A/N: Second Who fic. This was inspired partly by the new filming pics, partly by "The Runaway Bride," and partly by some comments made on YouTube videos featuring the new filming pics. FYI, this story contains SPOILERS! If you don't like spoilers, stop reading now and turn back. The spoilers involve casting for the season finale, "End of Time, Part One," and the fifth series premiere, but beyond that, this story is totally AU.

A Noble End

Chapter One

He opened his eyes to find smoke and smoldering air. As his blurry vision cleared, a face emerged from the rippling heat waves: tight, young, the color of fresh squeezed cream, and framed in vibrant flame colored locks. "Ah!" he sputtered, his lips spitting out the word before he could think on it. He wasn't sure why he was staring up into her face. He wasn't sure about the smoke. He wasn't sure about the heat. Everything in his recent memory seemed fuzzy, just lying there on the tip of his mind, yet – like a crowd all trying to fit through the same doorframe at once – none could break free.

"What!" the fiery redhead gasped, jumping back out of his line of vision.

He recoiled in response to her shock, suddenly bolting upright. From his new vantage point, he could see wreckage all around him: flaming, smoking, heaping piles of blue and black wood and metal and melted glass. "Who are you?"

"But-" the redhead seemed to stammer, then hedged backwards, away from him and the wreckage that surrounded them both.

"Where am I?" he continued. He arched his head, looking for any sign that might give him a geographical clue, but he found none.

"What?" The young woman asked again. She had paused her exit and was now staring strangely at him, curious, albeit still afraid.

Frustrated, he jumped to his feet, looking down at himself. His brown and blue pinstriped pants had a giant tear in the knee. He moved his hand to the tear and realized it seemed foreign. Nothing was making a lick of sense. "What the hell is this place?!" he shouted, suddenly fixated on the girl again. Something about the conversation – the girl in general – it smacked of déjà vu.

"Don't yell at me!" she suddenly spat, her voice diamond hard. She lifted her finger and pointed at him accusingly. "You're the one who crash landed on my property; you should be answering to me!"

Then it hit him. "I've had this conversation before," he realized, raising his hand into the air. "Or at least part of it. With…with…Donna." He looked at the girl again. She even looked like Donna, a little anyway. "Who are you?"

The girl scoffed. "My property," she repeated. "I'll be the one doin' the questions 'ere!" She stomped over to him, an insolent pout on her face. She seemed about ready to smack him when something caught her eye, a glint in the sunlight. Turning her head, she noticed the sonic screwdriver lying in the dirt. With a quick flex of her arm, she grabbed it and held it up into the light.

"That's not a toy!" he cried, promptly snatching it from her fingers faster than she could blink.

"Who are you!" she yelled, her voice more of a demand than a question.

"I'm The Doctor," he spoke simply. His memories were all coming back to him now: The Master. The Explosion. Wilf. Donna. As the image of the latter flashed through his mind, an ache ran through his hearts. Then he remembered his escape in the TARDIS and his frantic pulling and pushing of her controls, just before the crash…

"The…the Doctor?" the flame haired girl seemed silenced, a feat that had seemed impossible just moments earlier. "The Doctor?" she squeaked.

"The One and Only." A hiccup proceeded his words, emitting a strange golden-orange energy from between his lips. Then the crash suddenly made sense: the debris that he was standing in, they were that of the TARDIS. And the foreign hands – which he dared to look at again – they were of his new form, his eleventh regeneration!

The girl clasped her hands to her face, covering her nose and mouth in muted wonder. "But I thought they were only stories!" she gasped, her voice muffled from behind her hands. "All this time, just stories!"

"Stories?" The Doctor's voice seemed disembodied, both in the sense of his new body and his sense of actually paying attention to what the girl was saying.

The girl held out her shaking hand. "The Doctor," she repeated, her eyes aglow. "I can't believe you're real!"

"Why wouldn't I be?" He shook her hand. "You look awfully familiar," he blurted out before he could stop himself.

"And you look nothing like your pictures." She felt his grip loosen beneath her hand, but refused to let go. "Amy Donnalee Pond," she whispered. "Granna's told me so much about you!"

"Granna?" he repeated. His mind was spinning. Another hiccup burned in his throat and before he knew it, another burst of regenerative cellular energy was leaving his body. "Do I know her?"

"Oh yes, very well," Amy whispered, her eyes filling with tears. "Does this name ring a bell: Donna Noble?"

The strings on each of his hearts pulled taut. Yes, that name did ring a bell. How could it not? Donna Noble: the most important woman in the whole of the universe! And then it occurred to him: Granna. "Donna Noble is your grandmother?" he blurted out. "What year is this?"

"Two-thousand-forty-eight."

"Twenty-forty-eight!" he shouted. "Oh, blimey! What on Earth have I done?"