This chapter practically wrote itself. So I bring it to you early! I do hope it delivers.
Donna immediately flung her arms around him, and he returned the embrace with surprising strength—she'd have expected the experience to be somewhat draining, but he was able to match the force she was offering to the hug, which was even impressive on its own considering how much he resembled a beanpole.
"Scared me for a minute there," she whispered.
"I do my best to never stop," he returned, and she couldn't help but smile.
Deeming it enough, she pulled away, turning her attention instantly to the revolting thing below the cuff of his trousers. Forgetting for a moment any talk of "minor surgery," she reached out with every intention of yanking it off, pushing her squeamishness deep down where no one could see it.
She was unfortunately thwarted when the leg she was about to free of a parasite jerked in the direction of the ceiling and bent so that the ankle was covered by the opposite shin. The resounding and alarmed "NO!" that had accompanied the action echoed in her ears, and she looked up at the Doctor, who was staring at her, wide-eyed.
"What?" she asked, bewildered and rather wide-eyed herself.
"Leave it," he said certainly, expression not changing, body still tensed up and gathered away from her, eyes still fixed on her. And besides being totally perplexing, it was beginning to make her uncomfortable.
"'Leave it'? Why? This thing—" and she pointed in the direction of the offending thing—"stole your senses, nearly left you a physical vegetable."
He extended his fingers and turned over his hand in a submissive gesture. "I'm not arguing with that."
"Are you completely back? How did you manage it? What did you say?"
"It was a conversation, Donna. I wasn't the only one saying things." His body finally began to relax, and he leaped off the bed and started brushing himself off and straightening his jacket. "Who's in charge around here?"
Donna was able to give a concise rundown of everything she'd learned before the two of them left the room. The Doctor listened intently and asked a couple of questions, but didn't offer any of what he himself had gathered in the same time frame. He seemed to be saving it, at least in whole, for a slightly bigger audience. It was logical, but it would have been annoying—if he had for some reason kept uncharacteristically quiet.
"They're actually beautiful creatures, Donna," he kept saying, and "They're really quite humble, you know? All they want is to learn. I love it!" Donna stared at him, and down at his ankle area, and back at his face, and remembered the absolute fear she'd seen on it as they were pulled out of the caves. It was gone now, replaced with wild excitement. And it certainly helped that he'd gotten back into his coat. With his natural inability to quite stick to a walking pace, it seemed just as enthused as it billowed behind him.
A smile found its way onto her face. It was okay not to know everything. She did know that this change signaled clearer skies ahead.
The Doctor's manic energy prompted quick answers out of passersby, and within minutes Ilseg had been located yet again. The alien sat there at his simple desk, hand still gripping some strange writing utensil and poised above some thick paper half-filled with words, and stared up at his two visitors. Donna wasn't sure if he'd seen the Doctor before or not, but if he recognized her, he ought to be able to extrapolate the identity of the man standing next to her.
Sure enough, after a few moments he said in wonderment, "Extraordinary. You shouldn't even be able to stand."
"I can do a lot more than stand, mate," the Time Lord replied without missing a beat, grinning ear to ear. "I can process the sound waves you're putting into the air and find meaning in them. I can rub my vocal cords together to make sounds of my own, and decipher them myself while being sure that you're receiving my message. I can hold myself up and be perfectly aware of my own position. I can walk and run and jump and climb and clack my heels, maybe even all at the same time—I could certainly try it, anyway. I have two beating hearts and if I stand still enough I can feel them both working to keep my body running. I can sit back and listen to the Cascade of Rinsay and the utter symphony it creates and invent my own words to its songs, all while surveying its total eight thousand metres of deep blue waterfalls with my own two eyes. I can certainly try to scale any mountain of the planet Gkra-4 and if I fall and sprain my wrist you can bet my body'll let me know I've done something wrong. I can enjoy a—well, no, I can't enjoy a banana, never mind about that one, we'll get back to it. Point is, Ilseg, I can do anything involving the senses of sight, hearing, and touch, and it's the most incredible thing in the universe, and it was given back to me freely."
"But what about the other two?" Donna asked worriedly at the same time Ilseg said, "But that's impossible. How were you able to make it give them back to you?"
"I spoke with it," he said calmly. "I convinced it to give them back. It chose to acquiesce. I didn't make it do anything."
"You let it keep smell and taste?" Donna tried again.
He nodded. "As leverage. My idea."
"Leverage?" Ilseg's already enormous eyes widened. "You mean it's still on you?"
"It is that. It's no danger to anyone here, and we are no danger to it." The Doctor stared down the much shorter alien severely, presenting these as statements of absolute fact. "I've got some things I need to go over with you."
"Ridiculous," Ilseg declared.
The Doctor leaned forward in his seat (which hadn't been able to contain him for the entirety of his tale, but he'd returned to it near the end), urgency written large across his face. "I know how it must sound to someone who's lived in this society all his life, but these creatures are just as alive as you are, and they have never meant you any harm."
"I do not care whether they have meant us harm," Ilseg said venomously. "They have done us a great deal. They are the creatures parents tell their younglings stories about to make them behave. We have lost so much to them. They are not to be negotiated with."
Donna gave him a sidelong glance, as the Doctor pressed, "I'm presenting you with a solution. You'd rather continue living in fear? You could make these sacrifices in a controlled way, on your own terms."
"We shouldn't have to make them at all," Ilseg spat.
"So the solution you're proposing," Donna said uncertainly, still trying to wrap her mind around all this, "is that elderly Cirulians—"
"Upper Cirulians," the Doctor corrected.
Donna thought about that. It was true that these cave-dwellers—lauep, as Ilseg had called them—were also of the planet Cirula. "Okay, that elderly Upper Cirulians… 'donate' their senses?"
He nodded.
"Doctor," Donna said quietly, "I can't picture giving away something so crucial to human"—she grimaced—"interaction, no matter how old and frail I was. Especially if I had no clue about the effort I was furthering."
"Ah, but you see," the Doctor said excitedly, "after it accepted my offer, I asked it some more questions. It wouldn't answer all of them, but it told me a bit about its colony and the way the colonies function. And they don't all look like the one on my ankle."
Ilseg's skin visibly darkened, which was interesting, though Donna didn't know enough about his race to be able to tell what that entailed. As for Donna herself, she froze. "What do you mean?" she whispered.
"It's a 'gatherer,'" the Doctor explained animatedly, standing up again without appearing to realize he was doing it. "It's the simplest kind. There aren't even that many of them. They're the ones that collect senses for every new generation. There's only more than one of them per colony as insurance, because if there were just one it would probably fail.
"Then there is the next rank up, and I didn't get a very clear picture, but they definitely felt more advanced, and several times bigger. They're the ones that gather food, take care of the young, you know. Very common, they make up most of the colony.
"And then, AND THEN" and he came this close to shouting, obviously very enthused about whatever was coming up if the grin lighting up his face was anything to go by, "there is the reason for the sense thieves, the crowning glory of the species, the purpose they work towards, the most precious treasure inside those caves—the workers. They are the ones who need the senses, because they are the ones who dream. They're the smartest, but beyond that, they are the most creative. When new ones are born, the gatherers are sent out to supply them with ways to take in the world, and to add something to it. They learn as much as they can. And they build. Not just so their colony has somewhere to call home, but for the sake of building. Picture it—a species that has evolved not just to survive, but to learn. To explore. It's quite honestly the most inspiring thing I've heard of in a very long time."
Donna's brain was working furiously to process this. With this description, if she could just accept it, suddenly everything turned upside down. Though she had to wonder how much of a difference this would really make if somebody else had relayed it to her as the Doctor remained stretched before her, senseless.
Meanwhile Ilseg was sitting perfectly still, the papers before him long forgotten—everything long forgotten, apparently. "What?" he finally whispered, horror filling his wide dark eyes. "They're advancing?"
"Progressing," the Doctor agreed. "At an incredible rate, too. In the last few hundred years alone they've evolved hands with opposable thumbs and their brain capacities have expanded immensely. At this point they remain in the caves only because they know they're not physically prepared to fight off Upper Cirulians, and they're afraid."
"They're afraid of us?" Ilseg clarified contemptuously.
"Very much," the Doctor said calmly. "They're aware of what they've had to take from you. They're not sorry for doing it—it's all they have. But they know the difference it makes to you. They know what would happen to their colonies if they couldn't hide themselves so well."
"You think I ought to feel guilty that they're right?" Ilseg spat. "All I want is to protect my people. I owe these filthy cave-dwellers nothing. And if you think otherwise, Doctor, I don't believe we can call ourselves allies."
This wasn't going as well as it could be. Donna could feel the tension in the room's atmosphere. Moreover, she could see it in Ilseg's stormy eyes.
"Things could be different," the Doctor urged.
"You visited us, our planet," Ilseg said carefully, the strain evident in his voice. "You came in the middle of a natural and ongoing war, you were taken in by our enemy, victimized by them, yet still you take their side. I do not know if you are blindly faithful or simply mad. But I cannot have you doing anything to put my community in danger."
"So what are you gonna do?" Donna asked, amused despite herself at anything resembling a threat coming from this creature the size of a preteen.
"You will leave this facility, this community, this planet, immediately," Ilseg said through tight lips. "If you are seen again I will have you imprisoned."
Donna stood up automatically. She still wasn't feeling particularly intimidated, but… perhaps lingering much longer wasn't the wisest idea.
"You're making a mistake, Ilseg," the Doctor warned, an old fire burning in his eyes.
"Even if that were true, it is mine to make," the alien responded hatefully. "Now get out of my sight."
Never one to give up—or readily obey authority—the Doctor simply seated himself back in his chair, leaning forward so much it almost brought him to Ilseg's eye level. "I promise I am taking no side here," he said seriously. "I have everyone's best interests at heart. Their colonies', and your community's. I have plenty of experience with this kind of thing, and I have thought this through. I know you have suffered. But I can help you."
For the first time, Ilseg seemed to waver, if only showing it through a slight flicker of his large eyes from the Doctor's eyes to his tie. But he resumed eye contact quickly, and after only a few seconds' pause, he said, slowly and deliberately, "I will say this only once more." His tone left no room for argument as he commanded, "Get out."
For a long moment, neither of them broke eye contact. From what Donna could tell, they were matched in determination, but Ilseg was decidedly… angrier. Tense silence hung in the air.
The Doctor suddenly stood up, spun around, and marched out of the room. Donna cast one last glance towards Ilseg, and accidentally met his eyes. He stared into her almost murderously, seeming to transfer his rage from the now-absent Doctor to her, and she wasted no time in hustling out of the room after the Time Lord.