Fic: Close Encounters of the Invisible Kind (part 4)
Close Encounters of the Invisible Kind (part 4)
Author: Lilac Summers (lilsum4)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Doctors/Donna, Rose, some Jack for funsies!
Rating: PG
A/N: And here we go! Let me know if you are enjoying this!
"You're in an awfully chipper mood," observes the Doctor when he feels Donna dance around him, a rush of displaced air marking her movements. "Have you been watching Jack in the shower again?"
"I'd set up camp in there if I could," rhapsodizes Donna while she twirls around, giddy with the remembered sight of hunky naked male. She's bubbling with energy and she thinks perhaps Jack, especially naked Jack, is like ghost crack or something.
But it wasn't even the sight of that wonderfully toned, wet body that made her so happy. It was the way Jack would walk to the console room to announce loudly that he was going to take a shower, then would call for her and cheekily invite her to join him - like she was a real person, like she mattered. The way he kept a rambling conversation going in the steamy bathroom and pretended to answer questions she hadn't really asked. It was the way his laughter echoed off the tiles when Donna amused herself by zooming through the mist of the shower-head, managing to make small whirlwinds of droplets.
He treated her like she were anyone else, not some soppy ghost. And Donna finds it absolutely wonderful that out of all of time and space, she has managed to find two people - the Doctor and Jack - who try to include her as much as possible.
If she finally manages to grow on Rose, too, she will have herself a whole new family.
With this happy thought, she buzzes another quick circle around the Doctor and gives one of his ears a friendly tug. "Anyway, he said he didn't mind. And if a girl can't peek at a gorgeous man when she's a ghost, then when can she, I ask you?"
The Doctor shakes his head in amusement. He can't hear her words, but he can almost sense the tone. He imagines it as bossy and brash and bright, though he doesn't know why he thinks so. "I wouldn't have guessed that 51st century pheromones worked on the non-corporeal. You must be the cleanest ghost in all existence, with how much you've been hanging around Jack during bath-time."
Donna tilts her head, observing how focused the Doctor suddenly seems to be, furiously sonicking a loose screw on the console. "Are you…are you jealous?" she shrieks, delighted. "Are you all sad and sorry I no longer peek at you in the shower? Which I don't because you told me not to go back in there. Jealous, jealous!" she crows, swirling around him in circles. "Are you? Are you? Are you?" she bugs him, poking at his ears with each question.
Jack walks in, hair wet from his most recent shower, to the Doctor batting his hands madly around his head.
"So either the TARDIS developed an infestation of gnats, or Donna is bothering you," Jack observes, fastening a cuff.
The Doctor ends with one last swipe at the air and a "Quit it!" at Donna. He then turns his attention to Jack. "I do wish you would stop encouraging her."
Jack shrugs. "Why? Donna and I get along just fine, don't we sweetheart?" A cobwebby kiss on the cheek is his answer. He grins at the Doctor. "I can't help that I'm adorable."
There's a thump and a curse from far off in the TARDIS - Rose, perhaps, knocking something over. Bubbling with manic energy, Donna shouts, "I'll go check!" and rushes off, buoyed by the TARDIS' rusty laughter.
The Doctor senses her leave and listens to the drifting sounds of the TARDIS, before turning curious eyes to Jack. "Can you feel her, then, Donna? I understand Boe-kind are psychic."
Jack shrugs and settles into the jump seat, one hand slicking over wet hair. "Not really. No more than the odd sensation of walking into cobwebs, the way Rose described. Though every now and then I catch a tiny hint of noise - like static coming from very far off. But I always make a special effort to make any lady feel included, even ghostly ones." He smiles, all dimples and charm. "Would love to see her, though. Bet she's a looker. What do you feel?"
The Doctor decides, out of the kindness of his heart and no small amount of evil glee, not to mention that Donna is actually creepy as hell: nebulous, featureless face and body, with glowing holes for eyes. "I don't feel much more than you. Though I do believe the longer she stays in the TARDIS, the stronger she becomes. I can tell when she's in the room now, and get a sense of her mood. Maybe one day I'll even be able to hear her," he muses, making one last adjustment to the screw.
Jack observes the Doctor with knowing eyes. "It must be lonely for Donna, not being able to interact. I've never actually met a ghost before, and I've been around. How long do you think she'll be able to stay? I mean, she can't just live on the TARDIS forever, can she? No matter what type of boost she gets, she's still not alive. Doesn't she belong somewhere, like the 'great beyond' or something?"
"I don't know, Jack. Where do our souls go when we die? Even the Time Lords didn't have an answer to that one. We thought we returned to the universe as energy but here Donna is, proving that there is something that remains.
"Yet if there is someplace we are supposed to go when we die, then why was Donna able to stay here? Does that place, wherever she is supposed to be, want her back? Or is staying here, absorbing the vortex, turning her into something that won't be accepted when she's finally ready to go?" the Doctor finishes quietly, voicing his frequent fears.
Their conversation comes to an abrupt halt when a swirl of energy enters the room once more, accompanied by a fuming Rose.
"Doctor, you have to make her stop!" demands Rose, waving a handful of mascara wands.
The Doctor senses Donna take refuge behind his back. The TARDIS is giggling, and he doesn't doubt Donna is, too. "Make who stop what?" the Doctor plays innocent.
"Donna! Make Donna stop stealing my mascara! All I've got left are wands with no bottles. I hid my new ones in a cupboard and practically killed myself climbing up there, to find only the wands left!"
"I didn't do it, I was having a shower with Jack!" proclaims Donna grandly.
Right on cue, Jack pipes up for her. "Donna was in the shower with me, I'm pretty sure."
Rose gapes. "And none of you have a problem with a ghost in your shower?!" she shrieks.
Jack saunters to her and swings an arm over Rose's shoulder, pulling her into his side and giving her a wink. Rose squeaks, mascara wands dropping from her limp fingers, while the Doctor watches impassively.
"Don't be jealous, darling. You can join me in the shower anytime, too."
Rose turns bright, bright red at that, casting uncertain glances the Doctor's way.
For his part, the Doctor merely rolls his eyes at Jack. "Ease up, Jack. You're going to short-circuit her brain if you keep pumping out so many pheromones."
"Ooooooh, Rose!" Donna abandons her hiding place behind the Doctor, to fly up to Rose with equal parts excitement and envy. "This is where you're supposed to take Jack up on his offer, because seriously, you do not want to miss out on that! Oh please please please, do this for the both of us. I won't watch. I mean, I'll hardly watch. Actually, doesn't matter, you won't know if I watch or not."
Jack is grinning at the Doctor. "And you don't have to feel left out, either, Doc. You may also join me in the shower whenever you like."
Rose's mouth drops open in shock, the Doctor rolls his eyes again like he was expecting the offer, and Donna floats to the ceiling in surprised glee.
"OH. MY. GAWD. Okay, I'd definitely be watching that. In fact, I'd get the TARDIS to record it," Donna informs everyone firmly, in case they were in doubt. So what if they can't hear her, she wants it known just in case.
But any further discussion on shower partners ends as the TARDIS thunks to a halt.
"Ah, here we are. If everyone is quite done, let's get going," says the Doctor
As they trek to the door, Rose turns around a gives a final glare around the room. "I'm not forgetting the mascara incident! This isn't over!"
"You bet," quips Donna. "I will have a list of 10 reasons for why you should totally get over your crush on the Doctor and jump Jack's bones instead. Number one is: LOOK AT HIM. I'll have another 9 for you when you return. Be excited!"
She floats with them to the door, imagining what it would be like to actually get to leave with them, experience whatever adventure they're heading off to. But she knows she can't, and that's okay, because she gets to wave to her new budding family as they file out the door, and it makes her happy even if they can't see her.
Afterward, she heads to the Doctor's room to wait in its soothing blue confines. And waits. And waits some more.
Hours later, they still are not back..
When Rose finally returns, alone and frantic, Donna feels her life (well, afterlife) is about to crumble.
"I don't understand," cries Donna, trying futilely to stop Rose. "You're hurting her! What are you doing?!"
Rose tightens the chains wrapped around the TARDIS console once more, deaf to Donna - as everyone always has been.
She runs back outside and gets into the tow truck, revving the engine, and all Donna can do is look on uselessly from the open front doors. "Stop it!"
The chains tighten and pull, and the TARDIS gives a long, unhappy groan.
Donna rushes back to the console. "Just do it. Giver her what she wants before you break!" she begs the TARDIS.
The TARIDS warbles at her, warning of consequences Donna doesn't quite understand. All Donna cares about is that the TARDIS is in pain, and the Doctor is lost. "She wants to go back and pick up the Doctor and Jack, right? That's good! Just….." Donna swallows. The TARDIS is her friend, and the closest thing to belonging she will ever find - but she doesn't understand the motivations behind even a tiny percentage of the TARDIS' actions, like why she would let Rose try to pry her open.
"I'll help," throws in Donna, recklessly. She doesn't know quite what she'd be helping with, but she figures it must be something pretty important if the TARDIS won't just open up, let Rose do whatever she's trying to do, and rescue the Doctor. "Let Rose go back and I'll help with whatever you need," Donna promises again.
The TARDIS pauses in her clanking before giving one last inquisitive groan. Rose is rushing back inside just as a panel by the console gives an ominous cliiick and begins to open.
Rose, who was sure of failing once more, watches with eyes wide in hope and surprise. Gold energy begins to stream from the panel, floating towards Rose.
"Oh. Oh, that …probably won't be good," observes Donna.
It's when she sees the gold stream into Rose - through her eyes and mouth and nose and ears - that she really starts to wonder what she's just promised. Alarmingly, the more gold that flows into Rose, the more Donna feels an undeniable pull towards the blond. Rose has become her own center of gravity, pulling Donna in like a black hole
Donna reaches out to the console, frantic fingers plucking at levers and wrapping around anything she can find. But her link to the TARDIS is utterly broken, and it's like trying to grasp anything else now as her fingers reach straight through. She can start to feel her non-corporeal edges dissolve, her anchor totally lost.
She has no choice but to let the invisible current tow her closer and closer to Rose, until she's staring at her from centimeters away and then…
Where is she?!
Everything feels weird. And heavy. And wrong.
And oh, so right.
There's mass to her, and the luxury of feeling bones and muscles and a body standing solidly on the ground. She's looking out of strange eyes, swirls of gold in her vision, but by god she's alive.
Donna is lost in the beautiful pleasure of feeling a heartbeat in her chest, of drawing breath into lungs, so it takes her a moment to notice she's moving.
Her feet are marching without her permission, and she sees unfamiliar soft white hands waving over levers before she realizes, with sick understanding, that she's not alive. She's in Rose, inhabiting her body like an unwilling virus.
It scares her, scares her more than how wonderful it feels to have hands and eyes and feet and feel cloth against her skin. She can't control anything that Rose is doing. And now that she's aware where she is, she starts to sense how full it seems inside her head, like whispers and screaming and singing, all at the edge of hearing. It takes only a little bit of focus to recognize that the singing is the TARDIS. The whisper is something new that seems to look at Donna and say, "I am the Bad Wolf."
And the screaming is Rose. Poor Rose who had no idea what she was asking for when she opened up the TARDIS.
Well, neither did Donna.
Now a final wave of Rose's hand sends them hurtling back where they came from, Rose's feet steady and sure during flight in a way they have never been before. The TARDIS lands smoothly, soundlessly, without a single quiver.
Rose or the TARDIS or this "Bad Wolf" carries them all through the door. The sight that greets them breaks Donna's heart, that of the Doctor facing off against an improbable army of pepper pots. The look on his face is resigned, almost calm, but as the pepper pots exclaim and he turns his head to see what the fuss is about, his face blanches with terror at the sight of Rose.
"Rose…what did you do?!" he gasps.
"I am the Bad Wolf…" come the words out of their lips. Donna loses the rest of the sentences as she feels engulfed in light, Rose pulling from the power of the TARDIS to make sweeping changes in the cosmos.
That screaming that Donna has identified as the "true" Rose is getting louder and louder in her head, hurting Donna's brain. The Doctor is begging Rose, the Bad Wolf, to stop, but Donna understands that Rose is caught up in the overwhelming power of the TARDIS and can't - maybe even doesn't want - to let go. Donna can actually feel it burning through Rose's body like a cancer, and Rose is wrapped up in it, unable to see a way out.
So what are you going to do about it, silly girl? Donna berates herself. You have to do something! The TARDIS must have known you could help someway, or she wouldn't have accepted your offer!
But what can she do? She's was ever just a temp, and now a dead one at that!
Except that right now she's in this body, trapped with a burning Rose. And for one horrible moment, one truly evil instant, Donna wonders what will happen if Rose burns. If Rose burns, could Donna perhaps stay? Could Donna inhabit the empty places Rose's soul left as she burned away, and steal this body for her own? To feel again, to touch, to breathe and laugh and have people see her and listen and be alive.
Donna kills the thought as quickly as she acknowledges it lurking in the back of her mind. Because Rose is sweet and naive and so young still, so caught up in the romance of life that she thinks everything is one big game. But she's maturing, and given enough time and the wonderful experiences the Doctor has given her, she could become someone truly brilliant.
This is Rose's time, Rose's life, and Donna…Donna's time is over.
"Let it go," Donna shouts loudly in Rose's brain, for want of any other ideas. It's the only thing that occurs to her, and one thing that Donna's always been able to do: shout. "It's enough!" she screams into the maelstrom of energies.
A thought flits through her mind, in Rose's broken voice, "I can't. I can't find a way out."
"I will help you," promises Donna. "Follow my voice. Stop using the power - it doesn't belong to you anyway - and just follow my voice."
"...Donna?" Rose's thoughts falter, the TARDIS' energy slipping slightly from her grasp.
"Yes! Yeah, sweetheart, it's me. You don't want to be a ghost like ol' dead Donna now, do you? You can't go adventuring with the Doctor if you do! You have to let it all go."
She continues to cajole and berate and occasionally sass at Rose until, with a sigh, Rose forces her hold on the power free. The gold that had overpowered her vision clears enough for Donna to see the Doctor approaching them carefully, grasping her (wait, no, Rose's) head in his large, gentle hands.
And kissing her.
Oh, Donna hasn't been kissed in a very long time. Hasn't felt lips and warmth and another person's touch on her in ages. And though she knows the Doctor isn't kissing her, it still feels as though he is. It feels wonderful. If Donna could, she'd wrap her arms around him and hold him tight and not let go.
Even if it's not really a kiss, but the Doctor's own brand of a cure, as he slowly pulls the TARDIS' energy within himself.
Donna feels the last golden tendrils wrapped around Rose like a puppeteer unravel. She feels the pressure of the Doctor's lips against hers begin to fade away as Donna's soul once again is pulled along, a leaf caught in a river, at the mercy of currents she can't control.
She loses the feeling in her hands, in her feet, the lovely novelty of mass, until she's an amorphous nothing once more.
For one quick moment, she wonders if she'll be pulled into the Doctor this time, and won't that be interesting…
But she smacks into what feels like a solid barrier, letting her go no farther. He's a Time Lord, after all, and perhaps his brain is already too full to hold a ghost, or he can protect himself against possessions. Donna reels at the impact for a moment before quickly gripping the Doctor's arm, anchoring herself to him now that she's back in ghost form. And so she has a front row view of him taking the last drop of energy, of catching an unconscious Rose in his arms, and him opening eyes that now glow a brilliant gold with pilfered TARDIS energy.
To her shock, he turns his head to where she floats, gripping his arm. Those golden eyes widen, and the Doctor smiles with delight. "Is that you, Donna?"
Donna stares. He's looking right at her! "Doctor?" she says, tentatively.
The Doctor's smile stretches even wider, if that's possible, like it will split his face in two. "Look at you! You are beautiful!" he says.
Donna's non-existent heart leaps in her throat. Hope builds to staggering heights. "You-you can see m-" she starts to say, right when the Doctor closes his eyes for one long moment, his face twisting in pain.
When he opens them again, they are blue and normal, and he looks right through her as if she's no longer there. His brow furrows in confusion, like he can't quite recall what he was looking at.
"Doctor?" Donna whispers. She whispers it because if he doesn't turn to look at her again, she can fool herself into thinking it's because she wasn't loud enough for him to hear her.
He doesn't turn to look at her again.
Instead, he picks Rose up and strides to the TARDIS; Donna is towed in after him once more by her grip on his arm.
And she doesn't care what anyone else would say; she's not crying, 'cuz ghosts don't have tear ducts, anyway.
Go to part 5