Title: Eclipse
Rating: R
Pairing: Ten/Donna (Friendship)
Word Count: 1,144
Summary: If she wasn't going down quietly, then neither was he. The Doctor’s harebrained scheme to save Donna Noble. Spoilers for Doctor Who 4.13 - Journey’s End.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Story title inspired by The Frames.
Author’s Notes: So, it seems that I had more enthusiasm for this than I originally thought. I don’t think it will be a very long thing, in all, but I do think that I will finish it in a relatively quick fashion. Besides; this idea, as a method of saving Donna, just wouldn’t go away. So I figured I’d run with it. Plus, we've made the jump into present tense, so that's exciting - more urgent and all that. Feedback is love, as always, and actually does serve as an incentive to write more ;)

Part One: Eulalie




Part Two: Desperate Moments In Linear Time

It’s the best idea he can come up with, given the limited time frame and his current state of mind; his hearts are throbbing hard, too quickly - he knows its partly biological, as the TARDIS has dropped the internal temperature considerably in an attempt to counteract Donna’s fever, but he’s not delusional enough to pretend that it’s just his own defense mechanisms, his own sense of survival pulsing hot and fast through his veins - he’s petrified, and he can’t help it.

“Damnit!” he yells as the wiring sparks at him, angry and hot against the skin of his palm and he flinches, cringes at the fact that this isn’t going quite as well as he’d dared to hope.

Because as much as it’s killing him, the fact remains that the Chameleon Arch is of Gallifreyan design; Time Lord technology. And of all the hundreds of thousands of species in the universe, the one setting it doesn’t have is the only one he needs.

But he’s not an idiot - he was always smart with the mechanical aspect of things, always, and he knows that he can do this, knows that he can make this work. He’s brilliant, he’s fucking brilliant, and with a mind like his focused solely on one thing, just this one little thing, he can manage it. He knows he can.

He has to.

So the sparking and the shorting of the circuits doesn’t bother him so much, and when he scorches his right thumb just below the nail, he shrugs it off and keeps working, trying to find the right settings, trying to manipulate the reactions and the protocols just so, trying to fit in a setting for ‘Time Lord’ just between ‘Hoix’ (which he doesn’t much mind if he damages, because he never wants to contemplate a situation where the only option is turning into one of those) and ‘Vespiform’ (which hits a little too close to home, just now).

He thinks of Donna, stripped bare and still shivering as her temperature rises, under the watchful care of the TARDIS’s sentient medbay - a ticking clock, a time bomb counting backwards towards zero, slowing fading away while he tinkers with the vague sort of hope that he’ll be able to finish this wild project in time to make a difference.

It’s enough of an incentive for him to move a little quicker, to suck the sweat from his upper lip and keep at it - with the stakes so high, he doesn’t have any other choice.

--------------------------------------------------

All things considered, her world’s pretty bleak at the moment.

Wherever she is, it’s extremely dark. And hot. And quiet, too. It’s sort of peaceful, really; or else, it would be, if her entire being wasn’t throbbing like mad, if her head wasn’t pounding terribly. She needs something, and paracetamol doesn’t quite seem like it’ll cut it this time - maybe some whiskey, the stuff her grandfather drinks, maybe that would work.

Or the touch of a hand. A cool, ancient hand atop her own, holding on and refusing to let her go.

It’s awfully lonely in this place.

She can feel the brush of something against her mind, and its soothing - chilled and lovely across the vibrating ridges of her brain, penetrating the creases and shadows of her consciousness, and she breathes; it’s familiar, and giving into it is like the rain after a drought. She opens her eyes, and there’s a faint red glow in the blackness, a fire kindling - embers glowing on the horizon of some distant place, some distant sky; somewhere.

She sees something, hears something, and the light in the distance pulses with the rhythm. The words are faint, lost, but they’re growing in power with every passing instant; she catches the end when the brightness flares suddenly, the cold touch on her mind suddenly more, suddenly icy, and it burns sweet and blissful as the phrase gains meaning, meaning from the memories that were his long before they were hers;

“I create myself.”

It’s strange, she thinks, but she doesn't question; not yet. She’s not strong enough for that - she can’t feel him anymore, and she needs him.

She’d murder a martini right about now, if she could.

--------------------------------------------------

The interface is loading, and he’s tense from the shoulders down; he’s tired - bone tired for the first time in eons, and he has to lean against the arch of the entryway into the medical bay to keep his balance as he watches her, carefully measuring every rise and fall of her chest, making sure the cadence doesn’t change, making certain that there’s no variation, no alteration - that she stays the same.

He feels a stir in the atmosphere of the room, and his hearts leap as he thinks it might be Donna - some twist of fate, some miracle - and the hope in his expression falls flat as he notes that she hasn’t moved, that nothing’s changed; he pauses, his breath hitching, and he knows that he should just be grateful for that much, that he shouldn’t be disappointed, but he can’t help it.

He recognizes the shift, the brush against his mind, this time as the TARDIS; the one companion who never leaves him - not for long - never wavers, or falters. He wishes she could be enough, sometimes. Most of the time, though, he’s almost glad she isn’t.

“Taken a bit of a shine to her too, old girl?” he asks the all-pervasive presence with a glance around the room, feeling a hum of definitive affirmation in reply. He sighs, his worried gaze settling heavily on Donna, the light sheet protecting her modesty shifting softly with her breaths; he approaches her slowly, hands gentle on her arms near the elbows, frightened but not surprised at the heat rising off of her in waves. He has to fight the urge to rub from her shoulders down, to create friction against the frigid temperature of the room - he can see his breath on the air, and that only makes him more nervous.

“Hold on, Donna,” he pleads quietly, fingers wrapped around her wrists. “Just hold on.”

--------------------------------------------------

The glow in the distance is like a prelude, like the rising sun - she can tell it’s going to be blinding, that it’s going to burn; but it’s beautiful, and she doesn’t have to look away just yet, so she fights it, and keeps on watching.

She feels a touch, and looks to her left, hoping to catch a shadow in the growing light, but there’s nothing.

It doesn’t matter though. She still felt it.




Part Three: Ontological Subjectivity