The road less travelled...

Title: Donna and the Waters of Mars 1/8
Author: katherine_b
Rating: PG
Summary: How would having Donna on Mars have changed things?
Characters: Ten, Donna Noble, Adelaide Brooke, Ed Gold, Yuri Kerenski, Mia Bennett, Tarak Ital, Steffi Ehrlich, Roman Groom, Maggie Cain, Andy Stone and Gadget.
A/N: So, here it is. For those who aren’t aware, this follows on directly from The Next Doctor and Donna and Planet of the Dead and the Living.

Part I

“Two years, Donna Noble,” the Doctor reminds her as they stroll along beside one of the canals of New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New Paris. “Two years since you hunted me down at Adipose Industries because you thought your life was too boring without me.”

“Sort of, you conceited sod,” she says with a grin, giving his fingers a squeeze. “It might be two years if time was linear. But actually…”

“…from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey.... stuff,” they finish in unison, exchanging knowing smiles.

“You know,” the Doctor says thoughtfully, his other hand jammed into the pocket of his pants, “I have to be suspicious about exactly how much of what you learned when you were the DoctorDonna that you actually hung on to.”

“I suppose I should be thankful you didn’t do to me what you did to Martha and take me to New New – well, all those new’s – New York,” she says in response.

“I thought she’d like it!” he protests indignantly, momentarily forgetting that she hasn’t directly answered his question. “I mean, she had a great time with Will Shakespeare!”

Donna rolls her eyes, but he continues before she can speak.

“Besides, at least I didn’t bring her somewhere like this. I mean, I wouldn’t want her to get the wrong idea. I told you what she thought of me then.”

“But you’re sure that I won’t,” she says mockingly.

“You said you always wanted to visit Paris!” he protests “I mean, your mother’s been there – the original city, that is. It’s only fair you get to go one better.”

“Thank you.” She stops teasing him and gives his hand another squeeze. “One thing, though. I can’t quite believe it’s been so completely peaceful for the whole time we’ve been here. I mean, no riots, no evil overlords wanting to take over the place, no aliens threatening the inhabitants’ peaceful lives – what’s going on?”

He grins, hoping that she doesn’t notice the discomfort he can’t quite hide when he’s not being completely honest with her. “As I told you when I first invited you along, you suspicious human, it’s not always bad!”

“You also told me you couldn’t go back over your own personal timeline,” she retorts, and he knows that she realised.

“I didn’t!” he objects. “I just – well, while you were showering and everything, I just stopped by to make sure. I’m not about to risk meeting myself or anything.”

“You’re such a romantic,” she teases.

“Why would I want to meet myself?” he demands almost incredulously and she shakes her head, rolling her eyes at the same time.

“Not like that! I mean – checking that the coast is clear before we set foot here. Your ‘knight in shining armour’ act.”

“Somehow I can’t picture you as a damsel in distress,” he retorts, his lips quirking into a grin. “At least, not unless the Sibylline Sisters get hold of you again.”

“Oh, you know me, I’d just scream the place down again,” she says cheerfully. “So what else do you have planned for us in this apparently safe city then?”

“Nothing much, unless there’s something you want to see that we’ve missed.” He pulls his hand out of his pocket to pat his chest above the pocket of his coat. “I’ve still got all those souvenirs you bought. We’ve eaten at what is and will remain one of the best restaurants on New New Earth for centuries to come. We’ve been to the New Louvre to see the only original piece of Earth artwork left – the Mona Lisa. We’ve been up the New Eiffel Tower. We visited New Notre Dame. We did a cruise along the New Seine. We nearly got killed trying to get to the New Arc de Triomphe on the New Champs Elysées…”

“I really would have thought French driving would improve over time!’

“I told you that they wanted to recreate everything exactly the way it was on the original Earth,” he tells her with a grin. “Even the dangerously stupid stuff. So, anything else you want to do then?”

“Not that I can think of.” She falls silent for a moment, clearly thinking hard, before giving a shrug. “Back to the TARDIS, then?”

“For the moment, yes,” he agrees cheerfully.

“So you have got something else planned,” she says triumphantly. “I thought I recognised that look on your face. What is it then?”

He smirks. “Patience, Donna Noble, remains a virtue, even this far into your personal future.”

She laughs and gives him a gentle punch on the arm as they approach the TARDIS. He unlocks the door and holds it open for her, closing it behind them and then shrugging out of his duster as he approaches the console, tossing the garment over a convenient coral strut.

“So, quiet night on the TARDIS then?” she teases as she takes her place opposite him. “That’s not like you, Martian Man.”

Perhaps for the first time he doesn’t rise to her bait. Instead, even as he sends the TARDIS into the vortex, he can’t help wondering if she’s picked up something from her subconscious knowledge of his thoughts.

Firmly suppressing even the faintest hints of what he has planned so as not to spoil the surprise, he steps back from the controls, eyeing Donna from head to toe.

“Just once,” he tells her with a grin, “you’re going to have to put up with me telling you what to wear. Come on, let’s go and get it.”

Before she can protest, he grabs her hand and all but drags her away from the console.

“Doctor, where are we going?” she demands as she manages to catch up with him without tripping over her feet and falling headlong.

“You’ll see,” he tosses back over his shoulder, leading her down eight different tunnels (although Donna isn’t the first person to tell him that they all look exactly the same to her), up two flights of stairs, down two more and finally arriving outside a set of large double doors.

“Okay, I’ll tell you one thing,” Donna says somewhat breathlessly when they finally stop. “If we ever played hide-and-seek in the TARDIS, you would definitely win! I could be looking for a year and never find you!”

“The TARDIS would help you,” he admits, trying not to sound hurt as he fishes in his pocket for a particular key. “I’ve tried it before and she always seems to help everyone else and make things as difficult as possible for me.”

“Well, maybe if you were a little less eager with the mallet,” Donna is beginning when the Doctor finds the key and unlocks the doors, throwing them open to reveal a room that seems to go on forever, filled with rack after rack of clothing, with a spiral staircase allowing access to everything.

“Oh, wow,” Donna finishes, her voice awestruck, as it often is when she finds new rooms in the TARDIS, even after this long of travelling with him.

Hands deep in the pockets of his pants, the Doctor strolls into the room, unable to help remembering when he was last here, not long after his regeneration into his current form.

He usually doesn’t come back here in between times, but he’s positive there was another suit somewhere that he needs for Donna and their next destination.

“So, just out of interest,” Donna says lightly as she walks in and begins smoothing her hands down various items of clothing with the experienced touch of a woman who is used to shopping, “if you’ve got all these here, why do you wear the same things every day?”

“I look good in pinstripes,” he protests indignantly. “They suit this body. Believe me, I thought about it long and hard before I chose this suit! I could have worn the skin of a Harvanian leopard instead, or… or a Venetian army uniform – how would you have liked that?!”

“I always liked a man in uniform,” she retorts with a smirk as she begins to flick through the racks.

“Hmph.” He turns away and leaps up a flight of stairs to hunt through the storage spaces.

“Doctor?” Donna’s voice calls and he peers between two piles of shirts and over the balustrade.

“What is it?”

His eyes widen as he instantly recognises what she’s holding up.

It’s a purple shirt, with patches of lighter and darker colour.

It’s all too familiar.

It’s Rose’s.

He swallows hard and almost falls down the stairs as he realises which area of the room she’s stumbled across.

“Yes,” he agrees as he takes it from her and almost reverently returns to it to its place on the rack. Then he turns to her. “Well,” he says with an attempt at joviality, “I wasn’t about to leave it in the console room for you to squawk at me about again, was I?”

She smiles and places her hand on his arm with a gentle squeeze before turning back to the rack. “So all of these belong to people you’ve kidnapped?”

“Hey!” He nudges her, trying to frown but unable to help smiling appreciatively at her for the way she’s trying to tease him out of any misery she may have inadvertently caused. “As I told you after you invaded my TARDIS, I don’t kidnap them!”

“’Course not,” she agrees with a grin, nudging him back, before something behind him catches her eye and she picks up another hanger which holds a red leather jacket. “Isn’t this Martha’s? But how can I have seen her wearing it if it’s here?”

“She bought another one after the original piece was damaged supposedly beyond repair.” He smiles as he takes it from her and holds it up to the light, turning it so she can see a series of incredibly fine lines of stitching. “The TARDIS managed to fix it, but Martha had the second one by that time, and she left this one behind when she decided not to travel with me anymore, before you came back.”

He hangs it up where it belongs and then turns to find Donna shrugging out of her brown leather jacket. His eyebrows dart upwards as she offers it to him.

“Want this to add to your collection?”

“Oh, no, no, no,” he protests anxiously, holding out his hands as if to ward her off. As a hurt expression crosses her face, however, he stops, realising that she deserves an explanation. “I never add things that belong to people who are still travelling with me,” he tells her, adding, with an awkward shrug, “It’s probably just a silly superstition, but I worry that they’ll leave if that happens.”

“Fair enough.” Donna pulls the jacket on again. “Go on then, Spaceman, keep hunting for whatever it was we came here for and then we can go wherever it is you’ve got planned.”

He grins at her again and then heads back up the stairs as she turns to a different area of the wardrobe and begins examining the many items of clothing he has, occasionally holding a jacket or a shirt up against herself, and he wonders what he’d do if she asked to wear any of it.

Meanwhile the Doctor continues the hunt he had begun some moments earlier, opening boxes and poking into the large piles of clothes that he keeps up here, frowning when he can’t locate it.

Finally he hears footsteps behind him and looks over his shoulder as Donna comes up to his level.

“You know, if you told me what you were looking for, I could help you,” she suggests, not unreasonably.

Sighing, he straightens up. “A space suit,” he admits. “Green, with a yellow helmet. Dark green.”

“I thought yours was orange.”

“It is.” He stares around the room, hoping to catch a glimpse of it. “That one is set to my specific physiological requirements. The green one is set for humans. Besides,” he adds with a grin as he glances at her, “you look better in green.”

She laughs as she turns to look at the shelves around them, including above and below where they’re standing while he resumes his search.

He’s just starting to get frustrated when he feels a light tap on his shoulder and looks up to find Donna beside him once again. However this time her arms are full of the green suit and she’s offering the yellow helmet.

“Is this what you were looking for?”

“Where did you find it?” he demands, taking it from her to ensure it is the right suit. Considering it’s the only green one, though, he can’t be too surprised when it is.

“Up there.” She waves a hand in a general upwards direction. “Do I need anything else?”

“Nope, that will be fine.” He eyes what she’s wearing – the brown leather coat that he sees her in most often, a dark purple shirt and blue jeans. “We’ll put on the suits in the console room and you’ll have to leave that jacket behind. It’ll be too bulky under the suit. That necklace will be all right though, if you want to leave it on.”

“Okay.” She takes back the suit and begins to lead the way out of the room before glancing back of her shoulder. “We don’t have to hunt for yours now, do we? We could be here all day!”

He chuckles and follows her down the stairs. “No, the TARDIS will have that waiting in the console room for me.”

“So why wouldn’t she have this one there, too?” Donna asks, gesturing at the suit by raising her arms.

“She would have if I’d asked her,” he admits with a grin. “I just thought it was time for you to see another room of the TARDIS.”

“Another chance to show off, more like,” she retorts.

“Well, maybe, that too,” he concedes as they leave the room and he locks the door, unavoidably reminded of what Carmel had said about his death and hoping, if it comes to regeneration instead, that it will be a long time before he actually does have to come back here.

Perhaps picking up on his feelings, Donna waits for him to finish securing the door and put the key away before she moves the suit to one arm and takes his hand.

He squeezes her fingers, feeling immeasurably comforted by her silent presence, as they head back through the numerous corridors to the console room.

As the Doctor had predicted, the orange suit is lying over the jumpseat, the battered yellow helmet on top.

“Your suit is new,” he answers before she can even ask a question. “No one else has worn it before. But mine’s had quite a lot of use.”

“Oh.” She looks about to ask another question, but instead, as he goes over and begins to put on his suit, she rests the helmet of her suit on the console and pulls on the baggy overalls.

The Doctor helps her to tuck her hair up and then set the helmet over her head before handing her the thick black gloves.

“Not the most practical of attire if we’re going to have to run for our lives,” she tells him, her voice muffled by the helmet.

“We’ll be fine,” he promises, sending the TARDIS out of the vortex and towards their destination. “I’ve been here before.”

“And where’s ‘here’?”

“You’ll see when we get there,” he promises, before checking the co-ordinates as the TARDIS comes in the land and then putting on the hand brake.

He settles the helmet before pulling on his bulky gloves and then heading for the door, his feet and Donna’s clanging loudly on the grating. At the doorway, however, he stops and turns back to face her.

“You know all those nicknames – or insults – you have for me,” he says with a grin, looking at her face behind the clear shield, his own voice echoing faintly in his ears from her intercom. “Spaceman and Time Boy and all the rest.”

“Martian Man,” she adds obligingly, with a matching smile as the small lights in her helmet make her hair glow.

“Especially that one,” he agrees. “Well,” he turns towards the doors and opens them, “I thought it was about time you discovered what a proper Martian looked like.”

He peers outside to make sure he has the right place, and then, with a nod, steps aside for her to move out onto the dry, dusty, red ground beside him.

“The red planet!” he announces with a satisfied grin.

Next Part