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He’s not in his room, he's not in her room, he's not in the shed.
“Do you know where the Doctor is?” Donna asks, wandering into the kitchen.
At the dinner table, Shaun shrugs. “I don’t know, but”—he glances down at Rose, mouth pressing into a grimace at the sight of her physics homework—“he said he’d help her with this tonight.”
“Also,” Sylvia cuts in. She stirs something fragrant on the stove, face pinched. “Dinner’s nearly ready.”
“Yeah, I know,” Donna replies, moving past him to the back door. “That’s why I’m looking for him.”
“He’s not in his room?”
“Already checked.”
Rose twists around. “TARDIS?”
“About to check now,” Donna says, a hand already on the doorknob. She steps out into the lukewarm dusk and lingers on the porch for a moment, hugging her cardigan close. Next to the shed sits the TARDIS, light shining through the windows. She tries the door. It’s locked. She rattles it again, pounds the fleshy side of her fist on the window, pushes herself onto her tip-toes to try to peer through the glass.
“It’s Donna,” she calls, rapping her knuckles against the wood. “Open up, Doctor. Stop moping.”
She pauses, waits in vain for a reply. Her next statement is addressed to the TARDIS.
“Please?” she asks, tipping forward, leaning her whole weight against the door. “Please.”
The TARDIS remains unyielding. It may just be her imagination, but she swears she can feel it hum an apology.
Please—
It opens. She topples through.
“Wh—Donna?!”
She crashes face-first into a wiry frame and sends them both sprawling. An elbow flails into her ribs. Her knee collides with something soft and fleshy. Someone yelps. They hit the ground.
The Doctor, pinned beneath her, is the first to talk.
“Er, Donna,” he begins, very polite, even as pain hitches his voice. He winces and jerks his head to the side. “D’you mind…?”
“Right, yeah.” Donna rolls off and sits up, surreptitiously glancing around the TARDIS. “Are you moping?”
The Doctor splutters indignantly. “Wha—am I moping?”
“Yeah.” Donna lifts a shoulder in a semblance of a shrug. She hasn’t looked him in the eye yet; the TARDIS’ interior has wholeheartedly captured her attention.
For one thing, the lights are all off.
For another, she can feel a humming where her palms are braced against the ground, and it’s—melancholy, somehow, tickling the back of her mind the way the Ood song did before her mind was open to it, and a little sense reckons this is rather important. “Are you?”
“That is,” the Doctor says. He sniffs. “Thoroughly and, quite frankly, irrelevant.”
Donna does not deign to reply, instead levelling him with an even stare.
“Alright, fine,” he concedes, sheepishly glancing around the gloomy control room. “Maybe it’s a tad relevant.”
“Rose is working on her homework, you know,” Donna says. “ Six o'clock, you said. I’ll help you, you said. It’s seven, Doctor. You’re late.”
“Ah.” He winces again, runs a hand through his hair. “Right.”
“Doctor,” Donna starts. She hesitates, turning to him, gaze snagging on the sharper lines creased into his skin, the shoots of grey through his hair. They’re no spring chickens. Well—the Doctor just isn’t a spring chicken, wasn’t one even when she met him for the first time, but that’s beside the point. They’re both softer now, worn around the edges. She tips him a smile. It pulls at her eyes, stings the back of her throat. “Oh, Doctor.”
“What’s that look for?” he asks, feigning innocence; the sadness in his gaze suggests otherwise.
Donna stretches out her arm, offers her hand. “I wish you’d just tell me what’s wrong.”
“I can’t,” he says. “You know I can’t.”
“Why can’t you, though?”
He catches his bottom lip between his teeth, then drops back his head and sighs at the ceiling. “You know.”
“I don’t, actually,” Donna retorts. She shifts, pulls her legs together, and leans forward. “I can’t look inside your memories, Doctor. It hurts. ”
The Doctor laughs humourlessly, head lolling against his shoulder. He’s on the edge of a retort, she knows he is, but he never lets it out. Instead, he returns her smile with one as worn and translucent as sea glass. “See? You know enough already.”
“Doctor,” Donna says, almost a groan. She takes a breath. Slowly, she reminds herself. Baby steps. Softening her tone, she adds, “You can tell me anything, you know. It’ll be good for you, I promise.”
“Yeah, I—” He breaks off, presses the back of his hand to his mouth. “I can’t. Donna, I’m sorry, I just, I just can’t, I—”
“It’s okay,” Donna soothes. “Take your time.”
“Yeah,” he whispers, hoarse. He’s still staring at the ceiling. A shaking hand darts up to wick the moisture away from the corner of his eye.
“Were you in here moping, then?” Donna asks.
The Doctor’s silence is answer enough. Finally, almost guiltily, he says, “Not moping.”
Both eyebrows raise. “Oh?”
“I wasn’t…” The Doctor trails off, fidgeting with his rumpled collar.
Beneath Donna’s palms, the TARDIS’ humming murmur seems to intensify, buzzing up her bones. It feels significant. It feels like a warning.
You’re losing him, it hums. You’re losing him.
Not again, she isn’t. Not now, not when he’s finally home.
She grabs his hand. “Doctor.”
He startles, jerking away in reaction before consciously settling. “Donna,” he says, choked.
“Doctor.” She doesn’t let go; after a minute, his fingers curl around hers. “What’s bugging you?”
At first, he doesn’t answer. He adjusts his position, simultaneously drawing his knees to his chest and turning to press his back against Donna’s side. Clutching her hand to his chest with both hands, he shudders with a bellows inhale. “You know I can’t, I…”
“You stubborn git,” she says, soft, and leans her cheek against the back of his head. “You know I’m always going to be here for you, right?”
“Not always,” he whispers. “You’re not always…”
“Well.” She exhales. “That’s just life though, isn’t it?”
He doesn’t reply, but he squeezes her hand tighter.
“Just…” Donna flounders for the words to explain her desperate, inarticulate thoughts. “I’m here for you now. ”
“Yeah,” he rasps. Slowly, almost as though the movement pains him, he twists a few degrees closer, just enough for her to see the line of his cheek, the flutter of his lashes. It’s not so much an invitation as it is a question, a hesitant supplication of hope and longing; she responds in turn, wordlessly opening her arms, a beacon to guide him home.
With a sound like a bitten-off sob, he curls into her, pressing his face into the curve of her shoulder, hands letting go of hers to clutch the back of her coat.
“Donna,” he says, and she feels the word reverberate from his chest, a broken, scraping admission that somehow both explains everything and nothing at all.
She holds him close, staring past him at the TARDIS door. A wretched thought forms, niggles the back of her mind.
“Were you…” The rest of the question catches in her throat. It’s too cruel to ask, too much to demand, too soon for either of them.
His shaking intensifies. He’s a fault line shuddering apart, and the TARDIS’ humming is a mournful dirge, and she’s losing him, she’s losing him, she can’t lose him—
“I love you,” she blurts.
His sharp inhale twists on the exhale, catches on a sob.
“Donna,” he starts.
“No, wait, don’t say anything yet.” Donna hugs him tighter, gently rocks them both. Her vision blurs. “No, Doctor, I love you.” The enunciation has a heft to it, the heaviness of an epiphany over fifteen years in the making. She presses a kiss to the top of the Doctor’s head.
“Quite right, too,” the Doctor echoes.
The words tug at the back of her mind, eerily familiar. She chalks it up to deja vu—or the Doctor’s memories rearing up from their deep-buried slumber—and shuts her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” the Doctor whispers.
“Don’t be.”
“No, I…” He pulls back, pawing the cuff of his sleeve across his face. “No, I…” His gaze slides over hers, haunted and guilty, and his mouth presses into a thin grimace. “I was…”
The question she couldn’t bring herself to say lingers on the edge of her tongue. It’s too soon, it’s still too soon, but her need to know overtakes her caution.
“Were you trying to leave?” she breathes.
The Doctor flinches, a ragged yes dropping from his lips like a cry of reaction.
“Oh,” says Donna. She leans against the console, cold metal against her skin anchoring her. A sort of blankness drops over her mind. Even the humming of the TARDIS is shocked silent.
“I’m sorry,” mumbles the Doctor, averting his eyes.
“Wait,” she replies, holding up a hand. “Wait, no.” Righteous anger licks up the base of her spine “No, you don’t get to just leave. You promised, remember? You promised Rose you’d help her, and you—”
“And I,” the Doctor says, still not looking at her, “I know.”
“Right,” says Donna. She crosses her arms. “Then—” She breaks off.
You’re losing him, hums the TARDIS. You’re losing him.
She sucks in a flat breath and looks at him. He’s hunched over, half-crouching, tension cording through his whole body. He’s—afraid.
“Oh." She can see it now; the Doctor is on the precipice of flight, just waiting for the final, fatal dismissal. A sense of conclusion, she reckons, being the sentimental creature that he is. “Doctor.”
He flinches again, curling into himself.
Internally, she berates herself.
You’re losing him.
“I’m sorry,” she grates out, and she blinks her vision back into clarity, coughs to clear her throat. “Doctor, I’m sorry.”
His gaze snaps back to hers. “Don’t be sorry,” he says, the words tripping and slipping into a long blend of consonants and vowels and shapeless agony. “Donna, Donna, don’t be sorry.”
“But I am,” Donna replies. “Just when I thought…” She trails off, digs her nails into her palm. “Just when I thought we’d made a home—”
And then she’s crying, tears blistering her cheeks, and she’s pawing her sleeve across her face, clawing at the wracking ache burning deep in her chest, a pain like she’s torn something awful and vital and she’s bleeding out, like she’s imploding so slowly she can see it happening, like the fear she felt when, fifteen or so odd years ago, unborn Rose stopped kicking against her stomach, and—
“Donna, Donna—”
The Doctor all but faceplants against her in his haste to gather her into his arms. His arms cradle her, wiry but strong, anchoring her consciousness in reality. He presses a kiss to the top of her head, murmuring a litany of apologies and reassurances.
Donna drags in another breath, blows it out. “Right,” she whispers. “Right, sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” replies the Doctor. His voice shakes. “Please, Donna, it’s not—it’s not your fault, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“I was so… blind,” Donna says. She sinks into the embrace, shuts her eyes against the darkened console room.
You’re losing him, hums the TARDIS, and she knows, she knows . It was a futile endeavour to try to keep an evanescent creature such as the Doctor in a home with concrete roots.
She swallows. Inhales. She can feel the tensile strength of him against her back, all corded tension poised to snap.
She starts to pull away. The Doctor holds tighter, just for a moment—more a knee-jerk reaction than a conscious decision—and then lets go, lets her go, and when she faces him, he’s trembling with silent tears, hands clasped tightly in his lap to keep them from reaching out.
“Oh, Doctor,” she breathes.
His gaze drops, shame colouring his cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
“Was…” Was I not enough? she wants to ask. Why else would you leave? Instead, she blurts, “Where were you going to go?” She winces. It comes out curt and sharp, the lashing bite of a hurting thing, and the Doctor flinches as if she’s struck him.
“I…” He trails off, fidgets with his tie. “I don’t know, actually. The, uh, the controls”—he jerks his thumb in the wrong direction of the console—“were set to random.”
“Do you want to go, then?”
The question startles both of them.
“I thought,” says the Doctor, peering at her with squint-eyed curiosity, “you didn’t want to leave Earth?”
“Well.” She shrugs. It’s true, technically. She doesn’t want to get lost again on some godforsaken planet, or shot at by aliens, or stranded in the stars— but there’s a thrill in adventure, in traversing the unknown, in gazing at the universe in unabashed wonder, that she… misses. That, and the expression on the Doctor’s face when he’s sharing in her amazement, something like hope, something like love. I’d do it for you, but instead she says, “Let’s go?” and lets it lilt up as a question, leaves the answer up to the Doctor.
“Alright,” he replies, a grin slowly cracking through his grimace. “Anywhere?”
“Anywhere safe."
The TARDIS needs no coaxing; a single pull of a lever, and she whisks them away, as smooth a ride as Donna has ever felt.
“Right then,” says the Doctor, staring at the door. His fingers twine through hers. “Shall we?”
Donna throws him a broad smile, then sets her teeth against the anticipation buzzing at the back of her throat and pounding in her chest.
The Doctor flings the door open and steps out and—
Donna lurches forward with a sharp yell as the Doctor tumbles over the threshold, grabbing blindly for the door frame. The fabric of the Doctor's coat starts to slip through her fingers and she clenches her fist, bracing herself against the door, pulling and pulling and pulling him through.
For the second time that day, they tumble into the TARDIS in a sprawl of limbs and panicked shock. As soon as they’re both safely inside, the door slams shut.
“Doctor,” Donna starts, grimacing at the feeling of a bony knee pressed into her thigh. “Could you, er…”
“Right,” the Doctor says. “Right, yes, sorry.” He rolls off and sits up to turn a quizzical expression at the door, scratches the back of his head. “ That was rather unexpected.”
Donna grunts agreement as she hauls herself upright and rubs her sore elbow.
“I wonder…” And the Doctor pushes the door open with his foot. It swings outwards to reveal… nothing. Well, Donna amends, as her eyes adjust, not nothing.
Outside, the TARDIS rotates slowly through an interwebbing of faintly flickering lights.
Space, she thinks. The final frontier.
“Oh,” the Doctor breathes. He grabs her arm, points excitedly into the vast expanse of inky black and pale-coloured pinpricks. “Look, look there!”
“Where?”
“Bottom right corner, that little puff of dust? Look, we’ll turn to it any second now—”
And then the nothing is replaced by a cradle of dust and gas and oh, but it’s so beautiful it makes her heart ache.
“Wow,” she breathes.
“Isn’t it gorgeous?”
She turns to him, and she can’t look away. The nebula is nothing compared to the unfettered joy in his eyes, and who was she to try to keep him? He’s a wanderer, her Doctor. The lonely vagabond.
You’re losing him, hums the TARDIS, and no—he is already lost.
Impulsively, she grabs his hand. He jerks in surprise, then slides closer, curling down to rest his head on her shoulder.
“Donna,” he rasps.
She pulls her gaze back to the stars beyond the door. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry.”
She doesn’t reply. The time isn’t right, she thinks. Space isn’t the final frontier—no, the Doctor is, and his secrets lie forever out of reach.
I’ve lost you, she thinks.
“You haven’t,” the Doctor whispers. “I’m still here.”
She startles; she hadn’t realised she’d said it aloud.
“I…” The Doctor exhales, turns his face against her shirt. “I want to go home.”
The TARDIS doors close. The whooping whir resumes. The Doctor stays pressed against her, clinging to her like she’ll phase away if he lets go.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, over and over, until the words are shaking as hard as his body and Donna can feel his tears through her shirt. “Donna, I’m so sorry, I couldn’t, I wanted, I never wanted, I didn’t want, I hurt you, I didn’t mean to hurt you, Donna, I’m sorry”—he breaks off as the TARDIS lands with a home-coming thud—“and you, and I—”
She runs her fingers through his hair, and he all but melts under the touch.
“Doctor,” she murmurs, “the TARDIS took you home.”
He jerks up at this, eyes blown wide. “She what?!”
Donna nods at the door, and the Doctor’s mouth pinches.
“I…” He turns to her, fingers laced through hers, and at the sight of her, his grimace relaxes into a smile. “I think we are home.”
They stand together in an applause of creaking joints and shuffle to the door. The Doctor reaches out a trembling hand and gently pushes it open, and Donna releases a slow exhale—she is home, this is home, this is her own backyard.
You’re not losing him, hums the TARDIS beneath her feet, and she braces herself against the doorframe, dizzy with relief, before glancing back at the Doctor.
His face is carefully blank, eyes unreadable.
"You'll be okay?" Donna asks, each word scraping up her throat.
And he hesitates, fingers curling against the wood of the TARDIS door before he steps onto the backyard’s grass and turns to her. "Yeah," he says, and he smiles again, small and soft. "I'll be okay."