Donna watches in disbelief as the Doctor continues to talk to the crazy woman, voices raised to try to drown each other out. The woman has quickly gotten over the shock of their arrival and is screaming obscenities at the Doctor, her face contorted and ugly in her frenzy. Donna rather wants to join in, angry beyond belief that he has put himself in danger like this. She knows that anger is mostly powered by fear, and she is very aware of the reason for her fear. The last time they had faced an Ilk it had almost killed him, and not twenty meters from where he is standing another Ilk lays.
Terry grabs her shoulders to stop her from just walking up and slapping the Doctor silly, and gestures to the side. The thugs are still knocked out flat, but that isn't what he is referring to. There is some sort of console attached to the primitive generator. Donna glares angrily at the Doctor, but he doesn't acknowledge her, so she turns and hurries to the console, Terry in tow. She may have a certain dislike for the Ilk as a whole, but this particular Ilk hasn't done anything to her, and she can't stand to see any creature in pain.
She strides over and pokes at the console briefly. It doesn't match the generator at all, much more organic and oddly crystalline than the bulky primitive brass thing it is attached to. She looks inquisitively at Terry, who shrugs at her, just as ignorant about the origins of this set up as she is. Her sonic has the thing down and out in a shower of sparks, no real effort needed, and suddenly the droning sound stops. The four of them freeze at the deafening quiet, the last syllables of the Doctor's argument echoing strangely in the hollow space. For a while there is total silence, until Donna's ears start picking up a wheezy faint sound. She turns to look for the source. It is the Ilk, fighting for breath, even as it lays there, no longer twitching from the electrical shocks.
"Look! Look what you have done to this poor creature!" The Doctor shouts, gesturing expansively, his face rigid in fury, eyes locked with the womans. The loss of the psionic field seems to have taken a great deal of anger out of her argument. The woman is looking at the Doctor like she has never seen him before, cold eyes scanning his face dispassionately and clearly find him lacking. "Poor creature?" she asks sardonically, cocking an eyebrow and throwing a cruel mocking grin at the captured Ilk. "That poor creature," she coos, "that came here to feed on the pathetic inhabitants of this backwater." She says with a sneer. "That poor creature." She says again, no pity in her face at all, only thwarted rage.
"It landed here, years and years ago, in my father's fields. Dug itself down, too wounded by a botched landing." She scoffs angrily, "It offered my father power, if he would only feed it. Of course that old fool agreed." Donna looks back at the console, suddenly realising that it must come from the creatures ship, though she wonders what must have happened to cause it to crash like that.
"My father, he quickly realised what that thing was doing, forcing itself into peoples minds, making them obey. He built this theatre around it, ostensibly to let it heal in peace." She gestures dismissively to the architecture, clearly unimpressed. "Healing was the furthest thing from his mind. He starved it long enough that it could put up little fight, then enslaved it."
Sounds start to trickle down from the world outside. It starts quietly, but slowly grows in volume until it is more deafening than the former droning. It takes a moment before the sounds make sense to Donna's sensitive Time Lord ears, then abruptly they detangle into the sounds of feet running, scrambling madly across the floor above, and the sounds of screams and cries as the Aeckurans come to themselves. For several long minutes that is all Donna can hear, even as the woman keeps ranting at the Doctor.
"I was young, and sick of being the daughter of a rankless farmer. He grabbed at power, and when it was well-established, I grabbed it from him." The woman says, a sort of glee in her eyes and voice as she speaks of her betrayal of her own father.
There is a certain unfamiliar disgust on the Doctor's face as he looks at this person who speaks so dismissively of torture and enslavement. It sends a twinge of something into Donna's hearts, makes them contract painfully to see him so upset. Her earlier anger at him is gone, erased in the face of his mounting anger and disappointment with this woman. He always wants to see the best in people, wants to believe in the better nature of sentient species everywhere, she thinks sadly. It kills him a little every time he is proven wrong, some part of her mind whispers, heart-sick on his behalf.
Terry has been taking full advantage of the distraction provided, and has snuck up on the woman without any of them noticing. Donna only realises what he is about to do when she sees him lifting his arms. He strikes so quickly that the woman has no time to react, his arms constricting around her neck and restricting airflow. She struggles viciously, and manages to get a good knock against Terry's face before she is rendered unconscious. Terry gently lowers her to the floor, then steps back with a satisfied expression on his square face. "Well, I was sick of listening to her, anyway." He murmurs and he wipes his hands against the straight-jacket he is still wearing as if his hands are covered in something dirty.
The Doctor is looking at their son in complete surprise, his jaw just a bit slack, Donna not far behind. Terry looks at both of them in confusion. "What?" he ask, blue eyes flicking back and forth between his parents. "What, she's fine, I just knocked her out, I swear!" he exclaims when neither of them say anything. Donna tries to think of an appropriate reply, not sure she would have been as merciful, but aware that the Doctor has a rather strict view on killing.
She is distracted by the Ilk. It has started twitching again. Donna sends a quick reassuring look at her son, then hurries over to the edge of the pit. There seems to be no easy way to get down to the creature. The remains of an old ladder lay snapped at the bottom of the pit, no help at all. The Ilk is clearly not well, not at all. It squirms a bit more, and Donna realises what it is trying to do in a flash of insight that has her insides freeze. "Wait, Ilk! Please, we can help you!" she calls out, searching for another way down, which brings both of her boys attention to the creature. It is writhing, but not away from the spikes. Without the energy from the generator, something has gone loose. The Ilk is pushing against one of the spikes embedded in its flesh. Its squirming brings it to brace against some rubble. It doesn't stop once the spike is braced, rather it gives one large heave and slams its body against the spike. There is a loud squelching sound that Donna is afraid will stay with her for the rest of her life, and the Ilk moves no more.
Donna whips out her sonic and finds the appropriate setting to run a life signs scan. Her sonic, a proper emergency engineers sonic, has a setting specifically for scanning in between rubble and ruins for even a faint sign of life. It can't distinguish one from another, all life being of equal value in a rescue situation, but it should pick out the Ilk just fine. It finds the thrum-thrum-fush of an Ilk heart, but not easily. The rhythm slows significantly, even as they listen, until (35 seconds, 12 microseconds later) it completely stops. Donna hasn't been aware of the rush of Time so acutely since unclasping the Chameleon arch, and for a moment she resents it with all her being. She wants to be just Human Donna again, who wouldn't have known. It would have been just a moment, too fast for her to conceptualise properly.
The Doctor places a comforting hand on her shoulder, and is joined by Terry moments later. Donna twirls and buries her face in the Doctor's shoulder, her eyes burning with nearly repressed tears. His arms snake around her, their comforting weight helping to ground her against the helpless feeling that is forcing her eyes to water. Terry joins the embrace, both of her boys humming comforting sounds at her as they stand there.
It takes them hours to get the situation in the village under control. They've trussed up the woman who was at the centre of the whole issue in Terry's straight-jacket, and hand her over to what is left of the elders-council. It had been three planetary years since the trouble had started, and many hundreds of inhabitants of what was once a religious retreat are dead. It takes some doing to insure that the Ilk is treated with the same compassion that the other victims are shown. Eventually Donna ensures that the Ilk is burned along with the remains of the Aeckuran dead, if on a different pyre. They are all three exhausted by the time they make it back to the TARDIS'.
Donna storms in through the doors, utterly fed up with the day she has just had. She isn't much surprised when the outside door leads into BABY's console room instead of Old Girl's, certain that the TARDIS' have sensed her mood, and her need to tinker. She ignores her companions, still a bit angry at both of them, and strides purposefully down her own long corridor until she reaches the newly retrofitted workroom. The place is large and full to the brim of various doodads and doohickeys. The Tinker doesn't pause even as she notes that many of the components in here are probably stored in Old Girl, rather than BABY. The Two TARDIS' have integrated to a higher extent than she had expected, but then she hadn't ever done a full on integration like that before.
Tinker hastily clears a workspace, her mind already going through what she needs to do to improve the Sonic Screwdriver to be of more use. Perhaps if it had been able to carve stone, she thinks to herself, they might have been able to save that poor creature. The plans for various methods of doing exactly that start building in her head, before another possibility pops up and she starts work on that without pause. No need to carve if you can simply displace, The Tinker tells herself with quiet efficiency.
"Donna." the Doctor is standing in the door when Tinker looks up from where her hands are busily assembling a quantum vacillator component. There mus be something off in her expression, because the concern on his face increases. "Donna?" he asks, and there is more uncertainty in that word than there ever has been. It breaks through the haze she has descended into, if only a bit. The Tinker closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Donna opens her eyes, and meets the concern with a watery smile. "Yeah?" she asks, her voice tired and her face drawn. He looks a bit lost for a moment, tipping on the balls of his feet.
"Are you alright?" he eventually asks. Donna can't help but laugh just a bit, her utter fatigue leeching into her voice. "As alright as I always am, Spaceman." She sniffles unintentionally, and hurriedly wipes at her nose. "It would be nice if, just once, no one actually dies, y'know?" she mumbles with a sniff, not meeting his eyes. Her hands are busy again, slipping a bit of this onto that component, tweaking hither and yon. She hears him take a hesitant step, then stride towards her.
"Donna, I'm sorry." He says when he is directly by her side, as if that makes any sense at all. Donna looses her grip on the Sonic, which clatters to the workspace top noisily. She just stares at it for a moment, surprised that her hands have failed her, then turns to look at the Doctor. "Sorry?" she booms. "You're sorry?" she repeats, even as the Doctor winces and looks to the ground, the overly familiar look of guilt contorting his face. The punch to his shoulder surprises both of them. "Don't you go getting a swelled head, Spaceman," she growls out, "that there was not in any way or form, your fault." The look of guilt doesn't quite abate, much to her annoyance and private heartache. She pokes him again until he meets her eyes, big brown eyes, sad and filled with too much death, meet her own blue-gold. "Not. Your. Fault." She repeats, then pulls him into a crushing hug. He returns it, and for a moment she wonders if he hadn't said that just to have an excuse to comfort her. "Not yours either, Donna." The sneaky bastard.
She savours the physical contact more than she should, she knows that. The Tinker had never been overly physical with other Time Lords, but her time with Wilf had taught her about friendly camaraderie, about how important hugging could be. This doesn't quite feel like a friendly hug to her, she realises with surprise that she tries her best to keep from sharing. The Human Donna had loved the Doctor as much as the chameleon arch had allowed her to, but within the friend limit they had set up. It had been set up specifically to not allow herself to create too long-term attachments, in case she needed to open the fob-watch. Still, Donna swears to herself that Human-her had never felt anything like attraction to the skinny git. Time Lord Donna, on the other hand, is utterly horrified to find that there is a stirring of romantic affection.
"Donna?" the Doctor asks her again, and she suddenly realises that she has tensed up in their hug, her mental shields on full strength. He pulls back just a bit to look into her eyes with concern. "It really wasn't your fault. If we hadn't come along, who knows how long that poor Ilk would have been there. At least he is free now." He says, voice full of conviction. Donna nods absently, horrified at herself, and halfway to convincing herself that it is just stress-related. He lets loose one of those warm smiles and pulls her close again. Donna stands there and wants BABY to just swallow her up. Of course, she thinks to herself, of course she's chosen now to loose her mind.