There was a knock on the door and Donna groaned, opening her eyes to bright light. She sat up scratching her head and then looked at herself. She was still fully clothed in a chestnut leather coat and jeans. Her shoes seemed the only thing that had been removed from her body before she'd gone to bed the night before and she wondered if she'd gotten drunk.
It was in that moment that she realized that beside her in the bed laid her little daughter. The child laid peacefully asleep, her chest rising and falling evenly. Donna looked up to see two women standing in the doorway to the room. Cloudily, her memory recalled them to be the Doctor's wife and daughter, Verianna and Lyibrine. She noted that while Lyibrine still wore the dazzling friendly smile, Verianna's was somewhat forced.
Donna shed her coat as she stood from the bed and kissed Catherine on the temple. Then she slipped into the kitchen, past the two women. She pulled open a few cupboards and then emerged triumphant from the third with a tin of tea bags. Pulling the kettle from the counter and placing it on the stove, she began to boil the water inside. Brushing her terribly mess ginger hair out of her face, she turned to the two women.
"I'm being rude," She stated bluntly, "Have a seat, please." Donna gestured at the chairs surrounding the small table, "Would either of you like tea?" She looked up from the counter at them.
"Yes, I would thank you," Lyibrine replied and joined her at the counter, "Mother, will take some too but she won't admit she likes it."
Donna smiled at the Doctor's second oldest daughter and searched through the cabinets for something to use to make breakfast. A movement out of the corner of her eye, made her look back up from her work. Lyibrine was pulling what appeared to be an entire loaf of French bread out of a bag tied around her waist. A satchel of what appeared to be an apple hybrid followed it and then a stick of butter.
"Don't tell me," Donna laughed, "Transcendental money pouch?"
"Correct," Lyibrine set about tying her hair up out of her face, "You're doing well in our world Donna Noble."
Donna stared at her for a moment. She was about to speak when the kettle whistled and she shut her mouth again in a rather somber expression. The ginger earth woman turned away, taking the kettle from the stove and pouring some of the boiling water into three separate mugs, which she carried over to the table and set down. She returned to the counter to collect the tea bags and then seated herself in one of the chairs.
Donna dipped the tea bag in her tea, waiting for the water to break apart and absorb the molecules. She didn't look up from her task but was acutely aware of the eyes that were watching her.
"So Donna," Lyibrine flopped rather ungracefully into the chair next to her, "Tell us, who are you?"
Donna raised her gray and gold eyes from the cup of tea she'd been stirring. She looked between the two Time Ladies. Each gazed back at her intently, as though they expected her to know what they were asking.
"Excuse me?" She felt her voice rise slightly in tone.
"She means to ask you what you are," Verianna answered quietly, though her voice regardless of the volume, was strong, "My husband has told us of your adventures together," Donna sensed a hard edge to the woman's tone that made her heart sink slightly, "And we know a bit of their outcome ourselves, having been saved by you several years ago, but it seems to me that from our seal in time to the time we emerged, you underwent a great change."
"Again I must ask, who are you?" Lyibrine's voice was hushed as she spoke.
Donna folded her hands around the warm cup on the table in front of her and took a sip.
"I can honestly say I don't know," she replied, "I've been told that time folds itself to me. Again and again people say it and then wonderingly stare at me as though I am a god of some sort."
"You became a Time Lady by your own means," Verianna pressed, "You have no notion of how that occurred.
"According to the Doctor, and the little bits I determined on my own," Donna took another drink of her tea, "I absorbed some of his regenerative energy, when I was dying aboard the TARDIS in the heart of the Crucible. Instead of killing me, like it should have, it was used to heal me and also to generate a human version of the Doctor. At the time I didn't notice I was anything more than a temp from Chiswick and couldn't do more than use my limited knowledge of the TARDIS to fly us out of the center of the ship and back to the control room. The human Doctor, John, helped me obviously. When we got back on the ship I was hit by a stunner which activated the Time Lord part of my brain that had been growing in my head since the meta-crisis. Then I was able to help the Doctors reverse the reality bomb and eliminate the Daleks." She paused and cast a glance over the two women listening to her, "My mind was burning, my human mind anyway. Had I not been hit by that spark nothing would have happened to me immediately. I would have changed and developed into a Time Lady but Davros' stun lightning connected the synapses between my human brain and my Time Lord brain, fusing them together before my body could adapt to function with the information a Time Lord carries. The Doctor did the only thing he could do and saved me by blocking my memories from me. That gave me time to adapt. My genetics changed over time and evolved to turn me into what I am now."
"And you fully understand all of this. It's not just speculation from a human sense," Verianna stated regally.
"I fully understand that I am a Time Lady, yes," Donna replied a hint of irritation in the rise of the sound of her voice.
"So long as you understand the ramifications of what it means," The Doctor's wife looked at her sternly, "Have you begun to listen and to hear?"
Donna stared at her thoroughly for a moment and then answered slowly, "I have heard the Heart of Gallifrey inside my mind. I can feel the pulse of Omega's non-star in my body and the coursing of the song of the Eye of Harmony through my veins. I hear it all."
Lyibrine shared a glance with her mother as Donna watched and then looked back at her.
"We do not mean to anger you, Donna, but there are things that we must ask, things we must know and you can tell them to us," Lyibrine stretched a hand up the table and placed it on her shoulder, "This has never happened before and you are so very different from us. We are curious."
"What about all the other bloody humans wandering about your planet?" The red-head replied snappishly, addressing not the Doctor's daughter but his wife, "Why not examine their minds if you have a need to entertain yourself?"
"They are not what you are, Lady Noble. Their minds are dull and gray. At best some reach a pale mauve. And even only the brightest reach that." Lyibrine's voice had just the slightest hint of desperation in it.
Donna sat back her mouth closed. She was still angry but the way the black-haired woman sounded was so similar to the way the Doctor sounded when he was fighting get people to understand. She took a few deep breaths finding that now her mind had fallen into the rhythm of the universe, it was easier to calm her thoughts.
"My father said you'd respond like this," Lyibrine sighed, "Donna, you are no longer a human. You must stop thinking of yourself as something that is easily compared to their lesser race. It is no longer who you are."
Donna glanced sideways at Verianna. The slight creek of the chair the Doctor's wife was sitting in had alerted her to the Time Lady's change in position. She noted a faint crease in the woman's brow that revealed the woman's troubled countenance. The ginger woman turned back to the Doctor's daughter and nodded.
"Fine. I'll accept what the Doctor said." She conceded and then took another sip of tea.
A smile crept onto Lyibrine's face, "Perceptive. You know him too well."
Donna couldn't help but notice from the corner of her eye that the crease between her thin alien double's eyes lengthened some.
"I wouldn't say too well." She replied, hoping her statement would settle some of Verianna's concerns, "We're friends, like siblings, so we know what we have to so that we can look out for each other."
The crease nearly disappeared as the eyebrows of the Doctor's Wife climbed toward her hairline. Donna tried not to pay attention to the stinging in her chest she felt when she'd said like siblings. For a moment she recalled the man from Pompeii and his statement that they looked very much alike. She would have laughed if the Doctor had been present but he wasn't, and so she held back the response she would have given in to. But she and the Doctor were not like siblings; they were partners, though in what way she did not know.
Decidedly becoming more human to distract her mind, she looked at Verianna with a smile.
"So come on. You have to have some stories to tell." The ginger temp pushed, "How did you meet the Doctor?"
Verianna's eyes fixed on her surprised. It was almost as though she had uttered a phrase as scandalous as that line from that American pop song. The woman seemed beyond herself with the suggestion of telling her story. Donna smiled at her and quite suddenly the woman stood.
"You'll have to excuse me, Lady Noble," she stated and then left the room.
Donna glanced after the Doctor's wife and then at Lyibrine. The black-haired woman gave her a wide-eyed stare and then stood.
"There goes the party," She commented brushing out the folds of her skirt, "Anyway, Donna, I left some clothes on your dresser and made some fancy use of the Squareness Gun in this thing," She pulled out something similar to the Sonic Screwdriver the Doctor carried with him. She spun it through her fingers once and then repocketed it, "There's a door in your room that leads into the back of dad's closet. That way if you two want to talk you don't have to knock on the front door. I don't imagine Meridine has told the maid you are a welcome guest. Please though, come and visit. I'd love to hear all about your travels."
"Of course I'll visit," Donna smiled kindly and started clearing the dishes from the table, "You couldn't keep me away. Plus I want to see what kind of house a Time Lord keeps. Your father has a terrible sense of interior design."
"Absolutely atrocious!" Lyibrine replied with a laugh, "And Donna, don't worry about Mum. Once I explain to her what Catherine is, I'm sure she'll become more manageable. Meridine and Tybus have managed to snake their way into her head again. It won't take more than a couple of days to sort it out," she grinned, "And you have to bring Catherine with you when you visit." Lyibrine paused and added, "And Luke. Jenny was sulking this morning." The Doctor's daughter stepped forward and embraced her before quickly leaving the room.
Donna sat back down in the chair at the table. Her cheek rested in the cradle of her hand as she thought. She sat there a long while, just mulling over all that had happened. Mind wondering over the impossibilities of her current location, she began to draw conclusions. All the while though, she could feel something weighing on her, heavily. The suspicion that something or someone was watching her had returned but the feeling did not feel quite like that. Unlike the hair raising feeling she had felt before, there was only a mental sense of the observation. Quite suddenly, the ginger time lady sat up straight. She was being watched, watched in her mind! Someone was going through her thought and her memories searching for something. Very subtly, they picked apart her consciousness like and archaeologist with the pages of a very old book.
Donna stood and pushed the chair roughly away from the table. It clattered but she ignored the noise. Her hurried footsteps brought her to her room where there was indeed the aforementioned door. Her hand close around the knob and she turned it. A pang of guilt flooded through her, but she pushed it aside. This was more important. She yanked the door open and was surprised to see a room on the other side filled with clothes that appeared to be from every planet, moon, galaxy, asteroid, comet, and otherwise in every color this universe and the next. Just as she wondered how she would possibly find the Doctor before whatever it was going through her mind, found the answer to its question, the was a loud crash and a large amount of swearing in at least seven different languages, none of which were even remotely human.
The ginger temp followed her ears to where a suit of seeming Roman armor lay on the ground and the Doctor stood, hopping on one foot. In the moment it for him to notice her, she had reached out to get his attention and her hand stopped somewhere in the middle. The Doctor looked at her with a blank but vaguely surprised expression that reminded her somewhat of a deer in the headlights look. Gingerly, the Doctor lowered his foot back to the ground and stood up straight. Donna took a moment to note that he wore only one sock. She would have laughed had the moment not been critical.
With a hand raised nervously to the scratch the back of his neck, the Doctor spoke, "Donna? How did you get in here?"
"Back door but that's not important," she answered, "I need you to block my mind."
"You should be able to do it yourself," he replied, and then the tone of her words sunk in and his eyebrows furrowed, "Why?" He extended his hands forward to touch to her temples and forehead.
"They're looking for your name." Donna replied, flinching slightly from his touch as his fingers touched her skin. Her memories from the last time this happened were bright in her mind "Someone is searching through my mind looking for your name."
"Why would they look-?" his voice trailed off and she saw realization and alarm in his chocolate brown eyes.
Donna pulled back for a moment as she felt him reach into her head.
"Donna relax, you have to breath for me to do this," The Doctor instructed and then it seemed that he too remembered their last encounter like this, "You can trust me this time Donna. I won't touch anything but what I'm there for…"
Donna closed her eyes and tried her best to keep her breathing even and her body calm. Her mind fought him, she could fell it and eventually she managed to wrestle its fight away, holding absolutely still both mentally and physically. She concentrated on breath, one breath in one breath out until she had calmed herself so much she was close to sleep. The ginger woman's eyes drifted shut and she blinked them a few times. The Doctor's fingertips drew away from her temples and cheekbones and grasped her shoulders instead. Her eyes shot open at this.
"Sorry, I was thinking you were human. I know its sometimes draining to have your mind tampered with," He rubbed the back of his neck.
"Did you do it?" Donna asked just to give him the satisfaction of telling her he had. She didn't feel like flaunting her Time Lord brain in front of him at the moment.
The Doctor nodded, his expression troubled. He stepped back and sank onto a bench she'd not noticed. Or perhaps it hadn't even been there until he'd needed it. Donna slowly walked over to him and, when he offered no objection, settled on the cushion as well. She folded on hand across her lap and placed the other on the back of his shoulder, lending him friendly support. She felt and shared his concern, though she could no longer feel the being digging through her mind. It must have by now realized that her mind was protected and decided to give up.
He looked up at her and opened his mouth as if to speak and then closed it again. Donna rubbed her thumb in absent circles as they sat pondering their discovery in silence, both staring at each other but not seeing their companion. Finally it was the Doctor who spoke, though it had been anybody's guess as to who it would have been. Both seemed to enjoy the sound of their respective voices so much.
"Why now?" he asked rhetorically, as he stood and began to pace, "And why my name?"
The ginger temp's gaze snapped on the circling Time Lord incredulously. She scoffed and he looked over at her.
"What?" he snapped.
"You really can't think of a reason?" she added brushing a tangle of red hair haughtily over her shoulder, "You're the Doctor. Everyone in the universe knows that the Doctor's name is a secret. Not to mention, I believe you had neglected telling me that you were a Prince, with noble family and heir status. Why would anyone want someone like that?" the last sentence was sarcastic, "And, on top of all that, you, unlike the rest of the self-possessed peacocks here, actually have connections in the universe. If they know your name, they can use it against you, name you, and then the last true Time Lord is gone."
The Doctor stopped pacing for a moment and stared at her his dark umber eyes meeting her blue grey ones for a brief moment and then he resumed pacing, "I'm a far cry from a true Time Lord, Donna." He replied, fingers rubbing his chin, "In fact I'm about as close as you come to being thrown from the chapters as one could get."
"Well, you were the first Time Lord I ever met. To me, a Time Lord is meant to regulate and act on time. Use it to be advantageous to the rest of the universe, "But that's not important. Right now we should be figuring out what just happened."
The time travelers lapsed back into silence again sinking deep within themselves looking for their answers.
a/n- Hello everyone, I'm, for the time being, back. I got a bit sidetracked; I'm already behind on schoolwork for the year.
Regardless, I hope you enjoy this chapter. I'm aware its not as up to snuff as my others but I felt I needed and update to keep the fan base (however small) for this story. I hope you're all well. (for the moment I'm not; Sinus infections/ear infections suck.) To those of you whom have it in your hearts to do me a great service, Review.
An-mhaith
Tabitha