The Doctor ends up making tea in Sylvia’s kitchen after… well. After It All. The world isn’t on fire anymore, which is great, but he doesn’t want to go just yet. The kettle runs far too loud, and doesn’t have the faintest clue what it’s doing. He grimaces, and sonics it. It immediately becomes quieter, and gets a better idea of its place in the world, and the fact he’s about to make tea.
Work done for now, he turns around and leans against the counter. Donna’s looking at him like she knows way too much.
The Doctor offers her an uncertain little smile. Barely a day together and he’s already caused absolute chaos: she’d be well within her rights to smack him in the face about now. She’s a mum, now, and everything—though it’s not like she ever needed the status to justify the physical punctuation of a point. (It doesn’t ever really hurt, anyway.)
For some reason, though, he gets the feeling that she’s much more likely to give him a lecture than a slap. The notion of the former is actually a little frightening, which is more than can be said for the latter. Well. He supposes that the other side of the coin of Donna being a mum now is that she knows how to conduct a good heart-to-heart/talking-to. That’s not been one of the Doctor’s strong suits, even at the best of times.
The smile makes Donna tilt her head a little, endeared, but she doesn’t stray from what is evidently her game plan, a plan that culminates in (or kicks off with?) her asking, “How are you?”
Ah. Hm. That’s… a tricky one.
“Fine,” says the Doctor, because he’s not sure how to even begin explaining the myriad ways in which he is not.
This does not fool anyone.
Donna silently raises a judgemental pair of eyebrows. The Doctor tries not to be the first one to break eye contact.
He fails.
Donna sighs.
“Just tell me one thing,” she says, gentle, concerned.
The Doctor’s throat hurts for no readily apparent reason. He doesn’t trust himself to answer without breaking the moment, without lying, without starting to cry, so he nods. It’s the tiniest and shakiest movement in perhaps the entire history of the universe.
“You weren’t alone?”
Oh. Oh, of course. She still cares—he keeps forgetting. He still cares, that’s a given, but it keeps surprising him that after all these years of not remembering, she can come right back to knowing him like it’s been no time at all—that after all these years he’s been through, he loves her just as much as she does him.
When he thinks about it like that, it’s obvious—of course she wants to know he wasn’t alone. He was alone for so long. What had she said? All those years ago? Just promise me one thing. Find someone.
And he does need someone. He does. It’s not worth pretending anymore that he’s fine on his own, not worth lying to her face. He hasn’t been fine on his own since… well, ever, really. Since he started following Koschei around with stars in his eyes.
(That was so long ago.)
A million galaxies are born and burn in the time it takes for him to answer. It’s only a few seconds. He can feel every one of them—the galaxies and the seconds.
“I wasn’t alone,” he says, surprised by how his voice doesn’t break. Probably helped by how quietly he says it, how low in his throat. It’s stopped hurting, he realises, and, in a detached sort of way: that’s nice.
Donna looks like she wants to say so much. The Doctor wants her to say it. He doesn’t know how to ask.
Instead, she nods like that settles it. “Good,” she says. “Good.” There’s a wistful quality to it. She wants to know more. He’s… he doesn’t know if he can give any more.
(He missed her so much. It’s been like an open wound. It’s always an open wound. Every time. Every last person. Even from thousands of years ago. He still misses Susan and Tegan and Ace and Jamie and and and—)
(But she’s here now. He’s back. He’s here in her kitchen making tea, and everything is okay, just for now, and he’s saved the day, and even though another day will come, and many more after that, he’s here for this one. He’d better make it count.)
“Amy.”
That takes Donna by surprise, but she cottons on quickly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Just like that, a dam has broken, and the Doctor starts swaying back and forth in contained movements, trying to regulate, and says, “Landed in her garden after… y’know. Flew off.” He winces. “Came back late.” He remembers her lonely face, just a child, and her anger so many years later, and spitting out baked beans and telling Jeff to get a girlfriend and Rory and the crack in Amelia Pond’s bedroom wall. “Her husband, too, Rory. And River.” He looks up at Donna, then—though he’s not sure when he looked away, really—“River Song, my wife; you met her. In the library.”
Donna grimaces. “Eugh, I hated that place.” Then she lets the real disgust be replaced by delighted disbelief. “You, married? I thought she was joking.”
He smiles despite himself; despite the mavity of the situation. “Nope. We really were.” His eyes flicker to the ceiling, visibly thinking, mostly for Donna’s benefit. “Multiple times.”
That earns him an amused snort. “Half of them in Vegas, I expect.”
“Space Vegas, yes,” says the Doctor, for once not actually lying. “You would’ve liked River, I think.” He’s sad, but he smiles, because their time together might be over but he has the memories of her, and that’s got to be enough. I wish you could have met her properly dies on his tongue. He swallows. “Clara, after that. Clara Oswald. She’s still out there somewhere, I think. Adventuring.” He sniffs. It’s unclear when he started crying, or if he started crying, or if he’s just suddenly got allergies. He’s not entirely convinced by the latter possibility. He doubts Donna would be, either.
“Then I went Scottish,” he says, incomprehensibly. Well—to anyone but Donna. She just nods. “Stayed with Clara for a bit. She was brilliant, by the way. You would have liked her, too. Erm,” and he shamefully has to wrack his memory, here, because the whole confession dial debacle played merry hell with it. “Then there was Bill, and Nardole and Missy. You would’ve liked Bill, too. You would’ve liked all of them. Missy was trying to be good, near the end.” He mimics her accent in the way that this face is so oddly good at, and ignores the hollow feeling in his chest.
“Missy?”
“Old friend. Old, old friend.” Adds hopelessly again, “She was trying to be good.”
He leaves the subsequent It didn’t work unspoken, and suppresses a shiver. He’s in Donna’s kitchen, and it’s not winter, and there’s no war. No Christmas ceasefire. No football in the cold, and no bloody glass people. But sometimes it still feels like his hands are in the snow, and he’s watching the world freeze around him and being outraged by the words of his younger-older self. Sometimes it feels like he’s nowhere, or like he’s on that bus again in the desert, squinting into the sun trying to catch a glimpse of anything but a blank plane.
“Then I crashed into a train,” he says, barrelling on, because he’s near the end now, he’s almost caught her up. “It was in Sheffield, though, so. I met Yaz and Ryan and Graham.” He blinks away what he’s pretty sure are tears. He misses everyone so much. He just wants someone to stay. He knows that nobody can.
“And Jack showed up again, as well, near the end of that face. Met Graham.” He smiles. “Thought Graham was me. Kissed him.”
Donna smiles too, and even laughs, and it’s like a dawning sun. He’s missed her terribly. “‘Course he did.”
The Doctor laughs, too, and he can’t help it, and he feels so horribly sad but so alive. “He’s still around here somewhere, I think. In your time, I mean. Not that it would matter,” he adds, “‘cause I think he’s managed to get his paws on another vortex manipulator by this point. I’ll try to put you in touch.”
Donna nods, eyes soft. “I’d like that.” And she really would—isn’t intimidated by an(other) immortal time traveller, would actually find some sort of comfort in knowing the Doctor exists for other people, too, and that her memory isn’t just finally giving out. That much is evident in the sad skew to all her sidelong looks.
He suddenly really wants to hold her hand, to not have to look back to know she’s there. What you need most is a hand to hold—but no, it’s not like that. He’s not really sure if it will be like that with anyone ever again. He’s not sure how to stop people from assuming that it could be.
He’s not sure how to contend with the way Yaz looked at him like she was teetering on a knife’s edge between pressing him to a wall and sobbing.
He’s not sure what he would have done if she’d done either.
Because saying anything is difficult, but saying wait is especially difficult, and so is saying stay—but without really meaning to he’s ended up saying stay for the past few thousand years, and people keep listening. It’s funny, the things people will listen to. Run and hide and I invoke the Shadow Proclamation tend to get pretty good reception, but the spoken-unspoken stay and I love you and please love me are unfailingly heard and actioned. And, unfailingly, the endings are abrupt, like a page torn out of a library book, and nobody gets to say goodbye in any way that matters.
It’s not fair, being a Time Lord and not getting to do over your goodbyes. What he wouldn’t give to stand on that snowy battlefield, or in New York, or on that beach. What he wouldn’t give to try again and again and again, to get it right, to say everything he never could and forever regretted, to do just one thing right.
(Just this once, Rose! Everybody lives!)
(That was so long ago.)
(It won’t ever be like that again.)
He blinks. He doesn’t know where he is. A bird sings outside. Oh.
His brain pieces together the visual input like one of those sliding puzzles, and Donna’s face is there in front of him—and so is the rest of her, for that matter. Real and alive and alright, and worried about him.
The Doctor gives another tight little smile. “That’s it. Um, here we are.” He spreads his arms.
Donna’s eyes are fixed on him. It’s been a long time since he’s felt so wholly seen. He’s not certain he dislikes it. It’s kind of a relief, really. He had been getting a little exhausted by nobody knowing who he was.
There’s so much more to be said. But if not being seen was exhausting, the inverse is even more so, and he just wants some bloody tea, and maybe to go curl up in a nest of pillows in a quiet place in the TARDIS and sob.
The kettle quietly finished boiling at some point during their conversation. The Doctor opens the cupboard to locate the tea and its peripherals. Donna stands there—watching him, seeing him—then goes to fetch some teaspoons.