Secrets Never Known

The Madman was still simmering. He didn't seem nearly as angry as before. If he was, though, he hid it well. No words came from his mouth as AnnaBelle sat not far from him, her legs crossed. The silence stretched on for so long that Anna began to feel impatient and her legs had fallen asleep, tingling every time she shifted.

Finally, the silence was broken so sharply that AnnaBelle was confused as to where the disturbance had come from. Then she saw her Madman's fingers tapping obsessively on the metal of the chair that he sat in. He seemed not to notice his own movements, his head resting in his still hand, a dark shadow painting his face and eyes.

After another moment of quiet tapping, AnnaBelle's mind couldn't take it. "You shouldn't be so angry," she murmured quietly.

She didn't know why she was talking, but she pushed forward despite the clear fact that he hadn't heard her.

"Whoever this Doctor guy is... I won't let him stop you..." She watched him almost hopefully.

He gave no reaction.

Her shoulders slumped and she swallowed, her throat feeling thick. "And I know you won't let him stop you... You-"

She stared at his blank face, then watched his fingers moving in the same pattern. Her eyes traveled to his dark ones again.

"You never let him."

AnnaBelle didn't know what made her say it, but she knew it was true. Shifting slightly, Anna took a deep breath and continued her calming words. Maybe her Madman couldn't hear her, but she could, and she needed the words just as much as he did.

Anna's hand cupped her cheek as she stared down at the words on the page before her. Her eyes drooped closed slowly. She'd slept soundly all night, sitting in her dreams with the Madman, yet all she wanted to do from the moment she woke up was sleep. She drifted in and out of consciousness during the course of her English final. After having gotten it over with and bringing it up to Mr. Smith, she'd begun flipping through the last three notebooks she'd filled, having brought them to school with her. It took only a few minutes of reading the stories for her to fall asleep completely.

A hand on her shoulder caused AnnaBelle to start, waking and looking around her at the empty classroom. She looked up into the face of Mr. Smith, who was smiling down at her kindly. She sat up, the pages of her notebook sticking to her arms as she did.

"School's out," he said. "I let you sleep for about 30 minutes, but I think you'd best be getting home by now. Don't you agree?"

The young girl nodded. She gathered the notebooks from her desk and stuffed them into her backpack. She slid out of her desk without a word to the man beside her and walked to the door to the classroom. Before she could leave, she turned to look at him. Her eyes were still full of sleep as she spoke to him.

"Thank you, Mr. Smith," she said. Her voice was hardly above a whisper and it took her a few moments to find the words she wanted to say. "Thank you for not laughing and for being interested in my dreams. Thank you for being my friend."

Instead of smiling as AnnaBelle had thought he would, the teacher frowned. His eyes trailed over her face and she saw secrets and deep knowledge in them. They reminded her so much of her Madman in that moment that she nearly dropped her bag. But the look was gone as quickly as it had arrived, and the smile she'd wanted replaced the frown.

"It was my pleasure, Ms. Webber," he said, and though he made his voice sound cheery, Anna could hear something else in it; something she couldn't quite place.

AnnaBelle nodded at him, then pushed through the door and into the hallway. She silently hoped that that wouldn't be the last she would see of the substitute teacher that had been her very first true friend.

--

The Doctor sat on the floor of his TARDIS, a yellow covered notebook in his lap. The writing in it varied in both point-of-view and level of neatness. The drawings it held ranged from small drawings that filled margins to ones that took up entire pages; drawings of AnnaBelle's Madman's hands, face, eyes, his full body. There were drawings of him sitting, standing, kneeling, crouching. The Doctor's hands ran over the drawings, his own memories of the man mixing with Anna's descriptions of him, which were much nicer at most times.

And yet she was scared of him. She mentioned it over and over again. His power and knowledge terrified her, his determination to find her made her panicky. She was apprehensive of everything he did, but she still cared for him; still wanted to be with him out in the universe.

AnnaBelle was in a delicate state when she finally slipped into sleep's welcoming arms. The day had gone slowly and all she wanted to do was see that familiar face that haunted her every dream. She was tired, frustrated, and ready to snap.

Maybe it was the high emotions or maybe it was something to do with him, but AnnaBelle felt fear as she gazed at the Madman's face. His star-filled eyes were suddenly two abyssal plains that drew her in at a startling rate. He was doing nothing out of the ordinary. He merely sat. He sat and stared.

AnnaBelle knew that he was thinking, only thinking, but that blank stare sent tendrils of cold out to constrict her chest. He was on the verge of something and it wasn't something hopeful. It might have been this that terrified her. The fact that her Madman was possibly a second away from giving up was what AnnaBelle tried to convince herself was the cause. She knew it wasn't.

It wasn't the atmosphere or the idea of losing him that so scared her. No, it was the possibility of staring into those same cold, unforgiving eyes that chilled her blood. The idea of her Madman finding her, fixing her with that ruthless stare that so many had cowered under, and deciding she was worth no more than all the rest.

The Doctor was determined to find out why he was looking for AnnaBelle; why he wanted her so much. He wanted to keep the girl safe from her fears, and as long as he didn't know what the other man's intentions with her were, he would make sure the man of her dreams didn't get his hands on her.

--

AnnaBelle's room was a disaster. It looked like hundreds of tornadoes had torn through it. Clothes, dolls, papers, you name something and it was probably covering her floor and her bed. Her eyes darted from one pile of things to another in a wild, almost inhuman, fashion.

"Where is it?" she whispered frantically.

The moment she'd gotten to her room she'd opened her backpack to put the two older notebooks back in their place, only to find that one of them was missing. Immediately she tore around her room, throwing things here and there even though she knew the notebook wouldn't be there; she specifically remembered taking the missing yellow one to school with her. She hadn't stopped the mess-making rage until she was absolutely sure it wasn't there, until she'd looked in every single spot in her room.

She sat down on her bed, tears collecting in the corners of her eyes as she ripped at her hair. Her bare feet tapped the floor as she tried to recall anything that could have happened to it. Nothing came to mind and that angered her even more. A manic scream rang through the house, and she was glad that her parents and brothers were gone at a baseball game.

"Where are you?"

AnnaBelle's voice fell flat, breaking on the last word. Her eyes grew dim and she knew that she no longer was speaking of the notebook. Where was her Madman? And when would he finally come save her from this world?