Title: Afraid of Forgetting
Rating: PGish? Angsty.
Summary: The mystery room didn’t appear to have any windows, and it was too dark to really make out any features of it, but it still seemed oddly familiar. Donna couldn’t remember ever having been here before, but she felt a disorienting sense of déjà vu nonetheless.
Word count: 2,010
Notes: Sorta kinda based off some set reports from the Christmas special, but with no intention to be accurate or predictory. Part one of a three-part series.


When Donna was jarred out of her sleep, she was sure it must have been because of the cold. She was freezing and her limbs ached. Pulling her knees into her chest and wrapping the thin, moth-eaten blanket tighter around her shoulders, she suddenly realized that she was dressed only in her undergarments. This was bizarre, not only because Donna owned at least ten pairs of pyjamas and hated wearing anything less to bed, but also because she couldn’t recall going to bed in the first place.

Braving the cold, she stuck her head out from under the bedspread and peered around the room. Though she could hardly see through the darkness, she realized instantly that she wasn’t at home. She sat up, pulling the blanket up to her chin and chewing her bottom lip worriedly. As she gazed around the room a second time, she struggled to remember how she had come to be there, or at the very least, if she had been drinking recently. Try as she might, though, she couldn’t recall anything except the walk home from the tube station. When had that been?

The mystery room didn’t appear to have any windows, and it was too dark to really make out any features of it, but it still seemed oddly familiar. Donna couldn’t remember ever having been here before, but she felt a disorienting sense of déjà vu nonetheless. On the opposite side of the room, a door stood slightly ajar, and a strange orange glow seeped in from somewhere beyond. When Donna listened closely, she could hear a steady mechanical hum.

She pulled her blanket tighter around her, feeling more than a little bit frightened. Memory loss was hardly something unusual for her as of late, but it rarely landed her up in a strange bedroom with just her knickers on. She took a steadying breath and tried examining the room again, willing her eyes to adjust to the darkness. She made out an old wooden chair sitting next to the bed. Someone had placed her clothes there, folded, and in a neat pile. By the glow of the odd orange light, she thought she could make out some sort of wallpaper pattern, but it looked as if it was peeling away. The trim along the ceiling looked like ornate carved wood, but why were there no windows? The room was bare, apart from the sparse bed she sat on and the knackered chair beside it. Donna was now certain she had been here before, but the feeling didn’t comfort her. In fact, the familiarity of the place left a pit of dread singing in her chest.

The sound of footsteps tromping past the bedroom door made her leap to her feet in panic. There was someone else here! She hurriedly pulled on her clothes and had only just managed to pull on her jumper when a figure appeared at the door. The strange orange light intensified as he pushed the door open, and he appeared as a shadow in the doorway. She could only make out his silhouette against the blinding light. Was he wearing a suit?

“Who are you?” Donna demanded. She had intended the question to be forceful, but her voice trembled treacherously. She tried to hide how much her legs were quaking under her.

The man didn’t answer her, but she thought she saw a grin stretch across his features. He ducked out of the doorframe and disappeared. After a few seconds, the orange glow suddenly appeared to grow and stretch, inching along the floor towards her. Donna unconsciously backed away from the light, hitting the back of her legs on the bed behind her. She half-fell, half-sat on the edge of the mattress, eyes fixed on the lights as the humming grew louder and more intense. She stared in awe as she realized the man was wheeling a large contraption into the room. It was nearly as tall as he was, and it emitted a bright amber hue from somewhere inside it’s inner workings. It whirred and hummed mechanically, while various screens mounted to its front displayed pulsating lines and indecipherable circular shapes. Donna couldn’t even begin to fathom what it might have been for, but she felt the uneasiness in her chest rising. The stranger kept his attention on the machine, twisting dials and pressing buttons as he inspected the screens on front.

“Who are you?” Donna asked again angrily, despite her fear.

“Oh, you know me.” The man didn’t turn away from his machine, but she could hear the smile in his voice. It didn’t make her feel any more at ease.

The orange glow from the contraption had lit up the room. Now that he had mentioned it, she thought she may have recognized the man’s face as he had wheeled the strange device inside. It was a vague recognition, like when she ran into an old mate from school, but couldn’t quite remember who they were. The man turned back towards her, apparently finished fiddling with the device, and she scrutinized his face. Who was he?

Suddenly, something clicked into place and she stared at him incredulously. “Hang on!” she said, “Hang on, I do know you!” She paused for a moment, embarrassed by the ridiculousness of the statement she was about to make. “You... you were...”

“Prime Minister,” The man said the last two words at the same time Donna did, but in a mocking tone. He sighed heavily and sat down next to her on the bed. “I’m getting tired of this game, Donna Noble.”

Donna backed away from him, eyes wide. “How do you know my name?”

The man- what was his name, Saxon?- only rolled his eyes. Before Donna had time to revel in the absurdity of the situation, he’d placed his hands on either side of her face. She was too shocked to react.

Suddenly, like a flashback, she recalled sitting with this man at a long table. They were both eating, but the meal was unpleasant. She had been uncomfortable and scared, not just because she was being held prisoner, but because she hadn’t expected this sort of behaviour from her captor. Had he locked her in a room and fed her gruel, it would have seemed normal- like on telly- but sitting down with her to a formal dinner was somehow terrifying in its cordiality. She remembered this was the first time she thought he might be truly mad.

She remembered that room, now. It was only just below this one, down the large staircase and through the wooden doors at the end of the corridor. And she remembered where here was, as well- an old decrepit mansion, surrounded by dead shrubbery, though she couldn’t say where. She’d been here a long while now, weeks maybe, though it was hard to tell for sure. So why had she not remembered any of this when she’d woken up?

The sudden rush of memories made Donna’s head spin. She swallowed hard and looked into the eyes of the man sitting next to her, his hands still on her head. People had called him Harold Saxon, once, but that was a lie. He called himself The Master. She had mocked him when he’d first told her, and he had hit her in the face. He hadn’t expected her to hit him back. He’d taken her here all those weeks ago, nabbed her in the alleyway as she was walking home from the station. But she still couldn’t remember why.

Oh, Mum and Gramps would be so upset. They would have no idea where she’d gone off to. She hoped they didn’t think she’d run off somewhere. Or lost her mind again. If they thought she’d just gone on another unannounced journey like she’d been known to do after her memory disappeared, they might not even try and look for her. Would anyone notice she was gone? Her friends, or her co-workers? And where was the Doctor, anyway?

Wait, what? The Doctor? There was a feeling like a pinprick in the back of neck, and she remembered. The Doctor, with his hands on either side of her face, stealing her memories away. Her eyes flew open and the Master stood in the Doctor’s place, only now, the memories flowed back in.

She gasped as images flooded her senses. Fire and water, giant insects straight out of a horror film, a planet made of ice, soldiers and monsters, a crowd of people running in fear, metal creatures screaming. Nonsense words suddenly made sense: TARDIS, Sontaran, Dalek, bigger on the inside, allons-y! And the Doctor stood in the middle of it all.

The pinprick at the base of her skull spread up into her head, burning and aching. The images didn’t stop. Tiny creatures made of fat called Adipose, meeting Agatha Christie- Agatha Christie!- in 1926, a colourful bazaar on a distant planet, boats spread across the English channel as far as the eye could see, a terrifying parallel universe where the world burned. She remembered it all. And it hurt.

Donna’s head screamed as the memories were restored. She couldn’t take it anymore. Donna pulled away from the Master’s grasp, and leapt up off the bed, trying to dash towards the door. She only made it a few steps before he grabbed her by the wrist and wrestled her back onto the bed. She thrashed against him, the pain in her head searing, but she couldn’t break free. He was stronger than he looked, skinny bastard. He held her down and pressed his hands to her head once more.

The memories started flowing again, flashing before her eyes at an impossible speed. A dog made out of metal, an exploding world, robots with human brains, mountains swaying in front of an orange sky. It all went by so quickly, it took her a moment to realize these weren’t her memories. “Doctor,” she whispered. The Master glared down at her triumphantly.

It was too much now, and much too fast. Equations and facts filled her head, the history of a million civilizations, co-ordinates, languages, mechanical workings of a million devices. It was brilliant, and it was killing her. Her skin felt as if it was on fire. Her head ached and burned with such ferocity that it felt like every bone in her body might splinter and burst with the pressure. She was vaguely aware of the Master standing and walking back to his machine, but she was in too much pain to run.

Donna squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block out the pain by focusing on the memories in her head. She could see everything; every single world and every single species, everything that was or that could have been or that would one day be. It would all be so terribly beautiful, if it weren’t so incredibly painful.

The Master attached something resembling electrodes to her head, hooking her up to his glowing machine. He’d done this dozens of times now, she remembered, but his plans must have failed every time because he always made her forget again in the end. Of course, he took away all of the memories, both deadly and benign. It was hard to formulate an escape plan when you woke up every day with no idea where you were or how you had come to be there.

The pain was excruciating, like her entire body was on fire and being torn apart at the same time. She tried to embrace the knowledge in her head, to revel in the beauty of it all, and that brilliance she had felt when it had first been awoken in her head, so long ago, but the agony of it all kept tearing her away. As she felt herself losing consciousness, she prayed that she might not wake up again; that she could die with those brilliant images, that astounding knowledge still intact, without all the pain. But she wept, knowing that soon she would forget it all again.