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.]

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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.

She stands still, her head tipped back just enough for her to look up at him from so very near, near enough that her complex perfume of myrrh and cloves touched with fruit wreathes the air around them with subtle scent.

Ice-blue, diamond-bright eyes meet his without fear.

"Their names?" One corner of her mouth twists in distaste. "So many it is they have, too. Oh, thick as thieves they are, the Shaper and the Runner, and no question that for them it is so fitting."

Anger edges her own words now, tinged with the bitterness of betrayal as she tells him,

"First the Runner -- fleet indeed, that wing-footed one, but not fast enough to outrun his own clever scheming, not this time. Call him Enagonios, Mercury, Hermes, Mercer, or what you will: all the same they are, and all the one who promised me that all was made new between us -- oh, but he lied, and the more fool I was, I let myself believe him, when all along he conspired with the other."

Bitterness slides quickly into black hatred and loathing as she tells him,

"That one it was who made my prison, oh yes -- crafted it with his own hands, he did, the so-cunning Shaper. Subtle-counselled Prometheus it was who imprisoned me so, Doctor, the fire-bringer himself."

The Doctor's lips turn down in a slight frown. Prometheus and Hermes. Hardly inconsequential foes, at that. Still, he's faced stronger.

(I've seen fake gods and bad gods and demi gods and would-be gods...)

"Promise me, Blodwen," he says, looking down into her eyes. "Give me your oath that you did nothing to provoke them prior to their actions. Nothing as a mortal, I mean." As far as he's concerned, that consequence settled all previous debts.

Barely-visible tension threads its way through her frame at his request. Aside from that, she is perfectly, utterly still.

"Well, and I have been a ffwl before to trust anyone," she murmurs, after a long moment. "And if I come to regret it again now, a lesson learned over may be the clearest remembered..."

Without looking away from him, Blodwen shakes her head.

"That oath I cannot give you, cariad. For I am sure it is that they would claim otherwise, and perhaps rightly. But I do swear to you that I caused no harm even near that which they wrought upon me, and very little even at that."

A beat.

"Mercer would claim that I wounded his little fae friend, I think -- Puck, Robin Goodfellow? And yes, an unkind trick I did turn back upon him, in return for his continued taunts and cruelties to me, though mortal and cast down I was."

Her tone hardens.

"And Prometheus? Would that I had paid more heed to his threats -- but nothing, nothing did I do to him, ever, before he made the first of them, I swear, and afterward I only spoke once briefly to one he knew, warning her that he was more than his mere mortal seeming--"

Her agitation is increasing, visibly.

He could enter her mind and attempt to determine for certain if she were telling the truth. But it's not a thing he does lightly or without asking. And ultimately, it would settle nothing. If she refused, it could be from hiding the truth or because the power she controls would be too strong for him to tame. If she accepted, it could be from honesty or because the power she controls would be strong enough to cloud the truth.

It comes down, finally, to whether or not he trusts her. He did not trust the White Rider of the Dark. He trusted Angie North. The woman standing before him is both, and neither, and new. That she desires vengeance is certain. That she has her own agenda is clear. That one day their aims may again be at odds is certainly possible.

But today... today she's a soul in pain. He sees that in her eyes -- in her real eyes, not the seeming that she's painted over them. She's as alone in the universe as he is, trying to find a way out of the few paltry shreds of possibilities presented to her. She has no allies defending her, no great destiny buffeting her, no true friends to stand beside her... Well, maybe that last part isn't entirely true.

The Doctor reaches out, touches her lightly on the shoulders. He isn't surprised when the touch doesn't match the appearance, as he already knows this form is mostly illusion. What surprises him is the slight tremble he can feel from her, just a faint betrayal of emotion -- anger, fear, regret, and more -- locked away behind the mask she presents to the world.

His voice is soft now, the fury pushed back down until it is called upon again. "I believe you," he says gently, knowing in that moment that he truly does.

Blodwen flinches at his touch, one hand automatically rising as if to defend herself--

--but then he speaks, and she freezes, staring at him.

"... you do?"

The tone of the question is so startled that it nearly breaks his hearts. That she would have answered so honestly, made herself so vulnerable to him, all the while fully expecting him to turn on her... it was remarkable. But then, he has always told her as much.

And so he doesn't answer her with words. Too many of them have been spoken to her in anger, too many threats made and promises broken. Instead, he dips his head and finds her lips with his own. It isn't the first time he's kissed her, but where that one was brief, this one lingers. It isn't a purely selfless act; he sees his own loneliness reflected in her eyes as well. He can't help but to reach for some morsel of comfort even as he tries to provide the same to her.