Sounds Like Destiny | Queen of the Winter Night 3/5
Title: Queen of the Winter Night 3/5
Author: Tess/mihane_echo
Rating: Rated E for everyone
Word Count: 8153/31694
Pairing: Ten/Donna
Spoilers: Through 4.13 Journey's End
Summary: The Doctor is thrust back into an amnesiac Donna's path when an alien seeks sanctuary with her.
Disclaimer: The canon stuff belongs to the Beeb and I'm borrowing it to play with. Everything else I made up for my entertainment.
Author's Note: Okay, this has taken like ten thousand years, but here is the first story of my Sounds Like Destiny series, affectionately referred to as AU Series 5. This story replaces The Next Doctor as the Christmas story after Journey's End.
Author's Note 2: Thanks to my beta and good friend lilianvaldemyer for her patience, support and frequent butt-kicking. More thanks than I have words for really. ily darling <3
She was cold.
Actually, she was hot. A migraine, dull and throbbing like the steady drip of a leaky tap, played on her temples and drummed at the backs of Donna's eyes. It was the ground beneath her that was cold. There was a blanket thrown over her and someone's lap under her head, but neither helped the cold sidewalk against her back.
Thump, thump went the migraine.
changed my life.
it's no fun if I see it on my own.
Thin brown silhouette in her arms. Trembling.
She wanted to protect him.
Quite involuntarily, a noise came out of her; a garbled breath, a word? Something that might've even been a name. Above her, someone was saying her own.
The person whose lap she was borrowing shifted, cradling her head more securely while their hand brushed back the hair at the side of her face. Someone else was holding her wrist, fingers feeling for a pulse.
She started to move, to open her eyes and tell them she was all right. A clatter of percussive pain beat the back of her forehead and she stilled with a whimper.
Drip, drip went the tap.
tocomewithyoucomewithme?
In the box. The tiny, huge box.
any planet any where any when in the whole wide are you all
right- sometimes I need someone.
Fragments of memories, scattered and mismatched as if in a dream, and completely in the wrong order- at once, Donna realised they were coming to her backwards. The fact that she recalled a chronological order at all was cause for alarm.
It's too soon, she thought; or perhaps she said it. The person (Dylan?) mumbled something back.
I am so sorry. But we had the best of times. The best.
I can't go back. Don't make me go back.
Goodbye.
No, no, no, WAIT, please!
She hadn't said that. She should have. If they had waited, if she'd tried harder, she might've remembered.
Remembered what? Something crucial, something momentous and brilliant and so very unlikely. What was it?
"Donna!"
The world came rushing back in a cacophony of sound. She could hear panicky people clamouring about what had happened and even more panicky people beyond the police cordon she could see out of the corner of her eye.
Right above her was a familiar, worried-looking Irishman. Dylan straightened his spectacles. "All right?"
Her head still hurt, even as she pushed herself up. The paramedic gently held her shoulder. "Miss, you ought to stay still."
"No, I'm all right," mumbled Donna, squinting around. There were still people being loaded onto gurneys and into ambulances. Police officers were spread out in little groups of ones and twos, securing statements from the bystanders.
It wasn't until she had scanned the whole street twice that Donna realised she was looking for a police box. And she was disappointed that he wasn't there.
He. Not it.
She felt another drip from the tap, adding to the volume already in her mind. The thin man in the brown suit and his police box were becoming clearer.
"Oh no."
Dylan looked round, wondering what she was staring at. "What?"
Heart racing, Donna reached up; her friend took her hand automatically and helped her to her feet. The paramedic held his hands out to catch her, but she stood without wobbling. That sensation of a cold draft sweeping in behind her returned; lighter and less pronounced, but she recognised it. Immediately she covered her eyes with her hand.
"Nooo, not now," she moaned.
Think of something else. Spiders. X Factor. Curry. Mortgage.
Her mind was a blur of images, flashes out of the corner of her eye that disappeared when she looked straight at them. She squinted at the paramedic, sure he had long sausages oozing out of his mouth; frightened, she gave her head a shake to clear it.
This time when she looked at him, he was an ordinary bloke.
"Miss, you all right?"
Her hands still shading her eyes, she nodded slowly. "I just... I need a minute. I've had a turn, is all. Migraine."
"Donna, do you want to go to hospital?"
The paramedic looked all too ready to comply with Dylan's suggestion, and Donna couldn't have that. She needed to go home. Ab-- Don't say the name. It. The thing, she urged herself. It was at home. She could take in her usual aromatherapy, relax and go on about forgetting.
She mugged for him. "Naaah. I'm fine. I think I'll go home and wait for this to pass. I get them all the time." Glancing sideways at Dylan, she pressed her lips together, pleading him with her eyes to back her.
After a long moment, he nodded, running a hand through his shaggy black hair. "I'll take you. If you're having a migraine you're in no fit state to drive."
She didn't linger to say thank you to the medic or wait for Dylan; taking deep steady breaths and long strides, Donna marched herself back to the antiques shop, her eyes on the ground as she weaved through the crowd of people and accident workers and police.
She leaned her elbows atop the roof of Dylan's green sedan, parked in front of the shop. "Don't think," she whispered to herself. "Don't think, don't think..."
The door to the shop creaked open, and she looked up. Dylan was heading inside. "Oi!"
"Don't you want your things? Your coat, your purse?"
"I'm sort of dying here," she stressed through gritted teeth. "I need to go home."
"I've got to lock up anyway. It'll just take a tick!"
She growled out a sigh and followed him in. He disappeared into the back room, presumably to see to the back door, leaving Donna on her own. She leaned over the counter to grab her coat and purse, pulling them on irritably. The man had no sense of emergency.
Though, he might, if she bothered to tell him she hadn't been kidding when she said she was dying.
She probably wasn't, in all actuality. The pain didn't seem so bad now. She had a slight fever but otherwise the metacrisis was holding itself back--
"Damn!" Donna clapped her hand to her forehead, held it as the pain surged. The slightest thought, as simple as a word, could do her in.
Chiswick. Boring, mundane, ordinary Chiswick. Nothing to see, nowhere to go. Just stay that way, Donna Noble.
Breathing hard, she turned, leaned her back against the counter. Her gaze was drawn, as it always was, to the window display of Christmas ornaments. Softly glinting in the dying sunlight, they seemed to radiate magic.
There was a piece that didn't belong sitting on the edge of the table, a tarnished brass handmirror lying glass-side up. Vaguely she remembered a woman abandoning it in a huff when she had given her lip about TK Maxx.
Automatically she went and picked it up, intending to return it to whichever table it belonged. It was a bit heavy, and she did a double take in the glass, watched her reflection's eyebrows narrow. "Oi! You weigh a bleedin' ton."
She admired it for a minute. She couldn't recall having ever seen it before, but Dylan was always finding new pieces and just chucking them in the store with hardly a second glance. For someone who ran an antiques shop, he didn't seem that interested in the merchandise.
She turned the mirror over. The back was fashioned into the image of a delicate bird with a lovely crested head. His outstretched wings made up the frame around the looking glass, and his long tailfeathers formed the handle. The sharp curves of his feathers brought to mind the image of flickering flames.
The bird born from fire, rising from the ashes.
A phoenix.
I hope I can tell you all this myself.
If you're watching this--
With a scream of pain, Donna dropped the mirror. It crashed to the floor and she dropped beside it, crouched on her knees, hands clutching her head. Tears welled under her closed eyelids.
Now don't do this to me. No, don't, don't do this to me. Not now.
You never give up. Please.
That's what you do, you're the Doctor, you save people!
Not this time-
The heels of her palms pressed to her eyes, blotting out any light that could peek through but in the darkness she could still see afterimages. Phantom lights swirling and spreading against the backs of her eyelids, formless shapes of baked potato heads and fluttering wasps.
Dylan called her name as he dropped to her side, his fingers grasping at her arm. His voice sounded impossibly loud, a banging metal drum over the din in her mind, and she cringed, shouting at him.
"Stop! Stop, please stop! Don't say anything... my head!"
"C'mon," he whispered, hauling her to her feet; she wasn't able to stand and she sagged against him. "We're going to the hospital."
"No!"
Struggling, Donna creaked her eyes open, looking for him. Her fingers grasped the lapels of his coat and she stared, shaking and desperate, into his green eyes. "Home. Take me home, please."
He opened his mouth to insist, and she shook her head.
"What I need is at home, Dylan, please. If you want to help me then take me home."
.
The TARDIS gave a great straining creak as it hurtled through the vortex. The Doctor's face was stony, staring into the middle distance as he circled the console, pressing this and twirling that. At his side, Sarah Jane attempted to straighten her muffler with one hand, but gave up as the world went sideways again.
Her eyes met the Doctor's as he flopped forward onto his belly, reaching for a switch higher up on the panel. For the life of her, she couldn't tell if the expression on her friend's face was anger or pain.
"What happened between the two of you?" she demanded, wincing as the G-forces pulling on her made the bruised hip ache even worse. "I'm not lacking intuition, Doctor, I can tell something happened!"
"It doesn't matter," he said, flipping the switch; the floor flattened again. "She's gone, I miss her, that's it."
Sarah Jane stared at him, her green eyes shining with emotion. "Of course it matters! She chose to travel with you. Do you think it doesn't hurt being left behind? Not just for her, but for you! You're better when you're with someone, Doctor, you always have been!"
He seemed to ignore her, concentrating on the controls, but she knew him. How often had they gone like that, in days past? She with something to say and he with too much on his mind, but he usually heard her. She knew he could hear her now.
"You can't just give up, Doctor. You may not get another chance."
His jaw tightened. "You were the one who told me that everything has its time. Maybe Donna and I just can't be together, maybe it was our time--"
"But what if it wasn't?" pleaded Sarah Jane. "Did you even ask her? Or did you just take her home and talk yourself out of ever going back for her?"
"It's not that simple--"
"It is that simple!"
His face contorted with anger and he slammed on the brake; the timeship gave a knee-rattling clunk as it hit the ground of their destination. Before Sarah Jane could stand, the Doctor was at her side. He kept his face blank, a study in detachment, but she knew that he could not be truly apathetic to something that upset him so much.
"Donna doesn't know who I am," he said, his voice low and even. "The Time Lord consciousness she got from me was killing her and the only way I could save her was to block it from her mind. So she doesn't know me. Or you, or anyone else. She doesn't know what we did or where we went. She can never remember any of it or she will burn up and she will die."
Stunned, Sarah Jane sat there, mouth hanging open. "What?"
For a heartbeat, he looked as though he wanted to say more. She could still see a fury in his eyes, black thoughts that had no outlet, but it wasn't caused by her.
Instead he stepped back, returned to the scanner and pressed in a few commands. Left where she was, Sarah Jane pressed her hand to her mouth, swept up in a wave of remorse, for what her friend had gone through, for goading him. She sniffed, pulling herself to her full height.
"T-That's... I'm so sorry, Doctor. That's awful." She shook her head. "I never could have done that. I never would want to forget you."
"Neither did she."
She looked over at him; the Time Lord was leaning against the console, his shoulders hunched and his face dark with rage, almost malevolent. "She begged me not to and I did it anyway," he spat.
"You... what?"
Sarah Jane could not believe what he'd said. To lobotomise a friend begging for their life didn't seem like something the Doctor could do, and yet in the same instant she knew he was telling her the truth. Her insides churned with acidic disgust.
His eyes flickered up to her, but he quickly looked away. She knew he felt reproached by the obvious accusation on her face, untempered by any compassion for his feelings or reasoning that there might have been due cause for his actions.
She was angry with him, and it showed.
"How could you?" she demanded, her voice low, barely restrained. "How could you just... You had no right! No right! If she said no, if she wanted to--"
"To what? To die?!"
His voice was so loud that Sarah Jane flinched, and when he went to his feet, fists clenched at his sides, dark eyes burning hot and furious, even his brown hair seeming to stand on end, she shrank back the slightest bit. He towered over her, his chest heaving; he looked quite mad.
"It was killing her! There was no middle ground, it was forget me and live or stay and die! I couldn't let it just burn her up, not if I could stop it! And you don't get to judge me, Sarah! Don't you dare. Unless you can tell me what would you do, if you had a choice? If you had to watch someone you--"
He clapped his mouth shut, forcibly swallowed the next word. His eyes, which had been so clear during his rage, smouldered with emotion now, and the expressionless mask he'd worn so steadfastly slipped. For the first time Sarah Jane could see how lost her Doctor was; had been, this whole time.
He wrenched his gaze away, to the floor, gathered his strength. "Someone you cared about, Sarah," he said miserably. "Between watching them die or saving them in the cruellest way, what would you choose?"
She looked down, her small hands gripping the edge of her muffler tight. She felt like a scolded child, and yet...
"It still wasn't right," she told him sadly.
"Neither was letting her die," the Doctor replied, brushing past her. He grabbed his greatcoat from the jump seat and then turned down the ramp, the grated floor clanking as his rubber soles thudded against it.
Sarah Jane lingered, musing on what she now knew. With a sigh, she followed him.
He was already treading gradually across the street, the sonic screwdriver held aloft in front of him; its blue light shone brightly in the low light of the winter afternoon. The quiet of the street was broken only by the sonic's beeping, a slow but regular pace.
He swept it over the general area, down the length of Wessex Lane and across to Mallard Street; like the needle of a compass, it pointed him towards the cottage on the corner. Still he moved forward, until his trainers crunched onto the gravel drive. The rapid trill of the sonic screwdriver was proof enough, and the Doctor lowered it, stowed it in his coat.
He shot a glance back at Sarah Jane, who glanced both ways and then darted across the street as well. He had paused at edge of the hedgerow.
"This can't be right," he muttered. She leaned in.
"What?"
"The signal's coming from inside the house," he said. "I thought maybe the garden, or the hilltop, but... Inside the house? It must be a shapeshifter, or else something that would look perfectly ordinary inside a human household, because they'd notice something alien."
She looked sympathetically at him. "Looks like you'll have to knock on the door." The Doctor grimaced but didn't move. After a moment she gave a determined little nod.
"All right then."
And she marched to the door.
.
It was right there. On the edge of his mind, the tip of his tongue--
The doorbell went.
Wilf gave a little moan, glancing towards the front door automatically, then back to his crossword. An eight-letter word for marvellously unfamiliar was now gone, startled away by the arrival of guests. Probably Ross Noble and his family.
He tossed the pencil onto the book and shuffled down the hallway, creaked the door open to keep out the chill. "Yes?"
A dark-haired woman bundled to her ears smiled brightly at him. "Oh! Hello. I hope I'm not interrupting anything, but..." She stepped aside slightly, letting a longish fellow slide into view. Longish, in a pinstripe suit and with brown stick-uppy hair.
Wilf felt his knees wobble at the sight of the Doctor.
"Hullo, Wilfred," the alien man said. "It's sort of important."
.
Everything was going wrong.
It was bad enough she'd gotten involved with a person like the Queen, with her heartless soldiers of ice. Even now, as Ophelia crouched in an alley on the edge of the town, hot tears streaming down her cold cheeks, the Frost stood perfectly still, like malevolent statues. She should have realised that when she gave them orders that they would carry them out as soldiers do.
She had never seen violence like that before.
It was easy to say she would never rest until she found Abies, and easier still to resent the humans with the way they tore through what they called "natural resources," as if those beings didn't have lives, or covered their precious green with tarmac and steel.
But it had not been easy to watch the Frost retaliate against a young man who had only bumped into them, a young man no older than she. To watch a mother shield her small child; to watch as the ice blast swallowed that little street, felling everyone it touched, innocent people who had no idea what was happening.
Or why.
If it had happened on Pinastra, she would have been shocked, outraged. She would've been a part of the healing process, along with Abies.
But she had allowed it to happen.
How had she strayed so far? And in the presence of someone who could punish her.
Ophelia bit down hard on her lip, chill bumps crawling up her arms as she remembered the woman with the red hair. That woman had come into the cloud of her own free will, not knowing or caring what it could do, to stop her and the Frost. To protect the people around her.
When she had threatened her, and her eyes opened, the scent Ophelia knew as Abies' had been overlaid by a wholly different smell. The scent of time.
The woman had been a Time Lord.
Abies had told her when she was a child, of Time Lords who stepped from a plinth of sapphire to rain destruction on those deserving. They were the judges of the wicked and saviours of the oppressed.
He had always spoken of them with a light heart and admiration, but Ophelia couldn't help but fear them. They became her childhood conscience. Don't misbehave. Or the Time Lord will come for you.
And now, she had.
"Ophelia."
The Queen's voice startled her out of her thoughts. She turned her head this way and that, looking for a sign of her. One of the Frost stepped forward. "I'm here, you ridiculous fool."
Ophelia looked up, at the Frost. The Queen's voice was emanating from their frozen bodies, the same way it seemed to come from the comet itself. "Yes, Your Magnificence?"
"I hope you haven't forgotten your promise to me," the Queen said in her eerie whisper.
Ophelia's heart sank. She had already dealt enough pain, brought on enough guilt and shame, to do anything the villainous woman desired. But Abies appeared in her mind, like an oasis in the desert, and she closed her eyes. A final tear slipped down her cheek.
"No, ma'am."
"Good," the Queen crooned. "Because I've found what I want."
.
The Noble home had not changed much in the five months since the Doctor had last been there. There was still the small sideboard at the end of the hall, over which were several photographs of Donna as a child. It was topped with an immaculately-kept lace runner and a vase of flowers. Neither vase nor flowers were ever the same, and today it was a beautiful arrangement of Christmas amaryllis, the rich red of their petals standing out against the frosted glass of the bowl they were in. He found himself staring at them. Anything to distract him from the photos above them.
A quarter of a century might have passed, but those were still Donna's eyes looking out at him.
Wilf had ushered the Doctor and Sarah Jane in from the cold and hardly shut the door behind them before throwing a hug on the Time Lord. Despite himself, the Doctor had embraced him in return, smiling broadly. The old man seemed to be in good health, and that was never a bad thing.
When he pulled away, he could see the worry written plainly on Wilf's face.
"I was afraid you might turn up," he said.
The Doctor balked. "It's good to see you again too."
"Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you're safe." He squinted his green eyes at the Doctor. "Although you do look a bit peaky."
The Doctor opened his mouth, preparing a retort; with luck, he'd manage enough bluster to rebuff the idea that anything could've happened to him. But Wilf waved a hand dismissively before he got the chance.
"Never mind. It's just... I don't know whether to be tickled or worried, to be honest."
"Why?"
He seemed hesitant to speak, his hands wringing themselves slightly. The moment lasted long enough for a knot to form in the Doctor's stomach; as concerns for Donna rose to the front, whatever was holding Wilf back resolved itself. He tipped his head in acquiescence.
"Donna remembers you."
The knot pulled taut. "No, she can't. It's impossible."
"She said your name, I was there," said Wilf. "Her eyes were glowing. Scared me half to death. And that wasn't all, it was the strangest thing..."
Donna remembers you. Nothing beyond those three words registered to the Time Lord, with the exception of a rather solid thump as he sank back against the wall. Three simple words, three words he both longed to hear and was terrified by. To be someone to her again, someone more than a faceless stranger... He would give everything. Anything.
Except her life.
Because knowing Donna Noble was alive was his light. Even if he could never be with her, there was nothing in the world so terrible that it could outweigh the knowledge that she was safe.
"Why don't we have some tea?" Sarah Jane suggested gently. "It would do us some good."
Actually, that was a brilliant idea. The Doctor squeezed his eyes shut. He was being ridiculous. "No, sorry. We have to think. Something came here, something alien. We have to find it before the Queen does."
"The Queen?" Wilf sounded bewildered.
"A Snow Queen," Sarah Jane supplied. "An alien creature who makes trophies out of people. She's on her way here now, looking for something that landed here a couple weeks ago. On the seventh."
"Here? In Chiswick?"
"No, here, in your garden." The Doctor looked at Wilf with urgency. "It's in the house, Wilfred. It's something that appears completely normal here, and you don't think one way or another about it. It's something I need to get out before the Queen gets here or all of you will be in danger."
The old man puffed out his chest. "Well, that's what I was trying to tell you. It was the Christmas tree."
The Doctor stared. "What?"
"Yeah. Me and Donna were up on the hill and there was this raggedy old tree laid up by the back door. Donna touched it and whoosh, her eyes went gold. And the tree --it was half-dead, mind-- turned into the prettiest thing you've ever seen." He moved down the hall, beckoning them to come along, and disappeared under the stairwell into the front room.
The Doctor followed, Sarah Jane at his elbow.
The front room was lit by only the fairy lights on the tree and a few lamps, but as they entered, Wilf flipped the light switch. There was a fuzzy green afghan crumpled on the sofa and, on the coffee table, a bottle of medication and a paperback copy of Murder on the Orient Express. A bookmark was sticking out of the middle.
The whole room smelled of jasmine and pine. The jasmine was subtle, overpowered by the dry fragrance of the tree, not something a human nose would detect. But the Doctor's senses caught it.
Slowly he moved forward to the table and picked up the bottle of pills. "Acetaminophen," he read. He looked up at Wilf. "She gets headaches?"
"Migraines," said Wilf. "For months, after she came home. She still needs them sometimes, but she started getting better after we found the tree. That's when she started sleeping in here."
The Doctor looked around. He'd found her sleeping in the library on the TARDIS once, a book half-closed on her lap and chest rising and falling lightly as she dreamed. It was that image he recalled now, her head turned down into the arm, ginger curls splayed out, her fuzzy afghan draped over her.
He didn't know what it was that compelled him to pick up the afghan, but once he had, he couldn't help bending his head slowly and bringing the soft wool to his face. He breathed deep.
His hearts twisted as Donna's familiar scent overwhelmed his senses. His fingers clenched into a tight knot.
Sarah Jane cleared her throat behind him. "Doctor."
He sniffed hard, dropping the afghan back where it lay. "Right. The tree." He turned to it, slipping around the table and reaching into his pocket for his spectacles. "Not an ordinary tree, not if it's done what you said. And that smell..."
"Smells like a Christmas tree," said Wilf.
"Yeah, it does." The Doctor sounded distant, already thinking. "But there's something else."
He peered through the branches and needles at the trunk, shifting and hunching as he prowled around it. Then, hesitantly, he lifted a hand and made to reach into it.
"Is that safe?" wondered Sarah Jane. "It regenerated itself when Donna touched it, what if it absorbs one's life force in some way?"
The Doctor stuck his tongue between his teeth. "Then it's about to get a hell of a burst out of me."
And he stuck his hands into the branches.
As he drew them apart gently, a tiny pair of beady brown eyes opened abruptly on the trunk. He snatched his hands back in surprise. "Whoah!!"
"What is it?" asked Sarah Jane and Wilf.
"Eyes," the Doctor replied heartily, smiling. "Our friend here is definitely an alien."
Doctor... came a soft, grandfatherly voice. You're finally here.
.
Opening her eyes as she landed, Ophelia watched the wisps of gaseous teleport rush off her like sheets of falling water. She lifted her gaze from the ground and looked around her. The Queen had directed her to a residential area.
Like the commercial wasteland, the flora of this place had also been desecrated. The long street, lined by large homes, went on as far as she could see. True, there were many more trees and flowers here than where she had been previously, but it was still nothing like home.
And yet, as disrespectful and avaricious as the humans were, she found herself breathing a sigh of relief that there were so few humans on the street. Maybe she could avoid a second incident with the volatile Frost.
She lifted her wrist and slid her thumb across the touchscreen; Abies' signal was clear once more, beeping steadily.
She turned to the Frost. "Follow me," she ordered them. "And do nothing without my explicit say so."
Grimly she turned back down the long street, and began to walk.
.
"Did everyone else just hear that as well?" Wilf pressed his hands to his ears, his green eyes round with surprise.
"He's using telepathy," Sarah Jane explained. She moved forward to stand at the Doctor's elbow as he began to talk.
"You know me?"
The tree hummed with warm admiration, his needles bristling slightly against the Doctor's palm. It has been a long time. Centuries, in fact. But neither I, nor any being of Pinastra, shall ever forget the face of the saviour of our planet in our time of greatest need.
The Doctor's face lit up. "Oh, Pinastra! That explains the smell, you're a Pinastran! I'd love to go there. And apparently I will. What's your name?" His eyes crinkled in contemplation. "And Pinastra's half a galaxy away; what are you doing way out here?"
I am called Abies of Pharospratum, and I am the last of the Great Fir Bohema of Pinastra. I came here because she bid me do so if I ever needed assistance, the tired voice came again, husky and soft in their heads.
"Who? Donna?" Confusion furrowed the Time Lord's brow. "When?"
In the time before the Last Great Time War, when my meadow was in danger, the blue box brought the Time Lords to our aid, the Doctor and the Phoenix. When the crisis had ended, she promised I could come to her for anything should I need it.
The great tree sighed. But what was ages past for me has not happened yet for her. I never imagined when I came to her that she would not know me. Nor that she would not know you, Doctor.
"You've made a mistake, Donna isn't a Time Lord." He folded his arms, his lips pressed together with regret. "She gleaned a bit of my mind, but I had to take it away."
Not away, said Abies. Hidden, mayhaps. But your face lives on in her mind. She dreams of you each night.
"That's dangerous," the Doctor said harshly. "It could kill her. She's a human, she can't have that sort of knowledge in her head. If she ever realised what you are and remembered, she'd die."
Perchance at one time. It does her little harm now; I have been assisting her.
"Assisting how?" Sarah Jane interjected. Before the old tree could answer, the Doctor turned to look at her over his shoulder.
"All species of Pinastrans have the ability to heal. Wounds of all kinds, physical, emotional, mental. In ancient times they had rallies called the Cathica Colours where travellers from all over the galaxies would come to be healed and saved. That deep, rich scent isn't just the aroma of a Christmas tree. It's called the Bohemallad Bouquet. The Great Fir Bohema emit a powerful mineral from their needles that..."
He stopped talking, his eyes going wide. "...stimulates brain activity."
For half a second, Sarah Jane could see the cogs turning in his head, the revelation in his eyes, the hope. "Stimulates," he said, "Of course! Great Fir Bohema can stimulate brain activity!"
He looked wildly from Abies to Wilf to Sarah Jane, his hands gesticulating as he talked. "Wounds of all kinds. Physical, emotional, temporal, alchemical, theoretical, academical--"
"Academical?" repeated Sarah Jane indignantly.
"--lamprophonical!" The Doctor stopped, squinting. "Is that a word?" He shook his head. "'Course it is. Anyway! Wounds of all kinds, including mental ones. It's like aromatherapy; the mineral in Abies' pheromones helps the brain to form more connections, newer and stronger. People who've suffered brain traumas like amnesia or aphasia can overcome them--"
He rubbed his hands over his hair and it stuck up like a rooster's comb; he seemed near hysterics. "Don't you see, he's helping Donna's mind adjust to the leftover regeneration energy she absorbed from my hand!"
"Adjust," repeated Wilf. "It's not getting rid of it?"
"No, nothing can do that," said the Doctor. "It's there, the only way to take it from her, really erase it from her body, would be for Donna to die."
"But what if her mind adjusts to it? She could remember you? She'd be like she was?"
The Doctor's mouth opened and closed reflexively, the only sign that he was struggling to keep his bearings. "Maybe, if we had the time! She's still human, and helping a human being adjust to the massive consciousness of a Time Lord in her head is..." Not impossible. Just... complicated.
He grimaced, holding back the rest of his thought for a moment, then said, "It would take a considerably long time for Donna to reach that point with only Abies doing it on his own."
There was a wretched hope in Wilf's face, so much that the Doctor couldn't bear to look at him, and yet to tear his gaze away would be an answer in itself. Please don't ask, he begged silently. I can't answer that. Not now.
Abruptly the great tree shuddered, the ornaments tinkling as they swayed on his branches. Unfortunately, Doctor, I do not have much time. I came to this planet to die.
The Doctor swallowed past the lump in his throat as Wilf sagged, visibly dejected by this news. He looked at Abies. "What does the Snow Queen want with you?"
My handler, Abies grated out, sounding weak. The child loves me and is not prepared to lose me. In her selfishness, she contracted the Queen for my preservation.
"In a tomb of ice?" demanded Sarah Jane. "Who would do that? Lock someone up to just keep them alive?"
The Doctor cleared his throat, giving her a look; she responded with such a glare of indignation he let the matter drop. He turned back to the tree.
"The Queen freezes you for your handler... What does she get in return?"
I know not; Ophelia would not tell me. I know it will be a heavy price. The Queen does not want for little.
"No," mused the Doctor. "I got that impression."
But you are welcome to ask her.
Three pairs of eyes shot to the great tree. "What?"
She is here.
The three of them moved as one to the windows. Wilf and Sarah Jane peered past lacy curtains in bewildered wonder at their newly-arrived company; the Doctor took a window of his own, parting the shades with the tips of his fingers just enough to get a quick glimpse.
Standing on the road at the end of the hedgerow were three figures. Two were tall and pearlescent white, wearing featureless pewter masks over their faces. Between them stood a small young woman with dark skin, dressed in red.
Sarah Jane spoke through her teeth. "I suppose it's ridiculous to hope they could be carollers."
"Time Lord!" The girl in red stepped forward onto the gravel drive, her voice ringing clearly out to the listeners inside. "I come on behalf of Her Magnificence the Snow Queen. Will you not show yourself?"
The Doctor chuckled grimly. "Sorry, Sarah." He pulled away from the window, moving towards the hall beneath the stairwell. Darting ahead of him, Sarah Jane placed herself in the archway. She shook her head vehemently.
"Doctor, it's a trap."
"Probably."
"And your cunning plan is to walk into the trap?"
He shrugged. "Part of the plan."
"So you have a plan?"
"'Course I do."
"And that is?"
"Setting fourteen-hundred-and-nine-B," he said, sliding past her and out the door.
.
To Dylan, the trembling figure curled in the passenger seat of his car looked as if she were dying. Her skin, usually dewy and white, was pallid and clammy, beaded with a fine layer of cold sweat. Her half-closed eyes rolled frantically beneath the lids, her lips moved soundlessly, as though she were speaking in tongues he could not hear.
It was strange that he should be so moved by her. She was human, after all, and he... was not.
She didn't know. No one did. No one knew the greatest secret of Dylan Healey and he liked it that way. Made his work easier. He had come to this planet to do a job and that didn't include falling in love with the loud-mouthed ginger woman who lived next door to him.
And yet he had, quite involuntarily.
She was someone special, someone unutterably brilliant and she couldn't even see it. It didn't matter that in the War he had witnessed atrocities... committed many of them. It didn't matter that there was work to be done that could alter the future of the human race. It didn't even matter that in his true inhuman form he was technically incapable of love.
Because with Donna Noble, the world found a way. Or she shouted until it did.
She whimpered and Dylan tore his eyes from the road for a quick glance at her. Her arms hugged her torso tight, fingers clenching the thick fabric of her coat.
His boot weighed a little heavier on the accelerator.
"We're almost there, Donna. Hang in there."
.
The Time Lord appeared in the doorway, and the sight of him sent a chill up Ophelia's spine. He looked wild and rakish, with dark eyes that seemed to stare through her. She straightened her shoulders and met his gaze, boasting a confidence she didn't feel, especially as he then moved down the steps and across the gravel driveway towards her, his brown coat swinging lightly with his gait.
He was imposingly tall.
His eyes roamed over her, sizing her up, and by the time they reached hers again, his glare had softened. "You're too young to be tied into service with someone like the Queen," he said quietly.
"I'll do what I must, if it saves Abies," replied Ophelia, albeit in a shaking voice. Behind him, at the door, she noticed a woman with brown hair had appeared, followed by a little old man. Ophelia's nerves steadied. "What would you do? To save someone you loved?"
"Horrible things," he said, and the girl thought she saw grief flash over his face. "Things I will never forgive myself for. So what you have to ask is will you be able to live with yourself if you entomb him, knowing he doesn't want it?"
"I can't live without him," she persisted. "He rescued me, with the Bohemallad-- when I was alone and had lost everything, he saved me. With his kindness and his cleverness, he guided me. He made me who I am!"
"And this is how you repay him? Eternal hibernation?"
"It's better than nothing!" Tears filled Ophelia's green eyes. "I would rather have him entombed in my presence than live on without him."
The Time Lord grimaced bitterly at her, his lips pressed together, his eyes filled with pain. "I understand. Believe me, I do. You have no idea, really." He shook his head. "But it doesn't make it right."
His words had such weight that they seemed to have a physical form in the air, and they echoed in Ophelia's head. For a half second, she faltered.
"Is he still alive?"
"Yes," replied the Time Lord.
She closed her eyes, a tear slipping down her cheek. Relief. And regret.
She opened her eyes. "May I go in and see him?"
He hesitated, gauging her demeanour. Then he stepped aside, his arm outstretched. "After you."
Ophelia moved past him, her heart pounding. They had only crossed the gravel by a few steps, enough for the Time Lord to begin to follow, his back exposed to the Frost.
She discreetly pressed a button on her wrist device.
There was a quiet whoosh, and then a crunch of something heavy landing on the gravel. Ophelia watched the Time Lord's companions' eyes widen in shock; the woman opened her mouth to cry out.
"Well done, Ophelia," came a soft voice.
As one, the Pinastran girl and the Time Lord spun back to see the Snow Queen standing just behind him, the wispy remnants of gaseous teleport sliding in sheathes off her white skin and clothes.
Impossibly fast, before he could move or speak, the Queen clamped down both hands on his shoulders with bruising force. He cried out loudly, trying to fight off the ice climbed up his body with the speed of rushing water. His hands were shaking so badly that he dropped the sonic device he'd been holding; it dropped with a thunk onto the gravel.
And then, tipping his head back to take one last long breath, he was swallowed by the ice.
.
"NO!"
The image she had feared had come to life right before Sarah Jane's eyes: the Doctor, frozen, his body trapped in a craggy pyramid of ice. It was so clear that she could see him as through a window, the desperation of a final breath on his face.
Standing in front of him, laughing gaily, the Snow Queen looked like the villain from a fairy tale, beautiful and horrible. Sarah Jane wasn't aware of yelling, only of running; she sped towards them, nothing in her head except to get to the Doctor.
Spotting the sonic by his feet, she stooped to pick it up. From the ground she aimed and sonicked-- not at the Queen, but at the Doctor, hoping to shatter the ice as she had done before.
The Snow Queen's dead eyes found Sarah like laserpoints.
"You again," she breathed.
With a lazy flick of her wrist, she sent another blast of frozen air into Sarah Jane. As before, the force of it was so strong that the human woman flew across the ground, tumbling over and again, before her body battered against the side of the house and crumpled in a heap
With a little gasp, Wilf hurried down the steps and crouched at Sarah's side, gently pulling her upright; she didn't respond. Anger jockeyed over fear as he watched the Queen stroke the frosted ice that encased the Doctor.
"He's mine," she was whispering. Her hands slid down the slope over the Doctor's closed eyes. "The last of the Time Lords, standing at my side forever in silent impotence..."
"Oi! Get your glassy hands off him, you arctic swine!"
The ice woman ignored him.
"Your Magnificence." Ophelia stepped forward, her voice and posture timid. "Abies is within."
The Queen sighed, sounding almost dreamy, her eyes still on the Doctor. "Why should I bother?"
Ophelia's heart clenched. "What?"
The black eyes glided lazily from the Time Lord to the girl, looking bored; her voice, quiet as always, was anything but. She sounded positively malicious. "I don't see the point of it. I have what I want. Why should I waste my energy stopping death for your raggedy little tree?"
The girl's fists tightened. Red swelled at the edge of her vision and she could barely speak for grinding her teeth. "Because I just sacrificed everything for it. I let him trust me and when his back was turned, I called you here. I watched innocent people get hurt and it was my fault-- and I only did it because that was your price!"
The Queen smirked. "That sounds like a personal problem."
Ophelia tasted blood as she bit her lip. The Queen moved around the frozen statue, and tipped her head patronisingly. "Don't fret, Ophelia Wode. Your tree will be saved."
She looked over at Wilf and Sarah Jane, who was now coming around but still hadn't gotten to her feet. "You will all be saved."
Ophelia looked from the Queen to the crouched humans, and placed herself between them. Tears glittered unshed in her eyes. "What are you going to do?"
The Queen clicked her tongue, surveying the landscape. "This place is lovelier than I could ever have imagined. There's something so perfectly defiant in it. Arrogance," her voice sparked with devilish glee. "The humans come by their conceit honestly."
Her dead black eyes fell on Ophelia. "I shall freeze the entire planet."
"No!" Sarah Jane stirred, struggling to pull herself up on Wilf's arm.
"Your Magnificence, please don't," implored Ophelia. "You don't need to! You have what you want. Let the humans live their lives."
"And let someone else gather this planet for themselves, now that their guardian is gone?" Her fur coat swinging over the gravel, she swept back around, her hand outstretched and resting on top of the ice-Doctor's head.
"No. This blue bauble shall be mine. Be sure to stay by your Abies' side as I swathe everything in an endless winter. You'll be together for a long time."
Her blue lips curled into a wicked smile, cold and cruel. The four of them, Queen, Doctor and Frost, were enveloped by plumes of gas.
And just like that, they were gone.
.
Her heart was racing.
So fast, ba-dump-dump, ba-dump-dump. She could almost imagine she had two in there.
A tiny smile graced her lips and then the pain blazed again, and Donna twisted with a groan. It seemed as if the whole world was burning around her. Everything was a blur of white-hot pain and noise that stabbed at her eardrums. A fever unlike anything she'd ever experienced began to rage in the front of her mind, igniting the memories that lay dormant within her.
Sleeping Beauty, waking placidly from a pleasant dream, she was not. The self that had been frozen by the Doctor was thawing out, coming back to life-- and it hurt.
She had to get home before it was too late.
Her stomach dropped out as the car roared over a hill, the engine humming eagerly under Dylan's masterful driving. "Still with me, Donna?"
He sounded far away, and his voice grew fainter as the thoughts in her head grew louder, clearer, stronger, like a beacon calling to her from across time.
Force pulled on her as the car swung a right, a turn she recognised from repetition. She chanced opening her eyes just a smidge.
Something bright and shining scanned over her face, and Donna flinched, her eyes shutting reflexively. Then she opened them again, slowly.
A tall police call box was standing on the corner across from her house, the lamp glinting in the fading sunlight.
"Dylan, stop!"
He obeyed immediately. The car had barely come to a full stop before Donna snapped off her seatbelt and flung open the door in one motion. Her knees gave out instantly, but she dragged herself up, staggering over the road towards the box.
Emerging from the end of the hedgerow, she halted in her tracks, a deer caught in the hunter's scope. The two ice women from before, now flanked by an even taller alien creature, were standing on her drive. Someone, a man, was encased in crystalline ice just in front of them.
She recognised the thin body and the blue suit he was wearing.
Doctor!
Without thinking she moved forward, her legs wobbling like jelly. She opened her mouth to call out his name, but before the breath had left her lungs the ice woman and her soldiers vanished-- taking the Doctor with them.
Her heart sank. The ground fell out beneath her feet.
No... No, no, no!
"Donna!"
Dylan appeared at her side, hooking an arm under hers and lifting her up. She looked up at him, shaking her head.
"He's gone, they took him--"
"What? Who did? Took who?"
A little white head with alarmed green eyes peered out around the hedge. "Donna!"
"Gramps!"
"I thought I heard Dylan calling you--" Wilf bustled over, tears in his eyes. He looked as though he'd had a bad fright. "Oh my girl, what are you doing here, you oughtn't be here!" Too blatantly, he tried to direct Donna towards the house, her back to the TARDIS.
She shook her head. "It's all right, Gramps... I remember."
continued in part four
back to part two
Author: Tess/mihane_echo
Rating: Rated E for everyone
Word Count: 8153/31694
Pairing: Ten/Donna
Spoilers: Through 4.13 Journey's End
Summary: The Doctor is thrust back into an amnesiac Donna's path when an alien seeks sanctuary with her.
Disclaimer: The canon stuff belongs to the Beeb and I'm borrowing it to play with. Everything else I made up for my entertainment.
Author's Note: Okay, this has taken like ten thousand years, but here is the first story of my Sounds Like Destiny series, affectionately referred to as AU Series 5. This story replaces The Next Doctor as the Christmas story after Journey's End.
Author's Note 2: Thanks to my beta and good friend lilianvaldemyer for her patience, support and frequent butt-kicking. More thanks than I have words for really. ily darling <3
She was cold.
Actually, she was hot. A migraine, dull and throbbing like the steady drip of a leaky tap, played on her temples and drummed at the backs of Donna's eyes. It was the ground beneath her that was cold. There was a blanket thrown over her and someone's lap under her head, but neither helped the cold sidewalk against her back.
Thump, thump went the migraine.
changed my life.
it's no fun if I see it on my own.
Thin brown silhouette in her arms. Trembling.
She wanted to protect him.
Quite involuntarily, a noise came out of her; a garbled breath, a word? Something that might've even been a name. Above her, someone was saying her own.
The person whose lap she was borrowing shifted, cradling her head more securely while their hand brushed back the hair at the side of her face. Someone else was holding her wrist, fingers feeling for a pulse.
She started to move, to open her eyes and tell them she was all right. A clatter of percussive pain beat the back of her forehead and she stilled with a whimper.
Drip, drip went the tap.
tocomewithyoucomewithme?
In the box. The tiny, huge box.
any planet any where any when in the whole wide are you all
right- sometimes I need someone.
Fragments of memories, scattered and mismatched as if in a dream, and completely in the wrong order- at once, Donna realised they were coming to her backwards. The fact that she recalled a chronological order at all was cause for alarm.
It's too soon, she thought; or perhaps she said it. The person (Dylan?) mumbled something back.
I am so sorry. But we had the best of times. The best.
I can't go back. Don't make me go back.
Goodbye.
No, no, no, WAIT, please!
She hadn't said that. She should have. If they had waited, if she'd tried harder, she might've remembered.
Remembered what? Something crucial, something momentous and brilliant and so very unlikely. What was it?
"Donna!"
The world came rushing back in a cacophony of sound. She could hear panicky people clamouring about what had happened and even more panicky people beyond the police cordon she could see out of the corner of her eye.
Right above her was a familiar, worried-looking Irishman. Dylan straightened his spectacles. "All right?"
Her head still hurt, even as she pushed herself up. The paramedic gently held her shoulder. "Miss, you ought to stay still."
"No, I'm all right," mumbled Donna, squinting around. There were still people being loaded onto gurneys and into ambulances. Police officers were spread out in little groups of ones and twos, securing statements from the bystanders.
It wasn't until she had scanned the whole street twice that Donna realised she was looking for a police box. And she was disappointed that he wasn't there.
He. Not it.
She felt another drip from the tap, adding to the volume already in her mind. The thin man in the brown suit and his police box were becoming clearer.
"Oh no."
Dylan looked round, wondering what she was staring at. "What?"
Heart racing, Donna reached up; her friend took her hand automatically and helped her to her feet. The paramedic held his hands out to catch her, but she stood without wobbling. That sensation of a cold draft sweeping in behind her returned; lighter and less pronounced, but she recognised it. Immediately she covered her eyes with her hand.
"Nooo, not now," she moaned.
Think of something else. Spiders. X Factor. Curry. Mortgage.
Her mind was a blur of images, flashes out of the corner of her eye that disappeared when she looked straight at them. She squinted at the paramedic, sure he had long sausages oozing out of his mouth; frightened, she gave her head a shake to clear it.
This time when she looked at him, he was an ordinary bloke.
"Miss, you all right?"
Her hands still shading her eyes, she nodded slowly. "I just... I need a minute. I've had a turn, is all. Migraine."
"Donna, do you want to go to hospital?"
The paramedic looked all too ready to comply with Dylan's suggestion, and Donna couldn't have that. She needed to go home. Ab-- Don't say the name. It. The thing, she urged herself. It was at home. She could take in her usual aromatherapy, relax and go on about forgetting.
She mugged for him. "Naaah. I'm fine. I think I'll go home and wait for this to pass. I get them all the time." Glancing sideways at Dylan, she pressed her lips together, pleading him with her eyes to back her.
After a long moment, he nodded, running a hand through his shaggy black hair. "I'll take you. If you're having a migraine you're in no fit state to drive."
She didn't linger to say thank you to the medic or wait for Dylan; taking deep steady breaths and long strides, Donna marched herself back to the antiques shop, her eyes on the ground as she weaved through the crowd of people and accident workers and police.
She leaned her elbows atop the roof of Dylan's green sedan, parked in front of the shop. "Don't think," she whispered to herself. "Don't think, don't think..."
The door to the shop creaked open, and she looked up. Dylan was heading inside. "Oi!"
"Don't you want your things? Your coat, your purse?"
"I'm sort of dying here," she stressed through gritted teeth. "I need to go home."
"I've got to lock up anyway. It'll just take a tick!"
She growled out a sigh and followed him in. He disappeared into the back room, presumably to see to the back door, leaving Donna on her own. She leaned over the counter to grab her coat and purse, pulling them on irritably. The man had no sense of emergency.
Though, he might, if she bothered to tell him she hadn't been kidding when she said she was dying.
She probably wasn't, in all actuality. The pain didn't seem so bad now. She had a slight fever but otherwise the metacrisis was holding itself back--
"Damn!" Donna clapped her hand to her forehead, held it as the pain surged. The slightest thought, as simple as a word, could do her in.
Chiswick. Boring, mundane, ordinary Chiswick. Nothing to see, nowhere to go. Just stay that way, Donna Noble.
Breathing hard, she turned, leaned her back against the counter. Her gaze was drawn, as it always was, to the window display of Christmas ornaments. Softly glinting in the dying sunlight, they seemed to radiate magic.
There was a piece that didn't belong sitting on the edge of the table, a tarnished brass handmirror lying glass-side up. Vaguely she remembered a woman abandoning it in a huff when she had given her lip about TK Maxx.
Automatically she went and picked it up, intending to return it to whichever table it belonged. It was a bit heavy, and she did a double take in the glass, watched her reflection's eyebrows narrow. "Oi! You weigh a bleedin' ton."
She admired it for a minute. She couldn't recall having ever seen it before, but Dylan was always finding new pieces and just chucking them in the store with hardly a second glance. For someone who ran an antiques shop, he didn't seem that interested in the merchandise.
She turned the mirror over. The back was fashioned into the image of a delicate bird with a lovely crested head. His outstretched wings made up the frame around the looking glass, and his long tailfeathers formed the handle. The sharp curves of his feathers brought to mind the image of flickering flames.
The bird born from fire, rising from the ashes.
A phoenix.
I hope I can tell you all this myself.
If you're watching this--
With a scream of pain, Donna dropped the mirror. It crashed to the floor and she dropped beside it, crouched on her knees, hands clutching her head. Tears welled under her closed eyelids.
Now don't do this to me. No, don't, don't do this to me. Not now.
You never give up. Please.
That's what you do, you're the Doctor, you save people!
Not this time-
The heels of her palms pressed to her eyes, blotting out any light that could peek through but in the darkness she could still see afterimages. Phantom lights swirling and spreading against the backs of her eyelids, formless shapes of baked potato heads and fluttering wasps.
Dylan called her name as he dropped to her side, his fingers grasping at her arm. His voice sounded impossibly loud, a banging metal drum over the din in her mind, and she cringed, shouting at him.
"Stop! Stop, please stop! Don't say anything... my head!"
"C'mon," he whispered, hauling her to her feet; she wasn't able to stand and she sagged against him. "We're going to the hospital."
"No!"
Struggling, Donna creaked her eyes open, looking for him. Her fingers grasped the lapels of his coat and she stared, shaking and desperate, into his green eyes. "Home. Take me home, please."
He opened his mouth to insist, and she shook her head.
"What I need is at home, Dylan, please. If you want to help me then take me home."
.
The TARDIS gave a great straining creak as it hurtled through the vortex. The Doctor's face was stony, staring into the middle distance as he circled the console, pressing this and twirling that. At his side, Sarah Jane attempted to straighten her muffler with one hand, but gave up as the world went sideways again.
Her eyes met the Doctor's as he flopped forward onto his belly, reaching for a switch higher up on the panel. For the life of her, she couldn't tell if the expression on her friend's face was anger or pain.
"What happened between the two of you?" she demanded, wincing as the G-forces pulling on her made the bruised hip ache even worse. "I'm not lacking intuition, Doctor, I can tell something happened!"
"It doesn't matter," he said, flipping the switch; the floor flattened again. "She's gone, I miss her, that's it."
Sarah Jane stared at him, her green eyes shining with emotion. "Of course it matters! She chose to travel with you. Do you think it doesn't hurt being left behind? Not just for her, but for you! You're better when you're with someone, Doctor, you always have been!"
He seemed to ignore her, concentrating on the controls, but she knew him. How often had they gone like that, in days past? She with something to say and he with too much on his mind, but he usually heard her. She knew he could hear her now.
"You can't just give up, Doctor. You may not get another chance."
His jaw tightened. "You were the one who told me that everything has its time. Maybe Donna and I just can't be together, maybe it was our time--"
"But what if it wasn't?" pleaded Sarah Jane. "Did you even ask her? Or did you just take her home and talk yourself out of ever going back for her?"
"It's not that simple--"
"It is that simple!"
His face contorted with anger and he slammed on the brake; the timeship gave a knee-rattling clunk as it hit the ground of their destination. Before Sarah Jane could stand, the Doctor was at her side. He kept his face blank, a study in detachment, but she knew that he could not be truly apathetic to something that upset him so much.
"Donna doesn't know who I am," he said, his voice low and even. "The Time Lord consciousness she got from me was killing her and the only way I could save her was to block it from her mind. So she doesn't know me. Or you, or anyone else. She doesn't know what we did or where we went. She can never remember any of it or she will burn up and she will die."
Stunned, Sarah Jane sat there, mouth hanging open. "What?"
For a heartbeat, he looked as though he wanted to say more. She could still see a fury in his eyes, black thoughts that had no outlet, but it wasn't caused by her.
Instead he stepped back, returned to the scanner and pressed in a few commands. Left where she was, Sarah Jane pressed her hand to her mouth, swept up in a wave of remorse, for what her friend had gone through, for goading him. She sniffed, pulling herself to her full height.
"T-That's... I'm so sorry, Doctor. That's awful." She shook her head. "I never could have done that. I never would want to forget you."
"Neither did she."
She looked over at him; the Time Lord was leaning against the console, his shoulders hunched and his face dark with rage, almost malevolent. "She begged me not to and I did it anyway," he spat.
"You... what?"
Sarah Jane could not believe what he'd said. To lobotomise a friend begging for their life didn't seem like something the Doctor could do, and yet in the same instant she knew he was telling her the truth. Her insides churned with acidic disgust.
His eyes flickered up to her, but he quickly looked away. She knew he felt reproached by the obvious accusation on her face, untempered by any compassion for his feelings or reasoning that there might have been due cause for his actions.
She was angry with him, and it showed.
"How could you?" she demanded, her voice low, barely restrained. "How could you just... You had no right! No right! If she said no, if she wanted to--"
"To what? To die?!"
His voice was so loud that Sarah Jane flinched, and when he went to his feet, fists clenched at his sides, dark eyes burning hot and furious, even his brown hair seeming to stand on end, she shrank back the slightest bit. He towered over her, his chest heaving; he looked quite mad.
"It was killing her! There was no middle ground, it was forget me and live or stay and die! I couldn't let it just burn her up, not if I could stop it! And you don't get to judge me, Sarah! Don't you dare. Unless you can tell me what would you do, if you had a choice? If you had to watch someone you--"
He clapped his mouth shut, forcibly swallowed the next word. His eyes, which had been so clear during his rage, smouldered with emotion now, and the expressionless mask he'd worn so steadfastly slipped. For the first time Sarah Jane could see how lost her Doctor was; had been, this whole time.
He wrenched his gaze away, to the floor, gathered his strength. "Someone you cared about, Sarah," he said miserably. "Between watching them die or saving them in the cruellest way, what would you choose?"
She looked down, her small hands gripping the edge of her muffler tight. She felt like a scolded child, and yet...
"It still wasn't right," she told him sadly.
"Neither was letting her die," the Doctor replied, brushing past her. He grabbed his greatcoat from the jump seat and then turned down the ramp, the grated floor clanking as his rubber soles thudded against it.
Sarah Jane lingered, musing on what she now knew. With a sigh, she followed him.
He was already treading gradually across the street, the sonic screwdriver held aloft in front of him; its blue light shone brightly in the low light of the winter afternoon. The quiet of the street was broken only by the sonic's beeping, a slow but regular pace.
He swept it over the general area, down the length of Wessex Lane and across to Mallard Street; like the needle of a compass, it pointed him towards the cottage on the corner. Still he moved forward, until his trainers crunched onto the gravel drive. The rapid trill of the sonic screwdriver was proof enough, and the Doctor lowered it, stowed it in his coat.
He shot a glance back at Sarah Jane, who glanced both ways and then darted across the street as well. He had paused at edge of the hedgerow.
"This can't be right," he muttered. She leaned in.
"What?"
"The signal's coming from inside the house," he said. "I thought maybe the garden, or the hilltop, but... Inside the house? It must be a shapeshifter, or else something that would look perfectly ordinary inside a human household, because they'd notice something alien."
She looked sympathetically at him. "Looks like you'll have to knock on the door." The Doctor grimaced but didn't move. After a moment she gave a determined little nod.
"All right then."
And she marched to the door.
.
It was right there. On the edge of his mind, the tip of his tongue--
The doorbell went.
Wilf gave a little moan, glancing towards the front door automatically, then back to his crossword. An eight-letter word for marvellously unfamiliar was now gone, startled away by the arrival of guests. Probably Ross Noble and his family.
He tossed the pencil onto the book and shuffled down the hallway, creaked the door open to keep out the chill. "Yes?"
A dark-haired woman bundled to her ears smiled brightly at him. "Oh! Hello. I hope I'm not interrupting anything, but..." She stepped aside slightly, letting a longish fellow slide into view. Longish, in a pinstripe suit and with brown stick-uppy hair.
Wilf felt his knees wobble at the sight of the Doctor.
"Hullo, Wilfred," the alien man said. "It's sort of important."
.
Everything was going wrong.
It was bad enough she'd gotten involved with a person like the Queen, with her heartless soldiers of ice. Even now, as Ophelia crouched in an alley on the edge of the town, hot tears streaming down her cold cheeks, the Frost stood perfectly still, like malevolent statues. She should have realised that when she gave them orders that they would carry them out as soldiers do.
She had never seen violence like that before.
It was easy to say she would never rest until she found Abies, and easier still to resent the humans with the way they tore through what they called "natural resources," as if those beings didn't have lives, or covered their precious green with tarmac and steel.
But it had not been easy to watch the Frost retaliate against a young man who had only bumped into them, a young man no older than she. To watch a mother shield her small child; to watch as the ice blast swallowed that little street, felling everyone it touched, innocent people who had no idea what was happening.
Or why.
If it had happened on Pinastra, she would have been shocked, outraged. She would've been a part of the healing process, along with Abies.
But she had allowed it to happen.
How had she strayed so far? And in the presence of someone who could punish her.
Ophelia bit down hard on her lip, chill bumps crawling up her arms as she remembered the woman with the red hair. That woman had come into the cloud of her own free will, not knowing or caring what it could do, to stop her and the Frost. To protect the people around her.
When she had threatened her, and her eyes opened, the scent Ophelia knew as Abies' had been overlaid by a wholly different smell. The scent of time.
The woman had been a Time Lord.
Abies had told her when she was a child, of Time Lords who stepped from a plinth of sapphire to rain destruction on those deserving. They were the judges of the wicked and saviours of the oppressed.
He had always spoken of them with a light heart and admiration, but Ophelia couldn't help but fear them. They became her childhood conscience. Don't misbehave. Or the Time Lord will come for you.
And now, she had.
"Ophelia."
The Queen's voice startled her out of her thoughts. She turned her head this way and that, looking for a sign of her. One of the Frost stepped forward. "I'm here, you ridiculous fool."
Ophelia looked up, at the Frost. The Queen's voice was emanating from their frozen bodies, the same way it seemed to come from the comet itself. "Yes, Your Magnificence?"
"I hope you haven't forgotten your promise to me," the Queen said in her eerie whisper.
Ophelia's heart sank. She had already dealt enough pain, brought on enough guilt and shame, to do anything the villainous woman desired. But Abies appeared in her mind, like an oasis in the desert, and she closed her eyes. A final tear slipped down her cheek.
"No, ma'am."
"Good," the Queen crooned. "Because I've found what I want."
.
The Noble home had not changed much in the five months since the Doctor had last been there. There was still the small sideboard at the end of the hall, over which were several photographs of Donna as a child. It was topped with an immaculately-kept lace runner and a vase of flowers. Neither vase nor flowers were ever the same, and today it was a beautiful arrangement of Christmas amaryllis, the rich red of their petals standing out against the frosted glass of the bowl they were in. He found himself staring at them. Anything to distract him from the photos above them.
A quarter of a century might have passed, but those were still Donna's eyes looking out at him.
Wilf had ushered the Doctor and Sarah Jane in from the cold and hardly shut the door behind them before throwing a hug on the Time Lord. Despite himself, the Doctor had embraced him in return, smiling broadly. The old man seemed to be in good health, and that was never a bad thing.
When he pulled away, he could see the worry written plainly on Wilf's face.
"I was afraid you might turn up," he said.
The Doctor balked. "It's good to see you again too."
"Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you're safe." He squinted his green eyes at the Doctor. "Although you do look a bit peaky."
The Doctor opened his mouth, preparing a retort; with luck, he'd manage enough bluster to rebuff the idea that anything could've happened to him. But Wilf waved a hand dismissively before he got the chance.
"Never mind. It's just... I don't know whether to be tickled or worried, to be honest."
"Why?"
He seemed hesitant to speak, his hands wringing themselves slightly. The moment lasted long enough for a knot to form in the Doctor's stomach; as concerns for Donna rose to the front, whatever was holding Wilf back resolved itself. He tipped his head in acquiescence.
"Donna remembers you."
The knot pulled taut. "No, she can't. It's impossible."
"She said your name, I was there," said Wilf. "Her eyes were glowing. Scared me half to death. And that wasn't all, it was the strangest thing..."
Donna remembers you. Nothing beyond those three words registered to the Time Lord, with the exception of a rather solid thump as he sank back against the wall. Three simple words, three words he both longed to hear and was terrified by. To be someone to her again, someone more than a faceless stranger... He would give everything. Anything.
Except her life.
Because knowing Donna Noble was alive was his light. Even if he could never be with her, there was nothing in the world so terrible that it could outweigh the knowledge that she was safe.
"Why don't we have some tea?" Sarah Jane suggested gently. "It would do us some good."
Actually, that was a brilliant idea. The Doctor squeezed his eyes shut. He was being ridiculous. "No, sorry. We have to think. Something came here, something alien. We have to find it before the Queen does."
"The Queen?" Wilf sounded bewildered.
"A Snow Queen," Sarah Jane supplied. "An alien creature who makes trophies out of people. She's on her way here now, looking for something that landed here a couple weeks ago. On the seventh."
"Here? In Chiswick?"
"No, here, in your garden." The Doctor looked at Wilf with urgency. "It's in the house, Wilfred. It's something that appears completely normal here, and you don't think one way or another about it. It's something I need to get out before the Queen gets here or all of you will be in danger."
The old man puffed out his chest. "Well, that's what I was trying to tell you. It was the Christmas tree."
The Doctor stared. "What?"
"Yeah. Me and Donna were up on the hill and there was this raggedy old tree laid up by the back door. Donna touched it and whoosh, her eyes went gold. And the tree --it was half-dead, mind-- turned into the prettiest thing you've ever seen." He moved down the hall, beckoning them to come along, and disappeared under the stairwell into the front room.
The Doctor followed, Sarah Jane at his elbow.
The front room was lit by only the fairy lights on the tree and a few lamps, but as they entered, Wilf flipped the light switch. There was a fuzzy green afghan crumpled on the sofa and, on the coffee table, a bottle of medication and a paperback copy of Murder on the Orient Express. A bookmark was sticking out of the middle.
The whole room smelled of jasmine and pine. The jasmine was subtle, overpowered by the dry fragrance of the tree, not something a human nose would detect. But the Doctor's senses caught it.
Slowly he moved forward to the table and picked up the bottle of pills. "Acetaminophen," he read. He looked up at Wilf. "She gets headaches?"
"Migraines," said Wilf. "For months, after she came home. She still needs them sometimes, but she started getting better after we found the tree. That's when she started sleeping in here."
The Doctor looked around. He'd found her sleeping in the library on the TARDIS once, a book half-closed on her lap and chest rising and falling lightly as she dreamed. It was that image he recalled now, her head turned down into the arm, ginger curls splayed out, her fuzzy afghan draped over her.
He didn't know what it was that compelled him to pick up the afghan, but once he had, he couldn't help bending his head slowly and bringing the soft wool to his face. He breathed deep.
His hearts twisted as Donna's familiar scent overwhelmed his senses. His fingers clenched into a tight knot.
Sarah Jane cleared her throat behind him. "Doctor."
He sniffed hard, dropping the afghan back where it lay. "Right. The tree." He turned to it, slipping around the table and reaching into his pocket for his spectacles. "Not an ordinary tree, not if it's done what you said. And that smell..."
"Smells like a Christmas tree," said Wilf.
"Yeah, it does." The Doctor sounded distant, already thinking. "But there's something else."
He peered through the branches and needles at the trunk, shifting and hunching as he prowled around it. Then, hesitantly, he lifted a hand and made to reach into it.
"Is that safe?" wondered Sarah Jane. "It regenerated itself when Donna touched it, what if it absorbs one's life force in some way?"
The Doctor stuck his tongue between his teeth. "Then it's about to get a hell of a burst out of me."
And he stuck his hands into the branches.
As he drew them apart gently, a tiny pair of beady brown eyes opened abruptly on the trunk. He snatched his hands back in surprise. "Whoah!!"
"What is it?" asked Sarah Jane and Wilf.
"Eyes," the Doctor replied heartily, smiling. "Our friend here is definitely an alien."
Doctor... came a soft, grandfatherly voice. You're finally here.
.
Opening her eyes as she landed, Ophelia watched the wisps of gaseous teleport rush off her like sheets of falling water. She lifted her gaze from the ground and looked around her. The Queen had directed her to a residential area.
Like the commercial wasteland, the flora of this place had also been desecrated. The long street, lined by large homes, went on as far as she could see. True, there were many more trees and flowers here than where she had been previously, but it was still nothing like home.
And yet, as disrespectful and avaricious as the humans were, she found herself breathing a sigh of relief that there were so few humans on the street. Maybe she could avoid a second incident with the volatile Frost.
She lifted her wrist and slid her thumb across the touchscreen; Abies' signal was clear once more, beeping steadily.
She turned to the Frost. "Follow me," she ordered them. "And do nothing without my explicit say so."
Grimly she turned back down the long street, and began to walk.
.
"Did everyone else just hear that as well?" Wilf pressed his hands to his ears, his green eyes round with surprise.
"He's using telepathy," Sarah Jane explained. She moved forward to stand at the Doctor's elbow as he began to talk.
"You know me?"
The tree hummed with warm admiration, his needles bristling slightly against the Doctor's palm. It has been a long time. Centuries, in fact. But neither I, nor any being of Pinastra, shall ever forget the face of the saviour of our planet in our time of greatest need.
The Doctor's face lit up. "Oh, Pinastra! That explains the smell, you're a Pinastran! I'd love to go there. And apparently I will. What's your name?" His eyes crinkled in contemplation. "And Pinastra's half a galaxy away; what are you doing way out here?"
I am called Abies of Pharospratum, and I am the last of the Great Fir Bohema of Pinastra. I came here because she bid me do so if I ever needed assistance, the tired voice came again, husky and soft in their heads.
"Who? Donna?" Confusion furrowed the Time Lord's brow. "When?"
In the time before the Last Great Time War, when my meadow was in danger, the blue box brought the Time Lords to our aid, the Doctor and the Phoenix. When the crisis had ended, she promised I could come to her for anything should I need it.
The great tree sighed. But what was ages past for me has not happened yet for her. I never imagined when I came to her that she would not know me. Nor that she would not know you, Doctor.
"You've made a mistake, Donna isn't a Time Lord." He folded his arms, his lips pressed together with regret. "She gleaned a bit of my mind, but I had to take it away."
Not away, said Abies. Hidden, mayhaps. But your face lives on in her mind. She dreams of you each night.
"That's dangerous," the Doctor said harshly. "It could kill her. She's a human, she can't have that sort of knowledge in her head. If she ever realised what you are and remembered, she'd die."
Perchance at one time. It does her little harm now; I have been assisting her.
"Assisting how?" Sarah Jane interjected. Before the old tree could answer, the Doctor turned to look at her over his shoulder.
"All species of Pinastrans have the ability to heal. Wounds of all kinds, physical, emotional, mental. In ancient times they had rallies called the Cathica Colours where travellers from all over the galaxies would come to be healed and saved. That deep, rich scent isn't just the aroma of a Christmas tree. It's called the Bohemallad Bouquet. The Great Fir Bohema emit a powerful mineral from their needles that..."
He stopped talking, his eyes going wide. "...stimulates brain activity."
For half a second, Sarah Jane could see the cogs turning in his head, the revelation in his eyes, the hope. "Stimulates," he said, "Of course! Great Fir Bohema can stimulate brain activity!"
He looked wildly from Abies to Wilf to Sarah Jane, his hands gesticulating as he talked. "Wounds of all kinds. Physical, emotional, temporal, alchemical, theoretical, academical--"
"Academical?" repeated Sarah Jane indignantly.
"--lamprophonical!" The Doctor stopped, squinting. "Is that a word?" He shook his head. "'Course it is. Anyway! Wounds of all kinds, including mental ones. It's like aromatherapy; the mineral in Abies' pheromones helps the brain to form more connections, newer and stronger. People who've suffered brain traumas like amnesia or aphasia can overcome them--"
He rubbed his hands over his hair and it stuck up like a rooster's comb; he seemed near hysterics. "Don't you see, he's helping Donna's mind adjust to the leftover regeneration energy she absorbed from my hand!"
"Adjust," repeated Wilf. "It's not getting rid of it?"
"No, nothing can do that," said the Doctor. "It's there, the only way to take it from her, really erase it from her body, would be for Donna to die."
"But what if her mind adjusts to it? She could remember you? She'd be like she was?"
The Doctor's mouth opened and closed reflexively, the only sign that he was struggling to keep his bearings. "Maybe, if we had the time! She's still human, and helping a human being adjust to the massive consciousness of a Time Lord in her head is..." Not impossible. Just... complicated.
He grimaced, holding back the rest of his thought for a moment, then said, "It would take a considerably long time for Donna to reach that point with only Abies doing it on his own."
There was a wretched hope in Wilf's face, so much that the Doctor couldn't bear to look at him, and yet to tear his gaze away would be an answer in itself. Please don't ask, he begged silently. I can't answer that. Not now.
Abruptly the great tree shuddered, the ornaments tinkling as they swayed on his branches. Unfortunately, Doctor, I do not have much time. I came to this planet to die.
The Doctor swallowed past the lump in his throat as Wilf sagged, visibly dejected by this news. He looked at Abies. "What does the Snow Queen want with you?"
My handler, Abies grated out, sounding weak. The child loves me and is not prepared to lose me. In her selfishness, she contracted the Queen for my preservation.
"In a tomb of ice?" demanded Sarah Jane. "Who would do that? Lock someone up to just keep them alive?"
The Doctor cleared his throat, giving her a look; she responded with such a glare of indignation he let the matter drop. He turned back to the tree.
"The Queen freezes you for your handler... What does she get in return?"
I know not; Ophelia would not tell me. I know it will be a heavy price. The Queen does not want for little.
"No," mused the Doctor. "I got that impression."
But you are welcome to ask her.
Three pairs of eyes shot to the great tree. "What?"
She is here.
The three of them moved as one to the windows. Wilf and Sarah Jane peered past lacy curtains in bewildered wonder at their newly-arrived company; the Doctor took a window of his own, parting the shades with the tips of his fingers just enough to get a quick glimpse.
Standing on the road at the end of the hedgerow were three figures. Two were tall and pearlescent white, wearing featureless pewter masks over their faces. Between them stood a small young woman with dark skin, dressed in red.
Sarah Jane spoke through her teeth. "I suppose it's ridiculous to hope they could be carollers."
"Time Lord!" The girl in red stepped forward onto the gravel drive, her voice ringing clearly out to the listeners inside. "I come on behalf of Her Magnificence the Snow Queen. Will you not show yourself?"
The Doctor chuckled grimly. "Sorry, Sarah." He pulled away from the window, moving towards the hall beneath the stairwell. Darting ahead of him, Sarah Jane placed herself in the archway. She shook her head vehemently.
"Doctor, it's a trap."
"Probably."
"And your cunning plan is to walk into the trap?"
He shrugged. "Part of the plan."
"So you have a plan?"
"'Course I do."
"And that is?"
"Setting fourteen-hundred-and-nine-B," he said, sliding past her and out the door.
.
To Dylan, the trembling figure curled in the passenger seat of his car looked as if she were dying. Her skin, usually dewy and white, was pallid and clammy, beaded with a fine layer of cold sweat. Her half-closed eyes rolled frantically beneath the lids, her lips moved soundlessly, as though she were speaking in tongues he could not hear.
It was strange that he should be so moved by her. She was human, after all, and he... was not.
She didn't know. No one did. No one knew the greatest secret of Dylan Healey and he liked it that way. Made his work easier. He had come to this planet to do a job and that didn't include falling in love with the loud-mouthed ginger woman who lived next door to him.
And yet he had, quite involuntarily.
She was someone special, someone unutterably brilliant and she couldn't even see it. It didn't matter that in the War he had witnessed atrocities... committed many of them. It didn't matter that there was work to be done that could alter the future of the human race. It didn't even matter that in his true inhuman form he was technically incapable of love.
Because with Donna Noble, the world found a way. Or she shouted until it did.
She whimpered and Dylan tore his eyes from the road for a quick glance at her. Her arms hugged her torso tight, fingers clenching the thick fabric of her coat.
His boot weighed a little heavier on the accelerator.
"We're almost there, Donna. Hang in there."
.
The Time Lord appeared in the doorway, and the sight of him sent a chill up Ophelia's spine. He looked wild and rakish, with dark eyes that seemed to stare through her. She straightened her shoulders and met his gaze, boasting a confidence she didn't feel, especially as he then moved down the steps and across the gravel driveway towards her, his brown coat swinging lightly with his gait.
He was imposingly tall.
His eyes roamed over her, sizing her up, and by the time they reached hers again, his glare had softened. "You're too young to be tied into service with someone like the Queen," he said quietly.
"I'll do what I must, if it saves Abies," replied Ophelia, albeit in a shaking voice. Behind him, at the door, she noticed a woman with brown hair had appeared, followed by a little old man. Ophelia's nerves steadied. "What would you do? To save someone you loved?"
"Horrible things," he said, and the girl thought she saw grief flash over his face. "Things I will never forgive myself for. So what you have to ask is will you be able to live with yourself if you entomb him, knowing he doesn't want it?"
"I can't live without him," she persisted. "He rescued me, with the Bohemallad-- when I was alone and had lost everything, he saved me. With his kindness and his cleverness, he guided me. He made me who I am!"
"And this is how you repay him? Eternal hibernation?"
"It's better than nothing!" Tears filled Ophelia's green eyes. "I would rather have him entombed in my presence than live on without him."
The Time Lord grimaced bitterly at her, his lips pressed together, his eyes filled with pain. "I understand. Believe me, I do. You have no idea, really." He shook his head. "But it doesn't make it right."
His words had such weight that they seemed to have a physical form in the air, and they echoed in Ophelia's head. For a half second, she faltered.
"Is he still alive?"
"Yes," replied the Time Lord.
She closed her eyes, a tear slipping down her cheek. Relief. And regret.
She opened her eyes. "May I go in and see him?"
He hesitated, gauging her demeanour. Then he stepped aside, his arm outstretched. "After you."
Ophelia moved past him, her heart pounding. They had only crossed the gravel by a few steps, enough for the Time Lord to begin to follow, his back exposed to the Frost.
She discreetly pressed a button on her wrist device.
There was a quiet whoosh, and then a crunch of something heavy landing on the gravel. Ophelia watched the Time Lord's companions' eyes widen in shock; the woman opened her mouth to cry out.
"Well done, Ophelia," came a soft voice.
As one, the Pinastran girl and the Time Lord spun back to see the Snow Queen standing just behind him, the wispy remnants of gaseous teleport sliding in sheathes off her white skin and clothes.
Impossibly fast, before he could move or speak, the Queen clamped down both hands on his shoulders with bruising force. He cried out loudly, trying to fight off the ice climbed up his body with the speed of rushing water. His hands were shaking so badly that he dropped the sonic device he'd been holding; it dropped with a thunk onto the gravel.
And then, tipping his head back to take one last long breath, he was swallowed by the ice.
.
"NO!"
The image she had feared had come to life right before Sarah Jane's eyes: the Doctor, frozen, his body trapped in a craggy pyramid of ice. It was so clear that she could see him as through a window, the desperation of a final breath on his face.
Standing in front of him, laughing gaily, the Snow Queen looked like the villain from a fairy tale, beautiful and horrible. Sarah Jane wasn't aware of yelling, only of running; she sped towards them, nothing in her head except to get to the Doctor.
Spotting the sonic by his feet, she stooped to pick it up. From the ground she aimed and sonicked-- not at the Queen, but at the Doctor, hoping to shatter the ice as she had done before.
The Snow Queen's dead eyes found Sarah like laserpoints.
"You again," she breathed.
With a lazy flick of her wrist, she sent another blast of frozen air into Sarah Jane. As before, the force of it was so strong that the human woman flew across the ground, tumbling over and again, before her body battered against the side of the house and crumpled in a heap
With a little gasp, Wilf hurried down the steps and crouched at Sarah's side, gently pulling her upright; she didn't respond. Anger jockeyed over fear as he watched the Queen stroke the frosted ice that encased the Doctor.
"He's mine," she was whispering. Her hands slid down the slope over the Doctor's closed eyes. "The last of the Time Lords, standing at my side forever in silent impotence..."
"Oi! Get your glassy hands off him, you arctic swine!"
The ice woman ignored him.
"Your Magnificence." Ophelia stepped forward, her voice and posture timid. "Abies is within."
The Queen sighed, sounding almost dreamy, her eyes still on the Doctor. "Why should I bother?"
Ophelia's heart clenched. "What?"
The black eyes glided lazily from the Time Lord to the girl, looking bored; her voice, quiet as always, was anything but. She sounded positively malicious. "I don't see the point of it. I have what I want. Why should I waste my energy stopping death for your raggedy little tree?"
The girl's fists tightened. Red swelled at the edge of her vision and she could barely speak for grinding her teeth. "Because I just sacrificed everything for it. I let him trust me and when his back was turned, I called you here. I watched innocent people get hurt and it was my fault-- and I only did it because that was your price!"
The Queen smirked. "That sounds like a personal problem."
Ophelia tasted blood as she bit her lip. The Queen moved around the frozen statue, and tipped her head patronisingly. "Don't fret, Ophelia Wode. Your tree will be saved."
She looked over at Wilf and Sarah Jane, who was now coming around but still hadn't gotten to her feet. "You will all be saved."
Ophelia looked from the Queen to the crouched humans, and placed herself between them. Tears glittered unshed in her eyes. "What are you going to do?"
The Queen clicked her tongue, surveying the landscape. "This place is lovelier than I could ever have imagined. There's something so perfectly defiant in it. Arrogance," her voice sparked with devilish glee. "The humans come by their conceit honestly."
Her dead black eyes fell on Ophelia. "I shall freeze the entire planet."
"No!" Sarah Jane stirred, struggling to pull herself up on Wilf's arm.
"Your Magnificence, please don't," implored Ophelia. "You don't need to! You have what you want. Let the humans live their lives."
"And let someone else gather this planet for themselves, now that their guardian is gone?" Her fur coat swinging over the gravel, she swept back around, her hand outstretched and resting on top of the ice-Doctor's head.
"No. This blue bauble shall be mine. Be sure to stay by your Abies' side as I swathe everything in an endless winter. You'll be together for a long time."
Her blue lips curled into a wicked smile, cold and cruel. The four of them, Queen, Doctor and Frost, were enveloped by plumes of gas.
And just like that, they were gone.
.
Her heart was racing.
So fast, ba-dump-dump, ba-dump-dump. She could almost imagine she had two in there.
A tiny smile graced her lips and then the pain blazed again, and Donna twisted with a groan. It seemed as if the whole world was burning around her. Everything was a blur of white-hot pain and noise that stabbed at her eardrums. A fever unlike anything she'd ever experienced began to rage in the front of her mind, igniting the memories that lay dormant within her.
Sleeping Beauty, waking placidly from a pleasant dream, she was not. The self that had been frozen by the Doctor was thawing out, coming back to life-- and it hurt.
She had to get home before it was too late.
Her stomach dropped out as the car roared over a hill, the engine humming eagerly under Dylan's masterful driving. "Still with me, Donna?"
He sounded far away, and his voice grew fainter as the thoughts in her head grew louder, clearer, stronger, like a beacon calling to her from across time.
Force pulled on her as the car swung a right, a turn she recognised from repetition. She chanced opening her eyes just a smidge.
Something bright and shining scanned over her face, and Donna flinched, her eyes shutting reflexively. Then she opened them again, slowly.
A tall police call box was standing on the corner across from her house, the lamp glinting in the fading sunlight.
"Dylan, stop!"
He obeyed immediately. The car had barely come to a full stop before Donna snapped off her seatbelt and flung open the door in one motion. Her knees gave out instantly, but she dragged herself up, staggering over the road towards the box.
Emerging from the end of the hedgerow, she halted in her tracks, a deer caught in the hunter's scope. The two ice women from before, now flanked by an even taller alien creature, were standing on her drive. Someone, a man, was encased in crystalline ice just in front of them.
She recognised the thin body and the blue suit he was wearing.
Doctor!
Without thinking she moved forward, her legs wobbling like jelly. She opened her mouth to call out his name, but before the breath had left her lungs the ice woman and her soldiers vanished-- taking the Doctor with them.
Her heart sank. The ground fell out beneath her feet.
No... No, no, no!
"Donna!"
Dylan appeared at her side, hooking an arm under hers and lifting her up. She looked up at him, shaking her head.
"He's gone, they took him--"
"What? Who did? Took who?"
A little white head with alarmed green eyes peered out around the hedge. "Donna!"
"Gramps!"
"I thought I heard Dylan calling you--" Wilf bustled over, tears in his eyes. He looked as though he'd had a bad fright. "Oh my girl, what are you doing here, you oughtn't be here!" Too blatantly, he tried to direct Donna towards the house, her back to the TARDIS.
She shook her head. "It's all right, Gramps... I remember."
continued in part four
back to part two