To everyone keeping me company on this journey, THANK YOU!
.2. Melody Eternal
A few snowflakes touched down on his outstretched arm. Those that landed on his palm melted almost immediately, but some snowflakes settled on a sleeve of his coat. Unique in their fragile beauty. The Doctor made a few steps forward, wading in a knee-deep fluff, sweeping the snow with a hem of his coat. He halted and took a deep breath of clear, frosty air. This world was magnificent – whiteness carved with blue shadows, under a milky sky, slightly coloured with golden sunrays. Voluminous, grey clouds were passing above, like herds of gigantic animals.
The Doctor looked back at Theta, who was waiting next to the TARDIS's door. Somehow there was a fleeting moment of surprise at a sight of the Ood in his grey clothing; some tiny part of the Doctor's mind expected to see Donna standing there, bare arms crossed on her chest and covered in goose-bumps, and an expression of disappointment on her pursed lips. Immediately his memory offered him a vision of her face, encircled by wavy hair and by a fur rimmed hood. Never did she look more beautiful than at that very moment – fiery on the background of an almost monochromatic landscape. He hadn't realised it at that point; he was memorising an amazing woman in picturesque scenery; but all he could see then was Donna Noble from Chiswick, London, a citizen of Earth, so irritating with all her fussiness, and with lack of appropriate admiration.
"And? Anything?" he asked.
The Ood shook his head slowly. He carefully lifted up his translator ball, filled with sea-blue fluorescence of the Cells.
"I didn't expect them to be compatible," he said.
Compatible? It was a word almost certainly offered to him by the Cells, still speaking the language of the Emporium Everdream, a computer program from a far away moon in the Triangalla system.
"Maybe we are too far from the Oods' population centres?" the Doctor suggested.
"Distance shouldn't be an issue. The connection encompasses the whole planet. No, it's because of the broken thread." Theta's shoulders sagged even more.
"A little patience." The Doctor met Theta's gaze and broke off sheepishly. He just tried to teach patience to one of the most patient beings in the universe; he, a man rather poorly qualified in that area. "Let's just wait."
He sniffled and turned again to face the majestic landscape of the Ood Sphere. His brow was furrowed. He needed a happy ending, he needed it so much, but he knew that not all endings could be happy. Theta still stuck around the TARDIS. It seemed that her blue planks offered him some security. Snow sparkled like mounds of diamonds.
Music burst out unexpectedly, indescribably powerful, moving from nothingness into a crescendo of recognition, salutation and joy. Thousands of individual voices chirruped and screamed for a while, just like instruments being keyed before a great concert; then a motif appeared and dragged along subsequent voices, while leaving others in counterpoints and their harmonics, emphasizing the basic theme. The Doctor swayed, as if lashed by a sudden gust of wind. He stepped back, struggling against the urge to plug his ears. What good would it do against a telepathic symphony anyway? He looked back and saw Theta kneeling in a deep snow, clutching his temples with both his hands. The translator rested next to him, on top of a snowdrift, glowing with an intense shade of indigo – the Cells' colour the Doctor had never seen before.
"Theta!"
His scream didn't even scratch the wall of sounds. He reached his friend in three long jumps and bent over him, alarmed.
"Theta! Are you all right?"
The Ood looked up, his eyes completely glazed.
"Doctor..."
"Theta!" Pulling him by the arms, the Doctor opened the TARDIS's door with a toe of his trainer. "Get inside, Theta! Quickly! Move it!"
"No... Doctor... This is..." The Ood pushed away his helping hands. "This is beautiful."
"Noisy!" the Doctor yelled.
"What?"
"Not too noisy?"
"Salutation," Theta said. He wasn't gripping his temples anymore, but remained on his knees in the snow. "Longing and joy of return. A hero. Gratitude. Oooo..."
A long note, and then sounds descending, like glass beads rolling down the stairs – little crystals of melancholy.
"Sorrow," the Ood summed up the obvious. "Longing. A return, but just a half-return. Doctor-Donna is back, but not complete, not whole. Fragment. Just as it had been sung."
The Doctor's mouth twitched.
"Bereavement," Theta said. "Mourning."
Several voices started climbing up the harmonic steps, and after a while a whole wave rose into chirruping trills.
"Memory, memory, gratitude and joy. In the song, forever, melody eternal, memory and gratitude."
The Doctor slumped onto the snow next to Theta.
"And I thought it would be hard for you," he said, his voice flat.
"Joy, joy, memory, salutation."
"Can they hear you?" the Doctor asked. His shoulders were hunching more and more under the weight of the Oods' song. "Tell them to stop."
"Joy, gratitude, memory..."
"Stop it! Just stop it!"
The Ood blinked once, quickly and reached for his translator ball. Suddenly the symphony died out. In silence, hesitantly, a capella, sang Theta's mind-voice. It was singing about sadness and surrender, about long hopeless days. Violent, fitful notes painted a serious malfunction in the Adventure Emporium, and pain caused by the Cells. Meanders of sounds and emotions described meeting with the Doctor, his journey through adventures, struggle against forgetting. A melancholic adagio marked the death of the computer and the Cells. Mad staccato for the birth of new Cells, journey in the TARDIS, landing on the Ood Sphere. And then hesitant, trembling question; a supplication.
After a long silence mixed sounds appeared, again resembling keying of the instruments before a symphonic concert.
"They don't know what to think," Theta translated. "They are afraid of strangers. They like the Cells' song, but they are distrustful. They trust the Doctor, but their fear is equally strong. They remember humans. They remember the pain of separation and broken threads. They have hope. The Doctor is their hope."
And there was no Doctor-Donna anymore. Just the Doctor. He inclined his head to hide an expression on his face.
"They made you sad," Theta continued. "They are sorry. They will accept the Cells if the Doctor will vouch for them. They will not make him sad again."
"No... It's not that..." the Doctor murmured. "It's just... oww... I think... My migraine is starting... oww... again..."
"You spent too much time with the Cells." Theta, alarmed, grabbed the Doctor's arm, saving him from falling into the snow. "Your mind is open and fragile. I'll ask them to quiet down."
"No..." the Doctor whispered, his lips pale. "Ask them to sing... to sing Donna's song..."
"They are causing you pain," Theta protested in sudden silence.
"Sweet pain," the Doctor answered.
"You said you didn't like pain."
"Just one song. Please."
It seemed that grey silhouettes emerged from under the snow. After a while Theta and the Doctor were surrounded by a circle of maybe fifty Oods, fixing their large, slanting eyes on them.
"They are asking if you are sure of it," Theta, quite unnecessary, translated their thoughts.
"Oh, yes." Still on his knees in the snow, the Doctor turned to the Oods. "Yes. Please," he thought.
After a brief moment of hesitation the Oods' minds started singing about Donna. The Doctor endured that sweet pain up until he realised, that he was curled on the icy ground, alone, except for Theta, who had stayed by his side, and now was shaking him anxiously.
"Oww... It's... It's all right... It's... oww..." the Doctor mumbled, sitting up. "Did they go?"
"The connection is too strong," Theta explained. "The Cells opened your mind, and it is not safe for you. They left, so they wouldn't harm you."
"Sweet harm," the Doctor murmured. "And you? Are they going to accept you? Can you stay with them? What about the Cells?"
"Yes!" Theta was positively beaming. "They came to like the Cells' song. They can hear my thoughts, and I can hear theirs. I can stay, Doctor. I have a home. Thank you, thank you."
"You're very welcome, but it's all the Emporium Everdream's doing, not mine... Ooooww... Now that's a real migraine!"
Theta helped him up and brushed the snow off the Doctor's coat.
"Stay," he asked. "The Oods will refrain from singing until your sensitivity returns to normal."
"Eeeerm..." The Doctor smiled; a little, sad smile of a man, who turns from his friends and leaves the party a long before its end, knowing that the fun will continue after he's gone, as if he never existed. "Tell them I am very grateful for their song, and for remembering me, Theta."
"Do you really want to do this?" asked Theta hesitantly.
The Doctor inhaled through his narrow nose, pushing both hands in his trousers' pockets.
"I dunno," he answered. He opened the TARDIS's door and hesitated on a threshold. "Every man is a sum of his memories. But sometimes... memories are just not enough..."
"Good luck," said the Ood seriously.
"Same to you!"
The Doctor walked into his blue box and let the TARDIS sing her own song.
To be continued...