Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. At least, that's what Steven Moffat tells me.
They're whispering about her, again.
It's the third time this week and Donna's getting sick of it. She's confronted them, and they both deny anything, yet they were doing it again.
She can't hear exactly what they're saying, just her name, over and over.
Donna, Donna, Donna, Donna.
(Though for some reason, she has a feeling their whispers involve a little blue box.)
She's at work, and a friend of hers is talking about her latest holiday.
"Have you ever been to Pompeii?" It's a simple question, and Donna's about to say nobut something stops her, like maybe, in some twisted universe, very far away from here she has.
Donna, Donna, Donna, Donna.
(And she can't place why but she now has an irrational fear of the dark.)
More than once, she wakes up in the middle of the night screaming, screaming for a faceless man, a faceless man with converse shoes.
Donna, Donna, Donna, Donna.
(And even when she wakes up, she can still hear the whispering.)
She bumps into a girl with dark skin on the way to work one morning. The girl gushes and asks how Donna is. Donna asks who she is.
The smile fades from the girl's face and she says "Martha. Remember? With UNIT? And Sontarans?" Donna doesn't reply because she's late but she can feel the strange girl's eyes on her until she turns the corner.
Donna, Donna, Donna, Donna.
(She wouldn't be able to tell you why she had to cry herself to sleep that night.)
Days later, Donna mentions it to Wilf and he looks at her and says "Do you know her?" And Donna replies with a 'no' and she expects him to make a joke, but he doesn't, he just looks up the sky and whispers "Oh Donna."
Donna, Donna, Donna, Donna.
It's New Years Eve and it's just the three of them, just sitting around telling stories and laughing, and then suddenly it's all there, all of it, everything that she'd forgotten, that she was supposed to have forgotten, all of it's their inside her head, all of the travelling and the laughing and the coffee in the morning and who Martha is and her making jokes about Oods and Agatha Christie and naming Jenny and how to fly the TARDIS and how amazing the TARDIS was and how much work the running was. And all the bad stuff's there too, about Davros and Daleks and the Bad Wolf and waving at fat and having to snog the Doctor who she never thought about in that way and crying because she had to leave when she was supposed to stay forever, but it doesn't matter what it is as long as she remembers it, because she's once again the most important woman in the whole of creation, and finally the whispering has stopped.
(And she throws her head back and laughs.)