Whoniverse fic!
Sep. 18th, 2010 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trace_of_scarletFic: The Saved-The-World Club
Fandom: Whoniverse (Sarah Jane Adventures/Doctor Who/Torchwood crossover)
Rating: G
Wordcount: 3173
Summary: In the aftermath of the Stolen Earth, whatever happened to Donna Noble?
Characters: Martha Jones, Sarah Jane Smith, Mickey Smith, Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones, Gwen Cooper, Wilfred Mott, Donna Noble, Luke Smith, Rhys Williams. Mentions of the Doctor, Clyde Langer, Mr Smith and Sylvia Noble.
Notes: Takes place post-Stolen Earth; betaed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
catslash and alas_a_llama, who both put up with my faffing, fuss-arsing and vacillating with amazing good grace. May well remain as a standalone, but if I continue this past a one-shot, it will almost certainly contradict the stated events of The End of Time with regards to what happened to the companions, and potentially Children of Earth as well. Because damnit, what happened to Donna was stupid and while I don’t want Ianto to come back to the show, what happened to him was pretty dumb as well. Also happens to be my first fic in this fandom.
In the end, it was Martha who – sitting down with Sarah Jane and the ten o’clock news and a well-deserved coffee – watched the footage captured by the ever-reliable BBC news team of UNIT’s assault on a double-decker bus and discovered that something was more seriously amiss than usual. They both noticed the suspiciously-familiar lanky figure, of course, but it was Martha who first spotted his suspiciously unfamiliar brunette assistant and realised that the Doctor had apparently mislaid a redoubtable ginger companion.
“He can’t possibly have let her get killed... can he?” she asked uncertainly.
“Would anyone dare try?” Sarah Jane shook her head, though she didn’t seem much more definite than Martha did. “Perhaps she decided to go home?”
This time, Martha could be definite. “Not on your life, not if she had any other option. She was going to travel with him forever.”
“Weren’t we all, though?” The older woman frowned, turning the TV off halfway through the weather. “Hmm. I’d start up Mr Smith, but at this time of night he’s bound to wake up Luke and he’ll never sleep again if he realises something’s up. Could you phone Torchwood? They’re bound to know more.”
Martha’s phone was already in her hand. “Ringing as we speak!”
She was supremely unsurprised, just under a minute later, when it turned out to be Ianto who picked up the phone – she’d actually checked on the UNIT computers, back before the world was stolen, just to make sure that there weren’t any known alien species capable of turning coffee directly into a mixture of efficiency and snappy tailoring. She was, however, somewhat surprised to discover that Torchwood knew about as much about the current or even last-known location of the (mostly) human known as Donna Noble as she and Sarah Jane did. Torchwood probably didn’t do as good a lamb dinner, either, she reflected.
Since it was admittedly somewhat worrying but probably – hopefully – not an actual emergency, and Jack and Gwen were at the Students’ Union dealing with what Martha gathered was a weevil infestation on Drink The Bar Dry night, Ianto suggested in measured Welsh accents that perhaps they should all meet up. Jack, he knew, had wanted to meet Sarah Jane properly for a while, and Gwen had mentioned only the other day that it would be nice to see Martha again. Martha herself did not miss the unspoken but quite clear message that Jack worked far too hard, in Ianto’s almost-certainly-correct opinion, and that getting him out of Cardiff for once would at least provide him with a different kind of work. She glanced at Sarah Jane, grateful that she’d thought to put her mobile on speakerphone when Ianto picked up, and got a nod of assent. Next Friday lunchtime was quickly fixed upon, on the grounds that it would all be a lot easier to discuss things whilst Luke was safely in school. Martha then rang off with the mischievous request that Ianto please tell Jack she’d acquired the hat he’d asked for, and was rewarded with being almost able to hear Ianto turning red.
In the meantime, Sarah Jane would see if Mr Smith could achieve success where Torchwood’s computers couldn’t, and Martha would try several dozen times to reach the Doctor on her mobile and eventually give up with a raging headache and a four-figure phonebill. She also, and with rather more success, phoned Mickey Smith, on the grounds that a) he ought to be there, b) he was good fun and helpfully easy on the eyes, and c) he’d kill her if she didn’t. Besides, he’d known Jack the longest, although given that this was Jack she wasn’t too sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. On the other hand, having done so and retained a more than passing acquaintance with sanity did at least prove Mickey’s fortitude, strength of mind, and vicelike grip on common sense.
Well before Friday, it turned out, Mr Smith found the current address of Donna Marie Noble with the kind of ease that Martha had always found disturbing in a computer: it was just too smug, somehow. It appeared that she was working as a temp and still lived with her mother and grandfather in Chiswick, and Martha was unable to decide which of these facts she found most disconcerting when compared to the Donna she’d known. Oh, surely once upon a time Donna could have lived that sort of life, but after travelling the stars and saving the galaxy? After seeing Pompeii and bringing the stars home to roost? It seemed ridiculous to stifle that much life in suffocating suburban normalcy, and she couldn’t imagine Donna accepting it for a moment. If she had returned home willingly, Martha was sure it would only have been to go shopping.
Sarah Jane had telephoned the home phone number Mr Smith had provided (not being the sort of computer to forget such minutiae), and had spoken to a rather terse lady called Sylvia who had sharply advised her not to phone back. In light of this, she and Martha had been unable to agree on the wisdom of paying a house call, and in any case that week they both had exceptionally full schedules which involved yet another abortive Slitheen invasion (for Sarah Jane) and unnamed lizard creatures who appeared in the middle of a Yorkshire rainstorm and then seemed sensibly disinterested in sticking around (to Martha’s slightly guilty relief). They therefore abandoned trying to actually speak to Donna until Friday, when they met up with Jack, Gwen and Ianto at a rather inferior café in West London whose coffee, Ianto declared sniffily, had to be at least a fortnight old and which wouldn’t have been anything to write home about even in the first instance. Its saving grace, however, was that it happened to be just around the corner from Donna’s house.
Mickey’s arrival, several minutes after the drinks had arrived, thankfully distracted Jack from flirting, albeit under Ianto’s tolerant gaze, with yet another attractive café customer as Mickey spluttered slightly out-of-breath apologies (apparently a stray Sontaran had turned up in Surrey) and was waved into a chair. Introductions seemed necessary and were duly performed by Jack – aided by Martha – and further drinks had been ordered and were just arriving when the door jangled and a small elderly gentleman entered the café, followed by an undeniably familiar redhead and the aforementioned redhead’s thirteen bags of shopping.
“Donna!” Martha leapt to her feet. “Donna, over here!”
The look of blank unrecognition made her smile drop like a stone; not entirely deterred, she took a few tentative steps forward and tried again. “Donna? Donna, it’s me, it’s Martha.”
The other woman shook her head with just a hair of uncertainty. “You – must’ve got the wrong woman. I’ve never seen you before in my life!”
Jack, equally bemused, swung himself out of his seat. “Donna Noble? I know we didn’t meet for long, but you’ve gotta remember me!”
“Now I know you’ve got the wrong woman, sunshine,” Donna said, although there was still something not-quite-certain about her face as she shook her head. “’Cause I’d definitely remember you!”
Martha’s eyes flicked to Jack, confused, until the old man (her grandfather?) stepped in front of Donna. “That’s enough, the lot of you!” He eyed them through fierce, watery blue eyes. “Donna, love, go and get the drinks, will you? I’ll catch you up in a minute.”
“But- ”
The old man was gently insistent. “Nah, love, you go on. You know what your mum’ll be like if we’re back late for lunch.”
Something in his expression and the harmonics of his voice seemed to induce obedience and Donna took herself off with one final look back of mingled curiosity and incomprehension. Her presumed grandfather waited until she was deep in conversation with the girl on the till, Donna being reliable about such things, before sidling closer to where Martha and Jack still stood stupidly silent, with a look on his face reminiscent of a zoologist faced with a fascinating but highly unpredictable new species.
“You lot know ‘im, do you?” he demanded in what was clearly meant to be a deeply hushed whisper but which in fact only made what he was saying more noticeable. Luckily, Donna was deeply engrossed in admiring someone’s shoes. “That Doctor chappie of hers?”
“Er, yes.” Ianto was the first to regain common sense – and speech. “Well, most of us did. Gwen and I just sort of ... know him by association.”
“Look, what’s happened to Donna?” Martha cut in. “Why doesn’t she know us?”
“Look, I... I don’t really know myself, not really. ‘e wasn’t making a whole lot of sense when ‘e brought her home and explained it. But, look, you can’t talk to her, you really can’t. He said he had to take her memories away or she’d have died, and if she remembers him again – bam.” He made a horribly descriptive gesture. “Say goodnight.”
The group looked at each other blankly for a moment.
“Did – she took on all the Doctor’s knowledge and stuff, didn’t she?” Mickey asked cautiously. “I mean, like Rose did, and then she couldn’t handle it, and she was gonna die, too.”
Martha mentally trampled firmly on the urge to make a tart remark about Rose. “Wasn’t there any other way? I mean, I only heard of a fragment of all the things she saw and did with him, and to take all that away...” She licked suddenly dry lips. “Well, it’d be horrible.”
“I can’t imagine he would’ve done it, if he’d had a choice. ‘e looked as if his world’d fallen in.” Unexpectedly the old man held out his hand to Martha. “Wilfred Mott – Donna’s granddad.”
Martha shook hands obediently. “Martha Jones. These are Mickey Smith, Sarah Jane Smith, Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones and Gwen Cooper – and no, as far as any of us know none of us are related. Mickey, Sarah Jane, Jack and I all travelled with the Doctor at different times.”
Wilf gave their group a funny little salute, which Jack returned. “Then it’s an honour to meet you all. Look, I can’t stop longer or she’ll get nosy, but you lot take care of yourselves, all right? And keep an eye out for ‘im. You know who.”
“We always do,” Sarah Jane said, just a little wryly. “You take care of yourself, Wilfred Mott.”
He nodded to them and turned to leave, but had only taken a few steps before Martha said, suddenly, “Wilfred? Is she happy?”
He stopped as if the question had hit him, and didn’t turn around. “I hope she is,” he answered simply. “I really do.”
He went back to his granddaughter without another word, watched with varying degrees of surreptitiousness by six pairs of eyes. Finally, the group turned back to look at each other.
“Well,” Sarah Jane said finally. “That was ... unexpected.”
“It was weird.” Mickey’s voice had feeling in it.
“What I don’t understand,” Gwen Cooper piped up, “is that if the same thing happened with this Rose person, how come he could help her and not your Donna?”
Mickey and Jack both shrugged. “No idea,” said Mickey. “I was back on Earth.”
“And I was there, but I was a bit busy being dead,” Jack finished brusquely. “For the first time, as it happened.”
“But if it can be done, and I’m assuming it can be, since it sounds like this Rose is still walking around with all her memories on...” Ianto paused significantly, and Jack and Mickey recognised their cue to chorus ‘She is.’ “...Then there’s no reason we can’t sort it out ourselves. I mean, presumably we’ve got the resources. How could we not have?”
“But if the Doctor himself couldn’t fix her –” Sarah Jane began, to be fixed by a stern-eyed Welsh look.
“No-one who knows everything,” Ianto said with authority and no little asperity, “Ever needs to become a sparkly Tinkerbell Jesus Alien. They just don’t.”
Martha raised her eyebrows questioningly at Jack, who merely looked seraphic: a definite signal, she suspected, that he had at some point considered an apocalyptic year-that-eventually-wasn’t to be appropriate pillow talk.
“-A what?” Sarah Jane demanded, looking startled, but Jack waved her away. “Long story. Go on, Ianto, I want to know what happens next.”
“Look,” Ianto continued, looking slightly nettled, “If Mr Mott is worried Donna will remember, then clearly her memories are still all present and correct, just ... suppressed. All we need to do is find out how to counteract the side-effects associated with the returning knowledge.”
Jack looked at Sarah Jane, who slowly nodded; Martha looked at Mickey, and joined him in a shrug.
“What gets me,” said Mickey, noticing that Donna and her grandfather were about to leave and thus steering the conversation around to more eavesdropper-friendly topics, “is that all this sounds worryingly like common sense. Aren’t there rules about that and timetravellers?”
“Look out,” Gwen said with a laugh, “Keep using it and the Rift’ll open here as well as in Cardiff!”
They all started laughing – not that the idea wasn’t too plausible to be truly funny, but right then they’d have laughed at anything, just to break the tension.
“While we’re getting off topic...” Jack turned to Martha with a grin. “What were you doing at Sarah Jane’s place last week, anyway? I didn’t know you two knew each other.”
“Luke-sitting,” Sarah Jane interjected.”I’d been working in Bristol, and Luke never remembers that he needs to eat if he’s on his own.”
“Turns out my new place is only five minutes’ drive from hers,” Martha explained. “I’ve been over quite a few times now. She does a seriously great Sunday dinner.”
“Well, now I’m intrigued,” Jack declared, making Martha laugh. “Any chance of a demonstration sometime, Sarah?”
She gave him a look that failed in any way whatsoever to be stern. “If you mind your manners, perhaps. And it’s Sarah Jane, thank you.”
He favoured her with a dreadfully impeccable salute. “Yes ma’am!”
This time Sarah Jane did smile. “That’s better – Captain Harkness.”
“Anyway,” Ianto cut in authoritatively, the café door having finally clattered to a shut behind Donna, her granddad, and Donna’s eight bags of shopping. “This is all getting well away from the point. Let’s face it, between the lot of us we have the best experience and research capabilities in the galaxy. Why shouldn’t we be able to fix this?”
Once again, they all looked at each other. “He does have a point,” Mickey said slowly. “It could be worth a shot.”
“And just doing some research can’t do any harm, can it?” asked Gwen. “It’s not like we’d be rushing in all madly.”
Martha bit her lip for a moment. “I’m in,” she said at last. “Like Gwen said, it can’t hurt just to see.”
“Spoken like a true companion,” Sarah Jane noted wryly. “Nevertheless, I’m in too. We shouldn’t leave one of our own behind, even if she doesn’t know it.”
“I feel like I should probably point out that this is gonna go really wrong, somewhere,” Mickey said, “but I’m still in. You lot are gonna need a really good hacker, and smart computers just don’t cut it on their own.”
Jack, last of all, spread his arms wide with a flash of his old grin. “What can I say? Of course I’m up for it.”
He serenely ignored the muttered “That and everything else, as per” from Mickey. Rising above the truth was meant to be harder than rising above slander, but Jack seemed to be more than capable of doing so with style, or at least with very white teeth, which was probably the same thing.
“Well, I think that does it, then.” Ianto raised his coffee mug. “Cheers. To Donna?”
“To Donna,” they all chorused, and drank.
~*~
In the end, they came to start meeting at Sarah Jane’s place at least once a month, ostensibly because of the Londoners’ unpredictable work schedules and the proximity of Mr Smith, and actually because Jack still cherished a hopeful crush on Sarah Jane. This arrangement turned quite quickly into a kind of comfortable routine: the Torchwood three (frequently accompanied by Gwen’s Rhys) would turn up on either Saturday or Sunday, Rift-based shenanigans permitting, at a time conveniently close to lunch, full of their latest ideas, discoveries or lack thereof. Discussion would continue through lunch, accompanied by a steady stream of helpful ideas from Luke, eventually fading into gossip and storytelling into the late evening. Sometimes Mickey would cook, sometimes Rhys would. Once Jack attempted to, and was henceforth permanently evicted from Sarah Jane’s kitchen. On Pancake Day, Martha burnt her way through almost an entire batch of pancakes and most of the frying pan before she got the hang of what she was doing but still wasn’t barred, much to Jack’s disgust. It was actually Rhys who first called these meetings the Saved-The-World Club, half sarcastic and half teasing as he jumped into the car one drizzly Sunday morning, and somehow the name stuck, even if only Luke took it seriously.
Spring faded into summer; Mickey and Rhys taught Luke how to play first football and then rugby, much to his friend Clyde’s approval and his disgust. The Doctor still refused to answer his phone; Martha kept on calling. The Brigadier, however, turned up the day before midsummer, and that time the drinking and the stories went on until the early hours. Sarah Jane, Gwen and Martha went shopping in the end-of-summer sales and foiled a Rutan invasion on their way home. Torchwood borrowed K-9 and Mickey and succeeded in saving the world without getting anyone at all killed, not even a civilian (although Cardiff’s Heath Hospital did have rather a rush on blood transfusions), which was generally agreed to have been a major step forward for all concerned. The world turned smugly on its proper axis, and the work went on.
Fandom: Whoniverse (Sarah Jane Adventures/Doctor Who/Torchwood crossover)
Rating: G
Wordcount: 3173
Summary: In the aftermath of the Stolen Earth, whatever happened to Donna Noble?
Characters: Martha Jones, Sarah Jane Smith, Mickey Smith, Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones, Gwen Cooper, Wilfred Mott, Donna Noble, Luke Smith, Rhys Williams. Mentions of the Doctor, Clyde Langer, Mr Smith and Sylvia Noble.
Notes: Takes place post-Stolen Earth; betaed by
catslash and alas_a_llama, who both put up with my faffing, fuss-arsing and vacillating with amazing good grace. May well remain as a standalone, but if I continue this past a one-shot, it will almost certainly contradict the stated events of The End of Time with regards to what happened to the companions, and potentially Children of Earth as well. Because damnit, what happened to Donna was stupid and while I don’t want Ianto to come back to the show, what happened to him was pretty dumb as well. Also happens to be my first fic in this fandom.In the end, it was Martha who – sitting down with Sarah Jane and the ten o’clock news and a well-deserved coffee – watched the footage captured by the ever-reliable BBC news team of UNIT’s assault on a double-decker bus and discovered that something was more seriously amiss than usual. They both noticed the suspiciously-familiar lanky figure, of course, but it was Martha who first spotted his suspiciously unfamiliar brunette assistant and realised that the Doctor had apparently mislaid a redoubtable ginger companion.
“He can’t possibly have let her get killed... can he?” she asked uncertainly.
“Would anyone dare try?” Sarah Jane shook her head, though she didn’t seem much more definite than Martha did. “Perhaps she decided to go home?”
This time, Martha could be definite. “Not on your life, not if she had any other option. She was going to travel with him forever.”
“Weren’t we all, though?” The older woman frowned, turning the TV off halfway through the weather. “Hmm. I’d start up Mr Smith, but at this time of night he’s bound to wake up Luke and he’ll never sleep again if he realises something’s up. Could you phone Torchwood? They’re bound to know more.”
Martha’s phone was already in her hand. “Ringing as we speak!”
She was supremely unsurprised, just under a minute later, when it turned out to be Ianto who picked up the phone – she’d actually checked on the UNIT computers, back before the world was stolen, just to make sure that there weren’t any known alien species capable of turning coffee directly into a mixture of efficiency and snappy tailoring. She was, however, somewhat surprised to discover that Torchwood knew about as much about the current or even last-known location of the (mostly) human known as Donna Noble as she and Sarah Jane did. Torchwood probably didn’t do as good a lamb dinner, either, she reflected.
Since it was admittedly somewhat worrying but probably – hopefully – not an actual emergency, and Jack and Gwen were at the Students’ Union dealing with what Martha gathered was a weevil infestation on Drink The Bar Dry night, Ianto suggested in measured Welsh accents that perhaps they should all meet up. Jack, he knew, had wanted to meet Sarah Jane properly for a while, and Gwen had mentioned only the other day that it would be nice to see Martha again. Martha herself did not miss the unspoken but quite clear message that Jack worked far too hard, in Ianto’s almost-certainly-correct opinion, and that getting him out of Cardiff for once would at least provide him with a different kind of work. She glanced at Sarah Jane, grateful that she’d thought to put her mobile on speakerphone when Ianto picked up, and got a nod of assent. Next Friday lunchtime was quickly fixed upon, on the grounds that it would all be a lot easier to discuss things whilst Luke was safely in school. Martha then rang off with the mischievous request that Ianto please tell Jack she’d acquired the hat he’d asked for, and was rewarded with being almost able to hear Ianto turning red.
In the meantime, Sarah Jane would see if Mr Smith could achieve success where Torchwood’s computers couldn’t, and Martha would try several dozen times to reach the Doctor on her mobile and eventually give up with a raging headache and a four-figure phonebill. She also, and with rather more success, phoned Mickey Smith, on the grounds that a) he ought to be there, b) he was good fun and helpfully easy on the eyes, and c) he’d kill her if she didn’t. Besides, he’d known Jack the longest, although given that this was Jack she wasn’t too sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. On the other hand, having done so and retained a more than passing acquaintance with sanity did at least prove Mickey’s fortitude, strength of mind, and vicelike grip on common sense.
Well before Friday, it turned out, Mr Smith found the current address of Donna Marie Noble with the kind of ease that Martha had always found disturbing in a computer: it was just too smug, somehow. It appeared that she was working as a temp and still lived with her mother and grandfather in Chiswick, and Martha was unable to decide which of these facts she found most disconcerting when compared to the Donna she’d known. Oh, surely once upon a time Donna could have lived that sort of life, but after travelling the stars and saving the galaxy? After seeing Pompeii and bringing the stars home to roost? It seemed ridiculous to stifle that much life in suffocating suburban normalcy, and she couldn’t imagine Donna accepting it for a moment. If she had returned home willingly, Martha was sure it would only have been to go shopping.
Sarah Jane had telephoned the home phone number Mr Smith had provided (not being the sort of computer to forget such minutiae), and had spoken to a rather terse lady called Sylvia who had sharply advised her not to phone back. In light of this, she and Martha had been unable to agree on the wisdom of paying a house call, and in any case that week they both had exceptionally full schedules which involved yet another abortive Slitheen invasion (for Sarah Jane) and unnamed lizard creatures who appeared in the middle of a Yorkshire rainstorm and then seemed sensibly disinterested in sticking around (to Martha’s slightly guilty relief). They therefore abandoned trying to actually speak to Donna until Friday, when they met up with Jack, Gwen and Ianto at a rather inferior café in West London whose coffee, Ianto declared sniffily, had to be at least a fortnight old and which wouldn’t have been anything to write home about even in the first instance. Its saving grace, however, was that it happened to be just around the corner from Donna’s house.
Mickey’s arrival, several minutes after the drinks had arrived, thankfully distracted Jack from flirting, albeit under Ianto’s tolerant gaze, with yet another attractive café customer as Mickey spluttered slightly out-of-breath apologies (apparently a stray Sontaran had turned up in Surrey) and was waved into a chair. Introductions seemed necessary and were duly performed by Jack – aided by Martha – and further drinks had been ordered and were just arriving when the door jangled and a small elderly gentleman entered the café, followed by an undeniably familiar redhead and the aforementioned redhead’s thirteen bags of shopping.
“Donna!” Martha leapt to her feet. “Donna, over here!”
The look of blank unrecognition made her smile drop like a stone; not entirely deterred, she took a few tentative steps forward and tried again. “Donna? Donna, it’s me, it’s Martha.”
The other woman shook her head with just a hair of uncertainty. “You – must’ve got the wrong woman. I’ve never seen you before in my life!”
Jack, equally bemused, swung himself out of his seat. “Donna Noble? I know we didn’t meet for long, but you’ve gotta remember me!”
“Now I know you’ve got the wrong woman, sunshine,” Donna said, although there was still something not-quite-certain about her face as she shook her head. “’Cause I’d definitely remember you!”
Martha’s eyes flicked to Jack, confused, until the old man (her grandfather?) stepped in front of Donna. “That’s enough, the lot of you!” He eyed them through fierce, watery blue eyes. “Donna, love, go and get the drinks, will you? I’ll catch you up in a minute.”
“But- ”
The old man was gently insistent. “Nah, love, you go on. You know what your mum’ll be like if we’re back late for lunch.”
Something in his expression and the harmonics of his voice seemed to induce obedience and Donna took herself off with one final look back of mingled curiosity and incomprehension. Her presumed grandfather waited until she was deep in conversation with the girl on the till, Donna being reliable about such things, before sidling closer to where Martha and Jack still stood stupidly silent, with a look on his face reminiscent of a zoologist faced with a fascinating but highly unpredictable new species.
“You lot know ‘im, do you?” he demanded in what was clearly meant to be a deeply hushed whisper but which in fact only made what he was saying more noticeable. Luckily, Donna was deeply engrossed in admiring someone’s shoes. “That Doctor chappie of hers?”
“Er, yes.” Ianto was the first to regain common sense – and speech. “Well, most of us did. Gwen and I just sort of ... know him by association.”
“Look, what’s happened to Donna?” Martha cut in. “Why doesn’t she know us?”
“Look, I... I don’t really know myself, not really. ‘e wasn’t making a whole lot of sense when ‘e brought her home and explained it. But, look, you can’t talk to her, you really can’t. He said he had to take her memories away or she’d have died, and if she remembers him again – bam.” He made a horribly descriptive gesture. “Say goodnight.”
The group looked at each other blankly for a moment.
“Did – she took on all the Doctor’s knowledge and stuff, didn’t she?” Mickey asked cautiously. “I mean, like Rose did, and then she couldn’t handle it, and she was gonna die, too.”
Martha mentally trampled firmly on the urge to make a tart remark about Rose. “Wasn’t there any other way? I mean, I only heard of a fragment of all the things she saw and did with him, and to take all that away...” She licked suddenly dry lips. “Well, it’d be horrible.”
“I can’t imagine he would’ve done it, if he’d had a choice. ‘e looked as if his world’d fallen in.” Unexpectedly the old man held out his hand to Martha. “Wilfred Mott – Donna’s granddad.”
Martha shook hands obediently. “Martha Jones. These are Mickey Smith, Sarah Jane Smith, Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones and Gwen Cooper – and no, as far as any of us know none of us are related. Mickey, Sarah Jane, Jack and I all travelled with the Doctor at different times.”
Wilf gave their group a funny little salute, which Jack returned. “Then it’s an honour to meet you all. Look, I can’t stop longer or she’ll get nosy, but you lot take care of yourselves, all right? And keep an eye out for ‘im. You know who.”
“We always do,” Sarah Jane said, just a little wryly. “You take care of yourself, Wilfred Mott.”
He nodded to them and turned to leave, but had only taken a few steps before Martha said, suddenly, “Wilfred? Is she happy?”
He stopped as if the question had hit him, and didn’t turn around. “I hope she is,” he answered simply. “I really do.”
He went back to his granddaughter without another word, watched with varying degrees of surreptitiousness by six pairs of eyes. Finally, the group turned back to look at each other.
“Well,” Sarah Jane said finally. “That was ... unexpected.”
“It was weird.” Mickey’s voice had feeling in it.
“What I don’t understand,” Gwen Cooper piped up, “is that if the same thing happened with this Rose person, how come he could help her and not your Donna?”
Mickey and Jack both shrugged. “No idea,” said Mickey. “I was back on Earth.”
“And I was there, but I was a bit busy being dead,” Jack finished brusquely. “For the first time, as it happened.”
“But if it can be done, and I’m assuming it can be, since it sounds like this Rose is still walking around with all her memories on...” Ianto paused significantly, and Jack and Mickey recognised their cue to chorus ‘She is.’ “...Then there’s no reason we can’t sort it out ourselves. I mean, presumably we’ve got the resources. How could we not have?”
“But if the Doctor himself couldn’t fix her –” Sarah Jane began, to be fixed by a stern-eyed Welsh look.
“No-one who knows everything,” Ianto said with authority and no little asperity, “Ever needs to become a sparkly Tinkerbell Jesus Alien. They just don’t.”
Martha raised her eyebrows questioningly at Jack, who merely looked seraphic: a definite signal, she suspected, that he had at some point considered an apocalyptic year-that-eventually-wasn’t to be appropriate pillow talk.
“-A what?” Sarah Jane demanded, looking startled, but Jack waved her away. “Long story. Go on, Ianto, I want to know what happens next.”
“Look,” Ianto continued, looking slightly nettled, “If Mr Mott is worried Donna will remember, then clearly her memories are still all present and correct, just ... suppressed. All we need to do is find out how to counteract the side-effects associated with the returning knowledge.”
Jack looked at Sarah Jane, who slowly nodded; Martha looked at Mickey, and joined him in a shrug.
“What gets me,” said Mickey, noticing that Donna and her grandfather were about to leave and thus steering the conversation around to more eavesdropper-friendly topics, “is that all this sounds worryingly like common sense. Aren’t there rules about that and timetravellers?”
“Look out,” Gwen said with a laugh, “Keep using it and the Rift’ll open here as well as in Cardiff!”
They all started laughing – not that the idea wasn’t too plausible to be truly funny, but right then they’d have laughed at anything, just to break the tension.
“While we’re getting off topic...” Jack turned to Martha with a grin. “What were you doing at Sarah Jane’s place last week, anyway? I didn’t know you two knew each other.”
“Luke-sitting,” Sarah Jane interjected.”I’d been working in Bristol, and Luke never remembers that he needs to eat if he’s on his own.”
“Turns out my new place is only five minutes’ drive from hers,” Martha explained. “I’ve been over quite a few times now. She does a seriously great Sunday dinner.”
“Well, now I’m intrigued,” Jack declared, making Martha laugh. “Any chance of a demonstration sometime, Sarah?”
She gave him a look that failed in any way whatsoever to be stern. “If you mind your manners, perhaps. And it’s Sarah Jane, thank you.”
He favoured her with a dreadfully impeccable salute. “Yes ma’am!”
This time Sarah Jane did smile. “That’s better – Captain Harkness.”
“Anyway,” Ianto cut in authoritatively, the café door having finally clattered to a shut behind Donna, her granddad, and Donna’s eight bags of shopping. “This is all getting well away from the point. Let’s face it, between the lot of us we have the best experience and research capabilities in the galaxy. Why shouldn’t we be able to fix this?”
Once again, they all looked at each other. “He does have a point,” Mickey said slowly. “It could be worth a shot.”
“And just doing some research can’t do any harm, can it?” asked Gwen. “It’s not like we’d be rushing in all madly.”
Martha bit her lip for a moment. “I’m in,” she said at last. “Like Gwen said, it can’t hurt just to see.”
“Spoken like a true companion,” Sarah Jane noted wryly. “Nevertheless, I’m in too. We shouldn’t leave one of our own behind, even if she doesn’t know it.”
“I feel like I should probably point out that this is gonna go really wrong, somewhere,” Mickey said, “but I’m still in. You lot are gonna need a really good hacker, and smart computers just don’t cut it on their own.”
Jack, last of all, spread his arms wide with a flash of his old grin. “What can I say? Of course I’m up for it.”
He serenely ignored the muttered “That and everything else, as per” from Mickey. Rising above the truth was meant to be harder than rising above slander, but Jack seemed to be more than capable of doing so with style, or at least with very white teeth, which was probably the same thing.
“Well, I think that does it, then.” Ianto raised his coffee mug. “Cheers. To Donna?”
“To Donna,” they all chorused, and drank.
In the end, they came to start meeting at Sarah Jane’s place at least once a month, ostensibly because of the Londoners’ unpredictable work schedules and the proximity of Mr Smith, and actually because Jack still cherished a hopeful crush on Sarah Jane. This arrangement turned quite quickly into a kind of comfortable routine: the Torchwood three (frequently accompanied by Gwen’s Rhys) would turn up on either Saturday or Sunday, Rift-based shenanigans permitting, at a time conveniently close to lunch, full of their latest ideas, discoveries or lack thereof. Discussion would continue through lunch, accompanied by a steady stream of helpful ideas from Luke, eventually fading into gossip and storytelling into the late evening. Sometimes Mickey would cook, sometimes Rhys would. Once Jack attempted to, and was henceforth permanently evicted from Sarah Jane’s kitchen. On Pancake Day, Martha burnt her way through almost an entire batch of pancakes and most of the frying pan before she got the hang of what she was doing but still wasn’t barred, much to Jack’s disgust. It was actually Rhys who first called these meetings the Saved-The-World Club, half sarcastic and half teasing as he jumped into the car one drizzly Sunday morning, and somehow the name stuck, even if only Luke took it seriously.
Spring faded into summer; Mickey and Rhys taught Luke how to play first football and then rugby, much to his friend Clyde’s approval and his disgust. The Doctor still refused to answer his phone; Martha kept on calling. The Brigadier, however, turned up the day before midsummer, and that time the drinking and the stories went on until the early hours. Sarah Jane, Gwen and Martha went shopping in the end-of-summer sales and foiled a Rutan invasion on their way home. Torchwood borrowed K-9 and Mickey and succeeded in saving the world without getting anyone at all killed, not even a civilian (although Cardiff’s Heath Hospital did have rather a rush on blood transfusions), which was generally agreed to have been a major step forward for all concerned. The world turned smugly on its proper axis, and the work went on.
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Date: 2010-09-19 01:38 am (UTC)“No-one who knows everything,” Ianto said with authority and no little asperity, “Ever needs to become a sparkly Tinkerbell Jesus Alien. They just don’t.”
*Snort!* I love it!
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Date: 2010-09-19 02:03 am (UTC)RTD's handling of Who had been bothering me increasingly for sometime (lovesick Martha!?!) but what he did to Donna ended Who for me. CoE was just icing. I'm trying to get myself interested enough again to watch Matt Smith since RTD is gone now, but I haven't managed it yet. The shows may have to sit on my DVR for a year or more.
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Date: 2010-09-19 12:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-24 07:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 11:47 am (UTC)*Punches the air*
YES! This is now my mantra. Are you planning to continue this? It's very good... :)
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Date: 2010-09-19 12:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 12:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-19 12:33 pm (UTC)Please finish?
Thanks for shareing.
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Date: 2010-09-19 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-20 05:27 am (UTC)Hope you do a sequel, though it will be a challenge to make it fit with canon (but a challenge worth meeting).
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Date: 2010-09-20 02:12 pm (UTC)So please do continue this because I love the idea of the Saved-the-World Club and Donna should definitely be in it!
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Date: 2010-09-21 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-21 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-21 04:56 pm (UTC)Maybe you don't fully intend to write more. But you must continue it. Otherwise how will we ever solve the mystery of why Donna walks into the pub with 13 bags of shopping, and back out with only 8?! ;)
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Date: 2010-09-26 11:28 pm (UTC)This was a sweet and fun and funny story. Thank you for sharing it! :D
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Date: 2011-04-26 02:01 am (UTC)