Chapter Warning: Character Death.


"Of course, sir. I shall contact the authorities in the morning." She suddenly noted that the Doctor was sopping wet from head to toe. "Oh, my manners! Let me put the kettle on, you look like you could use a hot cuppa before heading back out in that wretched storm."

"Thank you ma'am, that would be most appreciated," he said amicably.

The matron returned three minutes later to Donna's soft breathing and a sitting room devoid of all doctors.

xxxxxxxxxx

The TARDIS kindly opened the door for him as the Doctor rushed toward her and out of the rain. His entire outfit was completely soaked from head to toe. Now that he had Donna where she was meant to be, everything was in place. He promptly decided that he needed to change his clothes.

After several moments of searching through the TARDIS's wardrobe for the perfect bowtie, the green one with the stripes, he set off for the console room. He still had to return to the Ponds and explain to them exactly why they could never have their daughter back. He knew they would hate him, but there was nothing that could be done.

The Doctor's ears perked up as he heard the TARDIS's phone ring through her winding halls. He quickened his stride, glad for dry, non-squishy shoes. Very few people had his number and he had a sneaking suspicion that it was the person he had given it to most recently. He quickly snatched up the receiver the moment it was within arm's reach. "Hello?"

"Doctor!" Wilfred's voice crackled, despite the TARDIS's best efforts to make it otherwise. "She killed Shawn and she kidnapped Donna! Oh Doctor, please come back!"

The Doctor's blood ran cold. "Who, Wilfred? Who was it?"

"A woman, she had a laser gun thingy and an eyepatch!"

The Doctor gritted his teeth. "What day is it?" Wilfred informed him that it was the morning of January 4th, just a day after he had returned adult Donna to her family. "I'm on my way." He slammed down the receiver and ran as quickly as he could manage around the TARDIS's console, setting her off into the vortex at maximum speed.

xxxxxxxxxx

The Doctor landed the TARDIS as quickly as possible and bolted for the doors. He wasn't sure how Madame Kovarian managed to get back to 2011 again, but he meant to find out.

As soon as he stepped outside, he noticed that the TARDIS had materialised between Sylvia's house and the house next door. The sky was unusually dark and he looked up to see quite an interesting sight: a solar eclipse. He took a brief moment to marvel at it; though he could see one whenever he wanted, as he had a time machine, catching one by chance was extraordinary. Oddly extraordinary, even...

After the moment had passed, he ran out to the front yard to find Sylvia on the ground, crying over the dead body of Donna's husband. The Doctor carefully approached her, looking sadly down at the corpse of the brave man. "Sylvia?"

Her head snapped up. "Doctor... Doctor, she took Donna! She killed Shawn and now my dad is out there somewhere trying to find her..." She held a hand over her mouth and sobbed quietly. The Doctor quickly knelt next to her and pulled her into a comforting embrace.

"I'm so sorry," he said softly. "So very sorry. I really am." He held her for a few more moments. "I'm going to find your daughter and your father. I promise." She buried her head in his shoulder, something that could have only been brought on by unimaginable grief.

He held her as she cried, finally ready to bring up the topic that he had wanted to ask her about for a while now. "Why didn't Donna tell me that she was adopted?"

Sylvia's eyes took on a sharp light and she raised her head to look at him. "How do you know about that?"

"Because..." He wondered if he should tell her, but he supposed it didn't matter now. "I was the one who found her and took her to that orphanage."

"What?" Sylvia's eyes widened. "But they told us that her parents had-"

"I know," he said soothingly.

Sylvia closed her eyes, reminiscing. "We tried so hard to have a baby, but it just wouldn't work. Multiple miscarriages and... Well, we decided to adopt and that orphanage was the first place we went."

"She's special," the Doctor declared. "So much more special than even you know."

Sylvia raised an eyebrow in a silent question, but said nothing. She turned back to Shawn and gently lay a hand on his chest where a rose of blood bloomed. Her eyes began to tear up once more. "He was a good man. Such a good man."

"A good man..." The Doctor trailed off. That sounded vaguely familiar. Where had he heard that before? River... A spark ignited a thought in his head and he suddenly asked, "You said Wilfred was out trying to find Donna, why did he do that?"

Sylvia wiped her eye with a finger as the faint echo of sirens reached their ears, growing closer every second. "He's had nightmares the last two nights, from those soldiers. World War II and all that. He said he would do his duty after all. He wants to protect her."

"He took his pistol, didn't he?" the Doctor asked quickly, glancing up at the progressing eclipse.

"I tried to take it away from him, but he wouldn't listen. Blasted fool is going to get himself killed..."

The Doctor nodded slowly, letting the knowledge hit him and seep into his mind.

Demons run when a good man goes to war,

Night will fall and drown the sun,

When a good man goes to war...

xxxxxxxxxx

"So what does the rest of it mean?" The Doctor spoke aloud to himself as he set the TARDIS's scanner for Donna's unique energy signal. She popped up immediately and the TARDIS whirred and groaned, flying as fast as she dared through the time vortex.

The blue machine landed in an abandoned warehouse in- "Cardiff?" The Doctor checked the screen, but it was correct. They were in Cardiff. "How did they get to Cardiff?" A better question was how did Kovarian get back to 2011 in the first place? Her vortex manipulator didn't work and her time windows had been thoroughly dispatched.

The Doctor rushed down the steps, then paused. The prophecy that River had recited to him was now thrumming behind his eyes, brought forth by Sylvia's innocent words.

Demons run when a good man goes to war,

Night will fall and drown the sun,

When a good man goes to war

Friendship dies and true love lies

Night will fall and the dark will rise

When a good man goes to war

Demons run, but count the cost

The battle is won, but the child is lost

Because River had refused to help him save Donna, she knew something about what was happening here. She knew what was going on and she wouldn't tell him a thing. He ran a hand down his face, trying to decipher her riddle. Wilfred was most certainly the good man here. The demons were most likely the Nazis. The second line referenced the solar eclipse, surely.

"Sylvia said he would finally do his duty..." The fourth line made no sense to him. Friendship dying? The part about true love made sense; he had never seen a grandfather-granddaughter pair that adored each other so much, except perhaps his own relationship with Susan. But what did the fifth line mean? "Night will fall and the dark will rise"? A restatement of the eclipse plus... what? Kovarian?

The final two lines worried him the most. He already knew that Amy and Rory's child could never be returned to them, but something else nagged him from the back of his mind. It seemed that there should be more to it than that, especially since it seemed to jump from Donna's present to her distant past. It was disconnected otherwise; the child had already been lost.

He pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind and stepped out of the box, looking around. The warehouse was extremely abandoned with no bulbs in the light sockets and no equipment of any kind to be found. Only large, rusting metal containers remained, many with no lids or doors. The ceiling far above him was dotted with peeling paint. The air smelled of must and rat droppings. He wrinkled his nose in distaste.

Suddenly, the Time Lord heard the scuffle of running feet and a voice panting with fatigue. He pushed his way through the tiny opening between two containers. "You let him go right now!"

Donna!