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“Would you stay?” Donna says, as they’re about to leave the Tardis and step out onto Earth again.
“For a while, ‘course,” he replies, and swallows down that lump in his throat—that gnawing feeling, just in the back of his skull.
She looks at him, standing there. She’s ready to go, ready to see her family again—rejoin them and be happy. Live out her life, right?
Right.
“’For a while,’” she repeats, and she tilts her head at him just so, and she purses her lips like she’s definitely getting ready to say something about all that. She comes a bit closer to him, closing the small gap between them. He can see the sweat on her brow—from running and getting away from the danger he put her in.
“You can’t run forever, Doctor,” she says, and he almost scoffs. He looks at her with a broken little smile on his face, a lopsided grin.
“I can,” he says. “I can. I could, you know. It’s what we did together, even—back then. All the running.”
She scoffs, and then her eyes flit around the Tardis’ interior like she’s thinking about it all from before, and then her eyes return to look sharply into his, something reminiscent and real and genuine within them, burning and bright—Donna Noble, through and through.
“Don’t you want to stay somewhere, put down some roots? You say you can run forever, but you know, I don’t really think you can. Not forever. You’ve gotta stop at some point—”
“I’ve stopped before,” he says, just a bit too quickly. “I’ve stopped and settled down, and people have died, or have had to leave, or have gotten into things that they never should’ve had to. They all—” he says, and then stops himself short, and there’s a lump in his throat.
He runs a hand through his hair, and he turns around for a second with a spin of his heel. He breathes in, closes his eyes, and then turns back around to face her yet again. His hand is now splayed across his neck, and he knows that he looks a bit wild and a bit disheveled, and she looks… worried for him. Concerned.
“You know me, so. Always the running,” he says after a moment, a pause a bit too long, and there’s a little bit of a tight laugh mixed into it, but none of it really comes across as funny.
“I do,” she says, and she steps just a bit closer. She puts a hand on his forearm lightly, gently—with such care and compassion that it makes his hearts twist up in his chest.
“I do, Doctor, and I know that you hurt. That you hurt so much. Why don’t you spend a while with us, at least, alright? Months, years, even, we’d be happy to—”
“Donna,” he says, drawing it out, and he turns away from her yet again, because he just can’t stand it, even after all this time, and her hand drops from his arm. He walks a couple of feet away from her, his back to her, and he stares at the Tardis’ floor. It’s so clean, so polished, so unstained. He taps his foot against the floor, and the shoes on his feet feel like a memorial of a time long ago.
Donna doesn’t need to think, shouldn’t have to think, about how he will outlive them all. About how they’ll all get into danger because of him, and even barring the danger he always seems to get them in, he knows that he will outlive them by so, so very long regardless—human lifespans, and all that.
He once told Rose that she could spend the rest of her life with him, but he couldn’t spend the rest of his life with her.
He knows that Donna knows that, by now. That concept, that fact—that she is aware that he’s longer-lived than humans. Of course she knows that, of course she does, and how could he go and spend years and years and years with these people that he treasures and loves and yet he still cannot save from the inevitable, from danger or death, and he never can, no matter how hard he tries and tries and tries, how can he do that to them—
“It won’t last,” he says, finally, and his voice is soft and quiet, and—and it hurts. He’s still not looking at her, his back still to her, and he knows that he is a coward—always has been, perhaps, and maybe he always will be.
He shifts on his feet lightly, side to side, as he speaks. “It won’t last. Wilf, that dear man, will be gone soon, you know? And so will you, and so will Rose, and even Shaun. Blink of an eye, really. You’ll die, and I’ll still be there, watching on,” he says, and he finally turns around, facing her again, and he is scared and he is tired, for the thousandth, millionth, billionth time. Donna’s face looks a bit hurt, a bit helpless, but he knows that she knows he is right—she has to know that, doesn’t she?
“Isn’t it worth it, even if it doesn’t last,” she says, looking into his eyes like she is staring into his soul. “Even if you get just one more minute, one more year, or ten or fifty or a hundred more, isn’t it worth it?”
He hesitates, for a moment, saying nothing. He stops shifting at all, his feet set where they are, like he’s rooted to the ground. He looks at her, and he imagines, he ponders, how long he really does have left with her. With any of them.
“I’d like to think so,” he says, so very quietly.
I’d like to think so, and I’ve always loved them, every one of them, but they break my heart every time, he thinks, but doesn’t say. I’d like to think it’s worth it, but it kills me, each and every time.
“Then stay,” she says, her eyes now tearful. “Stay until you can’t anymore, okay?”
He’s quiet for a long moment. He looks her up and down—she’s older, now, but she’s not dying. Not yet. She’s older, and she’ll keep getting older, but she isn’t dead yet, and neither is he.
She’ll break my heart, sometime. Soon, he thinks. But not yet.
“Okay,” he says, and suddenly, like her world just blossomed, she smiles so brightly, so full of hope, and she takes his hand in hers. She leads him out of those Tardis doors, and he sees Wilf, that lovely, amazing man, and his hearts pull tight in his chest.
And then there are the fires, the fights, the world ending again. They shelter themselves by the Tardis, and Donna grips his hand tight for just a moment more. She looks at him, and she stares him in the eyes, flame and fire and hope.
Stay, he knows, is what she means. After this, after the world doesn’t end, stay.
He grips the side of the Tardis with his other hand, steadying himself, and he casts a brief look out at the chaos, smoky and dirty and disastrous, before he meets Donna’s eyes again. He squeezes her hand back, looks into her eyes with as much courage as he can muster, and then drops her hand, and he has to look away.
As long as I can, he tries to answer, and he hopes that she knows what he means.