A/N: I'd apologise for the ending, but Doctor Who episodes can be even nuttier than this!
Chapter11
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It had been no great decision at all for Shaun. One phone call from Donna and the deed was done; they would talk things through again. He could have tried to play it cool, but he missed her company and regretted the breakup, so of course he had agreed to meet up with her before their wedding was completely cancelled. He owed it to her and himself to give things a second chance.
It pained him to see her look so pensive as she approached him at their assigned meeting spot, on the corner of Mallard Street. The nervous bite of a lip, a frantic glance sideways as though someone would rush out from one of the nearby houses to rescue her from the encounter. His heart ached for her plight because it would be, ultimately, her decision.
What he didn't know was that part of her anxiety was due to John fading gradually away from view. She could still see him, but where he had been solid before, since the supermarket encounter with Shaun, John had become transparent. 'Would he totally disappear at any moment?' she fretted.
As it was, she was relying on John's steady moral support during her attempt to get back with Shaun and keep the wedding date they'd booked. She hated to admit it, but she needed him to stick around.
Standing his ground in some weird macho way, Shaun quietly waited until she was near enough to hear him greet her. "Hello Donna. How are you?"
"Hello," she automatically replied as she got close. "I'm alright. How are you?"
"Not bad." He grimaced, denoting his true feelings.
Her face softened in concern. "You still don't look so great, to be honest." She then reached out and placed a hand directly over the centre of his chest, sensing the erratic heartbeat below her palm. "Don't feel so good either."
Trying to remain strong, he replied, "I'm fine." The pain in his chest swelled up, tightening round him as he gasped for breath. "Donna, I don't feel...," he began to admit. But the pain was pressing him down onto his knees. "Help," he managed to whisper as the blood drained from his face.
"Just… hang on," she begged with an outstretched hand, and then fumbled to dial 999 on her mobile phone. "Ambulance. I need an ambulance," she told the woman that answered. "My fiancé has collapsed in the middle of the street. We're in Mallard Street, Chiswick; near the dead end."
She listened carefully to the dispatch advisor now on the other end of the line, calming her while the ambulance sped towards them. She assured them Shaun was still breathing, and she'd put him in the recovery position, as directed.
A gurgle from Shaun had her attention snapped back to his face. He looked close to death and the ambulance might still be a while.
"Shaun? Shaun!" she called out. Then she appealed to her friend standing invisibly by her side, "He needs help. Can you help him, John?"
He shook his head, trying to convey that he couldn't do much more to help. "I think he's had a heart attack."
"Can't you save him? Do that body possession thing again….? I don't know. Anything!" she begged frantically.
Knowing he couldn't refuse her, he made up his mind, and he determinedly said, "Stand back, Donna. This might be the last chance I have to see you, but Shaun will not leave you like I have to. Goodbye."
"Bye," she gasped as she watched John slam himself into Shaun's prone body.
There seemed to be a struggle of some sort, his arms and legs jerked about for a few seconds, and Shaun stilled before cautiously opening his eyes.
"Shaun," Donna whispered in relief. "You're back. Are you alright? Does anywhere hurt?"
Shaun blinked up her, adjusting his vision, and a slow smile of recognition filled his face. "Hello Donna." He immediately grimaced. "Ooh, that's weird. I sound different again. Did it work?" Then he fainted away.
The sound of the ambulance broke through the impending silence, and help arrived in the form of two genial paramedics who quickly assessed Shaun's condition. Within minutes, he was rigged up to an oxygen tank, strapped to the internal bed, and whisked off to the nearest hospital, with Donna by his side.
Throughout the journey, she had held his hand and whispered consoling words to help ease his unconscious pain. It had been touch and go at one point, they'd told her later, but he was fighting hard to stay alive despite the odds being low.
Despite her stomach growling and her eyes needing to look at something other than the hospital room Shaun been placed, Donna stayed by his side, holding his hand or keeping contact in some other form whilst avoiding all the monitoring stickers they'd placed on his upper torso. The plastic chair beneath her bottom had to be the most uncomfortable seat she had ever spent hours sitting on, but she was determined to see her vigil through. With loving sweeps, she tenderly stroked Shaun's hair.
Who was really in there, she wondered, making the machines ping in rhythm? Whoever it was, she needed her friend.
"John, come back to me," she begged.
"What did you want me for?" he suddenly asked from behind her.
She whirled her head around to gaze at him. "You're still dead!" she spluttered.
"I'm afraid so," he grimly confirmed, stepping closer to the hospital bed. "It's Shaun in there fighting to stay alive."
Her mouth gaped open for a second. "I don't understand. Why isn't it you?"
"Because it isn't my place to steal his life, Donna. I have no right to do that. He is destined to marry you."
"You've said that before," she stated, flabbergasted by this new turn of events. "The whole destiny thing. But how do you know? What makes you so sure I will marry him?"
Brokenly, John admitted, "Because I was there, Donna. I saw you come out of the church with him, smiling, almost dizzy with happiness."
She slowly blinked. "How?" she quietly asked.
"I suppose it doesn't matter now if I admit I can travel in time. Could travel in time," he corrected himself, "when I was me."
"But," she reasoned, "this means you could go back and stop it happening."
"I can't. It was my prophecy. A new song to be sung," he sadly explained.
"No, hang on," she begged, thinking desperately, "This might be like that film. The Keanu Reeves one."
"Speed," he suggested. "How?"
"No, not that one, you div!" she chided. "We've got no bomb, or a bus for that matter. Although having Sharon Bullock around would be helpful. No, I'm talking about the house by the lake one."
"The Lake House." Guessing what she might suggest, he insisted, "It wouldn't work."
"How do you know it won't?" she demanded. "In the film time was rewritten; made it seem possible. We exist in two different timelines, one where I wasn't aware of your death, but at one point in the future we can properly meet and change how it ends. You yourself said we were meant to be together. Perhaps this is how we can be."
"You'd die," he wailed.
"If that's what it takes to be with you forever, then I will," she vowed. "I only persisted with Shaun because you talked me into it."
"What about what Shaun wants?"
"I think he's realised that we were making do with each other. Yes, I could get him to marry me. I know I can eventually persuade him, and we'd be happy together, in a way. But I don't think I should."
"Why?" he gasped as all his fears about destroying the timelines reared up.
Donna's gaze somehow turned softer but assertive. "Because you showed me something better. This half-life of mine isn't worth living without you."
"I won't let you do that," he maintained, railing against every jubilant reaction his soul could throw at him.
Now determined, she stood up straight. "Try stopping me, buster! I have got to do this, or I'll never forgive myself. You were at the church right after the ceremony?"
He faintly nodded. "As I said, I arrived when you emerged from the church."
"Then I have plans to arrange." She took hold of his hand, and gently asked, "How much longer have you got?"
"Until Shaun wakes up. Perhaps an hour or so."
Holding back her tears, she suggested, "Then let's go look at the stars, one last time together."
The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS to meet a bright spring day full of promising blooms. But his attention was on the church doors that burst open to reveal Donna wearing another wedding dress. This one was different to the one his Donna had worn… not that he was allowed to refer to her as his Donna. She would have had a pink fit if he had.
All pain was ignored as he concentrated on her smiling face. She waved her hand about to show off a ring, her wedding band, to all and sundry. And then she did the strangest thing. Instead of turning to her bridegroom (and in all honesty, he hadn't even taken much notice of the man in question) she turned to look at him, standing by the lychgate.
No! She couldn't do that. Mustn't walk towards him; or open her mouth to speak. It should not, could not happen! But suddenly she was stood in front of him, gazing with compassion and unconditional love once more. She was almost glowing with it.
But when she called him 'Doctor' he almost collapsed, unable to conceal the toil on his body. "Doctor!" she cried, grabbing hold of his arm to keep him standing. "Come on, John. Let's get you inside."
"Inside where?" he managed to ask as the pain swelled up, threatening to engulf his body.
"The TARDIS, you prawn," she said; and in that moment he wasn't sure if this was a wild hallucination or a dream.
"Not allowed," he murmured.
"Of course it is," she brashly maintained. "Me and the Old Girl are friends. She'll let me look after you."
"How do you remember me?"
"That's all down to you, thanks. You don't know it yet, but you helped stop the Metacrisis burning me up. Well, not you exactly, but you'll soon work it out."
"About that…," he started to say as they stumbled up the ramp to the main console, with her holding him up. "Get back. It's started," he quietly voiced.
"Ah. You're not going to like this bit," she noted. "Take no notice of me. Just let it go."
"Donna," he gasped, "I'm sorry."
"I know," she assured him. "See you on the other side."
Other side? His mind suddenly cleared as the blaze took over him. "NO!"
It was too late. She was already reaching for him as his body burned with the regeneration fires.
The whole room lit up. Explosions took out most of the décor and a new body emerged. The new incarnation of the Doctor. A younger man with ancient eyes shrieked into his existence.
He reached up to touch his hair and exclaimed, "I'm a girl!" And realised that he wasn't. This new body merely had floppier hair. Then the Eleventh Doctor took in the reforming TARDIS. Everything would be changed. "Look Donna, I…"
There was nobody there with him. He had been all on his own when he regenerated. Silly him thinking he'd had company. This was a new life to delight in. A whole new chance.
"Geronimo!"
~~0~~
In a different dimension, and another timeline, the late Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble whirled in space together, clutching the handrail as the TARDIS bucked and yawed.
Eventually the spinning stopped enough for them to catch their breath. "Where are we?" Donna asked.
"No idea," he admitted with glee. "Let's find out."
Throwing open the TARDIS revealed that they were in a churchyard. A very familiar scene met them.
"No," she gasped in awe. "Is this where I think it is?"
"Seems like it," he reasoned. "Do you remember that whole destiny business? Seems like we were right."
"Yeah. But I mean… you don't expect it to actually happen."
"That's the power of a metacrisis." He reached down to lift up her hand to lead the way out, and took a second or two to look. "That's my ring. The biodamper I gave you," he said in surprise.
"What else would I wear? This meant too much to me to wear any other ring," she explained.
"Oh, Donna Noble. I love you," he declared.
"Thank gawd for that, because I love you too, John Smith, or whatever name you are going to use from now on."
"Thank you, Old Girl," he said to the TARDIS now stood behind them, and leaned down to kiss his new-ish wife. Well. She already knew his name, so it was more like a 'vows renewal' sort of thing than anything else.
Now satisfied that her work was done, and this version of her Thief was safe, the TARDIS slowly faded away to leave them with their joint destiny.
"There they are!" called out Wilf. "We thought you'd both done a runner," he aimed at them. "Come on, the photographer is waiting to take your wedding snaps."
"Coming Gramps," Donna happily answered, grasping John's arm. "Have we really reset time?" she whispered to him.
"Seems like it," he agreed. "Time can be rewritten," he quoted, and pulled her into a tight hug. "A big ol' new alternate universe created, just for you. We've been given a forever."
"With a mortgage," she teased, knowing he'd hate the thought.
"Ah, maybe not," he replied, reaching into his top pocket. "I have here the present I gained with some help from your dad."
"That's a lottery ticket," she noted, clearly unimpressed. "Why would my dad give me an old lottery ticket?"
"This isn't just any ticket," he explained, waving it high. "Your dad gave me the money to buy this week's ticket, bought knowing the result."
"That's cheating!" she gasped. "Merely a cheap trick."
"It's also a triple rollover," he enticed her, still waving the ticket. "Nobody else was going to win it."
"In that case…" She snatched the ticket and put it away inside her cleavage. "You can retrieve it later. Looks like we've got some celebrating to do."
"Allons-y!" he cried.
~~o0o~~