Work Text:
As far as Donna had been able to figure out the TARDIS's Control Room had no clock; at least not a clock that told time in a way she understood or could read. It made it hard for her to determine exactly how long she sat there watching as the Doctor stood there and stared down at the series of control panels in the center of the room. If forced to make an estimated guess it would be somewhere past a few hours and closer to an eternity. This was not a pleasant turn of events because Donna Noble did not sit silently and Donna Noble did not wait for others to make decisions even though she had spent the past however long doing both. Every time she tried to talk the Doctor shushed her and if he shushed her one more time they were going to have even bigger problems than the Big Problem they were in. The Big Problem that had something to do with course trajectory and a miscalculation and a slew of other things that reminded Donna that she was nowhere near anywhere she knew. She'd made a few wrong turns in her life including the type that led to driving through the kinds of neighborhoods her mother had warned her about. But she'd never made the kind of wrong turn that put her car on an unstoppable path towards a very bright, very hot sun.
The possibility of leaving the Doctor to his staring had crossed her mind but it was too easy to get lost in the TARDIS and if they were going to meet their end she didn't want to do it moments after accidentally wandering into the room full of plastic pink flamingos that she discovered last week. Meeting her end in the room that looked like the top of the Eiffel Tower wouldn't have been as bad but she could only find that room when looking for something else and never when she wanted to. With a sigh Donna leaned against the wall which felt several degrees warmer than it had earlier and thought of how she'd never seen the top of the real Eiffel Tower. Distance planets and the distance pasts were a typical day in the life of Donna Noble but the list of things she'd never done closer to home was too long. It was long enough that she forgot all about being shushed and decided opening her mouth again was the way to go.
"Doctor, are you going to stand there until we start to get a tan? You'd look dafter than Peter Andre with orange skin."
"Donna-"
"Don't you Donna me, mister. I want to know what's going on and when you're going to stop it."
The Doctor looked up at her and blinked several times as if concentrating on anything other than buttons or levers was difficult for his eyes. "I'm going to stop it when I find the Stop Pulling Us Towards the Sun Button."
"THE WHAT?!"
"Donna-"
The woman in question left her position and stalked over to her companion, making each step up the stairs loud enough to echo throughout the room. "I don't care how many timey- wimey-shiny-round-big-impressive looking buttons this place has if all you've been doing is looking for one that is a Stop Pulling Us Towards the Sun Button than you need to start coming up with a better plan."
He stared at her as if she was the crazy one and simply replied, "But the reason we're in this predicament is because I hit the Pull Us Towards the Sun Button."
With narrowed eyes and arms folded across her chest Donna stared long and hard at the Doctor. She'd never thought him even remotely close to sane but his insanity came with a gift for helping and exploring and she'd never thought of herself as all that close to normal. But this was a whole other level of crazy that made everything that had come before it seem almost normal. "WHY DO YOU HAVE A PULL US TOWARDS THE SUN BUTTON??!!"
"Sometimes it's necessary."
Donna heard the dismissal in his voice and it was worse than the shushing. Instead of standing like she'd been doing or staring like he'd so foolishly been doing Donna began to search. She started from the opposite side of the room that the Doctor was standing on and looked at every millimeter of floor, wall and ceiling. Her eyes hadn't stopped soaking in everything about the TARDIS from the minute she'd first found herself in it but that had been in wonder. Now she was on a mission and wasn't going to quit until she'd found what they were looking for.
"Nothing in here is labeled. How do you know what's a stop or start button?"
Alerted to what she was doing by her question the Doctor once again stopped his staring and paid attention to her. "Donna, don't touch anything in here. The smallest button could rip a hole in space before your finger was done pressing down."
"Or it could save our lives. Not to mention that a button that could rip a hole in space is another bad idea for a button."
"Donna-"
There wasn't any time to roll her eyes because Donna had found something that looked like it could be what they needed. "I found one that says Press Me."
"Don't press it."
"But it says Press Me."
"If I said Press Me would you?"
Donna shot him a look of pure disgust which was canceled out by the identical look he was giving her. "Noooo...but."
The but was that as a child Donna had been the type to do exactly what she was told not to do. She went into the rooms that she was told not to enter, touched the items she was told not to touch and befriended those she was told not to associate with. Adulthood had numbed too much of that impulse in her until the Doctor had come along and now that something was telling her to Press Me which probably meant Don't Press Me she knew she had to put her finger on it even if that was the very last thing she ever did. Her hand hovered in the air above it and she could feel the Doctor's gaze on her. When she looked up his look of disgust had faded to something else, something that looked very much like sadness and regret. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him exactly how old he was down to the second but she held it in. One act of rebellion for the day would be enough and that act was going to involve the pressing of that which possibly shouldn't be pressed. As her hand lowered down against the metal her eyes closed and it was hard to tell if the rest of the room got quieter or her heart got louder but the pounding of it was all she could hear.
Another infinite amount of time passed before Donna heard the Doctor shout, "You've done it!"
Done what exactly was still a bit of a question until he ran over to her and hugged her so tightly her feet lifted off the ground. A kiss landed on her cheek before she could hit him hard enough to make him let her go. "It worked?"
"It worked!" The Doctor's face broke into a wide, proud smile and Donna couldn't help but flush under the brightness of it. "Donna Noble. I never would have picked that one."
There was a hushed quality to his tone that led Donna to believe that statement was frighteningly true.
"Aren't you just glad you have me then."
"Oh yes."
After all that Donna wanted to take the longest nap of her life but sleeping away a minute of her second chance on life seemed a tragic choice to make. "So now what?"
The Doctor had already walked back over to the main panel of controls and started a series of button pushing and lever pulling that started to cool the room down. "Hero's choice."
The Hero's choice was easy and with a smile Donna replied, "The Eiffel Tower."