Title: A Swirling of the Dust
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Donna
Words: 3,197
Summary: 3,000 years after its devastation, the Doctor returns to a planet he failed to save.

Doctor Who:
A Swirling of the Dust

The Doctor stepped out onto the pale ochre of the dusty ground. Around him, the landscape rushed away in jagged layers, as though he were the origin of it all. The blank sky was dim, a mournful shade of sepia that tainted the sunlight an eerie brown-orange. The air was entirely still. Immediately ahead, the rock fell away into a valley so vast the other side was obscured by the curve of the horizon.

He looked down into it, unfazed by the sheer drop a mere six inches from his toes. The height gave him a sense of standing apart from this world, from its history and all that had gone before. For when he looked at the deep canyon, its city still smoking after three thousand years, he remembered his last visit, and the blazing fires that had burned then, fresh and strong.

He contemplated going back inside the TARDIS before Donna emerged so that he could take them elsewhere. He almost feared her reaction in seeing this place: for hadn't she, more boldly than any companion he had travelled with before, chastised him for his failures? And yet, he thought, she had prevented so many more. He thought of Pompeii. She'd had more courage than him that day.

He tried to think what would have happened if Donna hadn't been there, if he'd had to make the decision and take the responsibility on himself. He couldn't do it. He wondered if he had become more reliant upon his fellow travellers over the years, or if he always had been so in need of them.

As he looked out upon the desolation below, he recalled each one of his previous companions by name and by face, intending no particular order but somehow starting with Martha and ending with Susan. He blinked. Susan, his granddaughter: young, bright, beautiful Susan, without whom they could never have escaped this planet's desolation in the first place.

He missed her now, deeply. His flesh and blood, his prodigy, gone. He sighed her name. He was about to turn back when he heard Donna's voice as she stepped out of the TARDIS.

"Susan?" she asked. "Blimey, that's a new one."

The Doctor instantly thrust his arm out to stop her walking too far forward, over the edge of the cliff. She stopped, almost overbalanced, grabbed onto his shoulder for support and took a step back.

"Well you could've warned…" she began, but her voice trailed off before she could complete the sentence. Her eyes had seen the settlement far, far below, and she was silenced by the sight of it.

He looked at her. Donna's face had become solemn, and without turning away from the scene she asked: "What happened?"

"Everything, all at once," the Doctor murmured. "There was no way to stop it."

She shifted her gaze to him. He looked back for a moment, then away.

A sudden wind started up, throwing yellow specks of dust in their faces. Donna spluttered and tried to cover her eyes, turning her back on the vicious blasts of air. A moment later, the wind stopped as abruptly as it had begun, but there remained a thick haze in the air, obstructing their view. Donna squinted at the Doctor, about to ask why he had brought them to such a tragic, desolate place – but, to her astonishment, she saw that he was grinning.

"Wind!" he said. And as soon as the word was out of his mouth, he was off: running along the edge of the cliff, following it round to a place where a path began to slope downwards along the wall of the canyon.

"What's so great about wind?" Donna called after him. With an outward sigh and an inward thrill, she began to follow.

She caught up with him half way down the path, where he'd had to slow because of the way it narrowed. They scrambled over piles of fallen rocks, Donna asking question after question, the Doctor too excited to answer any of them. They had covered the mile-and-a-half descent in just less than half an hour, and as soon as they reached the bottom Donna grabbed the Doctor by the coat.

"Will you please tell me what's going on?"

"Wind!" he said again. She frowned at him and folded her arms. He couldn't help but laugh at how severe she looked. Nevertheless he explained: "Three thousand years ago, the inhabitants of this colony were wiped out. The attack came at an elemental level, completely devastating, completely unstoppable. I did my best to stop the atomic breakdown but I couldn't do it in time. At least, that's how it seemed. Now, though… now…" He laughed again, a sound-burst of pure delight.

Despite her bewilderment, Donna couldn't help but smile with him. "What? What is it?"

"Elements, Donna!" the Doctor enthused. He looked at her expectantly.

There was a long pause. Finally, Donna spoke. "Hold on," she said, slowly, "are you telling me that the wind is… people?"

As she said it, a breeze gusted across their faces. Donna jumped; the Doctor grinned before correcting her. "More specifically, the airborne subspecies of the element-dwelling Alazans. They survived, Donna! And there are enough of them to change the direction of the wind!"

Donna paused to look around her – as though expecting to see these new aliens popping up out of thin air – then turned back to the Doctor, wide-eyed. "Alazans," she repeated.

"Yep," replied the Doctor cheerfully.

"In the air."

"Oh, yes."

"The same air that we're breathing."

The Doctor's face fell a fraction. Donna continued, "We're breathing people."

"Yes, well, not people like you're thinking of. No humans here, Donna: Alazans exist in atomic form, becoming elemental as the next stage of their development. They must have been floating around as atoms for three thousand years… slowly being drawn to each other. There's finally enough of them in one place to make wind! And I thought they'd been obliterated. Ha! Shows what I know, eh, Donna? …Donna?"

He looked around. Donna had evidently wandered off during his excited explanation, and was now approaching a round hut-like abode, the roof of which was roughly shoulder-level. It stood a little apart from the rest of the settlement, and didn't appear to be giving off any smoke, save for a few wisps rising in waves towards the sky.

The Doctor moved to stand next to her, dwarfing the small building with his height.

"It's still intact," she observed, perplexed. "I thought you said everything was destroyed three thousand years ago? And what's this smoke stuff? Things don't keep smoking after three thousand years."

"It's not smoke," the Doctor replied, on the move again, circling the hut. "And you're right: not everything was destroyed. Just living matter. This vapour is a bi-product of the reaction that took place when the Alazans were destroyed."

Donna, who had been trying to determine the source of the gas, took a startled step back.

"It's not dangerous," he assured her. "Like I said, just a bi-product. It's taken three thousand years to dissipate, and it's still not completely gone. It might seem colourless down here, but just look at the sky…"

He gestured upwards. Donna looked and saw the blank, orange-brown canvas stretching above them.

"Will it stay that colour?"

"For a while. Eventually the gas will escape through the planet's atmosphere."

"How long will that take?"

"Oh, I don't know… another few centuries? If we'd landed here two thousand years ago, we'd have hardly seen sunlight at all."

Donna frowned, still thinking, turning her gaze back down to the structure in front of them. "If they're weird atomic elemental things, why do they have huts?"

"Now, now – no need to be rude," the Doctor chastised, clearly amused. He explained: "When enough individual atoms come together, they make an elemental life form. When enough elemental life forms come together, they take on a kind of amalgamated body. It's their mature state. They are a truly communal race."

"What, so this is their commune?" Donna replied. "I always knew there was something strange about people who live in communes." She flashed a mischievous grin, which the Doctor returned.

"Come on," he dared, and darted off again, in amongst the houses towards the middle of the settlement. By the time Donna caught up, he was studying the exterior of the centremost hut. It was larger than all the other buildings she could see, and its distinctly square design marked it out from the others, all of which were round in shape. He produced his sonic screwdriver and started to wave it about, scanning.

"Hold on, I haven't asked all my questions yet," Donna complained. "One of these days I'm going to tie you to a chair and then you'll have to explain things properly. Back home, I was thinking of joining a gym. I should've done it, just to keep up with you!"

She paused, affronted for a moment that the Doctor clearly wasn't listening. Then her gaze happened upon the ground at their feet and she said,

"What's that?"

"What?" asked the Doctor, still paying close attention to his screwdriver's blips and whirs.

"That – that hole, there."

"Hole?"

The Doctor finally turned to face her; Donna promptly pointed to a small pit just inside the entrance of the squarish hut. It appeared to have previously housed something conical, as the hole tapered towards the bottom; but whatever had contained, it had been quite small. At its widest point the hole was comparable to the Doctor's hand span in size. The Doctor crouched down to inspect the oddity, flicking his screwdriver on and off, jabbing at the soil.

"There was something here," he said.

"What sort of something?" Donna asked, unsure of how to interpret the seriousness in his voice. He didn't answer immediately, only stood up and looked towards the top of the cliffs. Suddenly, his frown vanished.

"I think it's homed in on the TARDIS," he grinned. His face was ablaze with delight. "We arrived, it activated, magnetised and – whoosh – straight towards the nearest power source!" He demonstrated the idea by skimming his hand through the air, directing the gesture towards the top of the steep valley walls. "It must've flown right over our heads."

"Activated?" Donna repeated. "Some kind of machine got buried here?"

"Looks like it," the Doctor beamed.

"If you're going to make us trek all the way back up there just to find it…"

But the Doctor, still smiling, waved his sonic screwdriver at her. "No need." Quickly he adjusted the setting and thrust it whirring in the general direction of the TARDIS.

For a good sixty seconds or so, nothing happened. Donna turned her attention from the sky back to the Doctor, folding her arms impatiently. The Doctor took no notice. The prospect of making contact with an alien life form, albeit mechanical, always excited him; and to be able to find any living thing on this planet was something he'd previously thought impossible.

Finally, a dot appeared on the otherwise featureless sky, curving over the cliffs. The rate of its descent was alarming. In just a few seconds it was almost upon them with no sign of slowing; it was zooming towards them, tumbling over itself, flashing orange-tinted sunlight off silver; the Doctor and Donna ducked –

It stopped dead, hovering above the Doctor, who still held the sonic screwdriver in his hand. The Doctor instantly straightened up to inspect it, thrusting on his glasses. A little more cautiously, Donna followed suit.

The miniature cone – which had been so silent in its approach it had not even made the wind whistle – abruptly bleeped.

"Hello," said the Doctor cheerfully. "Get left behind, did you?"

Perhaps it was the sound of his voice, or the vibration of it through the air, or the little cone's sensory perceptors receiving for the first time in three thousand years – whatever the reason, the cone started spinning this way and that in mid-air, looking for all the world as though it might be excited.

"Er," said Donna. "And this would be... what? A pet robot?"

The Doctor looked at her, grinned again. Donna stared at him.

"You mean it is a pet robot?"

"Well, in a manner of speaking. Sort of a sheepdog, I suppose. Not that it belonged to the Alazans, of course."

"No? Who did it belong to?"

The Doctor's expression darkened a little. "The Alazans knew the attack was coming. When threatened, they can regress back to their elemental stage – because you can't kill wind. This little thing…" He indicated the shining cone. "…as dinky as it may be, is designed to round up all the Alazan atoms into a containment field, where the elemental reactant can be administered."

Donna shivered and regarded the cone with a distinct air of suspicion. The Doctor seemed to shrug off his dark, disapproving manner as it tumbled over itself in yet another display.

"That's what it's programmed to do," he explained matter-of-factly. "It has no conscience, no concept of what it's doing or the consequences of doing it. It just follows its command structures. Simple."

"But it was used to…"

"Used," the Doctor agreed, emphasising the word. "It didn't do it of its own will. It's not responsible."

"You've got to admire the technology, I suppose," remarked Donna grudgingly. "I wish my mobile phone could last three thousand years in the ground. I'm surprised it still works."

He stared at her for a moment, making her fall silent. In the next instant his gaze was fixed on the cone, intense now, blazing, hardly daring to believe the answer could be quite so blindingly obvious.

"Doctor?" asked Donna, peering at him uncertainly.

"Donna!" he cried, "Donna! You've done it!"

She raised her eyebrows at him. He added: "It still works."

"But that thing was used to reduce the Alazans back to atoms!" Donna protested. "How is the fact that it works a good thing?"

"Oh, Donna, Donna! What if it could be redeemed?"

They gazed intently at each other for a few moments as Donna tried hard to put the pieces together. She imagined the cone doing its task, locating the stray Alazan atoms and driving them back towards the settlement… herding them all into one place…

"No," she said, eyes suddenly alight to match the flame burning behind his. Her smile grew almost cautiously, because like him she was finding it difficult to believe something could be quite so simple. "Is it really that easy?"

"Nope," the Doctor told her cheerfully, "it's even easier."

Donna grinned despite his cryptic remark, too caught up in his excitement to question what he meant, except to say: "What are you doing to do?"

"I, Donna Noble – I am going to bring the Alazans back – enough of them to start becoming real physical forms. And to do it they won't be rounded up like sheep."

He turned back to the hovering cone, raising his sonic screwdriver to the metal skin and lighting up the circuits beneath. In the dim, veiled light, Donna could see them quite clearly.

"The cone works by generating a field that repels the Alazan particles," he said, working away at the alien circuits. "It's designed to scatter them into enough of a frenzy that, in rounding them up, the cone also ensures that they're too active to bind themselves together in physical form… Ah! Done!" He seized her hand. "Quick! To the top of the cliff!"

She ran with him without question, enjoying the sensation of adrenaline coursing through her bloodstream, the sheer animal pleasure of having to run. Wind gusted up around them as they left the settlement, swirling past them towards the huts and the tiny silver cone at the very centre. Dust plumed around their heels and was dashed against their clothes, so that when they had finally reached a safe distance they were covered in dry, yellow-orange soil.

They stopped to look back. Half way up the cliff path, they could now see what was happening. A great funnel was forming in the centre of the settlement, and out of it – Donna could hardly believe her eyes – creatures were emerging.

She was too far away to truly describe them, and she got a sense that even if she had been face-to-face with one she wouldn't have been able to process it. They were just too alien. But the knowledge that they had made this possible, recovered something lost, filled her with a wholly profound feeling, one that could never be articulated.

They watched the tornado gradually decreased to a swirling of the dust, until there was nothing but clearly defined Alazans. When she finally found her voice, she spoke quietly, reverently. "So the cone actually attracted the Alazans to it."

"Yep." The Doctor was also smiling still. "Just a simple matter of reversing the polarity…"

He, too, sounded deeply satisfied. They continued to observe the Alazans interacting with one another, exploring their environment once again. Then, finally, the Doctor turned and continued up the steep slope. Reluctant though she was to lose that indefinable feeling, Donna followed.

They walked in silence until they reached the TARDIS. The vibrant blue of the ship's sturdy exterior was peppered with the same dust that covered them, and for a while the Doctor fussed around the woodwork, brushing off the soil. Donna found her attention absorbed again in the activity of the settlement below.

"Duster," the Doctor muttered, and disappeared inside. When he emerged, Donna asked:

"Why did you land the TARDIS here?" Her gaze was still fixed on the Alazans moving in the distance. "I mean, if you thought everything was destroyed…"

The Doctor paused momentarily, old-fashioned feather duster in one hand. It should have been a comical moment, but it wasn't.

"I don't know," he admitted. "All of a sudden I thought of it… I suppose I put in the co-ordinates on impulse. I think I just wanted to know what I'd find after three thousand years of destruction."

Donna sighed at him. "It's wonderful down there," she said, "so full of life. I'm glad we came. But I don't want to have to re-visit every single planet you've ever been to." She shifted her gaze towards him, gave him a gentle smile and sympathetic look. "You can't always save everyone, Doctor."

"No," he agreed, "but I always have to try."

She nodded, thinking how true that was. Then she noticed the feather duster in his hand.

"Are you seriously going to use that? In public?"

"Well–"

"Oh, don't be such a ponce. Come on, space man, let's go."

"But–"

"In!"

The Doctor gave a sulky frown, cast one last, lingering look at the paintwork of his beloved TARDIS, and then did as he was told. Donna nodded in satisfaction before turning to survey the planet of the Alazans for a final time.

"Well, Susan," she said into the air, "whoever you are – we did it. And don't you worry: we'll do it again."

She smiled to herself and stepped inside the blue police box. Its engines boomed. A few moments later, it was gone.

End.