The road less travelled...

Title: A Time of Endings 2/9
Author: katherine_b
Rating: PG
Summary: The End of Time with Donna in it. Wait, she already was. So why am I bothering to do this one?

Part II

The Master appears on the Doctor’s internal radar almost the moment he sends the TARDIS into a hiding place just a second out of time with where he is now. That distinctly non-human presence, gradually coming together into a stronger sign of life.

And yet the Doctor knows there’s something wrong.

Because the signal is incomplete, which makes him think that something about the resurrection must have gone wrong.

Still, he follows the indicator, knowing that he will have to face up to this, his best enemy, sooner or later. This time, after what happened before, with Jack and Martha, he definitely prefers it to come sooner.

At first, he pays little attention to the locations he’s moving through, but as he gets out of the city and closer to the river and the docks, he can’t help wondering what the Master is doing.

He has to suspect that he’s trying to hide.

But only from the Doctor, or is there, as the Ood suggested, a greater power at work that he’s as yet unaware of?

The Doctor knows he’s getting closer when he gets the first whiff of alien – Gallifreyan – pheromones.

So the Master isn’t resorting to Infinity Arcs and fobwatches this time. No games.

Well, maybe only one, he realises as he hears the first boom of an iron bar striking an oil drum.

Hide and seek.

And in the instant before he takes off running, he remembers the times they played this together on Gallifrey, and he has to wonder if the Master remembers it too.

Four knocks.

He knows he’s getting closer when the sound gets louder.

And louder.

And then he feels as the Master begins to run.

The Doctor tries for one moment to pretend to be glad he doesn’t have a companion, because it means he doesn’t have anyone to wait for or keep an eye on.

Then he spots the familiar silhouette atop a massive mound of gravel and skids to a stop.

A roar, wild and insane and almost animalistic, reaches him through the air, and then he feels his hearts stop for a beat as the Master launches himself an impossibly high distance into the air.

Why is it he wonders silently and in aggravation, as he takes off running in the direction the Master is going to land, that I never get superpowers whenever I come back to life?

Still, he doesn’t have time to ponder inane questions and finally sees the Master come to a stop on a huge stack of iron beams.

The Doctor is able to make it to the stretch of cement only a short distance away before the Master reacts, opening his mouth to laugh as he did in the images the Doctor glimpsed with the Ood. However what is more concerning is that the Master is clearly unable to maintain his biophysical state in a solid mass.

“Please,” he begs urgently, “let me help!”

The only response, and perhaps the one he should have expected, is a mocking look.

“You’re burning up your own life-force!” he pleads.

The Master all but rolls his eyes, as if pointing out that this isn’t exactly news to him. His form flickers again before he once more takes off running.

The Doctor is quick to follow, but as he rounds the pile of beams, he almost falls over a familiar but unexpected figure that definitely isn’t the Master.

“Oh, by gosh, Doctor,” Wilf’s voice announces in gleeful tones, “you’re a sight for sore eyes!”

“No, get away,” he orders, shoving the man off less than gently, as he clambers up the nearby pile of rusted beams, his eyes scanning the ground for any sign of the Master.

However, even as he looks, a part of his mind picks up the conversation happening behind and below him.

“Did we do it?” a male voice asks. “Is that him?”

“Tall and thin.” He can hear the pride in Wilf’s voice. “Big brown coat.”

“The Silver Cloak,” a woman exclaims as the Doctor feels the Master’s trail begin to fade away. “It worked!”

Distracted by the voices and the realisation that they’re talking about him, the Doctor turns and drops down off the pile of beams to stare at the group that have gathered.

“‘Cos Wilf phoned Nettie,” a woman with white hair and wearing a red coat is saying, “who phoned June. And her sister lives opposite Broadfell, and she saw the police box. And her neighbour saw this man heading east.”

He sidles up to Wilf, attempting to conceal his irritation. “Wilfred?”

“Yeah?” comes the careless response, but he barely gives him time to get the word out.

“Have you told them who I am?” he rushes on. “You promised me!”

He’s not quite sure what he promised, but he’s certain he would have sworn Wilf to secrecy at some point – wouldn’t he?

“No, I just said you were a Doctor, that’s all,” Wilf says in a tone that is clearly meant to be reassuring, before he suddenly stiffens to attention. “And might I say, sir, it is an honour to see you again.”

He throws in a salute and, for once, the Doctor manages a somewhat flustered and mildly amused salute back. However distraction comes before he can berate the man for his irresponsible words.

“Oh, but you never said he was a looker!” the woman who mentioned how they had found him puts in, and he gives her a startled glance, receiving a cheeky grin in return. “He’s gorgeous!”

The Doctor’s eyes widen in horror as he recognises the object in her hand, which she is giving to one of the men behind her.

“Take a photo,” she orders, handing over a mobile phone, and the Doctor opens his mouth to protest, but she’s already approached him, one hand outstretched.

“Not bad, eh?” the man says, juggling the camera.

“I’m Minnie,” the woman says, nudging at his arm to make him move it so that she can get closer. “Minnie the Menace.”

He can’t help thinking that whoever gave her that name was pretty much spot-on.

“It’s a long time since I had a photo with a handsome man,” she says flirtatiously.

He realises that his mouth is already open to say something, but that there aren’t any words ready to come. He can only be grateful for Wilf’s attempts to restore some sort of order as the others hurry to join Minnie.

“Just get off him,” Wilf complains. “Leave him alone!”

“Hush, you old misery!” Minnie scolds, before turning to the Doctor, her hands heading for his face, and for a wild moment, he’s worried she’s going to do something to his hair. “Come on, Doctor!” she urges as she has the audacity to pinch his cheeks. “Give us a smile!”

Clearly he manages a grimace of some description, because she turns away, apparently satisfied.

“That’s it!”

“Hold on,” the man holding the phone puts in, and then he presses the button. “Did it flash?”

“No, there’s a blue light,” Minnie tells him. “Try again.”

The Doctor glances at Wilf, who gives him an apologetic look as if trying to deny responsibility for what the members of his group are doing.

“I – I’m really kind of busy, you know,” the Doctor puts in, hoping to escape.

“Oh, it won’t take a tick,” comes the immediate reply. “Keep smiling!”

He suddenly realises that her arm is moving. “Is that,” he’s beginning nervously, “your hand, Minnie?” he explodes as he feels a firm tap on his rear end.

“Good boy!” she tells him and he feels the pat repeated.

“Now, that’s enough,” Wilf tells them firmly, moving to the Doctor’s side as the group breaks up. “Come on, let’s get a move on.”

“Where are we going?” the Doctor asks suspiciously, somewhat afraid it might be back to Minnie’s home.

“Just back into town,” Wilf replies readily enough. “Oh-ho, come on, I need to have a talk to you.”

Oh-ho, scared!

The Doctor suddenly starts as that memory recurs in his mind - standing on an empty street corner at Christmas time in London, with Astrid at his side - and he stares at the man beside him.

“Wilf,” he’s beginning warily, when suddenly he realises that Minnie has moved to his other side and has taken possessive hold of his arm.

“Come on,” she orders him. “No point hanging around here, is there?”

And he’s all but frog-marched away before he can even protest. What’s worse is that he finds himself trapped on a seat between Minnie and the window on the small bus that is waiting for them, so he can’t even talk to Wilf in a semblance of privacy.

The group chatters eagerly, but he gets away with little more than monosyllabic replies and is able to give his mind over to wondering why he’s never noticed anything strange about Wilfred Mott before now.

That man’s voice finally drags himself out of his thoughts and he realises that the bus has stopped and Wilf is standing up.

“Now, let the Doctor out, Minnie,” Wilf is urging. “I didn’t make all this effort to find him just so you could get a picture!”

“I’m glad you did,” Minnie says with a grin and a cheeky wink at the Doctor, merely turning sideways on the seat so that he only manages to get out with an effort and feels her hand on his back again so that he shoots out into the aisle rather less gracefully than he would have liked.

“Oh, leave ’im alone,” Wilf scolds her, before clambering down off the bus and back to the Doctor. “Come on then, here we are,” he tells the Time Lord. “Hurry up!”

Well, that’s a needless bit of advice, because the Doctor scarcely waits for Wilf to get out of the way before moving down the stairs and stepping onto the footpath with a feeling of reprieve.

“Goodbye!” Wilf says with a wave at those they are leaving behind. “Right, bye!”

Everyone on the bus waves eagerly, Minnie, the Doctor is quick to note, keenest of all and actually blowing kisses, which the Doctor has to hope are for Wilf and not him.

“Right, over ‘ere,” Wilf directs, crossing the street once the road is clear.

The Doctor looks around in confusion before following him to the other side of the street. “What’s so special about this place?” he demands. “We’ve passed fifteen cafés on the way!”

The only response he receives is a chuckle and a less-than-helpful, “Yeah, I know. ‘Afternoon!” Wilf adds cheerfully as he walks past several people who are leaving before heading inside and holding the door open for the Doctor.

Wilf clearly knows both this place and the reason he’s brought the Doctor here, because he makes a beeline for a specific table and sits down at it, waving a hand at the other chair.

As the Doctor takes his seat, he happens to look up in time to catch a strange expression in Wilf’s eyes. It reminds him of the time when they met beside Donna’s car.

The thing is, Doctor, is that Donna is my only grandchild. You’ve got to promise me you're gonna take care of her.

The Doctor shakes himself out of that memory, only to find that escape from that line of thought won’t be as easy as he’d hoped.

“But we had some good times, didn’t we though?” Wilf is saying. “I mean, all those ATMOS things and planets in the sky and me with that paint-gun.”

He chuckles, but the Doctor can’t join in because too much of what he’s thinking at this moment disturbs him.

Clearly Wilf decides, as the Doctor isn’t going to join in the trip down memory lane, that it’s time to get to the reason he has apparently been looking for him. He speaks hesitantly. “I keep… seeing things, Doctor. I – this face. At night.”

The Doctor decides he will worry about that – about what he presumes are nightmares involving the Master – only once he’s more reassured in his mind about something that is now becoming a profound matter for concern.

“Who are you?” he demands warily.

Wilf straightens in his chair, a look of confusion in his eyes. “I’m Wilfred Mott.”

“No,” the Doctor assures him. “People have waited hundreds of years to find me and then you manage it in a couple of hours.”

“Well, just lucky, I s’pose.”

The Doctor can see where Donna got her habit of dismissing the remarkable features of herself from in that simple statement. Still, he needs to know more.

“No, we keep on meeting, Wilf,” he reminds the younger man. “Over and over again. Like something’s still connecting us.”

“Well, what’s so important about me?” Wilf asks almost mockingly.

“Exactly,” the Doctor agrees. “Why you?”

For a few long seconds, they stare at each other. For the Doctor, though, he can’t bear to look into eyes that remind him so much of Donna’s. In the end, he pulls his gaze away to stare out of the window.

There’s so much he’d like to say at this point, so much he wants to ask Wilf about Donna, about whether she’s remembered anything, about whether she ever asks about that strange, missing time.

And yet he can’t bring himself to do it, because he doesn’t trust that he could get through a conversation on the topic of Donna Noble without breaking down.

The silence extends to a minute, then two. In the back of his mind, he can’t help wondering why Wilf doesn’t say anything, but then perhaps the Doctor’s reaction to his concerns has warned him off that topic, at least for now.

He knows that the Master is still a long way away – too far for him to seek out at this moment.

And then he hears several raps on the counter and feels his hearts begin to race before he realises that the count has stopped at three.

At that instant, he realises that what he really wants to do is talk. It’s good at that, this particular incarnation, and he somehow feels as if there are so many words he wants to get out before he loses his chance.

That was what was so wonderful about Donna. He could talk to her and at her and around her, and it didn’t matter whether she seemed to be listening or not. She always got the important points and knew how to react to the rest.

He feels pain grow in his chest at the knowledge that he will never have the luxury of that time with her again. He wishes he’d valued her presence more, that he hadn’t spent all of his time ignoring the various hints that had predicted the end of things because he had been so caught up in her promises of ‘forever’ that, for once, he’d almost let himself believe them.

And yet this is Donna’s grandfather sitting across the table from him, with the same eyes and the same tones of voice and the same aggravating self-effacement.

And he has to wonder if Wilf shares that beautiful empathy that is such a strong feature of his best friend.

“I’m going to die,” he says suddenly, startling himself as much as Wilf with the words, because they certainly weren’t what he had been expecting to say.

“Well, so am I, one day,” Wilf retorts, and the Doctor feels untold pain and horror creep through him at the thought.

“Don’t you dare!” he shoots back, and hears Wilf chuckle.

“All right, I’ll try not to,” comes the light reply.

“But I was told…” he goes on, glad to have made the difficult beginning, “‘He will knock four times.’ That was a prophecy. Knock four times and then…”

“Yeah, but I… thought…” Wilf interrupts after the pause, “When I saw you before, you said your people could change, like, your whole body.”

For once, he can only be grateful that he told Wilf and Sylvia about regeneration when he brought Donna back to them. It saves explanations and questions now, but somehow that doesn’t make this conversation any easier.

“I can still die,” he says miserably. “If I’m killed before regeneration then I’m dead.”

He leans forward, his arms resting on the table, staring past Wilf to the almost empty café behind them.

“Even then,” he says with a sigh, still unable to meet Wilf’s gaze, to see the pain in his eyes, “even if I change, it feels like dying. Everything I am dies. Some new man goes sauntering away.” He feels his lip quiver and fights for control before he gets the last words out. “And I’m dead.”

He can’t help wondering how Donna would have reacted to those words, if he would even have been able to say them to her. Could he have admitted a weakness like that? Then again, she was good at getting him to tell her things he hadn’t ever expected anyone else to know. He thinks back to Messaline and blinks fiercely at the remembrance of that conversation.

And then he realises that Wilf’s head has turned to look out of the window and snaps out of his reverie to follow the other man’s gaze.

“What?” he asks as he turns to look – only to wonder for a second if he’s hallucinating at the sight of his best friend, clad in a green coat, her hair hanging loose around her face in the way he likes it best, fishing in her pocket for something.

“I’m sorry,” Wilf tells him, perhaps seeing the pain that the Doctor knows he couldn’t possibly conceal at this moment, “but I had to.”

The Doctor feels his eyes prickle with tears. It’s been such a long time since he let himself cry that the sensation is horribly foreign and almost makes him feel sick, but he just finds it so impossibly and exquisitely painful to see her standing there that he can’t help himself.

And he hates that he instantly understands the reason why they had to come to this particular café.

“Look, can’t you make her better?” Wilf goes on urgently.

“Stop it!” he snaps, glaring across the table.

“No, but you’re so clever,” Wilf continues hurriedly. “Can’t you bring her memory back? Just go to her now! Go on, just run across the street and say hello!”

He wishes so much that he could – that there was some way.

And yet he knows there isn’t.

“If she ever remembers me,” he says from between gritted teeth, “her mind will burn and she will die!”

Wilf seems to flinch back in his seat at that hard word, and while the Doctor hates to cause anyone pain, he knows that the reason he’s being so forthright is because of how much he wishes things had been different.

Once he’s sure that Wilf isn’t about to keep begging for the impossible, he looks back over his shoulder and out of the window, drinking his fill of the sight of his best friend. Donna, he sees at once, might not have memories of him anymore, but some things haven’t changed.

“Don’t you touch this car!” she says warningly to a parking officer.

The Doctor hears Wilf chuckle and can’t help joining in a little.

“She’s not changed,” he manages to get out, fighting back tears.

“No,” Wilf agrees sadly, before suddenly sitting up a little more and peering at a young man who is approaching Donna, his hands full of bags. “Oh, there he is! Shaun Temple – they’re engaged! Getting married in the spring.”

A really nice day.

The words echo back from that meeting and the Doctor glances at Wilf to see how he’s taking the news.

“Another wedding,” he says for wont of something better to say.

“Yeah.”

“Hold on,” he exclaims in horror as he studies the face of the young man who will soon be a member of the Noble family, before turning back to Wilf, “she’s not going to be called ‘Noble Temple’ – it sounds like a tourist spot!”

“No,” Wilf assures him, before going on to add, perhaps somewhat teasingly, “it’s ‘Temple Noble’.”

“Right,” the Doctor acknowledges this, although he can’t help thinking it’s not much better. “And is she happy?” he asks almost desperately, although he manages to keep the worst of the anxiety of out his voice. “Is he nice?”

“Yeah, he’s sweet enough,” Wilf assures him, and there’s a knowing glance in the other man’s eyes that suggests to the Doctor that Wilf understood what he actually meant to ask. “He’s a bit of a dreamer.”

The Doctor can’t help thinking that that would help him to fit in with Wilf, who also seems to have that tendency in abundance. Even Donna, he remembers fondly, as he looks back over his shoulder to watch her again, could be that way sometimes.

“Mind you,” Wilf goes on, becoming more practical, “he’s on minimum wage, she’s earning tuppence, so all they can afford is a tiny little flat”

There’s a rush of relief as the Doctor realises that Donna has managed to escape from her mother’s negative influence. Still, he becomes aware the next instant of just how much Wilf would miss his granddaughter’s presence in the house.

“And then,” Wilf says suddenly, in a tone that makes the Doctor start, although he still can’t drag his eyes away from Donna, “sometimes I see this look on her face. Like she’s so sad. But she can’t remember why.”

“She’s got him,” the Doctor points out, wishing – well, he doesn’t really know what he wishes at that moment. Probably something impossible.

“She’s making do,” is Wilf’s reply.

The pain that has been building in his chest, which he thought was already almost unbearable, only expands further at this statement. He can’t tell whether he wanted to hear that Donna was safe and happy, that she’d moved on and was making something of her life, or that she was still missing something because of the lack of him there as her best friend.

At last he realises that neither one of those was ever going to satisfy him.

“Aren’t we all?” he says at last, fighting desperately for control.

He watches Donna fling her hair back over her shoulder and open the passenger door as Shaun goes around to the driver’s seat. He says something – the Doctor can’t make out what – and Donna grins at him in reply. For an instant it’s as if it’s the two of them on the TARDIS again, her grinning at him like she did when he first took her to the Oodsphere, or when he gave in her pleading and agreed to give her a driving lesson, or when they were fleeing from the Shadow Proclamation.

And it nearly kills him now that she’s not looking at him, but at someone else. That he means nothing more to her now than someone she met once who knows her granddad.

For an instant, he wonders if it’s the sight of Donna with someone else that will cause him enough pain to regenerate.

He could definitely think of worse ways to go.

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