Finding A Way Home - A Bitter Blow Part 1
Title: Finding A Way Home - A Bitter Blow Part 1
Author: katherine_b
Rating: G
Summary: There’s nothing to do but wait.
Characters: The two Doctors and Donna.
A/N: This is all juliet316’s fault. All of it. Not mine. Hers. The lynch mob forms to the right. ;-)
A/N 2: Written for the 55th weekly drabble challenge with the prompt ‘complication’ and for the 40th Travellers’ Tales with the prompt ‘nighttime’.
Part I
The Doctor stops beside the narrow bed and stares down at the man lying there, his motionless, slack face covered by the healing pod. Mentally he probes the Time Lord’s mind for a response, but just as on all the other occasions, there’s nothing. Only an agonising silence.
Stifling a sigh, both of impatience and exhaustion, he turns to look around the room.
The lights in the infirmary are kept low so that it resembles nighttime. The Doctor doesn’t need much light to see, and he hopes that having the room like this will lull Donna to sleep. She has scarcely moved from the chair where he put her after bringing the Time Lord in here after the accident.
It’s been almost sixty-one hours.
In all that time, nothing’s changed.
Oh, the bones that were broken in the fall have knitted, but that is standard procedure and done automatically by the healing pod. In fact, due to the lack of subconscious input from the unconscious man, it’s taken far longer than it should have. Not a good sign, if he needed another. Just one more complication.
The machines that cover the walls of this room, though, show no change whatsoever in the man now dressed in a medical robe. The Time Lord has shown no signs of waking up at any of the critical stages, which have thus far occurred every sixty minutes. From now on, the times in between will get longer, hours of no activity before the healing pod will give an automated burst of chemical stimulation.
He checks it all again, just to make sure.
Nothing.
Donna, with the Adipose snuggled in her lap, stirs in her chair as he passes. He leans over to find that she is not asleep as he’d hoped. In fact he doubts she’s had more than a few minutes at any one time, and it isn’t healthy for her or her unborn babies. Vague thoughts have been swirling in his mind for the past six hours or so, and now they solidify into a concrete plan.
Reaching in to his pocket, he pulls out his phone and sends a message before turning to Donna once more.
After removing Addy, he gently takes her hand, helping her out of the chair. He has done this several times over the past few hours and she goes with him willingly, unsuspecting. But this time will be different.
They wind up in the console room. He sits her on the jumpseat before turning to the controls. The sharp clicks and whirs clearly wake her out of her stunned haze.
“Wh-what are you doing?” she demands unsteadily, wiping a tear off her cheek.
“I’m taking you home,” he says grimly, sending the TARDIS out of the vortex.
“What?” Donna stares at him in obvious disbelief. “But - no - why?!”
“Because this is the last place you need to be right now,” he replies, avoiding looking at her. “You have to conserve your energy and it won’t be good for you to be here, waiting for him to wake up.”
“You promised he would!” Her voice is shrill with indignation and fear, and he finally turns his gaze on her to see her eyes, wide with terror, fixed on his face.
“He will,” he agrees. “At least,” honesty forces him to add, “I hope he will. But I don’t know when that might happen. It could be days - weeks, even! And you don’t have that long,” he points out, finally removing his hands from the controls and turning so that he can take gentle hold of her shoulders.
She raises tear-filled eyes to his face as he continues, “Donna, those babies of yours are only a few days away from entering the world.” He lifts a hand to wipe away a tear as it trickles down her cheek. “And you have to get out of this timeline in order to have their father with them and you when they arrive.”
“So,” she sniffs, “what? You drop me back in Chiswick…”
“And the two of us will come back for you the moment he’s well enough,” he vows. “You probably won’t even have the chance to sit down.”
“I wouldn’t anyway,” she snaps. “How can I, when he’s like that?”
“I know.” He gently pulls her into a hug, although it’s difficult with her enlarged belly in between them, before pulling back to look down into her face. “Donna, you have to conserve your energy. You haven’t slept since it happened, and you’ve barely eaten. It isn’t good for you, let alone the two still growing inside you.”
She buries her face in his shoulder for a moment before nodding and pulling away. “You need to take care of him,” she says unevenly. “You don’t need to be worrying about me, too.”
“Exactly,” he agrees, loosening his hold on her and leaning down to press a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll drop you at home, and I swear we’ll only be a few minutes.”
“P-promise me something,” she says, her voice shaking treacherously.
“What is it?”
“Th-that you won’t try to pretend to be him.” Her tear-filled eyes look up to meet his gaze. “That you w-won’t try to t-trick me or something.”
“Never.” He is insistent because he knows that attempting such a thing would break her heart all over again. “I wouldn’t do that to you. You know I wouldn’t.”
Her fingers clutch at his arm, but she nods, the sobs slowly lessening. He smooths her hair, pressing his lips to it, before turning back to the console.
Sylvia and Wilf are already waiting outside the doors when they arrive, and they are quick to support Donna as she steps out onto the grass.
“You go and take care of the other Doctor,” Wilf tells him as he presses a hanky into Donna’s hand. “There now, my darling.”
“Look after him,” Sylvia says, and he can see the worry in her eyes. “We’ll take care of Donna.”
“Time machine,” he reminds them. “We’ll be back in no time. Promise.”
Ducking inside, he sends the TARDIS into the vortex and is back beside the unconscious Time Lord within moments.
* * *
The Doctor paces the floor of the infirmary, living, for now, between moments when the healing pod will give the next dose of chemicals and the hope that it will prompt the Time Lord to wake up.
If he sits down, he’s afraid he’ll fall asleep, and he curses the human side of him that means he will eventually need to.
Sometimes he stops, studying the man in the bed, wondering if he actually is going to wake up. Wondering how long it might take. Wondering what he could have done in those first critical moments to make the outcome different. Wondering if this is somehow his fault.
He contemplates the impossible, of going back to that moment in time and changing something, giving more strength to the stair railing, or adding some sort of padding to the floor. It would trap him and the other Doctor in a time-loop, here in this version of the TARDIS, where nothing would ever change, but it would allow the people coming down the stairs of that restaurant a future.
But then he remembers the later Donna, waiting with her family for him to return, and knows he could never curse her to that sort of uncertainty.
And, in the absolute darkest, most desperate moments, he considers the unthinkable - that, if the Time Lord doesn’t wake up, there will be only one Doctor in the Universe, and that will be him.
He flinches back in horror from the mere suggestion.
Yes, he’s been flying the TARDIS on his own, or with people who aren’t Donna and the Time Lord, since he came back from Pete’s world. Yes, in the eyes of some of the people he met, he was the Doctor. Yes, physically he could do it all.
But deep down there’s always been something very reassuring about the knowledge that he had people to go back to. Connections. A family. People who know him as well as he knows them. As well as he knows himself. That he’s no longer alone.
Taking on the mantle of ‘The Doctor,’ though, would mean giving up the niche he has carved for himself. He would once more be front and centre - and alone. No matter what role people might play in his life, there would be no escaping that.
He would also have to give up something else that, just in the past few days, he’s realised he wants so much.
Verity.
Because, if he's the only Doctor, his priority will always have to be Donna and the twins. He will have to find ways to keep them safe, to care for them, and to protect them from harm. He won’t have time for Verity.
He loves Donna, of course he does. He wouldn’t exist without her.
But even just that short time with Verity gave him a glimpse into a future he thought had been lost when he opened the fobwatch and absorbed his own Time Lord energy.
That tantalising idea is torture to him now.
He knows he’s being selfish, and he hates himself for it. But here, in this darkened room, with mechanical beeps and hisses the only sounds he can detect, almost as if he were the only living thing left in the Universe, he can’t help himself.
After all this time, he’s almost frightened of being alone.
He doesn’t try to untangle the mess of thoughts and emotions in his mind, or attempt to work out their origins, whether from Donna’s human weaknesses or the Time Lord’s innermost fears.
Instead he does what the Doctor has always had to do - shoves them aside, focuses on the events unfolding in front of him, does what he can on a practical level to fix this, to make it right.
He turns the lights on to chase away the gloom and checks on the machines again, his eyes travelling over hours and days of readings, looking for even the least change. All of the results are stable, which is something to be grateful for. The Time Lord is no worse. He’s just no better.
In the small kitchenette that forms part of the infirmary, he makes himself a cup of tea, but not even banana muffins can tempt him to eat. Instead he adds more sugar than usual to his cup - the same amount as the Time Lord generally has - and relies on that for a necessary boost of energy.
If the healing pod didn’t block out all externals, as well as temporarily paralysing the body to aid in healing, he would try the trick with the tea that helped after the initial regeneration into the Time Lord’s current form. As it is, the TARDIS is already providing synthesised alternatives of the same chemicals.
There is a soft hiss as the next round of doses is supplied to the unconscious man.
The Doctor holds his breath, waiting for signals from the machines to tell him that, this time, it’s worked.
It’s getting harder to build himself up each time, to hope.
He breathes again when nothing changes and wonders just when he should give up.
When the TARDIS will give up.
And when he will do when that happens.
Next Part
Author: katherine_b
Rating: G
Summary: There’s nothing to do but wait.
Characters: The two Doctors and Donna.
A/N: This is all juliet316’s fault. All of it. Not mine. Hers. The lynch mob forms to the right. ;-)
A/N 2: Written for the 55th weekly drabble challenge with the prompt ‘complication’ and for the 40th Travellers’ Tales with the prompt ‘nighttime’.
Part I
The Doctor stops beside the narrow bed and stares down at the man lying there, his motionless, slack face covered by the healing pod. Mentally he probes the Time Lord’s mind for a response, but just as on all the other occasions, there’s nothing. Only an agonising silence.
Stifling a sigh, both of impatience and exhaustion, he turns to look around the room.
The lights in the infirmary are kept low so that it resembles nighttime. The Doctor doesn’t need much light to see, and he hopes that having the room like this will lull Donna to sleep. She has scarcely moved from the chair where he put her after bringing the Time Lord in here after the accident.
It’s been almost sixty-one hours.
In all that time, nothing’s changed.
Oh, the bones that were broken in the fall have knitted, but that is standard procedure and done automatically by the healing pod. In fact, due to the lack of subconscious input from the unconscious man, it’s taken far longer than it should have. Not a good sign, if he needed another. Just one more complication.
The machines that cover the walls of this room, though, show no change whatsoever in the man now dressed in a medical robe. The Time Lord has shown no signs of waking up at any of the critical stages, which have thus far occurred every sixty minutes. From now on, the times in between will get longer, hours of no activity before the healing pod will give an automated burst of chemical stimulation.
He checks it all again, just to make sure.
Nothing.
Donna, with the Adipose snuggled in her lap, stirs in her chair as he passes. He leans over to find that she is not asleep as he’d hoped. In fact he doubts she’s had more than a few minutes at any one time, and it isn’t healthy for her or her unborn babies. Vague thoughts have been swirling in his mind for the past six hours or so, and now they solidify into a concrete plan.
Reaching in to his pocket, he pulls out his phone and sends a message before turning to Donna once more.
After removing Addy, he gently takes her hand, helping her out of the chair. He has done this several times over the past few hours and she goes with him willingly, unsuspecting. But this time will be different.
They wind up in the console room. He sits her on the jumpseat before turning to the controls. The sharp clicks and whirs clearly wake her out of her stunned haze.
“Wh-what are you doing?” she demands unsteadily, wiping a tear off her cheek.
“I’m taking you home,” he says grimly, sending the TARDIS out of the vortex.
“What?” Donna stares at him in obvious disbelief. “But - no - why?!”
“Because this is the last place you need to be right now,” he replies, avoiding looking at her. “You have to conserve your energy and it won’t be good for you to be here, waiting for him to wake up.”
“You promised he would!” Her voice is shrill with indignation and fear, and he finally turns his gaze on her to see her eyes, wide with terror, fixed on his face.
“He will,” he agrees. “At least,” honesty forces him to add, “I hope he will. But I don’t know when that might happen. It could be days - weeks, even! And you don’t have that long,” he points out, finally removing his hands from the controls and turning so that he can take gentle hold of her shoulders.
She raises tear-filled eyes to his face as he continues, “Donna, those babies of yours are only a few days away from entering the world.” He lifts a hand to wipe away a tear as it trickles down her cheek. “And you have to get out of this timeline in order to have their father with them and you when they arrive.”
“So,” she sniffs, “what? You drop me back in Chiswick…”
“And the two of us will come back for you the moment he’s well enough,” he vows. “You probably won’t even have the chance to sit down.”
“I wouldn’t anyway,” she snaps. “How can I, when he’s like that?”
“I know.” He gently pulls her into a hug, although it’s difficult with her enlarged belly in between them, before pulling back to look down into her face. “Donna, you have to conserve your energy. You haven’t slept since it happened, and you’ve barely eaten. It isn’t good for you, let alone the two still growing inside you.”
She buries her face in his shoulder for a moment before nodding and pulling away. “You need to take care of him,” she says unevenly. “You don’t need to be worrying about me, too.”
“Exactly,” he agrees, loosening his hold on her and leaning down to press a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll drop you at home, and I swear we’ll only be a few minutes.”
“P-promise me something,” she says, her voice shaking treacherously.
“What is it?”
“Th-that you won’t try to pretend to be him.” Her tear-filled eyes look up to meet his gaze. “That you w-won’t try to t-trick me or something.”
“Never.” He is insistent because he knows that attempting such a thing would break her heart all over again. “I wouldn’t do that to you. You know I wouldn’t.”
Her fingers clutch at his arm, but she nods, the sobs slowly lessening. He smooths her hair, pressing his lips to it, before turning back to the console.
Sylvia and Wilf are already waiting outside the doors when they arrive, and they are quick to support Donna as she steps out onto the grass.
“You go and take care of the other Doctor,” Wilf tells him as he presses a hanky into Donna’s hand. “There now, my darling.”
“Look after him,” Sylvia says, and he can see the worry in her eyes. “We’ll take care of Donna.”
“Time machine,” he reminds them. “We’ll be back in no time. Promise.”
Ducking inside, he sends the TARDIS into the vortex and is back beside the unconscious Time Lord within moments.
* * *
The Doctor paces the floor of the infirmary, living, for now, between moments when the healing pod will give the next dose of chemicals and the hope that it will prompt the Time Lord to wake up.
If he sits down, he’s afraid he’ll fall asleep, and he curses the human side of him that means he will eventually need to.
Sometimes he stops, studying the man in the bed, wondering if he actually is going to wake up. Wondering how long it might take. Wondering what he could have done in those first critical moments to make the outcome different. Wondering if this is somehow his fault.
He contemplates the impossible, of going back to that moment in time and changing something, giving more strength to the stair railing, or adding some sort of padding to the floor. It would trap him and the other Doctor in a time-loop, here in this version of the TARDIS, where nothing would ever change, but it would allow the people coming down the stairs of that restaurant a future.
But then he remembers the later Donna, waiting with her family for him to return, and knows he could never curse her to that sort of uncertainty.
And, in the absolute darkest, most desperate moments, he considers the unthinkable - that, if the Time Lord doesn’t wake up, there will be only one Doctor in the Universe, and that will be him.
He flinches back in horror from the mere suggestion.
Yes, he’s been flying the TARDIS on his own, or with people who aren’t Donna and the Time Lord, since he came back from Pete’s world. Yes, in the eyes of some of the people he met, he was the Doctor. Yes, physically he could do it all.
But deep down there’s always been something very reassuring about the knowledge that he had people to go back to. Connections. A family. People who know him as well as he knows them. As well as he knows himself. That he’s no longer alone.
Taking on the mantle of ‘The Doctor,’ though, would mean giving up the niche he has carved for himself. He would once more be front and centre - and alone. No matter what role people might play in his life, there would be no escaping that.
He would also have to give up something else that, just in the past few days, he’s realised he wants so much.
Verity.
Because, if he's the only Doctor, his priority will always have to be Donna and the twins. He will have to find ways to keep them safe, to care for them, and to protect them from harm. He won’t have time for Verity.
He loves Donna, of course he does. He wouldn’t exist without her.
But even just that short time with Verity gave him a glimpse into a future he thought had been lost when he opened the fobwatch and absorbed his own Time Lord energy.
That tantalising idea is torture to him now.
He knows he’s being selfish, and he hates himself for it. But here, in this darkened room, with mechanical beeps and hisses the only sounds he can detect, almost as if he were the only living thing left in the Universe, he can’t help himself.
After all this time, he’s almost frightened of being alone.
He doesn’t try to untangle the mess of thoughts and emotions in his mind, or attempt to work out their origins, whether from Donna’s human weaknesses or the Time Lord’s innermost fears.
Instead he does what the Doctor has always had to do - shoves them aside, focuses on the events unfolding in front of him, does what he can on a practical level to fix this, to make it right.
He turns the lights on to chase away the gloom and checks on the machines again, his eyes travelling over hours and days of readings, looking for even the least change. All of the results are stable, which is something to be grateful for. The Time Lord is no worse. He’s just no better.
In the small kitchenette that forms part of the infirmary, he makes himself a cup of tea, but not even banana muffins can tempt him to eat. Instead he adds more sugar than usual to his cup - the same amount as the Time Lord generally has - and relies on that for a necessary boost of energy.
If the healing pod didn’t block out all externals, as well as temporarily paralysing the body to aid in healing, he would try the trick with the tea that helped after the initial regeneration into the Time Lord’s current form. As it is, the TARDIS is already providing synthesised alternatives of the same chemicals.
There is a soft hiss as the next round of doses is supplied to the unconscious man.
The Doctor holds his breath, waiting for signals from the machines to tell him that, this time, it’s worked.
It’s getting harder to build himself up each time, to hope.
He breathes again when nothing changes and wonders just when he should give up.
When the TARDIS will give up.
And when he will do when that happens.
Next Part