The Doctor had listened to Donna's story about being lost in an alternate universe where she'd never met him with more than his ordinary level of curiosity. He knew how lost he'd been when they'd met, and even though Donna couldn't remember the details of that reality, he could easily fill in the blanks.
Well that definitely explains the temporal anomaly I sensed earlier, but how… He scanned the stall, filled with various trappings of a fortune teller. Light filtered in through the red silk and reflected off something shiny and black lying in the brazier.
A Time Beetle? He picked it up and sat down on a stool to examine it. The pincers which had clung to Donna's back were limp and harmless now, but just twenty minutes ago, they'd been on the verge of disrupting the entire web of time.
The Doctor narrowed his eyes at the dead beetle. He couldn't decide if the Trickster targeted Donna on purpose, or if it had just been bad luck.
"I can't remember," Donna murmured. "It's slipping away. You know like when you try and think of a dream and it just sort of goes."
The Doctor blinked, then realised she was still trying to remember the details of that life. He shuddered; he was just as happy not knowing.
"Just got lucky, this thing," he said, trying to change the subject. "It's one of the Trickster's Brigade. Changes a life in tiny little ways." He straightened up on the stool. "Most times, the universe just compensates around it, but with you?" He grinned at Donna. "Great big parallel world."
"Hold on." Donna shook her head. "You said parallel worlds are sealed off."
"They are." After three years, the Doctor just managed to hide his flinch at the reference to Rose. "But you had one created around you." He tilted his head and stared at her. "Funny thing is, seems to be happening a lot to you," he said, more to himself than to her.
"How do you mean?"
"Well, the Library and then this," he said, trying to sound less concerned than he was.
Donna shrugged. "Just goes with the job, I suppose."
The Doctor looked at her, for once seeing all the things that had pulled together so he would be travelling with Donna Noble, right now. "Sometimes I think there's way too much coincidence around you, Donna. I met you once, then I met your grandfather, then I met you again. In the whole wide universe, I met you for a second time. It's like something's binding us together."
Donna snorted. "Don't be so daft. I'm nothing special."
"Yes, you are," the Doctor told her, hoping this would be the time she believed it. "You're brilliant."
Donna rolled her eyes, but then she got a distant look on her face, like he'd just reminded her of something she'd forgotten. "She said that."
The Doctor frowned. "Who did?"
"That woman." She sighed and shook her head. "I can't remember."
"Well, she never existed now," the Doctor pointed out, not understanding why Donna was so keen on remembering a life that never happened.
"No, but she said the stars." Donna spoke slowly, pulling the words from her memory. "She said the stars are going out."
"Yeah, but that world's gone." The Doctor spoke softly, trying to reassure her.
"No, but she said it was all worlds." Donna's voice gained confidence. "Every world. She said the darkness is coming, even here."
Timelines tightened around the Doctor, forcing him to give Donna's story his full attention. "Who was she?"
"I don't know."
But that hazy feeling he'd had earlier sharpened. He couldn't let go of the idea that everything that had happened from the moment he'd met Donna had been leading them to this moment.
"What did she look like?" he asked, trying a different angle.
Donna shrugged. "She was blonde."
The Doctor's mouth went dry, even though he told himself there were countless blonde women in the universe. He had to swallow twice before he could speak.
"What was her name?"
"I don't know."
The frustration leaking into her voice didn't stop him from asking again. "Donna, what was her name?"
Donna squinted, her frown wrinkling her forehead. "But she told me to warn you," she said, not repeating the answer she'd already given twice. "She said two words."
Two words following us…
"What two words?" the Doctor demanded breathlessly. "What were they? What did she say?"
His muscles tensed when her lips formed the first letter, but he made himself wait until she actually said it.
"Bad Wolf." The Doctor sucked in a breath, and Donna finally noticed his agitation. "Well, what does it mean?"
Instead of answering, the Doctor jumped to his feet and raced into the street, shoving aside the flaps of silk in his way. The bustle of the city that had been muffled by the stall walls swell around him, but he didn't hear it.
Every faded sign and torn poster and banner fluttering in the wind was covered with two words: Bad Wolf.
The Doctor stared at them until something tugged on his time senses. Something was coming.
He caught a faint whiff of ozone and felt the hairs on his arm stand on end. Someone had just teleported into the city, very very close by.
Hope surged through his hearts, unable to be controlled. The Doctor held his breath, then turned around.
Donna's mysterious blonde was stepping out of a nearby alley. She hadn't spotted him yet, and the Doctor drank in the sight of her. She looked leaner, with some of her softness sharpened by time and disappointment, but she was still Rose.
She turned the wrong way, and he had to call out to her. "Rose."
At her name, Rose stopped, then slowly turned around. The Doctor's hearts broke when he saw the same fear he felt—the fear that this wasn't real, and they'd wake up alone, again.
He held his arms out, and a smile stretched across her face as she ran into them. "Rose Tyler," he whispered, the words muffled by her hair. "You have no idea how glad I am to see you."
She laughed, then looked up at him with the cheeky tongue-in-teeth smile that always made his hearts skip a beat. "Oh, I don't know—I think I have a pretty good idea."
The Doctor chuckled. "I suppose you do."
He let his hands drift down to rest in the small of her back, and Rose reciprocated by sliding hers over his chest to wrap around his neck. She pushed up on her toes, and he sighed in pleasure when her lips touched his.
Rose whimpered when he caught her bottom lip between his. The sound made the Doctor's hearts ache, and he clenched his hands in the smooth leather of her jacket, trying to tell her how much he'd missed her.
She sighed and gentled the kiss, stroking his neck with her fingertips. "I know," she whispered as she pulled back.
The Doctor wrinkled his brow when she stepped away from him. That kiss was hardly long enough for a proper reunion between long-lost lovers.
Rose smirked, and he felt his ears turn red. "We can get back to that later, Doctor—after we save the universe."
"Ah. Right." He tugged on his ear. "I hear the stars are going out."
Rose nodded, then turned and started walking, his hand still firmly in hers. The Doctor raised an eyebrow when he realised she was leading them straight for the TARDIS.
Something else to discuss later.
Donna was standing in front of the TARDIS, her hands on her hips. "It's about time you got here," she scolded him. Then she smiled at Rose. "You must be Rose Tyler."
The Doctor blinked a few times. "I thought you said you didn't know her name."
Donna rolled her eyes. "Well, I didn't then, Spaceman. But when you come down the street holding a woman's hand, I can put the pieces together."
The Doctor closed his mouth before Donna accused him of imitating a fish. Finally, he shook his head and gestured from Rose to Donna.
"And do you…?"
Rose smiled at him indulgently. "Yeah, we've met."
"Right. Yes. Of course."
The impossibility of it struck him. "Actually, how? How did you meet, but… more importantly, how are you here?"
Rose nodded at the TARDIS, where every word had been replaced with "Bad Wolf." "I left a message to lead myself here."
Something was coming.
The Doctor had thought the portentous shiver in his time senses had referred to Rose's arrival, but as he read the words over and over, he suspected there was more yet to come.
The stars were going out. The darkness was coming. And Bad Wolf… Bad Wolf would create herself once more.