Chapter Text
Two thousand, four hundred and ninety three days.
Six years and almost ten months in this place.
Really isn't so bad, once you get used to it. Well, that's what she liked to tell herself. She felt grateful every single one of those near twenty-five hundred days that it wasn't solitary confinement or anything like that. She'd frankly rather not go through anything like that again. What she'd done for Clara, she didn't regret it. Would she do it again, though? She was grateful, too, to not be confronted with that choice. She was grateful for a lot of things.
Angela and the rest helped her get through each day, in a literal sense. She had someone to deal with, as low-stakes as the environment was. She also had someone to look forward to, sitting in her cell at the end of the day. Ryan and Graham would be worried about her. She'd get out of here somehow, someday, and make sure they didn't have to worry for too long. Another thing to be grateful for: even though her TARDIS was far out of her reach, it still provided that quiet comfort from afar, a promise to take her back to the fam.
Yaz would be worried about her too, but that was different. She tried not to think about Yaz for too long at a time.
Anyway, the prison itself. She hadn't explored much of it, but based on her daily route and a couple months of listening to different parts of the wall, she had it pinned as being a medium-large asteroid. As for location, the stars she could see out the cell window suggested she was maybe only a couple hundred light-years from Akhaten. Which still existed, in this timeframe at least. Funny old universe, isn't it?
There were one hundred and forty-six cameras, and she said hello to each and every one of them when she saw them during her outings.
Well, I say outings, but I’m really only going out to one place.
The exercise room was quite similar to her cell but with more shocky bits, and also people to talk to. Sure, they never talked back, but that had never stopped her before. Angela was great for staring contests, and Bonnie was a kind soul. What she and Clyde had done to get themselves in here, the Doctor didn’t rightly know, but she tried not to judge. She didn’t like to just treat them as zoo animals to be stared at, which was part of why she talked to them. Even if none of them wanted anything to do with her most days, not even Heather the Hath.
And so that was the way it went. Sleep, eat, exercise, day, night. Six years so far, who knows how many more to go. A touch of excitement here and there to keep her mind sharp. Talking to herself and doing everything she possibly can to stay strong, stay sane, stay herself. And eventually, to stay here no more.