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He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting here in the library on his own. Could be ten minutes, could be two hours. Donna’s left him to it and he’s grateful for that. Sometimes the thing he appreciates most about Donna is the way she gets him talking, but not tonight. Putting words together to pin down the thoughts going through his mind is more than he’s capable of right now. In fact, getting out of this chair and getting changed is more than he’s capable of.
After Canary Wharf, he didn’t change his clothes for weeks. Not even his shirt. He didn’t want the last of Rose to be flushed away in the laundry room. Even when they met – well, communicated – on the beach – he’d only dragged a comb through his hair and splashed his face with a bit of cold water. Good thing smells couldn’t travel across the Void.
But straight after the Racnoss business he’d gone out and bought a new suit – the blue one he was wearing now – and thrown the old brown one away. Luckily the TARDIS had overruled him on that and he’d ended up rescuing it before she incinerated it. He’d kept telling himself it was time to move on, that things would start getting better. He was still trying to convince himself they would when he first met Martha, months later.
Donna comes in carrying a tray. “When did you last eat anything?” she asks and, without waiting for him to reply, she plonks a bowl of macaroni cheese in front of him. It’s completely irrelevant but it occurs to him as he looks down at it that there’s something very comforting about serving sloppy food in bowls rather than on plates; it implies that you’re excused the task of keeping it together in one place when you’re too weary to bother doing it.
He tries to string together a few words of thanks but they don’t come, so he contents himself with shovelling in the slippery, bland sustenance – quickly, leaving no space for words between mouthfuls because he is pretty hungry, after all.
“I’d’ve brought it sooner,” she babbles on, “but I always think the crispy bit on the top is the best bit, don’t you? So I had to figure out how the grill worked and in your so-called kitchen that’s no easy matter, believe me. My mother would be disgusted at me for not serving it with a bit of parsley and a slice of tomato on the top. Fills a hole, anyway, doesn’t it – parsley or no parsley?”
“Yeah,” he replies, his mouth stuffed, and he’s thinking how every person he’s travelled with has had their special recipe he associates with them for ever after – with Rose it was chips, with Martha it was Creole chicken stew and with Donna it’s going to be something involving pasta and cheese. Key, Superphone, signature dish. The routine doesn’t change all that much. Just the faces.
There’s no forever with him. Sometime he’d better remind Donna not to use that word.
“Finished?” she asks. “Want a cuppa?”
“Thank you for looking after me,” he says, meaning it.
“Somebody has to,” she says. “You’d fade away otherwise.”
“Thanks,” he repeats. She stands up, ready to carry the tray away and he reaches out and squeezes her hand. She stands in front of him and he resolves to enjoy her warmth and kindness, the simple fact that she’s here, and not spoil it thinking about the inevitable ending.
She picks a long, blonde hair from his collar. “Must have been from that hug after the gymnastics display,” she says.
It’s the first thing that either of them have said to indicate that they’ve just returned from anything more emotionally draining than a stroll in the park. He can’t speak. His voice has turned the texture of golden syrup and he’s trying not to lose it completely.
“You knew she’d die, didn’t you?” she says. “You were saying goodbye to her from the moment you first met her. That’s why you didn’t give her a name.”
“They all do, Donna,” he manages to choke out.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she insists.
“You will,” he says. “One day.” And he’s thinking about the one time he was daft enough to overlook that shatteringly simple truth. How long are you gonna stay with me? Forever.
He’s learned his lesson there.
“Want to keep it?” She holds out the wisp of hair and he’s thinking, It can’t be anybody else’s. I was wearing the dinner jacket when I met Astrid, the tweed when Joan kissed me, and before that I didn’t even have this suit.
He shakes his head. “I’ve got the clockwork mouse.”
Suddenly her voice gets a bit louder. Not shouty loud, but not quite gentle either. Just Donna-loud. “I hope they don’t just leave her,” she says. “I hope they bury her properly or whatever they do. You never know with wars.”
He can’t answer that. He’s busy remembering piles of charred bodies and the smell of burning flesh. So many he’d no idea where the ones he’d loved might be, or even which pile to look through.
So he hadn’t. He’d run. That was how he’d survived, how he dealt with it. Always running.
“You know what I love about you?” she says.
“Shooting things with a water pistol?” he asks, desperately trying to laugh.
“Apart from that.” She smiles and he wonders if those wrinkles just under her eyes have always been there or are a recent development, a result of the stress she’s under looking after him. He’s not particularly good on companions over thirty, with the notable exception of Jack.
“Go on then, cheer me up,” he says.
“You give your heart, even when you know it’ll get broken,” she tells him. “Or should that be hearts?”
“There’s no point in having illusions,” he says, thinking that’s the only way he manages to deal with this life of his and wondering if she’ll call him out on that particular lie.
“Martha wasn’t much help,” she says. “Didn’t even pull her T-shirt up and look at the place the bullet went in.”
“Martha’s worked for Torchwood and seen someone on the team get shot in the heart,” he snaps. “Someone she happened to rather like. Doesn’t it ever occur to you that she might find it a bit traumatic to go through all that again?”
“Then she’s in the wrong job,” Donna says simply. “Or maybe she just knows you better than me. I’ll shut my big gob and get the kettle on.”
“I think you’d better,” he agrees.
“Oh, that reminds me,” she says, pausing in the doorway. “I don’t want you to think I’m being funny or anything, but that hand bubbling away in a tank really gives me the creeps. Would you mind moving it? Put it under the bed or somewhere I don’t have to see it.”
“It doesn’t bubble all the time,” he points out.
“Well, it was bubbling when I looked a few minutes ago,” she says. “Like you’d put on a pan of water for some spaghetti and then wandered off. I can just see you doing that.”
“I’ll get it sorted,” he promises. It’s not an unreasonable request.
She leaves him then and he takes the little mouse out of his pocket and turns it over in his hand a few times. He hopes they buried her properly, too. A part of him, one he’s absolutely no intention of indulging, wants to sneak back to Messaline and leave the silly toy on her grave in lieu of flowers. But why should she get the recognition denied to countless thousands of his people, the ones he incinerated? Sentimental rubbish.
He gets up with a yawn and notices his limbs are aching from all the running around he’s been doing. He wonders whether he’ll hang onto this body long enough to start getting arthritis and decides it’s very unlikely.
He wonders what Rose would say if she ever came back and saw him all grey-haired and wrinkled. Purely academic point of course. It’s not just very improbable; it’s impossible.
He wanders off to deal with the Hand. Donna turns out to be right; it’s bubbling like crazy in its tank. Jack used to call it his Doctor Detector; that was how he knew when the TARDIS was back in Cardiff. Weird, but he’s sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation for it.
He wonders how long he’s got, this time around, until the end of forever.