Doctor Who Fan Fiction ❯ Donna and Ten - The Inbetweens and backstories ❯ Chapter Twenty Five ( Chapter 25 )

The Doctor was already at the console, returning the TARDIS to his own universe. Donna walked up the ramp, as the Doctor stood to one side and leaned against the coral strut. She casually walked around the console, trying to assess his mood, and think of something to say in sympathy.

 

'I thought we could try the planet Felspoon. Just because. What a good name, Felspoon. Apparently, it's got mountains that sway in the breeze . . . Mountains that move, can you imagine?'

 

'And how do you know that?' he asked her quietly.

 

'Because it's in your head, and if it's in your head, it's in mine.'

 

'And how does that feel?'

 

'Brilliant! Fantastic! Molto bene! Great big universe, packed into my brain. You know you could fix that chameleon circuit if you just tried hotbinding the fragment links and superseding the binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary.' She was stuck in a loop, and she looked at him with concern; what was happening to her?

 

She gasped in a breath. 'I'm fine . . . Nah, never mind Felspoon. You know who I'd like to meet? Charlie Chaplin. I bet he's great.' She picked up the trim phone. 'Charlie Chaplin?' she said into the phone. 'Shall we do that? Shall we go and see Charlie Chaplin? Shall we? Charlie Chaplin? Charlie Chester, Charlie Brown, no, he's fiction. Friction, fiction, fixing, mixing, Rickston, Brixton.'

 

She suddenly doubles over the console in pain, gasping for breath. 'Oh, my God.'

 

The Doctor slowly walked over to her, his voice full of sadness. 'Do you know what's happening?'

 

She straightened up and took a breath. 'Yeah.'

 

'There's never been a human Time Lord metacrisis before now . . . and you know why.'

 

'Because there can't be.' She moved away from him around the console. 'I want to stay.'

 

'Look at me,' he said quietly, but she continued to adjust the console. 'Donna, look at me,' he said forcefully.

 

She reluctantly looked up from the console and saw his face, and knew what was coming. 'I was going to be with you . . . forever.'

 

'I know.' Everyone thinks that when they first meet him, but he knew how long forever really was.

 

'The rest of my life . . . travelling in the TARDIS . . . The Doctor-Donna,' she whispered, as if trying not to be heard by the universe. And then, the realisation hit her, of what he must do to save her life. But she didn't want to be saved if it meant going back to her ordinary, miserable existence.

 

'No . . . Oh my god . . . I can't go back, don't make me go back. Doctor, please, please don't make me go back,' she pleaded as he held her shoulders firmly.

 

'Donna . . . Oh, Donna Noble . . . I am so sorry.' He could see the fear in her eyes, and she could see the regret in his. 'But we had the best of times.'

 

'No.' Surely there were more times to come, it couldn't end so soon, she'd only just got started.

 

'The best . . . Goodbye.'

 

'No, no, no,' she protested, as he put his fingers on her temples. 'Please . . . please. No. NO.'

 

Donna was hanging from the window cleaner's cradle on the side of an office building. 'Oh great! I'm back where I started when I found Skinny Boy,' she said.

 

When she looked down, she gasped, the building went down and down seemingly forever. When she looked up, she could see the cradle, but it wasn't the Doctor standing there, it was some crazy looking woman, dressed in a grey, Victorian dress, with wild hair, and a warm, comforting smile.

 

'Doctor! Help me, I can't hold on for much longer,' she called out.

 

['Then let go Donna,'] the woman said, her soothing voice echoing in her head.

 

'Are you mad?! If I let go, I'll fall.'

 

['Then I will catch you, Donna']

 

'Not bloody likely,' she said with her old, defiant attitude overcoming her fear. 'Who are you?'

 

['You know . . . I've been with you since the beginning.']

 

'The TARDIS, you're the TARDIS . . . Where am I?'

 

['You are suspended,'] the voice told her.

 

Even hanging on the end of a cable, she was still able to roll her eyes. 'I can see that, the absence of ground under my feet kinda gave it away,' she said sarcastically.

 

['No, I have suspended you in time, I wanted to say goodbye properly.']

 

A strand of the cable split on the sharp metal edge of the building and flew apart, making Donna squeal slightly. She saw the blue energy from that shrivelled little man in that wheelchair thing. The oversized pepper pots, what were they called? Daleks, that was it. She saw the golden glow around the Metacrisis Doctor.

 

'But why me?' she asked him.

 

'Because you're special.'

 

'Oh, I keep telling you, I'm not.'

 

'No, but you are. Oh. You really don't believe that, do you? I can see, Donna, what you're thinking. All that attitude, all that lip, because all this time you think you're not worth it.'

 

'Stop it.'

 

'Shouting at the world because no one's listening. Well, why should they?'

 

'Oh, please don't tell me this is where I see me life flash before me eyes,' she said flippantly. ''Cos yer can stick that where the sun don't shine Missus.' But then she thought about it. 'Unless it was the Nice 'n' Bright Double Glazing office Christmas party, when I snogged Paul from accounts, you can put that one on a loop,' she said with a grin.

 

['Oh Donna, I am going to miss your sense of humour.']

 

'Well, that's a fitting epitaph, Donna Noble, not the bravest, not the cleverest, but definitely the funniest.'

 

['You may fool other people, you may even fool yourself,'] the TARDIS said. ['But you do not fool me, Donna Noble. You use humour as a tool, as a shield, and as a weapon.']

 

She was still in the TARDIS, but who were all the other people? She could see that hunk, what's his name? Jack, how could she forget him? And the blonde woman, the Doctor's love, her name was . . . Rose, yes, Rose, she was going to remember her name . . . Rose. She had said the darkness was coming.

 

'It's coming, Donna. It's coming from across the stars and nothing can stop it.'

 

'What is?'

 

'The darkness.'

 

'Well, what do you keep telling me for? What am I supposed to do? I'm nothing special. I mean, I'm . . . I'm not. I'm nothing special. I'm a temp. I'm not even that. I'm nothing.'

 

'Donna Noble, you're the most important woman in the whole of creation.' Who had said that, what was her name again?

 

'TARDIS, what's happenin' to me? I'm havin' trouble rememberin' things . . . Where's the, er . . . thin bloke with hair that needs a comb puttin' through it . . . the Doctor, where's the Doctor?'

 

['Don't worry Donna, he's here, and he'll look after you.']

 

Another strand of the cable snapped, and Donna gasped in horror at the thought of falling into the black abyss. She remembered people with purple lightning in their eyes and coming out of their fingers. Helix energy that skinny bloke had called it. And then there was Andromeda, a galaxy far, far away with lots of robots. Or was that the Star Wars film? The way her memory was at the moment, it was difficult to tell.

 

But she did remember being in a health spa, with diamond cliffs outside the glass dome, and where was that skinny bloke with the sticky up hair. The Doctor, yes, the Doctor, remember him, he's important, that impossible man called the Doctor.

 

'The cables wearing a bit thin, I could do with some help down here,' she called out to the woman on the cradle.

 

['Don't worry Donna, you won't come to any harm.']

 

'Don't worry she says, you're not the one hangin' out over a buildin'.'

 

['Neither are you, it's metaphorical,'] the TARDIS told her in a calm, warm voice.

 

'No it ain't, it's Adipose Industies.' Another strand of the cable snapped, and she dropped a few inches. Was that the Antarctic down there? Snow, he loved snow that skinny bloke did. She preferred it hot, Egypt or . . . Mexico, the Doctor recommended Mexico. THE DOCTOR! That was him.

 

"Oh, this is a big library", she thought to herself, was she temping here; she didn't remember Hounslow Library being this big? She remembered something about the shadows, "stay out of the shadows", that man had said . . . the Doctor. 'Ooh my memory lately, I don't know what's happenin', but she remembered the shadows ate people, or was that a horror movie she'd seen?

 

'Are you alright?' she asked him.

 

'I'm always alright.'

 

'Is alright special Time Lord code for really not alright at all?'

 

'Why?'

 

'Because I'm alright, too,' she told him . . . Time Lord, that was it, he was a Time Lord.

 

Another cable strand snapped and she could hear a buzzing sound, was that a giant wasp in the library of this manor house, it was all too weird, "I bet Nerys has spiked my drink", she thought.

 

"Oh, I can remember Nerys, but I can't remember . . ." Who were all those people in the TARDIS?

 

'We'll be late for cocktails,' he shouted from outside.

 

'What do you think? Flapper or slapper?' she asked, unsure if she had got it right.

 

He looked her up and down and then smiled warmly. 'Flapper . . . you look lovely.'

 

['Relax Donna, don't fight it, just let it happen.']

 

'But if I don't fight, I'll forget them, and I don't want to forget them,' she pleaded. She could feel her memory slipping away, and she knew what was coming, a life with no memory of any of these incredible people, a life without the . . . Doctor.

 

'TWANG'. Another strand snapped through, and she was in the middle of a war, except one side looked like gas mask wearing fish-men.

 

'You are completely . . . impossible,' she told the skinny Doctor man.

 

'Not impossible . . . just a bit unlikely.'

 

"I really must stop eating cheese at bedtime", she thought with a smirk, which quickly vanished when she saw the thin man cradling his dying daughter.

 

'I've been a father before.'

 

'What?'

 

'I lost all that a long time ago, along with everything else.'

 

'I'm sorry. I didn't know. Why didn't you tell me? You talk all the time, but you don't say anything.'

 

'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.'

 

'It won't stay like that. She'll help you. We both will.'

 

'But when they died, that part of me died with them. It'll never come back. Not now.'

 

'I tell you something, Doctor. Something I've never told you before. I think you're wrong.'

 

'TWANG'.

 

That man, who was he? The Doctor, how could she forget his name, when she could remember Nerys without any trouble. He'd set fire to the sky, because those dwarfs with the potato heads were trying to choke the planet.

 

'I'm not coming with you. I've been thinking. I'm sorry. I'm going home,' she said.

 

'Really?'

 

'I've got to.'

 

'Oh, if that's what you want. I mean, it's a bit soon. I had so many places I had wanted to take you. The Fifteenth Broken Moon of the Medusa Cascade, the Lightning Skies of Cotter Palluni's World, Diamond Coral Reefs of Kataa Flo Ko. Thank you. Thank you, Donna Noble, it's been brilliant. You've, you've saved my life in so many ways. You're . . . you're just popping home for a visit, that's what you mean.'

 

'You dumbo.'

 

'And then you're coming back.'

 

'Know what you are? A great big outer space dunce.'

 

'Yeah.'

 

'Doctor! Help me, I don't want to forget you,' she yelled at the wind, as she saw a small thin man wrapped in a white robe. She'd met Mohandras Ghandi, and he was SO like the Doctor. It had been nice and hot in India, unlike this place.

 

People with elongated heads and linguini coming out of their mouths, moved across the snowy landscape towards her. The wind started to sing a song, a song of hope and of freedom.

 

'DOCTOR! What's happening to me? Have I got dementia, because I don't seem to be able to remember?'

 

'Doctor-Donna, I have come to tell you that we will remember you, and you will never be forgotten. Our children will sing of the Doctor-Donna, and our children's children, and the wind and the ice and the snow will carry your name forever,' Sigma Ood said.

 

The sound of his voice was calming, and the song was uplifting for her. 'Thank you,' she said quietly.

 

'TWANG'.

 

God, it was hot . . . had she gone to hell?

'Vesuvius explodes with the force of twenty four nuclear bombs, nothing can survive it, certainly not us,' that skinny bloke told her.

 

'Never mind us,' she said.

 

'Push this lever and it's over . . . Twenty thousand people,' he'd said, the . . . Doctor . . . must remember his name, Doctor, Doctor, the Doctor.

 

And they had pressed the lever together, launching themselves out of the volcano and into an alleyway at night. There was her mum's car, next to that blue box, what was all that about, a blue police box? Who was that blonde woman, didn't I know her, I'm sure she was important, like the skinny bloke.

 

And then she was in Saint Mary's Church, Hayden Road, Chiswick, London, and she was getting married, except she wasn't, because she was in a weird looking Gothic cathedral. There was that man again, the skinny streak of nothing, and he'd been crying.

 

She smiled at him. 'Am I ever going to see you again?'

 

'If I'm lucky.'

 

'Just . . . promise me one thing . . . Find someone.'

'I don't need anyone,' he said arrogantly.

 

'Yes, you do. Because sometimes, I think you need someone to stop you.'

 

'Yeah . . . thanks then, Donna. Good luck. And just . . . be magnificent.'

 

['And, before you go, Donna, I wanted to give you a gift,'] the TARDIS said in her head.

 

'Excuse me if I don't take it off you right now, I've got my hands full at the moment,' she said with her final bit of sarcasm.

 

['You don't need hands for this gift, it is one of the Doctor's most treasured gifts, it is the gift of hope, and although you won't remember why, you will always have hope for the future.']

 

"The Doctor, that was him, the skinny bloke," she thought, and then the cable finally gave way. Donna screamed as she fell into the darkness.

 

['Donna Noble is leaving the TARDIS . . . Donna Noble will be saved.']

 

'DOCTOR . . . DOCTOR . . . HELP ME, PLEASE,' she cried out, and then she thought about what she had said.

 

'Doctor who?'