From the moment she found herself standing on his ship in a wedding dress, Donna knew that there was something wrong with the man in front of her.
He put on a good show. From the outside he looked almost human and if she focused only on his face that illusion stayed. Truthfully, she had known that there was no way he was anything resembling human. It was just easier to ignore the flashes of the impossible and blame humans and drugs. Being drugged would explain so much, the visual hallucinations most of all.
In the absence of drugs, "Tardis" being another word for spaceship should probably have been her next best guess. He was obviously Alien, because that place was just a little too techy for Hell, and some of the glimpses she was getting made that the only other logical conclusion. Opening the Door would have just confirmed a theory she had yet to have and it was just a pity the ship was already in flight.
That didn't mean that anything else was protected from being treated with her usual sarcastic defences and disbelief. Quite frankly, sarcasm was a good defence, and it kept her distracted from other things. If she pretended it was normal than it was normal, and she didn't have to acknowledge it.
But she never could have doubted him when he said he wasn't human. If she looked too long, she started to see things, things that didn't line up with what people called reality. The confused look on his face would fracture and reflect and stretch on for infinity trapped in a silver spoon. His movements would be fluid then sharp, liquid iron being quenched in water. It was these things that she was trying so hard to ignore, trying so hard to simply not see.
She needed out. Trying to get to her wedding was an excuse he didn't need to know it was. She had seen too much already; she didn't want to see more. All her instincts born from an evolutionary path that started as prey screamed at her to that danger was approaching. It didn't matter how kind he acted, that was something she couldn't ignore and one of the reasons she was so defensive about the woman's jacket.
But more terrifying than instinct was the need to stay.
Running away to her husband-to-be didn't work quite as well as she would have liked.
The first problem was that, like all men, he apparently couldn't drive no matter what claims he made.
The second problem, well … not a problem but certainly a consideration, was that she wasn't staying in something that was even more blatant about breaking the rules of dimensions in space than he was.
The third problem was that said ship blatantly breaking rules seemed to have a telephone line to the universe and refused to let her leave that easily. Given his comments about digesting she didn't want to think about that too closely. Some of the things the taxi drivers were yelling had her wondering if whatever illusion thing he had was contagious and if she was already catching it. Alien or not she'd kill him for that.
And the longer she stayed around him, the many times she failed to get away, the more she saw. Images out of the corner of her eye that didn't make sense and were not there when she looked again. Staring at him directly too long and watching as his form twisted, changed, curled in on itself and expanded out past the realms of possibility's. They compounded on each other to build a picture she didn't like and dear lord, this was meant to be the day she finally got what she wanted; a normal life that was actually going somewhere.
And then she's at her reception, several hours late, and it almost feels like him being a demon pretending to be an alien might not be that unfeasible. Because it is a special type of hell, finding that people are celebrating when as far as they should know she's missing, and then being blamed for it. She does her best though, buries the hurt and bends them around her finger and pretends for the Martian that is all fake when its really not.
She throws herself into the party and ignores the lingering pain and the glimpses of frost flowers on silver she catches whenever he movers in her peripheral vision. It works until he's telling her she isn't as safe as she should be and she realises that she's just put her whole family in danger.
Once again they don't believe her, they never believe her, until things go down.
And she's saving her not-yet-husband because, apparently, he's stupid enough to stand in the line of fire. Her mum's voice rings in her head pointing out that he's stupid enough to marry her after six months so she shouldn't be surprised. The same voice also points out that she's stupid enough to ask him so really, she shouldn't have expected much and they both deserve each other.
He's dragging her around, trying to protect her, trying to see a "big picture" that she would rather avoid. Has spent her whole life avoiding.
He brings up last Christmas and she says she was drunk; she leaves out the part where she was drinking because the air itself seemed to shiver against her skin. She hates Christmas, hates it because ever since she was a little girl, she thought the trees would kill her and never quite lost that belief. Her grandad has those kinds of feelings too, but he refused to drink it away, he embraced it while she tried to ignore what was going on.
Torchwood, Cybermen, she remembers the ghost watch and people saying names that didn't match the faces she could see. She was scuba diving in Spain, mostly because she had done the sensible thing with any invasion that started getting solid and thrown herself in the water to drown out the voices screaming in pain and the looks on the faces that overlayed the metal masks.
What can she say? It takes practice not to see, she has more than enough of it.
He's telling her about Huon particles, pencil in a mug apparently, not the way round she usually goes in that configuration. Oh, and he's a smart ass when it comes to her not-yet-a-husband even though he screwed up the bio-damper thing.
She wants to close her eyes when she looks in the reflective walls of the elevator, for some reason it doesn't help that she could have sworn that one of his reflected faces is trying to fix it's hair by staring intently at another.
Lance thinks that she's insane when she starts laughing while riding on the Segway's if his face is anything to go by. The Doctor laughs with her, probably thinking that it's just the situation, and part of her is happy to be understood even if not really. Because the reason she's laughing is because there are at least two metal limb-things sticking out behind him kicking wildly to try and stay balanced, and while not looking she sees him folding in on himself because expanding out almost pushed him off.
He thinks he's Clever distracting her with words she doesn't understand in the hopes that she won't look at the bigger picture he keeps trying to point out. But just this once she has to because it's her life. He's telling her why someone would put them in her, he's careful not to say what they will do to her.
It takes guts to look someone in the eyes and tell them that they should be dying. She's impressed when he manages it and for once the face he shows is the only one she sees and maybe pretend he really is human and take comfort from it. Because she should be dying, will be dying, doesn't have long to live because someone has been poisoning her from the inside out. She is human, even if he's not, and a habitually scared one at that. She goes with human nature and denies it, believes him when he says he will do something and won't let it happen.
She doesn't say a word about a quite voice in her head takes that denial beyond normal. When it says he doesn't have too, slow introduction and all that, she's already changed more than either of them can comprehend because activation happened long ago.
She will never look at spiders the same way again. If she gets out of this, selfless actions will forever be a cause for suspicion. Maybe she rushed things, but he let her, and he was planning her death long before they spoke.
Donna realises, once they are in the ship and talking, that as an alien he has absolutely no idea how to deal with someone else's pain. She only realises that he's trying to cheer her up when she's staring at a young sun and watching the light glint a little too cleanly off a few to many teeth.
She has every right to be insulted when she's kidnapped from under his nose, proving that those reflective surfaces are useless.
Things are right in the middle. Everything should be said but not everything is done and for the first time today she lets herself look at him. She can hear the Racnoss scream, a mother for her children, and it breaks her heart despite the fact that she was nearly food. The sound echoes as the water pours off him and fires flash.
He is a thousand knives and slivers and plates of metal reflecting off each other, crushing in and pushing out and constantly moving and polished surfaces shine and reflect a twisted version of the world. Some of the pieces glow red hot, turn to liquid and drip away, on others frost is clearly visible as they enter temperatures far below freezing. Some of his edges are sharpened, others blunted, pieces bent and battered and the feeling like he is putting himself back together after … something.
Chaos and order and he stands there calmly as he commits a form of genocide. Shiny metal distracts from the cracks that run through absolutely everything. And it's when she's looking, sees the cracks, that she knows that he would quite happily die there with his victims.
Something twists in her chest and she knows she won't let him. He still needs to keep his promise and save her.
And when everything is said and done, and she's widowed before she was even married, he asks her to come with him. She's saying no before she can even let herself think.
Because she's been looking at him, this whole time. She's stopped avoiding it and doesn't want to go back. She's just looking at him and seeing all that he is. So many contradictions and things in places that don't make sense when confined to just three dimensions. She knows it should drive her insane, her brain should not be able to handle what she is seeing. If anyone else could look past his human façade she doesn't think they would be able to keep from gibbering all the way to the loony bin.
Preserving her mental faculties is not the excuse she gives, but it probably would have worked. She gives a couple of hundred others, it feels like, to avoid the what really keeps her from going with him.
She tells him he scares her and it's the truth, but like all things with him she leaves something out.
What scares her is that she still feels the need to stay with him. She wants it all too much.
Something traitorous inside feels pulled towards him, doesn't want to leave. It's not love, or anything like that, not even a need for friendship or adventure or to see it all. She doesn't know what it is and that's the problem. After her most recent misadventure in human contact, she isn't so keen on going after something she wants like this. Not when there is no reason for the desire. Not when he's not human.
And now she's looking, not hiding, she doesn't have any trouble inviting him to Christmas dinner. She won't leave with him, but that pull is still there and she doesn't want him to go. He says he will, she knows he's lying. He needs someone to stop him, but he also needs someone to fix the cracks.
Creaking sparking metal that glows red hot and grows frost flowers and reflects a fractured world back at her and she can almost hear the clanking as he tries to fit himself to human shape to get through the door each time she calls him back. And then he is gone.
Egypt is her attempt to satisfy the restlessness he seemed to light in her.
It fails miserably.
That restlessness only grows. As her mother points out, she was never "bright", but she never had quite this much trouble staying focused before. Sitting still makes her bones itch and she was never quite as aware of her limitations as she is now. She feels trapped and it's enough to leave her on the edge of a panic attack.
The Year that Never Was doesn't help. Neither does her reaction to her family when she finds herself awake one day with the realisation that the world had ended and now they are back to before such a fate even began.
And at some stage when that itch is growing but before she hadn't lost it just quite yet, she sees Harold Saxon on the television for the first time. Or if it's not the first time ever, it certainly is the first time since she allowed herself to see. A large part of her mind blames him for her ever-decreasing sanity, and that was before he decided that world domination by wiping most of it out was a good idea.
Harrold Saxon is like a storm. Clouds rolling around each other, strong winds, crackling lightning and booming thunder. Even on a screen she can tell that he is impossible to grab hold of, and that even his wife probably doesn't have a clue what he is. Rain gives life and lighting lights fires that burn worlds to the ground. Playful winds tugging at umbrellas before blowing a house of its foundations. Harold Saxon is contradiction and paradox at its best as he swirls and eddies within human form and tears himself apart more than the strange beating she can see as it slowly shakes him to pieces.
Donna doesn't vote for him, neither does her Grandad, she thinks her mum might have though.
It's not speciesist, she has no problem with Aliens in general, it's just the idea of one of them running her country that probably contributes to her slowly loosing it. Also, there is nothing sane or competent about that storm, she simply doesn't trust it.
And then the Toclofane prove to be anything but friendly. She loses all her family in that initial decimation of ten percent. Donna never knew quite how she survived; people told her sarcasm wasn't really a good defence, those that knew that was what it was, but the Toclofane seemed to disagree as that was the only thing that she could think for why she was alive. Being entertaining had its perks, even when that entertainment was limited when it came to homicidal metal balls.
And just like the Cybermen, she saw more than she was supposed to.
She saw people, humans, floating heads that jittered and giggled after throwing away the last things that would have ever made them truly something. She hates just a little bit. Even more when she remembers him taunting the doctor on several channels before this mess and then pushing around the wheelchair full of dull and rusty gears that grind and spark but no longer gleam.
It horrifying and intriguing to watch that storm … tame, almost. She can tell if the doctor is in the room during a telecast simply by how the winds move, trying to wrap and nuzzle something just off screen. Lightning striking metal and seeming quite happy to be absorbed. It has to be one of the most unhealthy relationships she has ever seen.
She hears about Martha, is glad that he was able to find someone, doubts that she really will kill the Master, and lives a year of crushing fear as she watches too beings so far beyond human comprehension battle the right to rule the world.
And during that time, the restlessness grows. She's terrified, because she wonders if they would let her onto one of those ship they are building. Every time the bundle of cracked metal limbs that phase through each other end up on screen she feels that tug in her chest, the desire to follow, and can only be thankful that she doesn't get the same thing from the storm that rules from the sky and calls itself Master.
And in a blink of an eye, it's over. It never happened. A whole year in her head that doesn't belong, and the only really lasting effect is that the restlessness is just as bad as it was when she was considering hijacking one of the Master's rockets.
And the restlessness only grows until she finds herself waiting, looking, for a second chance to say yes.
Her Grandad, she suspects, is a little like her. He doesn't seem to see the same way she does, but then he didn't spend six months as a key filled with deadly Huon particles. If she was ever going to tell anyone about what she had seen, what she had been through, it would be him.
Because now she has been through even more stuff, Job seeking is such a good cover for doctor seeking. And the more she looks for him the more she sees around her, no longer disbelieving the information that her mind is telling her. Some of it she knows other people see as well, other are like that year that no longer happened, pockets of stuff that just don't make sense. She blames him for the fact that she now sees more than she ever wished she would.
And her Grandad is left to be the only supportive one when she's widowed and slowly going insane. Her mum might argue that he is too, given that he believes in Aliens and claims that one of them disappeared right in front of him this Christmas just gone.
She still draws the line at a flying Titanic though.
And then, against all odds, she finds him. Polished and smooth once again. Refracting and reflecting in a way that should give her a headache but doesn't. It's headfirst back into danger and running and once again someone is trying to turn the earth into some sort of nest for children at the expense of the human race and it feels like she can just breathe for the first time in a long time. Despite the crippling fear she should be in she's clear headed, and Dear Lord but they work well together.
She's found her second chance and grabs it by both hands this time, grabs him, doesn't really give him a chance to tell her that she's too late.
They are on the roof waving at fat, cute fat but fat just the same, and she takes a breath and notices all the things that have changed in the form that no one else seems to see.
Same number of cracks, but different now, some healed with new ones to take their place. The girl that walked the earth was good for him, some of the more destructive fires melting metal have been quenched, some of the sharper edges no longer look like they want to slice the world to pieces. He also seems less likely to throw himself into the destruction he creates and die alone with his victims.
She never could bring herself to tell him that she remembers that year. That she knew that he had had a person who wasn't here now, and really that last bit is the one that matters.
They can't save Foster, the matron Catherlia, whatever she calls herself. It's gruesome, but it doesn't bother her anywhere near as much as it should.
Donna doesn't think that he has ever had someone put quite this much effort into finding him and being prepared. The look on several of his faces is that of stunned confusion, on several others there is joy.
He doesn't want romance, seems scared of it, and dear lord but that suits her fine.
She would never be comfortable with someone when at times it feels like she can see his very soul. Doesn't mean she doesn't have fun at his expense. And he is a long, thin, thing of nothing, that nothing just also sometimes has knives and mirrors and silver plates.
She gives a message about her mother's car keys to a woman that flickers, shifting around the edges like a ghost. But she seems solid enough and Donna has put great effort into not being one to judge. She's so excited she can even ignore the fur the blond sprouts on occasion, the distinctly animal nose she grew for about half a second.
She runs away with a space man. She shows her Grandad that neither of them are crazy, and starts running to see the universe. She has freedom for the first time in her life without having to be scared of what she sees.
It's horrible. It's wonderful. She asks questions even though she already knows the answer to them. She sees, not everything that he does but more than she should. Fixed and Flux, that she can't see, but she still sees him and just how much he breaks with the choices he has to make. Knowledge is a terrible thing and she knows that better than any other.
The Ood are eye opening. She can't hear them without him, but the sadness is everywhere. She looks at them and she sees something that could almost be mistaken for her, and she knows they see some of the things that she does. They offer her a place and a small part of her wonders if she would accept it when this song finished, if she didn't promise that the next one would involve almost as much running as her current one.
They talk about not forgetting. As a human it's all she can ever ask for.
But that voice wonders. Wonders if somehow, she might be able to see the picture they paint.
People warn her, Martha warns her, that you can't follow the Doctor without getting changed, without changing those around you. She has been asked if she knows what she's doing quite a few times, if she really wants to risk all she ever had.
She thinks, but doesn't say, that she never much liked who she used to be anyway.
Donna knows she's changing. She can see it when she catches glimpse of herself in any of his reflective surfaces. Has watched as his silver slivers distort her reflection and throw it back at her and his sharp and blunt surfaces cut her into something new.
Martha talks about her family; she likens the Doctor to fire. Donna can't tell her that knows what happened because she remembers seeing it televised.
And maybe the doctor is fire, maybe people do get burned, but she knew that already. She knows that he's more than that even, he is metal and silver and heat and ice and something simply more and impossible that is trying to pretend its more or less human.
She maintains the right to be surprised about the hand, it looks nothing like him, not really.
As they run, she grows and changes and tries to spread her wings and succeeds so much more than she ever has before.
And yet …
Something holds her back.
Agatha Christie happens, and for the first time she wonders if she should start telling the Doctor what she sees. Would it have changed anything, to talk about the double vision for the priest and the wasp and that she should have known from the start that he was responsible? Probably lots but she had never, never, spoken about these things before. Not even her Grandad knows, and she doesn't think she could have said anything even if she wanted to.
Besides, if she told him what she saw, she would have to tell him that she can see him too. To tell him that he is melted metal and fractured reflections and the cold that comes once the sun is gone. And that has always felt like she's looking into his soul and she doesn't want him to know that she knows him so well.
Not when she's not even sure what he sees in the mirror, if it's the thin rake man or the breath-taking configuration of metal.
When the person who later calls herself Professor River Song takes off her helmet Donna knows that this thing with the library is about to get infinitely more complicated. And that's before their talk about who knows who and the difficulty for time travellers when it comes to answering that question.
River Song suddenly fills her vision and she is a thousand crushed rubies filled with the fire of a thousand burning suns. She is passion in its rawest form when innocence and ruthlessness combine. She glitters and burns, and firelight resonates within their red prisons and bath the world in a blood red light.
And Donna knows that Professor Song won't survive.
Because the Rubies are dull and un-shined, time and excess handling has taken its toll and though now crushed it's obvious they weren't always. Those suns are dying, just embers spluttering weakly and waiting for moment when they finally become ash and dust as they scatter the elements around to be something else born from the death of something once great.
River song doesn't look old, biologically she probably has lots of time left, but her measure of time is short now and the energy that continues her existence is running out.
Apparently, she isn't in River Song's future. But that's fine, she knows her name and really that's all a human can ask for. It's no different than saying goodbye to the Ood.
And that voice is still in her head, an instinct she can't explain saying rather cheekily that it knows something no one else knows. Not even Donna herself.
She spends years and yet seconds in a dream world, it's the first and last time that she doesn't see something beyond what anyone else can comprehend. It's a dream world because it is everything she has ever wanted in life. She is normal, she met the man she always wanted, and they have such beautiful children.
Her whole life she's been suspending reality in order to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary ever happens. She should have known it wasn't real from the moment she woke up, but she didn't want to know. Her ability to see the fragments of something other doesn't apply to the inside of a sting of numbers; maybe they didn't transcribe it, maybe there is nothing here that that particular peculiarity of hers effects.
And then she's back with the doctor and River Song is dead but not as dead as she could be. And she is forced to face the reality that her husband wasn't reality and even if he was she's never going to find him.
She will never understand why the snapping fingers thing got to him.
The Tardis is alive and sings to her at night if any of the things she's seen are making it hard to go to sleep. The Tardis warps space the same way he does, River did, the Master did, and it is just as alive as all of them. The only difference she can see is that everyone can see the Tardis.
And it's more running, more adventures, and she's still Running and Growing and trying desperately to outrun and outgrow something she doesn't even understand. Something lingers in her very bones, in her soul, in her mind.
The same restlessness that lead to months of searching.
A feeling like there should be something more.
The strangest sense that she's missing something.
She doesn't care though, not really. She sees so much good, so much bad, so many things to make her happy and those that make her want to cry and go home but, in the end, she wouldn't change a thing.
The same voice that has whispered that she need not fear death whispers that she is still waiting on something more. Spreading wings meet barriers that she assumes are just human limits. A feeling of freedom going hand in hand with entrapment. Her heartbeat in her own ears getting louder all the time.
She lies to the doctor, tells him that the alternate universe that sprung into existence just because she chose a different path is fading from her mind.
Doesn't tell him that she was seeing that bug on her back the same way she can see him. But if she chose a different path than there is no reason to pay attention to what she sees, no reason to look at it properly or even acknowledge that she sees it at all.
Until Rose Tyler, the girl who flickers and fades and sprouts fir randomly forcers her to and causes two different versions of herself to collide and fuse. She doesn't tell him that either, but she has the excuse of him suddenly having to worry about much bigger problems.
And then Rose is back, and Planets are missing, and the Doctor has to ask for help from the Shadow Proclamation and people giving condolences for losses that are yet to happen. Because that happens to her a lot and everyone seems to know her. That voice is still laughing at everyone in her head.
The doctor hopeless is not something Donna ever wants to see again. Watching the gears slow and stop and the fires dim until he is almost still.
And then he sparks into life when the signal gets though.
What she sees of Davros of the screen, he is an ever-evolving lump of rot that expands and falls in on itself through so many dimensions. It is also the first time she has ever seen the Doctor so scared, watching the metal spines bristle and it takes him a while to calm down to his usual almost playful arrogance.
Watching a Time Lord regenerate, even a failed one, is not something she is likely to ever forget. She feels that energy crackle against her skin, just like it did that Christmas, and all the fires and energy melt him down with the intention of fusing all cracks and forming him into something else.
It's beautiful, it's horrible, and that tugging inside comes back with a vengeance and she knows it took some of it into herself. She wonders what it would have been like if it finished, and just what is going to happen to that hand now that she can feel the energy beating against her from it. It keeps melting and reforming before her eyes.
That voice is still laughing in her head when they talk about converging timelines. She really can't tell them about what she sees now. And her mum has drilled into her how not special she has been. And it's so hard to think about what to do when that beating in her ears means that she really can't concentrate.
And the door is shutting on its own and Oh God she's stuck in the Tardis, the Tardis is keeping her prisoner, and her jailer is going to be destroyed. The tugging becomes unbearable towards the hand and suddenly the helping hand helps, handy thing, but now it's human.
Really human.
As in not just pretending, only has one heart, human.
Mostly. He's a little silver and cracked in some places, fewer blunt edges and more sharp ridges, she doesn't want to think about the melted metal dribbling down the left side of his face. Still, compared to the other one he's positively normal.
But … after him she's starting to feel less so. Because it wasn't her heartbeat she was hearing, it was him.
And he and the voice are in sync, agreeing because he's in her head and he's talking like it, talking about the tugging because he is aware of it now. He's in her head and part of her wants to be in his. The voice is laughing, and she thinks he knows that. He is also part her and it's more than the fact that he looks almost normal and only has one heart, more than her voice.
Time and Donna have started to have a strange relationship, or maybe it always was. She's not changing it though. Even if it would prevent this idiot from seeing straight through her.
And its destruction that the Dalek are planning, and he has a plan, but he's just a moronic space man. As proved when he fails miserably, and she must try and pick up the slack, and gets stuck by some lightning thing for her tro-
CRACK!
It's not her but it is her.
CRACK!
Oh, by Rassilon, that attack knocked something loose.
CRACK!
And the sound of tinkling eggshell falling to floor. And Donna dies in the arms of eternity. Because an egg cannot hatch without being destroyed utterly.
When the Doctor sees her, he is not sure if he should feel responsible or if that is simply narcissistic as it would imply that he had something to do with the fantastic creature in front of him.
Yolk clings to her and glues her feathers to her skin. Bones stick out and form random appendages that might be wings, might be more hands, might be a bit of both as he can't actually count the number. There is a light in her eyes he has never seen, freedom embraced even as she has to wait to dry and clean herself of before she can seriously consider flight.
The look on Jack's face when he sees her is something to be treasured, like when he met him and Martha at the edge of the universe. He's rather glad jack is in a stable relationship though, paternal instincts and all that.
Part Donna part Doctor and all miracle.
Because she claims that she is a human with a Time Lord mind, but they both know that's not right. She's leaving quite a bit out of that explanation and he must wonder if she has done that before.
They leave and Dalek Carne is yelling that he still lost one of his children, and he's right because Donna will never be the same. But he has a new child now, the Doctor Donna, a true child of time itself.
Once there safe but things still need to be done the yolk has gone and she's drying out. He has to say; she makes the most adorable puff ball. He suspects that some of, if not all, the telepathic ability passed over if her sudden glare is anything to go by.
One last thing to wrap up, only he can't.
She's impossible. Her mind starts to crumble, and she grits her teeth, focuses, sprouts another arm and shakes her head, a balance met so her mind is stable even with the knowledge crammed into it.
Like he said, impossible.
There is a glint in her eye's when she next turns to him, a trail of fluffy pin feathers following her path, as if she knows what he would have considered if he wasn't able to see the evidence with his own eyes that it was unnecessary.
'So, Swaying mountains? If you're a good Time Boy, I might even let you drive.'
For the Doctor Donna the barriers are gone, for the first time she is who she was always going to be, free from the shell she's been stuck in all her life. In some ways he could be considered her parent, in many ways he is, and that tugging was probably always the imprinting of a chick on its mother. Chick is a little too accurate at the moment and unfortunately unavoidable.
If he thinks he's going to get out of parental duties he has another thing coming.
His smile glints of silver a thousand times, reflections of eternity caught in a silver spoon.
'Lead on then, Time Girl, Allonzy,'
He hits a button and they are off.