AN: Sorry this has taken so long to get up :( My promotion kicked in on the 1st of December and I was transferred to another store on the 14th so I am now doing 10 hour shifts with at least an hours travel on each end of the day five days a week, either starting work at 6am or finishing after 10:30pm, so when I haven't been at work I have been asleep. Hopefully as I settle into my new routine a bit more I will be able to work in more time for writing

Hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year despite everything going on in the world and hope you are all keeping safe xx

Donna Noble was out of her depth a little, so far in her travels with the Doctor she had encountered the weird and the wonderful that alien planets had to offer her, but here in Cardiff of all places she was beginning to see an even weirder side of the alien she was travelling with. She knew that the Doctor had travelled with people before, like his friend Rose who he'd lost and Martha who was now working for an alien taskforce on Earth, but she had never imagined that she would be popping round for dinner with some of his previous travelling companions.

When he had said dinner and refueling the TARDIS she had imagined some sort of space station far off into the future, grabbing a bite to eat from some alien vendor just like a service station off the A1, not dinner at some manor in Wales in her time. Of course she didn't know exactly what it was you fueled a time machine with, but she had definitely expected it to be something futuristic, not something that you could get in twentyfirst century Cardiff of all places.

Being silenced was also rather out of her comfort zone, not many people ever attempted it, the Doctor had been one of the few who had managed it, but this old woman that everyone was calling grandmamma had it down to an art. She had managed to silence them all, they all were compelled to do as she said, and even Donna had found herself complying, eating the meal in silence before going off with the Doctor and the broad shouldered Welshman, Rhys to move the TARDIS.

Back in her comfort zone a bit as they moved the TARDIS Donna began to talk again, capturing the Welshman's attention and babbling on they walked back to join the others talking about some of the things she had seen on he travels. It was nice to be able to talk to someone about it all, it wasn't like she could talk to any of her mates about what she had seen they would just think she was drunk. She thanked the butler for the drink, and really who was she now that she knew people with butlers, and carried on talking until the elder woman started introducing the Doctor to people in the room that he hadn't met before.

She listened to the introductions before deciding to demand answers, as nice as these people were it was still rude of them to have just crashed their family dinner regardless of the fact they were friends of the Doctor's. If he had just turned up at her family dinner with someone else, her mum would have slapped him at least, especially if it had been without any warning. The response from Grandmamma as everyone called her was chilling and Donna felt chastised right to the soles of her feet. She nodded mutely at the woman, and then watched with a horrified fascination as a severed hand that she had somehow overlooked until now started a conversation in some form of sign language with the Doctor, before having what appeared to be a heart to heart with the man the Doctor had called Jack.

Donna looked towards the man next to her for an explanation, hoping that she wasn't the only one in the room that was confused. Hearing that the severed hand was actually the Doctor's and he had grown a new one was bizarre, that the severed hand was fully independent was stranger, but that a man who was supposed to be the Doctor's friend had kept his severed hand in a jar just seemed plain freaky to Donna. She listened to Rhys as he told her about Jack getting Thing from Torchwood London and then taking him back to the Doctor and how the Doctor had then taken Thing to the Addams family several years before then so that he had a chance to have a life of his own.

To Donna it all seemed a bit mental, but then again so had most things she had seen since she had met the Doctor. She apologised to Grandmamma for any unintentional slight, not wanting to come across to what was essentially the Doctor's family as rude. Conversation flowed in several areas of the room and she tried to listen to them all, keeping quiet for once in order to find the lay of the land as it were. Most of the room knew that the Doctor was family by the sounds of it, Jack the former companion had been unaware of it but seemed accepting, but two of the men in the room seemed as out of their depth as she was.

Turning to the man that she had dubbed her unofficial guide to the Doctor's family she tried to be as subtle as she could in asking what their deal was. It turned out that she wasn't the only one being introduced to the family en masse that evening, but at least she had the advantage that she knew about aliens and time travel. The two men, David and Kevin, were currently getting a crash course in aliens and the Addams' interactions with them.

"So I take it you haven't met Spaceman before then?" Donna asked Rhys, as she tuned out the other conversations going on around her, taking the opportunity to have a good long chat with someone who might understand all the craziness that went on in her life.

"Nope. I've heard of him of course, but never had the chance to meet him until now, which considering how often he refuels in Cardiff is actually quite remarkable." Rhys replied. "He tends to park the TARDIS right outside Torchwood on the Plass to refuel, and with how often I was there dropping Gwen off I should have crossed his path at some point. Although he does park on their lift so that would have been an interesting meeting with Gwen going off on one."

"Torchwood? Gwen?" Donna asked, "I thought Torchwood and the Doctor don't get along?"

"Jack's Torchwood is different, so is Torchwood Two really. They took the initial Institute Charter and interpreted it, Torchwood London was the only branch that really still considered the Doctor to be the enemy and well they were decimated in the battle of Canary Wharf." Rhys explained. "Gwen, well Gwen is my wife, or is until the papers finally come through."

Donna nodded, "He's mentioned a battle, Torchwood owned the company I used to work for, he talked about them a bit." She looked at him, trying to get a feel for whether she should be congratulating him or commiserating with him. "Marriage doesn't always work out." Donna offered up her own story, trying to gauge his thoughts, "My fiancé tried to feed me to a giant alien spider, it's how I met Spaceman over there."

Rhys winced at that and Donna let a small smile cross her face as she continued, "He got eaten instead, never did have to deal with going through a divorce, but it can't be easy. What happened? Seems your waist deep in all this alien stuff, so not like her job would have run you off."

"Gwen is not who I thought she was." Rhys offered, "It took me a while to realise it, but she could never accept me or my family for who we are, and is always trying to chase after a new conquest regardless of our relationship."

Donna winced, his words reminding her a bit of how she had felt walking in to her wedding reception to see Lance dancing with Nerys. "She was messing about?"

Rhys chuckled a bit self-deprecatingly. "Not since we got married that I know of at least, but when we were dating she was flirting with my cousin." He nodded in the direction of the man explaining to the two men about aliens, "Then when she started with Torchwood she started chasing my cousin's lover," he looked over at Jack, "and she started sleeping with Owen, one of her co-workers who has just married my little cousin."

Donna just looked at him in shock, and it took quite a bit to shock her nowadays, but what he was saying sounded like something out of one of the soaps she used to be addicted to. "Are all your family that tied up in Torchwood?" She asked, trying to move the conversation along a bit, not wanting to linger on the subject of his cheating wife/ex to be.

Rhys chuckled," You could say that yeah. There has been Torchwood in our blood almost since it was founded."

Donna looked round the room quickly, checking where the spaceman was and what he was up to, making sure that nothing was about to explode and that she'd end up running for her life in the next ten minutes. Seeing him engrossed in conversation she settled a little more, relaxing into her seat she smiled at the Welshman, encouraging him to talk she sat back to listen to his story. "Really, tell me more."