[Perhaps one more chapter left after this one. Donna has some serious talking yet to do.]

"Stay"

Part Two

It was almost too eerie, really, the shock of finding Donna on the TARDIS once again. Her hands on her hips, her hair spread out on the shoulders of the gray sweater he last saw her wearing. It was as if no time had passed at all which, while poignant, is also frightening enough that he can't force his hearts out of his throat.

"D-Donna, I … How can? … Are you in any pain?" he stammered, painfully mindful of the consequences now that she'd remembered him. He hadn't been exaggerating with Wilfred and Sylvia – Donna would have burned up in seconds had she stumbled upon their memories together.

"Not a bit," she assures him. "Then again, not sure I could even process nociceptive stimuli in my present form anyhow, so we'll stick with my pervious answer."

Nociceptive stimuli?

"Well, I shouldn't say 'my present form' because I'm not actually presently here, nor am I fully formed," she rambled for a moment. "But you know, the semantics aren't really the matter here if you ask me."

He saddened as she spoke because after listening to her he knew that his Donna was still gone. This, this person or whatever it was may have looked like Donna but that was as far as the comparison went. She was still talking when he pulled out of his thoughts, and he felt no guilt at all when he interrupted her ranting.

"You're not Donna," the Doctor said with some finality. "A good imitation, certainly, but still leagues away from the real thing." She didn't dispute the fact, not that he'd really expected her to. "So… that leaves one question, really: Who are you?"

"Clever, not that I'm surprised," the Donna duplicate observed, crossing her arms over her ample chest and walking towards him. "Though I suppose she should be insulted that you don't think she can use big words. That was my mistake, obviously."

He shrugged. "Nah. She'd be the first to admit it." He eyed the duplicate warily, refusing to back down when she stops just in front of him. "You haven't answered my question."

"No, I haven't," she said with a sigh. "I'm doing my level best to decide if I should be angry you tried to do me in."

His brow furrowed at the colloquial term. "Do you in? I don't even know who – or what, for that matter – you are. How could I have tried to kill you?"

"Not sure you thought of it that way at the time," she replies. "I'm never supposed to happen, you see. You blanked me out to save Donna."

Blanked out?

"As in…?"

"As in, erased. Gone. Poof!" she replied and dread built up in his throat. "All to save her. You needed her so, so badly to be alive that you were willing to sacrifice an entirely new species – the first of a kind."

Realization dawned and his eyes widened in shock.

"The metacrisis."

She nodded. "You're looking at her. I am the DoctorDonna, live and not-so-in-the-flesh. Incorporeal, you see."

He reached out and sure enough, his hand passed effortlessly through her arm. She didn't so much as flinch, but he did. While she may have looked solid enough, there was no physical substance to be found. It was unnerving to be talking to a shadow of Donna's essence.

"I don't believe in ghosts," the Doctor states suddenly, making the metacrisis laugh.

"Nor me. I'm not a ghost. You can't deny the parallels, though. Old friend come back after you never expected to see her again, appears out of nowhere, no tangible body… I can appreciate the similarities." After searching his face and seeing the question written plainly across it, she takes pity on him and adds, "She's alive and well, I promise."

"Yeah?" he asks, immensely relived. "So what are you, then?"

"Other than brilliant and gorgeous, you mean?"

"Yes."

"I'm an astral projection," she says and notes the disbelief on his face. "No, I understand. I wouldn't have believed me either but that's the truth. After you wiped her memory, I didn't really disappear – I just sort of… hid."

"You hid?" he repeats incredulously. "Just like that?"

"I suppose so, yeah," she shrugs. "Survival instincts go a lot further than just the humanoid races, you know. The part of her mind that combined the two of you – resulting in me, obviously – knew what was happening before she was willing to admit it to herself. Since I knew what you were going to have to do to save her, I decided to just take off. I shoved myself into a dark corner of her amygdala and waited until she'd gone about her life as normal. When she was comfortable, ignoring the massive holes in her memory, I started thinking about getting out and stretching my legs a bit."

"Is that what you're doing now?" he asks warily. "Stretching your legs?"

"Something to that effect," she replies and exhales loudly. "I just… stopped concentrating on hiding. You would think that it would be the opposite, intense concentration, but when I just let go and let myself feel… well, I ended up here. Every part of me knows that this is where I belong."

"Oh, Donna." He blinked and the pained expression on his face says that he's noticed his error. "No, I mean…"

"No, it's fine. You can call me Donna. I am her, after all."

"Are you?"

"In every way that matters, yeah. We feel the same things, dream the same things… the only real difference is that I've got all the memories she's not allowed to have anymore."

"I'm sorry," he says. He's surprised by how fervently he means it.

"No, don't be," she says, shaking her head. "It's how it has to be."

"Are you happy, at least?" the Doctor inquires, curiosity getting the better of him. "In this state, I mean."

"Yeah. For the most part, yeah. Things get a little boring now and again, but it's better than being dead I suppose."

"Fair enough." He shoves his hands in his pockets.

"The thing is this," she says exasperatedly, "I know I can't reintegrate myself with Donna's working memory. You were correct in your assertion that she would die if forced to contain all that energy. Even still, I am Donna. We're the same person, and I've lived with her burdens just as much as she's been forced to forget mine."

"How are you then, Donna?" he asks, trying to believe for the time being that they were actually speaking.

"Good. Things are good," she answers, taking in a deep breath and leaning her hip on the railing next to him. "Working now – just another temp job, but it's moderately entertaining. I'm even making friends."

"Friends? With that mouth of yours?" he asks incredulously, delighting as she elbows him in the ribs. "Shocking."

"Oh, I know. Practically saints, they are, to put up with me."

"Well, you'd almost have to be," he adds, winking playfully. She laughs and crosses her arms over her chest. "What else? What else have you done?"

"Got some highlights in my hair for a little while," she says off-handedly. "I was feeling whimsical and put some blonde in there. Two weeks later I hated it, and I went right back to ginger."

He laughs. "It's a riveting life you lead."

"You haven't any idea how exciting it is. I'm breathless sometimes."

"Tell me more."

"Don't you have somewhere to be?" she asks, a sad smile tilting the corners of her mouth. "Lord knows there's always someone depending on you somewhere."

"Not just yet," he says softly. "Stay with me a little while?"

She smiles. "Yeah. As long as I can."