![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
Title: Eclipse
Rating: R
Pairing: Ten/Donna (Friendship, UST)
Word Count: 3,389
Summary: The Doctor and Donna make a stop in Cardiff to confront both the past and the future. 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: You people spoil me with your kind words, so in hoping that you’re enjoying this enough to consider more of it a good thing - I’m going to spoil you back :) Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your perspective) for all of you, this chapter caters to some of my other leanings in this fandom - semi-romantic Jack (with Ianto, because I LOVE Ianto), Martha being appreciated, and the both of them finally receiving some sort of validation/apology for getting inadvertently screwed over by the Doctor at one point or another - because it all fell in so nicely with the direction for this part. Part Ten is where it’s all leading up to (sort of) at this point, so pardon the build-up. Hope it’s worth the read either way :) Comments, reviews, and little bits of stream-of-consciousness rambling make my day, and are appreciated more than words.
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
Part Seven: Two To Tango
Part Eight: Sonnets To A Dark Lady
Donna didn’t know what she’d been expecting, really - something like an office building, maybe, like the flashes of images she can conjure in her head that associate themselves with the word - but whatever she’d been anticipating, Torchwood in the flesh is anything but.
Dark, underground, with steely lighting and winding stairs with jutting, abrupt ends - glass and metal and rock that somehow bears the overwhelming scent of ever-present espresso, Martha’s the first to notice their arrival, and it’s only just before she goes to embrace Donna with a hug that she pulls away, conscious of her dripping forearms; she’s elbow deep in some florescent-looking goo that Donna really can’t help but hope never to get on herself. Ever.
The Doctor seems to somehow know his way around, and Donna doesn’t question it; she simply follows Martha to the circular pit where some dripping alien corpse is lying, the obvious culprit behind the slime on her arms.
“So, what’s left you here while everyone else is out to play?”
Martha looks up from where she’s scrubbing her hands in a nearby basin, grinning up at Donna, who’s still keeping her distance from the glowing space goo swimming in the open stomach cavity of the dead thing on the table.
“Jack’s still here, but everyone else went out on recon for the evening. Mickey’s monitoring them on site,” she explains as she twists the water flow off when the worst of the mess is washed from her skin, a subtle ultraviolet shine all that remains.
“Right,” Donna spoke awkwardly, shuffling her feet as Martha climbed the winding stairs, grabbing at a jumper that was hanging on the railing and shrugging it on, presumably to cover the glow of her skin.
Donna’s pleasantly surprised when Martha wraps her in a warm hug, and it doesn’t take long for her to return the gesture - there was something about Martha that she’d always admired, something quiet but profound in just the way she stood, the way she watched, the way she was.
“So, after everything,” Martha picks up, almost awkwardly, her eyes traveling the length of Donna’s frame as if sizing up any obvious maladies. “You’re alright then?”
Donna made to reply, but was cut off as Jack’s office door closed harshly in the background, the reverberation sharp as both women glanced towards the source of the sound, catching the shadows of Jack and the Doctor playing through the glass before they could make out the men themselves, the tension palpable even through the walls.
“I could go for a cuppa,” Donna finally states, resolute as she grabs for her jacket. “What d’ya say, Martha? Leave the alien and I’ll explain everything on the way.”
Martha didn’t need any more coaxing than that.
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The door of Jack’s office rattled the transparent walls that enclosed them as it closed, and the Doctor didn’t bother to sit, instead leaning casually against the hinges as the door swung shut whilst Jack settled himself behind his desk.
“You’re in love.” He wasn’t much in the mood for wasting time with this – the topic of conversation he had come here to address was making him nervous, uncomfortable; not to mention that coupling it with the vague hints Jack had dropped at the ball just the evening before didn’t help matters at all in that respect.
Jack stilled, frowning as he leaned into the edge of the table. “Excuse me?”
The Doctor watched as a tidal wave of emotions fluttered across Jack’s countenance as he blinked once, then twice, before schooling his expression into stoicism once more. “You’re in love, aren’t you?”
Jack shook his head - almost on instinct rather than on a conscious impulse - his eyes guarded, and the Doctor couldn’t help but note the way his fingers dug into his arms, so forceful that the skin was turned a crisp and ghostly white, silently betraying him. “I don’t think I know what you’re talking about.”
The Doctor scoffed, glaring at Jack irritably; more bothered by his denial than he knew he had any right to be. “You know full well what I’m talking about,” the Doctor drawled as he considered Jack from over his spectacles, shifting his weight ever-so-nimbly. “Mr. Jones, looking snappy in a suit?”
Jack recrossed his legs, this time in the inverse fashion, his shoulders fidgeting uncomfortably as he refused to meet the Doctor’s gaze, his bottom lip disappearing between his teeth before the Doctor urged further, his tone softening suddenly, a sympathetic twinge in his chest appearing from out of nowhere, urging him to be supportive, encouraging. “Whatever it is you’re thinking, do it.”
“Oh,” Jack replied quickly – too quickly - with a tone of sarcastic relief that made the Doctor somewhat suspicious; this was Jack, after all. “So you’re giving me permission to throw you out of my office like the raving lunatic you are.”
“Come off it, Jack,” the Doctor rolled his eyes, leaning more dependently on the doorframe, his words ringing hollow in his own hearts for reasons he didn’t comprehend, wasn’t ready to acknowledge; reasons he may well never be ready to acknowledge. “You know the truth as well as I do.”
Jack remained silent, his gaze focused harsh and heavy on a small glass pyramid set at the far corner of his desk. “You’re acting the coward, Jack,” the Doctor murmured, his shoulders slumping as Jack tensed in response. “And that was never you.”
Jack was quiet, his eyes scarce, barely so much as alighting anywhere near the Doctor as he murmured, “I was going to ask him to move in together. Get a place. Start a life. Or else, try to,” Jack paused, sighing deeply. “But it’s impossible. I’m wrong, Doctor. Like you said.”
The small, self-loathing sort of smile that Jack shot in his direction nearly shamed the Time Lord into oblivion, his throat constricting with the weight of a terrible guilt. “I was a fool,” the Doctor spoke softly, his head hung and his tone bare, soft as he sauntered sheepishly closer to where Jack sat. “To leave you. To run from you. I’m sorry, for that. For saying the things I did,” he walked to stand behind Jack, his hands molding to the cuff of his shoulders. “It’s not your fault, the way you are. And because of you, because of this,” he pressed his weight onto Jack for a brief moment in emphasis, “you’ve saved us all so many times. You will continue to save these people for ages upon ages, Jack Harkness.” He bent down, crouching to Jack’s side and swiveling the chair so that Jack would face him as he slid one hand from the immortal man’s shoulder, squeezing hard with the one that remained. “Because you’re not the coward,” the Doctor breathed as Jack raised wide eyes to meet his warm brown ones. “You’re the hero.”
He leaned closer, trying to fight the surge of remorse when Jack flinched away from him and their almost intimate proximity for the slighted bit – he’d been blind, all this time; so much love had been thrown at him for so very long, only to be scorned, only to be lost…
“You won’t live forever, Jack,” the Doctor whispered into his ear, bracing Jack at the neck with a gentle hand as the human man gasped at the words, the revelation of the one thing his already tired soul had wrestled with for so long – too long; the poison in his veins that had tainted every potential happiness beyond repair slowly subsiding as the tautness of his limbs faded and he slumped into the Doctor’s touch. “And when your time is up, maybe...” the Doctor moved to speak privately, just into the shell of Jack’s ear as he breathed; “Maybe he’ll be waiting. Maybe they all will.”
“There’s nothing after death,” Jack exhaled sharply, his voice hitching in his throat as he trembled, though there were no tears. “Only darkness.”
The Doctor pulled him into a tight hug, stroking his hair almost protectively for a moment as he soothed the man he’d almost destroyed in his grief; almost broken with his neglect. “Perhaps you’ve never lingered long enough to see.”
Jack was still for a long while, and the Doctor held fast to him; needing to anchor himself physically as he felt Jack’s unimpeded thoughts wrap around him as they flowed, unchecked in his vulnerable state – thoughts of a future, of love, of commitment and lingering passion; dreams of a heart that he could hold for as long as he lived, could cling to and hope to find again someday. They were powerful – all-consuming, these thoughts; tentative but so filled with longing that the Doctor couldn’t help but fall into them himself. They echoed his own darkest desires too closely for him to ignore.
“You’re different.”
The Doctor was jerked from his musings, from the frightened delving into his subconscious - his innermost self. “Pardon?”
“You,” Jack pulled back slowly, studying the Doctor’s face carefully, almost cautiously; are if just daring to believe in whatever it was that he was seeing. “You’ve changed.”
The Doctor frowned, not quite enjoying the scrutiny, the way he was being watched. “How d’you mean?”
Jack shrugged softly, as if he were trying to find the appropriate words. “You look...” he stopped, running a finger down the Doctor’s jawline as he considered. “Lighter. Almost happy.” Jack grinned at him, and the Doctor smiled bemusedly in response, wondering at the observation, and what it might mean.
“Do I, now?” he mused calmly, averting his gaze into the distance.
“But you’re afraid, of something.” Jack ‘s tone was heavy as he added those words - and the Doctor immediately felt cold, felt naked; as if everything were crumbling down in an instant before, with a shake of his head and a blink of the eye that was barely noticeable from the outside, he was steady again, simply backing away from Jack and removing himself from the room with careful and calculated ease.
“If I take this risk you speak of,” Jack’s eyebrows shot up skeptically, no sign of argument in his tone - he knew the Doctor’s time with him was up for now; “then maybe you should try one of your own.”
The Doctor looked vaguely stricken for a moment that held itself suspended beyond time, burning into both of their minds as it lingered. “Whatever do you mean?” he meant to asked with a casual air, but it came out more as a hiss - filled with a desperation, a need whose origins he couldn’t quite identify.
Jack reclined in his chair, swinging his feet up to cross at the ankles atop his desk, folding his arms across his chest as he eyed the Doctor intensely. “I think you know.”
It was all the Doctor could do to keep from faltering under that gaze, leveled so unflinchingly upon him – because he knew, deep down, what Jack was insinuating, knew in his hearts that it was more true than he liked to admit – felt it ache in his soul that it was nothing more than a useless dream. “He wants blue,” the Doctor interjected hastily, defensively, turning on his heel and moving to exit the office.
“What?”
He tried to derive some pleasure from stealing the upper hand from the ever-poised Captain, but couldn’t quite manage it. Instead, he weakly smiled over his shoulder as he clarified only slightly; “Blue. He’s going to want blue.”
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Martha likes coffee, but Donna’s taken to favoring tea these days - so the tiny little hole in the wall they end up at gets to stretch a bit to accommodate them both. Martha peers over her mug of hot Arabian blend in a variety Donna didn’t quite catch and isn’t familiar enough with to guess at, watching as Donna takes another bite of the cinnamon scones the barista just brought to their corner table. “My first real trip with the Doctor...” Martha starts in between sips of her coffee, taking a quiet moment to add more creamer while Donna stirs around the lemon at the bottom of her cup. “I met Shakespeare.”
“Seriously?” Donna swings her cup back down to the saucer it arrived on, interlacing her fingers and leaning forward to better listen. “The real him?”
“Flesh and blood,” Martha grins nostalgically. “He was a something of a looker, he was.”
At that, Donna laughs - full and strong, because she likes Martha, and of all the thoughts she absorbed from the Doctor, his ones of Martha somehow stand out the strongest for her. “I went to Pompeii,” she counters casually around a sip of tea that just wets her upper lip.
Martha’s eyes grow huge, filling with excitement as she folds her arms and catches her drink between her elbows upon the table. “Really?”
“On volcano day.”
“You’re joking?” Martha shoots Donna a scandalized look, only to get a short shake of the head in reply.
“Not in the slightest.”
“That’s...” Martha leans back in her chair, her lips pursed in a silent whistle as she marvels for a moment before smiling wide, almost bemusedly. “Not surprising. Whatsoever.”
Donna giggles again at that, her long curls bouncing around to frame her face as she dips her head to take another sip of her cooling tea, thinking that Martha is quite right indeed - nothing with the Doctor is surprising, except perhaps banality.
“I fell in love with him, you know.”
Donna nearly chokes on the sip of lukewarm liquid as she swallows, the drink suddenly hot again in her throat as she processes Martha’s words, tries to make sense of them, tries to determine just why her hearts as pounding and her stomach is lurching just slightly in response to them.
Martha looks increasingly frantic for every moment in which Donna offers no reply. “It’s not just you,” she tries to clarify, her tone soft and sympathetic as her hand comes to cover Donna’s colder, much colder one in something like solidarity.
Donna opens her mouth once without a sound, twice with just a gasp - the third time she manages a sort of pathetic squeak, but it’s not until the fourth attempt that she gets the word out in full: “Pardon?”
“I fell out of love with him, of course...” Martha explains quickly - obviously - as she points to the ring that Donna herself first noticed. “You can’t think of someone like that for long without it taking its toll, not without any reaction, any reciprocation...” The sadness in Martha’s expression as she remembers makes Donna ache, and she wants to reach out and comfort the younger woman for all the pervious pain she still carries with her, but she can’t. She can barely move past a blink, and stares in silence at Martha as if she’s a total stranger as the words slowly and repeatedly coil their way through her mind.
“Oh, God,” Martha breathes, her jaw slack and her eyes wide as her coffee pauses, tipped against her lip just short of taking a drink. “You’re not...”
Donna finally breaks the stasis with that, shaking her head with a coy grin that peaks above the meniscus of her teacup, smirking down into her Earl Grey as she takes a long drink.
“I’m sorry,” Martha stammers, embarrassed. “I just assumed -”
“It’s alright,” Donna assures her with a warm smile and a pat to the hand, lingering just too long over the stone of her engagement band. “I think everyone falls in love with him a little bit.”
“It’s just,” Martha shakes her head, still sheepish. “You’re still with him. After he saves the world, I mean - after he really saves the world...” she sighs, almost wistful. “It seems like we just, get swapped out on a rota. I figured... what with you, still being here...”
“Naw,” Donna saved her from continuing with a toss of her head and a brilliant, almost wicked grin. “None of that nonsense.”
“I suppose the whole... mind-swap,” Martha gestured with rapidly-moving hands as she decided upon a term for it. “I’m sure that made it difficult to part ways even if you’d wanted to.”
Donna hid her blush with a dip of her chin, letting her hair fall into her face as she finished off her tea. “Good thing I didn’t want to, then.”
Martha nodded, pausing for a moment in apparent consternation, as if debating whether to ask the question on the tip of her tongue. “You’re a Time Lord, though?” she finally blurted, leaning in with hushed tones as she inquired about what Donna had explained to her on the walk from the hub. “That’s...” Martha trailed off speechless, her gaze boring into Donna questioningly, desperately inquisitive.
“Still keeps me awake at night, sometimes,” Donna gave in, her voice just as soft - floating and ethereal, like a breeze. “Like it was all just a dream. But then I can feel him,” she swallows, her hand coming to support her chin as she unconsciously reaches out, brushing against the ever-present sense of him against her mind, sensing something tense there now, but burying her concern at it for the present. “And my pulse picks up just a bit, and it takes one heart a moment to catch up to the other, and I remember that it’s real,” her voice drops below a whisper as her eyes grow far and scarce. “It’s all real.”
“That’s incredible,” Martha breathes, fascinated. Donna only snorts, thankful for the escape from her thoughts, her fears.
“Incredible. Terrifying.” Martha laughs at this response, settling back comfortably in her chair once more and nursing what’s left of her coffee.
“You know, I have his memories,” Donna interrupts her after a space, catching her confused gaze with intensity, with command.
“Everything he knew, everything he thought, everything he’d ever done or heard of or considered doing, before the metacrisis,” she tapped her forehead meaningfully. “It’s all up here.”
Martha looks uncomfortable in the silence that follows, but says nothing. Her coffee’s gone, but the mug is still raised to her lips.
“He adores you,” Donna says softly, her hand on Martha’s once more, comforting her, trying to convince her that what she’s saying is nothing short of the honest truth. “He thinks you’re the one of the strongest people he’s ever known.”
“He wants the chance to do right by you,” she continued, trying to wipe the fear, the rejection away from Martha’s eyes. “He hopes he’s managed well enough so far.”
Martha’s chewing on her lip like a madwoman, and Donna can’t help but grin and grasp her hand a little tighter. “He thinks you’re brilliant. Impulsive, clever, stubborn in the best possible way. Unstoppable, he calls you,” she adds on fondly, tapping into the recollections she carries, channeling the voice in the Doctor’s memories. “He’s fairly certain that there’s nothing you can’t do, with determination like yours.”
Martha still says nothing, but she looks frozen, a tad off-color; Donna clears her throat a bit and finishes softly; “I just, thought you should know.”
“It was a bad time for him. Without you...” Donna’s eyes are far away again as she considers the possibilities. “Who knows what the universe would have come to, with him in such a state, and no one to help him out of it?”
She leans in, carefully noting the tears that are threatening to escape Martha’s eyes and smiling comfortingly at the younger woman. “Sometimes, we get the shit job, I think,” Donna said pointedly. “You didn’t deserve it, but you did it magnificently. If he could, he’d thank you for that. Someday, I hope he does.”
She stands, and makes her way over to the other side of the table, pulling Martha out of her chair and holding her tight, embracing her as she whispers softly;
“But in case he doesn’t; thank you, Martha Jones. Thank you.”
Part Nine: The Forgotten Tide
Rating: R
Pairing: Ten/Donna (Friendship, UST)
Word Count: 3,389
Summary: The Doctor and Donna make a stop in Cardiff to confront both the past and the future. 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: You people spoil me with your kind words, so in hoping that you’re enjoying this enough to consider more of it a good thing - I’m going to spoil you back :) Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your perspective) for all of you, this chapter caters to some of my other leanings in this fandom - semi-romantic Jack (with Ianto, because I LOVE Ianto), Martha being appreciated, and the both of them finally receiving some sort of validation/apology for getting inadvertently screwed over by the Doctor at one point or another - because it all fell in so nicely with the direction for this part. Part Ten is where it’s all leading up to (sort of) at this point, so pardon the build-up. Hope it’s worth the read either way :) Comments, reviews, and little bits of stream-of-consciousness rambling make my day, and are appreciated more than words.
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
Part Seven: Two To Tango
Part Eight: Sonnets To A Dark Lady
Donna didn’t know what she’d been expecting, really - something like an office building, maybe, like the flashes of images she can conjure in her head that associate themselves with the word - but whatever she’d been anticipating, Torchwood in the flesh is anything but.
Dark, underground, with steely lighting and winding stairs with jutting, abrupt ends - glass and metal and rock that somehow bears the overwhelming scent of ever-present espresso, Martha’s the first to notice their arrival, and it’s only just before she goes to embrace Donna with a hug that she pulls away, conscious of her dripping forearms; she’s elbow deep in some florescent-looking goo that Donna really can’t help but hope never to get on herself. Ever.
The Doctor seems to somehow know his way around, and Donna doesn’t question it; she simply follows Martha to the circular pit where some dripping alien corpse is lying, the obvious culprit behind the slime on her arms.
“So, what’s left you here while everyone else is out to play?”
Martha looks up from where she’s scrubbing her hands in a nearby basin, grinning up at Donna, who’s still keeping her distance from the glowing space goo swimming in the open stomach cavity of the dead thing on the table.
“Jack’s still here, but everyone else went out on recon for the evening. Mickey’s monitoring them on site,” she explains as she twists the water flow off when the worst of the mess is washed from her skin, a subtle ultraviolet shine all that remains.
“Right,” Donna spoke awkwardly, shuffling her feet as Martha climbed the winding stairs, grabbing at a jumper that was hanging on the railing and shrugging it on, presumably to cover the glow of her skin.
Donna’s pleasantly surprised when Martha wraps her in a warm hug, and it doesn’t take long for her to return the gesture - there was something about Martha that she’d always admired, something quiet but profound in just the way she stood, the way she watched, the way she was.
“So, after everything,” Martha picks up, almost awkwardly, her eyes traveling the length of Donna’s frame as if sizing up any obvious maladies. “You’re alright then?”
Donna made to reply, but was cut off as Jack’s office door closed harshly in the background, the reverberation sharp as both women glanced towards the source of the sound, catching the shadows of Jack and the Doctor playing through the glass before they could make out the men themselves, the tension palpable even through the walls.
“I could go for a cuppa,” Donna finally states, resolute as she grabs for her jacket. “What d’ya say, Martha? Leave the alien and I’ll explain everything on the way.”
Martha didn’t need any more coaxing than that.
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The door of Jack’s office rattled the transparent walls that enclosed them as it closed, and the Doctor didn’t bother to sit, instead leaning casually against the hinges as the door swung shut whilst Jack settled himself behind his desk.
“You’re in love.” He wasn’t much in the mood for wasting time with this – the topic of conversation he had come here to address was making him nervous, uncomfortable; not to mention that coupling it with the vague hints Jack had dropped at the ball just the evening before didn’t help matters at all in that respect.
Jack stilled, frowning as he leaned into the edge of the table. “Excuse me?”
The Doctor watched as a tidal wave of emotions fluttered across Jack’s countenance as he blinked once, then twice, before schooling his expression into stoicism once more. “You’re in love, aren’t you?”
Jack shook his head - almost on instinct rather than on a conscious impulse - his eyes guarded, and the Doctor couldn’t help but note the way his fingers dug into his arms, so forceful that the skin was turned a crisp and ghostly white, silently betraying him. “I don’t think I know what you’re talking about.”
The Doctor scoffed, glaring at Jack irritably; more bothered by his denial than he knew he had any right to be. “You know full well what I’m talking about,” the Doctor drawled as he considered Jack from over his spectacles, shifting his weight ever-so-nimbly. “Mr. Jones, looking snappy in a suit?”
Jack recrossed his legs, this time in the inverse fashion, his shoulders fidgeting uncomfortably as he refused to meet the Doctor’s gaze, his bottom lip disappearing between his teeth before the Doctor urged further, his tone softening suddenly, a sympathetic twinge in his chest appearing from out of nowhere, urging him to be supportive, encouraging. “Whatever it is you’re thinking, do it.”
“Oh,” Jack replied quickly – too quickly - with a tone of sarcastic relief that made the Doctor somewhat suspicious; this was Jack, after all. “So you’re giving me permission to throw you out of my office like the raving lunatic you are.”
“Come off it, Jack,” the Doctor rolled his eyes, leaning more dependently on the doorframe, his words ringing hollow in his own hearts for reasons he didn’t comprehend, wasn’t ready to acknowledge; reasons he may well never be ready to acknowledge. “You know the truth as well as I do.”
Jack remained silent, his gaze focused harsh and heavy on a small glass pyramid set at the far corner of his desk. “You’re acting the coward, Jack,” the Doctor murmured, his shoulders slumping as Jack tensed in response. “And that was never you.”
Jack was quiet, his eyes scarce, barely so much as alighting anywhere near the Doctor as he murmured, “I was going to ask him to move in together. Get a place. Start a life. Or else, try to,” Jack paused, sighing deeply. “But it’s impossible. I’m wrong, Doctor. Like you said.”
The small, self-loathing sort of smile that Jack shot in his direction nearly shamed the Time Lord into oblivion, his throat constricting with the weight of a terrible guilt. “I was a fool,” the Doctor spoke softly, his head hung and his tone bare, soft as he sauntered sheepishly closer to where Jack sat. “To leave you. To run from you. I’m sorry, for that. For saying the things I did,” he walked to stand behind Jack, his hands molding to the cuff of his shoulders. “It’s not your fault, the way you are. And because of you, because of this,” he pressed his weight onto Jack for a brief moment in emphasis, “you’ve saved us all so many times. You will continue to save these people for ages upon ages, Jack Harkness.” He bent down, crouching to Jack’s side and swiveling the chair so that Jack would face him as he slid one hand from the immortal man’s shoulder, squeezing hard with the one that remained. “Because you’re not the coward,” the Doctor breathed as Jack raised wide eyes to meet his warm brown ones. “You’re the hero.”
He leaned closer, trying to fight the surge of remorse when Jack flinched away from him and their almost intimate proximity for the slighted bit – he’d been blind, all this time; so much love had been thrown at him for so very long, only to be scorned, only to be lost…
“You won’t live forever, Jack,” the Doctor whispered into his ear, bracing Jack at the neck with a gentle hand as the human man gasped at the words, the revelation of the one thing his already tired soul had wrestled with for so long – too long; the poison in his veins that had tainted every potential happiness beyond repair slowly subsiding as the tautness of his limbs faded and he slumped into the Doctor’s touch. “And when your time is up, maybe...” the Doctor moved to speak privately, just into the shell of Jack’s ear as he breathed; “Maybe he’ll be waiting. Maybe they all will.”
“There’s nothing after death,” Jack exhaled sharply, his voice hitching in his throat as he trembled, though there were no tears. “Only darkness.”
The Doctor pulled him into a tight hug, stroking his hair almost protectively for a moment as he soothed the man he’d almost destroyed in his grief; almost broken with his neglect. “Perhaps you’ve never lingered long enough to see.”
Jack was still for a long while, and the Doctor held fast to him; needing to anchor himself physically as he felt Jack’s unimpeded thoughts wrap around him as they flowed, unchecked in his vulnerable state – thoughts of a future, of love, of commitment and lingering passion; dreams of a heart that he could hold for as long as he lived, could cling to and hope to find again someday. They were powerful – all-consuming, these thoughts; tentative but so filled with longing that the Doctor couldn’t help but fall into them himself. They echoed his own darkest desires too closely for him to ignore.
“You’re different.”
The Doctor was jerked from his musings, from the frightened delving into his subconscious - his innermost self. “Pardon?”
“You,” Jack pulled back slowly, studying the Doctor’s face carefully, almost cautiously; are if just daring to believe in whatever it was that he was seeing. “You’ve changed.”
The Doctor frowned, not quite enjoying the scrutiny, the way he was being watched. “How d’you mean?”
Jack shrugged softly, as if he were trying to find the appropriate words. “You look...” he stopped, running a finger down the Doctor’s jawline as he considered. “Lighter. Almost happy.” Jack grinned at him, and the Doctor smiled bemusedly in response, wondering at the observation, and what it might mean.
“Do I, now?” he mused calmly, averting his gaze into the distance.
“But you’re afraid, of something.” Jack ‘s tone was heavy as he added those words - and the Doctor immediately felt cold, felt naked; as if everything were crumbling down in an instant before, with a shake of his head and a blink of the eye that was barely noticeable from the outside, he was steady again, simply backing away from Jack and removing himself from the room with careful and calculated ease.
“If I take this risk you speak of,” Jack’s eyebrows shot up skeptically, no sign of argument in his tone - he knew the Doctor’s time with him was up for now; “then maybe you should try one of your own.”
The Doctor looked vaguely stricken for a moment that held itself suspended beyond time, burning into both of their minds as it lingered. “Whatever do you mean?” he meant to asked with a casual air, but it came out more as a hiss - filled with a desperation, a need whose origins he couldn’t quite identify.
Jack reclined in his chair, swinging his feet up to cross at the ankles atop his desk, folding his arms across his chest as he eyed the Doctor intensely. “I think you know.”
It was all the Doctor could do to keep from faltering under that gaze, leveled so unflinchingly upon him – because he knew, deep down, what Jack was insinuating, knew in his hearts that it was more true than he liked to admit – felt it ache in his soul that it was nothing more than a useless dream. “He wants blue,” the Doctor interjected hastily, defensively, turning on his heel and moving to exit the office.
“What?”
He tried to derive some pleasure from stealing the upper hand from the ever-poised Captain, but couldn’t quite manage it. Instead, he weakly smiled over his shoulder as he clarified only slightly; “Blue. He’s going to want blue.”
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Martha likes coffee, but Donna’s taken to favoring tea these days - so the tiny little hole in the wall they end up at gets to stretch a bit to accommodate them both. Martha peers over her mug of hot Arabian blend in a variety Donna didn’t quite catch and isn’t familiar enough with to guess at, watching as Donna takes another bite of the cinnamon scones the barista just brought to their corner table. “My first real trip with the Doctor...” Martha starts in between sips of her coffee, taking a quiet moment to add more creamer while Donna stirs around the lemon at the bottom of her cup. “I met Shakespeare.”
“Seriously?” Donna swings her cup back down to the saucer it arrived on, interlacing her fingers and leaning forward to better listen. “The real him?”
“Flesh and blood,” Martha grins nostalgically. “He was a something of a looker, he was.”
At that, Donna laughs - full and strong, because she likes Martha, and of all the thoughts she absorbed from the Doctor, his ones of Martha somehow stand out the strongest for her. “I went to Pompeii,” she counters casually around a sip of tea that just wets her upper lip.
Martha’s eyes grow huge, filling with excitement as she folds her arms and catches her drink between her elbows upon the table. “Really?”
“On volcano day.”
“You’re joking?” Martha shoots Donna a scandalized look, only to get a short shake of the head in reply.
“Not in the slightest.”
“That’s...” Martha leans back in her chair, her lips pursed in a silent whistle as she marvels for a moment before smiling wide, almost bemusedly. “Not surprising. Whatsoever.”
Donna giggles again at that, her long curls bouncing around to frame her face as she dips her head to take another sip of her cooling tea, thinking that Martha is quite right indeed - nothing with the Doctor is surprising, except perhaps banality.
“I fell in love with him, you know.”
Donna nearly chokes on the sip of lukewarm liquid as she swallows, the drink suddenly hot again in her throat as she processes Martha’s words, tries to make sense of them, tries to determine just why her hearts as pounding and her stomach is lurching just slightly in response to them.
Martha looks increasingly frantic for every moment in which Donna offers no reply. “It’s not just you,” she tries to clarify, her tone soft and sympathetic as her hand comes to cover Donna’s colder, much colder one in something like solidarity.
Donna opens her mouth once without a sound, twice with just a gasp - the third time she manages a sort of pathetic squeak, but it’s not until the fourth attempt that she gets the word out in full: “Pardon?”
“I fell out of love with him, of course...” Martha explains quickly - obviously - as she points to the ring that Donna herself first noticed. “You can’t think of someone like that for long without it taking its toll, not without any reaction, any reciprocation...” The sadness in Martha’s expression as she remembers makes Donna ache, and she wants to reach out and comfort the younger woman for all the pervious pain she still carries with her, but she can’t. She can barely move past a blink, and stares in silence at Martha as if she’s a total stranger as the words slowly and repeatedly coil their way through her mind.
“Oh, God,” Martha breathes, her jaw slack and her eyes wide as her coffee pauses, tipped against her lip just short of taking a drink. “You’re not...”
Donna finally breaks the stasis with that, shaking her head with a coy grin that peaks above the meniscus of her teacup, smirking down into her Earl Grey as she takes a long drink.
“I’m sorry,” Martha stammers, embarrassed. “I just assumed -”
“It’s alright,” Donna assures her with a warm smile and a pat to the hand, lingering just too long over the stone of her engagement band. “I think everyone falls in love with him a little bit.”
“It’s just,” Martha shakes her head, still sheepish. “You’re still with him. After he saves the world, I mean - after he really saves the world...” she sighs, almost wistful. “It seems like we just, get swapped out on a rota. I figured... what with you, still being here...”
“Naw,” Donna saved her from continuing with a toss of her head and a brilliant, almost wicked grin. “None of that nonsense.”
“I suppose the whole... mind-swap,” Martha gestured with rapidly-moving hands as she decided upon a term for it. “I’m sure that made it difficult to part ways even if you’d wanted to.”
Donna hid her blush with a dip of her chin, letting her hair fall into her face as she finished off her tea. “Good thing I didn’t want to, then.”
Martha nodded, pausing for a moment in apparent consternation, as if debating whether to ask the question on the tip of her tongue. “You’re a Time Lord, though?” she finally blurted, leaning in with hushed tones as she inquired about what Donna had explained to her on the walk from the hub. “That’s...” Martha trailed off speechless, her gaze boring into Donna questioningly, desperately inquisitive.
“Still keeps me awake at night, sometimes,” Donna gave in, her voice just as soft - floating and ethereal, like a breeze. “Like it was all just a dream. But then I can feel him,” she swallows, her hand coming to support her chin as she unconsciously reaches out, brushing against the ever-present sense of him against her mind, sensing something tense there now, but burying her concern at it for the present. “And my pulse picks up just a bit, and it takes one heart a moment to catch up to the other, and I remember that it’s real,” her voice drops below a whisper as her eyes grow far and scarce. “It’s all real.”
“That’s incredible,” Martha breathes, fascinated. Donna only snorts, thankful for the escape from her thoughts, her fears.
“Incredible. Terrifying.” Martha laughs at this response, settling back comfortably in her chair once more and nursing what’s left of her coffee.
“You know, I have his memories,” Donna interrupts her after a space, catching her confused gaze with intensity, with command.
“Everything he knew, everything he thought, everything he’d ever done or heard of or considered doing, before the metacrisis,” she tapped her forehead meaningfully. “It’s all up here.”
Martha looks uncomfortable in the silence that follows, but says nothing. Her coffee’s gone, but the mug is still raised to her lips.
“He adores you,” Donna says softly, her hand on Martha’s once more, comforting her, trying to convince her that what she’s saying is nothing short of the honest truth. “He thinks you’re the one of the strongest people he’s ever known.”
“He wants the chance to do right by you,” she continued, trying to wipe the fear, the rejection away from Martha’s eyes. “He hopes he’s managed well enough so far.”
Martha’s chewing on her lip like a madwoman, and Donna can’t help but grin and grasp her hand a little tighter. “He thinks you’re brilliant. Impulsive, clever, stubborn in the best possible way. Unstoppable, he calls you,” she adds on fondly, tapping into the recollections she carries, channeling the voice in the Doctor’s memories. “He’s fairly certain that there’s nothing you can’t do, with determination like yours.”
Martha still says nothing, but she looks frozen, a tad off-color; Donna clears her throat a bit and finishes softly; “I just, thought you should know.”
“It was a bad time for him. Without you...” Donna’s eyes are far away again as she considers the possibilities. “Who knows what the universe would have come to, with him in such a state, and no one to help him out of it?”
She leans in, carefully noting the tears that are threatening to escape Martha’s eyes and smiling comfortingly at the younger woman. “Sometimes, we get the shit job, I think,” Donna said pointedly. “You didn’t deserve it, but you did it magnificently. If he could, he’d thank you for that. Someday, I hope he does.”
She stands, and makes her way over to the other side of the table, pulling Martha out of her chair and holding her tight, embracing her as she whispers softly;
“But in case he doesn’t; thank you, Martha Jones. Thank you.”
Part Nine: The Forgotten Tide
Current Music: Dark Road by Annie Lennox
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