Disclaimer: This journey was possible because of wonderful people who created the Doctor Who universe and who keep surprising us with new ideas and visions with every episode of the series. They own all the rigts and rightfully so. My story is just a homage paid to them.

.17. Snow White

One last thing to do was to say "Goodbye".

Mickey watched the Doctor closely. A wound in his chest had healed within exceptionally short time (of course Mickey had no idea what speed of healing should be exceptional for of a Time Lord; still, he didn't think that three days in bed were a high price to pay for a heart pierced by a sharp outgrowth of the chitin extremity; even if one had two hearts). The Doctor was still very weak and pale. He had black circles under his eyes. He walked towards the Freezer slowly, with effort; left arm held stiffly by his side to protect the wound – just scared over.

"Are you sure you don't wanna stay, Doctor?"

"Absolutely." The Doctor shook his head. "You know me. I can't stand in one place. Let alone lie down."

"Jack will shoot me, when he finds out," moaned Mickey.

"He'll miss if you keep dodging really quickly."

"Ha-ha, very funny! And don't think that we are ok. We'll talk about it."

"About what?"

"You start travelling in time and space, and before you know you forget to call or visit. I know, it's all so ordinary, yes? So plain. But, Doctor, it's home."

"It is not my home."

"Yeah, yeah, keep pretending." Mickey pulled a face. "You have a family here, and it is your home."

"I'm not... especially... domestic... or familial," said the Doctor weakly.

"Sure." Mickey walked down the corridor, without looking back at the Doctor. "You know what, it's all rubbish. You think I don't know how it is, but I know. I know. The difference between the two of us is that I'm not running anymore. I mean, I did run, once, when I stayed behind in Pete's World, but not anymore. It may not be my real family and my real home, but I'm intending to stay."

"Does it mean I should call more often?"

"It means you should call," laughed Mickey. "And... find somebody, eh? Because you are complete rubbish on your own."

The Doctor stopped for a moment, leaning against the wall. Mickey looked back, alarmed, and noticed the Doctor's weird, thoughtful look.

"What?"

"Do you want to travel with me?" asked the Doctor. Mickey was considering his proposition for a while, before he shook his head.

"No. No offence, but... no." He sighed deeply. "You'll just land on some planet again and at once there'll be running and saving the whole world and this or that. But it won't be my world. Maybe Rose could deal with it all, but I can't. Those times and places... They're not mine. I can't worry about it all... and fight for it all... when I have so much to do here, on Earth."

The Doctor sent him a crooked smile.

"I understand... Ah, and... eeem... Don't tell anyone I asked, will you?"

"Only if you won't tell I refused."

"Mickey Smith, the Protector of the Earth," said the Doctor. Mickey started pulling faces already, preparing a sharp riposte, when he noticed warmth and approval in the Doctor's voice. He shrugged.

"Yeah... I think so... Yes," he murmured. "Well, let's just go, let's have it done."

He opened the Freezer's door for the Doctor. On the other side, with his hands on his hips and with head tiled slightly to one side, waited Jack Harkness. Mickey took half a step backwards.

"Didn't I tell you?" he moaned. "Now he's gonna shoot me."

"I'll whack you, at most," corrected Jack.

"So, you're looking for a companion, Doctor," he turned to the man standing behind Mickey. The Doctor raised his eyebrows. Jack shrugged slightly. "Voice really carries in these corridors."

"I'm not looking for a companion," answered the Doctor.

"Are you subtly implying you're not interested?" Jack laughed.

"Subtly?" responded the Doctor immediately and Mickey let out a quiet chuckle.

"At least you're not running away when you see me, anymore," Harkness consoled himself.

"I gather it's not a common reaction?"

"Hmm, thanks God, so far, most of the time I'm the chased one."

"And keep deluding yourself," murmured Mickey.

"You attract trouble and I attract trouble," said the Doctor, giving Jack a pale smile. "Two trouble attracting anomalies onboard the last TARDIS in the universe? It cannot end well."

"I have Torchwood, you know," answered Jack. "I have my team. I can't leave them. I must take care of this here Protector of the Earth (Mickey instantly jumped away from Jack, who tried to give him a bear-like hug). And I'm no anomaly. Have you come here to bid farewell to Donna?"

The Doctor hesitated.

"Farewell. Not... farewell. It doesn't sound right: farewell. There must be some other word, some other..."

"To part?" said Mickey. His face was serious, tense. He reached his hand and gently patted the sleeve of the Doctor's suit.

Jack moved a step away, letting the Doctor in into the Freezer. Donna's sarcophagus occupied the centre of the room – large, battered box, resembling a deep-freezer, which would made sense if not the advanced technology used for this unique machine. Moving closer, the Doctor saw Donna through its frosted glass – she lay there motionless, breathless, marble white, crowned with fiery hair, wrapped in tubes and wires – a cyberpunk Snow White in her glass coffin, awaiting a futuristic fairytale prince. But there were neither princess nor fairytales in Donna Noble's life. The only unusual story, with such a prosaic beginning – of choosing a direction at a T-junction – turned into a nightmare, which deprived her of her memories, normalcy, maybe life.

Donna Noble, who had saved all the universes.

Donna Noble, who had saved the Doctor, oooh, in so many ways and so many times.

Donna Noble rested here in her icy coffin, waiting against all hope for a kiss of life.

The Doctor swayed and had to hold on to the sarcophagus's lid. It was so cold his hands hurt. Jack immediately grabbed his arm, but the Doctor pushed him away, irritated.

"She said the world was cracked?" he asked dryly. "That adaptations were seeping through rifts?"

Harkness nodded tentatively.

"She said many weird things."

"All in all, she was rambling exactly like you," added Mickey.

"Something had happened," said the Doctor thoughtfully. "Something had happened and she felt it. Adam mentioned a time slide, three seconds of anomaly which got him into the past. And Donna was answering questions before you asked. These are echoes, Jack. These are waves of some event, and I have to localise it before it is too late."

Jack apparently wanted to say something, but reconsidered it and simply nodded his head. Mickey shifted from one leg to the other, rubbed palms together and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He opened and closed his mouth. He opened it again but could not force himself to speak up. The Doctor looked at him, eyebrows raised.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"I can see it's something, Mickey."

"It's nothing... I mean... Nothing." Mickey bit his lips. "But... You're doing it again, Doctor! You're always doing it! Always. You... You just leave. As you've left Rose..."

"Mickey, don't..." There was suddenly a lot of pain in the Doctor's voice.

"But it's true! You'll choose some timelordly escape route and don't you dare to deny it! Magicking a human twin? All for her? And what about you?"

"I'm all right." Doctor smiled weakly, but Mickey, exasperated, raised his voice and was almost screaming now.

"No! You'll say you're all right, and you'll get inside this box of yours, and you'll do something damn stupid again, because it's not all right; nothing is; and you the least of it all! You said goodbye and you jumped onboard the TARDIS just to get yourself killed!"

The Doctor sighed.

"I've got used to being alone," he said. "I've learned how to loose people, how to say goodbye, how to leave them behind, or how to look at them growing old and dying. I'm a Time Lord, Mickey. I'm an alien."

"And we are dumb monkeys!" countered Mickey immediately. "So what? At least we don't play comedy! We don't pretend that the whole universe rests upon our shoulders, because the universe doesn't rest upon anybody's damn shoulders, and you're no exception, and you can feel bad if someone you like lies here, frozen, and you can't save her as she's saved you, and of course you're changing the subject, and you pretend you have so much to do, all those rifts and anomalies, but in true you just want to slip out of here and again be..."

"Mickey, shut up," quietly advised Jack.

For a long time the Doctor stood still, looking through the thick sarcophagus's glass at Donna's face. Finally he shrugged his shoulders and stuck his hands inside his pockets.

"Yeaaaah..." he said. "I think I'll just... then..."

"Right... Sure you will..." answered Mickey, embarrassed.

"It reminds me that I have something for you." Harkness saved them both. He dived into the shadow behind the sarcophagus and emerged again holding soft, beige coat. "Not original, but for a copy it is perfect."

"A coat point two?" The Doctor smiled.

"So you know you don't have an exclusive on copy making."

"Thanks."

"And about this... Adam." Harkness knitted his brow. "Who do you think they are? Those... Lords of his?"

"Well... The first time I met him, there was a Dalek there." The Doctor put the coat on and looked down at himself turning slightly in the spot. His tone became light-hearted again. "Adam gained all his knowledge onboard the Crucible. I think we can safely assume that the Daleks are involved in one way or the other."

"You don't seem to worry."

"It's just inevitable, don't you think? I'd have to be blind, deaf and stupid to think I got rid of them. I never will. I've tried everything, Jack, I'd rewritten their history, I'd killed them all, and yet they came back. So, yes, I think it might be them. And I think we will meet again. And we will fight. But not today. Today I have other things to think about. Other things to do. I don't have time to worry about damn, mean, cosmic pepper pots."

"No, you really don't," smiled Jack.

"I have to tie all loose ends." The Doctor opened the coat and from his pocket he took out a small, battered machine, with three round brushes at the bottom and a lens at the top. "One cheap trick. This shouldn't take too long."

"A cheap trick?" repeated Jack without understanding. The Doctor winked at him.

"Cell 7B. Wednesdays and Fridays."

"What is it?" asked Mickey.

"A little, clever machine," answered the Doctor. "A small mechanical deck cleaner. Basically a hoover. Bigger on the inside."

For the last time he looked at Donna, sleeping peacefully in her crystal coffin. He tossed the hoover up, caught it in the air and strode towards the corridor.

"See, time is not a straight progression of cause to effect, past to future," he said as he walked. "There can be a past-future-continuous, and a past-simply-undone, and a not-so-present-as-you-may-think time. If you know how, you can run along its lines, or across them, cutting them and bending them to your will. And I plan to do it. One cheap trick. And then one very, very dear."

Behind his back Jack and Mickey exchanged glances.

THE END OF EPISODE ONE

THE VIRTUAL SEASON FIVE CONTINUES IN EPISODE TWO

THE ART OF FORGETTING

"I don't understand it." The Doctor runs his fingers through his hair. "I just don't get it."

"Oh, don't give up so easily," says Donna.

"Easily?! You call it easy?!"

***

Ood Theta faces the Doctor in a deserted corridor.

"Ooooh," says the Doctor, surprised and sad. "Don't tell me nothing has changed. Nothing? You still have to... serve?"

***

Ood Kappa talks to Theta.

"Humans' song has ended. There's nobody left but us."

***

Donna, dressed in a long robe, hair braided, sword in outstretched hands, stands by the lake, facing two boys.

"What are you looking at, prawn? Are you going to take it or not, I do not plan to stay here overnight."

***

The Doctor runs through the thick forest. Something invisible follows him with a horrible noise of crushed bushes and trees. The Doctor stumbles and falls to the ground. His hair is damp with sweat, he breathes heavily. He looks up, terrified...

***

"And you!" The Doctor points accusing finger towards Donna, relaxing on the sofa with a blasé expression on her face. "You have no right to be here!"

AND IN OTHER EPISODES OF THE VIRTUAL SEASON FIVE

"This is – honestly – this is wizard! Don't you think? Wizard! Donna Noble, citizen of the Earth, from Chiswick, London, in EDEN!"

The way she accented the last word suggested she found herself in an actual Paradise.

"Mmm..." said the Doctor.

***

"We're in Middle Ages!" he yelled.

"Well, you should have parked her better," teased Donna.

"What?!"

"The TARDIS."

"What?!"

***

The whole Freezer shook; a net of cracks appeared on the wall in which the TARDIS had stuck while materialising. Martha could hear explosions in the Hub's main hall, containing the Rift Manipulator. Lamps above her head lightened up as if fed by a too high voltage and intensity of electric current. One after another, light bulbs started to burst, sowing sparks and gradually submerging the Freezer in the semidarkness of emergency lights.

"No!" yelled Jack.

"Yes!" the Doctor yelled back.

***

"This is Rubik's Cube! The one and only, real, original Rubik's Cube!"

"Yeaaah." Donna wrapped herself up with the sheepskin coat and stamped her feet. "And I'm an Ice Cube. Again!"

***

In the light of the oil lamp Donna's eyes grew large and glossy. From behind a window she could hear cries, sobbing, horses' neighing, clatter of hammers nailing up next doors, bell-ringing and voices of criers: "Bring out your dead!"

***

"Everyone is waiting, General."

The woman sitting in a large, white room, with windows overlooking the city and the mountain range in the distance, under darkening burnt orange skies, turned away from the mirror and slowly got up from her chair. She touched the folds of her long, glimmering robe with a tall, stiff collar holding up her minutely styled, fiercely red hair.

"Oh, no, please, not 'General'," she said. "Donna. Just Donna."

***

"What have you done, Doctor?" asked Jack, sudden understanding in his voice. "What have you done?"

***

"Blimey!" said Donna hesitantly. "The dream I've had!"

***