The road less travelled...

Title: If You Knew Your Future… Chapter 6/12
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 VI – Which Doctor?

“Right, so you sat and watched me sleep for however long it was until…?”

“Until I realised you were waking up and I thought, if you didn’t remember who I was, being in the room with you when you woke up might not be the smartest thing to do.”

She nods slowly, although she's not completely convinced. “So the kiss on the forehead?”

He grins weakly, his gaze fixed on the teapot between them. “I just – I didn’t think you were quite awake and I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you alone.”

“Soppy Martian,” she teases, and he chuckles and releases his hands from her hold so that he can pour the tea. “So you wanted me back then?” she suggests as she takes her cup.

“So much,” is all he answers, but his tone of voice tells her everything.

“Glad to hear it,” she says idly, her thoughts returning to the question of which Doctor is now sitting opposite her. “Right – this is going to sound a bit weird, but, all that time we were travelling together, how was I?”

The Doctor grins at her. “Brilliant!”

“Nice, but not what I meant.” She adds sugar to her tea and then pushes the bowl over the table for him. “I mean, did I seem – strange in any way? As if, I don’t know, I’d already been through it all before.”

He arches an eyebrow at her and then spoons four serves of sugar into his cup. “What are you on about? You were, oh, I don’t know – thrilled and excited and nervous and couldn’t wait to get out there. Remember the Oodsphere? Exactly like that. Well, apart from the cold. All the time. Except maybe after the Library. Understandable, of course, but…”

“Okay, Spaceman, cut the long story short, will you?” she demands at last, exasperated. “What I meant was – you didn’t have the impression that I knew where we were going before we got there?”

“Don’t be daft, Donna, of course you didn’t!”

“Right, good, thank you. That answers my question.”

She sits back and sips her tea, reassured that she’s back with her first Doctor. Although – what’s happening to the other Doctor? Is he still out there somewhere? And what happened to her? Is there another version of her out there somewhere with him? If she isn’t there, is he missing her?

“Hello? Donna? Did you hear what I said?”

“Sorry.” She shakes her head and looks up at him. “What?”

“I asked what you were talking about.” He adds sugar and begins to stir his tea. “What do you mean – knowing things before we did them?”

“Oh, nothing.”

He suddenly reaches across the table and grabs her hand. “Donna?” he asks insistently. “What things? What do you mean?”

She shakes her head, staring at the table. “You’d never believe me.”

"Try me," he says before picking up his cup and sipping his tea. He pulls a face. “Ugh! How much sugar is in this thing?”

“At least twice what you normally have,” she tells him with a grin. “I think you were a bit distracted.” She pushes her own cup across to him. “Here, add two more and drink that. I’ll get myself another one.”

Even as she stands up, however, he’s beside her, taking her hand and gently putting her back in the chair.

“No, you don’t,” he warns. “I know what you’re like. One quick distraction and we’ll never get back to this conversation again. You drink your tea and I’ll get another one for myself.”

She has to smile at that. “You know me too well.”

“Goes both ways, Donna Noble,” he declares with a wink.

“Maybe, maybe not,” she murmurs, picking up the cup to sip her tea.

“You might not want to say that around someone with Time Lord hearing,” he suggests, getting another cup out of the cupboard. “Explain.”

She thinks about it for a moment, wondering what and how much to tell him. However he doesn’t push her, adding four teaspoons of sugar to his new tea and stirring it as he takes his seat. Finally, as he’s about to pick it up to drink, she speaks.

“It’s weird.”

“Weird?” He throws his hands into the air. “You are looking at the master of weird. The lord of weird! I eat weird for breakfast.”

“Which probably explains why you’re so skinny,” she replies. “You ought to try toast and muesli like the rest of us.”

He stares at her for a moment in total astonishment before laughing.

“Well, whatever weird thing happened to you, at least you haven’t been possessed by some alien life-force when I wasn’t looking.”

Donna sighs at that remark. It brings back, with a rush, all of the memories she has been trying to hold back through sheer force of will. That was what the other Doctor had said on her first morning in his TARDIS – at least, the first morning she could remember.

“Donna?”

The Doctor’s voice brings her out of her thoughts. He’s leaning across the table, his dark eyes fixed on her, and she has the sudden realisation that, even if what she’s about to tell him is ridiculous or utterly impossible, he will believe every word she says because he trusts her.

“Promise me one thing,” she says.

“Anything.”

“You won’t laugh. Even if what I say can't possibly have happened. Because I believe it happened. To me. Okay?”

He doesn’t speak, just nods, but somehow she finds it encouraging.

“Right, then.”

With a sigh, she gets out of her chair and begins to pace the length of the kitchen. There's a long moment of silence before she takes a deep breath and begins.

“I woke up in my bed on the TARDIS. After the metacrisis. But – it wasn’t this TARDIS. And you weren’t the Doctor. That is, you were. Only you weren’t. Because somehow, instead of it being after the defeat of the Daleks, it was just after we – me and this other Doctor, who was you, but wasn’t – after we saved everyone in England from being converted into baby Adipose. I remembered everything we’d done – you and me – right up until the very end with just us back on the TARDIS after leaving Rose and that other you in the alternate universe. But he didn’t. He’d never lived through it. So we did it all over again.”

She spins on her heel and glares at the Doctor.

“Now tell me I’m crazy.”

“I’m not going to tell you that.” He gets out of the chair and crosses the room to stand in front of her, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders. “Because you’re not. If you say all of that happened, then it did. I believe you, Donna.”

“Can you explain it?”

“No.” He pauses. “Sorry.”

“I guess I didn’t really think you’d be able to. I just – hoped you could.”

He nods. “I know. I do know – really. I’ve been in impossible situations so often, and they’d always be easier if someone could explain how and why.”

“You’re an impossible person.”

“Just a bit unlikely. As are you, Donna Noble. Not many other people can claim to have lived their lives twice.”

“God, not all of it! There are parts I definitely don’t want to go through again!”

He chuckles and pulls her into the sort of warm hug that she really thinks she needs right at that moment. She rests her head on his shoulder and sighs.

“All right, steady on! You’ll blow me away!”

She smiles, but doesn't pull away. The strength of his arms around her is incredibly comforting.

And yet...

She feels the same way about the other Doctor.

And she misses him.

She can’t help wondering what he’s doing without her. Is he still mentally beating himself up over having, as he thinks, taken her memories away? Could there be any way for them to find out if he’s all right – if he even existed? That, she decides, is what she’s going to try, just as soon as this hug ends.

Next Part

Links to previous parts: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 (the sad one) Part 4 (the really sad one) Part 5