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locker_monsterRating: G
Word Count: 1,062
Characters: Donna
Timeline/Spoilers: Set during “Midnight” so spoilers for that episode and for “Silence in the Library”/“Forest of the Dead”.
Summary: Even a vacation to Midnight can’t make Donna forget.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who belongs to the BBC and rightly so.
A/N: Just something to get me back into writing. It’s unbeta’d so all the mistakes are mine.
After The Library, they both need a vacation. It becomes obvious to Donna just how tired the Doctor is when she makes the request. He doesn’t protest or try to convince her they should go to some remote planet where the birds fly upside down. Rather, at the suggestion, his eyes light up, chasing away some of the melancholy that has been weighing down on him. A break, that’s what they need. No running for their lives or watching as people around them drop off one by one.
A quick spin through the TARDIS database leads them to a planet called Midnight. The Doctor chooses it for no apparent reason aside from the fact that he’s never visited the planet before. A whole world made out of crystal orbiting a deadly sun.
Donna can think of better places to relax, places where the sun doesn’t fry you alive, but when she steps out of the TARDIS her complaints fade away. They land in the Leisure Palace and it certainly lives up to its name. High domed ceilings reveal the sky of Midnight and the floors shine and sparkle, like the mountains of crystal outside. The one safe place on the whole of Midnight.
They opt to get rooms rather than stay in the TARDIS. Donna wants this to be a true holiday and that means getting away from the familiar. She reads from a brochure about the sights and sounds of Midnight while a bellhop carries their bags. The Doctor comments that the Leisure Palace reminds him of another vacation spot on a desolate planet but Donna is already planning her afternoon and barely hears him. She’s always wanted to visit an exotic spa and be pampered.
From her room, all Donna can see is stretches of crystal sparkling in the damaging light. It seems odd to her to build such an opulent place on such a deadly world. No one can walk outside or touch the ground. Any sights to see have to be viewed from behind protective glass.
But Donna isn’t here to sightsee. She grabs the Doctor from his room and drags him down to the promenade. Shops of every design and culture line the busy walkway. Soon she loses herself in a flurry of activity while the Doctor sulks as they move from shop to shop. He tries to suggest they should try something different but Donna happily drifts without hearing a word.
On the second day, Donna visits the spa, leaving the Doctor to explore on his own. Three times he calls asking if she wants to join him at an exhibit or see an attraction outside of the Palace. By the end of the day the spa staff knows her on sight as the redheaded woman with the annoying friend.
By the third day, Donna is content to sit by the massive pool and soak in some of Midnight’s ray, through the Palace’s protective glass naturally. She tells the Doctor to be careful when his eventual call comes in before she closes her eyes.
When she wakes up, she finds a pair of big brown eyes staring at her.
Donna blinks and sits up. Without the help of a transporter she’s instantly thrown away from the Leisure Palace and into another life.
A woman comes running up to her, apologizing profusely. She scoops up the young girl with the big brown eyes, evidently the woman’s daughter. The little girl, probably no older than six, squeals with delight as her mother picks her up. Donna watches them, a smile on her face but the expression doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
The woman takes a seat in the chair next to Donna. The little girl squirms in her mother’s hold until the woman relents and allows her daughter to wade in the shallow end of the pool. The mother watches intently, like all good mothers do.
Donna can’t help but watch as well. She can remember a time when she was the same as the woman sitting beside her, watching with bated breath while her children played only a few metres away. The experience invoked an odd sense of exhilaration in Donna the first time she allowed her son and daughter to play away from her. She could see her children growing up right before her eyes.
But the memory is false and it hurts when she has to remind herself so.
The woman turns to Donna as the little girl steps out of the pool. She asks if Donna is here with family. The little girl runs to her mother, the sound of her wet feet slapping against the tiled floor echoing across the vast room.
Donna can remember it all. First steps, first words, first cry of pain after skinning a knee. Each moment is doubled, played out by her son and daughter in her mind’s eye. She can see their smiling faces and hear their cute tiny voices calling to her. Long nights and restless afternoons and the exhaustion they caused; Donna can practically feel it now as she lets the memories come back.
No place in the universe, no vacation long enough could make Donna forget about what happened at The Library. She doesn’t want to forget but she doesn’t want to remember either. She has no mementos from that life, just a batch of memories concocted by a computer to keep her mind stimulated while it was stored in a data core.
Her children exist in a computer as data, as ones and zeros. How can she mourn for things that never were in the first place?
Here with a friend, Donna tells the woman. No family yet.
Enjoy it while you can, the woman says with a laugh. We came to Midnight, hoping to get away from it all, but you can’t leave family behind.
No, you can’t, agrees Donna.
When the Doctor returns from his trip, more downcast than before they arrived on Midnight, Donna hugs him fiercely. She hugs him because he needs it, because lives continue to end around him no matter where he goes, no matter what he does. But she hugs him because she needs it, too. They’ve each lost family now, whether it was real or just imagined.
Under a deadly sun, on a planet of crystal, they give each other strength without saying a word.
