Donna Noble is happy.
She is. She knows it. True, sometimes she wonders why her grandad gives her strange looks from time to time, when he doesn't think she can see him. True, she can't help but notice how… sad he looks then. And true, there's that odd, omnipresent feeling that there's somehow something missing from her life, her mind, her memory. Something dancing just out of reach, and she knows it's calling to her.
She can't see it or hear it, but it's always there, nagging at the back of her mind…
Daughter of London……Turn left…
…Daughter of London…
…Doctor. Doctor who?…
…Torchwood, Sarah-Jane, Dalek…
…Daughter of London…
…THERE IS SOMETHING ON YOUR BACK!
We are (one/two/three), you and I
You are (partly/wholely) human
There is (something/nothing) on your back
You are (Doctor/Donna/Doctor/Donna) something new.
Doctor/Donna/Doctor/Donna/Doctor/Donna /Doctor/Donna/Doctor/Donna WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
She doesn't know.
She doesn't care.
She doesn't remember.
There's something she finds horribly new-age about all this hippie dream stuff, and it doesn't really make much difference, does it?
But they draw closer to one another, all the time.
All quiet on the Western Front, a voice whispers in his head and in hers, as they stand there in the Belgium cemetery, only the marble monument between them. And then, because both of them have that gift of making connections without even noticing, silence in the library.
Both of them shiver, at precisely the same time; two not-quite strangers, connected by that thread of not-really closeness.
Contact is closer than you think.
Brushing past one another in the street. She shouts after the stolid, brown-haired man who just shoved her, stumbling back against the wall as he sprints past her without even glancing her way.
In the sky, alien spaceships dance.
And Donna Noble heads home for a glass of water and a migraine pill, then sleeps until morning; sleeps through the night that the small blobs of sentient jelly known as the Xcradra chose to host a tourist trip to Earth.
Close encounters.
Running past some sort of telephone box on her way to the cinema with her mate Tasha and some guy she's never met. So sure it wasn't there yesterday. Bloody council, with their bloody art installations, she thinks. Ugly blue box, why anyone'd want it there's a bloody mystery. And then she thinks she hears some sort of weird whooshing noise behind her, but it's too late to check, because the film starts in two minutes, dammit, and the cinema's a good five minutes' walk away.
So near.
In Cardiff, short weekend break, and she's just about to meet up for a meal with this guy, when she sees this guy in a long military coat, hears 'alien', turns without thinking or knowing quite why.
Silly, really. Just some nerd, and then Tom's there, and there's laughing, and he's stuttering away, and then she's so busy kissing him that she doesn't notice Military-Coat Guy and the Welsh feller in a suit shooting wildly at the giant sea serpent rearing out of the Bay.
And finally, the pieces are coming together, and the two meet.
He's still brown-haired and stolid and he hasn't aged a day, and he looks so damn familiar that she breaks off her conversation with Tom's boss to call him over; asks, "Do I know you?"
"I don't think we've met. I'm Jackson."
"Donna," she says, and blinks, because she felt something, a pain in her head, and even though she wants to stay and chat – doesn't know why, care why, remember why – she suddenly feels really sick and headachy, and has to sprint off hurriedly to pop some pills and throw up in the loo. And when she gets back, he's leaving – just his back, and the back of some other guy she doesn't recognise, and the chance is gone.
What is it, she wonders. It isn't lust or love or anything as simple as that. Just… familiarity, like maybe a soldier from Afghanistan has with a Iraq veteran.
But she's got her life waiting, so, in the end, what does it really matter?
"Who is she?" Jackson asks, back in the TARDIS. The Doctor is uncharacteristically silent for a moment, but he doesn't ask who Jackson means. Instead, he just says, a trifle enigmatically perhaps, "A better question would be, what is she?"
And Jackson pries it out of him, of course. And then the Doctor goes into one of those reflective moods again, and Jackson mirrors it unconsciously.
"You and her have a lot in common," the Doctor says eventually, and Jackson stays silent, because he understands. And what Jackson doesn't say is: we were both you for a while, you mean?
And what the Doctor doesn't say is: no, what I mean is, you were both half me.
And what both of them don't ask, a little sadly, is: did she get that perfection? Did she find as much of a fairytale ending as that not-really in the Library?
Sometimes, things are too obvious to say.
Sometimes, they're just too painful.
Donna Noble is happy.
She's got her husband Tom, and their perfect little family, one boy, one girl, Tom, her, and a lot of good times. She's got a nice suburban house, the park, the street with lots of families, lots of children, just like hers.
She's grown up, you see. She's not just a temp any more. And she's got the house, and the kids, and the park with the swings down the road (the road that somehow feels safe and comfortable and home). Most of all, she's got Tom (and oh, how she loves him, stutter or no stutter) and really, what more does she need?
Donna Noble is happy.
She just wishes she knew why it all feels so familiar.