The road less travelled...

Title: A Time of Endings 9/9
Author: katherine_b
Rating: PG
Summary: The End of Time with Donna in it. Wait, she already was. So why am I bothering to do this one?

Part IX

It seems to take forever for the red light to fade, but as soon as the lights around them snap off, the Doctor leaps to his feet and lunges for the door, reaching for the sonic screwdriver even as he hauls on the handle.

However the door swings open before he has to try anything else and he glares at it.

“Now it opens, yeah!” he explodes in fury, before dragging Donna’s motionless body out of the glass box and dropping onto his knees beside her, rolling her over so that her head comes to rest on his lap, more relieved that he can express to see that her face is unmarked. “Donna?" he pleads as he gives her a gentle shake. "Can you hear me?”

As he moves her, the light glints off the ring on her left hand and he suddenly grabs her wrist. Despite the fact that the blistering hot metal with its decorative Gallifreyan symbols burns him, he hauls the ring off her finger and tosses it over his shoulder, stroking the small circle of burned skin around the base of her finger.

He knows she's still alive, for the moment anyway, but that’s all he can be certain of until her lashes flutter and then lift, and she stares unseeingly into his face, blinking several times before focusing on him.

“Hello,” he says softly when she properly meets his gaze, still a little worried as his thumb strokes the skin of her temple and down to her cheekbone.

“Hi,” she replies weakly, and at the sound of her voice Wilf crawls across the broken glass to lean over his granddaughter and embrace her.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” he scolds, sobbing as he gives her a gentle shake. “You shouldn’t! You could have died!”

“Didn’t though, did I?” She frowns, reaching up to rub her forehead, before glancing at the Doctor. “Want to explain why, Spaceman?”

He smiles, relief filling him all over again so that he has to blink tears out of his eyes. He’s been ridiculously emotional over the past few days, but right now, he can’t even blame himself for it. “Don’t you know?”

“I wouldn’t be asking if I did, would I?” she snaps as she begins to struggle into a sitting position. He supports her up and sits behind her so that she can lean against him. She twists her head around to look up into his face, frowning. “Something’s different.”

“The knowledge is gone.” He smooths her hair. “The regeneration energy you absorbed during the metacrisis was burned up in protecting you from the radiation, which, it would appear, also had the benefit of destroying every last remnant of the Time Lord consciousness. Luckily,” he pulls out the sonic screwdriver and scans her with it, sighing when nothing is detected, “that seems to be all it did.”

“I didn’t regenerate?”

“You can’t.” He shakes his head a little as he flips the sonic and puts it away. “Your mind doesn’t have the capability to give that order to your body, even with a Time Lord’s mind in yours.” He looks up at the glass box for a moment before meeting her gaze again. “That dose of radiation was either going to kill you or cure you.”

“You knew it would work,” she says flatly

“I hoped,” he agrees. “It was a massive risk, though. I still wish you’d let me go ahead rather than taking it on yourself. Going through all that pain.”

“It would have killed you,” she points out, amending her words as he shakes his head in contradiction of her words. “Caused you to regenerate. Whatever. And I wasn’t letting that happen if I could avoid it.” She smiles at him. “The Universe needs the Doctor with as many lives as possible!”

He helps her to her feet, grabbing her shoulder to steady her as Wilf almost knocks her down again with the force of his embrace. She hugs him for a time before pushing him back with a gentle hand. “All right, Gramps, I’m okay! No need to carry on like this!”

“If your mother had been here,” Wilf says shakily, wiping the tears from his face, “you wouldn’t have had to worry about what the radiation might have done. She’d have killed you instead!”

“You’re not wrong,” Donna says with a laugh. “Lucky she wasn’t. I don’t think even Vinvocci glass is that strong.”

“But what I don’t understand,” Wilf says, “is how you’re here at all. I mean, you had all them Masters around you, about to get you, and then you said you were burning, and that was the end of it.”

Donna smiles, nudging the Doctor with her elbow. “That would have been the end of it, if he hadn’t left me with that handy little defence mechanism,” she agrees.

“Which I wasn’t ever expecting to have used against me, by the way,” he says, trying to frown.

“Yeah, well, you deserved it,” she retorts, grinning cheekily at him. “Trying to order me about like that!”

He chuckles, so happy to have her safe that he wouldn’t care if she was slapping him silly. Donna, meanwhile, looks at her grandfather.

“I woke up in the street,” she tells him. “Surrounded by all these copies of the Master. None of them were paying me any attention though, at least not at first. And I could remember a few things, really vaguely – the Vespiform and that horrible little Dalek Caan. But the most important thing was that I knew I had to find the TARDIS.”

“Oh, so that’s what went wrong.” The Doctor nods, glad to understand and glancing apologetically at Wilf. “That wasn’t my intention. Before I left her with you, I created a link with the TARDIS so that, if Donna ever did remember, she would be protected until she woke up, and she wouldn’t remember anything after that. I couldn't tell you that with the Master there though. But the link to the TARDIS must have been strong enough to penetrate the memory wipe and so she sought that out.”

“And then?” Wilf asks eagerly.

“Well, eventually they started noticing me again, and when they did, they kept trying to stop me, didn’t they?” Donna says rhetorically, and there’s a wicked light in her eyes. “All of those Masters. But at first, whenever they got close enough, the power came out by itself, and then I got the idea of trying to make it happen, and finally I could summon enough of it at will that I could fire it like I did at the Doctor.”

“We are so going to have words about that, by the way,” the Doctor can’t help putting in.

“Yeah, well, once we’ve finished having a little chat about your mind-wiping stunt,” she retorts dismissively, rolling her eyes, “then you can say whatever you like about what I did to you today, right?”

When he says nothing in response – and he knows there isn’t a word he can say that won’t earn him a slap – Donna turns back to her grandfather, who is looking from one to the other, clearly waiting for the end of the explanation.

“By the time I could control the power, I could remember it all. Everything we saw. Everything we did together. Everything he knows.” She takes the Doctor’s hand and squeezes his fingers. “Safe and sound. And,” she adds with an indignant glance at him, “I managed to do it without all of the pathetic passing-out that was part of your original plan. Sleeping – hah! What do you think I am, Doctor, a character from one of Agatha Christie’s novels or something, gracefully fainting dead away in the heat of the excitement?”

“Brilliant,” the Doctor tells her, shaking his head in wonder, although he has to wonder just how many people suffered as a result of Donna’s attempts to get to the Naismith manor and find him and the TARDIS. “That’s what you are – absolutely brilliant.”

Before he can hug her, however, Wilf suddenly turns and wraps him in a surprisingly strong embrace. He can’t help but return it.

“You’ve got some battle scars,” Donna points out as Wilf finally draws back, and her eyes dance as she gestures at the Doctor’s face. “Want them to remind you of your noble exploits – no pun intended – or shall I get rid of them?”

He grins, despite the pain it causes from the various cuts and bruises, as well as his broken bones and internal injuries from that fall, which he suspects will give him nightmares for some time to come. Still, it’s going to be better than it would have been if he’d had to regenerate. “Do you think you know how?” he teases.

Donna arches an eyebrow. “Like you said to Jack, the last act of the Time War was life – Rose saving you. Well,” her tongue eases out of her mouth to moisten her lips, “this is the last act of the meta-crisis.”

He really should know what she’s planning. After all, it’s the last remnants of his mind in her head that are giving her the idea. And yet, somehow, it’s still a shock when she grabs the tattered lapels of his jacket and, just like that other time, pulls him towards her.

He feels the shudder of energy flowing into him, the last fleck of the meta-crisis and the faintest hint of radiation. It slides through his body, prompting his cells into action, and, if his mind and his mouth hadn’t been otherwise engaged, he could have detected the instant when the skin begins repairing itself. When he spares a second to think about it, he can feel the bones knitting themselves together and his various bruised and battered organs returning to normal.

But what is most shocking, what causes his hearts to race, pounding almost painfully against his ribs, is the fact that she is kissing him again. Just like at Eddison manor, her lips are pressed against his, although this time without the taste of ginger beer and sardines and walnuts as an unpleasant accompaniment.

He moans in shock, but that melts away in an instant and he reaches for her. Before he can touch her, however, she pulls back and releases her hold, chuckling as she sucks in her bottom lip and winks at him.

“Got to do that more often!”

“Hey!” he exclaims indignantly.

“What did you do to him?” Wilf demands in astonishment, staring at the Doctor’s face.

The Doctor runs his unmarked hands over his face, unsurprised when nothing hurts. It’s no more than he expected.

“Just a little taste of the radiation.” Donna grins. “Enough to prompt his body into the first stage of regeneration. It heals him without doing something stupid like pushing him over the edge into a full-blown change – kind of like what happened when he was shot by that Dalek. Well,” she rocks back on her heels, a look of immense satisfaction on her face, “it’d be a bit of a waste on my part if he went ahead and regenerated anyway, wouldn’t it?”

“I’ll say!” The Doctor lunges and wraps his arms around her, hauling her off her feet in a massive hug as he whirls her around, laughing like a fool. “Oh, Donna Noble, you absolutely fantastic, incredible, remarkable, astonishing – !”

He suddenly stops and glares at her, setting her back on her feet so that he can point a warning finger at her. “If you ever, ever, ever try to suggest that you’re anything other than the most important woman in the Universe again, I’ll… I’ll – !”

“You’ll what?” she demands, laughing as she looks at him, her head tilted to one side.

“Leave you behind somewhere!” he threatens. “Somewhere dangerous. With Daleks and Vespiform and Sontarans and Vashta Nerada and Pyroviles – the whole lot of them! All at once!”

She rolls her eyes. “God, you can be dull sometimes. I’ve dealt with that lot. Can’t you come up with something new?”

He takes her hand, revelling in the gloriously familiar feel of it, and pulls out the sonic screwdriver so that he can summon the TARDIS back from its hiding place.

“You know,” he says happily as he leads the way out of the room, “now that I think about it, I reckon I probably can, yeah.”

* * *
They land with a slight bump and Wilf heads for the door, leaving the Doctor to pull on the handbrake and then take Donna’s hand before they follow him down the ramp.

Stepping out onto the street, the Doctor swallows nervously at the sight of Sylvia beaming from the doorway of the house.

“Oh, she’s smiling,” he says anxiously as Wilf waves a greeting. “Just when I thought this day was going to go well.”

Sylvia suddenly disappears back into the house and they can hear her calling Shaun’s name. For a moment, the Doctor gazes after her before looking at the woman beside him.

“If he wants to come,” he suggests hesitantly, nodding back at the TARDIS, “we're not exactly short of space.”

She smiles, but he feels his hearts drop as she gently releases her hand from his.

“We’ll see,” she replies vaguely, but there’s no time for more as Shaun races out of the house, throwing his arms around Donna in a massive hug that almost sweeps her off her feet.

“You’re all right!” he exclaims in relief. “We’ve been looking for you for hours!”

“Oh, you have no idea,” she says lightly, swatting his arm. “All right then, let me go! I’m not a sack of potatoes!”

“Are you okay, Dad?” Sylvia asks anxiously, placing her hands on Wilf’s shoulders and studying his face. “I was so scared when you just took off like that – and as for you!”

She suddenly turns on the Doctor, all trace of the smile gone, and he can’t help gulping a little at the look in her eyes.

However his own eyes suddenly pop when she pulls him into a hug.

“Thank you!” she exclaims in tones that make both Donna and Wilf laugh.

“Well,” he says breathlessly when she finally lets him go and he can straighten his jacket, “you’re – welcome, I suppose.”

“Who’s this then?” Shaun asks cheerfully.

“Who, me?” the Doctor replies, somewhat inanely. Somehow he can’t quite make himself smile. “Oh, nobody, really.”

“Don’t be daft.” Donna’s voice is stern. “This is the Doctor!”

“The Doctor?” Shaun glances at Sylvia, uncertainty in his voice and on his face. “But I thought… I mean – you told me. And she remembers…?”

“You told him?” Donna demands, spinning around to glare at her mother. “And you didn’t bother to mention it to me?!”

“He told us not to!” Sylvia gestures at the Doctor. “He said it’d kill you if you knew!”

The Doctor suddenly realises that Shaun has caught sight of Donna’s left hand. The Time Lord feels his eyes widen and he steps forward, but Shaun speaks before he can try to explain.

“You’ve taken your ring off,” he says in tones of profound hurt as he lifts his gaze to his fiancée's face. “What did you do that for?”

“Actually, I took it off,” the Doctor tells him, speaking fast in the hope of getting everything out and diffusing the situation. “I had to. It wasn’t a normal ring. It was called a bio-damper and I gave it to Donna years ago when she first found me. It was created by my people to block things and it helped to save Donna today, too, but because it was red-hot, I didn’t want it to burn her, so I had to take it off. I mean, it had drawn away all of the leftover radiation she absorbed, which is what saved her from dying as a result of remembering everything about me and what we did together.”

“You?” Shaun stares at him. “The two of you? Together?”

“No, it wasn’t like that,” he says quickly, sensing danger, and he raises his hands in a gesture of denial as he takes a step back. “Not like that at all. We’re not a couple!”

“You sure?” Wilf asks, and the Doctor sees Sylvia stamp hard on Wilf’s foot, even as the Doctor himself is tempted to do something similar because he doesn’t want to ruin this for Donna if it’s what she wants.

“Donna?” Shaun seems to be having similar thoughts, because he glances at the redheaded woman beside him, who is staring at the road. “What do you want?”

Donna suddenly looks up and reaches out. The Doctor thinks she is about to take Shaun’s hand, and he feels his hearts drop even further, but she simply takes hold of her fiancée’s arm and steers him away.

“We have to talk,” she tells him, marching him back in the direction of the house.

The Doctor feels as if he can’t breathe as he stares at them, seeing the expressions that dance across Shaun’s face – uncertainty, concern, fear, and sadness. He feels a weight come to rest on his arm and looks down into Wilf’s face.

“If she doesn’t go with you, I’ll – well…”

“You’ll what?” he asks numbly.

The other man frowns before suddenly grinning. “Go with you instead!”

“Dad!” Sylvia exclaims in scandalised tones. “No, you won’t!”

“Well, why not?” Wilf is beginning, but the Doctor doesn’t pay attention because Donna and Shaun have turned back towards the others, and the expression on Donna’s face is worrying him. She’s half-smiling, but there’s sadness in her eyes that makes him tense.

“Well?” Wilf asks eagerly before the Doctor can work out what he might want to say.

“She’s going,” Shaun says firmly, and the Doctor lets out the breath he had been holding in a rush. Fortunately nobody else hears it, as Wilf chooses that instant to give a cheer, which dies abruptly when he receives Sylvia’s elbow in his ribs.

“Are you going with her then?” Sylvia demands of Shaun as Wilf groans and glares at her, rubbing his chest.

“No.” Shaun shakes his head with a sad smile. “I can’t leave Mum. Not now, not with her being so ill. But maybe later, if she’s better,” he meets Donna’s gaze, “and we still feel the same way.”

“You could get married on Poosh,” the Doctor puts in hurriedly. “They do incredible ceremonies there – completely different from anything you’d ever have on Earth. They do this… never mind,” he finishes abruptly as he sees the look Donna is giving him and suddenly realises how difficult this is for Shaun.

That young man turns to Donna, kissing her before drawing back. “Call me,” he tells her. “Tell me about everything. Me and your Granddad. We can talk about it when we’re up on the hill, watching out for you.”

“Yeah, ‘course I will,” she promises, hugging him. “And you’ll let me know what’s going on here, won’t you? When you’re ready for us to come and get you.”

Shaun smiles, although the Doctor can see tears glistening in his eyes, before he blinks fiercely as he turns to the Time Lord.

“Look after her, Doctor,” he orders with mock sternness, “or you’re going to have all of us to answer to!”

The Doctor smiles, stretching out a hand to the generous young man. “I will,” he vows, returning the solid handshake Shaun gives him. “I promise.”

“Off you go then,” Wilf tells them, glancing at Shaun. “The sooner you go, the quicker you’ll be back.”

“Yeah.” Donna nods and hugs her mother and then her grandfather. “And you can call me anytime – any of you.”

“Look after yourself, Donna,” Sylvia admonishes.

“And the Doctor,” Wilf adds with a grin at that man, who nods.

“Take care of yourselves,” Donna orders, moving over to stand beside the Doctor. “We’ll see you soon!”

And as if she doesn’t want to hold off the moment of separation any longer, she dives into the TARDIS. The Doctor nods at each person, locking eyes with Wilf longest, before he follows her in and closes the door.

She’s sitting on the jumpseat, not unlike the time he formed the TARDIS around them when they were escaping from the Racnoss. The Doctor crosses to the controls, sending the TARDIS into the vortex before he sits down beside her, sliding his arm around her and pulling her gently against him.

“I am glad to be back,” she sobs. “I am! I wouldn’t miss it for anything. But, oh, it’s so hard to leave them behind.”

“I know.” As she rests her head on his shoulder, he fishes into the pocket of his coat and pulls out a handkerchief, which he presses into her hand. She wipes her eyes before suddenly, and very loudly, blowing her nose, which makes them both laugh.

“Right, enough of that nonsense,” Donna says briskly, swallowing a final sniff and then offering his hanky back. “Want it?”

“I think I can manage without it,” he assures her, before adding teasingly, “That is, if you’ve got a pocket to keep it in.”

She chuckles and stuffs it into the pocket of her jeans before pushing herself up off the seat and looking at him.

“So, whole wide universe, where are we going to go first?” she demands.

He smiles, squeezing her hand before letting go and starting to enter co-ordinates. “I thought,” he says lightly, “we might visit some old friends.”

“Ooh, that sounds promising.” She glances at the scanner and then frowns. “It doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. Not like it did before, when I was the DoctorDonna.”

“On the other hand,” he suggests as he works the controls, “you’re no longer in any danger of burning up. That has to be a good thing, doesn’t it?”

“I s’pose it is,” she agrees ruefully, “but I did quite like being, you know…”

“Stop right there!” he orders, turning to glare at her. “If you’re about to say anything about not being special anymore just because you haven’t got a Time Lord’s consciousness in your head, I might just make good on that threat I suggested before!”

“What do you mean?” she asks suspiciously.

With a knowing grin, he picks up a mallet standing on the floor next to the console and offers to her.

“You’ll want this,” he tells her, and she grins back at him, her eyes lighting up, before taking it out of his hand and, with a determined stride, heading for the door.

* * *
The noise of the bar hits them as soon as they open the door and step out into the hot, smoky room.

“We banned smoking in places like this on Earth years ago,” Donna scolds. “And this is how far into the future?”

“That is unbelievably patronising, Donna Noble,” the Doctor tells her, leading her out of the smoky corner and into the rest of the bar. “I’ll have you know that the smoke is produced naturally by some of this bar’s best patrons, and they’re given that corner so that they don’t upset the rest of the people here!”

“And so of course you had to park the TARDIS there!” she snorts, rolling her eyes as they approach the bar, before suddenly stopping and staring at a man sitting a short distance away, who is nursing a half-empty glass. “Is that – ?”

“Captain Jack.” The Doctor nods, before glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, one eyebrow raised. “We’re here to do him a favour, so think of Shaun and get that look off your face.”

“Oi!”

He chuckles and waves down the bartender, handing him the note he had written after they left Bannerman Road.

“Yes, that man there,” he says, nodding at Jack.

“Oh, the good-looking one?” the man says with a significant grin, and the Doctor rolls his eyes.

“Yes,” he agrees with an exaggerated sigh, before leading Donna around to a place directly opposite where Jack is sitting.

“Ooh, it’s an Adipose,” Donna says in delight as the small creature leaps up onto the bar and begins skipping along it. They both chuckle as the Adipose tries to leap over Jack’s glass and ends up in a squeaking heap on the floor.

However the Doctor is concerned that Jack barely responds to the sight of the poor creature struggling to its feet among the heap of broken glass – and even more worried that Jack isn’t practicing his legendary 51st century charm on any of the multitude of people in the bar. The Time Agent even seems oblivious to the numerous approving and flirtatious glances he is receiving from all over the room. The Doctor can only hope his plan will work, because something is clearly even more badly wrong than he had thought at first when he learned about the collapse of Torchwood.

“From that man over there,” the bartender announces, and Jack looks up to meet the Doctor’s gaze.

“Oh, get on and read it,” Donna mutters in frustration, shifting weight from one foot to the other with obvious impatience. The Doctor grins at her and then nods at the note in Jack’s hand.

The confusion in Jack’s face only increases when he reads the short message and he stares at the Doctor and Donna in obvious bewilderment.

The Doctor sees Midshipman Alonzo Frame sidling through the crowds and nods at the empty seat beside Jack, which is filled a moment later by the young man the Doctor met on the Titanic.

Jack glances at Alonzo before looking back at the Doctor. The Time Lord lifts his index finger to his temple in a salute, grinning at the expression on Jack’s face. The Time Agent salutes back before turning to man beside him.

“So,” the Doctor manages to hear Jack say through the undercurrent of sound in the bar, “Alonzo…”

Chuckling at the positive result of his plan, he tightens his grip on Donna’s hand and leads her back to the TARDIS.

“Another success, by the look of it,” she tells him, looking back over her shoulder and thereby almost running into a drunken Judoon. The Doctor steers her to safety with murmured apologies for the giant figure, who glares at them before staggering off.

They re-enter the TARDIS, and the Doctor shrugs out of his duster and tosses it over a beam before crossing the floor to his usual place. However before he does anything, a thought strikes him and he looks up at Donna, who is standing opposite him, her joy at being back evident in her eyes.

“You know what,” he says lightly, his hand hovering above the button on the console that will send them into the vortex.

“What’s that then?” she demands.

He laughs in sheer delighted surprise and relief as he presses the button and the TARDIS dematerialises. “I’ve just realised something.”

“Ooh, I worry when you use that tone of voice.” Donna rolls her eyes theatrically. “What are you thinking now?”

He bounces on the balls of his feet, preparing to run, because he’d really like to avoid the slap that he knows this comment properly deserves. And he winks at her as he begins to speak. “I think, and I could be wrong about this, but I really don’t think I am – not this time, anyway. Not that I’m usually wrong about things…”

“Well?” she interrupts impatiently.

“It’s just – I think this makes you my reward!”

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