Donna's friend Madeleine has just left Martha's flat, and... well, poor Donna! However, my fondest desire with this chapter was not to make Donna sound adolescent or pathetic. I wanted her reasoning to be sound, and not petty, not too feeling-sorry-for-herself...
Anyway, enjoy... if something like this is to be "enjoyed." ;-)
EIGHT
Martha dumped four mugs of forgotten coffee down the drain, and set about washing the porcelain by hand. The Doctor stood, leaning against the counter nearby, staring at the floor.
When she turned off the water, and they could hear each other again, she asked, "Feeling guilty?"
"Of course," he answered quickly. "But feeling guilty's like my hobby, so…"
"We had a lovely, romantic, fulfilling night. And she drank wine and cried."
"Yep."
A long pause ensued, while they listened to the water upstairs turn off, the shower curtain open, and footsteps move about.
When their eyes met once more, she asked, rather quietly, "Will we ever be able to have a night like that again, without the guilt?"
"I invited her, and she chose…"
"You know as well as I do that that doesn't matter."
He sighed. "Yeah. I do."
The door to the bathroom opened at the top of the stairs, and Donna emerged in a fluffy bathrobe, and sauntered down the stairs, towelling her hair dry.
"Hi, you two," she said, with an embarrassed sort of laugh. She sounded as though she'd come alive, though she still seemed exhausted. At least she didn't seem unsteady or addled. "Sorry about all this. Had a rough night."
"No need to apologise," Martha said.
"You'd think I'd know by now, I can't drink like a twenty-five-year-old anymore. Can't do anything like a twenty-five-year-old anymore."
The Doctor scrutinised her, without saying anything. She could feel his eyes on her, and was glad of Martha's presence.
"How are you feeling now?" asked Martha.
"A bit more alert. Headachey."
"Have a seat," Martha said, heading for the fridge. She emerged with a container of yoghurt, and a bottle of water. "Here you go – cysteine and hydration."
"Cysteine?"
"An amino acid. May or may not clear a metabolic pathway to help alleviate your hangover symptoms, according to a clinical trial," Martha replied, really quickly.
"Good grief, you talk like him now," Donna said, smiling, indicating the Doctor.
"Whatever. If nothing else, you should just get some protein in your body. And, I'll get you some ibuprofen."
"I usually have better luck with paracetamol," Donna advised.
"Nope," Martha snapped. "Can't mix paracetamol with alcohol – it'll destroy your liver."
Donna sat, and chuckled as Martha disappeared upstairs into her bedroom. "It's good to be friends with an A&E physician."
She tore off the foil top of the yoghurt, then realised she didn't have a spoon. Without making eye contact, she said to the Doctor, "I could do with a spoon. Could do without the judgement."
He leaned to his left and extracted a spoon from a drawer and set it down beside her right hand. Then he said, "This is not judgement. This is worry."
"I could do without that, too," she said, flatly, spooning a bit of lemon-flavoured yoghurt into her mouth. She didn't fancy it; in fact, it made her gag slightly, in her post-drink state. But she reckoned she owed it to Martha (who also happened to know what the hell she was talking about) to eat it. After her third bite, she acclimated to it, then took a long pull of water.
"Donna, you said you were going to game night with a bunch of mates. Your friend Madeleine tells a slightly different story."
"You checked me out? Who are you, my dad?"
"No, I'm your friend."
"Right. And I thought you weren't judging."
"No way. You've seen me do far worse when I've been despondent… I'm the last guy who's going to judge you for a weepy little bender."
"Good, then shut it, will you?"
"No, because I'm…"
"Concerned, I know," she sighed. "Everyone's concerned about Donna. But I'm not going to talk about it… any of it. So let's just get on with it, shall we?"
He didn't say anything.
Martha reappeared in the kitchen with a miniature cup, and two pills inside. "Don't take them until you've eaten. And drink at least that whole bottle of water, yeah? Preferably within the hour."
"Okay," Donna said. "Thanks."
This was, in point of fact, not Donna's first hangover – not by a longshot. She knew perfectly well, without being told, that hydration was key, and had taken a billion paracetamol in the morning on an empty stomach, and nothing bad had happened to her… except, perhaps, she now knew, she may have needlessly damaged her liver.
It was occurring to her that she would never just say okay, thanks, to any other friend who had said these things to her. Part of it was Martha's profession (this was what she did, for God's sake), and part of it was Martha's role in her life. Donna was grateful to her, a little envious of her, and she was reluctant to upset her in any way. She wanted to seem the least like a pain-in-the-arse as possible…
…and she wanted to soften the blow for what she wanted to say later.
Actually, in that case, maybe it would be better if Martha saw me as a nuisance… more so, that is.
"Well, shall we talk about Milfred G. Widgehouse?" the Doctor said to both of them, to lighten the heavy load of silence.
"D'you mean Buford S. Greene?" Donna asked, with a chuckle.
"Yeah, that's what I said," the Doctor shrugged.
"How did the great skulking caper go?"
"Not terribly productively," he said. "I only narrowly missed being caught… and I can't even say that with any kind of certainty."
"Didn't you say that he's got some sort of… technology?"
"Yeah," he sighed. "Borrowed power. He could sense me. I don't think he saw me, and it's possible he wasn't even sure what it was that he was feeling. But my presence there was definitely felt, whether Greene understood it or not."
"But tell her what you did find out," Martha urged.
He related to Donna what he had surmised, about the time capsule being in a different reality, and the stone panel being a kind of portal.
"Whoa, that's pretty bizarre," Donna commented. "Right up your alley."
"Well, let's hope so," he said. "I also found out that there's some sort of big meeting happening on Monday morning at nine. I think we should find out what goes on there. Though, obviously, I can't go back there."
"Okay, so we go in Sunday night and implant surveillance equipment," Martha shrugged.
"Can't do that," he said. "If I'm right, and Greene is using a particular sensor forged by the Time Lords, then he'll know immediately that there's surveillance technology in the room."
"So, we go undercover," Martha suggested. "They haven't seen me – I could use one of those old dictophone tapes to record the conversation…"
"Actually, I'm going to need Donna for this one," the Doctor interrupted.
Martha shifted her gaze to Donna, with a bit of surprise.
"The entire first floor is glass walls," the Doctor said. "Which makes things particularly difficult for skulking, even undercover. But what I noticed was that the ladies' toilet is right underneath the main conference room."
"And that's got what to do with me?" Donna wondered.
"You're going to listen in, and take notes," he said. "You know shorthand, yeah?"
"Of course."
"Well, we're going to need details."
"Oh. Okay. Yeah, I can do that. But I thought you said we couldn't use surveillance equipment," Donna said.
"We can't," the Doctor confirmed. "But I've got an idea for what we can use. I'll have it ready for you by the week-end."
"And the meeting is Monday morning at nine?" she asked, lowering her voice.
"Yes."
"And they open the time capsule on Wednesday, yeah?"
"According to the papers."
"And we stand by for damage control to negate whatever effect the artefacts therein will have upon our world… most especially the crowd that turns out to watch."
"If we can't stop it happening first, yeah." He squinted, feigning deep thought. "It is rather the sort of thing that we do, now I think of it. Wouldn't you agree?"
She ignored the question. "And then presumably, the TARDIS leaves from that back garden, and adventures in time and space continue?"
"That's the plan," he said. "Why?"
Donna sighed. She hadn't wanted to bring this up just yet, but since the "end-point" of this particular caper was being discussed, she reckoned it might be a good time. Especially as she sat there in a bathrobe, looking a bit pathetic, circles under her eyes, nursing a hangover.
"Because, Doctor, Martha… when the TARDIS does dematerialise from that back garden, I won't be in it," she said, gently.
"What?" Martha spat. "That's ridiculous, Donna. Of course you will be."
"No," Donna said softly. "I've decided. It's not my place anymore."
"Why?" the Doctor wondered aloud… as if he didn't know.
She made eye-contact with him, finally. "Because, Doctor, when you invited me to dinner last night, I wanted to go, but my first instinct was to say no. I said no, and made up an excuse before even giving it a second thought because…"
The Doctor and Martha waited for her to gather her thoughts and finish what she was saying.
"…because when you said, 'It'll be fun, the three of us,' what popped into my head was an image of the two of you on one side of the table holding hands, and me on the other side of the table, watching. Drinking. Holding my own hand. The words pity invite came into my mind in a split second, fast enough for me to reject the invitation and lie to you before I could stop myself."
"It was not a pity invite," the Doctor said. "It was something I genuinely thought would be fun for three friends to do."
"I know," she sighed. "Or, at least, I know that you believe that. But later on, talking with Madeleine, I began to realise that I will never not feel that way. I will never be able to just accept that you want me at that table with you, when you ask me to join you."
"Never? Really?" Martha asked. "What happened to, we'll get used to each other, like you said yesterday at lunch?"
"That came out of my mouth in the same breath as, being single is nothing new," Donna said. "Or whatever it was that I said. And it was true… none of this is new to me. Doesn't mean it feels all right. Besides, I was trying not to seem pathetic about it… but something in me snapped last night, after talking to you, Doctor."
"When I invited you to come to dinner..."
"... I hung up the phone and burst into tears."
"Donna you're just feeling a bit delicate right now… this is all new," Martha counselled. "This thing with the three of us, I mean. It's only been two days, with all of us under the same roof. And it's not a fraction the size of the TARDIS! Please, give it some time."
"I know myself, Martha," she said, smiling at her friend a bit indulgently. "I've been single for the vast majority of my adult life, and I've been made to feel like a loser because of it… not always, but quite often. More often than I should have allowed, frankly.
"The last twenty years," Donna continued. "I've watched one friend after another, meet someone nice, get engaged, get married, have children, buy homes, set up a life. Even find fulfilling careers. A few of my mates have done all of that, then chucked it all, and done it all a second time! Meanwhile, I have been a bridesmaid seven times and have dated every tosser, cheat, and leech in London. I have thrown seven bridal showers for other people, and then ended up having to return all the gifts from the one thrown for me, and go home without the groom. So I'm almost hard-wired, at this point, to feel delicate all the time. Human life is short – twenty years is a long time to seek, find, lose, and hear platitudes about it, over and over again."
A long silence ensued, during which the Doctor and Martha looked pleadingly at each other, each willing the other to say something that would fix it all – Donna's despondence, and their guilt.
Martha was the one to speak next. "Donna, I'm so sorry you feel this way," she said. "But… you helped us get together!"
"I know," Donna said, with a warm smile. "And I'm so glad I did! I would do it again in a heartbeat, because I wasn't lying yesterday when I said that I knew that you belong with him. I would never begrudge either of you any happiness… especially you, Spaceman, Crown Prince of Angst."
The Doctor smirked a little.
"But I don't belong in the middle of it," Donna finished. Then she scrunched up her face. "Literally or metaphorically, actually. So, I will gladly use my Powers of Secretarial Excellence to uncover and report on what's happening with Mumford P. Gladhand…"
"Buford S. Greene," the Doctor corrected, with a knowing smile.
"Yeah, that's what I said. But after his case is closed, I'm going back to Chiswick – back to my mum and my granddad, my herb garden, my crash diets, my online dating, my girls' nights..."
"Okay," the Doctor conceded.
"Okay?" Martha shrieked at him. "Are you kidding?"
"I'm not going to fight you, Donna," he said. "If you feel you need to go, then… we understand."
"Thank you, Doctor," Donna said, with a relieved sigh.
Martha, though, wondered if Donna were waiting for them to rush to talk her out of it!
"Well, perhaps I'll set about making that surveillance device for Monday, that can't be detected by Leland Q. Shoemaker's technology," the Doctor said. "I'll need the TARDIS."
"Yeah, and…" Donna said, standing up from her chair, and looking down at her garment. "It occurs to me that I'm basically just sitting here naked, eating yoghurt in someone else's kitchen."
"Go ahead and use my room to change, if you'd like," Martha said. "Sorry I don't have a spare room."
"It's all right," Donna said. "I'll probably just go back to my mother's house Friday night anyhow."
"Don…"
"Martha," the Doctor snapped. "With me, please?"
She was more than a little annoyed at his curtness, and his ordering her about. "Oi, who d'you think I am?" Then she softened, and sighed. "I thought we were going to go buy you a new suit."
"That can wait 'til later. Come on – I need your help with this thing."
Martha sighed and followed the Doctor out the back door.
As soon as they were outside, she asked, "What the hell is wrong with you? Are you just going to let her walk away?"
"'Course not!" he chided. "What do I look like, a man who would let someone like Donna escape to wallow in her own misery, while you and I spend the next God-Knows-How-Long shagging and drinking Sangria?"
"Well…"
"I'll admit," he said, leaning against the outside of the back door, with his arms crossed. "I'm not in the habit of begging people to stay, once they've made up their mind to leave. If I were, our relationship would have been very different long ago, and there would, arguably, be no Donna in my life right now, at all."
"Oh."
"However, I think this time, we need to make an exception."
"Thank God."
"Let's give her, say, two days. Forty-eight hours to stew in her own juices, and we'll take a hard stab at talking her out of it."
"Okay. Good. But we're going to need a plan of attack."
"I'm banking on her changing her own mind between now and then," he said. "Or, at least, having enough doubt arise that she'll be easy to sway."
"And if that doesn't happen? She's one of the few people you can't charm."
"Well… then… let's go buy a suit, and talk about a plan of attack."
"Two great ideas, Doctor," she chirped, a bit sardonically. "Wish I'd thought of them."