Fic: Ashes of Gallifrey ; Dust of Eden 1/5

[metztlimoon]

Author: Metztlimoon
Characters: Tenth Doctor, OCs, Special guest star
Rating: Contains adult concepts.
Wordcount: 17,000 in 13 chapters (and a bit)
Summary: The Doctor is injured and stranded on a planet that's been ravaged by a race with an unknown purpose. Working with the woman who found him to solve the mystery and save the planet, the Doctor comes to believe they're also fighting an old friend. (Set after Voyage of the Damned.)
Beta: kahtyasofia. You have been awesome from the first moment. Thank you.
With Thanks to: blaiyzed, Zebedee, kwizbitand ficfinishing
A/N : This is a first person fic from the viewpoint of the main OC. It had been sitting a third done on the hard drive for over a year, until ficfinishing came along and gave me confidence and inspiration. Kat also deserves thanks for the awesome title as well as everything else :) 

 

Ashes of Gallifrey ; Dust of Eden

"Eve…” he says.

 
The breeze catches his coat and the hair over his dark eyes. They are darker than the night that fell when he turned off the sun. I keep my thoughts tight in my mind, behind the wall he built for me, but flashes of those desperate days rise at the sight of him.

 He hasn’t changed, but my hair is turning grey.

 “I want it to stop;” he whispers, “everything, all of it.”

 I go to him and we sit on the edge of the lake in memory of long ago. The ground has mostly healed its scars, but it seems that he has not. I have not forgotten my promise; “I will be here.” 

 I wonder what has finally driven him to this.

 His tears run against my hand. “I’m sorry,” he says, as I stop brushing his skin and brush his mind instead. “I’m so sorry.”

 His soul is naked. How could I do anything but scream.

 

 

One

(The Fortista sector, 4212)

 

We moved quickly through the city’s rubble, searching for more survivors. When we reached a body, I called them as living or dead. Sometimes; the dead ones were still breathing, but a knife in the right place was quick, finishing a job already started and beyond our capacity to repair.

 

I was always the one who made the call. I was always the one who followed it through when necessary. I never allowed myself to wonder if I was wrong

 

I used to cry over it, but I hadn’t cried over anything in a long time. If I didn’t end it out here, they died slowly, sometimes over the course of several days; screaming in agony because we hadn’t the tools, or the training, to keep them alive. That mercy alone justified my actions, though Gods knew, sometimes I wished there was another way.

 

Sometimes, but not this time, they weren’t even human. I had no sympathy for them.  Then there was no call, just a silent despatch and a leaving to bleach in the heat.  In the sterile remains of my once fertile world, it was too hot even for maggots.

 

The crashed ship was small, in the livery of a courier company, probably carrying black market drugs and a couple of desperate passengers on the run from wherever. Why else would they have risked flying through this sector?  

 

Aside from the two kids, we found no one on board that was even half alive. Mary had coaxed them, wide eyed and staring, from the arms of their dead parents. Secretly, I wished them well with the nightmares to come.

 

“Possible incoming,” said Grant, from my right, as he looked down at the make-do scanner in his hand.

 

“Range?” I asked.

 

“Twenty-five klicks,” he replied.

 

“We’ve got time,” I said. “Five minutes.”

 

Jay was less assured, edgy; his hand was on his blaster and his eyes scanned the sky. “Make it three.”

    

“Five,” I said, firmly. I closed my eyes and focused on the whisper that drifted into my mind from the left. “You saw the trajectories, didn’t you?  It was losing compartments as it fell. There’s more round here.”

 

There was a shout from nearby. Mary had found the remnants of the medical supplies box. The morphine vials were broken but the antibiotics were intact, at least. Grant busied himself salvaging parts from the downed ship. These other finds vindicated me and Jay didn’t like that. There were no more survivors though, at least not from the wrecked courier, but I drifted off, in search of whatever it was that was calling to me.

 

He was lying in a pool of his own blood, but he’d had the wit to crawl into the shade. He’d been here a while; his lips were cracked with the heat and the blood was mostly coagulated, except where it still oozed from the cuts on his face. I knelt to check for a pulse and found it so erratic I was about to conclude he was too far gone. His eyes snapped open for just a moment; dark eyes looked into mine and I saw pain in his face and felt it knocking on my mind. I haven’t got… a lot…of time…His words, not mine, inside my head. I blinked in surprise, sitting down heavily. He had initiated contact!

 

Oh Gods, he might have looked human but he sure as hell wasn’t; not if he could speak to me like that, not with that freaky pulse and skin that was cool even in the extreme heat.

 

Not human… but still not one of them, and I was suddenly in a quandary. Cobalt wasn’t stupid. Cobalt would notice something like this and my duty was clear at that point - kill the stranger. But I’d given up hope of ever finding someone like me, especially in a hell-hole like this. A thousand possibilities flipped through my mind; all of them meaning I didn’t have to be alone in my head anymore, and most ending with being summarily executed.

 

And then he screamed, over and over, so loud I put my scarf over his mouth and resisted the temptation to slit his throat just to shut him up. There was no hiding it now. If he wasn’t dead by the time Jay came over; I was going to have to take him back.

    

“Eve,” said Jay, for a moment he was silhouetted against the sun and I couldn’t help but think that was a bloody stupid place to stand, “get a move on.”

    

“He’s got working lungs, at least,” I said. I looked down at the man beside me. He was about 20 centimetres taller than me, but he was slender; this was a good thing because otherwise I couldn’t have carried him. And carry him I had to, the whole three-K back to the tunnels.

    

“You want a hand?” Grant asked as I rejoined the search party, the stranger draped half over my shoulder as I kicked his feet to keep him moving. I gave up and hoisted him all the way.

    

“You saying girls can’t carry?” I retorted. I doubted Grant would ever notice the strange heartbeat but I couldn’t take that chance. I had to be the one to haul the stranger the entire way back.

     

“You’re no girl,” Grant laughed, “girls have pigtails. You gonna find me someone cute, next time?”

 

“Are you feeling left out?” I smirked, happy to have one over on him. “I thought you had a queue?”

 

“There’s a queue,” Grant agreed, “but not everyone in it has tickets. You want one?”

 

“Sure,” I said. “What’s the resale value?”

 ---

Jay grumbled the whole way back. We didn’t normally take those who couldn’t stumble unaided, but the fact that Jay could still use his arm meant he’d never argue with my medical judgement. Medical? Blundering around with a text book and a sharp blade. I’m the closest thing they’ve got and I know who he’s fucking so he’d better not fuss too much. I felt the stranger’s blood drip down my back, forcing me to call a halt to our journey. We stopped for no longer than it took to wrap a bandage around the wound in his side, and wonder if this one really was save-able at all.

 

The sky rumbled with thunder and a promise of impossible rain, and it masked the sound of their approach. We almost missed it; the small patrol, just the one jet, hovering as we crawled underneath rubble hoping we were invisible in our sand-stained clothes. I was suddenly awash in a sense of purpose not my own and I shouted to the others that I could hear something. Jay looked at me and I realised my ‘hearing them’ may have been one coincidence too many.

 

Truth be told, I was almost glad when the patrol appeared. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could have carried on in the heat and Jay certainly wasn’t going to slack off his pace because I was bringing in a dead man. Mary held the two children she’d found close and quiet, although they still cried. Jay was brooding over his blaster and I could see his mind working out how quickly he could have covered the ground to safety if he hadn’t had us with him. Grant was silently mouthing the words to a song in his head. My stranger; when did he become my stranger? I wondered, remained quiet, aside from the odd muffled moan and words that I didn’t understand. He looked at me briefly, and I pressed my fingers to his lips.

    

Going… the wrong…way… His words in my head, again. I wondered how his other voice would sound.

    

“Shhhh,” I soothed.

 

The sound of the jet moved away, deeper into the ruins, and a collective sigh of relief broke the tension in the rubble. Grant threw his scanner into a corner and snorted in disgust, “Heap of junk.” He looked at me then, head slightly to one side, “Your hearing scares me sometimes,” he said.

    

“Heh,” I replied, unnerved that he’d also noticed, “that's because I didn’t spend my college years in rock clubs.” I looked at my stranger. “You ready for another piggy back?” I asked. 

 

To my surprise, he smiled and jabbered something unintelligible as he collapsed onto me again.

    

“You don’t half pick them, Evie,” said Mary, as she escorted the children past.

    

“Yeah,” I said, as I lifted my charge onto my shoulders and followed.

 

Two

 

For twenty-four hours he said nothing. No, strike that; he’d said a lot but none of it was intelligible. When I came back from the makeshift infirmary around midday he might have said ‘no no no’, but it wasn’t clear enough to tell. The rest of his mumblings sounded like a language, but not one I’d ever heard and, out here, I’d heard a few. There were images, of course, like excerpts from movies, playing through in his mind. Faces, places, creatures, and the planet spinning beneath us. Terrifying, painful memories. Whenever I tried to catch one, tried to find some clue as to whom he was, they fell away. Except the ones that quite vehemently insisted no aspirin and no cats.

 

He’d lost a lot of blood but I couldn’t risk transfusing him, so I’d been filling him with fluids to prevent shock. He was running a temperature of 40^o C so there was no bloody way his skin should still feel so cool. He had an attack of the screams every four hours or so, and I’d come to realise it quieted him down if I wrapped my arms round him and thought calming thoughts. It also kept me from feeling so helpless.

    

That was how I came to cradle him in my arms and wipe sweat away from his forehead. This time felt different…this time there was shaking and fitting, and his temperature spiked at 45^o C, his skin finally feeling warm against mine. I was all but convinced it was time to let this one go. A human would have been dead long before now. When the seizures stopped, I laid him back down and sat at the end of the bed watching him breathe. Wondering if it might not be better for both of us if he wasn’t, I lowered my head to my knees.

    

“Hello.”

    

I looked up at the unexpected sound of a voice and I found him watching me.

    

“Hello there,” I said with a smile. I slid off the bed and returned to the more professional bedside chair. “Welcome back.”

    

“Where…?” he began, his voice cracking from dryness as I held a glass of water to his lips. I moved it away before he could drink too much, worried he might bring it back up. “Thank you. Where am I?”

    

“Safe,” I couldn’t help but feel that was a bit of a lie.

    

He looked at me, “Did I …” he touched his head and made a finger gesture I interpreted; correctly it seemed, as ‘think at you’.

    

“Yes,” I answered.

    

“Oh,” he looked contrite, “sorry, I don’t normally go around doing that. I just couldn’t quite make my mouth work. Never thought I’d have that problem. What did I say?”

    

I smiled reassuringly, “Nothing embarrassing.”

    

“Good,” he said, “right, anyway thank you for everything, I really should be…”

    

I put my hand on his chest to restrain him, but he restrained himself by collapsing back down onto the bed and screwing his face up in pain. “Ow….”

    

“You’re not going anywhere,” I said. I also had no intention of letting him wander out of there without an explanation.

    

He put his hand on his bandaged side. Only then did he seem to work out that he was largely naked under his sheet. He looked at me, “Um, did you…?”

     

I put on my most professional face, “someone had to.”

    

“Oh.”

    

“My name is Eve,” I said, “just so you know the name of the woman who undressed you.” And I was very good about it too, didn’t even peek. Not really. Professional… Ungh…A sudden image flashed into my mind, he’s standing behind me, his arms sliding round my waist and I feel a gentle kiss on my shoulder.

    

“Are you all right?” he asked.

    

I blinked. “Sorry.”

    

“I’m the Doctor.”

    

“Doctor…?”

    

“Just, the Doctor.”

    

This isn’t going to go down well, when Cobalt fixes me with that icy blue stare and asks what my stranger’s name is. “Oh,” I said.

    

“Is that going to be a problem? Sometimes it is you know. You could call me John Smith I suppose, but that’s not really my name, it would do, if it had to …It’s only a name though, not really important. Is it?”

    

I shook my head. He was cracked. “Not right now, no.”

    

“Could I …?” he motioned at the water and I handed him the glass. “Now;” he said, “no windows, ambient temperature below 10 degrees, no air conditioning, so we must be underground. Or in a cave system? No, those walls are brick. So, definitely underground. This would be sensible given how hot it is out there. So, where is there, Eve?”

    

“Thrace,” I answered.

    

“Thrace the place or Thrace the planet?”

    

I looked at him, puzzled, “Um… the planet Thrace in the Fortista sector.”

 

I saw I’d lost him for a moment when he closed his eyes and smiled dreamily. “The planet Thrace, ah. The ‘Picnic basket’ of the Empire. Vineyards, and cornfields, and scented blossoms that make spring smell like cointreau and …” his eyes opened again and he looked directly at me, animated, “no, wait a minute. It was what? Topping 40 out there? This can’t be right.”

    

I neglected to mention he was topping 40 in there, because I hadn’t heard that description of my home for a good five years. I looked at him like he was crazy. (Like? of course he was crazy.) 

“That was Thrace,” I told him, coldly. “Gods, I’d heard that they were keeping this hushed up but I never believed that no one would know. Picnic basket? Try frying pan.”

“I’ve been…busy,” he confessed sadly, as if busy could possibly be an excuse for not knowing we’d been progressively abandoned. “Tell me what happened.”

 

Three

 

“There’s a war,” I said, keeping my voice level. When he asked me which one, I told him there was no name for it. “There’s not even a name for our enemy. Not that I know of, anyway. We just call them Jars.”

 

I spat the word Jars. I had told this story before, knew how to keep my tone cool, but their name was always full of hate, despite my best efforts.

 

“Jars?”

 

“They look like mould; a filthy, red and grey mould, growing inside a body of glass. So, Jars.”

    

“Ah,” he said, and followed that with a handful of syllables that must have been their proper name. I knew without a shadow of a doubt I’d never be able to pronounce the exotic contortion of vowels with quite the same ease that he did. I tried but failed.

 

“Never mind,” he dismissed, “it’s just a name. They're lichen, by the way, not a mould. They extrude a silicate shell to move around in.”

    

“Can you at least pretend you give a shit about us?” I snapped.

 

“Sorry,” he said, “I get distracted by facts. Carry on.”

 

I went back to my calm voice, although every so often, it became a little sad. “Five years ago they came here, wanting half our crop and a say in the running of the government. They had big guns, so the government agreed. Keep them sweet until the Human Empire could come and help us.

    

“To begin with, they were civil enough, let the families with kids leave and head back to the Empire. Of course, I can only assume they didn’t let them go at all. But we were sure, totally sure, that the Empire would hear about this. Notice it was receiving less of our produce, and come help us. We even got to thinking it wasn’t so bad, ignored the fact that more and more of them seemed to be turning up every day with huge machines they ferried off to the other side of the planet. It’s funny what people will ignore.”

    

His eyes were deep and serious. “Yes,” he said, “until it’s too late.”

    

“There were disappearances. Whole farms, sometimes whole towns. Gone. Rumours of slaves, experiments, humans as food. There were patrols, and curfews, and communication restrictions. Travel between cities was limited. To protect us, they said. Grapes withered. Corn went un-harvested. Animals starved. 

 

“It took a field of dead animals to move us in the end, not a town of missing people. Low definition images, spread through the last of our broadcast network. So, we finally did something.

    

“I say ‘we’ but I wasn’t even there. Not then.”

 

In truth, the first thing I’d heard or thought of revolution was when the Jar shot my husband. I didn’t see the need to tell the Doctor that.

 

He rested his chin on his hand and looked at me sadly as I continued.

 

 My voice became more distant. “Five-hundred people mobbed the complex that rumour said was a concentration camp. It wasn’t. It was full to the brim with everything we’d made since the occupation began, just stuffed there, rotting. The Empire had to have known what was going on. They knew. They knew and were doing sweet fuck-all about it. The story goes that some bastard Jar was standing in the centre of the compound, laughing.   

   

“It started with that smug bastard and I can’t say I don’t think he deserved it. What happened next was a massacre. When the people swarmed the complex, the Jars turned their guns on them. Some hundred people made it out alive…”

 

That was when I’d first known. When Ben’s brother had come running home, blood and sweat in his eyes.  

 

Now my words were a bitter whisper. “The Jars pursued them into every community.”

 

I shook as I remembered. Screams as blood runs into the streets, broken bodies, broken bones, and broken skulls oozing onto the pavement. Terror. Hiding in barns and holes, and burnt out shops.

 

“I had always hoped that the Empire’d come and help us. I knew that night it was never going to happen. It was the last time night fell on Thrace.”

    

The Doctor looked at me. “Oh. They sabotaged the solar mirrors. Of course! Perpetual daylight! Well, they do come from a planet with three suns.”

    

He seemed so matter of fact about it, so impressed by his own reasoning that I wanted to give him a solid smack in the face.

    

“But why, Eve?” he asked, disarming me with his urgency, “Why? Surely the planet’s useless to them if it can’t produce anything.”

    

“Maybe they all want sun tans? Who cares?” I shrugged. “It’s not the food. It’s not the people. I gave up wondering why. It didn’t seem important. I've spent five years trying to stay alive. As long as they don’t see us, I think they pretend we’re not here. We scavenge what we can to survive but I’m not sure why the hell we bother.”

    

“I can help you,” he said simply.

    

I smiled at his naiveté. “Everyone we find out there thinks that. Everyone who’s been hit by whatever it is the Jars fire into space that strands them on our little piece of hell.” I was annoyed at my sudden descent into negativity. Wasn’t it hope that had made me bring him back here in the first place? My own, personal hope that he was like me.

    

“I can,” he insisted, grimly, “but I need to … need to get….” His eyes rolled back into his head, and he uttered a moan of pain.

 

Yeah. He’s smart. He knows about the Jars. And he’s … probably dying of something I have no idea how to fix.

 

“Eve,” he gasped, “Eve you have to find the….” He was breathing hard, and I knew what was coming next, as he started to shake violently. “Can’t…. I …. Time… ”

    

“Shhh,” I said, gently, “it’s okay.”

 

What am I on about? Okay? It most definitely was not okay. Not okay because he’d curled up in a ball, shaking like a man possessed by demons, spitting words that made no sense in that impenetrable language of his.

 

It wasn’t okay because I’d suddenly reiterated the helplessness of our situation. Soothing the Doctor was like soothing Ben, and I’d seen Ben die again and again. Suddenly I was wondering what the hell the point was. 

 

The Doctor’s eyes locked with mine, and he was begging me with them; begging for something I had no idea how to give him.

    

“Time…Missiles,” he said.

    

“What?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

    

“Must be using…damaged my capacity to regenerate....illegal. Illegal since… no, no, no. Not now, I can’t think about that, not now.” His words gave way to sobs of pain.

 

I pressed my hands to my head. I didn’t think I could bear to listen and I got up to run, finding that somehow he’d caught me feebly by the wrist and was whispering in my head … Don’t leave me… alone…

 

Him asking that was all well and good because; he was too far gone to see the muscles spasm in his body, to feel the nails drive into his palm so hard they bled, to watch anguish contort his face. He was too far gone to wonder why, why this time the word he was saying over and over again was somehow translated in my head as sorry.
 

***
PART TWO