Chapter Two
It was all Donna could do not to almost cry with happiness at the sight of the great blue box. It seemed...tired, somehow, like the wood was sagging and warping, albeit very subtly. And the outside looked singed, the paint peeling in places, cracks were clearly visible on the doors. No matter, she didn't have the time to focus on appearances. Not when she could hear the terrified screams of the people running for their lives not far behind her.
She banged on the door. "Oi! Spaceman!" There was no reply. "Martian!" Still, no reply. She sighed. Fine. "Doctor!"
There were sounds of someone shuffling around inside for a few moments, frustrated groans and coughs and few strange-sounding noises that she though might be alien curses, knowing him. Finally, the door began to creak open, slowly, almost painfully so, and Donna craned her neck to try and see inside.
Smoke billowed out from within the ship, shielding the figure slouched in the doorway from view. She coughed and waved her hands in an attempt to clear it, her eyes watering from the noxious fumes. Finally, he stepped out.
He was tall and harsh-looking, his facial features sharp and his eyes dark. He was bulkier than the Doctor she knew - more muscular with broader shoulders. He was dressed in an odd formal outfit that seemed to be taken straight out of a picture book about Victorian-era England. The fabric was torn and singed, though, and it fit him awkwardly; it was too tight in some places like his chest and arms and too loose in others. He stumbled, leaning against the door frame of the TARDIS, looking up at her with bright, shining, vibrant blue eyes that seemed to hold an endless amount of fury and sadness all at once.
"Who are you?" she asked after a moment's pause. If he heard her, he chose to ignore her question, looking around inquiringly.
"Where am I?" he wondered.
"I asked first," Donna countered. "Who are you?" Finally, he seemed to come back into focus, his gaze snapping toward her so quickly it made her jump.
"I'm the Doctor," he said plainly.
"No you're not." He furrowed his brow at her.
"Course I am!"
"No you're not!" Donna insisted. "I know the Doctor. I've seen him. He's a skinny streak of alien nothing, and you...Your face is all wrong, and your ears- Blimey, your ears! You could travel through time and space with just those things! Don't even need the space ship!" His hands shot up to his ears as she criticized them. She reached up and poked his cheek with one finger.
"If you're really the Doctor, did you have some kind of plastic surgery? Must've gone horribly wrong if you ask me-"
His expression suddenly turned hard, and he swatted her hand away, turning away from her.
"I don't have time for this," he growled. As he moved to shut the doors and leave her, before she got the chance to try and stop him, a terrified scream pierced the air, and both of them whirled around to search for the source.
The self-proclaimed Doctor took a step toward the sound, but stumbled again, his legs feeling weak, and he fell to the ground. Donna knelt beside him.
"Are you alright, mate?" she asked. He clutched his chest and looked up, a wisp of golden light escaping from between his lips. Donna put a hand on his shoulder, but he pushed her away.
"Fine," he said, though his voice was hoarse. He hoisted himself up and staggered toward the source of the noise.
"Something's going very bad here," he said to himself.
"Thanks for pointing out the obvious," Donna mumbled. He rolled his eyes and faced her, looking at her expectantly. She put her hands up in a defensive motion. "I don't know what's going on. I was just sitting around, mindin' my own business when out of nowhere some woman's plate of escargot goes bad! And I don't mean it spoiled. I mean it grew teeth and made a snack out of her finger-"
Just then, one of the creatures came into view. Its body was huge and slimy, its teeth gleaming in the light as it barred them and let out a horrid, gurgling growl. Its eye stalks turned toward them and it began to slither in their direction with alarming speed; Donna had never seen a snail move at such a quick pace.
"Into the TARDIS!" the Doctor yelled, yanking her by the arm and pulling her with him. "Now! Go!" She didn't need to be told twice; she followed him to the blue box. Its doors were shut, smoke still spilling out from within. He pulled on them, but they wouldn't budge.
"No...NO! Why now?"
"What's going on?" Donna asked, casting a glance toward the hulking beast that was still charging at them.
"It's still rebuilding, still repairing itself. We can't get in!"
"Well do something!" Donna yelled. "Doctor!"
He looked at her, grabbed her hand and said one word: "RUN!"
And they did just that. They ran down the alley, Donna letting out a scream as he pulled her past the slobbering beast, its teeth narrowly missing them. They wound up in the street; people still ran by, screaming and fleeing for their lives from the monsters that were terrorizing the restaurant.
They rounded the corner, and suddenly they were faced with a horrifying sight: four of the creatures, slobbering and growling, were bulldozing their way through the restaurant. People screamed and ran, some threw things at the beasts from a distance, and a few brave (or perhaps reckless) souls attacked them with whatever they could find. One man wielded a chair against one of the slimy monstrosities, but it chomped through the wood without any difficulty, and the man was forced to run for his life, narrowly escaping the sharp, knife-like teeth of the resurrected mollusk.
"What are those things?" Donna asked breathlessly.
"Snails," the Doctor plainly replied. "Reanimated and mutated to grotesque size, but still just your basic Earth snail."
"Those things jumped off of a woman's plate, and you're acting like it's just another day!" He didn't answer her; it seemed as if he hadn't even heard her as he bolted away, running toward the restaurant.
"Stay there!" he commanded over one shoulder. "Keep safe!"
"Oi! Don't you just run off and leave me-" But it was too late; he had already disappeared inside the cafe. She huffed angrily. "Fine," she mumbled, crossing her arms over her chest. "I'll just stay here in the middle of a hysterical crowd and wait for you to get back, you bloody spaceman..."
Something growled behind her, and her heart slammed against her sternum as she turned to see the gleaming, dripping teeth of one of the beasts mere inches from her face.
"DOCTOR!" she cried, and she immediately sprinted after him.
The restaurant was destroyed on the inside; only the basic structure of the building remained. The rest was torn to bits, pieces of things that had once been furniture and table cloths and counter tops littered the place. There were five of the creatures in total, all of them slobbering over the food they seemed to have found in what remained of the kitchen. Thankfully, the beasts seemed more interested in satisfying their appetites than chasing after innocent restaurant patrons.
He stepped forward, and a piece of glass cracked beneath his heel. The creatures looked up rather sluggishly and growled as they noticed him. They began to slither toward him.
After just a moment's surprise, the Doctor grinned.
"Been hitting the bottle rather hard, have you?" he quipped, nodding at the pile of shattered wine bottles that had spilled their contents all over the floor, most of which the snails seemed to have slurped up themselves. His suspicions were confirmed when he saw the way they unsteadily moved toward him, slow and groggy, not quite able to haul themselves forward in a straight line.
The closest one lunged, but it missed by a mile, and he jumped to the side, putting a cracked half of a table between him and the creature. He saw just what he'd been looking for on the floor just a few feet away and he grabbed it, dodging another poorly aimed assault by one of the monsters.
"I never liked escargot much, me." he said as he hopped up on the counter top. "Was never really fond of the taste. Still...nothing a little pinch of salt can't fix, is it?" He tossed the ornate glass salt shaker in the air above the creatures, and in a quick, sweeping motion, he took out his sonic screwdriver and aimed it at the container in mid-air. It shattered magnificently, its contents spilling over the creatures' writhing bodies, and they screeched in agony, their forms dehydrating and deforming until they were just lumps of rubbery tissue, all dead.
Donna came careening around the corner a moment later, stopping in her tracks when she saw the carcasses of the beasts. "How did you..."
"Salt," he said with a grin. "Just a pinch of salt. Nothing to it. Still, it can't have hurt that they were drunk."
"Drunk...?"
"Oh, completely. It's that French wine, there. Strong stuff." He stepped over the shrivelled corpses of the monsters, but stumbled again, holding himself up against the counter top. He coughed, a swirling gold mist escaping from his mouth again. Donna watched it dissipate in the air.
"What is that?" she asked dubiously.
"Regeneration energy," he said, hoisting himself up. "I'm still overflowing with it."
"Not dangerous, is it?"
"Course not." He let out a breath and turned to face her. But just as he did, Donna caught a glimpse of something huge and hulking making its way down the street outside, coming toward them. Moments later, someone screamed. Neither of them had time to react before the beast, the largest of the creatures, smashed its way inside and just barely missed catching the Doctor in its razor sharp fangs.
"You missed one!" Donna yelled as the Doctor grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away from the beast.
"Yeah, I got that!" he replied. "Move!" They ran to the back of the restaurant, out the rear entrance. The beast was making an unholy ruckus as it forged a path of further destruction through the already demolished restaurant.
"Up here!" the Doctor commanded, pulling Donna toward a metal ladder that led up to the roof of the building. They grabbed on and climbed up as quickly as they could, hearing the monster rampaging below them.
Donna made the mistake of looking down when they were nearly to the top, and she saw the beast beginning to slither its way up the side of the restaurant after them.
"Doctor!" she cried in warning.
"Keep climbing!" he yelled back. She tore her eyes away from the creature and followed him up to the roof.
"Now what, genius?" Donna asked breathlessly when they reached the top and realized that there was nowhere else to go besides the way they came. And that way was being blocked at the moment by a giant slobbering mutant snail with very sharp teeth and an apparently ravenous appetite for the two of them.
"I know, I know..." he ground out, gritting his teeth as he clutched his head and tried to focus his thoughts; his mind was still so garbled, still spinning from regeneration, still aching with the memories of death and destruction that were so vivid, so painfully fresh that it physically hurt him to think about it.
"Well?" Donna prompted; the creature was nearly to the top, and she could hear it growling with hunger. "You're supposed to be the man with all the answers, aren't you? Do something!"
"I know!" the Doctor yelled. Think. He needed to think. He just needed a moment to think. But he didn't have a moment; that thing was just moments away, and they were cornered. He just needed to think.
It came to him in one cascading torrent of creativity, and he found himself moving without conscious heed from his reeling mind. He picked up a shard of glass at his feet, climbing up on the ledge of the building, facing the creature that was slithering its way up the wall.
"What are you doing?" Donna asked.
"If this doesn't work," he called, staring the beast down, "You don't wait for me. You run, you understand?"
"What-" He didn't give her time to reply. He angled the glass in his hand toward the creature, ignoring the sharp edges cutting into his skin as he reflected the light from above, focusing it into a single beam and aiming it at the creature's eyes. It howled grotesquely, blinded by the bright light, and the Doctor took the opportunity and leaped from the ledge, landing on the creature and knocking it from the wall in its moment of disorientation.
Donna ran to the edge, looking down in alarm as a gut-wrenching thud echoed through the streets. The creature lay motionless on the ground below, the Doctor beside it. Donna rushed down the ladder as quickly as she could and knelt tentatively by his side; the creature appeared dead, the glass shard lodged in its hulking corpse.
"Doctor," she called, leaning next to him. She put a hand on its shoulder, and his blue eyes snapped open, making her jump. He sat up, taking a deep breath.
"I think you got it," Donna said after a moment, sounding rather dazed by the whole experience. The Doctor stared down at the creature's disgusting form, and he got a far-off look in his eye, like it brought on memories of something that caused him to become detached from the present for a few moments.
"Doctor..." she repeated. He didn't seem to hear her, so she leaned closer, and when she did, she saw sadness in his eyes, so vivid and crushing that it made her own heart ache just to see it reflected there. "Your hands..."
He snapped out of it, turning toward her finally. She gestured down at his hands; they were cut from the glass.
"It's nothing," he muttered, and his skin began to glow lightly, the same golden color of the wisps of regeneration energy he'd been exhaling before. The cuts healed right before her eyes, and he looked up at her with an expression that was hard and stern.
"You should go," he said.
"What are you talking about?"
"Go," he said, walking away from her and from the corpse of the dead beast. "Go home."
"What? Just like that?" She chased after him. "I came here looking for you!"
"A different me."
"But still you!" He paused, and she took the opportunity to catch up with him. "What happened?" she asked. "I know something happened to you. Just look at you! What's going on?" He turned to face her, and his expression was bordering on angry; the sight was enough to make Donna flinch.
"I told you," he said, his tone almost menacing, "Go home."
"No."
"No?"
"Yeah," she confirmed, crossing her arms. "It might not be something your used to hearing Mr. High and Mighty Doctor, but I'm telling you no. I spent a long time looking for you, and I don't care if you've got a different face then I'm used to, I'm not just going to let you leave."
He stood there a moment, staring at her.
"Now..." she breathed. "What's with these clothes? Did you get dressed in the dark or something? Or did you get lost on your way to a costume party?" He looked down at himself, seeming to realize for the first time what he was wearing; parts of the coat had ripped as they'd run and fought, and the trousers were awkwardly short.
"I was wearing them before..." he said cryptically.
"Before what?"
"Before I regenerated."
"You what now?"
"Changed my face. To save my own life. I barely escaped, but I was hurt...badly. I had to..." He began to drift off again, and Donna lowered her voice, squinting at him, somehow knowing that whatever he was talking about, whatever had caused him to change his appearance this way, it was bad. Very bad.
"Barely escaped what?"
He shook his head.
"It's nothing," he said. Donna rolled her eyes.
"Fine," she said. "If you want to be all dark and mysterious, be my guest. But you can't go gallivanting around Paris in that get-up. Come on." She took his arm this time, pulling him along with her down the street away from the destroyed restaurant, away from the grotesque corpses of the destroyed monsters.
