[Doctor Who] An Outrageous Amount of Running
TITLE: An Outrageous Amount of Running
AUTHOR: hibernate
DISCLAIMER: All bow down to BBC, masters of the universe.
WORD COUNT: 2000 words.
RATING: PG/all ages
CHARACTERS/PAIRING: Doctor & Donna (friends)
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Written for the Secret Santa challenge at doctor_donna. kiandra_fire wanted "Something where [Donna] is still with the Doctor or gets her memories back... I'm a sucker for happy endings."
Also archived at doctor_donna, Teaspoon and AO3.
1.
It's Monday. It's raining. It's three days till Christmas, Donna's new boss is an idiot and nothing exciting will ever happen to her again. Not that anything exciting ever happened to her in the first place.
It doesn't exactly make her day any happier when two seedy looking people get all touchy-feely with her on an empty street when she's rushing home after work. It certainly doesn't make her day any happier when she notices that they're not so much touchy-feely as they are, in fact, poking a gun into her chest. Well, some kind of weird-looking weapon anyway.
"You have got to be kidding me," Donna says. "You're robbing me? TODAY? I'm probably getting fired, it's Christmas, and it's raining. And now you're robbing me. Isn't that just wizard!"
One of the two, a man who on closer inspection looks like he's suffering from some kind of skin condition, pokes the weapon a bit harder into her.
"Oi!" Donna says, while the weapon emits a very worrying beep-beep noise.
"This is the one," the man with the gun tells the scruffy-looking woman by his side.
"Are you sure?" she replies back. "Didn't think it would be so... colourful."
It was just getting better. Not only were they robbing her, they were insulting her too. All the while pushing that weapon-thing all the harder into her.
"Stop poking at me with that thing," she snaps. Skin Condition looks bit guilty and Donna can't believe it when he actually lowers the gun.
"What are you, the worst robbers in history?" Donna huffs. "Oh, for God's sake."
She pushes herself past them, but is hindered by a hand on her arm and the gun, which is suddenly pressing against the side of her head instead of her body. Which isn't much of an improvement, really. People probably had a point when they said not to argue with the ones holding the guns.
Donna can hear the weapon winding up and for a second she forgets how to breathe - and then there's a strange sort of pressure building in her head. She gasps as a weird, pinging noise goes off in her head, like equalizing ear pressure underwater, and she's in the TARDIS. The Doctor is eyeing her with what is probably very restrained utter terror, but she's having much too fun to pay that any attention.
"Left hand down, left hand down!" He grabs on to her arm as the TARDIS shakes violently. "Getting a bit too close to the 1980s!"
"What am I gonna do? Put a dent in them?"
"Well, someone did."
The phone rings, and the world shatters.
Donna comes back to herself slowly.
She's still standing on the same street. Scruffy and Skin Condition are having a rather loud conversation. Or maybe it just seems loud because she's been struck with what feels like the mother of all hangovers.
"What did you do? Is it dead?"
"I don't know! How was I to know it kept the Time Lord consciousness in its brain? Not exactly a practical place for it."
Donna blinks. "Oh my God," she says and her mouth falls open. Things were certainly making a lot more sense now. "You're ALIENS."
Skin Condition shrugs a bit. Donna stares at the strange looking jar he's holding. The next second, both of them, both of the aliens, are gone in a flash of light.
Donna bites her teeth together. Hard. "I'm going to KILL that stupid Martian."
2.
"Doctor?"
The response on the other end of the phone line is a resounding silence. Donna wasn't really expecting anything else.
"So, Doctor. You'll never guess what happened to me today. I got up, went to work, met a couple of really nice aliens who then proceeded to rob me of the Time Lord consciousness I apparently had stored in my mind. And then I remembered I had spent months travelling around the universe with a skinny bastard of an alien, something I seemed to have managed to forget in the last six months. How's that for a day?"
"...WHAT?!"
*
He's looking rather stunned as he opens the TARDIS doors and spots her. Donna didn't think of it before, but he probably never did expect to see her again, at least not with her memories intact. She doesn't quite know how to feel about it herself. It's all a bit tangled and complicated.
The Doctor's shocked expression is slowly transforming into one of his huge, goofy smiles, as he walks towards her and throws his arms wide open for a hug.
Donna takes a deep breath and braces herself.
"Ow!" the Doctor says and puts a hand on his reddening cheek. Donna crosses her arms.
The Doctor looks a bit bewildered, but after a moments hesitation, he continues on and envelopes her in a bone-crushing hug, pressing her folded arms uncomfortably between them.
"Oh, Donna," he says and oh, she really wishes he wouldn't say her name like that because it makes it very hard to stay angry at him.
"You stupid alien... twig," she says, but her voice sounds meek even to her own ears.
The Doctor just pulls her in tighter. "And it's Christmas! Brilliant!"
He just had to bring that up. "Doctor," she says sternly and grabs his arms to push him away. "Time Lord consciousness, remember? Aliens have it?"
"Oh yes," he says, and then his grin fades away. "Oh no! That's... bad. That's very bad. I mean, it's good that you're here, all better again, but couldn't you have kept a closer eye on it?"
"Sorry, I was busy. You know. Having my memories bloody stolen, if you remember!"
She smacks him again, on the shoulder, for good measure. Not that it does her any good; it just makes him throw his arms enthusiastically around her again.
"Enough with the hugs, Spaceman," she says and pushes him away a second time. "We're going to have a long talk about all of this later, but let's go save the universe from your brain first, alright?"
"It's not exactly my brain, Donna," he complains. "I still have that."
"You keep on telling yourself that" she says, grabs his hand and drags him towards the TARDIS.
3.
The Time Lord consciousness has changed hands several times when they finally manage to track it down. And it happens the way it always happens with the Doctor. Something goes wrong and they end up in trouble. Well. In more trouble.
Donna struggles against the ropes. "You really outdid yourself this time," she grumbles.
"Why is it always my fault?" the Doctor protests.
"Yes," Donna agrees. "That's what I'd like to know."
"Very funny," the Doctor says. "Help me get out of these instead. Can you reach my screwdriver?"
"Of course, just hang on a minute while I'm being tied to the flipping CHAIR!"
"Oh, aren't you just a bundle of joy today. Cheer up! It's Christmas. Well, not here. But in your personal timeline."
'Cause bringing that up is sure to make being tied up in a prison cell so much better. "I hate Christmas," Donna mutters.
"Oh, no one hates Christmas!" the Doctor says cheerfully.
"I do."
"Now, don't be like that. Haven't you missed this?"
"Being tied up?!"
"Yes! Well, no, but... all of it." He pauses and sounds almost... shy, but that can't be right. "I've missed doing this with you."
"I didn't have a chance to miss it, did I?" she says, and maybe she sounds a bit resentful, but there it is. "Didn't remember any of this, thanks to you."
The Doctor doesn't say anything back and the following silence gets quite awkward. Donna can't see his face, with their backs turned against each other, but she imagines he's doing his best kicked puppy impression right now. Would it always be like this? Awkwardness and tip-toeing around the subject?
Oh, to hell with it. Donna rolls her eyes. "Fine. Which pocket?"
"Which what?"
"Which pocket is your screwdriver in?"
"Oh! It's the left. Or the right. Or the inside pocket. Definitely one of them."
Donna sighs deeply.
4.
The Doctor's trainers pound against the dry ground.
Meanwhile, Donna is really coming to regret the high heels. The Doctor is holding her hand in a firm grip, practically dragging her along, and she's panting like a fish out of water. Nothing like spending a couple of months blissfully ignorant of aliens and space travel to make your muscles pack up and leave.
"Hurry up, Donna!" the Doctor yells and casts a quick glance back at her, looking like he's having the bloody time of his life. He probably is, the stupid Martian, no one gets in trouble this often unless they enjoy it. Donna clutches the jar with the Time Lord consciousness tightly to her chest. The hand holding it tickles a little, like tiny electrical sparks shooting through it. Or maybe it's just the marathon running that's making her loose feeling in her limbs.
The Doctor pulls her into the TARDIS and she sinks to the floor of the console room, breathing heavily. "Bloody hell," she manages to get out.
The Doctor leans back against the door and grins. "That was fun!"
Donna sits back up again. "Fun? FUN?" Really if she hadn't just run the better part of a mile in heels, with furry, sharp-clawed aliens chasing after them, she'd stand up and slap him. As it is, she contents herself with a glare.
"Oh yes!" the Doctor says, completely missing the tone in her voice. "Very refreshing." He takes three long strides past her and soon the sound of the TARDIS engines fill the room.
Donna plops her head back down on the metal grille again. "Just once, I'd like to go somewhere where there's no running."
"What's wrong with running?" the Doctor says, sounding a bit hurt by Donna's lack of enthusiasm.
But Donna has stopped listening. She puts the jar down on the floor next to her and can't help but stare at it. Now that they're not running for their lives anymore, it's almost as if she can hear it. "What are we going to do with it?" she says, almost whispering.
The Doctor has turned solemn now. "It's yours, to do with what you want."
Donna holds up her hand against the jar and watches something in there spark golden. "Maybe we should destroy it," she says. "If it ended up in the wrong hands…"
"Nah, I think it's safe enough in the TARDIS." The Doctor pauses and adopts an even more serious expression. "And now then?" he says, utterly failing to sound anything other than very worried. She knows what he's going to say before he opens his mouth. "Do you want to... go home?"
She can't help it. It's just so easy. "Yes," she says gravely.
"Oh," he says. His voice has turned very soft. "Of course."
"Should probably tell Mum and Granddad that I'm alright, before flying off again."
A smile grows slowly on his face; Donna tries to school her features into something neutral and fails completely. She turns away instead, so he won't see her grinning like a mad woman.
The TARDIS rumbles around them as the Doctor sets a course for Chiswick.
5.
They're running again. At least this time she's in flats.
"We did it!" the Doctor whoops and flashes off a maniacal grin in her direction. "We saved them!"
Donna would answer, except she's a bit busy trying to breathe. She grabs onto his hand instead and grins back, as they run together. Sometimes Donna think that the worst part of all the trouble they always get in, all the alien prison cells she's seen the inside of and all the bloody running, is how it always makes her heart do a wild jig in her chest, almost as if… well, if she didn't know better, she'd think she actually likes it.
Sometimes she suspects she's getting to be as mad as he is.
AUTHOR: hibernate
DISCLAIMER: All bow down to BBC, masters of the universe.
WORD COUNT: 2000 words.
RATING: PG/all ages
CHARACTERS/PAIRING: Doctor & Donna (friends)
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Written for the Secret Santa challenge at doctor_donna. kiandra_fire wanted "Something where [Donna] is still with the Doctor or gets her memories back... I'm a sucker for happy endings."
Also archived at doctor_donna, Teaspoon and AO3.
1.
It's Monday. It's raining. It's three days till Christmas, Donna's new boss is an idiot and nothing exciting will ever happen to her again. Not that anything exciting ever happened to her in the first place.
It doesn't exactly make her day any happier when two seedy looking people get all touchy-feely with her on an empty street when she's rushing home after work. It certainly doesn't make her day any happier when she notices that they're not so much touchy-feely as they are, in fact, poking a gun into her chest. Well, some kind of weird-looking weapon anyway.
"You have got to be kidding me," Donna says. "You're robbing me? TODAY? I'm probably getting fired, it's Christmas, and it's raining. And now you're robbing me. Isn't that just wizard!"
One of the two, a man who on closer inspection looks like he's suffering from some kind of skin condition, pokes the weapon a bit harder into her.
"Oi!" Donna says, while the weapon emits a very worrying beep-beep noise.
"This is the one," the man with the gun tells the scruffy-looking woman by his side.
"Are you sure?" she replies back. "Didn't think it would be so... colourful."
It was just getting better. Not only were they robbing her, they were insulting her too. All the while pushing that weapon-thing all the harder into her.
"Stop poking at me with that thing," she snaps. Skin Condition looks bit guilty and Donna can't believe it when he actually lowers the gun.
"What are you, the worst robbers in history?" Donna huffs. "Oh, for God's sake."
She pushes herself past them, but is hindered by a hand on her arm and the gun, which is suddenly pressing against the side of her head instead of her body. Which isn't much of an improvement, really. People probably had a point when they said not to argue with the ones holding the guns.
Donna can hear the weapon winding up and for a second she forgets how to breathe - and then there's a strange sort of pressure building in her head. She gasps as a weird, pinging noise goes off in her head, like equalizing ear pressure underwater, and she's in the TARDIS. The Doctor is eyeing her with what is probably very restrained utter terror, but she's having much too fun to pay that any attention.
"Left hand down, left hand down!" He grabs on to her arm as the TARDIS shakes violently. "Getting a bit too close to the 1980s!"
"What am I gonna do? Put a dent in them?"
"Well, someone did."
The phone rings, and the world shatters.
Donna comes back to herself slowly.
She's still standing on the same street. Scruffy and Skin Condition are having a rather loud conversation. Or maybe it just seems loud because she's been struck with what feels like the mother of all hangovers.
"What did you do? Is it dead?"
"I don't know! How was I to know it kept the Time Lord consciousness in its brain? Not exactly a practical place for it."
Donna blinks. "Oh my God," she says and her mouth falls open. Things were certainly making a lot more sense now. "You're ALIENS."
Skin Condition shrugs a bit. Donna stares at the strange looking jar he's holding. The next second, both of them, both of the aliens, are gone in a flash of light.
Donna bites her teeth together. Hard. "I'm going to KILL that stupid Martian."
2.
"Doctor?"
The response on the other end of the phone line is a resounding silence. Donna wasn't really expecting anything else.
"So, Doctor. You'll never guess what happened to me today. I got up, went to work, met a couple of really nice aliens who then proceeded to rob me of the Time Lord consciousness I apparently had stored in my mind. And then I remembered I had spent months travelling around the universe with a skinny bastard of an alien, something I seemed to have managed to forget in the last six months. How's that for a day?"
"...WHAT?!"
*
He's looking rather stunned as he opens the TARDIS doors and spots her. Donna didn't think of it before, but he probably never did expect to see her again, at least not with her memories intact. She doesn't quite know how to feel about it herself. It's all a bit tangled and complicated.
The Doctor's shocked expression is slowly transforming into one of his huge, goofy smiles, as he walks towards her and throws his arms wide open for a hug.
Donna takes a deep breath and braces herself.
"Ow!" the Doctor says and puts a hand on his reddening cheek. Donna crosses her arms.
The Doctor looks a bit bewildered, but after a moments hesitation, he continues on and envelopes her in a bone-crushing hug, pressing her folded arms uncomfortably between them.
"Oh, Donna," he says and oh, she really wishes he wouldn't say her name like that because it makes it very hard to stay angry at him.
"You stupid alien... twig," she says, but her voice sounds meek even to her own ears.
The Doctor just pulls her in tighter. "And it's Christmas! Brilliant!"
He just had to bring that up. "Doctor," she says sternly and grabs his arms to push him away. "Time Lord consciousness, remember? Aliens have it?"
"Oh yes," he says, and then his grin fades away. "Oh no! That's... bad. That's very bad. I mean, it's good that you're here, all better again, but couldn't you have kept a closer eye on it?"
"Sorry, I was busy. You know. Having my memories bloody stolen, if you remember!"
She smacks him again, on the shoulder, for good measure. Not that it does her any good; it just makes him throw his arms enthusiastically around her again.
"Enough with the hugs, Spaceman," she says and pushes him away a second time. "We're going to have a long talk about all of this later, but let's go save the universe from your brain first, alright?"
"It's not exactly my brain, Donna," he complains. "I still have that."
"You keep on telling yourself that" she says, grabs his hand and drags him towards the TARDIS.
3.
The Time Lord consciousness has changed hands several times when they finally manage to track it down. And it happens the way it always happens with the Doctor. Something goes wrong and they end up in trouble. Well. In more trouble.
Donna struggles against the ropes. "You really outdid yourself this time," she grumbles.
"Why is it always my fault?" the Doctor protests.
"Yes," Donna agrees. "That's what I'd like to know."
"Very funny," the Doctor says. "Help me get out of these instead. Can you reach my screwdriver?"
"Of course, just hang on a minute while I'm being tied to the flipping CHAIR!"
"Oh, aren't you just a bundle of joy today. Cheer up! It's Christmas. Well, not here. But in your personal timeline."
'Cause bringing that up is sure to make being tied up in a prison cell so much better. "I hate Christmas," Donna mutters.
"Oh, no one hates Christmas!" the Doctor says cheerfully.
"I do."
"Now, don't be like that. Haven't you missed this?"
"Being tied up?!"
"Yes! Well, no, but... all of it." He pauses and sounds almost... shy, but that can't be right. "I've missed doing this with you."
"I didn't have a chance to miss it, did I?" she says, and maybe she sounds a bit resentful, but there it is. "Didn't remember any of this, thanks to you."
The Doctor doesn't say anything back and the following silence gets quite awkward. Donna can't see his face, with their backs turned against each other, but she imagines he's doing his best kicked puppy impression right now. Would it always be like this? Awkwardness and tip-toeing around the subject?
Oh, to hell with it. Donna rolls her eyes. "Fine. Which pocket?"
"Which what?"
"Which pocket is your screwdriver in?"
"Oh! It's the left. Or the right. Or the inside pocket. Definitely one of them."
Donna sighs deeply.
4.
The Doctor's trainers pound against the dry ground.
Meanwhile, Donna is really coming to regret the high heels. The Doctor is holding her hand in a firm grip, practically dragging her along, and she's panting like a fish out of water. Nothing like spending a couple of months blissfully ignorant of aliens and space travel to make your muscles pack up and leave.
"Hurry up, Donna!" the Doctor yells and casts a quick glance back at her, looking like he's having the bloody time of his life. He probably is, the stupid Martian, no one gets in trouble this often unless they enjoy it. Donna clutches the jar with the Time Lord consciousness tightly to her chest. The hand holding it tickles a little, like tiny electrical sparks shooting through it. Or maybe it's just the marathon running that's making her loose feeling in her limbs.
The Doctor pulls her into the TARDIS and she sinks to the floor of the console room, breathing heavily. "Bloody hell," she manages to get out.
The Doctor leans back against the door and grins. "That was fun!"
Donna sits back up again. "Fun? FUN?" Really if she hadn't just run the better part of a mile in heels, with furry, sharp-clawed aliens chasing after them, she'd stand up and slap him. As it is, she contents herself with a glare.
"Oh yes!" the Doctor says, completely missing the tone in her voice. "Very refreshing." He takes three long strides past her and soon the sound of the TARDIS engines fill the room.
Donna plops her head back down on the metal grille again. "Just once, I'd like to go somewhere where there's no running."
"What's wrong with running?" the Doctor says, sounding a bit hurt by Donna's lack of enthusiasm.
But Donna has stopped listening. She puts the jar down on the floor next to her and can't help but stare at it. Now that they're not running for their lives anymore, it's almost as if she can hear it. "What are we going to do with it?" she says, almost whispering.
The Doctor has turned solemn now. "It's yours, to do with what you want."
Donna holds up her hand against the jar and watches something in there spark golden. "Maybe we should destroy it," she says. "If it ended up in the wrong hands…"
"Nah, I think it's safe enough in the TARDIS." The Doctor pauses and adopts an even more serious expression. "And now then?" he says, utterly failing to sound anything other than very worried. She knows what he's going to say before he opens his mouth. "Do you want to... go home?"
She can't help it. It's just so easy. "Yes," she says gravely.
"Oh," he says. His voice has turned very soft. "Of course."
"Should probably tell Mum and Granddad that I'm alright, before flying off again."
A smile grows slowly on his face; Donna tries to school her features into something neutral and fails completely. She turns away instead, so he won't see her grinning like a mad woman.
The TARDIS rumbles around them as the Doctor sets a course for Chiswick.
5.
They're running again. At least this time she's in flats.
"We did it!" the Doctor whoops and flashes off a maniacal grin in her direction. "We saved them!"
Donna would answer, except she's a bit busy trying to breathe. She grabs onto his hand instead and grins back, as they run together. Sometimes Donna think that the worst part of all the trouble they always get in, all the alien prison cells she's seen the inside of and all the bloody running, is how it always makes her heart do a wild jig in her chest, almost as if… well, if she didn't know better, she'd think she actually likes it.
Sometimes she suspects she's getting to be as mad as he is.