The road less travelled...

Title: If You Knew Your Future… Chapter 2
Author: katherine_b
Characters/Pairing: The Doctor (Ten) and Donna
Rating: G
Spoilers: All of series four of NuWho
Summary: Donna wakes up to find herself in a world that is much too familiar.

Chapter II – Adventure of a Lifetime, Again

Donna stifles a groan as the Doctor closes the door of her room and leaves her alone. Her head is aching, but it’s not as bad as she thinks it probably should be, considering that her last memory is of agony as the metacrisis began to affect her.

And yet…

That’s the major problem with where she is now.

She can remember what it felt like to be the DoctorDonna, but she knows that that part of her mind is gone. There’s an emptiness where once she knew there had been an undercurrent of sound coming from all around her.

The other thing missing is the physical awareness of time that had become so vital when Davros had sparked the dormant Time Lord mind in her head into life. For those few hours she had been able to calculate every miniscule division of every moment of time that passed.

Now, however, she can feel the time passing in a different way.

She’s consciously aware that, if this world is the same as the one she appears to have left, where the Doctor will have to wipe her mind to save her from the metacrisis, then she’s only got a limited amount of time before it happens again.

Before she can think too much about this, however, the shower in her bathroom suddenly turns on.

“Oh, I see,” she tells the TARDIS. “If I’ve only got a limited amount of time, I ought to get on with it. Is that it?”

The door of her wardrobe slides open and Donna can see the sleeve of her dressing gown poking out of the assembled mass of clothing.

“All right, all right,” she says aloud. “I’m going!”

“If you’re going to sing in the shower, want an appreciative audience?” remarks a voice from the doorway.

She spins around and finds the Doctor standing there, his arms folded across his chest, and an amused grin on his face.

“Are you spying on me, Spaceman?”

“Donna, it doesn’t take most women two hours to get showered and dressed. Not the ones who want to travel with me, anyway. I wanted to make sure you hadn’t drowned or something.”

"Two hours? Seriously?" She glances at her watch, surprised to find that he’s right. "What on Earth have I been doing for that long?"

"Staring at the floor is my guess." He strolls into the room. "You haven't moved since I left." He stops in front of her. "Oh, and I should add that you're talking to the TARDIS as if you've known her forever. Not many people do that right away."

"Well," Donna catches herself before mentioning she's spent a fair bit of time on the TARDIS and she's used to the semi-sentient ship, "she did let me in once before," she says instead. "Just because I was glowing with huon particles can't have been the only reason." She shoots him a grin. "I reckon your ship's rather fond of me."

"She's not the only one," he says with an answering smile. "You don't think I'd have come looking for you if I didn't want you, do you? Got plenty of other things that I could keep myself occupied with."

"What, bashing the console with a mallet?" she teases. "Undoing wires that don't need to be undone? Mucking about with the chamele... Never mind."

"The what?" He grabs her hand as she's about to turn away. "Donna, what were you about to say? How did you know about...? There's only one thing on the ship with that name - the chameleon circuit."

She covers his fingers with her free hand. "You promised, Doctor. No questions, remember?"

"You're not making this easy for me."

"I might be mistaken, Spaceman, but I think you prefer it that way."

He stares at her for a moment in apparent amazement before chuckling. "Perhaps. All right, if I can’t ask you any questions about that, are you going to get ready for Ancient Rome or did you want to go back to bed?"

"Yeah, think I've slept enough for a couple of lifetimes," she replies giving his hand a gentle squeeze before letting go. "All right then. Twenty minutes. I promise." She turns to the wardrobe and then glances back at him over her shoulder. "As long as I don't have an audience while I sing in the shower."

Laughing, the Doctor leaves the room.

* * *

"Ancient Rome!"

Donna follows him with a shake of her head at his forthcoming disappointment. He only wants to give her a thrill and now they both risk death at the hands of enraged fire gods - although she's relieved to remember that it won't end like that. However, she knows there's huge emotional scenes to come and she has to prepare herself for that. Still, she can remember the words she used to persuade him to change his mind and return to save Caecilius and his family. That's some sort of comfort.

So she follows him into the marketplace and plays along with the sellers at the stalls. She enjoys every moment of this adventure before it becomes frightening. And she can't help being a bit thrilled even when it does become scary, when she's taken by the Sybilline Sisters and threatened with death. There’s something about being inches from death that really gets the blood pumping. Perhaps it’s what inspires the Doctor.

Then, when it seems as if there's no escape, when ash is pouring out of the sky down on them and they end up in the TARDIS, she can only summon up the energy to scream at the Doctor to save that one family by remembering everything they have yet to go through. She'd never forgive herself – or him – if she had that poor family's deaths on her conscience.

It's not fair.

No, it's not, but she’s learned that things often aren’t fair when travelling with the Doctor. Still, every moment he stands at the TARDIS console, staring at it, guilt and misery and fury etched all over her face, is another moment she can feel ticking away in that time before it will all end at his hands.

She might not have the mind of a Time Lord any more, but now she knows how it feels to be one.

And so she begs and pleads, just as she did the last time, until he gives in and goes back.

There’s a sensation of victory in her heart, just as there was before, but this time she lets herself enjoy the moment, even despite the fear and devastation on the faces of Caecilius and his family.

Because, this time, she knows it won’t last.

And it’s the same on the Oodsphere.

Where’d you learn to whistle?…Oh, nice one.

She can’t help enjoying the fact that she impresses him.

Appreciating the moment.

It’s the one thing she can’t afford to take for granted this time.

And she doesn’t.

But beyond all of that time running for their lives to escape Sontarans and men with guns and giant wasps, there's the quiet times they spend together in various rooms of the TARDIS. Conversations around the kitchen table, or in the library, or even standing to one side as the Doctor does some unspecified repairs to the console.

The Doctor’s the same. She’s the one who’s different.

“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” he asks her as they leave 1920s England.

“I really am.” She grins, leaning against one of the support struts, flipping through the Doctor’s copy of Death in the Clouds. “How could I not? It’s fun, and exciting, and everything I always thought it would be.”

“And how does it compare?” he asks, and because she’s a little bit distracted, she misses the sly nature of the question.

“The same, of course. I’m making sure of…” She stops short as she realises what she’s saying and glares at the Doctor, the book falling to the floor. “We had an agreement.”

“I can’t help it.” He’s frowning at the console, one hand idly flipping a switch. “It’s so difficult on me, with you already knowing all this. And the most frustrating thing is that I still don’t know why it happened.”

“What made you think of it now?”

“You knew I was talking nonsense about being able to tell what decade it was.”

“Honestly? I did that last time, too.” She folds her arms over her chest. “And that’s what’s hard for me. You aren’t able to give me credit for things I genuinely got right because you think I only remember it from last time. It’s not like that. I can’t – oh, I don’t know – wipe it all from my mind or anything,” she has to suppress a shudder as she says this, but continues regardless, “but I can promise you that I’m trying to replicate it all as much as I possibly can. Even all that stuff about working out the murderer at Edison manor. I could have just said ‘was it the waspy boy?’ at once, but I went through it all again to make sure it was the same.”

“It’s not boring you?”

“Nope.” She gives a definitive shake of her head. “Doctor, this time with you has been – is – will be – one of the best of my life. I get to live it all again. I get to remember every emotion and commit it to memory.”

Oh, the irony, she can’t help thinking.

He watches her for a moment, as if assessing whether she's telling him the truth or not, and then he grins. However it fades before it reaches his eyes and he eyes her for a time in silence before speaking again.

"I have to admit - I had my doubts, Donna. I thought maybe you'd dreamt it all. You know, after what we got up to with the Racnoss, and then with the Adipose and everything you did in between while you were looking for me. Maybe all of that got caught up in your mind and you imagined it as things we did together."

"But you don't feel like that now?"

Stepping away from the console and sliding his hands into his pockets, he shrugs with a non-committal mutter.

"Oh, good that you're sure then," she can’t help saying in heavily sarcastic tones.

He arches an eyebrow. "We-ell, I am sure. Sort of. It's just, when people have been in parallel worlds, you can tell. Well, I can. Always. And you haven't. But then - Donna, how did you know the Song of Freedom when you couldn't even hear the Song of Captivity? Because it was in your mind when I opened it so that you could hear the Ood singing. And yet it can’t have been, unless you been here before somehow."

“The Ood are telepathic,” she reminds him. “Maybe they…”

“No, they didn’t,” he interrupts before she can finish. “Because I would have known if they were somehow sharing that with you. I’d have heard it. And you weren’t hearing the Song of Freedom – you were remembering it.”

“Can’t hide anything from you.”

“But that means – when I sent you into the TARDIS, back when we were threatened by the Sontarans, you know what was going to happen!”

“Yes.”

He stares at her for a moment in obvious bewilderment, and then, pride evident in his voice, “You’re braver than even I thought you were, Donna Noble.”

She smiles. “I trust you, Doctor.”

“Because you know what’s going to happen?”

“Well, it’s partly that. Of course it is. But even if things suddenly shifted and went off in a completely different direction, I’d still trust you. I trusted you the last time, when I didn’t know what you were planning,” she reminds him, and watches as he gives a thoughtful nod.

“So you’d do whatever I told you to.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” She tilts her head slightly to one side and examines him. “I use my own judgement, too. And besides,” she adds with a smile, “if I was suddenly blindly obedient to your every order, you’d think I’d – now how did you put it? Oh, yes – ‘been possessed by some alien life-force when you weren’t looking’. True?”

“True,” he has to admit.

“There we are then.”

“There we are,” he echoes, before suddenly lunging for the controls. “And I think it’s time we were somewhere else. Preferably somewhere – beachy. Yes, you’d like that.”

And Donna sighs when she hears those words because, even if the content of the conversation was different last time, she’s positive it will have the same result – the Library.

For the first time, she’s not sure if she’s welcoming or dreading this new planet.

Next Part

Links to previous parts: Part 1