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Fresh air was what the Doctor needed, according to everyone in the Noble-Temple-Mott household at least. Despite his reservations, and he had several, the Doctor had yielded to these pearls of wisdom and, just half an hour later, he and Donna were walking through the gardens of Chiswick Hall.
It was mid December, and for the first time in a week it wasn’t raining. Puddles still lay in patches on the gravel paths and the neatly kept lawns were miniature swamps, populated by muddy dogs and toddlers dressed head to toe in colourful plastic. Donna smiled at an exasperated father as he sacrificed his posh trainers to rescue his preschooler who lay, star-shaped, in the boggy mess, making mud angels.
“Rose did that.” Donna told the Doctor with a laugh. “Then the mud soaked right through to her pants and she cried all the way home, poor kid.”
When the Doctor didn’t reply, she turned, and realised he had fallen behind. Donna frowned and wondered if the walk had been such a good idea after all. Waiting for him to catch up, Donna took a long look at the Time Lord. It was the first time he had left the house since in weeks. Exhaustion made him sleep. Sleep brought only nightmares, and the exhaustion deepened. She had thought a little exercise might help, but as he put one foot in front of the other, Donna could feel the effort behind every step. She pulled a face, annoyed that she had only noticed this now, and frustrated that the Doctor had said nothing.
“Are you alright there, spaceman?”
The Doctor, who had been entirely focused on the path and the placement of his feet, looked up sharply. Around him, the world tilted and swam. Resisting the temptation to screw shut his eyes, the Doctor searched for a distraction and found only wet topiary and muddy grass.
The truth was, he felt about as far from alright as he could get and still stand. Ten minutes into the walk, his legs had begun their slow transformation into concrete and the soles of his trainers barely scraped above the gravel as he pressed on. Solid ground, tarmac, pavements, felt like wading through thigh deep water and the gravel path slid away and his shoes. It was like walking on a pebble beach with the waves sucking the stones from beneath him.
“I’m fine.”
The Doctor wondered why the truth was so difficult to acknowledge and avoided the look on Donna’s face that declared her utter disbelief.
“Just tired,” he added, as if this tiny admission would satisfy her incredulity.
It didn’t, but she linked her arm through his and walked on at his pace, scanning the garden for a sheltered bench where they could rest. There was no weight in his arm as they crawled along, but every few steps his muscles tensed and Donna found herself the counterweight to the Doctor’s unbalanced shuffle. She wanted to reach an arm around him and pull him to her side, but she held back, determined not to push despite her mounting concern.
A woman on a nearby bench watched their slow staggered path towards her and gave the Doctor a dirty look as he rolled a little away from Donna, her arm pulling him back to the path. Donna saw the look and scowled contemptuously, making the onlooker shrivel and gather her shopping bags.
The Doctor, oblivious to the nonverbal exchange, focused his efforts on remaining upright. Every muscle ached in exhaustion. He knew this wasn’t right. This wasn’t him and there was no reason for his body to feel this way; and no amount of mental discipline could shut off the agony. He ground to a halt a few steps for the bench and wavered unsteadily.
Donna withdrew her glare from the woman and turned her gaze back to the Doctor. He had turned white, and she recognised the lines of masked pain as his jaw set tight. As he swayed away from her and towards a low water feature, she felt his other hand grasping for support and she grabbed it.
Fall averted, the Doctor squeezed shut his eyes and held on. On the grass behind them, a dog barked roughly, their owner shouting at them to be quiet. Three children giggled and squealed as they splashed in a puddle, the sound of their shrill voices cutting into the Doctor’s soul. On the other side of the pond, two teens revved the petrol engine of their remote control car, each acceleration generating a cloud of fumes that drifted across the water, the taste of it in hanging in the air, thick, putrid and suffocating. It was all too intense. Too much.
The woman from the bench pushed past them, deliberately walking too close, hitting the Doctor in the knee with a heavy bag.
“Shame on you!” she hissed at him. “Bloody druggies and piss heads. You’re ruining this place.”
The Doctor recoiled but fury burned in Donna. It straightened her spine, pulled her to her full height, and she opened her mouth, biting retort a breath away.
“Leave it,” the Doctor growled.
His fingers dug a little into Donna’s arm and her attention returned to the Doctor and the now vacant bench.
“Come on,” she said. “Just a few more steps.”
When he didn’t move, Donna turned to face him without letting go of his hand.
“Doctor?”
The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, wanting to reassure his friend with some easy line about bi-regeneration, but his tongue felt thick and heavy with the lie.
“I can’t move.”
Donna blinked at him, not understanding. And then she saw the fear rising in the Doctor’s dark glassy stare and she squeezed his hand.
“Sure you can,” she said with authority. “Come on, we’ve got this.”
Donna led with her right foot, but the Doctor didn’t follow and wobbled precariously as she stepped away.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked, stepping back to his side.
“I really can’t move,” he said, panic clipping his quiet words.
Donna flinched, remembering the days after they’d left the diamond planet of Midnight and glimpsing that same fear in his eyes now. Out of old habit, she scanned the area for signs of alien interference, but the garden’s visible occupants all looked typically human. She looked back to the immobile Doctor.
“What do you mean, you can’t move?”
“I mean, I can’t move,” he hissed.
Donna heard the frustration in his tone. She gripped his hand tighter and felt his fingers respond. She ran her eyes up and down him, noting the tremble of his limbs, the short, shallow breaths and the way his eyes stared straight ahead, gaze fixed.
“Okay,“ she said calmly, Well, you aren’t going to fall. I’ve got you."
Donna’s arm snaked around his back, her hand resting on his ribs. The Doctor inhaled sharply, breathing in the dirty air, petrol fumes, and the lingering perfume that hung around long after the rude woman’s departure. His breath caught, and he choked on the artificial fragrance. This really wasn’t him. The Doctor looked back on himself, aware he wasn’t totally in control of his own body, and reeled at the disconnect between himself and reality.
As the Doctor swayed again, Donna used the momentum to lumber forward, afraid he would fall if they didn’t move soon. The Doctor’s leaden legs stumbled two steps and with a gargantuan effort from Donna, the pair landed on the bench with a heavy thud. A passing dog walker gave them both a long look and crossed to the opposite side of the path, giving the dog’s leash an urgent yank to hurry them along. The dog’s hackles rose, and so did Donna’s, but she looked away haughtily and focused on the Doctor.
He sat as he had landed, bum on the front bars of the bench, legs outstretched, shoulders against the uppermost rung at the back. Blinking failed to clear the fuzzy edges of his vision and the tilt of the world felt more pronounced. He wanted to close his eyes, hang his head and disappear into the muddy earth, but he dared not move. His stomach knotted on its solely liquid contents.
Desperately unsure of herself, Donna squeezed his icy hand, feeling the cold sweat on his skin. A pernicious nagging instinct told her with the sense that the Doctor was slipping away, and that she wasn’t equipped to help him. Words rattled through her brain, platitudes, reassurances, angry little fears that wanted to yell and scream for him to stop this. Donna pursed her lips and schooled her voice into a calm, sensitive tone.
“You’re going to have to help me out here,” she said softly. “I need to know what’s going on with you.”
The Doctor blinked, her words not registering.
“Doctor?”
“I’m alright.”
He hadn’t meant to start with a lie, but the words were hard-wired in his brain, thousands of years of bravado, heroics and pigheadedness producing the phrase without conscious thought. He felt Donna’s stare and shame burned through him. Now he was sitting still, he could feel the turn of the earth and it did not agree with the images his eyes were sending his brain. He needed more air than his shallow breaths provided, needed to move, yet somehow he couldn’t do either.
“I’ll be fine.”
That wasn’t a lie. He would be fine in a minute. As soon as he figured out what, exactly, was wrong. But it wasn’t what he wanted to say either. The words he tried to form got stuck in his throat. His jaw clamped in frustration. He pushed against the swing of the earth and the spinning trees to look at her, eyes wide, searching, trying to communicate everything in one held stare.
Donna reached up and wiped away a tear with her thumb, holding his chin in her hand.
“What is it that makes it so hard for you to talk to me?”
He shrugged and, as his shoulders lifted from the bench, the tension in his legs pushed him back in his seat. The slight jolt made the world swim.
“I know you’re trying.” Donna continued in his silence. “I can tell you’re trying.”
The Doctor remained silent. His stare fixed on a leafless bush, all stork and twiggy branches, and willed it to stop moving.
“Can you look at me?” she asked.
His head turned to her in slow increments, like an android on TV, neck twisting in little rigid movements. He watched himself moving, still on the outside of his own being, separated from the moment by a half second. Donna’s face kept sliding to the left and jumping back again as he forced his brain to obey.
Donna made a valiant attempt at a smile and nodded encouragingly, making the Doctor queasy as the motion mingled with his distorted vision.
“Don’t do that,” he said, his voice urgent and serious.
“Do what?”
“Move,” he replied, the word sounded tight, strained.
She looked at him with a concerned and puzzled expression, but did as he asked.
“Why?”
The Doctor’s dark eyes held her gaze. His struggle to articulate was visible, lips parting and closing in silence, throat bobbing as he swallowed.
“Because the world won’t stop turning.”
It wasn’t a good explanation, but it was at least accurate and the truth. He watched Donna’s brow crease in greater confusion and then clear a little as she began to translate what he’d meant.
“You’re being literal, yeah?”
Donna thought she detected the slightest nod.
“You’re dizzy?”
No response.
“Well, you’re not drunk,” she mused, mentally going through a list of possibilities. “Panic attack? Umm... Poisoned? It’s a Time Lord thing and there’s something wrong with the Earth?”
The Doctor’s stare didn’t seem to agree with any of these.
“This is as bad as flaming charades,” Donna complained. “Worse, in fact, because at least then I had clues!”
Exasperation filled the Doctor’s expression, and Donna apologised.
“Distracted?” Donna tried again.
“Dissociated,” the word took effort and snapped from between gritted teeth.
“Oh,” said Donna, automatically pulling back slightly at the hissed frustration. “Well, I was right with the D’s.”
“Poison isn’t a ‘D’!” The Doctor retorted, surprised by the words that would, and wouldn’t, be spoken voluntarily.
“Whatever,” she said.
Donna pretended to sulk for a moment, but remembered not to move, keeping her head and torso still as she reached for his hand.
“It’s okay, just keep looking at me. Hold my hand. It’ll pass in a bit.”
He felt for her hand and relaxed a little as her thumb rubbed across his knuckles, her palm wrapped around his icy fingers.
“Nothing is quite real.”
“I know,” she said.
The Doctor’s eyes flinched, his focus deepened. Donna knew? Of course she knew. And whose fault was that? He felt his hearts fragmenting, old fractures tearing apart.
Donna glared at him, reading the guilt and sorrow on his face in an instant. She was far too familiar with that expression on his features.
“You are not the sole cause of the dramas in my life,” she said flatly. “So don’t go blaming yourself.”
She could see the question on his lips and interrupted it.
“It doesn’t matter. What happened to me thirty-odd years ago isn’t important right now.”
“Why not?”
Donna sighed.
“Because, if you really want to know, I can tell you later, in detail, using actual words, not via the power of guesswork and monosyllabic responses.”
The Doctor looked taken aback.
“Fair point,” he said.
Donna raised an eyebrow.
“Was that a joke?”
“Could be.”
The Doctor’s lips twisted at the corners, forming a very thin, very tired, smile. He blinked cautiously. Donna’s distraction had drawn him back into himself. The spinning and tilt of the world had, almost, corrected themselves and the nausea eased, leaving his body aching and exhausted from the effort.
Donna saw the Doctor look away and shifted to sit beside him, close enough for him to lean against her shoulder if he chose. She felt his slow movements, as though he was fighting gravity, and was glad when his shoulder nudged into hers, the familiarity of the gesture a reassurance to them both.
“I really do want to understand,” said Donna.
Her hand rubbed his arm, a tight little grip that told him everything really was going to be alright.
“Understand what?”
She grinned at him.
“Look at you, that’s three whole syllables.”
He gave her a look and nudged her gently.
“Understand what?” he said again.
“Why it’s so difficult for you to talk to me? To anyone. You’re the brainiest person I’ve ever met, you’ve got all these clever words and I have actually seen you talk the hind legs off an entire herd of donkeys. And I know I could make you tell me, sit you down, take the Tardis key and tell you we aren’t leaving until we’ve talked... but I don’t want to do that to you. I just want to understand why, when it comes to talking about you, your life, your feelings... it’s like you don’t have the words.”
“I don’t,” said the Doctor.
He closed his eyes, frowned, and rubbed the ridges between his eyes. With a sigh, he opened them again, and stared off into the distance, avoiding Donna’s eyes.
“I don’t have the words,” he said, his voice quiet and distant. “There’s so much I want to share with you. And I can’t, I just can’t.”
His voice hitched, and he sucked in a short, deep breath, sniffing and wrinkling his nose, turning to conceal his expression from Donna. There was, he thought, no reason to make a scene. Passers-by were still giving him dubious looks.
“I get it, sort of,” Donna said. “I want to tell you everything about the last 15 years. The good stuff, the silly things, the struggle. I want to share that with you.”
She paused and tugged at a stray thread on her cuff. Swallowing the nervous lump in her throat, she raised her head and looked to the Doctor who had turned back to face her. Picking her words carefully, she reached for his hand again.
“And then I worry that the truth will hurt. Because those first years after I came home... they were hard. Really hard. And then came Rose, motherhood, school bullies, gender clinics, lost jobs, recurring guilt over the lottery money... Even if I could pick a place to start, I’m not sure I should.”
The Doctor’s hand tightened around hers.
“I already know my truth will hurt you,” he said, his voice pained.
“How?”
He glanced at her with pursed his lips.
“The other Donna. The Not thing. She told me.”
“Maybe she was lying,” Donna suggested.
“She wasn’t.”
The conviction in the Doctor’s voice made Donna pause.
“So that means we are going to sit here and not talk to each other for the rest of our lives, does it?” she asked.
The Doctor looked at her and let out an exasperated sigh. Why did Donna have to make such good points?
“I didn’t think so,” she said and gave him a nudge with her shoulder. “I reckon I can handle it. She did, the Not Thing.”
This, the Doctor realised, was another good point and his face twisted with reluctance.
“It’s not that easy,” he said, looking away again.
Donna shrugged and shook her head. It wasn’t that easy, and she knew it.
“No,” she agreed quietly. “Nothing worthwhile ever is.”
That made him hesitate. The Doctor looked across the gardens to a family walking along with an old-fashioned pram; the parents arm in arm, beaming at their precious passenger.
“I had a family before,” he said with such a soft voice Donna had to strain to hear. “I’ve had... families... before. And I’ve lost them all.”
Donna leant against him, letting her head rest against his. She rubbed his knuckles with her thumb.
“Did you and River...?” she let the question hang incomplete, but her gaze had followed his to the young family.
“No,” he said, and there was a hint of regret in his voice. “But River was... River was a child of the TARDIS.”
Donna frowned with confusion and turned a little to look at him. The Doctor was still staring into the distance, lost in the past. His mouth opened, and he hesitated again, clearly aware of Donna’s bafflement, and struggled to continue. There was nothing complicated about the words, but saying them was so difficult, and the Doctor found himself talking in code around the subject, unable to say four simple words.
“River was... the name her parents gave her was… Melody Pond.”
Pond. Donna had heard that name before, part of the Toymaker’s puppet show.
Amy Pond. Oh, how the Doctor loved Amy Pond.
Donna’s jaw dropped. When the Doctor had said he’d had a family, she had thought of the family he had lost on Gallifrey, of the granddaughter he had told of after they had lost Jenny. But if River was Melody Pond, then Amy Pond wasn’t just his friend.
“Amy was River’s mum,” she said softly.
The Doctor nodded.
“And her dad?” Donna asked.
“Rory. Rory Williams,” he said, a tear slipping down his cheek as he closed his eyes. “We travelled together. All of us.”
“You travelled with a baby? Talk about domestic!” Donna ribbed him gently.
“She wasn’t a baby.”
The smile forming on Donna’s lips hesitated, and dread knotted her stomach.
“River was an adult?”
“Amy was pregnant when she was taken. We got her back, but... not Melody.”
Donna let out the breath she had been holding and squeezed his hand. She imagined losing Rose, the hole it would leave in her, the heartbreak, the utter bleakness, and felt the sting of hot tears.
“But you found her, eventually,” Donna said, because she couldn’t bear to turn it into a question.
And the Doctor nodded, because he couldn’t bring himself to tell her the rest. Not yet anyway.
“Eventually,” he said.
Donna puffed out her cheeks and shook her head, still confused. She felt his shoulder drop a little as he leaned against her side and she slipped her arm around him. It really was just like the old days. The Doctor and Donna, together, not quite talking about the things that troubled them. She looked around the gardens, at the grey paths and the darkening sky. It was going to rain.
“Blimey,” she said in a lighter tone. “You travelled with your wife and your parents-in-law? Bonkers, you are.”
He laughed and rubbed his face with both hands, feeling the stubble on his chin and wiping the wetness from his face.
“Yeah,” he agreed and slipped his arm around her. “I agreed to stay with you, your husband, your daughter, and Sylvia. I must be completely barking.”
“Come on,” said Donna, giving him a shove. “Let’s get home before we add hypothermia to your troubles. Shaun will be here in a minute.”
The Doctor frowned and looked down the path to the big metal gates where a black cab was pulling up. He looked at Donna and watched a grin form on her face.
“What?” she said and took her phone from her jacket pocket. “You’re not the only one with talent, Time Boy.”
“Talent?” he asked curiously.
“Yeah,” she said, standing and offering the Doctor her hand. “I can text in my pocket. Donna Noble, stealth texter extraordinaire.”
“That’s a talent, I suppose,” the Doctor agreed, with an unconvinced expression.
He took Donna’s hand, and she hauled him back to his feet. Linking arms, they began a slow walk to Shaun and the waiting transport home.