Meant to Be (TARDIS Family Adventures: Part 1)

Chapter 1: Stolen Earth, plus One (part 1)

We begin in the moments just before The Stolen Earth. The Doctor and Donna investigate the missing planet Earth, but the Doctor finds, to his shock, another missing planet that means more to him than Donna at first realizes. When they find the planets, they meet a woman the Doctor has never talked about to a single soul, and together the three of them formulate the plan of what they will do when they have the fateful meeting with Rose.

-*-*-

The Doctor was looking very pale. After Donna had finished explaining to him about the blonde girl, the one who only said, "Bad Wolf." Then the scare of seeing the words screaming at him everywhere, and the TARDIS reacting so negatively. He was very, very worried. He set the TARDIS down on Earth and pulled Donna towards the door. They open the door and he stepped out, Donna following him.

"It's fine. Everything's fine. Nothing's wrong, all fine." He turned around, trying to spot any trouble or distress. He spotted a milkman stepping off his truck and yelled out, "Excuse me! What day is it?"

"Saturday," the milk man replied.

"Saturday. Good. Good, I like Saturdays." The Doctor was flustered and clearly confused.

"So, I just met Rose Tyler?" Donna spoke up.

"Yeah."

"But she's locked away in a parallel world." Now it was Donna's turn for confusion.

"Exactly. If she can cross from her parallel world to your parallel world, then that means the walls of the universe are breaking down, which puts everything in danger. Everything. But how?" He ran back into the TARDIS, Donna following closely behind. He started flipping switches and putting in coordinates for another stop to check on things.

"The thing is, Doctor, no matter what's happening, and I'm sure it's bad, I get that but, Rose is coming back. Isn't that good?" Donna peered around at the center pillar at him.

Oh Donna, his dear, sweet, best friend Donna. She knew how much the Doctor missed Rose when they first met. But the Doctor had done a lot of thinking since then. His adventures with Martha and Donna had reminded him of the kind of companions he needed. He had time to examine the time he had with Rose, to examine his motives and feelings in their relationship. And now—now it appeared she was trying to get back to him, but for what purpose? "Yeah. (long pause) Yeah, it should be. But at what cost, Donna? Tearing apart the universe? Donna, you know better than anyone else that I cared about Rose, but—this is bad, very bad. *sigh* Donna, from what you described, Rose tore apart the TARDIS. You know the TARDIS is sentient, I know you have a close relationship with her, stronger than any companion has ever had, really. You come the closest to being able to talk to and understand her of any human, ever. Including Rose. She never understood the TARDIS, not really. And now, sadly, I see that she never really understood what I was trying to teach her. The damage she's done trying to get back here, even I can't begin to calculate what the ramifications might be—"

He was interrupted by what felt like something crashing into the TARDIS as it shook violently.

"What the hell was that?" Donna looked around to see if there was damage.

"Don't know. It came from outside." He ran towards the door—and found them to be in space—just a few space rocks floating nearby.

"But we're in space. How did that happen? What did you do?" Donna questioned him harshly. Before she could finish talking he was running back to the scanner and checking readings.

"We haven't moved. We're fixed—It can't have. No!" He ran back beside Donna at the doorway. "The TARDIS is still in the same place, but the Earth has gone! The entire planet. It's gone—" He closed the door, running back to the console to begin checking scan readings further.