The road less travelled...

Title: When Wrong is Right
Author: katherine_b
Rating: G
Summary: This time, is the Doctor just plain wrong?
Word Count: approx 1,100 words
Characters: Ten and Donna
A/N: As a result of bidding on me at the Support Stacie auction, sonicgirl2005 was invited to give me a prompt for a fic. She asked for “Sometimes it's good to be wrong.”

“Have you got it, Doctor?”

The Doctor turns to face her, his expression tense. “No. You?”

Donna is forced to shake her head. “No idea. No one would tell me anything.”

“We’re too foreign.” He looks around in frustration. “This is so big, so secret, that not even psychic paper is getting them to tell us anything. They expect to see someone trying to sneak their way in, so they do.”

“Doctor, are you sure they’re planning a coup?” Donna demands, finally catching her breath after what seems like hours of running. “I mean – it couldn’t be something else? I don’t know, less sinister?”

He gives a hollow laugh. “Not exactly likely, is it?” he demands sartorially. “I mean, we know they’ve got boxes of explosives, timed to be set off around the city. And from our conversation with the governor, he has no idea that anything could be planned. Maybe,” he adds bitterly, “it’s nine hundred years of experience talking, but that doesn’t usually bode well.”

Donna sighs. “I suppose not,” she’s forced to agree. “It’s just – we’ve been in this situation a few times now.” She glances at the Doctor for confirmation, but he’s too busy staring at the walled city in front of them in a state of obvious gloom to respond. “And,” she goes on with an effort to sound more cheerful, “it doesn’t feel tense enough in there for what seems like it’s about to happen.”

“I don’t know how you can be so certain,” the Doctor snaps, “considering we can’t get hold of the password that would let us into the city to find out for sure!”

Silenced by the tone of his voice, Donna looks around as the sun slips beneath the horizon and the world around them darkens. She can’t help shivering slightly at the cool breeze that picks up and, knowing that the Doctor won’t want to leave until he can be certain of the result of the political event they have been warned will happen here today, she moves away to gather together some wood.

The Doctor is still standing with his back to her, staring at the locked gate some distance away, as if he could somehow wish himself inside. Donna sighs and begins rubbing two sticks together, hoping that she can start a fire, which will at least give them – her, actually, since the Doctor doesn’t ever seem to feel the cold! – some warmth while they wait.

Five minutes later, all she’s managed is to get hot and bothered when a hand comes to rest on her shoulder and then she sees the blue flash of the sonic. The wood ignites and she sinks back on her haunches to cast a glance of aggravation at the Doctor, who at least has the grace to look ashamed as he removes his coat and places it on the ground for them to sit on.

“Sorry,” he murmurs as he sits down and pats the ground for her to take a seat beside him.

“Are you sure,” Donna asks as she wriggles into a more comfortable position, “that we’re meant to be changing things here anyway? It’s not a fixed point in time or something?”

He shrugs a little. “Some points of it are,” he admits, “but we could have stopped the actual events if we’d been inside the city. We can’t do anything from out here though,” he adds gloomily.

She leans back so that her shoulder brushes his. “I’m sorry,” she says, and he shakes his head.

“Not your fault,” he replies at once.

“Not yours either,” Donna suggests, wondering if she’ll convince him. “Maybe this just wasn’t meant to be.”

“Five minutes,” he says as if he hasn’t heard her.

She sighs and says nothing. It’s all too obvious how hard the Doctor is taking what he evidently sees as a failure, and she isn’t sure whether she can talk him out of it.

“Four,” he says a short time later.

“Doctor,” Donna pleads, although she knows there’s no point since he wont’ agree, but she can’t bear to sit here and listen to him count down the seconds, “we can’t change anything, so can’t we just leave?”

“Three minutes,” he replies.

Sighing again, Donna picks up twigs from the ground around them and feeds them into the fire. She shuts out the sound of the Doctor’s gloomy voice counting down the second-last and final minute before the major event that she knows will erupt on the other side of the high walls.

“Thirty seconds,” she hears him say at last. “Twenty. Ten.”

“Five,” she counts with him under her breath as the tension around them builds. “Three. Two. One.”

Although they’re expecting something, they both start violently at the sound of a loud bang from the other side of the walls. Donna frowns when that is followed by a high-pitched whistling sound and then an explosion of colour high in the sky above them.

“The signal,” the Doctor declares.

“No!” Donna sits upright to stare. “Fireworks!”

“Could still be the si…” The Doctor is silenced when coloured explosions continue to go off high above them. “Or possibly just fireworks,” he’s forced to admit.

Donna laughs in relief. “All that secrecy,” she declares in delight. “And it’s a party!”

“A surprise party,” the Doctor has to agrees as one of the fireworks spells out the words ‘Happy Birthday’ in blue and green light. “For the governor,” he adds, his voice revealing his growing comprehension, “which is why he didn’t know about it.”

She continues to chuckle as she admires the Catherine wheels that are spinning on the walls – and which they had previously thought was ammunition of some sort – while the Doctor fishes in the pocket of his jacket and pulls out a plastic bag.

“Marshmallow?” he suggests in an apologetic tone.

Donna grins and fishes two out of the bag, picking up a stick and poking them onto the end before she holds them over the fire.

“I think that’s a first,” she says while they toast.

“First what?” the Doctor asks as he imitates her actions.

She glances at him out of the corner of her eye as she eats her marshmallows, before she says, “The first time you’ve ever been so utterly and completely wrong.”

“Oi!” he’s beginning indignantly, when suddenly his marshmallows flare up and he has to pull them out of the fire and blow on them to extinguish them before they become inedible.

“And you know something else, Doctor?” she goes on as he crams both blackened marshmallows into his mouth and reaches into the bag for more.

“Mmm?” he asks, arching an eyebrow as he chews.

“Sometimes,” she says as he takes the new marshmallows he offers and begins cooking them, “it’s good to be wrong.”