The road less travelled...

Title: Living Alone
Author: katherine_b
Rating: Adult (particularly this chapter! *fans self*)
Characters: Donna and Jack
Spoilers: Various bits and pieces up to and including The New Doctor.
Summary: Donna’s life after the TARDIS departs
A/N: This is a rather unexpected sequel of sorts for Better Off Without You. In that story, the TARDIS boosted Donna’s ability to heal herself and recover from illness or injury. This story examines the impact that had on Donna once the Doctor returned her to Earth.

Chapter III

Lying in bed, the sheet wound around her legs and torso, and with Jack sleeping next to her, Donna rolled onto her back, tucked her hands behind her head and smiled. There was a wonderful sense of security with Jack there, and Donna knew that it came from more than just his commanding presence. It was also the realisation that he wasn’t going to die and leave her alone, as so many of her previous partners had done. Even if this turned out to be no more than a one-night stand, she would get a great deal of satisfaction out of reminding him of it at numerous points during the decades, centuries and millennia to come. The mere thought of it was more than enough to make her smile.

“Donna?”

The voice was a murmur and she looked over to find that he wasn’t sleeping at all. He was watching her as if waiting for something. Donna was confused for a moment before she remembered something that had taken placed more than a century earlier and smiled again.

Rolling onto her side, Donna rested her cheek on her hands.

“What’s the matter, Captain?” she teased. “Waiting for the retcon to kick in? What level did you use on me?”

Jack’s dark eyes widened slightly in obvious surprise. “What – how did you know?”

“Oh, you Torchwood mob have tried this before,” Donna said with a grin. “I suppose they must have picked up something strange about me. It turns out I’m one of those rare people that retcon doesn’t affect. Maybe my system doesn’t like it and nullifies the drug before it can do anything to me. I don’t know.” She arched an eyebrow. “Besides, do you really think I want to forget how amazing that just was? Or,” she teased, “are you afraid I’ll tap you for child support payments if I’m not taking precautions?”

Jack rolled onto his back and laughed. “Well, I’m glad I wasn’t a disappointment in any case. But what am I going to do with you now?”

Donna chuckled. “Well, I could have a quick shower and then disappear out of your life forever – or at least for the next couple of centuries.”

“No.” Jack’s hand was grasping her shoulder almost before Donna realised it and his eyes bore an expression of sadness bordering on fear. It was like the moment Donna could never forget– when she had refused the Doctor’s invitation to join him on board the TARDIS. “No,” Jack repeated more softly, “don’t do that.”

Donna reached out and covered his hand with hers. “I wasn’t going to,” she assured him.

“Donna Noble,” he murmured, his face so close to hers that it was almost touching, “do you know how amazing you are?”

She smiled. “Actually, I prefer the term ‘brilliant’.”

“Hmm, that sounds like something the Doctor would say.” He touched his lips lightly to hers. “Was it?”

“A long, long time ago.” Donna pressed herself closer so that her naked breasts touched his bare chest. “I learned many years ago – centuries probably – that the only way to get through is to focus on one day, sometimes one moment, at a time.”

Jack stroked his thumb along her cheekbone. “In other words, you’re here and I should be paying attention to you rather than worrying about the Doctor.”

“You’re a fast learner, Captain.”

He chuckled and rolled her onto her back, settling himself on top of her. His hand slid beneath the sheet and she felt his fingers brush along the side of her breast.

“I’ve had lots of time to practice,” he voice murmured softly in her ear, his next touch, as his hand moved lower, making her back arch against him, and her eyes widened as an ecstatic cry escaped her mouth.

“Then show me everything you’ve got,” she suggested, and laughed as he growled in her ear.

* * *
Donna wrapped Jack’s dark blue bathrobe around her and left the bathroom, her hair hanging in long, damp curls around her shoulders. Jack himself was already in the kitchen, a mug of coffee in his hands and a sleepy look in his eyes.

“Working today?” Donna asked, looking through several cupboards before she found the mugs and coffee.

“Oh, without me, the office collapses in a heap,” Jack said lightly. “Want milk?”

“Not at this hour. Black coffee wakes me up.”

“Well, we’ve got reason to be tired.” Jack grinned, his blue eyes dancing. “What time did you fall asleep? Three?”

“Hours ago? Yes, I think so.” Donna smothered a yawn. “I wonder if they’d notice if I didn’t come in today.”

“Probably.”

“Pfft, doubt it.” Donna shrugged. “If they still haven’t noticed that I’ve been coming to the office every weekday for almost two hundred years, they really aren’t about to spot it if I don’t appear.”

“Do you think they’d realize if you never came in again?”

“Oh, eventually, I suppose.”

Donna smiled as she said this, but then realised Jack was watching her as intently as he had the previous night, with a look that reminded her of a lion stalking its next victim.

“What?” she demanded. “What is it?”

“I wondered – Donna Noble, how would you like to work for Torchwood?”

* * *

"Donna." Jack waved a hand between the man standing next to his desk and the flaming redhead beside him. "Donna, this is Harry."

"Hopefully not Harry Saxon," grinned Donna with a sideways glance at Jack, who winked at her, before offering her hand to the man standing opposite. "Donna Noble."

Harry's hand stopped halfway to meet hers, his eyes widening. "Donna - Noble? Not the Donna Noble?"

Donna raised an eyebrow, wondering what this young man meant. "Which Donna Noble would that be?"

Jack choked and tried to disguise it as a cough. "Face it, Donna," he told her. "You're a living legend."

"Oh, come on..." she began impatiently.

"So is it true, then?" Harry asked, his eagerness clear in his voice as he leaned over the desk towards Donna. "Is it like the legend says? Did you defeat the Daleks single-handed? Did you send all the planets back home? And were you the person who made the second Doctor?"

"Good Lord, I hadn't thought about him in ages!" Donna turned to Jack, her expression suddenly sad. "I suppose he'd be dead by now. One heart and all that."

Jack nodded. "Of course. And Rose,” he added after a moment of silence.

“Yeah,” Donna agreed softly. “Everybody. Mickey. Jackie. Sarah Jane. All of the Children of Time.” She sighed and then forced a smile. “But not you, Jack. Never you.”

“No.” He managed a half-smile in return, but whatever else he might have been going to say was drowned out by an alarm that rang through the halls and made Donna start. “OK, gotta go,” he said briskly. “Harry, show Donna around. Get her set up at that desk outside my office.” Jack grabbed Donna’s hand and raised it to his lips, a teasing look in his eyes. “Ma’am.”

“No, wait!” Donna closed her fingers around his, her eye caught by something. She lifted Jack’s hand so that she could study the time agency vortex manipulator on his arm. Then she looked at Jack, a wary look in her eyes. “The Doctor defused this – and you’re still wearing it?”

Jack shrugged, trying to pull away. “Goes with the outfit.”

“Doesn’t work though,” Donna shot back, a slow smile creeping over her face. “Not unless someone were to give you the codes you needed. Someone with a Time Lord’s knowledge of space and time…”

Jack stared at her for a moment, his eyes widening, before his face broke into a grin. “You’re right,” he told her. “You are brilliant.”

“Oh, yes!” she agreed and punched six numbers into the device, the screen of which flared into life.

“Donna Noble, I think I love you!” Jack launched himself at the woman and kissed her passionately. “I’ll make it up to you, just as soon as I get back.”

“I should hope so,” Donna called, but Jack had already pressed the button on his wrist device and disappeared. She turned to Harry, who had watched this exchange with his jaw hanging open. “So,” she said to him with a cheeky grin, feeling better than she had done in ages, “how about you show me around?”

* * *
“The Doctor doesn’t trust me,” Jack said, before scooping up the last few noodles and a stray snow pea. “Donna Noble, you’re a damned good cook.”

“I’m aware of that,” Donna replied.

“Which one?”

“Both.” She quirked an eyebrow at him. “I’ve had two centuries to practice the cooking and that long to get to know what the Doctor thinks and feels about all sorts of things. Well, a century and a half, really. It took that long to remember everything and understand the difference between his mind and mine.”

“But you trust me.” Jack tapped his wristband. “Or you would never have reset this for me.”

“It’s interesting, sharing someone else’s mind.” Donna pushed her plate aside and rested her elbows on the table, her chin on her intertwined fingers. “You know exactly how they felt and thought in a particular situation, but you can also step back and take a completely objective view of things.” She smiled. “So I understand why the Doctor doesn’t trust you. He sees you as a liar, a thief and a con man.” She waited for a moment. “Not that I blame him. I mean, Jack Harkness isn’t even your real name.” She shrugged a little. “There was also the fact that you flirted in the most disgusting way with Rose!”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, some things you just can’t help, you know.”

Donna grinned. “All those accusations and that’s the one you react to. Really, ‘Jack’!”

“Hey, it’s as good as any other name. I’ve had it for long enough now – it kind of fits.”

“Except for the whole bit where it’s not your – oh, I’m not going to argue that point with you. Not now, at least. Keep it as a conversation starter for later. Instead, we’re going to talk about the Doctor again.”

Jack groaned. “Just the Doctor or Rose and the Doctor?”

Donna’s expression was severe when she looked at him. “All that time among human beings and you couldn’t see that, while it might have been all right to ‘dance’ in the fifty-first century, it really wasn’t in the twenty-first.”

“The Doctor’s not a human being,” Jack argued.

“He was – probably still is – deeply in love with her!” Donna glared at him. “I know you love him, but can’t you see that he was so caught up with Rose at the time that he wasn’t about to let anyone else in the way?” She sat back in the chair and caught her breath. “You really are hopeless – and here I’m talking about all men, not just those from the 51st century.”

“Glad we got that straightened out,” Jack muttered, looking offended, before leaning over the table, his voice definitive. “And there’s nothing to say that people can’t love more than one person at a time! I do!”

“Rose couldn’t.” Donna’s voice was definitive. “And the Doctor couldn’t. Not then. Not when his whole soul was tearing itself apart because of the Time War. He needed to latch on to something – anything. And that ‘thing’ was Rose.” She looked at Jack mockingly. “Usually salesmen are the best at understanding people. I suppose conmen don’t need the same skills.”

“Not fair,” snapped Jack. “I was – busy.”

“Busy getting your flirt on with Rose – and everything else on two legs.” Donna arched an eyebrow. “Although you weren’t fond of Nancy, were you? Do you only go for blondes then?”

“Not always,” he replied with a wink, but when Donna didn’t respond, his cheeky grin faded. “All right, if you know so much, how does he feel about me now?” Jack looked wistful. “Because unless I’m much mistaken – and I guess, from what you’ve just said, that I could be – he was pretty close to falling in love with you, too, Donna.”

“Ah, see,” Donna ignored the second part of his remark, “it doesn’t work like that. Him and me - there’s not an ongoing connection. It’s, well,” she thought for a moment, “a bit like a computer download. You take a snapshot of things at one particular moment, like when you save a computer file, and it gets copied. But you can go on and change the original file and, unless you save it again, you won’t have the latest version. That’s all I am. A saved version of the Doctor’s mind.”

“I dare say he would beg to differ.” He arched an eyebrow and reached across the table to pick up his dessertspoon, twirling it in his fingers. “You should have heard him, after he left you at home and came to tell us what he’d – what happened. He was – Donna, I saw him after he thought Rose was lost is the parallel world forever, and he was just as distraught about what happened to you as he had been about that.”

“He’d just lost Rose again,” she reminded him. “No, not lost. He gave her away, and to that other version of himself. So it was worse than the last time, because he knew she’d go on and be happy, and he – wouldn’t.”

“And you?”

“He hoped I’d be strong.” Donna let out a slow, trembling breath. “Strong enough to fight it. Maybe I could survive.” Her lips twisted and she briefly closed her eyes. “Couldn’t, though. Not in the end. Too weak.”

“No!” Jack flung the spoon back onto the table. It bounced off onto the floor with a loud ‘clang’, but neither of them noticed. “It wasn’t that at all. He hoped you might be able to survive – but deep down, he knew it would never work. He told us. Why can’t you see that? What he felt about you?”

“Because I don’t want to!” Donna burst out. “I don’t want to know what he feels about me! He’s got a right to some privacy!”

Jack was brought up short by this reply. “Yeah,” he agreed softly. “I guess he does.”

Donna hesitated for a long moment before speaking. “I’m sorry, Jack. I know you want me to tell you how the Doctor feels about you, but that really wouldn’t be fair on him, for you to have that knowledge.” She reached over and gently interlaced her fingers with his. “Next time you see him, ask him.”

“Two hundred years and he hasn’t visited Earth, Donna.” Jack looked momentarily lost. “I thought he might – I don’t know – come back to check on you or something. See what you’d made of your life. But – nothing. I checked with Martha and Sarah Jane, just in case I’d missed him, but they didn’t hear anything either. Ever.”

“I can’t explain that, Jack.”

Donna watched the man opposite her nod slightly. Perhaps he had expected that answer, but she knew he would have asked anyway. She could see that the Doctor’s absence was hurting him as much as it was her.

“He does something to you, that man,” said Donna softly, squeezing his hand and then letting go. “Gets under your skin, and you’re never quite the same again.”

Jack smiled bitterly. “Maybe we should organise a party, get everyone together who’s travelled with him.”

Donna gestured with wide-spread arms. “We might as well start the party right now, then, because we’d be the only ones there.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Jack shrugged. “It’s weird – I kind of keep forgetting that time’s passing the way it is. I look in the mirror and I never change. Not that I’d want to,” he added quickly, straightening his tie. “Practically perfect in every way.”

“Break into a routine from Mary Poppins and, so help me, God, you’ll be wearing dessert rather than eating it,” she warned.

He chuckled, but it faded as he looked at her. “It’s more difficult with you here, too, like this, Donna, because you should belong to a time from long ago, and you don’t. You’re here, too. Stranded.”

“Not stranded.” She shook her head. “Living. Helping. Moving on, just like the rest of the people who’ve travelled with him. Look what Sarah Jane did after he left her. What Martha achieved.” She gestured at him. “And look what you’ve done, Jack. Turned Torchwood from a tiny three-person organisation to a massive world-wide phenomenon that keeps us all safe.”

He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. “And how do you know that, Donna Noble?”

She rolled her eyes. “What do you think I was doing all day while you were off chasing whatever it was? I’m,” she paused and corrected herself with a smile, “I was a temp, Jack. I’m very used to settling in to new places quickly. Ten minutes to get my desk in order. Twenty minutes to do that silly ‘welcome to Torchwood’ briefing and then I had the rest of the day to myself. After all,” she chuckled, “it’s not as if you left me anything to do. So I rearranged your communication system to make it more efficient. That’s when I found out about the other branches.”

"Oh, you are good. Brilliant!" said Jack approvingly. "Knew there was a reason we couldn't let you go back to that dinky little office of yours."

Donna smiled. "Thank you."

She stood up and began to clear away the plates. Jack jumped to his feet to help, taking the plates out of her hand and carrying them into the kitchen. Donna noticed Jack’s spoon on the floor and picked it up, following him into the other room.

“Ooh, you even stack dishwashers,” she teased, noticing what he was doing. “You might be a keeper after all, Jack Harkness.”

“Hey, if it gets us on to dessert faster,” he teased with a shrug, “I’ll do anything.”

“Anything?” she asked, glancing provocatively over her shoulder as she got out the dessert.

Jack put the last knife into the dishwasher and then came over to the fridge, sliding his arms around Donna’s waist.

“Try me and see,” he suggested with a chuckle.

* * *
It was the early hours of the morning before they finally got to dessert, and Donna was covered with bruises from their activities in the kitchen, but she knew they would heal in time for her to go to work. Now she and Jack were sitting in the living room, sipping coffee, their conversation having returned, perhaps somewhat predictably, to the Doctor.

“He might never come back.”

Donna smiled. “He will. He has to, in the end. The TARDIS will bring him here eventually.” She arched an eyebrow. “And what will you do when that finally does happen, Jack? Do you still have the duty of care to Torchwood that kept you here after the year that wasn't? Or would you go with him?”

“He’d never ask me.” Jack smiled, but his eyes were so terribly sad that Donna could hardly bear to look at him. “He never really wanted me around. I can see that now." His lips quirked. "Why else would he have flown to the end of the Universe to get away from me?"

"Guilt," said Donna softly. "He'd left you behind on Satellite Five, Jack. He knew that. He knew what had happened to you, but he also knew what was going to happen as a result of having absorbed the Time Vortex from Rose. How do you think he would have felt, knowing that he would have been in a vulnerable state after regeneration and that he would be, in effect, leaving Rose to you?"

Jack exhaled deeply, the breath hissing between his teeth. His hands had been steepled at the level of his chest, his elbows resting on the arms of his chair and his legs stretched out in front of him. As he began to speak, however, he leaned forward so that his elbows rested on his knees and he gazed intently at Donna. "He really didn't trust me?"

Donna shook her head. "Not then." She smiled a little. "If it's any comfort, he trusts you a lot more now."

"Not enough to play," Jack replied, lifting his right hand in a gesture of demonstration and tapping the wrist transport. “I’m a Time Agent, Donna, it’s what I do. And he takes that away from me at every opportunity.”

“Perhaps, as a Time Lord, he doesn’t feel that you have,” Donna paused for a moment to select the right words, “made the best choices in the opportunities you were given.”

“In other words,” retorted Jack, “he thinks I’m a lying, cheating scumbag.”

“Good Lord, no!” Donna looked appalled and the dark shadows disappeared from Jack’s face, before she continued, “The Doctor would never use the word ‘scumbag.’”

Jack stared at her for a moment in absolute disbelief before joining in her hearty laughter.

Chapter IV