Fic: Pockets in Time Part 3
Title: Pockets in Time (Part 3)
Author: helloprilly
Characters: Ten/Donna
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 2573
Part 2
"I've come to talk with you again..."
~~~
A voice was whispering in her mind.
Donna groaned softly as she began the arduous process of swimming up through the heavy layers of unconsciousness; layers that seemed determined she stay immersed deeply where it was cool and safe.
It was hard to focus on any single sensation as her entire body seemed to be throbbing in pain of some kind or another, but it was the pounding in her head that gave her the most concern. She tried to raise her hand to touch her temple and that was when she became aware of the hand that she had been tightly clutching.
“Donna. Please wake up, Donna. I can’t do much more for you until I can stabilize the Tardis.”
Donna forced herself to blink her eyes open when she heard the Doctor’s voice, the concern in his tone was painfully obvious even as the gentle murmur in her mind ceased.
The light in the control room seemed to be even more dim than it had been before, but it was hard to tell with the Doctor’s bruised face leaning into her field of vision. She winced at the vivid bruise she saw arching across one cheekbone and up into his hairline, while his shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his chest.
His smile could have lit up a sun as he saw her eyes focus on him for a moment before they slid partially closed again, his hand reached up to lightly brush her left temple before he murmured.
“Oh no you don’t, Donna. Come on, focus on me and keep those gorgeous eyes open. I need to see your eyes, Donna.”
“You’re being a total prawn, Timeboy.” Donna’s voice sounded pitiful even to her own ears, but she listened to the Doctor’s voice and willed her eyes to flutter open once more.
“That’s better.” The smile on his face belied the concern in his eyes, and the silence in her mind was even more worrisome. He leaned away from her for a moment before his sonic swam through her vision, the blue light was strangely soothing before he set it aside once more.
“You’ve got a pretty nasty concussion, though I’m sure you already knew that. I’ve given you some medication that should begin to ease your dizziness, but I don’t want you to move too quickly right now.” He finally leaned away from Donna, his hand rising to rub tiredly over his face before he sighed. “You shouldn’t have done what you did, Donna. You had no idea what could’ve happened to you.”
Donna let out bark of laughter, her eyes clenching closed for a moment as the pain flared before she opened them and turned her head towards the Doctor. She groaned when she saw the circles were still floating around the control room, though the large circle that had enveloped the Doctor looked to have drifted towards the doors to the outside. The control panel was completely free of any spheres at the moment, and its panels had been ripped open with wires pulled out in what was obviously an attempt at repairs.
The Doctor was leaning back against an opened panel, his opened shirt revealing a spectacular bruise that covered half his chest. She winced in spite of herself, her hand rising to brush the cool skin lightly before she looked back into his pained eyes. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Doctor. But I really had no choice. The Tardis is in trouble and I can’t fix her. I’ve barely learned to pilot her but I could tell that she was going to fall out of the vortex if I’d waited much longer. I didn’t know what else to do.”
The Doctor laughed softly, his hand rising to hold her warm fingers to his chest for a brief moment. “You managed to crack a few ribs, but those will heal pretty quickly once I can get the medical bay back online. First thing though, I need to repair the old girl before we really do fall out of the vortex.”
Donna remembered the scream from the Tardis before the control room had exploded, that panicked shout had been right before she had vanished from Donna’s mind and she realized that the Tardis was still completely silent.
Donna sat up with a sudden gasp, her eyes clenching closed when the world seemed to tumble end over end with the movement. The Doctor’s worried shout in her mind was a lifeline to which she could cling as she fought to bring her senses back under control. “Easy, Donna! I told you not to move too fast. Those drugs haven’t had enough time to work properly.”
She swayed slightly against the Doctor as he leaned close to support her, her body melting gratefully into his embrace before she was able to calm the riotous spinning in her head. She gingerly touched her left temple, the point that seemed to have borne the brunt of both impacts and winced softly when she felt the cloth that had been wound about her head.
The Doctor just held her close, happy that she was conscious once more even though she was in obvious distress. He was having to fight against his natural instinct to connect with her mind because he just didn’t know the extent of her concussion and he didn’t know if the mental contact would actually do more harm than good. He couldn’t completely keep from touching her mind though, especially when he saw how much comfort she drew from the connection.
They were running out of time and he was loathe to have her move too soon, but he needed her help to make the necessary repairs to the Tardis before it was too late. It was the trip to get to the area that was damaged that was of the most concern to him. He shoved that fear from his mind though when she looked up at him, her blue eyes shining with tears when she asked, “Is the Tardis dead, Doctor?”
“No, she’s not. But she is very seriously damaged, probably more damaged than she has ever been before.” He had never been so happy to be able to answer a question as truthfully as the one that Donna had just asked. She stared into his eyes for a few moments, her thoughts strangely quiet as she studied his expressions before she smiled in joyous relief.
“Oh God, I’m so happy, Doctor. When I couldn’t feel her any more, I’d feared the worst; but what’s happened? What are all these circles and where did they come from?”
The Doctor jerked at her last question, his gaze jumping up to scan around the control room before he looked back to her with a question blazing in his eyes. “What circles, Donna? What can you see?”
Donna jerked back when she heard the Doctor’s question. Her eyes slid closed when the pain stabbed through her temples and the world spun on its axis once more. “What do you mean? Can’t you see what I do? I thought you were always in my head?”
The confusion and pain in Donna’s voice cut the Doctor to the quick, he heard in that pained whisper all the confusion and worry of a person who was apart from everyone around them. Donna was still worried about her differences. She still did her best to shield everyone she met from those differences, though sometimes those differences shined through whether she wanted them to or not. However, in this case, she was looking at him with concern writ plainly on her face; wondering why he wasn’t aware of what she was seeing and worried that once again she was too different to be so readily accepted.
The Doctor pulled her close, his lips brushing her temple before he forced his eyes to clench tightly closed. “I’m worried about your injury, Donna. I don’t want to touch your mind until I know the severity of your concussion. Frankly, I’m terrified to hurt you more.”
Donna shook her head with a laugh, the dizzying waves of vertigo already fading away far more quickly than they had even a few moments ago. She reached up to touch his cheek, her fledgling mind reaching out to his despite his cry of concern so that she could immerse herself in his thoughts. “You worry too much, Doctor. We both need you now, and you especially need what I can see. Don’t be scared of looking for it, I’ve been through worse and I know that we can fix it in the end.”
The Doctor looked down into Donna’s blue eyes, the amazing spirit that refused to be cowed was wrapping itself around him and not letting him suppress their connection. He cried out softly as he felt his entire being melt into her essence once more, his eyes sliding closed so that his mind could reach out through her enhanced senses.
He fumbled for a moment, his concern for her well being still overriding his every thought until he felt her mind gently enfold his and guide him to her visual perceptions.
The Doctor gasped when he blinked open his mental eyes, his gaze shifting frantically from corner to corner until he felt a dizzying wave of vertigo nearly overwhelm the both of them. He clenched their eyes closed, their minds were swirling with the overload of stimuli as well as the aftereffects of a not insignificant concussion; but he finally understood what Donna was seeing.
Donna was trembling in his arms. Her head was hurting more than it had been since she had regained consciousness, but the vertigo was almost completely passed. She had reveled in the connection with the Doctor, though it had taxed her mind more than she would have liked. He hadn’t been too cautious when he had withheld that contact from her since her mind was not as accustomed to the telepathic connection; but she still missed his thoughts and the silence was vast enough that she knew she would never be comfortable for long without his presence again.
“I’d scanned the disturbances in the Tardis before you regained consciousness, so I knew that the damage was pretty severe but what I just saw confirmed my worst concerns.”
“What’s going on, Doctor? How bad is it and where’s the Tardis? I can’t feel her in my thoughts at all.” Donna frowned worriedly when the Doctor didn’t immediately answer her question.
Instead, the Doctor pulled away from Donna for a moment, his gaze was carefully hooded as he picked up a tattered, ancient book that had been resting on its spine near the control console. He settled into a cross legged position by her side, his fingers twitching nervously against the pages of the book before he took a deep breath and finally responded to her concern.
“Have you ever heard of a panic room, Donna?”
Donna blinked in confusion at the Doctor’s question, her gaze lifting to his troubled eyes before she nodded. “I have, but what does that have to do with what’s going on right now?”
The Doctor huffed a tired sigh, his left hand rising to run distractedly through his disheveled hair while he gathered his thoughts. “It has everything to do with our current situation actually.” The confusion was plain on Donna’s face, but he could also tell that she was getting more worried by the minute with his evasion.
“The Tardis is safe for the moment, but I’m not sure how long that will be true. Her consciousness has retreated from its primary housing into a sort of panic room in order to protect herself from further damage.”
Donna chewed on her lip thoughtfully for a moment, her gaze rising to the time rotor as it sluggishly moved in its casing. The light was growing more dim by the moment and she could feel their time quickly slipping away from them. “How can you be sure she’s safe there, Doctor? Can you feel her still?”
The Doctor nodded, his hand rising to tap his temple in response. “Yes, I can but nothing more than a whisper of her presence. We’ve been bonded for centuries so it’s all but impossible for her to be completely severed from me while we’re actually inside the ship. It’s just a knowledge of where she is and that she is safe, but terrified at the moment.”
“Why is she in hiding, Doctor? Do the spheres have something to do with all of this?”
“The fabric of reality has shattered inside the Tardis. The disturbances are going to continue to get worse until the ship is literally ripped apart unless we can repair the damage.”
Donna gasped when she heard those words, her hand flying to her throat while her gaze darted around the control room with a new feeling of dread. “Then those spheres are actually…?”
“Miniature pockets of time that are spreading throughout the ship due to a rupture in the Tardis’ dimensional multiphasic transducer.”
Donna looked at the Doctor blankly before she muttuered. “In English, Spaceman.”
The Doctor slammed the book closed, his eyes shining with renewed purpose as he jumped to his feet. “The Tardis has a broken part and we’ve got to fix it. Now, come on!”
He stretched his hand out to Donna, his fingers twitching slightly as he waited for her to make her decision. She was staring deep into his eyes, her thoughts trying to make sense of what exactly he was thinking but she knew that there really was no other choice in the matter.
The Tardis was badly hurt and they were the only ones that could help her before it was too late. She reached up and threaded her fingers through his, her breath hitching as he carefully pulled her to her feet. “I’m going to expect a better explanation than that, Timeboy, but I know we don’t have much time to sit around nattering about it. Let’s go and you can explain on the way.”
The Doctor pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose and just grinned. “Of course, I will!” He twirled his sonic in his fingers before turning towards the corridor that led deeper into the Tardis.
“She can’t shift her corridors to make it easier for us to get to her core, so we’ve got to do this the hard way. I’m going to need you to watch for those spheres so we can avoid them if at all possible. Are you going to be alright doing that?”
Donna nodded softly. “I’ll be fine, Doctor. It seems that medicine has finally kicked in.”
The Doctor frowned softly before setting out. “It just masks the symptoms of your injury but it doesn’t heal the damage. So if you get dizzy or start to feel too much pain, make sure to let me know.”
She just chuckled in reply. “Quite worrying, Doctor. I’ll be extra careful!”
He took a moment to look deeply into her eyes in order to convince himself that moving her really was the only way to help the Tardis, his fingers tightened in her grasp for a brief moment before he murmured, “Allons-y!”
Hand in hand, they entered the darkened corridor to begin the long trek to the Tardis’ core, both uncertain about what they might confront along the way.
Part 4