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Outside, huge billowing storm clouds crawled across the sky, the tangled twigs on the sand banks waited to be soaked by the ensuing rains from the clouds above, and as the Moonlit sky grew darker the rains fell.
The view from the small single window became blurred as the diamond sparkling rain-drops cascaded down it's surface and the Moon became nothing more than a mere smudge in the evening sky, distorted.
Ace's eyes remained fixed to the window, staring beyond the rain to the sea, the beam of the lighthouse moving in blurred circles. 'The cold sea must feel like the swirling winds,' she thought to herself, 'roaring from each and every direction at once...' She pulled away with a jerk, the train of thought forgotten, like a weak dream destroyed in the awakening.
'Are you ready to leave then?' asked the man in black, stepping forward towards the extremely frightened John.
'No! I refuse to go with you!' He seemed near collapse, his shirt soaked with sweat, his hair had become stuck to his forehead.
The Doctor walked a short distance across the room, standing between the shaking figure of John and the man from the Homeland, a defiant look blazing across his face. 'If you have to take John, take me too. That's why he asked me to come here in the first place - to make sure that justice is done.'
The man eyed the Doctor cautiously, brushing a loose lock of hair back from his eyes. The broad laughing smile reappeared. His eyes ran over Ace. 'To make sure you don't try to trick me, we'll all go.' As he spoke, he reached out to the brass handle and flung the door wide open, making everyone wince as the wind blew the hard rain in on them all. The lighthouse in the distance continued to swing in the night, far away. As the beam glanced round towards them and eventually pass across the room, an immense explosion ripped the room apart, an expanding fireball of light and heat filled the whole flat. The beam swayed on into the night, the fires died in the room, which was now cold and empty as the grey hull of a ship-wrecked vessel. Everyone who was standing in the room were now far, far away. Nowhere near the rain, nowhere near the damp sandy beach. They had all gone to the Homeland.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
 ust rained in a fine powder over the wasteland that stretched into the distance in every conceivable direction. Tall tree-like weeds, brittle and dead, pointed their high, splayed fingers towards the heart of the burning sun, while the whole sky watched with pity at the figures lying in the fist of a loveless land; neglected and barren, an industrial graveyard; a tortured bombsite of fallen bricks and tombstone chimney stacks. Thick, evil, black smoke from the wild industrial bonfires crawled over the scene, plastic and aspixiating as it raged behind chain-link fencing. Chemical containers smouldered into dripping liquidity, their stench making the ravens in the tall trees cry even louder, before leaping into the air, casting an evil wing over the two unconscious forms.
Ace awoke first, coughing on a lung full of dust and smoke, her hair plastered with dirt, her eyes streaming. Her rucksack lay abandoned some twenty feet to the left of her. To her right lay the Doctor.
'Professor!' she tried to yell, the smoke making any use of vocal chords virtually impossible. She half stumbled, half crawled to the inert body of the Time Lord, whose umbrella stood in the ground like a sword, mere inches from his head. His hat sat forlornly on top of the red question-mark.
'Professor!' she repeated, shaking him by the shoulders. A small cough came from the face-down figure, and a little cloud of dust surrounded his head. He glanced up.
'Hello, Ace. Sorry about all of this...' He struggled to sit up, his whole body feeling like a segmented orange. He coughed again, and pulled the paisley decorated handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Ace, who wiped her sore eyes thankfully.
'This is the Homeland, right?' she said, handing the material back to the Doctor.
'That's right. Lovely day, isn't it?' he said flippantly, brushing down his jacket with a small clothes brush. Once he finished he passed the brush to Ace. 'Where's John?'
 
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the homeland page4
