It's funny how dark it is at night when you walk home. Bushes rustle and you walk faster in hope that you will make it there without being attacked. They say the world is a safer place now full of hopes and dreams and better law enforcment but sometimes you know that somethings can go wrong.
Only once I have locked my appartment door behind me do I feel safe and release a breath I did not know I'd been holding. My name is the Doctor. I once rescued civilisations and fought demons. I was a Timelord. But now I am stranded on planet Earth as a mere half human, a hybrid, abandonned by all including the woman I once worshipped. And as I run to the bathroom to throw up from fear I think about how I am no longer that timelord.
As I lay later on my bed I hear the door creek from a small gust of wind and I almost scream in fright, thinking that they're coming for me. Once i realise I'm okay I roll over and cry and think about what the Doctor would say if he were here. Then I realised it doesn't matter.
I wake up the next morning to a sunny day. But I have had another sleepless night plagued with nightmares and haunting memories and so I get up and got for a walk. I buy vodka and anything else strong enough that I know will make me forget. And then I go home and drnk myself to oblivion.
Hours later there is a knock on the door. Despite my heavily drunken state I am immediately alert because I have a Timelord brain and because no one ever knocks at my door. My neighbours learnt not to do so a week after i moved in.
Another knock snaps me out of my reverie and I bite my lip hard enough to draw blood. Fear pulses through me and I hope that it will glue me to the floor but I suddenly find myself rising to look through the peephole. And nearly die of a heart attack.
Pete and Jackie Tyler.
I knew Torchwood would catch up on me sooner or later because I knew Jackie cared and so did Pete and they probably wanted to make sure I was safe. I am in no fit state to see them but I know they know I'm here because Torchwood are annoying and tend to know these things. So I wrench open the door.
They look up with smiles which immediately vanish when they take in my apperance. Jackie starts to cry uncontrolably and even Pete looks shaken. They pull me into their arms and I stand rigid like a statue.
Nine hundred years of companions and I have forgotten what it is like to be hugged.
I step away from their embrace and walk back into my appartment, leaving the door open as an invitation. I do not wish to but after everything that they had done for me I could not refuse them now.
The door closes and they walk into the main room. I have no furniture. A sleeping bag, a pillow and a blanket in the bedroom and only a lamp in the kitchen. I never eat at home and when I'm here I either sleep or drink. The place stinks of alcohol and something moldy. I open the window because it is all I can do to make the place more welcome. I have nowhere to sit them so I stand awkwardly and wait for one of them to start freaking out.
Not to my surprise it's Jackie who starts cursing me then herself then Pete then her bloody daughter and then the high heavens.
But I don't pay attention because I just want to forget their existence and mine so I pick up a new bottle of whiskey and tune out Jackie's screaming and allow my mind to go blank.