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Notes from Back Then: Knew it couldn’t last.
Remember Matt and Rose? Well, this is Donna and Beyond. In that glorious spaceship future where the Wammy’s kids are traveling around in the Masayoshi causing havoc across the galaxy, and L sits down to have tea with the 9th Doctor.
This is also (kinda) a oneshot. Except…um, not. Still playing around in the same world, mostly cause I wish more of these things existed.
Fandom: Doctor Who/Death Note
Rating: Teen
DISCLAIMER: I wish this happened.
Summary: Donna gets lost and runs into a strange man in the woods.
“Oi, do you hear me? This is the absolute last time, spaceman!” Donna would have stomped her foot if it would have done any good, but she was running through the middle of a forest dropped from the pages of a horror novel, so she didn’t really have time for that. She probably shouldn’t have the breath for it either, but she was somehow able to bellow no matter what the situation. At least it made her easy to find. And people tended to listen to her, if only to protect their hearing.
She wasn’t sure exactly what was chasing her, only that it was big and dangerous and possibly ravenous, and wherever the Doctor had buggered off to, he’d left her. Alone. About to be devoured by something whose name she probably couldn’t even pronounce.
Sometimes she wished she’d known enough to leave well enough alone.
She shrieked as she ran into something and fell over, watching her life flash before her eyes. In her obstinacy, she decided to come back and haunt the Doctor, just because he didn’t have the sense to come get her.
She didn’t expect the thing following her to make a sort of scared snuffling noise and skid into a tree, its hooves trying to stop its eager forward momentum, only to quickly run away in the opposite direction. That probably still meant she was going to die. Whatever was near her now was scary enough to chase away a monster just by its appearance. Her eyes squeezed shut as she began cursing her alien friend for being a moron enough to leave her on an obviously dangerous planet. In the middle of Forest Dreadful, no less. If the woods weren’t named something so appropriate, they should be.
Something like a hand poked her shoulder, and her eyes involuntarily opened. She let out another bloodcurdling scream.
Before her was a man pulled straight of one of the most terrifying horror movies she’d ever watched. He looked human, but one of the most psychotic humans she’d ever seen. Dark red stains dripped over the black shirt, and a knife was in his hand. His eyes were an odd brownish red colour—rust, maybe, or blood—and watched her with a terrifying (and somewhat puzzled) intensity. A creepy smile twisted the corners of his mouth. The all-black outfit did not help his PR, nor did the pale skin and drooping, even wilted middle length obsidian hair. He was barefoot. Only a madman would be barefoot in a place where things wanted to eat you.
He blinked and asked in a plain English accent (which startled her immensely), “What’s your problem, mate?”
Let’s see, the Doctor ran off, leaving me alone and bored on a dangerous alien planet, I haven’t eaten for hours, I haven’t had anyone to boss around, the Doctor promised me a leisure planet, and something tried to kill me. And then I ran into you. This was not a happy Donna. And an unhappy Donna was a deafening, frightened Donna. Even the Doctor knew to disappear or do everything she said when she was in one of these moods. This guy was a stranger and lunatic, and what he didn’t know would shortly deprive him of his hearing for a few hours, if she didn’t manage to rupture his eardrums.
“That thing tried to eat me and next thing I know some psycho with a knife is staring at me as if he wants to carve me up. That’s my problem. Don’t make me get started on your problems, mate.” She then began, loudly, to enumerate each and every one of his flaws, and could tell by his wince that her volume was already doing damage.
She paused, mid-sentence, as the bloke began to laugh. Loudly, and creepily. The sickly graveyard laughter echoed around the forest, sending chills up her spine. It was enough to call up the dead, and other…scarier…things…
Eventually the mad fit of laughter stopped, and the madman stopped, a gleam in his eye. “The knife was for the glom. They’re a bit…vicious…around Jihret Skuila. As for me, yes, I am a bit psychotic, but I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.” One hand reached out and carefully fingered through her hair, as his head turned to the side, like a puzzled dog. He apparently was fascinated by the color of it.
“HANDS OFF, CREEPER-BOY.” Again, he laughed, but it was a muted, slightly less terrifying version of it.
“Sorry. Your hair reminds me of…someone I know. I have a bit of a reputation around here, so the hunter gloms stay away from me, but I wasn’t sure whether they’d try to claim you anyway. They tend to treat newcomers as fair game until taught otherwise.” He sheathed the knife, almost acting bored, behind his back, and she shivered.
“Dead or alive?” she asked, still not trusting the idea that he wouldn’t slit her throat while her back was turned.
“My friends are all alive. I don’t talk to ghosts. That’s not very healthy.” She couldn’t tell whether he was serious or not. “As for the gloms…well, their chief kind of wants me dead. But none of them have been able to carry it out yet.” He grinned, a wolfish smile full of teeth that set her hair to tingling. She wanted to run and keep on running. “Look, who did you come with?”
“What makes you think I came with anyone?” she snarled. Whenever she wanted to smack someone and make a run for it, she just got louder. She almost swallowed her words; not probably the brightest thing to insinuate to a killer, that you’re alone and wouldn’t be missed. But Donna Noble never backed down from a fight.
He smiled again, this time a more normal smile without the teeth, and tried to conceal that one. “You’re obviously not a combatant. Either you had a partner or friend of some type who ran off without you, hence what you were yelling earlier, or it was a whole party and you somehow became separated. Which is it?”
“What’s it to you, vampire man?” she yelled in his face, and he drew back, somehow frightened of her. That gave her no end of pleasure. She was somehow in charge of the situation.
“…I’m not a vampire,” he whispered, somewhat hurt by the insinuation.
She pointed one accusing finger at his shirt. “Then why is there blood on your shirt? I bet you had a midnight snack, didn’t you, vampire man?”
He blinked and looked at his shirt, as if he couldn’t remember what the stains were or how they’d gotten there. Then he began to chuckle in his creepy way again. “That’s strawberry jam.”
“Sure it is!” she shrieked, and he visibly flinched.
“It is,” he stated quietly in the hurt, almost sulky tone of a child about to be sent to its room. “I love strawberry jam.”
For a minute, she thought he was going to crawl away, crying because she’d hurt his feelings. She almost felt a little guilty and sorry for him. Then she remembered that he was the creepy vampire man who’d half scared her to death. Obviously the situation was his fault.
He sighed, wiping some tears away, then asked in a hesitant, honest manner completely different from his earlier creepy actions, “Um, well, if you wanted…I could escort you back to the camp. Then you wouldn’t be in the middle of one of the most dangerous places in the planet alone. And after dawn breaks, we can help you find your friend or party or whatever.” He offered one slightly grubby hand, half expecting her not to take it, and she suddenly did. Best to keep weird, crazy men like this on their toes. Ordinarily she would’ve run off, but she wasn’t half done with vampire man yet. She didn’t intend him to forget that he owed her.
That is, if he wasn’t just going to kill her. If he tried, though, she’d take her chances with the animals, especially if they didn’t make it to a real camp within a few hours.
She was half-surprised there was a camp by the time they stumbled in. She’d been challenged by a leather-clad blonde jerk with a gun, who’d gotten an earful and seemed to enjoy it, until the creepy bloke escorting her stepped in. The blonde seemed disappointed and scowled deeply as…she?...he?...let them into the compound.
Camp? Only by the slimmest of margins. It seemed well-entrenched, as if they’d been there for months, half makeshift and half deeply integrated into the surrounding terrain. Despite a few cautionary words from the vampire man, she determined to march directly to the highest authority and yell at him or her too, for letting a creepy guy run around the woods with a knife. Seriously, that was a good way to give people heart attacks, especially poor lost beleaguered individuals like herself.
When she burst into the command tent, she really wasn’t expecting what she saw.
The first thing she saw was maybe the twin of vampire man. Except his hair was spiky, his eyes had bags under them as if he hadn’t slept for a week, his shirt was white, and he was inhaling sweets like he was the only one who could possibly save the rest of the world from diabetes. He was perched on his toes in a chair and seemed ready to topple any moment. In short, he didn’t seem like a twisted, psychotic murderer like his twin did.
The second thing she saw was the Doctor, leaning over a guy in a striped shirt with hair as red as hers pointing out things on the screen in front of them.
She marched over and slapped him, noticing the redhead was wearing goggles, though she could still see his eyes widen beneath them as he swiveled to look at her.
A dry English voice asked in a calm, smooth monotone, “Beyond, what have I told you about scaring everyone you come across? Or, for that matter, wandering woods whose name translates to something morbid?”
Another creepy laugh met them. “But I make a perfect guide through woods this horrifying!”
The redhead rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I bet everybody who’s scared and lost in the middle of terrifying woods with hostile animals wants to meet you in the dark. Especially if you had your knife out again. Jerkface.”
She looked over her shoulder to see vampire man sulking again. “It’s not like Mello isn’t worse.”
Goggle man didn’t glance up from his computer. “If he kills someone, he’ll just shoot them in the brain. You’ve got issues dude. Doctor, are you sure about this thing?”
