Chapter One

The Doctor blinked and found himself back in the TARDIS. Rose hadn't been able to finish her sentence, but her bright smile had told him everything he needed to know. He had to get her back, although preferably without destroying two universes in the process. He was bound to receive at least a slap if she found out that he had taken any risks with that. And somehow he was convinced that being slapped by Rose was at least as bad as being slapped by her mum.

He turned to the console and stared at the monitor. The crack he had used to send his projection was gone. It had left a scar that emitted a very rare kind of radiation, but the remnants of the gap were far too unstable to be of use in the future.

He sighed, shut down the projector and was about to send the TARDIS back into the Vortex when he heard a demanding voice say, "Who are you? Where am I?"

He turned around to see a bride in full glory standing in the console room. "Oh, you've got to be kiddin' me!"

"What is this place?" the ginger-haired woman asked, ignoring his comment, sounding even more annoyed than before.

"The TARDIS."

"The what?"

"TARDIS. Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. And that's exactly where we are now. So you really shouldn't be here." He pointed the sonic screwdriver at her and glanced at the reading, quirking an eyebrow. "Definitely human."

"What else? And it's rude to point that – that – whatever it is – at people!" Then the meaning of his earlier words seemed to sink in. "What do you mean – space?"

"Space. As in 'outer space'." The woman still looked unconvinced. "Star Trek?" he tried.

"I don't believe you. That's a trick." She eyed him askance. "Must be Nerys. Nerys paid you, didn't she?"

"Who's Nerys?" She opened her mouth and he quickly continued, "No, I really don't wanna know. But believe me, we're in space." He walked over to the doors and opened them to reveal the pulsar in the background, then he closed them again. "See? Space."

The woman gasped. The Doctor ignored her and went over to the console. Maybe the instruments could pick up something unusual about her.

"This is impossible," he muttered to himself. "You can't be here." For a second he suspected he'd gone insane, well, more insane than normal, but he quickly dismissed the thought. He started the scan, turned around and faced her. Nothing wrong with asking. "What's your name?"

"Donna Noble."

"Nice to meet you, Donna. I'm the Doctor."

"The Doctor?"

"That's me." He waved.

"That's not even a name!" she protested.

"Well, it's my name," he retorted indignantly. Humans. Typical. If something didn't fit into the neat little boxes they used to categorise everything, they either ignored it or complained endlessly about it. Before she could interrupt him again he continued, his voice strained, "And what were you doing before you ended up here?"

"What do you think I was doing? I'm wearing a wedding gown just for fun! I was going to be married!" She had increased the volume with each sentence. In that she reminded him strongly of Jackie Tyler. "I was already halfway down the aisle when you abducted me. And now take me back!"

The Doctor raised his eyes to the ceiled dome, silently begging every deity that might be willing to listen for patience. The most important topic on his personal agenda was to find out how he could get Rose back. Dealing with annoying ginger-haired humans that had appeared inside his frankly magnificent time ship against all odds wasn't anywhere near the top ten of that list. It didn't even make the top hundred.

"Where to?" he asked calmly.

"St Mary's, Hayden Road, Chiswick, London, England, Earth, The Solar System." She sounded increasingly annoyed with every word. And she seemed to have lost her volume control. If she'd ever had one, that was.

Earth, London even. Why didn't that surprise him in the slightest? "And the date?" he added, a slight strain in his voice.

"What do you think what date it is? God, you're really a Dumbo. Fits the ears. Christmas, of course!" And in an afterthought she added, "2007."

"Oi! Why does everyone have to comment on my ears?"

"Well, they're kind of... prominent? And now take me to the church! Before I miss it." she demanded.

The Doctor sighed. The sooner he got rid of her the sooner he could find out how to get Rose back. He set the coordinates and sent the ship into the Vortex.

~o~o~o~

Donna Noble stared at the strange big-eared man who had told her calmly that she was in space. Right now he was operating bizarre instruments which had caused the column in the middle of the room to move. If he even was a man. He had asked if she was human, now she came to think of it. "Are you an alien?" she blurted out.

He turned around to face her, his arms crossed over his chest. "Yes."

"Oh my god, I've been abducted by an alien!"

"No!" he protested, looking horrified at the thought.

Then her glance fell at a blue jacket hanging over the railing. "You've abducted me – and I'm not the first one!" She held the jacket accusingly in his direction. "Where is she? Did you kill her?"

He stayed silent. A strange expression crossed his face.

"Oh my god, you killed her!"

"No! She's... I lost her."

"What do you mean – lost her?"

"She's gone, alright?" His tone made clear that the subject was closed. He concentrated again on whatever he was doing and then the ship – This had to be a ship, hadn't it? They'd been in space! – hit something and she grabbed the railing.

"Oi! Be careful!"

A few levers were flipped, a couple of buttons pressed and the column in the middle of the room stopped moving.

"London, England. Christmas 2007." The man – the Doctor – said.

She opened the door. "Yeah, well, thanks for nothing."

She left the ship, only to turn back and enter it again. She marched towards the Doctor and glared at him. "I said St Mary's. That's not even Chiswick." Then she realised that there had been something very odd about the exterior of this, well, space ship, turned on her heel and left the cavernous room again. Slowly she turned around and looked at a blue box. This had to be a hallucination.

"It's bigger on the inside," the Doctor said matter-of-factly, as if he was used to that reaction. She hadn't even noticed that he had followed her but he was leaning against the doorframe now, his arms crossed. "I don't know what happened but she needs rest," he said, "Chiswick'll have to wait."

"Great. Fat lot of good you are, Martian," she said sarcastically.

"Oi! Martians look completely different! No spikes on my head, for instance." He sounded offended. Another strange expression crossed his face, as if he was waiting for someone to come up with a remark. He left his place and took a few steps in her direction. "Anyway, there's something wrong with my ship, as if..." Then he got a gleam in his eyes, as if he had just realised something, stared at his blue box and continued, muttering mostly to himself, "The last time she sounded like that in flight was right after the Gamestation – after she had looked into her heart."

"What. Are. You. Talking. About?"

He took two more steps in her direction and held her at her shoulders, staring intently at her with blue-grey eyes. "Donna, I need you to think. Did anything unusual happen in the last few weeks?"

"Hey, I'm getting married every couple of days. What do you think of me? Of course there were unusual things going on!" The flippant comment felt already wrong while she was still speaking.

This time he didn't seem offended. "Nah, not that sort of unusual. More like the alien sort of unusual. Lights in the sky, strange things you might have touched?"

This was too much. First she somehow ended up in space – with an alien! – instead of simply getting married and now he was blaming her for that? With a quick movement she brushed his arms off, turned around and raced towards the street.

"Taxi!"

He came after her. Great. Now she would not only be late to her own wedding, no, she'd drag along an alien in a black leather jacket. "Taxi!" she yelled again. The driver shot her a glance and then he did the unbelievable. He accelerated. "Oi!" Then she turned to the Doctor. "Do you've got money?"

"What for?"

"The taxi, you Dumbo! I don't know how it works on Mars but here we have to pay for things."

"Don't you have any money?" A slight smirk crept up on his face. "Remember, I'm not from around here."

"Do you see what I'm wearing? Have you ever heard of wedding dresses with pockets? So, do you have any money, or what?"

He patted his leather jacket with a somewhat comical expression, with a tiny bit of exasperation and lots of sadness underneath. "Nope."

"Then do something about it."

With another exasperated sigh the Doctor turned around, muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "Stupid apes!" and went into the direction of the nearest cash dispenser in a nearby alley. As soon as he had vanished around the corner a taxi stopped in front of her. Never one to look a gift horse into the mouth she climbed in, determined not to mention the lack of money. Maybe she could still make it.

~o~o~o~

The Doctor waited impatiently for the customer in front of him to finish his business. Patience definitely wasn't one of the character traits of this incarnation, he was just better at pretending. Pretending he wasn't impatient, pretending he knew the solution, pretending he was alright. There was only one person who had always been able to see through his facade, and she wasn't here. He was fairly certain she knew he didn't have a clue how to get her back, but she believed in him. He really didn't deserve her.

He still wanted to get rid of Donna as soon as possible, but he had to admit that his curiosity was piqued. Her appearance in his TARDIS should have been impossible, especially because he had reinforced the shielding after the Gamestation. Neither the quick scan he had done with his sonic screwdriver nor the more sophisticated instruments of his ship had revealed anything unexpected. But still, something was going on here. He was interrupted in his thoughts by the squealing of tyres. Donna was gone. Apparently she had managed to stop a taxi.

He was about to return to the TARDIS and repeat the scan when he noticed a couple of Santas with musical instruments standing in front of a banner of Henrik's. He smiled briefly, lost in memories. He still owed the TARDIS for kicking him out in front of the shop. Meeting Rose had been the best thing that had ever happened to him. In the next second the Santas turned their instruments at him.

The Doctor had never liked the feeling of looking into a muzzle, although that sort of thing kept happening to him with surprising regularity.

He moved fast. With a fluid motion he pointed the sonic screwdriver at the cash dispenser, causing it to spill its contents and nearly shocking the customer in front of him to death, and broke into a run, avoiding the people who were already fighting about the money on the street. When he reached the corner he could see a taxi taking the next bend, Donna in the back seat and a Santa driving.

"Bugger!" He dashed back to the TARDIS.

Three minutes later he detected the taxi on the motorway. The TARDIS sounded as if she was in pain.

"Oh, no, no, no, no, no! Come on! Please, old girl. Just a little bit longer!"

He quickly adjusted the settings, fixing various levers in place with a buzz of his sonic screwdriver. Then he opened the doors. Donna was banging against the window and wildly pointing at the Santa in front of her. If he didn't know better he would have thought the driver was wearing a Cylon costume from Battlestar Galactica. He directed the sonic at the door of the taxi and unlocked it.

"Donna!" he yelled. "You've got to jump!"

"You're kidding me, right?"

"Do I look as if I was kidding? Jump!"

"I'm not jumping on a motorway. I'm in my bloody wedding dress, in case you haven't noticed!"

The Doctor pointed in the general direction of the console with his sonic screwdriver to adjust the setting of the accelerator, praying it would work and his ship would hold out a little bit longer.

"Donna, I'm only saying this once," he shouted, as soon as it looked that the TARDIS would do his bidding for another couple of minutes. "Whatever they are, they want you for some reason. And I don't think it's a good one. So, your decision. Jump or stay."

She stared at him intently. "The woman you lost... Did she trust you?"

"She does. She does trust me." He emphasized the present tense. "She's not dead, Donna. Now jump!"

She jumped. And nearly managed to knock him unconscious.

Two minutes later the Doctor landed on the roof of a council estate building, the TARDIS groaning pitifully. Something was very much not right with his ship. She had never sounded like that before, as if someone was tearing her heart out. He stroked the console affectionately. "We'll just leave you to rest, old girl."

Donna had already left the ship and was sitting on the edge of the roof. He sat down next to her. "For a space ship she really doesn't do that much flying." She looked as if she hadn't even heard him. "Did you miss it?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry."

"Not your fault."

He nodded and grinned suddenly. "That's a change." He pulled out the sonic screwdriver, searched his pockets for some time and eventually found a gasket in the depths of his leather jacket. He adjusted the setting and soniced it for a minute. "Give me your hand." He put the gasket on her pinkie.

"Great. Rub it in!" Donna said sarcastically, staring at the little black ring on her finger. "God, that looks as if it has engine grease on it."

"Oi, what do you take me for? That's a perfectly good gasket I've changed into a biodamper. With a bit of luck they won't be able to detect you now. Whoever they are."

"Robot Santas. That's insane. What are they? Are they behind all of this?"

"Nah, they're more like mercenaries. I've never seen a robot with enough imagination to successfully take over the world in my life, and that includes the Cybermen."

She looked at him questioningly.

"At the end of July? Big metal men everywhere on the planet, epic battle in the sky over London?"

"Holiday in Spain."

"They had Cybermen in Spain."

"Scuba-diving."

Great. Whenever he ran out of luck he did it thoroughly. Another ignorant human and another incident with aliens. At least his day couldn't get much worse. With that rather pessimistic thought he got up and held out his hand for Donna. Time to find out what was going on. She stared at him.

"Well, don't you want to find out what happened to your family? And your fiancée?" Eventually she took his hand and got up. A thought occurred to him. "Where did you say you met?"

"H.C. Clements. I was temping. And he made me coffee. That just doesn't happen. But Lance is the head of personnel, and he made me coffee."

He smiled, ignored her next words and remembered another couple who'd told him where they'd met. Street corner, two a.m. And he'd had that adventure as well. For a few short weeks, with Rose.

~o~o~o~

"Pete?" Rose said, her voice low. They were on their way back from Norway, where she had done the hardest thing she'd ever had to do; saying goodbye to the Doctor. Although she refused to believe that she would never see him again. She had made it back to him once before, against all odds, and she wasn't going to give up hope. Ever.

Jackie and Mickey were fast asleep in the backseat of the battered Jeep. Pete answered without taking his eyes from the unfamiliar road. "Yeah?"

She had to tell somebody, and it felt easier to talk to Pete first. He wasn't involved in the emotional mess that had overshadowed the end of her relationship with Mickey and turned her mum into a fury whenever the Doctor was mentioned. Both of them had never really forgiven him the year that hadn't existed for her. Oh, they got along, especially since he had sent her back from the Gamestation, but it still felt like they were barely tolerating him for her sake. And that hurt. Pete might not be her father, but he was a friend and that was what she needed right now.

She could predict how her mum would react. There would be lots of shouting involved, the Doctor would be called a cradle-robber, and then her mum would tell her to get over it and start a new life. Now they had money she could do so much better, she would say. As if that had ever mattered to her. On a certain level she knew her mum only wanted the best for her. She'd been a single-parent raising a child on a council estate until they'd ended up in this universe. Rose had seen how she had struggled, and she could understand that her mum would rate financial security fairly high.

She snorted. She had fallen in love with an alien who owned nothing but a blue box and had ended up paying for his chips more times than she could remember. But the Doctor had given her his hearts, and that meant more to her than any pretty boy with too much time and money on his hands ever could. He was the most powerful being in the universe and he had chosen her. She still didn't know how she could possibly deserve such a gift.

"He asked me to marry him," she blurted out before she had a chance to change her mind. "Well, his people's version of marriage, actually, but it means the same."

Pete looked at her and a genuine smile appeared on his face. Then he turned his attention back to the road. There hadn't been any traffic for miles, but the road was narrow and the terrain unfamiliar. When they reached a part that went straight ahead for about a mile he looked at her again and took her hand, squeezing it gently. "I don't know what to say," he admitted eventually, his eyes back on the road. "I'm happy for you, of course, for both of you actually. I could see how you felt when you first got here. But you said he didn't know if he could ever get here."

"I know," she replied quietly. Then she grinned. "But two persons as stubborn as we are should find a way without endangering two universes."

Pete smiled back. "Definitely." Then he asked, "Did you tell Jacks?"

"No." She paused. "I don't know if I can. I know what she's going to say. I could practically write the dialogue. It's a discussion we've had too many times since he brought me back one year later than he intended. I can't bear that right now."

"Don't you think you underestimate her?"

Rose sighed. "Maybe. Probably. She's my mum and she loves me. But I can't tell her now. Would you keep this to yourself for a bit?"

Pete nodded. "Of course. Take your time, but I think you should tell her."