"Yeah, so you saw them, then?" Donna prompted. The feathery woman she was speaking to seemed to get distracted easily.
"All four of them stepped into the lift together and went down. But that was around 3:00. I don't know where they are now, sorry."
"No, that's wonderful. That's the most recent sighting we've heard yet. Thanks very much." Donna turned away with a smile which turned into a sigh and a tired eye roll as soon as she was facing the other way. She wasn't making enough progress with the search. She scanned the room for anyone else who might know something, half-considering just leaving the room to do her own deck to deck search, and caught sight of a familiar man in a charcoal suit staring at her, openmouthed.
Donna's jaw dropped.
He was real. Oh, my god. He was real after all. And all this time, she'd thought he was just in her head. She never thought she'd see him again. Lee McAvoy. 'Welcome home, M-Mrs. McAvoy,' a voice echoed in her head. She was absolutely gobsmacked. A memory hit her, him with the kids, laughing. Him watching TV with his socks on the coffee table. Him taking her fishing, and her with her coat on, plus three more layers of knit jumpers, and a sarcastic quip about the next ice age on her lips. He'd kissed it off before she got it out.
A grin slowly spread across her face. She couldn't believe it! He was real after all! And here! Of all places, of all times in the universe, to run into him again! She shook her head and blinked, and he was still there. She couldn't bloody believe it!
Of course she was going over there to talk to him. Oh, how bonkers was this?! She knew him instantly! In real time, she'd only known him for a matter of hours, or even less, but looking at him standing there awkwardly on the other side of the room with his mouth working and nothing coming out, she felt she'd known him all of her adult life.
Suddenly, a wet blanket appeared in the form of her husband and threw itself over the proceedings.
"Who's that, then?" Shaun asked, having apparently materialized out of nowhere next to her ear, chewing loudly on some kind of finger-sandwich from the buffet.
Right, she was married. Forgot about that. Wait, that didn't come out right. Did she really just think that? Happily married. She was happily married. And here he was, Shaun Temple, fit, faithful, well off (well, they both were well off, thanks mainly to the Doctor's little lottery-winning wedding gift), and traveling the universe with her, spending quality time with her on the things she liked. They liked. Okay, she liked, but he would come to like it. She was sure of it.
"Oh, that's Lee. Old friend of mine. Want to go say hello? I'll introduce you." Her smile had momentarily faltered, but she pushed it back into place and led the way over to Lee.
Lee saw them coming and balked a little. Okay, hiding was out. What did one say to a woman one had loved and fantasized about for two years after a sentient planet-sized computer de-molecularized both your bodies and kept your conscious minds in a manipulated dreamlike state for over a century? Pleased to see you, will you marry me? Sorry about the brainwashing into marriage thing, and oh, by the way, I never really came out of it? Glad you're not a fake person after all?
"Lee?!" Donna exclaimed in disbelief, throwing her arms out for a hug. "Lee McAvoy?! I don't believe it!" He awkwardly hugged her back, half panicked smile on his face. He was rather acutely aware of her well-endowed bosom pressed against his chest.
"I never thought I'd ever see you again!" she continued. "I thought you were all in my head! You are really real! Look at you!" She stepped back to do so.
"Hello, D, D, D, D—"
"Your name is Lee, isn't it?" she said suddenly, frowning. "I looked for you in the library database after everyone got out, but I couldn't find anyone with your name."
"Uh, yeah," he nodded. He considered explaining that his full name was Leopold McAvoy-Stewart, but he was still working on getting the word 'Donna' out and didn't think he'd have much luck at it.
"Oh, sorry, I'm being rude. This is Shaun. He's my husband, just married. We're on our honeymoon," she smiled, holding up their hands to show off the rings.
"C-congratulations." Oh sure, he got THAT one out with only minimal stuttering. Two years late. Bloody stammer.
Donna grinned brightly, glancing between the two of them. Shaun gave him a half-hearted smile and looked off to the right, rather bored.
"So what are you doing here?" Donna asked, patting his arm fondly. "Vacation? Romantic cruise?"
"No, I'm a r-r-r-researcher, Aquarii University."
She snorted. "Your university springs for you to ride luxury liners as a work expense? I need a job like that!"
Lee reacted with a flushed, awkward smile. "No… n-n-not usual. The ship p-p-passes by the gas giant. Gonna send a p, p, p, p, p…" he paused for a second, closed his eyes, took a breath and started over. "A p-probe. Radiation readings." Oh, he was in high form tonight. The more nervous he felt, the worse it got. Donna, on the other hand, looked perfectly at ease.
"What for?"
"Oh, you know… S-s-science."
She smiled. "You should meet my friend. You get him started on science, he'll talk your ear off for days. He's around here somewhere." She looked around the room as if she expected him to pop in suddenly.
Shaun cleared his throat. "Well, I'm gonna go grab another sandwich. Good luck with your search, babe."
She looked confused for a moment, then shook her head. "Oh, right. The search. Yeah."
The new husband wandered off toward the buffet table. Lee watched him go with a cooled expression.
"How d-d-d-did you meet?" he managed, and felt relatively pleased with how calm and normal that question almost sounded.
"Oh, I was temping, you know, at his office, and he kept lookin' over at me, so I brought him a coffee." Her gaze grew distant and she frowned suddenly, like she'd just thought of something. "Actually, that's… I never thought of it before, but that's just like how my previous relationship started."
She must have caught something in his face, because then she added, "My last real life relationship before that, I mean."
"Right," he said quickly.
"Yeah."
He swallowed. "I w-wouldn't… c-c-count us as…"
"No, 'course not."
"'Cos that was just the c-c-comp—"
"The computer, yeah," she finished for him.
"Not real."
"No."
"Like b-b-b-brainwashing," he suggested.
"Sure. Of course."
They stood awkwardly for a while after that, each trying to think of a graceful way out of this increasingly uncomfortable conversation. Finally, Donna spoke first.
"I, erm, I'd better go back to see that Shaun doesn't eat something stupid and kill himself. He doesn't know to check for the safe-for-human-consumption labels."
"R-right. Nice t-talking to you."
"Yeah. Same."
She turned back toward the buffet and Lee beat a hasty retreat from the room.
Well, so much for his appetite. He wasn't really sure where he was going, but anywhere had to be better than here, at least until he could get his flustered thoughts back in order and be sure he wasn't going to make a fool of himself. He found himself climbing the old-fashioned spiral staircase up to the top deck where he could stare out into space without the added obstruction of walls or window frames to clutter everything up.
He kept telling himself to try to forget it. He'd been ridiculous all this time, keeping an eye open for her. Stupidly expecting that "I'll find you," uttered in a moment of panic and confusion would have any sort of meaning once the computer was out of her head. It was so obvious in retrospect. Nothing else in that world had been real. Why should her feelings have been any different? It was just the programming. He was the weird one to have taken it so seriously. He was a joke, really. A desperate fool clinging to his own delusions to avoid the painful truth: he was well and truly alone in the universe. Lee stared out across the expanse between the Hindenburg and the massive, multicolored rings of K'ribb-dees, and let out a choked, hollow laugh.
One deck below him, Donna Temple-Noble sat down next to Shaun and stared into her own kind of space with a vague sense of disquiet. She'd gotten such a rush from that first sight of Lee across the hall that she'd somehow assumed he'd be just as thrilled to find her again, and somehow, his reaction left her a bit irritated. What really bugged her was that whole 'computer brainwashing' bit. What the hell was that? He made it sound like he didn't miss her at all! She wasn't sure why that annoyed her so much – she had Shaun now, anyway – but honestly! She'd been a complete mess after the library, and that git damn well should have had the decency to suffer too. Bloody wanker!
…
Rose headed down the corridor looking for a stairwell to take her down to where they'd left the TARDIS. She needed to find Donna, but if she knew the Doctor (and of all the humans in the galaxy, she was probably the foremost expert on all things Doctor-related by this point), there was no way this evening was gonna end without some sort of running, fighting aliens thing, and she didn't feel like using the osteo-regenerator in the TARDIS infirmary to repair a broken ankle again. It wouldn't take a minute to grab a pair of trainers for herself and an extra pair for Donna on the way back to the dining hall.
She remembered the TARDIS was only a floor below them in storage section C, so she grabbed a passing crewman with an unusually oblong head to confirm where she was.
"Oh, hello! Sorry," she started, "but I've got to pick up something from storage section C. Could you point me in the right direction?"
The crewman responded with a weird, nervous-looking grimace and shook his head.
"Listen, I know I don't look like I belong back here, but I'm with the Doctor," she persisted. "He's talking to the captain right now. I've been scanned in, so it's fine."
"Er, it's… one floor up," the crewman said, and moved to pass around her. Rose stepped back into his way again, frowning, her instincts up.
"No, it's not. We came upstairs from storage to get to the dining hall, and that's on the same deck as the bridge."
"Yeah, er, that's what I meant. I'm new," the man said, and tried to duck around her again.
She turned after him as he passed, definitely suspicious now. "So new you don't even know where storage is? Oi, hold on a second!"
He whirled around about ten feet ahead of her and pulled an energy gun out of his uniform jacket. Rose's eyes widened and she dived for the floor, but there was no cover in the hall and the end of the hall was about 3 seconds too far away. His first shot hit the wall behind where she'd been standing.
She lunged forward, hoping to tackle him at the knees, but his recharge time was too fast and she took the second shot head on.
The familiar feeling of a stun-gun blast crawled over her and she face-planted into the floor. Well, shit, she thought as the darkness overtook her. Not even two minutes out the door. She'd never live this down.
Everything faded to black.