𝓼𝓾𝓶𝓶𝓪𝓻𝔂: Lisa has left utter chaos behind, and Donna sets about to clean it up.
𝔀𝓬: ~ 3.4 k (Chapter 5/?)
𝓽𝓪𝓰𝓼: multi chapter, slowburn-ish, hurt/comfort, eventual smut, car crash, loneliness, winter, canon adjacent, trauma, protective!donna, lesbian!donna is so real to me
A/N: it's too hot and I don't mean the fic sadly
𝒜𝑜𝟥 I header image & beta-ed by @sanguibus <3
One could watch the sun rise and set and it was beautiful, every damn time. That was the dirty thing about this place; it was too good at acting innocent before stabbing you in the back—and Donna could almost fall for it every single time. She’d watched the sunrise from the kitchen window after a long night staying up in case the fire started up again, busying herself with chores; tidying the kitchen, organising the pantry, washing dishes.
The last thing they needed right now was people going rogue and setting things on fire, least of all her own people. It was enough that Kenny, Dale, Jade and Kristy were going out foraging in the middle of an impromptu winter, all because Jim fucking Matthews had gone on one of his stupid excursions and thought he’d struck gold. Finding Tabitha shouldn’t be his priority right now, his damn kids should be. The kids she had to look after now and reassure they wouldn’t be orphans by dawn. This was a bad time to have to worry about a new arrival, one who she’d proudly proclaimed they wouldn’t have to worry about, and it would be easy to blame Lisa for stirring things up, but no, it wasn’t easy. Lisa was her responsibility and she deserved the same grace every new arrival before her had been granted. It wasn’t her fault that she got trapped here at the worst imaginable time. If anything, Donna had failed her, and she’d have to make up for it somehow—not only to avoid another wildfire.
“Can I have—” Victor started, then stopped abruptly and looked around the kitchen. “It’s different.”
Donna hadn’t heard him coming down and startled, but caught herself quickly. She’d spent almost a year hiding in holes in the ground from monsters every night but still jumped when someone walked in on her—the irony.
“Yeah, I, um, spent the night tidying,” she told him, leaving the window and approaching him. “You’re up early. What’re you lookin’ for?”
“My-mh peaches.”
“There’s not much left, Victor… You sure you wanna have them now?”
“I want peaches.”
“Okay, then,” Donna said calmly. Victor was restless, which was never a good omen. He had instincts regarding this place none of them could understand and a lot of them disregarded as the musings of a lunatic, but Victor was not that. “I’ll go get ‘em for you.”
“Okay,” he said expectantly.
Donna went into the pantry and took one of the last four canned peaches out from a box she had hidden for Victor behind other supplies. In the beginning, little else other than those canned peaches could calm his meltdowns until Donna had learned how to talk him down. She missed those times in some twisted kind of way, when it was just day-to-day survival and not whatever this mess was. Trying to get out of here no matter how many lives it would cost. The pretence of normalcy, her little kingdom, the bonds they all shared.
“Here you go,” she said, giving the can to Victor.
“Hm-thanks,” he said, taking the peaches into both hands, holding on to them tightly. He looked at the label for a long time, hesitant.
“Something wrong, sweetheart?”
Victor turned his head from side to side as if stretching his neck to work out a kink, working his lips. “The trees,” he said finally, “they—they’re upset.”
“You mean the fire? You’re worried about the fire?”
How do you approach portraying a character who constantly seems to suppress those emotions while still conveying the weight of what she's going through?
It's a combination of doing the work of what's sitting underneath the conversation — which is sometimes easier to track than others for me. I've watched scenes where, after the fact, I go, "There was something there that could have held a bit more weight." But part of it is that I have an aspect of that in me. Liz tends to carry burdens — I'm not someone who goes, "Oh well." [laughter] If I drop into a burdensome situation, that's something my body shifts into quite readily — unfortunately for me.
Liz Saunders interviewed by Mordecai - Behind The Screens / June 26th, 2026
𝓼𝓾𝓶𝓶𝓪𝓻𝔂: At the diner, Bakta has a surprise for Lisa before she meets Donna for lunch.
𝔀𝓬: ~ 3.3 k (Chapter 4/?)
𝓽𝓪𝓰𝓼: multi chapter, slowburn-ish, hurt/comfort, eventual smut, car crash, loneliness, winter, canon adjacent, trauma, protective!donna, lesbian!donna is so real to me
A/N: forgot to post this chapter here oopsie, now you're getting two for the price of one haha
𝒜𝑜𝟥 I header image & beta-ed by @sanguibus <3
Lisa had woken up to a different jacket laid out for her over the chair in Donna's room this morning, replacing the quilted jacket she'd worn all of yesterday. She'd liked that one, but the jeans jacket was more her style and newer, didn't have as many holes. Donna had left a note for her in the pocket:
Lunch??? — Donna
Today, she wasn't wearing Donna's clothes anymore but the ones she'd picked out with Bakta yesterday, although she'd kept the flannel shirt and wore it over the black turtleneck; it was getting colder by the day and she needed the layers. She skipped breakfast and headed straight for the diner, arriving just as Bakta was opening up.
"You look well-rested," she noted, an appreciative hum to her tone.
Lisa didn't reply as she followed Bakta inside and behind the counter. She'd slept better this time, curled in Donna's bed again. At first she'd tried the room she'd been given on her first night but then she'd heard those things screech again and fled to Donna's room. Even though Donna hadn't been there yet, it put her at ease enough to fall asleep, and so deeply she hadn't even heard her enter.
"Kitchen or coffee? Your pick," Bakta said, hand on her hip.
"Uh, coffee," Lisa said and looked around until she found the coffee machine. She knew how to work those things. They started their tasks in silence—Lisa refilling the machine and Bakta mixing pancake batter. Bakta didn't check on what she was doing, not even when the first townspeople trickled in and she got their orders. She just trusted her.
It's insane to me that everyone isn't discussing Eva Stratt and Sandra Hüller. Did you know they changed the whole marketing strategy because she sang? And that she sang because RyGos learned she has the voice of an angel? And that she was the dictator of the world and also its scapegoat?? And that she's the love of my life???
