TWELVE
Donna was very much enjoying the sun, the company, and the flush atmosphere. But, she was finding that there were not many things in the shops that she felt she had to have. She was not disappointed that she wasn't able to spend at will, as were the Jones women – she was just happy to be there. And of course, possibly to help the Doctor out by talking with them, should the opportunity arise, to flush out an alien interloper.
And arise it did.
She and Tish, Francine and Nadine had just begun discussing what they might like to have for lunch, when Tish's mobile phone rang. They all stopped on the sidewalk momentarily, while Tish searched through her purse.
When she found it, she looked at the display. "Sorry, It's Vanessa," she told her mum. "I have to take this call, or she'll think I've died."
"She'll think you've died?" Francine asked, nonplussed.
"Yeah, I left an overwrought message a few days ago while she was on holiday in South America," Tish explained, while walking away to get a bit of privacy. "I was scared and crying, and... well, you know."
"Oh, I see," Francine said, and she drifted over to a small area where there were a couple of benches facing each other, shaded by lush palms, and sat down with Donna and Nadine. Tish stepped into an alcove formed by the bay windows of two adjacent shops.
"Who's Vanessa?" Donna asked.
"Vanessa is Tish's best mate," Francine reported. "They've known each other since primary school."
"Oh, that's nice. Why might she think Tish has died?" Donna wondered, aware of her cheek. She reckoned that if the Jones women didn't want her to know, they were perfectly welcome to tell her to butt out. It's more or less how she had operated, her whole life.
Francine and Nadine looked at each other knowingly. "It's about that bloke, Adrian, that she was telling you about at breakfast yesterday," Francine answered. "The one who couldn't pay the bill at dinner."
"Oh. I thought there might be a bit more to that story than just one disastrous dinner at the Connaught," Donna said.
"Well, Tish decided to forgive him for that little episode, which is… well, her own business. And she and Adrian were together another couple of weeks, and actually, he was supposed to come with us on this trip."
"Really? That's a surprise."
"Well, I wasn't keen on it, but Tish was begging to have him along. And Clive started pontificating on how this trip was all about family and fun and acceptance, and shaking off our difficult past, and all that, and how could we do any of those things, if we were going to say 'no' to bringing along someone Tish cares about…"
"Okay, fair enough."
Francine's voice dropped to a secretive, almost conspiratorial, tone. "Anyway, two nights before we left, Tish was over at Adrian's for tea, and happened to see that he'd been packing a duffel for the trip. So, she started going through the bag, I guess, just to make sure he was bringing the right things… I don't know. But anyway, she found this little satchel she'd never seen before, and she opened it and found syringes."
"Oh no!"
"Tish mentioned how pretty he is, didn't she?"
"Yeah."
"Well, he isn't just pretty. He's also very well-built. Muscular, like an athlete."
"Gorgeous with his shirt off," Nadine chimed in.
"But, he was taking steroids, wasn't he?" Donna asked, her heart beginning to beat faster.
"But in the moment, when Tish confronted him about it, he had nothing to say – he just went straight into a rage," Francine explained, clearly trying hard to remain calm.
Donna gasped. "No!"
"He struck her. Only once, but quite hard, across the jaw. The bruise is already pretty small, though. It's almost unnoticeable."
"I hadn't noticed!" Donna pointed out.
"She's been covering it with makeup," Nadine explained.
"After hitting her, Adrian basically trashed the parlour – overturned tables, broke lamps, toppled over the TV. Thank Heaven he was in his own home, destroying his own things. Tish grabbed her purse and keys and ran out of there while he was raging in the kitchen."
"Oh, my God!"
"Later on, he called, and claimed he'd just started with the doping, or whatever they call it, that it hadn't been an ongoing thing. Tish believes him, because she feels she'd have seen the signs before then… as you know, he wasn't really clever enough to hide the symptoms…"
"But, doesn't it take a while for 'roid rage to set in?" asked Nadine. "Personally, I think he's blowing smoke up her skirt."
Francine nodded. "Very likely. He apologised of course, probably sincerely, but Tish would have none of it. She broke up with him then and there." She turned her gaze rather wistfully toward her daughter, ten metres away. "I guess she must have rung her friend Vanessa in the heat of the moment…"
"… and she wants to reassure her friend that she's all right," Donna surmised. She now studied Tish as well. "Actually, you know, she seems okay. She's having a good time, isn't she?"
"It seems so," Francine sighed. "It was an isolated incident, she's broken it off. And she's not afraid that he'll come after her, or anything."
"I've been laying odds that her flat will be filled with roses when she gets home from this holiday," Nadine said with a little smirk. "It's the sort of rubbish guys like that do to apologise."
"Wow, you folks have had a hell of a few days," Donna commented, thinking of Francine's tour-bus scare, and Clive's punch-up. She wondered if, from their point of view, having her and the Doctor turn up during their holiday also counted among those incidents.
It was then that they noticed, Tish was redepositing her phone back into her purse, and moving in their direction.
"Well, I think all is right with the world," Tish chirped. "Vanessa knows I'm alive. She has some stunning photos of Greece to show off. Status quo."
"Good," Francine said, squeezing her daughter's hand. "Now, let's get back to talking about lunch."
"Hi, Donna," the Doctor said, knowing who was on the other end of the call.
"Are you alone? Can you talk?" she asked.
"Not really," he said. "But yes."
He was currently standing knee-deep in the Mediterranean, playing frisbee with two boys who appeared to be about twelve, and to have no parents in the vicinity.
"First of all," she said. "Are you cold at all?"
He smiled, catching the frisbee. "No, as a matter of fact, I'm quite sun-kissed at the moment. No hint of an icy Siberian lake remains on my person. Thanks for asking. You?" Tossed the frisbee.
"Not cold, but still traumatised," she sighed. "Kind of wishing I'd just left my kit on, actually. Where's Martha?"
"She's gone to reserve a motor boat for later this afternoon. What are you up to now?"
"I'm outside the restaurant where we just had lunch," she said. "The others are inside, still waiting on dessert. Now, Doctor, listen. Francine told me about an episode, two days before leaving on this trip, when Tish's daft boyfriend Adrian got caught using steroids and flew into a violent rage, aimed at Tish."
He motioned to the boys that he had to take the call, and that they should continue the game with each other. The boys adjusted their positions on the beach, and that was that. "Whoa. That guy just gets better and better, the more I hear about him."
"He even hit her," Donna emphasized. "Apparently quite hard, across the jaw. She had to grab her things and rush out of his flat when he wasn't looking, and phoned her mate, Vanessa, apparently a nervous wreck. The whole thing sounds just awful. But guess what! Tish doesn't remember it!"
"Ohhh," the Doctor groaned, and pinched his forehead between thumb and fingers. "Oh, God."
"At lunch, before the food came, she said she had to go to the loo so, I went with her… you know, ladies always go in pairs."
"Yeah… what's that about?"
"Anyway," she continued. "I asked her about it while we were both washing our hands. I braced myself to act nonchalant, just in case she should not remember it… I didn't want to give myself away or anything. And Doctor… nothing. Nada. She looked at me, completely clueless."
"Did she seem surprised by it? Upset by it?"
"No," Donna said. "It was right creepy. She had this sort of droopy, sideways smile on her face, and made a sort of snort when I began to elaborate a bit, on what her mum had told me. But I didn't tell her everything."
"Good. What about now? Is she okay now?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. She hardly said a word throughout lunch… Nadine and Francine chatted like mad, but Tish was only interested in her salad. When I left the table, she was sitting there, still just listening."
"Did she watch you go?"
"I don't think so," Donna told him. "She didn't seem interested in the fact that I was leaving the table. I wondered if she'd begun focusing on Nadine."
"Possible. Even though, Nadine doesn't have the time-junk on her. But she is part of the family circle…" The Doctor sighed heavily. "I hate to say it, but I sort of hope that this thing does start to think outside the box, and wonder if Nadine and Leo are involved. I mean, not for their sakes, but…"
"…but if not, it means that Martha's definitely next."
"Right. Or you, or me."
"Ugh," she groaned. Then, she seemed to think for a moment. "But here's the weird part, Doctor. When I pushed further, and asked about how her family was getting on after being prisoners of the Master for a year, she seemed to remember that."
"Really?"
"Yeah," Donna reported. "She even commented on how her family didn't even have it half as bad as others, who were forced into labour camps…"
"Actually, Martha was in one of those camps for a while, on her trek."
"…and she talked about how watching Japan get destoyed couldn't have been half as bad as being in Japan when it was destroyed."
"She said that?"
"Yeah. Is it true – did the Master destroy Japan?"
"Yep. Torpedoes, missiles, bombs, flame-throwers, nukes, you name it. Burned it from roots to skyscrapers. And made us all watch."
"Why?"
"Because he's stark-raving bonkers, Donna," he said. "Also, evil and drunk with power."
"So, she remembers a trauma from over the past year, from months back, but not something from, what… last week?"
The Doctor contemplated this for a few moments, while he paced in the water. "You know, to be honest, I'm not surprised. I was beginning to form a hypothesis yesterday, about why Clive couldn't remember something so recently imprinted on his psyche… or rather, why the alien couldn't find it, once it was inside his mind."
"Okay, what's your hypothesis, then?"
He paced in the water. "Trauma takes a while to sink in… as quickly as one can be horrified or appalled by it, the actual impact of a trauma can be unclear for weeks or months. While the mind is still chewing on it, it's too nebulous, too intangible, too blurry, to be accessible to spy equipment, if you will. Extracting data from a computer can be similar. When something is in mid-download, it's not accessible – the system is still processing."
"The human mind is like a computer?"
"Well, no. But in this case, the analogy sort of works."
"If you say so," Donna sighed.
"Look… today, Tish has some perspective on how their trauma with the Master will play upon their lives and souls in the years to come. They are here, in Mallorca, trying to heal, together. The family is united, things are moving forward. But, by contrast, it will be quite a bit of time before she has a full sense of how getting attacked by her boyfriend will affect her in the long-run. The memory is clouded by emotion, and even the emotions aren't fully formed yet."
"I guess I can see that."
"Thing is, I grilled Martha about some stuff that happened when we were travelling together, which I now realise is too long-term to be a valid indicator. But she's been acting a little weird…"
"How so?"
"Just… not herself. She's bold, like. She's… I don't know… unfettered."
"Maybe she's just growing up," Donna said. "And she thinks she's got nothing to lose, since you already know everything she'd been trying to keep from you."
"I've wondered that," he admitted. "But I had to be sure, so I looked her in the eye and confessed who I was, willing the Epidromeas to take me, instead of her…"
"Point-blank confession, and it didn't touch you?"
"Nope."
"So, she's clean."
"She was, a couple of hours ago, anyway," he said. "But now, she's out of my sight, I can't be sure."
"Just do it again," Donna suggested. "Tell her-slash-it who you are."
"I could, I suppose. But..."
"But what?"
"It would be weird to do that every time I see her," he sighed. "'Hi, Martha, back from the loo? Great. Let me grab hold of you, and oddly emphatically declare my name and species... for the fifth time today.'"
"I get that. But we do what we've got to, yeah?"
He paused for a few beats, then, "Thing is, what if this thing is savvier than we think? Or what if it's growing savvier? If I keep doing that to her, I'm afraid it will… I don't know. Use her even longer, lie in wait longer… learn more about her, and about me. What if it decides to observe me, before attacking me directly?"
"Well, you and I have a 'safeguard trauma,' that we created."
"Yeah…" he mused, trailing off.
Donna clicked her tongue with dismay. "Though now, I don't reckon that particular 'trauma' will last very long, as indicators go. I don't really see a cold dip in a Siberian lake as being something that weighs heavily on my future. Even if I was topless."
"And, you did it to yourself, so… maybe the impact is less."
"Maybe."
"But it's still a bodily… event. Total immersion, literally and figuratively. Overwhelming, stunning."
"It hurt like hell."
"It wasn't an attack or anything intended with malice, premeditation, or your own carelessness involved," he said, his voice now sounding far away.
After a long silence, Donna asked, carefully, "Doctor? Are you thinking that Martha's going to need a trauma? As a safeguard?"
"I am. You're quite clever, Donna."
"No, I'm just not an imbecile," she corrected. "But, can you do that? Could you really bring yourself to traumatise Martha?"
Again, the Doctor didn't answer for a while. If Donna had been with him, she'd have seen him staring off into the horizon, where the sky met the sea.
"I don't know."
"Listen, considering all she's been through, you'd have to jar her hard, and potentially emotionally scar her to some extent. What on Earth could you see yourself doing to that end? You, the Doctor, the universe's biggest, and most effective do-gooder. You'd be too skittish."
"Good point, Donna."
"I meant that as a compliment."
"I know."
"You could take her Siberia and push her in the lake," she suggested, rather flippantly.
"I couldn't do that to her," he said, almost at a whisper.
"And anyway, Martha Jones might be able shake that off and take it in her stride," Donna speculated.
"She might, indeed," he agreed.
Another silence ensued, while the wheels turned. He genuinely felt that they needed a "safeguard trauma" for Martha, if not to prevent the Epidromeas' infiltration, at least to know when it happens. Thus, he could have some warning that the alien was getting dangerously close to him, and therefore, close to having access to the TARDIS and the vortex and…
They simply could not have Martha Jones walking around possessed by the Epidromeas, without their knowing it. That much was clear.
But, Donna, in her practicality, was making two excellent points: a) Martha's unbelievable mettle would prove an obstacle in this endeavour. And, b) therefore, anything violent enough to traumatise her, would be something that the Doctor could never bring himself to do, or even orchestrate.
"So, we have a bit of a Catch-22," Donna sighed.
"Maybe, maybe not," he mused, realising something. "I know her quite well."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying, I know her quite well."
"Oh, you know her weaknesses, you mean?" Donna asked, with a bit of disgust.
He didn't answer that question. Donna took his silence as assent. She realized he was hatching something.
"Doctor? What are you going to do? Doctor!"
"I'm thinking!" he spat. "Look, Donna, she's my friend. She understands more than we give her credit for sometimes."
"You're thinking she'll just forgive you, once you've vanquished the bad guy."
"Not out of the realm of possibility."
"Okay, wait… didn't you say that Martha had gone to rent a boat?"
"Yeah."
"For the two of you?"
"Yes, of course."
"What the hell is on your mind, Spaceman?" Donna was practically shouting now. "Talk to me, Doctor!"
At that point, the Doctor spied Martha walking up the beach toward him.
"She's coming back. I've got to go."
"Doctor, do not do anything that you can't take back! Certain things cannot be forgiven, you know!"
"Oi," his voice cut through her tirade. "A little trust, eh, Donna?"
And he ended the call.
Whoa! Hopefully you're a bit nervous now, hee hee! Please leave a review to let me know!
