not fucking Tomb Raider

[waydowndark]

Shhh...Close your eyes.You can lose three pints of blood before you die, or is it less than that? More? Oh God, oh Jesus, oh shit, she's going to die down here she's going to die oh God. Oh, Sarah

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[not_the_chav]

Martha was now officially beginning to believe that she was a magnet for bloody, confused people. To wit: She had been seated calmly at one of the tables in the kitchen, eating a bowl of seafood chowder, when without warning there was a woman stretched out in front of her, right across the table.

Spoon poised just above her bowl, Martha blinked, and watched as the woman sat up. The spoon landed against porcelain with a clink, and she slowly stood, now officially put off her meal.

"Are you injured?" she asked, calmer than she had any right to be under the circumstances, although her eyes were swiftly taking in every inch of her with a physician's instinct.

[waydowndark]

It's a moment before Beth can get herself under control, before she can stop screaming and stare, breathlessly, at the woman standing in front of her.

"I..." Both hands came up to Beth's throat, checking, probbing. Her legs, stretched out, looked whole. They'd dragged her. They dragged her with fucking teeth and claws.

Fuck.

"No. No...I don't...fuck...I don't think so."

[not_the_chav]

"Look at me," Martha insisted, holding the woman in her steady gaze, thankful when the screaming finally abated. "Just take a deep breath. You're safe here, do you understand? My name is Martha Jones, I'm in medical training- May I help you?"

[waydowndark]

Beth takes a deep breath and sucks it up and looks into the woman's face. In another life, before, Beth might have thought that she was pretty attractive, but now she just concentrates on staring into her eyes.

"I'm...I'm fucking dead, Martha Jones."

[not_the_chav]

"No," Martha replied without so much as a blink. "No, you're not. Maybe somewhere else you're dead, but here? You're alive." She held both hands out, palms up. "Let me help you down. What's your name?"

[waydowndark]

After a moment's hesitation, Beth reaches out and takes Martha's hand, her fingers curling around the other woman's probably a fraction harder than they should.

"Beth. Beth O'Brien. I'm...I'm a fucking English teacher."

This shit isn't supposed to happen to English teachers.

[not_the_chav]

"Hello, Beth O'Brien," Martha replied as she gave Beth's fingers a good, solid squeeze, just to make certain she understood that Martha was real. Gingerly, she helped the other woman down, but she did not dally, because time could very well be of the essence.

"If you're a teacher, then you should be sensible. I need for you to trust me. I am not going to hurt you or let anything hurt you. But right now you are so covered in blood that I can't tell if you're injured. Is this your blood, Beth?"

[waydowndark]

Numbly, Beth nods, almost stumbling as she gets down off the table, but ending up with both feet on the floor. Her legs feel strange, tender, almost, her knees stiff with scrapes under all of the blood.

"S'all mine," she says, slurring a little, feeling almost drunk, the pain and the fear and the dark. "There were...things down there."

[not_the_chav]

Wordlessly, Martha nodded, because under the circumstances, the description was good enough. She'd been around her fair share of things. "Do you think you could walk to the shower? It isn't far, and I can help you if you need it." There weren't any open wounds that she could see, no flowing blood anywhere. Just the stuff coated all over Beth, and a couple of minutes under a shower head would help considerably with determining whether medical care was actually needed. She remembered the way Jim had come in, covered in blood and frightened, but there hadn't been a thing wrong with him. At least not physically.

[waydowndark]

Beth shakes her head. She can walk, she knows she can, but the kitchen is well lit, bright, and she just wants to sit for a minute. Her throat hurts so badly.

"I'm fine," she croaks, and she can't help but touch her own whole throat again. "Don't know how the fuck it happened, but I am."

[not_the_chav]

"If I knew, I'd tell you," Martha began, tugging out a chair and pointing for Beth to sit. "What you need to know, Beth O'Brien, is that your entire life has just changed." After rooting around a moment, she came up with several kitchen towels and a cup. One of the towels she dampened in the sink, the cup she filled with cool water from the refrigerator, and then she carried it all back to the other woman. "Here. Take a minute." In the meantime, hopefully no one would walk to the kitchen and start screaming at the sight of her, thinking she'd been mauled by a dinosaur.

[waydowndark]

Beth takes the water, and the first swallow hits her raw throat too quickly and she chokes a little. She wipes her mouth on the back of her glove.

"I died," she says, quietly. "Down there. I did. I died. And now I'm here? What the fuck..."

She cradled her head in her hand.

"What the fuck?"