Checkmate (Doctor Who fanfiction)

Stay?

After sitting down, I leaned back on the door, shutting my eyes. I was so tired of this. Tired of living. Tired of not knowing what was going on. The room was dark, the way I liked it. The way I used to sit in the wash room, the air around me pitch black, just hiding from my dad. At least I understood the darkness. At least it was familiar.

Hot tears slid down my cheeks. I wanted to just stop. Stop being violent. Stop being brokenhearted. Stop being unfixable. Just stop being Ruby. No one could fix me. No one could help me. I was too far gone. I was just too deep in my hole of despair.

"Stop," I whispered to no one in particular. Probably myself. "Stop, stop."

No, Logic snapped. This is how you're supposed to be.

I winced. The voice of my usually friendly mental companion now gave me a headache.

"Go away," I whimpered. "Leave me alone."

You can't get rid of me. I'm always here. You don't get the upper hand this time.

"I never get the upper hand!" I cried. "I don't want to hurt anybody! I never have! Just leave me alone!"

No! Logic yelled back, reflecting my own mood back at me. You don't get that satisfaction. You're stuck with me. You got yourself stuck with me the second you started blaming The Doctor for your problems.

"What do you mean?!" I cried, sagging to the ground and sitting there in the darkness, helpless and alone with this strange voice. It suddenly occurred to me that Logic might not be me. I had conversations with it, right?

Oh, I'm just as terrible as you think I am, hissed Logic. I forgot that it shared my brain with me, which probably meant my thoughts weren't quite as private as I'd like to think.

"I don't understand," I sobbed. Add that to the list of things I don't understand. "Who are you?"

"I'm you."

I jerked my head over to look at daring gray eyes like mine. There was a girl, who was unmistakably me, only a couple years younger, who was sitting there, right next to me. He hair was a rat's nest, and her silver eyes were cruel and unforgiving. Her cheekbones were more prominent, almost scarily so, to the point of getting a papercut if I slapped her. When I looked down, I discovered the rest of her body was the same. Bony, with no layer of fat to break the hits that probably caused all those bruises. She nothing but a much too long and baggy white t-shirt that fell off her shoulder.

"Who are you?" I demanded, even though I had a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach that made me know that I knew exactly who she was.

"You call me Logic. But you know who I am," she said. Her lips were cracked and dry, like she hadn't had any water in ages. She looked up at the ceiling. "It's weird is it not, how we go to the things that hurt me the most to comfort us. Like darkness."

She was right. I resorted to old pain just to feel like I belonged, that something in my crazy life was stable. The worst things that ever happened to me were hoarded in the dark.

I wiped my tears, and nodded. "Yeah. I guess."

"I'm not here to comfort you," she said when she saw my tears had stopped flowing.

"Then," I said quietly, "why are you here?"

"To ask you a question. A simple one, really, but one you wouldn't ask yourself."

"And what's that?" I asked dryly.

"Why does he love you?" She said it like she was just asking how I was, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. "I mean really. Would he still love you if he knew that I live in your head? If he met me, would he love you so readily?"