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love-in-the-time · 4 years

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The Destiny of Stars, 10th Doctor/Donna, 12th Doctor, Donna, Clara, Fix-It, Rated M for language, sex, and violence.

Title: The Destiny of Stars Author: love-in-the-time Rating: M for language, sex, violence. Summary: “It is the destiny of stars to collapse.” - Neil deGrasse Tyson. A cry for help echoes across the universe into the mind of Donna Noble. A fix-it fic wrapped in a battle for the survival of a planet thousands of light-years away, turning around the central point of the Doctor and Donna.

A note: This took me two years to write. Quarantine time is the perfect time to finish fics. I wish all my fellow creators the peace and ability to make their art. Creativity is needed in these times, and you have my gratitude. This fic includes mention of a quarantine, but that idea came to me a very long time ago. Please enjoy, and i hope it offers you a moment of distraction.

She is standing on line for coffee, scrolling through her emails, when someone yanks on her arm and falls in front of her. Startled, Donna Noble jumps back, gasping.

On the floor in front of her is a kneeling woman, with dark hair tied up at the nape of her neck. She is bowing her head and clasping her hands. “Lady,” the woman is saying. “Noble lady, will you help me?”

Donna is astonished, and stands speechless for a moment. “I,” she begins. “I don’t know what you mean.”

The woman lifts her face and there are tears running down her cheeks. “Please help us,” the woman begs. “My people are dying.”

Donna feels a lurch in her chest. “What?” she asks. Her immediate conclusion is that the woman is crazy. “I don’t understand what you mean.” People are staring. She looks around her. “Are you all right?”

The woman stands up straight, wiping at her cheeks and composing herself. “Are you Donna Noble?” she asks, much more calmly.

“Yes,” Donna says. “Why?”

The woman clears her throat and inhales deeply. “I have come to beg your help on behalf of my people, the Mori. Our planet is dying.” She reaches out to touch Donna’s hand. “Please, if you and the Doctor—“

Donna blinks. “Who?” she asks. “Miss, I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She backs off. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.” She heads for the door, leaving the woman stunned behind her. She stands blankly for a moment and then seems to make a decision. She follows after Donna, her stride purposeful but her hands shaking. She catches Donna in the street.

“Please, I’ve come so far,” the woman says, and something in her tone makes Donna stop and listen. “Please, hear me. My people sent me to find you, and the Doctor, and bring you to help us.”

Again, Donna blinks. “I don’t know who that is,” she says. “I really can’t help you.” She reaches into her purse. “Can I get you somewhere? Do you need money?”

“No, no!” The woman is distraught. “We need you, and the Doctor, to come and save us.” She is clutching at Donna’s sleeve. “I will not fail them!”

Donna presses the unlock button on her car key fob and opens her car door behind her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she repeats. “I really don’t know what you mean. I can’t help you.” She climbs in and drives away, looking in her rearview mirror to see the woman cover her face with both hands. She shakes her head, disturbed by the encounter and unsure why she feels so unsettled.

By the time she pulls into her driveway, the beginnings of a wicked headache are starting behind her eyes. Donna squeezes her eyes shut and pushes her fingers into her lids for a moment, breathing through the pain. She’d never had migraines before about two years past, when she’d had some kind of accident. No one had really been very clear with her about what exactly had happened, but soon after she and Shawn had gotten married and Donna began to focus on other things.

But sitting still does nothing for the blossoming pain in her head and she makes her way up the stairs to the bedroom, crawling under the covers with her shoes still on. It had been some time since the headaches had been this bad, and Donna is miserable, recalling the first few months after her accident, when the pain had kept her curled on her bathroom floor, a seemingly endless flow of tears rolling down her face. Ever since then it was as if her mind refused to retain the information about what happened to her, so Donna mostly remembers fear and pain and an overwhelming heartbreak, as if she’d lost something or someone she loved. She wasn’t quite sure why being alone affected her so deeply after the accident, but Shawn had gentled her back to life when the pain subsided. Donna feels dragged back to those times.

She rolls over and kicks off her shoes, reaching over to her beside table and getting the paracetamol tablets out. She swallows three of them with no water, winces, and rests her head on the pillow. The room is dark and cool. She remembered it usually took a good nap to get rid of the headache and the echoes of it left bright spots in her vision for a few hours after. This would be one of those.

An hour later Shawn arrives home and finds his wife in bed, eyes closed but not asleep. He comes gently into the room. “Hello,” he whispers.

Donna rolls over. “Hello,” she answers.

“Head hurts?” Shawn comes to sit beside her on the bed.

Donna nods against her pillow and her eyes fill up. “It’s still terrible. It hasn’t been this bad in a long time.”

The migraine is a sign the fail-safe is working, Shawn remembers. Wilf told him everything. She’ll have an awful headache, and she’ll sleep. It’s only if she doesn’t wake up that we have to worry.

The idea of Donna not waking up scares Shawn deeply, that his generous, beautiful, determined Donna could be taken away from him by her past. So he retreats from the room to let his wife sleep.

Mostly Donna is able to fall asleep with minimal fuss but this time the pain only seems to get worse behind her eyes, until Donna is gasping, her eyes squeezed shut.

* * * *

Out of relative silence, the TARDIS’s main computer suddenly sounds an alarm that startles the Doctor and he jumps, banging his elbow against the console. The screen displays a flash of coordinates and the ship yanks itself out of the Vortex with a nauseating lurch. Clara gets thrown against the railing and steadies herself against a kind of flight she hasn’t experienced before. There is no thumping landing this time, only a quick, hard thud. The Doctor is looking at the screen. “London,” he says. “We’re in London. In Kensington.” He turns the view screen to face him and his eyes go wide. “Oh, no. Oh, no.”

“What?” Clara asks, coming round the console. “What’s happened?”

But the Doctor is already away from the console and flying down the ramp to the door. “It’s Donna,” he says, and Clara follows uncomprehendingly. The Doctor is clearly panicked.

They are in a bedroom, a large and spacious room painted in green, and in the room's corner there is a woman lying on a bed, her head thrown back. “Oh, my god,” Clara says.

Donna is lying unmoving on her bed, with a trickle of dark blood from her nose. Clara rushes to the bedside and looks back to the Doctor. He’s standing back, his hands at his sides, very still.

“I can’t be here,” he says. “She can’t see me. Or the TARDIS.”

Clara looks dismayed. “Who is this woman? How can we help her then?”

The Doctor looks around himself and then back at Donna. He comes to stand over the bed, rigid with fear, to see if she’s conscious, then seems to remember himself and points the sonic at her. It makes the slightest noise, on a low setting. “No,” he says. “She’s out cold.”

He turns back to Clara. “Help me,” he says. “Help me get her on the ship.”

The door to the bedroom bursts open and Shawn runs in, looking bewildered and afraid. “Who are you?” he demands of the Doctor and Clara, who freeze over Donna’s bed.

“I’m going to help her,” the Doctor says, and he recognizes the young man from the wedding. “Step back.”

Shawn rushes to the bed. “What are you doing?” He tries to stop the Doctor as he gathers Donna in his arms.

“Helping her!” The Doctor repeats. “Get out of my way!” And before Shawn can do anything further the Doctor and Clara slam the doors of the TARDIS in his face, with Donna aboard, her head lolled back in the Doctor’s arms.

* * * *

The first thing that Donna feels as she regains consciousness is the feeling of slogging out of deep, thick water that is trying to suffocate her. She feels a piercing pang in her head as she gasps for air and discovers the water isn’t choking her after all. She opens her eyes.

She’s in a room that looks like a hospital. Again. Donna feels a wave of dismay and sadness in her chest. She’d seen the inside of too many doctor’s offices and hospitals trying to discover the cause of her sudden, chronic migraines. It seems she’s landed in A&E again. Her eyes fill with tears. “Not again,” she says aloud.

But the person who comes to her bedside isn’t dressed as a nurse or a doctor. Donna looks up into a face she doesn’t know, a young woman with a fringe of dark hair over her open, gentle face. “Donna?” she asks tentatively.

“Yes,” Donna says. She inhales and exhales deeply.

“Are you all right?” the girl asks.

“I don’t know,” Donna says. She pushes herself into a seated position against what she realizes are large, soft pillows. Not like hospital pillows. She feels as if her sinuses are pulsing with dull pain. “Where am I? Is this a hospital?”

“Not quite. I’m Clara,” the girl says. “This is a… er, medical treatment center. We found you passed out in your bed with a nosebleed and brought you here.”

The Doctor is standing at the console watching the med bay on a screen, his face miserable. Donna looks pale and disoriented as Clara tells her mostly credible lies about tests and needing to rest. Donna asks for paracetamol tablets, which Clara promises to bring her. After a few more minutes Clara leaves, but the Doctor keeps watching. He sees Donna look around the room and then lower her face into her hands. He thinks about when Donna cried after Lee, and when she let him sleep wrapped around her on the rare occasions he slept.

Clara comes back to the console, looking worried. “What do I give her?” she asks. “Do we even have paracetamol?”

In response, the Doctor goes to the computer and punches at the keyboard. The synthesizer produces two tablets that look like paracetamol. “One is a painkiller, the other one will make her sleep,” he explains. “I have to figure out how to help her.”

He watches Clara give Donna the tablets and a glass of water and lower the lights in the med bay so she can sleep. He worries that she hasn’t kept asking where she is; she must feel really poorly.

“What’s wrong with her?” Clara asks when she comes back again.

“I need to stabilize her,” the Doctor says, ignoring the question. He circles around his console methodically pushing buttons, his deliberation masking the frantic worry he feels. “Every second she’s here she’s dying.”

“On the TARDIS? It’s the safest place in the universe,” Clara says. “What’s wrong with her?”

The Doctor slumps onto the jump seat.

“You better tell me about her,” Clara says, sitting down beside him.

The Doctor folds his hands together. “Donna showed up twice in my life and the second time she got the hint,” he begins, after a short, contemplative silence.

Clara settles in to listen.

“She’d been set up to be killed by her fiancé, and he was dosing her with particles that are contained in the TARDIS core. So we killed a giant spider queen intent on using Earth as a breeding ground, and I asked her to come with me. And she said no.”

“Did she?” Clara says, laughing.

“But then she came looking for me,” the Doctor says. “Imagine the odds. She found me. I haven’t ever stopped being grateful for that.”

“So why would she die?”

“I… she… some things happened, and she got caught up in a metacrisis, it’s a fusion of DNA kind of thing, it mixes biological materials and it’s very dangerous, and she… her DNA got mixed with mine and made a clone and—“

Clara has long since stopped being surprised at weird alien things. “So that made her sick?”

“It left her with a core of Time Lord energy in her brain,” the Doctor explains. “That kind of activity isn’t normal for a human brain; it sends it into overdrive. It doesn’t have enough synapses to handle it. I had to wipe her memory of me and try and contain the rogue energy. If the containment fails, her brain will explode inside her skull. And I’m afraid it’s failing.”

There is a crystal, horrified silence as Clara takes this explanation in.

“So she can’t see me, or know that she’s on the TARDIS until I figure out how to prevent that,” the Doctor concludes.

“But you don’t look the same,” Clara says. “How will she recognize you?”

Another pang in his chest makes the Doctor sigh. “She knows this face too.”

“How?”

“I… you know that I regenerate?” the Doctor asks. “This face is one that’s familiar to her. I think I must have chosen it, subconsciously. It reminds me I have a duty of care.”

The words are familiar; he’s said them to her before, And they still matter; they matter even more now. He tries not to let Clara see the fear and pain in him as he goes back to work on his computer console. He can’t think how he might be able to control it.

On the screen, Donna sleeps. Even asleep, she looks tired and pale. The Doctor types faster. The pill would ensure she’d be out for a few hours, but he knew she wouldn’t accept being lied to. Donna Noble couldn’t be fooled for long, if at all. The thought of that brings a painful smile to his lips. Donna, always on the front foot, ready to remind him that he wasn’t alone and he had others to consider.

The main concern for him was the containment around the Time Lord energy. If he had a way to extract… if he had a way to make her remember without hurting her…

Ultimately, he knows only one way, the risky way; the TARDIS core. He could connect her to the TARDIS core. The TARDIS loved Donna as much as he did, she would make sure Donna was safe. He could connect her to the core of the TARDIS and extract the energy trapped in her brain, and… and then what? What would happen to the energy? He looks up from the console at Clara, who is sitting quietly on the jump seat.

“I figured it out,” he says, and his voice is flat. Clara sees the unhappiness in his face.

“Tell me,” she says.

“I have to hook her up to the TARDIS core,” the Doctor says. “Before she wakes up. See if I can extract the energy from her brain without tripping the failsafe.”

“That sounds like a huge risk.”

“It is a huge risk.” The Doctor has to fight a rising tide of frustration and anger and keep his voice steady. “It’s an enormous risk I wasn’t willing to take the first time.”

So he and Clara carefully roll the bed Donna is in into the main console room. Donna sleeps on, breathing steadily. Her face is relaxed now. The Doctor gestures for Clara to sit down again and takes a moment to stand over Donna’s bed. His back is turned to Clara so she can’t see his face, but he feels the same helpless love he always felt for her, multiplied now a hundredfold because he knows she’s suffering and she’s been gone so long from him, and she’s back.

“All right,” he says to her gently. “I’m going to connect you to the TARDIS. You remember her, right?” He reaches out to place a small metal disc on her wrist, to measure her pulse and her blood pressure. “She remembers you.” And the TARDIS core glows brightly bluish white in response. The Doctor pulls a long set of cords from the console, attached to two more metal discs. These he attaches to her temples. Donna stirs and frowns in her sleep, too deep under the drug to wake up but still conscious of something happening. “Nothing bad will happen,” he tells her, hoping with all his might that he’s telling the truth. “I promise.”

As he circles around Clara sees the look on his face. She feels terrible for him; he looks absolutely destroyed, and truly afraid. “Nothing bad will happen,” he repeats, and looks up at Clara with his heart in his eyes. He pushes a few buttons and stands back from the bed.

For long moments nothing does happen. Long enough for Clara to look to the Doctor with curiosity, and then suddenly there is a crescendoing hum that rises and rises. Donna stiffens in her bed, as if having a seizure, the readings of her blood pressure and pulse spiking. The Doctor’s eyes fly from the console to her face. Donna isn’t waking, but she gives a final great shudder and lies very, very still.

On the floor of the console room there is a man lying, dressed in a long brown trench coat over a pinstriped brown suit. His hair is messy and spiky, and his face is young. He sits up, dazed, and the Doctor, despite his surprise, leaps in between him and Donna. The Time Lord energy in Donna’s brain has manifested in a copy of himself from long ago, an echo of her mind and heart.

He helps the younger Doctor to his feet and says impassively, “Welcome.” He can feel his pulses going wild in his neck, though he grits his teeth to show nothing. Of course it would be this. How else? He remembered the sheer relief of how they used to understand each other, the open wound of their subconscious emotional bond that pulsed with their shared pain and desire and joy and anger. That had long since closed over in his current form but this man--

The younger Doctor looks around warily. “Where am I?”

“Onboard my… er, your — my ship,” the Doctor says. “The TARDIS.”

“This is not my ship.”

The Doctor shakes his head. “Never mind, I need your help. Someone here needs you to help keep them alive.”

He hustles the younger Doctor down the nearest hallway into a spare room. He swipes the wall to activate the synthesizer computer and makes a large window through into the console room. He stands in the younger Doctor’s line of sight. “There someone here who needs you,” he says. “Needs you, specifically. I need you to be gentle with her.”

The younger Doctor suddenly lights up with the most wrenching expression of fear and anticipation he’s ever seen. “You haven’t,” he says.

The Doctor points out the window. Donna is sitting up on the bed, holding one of Clara’s hands and trying to stand up.

“That’s Donna,“ the younger Doctor says, his eyes fixed on her through the glass. “That’s Donna—” he repeats, and tears out of the room, coattails flying. The Doctor follows him out.

He watches his younger self go to Donna, his face wide with astonishment and joy, and stand in front of her as if to make sure she is really there. “Hello,” he says to her.

Donna breathes a great sigh and her eyes fill up. “Hello,” she says. “I know you.”

“Yeah, you do,” the younger Doctor says, and he catches her up in a great embrace, as warm and solid as he ever had been in life.

There is a piercing pang in her chest, and Donna finally, finally sobs, muffled into his embrace. It’s a sound of simultaneous relief and pain. The Doctor and Clara look at each other and retreat immediately, the Doctor’s face long with unhappiness.

For a long time they stand wrapped around each other, the younger Doctor shedding silent tears against her shoulder. “How are you here?” Donna asks, pulling away from him to look at his face, his dear, beloved, tear-stained face.

“TARDIS made me,” he says, sniffling and smiling at her through his tears.

“Are you real?”

“Yes.” He steps back from her. “Are you?”

“Don’t be daft,” Donna says, wiping her eyes. “Only one of me.”

“I know,” the younger Doctor says. He’s smiling so widely, so guilelessly full of genuine joy, that Donna can’t help herself and she hugs him again, pressing her lips to his cheek. Then she lets go of him and looks around her.

“That means I’m on the TARDIS,” she says, and fresh tears roll down her face. “I’m on the TARDIS.” She puts her hands to the console, finding it changed, and looks to the younger Doctor. “Why did you change it?”

The Doctor emerges into the room. “He didn’t,” he says, and Donna freezes. She looks at him in complete surprise.

“Caecilius,” Donna says, astonished. “You’re that man. From Pompeii.”

“No, no,” the Doctor says, smiling through the tears in his eyes. He comes to stand in front of her. “I’m the Doctor, I’m him.” He takes Donna’s hands in his. “I regenerated. I picked this face. I chose this face because of you.”

Donna is speechless, bewildered.

“I look in the mirror and I see the best of me,” the Doctor says. “You reminded me, you held me to the mark. Whenever I see this face I remember you.”

“But I couldn’t remember you,” Donna says.

“I know,” the Doctor says.

Donna looks over to the younger Doctor. “Isn’t he the Doctor?”

“As you knew him, yes,” the Doctor says. “That was me when you knew me.”

“But then... You are you when I knew you, too,” Donna says, and she frowns momentarily at the strangeness of the statement.

The Doctor winces and the younger Doctor smiles a little bit, so proud of her, like he always was. Donna looks to Clara. “And you said your name is Clara. You traveling with him?”

Clara nods. She doesn’t quite know what to say, for there are so many gaps in her knowledge of this subject that she is on the outside of it. Donna looks from the Doctor to the younger Doctor.

“How?” she asks, and she looks so torn between joy and grief that the younger Doctor puts an arm around her. She looks up at him. “How are you here, the same time as him, and how am I here?” She shakes her head to clear it. “I’m so tired.”

Immediately the younger Doctor starts to help her back onto the bed in the console room but she stops him. “No,” she says, and looks to the Doctor. “My room, is my room still...?”

The Doctor swallows hard. “TARDIS saved it in the memory banks. Every detail.”

Donna turns her back on all of them and walks down the hallway. First door on the right, she says in her mind, as she always had, and opens the door.

The same purple walls, the same ceiling set to display the shifting cycles of Earth day and night, the same impossibly enormous bed, the same everything. Donna inhales and then exhales deeply, and turns to find the younger Doctor standing a little behind her. “It’s the same,” she says, and walks into her memories.

The walls respond to her touch, and Donna, because she remembers how, sets the ceiling to an immense blue expanse, arching clouds above them. She looks so overwhelmed the younger Doctor goes to her and wraps her up, resting his chin against the top of her head.

Donna cries against his shoulder for a moment and then pulls away and slams both fists into his chest. “How could you take this away from me?” she demands, tears rolling. “How could you just do that to me, like I was nothing?”

“It wasn’t nothing,” the younger Doctor says. “Donna, it wasn’t nothing. It wasn’t. You would have died.”

“But I didn’t die!” Donna says. “I didn’t! I lived! And I had to live without you! And I had to live with holes in my head and my heart and my… mind! And you did it!” She thumps her fists against his chest and the Doctor takes hold of her wrists.

“Listen to me,” he says, and Donna regards him with wide, teary eyes. “If I had my choice you know I never would have done it. You know what I wanted.” He lets her wrists go.

“What about what I wanted?” Donna asks. “I said no.”

“Because you had no idea what the consequences would be!” the younger Doctor exclaims. “And I would not let you die. Not that way. Not any way.” His hands close tightly on her upper arms. “You would have had a massive stroke, at minimum. More likely your brain would have literally exploded inside your skull. You would have died screaming, with blood coming out of every hole in your head, and I would never let that happen. Did you want me to let that happen?”

Donna shudders, but she squares her shoulders. “What if that was how it was meant to go?” she asks him resolutely.

“Bollocks,” the younger Doctor says.

“What if it was?”

“It was never going to happen in the first place, so why ask?” he demands of her. “You already know I would save you over everyone, so why would you think I’d ever change my mind about that? Whatever face I have?”

“Because you killed me,” she says, her throat closing up over the urge to cry.

“I saved you.”

“You took away the only good and true thing I had ever had!” Donna shouts, and then bursts into tears again. “I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that I had lost a reason to live and I didn’t know why!”

“Better you should have a few headaches and feel sad for a while than be dead forever,” the younger Doctor snaps back, fast as a whip.

“A few headaches? Sad for a while?” An enormous rage and despair bubbles up inside her. “Sad for a while? Do you know how many times I thought about swallowing all my pills? Or just walking out in front of a lorry?” She sobs a few times, a twisted smile pulling her lips back from her teeth. “I’ve already done that once, right? Why not just do it again?”

“What do you mean, you walked in front of a lorry?” the younger Doctor asks.

Donna shrugs. “I walked out into the street to stop a paradox. On Shan Shen.”

“You never told me that.”

She doesn’t answer him. She only crosses her arms tightly around herself. Her face is so sad, and the younger Doctor is devastated.

“You never said that happened.” His eyes are full of pain. “You never told me you died.”

Still, Donna says nothing, because there isn’t anything to say. Silently, the younger Doctor reaches out to grasp her arms, but Donna blocks him and pushes him again. “You put me back in a world I hated, back in a world where I didn’t matter. Again. I thought I had left all that behind with you. You told me I could leave all that behind with you!”

“And I meant that! How could I know what was going to happen?”

“You said you could see everything,” Donna says, stabbing a finger at him. “What was fixed, what was in flux. The past, the present, and the future. The burden of the Time Lord. Isn’t that what you said?”

Again he reaches for her, undeterred, and this time she leans on him. “I didn’t know,” he murmurs to her, his voice broken along the edges. “You know, you know I never wanted you to be hurt.”

“But I was,” Donna says miserably into his chest. “I was, and I didn’t know what to do.”

He wraps his arms around her, one hand cradling her head, and Donna cries, the same silent sobs he remembers from so long ago and from no time ago at all. Finally her arms go around him too, and they both cling on.

“Can you forgive me?” he asks after a long, silent moment.

Donna wraps her arms tighter around him but she says nothing.

“Donna,” he says it pleadingly, softly.

Donna shakes her head into chest and doesn’t move any further except to bury her face in his shoulder and hold on. “You have to give me time,” she says. “I don’t know if I have a lot or a little of it, or how it moves, or what’s going to happen to me, not anymore.”

The younger Doctor moves to help her sit on the bed. She wipes her eyes. They look at each other, filling their eyes and hearts again with the inexpressible comfort of each other’s presence. There is a silence full of unsaid words, because Donna is unsure she could get the words out around the emotions in her throat anyway.

“What do you remember?” the younger Doctor asks, clasping her hands in his.

“Everything. All of it.”

“Does your head hurt?”

“Yes. But not so badly anymore.” Donna looks around herself. “I need water.” She gets up and goes to the synthesizer computer, and because she remembers how to use it, she produces a bottle of fresh, cold water. “Do you want any?” she asks.

“No,” the younger Doctor says, watching her standing in the glow of the computer. She is as beautiful as he remembers, and more, and scarred with pain and wisdom and fear and love. He watches her drink thirstily, and catch her breath after. She puts the bottle down and goes to the big doors on the far wall.

“This is my closet,” she says. “Are you telling me all my clothes are still in here?” She opens the door to see for herself, and the enormous, dimension-crossing room expands before her. She glances back at the younger Doctor, and disappears inside.

All of her dresses, her gowns, her jeans and trousers, her tops, her strange alien clothing from distant planets, her hats and jewelry and shoes and bags are all there. More even than she has at home with her unlimited budget. More than she will ever have on Earth, true in so many ways of this ship. “I will be me again,” she says to herself, and shucks her clothes entirely. She puts on everything she loved, the soft bras and knickers she’d created for herself out of fabric not found on Earth, a deep blue top covered in embroidered flowers, a pair of light blue jeans she’d always liked, and her favorite broken-in flat boots; now that she has them back she feels she can run for miles. She emerges from her closet and the younger Doctor’s face lights up.

“That’s my Donna,” he says, and Donna feels herself smiling.

“That’s me,” she says, and sighs a great sigh of relief. “Is this the strangest thing that has ever happened to me?”

The Doctor smiles too. “I don’t know,” he says. “But how? How did this happen? Can you remember?”

Donna shrugs. “I was in line for a coffee and this woman fell at my feet begging for me and the Doctor. She said she came from another planet.”

“That’s a given,” the Doctor quips, and they both smile again at each other. Something long-crushed in Donna starts to unfold in her chest, and she looks down at her feet before the younger Doctor can see her tears.

“Did she say where?”

Donna nods, and tries to wipe her eyes as surreptitiously as she can. But as always, as always, he knows. He knew the first time she cried after Lance, held her for so many times after that. “Don’t cry,” he says. “Come.” He holds out a hand to her and pulls her back onto her bed.

“She said Mori. The planet Mori. Something about how she couldn’t let her people down.” Donna’s tears dry at the sight of the younger Doctor’s face. He probably doesn’t even realize how he’s looking at her but she knows that goofy smile in her bones. There is the familiar surge of love and joy, threaded through with fear and anticipation, that has always existed in her for him.

“Mori. That’s quite far away, must have taken a huge amount of power to get her to Earth.” The younger Doctor frowns.

“She said the planet is dying,” Donna says. “She was so afraid. And I got scared and I ran. And then I had the headache and I woke up on board.” She shrugs. “What d’you know about Mori?”

“We might be better off sharing this information,” the younger Doctor says thoughtfully. “Maybe he should know? The other Doctor? And that girl?”

“All right,” Donna says. “But, Spaceman--” She reaches out to hold his arm. “Tell me first.”

He smiles at her. “Yeah. They can wait.” He has a feeling she’s thinking the same as him, that they’d spent a lot of time in this bed with conversation and other things. This is where they are comfortable. “Mori is a very large planet in a solar system located a bit closer to the center of the Milky Way than Earth. Say about six hundred million light years? They’re traditionally a technological society, they’ve achieved level ten spaceflight, so they’ve been traveling the universe for a while. Did that woman look like she was starving or injured?”

“No,” Donna says. “Only desperate. She was wearing black, if that’s relevant. She wasn’t young but not old either. And she was looking for us. You and me. Not... that Doctor out there.”

“Well,” the younger Doctor says, grinning at her. “No use breaking up a winning team, eh?”

Donna’s expression is shot through with joy and pain. “Right,” she says, and reaches for his hand. “We’d better tell them.”

They emerge back out hand-in-hand. The Doctor starts up off the jumpseat as they come back into the console room, looking from Donna to the way her hands are clasped with the younger Doctor’s. “I can remember what brought me here,” Donna says. “There was a woman asking for help. She said she was from another planet.”

“Where?” the Doctor asks. He gestures for Donna to sit on the jump seat.

“Mori, she said,” Donna says. “She said the planet was dying and she was looking for us, er... for you and me. Or him and me.” She frowns. “Er. Us.”

“Did she say how?” the Doctor asks. He looks at his younger self. “The Mori are advanced, surely there’s less war these days.” He goes to the console and pulls up the view screen. The younger Doctor, fascinated, comes to look at the new console system. The Doctor pulls up the current Shadow Proclamation reports on the galaxy neighborhood in which Mori is located.

“Nothing is written in the reports,” the Doctor says.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” the younger Doctor interjects. “You never know what’s being covered up, or missed.”

The Doctor inclines his head in acknowledgement.

“I suppose we’d better take a look ourselves,” the younger Doctor says. “It can’t hurt for us to see firsthand what’s going on.” He looks to Donna. “Do you feel well?”

Donna shrugs. “I feel fine. Physically.”

The younger Doctor comes to stand next to her, and both of them feel a distinct sense of calm in their close proximity. The Doctor watches it happen, attempting not to notice the way Donna’s body is turned to the younger Doctor’s, the way they graze hands.

Clara looks between them and sees the way the Doctor swallows hard. She steps up beside him and starts to assist in flight. “Are you all right?” she asks quietly as she moves around the console.

The Doctor shakes his head. “Fine,” he says. “Let’s see what’s going on.”

“I did know how to fly this thing,” Donna says. “Once.” She is observing the way the Doctor and Clara pilot the ship, and the younger Doctor nods.

“The best first mate this ship could ask for,” he confirms. They lean against the railings of the stairs for stability as the TARDIS lurches its way into spaceflight. Donna feels her heart start to race, and her hands start to shake in a mixture of absolute terror and anticipation and joy and excitement, and has to catch her breath. The younger Doctor keeps a close eye on her.

“Oh.”

The Doctor scrambles for the controls abruptly, looking in horror at the viewscreen. “Oh, no,” he says.

Everyone comes to stand beside him to see the screen. There is a planet in its center, blue and brown and green, like Earth, but with huge landmasses scattered across it. There are clouds, but Donna notices immediately the trailing gray and black lines rising from the surface. “That’s smoke,” she says. “It has to be. Like bombs fell.”

The Doctor looks over at her. “You might be right,” he says. She was often right when they were together. He zooms in on a particularly large plume of smoke and inhales. “It’s a crater,” he says. “Absolute destruction. There are hundreds of them.”

The younger Doctor nudges his way forward, a hand resting briefly on the small of Donna’s back. “Is it from explosives or extraterrestrial impact?” He looks closely at it. “It seems like bombs.”

Clara and Donna look at each other. “There’s a war?” Clara asks.

“Or an invasion,” Donna says, and the Doctor and the younger Doctor look back at her.

“What makes you say that?” the Doctor asks. He trusts Donna with the same quiet implicitness he always did.

“It looks like a pattern, like strategy,” Donna says. “Can you zoom back out?” She looks intent. “Look,” she says, pointing. “There’s a ring of holes around that water so no one can get to it.” She scans the screen. “Then there’s that huge one there, might have been a town or a building complex. And here. And here.” She points from crater to crater. “I don’t see anything that looks like an administrative or a hospital building, or any real infrastructure left.”

“That’s brilliant,” the younger Doctor says, and the Doctor nods.

“Let’s find out what this is,” he says. A few moments later they land with a tremendous thud. The Doctor and the younger Doctor start forward at the same time, and give each other a somewhat surprised look. The younger Doctor steps back and the Doctor opens the door. Clara and Donna follow them out into what turns out to be a tunnel, wide, made of metal, and lit with huge roundels. The Doctor looks round, pulls out his sonic, and the younger Doctor follows suit. Donna looks back and forth between them and shakes her head to herself. Between the two of them they scan their surroundings. “There’s life,” the Doctor says slowly. “Humanoid.”

Donna moves closer to the younger Doctor. “The Hath,” she says to him quietly. “Not the same place this time, though.”

“No,” he says.

There is silence in the tunnel. No one seems forthcoming to welcome them. Donna reaches instinctively for the younger Doctor’s hand and feels it close around hers with the same familiar relief.

The Doctor affects not to notice. He takes a deep inhale. “I smell explosives,” he says. “Carbon, magnesium, and sulfur. Wonder why she didn’t land us on the surface.”

“Damage,” Clara says. “There’s probably too much destruction.” She looks up to the ceiling of the tunnel. “Is the atmosphere breathable here?”

“It must be,” Donna says. “The woman I saw was built like a human.” She looks up too. “Maybe we can find a hatch or an access point.”

She and Clara begin to walk down the tunnel a little and both Doctors start to object. “Not without us, eh?” the younger Doctor says, catching up to them. Donna gives him a look of mingled affection and defiance.

“All right, I s’pose we can use you,” she quips. “What with the sonic and all. You can find the door.” She starts forward again, with Clara, and the four of them squint up at the ceiling.

“Here,” the younger Doctor says suddenly. Above them in the dimness of the ceiling is a very large hatch. It has a large metal wheel to turn, and there is a set of very poorly maintained beams screwed into the wall leading up to it. At least fifteen feet, Donna judges, and glances at Clara. “I’ll go up first,” the younger Doctor volunteers. “See if the wheel needs any encouragement.” And he scrambles up the ladder before anyone can protest, sonic in hand.

Donna looks anxiously up from the floor, and then at the Doctor, who has headed a few more feet down the tunnel. He has his sonic out too, looking for hidden doorways or passages. Then she looks back to the younger Doctor who has made his way up to the door. She breathes deeply, and follows him up the ladder.

Alerted by the shifting of the ladder, the younger Doctor looks down. Donna’s upturned face is dimly lit in the tunnel. “Donna,” he says. “What are you doing?”

Donna ascends closer to him. “Don’t want you to go alone,” she says. “If that woman was able to breathe Earth air the air here has to be similar enough.”

The younger Doctor gives her a gentle smile. Still the same Donna, he thinks. “All right,” he says. “Let’s go together.” He looks back up to the hatch, and reaches up to turn the wheel. It makes a tremendous groan and squeal, and Donna winces. But it moves with not much resistance after the first turn. The younger Doctor pushes it up and a circle of blue-and-white sky appears above them. He looks down at her. “Ready?”

She nods, her face illuminated now by the sunlight from above. They climb out and he helps her to her feet.

“Oh, no,” Donna says.

Around them stretches the remains of a city. There is stone and dust scattered everywhere. They have emerged from a manhole in the middle of what was once a wide boulevard. Some of the buildings are still tall, others are collapsed or demolished, and all of them are empty. It is so clearly uninhabited that Donna shudders. There is a smell in the air, like metal and rot.

“Horrible,” the younger Doctor says, squinting around them. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” Donna says, wrapping her arms around her middle. “Is anyone alive here?”

“Doubt it,” the younger Doctor says. He pulls his sonic out again and scans around them. He grimaces. “Bodies. Not live ones. Trapped in the rubble. For miles.”

With a shudder, Donna looks back at the hatch. “You said there was life underground. Maybe they ran. Like in the Blitz when they hid in the tunnels.”

“Yeah,” the younger Doctor says. “Listen,” he adds, turning to her. “I’ll keep you safe, whatever’s happening here.”

Donna nods. “I know,” she says. “You always have.” She looks around them again. “If there’s no life here we might be noticed.”

“You’re right.” He turns back to the hatch. “Let’s go back.” They climb down one after the other and descend into the tunnel where Clara and the Doctor are standing looking up.

“What possessed you to go up there?” the Doctor asks immediately, both relieved and indignant at once. “You have no idea what’s going on!”

“Now we do,” Donna says, readjusting her clothing. “No one alive on the surface.” She faces the Doctor the same resolute way she always did. “Someone razed this place to the ground and sent everyone living into these tunnels.”

“We found a stockpile of weapons,” Clara says. “Guns, swords, all kinds of things I’ve never seen before.”

“It’s guerilla warfare,” the Doctor says. He looks to the younger Doctor. “Does your sonic work?” Separating himself from himself is an effort.

The younger Doctor pulls his sonic out from his inner pocket. “At the ready.”

“Now we just have to figure out whether the life down here are victims or perpetrators,” the Doctor says. “It’s not like the Hath versus the humans this time.”

Donna flinches for the barest moment. They start down the tunnel, trepidatiously listening for noise or some indication of life. Then suddenly there is the squeal of metal on metal, hinges of a door somewhere.

“Who’s there?”

It’s a woman’s voice. Knowing this is no indication of safety, the four of them move forward into the light of one of the roundels, hands up. The woman steps out of the shadows. She is holding an enormous gun of some kind, her hair wild around her face. She is heavily pregnant and looks terrified.

“Oh.” It’s out of Donna’s mouth before she can stop herself. “We mean no harm. Not to you or your baby.”

The woman looks from face to face and blanches. She seems to recognize Donna. “Oh,” she repeats back. “Donna Noble. You’re Donna Noble.”

Donna nods.

“You. And the Doctor,” the woman says. Her eyes fill with tears. “We used our last bit of natural fuels to send Agent Karrish to earth and she found you.” She lowers the gun and weeps, and Donna rushes forward to embrace her without hesitation. She takes the gun out of the woman’s hands and puts it on the floor.

“My baby will live!” The woman grabs Donna’s hands. “We had no hope of this actually working.” She puts her hands over her eyes. “I was starting to wish he’d die inside me, I was prepared to give birth to this baby and watch him be murdered or stolen and I--” The rest of her words are lost to tears, and Donna looks from the woman’s ravaged face to the three humans standing solemnly behind her.

“What’s your name?” she asks gently.

“Beni,” the woman says, managing to steady her voice. “My name is Beni. I’ve been living down here for ages.” Her tears are mixed with awe. She moves forward towards the younger Doctor. “You’re the Doctor.”

“I’m the Doctor,” the Doctor says, and Beni looks at him confusedly.

“We were told he was a young man,” she says.

“Outwardly young,” the younger Doctor says wryly. “I’m technically the Doctor also.”

Beni smiles through her tears. “You brought me two Doctors, you clever girl,” she says to Donna, who can only shrug helplessly.

“Your agent found me,” she says. “She begged me for help, she said she’d come a long way.”

Beni turns back to the dimness behind her. “The rest of them will want to see you,” she says. “They won’t believe you’re really real.” She starts to lead Donna in through a large round door carved into the side of the tunnel. The rest of them follow her, and Donna looks anxiously back at the younger Doctor.

There is the smell of waste, which fades as they walk further into the room, and then a sharp smell of what must be disinfectant, and then a whisper of cooking food on the air. There are blankets and sheets scattered everywhere on the floor, large containers near them, filled with water. And there are people, people sitting in the midst of this apocalyptic scene, some of whom do not look up when they walk by.

“Look!” Beni shouts suddenly, in the middle of the gloomy silence. “Donna Noble found us. And two Doctors! The war is over!”

For a moment there is silence, and then people begin to emerge from corners and shadows, disentangling themselves from their hiding places. They are all women, from teenaged to elderly, all of them hungry and wide-eyed and afraid.

“Is that really her?” someone asks.

“It’s her, it’s her,” someone else says. An old woman steps forward with a piece of card in her hand. “Look, she’s like her shrine.”

Donna looks wide-eyed at a painted rendering of herself on the woman’s card. Under it is written “OUR LADY OF THE LIBERATION” and a date. “I visited the Ood shrines to Donna a long time ago,” the lady says. “When I was much younger. The statue there is magnificent.”

“A statue?” Donna is bewildered. “Of what?”

“Of you!” Beni says. “Didn’t you know?”

“No,” Donna says. “Why me? I’m no one.”

“You’re not,” Beni says. “You’re the Lady of the Liberation, you’re the protective goddess of the whole Mridulan galaxy, we’ve known stories of you all our lives.” She shakes her head in awe. “I can hardly believe you’re a real person.”

Donna looks to the younger Doctor. “Did you know this?”

The younger Doctor shrugs. “I had an idea,” he says.

The Doctor, who of course had known, who had visited these shrines many, many times, who had shed tears in front of the various depictions of Donna on many planets, who had thrown flowers at the very statue on the Oodsphere the old woman had referenced alongside all the celebrants of the Liberation Festival, now wonders how much this carbon copy of his old self knows. It must be up until he wiped her memory. At least he wouldn’t remember regenerating.

“Usually they draw you blindfolded,” the old woman says. “But you have eyes.”

Donna is frankly nonplussed. After a few moments she exhales. “All right,” she says. “I suppose it’s my job today to learn information I had no idea about that is disquieting to say the least.” There are so many faces gathered around them, and Donna is starting to feel crowded. “Er,” she says, at their expectant faces, “these are... the Doctors, and this... this is Clara, she’s my friend--” Donna’s gestures are hesitant. “We’ve come to find out what’s going on and help you.” It’s almost a question.

There is a wave of silence over the crowd and someone starts to cry. There are tears streaming down faces here or there. “I wish my husband was here to know this,” a woman says, and a few agree with her. “We haven’t seen our men in a long time.”

“I wish my son was here,” comes another voice.

“Do you know where our families are?” someones asks Donna from the crowd.

“No,” she says.

“Why did they separate you?” Clara speaks up, looking to save Donna from her confusion and unease.

“To make us weak.” A young woman says. She makes a path through the assembled crowd and holds out a hand to shake Donna’s. “I’m Nina. My husband was a peace officer before the invasion.”

“Who invaded you?” the younger Doctor asks. “I’ve never heard of any surface wars on your planet after the Shadow Proclamation put up the Truce.”

“The Shadow Proclamation are the ones who invaded us,” Nina says.

The Doctor is alarmed. “The universal police invaded you? They’re occupying?”

“They blew our capital to bits.” Beni makes circles on her belly with her hands. “I was in the hospital for an appointment when they hit. Found out I was pregnant twenty minutes before the lights went out. They declared a suspension of our constitution on the basis of emergent need in the light of intergalactic conflict. They told us our planet is a strategic location and they would rearrange our infrastructure to accommodate their needs. They razed us and drove us underground. They took our men and our boys. They shut our banks down and took our farms.”

“But that’s government forces,” the Doctor says. “You’re being occupied by an intergalactic treaty of officials. That makes no sense. They said intergalactic conflict? How is that possible when the Shadow Proclamation is made up of all universal nations?”

“We don’t know,” a woman says. “But our children are hungry and the surface is off-limits to us.”

“But now you’re here,” Beni says. “So maybe it will be over soon.”

They all look so hopeful and relieved.

The younger Doctor has been keeping a close eye on Donna this entire time, to be sure she is safe. “I’m not a miracle worker,” Donna says.

“That’s not what we hear,” Nina says.

The women and children make them welcome among them, bringing them food and water, gathering to watch Donna like an audience. She is distinctly unnerved by it. At first she declines their food on the basis of limited supply but then she realizes it’s almost like offerings. That makes it worse.

“Please,” she says after the fourth person has brought her food, “save your food for yourselves. And your children.”

“How else will we sustain you?” The old woman smiles and pats Donna’s hand. “If you are to sustain us, first we must feed you.” She sits near to Donna, smiling to herself. “My name is Persha,” she continues. “I’ve waited a long time to know if the stories were true.”

“What stories?” Donna asks.

“The liberation of the Ood, for a start.” Persha counts off on her fingers. “The Hath and Human War of Generations, the monster of Midnight, the Adipose, all of them.”

Donna is speechless. All of those are true indeed.

“Are they all true?”

“I... yes,” Donna says, unable at last to lie. And why would she? All of them are gloriously, painfully true, all of them had been taken away from her and now come rushing back with unexpected clarity. “Yeah,” she repeats, and her eyes fill up and spill over. “Yes, they’re all true.”

Persha looks dismayed. “Oh,” she exclaims. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

The younger Doctor moves before the Doctor can. “Donna,” he says to her, in a way that makes the Doctor clench his teeth, and wraps her up in his embrace. “Don’t cry.”

He feels Donna’s muscles tense and relax, and she steels herself. “I’m sorry,” she says, pulling away and wiping her eyes. “It’s all so overwhelming. I wasn’t expecting you all to know the details.”

“But they’re extraordinary!” Persha says, leaning forward to offer Donna a handkerchief made of various pieces of fabric sewn together. “All the things you did, the lives you saved! The two of you!”

The younger Doctor smiles at Donna too. “It’s true,” he says. “You did all of it.”

The Doctor clears his throat. “I wonder if we might ask you all a few more questions?” He wants to sit next to Donna, wrap an arm around her the way the younger Doctor is doing so easily now, comfort her, but he knows she will not regard him the same way she does the younger Doctor. Instead, he turns to Clara. “Will you sit with Donna? If someone is willing to guide us, we,” he indicates the younger Doctor and himself, “can do some recon and get the lay of the land here, so to speak.”

“Of course.” Clara comes to settle herself beside Donna among the blankets and people. Donna looks absolutely bereft when the younger Doctor stands up. He gives her a meaningful look and turns to his current self.

“Let’s solve this problem,” the younger Doctor says. “Two brains are better than one.”

Donna watches both of them walk out of the room, back into the tunnel, and away from her. She exhales shakily. “Please, will you let me talk to her alone for a while?” Clara asks the people who are still watching Donna hungrily, expectantly. They drift away slowly, one by one, some children being ushered by their mothers, others looking back over their shoulders.

“Thank you,” Donna says gratefully to Clara. She exhales and wraps her arms around herself. She looks around. “These people think I can save them,” she says after a long moment of silence.

Clara reaches out and puts a hand on Donna’s shoulder. “They’re glad to see you,” she says, and knows it sounds useless.

“They think I can do something that I can’t,” Donna says, her voice low but urgent. “These people think I can do magic. I don’t even know what’s happening on the surface, I hardly know anything about the Shadow Proclamation. And it’s worse that all the stories are actually true.”

Her hands are moving agitatedly, and Clara covers them with her own. “Don’t forget to breathe,” she says, and Donna slows her movements. “There is no way the Doctor will let you come to harm,” she says, and Donna’s eyes flicker to her face at the certainty in Clara’s tone. “And there is something going on here that you must be meant to be part of. I’ve been with the Doctor long enough to know that.”

Donna breathes steadily, slowly. She also knows this.

“He says you came looking for him,” Clara says. “That you turned him down and then you came and found him.”

“I did,” Donna says. “That’s true.”

“Why? How did you find him? How long did it take you?”

Donna shakes her head. “Took me about a year? Maybe a bit less? I was just... throwing myself into every strange thing that happened, spending my time and money on investigating weird happenings, I just knew he’d be around them.” She smiles a bit ruefully. “My mum was absolutely losing her mind. To her I was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Useless. But I knew. I just knew.”

“And where did you find him?”

“London. Of course,” Donna says. “That was the Adipose.”

“I don’t know what those are, but these people do,” Clara says, grinning too. “Maybe you can tell me the story.”

“They were aliens,” Donna says, “naturally. And they infiltrated a pharmaceutical company and started selling pills that caused people’s bodies to fragment, a kilo at a time.”

Clara grimaces in disgust.

“I mean, literally a kilo of living flesh,” Donna says. “It would detach itself and... walk away. I saw a woman dissolve completely into ten or eleven of the little buggers. Right in front of me on her bathroom floor. People thought it was a weight-loss pill.”

“That’s fucked,” Clara says, and her honesty startles Donna into a little laugh, the first since she’s arrived.

“It was fucked,” Donna says. “And I’m sure you’ve seen plenty just as bad. Almost inevitable with him, isn’t it?”

Clara nods in agreement. “The most exciting, excruciating, terrifying, euphoric things.”

“Yeah. Exactly.” Donna continues with her memories. “We discovered they wanted to use Earth as a nursery, and they’d recruited this... woman, this Miss Foster, to be the nurse, and she must have gotten them this office building they were in. She called herself a nanny. The Adipose dropped her on her head from the roof of the building when they realized they’d been found out.”

Donna remembers how, instinctually, she’d buried her face in the Doctor’s chest as gravity reasserted itself over Miss Foster’s body, how he’d pulled her in as soon as it happened, how she’d clung to him in a way she had wanted to do before, and how it was as natural as breathing to turn to him and feel him hold her close.

“They came in their ships and collected the babies,” Donna says. “We got them off the surface of the planet and out of the galactic neighborhood. No sign of them since, at least not locally. Not that I would know, even if it had happened again, since I was mindwiped.”

There is a little silence. Clara looks around them. “They say they’re being occupied by government forces,” she says. “Universal government forces. But why? For strategic purposes? Who is the enemy of the universal police? They’re meant to be the law that applies no matter the planet.”

“Then something is going on that shouldn’t be,” Donna says. “On one side or the other. You saw the visuals. They’ve cut off resources, made the city impassable. Is this the capital?” She looks around them. “Is this the capital? Or an important location?” she asks, raising her voice so she can be heard.

“This is the capital,” Beni says from her seat on a folding chair. “Bahara Ko Kel. It means ‘city on the blue water.’ There was a lake here a long time ago.”

“Where did it go?” Clara asks.

“It was drained,” Beni says. She drags her chair over to where Donna and Clara are sitting. “There was a... poisoning. It leached into the soil and we had limited natural aquifer capability to filter it out. So the government drained it.”

“What was it in the water?” Donna asks. “How do you know so much about it?”

“I was a city planner,” Beni says. “I was part of the team that designed the containment process and the drainage. As for what was in the water, we don’t know. We weren’t allowed to do tests.”

“How long ago was this?” Donna asks.

“Nine months now,” Beni says. “We’ve been down here almost eight months.”

“How do you get your water here?” Clara asks.

“We tap into the city’s underground pipe system,” a woman says. “We have filtration devices we smuggled down here. We can show them to you.”

Donna declines for both of them. “I won’t put your organizing in danger like that,” she says. “And food?”

“We steal.”

The answer is simple. Donna feels like she should have known. She doesn’t ask where from. She and Clara only look at each other solemnly. “How long exactly have you been down here?” Clara asks.

“We’ve measured by the one natural calendar we have,” Nina says, pointing to Beni. “Eight months.”

“I was four weeks along when I found out,” Beni says. “Now by my count I’m a week from my due date.”

“And... pregnancy is forty weeks among you?” Donna asks. “Are you humans?”

“Close enough,” Beni says. “Excellent question. And yes, gestation is forty weeks on Mori. Some of our relative species go a little longer, but we’re close to human physiology.”

“So they poisoned the major body of water in your city,” Clara says, “then they invaded?”

“About two weeks later,” another woman says. “They shut down the schools and the banks, that was our first indication. We all had to go and get our children from their schools, even those of us who sent our children off-world for their education. They claimed they wanted to do a census of Mori.”

Clara frowns. “Did they count you? Did they put marks on you? Take your names and addresses and details?”

“They just... processed us,” Nina says. “I lost my job. We all did. The men and boys over 12 were told to go one way, and the women and children under 12 the other. Took about eighteen hours to process the entire capital.”

“How awful,” Donna says. She thinks for a moment. “This was such a thorough and complete shutdown of your country,” she says. “They were so efficient, and so quick about getting you all out of the way. Did they do this anywhere else?”

“We aren’t sure,” says a woman. “But we managed to take a cell network for ourselves for two days before they figured us out, and we got nothing. No responses, no pings, no results on a scan. So they must have gotten everyone.”

“You have no communications above ground anymore?” Clara asks.

“We are cut off,” says Nina, and there is a finality about her words that makes Donna shiver.

“How do you know about the baby?” she asks Beni, who shrugs.

“I don’t,” she says. “We’ll see when it comes out.”

A look of dismay passes over the faces of all the women who hear that statement, and Nina says, “We’ll all be here to help when that happens.”

“What about you, Donna?” Beni asks. “Have you got a husband? A child?”

Donna looks down at the wedding band on her left hand. “I do have a husband,” she says slowly, thinking of her life on Earth for the first time in a while. “I... his name is Shawn.”

“What does he do?”

“He, er... he helps me run my foundation,” Donna says. “We... we have a foundation dedicated to science education in London.” She thinks of the building going up, layer by layer, in central London, the observatory she is funding, the giant telescope in the Wilfred Mott Planetarium and Library. The library dedicated to her grandfather, who’d capered through it like a boy when he saw all the stacks of books, the rows of computers, the enormous skylight.

“How long have you been married?”

“Just about three years,” Donna says. “No babies yet, we’ve been busy.” And that is most of the truth, though she leaves out that the migraines had made her fearful of pregnancy, not to mention she’d suspected she couldn’t get pregnant for a while, and now she remembers why; the Metacrisis. She has no idea if it has had a lasting effect on her cells or her DNA, if her time with the Doctor changed her body beyond her former functions. But there have been no pregnancies on earth, though her period has come with healthy regularity. She can be sure of nothing.

“Maybe we’ll see our husbands again soon.”

The statement is met with a general sense of forlorn agreement, the sentiment worn threadbare by hopeful overuse in these dark tunnels. Donna doesn’t even know who said it, just that it hangs in the air like a hungry ghost. She knows it’s renewed by her presence. She feels Clara squeeze her hand and suddenly she is tired. Overwhelmingly tired, as everything seems to catch up with her on a wave of anxious awareness.

“I need to sleep,” she says to Clara, and Persha leaps into action, quickly for all her age.

“Get blankets,” she commands. “Donna needs to rest.”

Donna is practically asleep upright, her eyes too heavy to keep open, as soon as the words have left her mouth. It is a tiredness she hasn’t felt in a long, long time. She rouses herself to lay down on the pile of blankets provided for her, and doesn’t stir when Persha drapes her with a coverlet. Her sleep is so deep and exhausted that Clara is worried. She keeps watch, whispering with the other women, gathering more information while she glances over periodically to check that Donna is breathing.

A long while later the two Doctors return. Donna is still asleep, and the younger Doctor moves towards her instinctively, immediately, and takes over watching for Clara. She goes to sit with the Doctor, who is mulling over a stack of drawings.

“These are layouts of the tunnels,” the Doctor says, glancing up at Clara as she sits down next to him. “They made me a few copies. We saw the water filtration system.”

“What are they doing underground?” Clara asks.

“What are they doing on the surface,” the Doctor says. “That’s the question. They drained that lake on the surface. They said it was poisoned.”

“They said the government didn’t let them test it.”

“I bet they didn’t,” the Doctor muses. “Who’s leading the Shadow Proclamation now?” he asks himself. “We should get back on the ship and do some research.”

“Why don’t we do that now,” Clara suggests. “I wonder if we have limited time before the Shadow Proclamation notice we’re here.”

“Right.”

The younger Doctor seems to take it as a given he will stay with Donna while she sleeps, and he nods at the Doctor when he hears where they’re going. He turns back to Donna’s sleeping face before the Doctor and Clara are even fully turned away.

Her breathing is steady; he can hear it. Her cheeks are flushed and her skin is pink. She seems healthy. He puts two fingers softly on her temple to check her pulse and blood pressure. Both are normal.

Donna stirs at the feeling of his fingers on her skin. She opens her eyes, blinks a few times, and then inhales and exhales deeply. She sits up and pushes her hair out of her face. “You’re back,” she says.

“I’m back,” he says softly. “Did you sleep all right? Are you all right?” He’s seen her in this state so many times, her blue eyes coming to life as she wakes up, her red hair in disarray.

“Yes,” she says. “Did I sleep long?”

“Yes,” the younger Doctor nods. “Clara said you suddenly started to fall asleep, and they laid you down. Does your head hurt?”

“No,” Donna says. “No, I feel rested. I’m hungry.” She looks around her for the parcel of food she’d been handed. They’d all made her a meal of their stash despite her protests. “Eat with me,” she says. “I know you walked a long way. You can tell me what you found.”

“We found more tunnels,” the Doctor says. “They showed me the food and water, the disposal, the weapons.”

“What do they have?” Donna asks. She tears open a package of crackers and hands the Doctor half in the wrapper. They break apart a block of cheese between them, and share the container of water. There are also small grapes.

“Guns. A lot of them. Traditional explosive and laser. Infrared, photon bullets, all that kind of thing. They have scramblers, trackers, small nuclear arms.”

Donna shudders. “Nuclear?”

“Well, that’s common technology for them, it’s not atom bombs,” the younger Doctor clarifies. “But yes, nuclear.”

“Will we be fighting, d’you think?” Donna asks.

“I don’t know,” the younger Doctor shrugs. “We’ll do everything we can to avoid it, of course. As usual.” But there is always the unspoken for him, the resolve that if anyone harmed Donna there would be a painful and certain death for them. “If they’re being occupied by government forces, then something very big is going on.”

Donna eats silently for a moment. “I’m scared,” she says eventually. “I’m afraid these people think I can do magic.”

“Magic?” The younger Doctor looks puzzled.

“That I can save them,” Donna says. “That I can do something that I maybe can’t do.”

“We can only do what we can do,” the younger Doctor says, counting grapes to divide them evenly between them. “Fortunately, I happen to know that you are capable of extraordinary things.”

Donna sighs. “Not you too, Spaceman.”

They both pause. The affectionate name slipped from her as easily as memory does.

“Don’t put pressure on me,” Donna says urgently. “This is life or death, there’s a pregnant woman here.”

“You’re not alone,” the younger Doctor reminds her, reaching across to take her hand. “Don’t forget that.”

“Do they think I’m a goddess?” Donna asks.

“No, I don’t think so,” the younger Doctor says thoughtfully. “I think they think you’re the deus ex machina, though.”

“I’m not,” Donna repeats.

“I know.” He pushes a stray bit of hair out of her face. “Remember what I said to you about coincidence? All that time ago? There’s too much of it around you. Something must be happening again.”

He watches the emotions warring on her face, her beautiful face that he has loved to look at for as long as he has known her. She is full of expression, and her eyes can speak volumes. With the slightest quirk of her lip he knows when she’s joking and when she’s serious. There is fear, excitement, and anticipation. That’s my Donna, he thinks.

“Is it beyond my control?” Donna asks.

“Like many things in this universe,” the younger Doctor shrugs. “And, like every other time, I will be here for every minute of it. And I will protect you and save you and make sure you get out of it alive.”

Donna looks down at her hands. “I trust you,” she says.

He pulls her hand to his lips and kisses it, a gesture out of the past that makes her gasp with the force of memory. Then he looks at her hand again and says, “That’s a wedding band, Donna Noble.”

“Er, yes, I... I got married.” Neither of them would have the knowledge the Doctor has, of her wedding when he’d stood in the graveyard and watched her laugh and smile and love another man.

“Who is he?”

Donna takes a long time to answer. Then she looks at the younger Doctor, the resurrection of all of her hopes and dreams, even removed from him as she had been, and she knows. “No one,” she says. “I’ll tell you about him another time.”

The younger Doctor doesn’t get a chance to pursue the subject. Suddenly there is a group of women gathered around them again. “Are you quite finished?” one asks, and Donna feels her heart sink.

“Why?” she asks.

“Because two of your friends have disappeared into your ship, and we are unable to understand why we have been shut out from it,” the same woman says. “They have not allowed us to know what information they are seeking and we demand to be told.”

“They want to know who’s in charge of the Shadow Proclamation,” the younger Doctor says. “What we can do to help. That’s all.”

“We’ve shown you our water, our food, our hiding places,” the woman says. She is starting to twitch slightly. “We are being suppressed by hostile intergalactic government forces, from achieving our destiny--”

“Hold on,” the younger Doctor says, holding up a hand. “Your destiny?”

“To dominate,” the woman says, and then Nina steps forward.

“To rule,” she says. “We have the superior minds, with our power nestled inside, alive, hungry.”

“Inside?” The younger Doctor’s wariness unfolds into guarded grimness. “Inside where?”

“Inside,” Nina repeats. “In our minds. Our brains. The power lies in them, waiting, ready to consume. We will not let anyone stand in the way.”

“In your brain?” The younger Doctor gets to his feet and puts his hand inside his coat to retrieve his sonic. Nina steps forward and knocks his hand out of the way.

“If you have a weapon you’d best let that notion go,” she says, and Donna notices her pupils are blown wide, a little bit of saliva oozing out of the corner of her mouth. “We will kill you.”

“But we came here to help you!” Donna exclaims, leaping to her feet as well. She comes to stand close to the younger Doctor.

“Don’t try and protect your husband,” Nina sneers, and Donna rolls her eyes instinctively.

“He’s not my husband,” she says, and the younger Doctor, despite his trepidation, feels one corner of his mouth quirk up. The eternal chestnut with them had always been that somehow, surely, they were married. “For fuck’s sake, they’re still doing that?” she asks the younger Doctor, and he shrugs.

“I don’t have any marriage certificate,” he says. “She’s not my wife.”

“Irrelevant,” Nina says.

“Let me help you, Nina,” the younger Doctor says urgently. “If you have something living in your brain you have the right to be free of it. The Mori have no symbiotic relationships with the flora or fauna of this planet. It shouldn’t be there.”

“Oh, no, no,” Nina says, smiling. “It belongs there.”

“What is ‘it’?” Donna demands. She can feel the dread starting to creep up and spread outwards from her chest like a many-armed thing.

“Kalazar,” says Nina, and she pauses a moment to twitch. “He is Kalazar. He is many. They are many. They are us.” She turns to Donna, which gives the younger Doctor the chance to reach for his sonic.

“He’s got something!” one of the women shrieks from the crowd. “He’s got something!”

There is a sound like metal and equipment and the women in the front step aside to reveal a group of armed children. They are holding guns of all variations, some that Donna can recognize, and others not. Donna chokes and grabs the younger Doctor’s arm.

“What have you done with the Doctor?” he demands. “And Clara?”

“We have contained them.”

“What does that mean?” The younger Doctor looks between the children with the weapons and the gathered adults.

“We pulled them out of that box.” Nina rolls her shoulders and shakes her head. She looks as if she’s had a terrible fright, her eyes wide. “We’re holding them. And now you too.”

“Have you all got this... thing in your head? This Kalazar?” the younger Doctor asks. “Is it a single entity? Is it made of parts? Is it a species?”

“Would you like to see? It’s your destiny too, after all,” Nina says. She turns to the surrounding women. “Shall we show the invincible Donna Noble how mortal she is after all? How she is destined to be part of us? And bonus,” here she turns to the younger Doctor, “she’s brought us two Time Lords, clever girl.”

“But what is it?” The younger Doctor is relentless, an old tactic, to keep people talking.

“Kalazar is greater than the sum of its parts,” Nina quotes. She is reciting from memory, as if programmed. “Kalazar feeds on the minds and brains of the untrained, and teaches them the true order. Kalazar is the Way of Thought. The unifier.” She starts to wince, and grimace, and then tips her head to the side.

A viscous, sluglike creature oozes out of her ear and slops onto her shoulder, like a puddle of mucus. It has few discernible features; none, really. Donna gags before she can stop herself. The younger Doctor draws back in distaste.

The blob is the color of dead flesh, mottled livid purple and red. It sits for a moment and then extends an appendage, blindly, until it reaches Nina’s earlobe. At which point it seems to launch its body up into the ear and Nina makes a strangled noise of terrible pain as it slops and forces its way back into her head.

“That is Kalazar, one of many, one of what will be millions,” Nina says as she straightens her head up again. There is a small trickle of blood from her nose. “And I have a goddess, and two fat-brained Time Lords, and a spare human. Basic model, a bit small to be useful for anything but scavenging, but she’ll do.”

“Oh, I think the men will like her.” Persha steps forward, and Donna gives her a horrified look. “Up to you, of course, but if we do come across them they’ll be ravenous.”

“You have one in your head too?” Donna asks, and then feels stupid.

“Of course,” Persha says. “We all do.” She looks Donna over critically. “I’d offer you to them too but something tells me this young man would go berserk.” She points at the younger Doctor. “You don’t have to have a marriage to be a wife, little human, Time Lord or no. You can’t lie to Kalazar.”

“Where are they?” Donna demands.

“You’ll be joining them,” Persha says. “The women will escort you to the room where we will process you and you will become part of us.”

“You said you needed help!” Donna exclaims. “You sent that woman, that agent to find me!”

Nina laughs, nudging Persha with her elbow. “Told you it would work,” she says. “She believed Agent Karrish.”

“She said your planet is dying!”

“So it is,” Nina says. “But we will resuscitate it, through Kalazar. All will be one.”

“Oh,” the younger Doctor says. “I see.” He looks grim. “This isn’t an invasion. This is a quarantine.”

Donna makes as if to grab his arm, but the armed group of children all retrain their weapons on her. “They razed your city because you were all infected,” the younger Doctor continues. “The Shadow Proclamation is doing damage control.”

“And we escaped them!” Nina declares. “We fled, and we are here to continue the glorious work.”

“Even the children?” Donna asks. She looks to the group of small hands clutching guns, the big eyes trained on them, the serious faces.

“Our most precious resource,” Beni says, and Donna is rendered speechless at the cruelty of it. “And now you.” She comes forward and yanks Donna’s hands behind her back. Donna feels rope wind tightly around her wrists. She sees the younger Doctor is being similarly restrained, but is less perturbed about it than she is. They are frog-marched down several long hallways, followed by two armed children, a boy and a girl, and shoved unceremoniously into a room behind a round door. The Doctor and Clara are sitting against the far wall, also bound, and Donna and the younger Doctor are deposited beside them.

“Don’t be afraid,” Beni says, and the rest of the women dissipate, leaving her and Persha and Nina. “It hurts, but not forever.” She looks back at Persha and Nina. “Shall I begin the teaching? Shall we initiate them?”

Persha nods. “Let them learn. They have arrived at their salvation.” She and Nina join hands with Beni and they begin to chant. “Teach the unbelieving masses, O Great Master Kalazar. Teach the unbelieving masses, O Great Master Kalazar.”

Both Persha and Nina tilt their heads in that unnatural, otherworldly way, and Clara chokes on her breath when the Kalazar oozes its way onto their shoulders, waving blind appendages to the air around them, before forcing their way back into both women’s ears, causing blood to leak from their noses. Nina has tears of blood tracing down her cheeks for a few moments, both of them groaning the chant until their voices normalize.

After a long while of this, Persha and Nina retreat behind Beni. “Let her teach you,” Persha says. She and Nina back out of the room, and pull the heavy door shut with a resounding clang.

“You evil bitch,” Donna says immediately, as soon as the door is shut. “You’re pregnant, you have a baby in you.”

Beni drops her ceremonial pose and leans against the wall. She looks exhausted. “Leave me alone,” she sighs. “You have no idea what you’re saying.”

“Is that even a baby in there?” Donna demands, and the Doctor, the younger Doctor, and Clara all look at her in horror, and then at Beni, realizing that Donna could be absolutely right.

“Maybe you’re the queen bee, maybe it’s you giving birth to those lumps of dead flesh--”

“Shut up!” Beni explodes, turning on Donna. “Shut up, you foolish cunt! Don’t talk about my baby like that!” She is furious. “I’ve been trapped here waiting for one or both of us to die in this hole, don’t you dare accuse me of putting my baby in danger!” She yanks Donna’s hair hard, to press Donna’s head against her belly. “Listen,” she hisses. “You can hear the heartbeat.”

And faintly, so faintly, Donna hears a steady thumping, a tiny drum of life. Beni pushes her head away roughly. Donna winces but her hands are bound and she can’t defend herself. “Fucking humans,” Beni mutters.

“Then why did you let them put that... thing in your head?” the Doctor asks, his tone more measured, non-accusatory.

“I didn’t,” Beni says, her voice tightly controlled. “I begged them not to. They don’t know what it might do to the baby. I agreed to cooperate. For my baby. Come what may.” She is shaking now. “I think they’re going to take my baby and process me once it’s born.” Her eyes fill with tears. “I may never get another chance to have a child, and it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me that I may never get to hold this one.” Beni starts to weep. “I’m trapped. My poor innocent baby is trapped too.”

“And how long did you say before you give birth?” the Doctor continues, softly, relentlessly.

“A week. Ten days, maybe,” Beni says. She wipes her eyes roughly. “I don’t exactly know. They’ll probably lock me up when I go into labor.”

“You think this is going to go on for ten more days?” the Doctor asks. He scoffs. “Not if I have anything to say about it, I’ve got appointments.”

“You propose to resist?” Beni asks. Her smile is mirthless. “How? They’re possessed. Those blobs control them. They sink into every crevice of the brain, and they live there and grow there. That’s why it hurts when they come and go. It’s attached to the living tissue of the brain. If they... If I... I’m afraid it would make me kill my baby. If I had one. Accomplish the pain all at once, you know? Let me give birth, let the thing crawl into my brain, and dispose of my baby all in one shot.” She starts to cry again. “Fucking fuck!” she says, and it’s a sound of frustration and pain that Donna knows so well. Despair and frustration and loneliness and fear.

“Beni,” she says gently. “We understand your fear. We see you. We will help you when that baby is born and we won’t let them take it, or you. We came here to end this problem.”

“But don’t you see?” Beni asks. “They know you’re not a goddess, Donna.”

“I’m not,” Donna says. “I never said I was. I can’t do magic. I can’t save you.” She also starts to tear up. “I know even less than you do. I was just brought here.”

The younger Doctor moves closer to her. Clara does the same.

“That means they can infect you too,” Beni says. “All of you. They’re planning to. And that means any resistance you try won’t work. You’ll be possessed.”

“We won’t let it get that far,” Clara says. “Circumstances have converged on this situation in a way that is bigger than you can understand. Donna being here is a sign.” Donna starts to object, but Clara stops her. “No, Donna, it’s true,” she says. “It’s time for you to stop pretending you don’t know these are extenuating circumstances. The burden is not all on you, but your presence is significant. You can’t hide that anymore.”

“It’s not,” Donna insists, and the younger Doctor shakes his head.

“No use,” he says. “She was the same with me.”

The Doctor grits his teeth. She was the same with me, he thinks. He adjusts his position, attempting to find a more comfortable way to sit with his hands so restrained.

“Oh, give it a rest, Spaceman,” Donna says. “We’re tied up in this room because I’m so fucking extraordinary.”

There is a little silence. Beni clears her throat. “I don’t think I can get you out of here,” she says. “I’m pregnant and I’m outnumbered. If you’re supposed to be here,” and she pauses. “All of you, not just Donna, then you’re the ones who’ll have to figure it out.” She shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Obviously you can’t make any waves,” Donna says. “They mean what they say.” She shifts against the wall. “But we are going to put a stop to this one way or another.”

There is a bang at the door, and it swings open. All four captives immediately assume positions of submission and a girl, not more than ten or eleven, pokes her head into the room. “Leave them,” the girl says. “Everyone wants to eat.”

Beni retreats towards the door with a wide-eyed stare at the Doctor, who is glaring at her resentfully. She turns back to the door, her face composed, and the girl pulls the door shut with a final look at all of them.

“Fuck’s sake,” Clara says into the silence, a sentiment echoed by all of them. “Now what?”

“We wait,” the Doctor says grimly. “What else can we do? They took my sonic.”

“I have mine,” the younger Doctor says. “Might be hard to get to it, but we’ll work on it.”

“Wait,” Donna says. “The Doctor is right. They’re going to come back for us. And they’re probably going to come for me first.”

There is a small silence because she is most likely correct. “We won’t let them take you,” Clara says.

“What can you do?” Donna asks. “We’re all tied up.” She looks at the younger Doctor and then to the Doctor. “We’ll have to wait. Let them think they’ve won for a while.”

And so they wait. Donna moves closer to the younger Doctor, trying to seek comfort from his presence. He shifts so they’re shoulder to shoulder. He can feel that she’s shaking a little, terrified that her prediction might be true. “We won’t let them hurt you,” he says to her. Donna is only quiet in response. She huddles closer to him.

None of them are sure how much time has passed by the time the door opens again. Nina enters, alone. “Get up,” she says to Donna.

“Fuck off,” Donna says, and spits at her feet. This earns her a casual, vicious slap across the face, and the Doctors and Clara all object at once. Nina hauls Donna to her feet.

“Shut up,” Nina says, to the room at large, and pulls Donna out the door with her.

Donna’s face is tight with hatred and rage as Nina pulls her along the corridors, first one way and then the other. She stumbles and drags her feet deliberately, making Nina slow and stop. It only makes Nina angry, though, so eventually Donna stops, fearing her for own safety. Nina brings her into another room, lit more brightly than the first. There’s a hole in the floor, from which a terrible smell emanates.

“Sit down,” Nina says.

Donna laughs.

“Sit down,” Nina repeats, and kicks her in the back of the knee, forcing her legs to bend. Donna lands on her knees and Nina pushes her shoulder until she sits. “Sit down,” she says again.

Donna looks towards the stinking hole in the floor and feels herself start to shake. Now her heart is racing. Nina kneels down and reaches into the hole, and in her hand is a quivering slop of life, a new Kalazar. “Are you afraid, Donna?” Nina asks. “Goddess of the Ood? The Beloved Companion? Defender of Galaxies?” She steps closer to Donna and Donna can smell the awful, rotting scent of the Kalazar, see the grotesque, pulsing life with the total lack of features. She feels herself start to panic as Nina gathers all her hair in one hand and wraps it securely around her fingers to hold it fast.

“No,” Donna says, puling away. “No, no, no.” Tears well in her eyes.

“Stop moving, you silly bitch.” Nina shakes her head. “This is inevitable.” She puts the slimy blob on Donna’s shoulder. Donna shudders; the cold, wet, stinking weight of it makes her want to scream forever. She feels the blind rooting of the creature, and immediately a stupendous pain flares in her ear and down her neck. It spreads into a vise around her forehead, burning and squeezing until Donna is blind with the agony of it. She can feel the screaming wrenching her throat. It’s worse than any migraine she had ever suffered, worse than the Metacrisis when she had felt her whole body torn apart.

There is a sudden sharp whine and a horrible, nauseating pang, and Donna keels over, eyes rolling.

The Kalazar spills out of her ear, twitching horribly. Then it bursts like a cyst, spilling red and purple and yellow liquid. It is clearly dead, as if it has been torn open by a knife.

Donna lies very still. Nina looks from the ravaged Kalazar to the prone figure of Donna on the floor. For all she knows they are both dead. The Kalazar, certainly, cannot be alive. Nina approaches Donna trepidatiously, finally terrified of the Beloved Companion. She reaches out to touch Donna’s shoulder and Donna stiffens in response. Nina doesn’t know whether to be relieved that she hasn’t killed Donna, but Donna has killed the Kalazar, and that she fears.

A moment later Donna sits up, her nose bleeding. She is dazed and defenseless, but now Nina is afraid.

“How did you kill it?” Nina breathes shakily. She backs away. Donna gags on a sudden influx of saliva in her mouth, and spits. She wipes at her nose and her fingers come away bloody. She looks to the ruined sack of the Kalazar’s body on the floor and her mind starts to work.

“How did I kill it?” Donna asks. “Fear me, Nina.” She gets to her feet, willing away the nausea, the vertigo, the pain. “You got too cocky with me.” She swallows the bile at her throat. “You thought you would try me. Do you think they worship me on a thousand, thousand planets because I’m mortal?” It goes against every fiber of her belief in herself, but she sees she is scaring Nina. “Do you think the Ood carved me into their mountainsides because I can die?”

Nina gropes for the door behind her, but Donna, enraged and exhausted, is quicker. “You thought you would bring some prizes to your masters, eh?” she asks. “Two Time Lords, two humans, well--” She stops herself, sounding like the younger Doctor, “I s’pose I’m not quite human after all.” The idea makes her feel lonelier than she has ever felt before, and reckless. She reaches up and closes a hand around Nina’s neck. “Sides deprive you of oxygen, front I crush your windpipe.” She looks Nina’s face over. “Look at the Kalazar. See his death. Do you think I’ll let you outlive it much longer?”

“You won’t kill me,” NIna says. “I’m a person.”

“Shut up,” Donna snaps. “I’m talking to the glob of snot in your brain.” She shakes Nina a bit. “Fear me,” she repeats, loudly and furiously. “Fear me!” She squeezes the sides of Nina’s neck, and the color flushes Nina’s face. Her eyes go wide and then roll, and the Kalazar slips from her ear to her shoulder to the floor, where it oozes towards the dead spill of its fellow creature. Donna wants to stomp on it, wishes for one of the guns the others had before. She releases Nina’s body and lets her fall to the floor. The living Kalazar lies quivering on the floor next to the putrid puddle of remains. Donna’s face twists in disgust. “I don’t know how to kill you,” she tells it. “But you won’t kill me.”

The door bangs open behind her and she whirls, expecting guns pointed at her. Instead, Beni stumbles in through the door, both Doctors and Clara behind her. Donna makes a sigh of relief and feels her knees give way. The younger Doctor beats the Doctor by an inch and catches her before she goes to ground. She is conscious, just weak and dizzy. “What happened?” she asks.

“Beni came,” Clara says, and she helps the younger Doctor move Donna over to the wall. The Doctor moves towards the putrid hole in the ground where, inside, there are masses of the gelatinous Kalazar, writhing and slopping in steam and stench. He holds his breath, engaging respiratory bypass, and regards the dead Kalazar with the living one sitting beside it. He looks back towards Donna, who is wiping the blood from her nose using a handkerchief produced from the younger Doctor’s coat. He wonders if his extra self has the same hyperdimensional pockets he installs in all his clothing.

“What are you?” he asks.

There is a groan and Nina sits up. She looks from person to person and her face registers dazed fear. “She killed the Kalazar,” Nina says, pointing at Donna. “She killed it, it fell out of her head dead.”

The Doctor feels his throat close with emotion; the safeguard is still working. He advances on Nina. “And this one is from your head,” he guesses, indicating the live Kalazar. “And this hole. This is where you keep them? Or is this where they come from?”

Nina doesn’t say a word. The younger Doctor pulls his sonic out of his coat and moves the Doctor aside. He pulls Nina to her feet and points the sonic at her. “I want you to understand,” he says, in an almost conversational tone, “that it’s in your best interest to cooperate with us, Nina, or I think you’ll find that it will cost you.”

The Doctor looks to his younger self. Death threats were rare from him at any point in history. “This machine I have, kind of like the one you took from my friend here, it does many things,” the younger Doctor continues. “So if you don’t want to find out what those things are, you’ll return the Doctor’s sonic, and you’ll help us. Because I have no problem pushing you into that stinking hole. Let them do what they will with you.”

Nina swallows. “They live in that hole. They were the poisoning of the lake in the capital.” She is shaking. The younger Doctor backs off, holding his sonic still pointed. “We had no choice--”

“You tried to put one of those in Donna’s head,” the younger Doctor grinds out. “That is unforgivable. You did this to children.”

“Ah, but you care more that I tried to do it to Donna,” Nina says shrewdly.

“I care that you did it to anyone,” the younger Doctor says. “You have too much to say for someone who has been actively infesting innocent people with parasites.” He steps back into her personal space. “And you’ll note you did not succeed with Donna, nor will you ever get the chance to try again.”

Nina smiles reflexively, convulsively. “You’re wrong,” she says. “That simple creature, he has the knowledge we need. Our world has been exploited, over-civilized. We’ve become our own worst enemy and Kalazar has come to remedy it all. He came to live in our waters, our good blue waters, and make all of us Mori whole again, and united. There is peace in Kalazar.”

“You lie,” Beni says from where she is standing with the Doctor and Clara. “You lied to me, and you lied to everyone else. You let this happen, you made this happen.”

“Did you?” Donna asks.

“I wanted to help!” Nina says. “We were going to lose everything! I wanted to preserve us, one way or another!”

“You’re the one who sent Narissa,” Beni says, pointing a finger at Nina. “You’re the one who told us we had no choice left. You’re the one who made us stay here.”

“We had no choice!” Nina’s voice is getting louder. “She took too long to come back! We had to do something! Kalazar promised! They promised us!”

“They promised you!” Beni exclaims. “You took it on yourself to speak for us and you ruined our lives! We were trying to resist them!” She puts two hands on her belly, rubbing circles to comfort her baby, whom she feels starting to move restlessly. “You said, if Narissa Karrish didn’t come back, then we’d have no choice. And you didn’t wait. You went to them. You brought them to us. You made us do this.” Her lip is trembling, but she holds herself together as best she can. “And nothing has changed. We aren’t above ground, still. Nothing has been solved. We’re slaves. And it’s your fault.”

Nina shakes her head. “No. No. I did what I did for everyone here. If we had let the planet keep dying, if they hadn’t come here--”

“No,” Beni says. “No more. No more. We made a mistake. We used our planet’s resources. There is nothing left. But you let a parasite into our midst. How could you have ever thought that they would help us?”

There is a silence. “Nina, who are you?” Clara asks. “What was your job before this? You said your husband was a peace officer but you never said what you did.”

Nina’s jaw is tight with fear. “I was the leader of this sector.”

“What does that mean?” Clara asks.

“It means I was charged with the protection of this city and its surrounding areas and I did what was necessary to keep as many as possible alive in the face of a world-wide crisis that resulted from our own negligence!” Nina swallows. “I did what was necessary when all other measures had been exhausted.”

Beni laughs, a sharp, mirthless sound, and the Doctor makes a noise of disgust. “What could have been happening that would make you do this?” he demands.

“Our crops stopped growing,” Nina says. “Our money was worthless, the weather was disastrous, our infrastructure was being destroyed, we had no electricity for weeks--”

“Enough,” the Doctor says. “I’m sick of listening to you. How do we kill them?”

Nina looks at Donna. “She knows, she killed one.”

They look at the blob on the floor, still quivering next to the dead Kalazar. It doesn’t seem to be responding to anything going on around it. “I didn’t kill it,” Donna says. “It fell out of my head. It hurt, and then it fell out of my head and it was dead. I don’t know.”

“Enough,” Clara says. “I seem to recall you’re going to give the Doctor back his sonic.” She shifts away from the Kalazar pool. The smell is nauseating, and Nina edges away from the group. Donna goes for the door and pushes Nina out of the way.

“You’re done trying to fix the problems here,” Clara says, joining Donna at the door, blocking the way out. “Now you’re going to use your leadership for something else.” She straightens her shoulders. “I’m the little one, the one you want to hand over to the men, or make me forage, or something? You’re going to bring those people here and you’re going to see them remove every single one of these slugs from their heads. If they won’t do it you’re the one who’s going to convince them, or remove it yourself.”

Nina looks terrified. “They’ll turn on me,” she says. “I promised them--”

“That’s not our problem,” Clara says. “Is it?”

Nina bares her teeth. “I was trying to help,” she says. “None of you care about that! You just want to blame me for doing my best.”

“This could never be your best,” the Doctor says. “You have my sonic on you. I want it back.”

“I’ll push you in,” Donna says. “Don’t think I won’t do it. I don’t know what they eat but if it’s flesh I feel sorry for you.”

Nina reaches into her sweater and retrieves the sonic. She hands it to Donna, who veers into her face on purpose, using her anger to fuel her recklessness. Donna hands the sonic back to the Doctor and goes back to stand in front of the door. “You tell them you lied to them,” she says. “You tell them what you did. You tell them what they have to do now. And then you take whatever punishment they give you.”

“And then what? Will that rebuild our houses? Will that bring our soil back to life?” Nina demands. “We’ll be back where we started!”

“No.” The Doctor shakes his head. “Because we will help you start again. Even if in small measures. But you have to fix this.”

“Or what?” Nina asks.

“Or what?” Donna repeats. “Or what, Nina?” She points to the dead Kalazar and its motionless live mate. “Or what?” Then she takes Nina’s arm. “On second thought, come here.” She pulls Nina over to the Kalazar quivering on the ground. “You know more than anyone else about these things, you’re the one who let them in here. How do you kill it?”

“I told you I don’t know,” Nina says. “You’re the one who killed that one.”

“How do you kill them, Nina?” Donna asks again. “If you don’t tell me, we’re going to start trying things.”

“People are going to start looking for me,” Nina says. Her voice is unsteady with fear. “They’re not gonna let you hurt me.”

Donna shrugs. “We’ll see if either of those things are true.” She smiles benignly. “How do you kill them, Nina?”

“I don’t know,” Nina says loudly into Donna’s face, who rolls her eyes.

“I guess it’s time to try things,” she says. She looks back at the Doctors and Clara, who shrug and nod in agreement. “Will you all help me keep Nina on task?” Donna asks. “We’ll have a higher chance of success that way. Many hands make light work.”

The Doctors and Clara surround Nina and Donna drops her arm. The younger Doctor is looking carefully at Donna, watching her for signs of stress or changes in her vitals. At one time he’d had glasses that allowed him to see those kinds of things but at this moment he only wants to make sure she’s safe.

“Step on one,” Clara says. “That one right there.” She points to the floor where the Kalazar is sitting. The dead one is starting to congeal and dry out beside it, and Nina swallows.

“Go on,” Donna says, and Nina shakes her head. “Go on,” Donna repeats, and prods Nina forward. Nina starts to shake, and lifts her foot. “Do it,” Donna says. Nina stomps her foot down and there is a simultaneous howl of pain and a scream that could never be human. Nina snatches her foot back, and there is a sickly, bloody liquid spread onto her foot and leg, which smells unimaginably foul. The Kalazar has an enormous dent in it.

Nina cries out again and they can see the liquid has seeped through her clothes and onto her leg where the skin is blistering. “All right, don’t torture her--” the Doctor says, and Donna turns her head to look at him, so unnerving to see the Roman in modern clothes, looking at her like the Doctor used to look at her, as if he were begging her not to leave. She inclines her head in acknowledgment, and pulls Nina back.

The Kalazar lies still for a moment and then, with a slurp, seems to inflate back to its original shape. It starts to slop towards them and everyone jumps back. Instinctively the Doctor draws his sonic and presses the button hard. A blast of square waves splats the Kazalar against the wall. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Donna says, and Beni retches next to her.

Nina takes advantage of the moment and wrenches free of Donna’s grasp. She goes for the door and starts to pound on it. “Help!” she screams! “Help me! They’re killing me! Help!”

The younger Doctor looks to the Doctor. “She’s not going to help us,” he says. “You know she won’t. She’s going to make this worse.”

Clara, Beni, and Donna pull Nina back and pin her against the wall. “I’m sick of talking to you!” Beni screams in her face. “I’m sick of this! My baby doesn’t deserve this! This ends now!” And before Clara or Donna can stop her, she slams Nina’s head into the wall and Nina collapses.

“Oh, shite,” Clara says. “Did you kill her?”

“I don’t care,” Beni says. She steps back. “We need her out of the way. We need that device he has.” She points to the Doctor. “We need him to kill these.” She moves her finger to the pit full of the slopping creatures. “We need this to be over. My baby needs to this to be over.” She winces and puts her hands at her back. “I need this to be over.” She looks to the younger Doctor. “Do you have one of those too? All of you?”

The younger Doctor grimly removes his sonic from his inner pocket. “I have one.” He points to the pit full of Kalazar. “They can go first, but you have to bring us everyone else.” He looks to Donna. “Maybe you can help them. They trust you.” He pauses. “I trust you.”

There is a little silence, and Donna steps back from Nina’s prostrate form. She looks to Beni. “Can we convince them? Without Nina?”

“They think you’re a goddess,” Clara says, and Donna shakes her head. “They do, Donna. They’re victims. There are children. Let’s help them.”

“They’ll listen to you,” Beni says. She grimaces again but shakes it off. “The sooner we do this the better.”

“We’ll take care of the Kalazar,” the Doctor says, and he’s aware of the way he’s looking at Donna, who looks so afraid and tired. And Clara beside her, his lifesaver in so many of the same ways as Donna, determined and compassionate and ready.

Beni opens the door and Clara and Donna follow her out into the tunnel. They walk together through hallways until Donna isn’t sure which way they’re going anymore.

They emerge into the big common space where everyone is gathered, and everyone turns almost as one to look at them. Beni puts her hands at the small of her back. “Listen!” she says loudly. “You need to listen to me.”

“Where’s Nina?” someone asks.

“She’s assisting the Doctors,” Beni says. “I need you all to listen to me. Something’s gone wrong.”

Everyone comes to attention. “What do you mean?” Persha asks, coming to the front of the group. Beni looks her in the eye.

“We have to get them out.”

There is a silence. Beni breathes deeply, feeling a small pain blooming low in her belly. “We have to get them out,” she repeats, willing herself to be calm.

“We can’t,” Persha says. “How will we get back above ground?”

“We don’t need them,” Beni says. “We don’t need them, and they are enslaving us.”

A murmur goes through the crowd at that. A child says, “I don’t want to be a slave!” and that sentence echoes through Donna’s mind.

“Then please, listen,” she says, and raises her voice. “Please listen. I don’t know why but you think I’m someone special, and for the sake of that, take me at my word. Get the Kalazar out. Save yourselves. There are other solutions to this problem and you don’t deserve to suffer.”

“But what about the men?” another woman asks. “What about our sons and brothers and fathers and husbands? How will they know?”

“We’ll have to help them too,” Donna says.

“But we don’t know where they are anymore!” The same woman’s voice breaks along the seams. “I don’t know where my husband is anymore.”

“Then let’s fix this so we can find out,” Donna says. “Please, if you care for yourselves and your children, and your men! The Doctors can help you.” The sentence is strange in her mouth. “Let us help you.”

A prolonged silence ensues, in which Donna can hear children starting to cry. Then some women shed tears too. “How can we?” Persha asks. “They own us.” She winces. “They are our masters. Oh, my head!” And she pitches forward, her eyes rolling back. She starts to shake like she’s having a seizure.

“Help her!” Beni shouts, moving as quickly as her ungainly belly will allow. Persha goes very still as people begin to approach her. Clara gets to her first and kneels down.

“Persha?” she says quietly, and then screams and falls back as the old lady gives a huge cough that sends a gout of blood over her chin and down her neck. Her nose begins to bleed, and then her eyes, and then her left ear. “She’s dying,” Clara says with certainty. She helps hold Persha down as she keeps seizing, a strangled sound coming from her throat.

“It’s self-destructing,” Donna says, feeling her mind start to move, like a fast-catching fire. “It’s going to kill her. Turn her on her side.” She helps them move Persha into rescue position (for a moment she wonders when she’d learned that and feels a familiar sensation stirring in her consciousness) and keep her from biting through her tongue. “If it doesn’t come out it’s going to kill her,” Donna repeats.

“What do we do to make it come out?” Clara asks.

“I don’t know,” Donna says. “It gets into every part of your brain. I didn’t do anything to make the one they put in me fall out.”

Persha makes a shuddering sigh and they watch the life go out of her in what seems like only a second. Clara taps her face and shakes her shoulder. “Persha!” she repeats. “Persha, wake up.”

“Fuck,” Donna mutters to herself, feeling her throat close up. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” She says it quietly to herself, and waits for what she knows is inevitable: the Kalazar to seep out, dead and burst and stinking.

Beni grits her teeth and Clara helps her back to her feet. “She’s dead,” Donna says grimly. “And they’re going to self-destruct on all of you. They won’t let you go unless we go quickly.”

There is a momentary silence. “Where’s Nina?” a child asks.

“She’s waiting for us,” Donna says, getting to her feet. “So come with me so we can get to her and fix this problem. Bring your children. Leave your weapons.” She starts to help people line up. They are all looking fearfully at Persha’s body as they go.

“If she freed the Ood, and led them to quarantine the Monster of Midnight, she’ll help us too,” Beni says to the children as they line up. “Everything will be all right.” She walks alongside the forming line and leads them down the labyrinthine hallways again. “We’ll all be all right,” she keeps saying. “This will be over soon.” She ignores the crampy spasm in her back as she helps Clara open the door and Donna leads the first few people inside the big room with the Kalazar pool.

“We’re here,” she says to the Doctors, who have seated Nina on the floor against the wall, their sonics pointed down into the hole. They turn to see her surrounded by people.

“She’s done it,” the Doctor says to the younger Doctor.

“And quite right,” the younger Doctor says, and they both smile at Donna. “Well done, Donna.” Donna smiles back uncertainly, and separates herself from the group to join the Doctors.

“Persha’s dead,” Donna says quietly.

“What?” the Doctor asks. “What happened?”

“It self-destructed in her head,” Donna says. “We have to prevent that from happening again. These bloody slugs are going to kill everyone unless we figure it out. They’re slimy little time bombs.”

The Doctors look over at the assembled women and children. “Self-destruct,” the Doctor says.

“Can you kill them with the sonic?” Donna asks.

“Yes, it seems they’re organic,” the younger Doctor says. “But who’s to say that won’t make them self-destruct also?”

“We do know one surefire way,” Nina speaks up from the wall. “Put them in Donna’s head. She’s the goddess, right? She killed one herself.”

The Doctor moves quicker than either Donna or the younger Doctor, and goes to stand over Nina. “You have no advice left to give us,” he says to her, his voice low and serious. “And to you, Donna is untouchable. You’ve had your turn to solve this problem and you failed. Leave her be.”

“Oh, the both of you?” Nina sneers, and her face is full of revulsion. “What kind of a disgusting whore is Donna Noble, the goddess, the Breaker of Chains, the common human fucking two Time Lords?”

A silence descends. The younger Doctor and the Doctor look at Donna and then away, unable to look at each other. Donna’s face is red. “I think I’ve taken quite enough from you,” Donna says. “I think I’m tired of listening to people tell me who and what I am, and I’m sick to death of being relied upon to fix a mess you made.” She pulls Nina to her feet. “We’re not going to use me, Nina. We’re going to use you. You’re the one who brought them here. If they need a place to reside, if they need to be coaxed out, that’s now your job. And you’ll do it, or you’ll be responsible for the death of every person here.”

Nina starts to pull away but Clara and Beni put restraining hands on her. “It’s over, Nina,” Beni says. “Your life for theirs. Surely you knew this was coming.”

“No,” Nina says. “No!” She appeals to the gathered women and children. “I promised you, I promised you this would work, they’re trying to stop it, please--”

“Persha’s dead,” a woman says. “She died, and the thing in her head killed her. It was like it committed suicide, and took her with it. We need to stop this.”

There is a general clamor. at this “We don’t want it to happen to us! Our children!”

“Spare us!”

“You brought them here, you make them leave!”

“They’ve turned on you,” Clara observes. “You miscalculated.”

“Do I have to die for it?” Nina asks, and then begs. “Please don’t let them kill me, I swear I was trying to help.”

“But you didn’t!” The same woman steps forward. “Now fix your mistake!” She starts to dig at her ear. “Make them get out of us.” Then she grimaces terribly. “Make them get out. Make them get out,” she repeats, and it turns into a wail of pain. A moment later a Kalazar slips out of her ear and oozes to the floor, and the Doctor points his sonic at it. The woman slumps beside it on the floor, insensible.

The Doctor winces and pushes the button on the sonic, sending percussive waves in rapid succession, like invisible bullets. The Kalazar bursts like a sack, spraying the comatose woman and those nearby with stinking liquid. There are shrieks of fear and disgust all around.

Beni grits her teeth against a sharper pain. Please hurry, she thinks. Please, please hurry. She breathes deeply, sighing a bit on the exhale, and Donna looks up sharply. She abandons Nina and comes to Beni.

“Are you all right?” Donna asks her, very quietly.

Beni nods reluctantly, her face twisting with pain. “It’s fine,” she whispers back. “I’m fine. Don’t stop anything. I’m fine.”

“You’re in labor,” Donna says.

Beni’s eyes fill up. “Don’t stop anything,” she begs softly. “First babies always take a long time, right? Help them.”

“You tell me the minute you can’t bear it anymore,” Donna says. “We’ll help you.”

Beni nods but turns away, ushering people into an orderly line while the Doctors and Nina move the unconscious woman out of the way. Donna looks worriedly after her and turns back to the Kalazar pit. “If you kill the ones in the pit will the others self-destruct?” she asks the younger Doctor. He shrugs.

“Don’t know. Is it a chance we’re willing to take?” he asks. “Maybe we should try and get them out first. Knock them out safely and get these bloody things out.”

“Can we do that to the children?” Donna murmurs. “Will they be safe?”

“This is a no-win situation, Donna,” the younger Doctor says. “There are no good options here. You know what that’s like.”

Donna leans her forehead on his shoulder momentarily. “I know. I remember.” She sighs. “We can only try. Whatever is least invasive.”

The Doctor, standing in front of the anxious people looking for a solution, turns to the younger Doctor and Donna. “What do you say?” he asks.

“I’d usually ask you that question,” Donna says, and the Doctor feels his lips quirk into a smile. That’s my girl, he thinks.

“We say knock them out one by one, force the slugs out, and kill them. Hope the people live.” Donna shrugs. “It’s our best guess.” She turns to the younger Doctor. “No promises, right?”

“None,” he reassures her.

“Well, at least we’re working without a safety net, as usual,” Donna says wryly. She tangles her fingers momentarily with the younger Doctor’s, just briefly, and whispers. “Beni’s in labor. It’s early yet but it’s happening.”

The younger Doctor looks immediately over to Beni, who is doing her best to reassure her fellow women with her hands at the small of her back. He can see the pain on her face, the way her skin is pale and the way she is starting to sweat. “Get her out of here if you need to,” he says. “I trust you.” Donna gives him a little smile. “I always trust you,” he adds.

“Same here,” Donna says, and turns to go to Beni.

“Children first,” Beni says, and both Clara and Donna hesitate at the same time.

“Are you sure?” Clara asks her, and turns to Donna. “If a child dies at the very beginning of this process then they might not let us continue,” she points out quietly. “They’re going to blame us.”

“Blame Nina,” Donna says, with a sneer over her shoulder. “She’s the one who brought them to this point.” She clasps Clara’s hand. “You know as well as I do that at some point there are no more good choices. We have to try.”

Beni makes a sharp noise, and clamps her lips shut against it, but Donna is adamant. “You have to go,” she says to Beni. “No more of this for you. Trust the Doctors. They know what they’re doing.”

Beni’s eyes widen and fill with tears. “Who will help me?” she asks.

“We will,” Donna says. “Trust the Doctors. Trust me.” She starts to lead Beni towards the door. “We don’t get to choose when babies come.” She gestures to Clara to take Beni’s hand. “Give me a second,” she says, and walks over to Nina.

“I want you to listen to me,” Donna says, and Nina rolls her eyes.

“What do you want, don’t you ever shut up?” Nina demands. “All I hear is you talking, all the time! Just shut up! I’m sick of listening to you threaten me!”

That makes Donna laugh. “Oh, my god,” she says, and she feels a wave of warm ache wash over down her face and her scalp, making her shiver. “It isn’t me who’s going to shut up forever, you silly little cunt, it’s you.” Bright spots appear in front of her eyes and then disappear, leaving Nina’s contemptuous face. “I don’t care that you were stupid enough to believe psychic slugs. I don’t care that you’re enough of a silly bitch to have victimized your own people. I don’t even care that your planet is dying. You can fuck off and die as far as I’m concerned. Alone and in pain? Better.” Another shivering wash of pain down her neck, as if someone were pouring bath water down her back. She imagines thunder. She remembers the words Oncoming Storm from somewhere in her consciousness. “I want you know to know that when this is over, when you’ve done your job and helped the Doctors clean up this mess, we are going to let your people do whatever they want with you. Whether they turn on you, or forgive you, and I think that’s unlikely, we won’t be stopping them. But if you put a foot out of line anymore, any more mistakes, I promise you I’ll take the decision out of their hands.”

“Fuck you.”

“Shut up,” Donna says, and it’s quiet but final. “Shut up now, Nina. You don’t understand what’s happening.” She shoves Nina back and goes back to Beni and Clara. “Let’s go,” she says. “I don’t want to look at her anymore.”

Beni has to stop a few feet down the hallway to double over in pain. “Do you know how to deliver a baby?” Clara asks Donna, who nods.

“Yes,” she says somberly, because Donna Noble did not know how to deliver a baby in such detail and with such precision, but the Doctor does. She breathes deeply against the headache. It seems to subside, and Donna relaxes. “Let’s get her somewhere warm,” Donna says. “And safe. We need blankets and water. Hot water. And scissors. Or a knife. Where’s the water pump?”

“I’ll take you to it,” Beni says. She straightens herself out and starts to walk again, resolutely, down the long, dim corridors. A few minutes later they have to stop again for Beni to groan against a wall. Donna and Clara count her through it, holding her up and massaging her back.

The room with the water pump is large and damp, and Donna and Clara scramble to find buckets. Beni works the pump for them so that the water gushes out, and Donna and Clara fill two big plastic containers full. Beni pauses to breathe deeply. “I’m so afraid,” she says, watching Donna and Clara drag the containers towards the door.

“Where are all the blankets?” Donna asks. “Where’s the place you all were sleeping?” She leaves her container to come and hold Beni’s hand. “We’re going to get you there and settled and we’ll make sure everything is all right.” She sounds more confident than she feels, something she knows in her bones the Doctor does all the time. It reassures her at the same time it makes her afraid.

“It’s the next room,” Beni says. She grits her teeth and opens the door to the room full of sleeping areas. Clara and Donna drag the water containers into the room and Beni leans against the wall.

Clara lays out blankets on top of another and Donna helps Beni onto her knees. “It’s gonna be all right,” she says to Beni. “Don’t forget you’re not alone.” She looks around herself. “I wish we had soap,” she says to Clara, and Beni groans again, this time from lower in her core.

“Me too,” Clara says. She reaches out to clasp Donna’s hand. “We’re going to do this and it’s gonna work and she’s going to be fine.” She starts to rummage through the gathered items in the room, not caring who they belong to, and emerges with a small penknife, which Donna eyes dubiously, and which Clara immediately sets to scrubbing with some of the water and a towel.

Over the course of the next few hours Clara and Donna help Beni walk until she can’t anymore. They give her water to drink and tell her stories; she is particularly enthralled with Donna’s account of Shan Shen and the Time Beetle. They stop to help her through contractions, and finally, when Beni can no longer listen to them or respond, she surrenders and lies down on a pile of blankets, sweating and straining with the urge to push.

“Oh, oh, help me,” Beni moans. “I feel something, I feel it--” The words trail off into a wail of pain, and Donna looks down between Beni’s thighs.

“Here it comes,” she says, feeling her throat closing with anticipation and emotion.

Beni is screaming, her chin pressed to her chest as she pushes. Donna is kneeling between her thighs, ready to catch the baby, and Clara is holding Beni’s hand, helping her count the length of the pushes and letting Beni crush her hand. “Just hang on,” Donna says to Beni, “you’re doing so well, Beni, just stay with it.”

Beni screams again and delivers her baby, into Donna’s hands. Donna sees that baby emerge more clearly than she has ever seen anything in her life, the new little life come gasping into outraged cries, and spontaneous tears roll down her face. “Well done,” she says. “Oh, well done, Beni!” All three women are crying with relief and joy, and the baby is flailing in the cool air of the tunnel. He’s so decidedly alive in the midst of all the death and destruction, that Donna is reminded why she does everything she does, and suddenly, deeply and forcefully, she wants to find the younger Doctor and tell him.

They wrap the baby in a blanket. Donna cuts the cord with the penknife and hands him to his mother. “What will you call him?” Donna asks.

“I hardly know,” Beni says, her eyes alight with exhilaration and love. “I hardly could allow myself to hope that he’d still come in the middle of all this—“ She looks up at Donna. “Isn’t he lovely?”

“He’s the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen,” Donna says, and she means it.

“I’ll call him Toivo,” Beni decides. “It means hope. He makes me have hope.”

Donna sits back on her heels and breathes deeply, to calm herself. Toivo has stopped screaming his objections to the sudden cold world he’s entered and is looking at his mother, squinting and blinking slowly in that curious way of newborns. “I’m going to wash up,” Donna says, and walks away from Clara and Beni without another word.

She goes for the water pump, working the handle in a kind of daze. The water surges out and Donna scrubs herself in the torrent. She is bloody to the elbows and her clothes are ruined. Donna feels as though she could sob and laugh and dance and sleep all at once, and a pain flares briefly behind her left eye. She puts her wet hands to her face and wipes away the tears she’s been shedding since she turned away from Beni. These are not for joy or for the beautiful son Beni had delivered, they are for herself and the things she wants and doesn’t have. They are for her fear and her loneliness, the great relief of seeing her Doctor’s face again, the dearest face to her. They are for her guilt at loving him as much as she did before she got married. They are for all the things she had tried to build and that had been put on hold, for the loss inside her that only has one remedy.

Donna breathes in and out deeply and splashes her face again, rubbing her hands and arms to make sure she’s completely clean. “Come on, Donna,” she says to herself. “Come on, girl. Get up.” And she walks back into the room with the blankets.

“All right?” Clara asks, looking penetratingly at Donna, who smiles tiredly at her and nods. “Shall I go have a wash? Beni’s been cleaned up.”

“Please,” Donna says, and Clara goes into the next room.

“Oh, Donna,” Beni says. “Thank you.”

“Oh,” Donna echoes. “Please. We’re all in this together.” She smiles at Beni.

“You must be exhausted,” Beni says.

“Me?” Donna laughs. “Not as much as you.”

“No,” Beni says. “I feel the most alive I’ve ever felt.” She looks down at her baby, whose little face is tranquil in sleep. “You have to hold him. He’s practically yours.”

Donna receives the little boy with a natural embrace, tucking him the crook of her elbow. “Hello, sweet boy,” she says to him softly. “I’ve just seen you come into the world, d’you know that? You’re beautiful, yes you are. Thank you for coming.” The baby opens his eyes for a brief moment, all the way awake, and looks up into Donna’s face. He smiles, a shining, toothless smile, and drifts back to sleep in her arms.

“Ah, see, he loves you,” Beni says. “Children know.”

Donna hands the baby back to Beni. Clara comes back into the room and Donna gets to her feet. “Let me find the Doctors,” she says. “Maybe they’ve managed as well as we have.”

She makes her way down the hallways. Behind the big doors she can hear a noise, like low rumbling, and she approaches trepidatiously. She pushes the heavy door open and the smell of the Kalazar assaults her nose. “Disgusting,” she says, stepping into the room. The Doctors look up from the boiling pit of the alien slugs. There are people lying on the floor, leaning against the walls, some unconscious, but all alive.

“You did it,” Donna says.

“We did it,” the Doctor says, and both he and the younger Doctor look her over to make sure she’s all right.

“Everyone all right?” Donna asks.

“Mostly,” the Doctor says. “Everyone is alive.”

“Right,” Donna says. “And the slugs?”

“Dead, or dying,” the younger Doctor says. He steps back from the pit. “All right?” He would love for it to sound offhand, but that’s impossible. He sees Donna’s face change briefly, the way she has to master her self control for the moment.

“Baby’s born,” Donna says. “It’s a boy.”

“Ah,” the Doctor says. “First piece of good news in too long, I think.” He steps back from the Kalazar pit. “I think this is done,” he says.

“And we really didn’t lose anyone?” Donna asks.

“No one yet,” the Doctor says.

“Well done,” Donna says, and actually smiles at him.

The Doctor wants to reach out and push her hair out of her face, or embrace her, or any number of things, but he doesn’t have the right so he asks instead, “Where’s Clara?”

“She’s with Beni,” Donna says. “Anyone hurt?”

“No,” the younger Doctor says. “We’ll have to keep an eye on them for a while yet.”

“Where’s Nina?” Donna asks. She looks around the room, and finds Nina sitting against the wall.

“Oh, go away,” Nina groans. “I did what you wanted, go away!”

“I want this to be the last time I speak to you,” Donna says. “I don’t want to look at you anymore, or think about you anymore. I just wanted to make sure you were still here.” She looks Nina over one last time, contemptuously, and says, “Sick of you.”

“Now what?” the Doctor asks the younger Doctor. “Get them back to the sleeping room?”

“Those who can walk,” the younger Doctor says. “The children, definitely. They’ll need to eat. Everyone will eventually.” He looks around. “Donna, will you help us get these folks organized?”

People are coming to, sitting up, looking around. Mothers are embracing their children. Some are crying, others are too dazed to say or do much. Donna helps the Doctors form everyone into a straggling queue. She leads them back towards the sleeping room, where Clara and Beni are waiting. They lock Nina in the room with the Kalazar pit, Donna giving her a shove back away from the group leaving the room. “You’ve lost your rights here,” she says to Nina, who screams once, piercingly, from behind the door as they walk away.

Once everyone has managed to settle themselves among the blankets and sheets and pillows again, Donna helps organize a few of them to retrieve food. She goes to sit with Beni and Clara again, who have moved to a spot against the wall. “How’s your little chap?” Donna asks, feeling her chest loosen a little bit at the sight of Toivo’s tiny face.

“Hungry,” Beni says, smiing.

“All right?” Clara asks. “Everyone’s back. They must have done it.”

“They succeeded,” Donna says. “Everyone seems to be alive. Nina’s in the room still. Alone.”

Clara’s face blanches. “They let you leave her in there?”

Donna shrugs. “They didn’t ask.” She shifts uncomfortably. “We’re going to let everyone decide what to do with her anyway. She’s earned that much.”

Beni tightens her arms around her small son. “I don’t want to be part of that,” she says. Donna gives her a sympathetic squeeze.

“I’m sure they can work it out,” she says. “You focus on this baby. He’s all that matters.” She lets her breath out and says, “I wish I could go home.”

“Me too,” Beni says. She reaches out to hold Donna’s hand. “You know you saved us,” she adds. “You keep telling us you’re no one but you’re someone, Donna. You’re someone who does extraordinary things.”

Donna shrugs. She has nothing to say any longer, so she leans against the wall and watches the Doctors move around the room. They are assessing vital signs, asking cognitive questions, and checking the children closely. “Where’s the TARDIS?” she asks Clara eventually. “Would be great to see my own bed.”

Clara lowers her voice. “She’s cloaked. She panicked when they captured us before. I’m sure we can find her, though.”

Rather than letting the potential disappearance of the ship overwhelm her, Donna just nods, winds her arms around herself, and sits quietly. A faint echo of headache tumbles across her sinuses. No use panicking. No use feeling much of anything at the moment, honestly, since she has no idea what to do next.

“What will they do with Persha’s body?” Clara asks, and points to the blanket draped over the old woman’s form. It’s been moved into a corner at the Doctors’ direction, but a dead body is a dead body. Beni holds her son closer. Donna shrugs.

“Right.”

The Doctor comes to stand in front of them, and exhales sharply. “We’ve gotten in touch with the Shadow Proclamation from my universal mobile. Bit of work given that their cell towers are down. Had to ping it off a satellite from a neighboring planet.”

“I used to have one of those universal phones,” Donna says.

“Yep,” the Doctor says. “You did. Useful, right? They’ll be here in a few hours. They had no indication of the Kalazar deaths.”

“So we can leave?” Donna asks, feeling hopeful for the first time in ages.

“As soon as they get here,” the Doctor says. He looks over his shoulder at the younger Doctor. “We ought to get a move on looking for the TARDIS, I’m sure she’s in some corner somewhere.” He sees the tiredness on both Clara and Donna’s faces and adds, “D’you want to wait here while we look?”

“Absolutely not,” Donna says, getting to her feet. She looks down at herself. “I’ve got blood and ooze on me. I want this to be done.” She looks down at Beni and says, “We’ll be back when we’ve located the ship. Stay where you are. Keep that baby safe. The Shadow Proclamation is coming.”

Beni nods and Donna and Clara join the Doctors. “Let’s go, let’s go,” Clara says quietly. “I want to be sure no one messed around with the ship. I can’t wait to stop smelling this place.”

It takes a while, and a good bit of sonicking, but eventually the TARDIS blinks into view in the corner of the same room they’d landed in. She is a bit wobbly from dematerializing so quickly, but Donna breathes an enormous sigh of relief to see her. The Doctor makes sure she’s stable, stethoscope to the door, and nods. “Right,” he says. “We’ll hide her again until the Shadow Proclamation arrives, and then we’ll go.”

Donna is ready to protest, but the younger Doctor reaches out to touch her shoulder. “We have to see it through,” he says. “Remember? Even if we can’t save everyone, we see it through.”

“I remember,” Donna says softly. She leans on the younger Doctor. “I’m just tired.”

“Almost over,” he says, and reaches for her hand.

In the end it takes four hours for the Shadow Proclamation to arrive, along with a detachment from UNIT and three agents from Torchwood. They are from all over the universe, of all ethnicities and species, dressed in hazmat suits and busy. Donna, Clara and the Doctors are relegated to the side as the agents all move around, removing Persha’s body and going for the room full of Kalazar. Uniformed officers take statements from the four of them, and address the problem of Nina by placing her under arrest.

“It’s almost anti-climactic,” Clara says as they turn to make their way back to the TARDIS.

Donna huffs a laugh out her nose. “I don’t mind.” She is impatient to get back aboard the ship, ready to shed her ruined clothes and wash every trace of this from herself.

“Wait!”

Someone shouts from the crowd. “Wait! Are you leaving?”

They stop, turn, and people step forward. “Yes,” the Doctor says. “Time for us to go, don’t you think? Let you get on with it?”

“I quite fancy a shower, actually,” Donna says. “So if it’s all right--”

“We’ve been visited by Donna Noble,” a woman says, turning to face her fellow people. “Most of us couldn’t even be sure the stories were true, but they are. They are, and we got to learn that for ourselves.” She looks over at Donna. “Thank you. All of you.”

And then what else is there to do but go back to the ship, find the blue box waiting for her like a promise kept. Donna lags behind the Doctor and Clara, and murmurs, “Spaceman,” clasping the younger Doctor’s hand in hers as they walk. He’s beside her immediately.

“Let’s go home,” he says. “Eh? Have a kip? A drink?”

“All of those,” Donna says with certainty. “A bath, for sure.” She doesn’t drop his hand when the Doctor unlocks the TARDIS to let them inside. She stands in the console room still holding on to the younger Doctor. She watches Clara and the Doctor circle the console and put the ship into flight. She stands off to the side while the ship comes to life around her, and her fingers twitch in the younger Doctor’s grasp. She feels the semi-electric sensation of the subconscious bond she shared with the TARDIS stir in her senses, magnified by the Time Lord energy in her and next to her in the form of the younger Doctor. Even the presence of the Doctor himself awakens a part of her that has been blindfolded and suppressed.

“I need to go,” Donna says after a few minutes. She turns to leave and touches the younger Doctor’s sleeve so he’ll follow. Inside her room she shuts the door and leans on it. She looks around the room and says, “Fuck,” on an exhale. “All right.” She seems to pull herself together. “Shower,” she says. “Bath. Get out of these clothes. Fucking filthy.”

The younger Doctor watches her shed her clothes and find a towel. “Are you coming?” she asks him from the doorway of her bathroom.

“Er, yes, of course,” he says.

Inside the huge bathroom she’d had built for herself back when she first arrived, Donna swipes the wall and activates the computer. She sets a hot temperature for her shower and steps in. The Doctor takes up a position on the big countertop he’d sat on many, many times in the past, when he and Donna used to laugh uproariously, not caring to end their conversation just for her to wash her hair.

“All right?” Donna asks, letting the water run over her. She taps the side of her shower twice to make the wall transparent so she can see him.

“Yeah,” he says. “Remember this?”

“Yeah,” Donna echoes. She can’t help but smile at the shelf of products she’d amassed so long ago, all exactly as they’d been, preserved by the save function of the TARDIS mainframe. She scrubs herself, lathering her hair and drenching it in the conditioner she’d bought on the planet Jocunda. The younger Doctor sits and watches, hungry for the sight of her, for her laughter, for her dear face. Even having sprung fully-formed from the TARDIS, a new metacrisis of memory and Time Lord energy and Donna’s indomitable life force, he is the same as he was. Nothing about him is half-formed, nor can it be since the first metacrisis. They are made of the same thing now more than ever.

“You’ll have to tell me what you’ve been up to,” the younger Doctor says, and Donna taps the wall to turn off the water. She emerges from the shower and takes her towel from him, wrapping herself up securely.

“Oh, you mean when not killing slugs or reintegrating into your freaky time traveling world with two of you calling yourselves the Doctor and one of them being that guy from Rome?” Donna asks, and the younger Doctor laughs, a sight that makes Donna’s heart jump.

She feels herself relax. "I’ve done a lot, Spaceman,” she says. “I won the lottery, but I bet you knew that.”

“I didn’t,” he says. “But that’s no more than you deserve.”

“Triple rollover,” Donna says. “We got six hundred million pounds.”

“Whoa!” The younger Doctor laughs again. “Oh, Donna,” he says. “You gave everything, it’s only right that you should have everything in return. What’ve you done with it, eh? Fancy cars? Holidays?”

Donna shakes her head. “I’m building an observatory and a library in London.”

“‘Course you are,” the younger Doctor says.

“Named it after my grandfather, he’s absolutely over the moon,” Donna says, and then grins. “Sorry. Bad pun.”

“Good old Wilf,” the younger Doctor says. Donna recognizes the look on his face; something that was just for her, something he didn’t share with other people. “You have done a lot.”

“Bought a house,” Donna says. “Got a better car. You know. Saving for the future.” She shrugs. “What a stroke of impossibly good luck.”

“You earned it,” he says. “Things come around.”

“I hope it’s all worth it,” Donna says. “I just couldn’t see wasting it on nothing.”

“You could never be nothing.” The younger Doctor slides back onto his feet and comes to stand close to her. “Don’t forget that.”

Donna leans on him, hungry for comfort and contact. He puts his arms around her and Donna gives in and embraces him too. The feeling is so familiar, so beloved, and her body and mind have lacked him for so long that she wraps him up in her arms. He pushes his face into the curve of her neck the way he used to, and they stand that way for a long time. “I missed you so much,” Donna says quietly. “I had no reason to live for a long time.”

The younger Doctor cradles her face in his hands. “You are the most important woman in the universe. You saved us all. There will be never be a time when you are without a reason to live.” He kisses her, the same way he used to do, and Donna doesn’t hesitate for an instant. “I wish I had had a chance to tell you this,” he says against her lips.

“I wouldn’t have believed you anyway,” Donna says, and that makes them both laugh.

“I know,” he answers her, wrapping her up around the waist.

“Come,” Donna says, and leads him back into her room. She drops her towel and pulls him onto the bed with her. Both of them are alight with the memory of shared desire and pleasure, fueled by relief and the old familiar subconscious connection built between them. Donna helps him off with his suit and embraces him with all four limbs, her hands clutching his back and then his behind to get him as close as she can.

The rush of memory and pleasure is so incredibly comforting, Donna wishes she never had to give it up. Beside him afterward, both of them not ready to let go, she thinks about her life on Earth. She thinks about her house, her marriage, her library and observatory, how she could leave it all behind for this man beside her. How she had once left a life not worth living for him. How much more she has to live for now, even without the Doctor, younger or older. How hard she’d worked to build something worth living for, the the face of the nameless wound in her since she lost her memory.

She knows she forgives him. This man, who has validated her when nothing and no one else would, is forgiven. You already know I would save you over everyone. Those words will stay with her forever.

“Spaceman?”

“Yeah,” he answers, and he sounds contented and comfortable.

“D’you... are you permanent now?”

“What d’you mean?”

Donna pillows her chin on her hand, leaning on his chest to look into his face. “I mean... are you a human? Are you like the other one? Do you stay?”

The younger Doctor pushes the stray hair out of her face. “Don’t know,” he says. “I was made from the stored Time Lord energy in your brain. I... I think my existence might be dependent on yours. It’s the energy that keeps me sustained.”

“Well, I’m not going anywhere,” Donna says. “I plan to keep living, so you’re stuck now.” They both laugh quietly.

“That’s all right,” he says. “As long as you’re here, I’m here. When you go, I go.”

Donna’s eyes well up for a moment, and then she masters herself, the way she’d always done. The younger Doctor thumbs away the one tear that escapes and says, “You’re alive, Donna.You’ve been alive this whole time.”

“I used to feel it wasn’t worth it,” Donna murmurs. “I guess it is now.” She sits up, wrapping herself in the sheets. “I’ve done so much. I’ve got so much now, in London. The library, the foundation, it’s all there. I would love for you to see it.”

“I would love to see it. Have you got kids?” the younger Doctor asks. He reaches out to take her hand. “And your husband?”

Donna smiles, and there is no trace of guilt or shame in her face. “No kids,” she says. “Maybe it’s the metacrisis. And as for my husband. His name is Shawn.” She looks down at the little diamond on her finger, the one Shawn had offered to replace for a much larger one when they’d won the lottery, and that Donna had refused to change. “He’s lovely. He’s wonderful. We’re a team.” She shrugs. “He knows that something happened to me, and he knows about you... before. The traveling bit. But there’s nothing else for him to know.”

The younger Doctor sits up too, and grins. “You’ve always been a good secret-keeper.”

Donna reaches out to tap his cheek gently. “This belongs to me. To us. To no one else.” She tilts her head to regard him affectionately. “Are you hungry?”

“Nah,” he says. “But we might be being a bit discourteous here, hiding away.” He stretches a bit. “Maybe we ought to go back out there.”

Donna inhales deeply through her nose. “Right,” she says. “Apparently that’s the real Doctor there,” she says.

The younger Doctor smiles. “He is, you know.”

“I know,” Donna says, and her face gets serious. “I know. i can feel it. But he’s not you. I don’t know how to talk to him.”

“Yes, you do,” the younger Doctor says. “The way you talk to me.”

“He’s the guy from Pompeii,” Donna says, and both of them laugh. “He said he picked that face because of me. I didn’t know you had any control over your new face.”

The younger Doctor shrugs. “Gallifreyan regeneration is usually random. Had to have been a particularly powerful impulse in him to carry through the clean slate process.” He lets that statement be for a moment, and then adds, “Can’t say as I blame him. He’s got to be dying to talk to you.”

“Maybe,” Donna says. “Don’t know how I feel about that.” She gets off the bed and onto her feet, and stretches, a sight the younger Doctor takes in greedily, the way he used to before. There were very few things he’d allowed himself to be greedy about, but Donna is one of them. Was one of them. Would be one of them?

“What is it?” Donna asks, seeing his frown.

“Nothing,” the younger Doctor says. “I’m sorry, I had a thought.” He gets up too, and reaches for his clothes. “You don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to. You know that.”

“Yeah,” Donna says. “I do know that.” She reaches for him and embraces him close. “Thank you.”

He clasps her back. “Always,” he says.

They get dressed again, Donna disappearing into her closet and emerging in a long blue-green dress and sandals. She has beautiful gold earrings in her ears and bracelets on her wrists, and makeup. She’s done her hair half up and half down in that familiar way he loved before. “Much better,” she says. She readies herself and takes his hand.

In the console room the Doctor and Clara are talking softly between themselves. When the younger Doctor and Donna emerge back out, the Doctor clears his throat. “Do either of you need medical attention?” he asks. It’s all he can think to ask, and he tries not to ask Donna specifically.

“No,” the younger Doctor says. “Just a chance to unwind.” He looks around. “Why don’t we have a good meal? Some drinks? Park us in the Vortex and just relax for a little while.”

“I like that idea,” Clara says. “Come on, Donna, let’s go find some wine.” She threads her arm through Donna’s and they go down the hall, leaving the Doctors alone.

“She all right?” the Doctor asks.

“Yeah,” the younger Doctor says. “She’s all right. She’s... so much has happened to her.” He examines the new console in front of him.

“No one knows that better than me,” the Doctor says. “I’m trying to protect her.” He pushes buttons and flips levers, and they brace themselves for the lurch into the Vortex.

“So am I,” says the younger Doctor.

“But not from me,” the Doctor says, and both of them grow serious.

“There’s no need for me to protect her from you, is there?” the younger Doctor asks. “You’re me. Aren’t you?”

The Doctor relaxes. “Technically. You know I mean her no harm.”

“Yes,” the younger Doctor says. “I do know that.” He looks up from the console. “I don’t know if she’ll talk to you.”

“Doesn’t matter,” the Doctor shrugs. “She can do whatever she wants.” He leans on the railing around the console. “You all right?”

The younger Doctor nods. “I think so.” He looks towards the hallway both the women had walked down. “You better tell me about that Clara girl.”

The Doctor nods in reply. “Something about her. She’s rescued me. She’s supposed to be around.” The younger Doctor smiles a little at the softening look on the older man’s face. “She’s good.”

“Yeah.” Both of them are quiet. “Well, let’s go eat,” the younger Doctor says. “We lucked out.”

“I’ll follow you,” the Doctor says. “Want to put on the parking brake.”

The younger Doctor departs and there is silence for a minute.

“Doctor?”

The Doctor looks up from the console, and smiles. Donna is standing there, looking like herself, her beautiful self. She looks cautious but not afraid. “Doctor?”

“Yes,” he says, and he steps back from the computer. “All right?”

Donna nods, coming into the room further. “Came to talk to you. Couldn’t deal with the silence anymore. My fault.”

“Not your fault,” the Doctor says. He is ready for anything she might say.

Donna comes to stand in front of him. She regards him frankly, as she always had, but gently, openly. “I need you to listen to me for a little bit,” she says. “Will you?”

“You don’t even need to ask.” He feels such relief looking at her that he will grant her anything.

Donna takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry for being afraid of you.” She holds up a hand to stop him from replying. “You have to understand that you’re a stranger to me--”

“I’m not a stranger,” the Doctor says, and Donna gives him a wide-eyed look.

“Yes, you are,” she says.

“I’m not, he’s only the projection of your memories of me!” the Doctor says. “Donna, I’m—“ He takes a breath, embarrassed that he’s lost control over his feelings so quickly. “Something in me must have known this was coming because this face has everything to do with you.”

Donna is quiet. She looks down at her feet. “I know,” she says quietly. “I’ve been trying to stay alive for a long time without him-- you, I mean. And I’ve been pushed back into it without any warning, which I suppose I should be used to, but--”

“Donna,” the Doctor says, stopping the flow of her words. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Donna’s eyes fill up and she steps forward to embrace him. “Me too,” she says. And actually, it’s a relief, as much as it was to embrace the younger Doctor.

“You saved them, you know,” the Doctor says, wrapping her up tight. “Don’t cry, Donna.”

“I’m not, I’m not,” she says, pulling back and wiping her eyes. “I just wanted you to know. I’m just trying to adjust.”

“What do you want?” the Doctor asks gently. “Anything.”

“Honestly?” Donna asks. She sighs. “I want to go home.”

In the little silence that follows, the Doctor understands something. Her head must hurt. Her mind must be exhausted, working overtime with the Time Lord energy, diluted as it might have been in synthesizing the younger Doctor. She is still human, beautifully, painfully human.

“I can do that,” he says. “Now? Or will you eat with us first?”

Donna smiles. “Let’s eat.”

And the four of them end up laughing over big plates of delicious food conjured out of the TARDIS kitchen computer, and bottles of wine, until Donna puts her fork down and says, “Right. I’m tired.” A wave of pain rolls through her head, down her face, and she tries to hide her grimace. It’s been at the edges of her consciousness the entire time they’ve been back in the TARDIS. She gets up to move from the table and promptly collapses, and the younger Doctor leaps forward to catch her before she hits the floor.

“Not again,” he says.

“Get her into the medbay,” the Doctor says, and helps Clara to her feet and over Donna’s prone figure. “Can you get the door open? Go.”

Clara moves quickly and the younger Doctor gathers her up. “This is only going to keep happening,” he says to the Doctor. “She can’t keep doing this.”

“I know,” the Doctor says.

“I mean it, she’s got limited chances.” The younger Doctor sounds tired himself.

“I know,” the Doctor snaps. He takes a second look at the younger Doctor as they go. He looks pale suddenly, as if he’s losing stamina.

As they arrive in the console room Donna suddenly starts to shudder, her eyes opening. “No, no,” she says vaguely, struggling against the younger Doctor. “No more.” Her movements force him to stop, and lower her to the floor “Stop. Stop.” She curls her fingers into the younger Doctor’s jacket and shirt. “My head hurts. Again,” she tells him. “It’s hurting again.” Her eyes are overlfowing with tears. “When does it stop?”

“I know,” the younger Doctor says. HIs face is anguished and he looks up at the Doctor and Clara. “What else can we do?” he asks them.

The Doctor goes for the console, and Clara for water and a blanket, feeling the strain of fear for Donna, whom she has known for so little time but who has clearly made such a permanent impression on her Doctor. She can see the helpless love on the younger Doctor’s face, and the traces of it on the Doctor’s face. She has respect for that; she knows what it is love to someone on the other side of a wall.

Donna cringes at the pressure, the way she can feel her pulse pounding in rhythm with the pain. “Listen,” she says to the younger Doctor. “I don’t want anyone else to hear. I’m scared I’m gonna die.” She sounds urgent and terrified.

“You’re not gonna die,” the younger Doctor says, as the Doctor punches the console in search of a solution.

“We can be with each other forever now,” Donna says, feeling the terrible spreading pain her head. It feels so final, all of it. “I never wanted to leave you.”

“I didn’t want you to go.” The younger Doctor’s face is soaked with tears. “I’m here because of you. Again.” He clings to her, his cheek pressed to her hair.

“No,” Donna says. “I’m here because of you.” She reaches up to him and kisses him, not caring who sees. She knows somewhere in her mind that it’s the last time, so she holds onto him. The pain squeezes and squeezes around her head and neck in a thick band of agony. “It hurts so much,” she whimpers to him. “I wish it would go away.”

“I wish I could make it go away.” The younger Doctor feels the sensation in his hands lessen just a bit, just enough so he knows this can’t go on much longer. Neither of them can go on much longer like this. He wraps her up tighter because he still has his strength. Donna turns her face into his chest. “But you’re not alone,” he tells her. “I’m here, I’ve always been here. I go when you go.” Donna clings on to him with what strength she can muster in her hands. Both of them are sobbing now, Donna with less and less force as breathing becomes slower. It’s so easy to slip into sleep, she thinks. So easy to let go, because he’s holding her and she won’t fall. So easy…

She doesn’t know that the younger Doctor has gone, dissolved into nothing around her, and the Doctor has wrapped her in his arms instead. She doesn’t know anything until she takes a great gasping breath under a cacophony of doctors and bright lights, and the headache is gone.

* * * *

They subject her to a battery of tests, scans, bloodwork, and questions. But everything is fine. Donna knows this with a certainty in her bones, a kind of organic knowledge. Everything is going to be all right, she assures them, with a kind of secret smile that no one can decipher. Her MRIs come up clear, her bloodwork is pristine, and her body feels better than she has in years.

But the biggest part, the best part, is that she has her memories. Everything, from her ruined wedding and Lance’s death to the moment she woke up in the hospital this time. Everything is there. It is a bittersweet feeling, painful and joyful all at once, a longing for the stars mixed with the desire to be home, around people she knows and loves. She wants to see her library, half-built as it is. She wants to be in her house, dancing around her kitchen. She wants to stare through her grandfather’s telescope like she always had, looking for something in the sky.

After a week the doctors let her come home, pronouncing themselves mystified. Donna drives herself, despite protests, and Shawn sits in the passenger seat looking worried. But Donna is smiling, and she reaches over to hold her husband’s hand. “Everything is going to be fine,” she tells him. “Everything is okay. The Doctor saved my life. Again.”

And she’s right; the Wilfred Mott Planetarium and Library is finished within the year. The Noble Foundation holds its opening gala just before Christmas, and Donna, dressed in a wine-red ball gown with long lacy sleeves, helps her grandfather hold the giant scissors to cut the golden ribbon across the entrance to the building. There is cheering, everyone toasting to each other. The press is there to take photos and interview Donna and her family. Shawn beams beside her, handsome in a dark velvet jacket and trousers, and speaks to the reporters with pride in his wife and all the good work they’ve done together.

Donna mingles with her guests, eating hors d’ouevres and drinking champagne. She looks beautiful, she feels healthy, and she imagines the blue box in the sky watching their little party in London. At that thought there is a tug in her subconscious, something that pulls her away. She excuses herself and follows her instinct into the telescope room. Alone in the half-light, she puts down her champagne flute and goes for the small telescope, her grandfather’s, set up next to the large one. She aims it for the sky and looks into the lens. The sky is clear and she can see the expanse of spangled blackness above her. What a joy that the sky is no longer a stranger to her.

She stays there for a few moments longer, dwelling in her memories, and then steps back reluctantly. She doesn’t want to be missed. She closes the doors behind her, painted a certain dark blue. The people who love her are waiting.

#donna noble #tenth doctor #ten x donna #tatennant #fic #FINALLY FINISHED THIS IT TOOK TWO YEARS #otp: be with you forever

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