Just a little head's up: it's a pretty long chapter so settle in.

Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who...it owns me!

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Donna had heard the expression 'hit the ground running'; she had been that kind of life for the past couple of months in fact. However, she didn't think it was possible for her to hit the ground without having to move her feet from the metal grating.

She didn't remember if she had ever fainted before, but opening her eyes to see the Doctor hovering over her meant that she had done just that.

Her head felt heavy and her body wasn't exactly working the way she wanted it to.

"Are you okay?" The Doctor asked touching her cheek lightly with the back of his hand.

She hated the tone in his voice, she wasn't an invalid for crying out loud, but the panicked look in his eyes must have meant that she had giving him a good scare.

"You okay?" He repeated lifting her slowly into a sitting position, "Donna." He said sternly.

Her blue eyes shot up to him and she realized that she hadn't said anything.

Swallowing down her pride, she nodded, "Yes. I'm fine. What happened?"

The Doctor's body relaxed as he pulled out the sonic screwdriver from his breast pocket, "I don't really know exactly what happened, you were standing there when I said that I wanted to take you to Shan Shen, and boom out you went like a light."

Donna cringed inwardly at the whirling of the device came too close to her ear, but at the moment she wasn't really in the mood to say anything about it. She would let him live up to his namesake for the time being.

"I wish I knew what caused you to go down like that." He muttered as the sonic disappeared once more inside his suit, the results being negative.

She brought her hand to her face wiping away a bead of sweat off her forehead; she knew what made all the oxygen leave her brain and made her crash like a sack of potatoes. It was as if she had entered the 'Twilight Zone' without wanting to and there had been no way out except to leave the waking world momentarily.

Shan Shen. Of all God forsaken names to say, it had to be that one.

Donna looked up at the Doctor and grasped his wrist forcefully, "We're not there are we?" Her voice low and drained, "Please tell me that we're not there?"

"Not where, Donna?" He took a deep breath, "We're in the TARDIS, we have been for…"

"I know we're in the TARDIS!" She shouted at him, her frustration hitting him severely and his eyes fell from her face, "I mean," She lowered her voice and tried not to yell at him anymore, "Shan Shen? Are we on Shan Shen?"

The Doctor lifted his head and lowered it slowly, "Yes, I managed to land us there just after you passed out."

Donna stared at him; "You landed the TARDIS before seeing if I was alright?"

"I had to," He quickly told her, "we were in mid flight. It wasn't as if she could land by herself."

She realized right away that the reason her temper was beginning to flare was not because of the man sitting next to her, trying to see to her safety, but because of what was on the other side of those doors. A world she had never been too, never even heard of until last night and now from the Doctor. And that was what frightened her most, the fact that she had learned of that planet from the dream, that damn stupid dream.

'Dreams don't have meanings, Doctor?' She thought to herself. She guessed it was about time she told him that he was wrong.

She was going to have to tell him, everything. But, first…

"Can we leave please?" Donna asked him calmly, her demeanor composed and carried no hint of the extreme terror she had bottled up inside her.

The Doctor shifted on the balls of his shoes, "What's the matter?"

She shook her head, noticing that the Doctor was staring at her a bit too closely; 'if he tries to read my mind…I swear…'

"Nothing, really, I just don't want to go here. Let's go somewhere—uh, quiet. Not like the Library quiet, but where there's not a lot of people." She was rambling, that's what tended to happen when fighting off blinding fear.

The Doctor, with all his wisdom and intellect, could not figure her out at times. She was just another mystery the universe held for him to try and decipher, he loved the unknown. More importantly, he loved her. It wasn't hard to do so either, even with all that fire and ice she gave him, the real Donna was deep within and he had uncovered just enough to be let in. He would always be happy that she did.

And now, with her telling him to set the TARDIS onto another destination without any explanation, he was worried that that tumbled had done more than frighten the hell out of him. It would be his luck to find love once more and have it rip from him, like Rose.

But, there was nothing that could be done when his sonic informed him that there had been no injury sustained to her. He just hoped that that included her sanity as well.

Still, he couldn't deprive her of anything, and he stood and went to the controls, setting a new destination, leaving the unseen world of Shan Shen behind.

Donna released a sigh of relief as she felt the TARDIS move once again, thanking the Doctor silently for listening to her even though she sounded half mad. She wanted to slap herself for acting like a silly goose, but she shrugged off the feeling and smiled to herself.

The TARDIS landed once more, but this time she was aware of what was happening.

"There we are." The Doctor said looking down at her and offering his hand.

She took it and was raised to her feet and into his waiting arms. Burying her head into his chest, Donna could feel her anxiety diminishing; she of course knew that he wasn't going to let her go quite so easily. He was the pushing type and she was going to have to tell him that she had been scared. Scared of the fact that a dream had convinced her to leave a planet she had never been too, nor knew if anything was going to happen at all. She hated feeling as if there was nothing she could do to control her life, destiny or fate was nothing more than fantasized fabrications told to children to keep them from knowing what life was truly about.

Apart from her flying around with an alien and that some things like time travel is actually true, she could not believe that her life was preordained and she was simply going along for the ride. Cause if that was true, what would be the point in doing anything?

The Doctor laid a kiss on the top of her head, feeling her breath slowly as she returned to her senses. His arms held her a bit too tightly, but he wasn't letting go of her anytime soon.

"Doctor?" She whispered into his chest before pulling away and looking into his eyes.

He watched her and waited for her to continue.

"I have to tell you something, but I don't want you to laugh or look at me funny, cause I'm not crazy. At least I don't think I am." Donna told him as she shifted on the spot, she could see in his eyes that he already doubted her.

But, he nodded and took her hand in his, "Let's get some tea and sit in the kitchen where it'll be more comfortable? Okay?"

She let herself be led by him, her mind trying to remember every detail; it was not an easy thing to do. She had hoped that it wouldn't come to this, now it was upon her to tell him something he was sure to push back and rationalize.

Donna sipped the hot liquid slowly, breathing in the aroma and letting it fill her as it had done so many times in the past, but this time the feeling was different; more comforting and it was easy for her to begin.

The Doctor held the yellow mug with two hands, letting his cool flesh embrace the warmth the tea was emitting. He was staring at her, trying with all his might to keep his mouth closed, and his internal annotations to a minimal as he had promised.

"I had a dream last night that you took me to Shan Shen." She had said it quickly and made sure that she was looking him directly in the eyes when she did. "And before you ask, yes, it was called Shan Shen, because that's what you told me it was…in the dream. It looked like a version of Chinatown, apart from the fact that it was way across the universe."

The Doctor's eyes had widened considerably, he had visited the planet on several occasions and he had never told the woman before him about it. There would have been no way of her knowing the environment of Shan Shen. Even with all the brilliance Donna had she still wouldn't have been able to guess such things.

Donna saw his face tighten with confusion, and she knew that she had already managed to worry him, she sighed softly, if he only knew that wasn't even the half of it.

"On Shan Shen I had met up with this fortune teller, she wanted to read my fortune, and I was reluctant; at first, but I complied and we went inside her tent. Taking a hold of my hand, she told me that my past could have been different, different from the life that I was living. It was just a matter of a choice, one tiny decision that I had made without even thinking about it." Donna paused and looked at the Doctor.

"What choice? What did you do?" He asked, his hands grasping the cup tighter.

She chuckled lightly, "I turned left. It was a just an ordinary day, and it was before I worked at H.C. Clements, my mum tried to talk me into going to work at a more permanent job."

"Your mother?"

Donna nodded, "Yeah. And this fortune teller…she did something to me, and suddenly I was in my car with mum, and I didn't turn left, but instead I turned right." Her eyes had looked away from his and she was now staring down at the table, her mind rambling attempting to recall everything.

"Then something bad happened, I was walking one night and I pasted by an ambulance where members of U.N.I.T were loading a body into the back of it…" Tears began to well up in her eyes and the Doctor grasped her hand in encouragement.

"Tell me, whatever it is." His voice coaxing her gently, wanting to know more; needing to know.

Taking a shuddering breath she continued, "The person's hand fell from the gurney and it dropped something onto the ground—it was your sonic screwdriver."

The Doctor squeezed her hand, his long fingers holding constricting around hers, and yet he made no sound.

She tried to smile at him, reassuring him that this was just a dream and he was still apart of the living world.

"You had drowned at the bottom of the Thames when you were fighting the Racnoss."

He sat back in his seat, still holding her hand, staring at her as if she had just sprouted another head.

Donna allowed him to say something and when he didn't she went on, "It was then I met someone; a woman, and she was looking for you, but I had told her that you had died, she was very upset by this. Which she had responded by telling me to get out of the city, as quickly as possible." She screwed her eyes shut, "I don't exactly remember how, but I just remember watching with mum and gramps a replica of the Titanic fall from the sky and hit London. It killed everyone."

"Christmas day." The Doctor commented, "It was Christmas day." His voice was tight with emotion, and he had let go of her hand.

"Yeah, it was." Donna didn't need to know how he knew; it was very obvious that her dream had not been some unconscious invention, but something very real indeed.

"I met the woman again, this time it was when the Sontarans had invaded. She told me about Martha, she had died on the moon, and that a Sarah Jane Smith had saved the day. And as the gas burned away from the sky and the Sontaran fleet blew up above us, she said that a man named Jack Harkness and his Torchwood team had just died saving the world. And this was all because of me." Donna whispered the last word.

The Doctor nodded in understanding, "Because you weren't there to stop me in the first place. This in turn, left all those things I did undone. This woman, who was she?"

Donna lowered her eyes, "She said that the stars were going out, and that the darkness was coming. Do you know what that means?" She asked, ignoring his question for the time being.

"No."

"She said one more thing to me, before she vanished. She said that I was going to have to die, in order to make things right." Donna's voice hitched, "That's when I was back at the fortune teller's tent, and this thing had fallen off my back…like Lucius had said, remember?"

"'There's something on your back'." He repeated the words slowly, "What was it?"

Donna shrugged, "Some kind of large beetle, it scared the hell out of me." She told him with a small grin, "But the thing is, I didn't die in my dream, seems kind of odd that she would tell me that and it didn't happen, isn't?"

He didn't answer, he felt his hearts pound slightly harder within his chest; it was a thought that had always made him wary of having her leave his side for very long. He loved her alive, it was one of her best attributes.

"Do you know who this person was?" The Doctor asked the back of his mind he had an inkling that she did and wasn't telling him for his own good.

Donna opened her mouth, but no words came out. Taking a deep breath, she tried again, "Does the words 'Bad Wolf' mean anything to you?"

He was sure his hearts had stopped completely, "Rose." He whispered, his head spinning a million miles a second. It wasn't possible, it just wasn't. Dreams are funny things, they are so vivid sometimes, and yet the things that she knew…

Donna gazed at him as her own mind thought back; she had once wandered into Rose's old room by mistake. She had stayed longer than she should have, but she was curious of the young woman who had captured the Doctor's hearts. Her belongs were still in the same spot she was sure Rose had left them, the walls were decorated with various pictures of, she could only assume was Rose and the Doctor. And when she had seen the woman appear to her in the dream, she recognized her instantly. There was also another moment in which she had seen the blonde young woman, and it was in that moment she realized where.

"It's not possible." The Doctor whispered to himself.

"What isn't? Doctor?" She asked as she came back to the present.

The Time Lord had left his chair and was now pacing the length of the kitchen, with Donna's eyes following him with each pass he made.

"She's in a parallel world, no technology to cross, no gap to do so." He was muttered, as one hand dived into his pocket and the other went to riffling through his hair.

"She must have found a way, I mean this dream isn't the only time I've seen her." Donna told him calmly.

His eyes snapped back to hers, "What do you mean? You've seen her before? Impossible."

She nodded her head, "Remember when we were leaving the Adipose factory, and I told you that I still had the car keys on me?"

The Doctor shook his head a tad impatiently, wondering where exactly her point was.

"Well, I threw them into a bin and told this girl that my mother would be by to collect them. I told her to tell my mum that they were the trash, and that girl was Rose." Donna stood and went to him, "She must have found a way Doctor, she's managed to come back."

A smile swept across his face, as the reality of it sunk into his brain. The woman whom he thought was gone from his life forever was now trying to find him, trying so hard to come back into his life.

And Donna said nothing. There was nothing more to say, she had done enough. She knew that this relationship would not last for long; she had expected it to last longer than it did.

She could tell by the look in his eyes that his mind was only on one person, and it certainly wasn't on the red headed temp in front of him.

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I am very sad by the lack of reviews. :( ----- see