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John Smith sighed as he stared at the room in front of him. He felt trapped, stuck in a life that he wished he wasn’t in. Wake up, eat, work, eat again, sleep and then repeat. A cycle of days, the mundane routine bleeding them into one right after the other.
He’d done a lot of things in the past. Most of them, he could confidently say looking back, were mistakes. John had been excited, rambunctious, a bundle of energy, and fury, and fire, and all things loud. A stark contrast to the shell of a man he was now, a husk of what he could have been.
John looked down at the table. On it lay the wristband he’d used so often in the past, slipping through the fabric and stretching of time, changing and cracking the flow of history, though not enough to make any major changes. He was lucky he had yet to cause a paradox, but it would’ve only been a matter of time. He.. he stayed put now, for the better.
But, that temptation to leave, abandon this quiet, mundane, repetitive life he’d built. To feel the flow of time through his skin once more, to have that thrill again. The pull grew stronger each day, and yet, he ended each one in his bed, the watch left behind again.
Not today though. Today he gave in. John strapped it to wrist, feeling the cool silver metal, thrumming with energy, against his warm skin. He opened the pad, and saw the colors of the screen glow, a small smile (the first smile in so long) pulling at the corners of his lips. He punched in coordinates, setting in his destination and closed his eyes.
A golden glow flooded the room as the watch worked, time itself almost cracking open to allow the man to travel through, and John felt the vortex absorb him, moving into the past. The feeling flooded him, memories of a time where he was excited and full of emotions returning to him as a crack opened in front of him. He moved through it, the watch and time spitting him out to the ground.
As John picked himself up, he glanced around. His eyebrows furrowed. He’d set the watch to a very specific place, to his past self time energy, but the scene around him was that of a building he didn’t recognize.
It was an office of some sort. Some place where people held power. As he was trying to gather his thoughts of where he was, there was a sound behind him of someone opening the door.
John whipped his head around and his eyes met with Harold Saxon. The memories of the man jumped to his fore-thoughts and he realized when he was. 2007, the year that the man had been elected Prime Minister. The brown-haired politician stared at John.
“What are you doing here?” He said, a chilling tone to his voice.
“I, uhm.. I..” John struggled to come up with a reason as Harold, a person he used to be so close to, strode up to him.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve to show your face here.” He hissed, practically face to face with the time-traveler.
John tried to pull himself back, get the upper hand. “I.. I didn’t mean to come here, I-”
Harold laughed, a cruel sound as he sneered. “Oh, you just happened to wander in? How did you even make it past the guards?”
John didn’t answer, his eyes shifting down. Harold’s eyebrows furrowed, taking a slight step back and looking the man up and down.
“You crossed your own timestream.” He said with a dawning realization.
John nodded, and Harold continued. “You came back to me..” He paused. “Why did you do that?”
He sighed, unable to lie to Harold, despite, or maybe because of, all the fights and history between them. “I came to stop you. You.. you do something so bad, but we can-”
“Oh, I should have known.” Harold said, but his voice was no longer shocked, a bitter, angry tone to his voice now. “I should’ve known, you wouldn't come back for me, oh no, not you.”
John took a slight step back as the angry man approached him yet again. “No, you need to stop me. Why’s it always like that, John?” He spat, a furious glare in his eyes. “You’ve done plenty of wrong, more than me, but I don't come crawling back to glue it back together, do I?”
He tried to step back again, but his legs crashed into the desk, causing the time-traveler to stumble. “How could you?” Harold snarled, before a crazed laugh escaped his lips. “No, how dare you?”
John felt a cold pit of dread and a hot burst of panic rise in his chest, bubbling a swirling into an anxious energy that resided in his skin. He saw the rage and fury, years of frustration and betrayal, love and loss, all swirled in those dark brown eyes, so dark they were almost black.
“Wait,I.. I can explain, Harry-” He stammered out, and the widening of the man's eyes told him that was the wrong thing to say.
A sickening crack echoed through the room, and John clutched his nose, feeling the warm blood flow out. He looked up and saw Harold standing above him, his lips curled into a furious sneer. “You don’t get to call me that!” He snarled, his eyes reflecting a crimson red in the light of the room.
John, realizing what was happening, quickly moved, scarbling to the side as he tried to get away to a reasonable distance, so the two could talk, but he felt a tight grasp pulling him back. He whipped his head around, eyes caught with Harold as the man tried to tug him back. John’s eye narrowed, and in an instant, his leg kicked Harold’s kneecap.
The man yelled out in pain, releasing his grip on John and allowing him to move away. A deranged gin spread on the politician's face as he stood up, despite the obvious pain. “Oh, you still have some fire in that old body, don’t you?”
As he spoke, he made his way forward, but he no longer held the element of surprise on his side. John kicked his leg out, narrowly missing Harold. The brown-hair man stormed towards the time-traveler and dug his nails into his back, gripping the fabric as he swiftly brought his knee to his gut.
John groaned, doubling over as blood continued to leak from his broken nose. An elbow to the spine sent him to the ground, a cry of pain escaping him as he fell. He tried to get up, but the firm pressure of Harold’s dress shoe was on his arm, pinning the limb down effectively.
He looked up at the man that he once called a friend. “Wh.. what are you doing..? Why are you doing this…” He asked, hoping that it would come across angrily, but John could keep the pain out of his voice, from both the emotional knife stabbed through his heart and the bloodied, bleeding nose, dripping red on the floor.
A fist collided with his cheek as a cry of pain escaped his lips. Harold’s face was full of anger, a hauntingly beautiful image as he raised the bloody, bruised fist. “You leave, again and again.” He growled, and this time it was John’s eye that was hit. “You never came back, and when you do, it’s not for me. Just you.”
Blood escaped his lips as his face was punched at, the rich iron flooding his taste buds. Ignoring the pain, John managed to speak. “You can’t blame me for that.” He said, panting heavily. “It’s not my fault-”
“Yes. It. Is!!” Harold shouted, grabbing John by his coat collar, and slamming him roughly into the wall. He let out a pained sound as his head knocked into the hard brick of the office wall.
“You may be fine, running away from all your problems, but your actions have consequences, Doctor.” He hissed the name out like an insult, and it stung John like one. “You hurt so many, you hurt me, and now you can’t run.”
John felt his head spin, his eyes refusing to focus on the man in front of him. His breath was coming out in a staggered pattern, but Harold didn’t stop. He seemed to be in almost a trance as his fists continued to hit the time-traveler, breaking skin as he panted with fury.
He cried out, tears welling in his eyes as he slumped to the ground, blinking in and out of consciousness. John stared up at Harold, and Harold stood, unblinking, rage and heartbreak and glee, all melted into one glare, above him. The time-traveler's eyes fluttered as the brunette walked towards him, and looked down. He almost gave what seemed like a smile before John passed out.