Title: Close Encounters of the Invisible Kind, 9
Author: Lilac Summers
Rating: PG

Author's Notes: Thank you so much to all of you who are still reading, have still been waiting, commenting and encouraging me to update. 4 years later you didn't give up on me, so here it is!

She had forgotten that gravity's a right bitch.

Donna stumbles, quite literally, out of the TARDIS doors with as much grace as a newborn fawn. Or as though she's single-handedly imbibed a pub's stock of lager. Nerys' center of gravity feels horribly off and inhabiting these foreign limbs takes practice.

To add insult to injury, Nerys is also wearing truly uncomfortable wedding shoes, and she can already feel a pinch in her toes developing.

Once out the doors she uses the TARDIS to re-balance and keep from falling flat on her face. With hands upon warm wood, she realizes that, for the first time ever, she has an opportunity to examine the TARDIS from the outside. She's never had a chance before. So now she runs her fingertips over the aged, blue paint - tottering around it in a full circle, in awe at the machine. "Look at you!" she breathes, inspecting the details, from the message on the door to the actual working telephone. "You're amazing!"

Donna throws her arms wide against the police box in a hug, squeezing tight, relishing the rough texture of it under her hands, real skin pressing against solidness. It's perfect. "Thank you," she whispers now, her own little secret message, "For taking me in. Giving me a home. I won't get to hug you for real again - so thank you."

The TARDIS feels somehow content under her touch, so Donna thinks the TARDIS appreciates it.

She finally pulls back and turns, finding the Doctor standing a few feet away, watching her with a warm, secret gaze.

"What!" she demands in her brassiest tone. Well, Nerys' brassiest tone.

"Nothing," he grins. He extends a hand to her. "Come on. Aren't we supposed to be getting your friend to her wedding?"

She reaches forward and takes his hand and that feels perfect, too.

Several things happen rapid-fire after that:

She screams at the Doctor for not thinking about bringing money with him. She's the ghost along for the ride; it really should be up to the living to think about details like that, and it's not like he's green at this whole "unforeseen adventure" shtick. He says, one too many times, "Don't get too comfortable in that body," like she can forget, christ on a cracker, that this is temporary! And so then she accidentally-on-purpose leaves him behind when he's not paying attention, because he's being a git about this whole unintended possession thing and by god, she's allowed a bit of fun, ain't she - just for the little time before Nerys gets her skinny body back?

In the taxi, Donna bounces delightedly on the seat, actually enjoying London traffic for once. She doesn't get to enjoy if for long, as the driver turns out to be a Santa robot, and then Donna puts Nerys' body in mortal danger by diving out of a moving car, into the Doctor's waiting arms.

It's an awkward leap that's more flailing limbs, a hope, and a prayer, than anything else. She doesn't think the Doctor quite understands how utterly foreign this body feels - how any body would feel after all this time - and it's really a miracle that she doesn't land with a splat on the busy motorway.

When she does, against all odds, land with the Doctor's surprisingly solid body beneath hers, it takes her a moment to stop relishing the sensation of someone pressed against her. It's been soooo long.

But she does, in fact, remember that this is not her body. So in that moment when the Doctor and her are face to face and shocked into stillness, it strikes her that it's not Donna he's looking at, watching out for, holding hands with. It's Nerys.

She commands trembling limbs to lever herself to sit, in a pool of white skirts, on the floor. Excitement and adrenaline subside so that all that's left is an unwelcome pang in her chest. A deep, watery breath doesn't help the bite of realization that, as wrapped in giddy excitement as she is to take part in an adventure, none of this is truly happening to Donna. None of this is about her. It never is.

The Doctor has scrambled off to right the bucking TARDIS, consumed in flipping levers and pulling switches and dealing with a growing plume of smoke.

Donna watches him for a moment, then tells herself she really should get up. She's wrinkling Nerys' dress. The dress that should have been Donna's.

The sentence slips from her mouth without actual thought: "I looked better in it, you know."

"Hm?" the Doctor queries, distracted, more concerned with landing them safely.

"The dress. I looked better in it."

The Doctor finally looks up to find Donna slowly standing, smoothing down layers of tulle, looking down at her friend's form.

The Doctor recalls Donna only as an amorphous grey mass with terrifying pits for eyes, but looking at her in that borrowed body now, with a cocked hip, radiating attitude, he can imagine she must have been a force to be reckoned with. And for a moment that niggle of memory hits him again - of gold-nebulae eyes, staring into his, and hair red as the fields of Gallifrey. He shakes it off, as he always does, as a fancy of regeneration sickness.

The TARDIS pauses its bucking as he finishes banging a button into submission, but flies smoothly enough - despite the growing smoke - for him to step away from the console and towards her. "You keep saying it's your dress. I don't recall you mentioning you were engaged?"

Donna keeps her gaze lowered, one hand going to a tiny rip in the beading along the side.

"No, I wasn't. It was just, you know, hopeful thinking. Picking out your future dress so your mates don't end up filching your style. One of those silly things. But I really did love this dress, ever since we saw it once when we were window shopping. And then she goes and takes it!"

The Doctor is grinning, but as the seconds beat by and she continues to look down, he begins to suspect that her sassy pose and ire are all an act.

"Donna?" he asks carefully.

"I tried it on at the shop and everything. Even Nerys agreed it looked good, and getting a compliment out of her was a fucking miracle."

He reaches out a tentative hand and places it on her shoulder.

She looks up finally, trying to smile through a trembling chin, her eyes suspiciously wet. "I ripped it. She's gonna be so angry."

"You saved her life. She'll get over it."

For a moment he thinks she'll say more, thinks that gravity will win the battle with the tears he sees in dishwater blue eyes. But instead Donna squares her friend's shoulders and lifts her chin, all traces of vulnerability wiped from Nerys' face as if they'd never been there. "Damn straight! Now, where did you land us?" she sails out the door, leaving the Doctor looking after her.

He has to wonder now how many times he's missed that vulnerability, invisible to everyone, any nuance lost under the loud voice and funny quips that only he gets to hear but never see.

The light is bright, the wind whipping Nery's careful blonde chignon out of shape, as the Doctor follows Donna out onto the rooftop.

Donna sighs. "Forget the dress; I've gone and messed up her wedding."

"No you haven't. It's not your fault she got pulled into the TARDIS. Obviously, something's after Nerys."

"But who would want to be after Nerys?" asks Donna. "It must be some sort of mix up."

She shivers as she sits on the roof's edge, and he finds a long-dormant impulse kicking in. He takes of his jacket and drapes it over her shoulders.

Donna smirks - the Doctor has to wonder what that smirk would look like on her real face - and gives him a little eye-roll. "Of course this sad excuse for a jacket fits Nerys. You both are skinny as rats."

"Oi, I'm trying to be a gentleman here. Doesn't happen often, you know!"

She bumps his shoulder playfully. "Right, right." She burrows deeper into his jacket, and he watches her fingers play over the pinstriped material as if memorizing the texture. He sees it again, that flash of sorrow quickly buried. He has the strangest impulse to wrap an arm around her, to somehow comfort her into getting that well-hidden dejection cleansed from her gaze.

"Don't really even know what we were trying to accomplish, really. I mean, so if we'd gotten her back to the wedding, then what? I'd still be stuck in her," she muses, looking off at the cityscape.

"Maybe she'd force you out, not wanting to miss her own wedding. Moot point, now. We have to figure out why she's being hunted, and fix it."

"Poor Nerys. Chased around on her wedding day," Donna sighs and shivers again.

The Doctor shifts at her side, the urge to hug her almost overwhelming now, but he resists and instead digs in his trouser pockets until his fingers touch metal. He pulls out a ring, and offers it to Donna, palm up.

She gapes at his hand for a second, before carefully asking, "What's that for?" There's a catch in her voice.

"Biodamper. It will hide Nerys' biological signature from the robots. Should buy us some time." He offers it again but her hands stay resolutely on her lap, until he takes one in his own and slides the ring on her finger. Her hands are trembling. From the cold, perhaps?

"With this ring, I thee biodamp," he teases.

Her fingers curl in his. This time Donna can't hide her feelings fast enough, and Nerys' face shifts into an expression of sadness and longing.

"For better or for worse," whispers Donna.

Donna knows Nerys better than anyone, and has been hearing of her fairytale wedding plans since they were 15 and sneaking out of school. She gets it in one when she guesses where the reception would have been held.

"You had the reception without Ner- uh - me?!" Donna asks, appalled, upon entering the ballroom.

"Why not? You decided to pull that prank, so why waste all this?" begins Beatrice, attired in an appallingly ugly orange bridesmaid dress. Donna never much had liked Beatrice.

"Wasn't anyone worried?" Donna exclaims. "What kind of friends are you?!"

Lance - LANCE! - comes up to her. "Now, sweetheart. Don't fret so. We all knew you'd turn up. No case of cold feet would keep you away for long, right?"

"Lance?" she wonders, befuddled. Why was he even here?

He hugs her (and oh man, he was fit!), and a niggling suspicion has her pulling back just far enough to peruse his well-fitted tux and the expensive flower at his lapel. Donna stumbles back. Nerys...that absolute man-stealing cow!

It unfolds then, between friends and bridesmaids trying to placate her with glasses of wine, how she shouldn't be too angry. How lucky she is that Lance took her prank in a stride. How of course they were soulmates; it was fate that they'd meet at her friend's funeral who'd-

Wait, hold up! Donna reaches out and snatches the cocktail the Doctor had been nursing right out of his hand, to down in one gulp. Donna's funeral. They'd met at her own damn funeral! Now she really is fuming, and doesn't feel one whit guilty when the music strikes back up and Lance drags her onto the dance floor.

She's tearing up the dance floor, because...well, because she can. This, all of this, should have bloody well been Donna's, and so if anyone has the right to be dancing with Lance right now, it's her!

The Doctor hangs back, indulgent, letting her have her moment of fun. She winks at him over Lance's shoulder and the Doctor raises a new, fruity drink to her in reply. A conga line forms and she snags him into joining as they pass by, and then they're making a joyous circle around the room and she spins to laugh at some wry comment the Doctor makes about how conga lines are so much more fun when done on a planet with zero gravity, and it's all so wonderful that she forgets, for a little while, that this isn't hers and it isn't her future they're celebrating and then...

Then, she spies the quiet couple seated at a table on the fringes, and reality rears its head once more. Her feet cement themselves to the floor so that the Doctor crashes into her before pulling her out of the way as the conga line reforms without them.

"What is it?" the Doctor asks, scanning for danger as the blood has drained from her wine-flushed face.

"My parents," whispers Donna. Sylvia and Geoff, looking a little older, a little more tired. The smiles they aim in her direction, however, are as familiar as always.

It takes her several uncertain steps to make it to them, and the well wishes and hugs she receives pass in a blur. A quick impression of warm hands and Sylvia's favorite perfume, Geoff's hearty laugh. Donna has no memory, later, of what she said or how she forced Nerys' lips into a smile. Of how she was able to nod when Donna's own name was brought up and how much they wished she could be there to celebrate with her dear friend.

The Doctor is waiting, hands ready to grip her cold fingers, when she staggers back to him and begs, "Please, get me out of here." And right on time, the baubles on the decorative Christmas tree begins to explode.

Donna can confirm that after being kidnapped from your wedding, finding out your rubbish friends held the reception without you, and then finding out you're being poisoned, a great distraction from your troubles is to barrel down maintenance tunnels in a Segway. It is so ridiculous that the laughter bubbles up without warning, until she and the Doctor are hooting and giggling and altogether having a swell time. Unfortunately, Lance is an utter killjoy.

Well of course he is, the two-timing arse - turns out he was cheating on Nerys with a spider.

"Is it always like this when you go adventuring," asks Donna, much later, back on the TARDIS and watching the world being born. "The bits of chaos and the danger and the wonder?"

"Yep. 'S great, isn't it?" grins the Doctor, before noting that a wayward tear is further smudging Nerys' makeup

"I'm sorry about your friend's fiancee," offers the Doctor.

"Hmm," nods Donna. . She presses a cold hand to her chest. "She's so shocked inside. Oh, poor Nerys. What an absolute wanker Lance is. But this," she takes a deep breath now, staring at the kaleidoscope of colors outside the door as dust coalesces into her planet, "this puts it all in perspective, doesn't it. I hope it helps her."

It doesn't, not really. Or at least not right this moment, as she continues to sense Nerys aching in betrayal. But maybe one day in the future, Nerys will think back to this vista no other human has seen before, and heal.

The moment of calm is shattered as they're pulled back to earth, and Donna heartily wishes her friend hadn't chosen these horrible shoes for the wedding as she finds herself sprinting to keep up with the Doctor once more.

"So these Huon particles," Donna wheezes once the Doctor brings them to a stop at a maintenance door. "I still don't understand. What are they for?"

"They're an ancient form of energy, energy that's necessary for the Racnoss to rise. They need a living host to catalyze, and Nerys is it."

"You think maybe that's what's making me stick to her? Cuz it feels like how the TARDIS can keep me anchored" she ponders, watching him take out a stethoscope. She's pretty sure he's just fucking around at this point, he's such a drama queen.

He pauses suddenly, eyes going wide before whirling at her. Excited, happy hands gesticulate wildly. "Yes! Oh, yes! I'd forgotten entirely that you're stuck. Aren't you clever! The Huon particles, they're so old that the only other surviving particles power the heart of the TARDIS. They're like the little plus sides to your minus-"

"Oi, watch it."

"-an ancient magnet, keeping you in place!"

"Well gold star for me! Does that mean when you get them out of her I can finally leave?"

"Yep," enthuses the Doctor, back to inspecting the door he's so hell-bent on opening. "We'll sort that out back in the TARDIS, and then 'poof!', you're back to your role as resident ghost and Nerys is back to her boring life, probably knee-deep in wedding bills. Really, the wedding industry is a scam, I don't understand why-"

It occurs to him that he can't hear Donna's labored breathing hovering over his shoulder any longer. He whirls back around and, of course, she's gone.

"I fucking hate you. To think, it could have been me!" spits Donna, now suspended in a web beside Wanker!Lance.

He sneers, and Donna wonders that she ever found him attractive.

The Racnoss Queen forces the Huon particles out of the both of them, and Donna's ire for her friend is derailed as she begins to feel the tendrils holding her in place begin to dissipate. Goddammit, why did she have to be right this time! If she's forced out here, she's going to be lost!

She digs in tight, trying to keep within this borrowed body. The Huon particles want to take her with them, but she's not going to go without a fight! She calls out furiously to Nerys within her mind. "Help me stay!"

Nerys continues to cower in a tiny corner of her mind, nursing hurt and horror and disbelief. Donna is grasping tight with a strength she didn't know she had, seeking out the cells within Nerys' body that contain the tiniest footprints of Huon energy still, ingrained after 6 months of being dosed. But she's not going to be able to hold on for long by herself. "For god's sake, Nerys, be useful for once! What, you want this cheating bastard and his spider mistress to win?! You end up as spider food and Beatrice gets first dibs at any eligible bachelors at your funeral this time around?"

That does it. She feels Nerys psyche uncurl, ponder, and finally lash out a mental hand, clawing back at Donna, gripping at her with Nerys' signature bitchy stubbornness. A final, mighty heave from Nerys has Donna settling back into Nerys' body with a palpable jerk. "You better fucking get me out of here alive, Donna!" she hears Nerys say to her. "It's your fault I even met him!"

And isn't that classic Nerys.

The Doctor, thankfully, arrives right on time. He doesn't catch her, the dunce, but at least Nerys is not spider food, so that's a win. She's sure she'll remember Lance's fall for a long time, though. Is even more sure she'll remember the Racnoss Queen's frenzied sobbing and screams of "My babies" for much longer.

Which leaves Donna now standing in ankle deep water, staring at a stranger.

The Doctor, a silent and grim executioner, is perhaps the scariest thing she's seen today, or ever.

The water is rising rapidly, the screams of dying Racnoss long faded. "Doctor, you can stop now!"

He looks down at her with burning eyes, this stranger wearing the Doctor's face, and it's almost scary how well she can read him right now. How unfair it is that the Racnoss survived and his people didn't. How horrible it is to be the last. How easy it would be to just watch the water rise. The relief it would be to let go and finally, finally rest.

"What's death like, Donna?" he murmurs to her and she hears it just fine, even over the rushing water.

She gulps, terrified. But she forces her borrowed voice to be strong. "Boring. Endless. Pointless. Is that what you want? Because it's not what Nerys wants." It's not what I want for you.

He closes his eyes, finally, and when he reopens them it's the Spaceman she's used to looking back at her. "Let's get her out of here, then."

The Doctor has made it snow for her.

"It's time, Donna," he says to her quietly.

"I know," she sighs. She shuffles her feet a little, enjoying the solidity of dirt underfoot. Even the ache in her arches and pinching in her toes is welcome. She rubs her hands over cold arms. Skin and bone and a voice and will and action. She's about to let go of all of it.

"You need somebody, you know," she adds abruptly, using hands that aren't hers to reach for the Doctor's grasp. "Out here with you, a companion. You should find someone else, someone new. Like I told you before."

"I don't need anyone," he denies gruffly, though he grips her fingers tight.

"Yes you do. You need someone to share in the adventures and because... sometimes you need someone to stop you," she replies, voice kind. Somebody to live for. And it can't be me.

He blinks rapidly at her. Wayward tears or snow in his eyes? She can't tell because she is blinking just as hard.

"Not Nerys, though!"

He chokes out a laugh, scrubbing one hand over his face. "No, not Nerys. Not now that you're finally going to be free of her."

She grins, trying to be strong, and nervously smooths her hands over her ruined dress. "Okay, well, here goes nothing. You know she's going to freak the holy hell out as soon as I leave her, right?" she begins. She wants to ask for a hug again, because she needs it, but she feels stupid asking.

Though she does quickly remember something else. "Wait! Oh here, save this for me." She slides the biodamper off Nerys' finger.

The Doctor takes it from her with a confused look. "It's useless now, you know. No harm in it for her."

"But it's mine," she confesses in a rush. "Not Nerys'. You gave it to me and it's ...it's the closest I ever..." her throat clogs up, "closest I got to getting a ring from someone. Even when I was alive I..."

The Doctor's sympathetic eyes do her in, utterly, and she finds herself suddenly shouting, "Why did I have to die!"

To her horror, she feels tears sliding down Nerys' pale cheeks. Her bottom lip is trembling, her chest aching, breaths staggering. She'd forgotten how much it physically hurt being so sad.

She is suddenly enfolded in the Doctor's arms, his hug wonderfully tight as he shushes her and rocks her. And she didn't even have to ask.

She reaches around him, fists clutching his coat. She'd forgotten, too, how it felt to be comforted.

She is the one who finally pulls back, because it's too tempting to cling to him longer. She looks away and scrubs her eyes. The Doctor continues to gaze at her with soft understanding, slipping the ring into a pocket before reaching for her hands once more. "Donna..." he begins.

But she is embarrassed enough already, crying and snotty, and Nerys is not a pretty crier. She abruptly uses the Doctor's grip on her to pull herself out of this borrowed body. This time Nerys is more than happy to let her go, and it's almost like a cork popping out of a champagne. The force of it throws Nerys back and Donna is left a ghost once more, with a firm grip on the Doctor to keep her tethered.

Nerys catches her footing, stares, smacks the Doctor hard across the face, and turns tail to run away, screaming, "HELP! Martians are real!"

"What the hell was that for!" exclaims the Doctor. He shakes his head at the retreating form of the woman, and heads back through the TARDIS doors. He ensures that Donna's hand is firm in his before closing the door, because she remains silent. Nerys is still screaming and scrambling towards her front door when the TARDIS disappears.

It's only after the TARDIS is in the vortex that he realizes he can feel Donna's hand in his as if she were solid.

To be continued

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