Written for flowerings over at livejournal; her prompt was Ten/Donna where they go shopping for the perfect pineapple.
HAMLET
(raising the tapestry)
Polonius! Ah, I am indeed cursed. She who bears the weight of my madness is always you, Ophelia! Ophelia!
-- William Shakespeare
"Oh, this is awful," says Donna.
"Not so very awful?" says the Doctor.
"No, it's awful."
Tarps are snapping in the wind; dust is rising at their feet. Donna clutches a wide-brimmed orange-ish hat to the top of her head. Truth be told, she seems slightly fond of the hat though it is more ostentatious than anything she would have worn on Earth. The Doctor is bounding from stall to stall with a restless energy. Aliens cloaked in thick red and gold veils seem to be watching them. There are not too many others shopping at this moment in the bazaar. A number of the stalls are empty and open to a sky dotted with red suns.
"Ahh," says the Doctor. "The pineapple." He starts towards one of the stalls.
"You've got to be kidding me," says Donna, eying the mountain of fruit. She comes to stand beside him, jamming the hat more firmly on her head; otherwise he bets she would fold her arms against her chest.
"Oh no," says the Doctor. "I never joke about pineapple." He gently passes one over to her and she reluctantly takes it into her free hand. "Hold that one, it's a likely candidate." He takes his glasses out of his suit pocket and puts them on and then reaches for a second and a third, holding them aloft in the sunlight, one in each hand, squinting.
"This almost seems like a job for a professional. We should be flattered, after making the princess so upset."
"I would have told that screaming brat to-"
"Donna, we're trying to avoid a diplomatic incident."
"I still think they're all barking mad! When that princess started whinging like a dog put out of the house, let me tell you, if I were her Mum I would have-"
"Made her the drink that she wants," says the Doctor, breathing down on another ripe, spiny fruit. "It's very important that we get the right pineapple. It's a planet delicacy, that drink. It has the consistency of a milkshake and it works wonders for soothing a petulant child's mood…Oh, it's this one."
"That one?"
"This one. It's perfect in every way." He holds it up for her inspection. She tosses the one in her hand back into the pile.
"It looks like all the others to me," says Donna.
"I don't think you have the proper respect for the pineapple. Ananas comosus," he says slowly, his mouth relishing the words. "It's the third most popular fruit in the universe."
"Ananana what?"
"Pineapples were the most lucrative Earth export until around the year 6078 when the largely tropical planet Kyuurust sued for the right to export exclusively. No one wanted to share the enormous pineapple profit. There was a massive intergalactic inquiry as a result, and they decided on taste panels made up of dignitaries from about 600 different worlds to settle the matter. The panels were to pick the planet with the best pineapples, and they decided that Kyuurust pineapples deserved to be exported across the universe. The Kyuurians had devised some type of slightly mutated seed which allowed for the pineapple to remain ripe longer when being shipped off-world, which had been a problem on Earth for a long while…" The Doctor stares off into the distance. "There were revolts in Brazil and Paraguay that year after the Earth lost out on shipping rights. Ugly business."
"I thought we were in a hurry."
"You're right. We are in a hurry." He turns to the alien running the stand. He is swathed head to toe in a bright veil. Donna peers at him. The Doctor holds up his prize pineapple.
"How much?"
"50000."
"Ahh, right" says the Doctor, reaching into his pockets as if he had loads of money there.
"Aren't we going to haggle?" says Donna by his ear in a low voice.
"No, not here. They don't have that tradition. They have other interesting ones however-"
The princess kicks hard at the palace wall with all three of her feet, and the sound seems to echo beyond the grounds and out into the surrounding mountains. Donna puts her hands over her ears. The Doctor holds up his sonic screwdriver. Suddenly the princess is moving her mouth but no sound is coming out. She stops. Stares at them. One large tear slides down her face.
"Is that a tear?" says Donna.
"Oh yes. Seventeen other species of alien cry in a similar way to humans, her kind and the Time Lords among them. Did cry. That's sixteen then." The Doctor blinks and goes over to her.
"Your mother has some very important business she needs to take care of. Do you think you could sit very quietly and just wait a bit-"
She makes a gesture unmistakably meaning no.
"How about a compromise darling darling dear?" The Queen says soothingly as she hurries over. "The kitchens will make your favorite snack, you can drink as much of it as you like while Mother does something very important, and then we can have our usual afternoon walk." The princess opens her mouth to reply.
"Oh right," says the Doctor and fiddles with his sonic screwdriver, and she then is saying in a wail:
"I want my favorite drink with the pineapple and I want to take a walk nowwww!"
The Queen is suddenly guiding the Doctor and Donna out into the preceding chamber. "It's probably best if you stay out of her line of vision for the time being. We might get held up on the treaty but it'll be done." She closes the doors behind them with her foot and sighs. At that moment a suited servant comes rushing up. "We are out of pineapple! We haven't gotten the usual shipment. It's a disaster. We're going to have to send out for some."
The Doctor looks at him brightly.
Certain memories, held like an old photograph in one's hand, have edges that are slightly curled with sadness. He flicks through the parchment of some intergalactic newspaper, picked up in passing from a crowded stall. He doesn't know the year he settled on until he checks the date. Some eighty-seven years in the planet's future he and Donna will come to this bazaar looking for a delicious fruit as the key ingredient in a drink to satisfy a spoiled royal dignitary whose mother he was trying to flatter into signing a certain treaty of peace with the Flatdoks of Aartdak. He and Donna had found quite an adventure there before helping to broker peace. It was one of his better moments, thanks to Donna.
His head is overcrowded with memories, as it turns out, overlapping unevenly and messily. He would gladly lend her some, now that she is lacking. He wanders back towards his ship, hands in his pockets, trying to think of nothing and failing.
The Princess of Anaaa't Z4 is now sipping delicately a glutinous drink, orange in color, and belching loudly in appreciation. Her mother glances over at the Doctor and nods. He puts his hands in the pocket of his overcoat and rocks back on his heels. Donna grabs his arm. A servant with a tray brings several glasses over to them.
"The Queen Mother wishes you to try what you have worked so hard to attain."
The Doctor looks over at Donna and grins. She shrugs and takes one of the beehive-shaped glasses and sips. Spits it out.
Donna releases her hat as she leaps back while a stall is demolished by the mad challenger. It snaps back into the dust and wind, blowing against the legs of some passing being and then out past a grey dome of a building and then on to somewhere, nowhere. She takes a breath and looks around, spying a crate sitting on the ground by the feet of the alien who was selling them the pineapple. She empties the fruit out of it and turns to the challenger as he crouches below the Doctor, who is momentarily leaping from one stand to the next, and swings the crate at the back of his head. He drops like a stone.
"Well," says the Doctor, leaping down as his adversary falls at his feet. "That's interesting."
"Tell me, was I so very wrong?" the Doctor says. He is not in the habit of watching people die.
That's a lie.
"…They don't have that tradition. They have other interesting ones however-"
"I want that pineapple!"
"-like this!" The Doctor says to Donna. "A challenger. They challenge. They take bazaar shopping very seriously. Competitively." He turns to face the challenger, who is in fact another offworlder- a skinny alien orange all over with red spots across his face and six tentacles.
"It's too bad, we've got this pineapple," Donna says to him.
"I'm challenging him," the alien replies dismissively. The Doctor holds his hand out.
"I know how this works but I'm not looking for a fight, this pineapple is very important."
"It's perfect."
"I know it's perfect! That's why we have to have it. It's not for me, it's not for her, it's for the Princess of Anaaa't. Her mother is signing a peace treaty. Very important diplomatic business. You look like a reasonable fellow; I don't think I have to explain much more, do I? "
The alien is silent for a moment. Then he says, "I don't give a shit." Donna's jaw drops. He moves towards the Doctor with lightning speed. The pineapple bazaarman is chewing on something lazily and watching his potential customers duel. The Doctor lightly leaps out of the challenger's reach.
"Really, I don't want this to happen. I'd like to avoid it at all costs. What if we quickly picked you out another pineapple as good as this one? I'm sure there are several other excellent pineapples. Stay calm Donna," he adds as an afterthought. The challenger swings at him again and he ducks. A stall is demolished and pieces of the structure fly every which way. The tarp overhead flaps free above him, a flash of red under blue sky.
"See Donna? This is what pineapple does to beings," the Doctor shouts and leaps on top of a stall. The alien behind the counter looks up at him. "Hello! Sorry about this." He leaps over another swinging tentacle with a ballerina's grace. His smile hasn't faded yet. In fact, maybe it is a new smile and it comes from this. As long as there isn't guns the Doctor will go into danger smiling a bit, that was always the way of it, he can almost forget-
"Once the girl I was traveling with said she would stay with me forever and I did want her to, though I should know better than to try and qualify and quantify and pin down forever and hold it in my hands even in the form of a feeling which got closest to touching on that kind of promise of eternity. Or making forever like a promise. Because it can only be a promise. Nothing tangible to her, like the horizon, twilight, a companion, holding hands." He lay back his head against the console and props his dirty feet up on the chair, holding his body in rigid suspense above the floor. He bites his tongue hard. He is talking to no one. Donna is gone.
There is total and complete silence in the small, locked room until the Queen's quill his the paper. She begins to make marks in large, looping motions. She talks to him, suddenly candid.
"My daughter must have put forward a very bad impression today."
"Well," begins the Doctor.
"You must understand something. I love my daughter very much. I'm proud. I look at her and I see the promise of the next generation which will do its part to make this world great. They always do. I look at her and I also see all the work I have to do, the debt of both my mistakes and my potential. I can only do so much to mould her. She will finish the job herself. When you give them enough space, they always rise to the occasion. I'm excited about the good I have not gotten to see yet inside of her that only experience draws out."
"It's been my experience that experience draws out terrible things too," says the Doctor.
"Yes, that is true. But right now, the problem of experience is my problem only. She's only twelve, so until she matures herself enough to take the throne, she can act as a check upon me when I go too far. Do you see? I take two steps forward, I see her, I take one step back."
The Doctor frowns.
The Doctor is not in the habit of watching people die. He is also not in the habit of leaving a curiosity very long unsatisfied. He walks among the people of the Mars station and hears a clock ticking for all of them. Adelaide reaches to press a button and he sees his own hand. So that's it then. So many songs are ending. He turns to go many times, but doesn't. He remembers once in Pompeii thousands of people died, buried alive by ash, and one family who wasn't supposed to lived by the mercy of a human woman. Not so much the mercy of a Time Lord, he doesn't think now that Time Lords have mercy. There were only two and of them both, the Doctor has maybe a smidgen and the Master none at all.
In the end, he takes three away from Mars, kills one.
Donna turns her face towards the darkness of space outside of the shuttle window. He thinks she must be thinking about how one becomes accustomed to TARDIS travel. They are spoiled by the space within. She presses her hand against the thick glass.
"I can't believe this. Out in space somewhere, shopping for pineapples." She laughs. She is entirely unmarked from the bazaar scuffle. The Doctor watches her quietly and feels a nervous energy building up within him without release.
"Tell me, was I so very wrong?"
A/N: It's been a long while since I've written anything significant for fandom, so this feels rusty as hell. Excuse my mistakes.
And God do I have to get used to ffnet's lame formatting breaks.