Well, here's another one!
Hey, maybe we're gonna get a proper meeting this time! Have to wait and see, won't ya! ;) Actually, I think more than one meeting may be occurring this time!
Enjoy!
DISCLAIMER: In The Flesh and all its characters belong to Dominic Mitchell and BBC Three, I write this purely out of love :3
Chapter Four: A Miraculous Vanishing Act
He has no idea how long he's been walking, but he knows it's been long enough for the sun to rise and the birds to sing. Had he been in a more artistic frame of mind he might have marvelled at the sight, witnessing dawn rising over a strange city. Right now, though, it just serves as a grim reminder that he hasn't slept in close to fifty hours.
His fingers trail over a carved stone balustrade, and he slows to a halt as he realises what he's standing on. He looks down at the rushing water, leaning his elbows on the barrier and craning his neck. The current races thick and black below the bridge, and he wonders how deep it is. How far would he have to sink to be swallowed by the cold, cloying mud of the riverbed?
He knows that his feet must be covered in blisters and his stomach is turning from hunger, but he is struggling to care. It all feels distant now, all the aches and pains feel like they might as well belong to another body. There's enough turmoil in his mind that a little outer pain is really here nor there.
Instead of dwelling on the pain he just stands and stares, watching the currents sweep past. He sees a fallen branch, tossing and writhing with the tide as the icy river carries it downstream. He wonders how long it will keep going, how long until it sinks below the surface or gets dashed against the shore. The angry brown-black surge carries it along like it weighs nothing. It may as well be nothing for all the river cares.
He isn't even aware that he is leaning forward until he hears the voice.
"I wouldn't if I were you."
He knows that voice just as surely as he knows it's addressing him. He whips around, his hand still clenched on the balustrade.
The dark-haired man who owed him his life grimaced back, shrugging with his hands in his pockets.
"It's really feckin' cold."
After an hour long train ride in which she'd almost thrown up twice, Amy Dyer found herself once again in the town of her birth. Less than two hours later, and she is walking around it wondering how exactly a place can even get this boring.
Unfortunately, while the place had its fair share of pretty houses, nice gardens and rustic shops, no amount of decorative flower beds could diffuse the overwhelmingly bleak atmosphere. If she had to pick a colour to describe Roarton, she could only say grey. Medium grey. Not as clear and fresh as light grey and not as thick and sinister as dark. Just somewhere unbelievably middle-ish. And unfortunately, the people seem as coarse and colourless as their surroundings. She's already had several nosy and suspicious looks thrown her way. For a while she found herself wondering if they had some kind of local unspoken law about wearing coloured clothes in public, or maybe there was some kind of one underskirt limit no one had told her about. But the more looks she got the more she realised it just wasn't the kind of place that had much to do with outsiders.
She's just peeking into shop windows, silently chastising this toneless town for failing to uphold the ancient traditions of picturesque English villages (specifically the ones pertaining to creating a welcoming atmosphere to clueless out-of-towners), when she sees someone in the window of the nearby corner shop. She notices that he's taping a poster to the inside of the glass, and takes a few steps closer to investigate.
A grainy black and white picture adorns the centre of the paper, a photo of a ridiculously pretty boy with dark eyes and hair almost as pale as his skin. The word 'MISSING' is printed in stark capitals above his face.
A moment later someone emerges from the shop, and she turns to see the man who'd taped up the poster. He does an almost comical double-take when he sees her, and looks so confused she feels moved to help him out.
"I'm new in town," she explains, smiling reassuringly. So far the man wasn't giving her any weird looks, which was more than she'd had all day.
His expression remains blank for a moment before realisation dawns. "Are you, um, Dorothy Dyer's…?"
"Weird dying granddaughter?" she finishes for him, smiling at his awkward blush. "Yep. That's me. I see my reputation precedes me!"
"Oh, um, yeah. Dorothy, she, uh, talks about you a lot," he stammers, awkwardly shifting his stack of posters under one arm and extending his hand. "I'm Philip. Philip Wilson. Phil. Yeah."
Amy feels like she wants to be annoyed by his blundering way of speaking, but it warms her a little. It's pretty obvious that he's not talking awkwardly out of disdain or suspicion. She takes his hand and gives it a firm shake, smiling at him. "Nice to meet you, Philip! I'm Amy."
A small smile tips up the corners of his mouth, and his blush increases. Amy politely pretends not to notice, instead nodding to the posters under his arm. "Working hard, I see?"
"Oh, yeah," he says bashfully, fiddling with the edges of the papers. "Just on a kind of volunteer basis at the moment. New council elections aren't until the spring so, um…"
Amy smiles, turning her attention back the poster in the window. "So, who's this bloke you lot are trying to find? Anyone you know?"
Philip nods, readjusting the stack of paper in his arms and standing beside her to look at the window. "Yeah. Used to go to school together. His parents haven't seen him in a couple of days."
"Well, it's not exactly a big place," Amy reasons, scanning the grainy photo. "Not exactly many places he could go…"
Philip shrugs. "You'd think. But no one's seen hide nor hair of him in two days, so he must have found somewhere."
"Yeah, must have," Amy mused quietly, weirdly intrigued by the strange boy and his miraculous vanishing act. She read the text below the picture, and two words stood out to her.
"Kieren Walker," she murmured, searching his black eyes for answers. "Where are you hiding?"
Simon didn't know how long he searched high and low for the mysterious man to whom he owed his life. All he knew was that in the time he'd been combing the streets the sun had set and risen again, the Earth continuing its endless rotation while he scoured its surface.
He'd started out at the place where he'd been found, practically sprinting towards the street the second the ambulance driver gave him the name. He found himself in the alley again, the street outside thriving as usual, like nothing had even happened. He'd found his battered phone in the puddle where he'd left it, and pocketed it even though he knew he probably wouldn't get any use out of it anymore, but found no other signs of his presence or the presence of his quarry. He emerged back out onto the street, desperately seeking information and finding it with the help of a startled-looking café owner (who prefaced the conversation by asking if he was okay or needed another ice pack. Simon wasn't sure he liked that so many people now seemed to know him without him realising, so he ignored the question and pursued his own enquiries).
He'd walked through the afternoon, the evening, the small hours of the morning, too fixated on his hunt to care about the insistent tingles reminding him that he'd had his system completely purged and should probably be doing something about it. That could wait a while, but if he let the trail of the mysterious man grow any colder he'd lose him for good.
Morning rolled round, and he finally struck lucky. A pair of girls (art students, at a guess) sat outside a coffee shop drinking pointlessly massive mugs of hot chocolate. The tall, green-haired one had flipped through her sketchbook, eventually finding a hasty line drawing of the man he searched for (while the shorter red-and-blond haired girl quietly rambled about how gorgeous his eyes had been. Simon would have stopped her, but he kind of had to agree). After they pointed him in the direction of a nearby park he barely had time to thank them before he was sprinting away.
And now here he is. Standing on the bridge in the park, and even from the back he knows who is leaning over the railing.
He wants to be angry. He honestly wants to yell at this stupid man who saved his worthless life. He is still convinced he would have been better off if he'd just been allowed to quietly die on his own time, without this complete stranger swooping in at the last minute. But he finds his anger tempered somewhat by two things. The first thing is the blood staining the strange man's sleeve, patchy and faded as though it had seeped through from the inside. The other is the way his body is leaning forward, creeping gradually closer to the rushing water as if he's weighing up the pros and cons of just letting himself fall in. It is these two factors that make him speak out calmly instead of aggressively when all he really wants to do is yell.
"I wouldn't if I were you," he calls out.
The man turns around, and Simon's breath hitches.
Whatever blurry image he'd had in his head didn't do the man justice. In person his hair glints in the rising sun, his pale skin practically glows. There were other things his drugged mind had omitted, things like the bruise-like shadows beneath his eyes and the sallowness of his cheeks, but right now he can't focus on any of those. All he can do is stare at his eyes.
"It's really feckin' cold," he explains lamely, pushing his hands into his pockets. "I should know. Taken a couple o' dunks in there, myself. Y'know how it is. Go to a party, one drink too many…"
The man stares at him as he rambles, and he remains fixated on his eyes even though his logical mind is telling him he should probably stop staring. Yes, his eyes are impossibly dark, he knew that much already, but there's something more. In the split second after he'd turned around, they'd looked distant, almost completely blank, something like muted despair shining from their depths. Though the flicker of recognition as he laid eyes on Simon pushed the darkness back a little, he could still see it there lurking in the shadows. His eyes seem more suited to a traumatised war veteran than an attractive young man in his prime. Eyes that showed a lost boy, old before his time.
The remaining shreds of his anger dissolve as the man speaks.
"They let yeh out quickly," he states, his voice hoarse from lack of use (or possibly dehydration) as he looks Simon's bedraggled form up and down.
Simon chuckles before he can stop himself. "Y'know that's the third time I've heard that in the last twelve hours?"
The boy laughs too, and Simon is transfixed by the sound. He slowly takes a few steps closer, standing beside the man just as he turns around and once again leans his arms on the barrier. Simon follows suit, until they are side by side looking out across the raging river.
"Right state you got yerself in back there," the man says, glancing sideways at him.
Simon nods in agreement. "Yeah. Yeah, it was."
"Deliberate?"
Simon is taken aback by the question. It's not the kind of thing people usually ask. He looks back at the man, and sees complete honesty and understanding in his eyes. It's difficult to look at, so he turns his face back to the water.
"Sort of," he mutters, looking down at his hands as he rubs the warmth back into them. He glances briefly back at the man's blood-soaked sleeve. "How about you?"
The boy tugs at the offending sleeve self-consciously, offering a wordless nod in response.
"So," Simon says, changing the subject after a moment of tense silence. "Is your name really 'No One' or did yeh think I was a cyclops?"
The poor man looks so utterly bewildered by the question that Simon rushes once again into hurried explanations. "Like in the Odyssey. When Odysseus gets trapped by Polyphemus and tells him 'is name is Nobody so when he calls out for help the other cyclopes think he's just talking to himself… never mind."
The bewildered expression is still in place, but it seems to be tinged with amusement now. "Oh, okay. No, I didn't think you were a cyclops. I was just…" he shrugs, turning back to the river. "I was just telling the truth."
Simon opens his mouth to protest, but realises he has absolutely no idea what to say to that. He keeps his mouth shut, sneaking glances at the fair-haired man when he thinks he isn't looking. Initial awe aside, he can't help noticing how sickly the man looks. His slender hands tremble on the stonework and his puffy eyes stare across the water with a haunted expression. It all looks a bit too familiar- Simon could guess from personal experience that the kid probably hadn't slept or eaten in days. This brief pause at the water's edge was probably the longest he'd been on his feet without moving the whole time, he looks like he could collapse at any second without the sturdy barrier holding him upright.
The logical side of his brain (which he seems to be ignoring with alarming frequency at the moment) says to just say his thanks and leave. It's not his problem, whatever the guy has going on is nothing to do with him. He sees younger kids in much worse shape every day, it's not exactly a rare sight nor is it one he concerns himself with. There are some situations where it's best to just not get involved.
Still, the strange man had thrown that rule out the window when he'd saved his life. He supposed the least he could do was return the favour.
"You hungry?" he asks.
For a moment the man just stares at him, and it is clear in his expression that he's going to say no. Simon understands- clearly the kid has some serious bullshit in his life, probably the last thing he wants to do is go out for breakfast with a complete stranger he'd found drugged in a ditch. Still, Simon can't help feeling a little disappointed.
But then the man's face softens, and he looks both confused and disbelieving as he answers.
"Starving."
Well, there you have it!
So, they're finally together! Now for the slow build :3 (Although maybe not so slow. Hearts will be opened in the next chapter.)
Oh, and I'm working on the assumption that in 2009 Philip was about 18/19 (seeing as he used to hang out with Kier and Rick when they were kids I'm just assuming they were about the same age). And Amy I believe was 21 when she died, so yeah they're not too far apart- and as you can see fresh-out-of-sixth-form-Phil is already trying to get his foot in the door of the local council! Oh, that boy!
It's a good thing I've got a few chapters of this basically written already 'cause I have got a couple of HECTIC weekends ahead! Not going to have all that much time for new writing- my next focus is another chapter of Broken Masks, I guess, I'd rather not leave ya waiting too long for that! Although TMSYC will probably be updated before too long, as well!
Well, until next time!
