I'm burning up.
She felt the heat gather itself around her once again. The blinding light threatening to draw her into it, away from everything from everything she'd ever known.
"It's ok," a voice whispered to her, "just a nightmare".
"But I'm burning..."
"No, a slight fever. You're fine. It happens." Something cold was placed on her face. More than anything, it reassured her that there were still other sensations outside of the awful heat.
"Sleep now," the voice whispered, "you'll be fine."
...
You must never open the watch
Open it. Open it. Open it.
Even though somewhere inside her, she knew she was asleep and dreaming, she felt her hand slip into her pocket for the watch. She rubbed her finger across the metal, feeling for the catch.
Go on. Open it.
Her fingernail was at the catch.
A shadow fell across her. She felt a hand cover hers and ease the watch gently out of her grasp.
...
"Come on, Sleeping Beauty, rise and shine!" The Doctor's voice was so cheerful, it made her want to shake him. If she had the energy. Donna Noble opened her eyes and rolled back into the cushion as the lights hit her.
"It's the middle of the night," she mumbled, aware that that couldn't be true. At some point in the last few hours, she had gotten up for the day and retired to the couch that the Doctor had moved to the control room for her benefit.
"Donna?" Now his voice sounded concerned so she forced herself into a sitting position. It wasn't so bad once she was upright, she realised. She pulled her cardigan around her, reaching into her pocket.
"I think I've dropped the watch." She knelt down, checking under the couch and then the cushions.
"No, here it is," He came over and handed it to her. With a relief she couldn't explain, she clutched it tightly for a moment before putting it back into her pocket.
"You were trying to open it again last night. Donna, you need to put it away somewhere safe before you sleep. If there's anything bothering you about..."
She interrupted. "Am I ever going to stop feeling this tired?"
"Yeah, course you will. It takes a few days, that's all. Regeneration is tough enough at the best of times. In your case, it changed your own genetics. Again. Bound to take it out of you. You had quite a fever last night."
"Did I? I feel ok...just tired. Wiped my brow, did you?" She felt a bit embarrassed. God, she hoped she hadn't been talking in her sleep. Didn't that happen when you were delirious?
"Naturally!" He seemed completely at ease with the situation. She regarded him with interest. Maybe he didn't call himself the Doctor for nothing. "I'll expect the favour returned at my next Regeneration!" he said. "In a few days, your system will have adjusted. You'll be fine then."
"Plus, you make terrible coffee."
"There is that. Maybe we should go somewhere with really great coffee! Paris or Rome, or maybe..."
"There's no planets other than Earth with great coffee?"
He frowned slightly, "yes, but sadly, none of them are places you'd want to visit...not right now. Some aliens just can't take their caffeine!"
"Where are we now?"
"Circling...just circling..."
"And when we stop circling?"
"I don't know," he fiddled with the controls absent-mindedly. "I'm trying to think somewhere where there's no chance of anything happening. Just 'til you're back on your feet."
She laughed at the genuine puzzlement on his face.
"Yeah, like you've ever been anywhere that something didn't happen! Let's just go for the minor happening as opposed to the threat to the universe type of happening." She glanced at her stack of bags beside the couch.
"I should unpack these. God knows how you packed them up; men have no regard for folding clothes. Were you ever planning to return them? "
"Yeah...sometime."
"Not that I missed them. That's not like me!" She reached over and unzipped the first one, trying to decide if she really felt motivated enough to unpack the lot. Her predication was true. The clothes were stuffed in at every angle, as if they had packed up in a hurry. Or maybe as if the person packing them had been distracted at the time. Or upset. She glanced sideways at the Doctor.
"Missed me, did you?"
He shrugged, non-committal.
"Place was a bit quiet without your dulcet tones."
"Oi!" She threw a cushion at him then bent to retrieve a handful of small framed photos from the top of one of the bags.
"My pictures! I can't believe I didn't miss these!" The Doctor indicated the top one.
"You don't believe in packing light, do you? That's one's nice. I was looking at it...before...when I...packed."
"That wasn't exactly packing, Doctor."
But she turned the picture over and smiled at it.
"I was six years old then. Mom's hairstyle is well smart, isn't it?"
"You both look very happy."
"Ah," she handed him the picture, "there's where photos are deceiving. Mom was furious. God, right after that was taken..." She pretended to shudder.
"Why? What had you done? I have a feeling you were a terribly badly behaved child."
"Yeah, I reckon I was. I'd just gone off by myself. On holidays. Got on a bus because she told me we'd have no holidays that year. They had the police out."
The Doctor handed her the photo back, "I'd better think of somewhere to go quickly before you ditch me and head off!"
"The only thing was," Donna traced the picture with her hand, "I didn't."
"Didn't what?"
"Go by myself. Mom never believed me when I told her that. There was this woman, I'm sure of it. I remember her talking to me about holidays and how I should go with her, and I was so angry, I just took her hand and went. "
"And no one believed you?"
"No, well, I wasn't the most truthful at times! And even now," she frowned, "sometimes I think, yeah, I did make her up to get myself out of trouble. But I just have this image of walking away with her and getting on the bus. But she wasn't with me on the bus. My memory of it now is just what my mother or Granddad said. You know, your childhood sometimes, you know something happened but you don't remember the exact feel of it."
The Doctor nodded. For a moment, she wondered if he would tell her something of his own childhood. Mind you, that must be hard to remember by now.
"The thing is," she continued, wondering if she should get off the subject, "when I think of it, I remember the woman was crying. It's weird. I remember nothing of what she looked like. Just that there were tears on her face. Maybe she'd lost a child or something and took me, and then decided not to go through with it." She shrugged, "or maybe I really did just make her up. Doctor, I've just thought of somewhere! All those little seaside towns we'd go to on holidays when I was a child! We
could go, literally, back to that time. And I can guarantee, nothing ever happened in any of those places!"
"No, sorry," the Doctor sat beside her, "I have this rule now about taking people back to their pasts. It's harder when it's your own life, not to change something. There was this incident with Rose...her emotion got the better of her and...well, it nearly brought about the end of the world."
"Just one of those things, eh? The end of the world? Poor Rose..." She stopped uncertainly, unsure if Rose was a good topic of conversation or not.
"No, I don't mean go back to one of my holidays specifically. But one of those little towns near the sea. In the winter! In those years! It would be so quiet...no one had money in the 70s and 80s!! But I remember those places as being great. Just great."
"Sneaking off to clubs at all hours, I bet!"
"No! I was too young for that! What age do you think I am?! Playing on the beach all day; making friends; fizzy drinks and chips outside when my parents went for a drink."
"So I can leave you with fizzy drinks while I go clubbing then?"
Donna smirked at him. "Is there anything like childhood holidays?" she said dreamily, "Mom seemed so much happier then...we all seemed to laugh so much..."
"Your mother is on your mind a lot, isn't she?"
"Yeah..." Donna trailed off, not really wanting to talk about it.
The Doctor looked at her thoughtfully, "well, sea air," he speculated, "can't do us any harm." He tapped a few buttons on the controls, "I'll leave it to the old girl to find a good destination for us!"
"With coffee..." Donna said, settling back against the cushions, "oh and really good fish and chips...and mushy peas...and..." She closed her eyes.
Dimly, she heard the Doctor sighing as he settled a blanket around her.
"Nice to have company again," he commented drily.