The sound of dishes breaking. Shouting echoed though the dark hallway and up the staircase. Hailey could hear the voices of the man and the girl downstairs in the kitchen. He man was yelling in rage again and the girl, without a care or a thought of her own safety, was yelling right back at him. She she never shout or talk back to the man of th house when he told her what to do, but the girl, Miranda, had rarely been known to care for such logic. The sound of a smack, so loud it was heard by the child lurking at the top of the stairs. She shook with fright and wondered again why she'd even been born at all. There was no place for her in the world just like there was none for the girl in the kitchen. Another smack and then a thump. The sound of someone's, presumably the girl's, head bumping hard against the wall.
"Listen to me. Stop being such a little idiot and listen!" The familiar middle aged male voice boomed over the loud rattling of a faulty air conditioner. The distinct sound of someone winded and gasping for breath, made it's way upstairs.
"Stop hitting me," Miranda was gasping as loud as she could. "I'd actually listen to a nice and considerate and loving person, but I won't listen to the demands of the man who beats on children." More loud and violent blows.
The child on the stairs crept forward and crawled on her hands and knees into the closet at end of the hall nearest the stairs.
"I've broken down young people like you lots of times, before. I will break you to. I'll crush you like a bug one day, and you'll listen to every god forsaken word I say just because you'll know I'll hit you otherwise." The man's voice screamed.
"You think I've never been hit before I came here," the girl shouted back. "I've fought blow for blow with my own stepfather since the age of eleven. Either go stuff yourself or go ahead and kill me, because that's the only way I'll break like your wife and daughter did."
"How dare you! You foolish, sick little dog. You're going to get it now!"
The child upstairs hid inside the linin closet with her knees against her chest, shaking in terror and helplessness. She could hear the sounds of punches and screams and a body falling hard to the floor time and again. When she heard the front door slam and a car engine firing up, she hurried to her feet, climbed out of the closet, and stood in the hallway shaking on knees that she helplessly with would boldly support her weight.
The older girl, the one that had been fighting with the man in the kitchen, climbed to the top of the staircase with the front of her shirt and her face covered in the blood from her nose, and doubled over gasping to catch her breath.
"I'm, taking off tomorrow," she said, as she wiped the blood from her moth with a wet rag. "I have to go. It's either leave or drop dead as a teenager. I'm going to drop you off with Mrs. Harris after school before I leave town. No way I'm leaving you here another day. And she'd better do something about that lunatic too. Go and pack, Hailey. I'll stash your suitcase outside in the bushes and we'll pick it up on the way to meet the bus tomorrow. "
A door slammed downstairs and heavy, angry footsteps stopped their way up the stairs.
Hailey sat upright in her bed, with a rapid heartbeat and a body tense with panic. She looked around at the dark red walls that surrounded her, and down at the comfortable bed with it's blue covers, that she sat on. Her eyes moved to the white desk in the corner and the little white dresser next to it. As she clearly recognized her room on board the TARDIS, she shook off the nightmare and let herself fall back onto the bed in relief. She was amazed at how quickly the time ship had come to feel like a place of safety for her. She felt silly for dreaming of an earlier time in her life,and even sillier for falling asleep in what must have been the middle of the day. She didn't even sleep very often - now of a sudden she was dozing off during the daytime! The Gallifrain history book she'd been reading lay open beside her on the bed. She shook her head, both to shake off the dream and her own confusion over the time. She shut her eyes for a moment and tried to remember the last thing she'd read in the book. Her mind wandered to a picture that she had imagined the past day, that she wished to paint. With her eyes closed she envisioned colors and perspective and tried to plan her new painting. Perhaps she'd begin it later. Her mind slowly wandered back to the horrible dream she'd had.
A knock at the door of the room, sent her pulse racing again. She didn't move and barely breathed. For a moment she was convinced that a very angry, violent, and dangerous man was right on the other side of that door. She forced herself to think within reason. Of course there wasn't anyone of that sort outside. In fact it didn't seem like there was anyone out there at all. She'd only impinged the knocking. She was still half asleep. Another light knock, at the door. She slowly sat herself back up again.
"Hailey," called the voice of a harmless female. "Are you in there. It's Rose."
"Yeah," Hailey called back, feeling even sillier by that time. She got up off her bed. "Come on in."
"Sorry," Hailey mumbled as Rose sat down at the desk and looked hopelessly at the stack of books on the top of it. "I was in here reading and I guess I fell asleep in the middle of the day. That was weird I must say. I've never done that before." Rose only laughed slightly and put down the book she'd been looking at.
"It's the lack of any real sense of true time when we travel," she said. "No set pattern to night and day, hours, time-zones. We still get tired of course, but our bodies have no idea when to sleep. Around here it seems best to just sleep when you're tired."
"Must be even weider for you," Hailey said. "You actually sleep for about eight hours a night like a normal person, I'd imagine. I'm just some weirdo insomniac that doesn't even get tired at all more than a couple times a week, and then sleeps only a couple hours."
"You aren't a weirdo," Rose said. "It's like the Doctor says. It's because of your Time Lord side that you don't sleep much."
"I can still barely even think about that," Hailey said. "I still can't get my mind to accept that I'm not really just some human girl."
"It does explain a lot of your physical traits though," Rose Answered. She paused a moment and then said laughing, "Except perhaps for your ability to jump so high and climb onto almost anything. I asked him about that once. He said he has no idea but they sure don't see many Time Lords scaling the tops of buildings and scrambling up trees."
"Of course not," Hailey replied. "That has everything to do with years of practicing."
"So you taught yourself, or were taught by someone, to climb and jump like that?"
"Of course. I taught myself to do it mostly. I always loved to climb as a child, and I could jump pretty well. I was great at moving fast. When I got into my teen years, I just kind of ended up turning climbing and jumping into an athletic art form or something. I used to climb onto roofs and things for fun. That day I first met you two, when that mugger almost robbed me, I just decided to make for the roof because I'd done things like that so many times just for the heck of it, why not use it to make a get away."
"I was actually pretty relieved when I learned that that's not some Time Lord trait as well. It's great to hear that climbing onto roofs like that is something anyone could probably learn. I love traveling with the Doctor very much, but sometimes it's still hard to wrap my mind around the whole alien idea. I don't think I'd what to find out his people have this great athletic ability too."
"Do you ever forget he's not actually human?" Hailey asked.
"All the time, yeah," replied Rose. She got up from the desk and went to sit with her friend on the bed. The first year or so that we traveled together I almost forgot entirely that he wasn't like me. He seemed so human. A little strange at times, but what person isn't a bit strange? It was so easy just to think of him as an odd man with a crazy time machine. He looks human of course so it's pretty easy to miss the fact hat he isn't." She laughed a little and then said, "I once told him I think he looks human. He remarked that no he doesn't human, I look Time Lord. I suppose it's all about perspective. Anyway, after he regenerated, it was a bit harder to forget that he wasn't a human being. I still do so often..."
"Wait, sorry, when he what?" Hailey had stumbled upon something, through their conversation, that she had never learned the definition of yet."
"Never mind. I had just assumed you'd learned about that in your studies already. It's probably covered in a more advanced book or something. I don't think I could even begin to explain that to you. "
"Do you ever have dreams about real life events?" Hailey suddenly asked. She was still so troubled by her dream.
"Sometimes, yeah," Rose replied. "I guess if something really stuck in you head it;s possible to dream of it happening just how it really happened. Why? Did you dream something like that?"
"Yes. It was about someone I knew years ago, when I was little. When I was eight years old I was sent to live in the home of this couple, the Martins. They worked for the government taking care of children and teenagers that had nowhere else to go. Anyways, they had a daughter of their own who was older and already out of the house. I met her a few times, and I just thought she was pretty scary back then. I later came to realize that she had a lot of issues. In any case, there was me and this other girl, called Miranda living in the house with them. Miranda was way older than me, fifteen I think. And she was wild and daring and tough. She used to get into so many fights at school, and she was picked up by the police more than once for small crimes like shoplifting. I'd hear about all this a lot of nights when Mr. Martin used to rant at her about it and threaten her with physical harm over it at the dinner table."
"I often heard that Miranda didn't really like anybody. She was unshakable and untouchable and mean, just to protect herself from emotional harm. But for some reason she liked me. I was like her, I guess that's why. She told me once that her birth mother had thrown her into a garbage bin as a newborn, and they never did figure out who her father was. I guess she was adopted once but that couple started to have its own troubles within a few years and when they split up in a few years her mother remarried and that man decided to get physically nasty to her, while her mother gave up on trying to stop him. So she grew up in this horrible violent house where she felt so unwanted."
"According to so many people, she could only look out for herself and not for anyone else. But she looked out for me. I was told once by my social worker, not to trust or count on Miranda, but I always did just that. Everyone knew she wouldn't harm an eight year old, but they never thought she could actually care to protect me from anything. I used to climb into her bed when I had nightmares. That's how we became friends. When I first moved to that home, I had a horrible dream that same night. She ran down the hall to my room and brought me back to hers, so she could protect me from the nightmares. The next day decided to punish me for knocking over a vase by mistake. He hit me once in the back of the head, and she threw a coffee mug at him from across the room. Of course they got into it then. They always did that. It was weird. They say children are pretty helpless when attacked, but she was hardly a child. He'd hit her and she'd hit right back. He used to beat her black and blue and there was not much she could do against him, but she'd try anyway."
"I still remember the stories we'd read together. She was seven years older, but she'd never really learned to read very well at all. I read very well for my age, and we used to read older children's books together. I read science fiction and fantasy books with her a lot. I used to tell her I thought that such things could be real to an extent, out there somewhere. She used to say that the world and the kind of life we were meant to live, would crush my dreams one day, but she hoped I'd defy the odds on that fact."
"Do you ever keep in touch with her still?" Rose asked. Hailey shook her head sadly.
"No," she said. "I used to. We wrote letters to each other once in a while after I was moved to a new place the day she dropped me off with the social worker and demanded I be moved. She ran away from the Martins. She was sick of the violence. The workers had no idea what was going on in that house of course, but she finally decided she had to let them know. She couldn't just stay in the system any more, but she also couldn't just leave me in that house. She had gone to live with her aunt in a little town hours away, wrote to me and told me she'd actually let her stay. It was looking for a while like her life was working out well and Miranda, the closest thing I'd ever had to a sister was actually happy for the first time in her life. I suppose that things must have been going on though that ever her aunt never knew the extent of because I got a letter from Miranda's Aunt Paula a few years ago after not really hearing much in a few years. She said that Miranda had been murdered in London and they think it was over drug money."
"That's awful," Rose remarked, disgusted by the sort of things it seemed Hailey was in one way or another influenced by in her life. Hailey's eyes were slightly teary now, thinking about her childhood friend having died, and about the violence in the Martin house. She wiped her eyes lightly with the back of one hand and smeared black make-up over on of her checks. Looking at the back of her hand, which was slightly smeared with it as well, she thought to look toward the mirror on the back of the door to her bathroom, which she had left open.
"My goodness," she said, slightly embarrassed. "What a mess. I've smudged my eyeliner pretty badly."
"You don't need to wear all that black eyeliner anyway," Rose remarked. She was prepared to go into the speech she'd heard her school friends use years before when they tried to give each other beauty advice. But things didn't go in the direction she had been anticipating.
"Of course not," Hailey said. "Yeah yeah, I know. That whole thing, I'm pretty as I am and I could try to look more 'girlish.' But why? Why not use a look I like to use. Besides I don't know all of the looks these days." She sat back down on her bed and said, "You are far better with make up and stuff then I am."
"I could teach you some things," Rose answered. "Just for fun I mean, not because you need to change anything. It's fun to learn new make-up tips though. I used to work in a shop. Make-up, certain styles of fashion, and even shoes kind of became my area of knowledge."
"Why'd you give up that job? Did you just want to move on to something else?"
"Not exactly no. I liked working there quite a lot. It was a nice job and the pay wasn't bad at all. The shop, a whole big three story department store, kind of blew up last year. It left a whole bunch of people suddenly without our jobs."
"What?" Hailey exclaimed. "That's horrible. You weren't inside at the time were you? Was anyone in there?"
"I don't think so," Rose replied. "The shop was closed at the time thank goodness."
"Did they ever figure out how it happened? Was it a bomb or something like that, or more like just something wrong with the heating or the wiring?"
"The Doctor blew the shop up," Rose answered. Hailey almost fell backwards right off the bed and onto the floor. She was shocked both at the idea of him doing something like that, though she knew there must have been a very good reason behind it, and at her friend's calm statement of that fact.
"Do I even want to know why?" She asked, not sure she really did.
"No," Rose replied, laughing slightly. "Probably not, actually. It was a crazy day though. it was a normal workday like any other when I met him for the first time. He was doing what he normally does, saving the earth and all that, and then not even an hour later the whole building went up in flames from an explosion. My life after that was never the same. Certainly never boring or typical again."
"Okay I must admit I'm curious. Why did he go and blow the place up? What does that have to do with saving a planet?"
"The Earth, beginning with London, was about to be invaded by creatures made of plastic. Well I suppose they weren't exactly creatures. Technically they were not what we would normally call alive. More like very advanced thought control technology with some degree of free thought. Anyway, I think he blew the shop up while trying to blow up the relay up on the roof, that was controlling the plastic things."
"Wow, " Hailey remarked. "If I were anyone else, I would never believe that one."
"Neither would I," Rose answered. Both of young women laughed.
A/N; Okey that chapter was short I know, but that looked like a good place to end it. No much in the way of action in that one, but I like to write a lot of conversation at times to. The next chapter will probably be a lot more of that kind of thing, and then it should if the plan goes as I'm thinking now get a bit more action-ish.