How The Winds Are Laughing
by Kathryn Andersen
Universe: Doctor Who
Summary: Lance is dead, H. C. Clemens is dead, her place of work is closed down. Is this some kind of joke? If it is, it's not funny, and Donna is going to find the person responsible and give them a piece of her mind. (A post-"Journey's End" Donna-fixit story.) Written in 2008.
Spoilers: New Who S4 through to "Journey's End", "Runaway Bride", traces of S3 and Classic Who also.
Rating: PG (swearing)
Further notes and thanks at the end of the story.
Chapter 1. Nothing Ever Happens In This Life Of Mine
"You have got to be kidding me! Is this some kind of joke?"
The deserted street gave her no answer. Neither did the "condemned" sign on the building. The H. C. Clemens building, where she worked. Except that she couldn't get in; none of the doors were unlocked, and her keys were useless. And there were no cars in the parking lot.
"Did someone declare a public holiday while I wasn't looking?" But somewhere inside her, a little tendril of fear uncoiled; the little girl who was teased at school for being a redhead, the one whose mother said she'd never amount to anything; afraid that she was the object of some kind of prank. So she did what she always did: she got angry. She turned around, looking, but she couldn't see anyone to vent her anger on. Nobody hiding in the shadows and laughing. "Bloody wankers!" she yelled, just in case.
I'm a temp. I know how to look things up. So she stomped back to the footpath, and walked two blocks to the nearest public library.
-oOo-
The library was old, dignified in stone. She shivered involuntarily as she walked past the high, wooden bookcases, deep with shadows. Stupid. Since when have you been scared of libraries? She quickened her step, and emerged in the new section used for public internet access. She draped her coat on the back of a chair, sat down, and began to google.
Twenty minutes later, she was angrier than ever. Had someone jiggered the computers? What kind of bastard would mess with the computers for a practical joke? Because it couldn't be true, despite the newspaper headlines bold in front of her. Lance couldn't be dead! They were getting married! Nothing left of Mr. Clemens but his shoes? How morbid was that? Misappropriation of funds, investigation, receivership - no!
Besides, how dense did they think she was, making out that this happened more than eighteen months ago? She wasn't born yesterday! It was December, not August. It was-
She stopped. It was far too warm for December. She'd taken off her coat on the walk over because it was too hot. The sky was too blue, the sun was too bright; it wasn't December.
What the hell was going on? Last night... last night Nerys had called, rabbiting on about planets in the sky, utter nonsense. Gramps had had a visitor; she'd hardly noticed the fellow, brown suit, skinny like a weasel. And... and the rest was a complete blank. What had she been doing yesterday? The day before? Planning the wedding, but... obviously that wasn't the day before yesterday.
How could she forget not getting married? How could she forget Lance dying? It would be like forgetting cutting off your own right arm! Impossible. Was she going crazy? Surely somebody would have noticed that. Somebody would have... yes. Certain people would definitely have noticed.
She was going home, and she was getting some answers.
-oOo-
"Why didn't you tell me?" Donna said.
"How was I to know that you would get up so early?" her mother snapped.
"You've been ill, sweetie," her grandfather said.
"Ill?" Donna said. "But I feel fine!"
"It was a brain thing," Wilf said. "That's why you can't remember."
"Eighteen flippin' months?" Donna said.
"Don't fret, sweetheart," Wilf said. "You're fine now." But he couldn't hide the worry on his face.
"What aren't you telling me?" Donna said. "Have I got a tumor? Am I gonna die? I've got a tumor, haven't I?"
"You're not going to die," her mother said sharply. "Your grandfather is just worried for you, that's all. If you- if you stress about it, you could have a relapse."
Donna sat back. "Oh." She twisted the ring on her finger. "I was afraid I was going crazy," she said in a small voice.
"No, sweetheart," Gramps said, giving her a hug, "you're not going crazy. You're my own Donna and you can take on the world. So don't you let this stop you."
"Thanks, Gramps," she said with a wan smile.
"No point in moping about," her mother said. "You can... you can find a new job. Get your mind off things."
Well, at least that hasn't changed, Donna thought. Same old, same old. Though was there less of a nagging edge to her mother's voice when she brought up the Job Question? Wishful thinking, Donna.
"So what the hell happened?" Donna asked.
"You were ill," her mother said. "We just said-"
"I mean, what happened in the last eighteen months?" Donna snapped back. "Like my own wedding, that I don't flippin' remember! Lance is dead! I saw the papers. How the hell did that happen?"
"Another woman," Sylvia said. "Bloody black widow, he deserved it."
"Lance was murdered by another woman?" Donna said. "He preferred an axe murderer to me?"
"I always said he wasn't good enough for you," Gramps said.
"No you didn't," Donna said with a smile. "You said, 'as long as he makes you happy...'."
"And he didn't make you happy," Gramps said, "so he didn't deserve you." He gave her another hug.
"So after that, you went to Egypt," Sylvia said.
"What did I do that for?" Donna asked.
"Wanted to get away from it all, I expect," Sylvia said.
-oOo-
You open your eyes and look down... and down, and down. A vast room, like a warehouse crossed with a mad scientist's den. There is nothing holding you up. You flail in fear, and find you cannot move. Gossamer threads hold you fast.
Below, Lance is laughing at you. "Did you think I wanted to marry you? I wanted something better."
Something steps out of the shadows, something huge and multi-legged. Red, like blood or rust, many-jointed legs supporting a pendulous thorax; emerging from the body, the torso and head of a woman, her skull flaring like a crown, each section sprinkled with blinking black eyes.
The spider-woman laughs.
Donna shivered as she woke. I think that's taking 'black widow' a bit too far, she thought. Stupid subconcious.
It finally hit her. Lance wasn't going to come around the corner with a cup of coffee for her ever again. Maybe they lied about the other woman, trying to make her feel better, but what was the point, when the man she loved was dead? Dead, gone, buried, never coming back.
She pressed her hands against her mouth, stifling a sob, but she couldn't stop the tears trickling down her face.
-oOo-
The air is fragrant with flowers and fresh-cut grass. The sun casts soothing warmth from a sky of cornflower-blue. The trees ripple in a gentle breeze. The lawn is a perfect green.
A white rabbit in a pin-striped brown suit hops in front of you. "I'm late, I'm late," he says, pulling out a fob watch.
You look at your own watch, but the face is blank.
You look up again, but the white rabbit has vanished.
You feel the weight of beads on your skirt, and realize that you're dressed as a flapper. You stroll across the lawn towards the stately home ahead of you, and the sounds of laughter and tinkling glasses. Another sound distracts you: a hum, a buzz, getting louder and louder. A bee? A wasp? You glance around, not wanting to be stung.
You freeze as a yellow and black shape the size of a man zooms towards you, its gossamer wings thrumming loudly.
You turn and run. If you can get to the trees you might be safe. But no matter how fast you run, the trees grow no closer. The lawn stretches on ahead of you. The buzzing increases, louder and louder. You feel a breeze on the back of your neck, a breeze that isn't the wind. The buzzing is right behind you.
She woke up, heart pounding, and turned off her buzzing alarm. She tried not to think about the nightmare; she had a job again, another temp job yes, but she was the best temp in Chiswick. And if she threw herself into her work she wouldn't have to think about Lance, or the strain around her grandfather's eyes, the way he spent more and more time looking through his telescope, the way she caught him looking at her sometimes, sad and worried.
She didn't ask further about her illness. It was obvious that neither her mother nor her grandfather wanted to talk about it, and that they desperately didn't want her to pursue the subject. That, more than anything, convinced her that she really had been at risk of dying, and that she was still at risk of a relapse. It loomed like a shadow, but she tried to put it out of her mind.
-oOo-
The shelves loom around you. Something is waiting, waiting in the shadows, something hungry.
There is a scream, cut off. You run towards the sound. The light shafts down on a skeleton in a space suit. The skull is picked clean.
The jaw clatters. "You won't tell them, will you?"
"I won't," you say.
"You won't tell them, will you?"
"I won't tell them."
"You won't tell them, will you?"
"Why are you repeating?" you ask.
"Why are you repeating?" the skeleton repeats.
"Stop it!"
"Stop it!"
"Stop repeating what I say!"
"Stop repeating what I say."
You reach out your hand, and stop, horrified, as your fingers melt away, becoming skeletal. You cannot move; you are a statue made of bone. The skull grows flesh even as your own vanishes. It is wearing your face. It has stolen your face.
"Kill the alien," it says.
You are helpless as they drag you towards your death.
There is movement; a door slides open. White, actinic light burns the shadows away, burns the impostor up, burns you, burns everything.
"Burn with me," you say.
Donna stared in the darkness, afraid to go back to sleep. When she closed her eyes, the image of the skull flashed before her. Worse, every time she was close to dropping off, the leaden weight of weariness made her fear that she couldn't move, reawakening the terror of death. Layered on top of that was the fear of fear itself; how was she supposed to avoid stress, avoid a relapse, if she couldn't sleep without nightmares? Her head was pounding as well as her heart. Sharp, stabbing pain, pressure, as if a laser seared through her eyes straight into her brain.
Right. Tomorrow I'm booking into yoga classes. If I make it that far.
The yoga classes helped, as did writing a dream diary. Donna found that writing down her dreams made them less frightening, as if the act of writing gave her some control, put an objective distance between her and her dreams. She joked to herself that she was having adventures in her dreams; becoming a regular Alice in Wonderland.
The terrors were fewer, but that didn't stop the dreams.
-oOo-
The garden is warm, rife with the scent of green, growing things. But you don't look at them, your eyes are only for the the woman dying in your arms, this stranger, your daughter, pale-haired like you used to be, but so much freer. The air stinks of cordite and blood and the ozone of a storm. You kiss her cool forehead goodbye, blinking back the tears.
You blink again. The twins are asleep in their beds, brown and red-headed, the heart of your happy home. You ignore the walls fading around you, flickering in and out of existence. Your son opens his eyes and says, "I'm not real, am I?"
"Of course you're real," you lie. "Now go to sleep."
You brush back your granddaughter's black hair and smile at her elfin face. "Sing to me," she demands.
You sing a lullaby, an old, old song. But the words that fall from your lips are devoid of meaning, as if the sense had been stolen from them, crystalline containers which have no key.
She woke with tears in her eyes and a sadness that haunted her all day. Bright light made her flinch, and she skipped lunch to sit on the floor and do breathing exersizes. They helped a little with the pain, but not the sadness.
-oOo-
Blazing bright, freezing cold, a vast snowfield surrounds you. Mountains loom in the distance. A bridge of icicles tinkles in the crisp breeze.
Faintly at first, but gradually clearer, you hear music; a song. Such a song... beautiful, poignant, sad, as if all the lamentations of all the exiles in history were bound up in one wordless chorus. It pierces your heart with loss and longing; longing for something that is missing, something you cannot find, something you don't know how to look for.
She woke with tears streaming down her face. Sniffling and wiping her eyes, she sat up, but she couldn't stop crying. Every time she thought she'd calmed down, the sense of loss overwhelmed her again. Finally she grabbed several tissues, blew her nose, and took a deep breath. And another, and another.
"I'm fed up with this," she muttered. "If I'm supposed to avoid stress, it jolly well isn't working. What's wrong with me? Well, apart from being on the verge of my brain exploding..." But her head wasn't aching this time. Just her heart, haunted with loss. "I don't know!" She stopped. "I don't know..." she repeated softly. "And not knowing what happened is driving me bonkers." Why else would she be dreaming about lost things? Maybe her brain was trying to tell her something. Saying that it was safe to remember. Safe? Why wouldn't it be safe? Yet another unanswered question, one more in the huge pile that she had been ignoring.
She wasn't going to ignore them any longer.
TBC
