Chapter Text
***
If there was one thing that Vienna knew for sure, it was the fact that she would never have the chance to travel with the Doctor. Nothing could convince her otherwise. Do you mean to tell her that she would ever be special enough for that kind of thing to happen? She wouldn't even have the chance to meet him. It would never happen. Not to her. She was not like all of the other people that he traveled with. It was almost laughable to try to convince herself that she would ever have that chance.
The other people that the Doctor traveled with were something else. They all had ordinary lives before they met the Doctor. None of them started with crazy lives like Vienna's. She can guarantee they haven't had to deal with monsters climbing out of a pit to try to steal artifacts to cause the end of the world. Her life was too crazy to be noticed by someone like the Doctor. He gravitated toward special people with regular, everyday lives. Vienna was not someone with a regular, everyday life. Her life was far from it.
You could technically consider Vienna special in the supernatural world with her weird healing ability. But she wouldn't be special in the ordinary human world. She was better described as an outcast. Humans would call her and any other supernatural monsters that. They were the beings that you dressed up as for Halloween, the beings that are made out to be the bad guys in media, the beings that people would never actually want to meet in real life.
What the girl didn't know was that she was going to meet the Doctor. She was going to meet him during the summer... But he didn't exactly look as she usually saw him. He looked much, much different. So different that the girl didn't even recognize him when she first saw him. How did she meet the madman with the blue box? It all started when Vienna decided to look into the mysterious deaths that had taken over Mystic Falls.
With Dr. Saltzman no longer being the headmaster of the Salvatore School, he was out of a job. He had been spending most of the summer trying to find a new one. Since he was busy looking for a way to make money, he didn't have time to check out deaths that were most definitely linked to the supernatural. Vienna had noticed this when he kept telling his daughters that he didn't have time anymore to do anything. He would leave it up to some of the Salvatore School teachers.
The deaths that had been circulating through the media recently had caught Veinna's attention. At different points in the town, there had been bodies found of people who had been completely flattened. That's correct. Flattened. These people had their bones, blood, and muscles removed so that all that was left was their skin. From the news reports, the police hadn't been able to find the cause since there hadn't been any cuts or even the slightest bruise on the bodies. This was all it took for Vienna to realize it had been a supernatural death and to investigate it herself. It wasn't like Dr. Saltzman was going to.
A murder had taken place recently in the woods. The police had already taken the body but hadn't cleaned up the crime scene yet. There had to be some clues left behind that could tell Vienna how the deaths were being carried out. So the girl headed out to the location of the most recent death. A sigh escaped her as she trudged through the woods, wiping her face with her hands, "Why does summer have to be so hot?" Vienna didn't like the cold, but she also didn't like the heat. She always wanted the in-between days better. The sight of police tape caught her attention, and Vienna grinned, quickening her pace. "This has to be the place- What?"
As soon as Vienna had made it to the crime scene, she found that someone was already there. It was a woman with short blonde hair, wearing a long grey coat and black pants. The one was crouched down, looking at something on the ground near the evidence tags through a magnifying glass. Hearing the footsteps, the woman looked up, "Oh, well, hello there!" The woman was very obviously British.
Now, what was this woman doing here? Could she be a hunter? She certainly didn't look like one. Either way, Vienna couldn't let her get too close to the investigation. She was human after all. Vienna cleared her throat and walked forward, stopping a foot away from the woman, "You aren't allowed to be here. This is police business," Vienna got out her psychic paper and wished for it to show that she was a detective or something similar. The woman stood up and grabbed the psychic paper, looking at it with a hint of amusement. "I'm Detective Hope Smith." Vienna had no idea where the name Hope came from. It was the first thing her mind could think of. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave the premises. You're compromising evidence."
The woman handed the psychic the paper back. "No, you see, I am actually a detective as well." The woman grinned widely. It made Vienna a little uncomfortable that the woman was so cheery. "I heard about the deaths here in Mystic Falls and wanted to check it out for myself. It's not every day that you hear about people being flattened."
There definitely wasn't a lie in her statement. Flattening doesn't really happen to people. Not in the way these killings were happening. This kind of thing didn't even happen in the supernatural world. For that reason, Vienna had to assume that it was dangerous. She couldn't have a human getting themself involved, "I am going to have to ask you to stop looking into these murders. You're going to get badly hurt."
"I'm more capable than you think," The woman said.
It was almost laughable how confident the woman sounded. There was no way she could deal with this. Vienna wasn't even sure that she could deal with it. She was only taking on the job herself because Dr. Saltzman was too busy to do it himself. Vienna found herself smirking as she tried to keep herself from laughing at the woman's statement, not wanting to offend her, "You are definitely not equipped to deal with whatever did these killings."
The verbiage caught the woman's attention. The woman's smile faded as she stared at Vienna with interest, "And what do you think did this then?"
"That's on a need-to-know basis," Vienna stated. Vienna motioned for the woman to leave the area. There was a moment when neither of them moved. At that moment, Vienna could feel something. It felt like familiarity. It was like something inside her recognized the woman. She didn't get to think about it too long. The woman had walked past her, nodding goodbye as she headed off to where she had come from. Vienna watched as she got farther and farther. Once she was sure the woman was gone, Vienna bent down beside the evidence markers, "Now... Let's take a look, shall we?"
Unfortunately, the crime scene didn't tell her much at all. That was mostly because whoever caused the murders covered up their tracks really well... Along with the fact that the police started to head over to the crime scene again, almost ten minutes after Vienna got there. She knew that getting caught by the police at the crime scene would not be a good idea, so she left almost immediately after hearing them come toward her.
With no physical evidence, Vienna went back to her dorm room. Her room was covered in newspaper clippings and had a map with pushpins and strings tied to them. The girl let out a sigh as she sat on her bed, staring at all of the evidence she had compiled. Something was staring her in the face, but she just wasn't able to piece it together yet. The newspaper clippings weren't telling her much, so it had to be something with the map.
That's when it hit her. She got up and rushed to the map, tracing over the strings. She had the locations where the victims were found on the map, with strings connecting each of them. There was one she hadn't added, and it was the latest. Vienna quickly got a pushpin and stuck it into the location where the recent body had been found. She connected the string to the last pushpin and took a step back.
It was an enneagram! An uncompleted one at that. An enneagram has nine points, and you would usually find it inside a circle. The origins of the shape were unclear. Vienna remembered hearing about the Enneagram of Personality, where each point represented a different personality type. Point one was the reformer, point two was the helper, point three was the achiever, point four was the individualist, point five was the investigator, point six was the loyalist, point seven was the enthusiast, point seven was the challenger, and point nine was the peacemaker. The Enneagram of Personality was supposed to describe the different personality types.
But there were only eight points on the map... Which meant that there would be one more murder. What was the killer thinking behind the enneagram? Well, there was only one way to find out. Vienna would have to become the last and final point. Vienna would be the peacemaker.
***
If someone had told Vienna that she was right behind the Mystic Grill, waiting to be attacked... She would have thought you were lying. But here she is. Behind the Mystic Grill. Waiting to be attacked. Vienna had pinpointed where the next murder would take place and headed there. She didn't want anyone else getting killed. No innocent person deserved to die. She would also hate to find out what happened when the enneagram is complete.
So far, Vienna had been waiting for almost seven minutes, and nothing had happened. The girl had taken to sitting down with her back leaning against the brick wall behind her. She wandered off in her thoughts, making sure to keep an eye out for her surroundings. Had she come too early? The murders were spaced out pretty close together. It seemed like a body was being found every ten hours. The last body was found almost nine hours ago, which meant that the next one would be taking place any minute now. Vienna decided to stand since her butt was starting to hurt from sitting too long.
A hand rested on her shoulder whenever she stood up. The sudden touch froze the girl. "Seems like my kill came to me," A gravelly voice stated.
Wanting to see who was about to kill her, Vienna turned around. She was met with claws coming right toward her throat. The girl moved her head back as fast as she could and cast a spell, "Dimiterre!" With a wave of her hand, her attacker was flown into the wall of the building behind them. It was then that Vienna got a better look at the killer.
To say that she was surprised by what she saw was an understatement. The monster looked like a mix of a Wookie from Star Wars and a werewolf from the earlier werewolf movies. It didn't look like any monster that Vienna had ever seen before. The beast snarled at her, "You're not going to keep me from finishing it. I need to complete it!"
Once again, the monster flung itself at her. It swiped at Vienna, and she dodged the hits. As soon as she was about to cast a spell to take down the monster, a loud, piercing shriek filled their ears. Both the monster and Vienna stepped away from each other, covering their ears from the horrible sound. Where was it even coming from?
The sight Vienna was met with left her feeling angry. It was the woman from before. She had what looked like a silver wand similar to the one Vienna had. The woman plugged one of her ears with her finger and covered the other with her shoulder as she lifted the silver wand into the air, pressing a button to produce the horrible shrieking. Eventually, the woman stopped and sighed, "I hate listening to that sound."
"What are you doing here?" Vienna inquired. She didn't make any attempt to hide her anger. She wanted the woman to see just how upset she was that she had run in on something that she had been told to stay out of. "I told you not to get involved in this!"
The woman seemed completely unbothered by Vienna's reaction, "I came to help because there's no way that you would be able to handle fighting him off by yourself. You're going to get yourself killed!" Funny, Vienna was thinking the same thing about her. Out of the two of them, Vienna was the only one with powers. She didn't see the woman with anything to help Vienna fend off the monster.
Hearing the woman basically demean her like that was enough to make Vienna even angrier. She stood up and stalked toward her, "I was handling myself perfectly fine until you came along, thank you very much." The woman was staring right at Vienna until she looked behind her. Vienna didn't pay much attention to what the woman was staring at. She was more concerned about how she had gotten involved in something she should have left alone. "Who do you think-"
The rest of her sentence was never said. The woman had placed a hand over the blonde's mouth to stop her from saying anything else. Vienna glared at the woman while the woman only looked at her with a nonchalant expression, "He left already." What did she mean? Vienna pushed the woman's hand off her mouth and turned. Exactly as she said, the monster was gone, seemingly running off while Vienna was ranting about the woman. Before Vienna could continue ranting, the woman said, "Don't worry. We can find him," The woman held up a jar with fur in it. "I can use this to track down his location, and then we can fight him off."
A scoff escaped Vienna, "'We'? When did this become a 'we' situation?"
The woman raised an eyebrow, "Seeing as I'm the only one who can find him, it would be smart of you to let me help." As much as Vienna hated to admit it, she was right. Vienna knew that this was the last place he was going to be coming to, and he showed up only to run off. He would probably steer clear of this place now. The only way to find him now would be to do whatever the woman had up her sleeve.
Sighing, Vienna nodded and gestured for the woman to lead the way. The woman gave the girl a big grin and walked out of the alley behind the Mystic Grill. Vienna followed her begrudgingly, glaring at her the whole time they walked. The blonde had been so focused on the woman that she hadn't even realized they were making their way toward a blue box and stepping inside it. As soon as Vienna walked into the box after the woman, she froze. Her eyes widened as she looked around. The box was bigger on the inside. That could only mean...
No way. It couldn't be. Vienna stepped out of the console room and looked at the box's exterior. It was a blue police telephone box. From what Vienna understood, there was only one time-traveling and space-traveling machine that looked like this. "Oh, my God..," Vienna walked back into what she now knew was the TARDIS and stared directly at the woman. If this was the Tardis, then where was the Doctor? Had this woman stolen the machine? The woman was currently at the console, placing the fur into a specific part of the machine. Vienna narrowed her eyes at the woman, "Who are you?"
For a moment, it seemed like the woman was hesitant to tell her. Eventually, she glanced up at the girl and introduced herself, "I'm the Doctor. It's nice to meet you officially, Hope Smith."
"It's Vienna. Vienna Forbes."
Why did she just tell her that? One mention of her being the Doctor and all of her defenses just shut down. The Doctor was a woman now? Obviously, regeneration had something to do with it. Vienna had never seen the Doctor regenerate, but she heard him- Er, her talk about it. Upon hearing the girl's real name, the Doctor gave her a grin. "It's nice to meet you, Vienna." The Doctor clicked a few buttons on the console and reached up to the lever. "You might want to hold onto something."
Just as the Doctor was about to flip the lever, Vienna quickly spoke up, "Wait! We have to have some kind of plan first! We can't just go waltzing in and expect things to work out."
"Trust me," The Doctor's smile became even wider. "I have the perfect plan."
***
So the Doctor's plan wasn't as good as Vienna thought it would be. The plan was originally to have the Doctor distract the alien. Yes, it was an alien called a Buroda. While the Doctor distracted the alien, Vienna was going to trap the buroda with a device the Doctor had made. Vienna immediately spotted a hole in the plan. The buroda wouldn't want to talk with the Doctor after the Doctor had basically pierced his eardrums earlier. This left Vienna to distract the buroda while the Doctor trapped it. The Doctor hadn't been too happy about this, but eventually let it go after Vienna made it clear that she wasn't going to change her mind.
The TARDIS had taken them directly to where the buroda was. He didn't stray off too far from the Mystic Grill. He probably was going to wait it out until he knew for sure that both she and the Doctor were gone. Little did he know that the fight was going to be brought to him, "Hey!" The buroda jumped and whirled around to see Vienna standing right behind him. "Look who we have here. The coward who ran away."
"I am not a coward! I am the strongest warrior of the buroda race!" The buroda glared at the girl.
A laugh escaped Vienna. The buroda tilted his head at her, confused as to why she was laughing. It was apparent to Vienna that he usually had people shaking in fear at the knowledge. Vienna spoke through her laughter, "So you mean... To tell me that," She busted out laughing more. She took a few deep breaths and tried to keep herself from going overboard with the laughing. "You mean that you are the strongest warrior of your race?" The buroda nodded with a look of pride. "Must not come from a really good race then. I mean, who runs from a fight? A coward race," Vienna crossed her arms and smirked. "Now, coward," The buroda sneered. "What I would like to know is why you're making an enneagram with your killings?"
"I am not a coward!" The buroda shouted once more. "To show you I'm not, I'll explain my plan," Vienna said, and nodded, gesturing for him to go ahead. The buroda looked satisfied that she was willing to hear him out. "It's a ritual. You kill nine people from a lowly race by completely flattening them. You leave the bodies at different points, creating an enneagram. Once you've killed the last one, you get the favor of the main god! The buroda king!"
"Boring!" Vienna stated. She saw movement from behind the buroda and knew that it was the Doctor. Vienna raised an eyebrow at the buroda, "I thought that you were the strongest warrior of your race. Wouldn't you already have the favor of the king if you're the strongest warrior?" The girl suddenly gasped and covered her mouth as if she were in shock. "Were you just lying to me?"
This did not please the buroda to hear, "It's not a lie! I don't lie! I'm not a-"
And just like that, the buroda disappeared into the device that the Doctor threw onto the ground. The Doctor grinned and bent down to pick up the device, giving it a quick look over. "Looks like Mystic Falls' little buroda problem is over with now." The Doctor turned to Vienna and smiled, "Good job with distracting him." Vienna only nodded in thanks. The Doctor stood up and turned away, "I better get him back to the Tardis and take him to his home planet."
An unsettling feeling came over Vienna as she watched the Doctor walk away. She couldn't do it. She couldn't let this opportunity pass her by. "Wait!" The Doctor stopped. Vienna ran over to her, and the Doctor turned to see what it was that the girl needed. "Let me come with you. I want... I want to travel with you. Please."
It was the look on the Doctor's face that told her everything that she needed to know. But Vienna wasn't going to stop. She wanted- No, she needed to go with her. She could feel it. The Doctor, on the other hand, didn't feel it, "You can't, Vienna. It's dangerous. Too dangerous."
"I've faced dangerous!" Vienna exclaimed. "I have faced so many things that you don't even know about. I can handle myself. You saw it in the alley," The Doctor didn't seem too convinced. Actually, no, she looked convinced. It looked like something else was keeping her from saying yes. "Please, just let me come with you."
A moment of silence fell on them. Neither of them said anything. The only things they could hear were the cars driving by and people talking. Vienna stared at the Doctor with a look of desperation. She needed to see more than just this town, more than just the school. She needed to see more. The only way to do that was to go with the Doctor. She just needed her to say yes.
Finally, the Doctor sighed, "Fine," She pointed at the girl like a mother would to their child, "Be back here by 3:30 PM, and you can come with me, all right?" Vienna nodded with a wide smile. The Doctor turned around and walked back to the TARDIS. "I'll see you next time."
And she most definitely would. Vienna had never run faster in her life. As soon as she got to the school, she raced up to her room, grabbed a bag, and started packing. She didn't pack everything she had since she wouldn't have room for it. The only thing she packed was essentials like multiple pairs of clothes and shoes, hygiene products, etc. She also made sure that she packed a spell book or two so that she could still work on her magic while traveling. She didn't want to get rusty.
Once she knew that she had everything, Vienna raced back to where the Doctor said she would be waiting for her. It looked like Vienna had come a little early, so she paced as she waited for the Tardis to show up. Five minutes passed, then ten, then twenty, and then 30. There was no sign of the Doctor. She was running late. Hopefully, she wasn't twelve years late like she had been for Amy.
The feeling of someone watching her overcame her. Vienna turned toward the direction she felt the stare coming from and saw a flash of blonde hair as it walked into the TARDIS. Vienna grinned. It was the Doctor. She stood up and looked into her bag one more time to make sure she had everything before she left. That was until she heard it. It was the sound the TARDIS made as it disappeared.
Looking up, Vienna saw the Tardis flicker in and out of existence, "What?" What was the Doctor doing? She clearly saw her, so why was she leaving without her? Vienna ran across the street to where the TARDIS was disappearing. It was hidden a little in one of the little alleys that Mystic Falls had. By the time Vienna had made it across the street and into the alley, the TARDIS was gone... The Doctor had left her.