LONDON GIRLS

London Girls: Early Morning

Shakespeare and Toast

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me.

Author's Note: Oh yes! Another update and STILL it won't make sense. It will eventually, though. I had GREAT fun thinking up of all the historical things that could go wrong, or get mixed up. What if...David Tennant had never sat down one day in his childhood to watch Doctor Who? THEN he might not have been an actor OR even if he HAD he might not have wanted to take on the Doctor's role 'coz he wouldn't have been obsessed with it when he was younger...then what? We wouldn't have had a Suit n' Converse Doctor! No David Tennant's Tenth Doctor, now isn't that a scary thought? Awful things happen when you meddle with time...

There was another aching silence in the kitchen. Both the Doctor and Donna looked at Martha in disbelief. Donna squeezed her eyes shut and lolled her head back dejectedly, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, 'Oh bloody hell!' The Doctor on the other hand, nodded, as if in reluctant acceptance.

"That's that, then," he muttered grimly, getting to his feet. "Time is collapsing. Brilliant."

He paced over to the fridge, and then back again, his Converse squeaking on the laminate floor.

Martha looked round at Donna, who seemed thoroughly fed up. From the look on her face, anyone would guess that she'd just been told that Christmas had been cancelled. Seeing as they were involved with the Doctor however, such a prospect unfortunately didn't seem altogether too impossible.

"What's wrong? What did I say?" she asked her, a prickle of fear creeping down her back. It seemed that, whatever was bothering the Doctor and Donna, whatever had caused them to look so…tense, she had something to do with it. But what could she have possibly have done? All she had said was that she didn't know what 'Titanic' was. Was that really such a bad thing? Surely the Doctor couldn't expect her to keep track of all the alien creatures they'd met, or insulted? That would be terribly unfair…

"Nothing, nothing," said Donna vaguely, shaking her head at her in poor reassurance. "It's alright, don't worry…"

"Worry?" barked the Doctor, from the other side of the kitchen, where he was staring moodily out of the window at the morning sky as if it had upset him somehow. "Who's worrying? Earth's timescale has evidently gone completely bananas for no specific reason other than it apparently decided it would be a good laugh to be awkward and make a nuisance of itself. Probably thought it would annoy me…but no, nothing to worry about…nothing at all!" he ranted sarcastically, his voice going all high pitched and indignant.

He stood with his arms crossed and glared at his two companions as if they were personally responsible for whatever it was that had happened.

"Tell me what's going on," ordered Martha, with as much authority as she could muster, in her best UNIT voice. The voice she usually reserved for issuing commands in the middle of complicated strategies, layered with superiority and just a hint of haughtiness.

Donna gaped at her; surprised that such a brash remark had come from a small, weak-looking woman who barely looked awake enough to hold her own head up. The Doctor though gave her a ghost of a smile.

"There's the Martha Jones I know!" he chirped, looking over at her approvingly. " That, Miss. Jones, is a very good question. Though not one I can answer," he said dryly, leaning against the kitchen sink with his hands shoved into his pockets; something he often did when he was deep in thought.

"What did you mean about 'Earth's timescale going bananas'?" she pressed, looking urgently from the Doctor to Donna when neither of them seemed to want to answer.

"Exactly what I said," replied the Doctor unhelpfully, leaning over to turn the tap on and watching the water trickle down the plughole. "It's literally gone all over the place. Most of your lot seem to be under the impression that Shakespeare was alive under the reign of Richard the Lionheart and that the light bulb was invented by Bill Gates and…you now apparently have no idea what happened with the Titanic."

"But…Shakespeare did write during the reign of Richard the Lionheart," argued Martha, puzzled. "Everyone knows he did…it's in all the history books, you just know!"

She looked at Donna to back her up, but Donna simply snorted and held her hands up, declining to comment.

"Martha you met Shakespeare! In the Elizabethan era! " cried the Doctor, striding over to her and grasping her by the shoulders. "He called you his 'Dark Lady'…you told him off for flirting with you!"

Martha stared into the Doctor's dark brown eyes at a complete loss of what to say. This time…really; this time the Doctor had fallen out of his tree. She'd never met Shakespeare. Ever. Did he honestly think she wouldn't remember something as superb as that?

"I've never met him!" she told him, quite indignantly. "Do you think I'd forget meeting Shakespeare?"

Gawping at her like a goldfish, the Doctor let go of her shoulders quickly, as if she had burnt him. His eyes were hard with disappointment, his mouth set into a grim line. The way he was looking at her, it was as if she'd slapped him across the face. Self-consciously, she wrapped her throw more tightly around her and pressed her lips together, shuffling in her chair, waiting to see what he would say next.

"Martha, I think you should go and get dressed," he told her quietly, his eyes boring into hers.

'Go and get dressed?' Who was he? Her Boss? Since when did she get dressed on his orders?

For a long moment, she stared back at him defiantly, determined not to be told what to do in her own house, yet something about the look on the Doctor's face weakened her resolve slightly, and she found herself getting to her feet, scraping her chair behind her.

"Get dressed?" she stormed, shooting him a contemptuous look. "I will not! Not until you tell me exactly what's going on and why you've come back! I'm not stupid, Doctor, though you're doing an excellent job of treating me as if I am! You just said that the timeline's gone mad…and if something's wrong with our timeline I want to know about it!" she fumed, her voice rising. Anger had given her a sudden rush of adrenaline, shaking off her tiredness.

Both the Doctor and Martha glared at each other obstinately with their arms folded. Neither seemed willing to give in to the other's demands.

"Martha," said Donna tentatively, after a long, awkward silence, rising to her feet and pulling lightly on Martha's sleeve. "Where's your bread kept? And your eggs? I could make you your breakfast while you go and get yourself sorted out and then when you come down Martian Man here, can tell you everything, ok? How does that sound?"

Martha and the Doctor turned to look at Donna, an unlikely candidate as ever to attempt to diffuse an argument. She stared right back at them, her hands on her hips, with a fierce expression on her face, like a woman insulted.

"Fine," said Martha shortly, giving in. "Eggs are in the fridge and bread's in the bread bin in the second cupboard along from the window." She pointed distractedly to the far side of the kitchen and swept out of the room, shooting the Doctor a hurtful look as she went, the long train of her throw trailing the floor.

The Doctor and Donna looked at each other in an uneasy silence as they listened to Martha's footsteps to fade away down the hallway and clomp up the stairs.

At the Doctor's raised eyebrows, Donna gave a careless shrug and headed over to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. "I've seen more office arguments than you've seen the bloomin' moon. Believe me…food distractions work wonders. Well, in your case any distraction works, really," she told him nonchalantly, pulling open the cupboard that Martha had indicated and bringing out a loaf of whole meal bread and shoving it into the Doctor's chest after a quick second's search. "Oh I knew she'd be all into that fancy organic whole meal malarkey!" she muttered under her breath, as if Martha had let her down somehow.

"Shift!" she said sternly, swatting the Doctor out of her way, as he was standing leaning against the fridge. He duly obliged. A preoccupied Donna Noble was not someone he wanted to inconvenience…

"No wonder she's so bloody skinny; she's got nothing in her fridge!" exclaimed Donna, her voice muffled as she crouched down to retrieve a small box of eggs from where it had been nestled between a measly lump of cheese and a limp, browning stick of celery.

"I hate other people's kitchens," moaned Donna, straightening up and closing the fridge door. She pulled out all manner of sieves, woks and bowls from the various different cupboards as she attempted to collect what she needed, like a very messy Borrower. "You can never find anything."

"I'm surprised you even know what a kitchen is," muttered the Doctor darkly. "Last week you tried to open that tin with a corkscrew…Donna, can you cook?" he asked doubtfully, looking around for a toaster, holding the loaf of bread gingerly in his hands like a bomb. Even Donna had to admit that the Doctor holding a loaf of bread didn't look quite right.

"I can make scrambled eggs on toast!" she said defensively, sounding mildly offended, wagging a spoon at him.

Sloppily, (and with a tea spoon!) Donna mixed two eggs and too much milk in an overly big mixing bowl and bunged it in the microwave with all the finesse of a clumsy teenager. Somehow, she'd managed to create her own mini war-zone in the corner of Martha's kitchen. Discarded pots and pans and cutlery lay scattered across the bench top, splattered in an eggy mess. If anyone could cause a small disaster simply by attempting to make eggs and toast, Donna Noble could. Oh definitely.

"There's something wrong with Martha, isn't there?" she said abruptly, getting straight to the point as she took the bread from the Doctor's hands and inexpertly slotted two pieces into the toaster.

The Doctor looked up at the ceiling, where they could hear the sound of gushing sound of water as Martha turned the shower on and padded backwards and forwards.

"Yes, there is," he said gravely.

They shared an intense, foreboding look, one squeezed with worry and dread. The undisguised unease in the Doctor's eyes unnerved Donna. If the Doctor was scared…

"What?" she asked sharply, her hands stilling from where they'd been sifting through draws looking for the butter knife, holding onto a small plate as if it were a security blanket.

"Well," said the Doctor carefully, looking back up at the ceiling. "For starters, she didn't ask us to wipe our feet when we came in, and believe me, that's like going to Craggy Island and Mrs. Doyle not offering you a cup of tea. She didn't bat an eyelash…eyelash? Eyelid? Same difference really, when you said I was doing a 'house visit' and she knows I hate houses. Annnd, she's too snappy. Martha's never normally so…what's the word? Like me, but sort of not?"

"Rude?" suggested Donna innocently, carefully following what the Doctor was saying with a rapt expression.

"Yeah…that," said the Doctor distractedly. "And she's too quiet. Well, beside you, everyone's quiet but Martha's too quiet. She's not exactly shy under normal circumstances. I don't know…it's just little things telling me something's not quite right," he concluded, pulling on his ear, deep in thought.

"Like never having heard of the Titanic?" said Donna, quizzically.

"Mmh," replied the Doctor slowly, for a moment getting sidetracked and staring out of the window, where it had began to rain softly. "But it's not just Martha who hasn't heard of the Titanic, and whose grasp on history seems to be all over the place…it's the entire human population. Everyone. Apart from you," he mused, looking at her thoughtfully.

"In the whole universe, you're the only human who knows what's really happened. All the wars, all the discoveries, all the inventions, all the suffering…" he finished, looking at her in half-wonder.

Donna shook her head at him, her eyes wide and perplexed.

"Why me?" she said uncertainly, tracing circles with her finger in the small pile of breadcrumbs beside the toaster. "I was rubbish at history. I got Chamberlain mixed up with Churchill and everything…how come I'm not all over the place?"

The Doctor pulled on his ear again; a sure sign that he was concentrating, the cogs of his brain whirring at a fantastic pace. He looked at Donna appraisingly for a moment before speaking. "Whatever's happened here…and I'm not entirely sure what actually has happened to be quite honest, which I find mildly aggravating because all I can do is take a very, very, very, very, very, very, educated and brilliant guess," he rambled, talking at an impossibly fast rate, as if he wanted to spit out all of his words before he lost track of the train of his thoughts.

"Happened in a period of what? Three months? Four months-ish?" he pondered. "I mean it's been ages for you, but in the Earth's timeline the last time you were here was with the Sontarans…about four months ago. I think that the only reason you haven't been affected," he said slowly, his mouth falling open as he thought, the tip of his tongue touching his teeth. "Is because you weren't on Earth whenever whatever it was happened. Whenever Earth's recognised events started going down the kazi quicker than the sales of the eighth Harry Potter book, you were with me."

Donna tilted her head to one side slightly, thinking through what he'd just said, not sure whether to laugh or cry. " I can remember history 'cause I was with you? Away from it all?"

"Yep, Probably having tea with our dear mate Agatha Christie," said the Doctor, sounding a bit more cheerful. "Spartacus and Spartacus!" he reminded her, a glimmer of a smile pulling at both of their cheeks.

"Doctor-Donna Friends," replied Donna warmly, joining in playfully.

" Batman and Robin," joked the Doctor, beginning to get into his stride and grinning down at his red haired friend. "Dynamic Duo; wandering round the universe being rude to people!" he announced, the worry in his eyes beginning to subside a little, just for a moment. "Shiver and Shake!"

There was a heavy silence; the air in the kitchen seemed to take on the consistency of setting treacle. All at once, the Doctor's face drained of colour, going ashen and white as chalk in a matter of seconds. His brown eyes lost their laughter and became pain ridden and anguished, his wide smile fading into a down turned sulk.

Donna had seen the Doctor look angry on a number of occasions. Seeing his eyes flash dangerously never failed to make her feel the slight squeeze of awe and wariness that she'd felt the first time she'd met him, as he'd stood and destroyed the Racnoss; water rushing all around him, his face set hard like marble, a lonely heartbroken wreck of a man.

This time though, the Doctor wasn't simply angry. He was livid with himself. His hands shook and his eyes were shining. Of course, his eyes were always shining; usually with glee, excitement and intelligence but now, now they were too shiny. As if tears had violently risen in his eyes, clamouring to overspill down his cheeks in thin trails.

Silently, desperately he turned his back to Donna and stared out of the window and up at the sky, as if searching it for answers he couldn't find.

Donna knew better, far better than to ask him what was wrong. The last time he had looked like this had been when he'd pointed a gun at Cobb, seconds after Jenny had died in his arms, and for one wild, heart-stopping moment she had thought that the Doctor was going to actually pull the trigger.

Donna knew the Doctor well enough to know when he wanted to be left alone with his thoughts, or the terrors of his memories, when he didn't want her to start burbling on, talking nonsense to try to make him feel better. Yet she also knew that sometimes, leaving the Doctor alone, staying silent, wasn't always what was best for him, even though it was what he wanted. In that respect he was like a stubborn teenager, rather than an ancient alien; stubbornly adamant that he knew what was in his own best interests when really, those close to him knew different.

This was one of those cases. When Donna Noble felt strongly about something, well…all the alien invasions in the world couldn't get her to stay quiet.

"Maybe not quite 'Shiver and Shake,'" she said lowly, watching him stick his hands in his pockets. She honestly had no idea why 'Shiver and Shake' could have upset him, but from experience, she could guess that it had something to do with the Time War, his dead people… or Rose, of course.

"No, maybe not," he said quietly, after a while. He at last turned round to face her, and she saw that his eyes bore no traces of moisture and his face had retained some form of colour. Whatever it was that had upset him, he had evidently managed to regain his composure, yet there was an unreadable preoccupation present in his eyes, as if his words had physically hurt him.

Wordlessly, he trudged back to the table and sat down, looking moody and subdued.

Donna watched him concernedly, not quite sure whether to hug him and comfort him about whatever it was that had got him so worked up, or to give him a good hard shove for getting all upset when time had gone so very wrong.

By way of a compromise, Donna did what Donna did best; she spoke; not very subtly changing the subject. She had always been about as subtle as an elephant in a china shop.

"What do you think's caused us to get history wrong?" asked Donna casually, as if they were talking about the weather, returning to sit opposite him. "'Cause even I know Bill Gates didn't invent the light bulb! It was that other bloke, wasn't it? Joe something. Or was he the one who invented matches?" she blundered, frowning in concentration, trying to remember a lesson on Victorian inventors that she'd doodled through in primary school. Year Six. She'd been what, 10? She couldn't help but laugh at the disbelieving expression on the Doctor's face. To be quite fair though, she had warned him before that she had been terrible at history. Maybe, up until now he hadn't realised quite how terrible…

Absent mindedly, she pulled Martha's Brides magazine towards her and flicked through it whilst the Doctor banged on about sulphur and air pockets and explained to her exactly how the lightbulb had been invented. Probably. Not that she wasn't listening to him or anything, she was. She just wasn't paying attention to what he was saying. The magazine held most of her attention.

Donna had already read her fair share of Bridal magazines; she knew everything there was to know about dressing the top table, which styles of dresses suited which shapes, (and for the record, empire-line dresses suited all figures, wobbly bits and all) how to cool down any mother-of-the-bride and mother-of-the-groom tiffs and how to 'get a flawless complexion for your big day!'

Not that Donna would swap her life now, traveling with the Doctor, for her mundane, unsatisfactory life working as a temp before, but reading through the magazine reminded her of the complete disaster her wedding had been, how much of a…failure she'd been before she met the Doctor. She wanted to go back, to find her old self on her lunch break at HC. Clements, sitting in the cafeteria with the other temps, pouring over the latest copy of Heat as they scoffed sandwiches and Percy Pigs from Marks and Spencer, and just…give her a right slap for being so, so self-absorbed and useless.

The very fact that she was sitting in Martha's kitchen reading a bridal magazine with a grumpy Doctor sitting opposite her was disappointing enough as it was. Live Aid, July the 13th 1985, Wembley Arena, London. That was what the Doctor had promised her. "Queen! David Bowie! The Who! Elton John and Kiki Dee!" he'd enthused, bouncing out of the TARDIS with a manic grin on his face. "Hell of a day! You'll love it! Chips and donuts! We'll have to go! Well, right after we've been to see your old Gramps, of course…"

They'd actually been on their way to visit Donna's family when the Doctor had randomly announced that he wanted to take her to Live Aid, and by 'visit' the Doctor meant 'say hello, quick cup of tea to be friendly, say bye, then we're going!'

Yet unsurprisingly, Donna had had other ideas. Five minutes had quickly turned into ten, then to twenty, then to half an hour…then to an hour and a half, with Donna simply chatting to her beloved granddad about absolutely anything and everything, her voice loud and raucous, her eyes alive with excitement, her gestures wild and over-the-top, (she'd somehow managed to spill her cup of tea all over her mum's clean carpet) and the Doctor simply hadn't had to heart to tell her he was…a little bored and impatient to go.

Exactly two hours since they'd arrived, Donna had announced that she was ready to 'hit Wembley and nick Bono's hat', (which the Doctor certainly wouldn't have put past her) and she had been shrugging her coat back on when she'd been distracted by the TV of all things.

"Weakest Link!" she'd exclaimed, diving for the remote. "Oh I've missed this! We watch this when we're eating our tea, don't we Grandad?" she'd said happily, sitting back down again and causing the Doctor to mutter something about "two rude, ginger women."

Promising the Doctor that she "wouldn't be a minute," she'd watched two rounds, shouting suggestions at the contestants (even though the Doctor had pointed out that they couldn't hear her) until a certain question had come up. The question that was responsible for the Doctor canceling their plans for Live Aid and taking a detour to see Martha Jones. The question that was the reason for Donna sitting in Martha's kitchen at five-ish reading wedding magazines…

"According to Empire magazine, which film is the highest-grossing box office hit of all time?" the snooty voice of Anne Robinson had asked a hapless contestant. A woman named Susan, with a very unfortunate dress sense and overly large gold earrings.

"Are you kidding me?" Donna had yelled at the screen, for a moment, quite forgetting where she was, making the Doctor cluck his tongue disapprovingly as he milled around by Donna's front door. Desperate to be away. "What is this? The 'Thickest link'? Give her a proper question!"

"Is it…The Return of the King?" Susan had answered nervously, her forehead shining with perspiration.

"No it bleedin' well isn't, you thick plonker!" Donna had bawled, in a very unladylike manner, like Eliza Doolittle shouting at her horse in My Fair Lady.

"I'll accept," had been Anne Robinson's retort.

Donna had stared, open-mouthed at the screen for a couple of minutes before leaping to her feet, extremely indignant.

"What do you mean, 'you'll accept?' It's Titanic!" she'd said in disbelief. "I went to go and see it seven times! It's my favourite film!"

Without further ado, she'd barged into the study, where her mum had been playing online Bingo and had commandeered the computer, leaving the Doctor in the living room with her granddad, trying to pretend that he was interested in the TV, when in actual fact he was probably counting backwards from 1000 in Gallifreyan, just to pass the time away.

"Doctor," Donna had said quietly, re-entering the room twenty minutes later, looking confused and slightly wary. " There's nothing about the Titanic on Google."

"Good," he'd said dryly, snorting. "It's a terrible film, with more historical inaccuracies than perforations in a teabag…"

"No, no," Donna had corrected him impatiently, moving closer to him so he could read her face and tell she wasn't winding him up. "I mean, there's literally nothing about the actual event itself. Nothing about it hitting icebergs and sinking…nothing about it being the world's biggest ship. I've checked the IMDB and there hasn't even been a film made about the Titanic! Kate Winslet's never worked with Leonardo DiCaprio! I've looked on Wiki as well, and there's nothing on there about the 14th of April, 1912! It's like it never actually happened!"

Frowning, and feeling slightly cautious, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, the Doctor had taken control of the Noble's computer, and with his Sonic Screwdriver, he had trawled through pages of internet searches and tapped into both Torchwood and UNIT's databases and had found that Donna had been quite right.

There was no record of the Titanic sinking anywhere; there wasn't even a reference to the Titanic being built. The 'tip of the iceberg' though, had been discovering that not only had the Titanic apparently ceased to exist, but that no fewer than 20583 events on the Earth's timeline had either been erased or re-written.

Princess Diana had never married Prince Charles, Take That had (thankfully, in the Doctor's opinion) never been formed; there was no record of the United Kingdom joining the European Union; America had been a part of the League of Nations, back in the 30's; Bill Gates invented the lightbulb; Shakespeare had written under the reign of King Richard the Lionheart…the stupid, laughable list went on and on.

Except neither the Doctor nor Donna had laughed.

" She said I was always first in line to argue with history," the Doctor had muttered to himself as he had closed down Torchwood's files, a distant memory seeping into his mind. He had ignored Donna's questioning look at the 'she' he had been referring to and had ran a hand through his messy hair. "But if this is history, I'm going to do more than argue with it!"

Distractedly, he had marched past an incredulous and confused Wilf and Sylvia, (who had been musing over the possibility of this mysterious 'Titanic' being an awful new reality TV program), out of Donna's house and into the abandoned TARDIS, with a pasty-faced Donna at his heels.

"Where are we going?" she'd asked him desperately as he'd began to enter in coordinates with the air of a man desperate to win at a grueling game of chess, his eyes fiery, his actions swift and calculated.

"To see Martha," he'd told her, grimly.

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