The road less travelled...

Title: Nightmares 6/8
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 VI

The Doctor wakes up to feel gentle hands touching his foot and can’t help groaning as a shaft of pain shoots up his left leg.

“Sorry,” Donna apologises, moving into his line of vision.

He sees immediately that she’s had time to change her clothes and do her hair, as well as have a shower because he can smell her soap and that fruity shampoo she loves.

He reaches out to grab her arm before she can move away again. “What are you doing?”

“Your ankle’s swollen, so I’m putting some ice on it.” She frowns at him. “Did you get up and go for a stroll after I went to bed?”

“Not that I know of.” He shakes his head. “Not unless I did it in my sleep. And I’d be surprised if I can put any weight on that leg yet, so unless you found me in a heap on the floor…”

“Oi!” She puts her index finger over his lips. “That was a simple ‘yes or no’ answer, mate. It wasn’t an essay question.”

He smiles and closes his mouth. As she moves back down to the end of the bed, he reaches up and finds the button to raise the pillow so that he can see what she’s doing.

While she’s removing the bandage, he studies her profile.

“You still look tired,” he says critically.

“Yeah, thanks for that,” she retorts without looking up. “You’re not at your sparkling best either, let me tell you, in spite of the amount of sleep you’ve had recently.”

“Thank you,” he says with as much sincerity as he can muster. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you, Donna.”

“You’d probably be lying under that jumpseat yet,” she replies lightly, moving the bandage away and wrapping an ice pack around his foot.

He hisses breath through his teeth as the skin of his ankle burns at the cold, and, as she looks up at him, he swallows hard.

“Sorry,” she murmurs.

“Not your fault.” He rests his head back against the bed and tries to think of anything that will distract him from the pain.

A thought strikes him and he’s shocked with himself for having failed to think of it before. He looks up at the woman who is unwrapping a new bandage for his ankle, suddenly realising that he’s never discussed several of the more important factors about himself with her, and wondering how to bring up the topic now. In the end, he decides to try the indirect approach.

“Can I have a mirror?”

She throws away the plastic wrapping and smirks. “Worried that your hair’s a mess after this long of lying in bed? Actually, no, it’s more likely that it’d be too neat to suit your tastes!”

“Are you quite done?” he demands in irritation, feeling a tiny flap of panic in his stomach.

“Why d’you want a mirror?”

What’s frustrating him is that she’s actually picked up a small hand-mirror that was lying on a nearby bench and is holding it against her chest with the reflective side turned against her shirt so he can’t see.

“I just – do,” he finishes lamely.

Her eyes travel over his face. “Hmm, tell you what, here’s what you look like: You’re a bit skinnier than you were before because you haven’t been eating. You’ve got dark shadows under your eyes and you look like you could sleep for a week, which is odd considering you’ve done nothing but sleep for the past few days. You look a little bit older and your injuries have caused you to get tiny little lines around your eyes and your mouth. Ooh, and did you know you’ve got a few little grey hairs here and there? How have I never noticed those before?”

It’s this last question that accelerates the panic from a tiny flap to full-blown terror, with adrenalin shooting through his system. He sits bolt upright in bed, ignoring the sharp stab of pain in his shoulder, and stares at her, not even registering that she’s not talking anymore.

“Mirror,” he raps out. “Now!”

“Say please,” she teases.

He glares at her instead and she finally gives in, placing the mirror in his hand and watching his face as he flips it over.

He can’t help letting out a sigh of relief as he sees the familiar brown hair and eyes of his tenth incarnation. Then, even as he sinks back against the raised head of the bed, he catches sight of the understanding half-smile on Donna’s face.

“It’s all right, Doctor,” she says softly. “You didn’t regenerate.”

He stares at her in astonishment, his hand dropping back to the bed.

“How did you – who told you?”

“You did.” She eases the mirror out of his hand and puts it away before sitting down in a chair next to the bed. He can see an odd look of tension on her face. “You started talking strangely when were sick, as if you were a whole lot of different people. After a while, I started trying to figure out what was going on.”

He manages a half-smile. “I bet you did,” he says, reaching out to take her hand.

She sighs, entwining her fingers with his. “You – one of you was so young, Doctor, and so helpless. Even more than you are now. He told me. I think.”

“The fifth me, perhaps,” he muses. “Sounds most like it.”

“If it helps,” she offers hesitantly, “before you – he – told me about the way you change, you mentioned people – Tegan, Nyssa, Adric…”

He stiffens at the last name, his eyes fixed on the wall in front of him.

“Definitely the fifth,” he murmurs, swallowing a lump in his throat.

When he meets her gaze again, he can see fear and uncertainty lurking in her eyes. She’s gently withdrawing her hand from his hold and he tightens his grip so that she can’t move away.

“I’m sorry, Donna,” he says, and means it.

He can’t even begin to think how frightened she must have been when he started talking like some of his former incarnations, and he can imagine how they might have reacted to finding themselves in this situation. His ninth persona, he knows, would have been particularly abrasive. The seventh, too, probably.

“So sorry,” he adds.

“Yeah, just…” She pauses for a moment before finishing the sentence in a brisk tone. “Don’t do it again, okay? Not without warning anyway.”

“Promise.” He gently rubs his thumb over her fingers. “I should have explained it to you before, Donna. But I thought you’d find the idea hard to accept, so I – didn’t,” he finishes lamely.

“I suppose the only way I was going to find out was if you got shot or something,” she says evenly, but he can hear the hurt in her voice.

“Unfortunately, that’s probably right,” he admits, guilt edging his tones. “It’s how most people who travel with me learn about it.”

“Well, lucky I know now, isn’t it?” she says, letting go of his hand and moving down to the other end of the bed.

She removes the ice pack and picks up the bandage, starting to wrap it around his ankle.

“How long d’you reckon you’re going to have to be like this then?” she asks without looking up, and he knows the conversation is closed.

He sighs, making a mental note to discuss it with her at some later stage, before turning his attention to her question.

“Well, this,” he lightly taps the splint on his leg, “accelerates healing. The fracture is probably already almost back to normal, but another couple of hours without any weight on it should finish off the process. And the tendons in my ankle should be better once the inflammation goes down. As for my shoulder,” he fights the urge to shrug, knowing it will only hurt, “probably another few hours for that, too.”

He sits forward again so that the movement makes her look up and fixes her with what he hopes is a look she will read as gratitude.

“It would have been longer if you hadn’t done what you did. Otherwise I would almost certainly have moved and made it worse.”

“That was the TARDIS, not me,” she objects. “I just used what she gave me.”

The Doctor flops back against the bed head, unable to hide his irritation and wishing he could fold his arms to show his annoyance. “You know, one day you might actually believe me when I say you’re brilliant!”

She gives a half-smile, shakes her head and finishes wrapping the bandage around his ankle, fastening it with tape.

“Right then,” she says as she lays the blanket back over his leg and steps away from the bed, “I could do with something to eat. How about you?”

He hasn’t thought about food until now, but as soon as he does, his stomach feels painfully empty.

“Definitely.”

“Glad to hear it.”

She’s about to walk out of the room when he suddenly realises that he doesn’t want her to go and leave him alone.

“Donna, wait!”

She stops, looking at him over her shoulder, curiosity in her eyes. “Well, what is it?”

“Can I come with you?”

“You prawn,” she says fondly. “I’m only going to be in the next room!”

“Well, but…” He pauses for a moment, thinking fast, before continuing. “There’s not a lot to do in here. I’m not tired anymore and,” he reaches up and tugs awkwardly on his ear, “I’d sort of like to have some company. But I’m hungry too. And you probably are, as well. So I thought, if I came into the kitchen while you cooked…”

She turns around and props her hands on her hips. “And how were you going to manage that then?”

“Umm…” He has to admit that he hasn’t thought of that. “I don’t know really.”

She chuckles. “Well, I’ve got a bit of an idea. Just hold your horses for a minute.”

As she disappears into the next room, he throws back the blankets and swings his legs down off the bed in preparation for her return. He can feel the blood flowing back into his injured foot more vigorously than before, but the ice seems to have helped because it isn’t as painful as it was. He can tell the fractured tibia has almost healed, too.

And then Donna returns.

There’s a smirk on her face as she appears, but he only wonders at it for a split second before he sees what she’s brought with her. He can feel his grin of anticipation sliding off his face.

It’s a wheelchair.

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