Disclaimer: The BBC and RTD own the characters and universe. I just play with them.
Author's Notes: I've taken this one up off of tkel_paris' journal prompt list. This one's #26. It had several options for an earlier meeting between the Doctor and Donna in Partners in Crime, but I felt it'd be most likely for either the cubes moment or the alley. Picked the alley, cos it was slightly easier than the cubes...but I am going to work on one with the cubes, eventually. It's too funny an idea to resist forever. :D
So far as I have planned, this story is only going to be three, maybe four chapters long. There's just really nothing that would change that much from their meeting earlier to justify continuing it past the end of Partners in Crime. Of course, now that I've said that I'll likely think something up sometime... but if I do, it'll be it's own little stand-alone story.
Anyway! On with the story! In which Donna finds the Doctor early and makes rude mockery of his Adipose-tracking gizmo... something I can't help but do every time I watch the episode. ;D
Chapter 1: An Alley Encounter
Donna stood on the street, bewildered. Where could that little creature have got off to? And what would she do with it even if she found it? Stuff it in her handbag? Her handbag! She'd left it inside poor Stacy's house! She started to turn to go back 'round the back to get it, and a taxi pulled up.
"Stacy Campbell?"
"No, she's gone," Donna replied, still trying to get everything that had happened tonight straight in her head.
"Gone where?" The driver asked.
More of her attention set on how to figure out where the creature or creatures that used to be Stacy Campbell had gone, Donna just shook her head. "She's just gone."
"Oh, great. Thanks for nothing." As the driver flipped on his 'For Hire' light and drove off, a minor part of Donna noted that if she'd not been in shock she'd have shouted at him for blaming her for his lost fare. As it was, she simply stood there a moment more, then turned to go back down the alley she'd just run down such a short time ago. She did still have to get her handbag, after all.
Then she saw a familiar skinny back, topped by that familiar messy nest of hair, and her jaw dropped. It was the Doctor, it had to be! That hair, and those trainers, and… well, she guessed it was the same pinstripe suit under that trenchcoat. And of course he was walking away, the git. Well, why not chase him? Worst she could do is look like a fool, yeah?
Taking a few steps at a jog to close the distance, she called out. "Doctor?!"
He spun round, his gizmo pointing at- "Donna?!"
"It IS you!" She grinned and ran the last few feet between them, hugging him then pulling back to take a good look at him. "Oh, I can't believe it! You've even got the same suit on! But we've got to have words with your stylist, cos you look like a flippin' hedgehog now!"
Hugging being a natural reflex - especially when it was someone as well-cushioned as Donna Noble doing the hugging - the Doctor hugged her back. But when he pulled back, he was staring at her in utter, complete confusion. "Not that it's not nice to see you again, which it is, mind, even though you're mocking my hair. But... but... what are you doing here?"
"Looking for you... well, sort of. See, I've been looking for you for a while now, and I thought 'Well, how do you find the Doctor?'. And then I thought 'Look for trouble and he'll show up', and believe me, this Adipose stuff I've been looking into, that's trouble!"
She then grabbed him by the hand and dragged him down the alley to the gate that led to Stacy Campbell's house. "Won't be a minute, just need to get my handbag. Unless..." She trailed off, staring at him.
"Unless what? And why have you been looking for me?" The Doctor asked as he found himself in the unusual position of trying to keep up with a Human. Usually it was him making the unexpected direction changes, physically and mentally.
"Well, unless your penis-gizmo there's good for more than bad jokes and can figure out what happened to poor Stacy Campbell. I mean, one minute she was getting ready for a dump-him date, then the next she was completely vanished and her clothes were laying on the floor of the bathroom and there's this jelly-baby shaped thing waving at me and hopping out the window."
She opened the gate, then turned to stare at him and frowned, just a little. "And why wouldn't I look for you after it hit me what a big mistake I made turning you down?"
"It's not a penis-gizmo, Donna! It's an alien-tracking device. Like a dowsing rod is for finding water, only this finds aliens." And since it wasn't indicating any aliens in the vicinity, he stuffed it in one of his pockets.
Then he reached in his inner blazer pocket to pull out the sonic screwdriver. "Sonic screwdriver will be more specific anyway... and I thought you were going to travel the world?"
"It is so, even if you can dowse for other aliens with it." She smirked at him as they walked to the back door. "Most I can say is that you're obviously not feeling the need to compensate if you can hold it in your hand." She shrugged as she led the way back into poor Stacy Campbell's house, with a pause by the chairs to scoop up her handbag.
"And I was going to travel. But... it's like... I had that one day with you, and I was going to change. I was going to do so much. Then I woke up the next morning, same old life, like you were never there. And I tried, I did try. I went to Egypt. I was going to go barefoot and everything. And then it's all bus trips and guidebooks and don't drink the water, and two weeks later you're back home. And then it's like it never happened. It's nothing like being with you."
He manfully refused to give her any more ammunition to tease him about the shape of his tracker, otherwise she'd never stop. Anyway, he was more interested in discovering if she was really serious about having changed her mind. "Even with the explosions and the risks to your life and the drowning spider-children? Which weren't actually children-children, you know."
"That's still in the top ten of the most horrible days of my life. And they may not have been babies or toddlers, but she was still their mother!" Donna glared at him, then led the way, handbag firmly on her shoulder.
"And she was still going to lead them into devouring the entire planet, Donna." He sighed and drooped his head. "I did offer her a choice, but she refused it which left me with no choice."
"Oh all right. Fine. That time you didn't have a choice." Up the stairs she went, quick-march, as though she was trying to get away from the topic.
He followed her up the stairs, curious for more than one reason. No one had ever turned him down and then changed their mind, much less managed to track him down later although admittedly their encounter tonight was purely accidental. But they'd have met within a day or two, since both of them were working on this Adipose puzzle. That had never happened before, and as they reached the bathroom, he asked, "So...you still want to come with me?"
On the landing, she turned to gawp at him, surprised. "You mean it? You really want me to come with you? Even though you know I'm going to argue with you and shout at you a lot?"
He looked up at her from two risers down and beamed. "I'd love it if you'd come with me. Arguments and all."
"Brilliant!" She backed up a bit to let him get on the landing, then hugged him briefly. Then she felt guilty for celebrating when there'd been a... well, a vanishing at the very least, and she let him go.
"Best celebrate later. Bathroom's here," she said as she led him to the door. "Had to break it open, and I was too late to help."
He took a look around the room, and his eyes locked onto the pile of clothes. "This is not good. And probably for the best that you didn't get in before it happened. Who knows what might have been done to you?"
"Wot, you think that jelly-baby thing wasn't alone? That I might have got hurt if I'd seen it happen?" Donna asked, feeling a frisson of fear before a slow-burning anger replaced it. "So, are you going to bleep or buzz or whatever so we can find out who did this and give'em what-for?"
"Working on it, Donna," he said as he started scanning. "I'm picking up traces of the same alien life form I've been tracking, but no trace of anything human, no trace at all. Whatever happened here, there's absolutely no sign that Stacy Campbell even existed. It's like she was completely subsumed..."
"Turned into that jelly-baby thing, you mean? It all happened so fast, but I swear that's what I saw. She screamed for help, and it only took me maybe ten seconds to burst the door open. But she was gone and there was one little thing, about so tall, stood in the window there."
She demonstrated the size and general shape of it with her hands, then continued. "Whitish, but shaped like a jelly-baby."
"It was more than just the one. The strength of the signal I picked up with my tracker indicated a lot of them. Which means something happened to trigger a massive conversion of human to alien life."
He rose from the squat he'd dropped into and took Donna by the arm. "Come on, won't do us any good to get spotted here."
"Yeah," she replied as she followed him back down, then outside and back into the alley. "But what do you mean, massive conversion?"
"Whatever is in those Adipose pills is, in it's ordinary function, turning precisely one kilo - or two point two pounds - of human fat into those little things you saw. Every night, the fat just walks away. Literally. But with Stacy Campbell, it obviously used her entire body, so it's not just fat that it can convert."
He tapped his finger against his lips in thought, then took Donna by the hand again. "Come on, TARDIS."
"And just where's the TARDIS from here?" She asked, digging her heels in.
"Er, about five miles that way," he said, gesturing vaguely down the alley the way he'd come.
"Right. I'm not walking that far, not this time of night, and especially not in these shoes. Not when I've got car right over here," she scoffed and half-dragged him back down the alley to the street.
"Oh no... please tell me it's not that Smart..." he whined as he followed her back down to the road.
"That was Lance's. No, borrowed my mum's car, have to get it back by some time tonight. Still," she said as they reached it and she bleeped it unlocked with the keychain. "It'll save us time getting to the TARDIS."
"Yeah," he allowed as he got in the passenger seat and belted up. "It will. And, if you trust me, I can use the TARDIS to get it back to your mum."
"Sounds good to me." She fastened her seatbelt, started the engine, then asked, "Which way?"
He pointed. "That way." And she put the car in gear and drove off.
He'd amazed Donna by getting the car inside the TARDIS, then been amazed by the amount of luggage she was toting around in anticipation of finding him. Then they'd taken a few minutes to find a bedroom for her to leave the luggage in and went to the console room, where he took apart the pendant he'd confiscated and examined it with a magnifying glass. "Ooh, fascinating. Seems to be a bio-flip digital stitch here."
"And what's that for, when it's at home?" Donna asked with a raised eyebrow at the technobabble.
"Bio-flip - flips biology, basically. The digital stitch tells the circuitry the strength of signal to send. So it transmits a signal every night, and one kilo of drug-laden fat converts and walks away. Presumably to be collected by whoever was driving that van I was chasing... which means someone sent both them and the signal to override the digital stitch. The signal to completely convert Stacy Campbell, the person or persons to collect the result."
"So... the pendant sends a signal to trigger the drug-filled fat to make a fat-person? And how come the customers don't show any signs of illness from losing so much weight so fast? I mean, poor Stacy lost eleven pounds in five days, but she was healthy and didn't show any signs of it, other than loose clothes. You'd think there'd be sagging skin or something."
"Not if it uses the excess skin to make its own skin." He put the pendant back together and put it in his pocket, then made a wibbly hand and shrugged. "You know, as a diet plan it kind of works."
"Except for the part where there's someone in charge of it all who doesn't mind murdering people to speed up making little fat people!" Donna snapped, glowering because lots more people were in danger of dying just like poor Stacy.
"Well, yeah, except for that." He nodded in agreement, then said. "It's getting a bit late - you said you wanted to get the car back tonight, right?" He started laying in coordinates for the house he'd dropped Donna off at last time, but got interrupted.
"We live with Granddad now. Dad died of cancer this last year - the one reason I'm glad I didn't leave with you the first time - and we couldn't keep that old house." She gave him the address and sighed. "I'm going to have to come up with something to tell Mum... at least Granddad will be easy."
"I'm sorry about your dad, Donna," he said and rested a hand on hers briefly, then fed in the new coordinates and they spent the brief minutes of transit in silence.
"Yeah," she said and gratefully absorbed his sympathy while they made the short hop. Once they landed, she shook herself back into action. "Right. You get the car parked in the drive, I'll go in and give Mum the keys. I'll probably be a bit, she'll want to nag."
He gave her a wry smile and waved at the door. "I think I'll skip, if you don't mind. She was mad enough that I ruined the reception to stop those Robot Santas. She might try and slap me this time, and I've had enough of that for a while." He rubbed his cheek. remembering the slaps both Jackie and Francine had got him with. Not to mention Donna's own slaps, and Sylvia was her mother... yep. Best to just stay safe in the TARDIS.
"Can't say as I blame you. She can hold a grudge forever." She smiled a bit, then said. "All right. You stay here where it's safe, and I'll go suffer. And don't forget to park the car!"
"I'll be here with tea and sympathy when you get back." He was still smiling as she walked out of the TARDIS, and grinned when she paused and half-turned, lips parted as though she was going to say something like stay put. "Go on, I really will be here. I promise."
Then he turned to the console and said. "Well Old Girl, looks like we're not going to be alone after all." He bounced over and started working the controls, dematerialising the ship while leaving the car behind in the drive.
Then he poked his head out the door, made a face and groaned when he saw the car had been left perpendicular to the drive, and popped back in to fix that minor bobble in positioning. It was a good thing Donna had missed that, he thought. She very likely would have teased him relentlessly about his poor parking skills.
Somewhat over half an hour later, the Doctor was beyond fidgety, and just about to go brave the fearsome den of yet another companion's mother, when Donna opened the door of the TARDIS and took one step inside. He noticed she'd changed while she'd been gone, from that smart suit into jeans with brown boots topped off by something he couldn't quite make out under that thigh-length cardigan and the extraordinarily long blue scarf. Not quite as long as his fourth self's scarves, but long enough that she wouldn't be able to make mock of them if she found them in the Wardrobe.
He grinned and bounced a bit. "Well! Off we go to tomorrow morning then?"
Donna rolled her eyes and asked, "You sure you actually found someone after I turned you down? Cos if you had, I'd think you'd remember we humans need sleep every night."
Then she grinned at him and waggled a thermos. "I was just about to go up the hill to tell Granddad, and I thought you'd maybe like to come along. He lives for all this, stargazing and aliens, and I thought it'd be a treat for him to meet a real live alien."
Suddenly uncertain, she looked at the toes of her well-worn but well-kept boots. "'Course, if you'd rather not, I understand..."
"No, I'd love to!" He smiled for the fondness she held for her granddad and pulled his coat off the pillar and swirled it around him as he followed her out. Even if the old fellow did gush embarrassingly, he'd handle it for the sake of the smile it would put on Donna's face.
After they'd reached the start of the hill, he cleared his throat and asked. "So...how'd things go with your mother?"
"Couldn't get a word in edgewise, as usual. I'll have to write her a letter or something just to be able to tell her I won't be around, much less anything else." She paused when they got just to the edge of the allotment. "I want to at least try and figure out how to break you to him, first. D'you mind?"
"No, of course not. It's a lovely clear night, stars are out... I can see why he loves to stargaze from up here." He stuffed his hands in his pockets and smiled, absently noticing how much he'd been smiling around Donna and he'd not even properly had her around for an hour. Just like when he'd first met her, and she'd made him smile even though he'd wanted to mope and sulk about losing Rose. But Donna was just so vibrant and full of life that he couldn't help but smile when she was around - she made him feel young again. Well, younger, anyway.
"Thanks." Donna grinned and walked along the path through a well-tended allotment.
He kept an eye on her back as she walked along. Then his eyes widened in surprise as he recognised the voice of her granddad. Ooh, this could possibly be trouble - he'd vanished right in front of the gent just this past Christmas!
"Aye, aye. Here comes trouble," Wilf said as he made his way from the shed to his camp chair.
"Permission to board ship, sir?" Donna picked her way through the rest of the allotment and stood by the shed, grinning as they traded salutes. Just like always.
"Permission granted. Was she nagging you?"
Donna rolled her eyes and laughed, then passed the thermos to him before she went to the shed. "Big time. Brought you a thermos."
"Oh, ta." He took it and poured out a cup after he settled in.
"You seen anything?" Donna was in the shed at the moment, getting that old tarp they'd used for ages for stargazing, and trying to figure out how to tell her granddad about the Doctor. Poor man had to be bored to tears already, just stood there listening to them and doing nothing. She'd have to check on the way back down the hill, make sure he hadn't fiddled about with anything from boredom.
"Yeah, I've got Venus there, with an apparent magnitude of minus three point five. At least, that's what it says in my little book." He slurped a bit from that plastic cup as she spread the tarpaulin on the ground and knelt on it. "Here, come and see. Come on, here you go. Right?"
Donna grinned at her granddad and peered through the telescope. Of course, at this distance it was only a little round dot, kind of bluish. Hmm...maybe she'd ask the Doctor if it was ever safe enough to go to Venus...
"That's the only planet in the Solar System named after a woman." Wilf said after his granddaughter took another peek through the telescope.
"Good for her," Donna said as she continued to stare at that little blue dot. "How far away is that?"
"Oh, its about twenty six million miles. But we'll get there, one day. In a hundred years' time we'll be striding out amongst the stars. Jiggling about with all them aliens. Just you wait."
Oh bless you, Granddad, she thought as she sat back on her heels. That was a perfect opening if she'd ever heard one. "Granddad... if you could meet an alien, would you really want to?"
He gave her a sharp look and raised an eyebrow. "Aye aye, what's all this then?"
"Oh just answer the question, Granddad." She almost made a face at him.
"Course I would, sweetheart. If I sit here long enough, I may even see one. But why'd you ask?"
"Because..." She trailed off and sighed and looked down at her knees. "I... I wasn't completely honest about what happened at my failed wedding. Nor about what happened to Lance. And I'm going to be leaving, tomorrow, with the alien who saved my life then, and we're going to be travelling out there..."
"Sweetheart," Wilf said as he turned in his chair and gave her a sad, sympathetic look. "I knew you've been different since then, but I never dreamed..."
"It wasn't the worst thing that could've happened. Top ten on the horrible days of my life, but not the worst." With a bit of effort, she shrugged away the remembered pain of Lance's betrayal and all the terror of the Racnoss, and managed a wry smile. "Anyway, d'you want to meet the bloke who saved me?"
"Course I do, sweetheart! And shake his hand and thank him for saving our little general." Wilf smiled at his granddaughter, knowing no amount of winkling would get the story out of her. She'd tell in her own time or not at all... but maybe this alien bloke would help her tell the tale...
"Brilliant!" She grinned and rose up on her knees and turned around. "Doctor? You can come over now!"
Wilf turned further in his camp chair as he heard footsteps on the path, then he almost fell over backward in his astonishment. Yeah, the bloke was wearing a suit and long coat instead of a tux now, but it was still him! The man who'd vanished in front of him Christmas Eve! "Ah! It's you!"
The Doctor walked closer, a grin on his face. "Oh, it's you, isn't it? The newspaper man."
"That's me," Wilf said, grinning as he stood up. "Wilf, sir. Wilfred Mott."
"What? You two have met before?" Donna got to her feet, eyes wide and jaw dropped in astonishment as her granddad went over to shake the Doctor's hand.
"Yeah. Christmas Eve. He vanished right in front of me!"
"And you never said?! Oh, the cheek!" She could've found the Doctor months ago, if only he'd told her!
"Well, you never said, did you now?" Wilf gave his granddaughter a pointed look, reminding her of just a minute or so ago.
As Donna deflated, the Doctor smiled wryly at Wilf. "It's hard for people to admit meeting aliens, much less everything that happened to her. And... sorry about vanishing in front of you like that. Circumstances beyond my control."
"Ah, that's all right. Got me prepared for what happened in the morning, didn't it?" Wilf said with a chuckle as he shooed his granddaughter back to the tarp and led the Doctor over as well. "Blimey, can't even tell anyone I've shaken a real alien's hand, much less straighten out most I know about the Titanic replica almost crashing into Buckingham Palace. Even madam there thinks that was a hoax."
"Oh. My. God. You mean that really was real? It wasn't a hoax?!" Donna sort of collapsed back on the tarp, just staring at her granddad and the Doctor.
"Yup," the Doctor said. "Of course, if I hadn't taken the risk and nearly crashed it into Buckingham Palace to use the heat of reentry to restart the engines, it would've crashed into a worse spot and destroyed all life on Earth, so it's a good thing I was there."
"Is that what you do then? Save the planet from other aliens?" Wilf asked as he sat back in his chair. "Er, I'd offer you a cuppa, but I've only got the one cup."
"We-ell, sometimes," the Doctor said, scratching the back of his neck as he sat down beside Donna, then pulled out two plastic mugs from his pocket. "Aha! Cups! I think Donna especially could use a cuppa."
"Yeah..." Donna mumbled as she tried to get everything straight in her head.
Wilf filled the three cups then sat back in his chair. "Now I know that wasn't the only time you saved people - Donna just barely mentioned you'd saved her, so I'm guessing you had something to do with stopping that webby star ship thing shooting everyone, Christmas two years ago."
"No, that was actually the military that dealt with the Webstar," the Doctor said as he handed Donna one of the cups. "I'm the one who drained the Thames to drown the Racnoss that belonged to the Webstar so they wouldn't eat the entire planet. Saved Donna in the process... but then again, she saved me too. Can't imagine what would have happened if she hadn't been there..."
"You'd probably have drowned, you daft twit," Donna groused. "Stood there all raging and fire and ice and watching those spider things drown until there wasn't any time left for you to get out."
"Probably," he admitted, then smiled. "But you were there, so I'll never have to find out."
"Yeah," she nodded, and smiled back at him, not noticing her granddad raise both eyebrows, then nod with a tiny smile.
"Aye aye, sounds like a story to me!" Wilf said with enthusiasm.
Donna traded looks with the Doctor, then sighed. She may as well tell the one person in her family who'd actually believe her. "Well it all started when I vanished from my wedding and appeared on his ship..."
For the next hour, they traded telling Wilf the story of what really happened two Christmas Eves ago, with questions from the old man occasionally interjected and answered. But it didn't really break the flow of the story, and finally Donna finished with, "And then I turned him down and, except for finally being told Dad had cancer and being grateful that I could be there in his last days, I regretted it from waking up the next day."
"So that's why you've seemed like you've been drifting, sweetheart," Wilf said, his sharp eyes noticing the comforting squeeze from the Doctor that his granddaughter accepted and returned without protest. "You've been looking for the Doctor all this time. And now, now you're going out there to really see it all." He sat back and smiled wistfully. "You'll bring a bit of those stars back for your old Granddad, won't you?"
"Oh yeah, you better believe it," Donna said with a brilliant smile and reached over to grab her granddad's hand.
"Well, we're not leaving quite yet," the Doctor said. "Got another little bit of alien trouble popped up that we've got to stop before more people get hurt. But after that, yeah, I can bring her back every so often. In fact..." he trailed off as he pulled out his sonic screwdriver. "You got a mobile, Wilf?"
"Yeah," Wilf said and pulled it out of his jacket pocket. "Mind, I mostly only use it for keeping track of time... what are you going to do with it?"
"Oh, just a little enhancement. Hand it over, won't hurt it a bit - yours too, Donna." He held out his hand and got Wilf's phone, but only a glare from Donna.
"And just what are you planning on doing to our mobiles?"
"I'm going to... extend the coverage. Just a bit... well, all right, a lot. Going to make it so you and your granddad can call each other no matter where or when we're at. Is that all right?"
"And they'll still work? You're not going to accidentally blow them up?" Donna asked, digging out her mobile as she asked.
"They'll still work. But no, you can't get free minutes," he added with a grin as she handed him her phone.
"How'd you know what I was going to ask next?" She tilted her head to the side curiously as she watched him bleep first her granddad's phone, then hers. Then he added a number to her granddad's.
"Because I thought you might. And free minutes would be cheating." He grinned at her, then continued. "And I added the TARDIS - that's the name of my ship, by the way Wilf, the TARDIS. Anyway, I added her number to your phonebook, just in case Donna forgets to charge her battery one day."
"Oh, can we show him the TARDIS?" Donna asked, giving the Doctor puppy-eyes. "Please? Just the console room? Please, please, please?"
"Welllll..." He pretended reluctance, which he knew Wilf caught on to from the grin on his face and gleam in his eyes. Then Donna amped up the puppy-eyes to eleven, complete with pout and wibbly lower lip, and the Doctor sighed for more than one reason. "Oh all right. Come on you two, let's go back to the Old Girl."
"Brilliant!" She leant over and gave him a tight hug, then leapt to her feet. "First we put everything away, then we give Granddad a peek!"
As they packed up the stargazing kit, the Doctor found himself hoping he never gave Donna cause to use puppy-eyes on him for real. Hers were far better than his - he'd felt like he'd do anything she asked, if she looked at him like she did at the end.
And may all the powers in the Universe help him if she ever cried in his presence. He'd never be able to resist her in tears.