The road less travelled...

Title: Friends or Strangers 12/12
Author: katherine_b
Rating: PG
Characters: Donna/the Doctor (John Smith)
Disclaimer: If the Doctor and Donna were really mine, this story wouldn’t even need to exist!
Spoilers: Up to and including Planet of the Dead
Summary: Donna’s got a new friend…

Chapter X

The Doctor re-enters the TARDIS and Donna watches him carefully close the door, seeing him take a deep breath, before he turns to where she’s standing.

“Donna?”

His voice is soft, hesitant, questioning.

“Is it gone?”

He nods. “It’s gone.”

“You destroyed it.”

“I had to.” He seems to be pleading for understanding. “It was killing people, Donna. I couldn’t let that continue.”

And yet you’re willing to give all that up for me, she can’t help thinking, and it only makes her decision more difficult.

She studies his face, seeing that the rage and fury have gone and that he’s wearing the same anxious, pleading expression she’s seen before on John Smith’s face. He’s waiting for her speak.

“When you left,” she begins slowly, “when you left me alone in here, what were you thinking about?”

He sighs, his shoulders drooping, and she can almost see his exhaustion.

“You,” he admits softly. “Only you.”

“You could have died out there!”

He nods, that tired look on his face again, and Donna wonders how familiar he must be with death that he can have such a reaction to it. Her heart aches for him.

“Can I ask you something?”

The misery is gone at once, that look of curiosity she loves replacing it instantly.

“Of course.”

“I told you that I read about the Doctor.” Her eyes travel briefly around the TARDIS before coming back to his face. “About all those amazing things he’s done – and about the people who travelled with him.”

There’s an instantly wary look on the man’s face and his hand creeps up towards the lapel of his jacket. Donna ignores that and continues with her question.

“Was I ever one of those people – one of those companions?”

He inhales a deep breath, hissing it out between his teeth as his fingers fish around in one of the inside pockets of his coat.

“Why do you say that, Donna?” he asks, and she can hear him forcing his voice to remain light.

“It’s silly, I suppose,” she begins nervously, seeing that he’s now holding a thin, silver object half-concealed in his hand. “It’s just – you remember all those days when I used to say I felt lonely when I woke up and I could never understand why?”

He nods, taking an unobtrusive step closer, but she continues regardless.

“I haven’t felt like that ever since we spent more time together – particularly since you asked me to live with you. It’s like – like I’m somehow whole again, even if there are still things I don’t remember. Like they don’t matter anymore, like they’ve been replaced by something else. Something better.”

He sighs, but in obvious relief this time, and drops the silver object into his pocket.

“So was I?” she asks before he can speak. “Was I one of those people I travelled with you? Is that the part of my life I can’t remember?”

“Yes,” he admits, and she can hear the pain in his voice.

“Was I the one you told me about, the one who had to be in the right place at the right time to meet you?”

He smiles, that fond, affectionate smile she loves seeing on his face. “Yes, you were,” he confesses.

“Why did I leave?” She narrows her eyes. “Did I choose to, or did I have to, the way you said – circumstances made me?”

“You would never have chosen to,” he says with a slight shake of his head. “You had to, Donna. You didn’t want to, but in the end…” He trails away with a shrug.

“This isn’t what happens though.” Donna frowns, widening her hands in a gesture of demonstration at herself. “Everything I’ve read says that the Doctor doesn’t go back to people who used to travel with him.” She drops her hands back to her sides. “So why would you come back to me?”

He sighs again, regretfully this time, and his voice, when he speaks is shaky.

“I told you about people leaving me – how they choose to, or they have to. And that’s true. But with you – Donna, I made that choice for you.”

He hangs his head, guilt etched clearly in his face and the slump of his shoulders.

“I took them away, Donna. I’m the reason you don’t have those memories anymore.”

She stares at him, horror and betrayal filling her. It takes almost everything she’s got to remain standing in the TARDIS, because she wants to turn on her heel and flee. But she has to know – “Why?”

She steps forward instead of back, towards him instead of towards the doors. “Why would you do that to me?”

“You were dying, Donna.” She can see the agony flaring in his dark eyes. “Dying in front of me.

He turns away, looking up at the glowing blue-green light in the centre of the room, his hands clutched nervously in front of him.

“If I’d done it sooner, if I’d helped you first instead of leaving you until last, then I might have been able to save you – saved your memories of me and everything we did together. But I didn’t.”

He looks back at her, and she can almost believe she’s seeing tears glisten in his eyes.

“I didn’t, Donna, and that’s been tormenting me ever since. Trying to think of other ways I could have saved you. Kept you with me. Stopped you from dying.”

“I would have died?” she ventures.

“You were dying.” He exhales shakily, running a trembling hand through his hair so that it stands on end even more than usual. “You were in so much pain, Donna, and that was the only way I could help you. But you begged me – pleaded with me – not to do it. And I’ve never been able to get away from that, to get over the fact that I made that decision for you.”

His voice dies away and there’s absolute silence in the TARDIS. Donna’s trying to imagine the scenes he’s describing, but she can’t even begin to picture a circumstance in which he would ever go against her wishes like that.

And yet, if the only possible alternative is death…

There’s something like desperation in his eyes, begging her to believe that he only did what he did to save her life.

And she slowly realises that she does believe him. That she trusts him more than she’s ever trusted anyone in her life before. More than could be accounted for by the short time they’ve spent together as Donna and John Smith, but perhaps as much as might come from a longer acquaintance.

“Why did you come back though?”

The question startles her as much as it clearly does him. He stares at her in apparent confusion, so she clarifies the question.

“With everything that happened, seeing me must be a constant reminder of it all. So why did you come back, if you knew I wouldn’t remember you in any case?”

He smiles for the first time since coming back into the TARDIS, an almost mocking, frankly amused smile.

“You might not be able to remember the Doctor, Donna, but do you really think I could forget you?”

She can feel the blood rush to her cheeks at the intensity of his gaze, almost as if it’s a stranger and not the man whose bed she’s been sharing for the past few months that is talking to her like this.

And in some ways, that’s exactly what it feels like.

“I wanted to give us another chance,” he tells her. “The chance to start over, to make new memories. Ones you wouldn’t have to forget. Memories of John Smith and Donna instead of the Doctor and Donna.”

There’s another long moment of silence. She can see the pleading expression in his eyes, but her emotions are so confused that she can’t give him any sort of answer. Her strongest thought at the moment is wonder at having been here before, in the TARDIS, with the Doctor, and seeing the Universe.

“What was it like, before?” she asks, hearing the wistful tones in her voice. “What was I like when I travelled with you?”

“Oh, Donna, you were brilliant!” There’s so much passion and love in his voice that a lump forms in her throat and she has to swallow hard to rid herself of it. “You never believed me when I told you, but you were – over and over again. You saved me – you saved the Universe, Donna! Imagine that – the whole Universe!

“I saved you, though?” Donna can’t disguise her eagerness. Who cares about the Universe? But the man in front of her – he’s so much more important! “You mean it?”

He smiles, shaking his head a little as if unable to understand her attitude. “You saved me more times than I can count, Donna, from the very first moment we met. Literally and figuratively, and in places and from people you could never imagine in your wildest dreams.”

For a moment he stares into nothing, and she wonders if he’s remembering those times that she will never be able to recall.

“I was never that good at taking care of myself,” he admits, stepping closer to her.

“If you were telling the truth before about the time of times you’ve been killed, I can believe it,” she says, unable to help teasing him a little.

He smiles at her tone. “But you’ve given me a reason to start,” he goes on. “Knowing I had to come back to you, to be there every evening when you got home from work, meant that I was more careful. I mean,” he chuckles softly, “I had a pretty good idea of how you’d react if a complete stranger, claiming to be John Smith, was there when you got home. But it’s more than that. Seeing how much I mattered to you meant that I started to value my own life as much as I value yours.”

There’s a long moment of silence before he speaks again, his dark eyes boring into hers, a questioning, hesitating – hopeful – look on his face.

“What do you want, Donna? What – who – do you want me to be? Because John Smith and the Doctor are the same in everything that matters, but I’d give up the Doctor and everything about him in a heartbeat if you asked me to.”

He’s standing so close to her that she can see the flecks of gold sparkling and dancing in his brown eyes, as if some mysterious power is pulsing through him. She can hear him breathing, fast and light, his anxiety evident in the tension of his frame.

Without looking, without breaking eye contact or losing that connection that is almost palpable between them, she reaches down and takes his hand.

“Doctor,” she says softly, watching his eyes light up and feeling as his fingers wrap protectively around hers.

The name is strange as it rolls off her tongue, but there’s something familiar, almost comforting about it, too. His free hand comes up and cups her cheek, his thumb stroking lightly against her cheekbone, and her eyes close at the familiar feeling of his cool skin against hers. It’s the same. She can see and feel the man she loves in the Doctor, and she knows.

Nothing will change, and yet everything will.

And it’s going to be brilliant.

“Doctor,” she repeats, taking a firmer hold of the hand in hers, looking up into his eyes again, the smile creeping over her features mirroring that on his, “show me the Universe.”