Another story that's been a long time coming, that my sis finally convinced me to start uploading. As my favourite modern companion, I believe that Donna deserved more of a send-off than she got, so...
Needless to say, completely AU from about two thirds the way through Journey's End.
"You weren't there in the final days of the War. You never saw what was born. But if the Timelock's broken, then everything's coming through. Not just the Daleks, but the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-have-been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-weres. The War turned into hell. – The Doctor
MANY YEARS AGO
THE GATES OF ELYSIUM
The star system was the last line of defence between Gallifrey and the Daleks, and Elysium was falling.
Explosions buffeted the complex and rock rained down from the ceiling. Expensive pieces of equipment were torn free from their housing and exploded in showers of sparks.
He sprinted through the complex, checking life pods and shepherding stragglers to the escape ports. They were losing their planet, they had no need to lose their lives too. Gallifrey had dragged them into a war they had no part in and had all but assured their doom.
He slammed the doors open, storming into the room beyond.
"Get to the evacuation ports. Can't you hear the alarms?" He demanded. "Move it, people!"
The Elysium people who recognised him and the authority he carried immediately leapt to their feet, thankful that someone had countermanded their orders. The others just stared at him coldly, angry that one of the natives had interrupted their suicidal scheming.
Suicidal for the people of Elysium, that is.
"Belay that." The lead Gallifreyan soldier overseeing the scientists snapped. "Back to work. The High Council of Gallifrey is relying on you to halt the advance of the Daleks here at the Gates."
His lip curled as he eyed up the great golden Gallifreyan warrior. "Our perimeter has been breached. It's only a matter of time, now."
"You will keep working. This opportunity may never present itself again. We will stop the Daleks at the Gates."
He wondered whether the soldier had been told it so many times that he just finally believed it to be true. There was an old man behind the soldier, wrapped up in leather. He caught the old man's eye, his old friend, and the man gave an apologetic shake of his head. He'd tried.
Eyes flinty, he stood nose to nose with the Gallifreyan soldier. "Elysium is not Gaillfrey's to give away. Has not enough of my brothers and sisters died for the glory of the Time Lord?"
The soldier's face twitched, like he itched to put this mouthy upstart in his place. "The work will continue."
His face folded into a sneer. "And Gallifrey will fight to the last Child of Elysium." He indicated the scientists with a balled fist. "Go!"
"The future of the universe is at stake. You do not have the authority-!"
He turned back, eyes flashing. "And what good is the universe if there's no one left to live in it?" He snapped. "You Time Lords, I have been listening to you talk and talk and talk and not actually do anything for months now. Elysium is lost. The Dalek arrival isn't imminent, it has already happened. The Nightmare Child is inching forward with every day. We have lost."
He spun on his heel, striding away. The next moment he was aware of the old man catching up to him.
"The last of the life pods are gone."
"I am aware. Unlike your fellows, my priority was getting my people to safety first."
"Let me give you a lift. My ship is not far."
The two of them emerged into the crumbling corridor.
BOOM.
The next instant the whole end of the corridor where they had just been standing broke away in a shower of dust and rock. The Time Lord froze, staring, as the first Dalek swept in through the opening, followed by another, and another.
"YOU WILL REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE!"
He grabbed the Time Lord's shoulder, spinning him back up the corridor just as he brought to bear the massive gun that was slung across his back.
"Captain!" His old friend shouted.
"Get out of here, Doctor." He brought the gun to his shoulder.
"My friend…"
"Get out of here!" He snarled. "You make all this death worth something! You do that for me! For all of us!"
The Doctor took one last fleeting look at him, and then was gone, sprinting down the corridor. He had mere moments to get to his TARDIS, and the captain was going to give him as much time as he could.
The captain lined up the shot as the Dalek foot soldiers came down the hall. "No more." He breathed. It seemed fitting that he would go out like this. The last casualty of a war that had never had anything to do with his planet in the first place.
"No more."
He should have known that simple death for the likes of him would have been too easy. The Daleks were smart. They knew he was a key figure in the Gates of Elysium resistance, and they knew about his partnership with the Time Lord known as the Doctor.
He had been trained to resist torture, and the Daleks knew this, so they handed him off onto their famed interrogators, sadists of the highest order, the Skaro Degradations.
They took him to a Dalek moon base not far from the irradiated wreckage of Skaro. The captain knew the place. The complex was a known processing farm for the Daleks. If the Gates of Elysium initiative had succeeded, it would have been the fleet's next target. He knew that when the Emperor had taken all the information he wanted, he would be processed into one of the mindless drones that had so decimated his home of Elysium.
Still, he could have been in the clutches of the Nightmare Child instead.
He fought the whole way there, not that the Degradations noticed. His weapons were taken and he was stripped and shoved into a small cell. Starved and sleep-deprived. And the captain knew that it was only the beginning.
They asked him questions about the resistance, about the forces of Gallifrey, but he would not speak.
They stripped chunks of flesh from his body and left him to bleed into the filthy floor before asking him again.
He would not speak.
They took his insides apart before putting him back together wrong before asking him again.
But still he would not speak.
That was the day the Degradations dragged him to the processing plant.
His arms and legs were the first to go, cutting and slicing and pulping, looking for that one viable cell suitable for the conversion process. There was so much blood, there was too much blood. The captain was inundated with it, his insides on his outsides.
He screamed, and the Skaro Degradations gloried in his pain.
So this is how it ends, not with a bang but a whimper.
Dimly he was aware of an alarm wailing somewhere.
"SECURITY BREACH. SECURITY BREACH. ALL STATIONS RETURN FIRE."
The massive steel door exploded inwards in a shower of burning shrapnel. He lay there drowning in his own blood as the world dissolved into fire, screaming, and smoke.
After what seemed like forever, he heard a voice.
"Get those cages open! Get these people out of here!"
A face was suddenly hanging over the captain, soot-blackened and bloody.
"We've got a live one here! Hurry up, I don't know for how much longer!"
PRESENT DAY
DOCTOR'S TARDIS
"-we've got the Torchwood rift looped around the TARDIS by Mr Smith, and we're gonna fly Planet Earth back home! Right then! Off we go!"
It was an amazing sensation, towing the planet behind them, knowing that for the first time in her life, she had saved the day. Donna Noble stared around her, giddy with excitement and all the new knowledge rolling around in her head, all the things she was yet to see.
"Yeah!" Jack Harkness whooped, high-fiving Mickey Smith. Donna subtly prodded Sarah Jane out of the way so she could get in a hug on the hunky captain, and slip in a little PG-rated groping.
The Doctor was smiling around them all fondly, like a proud father. Donna elbowed him in the side. He just grinned at her.
The goodbyes were happy but still somewhat subdued. Everyone made promises to see each other again, knowing that they probably never would.
It was painful, and yet they all pretended that everything was going to be all right.
A very human thing.
The Doctor grabbed Captain Jack's wrist before the man could slip past him.
"Well, Doctor, I know you don't like goodbyes…"
The Doctor's expression didn't flicker. "Where is it?"
"Where's what?" Jack asked innocently.
"The Vortex Manipulator." The Doctor said. "Don't think I'm going to just let you waltz out of here with the power to just pop in wherever you want. The universe will never be safe again."
"I vote for a strip search," Donna put in. Jack flashed her a smile.
"Might be too much excitement for poor ol' Grandpa." He grinned.
The Doctor did not look amused.
"Aw, Dad." Jack rolled his eyes. "Spoilsport."
"Pragmatic. I know you." He held out his hand, waiting. Jack sighed, and pushed up his sleeve, where the vortex manipulator should have been.
Should have been.
He frowned before checking his other wrist and patting down each pocket.
"That's… weird."
The Doctor's expression hardened. "What have you done?"
"Me? I haven't done a thing! It must have got pulled off during all the fun." He adopted a mournful expression. "Damn. It's probably halfway across the Medusa Cascade by now."
The Doctor raised an eyebrow.
"So doubtful, Doctor." Jack smirked. "But you can pat me down if you want."
The Doctor just rolled his eyes. "If you miraculously find it and go about starting intergalactic wars, I'm going to find you."
"Promise?"
"Get going!"
After the farewell to Rose, the Doctor was staring moodily down at the console. Donna sighed internally. If he was going to continue to be this miserable, she was going to kill someone. Maybe him.
"I thought we could try the planet Felspoon." She started, trying to lighten the mood. "Just, coz, what a good name! Felspoon! Apparently it's got mountains that sway in the breeze. Mountains that move, can you imagine?"
He just looked at her.
"And how do you know that?"
"Coz it's in your head. And if it's in your head, it's in mine!"
"And how does that feel?"
His tone started suspicions swirling about her head, and she slipped her hand up her opposite wrist, palming Plan B.
"Brilliant! Fantastic! Molto bene!" She said. "Great big universe, packed into my brain. D'you know, you could fix that chameleon circuit if you just tried hotbinding the fragment-links and superseding the binary-" The next moment it was like a skipping record. "-binary-binary-binary-" Donna managed to rip herself away from it, away from the Doctor's heartbroken expression. "I'm fine!" She snapped, pushing away.
She shook off her momentary lapse. "Nah, never mind Felspoon, d'you know who I'd like to meet? Charlie Chaplin! I bet he's great, Charlie Chaplin, shall we do that? Go and see Charlie Chaplin, shall we? Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Chester? Charlie Brown, no, he's fiction, friction, fixing, mixing, Rickston, Brixton – ow!"
A great lance of pain shot through her temple.
"Oh my God." Her eyes were wide and unseeing. No! Not yet! I need time!
"Do you know what's happening?" The Doctor asked quietly.
"Yeah." Donna's voice was just as quiet.
"There's never been a human – Time Lord metacrisis before now. And you know why."
"Because there can't be." She breathed. She knew. She could see it, right there in her mind.
He looked like he was going to start crying. But you can fix it, Donna wanted to scream. You can fix it. There's a way. There's always a way!
"Look at me, Donna. Look at me."
Despite herself, Donna could feel her eyes well with tears, hope shattering. "I was going to be with you. Forever."
"I know."
"Rest of my life. Travelling. In the TARDIS. The DoctorDonna." Her face crumbled. "Oh, but I can't go back. Don't make me go back, Doctor, please,"
"Donna. Oh, Donna Noble. I'm so sorry."
A bright spark of clarity pierced her addled brain, and suddenly Donna could see again. She knew what he was going to do, without a doubt. After all, she was in his head and knew him as well as he knew himself. She stared up at him as the Doctor cradled her head loosely between his hands.
"Doctor." She said softly. He paused, looking down at her.
"I'm sorry too."
And that was when she mashed the buttons on Captain Jack's stolen vortex manipulator.
As she vanished in tendrils of energy, the Doctor lunged for her.
She slipped through his fingers.
"Donna!"
I'm sorry, but I can't let you do this.
I'm sorry.
Her feet slammed into the ground, and she stumbled down to her knees, hands smacking against the ground to stop herself from smearing her nose across the floor.
The floor which was obviously not the grating in the TARDIS.
Donna Noble climbed stiffly to her feet, her headache temporarily quelled.
"Blimey." She breathed.
All around her was like nothing she had ever seen. All manner of alien creatures were rushing around, talking, laughing. She did get some sideways glances for her sudden appearance but otherwise she was ignored as if she had been standing in the middle of London or New York.
There were three suns in the sky.
"Bloody hell."