Before and After

The man in the suit had almost made it back to the shore. With what looked like a final, enormous effort, he pulled himself free of the waves and collapsed onto the stones, gasping for breath. Above him, the sky was darkening quickly. Rain and wind obscured the view and for a second, he was motionless where he lay. Then in one movement, he was upright, turning to the right and then the left. His eyes were wild.

"Donna!" he shouted into the storm.

Nothing. He rubbed his eyes as if trying to dry them to sharpen his vision but every inch of him was drenched.

"Donna!"

He turned back towards the churning waves.

"No!"

Alice shot upright in her bed. As she looked around, trying to calm her breathing, she realised that her bedclothes were all over the floor, as if she'd fought them, as if she too had been struggling to escape from the rising waters...

This was getting weird. Alice had had strange dreams before. In her psychology courses, she'd studied dreams, analysed them, and she'd always remembered most of her own in good detail. But this was three times in a row. She'd never had the same, vivid dream three times in a row.

It always started the same way. Donna, in the water, struggling to keep her head above the furious water. She could see her friend so clearly. A purple jacket...her hair loose and clinging to her as she fought. And that man, making his way ashore, without her. Collapsing on the shore, then realising he was alone, turning around and calling for Donna.

She switched on her bedside lamp, trying to clear the room of the remnants of the dream. Everything was normal. Clothes thrown over the chair beside her, a clock ticking, the faint light from streetlamps outside. The sound of wind and rain outside. The storm was certainly showing no signs of letting up any time soon.

Should she tell Donna about the dream?

Should she track down that man she travelled with and tell him?

She didn't even know where they were or what sort of places they went to. Donna never told her much.

Would they both think she was crazy to get so worked up over a dream?

Alice lay down again and turned into the pillow, trying as hard as she could to erase the images from her mind.

A week later

"You realise what you've done?" the Doctor asked, his voice hard. Through the million things she was trying not blurt out, Jenny had a fleeting realisation that she tended to think of him as the Doctor when things were going wrong between them.

"Told you we were going to get a bollocking," Jack whispered to her, raising an eyebrow. She knew he was trying to make them both feel better but it wasn't working. It wasn't working because his attempt at a smile looked like anything but and because deep down she knew, they both knew, how stupid they'd been.

"Jack?"

The Doctor walked slowly around the console and faced them. Jack looked defiant but Jenny could tell by his sharp intake of breath that he was as uncomfortable as she was.

"Yes?"

"You're not exactly lily-white yourself, are you?"

"Am I ever?"

The Doctor didn't dignify this with an answer.

"Yeah, ok." Jack took a deep breath. "It was a week ago, alright? Ianto and I...there was this restaurant I wanted to take him to and it's kind of complicated but we'd had a bad week and I just thought what harm could it do? Just this once..."

The Doctor gave a short, mirthless laugh.

Before he turned back to Jenny, she stepped forward, anticipating him.

"I know what I've done," she said, "I know what you said and I know I should have listened but when you hear the whole story, you'll know I wasn't just being impulsive. There was a split second and I really had to act or someone would've..."

The Doctor held up a hand.

"Enough...I've heard enough." The anger in his expression was now replaced by a curious mixture of compassion and irritation.

His eyes were so sad when he spoke again.

"Somewhere along the lines, we've all contributed to this."

"You haven't," Jenny said, trying hard to keep her voice calm.

"Yes. I have. I've obviously not explained to you how important...how..." His voice rose on each syllable and he trailed off as if there were no words to emphasise his point properly.

"Maybe I've even forgotten." He sighed and looked away from them, back to the console and beyond.

"If I hadn't been so blatant about the photograph, we could have handled it more discreetly. But she's Donna's friend and she deserved to be taken seriously. I thought she needed to know that someone believed her."

Jenny couldn't decide if he was talking to them or to himself.

"She did," Jack replied quietly.

"Most of all," he continued talking as if he hadn't heard him, "if I'd been honest with you, if I'd told you from the start what we were up against...when Alice told me. But you take these things seriously and you cause disaster. You run from it and it's the first thing you run into. All of our histories are filled with stories of people who tried so hard to escape from....from dreams, prophecies, whatever you want to call them...I was trying to protect Donna."

"We know," Jack said, "Doctor...none of this is your fault."

"Can't we do anything now?" Jenny asked, "can't we go back...?" She trailed off at the expressions on both faces.

"I don't mean...do anything stupid."

The Doctor stared down at the console but when he swung back to regard them again, his face was clear.

"'Course we can!"

"What?"

"Metaphorically, of course! We sit down and we go through everything that's happened since Donna went for that visit. Before then, in fact..." He gave Jenny a stern look.

"Ok," she said quickly.

"Doctor?" Jack was watching the Doctor and there was something in his face that Jenny had never seen before.

"It's not your fault, any of it," Jack repeated, "Donna would be the first person to say that."

Jenny looked away from them and to the couch in the corner with the purple jacket thrown over it. Later on, she thought, she'd get the jacket dry and clean and hang it up nicely.

It was about the only constructive thing she could think of to do.