white_flowers | (no subject)

(no subject)

She spends more time outside than in, lately, drifting along the lakeshore or through the trees, a living ghost among so many others here at the ends of worlds. At night, the dark, dry-blood red of her gown seems nearly black, and the grey gauze veil over her hair and her lower face gleams coldly in the light of moon and stars. In the day, of course, everything is clearer. Only her eyes remain always unchanged, ice-blue and glinting with diamond brightness.

She has no need to return indoors, and for the moment she prefers not to. It's calmer this way, at least for now, while the gift she's been given continues its work upon her. Blodwen's all too well aware of the changes that have taken place and which are still slowly occurring. She can't quite recall, but she thinks she dimly remembers something like this happening once long ago, uncountable years and ages distant, when last she turned from a mortal life.

For some reason, though, it seems to all be so much more painful this time.

In her inattention, she strikes her foot against a stone. Blodwen hisses in a sharp breath at the jolt and moves past it, continuing along the faint path that she's following, her thoughts already twisting inward once more.

Behind her, the rock crumbles into gravel and dust.

[OOC: Note on appearances; note on abilities and weaknesses.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He inclines his head to her in return.

"Better. And worse. As I expect you have been as well." He has, after all, noticed something different about her, though he hasn't quite worked out what yet.

"Oh yes," she says, lightly; so very, very lightly. "Yes indeed, to be sure."

Blodwen draws a step closer to him, then another, and pauses there, watching him.

She appears to be studying his expression with great care.

They say that scent is the greatest mnemonic of all the senses, and it's that more than anything else that the Doctor recognizes. He nods slowly, his smile subtly shifting to one of bittersweet disappointment. "Goodness, you've had some cowboys in there, haven't you?"

She blinks, and a look of true surprise crosses her face.

"What?"

"I've been around death and decay far, far too many times to be unable to recognize it," he tells her simply. "And you've pulled it over yourself like a cloak. I'm not sure what's underneath, but I know this--" he gestures at her form "--isn't it."

It's not confrontational, his tone. Instead, it's mostly sadness. That's about all he has left right now.

Her features shift at that, surprise flashing quickly to something complex, caught between pain and anger--

(--and a flicker, just a flicker, of what might be disappointed hope--)

-- in the instant before her expression hardens into a neutral mask.

"Clever, you are," she murmurs. "So very, very clever. I shouldn't wonder if you were to know it all, already, hmm?"

He shakes his head, still overburdened with sadness. "No. Not all of it. Maybe enough. Someone hurt you. Wore you down. I can see it in your eyes, the way you hold your head. You were weak, and someone else made you an offer. What else could you do but accept?"

It's an old, old story. One that he's just had to play a part in all over again. "Drowning man will grab any rope that's tossed. Any chance to regain the control that was stolen from them. And I'm sorry for that. I'm so very sorry."

"Weak, is it?"

Her hands clench into fists at her sides.

"Be it so, if it is that you will call it that. But where were you, then? Where were you, Doctor, when it was that I was yet mere mortal still and desperate for help enough to be so very weak?"

Acid drips from each word.

"So desperate I was, oh yes. Taken from here and trapped in a prison far from this place? Tormented unto death until I who once hated and feared it so wished only to die, but was not granted even that?"

The Doctor nods sadly, figuring it to have been something like that. It would have to have been from here that she was taken. Once again, the uneven application of the rules here rears its head.

"I did give you a device to signal me," he says carefully. He knows he's incredibly vulnerable out here right now. Blodwen has never attacked him directly, but if she felt provoked enough, that could change. "If it had been taken from you, it would have sent me a signal automatically, but it was never activated. If I had known, I would have come. I made you that promise."

Her eyes widen in shock.

(Oddly, their seeming doesn't alter, as if her glance were somehow fixed in glass.)

"... if it had been taken?" she says, after long seconds of taut silence.

"If it had been taken, you would have known?"

He nods again. "I programmed in a fail-safe. If it had gone more than 500 yards from you for more than three consecutive days, it was set to automatically signal me."

Slowly, so very slowly, she reaches into a hidden pocket of her gown.

Blodwen draws forth a crystal cube and holds it out on the palm of her hand.

"It was with me the whole time," she murmurs. "One of the things it was that made me so furious, cariad, can you not imagine? There with me throughout, and not a finger could I twitch to touch the sides, as you mentioned when first you gave it me, so long ago."

A pause.

"Had I but known..."

He exhales sharply and lightly bangs the back of his head against the tree. "A paralysis field," he says angrily. More at himself for not having considered the possibility than anything else, while still reserving a healthy measure for those responsible.

Which means that this -- what she's become -- is partly his fault as well.

She nods.

"Something of the sort, I do suppose. Yes."

The look on her face is hard to fathom.

"I'm so sorry," he says again, unable to meet her eyes. "I never imagined something like that." He swallows and asks the question he really doesn't want to. "How long?"

She closes her fingers around the cube with care, and lowers her hand, still watching him.

"... a year," she says, at last. "A year full, and half another in that place. Held unmoving, scorched and blinded--"

A pause.

"-- and mortal, oh yes, mortal still, with a mortal body's needs, but made undying." She gestures with her other hand at herself, and oh, but her smile is self-mocking and bitter.

"Believe me, dear Doctor, when I say it is that you do not want to see what is truly left of me beneath this shape."

Now it's his hands that are clenching, balling themselves into fists inside his pockets. "Who?" he asks, filling the simple word with a quiet fury that has turned entire armies back.

And unmistakable it is, too; impossible for anyone to miss, perhaps especially one such as her.

"It matters so much, then?"

Lightly said, but there's nothing light at all about the say she's searching his face.

"You were mortal," he says between clenched teeth. "You were no danger to anyone. And you were under my protection." And the third is what burns him up most. "It matters. Oh, yes, it matters."

Silence, for a single beat.

"And what would you do with the knowledge, cariad, did I give it you?"

He pushes off the tree with his back and starts pacing, anxious to burn off some of the anger inside. "You have powerful enemies, Blodwen," he says in lieu of answering immediately. "Gods and demons and faeries. Not to mention humans, some with abilities I don't fully comprehend. Quite possibly, facing down anyone with the power to imprison you the way they did would be a bad idea and the odds of my success would be low."

The Doctor stops pacing and turns to face her, the menace still in his eyes. "But that wouldn't stop me trying."

"The strength of your hatred is wondrous," the thing had gloated, and well she knew it then and knows it still.

To see this sort of rage and menace in another, like this, is a marvelous thing.

(he would have

now you could

twist

corrupt

together you could)

And yet, for the first time in a long, long while, a dim and guttering spark within her flickers, and she finds it a disturbing one.

(but he--

--he's the only one who--

--if I did--

--I don't want)

"Oh, cariad," she says, at last, softly amazed. "How strange a thing it is. I believe you would."

"Oh, I would," he hisses. At this precise moment, he would be willing to tear down half the universe with his bare hands.

He thinks of Harriet Jones, the disgrace that six words could bring. He thinks of two armies sucked out of time and space itself to drift endlessly in the Void. He thinks of the Carrionites, frozen in a neverending scream. He thinks of the Aubertines, the so-called 'Family of Blood', suspended forever in time. And he thinks of the Master, choosing to die in the Doctor's arms rather than live a prisoner; one final act of defiance to hurt his enemy more deeply by forcing him to survive.

The quiet fury of a Time Lord is a terrible thing to behold. And this one burns brighter than most because the punishment inflicted upon her is so close to the one he has visited upon his enemies in the past. Anger and shame make for a hotter flame than anger alone.

Terrible it is indeed, oh yes.

Terrible, and powerful, and glorious.

She takes a single step toward him, then hesitates before taking another.

"Two, there were," she says, after a moment.

"Oh, and there are more who dislike me, to be sure, and well we both know it -- but for this, there were but two."

He steps forward away from the tree, matching her, closing the distance.

"Tell me their names," he replies, the dangerous edge in his voice sharpened to a point.