Updated 10/17/2016

PROLOGUE

When you run, it feels like it will never end. But however hard you try, you can't run forever. You're always going to be afraid, even if you learn to hide it.

Her mother was playing the television – that was Nadine's first returning thought. Her second was that the Doctor* was sassing his companion and that the sound of his voice exclaiming the phone was ringing and should really be picked up, had awoken her. She tried to ignore it, to fall back asleep as silence enveloped the room for that split two point seconds where she relaxed her guard. Then it repeated again, just a little louder, a little closer and she opened her eyes. Another echo of the same words hit her loud and clear beside her, pulling her fuzzy head away from sleep.

A bright light from the surface of her touch phone made her wince and squint (hissing like a deranged cat who had been attacked by water) as it flashed insistently. This was followed by a second realization that someone (who doesn't understand that no one is going to be up at two o' clock in the morning! Nadine thought as she glanced wearily at the digital clock hanging on the opposite wall) had sent her a message.

Nadine sat up with a groan, snatching up the phone before hastily tuning down the brightness, before moving through the passcode only to see her messenger popping up with a link stretching to a video on YouTube. She mumbled, staring at the familiar and yet so foreign name resting at the top in bold black letters: Amanda. An old friend she hadn't heard from in five years. In all honesty, Nadine had forgotten Amanda even had her number; let alone that the girl would send a video to bridge the distant gap between them. It wasn't as if they had fallen out on bad terms, they had simply drifted as most friends do.

But to come so suddenly out of the blue, and so damn late, and yet Nadine hesitated dropping the phone back on the night table. She hesitated turning away and tucking herself back into bed, deciding that a video wasn't anything particularly important. But then her finger dropped on the blue link and waited (hands sliding through the dark curls of tangled haired around her shoulders. Pain wincing through her cranium at odd intervals when nimble fingers caught into spotted knots, but she paid it no heed as she glanced around the room slowly, adjusting to the minimal silver light that was filtering through the window curtains she had pulled back) as the video loaded.

A smooth beat filtered from the speakers, startling her stiff.

Oh...

Nadine remembered this song. The smooth and light voice of the woman singing in tongue through the speakers, and the nostalgic beat accompanying the woman.

"Is that… is that Wolf's Rain?" Nadine murmured, mystified.

She raised her eyes towards the tidy footfall of shelves' lining the wall, books of every shape and size climbing back around towards the door, knowing there were two thin books in the heaps stacked together that the song brought many memories with. Wolf's Rain. Nadine recalled hunting the show at nights (smaller and younger she had been, knobby knees criss-crossed on the floor of the living room with wide brown eyes eagerly waiting for the ticking minutes to pass by) while her mother muttered with an exasperated roll of her eyes. "Look, see. Keeping her confused. Feed her with useless information, that's what a television set does." That had been her mother's hearsay to Nadine and her elder sister when they were younger, more than often directed to Nadine when she had refused to slip back into bed (insisting that she was a big girl) and trying to stay up late.

Nadine had honestly forgotten. Sure the information was there at the back of her mind, but it had been buried underneath boxes and dust, and copious amounts of info, that Nadine might as well have erased it from existence the way nostalgia had hit her so suddenly now. Hard to deny as Nadine was, she knew that sometimes she would bury things away until something triggered the memory (something that had greatly frustrated her mother when she chose to spout off useless info instead of keeping the more important facts told to her).

A slight smile settled over her lips as her body relaxed back into the pillow, an excited flutter flopping around her belly. Her eyes fluttered shut and she listened, allowing the soothing song to gently tuck her back into the blissful arms of the sandman –

A sharp crackle pitched over the music and Nadine jumped, ears ringing from the assault. She grasped tightly to her phone and looked down, brows pinched in agitation when she noticed the screen had glitched. The soothing moment ruined as the white noise continued to eerily envelope the calm into a tense atmosphere, heart beating roughly in her chest as she huffed out a long deep sigh. Nadine breathed out a curse as she tried to restart the device. But the more she tried to fix the cellular device, the more the white noise roared, leaving Nadine just the tiniest bit anxious and many times frustrated.

Becoming fed up she almost tore out the sim card when a bright light blinded her.

Nadine yelped in surprise, the phone slipping from her fingers (impacting with a loud thump) as she fell back, pulling at the curtains behind her to steady herself and only succeeding in making the blinds crack, struggling to hold her. She blinked blearily past the spots in her vision, shaking her head before she looked for her phone, scowling in confusion on where it had tumbled.

She looked over the side, letting her fingers slide through the curtains, the phone lying harmlessly on the floor. The white noise gone. The sudden light vanished. Silence in its otherness filling the room. Nadine stared at it and then sighed, debating whether she wished to leave the comfort of her warm bed or not when she knew the phone was probably still iffy from whatever had caused it to glitch.

The bright orange light filled her vision before reality caught up to her.

The light flushed out in a wink.

No one was in the room. The curtains were still drawn. The bed covers thrown hazardously from a fight. In the silence the click of a dead clock sounded.

I thought there could be nothing worse, nothing more terrible than losing them. The hole they leave behind, the emptiness, and distress, tearing through the psyche. It was horrible. But I was wrong. They lived, I died, and there was always one thing worse than dying. And that was knowing you were going to die. And where. And how. Never understanding why, only knowing that it is coming, the fear that makes companions of us all...

*The Doctor: A time travelling alien and known as last of the Time Lords.