The road less travelled...

Title: Five of a Kind 3/8
Author: katherine_b
Rating: At least PG…
Characters: Donna and the Doctor
Spoilers: There may be mentions of everything except the Next Doctor, so proceed with caution if that sort of thing bothers you.
Summary: Donna might be having a few regrets…
A/N: If you haven’t read All In her Mind, which was part one of this story, or Lost for Words, which was part 2, in those stories the Doctor and Donna were happily reunited and had a bit of fun one night when they played board games and the Doctor got a bit drunk. Well, a lot drunk. Well, completely smashed, actually. And it was all Donna’s fault (or so the Doctor claims). They ended up in bed together. This is the consequence of that happening…

Part III

Donna yells when the infirmary is suddenly full of bleeps and clicks. She’s about to lean against the door when she remembers that it was what shut her in her and she doesn’t feel that she can trust it to keep her safe.

“What the hell is going on here?” she demands to the room at large. “And why can I still hear that damned drumming? What…?”

It’s at that moment that the final machine turns on and Donna yelps loudly when she realises what it is.

“Oh, no, please,” she begs. “Not that one!”

‘That one’ is a machine that sticks in her memory because of the way the Doctor introduced it to her.

“And this is the infirmary,” he’d announced, pride in his voice as he showed her around during her introductory tour of the TARDIS. “If anything ever happens to either of us, this room will know exactly what to do.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Donna had said, wandering around and peering at the various boxes and other unidentifiable machines. Then she cast an amused glance at him. “So what you’re saying is, your ship is smarter than you are.”

“What!” He looked indignant. “Hey! Look – no! Just no!”

She’d chuckled, pleased to have brought him down a peg or two. “Okay, then, clever clogs. What does,” she pointed at a machine at random, “this one do?”

“Ah.” He’d looked rather abashed, sinking his hands deep into the pockets of his pants. “Well – that one is something I happened to pick up in my travels. It doesn’t belong with everything else, as it happens. I picked it up in the forty-first century because, well, I liked the look of it, to be honest. Still,” he added cheerfully, “if there’s ever an occasion when it’s needed, it’ll turn on and produce all the readings it should, just like everything else.”

So that machine from the forty-first century is now beeping at Donna, and what really freaks her out is that the various readings on it are coinciding with the drumming sounds she can hear in her head.

And she can’t help thinking of something else the Doctor told her about this room.

“So,” she had said, “what if something happens and it diagnoses and treats the wrong thing? What would happen then?”

His expression had been serious as he crossed the room and stopped in front of her. “The thing is, Donna,” he had said, “this room is never wrong. It never will be wrong. Ever.”

Right now, she wishes he hadn’t been so damned definite because she isn’t sure she’s ready for what that machine is telling her. Still, there’s no harm in getting a second opinion.

She fishes out her mobile, pleased that she hadn’t had a chance to get into her pyjamas, which don’t have any pockets. Entering the number, she wanders over to the long, white bed and sits on it while she waits for the call to be answered.

“Hello,” a somewhat sleepy voice answers. “Doctor Jones.”

“Oh, golly!” Donna’s instantly apologetic. “I’m so sorry, Martha. I never meant to wake you up. I forgot to check what time it was.”

“Donna?” Martha sounds almost immediately more awake. “Donna Noble, is that you? What are you – where are you?”

“The TARDIS, but don’t ask me exactly where.” She thinks for a moment, and then, “Hey, wait a minute. Shouldn’t you be sounding all surprised to hear from me and wondering what I’m doing calling you – or even remembering who you are?”

Martha chuckles. “Don’t worry, the Doctor called to let everyone at Torchwood know he was planning to get you back. I’m glad he succeeded. Where is he anyway? Is there some big disaster headed for the Earth that we should all know about?”

“Not that I know of.” Donna smiles. “And as far as I’m aware, the Doctor’s tinkering in the console room.”

“Big surprise.” Martha’s voice suggests that she’s smiling, too. “So what can I do for you, Donna? There’s nothing wrong with you, is there?”

“I hope not.” Donna reaches out and touches the machine next to her. “I’ve had a bit of a weird night, though – ”

“It’s the TARDIS,” Martha interrupts her. “It’s meant to be weird.”

“Well, it’s the first time she’s tried this sort of weirdness on me,” Donna tells her, and then describes the dark room and what she heard there. “And now,” she finishes, “I’m in the infirmary and one of the machines is playing the sound of that drumming back at me.”

“Really?” Martha, having clarified that Donna is not carrying a fobwatch, is clearly at a loss. “Do you know what machine it is?”

“Well, the Doctor said it was called a foetal monitor.”

There’s a silence on the other end of the phone. Then, “Why on Earth does the Doctor have a foetal monitor?”

Donna grins. “That I can’t tell you. But can you tell me what it means if it’s turned on?”

“Presumably it’s detected a foetal heartbeat,” says Martha sardonically. “You and the Doctor haven’t – you know.”

“We-ell,” Donna draws out the word as long as she can and is glad to hear Martha laugh, “we might have. Once or twice. In the spirit of scientific enquiry, you know.”

“Or some other kind of spirit,” Martha shoots back with a giggle, but her voice takes on a professional tone. “Do you want to make a time so that I can take a look at you? I’d like to make sure there’s nothing wrong – the egg’s in the right spot and all that.”

“Sure, why not?” Donna smirks. “But I should warn you - that there’s not just one heartbeat on the foetal monitor.”

“Oh, two then?” Martha sounds cheerful. “Well, you should probably expect that. I mean, if the Doctor’s the father then any kid of his will probably have two hearts. Like Jenny,” she adds, after a moment of thought. “Still,” she goes on, “can you hear two clear heartbeats? Because I thought the Doctor’s hearts beat in sync. Then again, don’t worry too much. Babies’ hearts beat very quickly, so you might be confusing them for two separate normal human hearts. Put the phone on loudspeaker so that I can hear them.”

“Er, no, sorry, I can’t.” Donna’s grinning so hard now that her cheeks hurt. “This machine doesn’t have a speaker. It’s got a screen so you can see the lines, like the heart monitors they have on E.R. And this doesn’t show one line – or even two.”

She stops and can almost hear Martha’s impatience. “Well, how many? Three?”

“Mmm, no.” Donna chuckles. “Try six.”

There’s a sound of breaking glass and a splashing noise. “What?” Martha’s voice demands abruptly.

“Six,” Donna repeats. “Six separate red lines. And you were right about them beating in sync. The first and second lines match, as do the third and fourth, and the fifth and sixth.”

From the other end of the line there’s a choking sound. “Donna,” Martha’s voice finally speaks in a plaintive tone, “next time you’ve got news like this, could you at least wait until I’ve had breakfast – or at any rate, my first cup of coffee – before you spring it on me?”

Donna chuckles. “I’m still waiting for a diagnosis, Doctor Jones.”

“Oh, you know full well what’s happening, Donna Noble,” Martha shoots back, and Donna can tell from her voice that she’s smiling. “You’re having babies. Multiple. Three, by the sounds of things. Two hearts each. But you already knew that when you called me.”

“I did, yeah,” Donna admits. “But I had to tell someone.”

“I’ll say you did.” Martha laughs out loud. “How are you going to break it to the Doctor?”

“I’ll play it by ear. Any message I should give him?”

Martha giggles. “Tell him I said hello.”

* * *
Donna ends the call to Martha and then pulls the foetal monitor closer to the bed. Her left hand comes to rest on the top of the machine while her right gently touches her lower belly.

Immediately the drumming noise becomes louder.

“Oh,” she breathes, “is that what you are? You’re the ones who scared me!”

And then she laughs at the stupidity of talking to three embryos. Still, it somehow makes the idea that there are three miniscule little creatures inside her more real, and that has to be a good thing.

Slowly, as if realising that the excitement is over, the machines switch off one by one. In the end, only the foetal monitor remains active and, as Donna slowly gets off the bed, it too goes dark and silent.

“Well…” she says to herself.

She’s never quite imagined being in this situation before. Motherhood has never played a role in the picture she created of her future, perhaps because she had never found a suitable partner to be the father of her children.

The problem is that she still isn’t certain that she’s found the right man now – and that’s quite apart from the whole interspecies aspect of their relationship, if that’s what you’d could call it.

And there’s her concern that perhaps the Doctor isn’t ready to be father again.

She remembers only too well her conversation about fatherhood with him just after Jenny was created, and she still has nightmares sometimes about the devastation and pain on his face after Jenny’s death.

Does she really want to put him in that situation again?

She considers not telling him, but guesses that he will hear the heartbeats as soon as he gets close enough to her.

Maybe she could lie and tell him that the babies aren’t his?

But she dismisses that idea at once. He would know anyway, and the last thing they need now is any sense of mistrust between them.

No, she realises that all she can do is tell him and hope that he can accept the idea. Crossing her fingers, she leaves the infirmary – the door opens as she approaches it – and goes into the kitchen to make some of his favourite dessert, hoping that it will somehow soften the shock.

Part 4