Disclaimer: I own nothing! Please don't hurt me!
To everyone who has been reading Parallels of Parallels. I will finish this soon, I promise! I know I haven't updated for months, but my M.E got really bad and so it's taken me a long time to regain my strength. For now, here is something slightly different to keep you entertained. It just popped into my head and I had to write it down. Enjoy!
Prologue.
Imagine the most terrifying sounds you could possibly hear, and then double them. Hopefully, this will give you a pretty good idea as to what the conditions are like in this place. The place they call 'Siori Cyma Lyran'. Dead Man's Door. A prison from which no one has ever escaped. Once you go through that door, you never come out again. Not alive, anyway.
This prison is on the planet Delta Voira. A dark, desolate place where its inhabitants live in constant fear. It is said to be a place of hell. Of complete and utter contempt. You could say its citizens were prisoners long before many of them walked through Dead Man's Door.
They say that if you don't die by execution in Dead Man's Door, then insanity alone will kill you. The tiny cells are damp and reeking and cold, situated right next to a room that no one dares speak of, too frightened as to what will happen if they do. But the inmates can hear the sounds. Agonisingly painful screams of men and woman being tortured, sometimes just for small reasons; someone was heard crying or someone asked for more water. Sometimes, it's just for pleasure.
And they can't block them out, these sounds. They sit with their heads in their hands, rocking back and forth wretchedly, only seeming to stir slightly when all goes silent. Because that means they are coming for someone else.
In the dim light, a young woman is brought in and thrown into one of the cells. She makes no sounds, and it is only when the guards have left that she dares to cough, blood pouring out of her mouth. Her cellmates take a timid peek at her, mostly just to see if she came off better or worse than they did. Her blonde hair is dirty and matted to her head, the blood beginning to dry and turn a rusty brown colour. She has a nasty cut above her eye, trails of red trickling down her face. Bruises and whip marks cover her arms and her body and there is a nasty burn on her left hand. She shivers, but shows no sign of emotion as only exhaustion radiates from her. Her shirt is torn, as are her trousers, which are caked in dirt and blood.
The prisoners jump back suddenly as a clanging is heard from the level above. Someone else's turn.
The young woman moves slightly, being as careful as she can with her weak body as she drags herself over to the wall and props herself up against it. You can tell that this girl was once vivacious and free-spirited, but if she came into Dead Man's door with the tiniest glint of hope in her eye, it was now extinguished. Extinguished along with her vitality.
But how did she come to be here? Time will tell, but for the moment, she was staring death right in the face with no hope of ever going back.
For the very next day, Rose Tyler was to be executed.
In another universe, further away than you could ever imagine, at the exact same moment that Rose had let the blood in her mouth come pouring out, a man with an unnatural hyperactiveness and a mouth that frequently got him into trouble if it temporarily disengaged from his brain (which it often did), suddenly froze, a look of terror spreading across his handsome features.
This wouldn't have been too unusual if it wasn't for the fact that seconds before he had been throwing himself around his TARDIS console, flicking controls with a manic glint in his eye. His companion turned to him when she noticed the sudden silence and eyed him warily.
'What is it?' Martha Jones asked quietly, as if she was afraid of scaring him if she spoke at normal volume.
The Doctor blinked and looked up at her and Martha saw that the colour had rapidly drained from his face.
'I don't know,' he began, a frown appearing across his brow as he thought hard. 'But I have to stop it.'
Martha looked exasperated. 'How can you stop something when you don't even know what it is you're supposed to be stopping?'
The Doctor took in a deep breath. 'I think someone is in danger. As in life threatening.'
'You think?'
'I know,' he said darkly.
'Any idea who?' Martha asked, her voice a lot softer than before.
'It has to be someone who knows me. Someone who knows me well enough to be able to project their thoughts into my head, but it doesn't feel like… it doesn't feel like they actually know they are doing it. Not an enemy, a… friend?' He put his hands on his head and tugged a little on his hair.
'Think, think, think,' he muttered to himself as he started pacing the room.
Martha watched him intently, but that wasn't enough to stop her jumping out of her skin when he suddenly stopped and yelled, 'NO!'