A/N: First time writing Donna or rather about Donna but I heard this quote and immediately thought of her. Nothing fancy, just a short little character study. Let me preface this by saying that the TARDIS sound is produced by running a key over piano wires. You can produce the same sound by scraping the strings on your guitar.

"Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders." - Friedrich Nietzsche.

Blessed Are The Forgetful

She and Shaun had parted amicably.

That was how Shaun did everything. Amicably. He was so bloody agreeable about everything. Even the money. She knew his friends and she knew no matter how polite they'd been to her at parties and after work get togethers they were still advising that he take her for every penny.

He didn't though. When they'd hit the jackpot they'd both agreed to be reasonable and conservative, but given how much money they'd won that seemed silly. Shaun had so many dreams and schemes and plans and she liked to see him happy. He was always getting so excited about things. She had tried. And for awhile she was thinks she was. But not like him.

She hated that. No, that's not right. She didn't. Hating that would mean hating him and she didn't hate him. She couldn't hate him. He was sweet.

Sweet. Why on earth did she think she deserved sweet or wanted sweet for that matter?

After the wedding, after the money, once the daily struggle had been lifted from her shoulders she had nothing but her thoughts. She and the inner workings of her mind became intimate friends. Her brain chattering, demanding, nagging, complaining non stop and there wasn't typing or faxing or coffee making or yammering bosses and coworkers to buffer and distract her anymore. There was nothing. And it was hell.

In her old life she was always cocking things up one way or another. That's what her mum said. That's what she believed. The money had helped a bit with that. Alright it had helped a lot. Nothing to cock up anymore. Just shopping, buying, sitting, waiting. Waiting for what? She didn't know. Nothing much ever happened. Nothing at all.

The divorce came through. She'd tried to take lessons. Something to fill the days. Piano. Then guitar. Bloody guitar. She'd dragged the acoustic behemoth out of the trunk, sans case and the strings made this scraping sound, unearthly, screechy and familiar. She'd frozen, right there in the middle of the road and been hit with this crushing sadness. A sadness deeper than any she'd ever felt. It didn't make any sense. She'd lifted the guitar above her head and smashed it to bits on a bus bench got in her car and drove away.

She thought she was going mad. She went to psychiatrist who prescribed pills and said words like post divorce depression. He stopped just short of female hysteria. He gave her a brochure about a ladies group with a meetup scheduled at a local church. She addressed him only by his last name. Never could call him doctor.

She'd felt sort of barmy for awhile. She'd burst into tears one day when he'd worn this silly brown pinstripe suit. That was oddly the last straw for the both of them. He'd bought it on the cheap from a thrift store. Wanted it for a Halloween party, he said. Perfect for going as an old fashioned gangster. She'd not wanted him to get it but he had anyways. She'd hated that suit on him. It was too tight and too short. He looked stupid in it, just bloody stupid and when he'd come out of the bedroom she'd taken one look and started to cry. She never could explain why. She sent him off to the party alone on the condition that once it was over he chuck that suit in the bin so she never had to see it again. She took two aspirin and went to bed. They filed a week later.

She'd bought a star. You know those ads on telly that say you can buy a star from someone and have it named after them. She'd bought one for herself and one for her granddad in his memory. The certificate was hanging on the wall of her new house in London next to a picture of the two of them together.

Something about losing him had felt like it was the last. The last of what she wasn't quite sure but it was as if some string, some connection that had tethered the two of them to one another and together to something else had snapped. Whatever had broken, like a piano wire wound too tight had broken inside her as well.

The new house was nice. Large but nice. The envy of all her friends. Friend who whispered behind her back and never asked her out for drinks or parties anymore. Not that she would have gone.

There was so much about the past few years she wanted not to remember.

She'd insisted that her bedroom have a massive skylight, specially built and she positioned her bed right below it. She like to lay there and stare up at the sky and the dark and the stars. She pretended she could see the star she'd named after herself and granddad.

The memories of all the ways she'd gone wrong, all the paths she'd taken, all the turns that had been missteps that lead to dead ends came crowding in. The memories were the worst of it.

On clear nights she likes to lay on her bed and switch the lights off and just look up.

Now days Donna Noble spends her evenings staring up at the sky wishing for something she can't name and imagining how nice it might be to forget.