The culprit was a thread, just a thin piece of black string that had unraveled itself from Donna Noble's scarf. She was out at a local pub with a small group of friends, and she'd just draped her coat over the back of a chair and took off her scarf to lay it on top of the coat, when the offending thread decided to cling to her shirt. Nerys was the one to notice the contrast of black on green.

The past three months had been…strange. Not that anything strange was happening to Donna, of course. Nothing strange ever happened to Donna Noble. But everyone else had been acting strange. A few months back her friends had all been convinced there had been planets in the sky. Then her mother kept saying odd things like Donna was special and loved, though she eventually stopped this after Donna started to ask if she was dying and didn't know it. It didn't help that her granddad couldn't even glance at her without looking like someone had just killed his dog. Donna would often catch Wilf staring sadly at her when he thought she wasn't looking, and once or twice he'd get tears in his eyes for no reason at all and have to leave the room to collect himself.

Oddly enough she'd also found herself defending the late Harriet Jones whenever politics came up in conversation, though Donna had never voted for the woman, and wasn't even bothered when the former PM was kicked out of office.

Of course, none of these things that Donna couldn't explain had prepared her for the extraordinary impact of an ordinary comment from one of the more ordinary people in her life.

"Hold on love," Nerys said, as she reached over to pluck the thread away. "There's something on your back."

And just like that, the Earth stopped spinning.

There's something on your back.

The words echoed in Donna's head. The pub disappeared. In place of her friends, she saw other faces: a pretty young woman surrounded by soldiers, a handsome bloke in an out of date military coat, a blond girl appearing out of nowhere, a surprisingly fit older woman, even the former Prime Minister herself. Words came next, names of people and places, things that had been said in another life.

Racnoss.

Martha Jones.

Her name was Rose.

Jenny.

Pompeii.

Two words.

TARDIS.

Rose Tyler.

Poosh.

Medusa Cascade.

Bad Wolf.

DoctorDonna.

…

…

…

Doctor.

"Donna!"

Donna's head snapped up to see Nerys waving a hand in front of her friend's face.

"You all in there?"

"Yeah I – AGGHHH!!" Donna leaned forward and grasped her head as a wave of sudden, extreme pain washed over her. Her legs gave way as the room began to spin around her, and everything went black.

Slowly, slowly, excruciatingly slowly, the pain subsided and the world came back into focus. Donna sat up quickly. She was in the backseat of her mum's car. Her granddad turned around in the passenger seat to face her.

"You're awake!" He turned again to face his daughter, "she's awake."

"What happened?" Donna asked, groggily.

"You passed out is what happened," nagged Sylvia from the driver's seat. "Too much to drink I bet."

"Your friends called us and we came to get you," finished Wilf.

"You really need to learn how much is too much," her mother continued, obviously not ready to let this slide. "Honestly, a woman of your age getting so pissed you pass out! It's embarrassing, is what it is."

"Mum, I didn't have anything to drink. We'd just got to the pub and – " Donna broke off as the memory of what happened slowly crept back. "I had something on my back."

"You what?"

"I had something on my back," Donna repeated, getting excited now. "I had something on my back! Nerys said I had something on my back!"

"Nerys is behind this, is she? I always said that girl –"

"Why," Donna broke in, not about to let her mother finish, "didn't you ever tell me I had something on my back?"

"Sweetheart," Wilf was getting worried at his granddaughter's odd behavior, "what's going on?"

"I had something on my back is what's going on! And he didn't even realize! I'll tell you what, if that scrawny git thought he'd just get away with it he's got another thing coming!"

In the back of her mind, Donna knew the reason why the Doctor had done such a horrible thing to her; she knew was dying. She was aware that her time was limited, and if she didn't do something soon, if she didn't somehow miraculously find a way to fix this, she wouldn't last very long. But she knew – and maybe this was just a chemical reaction in her brain meant to keep her from giving up and giving in to death – that dying as Donna Noble, part Human, part Time Lord, the woman who had traveled with the Doctor and who had creatures on other planets singing songs about her, was better than living as the dull, ordinary temp from Chiswick who'd done nothing with her life, and that thought would give her strength to keep fighting until the very end.

"So it's about a bloke, is it?" Commented Sylvia, completely oblivious to what was happening to her daughter.

"I'm going to fix this." Donna stated, ignoring both her mother and every ounce of logic she had. She continued, suddenly so stubbornly sure that everything would be alright. "And you know why? Because I'm Donna bleedin' Noble, and I'm flipping special!"