Donna wove deftly through the crowds on Shan Shen. Koschei was right – she did love this place. The bustle of the bazaar reminded her of London’s markets. The air smelled fresh, though, not heavy with petrol and fumes. Hawkers barked their wares all around her. Vairë had convinced her to try this foamy drink that was sweet and strong. Now, the blonde woman was standing several stalls back, haggling like an expert over some alien fruit. Koschei and Lucy had headed towards the area where the weavers had set up looms and were hanging their rugs. Lucy fancied some of them for their home on Galliterra. Ducking through the crowds, Donna sighed happily. She was so glad she had found Vairë again. She was so glad that she had taken the chance to go traveling. After this trip she thought she would ask to return to Earth to pick up her family and take them to Galliterra. Her mother had wanted time to wrap up her affairs and her granddad would be itching to go. He’d always been a bit adventurous and in love with the stars. He’d kept that telescope all these years, showing Donna the stars and telling her everything he knew about them. How thrilled he’d be with the chance to extend his life and his knowledge and to travel to see those distant stars up close and personal.
“Tell your fortune, lady. The future predicted. Your life foretold,” a Chinese woman called out to Donna. Donna turned to look at her. The woman had the flat face of most Chinese people. Very slight epicanthic folds gave her eyes the appearance of being slanted. Her lips were full and her teeth straight and white. She wore a black traditional wrap with golden symbols woven into it.
“Oh, no thanks,” Donna said politely. She’d never put much stock in fortune tellers.
“Don’t you want to know if you’re going to be happy?” the woman pressed.
“I’m happy right now, thanks,” Donna insisted.
“You got red hair. The reading’s free for red hair,” the fortune teller insisted.
“Oh, all right,” Donna agreed. It couldn’t hurt, after all. Especially if it was free. Glancing up the street, she saw Vairë happily arguing with a vendor. The blonde woman was laughing and smiling for the first time since Midnight. Donna let the fortune teller lead her into the building. The sat across from each other, a small square table between them. The fortune teller lit a stick of incense and set it to smoke in a bowl as she took Donna’s hands in her own and traced her fingers over the lines in Donna’s palms.
“Oh, you fascinating,” the fortune teller chuckled. Donna bristled and started to pull away. “No,” the fortune teller soothed with a smile, “but you good. I can see a woman. The most remarkable woman. How did you meet her?”
“You’re supposed to tell me,” Donna pointed out.
“I see the future. Tell me the past. When did your lives cross?”
“It’s sort of complicated. I ended up in a spaceship on my wedding day. Long story,” Donna said, waving her hand dismissively. What did it matter how she met Vairë?
“But what led you to that meeting?” the fortune teller pressed.
“All sorts of things. But my job, I suppose. It was on Earth, this planet called Earth, miles away. But I had this job as a temp. I was a secretary at a place called HC Clements,” Donna explained. Then, all of a sudden, it was like she was back there. Back on Earth looking up at the HC Clements offices. She shuddered. “Oh, sorry.”
“It’s the incense. Just breathe deep. This job of yours. What choices led you there?”
“There was a choice, six months before, because the Agency offered me this contract with HC Clements,” Donna said softly, remembering. “But there was this other job. My mum knew this man…” All of a sudden it was as if she were back there. Her mother was chiding her about going for an interview for a temp position instead of doing the sensible thing and going after a career. She’d hated it when her mother started riding her back about her choices. True, Donna hadn’t ever made the best choices in her life but it was her life to live, not her mother’s!
“Jival, he’s called,” her mother was saying as the two of them got into the car. “Jival Chowdry? He runs that little photocopy business and he needs a secretary.”
“I’ve got a job,” Donna insisted.
“As a temp,” her mother sneered. “This is permanent; it’s twenty thousand a year, Donna.”
“HC Clements is in the City. It’s nice; it’s posh, so stop it!”
“Your life could have gone one way or the other. What made you decide?” the fortune teller asked insistently.
“I just did,” Donna said tonelessly, the memory washing over her.
“But when was the moment? When did you choose?” the fortune teller hissed. Donna could sense something creeping up on her but for her life, she couldn’t break free. She was trapped, back in the car with her mother, arguing over her decision.
“It won’t take long. Just turn right. We’ll pop in and see Mister Chowdry, so Suzette can introduce you,” her mother insisted.
“I’m going left. If you don’t like it, get out and walk,” Donna snarled.
“If you turn right, you’ll have a career, not just filling in!”
“You think I’m so useless!” Donna shouted angrily. She could feel tears pricking her eyes. If she cried, her mother would seize on it and keep up until she gave in. Donna knew that from long experience.
“Oh, I know why you want a job at HC Clements, lady,” her mother muttered. “Because you think you’ll meet a man with lots of money and your whole life will change. Well, let me tell you, sweetheart. City executives don’t need temps, except for practice.”
“Yeah. Well, they haven’t met me,” Donna whispered softly.
Suddenly, she was back in the fortune teller’s hut on Shan Shen. The Chinese woman was studying her carefully. “You turned left. But what if you turned right? What then?” the fortune teller wondered.
“Let go of my hands,” Donna whispered. The fortune teller clung to her hands more tightly. She couldn’t get free.
“What if it changes? What if you go right? What if you could still go right?”
“Stop it!” Donna felt something climbing up her back. She tried to shake it off but couldn’t. “What’s that? What’s on my back? What is it? What, what’s on my back?” she demanded, beginning to panic.
“Make the choice again, Donna Noble, and change your mind. Turn right,” the fortune teller snarled.
“I’m turning,” Donna whispered, getting caught up in the memory of that day again. Suddenly, she was wavering. Instead of turning left, she was really considering turning right and doing what her mother wanted.
“Turn right. Turn right. Turn right!”
“Well, let me tell you, sweetheart. City executives don’t need temps, except for practice,” her mother was snarling softly.
“Yeah. Suppose you’re right,” Donna whispered as she changed the blinker’s indicator to signal a right turn instead of a left turn.
“Turn right, and never meet that woman. Turn right, and change the world!”
~*~*~*~
The Doctor strode into the room where the Dimension Cannon was stored. After weeks of fine-tuning it, he thought he had something that would be safe enough to use. It would search for cracks or weak spots in the walls of the universe but would not do enough damage to collapse the realities. With it, he should be able to return to Rose and the TARDIS even with the Chief’s crazy Vortex Manipulator on his wrist. He glared at the device. He didn’t dare take it off. He didn’t dare tinker with it. But once the damned thing was gone and he was reunited with Rose, the Doctor was going to make a pit stop in the 51st century and throttle the Chief.
“Oi, Doctor!” he heard Mickey shout. “’Bout time you got here. We’ve got some really strange readings here on the Dimension Cannon.”
“I am not putting off the test,” the Doctor muttered angrily. “We located Donna, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, but her readings have changed, too.”
“What do you mean ‘too?’”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. A few minutes ago, we could pick up Rose’s readings fine. We couldn’t hone in on them but we could see them. Now, they’re gone. Tosh traced it back and it looks like they vanished years ago. Almost like she died or has just been hanging out in the Time Vortex.”
“She’s not dead! She can’t be dead!”
“I’m just telling you what the readings are telling us. Something has happened over there. Something that means that Rose disappears. Here, look at this,” Mickey said, pointing to the monitor. “Rose’s readings end here. Jack’s end here. Something weird happens here and the whole of Earth vanishes here. There’s some kind of closed temporal feedback loop connecting this point to a point in the very distant future. We can’t make heads or tails of it but it’s bad.”
“Just get me back to Rose. I’ll fix this as soon as I find her.”
“That’s the thing,” Mickey sighed. “We can’t get you to her. But we can get you to Donna.”
“Fine then. Send me to Donna and I’ll get to Rose myself.”
“Get over to the Cannon, then,” Mickey muttered. “Just be prepared.”
“I will be,” the Doctor replied, fighting to keep from snarling. He took his place in front of the Dimension Cannon and closed his eyes against the harsh, bright light that washed over him as Mickey and the other techs activated it. The Doctor felt himself flying through time and space. It wasn’t as uncomfortable as using a Vortex Manipulator but it was no match for the TARDIS. He could feel himself running – it was instinctive to flail and run in this situation. After what seemed like ages, he felt solid ground under his feet. Up ahead, a red-headed woman was walking towards an ambulance. He almost smacked into her before he caught himself and managed to stop.
“Trap One to Greyhound Fifteen. What is your report? Over,” a voice said over a radio. The Doctor stared at the soldiers behind the barricade. They looked like UNIT forces. If he could just talk to them, he might be able to use them to get back to Rose.
“From the evidence, I’d say she managed to stop the creature. Some sort of red spider. Blew up the base underneath the barrier, flooded the whole thing. Over,” the soldier on the scene reported into his own radio. The red-head was staring off to the side. The Doctor followed her gaze and sucked in a breath when he saw a stretcher, the blanket pulled up to cover the body on it. Whoever it held was dead. But whose body was it?
“And where is she now? Over.”
“We found a body, sir. Over.”
“Is it her? Over.”
“I think so. She just didn’t make it out in time,” the soldier said sadly as the stretcher was lifted into the ambulance. A small, thin arm fell out from under the blanket. The hand opened and a sonic screwdriver hit the pavement. The Doctor stared at that arm and hand. How many times had he interlaced his fingers with the limp fingers on that hand? How many times had he dreamed of feeling that hand caress his face? His chest? Take hold of him in its hot, human grasp? How many times had he wanted to kiss that hand, nuzzling the palm and drawing each of those long, delicate fingers into his mouth until the owner moaned in pleasure? “Vairë Carter is dead,” the soldier continued, speaking into his radio. “The river must have rushed in before she could get out. Escort the ambulance back to UNIT base,” he ordered some other soldiers. He looked sad and frightened as he watched the ambulance pull away.
“What happened? What did they find? I’m sorry, did they find someone?” the Doctor said to the red-haired woman watching the scene.
“I don’t know,” the woman said flatly. “A woman called Vairë, or something. Sounds Norwegian to me.”
“Well, where is she?” the Doctor demanded. He couldn’t believe she was dead. Rose couldn’t die! Not before he could see her again! Not before he could beg her forgiveness and vow to stand by her side for the rest of her life. She couldn’t be dead! That couldn’t be her body that was being carried off by UNIT!
“They took her away. She’s dead. I’m sorry, did you know her?” Donna asked softly.
“I came so far,” the Doctor whispered, pressing one of his hands to his mouth. He would not cry. He would not break down in front of a stranger. He would not! “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Donna. And you?”
“Oh, I’m just passing by. I shouldn’t even be here. This is wrong. It’s wrong. This is so wrong,” the Doctor muttered. He could feel the time lines shifting and breaking. It was like a paradox was trying to form only…no, this was more like a parallel Earth. An Earth altered by a single event from Terra Alpha. Closing his eyes, he tried to sense his home universe but could not. It was gone just like Gallifrey. Instead, this perversion of a universe was taking its place. “Sorry, what was it? Donna what?” he asked absently as he tried to figure out why the universes had diverged and vanished like they were doing. Rose was important to him, he knew, but could her life really be of such cosmic importance? Did the whole of Terra Alpha’s reality hinge on her? He’d have to figure it out eventually. For now, he’d deal with this strange parallel world that was overwriting his home universe. Opening his eyes, he glanced at Donna and sucked in a breath. He could see something on her back. Something that shouldn’t be there. Blinking, he stared at her again, not surprised to find he could no longer see the thing even though his Time Sense told him it was there.
“Why do you keep looking at my back?” Donna demanded angrily. Several times others had stared at her back as if there were something on it. She couldn’t see anything no matter how hard she looked. It annoyed her the way some people stared at her back like that.
“I’m not,” the skinny bloke with spiky brown hair insisted as he turned his head, looking everywhere except at her.
“Yes, you are. You keep looking behind me. You’re doing it now. What is it?” Donna asked as she twisted trying to see whatever it was that others saw. “What’s there? Did someone put something on my back?” When she turned back to face that skinny streak of nothing, he was gone. Sighing and wondering if she’d gone mad, Donna headed back home.
~*~*~*~
The Doctor had hidden himself well from Donna. When she stalked off, continually looking over her shoulder, he stood up from his hiding place. Finding an abandoned car, the Doctor hotwired it and headed off towards the UNIT base where the ambulance had been headed. He used his psychic paper to get through the guards and into the morgue. The Dimension Jumper in his pocket beeped, letting him know that it had enough power to return him to Terra Beta. But, before he went back, he had to know for certain what was going on. Steeling himself, he headed directly for the blanket-draped stretcher on the far side of the room. His fingers curled around the top of it and he could feel his body beginning to shake. Swallowing, telling himself that it couldn’t be Rose under the blanket, that it couldn’t be his spare sonic screwdriver in his pocket, he pulled the blanket back. The howl that was ripped from his throat sounded inhuman.
Rose Tyler lay on the stretcher. Her face was pale. No blood rushed through her arteries and veins, bringing oxygen to her body. Her eyes were closed. Faint bruises as if she had not been sleeping well, marred the skin under her hazel eyes. Her blonde hair was still wet and stank faintly of the pollution from the Thames River. The Doctor put a hand on her forehead and then jerked it back. She was cold. Her skin was chilled with death. Her once-rosy lips were pallid and slightly parted, showing a bit of her teeth.
“Rose,” he whispered, his voice harsh and thick with longing. He couldn’t leave her here like this. He bent over, dipping his head, and pressed his lips against hers, willing her to live. “Rose,” he whispered against her mouth. “You can’t be dead. You can’t be.” His hands stroked her neck, his fingers stopping where the pulse would be. He felt nothing. “Oh, Rose,” he groaned. “You can’t leave me here like this. This isn’t supposed to happen. Sweetheart…you can’t die without knowing how much I need you. How much I love you…”
A noise in the distance pulled the Doctor from his reverie. The UNIT soldiers were coming. They’d perform an autopsy. He shuddered at the thought of them touching Rose, cutting into her body, examining her with cold calculation. He couldn’t let them desecrate his beloved that way. Gathering her chill body in his arms, the Doctor reached for his Dimension Jumper and pushed the button that would take him back to Pete’s World.
~*~*~*~
“What the hell!” Mickey shouted when the Doctor reappeared in front of the Dimension Cannon. He was holding Rose in his arms. “What the hell?”
“She can’t be dead!” the Doctor insisted. “She can’t be!”
Mickey raced over and pressed his fingers against the pulse point in her neck. “She is,” he muttered. “Why did you bring her corpse back here? This will kill Jackie!”
“Don’t you dare, Ricky! Rose isn’t dead!”
“She seems to be pulling a fairly good impersonation of it if you ask me.”
“Take her,” the Doctor snarled angrily. “Put her somewhere safe. Don’t you dare let anyone experiment on her! You,” he shouted at one of the other techs, “let me see the read-out from the Cannon.”
“Doctor, we have to bury her,” Mickey muttered.
“Don’t you dare! You put her somewhere safe. Somewhere warm. When she wakes up, you tell me immediately!”
“She’s not going to wake up, Doctor! She’s gone!”
“Rose Tyler is not dead!” the Doctor screamed. “Show me the read-outs. I need to know why the time lines diverged.” The tech glanced at Mickey. Mickey nodded as he gestured for others to come in and gather Rose’s remains. He would humor the Doctor for now. Rose’s body would be stored in the morgue. Only himself and the Doctor would be allowed entrance there. “There,” the Doctor muttered, pointing to the data. “Donna turned right instead of left. That’s where it all went wrong. If I can get her to turn left, then this will all be undone. I just have to keep her alive until she’s ready to hear it,” he grimaced. “Send me back.”
“The Cannon needs another hour to charge,” the tech stammered.
“Then I will see Rose tucked in safely,” the Doctor growled. “In one hour, I’m going back to check on Donna Noble. Any information you can pull up on her, send to me. You got that?” the tech nodded blankly. The Doctor snarled something in his native language before storming over to the physicians who were loading Rose onto another stretcher. Holding her chill, dead hand in his own, the Doctor walked with them to the morgue, whispering to her all the while and praying that he could undo whatever it was that had gone so wrong. “We were always supposed to be together, love,” he muttered in Gallifreyan. “The Doctor and Rose Tyler in the TARDIS. I will spend the rest of your life with you. And when you finally do go, wizened and aged, having dandled grandchildren and great grandchildren on your knee, I’ll go too. You won’t go into the darkness alone, Rose. I will be with you. I…I never should have gone back for Reinette like that. You should have been with me. I wanted nothing more than you. You can’t leave me like this, Rose. You just can’t!” he wept. “I’ll save you. I told you that I would always come back for you. And I will, my love. I will. Please,” he prayed softly, “please tell me that you believe that.”
~*~*~*~
Donna was staring at the television screen. She, her mother, and her grandfather were all tucked safely in at a nice hotel outside of London. That strange man, that skinny streak of nothing with gravity-defying hair, had appeared and told her about the lottery ticket. Using it – even if she wanted nothing to do with Mr. Chowdry – had gotten her family out of London. A strange ship, large and looking like a cruise-liner from the early 1900s, had just smashed into Buckingham Palace. For a moment, Donna had been looking into a mirror and could have sworn she saw something on her back. But it was gone. A mushroom cloud rose in the distance.
“That’s everyone. Every single person we know. The whole city,” Sylvia whispered in horror.
“Can’t be…” Donna muttered, unable to believe what she was seeing.
“If you hadn’t won that raffle,” Wilf sighed. Donna shook her head. It was strange. The night after she’d lost her job, she’d gone out to find something for tea with the last of her wages. There’d been a flash of light and then that strange bloke from before, from Christmas, had been skidding to a halt in front of her. He’d stared at her in shock for a moment before starting to talk to her about her plans for the next Christmas. He’d been the one to tell her she had the winning lottery ticket and that she needed to get her family out of town. Donna shook her head again to clear it. Who was that strange man? And how did he seem to know what was going to happen next?
~*~*~*~
Leeds. She was in bloody Leeds of all places. The whole of southern England had been forced to evacuate to escape the fallout from that spaceship slamming into Buckingham Palace. Other European nations had begun closing their borders, unwilling to absorb the refugees searching for a new home. Donna and her family had been given no choice. It was Leeds or spend another three months in a hostel praying that they would be sent somewhere better than bloody Leeds.
And they didn’t even have a home of their own! They had to share this flat with two other families. And they were Italians! So loud and boisterous. Even living with a bunch of bloody Yanks would have been better than this! But the Americans had their own problems. Sixty million of them had died, their bodies dissolving into creatures made out of fat. Then those creatures had gone up on spaceships. America had been going to send aid to Britain but when one out of five of their citizens died in a single night, it was all that the United States could do to maintain order in their own country. Donna wouldn’t be surprised to hear that they were having another civil war. At first, many nations had cheered the downfall of the United States. But then, when their navy no longer patrolled the sea lanes and their Army was forced to withdraw back to the mainland, the rest of the world found itself in a strange new environment where pirates had command of the sea, forcing nations and merchants to pay ruinous ransoms. The Middle East had dissolved into complete chaos. Egypt shut down the Suez Canal. Planes that flew over the Middle East found themselves forced to land by Iraqi or Iranian jets, their crews, passengers, and cargos held for ransom or stolen and sold on the black market. China had begun exerting its influence in the Pacific and there were even rumors that the Japanese and the Australians were planning to rearm themselves and go to war with the Asian power.
The whole world had gone mad and Donna was stuck in Leeds, living in a flat with nearly two dozen inhabitants when it was only meant to house five at most. She, her mother, and her grandfather lived in the kitchen, sleeping on camp beds. She’d searched all over for some kind of work, something to make money so that she could get the three of them their own place instead of having to share with others who couldn’t seem to understand the concept of ‘quiet.’
“Mary McGinty. Do you remember her?” Sylvia asked softly. She and Donna were tucked into their camp beds in the kitchen.
“Who was she?” Donna asked politely.
“Worked in the newsagent on Sunday. Little woman. Black hair.”
“Never really spoke with her.”
“She’ll be dead. Every day I think of someone else. All dead,” Sylvia muttered.
“Maybe she went away for Christmas.”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll go out tomorrow. I’ll walk into town. There’s got to be work. Everyone needs secretaries. Soon as I’m earning, we’ll get a proper place. Just you wait, Mum,” Donna said, hoping to pull her mother from her brooding.
“What if it never gets better?” Sylvia muttered in despair.
“Of course it will!” Donna insisted.
“Even the bees are disappearing. You don’t see bumble bees anymore.”
“They’ll sort us out. The emergency government. They’ll do something!”
“What if they don’t?”
“Then we’ll complain.”
“Who’s going to listen to us? Refugees. We haven’t even got a vote. We’re just no one, Donna. We don’t exist,” Sylvia said sadly. Just then loud, raucous singing from the front room wafted into the kitchen. Donna snarled in irritation. How many times had she asked them to keep it down after dark? How was she going to get any sleep with them carrying on like a bunch of drunks? Climbing out of her bed, Donna stormed into the living room where Rocco and his family were singing loud, bawdy sea shanties. “Now listen, Mussolini!” she roared. “I am telling you for the last time to button it! If I hear one more sea shanty…”
The Italian family stopped singing and moved aside. Wilf was sitting there, holding a glass of whiskey in one hand and looking a little sheepish. “I always loved a sing song,” he muttered apologetically. Donna stared at her grandfather before throwing her head back and laughing. That was all she could do, now. Being angry about the situation got her nowhere. Drowning in sorrow and despair like her mother wasn’t her style at all. But looking for humor, for some way to make it bearable, that was something Donna could do. Rocco stood up and hugged her, knowing what she was thinking, and then pulled her into the crowd. Soon Sylvia joined them, desperate to have something on her mind other than all the friends she had lost. Before they knew it, the whole group was singing Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of their lungs and laughing.
The loud report of an automatic weapon being fired stopped their song. Rocco stood up and ran to open the door. “No, you stay here. Everyone, stay,” he ordered when Donna and the others moved to follow him. “Hey! Firing at the car is not so good. You, you crazy or what?” he shouted to a soldier who was unloading his weapon on a car in the street. Donna had managed to shove her way to the front of the crowd so that she stood just behind Rocco. The Italian, ever-chivalrous, shielded her with his own body.
“It’s this ATMOS thing, it won’t stop. It’s like gas. It’s toxic,” the soldier said apologetically. Every car in the street was spewing some kind of white, stinking gas.
“Well, switch it off!” Wilf shouted from his own position just behind Rocco. The two older men nodded at each other. They had both been soldiers in their day. The instinct to protect the women and children and to keep the younger men in line ran strong in them. Both of them were disgusted by the soldier’s panic and his useless firing on the car. Donna shoved her way in front of them and stared at the street.
“I have done. It’s still going. It’s all the cars. Every single ATMOS car, they’ve gone mad,” the soldier explained. Then he looked at Donna and raised the barrel of his gun so it pointed at her. “You, lady. Turn round! Turn around now!” he shouted.
“Are you crazy, boy?” Rocco roared.
“Put the gun down!” Wilf ordered using his old drill-sergeant voice.
“I said, turn round! Show me your back!” the soldier shouted at Donna.
“Do what he says!” Sylvia pleaded. She didn’t want to watch her only child be shot to death in front of her. Things were bad enough already without her having to bury the only child Geoff had given her.
“Show me your back!” the soldier roared as Donna raised her hands up and began walking towards him. The barrel of his gun quivered in his frightened grasp. Wilf muttered sourly. In his day, any soldier drawing a gun on a woman would have had hell to pay for it. Any soldier who couldn’t master his fear and panic enough to keep a steady aim would have been ridiculed for months by the rest of his squadron. Rocco’s muttering in Italian matched his own thoughts. The two one-time soldiers were in agreement. This boy playing at being a soldier needed to be disciplined by his officers.
“Turn around!” Sylvia wept.
“Turn around, now! Show me your back!” the soldier repeated. Donna slowly turned so that her back was facing the young soldier and his gun. She tried not to shake in fear at the thought that she could no longer see the gun. Any second now, bullets would rip through her and she would die there in the street. “Sorry. I thought I saw…” the soldier muttered, lowering his gun and looking at Donna in confusion.
“Call yourself a soldier? Pointing guns at innocent women?” Wilf snarled. “You’re a disgrace. In my day, we’d have had you court martialed!”
Just then, Donna saw a flash of light further down the street. It reminded her of the last time she’d seen that skinny bloke with the stick-up hair. Walking towards it, she ignored her mother’s shouts for her to return to the apartment, that it wasn’t safe for a woman to wander the streets at night. She turned the corner and wasn’t surprised to see the skinny man in the brown pin-striped suit looking at her with a mixture of sorrow and regret.
“Hello,” Donna said softly.
“Hi,” the bloke said, nodding. The two of them walked down the street standing side-by-side. Donna noticed that the skinny fellow didn’t give her an appraising gaze at all. He was completely disinterested in her as a woman. She glanced quickly at his left hand, surprised to find no wedding band there. Maybe he was gay. Or maybe she just wasn’t his type. The second thought brought a lot of reassurance to her. True, she wasn’t a beautiful woman but she’d still turned the men’s heads when she decided she wanted attention. But from this long, tall, dark skinny streak of nothing, she decided she didn’t want any attention. She could be friends with him. The two of them reached a bench and he settled down, tucking his long, brown trench coat behind him and hitching the tops of his pinstriped pants up a bit. He adjusted the knot in his blue-on-brown tie and then leaned back, staring up at the sky. “It’s the ATMOS devices. You’re lucky, it’s not so bad here,” he muttered, answering her unasked question. “Britain hasn’t got that much petrol. But all over Europe, China, South Africa, they’re getting choked by gas.”
“Can’t anyone stop it?” Donna asked.
“Yeah,” he nodded, “they’re trying right now, this little band of fighters, on board the Sontaran ship. Any second now.” His eyes turned towards the sky. Donna flinched when a blaze of fire washed over the sky, burning the gas away.
“And that was?” she prodded. How was it that this man knew what was going to happen?
“That was the Torchwood team. Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, they gave their lives. And Captain Jack Harkness has transported to the Sontaran home world. There’s no one left,” he said softly.
“You’re always wearing the same clothes,” Donna noted. It was true. This was the only outfit she’d seen him wear. “Why won’t you tell me your name?”
“None of this was meant to happen,” the man replied, dodging her question. “There was a woman. This absolutely fantastic woman, and she stopped it. The Titanic, the Adipose, the ATMOS, she stopped them all from happening,” he said, his gaze wandering off. Donna studied him. Whoever this woman was he was talking about, it was clear that he was in love with her.
“Vairë?” she asked, recalling the woman’s name from their first meeting.
“You knew her,” the man said calmly, still not looking at Donna. The red-head thought she could see tears in his eyes.
“Did I?” Donna asked. “When?”
“I think you dream about her sometimes. A woman in a white blouse. Black pants and shoes. A long black leather trench coat. A small but indomitable woman with gold-flecked hazel eyes. Golden haired. Beautiful, soft, golden hair,” he sighed.
“Who are you?” Donna asked.
“I was like you. I used to be you,” he replied, not entirely untruthful. “You’ve travelled with her, Donna. You’ve travelled with Vairë Carter – Rose Tyler – in a different world.”
“I never met her. And she’s dead,” Donna said harshly.
“She died underneath the Thames on Christmas Eve, but you were meant to be there. She needed someone to stop her, and that was you,” he replied, turning to gaze at her with soft, sad brown eyes. “You made her leave. You saved her life.”
Donna shivered as she had a vision. She could see a hazel-eyed blonde woman standing under a rain of water. She was wearing a white blouse that clung to her. A black leather trench coat reflected the light wetly. The woman’s eyes were hard and implacable. A red spider with a humanish face screamed as the blonde stared her down. If the blonde woman didn’t move…she would die…the weight of the Thames would rush over her and crush her. Donna had to make her move. She had to! Donna heard her own voice calling out “Vairë, you can stop now!”
Then Donna returned to herself. She was sitting on a bench in bloody Leeds with a man whose name she still didn’t know. “Stop it. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Leave me alone!” she whimpered as she stood up from the bench and glared at the skinny bloke.
“Something’s coming, Donna Noble. Something worse,” he insisted.
“The whole world is stinking. How can anything be worse than this?” Donna demanded.
“Trust me. We need Vairë more than ever. I’ve…I’ve been pulled across from a different universe because every single universe is in danger. It’s coming, Donna Noble. It’s coming from across the stars and nothing can stop it.”
“What is?” Donna asked.
“The darkness.”
“Well, what do you keep telling me for? What am I supposed to do? I’m nothing special. I mean, I’m, I’m not. I’m nothing special. I’m a temp. I’m not even that. I’m nothing!” Donna shouted in despair.
“Donna Noble, you’re the most important woman in the whole of creation!” the skinny bloke retorted. He ran a hand through his hair and scratched the back of his neck nervously.
“Oh, don’t. Just don’t. I’m tired. I’m so tired,” Donna wept.
“I need you to come with me,” he said at last.
“Yeah. Well, puppy-dog eyes might work on the ladies, but you ain’t shifting me,” Donna snorted.
“That’s more like it,” he grinned.
“I’ve got plenty more,” Donna joked.
“Then you’ll come with me, only when you want to,” he sighed, staring back up at the sky.
“You’ll have a long wait, then,” Donna said as she started to walk back to her flat.
“Not really. Just three weeks,” the man said confidently. “Tell me, does your grandfather still own that telescope?”
“He never lets go of it,” Donna said in shock. She turned back to stare at the man.
“Three weeks’ time. But you’ve got to be certain. Because when you come with me, Donna, sorry. I’m so, so sorry, but you’re going to die,” he whispered. Donna stared at him as he faded away. Shaking herself and trying to convince herself that this had all been some kind of dream, Donna headed back to the flat she shared with two other families.
~*~*~*~
As he always did when he returned from a jump, the Doctor visited the morgue. Rose’s body was still there. She looked like she was sleeping. A comfortable chair was next to her bier. The Doctor sat in it and took one of her hands in his own. “I found her again, Rose,” he whispered. “Donna Noble. I can see why you were drawn to her. She’s amazing. So feisty and fiery.”
Part of him knew that Rose was gone. Still, he hoped that if Terra Alpha could be returned to the proper path, she would wake up here. He would gather her in his arms and never let her go. Mickey and the others thought him mad to insist that Rose wasn’t dead. He supposed he couldn’t blame them. They could only perceive time in a limited manner. But he…he could see the splits and breaks. The whorls and wheels of it. Rose was not supposed to die under the Thames at Christmas. Her time line was supposed to continue. There were so many things she was supposed to do in her life. He couldn’t determine what they were, exactly – the damned Vortex Manipulator blinded him to them – but he could tell that she would be thousands of years old when she finally did die. She could give him forever or as close as anyone could. She might even out-live him. The Doctor grinned at that. He’d been so terrified that he’d have to watch her die…but the Dimension Cannon showed him that if she lived…if she avoided death at a few places where it could happen, and if he could join himself to her, she would never leave him. Every night, now, when he found himself dragged down into a few hours’ sleep, he dreamt of her. Of their life together. Of the children they would have. They would live on the TARDIS and travel through the whole of reality. He’d find some way to let her visit Jackie and Pete and Tony. They would be so happy. Then, one day, when he and Rose were both old and weary of life, they’d settle into bed together and fall asleep, never to wake. They’d be buried together, still holding each other. That was his dream. His goal. He just had to get Donna to turn left so that Rose would live!
“I never told you how beautiful you were,” he whispered to Rose. “I almost did that time we landed in Charles Dickens’ time. But, I had to ruin it with ‘for a human.’ Rose, you were always beautiful to me. I loved to watch you sleep. You were so peaceful, then. And the way you smelled,” he sighed. “You have the most wonderful fragrance. I can smell your soap and shampoo and then this special scent that is just you. It’s so clean and magnificent. Nothing I’ve ever encountered comes close to matching it. And, Rassilon,” he whispered, “you were so brave and so strong. I tried to scare you off a few times but you met me glare for glare, terror for terror, and refused to be budged. Remember when we were trapped in 10 Downing Street with the Slitheen?” he asked. “You cleared out that cupboard and I sat next to you. Gods, after that missile hit and we were still alive, it took all of my willpower not to push you to the ground and have my way with you then and there and the television cameras be damned! You were so strong and glorious, Rose. That’s why I can’t let you be dead. I need you. I need you to come back to me. That’s while I’ll keep pushing Donna until she turns left. That’s why I’ll never give up. I need you too much, Rose Tyler,” he whispered, standing up and pressing his lips to hers. “I’ll see you again soon,” he added as he started to walk away. “Just as soon as Donna turns left.”
~*~*~*~
Donna settled down next to her grandfather. He had pulled out his telescope to study the night sky. She tried not to think about Rocco and the others who had been taken off to ‘labor camps.’ At first, she hadn’t thought anything of it. Then her grandfather mentioned that it was happening again and that they’d called them labor camps before. Visions of the Nazis and the camps that the Jews and other ‘undesirables’ were carted off to swam in her vision. Surely Britain could never stoop that low. Some might talk about Britain for the British but they couldn’t really mean it, could they? They couldn’t send someone as lively and funny as Rocco off to be killed and dumped into a common grave.
Could they?
Donna shuddered. Wilf was muttering to himself. “You know, we’d get a bit of cash if we sold this thing,” he said, pointing to the telescope.
“Don’t you dare,” Donna growled. “I always imagined, your old age,” she sighed. “I’d have put a bit of money by. Make you comfy. Never did. I’m just useless,” she muttered. Her grandfather continued to tinker with the telescope. She rolled her eyes and glared at him. “You’re supposed to say, ‘no you’re not,’” she prodded.
“Ha, it must be the alignment,” he said, tinkering with the lenses.
“What’s wrong?” Donna asked.
“Well, I don’t know. I mean, it can’t be the lens, because I was looking at Orion. The constellation of Orion. You take a look. And tell me, what can you see?” he said, gesturing for Donna to look through the scope. Donna put her eye to the eyepiece. She could see nothing.
“Where?” she asked, wondering if she was looking in the wrong place.
“Up there in the sky,” he grimaced.
“Well, I can’t see anything,” she replied. “It’s just black.”
“Well, I mean, it’s working. The telescope is working,” Wilf insisted.
“Maybe it’s the clouds?” she offered.
“There are no clouds!”
“Well, there must be!”
“There’s not! It was there. An entire constellation. Look. Look there,” he said, pointing. Then more stars blinked out. Donna gaped in amazement as one after another, the stars in the sky went dark. It’s exactly what that strange bloke had said would happen. “They’re going out. Oh, my God! Donna, look. The stars are going out.”
“I’m ready,” she whispered, turning around. She wasn’t surprised to see the brown-eyed, brown-haired strange man looking at her with a mix of pity and sorrow. Walking towards him, she let him lead her where ever it was he wanted her to go.
~*~*~*~
Donna hopped out of the truck. They were at some kind of military base. Soldiers saluted her and the man. She gazed around in confusion. She was no one important. Why were these military officers saluting her?
“I’ve told you, don’t salute,” the man said wearily as he walked over to a console and began tapping away at the keys.
“Well, if you’re not going to tell us your name,” the officer muttered. She was a black woman, smartly dressed, with a look of no nonsense about her. Donna felt comforted by her presence. This was the kind of woman who wouldn’t let anything unplanned happen in front of her. She was in complete control of the situation.
“What, you don’t know either?” Donna asked the officer, nodding towards the man.
“I’ve crossed too many different realities. Trust me,” the man muttered absently, his thoughts elsewhere, “the wrong word in the wrong place can change an entire causal nexus.”
“He talks like that. A lot. And you must be Miss Noble,” the officer said, saluting.
“Donna.”
“Captain Erisa Magambo. Thank you for this,” the officer replied.
“I don’t even know what I’m doing,” Donna admitted sheepishly.
“Is she awake?” the man asked, interrupting them.
“Seems to be quiet today. Ticking over. Like it’s waiting,” Captain Magambo replied calmly. The man walked over towards a blue box that said “Police Box” on it. Donna followed him. Cables and cords came out of the box. All kinds of electronics were hooked up to it. Something about the box felt familiar to Donna but she couldn’t place it.
“Do you want to see it?” the man asked.
“What’s a police box?” Donna wondered.
“They salvaged it from underneath the Thames,” he explained. “Just go inside.”
“What for?”
“Just go in,” he grimaced. Donna walked inside the box and stared. It was bigger on the inside. She walked out and then walked around the box before ducking her head back in.
“No. Way!” she said in amazement.
“What do you think?” the man asked.
“Can I have a coffee?” she asked in a small voice.
~*~*~*~
Donna stared at the array of mirrors and cables. The man had told her about the police box, the TARDIS, he called it. He’d explained that it used to be his ship but that it had found a new pilot – Vairë. Vairë had become the ship’s sister. And then, in time, they’d found Donna and Donna had traveled with them. He talked about helping UNIT to scrape off the surface technology so they could make this…whatever it was that he was trying to get her to stand in. He’d whispered that humans didn’t discover time travel for several thousand more years, something about fixed points that almost made sense to her. She found herself staring at him. The things he muttered were things she felt she should know. Donna let him guide her to the middle of the circle of mirrors.
“Just stand there,” he said pleasantly.
“Out of the circle, please,” Captain Magambo ordered.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he grinned as he walked outside of the mirrors.
“Can’t you stay with me?” Donna called out to him. She didn’t want to be left alone here.
“Ready and activate!” Captain Magambo shouted. The lights turned on one after another. Donna could feel something whirling around her. Out of the corner of her eyes, reflected in the mirrors, Donna could see some creature on her back. She shuddered and closed her eyes tightly.
“Open your eyes, Donna,” the man called out to her.
“Is it there?” she sobbed.
“Open your eyes. Look at it.”
“I can’t!”
“It’s part of you, Donna. Look,” the man insisted. Donna glanced at it and began crying. It terrified her. It was some kind of black, huge beetle. She’d always hated bugs and now a massive giant beetle was on her back! “It feeds off time, by changing time,” he explained as the lights were turned off. He walked back to Donna and rubbed her arms in a friendly, reassuring manner. “By making someone’s life take a different turn, like er, meetings never made, children never born, a life never loved. But with you, it’s…” he trailed off uncertainly.
“But I never did anything important,” Donna wept.
“Yes, you did,” he insisted. “One day that thing made you turn right instead of left.”
“When was that?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t remember. It was the most ordinary day in the world. But by turning right, you never met Vairë, and the whole world just changed around you.”
“Can you get rid of it?” Donna pleaded.
“No, I can’t even touch it. It seems to be in a state of flux,” he sighed.
Donna looked over her shoulder at her back. With the lights gone, she couldn’t see that thing. “It’s still there, though. What can I do to get rid of it?” she asked.
“You’re going to travel in time,” he said softly.
~*~*~*~
Donna blinked and pushed herself up on her feet. She was wearing a jacket that would protect her from temporal feedback – whatever that was. That thing was still on her back. But she was back in the past, now. She just needed to find herself and convince herself not to let her mother talk her into turning right instead of left. Looking around, she gaped. She was in Sutton Court! She was half a mile away from where she was supposed to be! And, according to that watch they’d given her, she had only four minutes to reach herself and get herself to turn left! Blimey, but they liked to cut things close!
Jogging as quickly as she could towards where she knew her mother and her past self were, Donna tried to think up things she could say to get her past self to turn left. Nothing was coming to mind other than she was out of breath, tired, and sweaty. She wanted a bottle of water more than anything she’d ever wanted before in her life. She kept running, though. She needed to make herself turn left. Everything depended on that!
“I’m not going to make it,” she whispered, out of breath. Just then, she was a large blue van coming towards her. She remembered it racing by in front of her car that day. “Please,” she muttered as she forced herself to walk out in front of the van. She felt it slam into her, sending her flying backwards and hitting the street hard. A woman screamed. Cars began honking angrily as the van’s driver got out and ran to check on her. Then he was there. That tall, skinny streak of nothing dressed in a pinstriped suit. He knelt down next to her, stroking her hair gently.
“Tell her this,” he whispered as he put his mouth next to Donna’s ear. “Two words.” He whispered two words into her ear and then stood up and walked away. Donna closed her eyes. She was so tired…
Everything seemed to rewind, then. She remembered being caught in a spaceship on her wedding day. The Racnoss. The Adipose. Vairë. Galliterra. The Protector. The Sontaran. Martha. Luke. Jenny. The Library and River Song. Midnight. And Shan Shen and the fortune teller. Donna opened her eyes, glaring at the Chinese woman. She felt something fall off her back.
“What the hell is that?” she demanded angrily.
“You were so strong,” the fortune teller panted. Sweat beaded on her brow. “What are you? What will you be? What will you be?” she sobbed as she ran out of the tent. Just then, Vairë ducked her blonde head inside and looked at Donna with concern.
“Everything all right?” she asked.
“Oh, God,” Donna sighed as she ran over and embraced the other woman.
“What was that for?” Vairë asked, patting Donna’s back.
“I don’t know!” Donna said tearfully. Vairë hugged her again and then walked into the tent. She hissed when she saw the beetle on the ground. Picking it up, she set it on the table and then snubbed out the incense. Vairë picked up a straw and began prodding at the beetle while Donna tried to recall what had just happened. “I can’t remember. It’s slipping away. You know like when you try and think of a dream and it just sort of goes,” Donna sighed. Vairë had asked her what she could remember but she could remember precious little.
“Just got lucky, this thing. It’s one of the Trickster’s Brigade,” Vairë muttered, studying the creature. “Changes a life in tiny little ways. Most times, the universe just compensates around it, but with you? Great big parallel world,” she laughed. Donna grinned and then grew serious.
“Hold on. You said parallel worlds are sealed off,” the red-head replied. “At least until Prot gets that Eye of Harmony thing finished.”
“They are,” Vairë muttered. “But you had one created around you. Funny thing is, seems to be happening a lot to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, first the Library and then this.”
“Just goes with the job, I suppose.”
“Sometimes I think there’s way too much coincidence around you, Donna. I met you once, then I met your grandfather, then I met you again. In the whole wide universe, I met you for a second time. It’s like something’s binding us together,” Vairë said wonderingly.
“Don’t be so daft. I’m nothing special,” Donna snorted.
“Yes, you are,” Vairë smiled. “You’re brilliant.”
Donna started. That skinny bloke had said the same thing. “He said that,” she muttered.
“Who did?” Vairë asked absently.
“That man,” she sighed, shaking her head. “I can’t remember.”
“Well, he never existed now.”
“No, but he said the stars,” Donna whispered, straining to recall it. “He said the stars were going out.”
“But that world’s gone,” Vairë replied.
“No, but he said it was all worlds. Every world. He said the darkness is coming. Even here.”
“Who was he?” Vairë asked. She could feel a thrill of anticipation heating her blood.
“I can’t remember.”
“What did he look like?”
Donna closed her eyes. “He was tall. Skinny. Pinstriped suit. Brown hair and eyes.”
“What was his name?” Vairë demanded. “Donna, what was his name?”
“I don’t know!” Donna shouted. “But he told me to warn you…He said ‘two words,’” she trailed off, shivering.
“What two words? What were they?”
“He said…’Bad Wolf.’”
Vairë began to shake. Very, very few people knew about Bad Wolf. The Doctor was one of them. That meant that he was there. He was there and he was looking for her. He was trying to warn her that the end of the universe was approaching and that she needed to be ready to stop it. All these years she had been trying to get back to him and now he’d found Donna. He’d found Donna and sent a message through her. Vairë stood up and ran out of the tent. Everywhere she looked, she saw the words ‘Bad Wolf.’ On the banners, on the signs, on the placards. Even on the TARDIS. She could feel Koschei growing concerned and running towards her, Lucy in tow. Donna followed her as she entered the TARDIS. The lights in the console room were red – an indicator of trouble. The Cloister Bell tolled. Vairë shuddered.
“Vairë what is it?” Donna asked as she walked into the TARDIS. “What is ‘Bad Wolf?’”
“It’s the end of the universe,” Vairë said flatly as she tried to calm the panic in her heart.
~*~*~*~
After giving Donna the warning to pass on to Rose, the Doctor made the jump back to Terra Beta. Before his feet even hit the ground, he was racing for the morgue were Rose had slept these many weeks. He laughed in triumph when he was met with an empty bier. Mickey, racing right behind him, shouted in joy as well. They had done it. Rose was alive. Now all that the Doctor needed to do was figure out how to get back to her despite the Vortex Manipulator on his wrist.
“I need to get back to Terra Alpha,” he told Mickey.
“Give the Dimension Cannon another ten minutes to recharge and we’ll have you there safe and sound,” Mickey promised.