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"Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen."
--My Antonia by Willa Cather
Donna Noble, they say, she’s going to save the world.
It echoes faintly of something that was and wasn’t, a sentence with another name attached, a dark-skinned lady with a determined jaw.
Donna Noble, they say, she is our only hope.
The only hope in a world where the Dalek’s have long taken over. Where the Doctor is dead, killed and not regenerated, where a young blonde had foolishly thrown herself in front of a man that was immortal, because she didn’t know. A world where humans no longer rule the planet, where safe-houses are few and far in-between and Cardiff is suddenly the safest place to be.
A world where Donna Noble turned left and met a man with a box and saw him die, because she or someone else or the whole goddamn universe wasn’t fast enough to save the man who had saved them all countless times.
Donna Noble, they say, she has a plan.
We trust in Donna Noble.
“What if this doesn’t work?” she asks Jack one day, wrapped in his long coat, still freezing in the cold winter. The snow was half-way melting and it was slippery under her feet. She could just imagine falling now, hitting her head and dying out of clumsiness. She almost snorted at the thought.
“It will work,” Jack says, and she doesn’t know why he sounds sad.
“What will happen to me?”
He doesn’t answer that.
They find it, the next day. It’s battered and more black and grey than blue, having been through a lot these past five years, but it’s there and it looks glorious.
“Some things are set, you know,” Jack says as he fumbles after his key. “Some things are always meant to happen. Other things aren’t. It’s not so bad when you try to change the changeable, but the fixed points…”
“And this was a fixed point?” Donna asks, because of course it was, of course the Doctor couldn’t just die, he had millions yet to save.
Jack meets her eyes. “No, Donna, it wasn’t.”
She doesn’t understand why he’s sad. They will save the Earth. They will go back, and all this will have never happened, the Daleks will leave, everything will be fine.
Donna Noble, they say, she’s the one that started it all.
Her breath hitch. “And we can fix it? We can bring him back?”
She still doesn’t know why Jack looks so sad.
“Yes, Donna. We can.”
“Then let’s do it,” she says, because surely, everything will be better once the Doctor is back? The planet will be saved. Everyone will be safe.
Safe and happy.
“I want to stay,”
“Donna, look at me.”
“I was gonna be with you. Forever.”
“I was asleep, in my bed, in my clothes, like a flippin’ kid, what’d you let me do that for?”
Donna Noble, they said, she’s going to save the world.