Fyffe walked into the flat, past Madison, and through the kitchen. Following behind her was the strange man who had saved her life from the falling masonry, ash and smoke. Unlike the girl though, he did not enter the flat, but paused in the doorway and gazed stonily at the burning city outside.
‘You haven’t got anything to eat, do you?’ the blond girl asked, and she began rummaging through the cupboards at the back of the flat. Madison gave her a look of complete disbelief and glanced at the man in the doorway. Since returning home, she had lost her glazed confusion and a harder look had settled upon her face.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, without sounding it at all, ‘who the hell are you two, what are you doing in my house, and why the hell are you eating my food without even asking?’
Fyffe glanced up with her hand buried deep in a packet of flour. As if in slow motion, and with her eyes never leaving Madison’s face, she drew her hand up out of the packet, raised it to her face and gave her flour stained fingers a slow lick.
There was a long pause.
Under the shocked stare of the other woman, Fyffe shrugged delicately, before taking a secondary finger-lick and returning her attention to the packet with interest.
Once again, Madison turned to the man, assuming he was connected to this impossibly strange child, and trying, in a futile attempt, to get him to explain the situation. Still leaning against the doorway, he shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and turned around slowly, looking straight at Madison.
‘That child,’ he said slowly, ‘did you know him?’
Madison frowned. For a moment, she had seen an unsettling flicker in the man’s brown eyes which echoed what she had seen before. There was something buried deep into them, like a raging fire there; a power and an intense restlessness. This man had dark demons inside of him, and was fighting them every step of the way.
She realized that he was waiting for a response.
‘Yes, I knew him,’ she said. ‘Not very well… but his dad was a sweeper in the factory where I work.’
She wondered for a moment why she had answered the man when she had so clearly seen something in his eyes that she didn’t like. She didn’t know him, didn’t want to know him… but…
But there was something in his face that was so… desperate. Underneath the fire and demons nestled a need for companionship and understanding. Past the rage of the Time Lord, past the fury, the mercilessness... the Doctor’s infectious optimism and his unquenchable desire to help, to simply live, shone out.
‘I couldn’t save him,’ the man said quietly as the screams from the burning city rose behind him. ‘Sorry.’
Madison opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything, the man suddenly ran his fingers through his hair and scanned the room.
‘You don’t happen to have a shoe, do you?’
The question was so unexpected, that Madison took a step backwards out of surprise. She began to get the feeling that this man was almost as complex as the strange girl behind her. In a split second, he had taken all that rage and sorrow, all the darkness, and simply locked it away. She glanced down at her feet and, as he followed her gaze, the man smiled slightly and shook his head.
‘I meant a spare one,’ he said, ‘… no? Ah, well, never mind,’ he lifted his eyes from Madison’s face and called out to the girl. ‘Fyffe, put that down… I’m sure flour isn’t good for you.’
There was a thump as the opened flour packet landed heavily onto the floor. The Doctor face flashed a disapproving look that was so subtle it was barely noticeable, he then returned his attention back to the woman, giving her a cheery smile. She mouthed silently back at him in a way that reminded him strongly of a Langurian Human Harp fish… except that she wasn’t trying to eat her own tail.
‘ – ’ she began.
‘I’m the Doctor by the way, and this is Fyffe,’ he said and gestured towards the young girl, who was now holding a pineapple at arms length and giving it a wary look.
‘Oh…’ said Madison, ‘… um,’ she shook herself and tried to regain some control over the situation. ‘What the hell are you doing in my house?’
The Doctor paused and frowned to himself. ‘Dunno. We went to your makeshift hospital… and then I was following Fyffe. I guess she was following you.’
Madison spun around at the girl, ‘why were you following me?’
Fyffe looked up from her examination of the pineapple, ‘because you knew where you were going, and we did not,’ she said simply.
‘Ah, yes,’ said the Doctor scratching his earlobe nonchalantly, ‘we just arrived; been on a bit of a jungle adventure for the last day or so.’
Madison frowned at him. ‘You were in the jungle?’
The Doctor opened his mouth to reply but Madison cut across him.
‘Wait, wait,’ she said, ‘you said you were called Doctor?’ she gave him a scrutinizing glance and he shrugged, ‘and this is… who?’
‘Fyffe,’ said Fyffe.
‘And she’s, what, you’re daughter?’
Fyffe suddenly laughed so hard that she dropped the pineapple. The Doctor gave her a puzzled look as though he himself could not understand the strange child. At least, no more than Madison or any other sane person could.
‘I’ll take that as a no, then,’ said Madison, trying hard to not be offended by the girl’s sudden outburst. ‘Look, I don’t want to be rude–’
‘You haven’t told us who you are,’ said Fyffe from behind her.
‘She’s called Madison,’ said the Doctor. Madison turned and stared at him with a horrified expression. He smiled reassuringly.
‘It’s on your name-tag,’ he explained gently and nodded at her, ‘on your overalls that you’re wearing, work clothes are they?’ He shifted slightly as though in discomfort. ‘Are you sure you don’t have a spare shoe kicking about?’
Madison shook her head, ‘wait–’
Fyffe began laughing hysterically. The Doctor raised his eyebrows and shot her a glance.
‘Do you get it?’ Fyffe asked breathlessly.
‘What?’ he replied.
'But–’ began Madison.
‘You said kicking about.’
‘Right…’
‘You were talking about a shoe…’
Madison opened her mouth as the Doctor plunged his hands back into his pockets. A slow smile was spreading over his face. ‘Yeah?’ he said coyly.
The girl looked like she was about to explode. ‘And you said kicking about!’
The Doctor grinned, ‘you’re insane, Fyffe.’
‘Hang on a moment–’ Madison interjected.
The Doctor turned to face her again and gave her an annoyingly innocent smile, as though everything was perfectly normal. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘you were saying?’
Madison swallowed, ‘Well,’ she began.
‘What’s this?’ said Fyffe from behind her, holding the pineapple upside-down.
‘Oy, put that down,’ said the Doctor, suddenly switching from insane, happy-go-lucky man, to stern guardian, ‘it’s not yours… and besides, I know there are some breeds of pineapple that explode if you handle them to roughly.’
Fyffe glanced suspiciously at the pineapple then carefully laid the innocent looking fruit on the floor, before taking several large steps backwards.
‘Stop!’ shouted Madison.
In one single movement, the Doctor and Fyffe stopped. They glanced at each other and then looked at Madison with interest as she pointed first at one, then at the other.
‘Why do you only have one shoe, and why do you have a twig behind your ear?’
The answers came back abruptly.
'I lost the other one.’
‘I don’t know.’
Something deep inside Madison’s mind creaked slightly under the extreme pressure, and then proceeded to snap.
‘Fantastic!’ she cried sarcastically. ‘No, really! That’s just brilliant, isn’t it?! Bloody BRILLIANT!’ She began pacing furiously around the room. ‘You two,’ she vented, ‘I, I don’t even know who the hell you are! And you come in here and… and eat my food and ask me about shoes?!’ She arrived at the small window and pointed venomously out of it. ‘There is a war going on outside! My city is being bombed, people are dying… we might all die, cause there’s no way outta here, we’re just trapped like stinking rats! You’re not even from this city, for all I know, you could be the enemy! Now, you, you… you just get out of my house!’
In her fury, she began pushing the Doctor towards her door, hoping that the girl would simply follow him. The Doctor gave her a worried look that appeared to be tinged with fear. When she was angry, Madison was like a bulldog going through PMS. He didn’t resist her shoving and, as he was ushered away, he held up his hands to show his submission, gripped the door handle and swung it open.
Then he stopped.
Standing behind him, Madison tried to force his body through the doorframe, but he did not move.
‘Get out!’ she wined. ‘Seriously, I don’t even know who you are, just leave me alone!’
Fyffe drifted up behind the Doctor and gazed out through the door.
‘Oh, look,’ she said and pointed upwards.
Falling through the sky in almost a lazy manner was a long grey cylinder. If the cylinder had attended a fancy dress party, then people would have guessed it to be some kind of missile or bomb. The cylinder would have smiled and been proud, even a little smug, of how realistic its costume was… it would also have probably ended up getting so drunk that it spent the next day with its head down the toilet throwing up.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t at a fancy dress party. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in fancy dress. The Doctor stared at it with a strangely disappointed expression.
The cylinder was, in fact, a real missile and was destined to hit the city of Tendra with a large, loud and probably quite impressive explosion – at least impressive for anyone who didn’t happen to be blown up.
The Doctor blinked at the sky.
‘Ah,’ he said...
1 comments:
rebrith oh great.
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