Author's Notes: I do not own Doctor Who, the Duplicate Doctor, Alternate Donna. Does anyone own Alternate Donna? Just a thought. Anyway, thanks for the reviews and reads and follows. I appreciate it and I love hearing from you. So, just to issue a reminder/warning, I'm going seriously non-canon on the whole River/Amy situation here which you probably guessed by the presence of Jeff a few chapters ago. I know, poor Rory, but maybe he won't have to die as many times in this universe. I mean, it's an Alternate Universe, that's what the whole thing is based on. Anyway, enjoy and please, please let me know what you think of the chapter.

She was going.

John was surprised by how affected he was at this moment, even though he had known it was coming and had insisted upon it. Today was the day Mayantha was going home.

To Gallifrey. Some place he would probably never go again and even if he did, it wouldn't really be his home. It was another Gallifrey, just one of the billions of possibilities of what Gallifrey could be, but that didn't stop him from wondering about it.

It was alright. She was supposed to go. She had to go home to her family, she had a life, such a great big life to lead and John was sure that keeping an ex-Time Lord company was around the last thing she needed to be doing. She had a career and so many brilliant ideas. Donna had pried about boyfriends and Mayantha had revealed there was one suitor, some young man that worked at TARDIS cultivation, but he was intimidated by her father.

John liked the sound of that. Good for the Doctor.

He kept having to remind himself that this wasn't his Mayantha. His Mayantha was so long gone, murdered by the Daleks during their first attack of Gallifrey, the prime of her life being robbed by a war she had nothing to do with starting. The Doctor had been to some dark places in his soul after that, temporarily shell-shocked, his only daughter taken. He had wondered about the time back on Skaro with Sarah Jane and Harry, if he had made the right choice in not ending the Daleks then. In those days, if he could have gone back and done it over, if it had meant getting his daughter back, he would have.

John wasn't so sure that it wasn't in part what he had been thinking of on the Dalek Crucible. Donna next to him, pregnant with another daughter, one that was also in danger of being taken too soon by a war she certainly had nothing to do with. The hell if they were going to take another daughter...

"Hey." John felt a light touch on his wrist as Donna sat next to him. They were in the back garden, they had invited Adeola, Jack and Gwen over to say farewell to Mayantha as well and were enjoying the beautiful day, playing a game of frisbee. "You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"The angst bit," Donna said with a tiny smile. "You're thinking about her alternate, aren't you? Your Mayantha."

"Yeah..."

"It's okay, you know. You're allowed to think of her."

"The Doctor had this ability to put things away, keep memories away, I don't have it."

"Well, I don't think that's true," said Donna.

John looked at Donna.

"Why'd he take up with Alternate Me then? You said he tried to deny it at first, then what?"

"It was too hard to be alone."

She squeezed his hand. "You don't have to be."

John smiled at her. He looked up to see a man heading towards him, the one Mayantha had tried to talk to.

He knew that look. It was usually on the face of someone's mother...

"Jeff!," shouted Jack.

The man slugged John.

"Oi! What the hell do you think you're doing walking into my back garden and hitting my husband!," shouted Donna.

Mayantha got in between Jeff and Donna, who seemed ready to strike. There had been about enough of trespassers in the Smith-Noble home. "Jeff, that's not him. That's not the Doctor."

"Sure looks like him."

"Well, he's not," said Mayantha. Despite her youthful appearance, she had all the authority that would be expected of a Time Lady when she spoke. "If you have something to say, you may say it to me."

"Did your dad send you alone?," Jeff asked angrily.

"Yes, yes, he did," said Mayantha. "He wanted me to tell you something."

"Oh, yeah, what's that?"

John straightened up, rubbing his jaw. Gwen and Jack were at Mayantha's side. Adeola was holding on to the kids. Mayantha walked closer to Jeff.

"He knows it was you, Jeff," said Mayantha.

"Knows what was me?"

She swallowed. "He knows you led the Silence to Gallifrey. That's how they found it, that's how they took my sister."

"Whoa," said Jack.

"He knows you did it," said Mayantha. "He wants me to tell you you're forgiven. You were always forgiven."

"I don't want his forgiveness. I would do it again," said Jeff.

"Yes, he knows that and that's why he hasn't told the High Council."

"I don't need favors from him. He took my daughter from me. My marriage is over thanks to him, Amy's seeing some nurse!"

"I'm sure he'll be sorry to hear that," said Mayantha. "Had he been able to do other than he did, I know he would have."

"Time Lords," snorted Jeff.

"I think you've said enough," said John.

Jeff looked at John. He may not have been the Doctor, but John could tell that he had enough of the Doctor's fury in his eyes to scare him. It must have been why Jeff hadn't told him this in person in the first place. So, what could Jeff do? He left.

John looked at Mayantha. She seemed upset by what had just transpired and John understood completely. There was nothing like a disgruntled companion to ruin a Time Lord's day.

"Alright," said Donna, "now that's done, let's have some cake and ice cream, shall we?"

Finally, it came to the moment where John, Donna and Mayantha were in the sitting room standing outside her TARDIS. Donna had just given Mayantha what she swore was her last hug and Mayantha looked at John as she held the tin of chocolate banana biscuits he had baked for her.

"I'll come back and visit," said Mayantha. "I don't know when. It'll probably be a long time for me and hopefully not too long for you."

"Do come back," said Donna. "We'll keep your room ready."

"What are you going to tell the Time Lords about me?," asked John.

"I'll tell my mum and dad the truth, the High Council just needs to know the Master's body was disposed of properly."

"Don't know if I would call it proper..." John muttered.

Mayantha handed John a black leather case. "Here. Psychic paper in case you need anything. Might take some work to get it through the barrier, but we'll get it eventually."

"Psychic paper?," asked Donna.

"Yeah," said John. "I'll explain later."

Mayantha checked her watch. "This is it."

John nodded. Mayantha smiled and gave him one more hug. They said goodbye and she stepped into her TARDIS. Donna squeezed John's hand as they watched it disappear.

"You're going to miss her, aren't you?," asked Donna.

"I'm fine," said John.

She hugged him. "You're so not," she said wryly.

Mayantha's TARDIS materialized in the drawing room of the family home on Gallifrey. She stepped out, sad at having just left John and Donna, happy to see her native two suns hanging in the sky.

"I'm home!," said Mayantha.

"Oh, were you gone?," she heard her father say from the hall. He stepped in the drawing room and adjusted his bow tie, playing at being casual.

"Yeah, I just went out for some milk."

"You were meant to be home a month ago," said the Doctor.

"I made some friends and besides, I brought chocolate banana biscuits," she said holding up the tin John had given her.

The Doctor opened them and took a sniff. "These smell homemade. Who did this?"

"You did," said Mayantha. Her father looked at her with concern. "Well, sort of."

"Let's get some tea and you can tell me all about it."

Donna had gone to meet the kids at school and take them to their appointments with the child psychiatrist. John was alone in the sitting room, trying to focus on how to reorganize the department when he returned to work on Monday, but his mind kept drifting to Mayantha and Gallifrey and the other Doctor. The doorbell rang and John welcomed the opportunity to stop pretending he was working and leapt to answer it.

He was surprised to see the woman who he had met that day in Leadworth, the one who had mistaken him for the Doctor, Amy Pond. She didn't look angry, if anything, she just seemed a bit sad.

"Hi," said Amy. She stared at him forzen for a minute. She paused. "Sorry, oh my God, you look just like him."

"Come in."

Amy came in.

"I'm sorry for intruding like this, I just wanted to see Mayantha."

John drew a deep breath. "Well, I'm sorry to say she's left. She had a specific time she had to go home at."

Amy nodded. "Yeah, of course. I should go."

"What happened with your daughter?," asked John.

Amy stopped her exeunt and turned to face John.

"I tried to get the story out of Mayantha and she told me some, but I got the impression it was hard for her. Then your husband visited the other day..."

Amy rolled her eyes. "That's just like Jeff." She paused. "They took my baby from me and they made her a cold-blooded killer, she was damaged, so damaged beyond all hope."

John motioned for Amy to sit and she took a place on the sofa. John sat down across from her.

"And the Doctor killed her..." John said softly.

Amy shook her head. "No, that's on me."

"What do you mean it's on you?"

"River, she came to me. She said she wanted to chat. See, she had this diary she kept track of her meetings in because they were out of order..."

"Oh..." John said noncommittally, remembering what had happened at the Library.

"She bragged to me about killing. She bragged about having the Doctor's daughter with her, stealing her from her nursery and I begged her to give the Doctor back his baby."

"Because you knew what it felt like..."

"Yeah," Amy nodded, "exactly. River said the Doctor could have his daughter back over his dead body. She went to say hi to my husband and I looked in her diary and saw where the last entry was and so I called the Doctor."

"Then why did Mayantha say that her father had?"

"I don't know if you've noticed, but the Doctor has a talent for guilt."

"Yeah, I've noticed," said John.

"He felt badly about what had happened. He always wants to save everyone. He didn't want what happened to come between Jeff and I." She sighed. "He wasn't the same when I called him, you know, he just looked like a shell of himself, he told me he had been searching for twenty years, on his own. He really doesn't do alone well."

John smiled wryly. "Neither do I."

"So, I asked to go with him and he agreed. I thought it was to make sure he didn't hurt River but we got there and we found his daughter and I thought he had looked bad. She was so much worse. She was just six and the Silence had been raising her, brainwashing her, they didn't even tell her who she was, what she was and still, somehow, she was fighting against it, hanging on to whatever little piece of a Time Lady was in her soul and they punished her for it... And I knew my daughter was responsible, which made me sick." Amy's eyes were filled with water as she spoke.

"It wasn't your fault, Amy, she'd been taken from you."

"Just because it wasn't my fault, doesn't change anything and it didn't change that there was another little girl who still had a chance. It was the only choice at the time."

John nodded. "You did what you thought was best."

Amy shook her head. "It doesn't make me feel any better."

"It never does."

Amy appraised John. "You're different than my Doctor, aren't you?"

"I suppose so. My experiences are much different than his, darker. Where I'm from, the Doctor's alternate is the last of his kind. He fought in a war where he had to kill the rest of his people in order to save the rest of creation."

"So, I suppose you understand then."

John nodded. Amy Pond might have been young, but John had known by her eyes she was older than she looked or at least she felt older. He supposed she would have to, given what she had just told him. The awful realization that her child was a monster, realizing what was necessary. He saw in her something like a kindred spirit and he had an idea.

"I've taken up too much of your time..." said Amy getting up from the sofa.

"Amy, what do you do?"

"What do I do?" She was puzzled by the question.

"Where do you work?"

"I work in a shop."

"How long did you travel with the Doctor?"

"A couple of years, I suppose. Why?"

John drew a deep breath. "I wonder if you would consider taking a position at Torchwood. See, I've just been made head of the Extraterrestrial Desk and I have very few employees that have experience with actual extraterrestrials."

Amy shook her head. "I don't think I'm qualified, I haven't been to university, I used to be a kiss-o-gram-"

"Degree holders I have and I don't think we have any kiss-o-grams on staff, but I need people who aren't afraid of aliens, who can deal with them and are actually interested in talking to them. Besides, I've had some luck with shop girls." He paused, considering. "Well, a little. Much more luck with gingers."

Amy nodded. "We can try it out, yeah? Trial period."

"Trial period," John confirmed with a grin.