![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Finding A Way Home – Bouncing Bundle of Joy
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
katherine_b
Rating: G
Summary: An old alien threat returns.
Word Count: approx 2,700 words.
Characters: Both Doctors, Donna and an unexpected visitor.
A/N: Written for the first Travellers’ Tales with the prompt ‘chosen’
A/N 2: This also owes a bit to a certain fic bytime_converges.
The half-human Doctor allows his Time Lord counterpart to lead the way out of the ramp and into the mid-afternoon Chiswick sunlight. If he hadn’t realised it before, their time together now would certainly have shown just how the other man feels about his wife.
Sunlight streams into the TARDIS as the doors open – and the Doctors stare in bewilderment along an unsettlingly deserted street.
“Er,” the half-human Doctor begins, framed in the doorway of the TARDIS, “I might be wrong - unlikely, I know, although it's been known to happen - but didn’t Donna tell you to be back here by five? And isn’t it five now? So where is she?”
“I don’t know,” the other man admits as he looks around, his brow furrowed with concern. “I thought she’d be here. She should be here!”
“Wrong street,” the man in blue begins to guess. “Wrong century. Wrong planet. Wrong...”
“You’re not helping,” the Time Lord says grimly, but is interrupted by a sound from down the street.
“Doctor!”
Both men turn and a grin lights the face of the half-human Doctor. He turns the man next to him – but the place is empty. A shuffle of rubber on asphalt and the other Doctor is sprinting down the road towards the mother of his twins, who is watching him with the sort of amused tolerance she always displays when he’s at his most childish.
The other man can’t quite help holding his breath, as if another deadly tin box on wheels is going to trundle out from behind a van and disrupt this reunion, too.
But no, this time it all ends well, although the Doctor pulls himself up short, just before he would have crashed against his wife. He’s treated her like a sheet of glass ever since they both learned she was pregnant, much to Donna’s irritation. Still, at least she won’t be able to complain about the warmth of his embrace, the energy of which nearly wraps her completely in his long, brown overcoat.
Eventually, however, he lets her go, taking her hand and they walk together towards the TARDIS. The man in the doorway of the blue box watches as they gaze at one another, their pace slowing to a comfortable amble. Much of the Time Lord’s twitchiness has been soothed and the tension in Donna’s voice has obviously abated as her tones carry the short distance to where the other Doctor is waiting for them.
Finally she glances in the direction of the blue box and increases her pace, tugging on her husband’s hand to hurry him along. He gives a good-natured roll of the eyes and says something that the other man suspects is along the lines of ‘I think you like him as much as you do me’. The gentle slap Donna gives his arm is confirmation, and the half-human Doctor can’t quite hide a grin.
He shifts his weight, about to reach up and unlatch the small hook keeping the second door closed.
That’s when the TARDIS suddenly gives a violent jerk that throws the Doctor backwards so that he lands on the ramp, staring at the two white doors, which have slammed shut as soon as he was out of the way. The sound is still echoing around the console room.
“Oi!” he hears from outside, and then pounding feet. Before he can regain his footing, the TARDIS jerks again, from one side to another, and he slides off the ramp, landing several feet below, although the ship is at least considerate enough to have a padded mat waiting for him, so it doesn’t hurt.
“What are you doing?” he demands of the ship as he struggles to his feet.
The TARDIS is continuing to buck and jolt, so that it’s a struggle for him to get to the console. When he gets there, though, there’s not much he can do as the TARDIS is not in flight, nor in any danger of taking off. There’s also no indication of what is causing her to misbehave.
“What the hell - ow! - is going on?” he demands, switching on the microphone so that he can hear and be heard by the others outside.
“No idea,” the other Doctor replies. “She just – she’s gone crazy!”
“There’d better not be Daleks out there!” he warns, hanging on for dear life as a particularly vicious movement nearly sends him flying again.
“I promise there aren’t,” the Time Lord assures him. Then, “Donna, move away. I won’t have anything happen to you.”
“Oh, don’t be so daft,” Donna is beginning, when suddenly the TARDIS heaves itself sideways and the Doctor at the console is flung against the jumpseat.
His fingers scrabble for purchase on the cracked yellow leather, finally managing to stop his movement just before he would have been deposited on the floor. Considering the way the TARDIS is carrying on, he imagines that might have resulted in serious injuries, so he can only be thankful. Warily, he staggers back to his feet and returns to the console, trying to find a way to calm the ship down.
“Donna, get away!” the man outside bellows, and this time there’s no argument. “What is going on in there?” comes the next question.
“The TARDIS is trying to take off,” the man trapped inside exclaims, finally recognising the noises coming from the console. Usually they’re muffled by the demateralisation sequence and he hasn’t heard them like this before. “She can’t,” he adds in response to an exclamation from the Time Lord outside, “but she wants to. I think she’s afraid of something,” he goes on as a wave of emotions from the ship seeps into him.
“Afraid?” the other Doctor demands. “What is she afraid of?”
“I don’t know, any more than you do,” the blue-clad man retorts in frustration. “But,” he goes on as things seem to calm down a little, “whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be – whoa!”
The TARDIS seems to lift several feet off the ground, and as it crashes back down, the Doctor loses his grip on the console and is flung to the floor. It hurts as much as he thought it would and he groans, one hand over his ribs, as he flips himself on to his front in an attempt to prevent any further injuries.
Despite the situation, however, he feels as his body takes over, healing him without conscious thought on his part. It’s like when Jack comes back to life. Very weird, but he assumes he’ll get used to it.
No time for this, though, if he’s going to find a way to stop the TARDIS from shaking itself apart.
From his position on the floor, and ignoring the other Doctor’s demands to know what’s going on, he crawls across the floor to the grating, manages to lever it off, and lowers himself beneath the console space. Reaching into the green-lit console underside, he grabs a handful of wires and yanks them out.
The TARDIS stops shaking instantly and the lights fade, only the emergency lighting around the walls providing any sort of illumination.
The next moment the doors above his head are flung open and the brown-suited Doctor bursts into the room. He looks around for several seconds before his eyes travel down to where the other Doctor is still crouching beneath the console. He nods a little, perhaps at the sight of the bare wire endings in the other man’s hands, and then reaches down beneath the grill to offer his own hand to help him up.
“Thanks,” the man in blue mutters somewhat breathlessly as he drops the wires, grabs the other man’s hand and scrambles up into the main part of the room.
Then he looks around and realises they’re alone.
“Where’s Donna?”
“I’m out here,” the woman’s voice replies, sounding strangely distant. “And I think I know what’s wrong with the TARDIS.”
The men exchange eyebrow-raised glances and make for the door, comfortable that the ship isn’t about to take off without them.
However both stop dead at the sight of Donna sitting on the grass at the side of the road, the backpack she had been wearing sitting open on the ground beside her.
She isn’t alone.
A small, white, very familiar creature with one fang and large black eyes is dancing around her in circles.
The Adipose squeals dismally at the sight of the two men and rushes to Donna, burying itself in her lap as best it can.
“What?” the man in brown demands in obvious disbelief.
“What?!” the other Doctor echoes.
“I’d reckon,” Donna says slowly, “this was what the TARDIS was complaining about.”
Both men are still only just outside the blue box, some distance from where Donna is sitting. She smiles rather weakly at them. “It won’t bite,” she promises.
“Donna,” her husband demands, having clearly managed to gather his thoughts, as he points at the Adipose, “what is that – thing – doing here?”
“Well, actually,” Donna tells them as they slowly move across the ground towards her, “it’s your fault it’s here at all.”
“My...?” The Time Lord looks suitably indignant. “How is it my fault?”
“Do you know what day it is?” she demands, hurrying on before he can answer. “It’s Monday,” she says. “And if you’ll recall, the baby shower was on Sunday. Right time,” she adds with a pitying smile, “but wrong day.”
“And what has that got to do with this – creature?” her husband asks, clearly still unable to name it.
Donna smiles and pats the Adipose, who purrs and snuggles against her rounded belly. “We-ell,” she says slowly as the man, after exchanging wary glances, approach her, “Mum’s been complaining about a strange noise in my room.”
“For how long?” the man in blue demands as they finally reach her and sit down on the grass next to Donna and the Adipose.
“A while,” she admits. “Since the whole thing with Adipose Industries actually. Well,” she says somewhat impatiently as the Time Lord snorts, “how else was it going to get to Earth?”
“But I don’t understand,” the other Doctor says slowly as the Adipose peeps at him over Donna’s arms. “Why didn’t it leave with the others?”
Donna shrugs. “Dunno.” She relaxes her hold a little and the small lump of fat slides down to the ground, making a ‘whee’ noise as it goes.
The half-human Doctor is unable to help chuckling at the sound, and the other two join in, the Time Lord with some reluctance. The tension relaxes a little and the brown-clad Doctor takes his wife’s hand. The Adipose watches this for a few seconds before apparently deciding it’s all right and letting out a little ‘aw’.
“Well,” the other Doctor says at last, glancing at Donna, “it’s certainly fond of you. Where did you find it anyway? Somewhere in your room?”
“I think it was hiding in my wardrobe,” she admits. “I found it in my bed when I woke up this morning. It seems to have been hiding in my room for all that time and only came out when I was asleep. Which is why,” she goes on, turning to her husband, “I’m blaming you. If you hadn’t left me behind for a whole day, I wouldn’t have spent the night there – not to mention listening to Mum badmouthing you all evening! – and then I’d never have found it!”
“Mmm.” The man holding her hand rubs his free fingers through his hair and looks mildly uneasy. Then something clearly occurs to him and horror flickers over his face. “Your mother didn’t see it, did she?”
“I’m not that daft!” Donna says drily. “You think I haven’t already heard enough about the Adipose from the time she saw them appearing all over London? I just told her I’d found a hole in the roof and that something had probably got into the attic or something. I think she believed it.”
“Good, good.” But from the way he’s speaking, it’s clear that the Doctor’s thoughts are elsewhere now that he’s been reassured about his mother-in-law. “The question is,” he goes on in thoughtful tones, “exactly why that Adipose is still here, and,” he glances at his wife, “just why it loves you so much.”
“Maybe I’m just irresistible,” Donna jokes, fluttering her eyelashes at him, and he grins.
“Well, that too,” he admits. “But it’s more than that.”
“It’s imprinted on her,” the other man says as this occurs to him.
“Imprinted?” Donna demands. “What does that mean?”
“It’s what baby animals of some species do,” he tells her. “Generally the first thing they see, they assume it’s their mother and they create a bond with it. I think,” he adds, seeing that the Adipose is still staring at Donna, even if it’s become brave enough not to be snuggled up against her for protection all the time, “that’s what has happened here. You must have been one of the first things it saw and it’s decided,” he chuckles, “that you’re its mum!”
“Most likely that Adipose we saw in Matron Cofelia’s office,” the other man suggests, reaching out a hand to the small, white creature, who looks from Donna to him, as if for reassurance, before reluctantly touching the Time Lord’s long fingers. “After all,” the Time Lord continues, “that’s probably the only one that had a chance for a good, long look at you. Since it couldn't find you, as we'd left Earth, it must have made its way to your house and waited for you to come back.”
“The question is,” the man in blue says as he watches this reluctant interaction, “what we’re going to do with it now.”
“My Mum would have a fit if I left it behind,” Donna says truthfully.
The half-human Doctor finds himself the subject of an appealing look from a pair of big, dark, shiny Adipose eyes. Clearly it has understood every word of the conversation and is aware that its fate is being decided.
And, darn him, the soft side that comes from Donna is rapidly overtaking his more practical Doctor-inherited side.
“You know,” he says slowly, raising his eyes to see that a pleading expression on Donna’s face not dissimilar to that on the Adipose, “if we took it back home,” he goes on, “it would struggle to fit into that strict hierarchical society they have there.”
The Time Lord sighs, a sound that is almost a groan, and rolls his eyes. “You two,” he says somewhat bitterly, “are hopeless. Soft touches of the worst kind.”
“Oh, like you can talk,” Donna says scornfully. “Don’t give me that rubbish.”
“I notice,” the other man puts in, “that you aren’t exactly arguing.”
The man in brown snorts loudly. “What choice do I have?” he demands. “Like anything I say will make a blind bit of difference.”
“Aw!” Donna gives him a look of mock-sympathy and scoots closer so that she can nestle against his shoulder. “Is the poor Time Lord feeling hard-done-by all of a sudden?”
He rolls his eyes, but it’s clear that he can’t continue the façade of being angry when his wife is treating him like this. In the end he grins and kisses her, the tension in his shoulders relaxing.
“The only problem I can see,” he says at last when they break apart, “is how we’re going to persuade the TARDIS to let this little ball of fat in.”
“Well, right now,” the other man reminds him as he gets to his feet, “she’s not exactly able to argue. Why don’t we do a quick reprogram while we’re reconnecting those cables? Then she should be fine.”
“Thank God for that,” Donna replies, taking her husband’s hand and allowing him to pull her to her feet before she picks up the half-empty backpack in which the Adipose had obviously been concealed. “After all,” she adds with a grin, “the ride can be bad enough sometimes without it being made worse by her trying to throw someone out!”
“Oi!” the two men exclaim indignantly and she giggles, sliding an arm through each and guiding them in the direction of the silent blue box, the Adipose skipping along behind.
The creature stops on the threshold and lets out a dismal little ‘ooh’ as it looks around at the massive space, clearly having the same reaction as everyone else in that situation. This prompts another chuckle from the three people standing near the console as they set to work on reprogramming the TARDIS so she won’t react so violently when they finally reconnect her cabling.
“I’ll tell you something,” the Time Lord says as they watch the little creature amble around the console room. He glances at the other two to find himself the object of their questioning gazes. “That,” he goes on, nodding at the Adipose before turning to his wife, “is definitely not sharing our bed!”
Naming Names
Author:
katherine_b Rating: G
Summary: An old alien threat returns.
Word Count: approx 2,700 words.
Characters: Both Doctors, Donna and an unexpected visitor.
A/N: Written for the first Travellers’ Tales with the prompt ‘chosen’
A/N 2: This also owes a bit to a certain fic by
time_converges. The half-human Doctor allows his Time Lord counterpart to lead the way out of the ramp and into the mid-afternoon Chiswick sunlight. If he hadn’t realised it before, their time together now would certainly have shown just how the other man feels about his wife.
Sunlight streams into the TARDIS as the doors open – and the Doctors stare in bewilderment along an unsettlingly deserted street.
“Er,” the half-human Doctor begins, framed in the doorway of the TARDIS, “I might be wrong - unlikely, I know, although it's been known to happen - but didn’t Donna tell you to be back here by five? And isn’t it five now? So where is she?”
“I don’t know,” the other man admits as he looks around, his brow furrowed with concern. “I thought she’d be here. She should be here!”
“Wrong street,” the man in blue begins to guess. “Wrong century. Wrong planet. Wrong...”
“You’re not helping,” the Time Lord says grimly, but is interrupted by a sound from down the street.
“Doctor!”
Both men turn and a grin lights the face of the half-human Doctor. He turns the man next to him – but the place is empty. A shuffle of rubber on asphalt and the other Doctor is sprinting down the road towards the mother of his twins, who is watching him with the sort of amused tolerance she always displays when he’s at his most childish.
The other man can’t quite help holding his breath, as if another deadly tin box on wheels is going to trundle out from behind a van and disrupt this reunion, too.
But no, this time it all ends well, although the Doctor pulls himself up short, just before he would have crashed against his wife. He’s treated her like a sheet of glass ever since they both learned she was pregnant, much to Donna’s irritation. Still, at least she won’t be able to complain about the warmth of his embrace, the energy of which nearly wraps her completely in his long, brown overcoat.
Eventually, however, he lets her go, taking her hand and they walk together towards the TARDIS. The man in the doorway of the blue box watches as they gaze at one another, their pace slowing to a comfortable amble. Much of the Time Lord’s twitchiness has been soothed and the tension in Donna’s voice has obviously abated as her tones carry the short distance to where the other Doctor is waiting for them.
Finally she glances in the direction of the blue box and increases her pace, tugging on her husband’s hand to hurry him along. He gives a good-natured roll of the eyes and says something that the other man suspects is along the lines of ‘I think you like him as much as you do me’. The gentle slap Donna gives his arm is confirmation, and the half-human Doctor can’t quite hide a grin.
He shifts his weight, about to reach up and unlatch the small hook keeping the second door closed.
That’s when the TARDIS suddenly gives a violent jerk that throws the Doctor backwards so that he lands on the ramp, staring at the two white doors, which have slammed shut as soon as he was out of the way. The sound is still echoing around the console room.
“Oi!” he hears from outside, and then pounding feet. Before he can regain his footing, the TARDIS jerks again, from one side to another, and he slides off the ramp, landing several feet below, although the ship is at least considerate enough to have a padded mat waiting for him, so it doesn’t hurt.
“What are you doing?” he demands of the ship as he struggles to his feet.
The TARDIS is continuing to buck and jolt, so that it’s a struggle for him to get to the console. When he gets there, though, there’s not much he can do as the TARDIS is not in flight, nor in any danger of taking off. There’s also no indication of what is causing her to misbehave.
“What the hell - ow! - is going on?” he demands, switching on the microphone so that he can hear and be heard by the others outside.
“No idea,” the other Doctor replies. “She just – she’s gone crazy!”
“There’d better not be Daleks out there!” he warns, hanging on for dear life as a particularly vicious movement nearly sends him flying again.
“I promise there aren’t,” the Time Lord assures him. Then, “Donna, move away. I won’t have anything happen to you.”
“Oh, don’t be so daft,” Donna is beginning, when suddenly the TARDIS heaves itself sideways and the Doctor at the console is flung against the jumpseat.
His fingers scrabble for purchase on the cracked yellow leather, finally managing to stop his movement just before he would have been deposited on the floor. Considering the way the TARDIS is carrying on, he imagines that might have resulted in serious injuries, so he can only be thankful. Warily, he staggers back to his feet and returns to the console, trying to find a way to calm the ship down.
“Donna, get away!” the man outside bellows, and this time there’s no argument. “What is going on in there?” comes the next question.
“The TARDIS is trying to take off,” the man trapped inside exclaims, finally recognising the noises coming from the console. Usually they’re muffled by the demateralisation sequence and he hasn’t heard them like this before. “She can’t,” he adds in response to an exclamation from the Time Lord outside, “but she wants to. I think she’s afraid of something,” he goes on as a wave of emotions from the ship seeps into him.
“Afraid?” the other Doctor demands. “What is she afraid of?”
“I don’t know, any more than you do,” the blue-clad man retorts in frustration. “But,” he goes on as things seem to calm down a little, “whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be – whoa!”
The TARDIS seems to lift several feet off the ground, and as it crashes back down, the Doctor loses his grip on the console and is flung to the floor. It hurts as much as he thought it would and he groans, one hand over his ribs, as he flips himself on to his front in an attempt to prevent any further injuries.
Despite the situation, however, he feels as his body takes over, healing him without conscious thought on his part. It’s like when Jack comes back to life. Very weird, but he assumes he’ll get used to it.
No time for this, though, if he’s going to find a way to stop the TARDIS from shaking itself apart.
From his position on the floor, and ignoring the other Doctor’s demands to know what’s going on, he crawls across the floor to the grating, manages to lever it off, and lowers himself beneath the console space. Reaching into the green-lit console underside, he grabs a handful of wires and yanks them out.
The TARDIS stops shaking instantly and the lights fade, only the emergency lighting around the walls providing any sort of illumination.
The next moment the doors above his head are flung open and the brown-suited Doctor bursts into the room. He looks around for several seconds before his eyes travel down to where the other Doctor is still crouching beneath the console. He nods a little, perhaps at the sight of the bare wire endings in the other man’s hands, and then reaches down beneath the grill to offer his own hand to help him up.
“Thanks,” the man in blue mutters somewhat breathlessly as he drops the wires, grabs the other man’s hand and scrambles up into the main part of the room.
Then he looks around and realises they’re alone.
“Where’s Donna?”
“I’m out here,” the woman’s voice replies, sounding strangely distant. “And I think I know what’s wrong with the TARDIS.”
The men exchange eyebrow-raised glances and make for the door, comfortable that the ship isn’t about to take off without them.
However both stop dead at the sight of Donna sitting on the grass at the side of the road, the backpack she had been wearing sitting open on the ground beside her.
She isn’t alone.
A small, white, very familiar creature with one fang and large black eyes is dancing around her in circles.
The Adipose squeals dismally at the sight of the two men and rushes to Donna, burying itself in her lap as best it can.
“What?” the man in brown demands in obvious disbelief.
“What?!” the other Doctor echoes.
“I’d reckon,” Donna says slowly, “this was what the TARDIS was complaining about.”
Both men are still only just outside the blue box, some distance from where Donna is sitting. She smiles rather weakly at them. “It won’t bite,” she promises.
“Donna,” her husband demands, having clearly managed to gather his thoughts, as he points at the Adipose, “what is that – thing – doing here?”
“Well, actually,” Donna tells them as they slowly move across the ground towards her, “it’s your fault it’s here at all.”
“My...?” The Time Lord looks suitably indignant. “How is it my fault?”
“Do you know what day it is?” she demands, hurrying on before he can answer. “It’s Monday,” she says. “And if you’ll recall, the baby shower was on Sunday. Right time,” she adds with a pitying smile, “but wrong day.”
“And what has that got to do with this – creature?” her husband asks, clearly still unable to name it.
Donna smiles and pats the Adipose, who purrs and snuggles against her rounded belly. “We-ell,” she says slowly as the man, after exchanging wary glances, approach her, “Mum’s been complaining about a strange noise in my room.”
“For how long?” the man in blue demands as they finally reach her and sit down on the grass next to Donna and the Adipose.
“A while,” she admits. “Since the whole thing with Adipose Industries actually. Well,” she says somewhat impatiently as the Time Lord snorts, “how else was it going to get to Earth?”
“But I don’t understand,” the other Doctor says slowly as the Adipose peeps at him over Donna’s arms. “Why didn’t it leave with the others?”
Donna shrugs. “Dunno.” She relaxes her hold a little and the small lump of fat slides down to the ground, making a ‘whee’ noise as it goes.
The half-human Doctor is unable to help chuckling at the sound, and the other two join in, the Time Lord with some reluctance. The tension relaxes a little and the brown-clad Doctor takes his wife’s hand. The Adipose watches this for a few seconds before apparently deciding it’s all right and letting out a little ‘aw’.
“Well,” the other Doctor says at last, glancing at Donna, “it’s certainly fond of you. Where did you find it anyway? Somewhere in your room?”
“I think it was hiding in my wardrobe,” she admits. “I found it in my bed when I woke up this morning. It seems to have been hiding in my room for all that time and only came out when I was asleep. Which is why,” she goes on, turning to her husband, “I’m blaming you. If you hadn’t left me behind for a whole day, I wouldn’t have spent the night there – not to mention listening to Mum badmouthing you all evening! – and then I’d never have found it!”
“Mmm.” The man holding her hand rubs his free fingers through his hair and looks mildly uneasy. Then something clearly occurs to him and horror flickers over his face. “Your mother didn’t see it, did she?”
“I’m not that daft!” Donna says drily. “You think I haven’t already heard enough about the Adipose from the time she saw them appearing all over London? I just told her I’d found a hole in the roof and that something had probably got into the attic or something. I think she believed it.”
“Good, good.” But from the way he’s speaking, it’s clear that the Doctor’s thoughts are elsewhere now that he’s been reassured about his mother-in-law. “The question is,” he goes on in thoughtful tones, “exactly why that Adipose is still here, and,” he glances at his wife, “just why it loves you so much.”
“Maybe I’m just irresistible,” Donna jokes, fluttering her eyelashes at him, and he grins.
“Well, that too,” he admits. “But it’s more than that.”
“It’s imprinted on her,” the other man says as this occurs to him.
“Imprinted?” Donna demands. “What does that mean?”
“It’s what baby animals of some species do,” he tells her. “Generally the first thing they see, they assume it’s their mother and they create a bond with it. I think,” he adds, seeing that the Adipose is still staring at Donna, even if it’s become brave enough not to be snuggled up against her for protection all the time, “that’s what has happened here. You must have been one of the first things it saw and it’s decided,” he chuckles, “that you’re its mum!”
“Most likely that Adipose we saw in Matron Cofelia’s office,” the other man suggests, reaching out a hand to the small, white creature, who looks from Donna to him, as if for reassurance, before reluctantly touching the Time Lord’s long fingers. “After all,” the Time Lord continues, “that’s probably the only one that had a chance for a good, long look at you. Since it couldn't find you, as we'd left Earth, it must have made its way to your house and waited for you to come back.”
“The question is,” the man in blue says as he watches this reluctant interaction, “what we’re going to do with it now.”
“My Mum would have a fit if I left it behind,” Donna says truthfully.
The half-human Doctor finds himself the subject of an appealing look from a pair of big, dark, shiny Adipose eyes. Clearly it has understood every word of the conversation and is aware that its fate is being decided.
And, darn him, the soft side that comes from Donna is rapidly overtaking his more practical Doctor-inherited side.
“You know,” he says slowly, raising his eyes to see that a pleading expression on Donna’s face not dissimilar to that on the Adipose, “if we took it back home,” he goes on, “it would struggle to fit into that strict hierarchical society they have there.”
The Time Lord sighs, a sound that is almost a groan, and rolls his eyes. “You two,” he says somewhat bitterly, “are hopeless. Soft touches of the worst kind.”
“Oh, like you can talk,” Donna says scornfully. “Don’t give me that rubbish.”
“I notice,” the other man puts in, “that you aren’t exactly arguing.”
The man in brown snorts loudly. “What choice do I have?” he demands. “Like anything I say will make a blind bit of difference.”
“Aw!” Donna gives him a look of mock-sympathy and scoots closer so that she can nestle against his shoulder. “Is the poor Time Lord feeling hard-done-by all of a sudden?”
He rolls his eyes, but it’s clear that he can’t continue the façade of being angry when his wife is treating him like this. In the end he grins and kisses her, the tension in his shoulders relaxing.
“The only problem I can see,” he says at last when they break apart, “is how we’re going to persuade the TARDIS to let this little ball of fat in.”
“Well, right now,” the other man reminds him as he gets to his feet, “she’s not exactly able to argue. Why don’t we do a quick reprogram while we’re reconnecting those cables? Then she should be fine.”
“Thank God for that,” Donna replies, taking her husband’s hand and allowing him to pull her to her feet before she picks up the half-empty backpack in which the Adipose had obviously been concealed. “After all,” she adds with a grin, “the ride can be bad enough sometimes without it being made worse by her trying to throw someone out!”
“Oi!” the two men exclaim indignantly and she giggles, sliding an arm through each and guiding them in the direction of the silent blue box, the Adipose skipping along behind.
The creature stops on the threshold and lets out a dismal little ‘ooh’ as it looks around at the massive space, clearly having the same reaction as everyone else in that situation. This prompts another chuckle from the three people standing near the console as they set to work on reprogramming the TARDIS so she won’t react so violently when they finally reconnect her cabling.
“I’ll tell you something,” the Time Lord says as they watch the little creature amble around the console room. He glances at the other two to find himself the object of their questioning gazes. “That,” he goes on, nodding at the Adipose before turning to his wife, “is definitely not sharing our bed!”
Naming Names
restless