Author's Note: This is my first attempt at fanfiction of any kind, and I had to write it to fix what I felt was the saddest companion's ending in all of Who. This pairing is by far my favorite, and I wish that it had lasted longer and grown in to something more as 10 was my first Doctor.

I don't own Dr Who or any of its characters, but I do love the world that the creators have made and hope you enjoy my little jaunt into this universe. We will get to the good stuff all in good time, but first the universe has to be saved! With the Doctor, doesn't it always?

Allons-y!

I have included a chapter summary of this story as I have received feedback that 300,000+ words can seem pretty daunting. The story breaks down quite nicely into 7 story arcs and can be consumed in smaller sittings for each arc if you have turned away from this story in the past due to its size. I hope this breakdown will make the story more appetizing. Thank you again and I hope you enjoy the birth of the Phoenix Universe.

Chapters 1-6: An old Enemy Returns

17,277 words

Chapters 7-12: Interlude-Time to regroup

39,963 words

Chapters 13-21: Trouble in Cardiff

74,628 words

Chapters 22-25: Interlude-Unfinished Business

53,557 words

Chapters 26-30: The bonds of the Nexus

66,927 words

Chapters 31-34: A Christmas to remember

46,780 words

Chapter 35: Epilogue

12,661 words

Her hair still burned with its own inner flame as the sunlight caught it. The red gold curls falling about her shoulders like a waterfall of molten fire.

He sat across the park making sure to stay well out of her line of sight, but unable to stop watching her. The Doctor was very good about bending reality just that little bit about himself with the help of his trusty sonic. He knew the dangers, most importantly the dangers to her should she see him, but he had been unable to help himself.

In the months since he had suppressed her memories beneath the mental shield of his own weaving, he had found himself stumbling and falling down a dark and dangerous path. She had become his conscience, the guiding hand when the rage that had been burning in him since the end of the time war threatened to explode and destroy any in its path. She reminded him what had always drawn him back to planet earth over and over again in his near millennium of life. She had been the beacon that drew him back from that frightening abyss that screamed at him with the power that was his as the last of his kind. Now that she was gone, and gone by his own hand, even the miniscule restraint that he had before was long since gone, burned away in the seething fire of the rage that he had been running from for far too long.

Her laughter as she read something in her book echoed across the park to him, stabbing him right between his twin hearts as he remembered all the other times he had heard that sound. The curse of the Time Lord, the sheer perfection of their memories as they can see all of time and space about them, always burning in their utter perfection, both the dark and the light. He was floundering and he knew it, the prophecy of the Ood seared into his mind as he ran mindlessly from catastrophe to catastrophe, wondering if he was actually trying to seek out the end that supposedly was so near.

Huffing out a frustrated sigh, he scrubbed his hands over his face and leaned back against the park bench as he clenched his fists against eyes too tired to cry and a throat too tight to scream. He was afraid if he did give that scream voice, it would never end and he would do the unthinkable and take her back, consequences be damned.

For a brief moment his control wavered and the wave of agony and self-loathing blasted out from him in a telepathic wall of sheer power, the humans around him completely oblivious to it except for the one with part of his soul embedded in her mind.

Donna heard a muffled scream, a cry like she had never heard before accompanied by a stab of pain through her temples so strong, her hand flew to her head to see if blood was pouring from her pores. Just as quickly as it came, it passed leaving only a vague emptiness behind it and a lingering dull ache that didn't quite subside.

She looked up from the book she had been reading, which was now creased and wrinkled from the tight grip of her hand and looked around the park. Her breath came in stuttering gasps as the sheer adrenaline rush slowing faded from her system, she wondered who could have screamed with such soul searing agony and why no one else in the park was reacting. Could they not hear it? Her eyes searched the other benches, lingering briefly on a man in a blue pinstriped suit with white trainers of all things. Her head cocked as she felt a brief stirring at the incongruous fashion choice, wondering why she felt a tickle of something familiar about the man, though he was getting up and moving away in no seeming pain at all. Well then it couldn't have been him then, she thought. Sighing and shaking her head once more, wondering what portion of her fantasy world was coming out to grab her now.

She felt she was teetering on the brink of insanity day in and day out. Like a part of her was asleep or worse off dead and she didn't know how or when or why. Sylvia had forced her into therapy in an uncharacteristic show of concern, but deep down Donna knew it was just because Sylvia wanted her all sorted out properly so that she could once more start trying to live up to whatever unattainable ideal her mother had for her. The sensation of floating through life was definitely not one that she loved, and the months that had passed that she had been in this state left her worried that maybe she truly was going mad. But did a person who was going mad, know that they were going mad? Didn't the movies always depict lunatics as giggling happy people bouncing through life? Well happy when they weren't screaming as they were tied up in straight jackets that was. Shaking her head at herself, and picking her book back up, the strange scream and pain already fading from her temples as she chalked it up to yet another unexplainable experience in a life that was becoming increasingly littered with them.

Best to focus on the mundane, get through life day by day, for some reason driven just to keep on living, keep on going even though she had no idea where the drive came from that forced her to go through the motions. The tears fell uncontrollably down her cheeks as the words on the page blurred before her eyes, reaching in to her bag for the pile of tissues that she always kept at hand. For some reason, that scream had felt so familiar for just one moment in time, the sound of the voice had clicked something in her heart, causing it to flutter before fading once more behind that haze.

Oh god she truly was going mad, but for some reason she knew she would not be telling her therapist about these events. Something told her to hold it close for some inexplicable reason, even though she knew it was probably linked to the nightmares, and the fantasy world that sometimes blended with the real world. Just for this one time though, she didn't care.

Engrossed in her own tears, Donna didn't notice the tall lanky, blonde man leaning against a tree behind the bench that the blue suited man had been sitting on, as the blonde stranger watched her with speculation filling his eyes. Nor did she feel the light brush against her mind, lightly probing and testing before pulling away as it if never were.