An Officer and the Noble Woman, Part 2
Title: An Officer and the Noble Woman, Part 2 (2 of ?)
Author: dtstrainers
Paring: Donna Noble/Peter Carlisle
Beta/Co-Captain of this Ship: All hail the great and glorious WhosInTheAttic! She held my hand through all of this and poked me in the back repeatedly until I posted Part 1 last night. Even so, any and all mistakes are my own.
Rating: M (This chapter is tame, but subsequent ones will have some serious ratings.)
Word Count: 2,411
Summary: While investigating a murder, Peter meets a woman whose life is an even bigger mystery.
Disclaimer: Donna and Peter both belong to others, except in my own twisted version of what should be.
Thanks to All Who Commented on Part 1: You all made me so happy, I cried.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8.1 | Part 8.2 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12
Thursday, 19 April 2012, 7:00 PM
“And do you know what she had the nerve to say to me, then?” Nerys demanded, leaning back and crossing her arms across her tight sequined tank-top. “That little bint told me to keep my distance or she’d...”
She knew the choreography of this diatribe by heart and made the appropriate faces and sounds at the appointed times in her friend’s tirade, but her thoughts were miles away. If she were being honest with herself, Donna Noble’s thoughts were really only a few blocks away and 20 hours in the past, focused on a man she’d never met and would probably never see again. She didn’t know why; it’s not like she fancied him or anything. From what she had seen from across the street, he was just a long streak of nothing, and anyway, she’d given up on men, had stopped looking for love after her marriage had ended. It had been a little over two years since she awoke one day and realized that a year of her life was gone, missing entirely from her memory, and nothing she did had filled in the void left behind. Whenever someone mentioned something that she had missed, some public event or personal milestone she should be aware of, Donna fell back on her habitual excuse, that she’d been traveling, to cover up her ignorance. It was easier to refer to her ‘Extended Holiday Abroad’ rather than trying to explain focal retrograde amnesia.
She must have missed her cue in Nerys’ drama, Donna realized, because suddenly Nerys focused her vitriol on her. “Oh, are you still on about PC Plod from last night? Honestly, Donna, why don’t you set your sights on something a bit more, I dunno, manageable?” Nerys sneered across the table at her. Donna rolled her eyes and gave her friend a withering stare. That was Nerys up one side and down the other, she reflected bitterly before considering the truth of her words. Really, though, she was right; what business did she have focusing on a man she’d only seen at a distance? Yes, he’d regarded at her with something that looked like interest last night, but he was a policeman interviewing potential witnesses to a crime he was trying to solve and anyone on the street might have been able to provide information. It didn’t mean anything at all.
As Nerys launched headlong into Act 2, Donna reflected bitterly on something her mother always told her: You get the friends you deserve. Donna absently wondered what sin she’d committed to end up with Nerys. Maybe she killed someone, she mused- it’s not like she could remember it, anyway. And that was the crux of all her problems- Donna couldn’t remember. She’d lost everything in her travels. She snorted to herself: you were supposed to make new memories on holiday, not lose them. She had panicked at first when she had started to realize the extent of her loss, especially after her mother had pointedly refused to tell her anything about what had happened. All she would say was that Donna had suffered an accident while she’d been out of the country, but she was all right now and Donna should just let it go. As if. Donna had never just let anything go in her life: why should she start now? Worse than her mother, by a thousand times, though, was the way her grandfather had started treating her. He couldn’t look at her or talk to her properly anymore. He’s get the strangest, saddest expression in his eyes when she tried to explain how lost she felt, and she knew- she KNEW- he knew something, but wouldn’t tell her.
But just as conditions as home were becoming unbearable, something unexpected happened. Donna fell headlong into a fairy tale. She met Shaun Temple and he made her smile. He’d shyly flirted with her and she’d fallen in love with the sweet, gentle, caring man who plainly worshiped her. For the first time since her memory loss, she started to rebuild her life. True, they didn’t have much money, but they had each other and they’d manage. She had thought her wedding day would be the pinnacle of her life, that she’d never be able to be any happier, and then, to top it all off, she’d received a winning lottery ticket with a triple rollover as a wedding present. She never did find out who the ticket was from, and even after taxes and sharing a large chunk with both Shaun's family and her own, they still never had to worry about money again. She had it all, and for a time, she was well and truly happy.
And then one day, she wasn't. At first, she thought it was just the letdown after all the excitement had passed, so she and Shaun had gone on a trip. She’d had the strangest sense of deja vu on the streets of Pompeii and she ended up standing, transfixed, in the courtyard of a home that had been buried in the ash for nearly two thousand years. When they'd returned home, it was just as bad. Something would catch her attention- the sound of a dust cart lumbering by or the shriek of a lorry’s breaks- and it would stop her in her tracks and set her to scanning the crowd for a face she had no way to recognize. Then there were the little things, things that would set her to crying for no reason: the sound of an insect, trapped and buzzing at the glass, the Persil ball in the laundry or a plate of cooked spaghetti in the kitchen, and once, when she’d taken her engagement ring in to be cleaned, the sight of her own wedding band on her finger.
Grocery shopping was an ordeal: she'd find herself buying more bananas than she and Shaun could possibly ever eat, but for some reason it was important to always have them around, which was strange, because she wasn't especially fond of them herself. With the amount of banana cupcakes and banana bread and banana pancakes she'd forced upon poor Shaun, it was a miracle that he didn’t absolutely detest bananas in the end. And she hated the sight of both plungers and kitchen whisks.
Then there was Shaun, her perfect man: gorgeous, adored her, and never spoke a word of disagreement to her. But something was missing- it was as if he had no life, no fire, and one day, Donna was horrified to find that she was bored with him. She began to pick arguments with Shaun, trying to force him into declaring an opinion contrary to her own, but no matter what she did, he'd agree with her. It wasn't as if she were an intellectual giant herself, but really! She was profoundly depressed to realize that the only real passion in her marriage took place in the bedroom and nowhere else.
The last straw, though, was the Girl’s Night Out at the George when she'd sat there, absently drinking a Crabbies, and munching on nuts. She'd tried one of the little hors d'oeuvres someone at the table had ordered, tiny toast points with some kind of fish, and suddenly, her head had spun and she'd dropped like a stone. When she finally came to with a massive headache, she couldn't stop sobbing. Shaun had come running, desperate to help, but he had no idea what to do. Donna had ended up comforting him and at that moment, she realized what she had to do.
That was the beginning of the end of her fairy tale. In the end, she'd let Shaun go, as much for his sake as her own. He'd tried to refuse the money from the lottery, but Donna had insisted. It had been a wedding present, after all, and the least he deserved after the hell she'd put him through. She still had enough money left that she didn't need to work but she continued to temp just to keep herself busy and have regular human contact without having to get too close to anyone. She liked being helpful, staying around just long enough to resolve some emergency, then flying off to the next crisis, never hanging about long enough to miss anyone or be missed.
She'd taken to walking regularly, sprinting at intervals for both the cardiac benefits and the adrenaline high it provided. And through it all, Donna kept looking. She was always scanning the crowds, looking for someone or something, but she couldn't remember what it was that she was searching for. After she and Shaun broke up, her grandfather had become sadder and sadder and her mother had become even more strident, if that were possible. Donna assumed they were disappointed in her and what she’d done, even though Wilf steadfastly denied it. But he never again invited her up the hill to look at the stars, and she was heartbroken at the loss of her close connection to him. In the end she found herself alone with only Nerys as a friend.
“Donna? Donna, Earth to Donna....” Nerys whined, her elbow on the table, wrist cocked, gesturing at her friend with a half-empty glass held limply in her hand. “Where is your head these days? ” Reluctantly returning to the here and now and Nerys' continued monologue, Donna sighed heavily and nestled herself back into the corner of the booth they frequented. She loved it and was grateful that the other patrons had conceded it to them without complaint. Tucked into a little alcove to the right of the bar, the small round table could comfortably accommodate four, but no more, and afforded the best view of the George IV. From her vantage point, Donna could see not only the entire room, but also the sidewalk leading up to the building through the long windows out front. She only had to turn her head to look into the courtyard at back. She didn’t know why it was important to her, but she felt safe here and she liked watching the other customers who frequented the pub.
“So, like I was saying,” Nerys continued, refocusing on her favorite topic, “I told her, ‘Sweetie, you’d better...’ ”. Donna stared down into her pint, resigned to another pointless evening filled with Nerys havering on about one trivial thing or another when she felt ... something. A odd, light shiver passed through her and her head jerked up, looking to see who’d entered the pub and let in a draft. Donna’s heart stuttered as time rippled and flowed around her and she reached out a hand to shush the prattling coming from across the table. "Nerys!" she hissed, eyes riveted to the doorway.
Annoyed at the interruption, Nerys huffed and searched the bar for the reason she’d been cut off. Following the line of Donna’s gaze, she was momentarily taken aback. In all the time since she’d returned from her ‘holiday’, Donna had never so much as given a man in the George a second glance. Nerys had begun to think that maybe, in her missing year, Donna had switched teams and her marriage to Shaun had been a sham to throw people off, but as time passed and Donna never made a pass at her, she had abandoned that notion. And now, here she was, barely breathing and staring open-mouthed at the lanky form of a man who paused at the entrance, cataloging his surroundings.
Nerys took inventory quickly, mentally calculating the cost of his wardrobe and drew a swift conclusion. “Is that him, then? Your Tall Glass of Water from last night? Your ‘Dream Man’?” she sneered at Donna. “ He might as well scream ‘copper’, standin’ there like he owns the place. Oh, and he can’t be very good at his job, either, judgin’ by the state of him,” she continued, barely stopping for breath. “They must pay him what he’s worth, which isn’t much. That coat’s got to be at least three years old, and he picked it up at Asda on sale to begin with.”
Nerys’ stream of snark continued unabated and Donna wondered absently if they were looking at the same man. Granted, he wasn’t the sort who would stop conversation as he entered the room, but when you did take notice of him, you wondered why everyone else was still talking. He walked to the bar with easy grace and Donna found her eyes following him. He gestured for the barkeep and there was something about his slender hand that made her palm itch. She followed it with her eyes as he reached to brush the hair back from his forehead -he needed a trim, she decided- and he sniffed as he surveyed the pub with a deceptively casual glance that took in every detail. And his eyes, she thought, dark chocolate eyes you could fall into and never, ever hit bottom.
The barman brought him his pint and he leaned back against the bar, unruffled, unhurried and when Donna looked at him, the weight of the world lifted from her shoulders. She stared at him and was shocked to feel a tickling in her nose and her eyes began to water and all she could think was that she had finally found Home. Which was totally and absolutely ridiculous, she groused mentally, shaking her head and refocusing on the man standing at the bar. What was she, a bloody schoolgirl? She needed to get a grip on herself, right here, right now. Donna braced her hands against the table and drew in a deep, steading breath. She closed her eyes for a moment, preparing to return her attention to Nerys, but looking up, she realized he was staring straight at her.
And then he wasn't. He turned his attention back to the bar without so much as a hint of recognition, and the feeling was gone. It was just my imagination, she thought, then smiled sadly to herself as she completed the lyric in her head, runnin' away with me. She granted herself the luxury of one more glance in his direction before returning her attention back to reality and she almost missed the tiny flicker her way of the eyes of the barkeep her Man of Mystery was addressing.
**********
Want to see Donna’s pub, the George IV?
The George IV
185 High Road
Chiswick
London
W4 2DR
http://georgeiv.co.uk/gallery
(And yes, we’re Googling Bastards....)
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8.1 | Part 8.2 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12