NOT a kneejerk reaction to "End of Time"…my initial reaction was, "NO, WHY, DAVID, WHY???!! I LOVE YOO—haha, Matt Smith made a funny!". But I did love the sendoff our Ten got, though "I don't want to go," broke my heart. Anyway, this story is actually a little Wilf homage. Cos, let's face it, we love Wilf. Wilf was one of my favourite companions, second only to Donna, and it was so sad that the whole knocking prophesy was actually about him! I just thought, since Steven Moffat has proclaimed that he won't revisit RTD's characters and instead create his own (or words to that effect), we should have a little closing to the Noble family saga. And, of course, reflect on what I think is a Wilf and Doctor father/son relationship. N'aww. Maybe, after this, I'll do a little on the others: Rose and 10.5, Jack and Alonso (:D), Martha and Mickey (I was one of the few who believed before it became canon –nodnodnod-). Perhaps even the Master. I loved him! He was, like, extra-crazy- emotional-and-self-sacrificing! Master!
Ahem. In summary—I felt like writing a post-EoT story in which canon remained unaltered and the Noble family got an extra happy ending. This is a bit ramble-y, but I do love the ending, so please stick around. If there are any inconsistencies, or I mucked up the tenses, please review and let me know. That is all. Enjoy!
Summary: "What stung the most was the knowledge that they would never see one another again, and Wilf had not taken the opportunity to tell the Doctor how much he had changed his family's lives—or how much he meant to them." Spoilers for End of Time!
Stargazing
That lottery ticket was going to be very helpful in future.
The reception was a real party—the DJ was still playing, the guests were still dancing, and the festivities looked to be going long into the night. Donna and Sean were, of course, in the thick of it, enjoying their first night as a married couple as much as they could, given that tomorrow, reality would be demanding their attention once again. Only Wilfred stood away from the throng of people—he was on the veranda outside the hall, his wrinkled hands resting on the barrier as he stared up at the stars.
How on Earth had they managed to pay for this shindig? Wilf couldn't recall—maybe his family just hadn't told him, maybe his mind was starting to fade. He was getting too old.
So old, yet one man considered his life more important than his own.
Wilf sighed—a raspy, tired sound—and tilted his head back to stare at the sky. His granddaughter could not have picked a better day to get married. It had been relatively sunny all day, but tonight…the sky was a midnight blue and utterly cloudless, pinpricked with millions of tiny white stars. Perhaps Donna, despite her memory-wipe, had been left with some instinct that told her the perfect time to see the stars. Wilf wondered how many she knew; how many she had seen close-up. He wondered if, could she still remember, she would come out and join him on the deck, and tell him which planet was covered in the most glorious flora and fauna you would ever see, which was inhabited by the most weird and wonderful creatures. Which one she had loved, which she had hated.
Then his mind kept wondering. If she could still remember, would she be here? Would she have met Sean or got married? Or would she be continuing to discover the universe? Would she remember to tell her dear old Gramps all about it when she came home? Would she even come home?
Of course she would! The Doctor wouldn't let her forget that.
Ah, the Doctor; that amazing, strange, tortured man—the man who had not only shown Donna the universe, but given Wilf a taste of it himself. The man who had saved their lives a thousand times over with a screwdriver and a pair of Converse. The only man Wilf had ever wanted to call son.
His mind, decrepit and flawed though it was, continued to ponder on life without the Doctor. If they had never met him, where would his family be? Donna would have married that Lance bloke; Donna would have been captured by those spiders she had told him about. Donna…would be dead.
Oh God.
Wilf shook his head quickly, urging himself to snap out of this reverie. Donna wasn't dead, Donna didn't marry Lance. Donna was inside that hall right now, married to a lovely man who loved her for her and not for the opportunities her fate would allow him.
That was another reason to be thankful for the Doctor. He saved her on the day they met and introduced her to a world beyond offices and chippies and the X-Factor. A world that often enamored her own grandfather. She may no longer have memories of their life together—the DoctorDonna—and if she ever got them back, she would undoubtedly be killed, a fact which broke Wilf's heart. But still the Doctor had influenced her life in little ways, even if she had no idea.
And then there was Wilf! He looked up and smiled at the sky above. Only a few short weeks ago, he had been on the other side—he had looked down on Earth as he now looked up at the sky … with nothing short of wonder. He had, a fact he reminded himself of proudly, had a part in saving Time itself. The Doctor did most of the work, yeah, but Wilf helped.
In a way, the irony was funny. The Doctor saved millions of people and came out (relatively) unscathed. Then, in order to save one insignificant old man, he sacrificed himself.
Wilf remembered the Doctor's appearance that afternoon. He heard the sorrow in his voice, saw the whirl of gold in his eyes. He knew because he often saw it in Donna, in moments when she stared into space and murmured as she tried to call to mind something she could not remember. The Doctor was going to die.
Wilf did not know about regeneration—the Doctor had mentioned it, maybe, but Wilf was not fully sure of its purpose. All he knew was that his Doctor was dying and soon, it would be a new man flying the TARDIS, a man Wilf would not recognize. The Doctor would get a new life, but only by leaving behind the old.
The thought of his wild-haired, suit-wearing, hyperactive Doctor, dead, and a new person in his place brought tears to Wilf's eyes and suddenly he could not look at the sky anymore. He ducked his head and rubbed his face. The man he knew would soon be gone—perhaps was already gone!—and who would remember him? To places like UNIT or Torchwood (again, places he only knew by association with Donna until the metacrisis-unpleasantness), he was merely a being who, occasionally, could play a key part in their actions. Take away that, only a handful of people truly knew this Doctor. He had affected the lives of so many and—what—ten people would notice? And how many of them would be able to tell the Doctor how important he was to them?
That, Wilf supposed, was what stung the most; the knowledge that he and the Doctor would never see one another again, and he had not taken the opportunity to tell him how much he had changed his family's lives—or how much he meant to them.
But—and this was a wild theory even to Wilf—maybe he didn't have to tell him to let him know.
How many times had the Doctor stressed that he wanted Donna to have a great life? How often did he make it clear how brilliant they, the ant-like human race, were? How much did he deserve to see how greatly he had touched their lives?
Wilf didn't know how much time he had left to live…but damn it if he wasn't going to spend it making sure he and Donna lived it to their full potentials!
With a determination he didn't know he possessed, Wilf turned and marched back into the dance hall, intent on fox-trotting the night away with Minnie.
Of course, for all his bravado, Wilfred Mott would always ensure that the Doctor was never far from his mind. His fortitude in preserving his great memory meant that he would ever be capable of forgetting or moving on himself. Well, a man like the Doctor is never easy to forget—but despite his earnest wish to live life to the fullest and stop dwelling in the past, Wilfred would not let it stop him from remembering the Doctor in other, small ways.
It wouldn't stop him from flashing Sylvia a secret smile when Donna does win the triple-rollover the next week—and celebrates by buying a spacious penthouse and jetting off to the Bahamas for a "proper honeymoon".
It wouldn't stop him from laughing his head off when the Vinvocci, a race of green-skinned, prickly aliens, invade, claiming that diplomatic relations had been destroyed by a madman in a pinstripe suit.
It wouldn't stop him from crying a little when Donna and Sean present to him his first great-grandchild and Sean jokes that, one day, little David Geoffrey would be a great doctor.
It wouldn't stop the pride in his chest blooming when, instead, Dave took to astronomy like a fish to water.
And it wouldn't stop him from trooping up to his hill every night, leaving behind a house full of laughter and family and the future, and for a moment, revisiting the past. It wouldn't stop him from leaning back and gazing wistfully at the stars, hoping every so often that one day, he will see a blue box streak across the sky, reminding him of the life he has led and the life Donna never did.
And sometimes, with eyes that Wilf would no longer recognize, the stars will gaze back.