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Brilliant by Degrees by wmr [Reviews - 24]  Author's Notes: With thanks, as always, to Gillian Taylor for BRing, and to everyone who answered the poll on my LJ, in particular Adalia Zandra, Ninamusing and KathyB who gave me excellent food for thought. | |
Brilliant by Degrees
Disapproving tuts echo around him as he edges along the narrow aisle, brushing laps along the way, then slides into the seat next to Jack.
“You’re late.” Jack’s whisper carries a caustic edge.
“I came,” he points out.
“Wasn’t sure you would,” Martha leans across Jack to murmur.
“You said it was important.” That’s what the text message said. Come. VERY IMPORTANT. (Jack says he’ll come after you if you don’t). And then a date, time and place.
Though he still hasn’t a clue why they wanted him to come here. A huge auditorium at South Bank University, filled to bursting with attendees at a graduation ceremony. He can’t even see why Jack and Martha would be here, let alone what made them think he should come. What? Did Mickey decide to get a degree in rocket science?
About time they explained, really. He leans across to Jack again, ignoring the irritating voice droning on and on from the platform. “What-”
“Quiet!” Jack mouths, waving a finger in what’s really a rather... bossy manner. Since when has Jack become such a - well, a commander?
He subsides, but is ready to seize his opportunity again when the woman on the platform stops speaking and applause breaks out. “What-”
“I can’t speak for Gallifrey, of course, but it’s considered good manners here on Earth not to talk when someone’s giving a speech,” Jack murmurs in his ear, and that’s very definitely sarcasm.
“Thanks, Jack, never knew that.” He fidgets. This chair’s uncomfortable - all horrible moulded plastic - and it’s too close to the chair in front. He’s feeling all hemmed in and confined. If they don’t tell him what he’s doing here in the next five minutes he’s leaving.
A hand covers his and squeezes. “Just hold on, Doctor. It’ll be worth it.” Martha’s looking at him as if she knows he’s about to bolt.
He sighs. “All right.” Just as long as she realises he wouldn’t do this for anyone else. Well. For almost anyone else.
One after another, in an endless procession, graduates are introduced and called up to receive their scrolls. After a nudge from Jack, he applauds desultorily, all the while calculating how long it’ll take to get through the three hundred-odd gowned and hooded people he’s counted - well, sort of counted, by multiplying the available space by density of black-clad humans packed into it.
Jack nudges him. “Doctor. Wake up.”
“I am awake!” he protests.
“That’ll be why everyone around us heard you snoring, then,” Martha interjects.
“Traitor,” he accuses her, and reaches for his sonic screwdriver. If he has to be trapped here for the next hour, he might as well start work on that new setting he’s been planning. It’s about time he had a means of shutting people up instantly, and it’s not as if it’s difficult. Just cut off the sound waves, and hey presto! Instant silence.
“Doctor! God, you’re like a little kid,” Jack mutters. “Put that away and pay attention.”
He debates zapping Jack with the soldering setting. He’ll resurrect within a few seconds anyway.
“...present the candidates for the Bachelor of Science in Psychology...” a voice somewhere in the background announces. Jack nudges him again. He glances up briefly, sees nothing of interest and idly flicks his gaze around the room.
Only to come to a complete halt as flame-red hair catches his eye.
It can’t be.
Yet it is. That toss of her hair over her shoulder, the way she walks, and that sudden grin as she catches sight of someone in the audience.
He follows the direction of her gaze. It is. Wilf and Sylvia, both waving at her, both beaming proudly.
He watches as her name’s announced - First-Class Honours! - and she strides across the stage to the University Chancellor; applauds louder than anyone else present as she accepts her scroll and shakes his hand; stares at her familiar - though a little older - face as she walks sedately down the steps and back to her seat.
Donna. With a degree in psychology.
Oh, yes. Yes.
She’s the companion who got him talking when nobody else could, after all. Even though she came right out and told him that he talks and talks but never actually says anything, he told her, didn’t he? About his family. About losing them. About why he was too scared to accept Jenny.
Later, he told her about Midnight, about the shuttle and Sky and his voice being stolen. And, of course, right from the beginning he told her about Rose: about losing her, and later how much he missed her.
The weirdest thing was that at the time he never even realised how much he was telling her.
He’s still applauding as Donna resumes her seat, and it’s not until Jack lays a hand against his back that he realises there are tears in his eyes.
***
They leave before it’s over; people sitting around them are aggravated, but they can’t risk Wilf and Sylvia seeing him. Or, worse, Donna herself.
“She went back to temping,” Jack explains once they’re safely outside and walking together towards the TARDIS. “It was what she knew, so...” He shrugs. “Six months later, she applied for a part-time business management course at West Thames College. Finished top of her class, and got hired as a recruiter at her temping agency. And then...” Jack grins. “That’s where we got involved.”
“Yeah?” He looks from Jack to Martha and back again. “What did you do?” He can’t help but be alarmed. If Donna remembers anything, anything at all, her brain will implode from the pressure of the metacrisis. She’ll die.
“Nothing dangerous.” Martha’s quick to reassure. “Neither of us went anywhere near her. Too much of a chance she could recognise us.”
“We sent in Sarah Jane.”
Sarah. Yes. That should be all right, then. Donna really didn’t get to know Sarah at all that day; they only talked briefly on the subwave network, of course, and they didn’t meet properly until after he got everyone back onto the TARDIS.
“You know she works for the Sunday Times Magazine. She interviewed Donna - pretended to be working on a story about adults returning to education.”
“And?” He’s tempted to shake Jack to get him to tell the story faster.
“And.” Martha takes over. “Well, we thought maybe Donna wanted to own her own business. She’d be bloody good at it, too. But she told Sarah what she really wanted to do was study psychology. Not even to do anything with it, but cause she was interested. Couldn’t afford it, though, she said. The fees weren’t the problem. It was just she’d have nothing to live on and she didn’t want to go back to living with her mum.”
“So Sarah contacted her a few days later to tell her about the Torchwood Foundation Scholarship,” Jack continues. “Donna fit the criteria perfectly. So she applied, and...” He gestures behind them, in the general direction of the auditorium.
“The Torchwood Foundation,” he repeats. He won’t ask where Jack got the money from. He’s pretty sure, though, that it didn’t come from any of Torchwood’s official funding.
Martha just nods, and he deduces from her expression that she’s completely convinced - not necessarily that there’s a Torchwood Foundation, but that Jack found the money from Torchwood sources.
And so Donna has her degree in psychology, thanks to his very good friends. Friends who’ve done for her what he should have done, except he decided he’d already interfered in her life too much. Done her too much damage.
He could, though, have tried to do some good, couldn’t he? He managed to do it for Martha, after all.
He didn’t damage Martha beyond repair, though, did he? Donna... well, he thought he had. But he didn’t, did he? Because, from what Jack’s said, although she’s had help to complete the final stages of her journey from there to here, she started it on her own.
Donna Noble was brilliant, all on her own. Is brilliant. And will continue to be brilliant.
“It doesn’t stop there, though,” Jack says. “For the past two years, she’s been volunteering at a drop-in centre for refugees. Bit of everything, from admin to settlement help to trauma counselling. She’s good, too. They want her to get her Masters so she can practice professionally.” He smiles crookedly. “Think the Torchwood Foundation can cover it.”
He makes a mental note to send Jack some money for the ‘Torchwood Foundation’.
They’ve reached the TARDIS now and he pauses, turning to look at the two of them. “Thank you. Both of you. And Sarah too. Tell her I said thanks.”
“We will,” Martha promises. Jack nods. Really, the two of them are far better friends to him than he is to them.
He extends his arms. Martha comes, hugging him warmly. “Don’t be a stranger, you hear?”
“I won’t,” he promises as he releases her, and actually means it.
Jack’s about to salute, but he pre-empts him by stepping forward and hugging him instead. “I know this was your doing,” he says quietly, for Jack’s ears only. “I won’t forget.”
“Remember this, then,” Jack says, his voice firm and confident, as he straightens and looks the Doctor directly in the eye. “This is what you turn us into, Doctor. Psychologists and doctors and defenders of the planet. Not murderers.”
Yes. He looks at Jack, looks at Martha, thinks of Sarah Jane and Mickey and Donna - and even Rose, back in her parallel universe with the other him. And of everyone else who travelled with him and who went home wiser, more aware of the universe around them and wanting to do great things.
Maybe it’s because they’ve known him. Or maybe it was because they were always brilliant anyway.
Either way, it’s fantastic.
- end
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