Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 80th cycle. Now cycle 81!

"A Common Cause"
Doctor Who/Glee crossover #9
From DW: 10th Doctor, (Donna)
From Glee: Kurt

1. An Old Story

San Francisco, California – in the year 2015

There were some things Kurt had never found to be compatible to his patience, but then it wasn't all the time, and he could be made to wait, either because he really wanted to, or because there was some necessity to it. Waiting to tell Blaine about his adventure with the Doctor had been of necessity, although with time there had been some wanting, too; seeing the look on his face now definitely made it worth it.

"Why didn't you tell me before?" Blaine first asked.

"I couldn't," Kurt pointed out. "If I did, then you would never have asked him, and he never would have done it," he explained simply, and Blaine sat back, knowing there was no working around that.

"But when…"

"Do you remember a little while before graduation and all that, I disappeared for like a day?" Kurt recalled, and he could see the memory work its way to the surface.

"So when I told you about how I'd found out he existed…"

"I'd already met him," Kurt confirmed. Blaine chuckled, amazed. "I hated not being able to tell you."

"Did you?" Blaine asked, and after a moment, Kurt gave a slight shrug.

"For the most part," he admitted. "Pretending like I knew nothing could be fun, too. I did always wonder when it would happen, that you met him and asked him to come for me. If you just disappeared out of nowhere, or took too long to get back from somewhere…"

"Like now?" Blained guessed.

"Like now," Kurt confirmed. "So that's over now."

"So what happened?"

"Well…" Kurt sighed. "I found out why Donna didn't remember me, when I saw her again, you know?" Blaine nodded. "All that time I thought maybe I hadn't made as big an impression on her as she did on me," he went on, then shook his head. "That wasn't it at all, or… maybe it was, but there's no way to know. The Doctor explained it to me, I guess it had just happened, not long before he came to me. I think it might have been why he did come in the first place."

Kurt told him, what he knew at least. It had been impossible to know how much the Doctor had and hadn't told, whether he'd changed anything, to protect her memory, her as he remembered her at least, or to protect him, from the harshness of it all. He hadn't prodded too far, sensing the alien man was telling him anything at all, for no other reason than maybe he owed him some amount of truth. The Doctor told him how Donna Noble had somehow been imbued with the Time Lord's mind, how she had helped to save them all because of this, but that in the end it had been too much for her brain, her human brain, to handle, and it would have killed her if he hadn't taken it away. The price had been her memories, of everything they had ever done together. Donna no longer knew she had ever met the man, or gone to any of the places they'd gone, done the things they'd done… including a visit to a Gap store in Lima, Ohio, where she'd seen the Warblers of Dalton Academy and spoken to a boy named Kurt Hummel and given him advice he'd taken to heart.

"She doesn't remember any of it?" Blaine was taken aback. He'd only left her less than an hour ago, and now he was finding out that, wherever she was, Donna had already forgotten it, in her own actual time.

"She can't," Kurt confirmed. "The Doctor said that if she remembered, it could kill her."

"Doesn't seem fair, does it?" Blaine processed what Kurt had known for three years already. He remembered most of all the short talk they'd had, sitting outside, while the Doctor had been off to find the instrument, before he'd followed them to the TARDIS. That was the first time he'd really gotten to know the woman Kurt had told him about, those times he'd met her, and he could see why, in those two short encounters, she had endeared herself to him and made the impression she had.

"The Doctor said he came for me because he thought he had some unfinished business with her, and with us. He didn't know about all that business at McKinley three years ago yet… But he thought we should take care of this thing, me and him, to honor her," Kurt smiled, and it did ease some of Blaine's sadness at finding out what had happened to her.

"Then you did find them, the ones who used the kids from Isher Academy?"

"Well, I didn't find them, the Doctor did, but… yeah, we went after them. Probably wasn't too hard to look, once you knew what you had to search for. They hadn't done what they'd planned to do, but as far as they were concerned they'd gotten away with it, so what was to stop them from trying their luck somewhere else?"

Blaine felt a chill at the thought of it. He'd told Kurt about what had happened, including how he had been entranced the same way the children had, how he'd almost hurt people, but he doubted Kurt could really understand, what it had been like, what it had felt like, and what it meant to him that the people responsible had never been punished and might get the opportunity to do it again somewhere else, with more people, more innocents. If they were willing to use those kids, then what weren't they willing to do?

"What happened?" he asked, dread settling into him at the thought of finding out.

"Well, I was at school one day, and then he just… showed up," Kurt shook his head, recalling. "I was at my locker, and he came. He looked the same as when I saw him at the Gap that time, but there was something different… Sad, but determined. He said he needed my help."

TO BE CONTINUED (TOMORROW)