Work Text:
The moment she sees her, she skips a breath. There she is, as animated at ever, telling off some bloke. She’s as lively and temperamental as she remembers her to be, relentless as she yells. She thinks longingly of a time lost long ago, in another world entirely, and her hearts throb with bitter fondness. She’s tried to forget her, like she forgot her, all those years ago. Try as she might, there is no forgetting the best friend that she’d had when she was all pinstripes and sandshoes. And even if there was, it would be a capital crime to willingly forget someone as significant as she was.
“And you!” Donna Noble exclaims, pulling the Doctor from her thoughts as she stomps towards her. “What’re you looking at, then?”
“Just – thought you were an old friend, that’s all.”
A half-truth. Donna is an old friend, but she did not for a moment confuse her for someone else. If Donna pushes, though, she can come up with a quick clever story. She can pretend she’s a different belligerent ginger. And then, she thinks with a half-smile, Donna would either get annoyed that she was prattling, or – if it was one of those days – have a little sympathy for her.
But Doctor , she reminds herself, Amy is gone too. Everyone is gone in the end.
Soon, Yaz will be too. She tries to ignore the pounding of her hearts, unsure if it’s the infatuation she’s tried to suppress, or the despair of the knowledge that Yaz, like Amy, like Donna, will be gone soon.
“Are you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
In a way, she has.
“Yeah! Yeah. Just – I get lost in my thoughts sometimes.”
“I think a friend long ago who was like that. Don’t remember much about him, though. Must’ve been a dream.”
“Probably a very good dream then.”
“Well. Yeah. Anyway. I’ve got a spa appointment in an hour and that guy over there slowed me down. Got to go now. Best spa in London, Nerys says! I’ll be the judge of that. Bye, then.”
Donna moves to go, but the Doctor fishes a rock out of her pocket. “Donna, wait! You dropped this.”
They both know that Donna didn’t, but there’s an unspoken agreement between the two of them, that they’ve met in another life, that they were friends in another life. Donna takes the rock unblinkingly and the Doctor prays to whatever gods are listening that it won’t remind her of anything from when they travelled together. It shouldn’t. She had only discovered it when she was Scottish and Clara had insisted on a mindfulness day.
“I didn’t tell you my name,” she says.
Oh, Donna. Like I could ever forget you.
“Melody,” she says, her wife’s name on her lips, like instinct. “Melody Pond.”
We’re all stories in the end.
“Nice to meet you,” she says, and walks away, not looking back.
It’s a crystal from a distant planet. A gift from a wise soothsayer that had told her it was for an old friend. Wards off bad dreams, attracts good fortune. Donna Noble has always deserved better than she could give her.
The Doctor walks away, in the opposite direction, towards the lonely police box tucked away in an alley. Yaz is leaning against it – probably has been leaning against, it the whole time – a concerned look on her face. The Doctor tries not to think about Donna or Amy or River or Clara or anyone else but Yaz, because this moment is now and it’s not forever. She smiles at her weakly.
“Who was that?” Yaz asks as the Doctor steps back into the TARDIS, hoping it blends in the background well enough, lest Donna notice it and burn from the inside out. She heads to the console, setting their next destination and exhaling.
“Just a temp from Chiswick,” she says shortly, and turns off the brakes as the TARDIS dematerialises.