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When they finally stop clinging to each other—which takes far longer than the Donna of fifteen years ago would have ever admitted, but she’s not so bothered about it now—it’s probably been hours, though it almost seems as though no time has passed at all. She imagines there hadn’t been much time to input a specific destination when they’d been fleeing for their lives, and so the TARDIS is more likely than not still just hurtling through empty space in the vague direction of the stars. And, sitting inside, huddled beneath the console pressed together so tightly she can feel both his heartbeats—the Doctor and Donna, exactly as it was always meant to be.
Except that it doesn’t quite feel that way anymore, does it?
“Are you all right?” the Doctor asks, his arms around her finally relaxing just enough to allow her to sit up properly. She’s getting too old to be spending hours hunched over on the floor anymore.
You left me, she thinks. You took the wrong one. You left me.
“Fine,” she says, because they both know all too well that word actually means not fine at all. The lingering headache from the metacrisis nearly killing her still swirls behind her eyes, she still hasn’t eaten since missing out on her mother’s tuna madras what feels like ages ago, and she misses her and Rose and Shaun and Grandad more than she has the words to express.
“No, you’re not.”
“Yeah, I’m not,” she agrees, not entirely pleased at the confession. “I’m tired, my head still smarts, and I want to go home. But don’t you pretend like you’re doing any better than me.”
“Your head hurts?” he asks, and reaches one hand towards her temple like she would do if it were Rose complaining—except something about the look on his face as he does it makes her jerk out of his arms so violently that she’s halfway across the platform before she fully realizes what’s just happened.
…Well, then. Moment thoroughly ruined.
“...Right,” she says, looking at the Doctor and trying not to feel too distressed about the sheer horror in his expression. Maybe once she would have taken a grim satisfaction in the guilt on his face, but now, after all the hell they’ve been through in the past day, it just… hurts. “Sorry.”
“I—” He looks like he wants to disappear. “I wasn’t going to—”
“I know.”
But regardless of what they might have wanted to say to each other, whatever spell was above them has now been broken. Carefully, Donna manages to push herself to her feet and step back towards the console. She extends a hand to help him up, and maybe that contact lingers longer than it strictly needs to as well, but at least they’ve gotten moving again.
“Let’s… get you home,” the Doctor says.
Home had been the TARDIS, once. Or maybe it hadn’t. Maybe home had been him all along, and it only took a flood of memories and becoming lost at the very edge of the universe to realize it.
“Yeah,” she says. “Let’s go home.”
As fast as the TARDIS is, it’s still going to take them quite a while to make it all the way back to Earth. Donna resigns herself to spending most of that time leaning on one of the many railings, wishing there were a window to stare broodily out of in that dramatic sort of way like people do in movies. The Doctor remains at the controls, fiddling with buttons and levers almost as often as he glances over his shoulder at her, and the uncomfortable energy building between them is growing too strong not to address but she has no idea where to even start.
You left me. You took the wrong one. You left me. You looked me right in the eye and wiped my memories, and for fifteen years, I never knew you again. You left me, you left me, you left me.
“Lighting’s a bit harsh,” she says instead, because what else is she supposed to say? There’s nothing good to say, but the silence must be filled somehow. While she won’t deny that the TARDIS’ new design is absolutely beautiful, the brilliant white now feels a little too reminiscent of the spaceship at the edge of the universe.
“I’m sorry, Donna,” the Doctor blurts, gaze burning into the console beneath his hands. He’s back to refusing to meet her eye again.
She scoffs, though there’s little strength behind it. “Since when do you apologize, Spaceman?”
She knows the answer to that already, of course. She may not be able to look into any of the memories he’s unwittingly shared with her on purpose, but she still knows more about him now than she’d ever expected to.
“Well,” he says, with an almost embarrassed shrug. “You’ve always been special, haven’t you?”
“Most important woman in all of creation, I’m told,” she replies. “Too bad I could never put that on my CV.” She laughs. “God. I’m going to have to find another job now, aren’t I? Just… go home, and live on, as though none of this really happened.”
“You could—” the Doctor begins, but he seems to know better than to finish voicing that particular suggestion.
“I don’t think so, mate,” Donna tells him, shaking her head fondly, though there’s none of the harshness either of them might have expected in her tone. “Don’t you remember what I said to you when we first met?”
He frowns. “A lot of ‘oi, watch it, you bloody Martian,’ and ‘I’m in my wedding dress’ with about twelve exclamation points, if I recall correctly?”
In practice he probably recalls exactly, but that’s a whole different can of worms. Donna snorts. “Not that. The part about you needing someone to stop you.”
Something in his expression shifts, and he’s now on the defensive. “What about it?”
“I think you need to stop, Doctor.”
They stare at each other. Something pings on the console. Neither of them address it.
“What?”
She can’t help herself. “What?”
“Oi—”
“Oi. You know exactly what I mean.”
“...I don’t think I can, Donna,” he says softly. “I honestly don’t think I can.”
“Well, that’s what Rose said when I told her she could be whoever she wanted to be, and look at her now! I mean, there was a whole other conversation that came after that, and of course I had a lot to learn about in those early years, but that’s just what you do for the people you love.” She stares directly into his eyes, and allows herself a small feeling of victory when he doesn’t immediately look away. “I know from experience that it’s worth it, Doctor. Which is why I’m telling you that I’d be willing to do it again.”
He shakes his head. “I’d only be putting you in danger. You and your family. Something might happen to you.”
She mirrors his movement exactly, partly in an attempt to reassure herself, partly just to annoy him. “I think I’ve proven myself quite difficult to get rid of, mate. And—” she pauses suddenly, because there was something else that happened not too long ago that they really ought to address. “Don’t think I couldn’t hear what you said on the Meep’s ship, just before Rose saved us.”
Do what you want. Now that had broken Donna’s heart.
The Doctor splutters, rather indignantly. “How was I supposed to—I thought you were dead!”
“Just think about it, will you?” Donna says. “You’re like family to me. Even when you were gone, and I couldn’t remember, it was like—like some part of my soul was missing. And I know I had Rose, and Shaun, and Mum and Grandad and, god, even that viper Nerys—but my life wasn’t complete without you. And—let me finish, okay? Those things that were Not Us? That other you, he… said some things. And if he had all your memories, then maybe some of them were true. And if they were….” She cuts herself off before she can get too choked up. It seems that her point is making it across on its own anyways. “Look. As much as you and I are going to be having words about how things ended back then, you don’t owe me something to make up for it, or anything like that. I’m just asking this as your friend.”
“Are we, still? Friends?”
Donna practically gapes at him. “Yes, you dumbo! Why would—” Well. She can imagine why he might think she was upset with him. Which she very much is, to be clear: about the whole memory thing, and maybe also a little bit for his initially rescuing the not-her, even though she knows full well that hadn’t been a deliberate choice on his part. But that’s going to be a conversation for after they’re home; after she’s smothered Rose and Shaun in the biggest hug either of them have ever experienced and refused to let go until the next alien invasion forced them apart. Or until somebody brings her some takeout, because she is absolutely starving. Whichever comes first. And they’ll also have to figure out where they’re supposed to live, considering how the Unit soldiers definitely blew up her house beyond a habitable state. But then— then, she and her best friend are going to have a thorough conversation, and it’s not going to be interrupted by some annoyingly nosy not-things with absolutely no sense of privacy. “You’re my best friend in this whole universe,” she says. “And I would know, because I’ve seen the edge of it.”
The Doctor smiles, though there’s still something a bit shaky about it. “You know what, Donna? That’s almost the exact same thing I’ve said about you.”
She grins right back. “You idiot.”
“Yeah… yeah, that’s me.”
“So. Let’s get us both home, shall we?”
“I never promised anything!” he protests, but she can already tell that the seeds of the idea have taken root in his mind.
The TARDIS continues its path through the cosmos, carrying them forwards. Carrying them home.