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Donna didn't look right into the heart of the TARDIS - she's not an idiot, and she didn't put up with him whinging on about that Rose chit for *nothing* - but he's messing about with repairs in the console room again, and there's suddenly a crack - or something - in the central column, and before she's even thought about what she's doing, she's raced over and covered the sudden flare of light with both her hands.
It tingles. Not just in her hands, but all up and down her, and it feels - well, friendly, so when the Doctor pokes his head out of the wall panel a split second later and shouts "Oh - Hell - Donna, don't move an *inch*-- " all she does is roll her eyes at him and relax into it a bit ostentatiously. He frowns at her but ducks back into the machinery and twiddles something a few times, and Donna can feel the insistent pressure of the light build and build into her until they both flare up and it fades away into no more than a feather-light touch to the palms of her hands.
The Doctor bounces across the room to where she's standing and blows out a breath of relief. He's standing *awfully* close, in fact, breathing right on her tits, which feels far too nice right after all that tingling and flaring, and she'd say something except for how it's obvious that at the moment he hasn't got eyes for anything but his ship. And anyway Donna's not entirely sure what just happened, but she's still a bit warm and tingly, and she's fairly sure she's going to have to get some less sticky knickers in a bit.
"Alright," says the Doctor, trying for stern, "move your hands away slowly - good - and go stand over *there*." He's pointing to the part of the chamber that's as far as possible from where he's working, and she's tempted to protest on principle, but she does't actually want to cause the end of the universe, so she does, while he pulls his itty-bitty screwdriver out of his trouser pocket and, with great concentration, runs it back and forth along the now gently pulsing slit in the casing.
When he's done he turns to her. "Now as for *you*, Donna Noble - that was the most idiotic thing I've seen this side of Calaphraxus Four - I ought to just lock you in your room till - "
"Oi," says Donna, "I did it wrong, did I? Ruined all your repairs - so what would have happened if I'd stayed out of it then?" She's fairly sure that if she actually *had* done something wrong, he'd be a lot more upset than this - and anyway she's still filled with a sense of airy well-being and can't bring herself to care.
"Well - ah - best case scenario if it hadn't been sealed by a co-valent life-force is the TARDIS spilling polyentropic spacetime into this whole area of the Vortex and screwing up causality for three-quarters of a galaxy - but that's beside the point."
"So in other words I did exactly the right thing and saved the day - again. What's your point? You just jealous that someone else got up close and friendly with your TARDIS?"
He's staring at her and doesn't answer - staring lower than her face, in fact - so she waves a hand at him. "Yoo-hoo, Doctor, I'm --" and then she realizes that her hand - both of them - is glowing with the same light that had spilled from the column.
"That," says the Doctor. "You've been exposed to a huge dose of Vortex energy, and that's far too dangerous to a human." He takes a step forward. "Let me--"
Ha, Donna's heard this story before, too. "Oh no you don't, Doctor. If I ever let you kiss me it won't be because you're so desperate for your ship you're even begging for her sloppy seconds."
"What?" says the Doctor. "I am not!"
"You *lick the console*, Doctor!"
"That's - that's chemoanalysis!"
"So's my vibrator."
There's a second or so of silent staring after that, and then Donna ventures, "So there's a way of fixing this that doesn't involve your tongue getting all up in our energies, right?"
"Well-" he reaches toward her, then pauses. "Can I see your hand?" He holds it lightly in his, but the instant their skin touches there's a sudden - spark - that jumps between them, making them both gasp, and the Doctor drops her hand and steps back.
He swallows. "You're lucky," he says, "It's a fairly small dose; you just need to use it up before it's done permanent damage."
"Use it? For what?"
"Anything." He grins and bounces. "You're - quite literally - holding the power of the Vortex in your little hands, Donna. Well, it won't do quite anything, 'cause it's a finite amount of power, but think of it as one free wish, granted. Just, well, be careful with it. Don't screw up the universe too badly."
"One wish? Anything?" Donna thinks for a second. She didin't need to be told to be careful - she's heard enough fairy-tales to know what happens to people who make the wrong wish. "What would you use it for, Doctor?"
He takes a breath as if to speak, and then puts a hand out and hastily steps further back. "Oh no, no, not me, Donna. Can't be me. Don't ask me. Anything. Please. You do the wishing."
Yeah, the Doctor's clever enough to push the responsibility on someone else - well, Donna thinks. She ought to be able to come up with the answer. She's seen the X-Files, and that Disney movie with Robin Williams - she has a sudden thought, and presses her hands back against the column behind her.
What would you wish?, she thinks at it loudly. She doesn't get an answer in words, but there's - suprised, and happy, and unsure, almost disbelief. What, no one's asked you that before? she thinks. Bloody man, that's just typical. There's something that must be laughter in the answer she gets, but it's warm laughter, with bubbles. It's got to be right; who better to know how to use the power? Donna leans back full-length and closes her eyes. I want - what the TARDIS wants. She takes a deep breath. That's my wish.
She can feel the light flare up out of her, into the walls of the TARDIS and through it and beyond, a ripple of energy and a breath of cool air over all of her body. She opens her eyes and steps forward. "Did it work?" she asks, and then she thinks, *all* over her body, a half-second before she realizes that neither she nor the Doctor are wearing a stitch of clothing.
"Oh bloody hell," she says, "I thought you were supposed to be clever!"
"I am clever!" the Doctor says. "Anyway this isn't my fault - you sure you didn't?"
"NO, I didn't, and I wasn't talking to you," says Donna, just as the Doctor says, "And I don't think it worked -" he catches one of her hands and pulls it up. It's still glowing like the column of the TARDIS, Donna realizes, but not the same way it was before - and she can still feel the connection she'd felt leaning back against that column, the joyful note that sounded like nothing so much as a more - personal - version of the song of the Ood, stronger than ever now that she was touching the Doctor.
"Oh," she says.
And "Oh my," says someone else, from over the Doctor's shoulder. Donna jerks her head up, just as the Doctor spins so fast she'd have sworn he levitated a bit.
"Rose!" says the Doctor.
The someone else is a blonde girl, with a figure almost as nice as Donna's, a bit of a glow about her, too much make-up, and, she can't help but notice, just as naked as they are. "Hi," says Donna. "I'm Donna, I'm the Doctor's latest, but this is not what it looks like, swear to God."
"It really isn't!" squeals the Doctor.
"Yeah?" says Rose, stepping a bit closer in and raising an eyebrow. "You sure?"
Donna holds a hand up. "I got a bit of Tardis stuff in me and he wanted to get rid of it, but I told him he wasn't kissing me until he was willing to admit it was me he was kissing."
"That's not what you said!" says the Doctor, but Rose is too busy looking Donna up and down, her lips half-quirked in a smile. "Yeah?" she says again. "You know, I know a bit about that sort of thing myself. You willing to let me have a go at it?"
Donna - well, months of second-hand whingeing aside, Rose isn't half fit, and the TARDIS is wriggling back and forth saying oh please, and besides ever since she touched the light she's been horny as hell - so she taps the Doctor on the shoulder and says, 'Oi, shove off." He steps aside instictively and before he has time to do anything else she's got her arm behind Rose's neck and they're kissing.
And oh - if she thought sparks flew when she touched the Doctor, that's nothing compared to this. They're kissing, and Rose is a very good kisser, and she can feel Rose's breasts pressing against hers, and it feels like every cell in her body is on the verge of going off like firecrackers, and she can feel Rose's body waking up at her touch - waking, and remembering, and the fire flows through them both, and in it all the TARDIS is singing, singing, singing - Donna reaches out blindly and grabs the Doctor's wrist and with his touch it's all that much clearer and sharper and Donna doesn't think she could bear it if it wasn't that she's drunk on it, drunk on the sex and the light and the Doctor and the love, the love that the TARDIS is just pouring through all of them like an ocean set free --
She's not sure which of them breaks it first but she's fairly sure that if they'd been one second later she'd have gone up in a pillar of fire right there, so it's just as well. She's swaying a bit, unsteady on her feet, and the Doctor slid right down on the floor the second she let him go.
Rose is laughing. "I can't believe--" she pauses to breathe a bit - "I can't believe you did that!"
And - yeah, Donna's fairly sure at this point she knows exactly what the TARDIS's wish was, though she's not sure how Rose figured it out so much faster - and she thinks she'd be a bit annoyed if she wasn't grinning foolishly. "Well, how was I supposed to *know* she was just as much of a kinky pervert as he is?" she asks. Rose is outlined in light, now, too, and she doesn't dare look at the Doctor.
"What do you mean, a kinky pervert?" the Doctor asks. "What's going on?"
He's a bit slow about this sort of thing, Rose mouths at her, and Donna answers Don't I know it. "I used the Vortex energy to give the TARDIS whatever she wanted," Donna explained to him. "And apparently --"
"Apparently what she wanted was for all of us to have an orgy in the console room," finishes Rose.
"That actually explains a lot," says a new voice, and Martha Jones steps into the conversation.
"Oh, fantastic!" says Donna. She thinks she may still be more than a bit punchy - in fact she's not sure she's ever coming down, or she ever wants to, with the TARDIS still running in her veins and the Doctor panting at her feet - so she just takes hold of Martha's shoulders and fills her up with the light. Martha makes an "O!" sound - sudden - and grabs and Rose and they all come tumbling down in a pile on top of the Doctor and she's fairly sure that parts of her brain short out for awhile, but that is actually very much fine with her.
She's pretty sure there's some actual sex in there somewhere - there's skin and heat and light and love and pain and joy and scent and touch and breath and laughter, and she remembers touching Rose's cunt, her fingers slick with liquid sunlight, and wondering if the Doctor's come always tasted like stars or just today, and hearing an voice - or maybe an echo - from one of them or all of them, always, and Martha's fingers twisting in her and with every twisti sending little jolts of pure pleasure all the way up into her belly to burst with soft fire like tame supernovae - and whether there's skin to skin or not, every bit of her touched, and touched, by all of them and all --
She has no idea how long it lasts but eventually the tangle resolves itself into the Doctor, fast asleep and completely shagged out like he has been for awhile, and Rose with her head pillowed on his shoulder and her hair spread and shining over them both, Martha curled up tight beside him and nearly asleep, and Donna's barely keeping her eyes open herself.
But she can feel the fire fading away and the TARDIS leaving them, and she remembers - he'd said it was a finite amount of energy. And the TARDIS is saying goodbye, sadly but willingly, and with air of a job well done. The fire draining away is like ten times the worst morning after ever - Donna bites down on inappropriate laughter, but if anyone'll ever have an excuse to say "The spark's gone out of the relationship--"
And then the TARDIS says (maybe the last time she'll ever hear it, in words, at least) Don't let him go back to being alone. Don't let him run. Keep it--
HOW? Donna wants to shout. How are *we* supposed to go after *that* - but with a last sudden flare of energy (spent) Donna can't feel the Tardis anymore, and it's all gone--
"Oh come on!" someone says. Someone with an American accent. "Don't tell me I missed it all! There's no way that's fair!" and she looks up to see Captain Jack Harkness standing in the console room, legs akimbo, hands on his hips, and absolutely starkers.
And, very slowly, Donna Noble smiles.