The road less travelled...

Title: Finding A Way Home 4/4
Author: katherine_b
Rating: PG
Characters: The Doctor, the alternate Doctor and Donna Noble
Disclaimer: If RTD and the Moff don’t want the spare Doctor, maybe I could have him?
Spoilers: Up to Journey’s End.
Summary: The Doctor is feeling lost and in pain…

The bedroom door is flung open before either man can move. MC hears the Doctor give a soft intake of breath at the sight of Donna in the doorway, but a strange feeling creeping rapidly through his body distracts him.

Donna had been looking over her shoulder as she opened the door, but as she steps across the threshold, she turns, her mouth falling open at the sight of the two men standing in the middle of her room.

MC can feel the echo of the anaesthetic affect the TARDIS is having on Donna and he dashes forward as her blue eyes roll up in her head. He catches her before she can collapse to the floor, holding her limp body against his, even as the room around them begins to change back to the coral pattern of the TARDIS interior.

The Doctor moves to close the door, which changes from the pine of Donna’s bedroom to the white TARDIS double doors beneath his hands. The ship heads into the vortex, its usual sounds muted so much that MC doubts anyone in the Noble house would have heard them.

Only the bed remains from Donna’s room, and MC carries her over to it, laying her down as gently as if she could break. He can feel tiny shifts and changes within his mind that he knows reflect what is happening to Donna.

He turns to look at the Doctor, seeing that his face is taut and his eyes are grim.

“You do realize,” MC says, trying to ease the tension, “that she’s going to kill you when she wakes up.”

“She could beat me into my next regeneration and I wouldn’t care,” the Doctor replies, his eyes never leaving Donna’s face. “Just as long as she knows who I am.” His gaze flickers momentarily over to MC and then back. “Who we are.”

MC nods, smoothing a lock of Donna’s hair behind her ear, and then straightens up and moves away so that the Doctor can take his place at the bedside.

In his mind, he can feel the way the TARDIS is healing Donna’s damaged brain, recreating the neurons that began to tear themselves apart as soon as his mind wasn’t there in support to hold back the affects of the metacrisis.

He knows, too, that the TARDIS is using his energy to hurry the healing process.

Perhaps picking up on his thoughts or his feelings, the Doctor suddenly looks up at him. “Are you all right?”

“Mmm hmm.” MC smiles. “Just peachy.”

“You’re – ” The Doctor frowns and gets up, crossing the short distance between them to stand in front of him, brown eyes studying his face. “It’s not pain exactly.”

“Energy,” MC tells him. “The TARDIS is using my energy to help Donna.”

“Your limited energy,” the Doctor says slowly. “Your human energy.”

“Gee, I didn’t think you cared,” MC jokes, before becoming more serious. “It’s fine, Doctor. I’d give up more than a few years of my life to save Donna.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrow. “If the TARDIS takes too much, there won’t be anything I can do to save you – not without losing Donna in the process.”

MC nods. “I know.”

“You’ve always known,” the Doctor proposes hesitantly, but in tones that reveal his growing understanding. “You knew what the TARDIS would do to save Donna.”

He shrugs. “I had a bit of an idea.”

The Doctor’s eyes are suddenly glistening with rare tears. “You idiot,” he says in raspy tones.

MC gives a half-smile. “I seem to recall you saying that before.”

“That’s why you never included a return system in your vortex manipulator,” the Doctor says slowly. “You knew you wouldn’t need it.”

“No.” MC shakes his head. “I knew, if I managed to get to Donna without you finding me, I could have created something that had a chance of getting me back. But I also knew that, if you found me, you’d close the last gaps through to the parallel universe.” He meets the Doctor’s gaze steadily. “I left Rose a note that explained it all. She knows, Doctor.”

“If I knew a way, I’d send you back there right now,” the Doctor threatens, but with no emotion in his tones.

“And you’d lose Donna,” MC says softly. “Forever.”

MC watches the Doctor look from him to Donna, seeing the agony in his eyes, understanding the inner turmoil he’s suffering and the impossibility of the choice.

Feeling, too, as more of his energy is used by the TARDIS to help Donna.

Feeling as the seconds slowly slip away.

Taking his life with it.

“She’s going to kill you, you know that,” the Doctor tells him. “Kill you for what you’re doing.”

MC chuckles. “Oh, I know! In one sense, if it does end like this, maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.” He arches an eyebrow in amusement. “A way to escape the slaps!”

The Doctor’s face is haggard with pain. “How am I meant to tell her?”

Reaching forward, MC briefly places a gentle hand on the Doctor’s arm. “She’ll understand,” he says softly. “I know she will.”

The look he receives in return is complete incomprehension. “How can you be so –calm?” the Doctor asks jerkily.

“You will be.” MC smiles. “When it’s the last time, you’ll be like this. Somehow death is a lot easier to accept than I thought it would be. The end of the Universe – that’s scary! But dying – easy.” He arches an eyebrow. “You were calm enough about it when you regenerated last time.”

“Regeneration’s different.” The Doctor is unable to suppress a shudder. “That’s just changing a face, a body. It’s not – final.”

“Donna isn’t afraid of death either.” MC glances at the unconscious woman on the bed. “Maybe this is where this feeling comes from.” He glances at the Doctor. “Talk to her about it one day. You might learn a thing or two.”

There’s a long moment of silence. MC knows that the Doctor is desperately trying to think of a way to solve the situation confronting him. The fact that he jumps violently when MC speaks again shows how deep in thought he was.

“In any case, it’s not as if I’m meant to be here, is it?”

“What do you mean?” the Doctor asks sharply.

MC shrugs carelessly, although this is the one sore point that he’s always been rather reluctant to address.

“Well, I’m not really anything, am I?” He spreads out his hands in a gesture of demonstration. “I’m not a Time Lord. I’m not a human being. I’m like an echo of you and an echo of Donna. Not really one thing or another. Sort of like being in limbo.” He sighs softly. “Maybe saving Donna is my real reason for being here.”

“No!” The Doctor’s voice is sharp, but not with anger. MC can hear frustration and sadness instead, and he can’t help being pleased at the thought that he might just matter after all.

He strolls across and perches on the edge of the console. For the moment he’s got the strength to keep himself upright, but he can’t be sure how long that will last. The pull from the TARDIS on his energy reserves is relentless.

“There’s nothing you can do, Doctor,” he says simply. “I know you like trying to fix everything, but you can’t fix this.”

“Don’t say that!” the Doctor growls and now he is angry, but MC knows that it’s the situation, not him, that’s causing that emotion.

Again, he can’t help being pleased.

“This is all my fault,” the Doctor says a short time later, his voice heavy with grief. “If I hadn’t kept the hand…”

“The Universe would have been destroyed by the Daleks,” MC interrupts smoothly, not wanting to listen to a litany of the Doctor’s woes, knowing them as well as he does. “There’s not a thing in this that you could have changed that wouldn’t have resulted in us all dying.” He pauses for a moment. “And the loss of one person isn’t quite the same as the lost of every single person, is it?”

There’s a long silence following this.

“I could have kept you and Rose with us instead of dumping you into that parallel world.”

“Mmm.” MC nods a little. “Perhaps. But it’s happened and you can’t change it.” He narrows his eyes. “Doctor, you’re not allowed to beat yourself up over this forever. This is my choice. Something I want to do. Something I can do. Something good.” His lips twist in a sad smile. “Something that’s not dangerous.”

“I just – I hate feeling helpless!”

“You think I don’t know that?” MC smiles. “Don’t forget where I come from. I know everything about you!”

A sad smile crosses the Doctor’s face. “Yes, I suppose you do,” he agrees quietly.

The Doctor begins pacing the console room, keeping his eyes averted from both MC and Donna, hands clasped behind his back and his head lowered.

MC, meanwhile, watches Donna’s face, seeing the colour flushing in her cheeks, her hair spread across the pillow and her hands lying limp across her stomach. He boosts the energy that the TARDIS is using, accelerating the process of healing, wanting nothing more than to hear Donna’s voice again before he goes.

He wonders if there will be a chance for him to see those glorious blue eyes one more time.

He hopes so.

He doesn’t even look up when, out of the corner of his eye, he sees the Doctor stop dead as a thought clearly occurs to him. Instead, busy memorising Donna’s features, he waits for the question.

“If Donna hadn’t – if there’d been no side-affects from the meta-crisis, would you have come back?”

MC thinks about this for a moment. It’s not something he’s asked himself before, but it’s an interesting thought. “Probably not,” he says at last. “I’d probably have stayed with Rose.”

The Doctor looks at him curiously. “You don’t sound too sure.”

“We-ell,” MC idly fiddles with the cuff of the blue suit, finally turning his eyes in the Doctor’s direction, seeing the devastation in his brown eyes. “I suppose I would have stayed because it was what I was expected to do.”

“Rose wanted you.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “Rose wanted you. She still does.” He smiles sadly, not bothering to hide his disappointment. “She saw each little thing that made us different – and told me about it every time. She dressed me differently, talked to me differently, treated me differently.” He stops and sighs before continuing, “I’m not you, Doctor, no matter what I might look like, and Rose knows that.”

The Doctor echoes the sigh, staring at the bed where Donna is lying. “I can’t go back to her.”

“Trying to return to that universe would destroy both it and the TARDIS now that you’ve sealed it off,” MC agrees. “Like trying to go back through the Time Lock to Gallifrey. And Torchwood in the parallel world will work that out, so I doubt they’d try to use the dimension cannon again.” He smiles faintly. “But at least you’ve still got Donna.”

“If this works,” the Doctor says cautiously, perhaps unwilling to allow himself to hope until he knows the outcome.

“It will.” MC nods, feeling slightly light-headed as he does so. “I can feel it,” he adds. “Feel what the TARDIS is doing.”

“I know what she’s doing,” the Doctor agrees softly. “Fixing up what I did to Donna.”

“She will forgive you, Doctor,” MC tells him. “Donna, I mean. Of course, she’ll probably yell a bit first, and I’d imagine you might have to endure a couple of slaps – but she’ll understand why you did it.”

“I hope so.”

“You know so.” MC nods again, closing his eyes briefly to fight off dizziness, before an idea strikes him and he looks up. “What did you think when you first saw me run out of the TARDIS?”

“At first?” The Doctor’s lips twitch. “I thought it was some sick prank by Davros. I knew the Daleks couldn’t come up with anything like that, but I thought he might.”

“Jack knew.”

“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” A gentle smile plays around the Doctor’s mouth. Then he sighs and his eyes move to the woman lying on the bed. “It was only when Donna ran out that I realised what had happened.”

MC follows the Doctor’s gaze, remembering that moment when, amidst the haze of pain caused by Davros shooting him with the bolt of electricity, he saw Donna run out of the TARDIS and pick up the gun he had created with the intention of killing the Daleks.

“What was the first thing Donna said to you?” the Doctor asks suddenly.

MC laughs, remembering that moment. “As I recall, ‘You. Are. Bonkers.’”

The Doctor smiles sadly. “I can hear her saying it. Were you prattling on about something unimportant as usual?”

“Oh, I like that!” MC rolls his eyes. “You’re one to talk!”

“You were, weren’t you?” The dimples have appeared in the Doctor’s cheeks, but his eyes are devastated. “What was it – the TARDIS?”

“This suit, actually.” MC grabs a handful of the blue fabric. “I like blue.”

The material slips from his weakened grasp and he drops his hand onto his leg before slowly lowering himself from his seat on the TARDIS console so that he’s sitting on the hard grating of the floor.

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor says from the jumpseat where he has sat down. “So sorry.”

“What for?” MC asks, somewhat wearily.

“That I can’t help you.”

“I don’t want you to.” Resting his head back against the lower part of the console, MC smiles. “In one way, this is the best thing that could have happened.” He looks down at his right hand, the one that started it all, flexing it and seeing how sluggish the response is. “Not everyone gets to choose the way they die. And this isn’t painful or noisy or messy.” He nods at the realisation. “If there can be a good death, then this is probably one of them.”

There’s a long moment of silence before he speaks again, looking up at the man from whom he came, a sad smile playing on his lips. “You know, Doctor, there are worse things than being human.”

Movement from the bed attracts the attention of both men. The Doctor leaps up from the jumpseat and darts over to the bedside, taking Donna’s hand and brushing the fingers of his other hand against her cheek.

As if in response to his ministrations, her tongue eases itself out of her mouth and moistens her lips, and a small frown appears on the smooth skin of her forehead between her eyebrows.

Her lashes flutter for a moment and then finally lift, their glorious blue depths reflecting the brilliant colour of the TARDIS core. They focus on the face of the man hovering beside the bed, and recognition floods them at once.

“Donna?” the Doctor asks hesitantly.

“Doctor,” she replies softly, a smile curling her lips.

It’s at that moment that MC loses the last of his strength and, knowing that he has done all he can, finally gives in and lets himself fall into the blackness that is dragging him under.

The darkness is all-encompassing, and even the sounds from the TARDIS slowly fade away.

It’s not quite the end, though, because he can feel the last of his energies making a valiant attempt to restore his fading life and keep his single, human heart beating.

The thing that really surprises him is how different this feels from regeneration. On those occasions, the body collects all of the energy it has into one central point, to expand outward in a controlled explosion, changing the cells, sucking the old identity away and replacing it with a new one.

But this time there’s just a complete silence.

Rather like the vortex, but without the lights.

Except for one.

A faint pinprick of light makes itself noticeable at the very edges of his slowly fading consciousness, and his innate curiosity drives him towards it.

He knows that Donna has often read stories of the white light where people go when they die, and he can’t help wondering if this is it.

But he doesn’t wonder for long.

There’s a stinging pain on his arm which gets sharper with every passing second, and he somehow finds the energy to laugh inwardly as he makes out two very faint words, spoken in tones of shrill feminine indignation as hands shake him ever more violently.

“You idiot!”

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