CALL HIM JOHNNY
Chapter 4: The Doctor's headache Disclaimer:Ooh, what can I pass off as mine? Supplementary credits, I think. Other than that...not mine. Author's Note: How long has it been since this was updated? My apologies. I started this before S4 even started, so it obviously doesn't...quite fit. But never mind. The previous chapters concentrated on Rose, hearing the Doctor's voice in her head, yeah? Well, now it's the Doctor's turn. Don't worry if it doesn't make any sense yet. It's not supposed to! Please let me know if I should carry on with this, or abandon all hope! Donna looked…decidedly unDonna-ish. Fully aware though the Doctor was that 'unDonna-ish' was not a word it was nevertheless applicable. She looked slightly distracted and on edge; her green eyes kept flickering over him uneasily, her lips pursed concernedly, as if she expected him to suddenly erupt or grow another head. It was as if she were on tenterhooks, waiting for something to happen. She sat opposite him at the small table, perched on the edge of her seat with her legs crossed, her hands curled around her tea cup, tightly. She was definitely looking at him more than usual; taking surreptitious (or so she evidently thought) glances underneath her eyelashes in the same way as one would look at a dying person. The Doctor had taken them to a small tearoom on a space station on the borders of the Panjassic Asteroid field, famous for its caramel teas and music of Earth origin. It was also the only settlement outside the Milky Way in which it was legal to use oxygen as currency, which as a result, had not only baffled Donna but had also attracted large numbers of woody, tree-like people from the Forest of Cheem as workers and tourists. "They're called 'Trees', Donna. Trees which have evolved into humanoid shapes and taken human characteristics." the Doctor had informed her quietly, as a taken-aback Donna had gawped at the tree-people from the doorway when they first entered the tearooms, having left the TARDIS in an abandoned back corridor. Ever the diplomat, she'd pointed out rather loudly that they were 'like something off Star Trek' and 'smelt like Dobies at Christmas.' After introducing himself and Donna, the Doctor had been shown to a small table with a silken tablecloth by an efficient young adolescent Tree called Lute and ordered two rounds of caramel teas with sugared bananas, babbling as he did so about 'not being recognised without ears like dustbin lids.' The tearoom was hot and stuffy, with slightly less carbon dioxide in the air than in Earth's atmosphere, tinged with the sweet smell of resin given off by the tearoom's occupants. Almost all of the customers were serious, conservative-looking Trees, talking quietly amongst themselves, all except the Doctor and Donna and two cyborgs in the far corner having an animated discussion about flavoured electricity. The walls were a pale pink, with gold-embossed leaf patterns to match the leaf-patterned yellow carpet. With tinny, 45th century Earth music tinkling from the clunky grey speakers bracketed on the wall, the whole room gave the impression that they were sitting in someone's tacky, mismatched living room… Detailed though the Doctor's observations were, they couldn't quite distract him from Donna's incessant staring. He cleared his throat, twisting his own teacup around on its saucer so that the handle now faced left rather than right, making an unpleasant scraping noise of china against china as he did so. "Donna?" he said purposefully, looking across at his friend, whose head snapped up quickly, her eyebrows raised. "Is everything all right?" Donna frowned at him, as if he'd asked her if she could do meta-physics after three bottles of wine. "Yeah, fine," she breezed, unconvincingly. "Why?" "You're staring at me," he replied matter-of-factly, drumming his fingers on the table to occupy himself, as for some reason, the memory of a similar conversation he'd had a few years ago came dredging up, dancing across his mind's eye. Then, the eyes boring into his had been brown and sardonic. The woman staring had been younger and blonde. A memory of Rose. "My mum's still on board," she'd said wryly, trying not to move her lips too much, a trace of rueful amusement detectable in her voice. He'd turned round to see a displeased Jackie Tyler glaring down at him with her arms crossed. Jackie Tyler. In his TARDIS… He scowled, his brow furrowing, trying to empty his mind of the insufferable memory; it had been that day, just before they'd landed at Torchwood Towers and his very universe had started to unravel beneath his fingertips. Rose. "I'm not," argued Donna, defensively. "It's just…" "Your bill, Doctor, Miss Tyler," announced Lute carelessly, thumping a piece of flimsy tissue paper on the middle of the table as he hurried past, carrying a square metal tray of green sludgy-looking drinks that smelt of nail varnish remover to a table of wizened old female Trees playing what looked suspiciously like draughts. The Doctor's jaw clenched as Lute sped past, his face paling ever so slightly. Donna shot him a helpless look, her fingertips gracing the buttons of her tan leather coat for want of something to fiddle with as his eyes darkened to the colour of liquor and became haunted-looking and preoccupied. They flashed once at her, swift and searching and Donna saw none of their usual warmth; it was as if their light had been extinguished. She could only shrug back, half-heartedly, an unsure smile on her face as if to reassure him. She felt…not frightened exactly, but slightly nervous. The way she used to feel when she'd stopped out too late as a teenager and then been summoned to the kitchen to talk to her parents mid-morning the day after, with a sick clenching feeling in her stomach, knowing she was about to be told off, and a hangover from hell. The Doctor didn't talk about Rose. When she met him on her wedding day- oh, what a farce that had been, she'd asked him about this mysterious, absent 'friend' of his. Oh yes, the woman who'd simply left her top trailing over a railing in the spaceship of an alien. 'Friend.' As if. But no, he'd deliberately dodged her question and changed the subject. He'd lost his friend, and by 'lost', and the fresh pain that splintered across his face and the hollowed look in his eyes as he'd said it, Donna had thought he'd meant lost lost, as in dead. Incidentally, she'd been wrong. This woman, his friend, she 'wasn't lost, she was so alive.' As he'd said goodbye to her that Christmas Eve before he left, as ash fell from the sky as miserable snow, she'd been unable to stop herself from asking what his friend's name was, and he'd told her that she was called…Rose. His face had fallen at Donna's question, and had frozen in a mask of genuine heartbreak, as if to reply to her, would be like being stabbed with thousands of needles, would cost every ounce of energy the maddening man possessed. His voice, which bless him, he'd tried so hard to keep steady, to keep free of his emotions, had cracked as he'd said Rose's name. From that, Donna had concluded, with a large lump in her throat, that whether this Rose was just his 'friend' or not, was irrelevant. He quite plainly loved her. Then, when she stumbled upon the Doctor again he'd told her that Rose was still lost. So that's all Donna knew. That the Doctor had a friend called Rose who he had loved but had lost…how, what, why and when didn't come into it. It was a closed case. Closed, padlocked shut and buried beneath fifteen feet of ice. The Doctor would never tell her about Rose, and Donna would rather cut off her own arm than bring the subject up. Even she, herself would admit that she had a bit of a gob on her, one that more often than not, operated without any input from her brain, but she knew when to keep quiet and so quite happily enough Rose had never been mentioned. Not consciously, anyway. Once, he had called her 'Rose.' On their way back from the Oodsphere mid-flight, flakes of snow still clinging to her hair and hood as the TARDIS had juddered and spluttered her way grinding into the Time Vortex, with Donna fruitlessly breathing on her freezing, cupped hands to warm them up, the Doctor had barked, "Rose! Hold down the button that looks like a jelly bean…ohh, it is a jelly bean-hold it down anyway! Allons-y!" He'd said it without thinking, without realising, his grinning, enthusiastic manner had not dented, he hadn't faltered, hadn't withdrawn behind his self-made wall of steel to torture himself, he just honestly didn't think anything of it… Donna had never told him. Better that way, she thought. She hadn't even…felt anything. It wasn't like the ultimate faux pas when you call your girlfriend by your ex's name, though indeed it could be regarded as being like that. She wasn't jealous or offended or put-out; she had the good sense to know that the Doctor didn't mean anything by it; that it was a mere slip of the tongue, that it was obvious that he still missed her, even after his travels with mad, blind, charity Martha… That was once. Once, Donna had let it go. More than once was pushing his skinny n' suited luck. Because now, he'd done it again. Called her Rose. Introduced her as Rose, even. "I'm the Doctor and this is Rose Tyler," he had said jovially, gesturing at a blinking Donna as they were met at the door of the tearooms by a weirdly-shaped, smiling chunk of wood. The wooden waiter, Tree Man Cheep, or whatever the Doctor had called him, had led them over to an empty, slightly wobbly table, with a unidentifiable stain on its silky tablecloth, and they'd drunk their tea and chatted amicably enough…but Donna had been unable to shake off the feeling that something was…slightly wrong. There had been a funny prickling at the back of her neck, like when you're watching a film and you just know that something terrible is going to happen. Call it women's intuition or whatever, but Donna had been unable to relax during their sickly sweet tea. Unconsciously, her eyes had begun to drift over to the Doctor, watching him examine pieces of banana, frowning down at his teacup. She hadn't realised that the Doctor had noticed, but then again, subtlety had never been her strongest point. The look on his face as he rummaged deep in his coat pocket and brought out three heavy-set bronze rectangles, about the size of a mobile phone was the same withdrawn, agonised one she'd seen drawn over his features when he'd spoken about the war and his lost people to Jenny… The Doctor sprung to his feet with so much coiled energy and force that it was a miracle that he didn't send the table flying, and set down the three bronze rectangles in one fluid motion. Wordlessly, seeming more than a little preoccupied, he trudged out of the tearoom with his hands in his pockets, Donna following just behind him. She took a quick look behind her as they left, gauging to see if anyone was staring after them. The Tree who'd served them, seeing her look back at him, gave her a polite nod as he scooped up their payment. "Thought you said they used oxygen as a currency?" she asked curiously as they made their way down a cool, bronze-lined corridor, the air close and cloying, as if they were walking through a Tube tunnel, back to the TARDIS. The Doctor glanced at her. "It's an option, yeah," he replied, smiling at her slightly. "Perfect for Trees, who release oxygen as a product of photosynthesis. Don't really need it. You and I, on the other hand…" he grinned at her, though it didn't quite reach his eyes. "So what did you pay them with, then? Gold bricks?" asked Donna jokingly, determined to keep him talking, in a vague hope of taking his mind off what the Tree Man had called her. She fell into step beside him, her trainers squeaking along with his converse. "Supplementary Credits," he said grudgingly, as if the topic didn't interest him at all. He kept his hands shoved in his pockets, his mouth set in a grim line. "Universal. Can be used anywhere in the Universe," he said shortly as they came to the end of the corridor and turned right onto another, identical grey one. "I'd like to see the woman accepting those in Tk Maxx," she said wryly, pulling her eyebrows into a disbelieving line as they walked. "Mmmh," replied the Doctor, distractedly. "Donna," he said sharply, getting straight to the point. "Why did Lute call you 'Miss. Tyler?" He sounded quite accusatory, and he did not turn sideways to look at her, but kept his gaze fixed firmly straight ahead. Donna sighed softly and raised her eyes to the heavens slightly before looking at the Doctor, taking in his strong profile, thunderous eyes and down turned mouth. "'Cause that's who you introduced me as," said Donna tonelessly, with a hint of reluctance in her voice, as if she really didn't want to get into it. She looked vaguely pitying. "I've been called much worse, mate. Don't worry about it," she said dismissively, elbowing him gently. The Doctor, who at first looked as though he were about to deny Donna's claim, simply swallowed and shook his head, as if to clear it, his eyes mournful. "I'm sorry," he said at last, sounding absolutely honest. "I didn't mean to…" "It's fine," Donna cut him off, preventing him from apologizing further. She didn't like hearing the Doctor sound this upset and fed-up. To be honest, she preferred it when he was being a talkative over-excitable lunatic, getting on her nerves, than being all dark and broody like this. "It's just…why would I call you Rose?" pondered the Doctor, his voice going slightly higher in pitch, like it always did when he was incredulous or excited or disbelieving or happy or confused or…actually, his voice went high at the slightest of things. "It's not through force of habit, you don't look like her, I didn't bring her here I…"he ran an exasperated hand through his hair as he ranted, making it stand up on end, as if he'd been recently electrocuted. "The last time I saw Tree people…I suppose…no." he babbled on to himself, still walking, pulling vigorously on his ear, as if he wanted to rip it from his head. "You've met talking trees before, then?" asked Donna sarcastically, as knowing him, he probably had. Nothing concerning the Doctor would ever surprise her. "At the end of the world, yeah," he said calmly, ignoring the small noise of surprise that Donna made. He spoke of the end of the world in the same way that you might talk about the weather. "At the end of the…?" "Question is," he bumbled on, waving an 'I'll-tell-you-later' hand at her. "Why? Why…" He suddenly stopped, dead mid-question in the middle of the corridor, eyes scrunched closed, a hand massaging the back of his neck thoughtfully. "Do I have a headache?" he finished in bemusement. "It's as if the top layer of my second mind's gone on the blink," he said in slow amazement, as if even he couldn't believe what he was saying. "Your what?" said Donna loudly in alarm, her voice blaring like a foghorn, making her cockney more pronounced. "How many minds have you got, Space Boy?" Her eyes raked over him, half concerned, half disbelieving. The Doctor, stood still as a statue in the middle of the corridor, kept his eyes tightly closed and slowly raised a long finger to his lips. "I feel," he said carefully in a low voice, as if testing the waters. "Bored." Donna frowned at him, her mouth opening in indignation. "Cheers," she muttered mutinously. "If you're trying to hint that…" "Sh, sh, sh, sh, shhh," the Doctor shushed her, flapping an impatient hand at her, a look of dead-set concentration on his face. "My subconscious is…is hurting? Is it?" he mused unsurely. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no…. not my subconscious…top layer. Second mind. Yeah…wait, no! No…Yes!" His eyes snapped open and darted wildly from side to side. "Hens!" he shouted triumphantly, and took off down the corridor, his long brown coat billowing behind him like a cape. "Hens? What are you jabbering on about now, you fruitcake?" shrilled Donna, pelting after him at full speed to catch up. "You're a madman," she chuntered under her breath as she ran, breathing heavily. "You're off your bleeding rocker…"
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