AN: I'm so sorry about the delay. It turns out I wasn't just tired or burnt out. I was sick, and I'd been sick for a long time. I'm finally starting to get my energy back, so the rest of the story should be coming either on the regular weekly schedule, or close to it.

Chapter Forty-one: The Importance of One Woman

Donna sighed and leaned back from the kitchen table when dinner was over. "That was nice."

Her mum sniffed and got up. "It wasn't anything special, just the chops I got last week. But I suppose we ought to be grateful we're alive to have dinner at all."

The critical note in her voice was one Donna was intimately familiar with, and she shared a knowing look with her grandfather. Honestly, she was surprised her mum had held off this long before listing the faults of everyone involved in the events of the day.

Donna rubbed at her neck, still sore from being blasted away from the magnetron on the Crucible. Another reason not to tell her what I do.

"Giant pepper pots rolling down the street," Sylvia continued as she started the washing up. "Just shooting everyone with lasers. Although if you ask me, whoever designed those robots really should have used something other than egg beaters. Not very intimidating, really."

Donna barely managed to suppress a snort. Of course Mum would criticise the Daleks' design. "Well, they seemed to be pretty effective," she said sardonically, "so I'm not sure they need to worry about any possible design issues."

Her mum stopped scrubbing a plate and looked back at her over her shoulder. "Oh, you saw them? I thought you would have missed them like you miss everything else."

The words barely stung. "Yeah, I saw them. They were everywhere, weren't they?"

Sylvia raised an eyebrow, then went back to doing the dishes. "I suppose so. And that's another thing! Where was the military? We had an actual alien invasion—you would think that would interest them."

Donna rolled her eyes. "How do you know they weren't involved?" she retorted, thinking of Jack and Martha. "Just because it wasn't on the telly? It's not like top-secret government agencies can really advertise what they're doing."

Her mum turned slowly and stared at her while leaning against the counter. "And I suppose you would know all about top-secret government agencies." She snorted. "The only agency you're familiar with is the temp agency."

The throbbing in her temples got worse, and Donna pulled her phone out of her pocket. "I ought to be going," she said as she sent a quick text to Rose, begging for a rescue. "I told my friends I'd meet them at seven, and it's half six now." It was only a white lie. She had told Rose her visit wouldn't last long.

She stood up and slid her phone back into her pocket. "Thanks for dinner, Mum. I'll ring later, all right?"

Sylvia rolled her eyes. "Oh, yes. It would be nice to know where you are the next time the world is going to end."

"Hopefully that won't happen for a while." Donna winced as soon as the words left her mouth—she'd probably just jinxed them, but oh well. It was too late now.

She smiled at her grandfather. "Here, I'll walk you up the hill before I go."

Wilf stood up and pushed his chair in. "Yeah, all right." The two of them walked to the back door, pausing just for a moment while he grabbed his coat.

A gust of wind blew down the hill as they shut the door behind them. "Brrr!" Donna shivered and rubbed her arms. The afternoon sun had disappeared behind clouds, and it smelled like rain.

"Here, you put this on," her granddad insisted, draping his coat over her shoulders.

"Thanks, Gramps." Donna pulled it tight around her and inhaled his familiar, comforting scent.

He nodded, then rested his hand on her back, leading her up the hill to their allotment. "You were there, weren't you?" he asked as they climbed the dirt path. "Stopping those things from destroying the Earth."

"Yeah, I was."

"I was going to call you," he said. "Stars kept going out, and I thought, 'I bet Donna could help.' And then suddenly there were planets in the sky and those pepper pots on the ground."

Donna laughed. "They're called Daleks. But they do kind of look like pepper pots, don't they?"

He nodded. "Your mother might not be impressed by their design, but you're right. It got the job done." They reached the top of the hill and sat down on the garden bench. "I tried to shoot one of them with a paint gun—thought if they couldn't see, they'd be disabled. But it just burned the paint off its eye stalk thing, and said, 'My vision is not impaired.'"

Donna pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle her gasp. She vividly remembered the way the Daleks had shot Jack. He might have come back to life, but they'd killed him stone dead first. If they'd shot Gramps…

She distracted herself from that train of thought by pulling out her phone to text Rose again. If she wanted them to pick her up, she'd need to tell them where she was.

"Going back out to the stars already?"

Donna didn't miss the wistful note in her granddad's voice. She was ready to go home, but she'd missed him while she was travelling. "I've got to, Gramps. There's just so much out there."

"Well, you tell your friends they'd better do their best to always bring you home." He gave her a crooked smile. "After all, what would I do without my favourite granddaughter?"

Donna snorted and leaned into his side. "I'm your only granddaughter," she reminded him.

He nudged her side with his elbow. "Then you have to be my favourite, don't you?"

"Oh, all right."

A familiar, companionable silence settled over them. This could have been any one of a hundred nights she'd sat out here with him, watching him tinker with his telescope or potter around the garden. Donna's throat closed, and she had to blink back the tears that threatened.

"Hey, none of that now," her granddad chided. "You've got your life, and that's a good thing."

Donna sniffed. "Well, then what are we going to talk about?"

He leaned back, resting his back against the shed behind them. "Why don't you tell me how it happened."

She took a deep breath. "Yeah, I guess I could." She stared up at the darkening sky, trying to remember the entire story. Exhaustion struck suddenly when she realised she'd been up for at least twenty hours, and her jaw split in a yawn. "But I don't even know where to start," she mumbled. "It's been… an incredibly long day."

"How did you even know the Earth had moved? Does the Doctor have an alert or something?"

"No, we were actually here when it happened. I mean. In the TARDIS, but parked on Earth." Donna pursed her lips, then nodded once. "I guess that's as good a place to start as any."

Wilf listened intently as she told him about how they'd come back to Earth because of Rose's dream, and how the disappearance of the planet beneath their feet had rocked the TARDIS.

She cringed internally when she remembered her panic. Rose and the Doctor both had family on Earth, but they'd kept their wits and focused on solving the puzzle instead of falling apart.

The revelation that there were space police in charge of enforcing galactic law impressed him. "Galactic law," he echoed silently, his lips forming the words.

He laughed when she told him about following the trail left by the bees. "There's always something those villains miss," he crowed. "One tiny little thing they're just too arrogant to think about."

Donna skipped ahead then, past the introductions to the Doctor and Rose's friends, straight to the TARDIS being taken to the Crucible.

"And that's when we found out what the planets had been taken for. The Daleks had turned them into a Reality Bomb." For a moment, Davros' voice echoed from her memory, the insane cackle as he declared the destruction of reality itself.

"A what?"

She shook her head, exorcising the memory. "They were trying to erase all of reality," she explained. "That's why the stars were going out."

"So how did you stop them?"

Donna hesitated. She still didn't understand exactly what Rose had done, or how, and she wasn't sure how much of it she should share with her granddad anyway.

She finally settled for a simplified version of the truth. "Rose managed to stay on the TARDIS when the Daleks ordered us all out. And she used the ship to dismantle the bomb. And that also got rid of all the Daleks."

Wilf took his hat off and rubbed the top of his head. "Daleks and Reality Bombs and saving the universe," he mumbled. "It's not what I thought you'd be doing when you were a girl, but I'm proud of you, Donna."

Donna flushed. "Oh, I didn't save the universe," she protested. "I was in a holding cell most of the time, or just standing there watching. Rose did most of the work, with the Doctor's help."

Her granddad shook his head. "You told me those Shadow people didn't even know about the other planets until you and Rose brought them up. And you were the one who told the Doctor about the bees disappearing."

Donna blinked. She hadn't thought she'd been any help today, not really. But Gramps was right—if she hadn't been there at the Shadow Proclamation, they might never have found the Earth at all. Rose had been the one to destroy the Daleks, with all that glowy power she had… but Donna had been the one to get them there in the first place.

"Yeah. I guess I was."

Wilf nodded and rubbed at his jaw. "I'm proud of you, sweetheart. You've finally found where you belong in life. If this is what travelling with them aliens has done for you, then I'm for it."

The wind picked up again, but this time it carried the faint wheezing of the TARDIS engines. Donna shrugged out of his coat, then kissed him on the cheek. "You know what, Gramps? So am I."