still needs a title 3/?
Despite everything, when he heard her loud voice, he felt himself smile. Good old Donna, he thought. Racing to my rescue like the American Cavalry.
He leaned his head back against the wall and sighed deeply.
Too bad this was the one thing he couldn't be rescued from. Not even by a very determined redheaded spitfire.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Are you deaf, man?" she bellowed, raising her volume even more. "I said open the bloody door!"
"I'm afraid, ma'am," he answered softly. "That's a dangerous felon in there. We were told he would rip out our--"
"Oh, for G-d's sake!" She snatched the key ring from him and held them spread like a fan before his face. "Just tell me which one it is and you won't be responsible! I'll do it!"
He studied her for a moment, then reached a decision. He reached out and - mutely - tapped a single key.
She nodded firmly and held it, letting the others fall against her palm. "Now get out of here."
He didn't have to be told twice.
She fitted the key into the lock and turned it until it made a satisfying "Click". Then she pushed the door open and stepped inside the room.
The Doctor looked oddly vulnerable, sitting there in handcuffs. He wore no jacket or vest, and his shirt had been untucked from his belt. He had his head tilted back against the wall and his voice was strained. "Hullo, Donna."
"What did they do to you?" she asked, coming to sit beside him on the cot.
His head turned toward her slightly, though his gaze remained fixed over her head. "They tortured me."
"Why?"
The Doctor sighed. "About forty years ago - their time, just a few weeks mine - I landed here. The people were being oppressed by a family who thought they were deserving of the title of 'god'. I showed the people they were mere humans - and the people murdered all but the children. The hope was they could take the children and raise them right."
Donna touched his arm, and his eyes closed. "I take it," she said softly, "it didn't work out that way?" A few weeks ago his time, she thought. That was while I was recovering. When he thought the sight of him would kill me.
"No," he said, just as softly. "No, it didn't work out that way. Jarius - the head man here - is one of the older children who survived. He used this rest stop as a chance for vengeance."
"Will you heal when we get you to the TARDIS?"
He felt himself smile slightly again. When. Not if. Good old Donna. "I'm not sure, this time."
"What do you mean, you're not sure?"
"They pumped me full of drugs, Donna. They've stripped my time sense from me. Without that, I'm just a human with an extra cardio-respiratory system."
"And a brain that holds libraries of information," she pointed out.
He chuckled bitterly. "You would know."
"Yes, but it's like reading about it in a story now," she reminded him.
He smiled and leaned against her for a moment, gratitude stealing his voice. When he'd stripped the Time Lord part from her brain, he'd quite forgotten the magnificent propensity the human body and brain had to heal.
Her brain - quite on its own - had healed around the gaps he'd had to make. The memories had returned slowly, and her now fully human mind now recognised them as being hers, but distant enough that she couldn't remember anything but the facts.
Like reading it in a book.
"Donna," he said against her shoulder. "You're going to have to get us out of here."
And with that, she knew. "They didn't stop at taking your time sense, did they? What else did they do to you?"
Silence.
"Doctor." She jostled him, pulling him to sit up and turning his face toward her to make her point. "What else did they---" she broke off abruptly, her eyes going huge.
"Oh, my G-d," she whispered.
His eyes were fixed, staring at a point over her head. The rich brown was all but swallowed up by huge pupils that didn't react when his head was tilted to the light.
"Oh, my G-d," she repeated. "You're blind."
His reply was in a choked voice clogged with fear and rage. "Yeah."