continuum_of_drs | Home Again?

"You don't need to run away. Let's just ... make some tea and sit down ... and talk this through. All right?" Smile?

His other selves are varying shades of disappointed, curious, angry... he ignores all of them and attempts to lead clair back to a small cluster of squashy chairs.

Meh! She very much wants to hole up, somewhere quiet and solitary where she can come to terms with whatever just happened. He... he let her drink from him, and forgave her the hurts she'd done him, even though her other self had been fully willing to kill him.

Almost unwilling, she lets him draw her to the chairs and curls up in the one nearest the room's fireplace.

Much better. He wobbles, though, and drops onto a footstool near the chair Clair is currently curled in. He breathes for a moment. Looking back up at Clair, he nudges her mind gently toward the idea of talking.

"What is it that's bothering you?" he asks softly.

She swallows hard before she can speak. Agh, the drama.

"Trevor hated drinking from me. Always worried he'd go too far and I told him it was okay because I *hiccough* loved him."

"Ah, I see. I'm sorry," he answered.

"Is he the reason you're a vampire?"

A half-nod.

"A lot of reasons, but he did it.... He drank my blood and I drank his. To save my life."

He watches her intently as she says this. "Did you want your life saved? It's not always a kindness to stop someone dying."

She pulls her knees up under her chin, staring into the flames. "He changed me twice. The first time, I wanted him to kill me. He bit me, the way I bit you.... On humans, it makes us a mutant. Not quite a vampire, but not human anymore. I.... No, that was still Russell. Tried to get him to kill us. We'd rather die than be tainted like that. He wouldn't. So... I happened."

"He didn't make me into a vampire until later. I was dying...."

He nods, listening closely. It was sounding less and less like a typical vampirising. Even the TARDIS is listening.

"I wanted it, then. I was afraid, but I didn't want to die and leave him alone like that. He...." Her voice strangles off. Trevor was a vampire. He could have lived hundreds of years. "I wanted to be with him forever."

"Ah, I see," he answers softly, almost regretfully.

"What happened to him?"

"He was killed by butchers. My best friends hid it from me, to keep Russell from coming out...."

"... I'm so sorry..."

It seemed all he could do was apologise. There wasn't any way to solve her problems until she decided she really wanted them solved. Until then, she'd continue in this limbo of loss and half-existence. It was an almost painful thought.

He curled an arm around her. She was so small and chilled.

Exhausted by emotion and reaction, she leaned into him. Already, the bones of her face and shoulders were less prominent, softer beneath the skin. It's only been a few months since her loss, and Russell keeps it fresh, using it against Clair to keep her weak. Her devotion to Trevor was a reaction to the psychotic break he caused when he bit her, and it was extreme, a rather unnatural love.

"I wish I could go back."

"I'm sorry. It's not possible to go back. Time ... can't be bent round that way. The past is still the past and it can't be altered."

Hug. The worst thing to have to say to someone. They don't understand, not any of them, but it's true. There really is no going back. It simply isn't possible.

She almost disappears inside the hug, her face pressed against his collar. She shakes, and it builds into silent, wracking weeping.

There wasn't anything he could do but hold her, as though keeping her from coming apart from the force of her sobbing--though soundless, he could still feel it shaking her hard. He had no idea what to do. How to comfort that sort of pain, so close to the surface. His ... was hidden by time. Covered over. He'd buried it himself, after all.

So he held her close, hoping his warmth would help.

She was cold. A vampire doesn't produce much heat for herself. His warmth penetrated, eventually, making breathing easier and slowing her heartbeat, easing the jagged-edged turmoil of her mind. Her breathing slowed to long, deep breaths with only the occasional shudder, and her eyes drifted shut.

He'd prided himself on his rational mind for centuries. He knew what to do in any situation. Well, almost any. He held her, looking down at her small form, defeated and broken, and he literally had no idea what to do. And it tore at him, seeing her like this, vampire or no, not only because he could hear the pain in her mind.

Because of this greater telepathic sensitivity, he'd come to a few rather startling realisations with this regeneration, the first being that emotion was not a thing to be walked away from or overlooked. It can't always be distracted from. Not even for himself.

The second, of course, was the realisation that people, including himself, needed to know they were not alone.

And the third was that affection did a lot for the mind.

He leaned closer, then, and gently kissed her.

Her shoulders hitched a final time, and she returned it with a shy hunger, her face tipping up to his.

He was so warm. Like... No. She banished everything else from her mind, for once able to silence Russell's angry racket. This was a gift, and she wouldn't have it polluted.

He helped to soothe her mind, even while his lips remained on hers and his arms still held her.

It wasn't something he did often. He was a bit out of practise. Yet he found he did not want to pull away and break this warm moment.

One hand was fisted in the front of his shirt by the time she pulled away, her eyes flicking up to meet his. Bashful, nervous about what was happening. Grateful.

"I ... ah ... only if you want, that is...."

No-one ever said he was always erudite.

"I...." Honesty. She has to be honest, or she's no better than Russell. Who's fuming somewhere in the back of her mind, disgusted and hateful.

"I... I want to be close to someone. I'm damaged, and I will be for a long time, but I need closeness, and...." Little flail. "Please."

He nods. "I think I know what you mean." He hasn't let go of her, yet. He'll draw near again. Softly kiss her again.

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