A/N: Welcome to part two!
I do not own Doctor Who. All I own is this story and my OC. Please review; no flaming will be tolerated.
Cheers!
THE ULTIMATE DEFINITION OF SELFLESSNESS
"Time can bring you down, time can bend your knees.
Time can break your heart, having you begging, please.
Begging, please."
– Eric Clapton: 'Tears in Heaven' (Unplugged [1992])
Tunnel
While they were travelling along the tunnel, the Doctor continued to consult the map they had pinched from the guard Jenny had unwittingly knocked out.
"Wait!" They pause momentarily when the Doctor discovers something. "This is it. The hidden tunnel." He glances around. "There must be a control panel." Donna and the Heart help look for this control panel when Donna spots yet another set of eight numbers emblazoned on the wall: 60120714.
"It's another one of those numbers. They're everywhere." She pointed out, and the Heart glanced up at the numbers, also mildly curious.
"The original builders must have left them," She theorises. "Some old cataloguing system, maybe?" Donna gestures toward her.
"You got a pen? Bit of paper?" The Heart pauses and rummages around her coat pockets when the Doctor nudges her, and she looks over to see him absently holding out a pad of paper and a pen. She thanks him with a smile before taking them and handing them over to Donna, who immediately writes down the numbers. The redhead takes a moment to figure it out. "Because, do you see, the numbers are counting down." The Heart takes the pad of paper and looks at it as Donna explains. "This one ends in four. The one in the prison cell said one six."
"Always thinking, you lot. Who are you people?" Jenny questioned, a little exasperatedly.
"I told you. I'm the Doctor, she's the Heart." The Doctor refers to his tether, who absently raises a hand in acknowledgement, still in discussion with Donna.
"The Doctor. The Heart. That's it?" Jenny said.
"That's pretty much it." Donna shared the younger blonde's confusion and frustration.
"So, you don't have a name either? Are you an anomaly, too?" Jenny looked interestedly at her 'parents'.
"No," the Doctor said, succinctly.
"Far from it." The Heart added. But Donna snorted in disagreement.
"Oh, come off it. You both are the most anomalous couple I've ever met." She stated flatly.
"Here it is." The Doctor finally locates the control panel, causing both the Heart and Donna to stop their discussion over the random set of eight numbers to come over and watch.
"And Time Lords. What are they for exactly?" Jenny continues questioning.
"For? They're not, they're not for anything." The Doctor explains.
"So, what do you do?" Jenny asks.
"We travel through time and space," the Heart explains, and Donna grinned at Jenny with excitement, eager to go into more detail about it since the Time Couple were reluctant to.
"They save planets, rescue civilisations, and defeat terrible creatures. And they run a lot." Donna looks meaningfully at Jenny. "Seriously, there's an outrageous amount of running involved." The Doctor manages to get a nearby door open.
"Got it!" He shouts triumphantly.
"Well done, love!" the Heart praises him, and immediately, they can all hear Cobb's voice uncomfortably close by.
"Squad five, with me."
"Now, what were you saying about running?" The Doctor grinned at Donna before taking the Heart's hand and doing just that. Donna rolls her eyes and takes off after them, followed by a bewildered Jenny.
Passageway
The Doctor, leading the Heart by the hand, stops running just before the array of laser beams that were crisscrossing the passage. Donna pales a little when she sees them.
"That's not mood lighting, is it?" She questioned. The Doctor wordlessly picks up the clockwork mouse from earlier and tosses it into the lasers. It immediately disintegrates the moment it touches it. The redhead gulps. "No, I didn't think so."
"An arming device," the Heart reveals as the Doctor goes over to a nearby blue box that presumably controls the laser beams. Donna once again spots more of the eight numbers.
"There's more of these." She goes over to it and jots it down on the pad of paper. "Always eight numbers, counting down the closer we get," Donna mumbles to herself. This time, the numbers were: 60120713. The laser beams suddenly blink out.
"Right, here we go." The Doctor stated triumphantly.
"You'd better be quick," Donna stated with large eyes as she looked back the way they had come from.
"Corridor." They hear Cobb not too far behind them. Jenny's eyes narrow in recognition.
"The General." She starts heading towards them, but the Heart grabs her arm and stops her.
"Where are you going?"
"I can hold them up," Jenny insists, but both the Doctor and the Heart shake their heads firmly.
"No, we don't need any more dead." The Doctor tells her, and Jenny glowers at them with impatience.
"But it's them or us." Jenny points out, logically.
"Doesn't mean that you need to kill them so that we can escape," the Heart retorts.
"I'm trying to save your lives." The blonde reasons. The Doctor gently puts his hands on her arms.
"Listen. The killing. After a while, it infects you. And once it does, you're never rid of it." The Doctor states from personal experience, and possibly from what he had witnessed from other people who were forced to kill to protect themselves and/or others, either for a purpose like a war or out of self-defence. Jenny doesn't seem to understand and persists in arguing with them.
"We don't have a choice."
"There's always a choice," The Heart corrects her. Jenny hesitates, but as Cobb and the other soldiers get closer to them, she has to make a decision.
"I'm sorry," She whispers regretfully and races off towards Cobb and his men.
"Jenny?!" the Heart yells after her in alarm while the Doctor watches her go with a grim expression on his face. Jenny runs around the corner and readies a machine gun at the approaching voices.
"There she is!" They hear a soldier raise the alarm.
"At arms. Fire!" Cobb shouts, and the Doctor, the Heart, and Donna hear Jenny exchanging gunfire with Cobb and the soldiers. The Heart sags with disappointment as the Doctor sneers with disgust and pulls the Heart back towards the laser beam corridor.
"We told you. Nothing but a soldier." The Doctor tells Donna scornfully. The redhead looks disappointed, but tries to be optimistic.
"She's trying to help." She reasons. The Doctor goes back to the blue box and works on disabling the laser beams.
"Jenny, come on!" the Doctor shouts down the corridor to Jenny, who shouts back.
"I'm coming!" She promises.
"Cease fire. Ceasefire." Cobb gives the command just as the lasers in the corridor go out.
"That's it!" Donna shouts triumphantly. The Heart calls out to Jenny.
"Jenny, leave them! Let's go!" The trio runs down the corridor. But they could still see Cobb trying to persuade Jenny back over to his side of the war.
"You're a child of the machine. You're on my side. Join us. Join us in the war against the Hath." The Heart scoffs at the selfishness of the General. "It's in your blood, girl. Don't deny it." There was silence for a few moments before somebody took aim and fired.
"Jenny, leave them! Let's go!" the Doctor shouts insistently, losing his patience.
"Hurry up!" Donna pleads. Jenny appears just as the laser beams reappear.
"Shit…" the Heart curses, as Jenny looks back at the trio with horror on her face … then calculates as she studies the beams in front of her, trying to figure out a way across without being disintegrated.
"No, no, no, no, no, no. The circuit's looped back." The Doctor despaired.
"Well, zap it back again!" Donna snapped, but the Doctor shook his head, looking helpless.
"The controls are back there with Jenny, remember?" the Heart reminds Donna, who sagged in realisation. Jenny looks back down the corridor when she hears Cobb and the soldiers rapidly approaching.
"They're coming!" Jenny tells them. The Doctor and the Heart look about desperately for an alternative way to temporarily bring down the laser beams.
"Wait. Just…" But there wasn't anything they could do. "There isn't. Jenny, I can't…" the Doctor stammers fearfully. Jenny immediately throws away her weapon.
"I'll have to manage on my own." She backs up towards the wall and prepares to run. She grinned devilishly at her parents. "Watch and learn, Father. Mother."
"No, stop!" the Heart calls out in alarm, but falters as she watches Jenny somersault her way through the laser beams, safely making it to the other side. "Woah!" Her mouth falls open in surprise.
"No way!" Donna was gobsmacked. "But that was impossible." Jenny stops to catch her breath and beams happily at her parents.
"Not impossible. Just a bit unlikely." The Doctor finally gives Jenny a proud, beaming smile as Jenny runs at him and the Heart and engulfs them both in an excited hug. "Brilliant! You were brilliant. Brilliant." The Doctor praises her.
"Fan-bloody-tastic!" The Heart cheered, equally as proud as the Doctor was.
"I didn't kill him," Jenny tells them. "General Cobb, I could've killed him, but I didn't." She grins brightly at the Heart. "You were right. I had a choice." The Heart smiles affectionately at the younger blonde. But the smile fades when she looks over Jenny's head and spots Cobb and the soldiers appear on the other side of the lasers.
"Donna. Jenny, come on!" The Heart grabs both their hands, and they take off down a nearby corridor. The Doctor stays behind momentarily.
"At arms," Cobb orders, and his men raise their guns and aim them towards the Doctor.
"I warned you, Cobb." The Doctor stated coldly. "If the Source is a weapon, I'm going to make sure you never use it." He promises, and Cobb looks furious.
"One of us is going to die today, and it won't be me." He gives the signal to fire, and the Doctor runs away down the corridor after the Heart, Donna, and Jenny, away from the hail of bullets.
Corridor
Since Jenny had earned their trust by not firing upon Cobb and the rest of the soldiers, the Doctor and the Heart were slowly warming up to the younger echo, who was as inquisitive as ever when it came to her parents. '
"So, how long have you been together?" Jenny questioned the Time Couple, who glanced at each other hesitantly.
"What do you think? Should we tell her the truth? About how I was exiled from Gallifrey for my protection, grew up as a 'human' child, and technically didn't meet you until I was 19?" The Heart telepathically questions her tether, who frowns almost immediately and shakes his head.
"No. We'd better stick to the basics for now. Give Jenny the full story later on when we can explain it to her better." The Doctor suggests. The Heart feigns difficulty in remembering.
"Ooo, it's a bit hard to say, love." The Heart responded to Jenny's question. "What do you think, Doctor? About three years, give or take?"
"Yeah, that sounds about right." The Doctor nodded. Donna eyes the couple questioningly, knowing that their answer isn't right, but the Doctor shakes his head firmly at the redhead, who shrugs and lets it go.
"And what's it like, the travelling?" Jenny was quick with her next question. Donna decided to field this question.
"Oh, never a dull moment. It can be terrifying, brilliant and funny, sometimes all at the same time." Donna smiles at the memories. "I've seen some amazing things, though. Whole new worlds."
"Oh, I'd love to see new worlds." Jenny looked positively excited about that, and Donna smiled knowingly at the girl.
"You will. Won't she, Doctor? Heart?" Donna looked firmly at the Time Couple.
"Hmm?" the Doctor asks curiously.
"Do you think Jenny will see any new worlds?" Donna asks, and the Heart smiles indulgently at Jenny.
"Well, can't have all the fun, can we?" She replied. Jenny's face lit up like a torch.
"You mean? You mean you'll take me with you?" She confirmed, and the Doctor frowned at her like she was crazy.
"We can't exactly leave you here, can we?" He points out and receives an armful of an ecstatic Jenny.
"Oh, thank you!" She exclaimed. The Doctor chuckles. Jenny then pulls away and launches herself at the Heart. "Thank you, thank you!"
"You're welcome, sweetheart." The Heart acknowledges. The younger blonde then lets go of her 'mother' and turns to run down the corridor.
"Come on, let's get a move on!" Jenny shouts.
"Careful, there might be traps." The Doctor calls out, sounding like the average cautious father, as he smiles after her. The Heart sidles up to him, and they link hands. Donna observes them with a knowing glance.
"Kids. They never listen." The smiles on the Time Couple's faces fade, and both look solemn and uncertain. "Oh, I know those looks. I see it a lot around our way." Both aliens look back at Donna curiously. "Well, in observing the Doctor, I've seen blokes with pushchairs and frowns. You've got dad-shock." Donna looked amused, and the Doctor raised an eyebrow at her.
"Dad-shock?" He parroted, perplexed.
"And with you, Heart, well, you showed all the emotions. Surprise, joy, ambivalence, worry, and, for some reason, grief. It's common for women who had specific plans for their future." Donna stated, and the Heart looked away, earning concerned looks from Donna and the Doctor.
"No, it's not that." The Doctor spoke up for himself. "Well, at least it's not for me…" He corrected.
"Well, what is it then?" Donna scoffs. "Like you've got a sports car, and she's going to turn it into a people carrier?" She mocks him.
"Donna, I've been a father before." The Doctor explained, and Donna looked shocked.
"What?"
"I lost all that a long time ago, along with everything else. Except for Heart, of course." He added, and Donna looked ashamed.
"I'm sorry, I didn't know." She stated, sincerely. "Why didn't you tell me? You talk all the time, but you don't say anything." Donna accuses, and the Doctor winces apologetically.
"I know. I'm just. When I look at her now, I can see them. The hole they left, all the pain that filled it. I just don't know if I can face that every day." He confesses, sadly. Donna bites her bottom lip, now looking guilty.
"It won't stay like that, you know. She'll help you; the Heart'll help you. We all will." She promised him, but the Doctor still looked unsure.
"But when they died, that part of me died with them." The Doctor stated. "It'll never come back. Not now."
"I tell you something, Doctor. Something I've never told you before. I think you're wrong." Donna then turned her attention to the Heart, who was still looking away.
"Well, what about you? Is it bringing back memories of you being a mother as well?" Donna asked, not unkindly. But the Heart shook her head.
"No. I've never been a mother. Ever." She confesses, shocking the Doctor.
"What?" He stops walking and looks at her in disbelief.
"What, not ever?" Donna looked sympathetic. "Are you unable to?" The Heart smiles a little.
"No, you've misunderstood me. I've never been a mother because I've never been married. Not even once. My house was one of the 'Great Houses' and held immense respect. But after my twin brother and I were initiated into the Academy for our studies, and my brother's insanity became obvious, I was considered undesirable, fearing that I might be insane too." The Heart clarified. "The idea of becoming a mother, without any prior knowledge, terrifies me. Which was why I was initially hostile and kept Jenny at arm's length." However, Donna looked unconvinced. Sympathetic, but unconvinced.
"You realise that you're not the first person to have these misgivings, right? I'm pretty sure even the Doctor did. Am I right?" Donna looked at the Doctor, who nodded immediately. "When the time is right, you'll know when you're ready. Even if it's with him."
"I'm making an effort not to be insulted right now." The Doctor groused, not knowing he was repeating the same retort he had once given Rose when she offended him back when he was Nine. They react when they suddenly hear gunfire, and Jenny comes running up to them.
"They've blasted through the beams." She told them, before grinning at her parents. "Time to run again. Love the running. Yeah?" The Doctor grins back, and the Heart giggles.
"Love the running." He agreed. They leg it, only to come up to a dead end, in the form of a plain door.
"We're trapped!" Donna fretted.
"Can't be," the Doctor denies. "This must be the Temple. This is a door." He pulls out his sonic and works on opening the door while Jenny stands guard voluntarily. The Heart spots eight more numbers and taps Donna on the shoulder, pointing toward them.
"And again!" She scribbles down the numbers: 60120712. "We're down to one two now."
"I've got it!" the Doctor yells out. Jenny looks back at the trio with a worried expression on her face.
"I can hear them." She reports back.
"Nearly done…" the Doctor stated. But Donna and the Heart were more focused on the eight numbers.
"This can't be a cataloguing system." Donna shakes her head in frustration.
"They're getting closer!" Jenny yells.
"Then get back here," the Doctor requests.
"They're too similar. Too similar." Donna tells an equally perplexed Heart. Jenny stubbornly ignores the Doctor's request to retreat towards them out of danger.
"Not yet!"
"Now!" the Doctor orders sternly. The sonic finally unlocks the plain door. "Got it!" They all scramble quickly through the opened door, unaware of a similar one opening up nearby, emitting a tired, dirty, but otherwise unharmed Martha on the surface of the planet.
"They're coming!" Jenny shouts and looks frantically at the Doctor. "Close the door!"
Spaceship
The Doctor manages to slam shut and lock the door behind them. They all sag with relief that, for the time being, they were safe from Cobb and his men.
"Oh, that was close," Jenny remarked.
"Too close," the Heart added, a bit wary.
"But it's no fun otherwise," the Doctor reminds the two important women of his existence with a cheeky little wink and a grin. The Heart rolled her eyes at him with affection. They look around curiously.
"It's not what I'd call a 'temple. " Donna observes.
"It looks more like…" Jenny comments.
"A fusion drive transport," the Heart reveals, surprised. "It's a spaceship." Donna frowns at her.
"What, the original one? The one where the first colonists arrived?" She asked, and the Doctor nodded in confirmation.
"Well, it could be, but the power cells would have run down after all that time." He gestures at the ship. "This one's still powered up and functioning." The Doctor spots a set of stairs and starts heading towards them. "Come on." They head up a flight of stairs to see that someone is already attempting to cut their way in through another door.
"It's the Hath," Jenny realises. "That door's not going to last much longer." She points out. "And if General Cobb gets through down there, war's going to break out." The Doctor goes over to the main computer of the spaceship and starts pushing random buttons to wake the system up. His eyes light up when he finds something.
"Look, look, look, look, look. It's the Ship's log." He identified it, and everyone crowded around for a closer look. The screen read, 'Messaline Leader One mission log designation XG2482942- 372.' The Doctor reads the first paragraph out loud. "First wave of Human/Hath co-colonisation of planet Messaline." The computer screen then automatically reads: "Core subterranean deployment successful. Online and active. Phase one initiated. Construction drones deployed. Construction of sections 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 3C & 3D complete. Phase one is in progress. Construction drones are active. Construction of sections 1C, 1D, 2C, 2D, 3A & 3C complete."
"So it is the original ship." Jenny realises.
"What happened?" Donna questioned, looking a bit concerned. The Doctor re-reads the paragraph.
"Phase one, construction. They used drones to build the city." He confirmed.
"Does it mention the war?" the Heart asks. The Doctor scrolls through the Phase One in progress. The computer screen reveals 'Construction of western quadrant complete. Phase two has been initiated. Commencing colonisation protocol 0.7. Designated pioneer progenation in process. The mission commander was quarantined due to an outbreak of Byzantine fever. Prognosis negative.'
"It's the final entry," the Doctor's voice sounded grave. "Mission commander dead. Still, there is no agreement on who should assume leadership. Hath and humans divided into factions." His eyes widened in realisation. "That must be it. A power vacuum. The crew divided into two factions and turned on each other. Start using the progenation machines, and suddenly you've got two armies fighting a never-ending war."
"Whose armies are now both outside?" Jenny pointed out, indicating the two sealed doors that were currently being cut into.
"Look at that." Donna pointed towards another eight numbers on a display above a screen showing the whole planet. The numbers were 60120724.
"Like the numbers in the tunnels." The Doctor muttered curiously.
"Wish we knew what the hell they mean." The Heart grumbled, but Donna instantly looked triumphant.
"No, no, no, no. But listen," She urged. "I spent six months working as a temp in Hounslow Library, and I mastered the Dewey Decimal System in two days flat. I'm good with numbers. It's staring us in the face." Donna grinned at them.
"What is?" Jenny looked confused.
"It's the date," Donna reveals. "Assuming the first two numbers are some big old space date, then you've got year, month, day." The Heart suddenly beams in realisation.
"Of course!"
"See? She gets it!" Donna pointed towards the Heart, who smiled admirably at the redhead for solving the puzzle. "It's the other way around, like it is in America."
"Oh! It's the New Byzantine Calendar!" The Doctor finally understands and joins the Heart in smiling at Donna, looking impressed.
The codes are completion dates for each section. They finish it, and they stamp the date on it. So the numbers aren't counting down, they're going out from here, day by day, as the city gets built." Donna continued proudly.
"Yes. Oh, good work, Donna!" the Doctor praises the redhead. But the Heart then spots something.
"Hang on a sec…" She frowns at the date.
"Yeah, he still hasn't figured it out," Donna tells the Heart, who looks warningly at her not to push her luck. "The first number I saw back there was sixty twelve oh seven seventeen. Well, look at the date today." She encourages him, and the Doctor studies it closely.
"Oh, seven twenty-four." His eyes widened in shock. "No…."
"What does it mean?" Jenny looked for an explanation.
"Seven days." The Doctor muttered in disbelief.
"That's it. Seven days." Donna agreed.
"Just seven days…" the Heart mumbled in sheer amazement. Jenny looked slightly annoyed at the lack of an answer to her question.
"What do you mean, seven days?" She questioned impatiently. The Heart turns towards her to explain.
"Seven days since war broke out."
"This war started seven days ago. Just a week. A week!" Donna stated. Jenny's mouth fell open in shock.
"But, they said years." Jenny pointed out.
"No, they said generations," The Heart corrected her, kicking herself that she hadn't figured that out sooner.
"And if they're all like you, and they're products of those machines—"
"They could have twenty generations in a day," the Doctor cuts off Donna, sounding a bit appalled. "Every generation gets killed in the war, passes on the legend."
"Like a massive game of Chinese Whispers," the Heart realises as the Doctor beams proudly at Donna.
"Oh, Donna, you're a genius."
"But all the buildings, the encampments. They're in ruins." Jenny looked confused.
"No, they're not ruined. They're just empty. Waiting to be populated." The Doctor was grinning from ear to ear, absolutely excited about what they had just discovered. "Oh, they've mythologised their entire history."
"The Source must be part of that too," the Heart reckoned, spying a nearby corridor and taking off towards it. "Come on." The four of them continue down that corridor and eventually stumble upon Martha.
"Doctor! Heart!" Martha yells out in relief when she sees familiar faces and is nearly bowled right over when the Heart rushes at her to pull her into a relieved hug.
"Oh, my God. Are you okay?" the Heart fretted over her like a worried mother and inspected her for injuries.
"I'm fine. Quit fussing." Martha scolds lightly.
"Martha!" the Doctor exclaimed, happily. "Oh, I should have known you wouldn't stay away from the excitement."
"Donna," Martha greets the redhead who inspects her soiled clothing with concern.
"You're filthy. What happened to you?" Donna wondered, and Martha hesitated, trying to find an appropriate answer that would less likely have the Time Couple go mad at her for potentially putting herself at risk on a possibly dangerous planet.
"I, er, took the surface route," She reluctantly explains, and the Time Couple look horrified.
"Positions!" They all hear Cobb giving orders, and the Doctor scowls in annoyance.
"That's the General. We haven't got much time." He grabs Martha's arm and leads her along the corridor, back to the way she had come from. However, Donna protests.
"But we don't even know what we're looking for."
"Is it me, or can you smell flowers?" Martha sniffs the air with interest, and everyone follows her example.
"Now that you mention it, I am getting a whiff of something sweet and fragrant." The Heart agrees.
"Maintain defensive positions." Cobb was getting closer, which meant they needed to hurry instead of chatting about smelling random flowers. However, the flowers could also be a clue towards what they were potentially searching for.
"Smells like Bougainvillea," The Doctor identified. "I say we follow our noses." He suggests.
"Squads seven to ten, advance. With me." Cobb continues issuing orders.
Hydroponics
The five of them follow the strong scent of Bougainvillea to the spaceship's hydroponics room. They found themselves surrounded by plants of all types, and the Heart couldn't help but smile and relax at the delicious fragrances that were camping out in her nose.
"Oh, yes. Yes." The Doctor was pleased with their discovery. "Isn't this brilliant?" They come across a glowing globe resting upon a pedestal, which has wires running towards it. Beside it was a control panel and a screen.
"Is that the Source?" Donna guessed.
"It's beautiful," Jenny gushed in awe.
"But what is it?" Martha asks, and the Doctor goes closer to the globe to examine it before giving a definitive answer.
"Terraforming," He concludes, looking fascinated. "It's a third-generation terraforming device."
"So why are we suddenly in Kew Gardens?" Donna frowned.
"Because that's what this thing does," the Heart elaborated. "Only bigger. Huge event. It's in transit state."
"Producing all this must help keep it stable before they finally—" The Doctor is cut off when the Hath and human soldiers run into the room from opposite sides. "Stop! Hold your fire!" He shouted firmly. Cobb eyes him suspiciously.
"What is this, some kind of trap?" He demands, and the Heart throws him an agitated look.
"You said you wanted this war over." She pointed out.
"I want this war won," Cobb corrects her.
"But you can't win. No one can," the Doctor explains. "You don't even know why you're here." He gestures towards the Heart. "It's like the Heart said earlier, it's all just Chinese Whispers, getting more and more distorted the more it's passed on." He gestures towards the globe. "This is the Source. This is what you've been fighting over. A device to rejuvenate a planet's ecosystem."
"Exactly. There's nothing mystical going on here. This was created in a laboratory, not by some deity. This is a bubble of gases, a cocktail of stuff for accelerated evolution. Methane, hydrogen, ammonia, amino acids, proteins, nucleic acids. It's used to make barren plants habitable." The Heart's reasons.
"Look around you. All of this was not for killing; it was for bringing life. And if you allow it, it can lift you out of these dark tunnels and into the bright, beautiful sunlight. No more fighting, no more killing." The Doctor picks up the globe. "I am the Doctor, and I declare this war over!" He smashes the globe onto the floor, and it releases gas and energy. The entire room watches as these gases and energy slowly rise up and out of the spaceship. All the soldiers put down their weapons, except for Cobb. Jenny approaches her parents, looking confused.
"What's happening?" She asks. The Time Couple surrounded their daughter, all too happy to give her a debrief about what was happening right before their very eyes.
"The gases will escape and trigger the terraforming process." The Doctor states.
"What does that mean?"
"It means a brand new world, love." The Heart explains. She suddenly stiffens, feeling a strange sense of déjà-vu. An intention to cause harm or revenge, and she glances around for the culprit.
"Mum? What's wrong?" Jenny looks at her mother with concern.
"Everything," the Heart responded absently. Then her eyes widen in horror when she spots Cobb raising his gun and aiming it directly towards the Doctor, a look of cold fury on the General's face. Jenny sees this and looks in the direction the Heart is looking and reacts instinctively.
"No!" Both Jenny and the Heart shouted in warning, and before the Heart could react, Jenny took the bullet Cobb had intended for the Doctor. Cobb is immediately restrained by his men.
"JENNY!" shout both the Doctor and the Heart, who lay their daughter on the ground.
"Jenny? Jenny. Talk to me, Jenny!" the Doctor demanded urgently.
"No, no, no. This can't be happening. Not again!" the Heart fretted and attempted to put pressure on her daughter's wound. Donna and Martha observe this worriedly.
"Is she going to be alright?" Donna mutters to Martha, who shakes her head sadly.
"I saw this happen before … when the Heart stepped in front of a bullet for her brother," Martha explains, and Donna paled.
"And what happened then?" She reluctantly asks, and Martha just points towards the Heart.
"She regenerated into the woman you're looking at right now." She stated, and Donna's mouth dropped open in horror. Jenny weakly looks up at the gases and energy still trying to find their way out of the spaceship, and gives a pleased little smile.
"A new world. It's beautiful." She murmured as tears welled up in her parents' eyes.
"Jenny, be strong now. You need to hold on, do you hear me?" Jenny focuses on her father's face. "We've got things to do; you, me, and your mother, hey?" The younger blonde's eyes start fluttering closed, and the Heart shakes her awake.
"Hey? We can go anywhere. Everywhere. You can choose. How does that sound?" the Heart begged as Jenny smiled at the idea.
"That sounds good…" Jenny agreed softly, but neither the Doctor nor the Heart liked the sound of that and continued trying to help her stay awake for as long as possible.
"You're our daughter," the Doctor reminds Jenny and looks up at the Heart, brokenly. "And we've only just got started. You're going to be great. You're going to be more than great. You're going to be amazing!" the Doctor promises her.
"How does that sound, honey?" The Heart questions her, but Jenny doesn't respond and goes limp in the Doctor's arms as she succumbs to her wound. "Jenny? JENNY!?" She looks up at the Doctor, panicking. So was he.
"Two hearts. Two hearts. She's like us. If we wait. If we just wait—" the Doctor theorised, but Martha gently stopped him.
"There's no sign, Doctor. There is no regeneration." The Time Couple looked at her in denial. "She's like you, but maybe not enough." The Heart sags in on herself and begins weeping over Jenny's lifeless body.
"No. No, Jenny…" She cries into her daughter's blonde hair. The Doctor looked defeated.
"No. Too much. That's the truth of it. She was too much like me…" He weeps and gently lays Jenny's body in the Heart's arms, kissing the younger blonde on her forehead. A stormy expression passes over the Doctor's face as he gets up and goes over to Cobb, who was being restrained by both Cline and another soldier and made to kneel on the ground with his hands held securely behind his back. The Doctor immediately picks up Cobb's pistol and aims it at the General's head. However, he hesitates for a very long time before he eventually puts the safety back on and gets right into Cobb's face.
"I never would," the Doctor snarled, livid. "Have you got that? I never would." He straightened up and addressed the rest of the soldiers, both human and Hath. "When you start this new world, this world of Humans and Hath, remember that. Make the foundation of this society a man who never would!" He then tosses aside the pistol and goes back over to where his tether and his daughter were and sits behind the Heart, cradling both her and Jenny to him as the once-parents wept for the loss of their daughter, while Donna and Martha observe, in tears of their own.
Camp
Jenny lies in state on a table when sunlight begins to shine through the stained-glass windows of the Theatre. The Doctor and the Heart were standing close by their daughter's body, focusing only on her, while still wrapped up in each other's arms and deep in their grief.
"It's happening," Martha realises as she takes in the brand-new sunlight. "The terraforming."
"Build a city, nice and safe underground, strip away the topsoil, and there it is," Donna observed before turning towards Cline, who was now in charge since they had incarcerated Cobb. "And what about Jenny?" The Time Couple looked up at Cline, also curious about what was going to happen to their child.
"Let us give her a proper ceremony," Cline requested the Time Couple. "I think it'd help us. Please." He asked, and the Doctor and the Heart nodded their permission.
Tardis
The five returned to the Tardis, which remained untouched during the fighting, and immediately dematerialised away from the planet. The Heart was sitting on the jump seat. But I was still listening in to the conversation between the Doctor, Donna and Martha. The Doctor had a theory about why they had ended up on Messaline in the first place.
"Jenny was the reason for the Tardis bringing us here," He explained. "She just got here too soon, which then created Jenny in the first place. A paradox. And endless paradox." He looks over at Martha. "Time to go home?"
"Yeah. Home." Martha agreed solemnly.
The street outside Martha's flat
The Tardis materialises near Martha's flat, which she had managed to salvage after the Master nearly killed the Doctor, the Heart, Jack, and herself with sticks of dynamite attached to her television set. The four of them step from the blue box to send Martha off, still reeling from the tragedy they had just gone through.
"Are you sure about this?" Donna questioned Martha, who never looked more determined to leave than she did. True, she loved travelling around with the Doctor and the Heart in their Tardis, but there was a limit, and she had reached it. Martha nods at Donna's question.
"Yeah, I'm positive. I can't do this anymore." She looked both pointedly and meaningfully at the redhead. "You'll be the same one day," Martha predicted, but Donna shook her head firmly.
"Not me. Never," She insisted. "How could I ever go back to normal life after seeing all this? I'm going to travel with them forever." The Doctor and the Heart privately disagreed with her. All companions claimed this once they had a taste of the wonders and beauties that the Tardis provided, and sometimes even after they went through horrible situations, like Jenny's death, for example. But in the end, they always ended up leaving one way or another. Whether it be by their own volition, they had no other choice, or, in a worst-case scenario, they were killed. Martha looked doubtful and sympathetic, but smiled and nodded at Donna.
"Good luck," She said. She and Donna smile back.
"And you." The redhead goes to head back inside the Tardis while the Time Couple walks on ahead with Martha to say their goodbyes.
"We're making a habit of this," the Doctor joked, and Martha laughed lightly.
"Yeah. And you'd think it'd get easier." She stated, but then sobered and gave the couple a concerned look. "All those things you've both been ready to die for. I thought for a moment there that you'd finally found something worth living for." Martha looked disappointed on their behalf, but the Time Couple plastered on brave smiles.
"Oh, don't be silly, Martha. I get the feeling that there will be a lot more that we'll be ready to die for in the future. And we will always persevere." The Heart disagreed.
"And there's always something worth living for," the Doctor added. The three of them meet together for a group hug before stepping away.
"Bye, Doctor. Bye, Heart." Martha bids them both.
"Goodbye, Doctor Jones." The Doctor nodded back.
"I've got the oddest feeling that we'll be seeing you again soon…" the Heart added before she and the Doctor headed back towards the Tardis. Martha looks down at her engagement ring before smiling and turning to go inside her home.
A/N: Thanks for sticking around for this long. Stay tuned for the next chapter. Remember to review! TTFN