To All Things Housed In Her Silence

[Xiro]

Characters Appearing: Xiro & 13th Doctor
Location (s): The Ancient Forest
Previous Thread Name.: To All Things Housed in Her Silence
Plot Summary.: Xiro arrives in the Ancient Forest, heavily wounded, dazed and confused. He is found and rescued by 13.

[Xiro]

One more step... Good. Now another...

The snow was deeper than anticipated. In he sank, up to his knee, and he stumbled forward. He'd have fallen if not for the tree, which he clung to like a frightened, wet cat. He may as well have been just that; the blanket he'd stolen to shield himself from the harsh winter elements was now soaked and freezing. It would have probably been better to abandon it at this point, but he could not convince his blue, trembling fingers to release their death grip on the fabric. He had naught else.

The wind howled through the trees, whipping through his disgusting and matted locks and spurring him onwards.

He had to get home... How far away was Brightwall? Just how much farther did he have to go? How long had he been walking? How long before night fell and he froze to death?

Gritting his teeth, he pushed off from the tree and took another step. Then another. And another.

He wasn't about to give up just because death seemed to loom ahead. How many times had he faced death? It could not lay claim to him. He was the Jack of Blades; his soul was no one's but his own! And he would keep going. He would get home, lick his wounds, and then he would have his rev--

The ground gave way beneath him, sending him tumbling forward with a strangled, undignified squawk of surprise. He hadn't seen the sharp drop, hidden by the snow and encroaching darkness as it was. And it was a long way down...

The snow could only do so much to cushion a fall from that height. He hit the ground hard on his already ruined back, driving the air from his lungs and making him see stars.

Get up! his mind shouted as he lay there gasping. You stop, you die!

Sound advice. It took an over-abundance of effort to roll over, but he managed. He tried not to think about the blood warming the snow, or how he tasted copper. Or how he'd lost his blanket in the fall. He just needed to stand. He could do that, stand. Why, he'd been standing up practically all his life.

But his strength was waning. His arms and legs trembled with the effort. His wounds screamed.

“Don't,” he growled, grasping at fistfuls of snow. “Don't you dare.”

He couldn't give up. Not now. Not after all he'd been through! What, had he survived countless centuries of blood and strife, laughed in death's face numerous times, lost and endured so much, only to fade here, alone in some dark, forgotten wood? No. No! He refused!

Rallying, he dragged himself towards the nearest tree. It took every ounce of strength to pull himself up to his feet, every bit of concentration to command his legs to hold his weight. His vision was beginning to swim, and by the time he finally managed to actually stand, he was panting like a dog after a run.

Just... one more step...

But his legs, the rebellious, traitorous things, failed to follow through. He and all his hubris and determination collapsed into the snow in a heap.

[13]

Stepping into new worlds wasn't unfamiliar to 13. She'd spent most of her lives (or at least the ones she could remember) exploring the universe, seeing millions of new worlds and often saving them, then heading back to the TARDIS for a cup of tea and a laugh. Exploration was what she did. Still... what good would exploring multiple universes do her if she didn't still get awed and excited about things?

None at all, she was certain. This silent forest was beautiful and fascinating. She'd come here intending to make a proper study of the place, sonic in hand with another few bits of kit she'd pulled together to tackle the hurdle of wood and growing things. The sonic didn't do so well with plant life, never had. If whatever was going on with this forest was the trees themselves, she'd need a gentler method of engaging with them.

This trip, however, seemed somewhat doomed. She'd gotten wildly turned around several times (she made a note to herself to figure out the poles of this world more accurately to avoid this in the future), the snow was blocking the signal of one of her more delicate pieces of equipment, intended to track tree roots and the consciousness of the grove, and when she finally had a cleared out area large enough for said device, her sonic went mad, registering a dying humanoid nearby.

She spared only one quick longing glance at her equipment before sprinting off into the snow in the direction her sonic indicated. As much as she'd intended to dedicate the day to quiet study, she wasn't going to just... let someone die while she could help.

"Hello?" She called, looking for the person in question. The snow made it tricky- anyone in the state the sonic indicated would likely have collapsed, and in this snow... well, she had to hope they weren't too thoroughly covered or else she'd have to do even more digging today. "Don't be frightened, I'm here to help. Are you conscious?"

[Xiro]

A voice on the wind... Had he imagined it?

He tried to lift his head, but it proved too heavy. A blurry figure stood out against the stark white of winter, a splash of color among the trees. The crunch of feet in snow sparked hope in his chest. He tried to lift his head again, grunting with the effort. He was so tired...

"H...Here..." It came as a harsh, strangled sound scarcely above a whisper. He doubted this potential savior could hear it, so he ran his dry tongue across dryer lips and tried again. "Here....! I'm... here..."

[13]

13 perked up when she heard a strained voice from the snow, spinning around to find the source of the sound and finding a hint of color under a light dusting of snow to her left. He hadn't been here long, presumably, but the combination of his pale skin and the light dusting had made him rather difficult to spot. She was relieved he was aware enough to respond to her, at least.

"Hang on, lemme get you out of the snow. My ship's nearby, we can get you warmed-" She cut off, eyes going huge and worried, when she realized that the poor man was completely naked. "Oh, shit, hypothermia?"

The latter was mostly said to herself, assuming the man had stripped himself off. If he were that far gone to hypothermia, she needed to move faster than she'd initially thought. There wasn't time to chat- humanoids like this one were so very vulnerable to extreme cold. "I'm gonna... scoop you up and carry you to my ship. Doesn't look like you can walk right now."

That said, she took off her jacket, pulled him out of the snow, wrapped him in her jacket for warmth/modesty, and slung him over her shoulders in a fireman's carry. "Hang in there, try to stay awake if you can. What's your name? I'm the Doctor."

[Xiro]

A woman's face swam into view, framed by blonde hair and pinched with concern. Not someone he recognized, but she appeared to be friendly, at least. She was saying something, but the words she spoke held little meaning to him, like trying to make sense of the babbling of a brook. Then all at once, he was wrapped in something warm and hoisted up. Either she was stronger than most, or he was so weak and withered that he hardly weighed a thing.

She continued to speak. He tried hard to concentrate, to understand. Stay awake... your name?... Doctor...

"X... Xiro," he huffed.

The world was starting to spin, and even screwing his eyes shut did not stop the vertigo. A groan escaped him as his stomach churned with bile. At least, if she was truly a doctor like she claimed, he was in good hands. He almost could not believe his luck.

[13]

"Xiro?" 13 smiled, though he wouldn't be able to see it. "I knew a bloke named Xiro once. I broke his garden table by accident, but he was nice enough to not hold it against me."

She wasn't sure how much of what she was saying he could process, but that had never stopped her before. And it might help him stay conscious. She wasn't entirely sure what species he was in particular, and it could be dangerous to fall asleep in this state, depending on the species in question. So she kept on, telling him a silly story about a younger version of herself and a banana while she ran for the TARDIS. "And then he went for his gun, but found a banana instead and did not have any idea what to do about it. The look on his face was incredible. I find nearly everyone needs a bit of levity in this sort of dire situation, it helps keep us going when we might otherwise get overwhelmed and shut down. Do you like bananas? They're not my favorite anymore, but I'm still fond of them."

She slowed down as she approached her TARDIS, trying not to jostle him too much with a sudden stop. "Alright, here we are. Let me get the door and then..." With a click of her fingers, the door swung open and she brought the man inside, rushing him through the console room to the clinic, setting him down on the bed. "There you are, Xiro. I'm just gonna have the TARDIS scan you to make sure I know how to help you. Not sure what species you are yet, and you don't seem in any shape to tell me."

[Xiro]

Had he the presence of mind to truly process what she was saying, he would have found such a statement odd. His name wasn't exactly a common one, after all. But he was too far gone at that point to make sense of anything further she had to say. The entire story she went on to tell was lost on him, bananas and all; it was nothing but droning noise to his ears. Aside from a grunt or groan here and there, he gave nothing in the way of a response.

He was barely aware of the change in scenery, but the difference in temperature was both immediately noticed and welcomed. Though his teeth continued to chatter, he could feel himself begin to thaw. Then came the comfort of something soft beneath him. It felt almost alien at first. How long had it been since he'd lain in a proper bed? He could not recall.

As he lay there listlessly, the TARDIS began its scan. The damage was extensive: innumerable wounds covered him from head to toe, the worst of which being focused on his upper back, which had been lashed open several times over. Many of those wounds were deep and badly infected. He'd also suffered several broken fingers and ribs on either side, a shattered collar bone and dislocated shoulder on his left, and on top of it all, he was severely malnourished. There was also something strange about the injuries... It almost read like an infection, or a parasite, but neither description quite fit. Whatever it was, was definitely not good. At the very least, his physiology appeared to be no different from that of an average human.

[13]

The first thing the TARDIS' scan told the Doctor was that human-standard warming practice would do well for this strange man. She sprang into action, retrieving a warming blanket and laying it gently atop Xiro before setting it and the bed underneath him to start warming on their lowest setting. The TARDIS could take it from there and amp up the warming as Xiro was ready for it.

That done, she stepped back to look at the full results of the scan. "You've really been through the ringer!" She remarked sympathetically. "Don't you worry, the TARDIS can fix you up. Once your body's up to temperature we can start on your broken bones. I wouldn't have carried you like I did if I'd realized, I'm sorry. Though you probably can't properly hear me yet, your brain's probably all in knots from whatever the hell happened to you."

She frowned at the readout again, shaking her head. "I'm gonna have to take a sample from one of your wounds to figure out what's going on in there. It looks like an infection, but one the TARDIS has never seen. That's really rare, especially in humans and human adjacent species. She's got every known human disease in her databanks. Though of course, that's from back home..." She sighed and picked up another device, approaching her patient and tapping it lightly to the deepest wound she could access without moving him. It was a high tech bit of kit she'd picked up from the hospital at New New York, designed to take blood and tissue samples without causing pain to the patient. She hoped it would work as intended for Xiro.

That done, she put the sample in for further analysis and settled in to monitor his vitals until he regained some semblance of consciousness

[Xiro]

Like an old companion waiting at his bedside, pain was there to greet him as soon as consciousness returned. With claws and spikes it embraced him, and all he could do was let out a strangled gasp. Hurriedly, he tried to smother any further noise by burying his face in his pillow. If they realized he was awake...

Wait... pillow? There was nothing so comfortable in his cell.

It was then that he became aware of other oddities. There was the warmth, for one, as well as a low, constant hum and intermittent beeping. Gone were the bone-deep cold, the whispers, the screams, the drip-drip-dripping of the leaky roof in the corner. This was not his cell. And it was definitely not the torture chamber.

It took a lot of effort to peel back his eyelids, and he immediately closed them again with a hiss. Gods above, why was it so damn bright?! Where the hell was he?

He tried again, slowly this time, blinking away the temporary blindness as his eyes adjusted. He wasn't even sure how to describe the room he found himself in. The only thing that seemed somewhat familiar was that a woman hovered near his bedside, and even then, he did not know her from anywhere. 

"Who...?" He cringed at how weak he sounded, croaking away like a frog. "Where...?"

[Laurie Strode]

The Doctor's attention span was, to put it bluntly, shit. By the time Xiro woke up, the Doctor had analyzed the initial test results twice, read a novel that was now haphazardly next to his head, pulled out an odd device to tinker with, and started toying with the exact right settings for the lights in the room. She might not have even noticed him wake up, if she hadn't been glancing at him to see if he was reacting to the changes. She'd been doing that for at least half an hour with no change, so she was shocked by the way he buried his face immediately in his pillow. She dimmed the lights a bit, then half again when he opened his eyes with a hiss. He'd been through the wringer already, having her lights too bright for him felt like adding insult to injury.

"Good t'see you awake!" She chirped, speaking a bit too loudly in her excitement. "My name is the Doctor. I found you in the snow and brought you onto my ship to warm up and tend to your wounds. Don't worry, whoever or whatever did this to you won't find you here. Unless you did it to yourself somehow, I suppose. I shouldn't assume. I knew a species once that cut themselves down to the bone ceremonially to signify important agreements. Fascinating blokes."

She was rambling again. Oops. The Doctor cleared her throat. "In any event, you're safe here. On my honor, I will do anything I can to keep you from harm while you're aboard my ship."

[Xiro]

It was difficult to parse the meaning behind the deluge of words that poured from the woman's mouth. Much of it went clear over his head, but one thing did stand out to him.

"Ship...?" 

Once more, his eyes scanned the room. Not a plank of wood to be seen. Everything was made of one sort of metal or another, and electricity coursed through wires and filaments. There were lights and buttons he couldn't even begin to make sense of. If this was a ship, it was unlike any he'd seen since the days of the Old Kingdom.

A chill ran through him. It couldn't have been that long, could it? Just how long had he been held captive? Did he really want to know?

He found himself struggling to sit up, his wounds screaming in protest. Still, he pushed on. "I... I have to get... home... to Brightwall..."

[Laurie Strode]

"It's a spaceship, not a ocean ship" She told him in an attempt to be helpful. He wasn't wearing anything he could use to gauge his origins, but she saw him looking around the place like it didn't match what he thought of as a ship. "Space and time, technically. Though the time part is... really unreliable these days. She's not in her best shape right now. The transition between universes was hard on her."

"Ohhhhhh." 13 said, wrinkling her nose as she realized she'd have to be the one to deliver the news about his world and where he was. She'd been around long enough to know that there was nowhere named Brightwall here he could be referring to, except possibly a bookshop somewhere. "No, I'm sorry. Do you not know where we are? I'm pretty sure you're a very long way from home. Not that you could cross the street in your condition. You've got seven broken bones and multiple dangerously infected wounds. Not to mention the frostbite on most of your extremities, the hypothermia, and whatever did this to you. The latter's not a medical issue, it just seems relevant."

She held up a screen to show him the scan of his injuries, heavily shaded with infection and spiderwebbed with broken bones and slices. "So, look, I'll give you a quick rundown so you know this is more of a marathon than a sprint sort of situation, yeah?"

She took a deep breath. "You have been taken out of the world you know and brought to a new one. That's how we all end up here, apparently. Something is creeping across the multiverse, destroying worlds, and ours were apparently in the line of fire. If you ever want to go home, you'll have to quite literally save your whole world. Which... I'm working on it, but it's going to take a while. You'll went to heal at least enough you won't keel over in the process."

[Xiro]

"It's a space ship," she'd said, as if that made any sense.

He stared at her, trying to understand. She was still saying too much too quickly for him to comprehend. Blood loss had seen to it that his mind was as foggy as they come. He growled in frustration, digging the butt of his palm into his forehead as he finally managed to sit upright.

"Gods above... slow down," he grumbled as the strange box of light was shoved in his face. He could see that a... diagram? of the human body--his body, he presumed, was upon it, displaying the myriad of wounds he'd suffered. He barely cared, for the woman's next words were far more concerning.

Something was destroying worlds... The Corruptor, perhaps...? His mind immediately answered in the negative. The former Archon merely aimed to rule, and the eradication of entire planets would leave little to lord over. This was something far bigger, more dangerous.

A cold chill ran up his spine and seized his heart. He didn't much care for Albion or the speck of sand it sat upon. But the rest of the universe--or the... multiverse? That was a bit much, even for him.


Feeling a bit sick, he lay back down. "Marathon," he huffed with a nod and a wince, "right...." Gods, everything hurt... She was right about one thing: He wasn't in any condition to fight, nor to run around like a headless chicken in search of a solution. "'Suppose... I'll leave all that... to you for now."

[13]

The Doctor quickly tapped a button on the side of the hospital cot Xiro was occupying, so that it would shift so that he could sit up easier, once she saw him trying. It would probably be better if he stayed still, but there was no point fighting with him about it. Judging by the state of him, Xiro probably needed the sense of autonomy more than the small difference in his pain levels or recovery time. If the bed was set to support his back, though, it would enable the former and minimize the latter, which could only be for the good.

"Slow, right. Never been particularly good at slowing down, but I'll try." She told him with an apologetic smile. "Especially since I'm telling you not to rush."

13 watched Xiro's reaction to her words carefully, in case he panicked or had some other adverse reaction. She liked the thoughtfulness in his eyes, and she could tell that he wasn't taking it lightly, either. She wouldn't have thought he could get paler, but he'd managed it as he'd processed the full meaning of what she'd said. "Good, I love rescuing people with some sense." She nodded encouragingly and stood up, half turning to fiddle with some piece of equipment to give him a moment to process and get his bearings a bit.

"I don't know how much you remember about my finding you in the snow, so I'll start from the beginning with giving you some more practical information." She told him after a couple minutes. "My name is the Doctor. You said your name is Xiro, so unless you correct me, I'll assume that's accurate. I found you in a forest on a planet called Median, and brought you onto my ship, which is called the TARDIS. It's... as I said earlier, not the kind of ship that sails in water. Mine... travels through the stars, I suppose. But right now, I'm parked in the forest I found you in. I do need to ask- is anybody unfriendly likely to show up at my doorstep looking for you? I can move the ship, and they likely won't be able to follow me, but I didn't want to go anywhere until I knew what was going on, in case someone friendly were looking for you."