A/N: I can't get out of my head how much the new filming pics of Amy make me think of a teenage Donna. What's with getting a new redhead companion so soon after the loss of Donna? (Who sure as hell better not die in "The End of Time, Part Two!") And is it just me, or does anyone else think the Eleventh Doctor looks like a teenager in an old fashion tweed jacket and bow tie professor's attire? Boy, they sure do make the oddest pairing I've seen yet. Anyway...
A Noble End
Chapter Two
"You don't remember, do you?"
"Why would you ask that?"
"I can see it in your eyes: the need to remember when you can't. Granna had the same one my entire life, right up until the day she died."
A crippling pain rippled through The Doctor's chest. "Donna's – Donna's…what happened to her?"
"Old age," Amy replied quietly. She motioned her hand. "C'mon, Doctor, I think you need to come with me. There's something you need to see."
He stepped towards Amy, away from the wreckage. A black hole was forming in the pit as he stared at the immortal remains of his TARDIS. She had been the only one that been with him ever since his first incarnation and now, here on Earth in the year of 2048, she was nothing but charred rubble. "I'm sorry," he wheezed, just quietly enough to keep Amy from hearing. The Doctor turned to Amy and followed her. She was leading him down a dirt pathway, lined with miniature pumpkins, some with painted on faces. "Is it-"
"Halloween," Amy confirmed. "If you couldn't guess by the police uniform," she added, her voice laced with sarcasm. She motioned her hand down the side of her costume: a fake bullet proof vest marked Police over an ultra mini black skirt, nylons, and spiked heels.
"How old are you?" he ventured as he followed her into the kitchen via the sliding glass door from the backyard. Judging by her face and stature, he hypothesized she couldn't be more than twenty, twenty-one at the latest.
"Eighteen," she replied, leading him up the stairs. "I just started at Uni last month." She stopped abruptly at the second room on the right, opened the door, and allowed him entrance. The room was painted a pale peach color, with Victorian lace white curtains and a four poster oak bed with matching, hand carved dressers. "This was-"
"Donna's room."
"My grandparents' room," Amy finished. "But after Granna died, Grandad Lee couldn't bear to change anything, let alone stay in here anymore." She stopped at a dresser and slid her hands to the curved gold handle. "So it's just been-"
"Preserved."
"Yeah," Amy agreed. "Walking in here," she sighed, "it's like a…a time portal." She pulled back the drawer and retrieved a small stack of books, which she brought over to the bed and spread out along the silk bedspread. She patted the mattress, beckoning to The Doctor, who sat down opposite her.
The Doctor cocked his neck, gazing in awe at the books. The covers were adorned with cartoonish pictures of a flaming redhead, a blue box, a brown haired man with glasses, and ghoulish creatures in various stages of attack. "What are these?" he asked, his questioning leaving his lips as his eyes washed across the words at the top of the books.
"The Adventures of Anne B. Noodle," Amy replied, as she watched The Doctor gently pull back the cover and begin to read the pages. "Children's stories."
"Not just children's stories," The Doctor replied, his eyes alight as they grazed over cartoon depictions of a redhead in a wedding dress being transported to a spaceship. His spaceship: the TARDIS. "Our stories."
"She used to tell us all about them when we were young," Amy replied as she stroked the cover of one of the books fondly. "We ate them up like chocolate, my cousins and I. We couldn't get enough of Anne's adventures."
"Anne's," The Doctor echoed. He lifted his eyes to meet Amy's. "Anne B. Noodle…an anagram-"
Amy nodded, "For Donna Noble."
"What happened to her?" The Doctor asked, closing the book he was holding.
"How much do you remember?"
"I remember…a phone call. She was…" he pressed his hands to his temples. "…she was starting to remember."
"She was," Amy agreed, picking up another book. She handed it to The Doctor. "And her memories began to make her mind explode. She nearly died that date," she said, illustrating her point with the pictures in the book. "But you used this," she spoke, pointing to a glowing gate.
"The Immortality Gate."
"Yes. You used it to heal her rupturing mind. You had hoped that maybe it would work to heal her completely, but her memories kept leaking through, like putting a tiny band-aid over a gash. You were forced to wipe her mind again."
"And I saved her?"
"You placed her into a coma, which, yes, did save her for the time being." She could see the pain bleeding from The Doctor's eyes. "Problem was," she explained, turning the pages of the children's book, "during your subsequent battle with your arch nemesis-"
"The Master." He placed his fingers to the sides of his head, memories of The Master taking over all of Earth's inhabitants suddenly flooding back to him. His lips quivered. "Wilf. And-and-"
"Yes," Amy whispered. "Great-Great Grandfather Wilf and Granna's fiancé, Shaun, were killed that day. I'm not entirely sure how you stopped this…Master?"
"Yes."
"The Master. Obviously, Granna wasn't there for that, being in a coma and all. Nor was Great Gran Sylvia. But I'm 'ere, aren't I? As good as any living proof that you stopped The Master. Granna swore up and down when she wrote this edition of her books that Anne B. Noodle's grandfather had helped save Earth though."
"How did she wake up from the coma?"
A smile crept across Amy's red lips, almost the same color as her vibrant hair. "That would be in this book," she said, handing him another story. "You came with Anne B. Noodle's prince charming. Does he look familiar to you?"
The Doctor squinted, trying in vain to place the man depicted beside him at Anne's bedside. "No."
"Lee McAvoy."
The Doctor's head spun. "Lee McAvoy!" he rasped. He remembered how Donna had told him of her marriage to Lee in the cyber world, yet when she searched for his name, she never found it on record and assumed he had only been a cyber creation, just the same as the children they had shared in that world. "I found him?" he asked reflexively.
"Apparently so. Brought him back to Granna and," she turned the page, "like something out of a fairytale, she woke up."
"That doesn't make sense," The Doctor spoke sullenly. "If she remembered-"
"She explains it here: 'The Doctor's spaceship brought him and Alvee McOy to Anne's side for a reason, a sole purpose to stir the heroine from her Earthly slumber with a waking kiss.'"
"It's always a kiss," The Doctor chuckled. "And it really worked?"
"It really worked," Amy laughed. "When she woke up, she didn't remember a thing. Well, except that she was instantly drawn to my grandfather. It wasn't until their wedding day that she started to have flashbacks."
"That makes sense. Since her wedding was how it all started."
"Right," Amy replied, her voice cracking ever so slightly. "She remembered more and more with each passing year. And that's when she began to write the stories. She told them orally at first, to her children, Ella and Joshua-"
"Just like from the cyber world," The Doctor cut in.
"And then to us, her grandchildren. By then, they were so descript that Grandpa Lee convinced her to publish them." She opened the last book and directed The Doctor's attention to the publishing date. "She passed away only six months after the last of Anne B. Noodle's adventures were finished. We all realized at young ages that Anne and Granna were one and the same and we all though that if Anne got a happy ending, that so did Granna, but when she died, one by one we began to stop believing. Our entire lives we believed in Granna's stories, like one does Santa or the Easter Bunny, and then she just…she just left. The day she died, I stopped believing that there was a Doctor, because you," she pointed, "didn't come to save her like a doctor should."
The Doctor pressed his hands to his hearts, he could feel them beating irregularly. "I'm sorry," he whispered. He knew it didn't help. As someone who had lost his entire race, he knew those two pathetic little words never helped a lick, but he just couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Why?" Amy asked, surprising him. "As a sad, angry child who had just lost her grandmother, I didn't realize it then, but you had given me the best gifts I could ever ask for: you had fixed Granna. You saved her. And you saved my grandfather, you reunited them both with their true loves. And without that, I and my parents and my cousins, none of us ever would have existed. How can you be sorry about that?"
"Because I wasn't there to say goodbye."
Amy took his hand. "Would you like to now?"
The Doctor could feel the air around his eyes heating up, practically boiling as it humidified. "Yes."
Amy clutched The Doctor's hand, abandoning Anne B. Noodle's adventures on the bed as she led him back down the hallway and stairs from which they'd come and into a quaint living room, where two marble jars sat atop a fireplace, side by side, in front of a smiling photograph of Donna and Lee on their wedding day. "They were cremated," she explained, picking up the red marble canister that sat in front of Donna's side of the photograph. She handed it to The Doctor. "Grandpa Lee, he passed away less than two months after Granna. He couldn't bare to live without her again. And she always said that she didn't want to be buried, that she wanted to be free in the stars."
"She once told me that she wanted to travel with me forever, until the day she died," The Doctor said, clutching his fingers around the marble jar that contained the mortal remains of Donna Noble-McAvoy.
"We considered spreading her ashes in the wind," Amy replied, "but Grandpa Lee would have none of it. He said that she wanted to be in the stars and so she'd stay here with her family until someone found a way to do that. And when he died, we knew that there was only one place he wanted to be – with her – so here they both sit, waiting for a ride to the stars." She touched The Doctor's hand again.
"You're asking me to take her to the stars," The Doctor realized.
"I think it's meant to be," Amy replied, "don't you? Please, Doctor?" She pursed her lips, looking so much like Donna that the mere sight of her almost killed him. "Say goodbye to her properly."
"What about the rest of your family?" The Doctor asked. "Don't your parents and your cousins and your aunt or uncle deserve to say goodbye too?"
Amy tilted her head back. "Simone!" she called into thin air. Glancing sideways at The Doctor she explained, "That's the house, short for Simulation One."
"Yes?" a mechanical feminine voice answered.
"Please dial Uncle Joshua's number."
"Yes, ma'am."
Amy picked up her grandfather's urn as the sound of punching buttons was heard in surround sound, followed by a ringing telephone. She stroked Lee McAvoy's navy blue urn fondly, until the sound of breathing filled the room and before the person who had answered could speak she butted in, "Wilfie, is that you?"
"Amy?" a male voice answered, deep and gruff, as if the voice on the other end had just transitioned through puberty.
"It's me," Amy said, her voice quick and demanding. "Look, I need you to get everyone together, Uncle Josh, Aunt Adele, you, and your sister. Bring them over here, now."
"Now?" Wilfie complained. "We all just sat down for classic horror movie marathon, Ames."
"It's-it's an emergency," she lied. "You have to come!"
"What kind of emergency?" Wilfie asked, suspicious. "You've a'ways had a knack for being overdramatic, Ames."
"Just hurry it on over!" Amy snapped. "Trust me on this, Wilfie."
"I'll see what I can do," Wilfie grunted, before the invisible connection disappeared with a surround sound click.
"Call disconnected," Simone relayed.
"Thank you, Simone, that'll be all."
"Miss Pond," Simone interrupted. "Your roast is almost ready."
"Thank you," Amy replied, her voice terse. "That will be all." She waited, but Simone seemed to have nothing more to say, so the redhead looked to The Doctor. "Mom should be home any minute," she replied, motioning for The Doctor to follow her. "So you'll do it, yeah? For Granna? Take her to the stars?"
The Doctor clutched the urn to his chest as he followed Amy into the kitchen, where she set Lee's urn on the table and proceeded to open the oven, where a roast slid out on a conveyer, perfectly cooked. A lift carried it up to the stove and slid it onto the awaiting cooling racks. All he could do was chuckle at the ease of human inventions over time. "For Donna," he said, just loud enough for Amy to hear.