Fight or Flight ( Doctor Who Fanfiction )

Empire.

After.

Disabling the network of smoke alarms was easy enough - I'd done it enough times in various dorm rooms and hotels. So was locking all the doors and windows. Time consuming, sure, but easy.

I'd given the entire staff the day off, since my parents were gone, and my security details only ever met me when I left the house, which the tracker in my neck guaranteed them I was not doing.

It was a mixture of a plan and a coincidence, I suppose.

No matter.

Fire caught quickly. I lit one match and dropped it on my desk, atop all the papers, half-written letters to a dead girl, and unfinished work for my father.

I watched it spread. Wondered if this was the part where I should be feeling fear.

It wasn't long - or maybe it was - before the walls were alight, the whole room crackling, and a beam from the attic fell through the ceiling outside this room, indicating that the fire had made it past out of my room. I listened impartially to the beam crashing through the chandelier in the front hall.

The smoke crept lower and lower, like a descending heaven. I couldn't see anything past it. The ceiling was gone. The tops of the doorframes were gone. The smoke devoured my world even more completely than the fire, and I was happy to see it go.

Soon it would devour me, too.

I lifted my chin.

Religion had never struck a chord with me. But for a moment, I prayed to anything that could hear me - or maybe that's called a wish. if Rue is out there somewhere, let me be with her.

Or maybe I wasn't good enough to be allowed in wherever she was. So, if I didn't deserve to be with her, l prayed I would be allowed catch a glimpse of her there on my way past paradise to wherever I belonged.

Just don't let her see me. Please. I don't want to see her cry.

The smoke crept past my nose.

I think I thought it would hurt less. As someone who was used to smoking just about anything I could get my hands on, breathing it in didn't scare me.

But this was a completely different experience. It felt like inhaling a thousand knives, and I might have screamed if I could. I felt my body hit the ground, but then I couldn't feel much else. There was this vague awareness that I was in excruciating pain, but I couldn't quite feel it.

I could see the blurred flicker, and that descending wall of smoke.

Now there were flames closing in on all sides, and there were voices screaming my name.

I was vaguely aware that no one else was supposed to be here, and that they should leave before they were hurt. I turned my head towards the door, but my eyes wouldn't focus. All I could make out was fire and that wall of smoke descending.

Leave, I thought at them. Go.

I closed my eyes.

"I FOUND HER!"

Rory.

"OMARA? OH MY GOD!" Amy screamed. "MELS, SHE'S HERE!"

"SHIT!"

"PUT OUT HER SLEEVE!"

Arms pulled my torso off the ground. My eyes flickered open, but all I could see was one or two fuzzy, dark silhouettes against the flickering backdrop.

There was another crash.

"GRAB HER LEGS!"

The rest of me lifted shakily off the ground, and my loss of contact with the ground cut all connection with reality. Up was down. I was swaying, and I was flying. I was falling. The heat seared my skin. Was this hell?