Weather Forecast
Rating: PG
Prompt: #085 - She
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: Set between Forest of the Dead and Midnight.
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Donna
Summary: It's cold, it's damp and they are locked in a cell. When the Doctor shows signs of falling ill the day can't possibly get any better, can it?
Snow was falling constantly from the grey sky, in a way that would have reminded Donna of the Planet of the Ood, had the weather here not been so miserable in comparison. On Ood Sphere big white flakes had fallen from a bright, friendly sky to join with the snow that had fallen before and form a thick white carpet to cover the world and make it shine and sparkle. So, okay, perhaps in her memories it was all a little more pretty and romantic than it had been in reality (and certainly the memory-Ood Sphere, right now, was lacking the corpses), but compared to this place anything would have been shiny and sparkly.
The snow fell, but met only mud on the ground, where it melted to provide more mud. Still it was lousy cold, and the sharp wind pushed the coldness into every gap in her clothes. She could feel it crawl up the legs of her trousers and reach for her belly.
In addition the sky was dark with heavy clouds and everything was bathed in a watery grey twilight. Not very inviting, this place. It had made even the Doctor grimace. It had not, however, made him close his coat.
The one thing that could make this place any worse, she had decided after running around for an hour or so, would be wild, aggressive beasts or possibly carnivorous plants. And look what she had found right after!
The tentacle of something unpleasant and spiky and apparently (hopefully!) herbal had shot out of the ground and wrapped around her leg. The Doctor had managed to get it off by annoying it with his sonic, but not before its spikes had torn into her trousers and her skin. Now she was even colder, and bleeding and in a Very Bad Mood.
On top of that she was in pain. A lot.
She had insisted, rather loudly, on returning to the TARDIS, and the Doctor had kindly supported her - not that she had left him much choice. (It all depended on how much he was attached to his balls. If he even had something like that. Donna thought she’d have to check some day, but then decided that she really didn’t want to know that badly.)
Admitting that the planet wasn’t quite as harmless as he remembered it to be, the Doctor had even offered to simply carry her back to his ship, but Donna had declined, with clenched teeth. She was quite fond of chivalrous men, but even knowing he was an alien and stronger than a human of his build, she still couldn’t bring herself to trust his skinny frame. If he had collapsed under her weight it would have been simply too embarrassing.
As she had limped through the icy mud with the wind tearing the hood off her head and pain travelling up her leg with every step, she thought that only bad tempered men with guns could have made the day any more perfect.
And, oh, look…!
The good thing about it, she though later, when she was sitting in a cell beside the Doctor, was that at least they were out of the terrible weather. But the cell was also dark and grey and clammy, and her clam clothes were sticking to her skin. The only improvements were the absence of wind and rain.
At least the soldiers that had arrested them for trespassing a military area had taken care of her injured leg. They’d cleaned and bandaged it, and then they’d cuffed her hands and left her alone with the Doctor, who was equally cuffed and wet, but at least unhurt.
If possible her leg hurt even more than before, now it wasn’t numb with cold any more. With the luck she was having the bloody killer plant had probably been poisonous.
The throbbing in her leg seemed to agree with her. She voiced the thought to her local Time Lord.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “There are no poisonous plants in this area.”
“You also said this area was safe!” she reminded him. “Safe means no bloody enormous man-eating tentacle bushes! Safe means flowers and sunshine and cocktails, and a massage, and perhaps a pool! Or is this just another of these cultural differences shining through, space pirate?”
She was in pain and scared. She had the right to rant a little.
“This place was quite different when I last came here. No monster plants,” the Doctor explained patiently. He was sitting on a narrow bed, his cuffed hands folded before him, and Donna was sitting on another bed, on the opposite wall. All together they had about six square metres to share.
“Then where did they come from?”
“Well…” He drew out the word, as he often did before giving a demonstration of his cleverness. “The mutated monster plants, combined with the armed guards and the electronic fences we unfortunately managed to land on the wrong side of make me guess that this has become a testing area for biological experiments since I last came here.”
“And when did you last come here?”
He thought for a moment. “Must have been about a century ago.”
Donna groaned. “Doctor, it amazes me that you always assume places don’t change at all in a century. ‘Don’t worry, they have no automatic weapons! The last time I came here the world was still inhabited by dinosaurs.’”
“I’ve met dinosaurs with guns,” the Doctor pointed out.
“I’m more concerned with how to get out of here, if you don’t mind,” Donna said before he could drift off into a longer narrative. Suddenly her eyes widened. “Oh my God,” she gasped. “They’re gonna kill us!”
The Doctor raised an eyebrow at her. “They’re not gonna kill us, Donna.”
“But we’re in their secret testing area! They won’t let us go now! If they don’t shoot us they’ll use us for their experiments, or let us run around outside to see how long it takes before something kills us.”
“You’ve spend too much time of your life watching movies.”
“If they create mutant plants here, how do you know it wasn’t poisonous?” Suddenly Donna was genuinely scared. “I’m going to die here, aren’t I?”
The Doctor shook his head, a warm twinkle in his eyes. “Don’t worry,” he said again, and sounded so certain and trustworthy that Donna had no choice but to calm down. “You’re going to be fine.”
She leaned back against the cold, hard wall and due to the handcuffs failed to cross her arms. “I’m not fine now,” she informed him. “I’m in pain. It bloody hurts!”
“I know,” he said sympathetically. “There’s nothing I can do about it before we get out of here.”
“And when will that be?” she pouted.
“Tomorrow, I suppose. They’ll check the identities the psychic paper has given them and let us go.”
“You’re used to getting arrested, huh?”
The Doctor merely snorted.
There probably was a lot about their situation he wasn’t telling her.
“I’m also cold,” Donna complained. “I know an alien like you wouldn’t notice, but for a human it’s not exactly cosy in here.”
“I’d come over and snuggle with you, but then you’d slap me again,” the Doctor said with a quick smile.
“Damn sure I would,” Donna growled, and hissed in pain when she stood and put weight on her injured leg. Fortunately the other bed was barely a step away. “But I can snuggle with you. You just sit still, and no one has to get hurt.” Except for you, her leg seemed to scream. You’re hurting already!
“No argument from me,” the Doctor said as she heavily fell against him. “I just fear I don’t have that much warmth to share.”
“You’re better than the wall,” Donna gave him, because he was. He also had a lot more bones and angles than the wall, she found as she tried to get his open coat around her despite their bound hands. “Just so this is clear: this is the only situation that will ever have me trying to get beneath your clothes!”
“Don’t worry, it’s not an experience I’m keen on repeating,” the Doctor grunted, which earned him an elbow in the ribs.
Silence soon fell between them. Small talk would probably have helped to lift the dark mood that had fallen over their small cell and helped Donna to distract herself from her fears, but exhaustion was lying heavily on her, and she didn’t feel like talking. On top of that she had a headache that steadily grew worse. Even if she had not been poisoned, she’d definitely caught a cold out there.
It was the Doctor’s fault they were in this mess. In return she’d make him serve her chicken soup for a week.
There was a small window, high in the wall. Too high to see anything but the sky through it, and the snow falling noiselessly just out of reach. Unable to see it melting into the dirty ground it looked peaceful and reminded her of Christmas.
The pain in her leg reminded her of a tentacle pulling her towards a hungry hole in the ground, and of being scared to death. It reminded that she was still scared to death, because there was no proof that the Doctor was right.
She wasn’t as scared as before, though, since she had learned that there was no mess the Doctor couldn’t get them out of. She knew he’d protect her. If there was one person she trusted with her life it was him.
Still, with darkness slowly falling over them in silence, shivering and injured in a cell on a planet full of monster flowers it was hard not to get a little depressed and wish she was home instead, with her granddad and her mom, and that her dad was still alive, and to long for a family and a home that hadn’t been real.
“Tell me something,” she murmured.
For the longest time there was no answer. Donna wondered if the Doctor had fallen asleep.
Her back was feeling a little warmer where she was leaning against him.
“What do you want to hear about?” came his soft reply.
“I don’t know. Anything.” She stared at the snow falling past their window. “Tell me about your childhood. Is there something like Christmas on your planet?”
She felt like kicking herself when she remembered that she had to speak of that planet in past tense.
Again this long silence. She wanted to apologize, change the topic, but then she felt his breath in her hair as he spoke.
“No,” he said. “Nothing like that. We had few historically motivated holidays, but they weren’t much fun. It’s a pity, though. Gallifrey would have been a good place for something like Christmas. We had a lot of snow where I came from.”
“I don’t think we’ve had snow in London for Christmas for at least ten years,” Donna mused. “Real snow, not ash, or alien trickery.”
“In the mountains we had snow almost all year,” the Doctor told her in his calm, quiet voice. “It was a bit wasted on the rest of my family, though. They just wouldn’t know what to do with it. I had to learn what a sledge was from a text on alien cultures. When I was seven I build one and tried it one the slope behind the house. However, it was a bit more steep and long than I had anticipated.”
“And you broke your arm,” Donna finished his story. It always ended with broken arms in stories like that.
She felt him shake his head. “My bones don’t break that easily, although we are a bit more fragile in our first life.”
‘First life?’ Donna wanted to ask, but he was already going on.
“Anyway, my family wasn’t amused. They took my improvised sledge away and told me never to do something like that again. The next day, though, an older cousin of mine showed me where she’d hidden the sledge she had built herself as a child and told me where the others wouldn’t…” His voice died down. She was asking too much of him. Feeling guilty she was overcome by the need to offer something in return.
“I miss my children,” she said.
“Your children?” he murmured, with mild confusion. Donna turned on the narrow bunk until she was almost facing him, and he somehow managed to get his cuffed arms around her and pull her close.
“When I was in the virtual world created by the Library,” she whispered, pressing her cheek against his chest. “I had a husband, a son, and a daughter. It wasn’t real, and that it only lasted a few hours, but it felt like years. I know it sounds silly, but they were my children and I loved them. I tried to hold on to the illusion even when I knew what it was, but they were taken away and I couldn’t…” Before she knew it she was sobbing into his shirt.
“Oh, Donna,” he murmured, moving awkwardly so he could stroke her hair. “I’m so sorry.”
‘It’s not your fault,’ she wanted to say, because it was true. But overwhelmed by the grief for a family she couldn’t grieve for because it had never existed, she only accepted his apology, and listened to his even, inhuman heartbeat until she fell asleep.
-
She fell asleep and in her dream they were not alone in their cell. A woman was dancing between beds that were farer apart than they could be, and then the distance grew even more and their cell became the universe. And the woman was dancing with the Doctor, and both of them were laughing as her blue dress swirled around them.
Then, suddenly, the woman was before her, and she pulled Donna to her feet and pressed a kiss to her lips, full of gratitude and necessity and coldness. For a moment she was dancing with them, caught in their embrace, but soon they let go and the momentum carried her away, and the Doctor watched her with tears in his eyes as she fell into the darkness.
-
The Doctor leaned back against the cold, hard wall, his eyes firmly closed. In his arms Donna slept, physically and mentally exhausted. He was glad she’d been able to find some rest after all.
He felt the exhaustion in his own bones now, and the ache. It felt like the temperature had dropped as his own temperature slowly rose. The Time Lord breathed deeply and evenly and let the fever come. It pulled at his limps, made them heavy, and his head ache. He relaxed as best he could in this uncomfortable position and soon his mind began to wander, and sleep claimed him.
While he slept he dreamed. It was the old dream, the bad dream. The dream he sometimes seemed to remember having dreamt even before it became a memory. In his dream he was alone inside his head, for the first time truly alone. They hadn’t flickered out of existence one by one; one moment their presence had filled his mind the way it always had, so natural that he had hardly ever even realised they were there, and the next moment they were gone, leaving nothing but echoless silence. The hole inside his mind threatened to swallow him. In the vast void he was tiny, and without hope.
But even in this emptiness he wasn’t all on his own. She was with him, offering a hand to hold on to, the lifeline that kept him from being swept away by madness. She was still with him. She was always with him. Without her he’d be lost.
She was standing beside him in the cell, and her cool hand touched his brow and smoothed his hair.
Don’t leave me, he begged her, desperately reaching for her for she was all he had left. Don’t leave me.
She kissed the back of his hand and kissed his eyelids and told him not to worry. She would always be with him. Nothing would take her from him - she’d take care of that. No matter the price.
In his dream he accepted her promise gratefully and without question. She made him lie down on the bed and stroked his hair until his sleep became peaceful.
-
Donna woke with a stiff neck, and shivering all over. The constant trembling of her body seemed to have become part of her nature. Especially her legs were cold, as well as her back - every part that was not pressed against the Doctor.
She also woke with pressure on her bladder. There was a toilet in their cell, as well as a tiny little sink that certainly didn’t offer warm water. For a hot shower Donna would have killed. Or better yet, a hot bath! To wash the cold and the stiffness out of her bones.
More than anything though, she wanted a wall between the toilet and the rest of the cell.
For a long time she stayed where she was: shivering subtly against the Doctor’s body, her face half buried in his coat, staring over at the place she needed, but didn’t want to go to.
The Time Lord didn’t move at all. Assuming he was asleep Donna did her best not to disturb him as she awkwardly slipped out of his embrace. The handcuffs made it impossible not to bump into him all the time, but he didn’t stir.
He looked kind of pale, she thought when she had finally managed to free herself. Well, skinny people had little tolerance for bad weather…
It looked terribly uncomfortable, leaning against the wall like that. Donna might try to do something about it (just looking at him made her back hurt), but first things came first.
She had managed to forget about her injured leg, until she rose from the bunk.
They were locked in a cell - why the hell did they have to bother with handcuffs on top of it? Donna scowled to herself as she inelegantly pushed down her trousers, reluctantly exposing her skin to the cold air.
All the time she kept her eyes fixed firmly on the Doctor, ready to yell at him should he show the slightest sign of waking up. She’d have his head should he even dare blinking at her!
But he didn’t. With some effort Donna managed to get her clothes back in order and wash her hands. A towel, apparently, would have been too much to ask for.
The grey light falling in through the window indicated early morning - or perhaps the light was just always grey here. Either way, Donna wondered if they’d at least be served breakfast in this lousy motel. She definitely wouldn’t recommend it to her friends.
Unfortunately the only friend around was still sleeping peacefully. Now that she wouldn’t have to murder him for waking anymore, Donna began wishing he’d wake up so she’d have someone to talk to. She also wouldn’t mind if he told her once again that all would be well. It was always so easy to believe him.
Leaning his head against a wall made of concrete all night would end up giving him a terrible headache. The thought made Donna remember her own headache and she realised that it was gone. Apart from still being miserably cold and aching all over from stiff muscles she felt much better than the day before.
The pain in her leg had not lessened, but it hadn’t grown worse either. Perhaps she hadn’t been poisoned after all.
Time to help the Doctor feel better when he woke up as well, she decided, and limped over to him again. When she moved him so he was properly lying on the bed she was careful not to wake him, but should he happen to wake up… well, at least then she’d have useful company again. It was the first time she saw him sleep anyway.
But he didn’t wake up. He just stirred barely noticeable and his lips moved slightly, without making a sound. Donna was overcome by the sudden urge to take off her coat and wrap it around him, and it probably a good thing she couldn’t get out of it with her hands locked together - she’d have caught that cold after all.
When she smoothed the hair out of his forehead it occurred to her that he might have been the one to catch a cold. His skin, usually so cool to the touch, was unexpectedly warm, and now she was looking for it Donna saw the red spots on his pale face. Suddenly she was worried. She wouldn’t know what she should do if the Doctor got sick. Could he even get sick? She’d always thought he’d have some sort of invincible immune system.
Unable to think of anything else, she decided to ask the man in question.
“Doctor,” she said urgently, holding his shoulder and shaking him. “Wake up!”
He groaned and blinked sleepily.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, sitting up. His tired eyes scanned the cell, and when he found that nothing had changed since the night before and they were still alone he looked at her in confusion.
“You’re running a fever,” Donna told him. He blinked.
“You woke me up just to tell me that?”
“Well, it seemed worth mentioning. You’re never sick.”
“Yeah, well, I’d already noticed, thanks.” The Time Lord fell back onto the narrow bunk and covered his eyes with his arm. “Getting to sleep it off would help.”
“Sorry,” Donna apologized. “It’s just that… you’re never sick. What if it gets worse?”
“It will, probably,” the Doctor told her - if it was meant to be reassuring he’d just failed big time. “But there’s no reason to worry. Just let me sleep a bit and I’ll be fine.”
“But what if you’re not?”
The Doctor lifted his arm to glance at her. “I’m not going to leave you behind in this place,” he promised. Donna slapped his arm.
“It’s not me I’m worried about, you faithless dumbo!”
He chuckled softly. “If I should pass out, just… ignore me until I come to again. If our nice, armed hosts show up, don’t let them give me anything for the fever - human medicine kills me.” He rolled onto his side and closed his eyes, shivering ever so slightly. Donna just stared at him. He probably really thought his words had been of any help. It was something they would need to have a long chat about once they were back in the TARDIS.
And she’d make sure he wouldn’t enjoy it.
-
No one came. Once Donna fell asleep on the cold bed opposite to the Doctor’s, and when she woke up there was a tray of food sitting on the floor. For a moment her heart stopped, and she imagined them getting in without her noticing and killing the Doctor with their human medication, but the tray appeared to have been shoved in though a gab in the door and the Doctor was still sleeping deeply, if less peacefully now. Donna sat down beside him while she ate and discovered that he was radiating even more heat than before. She tried to make him drink some of the tasteless soup, but he refused to become aware enough to understand what she wanted him to do.
“Just tell me what’s wrong with you!” Donna asked desperately when she managed to at least make him look at her. But his eyes fell shut a second later and he drifted off without even registering her question.
She was caught between concern, frustration and anger. Only the Doctor could place someone in a cell with an ill friend and expect them not to be out of their minds with worry. When his breath became laboured she began to wish their captors would come in, so she could tell them he wasn’t human and they could figure out how to help him.
The Doctor hadn’t seemed worried at all. It was absolutely no consolation to her.
She didn’t dare going back to sleep. The light outside dimmed again - hadn’t the Doctor told her they’d be out after a day? Perhaps he was also wrong not to be concerned about his state. Donna stayed by his side, muttering curses and insults at him even as she wiped the sweat off his face. The night seemed to last forever and his state steadily grew worse. Before dawn she was fearing for his life.
Donna made him as comfortable as possible, feeling helpless and useless. She held his bound hands in hers when cramps ran though his body. At some point she might even have been singing to him.
Pain, coldness and fatigue made her overly emotional, but she stayed true to herself and stubbornly refused to cry. At least until the sun rose and the Doctor was sleeping his still and deep sleep of complete exhaustion. His breathing was steady, if still shallow, and Donna allowed herself to breathe normally again. As long as he was still out and couldn’t see her it was okay, she found, to have a little breakdown.
Before he woke up she needed to make up a story to explain why his hands felt so crushed, just in case he asked.
He slept on until noon. Finally he blinked in the weak light and rolled over with a moan.
“The worst is over,” he whispered with a smile of relief that seemed all the brighter in his exhausted face. His voice was hoarse and catching in his throat. “You’ll be fine, Donna.”
“Me?” Donna frowned. “I think there’s something broken in your head, spaceman.” There was too much affection in her voice to fool him. He squeezed her hand and she realised that she was still holding his.
“We’ll leave tonight,” he murmured. “Get some rest before that. You’ll need your strength.”
“According to you we’re out of here since yesterday,” Donna criticised. The Doctor’s face remained blank.
“Yeah… that was a lie. But this isn’t.”
“You lied to me?” It wasn’t quite a yell, but her voice rose in volume enough to make the Time Lord wince. Donna didn’t feel like being considerate just now. “Why did you do that?”
“So you wouldn’t worry.”
“They’re not going to let us go, aren’t they?” She was a little surprised how little that shocked her now.
“No. But they won’t do anything to us before tomorrow.”
“And that’s not another lie?”
“No point to it. Go rest now.”
“Don’t order me around!” Donna jumped to her feet and sank back down with a whimper. “How do you plan to get out of here?”
“Through the door.” Well, it seemed like the obvious choice. The Doctor’s eyes slowly fell shut again, but Donna wouldn’t let him get away this easily.
“And why couldn’t we have done that before? If we had left right away, I wouldn’t have needed to spend two days in this freezing, damp, depressing place worrying myself sick over you!”
He opened his eyes once more, to give her a puzzled look. “Why did you do that? I told you not to worry.”
Donna felt like throwing something at him. “Oh, shut up, you idiot!”
He did. His eyes closed again.
“Will you be strong enough to leave?” Donna asked him, wondering what they’d do if they ran into more trouble.
“Yes,” the Doctor said with absolute certainty. “If I get some more rest, and you as well.”
“You’re not getting me!” she snapped, out of habit.
“Rest, Donna. You’re supposed to get rest. Over there.”
She gave a desperate little laugh. “There’s no way I can sleep now! With you being ill and people out there waiting to kill us.” She hesitated. “They are going to kill us, aren’t they?”
The Doctor ignored her question. Instead he stared at her with this look that always reminded her just how alien he was. She shuddered.
“Donna,” he said, his voice stronger, more intense then before. “It is vital, literally vital for you to get some sleep before we leave here. Let me take care of everything else.”
Donna very nearly gave in then. But she pulled herself together. “You don’t look like you’re going to take care of anything. You’re ill.”
“No, Donna, I’m not. You are. And therefore you must rest.”
He was beginning to scare her. “You’re not making sense.”
“Yes, I am. You’ll understand soon, I promise. But now just get some sleep. You look terrible, and, please, I don’t have the strength to discuss this with you now.” Their cell was so small that he could reach for her hands across the gab between their beds without having to move. “Just trust me!”
She had no other choice, not when he was looking at her like that. Donna expected sleep to flee her, but she was gone three minutes later.
-
When Donna woke just after nightfall, the Doctor was already awake. He sat on his bed, pulling his coat tighter around his shivering body. His handcuffs were lying abandoned on the floor beside him.
When she asked, quite disbelievingly, how the hell he had gotten out of them, he just said something about escapology, and that he couldn’t have done it before for reasons he’d explain later. He further admitted, while removing her own cuffs, that he had lied about her not having been poisoned as well.
“While you slept I synchronized our biorhythms and took over the symptoms of the poisoning from you,” he explained. “My body is stronger than a human’s. I knew I’d be able to take it.”
“You’ve stolen my illness from me?” Donna gasped, not quite understanding.
“I’d call it Saving Your Life, but if you insist…”
“You could have asked!”
“No, I couldn’t! Well, I could, of course I could… But I didn’t want to. You would have been difficult, and I was going to do it anyway.”
Oh, and it that case it was okay, wasn’t it? “I’ll show you difficult, sunshine!” Donna was positively bristling with anger.
“Yeah, later.” The Doctor waved her off. “The thing is, it’s time we left here. But you can hardly walk, and in this state neither can I.”
“What are we going to do?” she asked, putting her other feelings behind for the time being as fear came back to remind her of its right to be here.
The Doctor looked at her seriously, through bloodshot eyes.
“I have to give it back to you,” he said. “The worst is over. Your body has fought off the poison, so you’ll be able to take it now.”
“My body has fought off nothing!”
“Yes, it did. I only took the effects. The rest was up to you.”
Donna shook her head, amazed. “I felt nothing.”
“That was the idea.” The Doctor smiled. “But now you have to, so I can get us out of here. Do you think you’re up to it?”
“It was my illness to begin with,” Donna said bravely, rubbing her sore wrists. “You just borrowed it.”
“You’ll still feel pretty crappy,” the Doctor warned her.
“What alternative is there? Besides, once we’re back in the TARDIS you can fuss over me and make me chicken soup until I’m back to health.”
“Uhm, no.” The Doctor smiled sheepishly. “In this case chicken soup wouldn’t help. If anything it’ll make matters worse.”
Donna groaned.
-
Donna weakened rapidly as the sickness caught up with her. At the same time the Doctor gathered his strength, but the fever had drained him and he needed a few hours before he felt up to the task ahead.
Thanks to the fact that his pockets weren’t just bigger on the inside but also able to hide their contents, the Time Lord had no trouble opening the door with his sonic. A quick look left and right confirmed that there was no one around. Half a minute later he emerged into the corridor, with Donna in his arms. His friend was barely conscious and still protesting weakly. The Doctor ignored her as he hurried for the exit.
It was dark outside, almost too dark to see anything. But the temperature had dropped further and the snow that was no longer melting as soon as it touched the ground added a faint shimmer to the blackness.
The Doctor added a little blue light as he held his sonic between his teeth, set of a frequency that should hopefully keep all unpleasant creatures away from them. With his arms full of Donna he set off into the direction he knew the TARDIS to be in.
After almost an hour of walking through the deep snow getting the door open without dropping the human woman to the ground was a challenge. He mastered it, and was more than glad to finally be home again.
His first stop was Donna’s room, where he carefully placed her on the bed. She had been quiet for a long time, and he was surprised to find her awake after all. Despite her weakness she still could slap disconcertingly hard.
“What was that for?” he asked, rubbing his cheek under her glassy stare.
“For lying to me,” she slurred. “And other things.” Then she turned onto her side, closed her eyes, and fell asleep. The Doctor looked down on her sympathetically. He knew exactly how miserable she was feeling right now.
Deciding that she wouldn’t appreciate it if he undressed her, he just pulled off her shoes and tugged her in. Then he settled in the armchair beside her bed, knowing that he had to grant his aching body a short break before he could go back to their prison to do what he needed to do.
-
The Doctor was back when Donna woke up, though he was apparently not back when she woke up for the first time, judging from the glare she gave him as he entered her room. This woman amazed him: she could be ill and pale and shivering and still glare hard enough to break windows.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“I needed to take care of stuff,” the Doctor explained vaguely, flopping down in the armchair. In his defence he added, “I left you a note.”
“Oh yes, I read it. ‘I’ll be back.’ Who do you think you are, the Terminator?” She reached for the glass of water he had considerately left on the bedside table. “You were supposed to take care of me.”
“Sorry. Was kind of important. I’m back now. What can I do for you?”
Donna kept glaring. “You can tell me what was so important. And what the hell was going on in that place.”
“Oh, good!” The Doctor managed a tired grin and wished his head would stop pounding. “These things belong together anyway.”
In the next few minutes he gave her a strongly abbreviated version of recent events. When they were in the cell, and he’d been ill, his telepathic defences had been weakened and allowed him contact with another vaguely telepathic being held prisoner there. Through them he had learned that there were about half a dozen cells, all occupied. Whenever someone entered the area, the men running the project waited until they were attacked by one of their poisonous experiments and, should they survive, locked them in to see how their bodies reacted to it. The Doctor, better prepared than during his first visit, had freed the other prisoners and convinced their captors not to continue the project.
His face fell. “Some of the prisoners I couldn’t help anymore. They died, or will die soon.”
Donna took his hand, her gaze softening. “You did what you could,” she told him. He noticed how hot her skin still was. “But I don’t understand how we could get out of there so easily. Didn’t they watch us, or something?”
“They did. There was a camera hidden in the cell.” Donna’s eyes flashed with new anger at that, and she opened her mouth to say something. But in the end she just grimaced and let him continue. “But since the prisoners were only fed every two days, I concluded that there was no one present most of the time. No guards, no one to look at the surveillance tapes. Besides, I couldn’t sense anyone outside the cells. However, they would have noticed that the wrong person had fallen ill in our cell, which is why we needed to get away so soon. Sorry.”
“Believe me,” Donna said. “I’m rather ill here than spend another hour in that damp freezer and have you be ill in my place.” She pinched his arm but it was lacking force. “I’m still pissed because of that.”
“I’ll make up for it,” the Doctor promised. “How about you choose our next destination?”
“Your next destination is a bed,” she growled. “Yours, don’t get any funny ideas. You look like crap. And after that any planet is fine - as long as they have a spa.”
The Doctor snorted softly. “I think I know just the place. Pools, massage centres, shopping malls, and lots and lots of sunshine.” He didn’t need to mention that the sunlight there was lethal just now. Donna’s mood lifted immediately.
“That sounds fantastic. That is, if your navigational skills actually get us there.”
“Oi! Be quiet and go back to sleep. I won’t take you anywhere before you’ve recovered.”
“I’m hungry,” Donna complained, and the Doctor gave her the glass.
“Have some more water. I wouldn’t risk eating anything before tomorrow, your body probably can’t take it yet.”
“I’m not sick in the stomach.”
“Believe me, if you ate something you’d be.”
Donna growled some more, but didn’t seem too keen on throwing up all night and gave up. After she sank back onto the pillow, the Doctor turned to leave, but her voice caused him to stop in the doorway.
“Thanks for saving my life,” she said without opening her eyes. “Even if I didn’t ask for it.”
“Don’t mention it,” the Time Lord replied. “Without me you wouldn’t even get in trouble. I’d always save you, whether you want me to or not.”
Donna didn’t answer. With a sad smile the Doctor turned around and let the door between them close.
December 1, 2008
Prompt: #085 - She
Claim: The Time War
Table: Here
Spoilers: Set between Forest of the Dead and Midnight.
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Donna
Summary: It's cold, it's damp and they are locked in a cell. When the Doctor shows signs of falling ill the day can't possibly get any better, can it?
Snow was falling constantly from the grey sky, in a way that would have reminded Donna of the Planet of the Ood, had the weather here not been so miserable in comparison. On Ood Sphere big white flakes had fallen from a bright, friendly sky to join with the snow that had fallen before and form a thick white carpet to cover the world and make it shine and sparkle. So, okay, perhaps in her memories it was all a little more pretty and romantic than it had been in reality (and certainly the memory-Ood Sphere, right now, was lacking the corpses), but compared to this place anything would have been shiny and sparkly.
The snow fell, but met only mud on the ground, where it melted to provide more mud. Still it was lousy cold, and the sharp wind pushed the coldness into every gap in her clothes. She could feel it crawl up the legs of her trousers and reach for her belly.
In addition the sky was dark with heavy clouds and everything was bathed in a watery grey twilight. Not very inviting, this place. It had made even the Doctor grimace. It had not, however, made him close his coat.
The one thing that could make this place any worse, she had decided after running around for an hour or so, would be wild, aggressive beasts or possibly carnivorous plants. And look what she had found right after!
The tentacle of something unpleasant and spiky and apparently (hopefully!) herbal had shot out of the ground and wrapped around her leg. The Doctor had managed to get it off by annoying it with his sonic, but not before its spikes had torn into her trousers and her skin. Now she was even colder, and bleeding and in a Very Bad Mood.
On top of that she was in pain. A lot.
She had insisted, rather loudly, on returning to the TARDIS, and the Doctor had kindly supported her - not that she had left him much choice. (It all depended on how much he was attached to his balls. If he even had something like that. Donna thought she’d have to check some day, but then decided that she really didn’t want to know that badly.)
Admitting that the planet wasn’t quite as harmless as he remembered it to be, the Doctor had even offered to simply carry her back to his ship, but Donna had declined, with clenched teeth. She was quite fond of chivalrous men, but even knowing he was an alien and stronger than a human of his build, she still couldn’t bring herself to trust his skinny frame. If he had collapsed under her weight it would have been simply too embarrassing.
As she had limped through the icy mud with the wind tearing the hood off her head and pain travelling up her leg with every step, she thought that only bad tempered men with guns could have made the day any more perfect.
And, oh, look…!
The good thing about it, she though later, when she was sitting in a cell beside the Doctor, was that at least they were out of the terrible weather. But the cell was also dark and grey and clammy, and her clam clothes were sticking to her skin. The only improvements were the absence of wind and rain.
At least the soldiers that had arrested them for trespassing a military area had taken care of her injured leg. They’d cleaned and bandaged it, and then they’d cuffed her hands and left her alone with the Doctor, who was equally cuffed and wet, but at least unhurt.
If possible her leg hurt even more than before, now it wasn’t numb with cold any more. With the luck she was having the bloody killer plant had probably been poisonous.
The throbbing in her leg seemed to agree with her. She voiced the thought to her local Time Lord.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “There are no poisonous plants in this area.”
“You also said this area was safe!” she reminded him. “Safe means no bloody enormous man-eating tentacle bushes! Safe means flowers and sunshine and cocktails, and a massage, and perhaps a pool! Or is this just another of these cultural differences shining through, space pirate?”
She was in pain and scared. She had the right to rant a little.
“This place was quite different when I last came here. No monster plants,” the Doctor explained patiently. He was sitting on a narrow bed, his cuffed hands folded before him, and Donna was sitting on another bed, on the opposite wall. All together they had about six square metres to share.
“Then where did they come from?”
“Well…” He drew out the word, as he often did before giving a demonstration of his cleverness. “The mutated monster plants, combined with the armed guards and the electronic fences we unfortunately managed to land on the wrong side of make me guess that this has become a testing area for biological experiments since I last came here.”
“And when did you last come here?”
He thought for a moment. “Must have been about a century ago.”
Donna groaned. “Doctor, it amazes me that you always assume places don’t change at all in a century. ‘Don’t worry, they have no automatic weapons! The last time I came here the world was still inhabited by dinosaurs.’”
“I’ve met dinosaurs with guns,” the Doctor pointed out.
“I’m more concerned with how to get out of here, if you don’t mind,” Donna said before he could drift off into a longer narrative. Suddenly her eyes widened. “Oh my God,” she gasped. “They’re gonna kill us!”
The Doctor raised an eyebrow at her. “They’re not gonna kill us, Donna.”
“But we’re in their secret testing area! They won’t let us go now! If they don’t shoot us they’ll use us for their experiments, or let us run around outside to see how long it takes before something kills us.”
“You’ve spend too much time of your life watching movies.”
“If they create mutant plants here, how do you know it wasn’t poisonous?” Suddenly Donna was genuinely scared. “I’m going to die here, aren’t I?”
The Doctor shook his head, a warm twinkle in his eyes. “Don’t worry,” he said again, and sounded so certain and trustworthy that Donna had no choice but to calm down. “You’re going to be fine.”
She leaned back against the cold, hard wall and due to the handcuffs failed to cross her arms. “I’m not fine now,” she informed him. “I’m in pain. It bloody hurts!”
“I know,” he said sympathetically. “There’s nothing I can do about it before we get out of here.”
“And when will that be?” she pouted.
“Tomorrow, I suppose. They’ll check the identities the psychic paper has given them and let us go.”
“You’re used to getting arrested, huh?”
The Doctor merely snorted.
There probably was a lot about their situation he wasn’t telling her.
“I’m also cold,” Donna complained. “I know an alien like you wouldn’t notice, but for a human it’s not exactly cosy in here.”
“I’d come over and snuggle with you, but then you’d slap me again,” the Doctor said with a quick smile.
“Damn sure I would,” Donna growled, and hissed in pain when she stood and put weight on her injured leg. Fortunately the other bed was barely a step away. “But I can snuggle with you. You just sit still, and no one has to get hurt.” Except for you, her leg seemed to scream. You’re hurting already!
“No argument from me,” the Doctor said as she heavily fell against him. “I just fear I don’t have that much warmth to share.”
“You’re better than the wall,” Donna gave him, because he was. He also had a lot more bones and angles than the wall, she found as she tried to get his open coat around her despite their bound hands. “Just so this is clear: this is the only situation that will ever have me trying to get beneath your clothes!”
“Don’t worry, it’s not an experience I’m keen on repeating,” the Doctor grunted, which earned him an elbow in the ribs.
Silence soon fell between them. Small talk would probably have helped to lift the dark mood that had fallen over their small cell and helped Donna to distract herself from her fears, but exhaustion was lying heavily on her, and she didn’t feel like talking. On top of that she had a headache that steadily grew worse. Even if she had not been poisoned, she’d definitely caught a cold out there.
It was the Doctor’s fault they were in this mess. In return she’d make him serve her chicken soup for a week.
There was a small window, high in the wall. Too high to see anything but the sky through it, and the snow falling noiselessly just out of reach. Unable to see it melting into the dirty ground it looked peaceful and reminded her of Christmas.
The pain in her leg reminded her of a tentacle pulling her towards a hungry hole in the ground, and of being scared to death. It reminded that she was still scared to death, because there was no proof that the Doctor was right.
She wasn’t as scared as before, though, since she had learned that there was no mess the Doctor couldn’t get them out of. She knew he’d protect her. If there was one person she trusted with her life it was him.
Still, with darkness slowly falling over them in silence, shivering and injured in a cell on a planet full of monster flowers it was hard not to get a little depressed and wish she was home instead, with her granddad and her mom, and that her dad was still alive, and to long for a family and a home that hadn’t been real.
“Tell me something,” she murmured.
For the longest time there was no answer. Donna wondered if the Doctor had fallen asleep.
Her back was feeling a little warmer where she was leaning against him.
“What do you want to hear about?” came his soft reply.
“I don’t know. Anything.” She stared at the snow falling past their window. “Tell me about your childhood. Is there something like Christmas on your planet?”
She felt like kicking herself when she remembered that she had to speak of that planet in past tense.
Again this long silence. She wanted to apologize, change the topic, but then she felt his breath in her hair as he spoke.
“No,” he said. “Nothing like that. We had few historically motivated holidays, but they weren’t much fun. It’s a pity, though. Gallifrey would have been a good place for something like Christmas. We had a lot of snow where I came from.”
“I don’t think we’ve had snow in London for Christmas for at least ten years,” Donna mused. “Real snow, not ash, or alien trickery.”
“In the mountains we had snow almost all year,” the Doctor told her in his calm, quiet voice. “It was a bit wasted on the rest of my family, though. They just wouldn’t know what to do with it. I had to learn what a sledge was from a text on alien cultures. When I was seven I build one and tried it one the slope behind the house. However, it was a bit more steep and long than I had anticipated.”
“And you broke your arm,” Donna finished his story. It always ended with broken arms in stories like that.
She felt him shake his head. “My bones don’t break that easily, although we are a bit more fragile in our first life.”
‘First life?’ Donna wanted to ask, but he was already going on.
“Anyway, my family wasn’t amused. They took my improvised sledge away and told me never to do something like that again. The next day, though, an older cousin of mine showed me where she’d hidden the sledge she had built herself as a child and told me where the others wouldn’t…” His voice died down. She was asking too much of him. Feeling guilty she was overcome by the need to offer something in return.
“I miss my children,” she said.
“Your children?” he murmured, with mild confusion. Donna turned on the narrow bunk until she was almost facing him, and he somehow managed to get his cuffed arms around her and pull her close.
“When I was in the virtual world created by the Library,” she whispered, pressing her cheek against his chest. “I had a husband, a son, and a daughter. It wasn’t real, and that it only lasted a few hours, but it felt like years. I know it sounds silly, but they were my children and I loved them. I tried to hold on to the illusion even when I knew what it was, but they were taken away and I couldn’t…” Before she knew it she was sobbing into his shirt.
“Oh, Donna,” he murmured, moving awkwardly so he could stroke her hair. “I’m so sorry.”
‘It’s not your fault,’ she wanted to say, because it was true. But overwhelmed by the grief for a family she couldn’t grieve for because it had never existed, she only accepted his apology, and listened to his even, inhuman heartbeat until she fell asleep.
-
She fell asleep and in her dream they were not alone in their cell. A woman was dancing between beds that were farer apart than they could be, and then the distance grew even more and their cell became the universe. And the woman was dancing with the Doctor, and both of them were laughing as her blue dress swirled around them.
Then, suddenly, the woman was before her, and she pulled Donna to her feet and pressed a kiss to her lips, full of gratitude and necessity and coldness. For a moment she was dancing with them, caught in their embrace, but soon they let go and the momentum carried her away, and the Doctor watched her with tears in his eyes as she fell into the darkness.
-
The Doctor leaned back against the cold, hard wall, his eyes firmly closed. In his arms Donna slept, physically and mentally exhausted. He was glad she’d been able to find some rest after all.
He felt the exhaustion in his own bones now, and the ache. It felt like the temperature had dropped as his own temperature slowly rose. The Time Lord breathed deeply and evenly and let the fever come. It pulled at his limps, made them heavy, and his head ache. He relaxed as best he could in this uncomfortable position and soon his mind began to wander, and sleep claimed him.
While he slept he dreamed. It was the old dream, the bad dream. The dream he sometimes seemed to remember having dreamt even before it became a memory. In his dream he was alone inside his head, for the first time truly alone. They hadn’t flickered out of existence one by one; one moment their presence had filled his mind the way it always had, so natural that he had hardly ever even realised they were there, and the next moment they were gone, leaving nothing but echoless silence. The hole inside his mind threatened to swallow him. In the vast void he was tiny, and without hope.
But even in this emptiness he wasn’t all on his own. She was with him, offering a hand to hold on to, the lifeline that kept him from being swept away by madness. She was still with him. She was always with him. Without her he’d be lost.
She was standing beside him in the cell, and her cool hand touched his brow and smoothed his hair.
Don’t leave me, he begged her, desperately reaching for her for she was all he had left. Don’t leave me.
She kissed the back of his hand and kissed his eyelids and told him not to worry. She would always be with him. Nothing would take her from him - she’d take care of that. No matter the price.
In his dream he accepted her promise gratefully and without question. She made him lie down on the bed and stroked his hair until his sleep became peaceful.
-
Donna woke with a stiff neck, and shivering all over. The constant trembling of her body seemed to have become part of her nature. Especially her legs were cold, as well as her back - every part that was not pressed against the Doctor.
She also woke with pressure on her bladder. There was a toilet in their cell, as well as a tiny little sink that certainly didn’t offer warm water. For a hot shower Donna would have killed. Or better yet, a hot bath! To wash the cold and the stiffness out of her bones.
More than anything though, she wanted a wall between the toilet and the rest of the cell.
For a long time she stayed where she was: shivering subtly against the Doctor’s body, her face half buried in his coat, staring over at the place she needed, but didn’t want to go to.
The Time Lord didn’t move at all. Assuming he was asleep Donna did her best not to disturb him as she awkwardly slipped out of his embrace. The handcuffs made it impossible not to bump into him all the time, but he didn’t stir.
He looked kind of pale, she thought when she had finally managed to free herself. Well, skinny people had little tolerance for bad weather…
It looked terribly uncomfortable, leaning against the wall like that. Donna might try to do something about it (just looking at him made her back hurt), but first things came first.
She had managed to forget about her injured leg, until she rose from the bunk.
They were locked in a cell - why the hell did they have to bother with handcuffs on top of it? Donna scowled to herself as she inelegantly pushed down her trousers, reluctantly exposing her skin to the cold air.
All the time she kept her eyes fixed firmly on the Doctor, ready to yell at him should he show the slightest sign of waking up. She’d have his head should he even dare blinking at her!
But he didn’t. With some effort Donna managed to get her clothes back in order and wash her hands. A towel, apparently, would have been too much to ask for.
The grey light falling in through the window indicated early morning - or perhaps the light was just always grey here. Either way, Donna wondered if they’d at least be served breakfast in this lousy motel. She definitely wouldn’t recommend it to her friends.
Unfortunately the only friend around was still sleeping peacefully. Now that she wouldn’t have to murder him for waking anymore, Donna began wishing he’d wake up so she’d have someone to talk to. She also wouldn’t mind if he told her once again that all would be well. It was always so easy to believe him.
Leaning his head against a wall made of concrete all night would end up giving him a terrible headache. The thought made Donna remember her own headache and she realised that it was gone. Apart from still being miserably cold and aching all over from stiff muscles she felt much better than the day before.
The pain in her leg had not lessened, but it hadn’t grown worse either. Perhaps she hadn’t been poisoned after all.
Time to help the Doctor feel better when he woke up as well, she decided, and limped over to him again. When she moved him so he was properly lying on the bed she was careful not to wake him, but should he happen to wake up… well, at least then she’d have useful company again. It was the first time she saw him sleep anyway.
But he didn’t wake up. He just stirred barely noticeable and his lips moved slightly, without making a sound. Donna was overcome by the sudden urge to take off her coat and wrap it around him, and it probably a good thing she couldn’t get out of it with her hands locked together - she’d have caught that cold after all.
When she smoothed the hair out of his forehead it occurred to her that he might have been the one to catch a cold. His skin, usually so cool to the touch, was unexpectedly warm, and now she was looking for it Donna saw the red spots on his pale face. Suddenly she was worried. She wouldn’t know what she should do if the Doctor got sick. Could he even get sick? She’d always thought he’d have some sort of invincible immune system.
Unable to think of anything else, she decided to ask the man in question.
“Doctor,” she said urgently, holding his shoulder and shaking him. “Wake up!”
He groaned and blinked sleepily.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, sitting up. His tired eyes scanned the cell, and when he found that nothing had changed since the night before and they were still alone he looked at her in confusion.
“You’re running a fever,” Donna told him. He blinked.
“You woke me up just to tell me that?”
“Well, it seemed worth mentioning. You’re never sick.”
“Yeah, well, I’d already noticed, thanks.” The Time Lord fell back onto the narrow bunk and covered his eyes with his arm. “Getting to sleep it off would help.”
“Sorry,” Donna apologized. “It’s just that… you’re never sick. What if it gets worse?”
“It will, probably,” the Doctor told her - if it was meant to be reassuring he’d just failed big time. “But there’s no reason to worry. Just let me sleep a bit and I’ll be fine.”
“But what if you’re not?”
The Doctor lifted his arm to glance at her. “I’m not going to leave you behind in this place,” he promised. Donna slapped his arm.
“It’s not me I’m worried about, you faithless dumbo!”
He chuckled softly. “If I should pass out, just… ignore me until I come to again. If our nice, armed hosts show up, don’t let them give me anything for the fever - human medicine kills me.” He rolled onto his side and closed his eyes, shivering ever so slightly. Donna just stared at him. He probably really thought his words had been of any help. It was something they would need to have a long chat about once they were back in the TARDIS.
And she’d make sure he wouldn’t enjoy it.
-
No one came. Once Donna fell asleep on the cold bed opposite to the Doctor’s, and when she woke up there was a tray of food sitting on the floor. For a moment her heart stopped, and she imagined them getting in without her noticing and killing the Doctor with their human medication, but the tray appeared to have been shoved in though a gab in the door and the Doctor was still sleeping deeply, if less peacefully now. Donna sat down beside him while she ate and discovered that he was radiating even more heat than before. She tried to make him drink some of the tasteless soup, but he refused to become aware enough to understand what she wanted him to do.
“Just tell me what’s wrong with you!” Donna asked desperately when she managed to at least make him look at her. But his eyes fell shut a second later and he drifted off without even registering her question.
She was caught between concern, frustration and anger. Only the Doctor could place someone in a cell with an ill friend and expect them not to be out of their minds with worry. When his breath became laboured she began to wish their captors would come in, so she could tell them he wasn’t human and they could figure out how to help him.
The Doctor hadn’t seemed worried at all. It was absolutely no consolation to her.
She didn’t dare going back to sleep. The light outside dimmed again - hadn’t the Doctor told her they’d be out after a day? Perhaps he was also wrong not to be concerned about his state. Donna stayed by his side, muttering curses and insults at him even as she wiped the sweat off his face. The night seemed to last forever and his state steadily grew worse. Before dawn she was fearing for his life.
Donna made him as comfortable as possible, feeling helpless and useless. She held his bound hands in hers when cramps ran though his body. At some point she might even have been singing to him.
Pain, coldness and fatigue made her overly emotional, but she stayed true to herself and stubbornly refused to cry. At least until the sun rose and the Doctor was sleeping his still and deep sleep of complete exhaustion. His breathing was steady, if still shallow, and Donna allowed herself to breathe normally again. As long as he was still out and couldn’t see her it was okay, she found, to have a little breakdown.
Before he woke up she needed to make up a story to explain why his hands felt so crushed, just in case he asked.
He slept on until noon. Finally he blinked in the weak light and rolled over with a moan.
“The worst is over,” he whispered with a smile of relief that seemed all the brighter in his exhausted face. His voice was hoarse and catching in his throat. “You’ll be fine, Donna.”
“Me?” Donna frowned. “I think there’s something broken in your head, spaceman.” There was too much affection in her voice to fool him. He squeezed her hand and she realised that she was still holding his.
“We’ll leave tonight,” he murmured. “Get some rest before that. You’ll need your strength.”
“According to you we’re out of here since yesterday,” Donna criticised. The Doctor’s face remained blank.
“Yeah… that was a lie. But this isn’t.”
“You lied to me?” It wasn’t quite a yell, but her voice rose in volume enough to make the Time Lord wince. Donna didn’t feel like being considerate just now. “Why did you do that?”
“So you wouldn’t worry.”
“They’re not going to let us go, aren’t they?” She was a little surprised how little that shocked her now.
“No. But they won’t do anything to us before tomorrow.”
“And that’s not another lie?”
“No point to it. Go rest now.”
“Don’t order me around!” Donna jumped to her feet and sank back down with a whimper. “How do you plan to get out of here?”
“Through the door.” Well, it seemed like the obvious choice. The Doctor’s eyes slowly fell shut again, but Donna wouldn’t let him get away this easily.
“And why couldn’t we have done that before? If we had left right away, I wouldn’t have needed to spend two days in this freezing, damp, depressing place worrying myself sick over you!”
He opened his eyes once more, to give her a puzzled look. “Why did you do that? I told you not to worry.”
Donna felt like throwing something at him. “Oh, shut up, you idiot!”
He did. His eyes closed again.
“Will you be strong enough to leave?” Donna asked him, wondering what they’d do if they ran into more trouble.
“Yes,” the Doctor said with absolute certainty. “If I get some more rest, and you as well.”
“You’re not getting me!” she snapped, out of habit.
“Rest, Donna. You’re supposed to get rest. Over there.”
She gave a desperate little laugh. “There’s no way I can sleep now! With you being ill and people out there waiting to kill us.” She hesitated. “They are going to kill us, aren’t they?”
The Doctor ignored her question. Instead he stared at her with this look that always reminded her just how alien he was. She shuddered.
“Donna,” he said, his voice stronger, more intense then before. “It is vital, literally vital for you to get some sleep before we leave here. Let me take care of everything else.”
Donna very nearly gave in then. But she pulled herself together. “You don’t look like you’re going to take care of anything. You’re ill.”
“No, Donna, I’m not. You are. And therefore you must rest.”
He was beginning to scare her. “You’re not making sense.”
“Yes, I am. You’ll understand soon, I promise. But now just get some sleep. You look terrible, and, please, I don’t have the strength to discuss this with you now.” Their cell was so small that he could reach for her hands across the gab between their beds without having to move. “Just trust me!”
She had no other choice, not when he was looking at her like that. Donna expected sleep to flee her, but she was gone three minutes later.
-
When Donna woke just after nightfall, the Doctor was already awake. He sat on his bed, pulling his coat tighter around his shivering body. His handcuffs were lying abandoned on the floor beside him.
When she asked, quite disbelievingly, how the hell he had gotten out of them, he just said something about escapology, and that he couldn’t have done it before for reasons he’d explain later. He further admitted, while removing her own cuffs, that he had lied about her not having been poisoned as well.
“While you slept I synchronized our biorhythms and took over the symptoms of the poisoning from you,” he explained. “My body is stronger than a human’s. I knew I’d be able to take it.”
“You’ve stolen my illness from me?” Donna gasped, not quite understanding.
“I’d call it Saving Your Life, but if you insist…”
“You could have asked!”
“No, I couldn’t! Well, I could, of course I could… But I didn’t want to. You would have been difficult, and I was going to do it anyway.”
Oh, and it that case it was okay, wasn’t it? “I’ll show you difficult, sunshine!” Donna was positively bristling with anger.
“Yeah, later.” The Doctor waved her off. “The thing is, it’s time we left here. But you can hardly walk, and in this state neither can I.”
“What are we going to do?” she asked, putting her other feelings behind for the time being as fear came back to remind her of its right to be here.
The Doctor looked at her seriously, through bloodshot eyes.
“I have to give it back to you,” he said. “The worst is over. Your body has fought off the poison, so you’ll be able to take it now.”
“My body has fought off nothing!”
“Yes, it did. I only took the effects. The rest was up to you.”
Donna shook her head, amazed. “I felt nothing.”
“That was the idea.” The Doctor smiled. “But now you have to, so I can get us out of here. Do you think you’re up to it?”
“It was my illness to begin with,” Donna said bravely, rubbing her sore wrists. “You just borrowed it.”
“You’ll still feel pretty crappy,” the Doctor warned her.
“What alternative is there? Besides, once we’re back in the TARDIS you can fuss over me and make me chicken soup until I’m back to health.”
“Uhm, no.” The Doctor smiled sheepishly. “In this case chicken soup wouldn’t help. If anything it’ll make matters worse.”
Donna groaned.
-
Donna weakened rapidly as the sickness caught up with her. At the same time the Doctor gathered his strength, but the fever had drained him and he needed a few hours before he felt up to the task ahead.
Thanks to the fact that his pockets weren’t just bigger on the inside but also able to hide their contents, the Time Lord had no trouble opening the door with his sonic. A quick look left and right confirmed that there was no one around. Half a minute later he emerged into the corridor, with Donna in his arms. His friend was barely conscious and still protesting weakly. The Doctor ignored her as he hurried for the exit.
It was dark outside, almost too dark to see anything. But the temperature had dropped further and the snow that was no longer melting as soon as it touched the ground added a faint shimmer to the blackness.
The Doctor added a little blue light as he held his sonic between his teeth, set of a frequency that should hopefully keep all unpleasant creatures away from them. With his arms full of Donna he set off into the direction he knew the TARDIS to be in.
After almost an hour of walking through the deep snow getting the door open without dropping the human woman to the ground was a challenge. He mastered it, and was more than glad to finally be home again.
His first stop was Donna’s room, where he carefully placed her on the bed. She had been quiet for a long time, and he was surprised to find her awake after all. Despite her weakness she still could slap disconcertingly hard.
“What was that for?” he asked, rubbing his cheek under her glassy stare.
“For lying to me,” she slurred. “And other things.” Then she turned onto her side, closed her eyes, and fell asleep. The Doctor looked down on her sympathetically. He knew exactly how miserable she was feeling right now.
Deciding that she wouldn’t appreciate it if he undressed her, he just pulled off her shoes and tugged her in. Then he settled in the armchair beside her bed, knowing that he had to grant his aching body a short break before he could go back to their prison to do what he needed to do.
-
The Doctor was back when Donna woke up, though he was apparently not back when she woke up for the first time, judging from the glare she gave him as he entered her room. This woman amazed him: she could be ill and pale and shivering and still glare hard enough to break windows.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“I needed to take care of stuff,” the Doctor explained vaguely, flopping down in the armchair. In his defence he added, “I left you a note.”
“Oh yes, I read it. ‘I’ll be back.’ Who do you think you are, the Terminator?” She reached for the glass of water he had considerately left on the bedside table. “You were supposed to take care of me.”
“Sorry. Was kind of important. I’m back now. What can I do for you?”
Donna kept glaring. “You can tell me what was so important. And what the hell was going on in that place.”
“Oh, good!” The Doctor managed a tired grin and wished his head would stop pounding. “These things belong together anyway.”
In the next few minutes he gave her a strongly abbreviated version of recent events. When they were in the cell, and he’d been ill, his telepathic defences had been weakened and allowed him contact with another vaguely telepathic being held prisoner there. Through them he had learned that there were about half a dozen cells, all occupied. Whenever someone entered the area, the men running the project waited until they were attacked by one of their poisonous experiments and, should they survive, locked them in to see how their bodies reacted to it. The Doctor, better prepared than during his first visit, had freed the other prisoners and convinced their captors not to continue the project.
His face fell. “Some of the prisoners I couldn’t help anymore. They died, or will die soon.”
Donna took his hand, her gaze softening. “You did what you could,” she told him. He noticed how hot her skin still was. “But I don’t understand how we could get out of there so easily. Didn’t they watch us, or something?”
“They did. There was a camera hidden in the cell.” Donna’s eyes flashed with new anger at that, and she opened her mouth to say something. But in the end she just grimaced and let him continue. “But since the prisoners were only fed every two days, I concluded that there was no one present most of the time. No guards, no one to look at the surveillance tapes. Besides, I couldn’t sense anyone outside the cells. However, they would have noticed that the wrong person had fallen ill in our cell, which is why we needed to get away so soon. Sorry.”
“Believe me,” Donna said. “I’m rather ill here than spend another hour in that damp freezer and have you be ill in my place.” She pinched his arm but it was lacking force. “I’m still pissed because of that.”
“I’ll make up for it,” the Doctor promised. “How about you choose our next destination?”
“Your next destination is a bed,” she growled. “Yours, don’t get any funny ideas. You look like crap. And after that any planet is fine - as long as they have a spa.”
The Doctor snorted softly. “I think I know just the place. Pools, massage centres, shopping malls, and lots and lots of sunshine.” He didn’t need to mention that the sunlight there was lethal just now. Donna’s mood lifted immediately.
“That sounds fantastic. That is, if your navigational skills actually get us there.”
“Oi! Be quiet and go back to sleep. I won’t take you anywhere before you’ve recovered.”
“I’m hungry,” Donna complained, and the Doctor gave her the glass.
“Have some more water. I wouldn’t risk eating anything before tomorrow, your body probably can’t take it yet.”
“I’m not sick in the stomach.”
“Believe me, if you ate something you’d be.”
Donna growled some more, but didn’t seem too keen on throwing up all night and gave up. After she sank back onto the pillow, the Doctor turned to leave, but her voice caused him to stop in the doorway.
“Thanks for saving my life,” she said without opening her eyes. “Even if I didn’t ask for it.”
“Don’t mention it,” the Time Lord replied. “Without me you wouldn’t even get in trouble. I’d always save you, whether you want me to or not.”
Donna didn’t answer. With a sad smile the Doctor turned around and let the door between them close.
December 1, 2008