Tuesday, July 06, 2010

What could have happened to Donna Noble?

Mycroft Holmes wearily returned the red handset to its phone cradle and rested his chin on the heels of his hands. Donna's mobile was still out of service. He'd dialed her mother's number dozens of times over the past eleven days, but no one ever picked up.

After an alarmingly existential encounter with an alien time machine, Mycroft had found himself back in his own Whitehall office, safe and sound. But as the ensuing days passed, he found that neither the familiar surroundings nor its trappings of power were much of a comfort to him. The gleaming mahogany desk with its security-hardened telephone. His corner office looking down onto Richmond Terrace. The state-of-the-art computer station that was the center of his vast global intelligence web.

Least of all, the oil painting of a starry night that looked so much like a Vermeer.

On the one hand, he could recall Sherlock sending it to him with a typically smug, self-congratulatory note. On the other, he could not imagine that a painting of the Van Buren Supernova would have adorned the east wall of his office in the World Without Stars.

It was a paradox in paint, and it made his head hurt.

He had to find Donna Noble. If anyone in the world could understand what had happened to him, it would be Donna. She'd traveled in an alien's time machine, after all, and for a blessedly short span of time, her brain had been invaded by a Time Lord's mind.

Well, he'd scotched that at least. Mycroft's mind went back uneasily to the manner in which he'd done that. "Chop her hand off !" he'd shouted desperately at the TARDIS. "But be sure that the Doctor's mind is trapped inside it!"

He'd meant it for the best, but—what had happened to her after that?

Where on Earth could Donna possibly be?

And then it occurred to him—she'd been traveling in both space and time. She didn't have to BE on Earth. The Doctor could have scooped her up and whisked her away to anywhere in the universe, to the past, present—or future. In which case he'd never find her.

Mycroft's jaw clenched when he thought of Donna out there in the cosmos forever out of his reach, but there was no use dwelling on that scenario. To have a chance of accomplishing anything at all, he had to concentrate on the possible.

If and when Donna Noble returned home, he knew that she would pull up her socks, go on with her life, and get back to work—one-handed or no.

Now, what was her favorite contract agency? Mycroft furrowed his brow briefly and the name of the firm that had sent her to H.C. Clements popped into his head. Picking up the red phone again, he dialed its number.

"Mayfair Office Support—supporting you through thick and thin. Ms. Cholmondeley speaking," a woman answered him in nasal tones.

"Oh good," he replied in a disguised voice that was even more nasal. "I'm Mr. Hmmmm—the coordination secretary for the Whitehall Multi-Agency Building. My department has an immediate need for a contractor with certain specific skills, and for the right person we could offer a most attractive rate…"

He mentioned a figure that was perhaps a trifle on the stratospheric side and Ms. Cholmondeley immediately began to gabble about her firm's contractors' superb skills in the fields of word processing, database maintenance, and IT support.

"Yes, yes, but that's what not we need," Mycroft said dampeningly. Donna's hand had been cut off—he wasn't about to ask for keyboard work. Now, what else was she good at? It came to him immediately. "What we want is, umm… proficiency with the Dewey Decimal System."

A moment of dead silence was followed by the stammering reply, "I-I'm afraid we don't have a category for that. I'll have to search through the resumes manually."

"See that you do. I'll hold." At Mycroft's elbow a cooling cup of Earl Grey tea was sitting next to an untouched chef salad. This was the kind of task he usually assigned to underlings, but there was absolutely no one that he could tell about Donna.

Eventually the Mayfair woman returned to the phone. "Mr. Hoom? We do have a candidate who fits your requirement. As a matter of fact, she's available right now."

Hope rose in Mycroft's breast. That had to be Donna! "She lives in Greater London, I take it? Oh, Chiswick?"

He forced himself to ask casually, "What's your fax number? I'll send you the standard forms and she can start at once."

Ms. Cholmondeley immediately gave him the number, but Mycroft didn't bother to write it down. It was quite unnecessary for a man who had an eidetic memory.

Friday, July 09, 2010

Donna Noble, the unknowing object of Mycroft's dogged search, had started work in his own office building two days ago. When he'd first observed their new office temp on closed-circuit, he'd been relieved to see that she was indeed Donna, looking quite smart in a white shirtwaist and a navy blue business suit. For two days she'd walked into the building at eight thirty and for two days she'd walked out again at five—but he had yet to encounter her face to face.

He couldn't be too obvious about his interest in Donna, and unfortunately, the woman who ran the Documents Library had been most irate that he'd assigned her a temp without notifying her first. The elderly librarian could be quite formidable when she put her mind to it. She'd managed classified documents for the British Government for longer than he'd been alive, and by this time she could pull almost as many strings as he could.

Miss Silver had marched right into his office without an appointment. "I do not appreciate you foisting this woman on me sight unseen, Mr. Holmes."

Her mouse-grey hairbuns had quivered with indignation as she waved a copy of the work order in front of his nose. "I do not care for the implications of it—no, not at all."

"And finally…" Her sharp blue eyes had bored into him with a glare of total outrage. "My library does not employ, and never has employed, the Dewey Decimal System!"

Having made her opinions perfectly clear, Miss Silver had stalked out, shooting a basilisk glare at the hapless young man who was temporarily filling in for his P.A.

Miss Silver was only one of the reasons he hadn't dared to enter the library. The more important reason was—Donna still had two hands, and he couldn't imagine why. Did it mean that she'd never had a Time Lord's mind shoved into hers? Never set eyes on Firbourne House? Never met Mycroft Holmes?

It was the one scenario he hadn't allowed for—that he would track down Donna Noble and she wouldn't remember him.

Well, there was no time like the present—for ordinary mortals like him, at least. He had to know the truth, no matter how bad it was. As soon as Mycroft saw Miss Silver march off to the commissary for her morning tea break, he set down the Bond Air dossier and hastened out to confront Donna Noble.

Swiping his key card through the library's security card reader, Mycroft quietly entered Miss Silver's sanctum sanctorum. He'd discovered long before that the Documents Library was an excellent place to lurk when he didn't want to be hauled into meetings. Nobody ever looked for him there and better still, it was a dead zone for mobile phone signals.

Eight cubicles equipped with dedicated workstations and surprisingly comfortable chairs covered one wall. The rest of the library was filled with row after row of locked file cabinets that held the hardcopy confidential reports five government agencies either had not or dared not convert into digital form. One of those cabinets, he knew, housed the final draft of every report he'd produced for the last ten years.

But Donna was nowhere to be found. Since he hadn't seen her in the hall on closed-circuit, she had to be in the work room. He carded open the back door and walked into an environment that was completely unlike the softly-lit, elegantly-carpeted Documents Library. It was…fusty. Dust motes swirled under flickering fluorescent lights and cardboard boxes stacked almost to the ceiling were crammed so tightly that there was almost no space to move between them.

Hearing shuffling noises beyond the boxes, Mycroft cautiously edged his way down the narrow aisle between the stacks. It would too ironic if he were crushed to death under government secrets. At the back of the room he found Donna sorting papers on a metal table. A smudged cambric apron covered her from shoulder to knee and her ginger hair was falling down in damp ringlets.

"Whatever has Miss Silver got you doing?" he asked in blank surprise.

As soon as she heard his voice Donna spun around, her face lighting up with excitement.

"Mycroft! Oh-My-God—it's you! I've been hunting all over for you!"

So, she still knew his name. That eliminated the most pressing worry.

"Your mobile number doesn't work and I've been calling your mother's house for days!" he roared indignantly. "In this day and age, what sort of person doesn't have an answering machine?"

Donna's face darkened for a moment, but then she laughed at him. "Yeah, I was worried about you too."

Slightly embarrassed, Mycroft opened his mouth and closed it. An apology, he assumed, was in order, but instead of making one he blurted out, "What happened to your hand?"

"Oh, this one?"

Donna wiggled the fingers of her right hand. It looked perfectly fine, expect for the angry red scar on her wrist. "When the Inversion Catalyzer exploded, my hand got chopped off by a flying piece of metal—and interestingly enough, every scrap of the Doctor's mind was dragged along with it. The Doctor himself was absolutely amazed."

Mycroft rolled his eyes. "I'm sure he was."

"Believe it or not, my hand grew back in a matter of minutes. One last burst of regeneration energy, the Doctor told me." Donna shrugged eloquently. "Bet you didn't expect that one!"

No, he hadn't. He'd believed that she'd been maimed and he'd been worrying constantly about her. While he was trying to figure out a reply, he noticed that Donna was examining him.

"The question is, Mycroft, are you all right? I was so scared you were hurt that I started calling all the hospitals as soon as the Doctor dropped me off in London."

"Why would I be in hospital?" he asked dismissively. "You're the one who was in mortal peril."

Donna put her hands palms-down on the table and stared at him. "I was afraid you might have had a seizure or something. After you went through the TARDIS intersect you looked like a wrung-out dishrag. Like the Doctor said, the human mind can't absorb that much information all in a lump."

Mycroft drew himself up to his full height. "The Doctor's never met a man like me, I presume."

She gave him a skeptical glare and he grudgingly admitted the truth. "I've had some headaches and a few flashbacks, yes. But other than that, I'm fine."

Blinding migraine headaches and terrible flashbacks of rainbow ribbons that seemed to drill into his skull—but he wasn't about to admit to that.

"You were unlisted everywhere I looked!" Donna retorted in exasperation. "I knew you'd hate it, but I nearly called your brother Sherlock."

That, Mycroft was quite sure, would not have ended well. "Oh dear, I'm glad you didn't."

"At least your brother's got a web page!"

"A certain amount of secrecy is required for my job, I'm a-a-a-" Mycroft was about to embroider on his usual description of the 'minor government position' that he held when he was abruptly cut off by a convulsive sneeze.

"A-achooo!"

Blasted dust!

"Whatever are you working on here?" he demanded. "These boxes must be at least ten years old."

"You're right about that. They're old transition files from Hong Kong that were wished onto the library awhile back." Donna dropped a few more file folders onto the tallest stack. "Miss Silver told me to pull out the Top Secret documents and pack the rest for offsite storage."

Mycroft raised one eyebrow. "I wouldn't have thought she would allow a new contractor to handle classified documents. Miss Silver is usually far more cautious than that."

"She said she was sure you could arrange any clearance for me that was necessary. She also said I didn't look at all like what she'd expected." Donna added with a smirk, "What did she mean by that, do you suppose?"

"I wouldn't care to speculate," he answered with wounded asperity.

"Yeah, right."

He was uneasily aware that he would be told exactly what Miss Silver had meant—in some detail—if she walked through the door and found the two of them together.

"You do have your work to do, Donna, and. I shouldn't stay here too long. Shall we continue this conversation at dinner?"

A reminiscent smile crossed Donna's face. "That sounds so normal it's almost shocking. Friday and I'm going out to dinner tonight with a bloke. I must really be home again."

Mycroft didn't quite know how to respond to this. Had Donna just called him a 'bloke'? After a moment he said dryly, "Welcome back to London. Will 5:30 be all right?"

"Sure, that's fine." After a moment's thought she added, "Could we take my car, though? I don't want to leave it in the parking garage."

"You drove to work—for a job in Central London?" The usually-imperturbable Mycroft was almost startled. The London congestion charge made commuting by automobile to the City, already unspeakably troublesome, prohibitively expensive.

"Just for the first week." Donna gave him a conspiratorial wink. "Meet me in the parking garage—we don't want to upset Miss Silver."

With Donna it was always one new experience after another. Mycroft had quickly discovered that he was rather unused to being a passenger in someone else's car. If he hadn't caught himself, in fact, he would have climbed into the back seat out of habit.

The restaurant that he'd chosen was less than a mile away, but to get there they had to contend with London's rush hour traffic. Besides the incessant flow of frenetic commuters, there was a herd of stop-and-go tour buses, not to mention crowds of American tourists who usually looked the wrong way before they crossed the street.

"Take Pall Mall at Charing Cross," he ordered automatically.

"I know, I know, Mycroft. Your directions to the fish place were very clear."

Donna's hands were clenched on the steering wheel and she was silently mouthing remarks to her fellow drivers that she would probably have made out loud if he hadn't been there to hear them. It's not that she was an aggressive driver, just—argumentative.

"When you get to St. James—turn left."

The car jerked sharply. Donna's foot had suddenly hit the brake, then left it just as suddenly. Darting a glance to the right, Mycroft saw that she looked a bit unwell.

"Sorry—I was just startled for a moment," Donna said with a choked gasp.

"Quite all right. Rush hour traffic, after all."

Mycroft quickly sifted through his recollections of Donna's life. The words 'turn left' had brought back something very unpleasant to her. It seemed to be connected with the sound of screeching brakes, which would imply a traffic accident, but he couldn't recall what had happened.

From her strained expression, he could tell that Donna couldn't remember it either.

After swerving to miss a bicycle courier who had a suicidal streak, Donna turned onto St. James. The traffic was inching past a series of construction cones and they crept along for a few moments in complete silence.

"Mycroft," Donna finally ventured, "I know that the TARDIS matrix downloaded my life experiences into your brain. How much of it do you still remember?"

Mycroft was somewhat loathe to answer that question. The longer that he thought about it, the more that it sounded—creepy.

"Only bits and pieces, really. Most of them whipped by too fast for me to understand, although I'll admit that I did tell the Matrix to slow down for your experiences in the TARDIS." He had already realised, but did not say to her, that his eidetic memory was slowly knitting those bits and pieces together. "What brought this up?"

She gave him a sideways glance. "When I stepped out of the lift you were already waiting by my car. How did you know which one was mine?"

"You sound just like my brother Sherlock."

"I did look at his website, you know."

Another triumph of the science of deduction.

Mycroft shrugged. The stakes here were simply too high for him to risk a lie. "Your father left you a 2003 blue Mini-Cooper in his will because he didn't think you'd ever get around to buying a decent car for yourself."

"Bits and pieces, huh?" Donna shifted her gaze away from him and stared out at the surrounding traffic. "It's almost like you're reading my mind. You knowing all that, it's—it's—"

"Encroaching? Bizarre? Embarrassing?" He was accustomed to people who'd thought that about his superior perceptions and most people had far less reason for it.

Donna flushed slightly. "Well, embarrassing, mostly."

"Donna. You're a courageous woman who's lived a remarkable life. There are no dark secrets in your past. What difference does it make whether I know the name of your favourite television show or where you shop for knickers?"

For a moment Donna was taken aback by his frankness but then said defiantly. "Harrods. I buy my clothing at Harrods."

"Harrods?" he echoed, alarmed by a sudden sense of discontinuity. "When I met you at Firbourne House you were wearing clothes that you'd bought at Marks & Spenser."

"So? When I got back from outer space I decided to go upscale. Look, is that your fish place?"

It was indeed. In the middle of a row of grey Portland stone storefronts there was a black door flanked by two Greek columns, and above the door there was a royal blue awning that was stenciled in silver letters, "ICHTHYS."

"Yes, it is. There are a few parking places in the back. It's quite early—you may be able to squeeze in."