Fight or Flight ( Doctor Who Fanfiction )

High Tide

My flat was dark when I left it. A new thing, barely furnished. A mattress on the floor, a couple of boxes. It was a relief to leave it behind.

I walked barefoot down the streets, eyes following the light of the street lamps instead of the light cast by the moon.

I reached the edge of Leadworth without seeing a soul, and that was when I called him.

No sooner had I selected right number, than did the air begin to stir.

He didn't even pick up - he was already standing against the doorframe of his ship when I turned around.

I was the one to speak first, and when I did it was just a simple greeting.

The warmth in his eye was almost painful. I still had so many questions, so much to crucify him for.

"You rang," he commented. "Do you know what you want?"

Ah, yes, the favor he was determined to give to me.

It was an easy way to explain my call. A slightly easier explanation than "I want you", which was the reason why he'd given me his number in the first place.

"My father is dead, and I never made peace with him."

He nodded slowly, trying to piece it together. "You want to say goodbye?"

I shook my head. "I want to see him die."

Unsurprisingly, the morbid request did not go over well with his delicate hearts.

"The death of Michelangelo King," he said with a furrowed brow. "Will seeing that make you happy?"

I was quiet. The answer to that shouldn't matter. He'd agreed to do what I asked, and now was the time for action, not philosophy.

"After you," he said softly, realizing he wouldn't be getting an answer.

Twentieth floor.

The two tallest buildings in this part of Tokyo faced each other. One was a sleeping office building, and the other had been temporarily retrofitted into a hospital.

The office building was empty, so we wandered between gray cubicles after the Doctor disabled the alarms. Scattered light from the city below made most of this level visible in grayscale, as long as you didn't look too closely at the shadowed desks.

He trailed me as I walked over to a windowed wall, so we could look out at the building across from us, where another glass wall stood out, a starkly bright screen against the dark sky and glimmering swath of buildings below.

Somewhere out there on this night, far away, we were celebrating the Williams' wedding.

"Why here?" He asked. "Why Tokyo?"

"He knew I was here. Wanted to make it easier for the prodigal daughter to return."

"Hm," he murmured. "The sky is nice. That's something. Didn't think we'd be able to see the stars."

"You usually can't," I sighed, trying to block out their glimmer. "We must be on the outskirts of the city. I wish there were clouds at least. Sorry."

"You don't have to apologize. I know you don't like them."

We were both quiet for a while.

The screen before us showed a vast, empty room. Empty besides a lone hospital bed and a chair stood beside his bed where my mother sat, faced away from us. She was asleep at his side, head down on the mattress while she held the hand of a pale man whose faded hair was turning grey. My father was only 30 when his hair started to lose its color, and I liked to imagine I had some role to play in the stress that caused it.