Title: Queen of the Winter Night 1/5
Author: Tess/teashadephoenix
Rating: Rated E for everyone
Word Count: this part 4910
Pairing: Ten/Donna
Spoilers: Through 4.13 Journey's End
Summary: The Doctor is thrust back into an amnesiac Donna's path when an alien seeks sanctuary with her.
Disclaimer: The canon stuff belongs to the Beeb and I'm borrowing it to play with. Everything else I made up for my entertainment.
Author's Note: Okay, this has taken like ten thousand years, but here is the first story of my Sounds Like Destiny series, affectionately referred to as AU Series 5. This story replaces The Next Doctor as the Christmas story after Journey's End.

Author's Note 2: Thanks to my beta and good friend biodamped for her patience, support and frequent butt-kicking. More thanks than I have words for really. ily darling <3



If someone had told him that at the end of his life he would be alone, he would have scoffed at the idea.

Not he, who was ancient and timeless; who had endured three emergences of the Withering Plague and survived two wars, including the Last Great Time War; who was always surrounded by so many loved ones, his friends and companions, children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

And yet this loneliness felt like a weight in him, stifling all thought until all he saw and knew, all he could know, was that he was the last.

Last was such a light term in the human language. It was too casual and flippant a description for so final a fate. Extinct was a much heavier word.

His species was extinct.

All but for him. He was the last.

In the solitude of the night, he wandered down a business street of the human city in which he had landed. It was a festive time for the humans; he could feel the residue of high emotion thick in the air: charity, good will and kindness. Over that, a thick layer of haughtiness and frustration.

These humans were awfully strange, turning a festival of giving into a shopping tournament of who could purchase the last of a particular item the quickest.

Last. There was that word again.

He wandered on.

Many hours later, he found himself out of the human city and amongst smaller villages. The feeling here was much more to his liking. It felt like home; love filled the air. Families gathered in comfortable togetherness and there was good humour and high spirits all around.

For the first time since arriving, he opened his tiny shrivelled eyes to look upon the humans through one of their windows. Immediately he recoiled.

There was someone like him inside the human's house.

They were dead, propped up on a stand and swathed in lavish decoration. Stretching out his telepathy, he realised there were many others, all trapped, all dressed in bright lights and red ribbons for the humans' amusement.

What would they do to him, if they found him?

He had to find a safe place.

He could sense, somewhere close, the mind of someone who could help. Someone strong and brilliant.

A Time Lord.

She was his only hope.


.



The ground was hard and cold under her hands. For a long time Donna Noble sat, eyes shut and head tilted back, feeling the solidity of the Earth and imagining she could feel it spinning. Nonsense, of course. Just another of the absurd notions she'd come up with in the past five months.

Like the feeling of aimlessness that had begun to define her, the feeling of being completely lost. Lost in the dark and groping for a hand to pull her out. A hand she was unsure was ever coming.

Blue-gray eyes slid open and turned skyward. The heavens were vast and dusky black, dotted with stars. Between shadowy clouds Donna could see glimpses of once-familiar constellations. When she was a little girl, she'd known them by heart, could spot them without a second's hesitation. Now, like so much else of her shoddy memory, they were gone.

"What's that one?" she asked her companion.

Bundled up in a heavy coat and thick muffler, his snowy-white head topped with a red cap, was her grandfather Wilfred Mott. He was the stargazer of the family, a regular visitor to the hilltop of their allotment and always accompanied by his telescope. Depending on what he was looking at for the night, he usually had star charts and books with him as well.

Tonight he hadn't brought anything along with him. Donna still wondered what exactly he was looking for.

"Which one?" he asked, following her pointing finger.

She nodded eastward. "That red one."

He did some quick maths and some drawing in the air with his finger. "Mars."

"Oh!" Donna sighed dreamily. "Not even a star. A whole planet."

Wilf chuckled. "You know how to spot the big ones, that's for sure."

"It's just luck," she said.

They sat for a little longer, listening to the rustle of wind against the grass, the occasional car in the distance. Then Wilf made a strident sort of sigh, the signal that the evening was over, and started to disassemble the telescope. Donna stood to help, folding up their old picnic blanket and picking up the tea thermos.

Before they headed down for the house, her grandfather scanned the sky one last time, a solemn expression on his weathered old face.

"What are you looking for?"

He looked down at her. So often in the past few months she had seen this look, sad and lost, with a yearning to speak. She recognised it because she felt it too. He shook his head.

"Just thinking of an old friend."

Donna nodded. "Anybody I knew?"

"You know I wish I could tell you."

She sighed again. "And the doctor says it's a bad idea to press the issue, I know." With her free hand she swept her ginger hair from her face, pretending for a moment it was an icy wind that brought tears to her eyes. "I just feel like half of me is missing. Like I had another... life somewhere and now I can't find my way back to it."

She closed her eyes, gathering her bearings, then looked at her grandfather. He looked miserable, nearly about to cry; guilt swept through her like a flash flood. She ducked her head and gave him an apologetic wince.

"I'm sorry, Gramps. I don't blame you."

"I know. It's not easy, what you're going through. And if it were anybody else, they would give up." He bumped his shoulder against her arm affectionately, his hands too full to do otherwise. "But not you. You stay strong. Because if anybody can find their way out of the dark, it's you."

Donna smiled at him, but it faded quickly as she noticed something leaning against the side of their house. "What's that?"

Wilf followed Donna's gaze. A straggly-looking pine tree was set against the red brick back wall, and nearing collapse into the sliding glass doors that led to the kitchen. It had lost several needles in patches, and those it still had were dry and browning. It was bare, with no packaging whatsoever. It hadn't even had (what was left of) its branches tied.

Donna stared, livid. "That had better not be the Christmas tree! It's half-dead! Who delivers an unpackaged tree to the back door? How did they even get back here? The gate's bloody locked!"

"Well, jumping a gate's easy enough to do, Dylan does it all the time," her grandfather pointed out.

"Yes, because Dylan is the cornerstone of etiquette," she grumbled, thinking of her erstwhile neighbour and boss. "It's nine o'clock at night, Gramps. It wasn't here when we came out, that's for sure!"

Donna huffed in frustration, hands planted on her hips, and strode over to the sorry-looking thing. "There's got to be some sort of packing slip or a company card or something--" She started digging through the branches in search of a paper trail.

But the moment her skin touched the needles, a shudder rolled through Donna's body, and she gasped as though she'd pricked her finger.

"What? Does it bite?" When she didn't answer, Wilf moved around to look at her. "Donna?"

Donna's eyes were glowing a faint gold. Wilf started, dropping the telescope case to the soggy grass. "Donna!"

He grabbed her shoulder and tried to pull her away; she swayed lifelessly and then dropped to her knees as though she'd lost all control of her body. Her eyes remained open and golden, staring at the tree.

The tree which, to Wilfred's shock, was suddenly moving of its own accord. Its trunk straightened up and its branches stretched out, like splayed fingers. The age and deterioration began to fall away, like sheets of snow from a windowpane, as missing needles were replaced and brown ones reborn.

In moments, the haggard dead thing before them was in full bloom, a gorgeous Christmas pine with lush green needles and a rich scent.

And then Donna said, in a soft voice, "Doctor..."

"What?" demanded Wilf, frightened and desperately confused. But before he could say anything more, Donna's eyes slipped closed and she fell unconscious against his chest.


.


In an empty back alley in London, a faint sound began to rise in the cold December air: an organic warbling and whooshing. In only a few seconds, the shape of a blue box formed, and then the TARDIS settled and materialised completely. The door squeaked open and a tall, thin man in a blue suit and brown greatcoat stepped out.

He paused, keeping his eyes closed, and took a moment to savour the feel of chill air biting at his skin, the sound of a distant Christmas melody teasing his ears, the feather-soft sensation of snowflakes falling on him.

The Doctor opened his eyes and breathed a contented sigh.

He loved Christmas. In all the eras in all the worlds, Christmas was his favourite. The smells were the best.

Roasting turkey, icy peppermint, sultry cinnamon and rich pine warmed the winter air, bringing out the mirth in even the most bitter of Scrooges. And the impressionable Time Lord soaked up the warmth and good cheer around him like so much sunshine, for he needed it, badly.

It had been ages since the Crucible; how long he had drifted, the meaningless meandering matching his dark mood. For the first time in weeks, he felt better; content, even. Definitely a mood to nurture with a panto or a decent mince pie.

Of course, the message on the psychic paper had helped. Christmas 2009. She needs you.

Nothing like a spot of trouble to cheer him up.

He tugged the door shut behind him, stuffed his hands into his pockets and walked down the alley, which wrapped around an antiques shop. A sign in the window, written in lofty swirling calligraphy, proclaimed the name of the shop to be No Passing Zone. He took in the small collection of tarnished timepieces, laid out on velvet in the window display, as he followed the flow of traffic past the shop.

Out on the London street, the last day of the holiday rush was fully under way, shoppers coming and going this way and that. The Doctor watched them with a bemused expression on his face, slipping between them with an easy agility.

There were mothers hanging on with firm hands to excited children as they pointed into shop windows. Fathers followed behind with armloads of boxes and bags hanging from the crooks of their elbows. Young girlfriends clung to their blokes' arms, captivated by the Christmas lights that stretched between shops.

For a heartsbeat, he imagined the warmth of a woman's hand pressed against his palm, accompanied by the scent of jasmine. Though even he could not imagine her being captivated.

Narky and dismissive, more like; Donna wasn't fond of Christmas, after all.

The Doctor's pace faltered, slowing for that one moment when he saw her face in his mind's eye, and his hearts sank. He could feel the emptiness inside him widen, like a gaping maw looking to consume him, until it seemed to fill his chest and stifle his lungs.

He took a deep breath and glanced around himself in a furtive sort of way. He felt like every person on the street could see his pain and was staring at it. He shoved those thoughts to the back of his mind and continued to walk.

Every time... The brief moments of his day when he wasn't actively thinking of her were always shattered by something he saw or heard, something he did, that reminded him of her. And each time, it renewed the pain of her absence all over again.

It frustrated him-- infuriated him. It was as though he couldn't control his own thoughts and feelings, which was ridiculous. He was a Time Lord, he ought to have better mastery of his own heart than this. It didn't do to be in so many pieces. He had to move on from it.

Hard enough to do. Harder still when every waking thought was how much he missed her, and how he wanted her back.

You can't have that, he told himself belligerently. Get over it.

He quickened his pace, eyes now roaming aimlessly over the shop fronts and window displays, catching glimpses of people here and there. Why was he here? He had been summoned, hadn't he? Who was it who so needed him, yet couldn't even be bothered to reveal herself?

He needed a distraction.

"Doctor!"

"Ta," he muttered absently as he was broken out of his thoughts. He spun towards the voice, his head first then whole body, his coat twirling out around him as he turned to face a mirthful Sarah Jane Smith. She was several paces behind him, running to catch up; he wondered how long she had been following him.

She was as lovely as ever, dwarfed in a thick navy overcoat and a rich cream-coloured muffler; her face was flushed from the cold and excitement. The Doctor grinned as she threw her arms around his neck, and he lifted her up off the ground.

"Sarah Jane!" he bellowed happily, giving her a tight squeeze.

"The one and only," she said cheerfully. As he set her down she pushed back a length of her dark hair and straightened the collar of her coat. "Where were you? I must've called you half a dozen times!"

He reached up to tug at one ear embarrassedly. "Sorry. Got a lot on my mind."

Sarah Jane's round eyes gazed up at him expectantly. "Oh, about the comet? I was hoping you could shed some light..." He stared blankly at her and her voice began to trail. "You are here about the comet, aren't you?"

He pressed his lips together, shook his head. "Well, not to start with but I can certainly become rapidly interested in it." His face brightened. "See? Curiosity's already piqued. What's this about a comet then?"

She smiled in bemusement at him, then took him by the arm, and began to guide him back the way they came, talking all the while. "It's how I knew you were here, I asked Mr. Smith to keep an eye out for the TARDIS just in case--" She looked up at him as if expecting him to complain, but he simply nodded and she continued.

"He found it a week ago. Torchwood and UNIT discovered it around the same time, I think, and I suppose space agencies around the world must've seen it also, but NASA and Roscosmos only just reported it," she chuckled lightly. "Keeping out most of the details, of course-- they don't want to cause mass panic."

The Doctor was chewing on his tongue. "Mass panic?"

"Well, because at first glance, it appears to everyone to be on a collision course with Earth." Sarah Jane herself looked quietly distressed but terribly intrigued at the same time; it was an expression the Doctor remembered well. "There's more to it than that, but that's the only thing a civilian would hear."

The Doctor frowned. "How big is it?"

"Three-hundred and twenty-two kilometres, give or take." His eyes bulged in shock and Sarah Jane nodded. "It's one thousand times larger than Apophis. And that's frightening enough, except that it isn't behaving as an ordinary comet should." Her eyes glittered as she gave him this most important detail.

"It's slowing down."

The Doctor's lips parted as if to speak, but instead he nodded slowly, his eyes looking somewhere in the distance. "Not a comet then."

"No, it's definitely a comet." He looked down at her quizzically and Sarah Jane shook her head. "I'm afraid I don't know any more than that, I left Mr. Smith to do some scans while I came to get you. He should have them finished by the time we get back. I'll meet you at my house?"

"Eh?"

She gestured then to an alley to his right; belatedly the Doctor realised she'd walked him all the way back to the TARDIS. He glanced back at her. She had walked over to a little moss-green car parked on the curb and opened the driver's side door. He grinned impishly.

"I wager I make it there before you," he called playfully.

Sarah gave a hearty laugh, shaking her head. "With your track record? I'll take that bet."


.


Caught in the thick of the Solar System, the very comet Sarah Jane had spoken of was flying at a leisurely pace towards the Earth. This was no ordinary comet, but a vehicle.

A large circular platform, the voyager's deck, was positioned atop the widest part of the teardrop-shaped mass. The floor was as smooth as polished marble and translucent, like the ice on a frozen lake. Tall, intricately carved pillars formed a ring around the platform, separating it from the rest of the comet, which was a craggy and untamed glacier by comparison.

On the deck were the passengers, people of all different races and species: all alien, some humanoid, some not. Only one thing had united them on this voyage.

They were collectors.

That aside, they shared an obvious professional attitude; many carried portfolios or personal data assistants of varying levels of technology. Those who could wear clothes were dressed well but not opulently. The crowd of over ten-thousand had broken up into groups, and they chatted amiably amongst themselves about their purchases or potential deals in various parts of the various galaxies.

Standing alone on the deck's icy surface was a young woman. She was small and curvy, dressed warmly in a berry red dress that ran from her throat to the floor. She had a curly bob of pine-green hair and chestnut brown skin that made her look rather like a woodland nymph.

Anxiously she spun a plain wooden ring on her finger, her eyes never leaving the open air before her and the little blue bauble that, in less than a day, would be the Earth.

She had to find him. She did not want to consider what the Queen would do to her if she could not find him. If it had been a question of money...

But it wasn't, there was no point wishing otherwise.

"Ophelia."

Every muscle of the girl's body stiffened with fear at the low, cool voice. She turned, a horridly fake smile plastered on her pale face, to the giantess of a woman who sat on a frozen throne.

The Snow Queen had the presence of a ghost, all white skin and hair, but her shiny black dead eyes made her far more frightening than any spectre. They gazed right down into the core of you, saw every fear and personal whim, memorised them to use them to her advantage. Those eyes, Ophelia had noticed, had never looked away, never even blinked, when the Queen had unleashed unspeakable cruelties on her subordinates.

For all her terror, she was just as beautiful. She wore beautiful frosted crystals in her hair; at her throat, silver and opals. Her tall, bony body was dwarfed under a thick overcoat, the fur collar looking like an immense lion's mane around her neck, shaggy and snowy-white.

Two guards, as white as the Queen but smaller in stature, stood on either side of the throne. They were draped in heavy capes and glittering silver armour. Their hair was cut much shorter and featureless stone masks hid the entirety of their faces from view. As long as Ophelia had dealt with the Queen, she had never even heard them speak.

A deceptive little smile crooked the corners of the Queen's pale lips.

"I expect you've found your lost little friend?"

Ophelia swallowed, fighting a shiver. "Not yet, Magnificence." As the Queen's black eyes narrowed, Ophelia hastened to add, "I have narrowed it down to a particular area the locals call Britain."

With trembling hands, she pushed up the velvety sleeve of her dress, revealing a wrist PDA, and tapped the touchscreen. A vaporscreen appeared before them, showing holographic images of Britain. The London Eye, Westminster Bridge, various streets and shops, all decked for Christmas.

And the multitude of Christmas trees, on farms and in homes.

Ophelia's face tightened and she turned to the Queen, whose dead eyes betrayed clear disapproval.

"You expect to find your Abies in this?" demanded the low voice. "One tree among the forest?"

"N-No doubt this is the reason he choice this place, Magnificence, as his hiding spot. He believes he will be able to hide among these lesser lifeforms. But I will be able to track his energy."

Ophelia took solace in this fact, her voice growing stronger. "His signal is fading but I should have his location long before we arrive. I'm preparing to leave now by gaseous teleport to do a thorough search on the planet itself."

"Do it," ordered the Snow Queen. With a roll of her black eyes she gestured beyond her at the two guards who followed her. "Take the Frost with you. I need not remind you of what awaits you, should you come back empty-handed."

"No, ma'am," said Ophelia.

With that, the Queen's hovering chair turned slowly and floated away; the guards stayed behind obediently. Ophelia let out a long breath, feeling her heart fall into her belly, burning with an almost acidic sickness. Then she checked herself, feeling the eyes of the guards on her. It felt, at once, as though she had been judged.

She turned away from them, steeling herself for what she must do. Once again she pushed up her sleeve, and tapped another sequence onto the touchscreen of her wrist PDA.

In a wisp of smoke, the three of them had gone.


.


Blue-gray eyes slid open, blinking sleepily. The front room was dim and quiet, nothing in Donna's whole world except her fuzzy green afghan, the squashy cushions of the sofa beneath her and the rich scent of the Christmas tree in the corner. It was a splendid thing, draped in shiny glass ornaments and twinkling fairy lights.

As she sat, comfortable as a drowsy kitten, she found herself gazing at one tiny light. Bright blue, and glowing.

Sonic blue.

Donna breathed deep, and for four blessed seconds the subtle ache in the back of her head stopped.

Doctor...


.


Upon entering the kitchen, Wilf had the impression that Mother Nature and the Christmas spirit had teamed up, and the resultant masterwork had overwhelmed the room. The table was buried under a bed of evergreen cuttings of various length and trim. At the counter, Sylvia Noble was carefully tying bundles of amaryllis and wrapping them in plastic to protect them during the short walk to her friend Susette's.

Both ladies being avid gardeners, Christmas was nothing less than a challenge from the Almighty to keep something alive long enough to make centrepieces. The two women regularly got together with the best cuttings from their gardens for an afternoon of arranging which, ordinarily, was Sylvia's favourite thing to do.

And yet this morning she was fussing, her eyebrows narrowed nearly into one line.

"If she's not awake by noon, I'm going in there and dumping a bucket of cold water on her head," she grumbled.

"Let her be, she needs her rest," Wilf said to his daughter, as he braved the explosion of amaryllis to get to the kettle. His afternoon plans were much simpler, a cup of tea and the Times' crossword.

Sylvia snorted. "After doing what, I ask? She works in an antiques shop. Hardly manual labour."

"You know why," insisted Wilf. Their eyes met, and he lifted his eyebrows nearly into his receding hairline. Sylvia tutted.

"I don't suppose you've seen him, then? He does seem to make a habit of turning up for the holiday, first at the wedding and then at your newsstand last year... Not that I want him hanging around," she said sharply. "But it's only right he make sure it's not coming back. I'm not losing her because of that--"

"Shh," he cautioned, lifting his hand, as a sleepy redhead appeared in the doorway, clad in jeans and a rumpled top. Wilf beamed at his granddaughter. "Good morning, sweetheart!"

With a sleepy smile Donna shuffled over to him, kissed the top of his snowy-white head. She eyed the mug in his hands. "Is that fresh?"

"Still piping hot," he said. He slid his mug over and retrieved a second one for himself. "Go on, take that one."

She took the proffered mug with a quiet thank you and sat on the opposite side of the counter, her back to the kitchen telly. Never one to miss an opportunity to better her daughter, Sylvia took advantage of Donna's habitual morning silence.

"I see you slept in your clothes again," she said. "It's bad enough to sleep on the sofa like some sort of transient, but not even bothering to change into your pyjamas is just lazy."

"I had a headache," said Donna. "I only meant to sit down for a moment." She huffed an annoyed breath into her mug. "Not that you're worried about me."

The comment wasn't fair in the least, and she knew it. Her mother had always seemed cavalier about the things Donna did, even if she did them with good reason, but in the recent past, Sylvia's attitude had changed. She knew better than anyone else how awful the first few months after the accident had been. More than once, Donna had snapped out of a fit to find her mother holding her, her blue eyes wide with terror.

She'd never seen her mother like that before. Sylvia Noble, all hardness and stern demeanour, was not easily shaken.

Donna had a sense that she'd frightened the older woman. For the first time in her life, she felt she may've glimpsed her mother's love for her. So it was with a nagging guilt that she let her mother reply tersely, "There's no need for cheek."

A happy little chirp sounded from her jeans pocket and Donna tugged her mobile out, squinting at it. "Dylan's asking me to come in."

Sylvia gave an exasperated groan. "But you had the day off! You said you'd help with the cleaning! I'm going to be at Susette's until at least five o'clock, the guest room isn't made up and your Uncle Ross and his family are going to be in by eight. Seven, if Melinda has her way."

Donna made a face. "Nine, if Jason's with them. I don't want to go, it's too flippin' cold outside. But he does really need it. He says and I quote, 'It's mewling and barking in here.'"

"Oh please. How busy can an antiques shop be?"

Finishing her tea, Donna smirked into the empty mug, set it on the countertop as she stood. She had just enough time for a shower if she rushed it. "I expect too many people still live with their folks and are looking to get them something that reminds them of their era."

Wilf chuckled, stifling it only when Sylvia rolled her eyes at him. She gathered up her cuttings of evergreen and amaryllis, tutting as she did. "You're not too old to thump, madam."

Donna bit her lip to keep from grinning.


.


She hated having to rush. Where was the fun in being a woman if you hadn't the time to mix and match and accessorise your clothes? With an impatient groan she rose from the stool at her vanity table and went to her chest of drawers, on top of which sat a large wooden box of jewellry. She started pawing through it for appropriate earrings; among the pieces, of all things, was a small silver key.

Donna shoved it aside and continued her search.

She wished she could've properly redone her nails. They were currently a fiery orange-salmon colour and didn't match the rest of the chocolate brown ensemble she'd chosen, which miffed her considerably. The off-the-shoulder look was hard enough to pull off without tacky nail varnish. Even her hair was only thrown up in a loose bun. At her leisure she could've played with it, made it appear elegant. As it was, it just seemed lazy. She had always striven to look her best, mostly due to the pressure her mother put upon her. And boys. She'd been teased mercilessly in school for wearing trousers all the time.

Which was absurd. She wore skirts, and liked them well enough. It was just a matter of finding the right cut and length and print. The pinstriped piece she'd chosen today was one of her favorites, brown with cream-colored embroidery.

Finally she found the earrings she sought: a pair of caramel-coloured glass beads that looked like tiny swirled lollipops.

She put them in quickly and then turned towards her bedroom door and did a quick pat-down, brushing out stray wrinkles and adjusting the tops of her knee-high boots. Standing tall again, she looked with satisfaction upon herself in the floor-length mirror on the back of her door.

Autumn goddess, she thought with a smug smile. Winter doesn't have a thing on me.

continued in part two