*Hello one and all! It's been a while, apologies but I was in Cardiff since Sunday, otherwise I would have posted sooner. I'm back home home now and the next month or so, I am going to go Whouffle crazy. The Year of the Doctor will be up hopefully by the weekend, Oswin will be finished probably next week and more super prompts from Counting Sinful Stars, xandrota and ladydi1984 will be up over the next few weeks, plus prompts and such. Anyway, last chapter was pretty heart-breaking and frankly this one is worse. I really wanted to explore Oswin's emotional turmoil. I've been in this situation on the Doctor's side so I don't know how it was so much easier to slip on Oswin's skin but nevertheless, this is a brutal one. I hope you enjoy anyway and I'll be back soon, Thursday most likely :) As ever, thank you so much to all my wonderful readers, reviewers, followers and favouriters and please let me know what you think! TPD*
Oswin was furious with herself. How could she have not seen this coming? The signs had all been there. The weird behaviour, the constantly trying to impress her, the sex for goodness sake! Did she really believe that the Doctor was the sort of person who had meaningless sex? How could she possibly have been so thick? She felt like she knew the Doctor pretty well but obviously not that well if she hadn't realised. Or worse, maybe she had realised it and ignored it for her own selfish purposes. She should never have slept with him and as much as Oswin wanted to carry on sleeping with him, she'd have to be insane to even consider it now. She half-wondered if she was going to have to leave the TARDIS. Could their relationship survive? Friendship, she corrected herself. Referring to it as a relationship felt cruel, given what had just transpired.
And as much as Oswin hated herself and hated the situation, there were two things she knew. One, that she didn't blame the Doctor. She wasn't angry with him, which was surprising in itself, but her time on the TARDIS had clearly mellowed her. But also, she never doubted her decision. As pissed off with the mess as she was, Oswin never for a second questioned it. She didn't love the Doctor and there wasn't even a small part of her that wanted to go out with him. He was amazing and everything, but there was nothing there romantically. The sex was great, but, to Oswin at least, there was nothing behind it. She would never have had sex with him if she had had any inkling that she had feelings for him, she was much too guarded to allow that. And it was cruel. Horribly so, but Oswin wasn't going to fuck around with him. Not anymore. She had to be blunt, there was no other way for her to be. It would never happen between them and he had to know that, otherwise there would be no hope for their friendship whatsoever.
After he had stormed out, Oswin had lost it. She had barely been holding it together after the incident in the caves anyway, that place had shaken her to her core. Memories came flooding right back: of dragging River from that foul stuff, it pouring out all over her, filling her nostrils, clinging to her hair, swamping her arms. There had been a moment where she'd thought she was going to drown as it swam into her mouth, tasting even worse than she'd imagined and she'd vomited it out, her entire body shuddering. As the moments flashed back to her, coupled with the look on the Doctor's face when she'd told him of her lack of feelings, she screamed in anguish. She stood, letting the towel fall to the floor so she was completely naked and then she swung her fist. As it collided with the mirror, Oswin thought she heard her own sanity shatter alongside the glass. She swore loudly as pain rocketed up her arm, glass slicing into her knuckles, which were burning in agony. She pulled her hand away but she didn't feel better, she felt worse. The pain in her hand was still secondary to the fierce guilt raging within her, coupled with the images of the cave.
These new memories were fresh, but they weren't as traumatising as another set, memories that now she pulled out, just to increase her level of despair. Memories of Daleks shrieking every night, Oswin unable to sleep as if her eyes drooped for a minute, the nightmares kicked in. They had always come for her in her nightmares and they still did. When she fell asleep, the walls to her perfect security system came crashing down, Daleks on all sides as she died over and over again, each extermination more excruciating than the last. Oswin started to sob, doubling over and trying to get the Dalek voices out of her head. Then she saw it again. His face. The look of pain, anguish and then, finally, complete and utter despair. She had taken his heart and crushed it in front of him and she had looked him in the eyes and seen a little light leave them. Her best friend, the only person in the world that she had left to love. Because she did love him. She couldn't say that to him of course, because it wasn't the sort of love he wanted. But nevertheless, she loved him like a friend, the sort of friend that you wanted to be there forever. And that fantasy was as dead as her mother.
When you only have sad memories, you need to try and cling to the happy ones, the ones that can pull you out of a slump. But for Oswin, all of her memories were tainted. The memories of her mother stained with the reminder that she was dead and the look in the paramedics eyes when he told a little girl she'd lost her mum. Her memories of the last year or so, travelling with the Doctor and the fun that they'd had, tainted by the knowledge that the entire time, his feelings for her had been building at a colossal rate, out of control. Out of her control. Oswin craved control more than anything and her entire life was one great big spinning wheel and she was strapped down to it whilst the Doctor, the Daleks and everything else that the universe could throw at her twirled her around, the motion-sickness too much for Oswin to bear.
She screamed again, the noise filling the otherwise silent room. She didn't know or care where the Doctor was. That was a lie though, because of course she cared. She cared more than anything in the entire world. And that was what made it so impossibly hard for her. The reason that her soul was crushed, the reason that saying the words left stamp prints on her almost as much as they left marks on him. Every word was not just a blow to him but to her own sanity, her own being. Her hand felt almost numb again, the burning reduced to little more than an itching compared to the torrent that was washing over Oswin's chest, making every breath feel impossible yet somehow she managed to keep breathing. To keep going, if she was managing that. If she could manage that. She both wanted to see the Doctor and not to see him. She wasn't sure that she could handle seeing the broken look on his face, seeing the dull, lifeless eyes, seeing his chin wobble. His chin. How many times had she teased him about it, decimating his self-esteem with her cocksure attitude?
As she looked back on every interaction she'd ever had with the Doctor, breaking down and reimagining every single scenario, trying to pinpoint the exact moment everything had started to fall apart, she knew that she was over-analysing it. She glanced down at herself and there was blood all over the carpet. Oswin swore again, her feet had been cut to ribbons by all of the broken glass and she hadn't even felt it. Each swear word penetrated the lingering silence that was hanging over her. It felt good, but it also felt empty. The curses meant nothing without seeing the Doctor's disapproving look that should accompany them.
The next hour was one of the hardest of Oswin's life. She had faced harder, but only just. The first few days of the Asylum, the days following the loss of her mother. If she could survive them, she could survive this. That was what she told herself. But the truth was, had she survived either? Her mother's death still lingered on, snapping away at her soul when she needed it least, whenever she was close to being happy. And the Asylum had never stopped taunting her, memories of it slipping into her consciousness. She was still breathing, her heart was still pumping blood around her body, but each experience, each horrific encounter, left her a little bit less human. They kept gnawing away at her, until she wasn't even sure what was left. The Doctor had built her up. He had given her reasons to carry on. If she had to go back to her regular life after this, she genuinely didn't think she'd last very long. How could she give all of this up?
Oswin would never know how she found the strength to clean up her feet, bandage her wrist and go to look for the Doctor. But she did just that, her entire world hanging on a knife edge, her very sanity clinging to the edge of a precipice. She didn't want to see the Doctor. She couldn't bear the thought that he would push her off the edge of the cliff that she was standing on the edge of, or worse, that she would throw herself off for him. It was a sacrifice she was almost willing to make, willing to cut him out of her life, let her own light fizzle out, rather than torture him with her presence every single day. But Oswin was a coward and Oswin knew that if push came to shove, she'd probably break down and beg him to let her stay. She wasn't even a fifth of the person that the Doctor was and they both knew that. Nevertheless, she had to go and see him. She couldn't hang on forever. She needed to either fall or climb to safety.
He was in the console room. In the end, he had been waiting for her, just like she'd been waiting for herself. He'd been crying. Obviously. He looked every bit as dreadful as she felt and probably looked. His eyes were red raw, his sleeves snotty, his face a mask of death. After the day that they had both had, it would make all the sense in the world to sleep. To take the night to assess their relationship and how to move forwards, but Oswin didn't have that luxury. She needed to resolve this.
"Doctor," she said quietly, the single word destroying the limp, awkward silence that had been threatening to suffocate them both since the moment they had locked eyes.
"Oswin," he replied. That was it. It was clear she was going to have to take the lead on this one. The way he said her name, so tender, yet so full of regret. He was angry with himself, he'd probably spent the last hour beating himself up, maybe physically as well as mentally. Well that made two of them. Oswin was suddenly acutely aware of the throbbing in her hand and tried to disguise the bandage, but he was already staring at it, his eyebrows curving out in surprise, his mouth moving ever so slightly. He was trying not to react but she knew him well enough. Or at least, she thought she had. She didn't know anymore. Her faith in her ability to read him had been shaken to its core, the same as everything else she thought she had known.
"I want to say I'm sorry," she sighed. "But the words can't do justice how I feel right now. They're pathetic, petty almost. Like I can quantify how much damage I've done to both of us. How much I've hurt you. And I imagine you feel roughly the same."
He nodded. The movement left his head bowed, as if he couldn't even bring himself to look at her anymore. She preferred it that way too, she didn't have to look into his big, sad eyes. She was too selfish to not enjoy that fact, even if it only registered for a moment, a flicker.
"What can I do?" she asked. And it was desperate. They both knew it. They both knew that something fundamental had fractured in their friendship and neither of them had a clue how to fix it. Oswin was asking him for answers that she knew he couldn't give, because as much as they were clueless, they both needed each too much to accept the fact that things were ugly and they were probably only going to get uglier.
"I don't know," he replied in a harsh, strained voice. At least he was admitting it, willing to open up his brain to the possibility that his knowledge of the intricacies of the universe was meaningless when his knowledge of Oswin and himself, was required. And worse, it was sorely lacking. "I don't suppose you've changed your mind about me?"
Oswin shook her head. She couldn't speak. She couldn't tell him the words again, she had barely managed to survive saying them once. She just kept shaking her head, like the amount of times she did it would translate. He nodded again, leaving his head in that same, lowered position. She stared at the floor. She had to say it, the question was burning at her.
"Do you want me to…?"
She couldn't finish the sentence as her voice cracked and her entire body shook. She wanted nothing more in the world than to undo the last twenty hours, just to be oblivious again. She couldn't bring herself to ask him the question, as she feared the answer. She didn't know what she feared more: if he kicked her out, or if he didn't. Kicking her out would destroy her, but staying would ruin him. They were caught between a rock and a hard place and Oswin knew which of them was willing to make the self-sacrifice. And it wasn't her.
"No," he said so quickly, Oswin doubted she'd have been able to finish the sentence even if she'd wanted to. "I mean, I don't want you to leave. I don't know what I'd do without you to keep me in check!" He'd said it light-heartedly, like the Doctor she knew, but his heart wasn't in it. There was an edge to the way he said it that sent a shiver down her spine. She imagined the Dalek Asylum, blown to smithereens. And then she thought back to everything she'd read about the Doctor. The Daleks feared him. She tried to ignore the Doctor's darker side, but when it was so chilling laid out in front of her, as an ultimatum, it was impossible to do so.
"Yeah," Oswin mumbled. "I thought so."
Then, by pure chance, they both looked up at the same moment. Their eyes met, his green meeting her brown and, just for a moment, none of it mattered. They could hold it together, find a way to make it work. The Doctor allowed himself a smile and Oswin returned it, fierce. His eyes were flickering, like they were just threatening to break back into that explosive light that she knew signalled his passion. But not quite. And then he was moving and she was meeting him and they were hugging so tightly she thought that he might be able to squeeze all of the pain and doubt away. They were going to get through this.
"I hate this," Oswin murmured, his ear millimetres from her lips. "I hate this so damned much."
"So do I," he admitted. "So do I."