Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s Just A Burning Memory

The Doctor supposed he should have been thinking of Rose, still. He had lost her again, no more than two minutes ago, and after looking for her for so long, too, in everything if not Space or Time.

But the truth was, Rose would eventually be happy; sure, the girl was conflicted. Who wouldn’t be? The man he had left her to deal with both was and wasn’t him. He was also half-Donna, who was pretty much a stranger to her. And if that hadn’t been enough, he had an anger in him the likes of which Rose had worked very hard on taming in her first Doctor. The one she’d had to challenge, and who had challenged her patience in return, every second of every day they had been together.

But she had done it before, and the Doctor knew she would do it again. Rose Tyler didn’t give up.

And so, he did not think of her; he had stopped the moment the TARDIS had left Pete’s World and Donna, his best friend in the Universe and now the only being who would ever know everything he knew, had started babbling nonsense and adventure in an effort to distract him from the pain of saying farewell to Rose – and herself, maybe, from the inevitability of the conversation they were about to have.

What Donna didn’t seem to get, though, and it was a strange thing considering that, well, she could see his thoughts, was that thinking of Rose actually was the distraction. Because the moment he’d stopped, Donna was standing there, pressing buttons, speaking at a hundred miles per hour and smiling, and she was beautiful and brilliant; and it was all about to come to an end.

O how he wished he had trained himself better to accept fatality on things that didn’t hurt quite as much as she did, with those earth-blue eyes and flaming hair, and that brilliant laugh he would never get to hear again...

He had been arrogant. Thought he could have it all. That he could do anything. That the Universe owed it to him, even.

But there was the truth: the Universe never owed a thing to no one, and the Doctor was nothing. And today was a most cruel reminder.

“I wanna stay.”

“Look at me.”

She didn’t; just kept fiddling with the console, ignoring him. But he knew that trick, he had invented that trick. He could see her irises dart left and right, struggling not to stray from the buttons and the levers. She wanted so badly to look at him because she knew it would be the last time, whatever happened. But she was absolutely terrified.

“Donna,” he said firmly. “Look at me.”

She raised her head, trembling all over, and her wide blue eyes looked straight through him. He searched them for a moment, begging silently. Time moved slowly until their eyes finally met, the moment hers filled with life again almost palpable. “I was gonna be with you... Forever.”

“I know.”

“Rest of my life. Travelling, in the TARDIS. The DoctorDonna.”

There was a pause and they just stared at each other, a silent conversation, which the Doctor thought would end with them agreeing that what he was about to do was the best option. Not even the best, but the only option.

“No.”

He froze, dread pooling like vodka in the pit of his stomach, warm and nauseating.

“What do you mean, ‘No’?”

“I mean, no.”

He stared at her in bewilderment. No? She thought she could just say no?

“But- Donna… We don’t have a choice!” he cried.

“Oh, you don’t. But I do.”

He would have wanted her to look mad, or delusional, perhaps. A little slip, maybe. He would have forgiven a slip. After all, her brain was actively self-destructing, right now.

But it was nothing of the sort. She was calm, ominously so. No smile, no more tears. She had stopped shaking, too. She seemed wise like never before. And that, perhaps, terrified the Doctor the most.

“Don’t do this to me. Please don’t do this to me.”

Begging most likely wouldn’t help, but hell, she mattered more than his dignity; if he thought kneeling to her and imploring could save her, then he would break his knees and break his back and do so without a flinch nor blink.

But she had recoiled to the other side of the console and when he tried to approach her, she stepped further back, towards one of the corridors.

“What are you gonna do?” she asked. “Chase me? This place isn’t just bigger on the inside, it’s infinite, I understand it now. You won’t reach me in time."

“Donna,” he pleaded, gripping the console panel as he made his way around it. But Donna stepped further out of reach. “I’m begging you, come to me. Please, just come to me…”

“Also, we both know me running around will only accelerate the blood flow to my brain, hasten my death and reduce the number of minutes – what am I saying, seconds you get to spend trying to convince me to change my decision, which, by the way, I won’t. So stop wasting my time, I don’t have much of it left.”

She was speaking fast, so fast. He needed to find a loophole, now. She really didn’t have much time left.

What he did next was petty, and he wasn’t very proud of it, but then again she was trying to get him to let her die; what could possibly be any more petty than that?

“What about Wilfred?” he asked, giving her the saddest puppy look he could muster, which wasn’t very hard since he was on the verge of breaking down. “What would I tell your gramps, Donna?”

For a moment there, he saw it in her eyes – that flicker of guilt. Hope. She was considering. But then, just as fast as it had appeared, it vanished. Or, rather, got pushed behind that unbreakable determination. “He’ll understand,” she nodded. The tears were back, but there weren’t enough. “He’s good at understanding…”

She had used the future tense. In her mind’s eye, it was bound to happen, and that was it. There was no convincing her, was there? She was just going to wait it out, and he was supposed to accept that? And, more importantly, he was supposed to be able to explain that to Wilf’? How could she do that?

The warm feeling in the Doctor’s stomach turned into white-hot fury, and it spread, like a virus. It spread until all he felt was anger, and he tried not to think too much about how this was one of the five stages of grief.

He wasn’t grieving, how could he be? She was still here, right in front of him!

Denial.

“Get over here, Donna,” he said through gritted teeth.

“No.”

“I said get over here!”

“And I said no!”

“GET OVER HERE, NOW.”

She jolted in surprise, and so did he. He had yelled at her. He had yelled at Donna.

Stupid, stupid idiot!

Then and there, he really felt like hurting himself. His best friend in the world was dying and he was making it about his feelings. This was the moment he had chosen to be selfish, to deny Donna her rightful choice. But it didn’t matter any more.

It was already too late.

She must have felt the itchy warmth of the trickle. Her hand slowly went up to her nose and her fingers came out bloody. She scoffed. “All this fuss, and for what?” she said. Then she saw how upset he was, with his big brown eyes like a deer caught in headlights. Except she was the one caught in the headlights, and all the Doctor could do was watch. Her eyes filled with tears. “Look…” she sighed. “I’m sorry. I just can’t go back to who I was before.”

He glared at her. “Who you were before is the same as who you are now. You always had the potential for more, Donna. You just needed to learn how to see it.”

“Oh yeah?” she narrowed her eyes at him. “And who was gonna help me do that after you were gone, dumbo? Hm? My mum?”

This time, the Doctor stayed quiet. Donna’s eyelids were already drooping. “Can we just… stop fighting? I’m really tired…”

She swayed, and he caught her just in time to lower her to the ground, gently. She was shaking a little.

“Spaceman?”

Her voice was small, just like during their sleepovers when she was desperately trying to stay awake and finish one of their conversations. He wrapped his long brown coat around her shoulders to keep her warm. For once, he didn’t know what to say.

“I’m sorry…”

That was her voice again. Her little, guilty voice. Quite the endearing fusion between the one she used to keep him grounded sometimes, to mother him, of sorts, and the one he'd sometimes picture her using as a child to get out of situations. He imagined it would have worked quite well on her dad. And her gramps, but that was a given. Now, it was working on him. His cheek found her cold forehead and he shook his head. “Shut up…” he said quietly.

“Oi… You’re not telling me to shut up…”

“No, you’re right,” he smiled. “Never.”

Together they giggled like idiots, but he felt her body tense against him. For a moment, she went rigid, and he pulled back to look at her. Her eyes were shut tightly, her face contorted in pain. When she was finally able to move again, she clutched his suit tightly, letting out a desperate wail. She gasped several times, and after a minute, she choked out a sob.

He cupped her face. “What do I do, Donna? Just tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it, alright?”

Finally, she opened her eyes again. “There’s nothing you can do…” she said. That seizure had strained her voice, and probably other things, too.

He hesitated for a moment, but he had to at least give her an option; he owed her that much.

“I can end this. I can end this right now, you just have to ask. Okay? Just ask and I’ll end this, you won’t feel a thing…”

This was the hardest thing he had ever said. Nine-hundred-and-four years of life, and he had never been less sure of anything.

“I would,” she scoffed. “But I’m not done talking.”

There was silence for a moment, and he felt her heartbeat increase to a worrisome pace.

“Donna..?”

Her lips trembled; she took a noisy breath.

“I can’t feel my legs, Doctor.”

The terror in her voice was his last straw. He felt the heat pool into his eyes, and the tears started to trickle down his face. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

“Don’t, please…” she shook her head. “None of this is your fault.”

“It is, all of it.”

“No,” she said firmly. “Don’t do that, there’ll be time to be sad later. I’m not dead yet.”

He nodded, mouthing a small “Okay”, his eyes shut tightly.

“And even then,” she said. “Don’t blame yourself. There are worse ways of dying than in your best friend’s arms.”

“You think?” he asked pitifully.

“I don’t just think, I know. My grandmother…”

“Eileen?”

“Yup, that’s the one. She died in a hospital a few years back. She was alone when it happened, because of me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’d broken my leg at work. Mum and Dad were working but I needed someone to come pick me up. Gramps was with her but when he heard what happened, he jumped into his car and rushed to my aid. Grams died that evening. They didn’t get to say goodbye.”

“Donna, that’s not your fault…”

“Exactly,” she nodded with a smile. “It was totally out of my control, I mean… I didn’t break my leg for fun.”

He realised what she was getting at, and his grip tightened around her shoulders. “Donna Noble, you sly little thing…”

She looked into his eyes. “It’s not your fault, either,” she said. “I’m an adult, I make my own choices. I chose to travel with you, alright? Don’t take all the credit, I literally threw my suitcases in your face.”

The Doctor smiled as the memories came rushing back. “The hatbox.”

Donna chuckled. “The hatbox.”

Then, she remembered something important. “We never broke our number one rule, did we?”

“No mating, just mates?”

“Yeah, that one,” Donna said.

“Well…” the Doctor pretended to think. “There was a kiss… In front of Agatha Christie, no less! Mind-blowing kiss, if I say so myself.”

Donna snorted so hard she almost choked. “Stop it! It doesn’t even count, your mouth was covered in filth, it was disgusting.”

“You wound me! But come on, I’m not that bad a kisser?”

“Stop being an idiot, it’s important.”

The Doctor pressed his chin on top of her head. “Go on then.”

“As I was saying,” Donna sighed, “We never broke our rule. Though I might be about to dent it a bit.”

“What did you come up with this time?” he laughed. And it felt good to have a laugh with his best friend, until he realised that ‘this time’ was the last. Then, he lost his smile.

“Will you just shut up and listen for once?” she said.

“Alright, alright, go on.”

“Thank you. Alright, okay, so… I know I spent a lot of this year making fun of you, and sometimes, maybe you feel like I was only here because of what you could give me, and not because of you as a person…”

Never. It had never even crossed his mind, but he didn’t say. She wasn’t finished.

“I think you need to know how much I love you,” she said bluntly.

He nodded again into her hair.

“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had… And even though I’m really, really scared right now, just know that nothing in the Universe makes me happier than to see this face of yours. It took me dying to understand that, but I didn’t need a boyfriend or a husband… You’re the love of my life, in a way. I don’t need to kiss you or- or mate with you to know that…” she chuckled.

And he smiled softly, his nose buried into her hair. Pretending to sniffle, he inhaled her scent.

“And I don’t need to tell you that I love you for you to know that I do, right?” he asked.

“Don’t worry, Spaceman,” she scoffed. “They say actions speak louder than words… Yours covered a thousand of those conversations.”

“Okay,” he whispered and closed his eyes.

She shivered against him. He hugged her even tighter. “If that’s what it feels like every time you regenerate, then I’m glad I only have to do it once,” she said.

“It’s not,” he lied.

“Oi… I’m in your head, remember?” she said. “You can't lie to me like that.”

She was getting weaker, and there wasn’t much time left. He wanted to tell her that what he was feeling, that terrible pain, the fear of losing her, was worse than a hundred of his most painful regeneration. But she didn’t need to know that. She was in his head, she knew how much he cared. And the thought made him feel a bit sick for her.

“D’you think he’ll find her?” she asked.

“Mhm?”

“The other you that’s half of me,” she clarified. “You think he’ll find the other Donna, in that parallel world?”

He hadn’t had any time to think about it, but as he did, the idea of some other version of him getting to spend one lifetime – no, the rest of his life, actually, with another version of Donna, made him feel some peace… and quite a bit of jealousy, too. But that was never important.

“Is it selfish of me to hope they’ll find each other?”

“No,” Donna murmured. “I hope so, too.”

They waited, for a while, not knowing what else to say but not really needing to, either. Then, Donna started to hum. She had such a pretty voice. The Doctor listened: it sounded like Little Talks, by Of Monsters and Men; well, in their case, just a monster and a woman. They’d heard that song for the first time a few months back, at the supermarket. Without really thinking, Donna’d said to him that the lyrics reminded her of them a bit. That night, as they were making dinner in the TARDIS’ Galley, the Doctor had turned on the radio, and there it was again, that same song, blasting through the speakers.

This song reminded Donna of the principles of their relationship: two people finding solace from their loneliness in each other. It wasn’t how she’d put it, but the Doctor could read between the lines – sometimes. Though the truth may vary, this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore. He liked the prospect.

Back then, he’d chosen to ignore the ending. You’re gone, gone, gone away; I watched you disappear. All that’s left is the ghost of you. Now we’re torn, torn, torn apart- Why waste time thinking about it? That was the way it always ended, after all.

Without even realising, he’d started singing along. It wasn’t the first time the Doctor found himself copying her, and ended up on the other side of the looking glass. It usually was the other way around, what with his lifestyle. Sentient beings made a suffocating habit of thinking they could rely on him. But Donna had done nothing if to share his burden; it had been pleasant, if ephemeral.

He felt the soft body wriggle in his arms. He lifted his chin out of her hair and saw that she was staring, eyes glassy; her nose was bleeding again. She smiled mockingly.

“You sing like a pot.”

He giggled. “I do a bit.”

“Can you go on without me?” she asked, snuggling into his chest, and he pondered what she'd really meant by that. “I’m too tired…”

“I thought I sang like a pot?” he teased.

“Yeah…” she sighed. “But love is blind. And deaf, too, apparently…”

Donna and the Doctor chuckled softly in the quiet of the TARDIS. The console’s steady and familiar hum rocked their hearts, and Donna’s head fell against her best friend’s chest.

“Go on, Spaceman…” she said.

He could feel it: her heart slowing down, her skin getting colder. The shaking had stopped, as well. Her body was shutting down. He sang some more, and didn’t stop until she was finally limp.

He couldn't bring himself to check for a heartbeat.

He adjusted Donna’s body against his and her head fell back; he felt the weight above her neck suddenly recline over his left arm, and the length of her red hair plunged like a cascade behind her and the tips brushed against the grid.

Now we’re torn, torn, torn apart,

There’s nothing that we can do,

Just let me go, we’ll meet again soon…

One loose hair fell between the squares of metal, right into the heart of the sentient ship. The Doctor would never know, nor that it would stay there, peaceful and shining like a million sunsets, cherished by the old girl, like a pirate and his gold, a mother and her child, an ocean and its oldest creature, navigating its depths undisturbed.

It would stay there, even after. Like a secret, but never forlorn, and never sad.

I Lost Something In The Hills

Do it for Donna, he told himself as he got into the cab with Wilfred, both him and the old man clad in a black suit. He felt like a sour little boy being dragged to school by his parents for picture day, in itchy clothes that didn’t properly fit.

“Saint Mary’s Church, Haven Road, please.”

But that’s not what it was: Donna’s gramps had been nice enough to take his side, and now they were both paying the price.

“You know,” the Doctor said in a small voice not to startle the man. “I could have just gone by TARDIS. You didn’t need to do this for me.”

Wilfred was looking out the window, his chin in his hand. He had been awfully quiet all morning. Usually so bright and talkative around the Doctor, now he just stared blankly at the passing cars and houses, refusing – or unable – to connect with reality.

It took him all of twenty-three seconds to realise he had been spoken to, and he jolted slightly, turning his head until his big blue eyes met the Doctor’s sombre ones. He gave the alien a tight-lipped smile and a gentle pat on the knee.

“Seriously,” the Doctor said gravely. “You should be with your daughter, right now. She needs you, on a day like this… Really, I already owe you for convincing Sylvia to let me come. She’s still home, isn’t she? There’s still time if you want to turn around, catch her before she leaves?”

He was babbling. He couldn’t think of a time when he had been any more uncomfortable than today, right now, in this cab. He had been angry, he had been sad, he had been frustrated. But right now, he was ashamed.

But Wilfred simply smiled, as he always did, his unwavering compassion making the Doctor’s stomach churn.

“I shan’t,” the old man said. “Sylvia made her choice, eh? Well I’ve made mine: if she doesn’t want you in the car, then I don’t want to be in the car.”

To be honest, he was glad that Sylvia had said no. That blue car still smelled like Donna – orange blossom and coconut oil –, and frankly, he didn’t know that he was ready for it to haunt his nostrils again, at least not now. Not today.

Wilfred probably couldn’t smell it, what with his human nose, or his history as a former smoker. And it made the Doctor very sad.

He felt as though his Adam’s apple had grown to a constricting size, Wilfred’s eyes boring into his, looking for something, anything, that would explain why they had to be in this cab today, heading where they were headed, without the woman this day was all about.

And O did Wilfred resent him. Him and every bloody alien in this wretched universe. He was just too nice to say. But if those nine-hundred-and-four years of life had taught the Doctor anything, it was this: the eyes never lie. And right now, Wilfred Mott’s were like the scene of a film with a sad ending played on a loop:

“You gotta promise me you’re gonna take care of her.”

“She takes care of me.”

And she had, hadn’t she? That’s probably what Wilfred was thinking, right now. Maybe the awareness stopped where Donna’s heart had stopped. Maybe he wasn’t even conscious of how much he hated the Doctor.

Or maybe, just maybe did he know about the eyes trick, too, and could see, in the Doctor’s, that the self-loathing surpassed any and every feeling Wilfred had ever experienced in his entire life, and he merely pitied him. That was always a possibility.

The cab pulled up at the end of the street where the church was, and his train of thought was cut short – yeah, right, like that was ever a thing –. Wilfred insisted on paying, and the Doctor’s unease reached a near-breaking point.

It didn’t take long for Sylvia to arrive after that. She wasn’t crying when she did, but her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. Her nose was raw, the skin flaking off from blowing it so hard. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and her eyes looked smaller than they usually did. They were extinct.

The anger that filled them again when her eyes landed on the Doctor felt forced. It was okay, the Doctor thought. She had a lot of other, more important things to direct her attention to, didn’t she?

Wilfred didn’t partake in the viewing. He said he didn’t want to remember Donna like this. A sentiment the Doctor couldn’t grasp: he remembered everything. Every moment with the feisty redhead. From the day she had appeared on his ship till the night of her death. All that came in between. The trips, the sleepovers, the quiet moments spent reading together in the TARDIS library – which were never really quiet since the two best friends didn’t know how to shut up –, everything.

Would one moment, one image tarnish, or even just change any of that? No. Certainly not. Therefore, he walked down the aisle – the same one Donna had taken right before being transported onto his ship and shouting at him for the rest of the day, right into the evening.

Now people were crying in front of her open coffin. People he didn’t know.

The Doctor looked over at the picture of Donna her mother had chosen for the service. It was old, didn’t quite look like her any more. His Donna was more mature, the structure of her face more defined, her eyes less innocent. That picture must have been more than five years old. She hadn’t met him back then.

The people in front of the coffin finally left, and the Doctor heard something, over his shoulder, that made him raise an eyebrow:

“She looks like she’s just sleeping…”

He frankly didn’t get why people at funerals always said that. Mainly because it was almost never true. He glanced down at Donna’s prone form: she certainly didn’t look like she was asleep. And he knew what he was talking about, he had seen her fall asleep plenty! Movie nights, quiet evenings in their library. So many of them.

Donna didn’t look like she was asleep, she looked dead. She didn’t have that little frown or that little pout and, more importantly, she wasn’t breathing. Her complexion was off, not warm enough. They hadn’t gotten the blush quite right. And as for the shade of her lip gloss, she would never wear that colour.

Would never have worn that colour.

She certainly wasn’t asleep. Her chest was so still. He could already see the first signs of decay on her skin. She had been sprayed with some perfume that wasn’t her own.

Good, he thought. Because this wasn’t his Donna.

Only her hair remained the same, the only tangible proof that this really was Donna’s body and not some plastic replica made by the Nestene Consciousness, or something of the like. Donna was the only being with this exact shade of orange in the entire Universe and it was engraved in the indestructible hard drive of the Doctor’s immortal mind.

He sniffed. “Hey Donna.”

A long, curious stare. He hadn't expected her to answer. She was dead, after all. Nevertheless, there was a deliberate gap between his sentences, and maybe, just maybe, Donna's voice echoed back, somewhere in his Time Lord equivalent of a temporal lobe. 

“I don’t know what people are supposed to do at funerals. They say goodbye, right? We did that already, didn’t we?”

A pause.

“Do they give gifts?”

He threw a look around the room, making sure no one was looking. Well, Wilfred was, from his seat at the back, but that didn’t count; that was okay.

He rummaged through his pocket and his fingers closed around his sonic. He stared at it for a minute, rolled it between his digits. “Here,” he said, and he placed it under Donna’s cold hand. He did it so that her forearm was hiding the part that was too long for her small fingers to cover.

“It’s my own. I added a setting for wood,” he smiled down at her. She didn’t smile back, obviously. “That makes you the only Doctor whose sonic screwdriver does wood. That I know of.”

He tilted his head to the side as if to get a better perspective. “So if you ever get bored in there one day, if you want to – I don’t know, pop to the surface to say hello, just press it down. Setting one. Simple.”

And he stared again, wistful. “Sorry I yelled at you for borrowing it this one time. You were right, I was selfish. I guess I’m a bit of a materialist… Screwdriver, TARDIS… Anyway, sorry. It’s yours now, I’ll just make myself a new one.”

He saw blonde hair in his peripheral vision. He turned around: a tall, thin girl in a fitted dress was standing right there, on the left, near the wall. A familiar face. Her dress, as well as being fitted, was a dark blue, just a few shades darker than the one she had worn at Donna's wedding a couple years back. A name popped into his head.

Nerys.

From the day he had met Donna, the Doctor knew about Nerys and her love-hate relationship with the redhead. Friends since childhood, even best friends at one point. They’d stayed connected through their mothers, who, themselves, had been friends for a long time. But Nerys had never really gotten over the bite that Donna had given her on their very first day of school and their relationship had been… rocky, to say the least.

Long story short, Donna basically blamed everything bad and annoying on the blonde girl. Kidnapped by a strange man in a blue box on her wedding day? Must be Nerys. So much so that it had become a game between Donna and the Doctor: couldn’t fall asleep last night? That’s just Nerys. That big alien thing is chasing us to try and kill us? That’s Nerys for you. We’ve landed at the wrong time of the year on a planet where we were supposed to go sunbathing? Nerys again – although, that last one, Donna was more than happy to blame it on the Doctor.

Still, it was all gone now, wasn’t it…

The Doctor realised he had been staring at Nerys. Subtlety had never been his strong suit, and she saw him observing her, and she looked at him, too. For once, she didn’t look bored, or annoyed, or like she would slap Donna’s face if she could. No, she just looked a bit lost. Genuinely lost, not faking anything for attention.

While everyone else was crying as profusely as they could, albeit silently, Nerys was just quiet and frowning, and wistful it would seem, just like him. He was tempted to go see her, but someone behind him cleared their throat politely, and he turned around and a man was standing there. Tall man, around the age Donna was, with brown skin and gentle eyes.

“Hey, mate,” the man smiled shyly. “I’m sorry, am I, um… Am I interrupting?”

The Doctor blinked a few times. There was no malice, no spite in his voice or his eyes, for that matter, and that was a change. He just seemed very sad, very tired. There was something almost… familiar about him. The Doctor smiled; it didn’t reach his eyes, but he did smile.

“No, sorry, go on,” he said as he stepped to the side. “Friend of Donna’s?”

“Yes, kind of… We went to school together,” the man said, and he scratched the back of his head. “I don’t know if she remembers – remembered,” he quickly corrected himself, “but when we were six, I said I’d marry her one day, and she said that yes, I would.”

The man laughed, and it all came back. That smile, those kind eyes, six years old… He was Shaun Temple, of course. Donna had shown him pictures of some of her friends, and among them was a picture of young Donna, with her hair and freckles, all the same. And next to her, there was a little boy, Shaun Temple, her Primary School sweetheart. She’d seemed very fond of Shaun when she’d shown him the picture.

Therefore, when the Doctor smiled again, it did reach his eyes.

“You’re Shaun, Shaun Temple,” he said.

Shaun’s mouth opened in surprise. “Yes, that’s me,” he said. “How’d you know? I don’t reckon I’ve seen you before, and I know most of Donna’s friends…”

“I’m John,” the Doctor said. “I met Donna at her wedding. Then we met again, last year, we travelled together for a while… I took her home and she…”

She died. The words never left his mouth, but Shaun’s face fell, and he nodded.

“I don’t understand how this can happen to someone so young. Or to her, of all people…” Shaun said. “She always seemed fine, so fiery and loud…”

The Doctor looked at his shoes in shame, because he was about to tell a lie. But that was all he could do, really. These people needed closure.

“She’d had chest pains for a few days, before she... well. Must have been the stress of the invasion. I was with her when it happened, she nearly got killed by one of those things, those alien robots,” he said, feigning ignorance. The Daleks weren’t robots, per se, but they kind of were, for someone like the Doctor, or the humans, who both felt everything so deeply when all those monsters knew was hatred. “What did they call them again?” he asked innocently. “The government?”

“I think Daleks, that’s what it said on the News…” Shaun answered distantly.

 The Doctor gave him a nod. “I took her home, she wanted to make sure her gramps and Sylvia were fine. They told her she needed to see a doctor…”

A doctor. O, the irony…

“And did she?” Shaun asked.

“No,” the Doctor said. “We waited too long…”

He looked over at the open coffin, where Donna still lay so still, and he said:

“The pathologist said it happened while she was asleep. Her heart just stopped… It happens. It just does.”

Shaun had been staring at Donna’s body for a while, now, pain etched on his face.

The Doctor wanted to hug him, tell him it was fine, that there hadn’t really been an autopsy. He had made sure of that. He hadn’t wanted anyone to cut open his Donna, especially since it wasn’t necessary. So, he’d hacked into her hospital file, and he’d falsified the records. For her dignity. Unfortunately, Shaun couldn’t know. No one could, except for her mum and her gramps.

“She didn’t suffer, you know?” the Doctor said with a sad smile, and again that was a lie. “We travelled, and she lived, she really, truly lived, she saw so many wonderful things, and then… Then, she fell asleep, and she didn’t wake up. They say it’s the most peaceful way of going…”

Shaun kept looking at Donna for a moment. Then, he stretched out a hand for the Doctor to shake, and the Doctor took it.

“Thank you, John. It’s nice to meet you,” Shaun smiled.

“It’s nice to meet you too, very nice…” the Doctor said. “Donna told me about you. She liked you, Shaun. She liked you a lot…”

Shaun’s eyes watered a bit. He looked at Donna again, then back at the Doctor, and he smiled a heartbroken smile.

“I liked her a lot, too,” he said.

And then he was about to go, but he turned around and, wistfully, he said:

“I really would have married her, you know.”

The Doctor stayed there a moment longer after Shaun had excused himself. Maybe a few minutes, until more people started arriving and he took it as a cue to go and sit in the back. But before he left, he kissed the tips of his fingers and brought them gently against Donna’s cold forehead.

“Goodbye, Donna…”

The rest of the funeral was kind of a blur. It wasn’t that important, really. He wasn’t even sure Donna would have wanted him to attend.

He’d stopped counting the sheer number of people he’d heard crying on the stall that Donna was their best friend… Cause she wasn’t their best friend, she was his. Out of all those people, the Doctor couldn’t recall even one being in those pictures Donna had shown him. Because they weren’t. He’d stolen glances at Nerys and saw that she had a look of disgust on her face as she listened to those girls’ little speeches about how much they were going to miss their best friend Donna. Even Nerys agreed with him.

As the service came to an end, the Doctor prepared to leave and never come back. He stopped in front of Wilfred, who had strayed from his crying daughter so that the Doctor wouldn’t be too intimidated to come and talk to him. Not that Sylvia intimidated him, thought the Time Lord as he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his trousers.  

“Right, I’ll be off, then…” he sighed. “Thank you for inviting me, Wilfred. I’m glad I was here.”

No he wasn’t.

“You’re sure you don’t want to stay for the wake? There’ll be biscuits; I remember you love biscuits.”

He wished he could disappear, right now. He was even surprised he hadn’t just regenerated on the spot from all the shame, and that crippling guilt he was facing.

“I do, I love biscuits, I just…”

Wilfred looked at him expectantly. And that was it, the last straw. The Doctor just couldn’t take it any more.

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

A frown. “Pardon?”

“I’m the reason she died, so why do you keep smiling at me, and being nice, and inviting me to her funeral when we both know, just looking at my face, all you can think of is you’re never gonna see Donna again.”

The old man’s eyes filled with tears and almost immediately after, he broke down in sobs, covering his mouth with a trembling hand. The Doctor stayed still, unsure what to do, what to say, not wanting to say anything, just wishing he had shut his big mouth like he always did when emotions came out to play. When Wilfred’s eyes met his again, they were red and glimmering.

“You want me to blame you for respecting my granddaughter’s last wish?”

“It wouldn’t have been her last wish if I hadn’t.”

Wilfred shook his head. “But it was, see, she would have died anyway,” he said. “Cause you told me, you said she would have forgotten you, and all those wonderful things she did… And if she chose to die instead, it’s because she knew. She wasn’t just going back to her old life, Doctor. She would have always felt it, deep down. That void you’d have left there. You and that blue box, and those alien worlds you saved together.”

“Then blame me for putting her in that spot,” the Doctor said furiously. “It’s my fault she had to make that choice. I took her with me.”

“And if you hadn’t, then the whole Universe would have disappeared, how does that even compare?” Wilfred cried.

“Because it’s Donna!”

That was almost a scream, that thing he dared say and realised too late that he had. It was so selfish, to think that he could have possibly hesitated between Donna and the rest of the Cosmos had it been on the table. But his pain was boundless and his life was so long. Wilfred nodded and hugged him gently, not too tight not to break him, but still tight enough to hold him together.

“I know, son. I know…”

One question still lingered, then. The Doctor pulled back and looked at Wilfred. The old man’s wrinkled hands cupped his face; thumbs brushed the Doctor’s wet cheeks, wiping away the few tears that were getting cold.

“Then what is it?” the Time Lord asked. “If you’re not angry with me, what is this thing in your eyes? That resentment?”

Wilfred shrugged. “It’s guilt,” he said. “I’m not blind, Doctor. I know Donna wasn’t happy. But to think she would rather have died than return to me? I can’t help but think, what if I hadn’t let her mum speak to her like that? What if I stood up to Sylvia more, like I did today on your behalf? It’s my fault, I’m supposed to protect them, they’re my kin.”

The Doctor frowned, deeply wounded. Wilfred was the best of humanity, and to think he resented himself, so deeply, for something that was so out of his control, so not his fault? He couldn’t bear it.

“Me and my wife, Eileen, we were never cruel to Sylvia, not like she was to my little girl. So I keep wondering what we did so wrong, for her to hate herself so much? For her to project it onto poor ole Donna,” Wilfred said. “You know why she hates you so much, my Sylvia?”

The Doctor shook his head.

“It’s because of what you could give to her daughter. How special you made her feel, how important. Donna’s dad, Geoff’, he was a good egg. The best sort. He loved my daughter and his daughter to insanity, he did. But he was so ordinary,” he smiled sadly. “Whereas you, son, you aren’t. Sylvia knows how smart, and kind, and how extraordinary you are. And because Donna’s a part of her and she hates herself so much, she could never understand, what you saw in her that she didn’t see in herself.”

“I keep thinking,” Wilfred added after a long pause and a sniffle, “if I had been listening, then things would have been different. I remember all that time Donna spent looking for you, how she clung to that one time she saw you, she clung to you by her fingernails. She hadn’t told me, about Lance. About what he tried to do to her. I thought there was no shame between us, no secrets. But she kept all this in, cause she thought even her old gramps couldn’t understand.”

Tears rolled down the old soldier’s cheeks unchecked.

“What did I do, Doctor? What did I do so wrong?”

“Don’t you dare, Wilfred Mott,” the Doctor said through gritted teeth, shaking his head, his eyes dark and full of madness. “It’s not on you, it never was. You were the only thing in Donna’s life she still came back to Earth for. If it wasn’t for you, she would never have come home again.”

“But this was never home,” Wilfred said. “I realise that now. This was never home to her. You were. That’s why she died in your TARDIS. I just wish I’d been able to give her what you gave her.”

It took them both all of five minutes to know what to say next. Or, for the Doctor, what to say last as, before finally leaving, he told Wilfred one last thing:

“About what you said, earlier; Geoffrey Noble was not ordinary. You’re not. I’ve never met anyone that wasn’t special. You had to be, your granddaughter was…”

He trailed off, then swallowed and decided to finish his sentence, because Wilfred needed to hear it:

“She was the most important woman in the whole wide Universe.”

He decided on a stroll, he needed it after what this day had gone to. As he walked back to the TARDIS, the sky was infuriatingly blue, for once. The birds were chirping, and the streets were peaceful. It almost felt as though the Universe was mocking him.

When he reached the trusty old blue box, standing in the park where he’d left her, clad in her perception filter, TARDIS blue didn’t mean anything to him any more. Maybe it was just him, maybe it wasn’t, but the colour seemed to have washed out, as though forgotten there for hundreds of years. He unlocked the door, stepped inside, closed it. He realised he hadn’t been back in days, not since dropping Donna off, and he tried to remember more of what he’d been doing all this time, where he’d been staying if not here. But he couldn’t.

And then, the scent attacked his nostrils. Her scent.

Holding his breath, he walked over to the console and pressed a few buttons to try and activate the ventilation system, but nothing happened. He tried again.

“Come on, come on…”

But nothing happened. That scent lingered, strong and imposing, and he looked around. Only then did he realise that the light in the console room was dim, colder than usual, the time rotor a haunting blue. It felt both familiar and alien. Focusing, remembering, he realised it was how it had been during his previous regeneration, when he had been the Ninth Doctor, before Rose Tyler and after the Time War. All blue and dark and uninviting, much like himself at the time, and even more like himself now.

Furiously, he tried those stubborn bloody buttons again, but nothing happened.

“Are you doing this?” he asked, looking around at the walls and the ceiling.

The old girl gave no answer, neither physical nor psychic. Just kept humming softly, ignoring him. She was blocking him out, he realised. He couldn’t feel what she felt as he tried.

“Stop it! Activate ventilation,” he said.

She gave him nothing. No answer nor access, nothing. The scent lingered, like it had a will of its own. Donna Noble, telling him, ‘I chose not to forget you, and now you won’t forget me, either.’

“I won’t, I swear I won’t,” he said out loud. “How could I? Just… please, please stop…”

He covered his head, pathetic, like a child being yelled at by a roomful of grown-ups. The skin of his face felt hot like the sting of a colony of red ants, his nose clogged with incoming tears, his scalp itchy. He rubbed his tense fingers through his hair, trying to ease the panic clawing at his stomach, digging a hole into him with a trowel.

Eyes closed, arms wrapped around his head, he walked blindly around the room, tapping his feet in an effort to ground himself. He almost slipped over something, and for a moment he stilled, a statue stuck in an earthquake. When he dared open his eyes and he looked down to see what had almost made him fall, he saw his brown coat, sprawled out on the floor.

His knees gave out and he crumbled onto the unforgiving grid. He gripped the thick fabric until his knuckles ached, burying his face into it and drenching it in snot and tears and drool. The sounds that escaped his mouth weren’t human but then again, neither was he, and he stayed like this until he couldn’t bear the scent of his best friend, staining the inside of his trench coat.

He pushed it aside and let his forehead hit the metal floor, hooking his fingers into the heated grid.

“Please, let me go… I just want to go…”

For a minute there, the Doctor thought of just letting this take him, of holding his breath if needed until regeneration kicked in, and only then deciding if he would proceed with it or not. But then, something warm wrapped around his back, enveloping him like a trauma blanket. He looked over his shoulder briefly, and there was nothing, no blanket, just the console room.

The TARDIS was back inside his head, rocking his mind apologetically like a mother with her crying newborn, grieving with him. Donna’s scent finally vanished. He let out a shaky breath; he was so tired…

What came after was a wild guess. He must have just fainted there, on the floor of the console room, because that’s where he woke up, red square lines marking his cheek and a terrible soreness running down his neck. His knees felt bruised.

He passed a hand through his messy hair and sat up, looking around for comfort. The room was still blue, still terribly quiet, and the constant, rhythmical humming was like the lych bell at an English church.

He grabbed onto the console and pushed himself up. Upon looking at the date, he realised he had been asleep for three days.

He fumbled with the controls, setting them on random, knowing full well that the TARDIS would take him where he was needed – or would find what he needed. When he opened the door to a new world, he was momentarily blinded by how bright the sky was: it was snowing, properly snowing. People trotted about a noisy and colourful marketplace, and the smell of roasted chicken and cinnamon filled the air.

It was Christmas.

I Dream A Highway

Adventure can wait, the Doctor thought as he set the coordinates of his ship to Muswell Hill, London, three months – Earth time – after his last visit. He had received a call from Martha who, when she saw that he wasn’t picking up any time soon – he was being chased by a gang of angry Chelonians and had left the mobile inside the TARDIS –, had left a voicemail. Upon seeing the notification, which the TARDIS had kindly blasted through the console room as soon as the Doctor was safe inside and the door locked, he had decided to pay Martha the visit she’d requested from him.

It wasn’t an emergency call, that he knew of. It would seem she just wanted a courtesy visit. Maybe she was testing him, trying to see if he would come without the words ‘Impending Doom’ or ‘Help’ implied in the message… And for once, the Doctor decided that he would be unpredictable, both to himself and to her, and he obliged.

He just wondered why it needed to be Muswell Hill.

The TARDIS wheezed a bunch of times and the Doctor opened the door. He looked around: at least he had got the date right. Martha sat on a bench that hugged the black wrought iron fence of a park, her back hunched over as she stared at the paved side walk. He waited a few seconds for her to notice him, but she didn’t seem to have heard the familiar sound the TARDIS always made before stabilising. The Doctor found himself on the other side of the road to her, and Martha still didn’t lift her head. Something about it, though, felt deliberate.

Brushing it off as sleep-deprived paranoia, the Doctor took a quick look around for cars, and seeing none, he jaywalked her way.

Her peripheral vision must have caught sight of his white trainers, because she straightened up and looked at him, and then she rose from her seat. He stopped a good three meters from her, like he always did, and smiled, waiting respectfully for her to close the distance and hug him – which she didn’t. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and the Doctor realised she wasn’t looking into his eyes. Her face, usually adorned with a beautiful, happy grin every time she saw him, was twisted into a fake smile.

“Martha?”

“Doctor.”

Something was wrong, she was cold. His Martha wasn’t cold, not with him, not even after everything. So why now? What had changed?

“You called me,” he hesitated. “Is everything okay?”

She gave him a quick, dismissive nod, then looked over his shoulder. She frowned. “Is she okay?”

“What-?” He turned around and realised she was talking about the TARDIS. “What do you mean?”

“The colour, I don’t know… It looks… weird.”

He swallowed, stammering for a moment. “She’s- You think? No, she’s fine, she’s…” he stopped. Martha wasn’t convinced. “How are you?”

She pressed her lips together, nodding again. “Yeah, I’m fine… You?”

“Good… yeah, good… You called me,” he said again.

“I did, yeah.”

“Why here?” he frowned.

“I live here now… with Mickey,” she said.

His eyes widened a bit. Was this why she seemed so uncomfortable? No, it couldn’t be… Was it?

“Mickey..? What happened to Tom?”

She scoffed.

“Too much like you. I got tired of waiting, I guess…”

The Doctor shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be. I’m happy.”

“Are you, though?”

She looked into his eyes, finally. She seemed angry. Or frustrated, or both. “Yes,” she said. “There’s a café, a few blocks from here. It’s quiet, but not too quiet. We can have a chat. On me?”

“Okay, yes… Thanks.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes. The streets were nice enough, and safe – so long as you weren't a young gay man in the early eighties, the Doctor thought –, just what Martha needed after all the mad things he had put her through for so long. The Doctor pondered what she had said, about her and Mickey being together. He would need to ask about it, later, when the timing was right – if it ever was right.

They entered a medium-sized structure. The façade was painted sage green, the name of the café a blue font just above the high bay window. Inside, the walls were made of red brick, and little plants hung from the ceiling. It was cute, both modern and quaint. They chose to sit in a corner. The seats were comfortable enough.

“So, Mister Mickey, then?” he finally said once they were served. “It’s only been, what, three months? Isn’t it a bit soon to move in together?”

“I don’t know,” Martha shrugged as she sipped on her iced coffee. “We understand each other, we’ve been through the same stuff… Some of the same stuff, at least.”

The Doctor nodded. It didn’t seem like she had much to say about Mickey. Because there wasn’t, really. He was a nice man; he was loyal – maybe to a fault –, romantic, relatively good-looking… and smarter than he looked. What wasn’t there to like?

The seconds stretched out into minutes, awfully quiet, agonisingly long minutes, and after a few of those it seemed that Martha, who was always one to encourage his constant rambling, was the first who couldn’t take the silence any more. She put her glass down noisily, getting his attention. She let out a sigh, and she looked him in the eye.

“Do you remember my cousin, Adeola? The one who worked at Canary Whorf.”

“Adeola Oshodi,” the Doctor nodded slowly. “The one who never came home. Yeah, I was there…”

Martha sniffled and she wiped her nose, before crossing her arms on the table. “Did you know that her parents lived in Chiswick? She grew up there.”

The Doctor tensed at the mention of the familiar neighbourhood. He shook his head, and Martha stopped talking. She was waiting. He stared at her. Waiting for what?

And then, he saw that her eyes had started to glisten. A single tear rolled down her cheek.

She knew. Oh, God, she knew…

“How did you-?”

Martha rubbed her eyes vigorously, trying to get a hold of herself. Her throat made a little sound, and she closed her eyes for a moment, breathing deeply.

“I was on holiday, a few days ago. I thought, this would be the perfect time to go visit Adeola’s grave, say hello. So, I took the car, I went to buy her favourite flowers. I drove to Chiswick New Cemetery. I dropped the little plant off,” she said, her voice faltering. “And then… I don’t know why, but something told me I needed to turn left, and I did. I walked down that little path, looking at the names on the graves…”

The Doctor felt like he was burning up. He knew where this was going. He was scared, he was so scared.

“I stopped, in front of one of them. The dirt looked fresh; two months, maybe a bit more… I looked up. And I saw the name.”

Don’t cry, Doctor. Not here. Please don’t cry, you idiot, not in public. Not in front of her.

The Doctor’s bottom lip started to quake. Martha wasn’t finished.

“At first, I thought: it’s okay, it’s probably not her… Noble is a pretty common last name, isn’t it? And he would have called, the Doctor would have called me…”

Her voice was getting louder and louder. It was shaky and sad, but more than anything it was angry. So angry. “But then I saw the date…” she said. “Just a few days after the Dalek invasion, what do you make of that?” she snapped, her voice orotund and livid.

“I’m sorry…”

It was a pitiful whisper, his eyes staring down at his joined hands on the table, not daring to look up out of shame.

“What happened?” she asked, and she choked out a breath. “What happened to Donna?”

“It was…” he trailed off. He was crying. He hadn’t even started to talk yet, and he was already crying. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He wanted to rip those tear-ducts, to rip them off with his own stupid fingers.

“It was the Meta-Crisis…” he finally let out pathetically. “After dropping Rose and Jackie and the other me off at Bad Wolf Bay, we got back inside the TARDIS, and she…”

Tears rolled down Martha’s cheek. There was no anger left in her gentle eyes, only pain. Pain and pity.

“She knew she would have to make a choice, soon, cause her brain was starting to overheat. Humans aren’t supposed to carry a Time Lord consciousness. It’s like… putting metal in a microwave. Something like that.”

Understanding dawned on Martha. “And was there nothing you could do to save her?”

The Doctor scoffed, a humourless smile crossing his lips for a second. “Yes, there was. I was gonna erase her memories of me, of the TARDIS, how we met and how she searched for me and that year we spent together, everything we did…”

Martha wrinkled her nose a bit. “Why didn’t you?”

“She stopped me. She stalled, gained some time until she knew it was too late. Only then, she allowed me to touch her.”

He rubbed at his face and realised his cheeks were wet and stinging.

“Mostly, I’m mad at myself,” he said, hating what he was about to say. “But I’m also… so bloody angry with her. Cause she forced me to watch her die. My best friend.”

That was it for Martha. She who had been so enraged, so frustrated and upset that he wouldn’t even tell her after all they had been through, she found that she still couldn’t bear to see the Doctor in pain, not any kind, any level of pain. And right now, she could say in all confidence that she had never seen him in such agony, such despair. Not even when he had been possessed with a psychedelic sun. Not even when he had told her of Gallifrey, his home planet – he had been wistful, maybe, but that pain had faded. All things do, given time – and the right people. Not even when he had been John Smith, the man born to die. Not when his own two hearts had stopped.

She would say, after a bit of reflection, that losing the Master had been a close one. So it would seem. Maybe different, still a close state. But the Master had been toxic; more than toxic, the Master had been beyond Salvation. Whereas Donna? Donna had only ever helped.

Martha walked around the table, sat in the booth next to him, and brought his head down against her neck. She had always been so small right next to him, yet right now, he felt tiny in her arms. Lukewarm tears fell into the crook of her collarbones, and he shook against her, sobbing silently. His face was hot and his hair smelled like sweat. He was feverish, she realised, having hugged him times enough to know that the Doctor’s skin was supposed to be cool. The grief was making him sick. She planted a kiss there, on his scalp, rocking his lanky body left and right, holding his head firmly. He clung to the sleeves of her little jacket, knuckles white.

“What’s the point in being mad at someone who’s gone, Doctor?” she smiled kindly, burying her nose in his silky hair, and he unclenched his fists, if only a little. “Isn’t life frustrating enough as it is without holding grudges at all the people you’ve lost?”

“Then I’ll just be mad at myself,” he said. “Cause I’m still here, and I’ll always be here, until I’m not.”

Martha let out a sigh. “I’m going to tell you something, okay?” she said. “I don’t know if it will change a thing, I hope it will. So please, for a moment, put your ego and your stubbornness on hold and let this sink in.”

They pulled back at the same time, and she cupped his face, stroking his freckled cheeks with her delicate thumbs.

“When I met Donna for the first time, there was a moment when I asked her for help, and you were busy, doing your own thing. Well, I didn’t need Donna’s help; or not really, at least. It was more of an excuse than anything else.”

The Doctor frowned. “To do what?”

“To have a talk with her. About you.”

The Time Lord stayed silent for a moment, and then, when he was ready, “Go on.”

Martha straightened up; her hand was still pressed between the Doctor’s shoulder blades.

“I remember the look in her eyes, that wonder and excitement you get from travelling with the Doctor and his TARDIS… And I saw that it wasn’t the same for her as it was for me. Not really, at least.”

“What do you mean?” the Doctor frowned.

She blushed a bit. “Well… It’s no secret that I fell in love with you, that day we met, on the Moon.”

The Doctor blushed as well. “About that, I’m sorry I kissed you,” he said, shameful. “I think there was this part of me, this selfishness…” he trailed off. Then, “I met Donna, before I met you. Did I ever tell you that? I guess not.”

She gave him a wide-eyed look and shook her head, a small smile gracing her lips as she did. “No, I didn’t know. What happened, then? Why didn’t she travel with you?”

“I did ask her,” the alien scoffed. “She said no. She told me I scared her to death…”

Martha’s smile turned into a bemused chuckle. “No, you’re joshing me!” she said. “Donna Noble, afraid of you?”

“As incredible as the thought sounds, yes, apparently. That’s what she said, at least,” the Doctor recalled fondly. “We had this one day together, it was Christmas. She was getting married and she got teleported inside the TARDIS, right as she was about to exchange her vows. Which, thinking back, it’s not a bad thing that it happened. Turns out her husband-to-be wanted to sacrifice her to the Empress of the Racnoss…”

“What’s a Racnoss?”

“Giant… spider people. Anyway. So, I saved her, and then, she saved me. I gave her a lift home, and I said, ‘Come with me’, and she smiled and said no,” the Doctor said and pressed his lips together. “I was a bit hurt, but in time I understood why. Cause she did give me one piece of advice before I left.”

“What was it?” Martha asked softly.

“Find someone,” he said. “She told me, ‘Sometimes I think you need someone to stop you’.”

Martha smiled apologetically. “She was right, though, wasn’t she?”

“She was, yeah…” he said, contemplative. “But it was a mistake, choosing you.”

“Well that was blunt,” Martha recoiled, faking offence.

“Is it, really?” he narrowed his eyes. “Think about it: you were getting on with your life, Martha Jones. You had friends, you had a big family, you were studying to be a doctor – brilliantly so, might I add. You didn’t need me, I needed you. And because, at the time, I was too selfish to care, I nearly destroyed everything you loved.”

Martha stared sadly.

“Isn’t this what you were trying to tell me?” he asked. “About you and Donna being different? You travelled the Universe with me because you fancied me. And deep down, I knew, and I used you because I also knew I shouldn’t be on my own. And I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry…”

It took her a moment to process his long-due apology, but when she did, she ruffled his hair and kissed his forehead. When she pulled back, his eyes were a bit wet.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “You really are a piece of work, you know that?”

He giggled. “Yeah, I do a bit.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I travelled with you because I loved you. Donna travelled with you because she loved the Universe. That’s what I saw, in her eyes. In the way she talked about you, about your adventures together. There was no you without her. Whereas for me, there was only ever you.”

His blush was back. Why were feelings so uncomfortable all the time? Oh, he knew that one: because humans were ephemeral. Just the story of a double heartbeat.

“What did you tell Donna?” he asked in a low voice. “When you met her?”

“I told her I knew. What it was like being her. How wonderful it was, how wonderful you were.”

The Doctor smiled.

“And then I told her what happened to me,” Martha said gravely. “I told her the price I paid for standing so close to someone so bright as you. How dangerous you are, how you burn everything you touch or that touches you.”

Her words cut through the air like a knife. Then, there was silence, and finally, Martha breathed.

“But I also said you didn’t mean to, and that’s the worst part, right? You don’t. Cause if you did, you wouldn’t be so bloody dangerous. It’s like following this light, and the light keeps saying ‘Trust me, I’ll keep you safe’. And it’s the only shining thing there is, so of course you follow it. You don’t look down,” she said sharply, her eyes filled with motive, that dark passion that had made her decide to leave him. “And here comes the fall.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” he asked.

“Because it was a good enough reason for me to leave,” Martha shrugged wearily. “And I thought Donna deserved to know so I told her. But you know what?”

He shook his head.

“It wasn’t enough,” she said. “And Donna wasn’t stupid, and she wasn’t blind or thick like she thought she was. She was simply brave. Brave enough that it didn’t matter who you were or what you could do because you truly saw her. You gave her what she needed.”

Martha gently grabbed his chin and smiled. “She knew who you were, Doctor. And it didn’t matter.”

Color My Soul

He did it on a whim, one day. Nothing happened that could have triggered that precise thought that had thus far been tucked away in the ‘Do not open’ compartment of his brain.

But today had been a long day, and River was off with Amy and Rory, showing them one of her favourite rooms in the TARDIS. He was alone at the console. He smiled.

“I think it’s time, old girl. What do you say?”

He felt a hum of agreement in response. He was nervous, understandably so, but he was ready.

There it was, finally, after all this time. There was barely a shift in the air, and the smell of coconut oil and orange blossom filled the space around him. He closed his eyes, bathed in it, and every one of the feelings and memories it brought back. Although this Doctor was less prone to private meltdown sessions than his predecessor – the Doctor who had known her – had been, this Doctor still felt the wet warmth of the welcomed tears that had started to pool. He waited for the familiar burn that coats the eyeballs and blurs the sight before finally letting go. It hurt to cry again for her, but it was a good hurt; a bit like sitting down and stretching your legs after running for too long.

He didn’t try to hide that he was crying either when three other pairs of feet echoed on the grid and he looked at his friends.

Rory had this expression on his face, wide-mouthed and all, like he didn’t know if he should hug him or not. River tilted her head, waiting for an explanation, and Amy just gave that pouty frown she had on whenever the Doctor did something that unnerved or puzzled her. Then, she sniffed a bunch of times, noticing the change in the air.

“Why are you crying?” she asked. “And what’s that smell about?”

“Oh, I just thought it would be cool to have something nice in here, don’t you?” he answered selectively, clapping his hands together. “Isn't this what you humans do? Burn some incense, listen to music when you're sad or your thoughts are too loud? Incense is cool.” He grimaced as he realised he had just admitted to being sad. “Not so cool, actually. Very bad for the lungs. Don't do that.”

The three friends were used to the brutal changes in the Doctor's mood, by now, but this time around, it was somehow upsetting.

“I didn’t know you were so… vanilla,” Amy scoffed.

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed in offence. “Vanilla? Defrost your nose, Pond, this is orange blossom and coconut.”

Amy rolled her eyes with a snort, and from the corner of his eye, the Doctor could see River pull her little notebook – TARDIS blue – out from the inner pocket of her jacket, and scribble something inside.

“I wondered when you’d finally let her back in,” she said with a soft smile.

The Time Lord was quite surprised. It was unusual for River to write about anything other than their adventures in that thing; she didn’t write about the little things – at least, he didn’t think she did, but he had never peeked –. After all, he thought, grief was an adventure, sort of. It just wasn’t hers.

He looked over at Amy, and it hit him for the first time that her hair was red. Well, he had noticed before, of course, he wasn’t blind. He loved red hair; loved it with a bit of jealousy, if he was being honest – which he rarely was. But then and there, it had him thinking. About how she was the first face that this face saw, and his first full-time companion after losing Donna. It had evolved into something else, naturally, and it wasn’t his doing or something conscious, even, yet it still felt nice. And right.

“Doctor, what are you doing?” Rory asked.

The Doctor realised he had reached over to where Amy was standing and was stroking a strand of her hair. It didn’t look like Donna’s at all, really. Donna’s was slightly more auburn, whereas Amy’s was plain orange. But red hair was red hair and the Doctor felt wistful.

He never told them what had gotten into him that day, and that just added to the long list of Doctor Oddities which they would never know the bottom line to. Except, maybe, River. River seemed to know. And the Doctor was fine with that; he really was.

I Shall Believe

As he watched his former body walk alone and back to his own TARDIS, the Doctor couldn’t help a pang of guilt and pity from overtaking him, staring at the back of himself, letting him go to his death unknowing and defeated but scared to death. One of the drawbacks of crossing one’s own timeline, he supposed. Still, no point in dwelling; there was nothing he could do to make this easier or less daunting.

Or wasn’t there?

“Still a bit hard, going back in there?” the next Doctor asked rhetorically.

His younger self spun around, hands in his pockets, looking like he had seen a ghost.

“The distraction is over now, and you’re going back to being alone…” the Eleventh Doctor said bitterly.

“Yeah.”

They stood awkwardly for more than a minute, and the older one gave a tentative smile, trying to catch the other’s attention. “I’m old,” he said. “So much older than you are now.”

Sandshoes did that thing with his left eyebrow that would certainly have made Chinny chuckle had his former self not been so sad, now.

“Look into my eyes. You have just been through some of the most terrible things in a long time. I know you keep remembering, and feeling guilty, and you almost wish that you could go back and apologise to the us that came before, the Ninth Doctor who loved Rose Tyler and was starting to know the taste of Hope again, and you feel like you’ve let him down. I know you don’t really want to go.”

The Tenth Doctor’s big brown eyes darkened with pain. The Eleventh Doctor had to give it to him: it was an impressive death glare, indeed.

“Now listen carefully, matchstick-man, because I remember being told this by myself,” he said, and pointed to himself proudly, “when I was your age. And I didn’t remember it until now, of course, you’re not supposed to, but still; even though I couldn’t remember, I could still feel it, right beneath the surface, that tiny motivation, urging me to go on. That which made it just a little bit easier when I had to go – when you will have to go.”

“What is it?” his younger self asked in a small voice, hands in his coat pockets.

“This.”

The Eleventh Doctor smiled, and he got in the Tenth Doctor’s face, close enough that he could whisper without anyone else hearing.

“One day, the TARDIS will smell like Donna Noble again, and it won’t hurt so much any more. It will be like… carrying a piece of Home with you, wherever you go. Just like you were bringing her along, like the old times.”

The Tenth Doctor pulled away, his expression unreadable – to anyone who wasn’t the Doctor, at least. But that was between the Doctor and the Doctor. And as he got into his TARDIS, his own TARDIS, the one that didn’t smell like Donna Noble yet or any more, he turned around.

“Does this mean I won’t mind going, when the time comes?”

The Eleventh Doctor crossed his arms, all pompous and proud and with a sigh, he smirked.

But as he spoke, one could tell he could barely look at himself, still.

“You will. You’ll be sad, all of us are. You’re not special.”

One last look, see you later. The door closed. The TARDIS wheezed. Off he went into the Time Vortex.

The Doctor smiled: for once, he had been kind to himself.

The End