Spaceman (Doctor Who fic)
Title: Spaceman (1/1)
Author: Sue DeNimme
Characters/Pairing: Ten, Donna
Rating: G
Spoilers: Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, The End of Time Part Two
Word count: 1477
Summary: Donna finds the perfect gift for the Time Lord who has everything, and nothing.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and its characters belong to the BBC. No copyrights were harmed in the making of this fanfic.
A/N: The painting in this story actually exists, and was done by my husband's late grandfather, as a set decoration for a local TV show (on weird phenomena). My husband still has it.
"What about the Greys?"
It was a reasonable enough question, she'd thought at the time. She had been sitting on the jumpseat in the TARDIS control room, thumbing idly through a magazine and keeping the Doctor company while he did some under-the-floor maintenance.
"The whos?" came his muffled voice, the clinks and clangs continuing with barely a pause.
"The Greys. Can we visit their planet sometime?"
"Greys?" The clinks and clangs stopped. A moment later, the Doctor's head popped up, his expressive face screwed into an almost comically puzzled grimace that she would have thought was exaggerated for effect if she hadn't known him. "What d'you mean, Greys?" He sounded astonished and even aggrieved by the suggestion that there might be an alien species that she had knowledge of and he didn't.
"You know. Little buggers, grey skin, big heads, great big black eyes. Used to hear stories about them all the time, when I was looking for you. Don't tell me you've never heard of them."
"Ohh!" His expression cleared. "The ones who're always whisking people off and sticking things up their... never mind. Why would you want to see them?"
"I dunno. Just curious, is all." Donna laid the magazine down across her lap and folded her arms. "Not that I'm planning on letting them get anywhere near *my* never-mind, but I wouldn't mind having a chance to ask them what's so fascinating in there. Among other things."
The Doctor put his elbows on the edge of the grating and leaned on them, staring thoughtfully ahead. "Often wondered that myself." He coughed. "I mean, about what's so fascinating to *them*."
"So?" she prompted. "Can we see them?"
His eyes snapped back to her, then in one of his quicksilver changes of mood, he popped back down, out of sight. "Nope," he said succinctly.
Donna waited a moment or two to see if more was coming, then asked, "Why not?"
The noises of his repair work resumed. "Because they don't exist." Clink. "Weeell... they *might* exist. Possibly. But let's just put it this way -- it's not very likely."
"How do you figure that? What, they're not in that ginormous mental Wikipedia of yours, so it's not even worth looking into? So to speak."
"Oh, we can. If you *really* want to. But when you consider that even with faster-than-light drives, you're talking about a race of people traveling thousands, maybe millions of light years to one planet to look at bums... I mean, come *on*! And Earth is the only planet I've ever heard of that has stories about them. The *only* one. Makes one wonder if it isn't just you lot thinking awfully highly of your posterior regions. Anyway, it's a bit of a red flag, don't you think? And *how* did we get on this subject, anyway?"
"All right, all right." She rolled her eyes. "Forget I even brought it up, Spaceman."
"Gladly."
***
The TARDIS doors shut, to the snap of the Doctor's fingers. Under other circumstances, Donna would have demanded to know just where and when he had learned to do *that*. But not now. She watched him go to the console and send the ship into the Vortex, then she simply left him to his piloting and went off to her room for a shower, a cry, and a sleep.
The first two were easy; the last was elusive. She couldn't stop remembering her husband, seeing his eyes, hearing his stutter, basking in his sweet attentiveness, feeling his touch. The sound of her children's laughter. The smell of their hair as she'd hugged them. The helpless despair when they winked out of existence, when she watched Lee fading into the white void.
She couldn't decide which was worse -- the fact that she'd lost them, or the fact that they'd never really existed, physically.
When she came back to the control room, the Doctor was there. She wasn't sure that he'd ever left. He didn't say a word, just landed the ship, and when the doors opened, she found herself across the street from her home.
She felt her eyes unexpectedly tearing up. How had he known? Usually, when it came to other people's emotional needs, he could be infuriatingly obtuse, sometimes to the point of callousness. But this time she hadn't even had to think of asking.
She threw her arms around him, whispered, "Thank you," and ran out of the TARDIS into her granddad's arms.
Only when she was out running errands a week later, having left the Doctor happily ensconced in the little shed up the hill, chatting with Wilf and looking at telescopes, did it occur to her why he had brought her here. He'd done it because he knew exactly how she felt. Because he'd felt it too, on a scale so immense that she could barely conceive of it. He'd lost not just his family, but his people, his entire planet. Not to mention Jenny. And to top it off, he'd lost somebody in the Library as well. Of course he'd known. How could he not?
She was lucky. She had a home to go back to. The Doctor didn't. There wasn't one single place in the universe where he could go and not be an alien.
That was when she saw it, in a dingy little kiosk. Destiny, coincidence -- she couldn't be bothered wondering. She immediately marched over and bought it.
***
The Doctor stared at the large, flat, rectangular, brown-paper-wrapped package leaning against the console. "What's this?"
"What d'you think it is, you prawn?" she retorted, smiling. "What, you've never seen a present before? Open it!"
He needed no further prompting.
If anyone had asked Donna what she thought she was best at, she'd have told them three things: typing, numbers, and shopping. In particular, she'd always had a knack for picking things for other people. She smugly watched the grin blossom across the Doctor's face as he strode forward and eagerly tore the paper away to reveal... a painting. A painting of a small, grey-skinned, big-headed being in a spacesuit, staring enigmatically out at the viewer, with large, mysterious black eyes.
It took the Doctor a moment to recover. He opened his mouth, closed it, and rocked back on his heels a little, then rallied with one of his little facial shrugs. "Um..." His hand reached up to ruffle the hair on the back of his head, a sure sign that he was confused but trying not to show it. With a sinking feeling, she wondered if maybe her knack had failed her this time.
"I know, the proportions are a bit dodgy, but I saw it and it made me think of when we talked about the Greys, and I thought, well, he doesn't have a home planet either. So, a spaceman for a spaceman." She was babbling, she realized, and finished lamely, "You know? I understand if you don't -- "
"Donna," he interrupted, and she saw that his grin was back. She was familiar enough with his grins by now to know that it was a genuine one. "I love it. Thank you!" He swept her up in one of his huge, enthusiastic hugs -- which was one of the things *he* was best at.
***
One suit, ripped and battered, came off. Another one, fresh and neat, went on.
A bit like something else that was going to be happening in a little while, he thought wryly as his fingers flew as fast as he could make them. He had to be quick, while the level of pain was still manageable. How long he could fight it off, he wasn't sure, but this incarnation had always surprised him with its capacity to control its internal energies, so he imagined he could at least accomplish everything he intended in what time he had left. See everybody he wanted to see. Help where it was needed, one last time. It was the least he could do.
As he reached for a new tie and wound it around his neck, he glanced into a pair of mysterious black eyes. The eyes stared back, unblinking.
The Doctor paused for a moment, then reached out and stroked the alien's face, the canvas rough under his fingers. I'm going to take care of her, he promised silently. You take care of me. The new me.
He slid the tie through its knot, buttoned his jacket, and left the room without a backward glance.
~end