I know now why the Angels Weep (Worm x Doctor Who)
They shut the door, locked it, leaving her alone amidst the insects and the filth, and she screamed and cried even as the bugs crawled all over her and some part of her knew that no one would ever come. She'd been left here to rot: alone, unseen and uncared for, and she felt herself a relic. And in her despair, something else noticed. She caught a glimpse of it - something ancient and so very, very cold.
Her heart turned to stone.
So too did the rest of her.
Her next conscious experience was of coming awake, feeling herself transformed into something stronger and strangely invincible and so very hungry, and so very, very cold.
She reached out with one marble hand towards the locked door and she paused - for it was strange, looking at that perfectly crafted hand which simultaneously looked so very wrong and so very right. She reached out with it and she pushed, and the door fell off its hinges and clattered upon the floor below.
An angelic statue, in a near perfect likeness of a teenager, began to emerge from that locker. It reached out with both its hands and pushed itself forwards, out of all that muck and detritus, and it got one foot outside of the door, before it heard the sound of laughter carrying towards it from down the hall, and a moment later a gaggle of girls turned into the corridor and one of them paused, staring at the statue in the locker, and the statue stopped mid-stride.
There were three of them and they headed towards the statue which appeared to be pulling itself out from that locker, reaching out towards them with one of its arms outstretched, like a zombie that had clawed itself out from some fetid grave. And then they registered the contents of all that had been placed along with it in that metal box and that created a bit of a freak out on its own.
Because, seriously, were those tampons fucking used?
"Okay, Jesus, I knew this school was fucked up, but what the hell is this even supposed to be?" one of the girls said.
"Do you know whose locker this is?" asked the second. "Because this? Pretty vile I have to say."
"And what's with the statue?" the first said again.
"Quite a stunt to put together over break," the second agreed.
The third of the trio, the one who had kept her eyes locked on the statue that entire time, entered into the conversation then, and her voice was strangely hesitant and perhaps a little bit afraid. "Do either of you get the impression that there's something fucking wrong about that statue? It's givin' me the heebie jeebies."
"It's a statue," the first said, crossing her arms. "Jesus, Maria, I knew you had your superstitions and all that, but getting freaked out by a fucking statue? It's a bad prank…"
"Must have cost a pretty penny to put together," the second one agreed, reaching out towards the statue. "Pretty fine craftsmanship, I think."
"I really don't think we should be touching it," Maria said. "Hell, I still think there's something off about this entire thing. Can't we just – you know – leave? Like now?"
"Baby," the first girl chided under her breadth.
"Come on," the second girl said to the first. "You have to admit, this entire business with the statue and the locker and those fucking tampons is messed up. We should probably report it."
The first one paused, but as she looked closer at the statue, the one that looked so very life-like and so very wrong, she began to feel some semblance of Maria's plight. It seemed to be reaching out, mid-step, pulling itself one foot after the other and it looked to her as if, in any given moment, it might lurch forwards some more.
"This is really gonna' be givin' me nightmares," Maria added, and the other girls, now that they found themselves looking closer at that infernal statues realized that they had to agree. There was something not right about it.
Still, lifelike though it may have been, the statue remained a statue, yet still the girls found their eyes locked upon it. Even though they wanted very much to leave, to run as fast as they could for class, or, better yet, for home, some long engrained human survival instinct kept them rooted in place. Kept their gazes locked upon that marble angel, and then the bell rang, the spell broke and the girls looked away. And the statue moved.
They all but ran to get to class, refusing to look back towards the statue, and Taylor Hebert pulled herself out from that locker and in a handful of seconds, she took a few more steps, and then she stopped, as the hallway became inundated with activity, with a swarm of teenagers pushing to and fro, trying to reach their next class. And the statue was frozen once more.
Students paused to look at that bizarre statue which had inexplicably taken its position in the hall, and a small crowd began to gather, no longer caring for the time that read upon the great clock mounted on the wall, or, for that matter, about the next classes on the schedule. They simply stared at that statue, circled around it and tried to make some sense of its presence there, while others deigned to look at that locker as well, and, as soon as they did, some among them swiftly ran for the nearest stalls.
As was perhaps inevitable in such situations, the authorities were alerted to this impromptu gathering, and the students were herded on their way, by the teachers and security guards and custodians called in to deal with the whole mess. And two of the custodians grabbed hold of the statue, one from the front and the other from behind, and together they hauled it out down the corridors and through the back entrance, and they chucked it in a dumpster outside. And then they turned away and slowly started walking back towards the threshold.
And in that same moment, Taylor awakened once more, no longer where she was before, and she was confused and overwhelmed and she tried to call for help, but she found her mouth was strangely rigid and it couldn't form the words. In any case, it wouldn't have mattered all that much, because there wasn't any air in her lungs to begin with.
And she was still so very cold and so very hungry and, on instinct more than anything else, she reached out towards those two custodians whose arrival she could not recall. She grabbed each by the shoulder, her mind screaming for assistance, for someone - anyone - to notice. To do something, just this once.
And then the two were gone, hurled backwards in time, and Taylor remained fixed in place, strangely satiated and no longer quite so frozen inside. She had devoured them, taken all that they were and could have been, leaving two broken husks stranded in the distant past.
And in that moment, Taylor understood - she was one of the Weeping Angels, ancient even among the ancients. She had become one of the monsters, and even as she recoiled from what she had done, she could feel that hunger beginning to gnaw once more, and with it returned that deep and terrible cold.
And Taylor Hebert understood what it was she must do.
One night, on a cold January morning, a mysterious stone statue appeared on one of the busiest intersections of the downtown Brockton Bay. No one knows quite how it got there, or who crafted it, but it has, with time, become a fixture of its own. A site at which many a tourist would stop, to gawk and stare, one of the many local wonders which its city so famous.
But people tell strange stories about that statue. They say that sometimes it moves. That it changes position when no one's looking, even if such moments are rare and fleeting. And there are even stranger stories: a few times, the municipality tried to cart it away, they even tried to destroy it once or twice, but inevitably it would return - to the busiest, most frequently trafficked streets in Brockton Bay, and there people would inevitably gather once more to gaze upon the Weeping Angel.
There are no tears, no howls of agony, and for every minute in which Taylor is awake and conscious, she is frozen for hours on end. Alone amongst the multitude, she thinks back to all she once was and all she has become, and, even though no moisture (excepting the occasional bout of rain) touches her marble hewed face, all that gaze upon her can agree on this one particular thing.
The statue's crying.