"It is both a blessing and a curse to feel everything so deeply." – David Jones.
"Let me guess," the Doctor grunted his way into the small canteen that attracted his attention while pacing around London, "You don't have a clone sister neither do you have another restaurant somewhere else in the universe."
The petite girl frowned her eyebrows together, turning around from the plate she was setting clean, "You okay there, sir?"
He shook his head, sinking down at a random table, "I think someone's playing a prank on me."
Hesitantly, she walked towards him, placing the menu in front of him, "I'm sorry to hear that, sir."
"Doctor," he corrected, sounding a little more arrogant than he had intended.
The barista made a face, but letting it go. She wasn't in the mood to deal with snub clients, all she really desired was to call it a day and go home to a nice and warm bath. "Take your time, Doctor."
He run his eyes quickly through the piece of plastic paper in his hand, before throwing it away, "Would you fetch me something that will cost me no money?"
She couldn't tell whether he was being funny or not. From the way his eyes were frozen on her, she guessed he was as serious as he knew how to be, "We don't fetch that sort of thing here."
"That's too bad, I was starting to comfortable here," he argued, moving to depart the tidy diner but never actually doing it.
She sighed deeply, coming to terms the sooner she pleased him, she would get free of him. Rolling her eyes, she offered him a bottle of water, free of charge. "Anything else?"
"Yes," he was quick to say, before she had the chance to walk away, "Do you happen to know any places in town for rent?" she stared at him blankly, "I mean, my companion's new place was recently taken down by… by a lice manifestation, and she currently has nowhere to live."
She glanced at him with the corner of her eyes, suspiciously, "I'm afraid I can't help you."
He shot his shoulders up and down, "Heh, it was worth a try."
Carefully, she stepped back into his field of vision, "How exactly can lice tear down a house?"
He chuckled, the answer was too obvious for him, "You underestimate lice, miss," he gestured towards the seat on the opposite side of the table, "Sit down and I'll tell you how," he noticed her big eyes full of doubt, "Come on now, I don't bite."
Reluctantly, she agreed, shyly taking the stool in front of him. "Go on, then. Tell me how."
The Doctor seemed to change his mind abruptly, "Nah, never mind. You'd never believe me."
She angrily tapped her hands across the wooden surface of the table, "You can't do that!"
He leaned on his back, crossing his arms before his chest, "Yes, I can. It's my story."
She shot him a dead look, "I'm giving you free water."
He handled her back the untouched bottle, "I don't want your free water."
She reclined as well, getting as far away from him as possible, but she did no effort of moving. She just carried on staring at the window of his soul, intimidating him the only way she knew how to.
He cleared his throat, bickering his lower labium, "Alright, then, I'll tell you a story."
She smiled in victory, casually resting her arms above the table, not dreading him anymore as she had gotten what she wanted. She silently waited, suddenly forgotten about her rush to head back home.
He enjoyed seeing the curiosity in her eyes, "Have you ever seen a house alive?"
The girl opened her mouth to protest him wrong, but decided against it, knowing he wouldn't tell her the tale if she did, "No…?"
"I noticed something was wrong the moment I saw the place. It was very draughty, and not just in the outside," his eyebrows were dancing on their own as he spoke, "I was kicked out of the house by companion, she didn't want to look uncool next to her roommates. But I didn't leave, instead I hid myself inside while analyzing what was happening."
"Bet she wasn't very pleased," she muttered under her breath, not breaking eye contact.
"Of course she wasn't, but what can I do?" he jerked, "Me being there actually saved their lives."
"You really have an ego, don't you," she complained, half a smirk on the corner of her mouth.
He seemed to ignore her, "Anyway, as she found me peeping through the house, she started to yell at me, but that's beyond the point. The information I had gathered was far more interest than her coolness, it was enough reason for them to find another place to live."
"And did they?"
"Of course not," he puffed, "Have you met young adults? They're absolutely out of their mind," the Doctor rolled his eyes, "They said they would call the landholder instead, to fix what I assumed wrong. And then, surprise! The landlord magically shows up."
"A house with life and a magician as landlord?!" she arched her right eyebrow, "That's just crazy."
"There's more craziness in the universe than you might think of," he argued, indifferently, "As the creepy landlord departed, one thing led to another and we were separated, half the group up the house, half of us down the living. But you know what they say, the tigers come at night."
Her eyes widened, "There were tigers too?"
He looked annoyed for an instant, "No. But that's when the bugs bite, that's when… the bugs comes out from under the bed and the house awakens."
She felt chills running down her spine, "What did the house do?"
"It sealed us in," he added a mysterious tone to his voice, "One by one, the house was consuming us. Feeding on us. Well, not the house itself, but something that had gotten into the fabric of the house, eventually becoming the house. Naturally, I started to mess with the wood, touching it, knocking on it, forcing whatever was hiding inside of it to come out. And they did."
"What were there?" she asked in a whispered voice, somewhere during the storytelling leaning closer to him so she could hear him better.
"Lice!" he squealed, almost disappointed, "Alien lice. Next thing we knew, we were in a middle of a bug infestation, but not ordinary bugs, insects that ate us for living. Actually, they didn't look like lice, not at all, but it's surely better than calling them dryads."
The barista made a face, "So this whole thing started by a lie?"
"Does it really matter?" he wrenched on his seat, "What matters is that we had to run for our lives, and so we did, finding our way to the forbidden tower. Did I mention the tower? Because there was a tower and we weren't allowed to step inside it."
She cleared her throat, "I see you have a habit of not following commands."
Once again, he ignored her, "Unsurprisingly, we met the landlord there, but not before finding the belongings to the previous lodgers of the house. Presumably dead. Presumably eaten by the house. I started demanding for answers, wanting to know why he was killing people in such an arbitrary manner. I wanted to know why was a human so humanless."
He made a long pause, getting her anxious, "Well? Why did he say?"
He let out a whiff, "Because his daughter was dying, and the alien lice saved her life."
"That's noble… ish."
He winced his nose, "I tried to talk sense into him, showing him I'm a doctor, maybe I could help his daughter, and he agreed. He took me to her, where I met Bill – we were then the last two standing. The daughter had become one hundred percent wood, but she still had a consciousness. Not a lasting memory, just… consciousness."
"That can't be a nice way to stay alive," she debated, saddened.
"It's not," he agreed, "What's the point of surviving if you hide away from the world? Imagine being confined into a small room for the past 70 years, that's disturbing. You know what else it is? Lacking sense."
She stuck her brows together, "What do you mean?"
"If the daughter had been trapped like that for so long, how could her father still be alive?" he prompted, "I wasn't the one to notice it, Bill was, leaving us to one conclusion only: he wasn't her father, he was her son, now more advantaged in age than she was. And like I said, she didn't have a lasting memory, and convincing her he was her father was the only way he had seen to protect her."
She nodded, expecting him to carry on.
"He was just a kid when he learned that the lice could keep his mother alive as long as he cared for them, fed them, because wouldn't you do everything to protect the one who brought you to this world?"
"Wouldn't you?" her voice was soft, caring.
"Not just the one who birthed me," he bowed his head, "But everyone who I ever cared for. Even if it destroyed me, even if kept me in a torture chamber for billions of years, just so I could see their face on the other side. I'd do anything."
She lowered her head, swallowing hard, "That's loyal of you."
He let out a long breath he didn't know he was holding, "But that doesn't mean they wouldn't be crossed with you after learning all the pain you had caused for them. She wasn't. She was beyond mad, so infuriated she did the only thing a sane mother would do to their misbehaved kid. She held him as she let the lice eat both of them, bringing an ending to all that misery, to all that agony."
Her jaw fell slightly open as the story closured itself, shocked.
"She gave us a redeeming gift before she went, she restored all the people that the house had just taken. After that, we just fled away from the inside, watching as the house was completely taken down. Destroyed."
She bit the corner of her lower lip, "No wonder your mate needs a new house."
He silently agreed, impatiently tapping his fingertips melodically against the wooden table.
Had she expected him to say anything, she would be facing a long wait, "Did it really happen? I mean, was it all real?"
He engaged her with a bow of the brows, "What do you think?"
She frowned her eyebrows, "I think that's a hell of a story."
The Doctor chuckled, still glancing at her big brown eyes, "Yeah, me too."