He always, always told them not to walk off- but by now, he realized, as he cursed under his breath for the hundredth time, he should've known that they never listened to him. Now he was stuck running around High Street, getting odd looks from the people who bothered to notice him, looking for Amy and Rory before they got into trouble. Sometimes he wished he could find the responsible ones, the ones who paid attention and realized that maybe listening to the nine hundred year old time lord was a good idea every once in a while-
"Oi! Watch where you're going!"
He stopped, fumbling with the tangled mess of the shopping bags and person he'd managed to get himself tangled up in. He didn't have time for this, he thought, as he apologized and managed to drop his little book of psychic paper into one of the shopping bags in the process, he had to look for bloody Amy and her stupid husband-
They were both talking over each other- "Sorry" "You're right you're sorry, some of this is fragile!" "All right, calm down, I just-" "Is that a bow-tie? Who wears-?" "It's cool" – when another voice broke over them (an older one, more fragile and somehow familiar-)
"Donna? What's happened?"
The Doctor finally looked up at the face of the person he'd walked into, and did a double take. He flinched away, nearly dropping the psychic paper in the bag again just as he got hold of it, and took step back.
The Doctor looked at her face, and then his, at the beautiful, human faces that had hardly changed since he'd seen them-
"Are you all right? I could hear you from all the way around the corner…"
He felt like an outsider (like had for years before, back when he'd just stolen her, his beautiful blue TARDIS, when they were the only ones travelling through the universe together), like he was looking through a window at something that he used to be part of. He was happy for her, he was (for the ring on her finger, and the healthy rose on Wilf's cheeks, for the lost weariness on their faces), but that didn't change the twinge of pain that started in his chest and spread until it had turned into a small pounding behind his eyes.
He looked over their heads (Wilf was apologizing on Donna's behalf, but the Doctor didn't hear him), and there they were, his idiot friends (the girl who waited and the brilliant human boy who stayed with her), Amy waving and dragging a disgruntled Rory behind her. Amy was saying something. Shouting.
Donna was too pre-occupied with muttering angrily and checking that everything in the bags was all right, so it was only Wilf who heard it, only him and everyone else who didn't care.
"Doctor!"
Wilf looked at him, but didn't say anything.
"Doctor!"
It was all over his face. He remembered.
"We went around a corner and you'd disappeared!"
You've changed your face again, he could almost hear Wilf say.
"I tried to stop her, I did, but you know Amy-"
Wilf smiled.
Amy stopped, Rory stumbling to a halt beside her. "Oh. Who's this?"
They were starting to leave now (she was all right, he reminded himself, that was all he needed, to see that she was all right), Wilf pushing Donna along and smiling politely at Amy and Rory before he left.
Amy threw him a questioning look, but he ignored it.
"You know, when I tell you not to run off, I mean it," he said briskly, walking in the opposite direction (he couldn't hold on to that, and he'd promised not to go back and visit them from before they knew him- he couldn't risk it). "Sometimes I think there's something in your heads that stops you listening to me."
He saw the curiosity on Amy's face, but that day was never brought up again.