The road less travelled...

Title: Finding A Way Home – A Bitter Blow Part 5/5
Author: katherine_b
Rating: G
Summary: There’s nothing to do but wait.
A/N: Written for the 13th Travellers’ Tales with the prompt ‘envelope’.

Part V

Donna’s eyes fill at the Time Lord’s words, but even as the Doctor is looking around for some tissues, the other man suddenly leans forward and places his hand over her entwined fingers, which are lying on her lap.

“I want to,” he begins, but then suddenly pulls away, his words cut short, as he jerks out of his chair and into a standing position a few feet away from her, with a cry that echoes through the room: “Donna Noble!”

Donna sobs, but the Doctor snaps his head around to stare at the man who shares his features.

“How did you know that?” he demands sharply, rising likewise.

“Know what?” asks Donna, sniffing into a tissue she has found in her pocket.

The Doctor turns to her, at the same time keeping one eye fixed on the Time Lord, who is looking frightened at this aggressive response. “I haven’t ever mentioned your name,” he says simply. “Your last name. Your maiden name. Not once. So,” he turns back to the other man, his eyes narrowing “how did you know it?”

“I... I don’t know.” The man shrugs uneasily. “It was just suddenly there – in my mind. Like a door opened and let me see it.”

“And you knew it was right?” the Doctor presses. “You knew to say it aloud, that it had to mean her.”

“It couldn’t have been anyone else.” The Time Lord shrugs. “It just – fit.”

“What does it mean?” Donna demands anxiously. “That he’s starting to remember?”

“That bit, that one tiny fragment, apparently so.” The Doctor begins pacing the carpet. “The question is, what was the trigger?”

“Was it something I said?” Donna asks. “Something you said?”

“No, couldn’t be.” The Doctor shakes his head. “It happened when he was speaking, not when we were.” And he turns on the Time Lord. “What else were you doing?”

“I was,” the man’s brown eyes are wide with fear and something approaching guilt, as if he’s afraid of having done something wrong, “sitting there. Just – talking.”

“You touched me,” Donna reminds him, breathing heavily. “You touched my hand.”

“Do it again,” the Doctor snaps almost before she finishes speaking.

The other two people in the room look at him fearfully and he gives them an impatient nod. “Come on, the longer we waste, the more danger there is of something going wrong!”

Husband and wife stare anxiously at one another for a moment before Donna, with obvious reluctance, holds out her hand and the Time Lord gently brushes his fingers over it. He looks up at the other man and shakes his head.

“Nothing.”

“Then you did something else,” the Doctor shoots back. He crosses the floor to stand in front of the Time Lord, who sinks back in his chair as if afraid of what might be about to happen. “What else,” demands the man in blue, “did you do?”

“I don’t know!” the Time Lord explodes, putting his hands out as if he would like to shove the other man away. “I – I don’t know anything!”

“You do.” There is something cold in the Doctor’s voice and he waves a hand towards Donna. “You know her name. And the only way for you to remember more – to remember everything, like I promised – is for us to work out exactly what you did that gave you that bit of information. Yes?”

Wide-eyed, the Time Lord can only respond with a miniscule nod, but that, at least, serves to quell the Doctor’s boiling impatience and rage. He pulls up a chair so that he is sitting opposite the man from whom he was created.

“Let me look,” he pleads gently. “I should be able to find it – to see exactly what you did, what you touched, that gave you her name.”

For a long moment, the Time Lord studies the Doctor, who attempts to suppress his impatience. It seems like forever before the man gives a slight nod.

“I suppose so,” he agrees. “If you really think it will work.”

“Right now,” the Doctor admits, “it’s the only chance we’ve got.”

His fingers lightly touch the Time Lord’s temples and then he is within that man’s disordered, lost, confused mind again. Unlike last time, however, there is a difference, a spark, an anchor that gives this lost soul something on which to cling. One thing of which he can be certain. One name: Donna Noble.

And all at once, with a glorious sense of understanding, he knows exactly what happened and how it might just be possible to give the Time Lord back everything he has lost.

He beams at the other two as he opens his eyes, and they look suitably startled.

“Doctor?” Donna ventures hesitantly, “what is it?”

“The answer,” he declares. “It’s staring us right in the face. In fact,” he gives a delighted chuckle, “right now it could hardly be more obvious!”

“But what is it?” Donna demands almost desperately.

The Doctor rises from his seat and returns to his place on the couch beside her. He lays a gentle hand on her stomach and smiles. “It’s them,” he says simply.

“What?!” the Time Lord demands, at the exact same instant as Donna protests, “I don’t understand, but if you think you’re doing something to my babies, Spaceman...”

“No, no, no!” He raises his hands in a gesture of denial. “We don’t have to do anything to them – because they’re going to do it all! They can’t help themselves, the poor things. They’ve been spilling out their feelings and thoughts and emotions for nearly nine months, but we haven’t even bothered to listen!”

Donna’s hand closes suddenly and smartly over his mouth. “Please,” she says between gritted teeth, “I don’t understand what you mean and, right now, I really, really need to!”

“Sorry.” He pulls her into a gentle hug, but his brain is so full of ideas that he can’t bear to sit still and leaps to his feet again, once more beginning to pace the room.

“That’s where it is,” he tells them, nodding at Donna but looking at the Time Lord. “The memories I can’t give you because you won’t let me. Somehow they are getting through to you when nothing else can.”

“What do you mean?” Donna demands anxiously, her hands held almost protectively over her pregnant belly.

“Just after he regained consciousness,” the Doctor explains, “I tried hypnosis as a way of recalling the past to his subconscious mind. But all Time Lords are trained in ways to resist it, particularly if it’s done with a natural or slow induction, which was all I could manage under the circumstances. It didn’t work, but while he was in that state, I attempted to project my memories into his mind. After all, they’re basically the same, aren’t they? The feelings would be different, but you can work around those.”

“It didn’t work,” the Time Lord suggests, frowning as if trying to recall this moment.

“No,” admits the Doctor. “Our minds aren’t compatible in that way. I’m human, at least partly, and you’re not. But them!” He points at the unborn twins. “They aren’t human. They’re Time Lord. And they have all the memories they inherited from both their father and their mother tucked away in their minds: traces of the days when the Matrix existed on Gallifrey. Usually it would be impossible to access their memories, since thoughts like those are generally so well controlled. But not for unborn children who haven’t learned that sort of control. And,” he glances at the other man, “not for you, in your current state.”

He turns to face the Time Lord, who no longer looks frightened, merely fascinated.

“The amnesia has knocked that control loose,” he continues. “So you were open to receive the first idea they threw at you – their mother’s name.” He shoots a grin at Donna. “The name of the most important woman in the whole of creation!”

“So – what?” asks Donna desperately. “What do we do?”

“He needs to touch you,” the Doctor tells her gently. “Oh, not like that!” he hurries on as a look of horror covers her face. “I mean, just like he did before. When he put his hand on yours, his fingers brushed your stomach – he touched the twins through you. He has to get as close as he can to them. Take in everything they’re trying to feed him. His mind will be able to anchor those details, the same way it's done with your name, and that should give all of the other thoughts something to cling to. It should stabilise everything,” he adds, turning to the other man, “so that your own memories and feelings and thoughts can fit around them and return to normal.”

“And that will work?” It’s the Time Lord’s turn to sound anxious and desperate.

“Right now,” the Doctor admits, his impatience growing in leaps and bounds, “it’s the only idea I’ve got. Can we at least try it?”

The Time Lord stares at his wife, who is looking at him in almost a hunted manner. Her gaze travels over his face once more, lingering on his mouth, his freckles, his nose, his hair – avoiding his eyes, which is where the strangeness lurks. Then she slowly reaches out a hand and picks up his fingers, moving them closer until she finally brings them to rest on her swollen belly.

The Doctor holds his breath, watching the intimate and yet strangely distant scene before him. The other man, he can see, is staring at his hand, resting against Donna, as if it was somehow no longer part of him. His eyes are wide and his breathing comes in short, anxious bursts.

And finally he pulls back and gives a slight shake of his head as if trying to dislodge something. Then he speaks.

“Well,” he says lightly, “that was interesting.”

There is nothing in his tone that wasn’t there before.

The Doctor’s breath escapes in soundless sigh of devastation and he lets his head droop. He had believed in this idea so much, perhaps because he was so desperate for it to work. For now, at least, his suggestions have run out. Exhaustion is beginning to overtake him at a rate of knots and he isn’t sure how much more he can stand.

He raises his eyes, trying to come up with comforting words – only to find that not all is as he had thought.

The Time Lord sits with his fingers entwined with Donna’s. Their knees, which had been a distance apart before, are now touching. There is an intimacy between them, a sense of closeness that is only emphasised when he realises that they are gazing into each other’s eyes.

Everything that was once missing from those brown eyes has returned with a rush.

The half-human Doctor is forced to swallow a large and very inconvenient lump in his throat.

And then the other man’s arms envelope him and he finds himself crash-tackled into one of the armchairs, the back of which gives way under the pressure, almost depositing both men onto the floor.

“You,” the Time Lord bellows in his ear, “are impossible! Did you know that? Absolutely ridiculous and impossible and stubborn and determined and I can’t think of any possible way to thank you that will be enough!”

“And I can’t breathe with you on top of me like this,” the half-human Doctor grunts, trying hard to get away. “So if your gratitude involves killing me, you’re going the right way about it.”

Donna gives a half-laugh, half-sob at this that draws both men’s attention and they struggle to get up, but the broken chair reduces their leverage and makes that difficult. The man in blue pedals wildly with his feet, one of which catches in something. There is a tearing sound and when the two Doctors are finally on their feet again, the medical gown has a horizontal rip across it at exactly waist height, so that it no longer covers its wearer decently.

Donna’s laugh this time is a proper one and she waves a hand at her husband. “For goodness sake, go and get dressed,” she demands, wriggling forward on the seat, about to get to her feet.

Instead she gasps, both hands flying to the sides of her belly, and for the first time, the half-human Doctor realises that he has been feeling an echo of that pain, coming and going in ever-increasing waves, since he brought Donna back on board the TARDIS. He’s just been too busy to pay attention to it before now.

“I suppose,” the Time Lord offers rather wistfully, his arms already around his wife, “this isn’t just Braxton-Hicks?”

“Doesn’t feel like it,” the other man shoots back, on his knees beside Donna, his hand rubbing the small of her back. “They’re a little too regular – nine minutes apart. If we don’t get her out of here, she could have those twins of yours on the living room carpet.”

The other Doctor bolts from the room, returning a bare instant later pushing the wheelchair that he had rejected so many hours earlier. He has also, the half-human Doctor notices, taken time to shove another medical robe on over the torn one.

With the contraction now over, Donna notices it too and giggles rather breathlessly. “Why didn’t you just get dressed?”

“No point.” The Time Lord shrugs. “I’ll need it later on, so why not save time now? Besides,” he grins, “this was quicker!”

The two Doctors help Donna in to the chair and out of the room, heading for the infirmary. The man in blue looks down at Donna as they hurry her along the passage.

“Her contractions are now eight-and-a-half minutes apart. Yup, this is the real thing, all right.”

New Arrivals