The road less travelled...

Title: Touch of an Angel 1/3
Author: katherine_b
Rating: G
Summary: Donna thinks she may have found a silver lining in the darkest cloud.
Characters: Ten, Donna and others
A/N: Written for the fifty-third weekly drabble challenge with the prompt ‘paddle’.
A/N 2: The villains in this piece are abiding by the characteristics that were applied to them in their first appearance rather than their second. Sorry.

Part I

Donna’s voice stammers into silence and the Doctor watches, pain in his chest making his hearts ache even more than they had done on the beach, as her hands clamp to either side of her head, the agony on her face obvious. He pushes himself away from the support beam and slowly crosses the few feet of grating between them.

“D’you know what’s happening?” he asks softly.

“Yeah,” she manages to get out, and in spite of his knowledge of her fortitude, he’s almost surprised she can make a sound.

In her eyes, he can see the understanding dawning. He can see the possibilities – probabilities – certainties – fly through her mind. The same ones he’s already calculated in order to come to devastating conclusion of what he has to do.

And then, even as he’s about to speak, somehow, despite the struggle he knows it must be simply to make her lips move, she gets words out first.

“And,” she manages to say, “I know how to fix it.”

Her words catch him off guard and he stops short, frowning a little, his hands already beginning to move towards her.

“This...” she begins, and her eyes close.

He guesses that she’s putting all of her remaining energy into trying to speak, and he places his hands on her shoulders to support her, unable to help gripping her more firmly than he’d ever touched her before. He’s not sure if he’s supporting or restraining her.

She manages to prize her eyes open again to look up at him. “This is – energy, right?”

“And it’s killing you, Donna,” he says quietly, tension humming through his body as the seconds tick away. “There’s no time for this.”

“No, wait,” she begs. “P-please.”

“Donna,” he goes on, not wanting to delay any longer, “I’m sorry.”

“Angels!” she gets out at last, and the effort leaves her visibly breathless.

His fingers instinctively relax and he feels his eyes widen at the ideas that this single word causes to race through his brain.

“Angels?” he clarifies, understanding. His eyes narrow. “You mean the Weeping Angels? But Donna, there’s no guarantee...”

There’s a flash of angry light in her eyes that cuts him off, and he sees her shoulders straighten. Clearly adrenalin is pulsing through her now. He can see an echo of the emotions in her face – the fury he guesses she’s feeling at what he’s planning to do.

“Who cares about a bloody guarantee?” she demands, managing to straighten despite the pain he guesses must be burning through her. “I’m dying here!” she bursts out. “And there’s no way you’re wiping my memory, Spaceman, so get that thought out of your mind right now!”

Breathless at the effort she’s made, she sinks back against the console, closing her eyes, unable to hold back a groan as the pain returns full-force. He sighs, even as he reaches for her temples.

“No,” she whimpers, trying to pull away, but he tightens his hold, doing what he can so that the pain will be temporarily suppressed.

“It’s all right,” he soothes, and feels her relax a little at his tone. He knows that this would be the perfect moment to carry out his plan – but somehow, with her so vulnerable and trusting beneath his fingers, he can’t do it.

“It won’t last,” he warns as his hands lower back to her shoulders, his thumbs rubbing lightly along the seams of her jacket.

The frown-line on her forehead vanishes and she clearly understands what he’s doing, in a way she’s never been able to manage before, thanks to the meta-crisis.

“I know.” She nods and risks cracking her eyes open again. She squints into the gentle golden glow of the ship for a while as her system recovers from the release of agony.

The Doctor has had occasion before to hate his knowledge of time and the way he can feel it passing. Now, however, the awareness of how quickly the seconds are passing in which Donna can survive without agony is something he detests. Still, they don’t have any time to waste on his regret.

“Angels,” he reminds her, and she turns her gaze to his face as she nods.

“They absorb energy,” she points out, and he gives a faint nod of agreement. “So,” she goes on, her voice speeding up, in a manner reminiscent of his, as she warms to her topic, “what happens if they absorb all of the energy inside me at the moment?”

He stares at her in a mix of astonishment, growing pride and dawning delight.

“You’ve saved the Universe today,” he says softly, “and now you might just have found a way to save yourself.”

He lets her go and dashes around the console, flicking switches and turning knobs, but even his frantic activity can’t keep his eyes averted from her form forever. Without his support, Donna has slumped back onto the jumpseat, clearly weakened by what she’s gone through. In the end, he stops and turns to her, bending down a little so that he can look up into her face.

“If this doesn’t work,” he begins hesitantly, but she cuts across him.

“Then I’ll be lost in the past,” she finishes, and this time her hand is resting on his shoulder, attempting to comfort him. “And I accept that.”

“You’ll die, Donna,” he says slowly, misery deepening, although he hadn’t thought that possible.

“I’m dying now,” she points out, and the quiet calm with which she says it makes him shudder inwardly. “And at least this is a chance.”

He nods a little, his eyes studying her features. He knows that, if he’d gone ahead with his own plan, he would never have been able to see her again. And if this fails, he could search throughout history and never find her. She’d have been just as lost to him then as she will be now if this goes wrong.

She’s right, much as it nearly kills him to admit it. There’s nothing else to be done.

“Stay there,” he orders, but she gets to her feet and reaches out for his hand, sliding her fingers between this.

“Partners,” she reminds him, “for as long as possible.”

He squeezes her hand, some tiny part of him superstitiously thankful to keep her with him, as if afraid that something will happen when they’re in different parts of the TARDIS. She smiles, one of the most beautiful smiles he’s ever received, mixed with fatalistic acceptance that nearly kills him to see.

Pushing aside that miserable thought, he leads her into what she’s always called, with some truth, the ‘junk’ room.

“What are we looking for?” she demands briskly.

“I’ve got some wire somewhere,” he admits. “And we’ll need something to attach it to the angels, but something we can put on them without touching them – just in case.”

“And if I only get touched by one before we get it all set up,” Donna finishes for him, “that won’t destroy the others.”

“Exactly,” the Doctor agrees, although he knows it wasn’t a question

Donna releases her hold on his hand and begins foraging through the piled-up boxes picking up a bag just as the Doctor turns away to begin his own search. Peering inside, Donna taps him on the shoulder and hands it to him. “What about these?”

He snatches the bag out of her hand and fishes around inside it, grinning as he pulls out a set of table-tennis paddles that he had thought were long-lost.

“Oh, brilliant! I haven’t seen these in – oh, ages!” he exclaims in delight. “I certainly haven’t used them for at least four lifetimes.”

“Yeah, I can imagine you would have been good at that when you were in your fifth body,” Donna remarks, leaning with would-be nonchalance against the wall, but the Doctor picks up on the tension in her voice and realises that she’s starting to fail again.

Time is once more slipping away.

He sets aside any further exclamations and turns to cast an eye around the room, finally diving in the direction of a dusty corner and pulling out a thick reel of wire.

“Let’s go,” he orders grimly, grabbing Donna’s hand and almost towing her back in the direction of the console room.

She doesn’t argue, which worries him more than ever, as she rarely lets his attempts to assert his authority pass without dispute.

He drops everything at the top of the ramp heading to the outside doors and then turns to the controls, but stops short as Donna gently frees her hand from his and takes her place on the opposite side of the console.

“But...” he begins, but she cuts him off.

“Try and stop me,” she warns, and he can’t say anything else because of the lump in his throat.

Unusually, there’s silence in the TARDIS as they head through the vortex. The Doctor keeps his eyes averted from Donna’s face, focusing on landing at the right place.

“Off to the side,” Donna says, saying aloud the idea he has already considered.

He nods somewhat distractedly, concentrating on ending up in the right place. They can’t afford to free the Angels from their quantum lock until they’ve been set up to have the energy flowing between them. Instead he sets them to land a few feet away.

Donna is already opening the doors as he puts on the handbrake and hurries to catch up with her, snatching up the bag as he goes. Stepping out onto the cracked cement floor, though, he stops momentarily to gaze at the four frozen angels. The large, dark room is almost eerily empty, with the only light coming from the single bulb in the ceiling and the dim glow from the TARDIS. The shadows make him think of the Vashta Nerada and he forcibly suppresses a shudder.

“Well,” Donna says briskly, “let’s get on with it then.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, his throat suddenly dry, as he unwinds a long stretch of wire and begins wrapping it over and around the handle and face of the paddle.

Donna takes it out of his hand almost before he’s finished and eases it between the stone fingers of the first angel. She’s about to duck under the angel’s outstretched arm to make it easier to wrap the wire around the figure when the Doctor looks up.

“Don’t!” he warns. “If you break their eye contact with each other...”

“Oh, right.” Donna manages a weak smile. “Never thought of that. Must be slipping.”

Her careless tones belie the fear that the Doctor can see so clearly in her eyes as she turns to look at him.

The most difficult part of the task is to wrap the wire around the Angels without touching them. Having the ping-pong paddles helps as the wire can be knotted on to them first before being wrapped around the stone arms. Despite the difficulties, they manage it at last and step back to see the stone figures wrapped in cables, looking somewhat ridiculous with the ping-pong paddles in their outstretched claws.

“So as soon as they’re free,” Donna says as she moves back with the Doctor into the doorway of the TARDIS, “their focus will be on the TARDIS rather than freeing themselves.”

“That’s the plan,” the Time Lord agrees. He glances at the woman beside him. “And you, of course.”

“Yeah,” Donna says somewhat hoarsely, and she suddenly reaches down to take his hand. She looks up at him, a small frown on her face. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” he assures her. “Oh,” he goes on as he remembers his own moment of being flung back through time, “it leaves you a bit stunned. Just catch your breath when you get there,” he goes on, trying to bring some levity to the situation. “Don’t go swimming for half an hour. Time travel’s nasty without a capsule.”

“Thanks for that,” she says briskly, giving his hand a squeeze. “Let’s get on with it then, shall we?”

He nods and they retreat back into the TARDIS. Donna stays by the door, her fingers curled tightly around the guards up the ramp. The Doctor concentrates on his work, keeping his eyes averted from the slumped figure of the woman on the far side of the console room.

Then there’s a gentle jolt and the Doctor knows not only that they’ve arrived but also that the Angels have been reawakened and have regained their hold on the TARDIS.

“That’s it,” he says, crossing the floor in only a few strides to move to Donna’s side.

“Not before time,” she replies in tight tones, and the pain is once more obvious in her eyes. “It’s started again.”

“Oh, Donna!” He can’t help placing his hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him. A tear is forming in one corner of her eye and he wipes it away with his thumb. “Safe journey,” he whispers, and she nods.

“Don’t forget me,” she begs, and he leans forward to touch his forehead to her.

“I couldn’t,” he assures her. “Not if I lived for another thousand years.”

She smiles tearfully and then glances at the door. “Let’s do it,” she orders, gently pulling herself free of his touch and turning to the door.

He nods and takes a step back, letting go of her so that he won’t be dragged back into time with her, as he was with Martha. Donna’s fingers reach for the door, and he sees her give a sigh as she touches the cool metal of the Yale lock.

Then she flings the white doors wide to find the frozen figure of an Angel on the other side, face frozen in a snarl and claw-like hands outstretched. Other sounds die at the same instant, as if all the Angels have stopped at the same moment, afraid of being seen.

Relief floods through the Doctor as he sees that, while the ping-pong paddles are hanging loose, the wires are still wrapped quite tightly around the stone form. As he’d predicted, their interest in the TARDIS means that they aren’t worrying about trying to free themselves.

“Go on,” he urges softly and sees Donna take a step forward out of the TARDIS and onto the small patch of ground between the blue box and the threatening angel.

The Doctor feasts his eyes on his companion for one final moment before reaching forward to close the doors of the TARDIS. Then he leans his head against the white painted wood to wait.

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