Dona nobis beatitas Part I Chapter 1
Graphic made by sonicgirl2005
Title: Dona nobis beatitas Chapter 1/?
Author: katherine_b
Rating: PG
Summary: The Doctor turns teacher.
Characters: Donna and the Doctor (Ten)
A/N: This story was written for time_converges after she became the owner of my soul as a result of the Support Stacie Auction. Jen’s prompt was: The Doctor teaches Donna some Gallifreyan traditions, and/or some of the language. It's up to you why or when or where, but if you can make it shippy I'd love you forever. :)
A/N 2: Yes, I’m aware my Latin is shaky verging on disastrous. Sorry if it offends any classical scholars.
Part I
“When you talk to me,” Donna asks suddenly, “what language do you use?”
The Doctor glances up from one of the books he’s frowning over and arches an eyebrow. “What prompted that?”
“I don’t know really.” Donna sits back in her armchair beside the fire in the library. “I was just thinking about how we were talking Latin today thanks to the TARDIS having those handy translation circuits and I wondered if you ever changed which language you spoke or you just relied on the TARDIS to allow you to be understood.”
“Are you calling me lazy?” he teases, putting the book aside and pulling up his legs to hug them against his chest.
“Maybe just a bit,” she shoots back with a grin. “So come on then, Time Boy, which is it?”
“Mostly English. Although,” he’s forced to admit, “when I’m tired or distracted, it can be Gallifreyan.”
“Really?” There’s a sudden expression of longing on Donna’s face. “I wish I could hear it!”
“You are,” he tells her obligingly.
“Yeah, not helpful.” She rolls her eyes. “Still sounds like English to me.”
He chuckles and then closes his eyes, focusing for a moment.
“Doctor?” Donna’s concern carries clearly across the room. “What are you doing?”
“Asking the TARDIS to turn off the translation circuits,” he replies without opening his eyes
“You can do that?”
“Mmm hmm.” He checks the system and then focuses on Donna once more. “How’s that?” he asks, hearing the musical tones of his native language and knowing from the slight frown on Donna’s face that she hears it, too.
“It’s beautiful!”
He smiles. There are - were - many things to dislike about Gallifrey, but language definitely wasn’t one of them.
“You like it then?” he asks in English.
“I love it!” She sits upright in her chair. “Teach it to me!”
“What?”
She shrinks back into her chair at his, he’s forced to admit, unnecessarily abrupt response. “Is that a problem?” she asks nervously.
“Well, no.” He frowns, tugging on his ear. “It’s just - nobody’s ever asked me to do that before.”
“But you love showing off,” she argues, her lips twitching in an effort to restrain what he can see is a cheeky grin. “And I’m giving you an opportunity to do just that!”
“Oh, that’s charming!” He tries to sound hurt, but can’t suppress his urge to laugh any more successfully than she is doing. “Really - nice!”
“True though.”
“Well, maybe…” he’s forced to admit.
“Good!” She sits upright in her chair, looking eager. “So will you teach me then?”
His response reveals his doubt. “You want to learn an all but dead language that only one person in the entire Universe can speak?”
“Why not?” Donna folds her arms almost defensively. “I like languages!”
“You love learning,” he tells her affectionately. “Otherwise you wouldn’t embrace change the way you do now.”
“Oh, pull the other one,” she retorts uncomfortably. “What’s the matter with me wanting to learn it anyway?” she hurries on, clearly wanting to change the subject. “Don’t you think you’ll be able to teach me properly?”
“Hey!” He glares at her. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, you don’t seem that eager, that’s all.” She studies her hands for a moment before looking up at him again. “If you really don’t want me to…”
“No, I do,” he says quickly, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, his fingers steepled in front of him. “It’s just - I’m surprised, that’s all. Of all the possible things I might have imagined you’d ask to do, if I’d bothered to make a list, that was most definitely last. Well, perhaps except for eating a Kenarvun, but that’s more common sense than anything else considering how awful they are.”
“Eating a what?” she demands.
“Oh, never mind.” He leaps to his feet and crosses the room in three large strides, stopping in front of a rolltop desk. The wood rattles as he flings up the cover, but he glances over his shoulder before rummaging inside. “Absolutely sure?”
“Definitely!”
“All right, allons-y!”
He returns to the table with a roll of thick paper, several pens and a bottle of ink.
“What this then?” Donna demands as he settles on the floor in front of the coffee table and pats the space beside him.
“Teaching.” He grins. “Starting at the beginning - the Gallifreyan alphabet. All one hundred and twenty-three letters of it!”
“You Time Lords love over-doing things, don’t you,” she remarks caustically, but gets up from her seat and joins him at the low table.
For once, he doesn’t rise to her bait apart from a grin. Instead, he traces out the letters onto the paper and begins sounding them out phonetically for Donna to imitate.
He can’t help but be impressed by how quickly and easily she gets her tongue around some of the most complicated letters. And he’s left dumbstruck when she proves she’s already learned the first forty-nine letters, in order, in the time it takes him to make a new pot of tea.
“Donna Noble, you’re brilliant!” he announces. “Remind me to tell you that more often!”
“Oh, get off!” she declares uncomfortably. “Plenty of other people could do that.”
“Maybe they could,” he agrees as he pours out the tea and carries the cups over to the table where she is sitting. “But how many would want to?”
“Are you going to teach me the rest?” she demands, taking her drink and stirring it with unnecessary vigour, further revealing her discomfort at his compliments in the way her shoulders are hunched and she won’t meet his gaze.
“Not now.” He moves the paper aside. “I think we’ll move on from language and do some history instead.”
“And I thought he wasn’t taking this seriously,” she remarks to the empty room - or possibly to the TARDIS, because Donna talks to the ship far more readily than most of the Doctor’s other companions, even this early in their travels.
Clearly the TARDIS has presumed that the comments were directed at her and shows her agreement in the plate of ginger snaps that are sitting next to the teapot when the Doctor goes to get a book and refill their cups.
Coming back to the table, he opens the book at one of the most well-worn pages and then takes his seat beside Donna again.
“The most important day on the Gallifreyan calendar,” he tells her, pointing to an image of a form covered in armour. “The Feast of Omega. Omega brought Gallifrey out of the Dark Times of the Universe. He enabled Gallifreyans to travel in time.”
“You mentioned the Dark Times when we were facing the Empress of the Racnoss,” Donna reminds him as she sips her tea. “You said that was where huon particles came from - and the time when the Racnoss existed.”
“It was.” He nods. “It was a time of Nestenes and Vampires and Carrionites and other sources of dark energy, like the Racnoss. But Omega managed to create a universe out of nothing - that was his skill, power over antimatter - and that helped to end the era.”
“Except for the Racnoss that escaped and became the Earth.”
“Yes.” He makes a rough sketch of the Secret Heart, the ship that became the core of the Earth. “As with any war, there are always a few survivors. Several Carrionites made it to Earth, too. They tried to open a portal back to that era that would allow the others of their race to escape destruction. The Nestene Consciousness, not being a single entity, has escaped into a variety of eras and onto many different planets. The Great Vampires escaped out of normal space into exo-space, but they’ve been destroyed. Hopefully for good.”
Donna smiles somewhat wanly. “I suppose that’s not a bad thing.”
“Not really.” He shrugs a little. “One less enemy to defeat.”
After a moment, she puts her fingers over his and gives his hand a gentle squeeze. He looks up to meet her gaze and smiles at the understanding he can see in her eyes, remembering the moment at Pompeii when she shouldered that burden, appreciating how she’s doing it again now.
“Tell me more about Gallifrey,” she says softly.
He nods and gives her fingers a final squeeze before turning pages in the book and writing out several other names on a new sheet of parchment.
“Rassilon,” he announces, tapping a picture of a figure lying on top of a casket. “He discovered a form of immortality.”
“I thought you lot were pretty immortal already,” Donna says, rolling her eyes. “How old are you again anyway?”
The Doctor laughs. “Nothing like immortal, I can promise you! Although, the old man did offer it once - the chance to be like Borusa and the others whose one wish was to live forever.” He smiles a little, remembering the adventures on the Death Zone from the various points-of-view of his former selves. “Definitely not something I would ever aspire to, even if there was a way to go back to Gallifrey and do it.”
Donna glances at him before looking at the thick tome on the table. “I don’t see any numbers on this page, like there were on Omega’s” she tells him. “When is Rasslion’s Feast Day then?”
“Actually,” the Doctor tugs at his ear, “he doesn’t have one. None of the major figures in the Prydonian chapter do.” He shoots her a wry grin. “The Prydonians weren’t fond of fun. They disapproved of the idea of Feast Days. However there is Otherstide.”
He only realises that he’s stopped talking when Donna prompts him with, “And that is?”
Sighing, he turns the pages of the book until he finds the one devoted to The Other. “One of the founders of modern Gallifrey, along with Rassilon and Omega and three others from different chapters. Otherstide celebrates the achievements of the Other. On that day, everyone is supposed to stay home, and gifts are given to children.”
“Like Christmas then,” Donna says idly, running her eyes over the picture of the Other. However she happens to glance at the Doctor as she’s speaking and clearly something in his eyes prompts her to ask, “Why is that day so important to you?”
“I can’t get anything past you, can I?” he asks hypothetically, doodling idly on the parchment.
“Nope.” She slides the pen out of his hand, getting ink all over his fingers as she does so, but she ignores his squawk of indignation and repeats her question. “What is it about Otherstide that’s so important to you?”
He smiles somewhat sadly. “It’s my naming day - that’s what we called birthdays on Gallifrey. And,” he adds quickly, before she can speak, “I also ran away from Gallifrey on Otherstide - a different one, obviously.”
“Oh.” Donna manages a half-smile. “I don’t know whether to congratulate you or offer my sympathy.”
“Either works.” He smiles back at her - and uses the moment of distraction to snatch back the pen.
The ‘lesson’ ends there, as they get into another of their teasing, squabbling and highly enjoyable tiffs that lasts through dinner and only ends when Donna falls asleep on the couch. The Doctor tucks a blanket lightly around her and then returns the book on Gallifreyan history to the shelf, wondering if - and secretly hoping - her desire to keep learning his language will continue.
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