Disclaimer - I own nothing. Except the plot. Promise.
Donna Noble awoke with a start, stifling a scream. It happened every night. The nightmares had been a constant since that day about three months ago, when she woke up and realized she couldn't remember most of the past year. They faded quickly but left her with a sense of dread throughout the day, like there was something really important she had to do that she just couldn't quite put her finger on.
Gallifrey is burning.
And then, there was that. She would always catch herself thinking about the weirdest things these days. What the hell did that mean, even? What was a gallifrey? Who said things like that? Maybe she should tell her mother and her granddad about these dreams. But, then again, with the "inconspicuous" looks they'd been giving her for the past few months, they'd probably have her chucked in the loony bin. No, she could deal with this on her own. Glancing at the clock, she sighed and dragged herself out of bed. She'd just gotten this temp job; it wouldn't do to lose it because of her overactive imagination.
After taking a quick shower and throwing on a suit, she wandered downstairs. She could hear her mum and gramps whispering heatedly about something, but didn't have the presence of mind to stop outside the kitchen and listen; her head was throbbing today. She gave them what she hoped was a cheerful "good morning" and then went through the motions of breakfast, barely noticing that she was rubbing her temples as she ate her toast.
"Have you got a headache again, sweetheart?" he granddad asked, startling her out of another daydream and looking at her with poorly-veiled concern. "Why don't you take some aspirin before you go?"
"Can't," she answered immediately. "I'm allergic."
"You're allergic to aspirin?" her mother replied incredulously, making Donna freeze for a second as she thought over what she'd just said.
"I…I don't know." She looked up in time to see Sylvia and Wilf share another one of those anxious glances. "Am I?" Neither one of them could answer her, and Donna found she was suddenly no longer hungry. Well, she had to leave for work, anyway. She said a quick goodbye to her mum and granddad as she headed out the door, but before she could get to the car something else caught her eye.
There was a man. Right in front of her house. Lying face down, probably unconscious, in the middle of the street. Definitely unconscious, she thought as she made her way to him and noticed the dried blood matting his hair. The idiot had probably been drunk last night and hit his head, what with the bizarre assortment of clothes he was wearing. I mean, really, who goes around in a pin-striped suit with a pair of dirty old trainers? And don't even get her started on that jacket. It looked like it was made out of an old sofa that no one wanted anymore. Idiotic bloke.
Great, big, outer-space dunce.
There was that little spark of a headache again. And why had she thought he was from outer-space? His clothes were barmy, yeah, but it wasn't as if he was wearing some astronaut suit. She bent down and pressed two fingers to his neck, searching for a pulse and pulling away abruptly when she felt it racing. That certainly wasn't normal, especially in someone unconscious. Maybe it wasn't alcohol, then. Drugs?
Or maybe he had two hearts.
Now, that was just ridiculous. Two hearts? Who on earth had two hearts? She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. It was official. She was going bonkers. Huge chunks of her memory missing, terrifying dreams that she could barely remember, and now making up bizarre, nonexistent medical conditions? She should get to work. She was going to be late. Someone else could deal with this man in the road.
But everyone else was walking right past them. Her neighbors didn't even seem to notice the pair of them. Donna huffed in annoyance. Honestly, couldn't anyone spare a few minutes to help some poor daft bloke in the street? Of course, she'd been about to abandon him, as well. She grumbled as her conscience wouldn't allow her to just leave this strange man and figured she might as well try to get him out of the street before calling the paramedics. Really, it was a miracle he hadn't gotten himself run over by now. She knew from all those medical shows she'd been watching recently (and why did she get worked up whenever anyone said the word "doctor?") that you shouldn't move someone with a head injury but, given the circumstances, it was probably the best course of action. She grabbed his arms and dragged him onto the sidewalk in front of her house. For someone so skinny, he was remarkably heavy.
He is too skinny for words; you give him a hug and you get a paper cut!
But she'd never given this man a hug. Why would she go around hugging random unconscious strangers? Was her subconscious trying to set her up? She'd had enough of that, thanks, and he was just a long streak of nothing, you know…
Alien nothing.
What. The Hell. Was wrong with her? She stood up and started to dig her phone out of her purse. The sooner she called the paramedics the sooner she could rid herself of this crazy man and then maybe she could call in sick to work, because her head was really beginning to hurt. But, after a minute of fruitless searching, she remembered she'd left her phone in the car the night before. Hopefully no one had tried to call her. She probably had a slew of missed texts from Nerys, going on about more planets in the sky. Going toward the car, she looked up and saw something that shouldn't be there. A big, blue box. A police box. What was a police box and why was it sitting in her driveway? It certainly hadn't been there yesterday evening when she got back from work. With all the insane happenings this morning, you'd think she would be able to just stay clear of it and leave the thing be.
But no. The big blue box seemed to be calling her. It looked so familiar. It's as if she'd seen it before. And she found herself taking a key out of her pocket. She's had it for months and never had a use for it, but she always took it with her. Her hands were shaking as she inserted the unassuming little key into the door of the police box.
It fit.
She pushed the door open and gasped at the sight before her. A giant room, glowing a strange greenish tint given off by the large column in the center. Far too large to all fit inside the little box in her driveway.
It's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Yeah, thanks little voice in my head, for stating the obvious. Her thoughts were cut off as she remembered the man she'd left on the sidewalk. This was his box. How Donna knew this is anyone's guess, but she figured she might as well bring him inside. After another few minutes of dragging his surprisingly heavy self, she managed to pull him into the box and dropped him onto the floor, closing the door behind them.
Great. Now what? What was wrong with her? She should have just called the paramedics and been on her way. Why was she getting involved in this? Did she think that this crazy blue box (TARDIS) was going to cure her insanity?
And suddenly she found herself prying open the grating of the floor and looking through the chests underneath it with no idea exactly what she was looking for. Bits of alien technology and artifacts from Earth flew by as she tossed them aside before her hand closed around a little brass fob watch. She grinned and set it aside before closing up the grating.
A fob watch, part of her mind wondered. What would she want with that old thing? It looked broken, anyhow. The other, apparently more dominant part of her brain didn't pay these thoughts any heed. She was twisting seemingly random knobs on the big panel in the center of the room and something descended from the ceiling. It looked like a misguided cross between a pair of headphones and a hard hat. What the heck was she supposed to do with this thing?
The Chameleon Arch.
It sounded like a bad name for a band from the 70s and why did it seem so important to her now? Furthermore, what was she even doing standing in the middle of this completely impossible blue box with a half-dead drug addict with poor fashion sense who THE CHAMELEON ARCH!
She gasped in pain. It seemed like her head was burning now, but she could remember. Tiny bits and pieces were coming back. The meta-crisis. Her head swiveled to the unconscious man she'd left lying on the floor. Not just a man. Time Lord. The Doctor. She'd taken his mind into her head, and he'd gone and locked away her memories. To protect her. Because there couldn't be a Human-Time Lord Meta-crisis. But the Doctor didn't know everything.
I can think of ideas you two couldn't come up with in a million years!
She grinned, the pain subsiding just a bit, and looked down at the Chameleon Arch in her hands. The only problem was, she couldn't remember how to use it. It didn't seem to matter, because she had already moved to the console without conscious thought. Pulling one lever, spinning another knob, she finally raced to the monitors and rapidly typed in a complex string of numbers.
Did I ever tell you? Best temp in Chiswick. Hundred words per minute.
More memories flooded into her brain and through the haze of the headache they brought she realized that she'd just changed the wiring of the Chameleon Arch. If she'd managed to do it correctly the machine should completely remove the Doctor's Time Lord consciousness from her brain, along with any other adverse side effects from the meta-crisis while leaving her human self, including the rest of her memories, alone. Operative word: should. She didn't have much time left to wonder. The pain was building and Donna knew that her human mind couldn't take much more. She shoved the watch into the Arch, jammed the contraption onto her head, and flipped one more switch on the TARDIS console.
Fire and light and agony exploded in her head, and she couldn't tell if it was the Chameleon Arch or the meta-crisis finally becoming too much. There were images and voices and for a few glorious seconds everything was back. She was the Doctor Donna again and she screamed as she remembered the Ood and Pompeii and Vespiforms and the Library and Professor River Song, Archeologist and Daleks and the Crucible and Gallifrey and the Academy and the Time War and the Master and the Brigadier and Romanadvoratrelundar and Rassilon and Susan and –
And then Donna Noble passed out.
She awoke, slumped against the TARDIS console, with the brass fob watch in her hand and the Chameleon Arch hanging innocently above her. Donna gave a triumphant laugh as she stood up. She'd done it. She'd proven the Doctor wrong. She searched her mind for his memories and couldn't remember any of them, while hers were all still intact. And, speaking of the Doctor, he was still unconscious on the floor. She should probably do something about that. As she debated the best method to drag him up the stairs to the sick bay (really, who puts the sick bay up a flight of stairs?), he groaned, eyes fluttering open. She offered him her hand, smirking as he used it to help himself up. This was going to be good.
"Thanks," he muttered, intent on brushing the dirt off of his suit.
"Doctor, you prawn, what were you doing?"
"Well, there were these lizard things, forget what they're called, but they're related to the Monoids…anyway, I tried to visit their planet but it turns out that they aren't very friendly and they have really good clubs and really good aim, so my head hurt a bit and I wasn't thinking much when I input the coordinates to escape and when I realized where I'd landed I panicked and tried to leave but, like I said, they had really good clubs, and so I must have passed out. But I'm better now, I'm alright, Time Lord physiology and all that, and, oh, Donna Noble, what are you doing here?"
"The next time you decide to wipe someone's memories, maybe you should ask them if they've got any better ideas first, yeah?" She crossed her arms and chuckled at his bewildered expression.
"What? But, but you're…the meta-crisis! Donna, how'd you..?" he broke off as she held the watch in front of his face, his eyes widening. "No...how did you manage that?"
"Well, if I still had your head in my brain, I would probably say something like 'I reversed the polarity of the whatsits and then flipped the flux doohicky,' but, seeing as I had to get rid of that part of my mind in order to not die, I haven't got the foggiest." The Doctor frantically grabbed at the monitor on the console and read whatever the Gallifreyan symbols meant before stepping back with a wide grin.
"Donna Noble. You. Are. Brilliant!" he crowed grabbing her in a tight hug. She laughed as he spun them around, but then slapped him as he surreptitiously tried to check her mind.
"Oi, hands!" she yelled, taking a step back. He held the offending appendages up in a placating manner.
"I just want to make sure you're alright. Promise. No more memory wipes." She debated this, finally stepping forward with a huff and another warning. Placing his fingers on her temples, he searched for any remnants of the meta-crisis and found none. Provided she never opened that fob watch, she was going to be perfectly fine. But, using the Arch… "Donna, that had to be painful. And you knew that."
"Not as painful as having your mind squeezed in my head, Spaceman," she replied, then glared at him. "Or living everyday like a great big chunk of my life is missing. Did you really expect me to be fine and dandy while some part of me was always going to remember what I lost? I thought I was going mad!"
"I was kind of in a hurry, Donna!" came the affronted response. "I didn't know what else to do! I wasn't going to just let you die!" Her frown softened, and he continued, "I'm sorry, Donna. Really, truly, I am. I didn't think there was any other way." Donna sighed. He had done this to protect her, after all.
"Apology accepted, you dumbo." The Doctor smiled again, a childish grin as he bounded over to the TARDIS controls.
"So, Donna Noble, do you still want to go visit Charlie Chaplin? Or maybe Planet Felspoon?"
"As tempting as that sounds, I s'pose I really ought to go tell Mum and Gramps what's happened. And then I need to grab my luggage. Can't go gallivanting around the universe without my hatbox, can I? You gonna help me carry my bags, or what, Skinny Boy?" She dragged him back inside the house to tell her family the news. Wilf was, of course, ecstatic, and even Sylvia seemed pleased by the turn of events. Donna fetched her still full suitcases from the back of her closet, where they'd been thrown and promptly forgotten after the meta-crisis. She and her family exchanged farewells and then suddenly Donna and the Doctor were back on the TARDIS, and it was almost as if the past three months hadn't happened. After debating the relative merits of Charlie Chaplin and Planet Felspoon, the Doctor had a better plan.
"How about I just set the controls on random, and we see what happens, eh? Molto bene?"
"Allonsy!" Donna replied, beaming like a lunatic. It was good to be back.