WARNING: GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF GORE AND VIOLENCE
Stolen Stars:
Chapter Seventeen
Don't fret precious, I'm here
Step away from the window
Go back to sleep
Safe from pain, and truth, and choice
And other poison devils
(Counting Bodies Like Sheep – Perfect Circle)
0o0o0o0o0o0
"Rose!"
Falling. She had been falling. Into a crushing darkness that seeped into her soul, clutching at her heart and devouring her in terror. A perversion, a sickness…
"Rose, dammit! Get up!" Mickey's voice was panicked and rough with yelling.
"Wha…" Rose blinked, and there was a whistling. Her old friend swore above her, and then she was being dragged roughly from her resting place.
Boom.
The ground heaved beneath her as her feet scrambled for purchase and the world was brought into crystal clarity.
The air tasted of blood and ash, and intermittent screams of the fallen. Whatever had just exploded over London's south bank left behind a thick black cloud laced with orange and red flames. The alarm sirens shrieked down the cracked roads of the city, mingled with the ambulance wails desperately attempting to reach the injured and dead. It was deafening, chaotic. Surreal.
"What's goin' on?" Rose demanded.
"Are you kidding me? Where's your 'ead? The bloody Sontarans attacked in the middle of the night. The Doctor's dead. Torchwood and UNIT have been wiped off the map along with half of Europe and North America. We got nothin'."
There was a pounding in her head, and a sinking feeling in her stomach. This was wrong. It was everything she had ever encountered, and yet this was wrong. It ate at her, an acid at the corner of her consciousness and coloring her vision. A devouring fog. A poison.
There's…something…missing.
She shook her head, attempting to clear it. Now wasn't the time to go bonkers. She had to find a way to stop this, and time was running out.
Rose's hand went to her thigh holster, and she pulled out her modified pistol. With a wince, Rose realized that the Doctor would have never wished this upon her.
But the Doctor wasn't here anymore. He left her all alone.
Alone, for years and years until she was forced to wither and die without him by her side.
No, that wasn't right. Where on Earth was this coming from? The Doctor was only just killed by Sontaran hands this morning. She hadn't died yet.
Had she?
Rose forced the thoughts back, and led Mickey through the wasteland that was formally London. They had to regroup whoever was left. Mickey was frantically muttering into his radio. From the responses that came few and far between, it seemed like there was only a handful of TW and UNIT officers still active and in the field of battle.
"Who's in charge?"
"In accordance with official line of authority and because of her association with both organizations and the Doctor," Jake said from the other line, "Rose Tyler would be designated leader of the resistance. What are your orders?"
Fighting off both fear and uncertainty that came with her reluctant role in heading the defense of Earth, Rose took Mickey's radio in hand. She cleared her throat.
"This is Rose Tyler addressing all Torchwood and UNIT personnel, and any other human military still alive," she said. "You will rendezvous at Buckingham Palace. Be safe, watch for tails. Good luck."
Mickey nodded at Rose, and took his radio back, hooking it into place at his shoulder.
"I hope you're cookin' up a plan, Rose," he murmured. Rose didn't respond, only scanned the street for oncoming enemies. When she determined their way to be clear, she motioned Mickey to follow her.
Their passage to the abandoned Palace was slow going. Upturned emergency vehicles and Sontaran blockades caused more than a few detours. The dead and dying littered the streets and hung broken and bloody from windows and inside skeletons of buildings.
They finally reached the half-destroyed Palace, and found only six others had made it.
"We need to buckle down," Rose said, "maybe there are still some trying to reach us."
"How long can we wait?" Major Johnson barked. "There are civilians still dying out there."
"What choice do we have?" she replied, her voice rising in anger. "We're outnumbered, every body and mind counts."
"We need to get into the mothership," Mickey said. "I can disable their weapon system from there."
"And how do you expect we get you there?" another UNIT agent asked as she reloaded her weapon. "The last teleporter was seized off the dead body of one of our agents."
"Maybe there's a—"
Suddenly, an electric crackling flooded the atrium.
"Defender of Earth. Resistance has been ineffective and yet you still struggle in vain to defeat us. You will exit the building, along with your cohorts."
There was an explosion of shouting from around her, mostly despairing at the fact that the Sontarans had found them.
Too fast. Things were happening too fast. I just needed more time. Why don't I have more time?
Things were a blur, but Mickey was able to control the rest of their group so Rose could speak.
"Mickey, you and I are going to give ourselves up as hostages," she said. "I have a sonic, you can break out of whatever bonds they put on you and get into their control unit."
Mickey's face was solemn and the fear in his eyes stung her, but he nodded.
"C'mon, everyone. Keep your weapons in hand."
Rose led them out the front of the Palace, and out into the open air. A Sontaran warship loomed above them. Her heart clenched, but she knew that to show fear was to invite more violence from the species.
"What are your demands?" she shouted.
"Death."
"Well that's not fair, is it?" Rose said, trying to stay calm. "I'm sure we can work somethin' out that doesn't require the genocide of billions of human beings."
"Incorrect, Rose Tyler. We require this planet for reproductive purposes, for the glory of Sontar. The human race will be wiped off like the infestation you are."
Rose swallowed, despair growing in her heart. No, this isn't how it worked. They were supposed to save everyone.
"Rose," Mickey hissed, "what are we gonna do?"
The blue and yellow woman clenched at the gun in her hand grimly as she looked up into the ashen sky and at the warship that blocked out the sun.
"End this, Sontarans. This is your last chance," Rose Tyler warned, but the threat landed weakly even on her own ears.
"The time for chances has long been over. Open fire."
"NO!" Rose screamed. But it was too late, and then everything was ablaze. Her friends, her fellow men and women, shrieked as their flesh bubbled and melted off their charred bones. Mickey roared in anger, unloosing a barrage of bullets at the spaceship, but it was useless. The guns of the Sontarans were fixed upon him and Rose could do nothing but scream as her childhood friend and former lover was ripped apart by a beam of red light. And she stood there, untouched and frozen in horror, until the world was engulfed in flame as well.
It was only the first, though. When she opened her eyes once more, a whole other horror brought her to play like a puppet on a blood-smeared stage.
0o0o0o0o0o0
Hel was cold.
Oh yes, he knew where he was. Part of him did, at least. The part that was conscious and remembered the years of toil under the tutor that drilled into him every aspect and myth of Yggrdrasil and its Realms. Hel was the last topic they covered on the matter, and most complex.
It was a place of dreams, and projections. According to legend, every soul experiences Hel differently. Those who have lived a life of shame will be tortured by their failures. Those who lived good lives found themselves surrounded by loved ones and laughter.
A fantastical notion built mostly on frivolous aesthetics, really.
No, Hel was cold. And it was real. So very, very real.
Hel was Jotunheim.
Loki strode through the iced mountain pass, glaciers glimmering silver and midnight in the perpetual blizzard that consumed the planet. The spear was clenched tightly in his pale hand and purpose drove him forward. Hate bubbled in his breast and he knew that he no longer had to hold it at bay, a truly thrilling thing.
A roar above his head signaled an attack, and Loki crouched, twisted, and lunged upwards. The Frost Giant impaled itself onto his spear and choked a curse upon his killer in the tongue of the Jotun.
Loki sneered at the monster and yanked the weapon from the Giant's chest.
He continued.
0o0o0o0o0o0
It was like she was stuck in the worst memories that her mind could dredge up. It was like someone had stolen those memories, twisted them into unique and increasingly terrible atrocities, and shoved them back into her mind.
And then forced her to live through every one.
She saw herself torturing the Doctor in Torchwood, watching in callous interest as she inspected how the electric current of her two cattle rods affected his two hearts.
She was no longer saved at Canary Wharf. She and Pete were ripped apart by the Daleks in the Void.
Rose Tyler burned in the heart of the TARDIS, a burning Hell as she watched the universe expand and explode. She saw the events of Ragnarok and screamed in despair even as the Bad Wolf scattered her atoms as well as Jack's.
Sometimes the Doctor would be there. Or perhaps he was dead. Or evil. Or her mother, or Mickey, or countless faces of her friends and acquaintances. They would speak with her, blame her, kill her, save her.
But in the end, they would all die. Like the Earth the first time she ever travelled the Doctor. It was a lesson; everything must die.
I understand, I get it. Leave me be. Let me die, please. Just end it already, she screeched to her unknown tormentors.
And now here, in the bowels of a foreign planet, she was forced to find the things that were poisoning and killing the local population. Moans of the sick, and the plague-ridden bodies gaped with blood-shot eyes followed her at every turn. The vermin of the streets scattered from her feet before feasting again on the mangled corpses.
"But alone. Alone, nothin'. Why do I even bother?" she chattered on, ignoring the fact that there was no one around breathing that could answer.
She should just turn the gun on herself and to her head. End this.
Rose Tyler laughed hysterically at the thought. Whoops, been there, done that. Twice. Or was it three times now?
That was the thing.
She can't die.
0o0o0o0o0o0
The temple rose like a glass cathedral from the war-scorched waste of a city, jagged spires of ice throwing off shadows and dim blue light over the
Loki approached the entrance, side-stepping the dead bodies of fallen Frost Giants. Killed, very likely, by the Asgardians that overwhelmed the Realm with Odin leading them. Strange then, that he had yet to encounter a single Aesir warrior.
Something drew him inside the temple As he listened, the place was silent…except for an echoed cough from deep within the ice halls.
As he neared the source of the sound, Loki caught the trembling wail of a child. An irrational chill of terror ran down his spine, but he entered the grand hall. An altar rose up on a pedestal in the center. On top of the altar was a shrieking blue child.
Fury, unlike anything he had allowed control over his mind before, engulfed him as he stepped towards the altar. The anger tasted of regret, and hatred, and lost chances. It sunk into his skin like a cloak, like a poison dagger through his heart.
This was what his purpose was. This was always what his purpose was.
"Pathetic runt," Loki hissed, his entire body shaking with rage and hatred as he raised his dagger above the wailing babe. "You should have been drowned like the abomination you are."
With one swift blow, the child was silenced. Its wound gaped like a second mouth, spilling ripped sinew and gristle. Blood dripped down the altar and the ice prince's blade, staining the glassy ice at his feet.
Dry laughter like the reached the raven-haired Asgardian as he stood motionless over the broken body.
"So symbolic. You were always one for theatrics Loki. Does it feel better, do you feel complete?" It paused, and received no response. "No, I thought not."
"Leave me," Loki rasped at the voice of the Other.
"Oh no, Loki, I shan't. Your penance has only just begun."
Loki was unaware as the Poison that followed him through and into the pit morphed and solidified into the Serpent. He did not turn until It flung him onto the altar beside the corpse of the Jotun infant.
His eyes grew wide with fear when Loki realized he could not move of his own volition.
"You see, Laufeyson. All that time inside that twisted little mind of yours, even I could not help but leave a little part of Myself entangled."
It hovered above him, a demon made of thick, choking poison and black muck. Loki shouted in protest when he found himself stripped of clothing and left shivering on the block of ice. He watched in horror as the child's body was lifted over and above his own, the blood leaving a trail over his bare chest.
With one motion, the Jotun, the child-Loki, disappeared into purple ropes of intestine. Loki gagged and struggled viciously away, his neck straining against the power that held him down.
"This should have happened so much sooner," the Snake despaired as the innards began to wind themselves and bind themselves to Loki's wrists, chest, and ankles; tethering him to the ice altar. "I would have been free if you hadn't made a glorious disaster of it the first time."
"What are you doing?" Loki gasped, finding himself able to move once more. But he couldn't move far—the entrails were strong and held him tight. Revulsion made bile creep into his throat, but he forced it back.
Loki knew this story. All those centuries of mocking the humans and their ridiculous sadistic tales of Ragnarok—the irony was not lost on him.
"I would have ripped free," the remnant of the Snake revealed. "If you had properly killed Thor Odinson when he was exiled on Midgard. And yet you could not even do that, you horrific failure. Alas, you wretched bastard creature, you had to fall through the Void and be captured by the Chitauri. Ah well, what's past is past. I have forgiven you for it."
"What are you, vile thing?" Loki cried, and yet he feared he already knew.
"I am Jorgmandr. And, coincidentally," It hissed, "I am part of you."