Full Summary: Donna Noble can never remember her best friend, the Doctor, but the Doctor has one final trick up his sleeve to make sure she never really forgets - and of course it's in a way only he could come up with - by secretly giving her hats.
An Abundance of Hats
"Hats are a great antidote to what's going on.It's really their purpose to put a happy face on a sad world."
-Stephen Jones
~#~
The first hat was a bright pink floppy brimmed hat, held in a matching round box. Donna Noble nearly tripped over it on her way out the door.
Despite her irritation, her curiosity led her to pick up the box and slowly lift the lid. It was a beautiful hat, as far as floppy sunhats went. Made of a sort of foreign fabric Donna couldn't place, and trimmed in purple silk.
It looked expensive, and immediately Donna turned the hat over and over to look for a FROM tag. Or a price tag. But she found neither. The box contained nothing but the pink hat and a small tag that read, "TO Donna Noble."
She slowly placed the lid back on the box, stepping a few steps away from the door to look both ways down the sidewalk. There wasn't a single soul walking the pavement this morning, leaving no clues as to who could have left the hat.
Frowning slightly in confusion, Donna quickly hurried back in the house to place the hatbox in the entryway before hurrying back outside to hopefully make it to work on time.
~#~
The second hat arrived two weeks later. This time Donna came upon it after a long day of looking at flats with her mother. It had frustrated them both – the two still couldn't seem to agree on anything – and Donna had let her mother go in the house long before her, so she could spend some time in the night.
After a while of this, she turned to face the door to the house, and noticed the brown cardboard box sitting on the front step. She crossed her arms, her head tilted in wondering, and once again approached the box. Again there was no return label, only her name written in an untidy scrawl. Carefully she tore the tape off of the box, opened the flaps, and peered in.
It was a blue and white striped knit hat – a sort of lopsided, funny looking knit hat that made Donna smile fondly at it. She picked up the hat, running her fingers over it. Something possessed her to slide this hat on, but it was a bit large and completely covered her ears and the front slid down her forehead and nearly covered her eyes. The back of it, however, barely covered half of her head.
She laughed. It was a hearty, almost hysterical laughter she couldn't seem to keep within her. It was quite a funny hat. She hadn't worn a hat in awhile that was so big – and so brilliantly blue and soft.
"Donna?"
Though her laughter died, her smile remained fixed as she spun around to face her mother, who looked slightly appalled. Donna slid the hat off of her head and placed it back in its box.
"Who's that from?" Sylvia Noble asked skeptically, but Donna merely shrugged.
"No idea," she said simply, hurrying into the house to place the hat next to the first.
~#~
It's the third hat that appeared nearly two months later that had Donna slightly suspicious. It arrived at her door once more, this time at the door of her recently rented flat. It also arrived differently than the other two, as it started with a knock on the door, but when Donna opened it, no one stood before her.
Her eyes instead fell on the black, square box, and Donna again picked it up, instinctively looking for a return label but, of course, finding none. She looked both ways down the hall, even bothering to utter a, "Hello?" down the hall. She wasn't expecting an answer, but still it baffled her as she backed into her flat again, shutting the door behind her.
Donna sat down on one of the many boxes she had yet to unpack and lifted the lid of the black box. She found herself smiling as she lifted the hat out of the box, holding it out to examine. It appeared to be a deerstalker; a peculiar sort of hat Donna hadn't seen many places (though, if she thought about it, her recent trip to the Sherlock Holmes museum was one of them). The flaps on either side of it flopped uselessly as she spun it.
"What am I to do with a bloody deerstalker?" she asked herself, and, unable to help herself, slipped the hat on her head. "S'pose I could solve all sorts of mysterious crimes, if the giver intended."
She laughed slightly, sliding off the hat and replacing it in the box. The black box itself joined the pink and the cardboard in her closet.
~#~
Two days later a small box was waiting for her as she entered her small office at work. It was nestled amongst the stacks of paper and books she, begrudgingly, had yet to find a home for. This box was quite a bit larger than the other three, and was a vibrant orange.
Donna stared at the box for a moment before hurrying around the corner to ask her office neighbor if he had seen anything.
"Sorry," he answered her, and she deflated a little. "No one's been by your office since yesterday."
"No one?" Donna asked, just to be sure.
Of course the answer was a shake of his head, and Donna felt her shoulders drop as she slowly walked back into her office, her eyes fixed on the orange box.
She opened this one with none of the haste and excitement she had opened the other three. To be honest, this was starting to bore her. At first receiving hats from mysterious strangers had been at least a little exhilarating. Now it seemed too normal for her to really get excited about.
This hat was a dark blue bowler hat, with a ribbon of silver. Donna ran her fingers over the velvety material of the hat, but didn't put it on.
"You're going to have to do better than this," she said quietly, to no one in particular. "I'm not a woman to be pleased by bowler hats."
She threw the hat back into its box, shoving it under her desk, determined not to think about it or the other three.
(It was an effort in vain, however, as the bowler hat found its home with the rest the minute she arrived back home).
~#~
It seemed as though her admirer was attempting to make up for the bowler hat. For the next two weeks, Donna Noble received three hats. A day. After fourteen days, she had a grand total of forty-six hats, overflowing the shelves she had placed each box on.
After another two weeks, the count had gone up to ninety-seven. Her closet now contained more hat boxes than actual clothing.
"Okay, when I said 'you're going to have to do better than this,' I didn't actually intend it as a challenge," Donna said upon picking up the ninety-eighth hat box, which sat in front of her flat door. "I have to credit your creativity, however."
She had just lifted out a Viking's helmet, adorned in golden accents.
"My mum is going to murder me when she sees these," Donna sighed to herself, settling the hat amongst the rest.
~#~
"Donna Noble, you did not buy all of these hats!"
Donna crossed her arms across her chest, leaning against the doorway of her closet and watching her mother pick through the abundance of hatboxes.
"I don't think anyone could afford this many," she snapped. "I've already told you; they're just showing up."
"Who would send you this many hats?" Sylvia asked incredulously, examining a pair of blue striped earmuffs.
"Whoever it is….they must care about me an awful lot…."
"Enough to leave you a hundred hats and not a single note?"
"Sometimes people can't leave notes, Mum!" Donna rolled her eyes, and Sylvia frowned.
"You might be wise to not accept any more of these, Donna. Who knows where they're coming from, or if they're stolen, or –"
"They're not stolen. And….And I can't just stop accepting them." Donna narrowed her eyes, running her fingers on the favorite hat among all of them. The blue and white striped knit hat that was way too big and lopsided. It still made her smile. Most of the hats in this room did.
"These hats are….getting them makes me happy," she said out loud. "I haven't been so happy in a while. It's….it's like I've got my own planet of hats in my own closet."
At once Sylvia's face darkened, and she studied Donna carefully. "Planet of hats?"
"I know there's no such thing, and that there can never be," Donna assured her, rolling her eyes again. Sylvia just sighed in immense relief. "But….I just like getting them. I don't know where they're coming from, or why they're coming to me, but….but I like them."
Sylvia's strict, tense face softened a little, and she reached out to take Donna's hand. "There's more happiness to come for you, love. And it doesn't have to come from these silly hats."
Donna blinked. She didn't think her mum truly understood, but she didn't have the heart to say so, or take her hand away. She'd learned lately that when loved ones don't understand, it's not easy to get them to.
Sylvia smiled slightly, taking the first hat Donna had received – the pink floppy hat – and placed it on her head.
"Whoever is sending these knows you love them," she said softly. "And maybe one day there will be a planet of hats for you to go to."
Donna smiled, a little childishly, and let the floppy hat fall over her eyes.
~#~
For a long breach of time, she received no hats. She would open the door every day, and immediately look down at an empty floor. She was willing to admit she didn't need any more hats, but she simply missed receiving them. Each time she opened the door of her flat to an empty hall, she felt her heart drop a few centimeters in her chest, like a slowly descending elevator. An elevator that only went down unless something forced it up again.
She began to feel unhappy again with every box she did not receive. Maybe her admirer had finally given up with trying to woo her. Maybe her admirer just simply didn't care anymore.
She was thinking about this, dejectedly, on her way upstairs to her flat after a rather dull day at the office. Her feet were heavy on every step, and she only looked up when she reached her hall.
She wasn't expecting anything different. But there he stood. A man with rather messy brown hair, a striped shirt, brown jacket, and red bowtie. And, as if the man wasn't bizarre enough, a red fez sat on the top if his head.
He stood right in front of Donna's door, and she approached him cautiously, skeptically, unsure of what he was doing there. She couldn't remember ever seeing him before.
"Are you lost?" she spoke up as she neared him.
The man turned, and his face actually lit up with a wide smile. But as Donna examined his face more, she only saw pain and fear and depression and loneliness reflected in every feature. This was not a happy man, no matter how much of a façade he pulled.
"No, no, not at all," the man assured her cheerily. "I'm just here to drop something off for someone. Do you know a Donna Noble, perchance?"
Donna blinked and nodded slowly. "Yeah….yeah, she's – well, I'm her, actually."
The man's smile, if possible, grew. "You're Donna! Well, he did mention something about the flaming red hair and persona –"
"Flaming persona?" Donna repeated, eyebrows raised.
"You are sort of radiating," the man said, waving his hands dismissively. "Besides the point. I'm here to drop off a final hat to you."
"You know who's been sending the hats?" Donna asked, instantly enthusiastic. "Could you tell me? Could I meet him? Do –"
"Ah, sorry, no, not really an option. Very shy, this bloke. Besides, he's leaving the country soon. It'd be best if you don't meet him." The man cleared his throat, in a sort of dramatic way. "I've been his messenger. He said you had a thing for hats – and so does he. A bit of a fetish; his family grows quite annoyed –"
"To the point, Sir Rambles-A-Lot," Donna interrupted, and the man smiled.
"Flaming persona, he said you'd have it," he said again, chuckling. "But now to bestow the final installment of –"
"Are you always this dramatic?" Donna couldn't fight the smile slowly growing on her face, and the man laughed once.
"As you wish, Miss Noble," he said, and lifted his hands above his head to take the red fez off. He spun it a few times in his hands before gracefully plopping the hat on Donna's head.
"This is it?" Donna asked, slightly disappointed. "This is worse than the bloody bowler –"
"He wore this one himself," the man said mysteriously. "Didn't buy it like the others. This was his pride and joy, the one hat he loved more than any other. It has sentimentality to it."
Donna looked up into the man's round, pained eyes, and noticed for the first time the tears pooling in them.
"I-I respect that, completely," Donna said quietly. "You don't….why do you look so sad?"
The man smiled weakly and placed his hands on Donna's shoulders. "I'm not sad, Donna Noble. I'm never sad."
She, of course, didn't believe him, but she didn't see it in her to be the one to say anything. So instead she stood a bit taller and placed a small kiss on the man's left cheek.
"You take care of yourself," she said, trying to sound conversational, but it came out wrong. Without even knowing this man, she had somehow formed a connection to him. He had given her the hats who made her happy, and though someone else entirely bought them for her, it was this man who delivered them.
She'd never forget her strange delivery man.
"Godspeed, Donna Noble," the man said, his eyes shining. And, with those parting words, he turned and walked back down the hallway until he disappeared and left Donna standing alone.
Donna never put the red fez with the other hats. Instead, she put it on her bedside table, where it would forever make her smile each time she woke up to it.