Don't Lose Yourself
Title: Don't Lose Yourself.
Characters: Donna, Doctor, cast of New Who
Summary: Life-saving touches happen in fiction.
Rating: G
Word Count: a bit under 2500
Disclaimer: I'm secretly RTD disguised as a 20something from Germany.
A/N: This was the idea I actually had for the Weekly Drabble Prompt #17 at doctor_donna.
“I’m sorry, Donna Noble. I’m so, so sorry. But we’ve had the best of times. The best of times.”
Donna barely heard him over the jumble of thoughts screaming in her head, a million ideas clamouring for her attention at the same time, the universe unfolding in her mind, pushing at the boundaries where her poor brain couldn’t handle it all and oh, the pain.
Stars, galaxies and universes were born and rose and died in the space of less than a second and new stars, galaxies and universes took their place forever and forever and they hurt.
Donna was thrown around in the Maelstrom of Everything, losing bits of herself with every birth and death.
What is this? Where am I? Who am I?
Stars, galaxies and universes whirled through the blackness like participants in an eternal dance, beckoning her to join them, to lose herself in them.
No! I am Donna Noble. I will not let this happen.
A touch, cool fingers on hot skin centred her. She focussed what was left of her - what was left of Donna Noble, human - on the tiny mortal shell that had housed her being. The Doctor had his fingers splayed on her face. She understood immediately. He was going to wipe her mind.
Anger flared in her. It was a tiny, mortal emotion, a truly human feeling.
That is not fair!
She yelled at the stars, the galaxies and the universes. She raged against the blackness. She stemmed herself against all that was happening and pushed.
It was a tiny human emotion, insignificant in the face of eternity, but it was enough. Donna cloaked herself in her anger and pushed, pushed hard. Nobody ever listened when she raged and stormed because - why should they? But the universes owed her, owed her big time.
They let themselves be pushed.
Centred and anchored by the touch of the Doctor’s fingertips feathery light and cool as snow on her face, Donna Noble pushed the stars, the galaxies, the universes and the blackness of Time out of her mind.
The Doctor staggered slightly under the new weight.
She ignored him and pushed deeper into his mind. It was hard work and strained her but she didn’t dare to stop. If she stopped, she’d die and so would he. Well, he’d regenerate, she amended as the ghost of a man in a simply horrible coat fluttered past her. She must remember to look for it in the wardrobe later and tease him endlessly about it.
Many faces, old, young, male, female, flew past her - companions, friends, family ... she didn’t stop.
Deeper in his mind, there were memories that were not his alone, that where those of his people. “A shared history” ... a shared memory.
Beyond those strange memories was the space where voices should be, the ever-ongoing background hum that would tell him he was not alone. There was silence instead. Empty silence - hollow, flat, oppressing, expanding, overwhelming.
Donna understood for the first time all that he had lost when his planet had burned. To live with this constant reminder, with this painful empty space, must be like dieing a thousand times a day. It didn’t surprise her anymore that he was half-mad and so big on avoidance.
For the tiniest moment, she considered leaving the universes there to fill that horrible nothingness with the noise of the stars. She knew she couldn’t though and pressed on.
At the back of his mind was what she had been looking for - a faint glow pulsating as if it was alive, his link with the TARDIS.
Donna pushed into the light.
The TARDIS’ mind was even more alien than the Doctor’s had been and Donna knew that she’d lose herself all over again if she looked too closely at what surrounded her. She still saw strange, thought-like images flashing past her out of the corners of her eyes and shuddered. Doggedly averting her gaze, she pushed on to the centre, to the flashes of red and blue and colours she had no name for.
The link to the Time Vortex stood wide open.
The stars, the galaxies and the universes swirled faster around her. The Vortex tugged at them. All the beautiful knowledge, all the Time was sucked into it.
Donna gave it freely. She let it all go. The DoctorDonna would not be but she had seen herself through the eyes of the Doctor. She had finally seen the brilliance he saw in her. She would be a mere human but that was all right. She would be a brilliant human.
She was Donna Noble and unburdened by the knowledge and memories that were not hers, she flew back into her own tiny, mortal shell.
Looking up, she stared into the brown eyes of her friend. She saw fear, guilt, remorse, surprise, but most of all sudden, wild hope flashing up in his face. She smiled weakly, tired from the ordeal. “And that, Timelord, is how you deal with a metacrisis.”
Grinning like a madman and looking almost giddy with happiness, the Doctor exclaimed, “Donna Noble, you are brilliant.”
“I know,” Donna said modestly because she did and she was.
One moment the Doctor was grinning at her, the next he was crushing her in a hug (“Air,” Donna gasped. “Need. Air.”) and the next, he was standing at the console, watching her again, almost vibrating with excitement. “Where to now, Donna? What do you want to do? Where do you want to go? Let’s go!”
“I want to go home.”
“What?” His face fell.
Donna cuffed him lightly on the arm. “You big prawn! Are you going to look like a kicked puppy every time I mention home? For a guy with an ego so big it hardly fits this universe, you sure have the self-confidence of a slug. I want to check on my family to make sure they’re all right and then we can go off traipsing around time and space.”
“A slug?” The Doctor sounded wounded.
“You’re right. It was a bad comparison. A slug doesn’t wonder, ‘Oh, maybe I’m not slug enough to eat this salad, maybe it doesn’t want to stay in my stomach, maybe I should puke it out.’ It eats the salad and that’s it.”
The Doctor made a blergh-face. “That was disgusting.”
Donna waved it away. “It was a speech of the moment and they’re hardly, if ever, good." She paused. "You know all those historic speeches? I bet you a tenner they were never thought up in the moment. Someone laboured over them for days on end beforehand or they were carefully edited afterwards.”
The Doctor was silent as he steered the TARDIS through the void. When he opened the door to a sunny, thankfully Dalek-free afternoon in Chiswick, he said, “I’d never puke you out.”
“See what I mean about the speech of the moment thing?” She grimaced and then smiled. “But the sentiment is appreciated.”
“I’m not a slug though.” The Doctor wasn’t pouting because Timelords didn’t pout. Not ever. He only expressed his apprehension about the misrepresentation of his person via facial means.
“Oh yes. You are.” Donna grinned slightly maliciously. “You’re probably a giant space slug and this whole body is just camouflage to mislead unsuspecting humans. Underneath your body suit, you’re a slug.”
The Doctor drew himself up to his full, skinny height and said haughtily, “You have just survived a metacrisis, so I understand that your brain might still be a bit addled and I forgive you.”
“You think I couldn’t handle your mind?” Donna snorted. “You wish, slugboy!”
They bickered until the door to the Noble house was flung open and Sylvia rushed out and enveloped Donna in a tight hug.
“Erm,” Donna said and hugged her back.
“I was so worried about you. But you’re all right. You’re all right.” Sylvia released her daughter, stepped back and whacked Donna on the arm. “Don’t ever do that again, missy!”
‘Aha!’ The Doctor didn’t finish the thought in case the Noble women had more mind-reading capabilities than he had accredited them and turned their Tough-Love-Slapping on him.
Sylvia dragged them into the kitchen and demanded to know what had been going on. Since the last few days had been filled with things that were hard to ignore, Donna couldn't fib her off with some white lie and had a lot of explaining to do.
Their visit had been intended as a short stop to say ‘Hello’ and ‘We’re off’. It turned into a long stay. But that was all right. There was tea and the Doctor loved that. Later, Donna sent him and her grandfather up the hill to look at Wilf’s telescope and the Doctor loved that even more.
While the men were thus occupied, Donna told her mother the truth, starting with what had really happened at the wedding that wasn’t. Donna talked and for what felt like the first time in her life, Sylvia listened to her. At one point during the story, Sylvia wore a look of such fury that Donna was quite glad Lance was already dead. Death by spiders must have been better than whatever her mother seemed ready to do to him at that moment.
It took the better part of five hours to tell Sylvia the abbreviated version of everything and by the end of it Donna was quite hoarse.
When she had finished, her mother stood up and hugged her again. Then she said, “Oh, will you look at that! The tea’s gone stone cold. And where are your grandfather and your skinny alien? Still up on that infernal hill, I bet. Go and tell them dinner’s ready in half an hour. If I didn’t remind your grandfather to eat every now and then, he’d probably starve to death up there.”
Donna went and fetched the men.
It was one of the best times she had ever spent with her mother, she reckoned afterwards.
“And now the universe!” the Doctor exclaimed, standing at attention next to the console.
Donna shook her head. “Not quite. Not yet. We’re going to see Sarah Jane first.”
“What? What for? She’s fine. We know she’s fine.”
She didn't say that she wanted to surround him with his adopted family for a while. The Doctor might run at the suggestion. “You’re not curious how she came to have a son then?”
He shrugged. “The usual way, I guess.”
“And she forgot to tell you?” Donna was sceptical.
“Well...” The Doctor pronounced the word with far more ‘l’s than it merited. “There were a lot of Krillitanes around. We were a bit preoccupied. But she said she’d been alone. Hmmm, adoption? No, not really. She said it was a long story. Adoption’s not a long story. Well, it can be but... Oh...” He looked at the grinning Donna. “Let’s go and visit Sarah Jane.”
The visit couldn’t have gone better. Luke and the Doctor bonded immediately over some geeky subject Donna didn’t even try to understand and went off to tinker in the TARDIS together. Donna put her foot down first though and threatened to never speak with him again if he even thought of taking Luke for a spin in the TARDIS and Sarah Jane whispered something into the Doctor’s ear that must have been truly imaginative because he blanched and promised to be good, no gallivanting across the universe, swear on my hearts, ma’am.
“Good,” Sarah Jane replied. “He’s far too young to go on a trip with you, gallivanting or not.”
The Doctor opened his mouth as if to protest, maybe point out that Sarah Jane hadn’t been much older at all, but one look from the mother silenced him.
The ladies retired to the kitchen, had some tea and Donna got some much sought-after tips on Timelord maintenance who was, she had found out a long time ago, pretty high maintenance.
Afterwards, because Donna said it’d be shoddy of them if they didn’t, they dropped in on Torchwood, which was hilarious. At least for Donna and Jack egging each other on the entire time. The Doctor looked more and more affronted and Ianto more and more embarrassed the wilder and more outlandish their flirting got.
Their visit came to a sudden end when Mickey nearly died of asphyxiation because he’d been laughing so hard that he’d choked on air. Gwen decided that enough was enough and friendly, but firmly complimented their guests out of the Hub.
Since they were on Earth anyway and apparently making social calls, they paid a little visit to Martha. Donna earned the Jones’ family instant approval when she slapped the Doctor a bit because he was an idiot and declared that they wouldn’t come back until he’d learned some manners. Mrs Jones was very happy with that development. It gave her hope she’d never have to see the man again and good riddance.
Finally, they went off to bother the rest of the universe and there was a lot of running, yelling and the odd explosion. But that was all right. She was all right. He was all right. And it was not the Timelord code all right. Which was all right.
It wasn’t perfect. When they were stuck in some hole of a prison for example, it was far from perfect. Occasionally though, to stop Donna nagging, the Doctor landed them on some random holiday planet for a little rest and relaxation. When Donna lounged in a deck chair with a drink in her hand, it was pretty close to perfect. Until the Doctor got bored and went off to nose into other people’s business which usually resulted in running, yelling and the odd explosion.
They had just come back from another such excursion, running at break-neck speed into the TARDIS and she was laughing and gasping for breath at the same time when she noticed that the Doctor didn’t laugh.
“What’s the matter, Doctor?” she asked or rather gasped between giggles.
He was also closer than he had been. Hadn’t he been standing on the other side of the console? And why was he looking at her with so much pain and sorrow in his eyes?
“I’m sorry, Donna Noble. I’m so, so sorry. But we’ve had the best of times. The best of times.”
The stars were raging behind her eyes.
Donna thought whoever had said that your whole life flashed before your eyes in your moment of death deserved a good kicking. Maybe her life hadn’t been interesting enough to deserve a good flashback and that was why she’d been given a What-If instead?
The galaxies whirled her thoughts away.
There must be something she could do. Something. Anything. Don’t lose yourself!
The roaring tide of universes sucked her under.
Push!
The sudden, cool touch of the Doctor’s fingers on her face anchored her against the storm in her mind and then pulled her into oblivion.
She didn’t have the strength to push.
Don’t lose yourself.
...
Lose yourself.
...
Your self.
...
Self.
....
..
.
Characters: Donna, Doctor, cast of New Who
Summary: Life-saving touches happen in fiction.
Rating: G
Word Count: a bit under 2500
Disclaimer: I'm secretly RTD disguised as a 20something from Germany.
A/N: This was the idea I actually had for the Weekly Drabble Prompt #17 at doctor_donna.
“I’m sorry, Donna Noble. I’m so, so sorry. But we’ve had the best of times. The best of times.”
Donna barely heard him over the jumble of thoughts screaming in her head, a million ideas clamouring for her attention at the same time, the universe unfolding in her mind, pushing at the boundaries where her poor brain couldn’t handle it all and oh, the pain.
Stars, galaxies and universes were born and rose and died in the space of less than a second and new stars, galaxies and universes took their place forever and forever and they hurt.
Donna was thrown around in the Maelstrom of Everything, losing bits of herself with every birth and death.
What is this? Where am I? Who am I?
Stars, galaxies and universes whirled through the blackness like participants in an eternal dance, beckoning her to join them, to lose herself in them.
No! I am Donna Noble. I will not let this happen.
A touch, cool fingers on hot skin centred her. She focussed what was left of her - what was left of Donna Noble, human - on the tiny mortal shell that had housed her being. The Doctor had his fingers splayed on her face. She understood immediately. He was going to wipe her mind.
Anger flared in her. It was a tiny, mortal emotion, a truly human feeling.
That is not fair!
She yelled at the stars, the galaxies and the universes. She raged against the blackness. She stemmed herself against all that was happening and pushed.
It was a tiny human emotion, insignificant in the face of eternity, but it was enough. Donna cloaked herself in her anger and pushed, pushed hard. Nobody ever listened when she raged and stormed because - why should they? But the universes owed her, owed her big time.
They let themselves be pushed.
Centred and anchored by the touch of the Doctor’s fingertips feathery light and cool as snow on her face, Donna Noble pushed the stars, the galaxies, the universes and the blackness of Time out of her mind.
The Doctor staggered slightly under the new weight.
She ignored him and pushed deeper into his mind. It was hard work and strained her but she didn’t dare to stop. If she stopped, she’d die and so would he. Well, he’d regenerate, she amended as the ghost of a man in a simply horrible coat fluttered past her. She must remember to look for it in the wardrobe later and tease him endlessly about it.
Many faces, old, young, male, female, flew past her - companions, friends, family ... she didn’t stop.
Deeper in his mind, there were memories that were not his alone, that where those of his people. “A shared history” ... a shared memory.
Beyond those strange memories was the space where voices should be, the ever-ongoing background hum that would tell him he was not alone. There was silence instead. Empty silence - hollow, flat, oppressing, expanding, overwhelming.
Donna understood for the first time all that he had lost when his planet had burned. To live with this constant reminder, with this painful empty space, must be like dieing a thousand times a day. It didn’t surprise her anymore that he was half-mad and so big on avoidance.
For the tiniest moment, she considered leaving the universes there to fill that horrible nothingness with the noise of the stars. She knew she couldn’t though and pressed on.
At the back of his mind was what she had been looking for - a faint glow pulsating as if it was alive, his link with the TARDIS.
Donna pushed into the light.
The TARDIS’ mind was even more alien than the Doctor’s had been and Donna knew that she’d lose herself all over again if she looked too closely at what surrounded her. She still saw strange, thought-like images flashing past her out of the corners of her eyes and shuddered. Doggedly averting her gaze, she pushed on to the centre, to the flashes of red and blue and colours she had no name for.
The link to the Time Vortex stood wide open.
The stars, the galaxies and the universes swirled faster around her. The Vortex tugged at them. All the beautiful knowledge, all the Time was sucked into it.
Donna gave it freely. She let it all go. The DoctorDonna would not be but she had seen herself through the eyes of the Doctor. She had finally seen the brilliance he saw in her. She would be a mere human but that was all right. She would be a brilliant human.
She was Donna Noble and unburdened by the knowledge and memories that were not hers, she flew back into her own tiny, mortal shell.
Looking up, she stared into the brown eyes of her friend. She saw fear, guilt, remorse, surprise, but most of all sudden, wild hope flashing up in his face. She smiled weakly, tired from the ordeal. “And that, Timelord, is how you deal with a metacrisis.”
Grinning like a madman and looking almost giddy with happiness, the Doctor exclaimed, “Donna Noble, you are brilliant.”
“I know,” Donna said modestly because she did and she was.
One moment the Doctor was grinning at her, the next he was crushing her in a hug (“Air,” Donna gasped. “Need. Air.”) and the next, he was standing at the console, watching her again, almost vibrating with excitement. “Where to now, Donna? What do you want to do? Where do you want to go? Let’s go!”
“I want to go home.”
“What?” His face fell.
Donna cuffed him lightly on the arm. “You big prawn! Are you going to look like a kicked puppy every time I mention home? For a guy with an ego so big it hardly fits this universe, you sure have the self-confidence of a slug. I want to check on my family to make sure they’re all right and then we can go off traipsing around time and space.”
“A slug?” The Doctor sounded wounded.
“You’re right. It was a bad comparison. A slug doesn’t wonder, ‘Oh, maybe I’m not slug enough to eat this salad, maybe it doesn’t want to stay in my stomach, maybe I should puke it out.’ It eats the salad and that’s it.”
The Doctor made a blergh-face. “That was disgusting.”
Donna waved it away. “It was a speech of the moment and they’re hardly, if ever, good." She paused. "You know all those historic speeches? I bet you a tenner they were never thought up in the moment. Someone laboured over them for days on end beforehand or they were carefully edited afterwards.”
The Doctor was silent as he steered the TARDIS through the void. When he opened the door to a sunny, thankfully Dalek-free afternoon in Chiswick, he said, “I’d never puke you out.”
“See what I mean about the speech of the moment thing?” She grimaced and then smiled. “But the sentiment is appreciated.”
“I’m not a slug though.” The Doctor wasn’t pouting because Timelords didn’t pout. Not ever. He only expressed his apprehension about the misrepresentation of his person via facial means.
“Oh yes. You are.” Donna grinned slightly maliciously. “You’re probably a giant space slug and this whole body is just camouflage to mislead unsuspecting humans. Underneath your body suit, you’re a slug.”
The Doctor drew himself up to his full, skinny height and said haughtily, “You have just survived a metacrisis, so I understand that your brain might still be a bit addled and I forgive you.”
“You think I couldn’t handle your mind?” Donna snorted. “You wish, slugboy!”
They bickered until the door to the Noble house was flung open and Sylvia rushed out and enveloped Donna in a tight hug.
“Erm,” Donna said and hugged her back.
“I was so worried about you. But you’re all right. You’re all right.” Sylvia released her daughter, stepped back and whacked Donna on the arm. “Don’t ever do that again, missy!”
‘Aha!’ The Doctor didn’t finish the thought in case the Noble women had more mind-reading capabilities than he had accredited them and turned their Tough-Love-Slapping on him.
Sylvia dragged them into the kitchen and demanded to know what had been going on. Since the last few days had been filled with things that were hard to ignore, Donna couldn't fib her off with some white lie and had a lot of explaining to do.
Their visit had been intended as a short stop to say ‘Hello’ and ‘We’re off’. It turned into a long stay. But that was all right. There was tea and the Doctor loved that. Later, Donna sent him and her grandfather up the hill to look at Wilf’s telescope and the Doctor loved that even more.
While the men were thus occupied, Donna told her mother the truth, starting with what had really happened at the wedding that wasn’t. Donna talked and for what felt like the first time in her life, Sylvia listened to her. At one point during the story, Sylvia wore a look of such fury that Donna was quite glad Lance was already dead. Death by spiders must have been better than whatever her mother seemed ready to do to him at that moment.
It took the better part of five hours to tell Sylvia the abbreviated version of everything and by the end of it Donna was quite hoarse.
When she had finished, her mother stood up and hugged her again. Then she said, “Oh, will you look at that! The tea’s gone stone cold. And where are your grandfather and your skinny alien? Still up on that infernal hill, I bet. Go and tell them dinner’s ready in half an hour. If I didn’t remind your grandfather to eat every now and then, he’d probably starve to death up there.”
Donna went and fetched the men.
It was one of the best times she had ever spent with her mother, she reckoned afterwards.
“And now the universe!” the Doctor exclaimed, standing at attention next to the console.
Donna shook her head. “Not quite. Not yet. We’re going to see Sarah Jane first.”
“What? What for? She’s fine. We know she’s fine.”
She didn't say that she wanted to surround him with his adopted family for a while. The Doctor might run at the suggestion. “You’re not curious how she came to have a son then?”
He shrugged. “The usual way, I guess.”
“And she forgot to tell you?” Donna was sceptical.
“Well...” The Doctor pronounced the word with far more ‘l’s than it merited. “There were a lot of Krillitanes around. We were a bit preoccupied. But she said she’d been alone. Hmmm, adoption? No, not really. She said it was a long story. Adoption’s not a long story. Well, it can be but... Oh...” He looked at the grinning Donna. “Let’s go and visit Sarah Jane.”
The visit couldn’t have gone better. Luke and the Doctor bonded immediately over some geeky subject Donna didn’t even try to understand and went off to tinker in the TARDIS together. Donna put her foot down first though and threatened to never speak with him again if he even thought of taking Luke for a spin in the TARDIS and Sarah Jane whispered something into the Doctor’s ear that must have been truly imaginative because he blanched and promised to be good, no gallivanting across the universe, swear on my hearts, ma’am.
“Good,” Sarah Jane replied. “He’s far too young to go on a trip with you, gallivanting or not.”
The Doctor opened his mouth as if to protest, maybe point out that Sarah Jane hadn’t been much older at all, but one look from the mother silenced him.
The ladies retired to the kitchen, had some tea and Donna got some much sought-after tips on Timelord maintenance who was, she had found out a long time ago, pretty high maintenance.
Afterwards, because Donna said it’d be shoddy of them if they didn’t, they dropped in on Torchwood, which was hilarious. At least for Donna and Jack egging each other on the entire time. The Doctor looked more and more affronted and Ianto more and more embarrassed the wilder and more outlandish their flirting got.
Their visit came to a sudden end when Mickey nearly died of asphyxiation because he’d been laughing so hard that he’d choked on air. Gwen decided that enough was enough and friendly, but firmly complimented their guests out of the Hub.
Since they were on Earth anyway and apparently making social calls, they paid a little visit to Martha. Donna earned the Jones’ family instant approval when she slapped the Doctor a bit because he was an idiot and declared that they wouldn’t come back until he’d learned some manners. Mrs Jones was very happy with that development. It gave her hope she’d never have to see the man again and good riddance.
Finally, they went off to bother the rest of the universe and there was a lot of running, yelling and the odd explosion. But that was all right. She was all right. He was all right. And it was not the Timelord code all right. Which was all right.
It wasn’t perfect. When they were stuck in some hole of a prison for example, it was far from perfect. Occasionally though, to stop Donna nagging, the Doctor landed them on some random holiday planet for a little rest and relaxation. When Donna lounged in a deck chair with a drink in her hand, it was pretty close to perfect. Until the Doctor got bored and went off to nose into other people’s business which usually resulted in running, yelling and the odd explosion.
They had just come back from another such excursion, running at break-neck speed into the TARDIS and she was laughing and gasping for breath at the same time when she noticed that the Doctor didn’t laugh.
“What’s the matter, Doctor?” she asked or rather gasped between giggles.
He was also closer than he had been. Hadn’t he been standing on the other side of the console? And why was he looking at her with so much pain and sorrow in his eyes?
“I’m sorry, Donna Noble. I’m so, so sorry. But we’ve had the best of times. The best of times.”
The stars were raging behind her eyes.
Donna thought whoever had said that your whole life flashed before your eyes in your moment of death deserved a good kicking. Maybe her life hadn’t been interesting enough to deserve a good flashback and that was why she’d been given a What-If instead?
The galaxies whirled her thoughts away.
There must be something she could do. Something. Anything. Don’t lose yourself!
The roaring tide of universes sucked her under.
Push!
The sudden, cool touch of the Doctor’s fingers on her face anchored her against the storm in her mind and then pulled her into oblivion.
She didn’t have the strength to push.
Don’t lose yourself.
...
Lose yourself.
...
Your self.
...
Self.
....
..
.