A/N: This is my first fanfic ever, it hasn't been beta'd and English is not my mother language, so sorry for mistakes of any kind. If you want to criticize anything of this fic okay by me, it actually gives room to improve, but do so kindly, don't flame please. I think it will have three chapters in total.

WARNING: Even if this first chapter is more of Shaun/Donna in a way, this is a Tenth Doctor/Donna romantic fic. So if you do not like the pairing this is not for you.

Chapter 1:

The day Shaun Temple met Donna Noble, it was raining. That was why it wouldn't be until much later, until he had gotten to know her better, that he would look back to their first encounter and realize that the wet moisture over her face were tears and not raindrops.

He had been going home after a day at work, and it was almost dark, not day but not also quite night yet, twilight. Between the rain that had been falling relentlessly for hours and the rather late time, there hadn't been almost anyone in the streets. The few people he encountered moved fast to the comfort of their homes, fighting against the cold wind that cut with an ice bite into any bit of skin left uncovered.

So when he turned a corner and found himself staring at a lonely figure standing in the middle of an otherwise empty street, Shaun couldn't help feeling a bit surprised.

Because the person was not moving, was not making any attempt to shelter herself from the pouring rain. She was just there, utterly still, head turned up to the sky as if looking for something among the dark gray clouds above. But what shocked Shaun more than anything was the utter sadness of the sight, the unhappiness he could sense without even seeing her face. And it wasn't until he was almost upon her that she moved and looked at him, wet ginger hair sticking to her face, looking almost black because of the rain that had fallen over it. And the expression her face wore was so sad, and something in her eyes so empty, that it frightened him.

So wordlessly he opened the umbrella he had not bothered to use before because of the wind that blew too strong, and looked at her, inviting her without words to join him. And he just did not know why he was helping a stranger, but something in him, for some reason he wasn't sure about, wanted to take that haunted look away from those eyes. She stared at him, in that hollow way, before joining him under the umbrella, somewhat hesitantly.

She immediately started walking in a brisk pace after that, and not knowing why, he followed, both of them below the too small umbrella that swayed under the wind and hardly provided any cover at all. But the two were so soaked at that point it really didn't matter. There was silence between them, it wasn't an uncomfortable type of silence, on the contrary, Shaun felt scared of breaking it. Like of the absence of words, the not telling, could somehow erase what had happened to the woman currently by his side, whatever it was.

After some time advancing through puddle filled streets, the sound of the rain hitting the floor and the wind's howling the only noise around them, she suddenly stopped. She was looking directly at a house that wasn't very far away from Shaun's own, and he knew then this was where she lived.

"It was raining too, that day."

Shaun blinked, surprised at hearing her speak for the first time.

"Sorry?" he asked, nonplussed.

She shook her head, hard, as if trying to clear it, water coming from her ginger locks in every direction, landing on his face and clothes.

"The day I woke up and had forgotten the last months of my life." she said it with a steady and impersonal voice, but there was an undercurrent of loss so vast in her tone that it made Shaun's stomach clench painfully. He knew without the need of her adding anything else that precisely those memories she lost were important in ways others weren't, that they held something enormously precious that now was out of her grasp.

And, he understood with horrifying clarity, she knew too.

"Thanks" she said then, and smiled, a sad smile that didn't reach her eyes, but also an honest one. Then she turned and went towards the house nearest to them, entering it.

He just watched her go, a lump in his throat. He wasn't completely sure what she thanked him for. Probably she wasn't, either.

A strong gust of wind snatched the umbrella from his frozen hands, and he just turned and walked away, slowly, hardly feeling the droplets of water falling on his too cold face.

He didn't even know her name.

It wouldn't be until two months later that he saw her again.

The office at which he worked needed a temp, as the one they already had had just left her job. So they hired a new one. It rained too the day she finally started working, and Shaun was surprised when he realized it was her, the woman he had found looking like a frozen statue under a downpour on a lonely street.

But she acted completely different. She wasn't the picture of desolation any more. Or at least it wasn't so painfully obvious. In fact, if he had not known beforehand, it would not have been noticeable at all. She hid behind a brash attitude, snarky comments and a bossy side. Sometimes she seemed almost shallow. She went out with friends and gossiped enthusiastically, or at least she appeared to. But what did not make sense to Shaun was that she seemed to act the way she did more because it was what it was expected from her, what she herself expected from her, than because she really wanted to, or felt like it. It was as if something had changed in her, but she did not know what or how, so she continued her life as if it had not, but only for one reason, that she did not have another possible option, or at least it had been taken away from her.

Nobody else seemed to realize something was wrong with her, terribly so. Not even Donna herself, most of the time. If Shaun had not seen her that day, he would not have noticed either. But he had seen that look, a look that made him shudder just to remember it, and even if it had been locked to the bottom of her eyes, he could peer into them and find it, hidden in their depths but not gone. If he hadn't seen it before, he would not have recognized it for what it was. It spoke of loss, on so many different levels, that it made him uneasy just to think about it.

He learned her name. Donna. Donna Noble. Shaun thought it fit her. And he was curious about her; something made him want to know her better.

So when he got the office he always found a way to exchange few words with her before each of them headed to their own workplace. As time passed their conversations become longer, and a certain confidence grew between them.

If she remembered their first encounter she didn't mention it. He didn't either.

One day he summed up courage to invite her to dinner, and she said yes. Not long after that he asked her out, and she said yes. Some months later he told her to come live with him in the little flat he could afford, and she said yes. Then he proposed, and she said yes.

He tried to ignore the fact that every time she answered affirmatively, in each of those occasions, just for a moment, just when she pronounced that word, yes, the look in her eyes was exactly like it had been the day he first saw her. And it was so brief each time Shaun was not even completely sure he had not imagined it in the normal fear of rejection while asking those questions.

He also tried to ignore that the day they become a couple and first kissed, water was falling lazily, almost gently, from a grey sky. And that it was also raining the first day she slept in his house, that from that day onwards would become their house.

Still, Shaun had learned to live with the emptiness in her eyes, as long as it was not as palpable as it had been that day he couldn't remember without feeling something cold in the bottom of his stomach, when Donna had looked more like an empty shell than anything else. He could bare her sad looks.

Until he started sharing a bed with her. Because when she opened her eyes just after waking, then was when she looked more miserable that ever. She dreamed a lot, and talked while it happened. She always seemed to be asking for a doctor in her sleep, and Shaun at first wondered if she felt sick, but after it happening all the time he let it go. Many times she woke up in the middle of the night, hands reaching at something desperately, and then she would cry, so silently it was difficult to notice, until her breathing evened and the dreams took her away again, dreams where she spoke many words he didn't know. Shaun just pretended to sleep, wanting to hold her and make her feel better, but knowing that she did not want it. When she woke up after just having dreamed she did not let him touch her or comfort her, and after trying for some time he just gave up. So he acted as if he did not notice while his heart broke piece by piece with every tear that rolled silently down her face almost every time she woke up. And still he had come to the conclusion he would rather suffer every night with her by his side that live without her at all. He did love her, and if that was the price to pay, witnessing her distress and sharing some of it every time they headed to bed, he would.

It took him some time to realize that she dreamed of her lost memories. And that she forgot them the second she was conscious again.

It was one day, when she had invited her mother and grandfather for tea, and she was putting a kettle in the kitchen, while he served some biscuits on a plate to take to Sylvia and Wilfred in the sitting room, that he summed up his courage to ask.

"What's a Dalek?"

She looked at him in confusion "A what?"

"A Dalek. And a TARDIS. What is a TARDIS?

And even while he saw a shimmer of recognition in her eyes, she answered that she had no idea what he was talking about.

He was going to say that they were words he often heard her pronounce in her dreams when suddenly he felt a hand on his arm, and when he turned, he found himself looking directly into Wilfred's horrified eyes.

"Shaun" he was trying to sound calm but the tone of his voice was strained "I think Sylvia wants to tell you something."

He took him out of the kitchen as fast as he could, almost shoving him away from it, the grip on Shaun's arm so strong it was painful. And he did not take him to Sylvia, just through the house to a room where Donna could not hear them, and closed the door.

"Where did you get those words from?" Wilfred asked as he turned to him.

Shaun was so shocked because of the contrast between the sudden rough attitude and the man's usually calm and sweet behavior that he answered without complaining of the rather harsh treatment. "Donna, she dreams a lot, and when she does, she talks. About Daleks, and a TARDIS, and something called a Sontaran. And she is always calling for a doctor, and…"

He was going to continue rambling about giant wasps and flying fat, but the look of pure pain in the old man's face at his last sentence stopped him.

Wilf took a deep breath. "You must never, never, mention any of those things to her, understood?" It was almost a warning, and the seriousness in his voice was something Shaun had never heard him use before.

"But why not? The loss of her memories has broken her, and I know she hides it well, but she is downright miserable. And I thought, if I help her remember then she will be happier, I just want to take that look away from her eyes."

And he realized, always had, even when he did not know her yet since that day when he had just met her.

"I want her to remember too." the sadness in the voice of his fiancée's grandfather was palpable "But she can't, she really can't." Wilf looked him directly in the eye "You don't know how much better she was with those memories. But if she gets them back, she will die."

And Shaun understood two things at once. One, that he was not going to get more explained to him that what had already been said. And also, that Wilfred was telling him the truth.

And that it hurt the old man to his core, knowing that his granddaughter was feeling sad without knowing why and that he could not do anything about it. As much, Shaun realized, as it hurt himself. And a current of mutual understanding passed them without the need of another word. For a moment he been about to demand to be told more about what hurt so deeply the person he was going to marry, but in face of the open sincerity in the other man's face, he could not. And the brief flare of anger at being denied vital information abated as fast as it had come.

Later, when Sylvia and Wilf had already left, and they were already in bed, as Shaun was watching Donna sleep he knew he really loved her. But while he watched her raise her arm, without waking, and close her hand, tight, holding only thin air in her fist, he wondered if she had ever been his. And then suddenly she said that word, the word she said every single night, Doctor. Even in the semidarkness he could see the completely real smile, happy and not forced, steal over her face. He could not help the feeling that the person holding her hand in her dream held her heart too, even if she did not know it, or maybe, remember it. And his own broke a little more in response. It hurt even more because it was the hand another was holding now in her dream the one that had his engagement ring around it's finger.

The patter of raindrops could be heard against the window of their bedroom, and it slowly lulled him to sleep.