Left Behind
Title: Left Behind
Author: Tess/mihane_echo
Rating: Rated EGAT for Everyone Grab A Tissue. There be angst.
Word Count: 2096
Spoilers: Through Series 4
Summary: The sense of smell is the most powerful memory trigger.
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: This fic is for lounge_lily. She gave me the idea a good long while back and then when it stalled she gave my muse a good talking to and straightened it out. I hope you enjoy it, sweetie. ;D
The air is a cacophony of sound. Clatters and smashes seem to echo off the walls as the Doctor rummages through the mess that is his bedroom. It's never clean, not really. Even when the TARDIS decides she's tired of the clutter and sorts it all out, she can never really move any of his belongings without him complaining that he can't find something, going off to look for it and then destroying her pristine rooms once more.
Which is sad, because his room is actually quite pretty. Circular, as all her rooms are. Quieter than the rest of the ship. Covered in lamps. Dozens of lamps; he loves lamps. He has tall standing ones, and short decorative ones, and floating ones that he keeps bumping his head on but refuses to set to a higher levitation setting.
He has that many, well, because he likes light. He needs that many in order to see over the inevitable mountain of junk that will end up on his floor. And on his desk. And hanging off the edge of his bed. And stuffed into his wardrobe. Mostly electronics, all in various states of destruction. Disassembled, half-built, dismantled, hastily-constructed, gutted and stripped and salvaged for parts.
Rose had asked why he didn't do his tinkering in the lab. Martha had as well. Donna had just gawped at the mess and then brought him his tea and settled down to read a book on his bed. She made a habit of making at least one snarky comment about the mess as she entered --"Do you think we'll ever see the floor again, Spaceman?"-- but after that it was just quality time in the comfortable almost-silence as he hammered and soniced, a jigger here and poke there and the occasional curse under his breath when he smashed, pinched or zapped his finger.
During her time in the Doctor's company, Donna had found that the only thing more frequent than him catching his fingers in some mishap was him digging through the mess looking for the bioenergy wave conductor or the macrocosmic spatiotemporal imager or "that little whatchamacallit that turns red when it's fully charged."
Which is what he's looking for now.
"Where've you put it now," he grumbles under his breath, partially to himself but more to the TARDIS. He knows she's put it somewhere, he just doesn't know where. It isn't in his room. Despite the state it's in, he knows it isn't because the thing glows bright red when it's fully charged and there isn't the slightest hint of red light anywhere in his room.
It isn't in the lab. It isn't in the kitchen. It isn't in the den, nor the library, nor the garden, nor the bathroom, nor the art gallery, nor the conservatory, nor the pool room, nor the wardrobe-- which would be a weird place for it, because the thing measures the distance between the same person at different points in time, there's just no reason for it to be in the wardrobe.
Where is it, where is it...? The Doctor swipes a hand through his hair, making it stick up in an oddly manic way as he turns his wild gaze down the corridor to the guest rooms. The only places he hasn't looked yet. So many doors... so many people who have travelled at his side. And all gone now. Left him alone.
With a groan he pushes through the first one, determined to just find the bloody thing.
Hours pass as he barges from one room to another, wrenching open cupboard doors and sticking his head under beds and yanking out drawers. He's found a shoe without its mate, ten pence, a broken watch, a spool of red thread and various other oddities but not the flipping red-glowy-thing.
He comes out of Rose's room with a sigh, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. Final room. Donna's room. He's going to be furious if it's in here, because the TARDIS should know better. These older rooms may be nostalgic, many of them painful even-- but none of them are as fresh as Donna's room. None of them still smell of their former inhabitants.
The Doctor closes his eyes and braces himself as he presses into the door, giving it a soft push open. Her room is warm. The air still smells strongly of her, some strange olfactory concoction that is some part Donna herself, with a measure of jasmine shampoo and that delicious perfume she used to wear at her throat. She may as well be there in front of him. He can almost feel her hand on his arm and her hair against his cheek, hear her voice as she laughs.
He opens his eyes to the dark, empty room.
After a moment the Doctor takes a few steps in, flicks on the lamp on her desk. The room looks even more pathetic when he can see all of it. When she had lived here it had been filled with her things: photos of her family on the nightstand and her desk. Her slippers parked at the side of her bed. Various knick-knacks she'd picked up during her travels, on Earth and to the stars.
Now it's bare. There's a book on her desk, but it's one from his library that never quite made it back. Rock Through the Ages: Fifty Centuries of Music. She'd only just started reading; it's open to the entry on the Beatles. Her bed is unmade, as though she literally could've just been there. Gotten up to check on him, perhaps; she had done that far too often. There's nothing on her vanity. Where there had been bottles of perfume and her necklace rack and a myriad collection of hair ornaments, there's only blank space.
He glances away, trying to focus on looking for his missing device. Her wardrobe doors are already open, and the red-glowy-thing isn't there either. Just some hangers. As he turns back, he spots something. Hidden in the corner of her vanity is one lonely and forgotten bottle.
He crosses the room slowly, reaching out and taking the little thing in his fingers. It's a lovely little bottle of frosted glass with peach blossoms and the Chinese characters reading the same painted onto its surface. He traces the outline of it with his finger, rubs over it with his thumb as though he can capture some essence of her from it.
He was sitting on the jump seat, staring topside of the TARDIS in a thoughtful sort of way. Where should they head for next? It was so hard to decide. There were so many places he wanted to take her; he could hardly begin to narrow it all down. How did you top Agatha Christie, anyway?
As he was pondering the whole of time and space, the stars and worlds that were theirs to travel and explore, he heard the distinct sound of sandal steps on the grated floor; he dropped his head back to look at Donna as she stomped in from the corridor archway that lead into the TARDIS interior. Her upside down face was flush with irritation and her red hair seemed to billow around her face like an auburn cloud.
"Oi, sit up straight and start time-rotoring. I've gotta go home."
At this the Doctor groaned, looking pitifully at her. Go home? As in, go home? "What? Why?"
Donna shook something in her hand at him, but he couldn't really it see it, due to being upside down. "I need more."
"More?" The Doctor spread his arms wide. "Donna, we have the stars! We have the whole sky. What else is there to want?"
She rolled her eyes at him --a very awkward-looking motion since she was upside down to his view-- and waved her hand at him again. "Not more, dumbo. More of this."
His head was starting to ache. Surely by now his face was red from the blood rushing to his head. He plucked the thing out of her fingers and sat up to look at it properly. It was a perfume bottle. Frosted glass with peach blossoms painted in it. Donna came to his side and took it from his open palm. "I've almost completely run out, and unless there's some designer store on Mars that sells it, we have to stop at home."
The Doctor's eyebrows knit. "Donna, it's just perfume," he said dismissively.
She glared at him, hands on her hips. "Oh, is that so? How come whenever you need any more of that nancy-boy product you like so much, the world is over until we stop and get more, but my perfume is just perfume?"
He felt his ears grow hot. "I have finicky hair. I need that, or this..." He waved a hand in the vague direction of his spiky hair, "This is a disaster."
"Well, I have a need to smell good." She pulled the top off and wafted it under his nose, let him breathe it in. "How can you deny me this?"
The Doctor lurched back instinctively as she violated his personal space, but at the same time a tingle of pleasure coursed through him. Drifting out of the frosted glass bottle was a sweet, soft scent that he immediately associated with Donna. It was a subconscious connection, but automatic. It seemed as though every instance she had ever come close to him or hugged him was suddenly at the forefront of his mind; indeed, at that moment it felt like she was suddenly much closer. The Doctor was abruptly aware of the droop of her lips as she pouted at him, the fiery tresses that cascaded over her shoulders, the way her blouse hugged the curves of her body.
His toes curled. He shuddered as a fire lit deep inside him and he spent a brief moment rebooting his brain, because it had disengaged and gone bye-bye. Since when could she knock him off his feet by just standing next to him as he breathed?
Oi, he thought to himself, that thing ought to come with a warning label, great big flashing signs so I have the time to properly prepare myself. He shifted to hide his reaction, going to his feet and sliding around to the other side of the console. Donna watched him expectantly, seeming unaware of how she affected him, and finally he nodded.
"Yeah, fine, awright, we can go." He pinned an intense stare on her, pointed at the bottle. "But only for that, though. We are not stopping for tea with your mother."
"Right," Donna said with a curt nod. "Not stopping to see Mum."
"Right."
"We are stopping to see Gramps."
"Oh, of course," the Doctor agreed with a smile.
The Doctor gazes at the bottle. His missing red-glowy-thing is forgotten as he plucks off the top and lifts it to his face to take a deliberate whiff. It's like being swathed in her scent except that this time, no fire begins to burn in his stomach. The pleasurable tingles and shudders don't come. Instead, a coldness creeps down his shoulders and back, draining away his strength until he turns to settle onto Donna's bed, sitting at first and then finally curling up on his side.
The imprint of Donna is everywhere, pressed even into the pillow he rests his head on. He wishes it didn't hurt so much that the room is vacant. Donna is safe. She is alive, she is safe, hopefully she is happy. She could've been dead, and he'd prevented that. So why can't he just be happy?
He pulls his spectacles off and presses the heels of his palms to his eyes, trying desperately not to break down and feeling like his chest is going to split open from the effort of it. When he drops his hands, his eyes are hot and blurry.
"I miss you," he says. He clutches the perfume bottle in his hand, his thumb stroking its smooth sides over and over as though rubbing it may call her back like the genie from the lamp. She doesn't, of course, and the motion gives him no comfort. He turns his face into her pillow, his breath hitching. Around him, the TARDIS makes a sound almost like a sigh and then quiets herself, her usual hum dropping to a distant reverberation somewhere deeper and further away from him.
Left alone, the Doctor dreams of a missing redhead with a smile that lights up the world. In his mind, she glows.
end
Author: Tess/mihane_echo
Rating: Rated EGAT for Everyone Grab A Tissue. There be angst.
Word Count: 2096
Spoilers: Through Series 4
Summary: The sense of smell is the most powerful memory trigger.
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: This fic is for lounge_lily. She gave me the idea a good long while back and then when it stalled she gave my muse a good talking to and straightened it out. I hope you enjoy it, sweetie. ;D
The air is a cacophony of sound. Clatters and smashes seem to echo off the walls as the Doctor rummages through the mess that is his bedroom. It's never clean, not really. Even when the TARDIS decides she's tired of the clutter and sorts it all out, she can never really move any of his belongings without him complaining that he can't find something, going off to look for it and then destroying her pristine rooms once more.
Which is sad, because his room is actually quite pretty. Circular, as all her rooms are. Quieter than the rest of the ship. Covered in lamps. Dozens of lamps; he loves lamps. He has tall standing ones, and short decorative ones, and floating ones that he keeps bumping his head on but refuses to set to a higher levitation setting.
He has that many, well, because he likes light. He needs that many in order to see over the inevitable mountain of junk that will end up on his floor. And on his desk. And hanging off the edge of his bed. And stuffed into his wardrobe. Mostly electronics, all in various states of destruction. Disassembled, half-built, dismantled, hastily-constructed, gutted and stripped and salvaged for parts.
Rose had asked why he didn't do his tinkering in the lab. Martha had as well. Donna had just gawped at the mess and then brought him his tea and settled down to read a book on his bed. She made a habit of making at least one snarky comment about the mess as she entered --"Do you think we'll ever see the floor again, Spaceman?"-- but after that it was just quality time in the comfortable almost-silence as he hammered and soniced, a jigger here and poke there and the occasional curse under his breath when he smashed, pinched or zapped his finger.
During her time in the Doctor's company, Donna had found that the only thing more frequent than him catching his fingers in some mishap was him digging through the mess looking for the bioenergy wave conductor or the macrocosmic spatiotemporal imager or "that little whatchamacallit that turns red when it's fully charged."
Which is what he's looking for now.
"Where've you put it now," he grumbles under his breath, partially to himself but more to the TARDIS. He knows she's put it somewhere, he just doesn't know where. It isn't in his room. Despite the state it's in, he knows it isn't because the thing glows bright red when it's fully charged and there isn't the slightest hint of red light anywhere in his room.
It isn't in the lab. It isn't in the kitchen. It isn't in the den, nor the library, nor the garden, nor the bathroom, nor the art gallery, nor the conservatory, nor the pool room, nor the wardrobe-- which would be a weird place for it, because the thing measures the distance between the same person at different points in time, there's just no reason for it to be in the wardrobe.
Where is it, where is it...? The Doctor swipes a hand through his hair, making it stick up in an oddly manic way as he turns his wild gaze down the corridor to the guest rooms. The only places he hasn't looked yet. So many doors... so many people who have travelled at his side. And all gone now. Left him alone.
With a groan he pushes through the first one, determined to just find the bloody thing.
Hours pass as he barges from one room to another, wrenching open cupboard doors and sticking his head under beds and yanking out drawers. He's found a shoe without its mate, ten pence, a broken watch, a spool of red thread and various other oddities but not the flipping red-glowy-thing.
He comes out of Rose's room with a sigh, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. Final room. Donna's room. He's going to be furious if it's in here, because the TARDIS should know better. These older rooms may be nostalgic, many of them painful even-- but none of them are as fresh as Donna's room. None of them still smell of their former inhabitants.
The Doctor closes his eyes and braces himself as he presses into the door, giving it a soft push open. Her room is warm. The air still smells strongly of her, some strange olfactory concoction that is some part Donna herself, with a measure of jasmine shampoo and that delicious perfume she used to wear at her throat. She may as well be there in front of him. He can almost feel her hand on his arm and her hair against his cheek, hear her voice as she laughs.
He opens his eyes to the dark, empty room.
After a moment the Doctor takes a few steps in, flicks on the lamp on her desk. The room looks even more pathetic when he can see all of it. When she had lived here it had been filled with her things: photos of her family on the nightstand and her desk. Her slippers parked at the side of her bed. Various knick-knacks she'd picked up during her travels, on Earth and to the stars.
Now it's bare. There's a book on her desk, but it's one from his library that never quite made it back. Rock Through the Ages: Fifty Centuries of Music. She'd only just started reading; it's open to the entry on the Beatles. Her bed is unmade, as though she literally could've just been there. Gotten up to check on him, perhaps; she had done that far too often. There's nothing on her vanity. Where there had been bottles of perfume and her necklace rack and a myriad collection of hair ornaments, there's only blank space.
He glances away, trying to focus on looking for his missing device. Her wardrobe doors are already open, and the red-glowy-thing isn't there either. Just some hangers. As he turns back, he spots something. Hidden in the corner of her vanity is one lonely and forgotten bottle.
He crosses the room slowly, reaching out and taking the little thing in his fingers. It's a lovely little bottle of frosted glass with peach blossoms and the Chinese characters reading the same painted onto its surface. He traces the outline of it with his finger, rubs over it with his thumb as though he can capture some essence of her from it.
He was sitting on the jump seat, staring topside of the TARDIS in a thoughtful sort of way. Where should they head for next? It was so hard to decide. There were so many places he wanted to take her; he could hardly begin to narrow it all down. How did you top Agatha Christie, anyway?
As he was pondering the whole of time and space, the stars and worlds that were theirs to travel and explore, he heard the distinct sound of sandal steps on the grated floor; he dropped his head back to look at Donna as she stomped in from the corridor archway that lead into the TARDIS interior. Her upside down face was flush with irritation and her red hair seemed to billow around her face like an auburn cloud.
"Oi, sit up straight and start time-rotoring. I've gotta go home."
At this the Doctor groaned, looking pitifully at her. Go home? As in, go home? "What? Why?"
Donna shook something in her hand at him, but he couldn't really it see it, due to being upside down. "I need more."
"More?" The Doctor spread his arms wide. "Donna, we have the stars! We have the whole sky. What else is there to want?"
She rolled her eyes at him --a very awkward-looking motion since she was upside down to his view-- and waved her hand at him again. "Not more, dumbo. More of this."
His head was starting to ache. Surely by now his face was red from the blood rushing to his head. He plucked the thing out of her fingers and sat up to look at it properly. It was a perfume bottle. Frosted glass with peach blossoms painted in it. Donna came to his side and took it from his open palm. "I've almost completely run out, and unless there's some designer store on Mars that sells it, we have to stop at home."
The Doctor's eyebrows knit. "Donna, it's just perfume," he said dismissively.
She glared at him, hands on her hips. "Oh, is that so? How come whenever you need any more of that nancy-boy product you like so much, the world is over until we stop and get more, but my perfume is just perfume?"
He felt his ears grow hot. "I have finicky hair. I need that, or this..." He waved a hand in the vague direction of his spiky hair, "This is a disaster."
"Well, I have a need to smell good." She pulled the top off and wafted it under his nose, let him breathe it in. "How can you deny me this?"
The Doctor lurched back instinctively as she violated his personal space, but at the same time a tingle of pleasure coursed through him. Drifting out of the frosted glass bottle was a sweet, soft scent that he immediately associated with Donna. It was a subconscious connection, but automatic. It seemed as though every instance she had ever come close to him or hugged him was suddenly at the forefront of his mind; indeed, at that moment it felt like she was suddenly much closer. The Doctor was abruptly aware of the droop of her lips as she pouted at him, the fiery tresses that cascaded over her shoulders, the way her blouse hugged the curves of her body.
His toes curled. He shuddered as a fire lit deep inside him and he spent a brief moment rebooting his brain, because it had disengaged and gone bye-bye. Since when could she knock him off his feet by just standing next to him as he breathed?
Oi, he thought to himself, that thing ought to come with a warning label, great big flashing signs so I have the time to properly prepare myself. He shifted to hide his reaction, going to his feet and sliding around to the other side of the console. Donna watched him expectantly, seeming unaware of how she affected him, and finally he nodded.
"Yeah, fine, awright, we can go." He pinned an intense stare on her, pointed at the bottle. "But only for that, though. We are not stopping for tea with your mother."
"Right," Donna said with a curt nod. "Not stopping to see Mum."
"Right."
"We are stopping to see Gramps."
"Oh, of course," the Doctor agreed with a smile.
The Doctor gazes at the bottle. His missing red-glowy-thing is forgotten as he plucks off the top and lifts it to his face to take a deliberate whiff. It's like being swathed in her scent except that this time, no fire begins to burn in his stomach. The pleasurable tingles and shudders don't come. Instead, a coldness creeps down his shoulders and back, draining away his strength until he turns to settle onto Donna's bed, sitting at first and then finally curling up on his side.
The imprint of Donna is everywhere, pressed even into the pillow he rests his head on. He wishes it didn't hurt so much that the room is vacant. Donna is safe. She is alive, she is safe, hopefully she is happy. She could've been dead, and he'd prevented that. So why can't he just be happy?
He pulls his spectacles off and presses the heels of his palms to his eyes, trying desperately not to break down and feeling like his chest is going to split open from the effort of it. When he drops his hands, his eyes are hot and blurry.
"I miss you," he says. He clutches the perfume bottle in his hand, his thumb stroking its smooth sides over and over as though rubbing it may call her back like the genie from the lamp. She doesn't, of course, and the motion gives him no comfort. He turns his face into her pillow, his breath hitching. Around him, the TARDIS makes a sound almost like a sigh and then quiets herself, her usual hum dropping to a distant reverberation somewhere deeper and further away from him.
Left alone, the Doctor dreams of a missing redhead with a smile that lights up the world. In his mind, she glows.
end