Do You Know What's Happening? (A Dr. Who Fanfic)

Plot holes drive me crazy, so crazy I can't sleep. So I've been up more than 24 hours because this thing had to be written or I wasn't going to be able to sleep. It's a VERY poorly written story because I rushed through it, and it actually deviates a little from my understanding of how we could INDEED bring Donna Noble back to the Who-verse without violating the rules. And it all has to do with the fact that the one underlying theme is that humans are clever, they're resourceful, they adapt, and there are actual precedents of similar things happening in real life with split personalities being merged in therapy and some things I've learned in other arenas along the way.

I don't write fanfics normally. This is probably only my second one ever. But there. I've put it out there. You can hate it if you want to. I'm going to bed.

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Do You Know What's Happening?

Shaun was working through lunch again. He did that more and more often these days, with no change in pay thanks to salary wages, and Donna missed his phone calls. He worked too far away for him to actually come home for lunch, so they had spent every workday on the phone on his lunch break. Or she met him and they ate lunch together. They would talk about anything ; sports, traveling and even different cultures. That was the biggest reason why she had fallen in love with him. He listened. And like her he wanted to see the world.

 

She was running errands in town, so she decided to go to the library by Shaun's work. It isn't that she was an avid reader. She had had that strange dream again, and borrowing a book on dreams from the library was cheaper than paying for a shrink. On the whole she wasn't very keen on libraries. They gave her the creeps with all their books and librarians shushing you at even the slightest sound.

 

As she walked through the front doors, her legs cut through the beams of sunlight that fell through the windows until she reached the very end of them. There was hardly anyone there, which sometimes happens on a weekday morning. She went to the computers first, but she wasn't really sure what she was looking for so she didn't stay long. They gave her a general sense of location, and that was enough. It was time to explore this place. Well, she was always ready for an adventure.

 

The smell of the books danced in her nostrils, and she could almost tell where the oldest books were hiding by the smell alone. She walked along the shelves, searching without actually searching at all. Sometimes her eyes strayed to a particular book's spine and she read the title, but nothing really caught her attention.

 

Do you know what's happening? the man had asked. His eyes were serious, his mouth grim, and every line in his face followed.

 

This dream had only happened once in a while at first, but lately she had it at least once a week if not more. It wasn't a very sad dream, but she always woke up from it gasping for breath with tears in the corner of her eyes. This nagging feeling in her breast that had been there for years, as if something was missing, kept growing with the dream's frequency. She used to be able to ignore it.

 

One book's title finally did catch her eye: The Meaning of Dreams: Messages from the Soul. "Good enough," she said to herself in a low voice and picked it up. She had to start somewhere, right? Great, she had her book. Now it was time to leave, maybe go to the spa after everything else she had to do was done. Well, she would eat lunch first.

 

The little sandwich shop she and Shaun liked to eat together was just up the block, so she decided to walk to it from the library. No... there was another little place even closer that she had always been curious about. She would eat there. Walking was easier than finding more parking, and she could use the exercise. She would read her book a little bit, and then it would be back to the mundane world.

 

She was almost there with a head held high and high heels tapping the sidewalk concrete in a firm and confident rhythm. She tried to phone her best friend Lorna to see if she wanted to meet up, but Lorna didn't pick up. Okay, so there would be no avoiding the book then. Fine, she would just get right to it then. Do you know what's happening? his voice went through her mind again. She nearly stopped her stride with it. The dream was coming to her awake now? Maybe she should see a shrink. Heaven knows she wasn't looking forward to reading anything.

 

Oh well, she was at the cafe now. If the book was a dud, she'd talk to Shaun about it. See what he thought--

 

She froze at the door, a living statue staring in with one hand raised to the door handle and eyes piercing the glass with a shocked stone gaze. Her heart, her only heart, had stopped mid-beat as if waiting for the backup of a second that wasn't there.

 

"Do I know what's happening?" she said out loud in a voice that started calm and rose to an angry crescendo. "Do I know what's happening?! Well, NOW I do!"

 

A man and woman at a table in the corner looked startled when they heard her. Their eyes met hers. The woman's eyes went wide with panic.

 

"You!" Donna stomped over to them and pointed dramatically. "Oh, I can't believe you! Oh!"

 

"Now, Donna," the man said, rising with his hands up in the universal peace gesture husbands made when they didn't want their wives to make a scene. "Don't--"

 

"What?" Donna cut him off with a toss of her ginger locks and mouth round with anger. "Don't make a scene, Shaun? What is it, you don't want anyone here to know you're sleeping with my best friend?" With each word, the reality of it sank in. The more it sank in the more she stressed certain facts loudly. And she was only just getting warmed up.

 

"It isn't like that," Lorna said in a pleading voice. "We both just happened to meet here by accident."

 

"Oh, is that how they're doing it these days? By accident? So you've been having accidents like this several times a week now? I supposed you weren't working late all those times either, Shaun. And you didn't forget my birthday at all did you!" Behind Donna, several patrons quietly left while others openly stared. She wouldn't have cared if she knew. "Oh," Donna gasped suddenly as all of the pieces from the past six months knitted themselves together in her mind. "Oh, you! You backsneaking little s**t! That abortion you had. That wasn't from your ex-boyfriend... it was Shaun's!"

 

Both of their eyes flickered with guilt, but they said nothing. There was no point in denying it, so they had stopped trying. Not that they had tried very hard to begin with. Donna could almost feel Lorna's thoughts. Donna had changed in the past couple of years. It wasn't a huge change, but there was something not quite the same. First of all, Donna seemed to think quicker. She latched onto facts and data almost as if she cared, and she had developed a curiosity for things around her when she never had before. Looking into Lorna's eyes, Donna knew. Lorna didn't see the point in fighting it.

 

Shaun's eyes simply said he didn't care.

 

Donna's eyes filled with tears. "We were..." she said in a choked small voice. "We were talking children, Shaun."

 

"That's all it was, talk," Shaun said bravely, stepping closer to Lorna as if to protect her from Donna's dwindling rage. "We were never going to have children. You wouldn't let it happen. You and your weird fears, always worried about what happens if they grow up. Or what happens if they disappear suddenly with no explanation. How could we move on to make a family when you're always worried about what happens if you do?"

 

"But..." Donna tried to say.

 

"This is for the best," Shaun said. "Look, I'm not going to throw you out on the street. You get half of what's left of the lottery winnings, right? It really is for the best, Donna. I want to have a family, and that just isn't happening with you. Not to mention how weird you can be with your interest in aliens and waking up at odd hours from those dreams of yours."

 

You're not special enough, he seemed to be saying. And a burden. She was a burden. She was sure there was more; things he may or may not remember that she only halfway paid attention to in her head. It suddenly didn't matter. At that point Donna did what she always did when faced with that sort of feeling. She let it win.

 

 

 

Do you know what's happening? the man's voice said in her dream again. Yeah, she replied with a voice just as sad as his expression. The feeling of futility was awash in her soul. It woke her up.

 

She had fallen asleep on the couch. It was dark outside and Shaun wasn't home yet. He probably wasn't going to come home now that she knew what was going on.

 

The book was sitting on the end table. She hadn't even tried to read it, and she was pretty sure it was going to be a long time before she felt like she would want to. She supposed she could drop it off in the library return slot later.

 

She made herself a pot of coffee and stood in the kitchen, holding her cup and staring blankly at the floor. What was she going to do with herself now? Maybe she had enough money she could visit India, or Peru. She never had gotten to travel as much as she wanted to. She and Shaun had traveled a little when they first won the lottery right after they married, but the money went faster than they had expected and soon they were forced to come home and return to their sedentary, work-filled lives. Lottery winners sometimes ended up being bankrupt without a penny; it was a common phenomenon. At least Donna and Shaun had been wise enough to know when to back off and set things aside.

 

Without him to support she could probably go somewhere again.

 

She poured the coffee down the sink because she couldn't even taste it. It was time for action. She went upstairs to pack Shaun's clothing.

 

Donna was not a graceful woman. Even though no one else was home, she marched up the steps loud enough for the neighbors to hear. Bin liners became Shaun's suitcases as she grabbed things at random, stuffing them into the plastic darkness never to return as long as she could help it. She was careless as she did this, sometimes only just noticing at last the pair of underwear she had not bought for him. The new shirt that was never there before. The picture of Lorna tucked carefully out of sight in the end table drawer on his side of the bed. She wouldn't have found it unless she were clearing the place.

 

Each new discovery was another punch in the gut. Tears made way down her cheeks even though she tried to hold them back. The more she found, the more angrily she stuffed things into the bags. Her arms were angry mechanisms, moving back and forth carelessly as she grabbed and stuffed. That was how she knocked over the table lamp. The bulb shattered.

 

Now maybe getting shocked by a broken light bulb when your hand slips or you're changing the bulb with the lamp still on isn't lethal. Careless folks who have been shocked in this way usually say there's nothing drastic to report. But the truth is even a weaker can kill you, especially if it happens to hit at the right time.

 

Take the human heartbeat for example. Because the human heartbeat happens thanks to very weak electronic signals coming from the brain. They're commands, orders telling your heart to contract. Getting shocked can overpower that signal and stop your heart. You just have to be hit at the right time. Or the wrong time as it were.[1]

 

Which is exactly what happened to Donna.[2]

 

Maybe it happened because she happened to have a bare leg touching the metal frame of the bed. Maybe there was something wrong with the lamp's wiring. She would never know, and later she wouldn't care. The shock ran up her arms, and it didn't stop at her elbows.[3] It was like her body welcomed it and lead it on up past her shoulders, to her chest, and straight into her heart. She gasped once in pain, and then she fell over.

 

She hadn't called anyone to tell them what was going on yet, so no one knew she was in trouble. No one came to rescue her. Shaun did not come home that night, so he couldn't find her lifeless body crumbled on the floor with a light bulb in one hand and a lamp shade being crushed under her torso.

 

Do you know what's happening?

 

Do you... know... what's happening?

 

Do you? DO YOU, DONNA?

 

She took a breath of life and opened her eyes. It hurt, oh how it hurt in so many ways. If this was a minor heart attack, and she was sure it was, she never wanted to experience a major one.

 

Her head was pounding as well. She felt something stir in my her head; awake and alive. There was a living thing waiting to be born. No -- it had been born. It was moving through her.

 

Must be a migraine. That had to be it. Yeah. And who wouldn't have a headache in the situation she was in? Donna finished Shaun's packing, threw the bags on the front lawn, and took some migraine pills. Off with the unfaithful, and goodbye to her headache. She went back to bed.

 

 

 

You two were just... I want to stay. Don't make me go back. There were mountains that move. Can you imagine that? I want to see that someday... I got the best bit of him, right? I got his mind. I got his mind.

 

Do you know what's happening?

 

Donna started awake as she had been doing for weeks now, but this time there was more to the dream than before. She sat in bed thinking about it but could come to no conclusions. Shaun's empty place in bed tore at her so she got dressed and went downstairs to make herself breakfast.

 

She had halfway finished her eggs when the front door opened. Familiar footprints made their way inside. Just like the day before, her heart stopped. Two emotional shocks in one week. She shouldn't have been shocked he was there, but she was. And, she had to admit to herself, maybe a little hopeful that she was wrong.

 

But she wasn't wrong. She sat at the kitchen table listening to Shaun as he went through the house, probably picking up things he wanted to keep and ignoring others. She listened to him turn on the tele for a moment, then turn it off again. He walked to the kitchen's swinging door and stopped there. For a few tense moments it was just her and him on either side of the door waiting in silence. The tension broke when Shaun walked away, went out the front door,  and put his things into the trunk of his car. She thought she heard him drive way, but she couldn't be sure.

 

That was when she finally broke and the real tears came. These weren't the stifled controlled sobs of the day before. They were hot, fresh, and somehow not the worst thing she had ever felt in her life. Her mind stirred again, but it was almost soothing. Something inside opened. Her instincts rushed to close it.

 

She had to be doing something. She looked around the kitchen, searching for something to do. Something that wasn't dishes. Maybe she could fit the cabinets with interior lighting so she wouldn't have to turn on the lights at night, or the faucet could certainly use a UV filter and chlorine eliminator.

 

No. Her mind clamped down and she leaned against the counter. This wasn't supposed to be happening. What did he say if it did? What was it?

 

There's never been a ...what was it?... She couldn't remember. She just knew there had never been one.  ...before now.

 

There was always a first time for everything, Donna said to herself with some of her angry spirit. That's where her rebellion ended for the moment. He was right. He was always right, it seemed, about everything. He said it couldn't be, it could never be.

 

That's all she knew in the moment; all her mind could comprehend. She knew her mind stood on the verge of something bigger, but she was afraid. It was too big for her. This... this was bigger than the entire universe. She had to run from it.

 

She would return the library book and then go shopping. She could use a pair of new shoes. A new outfit. She was a single woman now. Or at least, she was about to be. She wasn't sure she wanted to find him at this point, but if the perfect man were out there she could look good if he happened to come along.

 

She got dressed and grabbed the book off the end table, then started to look for her car keys. The house was a little messy from her hurried packing, and to her dismay they had gotten lost somewhere in the fury. There were boxes she still hadn't put aside for Shaun that she had pulled out of closets. There was a bag of clothing she hadn't put outside just yet. The least Shaun could have done was get it himself.

 

The box holding their Christmas decorations was pulled to the middle of the living room with the top opened. Shaun must have went through it when he was there, looking for the family heirloom ornaments or something like that. Or maybe he was bored. Who knew. Donna stopped because he had left their tree top ornament on the box.

 

She had never really liked the ornament. It was just your typical and boring eight-pointed star, but she would have preferred something a bit more friendly like an angel. The star ornament had always felt angry somehow. She knew she was putting feelings onto it that weren't really there, but she couldn't explain it.

 

Except now, suddenly, she knew if she tried really hard she probably could.

 

No. She managed to find her keys and get out.

 

 

 

There is nowhere to run when you're losing your mind. She knew that, but she was going to try anyway. I know what's happening, she said to herself as her car went down the block. At the corner she sat there, because she knew she had been here before. I know what's happening.

 

I can turn to the right, she reasoned with herself. The best shops are that way. Who needs Shaun. Who needs a man, period? Besides, I'm just a temp. It's not like anyone needs me.

 

He needed you there, to bring him back. You saved his life.

 

"Oh that's it," Donna said to no one. "I'm going bonkers right here, in the car, with no one to catch my drool for me!"

 

She turned the steering wheel left and hit the gas.

 

She never did stop at any shops. She just drove around, stopping once to get gas, and then kept on driving. The aimless journey made her feel a little better. She thought about stopping by her mother's, maybe have a chat with them to let them know what was happening. Or was going to happen.

 

There was a pest control fan passing her on the freeway. It had a giant insect on its back and a slogan on the side which reads, "Will exterminate anything!" Donna couldn't help but notice it, even though she was painfully aware she wouldn't have paid attention just a week ago.

 

In the distance was a thunder cloud, one of those black ones with the thick rain that made driving difficult. She actually stopped to wonder if the rain was going to fall up.

 

And she just couldn't help but notice how the mirrors on all the cars were flashing in the noon summer sun. It was like being in a sea of glass.

 

She got off the road then. There was a public park nearby. She pulled into a parking lot and just sat there with the air conditioning running and her hands gripping the steering wheel. Her body started to shake.

 

Am I going to die now? What happens to me then? Maybe it was some after effect of the electric shock. She probably should seek medical attention.

 

She didn't move the car. She didn't do anything. She sat there staring at the world outside with her chest heaving and her eyes wide open. And inside her mind, her eyes were wide open, too.

 

Donna Temple-Noble became whole again in that moment.

 

And it was the most dangerous moment of her life.

 

Years ago in a universe far away from there, she remembered, she had traveled with a man known as The Doctor. They had seen the most magnificent places together, and saved the universe a couple of times too. In the end she had been part of a human time lord metacrisis - time lords regenerate when they die. Some of that regeneration energy had gotten into her and bam! She was a new creature.

 

 There had never been one before her, and there probably wouldn't be one again. Maybe. The Doctor - yes, that's who she had been dreaming about in all these weeks - wouldn't like it. But as clever as The Doctor was, he couldn't control everything. Donna Noble knew this because he hadn't always controlled her, not that he'd tried.

 

She was half time lord. Her ticking mind wanted to laugh, her heart wanted to race in fear, and her body simply would not stop shaking from the memory shock. She wasn't human. She had stopped being human that day! She was half a time lord, which meant.. which meant...

 

The Doctor wasn't the only one left.

 

And she had to find him. Had to. Had had had to find him.Find. Him.Find him.

 

He didn't have to tell her, the last time this happened, why her mind was freezing. Why there was a stutter in her thoughts. There hadn't been a metacrisis before because there couldn't be. Time lords didn't mix with human thoughts. Time lords were all space and all time and humans tended to be an influx of here and now. It was a paradox. She was a parodox.

 

She was burning up already. She was going to die.

 

The Doctor had wiped her mind to save her life, but there was no way something that large could stay dormant forever. She was sure he would have put in fail safes as well, but if there had been any they were gone now. Two emotional shocks and one electrical shock in as little as two days was all it took. There was no other sensible explanation. Being shocked aboard a Dalek vessel -- Thank you Davros! -- was all it took when it first happened. She just got it three times over. It took a little longer, but there was no stopping it once it started.

 

"You silly dumbo alien boy," Donna whispered in frustration, gripping the wheel tighter and resting her forehead on it. "Sometimes I think you're only fascinated with us because we're the one thing you simply can't figure out!" Figure. Figure it out. Figure figure figure....

 

Lorna had sensed she had changed because she had. She was always going to be smarter and more aware than before because I got the best bit of the Doctor. I got his mind. No amount of making her forget she had it could take it away. It only made her unaware.

 

So too there were cases, alien abduction cases from before everything finally became transparent that Christmas Day. She'd heard about them on a random TV show, "Alien Interactgions: Then and Now." People in those cases were being abducted and studied, sometimes put through horrible experiences, and then their minds were getting wiped. They still had PTSD from their situation. They still reacted to things, reflected on things in their daily lives. Even wrote about them.

 

Wrote... wrote... wrote... wrote....wr-- gasp! Donna's heart began to hurt and her head was killing her. She nearly doubled over.

 

It's coming. I... I... I'm not enough of a time lord to regenerate.

 

I'm going to die. Here. Now. From knowing too much. Oh God now I just need a government agent to tell me that to sweeten the deal. Ow!

 

There cannot be a human time lord metacrisis. They don't mix.

 

Donna gritted her teeth. Well why can't they mix? she wanted to know. Suddenly all the times the Doctor recoiled at some normal human action, all the times he said "You humans" with arrogant disdain came fresh to the front of her mind. These weren't the Doctor's memories. Those only reinforced what she believed. That the Doctor could be a right big a*****e.

 

What's wrong with being human, anyway?

 

Do I have to remind you how we beat the Daleks, Doctor? You two were just time lords, you dumbos. Lacking that little bit of human, that gut instinct that comes hand in hand with planet earth. I can think of ideas you two wouldn't dream of in a million years! The universe been waitin' for me!

 

I can think of ideas... ideas... ideas...

 

For a few moments a few years ago, she was the most important woman in the universe. And it felt good. It felt so good.

 

Oh, Doctor. You're always trying to live in the moment, and we humans are always trying to live outside of time. Well. I am both. I think this means...

 

I can do both.

 

I can be both.

 

Because I can think of ideas no time lord would dare to dream of!

 

It hurt like crazy and her legs were wobbly, but she popped the hood and got out of her car. It was still running, but that was fine.  She looked at the engine and thought, no no. This will never do...  Car battery won't do the trick.

 

Then she knew. Did Shaun leave those tools in the car boot? Some of them, it turned out. Okay, just a screwdriver.

 

I have to get shocked again, Donna repeated to herself as she attacked her car radio with the tool. If I shock my system now before things settle I might be able to stabilize things. Okay yes, I know this is home grown shock therapy but I'm going to die anyway...  Oh, this thing! Where's a sonic screwdriver when you need one?

 

She worked feverishly, but she was a bit clumsy from the shakes and her mind's need to hang on things from time to time. It felt like the greatest triumph in the world when the radio finally came free, pulling wires after it. No wireless radio for her and Shaun, no. This radio had come with their car when they bought it, and it worked well enough so they had never bothered to change it out. Lucky for her.

 

Donna ripped the wires apart and tossed the radio aside. Now, she said in what she knew was nothing less than a voice the Doctor would have used, we're in business. She touched two ends together and was rewarded with a spark.

 

It might not be enough, she knew. I think... her mind said... think think think... the ground wire has to be attached to the battery. Ground wire. Ground. It's still attached isn't it? Yeah, has to be. I didn't take it off.

 

This would work better if I were wet. Crying.. standing in the rain... something.

 

Donna Temple-Noble, also known as the Doctor Donna in parts of the galaxy, then did a very Doctor-yet-human thing. She knew she had to fix the state of her influx while taking grip of her mind at the same time. She essentially had to reach inside of her time lord self and convince it to work with her humanity, and that required a reboot. It also meant she had to mentally reprogram herself - a thing humans are very good at believe it or not. She believed it.

 

And that required another shock. She wasn't sure just touching the bare wires would be enough. It probably wouldn't. As far as she knew no one had died working on car radios since the 1980's. (She only knew that because the Doctor has witnessed an accident a time or two.) She had to make sure the shock would be stronger, and that meant involving water somehow.

 

So she put the wires in her mouth.

 

The electricity exploded into her skull. She jerked back, losing the connection when the wires were torn from of her mouth, but the spark was all it took. The world spun, slammed backwards, and then for a moment was completely gone. Through it she did her best to concentrate on what she wanted to be, the kind of person she would become. She would force a regeneration of her own with this somehow.

 

Donna lay in her seat waiting. The shakes went away after a while, and the pain in her head started to recede. Maybe I'm not going to die after all. But did it work?

 

Am I human again? Or what am I?

 

She sat up. She looked at the sky, at the rain clouds that were now very close. And she knew that rain was not going to fall upwards. It was a normal raincloud. She also knew she'd recognize an abnormal one if she saw it.

 

She knew the leaves on the tree by her parking spot were green because of chlorophyll, and she knew about a race of plant people that had evolved strictly on asteroids. She understood how the TARDIS was grown, and if she reached she could understand why The Doctor petted his TARDIS so lovingly from time to time.

 

The different was that before, when she had been a fully awake and aware half time lord, the Doctor's memories were overpowering. She hadn't just gotten his mind. She'd been infused with his personality; his very essence.

 

I am not the Doctor, nor am I from Galifrae. That part had to go.

 

All I had to do, Donna thought with satisfaction, was decide which of us two I wanted to be. The rest simply had to follow. The human brain is only an organic computer, after all. I am the master hard drive. And The Doctor's personality is... she chuckled... my slave drive.

 

She got out of the car and stretched. It felt good to be alive, to be fully alive in a way she had only halfway known she had missed. She thought of Shaun. The betrayal still hurt.

 

But she was thankful, too.  If he hadn't let her go, would she have been able to set herself so free?

 

I was gonna be with you forever. Rest of my life. Traveling. In the TARDIS...

 

But we had the best of times.

 

"That we did, Doctor," Donna said. "Now how to find you."

 

Did her grandfather still have her cell phone, the one that was a direct line to the Doctor's phone? Maybe. But if not, she could figure out how to build her own. She knew of a certain Torchwood operator who might help her.

 

And if all else failed, she could go back to what worked before. Wherever there is trouble, there is the Doctor.

 

The Doctor was going to at least say hello to his most faithful friend. His best friend.

 

 

---

[1] This is real s**t. I kid you not. Would I lie? http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/12834/1/The-Effects-of-Electric-Shock-on-the-Body.html  Also: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/17/coroner-warns-of-dangers-after-man-electrocuted-in-bath-while-charging-phone. Weird s**t happens.

[2] There's also this weirdness. http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/414981/Woman-electrocuted-after-answering-plugged-in-iPhone  Or. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/girl-of-six-killed-by-tree-lights-1315887.html.

[3] There's also: http://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/1458433.husbands_claim_delays_verdict/