Roberto is starting to feel like he should offer Vash his cigarettes. The kid - not really a kid, not with those eyes - needs it. Or booze. Something. People with those eyes need something to sink their teeth into, and it's never good when you can't see what they've picked.
Though, given he's stumbled out of the truck for a midnight pitstop in the dunes and found Vash trying to hide his attempts to pick shrapnel out of his ribs, maybe his chosen vice is obvious.
"That black hides too damn much," he grumbles, like that isn't the point.
-----------------------
so. i've been consumed by trigun. was thinking roberto & vash thoughts this morning.
”there was a band around their necks that appeared to be rubbed raw, like they had been wearing a collar a little too tight for way too long. Who ever they belonged to before definitely didn’t take care of them well, if at all”
Yeah, the boys aren’t exactly in tip top shape when y/n finds them-
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
They receive training for this—every-fucking-body who has a chance of coming in contact with a SOLDIER in a high-stress situation does. Cloud has heard stories about what happens when troopers or scientists or fucking paper pushers walking too close in the hallway get pulled into the mako-enhanced trap of a SOLDIER zoning.
None of the stories end nicely, but that's par for the course in ShinRa gossip.
WAHOO day two! The Doctor needs a little adjustment to daily life but he's having a good time <3 679 words, he/they pronouns for the doctor, and donna having a stressed moment when faced with a space gadget right after waking up! @doctordonnaweek
noble/party
“Doctor.”
The Doctor looks up from Rose’s ten-minute explanation of the pros and cons of flanking, craned over his own shoulder, to properly see the extent of the exasperation showing on Donna’s face. It’s extensive. She’s leaning on the doorframe into the kitchen with her arms crossed. Time to step carefully.
“Yyyyyyyyyyes?”
She uncrosses her arms to let something dangle from her forefinger, one eyebrow raised. They leverage themself off the floor a little to squint at it…
“The…toaster?”
Donna pushes off the doorframe so she can come over and gesture the toaster in his face, almost clipping his nose.
“Does this look,” she asks, “like a toaster? Like something that can contain bread? It’s just –” She waggles it again, clawing the air for words. “It’s just! It’s a little squiggle!”
“Oh, it’s very simple –” he says, reaching up to take it and explain that it’s actually his personal design of a clever little breakfast invention called a toasting wand, but she yanks it out of his reach.
“Simple! I’ll tell you what’s simple! Leaving my bloody toaster alone on the morning that I have to get the house ready for a birthday party!”
Ah, this is not about the wonderful new updated toaster he came up with (it toasts both sides to perfection and adds the toppings in one swipe!), it’s another Doing Things When Things Are Happening. The Doctor’s life has almost always been doing things when things are happening, usually in layers deeper than Earth’s fossil record, but they’re trying to slow down for the sake of this “living life one day at a time” business and to avoid Donna strangling them with their own necktie.
“You know I’ve been tearing my hair out about where to put all of Grandad’s mates with the weather like it is!” Donna starts, and he can tell she’s just winding up. “I was up half the night wondering if I should just bung them all into the TARDIS, or put them in the attic, and you certainly haven’t been helpful with those decorations that almost buried the garden.”
The Doctor pops up to get his feet underneath himself, ruffles Rose’s hair in vengeance for her laughing at his plight, and hops upright.
“I just wanted to get my coffee and have my toast while I’m thinking where we’re gonna find space for everyone to eat so the wheelchairs can still get around, and you know what I find when I get to the kitchen? No toaster! Just this…this…gadget!”
Almost losing an eye to Donna’s gesturing – he should maybe add a few extra safety features, he wasn’t expecting it to be pointed at people – gives him the chance to fold his hands around hers. She’s mutinous, but lets them take the toasting wand. The wand goes in their pocket, their hands on Donna’s shoulders. Oh, she’s all kinds of tense.
“Donna,” he says, taking off his glasses to properly look her in the eye, “I’m sorry I changed the kitchen around when you’re so busy. I’ve already made coffee and everything. Let me make you a cup, ey?”
Under their hands, Donna softens, then slumps, leaning forward until her forehead bumps their chest. He folds her up in a hug, and they both heave a big sigh.
“Cold milk?” he asks.
“Yeah,” she mumbles into his collar. “Sorry.”
“Mm. And maybe I can rig something up for space?”
She chuckles. “What, are you gonna make my sitting room bigger on the inside?”
He leans back, looking down his nose at her cheeky grin.
“Are you doubting my abilities?” he demands.
Donna tucks herself under their arm, bumping hips, all warm life and laughter with her hair not yet done. The kitchen door is a little too narrow, but they manage to squeeze through it together.
“Just so long as you leave us all here, on Earth, and you leave my kitchen alone.”
“What? But you’ve been complaining about not having enough freezer space! I was gonna fix it.”
it's donna loving her husband AND her best friend hours. also fungus amongus.
@doctordonnaweek
Psychic massage feels mostly like a massage, but also a little bit like getting new glasses, or recovering from a cold. Knots of worry and unconscious ruts of thought have been worked out, but she also feels like her own brain is clear and crisp and colorful in a way she hadn’t known she was missing. She and The Doctor had ended up in the lounge chairs bordering a pool with elaborate fish towers showing off even more elaborate fish, like an aquatic hamster maze, and she’d been following one bright blue croissant-shaped fellow with an unhurried enjoyment she’s rarely experienced before. She’s not tired. She’s not worrying. She’s not impatient or swatting away guilt and insecurity. She just is, here with the fish and her best friend.
Said best friend had fallen into their own lounger like a dropped handful of sticks and has been lying boneless ever since. Donna is feeling a bit jelly-ish herself, if less like she’d been luxuriously flattened by a slow and thorough rolling pin, but he might be genuinely dozing. Or the trance/meditating thing he’d started around two months after moving in, something that had to do with Time Lord mental upkeep he’d obviously been neglecting for centuries. She’s never seen them do either in public before, nor even in private when they were first traveling together, and she savors the slow delight of it like a bed of coals, softly glowing.
Croissant-fish has done three lazy laps of the upper left corner of the maze and shifted completely into a smoothed, pale blue sickle when Shaun finds them. He’s rarely tense, except when trying to work self-checkout machines, but now he’s properly glowing. He’s beautiful, wearing a jumper she got him on his last birthday and at ease walking on an alien planet like they’ve encountered each other at the park. Noticing the Doctor makes him chuckle. Once he’s reached them, he brushes the top of the Doctor’s hair with his knuckles and leans down to give her a kiss.
“Hello, lovely,” she says once they’ve parted.
“Hello gorgeous,” he returns, sitting beside her and taking her hand.
Undignified mouth smacking on her right announces that the Doctor is stirring. He’s opted for less gelled heights in his recent hairstyles, but his hair is still spikey enough he looks like a baby bird in an awkward feather stage as he blinks, slow and a little out of sync, fighting to wake.
“Hello, sweetheart,” Shaun greets them, voice full of mirth.
The Doctor makes noises that may or may not contain words. Donna chuckles at him and flexes her hand in Shaun’s, admiring the strength of his fingers and the subtle shimmer on her nail polish.
“You have fun with your new mates?” she asks.
Shaun swings his legs onto the lounger, lies across her lap, and props his head up with his free hand on her other side. His jumper is remarkably snuggly. She pets it.
“Sure did,” he says. “They started having issues with atmospheric containment in the nitrogen sections, but it turns out Sorrister works for one of the companies that maintains the filtration system and they got it fixed right up.”
The Doctor, who’s been blearily studying Shaun’s position, decides he wants to join them. He peels himself off his lounger, one limb at a time, flops onto Donna’s, and arranges himself across her shins, cuddled right up against Shaun, with a sigh. Her legs are going to fall asleep quickly, but for now it’s like having a lap full of enormous cats.
They sit quietly for a moment before the Doctor mumbles, “This place has some of the best biome support infrastructure ever devised, I’m surprised they had atmospheric containment problems.”
“So was Sorrister!” Shaun says, “but it turns out they were having a bit of a fungal problem, and it got into the filters.”
“Some fungus,” Donna said, watching the fish again.
Shaun hums agreeingly. “Big teeth.”
She’s pretty sure the croissant fish is now doing a little dance with one of the two-headed shrimp things.
She blinks
The Doctor pops up, frowning and looking more awake.
“Teeth?” they ask.
“Oh yeah, big as anything,” Shaun confirms. “Ko Ta N knew a bit about Ramican containment, though, so we fiddled a little something up and took care of it.”
The Doctor is now fully awake. Shaun is quite pleased with himself, so Donna is mostly curious about what kind of fungus needs teeth and what for.
“By ‘Ramican,’” the Doctor says, with increasing urgency, “do you mean Ramicandelaberaceae, the fungal species that releases hyper-aggressive defensive spores when exposed to oxygen?”
“Yep! Some copper-sulfur spray and ultraviolet light got ‘em to calm down, and Ko Ta N got a job out of it. Did you know she used to have a nursery? Said she’d get us some cuttings.”
Donna is watching the one-alien show of the Doctor realizing someone else did their thing while they were doing the psychic equivalent of sunbathing on the beach. It’s entertaining. His eyebrows are even more expressive now than they used to be.
“We should invite her and her family to dinner,” she says.
Shaun hums. “She has something like six hundred and thirty kids,” he says. “But most of them are about the size of rice grains, so I bet we could work that out.”
“You fought an exposed colony of Ramicandelaberaceae with farming techniques and it worked?”
“It helps to have friends who work in different fields, Doctor,” Shaun says.
Donna covers her mouth to muffle her laughter.
The Doctor insists on seeing the evidence with their own eyes. The walk to the gardens bordering the nitrogen quarter is lovely, even with the Doctor vibrating with the urge to run ahead from his tether between them. The psychic massage apparently helped along the latent telepathic sense Donna suspects has been slowly strengthening in her mind over time. Between their clasped hands, she’s pretty sure she can feel his urgency bubbling over like a baking soda volcano.
Shaun guides them to the slightly scorched and stinky corner where the grand battle took place. The Doctor shoots off, scanning everything and talking to everyone. Shaun finds his new friends again and learns that Sorrister has gotten a raise, and Donna secures a promise from Ko Ta N to bring her family over for mushroom skewers. Rose arrives with her own group of new friends, and the Doctor adds urgent commentary to Shaun’s recounting of events.
Donna confirms the Doctor was meditating at the spa once they get back to the TARDIS, where they discover the center console has been ringed by purple cushioned benches overflowing with pillows. After everyone exclaiming over the TARDIS’s greeting of an enthusiastic lightshow and mechanical twittering, apparently because she also enjoyed the spa, Donna shoos him away from the controls and into the tide of pillows. He forges in, a child in a ball pit, and spends the entire ride home asleep on his belly, drooling and twitching like a dreaming dog. Rose entertains herself by constructing a pillow fort over their body.
HAHAAAAA LOOK WHAT I FINISHED FOR DOCTORDONNA WEEK. kind of. i had a whole idea and when i sat down to write it the words didn't want to word so instead there is a SCRIPT! Or a really advanced outline! I want to actually write the fic and fill in the gaps, lol, but until the week is over please accept this placeholder. For now, please enjoy:
DoctorDonna Week 2023, Day 1:
FIRE/GLOW
@doctordonnaweek
1,711 words, full of ALL CAPS as my heart led me and SPOILERS FOR THE DOCTOR WHO 60TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIALS STARTING IN THE FIRST SENTENCE
THE DOCTOR collapses after the events of The Giggle (bi-regeneration sickness, mumble mumble), people are very worried, Doctor-Donna snuggles and the beginning of discussing the rest of their lives together.
INT: WILF’S spare bedroom, night. THE DOCTOR is lying in the full-sized bed under a hideous quilt that may have come from the bottom of TARDIS storage or Sylvia’s linen closet. His SHOES – obviously borrowed from somebody – , COAT, and OTHER ASSORTED are draped over an armoir. He’s wearing his undershirt and is resting uneasily, sweating with a subtle golden sheen to his skin. DONNA enters, juggling a thermometer, cup of tea, and crazy space gadget.
DONNA, to a figure outside of the door
“No, I’ve got him. Really, go stay with Rose. Are you sure I shouldn’t -”
SHAUN, just a shadow in the hall behind the cracked door
“Absolutely. She’s putting on a brave face, but she’s tough. I’ll put on the telly and we can have a cuddle.”
DONNA smiles. She loves this man so.
“Yeah?”
SHAUN
“Yeah, you know she’s worried about him too.”
DONNA leans back out of the door and kisses SHAUN, slowly. It’s a moment of relief, savoring a return to normal with new appreciation for things she already loved more than she thought she could stand. They bump foreheads and smile, looking into each others’ eyes.
DONNA
“I love you.”
SHAUN
“I love you too. Now take care of your spaceman and give us a shout if you need anything.”
DONNA laughs and pecks him on the lips one more time before shutting the door.
~AUTH NOTE: DONNA GETTING SETTLED IN, SHOWING HOW BADLY OFF THE DOCTOR IS~
She runs her hand over the DOCTOR’S forehead the way she’s learned to do as a mother, but forgets about the psychic contact points. When her fingertips brush them, both she and the DOCTOR jolt. The DOCTOR resettles, facing DONNA. DONNA sits back with an expression of focus and then realization.
DONNA, as though recalling a long-buried memory
“Tannins.”
DONNA looks down at her cup of tea. She puts it on the bedside table and starts rearranging, finding another pillow or two and stacking them at the head of the bed before attempting to wrangle THE DOCTOR into sitting more upright. He’s floppy and uncooperative and she scolds him as she’s trying to get her arm behind his shoulders. She presses him forward and he falls so that he’s folded in half, nose on his knees. DONNA pauses in rearranging the pillows, looking at him.
DONNA
“How are you that bendy at your age?”
It occurs to her that, rather than folding comfortably, he may have torn something from being unable to support himself. She rushes to get the pillows in place and resettles him more gently. He exhales a little rush of gold but doesn’t otherwise react.
DONNA, while picking up the tea like a surgical instrument
“Okay, let’s give this a try.”
DONNA gingerly wafts the teacup under THE DOCTOR’S nose like smelling salts. When he doesn’t react, she wafts it more aggressively. She studies him closely after every pass. On the third pass, she accidentally bumps it against his chin and splashes a little.
DONNA
“Oh, shit! Sorry, sorry.”
She dabs the spill off his chin. THE DOCTOR gasps a big breath, opening his eyes wide, and DONNA startles badly.
DONNA
“SHIT!”
THE DOCTOR, bleary
“Issat tea?”
DONNA, looking down at the tea she forgot she was holding
“Yes! Yes it is, here, have a sip. Is it okay with milk?”
THE DOCTOR, being force-fed tea a little too quickly
*affirmative hum*
DONNA, pulling back
“Is that enough?”
THE DOCTOR is still swallowing his last sip, so he makes grabby hands for the mug. DONNA hands it over and sits back in her seat, wringing her hands.
THE DOCTOR, in between sips
“What, no honey?”
DONNA
“No, it’s late. Trying to calm down, aren’t we?”
THE DOCTOR finishes the mug in a long swallow and clumsily wipes his mouth with his shirtsleeve. DONNA looks disgusted but unsurprised.
THE DOCTOR
“So you made black tea?”
DONNA looks at him with her eyebrows raised, unimpressed.
DONNA
“It’s got you up, hasn’t it?”
THE DOCTOR
“Yeah, fair enough. Oooh –”
THE DOCTOR winces, falling back onto his pillows. DONNA sits forward in alarm and takes the teacup.
DONNA
“What? What is it?”
THE DOCTOR makes a face and then belches up a plume of regeneration energy. DONNA jerks backwards, trying to avoid it. It follows her, curling slowly like water but definitely in her direction. She swats at it like a fly and it clings to her fingertips.
AUTH NOTE: SOMEHOW THEY GET TO THE PART THAT I ACTUALLY WANTED TO WRITE
DONNA looks down, smiling tightly, reluctant or not ready to talk about the difficult subject of THE DOCTOR leaving her without her memories for fifteen years. He looks at her, endlessly old and endlessly regretful.
THE DOCTOR
“I’m sorry.”
DONNA, shaking her head as if to brush it off and still smiling
“No.”
THE DOCTOR
“No, really, I’m so -”
DONNA leans forward jerkily. She’s restraining huge, complicated emotions behind a smile that’s wavering a little bit. She raises her hands, controls them, and folds them firmly and decisively together on the bedspread. THE DOCTOR watches her. She takes a deep, shaky breath and sighs it out.
DONNA
“I keep thinking -”
She bites down on the rest of her sentence, looking away and sniffing. Her body language and expression are tight. She’s barely holding tears at bay. THE DOCTOR is also tearing up.
DONNA
“No.”
DONNA stands up and flips the covers off THE DOCTOR. He’s confused, but moves with her as she focuses hard on pushing him over on the bed, pulling up the covers, and pushing the pillows onto the floor. She toes off her shoes and climbs into the bed. She arranges them to her satisfaction, so that she has his head tucked under her chin and he can’t see her face. Under the thin blanket, they’re obviously tangled together like best friends at a sleepover. THE DOCTOR noses closer, hungry for contact.
DONNA, slowly
“I thought I was broken...for fifteen years.”
THE DOCTOR’s expression crumbles, pained. DONNA is staring at the SONIC SCREWDRIVER in the pile of stuff on the dresser, steadier now.
DONNA
“Mum was being nicer, and Grandad just – he looked at me in this way I didn’t understand. He’s always been so encouraging, we’ve always shared so much, and suddenly... I kept going. I met Shaun. There was,” she starts to tear up again, “so much good, he’s so good, and then we had Rose and we were so happy, I was so happy, but there was always this great...big...hole right through the middle of it. It felt...like I was missing someone so important, and I couldn’t tell if it was me or my best friend or – or both.”
She finally closes her eyes and lets the tears fall. Then her expression relaxes. There’s some relief in saying it. She squeezes THE DOCTOR closer and kisses him on the top of the head. He sniffles.
DONNA
“I’m not really angry about that yet, we’ve been so busy, but I will be. I’m gonna hold this over your head forever, I’m going to squeeze you for every-every drop of guilt shopping and chocolates I can get.”
They both chuckle wetly and sniffle. DONNA sobers.
DONNA
“I keep thinking, what if it was Rose or Shaun? What if I finally had someone I loved and...and I had to make that kind of choice? I don’t have all the memories but I can remember feeling how lonely you’ve been, how much you’ve been hurt. I don’t know what I would have done, if I was hurting that way.”
She pauses. Her expression firms.
DONNA
“But I would have come back. Even if I had to leave them, I would have come back. I would have kept trying to help.”
THE DOCTOR
“You’ve always been stronger than me.”
DONNA pulls back and they look at each other. THE DOCTOR’S expression is dull, defeated, DONNA’S angry. After a moment, DONNA sighs. Closing her eyes, she presses their foreheads together. THE DOCTOR softens, still all pain underneath, but DONNA is calmer.
DONNA
“No more excuses for you. I’m putting you in feelings boot camp. You’re gonna wake up and do two hundred happy push-ups tomorrow. It’s a big job, but I’m going to whip you into shape. You’re gonna be miserable. I’m going to make you the biggest emotional bodybuilder in this town.”
THE DOCTOR, smiling
“You promise?”
DONNA
“Yeah, I do. There’s no escape for you now.”
She tweaks his nose. He wrinkles it and grins his big old grin.
DONNA
“Glad we got that settled. Now! Sleep time.”
THE DOCTOR
“But-”
DONNA shushes him and budges them both down the bed so that they’re lying comfortably. THE DOCTOR protests, citing Time Lord sleeping habits that DONNA shoots down with a snort, but he lets her bully him around.
THE DOCTOR
“But Shaun -”
DONNA
“You wanna keep trying to tell me things about my own husband or do you wanna enjoy this while it lasts?”
THE DOCTOR settles in. They both relax, still tangled together but less likely to wake up with cricks in their necks and hands fallen asleep.
THE DOCTOR
“Alright, don’t blame me if you get weird in the morning.”
DONNA
“You have no idea how much weird I can handle. Normal life has weird you can’t even imagine.”
THE DOCTOR
“I look forward to learning about it.”
DONNA
“I know you don’t snore, but I remember that camping trip in the Diamond Mountains. No wiggling.”
THE DOCTOR
“And I remember the kicking.”
DONNA
“Shush. Sleep time.”
<THE END>
CODA: THE DOCTOR sits on WILF’S couch, sick with bi-regeneration/”my 11th-dimensional self got too close to the not-things from the end of the universe” flu, doped on Gallifreyan cold medication and an accidental ginger-ale someone who didn’t know about Gallifreyan biology gave them. They’re swaddled like a recalcitrant cat at the vet because they keep falling over when they try to get up. DONNA is filming them acting like they just got out of wisdom tooth surgery and choking on laughter.
for free day you get...a sample of the prose draft of the prompt from day one!
and also a VERY BIG thank you to @doctordonnaweek for arranging such a fun event!! everybody's fic and art was FANTASTIC. i had a wonderful time, sparked oodles of ideas, and have been able to write out some of my feelings from the specials. thanks for a great and very satisfying week!
Shaun follows her down the hall to Wilf’s spare room, one hand on her hip and the other holding the second cup of tea. Sylvia and Rose and Grandad are in the sitting room, talking again about the Meep and how long it’ll take for UNIT to fix up the house and whether Donna’s new job will mean she’s fighting more aliens. It had better not. Saving people is all well and good, but Donna hasn’t been able to take a shower yet and her clothes still smell like the chemically stale air of the ship at the end of the universe.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to sit with you? You’ve had a long couple of days,” Shaun asks.
Donna sort of sighs, sort of laughs. She’s not even mentioned how he nearly had barbecued wife, too busy explaining why everyone went mad and then too busy with the Doctor collapsing on Grandad’s front step.
“You have no idea,” she says, pausing at the door. She peeks around it; the Doctor is still lying in bed, flat on his back, glossy with sweat. “No, I’ve got him. Except, are you sure-”
Shaun takes her hand, kisses her knuckles. “Absolutely. We’re here, we’re safe. There’s nothing to worry about except your friend feeling better.”
* crawls in * okay i know wednesday was yesterday but today all i've got is wips......
@doctordonnaweek
ood/odd
"So with a combination of these little friends and the readings I triangulated with the sonic screwdriver and my own contact with the Ood brain, I can construct - well, I say construct, it's a little bit of growing, a little asking, not too much construction in the end - I can create a sort of interim node for any Ood who need some help on the way back to the Ood Sphere. Or who want to stay out there, traveling! There's a whole big universe out there, if they have one of this with 'em, they can go wherever they want with all the support they need. Sort of like the TARDIS does for me!"
Donna is busy watching the hive, trying to recall the name of the guy who did all those splotchy pages the psychologists use on TV. She's tuned out the Doctor's whittering until he remembers she's a part of the conversation instead of a well-dressed stump. Her ears are well-trained, though, and perk up all on their own when they hear something juicy. Usually, it doesn't make beautiful space fruit sour in her mouth.
"Like the TARDIS does for you?" she repeats.
memory/change
"So where does the psychic part of the psychic spa happen?" Donna asks.
The Doctor looks at her, then around at the garden.
"This is a psychic spa, Donna," he says.
"Yeah?"
He gestures. Not towards anything she can tell, he just gestures, generally.
"Psychic spa."
"I heard you the first seventy-three times you've explained it to us since you got too excited and shorted out the pamph-wait."
Donna stops, pivoting on her heels and spinning him around so that they're facing each other.
"Doctor," she says, holding them firmly by the elbows, "did you take us. And our family. To a spa which is a living, psychic creature?"
