She is braced for impact but this time there is no landing. Instead she is suspended in space, the Doctor's hand her only point of contact.
They are floating amongst the shattered ruins of a planet. Continent sized chunks of rock slowly spin, and clouds of gas bend the light of the nearby stars in a psychotropic haze of colour. It is beautiful and it is terrible and there are no words to be said; not even the questions of why or how.
His eyes are closed, frowning in concentration, and before her the fragments of planet begin to accelerate towards one another; a slow motion picture show gradually running up to speed. The ragged wisps of gas are not enough to convey the sound of landmasses colliding to her ears but she can feel the tremendous energy. More and more pieces of rock start to rush past, to join a cataclysm in reverse. It takes a moment for her to realise they are also accelerating rapidly towards the new planet.
For a moment everything is bathed in golden light; the heat of their descent through a proto-atmosphere scorching the air. It doesn't hurt. Perhaps her brain simply can't interpret this to provide a simulacra of the sensations she would have felt if she was alive. Thankfully. The air assumes a treacle-like thickness, cushioning them, until her feet make ground with cat-like softness.
She can hear him humming now, as all around the earth puckers and splits. Fiery arcs of lava spit across huge plains like the lash of a whip. Purple lighting stabs, a flickering strobe as the planet belches out more of her core to birth new continents; roiling clouds cry enough rain to fill the seas. Bare rock at her feet is suddenly carpeted blue-green. A tide of moss ebbs and flows until shrubs replace lichens, and acorns blossom into tall oaks within seconds. The rise and fall of epochs is underscored by him singing a tune he once picked out on guitar.
He opens his eyes and there is a feeling of deceleration, the roar of time replaced by chirruping insects and birds. They are standing on the edge of a lake surrounded by steaming jungle. She finally exhales the breath of another world as a butterfly lands briefly on her arm. It flits on to drink the nectar of a brilliant red orchid, and he clears his throat. "So," he says, grinning in that boyish way he as when he thinks he's being impressive, "what do you think of my planet?"
She swallows, trying to find the right words. How can anything encapsulate the majesty of what she has just witnessed; the impossibility of it all? She opens and closes her mouth, still agog at the buzzing rainforest he has conjured before her eyes. He is watching her carefully, awaiting her approval and God! How can it have been centuries since she last saw that wolfish grin? The very fundamentals of physics have been torn asunder in front of her eyes, and yet nothing between them is changed.
And she smiles, knowing the answer to his question like the words of a script. "Show off," she says.
His eyebrows shoot into his hair, mock outraged, until laughter bubbles up from underneath. She is laughing too, crying with it; both of them barely able to stand with the mirth.
"Yeah, I suppose it was a bit," he manages eventually. Her cheeks are aching with the mirror of the smile he wears, and there are questions she should be asking, answers that must be sought, but she can't—won't—care about that right now.
"Come on. Let's go and explore."
She has no idea how long they have been walking through the rainforest when they find the beach. Hours, maybe. Or days. It's a haze of wonder; digging fingers into the rooted soil and following creeping vines from buttress to branch; the oil-drop eyes of mouse-deer on the forest floor and the whiskers of its cat-like predator brushing past. Ripe fruit and sweet scent. Perhaps she is dead, and to explore this Eden with him is her reward. A paradise of colourful cawing birds and squabbling monkeys. Look, look, look is their mantra, a language of pointing fingers and tugged sleeves; of helping hands neither of them need but offer instinctively.
And now a beach of the proper tropical white sand, blue sea, picture-postcard variety. She drops to the warm sand laughing, lies back and spreads her arms wide. Sun on skin, eyes closed to better feel the texture of the grains that shift underneath her as she makes her sand angel. When is it that she has last made time to appreciate every tick and speck of the universe around her like this?
'Let's go make another,' she wants to say, and 'let's stay here forever.' They've given enough time to saving the worlds; surely they have earned the right to enjoy some. What terrible price can the cost of simply being be?
She sighs. Only all of time and space, she reminds herself. The consequence of a missed appointment with the inevitable. She opens her eyes to find he is casting a shadow, watching the breaking waves.
"When are we going to talk about it?" she asks lightly.
"Ooh, how about… never?"
She chuckles. "That'd be great, wouldn't it?"
His fingers trail in the sand, aimless patterns. "Sunset," he decrees.