Welcome to Gaia! ::

The Doctor stared at Th'ang the fork half way to his mouth.

"What sort of dangers?" he asked.

The BatWolf seemed about to respond when a loud screech echoed outside 'causing the entire home to shake. Th'ang winced and covered his ears. The Doctor bolted to his feet and ran towards the window.

"No! Get away from there!" the BatWolf cried grabbing the Time Lord and opening his wings so as to block the window. "You must not let it see you... it knows... it heard..."

"What is it?" the Doctor asked, "what does it want?"

"It's a Neon Leviathan..." Th'ang whispered, "it wants... to eat you. Both of you... The apples impair his nose, but you must not let it see you."

Fa'rne ran into the room and grabbed the two guests.

"You'll do no such thing," she muttered ushering them into a closed off hallway, "the light towers should be activating soon."

There was another earth shattering wail followed by a crack of lighting. The Leviathan roared in pain as a second and third bolt shot off from the towers at the edge of the orchard. A large beast that looked like a cross between a dragon and a crustacean flew overhead and snarled at the lot of apples before fleeing into the night sky.

<> she asked looking at Ally and the Doctor.

"They are the ones... that must not be lost," Th'ang replied.

"I don't understand," the Doctor said approaching the BatWolfs, "why does the Leviathan want us dead?"

"It doesn't want you dead, it wants to eat you," Th'ang replied wearily, "and in doing so, gain your powers. You two... are the last of your kind. One forged in kindness, the other by tyranny... but you both are needed. War is coming Doctor, a war we're hiding from, but I fear it will reach us soon enough."

"Oi! I don't need Ally to protect me!" he protested obviously offended. "And what d'you mean 'be done with it' I'm not a chore you have to put up with! If you want to go then just say the word, I'll drop you off wherever and whenever you'd like!"

<> Th'ang said raising both claws in a calming motion. <>

"Yes well don't be," he replied curtly before storming out with a slam of the door.

It wasn't Ally's fault, she'd not really done anything except express her true feelings... and it hurt. The talk of prophecies, of training, of treating him as if he were some pawn in a game... he hated it all. It had been done before but perhaps what hurt him the most was knowing that Ally had already begun to think of when she would discard him. Bitter wounds were torn open from those few careless words and wandered aimlessly through the orchard wishing he could stop the bleeding of his broken heart.

There was so much pain in his brown eyes as he looked down at her. The pain of loss and of being abandoned too many times to count.

"Don't cry Ally, I don't hate you," he told her quietly as he placed a hand on her head, "I've become a useless old man and now I'm just... tired. I'm so very tired... of the fighting, of the running, or the emptiness. Over nine hundred years 'defending' the universe and I've nothing to show for it. My companions leave me, others simply choose forget me, and so many other die... I've killed so many innocents in this battle for good I've become useless. I'm so very tired of it Ally...''

"They all leave in the end Ally..." he told her quietly, "you will too... once you find what you're looking for."

He then looked away his eyes glassy with tears.

"If a little girl took you hand in hers, and asked you to stop the pain... and you swore to her you would protect her... you swore she would see stars and moons and planets for the first time..." his throat constricted and he closed his eyes, "she trusted me. She'd never seen another person, her whole life she'd been locked away in the central processor of a computer. And she trusted me..."

Tears spilled then, "and I killed her. I destroyed the machines that helped her breathe, thinking the fighting would stop if the technology was gone. That little child... suffocated in the dark, and her world kept fighting with sticks and rocks... tell me Ally... what good am I? What good did I do then?"

"I'm too old Ally," he told her wearily, "there are too many mistakes and too little victories. I don't want to fight anymore, I've lost the will for it."

He gently hugged her back his hearts aching for more of the same contact, for more of her kind words... how he wished for someone who understood him but dreaded the moment said person would leave.

The Doctor felt his hearts constrict. Trust... why did people keep trusting him? He'd done nothing to warrant it.

"You don't even know me, you don't know the choices I could make," he sighed looking at her with a puzzled expression, "and you'd just let me."

He held her gently as his gaze turned to the millions of stars dotting the skies.

"I won't be around for much longer, Ally. I've only a few lives left," he said glancing at the brilliant night above, "the Universe will simply have to grow up. Eventually, everyone must..."