InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Ridiculously ridiculous"

The Tenth Doctor (dominustemporis) wrote in wariscoming,
@ 2011-09-26 21:22:00

Entry tags:

donna noble, the doctor (10)

Who: Ten/Open to people in the Complex
Where: The Complex!
When: Now
What: ~~I decided to be evil.~~ As it turns out, the alternate universe's Time Lords are very good at formulating poisons.
Warnings: Dying Time Lord
Status: Works by itself or for someone to come along and find Ten and get him to the hospital wing or TARDIS. One or the other. Just toss an e-mail or IM my way if we need to work out the details. ♥

The Doctor had been hoping that, for once, if he ignored a problem, it might go away. Well, maybe not go away so much as be forgotten for a little while. He was good at running, after all, and the fact that he was going to die, again, and this time there would be no regeneration was the type of news that left him longing for escape. He wasn't even going to die for a good reason. His death was going to be a mistake, all because of a Time Lord gone mad and the people he'd taught to fear him.

There would be no dignity to his end. There would be no desperate last-minute save. The poison was too well-designed. Oh, he'd bought a little time with Koschei's help, but his body had been slowly shutting down for days now. It had been ages since he'd eaten something; he was unable to keep food down, and even water gave him trouble. He had told Jenny that he didn't want her to see him like this, and he stood by that, doing his best to avoid running into anyone in person to prevent that terribly awkward "I can save you if you just let me help" conversation. There was nothing more that could be done for him, and he'd really rather not have to repeat that fact over and over again.

Thankfully, the complex offered a place for him to enjoy a bit of privacy while awaiting the inevitable. He really should have gone back to the TARDIS, but the thought of the others there stopped him. His eleventh self had Sexy to worry about, and there was no need for him to have to watch himself die. Leela and Romana certainly didn't need to see it, either, or Sexy, and it would have been too easy for Jenny to find him there. Rose, Martha and Donna ... Well. He wasn't sure where they'd think to look first. Rose hardly knew him, he hadn't heard from Martha since he'd returned, and Donna ... Actually, Donna might just figure out what he was doing and track him down to have a good shout at him. As much as he'd missed that shouting, he didn't want to see any tears that might come later.

Still, the Doctor couldn't quite bring himself to be a total recluse in the last hours of his life. He stepped out of the room he'd commandeered, planning to take a brief walk to stretch his legs a bit while he still could. Lawrence, Kansas, wasn't the most scenic location he could have chosen for his death, but it did have one thing he adored: people. He planned to walk down the street a short distance to a spot where he could watch the residents going about their daily lives, hopefully unmolested by the unfortunate visitors to their city.

He never even made it to the front door of the complex. His left heart gave out after he'd taken only a few steps down the hall. Groaning in pain, he stumbled into a wall, one hand pressed against his chest. He could feel his other heart beating frantically as it was suddenly left to do all the work on its own. Tachycardia, he distantly noted, feeling foggy and slow as it became difficult to breathe. It was all right, he told himself. It was fine. He could manage with one heart. Just as long as it didn't ...

Well, didn't do that. Cardiac arrest. Bollocks.

The Doctor collapsed, barely conscious, one heart failing, the other already useless.

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loudginger
2011-09-27 12:37 pm UTC (link)

With all this crazy going on, Donna was more than a little bit worried - about a lot of things. Getting back to a reality where the world wasn’t about to end, avoiding the ridiculously plentiful psychopaths, the Doctor she knew (well he was close enough to the one she knew, anyway; it didn’t matter if he was from the future, did it? At least he still had the same face, and he remembered her again) being poisoned...

She had actually managed to calm down about the latter, at first - he’d said his friend could get him better, after all, so there was nothing to worry about, right? She trusted him, after all. It hadn’t been until the human-TARDIS (which Donna still thought was really weird, okay?) had been hurt, and the new-Doctor (she was going to need to come up with a better way of telling them apart) had said that whole thing about worrying when people say not to worry.

Of course, it was completely by accident that she found him - as it always was, really. She’d been heading down to the complex kitchen to get some tea - she hadn’t had the chance to go buy anything of her own, yet, what with there being psychopaths and demons and Satan all over the place, and even if she’d had the time, she only had the money the people here had given her when she’d first arrived, and it was nice of them to give it to them but it wasn’t going to last very long; she’d need to see about finding work, soon. So she’d been going to get tea, because it generally helped when she was worrying about things she couldn’t do anything about, and she caught sight of a crumpled-up form laying in the hall.

A familiar crumpled-up form laying in the hall. She rushed to his side, dropping next to him and reaching out to shake him gently, trying to get him to open his eyes, grin, laugh and say he was playing some kind of stupid alien joke on her, the kind that’s only funny on, like, three planets none of them Earth so she could hit him and make him have tea with her and maybe make him eat something, because seriously, he was all bones...

...and if this wasn't a joke, she had absolutely no bloody idea what to do, here. This was way, way beyond her skill area, with the medical things and the he might be dead and she really hoped he was okay.

“Doctor?” Her voice was quieter than it usually was, smaller and sort of wobbly, and if the situation were any different she'd be following it up with bluster and glaring but right now that didn't seem very important. "You'd better not be dead..."

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dominustemporis
2011-09-27 01:40 pm UTC (link)

The world was shaking. That was rather annoying, the Doctor thought muzzily. The world could at least have the courtesy to sit still--or rather, just spin and not shake--when he was lying there dying and who, who came up with the whole idea of your life flashing before your eyes at the end, because all he was seeing was darkness and wait ... No. No, there was a very good reason he wasn't seeing anything. His eyes were closed. Well. If the world was dark because his eyes were closed, was it also shaking because of something that had very much to do with him? He decided to try opening his eyes to see.

Things were a bit blurry, but he could make out a bit of red. A lot of red, actually. Ginger red. He grimaced and tried to get an arm underneath him, to push himself up, but moving was rather problematic, and he only managed to sort of drag one arm into position to get himself up before he exhausted his meager reserves.

"Donna. Hi. Sorry. No. Not dead. Yet." Getting even that much out was a monumental effort, and he closed his eyes again. A nap sounded lovely. He really should take one, only there was a reason that would be bad. A big reason. A very big reason ...

What was that reason again? He couldn't remember, and he was tired, so very, very tired.

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loudginger
2011-09-27 06:24 pm UTC (link)

For a moment, when the Doctor started moving and opened his eyes, Donna was relieved - the sort of relief where all the adrenaline starts fading out and your limbs feel all rubbery and useless... but it didn’t last very long, and rubbery turned to shaking like leaves when his eyes fell closed again, the yet he’d added at the end ringing in her head.

“Doctor!” If the first time she’d spoken had been quiet and small, this was anything but, back to shouting and bluster as she shook him again, a little harder, even while her hands trembled, fighting down panic, “You are not allowed to die on me, you stupid bloody alien! Do you hear me? Stay with me!”

She didn’t know what was wrong - well, she assumed it was still the poison, but she didn’t understand why it was still an issue. Why hadn’t his friend fixed him? She’d thought he’d be getting better by now. Served her right for just letting him be, the bloody man couldn’t even recover from poison without someone looking over his shoulder, could he?

Donna looked up and down the hall for a moment, trying to think. The elevator wasn’t too far away, and the clinic downstairs wouldn’t be far once she got to the right floor, right? She could get him that far if he could walk, easily, but she didn’t really think walking was going to be an option, if just moving an arm and saying a handful of words had him this weak. But even as skinny as he was, he was a full-grown man, and she didn’t think carrying him was going to work...

Dragging it was, then.

“I’m guessing walking is out of the question, yeah?” Her voice was back to a normal tone, now, almost talking to herself, and she scowled slightly and pushed herself to her feet. “Right. When you’re better, you owe me for this, mister,” she muttered, getting a solid grip on him and starting to drag him up the hall towards the elevator.

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dominustemporis
2011-09-27 06:42 pm UTC (link)

It was nice, not worrying about anything for a change. The Doctor idly thought he could get used to this, the nice floaty feeling of not being entirely aware. It certainly hurt less. Donna was probably shouting at him right about now. He wasn't sure why, but he did know that he could hardly spend five minutes in her company without the shouting. Shame he was missing it. He'd missed that shouting. It had broken his hearts to have to let her go.

Hah. Broken hearts. That was a bit literal, wasn't it? He distantly felt a dull ache in the left side of his chest, where his left heart sat silent. There was a sharper pain in the right as his remaining functioning heart struggled to keep the blood flowing. It was already weakened from the poison. He didn't think it would last long on its own. His luck was absolutely rubbish. He'd rather his body had waited until Donna wouldn't have to watch before it gave in. It wasn't fair.

He came around a bit in the middle of being hauled off to the elevator like so much luggage. Donna was still fighting. Of course she was. She never did listen. A tiny, fond smile found its way to his lips. "Shaun's going to have his hands full with you," he muttered, forgetting for the moment that it might not be a good idea to let on to any clues about Donna's future.

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loudginger
2011-09-28 11:15 pm UTC (link)

Seriously, how did someone so bloody skinny weigh so much? It must be an alien thing, she decided, pointedly focusing on that (and half-counting down the steps until they reached the elevator) because having something that wasn’t please don’t die please don’t die don’t you dare die to think about was probably a good thing.

Soon enough they were at the elevator, and then he was saying something, almost too quiet to hear, and what she did hear didn’t really make much sense, because who was he even talking about? “What was that?” she asked, mostly just to keep him talking, because if he was talking he wasn’t dead, wasn’t slipping off and away and dying on her. She let go of him with one hand to reach up and repeatedly press the elevator call button a little bit frantically, hoping it would open soon and they could get down to where the doctors were and that he wouldn’t die in the meantime.

The doors opened, and she quickly readjusted her grip on him to drag him in through the doors, and she had a feeling if the situation were different they would look hilarious right now - her with her hair in all directions, half-frantically scooting a barely-conscious, ragdoll-limp Doctor around on the floor, into an elevator... it was like something that would be on a television show, a sitcom or something, only this wasn’t funny because he was actually bloody dying and she had to make sure he didn’t. Donna set him down and tugged his legs to the side slightly, so he wouldn’t lose a foot when the doors closed (that was about the last thing they needed, unexpected elevator amputations on top of some kind of freaky deadly alien poison) and then mashed the button for the lower floor.

“We’re almost there,” she said, as the elevator started to move, bending down so she wasn't absolutely towering over him, reaching out and putting her hand on his shoulder again, this time not shaking him, just resting it there, the action hopefully some kind of reassuring, “You’re gonna be all right.”

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dominustemporis
2011-09-28 11:34 pm UTC (link)

"Not this time." The response was almost automatic, though it was slurred and sluggish. "Bit too late. Was supposed to die months ago. Oops. The Ood. The Ood were right." His song had been ending. Well. Good for them. Lovely big of tapping into time and telepathy and whatever else they'd done that had allowed them to see this. They'd done a rubbish job of warning him, really, though he supposed that was a bit rude of him to think. He'd been in an alternate dimension when he'd been poisoned, and not just that, but an alternate dimension that had been completely, utterly, horrifically wrong. Prophecies were bound to get a bit jumbled, crossing dimensional walls like that.

"S'okay," he drawled faintly. "Got to see Rose. Got to see you. I missed you." He'd missed so many people, Romana and the Master and Leela as well as his more recent companions. It was a shame he'd have to leave them again. Well. After this, there'd be no more leaving anyone behind. He didn't find the thought as comforting as he'd hoped.

"Sorry," he added after a long pause. It seemed like the thing to do.

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