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magiccath · 2 months ago

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Yours, Stardust: Chapter one, Goodbye, Spaceman

A/N: Woah! A multi-part? Also, this is written in British English, you've been warned.

Summary: In which Donna loses her memories and you're forced to choose: your best friend or the alien you've grown far too attached to.

Word count: 6,379

Donna Noble always came first. Not that you had ever complained - not that you were complaining now. It was simply a part of your life, an irrefutable fact like the sky being blue. She had, and always would, come first.

You came first for her, too. It was always you and her. Best friends, always and forever. No one was ever supposed to get between you; parents, other friends, romantic partners, and least of all the Doctor. Before it was the three of you, it had been the two of you. For the majority of your lives, you had been inseparable. It was without saying that you and Donna did just about everything together. There was never one without the other.

The first time you met the Doctor still hung in the corners of your mind. You had spent hours searching for Donna, all the while fighting the growing pit in your stomach that something was wrong, before stumbling into the reception party. You were still in your wedding attire, your unreasonably uncomfortable dress shoes hanging from your hand, having given up and taken them off. Donna had put you in some silly outfit for the ordeal, something that she knew you wouldn’t even consider wearing for anyone else. But it was Donna, so of course you put it on.

When you saw Donna, properly pissed off and frazzled, you didn’t waste a second before throwing yourself into her arms. More than anything, you were just glad she was okay. You didn’t care if she had run off to elope this handsome stranger next to her, if he was holding her captive, or even what her shithead fiance would say about it all. All that mattered at that moment was that she was safe.

It turned out that she hadn’t eloped with the handsome stranger. Depending on who you asked, the kidnapping was up for debate.

You’d follow Donna to the corners of the Earth - In fact, you probably had over the years. You followed her to Egypt, you’d followed her around while she searched for the Doctor, and when the time came you’d followed her onto the TARDIS. When you were still kids, your mum had once asked you if you’d follow Donna off a cliff. In more ways than one, you supposed you had. The TARDIS wasn’t quite a cliff, but the outcome felt the same.

The Doctor knew that you and Donna were a joint package. He knew that if he lost one, he would lose both. As all things did with him, this too would end. He would move on and you two would stay the same - you and Donna, Donna and you. You’d come with Donna, and one day you would inevitably leave with her too.

That didn’t stop him from getting attached. It didn’t matter that he was over 900 years old, the last of his kind, or that he had lost almost everyone he had ever loved. The idea of him not growing attached to you was almost impossible. How could he not? You were everything that he’d ever allowed himself to hope for.

He’d let his guard down, he’d grown comfortable - accustomed, even. Donna’s favourite tea in the cupboard had become second nature to him. Your charity shop coat thrown across the coral structures of the TARDIS console room, right next to his own, was something he had grown too used to. The sight of your dirty trainers discarded on the metal flooring haunted him more than any other companion ever had. He didn’t want that all to change - he didn’t want your shoes strewn across the floor if you weren’t there to trip over them. He didn’t want your favourite chipped mug in the cupboard if you weren’t using it. He didn’t want Donna’s tea to collect dust, the metal tin rusting away in the depths of the TARDIS kitchen.

The Doctor followed a universal truth; companions always left or died. It was a destiny he had been trying to outrun for years. When they did (for whatever reason), their presence always lingered in the TARDIS, no matter how much he tried to ignore it. Donna had noticed it the first time she ever entered the ship, instantly clocking Rose’s purple shirt hanging from the railing. The TARDIS herself noticed, she felt the absence inside of her very being. She’d taken to filing prior companions’ rooms away long ago, hiding them away from the Doctor and oftentimes herself. Martha’s room was still somewhere on the ship, her medical textbooks and second favourite leather jacket hidden behind a door somewhere in the depths of the endless hallways. She’d had to buy a new sports med textbook, her old one (with all of her highlights, annotations, and stray pieces of homework) still sat in the ship, likely never to be opened again.

It was different with Donna and it was certainly different with you. He wasn’t even sure he could bring himself to file the two of you away, to hide you in the mental file folder of people he had let down, of people he had lost.

He wasn’t sure he could handle the loss of you. It would be painful to see the lack of you in all of the places you should be - standing next to him in the control room, handing him spare parts while he repaired the console, making yourself a morning cup of tea. He feared that when you left his life, he wouldn’t be able to look at the ship the same way again. It would feel haunted in the worst way.

In the grand scheme of his lifetime, it had been a blip, nothing more than a singular moment in time. He only had you for a mere handful of years, but it had never felt like that. As much as he hated it, he had grown to depend on you. Before he knew you, he might have been okay without you. Now, he would always feel the hole where you used to be.

You and Donna belonged on the TARDIS, you fit into his life in a way that no one else ever had. For the first time in years, centuries even, he was truly happy.

As much as he could, the Doctor had fallen into a sense of routine. There were things that he had just grown used to, things that he could rely on in his generally unreliable lifestyle. You always did your laundry on the TARDIS because you preferred the Laundromat to the machines back home. He knew that Donna wanted to go home once a month to check on Wilf, or that you would bring him a steaming cup of tea if he stayed up late working on the console. You never put enough sugar in it for his liking, but he’d never told you that. Maybe he should have.

He should have known it would never last. Wanting you here forever was nothing more than wishful thinking in the first place. Perhaps the universe was playing a joke on him, or maybe it was seeking revenge for all the things he had done wrong in his painfully long life.

Losing Donna was hard enough for him. Having to be the one to wipe her memory and explain to her mum and grandad why he could never see her again was one of the hardest things he had ever done in his long life. He felt gutted, ripped apart at his already fragile seams. There were so many people he had said goodbye to, but none of them were his best friend. Losing Donna was like losing a piece of himself, like handing away one of his hearts just to see it get run over by a truck. It was hard in ways he had never thought possible, but losing you was a whole different ordeal. He had loved Donna, yes, but never in the way that he loved you.

He loved you in a way he hadn’t loved anyone in the longest time. Even if he didn’t want to, even if he knew it wasn’t possible, he loved you. It wasn’t something he wanted to admit to himself, and it was something that he could never admit to you, but it was true. Just as much a fact as the sky being blue (though, the Doctor knew that the sky wasn’t really blue. Humans didn’t have the optical ability to see the true colour of the sky. The Doctor thought that was truly a shame, it was one of his favourite colours).

Even without it being said, there was something there. The two of you had never loved each other the way that the Doctor loved Donna. You hung in the space between; not quite together, but so much more than just friends. Maybe, if the two of you had time, he would have found his way to you. In the end, he always did. It was impossible not to, you were like a magnet to him. Nothing had ever come as easy to him as loving you.

He tried not to love you, he really did. But if he hadn’t been able to stop over the last year, he wasn’t going to be able to stop now. Loving you ruined him, body and soul, but he couldn’t seem to shake himself from it.

Losing Donna was painful for the Doctor, but it was life-ruining for you. It was practically excruciating to see the best part of your best friend's life be wiped away in an instant.

“When I’m with the Doctor, I feel like I’m actually something. Someone,” Donna had told you once. “Like my life finally has a purpose. This is it, this is where I’m meant to be.”

Donna wouldn’t even be able to mourn what she lost, because she couldn’t even remember that she lost it. Perhaps that was the cruellest fate of them all.

Never again would you sit on her floor on the TARDIS, organising her CDs and making fun of the Doctor. You wouldn’t ever complain to her about the Time Lord, or yell into her pillow because of how utterly frustrating he could be. She wouldn’t remember him, she wouldn’t remember the room she had outfitted on the TARDIS, she wouldn't remember those late nights. But you would, they would always be stitched into the seams of your memories. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t get rid of them.

You wanted to scream at the Doctor, beg him to give you your best friend back. He could destroy civilisations, save worlds, and build empires, why couldn’t he fix this? Why did he have to put you in a position to choose?

The Doctor had figured you would stay with him. In his mind, there wasn’t another option. He needed you. To you, the answer was obvious. Donna Noble came first. She always did.

Now, you were gone, but months ago you had been here. Your memory was already haunting him, fragments of you handing in his periphery. His eyes landed on the front doors of the TARDIS, his mind already filling in the blanks.

Only a few weeks ago, he had found you sitting with your legs dangling out of the open doors, feet idly kicking into the open air of space. He was sure if it was any other ship, flown by any other alien, you wouldn’t even consider sitting out in the open expanse of space, but you had grown to trust the Doctor and his TARDIS with more than just your life.

Donna had long since gone to bed, she was probably fast asleep wrapped up in the Egyptian cotton sheets she got from her first trip to the 1920s. You, on the other hand, found yourself unable to sleep, fancy cotton sheets or not. It wasn’t necessarily a frequent problem for you, but sometimes after steady weeks of adventuring, you weren’t able to sleep as easily. On those nights, you’d stay up with the Doctor. He would never openly admit it, but he liked the company.

Used to this routine, the Doctor had sat down silently next to you, his long legs draping over the edge of his beloved ship. For a minute neither of you said anything, just looking out at the stars. The silence settled around the Doctor like a familiar blanket. For once, he didn’t feel the pressing need to fill it with chatter.

It had been a beautiful night in space, though the Doctor supposed he’d never seen one that wasn’t. A glittering array of stars and soft nebulas filled his vision, a couple of far-off planets hidden behind stardust. It didn’t matter that he’d seen it billions of times, nothing else really compared to the feeling of just sitting in outer space, basking in the soft starlight.

“Have I ever told you about binary stars?” the Doctor murmured, his face still turned out toward the galaxy. From here, you could take a minute to admire his side profile.

“No, I don’t think you have,” you replied, tearing your gaze away from him. “Tell me.”

The Doctor reached his arm out and pointed at two sparkling spheres in the distance. They were nestled right next to each other in the dark, huddled together like penguins weathering out a storm.

“They’re stars that orbit the same centre of gravity, permanently bound together by it. Most of the stars are part of a binary system, actually,” he explains, his quiet voice ringing out into the night. “Normally you can’t see them as separate entities with your naked eye, but, well…”

“Being literally in space changes that,” you finish for him.

“Exactly.”

“Over time the stars lose momentum and slowly gravitate towards each other until they collide in a supernova,” the Doctor continued, still looking out into space with a forlorn look. “Or if one explodes first, it forms a pulsar. The companion star, the dimmer one that is, will be destroyed. Either way, they’re the death of each other.”

“Companion stars?” you chuckle, leaning your head against the solid wood of the doorframe. Now it was the Doctor’s turn to look at the soft outline of your profile.

“Or secondary star, B-star, you get the idea,” he utters quickly, just a few ticks faster than his normal dialect.

“Are we smaller stars to you?” you ask after a beat, gazing out at the pair of stars in the distance. In a way he envied them, two entities intertwined forever, always a joined force in the stark expanse of the cosmos.

“No,” the Doctor said almost instantly. “Never smaller, or lesser, or whatever other word you want to use. Never that. There’s never been anything bigger than you. Ever.”

“Are the other stars called the Doctor star? Time Lord star?” you teased with a wide smile, the expression taking over your entire face. He loved when you smiled like that, your whole face practically illuminating the room.

“First, it’s the brighter star. And, no, they’re the primary stars,” he scoffs, trying to hide the beginnings of his own smile. It was hard not to smile back when you looked at him like that.

“Which one’s the companion?” you asked, nodding in the general direction of the stars in the distance. From your spot, they looked the same, so similar you might have even mistaken them for one entity at first glance.

“Can’t tell from here,” the Doctor shrugged. “The TARDIS could tell us,” he looks back at the console, ready to get up and check. He was starting to realise he would do anything for you, and that kind of power was dangerous.

You shook your head, silently telling him to stay. “It’s not important, I just figured you’d know.”

“Contrary to popular belief, I don’t know everything.”

“I know,” you say simply. There were plenty of things the Doctor didn’t know, though it was rare for him to admit it. He didn’t know your birthday, or at least the proper date on first guess. He didn’t know Donna’s middle name, and most importantly, he didn’t seem to know how much he meant to you.

The silence settled back over you for a while. You sat like that for a while, sitting a little too close together and staring out into the universe before you. The binary star system hung in his field of vision, seemingly burning brighter than any other celestial body in his view. He couldn’t help but cling to the idea of them.

“The primary star is usually the one to explode, killing its companion,” the Doctor broke the silence. “It is literally the cause of the other’s death.”

“If I was a binary star, I’m not sure I would mind all that much.”

“Of course not, stars aren’t capable of thought processes or emotions-” he frowned, already correcting your statement.

“Metaphorically,” you cut him off before he could talk himself into circles; he was always really good at that.

“Oh,” he said, softer this time. “Why? Why wouldn’t you mind, that is.”

“Space is so big, everything is so far apart. If you’re a star, you just occupy your gravity all alone. But if one day, another star comes along and dips into that space… well, life isn’t so lonely anymore, is it?”

The Doctor shook his head, the spiky strands of his hair bouncing from the motion. “They kill each other.”

“Wouldn’t you risk it too? For that companionship, that love, that brief moment of contact before you combust? I know I would.”

“You have to kill your best friend, your partner. I’m not sure that’s worth it,” the Doctor argued. He was tired of losing people, tired of being the last one standing, tired of being the cause of all of those deaths. Maybe it should be called a “Time Lord star”.

“Would you rather be alone for the rest of your life?” you asked, turning back toward him. His eyes caught yours and he had to fight back tears. He didn’t want to be alone for the rest of his life, he wanted to be with you. With Donna. He would burn until he died out if he had to if it meant he could keep you. He would give you his hearts if he could - crack his ribs open and pry them out with his bare hands.

“Yes,” he lied, his voice cracking ever so slightly. It was nothing more than a pipedream, the idea that things would always be this way. He knew that, but it didn't make the inevitable blow any softer. You were never his to keep.

“We aren’t talking about stars anymore, are we?” you whisper. No, no we aren’t, he thought. Your words had hung in the air, the silence palpable.

Now, almost half a year later, his worst fears were coming true. He had drawn you too far into his gravitational pull and now he was going to lose you, just like he had lost everyone else.

The crash was inevitable. He couldn’t have the two of you forever, at some point, it was going to end. Binary stars always ended in explosions. It was only a matter of time before one of them went supernova.

Your voice tore him out of his thoughts. “So this is goodbye,” you whispered sadly, gazing down at the floor. You couldn’t look at him, not without breaking down. You’d never thought it would come to this.

“You can’t leave,” the Doctor’s voice almost cracked, his words strained. “I can’t lose you.”

“I can’t stay.”

“Yes, you can,” he pleaded. You didn’t have to respond to that, you both knew that the decision was already made. It was made the second that he wiped Donna’s mind.

The Doctor slumped against the console, the motion pained and dejected. “I just lost my best friend, I can’t lose you too” the Doctor cried, practically begging you.

“So did I!” you snapped. “I go with you and I lose the last bit of her I have left.”

“I can drop you off, you can always visit-”

“I’m not leaving her, Doctor,” you said definitively, refusing to budge on the matter. “She just lost the most wonderful year of her life - she lost you. I’m not going to be another thing she loses.”

“It doesn’t have to be one or the other.”

“It always is with you,” you murmured. The words hung in the air, the Doctor unable to argue with them. He couldn’t do the grey areas, he had never been any good at them. There wasn’t just getting coffee or catching up with him, there was always something more.

“She needs someone,” you added softly.

“She has Wilf and Sylvia.”

“She needs someone to remind her that she’s brilliant. Someone she will listen to.”

The Doctor didn’t have to respond to that, both of you knew it wasn’t the same. Donna needed someone there to remind her that she could be amazingly brilliant, and you were the only person who could really do that. You were the only one to see just how important Donna Noble was to the whole world, the universe even.

The only thing he could do was stare at you, silently committing your face to memory. You were already there, hidden in the corners of his mind. He didn’t need to memorise you, you were burned into him. There was no forgetting you. He wanted so desperately not to lose you, even the faint memory of you that would always linger in his mind. His eyes danced over your features, mapping every single curve and spot that he had grown to know so well. He wasn’t sure he could forget you, even if he wanted to. A little bit of you was permanently stitched into his very being.

“You were the best part of my life,” you whisper, breaking the silence.

“Your life isn’t over.”

“I already know. There’s no beating you, Doctor. I-” your words caught in your throat.

“I love him,” you had whispered to Donna months ago, the two of you curled up on the TARDIS library couch. “I love him irreversibly, I don’t think I could stop loving him if I tried.” You had tried, continuously even. It wasn’t meant to be, yet you couldn’t let him go.

“I love you,” you finally admitted to him, your voice a cracked whisper. The words weren’t a surprise to the Doctor. Frankly, you hadn’t expected them to be.

The two of you had danced around it for so long, lost in your own waltz of messy feelings. If you just kept avoiding it, wouldn’t it go away? But there was no more avoiding it, this was it. The last time you would ever see the Doctor.

“If I say it back will you stay?” he whispered, his voice raw.

“No,” you said instantly, a part of you hoping he’d say it anyway. He only nodded, his gaze falling to the floor. You don’t know why you’d expected anything else. It didn’t matter if you were walking out of his life, he couldn’t say it. You weren’t sure he would ever be ready to say it.

“Thank you,” he murmured after a beat. The words didn’t feel like enough, but they were all he had.

“I should be the one thanking you, not the other way around,” you chuckled sadly. “For showing me all of the universe and the things it has to offer.”

The Doctor shook his head, his spiky fringe drooping across his browline. “No, really. Thank you, for everything.” He would never be able to thank you enough for all that you had done for him; the countless nights you’d spent just sitting with him long after he should have gone to bed, all the times you’d talked him out of a spiral, the comforting squeeze of your hand in his. His life was undoubtedly better with you in it, and now you were walking out of it. The worst part was that he was powerless against it, there was nothing he could do to make you stay.

Unceremoniously, you slung your arms around him one last time. He allowed his own arms to snake around your middle, holding you tighter than he ever had. If he closed his eyes and focused on the feeling of you, he could almost convince himself you weren’t leaving. His nose slotted perfectly into your neck, it was so natural he didn’t even have to think about it.

“I’m going to miss you, spaceman,” you whispered, so quiet only the Doctor could hear.

It felt as if his hearts were being ripped out of his chest. He didn’t want to be this vulnerable, especially not in front of you. His mind grappled with the crushing weight of it all, frantically trying to scoop the last shreds of his dignity off the ground.

“I’ll miss you too, stardust,” he whispered, his voice strained. How was he expected to survive this? How could he be expected to do anything without you?

When you pulled away from the hug, there was the faintest hint of tears in your eyes. The sight only served to break the Doctor’s hearts further. He hated when you were sad, and he absolutely loathed it when he was the cause.

His hand reached out and brushed the stray tear from your cheek, swiping his thumb across the soft skin, his hand just barely quivering. You exhaled shakily, your breath ghosting across the Doctor’s skin.

“Goodbye,” you murmured, your voice cracking.

Reluctantly, you untangled yourself from the embrace, taking a step back. It took everything in the Doctor not to reach out for you and pull you back into him.

“Goodbye,” he whispered back.

He desperately wanted to wake up and find this was all some horrible nightmare. He longed to jolt awake like he did the many times he had dreamed of the horrors of the Time War. In the morning, this would be nothing more than a false memory that had plagued his unconscious mind. He would wake up, and you would be there. Donna would be there.

He blinked slowly, clenching his eyes shut with the hope that he would open them and this would all be fixed. After a beat, he slowly opened them again, but you were gone.

The TARDIS had never felt so empty.

You closed the door to the TARDIS carefully, your fingers lingering on the worn, blue wood of the ship. Once it was closed, you allowed yourself to sag against the doors. You took a second to gather yourself before stepping away from the ship. Only then did the tears start to fall.

As the TARDIS dematerialised, your cries turned into full sobs. The sound that once felt like home now felt like a fatal wound. You weren’t sure this was something you could ever get over, no matter how hard you tried.

It didn’t matter how hard your heart was breaking, you had other places to be. Donna needed you, and you weren’t going to abandon her. Now, or ever. Donna Noble always came first.

Hastily wiping your tears, you tugged the front door of the Noble residence open. You started slowly slipping off your shoes, kicking them dejectedly onto the wet mat by the coat rack. Just as you were easing off your left trainer, Donna rounded the corner. You didn’t even have time to register the fact that she was now awake, or even ask her how she was feeling before she started fretting over you.

“Oh no, I know that look,” she chided, immediately taking your coat from your hands.

“What look?” you plastered a smile on your face, the effort mitigated by your already blotchy face.

“Your sad one,” she stuck her finger in your face, “I don’t like it.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. Was it work? A bloke? A bloke at work?” she rambled on, growing increasingly irritated at the mere concept of someone upsetting her best friend. She would burn the world down for you if given the chance. No one meant more to Donna than you did.

“It was Josh, wasn’t it? I always hated him, but you already knew that. Not like I was ever secretive about it.” Of course she figured it was work, she didn’t remember that you had quit months ago. Time Travel wasn’t exactly compatible with a working schedule. Before you could respond and tell her no, it most certainly was not Josh, she was already going on again. “We’re going to have a pint of ice cream and then you’re moving on, got it?” she instructed, chattering on as if it was that simple. Maybe if it had been anyone else it would be that simple. Things were never simple when it came to the Doctor.

“Okay,” you nodded. The last thing you wanted to do right now was say no to the incredible force that is Donna Noble.

The Doctor sat across from Wilfred Mott, idly running a finger along the edge of his coffee cup. He didn’t drink coffee, at least not black coffee, so the drink sat untouched. He’d always loved the man, but lately, he was the last person the Doctor wanted to see. Wilf was just one more painful reminder of all that he had lost.

He didn’t understand why Wilf had picked this cafe, or even a cafe at all. There were hundreds on the street, yet he had seemed dead set on this one. It wasn’t even a nice one - the seats were cracked, the mugs chipped and mismatched, and the table was littered with scratches. The Doctor idly ran his pointer finger over a set of initials someone had carved into the wood, an eternal declaration of love.

Pulling his gaze back up to the other side of the table, he found Wilf staring intently out the window. It almost looked like he was waiting for something.

“What?” the Doctor asked, following his gaze with a furrowed brow.

Outside on the street was Donna, packing up cardboard boxes into her car. As if seeing his best friend wasn’t painful enough, you rounded the corner, calling after the redhead. Suddenly it all made sense why Wilf had insisted on this particular cafe.

“I'm sorry, but I had to. Look, can’t you make her better?” Wilf pleaded.

“Stop it,” the Doctor growled, tearing his gaze away from the pair. He wouldn’t allow himself to dwell on this. He wouldn’t allow himself to think about you, it would only cause him to spiral.

“No, but you’re so clever. Can’t you bring her memory back? Look, just go to her now. Go on, just run across the street. Go up and say hello,” Wilf continued.

“If she ever remembers me, her mind will burn, and she will die.”

“They miss you, both of them.”

The Doctor’s eyes faltered, wandering back to the pair of you on the street. Now, Donna was yelling at a traffic warden, her angry voice carrying into the diner. Her voice was hauntingly familiar, and only then did he realise just how much he had missed Donna’s fury.

“She’s not changed,” he chuckled.

“Couldn’t if she tried.”

“And…” the Doctor asked, not daring to directly ask how you were. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. Deep in his hearts, he longed for you to be happy. Yet, he didn’t think he could bear the pain of it.

“They’re fine too. Working at the university now, a big cushy job and all.”

The Doctor nodded. Of course, you were. At least you were happy.

“She’s getting married,” Wilf said, looking back out at his granddaughter. It took the Doctor a full second to realise he had been talking about Donna, not you. For a moment, panic rushed into his brain. He knew it would come one day, it was all part of you moving on. New job, new haircut, probably someone new to love too. He just wasn’t ready for that day to be today.

“Another wedding?” he said, trying to play off the split second of panic.

“Yeah.”

“Is she happy? Is he nice?” The Doctor turned his gaze back to the mug in front of him, staring at the rapidly cooling coffee like it was the most interesting thing in the world.

“Yeah, he’s sweet enough. He’s a bit of a dreamer. Mind you, he’s on minimum wage, she’s earning tuppence, so all they can afford is a tiny little flat. And then sometimes I see this look on her face like she’s so sad, but she can’t remember why.”

“She’s got him.” That was more than the Doctor could say. He didn’t have anyone, least of all the two people he wanted most. He’d spent the last year running around, searching for anything to fill the hole the two of you had left in his hearts. He had spent all that time forcing you out of the corners of his mind, chopping away at pieces of himself to rid himself of the ache. As much as he tried, he just kept seeing you in all of the places you should be.

“She’s making do.”

“Aren’t we all?” the Doctor chuckled dryly. His whole life he’d been making do, building the blueprints of a life out of abandoned scraps he’d found on the side of the road. He’d been living in a house of cards, and one day it was bound to fall down.

“Yeah, how about you? Who have you got now?” Wilf asked. The Doctor wanted to scoff at the idea. There was no replacing Donna, no replacing you.

“No one. Travelling alone. I thought it was better, but…” he trailed off. It wasn’t true, he never once thought that travelling without you and Donna was better. He swallowed, pushing the threat of tears back down. The two of you had moved on, it was time he did too.

“You need them, Doctor. I mean, look. Wouldn’t they make you laugh again?”

The truth was, you would. Both of you. Together, you could make everything better.

One last goodbye. He was at least owed that, wasn’t he? One last goodbye before he let go.

He figured he ought to at least wish Donna a happy marriage, even if he couldn’t do it directly. Before it all went down, Wilf had told him they were struggling, her and Shawn. The Doctor hated the idea of her in a shoebox flat, Donna Noble couldn't be squeezed in like that. At the very least, he could set them up for their new life. He wasn’t sure what constituted a lot of money, certainly not what constituted a lot of money in 2010. The best he could come up with was a winning lottery ticket.

He’d completely forgotten that in delivering the envelope with the winning ticket snuggled safely inside he would run into you. For a moment, he was taken aback by the sight of you, fretting about the bride in your wedding attire. You looked beautiful, but then again you always did. When his eyes met yours, it felt like the whole world had stopped. He practically froze when you started walking toward him. Maybe he wasn’t ready for this.

“What are you doing here?” you asked, your voice tense. The Doctor immediately felt as if he’d done something wrong.

“Will you give this to Donna?” he asked softly, handing over the envelope. Warily, you took it from his outstretched hand.

“What is it?”

“Lottery ticket, should be enough for them to start their new life,” the Doctor explained, nervously rubbing the back of his neck.

You nodded, staring down at the taupe envelope in your hands. “I’ll give it to her.”

The two of you stood in silence for a minute, neither of you venturing to speak. The only sounds in the area were the runoff of chatter from the wedding and the gentle chirp of birds in the nearby trees.

The Doctor had so many things he wanted to say, yet none of them felt like enough. This was the last time he was ever going to see you with this face - possibly at all - and he couldn’t come up with anything.

It’s not that he didn’t have things to say. Oh, he had so many things to say. A full year alone left him in a jumble of his own thoughts. He was still trying to detangle the webs of his mind. That wasn’t going to be his problem anymore, let the next one handle it.

“I’m sorry,” he uttered, his voice uncharacteristically quiet.

“For what?”

“Everything,” he said. “For what happened with Donna, and what happened with us.”

“I’m sorry too,” you whispered, fiddling with the envelope in your hands. “For leaving you and all of that.”

The Doctor shook his head. “It turned out okay,” he lied.

“You got someone new?”

“No,” he said instantly. Of course, he didn’t have someone new, how could you think that? He didn’t just move on, especially not from Donna and you. “No, I don’t.”

“You need someone.”

“I’ve been fine,” he lied again. In reality, he had been far from fine. The TARDIS felt hauntingly empty without you. He missed Donna’s tabloid magazines scattered across the control room, the last book you were reading discarded on the surface of the console, and the half-empty tea mugs from both of you sitting in the sink for days on end, he missed it all. No matter what he did, he couldn’t fix it.

“I miss you,” you whispered so softly the Doctor wasn’t even sure he heard you correctly.

“Then come back,” he practically begged. It didn’t matter how much he changed, how different this new Doctor was going to be, he would always love you. He would always need you.

“I can’t do that.”

“I’d rather have five days a year than anyone else all the time,” he uttered, fighting his way through the stabbing pain in his body. He didn’t have much time left. But then again, he never did.

“Goodbye, Doctor.”

Somehow, those words hurt more than they did the first time.

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