Hello : ) I know there are about a million and one stories out there like this one - most of them involving Rose reliving her life with the Doctor - but I've always wanted to do one of my own, just a little differently, hence why Donna is going to be the main character of this story : )

I actually started this story several years ago. I posted it, but I was never totally happy with it. There were just little things that bugged me about it, so I eventually took it down.

It was always my intention to rework some stuff in the story and put it up again, I just never really had the time, but now I do : )

Anyway, without further ado - welcome to A Noble Endeavour : )

Please remember that Doctor Who is not mine, and I hope you enjoy this story : )

A Noble Endeavour

Donna's Choice

Donna Noble let out a tired sigh as she leaned against the console of the Tardis, a magnificent time machine that could travel anywhere and everywhere in time and space in the blink of an eye.

Whilst on the outside, it looked like an old blue police box, but on the inside, it was so much bigger and so much more magical. Blue and green lights lit up the room, and large ornate coral struts held up the dome shaped ceiling.

The floor was a metal grate, and in the centre of the room, the strange and bizarre console stood, a large glass cylinder called the Time Rotor reaching up to the centre of the ceiling.

Donna herself was a tall, confident woman with long red hair and a gracefully beautiful face. No make-up, no nonsense, just her - pretty and confident.

Well, mostly confident.

She had a lot of self-doubt, and a strong lack of belief in her own specialness, even going so far as to deny being important or useful to anyone.

That was until she absorbed the Doctor's mind into her own head, and a whole universe of information exploded through her.

Facts and figures combined with human intuition.

A Human Being with a Time Lord brain.

She was the most unique woman in the whole of creation after all, and thanks to her, the universe was now safe. In fact every universe was, all thanks to Donna Noble.

The Doctor-Donna.

That was what she had been called by the Ood, and by the Doctor himself.

The man in question was the last of his kind, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. He was a pretty boy with spiky brown hair and a baby face complexion, and far too skinny for Donna's tastes.

He wore a pinstripe suit and a long brown coat, and even though he wore a manic grin most of the time, Donna knew better than to trust it.

He was never really alright.

He had lost too much.

His planet, his friends, his family, and now he had lost the woman he loved.

Twice!

And now, he had just said goodbye to all his old friends all at once.

Sarah Jane Smith had been the first.

But the Doctor didn't begrudge her one bit.

She had a son to get back too, and he was only fourteen. It was only right that she got the chance at being a mother, and so he had just waved goodbye and told her that he'd see her again soon.

Then Captain Jack Harkness and Martha Jones had left.

Captain Jack was the leader of Torchwood Cardiff, a small rag tag team that protected the Earth by monitoring a rift in time and space. He was also immortal, wrong by the laws of time, but the Doctor had managed to push past all that and by comfortable in his presence again.

Martha had other responsibilities too.

Not only did she have a family to look after, but she worked for UNIT, a sort of alien fighting army, and she was trying to show them a better way of dealing with aliens. Just like the Doctor had taught her.

So once again, he waved them off, back into their own lives.

Mickey Smith had then left too, deciding to come back to his original universe instead of returning to the parallel world he had spent the last few years in. Apparently his gran had passed away peacefully, and with no hope of rekindling his relationship with Rose Tyler, he was opting to start a brand new life back where he belonged.

After saying goodbye to the Doctor, he had raced off after Jack and Martha, and the three of them left together.

And the next goodbye was most definitely the most painful of all.

The Doctor had piloted the Tardis into a different universe, to a spot in a Parallel Norway called Bad Wolf Bay. Once there, Rose Tyler, her mother Jackie Tyler, and the New Doctor, the result of the same Biological Metacrisis that had given Donna so much intelligence, had all stepped out onto the beach.

The Doctor had gone on to explain that his clone would only live one single life and never regenerate, and therefore could spend a life with Rose in a way he never could. It was only when the clone had whispered that he loved her in her ear, Rose had given in and kissed him.

The Doctor had looked utterly heartbroken, but knew he was doing what was best for Rose.

What he thought was best at least.

Donna had thrown him a sympathetic look as he swallowed hard, before he turned and re-entered the Tardis, with Donna following, before piloting them away back to their own universe before the walls of the world closed again, trapping Rose Tyler and her new Doctor there forever.

And that was the moment the cracks in his armour had started to appear.

A tiny tear that Donna almost missed appeared in the corner of the Doctor's eye, and without uttering a word; he stormed out of the control room in his usual dark manner to regain some of his composure, leaving Donna alone in the control room.

And she knew what was going to happen next.

She had the mind of a Time Lord in her human head, and she wouldn't be able to sustain it for much longer.

She winced as her head throbbed with something so much worse than just a severe migraine.

Her mind was racing, so many ideas, so much darkness; her own mind was drowning in it.

The knowledge was killing her; burning out every synapse in her brain until soon she would burn up complete and die in absolute agony.

Ever-lasting death for the most faithful companion.

When she had first heard those words she didn't know who they might apply to.

They might have applied to Rose.

The most faithful companion; well Rose had crossed whole universes to get back to the Doctor, and if that wasn't faithful, Donna didn't know what was.

But the 'Ever-Lasting death' didn't really apply to her.

Then she had thought it might have meant Jack.

He was immortal, he died and came right back to life, so in theory, that could be called 'Ever-Lasting Death'.

But with him, the most faithful part was only partly true.

He had waited over a hundred years to find the Doctor again, but he then left for his own life again, twice now.

But now she knew the truth behind the words.

She was the companion that was destined to die.

She was the most faithful, because just touching the severed hand with the Doctor's regeneration energy in it hadn't sparked off the Metacrisis. It was her own belief that it would save her, that the Doctor would save her, which sparked it off.

Her belief in him - her best friend - that was what made her the most faithful companion.

And the ever-lasting death part was that if she allowed the Doctor to go ahead with his plan when he returned, the true her would die, the Doctor Donna would die, and with her memories gone, she'd be back on Earth, still alive but completely ignorant to everything she had done with the Doctor.

So in a sense, she'd be experiencing 'Ever-Lasting Death' without even knowing it.

And she was determined to find a way to stop it.

That was the thought going through her head as she tweaked a switch on the console, walking slowly in a circle around the controls.

"Donna… Donna… listen!" a whisper echoed around her.

Donna jumped and whirled around, looking around for the source of the voice.

"Hel…Hello? Who's there?" she called nervously.

"It's me… it's me, Donna!" the voice replied.

It was barely loud enough for Donna to be able to hear it.

"Who are you?" Donna demanded, getting angry and frightened, "Why can't I see you?!"

After all, hearing voices in an empty room was never a good thing, even with so many voices and thoughts now in her dangerously-close-to-burning head.

"Concentrate Donna… and you will see!" the voice ordered.

Donna, not sure what else she could do, did as the voice instructed and concentrated everything she had on the voice.

And with the power of a Time Lord/Human brain behind her, Donna gasped in shock and jumped back as a vision of a figure faded into existence before her, inside the Tardis.

The console beeped and powered down, and the lights all went out leaving just the Time Rotor glowing, much less brightly then it had been a moment ago.

Donna's wide eyes swept over the form of the woman before her.

She knew who she was of course.

Seeing as it was her!

Standing there dressed exactly the same but with something different about her eyes, was a second Donna Noble!

"But… how is that possible… oh! You're not me, you're just using my image as an interface to be able to talk to me freely" Donna quickly realised.

If she had been just a human, she'd have been spluttering and yelling about imposters and body snatchers, but now she could work out things like that without the Doctor telling her the answer.

She let out a groan of pain, clutching at her head.

She wasn't going to last much longer now.

The pressure in her mind was building up.

The moment would soon be upon them.

Soon she would be dead.

The other her smiled as Donna worked it out, but it faded into a frown as Donna's pain became more obvious.

"Do you know who I am?" the other her asked.

Donna frowned. Her voice was different too. It wasn't Donna's voice, but a voice which sounded eerily like Rose Tyler's, but it was rippling and echoing strangely.

Searching through the Doctor's memories which burned alongside her own, Donna saw the Game Station, with Rose Tyler, or more accurately Bad Wolf towering over him, his previous incarnation, as she spoke in that voice.

Frowning, Donna turned and looked over her shoulder at the console which had powered down, and the Time Rotor which was barely glowing at all now, before she turned back to the other her in realisation.

"You're the Tardis?!" she cried in shock.

"Yes I am! Time and Relative Dimensions in Space! What a clever girl you are!" the other her cheered in Rose's voice.

"Oh my god!" Donna gasped, before she winced as her head throbbed again.

She had just minutes left now.

She didn't have time for this!

She needed to think of a cure which would allow her to retain her memories before it was too late, or before the Doctor came back and wiped her mind.

She refused to allow him to do that.

Which meant that she couldn't be dealing with a talking Tardis right now!

"But you do have time to deal with a talking me, for I am a time machine!" the other her smirked, literally reading Donna's thoughts.

When Donna just stared at her in shock, the Tardis let out a fond sigh.

"I can translate any language inside your head but reading your thoughts is surprising to you?" she asked, rolling her eyes.

"You shouldn't be reading people's thoughts anyway" Donna snapped angrily.

"Normally I don't, but yours are so loud I can't help but hear them. And I love you so much I can't ignore them either!" the Tardis countered gently, a small tear forming in one eye.

"You what? You love me? Why?" Donna asked, bewildered.

If she had said that about Doctor, she would understand, but what, apart from what she had just done to save the universe, had she done to make the Tardis care about her so much?

"Because you saved the Doctor, right from the moment I let you in. Did I let you in? I will let you in? Oh my gosh, tenses are hard, aren't they?" the other her giggled.

Donna frowned at her.

"You… let me in?" Donna blinked.

This was just getting more and more confusing the longer the conversation continued.

"I'm the last Tardis. Nothing comes inside this body without my say-so!" the Tardis said cheerfully.

"Why would you let me in then?" Donna asked softly.

"Because you're special, and you've always been special. Always will be special? Could be? Will be? Are? Tenses! Oh well, you're all of them!" the Tardis told her.

And she said it which such conviction that even her, Donna Noble, couldn't argue with it.

It was then that the other part of the Tardis' original sentence hit her.

"How did I save the Doctor? He's the one that saved me!" Donna pointed out to the manifestation of the time machine.

"Oh no, dear Donna, you most certainly saved him!" the Tardis told her with certainty, "He needed someone after the loss of the wolf girl; he was dark and losing himself to the storm. You pulled him back".

And then Donna was hit with a memory the Tardis was forcing upon her.

"Doctor! You can stop now!" she called up to him, drenched and in her wedding dress.

And he did.

He stopped just because she had told him he could.

"You never fell for him Donna, and he needed that. I did like that Martha girl, but she didn't help my Doctor, not in the way you did. He needed a mate and that was you, you helped him open up and heal!" the Tardis persisted.

"I'm not his mate! Friend, buddy, pal - sure! But not mate! Never mate! Mate! Mate! Mate! Mate! Mate! Ah!" Donna yelped in pain.

She stumbled back, clutching at her head, and the Tardis frowned.

"Whatever the reasons are, we don't have time to discuss them! You are dying Donna Noble, and without you the Doctor will fall so far into the darkness, he will not survive it. He may regenerate, or he may not, be he will never be the same!" the Tardis proclaimed ominously, "I can see Donna. The whole of time, it's in my name after all, and he will fall further and further into the darkness without someone to pull him back, and the only one that can do so is you!".

Donna looked up at her with narrowed eyes.

"What do you want? Why are you here? Because look at me, I'm about to fail any minute. My mind will burn and I'll die. I can't help anyone!" she shouted, more of Donna then the Doctor shining through her tone at that moment.

"You're right. Whilst in this Metacrisis state you're useless, helpless, but as Donna Noble, you could do so much more to help him!" the Tardis explained to her.

"Why are you talking with Rose's voice?" Donna wanted to know, ignoring the words the Tardis had just spoken.

She didn't want to hear it.

Because returning to being just Donna Noble meant losing her memories, and she'd rather die than let that happen.

The Tardis huffed, but answered regardless.

"I can't just go poof and get a voice and body! I need lot of things, but most of all I need DNA. You touched the Doctor's hand whilst I was being destroyed, and through my link to him I managed to obtain your DNA. As for the voice, I obtained that when the Wolf looked into me and I looked into her" the Tardis explained, before getting down to what was really going on, "Now, you've got a choice to make, and it can only work once, so you need to make sure you get it right".

"Let me guess, the first option is that I refuse and my mind either burns or is erased and I'm returned to Earth. Earth. Earth. Earth. Earth. Earth. Earth. Earth. Earth. Earth. AND the second is that you do something to me. Am I right?" Donna asked coolly.

Her head was in pieces now!

Fire burned through her and it took all her own mind's strength to try and keep it at bay.

But she couldn't hold it off for much longer.

She had merely seconds left now.

"Correct! Oh you are such a clever thing aren't you? Now, here's your second option. I take your consciousness, and only yours, right back through time to the first moment I let you in here" the Tardis explained.

She empathised the yours to make it clear that it would be Donna's own mind and not the Metacrisis' mind that would be going back.

"What?! But that means I'd have to relive my life, every moment with the Doctor again! That's too dangerous!" Donna protested.

Never mind the fact that she wouldn't even be able to tell him without causing a paradox, but what if the timelines themselves couldn't sustain her future mind being in her past self's body?

"Oh it's dangerous Donna. Universally-exploding dangerous, but don't worry" the Tardis beamed at her.

"Don't worry? Don't worry?!" Donna repeated incredulously.

"Nope, because I'll be right there will you!" the Tardis cheered, "Well, I can whisper in your mind when you're doing something that will disrupt time too much".

"What are you saying? That I should save people? Do things differently?' Donna frowned.

It was so dangerous.

She would be constantly rewriting time!

The only way that could possibly work would be to take her back to the very moment she had first met him, back at her wedding, which had happened two years ago for her!

"Exactly! But most importantly, you could help the Doctor. He needs opening up; he needs someone to save him from his inner demons, to show him he isn't a bad man but a hero to many, and you are the only one that can. You are the best friend he's ever had. He needs you Donna, now more than ever. Will you do it?" the Tardis asked tensely.

Donna bit her lip.

Either option was going to be difficult.

But the Tardis was right.

The Doctor needed to be saved, before he ended up alone and miserable.

And he was her friend!

He had always done whatever he could to help her.

So now it was her turn to save him, even if that meant facing the hardest thing anybody could ever possibly face.

Her mind made up, Donna turned to face the Tardis, and silently nodded.

"You'll rewrite your entire time with him? Purely for him? And obviously to save yourself whilst you're at it? Don't forget that, that's very important!" the Tardis wanted to be sure.

"Yeah… I'll do it" Donna nodded.

A tear ran down her cheek as her doppelganger smiled warmly at her.

"Thank you Donna Noble, thank you!" the Tardis looked ready to hug her, but managed to refrain, "Now, first things first, don't expect too much of yourself. If you want to save people who died the first time, than by all means try, but some people just can't be saved, so don't let it dishearten you if you can't save everyone you'd like too".

Donna nodded.

She knew she'd be absolutely heartbroken if someone she tried to save ended up dying again, but the Tardis was right.

Not everyone could be saved.

Every single adventure she'd gone on with the Doctor was a testament to that.

"What's most important is that you find a way to prevent the Metacrisis from happening; it's the only way to save yourself. You can only do this once, so you need to pull it all off" the Tardis warned solemnly, "Secondly, as I've said, try to get the Doctor to open up to you more. You will never love him in the way the Wolf girl did, and that's good. He needs a friend, not someone who wants him to love her back like that. Just be yourself and I'm sure you'll manage to get him to open up to you. And fourthly… no... thirdly, we need to establish the bond" the Tardis finished.

"A bond so that when I'm back there my mind will still be able to hear you?" Donna assumed.

The other her nodded, gently raising her hands up.

Donna grimaced.

This wasn't going to be fun.

"Do it" Donna ordered nervously.

The Tardis placed her fingertips to Donna's temples.

"Don't worry, it won't hurt" the Tardis told her, before the sound of her whooshing noise filled the room and her eyes sparkled with a brilliant golden light.

A gold beam of pure temporal energy shot from her eyes and into the real Donna's, and a spark of golden fire fused the Tardis' consciousness to her mind.

Now they would be able to communicate without needing to speak aloud.

They would permanently be able to talk telepathically.

And it felt so strange to Donna.

It was like a warm blanket had been wrapped around her, or like she had been enveloped in a giant hug. Whatever it was, she liked the warm fuzzy feeling a lot.

But sadly, the process of establishing the bond had most certainly NOT been pain-free.

"Ow! Hey!" Donna protested whilst the Tardis laughed.

"Sorry. I lied. But I didn't want to worry you" the Tardis said whilst Donna muttered in annoyance about sneaky time-space spaceships.

"Do you know what I'm going to say next, what I have said next, what I will say next, tenses!" the Tardis frowned, still struggling to get a grasp on the correct operatives.

"You're going to tell me not to go with him when he first asks, aren't you?" Donna sighed sadly.

If the Doctor was going to be lonely like he had beem when she had first met him, she wanted to be able to help him with that.

It wasn't fair that she couldn't.

"I'm sorry but he needs to find you again, like he originally did. Just before meeting you the second time, he had been imprisoned and tortured for a full year. I couldn't do anything to help him. I had been destroyed and mutilated into a Paradox Machine. You'll help pull him out of all that, and that's when he needs you the most Donna. I'm sorry, but it must be that way" the Tardis told her gently.

She placed a comforting hand on Donna's shoulder.

Comfort that was greatly needed at that moment.

Donna remained silent for a moment, needing a second to allow everything she had just agreed to do to fully sink in.

She really didn't want to say no to going with him again.

It wasn't fair that he had to feel so alone for so long before she could help him.

But if the Tardis said that time would be changed too much by her going with him when he first asked, then the best thing Donna could do was listen.

That didn't mean she had to like it though.

"Okay" Donna finally sighed, like a small child giving into her parents.

"Good girl. Now, there's just one last thing to say" the Tardis smiled sadly at her.

"What's that? That? That? That? That? That?" Donna gasped as a fresh wave of pain rippled through her.

She only had about fifteen seconds left now!

The Tardis raised her hands again and placed them back on Donna's temple, and her eyes shone brighter than a golden star, a sort of pulsing energy rippling over her skin as she shone with the power of time and space.

"Good Luck" was the echoing answer she got.

That was all Donna heard, before everything faded to black.

And there's the prologue : )

It's very similar to the original version of this chapter, just better presented. I'm working off of the original chapters and just ironing out some of the stuff that was bugging me : )

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and please leave a review telling me what you thought : )

Until the next time, keep on reading : )