The road less travelled...

Title: Time After Time Part 13/14
Author: katherine_b
Rating: G
Summary: Have you ever wondered what happens to those the Doctor leaves behind?
Characters: Donna and the Doctor (Ten)

Chapter XII

“Donnakranoltondusoldar.”

She smiles up at him. “Doctor.”

His fingers stroke through her ginger hair, a half-smile playing around his lips as his dark eyes study her features. “You’re going to keep calling me that then?”

“It fits you.” She gives a slight shrug. “On Gallifrey, you were Theta, but here, in your TARDIS, maybe because you were always ‘Doctor’ to me before, it suits you better.”

“When you say before…” He trails off for a moment, staring over her head into the red glow of the fire in the fireplace. “Whenever I see you, I can’t help thinking of Donna Noble.”

“She would want you to.” Donna smiles as she thinks of that human version of herself. “She’d slap you silly if you forgot her.”

“She’s gone?”

He pulls away as he asks the question, his arm lifting from around her shoulders and falling to his lap. Donna feels something fall inside her at his mournful tone and her stomach clenches in fear.

“Not completely.”

He remains silent and she studies his profile for a moment, feeling the reflection of his emotions in her mind, before she turns to stare into the fire. When he doesn’t react, she sighs and draws away from him so that a few inches separate them on the couch.

He reaches out and tucks a gentle finger under her chin, turning her head back to face him. Her eyes fall in the direction of his chest, unable to meet his gaze, terrified of what he might say, wondering if she’s sought him out for all of time and space in vain.

“Donna.” He pauses for an instant. “Look at me.”

She sighs, expelling all of the air from her lungs, before finally raising her eyes to his.

For an instant there’s silence. Donna feels as if he is looking through her, studying the depths of her being, before he gives a slight nod and the tense lines around his mouth relax.

“Incredible.”

“What is?”

“Two such different people in one. You’re right, she’s not gone completely.”

“No.”

“But one thing I can’t understand.” Abruptly, he gets up off the couch and begins to pace the carpet, hands linked behind his back, his head bowed in a familiar gesture of thought. “Why didn’t I pick up on it before? I mean, I’m brilliant! I should have realised! Why couldn’t I hear her – you? I mean, I can now! So how did I miss it for all that time before?!”

He turns and glares at her as if she’s somehow to blame for his failure to realize the truth, and she can’t help smiling a little at his annoyance.

“Perhaps because you weren’t expecting to,” she suggests quietly. “You believed that everyone from Gallifrey was gone. Why should you expect to find a Time Lord in Chiswick, England, let alone somehow zapped into the TARDIS?”

“Is that how it happened?” He drops into an armchair on the far side of the room to stare at her. “Nothing to do with huon particles at all, but some Gallifreyan link to the TARDIS?”

“It’s more likely to have been a link to the vortex than just to the TARDIS.” She casts an eye around the room, feeling the ship, the last link to her lost home, humming in her mind, and she remembers what Romana said about her importance to the Universe. “Obvious the huon particles played a pivotal role, though, or it would have happened a lot sooner.”

For a moment she remains silent, her thoughts dwelling on those long epons when she waited for him.

“If it’s any comfort, this isn’t the only time you’ve failed to recognise me.”

“On Gallifrey?” He leans forward. “When?”

“So often.” She shakes her head slightly, regretting her words because she knows he won’t let her get away with not telling him, any more than he did all those epons ago when she first mentioned her strange, prophetic dreams. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.” He crosses the short space between them, sitting on the low table so that he can look into her face. Gently, almost hesitatingly, he reaches out to place a light hand on her arm. “Of course it does.”

His thumb strokes her shoulder, and she remembers when he did something similar to Donna Noble in the Library.

“Tell me,” he orders softly.

And so Donna finds herself doing something she had certainly never imagined, even in her wildest dreams – telling Theta about those near-meetings and missed opportunities that have left so many sore places on her hearts.

For a moment after she finishes, there’s silence.

“Do you want me to apologise?” he asks at last, although his tone suggests that he already knows the answer.

“No.” And she knows that isn’t what she wants from him, because an apology wouldn’t change anything. “I just – I’m glad you know.”

“I know you never gave up on me.” He raises his hand to cup her cheek, meaning that she can’t look away, and he meets her gaze with a warm, steady look that makes something quiver inside her. “You always believed in me, Donna. I can never repay that.”

“The important thing is that you know about it now.”

She places her hand on his, lightly brushing her fingers over his hand as a small smile curls her lips. His thumb strokes her temple for a moment, and she can feel the enhanced buzz of his mind in hers, which contact with that sensitive place always prompts.

“What is it about you?” he demands, arching an eyebrow as he gently releases his hold on her. “Sent away from Gallifrey, dumped on the Earth, left with no knowledge of your past existence…”

“It could almost be a mirror of your own life.” Her smile widens a little. “Not all at once, of course, but I was always something of an overachiever.”

“Memory wiped and forced to regenerate.” He begins to count points off on his fingers, continuing almost as if she had never spoken, except for a small nod to acknowledge her words. “Adopted and brought up as plain Donna Noble, believing you’re – she’s – human. How many hearts did Donna think she had, by the way?”

“Just one.” Donna tilts her head slightly to one side. “Human beings only notice what seems normal to them. And since Donna was never ill, nobody ever asked. No human doctor would bother to listen to the right side of a chest because they wouldn’t expect to find another heart there!”

“She didn’t even realize after the meta-crisis?”

“She assumed that the emotions she felt and things she heard in her mind came from you. After all, why should she think that she was anything other than a ordinary human being?”

“And when I wiped her memory…” He sighs, his shoulders drooping so that she can see as well as feel the impact that had on him, but he quickly changes the focus of his thoughts to frustration at his own blindness. “I should have realised then. I don’t know why – how! – I didn’t!”

“In your defence,” she says gently, “you were a little distracted.”

“Mmm.” He studies the carpet, but she can see the pain working across his face and feel it in her mind. “What I did, though,” he says in the end, his voice full of pain, “which I thought would resolve all the problems of the meta-crisis – it didn’t last.”

“It would have.” Donna is certain of that point. “In a human being, I’m sure it would have been enough. But, with time to recover from the challenge of having your Time Lord mind grafted onto my existing one, and with the TARDIS there to remind me, it could be released.”

“My abilities are not as strong as those of the President,” he suggests slowly.

“You didn’t have the control of the Matrix that Romana did at the time,” she reminds him. “And the power over the Matrix and thus over all Time Lords, is strong enough to control any mind – even yours! Borusa managed to control you when you and your other selves were in the Death Zone, so Romana could easily do what was necessary for me to change as I did. Make me forget everything about my past, except what escaped as part of Donna Noble’s dreams.”

“You became Donna Noble.”

She spreads her hands in demonstration. “Donna Noble is what I would have been if I’d lived all my life in Chiswick as human. I am what Donna Noble would have been if she had lived as a Time Lady on Gallifrey.” She smiles a little. “Donna Noble would never have been the person she was without elements of Donnakranoltondusoldar.”

“She was brilliant.”

“She still is, I hope.” Donna studies him through narrowed eyes. “Doctor, can you remember so little about Donna as she – I – was on Gallifrey that you can’t see the similarities?”

“It’s been such a long time,” he admits honestly, “that it’s hard for me to remember.”

“I’ve never forgotten.” She stares into the fire again. “And she dreamed about it.”

“Just like you dreamed about what would become her life.”

His voice is soft, almost inaudible, and her head snaps around to stare at him, finding him staring into space. “You remember?”

“A little.” He gives a slight nod. “The more time I spend with you, the more it comes back.”

“I hope so.”

Donna sinks against the seat, turning her gaze to the fire. She can feel herself slowly withdrawing in her mind as well, retreating behind the wall she built so long ago to cover for the many disappointments that his continued absence had caused.

His hand comes to rest on her arm, hauntingly familiar from their conversation on Gallifrey – so impossibly long ago – about Donna’s dreams.

“Come back to me,” he murmurs as he sits beside her on the couch again. “Please. Don’t leave. I couldn’t bear it.”

“You don’t want me.” She feels the aching pain of yet another letdown, of not being the right person for him at the right time, of him yet again failing to understand. “You want someone who no longer exists.”

“I believed everybody was gone.” His voice is filled with agony and his fingers tighten around her arm, although she suspects he’s not aware of it. “I thought I’d killed everyone. That they were all gone because of me.”

For a moment, as his eyes study her face, she can see the pain of what he’s gone through since the Last Great Time War. She can’t help remembering what she said about the way this man blames himself for the fates of others.

“Everyone,” he says slowly. “You. My children. All those who mattered to me.”

She feels her hearts constrict at the memory of Will and Tom and Janie, wondering for the first time – because she hasn’t let herself think of it before – what happened to them in the end. The Doctor hisses breath through his clenched teeth and his eyes fall.

“I shut myself off, refused to think about that time or those people. Even lied to Martha so that I could be happy, just for a moment.” He takes a deep breath. “But Donna…”

Silence, painful and filled with memories, stretches between them.

“What about Donna?” she asks in the end.

He heaves a shaky sigh and draws her hand into his lap, entwining his fingers with hers as if he could somehow absorb her into himself.

“I never even realised,” his voice is soft with wonder, “but now I can see that I let her close to me because she reminded me of the people I thought I’d lost.” He turns to look at her, his eyes bright with unshed tears. “Of you.”

“You couldn’t even remember who I was,” she says, trying to pull away, but he won’t let her go.

“I never forgot you,” he corrects, his voice soft. “But I couldn’t believe you’d survived.”

“You never sought me out all those times you came back to Gallifrey.” She remembers the agony of the one occasion that he looked at her with recognition, not long before his mind was wiped by the de-mat gun. That was the one meeting he couldn’t bring herself to tell him about, for fear of what the memory of what he had done then might do to him now. “You never came to find me.”

“I looked for you mentally.” He sighs. “Tried to find your mind among all of the others, but I never could.” He reaches out to tuck a curl of her hair behind her ear so that her face is no longer covered by her long, ginger locks. “You’re so good at hiding, Donna. But I didn’t remember that. I thought…” his voice catches, “I thought you must have died.”

“I always knew when you were there.” Her response is a mild rebuke. “I did everything I could to help you. Risked my reputation and my safety for you.” She hesitates, unsure whether to tell him the truth, but feeling that he should know. “Suffered for you.” She pauses for a long moment. “Died for you,” she finishes.

Before she fully realises what’s happening, she finds herself in his arms, which tremble as they hold her against him. It brings back echoes of that moment on Midnight, which suddenly flashes clear into her mind and she can’t quite help he way she wraps her arms around his back.

“I never wanted that,” he says in a muffled voice. “Never expected you would do that. If I’d only known…”

Resting her head on his shoulder, she releases the tight hold on her mind that is keeping him out. A sigh in her ear tells her that he’s realised the change, and he relaxes a little.

“I need you, Donna,” he whispers harshly. “You can’t leave me.”

“But do you want me?” she has to know. “Because, if you look at me and expect to find Donna Noble, with all of her human insecurities and frailties and those other aspects of her that you loved so much, but which aren't a part of me, then I’m afraid you’re always going to be disappointed.”

“No!” He pulls away, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders, and she can see the tearstains on his cheeks. “No, Donnakranoltondusoldar, I want you.”

“I’m not Donna Noble,” she reminds him again.

“I know.” There is an infinite amount of pain in his voice. “I lost Donna Noble the instant of the meta-crisis. I’ll never cease to mourn that loss. But I can’t let that destroy me, just as I've had to move on after all of the other losses in my life.”

“I know.” She echoes his voice and even his own tone, thinking of the many people she left behind on Gallifrey.

“Yes.” He draws her closer to him and rests his head against hers. “You do.”

“You haven't lost everyone,” she reminds him softly.

“No.” He presses his lips to her forehead and she feels a small frisson shudder through her at his touch as he continues, “And neither have you.”

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