Doctor Who Fan Fiction ❯ Donna and Ten - The Inbetweens and backstories ❯ Chapter Five ( Chapter 5 )

They ran into the house of Caecilius where the TARDIS was parked.

 

'Gods save us, Doctor,' Caecilius called out from where he and his family were cowering in a corner.

 

The Doctor stopped and looked at the terrified, pleading faces of this ordinary family, caught up in these extraordinary events. Were these the faces he would have seen on Gallifrey, when he pressed that big red button? He had been given this opportunity to look upon the consequences of his actions, and it filled him with guilt, remorse, and anger that he couldn't change a fixed point in time.

 

Once again he was all fire and ice and rage. Like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun, ancient and forever. Burning at the centre of time, seeing the turn of the universe . . . He was terrifying, and he was impotent. He couldn't bear to see those eyes looking at him; he turned and ran into the TARDIS.

 

'NO!' Donna screamed after him. 'Doctor, you can't.' She looked over at the family, who were waiting to die. 'DOCTOR!'

 

A large boulder flew through the window as she heard the engines start up, reluctantly, she ran into the TARDIS.

 

'You can't just leave them!' she shouted angrily from the doors.

 

'Don't you think I've done enough?' he said sharply. 'History's back in place and everyone dies.' He didn't look up from the console; he didn't want to see the look of loathing that would be in her eyes.

 

'You've got to go back. Doctor, I am telling you, take this thing back.' The TARDIS lurched, and then stabilised. 'It's not fair,' she quietly cried.

 

'No, it's not,' he agreed, still not able to meet her gaze.

 

'But your own planet . . . it burned.'

 

That hit a raw nerve; he'd just seen the consequences of what he had done, then and now. Finally, he looked up from the console, and let her see the anguish that burned in his soul. 'That's just it. Don't you see, Donna? Can't you understand? If I could go back and save them, then I would. But I can't.' His voice almost broke with emotion, and then he shouted. 'I can never go back. I can't. I just can't, I can't.'

 

'Just someone . . . Please . . . Not the whole town, just save someone,' she sobbed.

 

Their eyes met across the console, and for a moment, he was looking into the eyes of his lost love, Rose. Those eyes, which showed her disappointment in him for not saving anyone today, eyes filled with sorrow and pleading. Those eyes faded, and once again he was looking into the tear filled eyes of Donna.

 

And then suddenly, and without warning, he remembered the Daniels family in Southampton, in 1912. He had bought their ticket off them so that they didn't travel on the Titanic . . . wasn't this the same, couldn't he save just one family so that their faces didn't haunt his nightmares.

 

He reversed the controls, and the TARDIS lurched back into 79 A.D Pompeii. He silently looked up at Donna, his face impassive, his jaw set. He was taking a big risk, interfering with a fixed point in time, especially as it was a fixed point of his doing. He walked down the ramp and opened the door onto a scene of impending doom. The sky outside was as dark as midnight, dust and ash hung in the air.

 

He held out his hand. 'Come with me,' he said quietly. Caecilius reached out and clasped his hand, pulling his family to their feet and their salvation. They stepped inside the TARDIS, and if they thought Vesuvius erupting was a shock, well, this was just as bad.

 

'By the Gods!' Caecilius's wife Metella said. 'Are all temples and shrines bigger on the inside?'

 

The Doctor didn't answer; he didn't want to contaminate the timeline any more than it already was. He walked up the ramp and started the time rotor, setting the coordinates to land the TARDIS on a hill overlooking Pompeii. He walked past them down the ramp and opened the door, where they looked out on a scene of utter devastation, as pyroclastic flows covered the city with ash that would hide it for nearly two thousand years.

 

'It's never forgotten, Caecilius,' the Doctor told him. 'Oh, time will pass . . . men'll move on, and stories will fade. But one day . . . Pompeii will be found again. In thousands of years . . . And everyone will remember you.'

 

'What about you, Evelina? Can you see anything?' Donna asked their daughter, who had been a soothsayer.

 

'The visions have gone.'

 

'The explosion was so powerful it cracked open a rift in time, just for a second. That's what gave you the gift of prophecy. It echoed back into the Pyrovillian alternative. But not any more. You're free.'

 

'But tell me,' a quiet, emotional voice asked. 'Who are you, Doctor? With your words and your temple containing such size within?'

 

'Oh, I was never here. Don't tell anyone,' he whispered.

 

'The great god Vulcan must be enraged,' Caecilius said in anger. 'It's so volcanic . . . it's like some sort of volcano.' His voice broke with emotion. 'All those people,' he sobbed, as Metella hugged him and wept.

 

The Doctor looked at Donna, and they silently headed back into the TARDIS

 

'Thank you,' Donna said.

 

'Yeah,' he said as he set the controls on the console. He looked up at her. 'You were right . . . Sometimes I need someone . . . Welcome aboard.'

 

'Yeah.'

 

They smiled at each other as he started the time rotor. He'd found someone who could keep his moral compass aligned. She wasn't Rose, and he didn't want her to be, no one would be able to fill Rose's shoes and mend his broken hearts, but she was good company, and she had shown that she was made of the right stuff.

 

And while he was thinking of Rose, what did Lucius mean when he had said 'she was returning?' Did he mean Rose? No, it couldn't be, she was lost to him in another universe, the breach was sealed, forever.

 

['How long are you going to stay with me?']

 

['Forever.']

 

Donna on the other hand, didn't feel as though she was made of the right stuff. She had just watched in fascinated horror, as twenty thousand people were incinerated by red hot ash, and her brain couldn't accept it. How did the Doctor cope with seeing that kind of thing? She recalled the conversation they'd had in the escape pod.

 

[`But if it's aliens setting off the volcano, doesn't that make it alright for you to stop it?'] She'd asked him.

 

[`Still part of history.']

 

[`But I'm history to you. You saved me in 2008. You saved us all. Why is that different?'] She couldn't see why one was alright to meddle with, and one wasn't.

 

[`Some things are fixed, some things are in flux. Pompeii is fixed.']

 

[`How do you know which is which?'] She'd asked him, not realising that it was like trying to explain colours to a blind person, or the sound of birdsong to someone who was deaf.

 

[`Because that's how I see the universe. Every waking second, I can see what is, what was, what could be, what must not. That's the burden of a Time Lord, Donna. And I'm the only one left.']

 

She had heard the anguish in his voice. [`How many people died?']

 

[`Stop it,'] he'd said angrily, it was too many.

 

[`Doctor, how many people died?']

 

[`Twenty thousand,'] he'd told her, and she heard the sadness, regret, and the guilt in his voice.

 

[`Is that what you can see, Doctor? All twenty thousand? And you think that's alright, do you?'] She knew now that he didn't think it was alright, that it was far from alright, but what choice did he have? Twenty thousand now or billions in the future; the human race eradicated by being transformed into living volcanic lava.

 

It was then that she started to understand what he was on about; she was still here, she wouldn't even have existed if he hadn't blown up Vesuvius, so from her point of view, he had already done it. All the times she'd heard about Pompeii and Vesuvius, she'd been hearing about herself and the Doctor without knowing it.

 

'Oh this is doin' my head in,' she said out loud.

 

He looked up from the console. 'You alright?'

 

'What, me? Just fine and dandy thank you,' she said sarcastically. 'I mean, I've just seen first hand, an event that I learned about at school, saw on documentaries, and read about in books, and now I find out that I helped it happen. I mean, it's just . . . mental.'

 

Ah, she was in time shock. He smiled as he remembered Rose's first time shock. They had been on Platform One, in the year five point five, slash apple, slash twenty six, and she had seen the Earth consumed by fire. He knew what Donna needed; he adjusted the controls on the console, and landed the TARDIS.

 

'Come and have a look,' he said as he walked down the ramp, and stepped outside. Donna followed him, and was immediately hit by a wall of noise. Car horns, people calling to each other, a dog barking, in a busy town square with shops and market stalls.

 

'Where are we?'

 

'Pompei, one `i' this time, not two,' he told her.

 

'Eh?'

 

'Modern Pompei, they rebuilt it in 1891, and now it's a busy, teeming metropolis and tourist attraction.' They started strolling down the street.

 

'But it was only moments ago that we were here in the year seventy nine, it doesn't seem real,' she said.

 

'Mornin', sweetheart. What can I get you, darlin'?' a fruit seller asked her as they walked past.

 

She looked at the trader, open mouthed in amazement at the similarity between this trader and the one in seventy nine. When she looked at the Doctor, he was grinning at her and waggled his eyebrows. She looked back at the trader with a lopsided smile.

 

'Veni . . . vidi . . . vici,' she said saucily.

 

'Ah, inglese,' the man said. 'My English is not good.' Which the TARDIS unhelpfully translated as `scusate il mio inglese non è buono.'

 

'Ooh, it works the other way around as well,' the Doctor said with raised eyebrows.

 

'I've got no money on me, mate,' Donna said, slapping her trousers to show she had nothing in her pockets.

 

The trader picked up a rosy red apple off his display and held it up. 'Then I trade, one apple for a kiss from the lovely lady.'

 

Donna turned to the Doctor, and gave him her “he asked for it” look. The Doctor stifled a laugh, as she grabbed the front of the trader's apron and pulled him forwards.

 

'Come here Romeo,' she said as she pulled him into a full on tongue tango. The man's eyes went wide in disbelief, and his arms flapped ineffectually out to his sides, as Donna's other hand wrapped around the back of his neck, pulling him harder into the snog.

 

She eventually released him, and he staggered back with a gasp. She took the apple out of his hand and bit into it, winking at him as she did. The Doctor tilted his head back and laughed out loud.

 

'Hah! Pompeian's . . . Brilliant, all twenty five thousand of `em. Each one a living tribute to those who went before.' He looked at Donna. 'Feeling better then?'

 

She grinned at him, chewing the apple. 'Yeah, much better thanks . . . It's sort of put things into perspective for me.' She had a sad, thoughtful look on her face.

 

'We all lose people, I lost my dad . . .; you lost Rose.' He was about to protest, but she put a hand up to stop him and continued. 'I know she's not dead, and that must be such a comfort to you, and a torture at the same time, knowing you'll never be able to see her again.'

 

She took a deep, cleansing breath and smiled. 'But life goes on, and those twenty thousand people have become twenty five, and all six billion of us are here because of them . . . and because of you.'

 

The Doctor put his hands in his pockets and smiled warmly. 'Donna Noble, you're quite the philosopher. You must come to ancient Greece and meet a friend of mine, Socrates. Great bloke, good thinker, but a bit evasive when it came to answering questions.'

 

'Taught you then did he?' she said sarcastically.

 

'Oi, I'm not evasive, I'm avoiding paradoxes by not giving away information about future events,' he said defensively.

 

Donna linked arms with him and grinned. 'You're evasive, admit it. You're so slippery; you make eels look like they're covered in glue.'

 

'Slippery?'

 

'C'mon my slippery, skinny, spaceman, are you gonna show me the whole of time an' space, or what?' She tugged his arm and started walking back towards the TARDIS and then stopped, sniffing the air.

 

'Oh, can you smell pizza?'

'Yeah,' he replied, sniffing the air with her. 'Yeah.'

'I want a pizza, a proper, genuine, Italian pizza.'

'Me too,' he said with a smile.

'Right then Sonny Jim, before you get me back in that mad box of yours, pizza it is, and you can pay, 'cos I ain't got no Lira.'

The Doctor laughed at the memory of a similar situation after Rose's first journey. 'Me neither.'

 

'Well use your bleepy thing on the hole in the wall then, like you did when we first met.'

 

'That was an emergency, this is . . . lunch. You want me to steal money to buy lunch?'

 

'This is an emergency, 'cos someone's gonna die if I don't get a pizza soon,' she said menacingly, and then thought about it. 'Anyway, none of this would even be here if it wasn't for you washin' those spiders down the plug hole, or blowin' up those Pyro-thingies. I reckon the planet owes you a pizza at least.'

 

He slowly nodded his head, a far away look in his eyes as he remembered a conversation Rose had with her mum.

 

['Mum, I've had a life with you for nineteen years, but then I met the Doctor, and all the things I've seen him do for me, for you, for all of us. For the whole stupid planet and every planet out there. He does it alone, Mum, but not anymore, because now he's got me.']

 

Yes, he thought, using his psychic paper to get free travel on public transport, and entry to events like Live Aid or the Olympic Games was a fair trade for all that he had done “for the whole stupid planet”. And “bleeping” an ATM to get a bit of cash for a bit of lunch wouldn't be stealing, would it? It would be payment for services rendered, and a bargain to boot.

 

He reached inside his jacket and took out his “bleepy thing”. 'C'mon then, lunch is on me.'