Soundless Imaginings | One-Shots

Russian Roulette | Tagged

"This is bad."

"You've said that already, da?"

"It seemed worth repeating."

Okay, that little spurt of dialogue must be really confusing, and for that I'll apologize. I just didn't know how to start this. Where does one begin the tale of how their life - their normal, boring, excruciatingly anticlimactic life - was flipped-turned-upside-down in a matter of seconds?

I'll rectify this. Let's rewind a bit, shall we?

It was four o'clock in the morning. I was awake, nestled all cocoon-like in my comforters, my eyes fixed on the Nook screen I held in front of me, slanted to accommodate for my unorthodox posture. Why was I still conscious at this ungodly hour? Obviously because the fictional lives of the Doctor, Rose, and Captain Jack Harkness wildly surpassed the importance of the prescribed eight hours of rest I never got anyway.

No, not really. My insomnia was kicking in. But watching Doctor Who was still my top priority, so in a way the insomnia was welcome.

So. Watching Captain Jack be his adorable, innuendo-making self. Adjusting my earbuds every few minutes because I'd had them for months and like all their previous incarnations they turned to crap after so many tortured jam sessions (one ear was nearly blown out so the sound was lopsided and I cursed my own existence because of it). Waiting with baited breath as the Daleks infiltrated Satellite Five...

Whoa, whoa - spoilers. I'll take a page out of River Song's book and just skip ahead a bit so that I don't anger any potential Whovians. Savvy?

Wait, wrong Captain Jack. 

Ahem. Anyway.

While I was engrossed in my geeking-out (as well as the internal strife that always cropped up when I began comparing Nine and Ten's reigns as the Doctor) something gave me pause. I blinked in the graying darkness, held at bay only by the soft glow of my eReading device, shifting up onto my elbows so that my eyes cleared the headrest and I could make a quick sweep of the room. Shadows paced along the walls, chased by the light of the high-beams from cars rumbling along outside. Aside from the faint, electronic sound of "Exterminate! Exterminate!" chanting from my dangling earbud and the ambient noises of the night, there was silence.

I met the flat, black eyes of my stuffed bear who lay curled up among my pillows, shrugged, and dropped my head, once again fixing the placement of my earbuds for the optimum Who experience.

"Dammit, Jack, don't you die on me! I mean, this is like the third time I've watched this episode and I know how it ends, but goddammit, there's a build-up of false hope so don't you dare betray me, Captain Innuendo!"

There it was again.

Whatever'd snagged my attention before had resurfaced, and this time at a very critical point in the episode. Irritated, I paused the video, threw off my covers, and swung my feet to the floor. I rubbed at my bleary eyes, blinking again in the enveloping darkness, which, now that I'd escaped my illuminating Nook, seemed ten times darker. But this was, of course, my room, and so I had no trouble navigating while practically blind, cocking my head to follow the increasingly persistent tapping to its source. 

"God, do I hate that tree," I mumbled, ruffling my hair (which, despite my non-sleeping, had already gone into the first stages of bedhead, and so entangled my fingers in disastrous knots before I could pull my hand away) as I rolled up the blinds, expecting to see the spindly, skeletal branches of our gargantuan pine tree scraping at the glass. 

In case you haven't already guessed, it wasn't the damn tree.

Well, okay, the tree was there, as support for the person who'd actually been tapping at the window, but it's not the main focus of this tale, alright? Just wanted to get that straight.