Fic: In Human Hands (3/?)
Title: In Human Hands
Author: rallalon | Rall
Beta: vyctori
Rating: PG, AU towards the end of Season One; 9!Smith.
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: That explains a lot, he thinks, though any man in Barcelona should know that it’s a little early in the day for the prostitutes to be coming out. He rolls his eyes, answers, “That’s the tourist who stalks me.”
Yeah, I'm not dead.
The Tourist
The Girl
The Runaway
He makes it into the afternoon before he has to move, before sitting still isn’t an option. Yesterday, Saturday, he’d stayed put, had waited for a return phone call that never came. It makes him wonder about the woman he’d called, makes him wonder about the girl he’d met.
When he can’t stand the wondering any longer, he goes. He doesn’t wonder, isn’t made for it anymore. Wandering, though, yes. Yes.
He can do that.
Not even a full month back in this city, and already the surrounding roads have grown all too familiar. He considers going to Tarragona, is in the mood for ruins, is in the mood for a ride of at least an hour and a half.
His helmet stinks and the road goes by. He turns off the highway, meanders onto the back roads. Eventually, he needs a pit stop, pulls into a McDonald’s parking lot. The damn things are everywhere - almost as bad as Starbucks - but at least the bathrooms are sanitary. Usually.
Ignoring the glares of the cashier at the register, he strolls in and out with his helmet still on, touching his wallet in his jacket pocket solely to be sure that it’s still there. Small wonder he doesn’t eat, plastic places like this popping up all over the world. He can travel across continents, hop city to city and it’s not the memories he can’t avoid: it’s the restaurant chains.
There’s a little black-haired girl sitting with her dad in the booth by the door. He looks the other way when he walks out and both helmet and earplugs are still in place; all the same, he imagines their voices, hears Susan delighting over some stupid toy in a tiny plastic bag.
The chains might bring the memories, now that he thinks about it. It’s hard to leave all associations behind when all of them look so dismally similar.
His mind wanders as he returns to his parked bike and, for some reason, the thought of chips brings him back to the thought of the girl, to Little Miss Missing. He checks his cell phone then and, look at that: missed call.
Tugging his helmet off - it’s starting to smell; he really has to do something about that - he pulls out the earplugs as well, pockets them before hitting send on his mobile. The phone rings once, twice and then she picks up.
“You called my mum,” says a voice he isn’t expecting.
Her anger, he understands. The rest, he doesn’t. “How’d you get my number?”
“How’d you get mine?” she counters.
“You called me first,” he points out, throwing the obvious at her. It’s a simple fact of mobile phones.
He can practically see her rolling her eyes in mockery of him as she replies, “My home number. How’d you get that?”
He blinks. “Sorry?”
“You called my mum,” she says again. “You called my mum.”
“Yeah,” he says, and he knows he sounds patronizing. “I did.”
For a moment, there’s silence on the other end of the line, such silence that he wonders for a moment if the call has been dropped, wonders if she’s hung up on him. “Why?” she asks at last, sounds confused as much as she sounds angry. All the same, he can tell she’s attempting to be reasonable.
He’s a big enough man that he can at least try to return that favour. “’Cause in case you haven’t noticed, you’re acting like a runaway.”
“I’m an adult,” she tells him.
He could roll his eyes at that, can practically see her as a toddler proclaiming that she was a big girl now. “Legally, sure.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demands, indignant.
This is going nowhere, fast. “If you have to ask, I’ll have to call you thick.”
He hears her breathe in, hears her pull in air and hold it. Very slowly, very loudly, she releases it. “Look,” she says, trying once again to sound reasonable, “can we talk about this face-to-face?”
He shrugs even though she’s not there, sees her tuck a long strand of her hair behind her ear despite her absence. “Don’t see why we’d need to,” he says and then he can hear her blink.
“W-what?”
“Yeah, I called your mum,” he readily admits. “Enough missing flyers still up on the internet for that to be easy. And yeah, apparently your mum called you and gave you my number. And yeah, it looks like whatever the hell you’re doing, you haven’t left your family in the dark. That’s all set, then. My concern officially ends here.”
She’s quiet for a moment and then she says softly, asks softly, “You were worried about me. Why?”
It unnerves him, the way she sounds like she knows the answer. He doesn’t know it; how could she?
“You bother me a lot,” he sidesteps instead of truly replying. “Why?”
“’Cause you’re lonely,” she says simply.
Her words take him by surprise and he can find none of his own to counter them.
“See you tomorrow, yeah?” It’s not much of a question, the way she asks it, and she hangs up before he can reply.
He very nearly calls her back, but then the little black-haired girl and her father come out into the parking lot and the girl’s giggling and the father’s laughing and from now on, he’s using gas station bathrooms, sanitary or not.
Because he’s not lonely: he’s just alone.
And those, he tells himself as he tugs his helmet back on, are two entirely different things.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The morning can’t pass quickly enough. He tinkers and he’s bored and there’s really nothing to do. There’s work and he’s doing it, but none of it challenges, none of it makes his mind stop.
Sanchez watches him and he doesn’t show how it puts him on edge. It’s just the two of them today, the two other mechanics working only part-time. Normally, he likes this, but today it makes him the sole object of the other man’s attention.
“You are over-qualified,” the garage owner tells him, formal, says this and waits for a response.
He takes his time about it, looks to Sanchez as he considers his words, keeps those words equally respectful. “Are you firing me?” He wonders how Rose would be able to find him if he were fired, wonders and remembers her mobile number.
The Spaniard chuckles. “I’m no fool.”
It’s irrational, the way the comment leaves him pleased, the way this idle conversation makes time move. It’s irrational, but not unwelcome.
It almost feels like time goes by, like the planet has finally gotten around to moving. An indeterminate amount of time into the day, Sanchez approaches him once again, comes out of the office and into the garage. The man looks at him like he’s confused and he raises his eyebrows in reply.
“I thought you were a widower,” the native man muses, looking at him oddly.
“Never been married,” he replies briskly, wiping his hands on a rag that only dirties them further.
That gets another wry chuckle, but there’s something else below the man’s voice. “Makes for the worst kind of widower.”
He makes a noncommittal sound, isn’t in the mood to admit or lie. “Why’re you asking?”
“There’s a girl waiting outside, asked for you by name. Very pretty,” Sanchez adds, almost as an afterthought. It isn’t one. “Blond.”
That explains a lot, he thinks, though any man in Barcelona should know that it’s a little early in the day for the prostitutes to be coming out. He rolls his eyes, answers, “That’s the tourist who stalks me.”
The other man’s mouth quirks, a smile restrained. “Lucky man. If you need the help,” the garage owner continues, a sparkle in his eye, “I could distract her for you. It wouldn’t be difficult,” he adds, “for a handsome bachelor like myself.”
He snorts, shakes his head. “I thought you were married.”
“Makes for the worst kind of bachelor.”
He surprises both of them with a laugh and Sanchez stares.
“You can laugh!” the shorter man exclaims. “Before today, I didn’t know you could smile. When’d you stop eating lemons? Or would that be limes?”
He rolls his eyes. “Enough with the British jokes. She still out there?”
Sanchez nods in a way that says the shorter man is Not Judging Him. He thinks of the girl, thinks of her protesting and yelling “he’s not my boyfriend!” like she says it often. Looks like she does, if most people assume about her the way Sanchez does.
“She’s a worried little thing,” Sanchez informs him. “You take your break early today and get your business out the way, yes?”
He wants to protest, but there’s not much for it beyond doing as the man says. It’s not exactly conducive to business, he’ll agree, having an upset girl standing outside the garage.
So he handles it.
“Come back in two hours.”
“’kay.”
Not very well, but he handles it.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Two hours and eight minutes later, he has fully prepared himself to sacrifice his entire lunch break to whatever the hell it is he’s doing. He comes outside in his street clothes to find the girl and his employer hitting it off, the girl’s limping Spanish providing no end of amusement to the man. Catching a snippet of the conversation, he rolls his eyes. La ladrón de limón smiles at Sanchez, laughing over her new title.
Is it really that strange for him not to look sour? He can’t be that bad, can he? Sarcastic, bitter, cynical, yes, but this seems to be taking it to extremes.
He ends up dragging the girl away from his employer before señora Sanchez gets something new to worry about. She waves as they go, the newly acquainted pair laughing together, laughing at him.
This proves something to him that he’s unsure of, something that twists at him inside. The girl hits it off with strangers, consistently. The people she meets, the men she bumps into, she gets on well with them, immediately. He feels like he’s been swallowed up by a crowd, like he’s been buried in a large group of unusual acquaintances. Just another random person, him, one of her many.
She tugs on his hand and he loosens his grip and really, he doesn’t remember taking that hand, isn’t entirely sure where he’s dragging her off to. Her fingers tighten and she tugs again and when he turns back to look at her, the expression on her face isn’t one of a girl trying to get away from the lunatic hauling her across a strange city.
“Where’re we going?” she asks.
He doesn’t actually know. “Guess.”
She studies his face for a moment, her pensiveness from the morning making its return. “A park?”
“Yeah,” he says, and he knows just the one.
They walk together, weave through the crowds on the sidewalks making their way back home, their way out to a restaurant. Her hand is warm in his and he keeps forgetting to let go. A man walks towards them and something tickles his mind. Pickpocket, he knows without knowing why, a real ladrón.
He steps like so and swings their clasped hands like this and Rose shrieks a surprised laugh as he spins her to his other side. She’s quick and light and moves like a dancer, unsurprised by the unexpected steps. He releases her hand instead of holding it across both their bodies, lets her go, but she laughs again and hugs his nearer arm. She’s soft and warm and doesn’t seem mad at him at all, so he thinks she must be.
Her laughter invites glances and drives unwelcome hands away. The tickle subsides and he feels a strange sort of lightness, comes close to pressing his lips to the top of her head.
He needs to eat a bigger breakfast, he decides. He’s getting lightheaded and close to impulsive.
By the time they reach their impromptu destination, she’s gone back to holding his hand, the wool of his jumper evidently too scratchy to hug with her bare arms. The further they walk in, the quieter she falls, never mind the fact that they weren’t talking in the first place.
“Can I try to explain something to you?” the girl asks and he nods.
They find a bench, sit down. She twists towards him, one leg on the wooden planks, and he forces himself to stay still. The look in her eyes makes it hard and for a moment, he can’t decide whether he wants more to bolt or to pull her into his arms. If he had a tissue on him, offering it might be option three.
She shakes her head, putting his inability to cope on hold. “’m sorry I’m . . . ” She shakes her head again, tucks her hair behind one ear. “I didn’t mean to make you worry about all this stuff. An’ I’m sorry I yelled at you. You were just tryin’ t’ do the right thing, an’ - an’ I’m sorry,” she finishes. “Still mad, but yeah. I get why you called.”
He shrugs, brushes it off. “Just a helpful hint, but you might want to stop acting like the poster girl for runaway teens.”
“Told you, ‘m twenty,” she insists, hits his shoulder lightly.
“Like I said,” he replies, “you might want to stop acting like-”
She hits him again.
“It might be time for it,” he finishes, shrugs once more. “And have you always run around taking candy from strangers?”
Her lips quirk then and he can tell how hard she’s trying not to smile. “Nah, just lifts.”
His eyebrows rise. “That how you got to Barcelona?”
“Not unless you count an airplane pilot as a stranger.” She pauses. “Okay, yeah, I guess he would be.”
He rolls his eyes. “You always this literal?”
“Yup!” she replies and now she grins at him outright.
It only takes a few moments of silence to make that smile fade, only takes him not smiling back. But she tries, the girl does try. He hasn’t a clue why she does, but it’s not a reality he can deny. Still, it throws him for a loop whenever he gets to thinking about it, attempts to puzzle out her rationale.
Maybe she’s a bizarre ploy from some company, trying to confuse him into the ground before taking a go at selling him something, or worse: springing some sort of job opportunity on him. But that doesn’t match up with her formerly missing status.
He can’t seem to get a handle on her, but judging by the way his stomach tightens at her sobering expression, she certainly has a handle on him.
Well, if he’s already got her sad, he might as well give it a go. “What’d you do,” he asks, “for that year?”
She shifts, leans forward with her feet on the ground, her elbows on her knees. “Lots of stuff,” she says after a pause, says it softly enough to pique his curiosity further. “Best year of my life, really, that.”
The problem with asking personal questions is that people tend to ask them right back. Knowing this well, knowing this better than most, he considers edging around the subject before deciding to go with the blunt, direct approach. It’s not like he’s good at anything else.
“So what’d you do?” he asks again.
She shakes her head, has the decency to look him in the eyes as she replies. “Can’t say.”
He raises his eyebrows at her.
“Can’t,” she repeats, says it so matter-of-factly that he just might believe her.
Abusive boyfriend? He’s wondered about it and now he wonders some more. Some sort of witness protection deal? He knows that accent, thinks he might remember her saying something about living on a council estate, her saying it or the missing poster mentioning it; crime wouldn’t be entirely out of the question. Boyfriend involved in something?
“And where does your bloke come into this?” he asks. “The one who’s nearly a thousand and not your boyfriend.”
She bites her lip, looks at him directly as she thinks. That’s not a lie she’s considering telling, he thinks, just how much of the truth she’s willing to share. Positive sign, that, even if he doesn’t understand it.
What possible reason does this girl have for trusting him?
She nods to herself, asks, “D’you know UNIT?”
He nods back, eyebrows raised. “The Intelligence Taskforce for the UN, yeah,” he replies and as he does, something hits him in the back of his brain. The day she’d returned home, the day of the alien crash-landing: UNIT had been called in. It’d been all over the news, terms like “extraterrestrial specialists” flying about in conjunction with that abbreviation.
“He works with ‘em,” she says, “an’ ‘m not allowed t’ go with him where he’s gone this time, so ‘m waiting here.”
Meaning that she’d been allowed to before. The question of that missing year was partially answered - if the UNIT story wasn’t a hoax in itself. A significant if, that. “What?” he asks sarcastically. “Not enough room on the spaceship?”
She blanches and he blinks and when she laughs, the nervous tinge to it sets him on edge. “Nah, s’roomy.” She shakes her head, tucks her hair behind her ear. “But really, UNIT does sane stuff, too.”
Like kidnap girls from their homes and return them only when convenient?
His eyebrows are getting a workout today, what with all the going up and down. “Such as?”
“Medical emergencies,” she says simply. “My friend, he’s a doctor.”
He vaguely remembers their first bits of banter, thinks he might have made a joke or two about giving therapy to a car, or giving it its medicine or something along those lines. It’s possible that he’s picked her up from nothing more than that simple association, from hitting the one button she needed pressed in order not to be lonely with her friend gone.
Putting together other bits and pieces, he comes up with an explanation for her missing physician that makes actual sense. “Quarantine?”
She nods a little, nods a little more, looking straight ahead. “There’s this airborne thing,” she says and her voice wavers in a way that hints of something other than a lie. “Something to do with blood and once it gets in you, well . . .” She trails off, looks down between her knees at the ground between her feet.
He watches her closely as she speaks and his initial search for truth turns into something else. She’s pale as she speaks and so bent over her knees that he needs to lean forward to see her face. Her hands are clasped together, tight, and separate only for her to check something in her pocket, an unconscious tick if he’s ever seen one.
Her shoulders tremble beneath his arm and before he can think about what he’s doing, she’s pressed into his side, pressing into his side. “He’ll be okay,” he tells her and she takes the hand not on her shoulder in both of hers, holds it like a lifeline. “He’ll be back soon.”
“Sor’ of helps that I’ve got his UNIT account card,” she jokes weakly and her voice breaks only slightly as she says it into his jumper.
“Doubt any bloke of sense would leave something so important behind,” he agrees and she pulls back to look at him only to squeeze her eyes shut. And she doesn’t look like Susan and she’s nothing like Fred, but the movement is still not to be denied, not something to be stopped or restrained or given too much thought: he leans toward her, presses a kiss to her forehead in a manner once-familiar.
She bites her lip as she smiles and when she can bear to open her eyes once more, there are tears shining in them. She looks up at him then, looks at him like there’s something there to see, and he feels like tallest man that’s ever lived.
.-.-.-.-.-.
<-- | -->
Author: rallalon | Rall
Beta: vyctori
Rating: PG, AU towards the end of Season One; 9!Smith.
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: That explains a lot, he thinks, though any man in Barcelona should know that it’s a little early in the day for the prostitutes to be coming out. He rolls his eyes, answers, “That’s the tourist who stalks me.”
Yeah, I'm not dead.
The Tourist
The Girl
The Runaway
He makes it into the afternoon before he has to move, before sitting still isn’t an option. Yesterday, Saturday, he’d stayed put, had waited for a return phone call that never came. It makes him wonder about the woman he’d called, makes him wonder about the girl he’d met.
When he can’t stand the wondering any longer, he goes. He doesn’t wonder, isn’t made for it anymore. Wandering, though, yes. Yes.
He can do that.
Not even a full month back in this city, and already the surrounding roads have grown all too familiar. He considers going to Tarragona, is in the mood for ruins, is in the mood for a ride of at least an hour and a half.
His helmet stinks and the road goes by. He turns off the highway, meanders onto the back roads. Eventually, he needs a pit stop, pulls into a McDonald’s parking lot. The damn things are everywhere - almost as bad as Starbucks - but at least the bathrooms are sanitary. Usually.
Ignoring the glares of the cashier at the register, he strolls in and out with his helmet still on, touching his wallet in his jacket pocket solely to be sure that it’s still there. Small wonder he doesn’t eat, plastic places like this popping up all over the world. He can travel across continents, hop city to city and it’s not the memories he can’t avoid: it’s the restaurant chains.
There’s a little black-haired girl sitting with her dad in the booth by the door. He looks the other way when he walks out and both helmet and earplugs are still in place; all the same, he imagines their voices, hears Susan delighting over some stupid toy in a tiny plastic bag.
The chains might bring the memories, now that he thinks about it. It’s hard to leave all associations behind when all of them look so dismally similar.
His mind wanders as he returns to his parked bike and, for some reason, the thought of chips brings him back to the thought of the girl, to Little Miss Missing. He checks his cell phone then and, look at that: missed call.
Tugging his helmet off - it’s starting to smell; he really has to do something about that - he pulls out the earplugs as well, pockets them before hitting send on his mobile. The phone rings once, twice and then she picks up.
“You called my mum,” says a voice he isn’t expecting.
Her anger, he understands. The rest, he doesn’t. “How’d you get my number?”
“How’d you get mine?” she counters.
“You called me first,” he points out, throwing the obvious at her. It’s a simple fact of mobile phones.
He can practically see her rolling her eyes in mockery of him as she replies, “My home number. How’d you get that?”
He blinks. “Sorry?”
“You called my mum,” she says again. “You called my mum.”
“Yeah,” he says, and he knows he sounds patronizing. “I did.”
For a moment, there’s silence on the other end of the line, such silence that he wonders for a moment if the call has been dropped, wonders if she’s hung up on him. “Why?” she asks at last, sounds confused as much as she sounds angry. All the same, he can tell she’s attempting to be reasonable.
He’s a big enough man that he can at least try to return that favour. “’Cause in case you haven’t noticed, you’re acting like a runaway.”
“I’m an adult,” she tells him.
He could roll his eyes at that, can practically see her as a toddler proclaiming that she was a big girl now. “Legally, sure.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demands, indignant.
This is going nowhere, fast. “If you have to ask, I’ll have to call you thick.”
He hears her breathe in, hears her pull in air and hold it. Very slowly, very loudly, she releases it. “Look,” she says, trying once again to sound reasonable, “can we talk about this face-to-face?”
He shrugs even though she’s not there, sees her tuck a long strand of her hair behind her ear despite her absence. “Don’t see why we’d need to,” he says and then he can hear her blink.
“W-what?”
“Yeah, I called your mum,” he readily admits. “Enough missing flyers still up on the internet for that to be easy. And yeah, apparently your mum called you and gave you my number. And yeah, it looks like whatever the hell you’re doing, you haven’t left your family in the dark. That’s all set, then. My concern officially ends here.”
She’s quiet for a moment and then she says softly, asks softly, “You were worried about me. Why?”
It unnerves him, the way she sounds like she knows the answer. He doesn’t know it; how could she?
“You bother me a lot,” he sidesteps instead of truly replying. “Why?”
“’Cause you’re lonely,” she says simply.
Her words take him by surprise and he can find none of his own to counter them.
“See you tomorrow, yeah?” It’s not much of a question, the way she asks it, and she hangs up before he can reply.
He very nearly calls her back, but then the little black-haired girl and her father come out into the parking lot and the girl’s giggling and the father’s laughing and from now on, he’s using gas station bathrooms, sanitary or not.
Because he’s not lonely: he’s just alone.
And those, he tells himself as he tugs his helmet back on, are two entirely different things.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The morning can’t pass quickly enough. He tinkers and he’s bored and there’s really nothing to do. There’s work and he’s doing it, but none of it challenges, none of it makes his mind stop.
Sanchez watches him and he doesn’t show how it puts him on edge. It’s just the two of them today, the two other mechanics working only part-time. Normally, he likes this, but today it makes him the sole object of the other man’s attention.
“You are over-qualified,” the garage owner tells him, formal, says this and waits for a response.
He takes his time about it, looks to Sanchez as he considers his words, keeps those words equally respectful. “Are you firing me?” He wonders how Rose would be able to find him if he were fired, wonders and remembers her mobile number.
The Spaniard chuckles. “I’m no fool.”
It’s irrational, the way the comment leaves him pleased, the way this idle conversation makes time move. It’s irrational, but not unwelcome.
It almost feels like time goes by, like the planet has finally gotten around to moving. An indeterminate amount of time into the day, Sanchez approaches him once again, comes out of the office and into the garage. The man looks at him like he’s confused and he raises his eyebrows in reply.
“I thought you were a widower,” the native man muses, looking at him oddly.
“Never been married,” he replies briskly, wiping his hands on a rag that only dirties them further.
That gets another wry chuckle, but there’s something else below the man’s voice. “Makes for the worst kind of widower.”
He makes a noncommittal sound, isn’t in the mood to admit or lie. “Why’re you asking?”
“There’s a girl waiting outside, asked for you by name. Very pretty,” Sanchez adds, almost as an afterthought. It isn’t one. “Blond.”
That explains a lot, he thinks, though any man in Barcelona should know that it’s a little early in the day for the prostitutes to be coming out. He rolls his eyes, answers, “That’s the tourist who stalks me.”
The other man’s mouth quirks, a smile restrained. “Lucky man. If you need the help,” the garage owner continues, a sparkle in his eye, “I could distract her for you. It wouldn’t be difficult,” he adds, “for a handsome bachelor like myself.”
He snorts, shakes his head. “I thought you were married.”
“Makes for the worst kind of bachelor.”
He surprises both of them with a laugh and Sanchez stares.
“You can laugh!” the shorter man exclaims. “Before today, I didn’t know you could smile. When’d you stop eating lemons? Or would that be limes?”
He rolls his eyes. “Enough with the British jokes. She still out there?”
Sanchez nods in a way that says the shorter man is Not Judging Him. He thinks of the girl, thinks of her protesting and yelling “he’s not my boyfriend!” like she says it often. Looks like she does, if most people assume about her the way Sanchez does.
“She’s a worried little thing,” Sanchez informs him. “You take your break early today and get your business out the way, yes?”
He wants to protest, but there’s not much for it beyond doing as the man says. It’s not exactly conducive to business, he’ll agree, having an upset girl standing outside the garage.
So he handles it.
“Come back in two hours.”
“’kay.”
Not very well, but he handles it.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Two hours and eight minutes later, he has fully prepared himself to sacrifice his entire lunch break to whatever the hell it is he’s doing. He comes outside in his street clothes to find the girl and his employer hitting it off, the girl’s limping Spanish providing no end of amusement to the man. Catching a snippet of the conversation, he rolls his eyes. La ladrón de limón smiles at Sanchez, laughing over her new title.
Is it really that strange for him not to look sour? He can’t be that bad, can he? Sarcastic, bitter, cynical, yes, but this seems to be taking it to extremes.
He ends up dragging the girl away from his employer before señora Sanchez gets something new to worry about. She waves as they go, the newly acquainted pair laughing together, laughing at him.
This proves something to him that he’s unsure of, something that twists at him inside. The girl hits it off with strangers, consistently. The people she meets, the men she bumps into, she gets on well with them, immediately. He feels like he’s been swallowed up by a crowd, like he’s been buried in a large group of unusual acquaintances. Just another random person, him, one of her many.
She tugs on his hand and he loosens his grip and really, he doesn’t remember taking that hand, isn’t entirely sure where he’s dragging her off to. Her fingers tighten and she tugs again and when he turns back to look at her, the expression on her face isn’t one of a girl trying to get away from the lunatic hauling her across a strange city.
“Where’re we going?” she asks.
He doesn’t actually know. “Guess.”
She studies his face for a moment, her pensiveness from the morning making its return. “A park?”
“Yeah,” he says, and he knows just the one.
They walk together, weave through the crowds on the sidewalks making their way back home, their way out to a restaurant. Her hand is warm in his and he keeps forgetting to let go. A man walks towards them and something tickles his mind. Pickpocket, he knows without knowing why, a real ladrón.
He steps like so and swings their clasped hands like this and Rose shrieks a surprised laugh as he spins her to his other side. She’s quick and light and moves like a dancer, unsurprised by the unexpected steps. He releases her hand instead of holding it across both their bodies, lets her go, but she laughs again and hugs his nearer arm. She’s soft and warm and doesn’t seem mad at him at all, so he thinks she must be.
Her laughter invites glances and drives unwelcome hands away. The tickle subsides and he feels a strange sort of lightness, comes close to pressing his lips to the top of her head.
He needs to eat a bigger breakfast, he decides. He’s getting lightheaded and close to impulsive.
By the time they reach their impromptu destination, she’s gone back to holding his hand, the wool of his jumper evidently too scratchy to hug with her bare arms. The further they walk in, the quieter she falls, never mind the fact that they weren’t talking in the first place.
“Can I try to explain something to you?” the girl asks and he nods.
They find a bench, sit down. She twists towards him, one leg on the wooden planks, and he forces himself to stay still. The look in her eyes makes it hard and for a moment, he can’t decide whether he wants more to bolt or to pull her into his arms. If he had a tissue on him, offering it might be option three.
She shakes her head, putting his inability to cope on hold. “’m sorry I’m . . . ” She shakes her head again, tucks her hair behind one ear. “I didn’t mean to make you worry about all this stuff. An’ I’m sorry I yelled at you. You were just tryin’ t’ do the right thing, an’ - an’ I’m sorry,” she finishes. “Still mad, but yeah. I get why you called.”
He shrugs, brushes it off. “Just a helpful hint, but you might want to stop acting like the poster girl for runaway teens.”
“Told you, ‘m twenty,” she insists, hits his shoulder lightly.
“Like I said,” he replies, “you might want to stop acting like-”
She hits him again.
“It might be time for it,” he finishes, shrugs once more. “And have you always run around taking candy from strangers?”
Her lips quirk then and he can tell how hard she’s trying not to smile. “Nah, just lifts.”
His eyebrows rise. “That how you got to Barcelona?”
“Not unless you count an airplane pilot as a stranger.” She pauses. “Okay, yeah, I guess he would be.”
He rolls his eyes. “You always this literal?”
“Yup!” she replies and now she grins at him outright.
It only takes a few moments of silence to make that smile fade, only takes him not smiling back. But she tries, the girl does try. He hasn’t a clue why she does, but it’s not a reality he can deny. Still, it throws him for a loop whenever he gets to thinking about it, attempts to puzzle out her rationale.
Maybe she’s a bizarre ploy from some company, trying to confuse him into the ground before taking a go at selling him something, or worse: springing some sort of job opportunity on him. But that doesn’t match up with her formerly missing status.
He can’t seem to get a handle on her, but judging by the way his stomach tightens at her sobering expression, she certainly has a handle on him.
Well, if he’s already got her sad, he might as well give it a go. “What’d you do,” he asks, “for that year?”
She shifts, leans forward with her feet on the ground, her elbows on her knees. “Lots of stuff,” she says after a pause, says it softly enough to pique his curiosity further. “Best year of my life, really, that.”
The problem with asking personal questions is that people tend to ask them right back. Knowing this well, knowing this better than most, he considers edging around the subject before deciding to go with the blunt, direct approach. It’s not like he’s good at anything else.
“So what’d you do?” he asks again.
She shakes her head, has the decency to look him in the eyes as she replies. “Can’t say.”
He raises his eyebrows at her.
“Can’t,” she repeats, says it so matter-of-factly that he just might believe her.
Abusive boyfriend? He’s wondered about it and now he wonders some more. Some sort of witness protection deal? He knows that accent, thinks he might remember her saying something about living on a council estate, her saying it or the missing poster mentioning it; crime wouldn’t be entirely out of the question. Boyfriend involved in something?
“And where does your bloke come into this?” he asks. “The one who’s nearly a thousand and not your boyfriend.”
She bites her lip, looks at him directly as she thinks. That’s not a lie she’s considering telling, he thinks, just how much of the truth she’s willing to share. Positive sign, that, even if he doesn’t understand it.
What possible reason does this girl have for trusting him?
She nods to herself, asks, “D’you know UNIT?”
He nods back, eyebrows raised. “The Intelligence Taskforce for the UN, yeah,” he replies and as he does, something hits him in the back of his brain. The day she’d returned home, the day of the alien crash-landing: UNIT had been called in. It’d been all over the news, terms like “extraterrestrial specialists” flying about in conjunction with that abbreviation.
“He works with ‘em,” she says, “an’ ‘m not allowed t’ go with him where he’s gone this time, so ‘m waiting here.”
Meaning that she’d been allowed to before. The question of that missing year was partially answered - if the UNIT story wasn’t a hoax in itself. A significant if, that. “What?” he asks sarcastically. “Not enough room on the spaceship?”
She blanches and he blinks and when she laughs, the nervous tinge to it sets him on edge. “Nah, s’roomy.” She shakes her head, tucks her hair behind her ear. “But really, UNIT does sane stuff, too.”
Like kidnap girls from their homes and return them only when convenient?
His eyebrows are getting a workout today, what with all the going up and down. “Such as?”
“Medical emergencies,” she says simply. “My friend, he’s a doctor.”
He vaguely remembers their first bits of banter, thinks he might have made a joke or two about giving therapy to a car, or giving it its medicine or something along those lines. It’s possible that he’s picked her up from nothing more than that simple association, from hitting the one button she needed pressed in order not to be lonely with her friend gone.
Putting together other bits and pieces, he comes up with an explanation for her missing physician that makes actual sense. “Quarantine?”
She nods a little, nods a little more, looking straight ahead. “There’s this airborne thing,” she says and her voice wavers in a way that hints of something other than a lie. “Something to do with blood and once it gets in you, well . . .” She trails off, looks down between her knees at the ground between her feet.
He watches her closely as she speaks and his initial search for truth turns into something else. She’s pale as she speaks and so bent over her knees that he needs to lean forward to see her face. Her hands are clasped together, tight, and separate only for her to check something in her pocket, an unconscious tick if he’s ever seen one.
Her shoulders tremble beneath his arm and before he can think about what he’s doing, she’s pressed into his side, pressing into his side. “He’ll be okay,” he tells her and she takes the hand not on her shoulder in both of hers, holds it like a lifeline. “He’ll be back soon.”
“Sor’ of helps that I’ve got his UNIT account card,” she jokes weakly and her voice breaks only slightly as she says it into his jumper.
“Doubt any bloke of sense would leave something so important behind,” he agrees and she pulls back to look at him only to squeeze her eyes shut. And she doesn’t look like Susan and she’s nothing like Fred, but the movement is still not to be denied, not something to be stopped or restrained or given too much thought: he leans toward her, presses a kiss to her forehead in a manner once-familiar.
She bites her lip as she smiles and when she can bear to open her eyes once more, there are tears shining in them. She looks up at him then, looks at him like there’s something there to see, and he feels like tallest man that’s ever lived.
.-.-.-.-.-.
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