The Firm Resolve of Virtue and Reason
There had been so many stories like this. Stories with names that had a ring of authenticity, of the real truth around them. Names that Donna remembered from a dream of a dream, lost in ravages of time. Most of them passed her by, she hadn't been able to think about them, trying to distract her Grandfather from hospitals on the moon and Martha Jones and Sarah Jane Smith.
There was one she remembered. It seemed more familiar than the others, like she'd used it herself. And she remembered because it had been one of the last things she had seen on the news, the last thing she'd seen on TV before they all went dead.
It had started in the normal way, about the third item that had been announced, below further fuel shortages and lack of housing as more and more refugees from the south moved to the north. A smartly dressed news reader read from their script rather than an auto cue and without a computer generated background behind them, there wasn't the money, he stood before a brick wall.
"Also in the news, former student Ella Marlowe has been arrested for the fourth time for protesting to the government. No one knows how she managed to gain access to the temporary cabinet office in Cardiff but security was called when she began to harangue the Prime Minister Adam Craig and his cabinet. When she was taken from the government buildings she had this to say."
The picture changed to a young woman who couldn't have been much above 20. She was being lead from an official looking building wearing handcuffs. A microphone was shoved in front of her face and a voice off screen asked her why she kept doing risking her freedom by protesting.
"This government is made up of cowards who are frantically scrabbling to cover up the cracks and find some temporary solution. They are failing and need advice, need to change their policies."
"Why you?" The hidden reporter spoke again.
"Someone has to. Someone has to try and save the world. Someone has to be the Doctor."
She was dragged on by the soldiers she was being held by after that and pushed into a waiting, unmarked black van and was never mentioned on the news again.
Through all the long months, through everything she went through, for some reason Donna continued to remember that woman, who was really no more than a girl forced to grow up too soon. Before she knew it Donna was making her own momentous decision and she recalled Ella's words. Someone had to be the Doctor, putting themselves before others. Although Donna was saving her other self by sacrificing this self, she was also saving the world.
When Ella walked into the fortune tellers shop behind the Doctor, Donna couldn't help feeling pride for her well up inside. Ella hadn't stopped, she had been always been brilliant, always tried to help people, meeting the Doctor only meaning that she had more opportunity than she normally would have received.
It was a long time afterwards, after the world had been saved and she had met Rose Tyler again, properly and with names, that Donna could think about it properly. Really wonder how Ella knew about the Doctor before she had met him, know what it was he would have done if he had still been alive. Or perhaps what he would have expected her to do. Try as she might, Donna was unable to conjure an answer. Observing Ella, revelling in the joy of having once more helped and saved so many, and seeing the underlying grief and how close she had come to despair by so many deaths, after the fight Donna felt unable to ask. Some things were meant to remain a mystery she was sure, perhaps this was just one of those.