A call in a deathbed.

The bed and its inhabitant make a pale silhouette against the bay windows, translucent, even, like paper held up before a light. When the Doctor had stepped out of the TARDIS's doors and into the corridor, he had assumed he was in some rural manor, lulled into a sense of comfort by the warm wood paneling and large framed windows. Standing now in the threshold, he is no longer fooled. The light streams brightly in and birds sing in the tree boughs outside, yet even the rain-smelling breeze cannot sweep away the astringent stench of antiseptics, nor can the birdsong completely disguise the hulking machines gathered about like humming, murmuring, hiccuping family members drawn to a bedside. The figure sits back engulfed by pillows, lit up in frail profile. There's a faded scarf hanging from a peg on the wall, waving flag-like, faded and tired.

"Who are you?" She is very still, colourless, save for when she turns her head from the window to gaze at the doorway. Her eyes are side-lit and hazel.

"The Doctor," he says.

"No, you're not," she replies, unruffled and just as sure. "I know every doctor here, but I don't know you. So, who are you?"

Ever so calmly he approaches her bedside, crossing the room with an air of discovery about his ponderous steps. His eyes flicker here, there, examining before flicking away again.

"I've told you. I'm the Doctor."

For a pause, he meets her eyes and she stares back, and this time her entire body turns in the bed, and she's all angles and summer light. There's something direct about her, in the way she looks and not only sees but observes.

"Why are you here?"

"Why are you here?" He answer-asks her. Her hands have rested in her lap, but now her fingers shift, fluttering as if life had reawakened unexpectedly in them. She motions to the foot of her bed.

"Can't you look at my charts and tell me?"

"Not that kind of doctor."

She continues to watch him, nigh unblinking; a stranger waiting for the inevitable.

"I'm dying." The words are said with the same blunt tap of the tongue as all others, given no greater leeway nor weight, simply a statement of the facts. He was not a doctor; she was dying.

"Well that seems rather dull."

"What does?"

He's continued to approach and she has to look up at him now. The sheets have been pressed and tucked around her, blinding white and binding. He tilts his head over so slightly, and she watches.

"Sitting here just waiting to die."

"What else can I do?" Curious.

"Well, you could come with me." He smiles, all dimples and simplicity. He's the type whose honesty bleeds through every expression, and she doesn't know what to make of him. She sits in her bed as if she had been born there, as if she had already died there and never thought, not once, to leave it.

"What?"

"Come with me. We'll go adventuring," and he's all but humming with energy, with potential and excitement and curiosity to match. He crouches slightly, leaning closer, unable to keep joy from crinkling around his eyes "Would you like that? I can show you the backs of the stars, or even stars you've never seen before, they're so far. I could show you all of history, any of history. I can show you the firsts, the lasts, the glorious journeys getting there, anything you like."

There are worlds in his voice, tucked between the stops and syllables, stars shining in his breaths. She looks at him like she has never looked out her window; she looks at him like he is an adventure himself, an adventure in discovery. She rubs a palm across the peach fuzz covering her head and the back of her neck.

"Why?," she asks, and it's more than just that question. And she says again, as if in case he had forgotten, "I'm dying."

"That's the thing!" He all but sings, breathes it out, and leans closer as if they're magnetized. He all but vibrates with energy, and she can feel it rolling off of him. "You humans are such a funny species. You finally realize you're mortal and then you sit around, waiting for death to come to you, like it's late and you're the polite party host.

"But death is never late; you never have to wait, not really. Life is just the long wait for death, after all, and one should never waste that wait doing anything but adventuring." He says this with such conviction, as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe. She doesn't know where to look or what to see; his eyes or the nebulas spinning past in the backs of them, the pass of light and dark and dreams. He produces a hand, presenting his palm. So earnest, so smiling.

"Come with me."

And she does.