Takes place just after "Spring Cleaning On The Tardis," though it's not necessary to read that to understand this, at all. So. . .After "The Doctor's Daughter," in Donna and the Doctor's timeline, and between "A Day In The Death" and "Fragments" for Torchwood's.
The WWYR thread prompt for this was: "Donna falls down the invisible lift."
| Home | Most Recent | Categories | Authors | Titles | Help | Search | Log In | |
| Tenth Doctor, Torchwood | |
That Time Donna Tried To Clean Up Torchwood's Act by A Moment In Subtext [Reviews - 11]  Author's Notes: | |
"Cardiff?" Donna asked sceptically.
"What?"
"All of time and space and you've brought us to Cardiff?"
"What's wrong with Cardiff?" the Doctor asked. "I love Cardiff."
"You promised me alien planets and all I get is Cardiff?"
"This is just a pit stop," the Doctor explained. "Tardis needs to refuel, rift running through the city, I haven't explained this before?"
"Not to me."
"Oh." He looked slightly embarrassed for a minute. "Well-"
"How long are we going to be here?"
"Not long. I was thinking, while the Tardis refuels, pop into town and grab some groceries, drop off some of that stuff we don't need to keep, then we're on our way."
"So, an hour?"
The Doctor sighed. "Yeah, sure."
"I'm going for a walk."
"Be careful."
Donna rolled her eyes. "It's just Cardiff, Doctor."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In the same way some animals know it's going to rain before the first cloud forms, Donna knew she was going to fall about a second before she took the step into thin air. There should have been a sidewalk square; there was not. Had she been thinking clearly, she surely would have found some way to blame this on the Doctor. As it turns out, there's little time to place blame when hurdling hundreds of feet downward to your death.
Fortunately for Donna, she had been stockpiling luck from almost the moment she'd been born and had barely used any of it, leaving her the perfect cadidate for a miracle. It should therefore surprise no one that her rapid descent was halted early by the arms of a handsome stranger. Donna does not understand the concept of miracles. She does, however, understand the concept of gravity, which is the only reason her indignant squawk was not followed by a resounding slap to her saviour's face. She settled for an intensely annoyed glare.
"Whoa," her saviour said, "Steady. I've got you."
Donna just barely resisted the urge to snap "Well, no effing duh," at him. She can, on occasion, behave tactfully.
"It's not everyday a beautiful woman falls into my arms. Not literally, anyway," he said with a disarming smile. Donna absolutely refused to blush. "Who might you be?"
"I might be Donna Noble," she said, determined not to be charmed. "Who're you?"
"Captain Jack Harkness, at your service, ma'am." Somehow, without dropping her or setting her on the ground, he brought one of her hands to his lips.
"Well, aren't you a gentleman," she said scathingly. "What, am I supposed to swoon and simper now? You'll get none of that from me, bucko, let me tell you. I don't buy into- wait. Captain Jack! Well, that's just perfect! Ha! Not in a million, billion years he says, and then our next stop. . .great going, alienboy!" She directed that last triumphantly smug last line up toward the surface. "I can stand on my own two feet, you know, Captain."
"Of course," Jack said, setting her down as the lift came to her stop. "Welcome to my home."
"Said the spider to the fly," Donna muttered, looking around the Hub.
"I meant what I said before. No one's ever fallen down the invisible lift before."
"First time for everything," Donna said flippantly, then did a double-take. "You have an invisible lift in the middle of Cardiff? And you're surprised that people fall in?" She narrowed her eyes at the slightly sheepish look on Jack's face. "You've heard this before." She waggled her finger at him. "Imagine the liability claims if someone where to fall in here and die! That thing is a safety hazard and you know it! You're lucky I'm not pressing charges!" She planted her fists on her hips and stared.
"You can't press charges," Tosh said quietly, drawing Donna's attention to the other four people in the room. "Torchwood doesn't officially exist to press charges against."
"Thank you, Tosh." Jack said, nodding at her.
"Tell you what you should do," DOnna said, forging on regardless. "You should rope a whole section of the walk off, give it some police-y sounding explanation. No one falls in, and no one thinks anything of it. Secrecy's your thing, yeah?"
"That's not a bad idea," Jack mused.
"'Course it's not. I'm great with things like that. Super temp, that's me."
"That your superhero name, then?" Owen scoffed. "Secret identity when you're not falling into holes?"
"No, ratface," Donna sneered. "It means I'm a super temp."
"I like her," Ianto said after a brief pause.
"You're a temp?" Gwen asked curiously.
"I was. More of a traveller now, go figure." She shrugged off her coat and handed it to Jack, who stared at it as if she didn't have a clue what to do with it. Ianto sighed in a put-upon way and plucked it out of his hands on his way by. "Thank you. . ." she called after him.
"Ianto," Jack supplied. "Ianto Jones. That's Toshiko Sato," he nodded to each in turn. "Owen Harper, and Gwen Cooper-Williams."
"I'd say nice to meet you, but I've just fallen into your base and I'm not quite inclined to civility yet." Donna said, waving. She pointed at Jack. "I blame you for this. Well, actually, I blame the Doctor, but I can't get him to get me a cuppa, so you'll have to do for now."
Jack stared at her.
"What are you just standing around for?" She clapped her hands. "Chop-chop!"
Ianto walked back through the room, handing her a teacup and saucer as he went.
"Thank you," she said, taking a sip.
"Plenty of civility for him," Owen snipped.
"Let's see, respectable outfit, respectable face, didn't try to feel me up on the invisible lift, I'd say, yeah."
"I didn't try to feel you up on the invisible lift!" Jack protested.
"'s okay, you can make up for it," Donna said.
"How?" He got the distinct feeling he had lost control of the situation, if he'd ever had it.
"I've got time to kill. Show me around, see if I get any other ideas." She waved her hand around the Hub. "Invisible lift is probably the least of your problems."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Do you know what this is?" Donna asked, pointing to an alien artefact that happened to be sitting precariously close to the edge of a table.
"No," Tosh said. "Do you?"
"Do you know how to use it?"
"No," Owen said. "Obviously."
"Do you know if it's dangerous?"
"No," Ianto said on his way into Jack's office.
"So is leaving it here really the best idea?" Donna asked, slowly, as if to a group of particularly stupid first graders.
"No," Tosh and Owen sighed in unison.
"Very good," Donna said, still in her slow, patronizing voice. It was amazing the things you picked up just watching the Doctor talk to people. She glanced toward Jack's office and rolled her eyes. "Oi! You two!"
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"You're drooling," Donna said, standing next to Gwen, who was staring at Jack through the walls of his office. "What, exactly, is your job?"
"Police liason," Gwen said distractedly.
"And that means you do what?"
"Nothing right now."
"Obviously." She followed Gwen's gaze. "Don't you have a husband?"
"Yeah, Rhys. He's a dear."
"Is he now. Then why, pray tell, aren't you at home staring at him if you've got nothing else to do?"
"Jack is nicer to look at. Haven't you noticed?"
"I'm not married."
"I'm not cheating."
"Might as well be," Donna said, "Miss Moral High Ground. Let me tell you a thing or two about the difference between 'cheating' and 'not cheating'-"
"Must you?"
"I was engaged to be married. My wedding night, total chaos. My fiance was cheating on me with the Queen of the Spider People. No, really. Christmas before last, great big Christmas star flying around zapping things? That was my fiance's mistress."
"I'm sorry," Gwen said, putting her hand on Donna's shoulder to comfort her.
"You should be, lusting after your boss when you've got a perfectly good husband at home waiting for you," Donna chided. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Donna stared at the SUV, then at Jack and the rest of the Torchwood team, then back at the SUV. She fixed her gaze on Jack.
"So when you go undercover, d'you walk up to people's houses and say 'I'm with Torchwood, give us your alien artefacts?'"
"Not initially."
"Ever think maybe the bright yellow words emblazoned on your car might be tipping them off?"
"Haven't you got to meet up with the Doctor soon?" Gwen countered.
"Let him stew a while more," Donna said dismissively. "He's got a time machine, he can pop into the future a few days and pick me up then."
Donna suddenly found herself forcibly evicted from a Torchwood that absolutely, positively did not want to hear the truth about how horribly it ran it's operation.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Where have you been?" the Doctor asked, looking around the nearly abandoned street.
"Here and there. Around." She waved her hand.
"You didn't run into any trouble did you?"
"Doctor, I told you, it's just Cardiff. C'mon, you've got alien planets to show me."
Nearby, an inconspicuous tourist information booth closed for the night.
Script for this archive provided by eFiction. Contact our archivists at help@whofic.com. Please read our Terms of Service and Submission Guidelines.