They made it to a park bench, River's arm about her waist and the pair of them laughing like madwomen after midnight. "Going home feels like it's for other bloody people," she gasped, shivering a little as dark, cool, green-scented air settled over her skin and River's hand slipped around hers. She squeezed, unthinking. "Gramps'll worry even if mum doesn't, but—"
"I know." River smiled, flexing her shoulders slightly.
Donna found herself staring at the pattern dim streetlight glow and leaves made of her skin. "It's just, I would, and all, but—"
"I know."
Saying her head felt crowded, Donna knew, was wrong. That was like saying Bahamas were a little bit warm. But home was Sylvia waiting up with tea and repeats of The Archers. It was Gramps, the sadness in his eyes all suddenly, appallingly clear, and it was her old bedroom full of half-unpacked boxes. It was impossible.
"They knew." Donna let her eyes squeeze closed. "They both did, and didn't say a word."
River's smile was swift and sympathetic, but she also shrugged. "Sometimes, silence is the only safety. And they'd hate to lose you."
"But they did lose me." Ebullience had drained away as they sat, and Donna shifted against the wooden bench, its slats hard and slightly damp against her back, splinters catching her shirt. "I lost me. This me. I'm not sharing my head with Time any more, but I can still count pi down about 100 flipping digits. The Donna who woke up this morning would hear you talking about pi and ask if it came with chips!"
"It really should."
Donna snorted, squeezing River's hand again. "The Doctor," she said, slowly enough to let the word sit a while in her mouth. Slow enough to measure the name. "He…he knows you, now?"
River stiffened. "Of course he knows me. Whyever—?"
The woman's words seemed to fade in Donna's head, as she remembered the frantic, strained look that had been in River's eyes when they had first met in The Library. It had not lasted long: seconds, perhaps, before she had shielded it and goaded them all on, teasing The Doctor in a voice close to the one River had now, if much wearier. This River, the whose body warmed Donna's whole side and who was staring at her as if she were a Roman fruit-seller and Donna had started speaking Welsh, seemed too full of vitality to ever be reduced to a handful of saved bytes.
"And then, you remembered," Donna thought, flushing. Wonky timelines.
"—Why'd you do it?" Donna asked, watching River's face clear in the speckled light.
"Do what, darling?"
Donna's free hand darted up, two fingers touching her own lips. "You know what."
"Oh, yes." River winked. "But I want to hear you say it."
"Kiss m—save m—" Donna shook her head, hard. "Swallow all that time and give most of it back?"
"That's vivid. Not quite accurate, but evocative all the same. " River released her hand. "But the answer's quite simple, Donna Noble. I did it because I could."
"You know," Donna mused. "You should be careful. Psychopaths say that sort of thing all the time—what's so funny?"
River only let her head fall to Donna's shoulder, both arms going about her waist, meeting and fumbling with something until light flared up and swallowed them both, laughter and all.
Something had yanked on Donna's stomach until it wrapped around her tonsils, and it was cold.
Ice cold. She blinked. Snow cold.
"I'll ask about how in a minute," she gasped, teeth chattering as she shut her eyes against a new sort of blinding white light. "But right now, what I want to know is: why do neither of you give anyone time to get dressed for weather."
River laughed, Donna hearing the rustle of fabric beneath it and the grumbling winds. "Vortex manipulator," she said. "Never leave home without one. And here." She draped a jacket about Donna's shoulders. It was slightly too small. It was body-warm and wool-lined. "We'll only be here a minute."
Donna huddled into the borrowed warmth, eyes slitting open. She saw a world of sleet and spires; space twisted in new ways as ice skittered across the landscape. Small crystals were already forming in the finer, paler curls about River's face. The archaeologist was grinning. And Donna knew, seeing it all, that she had been here before.
"This is that Ood-Sphere, isn't it?"
"One of my first placements at university." River nodded. "I begged and begged for it, you see, even though what I could find here was more in the air than under the ground."
"What, snow?"
"Oral history." River spread her hands. "The very air of this place is thick with stories. Stories about him, stories about you. Stories. I found them at a very important part of my life."
Donna never thought she'd say that a vision of Six Sigma's face rising up in her mind was a beautiful thing, but, looking out over the snow with her memories still unfurling like so-many leaves, she didn't bother trying to find another word. "'DoctorDonna. Friends," she murmured.
"Exactly."
"The Ood said they'd sing about us. I remember that. And the Doctor looked so sad—"
"Their song meant a particular thing for him," River said softly, wistfully. "They saw even more than how wonderful you would be, saving the universe. But it meant a particular thing to me, too, when I heard it."
"Songs do it," Donna said, smiling. "My friend Cheryl? She can't listen to Kiss from a Rose without tearing up, no mind that it's the most pathetic song that side of The Macarena."
Donna jumped as River lightly slapped her arm. "Important song, The Macarena," she said. "Don't knock it. But yes. I heard about the Oodsong when I was still an undergraduate, studying the Doctor, and—"
"—wait. Wait. You studied the—"
"—oh, yes. Never mind that."
"There's a degree?"
River smiled, shaking her head. "DoctorDonna. Friends," she said, soft and sure. \
"Those words echo across the universe. Every universe. I would very much like to be friends, Donna Noble."
Donna swallowed, touching her lips again with fingers going an interesting shade of blue. "What? Like-uh—because I've never really—and I'm not—" I'm babbling. That's what I'm bloody doing.
The other woman's smile only deepened, eyes sparkling as creases lifted at the corners of her eyes. "As whatever you shall take. Hush."
Donna flushed, losing any trace of the weather across her skin. "And what about him?"
River cocked her head, smirking. "Who?"
Donna made a face. "Pretty boy."
"Who would ever call him that?"
Donna blinked, shrugging attempted diffidence. "But aren't you going to go and…find him, or something?"
"And leave you here, after all of this? Not a chance." River's smile faded, eyes serious. "Unless you want that, of course. But I was thinking that you should really come with me."
Looking up at River, catching something earnest beneath all her secrets and her teasing, Donna felt herself start to grin. She'd thought only one man could look nostalgic for a whole world of things that hadn't happened yet. "Where?"
"Oh," River breathed. "You've done this before. You know the answer to that."
"Yeah," Donna said, reaching out and placing her hand on the other woman's wrist, over the square, black bulk of the Vortex manipulator. "But maybe I want to hear you say it."
"Anywhere."
