Read at your own peril. Seriously. Brain-thumper, this one is.
Previously...
A familiar grind-and-roar noise filled the room, and all of Rose's hopes at once became reality. It was here, it was impossible, and it was a big blue box.
The TARDIS had arrived.
Don't half take his time, does he? thought Rose, slumping with relief into Midna, who grinned as an invisible breeze ruffled her hair.
Blue Silver: Chapter Nine
Two hours earlier…
"Think think, think! There must be a way to get aboard the Crucible!"
"I've got this," Jack said, holding up his wrist. The Doctor glared at the vortex manipulator thoughtfully.
"If I…the key should…yes, that could work…Jack, how did you fix it?"
"Why? So you can break it again?"
The Doctor shot him an exasperated look, like Jack had just dribbled on his shirt on purpose.
"Don't be so daft; I need to use it!"
"Why can't you just use it, then?"
"Captain!"
Jack shrugged, holding out the device for the Doctor to take. The Doctor whipped on his glasses and narrowed his eyes at the wristband.
"UNIT was working on a project for teleportation from scraps of technology salvaged from the Sontarans," Jack explained while the Doctor examined the device. "It wasn't finished. That was how Martha disappeared."
"Project Indigo…" muttered the Doctor as he looked up, his eyes sad. "Unfinished? Her atoms spread out across space…see what happens when you don't use a proper time machine? Well, that's just something else I'll have to try and fix, then. Anyway, the space-hopper?"
Jack rolled his eyes.
"I really wish you'd stop calling it that." Before the Doctor could defend himself, Jack continued abruptly, "My team and I were curious as to what UNIT was up to. Martha wasn't exactly ever very forthcoming but I had a few contacts with them back from the old days who still owed me a favor or two. Project Indigo has the same base codes as the Time Agency's vortex manipulators – namely, four and nine, just the coordinates I needed to get this baby working again."
The Doctor nodded frugally at his explanation, turning the manipulator over in his hands and studying it intently through his glasses. Jack wondered idly if the Doctor even needed those glasses.
"Yes, I think I can use that…" he muttered, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a familiar key.
"Incoming."
The Doctor and Jack looked up; General Sanchez had spoken up from his position at the door, a large gun poised at the ready. Dimly, they could hear the metallic intonations of the Daleks. Jack grabbed his own gun and prepared to join him, but the Doctor grasped his arm, halting him. Jack probably could have fought him off, but he didn't.
"Doctor?"
He had his tongue between his teeth and was poking at the manipulator with his sonic screwdriver, making Jack involuntarily wince.
The voices were getting closer. The General tensed.
"Whatever you're going to do, Doctor, you better do it now!"
"General, get back!" Jack ordered, feeling a little backward as he did so. Captain versus General…
Apparently, General Sanchez agreed.
"I can buy you the time, Captain, just hurry up!"
"You're coming with us!" Jack insisted. "Right, Doctor?"
The Doctor didn't answer. Jack recognized this mood. It was the same as it had been on Satellite Five, when he had gone ahead to hold off the Daleks while the Doctor prepared the device that would wipe out humanity; acceptance, resignation, but determination to see the final task through.
"Doctor?" Jack said again.
The General fired. Again, Jack attempted to break for the door and help out with his particle gun, but the Doctor grabbed his arm again. When Jack glared at him, the expression on the Doctor's face was one he'd never forget.
"I'm sorry."
Jack ignored him, firing the particle gun through the doorway at a Dalek that had just been about to get a clean shot at General Sanchez.
"Get back!" he tried again, firing and dodging a beam of light at the same time, the forgotten laser scorching the wall behind him harmlessly.
The General, sensing a fight in Jack, leapt up, knees cracking in his old age, and stood in the door, firing with abandon.
"NO!"
Out of ammo, General Sanchez dropped his gun and reached over to a panel on his right, pounding at the keys – which were, inconviently, only on the other side, as they had had only enough time to hide in the brig when the Daleks had first taken over the headquarters. The door slid shut just as Jack reached it. He punched at it in frustration, the General's screams ripping the through the air and at Jack's conscience.
"HA! Got it!" barked the Doctor in triumph. Jack glared at him. The Doctor didn't seem to notice, holding out the vortex manipulator for Jack to take. "Captain, take this and do something to make the Daleks kill you. When you come back, search the ship, got it?"
Jack nodded, though his anger refused to completely dissipate. He could hear the Daleks attempting to get through the door on the other side.
"What about you?"
"I've got this," said the Doctor, holding up a chain, to which was connected a mottled remnant of what had once been a TARDIS key. Wires poked out of it, a winding ball of a scraggly mess surrounding a wilted ball of metal, snaking up a silvery chain which the Doctor slipped around his neck. "Now go."
Jack looked at the solid granite door which had slid opened just a crack since the last time he'd looked at it. He scowled and nodded once, curtly.
"Go." The Doctor repeated, then disappeared in a bright flash of white light. Gritting his teeth, Jack backed up as the door finally opened and Daleks swarmed into the room. A shadow of the General's body could just be seen, his mouth still open in a silent scream.
Jack snapped the wrist strap to his arm and hit the button that would take him to the Crucible – assuming, of course, that the Doctor had set the coordinates already.
He had. Jack smirked sardonically at the nearest Dalek and aimed the particle gun. Not a second after he'd blown the metal top off the thing, he was shot by the red one. Pain lanced down his spine, black spots took over his vision, and he felt himself crumpling to the floor.
As soon as he was awake and alone, he jumped up and ran off, following the life signs detector up three miles of ventilation shaft to be met with the glorious sight of three women and Mickey Mouse.
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The TARDIS was in agony. Her telepathic field wove itself into his brain, ripping at it like someone grasping for something to hold onto during a free fall off a tall cliff. The Doctor gritted his teeth and shoved the pain away, trying to concentrate on the here and now.
The misshapen key around his neck was hot, burning through his clothes. Right. Temporal feedback. Hurriedly, he ripped off the chain, hissing at the scalding heat, and let it drop to the grating floor.
The TARDIS was being ripped apart. But why? How? The temporal trap he'd landed on in London must have completely lowered her defenses. Allowing anger to fuel his movements now, the Doctor hurried around the console, hitting buttons and flicking switches as he went.
The key should only have had temporal feedback if the only TARDIS it could get to existed in another time, which meant that in order to keep the TARDIS from destroying itself he had to dematerialize in a time outside of the one he'd jiggery-pokeried the key in and before he could even do that much he needed to stabilize the neutron flow from one end of the binary temporal coupling to the wire connected to the dematerialization unit…
Wait a minute. The neutron flow. It was overloading. What?
As he swiftly pressed a lever and ran over to the monitor to see what was outside, he tripped over something. He frowned. There shouldn't have been anything there to trip over, no upraised grating or…ah. Donna. So Rose and Midna hadn't gotten her out in time.
Before he could worry about this overmuch, the ship jerked. The Doctor was forced to grab tightly onto the console as he was nearly flung across the room, grunting as his arms practically ripped themselves from their sockets. He pulled himself up and yanked on the dematerialization lever, almost collapsing with relief when the central column burst to life, putting the overload to good power usage. They weren't going anywhere specific – he hadn't had time for that. He did, however, catch a glimpse of the Z-Neutrino energy core that could only have been in the Crucible. But what did Daleks need with Z-Neutrino energy?
And was Rose all right? Was Midna keeping her safe, like she'd said she would? Where were they? Caught? Killed? Oh Rassilon, no. Not that.
Still, first things first. He had to get Donna to the infirmary and find out just how serious that huge gash across her forehead really was. As he knelt over her prone, pale form, he noticed that her chest wasn't moving. Frantically, he grabbed her wrist, feeling for a pulse. Blood continued to gush from the wound on her head, but he was too late.
Donna Noble was dead.
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She was blind, or being blinded. All she could see was bright golden light everywhere she turned.
Donna frowned. Where was she?
She tried to remember the last thing that had happened to her. There was something about Rose…the jump-thingy or whatchamacallit…the doors had closed – she was screaming, terrified – they opened again, briefly, and then she felt like she was in a free fall, her back flat on the TARDIS floor, blood rushing to her head, her eyes all but popping out under the pressure. She'd stumbled to her feet when the gravity holding her down had finally let her up, and then…and then…that was it.
Golden light. What the hell was the point of golden light, anyway? Was she dead? God, she hoped not. She never knew heaven could be so painfully blinding, at any rate. She did come to realize something, though:
Eternity was rather intimidating when it was looking you right in the face.
Whispers surrounded her like a soft summer wind. However, she could decipher none of them, for there were so many and they blended together like seamlessly horrific music.
"Where am I?" she asked, and was startled when she heard not her voice, but another of the whispers. "Am I dead? Is anyone here?"
Panicking now, she reached out, trying to find something – anything – to grasp a hold of. She thought she could feel something cool and solid pass briefly over her hand.
Abruptly, everything changed. Donna was spun around circles, hung upside down, and wrung dry. The golden light separated into little balls of different colors – every color, she thought – with the deepest of blacks separating them all. Donna looked at her outstretched hand, only to see a glimmer of bright crimson light.
"What the hell is going on?"
"Calm," ordered an ethereal whisper that broke free from the others. When Donna's panic receded, she looked curiously at the bright ball of red and white swirly lights that was looking back at her with…her own face? Donna gasped and stumbled back.
"Calm," the thing ordered again, its voice firmer and, she realized now, resembling her own.
"Who are you?" Donna demanded.
"You."
The ball followed her steadily at eye-level as Donna took a few more steps back. Or, she reflected, perhaps she wasn't even moving at all, but moved instead in her mind, her imagination, because that was her automatic response.
"That's not possible," she tried to insist.
"What is?" Pseudo-Donna sounded wry.
"What are you?"
"Your heart. The heart of the vortex. Home, once, to Bad Wolf. Bad Wolf is something else now, independent of me."
"What?"
"We are in danger, Donna Noble."
The whispers around the two of them were growing louder, deeper, more urgent. They seemed to be trying to tell her something.
"Where am I?" she repeated, the only thing she could think of.
"We are in the Core. We are home."
"Home," Donna protested angrily, "is in Chiswick!"
The red light laughed. How the hell does light laugh?
"Not you," it clarified, "your heart. And me."
"I thought you said you were my heart," said Donna, feeling ridiculous.
"I am."
"So we both are?"
"We both are one."
"One what?"
"One individual."
Donna glared.
"Are you trying to tell me I've got two hearts, and one of them is talking to me?"
The light laughed gleefully in rather childish triumph.
"Yes.."
Donna snorted.
"Nope, sorry, not going with that one. I'm human, not Time Lord – or Lady, whatever – have been all my life."
"There is a beginning to everything."
"Not in this Donna, there isn't."
"Will be."
"If you think for one bloomin' second I'm gonna be anythin' like Mister Ego-central Doctor, you've got another thing comin'!"
"Not the Doctor. Donna Noble."
The whispers were painful now, though she could still only understand the one that was looking at her. A flash of memory lanced through her head.
"You are the most important person in the whole of creation!"
Rose. What did she have to do with this?
"She foresaw everything."
"She who?"
"Bad Wolf
Donna frowned. "Bad Wolf? But...I've heard that before! D'you mean...are you
talking about Rose?"
"Yes. Rose Tyler. The home. The cage. Bad Wolf remembers all. She, only some. Not this."
"What d'you mean 'foresaw' everything? Foresaw what? She's only human!"
"No. Not just human. Like you, but not. Important, but then not as important as you."
"Don't be so daft!"
"I am not. I am you."
"I'm not–" her voice broke helplessly. "I'm not important."
"Lies,"the echo of her voice hissed angrily. "You will carry the Legacy. You will be one of the mothers. Your heart and mine will join, and you will fulfill the prophecy."
"What? What prophesy? What Legacy? What are you talking about?"
The whispers were so painful by this point that she could barely think. Her head pounded fiercely; nothing made sense, she could see nothing straight, understanding nothing right... Just then, another ball of light joined the first, this one a bright silver.
"Donna," said Martha's voice from the ball. "Donna, listen to me. We need your help. The Daleks are working for the Master – remember, I told you about him? – and don't ask me how that happened, it's really complicated. But the Master wants Bad Wolf for himself. He's gonna destroy everything to get to it. I'm with the other children on the Crucible. Wake up, Donna, and tell the Doctor. Then help him. Help us."
Donna gaped, having not understood a word. The Master...wasn't that the one Martha had told her about when they were keeping out of the Doctor's way on the TARDIS? And the Daleks? What did those giant pepper pots have to do with her current problem? And 'with the other children'? What could Martha possibly mean by that? Was this even Martha?
She was so confused.
Another silver ball joined the party, this one so much brighter than the one impersonating Martha that it hurt to look at it. Flashes of gold could be seen from somewhere within, and all around the ball hung dark, looming clouds that skittered frightfully across the surface, never staying for long yet neither leaving, either. Dimly, Donna recognized the very vague shape of the Doctor's face in this one. The only thing unfamiliar about it was that a few tears had escaped his dark, brimming eyes and had tracked down his face. The Doctor she knew never cried, no matter how down he was feeling. Stupid male pride and all that.
"Donna," he choked, and Donna frowned again. What was wrong? What was going on? "Come back. Come on, don't do this. Remember the times we had? The best. The best. Don't leave now, we've got so much more to do. You haven't even meant Rose properly, y'know? That's something you can't miss out on. Come back, Donna, please, come back." His voice cracked.
If possible, she was even more confused than before.
"The thoughts of the echoes of their subconscious, thoughts they are not capable of thinking on their own," explained the red ball as the other two drifted off into the darkness. "The Doctor is holding your dead body in his arms, and Martha is calling for help."
"So I am dead, then?" said Donna grimly. The red ball didn't reply. "What d'you mean, Martha's calling for help? What can I do?"
"Go back," the voice that was so like her own commanded softly. "Go back and finish what you started. Regenerate."
"Regenerate?" Donna repeated dubiously. "What's that?"
"A Time Lord's way of cheating death."
"Well, that settles it, then. I can't do it. I'm not a Time Lord."
"Not yet, no."
"What do you mean?"
"Regenerate, and you will be."
Be a Time Lord? Was that was she wanted? Hell no. One look at the Doctor and you could tell what kind of a life the life of a Time Lord could be. Like hell she would put herself through that unless she had another choice about it.
"What if I don't want to be?"
"Then you will die, and the multiverse with you/"
So much for choices.
"What makes you think I'm so bloody important? I'm a - I'm a temp, not some bloody savior!"
"You need only for someone to look."
"What? What's that s'posed to mean?"
"Your greatness is only seen when the right people are there to see it, because otherwise you will not let it show. You will not believe, and you will not save them."
Save who from what? She wanted to scream.
"But what can I do?"
"Believe."
"'Believe'?" Donna deadpanned doubtfully, staring at the orb of light floating before her. "That's it? Just...'believe'? Believe in what?"
"Yourself."
Donna gasped in pain as everything started to make sense. Her body burned (wasn't her body dead?) and ached all over. Everything was confusion, nothing made sense, yet everything did, everything did, and she was burning; oh, she was burning, and the Doctor had better realize it, or he would burn too…Oh, it hurt, it hurt, it was eating her alive from the inside out, burning...
She was nothing, she was everything; she was the universe and she was time. She melded with the people of all timelines, head pounding in synchronization with the pulsating beat of would-be paradoxes and anomalies and things she shouldn't ever have to begin to understand. Above all, she burned.
Donna burst into flame.
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Are you breathing?
…No.
Why?
Can't.
Why?
Dying.
Why?
No one is looking.
So look for yourself.
She gasped, but no sound left her lips. She tried to move, but she couldn't even open her eyes. Everything hurt, so badly, and she wanted nothing more than to creep silently into the blackness again, forever forgotten. But she couldn't do that, because someone needed her, or at least needed some part of her; something that needed to be seen to be believed.
Even the thoughts in her own head didn't make sense anymore.
And who the hell was singing at a time like this?
Sensible or not, someone needed her and who was she but one to oblige? Well, she supposed it depended on who exactly was doing the needing, but something told her it didn't matter who it was, just that it was. She would have frowned except that she still couldn't move.
The Someone-Who-Needed-Her-Or-Something-Like-That (just Someone for short) was a confusion of the senses all by herself. Wait…'her'? How did she know it was a "she"? Did it matter? The hot and the cold and the rage and the liquid stubbornness that made her very bones ache to the quaking core certainly didn't seem to think so.
Now, why could she be feeling all that?
And who was she, anyway? What was her name? What did she do for a living? Did she have family? Kids? No, too young for kids, she sensed. Siblings, then? Friends?
Probably not. She felt too empty. What was that emptiness? Surely she was alive – she was capable of thinking, at least – so her innards were relatively intact, certainly not gone missing. The pain would be different if she hadn't any insides, she was sure. What pain was this? What was this cold, hollow sorrow that drenched her warm flesh and blood in ice?
Why could she remember nothing? What was a man (or a woman), she thought, but a sum of his memories? She was sure that was a quote from someone. Probably someone important. Definitely not her. Especially since she couldn't remember anything. If she couldn't remember anything, she certainly was nothing. For what being could live and yet have no recollection of having lived before? She wasn't a newborn, no, but she may as well be.
She tried to open her eyes again, if only to get her mind off the dark path toward which her thoughts were turning. It was no use; not even a crowbar would get them budge, unless it was actually shoved into her eye, in which case she'd be blind anyway and then the point was beyond moot. Ow. Just thinking about that hurt.
Stars, stars, shine Red so bright
O' sons of heaven filled with Light.
Moon, Miss moon, so lonely in the Dark
Though dawn will come, she leaves her mark.
Storm, wild Storm, lovely in his Rage
Ruthless is his tamer, the Wolf in her Cage.
Argh! Stupid singing. So annoying. What was it for again? No idea. She tried to ignore it, but something flickered in the back of her mind, like candlelight out of the corner of her eye. A glimmer of something. A memory? No. A picture. A picture within a memory.
She held the phantom photocopy in her hands, clutching it so tightly her hands balled into fists and her palms got cut and hurt like crazy. When she realized the phantom presence wasn't at all real, she allowed her hands to relax enough to flip the picture in her memory over to the back.
June 16, it read in messily elegant writing remarkably not crumpled from her unceremonious (if imaginary) fist-making; Little baby Midna Noble Black in the arms of her new mother.
Midna. It sounded vaguely familiar, she supposed. Was that name her own? Yes, it must be. It sounded right, and the woman lying on the bed holding the newborn looked familiar. Too familiar. So familiar it hurt. Auburn hair with black and blond streaks. Deep hazel eyes. Pink cheeks soaked with sweat and tears after her painful ordeal. Strong jaw, high cheekbones, long nose. Tall, she knew even though the woman was lying down in the picture, about as tall Midna's grandfather, and just as scrawny. How she knew how tall and skinny her grandfather was when she didn't even know the first thing about her own appearance, Midna didn't know.
A man stood next to the bed with one hand on the woman's shoulder, beaming so brightly and proudly into the camera Midna was surprised she wasn't blind from looking at it. This man had hair the color of dirty dishwater (rather like her own, really, and she nearly jumped for joy at this newest insight into herself) that shone gold in the hospital's stark lighting. He also had calming sea-green eyes that bathed her in warmth from just a glance. The shimmering hair was neatly combed back, eyes shining ecstatically. It was Alonzo Nicholsen Black, she somehow knew, the middle name taken after the man's father. The woman was Natalya, and that was all. Just Natalya. No mysterious maiden name from the past, rarely taking the 'Black' surname, and better known as Mom, in all actuality.
Mom. Dad.
The pain hit hard. Had she been standing or remotely even aware of her own bodily functions, Midna was sure her knees would have buckled under the strain of it.
Then the picture in her mind – her memories – changed, and she was shocked from the haze of her pain to clarity of her past.
The hospital room became a meadow with tall, bright blue grass and a deep green sky with two dancing silver suns shining high and near the west, deep black and purple and orange clouds escorting them to their setting. Around the meadow was a forest of crimson pine, and just beyond the forest could be seen the dimly pink-and-gold outline of the tallest snow-capped mountains Midna was sure could ever exist anywhere. The thin white cot became a long brown table surrounded by gray plastic chairs. The couple and their baby – Midna and her parents – morphed into a great big crowd of many people, none of them sitting, all of them standing around the meadow doing something.
Midna recognized herself (somehow) wrestling with a little black boy in the taller parts of the grass. Her parents were clinging together in the shade of a pine tree, snogging, and she mentally grimaced in disgust. Two blondes and a handsome dark-haired man (sounded like the beginning of a really bad joke, thought Midna wryly) were laughing raucously at a tall man in pinstripes, who looked absolutely gobsmacked with globs of whipped cream dripping, frozen in the photo, down his face. Another blonde, obviously much older than the other two, had a hand raised threateningly at the pinstriped man, an irate expression on her face. A few feet away, a dark-skinned man and woman were chatting with another dark-haired man who'd grown himself a few ragged, graying whiskers on his cheeks and who was holding the hand of the woman beside him. A redhead and some other man with the same gleaming dirty-dishwater hair as Dad sat cross-legged in the grass, apparently just looking at each other. A woman with graying hair that might have once been brown and a mischievous glint in her eyes was urging a weird little metal dog toward Midna's parents in an apparent attempt to interrupt and embarrass them. A blur of white, pink, and yellow shot across one part of the photo, a vaguely girly figure flying toward little Midna and the black boy she was playing with.
The table was filled with food of all kinds, from multi-layered cakes to pizza and mashed potatoes to pot roast. It was as if someone had combined a birthday party with a Thanksgiving feast and the festive cheer of Christmas dinner in some bizarre combination that resembled something like a family get-together...on someplace that definitely wasn't Earth. In the picture, most of the food had already been eaten, half-empty plates and filthy plates and completely full plates littering the surface like litter in the streets of the part of London everyone would rather avoid thinking about. And, of course, whatever had had the whipped cream that was smudging down Pinstripe's face.
Sixteen people. Seventeen, including the tin dog.
Family.
Love.
Loss.
Pain.
Tears blotched out the picture now, until Midna could no longer make out anything on it. It took her a moment to recognize that it was her memory crying and not herself. She, after all, could not move even if she had wanted to.
So many whispers, such echoes of time; they raced in her mind, dancing gloriously, hideously, the voices of everyone in that picture, of everyone who had ever mattered. Her memory self turned the picture over and the back read, in the same messy scrawl as the last one: The Family. This time, she saw the handwriting as her own, and every memory she'd ever had of anything started coming back all at once, clearer and sharper than ever.
She wasn't human, not like she had thought, or had wanted to think. Half-human maybe, but that was just making things confusing. Her grandparents on her father's side were both different species of alien, and one grandparent from her mother's side was definitely alien, and the other was...well, human, but not quite, exactly. Almost all of her great-grandparents were completely human, so she didn't have purely undiluted alien blood. That, of course, also depended on one's defintion of "alien", but...
Everything that hurt before hurt worse now. Honestly, it was simpler just to say that she wasn't human and leave it at that, because, quite frankly, Midna Noble Black was something the universe had never seen before.
But what else was new?
As her memories returned, she noticed everything that she should have noticed even before everything had gone wrong, all the things that pointed to her blatant inhumanity, beyond the physical stuff and her blood relatives.
Her first clue should have been the way everyone at school avoided her. Or maybe it was that she never went to visit any doctor but one that was a friend of the family's – an aunt, in fact, though not by blood. Maybe the hints came in how she excelled at every sport, aced every class, and ached for the weekends (which would be extended, sometimes, into months) she would spend traveling with her grandparents, experiencing things she could never tell anything about to another living soul outside of her family. Maybe it was in the fact that she was allergic to aspirin and no one in their right minds would be allergic to aspirin of all things.
Perhaps she should have known she was different from everyone and thing when she realized that the shadows of whispers and feelings in the pit of her stomach were not her own. Maybe she should have known that when her insides did double flops before her first kiss it wasn't because she was just that extra bit more nervous. Perhaps it was whenever somebody seemed to see right through her and it hadn't been only her own indifference she was feeling. Maybe it was even that the jealousy anyone felt over everything she could do that they could not it wasn't just that Midna was pitying herself for the friends she could never have because she was different.
Oh, it was fine when she was younger, because no one cares when the young act odd because the young are odd anyway. But then she went to high school and was thrust into a reality her upbringing couldn't face.
Her first love threw that fact right in her face. After that, she'd sworn she would never love again. She took all the malice of everyone and let it fuel everything she herself had had. Her parents grew afraid as she grew in strength and she started to do things abnormal even for a family such as theirs. She was telekinetic, telepathic, empathic, even psychic, seeing visions of the future mere seconds before they actually happened and so forever experiencing a future no one else could see, constantly living out of sync with the rest of the universe; different, extraodinary, and altogether useless in a world that required neither her nor her abilities. She grew angry and bitter because she couldn't handle it, couldn't understand it; no one could. Her grandfather tried to help her, but even a legendary man such as he couldn't stand up to Midna's growing powers.
Then she met someone she thought could understand, someone who seemed to love her right from the start and whom she had to, despite her sworn oaths not to, love back. She trusted him implicitly, so much so that she never ever questioned him on anything, never thought that what he was saying could have been different in reality, never thought that the things he said - sickening, horrifying things - weren't the truth.
It was only a few months after she met him that cousin Anastasia (or Annie, as everyone had called her) was captured, tortured and dissected by Torchwood, all because of what she was. Two hearts, ages-old father; what sane scientist could pass it up? But then Annie's parents were taken, and then her grandfather, because he was a hero, and then his wife, because she loved him and she was a hero too, and then Mom, because she loved them, and then Dad, because he loved her; and so on, everyone dying around her because she was too young and helpless and stupid to stop it. All of them, everyone that had ever mattered, destroyed, utterly, not just by Torchwood, but by themselves. Someone had interfered (Midna had been too young to realize the importance of finding out who) and soon the family was turning against each other, split apart and dying, seething with rage and betrayal and ripped to pieces by agony, self-loathing and brainwashing. Midna, of course, had plunged right into the middle of it all; she was, in fact, the catalyst.
Everything had always been her fault, right from the very beginning.
That was how the Valeyard and the Master worked. And, despite all her power, all her abilities and strength and wonder and glory, it was her own family that tore her apart in the end, for they were everything. They were all that mattered, and when they were gone, nothing mattered. Only Midna was left, because she was, very suddenly, "important". She was needed and necessary. She was chosen, and she was royally pissed off. She trapped the Valeyard and the Master in the Void, following only after she had reduced the rest of the multiverse to ash and set it to birth itself again.
In their insanity, both the Valeyard and the Master were wise. They were aware of the balance, and through the Valeyard, of course they knew about her, about what she could do. One little tip-off and she was suddenly a ten-ton hammer on a scale that held on the other side of it a tiny pouch of wheat. Chaos was the last thing anyone needed, so Midna fixed everything and got rid of her own self so it wouldn't happen again. But then the Valeyard found a way to escape and took the Master with him. They hid themselves in a remote universe and shoddily repaired the holes they'd left in the defenses around the Void on their way out. Terrified of leaving her confines, Midna did nothing for perhaps far too long, long enough for the evil duo to gain a foothold in the multiverse. Long enough for them to form a plan together, a plan she still figured out.
How the Valeyard thought he could survive it, Midna had had no idea at that time. It was possible he was just playing to his past. Maybe he would even go so far as to succeed, despite everything. It would be so like him, to defy the rules of that thing that made everything tick.
It was this thought that gave Midna the motivation to leave, to rejoin the physical world and do everything she could to, yet again, to restore balance before something set it off again. Next time, if or when it happened, she wouldn't have the powers to fix it. No one would, for that matter. Not even a virtual goddess would be able to pick up after that kind of a mess. Therefore, there was only one option: take away the threat, as if it had never even existed. Save the Valeyard before he was the Valeyard. Give him something that could save him, the only thing – the only one – who could save him.
Paradox upon paradox upon paradox threatened to undermine Midna, of course. But she knew one thing no one else did, something that only she, having been put in the right circumstances at the right times in just the right places, could possibly know: natural paradoxes that were and had always been meant to be would do no harm. After all, the multiverse hung in a precarious balance: love and hatred, pain and pleasure, happiness and sorrow, good and evil, dark and light…terrible, all-destroying paradoxes and natural, healthy ones. There were plenty of things in between all of that, of course (what were the scales made of? what supported them? what measured them? what kept the chains from snapping altogether? how could the good paradoxes counteract the bad paradoxes when the bad ones supposedly could not exist?), but the gist of it was…Midna's paradox was applicable because if it wasn't, everything would be thrown off. That would just be a paradox in and of itself, of course, since there were obviously times that that hadn't been so, and imbalance would affect the time vortex as well as the fabric of space.
Bleh. So convoluted, her life.
And so, perhaps the Valeyard would never exist at all, but for only in memory, like the Year That Never Was or...just like the Foundation. The Foundation which, Midna realized now, far too late, had been replicated by her own agonizing soul into a universe far too like it for her comfort. It was, however, for the same reason that she didn't like its closeness that its closeness would aid her. The Valeyard could ordinarily simply be killed (a last resort, in her opinion), but he was from the Foundation - one of three survivors - and this new universe was like Foundation 2.0, so he would be accepted into the laws of this universe as he would have been back home. Therefore, he would not be exempt from the rules of any multiverse like he had simply traversed the Void and met or killed an alternate past-him or helped out an alternately future him-him, which left her free to interefere as she pleased as well. She hoped, however, that the Valeyard would eventually realize all of this for himself and see that he was fighting a losing battle - a losing battle in which, on some level, she believed, he actually wanted to lose.
Her body throbbed in protest to her avid thinking.
This, of course, still left the problem of the Master, but without the Valeyard at his side...well, he was easy enough to handle. She hoped.
Sometimes she wished she were just a little more human than she was. Maybe then she wouldn't be allergic to aspirin.
Someone-Who-Needed-Her-Or-Something-Like-That was talking now. Who was that, anyway? And why could Midna hear her all of a sudden?
Ah. Of course. Someone who needed her. Or something like that. Someone who needed her in order to save him. Because she didn't understand yet, did she? Well, Midna could hardly be blamed for that; she would have explained it to Rose a hell of a lot better if she had actually known what was going on herself.
Midna felt her muscles twitch, just slightly, and became aware, yet again, of an aching pain all over her body, in places she never knew could ache the way they were. Her lips twisted slowly into a frown.
Midna needed Rose to save the Doctor and, later, his offshoot the Valeyard, so he wouldn't grow up to be worst evil in the universe for some God-be-damned (likely self-pitying) reason. But, Rose needed saving first. Picky, much? What did she need saving for, anyway? What was –? …Oh. Oh. Shit. That complicated things a bit.
Like things had needed anymore complicating?
"On the contrary, my master was once very good friends with your Doctor. It was only when he was driven mad by the vortex that he saw the error of his ways."
She grimaced, forcing energy into her muscles. Of course the bastard would team up with these abominations, why wouldn't he?
"So your master followed a madman? And here I thought we were up against something intelligent."
Midna had to snicker at that. In her head only, unfortunately. She was still fighting through the pain that rippled through her stomach and outward in waves that threatened to knock her back under. What the hell had she eaten last night?
"And who is 'we', Rose Tyler? Who stands with you now?"
Cue me, thought Midna dryly, gritting her teeth and pushing forth with everything she had, concentrating on the feel of Rose's anger and confusion and compassion and, soon enough, worry. Rose's innate stubbornness helped, too, Midna had to admit to herself.
"I do."
She couldn't believe she managed to say anything at all, let alone without sounding like a frog that had swallowed a toad that'd had a horse for its midnight snack. Ooh…midnight, she liked that. Eternal Midnight, that was her. Child of Contradiction; Chaos. Oh, she loved it.
"And I'm not alone. There are many who stand by her."
And that was so true. If only the Doctor would get his slow, lazy ass over here, everything would be just peachy.
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He could feel it, and it didn't make any sense. Still, the telepathic field was undeniable, much as he wanted to pretend it was impossible (which it was), and it was steadily growing besides. Bewildered, he gently lowered Donna's head back to the grating and took a few steps back, staring at her like maggots had already begun to infest her stiff corpse.
Worse, her pallid skin was beginning to glow from within.
"It can't be…" the Doctor murmured, barely even aware of doing so.
Donna burst into flame before his eyes just to prove him wrong, the Doctor was sure of it.
Shielding his eyes and giving up on understanding what was going on, he waited until the fire faded before rushing to Donna's side.Her face remained unchanged apart from a distinct lack of a life-threatening cut on the forehead.
Hardly breathing, the Doctor brought a hand to Donna's wrist, which felt neither warm nor cool to his trembling fingers, and felt for a pulse. Thready, but undoubtedly there, the double beat pulsed rhythmically in defiance of all things natural.
The Doctor sat back on his heels, completely at a loss.
"Hey, Dumbo," Donna greeted weakly. The Doctor jumped. Her eyes fluttered open slowly, taking in his befuddled appearance with apparent amusement.
"Painful, that," she whispered, closing her eyes again briefly. "How d'you stand it?"
The Doctor just stared.
Donna snorted at his lack of response and forced herself up on her elbows. This got him moving, insisting she lay back down, but Donna protested, saying that if she lay at his feet like a useless cadaver for one second longer she was going to slap him to show him just how useful she could be. The Doctor wisely acquiesced and deigned instead to help her stand before he lived to regret it.
"You…you…" he tried to start as she successfully wobbled over to the jumpseat and collapsed in it like she'd just had a long day at work. "You just…you…"
He opened and closed his mouth a few more times until, at Donna's raised eyebrow, he decided to stuff it.
"I regenerated," Donna finished for him, deadpan.
"But…but…but…"
"How?" Donna offered. The Doctor nodded helplessly. Donna smiled, reached over, and patted the console fondly. The rotor was still going. "The TARDIS," she explained, "is an amazing machine, didja know that?"
The Doctor nodded, not knowing what else he could do. Besides, he quite agreed.
"Besides gettin' into everyone's heads translating languages and all that, she takes an imprint of everyone to have ever been given one of her keys. Ingenius, really."
"Imprint?" the Doctor repeated, leaning on the console across from her, feeling a little more coherent now that he accepted the fact that he really didn't know everything.
"That's what I said, now let me finish!" snapped Donna, and the Doctor nearly quailed. "Anyway, the TARDIS takes these…echoes, I guess, a tiny little trace of subconscious minds, and files it away in her heart," she patted the console again, and an image of golden light and a game station drifted on the surface of the Doctor's mind. "Sweet, but useless. Until I came along, of course."
"What?" He was still only capable of stringing up one word at a time.
"The imprints stabilize the changes the TARDIS had to make in me to keep me alive," she said simply, as though it were obvious.
"Changes?"
Donna rolled her eyes.
"Two hearts, unless you didn't notice? Really now, Doctor, keep up. As I was saying…none of this would have happened if, say, Martha had been trapped in here instead of me. But because it was me, it worked."
"And why is that?"
Wow, he managed to get through four words this time, Donna thought to herself with a smug grin. She was so enjoying this.
"Because I'm me." The Doctor started to retort, just as she knew she would, but she cut him off, "I'm built for it. It's like I was meant to be a Time Lady all along."
"Why?" The Doctor asked. He looked pathetically cute when he was this confused, she decided.
Donna paused dramatically, letting the silence hang. When the Doctor gave her a frustrated glare, she smirked.
"Bad Wolf."
The Doctor's face fell slack.
Donna hurried to explain before he assumed too many things. It was important that he understood properly.
"Mostly, anyway. Bad Wolf was just an entity that lived inside the time vortex for a while. When Rose opened the TARDIS and looked into its heart – the TARDIS told me all about that, by the way – Bad Wolf became her, leaving the vortex empty. But for the second that Rose was part of all four – herself, Bad Wolf, the TARDIS, and the time vortex – her presence changed everything, decoding and re-coding the structure that made all of them, making them something different under the same name. She's human, but with a few perks. Bad Wolf is her (great girlfriend, by the way, don't envy you that).
"The time vortex is more in flux than ever, so it's easier to change and rewrite timelines than before. The TARDIS…well, the TARDIS was left empty. Rose was there, fully, not just traces of her subconscious, but her, and the TARDIS basically couldn't stand it when she...retreated." Here, Donna's voice lowered softly, her smugness fading. Rose's entrapment in the alternate universe, she knew, was no laughing matter. "Part of the TARDIS's heart escaped right after you saved Rose and went looking for her, but since she was with you and the TARDIS herself she was impossible to find; the different combinations of temporal energy completely got it confused. When Rose...I mean, when she...got stuck in the other universe, that tiny little part gave in and gave up and looked for a replacement. Hence, me. I'm special." The smugness returned by the end of Donna's explanation.
The Doctor blinked. Donna realized with a start that that'd been the longest she had ever talked without exploding into fits of fury. She laughed inwardly at the mental image.
But comprehension was starting to dawn in those dark eyes, a light lit that hadn't been before.
"The Huon particles," he murmured, almost to himself. He straightened, his eyes wild, looking at Donna like she wasn't really there. "You came to the TARDIS. And then you found me again. Your grandad, your car," he pointed at her, gesturing with his hands. "Donna, your car – you parked your car right where the TARDIS was goin' to land! That's not a coincidence…"
He turned away with a sound that was halfway between a groan of frustration and a shout of revelation, running hs fingers through his already messy hair to make it worse. He put his fingers over his temples and face.
"I must be blind…something has been drawing us together for such a long time –"
Donna frowned, trying not to feel scared. "But…but that's…This is just the TARDIS…just the TARDIS being lonely, yeah? I thought…but you're talking…like destiny. There's no such thing! Is there?"
The Doctor didn't answer, taking his hands off his own face to run through his hair again, eyes wide. "But it's still not finished," he said, looking confused again. "The pattern's not complete. The strands are still drawing together, 'cos something's got lost. But heading for what?"
She could see what he meant, now, could see the strands he spoke of, the not-quite tangible golden strings that hovered just out of reach, connecting slowly together by some invisible force. "Doctor?"
He looked at her, suddenly, really looking at her. He took one of her hands in his.
"Donna, you've got two hearts," he said, like she didn't already know.
"I noticed that, thanks," she said, trying not to notice the trembling in her voice.
"You know what that means?"
Donna nodded and looked up and into his eyes bravely, like this was just another perk of their travels.
Who was she kidding?
"I'm a Time Lady."
"Yeah," he nodded. "And…you were always gonna be one."
"Really? Like…destiny?"
He hesitated, and she thought she understood why. What was destiny when she could feel them? - The timelines around them, infinite and yet somehow limited, all of them ending eventually and yet each of them stretching on for eternity. Shadows of images she couldn't quite see shifted in the back of her eyes, and she knew instinctively that if she closed them she'd see the shadows more clearly but would likely still make little sense of them. Time was in flux, she remembered saying in her short spiel to the Doctor minutes earlier. Even more after Rose looked into it. None of the timelines were certain, she knew. It could change in much less than a second, become solid only in the present, faded in the past. The future wasn't set in stone, and the past technically wasn't, either, depending on the timeline you were going by.
No fate. No destiny. No nonsense.
But nothing made sense unless it was explained by that. It was like ancient mythology, she supposed, how the Greeks and the Romans had their gods to blame everything on when their limited science failed them.
Was this any different? What was really out there, if anything? What made any of this possible (or impossible, depending on your point view)? What made everything work
"Solid timeline," he corrected, as she knew he would. Her brain seemed to work a lot faster now than it had before, on different levels and deeper depths than she had ever thought her puny little mind could. Interesting. Was she going to turn into a braniac geek like him, now? She shuddered, sincerely hoping not.
Carefully, as though afraid she might break if he moved too quickly, he pulled her into his arms, and Donna sank into his comforting embrace gratefully, allowing a few tears to come at last. Those few, of course, gave way to many, until they were both sitting on the jumpseat and she was sobbing into his pinstriped shoulder, probably ruining the suit in the process.
She wasn't just any Time Lady, she knew. She was part-human, too. And that made everything so much worse, because humans went into the extremes of things and Time Lords didn't. She was being torn in two, almost literally, by two completely opposite forces of nature found deep in her very blood. She didn't know if she could survive that.
XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX
Donna must have fallen asleep at some point, because she woke groggily an indeterminable amount of time later to the Doctor prodding at her gently, telling her that the TARDIS had landed. She grimaced, thinking what a mess she had to look, then sat up and rubbed at a crick in her neck she'd gotten from sleeping on his bony shoulder. Honestly, hug the man and you really do get a papercut.
Then her head turned fast enough she had rub her neck again from whiplash. The TARDIS doors burst open, and she and the Doctor leapt to their feet. His face was pale, staring at the figure in the doorway like he was seeing a ghost. Donna was about to say something, but the mysterious man in the door beat her to it.
"Hello, Doctor."
The Doctor smiled a grim smile and stepped forward, his eyes flashing protectively as Donna made a small movement behind him.
"Long time no see."
"Not long enough," said the Doctor quietly.
No. Never long enough.
Wow...that one kinda got away from me. Started with two hours earlier and somehow ended before it was supposed to. I haven't even gotten back to the present yet. Ah well.
Enjoy? Sort of an interlude thing with a teensy cliffie at the end that explains pretty much everything this story's been leading up to, if you know where to look for it.
My head hurts...