A/N: sorry about the update delay - this latest lockdown is doing me no favours. This contains a reference to Torchwood episode "The 456", and the play/films "Blithe Spirit".

Chapter 9

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John bit his lip thoughtfully the following morning when he approached Donna sitting on her bed, brushing her hair.

"You look as though you're up to something," she noted. "Out with it. What's on your mind?"

Sitting down beside her, he tried to pick his words carefully. "Now that I know about my travelling abilities, I was thinking of trying to find a friend somewhere further away."

"How far? It's got to be bad, judging by your face."

"It could be bad for me, since it would mean leaving the country. Well, sort of," he blustered. "I'm not exactly sure if it will completely tire me out."

Her hand stopped mid-action as a horrifying thought struck her. "Would it take you too far? As in, you never making it back to me?"

"I don't know," he admitted. When she gasped, he reached out to hold both of her hands. "Whatever happens, I will do everything in my power, no matter how long it takes, to return to you."

Her voiced waivered as she asked, "Where are you going?"

"Wales."

"Wales? Oh for goodness sake, you idiot! You made it sound as though you were going to Katmandu or the back of beyond, not less than three hours down the motorway," she raged. "Do you have to make everything so dramatic?"

Now affronted, he huffed, "I am going under my own steam, I'll have you know. It might take me weeks to get over the strain. If I ever do at all."

Making cooing noises to calm him down, she placed her arms around his shoulders and tenderly kissed his cheek. "Sorry, I hope you find your friend and get the answers you want."

"I'm sorry too," he replied, accepting the embrace with enthusiasm. "What are you going to do later without me?"

"I had a text from Veena, reminding me we're celebrating Alice's birthday tonight."

"A girls' night out?" he queried, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "Glad I'm missing that."

"You are such a bloke," she fondly disparaged. "If you get home before I do, come and find me."

Standing on the platform at Paddington Station felt rather surreal. He'd tested out his teleporting skills getting around the Underground and he was about to try his next challenge: using a British Rail timetable. Should he travel the whole way on the same train, or should he jump forward to the previous trains? Worth a try, he decided.

He was still feeling optimistic a few hours later after searching every known place he could think of. But the result was the same: no Captain Jack Harkness. Nothing but devastation where the Hub had once been. Where was Jack?

Then the faint memory of seeing him from a distance in the bar on a space freighter crossed his mind. Jack was no longer on Earth which meant only one thing. No one could help him out of his post-life mess. He would have to find the solution on his own.

Which he would do, later. But for now, he was tired. So tired. It wouldn't hurt to rest in the debris for a while. So he sat, amongst the bricks and mortar in the bomb crater and allowed himself a good, long sulk.

Except something was happening. He was being pulled, against his will, to another dimension. It grabbed him quite viciously and dragged him almost kicking and screaming away from Cardiff. Flinging out his hands, he scrambled to grab hold of anything possible as it flew by, but it didn't work.

"Donna!" he screeched. "No! Please, no! I've got to get back to Donna!"

And then everything went black.

It felt strange to be out during the evening, walking with friends rather than chatting with John. Don't be so daft, she told herself when pangs of missing him started to overwhelm her.

Things after that weren't too bad. All the old gang were there, smiling at her as though she was fragile and would break at any moment. In some ways she'd got used to this new attitude since her accident. It was extremely similar to the way her mum and Gramps had acted; right up until recently, when she'd told them about John.

Okay, it was beginning to get on her nerves, but she was determined to cope. Smiling over the rim of her glass, she asked the others, "What's the plan once we finish this drink? Where are we eating?"

"Oh, you'll like this," Alice assured her. "We're staying here in the Red Lion to eat because I've booked us to get a reading."

Donna looked blankly at the others. Since when had they been massive fans of book readings? "Really? What book and who wrote it?"

"Not that type of reading, silly," Veena chided. She then leaned closer to confide, "Alice wanted us all to see a psychic."

She would have question this further, but Alice was nodding enthusiastically at her, so Donna changed her question. "Anyone I might have heard of?"

"Wendy Golightly. Caitlin in my office recommended her," Alice supplied. "Should be good."

"Yeah," Donna tried to agree. Did she want to know her future? Or was it bad enough just living it? "Can't wait."

Keeping a broad grin on your face can take it out of you, but Donna managed it, right up until they were all seated in front of Wendy Golightly. All her friends they were sitting there to have a piece of fun, that the woman was a charlatan, and that they would be told anything to please them. Donna, however, had a bad feeling about it.

Now some might say she was merely a suspicious woman, but it was all too much of a coincidence for her liking. When you think about it, having a dead friend turn up to haunt you and then only days afterwards you are being sat down in front of a psychic, are not your normal, everyday happenings. Not by a long chalk.

If she didn't know any better, she would have said it had been especially arranged by someone. Who that 'someone' could be was anybody's guess. But it was fishy, that much was true.

The woman, Wendy Golightly, was fairly ordinary looking. Not flamboyant or bohemian in the slightest, there was no chance you'd mistake her for Madame Arcati. More like Mavis who works down the library…

From behind her owlish glasses, Wendy studied them in turn as she tried to provide a poignant message. But when she got to Donna, she stopped and became rather flustered. "There's an aura, an energy around you," she cautiously began. "It's hard to see properly as it keeps moving about," Wendy continued, "as though it's-"

At this point, a blur swept across the room towards Wendy, to solidify into the form of John once it reached her. He staggered for a second, trying to get his bearings, and then he grinned broadly once he spotted her. "Hello Donna! Fancy seeing you here. No Shaun with you? Shame. I was hoping they'd try to fix that. Where's 'here', by the way?"

Donna opened her mouth to answer, but the words wouldn't come. In front of them, Wendy was juddering in her seat as though in the grip of a seizure. "Call for an ambulance," Donna ordered. "Make sure you tell them we're in a room above the Red Lion."

"Ah, thanks," John acknowledged the information, but Veena was looking at her as though she'd gone mad.

"Why are you acting like Lord Muck and saying it like that?" Veena insisted on knowing. Then her mindset grew more suspicious. "Do you think we're being bugged? Is there a hidden microphone in here? Are we going to end up on telly? "

"No, you're alright. This isn't a set up," Donna assured her as her first aid training from scuba diving kicked in, and she leapt forward to help lie Wendy safely down on the floor. "I was just… Never mind." She shook her head, trying partly to rid herself of the rising pain there, but her astonishment grew when Wendy suddenly stood up as John blurred out of existence again.

"Wendy? Are you okay?" Alice wondered from next to her.

A distinctly un-Wendy type voice came out of her. "I know you. You're Alice," a deep tone greeted her. "That's weird. Different voice. Well, what would you expect? A whole new experience."

"Who are you?" Alice asked in shock.

Wendy turned their head and beamed triumphantly at Donna. "I'm John. How did she do that?" Then Wendy bent forward, clutching at their head. "Ow. That hurts. I need to get out of here. See you later." And then Wendy dropped like a stone onto the seat below them.

"I'll get her some water," Donna announced, and raced out of the room, trying to think through the situation as she made for the kitchen below. "John," she whispered a couple of times as she climbed back up the stairs, but there was no sign of him.

When she re-entered the private room, Wendy was rather pale but also quietly jubilant. After giving her thanks on receiving the glass of water, she told Donna, "I was possessed by a spirit. First time that has ever happened for a client. He must have a very special connection to you."

"I'm beginning to think that myself," Donna muttered to herself. "Who me?" she said more loudly. "Nah. I'm nothing special. It was just a fluke."

Yet she spent the rest of the evening waving off questions from her friends about the mysterious visitation.

As she had expected, John was laying prone on her bed when she got home. He looked utterly exhausted, but she had to know. "What was all that about earlier?"

He managed to lift his head to say, "No idea. One moment I was sitting on the remains of a brick wall, and the next I was standing in front of you all, with the equivalent of a human vacuum."

"So it wasn't your doing?"

"No. I assure you it wasn't me."

"Hmm." She regarded him and wondered, "Perhaps we ought to visit Wendy Golightly again and get her to help you."

He rolled over and whined, "Do I have to?"

"If it helps, yeah."

"Do you know what would help me right now?" he pondered. "A cuddle. A Donna Noble special."

How could she refuse such a request? "Shift over," she instructed, and placed herself on the bed next to him; allowing him the chance to cuddle her close. "Did you get to see your friend in Wales alright?"

"No," he weakly admitted. "He wasn't there. There'd been a terrorist bomb attack that had demolished the building, so I don't know where he is."

"Sorry about your friend. I don't remember there being an attack in Wales," she remarked.

"Well. It's fairly typical, Donna," he noted, "you do have this tendency of missing stuff like that."

"I do," she agreed. "It's as if I'm not allowed to. Anyway, did you find out anything? Have you any idea why you haven't…" She tip-toed her fingers along the top of the bed covers. "…gone to the light yet?"

His eyes followed the course of her fingertips. "Yes, yes I have," he replied, visibly biting down on the urge to kiss them. "I was meant to be with you."

"I guessed that bit, Sherlock," she grouched. "Surely you've gained some knowledge while doing your Quantum Leap thing, jumping about to visit your friends."

A sheepishly expression crossed his face. "It's like this," he cautiously began. "I actually know who I was, what I did in life, and what links us. You and me."

"And?" she encouraged, waiting for the proverbial axe to drop.

After a few moments, he blurted out, "We were married." When her eyebrows shot into her hairline, he tacked on, "Well, sort of. As good as. Definitely. Bonded to one another. We were destined to be together. They all said so."

"You're telling me we were married," she sought to clarify, mouth still agape. "To each other. Married, and no one told me!"

"To be fair, your family never knew, since you didn't tell them." He then gulped down a sob. "And I didn't say anything when I had the chance to talk to them on my own. Sort of didn't matter at the time. There were other more important things to worry about."

"Oh yeah?" she scorned. "What sort of 'more important things' could possibly have stopped you?"

"The erm…the…," he stammered under her intense glare, "the accident. I took you home after the accident that injured your head and wiped your memory."

Still annoyed, she spat, "The accident that gets blamed for absolutely everything, yet nobody will tell me what actually happened. That accident!"

"It's best that they don't," he assured her. "The trauma was too much to bear, for us all."

"And yet you get to remember it," she pointed out. "That hardly seems fair."

"Oh Donna," he crooned, and wrapped her up in a hug, placing a kiss on her temple. "There's nothing I would like more than for you to be able to remember every single thing; but you can't, and we have to accept that. The worst part is that it stopped us being able to be together."

"At least I have you now, for a while," she muttered into his shoulder. "Will you promise me something? When your time's up and you must go to the afterlife, will you say goodbye to me properly?"

"I promise," he easily vowed.