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It had started as a cold, nothing but a sore throat and a runny nose, but when the fever, loss of voice, painful swallowing, and slightly swollen lymph nodes showed up to the party, she knew something was definitely wrong. What she didn't know, was that the Doctor could be affected by the very same symptoms.
It was his fault, really it was. He was the reason they'd gotten tossed into a damp old dungeon in the first place. He just had to sneak over the ten-foot wall - going through the front using psychic paper just didn't occur to him. 'Superior Time Lord intelligence, my arse,' Donna thought as she sat in bed beside him.
It had been her who chose to shout relentlessly for the guards to pay them some attention, but she wouldn’t admit fault, especially not to the Doctor.
While the humidifier sent puffs of vapor into the air of her bedroom, she felt a nudge on her arm. Taking her attention away from her television screen, she turned her head to see the Doctor holding up his white dry erase board.
"I don't know how this happened." It read in blue letters, and she knew he was referring to the germs she shared with him, as he had complained about it nearly non-stop since he came down with symptoms identical to her own.
Donna picked up her own board and purple marker, and wrote, "Old age" before turning it toward him.
His expression was one of horror as he rapidly scribbled. "Take that back!"
"No, you're an old coot! I blame you for this."
"Me!? You're the one who shared the germs!" he pointed his finger against the surface of the board with a firm 'thud.'
The Tardis hummed at them in warning, as if to say 'no fighting' to a couple of unruly children.
Donna rolled her eyes and fussed with the covers.
"What are you doing now?" he wrote.
"It's too hot," she replied, with an added frowny face for emphasis. She tossed the board away. He watched her fan herself after she threw the light sheet away. The end credits on the telly were scrolling up the screen now.
She crept over to the TV. While she was turned away, he hurriedly bundled up in one of the blankets from her bed. He was immensely grateful as the warmth of the duvet helped to quell the chill.
She had popped a movie into the DVD player. She turned towards the bed and as soon as she caught sight of the Doctor, she scrambled over to him as fast as her aching muscles would allow. She tried to pry the heavy blanket away, but when his iron grasp didn't relent, she reached for the white board instead. "You can't bundle up like that – you have a fever, you dunce!" She erased to make more room. "Use my sheet. Stupid Martian."
He wrapped the lighter fabric around himself after mildly glaring at her. He had been tempted to hiss. After only a few minutes of returning to the bed, Donna began to rub her hands up and down her arms, drawing her knees close to her chest.
"Too cold?" the Doctor's board read.
She nodded, and he opened his cocoon to her. She entered eagerly, cuddling into his side. He shuffled them down a bit so they could recline some more, and when the iconic Star Wars music emanated from the speakers, he wrote to her, "You are bloody brilliant."
She saluted her thanks and gave him a gentle smile. Alright, so she may have felt a little guilty at having gotten him sick right along with her, with laryngitis to boot. The least she could do was choose one of his favorites.
Half-way through the film, she put her board insistently in front of his line of vision.
"Honey?" it read.
Glancing at her with a sly grin, he wrote to her, "Yes?" he smiled broadly and waggled his eyebrows. 'Cheeky alien git,' Donna thought to herself as she let her head fall back in frustration. She would have let out a groan if not for the laryngitis. She wrote somewhat furiously.
"HONEY DROPS." She wiped the board and wrote next: "Where are they?"
Searching briefly among the covers, he soon passed the bag to her and she fished one out, popping one into her mouth. If it wouldn't have been painful to do, she would have sighed greatly at the relief it brought, the soothing, sweet taste going down her throat in tiny waves, extinguishing the raw sting like a fire being doused with water.
By the time Luke and Darth Vader were dueling, Donna had fallen asleep on his shoulder. He brushed hair from her face, and at his touch she snuggled deeper into his side. He touched her forehead with the back of his fingers, and was thankful her fever was finally going down, as was his own. With any luck, he would be able to hear her voice in the morning. He certainly had missed it.