My friend dared me to write a story to make her cry and this was the result. I've written some Whouffaldi fanfiction in the past, but Donna is my favorite companion, so it was high time I did a piece about her! I think I won the dare:) I thought I may as well post it on here. Hope you all enjoy and that none of you cry too hard:)
Donna sank to the ground, clutching her chest, desperately trying to deny what her muddled senses were screaming at her: she had just stepped in front of the Doctor and taken the arrow that was meant for him.
"Donna...?" The Doctor's eyes widened in disbelief. "No, no, no, no. This isn't happening." He hurried over to her, skidding on the floor in his haste, and dropped to his knees. As Donna reeled backwards, blood sheeting from her wound, he clumsily caught her and supported her against his chest. "Donna, say something, anything, please, this can't be happening."
"Doc...tor..." Scrabbling at her injury, Donna tried to get up and moaned as pain lanced through her body. "How bad is it?" she croaked, knowing fully well that it was a mortal wound and that it was going to sap every ounce of her strength until she died, but fervently praying that the Doctor would tell her otherwise.
He didn't. Tears poured from his eyes as he ran a shaking hand over her ginger locks. "Donna, oh, Donna Noble, you fabulous human being..." He closed his eyes for a moment, overwhelmed by grief.
"I'm dying, aren't I, Spaceman? Just say it, just bloody say it, please." Every word brought a fresh spear of pain, but she forced herself to go on.
"No, you can't die, there's got to be something I can do..." The Doctor produced his screwdriver from one of his voluminous pockets and began scanning her, but Donna weakly batted it away. "Doctor-"
"No, don't, let me-"
"I'm bloody DYING, you idiot, at least let me have the last word..." she wheezed. A faint smile crossed his face - she was still Donna, his Donna, snarky even in the face of impending death. "I'm gettin' blood all over my clothes, so if I'm going to die, I had better hurry up and do it."
"Don't go," he begged,"you can't just go."
She eyeballed him wearily. "As if I can help it?" The Doctor slid a hand under her head and pulled her towards him, cradling her and weeping bitterly all the while.
"Why?" he whispered hoarsely. "Why would you do that for me?"
"Oh, I felt a sudden urge to kill myself,"she retorted sharply. "Why d'ya think, dumbo? You're... my best mate." Donna felt her life force slipping away and willed it back, willed her heart to keep beating, willed her body to keep functioning. She knew it was a battle that she couldn't win, but she needed to hold on as long as possible. If not for her own sake, then for the Doctor's. Give up, her brain told her. You're already lost. Just let go. "Shut up," she snapped back to herself,"I won't take this nonsense from my own bloody head."
Unable to grasp the reality of the situation, the Doctor clasped Donna's hand and squeezed it firmly. "You are not dying, do you hear me? I forbid it." But the haunted expression that lingered unbidden in his eyes told Donna that he knew it was too late for her.
"Tell me..."she coughed wetly and cleared her throat. "Say it. Just... please..." Donna trailed off, too weak to continue speaking.
A tear trickled down the Doctor's cheek, but he made no move to wipe it away. "Fine. You're dying, then." His voice was flat and emotionless, but his eyes, brimming with unshed tears, expressed the depth of his emotions better than words ever could. "You're dying. The arrow punctured one of your lungs. It's a miracle that you're still alive, that you can still breathe and speak. You'd already be dead if it had hit one centimeter to the left. I can't stop it... oh gods, I can't stop it..."
Donna raised a slightly bloodied hand and affectionately caressed the Doctor's pale cheek. "It's okay. We had some good times together, eh, Martian?"
"That we did," he repeated thickly. "That we did." The two stared into each other's eyes, wordlessly communicating their emotions. "What am I going to do without you?" he murmured. "The Most Important Woman in the Universe, killed by a stupid arrow... those blasted aliens; they're going to wish they had never been born."
Donna was seized by panic. "No, Doctor, don't do that..." She felt blood well up in her throat but ignored it, determined to change his mind. "It's alright, really. There's no way I would have rather gone."
Fury glinted in the Doctor's eyes. "Donna, they killed you. They're going to pay for it. They've run away now, the cowards, but I'll find them."
"You twit, don't you see? If you kill them, then my death... all this... will have been for nothing. You can't let yourself get mad, you know you can't, you'll go overboard and end up killing yourself."
"But -"
"Just. Let. It. Go." At this point, speaking was sapping more and more of Donna's energy. A coughing fit racked her body, and she curled up closer to the Doctor. Disregarding the copious amount of blood pooling around her, he adjusted his position so as to better support her head.
"Tell Gramps and Mum I said not to worry," Donna continued. "Tell them... it's alright."
"I will." He ran his thumb along her cheek and emitted a sigh that contained the pain generated by a thousand years of living and losing, the pain that only a Time Lord can know.
"And... promise... you won't forget me." Donna stared up at her beloved Doctor's hollowed eyes and shook him as strongly as she could. "That time I met you in my wedding dress..." He chuckled bitterly, recalling the incident. "Agatha Christie... The Vashta Nerada... don't forget. Please."
"I won't," he assured her, tears flowing freely down his cheeks as he noticed that she was no longer able to focus on his face.
"And, Spaceman? I'll see you again... somehow. Promise."
Hope flared within the Doctor's hearts. "I surely hope so, Donna Noble." Seeing that she was slowly but surely fading away, he haltingly continued to speak. "Goodbye, Donna, you beautiful, brave woman. The universe will never forget."
She was gone. Agonized, unable to speak, the Doctor bent down and softly kissed her forehead. Multiple time streams, the existence of which depended solely on her survival, shattered to pieces, and he felt the loss of each one as sorely as he felt Donna's death. But then he remembered her last words, and a ray of light pierced his heart. "It isn't over, Donna," he whispered fiercely. "Not by a long shot."
The Doctor sat numbly by Donna's body for hours, unwilling to get up and face reality. He was dry-eyed, but countless tear tracks had etched themselves into his pale cheeks. Gazing at Donna's peaceful face and unconsciously stroking her hair, he pondered what to do next. His hearts were aching with agony, and he knew that he would never be able to recover from his loss.
Finally he stood up, wincing as sharp pain raced through his leg muscles. Above him, threatening gray clouds scudded angrily across the overcast sky, bringing with them the promise of rain. Even as the Doctor caught sight of the clouds, minuscule droplets of rain slid out of them and fell gracefully to the ground, dappling the dirt with splotches of moisture and washing away the dried blood.
"Donna..." he murmured brokenly. "I thought we had all the time in the world." He crouched and placed a shaking hand on her forehead.
And all of a sudden, as he stared at a single tear that had slipped from her eye just before she died, an idea struck him. A brilliant, madcap idea, but an idea nonetheless. The Doctor didn't bother considering its probability - if it didn't work, Donna was already dead anyway, so he had nothing to lose. "I have to pull it off," he whispered. "I've just got to." He fished his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and carefully scanned the tear on Donna's cheek. After it had been fully absorbed into the screwdriver, glowing with a pale blue light, the Doctor stowed the screwdriver in his pocket once more. Then he stood up and strode back to his TARDIS.
"This has to work," he told himself firmly. He knew what he was about to do had never been pulled off before - but Donna was strong; she'd get through it alright, he was sure of it. She had to, both for her sake and his.
Upon entering the TARDIS, he bounded up the steps to the console and began flipping switches and pressing buttons. "Chiswick, England, Earth, 2009," he muttered. "And be quick about it." Seeming to understand that Donna's life was at stake, the TARDIS took off immediately without her usual groaning and whining.
A short time later the Doctor exited the TARDIS, carrying with him a street map of Chiswick. After getting lost several times, he finally managed to find Donna's house. Nervously he ambled up to the front porch and rang the doorbell, shuffling his feet while he waited.
An old man wearing a shabby red hat came to the door. "We don't want whatever you're selling, thank you - oh. Who are you?"
"Wilfred, good to see you. Can I come in?" He shouldered his way into the house without waiting for an answer.
Leaving the front door wide open, Wilfred trotted after him. "But what's all this about?"
The Doctor groaned as he realized he had neglected to consider this part of his plan. No one would even know who he was, since he had traveled to a time when he hadn't yet met Donna's family. "Er, I'm the Doctor, you know me in the future except you haven't met me yet but you just did."
"That makes no sense! And, look, what're you doin' in here anyway?"
"Look, I really need to see Donna," the Doctor snapped. "It's important." Although he liked and respected Wilf, he sometimes cursed the old man's tendency to talk without stopping.
"Donna? My granddaughter Donna?" he repeated, surprised by the Doctor's request.
"Yes! Your granddaughter Donna!" Unable to wait any longer, the Doctor fumbled around in his pocket and produced his psychic paper. Flipping it open, he announced,"I work at the lottery around the corner. I came to tell Donna in person that she's won the lottery."
"The lottery? She's won the lottery? And hang on - I thought you just said you were a doctor?"
"Yes, I was... erm, I was a doctor of physics before I went to work at the lottery - oh, we really haven't got time," he finished angrily as he caught sight of Wilfred's disbelieving raised eyebrow. He pointed his sonic screwdriver at Wilf and a milky white fluid leaked from its tip, floating into Wilf's ears. "Oh gods, I hope this works," he thought, suddenly horrified that perhaps he had made a mistake.
Gasping, Wilfred hunched over, clutching his head. "Ow! Make it stop!"
"Hang on a sec, old friend," the Doctor comforted him. "It'll be over soon."
True to his word, Wilf's spasms stopped almost immediately. "Doctor...?" he croaked. "What are you doing here? And how did you just do that? You're not supposed to have met us yet!"
Grinning, the Doctor clapped him on the back. "I'll tell you later. Where's Donna?"
"Out with 'er mum," Wilfred grunted. "They went shopping."
"And they'll be back... when, exactly?"
Wilfred had little need to answer, for just then Donna and Sylvia Noble stepped through the front door, talking animatedly. "And then I said 'Oh, Nerys, just go away,' and then she said - Who the hell're you?" Donna stared unabashedly at the Doctor, and a wide smile broke out on his face.
"I'm the Doctor." And with that, not giving himself any time to doubt his actions, he pointed his screwdriver first at Sylvia and then at Donna.
Sylvia's reaction was similar to Wilf's. She doubled over, whimpering as pain flooded her mind, but her agony was over within a few seconds. Donna's, however, was much more drastic. She gasped and then fell to the ground in an unconscious heap, the clothes inside the shopping bag she'd been carrying slithering out onto the floor.
"What have you done to her, you horrible man?" Sylvia screeched, instantly rushing over to her daughter. "What have you done to my Donna?"
The Doctor helped her and Wilfred lug Donna onto the couch. "Don't worry, this is a normal reaction... I think." Gently he lifted one of her eyelids up and found that it was glowing an unnatural shade of white. Upon seeing this, Sylvia shrieked and scuttled away.
"GET AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER, YOU -"
"This isn't Harry Potter," Wilfred interrupted. "Come on, Sylvia, he's trying to help... leave him be."
Reluctantly she backed away. "Doctor, tell me what's going on."
Without looking up he answered,"Donna died in the future. I took a tear from her cheek and absorbed it with my sonic screwdriver, and brought it back here. Tears are rumored to contain an important part of the soul - the memory. You humans don't discover it until 3026, though. But it's said that if someone loses their memory, one of their tears will cure it. I shot Donna's tear straight up her nose - a direct passageway to her brain. All her memories of being with me are being processed right now. You and Wilf here had it easy -there wasn't so much for you to remember. But Donna's mind - in the future, that is - was absolutely packed with memories. The overflow of information is what knocked her out."
"And how long will this process take? Has it even been done before?"
..."No," the Doctor admitted, after a moment's hesitation. "Not successfully, anyway. Many've tried, but the test subject has always died a painful death. I probably shouldn't have said that," he added as an afterthought, catching sight of Sylvia's horrified countenance.
"Don't worry though, your Donna's a strong one. She'll manage. Just you wait and see." He took Donna's hand in his and pressed it to his forehead.
"You'd better hope so," Sylvia warned him. She and Wilfred huddled closer to Donna, watching anxiously.
After a whole hour, Donna finally regained consciousness - but when she did, she did it with style. She sat up and whacked the Doctor with all her might, sending him crashing into the dining table. "What. The. Bloody. Hell. Were. You. THINKING?" she shouted. "I flipping' died! And I nearly just died again! I BLOODY LOVE YOU!"
"What...?" The Doctor simply stared at her.
Donna crouched down and placed a loving hand on his shoulder. "You saved me. Again."
He hugged her and put his chin on her hair - the same position they had been in when she was about to die in the future. "Donna, you're my best mate. That's what best mates do for each other."
A tear slipped out of her and she brushed it away. "You bloody brilliant Spaceman," she sniffed. "You will never have to lose me again, I promise."
"Good."
Wilfred planted a kiss on his granddaughter's forehead and rolled his eyes at Sylvia, who was absolutely hysterical. "Doctor, won't this affect Earth's timeline somehow? Now we've met you before we were supposed to."
"I don't know. But at the moment, I don't care. Donna's back with me and that's all that matters. I assume you are coming with me...?" he asked dubiously.
"Are you joking, Martian? I wouldn't miss it for the world!" She got up, ready to pack her bags.
"Donna?" he called back to her. She turned around. "Will you be with me forever?"
She didn't even hesitate before replying. "Always."