A Chiswick Christmas Carol 6/8
Title: A Chiswick Christmas Carol 6/8
Beta: the amazing glory_jean... thanks so, so much!
A/N: Well, at least there wasn't as long a hiatus this time right? Anyways, much thanks to glory_jean for stepping in and beta-ing the rest of this story for me. I hope you enjoy! Sorry for the weird text switching....
It did stop him, and he actually stumbled a little with the force of the impact.
“What did I do this time?” He asked indignantly, staring wide-eyed at her as he pressed his hand against his injured cheek.
Rose snickered quietly. Donna was as good as her mum at giving him a slap, especially when he needed it. She hoped Donna would stay around for a while.
“Are you enjoying this?” Donna shot back angrily.
“You did take it a bit far, Doctor,” Rose added in defense of Donna when he looked to her, crossing her arms.
The Doctor stared at the two of them, and then let out a slow breath, relaxing slightly. Rose was glad to see that he did in fact look ashamed of himself.
Donna walked toward him then, breathing a little heavier than normal in her distress. “Right, just tell me- these particles, are they dangerous? Am I safe?”
He looked at her for a long moment, and his eyes flickered over to Rose before he said, not really convincingly, “Yes!” And then proceeded to quickly nod a few times.
Rose rolled her eyes. However good he thought he was at lying to people at important times, he really wasn’t.
But Donna seemed to have caught on because she tilted her head to one side and gave him a stern look before she asked firmly, “Doctor… if your lot got rid of Huon particles…why’d they do that?”
The Doctor sighed heavily, and just managed to look Donna in the eye as he told her gently, “Because they were deadly.”
Donna’s face fell completely at that. She looked like she was about to collapse as she whispered, “Oh, my God…”
Now that Donna had stopped glowing for the moment, Rose went over to the other woman and gently wrapped her arms around her shoulders in what she hoped was a reassuring way. “He’ll fix it, Donna. I dunno how, but he will.”
The Doctor quickly nodded. “I'll sort it out, Donna. Whatever's been done to you, I'll reverse it,” he said sincerely as he attempted to reassure her as well. “I’m not about to lose someone else.”
Rose looked up at him. “You didn’t lose me, Doctor.”
“I almost did,” he whispered quietly, and his expression was just like how he’d looked in those two minutes they’d had to say good bye. She suddenly had an urge to hug him, but right now it was Donna who needed her comfort more. “And I’m not loosing you either, Donna,” he promised.
None of them had any time to say something more, because they were distracted by the crashes and bangs that suddenly seemed to be coming from all around them.
As they turned around rapidly, trying to seek out the source of the sudden noise, a feminine sounding voice spoke to them, hissing and spitting. “Oh, she is long since lost,” the voice told them.
“What is that?” Rose asked, confused, moving over from behind Donna to link hands with the Doctor.
He shook his head, but before he could reply or any of them could speak, the large wall opposite them with the letters “Lab 003” imprinted on it in large black letters began sliding upwards.
They all turned to stare at the wall as it withdrew upward, not noticing Lance still standing by the doorway looking horrified.
As the wall drew level with their eye lines, they saw that it had apparently been hiding a secret chamber with an enormous round hole in the middle of the floor.
Donna’s eyes widened. “Well, that’s not a secret base. It’s a secret hole in the ground.”
A second later, the hissing voice spoke again, “I have waited so long, hibernating at the edge of the universe…”
As the voice spoke, the Doctor linked hands with Rose, and with Donna beside them, took a few slow steps towards the hole. Meanwhile, Lance, wide-eyed in horror, quickly ran back out of the door the four of them had come in from.
“… until the secret heart was uncovered and called out to waken!” The voice finished, voice rising triumphantly.
“Oh my god!” Donna exclaimed, pointing at the walls of the chamber that were lined with armed robots with metal faces wearing black hoods. “More alien robots!”
The armed robots turned so that all their gun-like weapons were pointing directly at the trio.
“That’s, not good,” the Doctor commented, moving closer to Donna and drawing Rose along him.
“No, really?” Rose asked scornfully, pressing herself against him. She really hoped he knew what to do, because she really didn’t want to be killed by armed alien robots. Especially ones being commanded by the kind of voice that had been talking to them.
The Doctor released Rose’s hand and took a few steps forward to peer down into the hole. “Someone’s been digging,” he commented, studying the hole. “Oh, very Torchwood. Drilled by laser.” He raised his head to address the voice, “How far down does it go?”
“Down and down,” the voice the replied, full of pride. “All the way to the centre of the Earth!”
Rose slowly took a few steps forward to stand next to him as she now looked down into the hole. “That’s a long ways down,” she observed, her voice only shaking a little.
“It is,” the Doctor agreed and then said more loudly, “What do you need a hole that deep for any way?”
Donna shuffled forward now to stand next to them as she asked curiously, “Dinosaurs?”
The Doctor and Rose turned to look at her.
“What?” He asked confused.
Donna swallowed once, nervously, before she repeated uncertainly, “Dinosaurs?”
Rose stared at her, forehead wrinkled in puzzlement, “What d’you mean dinosaurs?”
“That film, Under the Earth, with dinosaurs,” Donna explained quickly. When the two just continued staring at her, she added shortly, “Trying to help!”
The Doctor shook his head. “That’s not helping.”
“At least she’s trying, Doctor,” Rose scolded. “Have to give her that.”
He turned to look at her, ready to protest. But at her look he sighed and said to Donna, “Well, I suppose as long as you’re trying…”
“Such a sweet couple,” the hissing voice commented. Rose wasn’t sure if it was talking about her and the Doctor or Donna and the Doctor or some other mixture, but she did know that she didn’t take it as a compliment.
The Doctor moved away slightly from the two women and addressed the voice, and the ceiling, “Only a madman talks to thin air and trust me, you don't want to make me mad. Where are you?"
“High in the sky, floating so high on Christmas Night,” the voice replied condescendingly.
He shook his head, both hands in his pockets now. “I didn’t come all this way to talk on the intercom!” The Doctor protested, voice rising as he still paced around. “Come on; let’s have a look at you!”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Doctor!” Donna hissed at him.
“Who are you with such command?” The voice hissed angrily.
“I’m the Doctor,” he announced in the same way he always did.
“Doctor!” Rose hissed at him now.
But the voice went on. “Prepare your best medicines, doctor-man, for you will be sick at heart.”
The Doctor turned to grin at Rose and Donna, “See? Now we’re getting somewhere!”
“I think it’d be better if whoever it is just stayed in the sky,” Donna said softly, hanging her head a little.
Rose was about to nod her agreement, when all of a sudden there was a blue glow on the other side of the chamber, and a horrible red spider with a woman’s torso attached to the body and spider legs for arms and a human-like head but with multiple eyes that sharpened to a point, appeared on a ledge opposite them.
The Doctor stared at the creature, dark eyes wide in disbelief. “The Racnoss…” he said quietly. “But that’s impossible! You’re one of the Racnoss!”
“Empress of the Racnoss,” the spider creature corrected him snidely.
Rose, who knew the Doctor would be too busy making supposed small-talk with the new creature to answer anything, commented to Donna, “If only we had a really big shoe, we could get this sorted quickly.”
Donna managed a weak laugh, but her eyes were locked on the spider woman.
Rose sighed and leaned over to take the other woman’s hand. “Don’t worry, she won’t get you.”
This time Donna managed to nod at her.
Meanwhile, the Doctor was chatting with the Empress of the Racnoss.
“If you’re the Empress, where’s the rest of the Racnoss?” He asked her rapidly, and then added after a pause, voice slower and softer, “Or… are you the only one?”
The Empress of the Racnoss blinked at him a few times before she commented, “Such a sharp mind.”
“That’s it, the last of your kind,” the Doctor said softly, understanding. He then turned to Donna and Rose. “The Racnoss come from the Dark Times, billions of years ago, billions,” he told them and continued quickly as the Empress began hissing angrily again. “They were carnivores, omnivores, they devoured whole planets.”
“Racnoss are born starving,” the Empress interrupted them defensively, as she could apparently hear them.
Donna stared at the Empress as she asked, a little horrified, “They eat people?”
Instead of answering, he asked her, “H C Clements, did he wear those-“ the Doctor paused, forehead wrinkling. “Those, erm,” he raised a hand to make some confusing gesture that was probably supposed to help, “black and white shoes?”
Rose swallowed, getting a bad feeling about this.
Donna grinned, looking amused. “He did!” She agreed. “We used to laugh; we used to call him the fat cat in spats.”
The Doctor nodded and pointed to a web on the ceiling.
Rose and Donna looked in the direction he was pointing to turn and look up at the ceiling.
They noticed the pair of black and white shoes just barely poking out of the web above them.
“Oh, my God!” Donna exclaimed disgusted, staring wide-eyed at the two shoes.
Rose’s hand rose to cover her mouth. “Is that-?” She mumbled.
The Doctor nodded again and finished, “H C Clements, yeah.”
The Empress cackled, “Mm, my Christmas dinner.”
The Doctor turned to address her again. “You shouldn’t even exist!”He protested. “Way back in history, the Fledgling Empires went to war against the Racnoss-they were wiped out.” The Doctor said, managing to argue with the Empress and give Donna and Rose a history lesson at the same time.
Donna, who had been watching the Racnoss as the Doctor spoke with it, her, saw Lance as he crawled out onto a balcony above the one the Racnoss Empress was on. She stared at him, but Lance shook his head and raised a finger to his lips to tell her to stay quiet.
“Except for me,” the Empress corrected the Doctor.
Donna stepped in now, and began talking to the Empress as a bid to distract her. “But that’s what I’ve got inside me, that Huon energy thing.” The Empress began tossing her head back and forth, hissing, so Donna shouted, “Oi! Look at me, lady, I’m talking to you. Where do I fit in? How come I get all stacked up with these Huon particles?”
The Empress continued to ignore her.
“Look at me, you! Look me in the eye and tell me!” Donna demanded angrily, really getting into it now.
The Empress hissed angrily at her, but commented, sneering, “The bride is so feisty!”
“Yes, I am!” Donna shot back. “And I don’t know what you are, you big…” she made vague shapes with her hands, “thing….”
Rose was quietly cheering for Donna, and she leaned over to whisper to the Doctor, “She could give you a run for your money. ‘Specially since she’s rude and ginger, and she can talk just as much as you.”
“I think she’s doing just fine, don’t you?” He whispered back, looking admiringly at the ginger bride. “Especially after all she’s been through today so far.”
Rose was just about to ask him if he would consider inviting Donna to come with them, when she tuned back into what Donna was saying in time to realize she was talking to Lance who had apparently succeeded in sneaking up on the Empress.
“But a spider’s just a spider, and an axe is an axe!” Donna yelled at the Empress, and then turned to actually look at Lance as she said, “Now, do it!”
The Empress must have realized what they were up to, because she turned just in time to hiss at Lance as he swung the axe at her…and then stopped.
Rose felt her heart sink, and she glanced at the Doctor to see him looking sympathetically at Donna. When he saw Rose looking at him, he raised an eyebrow at her inquisitively. She gestured at Lance and the Empress with her hand and made a gesture that he must have understood because he nodded.
Rose winced at that, and felt even worse when Lance and the Empress suddenly began laughing. Oh poor, Donna.
“That was a good one.” Lance told the Empress, smirking. “Your face!”
“Lance is funny,” the Empress told the Doctor, Rose and Donna with a sort of odd grin.
Donna just stared at them, completely confused. “What?”
The Doctor leaned in towards her, and told her quietly, “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” Rose said softly, moving forward a little to stand right behind Donna supportively.
Donna shook her head. “Sorry for what?” She asked them before turning back to her fiancé. “Lance, don’t be so stupid!” Donna protested then yelled, “Get her!”
But Lance just stared pityingly at her, holding the axe loosely in his hands. “God, she’s thick.”
Donna just stared at him, totally lost.
“Months I had to put up with her,” Lance continued, scornfully. “Months. A woman who can’t even point to Germany on a map.”
Rose lightly put her hands on Donna’s shoulders as she yelled angrily at Lance. “Oi! You don’t have to be all mean about it!”
“I, I don’t understand,” Donna said quietly, staring at the man who was supposed to be her fiancé, as her whole world seemed to fall apart around her yet again. She was grateful for the weight of Rose’s hands on her shoulders, as that seemed to be the only thing grounding her.
The Doctor sighed, not really wanting to be the one to tell her this. But he moved next to Donna and asked softly, “How did you meet him?”
“In the office,” Donna said, turning towards him.
Rose moved to face Donna. “He made you coffee,” Rose broke in, calling on what Donna had told them as they sat on that roof.
“What?” Donna asked, still not understanding.
Lance gave an annoyed sigh and elaborated, as if talking to a simpleton, “Every day, I made you coffee,” he said, pointing cheekily at her as he came to stand near the edge of the balcony.
“You had to be dosed with liquid particles,” the Doctor told her gently, “over six months.”
Donna stared at him as she finally started to get what he was saying, “He was poisoning me?”
“It was all there in the job title- the head of Human Resources,” the Doctor accused Lance, turning away from Donna.
Lance grinned. “This time, it’s personnel.”
Rose glared at him as he and the Racnoss began laughing again. “That’s horrible! You’re horrible and that’s a horrible pun!”
Donna shook her head, not wanting to believe this. “But… we were getting married.”
“Well, I couldn’t risk you running off. I had to say yes,” Lance told her with an easy shrug, grinning arrogantly. As he continued, he sounded even more and more insulting. “And then I was stuck with a woman who thinks the height of excitement is a new flavour Pringle.” Lance rolled his eyes, making it sound like it was the worst thing ever.
The Doctor and Rose moved closer to Donna, all the feistiness seeming to die out of her as she listened to Lance’s tirade of complaints. Opposite them, the Empress made faces and laughed as Lance continued.
“Oh, I had to sit there and listen to all that yap yap yap --'oh, Brad and Angelina -- is Posh pregnant?' X Factor, Atkins Diet, Feng Shui, split ends, 'text me, text me, text me,' dear God, the never ending fountain of fat, stupid trivia.” Lance spat the few last words at her from across the chamber, grinning.
Donna continued staring at him as Lance went on and on, becoming increasingly hurt and confused as the man who she’d thought loved her complained about every little one of her faults. He seemed to have not really ever loved her at all; he’d just been using her for his own means. Just like everyone else in her life except for her granddad, he just saw all her faults and not any of her potential.
“I deserve a medal!” Lance declared, glancing at the Empress before looking back over at the trio again.
The Doctor stepped forward, taking the opportunity to cut off Lance’s tirade and ask some questions of his own. “Oh, is that what she’s offered you?” He asked nosily, as usual. “The Empress of the Racnoss?” The Doctor smirked as the Empress hissed a little at that. “What are you, her consort?”
Lance glared at him. “It’s better than a night with her,” he declared, gesturing at Donna with the hand still carrying the axe.
“Oi! Leave her alone!” Rose yelled at him from where she was trying to comfort Donna, lending the other woman her silent support.
Donna swallowed and told him mournfully, finally coming to terms with what had happened to her, “But I love you.”
“That’s what made it easy,” Lance told her nastily, smirking. He turned to the Doctor, “It’s like you said, Doctor -- the big picture -- what's the point of it all if the Human Race is nothing?” He challenged, and then gestured at the Empress. “That's what the Empress can give me. The chance to... go out there. To see it. The size of it all,” Lance explained, waving his hand at the area around them as if to indicate what he meant by ‘out there.’ “I think you understand that, don't you, Doctor?”
The Empress turned to her co-schemer. “Who is this little physician?” She asked him curiously, hissing as she eyed the Doctor.
“What she said,” Lance explained, nodding at Donna, “Martian.”
Rose snickered at that, and moved slightly out from behind Donna with the plan of telling the Empress and Lance just who they were dealing with. But she glanced over at the Doctor to see him shaking his head ever so lightly at her. Rose frowned at him, wondering what he was up to, but closed her mouth and decided to wait to see what he was going to do next.
The Doctor moved away from the two women, and managed to say, “Oh, I’m sort of… homeless,” without wincing as he tugged lightly on his ear. Before any of them could ask him about that, he walked back over to the peer down at the hole again. “But the point is, what’s down here? The Racnoss are extinct,” the Doctor repeated, now looking back up at Lance and the Empress. “What’s gonna help you four thousand miles down? That’s just the molten core of the Earth, isn’t it?”
Lance smirked condescendingly, tilting his head to look down at him, “I think he wants us to talk.”
“I think so too,” the Empress agreed, leaning forward a little to sneer at the Doctor.
“Well, tough!” Lance announced. “All we need is Donna!” He said, pointing first at him and the Empress and then at his ex-fiancé with his axe.
“Well, you’re not getting her!” Rose yelled back at him, moving back to Donna’s side and looping her arm through the other woman’s. “She’s not gonna be part of your schemes!”
The Empress glared at Rose as she straightened to her full-height and commanded, “Kill this chattering little doctor-man and his disrespectful blonde companion!”
“Ha, I’m the disrespectful one and you’re the chattering one,” Rose repeated to the Doctor, smirking at him. “It’s like she doesn’t even know us.”
The Doctor turned towards her, keeping an eye on the Empress and Lance. “What do you mean? I’d say she got it in one, except for I’m far more disrespectful than you are.”
“I’m getting there,” Rose told him with a light shrug. “Been taking lessons from you.”
“Don’t you hurt ‘em!” Donna challenged the Empress, moving a little so she was standing in front of the bickering Doctor and Rose in an attempt to shield them from whatever the Empress and Lance were planning to do.
The Doctor leaned forward slightly to tell her reassuringly, “No, no. It’s all right.”
He moved closer to her, gently pulling Rose along with him until the three of them were standing in a kind of tight huddle.
Donna shook her head, pressing up against them. “No, I won’t let them!” She argued, her voice shaking only a little as she held her arms out at her sides.
But the Empress ignored her, rising to her full height as she commanded to the until now forgotten armed robots, “At arms!”
All the robots turned to train their guns on the defenseless trio.
The Doctor raised his hands as he tried to interrupt, “Ah, now. Except-”
“Take aim!” The Empress continued gleefully.
The Doctor tried again, looking around at the robots. “Well, I just want to point out the obvious-“
“Doctor! Do something!” Donna told him sharply, all the fight having gone out of her at the sight of so many guns trained on them.
“Just wait!” Rose told the other woman confidently, but she was getting a little worried now too. She really hoped the Doctor had a plan.
“They won’t hit the bride,” The Empress reassured him, staring intently at him. “They’re such good shots.”
But the Doctor shook his head, waving his hands at her as he apparently tried to stall their execution. “Just-just-just-hold on, just a tick, just a tiny- just a little-tick,” he told her, faintly realizing that he was rambling again, especially when Rose nudged him in the side. The Empress hissed angrily at him so he quickly continued, “If you think about it, the particles activated in Donna and drew her inside my spaceship.” Donna turned to stare confusedly at him as he said this, and he was fairly certain Rose was shaking her head at him, but he still went on, reaching down with one hand to dig in his pocket. A few seconds later he found what he was looking for, and drew out the smaller test tube with huon particles that he’d used to demonstrate to Donna and Rose earlier. “So, reverse it…” the Doctor explained, twisting the top of the test tube which caused Donna, and the particles inside the test tube, to start glowing again, “The spaceship comes to her.”
Rose and Donna stiffened as a thick dark grey cloud of smoke enveloped them, blocking out the room around them as well as the armed robots and the Empress who angrily yelled for the robots to fire at the last second.
But it was too late. The three of them were already safely within the walls of the Tardis which had materialized around them from out of the smoke, protecting them.
As soon as the Tardis had fully materialized, the Doctor was off again, darting to the console. “Off we go!” He announced, already working at the controls.
Rose stumbled back a few feet and slumped heavily against the console, taking the chance to slow her rapidly beating heart. That had been close, even for the Doctor. Far too close.
From outside they could just make out the sounds of the Empress wailing angrily about losing her key, and the sound of the robots continuing to fire at the outside of the Tardis.
Donna stood frozenly where they had materialized; still stunned from everything that had happened to her in the past few minutes. She had been so sure that she was going to die, killed by a bunch of armed alien robots.
Rose however, had managed to quickly recover and had gone over to stand next to the Doctor. “Cut it a bit close there, didn’t ya?”
Once they started dematerializing a few seconds later, he turned to her with his best innocent expression. “What do you mean? I had it all under control, Rose. Nothing was going to happen.”
“Nothing was going to happen, there were alien robots with guns, Doctor!” Rose yelled at him, clenching her fists. “Guns pointed at us! They were gonna start firing in a second if you hadn’t called the Tardis.”
The Doctor patted her lightly on the shoulder. “We weren’t in any danger, Rose. Like you said, I called the Tardis just in time. And here we are, safe.”
“Yeah, cause you happened to have that test tube with the particles in it!” She argued, pointing at the pocket where she guessed he had put it. “What would ya ‘ve done if it hadn’t worked?”
He blinked and stared at her for a long moment. “Well," he said calmly, tugging on his ear, "I guess we would've died.” At Rose’s thunderous expression he quickly added, holding his hands out to her in protest, “If I hadn’t thought of another plan! Which I definitely would’ve, no need to worry!”
“But I am worrying, Doctor.” Rose countered, leaning in towards him. “Cause what happens if that happens again, and this time you don’t have a plan? Or if it doesn’t work out so well?”
The Doctor frowned, and reached out to fiddle with the controls. “Well, then I, we, take care of that when it comes,” he suggested slowly. Then, in an attempt to distract her, he flashed a grin at her and moved to another part of the console. “Right now though, we have an angry, evil, scheming Racnoss Empress on our hands.”
Rose sighed, “Yeah.”
It was no use challenging him like that; she knew it was unlikely she’d get any answers out of him. Even after what they’d gone through from Canary Wharf, he still had that “take it as it comes” attitude where he never thought things out.
As he fiddled with the controls on the part of the console he was standing at, the Doctor turned and addressed Donna, who still hadn’t said a word. “Oh, you know what I said before about time machines? Well, I lied.” He darted to another section of controls, and then stuck his head out around the time rotor again to add, “And now we’re gonna use it.”
Donna still didn’t respond, but Rose turned from where she was resting against the console a few feet away from him, and asked, “Where’re we going? Or when?”
“We need to find out what the Empress of the Racnoss is digging up,” the Doctor told her, now fiddling with different controls and starting to talk in a rush again as his excitement grew. “If something's buried at the planet core, it must've been there since the beginning. And that’s just brilliant. Molto bene!” He declared with a happy grin. “I’ve always wanted to see this.”
As he continued to babble and Rose half-listened, Donna walked a few steps forwards and then turned to nearly collapse against the console, her shoulders silently shaking.
The Doctor turned to look first at Rose and then at Donna as he told them quietly, “We’re going further back than I’ve ever been before.”
But Rose was watching Donna with a worried frown. “Donna?” She asked quietly, coming around to stand in front of the other woman.
It was then that she noticed Donna’s shoulders shaking silently and the silent tears pouring down her cheeks as she tried not to make a sound.
“Oh, Donna,” Rose whispered softly. “I’m so sorry.” She took another step forward and gently pulled Donna into a hug, holding the bride as she silently cried.
The Doctor didn’t say anything and pretended not to notice as he continued to work at the controls. But when Rose glanced up at him he nodded back and mouthed a silent thank you to her.
She smiled back and held Donna even tighter, whispering soft reassurances to the other woman as she ran her hand lightly up and down Donna’s back. Eventually, Rose gently guided Donna over to the jump seat and sat down next to her, arms still loosely wrapped around her shoulders.
Part Seven
community.livejournal.com/dr_2nd_chances/10809.html#cutid1
Beta: the amazing glory_jean... thanks so, so much!
A/N: Well, at least there wasn't as long a hiatus this time right? Anyways, much thanks to glory_jean for stepping in and beta-ing the rest of this story for me. I hope you enjoy! Sorry for the weird text switching....
It did stop him, and he actually stumbled a little with the force of the impact.
“What did I do this time?” He asked indignantly, staring wide-eyed at her as he pressed his hand against his injured cheek.
Rose snickered quietly. Donna was as good as her mum at giving him a slap, especially when he needed it. She hoped Donna would stay around for a while.
“Are you enjoying this?” Donna shot back angrily.
“You did take it a bit far, Doctor,” Rose added in defense of Donna when he looked to her, crossing her arms.
The Doctor stared at the two of them, and then let out a slow breath, relaxing slightly. Rose was glad to see that he did in fact look ashamed of himself.
Donna walked toward him then, breathing a little heavier than normal in her distress. “Right, just tell me- these particles, are they dangerous? Am I safe?”
He looked at her for a long moment, and his eyes flickered over to Rose before he said, not really convincingly, “Yes!” And then proceeded to quickly nod a few times.
Rose rolled her eyes. However good he thought he was at lying to people at important times, he really wasn’t.
But Donna seemed to have caught on because she tilted her head to one side and gave him a stern look before she asked firmly, “Doctor… if your lot got rid of Huon particles…why’d they do that?”
The Doctor sighed heavily, and just managed to look Donna in the eye as he told her gently, “Because they were deadly.”
Donna’s face fell completely at that. She looked like she was about to collapse as she whispered, “Oh, my God…”
Now that Donna had stopped glowing for the moment, Rose went over to the other woman and gently wrapped her arms around her shoulders in what she hoped was a reassuring way. “He’ll fix it, Donna. I dunno how, but he will.”
The Doctor quickly nodded. “I'll sort it out, Donna. Whatever's been done to you, I'll reverse it,” he said sincerely as he attempted to reassure her as well. “I’m not about to lose someone else.”
Rose looked up at him. “You didn’t lose me, Doctor.”
“I almost did,” he whispered quietly, and his expression was just like how he’d looked in those two minutes they’d had to say good bye. She suddenly had an urge to hug him, but right now it was Donna who needed her comfort more. “And I’m not loosing you either, Donna,” he promised.
None of them had any time to say something more, because they were distracted by the crashes and bangs that suddenly seemed to be coming from all around them.
As they turned around rapidly, trying to seek out the source of the sudden noise, a feminine sounding voice spoke to them, hissing and spitting. “Oh, she is long since lost,” the voice told them.
“What is that?” Rose asked, confused, moving over from behind Donna to link hands with the Doctor.
He shook his head, but before he could reply or any of them could speak, the large wall opposite them with the letters “Lab 003” imprinted on it in large black letters began sliding upwards.
They all turned to stare at the wall as it withdrew upward, not noticing Lance still standing by the doorway looking horrified.
As the wall drew level with their eye lines, they saw that it had apparently been hiding a secret chamber with an enormous round hole in the middle of the floor.
Donna’s eyes widened. “Well, that’s not a secret base. It’s a secret hole in the ground.”
A second later, the hissing voice spoke again, “I have waited so long, hibernating at the edge of the universe…”
As the voice spoke, the Doctor linked hands with Rose, and with Donna beside them, took a few slow steps towards the hole. Meanwhile, Lance, wide-eyed in horror, quickly ran back out of the door the four of them had come in from.
“… until the secret heart was uncovered and called out to waken!” The voice finished, voice rising triumphantly.
“Oh my god!” Donna exclaimed, pointing at the walls of the chamber that were lined with armed robots with metal faces wearing black hoods. “More alien robots!”
The armed robots turned so that all their gun-like weapons were pointing directly at the trio.
“That’s, not good,” the Doctor commented, moving closer to Donna and drawing Rose along him.
“No, really?” Rose asked scornfully, pressing herself against him. She really hoped he knew what to do, because she really didn’t want to be killed by armed alien robots. Especially ones being commanded by the kind of voice that had been talking to them.
The Doctor released Rose’s hand and took a few steps forward to peer down into the hole. “Someone’s been digging,” he commented, studying the hole. “Oh, very Torchwood. Drilled by laser.” He raised his head to address the voice, “How far down does it go?”
“Down and down,” the voice the replied, full of pride. “All the way to the centre of the Earth!”
Rose slowly took a few steps forward to stand next to him as she now looked down into the hole. “That’s a long ways down,” she observed, her voice only shaking a little.
“It is,” the Doctor agreed and then said more loudly, “What do you need a hole that deep for any way?”
Donna shuffled forward now to stand next to them as she asked curiously, “Dinosaurs?”
The Doctor and Rose turned to look at her.
“What?” He asked confused.
Donna swallowed once, nervously, before she repeated uncertainly, “Dinosaurs?”
Rose stared at her, forehead wrinkled in puzzlement, “What d’you mean dinosaurs?”
“That film, Under the Earth, with dinosaurs,” Donna explained quickly. When the two just continued staring at her, she added shortly, “Trying to help!”
The Doctor shook his head. “That’s not helping.”
“At least she’s trying, Doctor,” Rose scolded. “Have to give her that.”
He turned to look at her, ready to protest. But at her look he sighed and said to Donna, “Well, I suppose as long as you’re trying…”
“Such a sweet couple,” the hissing voice commented. Rose wasn’t sure if it was talking about her and the Doctor or Donna and the Doctor or some other mixture, but she did know that she didn’t take it as a compliment.
The Doctor moved away slightly from the two women and addressed the voice, and the ceiling, “Only a madman talks to thin air and trust me, you don't want to make me mad. Where are you?"
“High in the sky, floating so high on Christmas Night,” the voice replied condescendingly.
He shook his head, both hands in his pockets now. “I didn’t come all this way to talk on the intercom!” The Doctor protested, voice rising as he still paced around. “Come on; let’s have a look at you!”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Doctor!” Donna hissed at him.
“Who are you with such command?” The voice hissed angrily.
“I’m the Doctor,” he announced in the same way he always did.
“Doctor!” Rose hissed at him now.
But the voice went on. “Prepare your best medicines, doctor-man, for you will be sick at heart.”
The Doctor turned to grin at Rose and Donna, “See? Now we’re getting somewhere!”
“I think it’d be better if whoever it is just stayed in the sky,” Donna said softly, hanging her head a little.
Rose was about to nod her agreement, when all of a sudden there was a blue glow on the other side of the chamber, and a horrible red spider with a woman’s torso attached to the body and spider legs for arms and a human-like head but with multiple eyes that sharpened to a point, appeared on a ledge opposite them.
The Doctor stared at the creature, dark eyes wide in disbelief. “The Racnoss…” he said quietly. “But that’s impossible! You’re one of the Racnoss!”
“Empress of the Racnoss,” the spider creature corrected him snidely.
Rose, who knew the Doctor would be too busy making supposed small-talk with the new creature to answer anything, commented to Donna, “If only we had a really big shoe, we could get this sorted quickly.”
Donna managed a weak laugh, but her eyes were locked on the spider woman.
Rose sighed and leaned over to take the other woman’s hand. “Don’t worry, she won’t get you.”
This time Donna managed to nod at her.
Meanwhile, the Doctor was chatting with the Empress of the Racnoss.
“If you’re the Empress, where’s the rest of the Racnoss?” He asked her rapidly, and then added after a pause, voice slower and softer, “Or… are you the only one?”
The Empress of the Racnoss blinked at him a few times before she commented, “Such a sharp mind.”
“That’s it, the last of your kind,” the Doctor said softly, understanding. He then turned to Donna and Rose. “The Racnoss come from the Dark Times, billions of years ago, billions,” he told them and continued quickly as the Empress began hissing angrily again. “They were carnivores, omnivores, they devoured whole planets.”
“Racnoss are born starving,” the Empress interrupted them defensively, as she could apparently hear them.
Donna stared at the Empress as she asked, a little horrified, “They eat people?”
Instead of answering, he asked her, “H C Clements, did he wear those-“ the Doctor paused, forehead wrinkling. “Those, erm,” he raised a hand to make some confusing gesture that was probably supposed to help, “black and white shoes?”
Rose swallowed, getting a bad feeling about this.
Donna grinned, looking amused. “He did!” She agreed. “We used to laugh; we used to call him the fat cat in spats.”
The Doctor nodded and pointed to a web on the ceiling.
Rose and Donna looked in the direction he was pointing to turn and look up at the ceiling.
They noticed the pair of black and white shoes just barely poking out of the web above them.
“Oh, my God!” Donna exclaimed disgusted, staring wide-eyed at the two shoes.
Rose’s hand rose to cover her mouth. “Is that-?” She mumbled.
The Doctor nodded again and finished, “H C Clements, yeah.”
The Empress cackled, “Mm, my Christmas dinner.”
The Doctor turned to address her again. “You shouldn’t even exist!”He protested. “Way back in history, the Fledgling Empires went to war against the Racnoss-they were wiped out.” The Doctor said, managing to argue with the Empress and give Donna and Rose a history lesson at the same time.
Donna, who had been watching the Racnoss as the Doctor spoke with it, her, saw Lance as he crawled out onto a balcony above the one the Racnoss Empress was on. She stared at him, but Lance shook his head and raised a finger to his lips to tell her to stay quiet.
“Except for me,” the Empress corrected the Doctor.
Donna stepped in now, and began talking to the Empress as a bid to distract her. “But that’s what I’ve got inside me, that Huon energy thing.” The Empress began tossing her head back and forth, hissing, so Donna shouted, “Oi! Look at me, lady, I’m talking to you. Where do I fit in? How come I get all stacked up with these Huon particles?”
The Empress continued to ignore her.
“Look at me, you! Look me in the eye and tell me!” Donna demanded angrily, really getting into it now.
The Empress hissed angrily at her, but commented, sneering, “The bride is so feisty!”
“Yes, I am!” Donna shot back. “And I don’t know what you are, you big…” she made vague shapes with her hands, “thing….”
Rose was quietly cheering for Donna, and she leaned over to whisper to the Doctor, “She could give you a run for your money. ‘Specially since she’s rude and ginger, and she can talk just as much as you.”
“I think she’s doing just fine, don’t you?” He whispered back, looking admiringly at the ginger bride. “Especially after all she’s been through today so far.”
Rose was just about to ask him if he would consider inviting Donna to come with them, when she tuned back into what Donna was saying in time to realize she was talking to Lance who had apparently succeeded in sneaking up on the Empress.
“But a spider’s just a spider, and an axe is an axe!” Donna yelled at the Empress, and then turned to actually look at Lance as she said, “Now, do it!”
The Empress must have realized what they were up to, because she turned just in time to hiss at Lance as he swung the axe at her…and then stopped.
Rose felt her heart sink, and she glanced at the Doctor to see him looking sympathetically at Donna. When he saw Rose looking at him, he raised an eyebrow at her inquisitively. She gestured at Lance and the Empress with her hand and made a gesture that he must have understood because he nodded.
Rose winced at that, and felt even worse when Lance and the Empress suddenly began laughing. Oh poor, Donna.
“That was a good one.” Lance told the Empress, smirking. “Your face!”
“Lance is funny,” the Empress told the Doctor, Rose and Donna with a sort of odd grin.
Donna just stared at them, completely confused. “What?”
The Doctor leaned in towards her, and told her quietly, “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” Rose said softly, moving forward a little to stand right behind Donna supportively.
Donna shook her head. “Sorry for what?” She asked them before turning back to her fiancé. “Lance, don’t be so stupid!” Donna protested then yelled, “Get her!”
But Lance just stared pityingly at her, holding the axe loosely in his hands. “God, she’s thick.”
Donna just stared at him, totally lost.
“Months I had to put up with her,” Lance continued, scornfully. “Months. A woman who can’t even point to Germany on a map.”
Rose lightly put her hands on Donna’s shoulders as she yelled angrily at Lance. “Oi! You don’t have to be all mean about it!”
“I, I don’t understand,” Donna said quietly, staring at the man who was supposed to be her fiancé, as her whole world seemed to fall apart around her yet again. She was grateful for the weight of Rose’s hands on her shoulders, as that seemed to be the only thing grounding her.
The Doctor sighed, not really wanting to be the one to tell her this. But he moved next to Donna and asked softly, “How did you meet him?”
“In the office,” Donna said, turning towards him.
Rose moved to face Donna. “He made you coffee,” Rose broke in, calling on what Donna had told them as they sat on that roof.
“What?” Donna asked, still not understanding.
Lance gave an annoyed sigh and elaborated, as if talking to a simpleton, “Every day, I made you coffee,” he said, pointing cheekily at her as he came to stand near the edge of the balcony.
“You had to be dosed with liquid particles,” the Doctor told her gently, “over six months.”
Donna stared at him as she finally started to get what he was saying, “He was poisoning me?”
“It was all there in the job title- the head of Human Resources,” the Doctor accused Lance, turning away from Donna.
Lance grinned. “This time, it’s personnel.”
Rose glared at him as he and the Racnoss began laughing again. “That’s horrible! You’re horrible and that’s a horrible pun!”
Donna shook her head, not wanting to believe this. “But… we were getting married.”
“Well, I couldn’t risk you running off. I had to say yes,” Lance told her with an easy shrug, grinning arrogantly. As he continued, he sounded even more and more insulting. “And then I was stuck with a woman who thinks the height of excitement is a new flavour Pringle.” Lance rolled his eyes, making it sound like it was the worst thing ever.
The Doctor and Rose moved closer to Donna, all the feistiness seeming to die out of her as she listened to Lance’s tirade of complaints. Opposite them, the Empress made faces and laughed as Lance continued.
“Oh, I had to sit there and listen to all that yap yap yap --'oh, Brad and Angelina -- is Posh pregnant?' X Factor, Atkins Diet, Feng Shui, split ends, 'text me, text me, text me,' dear God, the never ending fountain of fat, stupid trivia.” Lance spat the few last words at her from across the chamber, grinning.
Donna continued staring at him as Lance went on and on, becoming increasingly hurt and confused as the man who she’d thought loved her complained about every little one of her faults. He seemed to have not really ever loved her at all; he’d just been using her for his own means. Just like everyone else in her life except for her granddad, he just saw all her faults and not any of her potential.
“I deserve a medal!” Lance declared, glancing at the Empress before looking back over at the trio again.
The Doctor stepped forward, taking the opportunity to cut off Lance’s tirade and ask some questions of his own. “Oh, is that what she’s offered you?” He asked nosily, as usual. “The Empress of the Racnoss?” The Doctor smirked as the Empress hissed a little at that. “What are you, her consort?”
Lance glared at him. “It’s better than a night with her,” he declared, gesturing at Donna with the hand still carrying the axe.
“Oi! Leave her alone!” Rose yelled at him from where she was trying to comfort Donna, lending the other woman her silent support.
Donna swallowed and told him mournfully, finally coming to terms with what had happened to her, “But I love you.”
“That’s what made it easy,” Lance told her nastily, smirking. He turned to the Doctor, “It’s like you said, Doctor -- the big picture -- what's the point of it all if the Human Race is nothing?” He challenged, and then gestured at the Empress. “That's what the Empress can give me. The chance to... go out there. To see it. The size of it all,” Lance explained, waving his hand at the area around them as if to indicate what he meant by ‘out there.’ “I think you understand that, don't you, Doctor?”
The Empress turned to her co-schemer. “Who is this little physician?” She asked him curiously, hissing as she eyed the Doctor.
“What she said,” Lance explained, nodding at Donna, “Martian.”
Rose snickered at that, and moved slightly out from behind Donna with the plan of telling the Empress and Lance just who they were dealing with. But she glanced over at the Doctor to see him shaking his head ever so lightly at her. Rose frowned at him, wondering what he was up to, but closed her mouth and decided to wait to see what he was going to do next.
The Doctor moved away from the two women, and managed to say, “Oh, I’m sort of… homeless,” without wincing as he tugged lightly on his ear. Before any of them could ask him about that, he walked back over to the peer down at the hole again. “But the point is, what’s down here? The Racnoss are extinct,” the Doctor repeated, now looking back up at Lance and the Empress. “What’s gonna help you four thousand miles down? That’s just the molten core of the Earth, isn’t it?”
Lance smirked condescendingly, tilting his head to look down at him, “I think he wants us to talk.”
“I think so too,” the Empress agreed, leaning forward a little to sneer at the Doctor.
“Well, tough!” Lance announced. “All we need is Donna!” He said, pointing first at him and the Empress and then at his ex-fiancé with his axe.
“Well, you’re not getting her!” Rose yelled back at him, moving back to Donna’s side and looping her arm through the other woman’s. “She’s not gonna be part of your schemes!”
The Empress glared at Rose as she straightened to her full-height and commanded, “Kill this chattering little doctor-man and his disrespectful blonde companion!”
“Ha, I’m the disrespectful one and you’re the chattering one,” Rose repeated to the Doctor, smirking at him. “It’s like she doesn’t even know us.”
The Doctor turned towards her, keeping an eye on the Empress and Lance. “What do you mean? I’d say she got it in one, except for I’m far more disrespectful than you are.”
“I’m getting there,” Rose told him with a light shrug. “Been taking lessons from you.”
“Don’t you hurt ‘em!” Donna challenged the Empress, moving a little so she was standing in front of the bickering Doctor and Rose in an attempt to shield them from whatever the Empress and Lance were planning to do.
The Doctor leaned forward slightly to tell her reassuringly, “No, no. It’s all right.”
He moved closer to her, gently pulling Rose along with him until the three of them were standing in a kind of tight huddle.
Donna shook her head, pressing up against them. “No, I won’t let them!” She argued, her voice shaking only a little as she held her arms out at her sides.
But the Empress ignored her, rising to her full height as she commanded to the until now forgotten armed robots, “At arms!”
All the robots turned to train their guns on the defenseless trio.
The Doctor raised his hands as he tried to interrupt, “Ah, now. Except-”
“Take aim!” The Empress continued gleefully.
The Doctor tried again, looking around at the robots. “Well, I just want to point out the obvious-“
“Doctor! Do something!” Donna told him sharply, all the fight having gone out of her at the sight of so many guns trained on them.
“Just wait!” Rose told the other woman confidently, but she was getting a little worried now too. She really hoped the Doctor had a plan.
“They won’t hit the bride,” The Empress reassured him, staring intently at him. “They’re such good shots.”
But the Doctor shook his head, waving his hands at her as he apparently tried to stall their execution. “Just-just-just-hold on, just a tick, just a tiny- just a little-tick,” he told her, faintly realizing that he was rambling again, especially when Rose nudged him in the side. The Empress hissed angrily at him so he quickly continued, “If you think about it, the particles activated in Donna and drew her inside my spaceship.” Donna turned to stare confusedly at him as he said this, and he was fairly certain Rose was shaking her head at him, but he still went on, reaching down with one hand to dig in his pocket. A few seconds later he found what he was looking for, and drew out the smaller test tube with huon particles that he’d used to demonstrate to Donna and Rose earlier. “So, reverse it…” the Doctor explained, twisting the top of the test tube which caused Donna, and the particles inside the test tube, to start glowing again, “The spaceship comes to her.”
Rose and Donna stiffened as a thick dark grey cloud of smoke enveloped them, blocking out the room around them as well as the armed robots and the Empress who angrily yelled for the robots to fire at the last second.
But it was too late. The three of them were already safely within the walls of the Tardis which had materialized around them from out of the smoke, protecting them.
As soon as the Tardis had fully materialized, the Doctor was off again, darting to the console. “Off we go!” He announced, already working at the controls.
Rose stumbled back a few feet and slumped heavily against the console, taking the chance to slow her rapidly beating heart. That had been close, even for the Doctor. Far too close.
From outside they could just make out the sounds of the Empress wailing angrily about losing her key, and the sound of the robots continuing to fire at the outside of the Tardis.
Donna stood frozenly where they had materialized; still stunned from everything that had happened to her in the past few minutes. She had been so sure that she was going to die, killed by a bunch of armed alien robots.
Rose however, had managed to quickly recover and had gone over to stand next to the Doctor. “Cut it a bit close there, didn’t ya?”
Once they started dematerializing a few seconds later, he turned to her with his best innocent expression. “What do you mean? I had it all under control, Rose. Nothing was going to happen.”
“Nothing was going to happen, there were alien robots with guns, Doctor!” Rose yelled at him, clenching her fists. “Guns pointed at us! They were gonna start firing in a second if you hadn’t called the Tardis.”
The Doctor patted her lightly on the shoulder. “We weren’t in any danger, Rose. Like you said, I called the Tardis just in time. And here we are, safe.”
“Yeah, cause you happened to have that test tube with the particles in it!” She argued, pointing at the pocket where she guessed he had put it. “What would ya ‘ve done if it hadn’t worked?”
He blinked and stared at her for a long moment. “Well," he said calmly, tugging on his ear, "I guess we would've died.” At Rose’s thunderous expression he quickly added, holding his hands out to her in protest, “If I hadn’t thought of another plan! Which I definitely would’ve, no need to worry!”
“But I am worrying, Doctor.” Rose countered, leaning in towards him. “Cause what happens if that happens again, and this time you don’t have a plan? Or if it doesn’t work out so well?”
The Doctor frowned, and reached out to fiddle with the controls. “Well, then I, we, take care of that when it comes,” he suggested slowly. Then, in an attempt to distract her, he flashed a grin at her and moved to another part of the console. “Right now though, we have an angry, evil, scheming Racnoss Empress on our hands.”
Rose sighed, “Yeah.”
It was no use challenging him like that; she knew it was unlikely she’d get any answers out of him. Even after what they’d gone through from Canary Wharf, he still had that “take it as it comes” attitude where he never thought things out.
As he fiddled with the controls on the part of the console he was standing at, the Doctor turned and addressed Donna, who still hadn’t said a word. “Oh, you know what I said before about time machines? Well, I lied.” He darted to another section of controls, and then stuck his head out around the time rotor again to add, “And now we’re gonna use it.”
Donna still didn’t respond, but Rose turned from where she was resting against the console a few feet away from him, and asked, “Where’re we going? Or when?”
“We need to find out what the Empress of the Racnoss is digging up,” the Doctor told her, now fiddling with different controls and starting to talk in a rush again as his excitement grew. “If something's buried at the planet core, it must've been there since the beginning. And that’s just brilliant. Molto bene!” He declared with a happy grin. “I’ve always wanted to see this.”
As he continued to babble and Rose half-listened, Donna walked a few steps forwards and then turned to nearly collapse against the console, her shoulders silently shaking.
The Doctor turned to look first at Rose and then at Donna as he told them quietly, “We’re going further back than I’ve ever been before.”
But Rose was watching Donna with a worried frown. “Donna?” She asked quietly, coming around to stand in front of the other woman.
It was then that she noticed Donna’s shoulders shaking silently and the silent tears pouring down her cheeks as she tried not to make a sound.
“Oh, Donna,” Rose whispered softly. “I’m so sorry.” She took another step forward and gently pulled Donna into a hug, holding the bride as she silently cried.
The Doctor didn’t say anything and pretended not to notice as he continued to work at the controls. But when Rose glanced up at him he nodded back and mouthed a silent thank you to her.
She smiled back and held Donna even tighter, whispering soft reassurances to the other woman as she ran her hand lightly up and down Donna’s back. Eventually, Rose gently guided Donna over to the jump seat and sat down next to her, arms still loosely wrapped around her shoulders.
Part Seven
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