I can never work out if darkness is a friend or an enemy. If it's hiding us to keep us safe or hiding the world from us to keep us alone. I remember fighting. I remember running. Like the coward I am. Sat on the ground, back to the wall, hair dripping wet from the rain, I'm sure I'm a pretty sad sight for any passer-by. In the darkness, there's a flash of colour though – a bright blue bowtie.
"Hello!" a voice calls out with the enthusiasm of a child. I smile on instinct. I have to keep the façade up. The kind man with the old eyes, armed with a bowtie and floppy hair, slides down to the floor next to me without invitation and returns the smile. "Jammy Dodger?" I register him asking, holding out an open packet but I decline. I'm not hungry.
"Long day, huh?" The stranger asks, and I nod. It's always a long day. At this point, it's more like a long life. And yet, I'm barely 20." "Tell me about it," he smiles, and I realise I must have said that out loud. Unless he can read minds. If he's Duraxian and he's had practice then it's not out of the question. He straightens his bowtie with a knowing smirk. "Mind you, I'm a little bit older than that."
He tells me he's over 1000 years old and I believe him, even though he doesn't look it. It's the eyes that give him away. "Might even be older," he mutters to himself and the illusion of a child shatters for just a moment. "I lie sometimes. And then I forget. I lose track. 1000 years of lies and you start to become the lie." He turns to me with the most serious expression in the world and his voice sounds as cold as ice: "Don't ever become me."
He looks like he wants to use my name, but he doesn't know it. He can't. I haven't told him. And I have no desire to. "How come you live so long?" I ask him, breaking the silence. "I'm lucky," he grins as though he's telling the funniest joke in the world. "Is that really the right word?" I wonder. "Some days," he answers.
"It's raining," I said, acknowledging the soft pitter patter of the rainfall on our heads for the first time. "Yes, it is rather, isn't it," the stranger concurred. "Why sit out here with me then?" I asked. "How honest you want me to be?" I answer his question with a look and he shrug. "You looked lonely."
"I suppose I am," I admit for maybe the first time ever. He looks at me with those sad old eyes and I wonder how many times he's admitted to feeling like this. He closes his eyes for a moment, like he's heard my thoughts, then they snap back open and he starts to speak again. "You never told me why you were out here." It's not a question, it's a statement. I don't have to answer. I choose to anyway: "I ran from battle like a coward. Kentari would be ashamed of me," I choke on the last few words. He smiles. "Nothing wrong with being a coward."
"You don't look like one though." I look up at that, with maybe just a spark of hope in my eyes. "There's more isn't there," he keeps smiling, "I can see it in your eyes." I wonder what my eyes look like to the stranger. I wonder if he can even see them in the dark. I wonder how much they betray me in every conversation. Maybe I'm not as good a liar as I think I am. Maybe nobody believes me when I tell them I'm alright. Part of me hopes they don't. I wonder if I stay quiet long enough if he'll just start talking again. In my experience, people usually do. Except when they don't. Sometimes they prefer the silence. Regardless, nobody ever actually wants me to fill it. But maybe this stranger does?
"I guess…" I start to answer slowly, "Everything feels empty. It feels like everything is so important but none of it actually matters. It's not all the time, but it's a good chunk of most days. Like there's something… missing." I stop myself there. He puts his hand on my shoulder and nods. "Sometimes things fall out of time: pieces of ourselves, the people around us, both sometimes. Time only wins if you give up though. Every life is important. Every second is a lifetime if you want it to be. Trust me."
He doesn't understand, and I don't blame him. I barely understand it myself. I'm not good at feelings. Not my own anyway. All I know is that sometimes it starts to hurt for no reason and I just crash. Not like a physical hurt, just a sapping never-ending tiredness. A loneliness. A name echoes in my mind although I can't place it. A woman's name. An impossible name. It's on the tip of my tongue for a second and then it's gone again, and that feels so much worse.
"So, you're not a coward," he says quietly, glancing down as he does and I realise I have no idea what I said out loud. "You're just tired."
"I am tired," I answer, the words echoing in my mind as I say them, "tired of struggling, tired of losing, and tired of…" I lose my train of thought. "Something else." He finishes it for me. "Being alone." I look up at him. He looks sad. "Sometimes we have to appreciate what we've had but let it go when it's time, because if we hold on too tight..." He doesn't finish the sentence.
The funny man in the bowtie leans towards me with that now-familiar smile. "The thing about letting go," he says to me quietly, "is that we're worried we'll fall. But you can't move forwards while you're still holding on. And if you do fall to the bottom, then there's no place to go but up. But I think, if you can climb past all this Contar, then maybe, just maybe, there'll be a light at the end that makes it all worthwhile."
Suddenly he reaches into his inside pocket and pulls out a key, glowing a burning yellow and bringing more light to the darkness than I thought possible. "The TARDIS is recharged and ready to go!" He announces it with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old on Christmas morning. I feel a twinge of sadness, thinking that the conversation has barely started. Even my imaginary friends leave too soon. And then he's gone, and I'm left to wonder if he was ever even here in the first place.
My name is Contar Smitt and I am a soldier, not a coward. If I don't come back, then treat this as my note. Everything has to end sometime, and some things have to end sooner than others. If this is my ending, then so be it. I lived. I wasn't always happy, but I was always alive and maybe that's enough.
I stop writing and go back to my war. Maybe this time I'll win.
Writer's Notes: anyone who's read my Doctor in Darkness short story will notice this was a reworked version of that. I like to make things useful to bigger products. If you want to compare the two then the short is up on my account too.