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Series 4 and 3/4 Ficisode 1: Mercury Rising
Series 4 and 3/4: Ficisode #01
Title: Mercury Rising
Writers: msqu, with dory_the_fishie
Characters: Ten, Donna, Wilf
Rating: G
Word Count: 4,392
Summary: After the events in The Library, the Doctor and Donna set course for a bit of a break back home in Chiswick. But trouble always finds the Doctor, and this time it's something that's escaped his notice for years. The Doctor will have to call on an old friend to protect Planet Earth this time.
Editor: dory_the_fishie
Director: msqu
Writer's Notes: Google is my friend, and I used it to find something close to home for the Noble family.
The sun beat down on Clarean Min as he scrubbed through the grime of the caliutrix meter, trying to get it back in proper working order. The heat of the sun was tempered by a light breeze coming through the wide open doorway of the hangar. He ignored the people walking past, though a handful of them paused to watch him. He was quite used to the mildly interested observers that visited this hangar. He knew he wasn’t working on the popular transport ship anymore, but he’d loved this ship ever since he’d come here as a child and seen his own father working on it. An early third century Rasodell Firebird, capable of speeds beyond what was traditionally manufactured today.
But now the visitors to the Mercurian Aerospace Museum came to see the gift from the planet’s new visitors, the Dellians. Clarean didn’t understand the fascination with everything Dellian, especially since they’d been a presence on Mercury for eight years now, but he was somewhat grateful that he was left to work on the Rosadell Firebird without interruption from the museum’s guests. They rarely stopped to ask questions about this old ship anymore, much more interested in the Dellian ship.
“Papi! Papi!”
Clarean whirled on the spot, grinning as he recognized the voices of his children. He had just enough time to set his tools aside before the young boy and girl launched themselves into his arms. Gathering them up, he spun them around, their delighted giggles thrilling his heart. “Hello, you two. What a pleasant surprise to have visitors two days in a row!”
“Gramps took us out again,” Bran explained, squirming out of his father’s arms, eager to stand on his own now that he was six, unlike his younger sister, who was content to remain in her father’s arms, snuggling into his neck.
Clarean looked up to see his wife’s father approaching, a large picnic basket in his hands. “Thought I’d bring you some of my famous bread freshly cooked this morning.”
He laughed. “She let you in the kitchen?”
“Oh, she doesn’t know I snuck in, she was at the inter-gallactic summit with the Dellians.”
His wife, the primary Mercurian ambassador to the Dellian government, was very protective of her own kitchen, and his father-in-law, Grorg, routinely launched an assault into that domestic realm, insisting on periodic afternoons of his own culinary delight.
“Why don’t we all sit down to eat in the sustenance bay of this old beauty?” Grorg suggested. “We came straight after it came out of the oven, so the bread’s still warm.”
Grorg and the two children rushed up the gangplank into the ship, and Clarean followed after them, but not before taking a look around the area of the hangar. He caught the eye of a Dellian sentry at the base of the nearby alien ship, but the sentry looked away. There were more Dellians in official formation around the ship today than normal, but Clarean figured it must have been due to the special announcement happening later that afternoon. Mercurian-Dellian press conferences always prompted new increased interest in everything Dellian for the Mercurian people.
The TARDIS was such a timeless thing, minutes and seconds meaning hardly anything inside of it because there was an endless stream of them, compiling together but not really going anywhere. Time was made up for so easily when you were inside of a machine that could pull you back, let you recover those minutes and seconds that passed you by. It was a simple enough concept, but something that was pointless when you couldn't make up for or recover experiences. She’d seen so many incredible things with the Doctor, but Donna knew time could not be rewritten.
The endless seconds stretched on and on, drawing out the gap that was slowly eating away at Donna's insides. She didn't know how to deal with the loss of her life in the Library. Was it really a loss when it had all been virtually simulated, made up? Could you mourn something that was never real? She wanted so much to believe that it was real, even just one small part of it.
She didn't feel she could really talk about any of this either. Not with the Doctor anyway, for he had suffered a loss during their last adventure as well. River Song - gone before he knew her, leaving him confused. She’d left so many questions unanswered, which Donna knew drove him mad. Madder than he usually was, anyway.
How long had it been, even? It felt like it had been days, but she knew it could only have been minutes since the Doctor had closed the doors of the TARDIS with a snap of his fingers. She knew it had only been minutes because neither of them had moved, yet she wasn't feeling any of the stiffness of prolonged stillness. With a sigh, she turned and went to take a seat at the navigational bench next to the console.
That seemed to stir the Doctor from his own reverie. He looked over at her, his lips pulling up in a smile - a very tired, half smile. She returned it, empathizing with him.
“I would just love a cup of tea right now, wouldn’t you?”
Donna nodded in agreement. “That sounds good. I’ll go put the kettle on, shall I?" She didn’t expect more than the non-committal murmur as she stepped out of the console room and down the hallway to the kitchen. Having spent so much time travelling with him, Donna knew the Time Lord’s aim with that suggestion. He needed just a moment alone, and she didn’t blame him.
“Things are really starting to come to life in here, aren’t they?” Grorg asked, flipping a myriad of switches on the navigation console.
“Not long before I reckon she could actually fly again.” The ship was humming to life, lights blinking on around them inside of the cockpit.
Little Zea was sound asleep down the corridor in the communal bay. In the next room over, Bran was watching a children’s program on the communications boards. One of the screens on the navigation console was linked to Bran’s feeds, and so Grorg and Clarean saw when the Mercurian-Dellian press conference cut in, interrupting the program.
”For the past eight years, our two species, Dellian and Mercurian, have existed together on this planet…”
“I’ll go see about finding something else for Bran on the entertainment box,” Grorg said, quickly jumping up out of his seat and dashing into the communications room.
Clarean followed right after him. “Oh, no need to change it - no harm done if Bran is interested. See, Bran,” he said as they came into the room, “there’s your mum.”
“I see her!” The young boy bounced in his chair, delighted at the scene before him.
“It’s good for him to see things like this, good for him to see what’s happening in the world.”
There was no response from his father-in-law, and Clarean looked around the room to see Grorg had already headed off again. He poked his head around the corner and saw the older man running down the gangplank of the ship.
Grorg rushed up to the nearest crowd of Mercurians watching the broadcast on a large entertainment box that had been provided in the hangar for the day. “Hey, who here would like to see this Rasodell Firebird that’s been restored?”
A few of the Mercurians nearby grumbled and shushed him. The Dellian sentry from earlier regarded him with interest.
He had to make sure he didn’t arouse suspicion. It was difficult to quell the desire to just shout at the Mercurians around him. But he had to do try to persuade them or else they were all lost. “The ship has a fully functioning communications room with a very interesting set of entertainment boxes. “
More grumbling and shushing. Grorg caught his son-in-law looking at him from the mouth of the ship, confusion on his face, plain as day. “Maybe another time then.” Grorg rushed back into the ship, looking at the timepiece on his wrist, though he didn’t need to, and it didn’t change the pressing direness of the situation that was about to reveal itself to the rest of Mercury.
“I thought you wanted me to turn the press conference off for Bran,” Clarean said, following the older man down the corridor.
“I do. I was lying to them. We need to turn it off now.”
“But he wants to watch his mum.”
Back in the communications room, Grorg spun Bran’s chair around. “Will you go check on your sister for us?”
Bran had grown more detached from the broadcast, but he wasn’t ready and willing. “Gramps!” he protested.
“Well, don’t you want any of the biscuits I packed as a treat? We can’t eat them while Zea’s still asleep.”
“Fine,” he huffed.
“But stay in the communal bay. Your father and I will bring the cookies in to you.”
“Okay, okay,” Bran said, slipping off the edge of the chair and then heading out of the room to wake his sister.
Grorg muted the sound coming from the entertainment box and flipped the radio communications on.
“What’s going on, Grorg?” Clarean asked the moment his son was out of earshot.
Grorg was turning into a frequency on the fourth level, a level rarely used because of its substandard broadcast capabilities in relation to the newer levels that had been developed. “Let’s take this thing for a test spin.”
“It’s - " he sputtered, “it’s not ready, and this - it’s hardly the time.”
“I think you’ll find that it IS ready. That’s why I was here yesterday.”
“Wait, what? What’s going on?”
As the radio frequency finally became clear, Clarean could hear a rush of voices, all communicating in panicked tones. “There’s no time to explain. You need to trust me, and you need to take her up now.”
Clarean was rooted to the spot, his eyes having landed on the entertainment box and the press conference again. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“Right now, Clarean! Do it!”
Donna made her tea and drank alone. She’d pulled another cup out of the cupboard for the Doctor, but once she heard clanging drifting down the corridor from the console room, she knew it would be a good while before the Doctor would take a break for tea. After taking a few minutes to freshen up and get a change of clothes in her room, Donna made another cup of tea and brought it back to the Doctor.
She found him right where she’d left him. Instead of being lost somewhere in the belly of the TARDIS, the Doctor was at the top of the ramp, staring straight at the doors. She watched as, every few seconds, he would snap his fingers, opening and closing the doors of his time machine. Donna wondered if this was because he was still thinking about River Song - she was certainly still thinking about Lee - or purely fascination with his new discovery.
Then all of a sudden the Doctor spun around, bright grin on his face, and rushed at her to take the cup of tea. “It only took you long enough.”
“Sorry, spaceman. Next time you want tea faster than I’m bringing it, you can make it yourself.”
“I wasn’t exactly complaining; it gave me a chance to recalibrate the dematerialization circuit.” He quickly gulped down the hot drink, and then hissed and shook his head. “Nothing like a hot cuppa to infuse the life right back into a Time Lord. Did I ever tell you about the Sycorax?”
“Naw, you didn’t.”
“Well, ended up saving the world from enslavement. With a sword. And a satsuma.” He looked like he was going to say more, but decided against it. The Doctor took two steps and was at the console, flipping levers and releasing the brake. "You know where I'd really like to go right about now?"
"Where?" she asked.
"Chiswick."
Maybe he really did, maybe he didn’t. Donna nodded and smiled. "Yeah, me, too."
The Doctor parked the TARDIS up on the hill where her grandfather looked out at the stars, but as it was only late morning, her grandfather wasn’t there. Donna imagined the Doctor chose the out of the way parking choice so as to perhaps avoid necessarily running into her mum. Donna didn’t really blame him.
As they walked down the path to the house, Donna took in a few deep breaths of air, drinking it in. She let out a nice, relaxed sigh. “I think I’m starting to get how you can just step out onto a planet and know when and where we are. I mean, obviously your spaceman nose has some excessive quirk, but this really does just smell like home to me.”
“Excessive quirk? Just because your nose isn’t as biologically advanced as this Time Lord beauty,” he said, pointing to his own nose, “doesn’t mean my nose is quirky. Yours is just lackluster; downfall to being human.”
Donna was just opening her mouth to argue, when the sound of Wilfred Mott’s jolly voice met their ears. He was leaning out of an upstairs window, waving excitedly at them and welcoming them back. As Donna and the Doctor approached the house, they saw Wilf's face leave the window, and a minute later, he was emerging from the back door, still waving and smiling as always.
"Doctor!" he exclaimed, as the gap between the three of them closed.
"Oy," said Donna with feigned offense. "Not excited to see me?"
"Oh, of course I am, Donna dear, but it's the Doctor!"
"Yeah, all right," Donna allowed, and the Doctor only smiled.
"Good to see you, Wilf," greeted the Doctor. "Spotted any aliens lately?"
The old man's features crinkled in delight. "Got one right here, haven't I?"
The Doctor gave a little shrug and a half-smile, and his eyes peered around Wilf to the door he'd come out of.
Wilf saw this. "Sylvia's not in, if that's what you're wondering. She's round at the neighbor's, and just as well. We can catch up properly." And he turned his back on them and went inside. The Doctor and Donna followed him into the modest kitchen, where a kettle was already on the stove. They took seats at the table, and Wilf joined them. Before either of them could say anything, Wilf had begun speaking.
"Now," he said, his eyes alight with excitement. "What should we do while you're here? Chiswick's got nothing on those planets of yours, but there's a fair bit to do. I was thinking--"
"Ah, Gramps, can't we just relax a little?" Donna might not normally have implored her granddad for quiet time, but the recent events of the library were still weighing on her mind. She fancied a nice cup of a tea, and a nap, maybe...
"No, absolutely not!" protested Wilf, as the Doctor merely looked on in amusement. "You two spend all your time doing stuff I only dream of, and you want to stop as soon as I'm in the picture?"
"It's just--" began Donna, but she was cut off by the Doctor.
"What're you planning, Wilf?" He glanced at Donna with that twinkle in his eye, and she knew this was a lost cause.
"Well," said Wilf, getting up to attend the kettle, which had just whistled, "we've got plenty of local attractions. You know how it is, when you live in a place but you never see what's near you?"
"Mm," agreed the Doctor, and Donna thought she detected some deeper meaning, some reference to that far-gone home of his, but whatever it was stayed buried beneath the persistent twinkling of his eyes and the smile that appeared to cover any unpleasantness.
"So I was thinking," continued Wilf as he set three cups of tea down on the table, "we could visit Leighton House. You know Leighton House, Donna?"
"Not really," she said, taking a sip of tea.
"See what I mean?" said Wilf. "It's right in our backyard and we've never visited! Supposed to be an excellent little museum. What do you say, Doctor?" He fixed his eyes on the Doctor, who set down his teacup.
"I think it sounds wonderful, Wilf," he said, and Wilf grinned.
Without any agreement from Donna, Wilf and the Doctor rose from the table, clearly intent on this plan. They were halfway out the door when Donna interrupted them.
"Oh, come on," she said, also getting up, though only to match them. "We've got a time machine, remember? That's right in our backyard. We could just visit his house, right, with him still in it?"
But the two men continued their way to the car, and Donna was forced to follow. "Oy!" she called, but she was met with two slams of two car doors, and then two pairs of eyes staring at her from behind the windshield. She walked over to the driver's side, and Wilf rolled down the window.
"Come along, Donna dear," he said, indicating the backseat.
"Wait just one minute, won't you? Doctor, surely you've already seen Leighton's house?"
The Doctor shook his head. "Can't say I have. Met him once at a dinner party. Not a terribly interesting man, I'm afraid, but his house -- supposed to be brilliant."
Donna allowed herself the indulgence of dropping her head back in submission, then climbed into the car.
They were off. They zoomed right along, with little traffic to hinder them. Donna observed every bit of Chiswick that passed her by; as much as she loved her adventures with the Doctor, there was something to be said about home. She had missed it, plain as that. And she may have objected at first, but she liked the idea of visiting a piece of history that was her own.
Not twenty minutes later, they were pulling into a tight parking space at the Leighton House and then making their ways up the path to the entrance.
"Brilliant!" exclaimed the Doctor, charging forward into the house. "Like I said, I met ol' Frederic a while back, but this..." He trailed off.
The three began exploring the rooms filled with the artwork of Frederic Leighton. They had opted for the self-guided tour, which Donna had insisted upon, knowing her friend wouldn’t have been able to let one of the trained guides do their job. And she was right. The Doctor was able to tell them quite a bit, and took more than one opportunity to tell them the real story behind various paintings or sculptures.
“The pride of Leighton’s own collection, though, were the tiles he collected from the Middle East, which we’ll see in the Arab Hall.”
“How many tiles are we talking?” Donna asked.
“Oh, just wait and see.”
“Seriously, he collected tiles?”
The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck in the way he always did when he was about to say something that maybe he didn’t need to say. “This is why we’re visiting his house without him actually in it. Like I said, met him before, he was a nice enough chap, but sometimes he was the epitome of a tile collector.”
"You know who I've always wanted to meet?" put in Wilf, walking alongside Donna. "Amelia Earhart."
“So’ve I,” the Doctor agreed, spinning around to walk backwards to engage in the topic. “Wouldn’t that be terrific? There’s a woman worth meeting. She started off really only mediocre, but she worked at what she wanted to do, she made mistakes along the way, but she stuck to it. Perseverance. Oh, you humans are wonderful that way. I bet Amelia Earhart would be charming. Don’t you think she'd be charming? ”
“I think she would - she always seemed that way in the newsreels,” Wilf agreed.
“Hang on, Doctor,” Donna interrupted, stopping in her tracks and cocking her head to the side. “You’re telling me that you’ve always wanted to meet Amelia Earhart, just like my gramps, and you can travel through all of time and space, but you just haven’t met her?”
“Well, no,” he replied simply with a shrug of his shoulders. “You know me - like to set the TARDIS navigation on random. How boring would my life be if I just went everywhere I wanted all the time? Get everything done I thought I wanted to do and then I’d just be left twiddling my thumbs, nothing to look forward to. It’d be like opening all the presents before Christmas. But traveling at random, I make so many more discoveries on the way, but I still have things to anticipate. New worlds that I hadn’t anticipated, all sorts of adven - hang on. This isn’t right.”
“Well, there’s a surprise,” Donna said, rolling her eyes. This was yet another thing the Doctor had pointed out as an inaccuracy over the past hour.
“You know where we really ought to go sometime? The Delirium Archive. It’s the largest museum in the galaxy.”
“What, so you can point out even more things that they didn’t get right? I swear, one of these days, your head will absolutely not fit through the doors of the TARDIS, bigger on the inside or not. And stop sonicing things in here! You’re going to get us in trouble or just annoy the other patrons.”
The Doctor didn’t spare more than half a glance to verify that they were the only ones in that hall of the museum at the moment. It wasn’t a terribly busy day in the museum, and they’d had the luxury of privacy for the majority of their time wandering around.
“But what would you need one ‘largest museum in the galaxy’ for anyway?” Wilf asked, cutting over his granddaughter’s nagging. “Seems a bit superfluous. No one ever sees everything in the museum when they go through, anyway. That’s the treat about being able to come back again and again to a small museum. You become familiar with it all, but you still find a surprise now and then.”
“I suppose you’ve got a fair point,” the Doctor said with a nod.
“I suppose you traveling anytime and anywhere in that blue box of yours is kind of like walking around in the largest museum, if you think about it.”
“Exactly! Which is why I keep her on random.” With a flourish, the Doctor stowed away his sonic screwdriver. None of them noticed the camera mounted on the ceiling in the corner of the room, or the way that it moved just slightly to the left to capture their movements. “But something isn’t right here.”
“We know, we know. You keep pointing out the historical inaccuracies in the paintings.”
“Besides that,” the Doctor said, tilting his head sideways. “There’s something else. The sonic is receiving this little pulse of transmission. It’s alien, but it’s very close by. We should probably check it out later this evening.”
“A real, proper, alien investigation?” Wilf asked.
“Oh, I think so,” the Doctor said, grinning widely at Wilf. “Looks like you’ll be getting even more of an adventure than you thought.”
There was a dull thump on the floor and then a loud hissing noise.
All three of them spun around to find the room quickly filling with a red smoke.
“Cover your mouths!” the Doctor shouted. “Come this way!” He turned to make their way back out the way they’d come, but there was another thud, and more smoke appeared blocking that doorway.
Donna rushed to one of the windows, but couldn’t budge the latch. She was starting to feel very faint, but she still managed to bark at the Doctor, “Come sonic this!” Even though he was only a second behind her and already on the job.
Another thud, but this time accompanied by a small groan. The Doctor and Donna turned to see Wilfred lying on the floor. Donna rushed over to him.
“No, Donna!” the Doctor cried. The room was filling so quickly with the gas that he could no longer see the doorways on either side of the gallery, let alone the other side of the room, and Donna had dropped the handkerchief to cradle her grandfather’s limp form.
The Doctor looked around at what he could still see, searching for anything he could use to smash the window and let in some air. He spotted a large bust on a pedestal. “Aha!”
He rushed over to fetch it, only to hear Donna drop behind him. The bust was heavy, but the Doctor didn’t even have a chance to lift it off its display mount before everything turned black.
As he woke up, the Doctor was aware of two things: very bright sunlight, and an incredible thirst. He blinked, bleary eyed and disoriented. He coughed, and as his eyes adjusted to the bright afternoon sun, he looked around the room. “Where are my friends?”
“It’s really not them you should be worrying about.”
The Doctor sat up on the table on which his captors had deposited him, surprised for a moment to find that he hadn’t been restrained in any manner. But the surprise didn’t distract him. “I’m already very not happy to find that they’re not here, so don’t play games with me. I’ll ask you again, where are my friends?”
“Are you aware of the situation you’re in, sir,” the man said. He was perched on the end of a large wooden desk, studying the Doctor from only meters away. “Who are you?”
The Doctor swung his legs off the table and strode over to the man, but after only two steps, he was knocked backwards. He put his hand out, finding he was behind an invisible force field. “You’re not human.”
“Neither are you,” the man said. “But I’m sure you must be quite parched after the sleeping gas. There’s water on the table behind you.”
The Doctor glared at the man. “Tell me where my friends are.”
“Tell me who you are.”
“I’m the Doctor.”
“Right. Well, I don’t use my true name anymore either. I’m Clarence Minor, and I’m the administrator of Leighton House; but I used to be Clarean Min, aerospace restoration architect of Mercury.”
“Hang on, you’re Mercurian? How’s that possible?” the Doctor asked. “The Mercurians died out more than twenty years ago.”
“Twenty-two, to be precise, and we didn’t die out. We were exterminated.”
TO BE CONTINUED
Title: Mercury Rising
Writers: msqu, with dory_the_fishie
Characters: Ten, Donna, Wilf
Rating: G
Word Count: 4,392
Summary: After the events in The Library, the Doctor and Donna set course for a bit of a break back home in Chiswick. But trouble always finds the Doctor, and this time it's something that's escaped his notice for years. The Doctor will have to call on an old friend to protect Planet Earth this time.
Editor: dory_the_fishie
Director: msqu
Writer's Notes: Google is my friend, and I used it to find something close to home for the Noble family.
The sun beat down on Clarean Min as he scrubbed through the grime of the caliutrix meter, trying to get it back in proper working order. The heat of the sun was tempered by a light breeze coming through the wide open doorway of the hangar. He ignored the people walking past, though a handful of them paused to watch him. He was quite used to the mildly interested observers that visited this hangar. He knew he wasn’t working on the popular transport ship anymore, but he’d loved this ship ever since he’d come here as a child and seen his own father working on it. An early third century Rasodell Firebird, capable of speeds beyond what was traditionally manufactured today.
But now the visitors to the Mercurian Aerospace Museum came to see the gift from the planet’s new visitors, the Dellians. Clarean didn’t understand the fascination with everything Dellian, especially since they’d been a presence on Mercury for eight years now, but he was somewhat grateful that he was left to work on the Rosadell Firebird without interruption from the museum’s guests. They rarely stopped to ask questions about this old ship anymore, much more interested in the Dellian ship.
“Papi! Papi!”
Clarean whirled on the spot, grinning as he recognized the voices of his children. He had just enough time to set his tools aside before the young boy and girl launched themselves into his arms. Gathering them up, he spun them around, their delighted giggles thrilling his heart. “Hello, you two. What a pleasant surprise to have visitors two days in a row!”
“Gramps took us out again,” Bran explained, squirming out of his father’s arms, eager to stand on his own now that he was six, unlike his younger sister, who was content to remain in her father’s arms, snuggling into his neck.
Clarean looked up to see his wife’s father approaching, a large picnic basket in his hands. “Thought I’d bring you some of my famous bread freshly cooked this morning.”
He laughed. “She let you in the kitchen?”
“Oh, she doesn’t know I snuck in, she was at the inter-gallactic summit with the Dellians.”
His wife, the primary Mercurian ambassador to the Dellian government, was very protective of her own kitchen, and his father-in-law, Grorg, routinely launched an assault into that domestic realm, insisting on periodic afternoons of his own culinary delight.
“Why don’t we all sit down to eat in the sustenance bay of this old beauty?” Grorg suggested. “We came straight after it came out of the oven, so the bread’s still warm.”
Grorg and the two children rushed up the gangplank into the ship, and Clarean followed after them, but not before taking a look around the area of the hangar. He caught the eye of a Dellian sentry at the base of the nearby alien ship, but the sentry looked away. There were more Dellians in official formation around the ship today than normal, but Clarean figured it must have been due to the special announcement happening later that afternoon. Mercurian-Dellian press conferences always prompted new increased interest in everything Dellian for the Mercurian people.
The TARDIS was such a timeless thing, minutes and seconds meaning hardly anything inside of it because there was an endless stream of them, compiling together but not really going anywhere. Time was made up for so easily when you were inside of a machine that could pull you back, let you recover those minutes and seconds that passed you by. It was a simple enough concept, but something that was pointless when you couldn't make up for or recover experiences. She’d seen so many incredible things with the Doctor, but Donna knew time could not be rewritten.
The endless seconds stretched on and on, drawing out the gap that was slowly eating away at Donna's insides. She didn't know how to deal with the loss of her life in the Library. Was it really a loss when it had all been virtually simulated, made up? Could you mourn something that was never real? She wanted so much to believe that it was real, even just one small part of it.
She didn't feel she could really talk about any of this either. Not with the Doctor anyway, for he had suffered a loss during their last adventure as well. River Song - gone before he knew her, leaving him confused. She’d left so many questions unanswered, which Donna knew drove him mad. Madder than he usually was, anyway.
How long had it been, even? It felt like it had been days, but she knew it could only have been minutes since the Doctor had closed the doors of the TARDIS with a snap of his fingers. She knew it had only been minutes because neither of them had moved, yet she wasn't feeling any of the stiffness of prolonged stillness. With a sigh, she turned and went to take a seat at the navigational bench next to the console.
That seemed to stir the Doctor from his own reverie. He looked over at her, his lips pulling up in a smile - a very tired, half smile. She returned it, empathizing with him.
“I would just love a cup of tea right now, wouldn’t you?”
Donna nodded in agreement. “That sounds good. I’ll go put the kettle on, shall I?" She didn’t expect more than the non-committal murmur as she stepped out of the console room and down the hallway to the kitchen. Having spent so much time travelling with him, Donna knew the Time Lord’s aim with that suggestion. He needed just a moment alone, and she didn’t blame him.
“Things are really starting to come to life in here, aren’t they?” Grorg asked, flipping a myriad of switches on the navigation console.
“Not long before I reckon she could actually fly again.” The ship was humming to life, lights blinking on around them inside of the cockpit.
Little Zea was sound asleep down the corridor in the communal bay. In the next room over, Bran was watching a children’s program on the communications boards. One of the screens on the navigation console was linked to Bran’s feeds, and so Grorg and Clarean saw when the Mercurian-Dellian press conference cut in, interrupting the program.
”For the past eight years, our two species, Dellian and Mercurian, have existed together on this planet…”
“I’ll go see about finding something else for Bran on the entertainment box,” Grorg said, quickly jumping up out of his seat and dashing into the communications room.
Clarean followed right after him. “Oh, no need to change it - no harm done if Bran is interested. See, Bran,” he said as they came into the room, “there’s your mum.”
“I see her!” The young boy bounced in his chair, delighted at the scene before him.
“It’s good for him to see things like this, good for him to see what’s happening in the world.”
There was no response from his father-in-law, and Clarean looked around the room to see Grorg had already headed off again. He poked his head around the corner and saw the older man running down the gangplank of the ship.
Grorg rushed up to the nearest crowd of Mercurians watching the broadcast on a large entertainment box that had been provided in the hangar for the day. “Hey, who here would like to see this Rasodell Firebird that’s been restored?”
A few of the Mercurians nearby grumbled and shushed him. The Dellian sentry from earlier regarded him with interest.
He had to make sure he didn’t arouse suspicion. It was difficult to quell the desire to just shout at the Mercurians around him. But he had to do try to persuade them or else they were all lost. “The ship has a fully functioning communications room with a very interesting set of entertainment boxes. “
More grumbling and shushing. Grorg caught his son-in-law looking at him from the mouth of the ship, confusion on his face, plain as day. “Maybe another time then.” Grorg rushed back into the ship, looking at the timepiece on his wrist, though he didn’t need to, and it didn’t change the pressing direness of the situation that was about to reveal itself to the rest of Mercury.
“I thought you wanted me to turn the press conference off for Bran,” Clarean said, following the older man down the corridor.
“I do. I was lying to them. We need to turn it off now.”
“But he wants to watch his mum.”
Back in the communications room, Grorg spun Bran’s chair around. “Will you go check on your sister for us?”
Bran had grown more detached from the broadcast, but he wasn’t ready and willing. “Gramps!” he protested.
“Well, don’t you want any of the biscuits I packed as a treat? We can’t eat them while Zea’s still asleep.”
“Fine,” he huffed.
“But stay in the communal bay. Your father and I will bring the cookies in to you.”
“Okay, okay,” Bran said, slipping off the edge of the chair and then heading out of the room to wake his sister.
Grorg muted the sound coming from the entertainment box and flipped the radio communications on.
“What’s going on, Grorg?” Clarean asked the moment his son was out of earshot.
Grorg was turning into a frequency on the fourth level, a level rarely used because of its substandard broadcast capabilities in relation to the newer levels that had been developed. “Let’s take this thing for a test spin.”
“It’s - " he sputtered, “it’s not ready, and this - it’s hardly the time.”
“I think you’ll find that it IS ready. That’s why I was here yesterday.”
“Wait, what? What’s going on?”
As the radio frequency finally became clear, Clarean could hear a rush of voices, all communicating in panicked tones. “There’s no time to explain. You need to trust me, and you need to take her up now.”
Clarean was rooted to the spot, his eyes having landed on the entertainment box and the press conference again. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“Right now, Clarean! Do it!”
Donna made her tea and drank alone. She’d pulled another cup out of the cupboard for the Doctor, but once she heard clanging drifting down the corridor from the console room, she knew it would be a good while before the Doctor would take a break for tea. After taking a few minutes to freshen up and get a change of clothes in her room, Donna made another cup of tea and brought it back to the Doctor.
She found him right where she’d left him. Instead of being lost somewhere in the belly of the TARDIS, the Doctor was at the top of the ramp, staring straight at the doors. She watched as, every few seconds, he would snap his fingers, opening and closing the doors of his time machine. Donna wondered if this was because he was still thinking about River Song - she was certainly still thinking about Lee - or purely fascination with his new discovery.
Then all of a sudden the Doctor spun around, bright grin on his face, and rushed at her to take the cup of tea. “It only took you long enough.”
“Sorry, spaceman. Next time you want tea faster than I’m bringing it, you can make it yourself.”
“I wasn’t exactly complaining; it gave me a chance to recalibrate the dematerialization circuit.” He quickly gulped down the hot drink, and then hissed and shook his head. “Nothing like a hot cuppa to infuse the life right back into a Time Lord. Did I ever tell you about the Sycorax?”
“Naw, you didn’t.”
“Well, ended up saving the world from enslavement. With a sword. And a satsuma.” He looked like he was going to say more, but decided against it. The Doctor took two steps and was at the console, flipping levers and releasing the brake. "You know where I'd really like to go right about now?"
"Where?" she asked.
"Chiswick."
Maybe he really did, maybe he didn’t. Donna nodded and smiled. "Yeah, me, too."
The Doctor parked the TARDIS up on the hill where her grandfather looked out at the stars, but as it was only late morning, her grandfather wasn’t there. Donna imagined the Doctor chose the out of the way parking choice so as to perhaps avoid necessarily running into her mum. Donna didn’t really blame him.
As they walked down the path to the house, Donna took in a few deep breaths of air, drinking it in. She let out a nice, relaxed sigh. “I think I’m starting to get how you can just step out onto a planet and know when and where we are. I mean, obviously your spaceman nose has some excessive quirk, but this really does just smell like home to me.”
“Excessive quirk? Just because your nose isn’t as biologically advanced as this Time Lord beauty,” he said, pointing to his own nose, “doesn’t mean my nose is quirky. Yours is just lackluster; downfall to being human.”
Donna was just opening her mouth to argue, when the sound of Wilfred Mott’s jolly voice met their ears. He was leaning out of an upstairs window, waving excitedly at them and welcoming them back. As Donna and the Doctor approached the house, they saw Wilf's face leave the window, and a minute later, he was emerging from the back door, still waving and smiling as always.
"Doctor!" he exclaimed, as the gap between the three of them closed.
"Oy," said Donna with feigned offense. "Not excited to see me?"
"Oh, of course I am, Donna dear, but it's the Doctor!"
"Yeah, all right," Donna allowed, and the Doctor only smiled.
"Good to see you, Wilf," greeted the Doctor. "Spotted any aliens lately?"
The old man's features crinkled in delight. "Got one right here, haven't I?"
The Doctor gave a little shrug and a half-smile, and his eyes peered around Wilf to the door he'd come out of.
Wilf saw this. "Sylvia's not in, if that's what you're wondering. She's round at the neighbor's, and just as well. We can catch up properly." And he turned his back on them and went inside. The Doctor and Donna followed him into the modest kitchen, where a kettle was already on the stove. They took seats at the table, and Wilf joined them. Before either of them could say anything, Wilf had begun speaking.
"Now," he said, his eyes alight with excitement. "What should we do while you're here? Chiswick's got nothing on those planets of yours, but there's a fair bit to do. I was thinking--"
"Ah, Gramps, can't we just relax a little?" Donna might not normally have implored her granddad for quiet time, but the recent events of the library were still weighing on her mind. She fancied a nice cup of a tea, and a nap, maybe...
"No, absolutely not!" protested Wilf, as the Doctor merely looked on in amusement. "You two spend all your time doing stuff I only dream of, and you want to stop as soon as I'm in the picture?"
"It's just--" began Donna, but she was cut off by the Doctor.
"What're you planning, Wilf?" He glanced at Donna with that twinkle in his eye, and she knew this was a lost cause.
"Well," said Wilf, getting up to attend the kettle, which had just whistled, "we've got plenty of local attractions. You know how it is, when you live in a place but you never see what's near you?"
"Mm," agreed the Doctor, and Donna thought she detected some deeper meaning, some reference to that far-gone home of his, but whatever it was stayed buried beneath the persistent twinkling of his eyes and the smile that appeared to cover any unpleasantness.
"So I was thinking," continued Wilf as he set three cups of tea down on the table, "we could visit Leighton House. You know Leighton House, Donna?"
"Not really," she said, taking a sip of tea.
"See what I mean?" said Wilf. "It's right in our backyard and we've never visited! Supposed to be an excellent little museum. What do you say, Doctor?" He fixed his eyes on the Doctor, who set down his teacup.
"I think it sounds wonderful, Wilf," he said, and Wilf grinned.
Without any agreement from Donna, Wilf and the Doctor rose from the table, clearly intent on this plan. They were halfway out the door when Donna interrupted them.
"Oh, come on," she said, also getting up, though only to match them. "We've got a time machine, remember? That's right in our backyard. We could just visit his house, right, with him still in it?"
But the two men continued their way to the car, and Donna was forced to follow. "Oy!" she called, but she was met with two slams of two car doors, and then two pairs of eyes staring at her from behind the windshield. She walked over to the driver's side, and Wilf rolled down the window.
"Come along, Donna dear," he said, indicating the backseat.
"Wait just one minute, won't you? Doctor, surely you've already seen Leighton's house?"
The Doctor shook his head. "Can't say I have. Met him once at a dinner party. Not a terribly interesting man, I'm afraid, but his house -- supposed to be brilliant."
Donna allowed herself the indulgence of dropping her head back in submission, then climbed into the car.
They were off. They zoomed right along, with little traffic to hinder them. Donna observed every bit of Chiswick that passed her by; as much as she loved her adventures with the Doctor, there was something to be said about home. She had missed it, plain as that. And she may have objected at first, but she liked the idea of visiting a piece of history that was her own.
Not twenty minutes later, they were pulling into a tight parking space at the Leighton House and then making their ways up the path to the entrance.
"Brilliant!" exclaimed the Doctor, charging forward into the house. "Like I said, I met ol' Frederic a while back, but this..." He trailed off.
The three began exploring the rooms filled with the artwork of Frederic Leighton. They had opted for the self-guided tour, which Donna had insisted upon, knowing her friend wouldn’t have been able to let one of the trained guides do their job. And she was right. The Doctor was able to tell them quite a bit, and took more than one opportunity to tell them the real story behind various paintings or sculptures.
“The pride of Leighton’s own collection, though, were the tiles he collected from the Middle East, which we’ll see in the Arab Hall.”
“How many tiles are we talking?” Donna asked.
“Oh, just wait and see.”
“Seriously, he collected tiles?”
The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck in the way he always did when he was about to say something that maybe he didn’t need to say. “This is why we’re visiting his house without him actually in it. Like I said, met him before, he was a nice enough chap, but sometimes he was the epitome of a tile collector.”
"You know who I've always wanted to meet?" put in Wilf, walking alongside Donna. "Amelia Earhart."
“So’ve I,” the Doctor agreed, spinning around to walk backwards to engage in the topic. “Wouldn’t that be terrific? There’s a woman worth meeting. She started off really only mediocre, but she worked at what she wanted to do, she made mistakes along the way, but she stuck to it. Perseverance. Oh, you humans are wonderful that way. I bet Amelia Earhart would be charming. Don’t you think she'd be charming? ”
“I think she would - she always seemed that way in the newsreels,” Wilf agreed.
“Hang on, Doctor,” Donna interrupted, stopping in her tracks and cocking her head to the side. “You’re telling me that you’ve always wanted to meet Amelia Earhart, just like my gramps, and you can travel through all of time and space, but you just haven’t met her?”
“Well, no,” he replied simply with a shrug of his shoulders. “You know me - like to set the TARDIS navigation on random. How boring would my life be if I just went everywhere I wanted all the time? Get everything done I thought I wanted to do and then I’d just be left twiddling my thumbs, nothing to look forward to. It’d be like opening all the presents before Christmas. But traveling at random, I make so many more discoveries on the way, but I still have things to anticipate. New worlds that I hadn’t anticipated, all sorts of adven - hang on. This isn’t right.”
“Well, there’s a surprise,” Donna said, rolling her eyes. This was yet another thing the Doctor had pointed out as an inaccuracy over the past hour.
“You know where we really ought to go sometime? The Delirium Archive. It’s the largest museum in the galaxy.”
“What, so you can point out even more things that they didn’t get right? I swear, one of these days, your head will absolutely not fit through the doors of the TARDIS, bigger on the inside or not. And stop sonicing things in here! You’re going to get us in trouble or just annoy the other patrons.”
The Doctor didn’t spare more than half a glance to verify that they were the only ones in that hall of the museum at the moment. It wasn’t a terribly busy day in the museum, and they’d had the luxury of privacy for the majority of their time wandering around.
“But what would you need one ‘largest museum in the galaxy’ for anyway?” Wilf asked, cutting over his granddaughter’s nagging. “Seems a bit superfluous. No one ever sees everything in the museum when they go through, anyway. That’s the treat about being able to come back again and again to a small museum. You become familiar with it all, but you still find a surprise now and then.”
“I suppose you’ve got a fair point,” the Doctor said with a nod.
“I suppose you traveling anytime and anywhere in that blue box of yours is kind of like walking around in the largest museum, if you think about it.”
“Exactly! Which is why I keep her on random.” With a flourish, the Doctor stowed away his sonic screwdriver. None of them noticed the camera mounted on the ceiling in the corner of the room, or the way that it moved just slightly to the left to capture their movements. “But something isn’t right here.”
“We know, we know. You keep pointing out the historical inaccuracies in the paintings.”
“Besides that,” the Doctor said, tilting his head sideways. “There’s something else. The sonic is receiving this little pulse of transmission. It’s alien, but it’s very close by. We should probably check it out later this evening.”
“A real, proper, alien investigation?” Wilf asked.
“Oh, I think so,” the Doctor said, grinning widely at Wilf. “Looks like you’ll be getting even more of an adventure than you thought.”
There was a dull thump on the floor and then a loud hissing noise.
All three of them spun around to find the room quickly filling with a red smoke.
“Cover your mouths!” the Doctor shouted. “Come this way!” He turned to make their way back out the way they’d come, but there was another thud, and more smoke appeared blocking that doorway.
Donna rushed to one of the windows, but couldn’t budge the latch. She was starting to feel very faint, but she still managed to bark at the Doctor, “Come sonic this!” Even though he was only a second behind her and already on the job.
Another thud, but this time accompanied by a small groan. The Doctor and Donna turned to see Wilfred lying on the floor. Donna rushed over to him.
“No, Donna!” the Doctor cried. The room was filling so quickly with the gas that he could no longer see the doorways on either side of the gallery, let alone the other side of the room, and Donna had dropped the handkerchief to cradle her grandfather’s limp form.
The Doctor looked around at what he could still see, searching for anything he could use to smash the window and let in some air. He spotted a large bust on a pedestal. “Aha!”
He rushed over to fetch it, only to hear Donna drop behind him. The bust was heavy, but the Doctor didn’t even have a chance to lift it off its display mount before everything turned black.
As he woke up, the Doctor was aware of two things: very bright sunlight, and an incredible thirst. He blinked, bleary eyed and disoriented. He coughed, and as his eyes adjusted to the bright afternoon sun, he looked around the room. “Where are my friends?”
“It’s really not them you should be worrying about.”
The Doctor sat up on the table on which his captors had deposited him, surprised for a moment to find that he hadn’t been restrained in any manner. But the surprise didn’t distract him. “I’m already very not happy to find that they’re not here, so don’t play games with me. I’ll ask you again, where are my friends?”
“Are you aware of the situation you’re in, sir,” the man said. He was perched on the end of a large wooden desk, studying the Doctor from only meters away. “Who are you?”
The Doctor swung his legs off the table and strode over to the man, but after only two steps, he was knocked backwards. He put his hand out, finding he was behind an invisible force field. “You’re not human.”
“Neither are you,” the man said. “But I’m sure you must be quite parched after the sleeping gas. There’s water on the table behind you.”
The Doctor glared at the man. “Tell me where my friends are.”
“Tell me who you are.”
“I’m the Doctor.”
“Right. Well, I don’t use my true name anymore either. I’m Clarence Minor, and I’m the administrator of Leighton House; but I used to be Clarean Min, aerospace restoration architect of Mercury.”
“Hang on, you’re Mercurian? How’s that possible?” the Doctor asked. “The Mercurians died out more than twenty years ago.”
“Twenty-two, to be precise, and we didn’t die out. We were exterminated.”
TO BE CONTINUED