Ten / Donna - Red
Title: Red
Author: yellow_craion
Disclaimer: Yeah, yeah - no profit, just fun
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Ten, Donna
Summary: Doctor has to find Donna before she pays the price for his mistake.
Words: 1 218
Warnings: Aftermath of torture but it's not really explicit
A/N: So, I started this over a year ago, if you can believe it. Con-crit is greatly appreciated.
The Doctor loves her fiery hair. It's hard to look at her and not admire it; the way it flows and swirls around her face and over her shoulders. That beautiful, strawberry-smelling, ginger hair that's impossible to miss.
And yet he forgot.
And he brought Donna to a place and time, where people with red hair are being imprisoned; as a tradition, apparently. Now that he thinks about it, the Doctor recalls someone saying it was a monthly sacrifice for the gods. Not that it really matters. What matters is to find Donna in that elaborate maze of corridors and get her safely to the TARDIS.
As he comes to another dead end, the Time Lord curses his own stupidity.
He reaches for his sonic and scans for her DNA signature again. Frowning, he re-checks the read-out.
'But I'm standing right…' Oh!
The wall. The thick, stone wall. Donna must be locked on the other side. He scans it, runs his hands over any crease he can find but there's no way in. It's just a wall, with no secret passage. He slams his fist into it. Finding a way around is going to take time he - or rather, Donna - might not have.
After shoving his guilt deep down, he rounds a corner to his left and runs along the slowly widening corridor.
-
Finally he sees a door in the distance. With each step he hopes more and more that it's the right one, and that Donna is alright. There's a noise behind it. The Doctor has barely any time to hide in a shadowed gap in a wall before a couple of guards walk out of the room and go past him.
"Gods will be pleased with this one!" First guard laughs as he wipes his bloodied hands with a cloth.
"They better be! It's been a while since I heard screams like that!"
It takes all of his self control just to wait for them to go away and not kill them with his bare hands when he hears this.
Once the hallway is silent again, he runs and sonics the door open, wincing at the loud creak. Inside he finds his companion, tied to a chair; illuminated by the daylight coming from a small window just below the ceiling. The closer he's getting to his friend the more his guilt and rage flare. A blindfold covers some of her face but a split lip, some cuts and a smear of blood are still perfectly visible. 'And it's all my fault!' the Time Lord thinks furiously. He reaches behind her head to undo the blindfold, noticing her bruised throat with revulsion, only to feel her flinch away from his fingers.
"Donna, I'm so sorry," he whispers and kneels in front of her so she won't feel threatened, even when she knows who he is. "It's me. It's the Doctor." He tries again and the blindfold falls to her lap.
"D-Doc?" It's more of a moan than an actual word, but he's still glad to hear her.
"It's me," he gives her a weak smile, if only to reassure her. He brushes some dirty hair away from her face. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have let us get separated in that crowd." His eyes stray down, looking for - and to his dismay, finding - more injuries. "It's my fault…" he adds brokenly.
When Donna opens her mouth to say something he stops her quickly, still in that quiet voice, "Don't, Donna." He holds her face gently between his palms, almost hiding his fingers in her tangled hair and searches her eyes. "Don't talk, okay? It's got to hurt. I'm sorry, sorry. I'm going to get you out of here. Trust me."
She just nods.
The Doctor looks around the room for something to cut the ropes with. His eyes lay on a table cluttered with various instruments, all of them dirty but only some bear any marks of recent use. When his overactive brain supplies him with all too accurate visual of what most probably have happened here, a part of him wishes he didn't let those guards walk away so easily.
A bigger part of him though, all but drowns him in remorse for letting Donna get hurt. In another surge of protectiveness he wraps an arm around her, but stops suddenly when his hand grasps at a torn and moist material of her blouse. As he looks down he's greeted by a bloodstained, shredded fabric that's covering her equally tormented shoulders and back. With fingers trembling with fury he cautiously puts some of the material aside and realizes many of the gashes are still seeping blood.
Donna flinches away from his touch with a tiny sound that breaks his hearts.
"I'm sorry, Donna. I'm so sorry!" Trying not to harm her any more, he goes for the knife to cut through the ropes. After a few seconds she's free.
He pulls her close to his chest. Vaguely he feels her grab a fistful of his coat and he can't control his urge to softly kiss the top of her head any longer. "I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I'm going to take care of you, Donna," he murmurs into her hair, closing his eyes briefly against the sting of tears.
She pulls herself up against him, so her chin rests on his shoulder and rasps out into his ear, "you d-didn't do it…S-spaceman"
He doesn't say anything. He just turns to look at her for a moment. She's too weak to walk on her own, and he's worried how painful it's going to be for her to be carried in her state, yet can't think of any other way of getting out of this horrible place.
Decision made, he sneaks one hand under her knees. With another kiss to her hair he says, "I need you to hold on to me, Donna. Can you do that? I'm sorry, I have to carry you out but… it… I don't want to hu-"
As he stumbles on his words, she leans even closer and stops him mid-ramble. "Quit apologizing… Spaceman. Just… get on with it."
Momentarily stunned, he nods jerkily and stands up with Donna in his arms. Even in this hideous situation, the Doctor finds he likes the way her warmer body feels folded so closely against his chest; the way her cheek rests atop his shoulder, almost completely hiding her face in the crook of his neck so he can feel her breath ghosting on his cool skin. He adjusts his hold on her, just to make sure he won’t drop her while opening the door.
"Sorry I'm so heavy."
It's so quiet, for a second he's not certain he heard her right.
"What? No, you're not." The Doctor looks down at her but can't make out her face. "Donna, look at me!"
When she eventually does, he repeats softly but with conviction, "Stop thinking about yourself like that!"
Donna looks away shyly.
The well known feeling of defeat washes over him, just like it does every time she refuses to believe how brilliant she is. Reminding himself it's neither place nor time for this, he walks out of the room and thinks of a fastest way to his ship.
End.