The road less travelled...

Title: Friends or Strangers 8/12
Author: katherine_b
Rating:
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: Donna’s got a new friend…

Interlude

Wilf moves restlessly around the living room, picking up and putting down random items, unable to settle. He’s been this way ever since the previous evening, and particularly since seeing Donna leave for work with stars in her eyes.

He’s just wishing he could have the Doctor here for one single moment to explain what’s going on when he hears the doorbell and moves to answer it.

To say that he’s surprised to see the object of his thoughts on the welcome mat is something of an understatement.

“Doctor?”

“Wilfred.” The brown-haired man nods, a cautious smile on his face. “You wanted to see me.”

The other man stares, his eyes widening. “H-how did you know?”

“Can I come in?” The Doctor nods at the inside of the house. “I’ll explain, but if Donna’s forgotten something and comes home early…”

“I’m sure you could drop it into her office for her,” Wilf can’t help saying rather sarcastically, but moves aside so the other man can pass him. “She’d probably be thrilled to receive a visit from the man she kissed last night.”

“Ah, so that’s what this is about.” The Doctor looks somewhat abashed. “I hoped you wouldn’t know.”

“You should be grateful it was me who saw you and not Sylvia.” Wilf stumps past him into the kitchen, but then turns on him, his indignation obvious. “Explain it to me, Doctor. I might not be the smartest man in the world…”

“Give yourself a little more credit, Wilfred.” The Doctor leans against the doorjamb. “It’s clear you’ve passed on your habits of self-deprecation to Donna. You’re more intelligent than you’re willing to admit.”

“I don’t understand things about you though.” Wilf drops into a chair and looks up at his unexpected visitor. “Like how you knew to come now. I’d only just thought that I wanted – needed – to talk to you and here you are.”

“Ah, little trick of the trade.”

The Doctor fishes into his pocket and pulls out a leather wallet, flipping it open to reveal a clear sheet of paper. Wilf looks at it, blinks and looks again as letters form.

Doctor, I want to talk to you. Wilf.

“It’s called psychic paper,” the Doctor says as he flips the wallet closed and returns it to his pocket. “Usually it shows people what they want to see. Lets me into all sorts of places I really shouldn’t go. But if people want to see me badly enough, I generally find out about it.”

“I see,” Wilf replies, although he’s still somewhat in the dark about how it actually works.

He has a sneaking suspicion that even the Doctor isn’t too sure on that point, but he’s not about to call him on it. Instead he changes the subject to something much closer to his heart, and, he suspects, the Doctor’s – Donna.

“I don’t understand something, though, Doctor,” he says in the end. “I’ve been thinking about things ever since you brought Donna back here. You said Donna could never remember you or it would kill her.”

“I did,” the Doctor agrees, the light of laughter fading from his eyes, leaving them almost has miserable as Wilf could remember from the last time that man had been inside this house.

“But,” Wilf goes on, barely heeding the interruption, “you also said you had to wipe her mind, to take those memories away. So, if you’ve taken them away, how can she be in danger of remembering?”

The Doctor sighs and hangs his head to stare at the floor. Then he moves across to take the chair opposite Wilf. “Yes,” he begins with visible reluctance. “I took away all of those memories. Memories of me and our travels together. The physical memories – the sounds and smells and tastes. Donna can’t remember the Doctor’s face or the sound of his voice or the specific words he said to her. She won’t remember it. Those memories are gone. Forever.”

“Then that should be the end of it,” Wilf says. “So I don’t understand the danger.”

“Ah, but think about what a memory really is,” the Doctor tells him. “It’s not just a simple recall of an event or a thing. It’s all of the feelings and emotions that you come to associate with it. It’s the links you make between one memory and another. The mind isn’t neatly compartmentalised. Everything’s tangled up into a ball, and trying to extract one thread, you find that’s tied to another, which is linked to something else and so on for infinity.”

Wilf sits silent for a moment, thinking about it and trying to understand how it relates to Donna.

“But what does it mean?” he asks in the end.

The Doctor sighs again. “There are things Donna will never be able to forget,” he says slowly. “Her body subconsciously reacts in a particular way to things because it’s been doing it for the whole time we were together. When I take her hand, I can feel her tensing, as if we’re about to have to run for our lives again – and we did it so often that it’s probably not surprising that she can’t quite shake that instinct, even if she has no memory of what it was we ran from. There are other things, too. Nothing specific, but just moments that make me wonder.”

“I don’t understand why you couldn’t take those things away, though,” Wilf is forced to admit. “Why didn’t you?”

“The question became where to stop,” the Doctor tells him. “How far to go. If I’d kept going, I would have had to take away every emotion and, eventually, almost every memory that Donna ever had in her life. Her mind works so quickly, makes so many connections, and is so full of strength and emotion that I would almost have had to wipe away her entire personality.” He pauses, exhales slowly, staring at the table. “And I would never have been able to do that. Not to her.”

There’s a long, painful silence in the kitchen. Wilf tries to imagine his beloved, red-haired, bouncy, vibrant granddaughter without the personality that makes her sparkle. He knows how agonising it was during those first weeks and months after the return of the Earth, with Donna discovering every single day how much was gone. He can’t even begin to think how it would be if Donna was missing those parts of her that made her so special. Even the thought of it makes him feel ill.

Yes, he decides for the first time, better that she should be as she is now, with those small gaps, than as she might be with nothing.

And she’s been more cheerful over the past few months, in any case, particularly since Easter…

Since the first time she mentioned her new friend, he realises suddenly. That man whose name had begun to come up more and more often in casual conversation – John.

Finally the pieces fall into place and Wilf’s eyes narrow as he looks at the man over the table.

“But you’re here now,” he says, slowly and deliberately. “And unless I’m mistaken, you’ve been here for several months. You’ve come back into her life, putting her in danger of somehow making sense of all those emotions. And that’s what you meant when you said it would kill her – that trying to work out how all those pieces fit would put more strain on her mind than she could deal with.”

“Exactly.” The Doctor nods. “And yes, I’ve been in Donna’s life as John Smith for a while – several months, in fact. And it was the events of Easter that made me come back.”

“That bus,” Wilf guesses. “The one that flew.”

“Of course.” The Doctor leans forward. “You and I both know that Donna was meant to be on that bus. That only pure luck meant she wasn’t. And if she had been, if she’d seen the things that were on that planet, there was no way I could have stopped it all overwhelming her. Too much of what happened there was similar to what we went through together.” He sighs and sits back in his chair, an almost hopeless look on his face. “Unfortunately, the Earth is being invaded more often. And with every visit, there’s a chance that something could trigger Donna’s mind into a spiral that nothing could save her from.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you came back,” Wilf says softly. “What are you hoping to achieve by being here, Doctor? Do you think you can save her if the worst happens?”

“I’d hope to,” the Doctor replies. “But it’s more than that. To state the very obvious, the Doctor and John Smith are the same. Same looks, same voice, same – everything. So if Donna has flashes that might prompt some emotion that I couldn’t remove, she’s more likely to associate that with John Smith than with the Doctor. At least, that’s what I’m hoping will happen. John Smith is a safe, very innocuous person for her to build up an emotional connection with. The Doctor isn’t.”

“If what I saw last night was anything to go by, she’s certainly doing that,” Wilf says drily. “And what happens if – when – she realises that John Smith and the Doctor are the same person?”

The Doctor sighs, and the very faint smile that appeared at Wilf’s first comment has vanished by the end of his question.

“I’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. What I’m hoping, though, is that the longer we have with her thinking of me as John Smith, the stronger those emotional bonds will become, and the better chance there is of her mind being able to cope whenever she find out.” He sighs again. “The truth is, though, Wilf, all of this is completely untested. There’s never been a human-Time Lord metacrisis before. I don’t know what will happen. I’m just trying to make sure we don’t lose Donna.”

Wilf can hear the emotion in the Doctor’s voice as he speaks. It’s not difficult to put the pieces together, and any fears he might have for Donna’s wellbeing are greatly eased by the knowledge that the Doctor will do everything he can for Donna.

“All right, Doctor,” he says quietly. “Do whatever you have to, to keep her safe. For us and for her, but for you, too.”

* * *
Teaser for the next part

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Donna apologises as she sits down. ‘Couldn’t get away.’