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Excessive by Lurky McLurklurk [Reviews - 0]  Author's Notes: Written for jelly_belly99 in the dw_femslash ficathon. Penny is the S4 companion who never was from The Writer's Tale. | |
Donna clung onto the console for dear life as the TARDIS shuddered through its materialisation.
"Was that louder than usual?" she asked, once the cacophanous elephantine roar had died down.
"What?" said the Doctor, casually flicking a switch as though that hadn't been the rockiest landing he'd done all year. "Loud? Nah. Come on, let's see what's out there."
What was out there was some sort of sumptuous posh people's place, maybe the antechamber of a dining room or the corner of a ballroom. The walls were a deep red, ornate gilt frames holding obscure pictures that hinted to Donna they were probably in the future.
"Go on, then," she said, "do that bit where you show off and tell me where we are. I've figured out it's the future. Or advanced aliens or something. But probably human future."
The Doctor's face fell. "We're on a spaceship, Donna. Excessive-class superliner from the 51st century. You can tell by the plumbing," he said, nodding at the pipes on the wall.
While he talked, Donna wandered round to the side of the TARDIS. What she saw there was rather astonishing. "Doctor," she said.
It was a ballroom, and around the dance floor were five other police boxes, making a perfect hexagon with the TARDIS she and the Doctor had arrived in, all of them with their doors facing outwards. "Doctor," she said, a little more loudly.
People were starting to emerge from behind the other TARDISes, people who looked a lot like the Doctor, accompanied by a variety of women. "Doctor!"
"Yes, what is it?" he said, finally coming to stand next to her.
"Told you it was louder than usual, didn't I?"
"Six TARDISes will do that, yeah," the Doctor said. And then, bless him, he actually gulped.
The others -- six pairs in all, though the last pair to appear didn't have a Doctor but a gruff-looking short-haired guy in a leather jacket instead -- all seemed to be having similar conversations. Then, there was one of those random silences as everyone in the room fell quiet at once. Donna noticed Martha standing a couple of TARDISes away, and gave her a little wave.
The Doctors took the opportunity to make introductions.
"Hello! I'm the Doctor," they all began simultaneously (even Leather Jacket seemed to think he was the Doctor), "and this is my friend--"
Which was where it got a bit confusing.
Donna's Doctor said "Donna".
Martha's Doctor said "Martha".
Leather Jacket said "Tosh", referring to the short Asian woman at his side.
The other three were all blondes; Donna tried not to read anything into that.
The Doctor immediately to Donna's left said "Lynda". Lynda was shortish with her hair in bunches, and added "with a y" at the end of his sentence.
The Doctor standing next to hers on the right said "Penny". Penny's hair was tied in a loose ponytail; she was wearing a beige mac and carrying a notebook and pencil.
A Doctor accompanied by a peroxide blonde said "Rose", and Donna realised that this must be the Rose. She gave the Doctor a quick glance to check he was OK, but he seemed too overwhelmed by the whole thing to be at risk of going off the deep end.
And then they all started talking at once again.
"What's going on, Doctor?" Lynda asked.
"Parallel timelines," three of them replied.
Rose turned to the Doctor standing next to her. "Is that right? You told me the walls between realities were closed, that that's why we can never go back for Mickey."
"Well," her Doctor started to reply, but Donna's Doctor burst in, shouting "Temporal fluke! A time tangle!"
"That makes rather too much sense for my liking," said Leather Jacket, who still seemed to be the impression that he was the Doctor. "How come you lot have all regenerated anyway? I'm suddenly feeling like I need to start taking better care of myself."
"Hey! This is a good body," Martha's Doctor said.
"What's a 'temporal fluke'?" Donna asked, rolling her eyes.
Lynda's Doctor put on his patronising voice, not having learned that it didn't work on Donna, and began, "Most people assume that time is a strict progression of cause and effect--"
"But really it's a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff," Martha interrupted. "We know."
"Actually, I was going to say that it's more like your life is a string, and if you ball up the string all the days of your life can touch all the other days. But that timey-wimey thing's good, I might use that. Anyway, a temporal fluke is when the string gets frayed, and all the different strands of it touch each other at once."
"That's a rubbish explanation," Leather Jacket said. "There's something wrong with spacetime here on this spaceship. Instead of just one of us, all the different possible us-es who could have got here did. Simultaneously." He looked at Rose. "So it's not the same as parallel universes, not quite. Do I know you from somewhere?"
Rose was about to speak, when he said, "Oh yeah, that's right, you're the girl from Henrik's who reported me to the authorities as a terrorist!"
"Maybe you should have been a bit nicer to me, then," Rose said, sticking her tongue out slightly. "I mean, you all know me, right?" she said, appealing to the other Doctors. They nodded. "Actually ... why aren't we travelling together any more?" She turned to her Doctor, looking worried.
While they were arguing, Martha made her way over to Donna and asked, "Why did you wave at me earlier? Do we know each other? 'Cos ... I think I would remember."
"I do know you, just not this you," Donna said. She frowned in confusion. "I think."
The Doctor leaned down and whispered in her ear. "Donna ... I have a feeling this Martha might be from a universe where she's attracted to girls."
Donna whispered back into his ear, and his eyebrows shot up. "Well, I can tell she's from 1913, for all that she doesn't dress like it. Bet you didn't know that. Time Lord, see," he said, tapping his forehead smugly.
"Anyway, Penny," her Doctor was saying, "we'd better be going. If temporal flukes like this are opening up, who knows what else might be happening elsewhere in the universe. My duties as Lord High President of the High Council of Time Lords demand that we return--"
"You're still President?" Lynda's Doctor said with amusement, as though it was less like running the universe than being stuck with the next round.
"Wait," the Doctor -- Donna's original one -- said, "there's still a High Council? There are still Time Lords?"
"Aren't there in your timeline?" Rose's Doctor asked.
"I may have ... destroyed Gallifrey."
"Oh, I think we've all done that," Martha's Doctor said, "back when we were--" and he mimed in the air in front of him, waving his hands to denote curly hair on the head of someone quite a bit shorter than him.
"Oh, yeah," most of them said.
But Lord-High-President Doctor said, "Hey, I didn't. Though I did end up stuck in a universe where time was circular for a while." He shrugged his shoulders. "Rassilon, you know."
"But I'm the only one who's destroyed it twice?" Donna's Doctor said.
The silence was deafening.
"Whoops," he said.
Donna felt a hand on her shoulder, saw another one on Martha's. She turned to see that Rose had already gathered the others -- Lynda, Tosh and Penny, that was right, wasn't it? "They're going to be a while," she said, "shall we leave them to it?"
They were about to leave when a huge explosion tore through the far end of the drawing room. Bits of wall hit the sides of the nearest TARDISes harmlessly and as the light faded, three figures became visible in the wreckage. The one in front, a woman with longish black hair carrying a chunky looking energy weapon, shouted, "I'm Gwen Cooper of the Torchwood shuttle Owen Harper. Put your hands up right now!" Then, more quietly, pressing her earpiece, "Ianto, are you getting the visual feed?"
Donna put her hands up instinctively, and so did all the other girls. Obviously no matter what timeline you came from, travelling with the Doctor prepared you for this sort of thing. As they waited to see what would happen next, Donna peered at the woman standing behind Cooper. She seemed very, very similar to the Tosh girl who'd been with the Leather Jacket Doctor.
Before she had time to ponder on this further, the man behind Cooper said, "Stand down, Gwen. It's OK." Then, into his commset, "Ianto, it's Jack. There's nothing to worry about. Nothing at all." He stepped forward and said, "Doctor? Doctors?"
"Oh, bloody hell," Rose said. "Obsessed, that man. Completely obsessed."
* * *
Gwen and the woman with her, who did turn out to be another Tosh, joined them as they explored the spaceship, leaving the Doctors and Jack to argue, or whatever else.
The ship certainly lived up to the "excessive" tag. The place where they'd landed, which Donna had taken as being probably the major ballroom on the ship, turned out to be an intimate little space for small parties; on leaving it, they found themselves on a balcony overlooking a cocktail lounge that you could easily have parked a moon rocket in. The plushly carpeted staircase leading down into it was fifty metres long if it was an inch. "Shall we?" Rose said.
They started walking down it eight abreast. About a dozen steps down, Gwen linked arms with her Tosh and they started doing can-can kicks. The idea quickly caught on and by the time they reached the bottom all eight of them were arm-in-arm, singing a version of the tune that made up in enthusiasm what it might have lacked in tunefulness.
They broke apart again, laughing, but it quickly died down as the sheer immensity of their environment impressed itself upon them. "This place is amazing," Penny said. She'd whipped out her notebook again and was scribbling away furiously.
"Roomier than the shuttle, that's for sure," Gwen said. "Don't you think, Tosh?"
"Much," Tosh said. Donna noticed that Tosh seemed a little distracted, staring at the other version of her, the one who travelled with the Leather Jacket Doctor. Only natural, she supposed. It wasn't every day you met yourself, it must be a bit freaky.
Donna wandered over to Penny. "What do you keep writing for, anyway? Are you going to patent the designs in your home time or something and make a killing next time you come to the future?"
"What? No, that would be terrible! I'm a journalist. I take notes, it's what I do."
"And the Doctor lets you?"
"He doesn't have much choice, really," Penny said, and they both laughed. "It's what saved him from being turned into a blob of fat, after all."
"Adipose!" Donna said. "That was when I met him. Well, met him again. First time was at my wedding. Well, my not-wedding ..."
"Oh, you're Donna. Yeah, he talks about you sometimes."
"Yeah?" Donna said, slightly warily.
"Don't worry, only nice things. Mostly. So you've dealt with the Adipose as well, then, in your timeline?"
Donna looked at the others, scattered around the room. "We probably all have, one way or another."
She turned back around to see that Martha had sidled up to her. "So," she said with a big smile, "we sort of know each other."
"Yeah," Donna said.
"I'd sort of like to get to know you better," Martha said, smiling even wider.
"Wow. You're a lot more ... direct than the other Martha," Donna told her.
"She's a bit shy?"
"Took me ages to get her into bed," Donna said, and laughed at Martha's suddenly shocked expression. "I said she was indirect, not me!"
"So?" Martha raised an eyebrow.
"So ..." Donna said.
Before things could go any further, they were interrupted by a shout of "Girls!" from Rose. She was on the far side of the lounge, up against a viewing window. It took them a good few minutes to all gather around her.
When they did, though, they understood exactly what had made her shout out like that.
Space outside wasn't your normal empty blackness with pinpricks of light affair. It wasn't even one of those fancy colourful gas cloud nebula things. The whole region was bathed in a sort of tenuous blue glow that was both eerie and beautiful.
And studding the azure backdrop, in every direction they could see, were an uncountable number of other spaceships, of all sorts of sizes and designs, some that looked just like you expected a spaceship to look, others that were so alien it was only the context of all the others that allowed you to make any sense of them at all. And all of them were motionless.
"It's beautiful," Lynda said.
"It's like a graveyard," Martha said, a chill in her voice. Donna found herself reaching for her hand and squeezing it.
"They're all trapped, aren't they?" Penny said. "Each and every one of them."
"I think this blue stuff might be what caused the time tangle thing," Tosh -- Donna wasn't entirely sure which Tosh -- said. "Though how they're not all drifting away from each other I don't know."
"There must be some sort of local standard of rest relative to the medium," the other Tosh said; the first time they'd communicated with each other. She smiled at her counterpart. "But it is all rather dubious, from a relativistic point of view."
"What happened to everyone?" Rose asked. They all looked at her. "I mean, I haven't seen any bodies, or anything. Have you?"
It was in a rather more sober mood that they continued their exploration of the decks. The cabins seemed to be the size of entire hotel floors. They looked lived in, contained luggage and toiletries and things -- Donna couldn't resist holding up a few earrings and looking at them in the mirror, but the possibility that they might belong to the victim of some terrible accident made her quickly put them back down -- but there were no signs of people, living or dead.
Eventually, through a very well-concealed door in a small games room that was, oh, only the size of Donna's mum's house, they found their way into the crew areas.
The ship's hidden areas had none of the sumptuous fixtures and fittings of the passenger areas, but if anything the bright spartan whiteness made their size even more overwhelming than the previous parts had been. Set in the walls were large screens, flashing red, messages scrolling past on them. Lynda headed over to one of them and started interfacing with it.
"You're good at that," one of the Toshes said. "How did you decode the operating system so quickly?"
Lynda looked nonplussed. "This stuff is fifteen millennia old, it's child's play to my internal firmware."
"Ohh," said Tosh, looking impressed, and a little intrigued.
The other Tosh came up to Donna. "I saw you with Martha. You like girls, don't you?"
"Seems to be a day for directness," Donna said, examining her fingernails to hide her self-consciousness. Then she turned to look her in the eye. "Why, are you ...?"
Tosh blinked. "No, I was just ... I mean, I do, and you ... I mean, definitely ... but ..." She sighed. "I'm not explaining myself very well. I've always thought that one of the nice things about being with girls is that they know what girls like, kind of ... by default."
"That's always seemed like a bit of a cliché to me," Donna said. Tosh looked crestfallen. "But, well, you know, clichés only become clichés because they're true."
"The thing is," Tosh said, encouraged again, "I've often thought that if you got to meet yourself, then they really would know, wouldn't they?"
Donna considered this for a moment, then said, "Like when you're wanking."
"I ... suppose," Tosh said, clearly slightly put off. "The thing is, she seems to be close enough to me, timelines-wise, that I'm fairly sure she thinks the same thing ..." And as if to prove the point, the other Tosh glanced up at them and smiled across to the Tosh Donna was talking to.
"Go for it!" Donna urged.
"You think?"
"I think. Once in a lifetime -- two lifetimes! -- opportunity to find out what your fantasy's really like." She got behind Tosh and gave her a hearty shove in the appropriate direction, but Tosh planted her feet firmly in one place, refused to be budged.
"You don't think it's ... a bit pervy?" she asked. "You're the one who compared it to masturbation."
"And is there anything wrong with masturbation?" Donna asked, slightly confrontationally. She realised that the others had turned to look at them, and decided to ignore it. "No, didn't think so. So come on!"
The other Tosh forestalled her attempts at matchmaking, though, by calling all of them together. "We've worked out where the crew went," she said. "Thanks to Lynda." Lynda smiled at them shyly. "There's a long range teleporter built in, they all zapped home as soon as they hit whatever this Space Sargasso Sea is."
"But if they've got teleporters why do they need spaceships?" Penny asked.
"I don't know about your weird alternate timeline," Gwen said, "but on my world the existence of aeroplanes hasn't put the luxury airship cruise companies out of business."
"Nooo, that would have been the Hindenburg," Penny said.
"That all makes sense, actually," Rose said, nodding at Lynda and Tosh. "One time, the Doctor and I were on this other 51st century spaceship, though it was a lot more dingy than this one, I can tell you. But it had these time windows to, like, olden days France."
Tosh -- the Tosh Donna had just been talking to -- gasped. "Of course! The time tangle! If these long range teleporters are really some sort of vortex manipulator with a zero time-differential, adjusted for the relevant affine connection to the destination--"
"--then the use of them on such a large scale could have weakened the vortex at this point!" the other Tosh joined in with her and they completed the sentence together. They smiled at one another, then turned in opposite directions to face half of the others each to explain. "It wasn't that blue stuff, that's something entirely separate. It's how they escaped from it that caused the problem."
"I'm not seeing all of us meeting as much of a problem," Lynda said. "I'm rather enjoying it."
"I wonder how the Doctors are getting on," Donna said. "Actually, no, it doesn't bear thinking about, does it?"
"So no one died," Martha said. "That's a relief."
"Let's keep going," Rose said.
Through the crew quarters and a huge kitchen, they found themselves once more in a passenger area after stepping through another ultra-discreet door. There were no exterior windows, and Donna had a sense that they were deep in the bowels of the ship now.
The room they found themselves in was again large, but not as intimidatingly gargantuan as some of the other places they had explored. It was dimly lit, but in a warm, soft way rather than a dismal one. Pieces of futuristic furniture of various shapes and sizes was dotted around the room, the only thing they all had in common the fact that they were well-padded and comfortable. Donna sat down on an L-shaped one instinctively -- they'd been walking for bloody miles by now, she realised. A few of the others followed suit, though Lynda, Rose and Martha all kept wandering around the room. Donna smiled slightly as she saw the two Toshes sit down next to each other on a long couch.
"What do you think this place is?" Lynda asked after those who hadn't taken the weight off their feet had explored it fairly thoroughly. She was fiddling with some straps she'd found on the wall by the door.
"It's a sex room," Rose said.
All eyes turned to her.
"Oh, come on, how many of us have met Jack?" She raised her hand, and others shot up too. Donna quickly realised that only she and Penny hadn't. "Right, so we know what this time period's like. Open-minded, decadent and ... well, excessive." Seemingly on a hunch, Rose pulled on the furniture closest to her, revealing that it was hollow on the inside and filled with what she had to conclude were sex toys. She pulled out some sort of implement that looked like it was probably for spanking.
"So?" Gwen said.
"So let's use it!" Rose said.
The expressions of the women around the room varied in the degree of shock that they showed, and Donna wasn't entirely sure where she herself came on that spectrum. "She's right, you know," Penny said, lips twitching into a mini-smile. "You can cut the sexual tension in here with a knife." She gestured at Donna and Martha. "I mean, look at those two. And as for--" Donna turned round to follow the direction of her pointing hand, and saw that Tosh and Tosh were already kissing, hands running up and down one another's sides in perfect mirror images "--well."
Donna was still overcoming her considerable surprise that she hadn't noticed that the others were equally into this sort of thing when Martha pounced on her, pushing her down onto what she could now only think of as a mattress. She was wearing a big grin and had a wicked glint in her eye. "You do want this, don't you?" Donna nodded gladly, and Martha leaned down to kiss her, at the same time sliding her hands down Donna's arms to stroke her torso, starting by holding her sides, just brushing against her breasts but quickly progressing to exploring beneath her top, tweaking her nipples between thumb and forefinger. Donna moaned into Martha's mouth.
Donna rolled over, entangling herself with Martha's legs where they had previously been straddling each other, kissing her passionately all the while. Quickly, they began to undress each other, their clothes not the only ones flying across the room.
Martha's skin felt subtly different to the Martha Donna knew, slightly rougher, her fingers more calloused as they swept down her belly, fluttered across her thighs and found her wetness. She surrendered to Martha's explorations for a moment, before deciding that she ought to reciprocate. She snuck her own hand up between Martha's legs, stroking the sensitive spots on Martha's inner thighs before running her index finger along Martha's slit, eliciting a moan.
They were interrupted by a loud smacking noise, and looked up to see that Rose was using the paddle she'd found on Gwen, who was bent over naked, hands grabbing her ankles and a big grin plastered on her face. "It tingles," she said excitedly.
"Really?" Rose seemed surprised.
Lynda, who was standing next to Rose, admiring Gwen's arse, ran her fingers across the surface of the paddle. "Built-in nanocapacitors. See?" She took Rose's hand and pressed it gently onto them.
"Ooh," Rose said, then swung it back again to use on Gwen.
As they settled into a regular rhythm, Gwen gasping "More" while Lynda stroked herself watching them, Donna turned her attention to the other side of the room. The two Toshes were licking each other vigorously, forming a perfect sixty nine on the floor despite the ready availability of bed-like areas. Penny had found a tetrahedral device that would have been perplexing to Donna had the way she was using it not indicated quite clearly that it was a vibrator.
"Is this turning you on?" Martha whispered in her ear. "Watching them?"
"You're the one with your hand in my pussy, you tell me," Donna said. As she spoke the words, Martha pumped her fingers almost all the way out and back in again.
"I'd say ... yes," Martha said with a grin.
Down on the floor, Tosh and Tosh had a very loud simultaneous orgasm, both of their heads tilting backwards at exactly the same moment. Over on the other side of the room, Gwen was now on hands and knees, with her head buried between Rose's legs; Lynda had taken over spanking her.
"I want to lick you," Martha said, stroking Donna's G-spot with her fingers.
"Oh, fuck," Donna said. "Don't just talk about it, do it."
As Martha slid her way down to kneel on the floor in front of her, the two Toshes came over, hand in hand. "Thank you for encouraging me," one of them -- presumably the one she'd been talking to earlier -- said. Donna propped herself up so that she was sat upright.
"We're very grateful," the other Tosh said.
"Thank you for the show," Martha said.
Donna hooked her legs around her back to pull her towards her pussy and shut her up. "Martha! Don't be so forward."
"Don't worry, we have a theory about that," the first Tosh said.
The second Tosh elaborated. "We think the time tangle is retroactive, that the people who popped up here are the ones who'd be up for this sort of ..."
"The word you're looking for is 'orgy'," Donna said.
Penny had wandered over and was standing behind the Toshes, having managed to overcome the temptation of her device. "That's a good word," she said, resting one hand on each Tosh's arse. "You're so sexy," she told them. "Both of you. I was watching you while I used that vibrator."
Donna was distracted by Martha beginning to lick her, so she didn't notice which Tosh it was that went to fetch the device, but she definitely noticed the other one starting to lick and nibble at Penny's breasts. She held onto Martha's head, holding her to the pussy lips that she was licking so expertly.
As Martha continued, she closed her eyes involuntarily, so she was surprised by Rose's voice close by. She opened her eyes again to see Gwen standing in front of them, Rose and Lynda behind and slightly to the side. Gwen had her hands tucked behind her back and was looking down at the ground.
"Tell them," Rose said.
"I'm a naughty slut and you may all use me however you like," Gwen said, her face flushing.
"Good girl," Rose said, her hand going involuntarily to her clit as her slave abased herself.
Penny and the two Toshes were tangled together, lying on the longer part of the L-shaped bed that she was sat on the edge of, the vibrator buzzing between them, being constantly passed around from one to the other. Now one of the Toshes extracted herself and walked up to Gwen. "On your knees," she said. Gwen complied instantly. "I've wanted to do this for such a long time," she said, confirming Donna's suspicion that this was the Tosh who worked with Gwen. And then she said, "Lick my feet." Gwen set to work happily.
"Rose," Lynda said, twirling the paddle she was still holding slightly nervously in her hands.
"Yes, Lynda, love?"
"Those straps on the wall ..." Lynda said, and Martha's tongue at Donna's entrance suddenly became much more urgent; clearly this talk was turning her on as well.
"Oh, you want to be tied up for a spanking now, do you?" Rose grinned.
"Not quite," Lynda said. "I want to do that to you." She giggled nervously.
Rose's eyes went wide, then she said, "OK!"
"Martha," Donna said, "stop." Martha raised her head, surprised. "I want to wait," she explained. "And I want to do something for you. Come back up here."
Martha climbed back onto the bed, between Donna and Penny. Donna began stroking her thighs, kissing and licking her breasts. As she slid her hands up to cup Martha's arse, she ran into another set of fingers, and realised they were Penny's. Then Tosh leaned across, giving Donna a deep kiss on the lips.
As time went on, the others joined them; when Rose appeared standing just behind Donna's thrown back head, pussy glistening with wetness after becoming so aroused by Lynda's spanking, Donna invited her to kneel over her face and let her lick her. Meanwhile, Lynda insinuated herself into the tangle of limbs somewhere off to her right. Tosh brought Gwen up onto the bed, holding her wrists above her head with one hand and sliding the other into her pussy, while the other Tosh returned to licking her counterpart's breasts.
Gradually, all eight became intertwined, a morass of fingers, lips, tongues exploring one another's bodies, the boundaries between them blending away, Donna losing her awareness of who was doing what and whom she was doing what to. The fingers inside her, the lips on her nipples and the pussy juices on her tongue drove her closer and closer, until finally, amazingly, she felt the futuristic vibrator buzzing at her cunt, driving her over the edge into a climax like none she had ever experienced before.
* * *
"Donna."
Someone was talking.
"Donna."
It was quite rude, really, she was clearly asleep. You didn't talk to asleep people, you talked to awake people.
"Donna!"
She startled into full wakefulness and found herself staring into the Doctor's face. Which was a bit of a comedown, given how she'd fallen asleep and what she'd dreamed about.
"Good, you're awake," he said. Realising she was still naked, she covered herself with her arms as best she could. "We have to leave. Now."
"Whuh?" she managed.
"The ... we have to leave, now."
"What have you done?" she asked with a groan, rolling over onto her back, hands flopping uselessly to her sides. He didn't seem to be bothered in any direction by the other seven naked women around, so she decided she didn't care what he did or didn't see.
"The good news is, we're the real ones."
"OK," Donna said.
"But ... well, we won't be if we don't get out of here. The other Doctors ..."
"The other Doctors what?" Donna demanded.
"They've decided that I've ... well, that the universe would be better off if one of them was the Doctor. They're talking about using the ship's engines and some of Jack's more esoteric technology to alter reality so that one of them comes out of the other end of the time tangle. They're squabbling at the moment over which of them it should be, but they'll make their minds up eventually. So we have to leave. Now."
"So you've been saying," Donna said. "I'm not sure I want to."
"What?"
"In case you hadn't noticed, I've been enjoying myself here."
"But ..." the Doctor started.
"But what?"
"Reality! The structure of the universe!" He waved his hands around madly. "All at risk! Probably."
"So none of them are real?" Donna said, looking at the sleeping forms around her. "They seemed fairly real to me."
"They're real here, within the time tangle," the Doctor said. "But the timelines they came from are just ... possibilities that never happened."
"What will happen to them when we leave?"
"They'll still be here," the Doctor said. "But once we've reified ourselves, they'll be trapped; if they dematerialise their TARDISes they'll simply cease to exist."
"There are worse fates," Donna said. "I'm not sure who's getting the worse end of the deal."
The Doctor looked horrified, but she didn't care what he thought right now.
She picked up her clothes, leaning over to kiss Martha on the forehead in the process.
She sighed. "Come on, then, let's go. Back to reality."
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