The road less travelled...

Title: Nightmares 1/8
Author: katherine_b
Rating: PG
Characters: Donna and the Doctor (Ten)
Spoilers: All of Season 4 up to the end of Forest of the Dead
Summary: Donna has nightmares about the Doctor.

Part I

Donna Noble has nightmares.

Maybe it’s because she’s a worrier – and really, with a family like hers, who would blame her? – or because she watches too many horror films at night with the lights off.

And Donna Noble on the TARDIS has more nightmares than ever before.

Fire and ice and giant spiders and men with weird faces or bald brown heads and darkness and shadows.

And, most of all, the Doctor.

He appears in her nightmares, terrifying and alone, full of fury.

She’d been afraid of him once.

But not anymore.

Now she was afraid for him.

She sees him in her dreams, always hurt, always in pain, always suffering.

Mentally, of course, that goes without saying.

But physically, too.

It’s ridiculous – she doesn’t even know if he can be hurt like that. He’s an alien, after all, and maybe they don’t get broken bones or bleed.

They just get their hands lopped off and keep on living. Like weird worms or something.

That’s her greatest fear, though. That something will happen to the Doctor and she’ll be left alone. Perhaps forever.

It was a fear she only fully understood after the run-in with the Sontarans. Her time in the TARDIS and on the Sontaran ship on her own was worse than facing any enemy. And it wasn’t just because she was afraid of dying. It was the fact that the Doctor wasn’t there with her.

Alone when she faced the Vespiform for the first time. That was why she stuck so close to the Doctor during the rest of their time in the 1920s.

That was the worst thing about the Library, too, when she half-materialised in the console room, before being sucked away again into CAL. During that instant, she had enough presence of mind to realize that she was alone. That awareness seemed to open a void in her heart and terror filled her so that she screamed.

Of course, it was gone, along with everything else, in the computer.

However she’s not thinking of any of these things at the moment

She’s standing on the far side of the console, arguing cheerfully about where she wants to go next.

“Shopping.”

“Diamond planet,” he shoots back. “You were the one who wanted the beach.”

“What, and the grains of sand are all tiny little diamonds, are they?”

“We-ell,” he tilts his head slightly to one side and grins at her, “maybe not exactly. But you can sunbathe.”

“You’ve just told me that they’ve got deadly sunlight,” she retorts. “All I want to do is find a nice, safe market somewhere.”

“Yeah, ’cos nothing dangerous ever happens while shopping,” he laughs.

“What are you worried about, doing your back?” she teases. “You reckon I’ll make you lug my purchases everywhere, do you? Although, now that you’ve put the idea into my head…”

“Me and my big mouth,” the Doctor groans.

“And just why do you want to go and stare at diamonds anyway?” she wants to know. “What’s the point if you can’t get close enough to see it properly? Watch it through that thick glass – hah! Might as well look it up on the TARDIS screen.”

“Donna, that’s not the point,” he begins in an exaggeratedly patient voice. “You’ll get to say that you’ve seen it. Been there. Looked out at a sapphire waterfall. Wouldn’t you want that?”

“Not as much as I want new shoes.”

He rolls his eyes. “You are impossible!”

“Takes one to know one!”

He sighs heavily and is about to speak again when Donna gets in first. “Tell you what,” she says slowly. “I’ll go to Midnight first if – if! – you don’t drag me along to that waterfall you’re so keen to see. I’ll lounge by the pool or something and you can go and be a tourist.”

His eyes are sparkling with victory, but he’s not giving in yet. “It won’t be any fun if you’re not there,” he whines.

“It’s that or nothing,” she warns. “And I’ll take you on a shopping trip you’ll never quite recover from, no matter if you live to be two thousand.”

“Bully,” he mutters, but there’s a satisfied grin on his face as he flips several switches, spins a dial and then presses the button to start them on the trip. “Off we go then!”

In that instant, the world turns almost literally upside down. Donna finds herself flung backwards, even as the Doctor lets out a yell, and then the ship tilts in the other direction and she clutches at one of the padded bars as she slams forward into it, the breath knocked out of her so that she can’t scream.

For several seconds she can’t focus on anything as the world is tossed around front of her. The only thing she can do is cling to the soft padding and wait for everything to stop.

She’s thrown off her feet and into the air, but she has no time to make a sound before she hits the floor. Her eyes are jolted closed as she slams into an uneven surface and she gasps for air like a fish out of water.

The last few objects and rattle and roll into place before the room falls silent.

There’s a sudden instant of calm.

Donna shakes her head to clear it, her arm aching from the tight grip on the bar, under which she’s been pinned. For a moment, before working out how she’s going to free herself, she prises her eyes open and looks around.

The room is darker than usual, the only illumination coming from the blue-green light of the time rotor, which isn’t moving. Donna shakes her head slightly and pushes away the padded bar lying across her stomach. She wriggles experimentally and can’t feel anything more than a steady ache, so she concludes nothing’s broken.

“Doctor?” she calls as she pushes herself up into a seated position.

There’s no reply and she squints into the strange half-light.

“Doctor, are you all right?”

Slowly she begins to be able to make out objects around her and can see that anything that wasn’t fastened down (and some things that were) have been thrown against the wall of the TARDIS against which she’s lying. It’s as if an earthquake has taken place.

Gradually she gets to her feet and looks down to see that she’s covered in dirt and dust. Even as she tries to brush herself off, she looks around again to find the other occupant of the TARDIS.

And then she sees a foot in a red-and-white converse protruding from beneath the upturned jumpseat.

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