The young man walks across a sand-blasted plain. There is a backpack on his back, which contains all the clothes, valuables and possessions he had been able to stuff in it while the clock counted down the seconds before Torchwood arrived at his flat. His dark eyes stare ahead. He wears a dark green beanie pulled down hard over his forehead, and his clothes - a hoodie over a T-Shirt that says "Kiss the Chef and the God - I Just Made an Apple Pie From Scratch" and a pair of cargo pants - are filthy and tattered.
He stumbles, weak and tired from days of walking. Knowing by now not to push himself, he takes off his backpack and sits on it, resting his head on his knees and breathing deeply. When his head stops spinning, he pulls out his water bottle and allows himself a few precious drops.
He picks up a handful of sand and lets it run through his fingers, reflecting on how much his world has changed in a few weeks. Before, he would have been fascinated by the chemical composition of the sand, the geography of the place he's in, the countless stars above his head. Now he doesn't really care.
What he feels is not anger. It's too deep, too smoldering, dark and inward and hardened. Anger is what you feel when someone cheats on you, or when the jerk at the next desk gets the scholarship you worked hard for. This is hate.
This is what you feel towards the man who showed you the greed and the darkness and the ignorance inside the human heart, even in yourself and even in those you love, and then left you to the mercy of it. This is what you feel when someone takes your innocence forever, in a way you can never just "move on" from. This is the feeling of misanthropy and desolation with no forseeable end in sight.
The young man stares ahead and wills that feeling to coalesce inside of him, making it something he will never forget. If The Doctor wants to tangle with human depravity, well, he'll get what he wants. He'll learn to fear humanity in all its hate- and avarice-filled glory. If the young man is after all a monster, at the very least he'll have the satisfaction of being The Doctor's monster.
He pulls himself up - slowly, slowly - dehydration, exhaustion, stress and hunger are not to be underestimated - shoulders his backpack again, and keeps walking. He's been walking for days now, or nights, really.
At first he tried walking during the day, assuming that the heat couldn't be that bad. His mother used to warn him that thinking he was invincible would be the death of him, and it almost was. Now when he sees the first hint of pink every morning, he slows, and when the sun peeks devilishly over the horizon, it's a sign that he isn't going to make it out today. Without a tent or any shelter, he tried at first to sleep stretched out on the sand, like the sheltered nerd he'd always been. He learned from that one quickly.
He looks up at the night sky. The stars, scattered across the darkness like spilled salt - unlucky, he thinks - are so bright and so countless that it's hard to remember they're separate from one another, much less their own suns with planets spinning around them, and living beings on some of them, and, somewhere out there, The Doctor. He could be looking at him right now, and he wouldn't even know it.
He gives a good hard glare towards the sky, just to be sure, and walks on.
Here I am! Third chapter's up, if you're reading this. I somehow managed to leave out the author's note on the first chapter, and it just didn't seem to fit with the mood of the second chapter, so here it is.
This one's gonna be a doozy. Long, complicated, spanning all of New Who and maybe a bit of the classic, depending on how much time I have to catch up on the classic. All New Who companions, even the temporary ones and the ones who don't have the official title of companion, will be there, and again, the classic series is a 'hopefully.'
I hope you enjoy it. Follows and favorites are nice, but above all, review. I want to hear your opinions, positive and negative, your (constructive) criticism possibly even more than your compliments, your favorites, your reflections, your thoughts about the show in general, your predictions, your suggestions, all of it. Hit me with it! I love you guys, I really do, and I want to hear your voices.
If you think you know the focus of this chapter, please don't spoil it in the reviews. Leave a review telling me you think you know, and I'll message you so you can tell me who you think it is. Maybe I'll tell you in that message. Maybe I'll tell you if you're right or wrong. Maybe I'll just laugh maniacally. Who knows? ;)
Anyway, have fun reading! The next chapter will most likely be up soon; I don't have a clear idea of what's going to happen, but I've been pretty inspired lately, so I'm hoping that won't be a problem. Stay with me, and enjoy!