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“Get down, Donna,” the Doctor says in her ear. “It’s safer on the floor. Come on.”
The whole ship is shaking around them, rocking and jolting from the force of the explosion in a vacuum. He pulls her towards the console and they stumble to their knees and then sit, clinging to each other in the rumbling panic of the moment. She can hear both his hearts hammering, and she presses herself closer to him, tightening her arms around him. She can feel her own pulse racing, almost to the point of faintness. She breathes, trying to ground herself in the feeling of his arms around her, her arms around him— they couldn’t do that if he weren’t really there. It’s all right, she tells herself. He’s really here.
“It’s all right,” he says to her over and over as if he’s read her mind, a mantra to soothe both of them. “We’re almost clear. It’s all right.”
There are two stupendous booms and the TARDIS lurches forward so hard they are thrown off their balance and collapse forward too. But then, mercifully, blessedly, the ship goes still, into stable flight. Donna pushes herself upright again and dives for him. He wraps her up fiercely in response and they try to align their breaths again. After a long moment when she can finally take a full breath without shaking, she feels him kiss her head. His lips press firmly against her hair and Donna feels her eyes well up with tears immediately. He feels her breath hitch and picks up her hand and kisses that too. She feels the tears overflow but she doesn’t want to let go of him. She turns her face into his chest and breathes as deep as she can. The Doctor moves so that his hands are resting on her back. And because it feels like letting go of him would be like peeling skin from muscle, instead she reaches up and presses her lips to his.
She’ll never know if he’d been expecting it, or hoping for it, but he responds immediately. And because he kissed her back right away the way he always used to, Donna reaches up with her other hand to clasp his head, her fingers buried in his hair. Mine, mine, mine, she thinks, and then with an electric jolt they both entrain at the same time onto their old psychic connection. The shock of it pushes Donna closer for a moment and then she pulls back, her lips buzzing from the force of the kiss.
Mine, she says again in her mind, and he nods.
“I can hear you,” he says. I can hear you again. They pull each other to their feet. “Okay,” he says. “Okay. So we can still do that.”
Since the first time he'd opened her mind to the Oodsong, they'd maintained and refined that connection, creating a bridge that went both ways, that became broad enough to encompass words, speech, sensations, emotions, sounds. Back then they'd used it for communication, for sex, so expert at it that they no longer needed to touch each other's temples, only make physical contact.
And he hadn't known if that would stay. He hadn't known so many things. At the same time, he feels the familiar sense of of course, that's my Donna, he had before. As if underneath all the chaos and pain and fear and grief is something solid and stalwart. Dalek Caan called her "the most faithful companion." The Ood, though she doesn't know it yet, call her the Beloved Companion and the Lady of the Liberation. She is worshipped as a protective goddess in countless galaxies, she and the Doctor memorialized in statues and paintings, carvings and sculptures. They are characterized as the male-and-female archetypes for many cultures. On the planets of Karissa and Amara, two sisters in a binary system, they are the representation of the Celestial Lovers. On Kataa Flo Ko one can find an ancient shrine with a statue of two people engaged in lovemaking, a shrine to the Doctor and Donna dedicated to the fertility gods. On Meridion Ten, Donna is the Keeper of the Flame of the Campfire Cities, and an idol of her stands in a temple with an eternal flame lit between its hands. On Balkea at the Temple of the Sea God, there is a statue of Donna as their goddess of voyages, her face turned wistfully to the ocean.
He'd had a ship named the HMS Donna once, incinerated in the atmosphere of Gallifrey. At the time he'd been so mad with grief and confusion and loss that the metaphor was lost on him, but now he thinks what said irony it was that his own Donna had been so burned by encountering him.
"Does your head hurt?" he asks her.
"No," Donna says. She wipes her eyes and sniffs, steeling herself. "We can still do that," she says again. She clears her throat and reaches for him again, pressing her fingers to his temples in an old familiar gesture. Save us the trouble, she says in his mind.
The Doctor reaches out to touch her face, resting his fingers at her temples. We don't have to do it like this every time, he says.
I remember. Just physical touch. He can feel the pang of emotion under the words, and she can feel his wanting like a contained seismic force. Nowhere to hide, nowhere safer to go.
I didn't know if you could still hear me, he says.
I didn't know either, Donna answers, and he can feel the bright electric energy underneath the feelings, the same rush of such a mix of love, lust, desire, loneliness, relief, and joy. It feels a lot like it used to, she adds. Feels nice. Still good, like pleasure.
Donna can feel the trepidation in him even as he is drawn irresistibly deeper into the connection. She welcomes him eagerly so they can get used to the new-old shape of their connection. He seems afraid to hurt her or push too far too fast. Come on, Spaceman, she tells him. I missed this, I need this. Don't you feel it?
They both sigh in relief a moment later because he feels himself relax finally. He won't hurt her anymore, with the metacrisis released from its vise grip around her brain. I feel it, he responds, and they settle into each other. Donna gets a flash of an image of them together, her thighs wrapped snugly around his hips, her arms twined around his back, her head tilted back in pleasure. It's gone as soon as she notices it, and she feels his momentary embarrassment that at this very moment that's what he's thinking of.
Don't be embarrassed, she says. First thing I thought of. Nobody knows but us. She inhales a little when she feels him send a more deliberate sensation, a clearer, more longer-lasting image, more immersive and more effective. So she sends him back her own thought, about his face buried between her thighs.
"Right," the Doctor says aloud, and Donna opens her eyes. The connection fades like a flashbulb, remnants of moans of pleasure and feelings of happiness echoing in their consciousness. "So," he says. "You wanted to go home."
"Yeah," Donna says. "We can set a course?"
"Yes."
"Traveling in a generally Earth-wards direction?"
"Yes." There is a pause. "I want you to know that I don't give a fuck that you're married," the Doctor says finally.
"I know," Donna says.
"You should give him that ring back and live with me again," the Doctor says next, straightforwardly and without any pretense.
"Maybe I should, but I can't," Donna says. No use in lying or avoiding the subject. "And Rosie. I have to wait until she's grown. I can't just rip her world apart like that. And I can't keep saving the universe. I'm tired."
"Maybe we should find a corner of the universe somewhere and settle down, you and me," he says next.
Donna actually laughs. "You wouldn't make it three hours before you'd be begging to be off again," she says. "You'd resent me for it eventually."
"I'd never resent you, you're all I want," he says immediately.
"Spaceman," she says, and she holds his gaze. "I have to go home."
"You are home," he says.
"Spaceman," Donna says again, so affectionately.
"I know," he says. "We'll be there soon. Let me go get my coat."