Fandom The Traveller of Refuge (Doctor Who)

[Venom Adhamm]

"No, I didn't do anything. There's just a... nevermind, everyone else will deal with it," I answer, trying to hide my visible discomfort from Marie as I approach the table and set the briefcase down.
"You got a place to lie down?" I ask Palloma as I open up the first aid kit and start sifting through it, pulling out everything I'll need to treat her.

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[Error 420]

You begin to treat her, and as Marie is walking around admiring the paintings, Palloma looks up at you. "Why did you leave them, Traveller? You could have helped, but you left instead." She doesn't seem disapproving or condescending.

Venom Adhamm

 

[Venom Adhamm]

...

I'm stunned for a moment as something replays through my mind. A distant world on fire, the voices of dear crying out for help. And I left. I did the same thing here, didn't I? I guess some things just don't change. I've left people to die before, though not often. It was an easy thing to do. I've killed other sentient beings too, and that was even easier. And it was all because I never could grasp the concept of death. With my lifespan and ability to regenerate, it seemed like something that could not touch me. And yet, when I looked towards that burning tent, I felt a chill. Is this what it means to fear death? I was scared that fire might kill me, just like last time. But now, I wouldn't be able to come back. At that moment, I was more worried about my own well-being than anyone else's. That's how it's always been, hasn't it?

"Because I'm not a hero. Never have been. I'm just..."

I'm reminded of one time, when I saw a blue-eyed white wolf on a cold planet far from any sun. Its fur was stained with red, and it was hard to tell how much of that red spilled out of its own flesh, and how much came from the flesh of another beast. One of its hind legs was hurt and got dragged along in the snow as the wolf wandered. It didn't seem to be going in any particular direction. I watched it for some time as it ambled aimlessly about. It soon came upon a larger, stronger wolf. This second wolf must've wanted to protect its territory, as it immediately leaped towards the white wolf. The two fought and both were heavily gored and battered in the end. The larger wolf had its throat ripped out, and the white wolf wasn't doing much better. It turned its head to me, and as I gazed into its dying blue eyes, I saw the clearest reflection of myself.

"I'm just a wounded wolf, trying to drag myself as far as I can go."

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[Error 420]

"Colorful metaphor. You must be killer at parties." She smiles as you insert a syringe in her arm, dispense your medicine, and finish up the procedure. Afterwards, she quickly sits up. "Well, I suppose I owe you a prophecy, no?" She rises from the hammock and takes a seat at the table, gesturing for you to take a seat. Marie notices this and sits back down.

 

[Venom Adhamm]

"I suppose you do. After that, make sure to rest for a few days while the medicine is in your system," I instruct as I walk over to the table and take a seat.
"So, how does your process work? Do I need to do anything, or can I just sit still?"

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"Sit. Enjoy scone if you want, but I recommend paying attention. Big prophecy is very important." She claps her hands once, and the glass ball begins to glow. The drops of glass on the cieling begin to swing slightly, tinkling on contact with one another. Palloma closes her eyes, and places her palms upwards on the table. Not long after, a drop of glass from the ceiling falls, its head colliding with the table. Palloma grabs the tip of the drop's tail and just slightly bends it, quickly pulverizing it. You see a green fog hang in the air where the glass just exploded, and then quickly rush towards the glass ball, seeming to fill it up. Palloma's eyes glow bright green as an image appears above you. The face of a white wolf, one you recognize, beloved pet of the man who ruined your life. You remember seeing it being killed by an injured wolf, and then you saw him for the first time. The man who would take your friends, nearly 2000 of your years, and 11 of your lives. But that is an image of the past, and that is not what this prophecy is. This image is of the future. The face of the wolf is on a cloak worn by a man. The man stands on a hill, overlooking Refuge, in flames. You see him approach your TARDIS, to his side. A hand reaches out and helps him into it. The image fades, and Palloma rests, "There is your prophecy," she says, out of breath.

 

[Venom Adhamm]

"I see."
Him again. It's always him. I don't think knowing this future will help me much. There's not really anything I can do to prepare for a confrontation with that man. Is he here already? If so, he might be the problem I'm here to resolve: the temporal aberration. Hmm. Didn't Marie say something about that?

"I just need one last thing from you. I've heard you talk about temporal aberrations sometimes. What do you know about them?"

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She pants, clearly exhausted. "What? Oh, yes. Those. They're the symptoms of messing with time. Somebody somewhere accidentally kills Washington's dad or something, time machine usually does a little rewriting, a little fixing, fixes it all up. Time aberrations are when the time machine doesn't clean things up, or there is no machine. Washington's dad is dead, well so's Washington, United States no exist, paradoxes abound, no good."

 

[Venom Adhamm]

"You know a lot for a Human. My time machine's detected that there's an aberration here. I think that robot, Davro, has something to do with it. He definitely shouldn't be in this place at this time, and he definitely shouldn't act the way that he does. You know anything about him?"

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[Error 420]

Venom Adhamm
"Davro? He might be abberation, yes, but he is not the cause. I would know it." As she says this sentence, the tent begins to shake, causing the glass drops above to clink against one another. Both women in the room seem very concerned.

Marie looks to you. "Uhhm, mister Ahab, I don't think that's right." Outside, you hear crackling, like massive thunder rippling through the sky.

 

[Venom Adhamm]

"I know it's not. Usually don't mind the weather, but when it makes tents shake..." Not sure what these people expect me to do about it, since it seems like it's already fallen on my shoulders. But... with my luck, it's probably related to what I saw in the future.

"I'm going to go check. Marie, you stay here," I say as I start to leave, before stopping and glancing back for a moment.
"Unless you really want to come along."

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[Error 420]

Marie dutifully comes to your side as you leave. Promptly upon opening the wooden door to the tent, you see across the clearing the clock affixed to the fort, its face reading 5:50, and then it was gone, the heavy clock face being torn off the fort from the East by a bolt of lighting. Looking that way, you see smoke, and hear the screams of war cries. The forest is being quickly turned to ash by an unseen force stretching across from the river far to the North. The town around you is full of men and women panicking, looking for lost children, arming themselves, attempting in futility to put out tents on fire. The earth shakes as more busts of lighting come from the cloud of ash to the East.

 

[Venom Adhamm]

Fire and ash... No point in trying to find a tent to hide in, and I doubt I'd be able to make it safely to the TARDIS. Something wicked is coming. It's at times like this that I wish I was armed with more than just a fancy door-opener/multitool. I'd never used weapons much before, never had the need to because I never felt... mortal. Didn't feel the need to protect myself with anything other than my usual belongings. But now...

"You or your folks got any guns?" I ask Marie, "I feel like I'm gonna be needing one."

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"Uh, yeah, some people!? I guess!? I don't know!" The sounds from the cloud of ash grow and grow, the lightning strikes and thunder becoming more constant over guttural screams. A lightning strike comes down nearby you.

 

[Venom Adhamm]

I jump slightly at the lightning strike, staring for a moment at the charred ground it left. Could've been me... Hell, we really can't stay out here. I don't really trust the integrity of the tents, but there's always that place. Ouiatenon. Might be the only safe place here right now. Somewhere to hold out. But what will I do when I get in there? I'll figure something out... I always do.

"Nevermind, forget the gun. We're going to that fort." I grab Marie's hand and immediately start sprinting towards the relative safety of the old fort. And as I ran, I felt something strange, something I'd never felt before.

Fear for my life.

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[Error 420]

You dash the long distance towards Ouiatenon, moving through burning tents and gun-ho civillians moving into the cloud, among them purple-masked men with guns ready to fight against the oncoming horde. As you reach the door to the fort, you hear mechanical whirring as a massive metal chariot bursts through the line of foliage, at least fifty feet across, with a single silohuette standing atop it. You see very little but the outline of a wolf's head over his. Davro busts out of the fort in front of you, throwing away his gloves, his arms quickly tuning to cannons. He stands, lining up a shot towards the metal chariot. With a gesture of his arm, the figure sends a lightning bolt from the cloud of ash, instantly annihilating Davro, sending metal shrapnel out, into you and Marie. You're quickly knocked onto the ground, hot blood rushing out of painful wounds all over your body, your broken bones pushing inwards onto you. Marie seems to have taken more of the blow. Her spine is bent terribly, and much of her body is covered in blood-coated metal shrapnel. She screams out in pain, visibly, but you can't hear her as your eardrums have been quickly shattered. You try, desperately, to rise, but fail. In the corner of your eye, in the far distance, you see Palloma's tent. Almost in slow motion, a lightning bolt arcs through the sky, landing precisely on it, causing a blast of white light, and you hear a familiar voice.

"Destination accepted. Returning to Refuge."

Before you stands Marie, dripping wet from the water of the Wabash, clad in a nightgown, on the walkway of the TARDIS, the lights dimly glowing red.
Venom Adhamm

 

[Venom Adhamm]

"Ah..." is the only sound that leaves my mouth as the chariot appears and the events unfold. Is that... I don't know. I can't... I feel cold. I look towards Marie, hoping to find some warmth in those eyes and that fiery hair of hers, but she seems just as cold as me. This is what all Humans feel like, isn't it? No... It's what all mortal species feel like. In the end, everything dies. How many people have I forced to suffer this awful feeling? I've killed before, but never felt anything, because I could never understand the concept of death. It was something so far from me... It's closer than ever now. I've failed my life's purpose, but at least now the suffering is finally over.

Did you think you could be free that easily?

"What...?"
I stare at Marie for awhile, before looking around at my surroundings, in confusion for a moment. Then, it seems pretty clear what's going on.
"Fuck's sake... I hate time loops. Marie, what's the last thing you remember?"

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Marie drops to her knees, shaking, her eyes vacantly staring down.

 

[Venom Adhamm]

Guess she remembers everything. Only reason for her to end up like that. Hmm... I forgot, humans don't feel and survive fatal pain all that often. It wasn't the pain that bothered me back there, it was the... sense that everything was over. Looks like that isn't the case now though. Still have to keep pushing on, just like I always have all these centuries. I walk to Marie and try to think of what to say, but no words of comfort come to mind. I'm the type of person that'd tell her to 'just get over it.' But for some reason, I feel like I shouldn't.

"There, there..." I say quietly, kneeling down next to Marie and putting an arm around her, holding her until she stops shaking. There's nothing else I feel like I can do. Nothing else I can say, except for a simple...
"There, there..."

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[Error 420]

Marie calms down, but seems unresponsive, and likely will be for a while.

 

[Venom Adhamm]

"You wanna just wait in here? This is probably the safest place for you, if that's what you're worried about. I've got a bed in my room over there that you can rest in until I've sorted everything out," I tell her, pointing towards one of the doors in the TARDIS.
"Want me to bring you there?"

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She shakes her head yes.

 

[Venom Adhamm]

I nod and stand up, helping Marie to her feet and escorting her through a few of the interior doors and into my room.

It's been awhile since I've been in here. I usually only come in to sleep but... I guess I haven't been sleeping for the past few... I've lost track already. It's a fairly large and comfortable room though. A large bed in the center with a nightstand on either side, a television mounted to the wall with access to any channel from any time and place, a few different food/drink dispensers, and lots of closets and drawers around to hold all my stuff. There's quite a lot of decorations around too, encased in a frame, glass, or just displayed on its own. All things I've collected over my centuries of travel... How many places have I had to go to, and to only be met with failure?

"Here," I say, bringing Marie to my bed, "You can rest here as long as you need. There's food and drink over there."
I point to the dispensers, then look back at Marie.
"I gotta head out to resolve all this though. Need anything before I go?"

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[Error 420]

Venom Adhamm

She quietly replies "No, thank you." As you turn to leave, she pulls you close by an arm. "Promise you'll keep my folks safe, Mister Ahab. Please?" Her eyes are red with tears and her voice shaky, her vibrant red hair dripping river water down onto your bed, each quickly dried away by nanites, invisible, insignificant machines living cycle after cycle to do nothing more than remove the dead skin from sheets. She gives you a parting nod, letting go of your sleeve and sitting in the center of the bed with her legs between her arms, staring off vacantly, a grim mirror of yourself.

 

[Venom Adhamm]

I stare at her for awhile, before finally speaking. I'm torn as to what to feel when I look at her. A part of me sees a cute, young Human girl with a lot of life left by her species' standards. But another part of me sees... something I'd rather not look at.
"I can't promise anything. Just rest. Whatever happens... just know there are some things even I can't change or fix."

For a moment, I think of reaching out to embrace her and hold her. Just like I used to do for one of my dearest friends when she was scared of the places we'd travel to, all those centuries ago. And for some reason... I just turn away, leaving the room as I enter the main area of the TARDIS.
"Really hope you haven't brought me to a time loop that's too troublesome to break," I tell my TARDIS as I step out through the main wooden doors to Refuge once again.

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