Chapter Text
He hadn't slept a wink in the past two nights. The faces of the soldiers, the cries of civilians and children all repeated when he closed his eyes. He would toss and turn so much that the blankets and sheets would be wound around his legs, trapping him to the bed. He had forfeited any idea of sleep at half past three in the morning. With a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, he spent the early hours on the ground floor of the house waiting for the sun to rise.
In a few days, he would be one year older. One more year that he didn’t deserve, that he had stolen for himself.
By quarter to eleven, he’s dozing off on the couch as Donna watches the telly, making idle comments here and there about the programmes.
On the table beside him, his cellphone dings.
“There he goes again,” Sylvia chirps, coming down the stairs fiddling with her bracelets.
“Your lover, spaceman?”
Of course it was Rose; who else would it be? He can’t help the way his heart jumps at the sound.
The phone is stolen from his hand. “Hey!” he shouts.
Donna, who was now standing over him behind the couch, cradles the phone in two hands. “Ooh, who could it be?” she teases, looking through the messages.
James twists to kneel on the couch cushions, lunging over the back of the couch in an attempt to steal his phone back from Donna, but she twists at just the right time.
She hums to herself, searching through the phone. “What the hell, James, there’s nothing here. It’s the same message over and over.”
“We talk-” he reaches again, straining, “in person-”
“I’m sure you do,” Donna says with a wry smile, holding the phone further away.
“Are you two behaving there?” Wilf asks from the kitchen.
“Oh, yes,” they both reply in unison.
“Who is it?” Donna asks, holding the phone behind her back.
“You don’t know her-” he makes quick work, but somehow Donna is faster.
For someone who spent years of his life in a war zone, his reflexes were embarrassingly slow.
“Then why can’t you tell me?”
“Have you ever considered it’s none of your business?”
“Everything’s my business when it comes to you,” she says. “Rose . . .” she reads out.
James slumps, hiding his face in his arms crossed on the table.
“Is that a code name for something?” Donna asks.
“No,” James admits, his voice muffled by his clothes. He’s too defeated to consider lying to Donna, to attempt and salvage an already burning ship.
“Rose, did you say?” Wilf asks, tottering from the kitchen with a bundle of newspapers under his arm. “We know a Rose; from that cafe, d’you remember Donna?”
“Wha’, the blonde girl?”
“That’s the one!” Wilf says with a grin. “She’s always so good to us.”
She stares back at James. “As in, the one you spent an entire year-”
“Under twelve months,” he corrects weakly.
“- living with, hiding from us?” Donna asks, her temper flaring. “You and her-”
“It’s not what you think!”
“But you were with Martha - you said so -”
Wilf sets the papers down on the table by the front door. “Maybe I ought to stay out of this one,” he says meekly, putting on his shoes and slipping outside.
“Rose and I never - Donna, honestly - it was never like that!”
“You would have had plenty of time!” Donna exclaims. “Every time Martha was on shift you an’ her-”
“No!” James says through gritted teeth, climbing over the back of the couch. He snatches the phone from Donna, pocketing it safely. “It wasn’t until after.”
Donna shakes her head. “I need dates, Spaceman.”
James groans. “It was in March, if that’s alright with you! It was March, and then again in April - it was her birthday, and she was- she just needed someone and it’s not like I’ve got anything better to do and it’s nothing. She - we both agreed it’s nothing, we both have things-”
His voice is catching in a way he wasn’t expecting.
Donna frowns at her cousin’s irritation. “Alright,” she says softly. “I believe you.”
“It wasn’t planned or anything. At least not the first time.”
“I said I believe you.”
He sighs, settling his own temper. “You can’t tell anyone-”
“I won’t-”
“Not your coworkers or your friends-”
“I said I won’t-”
“Because she doesn’t want that.”
“And what about you?”
“It’s not about what I want,” he says. He clasps his hands together, his nails digging into his skin. “I gave that up a long time ago.”
Donna rolls her eyes. “Oh, here we go again,” she says under her breath before returning to her previous sympathetic tone. “You aren’t stuck there, back on Gallifrey. Those terrible things, they might not always feel like it, but they’re in the past. You’re here now. You’re allowed to move on with your life.”
He doesn’t respond.
Donna sighs, letting the silence fall between them. Given the usual chatty nature between the two of them, James considers it a kindness. “Well, given we’ve exhausted that,” she eventually continues, “what are we doing for your birthday?”
“Donna . . .” James grumbles.
“Your first birthday home in how long-”
He tries again, “Donna, it’s not important-”
“What do you want?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, c’mon.”
“I don’t want anything!” he insists, trailing into the kitchen.
At this exact moment, a strong cup of coffee would be nice. Or the ability to fall asleep without dreaming.
“You have to want something.”
“No, I don’t.”
Donna stops, setting her hands firmly on her hips. “We could always go back to your love life.”
“I’m not listening to this,” James says, pulling out a chair at the table, the legs scraping against the floor. He plops himself down, half-turning his body away from her.
Years of growing up together meant Donna could read him like a book. She knew she would simply have to make the choice for him. She sat opposite him at the table, putting the topic of Rose, and by association his love life, to rest. “Nerys gave me this fancy cooking magazine some great-aunt of hers bought her when she last came ‘round to London. There was a recipe I thought you would like in there.”
James frowns. “What is it?”
“I dunno,” Donna says. “I read it a few months back. I still think I have it in my room somewhere.” She got up from the table, retreating towards the stairs.
James remains in his chair, debating whether he should leave out the garden doors or hide somewhere else in the house. He hasn’t been home an awful lot since Donna found him at the Christmas market. Some days the memories were too unbearable to stomach with watchful eyes around the house. Some days, like today, the guilt of being home, but not wanting anything to do with the family or a normal life, gnawed at the softer spots of his heart.
Part of him wishes Granddad hadn’t left. Maybe he would finally take Wilf up on talking about coming home, about the war.
Granddad always made him feel better about things like that.
They all had done so much for him since coming home. They did even more for him when they thought he was dead. He could excuse all the other holidays as trivial celebrations. His birthday, by comparison, was something special for them. For them, it was another year onto his life they never thought they’d celebrate.
He decides he’ll give Donna five minutes. Five minutes to try and find the magazine. After that, she would probably get distracted by something else she found in her room and forget all about it. She has been good to him through everything.
“Found it!” she shouts from upstairs, her voice muffled by the construction between the first and ground floor. She plods down the stairs back into the kitchen. “Here, a jaffa cake cake!”
James screws his face into a confused expression. “A jaffa cake cake?”
“A jaffa cake cake!” She flips the magazine open in front of him on the table. “Orange cake with marmalade, your favourite, and chocolate icing.”
“Not actually made from jaffa cakes?” James says with wide, curious eyes.
“You’re having me on,” she says flippantly.
A smile breaks across his face. “Next year’s idea, maybe.”
Donna was already searching through the cupboards for ingredients, bowls, and measuring cups. “This will be nice. Bit of cake after supper.”
Reading through the ingredients, James made a noise of indecisiveness. “You know how to make a cake?”
“Sure,” she says, pulling out measuring spoons. “I’ve made plenty of cakes before.”
“From the box,” he retorts.
“Oi!” she exclaims, pointing a wooden spoon at him. “Let me do this for you. It can’t be that hard, it’s not the rocket science you used to do.”
He scratches at his sideburn, getting up from the table. “No, but it is chemistry.”
“How many times have I told you I never want to mention that subject again? Not after what happened in Mr Wilson’s science class.”
One thing about Donna that James had experienced many a time in their childhoods was her impatience for instructions. In the early days when he would recruit her to help with his earliest projects, he never dared leave the instructions to her. She would always skip steps, or lose her place, or be more interested in gossiping about her friends on the playground. James didn’t mind the gossip as background chatter, but he still hadn’t quite forgiven her for missing three crucial steps related to screws and a miniature roller coaster that took days to put together.
So it really was no wonder when she knocked over a bunch of glass beakers, spilling chemicals meant to be mixed in test tubes all over the floor. Or the time she doubled the amount of hydrochloric acid to a zinc and copper mixture.
He considered it a good fortune that they never ended up in the same science class in school.
James watches as Donna adds the flour, baking powder, and salt to a bowl. Then, in a separate bowl, she drops the block of butter in with granulated sugar.
Suddenly, a large orange is tossed his way. “Zest that,” Donna instructs.
“As long as you’re not tossing the zester with it,” James mutters under his breath, setting the orange on the table.”
“Oh, I don’t know where it is,” Donna says, the butter hard in the bowl as Donna tries to cream it.
“What makes you think I know where it is?”
“Gives you something to do.”
James rolls his eyes and begins the hopeless search for the zester.
“Do you and Rose watch X-Factor?”
“I thought we weren’t talking about Rose anymore.”
“Well, what if I ended up spoiling it for you?”
“You aren’t going to spoil anything, we don’t watch X-Factor.”
“So what do you two watch?”
“Donna!” James hisses.
“Alright, alright,” Donna says, wisely choosing instead to ramble on about the remaining contestants on X-Factor, the visits to the judges’ houses, and the group sent home last week that was definitely better than the xylophone duo who made it to the top 6.
All the while, James did manage to find the zester. He also grabbed a bowl to catch the zest.
“Did you see Brad and Angelina’s red carpet photos from yesterday?”
James shakes his head, his orange completely zested. “Did she look good?”
“If you like the colour yellow,” Donna replies. “Her hair could have used some work.”
James brings over his bowl of orange zest in one hand, and the zested orange in his other hand.
Donna looks at the bowl of zest and then the zested orange. “I only need the orange zest,” she says.
James moves his hand with the zest bowl forward, but stares at the zested orange curiously. “What do I do with this?”
“I dunno,” Donna says, “Do I have to figure out everything for you?”
He puts on his best expression of innocence. “I just came back from the war, Donna.”
“Yeah, over a year ago,” she says, shaking her head and adding the orange zest to her cake mixture. “You must have made a meal for yourself at some point. Even if it was out of beanpaste.’
James digs his thumb into the top of the orange and begins separating the slices. As he does, he tilts his head to read the recipe Donna is following. “What’s a Ge-noise?”
“Ge-noise?” Donna repeats, startled at his pronunciation.
“Ge-noa-zee?” he tries again.
“Genoise,” she corrects.
James narrows his eyes. “Genoise?”
Donna nods.
He shakes his head, upset from his difficulties pronouncing the word.
“It’s Italian,” she explains. “You know, like molto bene? You’re always saying that.”
He returns his attention to the recipe, then looks at the mixture in her bowl, then back at the photos on the magazine pages, then back to the batter in front of them. “Donna?”
“Yeah?”
“Your batter has hard lumps,” he observes, popping an orange slice into his mouth.
“The butter wasn’t soft,” she says.
James chews. “You could have waited.”
“Yeah, but I’m making your cake now,” she says. “Do you think the marmalade can go in the oven? Is that what they do with real Jaffa Cakes?”
“But then the marmalade would heat up.”
“What d’you think will happen to it when warm chocolate is poured over it?”
“How hot does warm chocolate get? Not as hot as the oven.”
“But what if it adds more flavour?”
“Why don’t you just follow the recipe as written?” James asks, pointing repeatedly to the glossy magazine page.
Donna brushes his hand away. “Oi, don’t muck up my magazine. Why don’t you go finish your orange somewhere else.”
“I asked you a genuine question!”
“Because,” Donna begins. “How many recipes do you come across that are written to be followed to the dot?”
James’ jaw drops. “All of them. That’s the point of a recipe!”
“No, but sometimes they put the temperature too high because they don’t realise they’re baking with a faulty oven, or they put in too much salt because they’re old and can’t taste properly anymore.”
Absolutely astonished at her reasoning, James shakes his head and asks, “When’s Granddad coming back?”
“I dunno, probably out in the garden.”
As he steps out of the house, the sun hides behind a smattering of clouds.
He didn’t need the universe’s help understanding that he was deserving of very little.
Wilf was kneeling at the flowerbeds up against the fence, pulling weeds.
James crouches beside him, not wanting to cover his pants in dirt. He crosses his arms over his knees and rests his chin on the back of his hand.
Wilf keeps his eyes on the pesky weeds he rips from the soil. “Anything on your mind?” he asks in a too-casual tone, failing to hide the concern behind the question.
He knew coming home wouldn’t be easy. It’s what made hiding away at River’s flat and taking full advantage of Martha’s kindness and eagerness so easy.
The itch to run wasn’t easy to let go of.
“D’you need help with this?” James asks. He eyes a delicate pink blossom on one of the plants, the flower tiny compared to the leaves around it.
“You get some water for these,” Wilf says, pointing to the flowers as he tosses weeds into the pail beside him.
James follows through with the instruction without another word. The water raining down on the flowers is calming to his ears.
“That will do,” Wilf says, taking the watering can from him. He gives a rather weak smile. “Do you want to talk about earlier?”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” James lies.
“She makes you happy, though. She is a nice girl.”
James shoves his hands into his pockets, shrugging his shoulders defensively. “It’s not that simple.”
“When I came back from the war,” Wilf starts, putting the watering can back in the shed, “there were a lot of men who couldn’t talk about what happened. Not just the ones with shell-shock. The further they got away from it, the harder it seemed to remember it all.”
James nods knowingly.
“You might not want to talk about what happened, but you can’t keep your feelings bottled up,” Wilf says. He pulls off one of his gardening glove and rubs his hand over his shirt. “Makes your heart sick.”
“I’ll be alright,” James promises.
“Doesn’t have to be with me,” Wilf says, pulling off his other glove. “If it’s easier to talk about those sorts of things with Rose, I suspect she has a good ear for those sorts of things.”
James frowns, surprised at his grandfather’s own knowledge of Rose.
He must have gotten to know her quite well through the cafe, more than just an exchange of goods.
“She is,” he admits after a moment, his voice quiet enough to be carried away by the light breeze moving the clouds along overhead.
A butterfly flutters behind Wilf, enticed by the freshly-tended flowers.
He didn’t earn her kindness often, and the moments he had were startling every time. Her kindness was a reflection of her care, her attentiveness to those around her. When it came to the important stuff, when he was at his worst, she knew never to push too far. He was sure she found it much easier taking the mick rather than digging for every detail.
For him, it was the first time in years that those moments didn’t feel so impossible to overcome.
Even if she never stopped hating him, he was fortunate to have caught a glimpse of her heart. He was certain that her loyalty to the people she loved was unmatched.
They were lucky to have her.
The rest of the day, he traces his thumb over his palm.
Later that evening, after supper was served, Donna presents the finished cake.
James doesn’t know whether to close his eyes or run for the hills. He instead asks, “Why is it sunken in the middle?”
“It wouldn’t cook,” Donna says, defeated. “And I put the oven to the temperature they said in the recipe!”
“Don’t tell me you put the marmalade on before putting in the oven?” James asks, running his hands down his face.
“No, I waited until it came out of the oven.”
“But did you wait for it to cool?”
Sylvia’s scowls. “Do you really think orange and chocolate go together?”
“Jaffa cakes,” Wilf reminds her.
“I don’t eat Jaffa Cakes,” Sylvia says, wrinkling her nose.
Donna takes a knife to the cake, cutting out a piece to hand to James.
James takes a nervous breath.
Wilf gives a tight-lipped smile as he receives his plate. “Ta, darling.”
Sylvia keeps a hand against her mouth at the undercooked cake batter spilling over her plate. “Are you trying to make us sick?” she asks.
“Oh, don’t eat those parts,” Donna says, serving herself a slice (generous, given its lack of integrity).
James picks up his fork and begins prodding at the cake. He finds a piece on the edge that is cooked, and stabs it away from the rest.
Wilf, meanwhile, skims some of the chocolate off of the top, licking it off of his fork.
Sylvia turns more green in complexion.
“It’s good chocolate,” Wilf comments.
James takes his first bite.
Donna grits her teeth.
The crunch makes him worry he’ll break a molar.
He can’t help the scowl growing across his face. “That piece was burnt,” he excuses with a cough, forcing himself to swallow it down.
The hard edges scrape down his throat.
Sylvia pushes her chair back. “Why don’t I whip up some rice pudding?”
“Yes,” the three of them agree, all standing to throw out the mess called cake on their plates.