Author's note: This is NOT a chapter for Rose fans, so if you are one of those I recommend you move along.
For all others, this chapter came about after having rewatched the episode Turn Left. That episode always bugged me, but I could never figure out why. Rose was NOT nice to Donna in that episode at all, and this delves a bit into that. Its a housekeeping chapter leading up to their next adventure, but I could not stop this story coming out once I started writing it. MANY thanks to dm1, who is fast becoming my muse. I couldn't have given this form without your insight. :)
Donna stood in front of the mirror in her bathroom, slowly running her brush through her hair. She was wrapped in a fluffy bathrobe while her feet were bare against the cool tiles.
She was lost in thought, her mind filled with memories of the last few days. She hadn't been sleeping very well, well when they had finally tried to get any sleep that was. She had lost count of the times that they had made love, and every single time was somehow more glorious then the last.
Her body ached and twinged in all the right places, while her mind was still quivering from the memories of his touch and his soul entwined with hers. They had laughed and talked long into the night that first night, just enjoying the casual intimacy that seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
She opened up to him in so many ways, even though they were almost constantly in each other's minds now there was something so refreshing about just talking. Learning each other through their own words and touch seemed to bring the closeness to a whole new level.
She had left him sleeping as she had woken up from another strange dream, her mind spinning with all that she was remembering now. He was as exhausted as she was so she hadn't wanted to disturb him while she puzzled over the dreams that were becoming more and more common.
Her fingers set her brush down as she remembered a faint clicking near her shoulder, fingers touching the exact spot that she had now remembered feeling the mandible of the trickster.
She had forgotten so much of that alternate world when she had returned to the real world, it had all faded so quickly except for the final warning that Rose had told her to give the Doctor. Then the events on the crucible and her own loss of identity had wiped all traces of that parallel world away.
In the chaos of regaining her identity and memories, she had completely forgotten about that time she had lived in a world without the Doctor. Or she hadn't had the faculties to properly deal with that trauma on top of everything else.
However, the Ood's words of divergent timelines had sparked the memory once more and had awakened the memories that had been suppressed. It was not a conscious awakening, the memories were filtering through her thoughts in fits and starts coalescing in her dreams into a clearer picture of all that she had lived and felt in those lost two years.
She remembered now more fully Rose's involvement in that life, how she had always seemed to pop up at just the right time when yet another disaster was going to happen but she had never truly given her any direction other than to talk about how everything was wrong and that Donna was somehow the crux of it.
She jumped when she felt the Doctor pull her back against his bare chest, his arms wrapping protectively about her as he looked at her in the mirror.
She hadn't even been aware that he had been awake, hadn't felt the stretching of his thoughts within hers nor had she felt his approach because she had been so lost in her memories.
He watched her with concern, the tiny lines around his eyes deepening as he caught the echo of memories in her mind. His hands stroked up and down her arms, soothing the shivers that she hadn't been able to control. Tears were shining in her eyes when she remembered the feel of her own death, Rose leaning over her dying body so that she could send her message to the Doctor.
The Doctor pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head, eyes clenching tightly closed when he felt the remembered pain of her death from that other world as keenly as if it was happening to her right now.
"Donna? Are you alright?" His eyes were locked with hers in the mirror, trying to make sense of the tumult of her thoughts. "What's happened to suddenly make you remember all of that?"
She leaned back against him, feeling suddenly like she was falling into the dark depths of his eyes. She drew strength from his nearness, fighting the panic that had been welling in her as it all came back with a flood. Her eyes stayed locked with his, flashing back to the joy she had felt when the trickster had fallen off of her back and he had been standing right there in front of her alive and well.
"I don't know Doctor. It started when we were with the Ood really, the talk of timelines and how they diverge and how certain actions can change worlds." She tried to catch her breath, suddenly feeling as if she were running once more to try to change the world.
He continued to rub her arms, trying to soothe her even while his mind was racing. "How much do you remember of that parallel world?"
She shuddered and slid her eyes closed, feeling the memories just flood through her. "All of it now Doctor. It's like a door has been unlocked and it all just came pouring through. It didn't make sense at first, but this morning it all just seemed to fall into place."
"Tell me about it."
He took her hand and led her back into his bedroom, settling her back on the bed while he seated himself in a chair beside her. He had a feeling it was going to be a long story, and something was warning him he wasn't going to like what he heard.
She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms about them as she started to haltingly tell the tale. How something so simple as turning a different direction had changed the whole world. How it had been because of her actions that he had not died that night beneath the Thames. All the disasters that he had been able to prevent simply because her presence in that pit with him over two years ago had been the voice of reason that he sometimes lost. The voice of reason that kept him from dying.
She spoke of seeing his body being loaded into an ambulance and his cold lifeless hand sliding out from under the blanket, dropping the sonic screwdriver on the pavement before he was wheeled away.
She remembered how inexplicably sad she had felt for that nameless Doctor that had drown beneath the Thames. And that had been the first time she had remembered seeing Rose, when she had come running up to her as they had taken away his corpse.
The Doctor jerked at the mention of Rose, his mind withdrawing from hers so fast she was sent reeling.
She looked up at him, wondering if she should continue when she had felt that involuntary withdrawal from him. They never really had spoken about Rose and how he had felt about her, or even if he still did love her though she was lost forever. The thought filled her mouth with the taste of ashes.
His eyes bored into hers, his mind was reeling as suddenly he knew it was going to get a whole lot worse. "Please keep going Donna. Tell me the rest of it."
Her lips were quivering, but she nodded and ploughed on.
He winced when she spoke of the hospital being taken to the moon, and how all but one person had died. He had spoken sometimes of how he had met Martha Jones, so she knew that he was thinking about how terrified Martha must have been in her last moments of life as she and everyone in the hospital suffocated.
She spoke of the Titanic and how without his presence it had destroyed London and how she had been lucky enough to get her family out of the city for the holidays. All because of some stupid raffle. She remembered the horror she had felt when that mushroom cloud had risen in the sky, and the blast wave had rocked the posh hotel at which they had been staying.
The Sontaran invasion, the adipose where millions more died as the ships came to collect their children. And through it all Rose would appear, always right when something terrible was going to happen but with never more than a cryptic warning until the final night when she saw the stars going out one by one.
Her voice was leaden as she continued, the tears burning down her cheeks when she remembered walking through the doors of the Tardis as it was slowly dying. He was the reason why the Tardis lived as it did, and with his death it had slowly begun to decay.
She remembered the look on Rose's face when she had been sent back in time to correct the wrong that had led to all that destruction and death, how she had ended up nearly half a mile away with only four minutes to make all the difference in the world.
She remembered running like she had never run before, and the despair when she had realized she would never make it in time and that history was doomed to repeat itself.
She remembered the thought that had been uppermost in her mind as she had stepped in front of that transport, begging for that one little decision to be enough to change the world. Then she remembered Rose suddenly appearing and kneeling over her, leaning close as the breath left her body to send her message to the Doctor.
Dropping her face up onto her knees as she finished, her whole body was shivering as she reached out to his mind. His thoughts were racing, all the revelations that she had shared filling in all the little gaps that had been bothering him for far too long.
"She was there at the end with you?"
Donna nodded numbly at that. "And she did nothing to help you?"
Donna shrugged. "She told me I was going to die, that I had to die in order to make it all right."
He frowned as he leaned back, hands rising to scrub over her face as he blew out an angry breath. She jumped when he touched her mind once more, pulling her essence close to his and entwining himself within her again.
She cocked her head, surprised by the rage that she felt simmering within him. "What is it Doctor?"
"When you first told me that you had seen her in that other world, I had just assumed that she had been there to get that message to me. I didn't realize that she lived all that with you, I didn't realize that she was right there right when you needed her most and she did nothing." He pushed out of his chair and started pacing, his arms crossed over his chest as he continued. "She could've used her dimension jump to get you to just the right place in plenty of time. She even told us as much when she was here, that the dimension canon could measure timelines. That you were the center of it all, that all the timelines in the universe were converging on you. She could've traveled with you through the time machine and then given you the dimension jump to make sure that you were able to change the world without having to die like you did."
He didn't like that at all, he didn't like that she had stood over Donna's dying body and had done nothing to help her even though the Donna that lay there dying would soon cease to exist.
"But Doctor, in the end none of it happened. I made the change and reality reasserted itself, why are you so angry?" Though she knew the answer even before he said it, he was angry at Rose and he was angry that she had been so callous to Donna. As if Donna were merely a tool for a means to the end that Rose wanted to come to be.
"Because she could've done so much more Donna and she didn't!" She jumped at his shout, rising up to hug him close.
"Shhh, none of it ever happened Doctor. It's all right now though."
He shook his head, hugging her fiercely in return as he pressed a trembling kiss to the top of her head. He was angry for her, angry for everything that she went through and angry when he now realized that someone he had always thought fondly of had been so callous as to let her suffer. "No, it did happen even though those events were unraveled by your sacrifice. And Rose would have remembered all of that when she saw me again, because it hadn't been her reality. The trickster hadn't latched onto her, so her memories of all her actions would have been completely intact."
Donna recoiled at that, her mind flashing to how Rose had behaved with her when she had returned to them and they had all been taken aboard the Dalek crucible. If she had truly remembered everything that had happened to Donna…
The Doctor watched her in silence as she was trying to grasp what he had just told her, shaking her head in denial before looking up at him, unable to stop the next question from being uttered. "I thought you loved Rose, Doctor."
He sighed softly at that comment before he sat on the bed and pulled her down into his arms. "I thought I did as well, Donna. Well the Rose that I knew before she got trapped in Pete's world."
He was brooding now, turning his thoughts over and over in his mind while she settled quietly in a corner of his mind so as to not disturb him.
"She really did save me in my previous incarnation. I was angry and battle worn from the Time War and I was running harder than I ever had in my life before. She was the lifeline that I had needed to pull myself back from that abyss."
She pressed close against him, her head resting on his bare chest while he spoke of a time when he had been so lost.
She had remembered those days from when he had been joined with her, but they had been such a jumble with all the other memories and sensations that had overwhelmed her during her conscious moments. The fondness had been more than apparent, as had been the love or so she thought.
She hadn't wanted to have the "old girlfriend" talk with him, she thought it was best to leave the past in the past and let him bring it up when he was good and ready. But as before, events were out of either of their control and they were having this discussion now right after they had just shared so much together.
"I remember she didn't want me to regenerate, but I dismissed it because she didn't really understand the process and so I assumed that she thought that I would die." He sighed softly, remembering the look she gave him when he had first regenerated into this form. It had been a frightened look, but one that was very interested as well and he couldn't help but feel totally flattered by it.
They had had so many travels and she had been completely open and flirtatious with him, to which he had more than responded. "In the end though I realize that there was a lot more to it than that, especially now with everything you told me. I thought I had loved her, and yes I had been happy to see her again but not at the expense of all reality."
He frowned softly as he thought of that. "They had been building the dimension cannon for a long while, and she would really have had no compunction against ripping a hole through reality just to get back to me." The anger returned to his voice as he murmured. "She toyed with you for nearly two years even though that all happened in the span of just a few minutes in this world, for you it was agony."
She felt the anger vibrating through him as his thoughts were spiraling towards one inevitable conclusion and it was very much like he was going through all the stages of grief at once. Realizing the woman he had thought he loved had not at all been the person he thought she was.
"I loved the idea of her, I thought that was enough. She was in lust with the idea of me, and was willing to damn reality just to get back to me."
He shook his head, eyes clenched shut as he relived Donna's last agonized moments in that alternate world and the look she had seen on Rose's face as she knelt over Donna's dying face, conveniently at the exact time and place that she wanted to be while Donna had had to die in order to change the world.
"Those are not the actions of the woman I thought I loved. It's cold and calculating and makes me furious."
She turned and pressed a soft kiss to his chest right over his left beating heart, fingers fluttering softly over the skin as she tried to pull him back to himself. "She was desperate Doctor." God, Donna couldn't believe she was actually defending Rose to him.
He snorted in response, hand rising to press her head close against his chest before replying. "No, she was obsessed."
They sat in silence for a moment after those words, the ache that had been in his heart as he had thought with fondness of Rose suddenly completely stilled as he reconciled himself to the person that she truly was.
He had thought he loved her, but it was nothing compared to what he felt for Donna now. Rose would never have been able to handle the true overwhelming passion of a Time Lord in all his complexity.
As he looked back through their time together, he remembered more and more how she had tried to downplay the fact that he was an alien or just outright ignored it. She had been completely enamored with what she thought he should be, and only accepted his differences when they had been completely shoved in her face.
And when he had been about to regenerate after the Dalek blast had grazed him, she had once more begged him not to change even though she knew that if he didn't it would most likely mean his death.
Donna had been terrified for him when the golden light began to pour from his body, she had been terrified that she was seeing him die and there was nothing she could do to help him. He had been so foolish not to warn her about regeneration and what it all entailed, if only to have eased her fears when the process had begun.
He remembered hearing Rose begging him not to change, remembered her tears as he lay dying because she had come so far just for him and that being the moment that he made the decision to halt the regeneration before it took complete hold.
Those simple words had set so much in motion, that even though it had had to happen in order for the timelines to get Donna to the right place at the right time, it still galled him that the motivation behind the actions had been so astoundingly selfish.
"I'm sorry that you went through all that, Donna. Gods, yet another thing you have had to endure because of me. Watching everything you loved die, living through disaster after disaster and feeling as if there was no hope left anywhere in the world." She was surprised at the sound of tears in his voice, when she looked up at him they were shining brightly in his eyes as his gaze met hers.
The anger was fading now to be replaced with resignation, and sorrow on her behalf, for all that she had endured before she had then gone on to be her amazing self and save the universe. It caused an even bigger stab of guilt to pierce his chest as it had been so soon after that when he stolen everything away from her.
"I was more right than I even thought at the time to leave Rose stranded in Pete's world with my duplicate." He said with a shake of his head, jaw clenching as he thought that they truly were perfect for each other. "He was born of blood and fire and death while she too had been honed and changed by it into someone that I never even thought could exist."
He squeezed her tight at that, rocking her softly as his thoughts finally began to settle. He felt calm now as he truly said goodbye to Rose and to all that he had thought they might have together.
Donna felt that calm acceptance wash over him, her hand rising to stroke his face as she whispered. "I didn't mean to upset you, Doctor. I didn't even think that it would be…."
"Shhhh." He pressed his finger to her lips, shaking his head to keep her from continuing. "Sometimes, Donna, it's better for the clean break. I would have found out about your memories at some point anyways." His lips quirked in a soft sad smile. "This is for the best and truly allows me to finally truly let go and move forward with a somewhat lighter heart." He brushed a soft kiss to her lips, once again comparing her to Rose and everything that he had just learned coloring so many of his memories as he finally saw many of her actions for what they truly were.
It had been a teenage crush more than anything, something that he could cling to as he went barreling through the galaxy because there would never be the possibility of a lifetime for them. He knew even then that though he had thought he had loved her, there never would be more between them and that had made it safe to revel in the feelings that she had elicited in him.
He thought of Rose and his duplicate in Pete's World, thought that perhaps they could heal each other and learn and grow together. Or they could end up destroying that world as surely as they most likely would have this one if they had stayed. For some reason, her actions in her mad quest to return to him at any cost made him wonder if it wasn't an even bet to which outcome it would be.
He didn't even want to think what Rose would have done to Donna if she had stayed in this world and Donna had still been on board the Tardis. It had been a strange meeting between the two of them though, that had been certain, and he hadn't been able to put his finger on why Rose had acted so strange around her. Now though, he knew why and he couldn't stop the fresh surge of anger at that realization.
She had stood there and spoke to Donna about timelines, about how all of reality was focusing on Donna Noble while fresh in her mind, she was remembering leaning over Donna's dying body just so she could pass a message onto him.
He felt the truth of that memory in Donna's mind, she had just sat by and hadn't even tried to comfort her while the life drained from her body. Maybe she figured it didn't matter because Donna would barely remember anyways, or maybe because that Donna wasn't real anyways and so didn't deserve to be comforted. That that Donna was the aberration and her death was the only means to correct that aberration.
No those thoughts only made her actions seem even worse in his mind, but he didn't know what to think anymore with all of these revelations and he was left reeling as he struggled to bring it all into focus.
"Doctor, are there any other things I'm forgetting that will start to resurface again? And why did I suddenly remember this? I thought you said that the trickster would have taken those memories when I managed to fight it off my back?" She truly was confused about that, and why the memories were so very real now that they had resurfaced.
He frowned at that question, snapping out of his angry musings and his eyes boring into hers sharply as she suddenly felt the caress of his thoughts in her mind turn into something more intense.
She winced at the touch, pulling back from his sudden intensity and the throbbing that exploded in her head. "Doctor, what's wrong?"
He brushed his hand in a soothing caress across her cheek, murmuring softly. "I need to make sure you're all right Donna. These memories should be gone completely and the fact that they are back and so strong worries me." He cocked his head to the side as he continued to probe deeply into her mind, checking and rechecking for any telltale sign that he had missed some portion of Time Lord consciousness in his rush to drain the fire from her all those weeks ago.
Her mind was clear, her psyche beautifully intact and no lingering effects that might have triggered these memories. He blew out a relieved breath at that realization. "It looks like the metacrisis changed you in more ways than even I thought. It is nearly impossible for one of the Tricksters to steal a timelord's memories, not when time runs through our very veins. But in having my consciousness within you for so long, it must have left an echo of that imprint behind. Making you more sensitive to time and all its various intricacies."
His mind settled within hers once more, thoughts stroking over her own in a loving caress as he once again was filled with wonder at all that she had gone through and still she managed to surprise him. "You already were a formidable force, this has just completely changed the playing field now." He couldn't help the note of pride burning in his voice.
She was so much more than he could have ever even have hoped for, still human but now something even more than that, something that was still evolving as her powers settled and grew. It was going to be an amazing journey, and he was suddenly happy that he would be able to continue to walk that path with her.
"What does that mean, Doctor?" She was confused by his revelation, feeling herself off balance once more as she tried to grasp just how she had changed again. She was just coming to terms with her own newfound abilities, and now this just complicated things all over again.
He shrugged softly at that, for once truly at a loss as to what to expect. "I honestly don't know, Donna. But this does explain why they Ood stated that you would always be the DoctorDonna. You are indeed something new, and we will have to just walk and learn this path together." The smile was brilliant at that. "At least in this, I will be able to guide you better than anyone else. We will just have to keep an eye out for anything strange. You remembered what it felt like to look at the world through timelord eyes, it seems like some portion of that ability at least stayed with you."
"You're sure I'm going to be okay, Doctor?" She couldn't help the hitch of fear in her voice at that thought, though the Ood had assured them both that she was safe from that particular danger now.
"Yes, Donna. Absolutely sure. The fire is gone, but you have once more shown just how brilliant you are."
She blushed at that and buried her face against his chest once more, feeling a little overwhelmed with all the possibilities now before her but thankful that he would at least be there with her every step of the way.
He hugged her close, smiling softly when he felt her mind settling beneath the touch of his own thoughts. Her eyes slid closed while the rush of adrenaline that had chorused through her when she had relived those awful memories finally began to subside.
It felt so good to be comforted by him, to know that it was all going to be all right and that all she had gone through had not been in vain. Slowly, in little increments, she finally found herself believing just that tiny bit in herself and she was finally able to start to see something of what he did in her.
The Doctor just held her long into the night, his own thoughts turning morose as he finally said his last goodbye to Rose.