Fic: Eclipse (5/?)
Title: Eclipse
Rating: R
Pairing: Ten/Donna (Friendship)
Word Count: 2,559
Summary: Donna gets used to being something more than human. Spoilers for Doctor Who 4.13 - Journey’s End.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Story title inspired by The Frames.
Author’s Notes: I was going to hold off on this next part, really - but I was rather lucky today and got tickets to a political speaking event tomorrow that I was so excited about the opportunity to attend; thus, my good fortune has spilled over into posting this. I do hope you all enjoy it. Comments, as ever, are love like woah :)
Part One: Eulalie
Part Two: Desperate Moments In Linear Time
Part Three: Ontological Subjectivity
Part Four: Better Than One
Part Five: Ātman
Wandering aimlessly around the TARDIS has become something of a full-time position for her over the past forty-eight hours; she feels like everything is suddenly new as she looks around, appreciating every bit of equipment, every tiny thing she’d always taken for granted before, seeing it now for what it truly was - a masterpiece of precision, a work of art.
The whole suddenly-becoming-a-Time-Lord thing wasn’t quite as difficult as she might have thought it to be, had someone told her about it before it had happened - that is, it wasn’t quite so difficult once you got past the agonizing-pain stage. She thinks a bit differently, but it’s mostly just a more efficient version of what the original metacrisis had resulted in, something a bit less choppy and more refined than before. The only thing that’s really disconcerting are the hearts - those are still a bit weird. But she feels different, and that’s what’s both bothers her and thrills her most - she feels powerful, unstoppable - she understands now why he’s always marching off, all bravado and grins, waltzing in and saving the day; it’s because he feels that same unquenchable strength coursing through his veins, and he can’t help but act upon it.
He assured her that the headaches would fade in time, and he was right, of course - they did, and had already gotten much more manageable. He’s got her on some sedatives that can’t possibly be the dosages the say they are on the tin, because she’d be dead already if they were - tells her that it’ll dull the humming in her mind, block the sight of the Time Lord - the full consciousness of time and space and its infinite potential, if she indeed develops it - until she’s ready. He’s also confiscated all of her aspirin, and had replaced it with alternatives without a word. She doesn’t mention the switch.
On top of it all, she found herself spending a great deal of her time in the room across from her own - the Doctor’s room; after conceding the point of letting her move back into her own quarters, he’d gone and done one better than the monitors and the screens and started watching her himself, hawk-like and anxious. It took her three hours flat to object to his hovering in her own room, barely letting her dress in private - she probably would have slapped him silly for it if she hadn’t been able to sense, to feel, the very real, the very soul-deep ache resonating from him, desperate to keep her close, keep her safe.
Even in her sleep, she could feel him; and she slept a great deal that first week. They landed once, and only once, in that space of time, and neither had set foot outside the doors of the TARDIS, wherever it had been; she’d sat instead at the foot of his bed, legs crossed as he told her a story from one of his adventures before her time, something she could pick out of the countless memories filed away from the metacrisis, things that she felt a bit like a voyeur for recalling - they made her shiver with excitement at the same time as the guilt pooled in her gut.
It was funny, though; because she felt suddenly, in that moment as she toyed with the stitching in his bedclothes, enraptured by the sound of his voice, by his honest and genuine enthusiasm as he regaled her with tales of live dinosaurs and renegade smugglers, that she really was the most important woman in the universe.
He rarely left her side, and while she gave him his fair share of grief for it, she grew used to his presence rather quickly; a subtle but important shift in the dynamics of their relationship, evident in the way he watched her, the weight in his gaze. She wasn’t just his friend anymore, not just his companion - she was his lifeline, something that he’d been sorely missing for eons, and in finally having it gifted unto him, he was absolutely devoted to keeping it - her - close to him.
She found that, strangely, she didn’t much mind.
She sauntered into the control room, watching as the Doctor fiddled nonchalantly with his controls - ones she’d never batted an eyelash at before, but now found herself admiring for their simple brilliance. “Somewhere to be?” she asked casually, coming up to lean against the console.
He grinned briefly in her direction, his whole face lighting up as she tossed her head back and closed her eyes, seeming to drink in the atmosphere of the room, like it was her first time. “As a matter of fact,” he replied, adjusting his glasses and abandoning the lever he was contemplating in favor of making his way slowly towards her, hands stuck out in his pockets as he studied her from just above the frames perched at the tip of his nose.
“How’re you doing?”
She fought the urge to reply simply, to evade the question, because the concern in his voice was still crucial, still very real, and it made her chest ache to think that she was the cause. “It’s very... strange,” she answered slowly, honest as she can. “It’s not... bad, really. But good seems the wrong word for it, too.”
“I’m sorry.” His eyes fall to the floor with this, what has to be his hundredth apology for saving her bloody life, of all things. Anyone would think he sorely regretted having her around, and she’d said as much after the first ten times; it was the first and last time she mentioned it, though, because the look on his face - the way the color drained from it in less than a second - wasn’t something she wanted a repeat performance of any time soon.
“I didn’t...” the breath that broke in between sounded more like a sigh before he picked back up, stumbling over his words and worrying at his bottom lip. “I didn’t mean...”
“I couldn’t lose you.” His voice was teetering precariously on the edge of hysterics, and his eyes were wide in the way that she’d come to realize meant he was breaking, somewhere inside; the curves of his eyelids trembling with the strain.
“Hey, hey,” Donna reached out to him, steadying her hands on his shoulders, the open sleeves of her blouse fluttering on her biceps as she drew him a bit closer, rubbing around the base of his neck. “Look at me, Spaceman,” she coaxed his gaze up warmly, and he met her smile with the saddest of eyes. Playfully trying to turn his mood, she flicked him on the chin before catching it between her fingers and drawing his face up in front of her own.
“You did right by the both of us, yeah?” she assured him with authority, her voice firm; she’d only been telling him as much from the start. “I told you forever. I meant it.”
There was something in those words, the last ones, that seemed to do the trick, and Donna watched as the Doctor visibly brightened, the heavy burden on his shoulders lifting a bit as he nodded, swallowing hard and holding her gaze steady for just a moment past comfort before tearing his eyes away, returning to the TARDIS controls and adjusting the landing settings just a hair.
“So...” Donna broached the subject she’d been waiting to bring up before they could put it off any longer. “Am I...” she cleared her throat, hoping the nerves would leave her. “Am I like you? Really?”
She feared at first that she’d said the wrong thing, given the way he froze completely, barely moving at all and avoiding her gaze. “Physically,” he finally spoke, just as she was about to take it back and shrug the question off, “you’re pure Gallifreyan. As for the rest of it, I can’t know for sure. This...” he ran a quick hand through to the tips of his hair. “There’s never been anything like this before.”
He seemed content to let the topic rest there, but Donna wanted answers. Suddenly emboldened by the fact that he’d responded at all, she dove in head first. “I can feel you,” she blurted without prelude. “Your mind.”
He leaned back on the heels of his palms, his voice heavy; sombre. “I know.” It sounded more like he’d rather he didn’t, though.
“I didn’t know what it was at first,” Donna tried to be casual, meandering about the room on light feet, her back turned to him. “I thought it might be those drugs,” she commented irritably; “but it’s so familiar, and it never goes away. It’s you, isn’t it?”
She turned when he said nothing, and barely caught the end of his nod. There was something more in the gesture, though, and she could sense it, so she went out on a limb.
“You can feel me, too?” she guessed, grasping at straws.
He barely even sounded like himself as he muttered; “Yes.”
She forced a laugh, her lungs sore and her hearts stumbling frantically (both of them, damnit, and that’s not yet pleasant) as she tried to fight off the sense of rejection at his mixed signals, his lukewarm response. “Do I drive you mad?”
He turned to her, and he was changed in an instant - he was the force of nature that stopped wars and broke wills; the Oncoming Storm arriving in a crash of thunder as his eyes flashed and he seemed to make all of time and space stand perfectly still ’“No,” he breathed, and she could feel it, so close. “No...” he trailed off, and she wandered over to him just as twin tears escaped his eyes to run down his cheeks unchecked, his voice cracking and soft as he managed to finish the thought; “It’s beautiful.”
She felt him,head him move, swaggering towards her slowly, his eyes on his shoes. “It’s been quiet for so long,” he breathed. “So quiet. You’re a spark of life in the shadows, Donna.” She looked up and saw him in front of her, staring at her as if she was keeping the world turning in that very instant, as if she fascinated him, as if she were extraordinary. “You’re warm and tangible...” he reached out slowly, cupped her face gently in his palm. “And you’re here. You’re real.” His mouth moved with empty, useless sounds for a moment, then two, and he closed his eyes in an attempt to refocus, shaking his head to clear his train of thought. “I’ve spent longer than you can imagine, pretending that void wasn’t empty,” he finally explained, his tone strained. “That the place where I could feel everyone, everyone like me, that it wasn’t hollow and cold, when it was nothing but. And now...” his voice dropped to a whisper, and he had drawn impossibly close, his breath on her skin as he studied her, as he watched her with wonder in his eyes; “Against all odds, beyond all reason, you fill the void.”
There was so much emotion saturated in that single moment when he pulled away, his eyes saying so much of what he hadn’t, what perhaps he couldn’t. The unspoken words settled, suffocating, and Donna struggled for a moment to breathe before the weight shifted and became innocuous, static.
“We’re headed back a bit,” he broke the tension awkwardly after a space, the gravity still a palpable presence. “The galaxy we're looking for’s been absorbed in a merger by now.”
“A merger?” she marveled, a bit taken aback. “An interplanetary merger?”
“Bonkers, isn’t it?” His lips quirked and his eyes sparkled just a tad, and with that she knew they were alright again.
She felt light-headed, suddenly, and somehow self-conscious as bits of information seemed to rearrange themselves of their own accord in her mind. “But I knew that, didn’t I?” she asked rhetorically, the knowledge coming to the fore, only belatedly. “I knew those happened.” He spared her a nod and a sympathetic curve of his mouth as she shook her head, frustrated at her inability to even think properly. “I know those happen.”
“It’s a bit rough, adjusting and all,” she admitted, almost sheepishly. “It’s all still sort of, fuzzy.”
“Just getting used to it, I suspect,” he said as he tilted his chin, staring at her down his nose, his tone encouraging but his expression giving nothing away. “Your brain was different before, smaller; it was easier to find the new memories and access them. But now...” he sucked in a breath, whistling faintly. “It’s vast beyond comprehension, a Time Lord consciousness - the content’s going to have to propagate, so to speak, before it sinks in.”
She shot a glare in his direction at that. “Are you trying to say I was thick before?”
His stoicism broke for an instant as her voice raised, a proper and shining grin crossing his features as he declared boisterously; “Never. You were always brilliant.”
Suddenly though, he turned serious again, the veneer of his smile fading away as quickly as it came. “You know that you can ask me anything. Whatever you want to know.” He pegged her with his gaze, intense and soul-searching. “I’ll help you through this, Donna,” he swore with a subtle sort of passion, and she knew without a doubt that he would keep his word.
They were silent a space before the TARDIS broke the peace, wheezing a bit as the Doctor swerved around to check the readings on their progress. “Right,” he began, readjusting his spectacles. “I’m taking you to Catrigan Nova for some rest and relaxation. Think Midnight, without all the... bad.” He took a moment to wiggle his fingers ominously in the air for demonstration, and she rolled her eyes at him accordingly.
“Whirlpools of gold, landscapes of pearl and precious gems, diamond gardens, silver streets,” he extolled, bounding around the central column at warp-speed, per usual, excitement radiating off of him as he skipped around back to where he’d begun after the fourth go-round. “And one of the native species, the Daprok, they feed off of giving the most delicious massages,” he shivered with a grin in apparent recollection - if she concentrated, she could feel some residual sense of satisfaction connected to those words in his memories. “Something in the skin-to-skin contact stimulates their system and allows them to properly digest the nutrients in their food. It’s absolutely fabulous. Molto bene.” His cheeky grin was contagious, and she was returning it with a nod before she could think twice.
“Molto bene.”
Part Six: Only
Rating: R
Pairing: Ten/Donna (Friendship)
Word Count: 2,559
Summary: Donna gets used to being something more than human. Spoilers for Doctor Who 4.13 - Journey’s End.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Story title inspired by The Frames.
Author’s Notes: I was going to hold off on this next part, really - but I was rather lucky today and got tickets to a political speaking event tomorrow that I was so excited about the opportunity to attend; thus, my good fortune has spilled over into posting this. I do hope you all enjoy it. Comments, as ever, are love like woah :)
Part One: Eulalie
Part Two: Desperate Moments In Linear Time
Part Three: Ontological Subjectivity
Part Four: Better Than One
Part Five: Ātman
Wandering aimlessly around the TARDIS has become something of a full-time position for her over the past forty-eight hours; she feels like everything is suddenly new as she looks around, appreciating every bit of equipment, every tiny thing she’d always taken for granted before, seeing it now for what it truly was - a masterpiece of precision, a work of art.
The whole suddenly-becoming-a-Time-Lord thing wasn’t quite as difficult as she might have thought it to be, had someone told her about it before it had happened - that is, it wasn’t quite so difficult once you got past the agonizing-pain stage. She thinks a bit differently, but it’s mostly just a more efficient version of what the original metacrisis had resulted in, something a bit less choppy and more refined than before. The only thing that’s really disconcerting are the hearts - those are still a bit weird. But she feels different, and that’s what’s both bothers her and thrills her most - she feels powerful, unstoppable - she understands now why he’s always marching off, all bravado and grins, waltzing in and saving the day; it’s because he feels that same unquenchable strength coursing through his veins, and he can’t help but act upon it.
He assured her that the headaches would fade in time, and he was right, of course - they did, and had already gotten much more manageable. He’s got her on some sedatives that can’t possibly be the dosages the say they are on the tin, because she’d be dead already if they were - tells her that it’ll dull the humming in her mind, block the sight of the Time Lord - the full consciousness of time and space and its infinite potential, if she indeed develops it - until she’s ready. He’s also confiscated all of her aspirin, and had replaced it with alternatives without a word. She doesn’t mention the switch.
On top of it all, she found herself spending a great deal of her time in the room across from her own - the Doctor’s room; after conceding the point of letting her move back into her own quarters, he’d gone and done one better than the monitors and the screens and started watching her himself, hawk-like and anxious. It took her three hours flat to object to his hovering in her own room, barely letting her dress in private - she probably would have slapped him silly for it if she hadn’t been able to sense, to feel, the very real, the very soul-deep ache resonating from him, desperate to keep her close, keep her safe.
Even in her sleep, she could feel him; and she slept a great deal that first week. They landed once, and only once, in that space of time, and neither had set foot outside the doors of the TARDIS, wherever it had been; she’d sat instead at the foot of his bed, legs crossed as he told her a story from one of his adventures before her time, something she could pick out of the countless memories filed away from the metacrisis, things that she felt a bit like a voyeur for recalling - they made her shiver with excitement at the same time as the guilt pooled in her gut.
It was funny, though; because she felt suddenly, in that moment as she toyed with the stitching in his bedclothes, enraptured by the sound of his voice, by his honest and genuine enthusiasm as he regaled her with tales of live dinosaurs and renegade smugglers, that she really was the most important woman in the universe.
He rarely left her side, and while she gave him his fair share of grief for it, she grew used to his presence rather quickly; a subtle but important shift in the dynamics of their relationship, evident in the way he watched her, the weight in his gaze. She wasn’t just his friend anymore, not just his companion - she was his lifeline, something that he’d been sorely missing for eons, and in finally having it gifted unto him, he was absolutely devoted to keeping it - her - close to him.
She found that, strangely, she didn’t much mind.
She sauntered into the control room, watching as the Doctor fiddled nonchalantly with his controls - ones she’d never batted an eyelash at before, but now found herself admiring for their simple brilliance. “Somewhere to be?” she asked casually, coming up to lean against the console.
He grinned briefly in her direction, his whole face lighting up as she tossed her head back and closed her eyes, seeming to drink in the atmosphere of the room, like it was her first time. “As a matter of fact,” he replied, adjusting his glasses and abandoning the lever he was contemplating in favor of making his way slowly towards her, hands stuck out in his pockets as he studied her from just above the frames perched at the tip of his nose.
“How’re you doing?”
She fought the urge to reply simply, to evade the question, because the concern in his voice was still crucial, still very real, and it made her chest ache to think that she was the cause. “It’s very... strange,” she answered slowly, honest as she can. “It’s not... bad, really. But good seems the wrong word for it, too.”
“I’m sorry.” His eyes fall to the floor with this, what has to be his hundredth apology for saving her bloody life, of all things. Anyone would think he sorely regretted having her around, and she’d said as much after the first ten times; it was the first and last time she mentioned it, though, because the look on his face - the way the color drained from it in less than a second - wasn’t something she wanted a repeat performance of any time soon.
“I didn’t...” the breath that broke in between sounded more like a sigh before he picked back up, stumbling over his words and worrying at his bottom lip. “I didn’t mean...”
“I couldn’t lose you.” His voice was teetering precariously on the edge of hysterics, and his eyes were wide in the way that she’d come to realize meant he was breaking, somewhere inside; the curves of his eyelids trembling with the strain.
“Hey, hey,” Donna reached out to him, steadying her hands on his shoulders, the open sleeves of her blouse fluttering on her biceps as she drew him a bit closer, rubbing around the base of his neck. “Look at me, Spaceman,” she coaxed his gaze up warmly, and he met her smile with the saddest of eyes. Playfully trying to turn his mood, she flicked him on the chin before catching it between her fingers and drawing his face up in front of her own.
“You did right by the both of us, yeah?” she assured him with authority, her voice firm; she’d only been telling him as much from the start. “I told you forever. I meant it.”
There was something in those words, the last ones, that seemed to do the trick, and Donna watched as the Doctor visibly brightened, the heavy burden on his shoulders lifting a bit as he nodded, swallowing hard and holding her gaze steady for just a moment past comfort before tearing his eyes away, returning to the TARDIS controls and adjusting the landing settings just a hair.
“So...” Donna broached the subject she’d been waiting to bring up before they could put it off any longer. “Am I...” she cleared her throat, hoping the nerves would leave her. “Am I like you? Really?”
She feared at first that she’d said the wrong thing, given the way he froze completely, barely moving at all and avoiding her gaze. “Physically,” he finally spoke, just as she was about to take it back and shrug the question off, “you’re pure Gallifreyan. As for the rest of it, I can’t know for sure. This...” he ran a quick hand through to the tips of his hair. “There’s never been anything like this before.”
He seemed content to let the topic rest there, but Donna wanted answers. Suddenly emboldened by the fact that he’d responded at all, she dove in head first. “I can feel you,” she blurted without prelude. “Your mind.”
He leaned back on the heels of his palms, his voice heavy; sombre. “I know.” It sounded more like he’d rather he didn’t, though.
“I didn’t know what it was at first,” Donna tried to be casual, meandering about the room on light feet, her back turned to him. “I thought it might be those drugs,” she commented irritably; “but it’s so familiar, and it never goes away. It’s you, isn’t it?”
She turned when he said nothing, and barely caught the end of his nod. There was something more in the gesture, though, and she could sense it, so she went out on a limb.
“You can feel me, too?” she guessed, grasping at straws.
He barely even sounded like himself as he muttered; “Yes.”
She forced a laugh, her lungs sore and her hearts stumbling frantically (both of them, damnit, and that’s not yet pleasant) as she tried to fight off the sense of rejection at his mixed signals, his lukewarm response. “Do I drive you mad?”
He turned to her, and he was changed in an instant - he was the force of nature that stopped wars and broke wills; the Oncoming Storm arriving in a crash of thunder as his eyes flashed and he seemed to make all of time and space stand perfectly still ’“No,” he breathed, and she could feel it, so close. “No...” he trailed off, and she wandered over to him just as twin tears escaped his eyes to run down his cheeks unchecked, his voice cracking and soft as he managed to finish the thought; “It’s beautiful.”
She felt him,head him move, swaggering towards her slowly, his eyes on his shoes. “It’s been quiet for so long,” he breathed. “So quiet. You’re a spark of life in the shadows, Donna.” She looked up and saw him in front of her, staring at her as if she was keeping the world turning in that very instant, as if she fascinated him, as if she were extraordinary. “You’re warm and tangible...” he reached out slowly, cupped her face gently in his palm. “And you’re here. You’re real.” His mouth moved with empty, useless sounds for a moment, then two, and he closed his eyes in an attempt to refocus, shaking his head to clear his train of thought. “I’ve spent longer than you can imagine, pretending that void wasn’t empty,” he finally explained, his tone strained. “That the place where I could feel everyone, everyone like me, that it wasn’t hollow and cold, when it was nothing but. And now...” his voice dropped to a whisper, and he had drawn impossibly close, his breath on her skin as he studied her, as he watched her with wonder in his eyes; “Against all odds, beyond all reason, you fill the void.”
There was so much emotion saturated in that single moment when he pulled away, his eyes saying so much of what he hadn’t, what perhaps he couldn’t. The unspoken words settled, suffocating, and Donna struggled for a moment to breathe before the weight shifted and became innocuous, static.
“We’re headed back a bit,” he broke the tension awkwardly after a space, the gravity still a palpable presence. “The galaxy we're looking for’s been absorbed in a merger by now.”
“A merger?” she marveled, a bit taken aback. “An interplanetary merger?”
“Bonkers, isn’t it?” His lips quirked and his eyes sparkled just a tad, and with that she knew they were alright again.
She felt light-headed, suddenly, and somehow self-conscious as bits of information seemed to rearrange themselves of their own accord in her mind. “But I knew that, didn’t I?” she asked rhetorically, the knowledge coming to the fore, only belatedly. “I knew those happened.” He spared her a nod and a sympathetic curve of his mouth as she shook her head, frustrated at her inability to even think properly. “I know those happen.”
“It’s a bit rough, adjusting and all,” she admitted, almost sheepishly. “It’s all still sort of, fuzzy.”
“Just getting used to it, I suspect,” he said as he tilted his chin, staring at her down his nose, his tone encouraging but his expression giving nothing away. “Your brain was different before, smaller; it was easier to find the new memories and access them. But now...” he sucked in a breath, whistling faintly. “It’s vast beyond comprehension, a Time Lord consciousness - the content’s going to have to propagate, so to speak, before it sinks in.”
She shot a glare in his direction at that. “Are you trying to say I was thick before?”
His stoicism broke for an instant as her voice raised, a proper and shining grin crossing his features as he declared boisterously; “Never. You were always brilliant.”
Suddenly though, he turned serious again, the veneer of his smile fading away as quickly as it came. “You know that you can ask me anything. Whatever you want to know.” He pegged her with his gaze, intense and soul-searching. “I’ll help you through this, Donna,” he swore with a subtle sort of passion, and she knew without a doubt that he would keep his word.
They were silent a space before the TARDIS broke the peace, wheezing a bit as the Doctor swerved around to check the readings on their progress. “Right,” he began, readjusting his spectacles. “I’m taking you to Catrigan Nova for some rest and relaxation. Think Midnight, without all the... bad.” He took a moment to wiggle his fingers ominously in the air for demonstration, and she rolled her eyes at him accordingly.
“Whirlpools of gold, landscapes of pearl and precious gems, diamond gardens, silver streets,” he extolled, bounding around the central column at warp-speed, per usual, excitement radiating off of him as he skipped around back to where he’d begun after the fourth go-round. “And one of the native species, the Daprok, they feed off of giving the most delicious massages,” he shivered with a grin in apparent recollection - if she concentrated, she could feel some residual sense of satisfaction connected to those words in his memories. “Something in the skin-to-skin contact stimulates their system and allows them to properly digest the nutrients in their food. It’s absolutely fabulous. Molto bene.” His cheeky grin was contagious, and she was returning it with a nod before she could think twice.
“Molto bene.”
Part Six: Only