Weekly Drabble Challenge Response: Can't Stop
Title: Can't Stop
Author: Tess/mihane_echo
Rating: Rated E for everyone
Word Count: 548
Spoilers: Set after 4.13 Journey's End
Summary: He needs her.
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: I've not written angry!Doctor much, if at all, and being so frustrated with myself, I felt it the perfect time to remedy that. Written for Weekly Drabble Challenge #18 at doctor_donna. Prompt was addiction.
The Doctor only notices how hungry he is well into the fourth night, when his stomach finally gives a loud squawk of protest.
He doesn't need sustenance or sleep like his human companions do; he eats because he likes the taste and texture of food, and he naps on occasion so he doesn't get nagged at.
But what he's doing now is beyond that; he's high. High on his own anger, high on self-loathing. He hasn't stopped for three days and four nights-- hasn't stopped because he can't. He needs this, needs this to function as much as he needs oxygen. It drives him now, this furious obsession, his addiction to solving the puzzle.
Three days and four nights. Ever since that first night, the very night he took her home. Locked up in his mind, wracking his brain for tidbits of memory, the things he'd seen in his long life, for a clue, any clue.
Body buzzing with electricity as he dashes about his ship, running his hands through his hair as if it will stimulate a thought or keep him from tearing it all out.
Reading every biological text he had in his ship, chemistry and metaphysics, trying to work out a way to reverse it, dampen it, curb its devastating effects on her.
Collecting bits and bobbles off random gene sequence manipulators and energy-extracting capacitors, jumbling them together but they always seem to be missing a piece what is it? What the hell am I missing?!
And the pang hits him like the calm after running for a very long time, as though he had just left everything behind: his hunger, his fatigue, his anger and his pain; he had started running and not stopped.
He knows that if he stops, if he lets himself give up rest, that she'll catch up. Her flaming red hair, her firm mouth, blue-gray eyes, distant and cold with indifference, unfamiliarity. When she saw him last, for the precious final time, their parting moment, he had been a stranger to her and even now it tears him apart.
He doesn't want to remember her that way and yet that's all he sees if he slows down, so he doesn't.
He doesn't want to remember the feeling of powerlessness, how absolutely useless he was when watching her die, that his only option to save her life was to take her pain, swallowing up her brilliance and her memories with it because it was the only way.
And when that pang hits him, he pauses. For that one moment, when he contemplates stopping, even for a short time, Donna's face flickers in the back of his mind.
Donna smiling at him, oh so many times.
Donna crying in his arms, begging no, please.
Donna nodding offhandedly, not recognizing him.
The Doctor viciously hurls a half-finished gadget across the room and it shatters into several pieces against the wall. He sinks to his haunches, pushing up his glasses over his knuckles as he holds his palms to his eyes.
The only way.
It shouldn't have been the only sodding way. It was never the only way. There's a way out of this, he knows, he just has to look for it.
He can't give up on her.
He can't.
He needs her.
end
Author: Tess/mihane_echo
Rating: Rated E for everyone
Word Count: 548
Spoilers: Set after 4.13 Journey's End
Summary: He needs her.
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: I've not written angry!Doctor much, if at all, and being so frustrated with myself, I felt it the perfect time to remedy that. Written for Weekly Drabble Challenge #18 at doctor_donna. Prompt was addiction.
The Doctor only notices how hungry he is well into the fourth night, when his stomach finally gives a loud squawk of protest.
He doesn't need sustenance or sleep like his human companions do; he eats because he likes the taste and texture of food, and he naps on occasion so he doesn't get nagged at.
But what he's doing now is beyond that; he's high. High on his own anger, high on self-loathing. He hasn't stopped for three days and four nights-- hasn't stopped because he can't. He needs this, needs this to function as much as he needs oxygen. It drives him now, this furious obsession, his addiction to solving the puzzle.
Three days and four nights. Ever since that first night, the very night he took her home. Locked up in his mind, wracking his brain for tidbits of memory, the things he'd seen in his long life, for a clue, any clue.
Body buzzing with electricity as he dashes about his ship, running his hands through his hair as if it will stimulate a thought or keep him from tearing it all out.
Reading every biological text he had in his ship, chemistry and metaphysics, trying to work out a way to reverse it, dampen it, curb its devastating effects on her.
Collecting bits and bobbles off random gene sequence manipulators and energy-extracting capacitors, jumbling them together but they always seem to be missing a piece what is it? What the hell am I missing?!
And the pang hits him like the calm after running for a very long time, as though he had just left everything behind: his hunger, his fatigue, his anger and his pain; he had started running and not stopped.
He knows that if he stops, if he lets himself give up rest, that she'll catch up. Her flaming red hair, her firm mouth, blue-gray eyes, distant and cold with indifference, unfamiliarity. When she saw him last, for the precious final time, their parting moment, he had been a stranger to her and even now it tears him apart.
He doesn't want to remember her that way and yet that's all he sees if he slows down, so he doesn't.
He doesn't want to remember the feeling of powerlessness, how absolutely useless he was when watching her die, that his only option to save her life was to take her pain, swallowing up her brilliance and her memories with it because it was the only way.
And when that pang hits him, he pauses. For that one moment, when he contemplates stopping, even for a short time, Donna's face flickers in the back of his mind.
Donna smiling at him, oh so many times.
Donna crying in his arms, begging no, please.
Donna nodding offhandedly, not recognizing him.
The Doctor viciously hurls a half-finished gadget across the room and it shatters into several pieces against the wall. He sinks to his haunches, pushing up his glasses over his knuckles as he holds his palms to his eyes.
The only way.
It shouldn't have been the only sodding way. It was never the only way. There's a way out of this, he knows, he just has to look for it.
He can't give up on her.
He can't.
He needs her.
end