Rose thought that the rain on Venlafaxa V looked almost like blood. It was the local minerals in the water. They died the water a deep, thick red colour. She was sitting in one of the local buildings, waiting for the rain to stop and the Doctor to come back. The Doctor was busy dealing with a man who had escaped from the local penitentiary. He was a vicious criminal who had killed many people. His name was Quirbuti Laciell and he was a madman. Venlafaxa V was an alien planet far from Earth and Rose was fairly sure the Doctor had taken her to a different time as well. The fact that Quirbuti Laciell was an alien made him more dangerous to Rose than anyone else on the planet. The criminal madman had an unusual way of killing people. He would puncture two tiny holes in the neck of his victim and suck their vital fluids out through the holes. The result left them as empty of blood as the sky seemed full of it right now.

Rose and The Doctor had arrived on Venlafaxa V just that day and had all but walked out onto a dead body. It was one of Quirbuti Laciell's new victims. The Doctor, for all his genius, didn't realize right away that the man was bloodless because he was so covered in the horrible rain that had been falling.

It was the same rainstorm that Rose looked out on now, a few hours later. The Doctor had left her here, telling her that it was way too dangerous for her to be actively looking for the criminal. Human blood was especially pungent for the Venlafaxans.

"Venlafaxans have a very strong sense of smell," he had said, "I have no doubt that if you spread your smell around a large area then Quirbuti Laciell will be much more likely to come after you. Rose, I don't want that."

He had left here here, in this building, and she hoped that he was right and that she wouldn't be in danger if she stayed here. The blood rain deadened her smell and she doubted that the violent madman would come anywhere near a settlement when so many people were looking for him.

And so Rose sat in quiet contemplation at the window, the blood rain reminding her strongly of memories she didn't want to remember...

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"Rose, you horrible little girl! How dare you?"

And then she felt a short, sharp spurt of pain. Then nothing.

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The Doctor carefully made his way through the thick forest – the trees too dense for him to easily travel. He was worried about rose. He had exaggerated the strength of the Venlafaxans sense of smell to keep her from coming with him.

Rose had been getting increasingly worse over the past few weeks. First, the amount she ate slowed to a crawl. The Doctor had tried to help her out through a series of subtle hints but apparently she just didn't understand. The Doctor didn't know what the problem was or why it had cropped up so suddenly.

Somehow, he felt like it was his fault, which just made everything worse. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

The Doctor was part of a much larger search party all looking for the escaped criminal. They had spread out relatively far. The Doctor was traveling with only one other man, someone who, in his opinion, was a bit of a twit.

"Doctor, really, what are we doing in the middle of the woods?" The Doctor heaved an internal sigh. Really, the man was unbelievably thick.

"Our quarry could be anywhere, man, anywhere. Anywhere includes forests. In fact, he's more likely to be in a place where it's easy to hide."

Luckily that shut him up.

The Doctor would prefer, at the moment, to travel without talking so that he could focus on the problem at hand: Rose.

The Doctor was so worried about her, he almost missed the telltale sign on the ground. Thankfully, he didn't, and it made him realize something important.

"Gods," he said, "he's going for Rose!"

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Rose continued to look wanly out the window at the blood-rain, thinking about her mother. The Doctor liked her mother. She didn't want to tell him the truth. She wasn't sure he will believe her about the truth. The Doctor liked her mother around but Rose knows better. Her mother was nothing but courteous around the Doctor but rose knows better.

When rose was a kid, her mother would beat her for seemingly no reason. Her mother beat her all the time. Rose still has the scars from some of the worse beatings. There were times in rose's childhood when she knew only sorrow.

And the sky bled down, down...

She knew that the doctor must worry about her. She knows that she has not been taking good care of herself lately. She knows that she has been eating badly. She also knows that the doctor doesn't know about her scars. She can feel the memories of her mother have been getting more intense.

Rose, ever since the memories had begun to grow more intense, has begun to cut her wrists, as well as burn the cuts. She liked fire. She found the blood rain here disturbing, but it seemed to fit the situation at hand.

The back of her neck prickled.

Rose could hear a soft snuffling behind her. She turned around, expecting a stray dog, or whatever the equivalent of a stray dog here was.

Instead, she sees a tall man. His skin was pale, his mouth wreathed in blood, though that could just have been the water. His hair is black and slicked back. His skin is white. It is actually white, like the rest of his species, and his open mouth shows a pair of fangs that is not normal for a Venlafaxan to have.

Rose gasped.

The man smiled.

"Hello little girl, you smell lovely."

"Who are you?!" Rose gasped.

"I am Quirbuti Laciell and I am here to eat you."