Fic/One-shot: Copyright, Donna Noble
Title: Copyright, Donna Noble
Rating: PG
Genre: general, angst
Characters: Donna, Shaun, Wilf, Sylvia, split second of Martha, and Ten.
Word count: 2586
Summary: After EoT, but ignoring the regeneration. Donna constantly has strange dreams, so she writes about them.
Donna’s POV, kind of like she’s writing a journal.
Warning: possible urges to give Donna a big hug
Spoilers: most of series 4, The Runaway Bride-ish, and End of Time.
A/N: kinda stole Frank McCourt’s writing style hehe. Written in 3 AM when I should be trying to fix my sleeping pattern.
I’ve got a wonderful husband, and now I’m filthy rich because of an anonymous winning lotto ticket. Is life over yet? I don’t think so. Of course not.
Every night I have the funniest dreams. No, not really funny, but odd. Just odd. I forget them most of the time. The moment I wake up they’re a blur again. I remember sometimes, and when I do, I wish I didn’t and I expel them out of my brain before I start to cry.
This morning one of them is still fresh in my mind. It doesn’t really leave me alone, so I tell Gramps when I come over to visit.
Something’s wrong with Gramps, with mum, with everyone. At the strangest of times, they look at me with the saddest faces. I always expected mum to be so hard to talk to, but not my gramps.
He tells me it’s probably nothing and that I should just forget about it and I’m not pleased with that answer. How can I, when that’s all he’s been telling me? I miss my old gramps, and it’s moments like these when I walk out crying without any of them noticing.
I feel so alone sometimes, and I don’t know why. Well, I know half of why at least. But it’s deeper than that. Whenever I try to think of it I have the biggest of headaches, so I ignore the thought and move on.
It’s been a distracting day. Shaun lays in bed with me and I decide to tell him about what I’ve been feeling. He’s the only one that doesn’t react like my mum or Gramps. He doesn’t look at me like I’m insane, or I’m a ghost or as if I’m going to die in the next week-wait, that’s not the reason is it? Better not be.
I tell him about the dreams again, and how I remember this one vividly. Before anything else I tell him how upset I am about everyone’s behavior, and he gives me a consoling cuddle and I feel better.
He asks me what my dream was about and I say, ‘I don’t rightly know’.
‘Well go on,’ he says, ‘tell me what you do know.’
In the dream I travel the stars with a man who wears a suit and a long coat with converse. We’re friends, and we have adventures. There’s a chronological order to these adventures, or at least there should be, but that’s a bit hazy to me. Sometimes the dreams are different bits in one, and those are the ones that confuse me.
Shaun laughs and I frown. I ask him what he’s laughing at and he says that it’s strange to wear a suit with converse and then I laugh with him. I make a joke and tell him to imagine someone in a wedding dress and running shoes, but right when I do, I don’t find it funny anymore.
It’s no wonder everyone worries about me. Sometimes I don’t even know who I am.
I dream again that night. The man who is my best friend holds my hand as we run away from an erupting volcano (what barmy load that is), and I’m shouting at him, I’m so very angry and it wakes me up and suddenly I forget how his face looks like and the sound of his voice just like every time I wake.
It’s only me in the bed, and I rub my eyes and wonder where Shaun has run off to on a Saturday. He calls my name and comes in through the door. He says he has a gift for me. He sits with me in bed and I’m still very groggy, so Shaun hands me the small bag as he goes to make me some coffee.
It’s a journal, with a lovely cover of stars and constellations. I flip it open and admire the smooth pages and college ruled lines (God knows how much I despise wide ruled), and then Shaun comes in with my coffee.
‘What’s this for?’ I ask him.
‘If the dreams keep nagging you and you don’t feel like anyone’s listening,’ he says, ‘write ‘em down.’
So I do.
It’s quite addicting, really, I never thought I’d write in a journal. The last thing I ever remember writing was about this boy in 2nd grade….uck.
The things I write is what I remember of all my strange dreams. I try to make sense of them and put them in an order. I don’t leave my desk for hours because I’m sucked into telling what I see every night like a story. I sit there and try to remember what happened next. Usually that would light a big fire in my head but it doesn’t.
I’m displeased with my writing style, even if it’s just for a journal. I have to refrain from using too much slang and finding proper adjectives beats me. I feel so much better though, writing it all out.
It’s late at night and I’m starting to make mindless errors and I think my eraser’s running out…darn things are never enough. My wrist is terribly sore.
I go off to bed and Shaun is already there waiting for me. He laughs at me asks me if I had a bit too much fun and I say with all honesty, yeah, I did. He asks me if he could read what I have so far, and I toss it to him as I put on pajamas and settle into bed.
He reads quietly as I lay on his shoulder and close my eyes. I can’t exactly fall asleep, because he comments as he reads.
Shaun is bewildered with it all. Being told a dream and reading what someone has written about it have two different effects, apparently. The way I meet converse man in the middle of my wedding, my groom being a traitor, rejecting converse man and his ship, finding him again while combating a nanny and little aliens that I can’t quite remember… Our adventures are astonishing, he tells me. I think it’s nonsense.
‘The way you write it is fantastic,’ he says.
‘Yeah, sure, and I should publish it too,’ I quip with sarcasm.
He takes it seriously and says I should. Me, publish that rubbish? You’re kidding.
But he’s not kidding. The next half month when I’ve written in all the pages, Shaun begs for my permission to have his friend who happens to work at a publishing company read what I’ve written, and I eventually give it up. I haven’t anything to lose.
His friend loves it. It’s going on the shelves. Hold on a moment, I’m still in shock.
….
Still in shock.
Recovering from shock.
And I’m back.
I can’t believe it, there’s going to be books that have © Donna Noble on them. All because of a series of ridiculous dreams. Life is far from over. Light years and light years away from it.
----
Guess what, folks?
I beat Stephanie Meyer! Nah, not really. But that one book made a nice result. Not enough to make me supremely known and famous, but yeah.
The poor converse man doesn’t even have a name, so I humored Shaun and named him after him. I changed my own name to something else. Who writes a book with their own name as the main character?
I’m confused though when one specific review tells me that I based some bits of the story on a real event. As if, right?
I wonder why it was liked. It’s not like I doubt myself or anything, but I just wonder why it was so appealing to people. It’s like they knew exactly what I was talking about.
Mum is enraged with Shaun. I don’t know why, and then Gramps starts worrying, too. They have a talk without me in the kitchen but I can hear mum’s yelling, not loud enough for me to make out the words.
I’m tired of it and I walk in and I tell mum to stop shouting at Shaun, whatever it is he didn’t do anything wrong. The look on her face is menacing and gramps looks heart broken. I apologize, though really Shaun should be getting one from mum. I feel like crying, so I take his arm and we leave.
It’s hard. It really is, not ever knowing what people are talking about.
I continue to write. I don’t have the fame in mind, though. I write more about the dreams because every time I get it out there, I feel like I’ve found a missing bit of me. I can spill everything and no one will give me odd looks or tell me to forget it, cause I won’t forget and I don’t think I ever could, not even if I hit my head and forgot my own name.
I’m still upset with today. I lock myself up in what’s become my little office and I wipe tears away from the papers because it’s making it hard to write on. Shaun comes in and says nothing but gives me a hug.
Sometimes I feel like he’s hiding something from me too, but right now he’s all I’ve got. He’s the only one that’s willing to give me a chance.
I have nothing to do with the money I earn from what I wrote (or from the lottery, either). Money wasn’t that much important to me, so I donate almost all of it to multiple charities. I see a sad homeless man from time to time sometimes with and without Shaun. I give him food and we talk. He promises me that he’ll do better so that I don’t have to go through all the trouble of taking care of him. But I don’t mind it. I tell him it’s something converse man and his best friend would love to do every day.
One day I’m out for a little walk with Shaun after visiting that man and a woman approaches me. Martha, her name was, and she was telling me how much she loved my book. I’m flattered, really, but I thought it really strange. She walks away with the same look gramps or mum have sometimes.
A sort of sequel is waiting; everything just depends on what I see at night. Sometimes I remember nothing; sometimes I remember for ten minutes and then it all slips out of my head. I try to recall things in the shower and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
My dreams have been sadder these days. I still have no idea what they’re all about, but I wake up crying and the feeling sticks to me for the rest of the day. Gramps sees on today’s visit and for a brief moment, my old dear gramps is back, cheering me up and telling me I’m much more beautiful when I’m smiling. I don’t know why I have the slightest hope that I could tell him about what’s been bothering me, because when I do he just clams up again.
I confront him about this. I tell him that I don’t like it, Gramps, I really don’t like it when you look at me with sad eyes that I don’t understand, I don’t like it when you tell me to just forget. You push it aside like a disease and you hide things from me and I’m standing here trying to cope with the fact that I never know anything. I don’t even know who I am anymore, and now I’m not sure if I know who you are. I want my old gramps back, I want you to listen to me and I want you to be there for me and I just want everything back to the way it was and now I’m drenched in my own tears.
Gramps cries with me and he holds me for the longest time in a while. He tells me he’s sorry over and over into my hair and I believe him because he’s my gramps.
I have a dream that night where the converse man is looking at me so sadly, and for a moment I recognize his eyes in those I know. I see those eyes in Gramps, my mum, Shaun, that Martha lady.
Suddenly I don’t want to write anymore. I don’t even want to talk about it. It doesn’t make me feel better. It just makes me feel worse because I don’t want to remember the dreams that have turned into sad and sorrowful nightmares. I stay away from my journals and Shaun respects my choice.
I walk alone in the park later in the afternoon, feeling a bit numb. I take a seat on a bench next to a man and I find that I recognize him-he’s Mr. John Smith.
I say hello to him and he greets me back, asks me how Wilf and I are, the small talk. He’s read my book and he genuinely adores it, and I feel myself blush a little. I tell him it’s only part of my dreams.
He gets curious and asks me where these dreams come from, and I tell him I think it’s just my imagination being strange to me. They’re just dreams, nothing more, really. Something about him makes me comfortable enough to share the occasional headaches I get when I think too much about them. Mr. Smith tells me with concern to take it easy, that they are after all just and only dreams.
Out of nowhere, I start to cry. I can’t control it and Mr. Smith empathetically hands me a handkerchief to wipe away my tears and asks me what’s wrong. I babble out mindlessly and I say that converse man has gone and I keep dreaming of him leaving and he’s just a figure of my imagination but he makes me feel so much less lonely and every morning I wake up crying and I’ve gone completely bonkers, I desperately need a psychiatrist.
He smiles and he tells me no, I don’t need a psychiatrist. I’m not insane, I’m not bonkers and he tells me I’m magnificent. I’m a very special person and I ask him if he means that. He replies that the converse man would say the same thing, and that he’d want me to believe so, too. He picks up the handkerchief from my hands and dabs at my face himself.
My head hurts, the aches are coming back again and they burn and I tell him. He places his cold fingers upon my temples and I almost forget how I’m even here.
‘Lovely seeing you, Donna Noble,’ he says as he rises to leave. ‘Be wonderfully brilliant.’
Mr. Smith, I don’t really know who you are, but thank you.
The dreams are gone after that. I miss them, but I’m also glad they’re gone. I can focus a little more on my life now, instead of some ludicrous imaginary one. I’m going to be happy, yeah, that’s right. No more moping, no more of that nonsense. I don’t know who I am anymore-so I’ll start over.
I don’t need to have converse man or any of that blarney to live. I’ll tell you what, I can have a completely normal (multi-millionaire?) life, and I can be wonderfully brilliant on my own.
Of course, that’s what I say now. But life is far from over-light years and light years away from that.
END.
Rating: PG
Genre: general, angst
Characters: Donna, Shaun, Wilf, Sylvia, split second of Martha, and Ten.
Word count: 2586
Summary: After EoT, but ignoring the regeneration. Donna constantly has strange dreams, so she writes about them.
Donna’s POV, kind of like she’s writing a journal.
Warning: possible urges to give Donna a big hug
Spoilers: most of series 4, The Runaway Bride-ish, and End of Time.
A/N: kinda stole Frank McCourt’s writing style hehe. Written in 3 AM when I should be trying to fix my sleeping pattern.
I’ve got a wonderful husband, and now I’m filthy rich because of an anonymous winning lotto ticket. Is life over yet? I don’t think so. Of course not.
Every night I have the funniest dreams. No, not really funny, but odd. Just odd. I forget them most of the time. The moment I wake up they’re a blur again. I remember sometimes, and when I do, I wish I didn’t and I expel them out of my brain before I start to cry.
This morning one of them is still fresh in my mind. It doesn’t really leave me alone, so I tell Gramps when I come over to visit.
Something’s wrong with Gramps, with mum, with everyone. At the strangest of times, they look at me with the saddest faces. I always expected mum to be so hard to talk to, but not my gramps.
He tells me it’s probably nothing and that I should just forget about it and I’m not pleased with that answer. How can I, when that’s all he’s been telling me? I miss my old gramps, and it’s moments like these when I walk out crying without any of them noticing.
I feel so alone sometimes, and I don’t know why. Well, I know half of why at least. But it’s deeper than that. Whenever I try to think of it I have the biggest of headaches, so I ignore the thought and move on.
It’s been a distracting day. Shaun lays in bed with me and I decide to tell him about what I’ve been feeling. He’s the only one that doesn’t react like my mum or Gramps. He doesn’t look at me like I’m insane, or I’m a ghost or as if I’m going to die in the next week-wait, that’s not the reason is it? Better not be.
I tell him about the dreams again, and how I remember this one vividly. Before anything else I tell him how upset I am about everyone’s behavior, and he gives me a consoling cuddle and I feel better.
He asks me what my dream was about and I say, ‘I don’t rightly know’.
‘Well go on,’ he says, ‘tell me what you do know.’
In the dream I travel the stars with a man who wears a suit and a long coat with converse. We’re friends, and we have adventures. There’s a chronological order to these adventures, or at least there should be, but that’s a bit hazy to me. Sometimes the dreams are different bits in one, and those are the ones that confuse me.
Shaun laughs and I frown. I ask him what he’s laughing at and he says that it’s strange to wear a suit with converse and then I laugh with him. I make a joke and tell him to imagine someone in a wedding dress and running shoes, but right when I do, I don’t find it funny anymore.
It’s no wonder everyone worries about me. Sometimes I don’t even know who I am.
I dream again that night. The man who is my best friend holds my hand as we run away from an erupting volcano (what barmy load that is), and I’m shouting at him, I’m so very angry and it wakes me up and suddenly I forget how his face looks like and the sound of his voice just like every time I wake.
It’s only me in the bed, and I rub my eyes and wonder where Shaun has run off to on a Saturday. He calls my name and comes in through the door. He says he has a gift for me. He sits with me in bed and I’m still very groggy, so Shaun hands me the small bag as he goes to make me some coffee.
It’s a journal, with a lovely cover of stars and constellations. I flip it open and admire the smooth pages and college ruled lines (God knows how much I despise wide ruled), and then Shaun comes in with my coffee.
‘What’s this for?’ I ask him.
‘If the dreams keep nagging you and you don’t feel like anyone’s listening,’ he says, ‘write ‘em down.’
So I do.
It’s quite addicting, really, I never thought I’d write in a journal. The last thing I ever remember writing was about this boy in 2nd grade….uck.
The things I write is what I remember of all my strange dreams. I try to make sense of them and put them in an order. I don’t leave my desk for hours because I’m sucked into telling what I see every night like a story. I sit there and try to remember what happened next. Usually that would light a big fire in my head but it doesn’t.
I’m displeased with my writing style, even if it’s just for a journal. I have to refrain from using too much slang and finding proper adjectives beats me. I feel so much better though, writing it all out.
It’s late at night and I’m starting to make mindless errors and I think my eraser’s running out…darn things are never enough. My wrist is terribly sore.
I go off to bed and Shaun is already there waiting for me. He laughs at me asks me if I had a bit too much fun and I say with all honesty, yeah, I did. He asks me if he could read what I have so far, and I toss it to him as I put on pajamas and settle into bed.
He reads quietly as I lay on his shoulder and close my eyes. I can’t exactly fall asleep, because he comments as he reads.
Shaun is bewildered with it all. Being told a dream and reading what someone has written about it have two different effects, apparently. The way I meet converse man in the middle of my wedding, my groom being a traitor, rejecting converse man and his ship, finding him again while combating a nanny and little aliens that I can’t quite remember… Our adventures are astonishing, he tells me. I think it’s nonsense.
‘The way you write it is fantastic,’ he says.
‘Yeah, sure, and I should publish it too,’ I quip with sarcasm.
He takes it seriously and says I should. Me, publish that rubbish? You’re kidding.
But he’s not kidding. The next half month when I’ve written in all the pages, Shaun begs for my permission to have his friend who happens to work at a publishing company read what I’ve written, and I eventually give it up. I haven’t anything to lose.
His friend loves it. It’s going on the shelves. Hold on a moment, I’m still in shock.
….
Still in shock.
Recovering from shock.
And I’m back.
I can’t believe it, there’s going to be books that have © Donna Noble on them. All because of a series of ridiculous dreams. Life is far from over. Light years and light years away from it.
----
Guess what, folks?
I beat Stephanie Meyer! Nah, not really. But that one book made a nice result. Not enough to make me supremely known and famous, but yeah.
The poor converse man doesn’t even have a name, so I humored Shaun and named him after him. I changed my own name to something else. Who writes a book with their own name as the main character?
I’m confused though when one specific review tells me that I based some bits of the story on a real event. As if, right?
I wonder why it was liked. It’s not like I doubt myself or anything, but I just wonder why it was so appealing to people. It’s like they knew exactly what I was talking about.
Mum is enraged with Shaun. I don’t know why, and then Gramps starts worrying, too. They have a talk without me in the kitchen but I can hear mum’s yelling, not loud enough for me to make out the words.
I’m tired of it and I walk in and I tell mum to stop shouting at Shaun, whatever it is he didn’t do anything wrong. The look on her face is menacing and gramps looks heart broken. I apologize, though really Shaun should be getting one from mum. I feel like crying, so I take his arm and we leave.
It’s hard. It really is, not ever knowing what people are talking about.
I continue to write. I don’t have the fame in mind, though. I write more about the dreams because every time I get it out there, I feel like I’ve found a missing bit of me. I can spill everything and no one will give me odd looks or tell me to forget it, cause I won’t forget and I don’t think I ever could, not even if I hit my head and forgot my own name.
I’m still upset with today. I lock myself up in what’s become my little office and I wipe tears away from the papers because it’s making it hard to write on. Shaun comes in and says nothing but gives me a hug.
Sometimes I feel like he’s hiding something from me too, but right now he’s all I’ve got. He’s the only one that’s willing to give me a chance.
I have nothing to do with the money I earn from what I wrote (or from the lottery, either). Money wasn’t that much important to me, so I donate almost all of it to multiple charities. I see a sad homeless man from time to time sometimes with and without Shaun. I give him food and we talk. He promises me that he’ll do better so that I don’t have to go through all the trouble of taking care of him. But I don’t mind it. I tell him it’s something converse man and his best friend would love to do every day.
One day I’m out for a little walk with Shaun after visiting that man and a woman approaches me. Martha, her name was, and she was telling me how much she loved my book. I’m flattered, really, but I thought it really strange. She walks away with the same look gramps or mum have sometimes.
A sort of sequel is waiting; everything just depends on what I see at night. Sometimes I remember nothing; sometimes I remember for ten minutes and then it all slips out of my head. I try to recall things in the shower and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
My dreams have been sadder these days. I still have no idea what they’re all about, but I wake up crying and the feeling sticks to me for the rest of the day. Gramps sees on today’s visit and for a brief moment, my old dear gramps is back, cheering me up and telling me I’m much more beautiful when I’m smiling. I don’t know why I have the slightest hope that I could tell him about what’s been bothering me, because when I do he just clams up again.
I confront him about this. I tell him that I don’t like it, Gramps, I really don’t like it when you look at me with sad eyes that I don’t understand, I don’t like it when you tell me to just forget. You push it aside like a disease and you hide things from me and I’m standing here trying to cope with the fact that I never know anything. I don’t even know who I am anymore, and now I’m not sure if I know who you are. I want my old gramps back, I want you to listen to me and I want you to be there for me and I just want everything back to the way it was and now I’m drenched in my own tears.
Gramps cries with me and he holds me for the longest time in a while. He tells me he’s sorry over and over into my hair and I believe him because he’s my gramps.
I have a dream that night where the converse man is looking at me so sadly, and for a moment I recognize his eyes in those I know. I see those eyes in Gramps, my mum, Shaun, that Martha lady.
Suddenly I don’t want to write anymore. I don’t even want to talk about it. It doesn’t make me feel better. It just makes me feel worse because I don’t want to remember the dreams that have turned into sad and sorrowful nightmares. I stay away from my journals and Shaun respects my choice.
I walk alone in the park later in the afternoon, feeling a bit numb. I take a seat on a bench next to a man and I find that I recognize him-he’s Mr. John Smith.
I say hello to him and he greets me back, asks me how Wilf and I are, the small talk. He’s read my book and he genuinely adores it, and I feel myself blush a little. I tell him it’s only part of my dreams.
He gets curious and asks me where these dreams come from, and I tell him I think it’s just my imagination being strange to me. They’re just dreams, nothing more, really. Something about him makes me comfortable enough to share the occasional headaches I get when I think too much about them. Mr. Smith tells me with concern to take it easy, that they are after all just and only dreams.
Out of nowhere, I start to cry. I can’t control it and Mr. Smith empathetically hands me a handkerchief to wipe away my tears and asks me what’s wrong. I babble out mindlessly and I say that converse man has gone and I keep dreaming of him leaving and he’s just a figure of my imagination but he makes me feel so much less lonely and every morning I wake up crying and I’ve gone completely bonkers, I desperately need a psychiatrist.
He smiles and he tells me no, I don’t need a psychiatrist. I’m not insane, I’m not bonkers and he tells me I’m magnificent. I’m a very special person and I ask him if he means that. He replies that the converse man would say the same thing, and that he’d want me to believe so, too. He picks up the handkerchief from my hands and dabs at my face himself.
My head hurts, the aches are coming back again and they burn and I tell him. He places his cold fingers upon my temples and I almost forget how I’m even here.
‘Lovely seeing you, Donna Noble,’ he says as he rises to leave. ‘Be wonderfully brilliant.’
Mr. Smith, I don’t really know who you are, but thank you.
The dreams are gone after that. I miss them, but I’m also glad they’re gone. I can focus a little more on my life now, instead of some ludicrous imaginary one. I’m going to be happy, yeah, that’s right. No more moping, no more of that nonsense. I don’t know who I am anymore-so I’ll start over.
I don’t need to have converse man or any of that blarney to live. I’ll tell you what, I can have a completely normal (multi-millionaire?) life, and I can be wonderfully brilliant on my own.
Of course, that’s what I say now. But life is far from over-light years and light years away from that.
END.