A/N: I never planned on writing anything for Doctor Who, but after finishing the series a month and a half ago, this idea kept floating around my head until it had worked itself into an actual story. Naturally, I couldn't concentrate too much on anything else until I'd written it down, so here we go. This story follows post-Series 4 canon, but is partially AU as here Donna was able to retain her new Time Lord mental capabilities after the metacrisis and subsequently stayed with the Doctor. I'm very much a happy ending person, so that's what this is going to be. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Doctor Who is property of the BBC, and I take no ownership of the show or any of its characters. Some dialogue in this chapter is taken from The End of Time (Part 1) by Russell T. Davies.
The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS onto an unfamiliar sidewalk in front of a massive stone building, the words PUBLIC LIBRARY carved into the rock above its door. The planet they had landed on was a decent sized Earth-like one that the Doctor had only been too once before, several incarnations ago. In fact, the last time he had been anywhere near here was he and Donna's disastrous trip to a very different library in the not so distant past, though it seemed that they had arrived on this new planet a few years after that incident had occurred.
"Are you sure this is it?" the Doctor asked Donna, "You really want to go back in a library after what happened the last time?"
Donna offered him a small smile, but then nodded. "It's definitely here."
As she stared up at the enormous structure, her smile faded and a look of confusion took its place. The Doctor had a good idea of what she was thinking. Donna knew she was supposed to be on this planet, in this city, at this spot, on this day, and at this time, but she had no idea why.
It had started with the TARDIS. After the metacrisis a year or so back, Donna and the TARDIS had formed a closer connection, one much more like that of a Time Lord and his ship than of any other human companion and the TARDIS, with the possible exception of Rose Tyler. It had begun responding to Donna and pushing her into specific situations as it had always done with the Doctor.
The Doctor, for his part, had been very proud of Donna's ability to mentally survive the metacrisis, a phenomenon that could easily have killed her. After leaving Rose Tyler and his doppelgänger at Bad Wolf Bay in the parallel world, he had been extremely worried that he would have to remove Donna's memories and take her home. Donna, however, proved to be able to withstand the increase of brain activity and had not yet experienced any negative complications from the incident.
The Doctor did take Donna home after the day's events, but only for a short visit to see her family. Wilfred and Sylvia were so glad to have Donna home, safe and unharmed, but they wanted to know exactly what had happened. Donna told them an abbreviated version of their adventure, with the Doctor throwing in details every so often. Wilfred had soon realized that there was something different about Donna, so when she finally explained about the metacrisis, he simply nodded. Sylvia, on the other hand, had been extremely shocked and had to have the situation explained to her several times.
"There were two of him?" Sylvia wildly pointed at the Doctor. "How can there have been two of him?"
Donna sighed exasperatedly. "I've told you three times already! That was the metacrisis! Between me and his old hand that was filled with regeneration energy. It took some of my human DNA and made the other Doctor from the hand, and it took some of the Doctor's Time Lord DNA and added it to me."
"I'm never going to understand this," said Sylvia wearily. Wilfred patted her arm to comfort her.
The rest of the day had passed for Donna in a rush of explanations and phone calls with friends who were very surprised to hear that Donna had actually been around for this Earth-altering event. The Doctor, however, kept to himself.
He had returned, alone, to the TARDIS where his thoughts were with a blonde woman that he had lost for a second time, this loss even more permanent than the one before. As the rain fell thickly around the TARDIS, the Doctor wished only that he had said a proper goodbye to his Rose Tyler. Of course, he knew that, had he said goodbye to her one last time, there would have been a good chance that he never would have left. She'll be happy with him, he thought to himself. It is me, after all.
Soon, Donna had called him inside for dinner, threatening that if he chose not to come, she would go out in the rain and drag him inside herself. The Doctor, knowing the seriousness of Donna's statement, had complied.
After leaving her family's home, Donna and the Doctor had continued to travel all across time and space, the Doctor still missing Rose, but incredibly happy that Donna was with him, and even more happy that she could now pilot the TARDIS and help him fix the ship when it needed repairs.
They had spent Christmas in 1851 London where they met a man who believed he was the Doctor, but turned out to be a regular human named Jackson. The poor man had been consumed by grief for the death of his wife at the hands of cybermen, but he was able to regain his real memory and reunite with his still-living son. The real Doctor had saved everyone from a giant cyberman that had been created, and Donna was elated to see the Doctor receive, for once in his life, the gratitude of the entire city, their applause and cheers drifting up to Donna and the Doctor high up in Jackson's hot air balloon. When Jackson invited them to Christmas dinner that night, the Doctor had been unable to turn down the offer before Donna had accepted and pulled him down the street.
Several months later, they had popped back to see Donna's family for Easter, deciding to visit London while they were back so the Doctor could find a wormhole that the TARDIS had sensed in the area. The bus they had taken naturally went through said wormhole, landing on planet covered in sand. Donna had been furious with the Doctor, as he had promised her a nice peaceful Easter holiday, and had shouted at him as they went out to explore the planet. The presence of a Lady Christina de Souza who seemed set on impressing the Doctor with her lineage and numerous personal accomplishments only annoyed Donna further, and, upon finding out Christina was a thief who stole artifacts for fun, Donna almost slapped her. Of course when the Doctor figured out how to drive the bus back home and Christina leaned in to kiss him, Donna actually had slapped her. When they returned to Earth, the Doctor and Donna had a word with the police about lightening Christina's impending prison sentence for her recent theft of a priceless golden goblet, Donna only grudgingly agreeing to help because the goblet had allowed them to return home. Soon Christina was in handcuffs, and Donna and the Doctor were off again.
Only a few short weeks before the TARDIS had begun pushing Donna toward the public library where the Doctor and Donna now stood, the pair had landed in Mars in the year 2059, just in time to meet Captain Adelaide Brooke before her untimely death. If Donna of two years ago had come along on this trip, she would have begged the Doctor to save the crew, as she had begged him to save the family in Pompeii. However, Donna had changed over the course of her time with the Doctor. With her heightened Time Lord mental capabilities, she understood that this event was not something the Doctor could change; it was fixed: it had to happen. Realizing this, Donna had been able to help the Doctor leave the situation before he did anything too drastic.
Once they were safely away on the TARDIS, the Doctor had looked at Donna and smiled sadly. "I really do need someone to stop me sometimes. Thank you." Donna had nodded in reply as she and the Doctor shared a comforting hug.
And then it was Donna saying she had to visit this particular planet at this particular time because the TARDIS wanted her to. The Doctor had received his own message, not from the TARDIS, but from the Ood. He had not shared the Ood's summons with Donna, knowing that she would want him to go right away. The Ood had been continually reminding him that, as they said, "his song would end soon," and that was not an idea the Doctor wanted to think about at the moment.
So that left the library. It was a very large library, but not one of the largest in the universe. It was special only in its reputation for a massive quantity of obscure historical texts, something the Doctor knew Donna had very little interest in, but Donna said she was supposed to be here, so the Doctor went along with her. He had lost count of the random journeys that he had dragged Donna on, so he was glad to return the favor.
"No point standing around out front. Allons-y!" the Doctor said to Donna, grinning to reassure her, as he took her hand.
Donna returned his smile, and the two walked quickly up the stone stairs to the entrance.
Once inside, the Doctor asked Donna if she was okay by herself, as he wanted to go off to explore the large history section to see which parts of history the books had gotten wrong and which parts they had finally corrected.
Donna laughed and told him to have fun, but as soon as the Time Lord left, her smile fell and she stared from one side of the room to the other, still clueless as to why she had been pushed here. She began wandering through the shelves, pausing to examine a volume or two every so often, just to look as though she knew what she was doing there, but soon she grew impatient with her futile search and its unknown purpose.
"Oh come on!" she said to herself, louder than was appreciated in the library, particularly in the section in which she was currently standing, as several patrons were pouring over enormous historical tomes. An angry looking librarian glared at her disapprovingly, and several library visitors threw her annoyed glances.
However, one of the scholars at a table scanning an ancient volume looked up at Donna's exclamation and, at the sight of her, gasped. That small gasp in a room full of silence and turning pages caught Donna's attention. She glanced around to discover the source of the sound and was met with the sight of someone she had thought she would never see again. Someone she had convinced herself was created out of her own imagination.
"Lee," Donna breathed, her knees growing weak beneath her.
The dark haired man stood and rushed over to her, abandoning his research. "D- D- Donna," he finally spoke after several failed attempts.
"I found you. I found you," Donna repeated to Lee, as though assuring herself that this was reality.
Lee struggled for a moment, and then responded with one single word. "Yes."
The couple embraced, each elated to have found the other, and, completely oblivious to the not-so-subtle coughs of the other library patrons and the angrier-still librarian, their lips met in a kiss they had been waiting for so long to share.
A section away, the Doctor was flipping through one of the library's many volumes on the history of the planet Earth. Every minute or two he let out a laugh at an inaccuracy, offered a nod at a well recorded fact, or grew excited at an account of a particular event he had been involved with.
After skimming through the more interesting parts of the text (meaning, more often than not, the parts the Doctor had helped out with himself), he wandered over to the next section and was drawn to a very old book lying open on one of the tables. As the Doctor picked up the book to check the title, he noticed the heading at the top of the page the book had been opened to. It read in large letters, NOBLE.
"Donna," the Doctor said quietly as he scanned the page. It seemed to be an index of historical figures with a brief entry following each name. A short distance down the page he spotted what he was looking for: NOBLE, DONNA. It had been lightly underlined. He read the entry: Legendary red-haired woman spotted in various centuries, often on the planet Earth. Potential connection with several of the earliest well recorded and worldwide extraterrestrial encounters on Earth. Possibly a myth, but some connection may exist between her and the mysterious figure known as The Doctor (see DOCTOR).
The Doctor smiled faintly at the labeling of Donna as "legendary", but then he realized that whoever had been reading this book must be the reason for their trip here. The Doctor decided he needed to find Donna right away and let her know that someone was looking for her. With their track record, it was relatively safe to bet that this person's search was not well intentioned.
"Donn-" he stopped short as he looked up and saw the red-haired woman he was calling for just across the section, locked in an embrace with a man he did not recognize.
The Doctor walked hesitantly across the room, unsure of how to deal with the situation. The other library visitors seemed annoyed by Donna and the dark haired man's behavior, but neither was giving the rest of the library any attention.
As the Doctor neared the pair he cleared his throat loudly and addressed Donna. "So, um, Donna, who's your friend? Are you going to introduce me?"
Donna and the man broke apart, utter joy radiating from their faces.
"Doctor," Donna began breathlessly, "this is Lee McAvoy."
The Doctor stared at her for a moment until the name sunk in. Instantly, his face lit up. "Lee! Like 'Lee from the library computer' Lee?"
"That's the one!" Donna laughed. "He's real, Doctor! He's actually real!" Donna's exclamations elicited more dirty looks from the others in the room, while the librarian whispered angrily at her to please be quieter so as not to disturb those trying to work. Donna ignored her with a wave of her hand, caught up in her own happiness, and continued, "and Lee, this is the Doctor, my traveling companion and best friend."
The Doctor laughed. "I'm your traveling companion? Weellll," The Doctor paused, "I suppose that is sort of true, at least about this trip. You are the one who needed to go here, and now I see why." He grinned hugely at her. "But glad to meet you, Mr. McAvoy!" He shook Lee's hand.
"I've been d- d- doing research on you, D- D- Donna," Lee said, his eyes never leaving the woman at his side. "And the D- D- Doctor too. You're all over the h- history books."
"Oh yes, I saw!" the Doctor said, nodding at Lee, "I happened to glance into that book you were reading over there and saw the entry about Donna. It said she was, and I quote, 'legendary' and 'possibly a myth'."
Donna looked delighted. "Well of course I'm legendary! It's about bloody well time they noticed!" She laughed, half sarcastic and half joyful, and turned back to Lee. "I can't even believe this. We looked all over that library for you once everything had been sorted, but you weren't there."
"Y- Yes, I was. I s- s- saw you both leaving. I tried to c- call out, but I was t- t- teleported away before I c- could." Lee looked down at his feet, but Donna placed her hand on his cheek, lifting his head up so his eyes were level with hers.
"It's okay," she said softly, "I'm here now, and that's all that matters."
At that moment a library worker tapped the Doctor on the arm. "Excuse me, sir," he said, uncomfortably, "I see there's some sort of reunion going on here, but these people are trying to read and do research. Any chance you all could take this outside?"
"Oh yes, yes, of course," the Doctor replied apologetically, ushering Donna and Lee out of the section and receiving grateful smiles from the surrounding patrons and the now more peaceable-looking librarian.
As the three exited the library, Donna told Lee, as quickly as possible, all about the Doctor, the TARDIS, the metacrisis, their travels, and how she had finally been nudged by the ship into coming to this particular library at this time on this day.
After almost dragging him down the stairs, she unlocked the TARDIS and practically threw Lee inside before the Doctor had even gotten halfway down the steps.
"Look!" she almost shouted, "it's bigger on the inside!"
Lee was even more speechless than usual.
"Sorry about her," the Doctor said to Lee with a wink as he finally entered the ship, "she gets overexcited."
Donna opened her mouth to make an angry retort, but Lee patted her arm comfortingly and smiled.
"Wish I could make her shut up like that," the Doctor joked, tactlessly.
Lee did not try to stop Donna this time as she marched over to the Doctor and slapped him full in the face. "Stupid Spaceman," she grumbled as she walked back over to Lee.
"I was only joking!" the Doctor cried, rubbing his stinging cheek. "That hurt!"
'Yeah, not sorry." Donna glared at him, but her smile was curling up at the edges of her mouth, and the Doctor knew she would not be mad at him for long.
"So, Lee," the Doctor turned to their new companion who was still glancing, awed, around the ship, "you live around here?"
Lee looked at him and nodded. "I have a flat j- just down the road. W- Would you like to c- c- come for tea?" He directed his question at Donna who grinned and nodded her approval of the idea.
During the walk to the flat, Lee told them, stumblingly, about his job in the city as a historian, always traveling from library to library, with this particular library as his home base. Ever since he'd left the library where they'd met, he'd been trying to find Donna, as his friends and family from before his trip to the library were all gone now due to his long stay in the computer system.
As Lee told them about this loss, Donna stroked his hand comfortingly, and the Doctor could not help but smile at the gesture. He knew Donna needed this in her life, and he was nothing but happy for her.
Donna and the Doctor remained in the city for several days as Lee and Donna made plans for their future together. The Doctor took to spending time alone in the TARDIS, not wanting to dampen Donna's joy. He again longed for his blonde companion. Donna was the greatest: his best friend and the savior of the universe, but she could never be his Rose Tyler. If he had kept Rose with him, they would have been together, just as happy as Donna and Lee: reunited and, the Doctor could not even think the words with out the pain of loss consuming him, completely in love. But, no, he was being selfish, he told himself. Rose had him, a him she could stay with forever. They could have a family and travel in their TARDIS and have the most fantastic of lives. And really, the Doctor thought, all he had ever wanted was for Rose Tyler to have a fantastic life. With a sad smile, he returned to the single regret he could have acted on: he had left without saying goodbye. That's the one thing I would have done differently he said to himself, shaking his head, I would have gotten one last hug from Rose Tyler.
The Doctor would cycle through these thoughts several times each day, even as he tried to distract himself by working on the TARDIS, but always he ended with that one last wish.
During one of these periods as he moped about the TARDIS, Donna entered, the smile that had hardly left her face since finding Lee fading as she saw the Doctor's sorrowful expression.
"Doctor," she said hesitantly, "what's wrong?"
"Nothing, nothing. I'm okay," the Doctor replied, looking up at her and putting on a smile.
Donna looked at him reproachfully. "I know you too well for the whole 'I'm okay' trick to actually work, remember?"
The Doctor stared at his feet sheepishly. "Yeah, I always forget that." He lifted his head and offered a small smile, a real one this time, as he continued, "but really, I'll be fine. I promise."
Donna nodded, slightly reassured but still skeptical.
"So what'd you need, Miss Noble?" the Doctor asked in his usual light tone.
"Well," She stopped, a smile spreading wider and wider over her face. "Lee's asked me to marry him. He said it already happened before, so why wait." Donna's face was positively glowing with happiness.
"Donna!" the Doctor practically shouted. "That's brilliant! I'm so happy for you!" He rushed over to give his best friend a hug.
"But then we were talking about where we want to live, and he wants to come back to Earth with me, my time. Can we do that?" Donna looked up at the Doctor inquisitively, her eyes pleading with him.
"Of course you can," the Doctor answered, grinning, "What would the point of the TARDIS be if I couldn't do that?" He laughed.
"There's one more thing though," Donna continued, more nervously, "we want to have the wedding here, as the last thing we do on this planet in this time. It's where we met and then where we found each other again."
The Doctor nodded his agreement. "Absolutely."
"But I want my mum and granddad to be there too. Could you get them and bring them here?"
The Doctor shrugged. "I don't see why not, though your mother probably isn't going to handle being in the TARDIS too well, knowing her." The Doctor shook his head with a small sigh, but then looked thoughtful. "Wilfred will be fine though; he's a good man, Wilfred." The Doctor smiled at Donna. "When do you want them to get here?"
"Oh, whenever," Donna responded, unconcerned. "I just want them to get to know Lee before the wedding."
"Alright then," said the Doctor, nodding. "I'll leave tomorrow. I suppose I should make that stop along the way…" He trailed off. The Doctor had almost forgotten about the Ood and their request to meet with him.
"What stop?" Donna asked, suspiciously.
"Oh, right," said the Doctor remembering he had not told Donna, "I got a message from the Ood a day or so before we got here. There's apparently a matter of importance that they need my help with."
Donna looked at him sharply. "Why didn't you go before? This could be serious!"
The Doctor brushed off her concerns. "It's fine, it's really fine. You needed to be here, and the Ood can wait a little while. Besides, they'll probably just go on about how my song is ending and all that."
Donna placed a hand comfortingly on the Doctor's forearm. "You'll be fine, Doctor. I've never seen anyone better at escaping from death than you. You'll just grow a second body or whatever like last time." Donna laughed, trying to make light of the situation.
"I suppose," said the Doctor, humoring her. "But I'll go see the Ood tomorrow, definitely, and deal with that, and then I'll bring your family back here."
"Good plan," replied Donna. "Now get inside and have some fun. No need for you to sit around sulking in here all day."
The Doctor smiled, and the pair returned to Lee's flat.
The following day, the Doctor left Lee and Donna and landed the TARDIS on the snow-covered planet where the Ood resided.
The Doctor exited the TARDIS and found Ood Sigma waiting for him.
"Sorry I couldn't come straight here," he apologized nonchalantly, "my friend had a place to be and a guy to meet, and it all took a while…" He stopped as the Ood stared at him.
"You should not have delayed." Ood Sigma reprimanded.
"Last time I was here, you said my song would be ending soon, and I'm in no hurry for that."
"You will come with me." The Ood turned and began walking away, leaving the Doctor to follow him.
Ood Sigma informed the Doctor of the bad dreams of the Ood as he was led to a meeting of their Elders. There he was shown the dream. First, the Doctor saw the laughing face of a man he knew to be dead: the Master. Then he saw Donna's grandfather, Wilfred, so very scared back on Earth. "Is he alright? And Sylvia, what about her?" the Doctor asked frantically.
The chief Elder of the Ood did not answer, but continued, "you should not have delayed, for the lines of convergence are being drawn across the Earth. Even now, the king is in his counting house." The Doctor saw flashes of other faces, a man and a woman he did not know. And then it was the Master's wife, Lucy, all alone in a cage. The Doctor had not seen her since she shot the insane Time Lord inside the airship where they had spent the year that never was.
The Ood asked about the woman, and The Doctor showed them his memories and told them about that year and what had happened to the Earth and to the Master. But then the Ood pointed out a detail of the Doctor's memory that he had overlooked: part of the Master had survived.
"I have to go!" the Doctor yelled, struggling to break free from the Ood's circle, but the Elders stopped him. "Something more is happening, Doctor" the Elder continued, "the Master part of a greater design because a shadow is falling over creation. Something vast is stirring in the dark. Time is bleeding. These events from years ago threaten to destroy this future, and the present, and the past. The darkness heralds only one thing: the end of time itself."
The Doctor rose then, at last permitted to go, and sprinted toward the TARDIS. He needed to return to Earth to fix this, to fix the entire universe and all of space and time. As he set the coordinates of his ship, he wished for a moment that someone was there with him. But thinking of the Master and all the harm he had caused before, the Doctor decided that it might be better this time for him to be alone: no one could get hurt except himself.
A/N: The next chapter will be up as soon as possible, most likely within the next week.
Thanks for reading! Reviews are lovely and very much appreciated!
