Title: Meta-Crisis
Summary: Short little first attempt at a scene where River helps Donna get her memories back. Just me playing around with something that might get worked into a bigger piece later.
Rating: M for not-sex-but-seems-a-lot-like-sex content
Word Count: 1106
Other Chapters: No.
Disclaimer: The British Broadcasting Corporation owns Doctor Who and all related trademarks. I do not in any way profit from the use of these trademarks.
Pairings: River/Donna (kissing)
Contains: Fix-it fic.
Warnings: None.

They'd been snogging on Donna's bed for the better part of an hour. River was doing her best. They were nearly naked, bare breasts to bare breasts, and she was straddling Donna and holding their lips together as much as she could, but it burnt like the fucking sun after a few seconds.

She felt... odd. Hot. They were on top of the blankets and they'd already thrown all of their clothes off but their knickers. It was January and it was damp and rainy outside. River could see beads of sweat running down Donna's brow, and she could feel them running down her own, as well. River wished she'd thought to turn the heat off, of to bring along someone who could do it for her, but there was nothing for that now. River tangled their sweaty legs together and accepted the their circumstances for what they were.

She was vibrating. Or at least she felt like she was. Every hair on her body was standing up and there was an uncomfortable pulsing spreading from the roots of her hair to her toes, not missing an inch of her body along the way. Her hands and her lips and her legs tingled wherever they made contact with Donna's body. At first, the skin-to-skin contact pricked like needles, but then it faded into butterfly kisses and River found herself nearly unable and entirely unwilling to move away.

She felt... oh, it hurt a little. Kind of nicely, though. Like the warmth after a good spanking or the good stings from pinches that only heightened other sensations. She'd expected a splitting headache, but connecting her body to Donna's at several points was helping to distribute the pain more, lessening and changing the nature of the pain that both of them felt.

Donna moaned, and River couldn't tell if it was pleasure or pain. "How are you?" she asked, straining and still hearing her voice come out as a whisper. "Does it hurt?"

"Better," Donna whispered. Her voice sounded stronger than River's. "It's getting..." She moaned again, and River couldn't help but smile. "What?" she asked.

"I like that sound," River admitted.

Donna made it again, but then she shook herself out of it and glared a little. "Is this fun for you?!" she asked.

River laughed a little, feeling weak and vaguely dizzy and trembling under her own weight. "Less fun for me than it is for you, I imagine."

Both of their breaths caught. River felt the connection between them shatter and the flow of energy stop, and she quickly rolled off Donna and laid down beside her, panting. God. Her body was sizzling. It felt like she was about to regenerate, but she didn't think she was. She didn't think she could any more, even after this. Besides, you know when you're about to regenerate. You feel death, even if it's not your final death. This was all the physical sensations of energy from the Time Vortex pulsing through her, but none of the emotions that came with the death. She wasn't going to die or regenerate, she just needed some time to burn off this excess energy and to recover.

Regenerating would feel good, though. She just couldn't. And even if she could, she'd regret it later if she did.

"Donna?" she asked. "Donna, how are you? Did it work?"

Donna sighed. "You're bloody mad," she said. She sounded so much stronger than River did, though. Good. If River's body had shut down the energy exchange, it was either because Donna had no more to give or because River couldn't take any more. River hoped it was the former. "You are so bloody mad... but I think it worked."

River's body was already both human and Time Lord. It could stabilize the meta-crisis. Donna's body couldn't, and that was why the Doctor shut it away where it couldn't consume her. Even the Doctor's body couldn't have done this. The introduction of human DNA into his system would have made his body attack itself, and he wouldn't have been able to regenerate. River... River could do this. Her body had been doing it all her life. The human clone of the Doctor that had resulted from the meta-crisis could manage for the same reason. His body and River's bodies had beendesigned to take this. River was overheated and dizzy and weak from the rush of energy all that meta-crisis energy at once, but she was sure that her body could take it. It had to. For her husband. For Donna. To put something right in the universe, for once in her life.

She took a slow breath. "I remember everything. The Doctor, the Ood, the Adipose, the daleks, you in the Library..." She stopped suddenly. "You in the Library. You—"

"Shhhhhh," River said. "Spoilers. I haven't done the Library yet. Are you in any pain?" If she were still in pain, it would mean River hadn't absorbed all of the energy yet, and she'd have to try to burn some of what she'd already taken in off as quickly as she could, and absorb the rest of the energy before it killed Donna. If she wasn't in pain, they were probably okay.

Donna shook her head. "I feel fine. Tired, but fine. So what," Donna asked, "Are you some kind of alien too? Some kind of weird sex alien?"

River laughed a little bit. "No." She sighed. "Well... a little bit yes. Not a sex alien, but something of an alien. It's complicated." Taking all of their clothes off hadn't been part of the plan. River had broken into Donna's house while her husband was out and just touched Donna, at first. The palm of River's hand to Donna's forehead. She'd given her just a little bit of memory back, to make her listen and agree to let River help her, and it had worked like a charm. And then they'd both started to feel overheated and the concentrated pain in River's hand had become unbearable, so, by degrees, They taken their clothes off to get more comfortable and River had maximized their points of contact to minimize her own pain. It would look bad, if Donna's husband came home right now to find his wife lying on the bed and panting in her knickers next to another man's wife, but it wasn't actually all that bad.

"He doesn't know you did this, does he?" Donna asked.

River shook his head. "He'd have never let me try if I'd told him." She sighed and smiled. "He'll find out when I call him down here."