[Fanfiction] Time Bomb (2/3), by callieach
Title: "Time Bomb" (Part Two of Three: Ticking )
Author: callieach
Fandoms: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Characters: Donna, The Doctor, Martha, Jack, Ianto, Gwen, Mickey
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2029
Disclaimer: If I owned either of these series, I would be not only British, but also not still-heartbroken over season finales.
Author's Notes: I've been working on this since "Journey's End" but it just kept getting bigger and more demanding. But now I think it's where I want it to be, albeit in multiple parts. This is my first time writing any more than a quick drabble for any of these characters, so I'm a bit nervous about this, especially considering it's an unashamed 'I don't like what they did to Donna so now I'm going to fix it' fic and I may or may not have a suitible grasp on DW logic. Feedback of any sort would be wonderful.
Summary: Donna's forgetting and remembering things she shouldn't. (Includes spoilers for the end of 4x13 - "Journey's End" and unverified speculation for season 3 of TW.)
Part One: The Interrupted Vacation
---
Charlie’s not as funny as the Doctor wanted him to be. Even less funny was the big relic find in Rome, a monument to household gods no one has ever heard of before, including a box that looks suspiciously like the new police boxes in England, but even more like the one that’s landed on a Hollywood side street.
As much as he hates to change history, he knows this can never get to Donna.
---
“Martha? You alright?”
Gwen’s voice draws Martha out of her thoughts.
“Ya, I’m just contemplating what sort of incision I should start with,” Martha lies. She nudges a strand of hair out of her eyes with the back of her wrist. It’s been a good four minutes since she picked up her scalpel and started ‘contemplating what sort of incision’ she should use on the dead alien life form in front of her. Truth is, the creature they captured earlier, only to have it die on them before they even got back to the Hub, is barely even crossing her mind.
“Are you sure nothing’s wrong?” Gwen takes a step closer, so she’s directly opposite Martha with the autopsy table and it’s occupant separating them.
“I’m just… anxious.”
“About your friend? Donna, was that her name?”
“Yeah, Donna.” Martha looks contemplatively at her instrument before setting on the tray beside her. She leans on the autopsy table and looks directly at Gwen. “Thing is, if the Doctor knew how to save her, he would’ve done it that day, not mucked around with her brain a bit so she would hopefully never think of him again. That’s not like him. I know it isn’t. So by that reckoning, there’s nothing anybody can do to help her.”
“If I’ve learned anything from Torchwood, it’s that somebody is always going to do what you thought was impossible to save the day. I’ve seen Tosh and Owen and Jack do it hundreds of times, probably. And if I know anything about your Doctor,” Gwen says, reaching across the table to briefly place a hand on Martha’s shoulder, ”he’s the same way.”
---
For the rest of the afternoon, the headache gets stronger. Eventually, Donna gives up with her sightseeing and goes back to her hotel. She falls asleep watching a documentary on Mount Vesuvius and wakes up two hours later with the horrible nagging feeling that she’s forgetting something important.
She sits on the edge of the bed and muses over her recent habit of falling asleep fully clothed, then over the exact sensation in her head.
If she wants to use a work-related metaphor, she’s lost a dossier so important she has to drop everything else to find it. Not like she would ever lose anything as important as her subconscious seems to think this is, but she imagines that’s what it would feel like.
She rubs her forehead and reaches for her cell phone. Maybe a call home will ease her mind.
She listens to her mother talk about the fiasco with the neighbour’s cat, and then omits her run-in with Torchwood earlier when she’s asked what’s going on with her. She doesn’t mention her mounting headache or anxiety, either.
“Where’s Gramps this evening?”
“Out in the yard; I could go fetch him if you want.”
“No, it’s alright. No need to bother him while he’s stargazing.” Her own words are all her brain needs to unlock.
Donna involuntarily gasps as the memories start to hit her like physical blows. Her, in her wedding gown, watching the creation of the earth, sitting dejectedly on a rooftop, watching a man in a suit through water and fire. Finally finding him again, after searching so hard. A spa. Pompeii. Murder mysteries. “Stay out of the shadows.” Time and Space. “There’s something on your back.” The Ood. Bad Wolf. DoctorDonna, friends.
“Mum, I’ve gotta go -“
“Donna, what’s wrong?”
“- I love you.” She presses the ‘End Call’ button and doubles over when her headache develops into full-blown nausea. She’s got too much in her head now, instead of looking for that missing manila folder, she’s been bombarded with them, she’s drowning in them. And he abandoned her like this, that oafish pinstriped Gallifreyan.
She allows herself a moment to catch her breath and picture just how hard he’s going to get slapped for leaving her alone like this. Then she digs the piece of paper Jack gave her from her pocket and dials the number on it.
---
The phone at the front desk rings. Ianto runs from the medical station to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Ianto Jones, yes?”
“Yes…”
“Is Jack or Martha around?”
“They’re a bit occupied at the moment, but I can take a -“
“Just tell them to be ready when my taxi gets there.”
“Who is this?”
“Donna Noble, and because Jack didn’t give me the number to the TARDIS - oh no, I have to go through you lot if I want any help on this moronic planet - you’ve wound up with the duty of keeping my head from exploding.”
“They don’t know - “
“Oh, I know! But with the right frequency of electromagnetic wavelengths circulating through my head and just the right sort of shock at the moment just before my brain fries, my two consciences should have a fun little mixer and the proper reallocations of knowledge should, theoretically, take place. Of course, this could totally fry my fine motor functions but Martha’s brilliant, after all, she’ll be able to sort that out.”
“Are you sure that’s going to work?”
“Of course not! Do you think Time Lord’s ever - oh, taxi’s here. Make sure someone meets me in the plaza because I haven’t got a bloody clue how to get into that Hub of yours.” And then she hangs up.
Ianto just looks at the phone for a moment before slamming it back down on the receiver. Then he’s off running, back to where the others are crowded around the thing on Martha’s autopsy table.
“That was Donna Noble. She’s remembering.”
“How much?” Jack asks.
“I’d say just about all of it. She’s cursing you for not giving her the number to the TARDIS and blathering on about how to save her.”
“And how’s that?”
Ianto repeats what he heard word for word, while the look on Martha’s face grows increasingly more confused and helpless.
“Well that certainly sounds like something the Doctor would say, but I don’t know how to do that,” she says, stripping off her latex gloves and throwing them dejectedly on the table.
Jack gives her a sympathetic glance, then turns to Ianto. “Where is she now?”
“On her way here. Taxi.”
“Okay, you grab Gwen and wait outside for her. I don’t know what kind of shape she’ll be in, so be as careful with her as you can.”
“Yes, sir.” Ianto nods and leaves again.
“Mickey, you’re going to call Sarah Jane and get that computer of hers to call the Doctor. Tell her we need him now.” Jack locks eyes with Mickey for a moment as the younger man nods and turns to go out to his work station. “And Martha, we are going to find a way to save Donna Noble.”
---
Donna focuses hard not to sway as she hurries to the taxi. She opens the back door, ignores the flashback to the Christmas she met the Doctor, hops inside, and tells the cabbie to take her to the Ronald Dahl Plass. She quickly heads off any idle chit-chat by saying. “I’ve got a bit of a headache coming right now, so I’d really rather not have to talk,” and sinks lower into the seat.
Her head is full, she knows too much. And it’s killing her a little less slowly than she’d like. She knows what she needs to survive, and that knowledge is more instinctive human than adopted Time Lord. She needs him. And right now she doesn’t believe that he cares enough to come rescue her from this fate. If he did, he would’ve fixed her in the first place, instead of letting her go back to the stupid, naïve woman she was before she met him, though now a ticking time bomb for disaster.
She wants to be mad at the Doctor, but instead she hopes that she’s wrong in believing that he won’t swoop in and save the day after all.
---
He gets in, he destroys the statue, he gets out. Simple.
Donna would hate him for it. If she knew who he was. He dislikes himself intensely in her honour.
He’s in a crowded marketplace when Martha’s old phone starts ringing in his pocket. He ducks into an alley, around a few corners, then he pulls it out and answers it.
“Martha?”
“Sorry, no can do.”
The Doctor feels himself smile. “Sarah Jane, how are you?”
“Good. The problem’s Donna.”
Just as quick as his smile came, it disappears. “What?”
“She’s in Cardiff with Jack and the others, at Torchwood Three. Doctor, she remembers.”
“How much?”
“Mickey didn’t say, but her techno-babble’s reminding everyone of you.”
“I’m kind of blocks away from the TARDIS in ancient Rome right now,” the Doctor says, running a hand through his hair and making sure he remembers exactly where his ship’s parked. “But tell them I will be there.”
“I will. Good luck.”
The Doctor hangs up and runs.
---
By the time Ianto and Gwen come back into the Hub, supporting Donna between them, Jack and Martha have rigged up a machine that probably won’t work, but they’re going to try anyway.
Donna untangles herself from Ianto and Gwen when she sees the others and rushes to give Martha and Jack each a hug. Jack watches her for any sign of emotion, but finds her apparently staid.
Just as she’s stepping back from Jack, he catches a hint of pain her eyes as she says, “You know, I have that wicked headache you were talking about,” before she slumps forward onto him again, unconscious.
“Alright, team, time for action,” Jack says as he carries Donna to the chair he and Martha have rigged up.
“This isn’t going to work, Jack, we’re just going to fry her.”
“We have no other choice. She can’t last any longer.”
“Can’t we just wait for the Doctor?”
“Mickey!” Jack shouts.
From the other side of the Hub, Mickey calls back, “She’s called him. He said he’s in Ancient Rome, but he’ll be here as soon as he can be.”
Jack finishes strapping various things onto Donna and looks at Martha. “Ianto, stopwatch. I’m giving him thirty seconds. And then we’re doing this without him. He probably isn’t going to show up anyway.”
“What? Of course he will. She’s his companion, he did this to her, he’s not going to just leave her here to fry!”
“Martha, remind me to tell you about the time he left me on a space station with a bunch of Daleks.”
“Twenty seconds.”
“Oh, get over it, that was ages ago.”
“Actually, almost two thousand centuries in the future.”
“You know what I mean.” Martha smoothes her hair back nervously. “Where is he?”
“Should I go out and wait for him, too?” Gwen asks. She’s been hovering on the sidelines since the crisis started, knowing full well this was beyond her.
“No,” Jack says, “If he’s coming, he’ll park right inside the Hub. She used to matter that much to him.”
“Stop being so angry at him, Jack, you don’t know what it’s like.”
“No, but Donna does and we have to save her.” He barks at Ianto for the time.
“Six seconds until your deadline. Four… three… two…” When Ianto gets to one, Jack flips a switch on the chair and Martha bounds over to the screen she’s set up to monitor Donna’s vitals.
“I still think we should wait for the Doctor,” she says, not bothering to keep the panic out of her voice.
“Just watch the screen, Martha,” Jack orders as he cranks the dial next to the switch. The apparatus that started out simply humming with a low current of electricity now crackles and sizzles. Donna doesn’t seem to be reacting at all, neither to the eye nor on the monitor.
---
Author: callieach
Fandoms: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Characters: Donna, The Doctor, Martha, Jack, Ianto, Gwen, Mickey
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2029
Disclaimer: If I owned either of these series, I would be not only British, but also not still-heartbroken over season finales.
Author's Notes: I've been working on this since "Journey's End" but it just kept getting bigger and more demanding. But now I think it's where I want it to be, albeit in multiple parts. This is my first time writing any more than a quick drabble for any of these characters, so I'm a bit nervous about this, especially considering it's an unashamed 'I don't like what they did to Donna so now I'm going to fix it' fic and I may or may not have a suitible grasp on DW logic. Feedback of any sort would be wonderful.
Summary: Donna's forgetting and remembering things she shouldn't. (Includes spoilers for the end of 4x13 - "Journey's End" and unverified speculation for season 3 of TW.)
Part One: The Interrupted Vacation
---
Charlie’s not as funny as the Doctor wanted him to be. Even less funny was the big relic find in Rome, a monument to household gods no one has ever heard of before, including a box that looks suspiciously like the new police boxes in England, but even more like the one that’s landed on a Hollywood side street.
As much as he hates to change history, he knows this can never get to Donna.
---
“Martha? You alright?”
Gwen’s voice draws Martha out of her thoughts.
“Ya, I’m just contemplating what sort of incision I should start with,” Martha lies. She nudges a strand of hair out of her eyes with the back of her wrist. It’s been a good four minutes since she picked up her scalpel and started ‘contemplating what sort of incision’ she should use on the dead alien life form in front of her. Truth is, the creature they captured earlier, only to have it die on them before they even got back to the Hub, is barely even crossing her mind.
“Are you sure nothing’s wrong?” Gwen takes a step closer, so she’s directly opposite Martha with the autopsy table and it’s occupant separating them.
“I’m just… anxious.”
“About your friend? Donna, was that her name?”
“Yeah, Donna.” Martha looks contemplatively at her instrument before setting on the tray beside her. She leans on the autopsy table and looks directly at Gwen. “Thing is, if the Doctor knew how to save her, he would’ve done it that day, not mucked around with her brain a bit so she would hopefully never think of him again. That’s not like him. I know it isn’t. So by that reckoning, there’s nothing anybody can do to help her.”
“If I’ve learned anything from Torchwood, it’s that somebody is always going to do what you thought was impossible to save the day. I’ve seen Tosh and Owen and Jack do it hundreds of times, probably. And if I know anything about your Doctor,” Gwen says, reaching across the table to briefly place a hand on Martha’s shoulder, ”he’s the same way.”
---
For the rest of the afternoon, the headache gets stronger. Eventually, Donna gives up with her sightseeing and goes back to her hotel. She falls asleep watching a documentary on Mount Vesuvius and wakes up two hours later with the horrible nagging feeling that she’s forgetting something important.
She sits on the edge of the bed and muses over her recent habit of falling asleep fully clothed, then over the exact sensation in her head.
If she wants to use a work-related metaphor, she’s lost a dossier so important she has to drop everything else to find it. Not like she would ever lose anything as important as her subconscious seems to think this is, but she imagines that’s what it would feel like.
She rubs her forehead and reaches for her cell phone. Maybe a call home will ease her mind.
She listens to her mother talk about the fiasco with the neighbour’s cat, and then omits her run-in with Torchwood earlier when she’s asked what’s going on with her. She doesn’t mention her mounting headache or anxiety, either.
“Where’s Gramps this evening?”
“Out in the yard; I could go fetch him if you want.”
“No, it’s alright. No need to bother him while he’s stargazing.” Her own words are all her brain needs to unlock.
Donna involuntarily gasps as the memories start to hit her like physical blows. Her, in her wedding gown, watching the creation of the earth, sitting dejectedly on a rooftop, watching a man in a suit through water and fire. Finally finding him again, after searching so hard. A spa. Pompeii. Murder mysteries. “Stay out of the shadows.” Time and Space. “There’s something on your back.” The Ood. Bad Wolf. DoctorDonna, friends.
“Mum, I’ve gotta go -“
“Donna, what’s wrong?”
“- I love you.” She presses the ‘End Call’ button and doubles over when her headache develops into full-blown nausea. She’s got too much in her head now, instead of looking for that missing manila folder, she’s been bombarded with them, she’s drowning in them. And he abandoned her like this, that oafish pinstriped Gallifreyan.
She allows herself a moment to catch her breath and picture just how hard he’s going to get slapped for leaving her alone like this. Then she digs the piece of paper Jack gave her from her pocket and dials the number on it.
---
The phone at the front desk rings. Ianto runs from the medical station to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Ianto Jones, yes?”
“Yes…”
“Is Jack or Martha around?”
“They’re a bit occupied at the moment, but I can take a -“
“Just tell them to be ready when my taxi gets there.”
“Who is this?”
“Donna Noble, and because Jack didn’t give me the number to the TARDIS - oh no, I have to go through you lot if I want any help on this moronic planet - you’ve wound up with the duty of keeping my head from exploding.”
“They don’t know - “
“Oh, I know! But with the right frequency of electromagnetic wavelengths circulating through my head and just the right sort of shock at the moment just before my brain fries, my two consciences should have a fun little mixer and the proper reallocations of knowledge should, theoretically, take place. Of course, this could totally fry my fine motor functions but Martha’s brilliant, after all, she’ll be able to sort that out.”
“Are you sure that’s going to work?”
“Of course not! Do you think Time Lord’s ever - oh, taxi’s here. Make sure someone meets me in the plaza because I haven’t got a bloody clue how to get into that Hub of yours.” And then she hangs up.
Ianto just looks at the phone for a moment before slamming it back down on the receiver. Then he’s off running, back to where the others are crowded around the thing on Martha’s autopsy table.
“That was Donna Noble. She’s remembering.”
“How much?” Jack asks.
“I’d say just about all of it. She’s cursing you for not giving her the number to the TARDIS and blathering on about how to save her.”
“And how’s that?”
Ianto repeats what he heard word for word, while the look on Martha’s face grows increasingly more confused and helpless.
“Well that certainly sounds like something the Doctor would say, but I don’t know how to do that,” she says, stripping off her latex gloves and throwing them dejectedly on the table.
Jack gives her a sympathetic glance, then turns to Ianto. “Where is she now?”
“On her way here. Taxi.”
“Okay, you grab Gwen and wait outside for her. I don’t know what kind of shape she’ll be in, so be as careful with her as you can.”
“Yes, sir.” Ianto nods and leaves again.
“Mickey, you’re going to call Sarah Jane and get that computer of hers to call the Doctor. Tell her we need him now.” Jack locks eyes with Mickey for a moment as the younger man nods and turns to go out to his work station. “And Martha, we are going to find a way to save Donna Noble.”
---
Donna focuses hard not to sway as she hurries to the taxi. She opens the back door, ignores the flashback to the Christmas she met the Doctor, hops inside, and tells the cabbie to take her to the Ronald Dahl Plass. She quickly heads off any idle chit-chat by saying. “I’ve got a bit of a headache coming right now, so I’d really rather not have to talk,” and sinks lower into the seat.
Her head is full, she knows too much. And it’s killing her a little less slowly than she’d like. She knows what she needs to survive, and that knowledge is more instinctive human than adopted Time Lord. She needs him. And right now she doesn’t believe that he cares enough to come rescue her from this fate. If he did, he would’ve fixed her in the first place, instead of letting her go back to the stupid, naïve woman she was before she met him, though now a ticking time bomb for disaster.
She wants to be mad at the Doctor, but instead she hopes that she’s wrong in believing that he won’t swoop in and save the day after all.
---
He gets in, he destroys the statue, he gets out. Simple.
Donna would hate him for it. If she knew who he was. He dislikes himself intensely in her honour.
He’s in a crowded marketplace when Martha’s old phone starts ringing in his pocket. He ducks into an alley, around a few corners, then he pulls it out and answers it.
“Martha?”
“Sorry, no can do.”
The Doctor feels himself smile. “Sarah Jane, how are you?”
“Good. The problem’s Donna.”
Just as quick as his smile came, it disappears. “What?”
“She’s in Cardiff with Jack and the others, at Torchwood Three. Doctor, she remembers.”
“How much?”
“Mickey didn’t say, but her techno-babble’s reminding everyone of you.”
“I’m kind of blocks away from the TARDIS in ancient Rome right now,” the Doctor says, running a hand through his hair and making sure he remembers exactly where his ship’s parked. “But tell them I will be there.”
“I will. Good luck.”
The Doctor hangs up and runs.
---
By the time Ianto and Gwen come back into the Hub, supporting Donna between them, Jack and Martha have rigged up a machine that probably won’t work, but they’re going to try anyway.
Donna untangles herself from Ianto and Gwen when she sees the others and rushes to give Martha and Jack each a hug. Jack watches her for any sign of emotion, but finds her apparently staid.
Just as she’s stepping back from Jack, he catches a hint of pain her eyes as she says, “You know, I have that wicked headache you were talking about,” before she slumps forward onto him again, unconscious.
“Alright, team, time for action,” Jack says as he carries Donna to the chair he and Martha have rigged up.
“This isn’t going to work, Jack, we’re just going to fry her.”
“We have no other choice. She can’t last any longer.”
“Can’t we just wait for the Doctor?”
“Mickey!” Jack shouts.
From the other side of the Hub, Mickey calls back, “She’s called him. He said he’s in Ancient Rome, but he’ll be here as soon as he can be.”
Jack finishes strapping various things onto Donna and looks at Martha. “Ianto, stopwatch. I’m giving him thirty seconds. And then we’re doing this without him. He probably isn’t going to show up anyway.”
“What? Of course he will. She’s his companion, he did this to her, he’s not going to just leave her here to fry!”
“Martha, remind me to tell you about the time he left me on a space station with a bunch of Daleks.”
“Twenty seconds.”
“Oh, get over it, that was ages ago.”
“Actually, almost two thousand centuries in the future.”
“You know what I mean.” Martha smoothes her hair back nervously. “Where is he?”
“Should I go out and wait for him, too?” Gwen asks. She’s been hovering on the sidelines since the crisis started, knowing full well this was beyond her.
“No,” Jack says, “If he’s coming, he’ll park right inside the Hub. She used to matter that much to him.”
“Stop being so angry at him, Jack, you don’t know what it’s like.”
“No, but Donna does and we have to save her.” He barks at Ianto for the time.
“Six seconds until your deadline. Four… three… two…” When Ianto gets to one, Jack flips a switch on the chair and Martha bounds over to the screen she’s set up to monitor Donna’s vitals.
“I still think we should wait for the Doctor,” she says, not bothering to keep the panic out of her voice.
“Just watch the screen, Martha,” Jack orders as he cranks the dial next to the switch. The apparatus that started out simply humming with a low current of electricity now crackles and sizzles. Donna doesn’t seem to be reacting at all, neither to the eye nor on the monitor.
---