Author's Note: TW listed below.

Emerald Green

Chapter Twenty-Three

Flash

They were sliding down and down and down, the light from their flashlights sliding ahead of them as they'd both dropped them to try to hold on to the ground while still clinging to each other's hands. Molly thought it might have almost been fun, like a waterslide, if she'd known how they would land. It took some time for her to realize what they were sliding down was thick, sticky mud. She tried to claw into it to stop their descent, but the mud just came down with her in clumps. Suddenly, they were freefalling, and she could just hear the Doctor's scream over her own. It felt like they'd been falling for minutes, but she was sure it was just seconds before they landed in a pile of mud so high it reached just below her waist. She waited for some sort of agonizing pain, in case one of her legs had broken, but all she felt was the chill of the mud. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, and the chill faded for a second, and then she heard the Doctor shouting and the cold returned.

"Molly?! Molly!"

"I'm here," she said. She didn't remember letting go of his hand, but at least he was right beside her. She could see a faint outline from him, though one of the flashlights seemed to have disappeared, and only half the light from the other was visible.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah. I'm okay," she breathed. "Mud is supposed to be good for the skin, right?"

"Oh, good," he said, reaching for her shoulders as he breathed a sigh of relief. "I would never forgive myself if I killed Molly Quinn."

"Are you okay? You're not hurt?"

"No. No, I'm alright," he replied. He looked up and around, and she followed suit. They couldn't see much, but it was clear they'd fallen maybe nine feet. Chunks of mud were still rolling down at them, and Molly lowered her head to keep from it landing in her eyes. She looked around again, and saw what seemed to be a small cavern.

Molly tried to walk, but couldn't get her legs to move. "Where did all this mud come from?" she wondered.

"Shhh," the Doctor replied, holding a finger to his lips, then pointing upwards. She listened, but couldn't hear much over the mud still sliding above them. "There's a waterfall. Must be an underground lake somewhere above us, and it's leaking out."

"Oh," replied Molly. "…and you're still sure the ground isn't going to collapse on top of us?"

"Reasonably sure."

"Reasonably?" Great. She looked around again. "It's like a swamp here. How are we going to get out?" She paused. "…we're going to be able to get back up, right?"

"Of course we are."

"How?"

"Oh, I don't know. But there always seems to be a way." She saw the Doctor's outline shift as he slowly turned, then leaned forward as far as he could, and grabbed the flashlight. He shined the light around them, revealing that Molly's description of a swamp seemed accurate. But the light came across what looked like slightly more solid ground. "Alright," he said, turning back to Molly. "Let's make our way there."

"I can't get my legs to move very far."

"Here," he said, holding out the flashlight. She took it, then grabbed his offered hand. "You push, I'll pull."

She nodded, and leaned forward, and forced a leg ahead of her while he moved back, taking her along with them. He turned, and reached an arm out, and as he crawled to pull them forward, she kicked to push them. It took much longer than she would have liked, the cold seeping in through the mud and the fabric of her leggings, her exposed shoulders and arms, biting at her nose. By the time they made it across to the bank, she was out of breath, and despite the mud here still almost reaching her knees, she collapsed back into it, gasping for air. She heard the Doctor do the same beside her.

When they were breathing easier, he turned to look at her. "You know, you've got a little dirt on your face, just right here," he said, pointing to her cheek.

She could feel the mud covering her from her toes to her hair. "Oh, just a little?"

"Just a bit."

"You've just got a bit right here," she said, feeling wicked. She reached out and smeared some mud on his nose, one of the few clear places on his face.

"Did you get it?"

"Yep. You're totally clean now."

They laughed a moment as they both sat up. Molly looked down, and realized that the mud had sucked her shoes off, and that was why she could feel the mud on her toes. "Great. One of us always seems to end up barefoot."

"I'd offer you mine, but they wouldn't fit. Oh! Here," he said, and he pulled his coat off and wrapped it around her shoulders. "It's a bit chilly in here, and I'll be fine without it."

"Thanks," Molly said gratefully, and slipped her arms into it. At first she was worried about getting it muddy, but of course that was ridiculous. She could feel the weight of the mud on it, without even standing up. "So. What now?"

The Doctor stood and looked up. He reached towards his chest, frowned, then turned back to her. He reached down and helped her to her feet, then slipped his hand inside the coat just at her waist, and pulled out the sonic. She was about to call him out for putting a hand dangerously close to somewhere he shouldn't, but decided she was too tired from the fight with the mud.

She watched him swing it around, the sound almost seeming to echo in her ears. He looked down at it. "Pathway just to our left. Looks like it might at least lead us out of the mud."

"With the crystals putting off so much energy, couldn't the sonic pick it up?"

The Doctor shook his head as he turned to the left. "The signature they put out is faint. I was able to narrow it down to this area of the planet with the TARDIS, but the sonic is going to have trouble finding the signature until we're a bit closer."

They began down the next tunnel, each step having to pull their legs out of the mud again, holding their arms out to keep their balance. Eventually, the mud lowered until it was just at their shins, then ankles, then below their feet. Molly noticed that rather than the smoother walls above, these tunnels looked as though they'd been dug by rakes.

"They said the tunnels covered the whole planet," Molly said. "That's a lot of tunnels to search." She wasn't sure why she hadn't thought of this before.

"We're close enough, I'm sure. We'll run into them eventually." He turned back to glance at her. "What, are you already bored?"

"Uh, let's see," she began. "We're on an alien planet in the tunnels of extinct bugs, saw the crack in the universe, slipped down a miniature mudslide, and now we're wandering looking for crystals so powerful they can charge up a planet. Yeah, it's completely dull." She laughed. "It's pretty hard to be bored around you."

"I know," the Doctor laughed. "It's the best."

A sprinkling of dirt came down from the wall of the tunnel to their left, and then above them. The Doctor stopped to look at it, aiming the flashlight around to look for what had caused it.

"…Doctor."

He looked over at her. "It's fine. See? Still holding up."

"Doctor, why is the dirt coming down?"

"Dunno," he replied. "I'm hopeful it's just…shifting."

Molly fought the whining sound she wanted to make back. "We're pretty close to the crystals, right?"

He looked back at her, and she didn't appreciate the mild alarm on his face. "I very much hope so."

Molly didn't like that answer, but what other option did they have? They had to find another way up, and they couldn't just abandon people to what might well be their deaths on the moons. They continued forward for a while, when a scratching sound met Molly's ears.

"There are most definitely bugs in here," she said, trying to keep her voice pitched lower than Mickey Mouse.

"Well, yeah, of course there are," said the Doctor. "Not all life is dead on this planet. It's just whatever was strong enough to take the crystals that's dead."

"Why didn't you mention this?"

"I thought it was common sense."

Molly wanted to give a biting comment back, but admitted it was true. She should've known. "Maybe it's the bugs making the dirt fall."

"It would have to be quite a lot of them…" began the Doctor, but the way his voice drifted told her that the Doctor had thought of something. He stopped dead, then turned back to her. "Or I'm slow. Oh, I'm very, very slow! Everyone knows that!"

This was not something she liked to hear. "What do you mean?"

"The tunnels," he said.

"What about them?"

"They're big enough for us to walk through."

"I noticed that. And?"

"Why are they so big?"

Molly paused to think about it, and her stomach near sunk to her feet. "No. No. Nope."

"It might be that…"

"Don't say it."

"The bugs that took the crystals were very, very big."

"I told you not to say it."

"Well, it needed to be said."

She shuddered, and looked around. She hated to admit it, but it made sense, and she cursed herself for not noticing earlier. "Okay. Okay. At least they're dead." As she said it, more dirt fell from the wall beside them. She slowly turned toward it. "Doctor…"

"Uhm. Yes?"

"They're dead, right?" He didn't answer, and instead looked at her with alarm. She spun around in case something was behind her and didn't see anything, then turned back to him. "I changed my mind. I want everything to be boring. All the time."

More dirt rained down on them. The Doctor looked up at it. "I think, maybe, we should be moving. Faster."

Molly groaned, but kept up with him as he quickened his pace to almost a jog. She was glad now for the mud, rather than trying to run over bits of rock with her feet, but it was quickly running out. Soon they were jogging across dirt, some pieces dried into clumps. They found a three-way opening, and the Doctor scanned. He looked at the sonic, and grimaced.

"What?" Molly asked.

"Well, the good news is, I've found the crystals."

"Tell me this is a 'good news', 'better news' situation."

The Doctor glanced at her. "I'm afraid we're not that lucky."

She closed her eyes for a moment and asked the universe for strength. "Where are the crystals?" The Doctor gestured his head to the left. "Of course. In the direction of the gigantic bugs."

"I sure hope they aren't spiders," said the Doctor softly. "I hate spiders."

Molly shuddered. She was okay with spiders, usually. They ate bugs, so they were her allies. But thinking of something with eight legs and endless eyes towering over her… "My fingers are crossed we don't see them at all."

The Doctor began down the tunnel, and Molly walked with him. "I sort of would like to catch a glimpse," he admitted. "I don't see giant bugs very often. Usually just when I go back to the Carboniferous period."

Molly was busy trying to keep her heart from jumping out of her chest at every little sound. "I invite you to pop back here when we're done while I hide safely in the TARDIS."

"Might do that," replied the Doctor. "Might…not."

They were approaching a dead end, but Molly saw another opening to the left, this one with rocks in the dirt around the entrance. Right on the other side of the wall the dirt had been falling from. "Okay," she breathed. "Okay. Awesome."

"We might need to go down another offshoot once we turn," the Doctor said hopefully. "And not run straight into them."

Molly gulped, but then forced her feet forward. "Why are the rocks around this entry?"

"Maybe to cause a collapse in case of attack? There are some species on other planets that do similar things."

They continued forward, listening. Molly heard the scratching ahead, but far enough that she –

And there it was, crawling down the tunnel at them. It was big – very big. Its head nearly scraped the top of the 12-foot-tall tunnel. It looked more like a grasshopper than a spider, all green, crooked legs, wings tucked back, walking in a sort of crouched position. But along with the beady black eyes on either side of its head, it also had two eyes at the front. Its antennae split off at the ends, spreading out like the whiskers on a cat, and its mouth was constantly moving. Worst of all, the six legs it walked on were more like curved blades, and it walked along at the sharp tips of them. Molly could imagine the pain of a swipe from it, and wished it really had been spiders instead.

"What a whopper! Hello there, gorgeous!" the Doctor greeted it delightedly, and Molly glared at him incredulously. "You're a big fella, aren't you?"

The Lutumede moved forward a couple steps, and it seemed it blurred from the speed. "Doctor…" Molly began, her voice shaking. "Chances of it eating us on a scale of one to ten?"

"Depends," said the Doctor. "If it doesn't eat people, zero. If it does, probably a seven." The bug moved forward another step. "Maybe a nine. We should be going."

"Back the way we came?"

The Doctor looked beyond the bug, then clapped his hands together. "We still need the crystals. There's an offshoot just behind it. We can get around it."

"…we can?"

The Doctor nodded and grabbed her hand. "This sort of thing tends to work out for me. Ready?"

"No."

"…how about now?"

She made a whining sound, winced, and then said, "Geronimo."

"Geronimo!" The Doctor shouted, then grinned, and then they were running directly towards it.

Molly found herself screaming, though she hadn't exactly chosen to. There was just enough space between the Lutumede and the side of the tunnel to squeeze past it. It made a sort of creaking sound in its throat and rushed forward, past them. Molly heard it continue to move, and assumed it was turning around to pursue them.

Molly wasn't sure if she had ever run faster. She was even pulling ahead of the Doctor, who was taller and had more experience running for his life. This was even scarier than running from the Vashta Nerada-controlled Daleks for her. She hated bugs. She hated them. So she felt sick when she heard what sounded like a second pair – sextuplet? – of legs behind them. And then a third.

"I think it called some friends!"

The Doctor glanced back. "They're mostly curious, I think. They aren't following quickly. If they did, we'd be dead in a few seconds."

"Thanks for the comfort!" She saw an offshoot to the right, and circled around so she could drag the Doctor down it. He stumbled for a second trying to change directions, but they gained some speed. There were more openings ahead, and now they were zig-zagging through the maze. Molly was fairly certain they would never find their way out again.

The Doctor tugged at her hand suddenly, and she slowed and stopped when he did. She was panting as she turned back, and saw him looking behind them. "I think they've stopped. Or we lost them."

"Good. I…hate…bugs…" Molly spat out between breaths. Her heart was pounding, and her stomach hurt the way it did back in her physical therapy days when she'd pushed herself too hard. Her usual calm in an emergency had never kicked in, thanks to the deep-rooted fear of the bugs. It was the worst time for that mechanism not to work.

She leaned against the wall of the tunnel, and the Doctor leaned against the opposite. He was breathing deeply, too. Neither of them could say much between the breaths for a while. Finally, Molly swallowed and said, "Do you think we're hopelessly lost?"

"There's always hope," replied the Doctor, glancing down the part of the tunnel they hadn't been through yet. It didn't reassure her that he didn't go on to explain a plan.

"If we die to a bunch of bugs, or die of thirst while trapped in a bug nest, I am going to be really, really mad."

"Not for long," the Doctor pointed out.

Molly rolled her eyes, and opened her mouth for a retort, when a sound met her ears that made her vision shake as she shuddered violently.

Buzzing. From the tunnel ahead of them, there was the distinct sound of buzzing from a mob of bugs shaking their wings.

She choked back vomit. "Doctor…" she said fearfully, placing her hands over her ears. There was that bitter taste again. "This is very, very bad."

The Doctor's panicked face showed that he didn't need to be told that. He ran down the tunnel a few feet, and Molly closed her eyes tight, trying to block out the repeated buzzing as best as she could despite feeling as though tendrils had closed around her and were tugging her back into the past. She could almost see the swinging light when she felt the Doctor's hand on her arm.

"This way," he said, his voice unusually serious. He began to guide her down the tunnels, walking quickly, but not running. Molly wasn't sure she was capable of running while the buzzing of the bugs filled her ears and mixed with the sound of another kind of buzzing in her head.

"Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla," she muttered to herself, trying to keep herself grounded. If she fell, the bugs would catch them. It was only now that she realized she'd stop repeating the names every time she was scared. "Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla." She had to hold on to them. To her promise.

She forced her eyes open and saw the Doctor looking back at her with concern. But the buzzing grew closer, grew louder, and as he glanced behind her, his expression shifted to something more akin to fear. She didn't need to look behind her to know that a group of the Lutumedes were following right behind.

As they sped up, Molly continued her chant: "Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla. Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla. Phoebe, Heather-" she screamed when the scene in front of her flashed from the Doctor and the tunnels to the brick and the swinging lamp and the chair, then flashed back.

"Doctor," she gasped, and realized now she was crying. "I'm spiraling. I don't know if I can hang on."

They turned a sharp corner and ran a few feet forward, and the Doctor turned to her just in time to catch her as her legs failed, wrapping his free hand around her waist. She grabbed his shoulders and forced her feet back under her, forced her muscles to hold her weight, even though it felt like her hands were chained. Cold brick behind her. Red. Buzzing. Screams. Smell of copper and something sweet and sick. Buzzing. The ache of her throat. A wet thud. Buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. The buzzing was still approaching and she felt coolness on both her cheeks and she opened her eyes she hadn't meant to close and saw the Doctor with a hand on either side of her face. He was saying something. What? "Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Elanore, Nina, Ivy, Xyla." He was saying the names. He was saying them with her, trying to help ground her.

He disappeared again, for a moment, as she looked around the basement at the strange shadows around her and -she fought her way back as though kicking to the surface of water, and then the Doctor was back, and it took her a moment to realize he was saying something different now.

"- tell me! What was the buzzing sound the first time, Molly? What was the original?" She gasped and shook her head, but he gave her a gentle shake. "Tell me what the buzzing was. I can try to use a sound from the sonic to counteract it, but I need to know what it was!"

She shook her head again. No, no. She couldn't tell him. She couldn't.

But the buzzing was getting closer and louder and closer and louder and her mouth opened and without permission from her mind she gasped, "A bone saw!"

Even with her vision blurring, she saw the look of sick horror flash across the Doctor's face. But a breath later, he'd reached into his pocket and taken out the sonic. She heard it echo, one octave, then a higher one, then a higher one, until the pitch hurt her head. But the hurt chased most of the buzzing in her head out. She grabbed the sonic from the Doctor and held it to her ear, desperately, like clinging to a life raft in a hurricane on the ocean. He grabbed her free hand and they were running.

The sound was holding off the worst of the memories. As long as she could outrun remembering any specific detail the way they were outrunning the Lutumedes, there was a chance they could get away without her falling into a flashback. But she felt it coming on like a cold anyway, and her flashbacks had become more intense since being shot, and they didn't have time. So, as she listened to the sonic, she hummed along. But then it came to her suddenly, the reason she'd always thought of the sonic as echoing around her: it echoed in her head, another distant reminder of the buzzing of the bone saw. The pitch was helping keep it away, but the memory of the sonic making a buzzing sound that unconsciously brought the bone saw to the surface was pulling that memory up and up and up and then she'd thought about it for too long.

The basement was cold. The chains around her wrists felt like ice. The Doctor dragged her around another corner as her legs begged for mercy, for rest. The lamp was swinging, always was swinging from the force of the ceiling fan. The fan spread that sick, sweet smell around the basement. The Doctor looked back at her, but it was like he was a ghost. "We're gaining some distance on them!" he encouraged.

She spat blood out of her throat, gone raw with screaming. "Please, stop, please, stop, please, stop, please, stop, please, stop, please, stop!" She was screaming with the Doctor, too.

"We can't stop! Not yet!" he shouted back, and the voice was distant, going on and on, saying those same hateful, worshipful things again and again, that voice was The Doctor pulled her around another corner, and now they were sloping upward and the fear alone was going to kill her, she wished it would, she wanted "They're following shine of the sonic," he said and she'd rather it was her, she begged any deity that was listening to make it her she felt dirt against her face and then she felt herself lifted up the buzzing of the saw started, and she couldn't stop it.

"Don't do it, don't do it – I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" She couldn't tell which world she was in now. Everything blurred and spun together. She screamed her frustration, determined to stay here with the Doctor, to fight this off. "Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla, Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla, Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla." She repeated it for as long as her lungs had air in them, and then took another breath and kept going. It helped. It was anchoring her.

But she heard the buzzing just behind as the Doctor spun around another corner. He stopped and set her down and took the sonic from her, and she heard the sonic change pitches again, and it was another buzzing, and then a there was a crashing, crushing sound. The tunnel had collapsed, the way they'd come. She took a breath, and then drowned.

The words kept coming, long after she'd stopped listening. The chains dug into her wrists, which felt like they were being frozen solid. The brick scratched at her back, rough even through her pajama top. She could only take this information in a little at a time. Her face felt like it would wrinkle from the endless stream of tears, her head was swimming in confusion, her chest was filled with fear and sobs, and her ears were full of words, words, words.

She never remembered them praying, not over meals, or during emergencies, or before bedtime. She hadn't even ever been to a Christmas service. Her mother mentioned, now and then, her old gods and goddesses, but she didn't have the time to worship them anymore. But prayers were being spoken over her now, along with the bloody explanations.

But her eyes were stuck on the waterfall of red ahead of her. The chair. The ropes. She only now was seeing the table behind the chair, filled with kitchen utensils and power tools and things she recognized from the medical dramas her mom watched like it was her true religion. And she was starting to see things she didn't want to see around the edges of the room.

The words stopped. She prayed for them to start again, prayed as hard as she could, even though she didn't know how to pray. Prayed it was a dream. Prayed it was a joke. Prayed someone would come down the stairs.

But maybe she offended whatever gods there were, because the words didn't begin again, and instead, everything else began.

It was a blur of screams and scalpels, begging and screwdrivers, sobs and knives, blood and bone saws. Pins and lighters and thumbscrews, eyelids and ears and fingers. She didn't know where her screams and pleas and sobs began and where the others ended. They were one and the same.

But it stretched on and on, into eternity, until she was a different person, a wretched person, a terrified person, an empty person, not Molly Phoenix. Never again Molly Phoenix.

Molly Phoenix died.

"Molly, Molly!" she heard the Doctor shouting, far away, so distant he may as well have been on another planet, in another galaxy. "Molly, come back. Come on, Molly. Come back to me."

She blinked her eyes open, though she wasn't entirely sure she had eyes. She saw his face around her, and thought it was on a screen until he pressed his forehead against hers. She shifted forward in time, from that other, safer basement and television and Doctor Who, to whatever now was. "Molly," he breathed with relief in the air. "Stay with me."

Her lungs were breathing. She thought that maybe she should have been choosing to do that, but they did it on their own, anyway. Fast, too fast, and hard. Hyperventilating. Her body did that sometimes.

Something rough was behind her back, but it wasn't brick. Dirt and rocks. There were dirt and rocks beside her, too, piled high. The flashlight sat beside the Doctor, making the shadows stretched and threatening. Was she a shadow?

"I don't know what's real," she gasped. "I don't know what's real. I don't know what's real, I don't know what's real…"

She felt the Doctor's hands on either side of her head, his skin cold against her burning face. "You're real," he insisted. He reached down and put her hands (were they made of clay?) on his face. "I'm real. This is real, okay? This is real."

It didn't feel real. The Doctor was a TV character. None of this could be real. What was real was that other world, the basement with the brick and the chair and the red and the buzzing.

The buzzing. She listened. The buzzing that had been following them was gone. The buzzing that had chased her and the Doctor.

"Doctor?" she asked weakly, needing to confirm it was him, not her imagination, not a fantasy she invented to protect herself from reality, that she wasn't still thirteen and trapped.

He nodded, and she could feel the movement under her hands as though it were real. "Yes, Molly. It's me. The Doctor. I'm really here."

"Doctor…" she whispered, her voice the definition of wonder. Her eyes were wide. Yes, of course. This was real. Maybe she wasn't, but he was. Almost too real, so real it hurt her.

Depersonalization or not, she had to pretend she was real. She was remembering the crystals, the tunnels, the bugs. They were lost in a maze of tunnels. She had to come back, even if it was all an act.

She took a slow breath. "Remind me to invest in earplugs."

The Doctor smiled, kissed the top of her head. "Ah, there's my Molly. Welcome back, hey?" He stood, and offered his hands to help her stand, too. It was difficult while her legs felt like a plastic doll's legs, but she managed to stay standing. He held on to her hands, though, which helped keep her stable. "Think you can walk again?"

She didn't know, so she didn't answer. "What happened?"

"Well, we left the Lutumedes behind. I collapsed the tunnel so they couldn't follow us," he said. "Thankfully, we were chased right in the direction of the crystals. They should be just up ahead."

"And how long do you think until we can find the TARDIS?" She just wanted to be inside, safe. The thought of hearing those bugs buzzing again and having to go back to that hell almost choked her. It felt like she wouldn't survive a second visit to her past.

The Doctor slowly let go of her, and held his hands out as she swayed, but she found her balance and he bent down and picked the sonic and the flashlight back up. He tried to hand her the flashlight, but it slipped through her fingers. She apologized, and they tried again, and this time she was able to hold on tight.

The Doctor scanned the area. "I think she might be just above us."

"Convenient," she sighed.

He patted her on the shoulder. "I think we've earned some convenience."

Molly nodded – oh, right, she was Molly, not she – and found her arms wrapped around the Doctor before her brain told her that it had decided to hug him. "Thanks," she said, trying to put more power into her voice.

"Of course, don't be ridiculous," he said gently, giving her a tight squeeze before pulling back. He offered her a hand. "Let's get this finished so we can go home."

Home. It felt beautiful and painful. She hadn't had a home in so long – a house, an apartment, a hotel room. Never a home, a sanctuary. And the Doctor had just called the TARDIS her home.

But for how much longer would she get to have a home?

The pile of crystals had been beautiful, though they didn't sparkle quite as much as she'd imagined. They had a sort of layer of dullness to the outside. Maybe that was because she still didn't feel quite connected to reality. Still, they were pretty, and she helped the Doctor fill his pockets with a few, carefully in case they were volatile, which was a detail the Doctor hadn't mentioned until then.

They walked another few minutes, mostly in silence save for the Doctor pointing out each direction. He seemed to realize she needed more time to recover, to leave the memories fully behind and become a part of the real world again, for which she was grateful.

She was feeling more herself as they walked down a long tunnel, longer than the others, until she saw an opening to their right, and deep inside it she saw the crack again. The TARDIS was up ahead. Which felt a miracle, partially because she felt so dizzy and weak she wasn't sure she would be able to keep going for much longer.

The Doctor stopped. "I just…need a moment," he said, taking out the sonic again. "I need to know why it's here."

She wanted to object, but she could hardly blame him. He moved down the other tunnel. "Careful," she insisted. "Don't get too close. If you slide back down it's going to be hours before you find your way back again. If you find your way back."

"I'm watching the ground," he promised. He inched closer and closer to the crack, and Molly's heart beat wildly, terrified she'd see him disappear again. She wouldn't be able to follow him, she didn't have the strength, and she didn't have a key to the TARDIS. She'd be vulnerable, waiting out here for him to come back, not knowing if he would – terrified he wouldn't.

But he stopped while still on solid ground, and reached the sonic out as far as he could. She heard him scan for several minutes, scan and check the results, scan and check the results. He turned back to her after a time, and his face told her he hadn't learned anything.

"Sorry," Molly said. She was afraid of the crack in the universe. She could only imagine how much more afraid he was.

"S'alright," he replied. He sighed heavily. "Just another mystery."

But it wasn't. And they both knew it.

TW: PTSD, torture

Author's Note: This is definitely a bit dramatized. but it is based on my own experience with PTSD, so it may not be as overdramatized as it seems.