A/N: sorry for my absence and delay in replying to comments but I crashed and burned today/yesterday* [*delete whichever is applicable for your time zone]. Hubby had loads of fun trying to wake me up when he got home from work...


Part 9

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The Doctor stepped nearer and held Donna close, offering soft touches to calm her down. "He'll be okay once he has a chance to cool down," he gently assured her.

"But Doctor," she stammered out on a sob. "If we don't go after him he might get eaten by something."

"Let him go," Jenny advised the grief-stricken Donna. "My guardians will not let him leave the settlement, so he will be safe." With a tilt of her pretty head she considered the Doctor comforting Donna in an embrace. "He does have a point. How exactly did Donna become pregnant with your child, Dad?"

"I don't know for sure," he reluctantly admitted. "We didn't discover the pregnancy until we landed on this planet, but we've narrowed the time down to either being somehow affected by Messaline or England in 1926."

"Did you… share a bed?" Jenny cautiously asked.

"No we did not, in the sense you mean," Donna indignantly answered. "It just happened to me without any chance to enjoy the method."

"You mean you would have enjoyed it with me?" the Doctor smugly queried.

"Shut it, you!" Donna snapped at him in embarrassment. "It's just a phrase. I wasn't implying anything."

Jenny had been thinking as they bickered, and ignored their outbursts. "But don't you see?" she pondered. "I died on Messaline, thinking that was what I was supposed to do when shot in the heart. The Source encouraged my body to regenerate and come back to life. I'm convinced it did. Staying and travelling with you both was the one thing I truly wanted; and it was my last wish as I died. Isn't it possible that the Source also gave Donna what she truly wanted? A child and to be with you, Dad?"

"Well…," he blurted out as he thought on it.

Donna gulped self-consciously. "It's true I do want to be with your dad for the rest of my life; and I want to be a mother, so my dreams have sort of been granted. I'd have to find a man to fall in love with me and then marry to get the full package."

"Then you agree with me," Jenny gleefully acknowledged. "The Source is the reason you are pregnant."

"It does fit," the Doctor warily granted. "The Source was a terraforming device to create and encourage new life. And if Donna was in a fertile phase in her body, as her dates suggest, then it is not impossible to consider the pregnancy. My being the father is explained by the fact that I was the only male who had touched her. With my hands, holding hands, I mean," he blustered. "Thank goodness I hadn't done anything more than hug Martha. Although she could also be affected…"

"How charming of you to liken the baby to a disease," Donna joked as she too wondered if Martha had become pregnant. "At least we know what our next port of call will be when we get back to the TARDIS."

"What? Oh yes, definitely," he airily confirmed. "But you, Donna," he began to announce, having sprung mentally back into the room from his wandering thoughts, "you are truly brilliant, using the Source in the way you did."

"I didn't exactly do anything," she modestly disagreed. "This pregnancy happened to me. And come to think of it…" She rounded on Jenny. "What is all this twaddle you've set up about needing to be married in order to have a child?"

Jenny gave a petulant shrug. "They've set up their own religion around me, cannibalising the best bits from their own beliefs. All I did was accidentally regenerate in front of a few of them."

"You have responsibilities, as a Time Lord or Gallifreyan," the Doctor reminded her. "And how did you manage to become ginger?"

She gave another shrug. "If I had to change I thought that was a nice colour."

"You chose it?" Donna wondered in surprise. "Obviously you inherited quite a lot from your dad."

"And now I look as though I inherited something from my mum. If you'll have me?" Jenny then looked at Donna expectantly.

"If?! Of course I will." Donna joyously opened her arms, and Jenny rushed into the embrace. "Who'd have thought I'd gain two children within the space of a few days, thanks to you, Doctor," she said in his direction as the hug finished. "With a possible third."

"It will make denying we are a couple much harder in the future," he replied. "And a third?"

"That's if you let us take Harden with us," she cautiously explained. "Do you really want to leave him here to be eaten by the Dreadel?"

"No," he confirmed. "I don't want that to happen to anyone. Which means we have to rescue them all."

"I have a plan," Jenny confidently declared.

"What sort of a plan?" the Doctor questioned, dreading the possible answer.

Jenny beamed up at him, waiting for approval. "We build something that resembles a nuclear device and then you give them the choice to leave or be blown to smithereens."

"Excuse me, but isn't there a teeny flaw in that plan," Donna proposed. "What do you do if they just laugh in his face for threatening them with a cardboard box?"

"It would have flashing lights and everything," Jenny re-joined with ease. "It would look like the real thing. We could even put in an explosive."

The Doctor was stunned. "You want me to build a nuclear bomb. A non-working nuclear bomb. I'm afraid that won't do."

"But you said to give your enemies a choice," Jenny petulantly complained. "And this would do that for the Dreadel."

"No," he firmly declined. "There has to be a better alternative."

Donna's mind went back to a couple of days before, when they had first landed on the planet. "You said that this place was like the Marie Celeste; that everyone had buggered off. In that case, to preserve the time lines, shouldn't we just take all the people somewhere else much safer?"

A proud grin lit up the Doctor's face. Trust his Donna to think of preserving the time lines. "Molto bene, Donna!" he cried and grabbed hold of her head to briefly place a chaste kiss on her lips in a flash of celebratory madness. "Oops! Sorry about that," he mumbled in apology when she inevitably looked shocked at his action. "I got carried away in the moment."

In return, Donna gave a cough in embarrassment. "Daft Martian! Anyway, all we have to do is move the TARDIS here."

"I like this new plan," Jenny agreed. "And once you have completed the marriage ceremony we can set out to get it."

"Whoa! Hold your horses, missy!" Donna protested.

"We don't need to go through with your ceremony," the Doctor added. "It isn't necessary anymore."

"Oh, but you do," Jenny insisted. "It's the law."

"You are the law," Donna countered. "You can make up the rules as you go along if you want."

"Hopefully wise laws; very wise laws," the Doctor continued. "You have other, more temporal, things to consider."

But Jenny shook her head. "We set this up as a brave and highly moral society where all births will be legitimate. As the first, you must set an example."

This was too much for Donna. She sunk down despondently to sit glumly on Jenny's dais. "How much of an example do we have to set?"

"Look for yourselves," Jenny offered, using a held out hand to indicate towards the settlement beyond the curtained door.

The Doctor instantly pushed the curtain aside and peered out to observe a sea of eager faces outside waiting for some sort of ceremony. He sighed deeply. This meant that they couldn't avoid disappointing all these young impressionable people, and admitted to himself that part of him wanted to lay claim upon Donna and their unborn child.

"Very well," he reluctantly conceded. "We shall go through with your marriage ceremony; but I want Harden safely back here first. We shall need him to locate the whereabouts of the TARDIS later. And I insist upon devising my own vows."

"You do?!" Donna incredulously exclaimed. "I'm not going to say 'I obey', if you are expecting that one."

"As if I would," he pleasantly replied. "Not at all."

"Then I shall tell the people of Heiligtum that we are almost ready," Jenny proclaimed.

"Erm… don't forget we need Harden," Donna reminded her. "You said the guards would get him."

"And they will," Jenny promised.


Harden was brought into the shed a mere ten minutes later, almost carried there by two burly settlers and dumped unceremoniously in front of Donna and the Doctor. Judging by the irate pout on his face, Harden did not approve in the slightest.

"Now don't start!" Donna warned him before he could even open his mouth to say something. She stood with one hand on her hip and the other pointing an irate digit at him. "I know you are angry, and you have every right to be. But I need you to help us take part in this marriage ceremony for the settlement."

"Do I have to?" he asked, with an added whine to the pout already set on his face.

"Yes you do," the Doctor informed him. "At the moment you have a choice; either you be the person who gives Donna away or you can be my best man."

"Why can't I be both?" Harden wondered, warming up considerably to this idea and distracted away from his earlier anger.

"I don't see why you can't be both," the Doctor considered. "What do you think, Donna?"

"It could work," she readily agreed. "With Jenny performing the ceremony, that would make it as completely family as we can get in the circumstances."

"Family?" Harden queried, feeling his heart beat furiously as he desperately hoped that the title included him now.

His delight increased when the Doctor laid a hand upon his slender shoulder. "We will be moving the settlement away from here, so you are coming with us. Other details can be sorted out later."

With a repressed sniff, Harden forced himself to smile. "Just tell me what I have to do."

"I know you don't believe in all this," Jenny had requested when they finalised their arrangements, "but please make this wedding convincing for the good of the settlement. They need this to be truthful so that it sets a standard."

The Doctor was startled that she needed to ask it of them. "We can do that, can't we, Donna?"

"Oh yes." She smiled confidently at Jenny. "Especially now that we've got Harden back to help us."

Harden to the side of her beamed with pride. Never in his dreams did he think he would see a wedding again, particularly one he would play a major part in. This was like some fantasy from his former life.

"You really will be married?" he asked the Doctor.

"Under Hureenaxian law, yes," the Doctor confirmed. "It depends whether other planets recognise that or not, as to its universal legality."

"What about the planet you and Donna come from? Will you be married there?" Harden continued to press.

"Ah," the Doctor hesitated. "Not on my home planet. As for Donna's…" He gazed quizzically at her for a second or two. "I suppose we could get away with it."

"Not if I try to add it to my passport or driving licence details," Donna pondered, "but yes, I suppose we could."

Reassured by their words, even though he didn't understand all of what they had said, Harden adjusted his clothing to make sure it sat neatly on his body and readied himself to undertake his task.