Doors We Never Opened: Chapter 8

[the_magpye]

Title: Doors We Never Opened
Author: the_magpye
Rating: All ages
A/N: This started out as a oneshot, grew into a large oneshot, and then a slightly massive oneshot. So, it became chapters. Probably four or five, but that's a rough estimate. I have to send out apologies to momdaegmorgan for this being so late - belated Christmas wishes from me, Mrs Jenny! *hugs* But I hope you enjoy it, and fills the time before you start writing again - you know I have every confidence in you! ^.~ Thanks to rachelbeann for the advice! Feedback is much appreciated and earns hugs, especially since I've been impatient and not had this beta'd. ^^
Summary: Life went on, and on, and on, and Donna didn't notice its passing - mainly because she didn't have a job - a fact which her mum kindly reiterated to her in every other sentence she spoke, whether it be blatant or veiled with a dash of sarcasm. But when an opportunity comes along, she doesn't hesitate to grab it with both hands. Who knows where it could lead her...

Just to make it clear; THIS IS POST!S4, IN THE DOCTOR'S UNIVERSE.

Urgh, delay again! x.x But! You will hopefully have your explanations, even if they aren't entirely satisfactory. This is the chapter I'm the most worried about, as the majority is taken up with my 'logical theory of how Donna could potentially get her memory back'. I worry that it doesn't really fit with the rest of the story, and that it's too complicated or illogical and - well, a lot of other things. So any opinions on the big reveal would be very, very much appreciated and reviewers who tell me what they think will be given cookies. Or even a fic prompt, if you still think I'm a good enough writer after this! xD And I said this was the last chapter - but the plot changed and now it isn't. xDD The next one is. So, I'll be quiet now. Enjoy, I hope!

(Oh, and this is only roughly edited because it's late. >.< So any errors? Let me know! BIG hugs to rachelbeann for some plot confirmation! *glomps*)



'Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened into the rose-garden.' - T.S Eliot

&& PREVIOUS &&

'Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.' - The Wonder Years

Arriving home in Chiswick in the middle of the night was... interesting.

She'd never known before today how easy it was to break into a house. Or how fun. By all logic, it should have frightened her, but it reminded her too much of various jail breaks on various planets with various gangs of pursuing aliens for her to take it even the slightest bit seriously.

Especially when Jack was the one helping to hoist her through the window of the downstairs loo.

And it was her house, after all. She had the right to break into it if she damn well wanted to.

So there.

After a hurried goodbye to her three friends - which wasn't so much of a goodbye as an array of waving arms, signing wildly through the distorted glass of the toilet window - Donna tip-toed upstairs and went to bed.

No-one would be the wiser.

... would they?

"DONNA NOBLE, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!?!"

Ah.

The unholy screech of her mum hadn't changed at all, despite having a good few years of added memories shoved back into her head. It was nice to know that some things stayed constant, even if the image of Sylvia standing in the door, curlers in her hair and wielding what looked to be a rather large hockey stick, wasn't exactly what she wanted to see at two-thirty on Christmas morning.

Where the hell did she get that hockey stick from anyway?

"Donna, you all right? We heard noises, love, and your mum was pullin' her hair out when she noticed your bed was empty! What happened?"

Wilf peered over the fuming figure of Sylvia, blue eyes worried and crinkled at the edges.

And was he holding a golf club?

An email to Jack, Martha and Mickey at Torchwood was rapidly writing itself in her head as she listened to her mum rant, detailing exactly how crap their idea of shoving her through a window was - discounting the general entertainment value - and also how annoying it was that Rose had to steal her away from home in the middle of the night in the first place.

Urgh. The screeching was hurting her eardrums, so she chose to put a stop to it with a few, well-chosen words.

"Mum, shut up."

Sylvia paused in her rolling denouncement of her daughter's character, foot tapping against the carpet. Her silence only lasted a moment, and she was already opening her mouth to continue with the second barrage when Donna made her move.

"I remember."

And blessed quiet descended on the Noble household.

&&&

A mish-mashed explanation, a tearful granddad, a sulking mother and a Christmas dinner later, Donna was finally alone, in her room - with the hologram disk.

She was too impatient for answers to spend scant seconds opening the envelope that accompanied the little black ceramic and so set it gently on her dresser, next to the contact details of Team Torchwood. That email was still going to be sent, as soon as she knew what the hell had been going on around her over the last few months.
It was a little hard to believe that everything had (potentially) been a set-up - and a bloody organised one, too. Most of the evidence was pointing that way, as unlikely as it was.

About time she found out the truth, then.

She ran her fingers over the disk before dropping it carefully on the bed. And then, Donna pressed the button.

For a few moments, nothing happened. She began to feel the twisting of nerves and anger and impatience, squirming away in her stomach, until her ears caught a quiet noise, no louder than the background hum of the TARDIS.

The crackle of electricity was the only warning she got before light incinerated her pupils and left her squinting. A holographic image of Rose fizzled into life, sitting on her bed as if she'd been there all the time.

Donna blinked. Yes, she was sort of... blue. And translucent. But she looked real, she looked three-dimensional, and she was smiling, comfortable and familiar, staring straight across the room and directly into her eyes.

"Donna, if you're standing up, you should probably sit down. This could take a while."

Surprised, she just folded where she stood, crossing her legs and propping her head on her hands like an inquisitive child. She had so many questions, so many things that she wanted to know, but she wasn't about to interrupt. The hologram probably couldn't even hear her voice.

"All right. This thing'll let me keep talking and talking for as long as I like, and if everything goes to plan, I should have a lot to explain, right? Maybe recording this before I try and give you your memories back isn't the best of ideas - on Christmas Eve , of all days. Urgh, I'm so stupid. I've been arguing with myself about what to do for months, nearly a year now, and I've still not made up my mind. You might not even see this- oh. I'm babbling again. Aren't I?"

She chuckled, rueful. Donna laughed a little as well, and though Rose wasn't really here, it was close enough for her.

"But enough about that. I'll start from the beginning. Well, not strictly the beginning. Actually, the beginning was when I found out that the Doctor was going to... wipe your memories. And leave you. God, I was so angry when he told me, you have no idea, and I want to say sorry, on his behalf Donna, because he'll probably be too much of an idiot to say it himself. He's like that, we both know it. And we still love him for it... he just... oh, I can't explain it. He thinks he deserves to be alone, and it's up to you, and me and all of the others to show him how wrong he is..."

She shook her head, giving up on trying to articulate the unspoken and rolling her eyes instead.

"Back to the point. I'm going to ask you a question, and I want you to think about it. No need to answer, this is recorded and it's not like I'll hear you. Just... think. And remember."

Rose adjusted her jacket - blue, leather and familiar - before meeting her eyes dead on.

"What do you understand by the words 'Bad Wolf'?"

Those words, again. She was getting sick of them very, very quickly. Donna thought back to Shan-Shen - a message from a parallel universe, the beginning of the fall. Bad Wolf, on banners, on signs, on the TARDIS - everywhere - and it meant the end of the universe, the end of everything.

The end of her time with the Doctor, for sure.

"It didn't always mean the end of the universe. I should know - because the Bad Wolf was me."

What?

Rose carried on, regardless of her confusion.

"Bad Wolf was born when I saved the Doctor from the Daleks, up on a game station called Satellite Five. I dunno how much he told you about regeneration or how he ended up with big hair and a brown suit, but when I met him, he was all leather and ears and blue eyes. His appearance didn't matter, though, because in all the important ways he was the same - he sent me home when he thought there was no hope of survival, and stayed behind himself, self-sacrificing git that he is. Familiar much?"

She quirked a grin, affectionate, but it wasn't enough to hide the shadows crossing her face.

"I wasn't having any of that. When I got home, I saw these words, graffitted all over this playground near my flat: Bad Wolf. The broadcasting corporation based on the satellite was called Bad Wolf, too. And that wasn't the first time I'd seen them - this kid sprayed it on the side of the TARDIS... and there was a bomb, in World War Two, called Schlechter Wolf. And this project in Cardiff, Blaidd Drywg. Bad Wolf. Bad Wolf here, Bad Wolf there, Bad Wolf everywhere. And then I understood."

Her laugh was a little cynical, though the brown eyes boring into her didn't change their expression. Still clear, still determined.

"It was a link, a link between me and him, the past and the future. It told me there was still a connection, a way I could get back. I ended up ripping open the console with a big yellow truck and looking into the Time Vortex. That was the Bad Wolf - me and the TARDIS, working together to save the Doctor. And we did. We poured Time into the minds of the Daleks, and they burned away into dust. I was burning too, until the Doctor took the Time Vortex from me, and regenerated. That's why he looks like he does now... y'know..."

She gesticulated, trying to express her point and failing.

"All brown and grin and mania. He, the old him, died. My fault. And Jack lives forever, because of me. Me and the TARDIS."

From the look in her eyes, Donna could easily see that Rose felt guilt - it was plain enough, written in the lines around her mouth, obvious even though she was a hologram.

"I didn't remember at first, didn't remember anything. But it came back in bits and pieces, when I was asleep, or in the quiet moments when he wasn't babbling and we weren't legging it from alien dictators. I don't think I'll ever know all of it - the Doctor told me that I saw everything - past, present, future, all at the same time - and what human could cope with that an' not go mad, eh?"

Her last words rumbled quietly in Donna's head, and she couldn't help but draw the similarities between her metacrisis situation and Rose, burning away into everything and nothing as the Bad Wolf. History repeating, over and over again until it made her dizzy. Except it wasn't history, because it was in the future but it was the past as well and...

Urgh. All this time stuff. It made her head spin.

"After you and the Doctor left us on that beach after Davros, life went on - slowly, and a bit painfully, but it did, bit by bit. And then, one night, I had a dream."

Her gaze seemed faraway, locked in a memory she couldn't see.

"I dreamed of the Game Station, of what I saw and what I changed. Because I saw you, Donna Noble - I saw you in the future, travelling with the Doctor. I saw what would happen, I saw you lose your memories. And I made a few corrections. The slightest wound in the walls between the worlds, cauterized and only able to be activated by a certain device, at a certain point in time and in a certain way. Bam. The Bad Wolf had already set the return of your memories in the timeline, so all I had to do was go along with the plan."

Rose was smiling warmly now, reminiscing.

"The device you'll see when you get your memories back is a hopper - Torchwood never got around to naming it, because I'd left for this universe before they even had chance to put it through testing. But that was fine, because the Doctor - or Doctor Noble, should I say..."

Doctor Noble? He didn't... he couldn't have...
Oh, that stupid man.

"Well, he was the one who built it. A hopper, able to open that tiny little gap between the universes, at exactly the right time and in exactly in the right place. A hopper, with the tiniest spark of the Time Vortex buried inside, for safe passage there, and safe passage back, once the conditions of the timeline were satisfied. It was even clever enough to help siphon off your Time Lord memories, and create that little bubble outside the normal timestream. Well, I hope it will be, anyway, when I hit the button later tonight..."

That rasping chuckle was back. Donna was too absorbed to notice.

"The piece of TARDIS coral you gave us on the beach was the key to making all this happen - after it grew up, it was where we got the Vortex energy from, and how we got to the rip. Satellite Five, the alternate version, the year 200,000. We stayed in orbit for a few hours, just to check there really were no Daleks, and off I went. D'you know where I ended up?"

The question was rhetorical, and Donna wasn't about to answer. She had no idea, and resigned herself to listening as Rose wove this story of pre-determined fate and a trip across universes. All for her.

It was almost too much to take in.

"That night, with the Adipose. A blonde woman, keys in the bin. Remember?"

... oh yes. Yes, she remembered.

Rose smiled.

"I travelled across universes to reach the Doctor in time to join the fight against Davros. But I only ever entered the right universe once - and that was the night the Earth moved across the galaxy, to the Crucible. The me you met then, in that street after the Adipose, was the one arriving to return your memories. I've been in this universe ever since, getting ready to turn Donna Noble, temp worker, back into Donna Noble, time traveller and friend to die for."

The implications were staggering.

"I slipped back through the gap to tell the Doctor I was through, in the right universe, and then I went and set up base. It was all about laying low from that point... got a manegerial job with a company, worked my way up, tucked myself away and kept quiet during the Davros affair."

Her face clouded.

"Dunno if you ever met Reapers, but two of the same person being too close to each other in one timeline is pretty risky."

The image flickered, but Rose was smiling again now, ignorant of the distortion.

"But it wasn't so bad, Donna. The Doctor in the other universe tweaked my phone, so it has parallel world settings now, especially convenient when you happen to be hiding out in your home universe when you really shouldn't be there."

Another eye roll.

"The guys at Torchwood rang me with updates, kept me in touch with my mum, Pete, everyone... a few months passed after everything settled down, and then, there you were! Donna Noble, on a recruitment website. Right when I least expected it!"

She laughed, shaking her head in disbelief.

"So I offered an interview. Weeks later, you were in my office. I got worried when your memories started trying to come back by themselves - the fainting spell definitely wasn't part of the plan, but I guess I hadn't thought about what seeing familiar figures would do to... well, whatever the Doctor did to your head."

It was a paradox. It was a great big, self-fulfilling paradox. The whole thing, from Davros, to working with Rose, to the dreams and the headaches and the mysterious disappearances.

Her head hurt, and it was nothing to do with returning memories. She suspected her stinging eyes didn't, either.

"And that's about it. I'm sat here, waiting for Jack and the others to turn up so I can activate the hopper and create our own personal bubble outside the timeline. Less chance of stuff going wrong, and it'll fold in on itself when the job's done. Or should I say when the wolf's been fed?"

Rose grinned, but then glanced away. A quiet beeping fed in, background noise breaking the silence.

"Well, looks like this thing does have a timer after all, so I'd better get a move on. I know that if you are hearin' this, then everything's worked out to plan. And you should've been given an envelope, a brown envelope. Open it."

Not being one to ignore a blatant command, especially from a woman who she'd seen wield a gun twice her size and talk down a stuffy board member three times her age, Donna snagged the envelope from the side and tore it open.

Something jangled - something metal - and it fell into her lap, gleaming in the meagre light from the hologram.

It was a key.

'Oh...'

Rose spoke just as realisation hit.

"Inside is a TARDIS key. You probably have yours around somewhere, but this one is programmed to emit a... well, its like a homing beacon. When you touch it, it should activate. Which means that eventually, the Doctor will find you. We couldn't work out how long it would take for the signal to reach him - could be days, weeks, months. But it'll work. Promise."

Her mouth really was hanging open now. All of this planning, the risk, the preparation... all of it, for her.

And now, she really was going to get the chance to thump the Doctor a good one. Her eyes were burning viciously.

"Well, Donna. It's time for me to go. Torchwood should be here soon, and I'm running out of time. But before I go, I just want to say... well, it's been awesome having you as my PA, and..." She hesitated, a look of naked longing passing across her face.

"Look after him. Please. For me."

The silence lasted a few beats, and Donna could feel tears filling her eyes.

Rose squared her shoulders.

"And Donna, don't forget - you're brilliant, with or without your memories."

The image flickered, and died.

Utter quiet remained behind like a silent witness, punctuated only once by her quiet sniff.

She stared blankly down at the key, now glowing a dusty gold and lying innocuously in her lap, and struggled to understand the magnitude of what had been done for her.

Her fate had been decided at a point in the future she couldn't even think about.
Rose had come back.
Rose had stayed, all through the timeline, waiting for the right moment, the moment to act.
And then, Rose had gone again.

But...

"Tell him this: two words. Just two. Bad Wolf."

Bad Wolf didn't mean the end of the universe. Not the apocalypse, or judgement day or the expansion of the sun, or Daleks or Cybermen or any other species of alien. Instead, something infinitely more precious.

A link, between Rose Tyler and her Doctor, and a promise to return.

That promise was a beacon of light on the horizon, and she clutched it close to her chest, wrapped around her fingers with the chain of the key as grateful tears began to pour freely down her cheeks, a smile spreading across her face like the rising sun.

In the quiet of Christmas evening, Donna cried, and whispered two words to the distant stars.

"... thank you."

&& NEXT &&