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Entry tags:
DW fic: Living in a Photograph (where I'll find you waiting someday), Donna Noble, PG
disclaimer: not mine
Fandom: Doctor Who, newskool
Character: Donna Noble
Set: series five, spoilers through the Pandorica (or at least implied).
Rating: PG
Length: 1000
Notes: written for the Awesome Ladies Ficathon, but too long to post in one comment. Title from Shiny Toy Guns' 'Photograph'
Summary: lost memories, lost things, cause frustration.
Living in a Photograph (where I'll find you waiting someday)
by ALC Punk!
The problem with remembering things is that you sometimes forget them. Donna can be halfway through a chatty phone call, laughing at something hideous about the dress on the woman across the way from her and suddenly she'll be somewhere else.
It's easier to see, here in the open and the laughter of children echoed around her and (the Ugly Duckling) the woman who joined her on the park bench.
But then the world will right itself and she won't have forgotten what she was saying, and she'll forget that she was ever somewhere else.
It's easier like that. Easier to pretend the occasional lapse is something in the weather (oh, I'm just tired, mum-- or did I forget that? You've got to be joking, did you hear about-- or it's a leap year, isn't it?--). People talk around her, talk around the things she's forgotten.
Donna's ok with that, they don't remember them either.
There are some mornings where her routine is perfect: up, wash, dress, coffee, drive, work--and then there are mornings where she's putting on her shoes and thinking I won't be able to run in these, if the Daleks come again--and she doesn't know where that thought comes from.
"Who are the Daleks?" she asked her grandfather, once. She'd been in a rush, too afraid she was talking about something from her dreams.
He'd stumbled and said something vague about toys, but his eyes had been filled with something else, so she never asked again.
Terror wasn't what she wanted to see in his eyes.
It's not like the joy he has when they watch the stars, quietly talking about space travel (she's trying to ignore how he's changed, there, too, as though there's something he knows that she doesn't and she talks too loud to fill those silences and pretend nothing's wrong).
It's not something Donna likes to remember.
The world revolves around Britain, but not particularly around Donna Noble, and she's all right with that. She'll never be famous, she'll never be skinny, she'll marry a man who isn't really her dreams, but that's what she expects.
Day in, day out, the routine is comforting. It's normal. It's not, it's not...
Sometimes, Donna wants to scream in frustration, wants to remember what's she's forgotten, or at least know that she's really forgotten something. Out of the corners of her eyes, on those days, there's a movement in the world that shouldn't be there. A vibration (time-space-vector-graphics--that's just nonsense) that she can almost grasp before her anger drains and there's nothing.
On those days, she takes up running, jogging awkwardly and feeling stupid and embarrassed. Giving it up that night, as though it was just a stupid lark, she stands in the shower and thinks about snow.
Come morning, it's the same thing all over again.
Hitting coffee, she stops, remembering wearing a dress and fishing in sequins (he hadn't laughed, but he hadn't really talked at all, in the end).
This didn't happen, she'll remind herself fiercely before burning her tongue on the coffee. Pain is the best of distractions.
Distraction finally comes as a small thing--weeks later. A boy wandering down the street where he shouldn't be, and Donna finds herself following his steps, curious for no reason she can name. He slips down an alley, and Donna thinks about gangs of kids knocking over little old ladies for their pensions and prescriptions and almost doesn't follow. But there's an odd light shining onto the pavement, and a tang in the air that feels wrong, somehow.
There's a crack in the bricks of the wall, the boy standing near it, poking it with a stick.
"I wouldn't do that," says Donna, because it's the sort of thing you're supposed to say, and also because the crack is leaking light that is definitely wrong. It shouldn't be there, in all its jagged wrong-ness.
Not leaking sunlight or artificial light, but something else. Donna moves closer, and notices that boy is too close.
"Get back--"
She reaches for him too late. There's a flair, light tendrils winding around him, swallowing him up, brushing against her skin. It's like being burned with ice or that one time in a tanning bed that went awry (thank you, Shondra, she curses as she always does).
Jerking her hand back almost helps, except that it doesn't.
Not really.
There's a crack in the wall, and she can't remember how she found it, but she should. There was a boy, there was--
"Should have read the fine print," Donna whispers, bouncing on the balls of her feet and then stepping back. Her head is killing her, memories swirling and gushing, filling her until she wants them to stop for the pain they cause.
But it's a good pain, it's remembering all the places she's been and all of the things she's done. She's not just little Donna Noble, she's not just a nobody.
The crack is silently laughing at her, and Donna shoots a glare at it.
"I'm going to kill him. I'm going to bloody kill that skinny, weaselly--" Donna breaks off and remembers the reason she's been wearing sensible shoes.
The crack's tendrils are reaching towards her.
run
--she knows what it is.
Donna's moving, turning, already panting before she breaks clear of the alley. The crack is following her, widening, eating more of the universe. She can feel it at her back and it scares her more than death.
Savior of the universe, and she hadn't even remembered.
Oh, he was going to pay for that.
Right after one or both of them saved the universe from ripping itself to shreds.
The streets were silent around her as she ran for home. If she can get there before the crack does, if she hasn't forgotten everything again, if she's going to save the universe again--
if, if, if.
Rose Tyler had walked the gaps between universes. Martha Jones had walked the world (no one should remember that). Donna Noble was running, and that might make all the difference.
-f-
Fandom: Doctor Who, newskool
Character: Donna Noble
Set: series five, spoilers through the Pandorica (or at least implied).
Rating: PG
Length: 1000
Notes: written for the Awesome Ladies Ficathon, but too long to post in one comment. Title from Shiny Toy Guns' 'Photograph'
Summary: lost memories, lost things, cause frustration.
Living in a Photograph (where I'll find you waiting someday)
by ALC Punk!
The problem with remembering things is that you sometimes forget them. Donna can be halfway through a chatty phone call, laughing at something hideous about the dress on the woman across the way from her and suddenly she'll be somewhere else.
It's easier to see, here in the open and the laughter of children echoed around her and (the Ugly Duckling) the woman who joined her on the park bench.
But then the world will right itself and she won't have forgotten what she was saying, and she'll forget that she was ever somewhere else.
It's easier like that. Easier to pretend the occasional lapse is something in the weather (oh, I'm just tired, mum-- or did I forget that? You've got to be joking, did you hear about-- or it's a leap year, isn't it?--). People talk around her, talk around the things she's forgotten.
Donna's ok with that, they don't remember them either.
There are some mornings where her routine is perfect: up, wash, dress, coffee, drive, work--and then there are mornings where she's putting on her shoes and thinking I won't be able to run in these, if the Daleks come again--and she doesn't know where that thought comes from.
"Who are the Daleks?" she asked her grandfather, once. She'd been in a rush, too afraid she was talking about something from her dreams.
He'd stumbled and said something vague about toys, but his eyes had been filled with something else, so she never asked again.
Terror wasn't what she wanted to see in his eyes.
It's not like the joy he has when they watch the stars, quietly talking about space travel (she's trying to ignore how he's changed, there, too, as though there's something he knows that she doesn't and she talks too loud to fill those silences and pretend nothing's wrong).
It's not something Donna likes to remember.
The world revolves around Britain, but not particularly around Donna Noble, and she's all right with that. She'll never be famous, she'll never be skinny, she'll marry a man who isn't really her dreams, but that's what she expects.
Day in, day out, the routine is comforting. It's normal. It's not, it's not...
Sometimes, Donna wants to scream in frustration, wants to remember what's she's forgotten, or at least know that she's really forgotten something. Out of the corners of her eyes, on those days, there's a movement in the world that shouldn't be there. A vibration (time-space-vector-graphics--that's just nonsense) that she can almost grasp before her anger drains and there's nothing.
On those days, she takes up running, jogging awkwardly and feeling stupid and embarrassed. Giving it up that night, as though it was just a stupid lark, she stands in the shower and thinks about snow.
Come morning, it's the same thing all over again.
Hitting coffee, she stops, remembering wearing a dress and fishing in sequins (he hadn't laughed, but he hadn't really talked at all, in the end).
This didn't happen, she'll remind herself fiercely before burning her tongue on the coffee. Pain is the best of distractions.
Distraction finally comes as a small thing--weeks later. A boy wandering down the street where he shouldn't be, and Donna finds herself following his steps, curious for no reason she can name. He slips down an alley, and Donna thinks about gangs of kids knocking over little old ladies for their pensions and prescriptions and almost doesn't follow. But there's an odd light shining onto the pavement, and a tang in the air that feels wrong, somehow.
There's a crack in the bricks of the wall, the boy standing near it, poking it with a stick.
"I wouldn't do that," says Donna, because it's the sort of thing you're supposed to say, and also because the crack is leaking light that is definitely wrong. It shouldn't be there, in all its jagged wrong-ness.
Not leaking sunlight or artificial light, but something else. Donna moves closer, and notices that boy is too close.
"Get back--"
She reaches for him too late. There's a flair, light tendrils winding around him, swallowing him up, brushing against her skin. It's like being burned with ice or that one time in a tanning bed that went awry (thank you, Shondra, she curses as she always does).
Jerking her hand back almost helps, except that it doesn't.
Not really.
There's a crack in the wall, and she can't remember how she found it, but she should. There was a boy, there was--
"Should have read the fine print," Donna whispers, bouncing on the balls of her feet and then stepping back. Her head is killing her, memories swirling and gushing, filling her until she wants them to stop for the pain they cause.
But it's a good pain, it's remembering all the places she's been and all of the things she's done. She's not just little Donna Noble, she's not just a nobody.
The crack is silently laughing at her, and Donna shoots a glare at it.
"I'm going to kill him. I'm going to bloody kill that skinny, weaselly--" Donna breaks off and remembers the reason she's been wearing sensible shoes.
The crack's tendrils are reaching towards her.
run
--she knows what it is.
Donna's moving, turning, already panting before she breaks clear of the alley. The crack is following her, widening, eating more of the universe. She can feel it at her back and it scares her more than death.
Savior of the universe, and she hadn't even remembered.
Oh, he was going to pay for that.
Right after one or both of them saved the universe from ripping itself to shreds.
The streets were silent around her as she ran for home. If she can get there before the crack does, if she hasn't forgotten everything again, if she's going to save the universe again--
if, if, if.
Rose Tyler had walked the gaps between universes. Martha Jones had walked the world (no one should remember that). Donna Noble was running, and that might make all the difference.
-f-