Author's note: Written as a reaction to, and set after The Doctor's Daughter.
Warning: spoilers for The Doctor's Daughter.
Running. It was what he did best. It was always time to move, always time to move on, because what happened whenever he didn't move fast enough was that death and loss would always catch up. If the Doctor could move faster than a gun shot, he would have--and he would have gotten both himself and Jenny out of harm's way. But it always seemed like it was only a matter of time that people lost their lives around him. Taking companions onto the TARDIS was becoming like a game of tempting fate. The Doctor mused bitterly if he had to start making his companions take out life insurance before coming on board, or before even accepting the invitation to. More so if they were blonde.
"You all right?" Donna asked the Doctor. They were in the TARDIS after dropping Martha off, and the Doctor was staring at the console, at the same time his gaze was really aimed beyond it.
He couldn't really think of an answer. He gazed alongside at Donna, then at his hand in the jar, which was now reticent. Quiet. Maybe time could stand still right now, and keep everything at bay for the moment. But it couldn't. His two beating hearts kept time (all the time), and told him that the longer he stayed silent, the more Donna was going to say something in an effort to get him out of his mood, distract him with another subject, and then it would be on to the next adventure, which they had no guarantees of surviving.
"This life... travelling... is it really what you want?" he asked her.
The expression Donna gave him was one of exasperation, but a closer look at her eyes revealed a softness--she was going to treat him with kid gloves for at least a couple of days, the Doctor could see that much.
"I'm a grown adult, Doctor. I think I know what I want."
The Doctor simply nodded, fixing his eyes back on the TARDIS console.
"--But if that's all right with you, I think it'll be nice to stay put somewhere boring for a couple of days," Donna continued, surprising him. "Travelling doesn't always have to be the fast-paced, run-for-your-life life, if you take my meaning..." She was giving him an easy out.
"I take it."
"Great. I need a shower and a nap. Don't think of peeking or waking me up, Sunshine." She finished her words with a smile before walking farther into the TARDIS. Her way of giving him some time alone with his thoughts.
The Doctor didn't know whether to be grateful or despairing. Standing still, memories were hard to outrun. When Donna was out of the line of sight, the Doctor sat back in the seat facing the console, and let his shoulders droop. Some days, he wanted to hit the TARDIS (and some days, he did). It wasn't that much of a reach to blame this old machine for his troubles sometimes. The latest paradox especially.
Sadness threatened, and to distract himself the Doctor kicked the underside of the TARDIS console, but not hard. The TARDIS was the last, one remaining link to his past, that had stayed by his side longer than family, longer than any companions, even the ones who promised forever. But with Jenny, he'd allowed himself to hope... to hope that perhaps, at last, he had found another being who would stay. Another being like him. It was a fool's hope, because especially with his past experience as a dad, he knew children didn't always do what you wanted them to. He'd wanted his daughter to live. And she didn't. She'd given her life for him; he really didn't understand when people did that. He was the one with lives to spare. Yet he was surrounded by beings who chose to die for him, or whom he knew would die for him if the desperate situation presented itself. Logic demanded that he either travelled alone, or stopped getting into desperate situations, but the latter just seemed impossible.
On a morbid impulse, the Doctor reached a hand to the TARDIS console and pulled up the ship's log. Twenty-first-century Earth, he noted, was more dangerous than really called for. It seemed to need saving so very often. It vexed him, this--was it just a trick of perception or was it under more threats from aliens than any world had a right to be in such a short time? What made it so vulnerable? Even as this planet had its weaknesses, it had its share of intelligent and courageous individuals as well--it just seemed that sometimes the Doctor needed to be there to give those individuals a push, or to watch them sacrifice themselves as he stood helplessly by... And over and over again, this planet kept pulling him back. He'd had in mind to bring Jenny here, which was, looking back, probably a foolish notion. It was just, she had reminded him a little of someone else... someone else he had not been allowed by fate to keep. He really had to learn how not to get emotionally invested.
Strange. There was an entry in the log showing that the TARDIS had received two seconds of transmission from an unidentified source during their last visit to Earth. The Doctor counted back in time--ah, it was during the Sontaran encounter, around the time the TARDIS had been on the Sontaran ship (with Donna alone inside). It had a different signature from the transmission he'd sent from the UNIT communications central. And it wasn't that the source was unidentified, really. The coordinates just didn't make any sense. It came from a time and place that he was sure did not, could not, exist in this universe. Yet the signal strength, paradoxically--why all these mysteries?--was not that strong, and could not have come from too far.
"What is this, girl?" The Doctor asked the TARDIS rhetorically. "You getting secret calls from an ex I don't know about?" The ship was alive, perhaps as alone as the Doctor was, and sometimes the time lord entertained the amusing notion that it might be searching the universe for other TARDISes like it.
There was no recording of the actual transmission. The Doctor considered, then erased the record of its interception by the TARDIS.
It was strange how his hearts ached a little more as the entry disappeared from the screen.
END