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Overnight rain had helped clear the air, alleviating some of the pollution of the London air that had gotten a lot worse since my time. It was strange to think how much had changed in seventy years and even stranger to think I would have been ninety-three if I’d lived the years that had passed. I had lived some time, and some not, and some that had been undone. My relationship with time was a strange one, more often than not it was harmonious, leaving gentle marks on my body when I wasn’t paying attention, other times it was violent and painful, like I could feel the time-winds howling in the vortex, calling and worrying away at the edges of my mind. Sometimes I wondered if it was Caleera’s gift, still somehow swirling inside me, other times I wondered if it might be what happened to time travellers, who constantly cheat the clock. Really I think it’s just time passing, slipping away, and running out.
I was running too. In the early morning through Regent’s Park. Much was still the same it had been in my time and yet, not: the trees were taller looming in the twilight, black and imposing, the street lamps had lost their flickering charm and somehow seemed duller, and the ground beneath my thundering footsteps was smoother, character worn away by time.
Water splashed up my calves from another puddle I had failed to avoid, or rather not cared too. Somehow, it just didn’t matter, didn’t register as important. It didn’t make the list of things that I had on my mind that was far too full already. It was what had driven me out of bed in the early morning, long before daybreak, with the air chilly and the city oddly silent. I needed space to think and breathe and feel something other than the claustrophobia of 107 Baker Street. It wasn’t really the house, or even the flat, small as it might be. I didn’t mind that and I didn’t mind who I shared it with. It was what it represented: A standstill.
We were stranded. The TARDIS had broken down and thus far, all of the Doctor’s attempts to fix her had failed. The very thought filled my stomach with dread, much as it had done when I was lying in bed and wondered if that was it. If we would be trapped in 2020 forever.
I picked up the pace, pushing myself harder, chasing the anxiety away and running from it at the same time. I’d never been very sporty, I preferred an evening on the sofa with a good book, but all I’d longed for when getting out of bed had been to run, as though it might take me away from it all.
I was treading water and felt like I was drowning, even as I gulped down air into my burning lungs.
At least I wasn’t alone. The Doctor felt the same way. I could see it in his eyes, in the way he obsessively worked on the TARDIS and locked himself away when he couldn’t. And Liv? She was so far out of her time and she was no good at sitting still. She’d been masking it well, just like I’d tried to, though I think my composure was slipping.
Out there, at 4am, there were precious few people to see me cry. Though the rain has long since stopped, I would pass off the wetness of my cheeks as such.
I ran harder, up and across a bridge and past the zoo. My chest stung, I was soaked with sweat, and my heart was hammering so hard, it filled my ears and drowned out all other sound, the painful thoughts and creeping doubts. I was in pain, but I felt alive and for a moment, free.
I only returned to Baker Street when I could hardly keep myself upright. I hadn’t thought to bring a bottle of water, my shoes were hardly made for running long distances, and I’d kept going out of spite, rather than knowing how to properly run. I took one last deep breath at the foot of the stairs, thankful that my head was clearer than it had been, even if the now familiar feeling of helplessness remained at the back of my mind.
One day soon, I told myself. The Doctor had gotten us out of any number of tight scrapes, he would get us out of this eventually, even if it took a while. I could be strong in the meantime.
I opened the door to flat four as quietly as I could manage. There was time to go back to bed, particularly since it wasn’t as though we had anywhere to be through the day anyway, and I toed my soaked sneakers off by the door.
“Helen!” Liv stood in the doorway to the kitchen and I startled, her voice cutting through the silence.
“Liv-” I felt a flush of embarrassment in my cheeks but suppose it was hardly noticeable if I was as red in the face as I imagined from my run. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t, I was up already,” she evaded, though judging by the fact she was in PJs not for very long. “I just hadn’t realised you were out…” Perhaps a word of a lie? The sigh of relief, the glad smile… She could have been worried, but why not say so if she had been? Or perhaps she really hadn’t noticed my absence. It wasn’t as though we shared a bed for her to know I wasn’t there…
“You look hot,” she observed, words so sweet to hear but surely not intended. A Freudian slip perhaps? I should be so lucky. And she corrected herself quickly, likely still drowsy from sleep: “Sweaty, I mean. Have you been running?”
“Yeah.” Surely it was obvious and I felt caught red handed, wrapping my arms around myself as a sort of armour even as my body shuttered from my cooling sweat.
“I’ve never known you to do sports.” Liv kept her distance, a safe one, unmoving in the doorway, but she felt closer, just from the way she seemed to look right through me. She had a way of doing that and it always made me feel vulnerable, yet seen. A terribly contradictory thing.
“I miss the running.” I offered an evasive answer but not a lie. I tried not to lie to her, maintaining the one that hid my feelings for her was hard enough to keep up, I couldn’t do more than that.
“Me too…” she admitted with a smile, warm and understanding and I felt a little less alone, as I always did when I was with her. No-one else had ever made me feel like that. “This just feels so… limiting. Small.” Her eyes left me, travelling through the small hallway and I decided on a measure of the truth.
“I couldn’t stand it anymore… I needed some air…”
“I know what that feels like,” she conceded, and I glimpsed it in her eyes, so fleeting I had to doubt it had been there at all as she carried on more brightly. “But this is not too bad, is it? You and me? Here?”
“It’s not too bad, no…” That I couldn’t argue with. “I’m glad it’s you. I wouldn’t be able to do this with anyone else.” Another truth that I hoped she wouldn’t read too much into. Every now and then, it felt nice to be able to say these things and toe the line of our friendship, the shoreline, the insurmountable wall that I didn’t have the faith to cross.
“Me neither…” Liv smiled and tilted her head. “Funny how life plays sometimes, isn’t it?” There was something unsaid in her eyes that made my stomach flip and flutter.
“It is rather…” All the things that had led us to this place, this moment. All the time that had passed and not passed, bent and broken and tying us together. It was humbling and terrifying and ridiculous. I couldn’t attribute meaning to it, to the fact that we had been thrown together across all of time and space, else I would end up believing in something I couldn’t fathom.
“Perhaps we could go running together some time?” Liv broke a thoughtful silence, laden with the unspoken.
Running? I wasn’t sure we were still talking about running? I just didn’t know anymore what any of it meant. Was it foolish to hope? To dream? To love?
“I’d like that.” Whatever she meant, whatever she desired, I’d gladly do it, whether it was running or not.
“You might need some better shoes.” The tension in the air dispersed as she gestured to my muddy sneakers by the door.
“I might,” I conceded, disappointed that another moment simply passed us by. Time spent. Time wasted.
I shuddered. I needed a shower. I gave her a little smile and she returned it.
“Get yourself changed. I’ll make some tea.” She suggested as though it was nothing, as though she wasn’t the only person in the universe who would volunteer to do such things for me. As if it didn’t mean the world to me. As if her kindness didn’t squeeze my heart so much it hurt.
I wondered if she knew. I could tell her. I should have told her long ago but with every passing day, it seemed to be harder.
Another shudder ran through me, goosebumps erupting along my arms and I crossed the hallway moving towards the bathroom. Liv turned as well and somehow took the light from the room. It made me stall. The worse I felt in this suffocating place, the more I craved her light.
Perhaps I could tell her now, set myself free in one way while we remained prisoners in another.
“Liv?”
She stood wrapped in twilight as I looked back, her figure still but her eyes alive. They said so much that her lips didn’t. It felt them burn into mine, dragging up secrets, wants, desires that I couldn’t will my tongue to spell out either. My life had come with so many blessings since meeting the Doctor, was this the curse to balance the scales? To yearn but never brave, to hope but also fear?
And did Liv feel it too? Were we both damned to be caught in a lovely yet vicious circle?
“Yes, Helen?” Her voice broke the heavy silence but it fell once more like a suffocating vale, thick cloth that tied my movement and muffled my voice. I dropped my eyes and lost my nerve.
“Nevermind, another time.”
”Yes… another time…”
I carried on into the bathroom and turned on the shower, if just to mask the sound of the sob that broke from my chest.
It just hadn’t been the right time, but would it ever be?
Perhaps we had asked too much of time for it to ever be on our side. The time travellers who were just out of sync, always a step behind, always a little too late.