Hello hello hello! Welcome to what is basically my never-gonna-happen theory of how Donna could come back. Some fluff, some angst, a little something for everyone. Enjoy!

PS: I own Doctor Who. APRIL FOOLS! I totally don't. Wish I did, though. That'd be pretty cool...

Anywhoo, on with the fic. Allons-y, Geronimo, and all that...

You used to captivate me by your resonating light
Now, I'm bound by the life you left behind
Your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away all the sanity in me

These wounds won't seem to heal, this pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase

Evanescence – My Immortal

Donna Noble had reached the conclusion that she'd finally gone mad. That the nightmares had caught up with her and driven her bonkers. It was the only plausible explanation as to why she was standing in the rain outside of the house of an author she'd never met of a book she was inexplicably obsessed with.

It had all started when she'd passed out on Christmas morning. She'd been out to the pub the night before, and must've had a few too many because she'd woken up the next day in her mum's house with Shaun (her fiancé) and her mum sitting over her looking all worried. Ever since that day she'd been having the strangest dreams. Odd shapes, things that looked sort of like talking squids, giant spiders, a flying police box, and a man... a man whose face she never saw, but always radiated a deep and terrible sadness. Often, the dreams terrified her and she would wake up in a cold sweat. But other times, they were happy ones; a large group of people in a cavernous, circular room, laughing and hugging one another like old friends, or in other dreams finding the mysterious man after a long and terrifying separation... She didn't know where they came from, or what they meant, but they were more vivid than any dreams she'd ever had before.

But anyways, life went on. She and Shaun got married, and on their wedding day, her Grandad and her mum had given her a lottery ticket. It had seemed strange at the time, since they'd already got her something and they seemed strangely emotional when they gave it to her... but she'd won. Her, Donna Noble the Temp had actually won the bloody lottery!

She and Shaun had used the money to buy a house of their own, a nice flat in London, and a couple cars, and had given a nice chunk of it to Wilf, but had put the rest away for a rainy day (Shaun's idea, of course... all Donna wanted to do was spend it on private jets and expensive clothes) and continued on with life as normal. Donna was working as a secretary at a law firm, Murdoch and Reynolds, in London and Shaun worked for a programming company nearby. They both took their cars to work every day, until one day Donna had woken up and found her tires slashed.

"Why the hell would someone do something like that?" she's asked Shaun furiously over breakfast.

'It's alright, love, I'll get the police on it, and we'll have it figured out soon enough. But it's going to take a few hours replace the tires, so you may have to take the Tube."

Donna had dozed off halfway through the sentence. His mention of the police had brought back to mind the friendly sight of the blue police box in her dreams, and for a moment, she was lost to the world.

"... Donna?" Shaun asked concernedly.

"Yeah, love." Donna said, snapping out of it. "Sorry. Just a bit... freaked out over this tire slashing business. I'm so tired these days..."

"The nightmares again?"

"Oh, no, no it's nothing. I'm fine. It's nothing." she assured him. He wasn't convinced.

"You can take the car, if you like, I'm fine with the subway."

"No, no, of course not, love, I'm okay. The lottery hasn't made me too posh for public transit. You take the car, I'll be fine."

She stopped for coffee on the way down; there was a cute little cafe just across the street from their flat. Waiting in line, she had the strangest sense of being watched. She glanced around casually, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary. No one was even looking at her. She told herself to calm down, that just because some random punks had thought it would be cool to slash her tires didn't mean there was anyone out to get her. Her imagination was so overactive these days, what with the nightmares and all. She got to the front of the line, paid for her coffee, and walked with it down the street, and down a grungy, slippery staircase into the London underground.

It was busy, and it smelled, but she couldn't help but to be pleased with the familiar chaos. She'd spent years taking the Tube to work, and she was glad that she was still the same old Donna, even if she was a millionaire now. Smiling to herself, she paid for a token and made her way onto the train, taking the most open seat she could find. Shortly after, a pretty blonde girl sat down beside her.

"Hello," the girl said with a charming smile.

"Hi." Donna replied. Strange, people never spoke to each other on the subway.

"I'm Jen." she said.

"...Donna." She really didn't want to continue this conversation. People who spoke to random strangers in subway cars usually turned out to be weirdoes, and Donna really didn't want to deal with any more rubbish today. Unfortunately, the girl kept talking.

"Big, this place isn't it?" she said enthusiastically, looking out the window behind them at the crowded platform.

Donna just nodded this time, trying to hint as politely as she could that she didn't want to be having this conversation. Jen didn't take the hint.

"I've never been to London before. I'm from... well, far away. You've probably never heard of it. I'm looking for someone..."

"Oh..." Donna said. Please just shut up for the rest of the ride. Please.

"Ah well. At least I've got a good book to keep me occupied."

Unwillingly, Donna craned her neck to see the title of the book the young woman was holding. A Journal of Impossible Things, by Verity Newman. "Hmm...' she said."I've heard about that. Is it really as good as they say?"

"It's brilliant." Jen gushed excitedly. "It's about this nurse, Joan Redfern, who met this bloke in 1913, a man named John Smith. Except he wasn't a man... he was an alien pretending to be a human. He fell in love with her, but he had to leave her in the end. Apparently it's a true story."

Images flashed through Donna's head as the girl spoke, strange creatures and names... a cavernous, dark library, running from the shadows, driven by an inexplicable fear... "Ma'am?" Jen said gently. "Are you alright?"

"Fine." Donna said, snapping out of it. Two daydreams in as many hours... what was wrong with her? Trying to appear nonchalant to the whole thing, she asked the girl, whom she was beginning to think was just a nice young lady instead of some nutter, if she really believed all that rubbish about aliens.

"Of course I do!" she laughed. "You can't not believe in them with all that's going around these days. I mean, how about that hospital just disappearing a few years back? And those cute little... whatever-they-were-'s popping up, something to do with that whole weight-loss pill scandal? Not to mention all that went on with the President of the States getting assassinated by those flying ball thingies..."

"They proved that that was just a hoax, remember? Something thought up by the Saxon administration? I knew the whole time that man was a nutter... he was just too good to be true. Abusive, too, huh. Wife shot him shortly after the President was assassinated. Apparently, she'd had enough of him, too."

But even as she spoke, the former PM's image flashed in her mind, but not just one. Hundreds of them, everywhere. The face of Harold Saxon looking hungrily at her. Other things too. The image of a woman, and the name Jones flashed through her mind. Thousands of small pale things being lifted up into the sky around the Adipose Industries building. Hanging on for dear life as she hung in midair next to the Adipose Industries building, waiting for someone, for her guardian to save her. She pushed the strange images back and tried to focus on what Jen was saying.

"... And just about every Christmas for the past four years, something new happening. That star one year, and then the Titanic almost taking out Buckingham Palace the next, then all the stars going out a few months ago..."

"Tell you what, love, that wasn't aliens, that was the alcohol getting to everyone's head. You sound exactly like my Grandad, going on about ETs and aliens and all that rubbish."

Jen shrugged. "True or not, Impossible Things is still a good read."

Donna laughed. "Yeah, well... sci-fi's just not my thing I guess."

They lapsed into silence for a bit, then the train slowed. Jen looked up. "This is my stop."

"Bye." Donna said.

"See ya." Jen said with a bright smile. Then she walked away and was lost to the crowd.

Only after that did Donna realize that she'd left the book on the seat next to her. She grabbed it and stood up, looking around for the girl, but she was gone. She sat back down, the book still in her hands, as the train started up again. But shortly after picking up speed, it stopped abruptly, grinding to a halt and jarring all the passengers in the train. Not half a minute later, the conductor's voice came on, saying that they were experiencing some technical difficulties that may take a while to fix.

Donna groaned, and looked down at the book again. She didn't like sci-fi, but the girl had described it as sort of a romance as well, and it looked like she'd be stuck down here for a while, so why not? She opened the book and began to read...

By the time they got the train working again, she was hooked, wrapped up in the romance of Joan Redfern and the enigmatic John Smith. The story was told from the point of view of Nurse Redfern, through her real-life journal entries, but some chapters were laced with excerpts from the notebook of John Smith himself. And as much as Donna loved the romantic aspect of Joan's writings, she truly related to those of Dr. Smith.

The excerpts from his journal were the ones she truly coveted, and she often found herself skipping much of the plot to read what he had written. He described his feelings of emptiness, like there was something hugely important that he was missing, an inexplicable feeling that she had felt too, since a while before the nightmares started. Like there was some gaping hole in her chest that she hadn't even realized was there until a little while ago. A deep sorrow that she couldn't explain, and couldn't get rid of.

But what mystified her the most were the dreams he wrote of. Creatures whose descriptions matched the ones that she saw in her own nightmares. Creatures of metal with deadly lasers and no emotions except those of hatred, and shrill, terrifying voices that shouted a word that she could never quite make out. They scared her, and Smith wrote that they terrified him too, a deep fear that he couldn't quite explain. The places were familiar, as well. A safe place, a large, cavernous circular room that she was often in, but only in the good dreams. It was... home. That was how Smith described it. And that was certainly how it felt when she stood there in her dreams. A place where she belonged, a place she loved and never wanted to leave.

The parallels between what she read from Smith's diary and what she saw every night should have frightened her, but it didn't. It soothed her. Mystified her a little, but soothed her to know that someone, somewhere, had experienced the same longing and nightmares that she did now. She could almost hear Smith's voice in her ear as she read his words, speaking to her, telling her about the terrible and wonderful things he'd seen and done in his dreams. Which was bizarre, of course, because he had lived almost a hundred years ago so she hadn't the foggiest how his voice sounded. Still, she connected to him like she hadn't connected to any character in a book (and possibly anyone she'd met in real life) ever before.

And as she read, more images flashed in her mind. A computer screen full of smiling faces. Old friends. And someone standing behind her; she could tell just by his presence that he was her guardian. Doctor. Doctor. The word flashed briefly, then again. It seemed important, urgent. The title... or was it a name... flashed continuously. This was new, and it seemed vital. Doctor. Doctor who? She saw diamonds shimmering in the sun through a fifteen-foot thick window. She saw a giant wasp zipping through the air towards her. She saw the sky, where the Earth should have been, but it was gone. She saw her guardian, running down an empty street towards a woman who also seemed familiar. She saw him fall, taken down by one of the deadly metal creatures. She saw a thousand different images, some that she'd already seen in her dreams, some new.

Her head began to ache, a slow, painful throbbing. She suddenly realized that the book was causing this sudden onslaught of waking dreams, and she shut it and tossed it away from herself. The train rolled on, and no one in the crowded car had even noticed her panic. She was sweating.

After a few minutes, she caught her breath. The throbbing in her head had subsided... but the aching in her chest had come back. She hadn't realized it had even gone until now. It was as if the emptiness in her was filled when she read the words of John Smith, when she experienced the strange dreams. Was that it then? Her choice, between head and heart? Because her brain was telling her to close the book and never open it again. But her heart, her heart ached more than it had before. The gaping hole had been filled again, briefly, and now the emptiness seemed to consume her. The book was like a drug, she hated it, but needed it.

She picked it up again and turned it over in her hands, reading the "About the Author" section on the back page. There were three entries:

JOAN REDFERN: Born in 1884, she became a nurse at age 25 and worked at Farringham School for Boys, where she met John Smith in 1913. After his departure, she met and married Maxwell Newman in 1916 and they had five children. She died at age 98 in 1982. Joan's diary is her only work ever to be published.

JOHN SMITH: Little is known about the enigmatic Dr. Smith, other than the fact that he worked as a Maths teacher at Farringham School for Boys for three months in 1913.

VERITY NEWMAN: Born in 1973, she spent the first nine years of her life listening to her great-grandmother's stories about the dashing John Smith. She found Joan's diary in the attic shortly after her death in 1982, and found Smith's accompanying diary almost a decade later among her grandmother's things. Her infatuation with the tragic love story lead her to get it published in the spring of 2008. She dedicates this novel to her great grandmother and, of course, the mysterious Dr. Smith. She says she believes he is still out there, watching over her from the stars.

Donna's head began to ache again. Doctor Smith. The name being whispered urgently in her head. Doctor. Doctor. There had to be a connection. This book, this man, and her dreams were all tied together somehow. She needed to talk to Verity Newman.

Aaaaand, there's chapter 1. The rest of them are all up, and you'll see in a bit why I posted them all up at one. Oh, and if you're wondering about the chapter titles, it's because of an extended period of time in the Grey's Anatomy fandom (all the episodes of the show are named after song titles) and it rubbed off on me, so I do that quite alot. But they're all really good songs that I would recommend you all to chack out. But I digress. Give me a review, love it or loathe it!