Disclaimer: This (STILL) isn't mine.
AN: You have reached chapter five of seven. This is bombarding with sadness (a warning in advance) just like the one that follows. Enjoy, as I enjoyed writing this one.
Different
Donna Noble would periodically ask her mother where she was for those fourteen months. She would ask how she missed Lilian's birthday or Violet's wedding. Mrs. Noble always had the same response for her, though: she had been in a car wreck, and had fallen into a coma for those fourteen months.
Donna wasn't really sure why she kept asking. Maybe it was because she didn't remember the crash, or because she didn't believe that she had been in a coma for so long just from a wreck. Maybe it was because nobody in town had heard she had been in a car wreck, or how her mother would always slightly tense up at the question.
But mostly it was because this little tiny tidbit in her brain kept showing her strange images, of places that must have been dimensions away or creatures that should've been from Neptune. She wasn't frightened when she thought of these things, just sad.
One day in Winter as she sat on her couch, she thought these things, and tried to remember something, anything about those months. A tear dripped, as slowly as a sloth, climbing down her cheek. She didn't know why. But she felt happy, too.
Of course, very little of her time was spent worrying these things, and it was the small things that fought her off guard, like pinstripe suits and police boxes. She would point at it, red eyebrows furrowed, and for a moment, it was as though the words were on the tip of her tongue. But then it went away, and she was back to talking with her friends and doing temp work.
Sometimes she felt sad, sitting in her office desk, and she knew that she hadn't felt like that before the crash, and she might just start being thoughtful on a lonely car drive. And everyone could tell; there was definitely something different, small, but different, about Donna Noble after that "car crash".