Burning Curiosity

[preserved_ginger]

Title: Burning Curiosity
Character(s): Donna Noble
Pairing(s): implied Doctor/Rose
Rating: PG
Beta: The ever-faithful requialexa
Warnings/Spoilers: Refers to events of The Runaway Bride, and the new companion for Season Four.
A/N: A quadruple-drabble based on the premise that Donna would (naturally) be wanting to find out what had happened to Rose. I get the feeling that the Doctor might tell her, anyway, because he feels that in her he'd get a sympathetic ear.
Summary: There’s one question she’s burning to ask him.

You’ve been travelling with the Doctor for quite some time - although even you don’t know exactly how long (as trying to count the passing of time in a ship whose captain doesn’t seem to know what the word “sleep” is (and certainly doesn’t appear to need much, if any, himself) is practically impossible; you’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve been forced out of bed at an unearthly hour simply because he’s awake and bored and has to find something to do right now) - but you still haven’t managed to pluck up the courage to ask the question that’s been on the tip of your tongue since you first stepped aboard the TARDIS.  (You’re not counting that time in your wedding dress as your “first time aboard”; neither of you had wanted you to be there at the time.)

What happened to her?  What happened to Rose?  What happened to her that made him so very damaged, so obviously a completely broken man, that first-last time you met him?

You try to forget about it, as to ask him will only make him more melancholy than he is already (and you’ve noticed how sombre he can often be these days, you suspect that that’s when he’s thinking of her most).  You can’t stop wondering about it, though, and it’s not as if he hasn’t answered every other question (and there have been many of those) with remarkably good grace, for him, so maybe …

But then you remember the heart-broken man with the tear-filled voice who told you that his friend’s name (and you’d put your mortgage, if you had one, on her being more to him than just a “friend”) was Rose, and for a little while you reconsider.

For a while you manage to subdue your curiosity, but of course it doesn’t last and again you find yourself pondering what could have happened to Rose, to the woman he can’t seem to shut up about. You give yourself a mental shake and tell yourself to get a grip; the worst that could possibly happen is that he’ll take you straight home and you’ll never see him again.  You survived that the last time he did that, way back last Christmas, and you’ll survive it again if need be.  So, you say to yourself, you should stop being a coward, and just ask.

“Doctor …?”