The road less travelled...

Title: Second Chances – Wing And A Prayer
Author: katherine_b
Rating: G
Summary: The Doctor is desperate for Donna to survive. He’ll even cross his own timeline if he has to.
Word Count: approx 400 words
Characters: Ten, Donna and Wilf
A/N: Written for louiecat68 who says “I was reading "Second Chances " again. You always have me wondering what the Doctor is saying when he is fixing Donna.”

The door of the infirmary slides closed behind Wilf and the Doctor is grateful that the other man didn’t argue. He doesn’t have time for that because he can feel Donna weakening. He casts a desperate glance at her as he pulls the flask towards him containing those precious nanogenes, thanking whatever deity might be listening that his ninth incarnation hadn’t heard the TARDIS or spotted his behaviour in those vital seconds.

As he removes the lid, a cloud of gold surrounds him. He can feel the nanogenes reading him, measuring him, trying to determine what injury they are here to repair. He summons them with his hands, just as he did when he was a different man, on that glorious day when everybody lived.

He wants to repeat that miracle now so badly that he aches with it.

“Come on,” he breathes as he directs the nanogenes to Donna, hoping desperately that there’s enough time to make this work. “Please understand. Change her. Make her like me so that she can survive my mind in hers. Let her live too!”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees as the machine recording Donna’s heart begins to slow. The faint banging from outside the room suggests that Wilf has seen it too, but he doesn’t have time to spare on him now.

He places a hand on Donna’s arm as the nanogenes disappear, feeling as things begin to change, letting out the breath he’s been holding, sensing as the changes they have begun sweep through her body, changing her, doing what he had hoped would happen.

The muscles of her chest contract and then pulse into life even as they form into her second heart. Her lungs cease motion for a full minute as Donna’s new respiratory bypass develops. Her skin temperature begins to cool beneath his hand.

He rocks back on his heels, confident again, truly happy, as a grin works its way across his face. The machine recording Donna’s heart shows the beating of her two hearts, gloriously strong. Alive.

At that instant, he remembers the frantic grandfather waiting in the hall and picks up the sonic screwdriver, pointing it over his shoulder, hearing as the door slides open.

“You can come in,” the Doctor tells him, barely able to keep the ecstasy out of his voice. “It’s over.”