Author's Notes: I do not own Doctor Who. Thanks again for the reads, reviews and follows. I appreciate it. Let me know what you think.

The boat.

It all had to do with the boat.

"I mean, it's the boat, right? That boat has to go somewhere, if this is the river Styx or some outer space version of the Styx, it'll take me back where that lot came from, won't it? That's the idea, right?"

The trio of green-scaled alien children stared up at Donna blankly.

"This is the bit where either you tell me I'm brilliant or I've lost my mind," Donna said.

The alien children's father called for them and they were off. Probably glad to be, Donna decided.

The Doctor and Mayantha were off on another excursion, which was just as well with Donna because she wasn't willing to break the bad news to him yet. Not before she had proof or knew what the hell was going on. She had since come to the conclusion that the only way to do that was on the boat.

She watched as a purple skinned family talked in front of the dock. What Donna presumed was a mother was crying as her boy stepped back on the boat. It was hard to tell. Donna followed him onboard and hid behind a pylon as the boy waved goodbye. That's when she spotted the Doctor on the shore. He was walking with Mayantha and spotted her just as the boat set off.

"Donna! What the hell are you doing?!"

Oh, that was a change.

Donna sat down and waited. It didn't take as long to get to the underworld as Donna thought it would have. She followed the purple teenager out and followed him into a gleaming building. The boy was scanned by two blue skinned people and then he disappeared.

"What did you do?!," Donna shouted.

They looked up. They were surprised to see her and fussed with what appeared to be wristwatches.

"You heard me! What's going on? What the hell is this place?"

The woman spoke and it finally clicked into English. "There we are. Can you understand me now?"

"Yes," said Donna.

"My apologies, your species is uncatalogued. What are you precisely?"

"Human," said Donna.

"That's not what the scan shows," says the man. "It looks like some kind of parasite-"

"It's a baby!," Donna spat. "Don't you dare do anything to her."

"We've never had a human visitor before," said the woman. "What brought you here?"

"I'm asking the questions," said Donna. "What is this place? What do you do here?"

"This is the Reckoning."

"Oh, well, that's not scary at all," said Donna. "What happened to that boy?"

"He was returned to the database," said the man.

"The database?"

"How did you find out about the Reckoning?," asked the woman.

"Why is that so important?"

"Because you don't seem to know what this place is for."

"Then why don't you tell me?"

"The Reckoning is a place for people to come say farewell to their loved ones."

"What do you mean? You bring them back?"

"In a manner of speaking," said the woman. "We take their psychic imprint and use it to create a visage. That visage is fully interactive and adaptive, created in the memory of their loved ones."

Donna was appalled. "And people pay you? Are you making money off it?"

"It's a kindness."

Donna thought about the place. "So, you make everything perfect and you give them the best possible day ever and then take them away?"

"They get a chance to say goodbye, most of them didn't have that. The visages only leave when the family is ready."

"You don't seem to get it," said Donna. "My husband. He's never ever going to be ready and when he finds out about this he is going to flip out. We're talking full Oncoming Storm flipping out. We didn't understand what this was, he just got a psychic distress call- wait, how did he?"

The two looked at each other.

The woman spoke. "You mean the anomaly."

"We had never encountered a Time Lord visage," said the man. "We thought they were a legend. Then she appeared in the system and she could interact with the programming. We thought we shut down the distress signal in time and wiped the visage clean."

"How did she get in there in the first place?," asked Donna.

"All the species here are telepathic. On occasion, the pain of one can be so great that it stretches across the stars and finds its way here."

"She came from the Doctor," Donna concluded.

"The visage appeared and joined the boat and then we saw she had visitors. It was a kindness."

"Did you think about maybe putting up a caution sign?!," Donna spat. "Sorry, these people aren't real? Something to that effect?"

"They're as real as the visitors want them to be," said the man.

"Really real," said Donna. "He wants her to be really real, but she's not. Don't you understand? He's lost everything and I mean everything and you offered one little piece of that back."

"The visages are not meant to be permanent-"

Donna shot a glare at the woman. "Mayantha. She was called Mayantha and she was his little girl and he watched her die. If you're going to make a mockery of people, you ought to bloody well know who they are."

"They are only a tool to aid in grieving," said the woman.

Donna felt the fluttering in her stomach again.

"There wasn't another boat scheduled," said the man.

Donna looked back. The Doctor was coming off the dock with Mayantha in hand.

"Donna, what the hell did you go here for?," asked the Doctor. He took her hand. "What were you thinking? Come on."

"Doctor, I have to tell you something." She motioned at the two workers. "Actually, they have to tell you something."

"Tell me what?"

Mayantha asked a question in Gallifreyan. The Doctor said something back then turned back to Donna.

"This isn't real, Doctor. She's not real."

"What do you mean?"

Donna turned back to the woman. "Would you mind telling him again with all the big words?"

The woman froze.

Donna grunted. "Thanks. This place, they use your memories to make people, for a few days, just so you can say a proper goodbye."

"Donna, stop it."

"I'm sorry, Doctor-"

"Stop it! Just stop it!"

"Sweetheart..."

The Doctor turned to the man. "What's the process you use to make the memories into flesh?"

"A biomolecular psychic conductor matrix."

"So what keeps it from becoming permanent?"

Donna really didn't like the way this conversation was heading.

"The field around the planet keeps the process in check."

"Yes, but how do I get it to exist outside the field?"

"That's not recommended."

"Do I seem as if I care?," he asked.

"Doctor, what are you doing?," asked Donna.

"What does it seem like I'm doing?"

"It sounds as if you're trying to keep her."

"Yes, that would be it."

Donna thought she would have to pick her jaw up off the floor. "You are kidding me."

"I wouldn't joke about this."

"I agree. It's not funny!"

"This is happening, Donna." He pulled the brainy specs out of his pocket. "Now, take me to that matrix."

The Doctor walked off with the man. Donna and Mayantha were left staring at each other.

"So," said Donna, "how's it going?"

Mayantha shrugged. Donna smiled.

"You don't look like your mum at all," said Donna. "I suppose you must take after one of his regenerations. You do remind me a bit of Jenny, though."

Mayantha again shrugged.

"Oh, Jenny, she was... oh, this is hopeless." Donna looked at the female technician. "You said they were adaptive?"

"Yes, fully."

"So, you could add a language? I've seen the Matrix. Laurence Fishburne plugs in Keanu Reeves and suddenly he's a genius. Could you add in English?"

"This is how she was remembered."

"Yes, but I need to talk to her and I don't have time to learn Gallifreyan. Teach her English."

"It's highly unusual-"

"That's unusual?! Bringing people back from the dead, that's not unusual?!" Donna leaned forward. "Look. I don't know what alien court I have to sue you at, but you can bet I'm going to find it and your granchildren are going to be in litigation for this kindness."

The technician straightened up and went to work. She punched in some keys as Donna looked at Mayantha. Her head straightened for a minute.

"My word," she said in a posh accent, "that's quite something. Wait, that's English?"

"Yeah," said Donna.

Mayantha nodded. "New language. That's weird..."

"Did your dad tell you who I am?"

"Yes," said Mayantha uneasily, "you're his wife."

"And do you know what happened to you?"

"I died. Then I was here... How did I get here?"

"That's the thing. This place, it uses people's memories to bring back their loved ones for a little while. So they can say goodbye."

"Dad picked me?"

"I don't know if it was intentional, but, yes. Why? Does that surprise you?"

"It's just that there were so many others."

"Mayantha, I don't know what you think, but your dad loves you-"

She shook her head. "Time Lords don't-"

"I know what you all say, but he does. That toy of yours? The Scallofrax? He's always kept it. Always. He told me about you, how clever you are, how proud he was of your position at the Temple. How kind you are."

Mayantha looked around at the screens and computer. "If this is all one enormous psychic database, then I'm not really here."

"No, sweetheart, I'm sorry. You're not. I would give anything for you to be here, I would."

"I'm just a psychic projection."

"He's trying to figure out how to make you permanent."

"What?," asked Mayantha. "He can't do that. I'm just... Why has he done this? What's wrong?"

"I don't get it all, but he hasn't been right lately. He's been thinking about everyone he's lost, everyone he thinks he's wronged."

Just then the Doctor returned. "Alright, that conductor matrix needs an upgrade, but I think I have the parts on the TARDIS."

"Dad," said Mayantha.

The Doctor looked at Donna. "What did you do?"

"I had to talk to her," said Donna.

"She was right," said Mayantha. "Have you lost your mind? What would Mother say?"

"She's not here and that's the point, Mayantha."

"Donna is, though, and she knows this isn't right."

"It's an existence," the Doctor protested.

"That's not enough," said Mayantha. "It's not life. I'm a mockery of what I really was."

"No-" said the Doctor.

"You can't keep me like this, it's not right. I had my own existence, not just your perception of me."

"That can come back in time."

"How?"

"I can make it come back," said the Doctor. "I promise."

"I'm gone, Dad."

"No, you're not, you're here-"

"The Daleks attacked, remember? The first time they hit Gallifrey, the ground shook-"

"Mayantha, don't," warned the Doctor.

"The glass shattered, remember? And I couldn't see, but Mother came and then you came. You had that stupid long hair then."

The Doctor shook his head. "Please, don't."

"And you begged me not to go, you begged me, but I couldn't hold on and I couldn't regenerate and I had to go-"

"Stop it!"

"And I couldn't. And you can't expect me to now because I can't hold you here."

Donna watched as Mayantha shoved the technician away from the keyboard and started tapping away. The Doctor tried to rush over and he did just as Mayantha vanished as the boy had.

The Doctor stood there completely stunned.

"What happened?," he asked. He turned to the technicians. "Where did she go? Get her back!"

The technician looked. "She purged herself from the database."

"So? We'll do it again, only I'll get it right this time," said the Doctor. "I can bring her back. I know I can."

"Doctor," said Donna, "she asked not to come back. Not like this."

"Then I'll change that, I'll take it away."

"Then she's not Mayantha, is she?," asked Donna.

The Doctor stopped and turned to her. "She's my daughter, Donna."

Donna nodded. "I know. I know."

He collapsed into her arms again without a word. He didn't need any.

"I know," she said.

The Doctor and Donna sat back on the boat silently as they hitched a ride with some of the visages off to see their families. They walked past silently and got back in the TARDIS. Donna replaced the dematerialization circuit and the Doctor set them silently in the Vortex.

"Have you thought about why this Reckoning place is like that?," asked Donna.

"What about it?," the Doctor grumbled.

"It's so you can remember your loved ones happy. You try to never remember anyone and when you do, you remember them miserable. You remember Mayantha dying when you could remember her happy. She wasn't always dying."

"I can't do that, Donna."

She turned to him. "You need to try," she said sternly.

"You don't get to decide how I remember," he said walking away. She knew he was headed for his blasted Zero Room and she was headed straight for more hell.

Donna straightened up. "No, but I do get to decide how I live my life and if you're not even going to try, then I think you were right."

The Doctor stopped and turned. "Right about what?"

"When you said I should go home."

They stood there in stony silence, only the hum of the TARDIS could be heard.

A/N: I know. Cliffhanger. I don't even have a clever simile today.