Work Text:
It was a nice warm dinner. With all family together at the table, with yellow evening lights, with Rose and Shaun laughing at some ridiculous pun and Silvia rolling her eyes at them and Wilfred talking about that one brand new conspiracy from news with Donna. All noisy and cozy. In the kitchen, kettle was boiling, almost ready for tea.
It was a nice warm dinner when the Doctor said almost like accidentally:
"I think he's dying. The other me"
And for a very tiny and strange second everything went quiet.
The Doctor was staring at his plate absently and Donna was staring at him and everybody else were staring at her like they were waiting for something.
"Eat your food" Donna reminded casually at last, as she swallowed her piece of pie.
Suddenly, yellow lights felt so cold.
The thing is, time never stopped cracking and then healing itself and then cracking again. And they all knew that.
It was a cool clear night, with stars flickering and galaxies singing and timelines crossing each other in a weird hardly possible or sensible way when the Doctor died again. With gold running through his veins, with distant whispers from the time vortex, with Donna – so special and brilliant Donna, the woman who carries fire in her palms – holding his hand; there was a moment when something has just changed and then he wasn't connected anymore. A part of him has disappeared.
"So?" Donna asked gently.
Doctor shrugged.
"He's probably regenerated, that's it"
"And you what, simply magically know it?"
"Not magically" the Doctor smiled "Timelord, bi-generation stuff, statistical improbabilities and all that. It has some scientific explanation but maybe it's too hard to process. Even for me"
"Yep, totally some kind of magic" Donna insisted.
"Oi!"
It actually always felt nice when she teased him.
It was very natural and grounding and funny, and also it was a perfect distraction – he would forget how old he was and how many he'd lost. There are no words in existence that could've explain how grateful he was, how grateful he is.
(Donna knows, of course. The Doctor hopes she does)
Donna leaned into his shoulder just to be closer.
"Isn't it too soon?" she wondered quietly.
Echo of million different lives was gone with the blink. The whole wide Universe went still, so the Doctor could give his friend the most genuiene and soft chuckle.
"It's not happening now" he simply said "Even if it was, we would've no idea how long it took for him"
"For you"
"...Yeah"
It was weird to think of this future him as of, well, him. Weird, but also weirdly easy. And the Doctor wanted to say that it was always like this with themselves, but bi-generation was different. Very much new, even.
He was awared of how they died and disappeared and how creation was shattered again and again. He would wake up from these bizzare painful dreams without any memories of them, knowing that something, somewhere, was wrong. Surely, none of it happened. And yet, it did.
"Once, you said" Donna hesitated but continued with the sigh "You said you could feel it when a disaster was near"
The Doctor hummed instead of the answer.
"You still can?"
"Always could" he shrugged "Never acknowledged until it was staring me at the face. My own lifestream is a complicated thing and some troubles should be left for my personal future"
"Was it..."
Somehow, Doctor knew what she meant without her actually saying it.
"I dunno. Maybe it was an "end of the world" situation but he went peacefully"
And sadly. He didn't say that. His blood still was cold, colder than usual.
"Do you feel the next you?"
"No, not like that, not anymore. Everything back to normal"
They stood silent for a moment, gazing at deep dark sky.
It was the warm welcoming home, the tiny hollow backyard with the police box at the corner, where Donna asked
"You alright?"
"It's not me who died, isn't it?" the Doctor joked.
"Oi!" Donna laughed "He is, technically, you"
And the family was here too. And everything was brilliant.