October 18, 2023

The abandoned house doesn't have much going for it in terms of docking space. In fact, canal water comes up as far as the doorway; had the water level been just a little higher, the Doctor would've had himself an indoor swimming pool. Venice is a city slowly sinking and this building is one of many proving as much.

Nathan thinks it's a good thing nobody alive is currently living there, as a back entrance leading straight into a canal seems to him neither useful nor safe. It would be like stepping out of your house and onto the freeway immediately. Just with less crashing and more drowning.

He waits until he no longer feels eyes prying into his back and fastens the boat to the iron bars in a window. Not classy, definitely not deserving of Gino's seal of approval, but it will hold. The waters are calm and gentle today.

Nathan takes a deep breath. He needs to be like those waters and keep his head above them. Be calm, cool, collected.

He can do this.

Axe in hand, he climbs out of the boat, through the doorway and into the dark. No exclamations of shock or surprise greet or chase him. Nathan is a stealth master today, a goddamn ninja. One with the shadows, ready to kick ass.

The air he breathes inside is saline, tinged with a rotten mildew scent. Moisture clings to his clothes, burrowing into his shirt. Although he attempts to keep his footfalls quiet, he sloshes through puddles on a worn stone floor—the last flood's souvenirs. Fucking hell. Nathan wasn't counting on doing this undead murder with wet socks. But no pain, no gain.

He doesn't want to turn on a flashlight and draw too much attention to himself, so he stays close to the windows and lets his eyes get used to the dark first. He soon concludes the Doctor isn't down here with him. Safe for algae-covered planks, plaster, crumbled rock and a decaying, eyeless fish in a corner, he is entirely alone.

The second floor must be where the Doctor prefers to hang.

Nathan makes his way up an open stone staircase he trusts to hold him about as much as he did the stairs in Poveglia's asylum, which is to say not at all. The one advantage to stone stairs, he tells himself, is that they don't creak. He sidesteps more debris, remnants of a wooden barricade that must've served to keep reckless teenagers or the homeless out before the authorities started to neglect this effort. His scar prickles more with every step advancing the climb.

He's getting closer.

No sound from outside seems able to penetrate the smothering silence. Nathan's own breathing comes too loud for his comfort. When he reaches the second floor, he doesn't even dare blink too often, lest he misses something important that could make a difference between life and death.

More light makes its way onto the second floor than the first. The sun's rays sneak in past the half-opened window shutters, dust particles dancing in their beams. But the Doctor, if Nathan's theory is correct, doesn't thrive on sunlight. What Nathan thus seeks is the darkest corner of all.

And he finds what he's looking for fast.

The Doctor sits curled up in a corner with its back against the wall, unmoving, not making a sound. Its black outfit blends with the shadows better than Nathan ever could. If it weren't for the discoloured white mask sticking out like a sore thumb, the Doctor could have been invisible to anyone unaware a revenant dwells in the house. The creature faces the staircase Nathan ascended as if keeping watch, but with the mask covering the face underneath, Nathan can't tell if it's asleep.

It isn't reacting to Nathan's presence. If it was awake, it could've already struck hard five times over. Then again, Nathan can't ignore the possibility of this being a trap. Maybe the Doctor is watching him now, willing him to come closer before launching a surprise attack. So he waits while his heart rate increases, determined to see if the revenant will lose patience and pounce.

It stays in place.

Nathan approaches the creature, slow and cautious at first. It shouldn't be alerted to his presence too early. But the closer he gets, the easier it will be for the Doctor to feel him there, so he ups the pace with every step until his slinking has become a full-on charge. He bites through the steadily intensifying stabs this delivers to his scar. He raises his axe, ready to ram its head into the creature's rotting neck.

In his haste, he stubs a toe against a stray chunk of metal. It sends another shockwave of pain through his core. He swallows the profanities threatening to spill out, but can't subdue a whimper.

The Doctor's head snaps up at once. So much for the surprise effect.

Nathan grits his teeth, pulls himself together and swings his axe at his target with a grunt. To no avail. The Doctor is fast and agile for an undead man and evades the weapon's sharp blade by throwing himself to the side.

"Stand still so I can kill you, asshole," Nathan growls, opting for pursuit straight away. He needs to make sure this thing ends up decapitated—has to push it into the sunlight at the very least. Each time Nathan closes the distance between them, he takes a swing, but he fails to get a hit in. The Doctor dodges, strafes left and right, ducks away from every one of Nathan's attacks. All without breaking a sweat, without being hindered by a painful scar making it hard to see, think, focus.

This is not a fair fight.

Offense may be the best defense, but Nathan can't keep tiring himself out trying to lop the revenant's head off like a crazed madman. He changes tactics when the Doctor evades him again, only narrowly steering clear of an open window. Instead of swinging, Nathan thrusts his axe forward, its head slamming against the Doctor's chest.

Surprise effect regained.

The revenant stumbles back, into the light. To Nathan's chagrin, it doesn't turn to dust the moment the sun grabs hold. But the light must hurt. A shriek identical to the ones serving as background noise in Jamie's Poveglia footage bursts forth from the Doctor's throat.

Nathan won't stand still and wait for it to recuperate. He swings his axe at the Doctor's neck again with all his strength. This time I'll get you, swear to God.

But the Doctor ducks, the axe missing its head by a hair's breadth. Nathan gasps when the sheer force with which he swung rips the handle from his hands. His weapon sails right out of the house, taking a window shutter down with it.

He barely has time to register the loud splash of his only hope disappearing in the canal below. The Doctor seizes its chance. It goes on the offensive now, diving out of the light and straight towards Nathan. A whirlwind of black robes and undead weight knocks him off his feet, the collision sending them both to the damp ground.

Nathan winces. The Doctor, hovering over him, takes one glove off, exposing a purplish hand with sharp yellowed nails poised to slash at his face. Nathan doesn't at all like the sight of that. He shoots up, grabs the Doctor's robe and wrestles the beast to the ground. The revenant's claw grazes his shoulder, slicing through the fabric of his shirt, but he's too high on survival instinct to care. He pins the Doctor down.

He doesn't have a weapon anymore. Just fists.

But he knows how to use those.

He lands a hard punch on the Doctor's mask. And another. And another. He sees nothing but red, barely hears his own panting while hit after hit rains down on the revenant's skull. Nathan has been here before—once beat the absolute shit out of some street punk who insulted his mother less than two weeks after her murder, battered him until his knuckles bled and the bastard begged for mercy. After he coming to his senses, he vowed to never let loose like that again, to keep himself under control. He's been succeeding pretty well, but now he summons all the aggression and blind rage that flowed through his body way back when.

Your entire fucking undead life ends today.

Cracks rip through papier-mâché. With every hit the revenant takes, its breaking mask slips off further. Nathan thinks little of it at first—he'll damage the face more easily without the covering. He raises his fist, ready to make the Doctor endure his hardest punch yet.

But his arm stills before he can. Nathan snaps out of his violent trance.

The sight of the Doctor's visage petrifies him. It's a hideous, haunting face. Skin as unhealthily purplish as the one exposed hand is shot through with ink-black veins, bringing Nathan back to the night on Poveglia and the ghost he saw. Only a few stray strands of thin white hair still cling to a shriveled head. The Doctor's right eye is missing, but the left one still sits in its socket. It stares Nathan down, lidless and bloodshot.

Even Nightmare Derek looks fresher than this.

The Doctor uses Nathan's shocked paralysis to its advantage. It lunges forward, so fast Nathan swears his punching had little to no effect. Bared sharp teeth, yellowed like the fingernails, snap into his direction.

Nathan's reflexes kick in. The Doctor is going right for his throat, which he shields with his arm. The move saves his life, but excruciating pain sears his body the second the Doctor's teeth tear into soft flesh. It burns hot like magic fire, flames shooting through his arm and scar alike. Blood runs down Nathan's skin, dripping onto the floor, his pants, his shirt. He howls, kicking the Doctor in the stomach to force it to unclamp its jaw.

The revenant isn't quite a pitbull. It does let go.

"Shit." Nathan sits wheezing on the floor, pressing his wounded limb to his chest in an attempt to stop the bleeding with his shirt. It's his right arm hurt. His dominant arm.

No way is he still winning this now.

The revenant knows this. It's taking its sweet time.

"Stay back," Nathan threatens, though not even Gino could find him intimidating in his current state. He scrambles back on the floor; all he can think to do is put as much distance between himself and the Doctor as possible. He makes for the sunlight, but the revenant doesn't look impressed. Nathan's blood paints its dried lips red. It moves towards him slowly in a real victor's walk. Once Nathan's back hits the wall, it must understand, its prey isn't going anywhere.

Nathan racks his brain for anything he could still use to fight this creature off. Derek was no lighting example, but he knew how to use words for weapons. If only words could kill undead men. Nathan wonders if he should mumble a prayer in what could become his final moments.

Then something invades his peripheral vision. A fast-moving blur with a touch of lavender.

The Doctor, with its back turned to the stairwell, is zeroing in on Nathan. It doesn't have time to realise what's coming at him from behind. It shrieks when Jamie takes it down with such speed Nathan can't even tell if she's tackling it in a tactical move or really just slamming into it, going too fast to prevent a collision. Either way, both she and the Doctor join him on the floor.

Rare occurence as it may be, sometimes Jamie arrives precisely when she has to. Nathan may owe his life to her timing.

Unlike him, she doesn't challenge the Doctor to a physical fight. She must've missed him and subsequently rushed inside like a headless chicken, unarmed. While the Doctor momentarily stays on the floor in surprised shock, she jumps to her feet again and makes for Nathan by the window.

When their eyes meet, hers are filled with such feral fury it scorches him more than the pain in his flesh.

"Tell me, Nathan," she begins, enraged. "What part of wait for me was so damn hard for you to grasp?"