Just a Little Bit Impossible

It is deep into the small hours of the morning, blackness seeping through every window and battling against the artificial light. A bell tolls in the heart of the city, five chimes – it is five am. She creeps, quiet as air, through the corridors of her place of residence – she will not call it home for it is temporary – careful not to wake her comrades as she sees the doors close behind her with little more than a whisper. One after another until she reaches the stairs and then oh so slowly, carefully, she pads down them, the heels of her trainers barely scuffing the rough carpet. She minds her steps at this time of night as she always does, aware that her typical gait could awaken even the dead.

The air is crisp and she braces herself, her pyjama legs whipping in the dawn winds. The hooded jumper she was given so many years ago by a love long forgotten holds in little warmth, and the pyjama top two sizes too small does little for her as well. But she has to make this journey, as cold as she may be because she knows that the one day she didn’t, she would miss it. She would miss him.

She only saw him once, as a young girl. He didn’t say anything, just merely passed her by but in that, she knew he would save them all. Standing in the rain at five am, her mother and father among those that had fallen in the wake of it all, she had watched him step into that impossible thing and vanish into thin air, alone. She knew nothing of him and he knew nothing of her, but he had turned before the doors fell shut behind him and thrown her a smile. In that smile she saw everything.

Every day since, no matter where she was or whose care she was in, at five am she would rise from her bed and make her way outside, just on the off chance he’d be there again. City after city, home after home, she took the chance. No matter the weather or how the previous day had gone, whether she’d slept enough or not at all, she went outside and stood waiting for him. It was the one constant in her life, the only thing that reminded her that life goes on no matter what happens and that some things will always remain the same.

Half an hour was all she ever allowed him and then she would retire to her bed again, to fall asleep and dream of that maybe-one-day as she always did. She didn’t love him – not like that, anyway – but she idolised him. Whenever there was a mystery, whenever there was a threat, whenever there was danger, and whenever they were solved or fixed or reversed, she knew it had to be him who saved the day because who else could? Who else would? He was the protector, the saviour they all needed, and all she wanted in the whole universe was to help him do just that.

And so she stands, back to the heavy doors that contain the rabble of educated runaways in the whistling night, arms clutched around her heaving torso and her breath throwing clouds of vapour into the wind. Her eyes find the city clock with ease – she is no stranger to this, after all – and she waits, hoping that for once he will heed her call. She thinks as loudly as she can – as loudly as one can think – about that face, that suit, that man, willing him back to her so he can take her away and make her as brilliant as him.

The bell tolls five fifteen and her heart beats in rhythm. Maybe tonight is not the night – maybe no night ever will be – but she cannot break the pattern, she cannot leave before the half hour is up because ‘maybe’ is more than enough for her faith to stay strong. It is more than she has had in fifteen years, since her parents were taken away by those ugly things, those wretched bringers of war and death.

Will he still look the same? She asks the same question every morning. Fifteen years does a lot to a face – just looking in the mirror will tell you how true that is. But something in the back of her mind says he will. She doesn’t know how and she doesn’t know why, but it tells her those wide brown eyes and that wild, incredible hair have remained just as they were that fateful night. It is impossible, but she cannot imagine him being any other way.

There is no ticking of the giant clock but she can hear it in her head, ticking away the minutes as her bed calls her back to the dream lands. Five twenty-five and still no sign but she still hopes for him. All she can do is hope. It is the thing that keeps her going when all seems lost, when nothing seems to go right and all she wants to do is run away from it all. The seconds drift by as wind begins to die, the sun breaching its barriers of night and throwing a medley of yellows and reds and oranges and pinks into the wake of the stars upon which she rests her eyes.

Five twenty-nine. Her heart does not sink and she feels no disappointment – those feelings stopped happening when she was nine, after a year of praying for his return. She found no use for them because the hope was the only thing she wanted to feel about him, the only thing she wanted to associate with this impossible being.

The bell starts to toll, signifying to her that it is time to leave and finish resting her head for the real start to the day. She begins to turn, her eyes aching from the day that is starting to break before her, but is stopped in her tracks by a noise that incepts a pull in her heart so strong that she has to turn back. The wind returns but it is different now, less like an earthly blow and more like a jet engine coming into land. But it is no engine.

Before her eyes appears the very thing from all of those years ago. It materialises out of the air around her, bleeding into existence until it takes its final form and becomes as real as the shoes on her feet and the blood in her veins. The door opens with a creak – still familiar after all this time – and out pokes a head. He is still the same, those wide brown eyes and that wild hair like not a minute has passed. And oh, that smile. How different she is now from then but he still remembers her face.

Without a word he holds out his hand, a silent offer for her to run away with him and live an impossible life. She accepts with a step, not caring that she is not decent for travel or that she knows nothing of the man to whom she has given her life wholeheartedly to protect. And into the little blue box she steps, all wide eyes and wild haired just like him, ready to learn and ready to come alive.