[Doctor Who] To the Stars on a Solar Breeze
Title: To the Stars on a Solar Breeze
Author: hibernate
Characters/pairing: Donna, Addams, Rossiter (aka the Cactus People)
Wordcount: ~2100
Rating: PG/all ages
Beta: molly_diane ♥
Author's note: Because two people as snarky as Donna and the Cactus girl obviously need to meet. Spoilers for End of Time.
Summary: The jolly adventures of Donna and the Cactus people!
Also archived on Teaspoon and AO3.
There was probably a good reason why she'd sneaked past the security tape onto a crime scene, to stare at the charred remains of a giant horseshoe.
Yes. Definitely.
She'd think of it any second now.
Or maybe she'd just finally gone completely bonkers after all. Her brain certainly wasn't up to par these days. Three days earlier she'd apparently gone and passed out in the middle of the street, and if that wasn't worrying enough, in the months past she'd developed the oddest affinity for pinstripes.
Donna glanced up and wondered what had happened here. The window in the ceiling was broken, glass shards everywhere, as if someone had fallen down through it. She had the strangest feeling that she'd know, if she could just... concentrate hard enough.
"Excuse me."
Donna turned around, suddenly standing face to face with a security guard who didn't look particularly pleased to see her. "You're not allowed here," the guard said, crossing her arms over her black uniform. "This is a restricted area."
"Yeah. Sorry," Donna mumbled. "I just... took a wrong turn, I suppose." She shook her head, trying to clear her vision as she looked at the guard again. There was something odd about her. It was as if the air was sort of... shimmering around her. Donna started to feel cross-eyed as she tried to focus on it. Blonde curls were peeking out from under a red beret, yet she suddenly got an impression of... green.
"My colleague will follow you out," the security guard said, gesturing towards a tall man dressed in the same black uniform standing in the doorway. He squirmed and fiddled with his beret as if it didn't quite fit him.
"Right," he said and looked at Donna nervously, giving her an odd little wave. Obviously she'd taken a complete dive off the deep end, because he, too, looked oddly... green when she focused on him.
Right then. Next stop, the loony bin.
She turned to leave, glancing one last time over her shoulder at the Gate. For a second she could imagine how it would look when activated, lighting up in greens and blues, the air thickening with energy. "Only," she started. "If you reroute the magnetic super-field through the transverse plasma array and disconnect the bio-matrix, I think maybe this thing would..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "Never mind. Sorry."
The female security guard frowned. "What?"
"What?" Donna echoed back. She was getting a headache.
"What?" The male security guard looked between them. "That might work."
Donna rubbed her forehead for a moment. "I'm on my way then," she said. The security guards didn't look like they'd heard her. They were both moving to fiddle with the big horseshoe thing, forgetting all about her.
"Right then. Don't mind me; I know the way out."
*
Next day, Donna opened the door to find the female security guard waiting for her. No beret or uniform this time, but still in black and still with the same frown.
"You're not human," the woman said. It sounded vaguely accusatory.
"Say what now?" Donna said.
"We've scanned you so there's no need to deny it. You're like him."
"Him, who?" Donna had no idea who she was talking about, but the way the woman had said it, it didn't sounded like the kind of person you'd work really hard to not be anything at all like.
She fixed Donna with a stern gaze, aiming a threatening finger at her. "You're like him and you knew how to fix the Gate."
"Look, lady," Donna said, running out of patience. "Whatever you're selling, we're not interested."
She tried to close the door, but the woman pulled back on it. "Are you looking for money?" she said. "We can pay you. Not in Earth currency, but we've picked up a thing or two since we left Vinvoccia Prime."
"Really," Donna said, pinching the bridge of her nose, "if you'd like to start making sense, any time now would be fine."
The woman sighed. "I'm Addams. You're coming with me." She pressed on her watch and the next second the world twisted and--
*
--she was staring through a window at Earth. From space.
From space.
"Hello again," said a voice to her side. "I'm Rossiter." He gave her that same little wave as he had the day before. Although back then he'd been wearing a human face, and he was rather alarmingly green and spiky right now.
The headache that had been coming and going for the past couple of days blossomed into something quite hideously painful.
"You need to help us," the spiky, green person named Rossiter said. She probably ought to be afraid of him, but for some reason she wasn't. Possibly because the headache was draining her will to live. It might also have been because greenness and spikes notwithstanding, he still looked like he was a bit terrified of her.
"I don't..." she said, finding herself trembling. "Whatever you want, you've got the wrong person."
"But you're like him, more or less," Rossiter said. "Time Lord, he said Time Lord. It's not in our databases, but our computer scanned him while he was on our ship."
"Wrecking our ship," Addams interjected with a sneer. "Twice."
It was starting to get annoying listening to all that rubbish, and it certainly wasn't helping her headache. "You two are completely mad," she said. "What did you do to me?" She meant to start a rant about drugging and kidnapping, but the accusation died on her lips as the strangest feeling of déjà vu came over her. She leant heavily against the wall.
"Who are you talking about?" she said, surprised when it came out as little more than a whisper.
Addams sighed. "That idiot who called himself the Doctor."
Donna hardly noticed her hand slipping against the wall or landing hard on the floor. It didn't even hurt, unlike her head, which felt like it was coming apart. She felt vaguely embarrassed about spending her first meeting with real live aliens crawling about on the floor of their spaceship. Not the best first impression there, no. Except... the strangest of images where popping up inside her head, and then she suddenly had a feeling that this wasn't the first time she'd met real live aliens at all.
"What did you do to her?" Rossiter said. His voice sounded like it was coming from far away.
"Nothing!"
"Uh-oh. She's giving off some really odd energy signals."
Addams looked down at her, crossing her arms. The last thing Donna heard before she passed out was Addams reluctant muttering, "Well, do something! If her head explodes in here I'm going to get brains on the carpet."
*
Donna groaned.
It hurt, so she stopped that quickly.
Her memory was slightly fuzzy, but if the way she was feeling was any indication, she must have had a really good time the night before.
Thinking hurt too much, so she gave that up and focused on breathing for awhile instead. It was surprisingly exhausting for something she was pretty sure she'd been doing regularly for the better part of her life.
A very green, spiky shape appeared in her field of vision. Somehow she'd apparently managed to open her eyelids, which at least was a bit of progress. She tried to focus her eyes and failed miserably. The person in front of her disappeared in a green haze. Vinvocci; the word skittled across her mind, creating a tickle down her spine as vague memories started to stir.
"What did you do to me?" she mumbled, gradually gaining control over her muscles.
"We're Vinvocci," the green haze said, as if that was answer enough. She sounded like the woman who'd called herself Addams, although she'd been decidedly un-green at the time. "You were sick, we healed you."
Donna's brain whined and creaked like an old computer processor, but it was working, albeit sluggishly. The Gate. Vinvocci. Vinvoccia Prime, a planet devoted to medical science. Best healers in the Fasmora Quadrant. "I don't think you did a very good job," she said. "I feel like I've been run over by a Felucian Mountain Flattener."
"You'll feel better in a moment. Rossiter had to do quite a lot of," she gestured vaguely in the air, "rewiring."
Somehow it didn't make Donna feel better to be referred to as an old house with a faulty electrical system. But Addams was right - Donna was starting to feel better already. Not to mention her brain still seemed to be intact, which was better than she'd expected. "Thanks," she said.
"It's... what we do." Addams sounded slightly repulsed.
"Isn't that a good thing?" Donna tilted her head, which turned out to be an awful idea, because it made the room go off kilter in a rather alarming way.
"You try living on a planet full of doctors when you're really rather not that interested in any of all that... medical stuff."
A planet full of Doctors. That reminded her. "The Doctor was here?"
"He stopped by long enough to completely wreck my ship," Addams huffed.
That probably hadn't taken him very long.
"Then he got it to work again long enough to almost get all of us killed," Addams continued, "before it broke down again. Barely managed to make it back into orbit and now we're stranded on a back-end planet in the middle of nowhere."
"Oi!" Donna said. "That's my planet you're talking about."
Addams rolled her eyes. "And the quicker you can get me away from it the better. You're like him, so fix it!"
"It's not my fault!" Donna protested. "I'm nothing like the Doctor." Except the bit where she seemed to be in possession of a good chunk of his memories, but that was too complicated to explain. Either way, it was terribly unfair that she'd have to take responsibility for his actions.
"Maybe not," Addams said. "But I refuse to spend the rest of my life flattened out in a Shimmer. Can you do it?"
"Of course I can do it," Donna said. "You wouldn't by any chance have any tea first, though?"
*
"Did you really think naming a ship Hesperus was the best of choices?" Donna said. "It's a bit... doomed."
"Don't look at me. He," Addams gestured towards Rossiter, "is the one with a thing for primitive cultures."
"It was the schooner Hesperus," Rossiter recited, "that sailed the wintery--"
"Yes, I'm familiar," Donna interrupted, shooting Addams a glare. "If you want me to fix your ship, I suggest you stop insulting my planet." She proceeded to connect the final wires, giving herself a small shock in the process. "Ouch."
Addams' frown immediately switched to one of tender concern and worry. "What did you do? You didn't damage my ship, did you?"
"Thanks for your heartfelt concern for my safety," Donna muttered. "The ship's fine. Perfect, in fact. Now, hold on." She took a deep breath before shifting a lever. The ship shook and whirred as it practically jumped forward, setting off at a speed that made Donna smile proudly and pat the wall.
"Vinvoccia Prime is the other way!" Addams yelled.
Always so picky. "Oh," Donna said. "I haven't fixed the navigation yet."
"You were supposed to repair my ship and then get off it!"
Donna looked at Addams. She was very... spiky, not just physically. "But I can come, can't I? You, me, Rossiter and the universe. Imagine all the fun out there waiting for us!"
"We're going to Vinvoccia Prime," Addams said.
"Of course!" Donna paused. "We wouldn't have to go straight there."
"We're expected back."
Donna smiled. "But the navigation doesn't work. I'm sure it's going to be very hard to repair."
Addams stared at her. "Do you know how difficult it is to pilot a ship like this manually? We wouldn't have the faintest idea where we're going!"
"Oh, it's easy. You just aim where your nose is pointing. Here, let me--"
"I'll do the steering, thank you very much." Addams pushed her hands away. "I won't have you crash my ship into any stars."
As if she'd ever. She may have inherited parts of her knowledge from the Doctor, but the common sense was her own. "All right, I just need to be back on Earth in five months," she said. "I'm getting married!"
There might actually have been a tiny smile on Addams face. "The prettiest aliens are always taken."
*
A letter appeared on kitchen table in the Mott-Noble household.
Dear Gramps, Mum and Shaun,
Got my brain fixed. I'm off on a holiday with the Vinvocci for awhile.
Love,
Donna
P.S. Don't worry - I'll be back in time for the wedding.
Author: hibernate
Characters/pairing: Donna, Addams, Rossiter (aka the Cactus People)
Wordcount: ~2100
Rating: PG/all ages
Beta: molly_diane ♥
Author's note: Because two people as snarky as Donna and the Cactus girl obviously need to meet. Spoilers for End of Time.
Summary: The jolly adventures of Donna and the Cactus people!
Also archived on Teaspoon and AO3.
There was probably a good reason why she'd sneaked past the security tape onto a crime scene, to stare at the charred remains of a giant horseshoe.
Yes. Definitely.
She'd think of it any second now.
Or maybe she'd just finally gone completely bonkers after all. Her brain certainly wasn't up to par these days. Three days earlier she'd apparently gone and passed out in the middle of the street, and if that wasn't worrying enough, in the months past she'd developed the oddest affinity for pinstripes.
Donna glanced up and wondered what had happened here. The window in the ceiling was broken, glass shards everywhere, as if someone had fallen down through it. She had the strangest feeling that she'd know, if she could just... concentrate hard enough.
"Excuse me."
Donna turned around, suddenly standing face to face with a security guard who didn't look particularly pleased to see her. "You're not allowed here," the guard said, crossing her arms over her black uniform. "This is a restricted area."
"Yeah. Sorry," Donna mumbled. "I just... took a wrong turn, I suppose." She shook her head, trying to clear her vision as she looked at the guard again. There was something odd about her. It was as if the air was sort of... shimmering around her. Donna started to feel cross-eyed as she tried to focus on it. Blonde curls were peeking out from under a red beret, yet she suddenly got an impression of... green.
"My colleague will follow you out," the security guard said, gesturing towards a tall man dressed in the same black uniform standing in the doorway. He squirmed and fiddled with his beret as if it didn't quite fit him.
"Right," he said and looked at Donna nervously, giving her an odd little wave. Obviously she'd taken a complete dive off the deep end, because he, too, looked oddly... green when she focused on him.
Right then. Next stop, the loony bin.
She turned to leave, glancing one last time over her shoulder at the Gate. For a second she could imagine how it would look when activated, lighting up in greens and blues, the air thickening with energy. "Only," she started. "If you reroute the magnetic super-field through the transverse plasma array and disconnect the bio-matrix, I think maybe this thing would..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "Never mind. Sorry."
The female security guard frowned. "What?"
"What?" Donna echoed back. She was getting a headache.
"What?" The male security guard looked between them. "That might work."
Donna rubbed her forehead for a moment. "I'm on my way then," she said. The security guards didn't look like they'd heard her. They were both moving to fiddle with the big horseshoe thing, forgetting all about her.
"Right then. Don't mind me; I know the way out."
*
Next day, Donna opened the door to find the female security guard waiting for her. No beret or uniform this time, but still in black and still with the same frown.
"You're not human," the woman said. It sounded vaguely accusatory.
"Say what now?" Donna said.
"We've scanned you so there's no need to deny it. You're like him."
"Him, who?" Donna had no idea who she was talking about, but the way the woman had said it, it didn't sounded like the kind of person you'd work really hard to not be anything at all like.
She fixed Donna with a stern gaze, aiming a threatening finger at her. "You're like him and you knew how to fix the Gate."
"Look, lady," Donna said, running out of patience. "Whatever you're selling, we're not interested."
She tried to close the door, but the woman pulled back on it. "Are you looking for money?" she said. "We can pay you. Not in Earth currency, but we've picked up a thing or two since we left Vinvoccia Prime."
"Really," Donna said, pinching the bridge of her nose, "if you'd like to start making sense, any time now would be fine."
The woman sighed. "I'm Addams. You're coming with me." She pressed on her watch and the next second the world twisted and--
*
--she was staring through a window at Earth. From space.
From space.
"Hello again," said a voice to her side. "I'm Rossiter." He gave her that same little wave as he had the day before. Although back then he'd been wearing a human face, and he was rather alarmingly green and spiky right now.
The headache that had been coming and going for the past couple of days blossomed into something quite hideously painful.
"You need to help us," the spiky, green person named Rossiter said. She probably ought to be afraid of him, but for some reason she wasn't. Possibly because the headache was draining her will to live. It might also have been because greenness and spikes notwithstanding, he still looked like he was a bit terrified of her.
"I don't..." she said, finding herself trembling. "Whatever you want, you've got the wrong person."
"But you're like him, more or less," Rossiter said. "Time Lord, he said Time Lord. It's not in our databases, but our computer scanned him while he was on our ship."
"Wrecking our ship," Addams interjected with a sneer. "Twice."
It was starting to get annoying listening to all that rubbish, and it certainly wasn't helping her headache. "You two are completely mad," she said. "What did you do to me?" She meant to start a rant about drugging and kidnapping, but the accusation died on her lips as the strangest feeling of déjà vu came over her. She leant heavily against the wall.
"Who are you talking about?" she said, surprised when it came out as little more than a whisper.
Addams sighed. "That idiot who called himself the Doctor."
Donna hardly noticed her hand slipping against the wall or landing hard on the floor. It didn't even hurt, unlike her head, which felt like it was coming apart. She felt vaguely embarrassed about spending her first meeting with real live aliens crawling about on the floor of their spaceship. Not the best first impression there, no. Except... the strangest of images where popping up inside her head, and then she suddenly had a feeling that this wasn't the first time she'd met real live aliens at all.
"What did you do to her?" Rossiter said. His voice sounded like it was coming from far away.
"Nothing!"
"Uh-oh. She's giving off some really odd energy signals."
Addams looked down at her, crossing her arms. The last thing Donna heard before she passed out was Addams reluctant muttering, "Well, do something! If her head explodes in here I'm going to get brains on the carpet."
*
Donna groaned.
It hurt, so she stopped that quickly.
Her memory was slightly fuzzy, but if the way she was feeling was any indication, she must have had a really good time the night before.
Thinking hurt too much, so she gave that up and focused on breathing for awhile instead. It was surprisingly exhausting for something she was pretty sure she'd been doing regularly for the better part of her life.
A very green, spiky shape appeared in her field of vision. Somehow she'd apparently managed to open her eyelids, which at least was a bit of progress. She tried to focus her eyes and failed miserably. The person in front of her disappeared in a green haze. Vinvocci; the word skittled across her mind, creating a tickle down her spine as vague memories started to stir.
"What did you do to me?" she mumbled, gradually gaining control over her muscles.
"We're Vinvocci," the green haze said, as if that was answer enough. She sounded like the woman who'd called herself Addams, although she'd been decidedly un-green at the time. "You were sick, we healed you."
Donna's brain whined and creaked like an old computer processor, but it was working, albeit sluggishly. The Gate. Vinvocci. Vinvoccia Prime, a planet devoted to medical science. Best healers in the Fasmora Quadrant. "I don't think you did a very good job," she said. "I feel like I've been run over by a Felucian Mountain Flattener."
"You'll feel better in a moment. Rossiter had to do quite a lot of," she gestured vaguely in the air, "rewiring."
Somehow it didn't make Donna feel better to be referred to as an old house with a faulty electrical system. But Addams was right - Donna was starting to feel better already. Not to mention her brain still seemed to be intact, which was better than she'd expected. "Thanks," she said.
"It's... what we do." Addams sounded slightly repulsed.
"Isn't that a good thing?" Donna tilted her head, which turned out to be an awful idea, because it made the room go off kilter in a rather alarming way.
"You try living on a planet full of doctors when you're really rather not that interested in any of all that... medical stuff."
A planet full of Doctors. That reminded her. "The Doctor was here?"
"He stopped by long enough to completely wreck my ship," Addams huffed.
That probably hadn't taken him very long.
"Then he got it to work again long enough to almost get all of us killed," Addams continued, "before it broke down again. Barely managed to make it back into orbit and now we're stranded on a back-end planet in the middle of nowhere."
"Oi!" Donna said. "That's my planet you're talking about."
Addams rolled her eyes. "And the quicker you can get me away from it the better. You're like him, so fix it!"
"It's not my fault!" Donna protested. "I'm nothing like the Doctor." Except the bit where she seemed to be in possession of a good chunk of his memories, but that was too complicated to explain. Either way, it was terribly unfair that she'd have to take responsibility for his actions.
"Maybe not," Addams said. "But I refuse to spend the rest of my life flattened out in a Shimmer. Can you do it?"
"Of course I can do it," Donna said. "You wouldn't by any chance have any tea first, though?"
*
"Did you really think naming a ship Hesperus was the best of choices?" Donna said. "It's a bit... doomed."
"Don't look at me. He," Addams gestured towards Rossiter, "is the one with a thing for primitive cultures."
"It was the schooner Hesperus," Rossiter recited, "that sailed the wintery--"
"Yes, I'm familiar," Donna interrupted, shooting Addams a glare. "If you want me to fix your ship, I suggest you stop insulting my planet." She proceeded to connect the final wires, giving herself a small shock in the process. "Ouch."
Addams' frown immediately switched to one of tender concern and worry. "What did you do? You didn't damage my ship, did you?"
"Thanks for your heartfelt concern for my safety," Donna muttered. "The ship's fine. Perfect, in fact. Now, hold on." She took a deep breath before shifting a lever. The ship shook and whirred as it practically jumped forward, setting off at a speed that made Donna smile proudly and pat the wall.
"Vinvoccia Prime is the other way!" Addams yelled.
Always so picky. "Oh," Donna said. "I haven't fixed the navigation yet."
"You were supposed to repair my ship and then get off it!"
Donna looked at Addams. She was very... spiky, not just physically. "But I can come, can't I? You, me, Rossiter and the universe. Imagine all the fun out there waiting for us!"
"We're going to Vinvoccia Prime," Addams said.
"Of course!" Donna paused. "We wouldn't have to go straight there."
"We're expected back."
Donna smiled. "But the navigation doesn't work. I'm sure it's going to be very hard to repair."
Addams stared at her. "Do you know how difficult it is to pilot a ship like this manually? We wouldn't have the faintest idea where we're going!"
"Oh, it's easy. You just aim where your nose is pointing. Here, let me--"
"I'll do the steering, thank you very much." Addams pushed her hands away. "I won't have you crash my ship into any stars."
As if she'd ever. She may have inherited parts of her knowledge from the Doctor, but the common sense was her own. "All right, I just need to be back on Earth in five months," she said. "I'm getting married!"
There might actually have been a tiny smile on Addams face. "The prettiest aliens are always taken."
*
A letter appeared on kitchen table in the Mott-Noble household.
Dear Gramps, Mum and Shaun,
Got my brain fixed. I'm off on a holiday with the Vinvocci for awhile.
Love,
Donna
P.S. Don't worry - I'll be back in time for the wedding.