The Doctor bolted out of the TARDIS and ran down a street in Chiswick he knew well. He didn't have to run far. Sylvia Noble, pale and furious, was marching from her home and down the street to meet him. Behind her was the man the Doctor recognized as Shaun Temple, worriedly trying to keep pace with Sylvia.

"Where are they?! I heard you coming in that noisy contraption of yours! Where are they?! Where's my daughter?! Where's my father?!" Sylvia demanded.

The Doctor's hearts sank. Donna Noble was not returned to her family. He had no idea where she could be. She could be anywhere in time and space and he didn't know-

"I asked you a question, Doctor!" Sylvia shouted at him. She was close. The Doctor could see how drawn and worried she had been in every line of her face. He wondered briefly what her face would have been like if he had managed to return her father to her. Would she have smiled? He'd never know.

The Doctor said nothing because he didn't know how to say what was needed. But he didn't have to because Sylvia Noble was just like her father and her daughter, and somehow read the agony on his bloody and broken face without him having to say a word.

"No," she said brokenly. "No, you're supposed to be this great hero. You're supposed to save people. You did save people, I was watching the sky! I was practically praying to you!" Tears were streaming from her blue eyes, down her face. "Where is my family, you worthless alien?! Where?!"

She pushed him. She shoved both her palms against his chest and shoved him violently away. The Doctor didn't try to fight Sylvia, not even when her hands turned to fists and she shoved at him like she could push the answers out of him. He couldn't even feel it. He didn't feel anything but numb as he looked at Sylvia Noble.

"Sylvia, don't!" Shaun cried, and he reached for the older woman to try and restrain her, but Sylvia screamed and shoved him off. Shaun stumbled two steps backwards and looked helplessly at the Doctor. The Doctor just continued to stare at Sylvia, wishing things were different.

"This is your fault!" Sylvia screamed at him, hitting him again. "I knew this would happen if I let my family around the likes of you! You're careless! And dangerous! Trouble is always around you and it's always your fault!" And then she collapsed against him as the Doctor finally reached up and wrapped his arms Sylvia Noble and hugged her close.

"I'm sorry, Sylvia, I'm so sorry," the Doctor said as Sylvia sobbed against his chest, her fists clenched tightly around the lapels of his jacket.

The Doctor held Sylvia close as she clutched at him and cried. The sounds coming from her were the broken, anguished cries of a woman who been through hell, only to come out the other side and lose everything. He wanted to comfort her, to protect her. They never got on, which was as much his fault as hers, he could never forgive the way Sylvia treated her daughter. But he suddenly realized that he cared deeply for Sylvia, and as he held her he knew there was a simple reason for that.

Sylvia was family.

And she loved Donna, he knew. To both of them she was the most important woman in their lives.

"I promise," the Doctor said softly against the top of her head, "I'm going to find her. Even if it takes me a hundred years, I'm going to find her."

"What do you mean?" Sylvia demanded, standing abruptly and pushing him back. "What do you mean? Is-is Donna still alive?!"

"Donna is alive?!" Shaun said, undisguised hope in his voice. His face lit up. "I knew it! I knew she was!"

Sylvia snorted in a vaguely disdainful way as she stepped back from the Doctor, which puzzled him. He watched her as she pulled a handkerchief from her pocket to dab at her face.

The Doctor ran his hand through his hair. He didn't bother hiding his confusion. "I think so. That's part of why I'm here. I got a note saying she was out, but I don't know exactly what that means. I-I was hoping she'd be here-"

"Well, she's not," Sylvia said, shortly, the usual steel in her words and posture returning. "And you can just as well turn around and march back to that police box of yours and find my daughter!" She stopped, took a deep breath in. She looked right into his eyes, piercing him. "Is my father dead?" she asked calmly.

"Yes," the Doctor said, without hesitation and with every ounce of feeling he had. Sylvia deserved the undisguised truth from him.

"Where is he now?"

"UNIT is taking care of him. They will contact you once he is ready and you can see him," the Doctor said.

She nodded curtly, and looked away. She took a deep breath through her nose and exhaled through her mouth. Then she looked at him once more. "Bring her home to me. Understood?"

"I will find her, Sylvia," the Doctor said firmly, looking straight into her eyes. "I will find her. I will find Donna Noble even if it takes me one hundred years."

Sylvia pursed her lips, pausing for a moment as she studied his face. The Doctor meant every word he said with every cell in his body and he willed Sylvia to see that. "See that you do," Sylvia finally said.

When Donna landed from the vortex, she found herself on her back staring up at the white, bright sky. Spires of a strange city surrounded her, going up and up, hundreds of floors high. Maybe thousands. It was giving her vertigo looking at them, so she closed her eyes. She could feel the planet spinning through space, circling the sun, but it felt odd. Like the ground was miles below.

"Using a vortex manipulator isn't supposed to feel like that," Donna said out loud.

Then she noticed the ground she was lying on was moving.

Donna struggled to her feet on the moving walkway. She looked down as she tried to find a semblance of balance. Not only were the buildings looming above her, they seemed to go on several hundred stories below her too. Figures, she thought, Why is that time travel never takes you to the exact time and place you want to be? She processed that as she looked up and around. People were gaping at her and she self-consciously tried to adjust her war warn clothes. She must be a sight. Her clothes were torn and she was covered in soot, red sand, and a good deal of grime.

It didn't give people a right to stare. Donna gave the closest couple her best glare and they turned away quickly.

"That's what I thought," she said as she tried to straighten her tunic.

There were robots everywhere. Cleaning robots, robots directly traffic, robots handing out take away from various windows, people with personal robots-

Since the only robot she owned was a half-functioning roomba, Donna knew this was definitely not 21st century Earth and definitely the future. But still Earth. Newly awakened senses of time and space, how the dimensions weaved and bound the universes together, were telling her that she was on her home planet. Just when she didn't want to be.

Donna turned her wrist over to examine the vortex manipulator, but it was dead. She hit a few buttons, but the panel wouldn't activate, and she didn't feel the tell-tale pull through the pressure points of her wrist that told her the temporal field was activated. "Must be short-circuited. Wonder if it's the temporal circuits or the extrapolated space-time calibrators," she muttered, "Probably the latter because Halcyon needed to be in range on the planet outside the TARDIS-"

Donna paused, looking up from the vortex manipulator. "How the bloody hell do I know that?!" She thought the Doctor's memories were erased once her brain was rewired. Apparently she still retained of his jibber-jabber know-how, without any of the actual memories of his life.

Truthfully she didn't want him running around in her head. Not anymore.

"Well, I can't get anywhere or anywhen with a broken vortex manipulator, can I?" Donna said to herself. "What to do now?"

She looked around. She noticed a young person, maybe thirteen or fourteen, was standing on the walkway next to the one she was on, a bemused expression on his face. He had one finger out-stretched in the air like he was in the middle of tracing something.

"Something in my teeth?" she asked him with all the snark she could muster.

The boy shook his head. "You were talking to yourself," he said. Donna noticed that instead of human ears, he had distinctly feline ears on the top of his head and his head was covered in a chocolate brown mixture of fur and hair that matched his skin.

"What's with the cat ears?" Donna asked him, pointing and waving her finger around.

The boy brushed a hand over his ears. "My parents got my bodypeddle for my birthday."

"You're human then?"

The boy bristled. "Of course I'm human, everyone is human here. In the Overcities anyway-"

"It's just you have cat ears. And a big fluffy tail-"

"Haven't you see bodypeddle before?! You must have, no one has had your hair color naturally in a few centuries," he snapped, and tossed his hair-fur. "What's wrong? Don't you like it?"

Donna pursed her lips into a thin line and nodded slowly. "Yeah," she said, exaggerating the vowels of the word, "They...suit you." Donna wondered just how far she had landed in the future. Time travel had taught her she would have trouble relating to humans in any era, almost like they were aliens themselves. But at the same time, it was important to her to try and relate to people no matter where or when they were from.

Even if they were human teenagers with cat ears, tails, and fur.

"I like your look too. Very vintage. And grungy," he said. He gave her a friendly smile.

Donna smiled wanly. Vintage, just what every adult wanted to hear from a teenager in every Earth era that ever was. "Can you tell me where I am, Sunshine?" Donna asked in the brightest way she could.

The boy blinked at her. "Um...this is level 367. Grid number 65 I think. Are you trying to get somewhere?" he asked.

"Home," Donna said, wistfully. "I'm having tremendous trouble finding it."

"What level do you live on?" he asked.

"Oh, um...I don't. Not here anyway. I used to live in a flat that...was quite a few levels up," Donna said, intentionally trying to be vague, "But before that I lived in a box with a skinny twit."

"What's a twit?" the boy asked.

"What is this, twenty questions?" Donna snapped, and the boy jumped a bit. "Sorry," she said. Cat boy didn't deserve her anger. She'd get to the one who did eventually. "What I meant was, do you know where I can get directions?"

"There are computer panels on every corner of the grids," the boy said. "Look over there."

He pointed. In several feet, there was a platform she could step off of in front of what looked like a computer panel. Donna thought it was as good a place as any to get information about where and when she was.

"Thanks," Donna said.

"Good luck!" Cat boy called, waving goodbye as Donna stepped off the platform.

Donna waved back before turning back to the computer panel.

There didn't seem to be a button to activate the screen, and Donna tried touching it, but it remained black. "Um, hello? Anybody home?"

The screen immediately flashed. "Welcome to Spaceport Five Overcity Information Panel #2,677."

"Thank you," Donna said, bemused.

"Identification please." A red light started flashing in the white paneling to the left. Donna searched her pockets for Halcyon's psychic paper. "Hold on a tic," she said, "Here it is."

She held it up to the red light and moved it back and forth as if to scan it. The light quickly turned green.

"Would you like general history and information or specific inquiry?"

"Specifics only please," Donna said, "What is the date and time?"

"Time: eleven-o-one hundred hours. Date: Westember thirteenth 2910."

"Westember, what does that mean?! Nevermind!" Donna said when images and articles started scrolling on screen to prepare to educate her on the history of Westember. "Just tell me if there is a shop near where I can acquire extrapolated calibrators."

There was a brief pause. "I'm sorry, extrapolated calibrators did not match any search criteria."

"Of course not," Donna said, "Humans haven't discovered time-travel yet. I was hoping there might be an alien shop or two on thirtieth century Earth."

"Alien technology is forbidden on Earth by the Empress of the Great Human Empire."

"Is it now?!" Donna said. "Why so?"

Instead of answering her, the machine gave her the date the law was enacted and the punishment for being in possession of contraband, including something called brainwipe and corporation indenture.

Donna looked around before carefully unstrapping the vortex manipulator from her wrist and pocketing it. "That doesn't help me at all. Over my dead body will anyone be wiping my brain again," she said quietly, more to herself than the computer, "And temping is punishment now? What a lark." Donna tossed her hair over her shoulder, pushing away the image of the Doctor reaching for her face to force her memories away. She squared off against the computer. "All right then. Where can a girl find a place to sit down? Like a park with lots of trees? Assuming Earth still has trees-"

A map appeared on the screen, with a green dot representing Donna's current position and a red dot on a park some floors below and several blocks over. Donna quickly memorized it. The city itself was a three dimensional grid, so it shouldn't be terribly difficult to find. If, she thought, she could manage the moving walkways.

Donna stepped back onto the walkway. She smiled slightly at the couple next to her, but only because they were glaring aghast at her, probably appalled by her attire.

"Oh don't look at me like that," Donna said to the woman, "your dress looks like it's made of hawk feathers! And is your skin fuchsia? Did you dye your skin pink?!"

Both of them started walking quickly away, moving up several meters ahead of her. "Good riddance," Donna thought, folding her arms.

Donna found the park with no trouble. Her time sense told her she had been awake for just over sixty-seven minutes. The weather hardly changed a degree in that time, and despite the sunny weather, Donna's skin remained cool. She wondered if it was even real sunshine or if damage to the ozone rendered Earth's natural atmosphere unviable-

Blimey, even my thoughts sound like him, Donna thought. Am I turning into a mad alien?

When the metacrisis happened before, Donna was overwhelmed and delighted. The whole universe crammed into her head, her Doctor's universe, open before her. She could finally be his equal and they would travel the stars together.

It didn't feel like that this time. She didn't feel like Donna plus the Doctor in her head. She felt like Donna, who happened to know loads of stuff she didn't know before. She felt like Donna, but she was no longer human. She sat down on a bench in a funny little park in a floating city of the future, and wondered why she felt incredibly sad, like she was grieving for her lost humanity.

Before, it wasn't so frightening to become an alien. She had her best-friend by her side, a man she trusted with her life. A misplaced trust. Because that same day he had her whole life in his hands and he took it away.

Donna had spent the year without her life trying to fit herself back into a formula she thought would make her happy. A wedding, a husband, a mortgage. She had spent hours in parks just like this one crying the same frustrated tears she was crying at that moment because she had no idea what was missing, what had went wrong, why she couldn't get the formula right.

And look at the people she had hurt in the process. Her gramps, her mother. Poor, dreaming Shaun Temple.

Donna frowned. She turned her left hand and started spinning the simple silver band around her finger. Shaun had no idea who she was, not really. He loved a sad shell of a woman and he deserved someone who was as devoted to him and he was to her. And she wished she could be that woman, Donna thought as she continued to cry on that bench and twirl his ring, she wanted to be Shaun Temple's wife. She loved him because all he did was reach into the holes in her heart to keep the loneliness at bay.

But Shaun Temple didn't need to be burdened with a funny little alien woman who happened to be incredibly lonely.

"Stop it, Donna," she told herself, once again pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes to push back the tears. "You can't wallow like this. You need to get home to your family."

Easier said than done. Donna pulled out the vortex manipulator and the sonic screwdriver. Scans proved what she already suspected, that the miniature time-space manipulator was shorted-out. It certainly couldn't get her home.

Next Donna pulled out her mobile. She was puzzled when the screen showed she had one missed call. Donna flipped it open and saw the call was from her grandfather. The last she heard of Wilf, he was being held by that deranged psychopath. Did he get free and try to call her? Did that mad man tell him what happened to her?

Donna scanned the phone with the screwdriver. There weren't any satellites orbiting thirtieth century Earth so Donna's phone was useless...for the most part. If there was another twenty-first century phone on the planet that she knew the number to she could use sonic waves to contact it, like on Messaline. By that same logic, she could rewire her mobile with the temporalschematic wires in the vortex manipulator and possibly be able to call another twenty-first century mobile. As long as that mobile existed in all time and space at the same time...since it would only be able to access the vortex...

There was another funny little alien running around time and space, Donna thought. Another lonely alien like her. He had a mobile and a time machine and he could take her home.

She really didn't want to call him. Part of her was terrified. After all that time, she was back to being scared him. But Donna was never a woman to back down when she was scared, so she used the screwdriver to dismantle her mobile and the vortex manipulator and carefully started rewiring both.

It was a tedious process, but Donna took her time. Hurrying through these things resulted in sparks and fires, and that's the last thing she wanted on an Earth where alien technology was forbidden. But the tediousness of the rewiring process left her thoughts and feelings wide open and she couldn't help but analyze them. Maybe I'm not scared of him, Donna thought, Maybe I'm just furious that he took my life and then left me alone this long.

There was something else there, she knew, looking up and across the sunny and impossibly cool park. She was angry, and she wasn't sure she could trust him again, but below that, simmering under the layers of her emotions, Donna ached for home. For traveling, learning, and growing through time and space. For him. Her mad, wonderful friend.

"Oh," Donna said, both a sob and a sigh, "I need him."

She finished hooking up the phone to the vortex and Donna realized without the proper calibrators she would only be able to send a brief message and then she'd lose the signal, if she managed to send the signal at all. With her luck, that daft man would talk over her before she could tell him when and where she was.

Best not to use the earpiece and just say what she needed to say. He had an eidetic, he'd remember hearing it even if he couldn't listen for three and a half seconds.

"All right," Donna said, "let's get this over with." She aimed the sonic at the temporalschematic circuit wired to her mobile's data port. And sent the signal.

Sylvia had insisted on staying at home, arguing that someone needed to be there on the off chance that Donna made it back. "Besides," she had told him, without disguising the disgust in her voice, "You'll never catch me getting into that-that thing!" She indicated the TARDIS with a wave of her hand.

"We should go back to the flat," Shaun Temple said. "Donna could show up there. We can be there in five minutes, I know all the shortcuts-"

Shaun was already walking towards the familiar and hated blue compact car the Doctor recognized as Donna's.

"Actually," the Doctor called, "we'll take mine, shall we?" He turned back towards the TARDIS, not checking to see if Donna's fiancé would follow him because he knew he would.

Like all humans, Shaun cautiously followed the Doctor through the door of his police box and paused at the entrance, taking in the coral structure of the TARDIS console room. The Doctor didn't do his usual welcoming speech, mostly because he had no time or patience for it, but partly because a rebellious and deeply buried part of him felt this other man was an intruder.

"The address, Shaun Temple?" the Doctor called when he reached the location settings at the console. "Preferably latitude and longitude if you have them, I have more flexibility with exact locations, and less likely to materialize around unsuspecting life forms while they're taking tea, if the street layouts changed that decade. But street addresses work fine too...Shaun?"

Shaun started, looking away from the wires along the ceiling and back at the Doctor. He shook himself, dark eyes blinking. "Right, sorry," Shaun said, and he gave the Doctor his street address.

The Doctor plugged them into the TARDIS and ran around the console to flip the level that would send them into the vortex. His ship responded quickly, he could feel her anxiousness for Donna mirroring his own. The time rotor whirred, pulling them into the vortex. From the corner of his eye, the Doctor saw Shaun Temple wrap his arms around the coral pillar closest to the door. They were out of the vortex again in only moments, materializing in the alley next to the building the Temple-Nobles lived in.

The Doctor observed Shaun briefly as the other man cautiously looked around the still TARDIS before unwrapping his death grip on the pillar.

"Allons-y, Shaun?" the Doctor said, and he briskly started to walk towards the door, walking past him.

"Doctor?"

The Doctor paused before he reached the door. There was a strange note in Shaun's voice, one he wouldn't expect in a man of his character. It was the tone of someone about to demand answers from someone who wasn't inclined to make demands.

Jealousy was not a strange emotion for the Doctor. He had been in similar situations before. But it was different with Shaun because the Doctor wasn't competing with a rival for the affections of someone he cared about. Donna Noble could never be with him without risking her life and she had chosen Shaun Temple. With him, she was happy and he couldn't begrudge them that happiness. He could be jealous, he could wish it was him, but he couldn't begrudge them.

He turned and met Shaun Temple eyes.

Shaun sniffed, breaking eye contact, but his voice didn't lose its edge.

"You're the doctor Donna used to travel with? The one Wilf told me about?" Shaun asked.

The Doctor wondered how much Wilf had explained to Shaun Temple. Not that it mattered, considering the recent alien invasion of Earth and the fact they were standing in his intratemporaldimensional ship.

"Right, that's me," the Doctor said.

Shaun nodded like it was the answer he was expecting. "Back when Donna and I first started dating, Wilf said you might be coming back. I think he was trying to protect me. He didn't want me to get my heart broken, even though it was already too late. I fell in love with Donna the first day I met her," Shaun said, his eyes lighting up, before they quickly darkened again. "Sylvia though...she said you wouldn't come back if you knew what was good for you." Shaun paused. He smiled sadly. "Sylvia...she doesn't like me much."

"Oh, she can't stand me," the Doctor said. Then he winced because it sounded like he was turning it into a competition.

"No, you're wrong," Shaun said. He looked back up and met the Doctor's eyes again. "You're wrong about Sylvia. You should have heard her, the way she was talking to the sky when that red planet was hurtling towards us. The way she was talking to you. She was reverent. She believed you would save us all. I think she cares about you very much." Shaun sighed heavily. "And so does Donna-"

"Shaun-" the Doctor started, not wanting to hear.

"No, she does. Wilf said if she ever remembers you, she'd die. But she can't forget. She dreams about you. She wakes up crying and she can't remember why. She looks up at the sky with such a wistful expression on her face. It's like she used to be a bird and she forgot how to fly," Shaun said, and his voice broke. "I try to be enough for her. To give her what she wants. But I know I'm not. She grieves every day."

The Doctor felt the weight of what Shaun was telling him settle on his shoulders. He thought nothing could make him sink lower when it came to Donna, but he was wrong. Donna was not happy here in her old life. She really was just making do.

"Why are you telling me this?" the Doctor asked him.

Shaun put his hands in his pockets. He set his jaw and looked right at him. "Because if we open the door and she's there, waiting," he said, "We both have to do the best thing for Donna."

"I will," the Doctor said, "I always do what's right-"

"I'm not talking about what's right! 'Right' is so arbitrary," Shaun scoffed, "I said do the best thing for Donna. That means putting aside what I think is right, putting aside what you think is right, and do what Donna would want." Shaun moved to meet the Doctor by the door. "We both need more practice at that," he said.

The Doctor smiled. Oh yes. The Doctor decided he liked Shaun Temple very much. He may be a dreamer, but he was brilliant.

"I reckon we do," the Doctor said, and he opened the door.

Shaun stepped outside while fishing in his pocket for his keys. "We live on the fourth floor. Donna would always joke about how she'd be in the best shape of her life after living here for a year-"

The Doctor watched Shaun Temple walk off, pondering what the other man said about doing what was right.

Before he could follow Shaun out of the TARDIS, the mobile in his pocket started to ring.

to be continued...