Fic: Underestimating Donna Noble
Title: Underestimating Donna Noble
Author: lemon_pencil
Rating: G
Disclaimer: The Doctor and Donna want to belong to me, I'm sure, but the Beeb decrees that it is not to be.
Characters/Pairings: Ten, Donna
Summary: The Doctor's made a mistake in not giving Donna anything useful to do on their latest mission. Luckily she's about to put that right.
Spoilers: Only trivials ones. You've all watched the bloody show.
Author's Notes: Kinda different to most of my stuff in that it has half a plot! A lazily resolved lame plot, but it sorta has one all the same!
Swivelling chairs were the kind of thing you never really grew out of getting just a little bit excited at. The Doctor was the one who was normally the big kid, but Donna had to admit a certain penchant for swivelling chairs. When she’d been a kid, she’d sometimes crept into Sylvia’s study where she worked from home, and whizzed round and round for hours. So there was still a part of her that revelled in the feeling of spinning around, dizzy and slight nauseous, while watching the room flash by repeatedly in front of you.
Not this time though. This was one chair that was not going to provide Donna with any sort of pleasure; instead she was sitting quite stationary, staring straight ahead and sulking.
“Just sit there, Donna,” the Doctor had said. “Don’t touch anything. Let me look around.” They were in the office of Mr J. Snypes, a wealthy entrepreneur whose business premises had been emitting some unusual and highly suspicious radiation, which according to the Doctor didn’t belong on Earth. Something about him just didn’t quite add up, so they’d come to take a look around after dark, the locks proving no difficulty for the sonic screwdriver. Not that he’d told her what he was even looking for.
“What, you don’t want me to do anything?” she’d asked, miffed.
“Erm, you can… watch for intruders,” had been his reply, so she’d huffed and flopped down on the chair.
So much for “You’re brilliant, Donna.” More like “You’re a liability,” she thought. She eyed the desk in front of her moodily, and a square of paper poking out from underneath a paperweight caught her eye. She pulled it out, and saw that it read simply, ‘9 2 5 12.’ Bored, her mind started to drift away, finding trivial significance in the numbers. Nine - that was the number of faces the Doctor had possessed before the face she knew. Right now she’d quite like to slap the current one, actually. Two - how many hearts he had, of course. Five - the number of support pillars the TARDIS control room had, which she’d studied intently whist the Doctor had been busy tinkering away at the controls (it wasn’t a particularly exciting activity for spectators, however much he enjoyed it.) And 12 - it had been the 12th month of the year when she’d met the Doctor for the first time.
Losing interest in this exercise, she turned her attention back to the Doctor, who was now carefully opening the drawers in a large, grey filing cabinet. He looked up at her, his sonic screwdriver held between his teeth, and smiled through a mouthful of metal. She failed to return the gesture, instead choosing to scowl at him grumpily. He removed the screwdriver from his mouth and frowned.
“What’s up with you, Little Miss Sunshine?” he asked, peering into a file before snapping it shut almost immediately and picking up the next one.
“Nothing. Clearly I’m not skilled enough to help you with your investigation, so don’t let me interrupt you. I’ll just sit here and swivel for a bit, shall I?” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
He sighed. “I didn’t mean that. It’ll just - it’ll just be quicker if I do this. I know what I’m looking for,” he said, ignoring her mutter of “So would I if you bothered to tell me.” He continued, throwing away another file. “And anyway, the type of radiation I picked up from this place is potentially dangerous; there’s no knowing what we might find. I don’t want you ending up in the hospital bay in the TARDIS for a week. The moaning would drive me mad,” he grinned.
“Oi, you!” She was torn between continuing to sulk, forgiving him for wanting her to be safe or pretending to be annoyed at his teasing. But she didn’t have time to consider it for long, because just then she spotted movement on the CCTV screen on the wall.
“Doctor, someone’s heading towards this room!” she warned him, nervously.
He leapt up and grabbed her hand, pulling her towards the door. Emerging from the office, they could see two security guards advancing from the left, still a distance away down the long passage.
“You can help with this bit, Donna,” said the Doctor, grinning. “Run!”
They began to tear down the corridor in the opposite direction, just as the two figures also broke into a run. Donna’s heart was pounding in her chest and her palm was moist with perspiration - or maybe it was his, she couldn’t tell. This was always the bit that she both loved and hated: the intense fear at the prospect of being caught was almost overwhelming but at the same time fuelled the thrilling rush of adrenaline that coursed through her veins.
The Doctor skidded to a halt outside a door. “I’ve studied the floor plan for the building and if I’m right, this door ought to lead to the concealed basement area,” he panted, flinging it open and pulling her into the apparently tiny room beyond. The door swung shut behind them and plunged them into darkness.
“Hold on a sec,” said the Doctor. Donna could hear him rummaging around in his pockets above the sound of her own laboured breathing as she tried to get her breath back. The space was suddenly illuminated by the light of the sonic screwdriver, and he proceeded to run it along the seams of the wall in front of them. With a quiet rumbling noise, a panel protruded from the wall and rotated to reveal a glowing green keypad. A digital combination lock flashed up on the screen with the numbers one to twenty around the dial.
The Doctor grasped his hair in frustration. “A code, ahh, what would they have as a code? This was one of the things I was trying to find earlier; I thought they might have some sort of code but I didn’t see anything of use.” He was talking at a hundred miles an hour now, and Donna could almost see the little cogs whirring in his brain. “If we could get in, I could seal the door so those guys can’t follow us, but I can’t open it! Using the screwdriver to run through all the possible combinations will take several minutes but we don’t have that long!” He looked anxiously at the door behind, and she knew he was estimating how long it would take for their pursuers to catch up with them.
She was struck by an idea. “Out of the way, Spaceman,” said Donna, elbowing the fretful Time Lord to one side. Please let this work, she thought, screwing up her face in memory.
9… 2… 5… 12
Click
The wall moved backwards and slid open, revealing a staircase. Donna turned to the Doctor, whose mouth was hanging open in utter surprise. He opened and closed it several times.
“But… but… how did you…?” he stuttered weakly.
Donna grasped his hand and dragged him into the room beyond. “Come on! Scary bad guys outside? Remember?”
Snapping out of staring at her, he sprung into action and sealed the entrance. He then reverted his attention back to her, still gaping.
“How the hell did you do that?” he asked, disbelief evident in his voice.
She smirked. “Let’s just say I did a little bit of looking around myself in that office back there. Good with numbers, remember?”
“Oh Donna, I’ve said it so many time before but you are absolutely brilliant, ” he said, shaking his head in wonder.
“Yeah, whatever. But next time you’re snooping around, tell me what you’re doing, yeah? Without knowing what the heck you’re up to, I might not have stumbled upon what you needed another time. I may not be Einstein but, little bit more up here than you might think,” she said, gesturing to her head.
The Doctor hastened to correct her. “It’s not that I ever thought you weren’t intelligent, Donna, it wasn’t that. But okay, you win. I’m sorry I didn’t let you in on what I was looking for. Clearly my inquiries would have been greatly aided by the investigative skills of Donna Noble.” He smiled at her, a hint of pride in her in his expression.
She returned his smile, satisfied. They proceeded down the steps to the underground chamber. Later they would discover the precise plans of Mr J. Snypes, call in UNIT to lock down the building, narrowly escape a premature explosion and see Snypes being put away for good. All in a day’s work for the Doctor and Donna. But right now, the Doctor took a moment to marvel at how amazing his best friend really was. Every time he momentarily underestimated her ability, she went and did something to show how exactly how capable she was. Some day she’d believe she was wonderful, maybe.