Chapter 3

The Tardis took him to Derania 4, a beautiful idyllic planet where the people were peaceful and the beaches and mountains were unparalleled in several quadrants. As he stepped out of those blue doors, he sighed at the sight before him. "Why did you bring me here of all places?" The stab in his hearts as he thought of how Donna had always wanted to go someplace peaceful, preferably with a nice beach. The only time they had ever managed that was on Midnight, and he had nearly been killed by a weird space creature and then nearly sacrificed by the bloodthirsty passengers trying to save their own skins by making him a Time Lord sacrifice or some such.

For once, the Tardis was silent and she resolutely closed the doors in his face in a gesture meant to make him go on and maybe try to relax a little bit.
Shaking his head at his pigheaded ship, he walked down the path figuring he that could humor her for a few hours before jumping back in and trying to find the nearest catastrophe in which he could once more lose himself.

He wasn't sure how long the trip to Derania 4 had taken, which was odd, because as a Time Lord he had a perfect sense of time, and for some reason she had taken the round about way deliberately fuzzing his perception of time before arriving. Although that could have been his own doing, there had been quite a bit of rolling on his bed with his hands clenched painfully in his hair as he had screamed and railed against the cruelties of the universe. The hours and days had melted all together as his control finally began to crack.

Memories of his lost family had tormented him, his lost people and their deaths by his hand. By the vortex, so much blood on his hands. So many lives that had touched his that had ended only destroyed in the end. While on he went, the Lonely God who only grew more wrathful and vengeful with each loss.

The chasm of loss was yawning wider and wider within him, and he knew that it would only get worse as more time passed. Donna had told him to find someone once, but she had screamed that it was supposed to be her. She had screamed that right before the end.

Stopping and slamming his fist in to a tree, he startled several Deranians nearby. Their multihued feathers ruffling as they calmly regarded the look of haggard pain in his eyes.

Are you well Traveller? May we guide you to a resting place? The twin moons shimmered in their feathers as the mind touch ghosted through him.

The touch was meant to be gentle, but in his aggrieved state it only served to aggravate his already reeling senses. He couldn't respond telepathically, not without most likely incapacitating every telepathic being in the near vicinity, so he merely nodded and croaked. "Yes that would be just brilliant." The words felt like ash, but he was loathe to offend these peaceful creatures and the Tardis obviously felt he needed to take a break from saving the universe, if even for a short while.

He followed the colorful forms down the path towards a low cluster of open sided, grass huts. Behind him, the Tardis settled and as always listened to the universe beyond.

Donna was swimming in a sea of agony, but she was only half aware of it. Her mind was oddly disjointed, memories of places she had never seen swimming through it in a daze barely beneath the level of her conscious mind. She tried to blink her eyes open and was met with a stab of white light, before hastily blinking them closed.

"Finally coming round are we? Good, I have some questions for you."

Turning her head, she grunted. "Am I in hospital? What happened? Why can't I see?"

There was a chuckle before she felt a too cool hand against her arm, squeezing too hard to be meant to be comforting. Hissing she tried to jerk her arms away. "Oi! Keep your hands to yourself Mister!"

The agony in her head intensified suddenly as she screamed as she felt like she was being tortured, the oddest sensation of butterfly wings against her mind causing her to whimper in some dim remembrance of a horrible violation.

"Your name is Donna Noble." It was a statement of fact, but the voice, male obviously, waited as if expecting a confirmation.

"My name is none of your business until you answer my bloody questions!" There was a sharp stab of pain right between her eyes in response to her demand and her mind fragmented and reeled with a vision of an orange sky, and trees with leaves that burned like silver fire.

"You are not in a position to make demands, Donna Noble. Now then, when was the last time you were with the Doctor? And what happened?"

Head cocked to the side as she squinted, finally able to make a shape out through the white daggers of light. It was the blonde haired man from the park, and he was wearing something completely different then he had been then, He was in a black suit with a black tie and for a moment reminded her of someone she dimly recalled. He had been important, but it all melted away under a fresh wave of agony. "The Doctor? Haven't been in a few weeks, I've been doing much better." She lied, "He said if I continued this way, I wouldn't even need to stay on my medication." She hated the medication and lied about taking it regularly, it dulled her mind and made her walk through the world in an even denser fog. She tossed her pill each day, and only on the truly bad days did she actually dose herself in the hopes that she would forget.

Another sharp stab and the strangest feeling of something being peeled away in her mind, as a flood of disjointed images surged through the breach. The man in the blue pin striped suit and ridiculous trainers, his eyes burning, seething with a knowledge far too old for his too young face. For some reason she knew that the blonde man meant THIS man and didn't mean her regular doctor that her mother had forced her to go to.

As soon as she latched on to that image like a lifeline, uncertain how it was in her mind or why it was so important, a searing agony burned right through her from head to toe, her head was on fire and she screamed and screamed as she felt a golden glow burning behind her clenched eyelids.

The Master stepped back and quickly smoothed the layers back in place, finally starting to piece together what was going on. A portion of the Doctor was in Donna, at least most of his intellect if the brief brushes he had against that other presence were any indication, and some of his not too inconsiderable powers. With a click, the scream he had felt from the Doctor that had pulled him to that park finally made sense. Oh this was too rich as he realized that the two were still inextricably linked.

He threw back his head and laughed, realizing that the half formed plan that had been screaming in his mind with the incessant knocking had suddenly been given a form that he had never imagined. It would definitely burn her out, but he would have to control that burning and harness it, and if anyone knew the weaknesses of the Doctor and how to control them, it was he.

"Oh Donna Noble, you have no idea what you have set in motion. Soon enough, you will be witness to the return of immortals, and it is all thanks to you and the Doctor!" His laughter echoed through the hollow chamber, as he set about figuring out how to harness the immense power within this woman, no small amount of which was her own amazing fire. No wonder she was burning up, and no wonder the Doctor with all his misguided love and compassion had locked it away rather than harnessing it till she burned. "Oh Doctor, Ever the fool."