Disclaimer - None of these characters belong to me. They belong to the BBC, and RTD.
Notes - Because I am honestly amazed that there isn't more Midnight fic than there is. Because I loved it completely. This is a missing scene at the end. Set after the hug Donna gave him but before the end scene with them talking about not knowing what it was and the Doctor telling her not to repeat what he says.
In other words, this is the conversation in which the Doctor tells Donna what happened on the shuttle. The title is what it is because at the end, no one really ended up finding out what the truth really was.
Finding the Truth
When Donna shrugged out of his grip, needed in that moment just to feel someone friendly touching him, he wanted nothing more than to grab hold of her again and never let go. That didn't happen, because the first thing she did was put a hand on each of his shoulders, steered him towards a private table for two, sat him down in one seat, before taking the other and just looked at him.
She had yet to say a word, and he was entirely too grateful for that, because Donna could usually talk as much as he did.
Did being the operative word there. He wondered if he'd ever be able to actually talk for long periods of time without feeling like something terrible was going to happen right after.
They sat in silence for a long time, even longer than the 50 minutes he had been trapped on the Crusader shuttle after it had stopped moving with an unknown alien life form. He didn't know if it was because he was afraid to speak, or the thought that the moment he opened his mouth so would Donna.
He didn't think he could take anyone copying him right then.
Donna leaned forward, took one of his hands in hers and squeezed it, before she said anything. "Doctor? What happened?"
He managed to not flinch as the words echoed around the room. That was a different kind of echo, from being in a big room that was practically empty.
Space. Yes, that's what he needed. Not cramped little shuttle cabins, but lots and lots of space.
He shifted slightly, taking his hand out of her grip, and running it down his face, trying to scrub away yet another set of painful memories that undoubtedly left a mark on his psyche. And in a way this had been one of the most scarring things to have happened to him.
"Something got into the shuttle. It...picked things up, learnt from us, and in the end stole...me. My voice. I couldn't say anything but what she did, she had me cheering the others on in their attempt to kill me."
Donna raised an eyebrow at that. "They tried to kill you?"
He lowered his head, and nodded. "It was my fault too. I just...it was like..." He shut up, not speaking a word for five minutes, before thumping the table hard and burying his head in his hands. "Have you ever been so sure of something, only to have it completely and utterly turned on its head?"
He could feel her staring at him like he had lost his mind. And perhaps this time he truly had. Sometime during getting his voice, his soul for a lack of a better word, stolen by some nameless, faceless, unknown entity, his mind had completely snapped.
"Well, yeah. God, a few years ago I didn't believe in aliens. Time travelling was something you found in books I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, and things couldn't possibly be bigger on the inside than their outside."
He shook his head and growled. "No! No that isn't what I mean!" He moved his hands so they were supporting his head, on either side of his face. If he didn't, he'd end up banging his head repeatedly into the table until he...broke his nose, or his brain started leaking out of cracks in his skull.
"I mean something that you always thought you knew so well, suddenly turned around and changed so utterly and completely that nothing you said or did or tried worked in diffusing the situation."
She blinked, and he glared at her, suddenly angry. Not at Donna, who was just trying to help. Trying to help. Now if there was a sentence that should be repeated over and over it should be that. His mind was still quietly repeating 'It's gone' like a broken record.
Donna had the guts to smile at him then, and she reached out and patted his head like some obedient animal. "Oh, now this...this is you. Whatever happened must have changed something. Because for once you aren't hiding. You're not pretending to be alright."
He growled again, not being able to stop the ugly sound from crossing his lips, and he took his hands away from his face, and like before slammed them into the table. "I just had everything that is me stolen from me! My voice, my essence. And I was stuck, Donna! I couldn't move, I couldn't defend myself, I couldn't speak, I couldn't do anything! And they were going to kill me! Just because I was different."
The smile fell from Donna's lips, and a frown replaced it. "They tried to kill you why?"
"Something I said before it got me like that...made them realise I'm not human. I was trying to get them to stop killing the woman the thing had inhabited. Ended up with them conspiring to throw me out along with her."
The shocked look on Donna's face made him feel a little better. Donna knew him, knew that he wasn't evil or bad, or trying to work against a few humans he was trapped in a shuttle with.
"Oh god, Doctor, I'm sorry. I should have gone with you. Knew you'd find some way of getting into trouble."
He shrugged, tried to smile, but couldn't manage it. Then he asked what had been on his mind since he had been the scapegoat for a bunch of panicked humans who had no one else to blame for what was happening than the only other non-human on board.
"Donna...am I a bad person?"
She reached across the table and grabbed his fists, which were still balled up on the table, ready for their next good thumping. He let himself relax, and she slipped her hands into his.
"No. You're not a bad person Doctor. Annoying, too stuck up for your own good, a little too intelligent and ready to let everyone know it, and yeah, sometimes you can be a bit terrifying. But you're not bad."
It was the truth. The plain truth as Donna knew it. And though most of what she had just said was rather negative, it made him so relieved to hear someone telling him this and mean it without any malice or intent to hurt, that he let his head fall to the table and tried to catch his breath, which had fled him.
"I was terrified Donna. I don't think I've ever felt like that before. I was so sure I was going to die, and there'd be no chance of regeneration. I would just be dead. No coming back and I couldn't do a thing to prevent it or stop it as they dragged me to the door."
Donna's grip on his hands tightened, before one hand let go and went to rubbing the top of his shoulders, since they were pretty much there in front of her. He was still shaking. Well, he had stopped for a while after the rescue shuttle had come to pick the survivors up, but reliving what had just happened was making him just...uneasy.
They stayed like that for a few long minutes, before he calmed down enough to raise his head. He peeked up towards where Donna was, and saw her looking at him and there was nothing at all bad in her gaze.
Yet again, with what he had just seen of humans, a race he had admired and loved for so long, he knew that could change in a split second, and she could turn into someone who was willing to throw him out into a poisonous atmosphere that would kill him in a second, simply because he wasn't like her.
All this time around humans, and planet Earth, and he had thought he had learnt everything there was to know. And now he couldn't look at a group of people together and not think of them as a mob out for his blood.
He sure hoped this paranoia would end soon, or he'd be bloody hopeless.
He'd already spent too much time that day helpless, hopeless, stupid, and so utterly afraid. He didn't need any more of that.
"I...panicked. It took the rescue team 15 minutes to get me on the other shuttle. The others leapt at the chance to get out of there but...they had to come in to get me, and as soon as one of them touched me I lost it completely. I screamed for them to let go, and I felt like my chest was about to burst open by the sheer force of my hearts. It wasn't until one of the other passengers said something that they stopped trying to force me towards that door. Gave me time to...calm down a bit."
He didn't mention the 20 minute wait they had after Skye and the hostess disappeared outside in a blinding flash of light. He had been reduced to sitting on the floor, the others in seats, merely because he was afraid that if he got up to their level that they would turn on him again, think himself better than he was.
They stayed in silence for a while longer, the Doctor going back to resting his head on his hands, and he was a lot calmer because of the company of a friendly face and some silence. He knew Donna would speak sooner or later, and the first words out of her mouth weren't necessarily a change of subject, but it was just as good as one.
"What do you think it was?"
His hands moved with the movement of him slightly shaking his head. "No idea..."