[Doctor Who] Gaining momentum

TITLE: Gaining Momentum
AUTHOR: hibernate
DISCLAIMER: The usual applies: Not mine, theirs. No money for me, boo-hoo.
WORD COUNT: 1600 words.
RATING: PG/all ages
CHARACTERS: Donna, various others
SUMMARY: 5 things Donna remembers.

Also archived on Teaspoon and AO3.



1. Bigger on the Inside

"Fan-bloody-tastic," Donna says and kicks the overflowing suitcase that's refusing to cooperate.

Veena looks up from her magazine and smirks. "That's hardly going to help."

"It makes me feel better," Donna says darkly.

They're going to Rome for a week. Veena packed days ago and apparently has nothing better to do than have fun at Donna's expense.

Donna glares at the suitcase. "God, I wish it was bigger on the inside."

"Harry Potter!" Veena says and laughs.

"What?"

"You know. Harry Potter. They have spells for making tents and bags and things bigger on the inside."

Donna rolls her eyes. Veena is such a nerd sometimes.

Donna has seen one of the movies (on the worst blind date in the history of blind dates), but it didn't leave a very lasting impression. It was all people running around waving sticks and flying on broomsticks, and that evil snake bloke who she found out later was played by Ralph Fiennes - talk about a waste of perfectly good hotness, hiding him behind a mask like that.

But she definitely doesn't remember anything about things being bigger on the inside. No, that's from somewhere else. Must be another movie, not that she usually watches that supernatural, magic, space kind of thing, not if she can help it. Still, there's a word that seems to have come from nowhere, suddenly burning on her tongue. Not even a word, just nonsense. It doesn't mean anything at all, but it gives her goosebumps as she tastes it... tardis.

She really needs to stop falling asleep in front of bad sci-fi movies; it's doing things to her subconscious.

"I think my suitcase I smaller on the inside," she says and suddenly feels achingly sad and lonely.


2. A Hand in a Jar

Donna is baby-sitting Mooky's ten year old son, Rama. They're watching one of those Star Trek/Star Wars/Aliens movies, and Donna is really doing her best to keep up her interest. Last time she fell asleep halfway through a movie and there were complaints.

Mooky comes home just as Harrison Ford is frozen in carbonite. Apparently her date was awful, and Donna listens with one ear while - after a pointed look from Rama - keeping one eye on the movie. She's not terribly interested in either, and drifts off a bit, until something starts to niggle her.

"What happened to the hand?" Donna asks and frowns.

"What hand?" Rama says as he turns off the DVD.

"You know, the hand. The one that Darth Vader bloke cut off."

He shrugs. "I dunno."

For some reason Donna's heart starts beating a little faster. "Maybe someone found it," she says, picturing it all very clearly. "Maybe they put it in a jar and kept it."

"God, Donna," Mooky says. "That's sick. Don't give my kid ideas."

Donna doesn't know why but the thought of that hand in a jar somewhere, it makes her feel almost... smug.


3. Someone Else's Story

It's early and the bus is freezing - not a combination Donna is very fond of. She's temping at a new place where they're all a bunch of idiots, but it's all right, it's work. Mindnumbingly dull, but what else is new.

She puts a finger to the condensation on the bus window and forms a B. B as in bloody boring.

She continues with an A and a D. Another word follows before she has the time to think about it. Pulling back, she stares at what she's written.

Bad Wolf.

A slight shiver runs down her back. But it's just silly - sounds like something out of a fairytale. She moves to wipe the words away, but the bus has pulled over at her stop so she grabs her bag and hurries off.

"Look," she hears someone - a man - say behind her on the pavement. "There it is again. 'Bad Wolf'. Or rather 'floW daB'."

She turns around. There's a dark-haired man in a leatherjacket, a blonde young woman in blue and another man, who looks like he could be doing toothpaste commercials.

The man in the leatherjacket looks thoughtful as the bus drives off. "Those words are showing up very often around us."

There is something stirring within her. An old memory, something forgotten... something that seems strangely important.

"Oh well," the man says and shrugs. "It's probably nothing."

The woman says something in response that Donna can't hear, and they laugh as they move away in the crowd and disappear.

Donna shakes her head and walks away.


4. Turning in circles

Donna dreams.

Hands cradling her face... Falling through darkness. Black emptiness pressing against her. Chipping away piece by piece of her. Heart pounding, frantic breaths... piece by piece until there's nothing left. Nothing left. Nothing.

And then - a hand in hers, pulling her away.

She's in her work office, at her desk.

Sylvia is there, covered in post-its. "I don't know how you ever plan to get ahead in life, madam," she says. "Not if you don't start using that mind of yours."

The phone is ringing. It's so full of post-its that Donna can't lift it. All phones are starting to ring. There's so much noise everywhere.

"Are you listening to me?" Sylvia says and puts her hands on her hips.

The yellow post-its flutter as a wind blows through the room. They all say the same thing; hundreds if post-its - on Sylvia and every surface in the office, all of them containing only one word, in precise letters: TIME.

Something brown flashes in the corner of her eye.

"Use your mind, Donna," Sylvia says. "For once in your life will you listen to me? Use your mind!"

A hand in hers, pulling her away.

Donna is walking up the aisle. Lance is by her side, not her father, and he's grasping her arm tightly, leading her forward. Up the aisle.

There's somebody waiting there.

"No," she says and tries to disentangle her arm. "I've changed my mind! Let me go, you bastard! I hate you!"

"It's time, Donna," Lance says and pulls harder on her arm. At the end of the aisle she spots a brown, pinstriped suit. "Think! How thick are you?!"

Donna pulls free and runs.

The world shifts.

She's on a beach, surrounded by cliffs. There's a pink flower in her hand. She touches it against her lips, closes her eyes and breaths in the smell of roses.

When she opens her eyes again, someone in a brown, pinstriped suit is standing in front of her. The rose is gone. Donna puts a hand on the suited shoulder and turns them around.

And she's standing eye to eye with herself. The other Donna, in the brown suit, smirks at her.

"It's about time," she says and her grin widens.

Donna wakes with a gasp. The dream is already slipping away like water, but two words remain on her lips.

Time Lord.


5. Something New

"Donna! The photocopier is broken again."

Donna gives her boss a dark look and bites down on a sarcastic reply. Broken, yeah. Probably it's out of paper or ink, or there's a jammed paper. Things a four year old could fix. But apparently not otherwise intelligent people with university degrees and enormous pay checks.

Donna sighs and saunters down to the copy room.

On closer inspection the photocopier really does appear to be on the fritz. None of the usual things work. She opens it up to look for a stuck paper. Even after she's made sure there isn't one, she can't help but keep poking. She's never given a second thought to the inner mechanisms of a photocopier before, but following the wires and connecting parts, seeing how it all fits together; it's making something tickle in the back of her mind. Grabbing a screwdriver from a drawer, she starts picking things apart.

She can fix this. Oh yes.

It's twenty minutes later when she looks up from what she's doing and realizes that there is no photocopier anymore. Rather, there are hundreds of pieces of photocopier scattered around her.

Woops. How did that happen? And more importantly, how is she ever going to be able to put it back together again? Just a minute ago it had all made some kind of strange sense, but now all it does is make her head spin.

On the flip side, it's unlikely that anyone will ever ask her to help fixing anything technical again. On the not-so-good side, the reason for that is that there's no doubt she's getting the sack for this. Oh, her mother is going to love this.

Donna pokes one of the pieces with the screwdriver, and suddenly there's a flash of... something in her mind. Her hands start moving, almost on their own volition.

She knows this.

Just how, she has no clue and she can't stop to think about it now. She's moving faster and faster, trying to keep up with some small part of her unconscious mind that's doing all the driving now.

When Donna is finished, the thing in front of her looks nothing like a photocopier. She has no idea what it does anymore.

Her hand is shaking as reaches for the start button.

It makes an angry sound and starts humming. There's a bright light and then Donna feels like she's coming apart, like something is pulling at her from every direction. Her head aches like someone is trying to pull it off and she can't see, she can't move, everything is moving around too fast and she can't breathe, she can't--

It stops just as suddenly as it began.

There's a breeze running through her hair and it smells like... something new. Donna opens her eyes.

She's not in Chiswick anymore.