TLAWR Chapter Fifty-Three: Killing Donna Noble

[isilienelenihin]

An AU retelling of season 4, beginning with The Last of the Time Lords from season 3. First story in the All Roads Lead Home series.  Rated teen.

10/Rose, Martha, Jack Harkness, Donna Noble, the Master, River Song, Sarah Jane Smith, and many more.

(Earlier Entries)

Nothing you recognize  belongs to me!  Quotes taken from "Turn Left!"



River rubbed her eyes as she waited for the inevitable flash of light that accompanied her jumps to die down. Now that UNIT was underway, it was time to convince Donna to trust her, and to go with her, and to fix everything. Her first attempt had been, well, less than stellar. She hoped that Donna had listened to her, that she would use the raffle ticket left over from her previous position as Mr. Chowdry's personal assistant to get out of London for Christmas.

Without the Doctor to stop the replica of the Titanic from crashing into Buckingham Palace the entire city was destroyed, wiped out in a nuclear explosion from the ship's engines. River had tried to explain as much as she could, which wasn't much at all, really, but Donna was having none of it. The fire and bravado that she loved about the woman was definitely working against her.

Why do you keep looking at my back? What's on my back?

That had to be it, the creature that altered the timeline, that pulled Donna Noble from where she had to be. River had no idea what it was. She couldn't even see it, couldn't touch it if she tried, but out of the corner of her eye she thought she glimpsed something black and shiny, something with a hard carapace and six legs-some kind of insect.

Mickey was waiting for her, as usual, but something was different. A willowy young woman with blue-green eyes and strawberry blonde hair was leaning against the doorway, waiting for her. River blinked. "Jenny? What are you doing here?"

Jenny gave her a hug, and then arched an eyebrow. It was one more gesture she'd picked up from her father, although the accent was from Rose. "What d'you think? Dad sent me. Said I had to be here, something about closing a time-loop."

River pushed a stray curl back behind her ear. "Right. Well, we've already got a bungled timeline on the table, why not at a time-loop to that? Any idea what you're supposed to do?"

The other woman shrugged. "I think I'm supposed to be there when you find them."

Donna Noble was not amused. She and her mum and her granddad had spent three months living in a bloody hostel because the bloody Titanic had demolished their home in the city, and now the social worker wanted her to move to bloody Leeds!

"I'm not moving to Leeds!" she protested.

"I'm afraid it's Leeds, or you can wait in the hostel for another three months," the woman told her. Donna wrinkled her nose. She definitely didn't want to go back. It was packed-ten or twelve people to each room, bunk beds, no privacy, screaming babies and rambunctious children everywhere.

Her mum bit her lip. "All I want is a washing machine," she admitted.

"What about Glasgow?" Donna continued. "I heard there was jobs going in Glasgow."

The social worker was out of patience. "It's Leeds," she snapped, "or nothing. The whole of southern England is flooded with radiation. We've got seven million people in need of shelter, and now France has closed its borders. You can't pick and choose!" She slapped a stamp down on their folder and shoved it off to the side. "Next!"

"When are you?" River asked Jenny as they moved from the doorway into the flat proper.

"We went to Space Florida last week," the younger woman replied. "The time that Mum convinced Dad that swim trunks are cool, not the time he decided swimming in tweed was a good idea, or the time that Jack crashed the party and tried to ply him with alcohol."

River grinned. "That was an interesting night."

"Hold on," Mickey said firmly. "Who are you, exactly?" He was just a little touchy about random people showing up at their supposedly secret flat. They were, after all, on a mission to find the Doctor, and he could think of any number of beings who would like to get their hands on the Time Lord.

"I'm Jenny," she told him, like he was being incredibly thick. "An' you're Micky, an'-oh." Her eyes widened. "You haven't met me yet! No wonder you gave me that funny look." She held out her hand. "Like I said, I'm Jenny. It's short for generated anomaly, but Mum decided that 'Jennifer' sounds nicer, so that's what she calls me when she's cross. I'm the Doctor's daughter."

Mickey's jaw dropped. "His daughter? He can have kids? Does Rose know about this?"

Jenny frowned. "Obviously. She was there when I was born. Well, I say born. Can you be born if you're created by a machine? What defines birth?"

"Okay, I believe you're his daughter now," Mickey remarked dryly.

Life as a refugee left much to be desired. Donna, her mum, and her granddad lived in a house with seventeen other people. They slept in the kitchen on camp cots. One family had the upstairs and the other family (consisting of a husband and wife, and the wife's sister and her husband and children, and her niece's children, and the husband's mother) had the front room and back bedroom. It was crowded and noisy and it drove Donna half-mad.

"You'll see," she told her mother as they lay in bed trying to ignore the sound of raucous sea shanties from the next room over. "I'll go into town tomorrow and find work. Everybody need's secretaries."

Unfortunately, she was wrong. Jobs were almost non-existent, and she didn't have the proper credentials for military work.

"We'll settle in," Wilf assured her confidently. "Bit of wartime spirit, yeah?"

But that was the point. There wasn't a war. There was no goal to work toward, no end in sight-just the prospect of living this life day after day, caught in the legal limbo of being a refugee. As her mum told her, they couldn't even vote. There was no one to complain to, no one who would listen. They were three in a sea of millions, lost in the throng of faces that no one wanted to see.

Sometimes she caught herself looking for the strange woman with the blonde, curly hair-the woman she'd met by the Thames, the woman who saved her and her family's life. Months passed without a sighting, and she decided that it was just a coincidence, just one more strange thing in a strange, strange world. And then in the fall of 2008 vehicles started spouting a strange, white gas.

They were in the middle of a rousing rendition of Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' when they heard the shots. They were close, just outside the house. The song died, like a switch had been flipped. One of the boys who lived upstairs went to the door, but Rocco Colosato, the patriarch of the family that occupied the front room, pushed him back. "Stay," he told them. Of course Donna and Wilf ignored him and followed him out into the street. Soldiers were shooting at the cars. A strange, thick white gas poured from every exhaust pipe. It drifted through like a malevolent fog and left a disgusting, starchy taste in Donna's mouth.

Rocco was berating the soldiers. "Firing at the car is not so good!" he yelled. "You crazy, or what?"

"It's this ATMOS thing," the soldier explained. He was young, Donna realized, probably younger than she was, and he looked scared. "It won't stop! It's like gas, it's toxic!"

"Well, switch it off!" Wilf replied impatiently and pointed at the car.

"It is off!" another soldier replied.

"It's still going," the first soldier replied. "It's all of them-every single ATMOS car. They've gone mad." He trailed off as Donna turned to glance back at her mum. In a flash his gun was back up and aimed directly at her. "You!" he barked. "Lady, turn 'round!" She stared at him, uncomprehending. "Turn around, now!"

Rocco and Wilf were yelling at the soldier. "Put that gun down, boy!" her granddad shouted.

The soldier was having none of it. "I said turn 'round!" he repeated, and he and his comrade kept their weapons trained on Donna. She held up her hands and turned around in a circle, her heart pounding fit to burst. She'd never had a gun pointed at her, before. Had hardly seen them, to tell the truth. She found herself wondering what it felt like to get shot. If they were going to kill her, she didn't want them to do it in front of her mum and granddad. No one needed to see that.

His eyes widened as she presented her back to him. Whatever he thought he saw wasn't there. "Sorry," he said softly. "I thought-"

Wilf was about ready to burst a vein. She'd never seen him so angry. "Call yourself a soldier?" he snarled as he stood just in front of the boy. "Pointing guns at innocent women? You're a disgrace!" he snapped. "In my day you'd have been court-martialed!"

Donna, however, had stopped paying attention. There was a strange flash of light coming from an alley a few doors down. It was familiar-and then she remembered. The last time she saw it, something that was like lightning without thunder, was when she saw the curly-haired woman. She started toward it. Her mum was calling her, asking her to come back, telling her to leave it alone, but she ignored her cries. She wanted answers.

Donna reached the mouth of the alley, and stopped. She blinked. There was someone waiting for her-but it was a young black man with a scruffy beard, not an older woman with bright blue eyes and curly blonde hair.

"You're Donna Noble," he said in a thick London accent. "Nice to meet you at last. I'm Mickey Smith."

Mickey led her to a park bench. The wind was brisk and kept the fog from rolling in too densely. Donna was grateful. At least they could see the stars here, and it was nice not having to breathe the strange fumes.

"We're lucky," he told her. "S not so bad here. It's the ATMOS devices. Britain hasn't got that much petrol, but all over Europe, China, South Africa, they're getting choked by gas."

"Can't anyone stop it?" she asked him.

"Sure," he told her. "Working on it now. They're onboard the Sontaran ship." There was a strange sort of rumbling sound, and then the sky was filled with fire. It swept from horizon to horizon, burning off the gas that had collected in the atmosphere. Donna gaped. "Tha' was the Torchwood team," Mickey said quietly. "Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones-they gave their lives, and Captain Jack Harkness was transported back to the Sontaran home-world." A strange sort of smile twisted his lips. "UNIT's the only thing left defending Earth."

She looked blankly at him. "What?"

"UNIT," he repeated. "United Intelligence Taskforce. They protect the Earth from hostile alien threats."

"Normally I'd say you were a nutter, believing in aliens," she mused, "but not now. Not after what's happened." She paused. "Why wouldn't that other woman tell me her name?"

Mickey snorted. "River worries too much. She's like the Doctor. Me, I figure that none of this was supposed to happen anyway, so nothing I can say will destabilize the situation any more than it already is."

Donna frowned. "What do you mean, 'not supposed to happen?'"

He gestured expansively. "All of this is wrong, Donna. There's this bloke, this alien bloke called the Doctor, and he stopped it, he stopped it all from happening. The Titanic never crashed into Buckingham Palace. He stopped the Sontarans. Captain Jack is alive and well and working in Cardiff with his team. River calls it an 'altered time line.' It's one way the universe could have gone, one way events could have unfolded-but they didn't."

She snorted. "Now you're talking rubbish. Of course all of those things happened! We're living them!"

"That's the point," he countered. "You shouldn't be. In the real timeline, the right timeline, you travel with the Doctor, and a friend of mine named Rose." He leaned back and rested his arms on top of the bench. "She was my girl, was Rose, before she met the Doctor." It was his turn to snort. "After, well, can't really compete with all of time and space, now can I? But you, you saved his life, Donna Noble, except that in this time line you didn't."

"He was the man," she realized. "The one who died, the one by the Thames on Christmas."

Mickey nodded. "But he wasn't meant to. You were supposed to be there; you made him leave."

A memory hit her like a tonne of bricks, and she was standing in a cavernous room. A thing like a giant, scarlet spider-woman was howling in the middle of the room as water poured in and sparks showered down from the ceiling. Presiding over the terrifying scene was a man-a tall, thin man in a suit. His hair was slicked down with water and he was holding a remote control in his hands, but what she noticed were his eyes. They were dark and hard and empty, so empty, like someone had reached into his chest and pulled out his heart.

"Doctor!" she heard herself shout. "You can stop now!" And he glanced down, and she could see his humanity return, degree by degree, until she found that she could meet his gaze without the desperate urge to flee.

She pushed herself off of the bench and stood, arms wrapped around herself although it wasn't cold. "Stop it," she told him. "I don't know what you're talking about!"

He watched her for a moment. "I know it's scary," he said finally. "I was terrified of the Doctor when I first met him. I clung to Rose, told her not to go with him. Maybe-maybe if I hadn't, if I'd been a bit braver, maybe she'd still be my girl and none of what came next would have happened." He leaned forward. "But it did, and right now, Donna Noble, it all comes down to you, because something's coming, something worse than all of this."

"Leave me alone!" she yelled and started to walk away. He followed her.

"The whole world is stinking!" she snapped. "How could anything be worse than this?"

"The darkness is coming." He ran a hand through his close-cropped hair, unconsciously echoing the Doctor. "This whole thing started out as a way to get Rose home. She's trapped, right now, in a parallel universe-but then the stars started going out. We need the Doctor, and in order to find him, we've got to get you back where you belong."

"Why are you telling me this?" she shouted at him, tears standing in her eyes. "What do you mean, it all comes down to me? What am I supposed to do! I'm a temp from Chiswick! I'm nothing special!"

"Donna Noble," he said seriously. "On that night you were the most important woman in the whole of creation."

She sneered at him. "Oh, don't. Just don't. That might work on the girls at the pub, but you don't fool me, mate."

"I need you to come with me," he continued, undaunted. "Me or River."

"An' why should I do that?" she shot back.

He shrugged. "Because you want to save the world? Because you believe that I'm not a nutter?" He glanced around. "Because you can't help wishin' for something more than this? You pick the reason, but you'll come-only when you want to, 'course."

"You're gonna have a long wait," she told him and turned to go.

He sighed. "Not really, just three weeks."

Donna paused. "All right, I'll bite. Why three weeks?" What the hell, she figured. In for a penny, in for a pound.

"Does your grandfather still have that telescope?" he asked. She blinked at the non-sequitor.

"He never lets go of it," she replied slowly. Just how much had he been watching her? Was he stalking her?

"Three weeks time," he repeated. "But you've got to be certain, because I'm sorry, I really am-but you're gonna die." And then there was lightning without thunder, and he was gone. She stared at the place where he stood, tears running down her cheeks to drip off her chin. It wasn't every day you found out when you were going to die.

She thought it couldn't get any worse. She thought that the squalor and the wretchedness of their lives couldn't be topped. She thought the world had hit rock bottom, living in Leeds with seventeen other people (not including her mum and granddad) and relying on government aide to put food of a sort on the table. She was wrong.

The soldiers were taking the others. Rocco Colosatto and his family, the other family from upstairs, they were piled into the back of a government truck with all of their belongings. The ever-cheerful man said goodbye as exuberantly as he'd said hello.

He grabbed Donna up in a bear hug. "And you!" he exclaimed. "I'm going to miss you most of all-all flame hair and fire!"

He'd grated on her nerves when they'd first arrived, but in the months that followed he'd grown on her. His unfailing optimism and ability to make her laugh had gotten them through the suffocating closeness of their quarters. "But why do you have to go?" she asked.

He shrugged. "It's the new law, England for the English and all that. They can't send us home-the oceans are closed. They build labor camps."

She frowned. "I know, but labor doing what? There aren't any jobs. I should know, I've been looking." Behind her, Wilf looked uncomfortable. He'd been out of sorts all week, ever since they'd heard about the coming relocations.

For a moment Rocco's bubbly mask slipped, but only for moment. "Oh, sewing," he said expansively, "digging-is good!" With one last round of enthusiastic kisses on the cheek, he released Donna. Wilf stepped forward, and the other man gave him a smart salute. "Wilfred," he acknowledged gravely, "my captain."

There were tears in her granddad's eyes, Donna realized, as he returned the salute. Then Rocco nodded and was hustled into the truck. Wilf looked away.

"It'll be quiet with them gone," Donna noted, "but still, we'll have more room."

"Labor camps," her granddad said, his voice wavering. "That's what they called them last time too."

Donna glanced back at him. "How do you mean?" She returned her gaze to the truck. Rocco held his wife tightly. Her face was pressed against his jacket, and Donna could see her shoulders heaving. She was sobbing. And his eyes were pressed tightly shut, his lips a thin slash. It was strange seeing him without a smile. He was always smiling. A sinking feeling was growing in her stomach, fear and a terrible idea. They called them labor camps before.

"It's happening again," Wilf continued, his eyes haunted as he watched the truck pull onto the street.

"What is?" she asked, but he wouldn't answer. He pressed his lips tightly together and shook his head. She started after the truck, which was moving slowly down the cobbled road. "Excuse me!" she called. "Where are you taking them?" There was no answer, not from the soldiers nor the people being taken. "Where are you taking them?" she demanded again, but the truck had reached one of the main streets, and its speed picked up, and she was left standing in the middle of the road, staring after it as it faded from view.

She was sitting on the hill with her granddad when it happened. He had his telescope out, like he always did, and there was a fire burning, and they had a thermos full of tea. They didn't talk much, not like they used to before everything went to hell. She remembered what Mickey said, what the woman, River, said. The world is wrong. Yes, it was. It was horribly, terribly wrong, but how could they change it? What could she do?

"We'd get a bit of cash if we sold this thing," Wilf said, apropos of nothing, and gestured at his telescope.

Donna blinked. "Don't you dare!" she told him, and then sighed. "I always imagined, your old age, I'd have put a bit of money by, make you comfy. Never did." She sighed again. "I'm just useless." Wilf, however, wasn't paying much attention. He checked the telescope, muttered something, and then checked it again. She frowned. "You're supposed to say, 'no, you're not.'"

"Must be the alignment," he continued to himself.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I dunno! It can't be the lens, 'cause I was looking at Orion, the constellation of Orion. You take a look." He motioned for her to move forward. "Tell me what you see."

Donna looked down into the telescope's viewfinder, and then back up at her granddad. "Nothing," she said. "There's nothing there."

"It's working!" he exclaimed. "The telescope is working!"

"Maybe it's the clouds," she offered.

"There are no clouds," he scoffed. And then he froze. And pointed. Donna followed the line of his outstretched hand to the sky and her jaw dropped. The stars were going out. Faster and faster pinpricks of light were disappearing from the sky. It was nowhere near dawn, and there was no tell-tale lightness at the eastern edge of the horizon. It was as if someone was taking a giant eraser and simply wiping entire constellations-solar systems and supernovas and whole galaxies-out of existence. "Oh my god, Donna," her granddad whispered. "The stars are going out!"

The darkness is coming. And she knew, she knew it was time. She turned around, and the woman, River, was standing behind them. She was wearing the same clothes she always wore-her gray leather jacket pulled tightly around her to ward off the chill of the night. She was watching them with a strange, sad look on her face. And Donna knew. She was going to die, but this world, it wasn't worth living in, not if something better could take its place. Not if all of those people who died in London could be alive again. Not if Rocco and his family could be back home, where they belonged, not in some holocaust-type labor camp.

"I'm ready," she told the other woman. River nodded.

Four hours later Donna Noble found herself getting out of a UNIT truck. They were at a military base just outside London. River led the way, and Donna had the impression that she'd been there frequently, and recently. They were stopped just inside the perimeter by one of the red-bereted soldiers. He snapped a salute. "Ma'am, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart would like to see you."

"I said before, don't salute," River replied. "And we're a bit busy right now."

"It's important, Ma'am," he said respectfully, but firmly. "I'm to take you to him. Miss Noble is to accompany as well."

River sighed. "Very well then, lead on."

Alistair was waiting for them in an office that had been carved out of the warehouse with temporary walls. UNIT was well-versed in erecting mobile bases, and it showed. A large desk and comfortable chair were the only furniture. Alistair occupied the chair, and standing in front of his desk was someone River knew very well. She froze. Rose Tyler was staring back at her, looking at her like she'd never seen her before in her life.

And then River realized that she probably hadn't, because this wasn't her Rose. The woman was thinner than River had ever seen her. There were lines around the corners of her eyes and mouth that shouldn't have been there. She looked like she hadn't eaten in days and slept in longer, but the greatest change was her eyes. Even when she was angry, even when she was terrified, there was a spark of warmth, an empathy that she carried behind the brown orbs.

This woman looked like the Doctor after a very bad week. Her eyes were hard, cold, and completely empty. It was like someone had closed a door behind them, blocking any trace of the kind, compassionate soul within.

"You're River song?" she asked. "The Brigadier tells me you know the Doctor." River could only nod. Something that might have been hope flashed across not-Rose's face for just a second. "Where is he?"

River swallowed. "I'm sorry," she said finally. "I'm so sorry-but he's dead." She blinked, and then she was pinned against the wall. Not-Rose's hand was against her throat, holding her firmly, but gently. She could still breathe, although she was unable to move.

"If you are lying," the woman said, her voice quiet and frozen, "it will go very poorly for you."

"I'm not," River swore. "But this-all this is wrong. It wasn't supposed to happen. We're trying to fix it." Donna was watching, wide eyed. Alistair was a second away from summoning the soldiers, but River frowned. She could handle this by herself. She had to. Bringing guns into the situation would only make it escalate, and she really didn't want to find out what would happen then.

Not-Rose studied her for a moment, and then let her go. She looked pale, and tired, and old, and River finally realized why. There was a weight behind her eyes, a weight she'd never seen before. "How old are you?" she asked finally.

"Five-hundred and twenty-nine in April," not-Rose replied wearily.

It took a surprisingly short amount of time to explain what was happening to the alternate Rose. It might have been her greater experience with all things alien and strange, but River thought that it was more likely her desire for this not to be right that drove her understanding. River could sympathize. She didn't want to live in a universe without the Doctor either. Alistair left them in the stiff but capable hands of Captain Erisa Magambo-one of UNIT'S senior officers.

Their first stop was the TARDIS. Rose laid a reverent hand on the door of the battered time ship, and then rested her forehead against the cool wood. Then she lifted her key-still on a chain around her neck-and unlocked the door. She disappeared inside, and River turned to Donna. "D'you want to see it?" she asked.

Donna blinked. "What's a 'police box?'"

"It belonged to the Doctor," River replied. "Just go inside."

The ginger woman balked. "What for."

"Donna Noble," the other woman said in mock-irritation. "Just go!"

She stepped inside, and gasped. It was huge! Impossibly huge! She'd seen the outside, and there was no way that the cavernous room fit inside the little blue box! Not-Rose was standing next to what looked like the controls. One hand rested on a clear glass tube that stretched to the ceiling. Her eyes were closed, and she looked almost like she was listening. But that was daft, listening to what?

"She's happy to see you," the woman murmured.

"Sorry?" Donna asked.

Not-Rose opened her eyes. "The TARDIS is live. She's the last of her kind, just like he was the last of his. A sentient, dimensionally transcendent space-and-timeship." She glanced around at the jumble of wires that led from the console out into the warehouse. "Time and Relative Dimension in Space-that's what it stands for." A small smile curved her lips. "This room used to shine with light. And music! Anything you could want-Ian Dury, Operas from Venus, Symphonies from galaxies millions of miles away." She was looking past Donna, and the ginger woman felt like she was looking right through her, staring at a memory hundreds of years old. "He was a Time Lord-the last."

"If he was so special, what was he doing with me?" Donna asked hesitantly.

"He thought you were brilliant," River said as she strode into the dark room. She laid a hand on the tube next to Rose's, and the glass columns within moved sluggishly.

"Don't be stupid," Donna sniffed.

"If the Doctor brought you with him, than you were," not-Rose asserted quietly. "You just needed him to see it. He did that for me-for everyone he touches."

She looked at the blonde woman. "Were you and him-?"

Not-Rose's lips twisted into a bitter smile. "I was. Him, well, you never can tell."

"He was." River's voice was quiet, but sure. "And in the right timeline, you are. The two of you, it's like traveling with teenagers sometimes." One corner of her mouth tugged up into a crooked smile. "Made me jealous, you did, but you deserve it. After what the two of you have done for the universe, you deserve every minute of it." And then the smiled dropped, and she was serious again. "And we're going to make sure that happens." A flash caught her eye, a bit of black and shiny legs and pincers. She reached a hand out and drifted it over Donna's back. "Would you like to see it?" she asked the ginger woman.

Donna stared at her for a moment, fear rising into her throat like bile, and then she nodded.

Perhaps agreeing to look at the creature hadn't been such a good idea, she thought after River and Rose had managed to calm her down. She was sitting on a box-a make-shift chair-with a cup of tea whilst the other two women argued about something to do with the Time Vortex. It was gibberish to Donna. It was all madness-but she'd seen madness all around her, and they seemed to be sure that it would work, that she could fix whatever had gone wrong with the world.

And there was the fact that she had a giant bug on her back, and now that she'd seen it, she knew she couldn't ignore it. She couldn't go back to living her life, ignorant of the world around her. There was something wrong with the world, and not in the abstract way that philosophers and idealists believed. There was something concrete, something fixable, and she could do that. There was nothing for it. She had to try.

So she stood, and walked over to where the two of them were standing. "What do I need to do?" she asked in her most authoritative voice.

River smiled. "You're going to travel in time."

"I was able to use the TARDIS to track down the moment of intervention: Monday the 25th at one minute past ten in the morning. You probably don't even remember it-most ordinary day in in the world, but, by turning right when you were meant to turn left, you never met the Doctor and the whole world changed around you." River was pacing as she relayed the important information to Donna and not-Rose. "Your car was on Little Sutton street leading to the Ealing road. You turned right, but you were supposed to turn left. It's the most important thing-you've got to go back and turn left. Have you go that, Donna? One minute past ten you've got to make yourself turn left heading for the Chiswick high road."

"Keep the jacket on at all times," Captain Magambo instructed, motioning to the heavy, wire-covered trench coat that Donna wore. "It will insulate you against temporal feedback." She handed her a plain digital watch. "This will correspond to local time wherever you land."

They walked her to the edge of the circle, and River stopped her just outside. "I wanted to say thank you," she began. "I know this is terrifying, but I promise you, it's worth it. The Doctor is worth it. The life you have in the real timeline-it's worth it."

Donna laughed. "It has to be. I can't imagine anything worse than this." She glanced nervously at the mirrors that lined the circle. "I don't want to see that thing on my back."

"You won't," River assured her. "The mirrors are incidental-they bounce chronon energy back into the center which we control, and decide the destination."

Donna grinned. "It's a time machine."

River's answering grin was huge. "It's a time machine."

The ginger woman stepped into the middle of the circle. River turned to go, but Donna called her back. "I understand now," she told the curly-haired woman. "I understand what Mickey meant when he said I'm going to die. He meant this whole world is going to blink out of existence-but that's okay, because a better one takes its place-the Doctor's world!"

A hum built up as switches were toggled and buttons were pushed, and the time machine sprang into live. In the midst of the controlled chaos, River Song was a stone as she looked solemnly back at Donna Noble.

"That's right, isn't it?" the ginger woman asked, suddenly unsure. "That's what's going to happen."

"I'm sorry," River said. "I'm so sorry." And then the hum faltered, and she ran to the TARDIS. Not-Rose followed her. There was something wrong. The machine should be accelerating, not slowing! They weren't done yet, not even close! She grabbed the rubber mallet that hung where it always did, just off the console, and slammed it on the controls, apparently at random. Besides causing a shower of sparks, it had no effect. She swore.

"What is it?" Donna called nervously from the center of the mirrored circle. "What's going on?"

River gripped the edge of the console with enough force to turn her knuckles white. "Come on, old girl," she begged. "Just a little more, please!" The Time Rotor wheezed a slow climb, but fell halfway.

"What do you need?" not-Rose asked, her voice sharp. "Tell me, what is it that you need!"

"Power," River grated out. "She's been holding on since the Doctor died-but they're linked, and she can't function properly without him. There was no-one around when he died to release the bio-lock." The blonde woman blinked at her. "The Doctor's name, his true name. One of its functions is as a release mechanism for the telepathic link he shares with the TARDIS. Normally when a Time Lord is killed their TARDIS dies with them-makes it so no one can kill him to get to her." She patted the controls soothingly. "She overrode the protocol-but it's taking most of her strength just to stay alive. She doesn't have enough power to send Donna back."

Not-Rose straightened, and for the first time since she'd arrived in the broken timeline something of the woman River knew seemed to come through. "Well, then," she said softly. "Give me a moment, just a moment, and you'll have all the power you need. I can do power." Then she turned and strode out of the TARDIS and into the circle where Donna stood. She held out her hand and smiled. "I just wanted to say that it was brilliant to meet you, Donna Noble."

"You too," the ginger woman responded, and shook her hand. "Although River tells me I already have."

"Do me a favor," not-Rose requested as she dropped Donna's hand. "When you see the Doctor, tell him something from me. Tell him two words, just two. Tell him: 'Bad Wolf.'"

Donna flinched away from the blonde woman. An unearthly golden light seemed to suffuse her, starting with her eyes that shone like supernovas, like stars and fire and planets burning. She looked like a candle held behind quartz, like her skin was simply a shell for the light within. All movement had ceased and all eyes were fixed on her as she turned and walked back into the TARDIS.

She placed her hands on the console and turned her face, eyes closed, up to the Time Rotor. "I want you safe, my Doctor," she murmured in that strange, layered voice that heralded the appearance of the Bad Wolf. Then the light became blinding, and River was forced to cover her eyes against it. When it faded, the still, silent body of the alternate Rose Tyler lay crumpled at the base of the control console. She was smiling.

River couldn't stop staring. It wasn't her Rose, wasn't the woman who was as close to her as her own mother-perhaps closer, because River loved her parents, loved them more than almost anything, but Rose knew things. She understood. And she was dead. She'd spent almost five centuries trying to get back to the Doctor, and she was dead.

"I'm sorry," Alistair said softly and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. River blinked. When had he entered the TARDIS? How long had she been standing there? "Were you close?"

She took a deep breath. There was still work to be done. "No, not really, not this Rose." And then she closed a door in her mind and turned to face him.

"What do we do now?" Captain Magambo wanted to know.

"Now, we wait for Donna Noble."

Donna wanted to jump for joy. She wanted to grab one of the people walking past her and pull them into a hug or a dance or something! She was back! It was Monday morning! It worked! Then she glanced down at the watch, and all the joy drained out of her. She had four minutes to find herself and convince past Donna to turn left, but she was in Sutton Court-half a mile away!

She began to run. It felt familiar, almost comforting. But she wasn't a runner, never had been. She hated running, but something about it made her feel safe. Maybe the Doctor liked running. Maybe it was bleeding through. So she ran, and she ran, but finally she had to stop. This body wasn't used to running. This Donna hadn't lived that life-and she wasn't going to make it.

She needed a way to make sure that past her would turn left. Mickey's words rang in her ears. You're gonna die. She looked up at the road. There was a truck coming. A strange sort of calm settled over her. It felt like the floor had dropped out beneath her, but her mind was clear. "Please," she said, and sent a prayer to whatever god might be listening. And then she stepped out into the road, in front of the truck.

Past Donna was sitting at the intersection in the car with her mother. "Oh, I know why you want to work at H.C. Clements," Sylvia Noble snapped. "It's 'cause you think you'll meet a man! We let me tell you something lady, posh executives only use temps for practice."

She thought about replying, about telling her mum to shove it, and then she sighed. "Yeah, you're probably right," and she flipped the blinker on to turn right. And then the cars heading that direction stopped. A goodly line built up, five or six at least.

"D'you think there's been an accident?" her mum asked.

Donna snorted. "I'm not waiting in that! That decides it-I'm going left." She turned her blinker back the way it originally was, and history was put back on course.

Donna Noble lay on the pavement. She wasn't in pain, which was strange, and she was pretty sure that it wasn't a good thing. She was tired, so, so tired, and darkness was gathering at the edges of her vision. Just as she closed her eyes, she remembered Rose's words.

Tell him 'Bad Wolf.'