Because You're Special - Chapter 25
Doctor Who
Because Your Special
Its Not Fair
Author's Note: For some reason, my formatting on this chapter is stupid. Sorry.
Trussed
up to an alien operating table, in her scuba-diving suit, Donna Noble
was having flashbacks to all those horrid UFO movies. Except, she wasn't
a pretty young girl and her hero was lying on a similar table somewhere
instead of plotting the rescue of the century. She felt like crying-not
weeping but the sort of hysterical, terrified sobbing that never looked
attractive on film.
In the corner, she heard the sound of rushing
water and a soap pump squishing goop onto Bow-tie Boy's long pale
fingers. "It won't be just a minute," He called in the same tone of
voice that one might use as if he was announcing that supper was on its
way.
"Take your time." She replied flatly, staring up at the
circular patterns on the ceiling. They were regular, structured and
unique. Language. A language she'd seen before. Squinting, Donna
realized that she recognized it from her brief time on the Doctor's
TARDIS. The golden lettering rippled and shifted into a neat block
script that read "Med Lab 6 Emergency Supplies".
"So," She turned her head to the Doctor, "They are Time Lords."
"Cool,
isn't it? Not Time Lords-proper ones-you know but Neo-Gallifreyans, a
brand new species based off of human and Gallifreyan genetic structures.
They won't let me look into their genetic structures too much-unless I
want my own mind wiped. Something I don't fancy."
"No kidding." Donna shot at him, struggling against the straps before slumping backwards and fixing the nerd-Lord with a glare.
Slapping
his hands together and rubbing them nervously, Bow-tie Boy dropped to a
chair in front of Donna. His dark hair slung in front of his hollow
eyes, and he looked suddenly very old and very depressed. Shifting
forward, he moved to gently sweep Donna's bangs back.
She turned away from him, blinking hard.
Undeterred, the Doctor's fingers stroked her forehead and then lightly rested at the side of her face. "I miss you, you know."
"I guess you're lucky," She turned back, eye lids hot, "that you happen to be the one allowed to remember."
"This isn't what I wanted…" He stroked her cheek, "I don't want to do this."
Donna wriggled in her bonds, staring into his intense ancient eyes. "Then don't. Please. I don't want to go back. Please."
He
smiled sadly, before jumping from his seat and pacing the room.
Gesturing wildly, he looked anywhere but at her. "You're forgetting the
bigger picture, Miss Noble. Sometimes, you can ignore the big picture.
Run along and play football with your mates or eat a whole package of
jammy dodgers-but sometimes…" He collapsed backwards against the wall,
looking at her with a blank horrified stare, "you just can't. You just
can't. You have to do the right thing."
"I'll fight you, you know."
He raised his dark eyes to hers and he smiled faintly, a sad cheeky little smirk. "With the whole universe at stake?"
Bow-tie
Boy walked over and reached to jimmy a lever on Donna's bed. The
surface beneath Donna's feet jarringly dropped inch by inch as her the
portion beneath her head raised, until she was
half-leaning-half-standing like Frankenstein's monster. With a graceful
geeky whirl of the desk chair, he knelt backwards on it, his face inches
from hers.
"The temp from Chiswick. Most important woman in all
of creation…one day." He rested his arms on the back of his chair,
laying his chin on them. "And do you know why you're so special?"
Donna
looked at her strapped down arms and legs and rolled her eyes. "You
have to be kidding me," she muttered quietly and looked away from him.
"Because
you told me, in the fires of Pompeii, when the whole world was at
stake, "Never mind us"." You were willing to die to save other people.
An ordinary woman willing to make extraordinary sacrifices." He
shrugged, scrubbing his hands together before placing them on her
temples, "So, you can fight me-and lose-or you can do the harder thing,
the right thing, and save the world-save the universe again-by giving up a little of your soul."
"It's
not fair." Donna felt him inside her head now, a rush of golden
thought-if thoughts could be a color-and a pleasant babbling sound like
water mixed with a foreign language. The intrusion, tentative at first,
became stronger as it met no resistance.
"It never is." Bow-tie Boy breathed before closing his eyes.
Donna
closed hers, her thoughts tumbling in the tide of his will. She could
feel her memories flashing with clarity-a lightening bolt flash-before
being dashed into shards and pulled away.
…The bloodied
battered "cowboy" in the snow, looking lost and bitter. Picking out the
jacket. Dancing in the snow…the cannibal foodies chasing them...his arm
around her…his gleeful face over the invisible Fire-space 6…Halo-Boy and
Peri…Ace and the Professor…The Valeyard and the Dreamlord… Donna whimpered. Memories were flitting about and disintegrating so fast now.
Leela and Jamie…Tegan and Nyssa…James attacking the stranger in
pinstripess on the beach…saying goodbye. His goofy boyish smile. His
stupid huge ears. His bright blue eyes that were always so sad and so
hopeful too.
Donna opened her eyes, her vision blurry. "Goodbye, Doctor."
He opened one eye and winked at her, his voice soft. "Not goodbye, Donna. You'll be seeing me-a younger me, anyway-soon."
"Soon," she repeated. She wasn't sure what she was waiting for, exactly. Nor what she was hoping would happen soon.
But there was a girlish flutter in her gut like anticipation, and
warmth like affection filled her. Donna felt so comfortable. Drowsy and
warm. She blinked and her head nodded against the headrest.
"Soon." She heard a stranger's voice say as she fell asleep.
It
must have been some night, Donna thought groggily, looking at the stray
beer bottles on her nightstand. Pushing herself upright, she winced as
the room spun about her. And she'd promised herself that she wouldn't
get snockered this Christmas. That she'd remember her holiday unlike
last Christmas. There had probably been another "invasion" from
"martians" and she'd missed it.
Inching her way to the bathroom,
Donna promised herself that next Christmas she would watch her alcohol
intake. No way was she going to have three memories of Christmas, right in a row, non-existent.
After
retching, dressing, retching again, sipping water, ordering coffee and
retching again, Donna stood on her balcony and overlooked the sunny sea.
Beautiful. But not exciting. The shoreline looked cold and lonely for
some reason. Sipping her coffee, Donna decided she was going home.
Scuba-diving in Spain? Alone? What had she been thinking?
Probably she'd just been trying to impress Don at the gym.
The
next morning, Donna settled into her airline seat. She had just flipped
open a gossip mag to check on the latest Brad and Angelina news, when a
shadow fell over her.
"Hello?" It was a timid, stuttering American voice. The woman looked like she'd escaped from some tacky eighties sci-fi show.
"Hi," Donna replied, staring at the woman's short bobbed brown hair and strange fabric headband, "Are you my seat-mate?"
"Yeah."
The woman dropped into the seat and promptly kicked off her heels. "My
feet are killing me. One would think I spent all night dancing the samba
or something. You-you-don't mind, do you?"
"As long as they don't smell and are not in my face." Donna shrugged and offered a hand, "I'm Donna."
"Peri."
The woman smiled shyly, "I was actually supposed to be in second-class,
but at the last second, the Doctor-my friend-had a change of heart. And
here, I was, wondering if he had one."
"Rough relationship?"
"I'll say," Peri stuttered, "Just when I think I've got him figured out, he goes and changes on me."
"I
hate it when blokes do that." Donna said sympathetically. She turned
back to her magazine and tried to sort out what she was going to say to
her Mum when she got back to her normal life. She certainly wasn't going
to tell her Mum that most of the holiday was hazy and had consisted of
drinking copious amounts of booze. Sylvia Noble wouldn't be happy with
that. She'd have to lie and say she met a really nice bloke and that the
scuba diving was excellent.
Author's Note: For those about ready to kill me for doing this to Donna, keep reading, please. You've plodded along this far. =)
Okay, why a Peri sighting? I wanted to show that even if the memory of Donna has been erased from Six, she still had an effect on him and that those two are going to be okay. This may not matter to anyone else but Six is one of my favorite Doctors and I didn't want to leave him and Peri in a bad spot. *gasps for air, phew*