NEW: A Different Threefold Man (6/11?)
Title: A Different Three-Fold Man
Rating: T
Author:
tkel_paris
Summary: Not even Caan could see every possibility. The Hand was far more aware than anyone gave it credit for, and it transformed itself into something different. Now Donna Noble and the Doctor have their work cut out for them.
Dedication:
tardis_mole. This was provoked by “Another Fine Mess.” You'll have to read it all the way through to have any clue why. And yes, I beta read that story, so in a tiny way I'm tooting my own horn in addition to TM's. ;D And thank you, my friend, for the chapter titles! :D
Disclaimer: Rose Tyler wouldn't have been anywhere near Series 4, and therefore this probably couldn't have happened, had I anything to do with owning these characters. I've lost all respect for the character, I freely admit it. Which means I've lost some respect for her creator. Shame, since he also created characters that I adore.
Author's Note: A new entry for the Alternate Handy Fanfiction Challenge. Nope, we haven't mined this one to death. Not at all! :D And there are still other possibilities! :D
May story a day challenge is going well. Written seven stories in six days. Now they all need editing or expanding. But I'm crossing ideas off my list right and left! :D Meanwhile, back to the aftermath of the intense last chapter...
Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5
Chapter Six: Mirror Image
Moments later, the four companions had walked outside, and left. Not before breathing in the familiar polluted air of London. The new Time Family stepped out to bid them off, although the parents didn't notice the wincing reactions of the twins to the pavement.
Sarah Jane had rushed ahead, needing to get home to Luke, but not before giving the family hugs goodbye and insisting that they come to meet Luke - and Donna promised her they would. The others left after the Doctor used his Sonic on the Vortex Manipulator that Jack was using. The Boe-Kind had groaned over the loss of yet another one, but still saluted the Doctor. So did Martha. Mickey left with a knuckle bump for the Doctor and the twins, and a warm hug for “Mrs. Boss.”
The Doctor liked that nickname for Donna. He said it suited her. She rolled her eyes, but didn't stop smiling.
Once the companions left, the Doctor quickly and silently coaxed everyone inside. He made the TARDIS dematerialize and then tugged Donna into his arms, needing the comfort of one of her hugs as the weight of the day piled onto his shoulders. She sighed, feeling the shock and horror floating in from his mind. “The worst didn't happen,” she reminded him, thinking that talking aloud might ground her husband in reality. “We made it.”
“Too close,” he whispered. It was the curse of how a Time Lord saw time and space. Sometimes it could be ignored or pushed aside - and he did it a lot with his companions and assistants over the years, with varying results for him and for them. But some days, the consequences were unavoidable and he was hit with the worst results. Today, it was the worst thing he'd seen since the disaster of the Last Great Time War.
In fact, the Reality Bomb could, in theory, have destroyed the Time Lock and everything within it. The paradoxes involved gave even him a headache.
The twins sighed. They shared a glance. Which one of us should tell him? Duplicate Donna asked.
Duplicate Doctor frowned. Guess I'll have a go first. He turned to face their parents. “Hey, Dad?”
The Doctor opened his eyes, looking up to meet his children's gazes. He felt a bit of guilt as he realized that he hadn't hugged them until they dragged him away from the earlier mess. At least they hadn't held it against him. Proof that they held a lot of their mother in their psyches. A very good thing, he knew.
Duplicate Doctor decided to take looking up as permission to continue. “It's time to go to Chiswick.”
His eyes popped wide.
Donna groaned, and pulled out of the hug to fold her arms. “Oi, you know that I love my family. Did you really think that you could keep me around without dealing with them?”
The Doctor rubbed his neck. “Well...” He cleared his through, trying to find a response that wouldn't upset Donna.
Duplicate Donna snorted. “Dad, you like Mum's granddad, but you've got to deal with her mother, too. If you wouldn't part us from Mum, you're not going to part her from the blood family she had before we were born.”
Oh, blimey, the Doctor thought with a groan. I'm in trouble. But that didn't mean he wasn't going to try to delay things as long as he could. He did have a time machine, after all.
“Don't think you can use the time travel excuse,” Donna immediately said, eyes narrowing since she could sense his thoughts. “I know how you operate.”
The Doctor blinked, having forgotten that she could hear practically anything he was strongly thinking or feeling. “Donna, you know your mother doesn't like me-”
“You might be surprised once she knows the truth about Lance,” Duplicate Doctor retorted. “Hearing you saved her daughter's life might do the trick.”
“Well,” the Doctor tried again, “she's also been awful to your mother.”
“Doesn't mean I don't love her,” Donna snapped. “Besides, she and Gramps are the only family I could depend on before the three of you. A person needs family to count on.”
Which he hadn't had in a long time. It was the unspoken part of her words, trying to remind him that he had lacked that sense of a place he came from - which could possibly be within his grasp - until now.
“Come on, Dad,” the Duplicates moaned as one as their father opened his mouth again to try to talk them out of going outside. “Don't we need to be introduced as your and Mum's children?”
The Doctor flinched. The joys of being bonded with Donna had blinded him to the implications that went with being her husband. Not now. “Can we wait another hour?” he tried.
Donna snorted. “We've waited long enough, Sunshine. Time to reassure my family and face the music.”
The twins laughed at their father's blanching expression. They just walked outside, her first. They both flinched again over the feeling of gravel under their feet. Their new skins weren't used to adjusting to different surfaces, and their human DNA meant that they weren't as resilient as their father. The grating inside the TARDIS was getting to be a bit much, so they were looking forward to the carpet and other smooth surfaces inside their great-grandfather's house. She noted the sky. “Ugh. It's going to rain hard later.”
Her brother grimaced as he looked up, too. “Massive atmospheric disturbance.” As their parents exited, their father still pouting as he was led by their mother through a tight hand-hold, they looked up. “We'll get a lot of this for a while, won't we?
Donna sighed. “Better this than Daleks.” She marched up, key in hand and dragging the Doctor behind her, and unlocked her grandfather's door. “So tough it out, Husband.”
The Doctor opened his mouth to protest, as he had toughed out the Academy (yes, with a retest) and survived hundreds of years of loneliness, but Wilf opened the door before Donna could. “Donna! You're safe!” She was folded into Wilf's arms, forced to release her hold on the Doctor.
Not that he would've done a runner. He couldn't leave her to explain the Duplicates on her own. Nor be without her. Which meant he could've only held out so long against the combined efforts of his family.
Sylvia rushed forward. “God, Donna, where have you been?! What has that mad Doctor gotten you into this time?!” And yet she pulled Donna out of Wilf's arms and into her own, despite all her questions.
Donna, even as she was grateful for the biggest display of caring she'd seen from her mother in years, sighed loudly. “Oi!” She pulled away. “I just helped save the whole of Creation, I bring some new family members home, and this is the welcome I get?!”
Sylvia and Wilf then looked behind her, and noticed that she wasn't alone. Not only was the Doctor standing nearby, hands tucked in his pockets and practically vibrating with nervous energy, but there were two others fidgeting slightly. “Aye aye!” Wilf beat his daughter to speaking, although the shock was considerable. “They look like the two of you! But their clothes are huge on them! And where are their shoes?!”
“I know, Gramps,” Donna sighed, a bit stressed from the tension she could see coming. “May we all please come inside? It's about to start pissing down.”
Not too long after, the Duplicates were sitting on the floor, cross-legged and restraining their nerves. Their memories might speak to the sort of behavior they could expect from their gran, but they did not prepare them to actually face it. They finally understood why their parents had each messed up situations they ought to have been prepared for.
They sat across from their gran and great-grandfather, who kept looking at them. Well, when they weren't staring at their father, sitting on the other large chair in the room, or at their mother, who stood at the Doctor's right side. Their long jackets were hanging on the coat hanger near the door. Outside, they could hear the rain start falling. Well, falling was the biggest understatement of the decade. It sounded more appropriate to monsoon season in the Far East. The Duplicate Donna sighed. “I hope everyone in a flood area can clear out of the way.”
Her brother briefly clasped her hand. It was hard to tell which side of his mind that came from; their mother was the most compassionate person in the universe, but their father was more capable of it than he gave himself credit for.
Donna held up her hands. “Right, now let me explain without interruption. There's a lot I haven't said to you in particular, Mum, but I'm going to correct that now. Whatever passed between us before, the things that keep us from being able to speak honestly with each other, please let me speak.”
Her mother narrowed her eyes, but sighed with a huff. “Then tell us where you've been and what happened tonight!”
The Doctor forced his mouth to remain closed. The memory of how Donna was treated at the reception was still fresh in his mind, and he flinched over the regret of not saying something at the time. Those people who called themselves Donna's friends still needed a good what-for.
Donna, feeling her husband's frustration, patted him on the arm. Sighing, she took a deep breath. “It turned out Lance was lying. He was poisoning me with something alien, something brewed down inside HC Clement's. The aliens you've seen in past three years? There's more of them out there, and they've been to Earth before. We've been lucky so many times, and do you know who's had a hand in saving us most if not all of those times? Another alien, who was exiled by his own people for being different.” She touched the Doctor's shoulder. “And he's right here.”
Wilf wondered how old the Doctor was. Sylvia needed every bit of restraint she'd ever learned to keep quiet.
“He's millennia older than he looks. He's fought against people who would change things for the worse, and kept history running as it should. Oh, I guess I forgot to mention that his people could travel in time and space. That blue box in front of the house is his ship. Yes,” she added when she saw her mother's disbelieving look, “a ship. He's spent so much time on Earth, particularly among people from Britain, that he's made his ship look like one of those old police boxes. It's bigger than it looks on the outside. I can provide the proof later. He's shown that off a lot.” She ignored the blush on the Doctor's face. “In any case, he's spent all but a few of the last nine hundred years of his life alone. His planet, his people are all gone - consumed in a war against those pepper pots that nearly destroyed the universe.”
It was a hyper simplistic explanation, but Donna knew better than to mention now that her husband had a hand in his people's destruction. Certainly not after all that Davros and Dalek Caan had evidently exposed about him. Even if few of the companions understood the truth of it. She rubbed his shoulder, sending as many comforting thoughts as she could manage, all the love she held for him.
“The Daleks have targeted Earth time and time again. Of course, they're not the only ones. Another old enemy of the Doctor's wanted to use me as... a key to come back to life, which would've killed me and probably all life on Earth. But what Lance was poisoning me with somehow transported me into the Doctor's ship. He saved my life.” She took a breath, reminding herself to keep that she'd saved his to herself. “The alien Lance was in league with, a giant spider with a human torso, killed him. That's what happened to Lance. After he'd made it clear that he was using me, and pointed out every fault he saw in me.”
Wilf and Sylvia paled, choking on their breaths. Now they both understood why Donna couldn't find the nerve to talk about what really happened. It was too painful for her. Although they wondered how Donna managed to speak of it now without crying.
The flood of support from the Doctor fortified Donna, even as they both knew she was about to speak of something that they both regretted. “The Doctor asked me to go with him, traveling through time and space with him. But I was scared, and told him no.” She squeezed his shoulder again, accepted the lack of blame. “Turned out to be the biggest mistake I've ever made; I wanted to change my life, be magnificent like he told me to be, but I just couldn't figure out how.” She paused to clear her throat, to maintain her dignity.
“After Dad died, I decided to find the Doctor. I would've taken just one more time, just to figure out what I could do differently in my life, but I wanted more than anything to go with him as he'd offered. That's why I had half my things all packed - to be ready at a moment's notice. When you thought I was drifting, I was investigating anything that looked like trouble and might have aliens involved. Seemed the best way to find him. Wasn't until that night with all those Adipose, the little bodies of fat, that I did. I helped him save a million lives.”
Three matching grins of pride flashed at her. Made her blush a bit, feeling the familial love and awe.
Sylvia blinked as something hit her. “Suzette. She nearly died from those things coming out of her. You mean you saved her?”
“Donna had something from Adipose Industries that turned out to be key to stopping the transformation,” the Doctor explained. “I had one, but I needed a second, which she had from her investigating. She's always been brilliant. Arguing with me, figuring out the small details that are the clues to what's happening or what needs to be done, and being the best friend I've ever had.”
Donna smiled, blushing over the praise. “Daft prawn.” Her smile had to quirk into amusement when he flashed a beaming grin at her loving disrespect toward him. She wasn't surprised when he told her, One more thing I love about you, but it did make her blush and force her to clear her throat. “Since then, I've been traveling with him. On our journeys, we've made lives better, stopped would-be conquerors, and alien threats - including that ATMOS mess. And I've discovered that sometimes it's humans who are the source of the danger. So it's dangerous, but I've made a world of difference in many lives. And...he's made all the difference to mine.”
“You were always brilliant,” the Doctor retorted. “You just needed the chance to shine, and the belief in yourself.”
Sylvia noticed that he slid a sideways glare her way. She flinched, but kept silent because her daughter continued her tale - and she'd given her word.
“Perhaps. And today, the Daleks stole Earth and twenty-six other worlds to power an engine to destroy all of creation.” She looked at the Duplicates. “They stopped it.”
Wilf finally couldn't keep silent. “But who are they?!”
The Duplicates beamed, covering a sudden shaky feeling in their respective stomachs as they each waved. “Their children.”
“What?!” blurted Sylvia.
The Doctor sighed. It was time for him to pick up the tale. He cleared his throat and clasped his hands together, leaning forward. "I'm not like you. I look like you, I talk like you, but I'm not human. I'm from an alien race, an ancient race called the Time Lords. We can live for an exceptionally long time, and when we die we can regenerate, and become a new person. The energy used to regenerate is very powerful and very dangerous if someone not of my kind touches it. It happened today, while I was trying to save the Earth. I was shot by a Dalek and nearly died."
He shuddered, grabbing Donna's hand, needing the physical contact to ground himself in the present. He didn't notice how Sylvia's eyes widened in shock, and Wilf's in growing pleased surprise.
“Donna was trapped inside my ship in a very dangerous moment. The Daleks tried to destroy them both. She'd just watched me get shot and start regenerating, but I had a spare hand. Remember the alien rock over London when all those people were on the roofs?” Numb nods greeted those words. “I had regenerated fully not long before, and my hand was cut off in a fight for Earth's freedom. I was able to grow it back, and a friend recovered my old hand. I kept it in my ship for safekeeping, and I used it to absorb the extra energy so I didn't have to change. So there it was with Donna, and...she heard a heart beating. And touched it.”
“We'll take over here, Dad,” the Duplicate Donna said. She smiled at her new relatives. “What he failed to mention is that as the Hand, we were fully aware of our surroundings. We endured an annoying almost three years in various jars, being kept alive by nutrient fluids.” She knew her frustration dripped from her voice.
Her brother jumped in. “We were still sensitive to the time-lines, and everything was converging on us and on Donna Noble. The heart beating was us calling out to her, although we weren't really aware of what we were doing until she and the TARDIS were in danger. We needed to become a person to help, but we didn't have enough genetic material despite all the regeneration energy flowing inside. When she touched the jar, the energy connected with her body, and we absorbed some of her DNA.”
“That was enough to make one body and turn her from the Doctor's companion into our mother, but we sensed that fate would hand a cruel blow to Mum; the two-way Meta-Crisis - that's when someone touches regeneration energy and it backfires both ways - was in danger of threatening to grow in her mind and burn her. And that might've been the kindest fate.” She glared at her father.
He flinched. Donna and Jack had made the implications of a mind wipe painfully clear through some off-hand comments in the moments before the other companions left. He hadn't realized how many potential triggers for remembering existed, and the staggering number made him unspeakably grateful for how things had turned out.
“So,” the Duplicate Doctor continued, before his gran's curiosity overwhelmed her restraint, “we reached out to pull the energy back out of her safely. We managed, but got a bigger sample of her DNA with it. Before, it would've turned us as the Hand into a duplicate of the Doctor, but half-human. Yet there were two conflicting DNA instructions suddenly there. To resolve it-”
“We split apart, creating two hybrid bodies!”
“One Mini-Doctor and-”
“-a Mini-Donna!”
Donna slowly shook her head. God, they're a scary mix of the two of us, Spaceman. She got a tiny smile for her thought.
Wilf couldn't help but laugh. “Well, is that why she looks like Donna did at fourteen? Is that what you would've looked like at that age, Doctor?”
The Doctor frowned. “Well, I'm still not sure how to explain their existence. They really shouldn't exist at all, but I suppose it's a result of the time-lines being manipulated for so long to bring about the events of today.” He shrugged, sighing. “And I hate not understanding something.”
“They saved us all,” Donna jumped in. “They disabled the engine, and stopped the Daleks. The explosion in the sky was the Dalek Crucible being destroyed, which was their doing...” She trailed off, reminded that her children had followed in their father's footsteps in committing genocide to protect countless other lives. “We wouldn't exist without them, and their help in returning Earth back home.”
The Doctor had to interrupt his wife's flow. “But none of it could have happened without Donna. As much as our children could be called 'the Doctor-Donna', their mother birthed it all. In that moment that Donna took the risk of coming too close to burning, she made it possible to save every world - and songs will be written in her honor, across all of space and through to the parallel worlds that were also threatened.” He couldn't help but look at Donna's face. “For one moment... one shining moment, she was the most important woman in the whole wide universe."
Sylvia wasn't blind. She could read the expression in the Doctor's face. It was one she never thought she'd see directed at her daughter: utter adoration. She could swear that he considered Donna the most priceless treasure in the universe. An alien! But she couldn't stop her mouth; something in the Doctor's words hit a nerve. “She still is! She's my daughter.”
Donna thought her face would fly apart from shock.
The Duplicates' eyebrows did an impression of their father in surprise.
The Doctor fixed a steely glare on Sylvia. “Then why haven't you told her that before? She can't remember the last time you expressed anything other than disappointment in her or fear for her future!”
Sylvia flinched, head to toe.
Donna snapped to enough to tighten her hold on his hand and wrap her other one around it. Theta, stop it!
The Doctor had opened his mouth to continue, to give her what-for over all the offences he'd noted since meeting Donna, but his wife's quiet rebuke silenced him. He sank back into the chair, reminded that they had to try to play nice.
A deep breath was needed; Donna felt his anger on her behalf, and had to wait to rein in her conflicted feelings about her mother's actions. She turned to face her nervous grandfather and stunned mother. “One more thing: the Doctor and I are now, by his peoples' laws and customs, married.” She ploughed ahead in the face of her shocked mother opening her mouth again. “Did I plan to marry an alien? No! But I did, and the miracle is that he loves me. He's never let me down, not once! Mum, I know I haven't lived my life anything like what you wanted, but can you be happy that I've found happiness and a purpose in life?”
Wilf looked at his daughter, praying that she wouldn't have a fit. Lord knew the women of her bloodline were prone to strong reactions!
Sylvia felt five pairs of eyes looking expectantly at her. It was easier to look at the two people who were her...grandchildren...than to meet the cautious look of the Doctor, the pleading gaze of her child, or the slightly rebuking expression on her father's face. The two young faces were giving her silent pleas to accept them, and their father. To support their mother's choices, for once. The puppy eyes had been bad enough when Donna was that age, but the look seemed to have extra force behind it thanks to the Doctor's influence on them.
Of course, what would they do if she refused? Would she ever see Donna again? Her heart clenched so painfully Sylvia thought she'd pass out. Which settled her decision, if not her emotions. “If I couldn't tell that you two are that in love...I'm not sure I would feel so comfortable about this, but I can't remember you ever being so confident, Donna. He has changed you, hasn't he?”
“I just unleashed something desperate to come out,” the Doctor said, shrugging off the praise. Even where Donna's growth was concerned, he hated to toot his own horn.
Sylvia shook her head and stood. “Whatever the cause, I'm not pushing away any of you. You have a home here, and I hope to see her more often again.”
“Aye aye,” Wilf interjected, standing, “no more of this. We have new family to welcome!” He held out his arms to the Duplicates, who hopped to their feet, happily accepting a hug from their new great-grandy.
Donna worked her hand free as her mother walked toward her. Nervously, she realized. The two folded into a tight hug, the first truly loving one in years. It brought tears to their eyes.
The Doctor remained seated, watching his family being accepted into Donna's. He sagged into the seat, grateful that his wife wasn't going to be hurt by rejection. The joy his children had in hugging Wilf, and then Sylvia when she let Donna go, re-enforced that this was how things were supposed to be. Maybe life with Donna truly was a type of domestic that wasn't a bad thing. Oh, he felt it in his hearts, but it was another thing to convince his mind. Especially after so many years of rebelling against being in anything like a domestic role.
Still...his children needed a reminder that they couldn't take things into their hands like they had. It was his responsibility, and should've been his burden to make that decision. But how could he punish them in a way that they would respect?
His stomach growled loudly, interrupting his thoughts, and was followed promptly by his children's. He cleared his throat in the face of Sylvia's pointed stare. “Bit of an energy deficit from regeneration. The twins will have it worse since they've never eaten in their lives.”
Sylvia's eyes widened. “Why didn't you say something earlier?! Oh, we can't have them starving! Dad, Donna, help me see what we can make. God, I hope we have enough food to feed two teenagers. You went through a right phase of eating anything you could get your hands on. Grew taller and gained three bust sizes.”
Donna followed her mother into the kitchen, not thrilled over the unintentional reminder of when she started her struggle with her weight. Yet it was the most promising sign of her acceptance. She'd sensed the twins confidence in their grandmother's growing love, and that was the critical thing, wasn't it? Still...it took a lot of restraint to not snap a retort. She wanted to encourage her mother's acceptance of her family, after all. Pick her battles wisely and all. Even if it reminded her of when her friends all had fried eggs and she had a pair that turned heads as a young teenager.
Her poor daughter. She had that to look forward to. At least she'd have a protective brother as well as a father to snap the boys into behaving. She suspected the ones now were worth even less of her girl's time than the ones in her youth were.
The Doctor frowned over the thoughts he was getting from Donna, but he forced his gob to stay silent. A tall order, but one he could manage. It would take getting used to actually having a family of in-laws again. Even if it only meant two people. Suddenly, he was even more sorry for Geoffrey's death. The man had seemed such a decent chap, and Donna deserved to have more family.
The Duplicates laughed at their father. “See, Dad,” the boy said, walking past him, “that wasn't so bad, was it?”
His sister nodded enthusiastically, right behind him. “Oh, yes! Family and acceptance. All because you listened to Mum, hmm?”
He glared at them. They just laughed in his face and strolled into the kitchen, flopping into chairs by a table that only sat four.
He was father to two very cheeky buggers. They needed a few lessons in how to behave. Which would probably have to mostly come from Donna - she would give him what-for if he dared presume he could teach them manners. Well, he had plenty to teach them, and parenting was a shared job. Still, there were definite areas that he would need to let Donna and her family take the lead. Just as there were other things that required the opposite.
But, he sighed to himself, one thing had to come first. He followed them. As he pondered one important topic, an idea for their punishment was also forming in his head. He just needed to check with Donna to know what memories she had given them...to be sure it was suitable.
Chapter Seven: Opening Night
Rating: T
Author:
tkel_paris
Summary: Not even Caan could see every possibility. The Hand was far more aware than anyone gave it credit for, and it transformed itself into something different. Now Donna Noble and the Doctor have their work cut out for them.
Dedication:
tardis_mole. This was provoked by “Another Fine Mess.” You'll have to read it all the way through to have any clue why. And yes, I beta read that story, so in a tiny way I'm tooting my own horn in addition to TM's. ;D And thank you, my friend, for the chapter titles! :D
Disclaimer: Rose Tyler wouldn't have been anywhere near Series 4, and therefore this probably couldn't have happened, had I anything to do with owning these characters. I've lost all respect for the character, I freely admit it. Which means I've lost some respect for her creator. Shame, since he also created characters that I adore.
Author's Note: A new entry for the Alternate Handy Fanfiction Challenge. Nope, we haven't mined this one to death. Not at all! :D And there are still other possibilities! :D
May story a day challenge is going well. Written seven stories in six days. Now they all need editing or expanding. But I'm crossing ideas off my list right and left! :D Meanwhile, back to the aftermath of the intense last chapter...
Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5
Chapter Six: Mirror Image
Moments later, the four companions had walked outside, and left. Not before breathing in the familiar polluted air of London. The new Time Family stepped out to bid them off, although the parents didn't notice the wincing reactions of the twins to the pavement.
Sarah Jane had rushed ahead, needing to get home to Luke, but not before giving the family hugs goodbye and insisting that they come to meet Luke - and Donna promised her they would. The others left after the Doctor used his Sonic on the Vortex Manipulator that Jack was using. The Boe-Kind had groaned over the loss of yet another one, but still saluted the Doctor. So did Martha. Mickey left with a knuckle bump for the Doctor and the twins, and a warm hug for “Mrs. Boss.”
The Doctor liked that nickname for Donna. He said it suited her. She rolled her eyes, but didn't stop smiling.
Once the companions left, the Doctor quickly and silently coaxed everyone inside. He made the TARDIS dematerialize and then tugged Donna into his arms, needing the comfort of one of her hugs as the weight of the day piled onto his shoulders. She sighed, feeling the shock and horror floating in from his mind. “The worst didn't happen,” she reminded him, thinking that talking aloud might ground her husband in reality. “We made it.”
“Too close,” he whispered. It was the curse of how a Time Lord saw time and space. Sometimes it could be ignored or pushed aside - and he did it a lot with his companions and assistants over the years, with varying results for him and for them. But some days, the consequences were unavoidable and he was hit with the worst results. Today, it was the worst thing he'd seen since the disaster of the Last Great Time War.
In fact, the Reality Bomb could, in theory, have destroyed the Time Lock and everything within it. The paradoxes involved gave even him a headache.
The twins sighed. They shared a glance. Which one of us should tell him? Duplicate Donna asked.
Duplicate Doctor frowned. Guess I'll have a go first. He turned to face their parents. “Hey, Dad?”
The Doctor opened his eyes, looking up to meet his children's gazes. He felt a bit of guilt as he realized that he hadn't hugged them until they dragged him away from the earlier mess. At least they hadn't held it against him. Proof that they held a lot of their mother in their psyches. A very good thing, he knew.
Duplicate Doctor decided to take looking up as permission to continue. “It's time to go to Chiswick.”
His eyes popped wide.
Donna groaned, and pulled out of the hug to fold her arms. “Oi, you know that I love my family. Did you really think that you could keep me around without dealing with them?”
The Doctor rubbed his neck. “Well...” He cleared his through, trying to find a response that wouldn't upset Donna.
Duplicate Donna snorted. “Dad, you like Mum's granddad, but you've got to deal with her mother, too. If you wouldn't part us from Mum, you're not going to part her from the blood family she had before we were born.”
Oh, blimey, the Doctor thought with a groan. I'm in trouble. But that didn't mean he wasn't going to try to delay things as long as he could. He did have a time machine, after all.
“Don't think you can use the time travel excuse,” Donna immediately said, eyes narrowing since she could sense his thoughts. “I know how you operate.”
The Doctor blinked, having forgotten that she could hear practically anything he was strongly thinking or feeling. “Donna, you know your mother doesn't like me-”
“You might be surprised once she knows the truth about Lance,” Duplicate Doctor retorted. “Hearing you saved her daughter's life might do the trick.”
“Well,” the Doctor tried again, “she's also been awful to your mother.”
“Doesn't mean I don't love her,” Donna snapped. “Besides, she and Gramps are the only family I could depend on before the three of you. A person needs family to count on.”
Which he hadn't had in a long time. It was the unspoken part of her words, trying to remind him that he had lacked that sense of a place he came from - which could possibly be within his grasp - until now.
“Come on, Dad,” the Duplicates moaned as one as their father opened his mouth again to try to talk them out of going outside. “Don't we need to be introduced as your and Mum's children?”
The Doctor flinched. The joys of being bonded with Donna had blinded him to the implications that went with being her husband. Not now. “Can we wait another hour?” he tried.
Donna snorted. “We've waited long enough, Sunshine. Time to reassure my family and face the music.”
The twins laughed at their father's blanching expression. They just walked outside, her first. They both flinched again over the feeling of gravel under their feet. Their new skins weren't used to adjusting to different surfaces, and their human DNA meant that they weren't as resilient as their father. The grating inside the TARDIS was getting to be a bit much, so they were looking forward to the carpet and other smooth surfaces inside their great-grandfather's house. She noted the sky. “Ugh. It's going to rain hard later.”
Her brother grimaced as he looked up, too. “Massive atmospheric disturbance.” As their parents exited, their father still pouting as he was led by their mother through a tight hand-hold, they looked up. “We'll get a lot of this for a while, won't we?
Donna sighed. “Better this than Daleks.” She marched up, key in hand and dragging the Doctor behind her, and unlocked her grandfather's door. “So tough it out, Husband.”
The Doctor opened his mouth to protest, as he had toughed out the Academy (yes, with a retest) and survived hundreds of years of loneliness, but Wilf opened the door before Donna could. “Donna! You're safe!” She was folded into Wilf's arms, forced to release her hold on the Doctor.
Not that he would've done a runner. He couldn't leave her to explain the Duplicates on her own. Nor be without her. Which meant he could've only held out so long against the combined efforts of his family.
Sylvia rushed forward. “God, Donna, where have you been?! What has that mad Doctor gotten you into this time?!” And yet she pulled Donna out of Wilf's arms and into her own, despite all her questions.
Donna, even as she was grateful for the biggest display of caring she'd seen from her mother in years, sighed loudly. “Oi!” She pulled away. “I just helped save the whole of Creation, I bring some new family members home, and this is the welcome I get?!”
Sylvia and Wilf then looked behind her, and noticed that she wasn't alone. Not only was the Doctor standing nearby, hands tucked in his pockets and practically vibrating with nervous energy, but there were two others fidgeting slightly. “Aye aye!” Wilf beat his daughter to speaking, although the shock was considerable. “They look like the two of you! But their clothes are huge on them! And where are their shoes?!”
“I know, Gramps,” Donna sighed, a bit stressed from the tension she could see coming. “May we all please come inside? It's about to start pissing down.”
Not too long after, the Duplicates were sitting on the floor, cross-legged and restraining their nerves. Their memories might speak to the sort of behavior they could expect from their gran, but they did not prepare them to actually face it. They finally understood why their parents had each messed up situations they ought to have been prepared for.
They sat across from their gran and great-grandfather, who kept looking at them. Well, when they weren't staring at their father, sitting on the other large chair in the room, or at their mother, who stood at the Doctor's right side. Their long jackets were hanging on the coat hanger near the door. Outside, they could hear the rain start falling. Well, falling was the biggest understatement of the decade. It sounded more appropriate to monsoon season in the Far East. The Duplicate Donna sighed. “I hope everyone in a flood area can clear out of the way.”
Her brother briefly clasped her hand. It was hard to tell which side of his mind that came from; their mother was the most compassionate person in the universe, but their father was more capable of it than he gave himself credit for.
Donna held up her hands. “Right, now let me explain without interruption. There's a lot I haven't said to you in particular, Mum, but I'm going to correct that now. Whatever passed between us before, the things that keep us from being able to speak honestly with each other, please let me speak.”
Her mother narrowed her eyes, but sighed with a huff. “Then tell us where you've been and what happened tonight!”
The Doctor forced his mouth to remain closed. The memory of how Donna was treated at the reception was still fresh in his mind, and he flinched over the regret of not saying something at the time. Those people who called themselves Donna's friends still needed a good what-for.
Donna, feeling her husband's frustration, patted him on the arm. Sighing, she took a deep breath. “It turned out Lance was lying. He was poisoning me with something alien, something brewed down inside HC Clement's. The aliens you've seen in past three years? There's more of them out there, and they've been to Earth before. We've been lucky so many times, and do you know who's had a hand in saving us most if not all of those times? Another alien, who was exiled by his own people for being different.” She touched the Doctor's shoulder. “And he's right here.”
Wilf wondered how old the Doctor was. Sylvia needed every bit of restraint she'd ever learned to keep quiet.
“He's millennia older than he looks. He's fought against people who would change things for the worse, and kept history running as it should. Oh, I guess I forgot to mention that his people could travel in time and space. That blue box in front of the house is his ship. Yes,” she added when she saw her mother's disbelieving look, “a ship. He's spent so much time on Earth, particularly among people from Britain, that he's made his ship look like one of those old police boxes. It's bigger than it looks on the outside. I can provide the proof later. He's shown that off a lot.” She ignored the blush on the Doctor's face. “In any case, he's spent all but a few of the last nine hundred years of his life alone. His planet, his people are all gone - consumed in a war against those pepper pots that nearly destroyed the universe.”
It was a hyper simplistic explanation, but Donna knew better than to mention now that her husband had a hand in his people's destruction. Certainly not after all that Davros and Dalek Caan had evidently exposed about him. Even if few of the companions understood the truth of it. She rubbed his shoulder, sending as many comforting thoughts as she could manage, all the love she held for him.
“The Daleks have targeted Earth time and time again. Of course, they're not the only ones. Another old enemy of the Doctor's wanted to use me as... a key to come back to life, which would've killed me and probably all life on Earth. But what Lance was poisoning me with somehow transported me into the Doctor's ship. He saved my life.” She took a breath, reminding herself to keep that she'd saved his to herself. “The alien Lance was in league with, a giant spider with a human torso, killed him. That's what happened to Lance. After he'd made it clear that he was using me, and pointed out every fault he saw in me.”
Wilf and Sylvia paled, choking on their breaths. Now they both understood why Donna couldn't find the nerve to talk about what really happened. It was too painful for her. Although they wondered how Donna managed to speak of it now without crying.
The flood of support from the Doctor fortified Donna, even as they both knew she was about to speak of something that they both regretted. “The Doctor asked me to go with him, traveling through time and space with him. But I was scared, and told him no.” She squeezed his shoulder again, accepted the lack of blame. “Turned out to be the biggest mistake I've ever made; I wanted to change my life, be magnificent like he told me to be, but I just couldn't figure out how.” She paused to clear her throat, to maintain her dignity.
“After Dad died, I decided to find the Doctor. I would've taken just one more time, just to figure out what I could do differently in my life, but I wanted more than anything to go with him as he'd offered. That's why I had half my things all packed - to be ready at a moment's notice. When you thought I was drifting, I was investigating anything that looked like trouble and might have aliens involved. Seemed the best way to find him. Wasn't until that night with all those Adipose, the little bodies of fat, that I did. I helped him save a million lives.”
Three matching grins of pride flashed at her. Made her blush a bit, feeling the familial love and awe.
Sylvia blinked as something hit her. “Suzette. She nearly died from those things coming out of her. You mean you saved her?”
“Donna had something from Adipose Industries that turned out to be key to stopping the transformation,” the Doctor explained. “I had one, but I needed a second, which she had from her investigating. She's always been brilliant. Arguing with me, figuring out the small details that are the clues to what's happening or what needs to be done, and being the best friend I've ever had.”
Donna smiled, blushing over the praise. “Daft prawn.” Her smile had to quirk into amusement when he flashed a beaming grin at her loving disrespect toward him. She wasn't surprised when he told her, One more thing I love about you, but it did make her blush and force her to clear her throat. “Since then, I've been traveling with him. On our journeys, we've made lives better, stopped would-be conquerors, and alien threats - including that ATMOS mess. And I've discovered that sometimes it's humans who are the source of the danger. So it's dangerous, but I've made a world of difference in many lives. And...he's made all the difference to mine.”
“You were always brilliant,” the Doctor retorted. “You just needed the chance to shine, and the belief in yourself.”
Sylvia noticed that he slid a sideways glare her way. She flinched, but kept silent because her daughter continued her tale - and she'd given her word.
“Perhaps. And today, the Daleks stole Earth and twenty-six other worlds to power an engine to destroy all of creation.” She looked at the Duplicates. “They stopped it.”
Wilf finally couldn't keep silent. “But who are they?!”
The Duplicates beamed, covering a sudden shaky feeling in their respective stomachs as they each waved. “Their children.”
“What?!” blurted Sylvia.
The Doctor sighed. It was time for him to pick up the tale. He cleared his throat and clasped his hands together, leaning forward. "I'm not like you. I look like you, I talk like you, but I'm not human. I'm from an alien race, an ancient race called the Time Lords. We can live for an exceptionally long time, and when we die we can regenerate, and become a new person. The energy used to regenerate is very powerful and very dangerous if someone not of my kind touches it. It happened today, while I was trying to save the Earth. I was shot by a Dalek and nearly died."
He shuddered, grabbing Donna's hand, needing the physical contact to ground himself in the present. He didn't notice how Sylvia's eyes widened in shock, and Wilf's in growing pleased surprise.
“Donna was trapped inside my ship in a very dangerous moment. The Daleks tried to destroy them both. She'd just watched me get shot and start regenerating, but I had a spare hand. Remember the alien rock over London when all those people were on the roofs?” Numb nods greeted those words. “I had regenerated fully not long before, and my hand was cut off in a fight for Earth's freedom. I was able to grow it back, and a friend recovered my old hand. I kept it in my ship for safekeeping, and I used it to absorb the extra energy so I didn't have to change. So there it was with Donna, and...she heard a heart beating. And touched it.”
“We'll take over here, Dad,” the Duplicate Donna said. She smiled at her new relatives. “What he failed to mention is that as the Hand, we were fully aware of our surroundings. We endured an annoying almost three years in various jars, being kept alive by nutrient fluids.” She knew her frustration dripped from her voice.
Her brother jumped in. “We were still sensitive to the time-lines, and everything was converging on us and on Donna Noble. The heart beating was us calling out to her, although we weren't really aware of what we were doing until she and the TARDIS were in danger. We needed to become a person to help, but we didn't have enough genetic material despite all the regeneration energy flowing inside. When she touched the jar, the energy connected with her body, and we absorbed some of her DNA.”
“That was enough to make one body and turn her from the Doctor's companion into our mother, but we sensed that fate would hand a cruel blow to Mum; the two-way Meta-Crisis - that's when someone touches regeneration energy and it backfires both ways - was in danger of threatening to grow in her mind and burn her. And that might've been the kindest fate.” She glared at her father.
He flinched. Donna and Jack had made the implications of a mind wipe painfully clear through some off-hand comments in the moments before the other companions left. He hadn't realized how many potential triggers for remembering existed, and the staggering number made him unspeakably grateful for how things had turned out.
“So,” the Duplicate Doctor continued, before his gran's curiosity overwhelmed her restraint, “we reached out to pull the energy back out of her safely. We managed, but got a bigger sample of her DNA with it. Before, it would've turned us as the Hand into a duplicate of the Doctor, but half-human. Yet there were two conflicting DNA instructions suddenly there. To resolve it-”
“We split apart, creating two hybrid bodies!”
“One Mini-Doctor and-”
“-a Mini-Donna!”
Donna slowly shook her head. God, they're a scary mix of the two of us, Spaceman. She got a tiny smile for her thought.
Wilf couldn't help but laugh. “Well, is that why she looks like Donna did at fourteen? Is that what you would've looked like at that age, Doctor?”
The Doctor frowned. “Well, I'm still not sure how to explain their existence. They really shouldn't exist at all, but I suppose it's a result of the time-lines being manipulated for so long to bring about the events of today.” He shrugged, sighing. “And I hate not understanding something.”
“They saved us all,” Donna jumped in. “They disabled the engine, and stopped the Daleks. The explosion in the sky was the Dalek Crucible being destroyed, which was their doing...” She trailed off, reminded that her children had followed in their father's footsteps in committing genocide to protect countless other lives. “We wouldn't exist without them, and their help in returning Earth back home.”
The Doctor had to interrupt his wife's flow. “But none of it could have happened without Donna. As much as our children could be called 'the Doctor-Donna', their mother birthed it all. In that moment that Donna took the risk of coming too close to burning, she made it possible to save every world - and songs will be written in her honor, across all of space and through to the parallel worlds that were also threatened.” He couldn't help but look at Donna's face. “For one moment... one shining moment, she was the most important woman in the whole wide universe."
Sylvia wasn't blind. She could read the expression in the Doctor's face. It was one she never thought she'd see directed at her daughter: utter adoration. She could swear that he considered Donna the most priceless treasure in the universe. An alien! But she couldn't stop her mouth; something in the Doctor's words hit a nerve. “She still is! She's my daughter.”
Donna thought her face would fly apart from shock.
The Duplicates' eyebrows did an impression of their father in surprise.
The Doctor fixed a steely glare on Sylvia. “Then why haven't you told her that before? She can't remember the last time you expressed anything other than disappointment in her or fear for her future!”
Sylvia flinched, head to toe.
Donna snapped to enough to tighten her hold on his hand and wrap her other one around it. Theta, stop it!
The Doctor had opened his mouth to continue, to give her what-for over all the offences he'd noted since meeting Donna, but his wife's quiet rebuke silenced him. He sank back into the chair, reminded that they had to try to play nice.
A deep breath was needed; Donna felt his anger on her behalf, and had to wait to rein in her conflicted feelings about her mother's actions. She turned to face her nervous grandfather and stunned mother. “One more thing: the Doctor and I are now, by his peoples' laws and customs, married.” She ploughed ahead in the face of her shocked mother opening her mouth again. “Did I plan to marry an alien? No! But I did, and the miracle is that he loves me. He's never let me down, not once! Mum, I know I haven't lived my life anything like what you wanted, but can you be happy that I've found happiness and a purpose in life?”
Wilf looked at his daughter, praying that she wouldn't have a fit. Lord knew the women of her bloodline were prone to strong reactions!
Sylvia felt five pairs of eyes looking expectantly at her. It was easier to look at the two people who were her...grandchildren...than to meet the cautious look of the Doctor, the pleading gaze of her child, or the slightly rebuking expression on her father's face. The two young faces were giving her silent pleas to accept them, and their father. To support their mother's choices, for once. The puppy eyes had been bad enough when Donna was that age, but the look seemed to have extra force behind it thanks to the Doctor's influence on them.
Of course, what would they do if she refused? Would she ever see Donna again? Her heart clenched so painfully Sylvia thought she'd pass out. Which settled her decision, if not her emotions. “If I couldn't tell that you two are that in love...I'm not sure I would feel so comfortable about this, but I can't remember you ever being so confident, Donna. He has changed you, hasn't he?”
“I just unleashed something desperate to come out,” the Doctor said, shrugging off the praise. Even where Donna's growth was concerned, he hated to toot his own horn.
Sylvia shook her head and stood. “Whatever the cause, I'm not pushing away any of you. You have a home here, and I hope to see her more often again.”
“Aye aye,” Wilf interjected, standing, “no more of this. We have new family to welcome!” He held out his arms to the Duplicates, who hopped to their feet, happily accepting a hug from their new great-grandy.
Donna worked her hand free as her mother walked toward her. Nervously, she realized. The two folded into a tight hug, the first truly loving one in years. It brought tears to their eyes.
The Doctor remained seated, watching his family being accepted into Donna's. He sagged into the seat, grateful that his wife wasn't going to be hurt by rejection. The joy his children had in hugging Wilf, and then Sylvia when she let Donna go, re-enforced that this was how things were supposed to be. Maybe life with Donna truly was a type of domestic that wasn't a bad thing. Oh, he felt it in his hearts, but it was another thing to convince his mind. Especially after so many years of rebelling against being in anything like a domestic role.
Still...his children needed a reminder that they couldn't take things into their hands like they had. It was his responsibility, and should've been his burden to make that decision. But how could he punish them in a way that they would respect?
His stomach growled loudly, interrupting his thoughts, and was followed promptly by his children's. He cleared his throat in the face of Sylvia's pointed stare. “Bit of an energy deficit from regeneration. The twins will have it worse since they've never eaten in their lives.”
Sylvia's eyes widened. “Why didn't you say something earlier?! Oh, we can't have them starving! Dad, Donna, help me see what we can make. God, I hope we have enough food to feed two teenagers. You went through a right phase of eating anything you could get your hands on. Grew taller and gained three bust sizes.”
Donna followed her mother into the kitchen, not thrilled over the unintentional reminder of when she started her struggle with her weight. Yet it was the most promising sign of her acceptance. She'd sensed the twins confidence in their grandmother's growing love, and that was the critical thing, wasn't it? Still...it took a lot of restraint to not snap a retort. She wanted to encourage her mother's acceptance of her family, after all. Pick her battles wisely and all. Even if it reminded her of when her friends all had fried eggs and she had a pair that turned heads as a young teenager.
Her poor daughter. She had that to look forward to. At least she'd have a protective brother as well as a father to snap the boys into behaving. She suspected the ones now were worth even less of her girl's time than the ones in her youth were.
The Doctor frowned over the thoughts he was getting from Donna, but he forced his gob to stay silent. A tall order, but one he could manage. It would take getting used to actually having a family of in-laws again. Even if it only meant two people. Suddenly, he was even more sorry for Geoffrey's death. The man had seemed such a decent chap, and Donna deserved to have more family.
The Duplicates laughed at their father. “See, Dad,” the boy said, walking past him, “that wasn't so bad, was it?”
His sister nodded enthusiastically, right behind him. “Oh, yes! Family and acceptance. All because you listened to Mum, hmm?”
He glared at them. They just laughed in his face and strolled into the kitchen, flopping into chairs by a table that only sat four.
He was father to two very cheeky buggers. They needed a few lessons in how to behave. Which would probably have to mostly come from Donna - she would give him what-for if he dared presume he could teach them manners. Well, he had plenty to teach them, and parenting was a shared job. Still, there were definite areas that he would need to let Donna and her family take the lead. Just as there were other things that required the opposite.
But, he sighed to himself, one thing had to come first. He followed them. As he pondered one important topic, an idea for their punishment was also forming in his head. He just needed to check with Donna to know what memories she had given them...to be sure it was suitable.
Chapter Seven: Opening Night