![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Living Alone
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
katherine_b
Rating: Adult
Characters: Donna and Jack
Spoilers: Various bits and pieces up to and including The New Doctor.
Summary: Donna’s life after the TARDIS departs
A/N: This is a rather unexpected sequel of sorts for Better Off Without You. In that story, the TARDIS boosted Donna’s ability to heal herself and recover from illness or injury. This story examines the impact that had on Donna once the Doctor returned her to Earth.
Chapter II
In the end, she stopped making friends. It was too difficult, meant having to answer too many awkward questions. And only then did she fully understand why the Doctor - because of course she remembered the Doctor - travelled the way he did. It was easier to leave people behind after a short time than have the fear of their eventual departure looming ever larger.
Besides, there was that pesky little issue of never aging. She celebrated her first century by sky-diving and her hundred-and-fiftieth birthday by pot-holing some of the deepest caves in England, but as far as the organisers of the events knew, she was a woman in her late thirties who wanted to get things done before she turned forty.
She was getting very good at lying.
The thing that really surprised Donna, though, was how little human beings noticed things that they couldn't fully understand.
She couldn't really think of herself as human anymore. Not completely. Not with the Doctor's mind in hers.
She remembered that, too.
Now, when she looked back, she could see when the Doctor's mind took over and managed things in a way that Donna Noble, no matter how brilliant she might be, could have done. Memory of the metacrisis had flooded back when she recalled that night in the Crucible. It was as if the memory of the electric shock from Davros kicked her memory into gear as well. No more faint trickles of strange things that made no sense.
Now she remembered everything…
* * *
There was so much she missed.
Company, for one thing. After Sylvia’s death, and with Donna’s reluctance to make friends, evenings were spent at home in front of the television, but even Donna’s old favourite programs seemed less interesting without someone to discuss them all with.
She definitely missed the quiet nights up on the hill with Gramps, even if the last one of those had been more than one hundred and fifty years earlier.
Most of all, though, she missed the parts of her life associated with that incredible year she spent with the Doctor.
She tried not to think about the Doctor and often succeeded, but it was harder to avoid thinking about the TARDIS when so much of what was around her reminded Donna of that incredible ship.
Trying to find something to do after Sylvia passed away, Donna had taken it into her head to redecorate the house.
It was only later that she realised the living room was now the exact same coral tint as the walls of the console room.
By chance, she’d repeated the same feat in much of the rest of the house – her bedroom, bathroom, the kitchen and the room she had converted into a library were identical in many ways to rooms on the TARDIS.
Of course, that only made things worse.
And then there was the day that she was looking for fabric to make new cushion covers that would match her new couch. The old one had given up the ghost after a century, but Donna doubted that its ‘lifetime warranty’ would extend that far. Besides, there would be all those awkward questions. So she went looking for something new and found an attractive pale blue ottoman that just needed a few bright cushions to liven it up.
Something in a stripy pattern.
She certainly wasn’t expecting to find brown fabric with blue pinstripes.
Tears sprang to Donna’s eyes and she blinked them back, swallowing hard. Reaching out a hand, she touched the fabric, not really surprised to find that it even felt the same as the Doctor’s suit.
For a moment, she considered buying the store’s entire stock, but then reality hit – what would she do with it? It wasn’t the right stuff to use for furnishings and she couldn’t see herself wearing it. She definitely wasn’t about to make it into a suit!
And yet the prospect of leaving it behind was unthinkable.
In the end, she compromised. Along with the material she needed for the cushion covers, she also purchased several metres of the brown fabric and tucked it into the bottom of her handbag.
Donna began to suspect that the Universe was having a laugh at her expense when, as she went to leave H&M, she saw a stand of clothing for teddy bears, with the toys themselves on a nearby shelf. The ridiculous thing was that the bears each had a wild tuft of hair on top of their heads. Almost as if to rub things in, the clothing stands held rows of little shirts, tiny ties, small pairs of horn-rimmed glasses and miniature brown dusters.
“All it’d need would be a sonic screwdriver,” Donna murmured to herself, looking around to see if anyone was playing some sort of prank on her. However nobody seemed to be paying her more attention than usual. She actually wasn’t sure if this disappointed her or not. It would have been very much in character for the Doctor, if he suspected that she had her memory back, to announce his return in this bizarre way.
Collecting the bear whose hair was wildest and therefore most like the Doctor's, Donna selected various accessories and took them over to the cash register.
"Aw, it's very cute," said the salesgirl as she scanned the items. "Is it for your daughter?"
"Er, no." Donna looked startled. "No, I don't have any children. It's, um, for me, actually." She smiled somewhat conspiratorially. "It reminds me of a friend of mine."
The saleswoman returned the smile. "Let's hope he takes it as a compliment then." She bagged the items and handed them to Donna. "There you are!"
"Thanks." Donna took her new purchases, but even as she turned away, she wondered what the Doctor would think if he could see the bear. Going back to the manchester department, she got some brown satin and purchased a pattern for a suit that she was sure she could scale down to fit. If she was going to make clothes, she might as well do it properly.
* * *
Donna was still thinking about the Doctor when she left the shop. She peeped into the bag to check that the brown fabric would match the pattern on the little tie and almost walked into a tall man who just ducked out of a nearby street.
“Hey, whoa…” he was beginning in a markedly American accent when he suddenly stopped short. “Er, excuse me,” he muttered, turning away so rapidly that the long coat he was wearing swirled in the air as he tried to duck back down the alley.
However Donna had caught a glimpse of the man’s face and knew him at once.
“Captain Jack!”
Her voice stopped him abruptly and he turned back, his eyes widening.
“You… know who I am?”
Donna grinned. “I would have thought you’d be more surprised that I’m still alive. After all, it’s been how many centuries?” She eyed him up and down. “You look just the same.”
“I can return the compliment.” He grinned and touched his index finger to his forehead in a salute. “Looking very good indeed, ma’am.”
Donna chuckled. “Not now, Captain,” she scolded with a shake of her head that, she hoped, disguised the blush that had risen to her cheeks at his compliment.
Jack laughed outright at that. “Sounds all too familiar,” he said in mock-rueful tones. “Can’t even be polite without people thinking I have ulterior motives.”
“Because you usually do,” Donna retorted sharply, aware of Jack’s character thanks to the knowledge she had gained from the Doctor’s mind.
“Touché.” He chuckled and stepped closer. “So, Miss Noble – assuming you are still Miss Noble,” she nodded in affirmation and he continued, “might I suggest that we adjourn this meeting to a rather more comfortable location so that I can find out just how it is you remember me when, as far as I knew, you were supposed to have no memory of any of us?”
Donna smiled. “Now that definitely sounds like an ulterior motive, Captain. But as I have a number of questions I’d like to ask you, too, that sounds very acceptable.”
“Now who has ulterior motives?!” Jack grinned triumphantly, but even as he reached for Donna’s hand, he stopped short and then pressed a hand to an earpiece that Donna only just noticed as he touched it. “Uh, put that invitation on hold,” he told her, fishing in the pocket of his coat. His hand reappeared clutching a small, white card. “This is the address of our London office. I’ll meet you out front at seven o’clock and we’ll go for dinner. Yes?”
“It’s a date.” Donna took the card and glanced at the address before sliding it into her bag. “Most definitely a date. I’ll see you then, Captain.”
And Donna watched as the man turned on his heel and ran off down the street, pulling a large gun out of the pocket of his coat as he skidded to a stop and dashed down a laneway.
After glancing at her watch, Donna turned and hurried to the bus stop so that she would be home as soon as possible. After all, she had a big date to prepare for.
* * *
To Donna’s surprise, Jack was already waiting outside the rebuilt tower at One Canada Square, which, thanks to the Doctor’s mind, Donna knew housed one of the Torchwood branches.
“I didn’t know if you’d come,” she remarked, tucking her arm through his when he offered it to her.
“Oh, I have lots of questions.” He grinned at her. “And you’re the only person who can answer them, Donna Noble.”
“Likewise, Captain.” She gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “For instance, what are you doing in London? What happened to Cardiff? Surely you haven’t left Torchwood!”
Jack chuckled. “I keep forgetting that you know about Torchwood. Actually, probably more than I do.”
“Everyone knows Torchwood,” Donna reminded him. “Battle of Torchwood, remember? Only those people who were alive at the time call it the Battle of Canary Wharf.”
“And that would be the two of us and exactly nobody else.” Jack grinned. “Two hundred years ago next year, if I remember rightly. Not many others around who were there.”
“True,” she conceded. “But it does mean people know the name ‘Torchwood’, even if they don’t know what you do. Which is probably a good thing,” she conceded, “because if they were aware of the number of enemy aliens on this planet, nobody could control the panic.”
Jack chuckled, steering her in the direction of a nearby restaurant. There was no further conversation until they were tucked away in a far corner booth where they could talk without fear of being overheard. Jack ordered wine and, when it arrived, they toasted one another.
“To a long and healthy life,” said Donna with a grin.
“To living forever,” Jack replied, and something about his gaze made her understand why he had not been surprised to see her, even after such an impossibly long time.
“You know,” she said slowly, the smile dissolving, “about me. You know that I can’t – die.”
He nodded, his expression sombre. “Yes,” he agreed.
“How?”
“I don’t know.” He sat back against the padded leather of the bench seat. “I just – maybe it’s instinct. You’re, well – I always knew there wasn’t something normal about you,” Jack admitted with a careless shrug. “I don’t know, really. It just made me uncomfortable.”
Donna peered over the top of her glass at him. “Honestly, Captain? You feel just as strange to me. You’re – wrong.”
“Oh, don’t say it like that!” Jack looked profoundly hurt. “Really, that – that’s an insult!”
“No, it’s a fact.” Donna spoke practically and sipped her wine. “Part of my Time Lord mind, I’m afraid. And do you think I like being told I make you uncomfortable?”
“Okay, you win.” Jack smiled. “Actually, when I came back from dealing with that weevil, I half-thought you might have run away, like the Doctor tried to do so many years ago.”
Donna returned the smile. “I didn’t think you’d want to sit here opposite someone who made you feel so uncomfortable.”
Jack arched an eyebrow. “Oh, I’ve had time to get used to you now. At first, it took me a while to work out just why you felt so strange.”
“Ah, so that’s why you wouldn’t hug me,” Donna laughed and drank more of the wine. “I remember that only too well. We’d just watched the Doctor avoid regeneration and I dropped as many subtle hints as I could, but you stood there like you’d never hugged anything in your life. Although that isn’t exactly the way the Doctor remembers some of your meetings with him.”
Jack grinned. “Well, it’s not every day I meet another immortal.”
“I’m not immortal!”
“Nooooo,” Jack mocked her. “Not immortal at all. You just can’t die.”
“Er – exactly.” Donna set down her glass, fixing her eyes on the table for a moment, and then looked up with a smile. “Something like that anyway. And even if I don’t die, it still bloody well hurts if I injure myself.”
“Well, dying and coming back to life isn’t exactly a painless process either,” Jack admitted. Then he shook his head and laughed. “This must sound like the strangest conversation to anyone else.”
Donna joined in his laugher. “I suppose so,” she agreed. “That’s why I decided it was best to tell no one.”
“No one?” Jack arched an eyebrow. “Not even your mother?”
The woman opposite him smiled, running the tip of her index finger around the rim of her now-empty wine glass. “Shows how much you really know about my family, Captain. If my mother had ever found out that something this strange had happened to me as a result of my time with the Doctor, she’d have killed him and then me.”
Jack cleared his throat meaningfully.
“Well, she would have tried,” Donna amended her sentence. “Actually, knowing her, she might have succeeded where the rest of the world failed.”
Captain Jack laughed. “She sounds like she would have been an interesting woman.”
“Mmm, I suppose that’s one way to think of her.” Donna chuckled. “She’d have been flattered to hear you say it. And, you know, Captain,” she added with a teasing smile, “I think you’re probably the only man on Earth with the charm that might just have changed her from a gorgon to a decent person.”
Jack smiled indulgently, but his next question was soft and tentative. “How long has she been gone?” he asked, his eyes fixed on a point above her head.
“Oh, centuries.” Donna sighed and brushed back a strand of her hair, the other hand fiddling with her fork. “Just like everyone else.”
Jack reached over and placed his hand on her, stilling the nervous twitching. “Are you lonely, Donna Noble?”
She looked up, meeting his gaze properly for the first time since they had sat opposite each other in the restaurant booth, and was surprised at the variety of expressions that were flickering across his face. Anger, sadness, pity, but most of all, vulnerability.
Donna was forcibly reminded of the conversation she and the Doctor had had outside the TARDIS before she began travelling with him as a companion. The look on his face as he had said that he didn’t want to be on his own was very similar to the way Jack was looking now.
“What about you, Captain?” she asked, her voice soft. “You’ve been around a lot longer than me, and we both know how lonely it is, watching friends come and go.”
“Jack,” he said in a hoarse voice, entwining his fingers with hers. “Please, call me Jack.”
Chapter III
Author:
katherine_b Rating: Adult
Characters: Donna and Jack
Spoilers: Various bits and pieces up to and including The New Doctor.
Summary: Donna’s life after the TARDIS departs
A/N: This is a rather unexpected sequel of sorts for Better Off Without You. In that story, the TARDIS boosted Donna’s ability to heal herself and recover from illness or injury. This story examines the impact that had on Donna once the Doctor returned her to Earth.
Chapter II
In the end, she stopped making friends. It was too difficult, meant having to answer too many awkward questions. And only then did she fully understand why the Doctor - because of course she remembered the Doctor - travelled the way he did. It was easier to leave people behind after a short time than have the fear of their eventual departure looming ever larger.
Besides, there was that pesky little issue of never aging. She celebrated her first century by sky-diving and her hundred-and-fiftieth birthday by pot-holing some of the deepest caves in England, but as far as the organisers of the events knew, she was a woman in her late thirties who wanted to get things done before she turned forty.
She was getting very good at lying.
The thing that really surprised Donna, though, was how little human beings noticed things that they couldn't fully understand.
She couldn't really think of herself as human anymore. Not completely. Not with the Doctor's mind in hers.
She remembered that, too.
Now, when she looked back, she could see when the Doctor's mind took over and managed things in a way that Donna Noble, no matter how brilliant she might be, could have done. Memory of the metacrisis had flooded back when she recalled that night in the Crucible. It was as if the memory of the electric shock from Davros kicked her memory into gear as well. No more faint trickles of strange things that made no sense.
Now she remembered everything…
There was so much she missed.
Company, for one thing. After Sylvia’s death, and with Donna’s reluctance to make friends, evenings were spent at home in front of the television, but even Donna’s old favourite programs seemed less interesting without someone to discuss them all with.
She definitely missed the quiet nights up on the hill with Gramps, even if the last one of those had been more than one hundred and fifty years earlier.
Most of all, though, she missed the parts of her life associated with that incredible year she spent with the Doctor.
She tried not to think about the Doctor and often succeeded, but it was harder to avoid thinking about the TARDIS when so much of what was around her reminded Donna of that incredible ship.
Trying to find something to do after Sylvia passed away, Donna had taken it into her head to redecorate the house.
It was only later that she realised the living room was now the exact same coral tint as the walls of the console room.
By chance, she’d repeated the same feat in much of the rest of the house – her bedroom, bathroom, the kitchen and the room she had converted into a library were identical in many ways to rooms on the TARDIS.
Of course, that only made things worse.
And then there was the day that she was looking for fabric to make new cushion covers that would match her new couch. The old one had given up the ghost after a century, but Donna doubted that its ‘lifetime warranty’ would extend that far. Besides, there would be all those awkward questions. So she went looking for something new and found an attractive pale blue ottoman that just needed a few bright cushions to liven it up.
Something in a stripy pattern.
She certainly wasn’t expecting to find brown fabric with blue pinstripes.
Tears sprang to Donna’s eyes and she blinked them back, swallowing hard. Reaching out a hand, she touched the fabric, not really surprised to find that it even felt the same as the Doctor’s suit.
For a moment, she considered buying the store’s entire stock, but then reality hit – what would she do with it? It wasn’t the right stuff to use for furnishings and she couldn’t see herself wearing it. She definitely wasn’t about to make it into a suit!
And yet the prospect of leaving it behind was unthinkable.
In the end, she compromised. Along with the material she needed for the cushion covers, she also purchased several metres of the brown fabric and tucked it into the bottom of her handbag.
Donna began to suspect that the Universe was having a laugh at her expense when, as she went to leave H&M, she saw a stand of clothing for teddy bears, with the toys themselves on a nearby shelf. The ridiculous thing was that the bears each had a wild tuft of hair on top of their heads. Almost as if to rub things in, the clothing stands held rows of little shirts, tiny ties, small pairs of horn-rimmed glasses and miniature brown dusters.
“All it’d need would be a sonic screwdriver,” Donna murmured to herself, looking around to see if anyone was playing some sort of prank on her. However nobody seemed to be paying her more attention than usual. She actually wasn’t sure if this disappointed her or not. It would have been very much in character for the Doctor, if he suspected that she had her memory back, to announce his return in this bizarre way.
Collecting the bear whose hair was wildest and therefore most like the Doctor's, Donna selected various accessories and took them over to the cash register.
"Aw, it's very cute," said the salesgirl as she scanned the items. "Is it for your daughter?"
"Er, no." Donna looked startled. "No, I don't have any children. It's, um, for me, actually." She smiled somewhat conspiratorially. "It reminds me of a friend of mine."
The saleswoman returned the smile. "Let's hope he takes it as a compliment then." She bagged the items and handed them to Donna. "There you are!"
"Thanks." Donna took her new purchases, but even as she turned away, she wondered what the Doctor would think if he could see the bear. Going back to the manchester department, she got some brown satin and purchased a pattern for a suit that she was sure she could scale down to fit. If she was going to make clothes, she might as well do it properly.
Donna was still thinking about the Doctor when she left the shop. She peeped into the bag to check that the brown fabric would match the pattern on the little tie and almost walked into a tall man who just ducked out of a nearby street.
“Hey, whoa…” he was beginning in a markedly American accent when he suddenly stopped short. “Er, excuse me,” he muttered, turning away so rapidly that the long coat he was wearing swirled in the air as he tried to duck back down the alley.
However Donna had caught a glimpse of the man’s face and knew him at once.
“Captain Jack!”
Her voice stopped him abruptly and he turned back, his eyes widening.
“You… know who I am?”
Donna grinned. “I would have thought you’d be more surprised that I’m still alive. After all, it’s been how many centuries?” She eyed him up and down. “You look just the same.”
“I can return the compliment.” He grinned and touched his index finger to his forehead in a salute. “Looking very good indeed, ma’am.”
Donna chuckled. “Not now, Captain,” she scolded with a shake of her head that, she hoped, disguised the blush that had risen to her cheeks at his compliment.
Jack laughed outright at that. “Sounds all too familiar,” he said in mock-rueful tones. “Can’t even be polite without people thinking I have ulterior motives.”
“Because you usually do,” Donna retorted sharply, aware of Jack’s character thanks to the knowledge she had gained from the Doctor’s mind.
“Touché.” He chuckled and stepped closer. “So, Miss Noble – assuming you are still Miss Noble,” she nodded in affirmation and he continued, “might I suggest that we adjourn this meeting to a rather more comfortable location so that I can find out just how it is you remember me when, as far as I knew, you were supposed to have no memory of any of us?”
Donna smiled. “Now that definitely sounds like an ulterior motive, Captain. But as I have a number of questions I’d like to ask you, too, that sounds very acceptable.”
“Now who has ulterior motives?!” Jack grinned triumphantly, but even as he reached for Donna’s hand, he stopped short and then pressed a hand to an earpiece that Donna only just noticed as he touched it. “Uh, put that invitation on hold,” he told her, fishing in the pocket of his coat. His hand reappeared clutching a small, white card. “This is the address of our London office. I’ll meet you out front at seven o’clock and we’ll go for dinner. Yes?”
“It’s a date.” Donna took the card and glanced at the address before sliding it into her bag. “Most definitely a date. I’ll see you then, Captain.”
And Donna watched as the man turned on his heel and ran off down the street, pulling a large gun out of the pocket of his coat as he skidded to a stop and dashed down a laneway.
After glancing at her watch, Donna turned and hurried to the bus stop so that she would be home as soon as possible. After all, she had a big date to prepare for.
To Donna’s surprise, Jack was already waiting outside the rebuilt tower at One Canada Square, which, thanks to the Doctor’s mind, Donna knew housed one of the Torchwood branches.
“I didn’t know if you’d come,” she remarked, tucking her arm through his when he offered it to her.
“Oh, I have lots of questions.” He grinned at her. “And you’re the only person who can answer them, Donna Noble.”
“Likewise, Captain.” She gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “For instance, what are you doing in London? What happened to Cardiff? Surely you haven’t left Torchwood!”
Jack chuckled. “I keep forgetting that you know about Torchwood. Actually, probably more than I do.”
“Everyone knows Torchwood,” Donna reminded him. “Battle of Torchwood, remember? Only those people who were alive at the time call it the Battle of Canary Wharf.”
“And that would be the two of us and exactly nobody else.” Jack grinned. “Two hundred years ago next year, if I remember rightly. Not many others around who were there.”
“True,” she conceded. “But it does mean people know the name ‘Torchwood’, even if they don’t know what you do. Which is probably a good thing,” she conceded, “because if they were aware of the number of enemy aliens on this planet, nobody could control the panic.”
Jack chuckled, steering her in the direction of a nearby restaurant. There was no further conversation until they were tucked away in a far corner booth where they could talk without fear of being overheard. Jack ordered wine and, when it arrived, they toasted one another.
“To a long and healthy life,” said Donna with a grin.
“To living forever,” Jack replied, and something about his gaze made her understand why he had not been surprised to see her, even after such an impossibly long time.
“You know,” she said slowly, the smile dissolving, “about me. You know that I can’t – die.”
He nodded, his expression sombre. “Yes,” he agreed.
“How?”
“I don’t know.” He sat back against the padded leather of the bench seat. “I just – maybe it’s instinct. You’re, well – I always knew there wasn’t something normal about you,” Jack admitted with a careless shrug. “I don’t know, really. It just made me uncomfortable.”
Donna peered over the top of her glass at him. “Honestly, Captain? You feel just as strange to me. You’re – wrong.”
“Oh, don’t say it like that!” Jack looked profoundly hurt. “Really, that – that’s an insult!”
“No, it’s a fact.” Donna spoke practically and sipped her wine. “Part of my Time Lord mind, I’m afraid. And do you think I like being told I make you uncomfortable?”
“Okay, you win.” Jack smiled. “Actually, when I came back from dealing with that weevil, I half-thought you might have run away, like the Doctor tried to do so many years ago.”
Donna returned the smile. “I didn’t think you’d want to sit here opposite someone who made you feel so uncomfortable.”
Jack arched an eyebrow. “Oh, I’ve had time to get used to you now. At first, it took me a while to work out just why you felt so strange.”
“Ah, so that’s why you wouldn’t hug me,” Donna laughed and drank more of the wine. “I remember that only too well. We’d just watched the Doctor avoid regeneration and I dropped as many subtle hints as I could, but you stood there like you’d never hugged anything in your life. Although that isn’t exactly the way the Doctor remembers some of your meetings with him.”
Jack grinned. “Well, it’s not every day I meet another immortal.”
“I’m not immortal!”
“Nooooo,” Jack mocked her. “Not immortal at all. You just can’t die.”
“Er – exactly.” Donna set down her glass, fixing her eyes on the table for a moment, and then looked up with a smile. “Something like that anyway. And even if I don’t die, it still bloody well hurts if I injure myself.”
“Well, dying and coming back to life isn’t exactly a painless process either,” Jack admitted. Then he shook his head and laughed. “This must sound like the strangest conversation to anyone else.”
Donna joined in his laugher. “I suppose so,” she agreed. “That’s why I decided it was best to tell no one.”
“No one?” Jack arched an eyebrow. “Not even your mother?”
The woman opposite him smiled, running the tip of her index finger around the rim of her now-empty wine glass. “Shows how much you really know about my family, Captain. If my mother had ever found out that something this strange had happened to me as a result of my time with the Doctor, she’d have killed him and then me.”
Jack cleared his throat meaningfully.
“Well, she would have tried,” Donna amended her sentence. “Actually, knowing her, she might have succeeded where the rest of the world failed.”
Captain Jack laughed. “She sounds like she would have been an interesting woman.”
“Mmm, I suppose that’s one way to think of her.” Donna chuckled. “She’d have been flattered to hear you say it. And, you know, Captain,” she added with a teasing smile, “I think you’re probably the only man on Earth with the charm that might just have changed her from a gorgon to a decent person.”
Jack smiled indulgently, but his next question was soft and tentative. “How long has she been gone?” he asked, his eyes fixed on a point above her head.
“Oh, centuries.” Donna sighed and brushed back a strand of her hair, the other hand fiddling with her fork. “Just like everyone else.”
Jack reached over and placed his hand on her, stilling the nervous twitching. “Are you lonely, Donna Noble?”
She looked up, meeting his gaze properly for the first time since they had sat opposite each other in the restaurant booth, and was surprised at the variety of expressions that were flickering across his face. Anger, sadness, pity, but most of all, vulnerability.
Donna was forcibly reminded of the conversation she and the Doctor had had outside the TARDIS before she began travelling with him as a companion. The look on his face as he had said that he didn’t want to be on his own was very similar to the way Jack was looking now.
“What about you, Captain?” she asked, her voice soft. “You’ve been around a lot longer than me, and we both know how lonely it is, watching friends come and go.”
“Jack,” he said in a hoarse voice, entwining his fingers with hers. “Please, call me Jack.”
Chapter III
thoughtful