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1 - the doctor
The first time Donna met John, he’d been interviewing her for a job, and she’d clocked him with her handbag.
She’d been sitting, waiting, in the surgery where he worked, gripping her resume in her left hand. Her palms were leaving little wet marks on the crisp manila envelope; the sterile whiteness of clinics everywhere made her fingers twitch.
“Hello there,” John had said, going over to join her with a weary but cheerful nice-guy smile. Donna had watched him, and that smile, with some suspicion. “Doctor John Watson. Pleasure to meet you.” He’d shaken her hand, and then, with a wink, “I don’t suppose you’d like to have dinner?”
“Hello,” Donna had replied, with some dignity. “I’m Donna Noble. And I am engaged, you twit!”
And then she’d hit him. With her purse.
A laugh, and then a pretty young woman had poked her head out of one of the examination rooms. “Miss Noble,” she’d said, grinning at Donna. “I’m Doctor Sawyer. How do you feel about crime-fighting super-geniuses?”
“Well, if they barge in during office hours, they could always help me with paperwork.”
She’d been hired on the spot.
***
Donna likes John, really. He’s sweet and spunky, and he never treats her like a servant just because she runs reception. She’d had enough of that as a temp, really, had hated the orders and condescension even more than she’d hated the boring work and crap pay, had dreamed of having a job where someone else was making the coffee for her.
She won’t drink coffee anymore, not after Lance, but John always puts the kettle on for her right before her break starts, and she appreciates the sentiment.
They chat over tea sometimes, during lunch or on the surgery’s rare slow day. John lives the life that Donna’s always craved, haring off on mad adventures with an even madder man, seeing the extraordinary, saving the world. Or, you know, a museum. Or a bank in central London. It makes for pretty decent conversation.
“….. and then Sherlock grabbed the murderer, but that damn rat charged into the both of them, and they fell into the Thames. Again. Took Lestrade hours to get them both out – I think he was stalling on purpose, really.” Donna laughs, a proper hard laugh, and John grins back, then shudders slightly. “Giant Sumatran rats, ugh. I still have nightmares, sometimes.”
“Do you have bad dreams often?” Donna asks, worrying her lip. It’s a stupid question, really. Too personal. She doesn’t even know why she asked.
John shrugs. “Not frequently,” he says, with a forced lightness. “Why, do you?”
Screaming, in bed, the darkness pressing down on her like a toothed enemy. Fire and ash, falling, falling, all her fault. The sky is burning – there is something on her back – the stars are going out.
–gold creeps at the corners of her vision –
“Yeah,” says Donna, sighing into her tea. “Yeah.”
That, she supposes, is why.
***
2 – the patient
It is a busy Monday morning when he comes into the surgery. The waiting room is cramped with sniffling kids and sullen-looking adults trying for a sick day, and Donna has been rushed off her feet filing prescriptions and pulling queue numbers and cursing lazy hypochondriac idiots under her breath.
He sidles up to the reception desk, big eyes wide and appealing, mouth curved into an slightly dippy, sickly-sweet smile. Donna fixes him with a glare.
“Hello,” he drawls, leaning against the counter. “I’d like to speak to Doctor Watson, please.”
“Do you have an appointment?” He doesn’t, Donna knows. She’s just asking to be polite. She likes working here, after all, and if she got fired for being rude to a patient her mother’ll never let her hear the end of it. “We’re pretty full up today, but you’re welcome to take a number.”
The man smiles wider, edges curling with the bite of arrogance and steel. “I’m a…. friend of his. Jim. I’m sure he’ll want to see me right away.”
The buzzer sounds for another patient – number 65 already, and it hasn’t been two hours since the surgery opened. The radiator has been playing up lately, and the room is stuffy with muggy recycled air. A little kid is sniffing and yelling, tugging on his mother’s skirt and getting on everyone else’s nerves, and in the corner, a baby has started to wail.
“Listen, sunshine,” Donna snaps. “I don’t care if you’re his friend or his colleague or the bloody King of England. You could be the Lord of Time for all I care, I’ve got a room full of sick people who need to see him more than you do. Now, you can call Doctor Watson on his mobile – during his lunch break – or you can wait till his shift’s over and talk to him then. Got it?”
“Oh,” simpers Jim. Donna wants to slap him. “And what if I were ill? Really, truly in need of a doctor’s care?”
“Then I would tell you what I told the rest of them,” says Donna. “Get in line, or get out.”
Jim’s smile slips from arrogant to amused, but Donna’s watching his eyes as they harden by degrees. He steps away from the counter. “Thank you for your time,” he says. “Here’s my number, if he wants to call me back.” He slides a slip of paper under Donna’s growing stack of forms, turns, goes.
Donna rolls her eyes and calls the next patient.
***
“There was a guy in earlier,” she tells John, when he’s at his desk with a well-earned sandwich. She’d made him tea, too, a sympathies-for-your-crappy-Monday gesture. She hopes he won’t get used to it. “He wanted to see you. Right away, he said.”
“Oh, really?” John asks, around a mouthful of chicken. “What about?”
“Don’t know. Didn’t seem urgent, he wasn’t even sick. He claimed he was a friend of yours, so I told him to get lost.”
John laughs at that. “It wasn’t Sherlock, was it?”
“Please,” Donna snorts. “If it was that flatmate of yours I would’ve just given him a good kick in the arse. It was this little bloke. Sharp suit, big eyes. Called himself Jim.”
John stops laughing.
He freezes, shoulders stiff, and the sandwich starts to turn to pulp in his hand. Donna watches him, eyes sharp with concern. She wonders what she said.
“Oi, Doc,” says Donna, snapping her fingers in front of his face. “Doctor Watson? Oi. Hello? John!”
John doesn’t respond. Donna kneels by his chair, grabs his shoulder. He’s shaking. If it gets any worse, Donna thinks, if it gets worse….
–Running, screaming down corridors, flying for her life, his life, all life –
–“I can’t, don’t you see, Donna, I can’t –
- “I’m sorry,” he says, weeps, screams, “I’m so sorry” and the sky is burning –
“Not now,” hisses Donna. Her head pounds. “Go away, I’m busy, not now.” She gives John’s shoulder a little shove. He’s still not moving, probably catatonic. PTSD, adrenaline, shock. Lie him down somewhere, get a blanket. Get a doctor. She’s never seen this before herself (of course not), but her Grandad’s talked about it often enough that she knows exactly what to do. That’s why. That has to be why.
She keeps her hand on John’s shoulder, props the door open with her foot. “Doctor Sawyer!” she calls, to the now-empty room. “Doctor Sawyer! Sarah!” There’s no reply. Must’ve gone out for lunch. She usually does, on Mondays. Donna stifles a groan.
“Get a doctor,” she mutters to herself, digging in her pockets with her free hand for her mobile. “Get someone. Get a doctor.”
Not that kind of doctor, says a voice in Donna’s head, and –
– gold creeps at the corners of her vision –
“Shut up,” she mutters. “Shutupshutupshutup.”
She scrunches her eyes shut, and dials.
***
3 – the light
Do you have bad dreams, John had asked, and Donna does. She wakes screaming, some nights, seeing giant red spiders and planets in the sky and what-have-you, and on other nights she dreams of stars and spires and it isn’t bad, but it’s weird, and –
– gold creeps at the corners of her vision –
And she wakes up, most mornings, to gold light and a throbbing headache. She forgets her dreams by breakfast, usually, but they stay with her anyway. She’s terrified of spiders, now, and beetles, and she’s scared of the dark where she wasn’t before.
And Donna isn’t daft. Her mother might think she’s stupid, but she knows herself, and she knows that she’s smart. Not smart in books, granted, and maybe not smart with people, but smart enough to know when something’s wrong. Smart enough to know when she’s missed too much, lost too much, forgotten too much.
Smart enough to remember the light. Mad enough to chase it.
When John’s calm and resting with a fresh mug of tea and his idiot flatmate’s brother, Donna goes home and whips out her laptop. Gold light tickles the corners of her eyes, but she blinks it away. She isn’t afraid. She wants answers, and she will have them. She can type faster than her brain can short out, anyway, and she does know how to work Google, thankyouverymuch.
***
She searches for the events first, the mad alien things she’d supposedly missed out on. The mass hallucination this past Christmas, and the planets floating in the sky the Christmas before. The draining of the Thames the year before that, and that one crazy thing with the diet pills. She reads the news sites, the blog sites, the conspiracy sites policed by nutters. She skims the articles and copies some bits down, the parts that make her head throb the hardest, the words that fill her vision with light.
She moves on to her dreams, next. She punches in words that linger in her mind after waking, nonsense syllables, dalekssontaransvashtanerada, and perfectly normal words that taste funny in her mouth. Like Source. Like Library. Like Doctor.
Doctor, she types, and presses enter, and –
- it’s bigger on the inside, delight and incredulity, where the hell am I –
- the stars, she sees the stars, and the beginning of the world, and the skies are burning, burning –
- heartbeats, pounding in her ears, and –
- Donna Noble, you are the most important woman, the most important, the most –
- the stars are going out –
“Okay,” says Donna. “Okay.”
– gold creeps at the corners of her vision –
“Alright,” she mutters, shutting the computer down, pushing the images away. She keeps the words, though, scrawled over a legal pad, thick black ink holding questions and answers and certainties. She takes an Aspirin, goes to bed, and dreams –
- changing, changing, everyone changing, but she stays the same –
- run Donna run –
- gold creeps, and gold spills, and it fills the street, a defense, a weapon –
When she wakes, she still has the words, and there’s power in them, isn’t there. She knows this, as a feeling in her bones, a residual memory, a dream that hasn’t had the chance to fade, and, and.
And she doesn’t remember, but she remembers.
***
4 – the madman
Sarah gives both John and Donna the morning off. Donna spends the first hour of it buying them each a cup of tea, and they drink them together in the park.
“Feeling any better, Doc?” she asks, tipping her face towards the sun. She was trying for casual and brisk, really, but the concern seeps through. “You scared me yesterday, you know. I hope you’re happy.”
“Sorry,” says John, grimacing. “I’m fine, really. Just…. Didn’t see that coming. It’s all a little embarrassing, actually, I usually don't – I mean, you know. Nerves of steel and all that.”
Donna snorts. “Yeah,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Stiff upper lip. Say nothing at all until you’re on the verge of total collapse. Don’t scare the womenfolk, until you do. Men.”
John laughs. Donna smiles, proud, over the rim of the paper cup.
“Wanna tell me about him?” Donna prods John in the ribs, gently. Physical prodding usually helps metaphorical prodding along, she’s found. John’s quiet, for a while, but Donna’s in no hurry.
“Alright,” John says, finally, and does.
***
“Hello?” says the voice over the line, flat and dead and edged with steel. Donna’s hand shakes, slightly, on the receiver, but –
– gold creeps at the corners of her vision –
and it’s a hard light, this time, fierce and strong and angry, and Donna clutches at it –
- and they call me the Oncoming Storm –
and she’s not afraid, not of this moron, anyway. “Hi,” she says, brisk and bold. “Is this Jim Moriarty?”
“Yes,” says the voice, sounding not quite guarded and not quite angry. It sounds, Donna decides, like dark, like the patch of night sky when there are no clouds and there are no stars.
Donna hates starless skies.
“This is Donna Noble,” she says, and her voice is strong. “From the surgery. Did you want to make an appointment? Yes? Great.”
***
5 – the hero
“Well, well, well. Donna Noble.” Jim leers at her from across the pool – Donna’s choice, she likes irony – with a bright manic grin and eyes deep like black holes. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Donna’s heart pounds. She’d called Mr Holmes (the slimy government one, not the super-genius git) about this meeting, but she’d given him the wrong time. She hadn’t wanted to be disturbed. Standing in front of this madman, now, the dim, greenish pool lighting casting eerie shadows on the wall, she doesn’t regret it, not one bit.
The lack of backup is slightly disconcerting, though.
“That’s Miss Donna Noble to you,” she says, planting a hand on her hip. “I just wanted a little chat. I’m unarmed, too, so you can quit the creepy Bond-villain bit.”
“Oh, you’re unarmed?” Jim’s grin stretches even wider, and Donna marvels at his cheek muscles. “So am I.”
He spreads out his arms, wiggling his empty fingers, and a small forest of red dots settle themselves on Donna’s shoulders. Donna resists the urge to roll her eyes.
“Listen, nutso,” she says, taking a step forward. “My boss told me all about you. At first I thought you were just an annoying arsehole, but then he told me you strapped him to a bomb, and I thought, alright, there’s some serious crazy going on in your head.” She keeps walking as she talks, and soon she’s standing not five meters in front of him, staring him down. He’s such a tiny man, she decides. So very small.
She takes another step, leans in. Jim’s eyes are hard, bleeding chilling emptiness into the space between them, but Donna’s glare is pure fire, could melt steel even on her off days. She’s not afraid, not of him. His smile droops, just a little.
“And then,” she hisses, the ultimate accusation. “And then he told me you hurt children. So I just wanted to ask you, Mister Moriarty, who exactly you think you are.”
Jim giggles, bitter and cruel. “You brought me here to yell at me?” he asks, mouth curling into a sarcastic o. “Well, now, Miss Noble, that’s really too good. You – “
“Shut it,” Donna snaps, and Jim’s eyes flare with surprise, just for a moment. It gives her a feeling of intense satisfaction. “Listen, you evil tit, because I am talking. Now. I’ll bet you think you’re pretty hot, with your suits and your snipers and your clever little schemes. I’ll bet you think of yourself as, oh, I don’t know, a king or something. A ruler. A god. Am I right?”
“Well,” says Jim, voice high and considering, like a curious child’s. “Yes, a little bit. Do carry on.”
Donna does.
“You know what, though,” she says, taking a step back. “I have seen – I have seen planets, floating in the sky. I have watched the clouds catch fire, and I have seen the stars go out. I remember – I remember everything.”
- this is a lie, of course, but it is a clever lie, because –
- because –
– gold creeps at the corners of her vision –
The words, Donna thinks, concentrating hard. Remember the words.
“I’ve met – I’ve met the Sontarans. I’ve fought the Daleks,” Donna snarls, and these are words she doesn’t understand, words that she’d thought would sound stupid coming out of her mouth, but they feel – they taste just right. “I’ve seen shadows that devour, and I – “
- these are our forests, you are our meat –
- and the world, the world is wrong –
-oh, the universe has been waiting for me –
“And I burned them all.”
– gold creeps at the corners of her vision –
The images come, now, thick and fast. Donna’s head pounds, and her thoughts are hot and they shine, and there are voices, there are voices in her head –
- we sing, we will sing forever of the DoctorDonna –
- of you, Donna Noble, we will sing of you –
- the most important woman in the universe –
- and Donna remembers, and she remembers, and it burns, and oh, Donna is not afraid.
“I have,” she says, and her voice is strong, “I have seen this planet born, and I have walked among the stars. I have seen the universe, all in my head, and it is so, so huge, and you, Mister Moriarty, are so very, very small.”
Jim watches her, with something like amusement, with something tiny almost like fear. Donna doesn’t care. The whole world is glowing gold.
“I am Donna Noble,” she says, and it tastes like a roar. “I lit the fires of Pompeii. I saved the savior of the universe. I am the savior of the universe. They sing my name across the galaxies, and they call me the Oncoming Storm. I am not afraid of you, and there is nothing on my back.”
The light grows. It isn’t creeping, not anymore, and it isn’t just at the corners. It floods Donna’s sight and fills her ears with the throbbing of a heart, and her head pounds, and the light is growing –
- my best friend, did you really think –
- I’d leave her without some sort of defense? –
Not long now, Donna thinks. Three, two….
“I am the most important woman in the universe,” she tells Jim, and this time she doesn’t roar. She doesn’t shout. She doesn’t need to. “And you, James Moriarty, are just. A little. Bug.”
Jim’s smile slips. The little red lights dance. Then, all at once, they disappear.
One.
The world bursts with light as Donna falls.
***
6 – the doctor
Donna wakes in a hospital bed, to a splitting headache and a pale face pressed in uncomfortably close to hers.
“Oi,” she snaps, then winces. Blimey, her head hurts. “Who are you, then?”
The face pulls back, a little sheepishly, and it slackens with something too deep for a word like relief. “Oh, hello,” it says, and smiles. “I’m the – well, a doctor. A doctor. Just…. Any generic doctor, really.”
Donna narrows her eyes. This generic doctor is young, and kind of adorable, with a too-big chin and a very weird dress sense. Some kind of trainee, then, and that would be just like them, wouldn’t it, sticking her with some trainee who doesn’t know the difference between a broomstick and an IV pole. Bloody NHS.
“Doctor what?” she asks, because honestly, if he does anything untoward with her arteries she is so suing for malpractice. The doctor’s eyes light up, and he mutters something that sounds like well that’s new. Donna glares.
“John Smith,” he says, and Donna raises an eyebrow. “Well,” he adds, backpedalling, “Not really John, more like a Luke – no, Sarah-Jane’d – um, Matthew. Yes! Right! Doctor Matthew Smith, at your service.”
“Yeah,” sighs Donna, because his rambling really isn’t helping the storm in her skull. “Okay. Could you tell me what’s up with my…” She gestures upwards, to her head, which is right now trying to give her a concussion from the inside.
The doctor winces in sympathy. “You seem to have suffered some kind of…. seizure. Complete fluke, really. Think of it as a – no, that’s not – and that would just make your head hurt more – okay, never mind.”
Donna rolls her eyes, and regrets it almost immediately. “And the, uh….?” Snipers. Criminals. Crazy people. She doesn’t remember what happened to them. She does remember phoning Mr Holmes, though, and she doesn’t feel shot, so.
“Oh,” says the doctor, eyes lighting with unholy glee. “Them. They were, ah, apparently distracted. By your seizure. I think they’re in custody.”
“Good,” says Donna. “Right.” She closes her eyes. Maybe if she falls asleep her headache will pass.
“You,” says Doctor Smith, and Donna cracks her left eye open in annoyance. “You’re, you’re going to be absolutely fine. Absolutely. Perfect condition, really. Good as new, right as rain, all that. You know. Yes?”
Donna opens her other eye. “Yeah,” she says, meeting the doctor’s gaze. “Thanks.”
“Right,” he says, and turns to go.
Wait, cries a voice in Donna’s head. Waitwaitwait.
“Doctor,” she calls, and he turns back. He’s still smiling his delighted-kid smile, but it’s different, filled with terror and worry and hope, and oh -
– gold creeps at the corners of her vision –
- ouch, okay, never mind.
“Your bow tie,” says Donna, finally. “It’s very twee. But I like it.”
“Oh,” says the doctor – says the Doctor, thinks Donna, for a second, before she blinks it away – with breathless wonderment, and he’s smiling, and his eyes shine like the edges of Donna’s mind. “Thank you. I’m glad you do.”
“Yeah,” says Donna, again. She closes her eyes.
The voices in her head whisper as he walks away. Donna ignores them, for now. For now.