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Title: Finding A Way Home: The Heart of Things
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
katherine_b
Rating: G
Summary: Donna has something to tell the Doctor…
Characters: Donna and the second Doctor
A/N: This is a sequel to Finding A Way Home – Kitchen Conversation and it’s ALLfansquee’s fault! So Kayla, you can blame her (and not me)…
The door of the workshop opens as the Doctor is welding something into place on his latest gadget and he glances over his shoulder to see Donna enter the room.
“’Norning,” he says cheerfully around the sonic screwdriver in his mouth as he turns back to his work.
He’s rather too distracted to notice that she doesn’t immediately reply to his greeting, and he almost swallows the screwdriver whole when she grabs his shoulder and, without warning, spins him around to face her.
“What?” he splutters, wishing for a respiratory bypass as he snatches the screwdriver out of his mouth and tosses it onto the bench. “What is it? What did I do this time?”
“Which one are you?” she demands, and he squawks in shock as she literally dives at him, her hands come to rest on his chest, one over his single heart and the other over his right lung.
The Doctor falls silent, worried about the concerned expression on Donna’s face and knowing that she will identify him quickly enough. After a moment, apparently reassured, she gives a nod and steps back.
“Happy?” he asks after a moment, raising his eyebrows. “Was it me you wanted?”
“Mmm hmm.” Donna turns away and drops onto a nearby stool.
For a moment, he watches her, seeing the concern in her eyes and recognising the way her fingers are rapping a nervous beat on her knee. Pulling over another stool, he sits down opposite her, reaching out to place his hand over hers and still the movement of her fingers. She studies the floor for a moment before finally looking up at him, and as he smiles, she manages, albeit with visible reluctance, to smile back.
“What’s wrong?” he asks in the end. “And don’t say ‘nothing’,” he goes on as he sees her mouth open to speak far too readily considering what he’s just witnessed. “You come flying in her like you’re being chased by a swarm of Vespiform, manhandle me left, right and centre, and look as if you’ve just made a terrible investment with your life savings that means you’re flat broke at Christmas. So what’s the matter?”
“I just… I realised something,” she admits slowly, “and I needed to talk to… the Doctor.”
“‘The Doctor’?” he prompts. “Either one? Because if that was the case, I don’t think you’d have gone through the whole charade of checking for the second heart that we both know isn’t there.” He studies her in silence for a moment, wondering at the uncomfortable hunch of her shoulders. “Where’s the other Doctor?”
“Sleeping.” Donna nods in the direction of where the bedrooms probably are unless the TARDIS is playing around. “At least, he must be if you’re here. But,” she goes on lamely, “that’s why I had to – check.”
“What do you need me for then?” He narrows his eyes slightly. “It’s about him, isn’t it? Because otherwise it wouldn’t matter which one of us you talked to.”
Donna sighs, her eyes sinking to the floor again, but this time the Doctor doesn’t interrupt. He can’t even begin to imagine what Donna could need him for that she couldn’t talk to either of them about, so it’s safe to say that he’s caught somewhat off guard by her first words.
“I was thinking – maybe I should leave.”
“What?!” His jaw drops and he stares at her. “Donna – why? Why would you do that?”
She continues to stare at the floor, clearly unable to meet his gaze. “It’s just – things have changed. It feels… different.”
“And you don’t like it?” The Doctor is still almost completely in the dark about what she means.
Almost.
But he’s starting to wonder if there isn’t an explanation for why she had to talk to him and not the other Doctor.
“Donna, what feels different?” he persists gently when she doesn’t answer his question. “What’s changed?”
“The Doctor,” she admits in the end, finally looking up at him. “The other Doctor,” she adds quickly, as if not wanting to offend him, before her eyes once more head in the direction of the floor. “Being around him – particularly when you’re not there. It’s not the same.”
The Doctor’s mind begins to whirl with possibilities of what to do next. He can only be surprised at the other Doctor’s lack of self-control if he’s let something of his feelings for Donna slip around her. Still, he knows that he won’t need to berate the other man if Donna does decide to go home, because he’s aware that the Doctor will beat himself up over it for a long, long time. Of course, he would find it very difficult to forgive the Time Lord if Donna did decide to leave…
“And it’s all my fault.”
The Doctor is so deep in thought – and mental accusation – that he nearly misses Donna’s murmured statement, and when he finally hears it, he almost reveals his own emotions with a double-take.
“What?”
“No, it is.” Donna’s expression is one of misery. “I don’t even know how it happened, but…”
“Donna.” He takes her hand, giving her fingers a gentle, reassuring squeeze as she falls silent. “What is it? What happened?” And then, as she hesitates, “Come on, you know you can tell me anything. I mean, I’m half you as it is!”
She has to laugh at that, although it’s rather choked, and she wipes her hand over her teary eyes.
“He hasn’t changed at all,” she confesses softly. “It’s me. I’ve changed. Changed how I feel about him. Oh, but I can’t!”
Pushing herself up off the stool, she crosses the room, her arms folded over her chest as if to defend herself. For a moment, she just stands there with her back to him, and he can see her shoulders trembling.
He’s glad she isn’t looking at him, because it means she misses the grin that crosses his face, as well as the roll of his eyes and the shake of his head that he can’t help. This whole situation is so unnecessarily complicated – and, he has to admit, pretty darned funny, although he knows he wouldn’t feel that way if he was involved.
Managing to pull his face straight, he just manages to stop himself as he’s about to speak aloud the thoughts in his mind. Only the reminder of the Doctor’s anxious tones keeps him silent.
You aren’t going to tell her, are you?
And then Donna spins on her heel, panic in her eyes. “You mustn’t tell him,” she begs. “Please, Doctor! Promise me!”
“Of course I won’t tell him.” He injects his voice with as calm and reassuring a tone as he can as he crosses the room to place his hands on her shoulders. “I wouldn’t do something like that, Donna. Besides,” he adds with a slight smile, “he deserves to hear it from you.”
“I can’t tell him.” She shakes her head, staring at the floor once again. “Not about this. I mean, we promised – just mates! And after the way I carried on about it, I can’t possibly tell him the way I feel about him now.”
The Doctor has to physically bite his tongue to stop himself from speaking or he knows he would blurt out the results of the conversation he and the other Doctor had in the TARDIS kitchen before their adventure with the Hongorat.
“How do you know his feelings won’t have changed, too?” he suggests in the end, rather lamely, but Donna doesn’t seem to notice.
“Oh, he’s too sensible for that.” She rolls her eyes, presumably at the apparent ridiculousness of her feelings. “He wouldn’t be that silly. He doesn’t let his emotions get to him like that.”
You’d be surprised. You will be, when he finally admits it, the Doctor thinks, but manages not to let any sign of that thought cross his face.
“Want to tell me about it?” he asks in the end.
“Busybody!”
He tilts his head to one side and grins at her. “I don’t somehow think that the side of me that loves gossip comes from the Doctor, do you? You were the one who admitted to that addiction, aren’t all!”
She shoots him a mock-glare. “And I still have a bone to pick with you about that little deception, mister!”
“Oh, like your little trick of abandoning me wasn’t punishment enough!” He rolls his eyes. “Besides, I never said I wasn’t me! You just assumed that you were talking to the other Doctor.”
“Did you really not know all those answers then?”
“I didn’t ask you anything I already knew the answer to – well,” he admits somewhat reluctantly, able to guess at her response, “except your age.”
Her glare becomes suddenly real. “Oi!”
“You think I don’t know how old this single heart of mine his?” He knocks his ribs over his left lung. “Donna, I’m a Time Lord. Part Time Lord, anyway. Age – it’s just one of those things.”
In response, her eyes widen. “God, that means he knows as well, doesn’t it?”
The Doctor chuckles. “Donna, do you really think he’s going to worry about you being forty-one years, eight months and eleven days old when he’s rapidly approaching his first millennium?” He winks at her. “Trust me, he’s more worried about hitting four figures than you are about turning fifty!”
“You know that about him?” she demands suspiciously.
“Donna, I am him,” he reminds her. “Of course I know!”
“Then,” her eyes widen in realisation, “you could tell me what he’s feeling about me.”
“And then I’d have to tell him what you’re feeling,” he says promptly. “It’s only fair.”
“No!” Her response is immediate and panic-stricken. “No, don’t do that!”
“Then don’t ask me to do something like that.” He places his hands on her shoulders and draws her slightly closer to him. “It’s almost like cheating.”
“I suppose…”
She suddenly throws her arms around him, and he wraps his arms around her back, feeling as she gives a shaky sigh.
“Thank you, Doctor.”
The words are muttered into his neck and he smiles as he strokes her hair. As she relaxes, he pulls back slightly so that he can look into her face. “Promise me you won’t leave,” he says seriously, “no matter what happens.”
“Not without talking to you first,” she agrees, her hand pressed to his chest over his single heart. She finally smiles as she looks briefly at her hand before raising her eyes to his again. “I’m going to have to start carrying a stethoscope so I know which Doctor I’m talking to.”
He chuckles. “Blue suit, Donna, remember?”
“Wouldn’t put it past you to swap them around to confuse me again, like you did the morning after our adventures with the Hongorat.”
“Oi! For the thirty-second time, that wasn’t us! It was the TARDIS!” he protests, remembering yet again the morning he had woken up to find the brown suit draped over the chair where his clothes usually sat.
It hadn’t even occurred to him that there was something wrong until he met the other Doctor in the hallway outside and realised that he was staring at, rather than wearing, the blue suit. It was only later, as they discussed it in the kitchen, that Donna suggested it might have had something to do with the comment the Time Lord had made about the other Doctor have substandard vision before their confrontation with the Hongorat. Donna’s suggestion was that the TARDIS had arranged this to show that this other version was just as good as the original Doctor.
“Yeah, ’course it was,” she agrees with a proper, cheeky grin as she gives him one final hug before letting go. “I’ll let you keep on with – whatever it was you were doing,” she says, peering at the lump of metal on the workbench.
“Thanks.” He grins and steps towards the workbench. “Let me know if you and the Doctor decide to go somewhere when he wakes up, won’t you?”
“Nah!” She winks. “We’ll just leave you behind – again. Find another ‘deserted’ planet for you.”
“Hmph!” He rolls his eyes and listens to her chuckle as she leaves the room, pleased that she sounds happier as he picks up the sonic screwdriver.
And as the door closes behind her, he wonders, with another roll of his eyes and an impatient sigh, just how long he’s going to have to wait until the silly, stubborn other two occupants of the TARDIS finally realize the truth.
A Little Uncomfortable
Author:
katherine_b Rating: G
Summary: Donna has something to tell the Doctor…
Characters: Donna and the second Doctor
A/N: This is a sequel to Finding A Way Home – Kitchen Conversation and it’s ALL
fansquee’s fault! So Kayla, you can blame her (and not me)…The door of the workshop opens as the Doctor is welding something into place on his latest gadget and he glances over his shoulder to see Donna enter the room.
“’Norning,” he says cheerfully around the sonic screwdriver in his mouth as he turns back to his work.
He’s rather too distracted to notice that she doesn’t immediately reply to his greeting, and he almost swallows the screwdriver whole when she grabs his shoulder and, without warning, spins him around to face her.
“What?” he splutters, wishing for a respiratory bypass as he snatches the screwdriver out of his mouth and tosses it onto the bench. “What is it? What did I do this time?”
“Which one are you?” she demands, and he squawks in shock as she literally dives at him, her hands come to rest on his chest, one over his single heart and the other over his right lung.
The Doctor falls silent, worried about the concerned expression on Donna’s face and knowing that she will identify him quickly enough. After a moment, apparently reassured, she gives a nod and steps back.
“Happy?” he asks after a moment, raising his eyebrows. “Was it me you wanted?”
“Mmm hmm.” Donna turns away and drops onto a nearby stool.
For a moment, he watches her, seeing the concern in her eyes and recognising the way her fingers are rapping a nervous beat on her knee. Pulling over another stool, he sits down opposite her, reaching out to place his hand over hers and still the movement of her fingers. She studies the floor for a moment before finally looking up at him, and as he smiles, she manages, albeit with visible reluctance, to smile back.
“What’s wrong?” he asks in the end. “And don’t say ‘nothing’,” he goes on as he sees her mouth open to speak far too readily considering what he’s just witnessed. “You come flying in her like you’re being chased by a swarm of Vespiform, manhandle me left, right and centre, and look as if you’ve just made a terrible investment with your life savings that means you’re flat broke at Christmas. So what’s the matter?”
“I just… I realised something,” she admits slowly, “and I needed to talk to… the Doctor.”
“‘The Doctor’?” he prompts. “Either one? Because if that was the case, I don’t think you’d have gone through the whole charade of checking for the second heart that we both know isn’t there.” He studies her in silence for a moment, wondering at the uncomfortable hunch of her shoulders. “Where’s the other Doctor?”
“Sleeping.” Donna nods in the direction of where the bedrooms probably are unless the TARDIS is playing around. “At least, he must be if you’re here. But,” she goes on lamely, “that’s why I had to – check.”
“What do you need me for then?” He narrows his eyes slightly. “It’s about him, isn’t it? Because otherwise it wouldn’t matter which one of us you talked to.”
Donna sighs, her eyes sinking to the floor again, but this time the Doctor doesn’t interrupt. He can’t even begin to imagine what Donna could need him for that she couldn’t talk to either of them about, so it’s safe to say that he’s caught somewhat off guard by her first words.
“I was thinking – maybe I should leave.”
“What?!” His jaw drops and he stares at her. “Donna – why? Why would you do that?”
She continues to stare at the floor, clearly unable to meet his gaze. “It’s just – things have changed. It feels… different.”
“And you don’t like it?” The Doctor is still almost completely in the dark about what she means.
Almost.
But he’s starting to wonder if there isn’t an explanation for why she had to talk to him and not the other Doctor.
“Donna, what feels different?” he persists gently when she doesn’t answer his question. “What’s changed?”
“The Doctor,” she admits in the end, finally looking up at him. “The other Doctor,” she adds quickly, as if not wanting to offend him, before her eyes once more head in the direction of the floor. “Being around him – particularly when you’re not there. It’s not the same.”
The Doctor’s mind begins to whirl with possibilities of what to do next. He can only be surprised at the other Doctor’s lack of self-control if he’s let something of his feelings for Donna slip around her. Still, he knows that he won’t need to berate the other man if Donna does decide to go home, because he’s aware that the Doctor will beat himself up over it for a long, long time. Of course, he would find it very difficult to forgive the Time Lord if Donna did decide to leave…
“And it’s all my fault.”
The Doctor is so deep in thought – and mental accusation – that he nearly misses Donna’s murmured statement, and when he finally hears it, he almost reveals his own emotions with a double-take.
“What?”
“No, it is.” Donna’s expression is one of misery. “I don’t even know how it happened, but…”
“Donna.” He takes her hand, giving her fingers a gentle, reassuring squeeze as she falls silent. “What is it? What happened?” And then, as she hesitates, “Come on, you know you can tell me anything. I mean, I’m half you as it is!”
She has to laugh at that, although it’s rather choked, and she wipes her hand over her teary eyes.
“He hasn’t changed at all,” she confesses softly. “It’s me. I’ve changed. Changed how I feel about him. Oh, but I can’t!”
Pushing herself up off the stool, she crosses the room, her arms folded over her chest as if to defend herself. For a moment, she just stands there with her back to him, and he can see her shoulders trembling.
He’s glad she isn’t looking at him, because it means she misses the grin that crosses his face, as well as the roll of his eyes and the shake of his head that he can’t help. This whole situation is so unnecessarily complicated – and, he has to admit, pretty darned funny, although he knows he wouldn’t feel that way if he was involved.
Managing to pull his face straight, he just manages to stop himself as he’s about to speak aloud the thoughts in his mind. Only the reminder of the Doctor’s anxious tones keeps him silent.
You aren’t going to tell her, are you?
And then Donna spins on her heel, panic in her eyes. “You mustn’t tell him,” she begs. “Please, Doctor! Promise me!”
“Of course I won’t tell him.” He injects his voice with as calm and reassuring a tone as he can as he crosses the room to place his hands on her shoulders. “I wouldn’t do something like that, Donna. Besides,” he adds with a slight smile, “he deserves to hear it from you.”
“I can’t tell him.” She shakes her head, staring at the floor once again. “Not about this. I mean, we promised – just mates! And after the way I carried on about it, I can’t possibly tell him the way I feel about him now.”
The Doctor has to physically bite his tongue to stop himself from speaking or he knows he would blurt out the results of the conversation he and the other Doctor had in the TARDIS kitchen before their adventure with the Hongorat.
“How do you know his feelings won’t have changed, too?” he suggests in the end, rather lamely, but Donna doesn’t seem to notice.
“Oh, he’s too sensible for that.” She rolls her eyes, presumably at the apparent ridiculousness of her feelings. “He wouldn’t be that silly. He doesn’t let his emotions get to him like that.”
You’d be surprised. You will be, when he finally admits it, the Doctor thinks, but manages not to let any sign of that thought cross his face.
“Want to tell me about it?” he asks in the end.
“Busybody!”
He tilts his head to one side and grins at her. “I don’t somehow think that the side of me that loves gossip comes from the Doctor, do you? You were the one who admitted to that addiction, aren’t all!”
She shoots him a mock-glare. “And I still have a bone to pick with you about that little deception, mister!”
“Oh, like your little trick of abandoning me wasn’t punishment enough!” He rolls his eyes. “Besides, I never said I wasn’t me! You just assumed that you were talking to the other Doctor.”
“Did you really not know all those answers then?”
“I didn’t ask you anything I already knew the answer to – well,” he admits somewhat reluctantly, able to guess at her response, “except your age.”
Her glare becomes suddenly real. “Oi!”
“You think I don’t know how old this single heart of mine his?” He knocks his ribs over his left lung. “Donna, I’m a Time Lord. Part Time Lord, anyway. Age – it’s just one of those things.”
In response, her eyes widen. “God, that means he knows as well, doesn’t it?”
The Doctor chuckles. “Donna, do you really think he’s going to worry about you being forty-one years, eight months and eleven days old when he’s rapidly approaching his first millennium?” He winks at her. “Trust me, he’s more worried about hitting four figures than you are about turning fifty!”
“You know that about him?” she demands suspiciously.
“Donna, I am him,” he reminds her. “Of course I know!”
“Then,” her eyes widen in realisation, “you could tell me what he’s feeling about me.”
“And then I’d have to tell him what you’re feeling,” he says promptly. “It’s only fair.”
“No!” Her response is immediate and panic-stricken. “No, don’t do that!”
“Then don’t ask me to do something like that.” He places his hands on her shoulders and draws her slightly closer to him. “It’s almost like cheating.”
“I suppose…”
She suddenly throws her arms around him, and he wraps his arms around her back, feeling as she gives a shaky sigh.
“Thank you, Doctor.”
The words are muttered into his neck and he smiles as he strokes her hair. As she relaxes, he pulls back slightly so that he can look into her face. “Promise me you won’t leave,” he says seriously, “no matter what happens.”
“Not without talking to you first,” she agrees, her hand pressed to his chest over his single heart. She finally smiles as she looks briefly at her hand before raising her eyes to his again. “I’m going to have to start carrying a stethoscope so I know which Doctor I’m talking to.”
He chuckles. “Blue suit, Donna, remember?”
“Wouldn’t put it past you to swap them around to confuse me again, like you did the morning after our adventures with the Hongorat.”
“Oi! For the thirty-second time, that wasn’t us! It was the TARDIS!” he protests, remembering yet again the morning he had woken up to find the brown suit draped over the chair where his clothes usually sat.
It hadn’t even occurred to him that there was something wrong until he met the other Doctor in the hallway outside and realised that he was staring at, rather than wearing, the blue suit. It was only later, as they discussed it in the kitchen, that Donna suggested it might have had something to do with the comment the Time Lord had made about the other Doctor have substandard vision before their confrontation with the Hongorat. Donna’s suggestion was that the TARDIS had arranged this to show that this other version was just as good as the original Doctor.
“Yeah, ’course it was,” she agrees with a proper, cheeky grin as she gives him one final hug before letting go. “I’ll let you keep on with – whatever it was you were doing,” she says, peering at the lump of metal on the workbench.
“Thanks.” He grins and steps towards the workbench. “Let me know if you and the Doctor decide to go somewhere when he wakes up, won’t you?”
“Nah!” She winks. “We’ll just leave you behind – again. Find another ‘deserted’ planet for you.”
“Hmph!” He rolls his eyes and listens to her chuckle as she leaves the room, pleased that she sounds happier as he picks up the sonic screwdriver.
And as the door closes behind her, he wonders, with another roll of his eyes and an impatient sigh, just how long he’s going to have to wait until the silly, stubborn other two occupants of the TARDIS finally realize the truth.
A Little Uncomfortable
worried