Since my personal webspace is coming down...
This is a continuation of the one last one: Working title: Brave New World.
“It’s all right.”
A pair of long arms wrapped around her. The tone of voice was quiet and familiar; she couldn’t place the owner. She didn’t care; the voice reminded her of safety. She saw Turlough lying at her feet in her mind’s eye and began to shake. His eyes were open, but he seemed not to see. His breathing was shallow. The tourniquet tightened on his leg despite her hands being slippery with blood. She elevated it in her own lap and finished ripping the trousers to his waist. He was naked then, but she saw nothing; it only drove home the fact of how very pale he was.
As she fully emerged from the nightmare, her hands gathered the material of a shirt in her hands. “He was dying…”
“He’s alive…” Her shaking increased and the arms drew her tightly into a chest. She turned her head sideways and took several deep breaths as the arms grew hands and the hands held her shoulders. “He’s next to us; he’s alive and breathing.”
“I couldn’t…and the Doctor…”
“I’m fine…”
Tegan tilted her head back from his chest and looked up into his face. His right arm held her loosely, but his left arm held her tightly. The Doctor’s young visage looked down at her in the gloom; his eyes dark and serious. “I’m fine, Tegan…you took care of me.”
“Blood everywhere…”
“You stopped us both from dying.” His voice rumbled out of him. She was held tightly against the chest as he moved to sit. “We’re all okay. You’re fine.”
“The nightmares won’t stop, Doctor.” She whispered. “Why?”
He didn’t answer and his embrace released a little. His face was very gentle as he leaned forward and moved her to recline against the wall. His arm remained about her shoulders, holding her gently…like a child. “You’re trying to heal your mind. It was hard on you. You were exhausted and emotional…”
“I thought you were both going to die…” She took a deep breath and steadied her breathing. “You were both going to leave me.”
“I’m a Time Lord,” he responded. “I would have regenerated; I wouldn’t have left you.” He released her and moved a bit away. His finger traced down her cheek. “Brave heart, Tegan…go back to sleep…”
The interior of the sheltered ruin was warmer than outside, despite the warmer temperatures of late. It must be the wind, she thought, as she stepped nimbly inside their home. Her hands were full of clover and a small furry animal her arrow had taken down. Turlough was slowly wobbling around the interior, back and forth between the table and the fire.
“The tracks were in front of the root cellar again today.”
Her voice was matter of fact, but she felt a little unsure of the situation. Turlough was in the process of drinking water, but she didn’t wait for his comment. She walked to the table and put down her wares. “And the garden next door is coming along nicely.”
“I found your prints today,” he said quietly. She waited and fought the urge to help him to the table as he hobbled back. Tegan couldn’t help but watch the painful way he moved. His hips moved with a slight off center roll. He slowly leaned into the table and pulled the book on the surface towards him. She didn’t move to help him, but felt her heart rate quicken as he eased to the chair.
“Hmm?”
Turlough tapped against the page as Tegan laid the animal on the table. “I’ll skin it in a moment,” he said with a slight glance. “Look at this.”
“I can skin-“She began, but he shook his head quickly.
“You killed it; I skin them,” he said. “Look at this picture, Tegan…we can cook in a minute.”
“Not like there’s a lot of food anyway…” Tegan commented as she wiped her hands and joined him at the table. “I’ll have to go looking for berries tomorrow; might do you a bit of good…”
“No need to give me that look, Tegan; I’ll go,” Turlough shot back. She frowned at his attitude, but warmed a bit. Every day that he gave her a bad attitude made her feel like old times. He pointed to the page and her eyes quickly gave it a glance over in the dying afternoon light.
“Is that the print?” Turlough asked quietly as he turned the wheel of the tricycle. It in turn powered the billow…the fire flared.
“Yeah…” Tegan squinted at the page. “Yeah, that looks like it. Wow…it looks like a quoll.”
“And what was a quoll?” Turlough flipped to the next page. On the glossy paper, the picture of a four legged animal with a smaller animal in its mouth. “Obviously if it’s the same, it would be a carnivore.”
“Yeah, a bit of a vicious one, but they’re small. They’re Australian…well…if we were on Earth they would be Australian. Here I think they’re just displaced…” Tegan took the one of the knives and began to trim the clover. “And here I was worried…”
“Hmm…and how large are they?”
She stopped and held out her hands. “’Bout so big; they aren’t much of a problem.” Turlough nodded as he picked up another large knife to skin and gut the animal.
“And how big was the print?”
“Oh Lord…if I knew this was going to be a test, I wouldn’t have mentioned it in the first place,” she groused. The pot was put on the fire and she turned to wound the wheel. The fire flared.
“How large?” Turlough pressed the issue. She could hear the skin being cut and pulled from the animal carcass. She had heard it as a child when her father would skin animals after hunting and she had heard it often in the last three months; but she was very sure she was never going to get used to it. The thought of her father caused a momentary flash of intense heartache. When she had been on the TARDIS seeing him again was always just a matter of going home and she could choose the time and place. But now…she might never see him again.
The pain was acute. She shook her head and swallowed to dislodge the emotion, but succeeded only a little. It was enough.
With a shrug, Tegan held out her hand. “Cripes, I don’t know…big as my hand…” Her gaze fell to the book and then back to her fingers held wide in front of her. Then, slowly, she sank into the chair. “Oh…hell…”
“As I was thinking,” Turlough pressed. Although he looked older after his injuries, the youthful infuriating school boy attitude still came across uninterrupted. “Proportionally…that little…quoll…as you called it, would be…”
“As big as a bloody wild cat.. just what we need.” She looked at the encyclopedia thing and then frowned. The water nearby began to boil. “Can we figure out if it is a carnivore for sure?”
“Well, I’m not exactly an expert at their language,” he commented dryly.
“No need to get snotty,” she shot back and rose to look in the pot. She tossed in the clover and stood by to fish it out.
“Well…” he said as he began to slice the meat. “We do know that the prints are found near where we put the skins, bones and the like.”
She sighed heavily. “Right. So…we work under that assumption.” With a quick flick of her wrist, the strainer pulled the clover from the pot.
“They are near the trash pile,” Turlough said as he began to put the meat in the pot. His slow rolling gait was rhythmic and Tegan again fought the urge to help him. “It’s stored some distance away.”
“It’s early spring; the young are being born,” she said quietly and knowingly. “It’ll only be time before they start hunting for more food.”
Turlough nodded. “I thought so as well. You’ll have to bring the bows in. The gunpowder is useless.”
“The Doctor said the arrows wouldn’t work…”
“They will,” Turlough said as he put the last of the meat into the pot. “Not at a distance, though. We’ll have to get much closer.”
“Closer to something that will probably kill us,” Tegan voiced disbelievingly. “Wonderful. I want a knife at that distance. And I would have never thought you would know about bows and arrows.”
“Because I’m Trion and Earthlings are a bit more…”
“Primitive?”
“A bit closer to using their hands for warfare I was going to say. It’s all relative-“
“That’s big of you.”
Turlough pivoted slowly and approached her with that slow hobbling gait. He frowned down at her, a quizzical look in his light blue eyes. “Tegan, I don’t care what we are: if I’m not human and you are…it doesn’t much matter now.”
“Spot on,” she agreed, her teeth grit.
“Then why press the issue?” His hands gently rubbed her shoulders. She wondered what he had seen in her stance. She knew she was filthy and she had to find some new clothes soon. But surely she didn’t look like a waif quite yet. He often touched her when she seemed a bit out of sorts so she assumed she looked a bit unhinged. “Hmm?” He pressed as he rubbed her shoulders a bit harder.
“It just reminded me of the…Doc…” she said simply. His hands stopped rubbing her shoulders and squeezed them. She shook her head before he could respond. “I know; it’s been seven weeks, almost eight. And I don’t need you to say anything about it; I’m a realist. Every day that goes by means he’s probably not coming back. Bloody Time Lord.” That pain had been there about his father, grew a bit more intense and lodged in her chest.
Turlough slowly released her shoulders. “We should leave for the antenna soon.”
“We need food and water…” Tegan began. “Or at least we need to get together more of those purification pills…”
“Bleach…” Turlough replied. He turned and took the pot off of the fire. The meat was white and ready to eat. “By next week, Tegan, we should leave…he’ll find us there if he’s alive.”
She clamped down on the wave of sorrow and panic that threatened to overwhelm her. She patted the air with her hands. “I’ll try and get two animals per day…”
“We’ve got the salt…we can preserve for a short time.” He agreed quietly. “But make sure you bring the bows inside at night…”
**
Tegan hadn’t been inside the house previously; she had avoided it because of the tricycle in the front yard. Tricycle spoke of children and children’s toys and children’s clothes; there was something about adult things in a world like this. But children’s things in a dead world… she rubbed her arms. Even in the spring late afternoon sunshine, she felt chilled.
“Would they have felt pain?”
“It would have been almost immediate,” the Doctor said quietly. She watched his body stance, his right arm completely wrapped from wrist to shoulder limply resting in the sling. He turned; she saw his face in shadow until he followed her gaze to the swing set slowly moving in the breeze. “They would have felt nothing.”
He continued to look at her and she took a deep breath. “Tegan, they would have felt nothing.” He turned completely and painfully walked to her. She kept her gaze past his shoulder, kept it trained on the swing set. His left hand lifted, hung in the air for a moment, the palm turned toward her and then slowly lowered to his side. “Tegan…I promise…the children wouldn’t have felt anything…”
“Well, I’m not getting those clothes any quicker hanging about here all day, am I?” She asked harshly. She blinked her eyes, opened them wide and steadfastly began to walk towards the house. “After all, it’ll get dark soon; I have to get those clothes.”
The door opened under her hand. The Doctor had broken the locks on most of the houses in the area before he had left. The inside of the kitchen looked as though the family was going to return home. She knew better than to open the refrigerator in the corner. Dishes were in the sink; cutlery on the table; a pitcher on the table. Over the back of one of the chairs, a coat hung. A children’s textbook with a pencil and yellowed paper laid out on a desk near the table. She couldn’t help but read it as she walked past. It looked like a child had been practicing their writing.
“Oh…cripes…”
Quickly, she walked through the kitchen and into the main room. More toys were piled in the corner, a small pair of shoes by the hallway.
“Clothes…” she said quietly as she walked through the room. The stair yawned ahead of her in the dimming light and she quickly climbed to the second story. “Clothes.” She continued her mantra; Tegan bypassed the doors along the corridor. At the end, she opened the door on what she determined was the master bedroom. “Clothes…”
The bed wasn’t made, the windows had been shut, but the moisture had built up. The smell of mildew was overwhelming in the room. She covered her mouth and frowned. The closet opened and the clothes looked somewhat salvageable; washing others had resulted in useable items. She reached in to grab whatever she could find. Tegan filled her arms with pants and shirts and a few dresses. As she grabbed the last couple of items, she spied the back of the door. A small christening dress with the silk mildly discolored hung on the back of the door.
She felt her breath catch in her chest, the crushing pressure making it impossible to get oxygen. She began to pant and she turned to run from the darkening room. The sunset made the ghost of a happy day seem almost ghastly to her.
“It’s all right.”
A pair of long arms wrapped around her. The tone of voice was quiet and familiar; she couldn’t place the owner. She didn’t care; the voice reminded her of safety. She saw Turlough lying at her feet in her mind’s eye and began to shake. His eyes were open, but he seemed not to see. His breathing was shallow. The tourniquet tightened on his leg despite her hands being slippery with blood. She elevated it in her own lap and finished ripping the trousers to his waist. He was naked then, but she saw nothing; it only drove home the fact of how very pale he was.
As she fully emerged from the nightmare, her hands gathered the material of a shirt in her hands. “He was dying…”
“He’s alive…” Her shaking increased and the arms drew her tightly into a chest. She turned her head sideways and took several deep breaths as the arms grew hands and the hands held her shoulders. “He’s next to us; he’s alive and breathing.”
“I couldn’t…and the Doctor…”
“I’m fine…”
Tegan tilted her head back from his chest and looked up into his face. His right arm held her loosely, but his left arm held her tightly. The Doctor’s young visage looked down at her in the gloom; his eyes dark and serious. “I’m fine, Tegan…you took care of me.”
“Blood everywhere…”
“You stopped us both from dying.” His voice rumbled out of him. She was held tightly against the chest as he moved to sit. “We’re all okay. You’re fine.”
“The nightmares won’t stop, Doctor.” She whispered. “Why?”
He didn’t answer and his embrace released a little. His face was very gentle as he leaned forward and moved her to recline against the wall. His arm remained about her shoulders, holding her gently…like a child. “You’re trying to heal your mind. It was hard on you. You were exhausted and emotional…”
“I thought you were both going to die…” She took a deep breath and steadied her breathing. “You were both going to leave me.”
“I’m a Time Lord,” he responded. “I would have regenerated; I wouldn’t have left you.” He released her and moved a bit away. His finger traced down her cheek. “Brave heart, Tegan…go back to sleep…”
The interior of the sheltered ruin was warmer than outside, despite the warmer temperatures of late. It must be the wind, she thought, as she stepped nimbly inside their home. Her hands were full of clover and a small furry animal her arrow had taken down. Turlough was slowly wobbling around the interior, back and forth between the table and the fire.
“The tracks were in front of the root cellar again today.”
Her voice was matter of fact, but she felt a little unsure of the situation. Turlough was in the process of drinking water, but she didn’t wait for his comment. She walked to the table and put down her wares. “And the garden next door is coming along nicely.”
“I found your prints today,” he said quietly. She waited and fought the urge to help him to the table as he hobbled back. Tegan couldn’t help but watch the painful way he moved. His hips moved with a slight off center roll. He slowly leaned into the table and pulled the book on the surface towards him. She didn’t move to help him, but felt her heart rate quicken as he eased to the chair.
“Hmm?”
Turlough tapped against the page as Tegan laid the animal on the table. “I’ll skin it in a moment,” he said with a slight glance. “Look at this.”
“I can skin-“She began, but he shook his head quickly.
“You killed it; I skin them,” he said. “Look at this picture, Tegan…we can cook in a minute.”
“Not like there’s a lot of food anyway…” Tegan commented as she wiped her hands and joined him at the table. “I’ll have to go looking for berries tomorrow; might do you a bit of good…”
“No need to give me that look, Tegan; I’ll go,” Turlough shot back. She frowned at his attitude, but warmed a bit. Every day that he gave her a bad attitude made her feel like old times. He pointed to the page and her eyes quickly gave it a glance over in the dying afternoon light.
“Is that the print?” Turlough asked quietly as he turned the wheel of the tricycle. It in turn powered the billow…the fire flared.
“Yeah…” Tegan squinted at the page. “Yeah, that looks like it. Wow…it looks like a quoll.”
“And what was a quoll?” Turlough flipped to the next page. On the glossy paper, the picture of a four legged animal with a smaller animal in its mouth. “Obviously if it’s the same, it would be a carnivore.”
“Yeah, a bit of a vicious one, but they’re small. They’re Australian…well…if we were on Earth they would be Australian. Here I think they’re just displaced…” Tegan took the one of the knives and began to trim the clover. “And here I was worried…”
“Hmm…and how large are they?”
She stopped and held out her hands. “’Bout so big; they aren’t much of a problem.” Turlough nodded as he picked up another large knife to skin and gut the animal.
“And how big was the print?”
“Oh Lord…if I knew this was going to be a test, I wouldn’t have mentioned it in the first place,” she groused. The pot was put on the fire and she turned to wound the wheel. The fire flared.
“How large?” Turlough pressed the issue. She could hear the skin being cut and pulled from the animal carcass. She had heard it as a child when her father would skin animals after hunting and she had heard it often in the last three months; but she was very sure she was never going to get used to it. The thought of her father caused a momentary flash of intense heartache. When she had been on the TARDIS seeing him again was always just a matter of going home and she could choose the time and place. But now…she might never see him again.
The pain was acute. She shook her head and swallowed to dislodge the emotion, but succeeded only a little. It was enough.
With a shrug, Tegan held out her hand. “Cripes, I don’t know…big as my hand…” Her gaze fell to the book and then back to her fingers held wide in front of her. Then, slowly, she sank into the chair. “Oh…hell…”
“As I was thinking,” Turlough pressed. Although he looked older after his injuries, the youthful infuriating school boy attitude still came across uninterrupted. “Proportionally…that little…quoll…as you called it, would be…”
“As big as a bloody wild cat.. just what we need.” She looked at the encyclopedia thing and then frowned. The water nearby began to boil. “Can we figure out if it is a carnivore for sure?”
“Well, I’m not exactly an expert at their language,” he commented dryly.
“No need to get snotty,” she shot back and rose to look in the pot. She tossed in the clover and stood by to fish it out.
“Well…” he said as he began to slice the meat. “We do know that the prints are found near where we put the skins, bones and the like.”
She sighed heavily. “Right. So…we work under that assumption.” With a quick flick of her wrist, the strainer pulled the clover from the pot.
“They are near the trash pile,” Turlough said as he began to put the meat in the pot. His slow rolling gait was rhythmic and Tegan again fought the urge to help him. “It’s stored some distance away.”
“It’s early spring; the young are being born,” she said quietly and knowingly. “It’ll only be time before they start hunting for more food.”
Turlough nodded. “I thought so as well. You’ll have to bring the bows in. The gunpowder is useless.”
“The Doctor said the arrows wouldn’t work…”
“They will,” Turlough said as he put the last of the meat into the pot. “Not at a distance, though. We’ll have to get much closer.”
“Closer to something that will probably kill us,” Tegan voiced disbelievingly. “Wonderful. I want a knife at that distance. And I would have never thought you would know about bows and arrows.”
“Because I’m Trion and Earthlings are a bit more…”
“Primitive?”
“A bit closer to using their hands for warfare I was going to say. It’s all relative-“
“That’s big of you.”
Turlough pivoted slowly and approached her with that slow hobbling gait. He frowned down at her, a quizzical look in his light blue eyes. “Tegan, I don’t care what we are: if I’m not human and you are…it doesn’t much matter now.”
“Spot on,” she agreed, her teeth grit.
“Then why press the issue?” His hands gently rubbed her shoulders. She wondered what he had seen in her stance. She knew she was filthy and she had to find some new clothes soon. But surely she didn’t look like a waif quite yet. He often touched her when she seemed a bit out of sorts so she assumed she looked a bit unhinged. “Hmm?” He pressed as he rubbed her shoulders a bit harder.
“It just reminded me of the…Doc…” she said simply. His hands stopped rubbing her shoulders and squeezed them. She shook her head before he could respond. “I know; it’s been seven weeks, almost eight. And I don’t need you to say anything about it; I’m a realist. Every day that goes by means he’s probably not coming back. Bloody Time Lord.” That pain had been there about his father, grew a bit more intense and lodged in her chest.
Turlough slowly released her shoulders. “We should leave for the antenna soon.”
“We need food and water…” Tegan began. “Or at least we need to get together more of those purification pills…”
“Bleach…” Turlough replied. He turned and took the pot off of the fire. The meat was white and ready to eat. “By next week, Tegan, we should leave…he’ll find us there if he’s alive.”
She clamped down on the wave of sorrow and panic that threatened to overwhelm her. She patted the air with her hands. “I’ll try and get two animals per day…”
“We’ve got the salt…we can preserve for a short time.” He agreed quietly. “But make sure you bring the bows inside at night…”
**
Tegan hadn’t been inside the house previously; she had avoided it because of the tricycle in the front yard. Tricycle spoke of children and children’s toys and children’s clothes; there was something about adult things in a world like this. But children’s things in a dead world… she rubbed her arms. Even in the spring late afternoon sunshine, she felt chilled.
“Would they have felt pain?”
“It would have been almost immediate,” the Doctor said quietly. She watched his body stance, his right arm completely wrapped from wrist to shoulder limply resting in the sling. He turned; she saw his face in shadow until he followed her gaze to the swing set slowly moving in the breeze. “They would have felt nothing.”
He continued to look at her and she took a deep breath. “Tegan, they would have felt nothing.” He turned completely and painfully walked to her. She kept her gaze past his shoulder, kept it trained on the swing set. His left hand lifted, hung in the air for a moment, the palm turned toward her and then slowly lowered to his side. “Tegan…I promise…the children wouldn’t have felt anything…”
“Well, I’m not getting those clothes any quicker hanging about here all day, am I?” She asked harshly. She blinked her eyes, opened them wide and steadfastly began to walk towards the house. “After all, it’ll get dark soon; I have to get those clothes.”
The door opened under her hand. The Doctor had broken the locks on most of the houses in the area before he had left. The inside of the kitchen looked as though the family was going to return home. She knew better than to open the refrigerator in the corner. Dishes were in the sink; cutlery on the table; a pitcher on the table. Over the back of one of the chairs, a coat hung. A children’s textbook with a pencil and yellowed paper laid out on a desk near the table. She couldn’t help but read it as she walked past. It looked like a child had been practicing their writing.
“Oh…cripes…”
Quickly, she walked through the kitchen and into the main room. More toys were piled in the corner, a small pair of shoes by the hallway.
“Clothes…” she said quietly as she walked through the room. The stair yawned ahead of her in the dimming light and she quickly climbed to the second story. “Clothes.” She continued her mantra; Tegan bypassed the doors along the corridor. At the end, she opened the door on what she determined was the master bedroom. “Clothes…”
The bed wasn’t made, the windows had been shut, but the moisture had built up. The smell of mildew was overwhelming in the room. She covered her mouth and frowned. The closet opened and the clothes looked somewhat salvageable; washing others had resulted in useable items. She reached in to grab whatever she could find. Tegan filled her arms with pants and shirts and a few dresses. As she grabbed the last couple of items, she spied the back of the door. A small christening dress with the silk mildly discolored hung on the back of the door.
She felt her breath catch in her chest, the crushing pressure making it impossible to get oxygen. She began to pant and she turned to run from the darkening room. The sunset made the ghost of a happy day seem almost ghastly to her.