Waking Up
So, I had this floating in my brain this morning, and thought I'd bang it out. It was going to end kind of depressing, because I'm in a depressed mood. But it's Donna, and I just couldn't give Donna a sad ending. Couldn't do it to the Doctor either. So, happy ending all around. Please tell me if you think this could be linked on the doctor_donna comm.
I don't know if I can still say I'm on hiatus. I don't think I am. I'm just not getting things written. I don't have a muse I guess right now. Bear with me please, I may get more little plot bunnies. There's also the upcoming time crunch as Cheeky is finally going to start getting the help she needs, and she might be switching preschools.
Anyhow...as always, I don't own Ten, Donna, Jack, Wilf, the TARDIS, or Doctor Who. The BBC does. Please read and enjoy...
Have you ever had that feeling that you’re alone? Absolutely and unequivocally alone? That no one understands? No one knows? No one. Not even you. Except for that little niggling in your head that says you do know. You’re not alone, and there is someone who understands. You just don’t know who that person is. You did at one time, but you can’t remember. There’s a large portion of your life you can’t remember. You don’t know why, and no one tells you anything that might help you remember. In fact they go out of their way to convince you to not want to remember. It exhausts you and you just want to stay in bed, stay asleep where you dream and you think you remember.
That is how Donna Noble feels every day. She wakes every morning with the thought that somewhere out there, there is someone who understands what she’s feeling and someone who could help her to solve her memory problems. She’s determined to find this person, though she knows she’ll have to do it alone. She’s asked her family. Her mother frowned, slammed her teacup down on the table, stood and told her to get her head out of the clouds, and look for a decent job, before storming out of the kitchen. Her Gramps just shook his head sadly, patted her hand, and said that perhaps it was best to let things be as they were and move on.
It’s no use to ask her friends. She doesn’t have any anymore. They disappeared when she woke up with missing memories. Her mum won’t tell her why either. She tried to talk to Nerys once, but she couldn’t walk away fast enough. Donna swore she heard the word “freak” muttered under her breath. She remembers her fiancé, and that he vanished, along with her place of employment, but thinking about him makes her feel humiliation and then a surge of rage she can’t explain. Dwelling on it makes her head hurt, a golden shimmer flits across her eyes, and she gets dizzy.
This morning it feels a little different. She can’t explain why, it just does. She had the most intense dream she’d had since this all started. She’s always had dreams since the incident. They’ve been bizarre, sometimes sad, sometimes happy, but always they had the sense of being real. Like that was reality and her waking life was fake. Last night she’d dreamed of a man and a box, something that’s never happened. Usually there was color, and unfamiliar landscapes, and even more unfamiliar people? Species? Things? She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think they were human. Or even from Earth. Which when she thought about that, in the mornings, she usually needed a dose of paracetamol.
But last night, a man had appeared beside what she could only describe as a blue police telephone box. She knew though, that it wasn’t just a phone box. It was special. Donna twitched, wincing as she touched her temples. No. Not it. She. The blue phone box that wasn’t a phone box was a she. And the man with it, was not just a man, he was…he was… Donna groaned as the image of the man got clearer. Tall, thin, (and for some reason she wanted to call him a skinny streak of nothing) wearing a brown pinstriped suit and Converse (Converse?), Spiky brown hair that stuck up in every direction. Sideburns, and…the eyes. Soulful brown eyes that told of extreme age, and untold sadness. Donna whimpered as she sunk to the floor, the golden shimmer increasing in opacity. Those eyes spoke of sadness directed at her. Why her? Why would he feel sad about her?
Bigger on the inside was the next thought that she had. The blue phone box appeared again, this time the door on the front of it…her…swung open and she gasped as the unfamiliar yet familiar sight of a large console room came into view. She cried out as the throbbing ache that normally accompanied the times when she put a little extra thought into her dreams increased to migraine proportions. Faintly outside of these thoughts, she felt something touch her body, and then she thought maybe she heard her Gramps speaking.
A portion of her mind seemed to burst forth, and demand her whole attention. The man’s face increased in clarity, and just as her body seemed to ignite with heat she didn’t know was building, she found she knew the man and his name. He was a Time Lord. The last of the Time Lords, and his name was…the Doctor. She could hear his voice in her head fully now, and it was calling to her to do something. Do something with the heat and energy now infusing her body. Reg…reg…regen…regener…regenerate. She was rising up, she felt that. Like she was floating.
And then there was nothing.
~*~*~*~*~
The Doctor had taken the TARDIS to the vortex after going to Cardiff and explaining to Jack what he’d had to do to Donna to keep her alive, and that he was going to try for a solution. Jack was angry with him, but seeing how utterly destroyed the Doctor was over it, he calmed himself and walked with the Doctor to the TARDIS. He promised to watch out for Donna, and get regular updates from Wilf. Sylvia, he realized would not be all that cooperative and it was best to avoid her unless it was an emergency. He’d watched the TARDIS dematierialize and hoped the Doctor would be able to find a solution. Someone as brilliant as Donna Noble was, and who’d done what she’d done, saved the universe, should remember it. And he knew other things, that he felt were better for them to learn on their own. If the Doctor managed to help Donna.
The TARDIS spun in the vortex, mourning Donna, and waiting. Her Time Lord was taking his own sweet time to work on the issue. The ringing of the Doctor’s mobile startled him out of his brooding, and he grabbed it. It was Jack saying Wilf had called about Donna having dreams. The Doctor said the dreams were normal. Jack asked if he’d come up with anything, the Doctor said not yet.
When Jack again called, this time passing on the message that Donna was asking questions about her missing memories, the Doctor got a little panicked, but said as long as no one told her anything, then it should be alright. He was looking, and the TARDIS had a few thoughts as well.
The fourth phone call from Jack had the Doctor taking the TARDIS to Cardiff, the TARDIS making the decision herself to materialize around the immortal man to save time, and move herself to Chiswick, the back garden of the Noble house. Wilf had called saying Donna hadn’t come downstairs at her usual time, and when he’d gone to check on her, shed been slumped on the floor, hands at the side of her head, moaning. Her skin that was visible under her jim jams had a gold sheen to it.
The Doctor had burst into the room, dropped to his knees beside Donna, and put his hands on her contact points. He saw she’d broken through the blocks he’d put in her mind to contain the Time Lord consciousness, and blamed himself for not making them strong enough. He felt a not so subtle nudge from the TARDIS, to move on, and help Donna do what needed to be done. He picked her up, and ran as fast as he could to the TARDIS and laid her in front of the open panel next to the console. Extra energy flowed from the panel into Donna’s body as the Doctor stepped back. “Regenerate,” he said over and over, louder and louder until he was shouting it, and Donna’s body ignited into golden flames.
Wilf ran forward yelling for his granddaughter, but Jack pulled him back. He moved the old man over by the Doctor who stood trembling, and whispering “Please,” by the jump seat. The three men stood there as the TARDIS worked with the Time Lord consciousness to rewrite Donna’s DNA and regenerate her. It seemed to go on forever, but in reality was a matter of moments. When it was over, Donna’s body, which had been tensed up with the energy, relaxed against the grating, and she let out a small moan. The Doctor lifted her carefully and carried her to her room, where he laid her on her bed, covering her with the blanket the TARDIS has laid out on a nearby chair. The Doctor sat in the chair, and settled in to wait for Donna to wake up. Jack and Wilf went back to the Noble house, both figuring it would be best for just the Doctor to be there when Donna woke, to not overwhelm her.
~*~*~*~*~
Donna shifted, feeling a soft bed beneath her, and a softer blanket covering her. Her eyes fluttered, and as consciousness returned to her, she prepared herself for the usual headache that accompanied really intense dreams. But as she opened her eyes, she remembered something was going to be different. And hadn’t she woken up once today already? Confused she tried to sit up, only to find her muscles didn’t want to work right, they felt like she’d been through an extreme exercise regiment she hadn’t trained for, they were so sore. Her chest felt tight and her pulse was entirely too fast. Oddly, her head didn’t hurt, there was just a residual ache. She gasped as she registered that the room was not hers, at least not the one in her mother’s house. This was like the room from her dreams. And…and…there was singing. But not singing she could hear, no, this was inside her head. She pushed herself up on her arms, sitting up, wincing as she did so. She looked around, and then gasped as her eyes landed on the sleeping figure of the man from her dreams. The Doctor. Her pulse raced faster, and she gasped suddenly unable to breathe. She reached up with one hand to clutch at her chest, her other arm unable to hold her up, gave out, and she fell back on the bed with a loud panicked cry.
The Doctor jerked awake at the sound of a cry, and he saw Donna awake and struggling for breath on the bed. He moved to the bed, sitting on it, facing her, and helped her sit up. He turned her so her back was against his chest, and he hooked his chin on her shoulder. “Calm,” he whispered. He placed his hand on her chest, feeling the double heartbeats pounding frantically, and the newly created bypass trying to engage. He pushed his hand against her chest, in time with his breathing. “Calm. Breathe with me, love,” he said in the same low soothing tone. “In…and out…just like that, in…and out…”
Donna found herself relaxing in the Doctor’s embrace, and let her head loll back on his shoulder. Her mind began to clear, her memories reasserting themselves with every calming breath she took. By the time she was calmed down, her breathing relaxed, her heartbeats slowed, all of her memories had returned. She knew where she was, with whom she was, and thanks to the TARDIS speaking in her mind, she knew what had happened. It was a bit like waking up from a long slumber. Her life between the events on the Crucible, and now seemed like a foggy dream. This was reality. And, as she felt herself flush with a bit of embarrassment, she remembered the feelings she’d began developing for the Doctor after the events on Midnight. She’d sworn then, to keep them secret, since the Doctor wouldn’t feel that way about her, and she now resloved to keep them secret once more. Though she recalled, he had called her “love”. She shook her head, to dispel the thoughts, which made the Doctor let her go, and she missed his touch. Sighing, she turned to face him, and see where they went from here. She saw the look in his eyes, and her resolve melted. And she discovered kissing him was everything she had thought it would be.
When Donna shifted in his arms, the Doctor took that to mean she wanted him to let go of her, so he did, and he missed the feel of her in his arms. He wondered if she’d still not want “any of that nonsense” and thought about being able to love her as he wanted to. He wasn’t aware that she’d turned to face him, but he heard her small intake of breath, and his hearts soared when she took his face in her hands and kissed him.
~*~*~*~*~
Jack and Wilf came back to the TARDIS to check on Donna and the Doctor as they hadn’t heard anything for several hours. They went to Donna’s room, expecting to see Donna possibly still asleep, and the Doctor in the chair. Or perhaps Donna awake and the two of them talking. What they weren’t expecting was to see Donna and the Doctor in a tight embrace, thoroughly kissing each other, while hands explored ginger hair, and the skin beneath a pinstriped suit. Wisely the two men backed quietly away from the doorway, and went to the kitchen to prepare some food. Eventually the other two would be hungry, and what better way celebrate, than a four course meal.
I don't know if I can still say I'm on hiatus. I don't think I am. I'm just not getting things written. I don't have a muse I guess right now. Bear with me please, I may get more little plot bunnies. There's also the upcoming time crunch as Cheeky is finally going to start getting the help she needs, and she might be switching preschools.
Anyhow...as always, I don't own Ten, Donna, Jack, Wilf, the TARDIS, or Doctor Who. The BBC does. Please read and enjoy...
Have you ever had that feeling that you’re alone? Absolutely and unequivocally alone? That no one understands? No one knows? No one. Not even you. Except for that little niggling in your head that says you do know. You’re not alone, and there is someone who understands. You just don’t know who that person is. You did at one time, but you can’t remember. There’s a large portion of your life you can’t remember. You don’t know why, and no one tells you anything that might help you remember. In fact they go out of their way to convince you to not want to remember. It exhausts you and you just want to stay in bed, stay asleep where you dream and you think you remember.
That is how Donna Noble feels every day. She wakes every morning with the thought that somewhere out there, there is someone who understands what she’s feeling and someone who could help her to solve her memory problems. She’s determined to find this person, though she knows she’ll have to do it alone. She’s asked her family. Her mother frowned, slammed her teacup down on the table, stood and told her to get her head out of the clouds, and look for a decent job, before storming out of the kitchen. Her Gramps just shook his head sadly, patted her hand, and said that perhaps it was best to let things be as they were and move on.
It’s no use to ask her friends. She doesn’t have any anymore. They disappeared when she woke up with missing memories. Her mum won’t tell her why either. She tried to talk to Nerys once, but she couldn’t walk away fast enough. Donna swore she heard the word “freak” muttered under her breath. She remembers her fiancé, and that he vanished, along with her place of employment, but thinking about him makes her feel humiliation and then a surge of rage she can’t explain. Dwelling on it makes her head hurt, a golden shimmer flits across her eyes, and she gets dizzy.
This morning it feels a little different. She can’t explain why, it just does. She had the most intense dream she’d had since this all started. She’s always had dreams since the incident. They’ve been bizarre, sometimes sad, sometimes happy, but always they had the sense of being real. Like that was reality and her waking life was fake. Last night she’d dreamed of a man and a box, something that’s never happened. Usually there was color, and unfamiliar landscapes, and even more unfamiliar people? Species? Things? She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think they were human. Or even from Earth. Which when she thought about that, in the mornings, she usually needed a dose of paracetamol.
But last night, a man had appeared beside what she could only describe as a blue police telephone box. She knew though, that it wasn’t just a phone box. It was special. Donna twitched, wincing as she touched her temples. No. Not it. She. The blue phone box that wasn’t a phone box was a she. And the man with it, was not just a man, he was…he was… Donna groaned as the image of the man got clearer. Tall, thin, (and for some reason she wanted to call him a skinny streak of nothing) wearing a brown pinstriped suit and Converse (Converse?), Spiky brown hair that stuck up in every direction. Sideburns, and…the eyes. Soulful brown eyes that told of extreme age, and untold sadness. Donna whimpered as she sunk to the floor, the golden shimmer increasing in opacity. Those eyes spoke of sadness directed at her. Why her? Why would he feel sad about her?
Bigger on the inside was the next thought that she had. The blue phone box appeared again, this time the door on the front of it…her…swung open and she gasped as the unfamiliar yet familiar sight of a large console room came into view. She cried out as the throbbing ache that normally accompanied the times when she put a little extra thought into her dreams increased to migraine proportions. Faintly outside of these thoughts, she felt something touch her body, and then she thought maybe she heard her Gramps speaking.
A portion of her mind seemed to burst forth, and demand her whole attention. The man’s face increased in clarity, and just as her body seemed to ignite with heat she didn’t know was building, she found she knew the man and his name. He was a Time Lord. The last of the Time Lords, and his name was…the Doctor. She could hear his voice in her head fully now, and it was calling to her to do something. Do something with the heat and energy now infusing her body. Reg…reg…regen…regener…regenerate. She was rising up, she felt that. Like she was floating.
And then there was nothing.
~*~*~*~*~
The Doctor had taken the TARDIS to the vortex after going to Cardiff and explaining to Jack what he’d had to do to Donna to keep her alive, and that he was going to try for a solution. Jack was angry with him, but seeing how utterly destroyed the Doctor was over it, he calmed himself and walked with the Doctor to the TARDIS. He promised to watch out for Donna, and get regular updates from Wilf. Sylvia, he realized would not be all that cooperative and it was best to avoid her unless it was an emergency. He’d watched the TARDIS dematierialize and hoped the Doctor would be able to find a solution. Someone as brilliant as Donna Noble was, and who’d done what she’d done, saved the universe, should remember it. And he knew other things, that he felt were better for them to learn on their own. If the Doctor managed to help Donna.
The TARDIS spun in the vortex, mourning Donna, and waiting. Her Time Lord was taking his own sweet time to work on the issue. The ringing of the Doctor’s mobile startled him out of his brooding, and he grabbed it. It was Jack saying Wilf had called about Donna having dreams. The Doctor said the dreams were normal. Jack asked if he’d come up with anything, the Doctor said not yet.
When Jack again called, this time passing on the message that Donna was asking questions about her missing memories, the Doctor got a little panicked, but said as long as no one told her anything, then it should be alright. He was looking, and the TARDIS had a few thoughts as well.
The fourth phone call from Jack had the Doctor taking the TARDIS to Cardiff, the TARDIS making the decision herself to materialize around the immortal man to save time, and move herself to Chiswick, the back garden of the Noble house. Wilf had called saying Donna hadn’t come downstairs at her usual time, and when he’d gone to check on her, shed been slumped on the floor, hands at the side of her head, moaning. Her skin that was visible under her jim jams had a gold sheen to it.
The Doctor had burst into the room, dropped to his knees beside Donna, and put his hands on her contact points. He saw she’d broken through the blocks he’d put in her mind to contain the Time Lord consciousness, and blamed himself for not making them strong enough. He felt a not so subtle nudge from the TARDIS, to move on, and help Donna do what needed to be done. He picked her up, and ran as fast as he could to the TARDIS and laid her in front of the open panel next to the console. Extra energy flowed from the panel into Donna’s body as the Doctor stepped back. “Regenerate,” he said over and over, louder and louder until he was shouting it, and Donna’s body ignited into golden flames.
Wilf ran forward yelling for his granddaughter, but Jack pulled him back. He moved the old man over by the Doctor who stood trembling, and whispering “Please,” by the jump seat. The three men stood there as the TARDIS worked with the Time Lord consciousness to rewrite Donna’s DNA and regenerate her. It seemed to go on forever, but in reality was a matter of moments. When it was over, Donna’s body, which had been tensed up with the energy, relaxed against the grating, and she let out a small moan. The Doctor lifted her carefully and carried her to her room, where he laid her on her bed, covering her with the blanket the TARDIS has laid out on a nearby chair. The Doctor sat in the chair, and settled in to wait for Donna to wake up. Jack and Wilf went back to the Noble house, both figuring it would be best for just the Doctor to be there when Donna woke, to not overwhelm her.
~*~*~*~*~
Donna shifted, feeling a soft bed beneath her, and a softer blanket covering her. Her eyes fluttered, and as consciousness returned to her, she prepared herself for the usual headache that accompanied really intense dreams. But as she opened her eyes, she remembered something was going to be different. And hadn’t she woken up once today already? Confused she tried to sit up, only to find her muscles didn’t want to work right, they felt like she’d been through an extreme exercise regiment she hadn’t trained for, they were so sore. Her chest felt tight and her pulse was entirely too fast. Oddly, her head didn’t hurt, there was just a residual ache. She gasped as she registered that the room was not hers, at least not the one in her mother’s house. This was like the room from her dreams. And…and…there was singing. But not singing she could hear, no, this was inside her head. She pushed herself up on her arms, sitting up, wincing as she did so. She looked around, and then gasped as her eyes landed on the sleeping figure of the man from her dreams. The Doctor. Her pulse raced faster, and she gasped suddenly unable to breathe. She reached up with one hand to clutch at her chest, her other arm unable to hold her up, gave out, and she fell back on the bed with a loud panicked cry.
The Doctor jerked awake at the sound of a cry, and he saw Donna awake and struggling for breath on the bed. He moved to the bed, sitting on it, facing her, and helped her sit up. He turned her so her back was against his chest, and he hooked his chin on her shoulder. “Calm,” he whispered. He placed his hand on her chest, feeling the double heartbeats pounding frantically, and the newly created bypass trying to engage. He pushed his hand against her chest, in time with his breathing. “Calm. Breathe with me, love,” he said in the same low soothing tone. “In…and out…just like that, in…and out…”
Donna found herself relaxing in the Doctor’s embrace, and let her head loll back on his shoulder. Her mind began to clear, her memories reasserting themselves with every calming breath she took. By the time she was calmed down, her breathing relaxed, her heartbeats slowed, all of her memories had returned. She knew where she was, with whom she was, and thanks to the TARDIS speaking in her mind, she knew what had happened. It was a bit like waking up from a long slumber. Her life between the events on the Crucible, and now seemed like a foggy dream. This was reality. And, as she felt herself flush with a bit of embarrassment, she remembered the feelings she’d began developing for the Doctor after the events on Midnight. She’d sworn then, to keep them secret, since the Doctor wouldn’t feel that way about her, and she now resloved to keep them secret once more. Though she recalled, he had called her “love”. She shook her head, to dispel the thoughts, which made the Doctor let her go, and she missed his touch. Sighing, she turned to face him, and see where they went from here. She saw the look in his eyes, and her resolve melted. And she discovered kissing him was everything she had thought it would be.
When Donna shifted in his arms, the Doctor took that to mean she wanted him to let go of her, so he did, and he missed the feel of her in his arms. He wondered if she’d still not want “any of that nonsense” and thought about being able to love her as he wanted to. He wasn’t aware that she’d turned to face him, but he heard her small intake of breath, and his hearts soared when she took his face in her hands and kissed him.
~*~*~*~*~
Jack and Wilf came back to the TARDIS to check on Donna and the Doctor as they hadn’t heard anything for several hours. They went to Donna’s room, expecting to see Donna possibly still asleep, and the Doctor in the chair. Or perhaps Donna awake and the two of them talking. What they weren’t expecting was to see Donna and the Doctor in a tight embrace, thoroughly kissing each other, while hands explored ginger hair, and the skin beneath a pinstriped suit. Wisely the two men backed quietly away from the doorway, and went to the kitchen to prepare some food. Eventually the other two would be hungry, and what better way celebrate, than a four course meal.