He's doing some routine maintenance work on the TARDIS; a plug here, a wire there. It's parked in London. Exactly where, he doesn't know, thanks to the randomiser acceleration that he's trying to fix. Things are gripped between his teeth, hair's all on end.
The doorbell rings.
"Wait a bit," he mutters, deep in frenzied concentration.
It rings again, more insistently. When he doesn't do anything it begins to buzz away as if someone is holding the button down.
That's when it occurs to him that there's no doorbell on the TARDIS.
He leaps up - all gangly arms and legs - and yanks the viewfinder screen around.
It's Donna Noble standing at the door. Donna Noble has her arms folded, and one foot is tapping, and her eyes are squinted, and if he didn't already know that she has red hair he could have sworn there's smoke coming out of her ears.
He's confused to see her, and ecstatic, and … blast it that ringing really isn't going away. The nerve of it, she's psychic doorbelling him. Time Lord mind still there then, and memories somehow all back – and he doesn't even want to muse on the implications of that. Clearly she has no idea of stopping the ringing until there's an answer.
"Just so you know," she calls, "I am NOT stopping the ringing until I get an answer, Spaceman."
The Doctor reluctantly drags one sneakered foot after another to the door. He unlocks it.
She obviously hears the lock click because she slams her palms together in a clap and the doors fly open, catching him off guard (and on the chin, which hurts - a lot).
"YOU!" she says, striding in. The Doctor actually runs backwards, jumps up on the TARDIS console and scrambles his way over various buttons and levers to the other side of the control room.
"Donna – now, don't do anything rash," he says in his desperate fox-caught-in-the-headlights voice. She isn't stopping. She might really kill him dead this time. And judging by the look of her she'll wait and kill off each new regeneration too.
There's only one thing he can do.
"Giant wasp behind you!" he shouts.
She gasps and turns, and as she does he takes off down the corridor, arms pumping like an Olympic sprinter, shoelaces flying out behind him. Put space between them. That's right.
"COME BACK HERE, SPACEMAN!" he hears her bellow. It makes him run faster.
He practically hurls himself through the wardrobe door, thinking that there are any number of places to hide in here. Just climb into a clothing rack and wrap himself up in a coat or something. That's the ticket, she'll never find him. He hears her enter the room (curse her to Rassilon, she's like a bloodhound).
"You can run, Martian boy, but you can't … ooh, what's this?"
He hears the sounds of rustling and things being taken on and off clothing racks as she tries them on. He permits himself to roll his eyes. Some things never change.
But then he hears some sort of machinery grinding into gear, and all the racks of clothing start gliding around the helixed room. Just as the Doctor is wondering how he can slip out, it all grinds to a halt and there she is in front of him.
Except it's not Donna.
It's Rose.
He's completely lost for words. Really. His mouth is going open and shut like a goldfish but nothing is coming out.
"Rose?" he finally says in a voice about two octaves too high.
"You what?" she says, folding her arms and snaking her head to the side in a way that is so uncharacteristically Rose and so all Donna. "Oh bloody hell," she huffs, "don't tell me I'm doing it again."
She morphs, squidgily, into Donna. Donna with blonde hair. Now the Doctor is trying to remember just what those blue aliens he met in a bar last night on Raxacoricofallapatorius put into his drink. Was it some sort of hallucinogen?
"Oh, hang on," she says. "That's not quite right." She morphs into Sally Sparrow, filling out the blonde hair. Then back into ginger and Donna.
"Bingo. You've got a hell of a lot of people hanging around in this bleeding Time Lord memory bank of yours, haven't you? Haven't quite got the hang of this regenerating thing yet. Keeps happening at the weirdest times, I tell you."
"Donna …" breathes the Doctor, eyes terrified and glad and aghast all at once. "You're a …"
"Time Lady," says Donna, hands on her hips. "Yeah. I was wondering when that was going to come up. You know when it came up for me?" (She sounds dangerous. Best not answer. Take it as a rhetorical question.) "It came up when my mum noticed Kylie Minogue – oh, ME then, you dunderhead – standing in our kitchen. I mean, what would Kylie bleeding Minogue be doing in our kitchen?"
"But … it can't be," says the Doctor, running a hand wildly through his hair.
She ignores him. "God, Time Ladies aren't half vain, regenerating all the time. I've got a zit! Regenerate. My boobs aren't big enough! Regenerate." She regenerates into Romana II and back into Donna again, to prove her point. "You Time boys have it easy. Die, regenerate. Die, regenerate."
He hopes that doesn't mean she intends to make him die, and when she doesn't, he moves forward with his hands outstretched to count her two heartbeats. He needs to know; to make sure this isn't some dream.
A cracking slap snaps his head to one side. Not a dream.
"Oi!" growls Donna. "Stop feeling me up."
"So," says the Doctor, trying to get this straight, "your suppressed Time Lord mind tried to let you know about your … Timeness by growing your body an extra heart." He nurses his jaw.
"Yup," says Donna.
"Bringing all the memories back because now they won't kill you. Time Lord mind in a Time Lord body."
"Yup."
"And now you're here."
"Yup."
There's a pause while they eye each other off.
Then …
"Make up sex?" suggests Donna, and she pulls him flush against her and snogs the living daylights out of him, tongues dueling wildly.
When he pulls back, his hair is even more rumpled and he has lipstick on the side of his mouth.
"Donna," he squeaks, ears turning very red, "what in Rassilon are you doing? We've never had sex. Never. Not ever. Never ever."
"Don't be thick," she says. "Because I can remember a hell of a lot of times when we …"
She stops. Her eyes narrow dangerously. He gulps.
"Are these your memories in my brain? You've been dreaming of me … us … like that?"
He knows there's no answer to that one that'll get him out of here alive, so he leaps out of the clothing rack and tries to take off again but somehow he trips over an enormous feathered Gallifreyan headdress that Donna has tried on and tossed down. He slams to the floor. Instantly Donna pounces on top of him.
"You know what … Spaceman?" She curls the word around her tongue, relishing it. He stares up into her eyes. Her ginger mane is spilling all over him. He's terrified. He is so dead.
She lowers her lips to his ear and blows on it. Then she whispers.
"So have I."