A Good Man

••1••

I don't know where I am.

But I know who I'm with. I think. He's changed. And not just personality-wise. He exploded in a burst of golden light and popped back up with a new face. My jaw hit the floor when I saw him. The first word he said to me was "kidneys". Kidneys! What a way to make a first impression. Dear God, that man is odd. It seems like I barely know him, now. Well, I barely knew him before.

Our feet slap loudly as they fall upon the wet stone. We have been running for hours it seems. But I'm used to running. There's an outrageous amount of running involved when you travel with him. We are alone except for the steady drip of water that accompanies us. He pulls me along beside him, clutching my wrist tightly. "Doctor...?" I ask again. "Where are we heading to, again?"

Silence.

He's been completely quiet ever since we entered this godforsaken cave. He said something about full concentration and memory loss. I don't know. Spaceman stuff. Whatever it is I don't remember what.

The Doctor holds the candle out at the end of his arm. My eyes linger on the flame. It flickers and flutters silently. The candlelight lights up his face in a ghastly way. All of his features are dramatized and shaded in sickly ways. Almost like he's dead.

A sound like the ripping and scraping of metal echoes throughout the labyrinth of tunnels. It's so loud that I have to cover my ear with my only free hand and hold my other one against my shoulder since the Doctor has a death grip on my other one.

"Doctor?" I yell nervously, my voice jostled from the running. "Can you actually answer me this time and tell me what the hell that was?!"

He only pulls me closer to him and he runs faster. It was hard enough keeping up with his abnormally long legs. One of his long strides was two clumsy steps of mine.

As we run, the tunnel starts to lighten up a bit. The grating metallic noise still bounces off the walls. The Doctor comes to an abrupt halt and I run into him, nearly knocking him over. The tunnel had widened.

Overhead one of the planet's full moons glows, filtering light through the opening that's above our heads. The moonlight makes the perspiration of the cave walls glitter and glisten. Stalagmites protruding from the ground have conjoined with the stalactites hanging from the cave's ceiling to create pillars of stone.

I'm in awe. "Doctor?" I ask. "Where are we?"

He only throws me a quick glance and puts a finger to his lips as he pulls me out of the beautiful scenery and back into yet another black tunnel.

I sigh. There's no way I'm going to get anywhere with him. I follow silently.