After the Storm (2/6) Post JE, Rating G - Donna, Wilf, Sylvia, Jack, Martha, Tenth Doctor (original)
AUTHOR: sensiblecat
WORDS: 3665
SPOILERS: Up to the end of JE.
CREDITS: picture by fizzling_wizbee
RATING: Gen
CHARACTERS: Donna, Sylvia, Wilf, Tenth Doctor (original), Jack, Martha
“Stop it,” she told herself, with a huge effort of will. “This is how people get addicted to things. It’s not real life. This is. This house. Mum. Gramps. That pile of coupons over there. That Weight Watchers calorie-counter stuck on the wall.”
This was life? This was all there was?
The characters are the property of the BBC and no plagiarism or personal profit is intended. Though I don't always like the way he treats them, I have the utmost respect for RTD for creating them, and for the talented actors who brought them to life.
Chapter One
The Doctor had just finished dealing with a very large maggot. A Hydraphoria Maxima, to be precise, and they really didn’t come much bigger than that. How it had got into the Statue of Liberty was anybody’s guess; it could even have hitched a ride on the Earth as they were towing it home.
Harmless enough species as a general rule, and remarkably adaptable, as simple organisms tended to be. If she hadn’t been about to spawn, Hydie might have huddled massively inside the statue’s hollow body for years, just minding her own business. But things rarely worked out that neatly, even for a basically harmless creature that was just exploiting an unexpected evolutionary niche. Instead, her vast bloated body had exploded from Lady Liberty’s crown, sent a party of Japanese tourists plummeting into the Hudson River, capsized a couple of ferries, snapped the Brooklyn Bridge in two and headed for the nearest tunnel - which, of course, led straight to Manhattan Island.
Many things about that particular situation were not good, as the Doctor had a habit of saying.
Within the hour, the alien’s spawn and their poisonous nutrient cloud had taken over the subway network. If he hadn’t been alone, the Doctor reckoned he just might have been able to get the Hydraphoria and her numerous offspring off the planet alive, but his energies were instead divided between trying to persuade a stubborn, hormonal giant maggot to accept his offer of safe passage and stopping the local Ghostbusters from blasting every stinking worm baby’s ass to kingdom come. He won the first battle - well, he got her into a parallel dimension at least - but was too late to prevent a mass extinction. And frankly, he couldn’t be bothered to hang around and give the well-meaning vigilantes a lecture. Somebody might bring up the Sycorax, or even the Racnoss. Or, worst of all, drag him off to star in a tickertape parade.
A big maggot in the Big Apple. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so sad. Or if he’d had anyone to share the joke with. If a certain Donna Noble had been by his side, he’d a feeling she’d have made it clear to the NYPD that the shock and awe approach had its place, but this wasn’t it.
He’d have liked to see Donna Noble take Manhattan. He’d have liked to see Donna Noble, full stop.
Sometimes he wished his life could be a little bit less like the movies. But it wasn’t, and right now he craved the company of someone who behaved as if he was in one most of the time. Timing was critical, he suspected. For him, it was five lonely months since the weekend when Davros had stolen the Earth and, in passing, broken his hearts a little more. No doubt that would give him great satisfaction if he’d known.
The Doctor had carefully avoided Jack ever since. He didn’t want to get into a conversation about why he’d made the decisions he had. They’d been made in a hurry, under pressure, it hurt to be reminded of them and he wasn’t particularly proud of what he’d done. With the possible exception of Rose and the human him, but see “hurt to be reminded” above. People like Jack had ways of finding things out; doubtless he had learned, somehow, of Donna’s fate by now and was keeping an eye on her as best he could. Keeping an eye on people had never been the Doctor’s strong point, he’d be the first to admit. He bitterly resented the suggestion that he ought to be good at it. Wasn’t fighting giant maggots enough?
Any sooner, and the Doctor would have risked a lecture on his lack of follow-up, at the very least. But he reckoned that there’d been long enough now for the dust to settle, and a casual, unscheduled social call might, just about, be possible.
He set course for Torchwood Three and left the temporal co-ordinates for the TARDIS to sort out.
If he hadn’t been too tired to think clearly, he’d have realised that was probably a mistake.
*******
The minute Jack saw the expression on Donna’s face, he realised the extent of his error of judgement.
“Sorry,” he said quickly, and hit his Vortex Manipulator, leaving her standing open-mouthed and baffled on the doorstep, probably assuming she was losing her mind.
It wasn’t just embarrassment. He had to get away fast because he was so damn angry, he knew he needed to calm down a lot before he said something that’d make the situation worse than it already was. To be honest, he was almost as angry with himself for being so naïve as he was with the Doctor.
Almost, but not quite.
Martha was still around when he reached the Hub. Good. She was the right person to put him back together after a Vortex Manipulator jump, and to understand the way he was feeling about the Doctor right now.
“You’re back fast,” she said. “Ianto left some coffee for you before he went.” She paused, realising his thunderous expression had more behind it than a straightforward headache.
“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” she asked, and he thanked whatever power was up there that he’d decided to hang on to Dr Martha Jones and get her on the payroll.
“The bastard’s mindwiped her!” he said, grinding his teeth. “She didn’t know me from Adam. I only hope I didn’t trigger something. He can’t have done a very tidy job, not in that time frame.”
“And what about Rose?”
He shook his head, wincing as the familiar bolts of pain shot through his temples. He was so goddam tired of that arrogant sonofabitch taking away his Manipulator just when he’d got it working properly, sending him back to square one with some backup model from Stores.
“Didn’t stop to ask,” he replied.
“Maybe I should go?” Martha offered. “Or Gwen - she’s less likely to be recognised than me.”
“No,” Jack said, painfully getting to his feet and gulping down the coffee Ianto had left ready for him. “We’ll call Sarah Jane, get her to find out what’s been going on. If she doesn’t know herself, she’ll have the right sources.”
Martha opened her mouth to say something, then shook her head slightly and appeared to think better of it. Jack remembered that, alone among the Doctor’s companions, she’d maintained a direct telephone link with the TARDIS after her stint had finished. It was an achievement he’d always secretly admired, almost to the point of jealousy.
“If I know the Doctor,” he said, “he won’t be picking up the phone for anybody right now. He’ll be having a “Poor me, I’m so alone,” moment, wondering why everybody leaves him in the end.”
”Because he bloody pushes us away,” Martha said, sounding remarkably calm about it. Probably she’d come out the best of all the Doctor’s recent travelling companions, Jack reflected. Only fair, he concluded, given the amount of hell she’d gone through at the time. Maybe that had made it easier for her to put some distance between the Doctor and herself.
It hadn’t worked with him, but then he hadn’t the advantages of a family and a Tom Milligan to go home to.
“Know what I think?” Jack strode into his office, Martha following him. He threw his coat into a corner and tore off his Vortex Manipulator, both actions quite out of character for him, the ever-careful Captain Jack Harkness who kept track of everything and never let down his guard.
“I think he took Rose back home and left her with the other him. And when Donna called him out on it, he wiped her mind.”
Martha shuddered. “That’s horrible. He thought the world of Donna. And he may be an emotional cripple, but he’s not a psychopath. You really think he’d retcon a woman against her wishes? I can’t imagine Donna letting him do that.”
Jack was awkwardly silent. You didn’t have to be a psychopath to have a dangerously warped perception of reality. Particularly if you were powerful. “You gotta think about what he’d just been through,” he pointed out.
That riled Martha. “It wasn’t a walk in the park for any of us!” she flashed back.
“He was locked up with Davros for hours,” Jack said. “You don’t know what poison that old megalomaniac poured into his ear.”
“But he’s not the first insane dictator the Doctor’s had to deal with.”
“He’s one of the most dangerous, and they go back a long way.” Jack drummed his fingers on his blotter, conscious of a weariness that his recent caffeine shot had done very little to dispel. It went too deep for that. “I’ve seen him with Daleks,” he went on. “You can smell the fear. He’s putty in their hands. It all goes back to the old Time War stuff.”
“I’ve seen it, too,” Martha reminded him. “The Empire State incident.”
He’d forgotten that. “Touche,” he acknowledged. “And I remember you thinking he had a death wish at the time.”
“But this time around, he was with Rose.”
“That wouldn’t necessarily make things better,” said Jack. “It could go the opposite way. If anybody laid a finger on her, he’d lash out. But afterwards he’d blame himself and convince himself he didn’t deserve anybody who could make him act like that. Come on, you saw him in the Crucible, pleading clemency for the Daleks.” He could barely keep the disgust out of his voice. Those bastards had thrown him into a garbage chute, and that wasn’t the half of it.
“Well, if your analysis is right, he’d never have done that if they’d threatened Rose,” Martha argued. “He’d wipe them off the face of all creation, wouldn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “Maybe.” He remembered the Game Station, the moment of despair when the Doctor had believed Rose to be dead. Also, as it happened, the moment when he’d realised that any fantasy he’d ever harboured of being the Doctor’s Significant Other was dead in the water, unless the guy could be persuaded to party. He’d kissed him goodbye for more than one reason that night, and his impending death was only the easiest one to acknowledge.
“Davros probably said something to him,” he went on. “Something that convinced him he’s bad news for all his companions. Lay a guilt trip on the Doctor and you’re halfway to beating him, because he’s too busy navel-gazing to plan his next move.”
“Just as well there were two of them, then,” Martha remarked. “You really think he could bear to give Rose up? I can’t believe it.”
“Rose, you can kind of see the logic of,” said Jack. “The other him can age and die alongside her, and he won’t have to watch. He’s always had a hangup about that. After all, can you really see him looking on happily while the two of them flirted aboard the TARDIS? Although that still doesn’t explain how the hell he got Rose to go along with it.”
“I’m not sure I want to think about that,” said Martha.
“Me neither. In fact, right now, I’m not sure I ever want to see him again.” He paced around the office for a minute. “But we can’t just leave it there. If I know the Doctor, he won’t have thought about Donna’s family for a minute. They’ve been left in an impossible position.”
“Talk to them, then,” suggested Martha. “Although from what I’ve heard, the mother’s a bit of a dragon.”
“Maybe we should try the old grandfather, then. But first we need to get him on his own. I don’t know his movements, but we could have him put under surveillance. In fact, we probably ought to be doing that anyway. Keep the Press off their backs until things settle a bit.” Jack frowned, and was surprised to catch himself stroking the piece of coral on his desk, wondering how fast it could grow in another world. Sighing, he dragged his thoughts back to the Doctor. “He won’t have thought about her family. He never does. I’ve spent hours putting out fires for him, hushing things up and buying people’s silence.”
“And got precious little thanks for it,” said Martha.
“You’ve got it. The Doctor doesn’t do thanks,” Jack agreed. “He’s not big on leaving calling cards, either. Apart from burning wreckage, that is.”
It’s almost his way of communicating said a voice in his memory. He pushed it away.
Martha’s eyes were sharp but sympathetic as they rested on him for a moment. “Did you?”
“Do what?”
“Leave a card? Or would that be too risky?”
“I waited a few minutes, made sure Donna was back inside. Then I went back and slipped one through. Tomorrow, first thing, I’ll brief Ianto. If she calls before then, she’ll just get the standard message.”
“And we’ll get their number.”
He nodded.
Martha squeezed his arm. He was going to like having her around the place. They’d gone through a lot together. Owen (the first time around, anyway). The Master. Finding out what an asshole the Doctor could be when it suited him, and no doubt wondering whey they kept on bothering.
She only said what she needed to say.
“Two space-hops in ten minutes. No wonder you feel like shit.”
******
Donna slammed the door behind her and collapsed against it, waiting for her heartbeat to return to something approaching normality. She’d barely got her breath back before the bathroom door opened and her mother’s towel-turbanned head appeared in a cloud of steam.
“Did I hear someone at the door?” Sylvia asked.
Donna had to think fast - not the easiest thing to do when you were feeling as badly spooked as she was right now. Tell her mother, who already seemed to think she was a few sandwiches short of a picnic, that a tall, handsome stranger had just shown up on the doorstep, mentioned that she’d saved the universe and then - literally - disappeared in a flash of light? No. She didn’t think that would do her any favours, somehow.
“Cab driver,” she called quickly. “Got the wrong address.”
“Oh. Might have known. They can’t speak proper English, half of them.” Sylvia returned to her bathing.
Donna decided this wasn’t the right time to argue with her mother about racism. There’d be plenty of other opportunities. It was, however, time to go into the lounge, open the sideboard and pour herself a big gin, and that was exactly what she did.
Had she really seen what she thought she’d seen? Heard what she thought she’d heard? She could either believe a handsome man had shown up out of nowhere and seemed to remember her saving the world, or she could conclude that she’d imagined the whole thing. Seemed like a bit of a no-brainer, if she was honest. She’d already been accused of imagining a dodgy boiler was some strange noise from outer space, told she’d been globetrotting when she couldn’t remember a thing about it other than a couple of 18-30s trips to Majorca and a cancelled honeymoon, and started to imagine her family were hiding things from her and a harmless stranger was sinister simply because his hair wouldn’t lie down properly.
Mention this little incident and she probably wouldn’t be allowed out on her own any more.
She took a deep gulp of gin and suddenly lurched forward, grasping her forehead in her hands and biting back a stab of shock as her head seemed to explode with pain. Oh, great. On top of everything else, she was allergic to booze now. How else did you explain the hallucination she’d just had? A strange hemispherical room with knobbled walls falling into a pit of fire and a naked man growing from a dimembodied hand in a flash of light? Donna had never dropped acid in her life - her limit had been a couple of experimental joints at an all-nighter in Ibiza, but she’d bet fifty quid this was exactly what it felt like.
The rest of the gin lay spattered on the carpet, making the whole room reek of booze. Another thing for Mum to go on about. “Oh shit!” she cried. “Shit, shit, shit. Shit bugger arseholes. Shitting hell fire!” And before she could stop herself, she’d thrown the glass against the wall in sheer frustration.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, fear and anger were gone, to be replaced by hopelessness, and she realised she was crying. What was wrong with her? Maybe everyone was right and she had had a breakdown. After all, they said the last person to accept they’d been mentally ill was the patient herself. Why did life have to be so bloody horrible? This past year or two it had been one thing after another - first Nana dying, then Lance, then Dad, and now all this stuff. Someone up there really didn’t like the Noble family.
“Well, it could be worse,” she told herself. “Could be - ooh, I dunno. London getting destroyed by a nuclear bomb. Being homeless. Having to go and live in Leeds.” Leeds, where had that come from? She’d never thought of the place until that moment, not as a possible home, anyway. She started singing, tunelessly and a little hysterically, ‘Leeds, Leeds, it’s good for your heart, the more you eat the more you fart, the more you fart the better you feel, Leeds, Leeds for every meal…”
Somehow she’d arrived in the kitchen, but she seemed to have no memory of it. How long had this been going on? Having blackouts, spouting insane nonsense, seeing strangers vanish in a flash? She clung onto the edge of the kitchen worktop, forcing herself to focus on something.
“Oh my Gawd,” she breathed, terrified. “Help me! Please make it go away!”
What happened next was stranger than ever. She sensed, rather than saw, a pair of arms closing round her and a voice, filled with a terrible sadness, saying “Oh Donna Noble, I am so, so sorry. But we had the best of times…”
She hadn’t a clue who this man was, but that didn’t stop her feeling totally safe with him. Explain that. He could take her anywhere, make her face anything, and she’d trust him with her life. She’d stay with him for ever. He was her best friend, the most wonderful, unselfish, amazing person she’d ever met. He loved being with her, she loved being with him, and yet there was something about the way he was speaking to her that made her feel sadder than she’d ever felt in her life before.
In fact, being with him - this…she couldn’t call him a person, could she, cos there was nobody there?...this presence - it didn’t just make her feel sadder than ever before, but better than ever before. Braver. Happier. More alive. Did that make sense? Did it hell. But that didn’t stop it being true.
She didn’t want it to stop. Even though it terrified her, she felt she was more alive, more Donna, than she ever had been. A tiny little part of her brain was telling her that all she had to do was focus on something in front of her - something ordinary like the kettle, or that wire basket of apples over there - and everything would be all right. The feeling would go away. But she didn’t want it to.
“Stop it,” she told herself, with a huge effort of will. “This is how people get addicted to things. It’s not real life. This is. This house. Mum. Gramps. That pile of coupons over there. That Weight Watchers calorie-counter stuck on the wall.”
This was life? This was all there was?
Yes. Maybe not the life she wanted, but it was all there was. It was just what human beings had been doing for thousands of years - women, most of all - facing the awful moment when you grew up and realised that, no matter what your dreams might be, this was it, and you just had to get on with it.
And yet she couldn’t bear it. No wonder Mum thought she was rubbish. Getting on with it was her way of life, all she’d ever done.
Donna sank to her knees, right there in the middle of the kitchen floor, forgetting all about the broken glass in the lounge and the gin spilt on the carpet. She sobbed as if her heart would break - as if it already was breaking - and she was still there when Wilf came in, took her in his arms with the gentleness of a much older man who’d loved her too, and carried her up to bed, suspecting she’d remember nothing about any of this in the morning.
When he’d done all that, Wilf couldn’t leave her on her own for quite a while. Instead, he stood and kept watch over her, gently lifting ginger hair from her pale cheeks, tracing the tracks of the tears she was shedding even in her sleep - and worrying.
“Oh Donna, my poor girl, what are we going to do with you?” he said, sadly. “What would that Doctor of yours do?”
He hadn’t even left a phone number. Just saved Donna’s life - or so he’d said - and vanished into the endless night.
One thing was clear - they had to get help from somewhere. And not just any old help.
For the umpteenth time, Wilf reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out the simple business card he’d found lying on the doormat.
Captain Jack Harkness
PO Box 312
CARDIFF
Tel: 07700 900461
Could be absolutely anybody, of course. But he’d a feeling it wasn’t. He’d seen that name somewhere before. Damn this old cotton-wool brain of his; he just couldn’t quite place it…
WORDS: 3665
SPOILERS: Up to the end of JE.
CREDITS: picture by fizzling_wizbee
RATING: Gen
CHARACTERS: Donna, Sylvia, Wilf, Tenth Doctor (original), Jack, Martha
“Stop it,” she told herself, with a huge effort of will. “This is how people get addicted to things. It’s not real life. This is. This house. Mum. Gramps. That pile of coupons over there. That Weight Watchers calorie-counter stuck on the wall.”
This was life? This was all there was?
The characters are the property of the BBC and no plagiarism or personal profit is intended. Though I don't always like the way he treats them, I have the utmost respect for RTD for creating them, and for the talented actors who brought them to life.
Chapter One
The Doctor had just finished dealing with a very large maggot. A Hydraphoria Maxima, to be precise, and they really didn’t come much bigger than that. How it had got into the Statue of Liberty was anybody’s guess; it could even have hitched a ride on the Earth as they were towing it home.
Harmless enough species as a general rule, and remarkably adaptable, as simple organisms tended to be. If she hadn’t been about to spawn, Hydie might have huddled massively inside the statue’s hollow body for years, just minding her own business. But things rarely worked out that neatly, even for a basically harmless creature that was just exploiting an unexpected evolutionary niche. Instead, her vast bloated body had exploded from Lady Liberty’s crown, sent a party of Japanese tourists plummeting into the Hudson River, capsized a couple of ferries, snapped the Brooklyn Bridge in two and headed for the nearest tunnel - which, of course, led straight to Manhattan Island.
Many things about that particular situation were not good, as the Doctor had a habit of saying.
Within the hour, the alien’s spawn and their poisonous nutrient cloud had taken over the subway network. If he hadn’t been alone, the Doctor reckoned he just might have been able to get the Hydraphoria and her numerous offspring off the planet alive, but his energies were instead divided between trying to persuade a stubborn, hormonal giant maggot to accept his offer of safe passage and stopping the local Ghostbusters from blasting every stinking worm baby’s ass to kingdom come. He won the first battle - well, he got her into a parallel dimension at least - but was too late to prevent a mass extinction. And frankly, he couldn’t be bothered to hang around and give the well-meaning vigilantes a lecture. Somebody might bring up the Sycorax, or even the Racnoss. Or, worst of all, drag him off to star in a tickertape parade.
A big maggot in the Big Apple. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so sad. Or if he’d had anyone to share the joke with. If a certain Donna Noble had been by his side, he’d a feeling she’d have made it clear to the NYPD that the shock and awe approach had its place, but this wasn’t it.
He’d have liked to see Donna Noble take Manhattan. He’d have liked to see Donna Noble, full stop.
Sometimes he wished his life could be a little bit less like the movies. But it wasn’t, and right now he craved the company of someone who behaved as if he was in one most of the time. Timing was critical, he suspected. For him, it was five lonely months since the weekend when Davros had stolen the Earth and, in passing, broken his hearts a little more. No doubt that would give him great satisfaction if he’d known.
The Doctor had carefully avoided Jack ever since. He didn’t want to get into a conversation about why he’d made the decisions he had. They’d been made in a hurry, under pressure, it hurt to be reminded of them and he wasn’t particularly proud of what he’d done. With the possible exception of Rose and the human him, but see “hurt to be reminded” above. People like Jack had ways of finding things out; doubtless he had learned, somehow, of Donna’s fate by now and was keeping an eye on her as best he could. Keeping an eye on people had never been the Doctor’s strong point, he’d be the first to admit. He bitterly resented the suggestion that he ought to be good at it. Wasn’t fighting giant maggots enough?
Any sooner, and the Doctor would have risked a lecture on his lack of follow-up, at the very least. But he reckoned that there’d been long enough now for the dust to settle, and a casual, unscheduled social call might, just about, be possible.
He set course for Torchwood Three and left the temporal co-ordinates for the TARDIS to sort out.
If he hadn’t been too tired to think clearly, he’d have realised that was probably a mistake.
*******
The minute Jack saw the expression on Donna’s face, he realised the extent of his error of judgement.
“Sorry,” he said quickly, and hit his Vortex Manipulator, leaving her standing open-mouthed and baffled on the doorstep, probably assuming she was losing her mind.
It wasn’t just embarrassment. He had to get away fast because he was so damn angry, he knew he needed to calm down a lot before he said something that’d make the situation worse than it already was. To be honest, he was almost as angry with himself for being so naïve as he was with the Doctor.
Almost, but not quite.
Martha was still around when he reached the Hub. Good. She was the right person to put him back together after a Vortex Manipulator jump, and to understand the way he was feeling about the Doctor right now.
“You’re back fast,” she said. “Ianto left some coffee for you before he went.” She paused, realising his thunderous expression had more behind it than a straightforward headache.
“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” she asked, and he thanked whatever power was up there that he’d decided to hang on to Dr Martha Jones and get her on the payroll.
“The bastard’s mindwiped her!” he said, grinding his teeth. “She didn’t know me from Adam. I only hope I didn’t trigger something. He can’t have done a very tidy job, not in that time frame.”
“And what about Rose?”
He shook his head, wincing as the familiar bolts of pain shot through his temples. He was so goddam tired of that arrogant sonofabitch taking away his Manipulator just when he’d got it working properly, sending him back to square one with some backup model from Stores.
“Didn’t stop to ask,” he replied.
“Maybe I should go?” Martha offered. “Or Gwen - she’s less likely to be recognised than me.”
“No,” Jack said, painfully getting to his feet and gulping down the coffee Ianto had left ready for him. “We’ll call Sarah Jane, get her to find out what’s been going on. If she doesn’t know herself, she’ll have the right sources.”
Martha opened her mouth to say something, then shook her head slightly and appeared to think better of it. Jack remembered that, alone among the Doctor’s companions, she’d maintained a direct telephone link with the TARDIS after her stint had finished. It was an achievement he’d always secretly admired, almost to the point of jealousy.
“If I know the Doctor,” he said, “he won’t be picking up the phone for anybody right now. He’ll be having a “Poor me, I’m so alone,” moment, wondering why everybody leaves him in the end.”
”Because he bloody pushes us away,” Martha said, sounding remarkably calm about it. Probably she’d come out the best of all the Doctor’s recent travelling companions, Jack reflected. Only fair, he concluded, given the amount of hell she’d gone through at the time. Maybe that had made it easier for her to put some distance between the Doctor and herself.
It hadn’t worked with him, but then he hadn’t the advantages of a family and a Tom Milligan to go home to.
“Know what I think?” Jack strode into his office, Martha following him. He threw his coat into a corner and tore off his Vortex Manipulator, both actions quite out of character for him, the ever-careful Captain Jack Harkness who kept track of everything and never let down his guard.
“I think he took Rose back home and left her with the other him. And when Donna called him out on it, he wiped her mind.”
Martha shuddered. “That’s horrible. He thought the world of Donna. And he may be an emotional cripple, but he’s not a psychopath. You really think he’d retcon a woman against her wishes? I can’t imagine Donna letting him do that.”
Jack was awkwardly silent. You didn’t have to be a psychopath to have a dangerously warped perception of reality. Particularly if you were powerful. “You gotta think about what he’d just been through,” he pointed out.
That riled Martha. “It wasn’t a walk in the park for any of us!” she flashed back.
“He was locked up with Davros for hours,” Jack said. “You don’t know what poison that old megalomaniac poured into his ear.”
“But he’s not the first insane dictator the Doctor’s had to deal with.”
“He’s one of the most dangerous, and they go back a long way.” Jack drummed his fingers on his blotter, conscious of a weariness that his recent caffeine shot had done very little to dispel. It went too deep for that. “I’ve seen him with Daleks,” he went on. “You can smell the fear. He’s putty in their hands. It all goes back to the old Time War stuff.”
“I’ve seen it, too,” Martha reminded him. “The Empire State incident.”
He’d forgotten that. “Touche,” he acknowledged. “And I remember you thinking he had a death wish at the time.”
“But this time around, he was with Rose.”
“That wouldn’t necessarily make things better,” said Jack. “It could go the opposite way. If anybody laid a finger on her, he’d lash out. But afterwards he’d blame himself and convince himself he didn’t deserve anybody who could make him act like that. Come on, you saw him in the Crucible, pleading clemency for the Daleks.” He could barely keep the disgust out of his voice. Those bastards had thrown him into a garbage chute, and that wasn’t the half of it.
“Well, if your analysis is right, he’d never have done that if they’d threatened Rose,” Martha argued. “He’d wipe them off the face of all creation, wouldn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “Maybe.” He remembered the Game Station, the moment of despair when the Doctor had believed Rose to be dead. Also, as it happened, the moment when he’d realised that any fantasy he’d ever harboured of being the Doctor’s Significant Other was dead in the water, unless the guy could be persuaded to party. He’d kissed him goodbye for more than one reason that night, and his impending death was only the easiest one to acknowledge.
“Davros probably said something to him,” he went on. “Something that convinced him he’s bad news for all his companions. Lay a guilt trip on the Doctor and you’re halfway to beating him, because he’s too busy navel-gazing to plan his next move.”
“Just as well there were two of them, then,” Martha remarked. “You really think he could bear to give Rose up? I can’t believe it.”
“Rose, you can kind of see the logic of,” said Jack. “The other him can age and die alongside her, and he won’t have to watch. He’s always had a hangup about that. After all, can you really see him looking on happily while the two of them flirted aboard the TARDIS? Although that still doesn’t explain how the hell he got Rose to go along with it.”
“I’m not sure I want to think about that,” said Martha.
“Me neither. In fact, right now, I’m not sure I ever want to see him again.” He paced around the office for a minute. “But we can’t just leave it there. If I know the Doctor, he won’t have thought about Donna’s family for a minute. They’ve been left in an impossible position.”
“Talk to them, then,” suggested Martha. “Although from what I’ve heard, the mother’s a bit of a dragon.”
“Maybe we should try the old grandfather, then. But first we need to get him on his own. I don’t know his movements, but we could have him put under surveillance. In fact, we probably ought to be doing that anyway. Keep the Press off their backs until things settle a bit.” Jack frowned, and was surprised to catch himself stroking the piece of coral on his desk, wondering how fast it could grow in another world. Sighing, he dragged his thoughts back to the Doctor. “He won’t have thought about her family. He never does. I’ve spent hours putting out fires for him, hushing things up and buying people’s silence.”
“And got precious little thanks for it,” said Martha.
“You’ve got it. The Doctor doesn’t do thanks,” Jack agreed. “He’s not big on leaving calling cards, either. Apart from burning wreckage, that is.”
It’s almost his way of communicating said a voice in his memory. He pushed it away.
Martha’s eyes were sharp but sympathetic as they rested on him for a moment. “Did you?”
“Do what?”
“Leave a card? Or would that be too risky?”
“I waited a few minutes, made sure Donna was back inside. Then I went back and slipped one through. Tomorrow, first thing, I’ll brief Ianto. If she calls before then, she’ll just get the standard message.”
“And we’ll get their number.”
He nodded.
Martha squeezed his arm. He was going to like having her around the place. They’d gone through a lot together. Owen (the first time around, anyway). The Master. Finding out what an asshole the Doctor could be when it suited him, and no doubt wondering whey they kept on bothering.
She only said what she needed to say.
“Two space-hops in ten minutes. No wonder you feel like shit.”
******
Donna slammed the door behind her and collapsed against it, waiting for her heartbeat to return to something approaching normality. She’d barely got her breath back before the bathroom door opened and her mother’s towel-turbanned head appeared in a cloud of steam.
“Did I hear someone at the door?” Sylvia asked.
Donna had to think fast - not the easiest thing to do when you were feeling as badly spooked as she was right now. Tell her mother, who already seemed to think she was a few sandwiches short of a picnic, that a tall, handsome stranger had just shown up on the doorstep, mentioned that she’d saved the universe and then - literally - disappeared in a flash of light? No. She didn’t think that would do her any favours, somehow.
“Cab driver,” she called quickly. “Got the wrong address.”
“Oh. Might have known. They can’t speak proper English, half of them.” Sylvia returned to her bathing.
Donna decided this wasn’t the right time to argue with her mother about racism. There’d be plenty of other opportunities. It was, however, time to go into the lounge, open the sideboard and pour herself a big gin, and that was exactly what she did.
Had she really seen what she thought she’d seen? Heard what she thought she’d heard? She could either believe a handsome man had shown up out of nowhere and seemed to remember her saving the world, or she could conclude that she’d imagined the whole thing. Seemed like a bit of a no-brainer, if she was honest. She’d already been accused of imagining a dodgy boiler was some strange noise from outer space, told she’d been globetrotting when she couldn’t remember a thing about it other than a couple of 18-30s trips to Majorca and a cancelled honeymoon, and started to imagine her family were hiding things from her and a harmless stranger was sinister simply because his hair wouldn’t lie down properly.
Mention this little incident and she probably wouldn’t be allowed out on her own any more.
She took a deep gulp of gin and suddenly lurched forward, grasping her forehead in her hands and biting back a stab of shock as her head seemed to explode with pain. Oh, great. On top of everything else, she was allergic to booze now. How else did you explain the hallucination she’d just had? A strange hemispherical room with knobbled walls falling into a pit of fire and a naked man growing from a dimembodied hand in a flash of light? Donna had never dropped acid in her life - her limit had been a couple of experimental joints at an all-nighter in Ibiza, but she’d bet fifty quid this was exactly what it felt like.
The rest of the gin lay spattered on the carpet, making the whole room reek of booze. Another thing for Mum to go on about. “Oh shit!” she cried. “Shit, shit, shit. Shit bugger arseholes. Shitting hell fire!” And before she could stop herself, she’d thrown the glass against the wall in sheer frustration.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, fear and anger were gone, to be replaced by hopelessness, and she realised she was crying. What was wrong with her? Maybe everyone was right and she had had a breakdown. After all, they said the last person to accept they’d been mentally ill was the patient herself. Why did life have to be so bloody horrible? This past year or two it had been one thing after another - first Nana dying, then Lance, then Dad, and now all this stuff. Someone up there really didn’t like the Noble family.
“Well, it could be worse,” she told herself. “Could be - ooh, I dunno. London getting destroyed by a nuclear bomb. Being homeless. Having to go and live in Leeds.” Leeds, where had that come from? She’d never thought of the place until that moment, not as a possible home, anyway. She started singing, tunelessly and a little hysterically, ‘Leeds, Leeds, it’s good for your heart, the more you eat the more you fart, the more you fart the better you feel, Leeds, Leeds for every meal…”
Somehow she’d arrived in the kitchen, but she seemed to have no memory of it. How long had this been going on? Having blackouts, spouting insane nonsense, seeing strangers vanish in a flash? She clung onto the edge of the kitchen worktop, forcing herself to focus on something.
“Oh my Gawd,” she breathed, terrified. “Help me! Please make it go away!”
What happened next was stranger than ever. She sensed, rather than saw, a pair of arms closing round her and a voice, filled with a terrible sadness, saying “Oh Donna Noble, I am so, so sorry. But we had the best of times…”
She hadn’t a clue who this man was, but that didn’t stop her feeling totally safe with him. Explain that. He could take her anywhere, make her face anything, and she’d trust him with her life. She’d stay with him for ever. He was her best friend, the most wonderful, unselfish, amazing person she’d ever met. He loved being with her, she loved being with him, and yet there was something about the way he was speaking to her that made her feel sadder than she’d ever felt in her life before.
In fact, being with him - this…she couldn’t call him a person, could she, cos there was nobody there?...this presence - it didn’t just make her feel sadder than ever before, but better than ever before. Braver. Happier. More alive. Did that make sense? Did it hell. But that didn’t stop it being true.
She didn’t want it to stop. Even though it terrified her, she felt she was more alive, more Donna, than she ever had been. A tiny little part of her brain was telling her that all she had to do was focus on something in front of her - something ordinary like the kettle, or that wire basket of apples over there - and everything would be all right. The feeling would go away. But she didn’t want it to.
“Stop it,” she told herself, with a huge effort of will. “This is how people get addicted to things. It’s not real life. This is. This house. Mum. Gramps. That pile of coupons over there. That Weight Watchers calorie-counter stuck on the wall.”
This was life? This was all there was?
Yes. Maybe not the life she wanted, but it was all there was. It was just what human beings had been doing for thousands of years - women, most of all - facing the awful moment when you grew up and realised that, no matter what your dreams might be, this was it, and you just had to get on with it.
And yet she couldn’t bear it. No wonder Mum thought she was rubbish. Getting on with it was her way of life, all she’d ever done.
Donna sank to her knees, right there in the middle of the kitchen floor, forgetting all about the broken glass in the lounge and the gin spilt on the carpet. She sobbed as if her heart would break - as if it already was breaking - and she was still there when Wilf came in, took her in his arms with the gentleness of a much older man who’d loved her too, and carried her up to bed, suspecting she’d remember nothing about any of this in the morning.
When he’d done all that, Wilf couldn’t leave her on her own for quite a while. Instead, he stood and kept watch over her, gently lifting ginger hair from her pale cheeks, tracing the tracks of the tears she was shedding even in her sleep - and worrying.
“Oh Donna, my poor girl, what are we going to do with you?” he said, sadly. “What would that Doctor of yours do?”
He hadn’t even left a phone number. Just saved Donna’s life - or so he’d said - and vanished into the endless night.
One thing was clear - they had to get help from somewhere. And not just any old help.
For the umpteenth time, Wilf reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out the simple business card he’d found lying on the doormat.
Captain Jack Harkness
PO Box 312
CARDIFF
Tel: 07700 900461
Could be absolutely anybody, of course. But he’d a feeling it wasn’t. He’d seen that name somewhere before. Damn this old cotton-wool brain of his; he just couldn’t quite place it…