Evaporate, Eleven/Rose, Ten, g.
There are monsters. There is danger. There is panic and threat, and the man who left death behind holding the hand of a girl in the snow and there are heroics, and there is laughter., 545 words
There is a world where there's a man who knocks on her door early New Year's day looking as if he's just stepped out of death itself. In this world she gasps as he falls to the floor and still, smiles up at her as if he's an old friend come by for tea to catch up. At this time she goes towards the phone to call for help before he tells her no, there's no need for that, just as he forgets who she is, amnesia flooding his brain, just as thunder louder than the big bang itself screams in the sky.
There are monsters. There is danger. There is panic and threat, and the man who left death behind holding the hand of a girl in the snow and there are heroics, and there is laughter. There is the way she laughs like she's pulled his favorite sound from the universe and placed it in her chest and there's the moment when he asks her to come with him, because, well. Not because he needs someone but because he wants her. Wants to hear that laugh every day because today is his birthday and he can have whatever he wants.
In this world the girl remembers the man who told her she was going to have a great year and this is the moment that he remembers who she is and why she can't come with him. This, the same moment she strokes his ship like she loves her already and tells him he should change, maybe tweed would suit him and his dark brown mop.
She takes her one trip in a circle to one am, New Year's day. He never has taken her to Barcelona.
There's hurried explanations and the way she believes him too quickly and while he sneaks into the machine she watches the man in the coat watching her, this man who knows her future. She watches him talking to her like someone who's been through hell and back and back again, someone who knows what it's like to lose someone you need. He keeps watching even as she runs up the stairs and her chest hurts from holding her breath too long.
When the man who's cheated death comes back she takes his hand and squeezes as she watches the man in his clothes, clothes without tatters or tears, stumble towards the machine and she begins to cry. She cries and she's not sure why but she knows she's watching him die and that in some world, she would care, so she should care right now too, and it's only when the man squeezes her hand back and she looks into his eyes and he tells her yes, tells her something that no stranger would say to her that she knows she loves that man who's about to die.
So she watches him go into his magical machine and she holds his hand tight, tighter, as something inside explodes and bright light filters through the windows like sunshine.
The machine takes him away to a Scottish village because he told her to, and this world dies as he follows it.
Sometime, somewhere, they will recall the press of another's hand on theirs, and wonder where it came from.