Fight For Freedom |4| The Ascension

Chapter Sixteen: Vincent And The Avengers

The Doctor and McKenzie were standing in the Van Gogh section of the Museé d'Orsay, watching as Pietro, Zoë, and Amy excitably explored the paintings on show. One of the attendants, a man in a bow tie not dissimilar to the Doctor's, was lecturing a group of tourists about the paintings.

"So this is one of the last paintings Van Gogh ever painted," he was saying. "Those final months of his life were probably the most astonishing artistic outpouring in history. It was like Shakespeare knocking off Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear over the summer hols. And especially astonishing because Van Gogh did it with no hope of praise or reward. He is now..."

"Thanks for bringing me," Amy grinned. This particular trip had been her request.

"You're welcome," the Doctor told her, smiling as he saw Zoë low-key phasing herself and Pietro through the crowds.

"You're being so nice to me," Amy noticed. "Why are you being so nice to me?"

McKenzie pouted. "We're always nice to you."

"Not like this," Amy pointed out. "These places you're taking me. Arcadia, the Trojan Gardens, now this? I think it's suspicious."

The Doctor blinked. "What? It's not! There's nothing to be suspicious about."

Amy frowned. "Okay, I was joking. Why aren't you?"

"This is why I do the spy stuff and not you, honey," McKenzie sighed, smirking slightly.

"Each of these pictures now is worth tens of millions of pounds," the attendant continued, "yet in his lifetime he was a commercial disaster. Sold only one painting, and that to the sister of a friend. We have here possibly the greatest artist of all time, but when he died you could have sold his entire body of work and got about enough money to buy a sofa and a couple of chairs. If you follow me now..."

As he turned to a different painting, the Doctor tuned in to a couple of schoolboys nearby. "Who is it?" one asked.

"It's the doctor," the other replied.

The Doctor turned, only to find them looking at the portrait of Doctor Gachet. "He was the doctor who took care of Van Gogh when he started to go mad," the first child explained.

"I knew that!" the other one insisted.

"Look!" Zoë grinned. "There it is. The actual one." Amy held up the guidebook and compared the image to the actual painting.

"Ah, yeah, the Church at Auvers," McKenzie nodded. "You can almost feel his hand painting it right in front of you, carving the colours into - what the hell?!"

Pietro frowned. "What?"

"Well, just look at it," McKenzie said, her eyes wide.

"What?" Amy repeated.

"Oh, my -" the Doctor realised, seeing what his wife had. "Something very not good indeed."

"What thing very not good?" Zoë asked.

"Look there, in the window of the church," McKenzie instructed, pointing.

Amy blinked, seeing the dragon-like image too. "Is it a face?"

"Yes," the Doctor nodded. "And not a nice face at all. I know evil when I see it and I see it in that window." He headed off towards the attendant, McKenzie shaking her head.