Lirra's boots pounded uselessly down the pavement, raising futile little puffs of concrete dust that mushroomed briefly in her empty footprints before settling wetly back down again. She did not care that her reckless running made eddies down the street, offending the chickens and the goodwives and causing them to squawk; her passage was remarked by many, but it didn't matter. Short of disappearing on the spot, nothing could save her now, and, really, nothing more could hurt. She fled as if for her life, but truly she was dead already. They'd captured her face on the circuits: as far and as fast as she could run before she dropped dead—and twice over again—would not be enough. It was only a matter of time before the baying hounds loosed in her pursuit caught up and hauled her back limp in their mouths like a bedraggled water bird. Continuing this farce of running did nothing more than prolong her miserable life a few seconds more, but Lirra could not stop. She was dead, and she knew it, worse than dead, and yet she could not stop—
Rounding a sharp corner with her eyes craned back over her shoulder to catch the first harbingers of her doom, Lirra ran smack into an obstacle that yielded like flesh under the impact but halted her as surely as if she had flung herself pellmell into the magnetic putty of the holding cell wall that was surely her fate.
'They've flanked me,' her brain jangled as she whirled to face her captor. But no— Lirra was given the space of a frantic heartbeat to absorb the contradictory image of a woman whose broad hips blocked her way, whose strong hands held her fast by the shoulders, whose pale eyes registered her new captive our of a broad face lapped by curling tongues of blood and fire. For one silent second, the struggled—Lirra wriggling ineffectually like an eel, weakened as she was by hunger and the chase, while the impossible woman stood impassive—until she had rallied herself enough to kick, to scream, to anything, just so she could die a few seconds later, a few yards off up the street. Then the woman's water-clear eyes drifted beyond her, behind her, flicking back to catch those of the fugitive girl in fleeting recognition. Before Lirra could do more than begin to mouth a plea in exploitation of her captor's new-sprung sympathy, the woman released her shoulders. On the same movement, though, she brought both open palms up and clapped them together on either side of the girl's shorn head. Lirra's skull rattled with a hollow boom, and she reeled: stunned, she was unable to do more than double up and groan over the fist that sunk itself into her gut and scared all the air in her lung to flight.
In that moment, the woman seized her ear in one hand and her collar in the other—twisting cruelly—and commenced to shout. Lirra could hardly catch a word of it; it was all nonsense, it was all gibberish. But the tone itself was unmistakable. A woman in a pique, and Lirra the object of her ire.
"Would you look at that? Tea's completely ruined. I hope you're proud of yourself, you lazy thing." Lirra tugged to no avail, the only reward for her efforts an insistent yank to the ear.
Powerless, she crouched there, as good as in thrall. Her pulse beat like bird wings in the throat, and she gulped great drauts of the dirty, humid air through an open mouth; her whole being an arch of tension between toe- and fingertips anchoring her to the muck, chin level with her upthrust knees. The virew she got of the street beyond was inverted as the silver furze of her scalp brushed the pavement, people milling about on the flat surface of the sky while the bottomless earth plunged on beneath.
"Chips burned clean through! A new batch'll have to be bought fresh, and if you think it'll be coming out of my pocket, you're sadly mistaken, little miss." The woman with her wide mouth and her impossibly bright hair continued her inane rant, and Lirra despaired.
"Ungrateful wretch, I dunno why I bother!"
She could feel the footsteps of the Hounds coming ever closer, matching triple-time to match the racing of her blood, and she couldn't extricate herself from where she'd gotten snagged in this mad stranger's schemes. She could meet her inglorious end, crouched her on the cobbles, pinned down against a sooty wall of bricks and largely shielded from the view of passersby by the bulk of the woman who seemed determined to twist her ear right off. ….Shielded...
Lirra had the oddest thought, and grew absolutely still.
Above, the woman with her fiery, bloody halo continued to berate her in a shrill voice that carried, in words that made no sense. The imperative—Run! Get away! Don't die here!—beat a [frantic] rhythm all through her until Lirra thought she would shake apart. It mounted, climbed, built to a head—she squeezed her eyes shut because if she must die, as she would any second now, at least she would not watch. The angry clacking of hobnail boots, echoed deafeningly inside her head, all of a sudden occupied the same point in space as she herself. Surely it was over now, and she found she was a little relieved to have an end to the chase, if only because she was so very tired of being hunted.
Then, impossibly, the drumming began to fade. Lirra peered out from between her captor's ankles and her odd, flat shoes, to watch the booted feet of the last of the regiment of Hounds stomping out of sight down the street.
They had passed her by.
The woman was towing her up, and Lirra straightened stiffly: she remained standing only by virtue of the fact that she'd forgotten how to unlock her knees.
"Sorry about that, duck," the woman told her, straightening her wrinkled collar and tweaking the offended ear. "Looked like you coulda used a moment of invisibility, there." She winked at the [shell-shocked] girl. "No better way than to put you into so much trouble you couldn't possibly get into any more." Though her accent was a bit odd, her speech was plain enough now. But Lirra only stared, as dumbfounded as with that first deafening blow. As she often had as a child, Lirra half wanted to reach up and touch her own brow, feeling for the mark of favor that must be there, the trickster's sign that had let her be missed out by the choosers of the Lottery again and again, the had kept her alive and mostly whole up til now...that had delivered her into the hands of this fire-haired goddess who bestowed this most [odd,] most unlooked-for mercy when she needed it most.
Lirra dropped to her knees and threw her head back, proffering her wrists and throat to her rescuer for the slitting: she could think of no other way to repay the debt.
"Oh, no, none of that." The woman sounded oddly flustered as she tried to tug the girl back to her feet. "You get up, now."
Lirra obeyed, because she wouldn't contravene the orders of a goddess. Besides, she really didn't want to die.
"That's a girl," the woman beamed, brushing dust off Lirra's epaulets. "Now—" but she was interrupted as a man turned the corner and called out to her.
"Donna."
"What?" she turned toward him, impatient. Lirra ached to bolt for freedom, but the debt was still owed. Besides, she feared that as soon as she stepped from the shadow of this remarkable being, her luck would balance itself out and recall that she was supposed to be dead.
"Let's get back to the TARDIS. I don't like the smell of this place." The sharp-faced man said softly, half an eye on the woman he addressed, attention roving the crowded street in a way that could only be cataloging potential threats.
"What?" the woman mocked him. "The stink of debauchery and oppression too much for you?"
That made him look at her. "From here, yes. Let's go." Lirra had to gasp at her audacity in addressing him in such a manner: if the woman radiated the inner fire of god-hood, he veritably shone with it.
He was clearly drawing her away, but before she'd taken two steps, she turned back to Lirra, wanting to know, "You'll be alright now?"
She wouldn't. Lirra reached to grasp her sleeve. "Please, Madra, where you going?"
The long, brown man loosed a groan of eloquent frustration and slumped against the wall. "Far away from here," he answered before the woman had a chance to.
"Doctor—" she reproved.
"Donna, no, what've I said about touching them?" There was some venom in his voice, but the blood-red woman refused to be taken aback, even as he gestured sharply in her face as if to embed his point there, showing his teeth. "'Madra,' that's not a name, it's a title, and not one for the likes of you or me—"
Lirra cowered back a little in the shadow of her protectress.
"Doctor." The woman Donna cut across, still reproving with a gentle sadness, as a mother might. "Look at her. She's just scared..."
"If that thing is frightened, I'd rather not stick around and learn what it's frightened of." He grabbed the woman's arm and began leading her away. "Go on home, you." he tossed over his shoulder at Lirra.
Left alone, all the terror and futility flooded back. She stood there choking on it: lack of air made her stupid, made her bold. "But I can't." she blurted. The sharp man hesitated at that. And grasping at the only hope—for what did it matter if she died at a god's hands in a blaze of glory, or naked and retching in the bowls of the Facility? "Please, Madros, where you going?"
He turned at looked at her properly for the first time. "Far away." he said again. His large eyes seemed to swallow her, chewing and tasting til he had the full measure of her more closely than she did. Lirra thought she must disintigrate inot atoms under the scrutiny.
"Why?" he murmured at last, relenting at whatever he found in her face. "Need a lift somewhere?"