Weekly Drabble Challenge Response: (soul)mate
Title: (soul)mate
Author: Tess/mihane_echo
Rating: Rated E for everyone
Word Count: 417
Spoilers: Through all of series 4
Summary: He did not love Donna Noble.
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it belongs to the Beeb and I'm borrowing it to play with. I promise I will return them (marginally) unharmed. ;3
Author's Note: Written for Weekly Drabble Challenge #2 at doctor_donna. Prompt was protection.
I just want a mate.
It was as much for her comfort as it was for his protection. Protection from her, protection from his own stupid old heart. He didn't want to fall again, hurt again. But the truth was, the moment she covered his hands with hers in that volcanic crater, stood at his side and shouldered the responsibility of Pompeii with him, he loved her.
The Doctor spent days arguing with himself. He did not love Donna Noble. Well, he did, but she was his mate. Just his mate, his best mate and he liked her a lot, but he wasn't in love with her.
Even as she announced she was going home, and his heart sank to the bottom of his Chucks and he wanted to beg her not to go, he told himself it was because she was his mate. When she coaxed him out of his shell for the sake of his little blond daughter, helped him accept her, helped him grieve when he lost her and he wondered how he could have ever lived without Donna Noble, he said it was because she was the best friend he had ever had.
When she kissed him, and warm tingles shuddered through his pain-wracked body, beginning the chemical reaction that would flush the poison from his system, he felt an odd moment of bliss and he told himself it was because it had worked and he wasn‘t going to have to regenerate. It certainly wasn't because he loved Donna and she had kissed him, and that he had dreamed about touching her like that, and tasting her like that-- because he hadn't. She was just his mate. You weren't supposed to feel this way about your mates.
When she put her arms around him without a word and with that one gesture held him together, kept him from falling apart when he wasn't even sure who he was anymore, he was some voiceless thing lost on a diamond surface, and she brought him back from that place, he knew he needed her.
But it wasn't until after the Crucible, after the metacrisis and blocking her memory and sending her home that the Doctor knew that he loved her. He knew that his shield of flimsy words had failed him, that he had never had any real protection, that Donna Noble had burrowed herself into both his hearts and made a home for herself there.
Because she was his mate. She had always been.
Author: Tess/mihane_echo
Rating: Rated E for everyone
Word Count: 417
Spoilers: Through all of series 4
Summary: He did not love Donna Noble.
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it belongs to the Beeb and I'm borrowing it to play with. I promise I will return them (marginally) unharmed. ;3
Author's Note: Written for Weekly Drabble Challenge #2 at doctor_donna. Prompt was protection.
I just want a mate.
It was as much for her comfort as it was for his protection. Protection from her, protection from his own stupid old heart. He didn't want to fall again, hurt again. But the truth was, the moment she covered his hands with hers in that volcanic crater, stood at his side and shouldered the responsibility of Pompeii with him, he loved her.
The Doctor spent days arguing with himself. He did not love Donna Noble. Well, he did, but she was his mate. Just his mate, his best mate and he liked her a lot, but he wasn't in love with her.
Even as she announced she was going home, and his heart sank to the bottom of his Chucks and he wanted to beg her not to go, he told himself it was because she was his mate. When she coaxed him out of his shell for the sake of his little blond daughter, helped him accept her, helped him grieve when he lost her and he wondered how he could have ever lived without Donna Noble, he said it was because she was the best friend he had ever had.
When she kissed him, and warm tingles shuddered through his pain-wracked body, beginning the chemical reaction that would flush the poison from his system, he felt an odd moment of bliss and he told himself it was because it had worked and he wasn‘t going to have to regenerate. It certainly wasn't because he loved Donna and she had kissed him, and that he had dreamed about touching her like that, and tasting her like that-- because he hadn't. She was just his mate. You weren't supposed to feel this way about your mates.
When she put her arms around him without a word and with that one gesture held him together, kept him from falling apart when he wasn't even sure who he was anymore, he was some voiceless thing lost on a diamond surface, and she brought him back from that place, he knew he needed her.
But it wasn't until after the Crucible, after the metacrisis and blocking her memory and sending her home that the Doctor knew that he loved her. He knew that his shield of flimsy words had failed him, that he had never had any real protection, that Donna Noble had burrowed herself into both his hearts and made a home for herself there.
Because she was his mate. She had always been.