Disclaimer: Like imaginary friends, I don't own the Doctor or Donna. They just come to visit when needed.
Author's Note: I hope this is a little different take on the usual TARDIS/Companion story. Oh, and is it shameful of me to have included a reference to one of my previous stories in *this* one?
Enjoy!
Two in Tune
Donna Noble knew from the minute she was unceremoniously transported that there was something very strange about this ship. Okay, something even stranger beyond the "Time-And-Relative-Dimension-In-Space" sort of strange. She felt it in her bones, in her very being. She couldn't identify it. It was just there.
And the Doctor wasn't much help. He wasn't very forthcoming with information (well, when is he ever, really?). So she just passed it off as an effect of the huon particles she had been tricked into consuming.
Finally, her duplicitous fiancé Lance was found out (and eaten apparently), the Racnoss destroyed, and the huon particles neutralized, and she and the Doctor parted ways. And Donna never gave the strangeness another thought.
She did, however, think about the Doctor. Almost immediately, in fact. Whatever was she thinking, turning down his offer to travel with him? How daft was that? So after a while, she made up her mind to find him again, no matter how long it took.
And find him she did. Across the boardroom at Adipose Industries. "Just like old times," he said when they met on the stairs. Truer words were never spoken. They were chased and shot at. They argued and laughed. And saved Earth once again.
She realized she hadn't given him much choice about taking her back aboard the TARDIS. She was just glad he didn't object, once they got the ground rules straightened out. It felt so right the minute she stepped into the ship. Like she was home. Safe.
Donna sensed the strangeness almost immediately, but didn't have time to dwell on it. She learned very quickly that nothing involving the Doctor went smoothly or leisurely. A little quick stop in Ancient Rome to see the sights rapidly became a nightmare of epic proportions. Literally. Rome turned out to be Pompeii and the quick stop was, in reality, Volcano Day.
After losing (and finding) the TARDIS, uncovering (and thwarting) an alien plot to take over the Earth (again), almost dying in the process, saving a single family, and witnessing the destruction of the city, the two of them returned to his ship.
Donna was emotionally drained and exhausted. All she wanted was a quick shower and a long nap. After a brief exchange with the Doctor at the console, she made her way to her room. Kicking off her dusty sandals, she started toward the bathroom when she noticed something sitting on her pillow. She picked it up and exclaimed with joy. It was a book of poetry by one of her favourite writers, one whose work always brought comfort to her in the past. But it didn't appear to be any collection she had ever seen before. Opening the book, she glanced at the publication date: 14 March 3756.
She grinned. Of course. It would be a volume from the future. Just like the Spaceman. She was touched, actually. To think he'd been so considerate to leave it there for her.
She sat down on the bed and began to read. Suddenly, she was struck by an odd thought. How did he know? She'd never told him about her taste in literature. Had she? And how did he anticipate she'd need cheering up, today of all days? And, come to think of it, when did he even have the chance to put it there?
Crikey, but she was tired. This was just too much to think about right now. Closing the book, she tossed it on the dressing table and went in to take her shower. By the time she woke up later from her extended nap, she had forgotten all about it.
A few trips later (it was hard to think in terms of weeks or days in a time machine!), Donna returned to her room after dinner and was surprised to see a multi-coloured scarf draped over the back of the chair at the dressing table. She was sure she had lost that back on Novum Finium. Well, this is a Time/Space ship. She supposed the silly prawn went back and retrieved it sometime while she was asleep.
And again, she put aside that niggling feeling she had.
The oddness reared its head once again late one night. Donna and the Doctor had made an excursion to a planet with blue sand and orange water, which ended with them being chased back to the TARDIS by thousands of purple crablike creatures. While it all turned out alright, it seemed that the experience reawakened the memory of her first meeting with the Doctor.
In the wee hours of her sleep cycle, Donna began to dream of being pursued, but this time it was the children of the Racnoss after her. Thousands of red spiders surrounded her, their razor-sharp legs scuttling and fang-filled mouths gaping. She tossed and turned in her sleep, her bedclothes wrapping around her like the webs the Empress wove to hold her captive. Her heart pounded and her breathing became laboured.
Slowly, unconsciously, she began to hear soft music, a woman's voice wordlessly singing, soothing her mind and slowing her heart. The nightmare faded and she gradually eased back into a deep, dreamless sleep.
She woke up the next morning, the nightmare and the voice forgotten.
A while later, the Doctor and Donna were having a rare rest day on the TARDIS. They slept in late (well, she did….did he ever sleep?) and had a leisurely brunch. Over the meal, he prattled on as he usually did and she listened, as she usually did. He had just finished telling her about the weapons factory at Villengard, (which reminded him that they were out of banana muffins and could she pleeeaaase make some more?) and had begun to wax poetical about the pros and cons of reversing the polarity of various subatomic particles when he suddenly bounded out of his chair, proclaiming, "That reminds me! I need to recalibrate the Temporal Rift Modulator! And the Flux Capacitor should really be completely overhauled!" He stopped short as Donna grabbed his arm as he raced past her.
"You're kidding me, right? Flux Capacitor? Really?" she said, her eyebrows raised.
The Doctor blushed slightly, having the good sense to be a little embarrassed. "Okay. I stole that. But Doc Brown really had some wizard ideas!"
Donna laughed and pushed him out of the kitchen toward the control room. "Oh, go on, you. Tinker away, you mad little Martian." He grinned and dashed out.
She finished the washing up (it was uncanny how he always had something terribly important to do right then) and, after straightening the chairs around the table, she left the kitchen and wandered down the hall to the library. She could hear faint noises of banging, manic laughter. and the occasional curse word (well, she assumed they were curse words…they were in Gallifreyan) coming from the control room, most probably from beneath the console. She smiled to herself, lay down on the sofa, and picked up the book that she had left on the side table the last time she was here. It was an old volume entitled "Gallifrey: A Concise History of the Time Lords". That always made her laugh. Concise? Time Lords? Right. The notation on the bottom of the cover stated "Book One of Seven". They did love to hear themselves talk!
Sometime later, Donna noticed that her neck and back had kinked up from sitting with the Gallifreyan tome propped up on her bent knees. Getting up to stretch, she became aware of a low-pitched sound coming from somewhere in the room. At first, she thought the Doctor had installed an automatic start-up on the sound system in the library and it was playing soft music. She was surprised when she realized it was not music, per se, but a woman's voice, singing very softly, in very deep tones. She was even more startled when she recognized that the music was not coming out of any kind of speaker, but was resonating directly in her head!
Her confusion was complete as she slowly realized that she had heard this voice before somewhere. But where? Wracking her brain, the memory of her nightmare resurfaced and she was stunned to discover that the voice she was hearing now was the same as that which soothed and comforted her. Where was it coming from? And how was it in her head!
Donna ran quickly out of the library and down the hall, calling as she did, "Doctor! Doc-tor!" She arrived at the control room to find one of the grates open and the floor strewn with tools, wires, and bits of machinery. What she did not find was the Doctor. The sound continued to thrum low in her mind as she perused the scene. Walking over to the console, she reached for the monitor to see if she could tell what he may have been working on, or where he could have gone.
The moment her fingers touched the console, the thrum grew in intensity and Donna stepped back, stunned. "It's you!" she exclaimed aloud, looking about her. "You're the one in my head!" The TARDIS crooned her affirmative softly. "Okay," Donna said slowly. "So what are you trying to tell me? And where is the Doctor? I have a few things to say to him about this."
The voice in Donna's head grew louder and more intense. She stopped and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself, and listened. "The Doctor?" she asked. Again the affirmative croon. "Where is he? Is he in trouble?" A more intense "yes!" "Oh, what has the skinny little git done to himself now?" she asked, shaking her head. "Can you help me find him?"
And thus began the strange collaboration of the Companion and TARDIS. Donna began walking, searching areas of the ship she had never known existed, the music in her head guiding her steps. The song changed in pitch, from high and intense, to deep and slow, indicating the rightness or wrongness of her path.
Eventually, she came across a room, several floors up and farther back than she thought was possible. The music had become an incessant chant, so she figured she had arrived at her intended destination. Cautiously, she opened the door and stepped into what looked like an enormous laboratory and workshop. There were tables filled with electronic components in various states of repair. There were shelves with containers of all shapes and sizes, holding all manner of bits and pieces from disassembled machinery.
Donna picked her way through the piles of reference books and general detritus of a mad scientist's lair, until she reached an area devoted entirely, as far as she could tell, to chemical and electrical experiments on a rather grand scale. This part of the room was divided into rows of separate cubicles, each one housing a separate project. Some were small, just a single Bunsen burner and beaker. Others were far more complicated. One even involved what looked like Tesla's original Coil!
But it was the semi-charred wall at the end of the second line of cubicles that drew her immediate attention. The damage look very fresh and she thought she smelled an odour of burnt fabric. She made her way hurriedly and found the Doctor unconscious on the floor, his lab coat singed in several places, the cuff of his right sleeve still smoking.
She knelt down next to him and put her fingers on either side of his neck, checking fearfully for his pulses, relieved when she found both of them, faint but regular. She brushed the hair from his soot-covered face and spoke his name softly.
He responded with a low moan, his eyelids fluttering but not opening. She had to get him out of the lab and into the medical facilities, she knew. With her shoulder under his arm, and with great effort, she managed to get him upright. "Blimey!" she grumbled. "For a skinny little bit of nothing, you weigh a bloody tonne!"
The Doctor responded just enough to assist her by trying to walk, but it was clear that he was not conscious enough to be too much more help than that. Guided once again by the TARDIS' music, they made their way slowly back through the ship to the med-bay. Once there, she lowered the examination table with the foot pedal and draped the Time Lord unceremoniously across it, removing the charred lab coat as she did.
Donna went over to the sink and wet a soft cloth. She gently washed the soot from the Doctor's face, in order to assess the damage. He winced when she reached the hairline near his left temple. Dabbing it, she was disturbed to see blood on the cloth. Pushing aside his mop of hair, she examined the area and found a gash behind his left ear.
She quickly began to open cabinets, in search of something to staunch the bleeding and cover the wound. She stared in disbelief at the jars, canisters and boxes, all labelled in the beautiful circular script of the planet Gallifrey. She turned back to the prone figure and complained, "Would it be too much to ask to put an English translation on this stuff? For someone who travels with humans as much as you do, you really are pretty thick."
She looked up and the ceiling and said, "Love, can you help me out here? Which of these should I use?" And again, they danced their way, Donna reaching and the TARDIS singing, until the appropriate salves and dressings were located.
She had finished up attaching the covering over his wound and was putting things back in the cabinets when the Doctor's eyes slowly opened and he looked around, disoriented. Donna rushed to his side and said, smiling, "Well. Look who's back."
"Donna?" the Doctor asked. "Am I in the med-bay? How did I get here?" He tried to sit up, but clutched his head in pain, and lay back down.
"Now don't move too quickly," Donna replied, putting her hands on his shoulders to prevent him from getting up. "You've had a bit of an accident and hit your head rather hard. I was waiting until you were conscious before I gave you the pain killers." She handed him two little white pills and a cup of water.
"What?" he asked. "What? What accident?" He tried again to get up and, this time, she helped him off the table and into a chair. He swallowed the pills and water and sat down with a thump.
"What's the last thing you remember?"
"Well," he said, "I had taken apart the Flux Capacitor…" Donna snickered and he shot her a look. "Do you mind?"
"Sorry," she said, trying to hold in a giggle. "Do go on."
"So. I was just starting the overhaul when I realised that I was out of the lubrication fluid that allows the micronic calibrator to exchange radon isotopes with the intake manifold in the hyperbaric containment field…" He trailed off when he noticed Donna giving him her 'you're-prattling-on-can-you-get-to-the-point' look. "Anyway," he continued quickly. "I needed this stuff to finish, and really didn't want to have to put everything all back together and fly off to the nearest supply port. So then I thought, hey! I've got a lab around here somewhere. I can just make my own! Brilliant!" He rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. "Of course, I hadn't seen it in a while, so it took a bit of doing to locate it."
Donna cleared her throat meaningfully. The Doctor took a deep breath and said, "Okay, so, I found the lab and started mixing and heating and all that sort of chemistry stuff." He stopped and touched the bandage on his head. "I think I underestimated the volatility of the glycol ethers."
"So, to put it simply, you blew yourself up."
He gave her one of his lopsided grins. "Not to put too fine a point on it, but yeah. I think I did." Looking at her, he narrowed his eyes, his brows creased in concentration. "Wait a minute," he said thoughtfully. "It took me ages to find the lab, and I knew it was here. How…? Where…?" he stammered.
"Calm down, you'll strain something," Donna said, pushing him back into the chair. "I had help."
"Help?"
"Yeah." She smiled and recounted the entire story, beginning with the music in the library and ending with the search for the unintelligibly labelled meds.
The Doctor had leaned in, listening intently, and when she finished, he slowly sat back, amazement on his face. He stared at her with a rapt expression. "She sang to you? My TARDIS actually sang to you?" A sudden, startled look came to his eyes. Grinning sheepishly, he said quickly, "Ow! Stop that! Okay, OUR TARDIS sang to you. Cheeky thing," he muttered.
Seeing Donna's confusion, he took her hands in his and said, "Donna. You don't know how extraordinary this is. The TARDIS and I have a psychic bond. She talks to me all the time. But I have never, ever, known her to sing to anyone else."
Donna tried to take her hands away as she said, uncomfortably, "Well, I'm sure it was just because she needed me to find you, you self-destructive spaceman."
The Doctor refused to relinquish her hands. "No, Donna. That's not the only reason. She obviously thinks you're special. Quite special, in fact."
This time Donna succeeded in pulling her hands away, and stood up, moving away from the Doctor, not wanting him to see how much his praise touched and embarrassed her. He didn't move, allowing her the privacy she wanted. Regaining her composure, she turned back to him and said, "Come on then, Time Boy. Let's get you back to your room. Clean yourself up. Get a bit of sleep. I'll make up a batch of banana muffins for tea and wake you when they're ready. Okay?"
Standing up, he discovered he was still a little unsteady on his feet, and Donna hurried over to help him. With his arm draped over her shoulder for support, the two walked slowly down the hall to his room. As she turned to leave, the Doctor said, "She's right, you know."
"Yeah?" Donna stopped and looked at him. "About what?"
"You. You are very special. To her and to me. And one of these days I'll figure out exactly how to make you realize it too."
Donna blushed. "Go to bed, Spaceman, before the meds make you say something you'll regret later."
"Not the meds, Earth Girl. But I get your point. G'night."
Later, Donna sat in the kitchen, waiting for the timer on the oven to signal that the batch of muffins were done. She sipped her tea and thought about all that had happened that day. Listening intently, she thought she heard a distant voice crooning softly. She looked up at the ceiling and said, "It's okay, love. I won't bite. You don't have to hide."
The TARDIS sang a little louder and Donna smiled. "It was you, wasn't it? With the poetry book and the scarf?" She heard a soft affirmative tone. "I should have guessed. He may be a brilliant Time Lord, but he's not what I'd call the most thoughtful."
Another, more insistent, melody filled her mind. "Okay, okay. Sorry. You're right. He really is marvellous, and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else with anyone else."
She put down her cup and walked over to the wall, placing her hand firmly on it. "You and me had better come to an understanding, though. I will, on occasion, correct or challenge him. You have to admit he needs it sometimes."
The affirmative tone was repeated.
"Good. And I am going have to smack him a bit, 'cause, well, you know, he really does seem to enjoy it, in a weird sort of way." The TARDIS hooted, laughing along with her Companion. "Okay, so long as we're agreed."
She thought about the alien sleeping down the hall and smiled. She remembered what he had said and wished, oh how she wished, it were really true. But in any case, she was here with him now, and she felt at home and at peace. And she could be content with that.
The timer rang, and Donna walked over to the oven. Picking up the mitts, she removed two pans of muffins and set them on the counter to cool. A while later, enticed by the smell of fresh baked goods, the Doctor sauntered into the kitchen, his hair still damp and wearing a clean (if rumpled) suit. Grinning like the fool he often was, he snagged a muffin before Donna could smack his hand.
"You know, Donna," he began, after chewing a bit,. "I've had an idea. A brilliant one, if I do say so myself."
"Oh, a brilliant idea, is it?" she asked smirking.
"Do I have any other kind?" he smirked back at her. Putting down the muffin, he walked over, took her hands and said, "Ms. Noble, my ship seems to think you are a worthy companion. So, what do you think about having a go at piloting her?"
Donna stared at him, dumbfounded. "What? Me? You'll teach me how to fly the TARDIS?"
"Yep," he replied, popping the "p" in delight. They both reacted to the sudden music that filled the kitchen. "Okay, it was her idea actually, not mine. But it's still brilliant!"
Donna felt that warm, safe, comforting feeling that accompanied the gentle music of the TARDIS' song. Looking at the Doctor, she pulled one hand back to place it on the coral wall. Smiling, she said softly, "How can I refuse our darling girl?"
The Doctor hooted with delight and the TARDIS echoed. Grabbing her hands again, he dragged her into the control room, which had miraculously been restored to order, and said, "No time like the present. Allons-y!
Donna laughed and the TARDIS crooned her approval.