Alien Voices
Title: Alien Voices
Author: mihane_echo
Rating: Rated E for everyone
Word Count: 1719
Spoilers: None
Summary: "Actually, just for the sake of clarification, I said we had no musical instruments. You said we had no music." Companion piece to Alien Curses.
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it belongs to the Beeb and I'm borrowing it to play with. I promise I will return them (marginally) unharmed. ;3
Author's Note: More Gallifreyan language and culture, yay! Less with the funny and more with the squishy this time.
Donna just stares at the Doctor. Rather, at his legs, which are sticking out from under the floor; he's burrowed himself up underneath the console and is digging around in the TARDIS's inner workings. Still, the legs are attached to him and so Donna directs her perplexed stare in their general direction, because what he's just told her is just plain weird.
Rather, it seems weird to her. And this is even considering that she's witnessed alien babies made out of human fat and rescued a slave race that looked like sausage exploded out of their faces.
"Whatcha mean, you didn't have music? Time Lords didn't have savage breasts what needed soothing?"
She hears a bang and a softly muttered curse --which makes her groan, Lord only knows what disgusting thing he's said this time-- before he peeks out through the grating at her with wide eyes. One hand is rubbing his forehead where he's banged it. "Savage what??"
Donna glares at him. "Don't get clever, alien boy, you know exactly how I meant that."
The Doctor briefly holds her gaze, eyebrows knit and raised in an awkward, incredulous expression. Then he shakes his head, and disappears from sight again, returning to his tinkering. "Actually, what I said was we didn't have your sort of music. We were never much for instruments. Gadgets, now gadgets! Hah, we could come up with a dozen billion different gadgets and gizmos and thingamabobs for anything you could think of, but music... Very little effort went into it."
"You told me once that Time Lords had nothing if not pomp and ceremony," Donna says from her place on the jumpseat. "Said you had ceremonies and rituals for nearly everything from sunrise to sunset. Including sunrise and sunset."
"Yeah, we did."
"And no music?" The idea is just too baffling to Donna. She loves music. She needs her music. It's like the breath of life to her, the sound of heaven; it keeps her sane. Furthermore, the Doctor loves music! Donna tips her head incredulously. "How do you even evolve as a culture without music? Even animals have music!"
"Animals have voices, not musical instruments," the Doctor says.
Donna just blinks at him. "Whatever. I just don't figure it. How do you have a big, grand ceremony with no music? I mean, there're marches and themes and anthems and chants and fanfare... That's all stuff you need for ceremony, isn't it? Especially if you're going to be wearing some of the gaudy things you've shown me and trudging down an aisle what's half a mile long just to graduate from the Prydonian chapter."
Apparently finished, the Doctor scootches out from under the console, dusts off his hands. As he does he pins her with a little roll of his eyes; Donna just beams at him. He smirks.
"Why do you think I left? On Earth alone you've got lullabies, and serenades, and ballads and waltzes; you've got Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Janis Joplin, The Beatles, Bob Seger, Creedence. You've got Irish drinking songs and African chants and Japanese strings. I could go on and on."
He grins widely at her. "You lot are the loudest bunch in the universe, you love to listen to yourselves. And with good reason: humans have come up with incredible, brilliant stuff!"
Donna smiles at him as he replaces the grating into the floor and then slides around to the side of the console opposite her and gives a few dials a jiggle. "But not Time Lords?"
"Believe it or not, we mostly liked to hear ourselves ramble," he says.
"That's not as hard to believe as you might think, Captain Gob," the ginger woman teases, and the Doctor pokes his head out from behind the column.
"Oi!"
Donna laughs at him and he returns to his work with a little groan and a comment under his breath about how much abuse he suffers on a daily basis, blah blah. After a long moment she says thoughtfully, "It really does seem weird that you had no music on Gallifrey. It seems like with an average of a millennium of life to play with, at least one of you could manage a little ditty."
They're both silent for a moment and then the Doctor clears his throat. "Actually, just for the sake of clarification, I said we had no musical instruments. You said we had no music."
"So, what? You did have music?"
The Doctor stays quiet, keeping himself behind the column and out of view. Donna peeks around; he's concentrating very hard on the console and not looking at her. He seems embarrassed, fidgeting in his trainers a bit. "Well, kind of."
Donna sighs. "Good grief, you're like a little boy sometimes. Spit it out."
"We sang."
This time its Donna's turn to raise her eyebrows. "You sing."
"Sang, past tense," the Doctor says sharply. "I don't sing anymore."
"It's about to be sing, present tense. Let's have something," she says excitedly.
"No."
"Oh c'mon! You had to have known that if you said it, I would want to hear and yet you said it anyway, so not only is it completely not fair if you hold out on me now, it also makes you a giant tease." She folds her arms over her chest, fixing her gray eyes stubbornly on him. "C'mon, sing for me. I promise, I won't laugh at you. Even though it is my turn."
The Doctor stares at her uncomfortably, chewing the inside of his lip. After a moment, and not without a resigned sigh, he leans against the console, pulls off his glasses. He keeps his eyes on the floor for a long time, as Donna waits patiently.
He starts soft at first, so quiet she can hardly hear him. He never looks up, only fiddles with his glasses anxiously as the words pour out of him, his little Gallifreyan lilt making up the melody almost on its own. It's beautiful, far more beautiful than she would've expected, and it stuns her momentarily.
She doesn't understand the lyrics, not all of them. She can only pick out the few words that he's taught her, words like fire and sun and home, their breathy consonants and quiet vowels seeming to disappear into the air as the Doctor sings them. But somehow she can comprehend the ballad's meaning just the same.
Donna can hear it in the Doctor's voice, see it on his face. Pain and triumph, elation and warmth, angst and wholeness and passion. It stirs her to her core, a familiar, well-known feeling that she can't quite place at the moment. But she knows that even though she's never heard this song, never heard these words, the Doctor is singing about something Donna understands and feels deeply, innately.
As he finishes, Donna finds herself grinning at him, positively tickled. The Doctor doesn't look up; instead, he peers up at her through his lashes, his face flush with embarrassment. It makes Donna smile even wider. Moments like this are when the Doctor seems least alien, even though he's crooning an alien song through an alien tongue. Gallifreyan doesn't sound alien, not like science fiction novel alien tongues, anyway, with Xs and Qs and Zeds all over the place. That, and the apprehension on his face and in his body imply nothing more than a man singing to his mate and his composure a little ruffled for it.
She slides off the jumpseat and takes his hand, strokes his knuckles with her thumb. He inclines his head just the smallest inch to meet her eyes. Donna smiles warmly at him. "I guess you Time Lords must've really loved the sounds of your own voices," she tells him.
He returns her smile. "Well, we were, maybe, yeah, just a teeny bit pretentious."
Donna smirks at him, squeezes his hand. She turns to lean on the console next to him. "Oh but, now you're going to have to teach me the words because I couldn't understand all of them."
"It's complicated," he says, and Donna can tell by his tone he's trying to deter her from the subject. She grimaces.
"Ugh, was it something disgusting again? What is the matter with you? Pretentious you might say, but it seems like I all ever see are the most appalling bits! I'm sort of glad you never created musical instruments, I can't imagine what they'd look like!"
"It's about love."
Donna hesitates in mid-rant, looks up at him. The Doctor's eyes wander, seemingly all over the TARDIS but never back to her, before he finally answers. "The song, it's... Uh, that.. Traditionally, well..." He hurries through an explanation. "New husbands used to sing it to their brides on their wedding night. It's a pledge, to stay true to one another and love them wholly and completely and see none other while you're with that person."
Donna just blinks at him. She knows now why she understood the song's meaning. Love transcends all barriers, languages or otherwise. She'd seen it on his face, heard it in his voice, and that feeling spoke to her even through the words she couldn't understand. She smiles lightly, pensively.
Then something clicks in her head and Donna looks back up at him, eyes wide. "Wait a sec! You serenaded me!"
"It was the only song I could think of!" She hadn't thought it possible that he could look any more embarrassed, but somehow he does, almost literally turning red. Donna's mouth drops open and she tugs her hand away.
"You can't still be thinking about mating! Are you ever just like a normal man, always thinking about that!"
"No no no no no," the Doctor babbles, waggling a finger. "You're reading into it too much, I never said that!"
"Too right, you sang it!"
"Donna!"
She laughs at the mortified expression on his face and then loops her arm into his and leans into him; for a moment he stares down at her as though expecting a thump at any time. Donna looks up, shakes her head at him.
"You silly Spaceman."
For three days after that, Donna hums the song to herself whenever she knows the Doctor is within earshot, and laughs when she hears the inevitable, audible slap of his palm to his forehead.
end
Author: mihane_echo
Rating: Rated E for everyone
Word Count: 1719
Spoilers: None
Summary: "Actually, just for the sake of clarification, I said we had no musical instruments. You said we had no music." Companion piece to Alien Curses.
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it belongs to the Beeb and I'm borrowing it to play with. I promise I will return them (marginally) unharmed. ;3
Author's Note: More Gallifreyan language and culture, yay! Less with the funny and more with the squishy this time.
Donna just stares at the Doctor. Rather, at his legs, which are sticking out from under the floor; he's burrowed himself up underneath the console and is digging around in the TARDIS's inner workings. Still, the legs are attached to him and so Donna directs her perplexed stare in their general direction, because what he's just told her is just plain weird.
Rather, it seems weird to her. And this is even considering that she's witnessed alien babies made out of human fat and rescued a slave race that looked like sausage exploded out of their faces.
"Whatcha mean, you didn't have music? Time Lords didn't have savage breasts what needed soothing?"
She hears a bang and a softly muttered curse --which makes her groan, Lord only knows what disgusting thing he's said this time-- before he peeks out through the grating at her with wide eyes. One hand is rubbing his forehead where he's banged it. "Savage what??"
Donna glares at him. "Don't get clever, alien boy, you know exactly how I meant that."
The Doctor briefly holds her gaze, eyebrows knit and raised in an awkward, incredulous expression. Then he shakes his head, and disappears from sight again, returning to his tinkering. "Actually, what I said was we didn't have your sort of music. We were never much for instruments. Gadgets, now gadgets! Hah, we could come up with a dozen billion different gadgets and gizmos and thingamabobs for anything you could think of, but music... Very little effort went into it."
"You told me once that Time Lords had nothing if not pomp and ceremony," Donna says from her place on the jumpseat. "Said you had ceremonies and rituals for nearly everything from sunrise to sunset. Including sunrise and sunset."
"Yeah, we did."
"And no music?" The idea is just too baffling to Donna. She loves music. She needs her music. It's like the breath of life to her, the sound of heaven; it keeps her sane. Furthermore, the Doctor loves music! Donna tips her head incredulously. "How do you even evolve as a culture without music? Even animals have music!"
"Animals have voices, not musical instruments," the Doctor says.
Donna just blinks at him. "Whatever. I just don't figure it. How do you have a big, grand ceremony with no music? I mean, there're marches and themes and anthems and chants and fanfare... That's all stuff you need for ceremony, isn't it? Especially if you're going to be wearing some of the gaudy things you've shown me and trudging down an aisle what's half a mile long just to graduate from the Prydonian chapter."
Apparently finished, the Doctor scootches out from under the console, dusts off his hands. As he does he pins her with a little roll of his eyes; Donna just beams at him. He smirks.
"Why do you think I left? On Earth alone you've got lullabies, and serenades, and ballads and waltzes; you've got Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Janis Joplin, The Beatles, Bob Seger, Creedence. You've got Irish drinking songs and African chants and Japanese strings. I could go on and on."
He grins widely at her. "You lot are the loudest bunch in the universe, you love to listen to yourselves. And with good reason: humans have come up with incredible, brilliant stuff!"
Donna smiles at him as he replaces the grating into the floor and then slides around to the side of the console opposite her and gives a few dials a jiggle. "But not Time Lords?"
"Believe it or not, we mostly liked to hear ourselves ramble," he says.
"That's not as hard to believe as you might think, Captain Gob," the ginger woman teases, and the Doctor pokes his head out from behind the column.
"Oi!"
Donna laughs at him and he returns to his work with a little groan and a comment under his breath about how much abuse he suffers on a daily basis, blah blah. After a long moment she says thoughtfully, "It really does seem weird that you had no music on Gallifrey. It seems like with an average of a millennium of life to play with, at least one of you could manage a little ditty."
They're both silent for a moment and then the Doctor clears his throat. "Actually, just for the sake of clarification, I said we had no musical instruments. You said we had no music."
"So, what? You did have music?"
The Doctor stays quiet, keeping himself behind the column and out of view. Donna peeks around; he's concentrating very hard on the console and not looking at her. He seems embarrassed, fidgeting in his trainers a bit. "Well, kind of."
Donna sighs. "Good grief, you're like a little boy sometimes. Spit it out."
"We sang."
This time its Donna's turn to raise her eyebrows. "You sing."
"Sang, past tense," the Doctor says sharply. "I don't sing anymore."
"It's about to be sing, present tense. Let's have something," she says excitedly.
"No."
"Oh c'mon! You had to have known that if you said it, I would want to hear and yet you said it anyway, so not only is it completely not fair if you hold out on me now, it also makes you a giant tease." She folds her arms over her chest, fixing her gray eyes stubbornly on him. "C'mon, sing for me. I promise, I won't laugh at you. Even though it is my turn."
The Doctor stares at her uncomfortably, chewing the inside of his lip. After a moment, and not without a resigned sigh, he leans against the console, pulls off his glasses. He keeps his eyes on the floor for a long time, as Donna waits patiently.
He starts soft at first, so quiet she can hardly hear him. He never looks up, only fiddles with his glasses anxiously as the words pour out of him, his little Gallifreyan lilt making up the melody almost on its own. It's beautiful, far more beautiful than she would've expected, and it stuns her momentarily.
She doesn't understand the lyrics, not all of them. She can only pick out the few words that he's taught her, words like fire and sun and home, their breathy consonants and quiet vowels seeming to disappear into the air as the Doctor sings them. But somehow she can comprehend the ballad's meaning just the same.
Donna can hear it in the Doctor's voice, see it on his face. Pain and triumph, elation and warmth, angst and wholeness and passion. It stirs her to her core, a familiar, well-known feeling that she can't quite place at the moment. But she knows that even though she's never heard this song, never heard these words, the Doctor is singing about something Donna understands and feels deeply, innately.
As he finishes, Donna finds herself grinning at him, positively tickled. The Doctor doesn't look up; instead, he peers up at her through his lashes, his face flush with embarrassment. It makes Donna smile even wider. Moments like this are when the Doctor seems least alien, even though he's crooning an alien song through an alien tongue. Gallifreyan doesn't sound alien, not like science fiction novel alien tongues, anyway, with Xs and Qs and Zeds all over the place. That, and the apprehension on his face and in his body imply nothing more than a man singing to his mate and his composure a little ruffled for it.
She slides off the jumpseat and takes his hand, strokes his knuckles with her thumb. He inclines his head just the smallest inch to meet her eyes. Donna smiles warmly at him. "I guess you Time Lords must've really loved the sounds of your own voices," she tells him.
He returns her smile. "Well, we were, maybe, yeah, just a teeny bit pretentious."
Donna smirks at him, squeezes his hand. She turns to lean on the console next to him. "Oh but, now you're going to have to teach me the words because I couldn't understand all of them."
"It's complicated," he says, and Donna can tell by his tone he's trying to deter her from the subject. She grimaces.
"Ugh, was it something disgusting again? What is the matter with you? Pretentious you might say, but it seems like I all ever see are the most appalling bits! I'm sort of glad you never created musical instruments, I can't imagine what they'd look like!"
"It's about love."
Donna hesitates in mid-rant, looks up at him. The Doctor's eyes wander, seemingly all over the TARDIS but never back to her, before he finally answers. "The song, it's... Uh, that.. Traditionally, well..." He hurries through an explanation. "New husbands used to sing it to their brides on their wedding night. It's a pledge, to stay true to one another and love them wholly and completely and see none other while you're with that person."
Donna just blinks at him. She knows now why she understood the song's meaning. Love transcends all barriers, languages or otherwise. She'd seen it on his face, heard it in his voice, and that feeling spoke to her even through the words she couldn't understand. She smiles lightly, pensively.
Then something clicks in her head and Donna looks back up at him, eyes wide. "Wait a sec! You serenaded me!"
"It was the only song I could think of!" She hadn't thought it possible that he could look any more embarrassed, but somehow he does, almost literally turning red. Donna's mouth drops open and she tugs her hand away.
"You can't still be thinking about mating! Are you ever just like a normal man, always thinking about that!"
"No no no no no," the Doctor babbles, waggling a finger. "You're reading into it too much, I never said that!"
"Too right, you sang it!"
"Donna!"
She laughs at the mortified expression on his face and then loops her arm into his and leans into him; for a moment he stares down at her as though expecting a thump at any time. Donna looks up, shakes her head at him.
"You silly Spaceman."
For three days after that, Donna hums the song to herself whenever she knows the Doctor is within earshot, and laughs when she hears the inevitable, audible slap of his palm to his forehead.
end