Reaction fic to "Journey's End" (9/9) & Bonus coda (10)
The end, finally. Idea from jetpack_monkey, or this thing would just be the little coda.
Nine Ways Donna Noble Had a Fantastic Life
by Christina K
copyright 2008
9.
So it was six months after the last so-called alien mess, and Donna had found a good job with a party-and-trip-planning agency ("Adventure's Our Biz!") which had gotten her a free trip to the Orkney Islands, and then a much better free trip to Lisbon, and life was going along all right. She was thinking she might look for a new job, 'cause this one wasn't a challenge any more, maybe something political, maybe entertainment. She could completely organize Emma Thompson's life, even though it probably didn't need it, but yeah, why not shoot high, if you were going to change your direction?
Except that concept didn't really have the zing to it that it might have once, before she was sick for six months and forgot half a year.
That still bugged her.
Normal day, muffin and tea in hand, getting out of the car to walk over to the agency, and suddenly she's being mugged. By a crazy person.
"You need to come with me." Charm bloke, or at least he thought he was: close-cut dark hair, blue eyes, shiny smile, stupid beard, holding--
"What the hell kind of gun is that?" Donna tilted her head and poked at the muzzle of the whatever-it-was, all shiny and green and plastic. "Is that a squirt gun?"
"No, it's not a squirt gun," her mugger said, tone withering. "It's an acid gun. It will eat off your face. Or whatever else I point it at. So come along now, there's a nice little ape."
"Haven't you ever heard of the word please? Please." Donna glared back at the man. "As in, bitch, please. I'm not going anywhere with you."
"You'll regret it if you ~do-onn't~. Donna Noble." MuggerBoy's smile grew as Donna opened her mouth again. "The doctor will die if you don't come with me."
"Doctor? What doctor? Are you completely barmy? And how the hell do you know my name? Right. POLICE! FIRE! HEEEELLLLLP!" And hauled off to punch him, insane mugger or no.
Which earned her an almighty whack on the head with the shiny green gun, and MuggerBoy's annoyed voice saying, "If they're not relentlessly altruistic, they're just loud."
Donna would have demanded to know who the hell he was talking about, but the fuzziness around the edges of her vision closed in and swallowed her before she could even get out a Me loud? You crazy!
When she woke up, head throbbing like a tympani and eyesight doing a see-saw back and forth, she knew immediately that she was inside, somewhere quiet, and oh hello, handcuffed to a hospital bed. Not her own hospital bed; she was sitting in a chair next to it, wrists manacled to the roll-bar or whatever they called it. After a few blinks, she got a look at the person lying in the bed; out cold, poor bastard. Skinny, wild bed-head, sharp ferret features looking waxy with illness. He had a zillion and one wires going into his head and chest and arms and fingers.
"Ahhh, you've re-joined us. Thank you, Miss Noble." CrazyMugger grabbed an electrode that lead to a wire connected to ComaBoy's head, and stuck it schllllllp! to her forehead. Speechless for a moment, Donna stared at him as he grabbed her fingers, and despite her wiggling, side-kicks and "Oi!"'s, fastened little finger clamps onto them. "Be grateful this isn't last century, it would be so much more difficult to extract what I need if this were 1909 instead of 2009. With a sixty percent chance of survival for you, as well. There we go!"
"You. Are. Insane. HEEEEELLLLP!" ComaBoy didn't even blip at that, not according to all those monitors on the other side of the bed, and no one else walked into the hospital room/Mad Scientist's lair, even after Donna screeched for a full minute. Bloody hell.
CrazyMugger smugly waited until she had to stop to catch her breath, to tell her, "Really, you'll thank me for this. Well. For the two point five hours you'll survive past it. And the doctor will thank me that I took the precaution of handcuffing you. See, I'm not completely evil. I'm bringing him back from complete brain-freeze to break a time-lock, but I'm doing it carefully!" He started flipping levers and pushing buttons on the monitoring equipment, and a few of the machines began to beep faster. And faster. And glow.
Donna was winding up to scream again when the coma patient's mouth started to glow. Just faintly. But it was enough to make her gulp, and peer at him more closely.
And now her fingers were glowing. Well, isn't that just perfect!
Funny, now it was his eyelids, and his chest, and ooo, her eyesight was going
all
funny?
The awareness of the Time Vortex tilted and unfolded like a TARDIS inside her head, for just a nanosecond:
the Medusa cascade / Martha/ DalekCaan/ Lee/ thesongoftheOod/ JennyJenny/ ashesofPompeii/ brilliant / Roselostagain/ transducers transponders transistors can't even change/ Granddad/ somethingonyourBACK
Donna's head had slammed into the rail in there somewhere; when she blinked open her eyes again, it was to stare at the Doctor. ComaBoy. The Martian.
Who blinked open his eyes, and stared back at her, awareness coming back slowly. Stunned shock, confusion, apology, worry, fear, guilt.
Donna's fingers twitched and lunged forward with the impulse to strangle him, then had to subside when she couldn't get any closer. That she had the simultaneous impulse to hug him and tell him his hair looked very stupid was just par for the course.
"You are so, so lucky I'm cuffed to this bed, boyo," she told him, gulping for air. "Right. Who's the git with the beard?"
"Beard?" he muttered, then stared at the Mad Mugger in disbelief. "You grew it back. Again. Oh, lord, you're still evil. Donna, he's evil! Can you-- no, you're handcuffed, can't run, blast."
"And you're still stupid. Seriously, you had a metacrisis with her?" Their captor jerked at thumb at Donna and sniffed. "I thought you had better taste. Credit where it's due though, you had her brain nicely sewn up. If I hadn't need to jump-start you from full introversion and mind-freeze, it might have lasted sixty years or so."
"When we get out of this," Donna told the Doctor, "You'n me are going to have a nice long chat about mucking about in people's heads for other people's good, and hanging out with blokes who mug people with acid guns. Right now, we got two and a half hours before he kills us. So hop to it, mister. Time to save the day."
The Doctor broke out into a huge smile, brighter than nuclear explosions (and she'd seen those, she knew that now). "Donna, the Master. Master, Donna." He slewed his head around to look up at the Master. "You are in so much trouble. Trust me on this."
Coda:
"Oi!"
Donna pulled the bloke mooning over the Parliament building out of traffic, and kept him from falling back over into the path of the lorry barreling down the street. "Are you blind and deaf? You could've been a spot on the pavement there, mate!"
Skinnyboy gaped at her a moment, muttering, "What... ooo, truck, right. Splat. That's never pleasant no. I like this body unflattened, got to be more careful..."
"You're welcome," Donna told him pointedly, starting to smile at his bewilderment. "You okay now?"
"Right as rain." He gave her a searching look, and Donna raised her eyebrows at him, before he blinked and shook his head. "Got to go. But, um. Thanks, Donna. Saved my life. Again. Nicely done."
"You're-- hey. How did you--"
Then he stepped out into traffic again, ducked around a bus before Donna could even dart forward to catch his pinstripe.
And when the bus pulled away, he was gone.
When she got to work, she found a key in her jacket, one she'd never seen before. More like a pendant than a key, really.
... but the rest is a story for another time.
Nine Ways Donna Noble Had a Fantastic Life
by Christina K
copyright 2008
9.
So it was six months after the last so-called alien mess, and Donna had found a good job with a party-and-trip-planning agency ("Adventure's Our Biz!") which had gotten her a free trip to the Orkney Islands, and then a much better free trip to Lisbon, and life was going along all right. She was thinking she might look for a new job, 'cause this one wasn't a challenge any more, maybe something political, maybe entertainment. She could completely organize Emma Thompson's life, even though it probably didn't need it, but yeah, why not shoot high, if you were going to change your direction?
Except that concept didn't really have the zing to it that it might have once, before she was sick for six months and forgot half a year.
That still bugged her.
Normal day, muffin and tea in hand, getting out of the car to walk over to the agency, and suddenly she's being mugged. By a crazy person.
"You need to come with me." Charm bloke, or at least he thought he was: close-cut dark hair, blue eyes, shiny smile, stupid beard, holding--
"What the hell kind of gun is that?" Donna tilted her head and poked at the muzzle of the whatever-it-was, all shiny and green and plastic. "Is that a squirt gun?"
"No, it's not a squirt gun," her mugger said, tone withering. "It's an acid gun. It will eat off your face. Or whatever else I point it at. So come along now, there's a nice little ape."
"Haven't you ever heard of the word please? Please." Donna glared back at the man. "As in, bitch, please. I'm not going anywhere with you."
"You'll regret it if you ~do-onn't~. Donna Noble." MuggerBoy's smile grew as Donna opened her mouth again. "The doctor will die if you don't come with me."
"Doctor? What doctor? Are you completely barmy? And how the hell do you know my name? Right. POLICE! FIRE! HEEEELLLLLP!" And hauled off to punch him, insane mugger or no.
Which earned her an almighty whack on the head with the shiny green gun, and MuggerBoy's annoyed voice saying, "If they're not relentlessly altruistic, they're just loud."
Donna would have demanded to know who the hell he was talking about, but the fuzziness around the edges of her vision closed in and swallowed her before she could even get out a Me loud? You crazy!
When she woke up, head throbbing like a tympani and eyesight doing a see-saw back and forth, she knew immediately that she was inside, somewhere quiet, and oh hello, handcuffed to a hospital bed. Not her own hospital bed; she was sitting in a chair next to it, wrists manacled to the roll-bar or whatever they called it. After a few blinks, she got a look at the person lying in the bed; out cold, poor bastard. Skinny, wild bed-head, sharp ferret features looking waxy with illness. He had a zillion and one wires going into his head and chest and arms and fingers.
"Ahhh, you've re-joined us. Thank you, Miss Noble." CrazyMugger grabbed an electrode that lead to a wire connected to ComaBoy's head, and stuck it schllllllp! to her forehead. Speechless for a moment, Donna stared at him as he grabbed her fingers, and despite her wiggling, side-kicks and "Oi!"'s, fastened little finger clamps onto them. "Be grateful this isn't last century, it would be so much more difficult to extract what I need if this were 1909 instead of 2009. With a sixty percent chance of survival for you, as well. There we go!"
"You. Are. Insane. HEEEEELLLLP!" ComaBoy didn't even blip at that, not according to all those monitors on the other side of the bed, and no one else walked into the hospital room/Mad Scientist's lair, even after Donna screeched for a full minute. Bloody hell.
CrazyMugger smugly waited until she had to stop to catch her breath, to tell her, "Really, you'll thank me for this. Well. For the two point five hours you'll survive past it. And the doctor will thank me that I took the precaution of handcuffing you. See, I'm not completely evil. I'm bringing him back from complete brain-freeze to break a time-lock, but I'm doing it carefully!" He started flipping levers and pushing buttons on the monitoring equipment, and a few of the machines began to beep faster. And faster. And glow.
Donna was winding up to scream again when the coma patient's mouth started to glow. Just faintly. But it was enough to make her gulp, and peer at him more closely.
And now her fingers were glowing. Well, isn't that just perfect!
Funny, now it was his eyelids, and his chest, and ooo, her eyesight was going
all
funny?
The awareness of the Time Vortex tilted and unfolded like a TARDIS inside her head, for just a nanosecond:
the Medusa cascade / Martha/ DalekCaan/ Lee/ thesongoftheOod/ JennyJenny/ ashesofPompeii/ brilliant / Roselostagain/ transducers transponders transistors can't even change/ Granddad/ somethingonyourBACK
Donna's head had slammed into the rail in there somewhere; when she blinked open her eyes again, it was to stare at the Doctor. ComaBoy. The Martian.
Who blinked open his eyes, and stared back at her, awareness coming back slowly. Stunned shock, confusion, apology, worry, fear, guilt.
Donna's fingers twitched and lunged forward with the impulse to strangle him, then had to subside when she couldn't get any closer. That she had the simultaneous impulse to hug him and tell him his hair looked very stupid was just par for the course.
"You are so, so lucky I'm cuffed to this bed, boyo," she told him, gulping for air. "Right. Who's the git with the beard?"
"Beard?" he muttered, then stared at the Mad Mugger in disbelief. "You grew it back. Again. Oh, lord, you're still evil. Donna, he's evil! Can you-- no, you're handcuffed, can't run, blast."
"And you're still stupid. Seriously, you had a metacrisis with her?" Their captor jerked at thumb at Donna and sniffed. "I thought you had better taste. Credit where it's due though, you had her brain nicely sewn up. If I hadn't need to jump-start you from full introversion and mind-freeze, it might have lasted sixty years or so."
"When we get out of this," Donna told the Doctor, "You'n me are going to have a nice long chat about mucking about in people's heads for other people's good, and hanging out with blokes who mug people with acid guns. Right now, we got two and a half hours before he kills us. So hop to it, mister. Time to save the day."
The Doctor broke out into a huge smile, brighter than nuclear explosions (and she'd seen those, she knew that now). "Donna, the Master. Master, Donna." He slewed his head around to look up at the Master. "You are in so much trouble. Trust me on this."
Coda:
"Oi!"
Donna pulled the bloke mooning over the Parliament building out of traffic, and kept him from falling back over into the path of the lorry barreling down the street. "Are you blind and deaf? You could've been a spot on the pavement there, mate!"
Skinnyboy gaped at her a moment, muttering, "What... ooo, truck, right. Splat. That's never pleasant no. I like this body unflattened, got to be more careful..."
"You're welcome," Donna told him pointedly, starting to smile at his bewilderment. "You okay now?"
"Right as rain." He gave her a searching look, and Donna raised her eyebrows at him, before he blinked and shook his head. "Got to go. But, um. Thanks, Donna. Saved my life. Again. Nicely done."
"You're-- hey. How did you--"
Then he stepped out into traffic again, ducked around a bus before Donna could even dart forward to catch his pinstripe.
And when the bus pulled away, he was gone.
When she got to work, she found a key in her jacket, one she'd never seen before. More like a pendant than a key, really.
... but the rest is a story for another time.