The Short Version
Pavilion is more or less the same kind of thing as House, born in her own extrauniversal pocket, and up to a point, her story is similar as well. Scavenges things that fall in from the universe, makes people-puppets, lures in Time Lords to eat their TARDISes' artron energy, and eventually tries possessing a TARDIS to find her way out there.
Like would happen years later with House and a different Time Lord, the Time Lord and his TARDIS matrix managed to catch up and get back control, but the difference is that Pavilion brought enough minions on board that after it all came to a head, she had a body left to escape into instead of getting rubbed out entirely, and she was never actively malicious, just doing what she thought she had to do to survive, so when she got down on her knees and begged for her life, the Time Lord decided to let it slide.
Originally Posted by
davyjones
"Now," Calico says as he circles the humanoid form Pavilion has effectively trapped herself in, "what are we going to do with you? Hm?"
He runs his sonic screwdriver over the form and looks thoughtfully at the readings. "Well, your artron-energy consumption is going to be much lower in that body - what my 58 bleeds off on a normal day should be, er, mostly enough, I think. And I hate to leave folks stranded - even if they deserve it; you're not exactly in a position to cause any more trouble than you already have, so...what do you say to travelling with me for a while?"
The Long Version
Pavilion knows that paradigms change. First you are the scavenger, then you are the predator, then you are the prey, and then you are the forager.
Or perhaps it's better to say they don't really change at all, because once you've been in those eleven-dimension circuits, even for the barest cubic inch of that frozen-liquid crystal you call a personal timeline–you understand that it was always going to happen this way–even if it wasn't always always going to happen this way.
Of all your brothers and sisters out there, each in their own little extrauniversal eggs, you were always going to be the one–or one of few–not to starve in your cradle, to have one of those wayward fleas on your back actually arrive with what you needed.
You were going to be clever–clever enough to stitch those lost things into your hands and eyes and ears, to fashion the remnants of that first meal into bait for more.
Clever enough to know that there was poison waiting in those terrible engines and how to crack their shells and drain it away before you ate.
But you were not going to be quite clever enough, because there are only so many drops of poison you can escape when the poison can scheme and see the future and when it comes with friends who are clever too.
It was never going to last forever. Bit by bit the trickle of nourishment was growing thinner and thinner. As though the Time Lords were all going off somewhere–as if they had found something better to do than blunder their TARDISes into your waiting gullet.
So you worried and plotted and learned some more–rootled around with your person-hands in the corpse-fields until you knew how to heave yourself out of your carapace of rock and into one of fine, intact Gallifreyan metal.
Then when that last Time Lord came you threw him and his poison out and loaded yourself and all your puppets onto that gray column of a ship–
–and you were off! Out of that damp little junk-hole, free of your womb, casting off the after-birth at last! A whole universe for Pavilion, full of flesh and fire and wonderful, sublime, artron energy–
–but you forgot–will forget–always forget–that a Time Lord is a Time Lord, and you don't take your eye off him until he's dead. You forgot that the thing that was supposed to live in your stolen body is a hundred thousand times bigger than you and together they can see and know and do things you could squat for a million more years on the edge of the universe and never imagine.
And when he is back in the control room again and she is chasing you out of her home, you realize that what saves you isn't all that artron energy, or how clever you were either.
You got to live because you weren't cruel or callous. You took all your minions with you because somewhere deep inside you did care about them and the memories of who they once were, so even when it was all over there was one last body left to leap into, to endure in just long enough to beg.
You were spared because you didn't lie or play sadistic games, and when you cried with glowing eyes that weren't yours that you didn't want to hurt anyone–but you needed what you needed to survive out there in that dark hole outside the universe–the Time Lord and his time machine believed you.
He let you live and you started to think that maybe–out here in this place where there are stars in the black and people live to do more than just carry on a little longer–what really matters is a bit of kindness.
So, this is where we've gotten to, Pavilion.
That's how my story went, me.
Do you remember what we saw in those TARDIS circuits then? Did we see–will we see–are we seeing past this moment?
Do we see how I survive?
Yes. No. Necessarily. Contingently. Definitely and possibly–or maybe just 'maybe'.
One more leap into the vortex.
One more gulp of life.
Re: Adventures in Time & Space OOC
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