She's been known by many names, truly. Many, many names. Mostly male, because none figured close enough to truly see her, but enough names.
They split her, you see, the Greeks. They split her to Thanatos, Hermes, and Iris, since none of them had seen her.
(they'd only felt her)
They'd sacrifice to her in form of Hades, Lord of the Dead, fearing and worshiping her as him through their time in equal measures.
Hated, but a source of hope, to wish that their loved ones went to a better place than Life.
The Romans were the same, the Egyptians had made her Anubis and Osiris by parts. Then it went on, and on for longer and longer.
The only thing that ever stayed the same were the sacrifices.
Sometimes she wondered, why did they think that she needed these things? Why did she need this bread, the pomegranates, the shoes and such? She had no corporeal body, you see. She had no way of appreciating this gifts. All she thought of them were that they were simply foolish endeavors - trying to gain favor with a being that had no use for their offers, had no use to help them. But she grew fond of the thought, grew fonder as they sacrificed animals, and watched silently as they died.
When the Master first decimated the armies, she wondered what he was doing. Then she grew to watch him, saw everything.
When John Hart ripped the heart of his first kill, she had finally figured it out.
Sacrifices to her.
Her.
Death.
She'd follow them, bring her touch through where all they went, so that their footprints would leave trails of Death herself.
Perhaps it was a way to mark the world with her footprints, mar the universe of Life with her own prints, a thing she had never been born with.
It was a beautiful thought, truly.
When Jack Harkness renounced her, she still followed him. But now, instead of him loving the death, he hated it.
And in a way, he hated her, didn't he?
A little as though mimicry of how she hated Life.
But didn't he also hate the Bad Wolf?
Yet the sacrifices still came. The offerings of men with their heads blown off, of women with their limbs tangled haphazardly from a bomb-blast, of children limp like dolls, strewn across playgrounds. Of horrendous beasts with their intestines spilling about them in their death throes, of past lovers gazing sightlessly up towards the ceiling.
It all still came.
So perhaps she grew a little confused. Stopped trailing her fingers behind her men and women, stopped blessing them in her way.
Then Torchwood came.
She hated them.
So she leaned down again and touched each one of them with featherlight fingertips that weren't real, ghosted across their foreheads and brushing about their shoulders and she floated through the world.
Torchwood had always been cursed.
Or maybe blessed?
Either way, it was her offering to Captain Harkness.
Didn't he like it?
Whether he saw it or not.