Disclaimer: I own nothing, Time and the Universer owns it all in the end.
Daughters of the Stars
The moment she saw her, she had known she'd be leaving with her. The platinum-blond girl with blue dreamer's eyes. She had seen many children she could gladly take into her heart but this one, this one she realised in two hearts beats, was already there.
A ghost. Of another blond, blue eyes, mischief grinning dreamer. The same girl who lived, and died, in her dreams – who Donna cried for every night, every time she tried and fail to conceive. A part of her knew it just wasn't biological possible, for reasons her mind refused to turn over. But a stronger part of her saw her little starlight solider, her niece like daughter. Her on so brilliant child...
And when Donna Temple-Noble looked into the pale face of the young Adelaide Brooke, she saw history changing brilliance shinnying back. She didn't look again. She hugs her new daughter and demand the girl came home at once. It wasn't right, it was just natural. Because Addy filled a part of Donna she didn't consciously realise was empty and because Donna fuelled Adelaide's space filled dreams with tales of other worlds, time and impossible beings.
Because the greatest things a person can do, is to leave their mark on history, Donna always whispered, and you'll the biggest mark the time herself has ever seen, my little dreamer.
Adelaide wasn't spoiled but Donna never denied her anything. She pushed her hard, but Adelaide took to her studies like a duck to water, only needing the regular encouragement to stay focused and not get too caught up in her fantasy. Donna never wanted Adelaide to stop dreaming, as much as it hurt.
Every time Adelaide smiled, Donna watched another girl grinning back. When Adelaide dreamed, she saw the uncle she had never meant and all his wonderful impossible-ness made real. When Adelaide stood her ground and did what no one had ever done before, Donna liked to think secretly that their might just be a hint of her in there. The most important women in the history of many many races with a hint of her mother, the most important woman in the universe. Donna was never more proud then when she looked at the woman her daughter grew to be. Even when she cried.
She cried – a lot. In her sleep. Before Adelaide, it was dreams of the blond child solider with her innocent eyes and enthusiastic smile. Afterwards, it was dreams of two blond haired dreamers, racing around laughing – on earth, in space, in varying worlds and times – with her and her Doctor, the man who should have been her brother, laughter and chasing them. Whispering delightful stories and showing them fantastic sights. More dreams into colourful reality.
But there were only dreams, and she woke up in the morning with tears of sorrow and joy, which in the light made no sense to her.
She cried with happiness when Addy shrieked her acceptance to Cambridge. She shrieked back when Addy followed her dreams, chasing the stars from earth at NASA.
She wept when Addy told her of Bowie Base One on Mars. She hugged her daughter, congratulated her on her impossible-but-possible dreams, on her lifelong happiness achieved.
She suppressed the bitter grief that told her she'd never see her famous daughter again. That whisper time and fate was taking another one of her children from her – her starlight explorer this time.
She wasn't surprised to hear of her daughter's death.
But it shocked her to the core to hear that it was suicide. Impossible – wrong impossible. Addy was full of dreams and hope, why would she kill herself? It shook the world, but not the way Donna though it would. When she dreamed, it was same dreams that her love and fear of Addy's star always gave her – but it's different.
No longer is it the shining blue-eyes blond falling into the arms of her father. Now, it's her Addy with the gun shoot to the chest between her hearts and dying in the helpless Donna's arms. She cry, because what can she do? This was always Jenny's fate and it was always Adelaide's. She was only along for the ride, watching and love her oh so brilliant daughter. Donna could no more stop it than stop her daughter dreaming.
She was better off dead than not dreaming.
She watched, still alive without good reason, as her great granddaughter grew up with the legacy, with the shame and the infectious dreams. She watches her Susie's grief turn to hard determination, her interest in stars to love and passion – she had loved her Grandmother without knowing her, and would curl up to hear the same tales again and again. She was never old to hear Nana Donna's stories, never to old to dream them and never, never to young to follow them too.
Donna sometimes wonders why she's still alive, still so shockingly young for her age. A part of her, that same mysterious part that loved Adelaide before she knew her, who loved Jenny and her Doctor, who knew things before the happened, who knew this was wrong – whispered to ignore it. She did, even as she embraced her newly Captained Great-great granddaughter, who was just as impossibly important as Adelaide and Donna had once been. Her little brilliant Susie...
When her youngest grandchild ran off to the stars, like her mother did, and her grandmother did, and her great grandmother did, and her great great grandmother and her sort of full-blooded Time Lord brother did, Donna knows that time was fixed.
She cries, even as the all too blond haired, blue eyed starlight soldier of hers threw her arms around her and shows her the stars, one last time. She never ever regretted teaching her girls to follow their wonderful, impossible, important dreams. What else can a Mother-Time Lady do?
Her daughters were born from starlight and belong there, never tied down to earth, or Gallifrey or any other world. The fates of the mortal daughters of Gallifrey were fixed in time but no one loved them any less because of it. Donna and the Doctor certainly didn't.
