A/N: So, this is part two. I meant to leave it as just the first part of this story, but I got curious about how Donna would interact with River and then I just had to add the future Doctor and Rose, just for good measure. (Also, since those of you reviewed wanted me to write more, here we are.)
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Donna had a spoonful of jam in her mouth when River walked in, dad following her, cradling his red cheek. She concentrated on cleaning her raspberry jam jar, the spoon clinking against the glass bottom. It tasted just like the jam her mum made, and for the first time in her life, Donna missed home and her parents. Sadly, she put the nearly empty jar on the table, staring at it.
"Was that the raspberry jam?" asked dad, also staring at the almost empty jar.
Donna glanced at him. "Yeah, mum's raspberry's my favorite."
"Mine too, and I was saving that for a special occasion!" said dad, anger seeping into his voice.
That startled Donna. Dad was never angry at her and her siblings, annoyed, yes, agitated, most likely, disappointed, from time to time, but never angry. She looked at the jar and back up at dad and the differences between this... younger Doctor and dad jumped at her.
His eyes, for one, hid great anger and pain.
For another, he hid his actual emotions behind a more genial mask.
This is before he knows he saved Gallifrey, instead of burning it, she realized with a small gasp. This is before mum came back! He doesn't have an endless supply of mum's raspberry jam like he does at home.
"Sorry, dad, I didn't realize..." she trailed off, regret coloring her voice, and knew her apology was inadequate. "It's just... mum makes more jam when ever we're running low and I didn't even think when I took it. It just reminded me of home... There's still some left, if you want?" she said and offered the rest of the jam as a peace offering.
Dad snatched the jar quickly from her and held it close to himself, sticking his fingers in.
"Um, dad?" said Donna, looking at him with raised eyebrows. "Spoons are over there," she said and nodded to the drawers.
"Who needs spoons," he grumbled and stuck his jam covered fingers to his mouth.
"Mum raps your fingers every time you do that," she said, stretched to take out a clean spoon, and rapped her dad on his fingers with it, like she'd seen mum do a million times before. Then she offered the spoon to him with an arched eyebrow.
The Doctor stared blankly at her before slowly taking the spoon. He turned around but before he got out of the door, Donna heard him muttering "Jam... with a spoon... domestic..."
She shook her head with a smile and stood up. She took out a marmalade jar from the cupboard instead, and started eating. Dad would never change...
River, who had observed the whole thing silently, slid to the chair opposite of Donna. "You shouldn't be here," she finally said.
Donna shrugged. "It's not like any of you will remember me being here or any of the things I told you. I'm sure either the TARDIS gives you all retcon or dad suppresses all your memories. Besides, isn't this what you basically do with dad's timeline? Go backwards on it? Not on purpose, I know, but still. The first time he met you, you told him something that you shouldn't have known because dad was head over heels in love with mum. You told him his name. But because you knew it and told him, he left mum behind with his human clone, breaking all their respective hearts. Then this causality loop happened and he married you to save the universe, leading to you telling him his name the first time he meets you in the first place. I hate temporal physics, they give me a headache," she groaned.
"I suppose that's what it looks like from the outside," agreed River. "But it's not."
"How would you know?" challenged Donna, looking at the woman who had managed to push her parents away from each other for a few hundred years. "Have you got a telepathic connection? Have you shared a mind link? Or even surface thoughts? Are you even telepathic? Or emphatic?"
"No," River admitted. "My gifts from the TARDIS do not extend to the more psychical side of the mind. But the Doctor wouldn't have married me and kept up the illusion of it if it wasn't true."
"Or he didn't need you to follow through the causality loop," pointed out Donna practically. "I'm not saying this to be mean, or anything, in fact I quite pity you, but your whole marriage is a sham. You're not even a rebound wife, which have been known to happen from time to time, aunt Martha was a rebound companion when dad lost mum the first time and the parallels between you and her aren't even there. In fact, you're not even a companion. You're like Madam Vaster and Jenny and Strax, people he trusts and would do nearly anything for, but not everything. You know how he says Time can be rewritten all the time? He could do it, rewrite your history, but it would take years and years of work, most likely a few centuries, and he won't, can't sit still for so long. That's also the one thing he wouldn't do for mum, but that's because mum wouldn't want him to. Okay, that's a lie, dad couldn't rewrite mum's history because the whole of time and space would never have been born if Bad Wolf didn't happen, and Bad Wolf was the entity that ensured they got together again."
"What's Bad Wolf?" asked River. "This is not the first time I've run across the reference, but I've never found out what it actually is."
"Archaeologist," Donna snorted under her breath before answering, her eyes glowing eerily golden. "Bad Wolf is mum looking into the TARDIS' heart and the TARDIS looking back and the two of them merging to save dad. She's the entire Time Vortex channeled through a twenty-year-old human in love with an alien and wanting him safe. She creates herself. She's the deity that created this Universe after being born in this universe. She is a message scattered across Time and Space to lead mum back to dad when they're separated. She is the beginning and end of everything. She is life and death, damnation and salvation, day and night. She is the voice in the wind, the history and future of everything. She is the alpha wolf who will do anything to defend her mate. It's no coincidence dad has survived everything he has had happen to him. He just had Bad Wolf looking after him long before he knew mum. Does that answer your question?"
"Not even close," answered River plainly.
Donna gave a frustrated sigh and pushed her marmalade away. "Okay... um... say universes had names and were entities in their own right. Ours would be named Bad Wolf. Our parallels would be Bad Wolf 849230.375/Alpha or something similair. But there are other universes out there, some where our laws of physics don't apply, like N-space and E-space that would have their own names that we don't know, we just call them N-space and E-space. They would also have their own parallels. Then there's the void that exists between universes and their parallels. The Void would also have a name of it's own but we call it the Void or Howling but the Void wouldn't have any parallels, because it just doesn't have the capacity to be anything different. Back to Bad Wolf. Bad Wolf is literally everything about this universe, but she was born because mum wanted to save dad from the Daleks and looked into the heart of the TARDIS."
River nodded slowly but Donna saw the she still didn't really get what it meant. But she didn't feel the need to explain it any further. To be honest, she didn't understand it any more either and was just repeating what her parents and the White Guardian had told her.
Still, River changed the subject. "So, who's Donna Noble?" she asked. "You said you were named after the great Donna Noble."
Smiling sadly, Donna told the story of the Most Important Woman in All of Creation and how she had to forget all the good she'd done in her life, had to forget the best friend who would rather she live than spend a short while with him. By the end of the tale, they were both crying for the ex-temp lottery winner from Chiswick.
"After her, dad didn't have any companions until he regenerated and crashed into Amelia Pond's garden," Donna finished and tried to wipe her wet cheeks, only managing to get her pajama sleeves wet. "That's the story of Donna Noble, the sister of dad's hearts."
They sat in silence, Donna reflecting on the reasons she's named after the first Donna, and River thinking of how much she still doesn't know of her husband who, apparently, has been in love with someone else for the whole duration of their marriage. She didn't doubt that the Doctor loved her, but during her rather heated discussion with him earlier he'd confirmed what she'd suspected for some time already: he wasn't in love with her like she was with him.
"Did you know Louisa Montgomery based the character of Anne Shirley on Donna Noble?" Donna finally blurted out, not standing the silence any longer.
The random announcement baffled River who'd been deep in thought. She stared at the young girl in front of her before laughing. "Oh, you are precious, sweetie!"
'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'
The two talked the night away, snacking on hot chocolate and some jammie dodgers every once in a while, and only Amy and Rory shuffling in for breakfast alerted them to how much time had passed.
Amy took a look at Donna's mug. "So it's yours!" she announced triumphantly and pointed at it meaningfully. "I knew it couldn't be the Doctor's!"
"Of course not, dad's mug is the one Jamie painted, #1 Dad on one side and #2 Parent on the other," said Donna, like it was obvious, before remembering what point in dad's timeline she was at. "Oh, right, this is before it..." she bit her lip.
Rory was staring at her. "You're really here," he said, disbelief coloring his voice. Shaking his head he went tot eh fridge. "I thought I'd eaten too much cheese before bed and had a strange dream."
"Yeah..." drawled Donna, her tongue poking out from between her teeth in an imitation of mum. "Last time I slept, I dreamed uncle Jack died and we had a funeral for him, which was totally bizarre, seeing as he can't actually stay dead. Then again, Michael Jackson was also dueting with Taylor Swift in it, with the Beatles providing the harmonies and music."
"Hold on, hold on," said Rory as he closed the fridge. "What do you mean, can't stay dead?" he asked as he turned to look at her, bacon and eggs held in his hands.
"Well, mum made him a fixed point in time and he can't stay dead or the universe implodes," shrugged Donna. "I mean, he first died by extermination from Daleks, Then he got shot through the heart. Fell off a cliff, trampled by horses, World War I, World War II, poison, starvation..."
"...stray javelin," added dad as he entered the galley with an empty jam jar which he put on the counter for the TARDIS to deal with. "I remember when he told me. He'd just died not three minutes before from electrocution, and was in a chamber filled with radiation that would have disintegrated anyone else. Of course I'd known from the second Rose brought him back but, well, I was regenerating and really didn't need Jack grating against my senses as well."
"It also probably helped that he'd kissed mum before going off to die," grinned Donna, "while you just couldn't show your feelings. But of course, you indulged before dying, and took the vortex out of her with a kiss when any sort of physical contact would have sufficed. But really? I think you need a Doctor was definitely not your best pick up line, dad."
"No," dad grinned back. "The best one was Did I mention it also travels in time? Your mum could shrug off all of space, but add in time, and she ran right into the TARDIS, leaving behind Rickey the Idiot and her life of beans on toast."
"Mum's never had beans on toast, you know that, right?" said Donna, her smile a copy of her mum's, with the tongue peeking out.
The Doctor's breath hitched when he looked at her. "You look so like your mother," he said quietly, eyes roving over her face. "Except for your eyes."
"I've got my father's eyes," she snickered knowingly. "Sirius and Harry in the end of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban the movie!" she then declared quickly, like it was some kind of test for speed. When no one else said anything and just looked at her strangely, she blushed. "It's a game. If you make and/or recognize any and every reference or quotation of a movie, TV-series, play, book song or artist, you have to shout out, who, where and in what. We tally it every Friday and the one who wins, gets to choose Sunday lunch's dessert. Or, well, what passes as Sunday lunch. I also made a quotation yesterday, but thought explaining things more important at the time..."
"What quotation?" asked Rory curiously.
"Now Clara. Who's Clara?" answered Donna. "It's Sherlock Holmes from the first taxi scene with John Watson in Study in Pink, the first episode of Sherlock." She looked around, meeting each of their eyes. "That's two points for me."
"Huh," mused dad. "That's actually quite a clever way to make remembering pop culture easier and to introduce it to young children. It must've been my idea!"
"Actually it was mum's since she got tired of eating fish fingers and custard," Donna revealed, "never mind that everyone was already playing it, but with the prize, it became real. And when almost everyone playing the game has a Time Lord's memory, one would think mum would win the least, but she grew up with, you know, reliable telly and a mum who loved watching it. She often makes references that none of us have ever heard of and when we try to accuse her of making them up, she has us research them and, well... they're all there."
"Like what kind of references?" Amy wanted to know.
"Well, we were on a planet that had been populated by humans but then there had been some kind of electrical storm that had shorted out all their technology and they'd reverted to near medieval means and society, and then there was this pit with snakes, and mum goes all Snakes? Why does it always have to be snakes? and shouting Indiana Jones. I mean, we'd never seen the movies before, but after that, it became Jamie's favorite series." Then she stood up. "Well, I'mma gonna have a shower. I'll be back. The Terminator in the police station scene in the movie The Terminator! Damn, but I'm good..."
'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'
After her shower she found the others in the console room, bickering over what to do, whether or not to continue traveling even with Donna on board or if they should wait for something to happen to solve the problem she presented. Amy was all for continuing traveling even with her, Rory was all for waiting for something to happen and dad was trying to convince the TARDIS to locate her future self so that they could safely deposit Donna back to her own time. River was staying out of the argument and instead grinned at Donna when she descended the stairs, looking around in awe.
"Oh, it's so different!" she said with a bounce in her step. "Not at all like mum described her first console room, or what Clara said was the cold and futuristic center of the alien spaceship. In my time, there are lots of more seats and child-safe gates everywhere. Tim and Tom learned to open them when they were three, so dad had to change the original ones for taller gates. He was so put out when he realized he'd lost them. Luckily he also found them before mum got home from shopping."
"Baby proofing the TARDIS," muttered dad.
"How domestic of you," teased Amy, bumping his shoulder.
"One day," the Doctor's voice said from the doors of the TARDIS though he stood on the dais with the console and Amy, Rory, River and Donna, "you children will be the regeneration of me."
As one they all turned to the source of the voice and saw the Doctor with a grin on his face. He was attired differently as he had a burgundy velvet coat instead of a tweed jacket, but the bow tie was still safely there. Behind him stood a blond woman with a small baby bump.
"Just like your mum," he continued. "Jeopardy friendly, each and every one of you lot. Can't even leave you to TARDIS-sit without you jumping time tracks. Luckily you didn't jump too far to the past." He turned to the woman beside him. "Can you imagine what old big ears would have said?"
"Children?" she said with an exaggerated frown and northern accent. "In the TARDIS? This isn't a bloody nursery! Don't you dare turn this place domestic!"
"And he still would have let you," the other Doctor grinned at her. "I mean, had he ever gotten over the fact that you wanted an old man with a daft face and guilt problems enough for a whole Galaxy, he would have let you. He'd have let you get away with murder if you'd just blinked those big brown eyes of yours at him."
"Oh really?" asked the woman slowly with half hooded eyes and a lazy smile, her own diluted London accent shining through.
"Oh yes," nodded the other Doctor. "Had you chosen to stay at home instead of go with him to see the plasma storm of Horse head nebula, he'd have come and get you and had that blood tea with your mother. He'd have grouched the whole time and been miserable company, but he'd have stayed until the last piece of Jackie's Shepherd's pie had disappeared."
"Even then?" asked the woman, slight surprise in her voice.
"Didn't the words "I could save the world but lose you," tell you anything?" asked the other Doctor, tilting his head slightly.
"I didn't really think of you like that just yet," admitted the woman with a small blush. "It started about a week later, you know, that incident with the shower."
The other Doctor grinned and blatantly checked her out. "That gave me material for fantasies for three hundred years."
"And what tided you over for the last one-and-a-half centuries?" she asked, leaning closer.
"Oh, the pool incident and the trip to Kyoto and those Japanese hot springs and that second trip to ancient Rome," answered the other Doctor huskily, his arms going around her middle and pulling her closer.
"Okay, that's enough!" interrupted Donna loudly. "TMI, again! And these people aren't used to you and mum flirting like no tomorrow," she said and gestured wildly to the staring River, Ponds and the younger Doctor.
The other Doctor and the woman turned to look at her, startled, before pulling away from each other reluctantly. "Oh, right, Donna," the other Doctor said and looked at everyone. "Hello! As you can all probably see, I'm the Doctor, and this vision of loveliness is my wife Rose. We're just picking up our daughter. Don't mind us!" he greeted them generally before turning with Rose. "Come along Donna, we've got your siblings to pick up!"
"Wait! Wait, wait, wait, dad!" cried Donna and ran down the stairs, leaving her younger dad and his friends behind. "Bye Ponds! Bye dad! Remember to suppress their memories!" she cried over her shoulder before chasing after her parents. "Mum wasn't showing when you left! How long has it been for you?"
"A month," answered dad over his shoulder, one arm wrapped securely around his wife's waist. "It took us three weeks to track you down."
"Never mind your dad, love," mum told her with a smile. "He doesn't mean that in a bad way. He's just annoyed the TARDIS wouldn't land here before we'd been on twenty different maternity-centered planets, some of which were rather matriarchal and he had to get a property tattoo."
"Among other activities," said Donna and rolled her eyes.
The Doctor turned to look at her. "How did you know? We picked up presents for all of you."
"You mean you didn't spend the last month just shagging mum?" Donna wanted to know.
"No!" denied the Doctor vehemently. "Phersus Seven is a pleasure planet designed for expecting mothers! We've been having massages and relaxing baths and all kinds of delicious health foods and shopping for comfortable shoes that will reduce the swelling of her ankles! And she isn't in the delightful phase of her pregnancy yet. I suspect it'll start sometime next week. Oh! It turned out we're expecting Amelia and Alistair."
"I told you, we're not naming them Amelia and Alistair," huffed Rose. "We're naming them Ida and Pete."
"How about a compromise then?" asked Donna, rolling her eyes at her parents. "Alistair and Ida, same vowels and both have consonants that are powerful. Also, they roll off your tongue easily together, don't you think?"
The Doctor and Rose stared at her before grinning. "Brilliant!" announced the Doctor loudly and turned to Rose. "Our daughter is brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! How come I didn't think of that?"
"Because you're just a Time Lord, lacking that gut feeling that comes hand-in-hand with planet Earth," said Donna smugly, flipping her blond hair over her shoulder and swaggered to the TARDIS, opening the doors with a snap of her fingers.