continuum_of_drs | Home Again?

Clair came to find Eight first. She'd been lurking in the depths of the time machine ever since the incident, not wanting to face any of them, but she had to.

He was in the library (of course the TARDIS has a library), idly flipping through a very old-looking book.

The walls were covered in bookshelves, the room filled with tables covered in small knickknacks, curiosities, and odd machines.

He looked up from the book. "Hullo, Clair."

Clair, implant blinking peacefully blue, looked sheepish as she edged into the room. "I wanted to say I'm sorry for what we did to you."

"We?" He closed the book and put it aside, finding a chair to settle on. "I was under the impression it was Russell."

"It was. But I am too." She feels she's responsible for the actions of her original personality, no matter who's technically in charge.

He nods. "Might I ask what happened?"

She puts her hands in her pockets to keep from flailing them. "It was... She gets so tempted sometimes. And she gets cruel.... I'm sorry. I shouldn't have given in."

He has a thoughtful look on his face. "She seems stronger than the implant."

Grimace.

"Sometimes. She finds ways...." She struggles to complete the sentence. "Ways th-around it, through me."

Oddly, despite the fact that she'd come to apologise to him, he seemed oddly inviting. Strangely able to put one at ease in his presence. Whether that was deliberate or not, however, was difficult to tell.

"How does she do that?" he asks quietly.

Inviting or not, it was hard to find words to express the weird sensation of sharing one's mind with an enemy.

"I'm... Me, this personality, I'm small. Much younger, with so little to use against her. She has all these memories, all the things that shaped her and all the things that made me. She's bigger, older, smarter, and stronger and she's always, always angry. And the implant stands between her and me but parts of me are her and parts of her are me and she uses them to get around.

He has a thoughtful look on his face at that, and Clair may or may not be able to feel a light telepathic touch.

"Do you want to fight her?"

She's no telepath herself. It would have to be an actual intruion or a telepathic sledgehammer for her to feel it.

"I try. I didn't want to hurt you, Doctor. Research, yes, I'll admit it. You're aliens. But she used my curiousity to make us do all those things. I tried to fight her, to temper us, and she just got angry."

"I know you didn't." Smile.

He goes back to looking thoughtful. "The question becomes, then, how to get round the strength her anger gives her?"

"I don't know! I'm not a psychiatrist or a hostage negotiator or a- a- a Time Lord!"

All this flailing simply made her seem smaller and more unhappy than ever. He found himself leaving the chair and walking over to her, curling his arms around her in what he hoped was a reassuring hug.

"We haven't given up, yet."

She burrowed against his coat, small and so very young. She's only twenty six. Or two, depending on how you're counting. "I don't know what to do and oh god, you smell good."

...

Blush.

"Ah. And not in the conventional sense, I daresay."

She was starving. He could sense it. Feel the bones of her shoulders and spine under her jacket even more than usual. And there wasn't really anything about with which to feed her. He vaguely remembered Nyssa--so long ago--in a similar predicament. But the artificial blood substitute she'd devised hadn't worked at all, she'd told him later. She and Clair were two very different kinds of vampires--the haemoglobin substitute might work for Clair, but it would take days to brew.

There wasn't anything else for it, really.

"You need to drink, don't you?" he asked quietly.

Kind of pointless trying to lie to the psychic who can feel your ribs. She nods against his chest, miserable.

There was a pause after which he released her, reaching up to untie his cravat and unbutton his collar. It was pretty obvious what he meant by that. After a thought, he found something to sit on. He figured he was going to need it.

She stared at him, and then suddenly went pale and backed away from him hastily. "You can't... I can't.... I don't want to hurt you!"

He shook his head, remaining where he was. "There isn't anything else that can be obtained quickly enough and you're dangerously underfed as it is. I'll be all right." Smile?

"No, you're not, you're still recovering...." Almost unaware, she draws near him again, her eyes on his bared throat even as she protests. There's a certain amount of animal instinct involved in being a vampire, and Russell is quiet for once, scorning it.

"My species are a little hardier where this is concerned than humans are." That actually was true. For all their cultural and psychological aversion to vampires, Gallifreyans had a remarkable tolerance for their mode of feeding. Perhaps that was why.

Flail! But.... he's a lot bigger than she is, and he can stop her if he has to. Right? Right?

"You're sure about this, aren't you?"

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GIP

And such a lovely icon it is, too.

Re: And such a lovely icon it is, too.

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