AN: Am back off my break now I did my essay and that. Should resume the Monday/Wednesday/Saturday upload schedule I try to maintain now.

DAY 146

Night-Gaunts

Ten

The fur-balls pawed over their mother blindly, Princess Sparkle Tutu laying there languid and exhausted letting them suckle, sometimes dragging one of them towards her to lick it clean. They were senseless and cute, and the Tenth Doctor had been watching them in Nerve Centre on his own for a while now. It would be a week or two yet until those kittens could even be touched by anyone except the big ginger cat. None of them had even seen the outside of their cardboard box yet. In any species, the early stages of life were a wonder to see. New children born on his TARDIS. It reminded him of New Earth, Brannigan's 'children of the motorway.' In a way, these cats were children of the motorway, too. A motorway, at least.

Princess Sparkle Tutu, he thought to himself, trying to recall when the name-change had happened. It startled him when he realised it had been Jenny's idea, once the cat's true biological sex was discovered. Though, he wasn't sure it needed its name changing, he wasn't even sure these simple Earth-cats had a sense of gender. Then he was thinking about Jenny herself, because he had heard vague news that she was back on the TARDIS, yet she had failed to find him and tell him. In fact, she hadn't told him she was leaving, either, nor had she ever mentioned when she had been back on the TARDIS briefly the previous week. Apparently, she had been spending time with Eleven, which was something Ten did not comprehend. Eleven was barely even Jenny's real father. He wondered what this meant for him, this ignorance of his daughter's affairs. Just that she was forgetful, surely?

In any case, he had been distracted. Jenny was not his top-priority. Rose Tyler was his top-priority, but she was asleep, and he was trying not to think about her because he got an odd sort of contracting-feeling in his chest whenever he did. As though the thought of marrying her, and of planning a wedding, and of… all of that, was causing him physical discomfort. But that couldn't be so. He loved her. What reason could he possibly have to be worried about seat covers and decorative bouquets and wedding favours and vows and whether to have it in a church or a hotel and what colour the confetti ought to be and what the menu should… Okay. Admittedly, maybe he was feeling… slightly overwhelmed. But only slightly.

His lonesome musings were interrupted by the entrance of somebody else into the room; Donna Noble came through the doors from the Bedroom Circle at that unholy, late hour, and was almost as surprised to see him there as he was to see her. Their eyes met in silence for a second.

"Shouldn't you be asleep?" he asked.

"Shouldn't you be with Rose?" Donna countered, "What's she going to do if she wakes up alone?"

"Well, I…" he faltered. He didn't really have an answer for that. No doubt Rose wouldn't be particularly happy to wake up alone, she never normally was, not when he was often going for late-night strolls around the TARDIS recently. She kept asking him if something was wrong, to which he merely replied of course not, he just wanted to stretch his legs.

"Sorry," Donna said, sighing, closing her eyes for a brief moment, "I just got woken up by a bad dream, that's all. If you and Rose are having problems, then that's none of my business."

"We're not having problems!" he protested, then paused, "Do people think we're having problems?"

"Nobody thinks anything about you and Rose as far as I know," Donna said, "Everyone's been paying those cats a lot of attention, and Jenny since she got back yesterday."

"Did she get back yesterday?" he asked, though he knew full-well she did, "I haven't seen her. She didn't come to say hello."

"Why would she?" Donna asked.

"I'm her dad." Donna narrowed her eyes at him.

"Do you want a hot chocolate? That's all I came to get, calm myself down," she said eventually.

"Was your dream that bad?" he asked, and she nodded. He told her he would like a hot chocolate if there was one going, smiling, and then went back to looking at the kittens. The black one of them was a little larger and lurked on its own at the back of the box. Indeed, it was practically a shadow. If it wasn't for its yellow eyes with an odd, shining quality, he might only think there were four kittens, not five. They were a variety of breeds, he saw. One of them was completely bald, and another was a calico which squeaked upon occasion, unable to meow. They didn't have much by way of personalities yet, though.

Donna put a hot mug of drinking chocolate in his hand and sat by his side on the sofa.

"You messed up with her, you know."

"Rose?"

"No, Jenny," Donna said, "Because of Rose, probably. There are other important people in your life, Doctor."

"I know, but she's… Rose is…" he didn't have the words to describe what Rose Tyler meant to him. She was his universe, the sun in the centre of it, and he was a planet, and everybody else just felt like moons and asteroids to him. The sun was the thing that kept him from being a barren old rock floating around in the time vortex. Rose was. "What did I do to Jenny?"

"You kept trying to make plans with her and then forgetting," Donna said, "You've probably forgotten you ever did that in the first place. She's not happy with you at all."

"What have I ever done?"

"Left her behind on Messaline."

"She was dead."

"This has been resolved, you know. With the Eleventh Doctor. Not with you. Enough about that, though – why are you hiding from Rose? You can tell me, you know," she said. And he looked at Donna and realised she was right. His mind flashed with the usually irrelevant knowledge that the Ponds thought Eleven had abandoned them in favour of his marriage, and was Donna not his equivalent of the Ponds? His best friend? He didn't want to be focused so much on Rose that he lost her. But he supposed that point hadn't been reached just yet. And she was his best woman.

"I'm not sure I'm ready to be with her properly," he said, "Maybe I was just being presumptuous, and hopeful… obviously Rose has been married before, she wouldn't… but me… well, I suppose I have been married before, but that isn't really…" He babbled a lot.

"Typical man. Just scared. They always forget that you don't instantly marry someone after the proposal, there's still a while in between," she said.

"Well I wish there wasn't a while, I wish we were just married," he muttered, "I did my bit. Proposing."

"The wedding is your bit too, silly," she elbowed him jokingly. He scowled and sipped the hot chocolate, which was not very good, truthfully, because Donna was none too adept when it came to making palatable beverages with kettles. "You should just tell Rose if you're stressed. She does keep going on about all the planning you've got to do. I can see why you want to rush it, but I don't really think you need to."

"I just want Rose to be happy."

"I'm sure she wants the same for you. Maybe you just need a break – when was the last time you went out anywhere without Rose?" she asked. He frowned. Off the top of his head, he couldn't rightly remember.

"I suppose… a little over two weeks ago."

"God, really? That'll be all, then, you need a break," she said.

"But Rose-"

"Will not mind," Donna said firmly. He thought about this for a while, his eyes straying back towards the kittens who just walked all over each other in their sightless way. "Have you talked to Jack lately?"

"Jack? No, why? Haven't seen him. Has he been bringing people back onto the TARDIS again? I wish he wouldn't, it's meant to be an honour to travel on this ship, only my closest friends, not his drunken hook-ups," Ten complained, knowing that ever since things had collapsed between Jack and Jenny, Jack had become rather more of a womaniser than usual. Well, he wasn't entirely sure of the correct term, being as it wasn't exclusively women he had been bringing back. More women than men, though, it seemed, which the Doctor found surprising. He'd always been under the impression that Jack had a rather boyish preference.

"I haven't seen him, either, not after he asked to swap rooms and ran off a few hours later."

"He asked you to swap rooms?"

"I don't think he fancied much the idea of having to, you know, hear things, if Jenny ever brought her girlfriend home. Which she did do, to be fair, and if I were Jack I wouldn't want to hear anything my ex is doing, either," Donna said, "Not that I did hear anything from them, apart from them just talking to each other."

"Sorry – did you say Jack ran off?"

"Yeah, Oswin said something about Liam Kent mentioning the name 'Jones' and he took his coat and left."

"Really?" Ten asked. She nodded. He supposed it had to be something important if Jack had taken his coat, Jack always took his coat when he was carrying out some morally grey business of his. "Can't someone just call him?"

"He left his phone behind, it's on the table over there," Donna said, pointing at one of the two white tables behind them. So it was, the Doctor noted. Jack's coat took priority over his phone, though. The TARDIS would be able to find Captain Jack easily enough if it ever came down to it, but they didn't really need to worry. After all, it was Jack. He couldn't exactly get himself killed.

"Maybe he's just gone to see Esther?" Ten suggested. Donna shrugged.

"Maybe."

"Shouldn't you go to bed, though? It's the middle of the night."

"I'd rather not," she said stiffly.

"…How bad was your dream, exactly? So bad you don't want to go to sleep? A nightmare?"

"Yeah. Sort of. I don't know, it was strange… there were these things… aliens, I guess, or something else, like nothing I've ever seen, in a colour I don't even recognise. How can that be possible? A new colour? I couldn't even begin to describe it," Donna said.

"That's unusual…"

"There's only a certain amount of colours though, aren't there? In the rainbow?"

"Well, no, not necessarily," Ten said, "Colour is relative to what species you are. Different species have different eyes and can see hundreds of colours, maybe. I can see more colours than you can. But then, I've always been partial to a black and white film. Then Adam Mitchell is colour blind because his eyes are different – and I've heard he has it quite bad, too, imagine what it must have been like for him the first time he saw purple… but, anyway, your dream."

"Well there was this strange colour, and all these buildings, but they were sort of round. You know those optical illusions? Like the never-ending stairs, and stuff? It was like that, but with spheres."

"Very odd indeed…"

"I think some things were floating. And those creatures, or monsters, I don't know, they were there, and all these odd symbols I've never even seen before. I couldn't even draw them for you, but I just know I'd never seen anything like them, and these sounds, like whispers in another language. I could hear the voices on the air. I don't know why it scared me so much, but I don't want to go back to sleep again…" Donna said.

Ten was about to say something after thinking what she had said over, when there was a pinging noise overhead like that of an announcement, and the smooth voice of Helix addressed them from seemingly within the walls: "Apologies for interrupting, Doctor and Mrs Temple-Noble. A phone in the console room is ringing."

"Oh, really? I don't suppose you can patch it through your speakers into Nerve Centre?" Ten suggested.

"Unfortunately the communications systems are beyond my range of influence;; I do not have permission to breach my shackle parameters to fulfil your request, Doctor," Helix said.

"Yeah, maybe don't breach your shackle whatsits. We don't need another Elle," Donna said, then to Ten, "Are you going to go answer the phone?"

"Oh, right," he stood up quickly when he realised he probably should. It normally seemed to be Jack who answered the phones, but of course now he wasn't there to do so. Still carrying his hot chocolate, with Donna following, he went into the console room and picked up the old fashioned telephone. "Hello? The Doctor speaking."

"Oh, thank god," said the familiar voice of Kate Stewart, taking him by surprise, "Thank god it was you who answered and not Jack, or Oswin. I need your help, I need you to settle a dispute."

"A dispute? With UNIT?"

"Who is it?" Donna asked.

"Kate Stewart," he answered.

"Who are you talking to?" Kate asked.

"Donna Noble," he answered.

"Not with UNIT, between UNIT and Undercoll."

"Undercoll being… um…"

"New Torchwood," Donna said, "What do Undercoll want?"

"Undercoll are trying to claim something as theirs, something alien, I need your help," Kate said.

"You want me to mediate?"

"In a way, yes. Isn't that what you pride yourself on? Negotiating? Peace-keeping?" she questioned.

"I… alright. Alright, fine, I'm not very busy, and I'm sure the Brigadier would like me keeping in touch on his daughter," Ten said, wondering what part of time Kate was calling from. He was a little hazy on the Undercoll/UNIT balance, though, where one ended and the other started. He could have sworn he remembered hearing something about UNIT having their power negated by order of the crown.

"Good, good. Get to Hollowmire." Kate hung up. No date, no more specific location, nothing. Ten sighed and pressed some buttons on the nearest keyboard so that the TARDIS would trace where and when the call came from.

"Hollowmire?" he frowned, "Why does that sound familiar…"