Held in Trust: Chapter 4
Title: Held in Trust (4/?)
Characters/Pairings:Duplicate Doctor/Rose, Alt!Donna, the Tyler clan, and lots of OC's.
Rating: Teen
Summary: An Alt!Ten, Rose and Alt!Donna Adventure!
Join our heroes as they investigate a mysterious man from the future, an apocalyptic death cult, and the wonders of the internal combustion engine.Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
A/N: Sequel to The One True Free Life. It's not entirely necessary to have read that, but if you're finding yourself at any point going, "Huh?" it's just probably something that was explained in that story.
It was beastly cold, but Donna had prepared a flask of tea for her and her grandfather to share while they enjoyed a rare hour of clear skies. Her ears still rang with the yapping of cousin Charlotte's dogs, but the drone of the sea was quickly and mercifully replacing it.
"You don't look like you're enjoying yourself, sweetheart." Wilf handed her a little enamelware mug which she used to first warm her hands before taking a sip.
"No, I like this," she said, gesturing to the beach chairs, the telescope and the tiny little sliver of new moon on the horizon. "Even if it's a bit chilly. Now then, why don't you find me something pretty to look at."
Wilf leaned over and, taking a quick glance at a star chart, began to make adjustments. "I never thought I'd see a Mott woman so interested in stargazing. Your mother would never have anything to do with it, said she could see them just fine from far away and there was no use in taking a closer look." He beckoned for her to come look through the viewfinder. "The constellation Lyra."
Donna put her tea down and leaned over the eyepiece. All those stars, suns each and every one, perhaps with entire solar systems of their own. She used to look up and just see dead rocks--pretty, like diamonds, but similarly lifeless--until the Doctor had told her about the galaxies teeming with life that wheeled over their heads all the time. Perhaps not as many as there used to be, but still untold billions.
Wilf continued his guided tour. "There's four stars all kind of making a rectangle--do you see them, Donna?"
"Oh, I never know where to look, but I do see one really bright one. It looks sort of bluish, with a little ring around it." She sat back up in her chair to let her grandfather have another look.
"That'll be Vega."
Donna laughed. "Vegas? All the way up there?"
Wilf turned and gave her a rather nonplussed look. "Veg-ah," he said again. "Lyra's still got all of its stars, and Vega's the brightest."
"I enjoy this time with you, granddad, but I'm afraid I'll always be rubbish at remembering the details." She poured a warm-ups for both of them.
"Lyra is next to Cygnus, the swan-or what's left of it." Shaking his head sadly, he pointed up in to the night sky and traced a cross with a shaky index finger. "Orpheus was the greatest poet who ever lived, and when he was killed his body was made in to a swan, and put in the sky next to his instrument."
Donna made a grim face. "Are there any stories about the constellations that don't involve everyone dying? It's like a cemetery up there."
Wilf stood up with a sigh. "I can think of a lot worse things to happen when you die than to live up in the stars. This damp out here, my old knees can't take it. I'll come get you when supper's ready--pork chops again, I reckon." He made a face and stuck out his tongue.
Donna gave a little hoot of laughter. "I'm so glad it's not just me then. I don't know whether to eat the chops or resole my shoes with them! When we get back home, we're having dinner at the chippie, my treat. And we're not telling mum about it--she dragged us here in the first place."
In answer he just gave a cheeky wink and walked back to the house, leaving her alone on the shore. With no one else there to speak now, the sound of the water seemed to grow nearer and all-pervasive, drowning out even her own breathing. She looked again at Vega with its bluish hue matching the faint blue that still clung to the horizon at this early hour of the evening. So many lives and such infinite possibility, if the Doctor and Rose were to be believed. The pair of them seemed to bring that life and possibility with them, like the scent of jasmine that always seemed to linger after Rose had left the room. Donna had often seen the Doctor watch after her, watch her leave, and then take a moment to appreciate her absence, with a little sniff of the air and a sigh. Donna was pretty sure that he had no conscious idea at all that he did it. Love for Rose just seemed to be a simple fact of who he was, as if he'd been born to it.
"And you two are going to tell me what your whole deal is," Donna had announced after her fifth day in hospital. "Shut up," she barked, seeing them both about to furiously dissemble--the Doctor was already producing a series of nonsense syllables and well-s. "Not after what I've just seen and heard. So, out with it. Who are you? Where are you from?"
The Doctor and Rose's heads whipped around to look at one another and they opened their mouths to speak at once, but nothing came out of either of them. Rose shut her mouth with a click of her teeth but the Doctor took a deep breath and just tossed it right on out there, completely deadpan.
"We're from a parallel universe."
Donna laughed so hard her sutures started to pinch and she had to cover her mouth with a hand to stifle it. "No, come on! Be serious. I just took a bullet for you, don't make me tear my stitches laughing."
"No, really, we are," he said innocently, eyes round and bright. Rose remained silent, looking back and forth between the Doctor and Donna in her hospital bed. "I am, and so's Rose, and Rose's mum too."
That was just entirely too much. Donna would be willing to believe that he was perhaps not a local boy, but the entire family of Tylers? They'd been famous for ages, there was no way they were anything but what they seemed to be. She gave them both a sidelong look.
"Are you all aliens, then?"
Rose put her hand to her mouth and giggled.
"Oi missy, don't make me feel stupid for asking--it's a legitimate question. If he's an alien and you're all from some parallel universe, what does that make you? And your mum and dad?"
"Sorry." Rose's face fell back in to a frustratingly blank mask. "I'm not an alien, nor my mum. My dad, Pete Tyler, he's from here though. It's complicated."
"I'm the only alien here," the Doctor added reassuringly, as if that information was supposed to be reassuring in any way, shape or form.
"And you two..." Donna pointed at each of them and tried to figure out how to word her question. Proper etiquette for what to do when you encounter cross-species love affairs appeared to be a bit of a minefield.
They looked at one another again and the temperature in the room seemed to go up at least ten degrees. Donna felt like maybe she should take her IV stand and leave them alone for a bit.
"Excuse me, I didn't ask for a demonstration," she said, covering her eyes with a hand. She directed her next question directly to Rose, as apparently the only other human in the room. "Seriously? He's an alien."
"Well, to be fair, he's really not completely. He was but," she exchanged a very strange series of looks with the Doctor before going on, "he's not...not anymore."
"What does that even mean?" Donna cried with exasperation but then waved her hands in front of her face and shook her head. "No, no, don't tell me. Just...don't tell me. The pair of you are going to do my head in with all this. But just one thing...."
The Doctor turned his sparkling eyes on her and gave a thin-lipped little smile that made his dimples visible even underneath his scruffy beard.
"You're from...outer space, yeah?"
He nodded and Rose nibbled on a pinky nail, watching his reactions closely, as if she herself didn't know how he'd answer.
"What's it like?"
He blinked slowly and Rose's hand shot out to grab his and pull it in to her own lap. "It's brilliant," he said, and sounded almost as if he was holding back tears. "Really brilliant. Ask Rose, she's been there."
"No way!" Donna gasped, and Rose dutifully nodded. "You've been to, like, other planets?"
"Yeah," she answered, never really taking her eyes off the Doctor. "And it is brilliant."
Looking through the little telescope Donna tried to imagine the Doctor and Rose up there, and maybe her with them. They'd never been quite clear on space ships and the like and, while they'd not mentioned popping off to Mars after tea at any point recently, she felt like she should always be prepared to go with them, should they ask. For the thousandth time, she went over her mental checklist of things she would need to do before leaving the planet; what she would tell her mum, what she would tell Wilf (which differed greatly from what she'd tell her mum) and what she would pack, if given the choice.
Going over her little list was soothing, and seemed to go well with the yawing surf and the slow climb of the new moon overhead. So soothing, in fact, that when the prelude to Bach's first cello suite began to play, it at first didn't occur to her that it was anything other than incidental music scoring her moment of peaceful contemplation.
She held the phone to her ear and before she could even get a hello out, the Doctor started shouting down the line about Rose. Nothing he was saying was making much sense and he was bellowing as if he were mad at her, Donna.
"Oi!" she finally hollered back, which won a few seconds of quiet. "Use your indoor voice and tell me what's wrong or I am hanging up."
"I sent Rose to Somerset and something's happened," he blurted so it all sounded like one long, garbled, panicked word.
"Oh no," she gasped but could tell that her reaction was about to wind the Doctor back up for more shouting, so she quickly continued to the action items on the agenda. "Tell me what happened and what you need me to do. Slowly. I can't help if you're just talking a lot of nonsense."
"I...I don't know what to do," he moaned, and Donna got the distinct impression that this was a phrase he had rarely, if ever, used before.
***
About four miles outside the odd little town of Glastonbury, Rose was one moment running her hand down the side of an innocent-looking chain link fence, and the next crying out involuntarily from a great blow to her shoulder that missed braining her by inches. She fell forward to the ground, dropping her phone and the other device in to the mud as she landed on her hands and knees. From this position she was able to take off like a sprinter, across the field, jumping over the stile and in to the orchard again. She could hear the footfalls behind her--two, maybe three people, it was hard to discern. That they meant her harm seemed a fairly reasonable assumption given the blunt force trauma to her shoulder, and she weighed her options: Try to make it back to the car before they caught up to her, or attempt to lose them in the orchard.
She looked over her shoulder, but it was too dark. At least they weren't near enough that she could actually see the whites of their eyes, as it were, but the sound of their steps was now coming from more than one direction, signalling that they were splitting up and attempting to cut her off.
She slowed her pace slightly so she could take stock of her assets in this situation. There were some rather large rocks on the ground, and she scooped one up on the fly and jammed it in to her coat pocket before hoisting herself up in to the nearest apple tree. Her hands were cold and her grip was not as sure as she'd have liked it to be. From the branch on which she was perching about eight feet off the ground, she could see where she'd left the car. Not far away at all really, if she could create a distraction and get them to leave her immediate vicinity.
Balancing herself so she wouldn't fall out of her tree in the process, she lobbed the rock as hard as she could, as far as she could from the path between her present position and the car. The sound it made coming down through the branches of a tree and then hitting the ground was followed by silence from the others, and Rose held her breath while a second took ages to actually tick past and they changed their direction.
Getting out of the tree without making just as much sound as the rock was tricky business and she had to remind herself to breathe as she did so, creating little puffs of fog in the cold night air. To her ears, the sound of her trainers picking their way through fallen branches and dead leaves was like the scream of jet engines, and it was an act of will to not break in to a much more obvious run before she was sure she'd be able to make it with enough of a lead. When she did finally begin to run flat out, the wind in her face made her eyes water, and her fingers fumbled with the car door handle for a dangerously long time before she was able to pitch herself inside, jam the key in to the starter and turn it hopefully.
The Doctor was right: a reliable car really is of the utmost importance.
(To Chapter 5: Control)
Characters/Pairings:Duplicate Doctor/Rose, Alt!Donna, the Tyler clan, and lots of OC's.
Rating: Teen
Summary: An Alt!Ten, Rose and Alt!Donna Adventure!
Join our heroes as they investigate a mysterious man from the future, an apocalyptic death cult, and the wonders of the internal combustion engine.Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
A/N: Sequel to The One True Free Life. It's not entirely necessary to have read that, but if you're finding yourself at any point going, "Huh?" it's just probably something that was explained in that story.
It was beastly cold, but Donna had prepared a flask of tea for her and her grandfather to share while they enjoyed a rare hour of clear skies. Her ears still rang with the yapping of cousin Charlotte's dogs, but the drone of the sea was quickly and mercifully replacing it.
"You don't look like you're enjoying yourself, sweetheart." Wilf handed her a little enamelware mug which she used to first warm her hands before taking a sip.
"No, I like this," she said, gesturing to the beach chairs, the telescope and the tiny little sliver of new moon on the horizon. "Even if it's a bit chilly. Now then, why don't you find me something pretty to look at."
Wilf leaned over and, taking a quick glance at a star chart, began to make adjustments. "I never thought I'd see a Mott woman so interested in stargazing. Your mother would never have anything to do with it, said she could see them just fine from far away and there was no use in taking a closer look." He beckoned for her to come look through the viewfinder. "The constellation Lyra."
Donna put her tea down and leaned over the eyepiece. All those stars, suns each and every one, perhaps with entire solar systems of their own. She used to look up and just see dead rocks--pretty, like diamonds, but similarly lifeless--until the Doctor had told her about the galaxies teeming with life that wheeled over their heads all the time. Perhaps not as many as there used to be, but still untold billions.
Wilf continued his guided tour. "There's four stars all kind of making a rectangle--do you see them, Donna?"
"Oh, I never know where to look, but I do see one really bright one. It looks sort of bluish, with a little ring around it." She sat back up in her chair to let her grandfather have another look.
"That'll be Vega."
Donna laughed. "Vegas? All the way up there?"
Wilf turned and gave her a rather nonplussed look. "Veg-ah," he said again. "Lyra's still got all of its stars, and Vega's the brightest."
"I enjoy this time with you, granddad, but I'm afraid I'll always be rubbish at remembering the details." She poured a warm-ups for both of them.
"Lyra is next to Cygnus, the swan-or what's left of it." Shaking his head sadly, he pointed up in to the night sky and traced a cross with a shaky index finger. "Orpheus was the greatest poet who ever lived, and when he was killed his body was made in to a swan, and put in the sky next to his instrument."
Donna made a grim face. "Are there any stories about the constellations that don't involve everyone dying? It's like a cemetery up there."
Wilf stood up with a sigh. "I can think of a lot worse things to happen when you die than to live up in the stars. This damp out here, my old knees can't take it. I'll come get you when supper's ready--pork chops again, I reckon." He made a face and stuck out his tongue.
Donna gave a little hoot of laughter. "I'm so glad it's not just me then. I don't know whether to eat the chops or resole my shoes with them! When we get back home, we're having dinner at the chippie, my treat. And we're not telling mum about it--she dragged us here in the first place."
In answer he just gave a cheeky wink and walked back to the house, leaving her alone on the shore. With no one else there to speak now, the sound of the water seemed to grow nearer and all-pervasive, drowning out even her own breathing. She looked again at Vega with its bluish hue matching the faint blue that still clung to the horizon at this early hour of the evening. So many lives and such infinite possibility, if the Doctor and Rose were to be believed. The pair of them seemed to bring that life and possibility with them, like the scent of jasmine that always seemed to linger after Rose had left the room. Donna had often seen the Doctor watch after her, watch her leave, and then take a moment to appreciate her absence, with a little sniff of the air and a sigh. Donna was pretty sure that he had no conscious idea at all that he did it. Love for Rose just seemed to be a simple fact of who he was, as if he'd been born to it.
"And you two are going to tell me what your whole deal is," Donna had announced after her fifth day in hospital. "Shut up," she barked, seeing them both about to furiously dissemble--the Doctor was already producing a series of nonsense syllables and well-s. "Not after what I've just seen and heard. So, out with it. Who are you? Where are you from?"
The Doctor and Rose's heads whipped around to look at one another and they opened their mouths to speak at once, but nothing came out of either of them. Rose shut her mouth with a click of her teeth but the Doctor took a deep breath and just tossed it right on out there, completely deadpan.
"We're from a parallel universe."
Donna laughed so hard her sutures started to pinch and she had to cover her mouth with a hand to stifle it. "No, come on! Be serious. I just took a bullet for you, don't make me tear my stitches laughing."
"No, really, we are," he said innocently, eyes round and bright. Rose remained silent, looking back and forth between the Doctor and Donna in her hospital bed. "I am, and so's Rose, and Rose's mum too."
That was just entirely too much. Donna would be willing to believe that he was perhaps not a local boy, but the entire family of Tylers? They'd been famous for ages, there was no way they were anything but what they seemed to be. She gave them both a sidelong look.
"Are you all aliens, then?"
Rose put her hand to her mouth and giggled.
"Oi missy, don't make me feel stupid for asking--it's a legitimate question. If he's an alien and you're all from some parallel universe, what does that make you? And your mum and dad?"
"Sorry." Rose's face fell back in to a frustratingly blank mask. "I'm not an alien, nor my mum. My dad, Pete Tyler, he's from here though. It's complicated."
"I'm the only alien here," the Doctor added reassuringly, as if that information was supposed to be reassuring in any way, shape or form.
"And you two..." Donna pointed at each of them and tried to figure out how to word her question. Proper etiquette for what to do when you encounter cross-species love affairs appeared to be a bit of a minefield.
They looked at one another again and the temperature in the room seemed to go up at least ten degrees. Donna felt like maybe she should take her IV stand and leave them alone for a bit.
"Excuse me, I didn't ask for a demonstration," she said, covering her eyes with a hand. She directed her next question directly to Rose, as apparently the only other human in the room. "Seriously? He's an alien."
"Well, to be fair, he's really not completely. He was but," she exchanged a very strange series of looks with the Doctor before going on, "he's not...not anymore."
"What does that even mean?" Donna cried with exasperation but then waved her hands in front of her face and shook her head. "No, no, don't tell me. Just...don't tell me. The pair of you are going to do my head in with all this. But just one thing...."
The Doctor turned his sparkling eyes on her and gave a thin-lipped little smile that made his dimples visible even underneath his scruffy beard.
"You're from...outer space, yeah?"
He nodded and Rose nibbled on a pinky nail, watching his reactions closely, as if she herself didn't know how he'd answer.
"What's it like?"
He blinked slowly and Rose's hand shot out to grab his and pull it in to her own lap. "It's brilliant," he said, and sounded almost as if he was holding back tears. "Really brilliant. Ask Rose, she's been there."
"No way!" Donna gasped, and Rose dutifully nodded. "You've been to, like, other planets?"
"Yeah," she answered, never really taking her eyes off the Doctor. "And it is brilliant."
Looking through the little telescope Donna tried to imagine the Doctor and Rose up there, and maybe her with them. They'd never been quite clear on space ships and the like and, while they'd not mentioned popping off to Mars after tea at any point recently, she felt like she should always be prepared to go with them, should they ask. For the thousandth time, she went over her mental checklist of things she would need to do before leaving the planet; what she would tell her mum, what she would tell Wilf (which differed greatly from what she'd tell her mum) and what she would pack, if given the choice.
Going over her little list was soothing, and seemed to go well with the yawing surf and the slow climb of the new moon overhead. So soothing, in fact, that when the prelude to Bach's first cello suite began to play, it at first didn't occur to her that it was anything other than incidental music scoring her moment of peaceful contemplation.
She held the phone to her ear and before she could even get a hello out, the Doctor started shouting down the line about Rose. Nothing he was saying was making much sense and he was bellowing as if he were mad at her, Donna.
"Oi!" she finally hollered back, which won a few seconds of quiet. "Use your indoor voice and tell me what's wrong or I am hanging up."
"I sent Rose to Somerset and something's happened," he blurted so it all sounded like one long, garbled, panicked word.
"Oh no," she gasped but could tell that her reaction was about to wind the Doctor back up for more shouting, so she quickly continued to the action items on the agenda. "Tell me what happened and what you need me to do. Slowly. I can't help if you're just talking a lot of nonsense."
"I...I don't know what to do," he moaned, and Donna got the distinct impression that this was a phrase he had rarely, if ever, used before.
***
About four miles outside the odd little town of Glastonbury, Rose was one moment running her hand down the side of an innocent-looking chain link fence, and the next crying out involuntarily from a great blow to her shoulder that missed braining her by inches. She fell forward to the ground, dropping her phone and the other device in to the mud as she landed on her hands and knees. From this position she was able to take off like a sprinter, across the field, jumping over the stile and in to the orchard again. She could hear the footfalls behind her--two, maybe three people, it was hard to discern. That they meant her harm seemed a fairly reasonable assumption given the blunt force trauma to her shoulder, and she weighed her options: Try to make it back to the car before they caught up to her, or attempt to lose them in the orchard.
She looked over her shoulder, but it was too dark. At least they weren't near enough that she could actually see the whites of their eyes, as it were, but the sound of their steps was now coming from more than one direction, signalling that they were splitting up and attempting to cut her off.
She slowed her pace slightly so she could take stock of her assets in this situation. There were some rather large rocks on the ground, and she scooped one up on the fly and jammed it in to her coat pocket before hoisting herself up in to the nearest apple tree. Her hands were cold and her grip was not as sure as she'd have liked it to be. From the branch on which she was perching about eight feet off the ground, she could see where she'd left the car. Not far away at all really, if she could create a distraction and get them to leave her immediate vicinity.
Balancing herself so she wouldn't fall out of her tree in the process, she lobbed the rock as hard as she could, as far as she could from the path between her present position and the car. The sound it made coming down through the branches of a tree and then hitting the ground was followed by silence from the others, and Rose held her breath while a second took ages to actually tick past and they changed their direction.
Getting out of the tree without making just as much sound as the rock was tricky business and she had to remind herself to breathe as she did so, creating little puffs of fog in the cold night air. To her ears, the sound of her trainers picking their way through fallen branches and dead leaves was like the scream of jet engines, and it was an act of will to not break in to a much more obvious run before she was sure she'd be able to make it with enough of a lead. When she did finally begin to run flat out, the wind in her face made her eyes water, and her fingers fumbled with the car door handle for a dangerously long time before she was able to pitch herself inside, jam the key in to the starter and turn it hopefully.
The Doctor was right: a reliable car really is of the utmost importance.
(To Chapter 5: Control)