Aberystwyth via Borth; Anji's Hangover

"You're not very popular, you know."

Anji let out a long, nicotine filled breath and tried to flick some ash on the kid, but the wind caught the embers and blew them away off into the field behind the empty railway platform. Further down the tracks were the tiny cluster of tired buildings that comprised Borth-proper.

Borth.

Beirut.

Was there a difference really? At least Beirut had some random staccato bullet patterns on the decrepit walls. Very Rorsarch, very Hollywood… it was a subtle touch that Borth lacked. The walls of the square buildings were weathered and tired, windblasted by the ocean winds that roared up the cobble beaches. It was the busiest weekend in the season, but all Anji had seen were four lost souls walking the beach.

The Doctor had left Anji with Fitz the day before to wander around the little Welsh village of Aberystwyth while he did some research in the local library. His mention of the town having over fifty pubs led to Fitz's Fabulous Pub Crawl. They made it to fourteen bars, ending up in Rummers pub near the old castle ruins. They had grown depressed when the purely Welsh pubs wouldn't serve or even speak to them. Apparently Welsh was the one language the TARDIS's translation circuits couldn't handle.

Anji lost Fitz when she went for a kabob. She wandered down to the pier to sober up a little only to discover that the TARDIS was gone too. No doubt the Doctor had run off somewhere, which was fine, but it was Bank Holiday weekend and she couldn't find a room anywhere in the entire town. She'd ended up having to take the last train to the nearest neighboring town to the north: Borth. Here she'd found a 'bed' at the local youth hostel. The 'bed' consisted of a vinyl wrapped foam 'mat' with a sheet on top. The night before when she'd collapsed in it, the quotes had been merely entertaining, but she woke up stiff and sore with an aching lower back this morning on top of her hangover and they didn't seem so funny.

She couldn't wait to get out of this wretched little town. She vaguely remembered talking to a balding local the night before. Apparently, his idea of fun consisted of sitting in the fields during thunder storms and trying to get struck by lightening. He was up to strike number six and had invited Anji to come with him into the darkened fields, but she got the impression that he was really only after a different kind of lucky number seven and retreated to the relative safety of the youth hostel.

She'd been happily sitting on the platform listening to the distant sounds of the sea, pondering if she should give some friends in London a call when the child sat down next to her and started playing with his blocks. The boy was about six or seven with deep mocha skin and GAP jeans and a dirty t-shirt. Considering the pale visages of the rest of the villages, he didn't blend in very well. Not that she fared any better either.

There was no parent or guardian in sight, much to Anji's discomfort. The kid wouldn't shut up either, which wasn't helping her headache. She didn't really know how to deal with kids. She hadn't been around them in… well, a while anyway.

The child was, apparently, mocking her popularity, or lack there of, as she waited on the bench for her train. And she'd left all her aspirin in the TARDIS. All in all it was a bit much.

"I'm trying to get back to my friends…" Anji said softly. The cigarette wasn't really helping. She hated smokers. She hated smoking. She had a vague recollection of lighting up last night to irritate Fitz for some reason. Or the Doctor. That had been after her seventh or eighth Russian Bull… she wasn't sure now. All that vodka and Red Bull had given her a combination of caffinee and alcohol hangover… She wanted to sleep in but couldn't keep her eyes closed.

It was mornings like this that she realized she wasn't twenty-two any more. She rolled her head back and forth and listened to the familiar snapping and pops that hadn't been there a few years before. The sensations were like new friends she didn't particularly like very much.

Anji tried flicking another dash of ash from her ciggie to ward the little blighter off- his stacks of blocks were getting dangerously close to her shoes. She wasn't usually this unfriendly, but after traveling with the Doctor for so long, for all she knew the little beast could be the spawn of Satan or an Auton love child.

She was very pointedly not paying attention to whatever words he was spelling with the letter blocks- Anji was not in a mood to deal with cryptic 'Redrum's before at least having one decent cup of coffee.

"Why don't people like you?" He pulled out a little stuffed frog from his pocket that hopped from block to block.

"People like me," Anji said defensively. "They just don't happen to be here right now." She paused and considered her complex relationship with Fitz. "Mostly they like me… I think. Sometimes." She didn't like where this conversation was headed. "What about you, where are you're friends?"

The little boy didn't look at her, intent on his froggy. "They're everywhere- can't you see them?"

Anji stared at the empty air around him. No sign of friends. No sign of the train either.

"I had an imaginary friend once." Anji tried to remember the name of her childhood companion but it was lost in the crenulations and fragmented folds of her mind. All that was left were shadowy flashes of playing in fields and birthday cakes.

"They're not imaginary," the little boy protested, crossing his arms. "Your one of them too."

"Ta," said Anji almost smiling.

"You're old."

Her smile was lost. Her frown deepened.

Anji sighed, hoping to change the topic. "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

"I'm going to travel and then I'm going to have a big family and have lots

of friends come and visit. What do you want to be when you grow up?" He continued stacking the little cubes on top of each other.

"I am grown up," Anji pouted. "I'm a… I was a… When I get back…" Anji took a drag on the cigarette to mask the fact that her voice was starting to break and crack. She found herself wanting to say 'I'm a finanicial… I'm… I'm over thirty. I wanted to be a doctor or a veterinarian… but things just happen and you need a paycheck to cover the rent and you do what you need to do and your twenties are a blur and then you discover that you can't be a doctor because suddenly you're too old, because you have to start planning for retirement and a mortgage and you realize that all your dreams were only that, just dreams and they were never going to happen because you're going to die someday and you're running out of time and you have to start getting ready to be old, and that's it, that was your life… but I have no life, I left it behind, ran screaming away when things got bad and I'm not ready to go back yet cause if I do it means that I'm going back to a life that leads slowly to retirement and inevitably death.

She found that she was nauseous, the cigarette acrid and cloying in her throat.

Instead she said,"I'm a yuppie."

The boy screwed up his face in disgust. "We hate yuppies."

"We do?" Anji emphasized his choice of pronoun.

"Everybody does."

"Funny…" Anji muttered… so did I.

But she didn't say it.

The hoot of the train echoed in the distance.

Anji stood up, eager to put some yards between her and the odd boy.

"You can't stay," said the boy simply.

The phrasing confused her. At first she thought it was a question, not a statement. "No," she said hesitantly, "I can't stay, I've got to go back to my friends."

The boy continued stacking his blocks in silence. His little eyes were watching her.

There was a long awkward pause- Anji had run out of things to say.

She dropped the cigarette to the ground and squashed it out with the heel of her show.

With a gust of wind, the train pulled up, the brakes screeching softly as a door came to a halt before her. The early morning light making darkened the glass creating a ghostly mirror.

Anji stared at her murky reflection and saw a stranger looking back. A stranger with tiny wrinkles around her eyes, deep laugh lines etched about her lips and nose, and a scattering of gray hairs wafting in the breeze. It was herself, a life with her half of her life behind her, measured in lost dreams and a handful of fleeting decades. Hiding in a fantasy world with the Doctor and Fitz until she was ready to go back to the real one.

Anji willed the door to open.

"You've got to go, but it's not your fault." The boy said, knocking over his tower of blocks. "It's just that they don't like to be reminded of themselves."

Anji didn't know what he was talking about and didn't want to know. She just wanted the damn doors to open cause this kid was giving her the creeps.

"It's time for you to go now."

The silvery doors swished open, hiding her reflection away, sliding it into its silver hull.

Anji stepped onto the train without looking back. She headed for the farthest seat on the opposite side of the train and stared out into the fields, willing the train to move. She only relaxed when she heard the door hiss shut.

The boy watched the train disappear down the tracks, fading into the southern hills. He packed up his little blocks, stacking them neatly into his big plastic briefcase and stood up, flickering, flashing and stuttering into a new form, tall, solid, rectangular and blue before vanishing from Borth forever.