I just wanted to take a quick second to let all of you guys know how much I appreciate you reading my story. It means a lot and I love reading all of your reviews! It makes me really happy, to be able to create something that other people like so much.


His conscience weighed him down like an albatross, but he pushed those thoughts away. The little girl in the spacesuit was most certainly Melody. And if she was... That meant the Silence were coming for her. He didn't know when, but they would take her and there was nothing he could do to stop them.

He ran a hand down his face in frustration, then returned to the console. Donna was his main priority now. He couldn't let them take her, or hurt her, or...

No. He had to save her, no matter what.

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The TARDIS wheezed into existence on a certain street in Chiswick. The Doctor raced down the steps and out into-

Well then.

He almost considered retrieving an umbrella. It wasn't raining, but snowing. It was very early January, the second by his calculations, and the snow was doing its hardest to cover absolutely anything and everything it could find as quickly as possible. There had been snow during Donna's abduction, but very little falling from the sky, as opposed to now. He hoped that the TARDIS hadn't missed her mark.

Just then, a voice reached his sensitive ears through the swirls of snow. "I'm going and that's final!"

The Doctor would recognise that fatherly voice anywhere. He quickly gained his bearings and sped off as fast as he dared to the Noble residence, finding that he was parked only a short distance away. As he approached, Wilfred came into view holding a very familiar object: the pistol that he had used to send Rassilon and Gallifrey back into the Time War not so long ago. Those brought back some memories, none at all pleasant. He took a deep breath, listening to Wilfred's angry words as he shook the gun over his head. "I'm going to get her back myself!"

"Dad, you can't, it's too dangerous out there! The police are going to find her, let them handle it!" Sylvia stood at the open door to her home trying in vain to coax her father back inside, coat haphazardly wrapped around her shoulders. The snow was forcing its way into her house and the puddle on her floor was quickly growing in size.

"Wilfred!" The Doctor called through the snow, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Get back inside!"

"What?" Wilfred spun around, looking for the source of the voice that was not his daughter's. He spotted the Doctor's figure in the swirls of snow, but could not discern anything specific about the person. "Who's that, then?"

"Get inside the house!" The Doctor finally made it to the man's side and grabbed his shoulders, turning him in the direction of Sylvia and their warm, inviting living room.

Wilfred became indignant very quickly, an impressive feat when standing in the middle of an almost-blizzard, even with a gun. "Listen here you, my granddaughter-"

"Dad, get in the house!"

Wilfred stared at the Doctor with the classic look of confusion, for those words had come from the Time Lord's mouth, not Sylvia's. "Who are you?"

"Get in the house, you stubborn..." The Doctor trailed off as he had to almost push the aging man toward his house. "You're worse than Donna!"

"Donna?" Wilf's ears perked up at the name of his precious granddaughter as he trudged through the snow. "How do you know Donna?"

The Doctor finally coerced Wilfred inside the house, listening to Sylvia fussing and fetching blankets and sweaters. She went on and on about having to make tea, completely ignoring the new presence in their home. She had taken Wilfred's gun, much to the man's dismay, and hid it somewhere when he wasn't looking. He followed her angrily into the kitchen, trying to reason with her. She would have none of it.

The Time Lord chanced a look around their home while they argued. He noted that it did not seem like the house of someone who had won the lottery less than a year earlier. He vaguely remembered Wilfred mentioning Donna and Shaun getting their own flat, but Donna would have had no expense spared to give her grandfather as much comfort as possible. He came to the conclusion that the sentimentality of the house overrode everything else; Donna's late father likely had something to do with it.

The Doctor approached the arguing pair and watched their exchange for some moments from the corner of the kitchen before they finally registered his presence. "Who are you, then?" Wilfred asked angrily, suddenly walking up to the other man. He puffed himself up as large as he could and poked the Time Lord in the chest, enunciating every word. "Who do you think you are, eh? Bursting in here and trying to stop me from helping Donna! And then you call me Dad, and-"

"Dad," the Doctor interrupted gently, causing the human to stop poking him. "I know you aren't my real dad, but I'm still proud of that." He turned from Wilfred's very confused face to Sylvia, who was observing him with an inquisitive look. He bowed his head to her respectfully. "It's nice to see you again, Sylvia."

"What... Dad, who is he?" Sylvia placed the tea cup in her hand back on the counter and marched right up to the stranger. "You tell me who you are right now-"

"Well hopefully, in about oh..." He glanced at his watch. "Ten minutes, I'll be the person off in the blizzard to rescue Donna! That is, if I don't get buried in the snow! Which, judging by the swirlyness and the overall general... snowyness of the snow, could be very likely." His numerous hand gestures did nothing to help the strange explanation. It only made the two humans more confused.

"Just tell us who you are," Sylvia demanded. "Or I'm throwing you out of here right now!" She appreciated his efforts to get Wilfred back in the house, but he was becoming more suspicious by the second. He seemed to know them, though she had never seen him before in her entire life.

The Doctor indignantly huffed air from his lungs, sending his hair flopping. "Well that's rude-"

"Tell us!" They were both scowling rather angrily at him.

"Fine!" he yelled back, placing a hand on each hip in an attempt to steady himself from their verbal attacks. "I'm the Doctor."

Sylvia blanched. Wilfred stared, then sputtered, "You're the- Oh my god. You came back!" And with that, the alien was enveloped in a crushing hug that betrayed the elderly man's strength. "You're here to save Donna?"

The Doctor returned the hug enthusiastically. "Yes I am, but unfortunately you have to let go of me first." He didn't. "Where is Shaun?"

Wilfred nodded toward the stairs. "He's upstairs, in bed. They knocked him out. We're lucky they didn't just kill him. I'm not sure why they didn't..."

The Doctor thought for a moment. "They were ordered not to kill anyone," he finally deduced. "They obviously only wanted Donna."

Sylvia stood silent, eyeing the Doctor critically. "My daughter gets kidnapped and then you show up! This is your fault, isn't it?"

The Doctor's face fell. He drew back from Wilfred, who gazed at him with a look that demanded an explanation. "It is," he confirmed. Instantly, Sylvia burst into an angry rant about how dangerous he was, but Wilfred quickly shushed her.

The Doctor swallowed nervously under their gazes and continued. "They want her mind. The information that she took from me, the reason I had to erase her memories. They plan to take it from her and use it against me." He paused in reflection. "I've put her in danger again." He raised both of his hands to his head, scratching furiously until his hair was sticking out in a million different directions. He was angry at himself for getting Donna caught in another terrible situation.

His new comical appearance did nothing to stem Sylvia's anger. "So why aren't you out there finding her?"

"Because I have no-" He paused. He had been trying to think of a way to properly find her, something that was much more precise than the DNA tracker. Time would be wasted otherwise, since he couldn't cross his own timeline, and every second was precious. "I just thought of the perfect way! Ha!" He grabbed Wilfred and Sylvia, kissing them each on the forehead before he turned and ran from the kitchen, bolting from the house into the snow.

xxxxxxxxxx

The Doctor trudged through the swirls of snow back to the TARDIS. The storm had let up slightly since his conversation with Sylvia and Wilfred, but the wind sent flakes of snow into his already destroyed hair-do. He quickly combed it with his fingers as he ran up the TARDIS steps. He pulled her movable screen around and began to do a scan for background radiation.

Seeing as the battalion of soldiers had gone through the time window, they would have background radiation all over them, as would Donna. He impatiently waited for the scan to complete and it took quite a bit longer than he would have liked. The TARDIS finally made a satisfying ding noise and he stared at the screen for a moment before shouting "Aha!"

On the screen were thirteen blips of golden radiation, travelling at a steady pace through the snow. The soldiers were walking quickly and it seemed as though one of them was carrying Donna, likely because they had knocked her out at well.

It took him several moments to hunt down the time window itself. There were two almost identical spatial disturbances, one near Donna's home and one a few miles away. The one near Donna's house made sense because he saw the soldiers when they kidnapped her, but the window several miles away made little sense.

"Unless..." He had hoped that disturbing Madame Kovarian's equipment would shut down the time window. There was a chance that he had caused this move. It could be the extra time he needed to save Donna.

He quickly set the TARDIS's coordinates as close as he dared to the time window, then threw the switch and felt her lurch to the side as they flew off into the Time Vortex.

xxxxxxxxxx

The TARDIS landed with a thud exactly where he had planned, an impressive feat in itself. The Doctor practically catapulted himself from of the blue box and out into the snow. It was finally beginning to slow, giving him an almost unobstructed view of the scene unfolding in front of him.

Around him were brick buildings, creating an alley that led to a wide road full of dozens of small shops. The time window was plastered against a shop front, giving a view into the control center he had been in not so long ago. The soldiers immediately came into view, with their Captain holding a device in his hand that the Doctor recognised. It was built to detect spatial disturbances like the rift that sat in Cardiff, but time windows also fell under that category. Kovarian had almost uncomfortable foresight.

The Doctor reached into his jacket for the sonic screwdriver as he ran down the alleyway, zapping the Captain's too-advanced technology. The metal sparked and fizzled out, causing the soldiers to jump in surprise at the sudden attack. They quickly drew their weapons, searching through the falling snow for their enemy.

The Doctor quickly approached the group, getting as close to them as he dared, which really wasn't close at all. Thirteen guns weren't exactly a happy thing. He noted that they were genuine 1940's weapons, meaning that his sonic screwdriver couldn't do anything without injuring or killing the men, though they might deserve it. Luckily, they didn't know that and he planned on keeping it that way. The men looked cold and tired and he finally saw Donna hanging limply over the tallest man's shoulder. "Let her go."

"She is required, Doctor," the Captain spoke. "I surmise that the disappearance of our other window was your fault."

He shrugged. "Guilty as charged." The snow all around them was slowing, becoming more beautiful than annoying. The cold stayed, but he couldn't feel it as the humans could. Several of the soldiers were eyeing the warmth beyond the time window sitting to his right, but the Doctor couldn't muster any sympathy for them.

"Unfortunately, we cannot let you take her back. Please understand."

The Doctor frowned. "If you don't give her back, I will be very, very cross and you really don't want that." He waved the sonic screwdriver at them as threateningly as he could manage. The Captain showed no signs of discomfort, but the rest of the soldiers looked uneasy.

"I have been informed of your weapon's capabilities," the Captain said quickly. "We have nothing to fear."

"I could use this to vibrate the bullets in your guns and make them explode," he said, waving the sonic in their direction. The soldiers blanched and a few of them tossed their guns a safe distance away into a snow drift. The Captain frowned angrily, but said nothing. The Doctor whistled. "Your choice, Captain."

Just then, the time window shimmered and Madame Kovarian herself stepped into 2011.

Before the Doctor could react, she raised the pistol in her hand and fired.