Title: Eclipse
Rating: R
Pairing: Ten/Donna (Friendship, UST)
Word Count: 1,584
Summary: The Doctor and Donna relax whilst tying up a few loose ends. 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: Again, this was going to be held off until the weekend... but you’re all so inspiring with your lovely comments that I couldn’t resist posting again :) Just like I couldn’t resist a little fluff in this part, actually - not to mention that, after a really lovely evening, I was driven to write like a madwoman; so I’ve now written through to Part Eleven, which is rather exciting on my end at least. Anyway, I do hope you all enjoy this little interlude; it’s starting to set the stage for the meat of this story - the direction that morphed it into something more than what it was originally going to be. Reviews, comments, and any other manner of reply are, as ever, lovelovelove.


Part One: Eulalie
Part Two: Desperate Moments In Linear Time
Part Three: Ontological Subjectivity
Part Four: Better Than One
Part Five: Ātman





Part Six: Only


The Daprokian massage, Donna discovered, was every bit as good as the Doctor hinted; maybe better.

The planet itself was also just as spectacular as the Doctor had claimed - beautiful and shining, and natural in a way Midnight hadn’t been able to touch; and as a result, Donna felt more relaxed, more at ease beneath the twin suns as they set, shimmering on the horizon, making the golden spa she was reclining in look like liquid fire, or the heart of a blazing star.

The bubbling, metallic liquid she was submersed in was warm, and the scent of honey filled the air as she leaned into the side of the pool, the tips of her hair skimming under the surface and becoming saturated with the damp. She tugged on the strap of the black one-piece she was wearing as she glanced to her side, where the Doctor’s neck was thrust back onto the ground outside the outcropping of the tub, his eyes closed and his face lax. With a sigh, she reached out for his arm, watching as his eyes slid open lazily, unconcerned and unfettered with worry for just the barest of instants as the twilight that was taking over the sky reflected in his irises. “There’s something,” she began hesitantly, studying the ripples where her elbows broke the surface before meeting his eyes again; “that I want to ask you,”

The Doctor’s head snapped up off the diamond-lined silver paving the ground outside the whirlpool, and any levity left in his gaze was lost in a second as he paled, looking closer to the color of the pearly flowers in the gardens nearby than was healthy. “Don’t look so petrified,” she snickered, amused by his reaction. “I’m not going to ask you how a Time Lord procreates or anything. Already got that up here, yeah?” she tapped her head in demonstration. “You were a bit kinkier in your younger years than I’d have ever given you credit for.”

She couldn’t help but giggle when his cheeks proceeded to resemble the thin, glassy ruby veil that separated the hot springs from their place near the jacuzzis.

“Seriously, though,” she managed as her laughter died and his coloring evened out again to the creamy shade it always was, still a bit flushed but nothing too drastic. “Your memories.” She flinched as his expression turned grave, his eyes aging as she watched. “All the things… all these wonderful, horrible, spectacular things in my head that I haven’t done… I...” She faltered, closing her eyes as memories flooded her, as if beckoned by her explanation; things she understood now, things that made sense; emotions that she felt but couldn’t process properly - they were in her hearts and soul, twisting them with grief and lighting them with happiness, but they felt somehow... wrong; leaving her with a feeling in the pit of her stomach that rivaled the one time she’d stolen a pack of gum from the corner store when she was seven.

“I can take them back,” he finally spoke, his voice heavy with sadness and guilt, his eyes dark, but his hand reaching out and touching hers with a softness, a kindness that she’d never felt an equal to before. “If you want me to.”

She shook her head, needing to clarify; it wasn’t his fault, not for the reasons he was likely thinking, at the very least, and she needed him to understand that. “It’s just, I want to know you. I want to know about you.” She dipped her chin and met his eyes, her own smiling sadly over towards him. “But not like this. I want you to tell me.”

She reached over and rubbed at his forearm, trying to get her point across, baring a tiny piece of her soul, her insecurities in the process. “I want you to trust me yourself, because you choose to. Not because of some…” she cleared her throat awkwardly, not quite knowing what to call it; “Some accident”

“But I do trust you, Donna,” his whisper came from nowhere; and it made her shiver even in the perpetual heat; there was something deep and soulful in it, and it echoed desperately across the dampened connection in the back of her mind. “Else I would have erased those memories already.”

His response, the weight of it, threw her off for a moment, and she had to regroup. “I think…” she took a deep breath, trying to sort out her thoughts, trying to let the warmth of the pool around her melt her cares and concerns away; let the hand still fixed upon her arm to soothe her. “I think I want you to just take the things you know, that I wouldn’t,” she finally managed. “The important things. The personal memories, the private things I’m not a part of.” She watched as pain, hurt, and finally resolute understanding flooded his expression, and she wanted to explain - to stop and tell him that she wasn’t rejecting him, that she was respecting him; but she couldn’t; she had to press on. “I mean… it was obviously useful when I knew all that technical stuff.” And it was. She’d saved them all, because she knew what he knew. She couldn’t allow herself to lose that, to risk both of them, to risk the universe again, just because she wasn’t smart enough. Not when she knew that she could be. “Can you do that? Sift through it all, and just pick apart what I need in order to be useful?”

“Donna,” his hand in hers grasped suddenly tighter, his thumb running the length of her joints. “I thought we’d grown past that. You don’t have to be ‘useful’ – you just have to be you.” He leaned over casually, brushing a stray piece of her wild hair from where it had clung with wetness to the middle of her forehead. “And you are so much more than merely ‘useful.’”

“I want to be able to help, though,” she countered, her tone serious. She hated feeling useless, especially now that she’d had a taste of what it meant to be the opposite. “Be able to take care of things, like you do.”

The Doctor sucked thoughtfully on his bottom lip as he considered her words, and before he spoke again, Donna could have sworn that the pool she was lounging in had unexpectedly rose in temperature just a few degrees. “Fair’s fair, I s’pose.”

She blinked, the heat subsiding slowly. “You can do it, then?”

“’Course I can,” he said with a toss of his head, the bits of his hair that were soaked sending droplets of honey-scented moisture flying through the air as he grinned his wide, cheeky sort of grin. “I can do anything.”

“Careful” Donna shot back with a roll of her eyes and she sunk deeper into the bath. “If your head gets any bigger, you’ll drown with the weight.”

He choked playfully, grasping sarcastically at his chest. His very bare chest that was now peaking a bit higher above the surface of the golden water than it had been before. “You wound me,” he tossed back playfully, and she was shaken from where her eyes had fixed near the first line of his ribs. “But we’ll take care of the memories,” he promised, growing more solemn as he reached over to squeeze her hand in reassurance. “And soon.”

The rhythmic rise and fall of his chest was hypnotizing for the longest of moments, and Donna was adamant in blaming the perfume of the opalescent milkweed fields that stretched out into oblivion past the confines of the resort for the distraction. “So, where are we off to after this?” she managed to speak once her mental faculties had been graciously returned to her, not quite wanting to think too far past the enjoyment of this relaxing interlude, but still curious about what the Doctor might have planned next.

“Well,” he clicked his tongue, passing a hand over his face to wipe off the mist that was accumulating, shining on his skin. “I had a thought.”

“A thought?” Donna gasped in jest. “You? Seriously?”

He rolled his eyes in her direction as he let his neck loll to face her. “Just the one, of course.”

“Ah, well,” Donna dismissed him with a flick of her wrist and a grin. “I suppose that’s not too bad. Can’t have you thinking just helter skelter all over the place, though – dangerous, that.”

“Ha,” he indulged with a long swallow, silent for a brief instant between the words that preceded and those that followed.

“But my thought, see…” he began, only to trail off, suddenly having trouble looking her in the eye - it was probably for the best, though, really, because she couldn’t quite manage to meet his gaze either. “I wondered if you might like to accompany me to the annual ball of the High Contessa of the Third Great Laxicarian Dynasty. I’m expected this century, I think, and they’re quite good with time signatures, the Laxicarians – they know if I don’t keep my word according to my own timeline, and I’m running out of opportunities before my hundred years are up.” The words all blended together, his usual rambling, but by the time he tacked on the “I figured, who doesn’t like a good waltz, yeah?” - she’d managed to divine the gist of things; the Doctor, in all his might and power, all his confidence, was babbling about asking her to a dance.

If her hearts hadn’t been pounding in her throat (and finally, that plural was beginning to feel normal), she might have laughed at the juvenility of it all.

“Do you dance, Doctor?” she asked breathlessly, her eyes fixed on him as he turned to her; the way he tilted his head, glancing in her direction, sending butterflies into her stomach and up through her chest.

“I’ve been known to,” he murmured, barely audible, but so present. “On very special occasions.”

She giggled lightly, because she didn’t know what else she was capable of doing, and she couldn’t stand the still, not with the oddly giddy feeling fluttering through her torso like mad. “D’ya know, I only learned ‘cause of Lance.”

He smiled warmly at that, remembering her, whilst she grimaced at the very same recollection - that wedding dress such a contrast to the walls of the TARDIS as she’d appeared out of nowhere. “Shall we reap the benefits of that affair then, on Laxicar IX?” the Doctor asked again, much more at ease as he arched his back and eased his chest out from the molten gold, a splash of it landing on her dry cheek and tingling pleasantly before it evaporated; she couldn’t help but grin at him.

“I’d be delighted.”

His smile was exuberant as he sank back into the pool, the crimson sunset glistening on his face as he breathed contentedly; “Brilliant.”


Part Seven: Two To Tango