GOD, I am just SLACKING.
I'll try to get back to a normal posting rhythm at some point - as for now, work with me.
I like this chapter. I made me like Donna more, which I didn't know was possible.
Also, to Lissical, thanks for being massively awesome and getting me a link to Night Terrors. You also scared me slightly, because I searched Megavideo and couldn't find it there.
I also know that a bunch of you also sent me some links and suggestions, so thank you. Lissical just got there first.
While Rose was wandering the TARDIS, not long before the Doctor showed up, Donna's stomach was clenching, head whirling with emotions as she stared blankly at the door to her and Martha's room. Suicide. The thought of anyone – especially Rose – going to this level baffled her. She and Martha were sitting cross-legged on her bed, facing each other. Martha had just told her the story of what had happened while she was gone, in much more detail than what she'd received in the console room. She just couldn't take it all in.
"But what about you?" Martha asked after a pause.
She looked back to the younger girl, and it took her awhile to return to the present. "Sorry, just thinking," she murmured. "What?"
She didn't seem to mind. "When you were gone. You told us all about it, but... was there more?"
"Well, not really, no, but..." she shook her head, scoffing softly. "I was hoping the Doctor would've been interested, but..."
"What?" If he wouldn't give her audience, it was apparent that Martha would – she was leaning forward, looking interested.
Donna swallowed, considering her reply carefully. "When I was in that cave that I talked about, and I saw that light – the yellow one, remember? It bounced off the walls and made them glow orange – Well... It was weird, but it was like that light made me... I dunno, smarter."
"How do you mean?" Martha asked.
"It was like... I saw it, and I knew what was going on. I knew that the Time Vortex was here, and I knew exactly where the TARDIS was, and I could pinpoint exactly where each of you were standing, and..." She stopped, and her face blanched, and she became very quiet.
Martha frowned and said, "What is it?" Donna's face was so pale now, that it created an eerie and ghost-like contrast against her fiery red hair – she'd didn't like it, and wanted the color to return to her normally lively face. Looking at how off she was made the sick girl's headache flare wildly.
She saw Donna's jaw clench. "I remember... That I knew something was wrong. I knew where Rose was, and instinctively I searched further for her than the rest of you because I could tell something wasn't right." Her face went a shade lighter. "And I found her. And she was... I can't even describe it. It was so dark, and deathly quiet, and there was just... nothing, Martha. Bloody nothing. Just the black, and the silence, like a veil over everything, and it stole the life and breath out of the very air. It was like it knew I was watching. It felt me, Martha, and it grabbed me, and for a moment-"
She stopped dead. It looked to Martha like she was a video that someone had paused.
"For a moment, Martha, I was there with Rose."
"How so?" Martha heard the tremor in her own voice.
Donna raised her head, and it seemed to Martha like it took a long time for her eyes to lock on her. "It was... Like I was Rose, for a brief second. I could feel her fear, and her realization that she wasn't dead, and how... how scared she was, Martha. And... and I felt the Void take her, and I felt her fade away, like she was just a dream. I felt her... leave. And Rose was still there, but it wasn't Rose anymore. It was like the Void had taken everything that ever made her... her, and turned it into Void. And then..."
"Then?" Martha's voice was a hoarse whisper.
"Then I was back in the cave. I was me again. The whole thing was over. In fact, I would've forgotten about it if it wasn't for the fact that I had to get back to you. I did forget everything about Rose – I was just so focused on getting back to all of you."
Martha looked down, unable to find the right words. Finally she said, "That's horrid Donna, I'm so sorry."
"No, it's not..." the fiery-haired girl looked down, shaking her head. "It wasn't... I know how bloody wretched that must've been for Rose, and I felt all of that, which was horrid, but... I feel like that needed to happen. I feel like... I had to have felt that. I don't know why, but it just seems like it had to happen."
Martha didn't reply immediately. She knew that she would never be able to understand what was going through Donna's head. She had seen and done things that didn't involve Martha, and never would. "I hope you're okay," she said finally, sounding very quiet to her own ears.
Donna didn't address this. Instead, she said, "There's another thing."
"What?"
Her eyes were directed at the bedsheets below them, and her jaw clenched on occasion with stress. "During that time, when I looked at the light and saw all of that... Oh Martha, it's silly."
"I'm sure it's not," she replied, thinking that nothing Donna said could sound silly after all that she'd just heard.
"When I looked at that light, when I learned all of that, and understood so quickly, it was like I was Doctor Donna again. Like I could figure out anything, and understand whatever I wanted to, and do... anything."
"Was that what it was like before?"
Her eyebrows narrowed. She took a sudden interest in the frayed edge of the bedsheets. "After the Doctor wiped my mind, it was like my life – the stupid one, where I didn't remember anything – was a dream. And the real one, where I did remember the Doctor..." She looked up. "You were told about when the Master came back, and the Doctor had to regenerate, right?"
Martha nodded.
"Well, I was there, for a bit of it," she looked down again. "And when everyone turned into an image of the Master and I didn't... I started remembering. And my real life came back, for about a minute, and it was like I was watching my fake life, and seeing all of that, and thinking, 'How is it that I forgot all of this? How could I have forgotten everything...'
"And during that minute, I wasn't Doctor Donna-" She laughed weakly "-not at all, but I still understood... how I'd forgotten, and what had happened... and then, there was this orange flash and... Back to the dream."
She closed her eyes, very slowly, as though there was something pricking at the edge of her vision. "When I was Doctor Donna, it was just... It's hard to even describe, Martha. It was like I could do anything, like I was anything... like I could take any problem, or any trouble that anyone had, and fix it. I knew the answer to every question, the solution to every equation. Everything in the universe just... made sense. And it was scary, too, Martha. I knew everything, and I was afraid of myself. I was afraid I knew too much. I knew I knew too much. No one should know all of that."
"And now?" the other girl asked, her voice a quiet whisper.
"I've forgotten most of what I'd learned now," Donna replied, shaking her head, her expression far away. "I don't regret not remembering. I shouldn't."
"But then earlier... You felt like Doctor Donna again," Martha said.
"Yeah, I did. And, looking back on it, I don't think I like it," she looked up at Martha, and she saw some of the color return to the other girl's face as she smiled weakly. "I'd rather just be Donna. No normal person should know as much as I did before. Being plain old me is better."
Martha returned the smile, secretly relieved that her friend no longer seemed so troubled. "You're alright Donna. No need to feel bad about it."
"I don't," the other replied, but Martha thought she caught a glimmer of something dark in her eyes.
"Maybe you should talk to Rose," Martha suggested, hopeful to change the subject. "Since, you know..."
"Yeah, I've thought about it," Donna no longer sounded so distant or... not herself. "But she seems so, I dunno, past it, that I'm like, 'Why remind her?' She seems to have recovered."
"I'm not so sure," she replied. "I'd bet she's burying it."
Donna smiled, somewhat to herself. "I'd bet that the Doctor will keep her covered. I know they've been distant with each other, but... somehow, I don't know... Somehow, I think he's gonna make her happy again."
Little did the two of them know, at that exact moment the Doctor had leaned in to kiss Rose.
Martha smiled, looking away as she nodded. "Suppose we should go to bed."
"Yeah," Donna agreed. Martha stood, going to her bed, and the next few minutes were spent in getting ready to sleep. Finally, the two of them were lying in their beds, and Donna flicked out the light, saying, "Goodnight."
"Goodnight," Martha replied.
Both thought that the other sounded distracted and faraway.
Yay! I have nothing good to say here.