Summary: Really, how could Donna Noble turn down an offer of all of time and space? When the Doctor runs into a Family out to use him to make themselves immortal, Donna has the chance to prove yet again that he needs someone.

Author's Notes: Human Nature/The Family of Blood if Donna had decided to take the Doctor up on his offer to travel with him at the end of Runaway Bride.

"Did they see you?"

"How should I know? Did you not see how fast I was running just now? I couldn't exactly take time to check out the scenery, could I?"

"But did they see you?"

Donna rolled her eyes. Did he really not understand the words 'I don't know'? Well, he was an alien who thought he knew everything there was to know, so she supposed not.

"I didn't ever look at them," she admitted, "so I doubt they could have seen my face. Wouldn't bet my life on it, though."

That seemed to bring the Doctor up short. "Wouldn't bet your life ..." he muttered. Donna had that dawning feeling of dread (being with the Doctor had made her intimately familiar with it) that he was about to ask her to do just that.

"Argh, they're following us," the Doctor growled. He bounded around the console, flicking switches even faster than Donna was used to. "They're jumping time tracks, hanging about the TARDIS like flies near rotting food. Stolen technology, no doubt. I can't shake them."

"What happens if they catch us, then?"

"I'd rather it didn't come to that. Look," the Doctor started, "they can track me, because I'm unique. Only Time Lord in the universe; it's not a difficult scent to follow about. But you're human, and it's difficult to track any one of you lot with billions – trillions – of you hanging about various parts of time and space. And if they really didn't see you, there's this thing I can do to make it just as hard for them to track me as well. I can make myself into a human, and then I'll just be one among the many. The TARDIS will drop us off and create a place for me, and then she'll power down so they can't trace her. The people who are following us, the Family, they'll die within three months. We just have to wait them out. It'll be like a holiday, only backwards. Staying in one place instead of always on the move, just for a while. But I won't remember being me, so I'll need your help more than ever."

"Three months," Donna repeated, unimpressed.

"I know it's a lot to ask, Donna, and I'm sorry."

Donna waved his words off. "Yeah, that's all well and good, but that's not the problem. Thing is, I've never known you to go even three hours without attracting trouble. Three months? You're just asking for it, aren't you? There's no way things will work out the way you're hoping. And what happens when things go pear-shaped, eh? What if this Family finds us after all, human or no human? You'll be all amnesiac and probably less than useless, and we'll be sitting ducks. And whatever people are around us will be cannon fodder."

"That's a bit of a mixed metaphor, isn't it? Ducks and cannons? Although I suppose it's all water-related," the Doctor mused somewhat inanely. Donna could see by his frown, though, that her words were having some impact on him.

"Like you have a leg to stand on there, Mr Talks-at-a-hundred-miles-an-hour-and-never-makes-a-speck-of-sense-to-anyone-sane."

"I'm just going by 'the Doctor' these days," he said.

"Not the time for jokes, really, is it? And anyway, another thing brainiac, they're out there travelling in time just like the TARDIS does, right?"

"Not 'just like the TARDIS'. That is a human-designed gadget from just barely in your future that'll probably break the minute you press the on button, while the TARDIS is a frankly magnificent ship that –"

"That will also break the minute you press a button, or sometimes for no reason at all." At the Doctor's affronted look, Donna quickly continued, "Look, I've heard the 'Ode to the TARDIS' enough times, thanks. I get it. But if they can travel in time, even if the TARDIS is better at it, then what stops them jumping through time to the end of our three months, just when we think it's safe and you've turned back. Couldn't they catch us then as easily as now?"

The Doctor was silent for a while, which was astonishing in itself. But it was nothing compared to what he said when he did eventually (inevitably, with his gob, Donna thought) speak up again.

"Donna Noble," he said, "sometimes you're even more magnificent than I am."

"Well, duh," she said casually, but she had to admit that the words made her chest puff up a little with pride. It was a good feeling, and one she still wasn't all that used to.

The Doctor nodded to himself. "All right, then, turning human, not the best idea after all. And we can't have them chase us through the Time Vortex for three months, because time in the Vortex is only relative so it isn't really passing them by, so they likely won't ever run out of life that way."

"So, what? We let them catch up to us and, as per usual, you use that motor-mouth to confuse the hell out of them until somehow, at the end of the day, you just happen to have saved the universe?"

The Doctor grinned manically. "Donna, you took the thought right out of my head."

Donna sighed. "Right. Here we go again."

* * *