Shadow of a wing (Doctor Who)

A brief moment of rest

"Again too late..." The Reaper kicked against the console. "And always so much that no one can tell me how much! That's infuriating!"

With a grunt he hung his coat on a hook and went to get some rest. This had been the twentieth planet today and he was angry and exhausted.

Some places there wasn't any sign at all of what he was looking for. So he probably was way too early. He had tried jumping forwards, but it always seemed as if he was several millennia away from the right time. No matter how hard he tried, never did he hit the right time. So jumping from place to place was his best option still.

He wouldn't run out of them anytime soon. There was content from over a thousand years of travelling through all of time and space to cover.

But how long would that take?

With a deep sigh he sunk down on the sofa he had put in the console room a while ago. It didn't really matter. There was not even a choice not to go on. If he wanted his timeline to stay intact, that was. And he hated to have no choice. Especially not when it meant to...

Whatever.

The Reaper grabbed the book he had left there and tried to rest his mind for a while. His hand brushed something he still had in his chest pockets from a few places ago. Oh, right. There had been this young idiot merchant of whom he had snatched the glasses to annoy him. With a grin he put them on and looked back at the pages.

"Mhm... that's actually more convenient."

There was a slight vibration in the air, subtle and barely noticeable. His head snapped up from the book, turning all around. It was definitely not imagination, so he closed his eyes to focus on it. The vibration came back, a tiny little bit stronger, made the hair on his arms stand up a bit. It was... like the faint echo of something that could become a sound at one point; having a somewhat amused tone to it. Almost like a giggle.

The Reaper suddenly smiled. "What? Do I look funny with those?" He slid the glasses further up his nose and grinned. "I probably do."

For a while he listened to the silence, but nothing else happened. Had it been imagination after all? No matter how often he tried, there never was an answer.

The words of the machine woman came to his mind... 'You are not alone on this journey'

If only. Some days, like today, he could swear there still was something in here. But most of the time there was nothing at all.

"You really could talk to me, you know," he sighed. "Just once..."

Silence.

His eyes glared at the pages without seeing the letters on it. Some time later he then shook his head and sighed, leaning his head back. After all the years he had been on Gallifrey it was strange to be on his own again. Even though he had always loved to travel in solitude, now it weighed on him for some reason. Well... not some.

"You've been travelling all alone for this entire time, haven't you?" he asked the silent air. "Are you... lonely? Mhm... I bet you are. How else could it be..."

It could be imagination, but there was a slightly vibrating distortion in the air again. In theory it could stem from the machines. They produced all sorts of energetic pollution. Especially since he wasn't able to repair some of them.

But there was this slight sting of hope. It was possible after all. Either that or he had simply exchanged one madness for the other. It was so unbearably quiet without the drums. Maybe his mind invented stuff to keep him from going crazy again.

So he started to red once more, this time though aloud.

And for a brief moment it was as if he could feel how someone sat next to him, listening.