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And he's mostly happy now, he really is. He's settling in and getting normal, and maybe he'd even be completely happy if it wasn't for the way Donna sometimes holds her head, touches the back of her hand to her mouth, braces herself against the table like she’s a heartbeat away from collapse.
“Donna,” he says to her in these moments, the word torn from him, a secret yanked from his chest cavity and held to the light. “Donna, are you—”
And she stiffens, always. Brushes her hair over her shoulders. Pins on a scowl and flaps her hand at him and says, “Stop fretting, I’m fine.”
How can he stop? How can he, when she is so obviously not fine? But he bites his tongue, takes a step back. After so many years of staying away, giving her space is second nature.
But he—
He can’t. He just—
Everything has a boiling point, a peak, a sudden snap.
For them, it happens on a Monday.
Donna’s knee buckles during their daily walk around the block, and he lunges for her without thinking. She staggers against him, already pushing him away, and he can’t, he can’t, he can’t let go.
“Get off me,” Donna’s saying, “get off, get off,” and his arms tighten around her as if on their own accord. This close, he can smell the particular brand of laundry detergent he has always associated with her, and it makes his throat clench.
“Get off—” And Donna twists free, pulling away, staring at him like he’s grown another head. “What do you think you're doing?”
“You—” He flounders. He looks around the street, cranes his neck up at the sky for answers he doesn’t find. “You’re fine,” he agrees finally, and he clears his throat, scratches the back of his neck. “You’re fine, I’m fine, we’re all fine.”
“Right,” Donna says. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Right.”
“Shall we?” he asks, proffering his arm. After a moment, she accepts, and they walk on, arm in arm as if nothing has changed.
And nothing has changed.
Except.
Except—well, you know. Everything.
“Doctor,” Donna murmurs. She tugs him onto someone’s lawn to let a couple push their baby stroller down the sidewalk. “We need to talk.”
“Donna,” he says. His mouth is dry. Why is his mouth dry? There’s nothing wrong with that phrase, we need to talk, and yet it has never failed to make his hearts skip a beat.
“Come on,” she replies, and they sidestep back onto the asphalt.
He watches their shoes moving in almost-unison, hesitating for just a moment to get their strides back into sync. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere,” she says by way of explanation.
They lapse into silence. Their shoes click in a two-beat rhythm. A car passes them, too fast for a residential neighbourhood, and Donna hollers at it so loudly it’s a marvel the Doctor isn’t deafened, and afterwards, she pulls him past the road they’d normally turn onto to get home without fanfare.
“Where are we going?” he tries again, and again she does not reply.
His palms grow damp, sticky. He fans out his fingers, lets the cold evening air try to dry them off—it doesn’t work.
They walk, and walk, and walk.
And then they round a corner, and a decrepit playground comes into view.
“Here we are,” Donna says.
The Doctor swallows, glances around. It’s not… that bad, in the scheme of things. Just old. Rusty. Empty, too, but in his mind’s eye he can see it at its prime, children flocking to its swings and slides. “Where’s here?”
“Used to take Rose here,” says Donna. And then she stops. Swallow hard. Makes a soundless motion with her mouth, like a word without weight, and closes her eyes. “Used to take Rose here.”
“Donna,” the Doctor starts, and Donna inhales sharply, grabs his hand, drags him towards the swings.
“It’s beautiful at sunset,” she says determinedly, and much, much too fast.
The Doctor nods, jerky, slow. “Right.”
She plops herself down on a swing and gestures to the one beside her. “Come on. There’s a great view—” She breaks off, clutches at the chain with a trembling hand. “There’s a great view of the sunset from here.”
“Right,” he says again, and he joins her.
“Did I ever—” she starts. She clenches her jaw, presses two fingers to her temple.
He watches her warily, bones humming with the impulse to— To what, help? Hold her? He stays still—and it’s so unnatural it almost hurts—and Donna scuffs the tip of her shoe into the wood chips.
“When you took my—” Donna shakes her head. “Never mind.”
“No, tell me,” the Doctor says, earnest. “I don’t mind.”
“I don’t want you to baby me,” Donna says. She meets his gaze, holds it unwaveringly. “Don’t try to catch me, Doctor.”
He exhales. “Right. Of course.”
“It’s not that I don’t like your concern,” she continues, and she faces forward, kicks herself into gently swaying motion.
“Right,” says the Doctor, and he distantly realises he’s said right four times in the past three minutes.
“But I’m fine. I’m fine.” And then she hesitates. She’s swinging through the air in slow-motion, hair wisping back and forth, and the sun is at last dipping glorious below the horizon. “Did I ever—”
“Oh,” says the Doctor, staring wide-eyed at the playground. "Oh."
He gets it. He gets it, now. Even after he took her memory, things still bubbled through. Dreams. Emotions. A distant compulsion from an even blurrier memory of something that never happened.
"I don't remember their names." Donna's breath hitches. "Do you?"
"I…" He racks his mind and comes up empty handed. "I…"
"I took them to a park like this, too," says Donna, and she's floating higher and higher into the air, a blur of motion, a fleeting image—
"Donna," he says, and he clears his throat. "Donna."
"No."
"You don't even know what I was about to say."
"Do I need to?"
"Donna, please—" His voice cracks, breaks. "Just look at me."
And he watches her lean forward, forward, forward—
But she doesn't jump. As her momentum carries her backwards, she jams her heel into the ground and wood chips go flying.
When she finally stops, they lapse once more into silence. It's awkward, almost, this time around. Heavy in a way it never used to be, and damn it, but he's missed fifteen years of her life, and he—
He reaches out and tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
"I'm sorry," he says, quiet.
"They weren't even real," Donna replies.
"They were real to you."
And Donna looks at him then, the sunset glinting off her hair and shiny eyes, and she asks, "Does that matter?"
"Yes," says the Doctor. "Of course it matters."
"I…" She touches her temple again, a wince tightening her mouth.
"Headache?" he asks.
"Just a normal one," she agrees, and she stands up from the swing and offers him her arm. "Come on. Let's go home."
He's fine. She's fine. They're both fine. They walk home in the iron-gold dusk, and he tells himself to smile.