Fic: Forever (Doctor Who)
May. 30th, 2008 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficTitle: Forever
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Donna Noble, the Doctor
Spoilers: Only for the general situation of season four.
Word Count: 1,664
Summary: Why Donna doesn’t go to Earth anymore.
Donna watched the heart of the TARDIS inside its organometal chest. It had a month-long beat, the flex of which she had trained her eyes to see. She’d been traveling with the Doctor for a number of years, a handful of months, a smidgen of days, and an inconsequential amount of minutes. The heart of the TARDIS still awed her… glee at the trick of seeing its rhythm, astonishment at the power beyond the thin shell concealing it, and bemusement at the Doctor’s ability to harness it.
“What’s so funny?” the Doc asked. He was perched on the console in a rather Zen pose, though the frantic activity of his torso put the lie to that. He had a mop pointed toward the ceiling and every so often he would jangle it and the mophead would disappear.
“You are,” Donna said.
The Doctor considered this. “Yes.” He plunged the mophead through the invisible singularity again.
“That’s all? ‘Yes’? You are quiet, mate. Voice box molting?”
“No. Just quiet.”
She stood up and whacked him playfully on the shoulder. “Well, if you’re not going to give me any patter, then I suppose I’d just better pay mum a visit. It’s been seven months, she probably has a vicar’s weight in sermons saved up.”
Lackadaisically, the Doctor tossed the mop aside and changed the TARDIS’s course with the fewest contortions she’d ever seen.
“Alright, alright, you don’t have to talk to her. Just stop with the cold shoulder, ya sulky alien boy. Geez!”
The TARDIS rumbled half-heartedly and came to a rest. The Doctor said nothing.
Donna rolled up her sleeves as she approached him. “You’re not abandoning me, are you? Is that what this is? You get bored of me, so you decide to drop me off where you found me and get someone new!?”
He put his hands over her forearms, holding her with a completely non-obvious strength. “I would never leave you. Especially not now.”
As if physical contact were suddenly illicit, he let go of her and half-bonelessly slid down to his feet. A read-out was blinking red and green festively. He tapped it to a stop, furrowed his brow at what it reported, and tapped it again.
“When are we?” Donna asked, still perturbed by his strange behavior.
“Earth, London, 2011.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose with two of his fingers. “This is all wrong, we shouldn’t be here.”
“What’s wrong with 2011? It’s a few months off, but we can still say hi.”
“March 21st,” the Doctor mumbled, alarm in his voice. “We could skip back six months and the personal timelines will still mesh. My seventh self will be in Wales, so I’d have to steer clear of there.”
Donna white-knuckled her hand on the back of his coat. “What’s wrong with London in 2011?”
“Clean-up’s not done yet,” the Doctor said off-handedly, then launched his head forward in the manner of someone profaning vehemently under his breath.
“Clean-up of what?” she demanded, her voice raising to a tone she hadn’t taken with him in years. When he didn’t answer, she pulled on the coat so hard it ripped. He turned. His face was answer enough. She’d seen it often, sympathy and sorrow and pain shared. ‘Sorry your planet blew up, but at least you’re okay.’
She ran for the door and he moved faster than he did for any monster. She wondered, crazily, whether he ever slowed down so she could keep up, and then he was on her, holding her back, wrestling with her until they toppled to the ground.
“Let go of me, you goddamn alien! What did you know? How long…”
His face ended up next to hers, cheek to cheek, as he held her down. “Stop struggling. I’ll let you go, just wait so I can turn on the shield.”
She kneed him in the gut and scrambled loose, getting to the door ahead of him. But just as she grabbed the doorknob, fear flooded her veins. All the horrible sights she’d seen were out there, ready to be obliterated by the sight of her real home. She couldn’t bear to see the destruction come home.
The Doctor stood next to her. He was still winded and ragged from the short fight. Without a word, he reached past her and flipped a switch on the doorframe. She’d released the doorknob. He took it for her.
“Are you sure?”
She answered his question with a question. “Is it bad?”
“Yeah.”
“How bad?”
He looked away.
She had to know. Better now than later, the scorpion sting of reference to future history, mentions in newspapers, rumors, hints like the foreshadowing in a horror story. Shadows traipsing along the corner of her mind’s eye. She nodded.
He opened the door.
It wasn’t a hive. It wasn’t a Cybermen factory. It wasn’t Sontarans or Ood or Daleks. It was much, much worse.
Rubble. As far as the eye could see, so deep you couldn’t see the ground. There wasn’t a building left, just the jagged scar tissue of debris spread out all too evenly, the sands of a desert. The sky was dark with smoke, a miasma of ashes that soaked the clouds. It was as if a gaping wound had been torn into the world, rending both land and air.
The Doctor closed the door. “You shouldn’t look at it too long. Not healthy.”
The world’s spinning deposited her across from the Doctor, facing him.
“I’m sorry, I’m so…”
“Don’t.” She almost slapped him, but the word was enough.
In the silence that stretched out from that moment, the Doctor fetched a chair and sat her down in it. Kneeling in front of her, he began.
“Harriet Jones was supposed to spearhead a revolution in the intelligence community, a streamlining of worldwide agencies into a cohesive force.”
“What happened?” someone dead asked. It took Donna a moment to pinpoint the voice as hers.
“Without her, MI-6 and the like floundered into an enemy they weren’t prepared for. Three dirty nukes in Britain. I stopped one in Ireland. The authorities stopped one in Belfast . But the third…” he laid his head down on her knee. “It had to happen. Time is locked in here. I bent it to the breaking point saving as many as I could. Vacations, car sabotage, bomb threats on incoming flights…” he chuckled with dark humor, then brightened just a little. His next words came as a litany, something to derive comfort from in the dark of night when he was alone with his soul. “I got the Joneses out, I got Sarah Jane out…”
“And my mum? Grandad?”
He looked up at her. His face had frozen into an almost serene expression. “I did everything I could.”
She didn’t slap him. She punched him. It landed on his chin and hurt like she’d broken a knuckle. The pain energized her. The second one left a goose egg but by the third he had rose up to embrace her. He held on no matter how she kicked or scratched. She bit into his neck and it felt savagely good to make the bloodless one bleed. Even more of a release was screaming in his ear until he must’ve gone deaf, screaming until her throat was hoarse and her lips were dry, and she still had things to say about how it was his fault, how he could always fix things, how she had given everything for him and he couldn’t spare just two old Londerers for her, they could just sit at home and watch Eastenders for the rest of their days, how would that hurt history?, and through it all the pressure he held her with never changed. He held her until her screams were ragged into sobs, the blood from her bite dried, and outside London was still a wasteland.
When she let him go, (or he let her go, it was hard to tell) the Doctor slumped to the ground. It was only then that Donna realized the strain she’d placed on him. He looked like he’d aged twenty years, with his hair falling flatly around his ears and the lines of his face combining in their depths to give his eyes a haunted quality that had always been there but never more conspicuous.
“They didn’t feel anything.” He scrubbed at his face with his hands and left them there a moment, covering his eyes. “They were near the epicenter of the blast.” His hands trickled down his set face. “It was the least I could do.”
Donna sat down, missed the chair, ended up lying near him on the grated floor. “Thank you,” and a bitter irony that would be with her the rest of her days was born in her voice.
The Doctor’s head lulled to regard her with its thousand-yard stare. “I could take you back. A day before. A week before. Give you a chance to say goodbye.”
Donna turned on her side. “I said goodbye a long time ago. You wanna help, take me somewhere else, somewhere far from here. Anywhere but here.”
The Doctor nodded, then stood up every inch the arthritic old man and padded to the console. He laid in a new course and stayed with the TARDIS every step of the way.
“You want to…” he began, then fell short of thinking up anything she might want to do.
“I think I’ll just lie here a while.”
He nodded again, trying out a bit of the old bounce and finding it wanting. When they got to where they were going, the Doctor found himself not caring, for the first time he could remember, where they were. Donna was asleep and he didn’t want to wake her. The Doctor threw a blanket over her and sat down to watch her sleep, occasionally rubbing at his eyes.
Donna Noble never returned to Earth, and in some ways she never left it.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Donna Noble, the Doctor
Spoilers: Only for the general situation of season four.
Word Count: 1,664
Summary: Why Donna doesn’t go to Earth anymore.
Donna watched the heart of the TARDIS inside its organometal chest. It had a month-long beat, the flex of which she had trained her eyes to see. She’d been traveling with the Doctor for a number of years, a handful of months, a smidgen of days, and an inconsequential amount of minutes. The heart of the TARDIS still awed her… glee at the trick of seeing its rhythm, astonishment at the power beyond the thin shell concealing it, and bemusement at the Doctor’s ability to harness it.
“What’s so funny?” the Doc asked. He was perched on the console in a rather Zen pose, though the frantic activity of his torso put the lie to that. He had a mop pointed toward the ceiling and every so often he would jangle it and the mophead would disappear.
“You are,” Donna said.
The Doctor considered this. “Yes.” He plunged the mophead through the invisible singularity again.
“That’s all? ‘Yes’? You are quiet, mate. Voice box molting?”
“No. Just quiet.”
She stood up and whacked him playfully on the shoulder. “Well, if you’re not going to give me any patter, then I suppose I’d just better pay mum a visit. It’s been seven months, she probably has a vicar’s weight in sermons saved up.”
Lackadaisically, the Doctor tossed the mop aside and changed the TARDIS’s course with the fewest contortions she’d ever seen.
“Alright, alright, you don’t have to talk to her. Just stop with the cold shoulder, ya sulky alien boy. Geez!”
The TARDIS rumbled half-heartedly and came to a rest. The Doctor said nothing.
Donna rolled up her sleeves as she approached him. “You’re not abandoning me, are you? Is that what this is? You get bored of me, so you decide to drop me off where you found me and get someone new!?”
He put his hands over her forearms, holding her with a completely non-obvious strength. “I would never leave you. Especially not now.”
As if physical contact were suddenly illicit, he let go of her and half-bonelessly slid down to his feet. A read-out was blinking red and green festively. He tapped it to a stop, furrowed his brow at what it reported, and tapped it again.
“When are we?” Donna asked, still perturbed by his strange behavior.
“Earth, London, 2011.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose with two of his fingers. “This is all wrong, we shouldn’t be here.”
“What’s wrong with 2011? It’s a few months off, but we can still say hi.”
“March 21st,” the Doctor mumbled, alarm in his voice. “We could skip back six months and the personal timelines will still mesh. My seventh self will be in Wales, so I’d have to steer clear of there.”
Donna white-knuckled her hand on the back of his coat. “What’s wrong with London in 2011?”
“Clean-up’s not done yet,” the Doctor said off-handedly, then launched his head forward in the manner of someone profaning vehemently under his breath.
“Clean-up of what?” she demanded, her voice raising to a tone she hadn’t taken with him in years. When he didn’t answer, she pulled on the coat so hard it ripped. He turned. His face was answer enough. She’d seen it often, sympathy and sorrow and pain shared. ‘Sorry your planet blew up, but at least you’re okay.’
She ran for the door and he moved faster than he did for any monster. She wondered, crazily, whether he ever slowed down so she could keep up, and then he was on her, holding her back, wrestling with her until they toppled to the ground.
“Let go of me, you goddamn alien! What did you know? How long…”
His face ended up next to hers, cheek to cheek, as he held her down. “Stop struggling. I’ll let you go, just wait so I can turn on the shield.”
She kneed him in the gut and scrambled loose, getting to the door ahead of him. But just as she grabbed the doorknob, fear flooded her veins. All the horrible sights she’d seen were out there, ready to be obliterated by the sight of her real home. She couldn’t bear to see the destruction come home.
The Doctor stood next to her. He was still winded and ragged from the short fight. Without a word, he reached past her and flipped a switch on the doorframe. She’d released the doorknob. He took it for her.
“Are you sure?”
She answered his question with a question. “Is it bad?”
“Yeah.”
“How bad?”
He looked away.
She had to know. Better now than later, the scorpion sting of reference to future history, mentions in newspapers, rumors, hints like the foreshadowing in a horror story. Shadows traipsing along the corner of her mind’s eye. She nodded.
He opened the door.
It wasn’t a hive. It wasn’t a Cybermen factory. It wasn’t Sontarans or Ood or Daleks. It was much, much worse.
Rubble. As far as the eye could see, so deep you couldn’t see the ground. There wasn’t a building left, just the jagged scar tissue of debris spread out all too evenly, the sands of a desert. The sky was dark with smoke, a miasma of ashes that soaked the clouds. It was as if a gaping wound had been torn into the world, rending both land and air.
The Doctor closed the door. “You shouldn’t look at it too long. Not healthy.”
The world’s spinning deposited her across from the Doctor, facing him.
“I’m sorry, I’m so…”
“Don’t.” She almost slapped him, but the word was enough.
In the silence that stretched out from that moment, the Doctor fetched a chair and sat her down in it. Kneeling in front of her, he began.
“Harriet Jones was supposed to spearhead a revolution in the intelligence community, a streamlining of worldwide agencies into a cohesive force.”
“What happened?” someone dead asked. It took Donna a moment to pinpoint the voice as hers.
“Without her, MI-6 and the like floundered into an enemy they weren’t prepared for. Three dirty nukes in Britain. I stopped one in Ireland. The authorities stopped one in Belfast . But the third…” he laid his head down on her knee. “It had to happen. Time is locked in here. I bent it to the breaking point saving as many as I could. Vacations, car sabotage, bomb threats on incoming flights…” he chuckled with dark humor, then brightened just a little. His next words came as a litany, something to derive comfort from in the dark of night when he was alone with his soul. “I got the Joneses out, I got Sarah Jane out…”
“And my mum? Grandad?”
He looked up at her. His face had frozen into an almost serene expression. “I did everything I could.”
She didn’t slap him. She punched him. It landed on his chin and hurt like she’d broken a knuckle. The pain energized her. The second one left a goose egg but by the third he had rose up to embrace her. He held on no matter how she kicked or scratched. She bit into his neck and it felt savagely good to make the bloodless one bleed. Even more of a release was screaming in his ear until he must’ve gone deaf, screaming until her throat was hoarse and her lips were dry, and she still had things to say about how it was his fault, how he could always fix things, how she had given everything for him and he couldn’t spare just two old Londerers for her, they could just sit at home and watch Eastenders for the rest of their days, how would that hurt history?, and through it all the pressure he held her with never changed. He held her until her screams were ragged into sobs, the blood from her bite dried, and outside London was still a wasteland.
When she let him go, (or he let her go, it was hard to tell) the Doctor slumped to the ground. It was only then that Donna realized the strain she’d placed on him. He looked like he’d aged twenty years, with his hair falling flatly around his ears and the lines of his face combining in their depths to give his eyes a haunted quality that had always been there but never more conspicuous.
“They didn’t feel anything.” He scrubbed at his face with his hands and left them there a moment, covering his eyes. “They were near the epicenter of the blast.” His hands trickled down his set face. “It was the least I could do.”
Donna sat down, missed the chair, ended up lying near him on the grated floor. “Thank you,” and a bitter irony that would be with her the rest of her days was born in her voice.
The Doctor’s head lulled to regard her with its thousand-yard stare. “I could take you back. A day before. A week before. Give you a chance to say goodbye.”
Donna turned on her side. “I said goodbye a long time ago. You wanna help, take me somewhere else, somewhere far from here. Anywhere but here.”
The Doctor nodded, then stood up every inch the arthritic old man and padded to the console. He laid in a new course and stayed with the TARDIS every step of the way.
“You want to…” he began, then fell short of thinking up anything she might want to do.
“I think I’ll just lie here a while.”
He nodded again, trying out a bit of the old bounce and finding it wanting. When they got to where they were going, the Doctor found himself not caring, for the first time he could remember, where they were. Donna was asleep and he didn’t want to wake her. The Doctor threw a blanket over her and sat down to watch her sleep, occasionally rubbing at his eyes.
Donna Noble never returned to Earth, and in some ways she never left it.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 04:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 04:57 pm (UTC)Totally heartbreaking stuff.
P.S: On a more flippant note (if I can stop crying for a moment), I like your pic. Hooray for Serious Cat.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 07:43 pm (UTC)Poor Doctor too...
no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 10:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-31 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-31 05:18 pm (UTC)I felt Donna's sorrow and the Doctor's guilt(?) deep in my soul. The last line was just gut-wrenching and the tears just started rolling down my face. I had so many other things I was going to write about this piece but they just wouldn't come together in a coherent thought. That means you've do a wonderful job.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-01 04:55 am (UTC)That was really well written, and so, so sad!
no subject
Date: 2008-06-02 11:15 am (UTC)