The road less travelled...

Title: Friends or Strangers Part II – 2/12
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: The Doctor is feeling lonely.

Chapter 1

The Doctor leans against the corner of a tall building, watching the familiar figure of Donna Noble walk into a nearby office block. He can’t help comparing this moment with the time he stood and watched Martha Jones before inviting her on board the TARDIS.

Except that he knows this won’t end up like that.

Because he doesn’t mean a thing to Donna Noble, and that’s the way it should stay.

Which is what makes his plan so crazy that, when it first occurred to him, he dismissed it as ridiculous.

But it returned into his mind again and again, as he worked on the console, or saved a planet from invasion, or even just on the odd occasion when he remembered to eat, standing against the bench and staring at the two empty chairs facing each other across the small dining table.

Until he found himself not just thinking about the plan, but ways to implement it.

Ways to ‘accidentally’ bump into Donna Noble. To get to know her again. To find out just how much she actually does think about things that might prompt memories of him. To see how much she’s changed.

He refuses to listen to the tiny part of his mind that suggests he just wants to be with her again.

No, this is about Donna, not him.

Which is why he eventually decided that she needs to meet him as ‘John Smith’ again, to get to know him without learning who is really is, and, by doing so, destroy the threat that he represents to her as ‘the Doctor’.

At least that’s what he hopes will happen.

He knows that the Donna Noble who was so nearly on San Helios with him is a different woman from the shouting, noisy redhead he first met on the TARDIS so long ago. Her reaction to the news about the bus is evidence of that. Where Donna would once have been either sceptical or afraid, now he knows from what Wilf told him that she would have welcomed the new experience.

And yet he’s certain that she can’t remember – won’t remember – any of their time together. Those memories are gone forever. Not even he could give them back to her.

No matter how much he wishes he could.

This is the eighth day he’s followed her, extending the TARDIS perception filter to cover himself so that he won’t be noticed by anybody, but particularly not Donna.

The first thing he noticed is that she’s walking to work these days, and he can’t help wondering if she’s developed a subconscious dislike of driving after the incident with the Sontarans.

Or is it just because the way to work is through a pleasant park?

He can’t help but be amused by the fact that she eats fruit on the way to work – mostly a banana.

And she spends every lunchtime reading in the sunshine or in a nearby café if the weather is bad. Not the Mills & Boon novels or trashy gossip magazines that he’s certain she would once have consumed, but the more basic science journals, or sci-fi novels, and once an Agatha Christie murder mystery.

He’d felt his hearts ache that little bit harder when he recognised the cover.

Murder on the Orient Express.

He even checked in on her on Saturday, intrigued to find that she had a dog with her, until he remembered her saying she’d had one until Lance asked her to get rid of it. Still he’d never pictured her as a cat person. Goldfish, perhaps. Or maybe a parrot. Still, a dog makes sense.

He was horrified to realise, when he’d been back onto the TARDIS for a few hours, that he had cleared a corner of the living room for a dog-bed.

He tried to stay away on Sunday, just because of how much he hates the day, but finally gave in and waited outside the house. When she didn’t come out, he’d gone up and, greatly daring, peered in at the windows.

A paint-daubed Donna stood in the middle of a room, looking around with satisfied eyes. He’s seen her look that way before, most recently after defeating the Daleks when she was explaining to everyone else in the Crucible what happened as a result of the metacrisis. And yet, while this moment might not be as critical as that time was, he understands her feelings of satisfaction at the task she's just completed.

Even more so when he came back late that evening to watch her settle the final belongings onto a shelf of what had clearly become her new bedroom on the ground floor of the house. He wondered if this was a desire for some sort of independence on her part, to move out of the traditional bedroom and have a place where she could come and go without her mother being as aware of it as an upstairs bedroom would be.

And now, by Wednesday, he’s completely familiar with Donna’s routine.

He follows her across the park to work as usual, the TARDIS parked in an alley next to an apartment building. Sitting on a bench under a tree, he leans back and closes his eyes, feeling the warmth of the sun on his face. It's going to get hot in June, as he already knows from a previous visit that allowed him both to watch Andy Murray at Wimbledon and to defeat yet another alien threat at the same time (which incidentally prevented the British champion from reaching the final).

For now, though, the weather is quite mild.

He hasn't been really cold since those first few days after San Helios.

He's taken to spending whole days in this park. Donna comes here to have her lunch and walks through it to get home of an evening. But even when she’s not there, the Doctor finds that he enjoys the peace and quiet – something that has been lacking in his life ever since he left Donna behind.

He wonders when he started liking this sort of thing. Does it mean he’s getting old?

Chuckling softly, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handful of breadcrumbs, scattering them for the few birds who are hopping on the ground around his feet.

Being nice to animals – he’s definitely getting old.

However as he reaches into his pocket for more, his fingers come into contact with a strange square object that he can’t, at first, identify.

Curious, he pulls it out and holds it up to the light, rolling his eyes as he realises that it's a small block of wood. It harks back to a time, several regenerations ago, when he picked up the habit of whittling. He found several leftover pieces of wood in a cupboard while he was looking for something else and shoved them into his pocket.

Now he turns the small cube over in his fingers, wondering if he still has the ability in this body to create the carved works of art that he did then. Of course, he doesn't have a whittling knife with him, but he finds a setting on the sonic screwdriver that will sear wood and uses that to carve a design in the cube.

His fingers shake a little at first, but he finds himself remembering the skills that he developed back then. Burning away the edges so that it's more of a rounded object, he begins sketching lines on the wood, gradually deepening them. But by the end it looks more like a closed flower bud and he wants something prettier.

Using another setting on the sonic screwdriver, he briefly restores life to the wood so that the carved petals open out, revealing the untarnished heart of the object. A few more strokes and he's holding a replica of a delicate rose, the edges of each petal darker than the rest.

With a smile, he replaces the piece of wood in his pocket and pulls out another cube, his actions more confident this time. The results are far more satisfactory and he nods as he holds it up to the light. His work is so effective that he can see shadows through the delicate petals.

“Good,” he says as he replaces the flower and the sonic in his pocket. “Very good.”

A flash of yellow catches his eye as he resettles his jacket and he turns to see a girl lifting a bunch of bananas out of a shop window. As if in reply, his stomach growls and he remembers how long it’s been since he ate. Pushing himself up off the wooden bench, he’s startled by the length of his shadow and surprised to realize that the greater part of the day has gone.

Stretching, he crosses the short stretch of grass to the shop. His hand is already out to open the door when it is suddenly pushed out towards him from the inside. He all but leaps back, away from both the door and the unexpected stream of hot coffee that is pouring from a paper cup in the hand of the person who stumbled on the threshold.

And he looks up into the brilliant blue, frankly startled eyes of Donna Noble.

* * *
Teaser for the next part

He's not sure he's prepared for this.