Everything was ok. She'd lost no one. She'd lost nothing.
Around now would have been the time she'd be tucking them into bed. Although, now that she looked back, there were no specifics to her memory. There were no routines, no little fond recollections of a funny incident here and there. Just one lone image of the tucking in, the fact of the stories told, rather than an actual memory of even one. She knew that afterwards, she would have gone downstairs and waited for Lee to come home, but again, there were no nuances to that thought. It was a fact, not a memory. Never a memory.
She felt unreal.
"Donna?" the Doctor's voice was slightly hesitant. "Are you alright?"
Donna nodded distractedly and wandered away from him, out of the console room and towards her own room. Everything was just as it had been the last time she had left this room, breathless with unspoken excitement about what she might see the next time the TARDIS doors opened. Her clothes flung on the bed. Make-up scattered on the night stand. Three shells from a beach on that planet whose name she could never pronounce. An empty cup. And somewhere out there was her family. Her real family. Her mother and Granddad.
But suddenly none of them seemed to fit together anymore.
She folded some of the clothes and sat beside them on the bed. Her hands smoothed the blanket, over and over.
"Donna?" She hadn't heard him coming. Once upon a time she would have teased him about being so light that he could glide like a ghost.
"What?"
"It's your turn to cook."
"What?"
"Your turn to cook," he repeated.
She looked at him with a mixture of contempt and concern. After the day (only a day?) they'd had, he was thinking about food. After all they'd lost. Of course, he'd lost someone. Someone obviously important. Someone who'd had no idea who she was. But still, he'd lost more than she had. She'd lost something that never existed. In effect, she'd lost nothing.
Nothing.
"What do you want to eat?" she asked mechanically, forcing herself to get up.
"Anything," he replied, holding out a hand as she passed him, "Donna..."
"Ok." She ignored the gesture and headed towards the kitchen.
The cupboards were twice as unappealing as they usually were. She'd spent her first few weeks in here attempting to decipher languages and codes with the help of the TARDIS just to figure out what most of the food actually was, in Earth terms. She'd spent days writing shopping lists for their trips to shops that were more...local. Somehow the food thing had never really mattered. She was usually too excited to care too much about what they ate. And for the Doctor, it seemed to be a purely functional thing. She was never even sure if he actually needed to eat or if he did merely to be sociable.
She took down a few packets and opened them, sniffing the contents cautiously and waiting for the words on the packets to become even slightly legible. The first one was powder and smelt of tomato soup. What would adding water do to it? Or pouring it over potatoes or pasta? Was it some sort of sauce? As soon as the thoughts occurred to her, the foods she considered seemed to become visible. Potatoes in a rack by the door that she had never spotted before. A glass jar full of pasta.
"They were never here before!" she said out loud, feeling slightly enthusiastic, despite herself.
"Did you say something?" The Doctor appeared in the doorway.
"Just...that there's normal food here!"
"There's always normal food here!"
"Your normal is different to mine!"
She froze, hearing the words. It was true. The reality of the situation struck her. He had lost someone. But he had still to meet that someone and by the sounds of it, have a bloody good time with her. A bloody good time that included handcuffs! Whereas Donna...
...had lost nothing.
"Oh I don't know," he said lightly. "We're both here in a kitchen cooking..."
"I'm cooking!"
"Ok! As I was saying, we're both in a kitchen. You're cooking. I'm watching. In a second I'll set the table, maybe put music on. I'll criticise your cooking. You'll criticise my kitchen. Sounds fairly normal to me, and by your standards too."
"You know what I mean." She set out two saucepans, looking doubtfully at the second package. It smelled a bit off to her but maybe that was how it was meant to smell. As she moved to pick it up, she brushed against the saucepan nearest to her. They both fell with a clatter, one lid falling straight on her toe.
"Ow! This bloody kitchen! No room to move!"
The Doctor made a move as if to assist her.
"No! Leave it! There's barely enough room for one of us!"
She retrieved the saucepans, emptied potatoes into one and added water from the kettle, not looking at him. His steady gaze was almost like a physical sensation.
"Set the table then, if you're going to," she said finally.
He didn't move.
"Is this kitchen like this, when there's no humans on board?"
He looked around the small room if as only becoming really aware of it.
"Small and inconvenient, do you mean?"
She spread her arms out in an almost helpless gesture. "All planets don't have kitchens, do they? I mean, kettles and cookers and fruit bowls. Is it some sort of smokescreen? Trying to make us feel like we fit in?"
"Donna..." He walked over and stood beside her at the worktop. "You do fit in. You wouldn't have chosen to come if you didn't."
"Maybe we don't though. Not all of us. Most of it's wonderful. But some of it's too much." She traced her fingers along the smooth counter. "Maybe it's just me, being thick. Not getting it. Missing the bigger picture."
"Don't talk about yourself that way."
"Why? It's true. I never did anything. Never went anywhere. Never showed any interest. You said it yourself."
"Sometimes we all say things without thinking. Especially when we're frustrated or upset." He gave her a significant look.
"Well, sometimes it is too much."
The way he stood beside her made her wonder if he knew that it was easier to talk without having to look at him.
"I know."
"Do you?"
"Yes. I do."
"I don't want to know what happens," she said, "not really anyway. But then I think, maybe I should leave. Go home. Now."
There was silence for a moment. Then he said, barely audibly, "Is that what you want?"
She sighed. "No. But...maybe it's the only way I'll ever be able to. Before I see anymore. I was useless at home, never able to settle to anything. I couldn't even do anything for them...at home...not like I wanted to." She reached up into the nearest cupboard and took down two tins, staring despairingly at them.
"Of course you were."
"You weren't there!"
"I don't have to be. Donna, look at me."
She turned away to lift the saucepan lid.
"Donna."
She sighed again, louder this time, to show he was annoying her. The she forced herself to meet his eyes.
"None of what you are right now is because of this...travelling with me, or the TARDIS or the planets or any of it. This is what you are, what you always were. Open, compassionate, curious and aware. You'll always have you, and you'll always be the person you are now. In my eyes, that's brilliant!"
She tried to subtly turn away to wipe her eyes but he reached for her and put his arms around her gently, resting his chin on the top of her head. She contemplated merely moving away or actually hitting him and somewhere in the midst of the decision she leaned against him, swallowing hard. The solidity of another body, albeit an alien one, was surprisingly reassuring.
"Thanks," she whispered at last.
"I'm only being honest."
"Even though I don't have handcuffs?"
"Even despite that."
"I don't think I'll ever be much good at marriage and domestic life anyway," she said. "First husband cheats on me with a giant spider before we even get to the wedding day and the second one..."
He rubbed her back softly.
"What are you when they never existed? Not a widow. Not bereaved. Just...nothing, I suppose. It feels weird. I don't know..." For a second, she felt her fingers grip the folds of his jacket tightly and cling. Embarrassed, she released him.
He brushed a stray hair from her forehead and smiled gently at her.
"You're here with me. On the TARDIS. And we're about to have dinner."
"Are we? I haven't a clue what I'm cooking!"
"Doesn't matter. You're doing what all humans do and trying to make sense out of it all. You're just slightly taking it out on the kitchen!"
She surveyed the bubbling saucepan and oddly coloured packets ruefully. Then she regarded him seriously.
"I'm sorry, though, I really am, about your friend. I mean, I know you saved her but I know it wasn't what should have happened. Ideally."
He stared into the distance for a moment.
"Sometime in the future," he said eventually, "something happens that I thought...hoped...was impossible. I trust her...and that means she's part of it. It's incredible...that's the thing about time travel. Things happen in a loop. But at least, sometimes, it means you can get a head-start on yourself."
"Am I supposed to fill in the gaps in what you just said?"
"No doubt you'll try."
"The handcuffs said it all for me."
"Donna! Handcuffs can be used for many, many things."
"Exactly!"
"Functional, purely functional things."
"Yeah, like what? You two join the police force together?"
"Take your mind out of the gutter, missy, and cook some dinner. Why d'you think you're here at all? I hate cooking for myself!"
"Oi! You'll be wearing it in a minute." She poured one of the packets into the next saucepan and poured boiling water on it. As she put it on to the cooker, she looked suspiciously into the mixture and noticed out of the corner of her eye that he was doing the same. They both jumped back with a collective yelp as the mixture bubbled out of the top and spread itself thickly over the surface of the cooker.
"Ugh...it's congealed already. Not a sauce then."
"No," the Doctor sounded apologetic. "I think it might actually be...well, a sort of engine oil. From the Imperial Galaxies of Hosreem. Did I ever tell you about there? You'd love it!"
"What's it's doing in the kitchen?"
He shrugged vaguely, still lost in thought. She watched him, and felt herself smile.
"I do want to stay."
"Sorry?"
"I don't want to go home...I mean, not for good. Maybe a visit would be nice. But I want to be there...when all that happens...everything that's going to happen and all those places you said we'd go to. Imperial Galaxies and Martian landslides and whatever..."
"Donna." He took her hand. "If I've anything to do with it, you will be."
"Where's the next place then?" The old familiar feeling of excitement had returned. She looked longingly at the TARDIS doors.
"We ought to make a list of places, shouldn't we? I've never made lists before, have you? Oh yeah, you have! You do a mean shopping list! Tell you what, I'll call out the places and you write them down and we'll start tomorrow...or tonight even. One after another! It'll be a great list...we'll never run out of places!"
"What am I, your secretary now?"
"You're far more than that. And to prove it, you get to choose our next destination!"
She turned off the cooker and started to dump the contents of the saucepans into the nearest bin.
"Best start with somewhere where they do a good meal then."