Disclaimer: The BBC owns it all, I'm just borrowing. Because it's fun to play in their sandbox, with all these lovely toys.
Author's Note: Yes, another story, and another AU. I like AU's, even if they do try eating my brain for about a month. And now, off to work on the next chapters for three stories.
Chapter 1: The Decision
"Doctor, I'm staying."
That sentence was so unexpected, it stopped the Doctor in his tracks, hand stretched out for the door of the TARDIS. Befuddled, the Doctor stood and stared at Donna in disbelief before swallowing hard and squeaking out "Forever? Here?"
"No, you daft git," Donna snorted and shook her head. "But I can't just go off and leave before the...before Jenny's funeral. I dunno about Time Lords, but I...well I need closure. Funerals do that."
"Oh." He rather thought that Donna thought it would be a good idea for all of them to stay, and if she was staying, he ought to, but he couldn't. Not with his hearts so recently shattered. Not when it had taken him too long to realise just what a precious gift he'd let fall through his fingers. "I...I can't. I just...can't"
"I thought as much, Doctor." Donna smiled sadly and rested her hand on his arm for a moment, then squeezed and let it fall. "Just leave me the number for that mobile you've got in the TARDIS and I'll call when...well, when it's all over."
He tried for a smile but it failed miserably, and instead he swept Donna into a tight hug. When he felt he could speak again, he let her go and programmed the number into her mobile. "Will you...make sure they understand?"
"Course I will," Donna smiled sadly and tucked her mobile back in her pocket. "Go on now, take Martha home." She'd tell him to find someone to talk to while he waited on her, but who else would understand what he was going through right now? Even Martha didn't seem to, and she'd been there too. It was almost enough to change her mind, but she was set. She'd see about encouraging him to talk later, when it was all over.
"All right." He smiled wanly, then slipped into the TARDIS. Donna waited until that wonderful blue box had vanished, then made her way back towards the hall where Jenny had been laid out, but got sidetracked with some problems the Haath were having.
"Doctor, are you sure that was a good idea? Leaving Donna on Messaline? They only just stopped fighting, it could break out again." Martha looked up at her tall alien friend, and would have continued voicing her concerns if he hadn't interrupted.
"Martha, if there's one thing I've learned about Donna, it's that it is pointless to argue with her when her mind is made up. What was I supposed to do, pick her up and carry her off kicking and screaming?" He sighed as they walked towards Martha's place. "Besides, if they dared even think about it, she'd shout them into surrender in nothing flat."
"Well I suppose. She's pretty smart, she can probably handle them if they do think about it."
"Course she can. She's brilliant. Probably got everyone too busy arranging things so they can be a colony again to think about fighting anyway."
"Mmm. She's good for you, too," Martha smiled and turned to face him when they reached her door. "I'm glad you found her."
"I didn't find her, she found me." He managed a chuckle, then bent down to hug his former companion. "It was good to see you again, Martha Jones. Maybe next time we can manage a visit without an invasion?"
"That'd be good, Doctor, and then you can explain what you meant by she found you." Martha hugged him back, then smiled. "You'd better go on - I don't want you calling later because you were late and got Donna mad at you."
He shuddered dramatically. "No, I definitely don't want her mad at me for making her wait. She's got a fierce right hook." He smiled, then turned and walked back to the TARDIS, long coat barely waving as he walked away, shoulders slumped.
Martha watched as the TARDIS dematerialized and wondered just how the Doctor had found out about Donna's right hook. That was probably another tale worth the hearing. She'd have to call them in a week or two and see if she could at least talk Donna into sharing some stories.
Donna had wound up killing an hour or two helping out here and there. It wasn't easy, getting two races of soldiers used to being regular people again, but she thought she'd given them a good start. She'd even told them how to hold a proper trial, because humans and Haath both thought General Cobb and some Hath muck-a-muck whose name she didn't catch needed one for trying to continue the conflict. She'd gotten in a few good slaps on that Cobb too, when he broke out of confinement and tried to get the fighting started again. And she'd punched his Haath counterpart in the stomach - couldn't very well slap something that had a fishtank over it's face, could she?
Now she was tired, physically and emotionally, and she sighed as she slumped lower in the chair by Jenny's makeshift bier. If they didn't figure out how to start a funeral soon, she was going to have to organize that too, and she didn't think she could quite bear it. She stretched and sighed, then shifted to sit upright in the chair again when Cline and one of the Haath finally came in to start preparations. Both the boys (she thought the Haath was a boy, anyway) nodded to her and shifted Jenny around slightly.
There was a tiny wisp of something showing sort of golden-green just above Jenny's face, and Donna rubbed her eyes, thinking it was just a hallucination, and it was actually dust being weird in the sunlight now streaming through the windows. But then, suddenly, Jenny opened her eyes and said, "Hello, boys."
Donna watched, her mouth hanging open in disbelief, as Jenny sat up and stretched, then hopped off the bier and, yeah, she was definitely bouncing on her way over. So much her father's daughter...blimey! The Doctor - she had to call him and tell him about this right away! Well, in a minute or two, when she properly believed this was happening.
"Hullo Donna! Where's Dad and Martha?" Jenny hugged the red-headed woman who'd been mostly so good to her, and frowned a little when she didn't hug back immediately. "Donna? What's wrong? Are you all right?" She shifted from hug to running her hands over Donna, trying to check for injuries.
For some reason, that pulled Donna from her stupefaction, and she gently grabbed Jenny's hands to stop her. "I'm fine, I'm not hurt. But you were dead, sweetheart," She did her own version of what Jenny had, but only checking one spot - where she'd been shot, and should have had a great hole in her chest. But it was just smooth skin and healthy bone, and she shook her head even as she swept the girl into a big hug. "You were dead, and now you're not, and you didn't regenerate. I don't know how you did it, but I'm so glad to see you again!"
Jenny was a bit baffled, but gladly hugged Donna back. When she let go, she pulled Donna out of the chair and started tugging on her hand. "C'mon, let's go find Dad and Martha...unless something bad happened?"
"No, nothing bad happened to them. Other than...well, losing you. Martha had to go back home, so your dad left me here and took her back. I'll just ring him up though and he'll be right back." Donna hugged Jenny again, then fumbled out her mobile. "Oh, he'll be so thrilled to see you - right old misery he was when he left."
Both of them ignored Cline and the Haath running out of the room - Donna was too busy calling the Doctor, and Jenny was too excited about the prospect of seeing her dad again to pay attention to her situational awareness.
"...oh come on you prawn, answer the - Doctor!"
"Donna? What's wrong? Have they started fighting again?"
"What? Why would they...no, they haven't started fighting again, they're even putting that Cobb and apparently his Haath twin on trial for trying to start it up again. No, listen to me, you have to come back here right now. Jenny's alive and standing right next to me."
"..."
"Oh don't be like that, just get here, and no, I'm not making a cruel joke, I wouldn't do that to you, Spaceman."
"But...how?"
"Dunno. There was this wisp of goldy-greeny stuff just above her face, then she sat up like she'd never been shot. Now, are you coming?"
"Donna, yes, of course I'm coming!"
"About time, prawn, now how...oh, that's new."
The TARDIS materialized around Donna and Jenny, and Donna closed her mobile, then gave Jenny a gentle shove towards her dad.
Grinning like a madman, the Doctor closed the distance between them and pulled Jenny off her feet into the biggest hug he'd yet to give her. "Jenny, oh Jenny, this is fantastic! Brilliant!"
"Oh yes!" Jenny hugged her Dad just as tightly, not even minding that her feet weren't touching the floor. They stood like that for some time, just holding each other, until Donna touched both their shoulders.
"We probably should get into somewhere more comfortable. Why don't you show Jenny how to put the TARDIS into the Vortex and I'll put the kettle on?"
The Doctor gently set his daughter back on her feet, then pulled Donna into a hug. "Thank you Donna. Thank you so much for staying." An extra squeeze, then he let her go, still smiling broadly. "And that's an excellent plan, brilliant even! Allons-y!"
And with that, he pulled Jenny over to the console with him and started her first TARDIS piloting lesson. Donna stood for a moment and watched the pair enthusiastically babble at each other, then smiled and walked down the hall, fingers trailing along the wall. "It's going to be a lot more energetic around here, isn't it?" She laughed softly at the gust of warm air and the contented hum she received in reply, then continued to the kitchen. Tea and perhaps some sandwiches, and then she would be off to bed.
About five minutes after the TARDIS departed, Cline and Haath Peth ran back into the room, several others on their heels. "Where'd they go?"
Haath Peth burbled at Cline, who frowned at him and then shrugged. "I suppose you're right. Still, the least they could have done was stick around and celebrate the miracle."
Another burble, and Peth gently gripped Cline's shoulder. "You do have a point, Peth. We'd try to keep them, and they wouldn't like that." He turned to face the group of humans and Haath that had followed them, and made shooing gestures. "All right people, let's get back to work. We've got a civilization to build, and legends to make proud of us."
A decade later and Messaline was a beautiful world, peaceful and full of promise as it had always been meant to be. And they had memorials, lest the hard lessons learned at their beginning be forgotten. The most popular one was of three statues in a lush garden. The Man Who Never Would forever stood over broken guns, the intense gaze on the face of the statue seeming to look into the soul of each person who viewed it, daring them to always do the right thing no matter how hard it was. The Organizer stood to the right of the Man, somehow inspiring a sense of spirit as well as a calm orderliness that soothed the troubled soul. And the third, The Goddess' Gift stood between the other two, dressed in a soldier's uniform, yet at her feet too were broken guns, and for any observer her expression of pure joy in the world only reinforced their determination to keep Messaline worthy of inspiring that same joy in all her peoples.
And one day a Messaline century later, the Doctor, Donna and Jenny would return to the planet and be horribly embarrassed when they found their statuary memorial.