A/N:
At the time of writing, I hadn't watched the new Riddick movie yet, my CoTR knowledge was based on Pitch Black, CoTR, Escape from Butcher Bay and Dark Athena.
Both franchises do not belong to me
This is a AU fusion between the two universes.
x
Self-Fulfilled
"Ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?"
Zhylaw's head jerked up at the question, a newborn Furyan child dangled carelessly in his grasp, wet with its own life-blood. The cord wrapped around its neck glistened obscenely in the light from the surrounding fires but it was ignored by the two warriors standing on the desecrated Furyan soil.
The Necromonger took in the intruder, he was leaning calmly against a fallen pillar, arms folded. A pair of cold blue eyes glittered dangerously but the man's face remained impassive. He wasn't Furyan, the Necromonger could tell. After slaughtering a planetful of them, he could recognize them with the slightest glance. This man was dangerous, one could not mistake it, but he lacked that sheer animal vibe that belonged wholly to the Furyan people. They were fire, heat, rage and untamed savagery, this man was the cold promise of sudden death.
Zhylaw could not help but wonder what sort of Necromonger the man would make, if he was converted.
"I have heard of a prophecy," Zhylaw tilted his head to the destruction he'd wrought upon this wretched world. "A Furyan male would be my downfall. A prophecy that is now invalid."
The man cooly surveyed the wrecked landscape, a look of clear distaste twisting his face. "Prophecy," the man scoffed. "It could have been anyone. Any race. Future's always a thing in motion till some idiot starts throwing around stupid little words like fate, destiny, prophecy, thinking they can see the future. It's all unrealized potential, like dough really. Those pretentious words take that dough and give it shape, direction, power, make it real when it didn't have to be. Could've been anything that brought you down, Zhylaw, anything. A Sinatran, the Exxilons, a faulty wire in your great Necropolis, or maybe you never fell at all, the possibilities were endless."
The Necromonger took a step towards the man, eyes glittering in interest. This was no Elemental but he spoke with something of the wisdom of a seer. "Were?" he queried curiously.
"Your prophecy has given your timeline an outline. Your actions here gave those words power, sealed it. It's all solid now, self-fulfilling and all. Can't escape it, can't outrun it no matter how hard you try."
Zhylaw laughed outright, crushing the head of the infant in his grasp in outright defiance to the seer's words. "Furya is dead!" he gestured to the dying world with his other hand.
A bitter smile touched the man's lips as he tilted his face to the sky. "There was once a war," he began softly and the Necromonger strained to hear the whispered words. "A war so large it resonated through time and space and put your little crusade to shame. Civilizations were not simply crushed and destroyed, they were erased from the very fabric of reality. The Furyans fought against immeasurable odds in that war, a war that never was and never will be. And they were one of the last to fall."
In a sudden, quick movement, the man pushed himself of the pillar and step up close to the Necromonger. Zhylaw's grip tightened on the blade resting at his hip in warning. "Furyans do not die easily or quietly. And their anger does not lessen in death. I'd be more than a little worried at what you've aroused today."
With these words, the stranger departed, vanishing in the flames. Zhlyaw stared after him for a long while, pondering the prophecies -the warnings- he had been given. Then he scoffed and dismissed the man and his ravings about wars that had never occurred.
Who was he to speak of time and fate anyway?
He was no Elemental Seer after all.
-
He'd come here to see if they'd remembered.
Furyans gave ancestral memory a whole new meaning so it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that they might recall something -anything- about the Time War. The rest of the universe may have forgotten the Time Lords but there had to be someone, somewhere who remembered. Time was an infinite thing after all, there was bound to be traces of his people if he looked hard enough. That Furya had survived he'd taken as a good sign. Some planets had slipped through the Lock without ill effect, intact and unharmed from a War that had once ravaged their surfaces and yet now had never touched them.
The TARDIS had rebelled against landing on Furya, the planet had been all but blocked to them but this little patch in history. And when he'd stepped outside, he knew why almost immediately. Time was all wrong here, straight and narrow and set. A self-fulfilling prophecy locking up the timelines because someone had got it in their head that they could tell the future.
Time Lords would have fixed this within moments. Then again, if the Time Lords were still around, the Elementals would have never dared to interfere so drastically with the galaxy. They were rather active around this time-period but Gallifrey had always kept them in check. The Doctor didn't dare to interfere now however. Time itself was so unstable, still reeling from the War and any attempts to meddle could easily remove this sector of space from all existence.
There was nothing for him here, nothing that he could do at all, except glare at the genocidal maniac in the center of this colossal tragedy and give him a stern talking to.
Useless.
He made his way through the city, avoiding the Necromonger patrols decimating the planet. The TARDIS came into view and he pulled out his key to unlock it when he heard it.
He shouldn't have been unable to, it was too faint for Time Lord ears. A sick, wet rasp of an inhale of air.
The TARDIS throbbed in warning as he peered carefully under a pile of rubble. There was a Furyan woman splattered in blood and body mangled beyond recognition.
And a Furyan child with his own birth cord wrapped around his throat.
Time froze and threatened to shatter as his hand reached out automatically. The Time Lord stopped and stared in horrified recognition.
Oh.
Oh, no.
He remembered a Furyan, powerful, willful and defiant to the very end. He'd commanded his armies into a furious death machine that had swept across battlefields and decimated enemy lines with lethal ease. The Alpha Furyan, a creature that had never met an equal in combat in all time and space.
The Doctor closed his eyes.
A self-fulfilling prophecy loomed in warning.
Slowly, he retracted his hand. Given the choice, he'd have snatched the child up and into the TARDIS, away from the cruel reality an Elemental Seer had so carelessly created with a few simple words to a power hungry Necromonger. But as the timelines crystallized around him, weaved from the violence sweeping across the planet, he caught a glimpse of the man this child would become now. He knew the Furyan would never thank him for it even if he could do it. As a creature of the here and now, the loss of something he never had been or ever know could not and would not bother him.
The Doctor gathered himself up slowly. Someone would find the child soon, someone would remove the cord from his neck and take him from the ruined planet.
But it could not be a Time Lord who shouldn't exist from a planet that never was. A Time Lord who once upon a time might have once been regarded as a comrade in arms by an Alpha Furyan. An Alpha Furyan who would never exist, his timeline twisted beyond all recognition because the words of an Elemental Seer had been given shape and power.
The War was over.
It was time he started to bury his dead and move on.
Furya had no friends left for him now.
