Nothing
"Am I ever going to see you again?"
"You can't."
What really twists at her stomach the most is that he was right – she travels to that world so many times, but she's always a step behind, or to the left or a floor too high, and she never does see him.
She hears his name spoken on so many lips across so many times, and between so much space. Only ever echoes.
She sighs bitterly and turns, walking away into nothing.
Dreamer
"When did you become a dreamer, Donna?"
The question catches her by surprise, and she looks into the bottom of her tea-cup contemplatingly. There was a week, he first stepped into her life, where all she could do was stare at the wall caught between wonder and hatred for the man who had stepped in just in time to save/ruin her life. She knows, by the way he moves, that he's saved/ruined others before her and will continue to do so, probably for as long as he continues to live.
And then she thinks of Lance, his tired, tried eyes and the way he looked at her.
She cries.
Medic
She presses a damp towel to the dying mans' forehead and tells him false words of encouragement, tells him that he's going to be okay, if he just manages to hold on, when she thinks that it'll just be kinder to let him go, that it would be better to let him fade without ignorance.
But her training makes her strive ever onwards, and she wraps one of his hands in both of hers and clings on as well as she's able. "You're going to be okay." She says, "You're going to be okay."
But she doesn't know the meaning of the word.
Mistakes
He's only ever gone on one adventure with that man, and it's enough to make him smitten forever, even if he can never return to the greatest man he's ever met. He has a hole in his forehead and has taken to wearing caps, hats and scarves when he leaves the house to cover it.
He remembers his mother's reaction, the painful, earsplitting scream, as he hastily tries to explain before he realizes that he can't.
He puts on his hat and heads for the corner shop, wincing every time someone makes a noise even reminiscent of a click. The Doctor said it was a mistake to bring him. He thinks it was a mistake to go.
Brave
She smiles hopefully at him, and he tangles his hand in hers, trying to ignore the fact that her hair is brown, not gold, that her eyes are blue, not hazel, that she's not wearing enough make-up as opposed to too much. He tries to ignore all these things and see her as who she is, not who she wants to be.
It never works, but he tells himself that it's brave to make the effort, even when she throws her ring into his shocked face, the day before the wedding.
"Mickey, you bastard!"
Knowledge
The starlight captivates her with its eerie glow and she thinks she knows nothing more beautiful than the way his eyes twinkle as if lit up by starlight.
She tries hard not to let it distract her as she goes about her work, saving the passengers of the Titanic, but it's always on the back of her mind – will he see her again? Will she see him again? Will they both be alright at the end of this?
The machine, the Forklift, the sudden realization. Astrid knows she is going to die.
Waiting
She knows that he was lonely, but it feels like nothing she's felt before when he leaves her life for good. It takes her a few years to realize that he's gone, that he's not coming back, and it takes her another year to unpack her suitcase, and to stop staring at the fire in the grate as if it's going to move. She moves on and falls back to France, the good little socialite, all learning and horse-riding and embroidery.
When she comes down with a fever, it's almost a relief, and she's ready to stop waiting.
Frozen
This is what it feels like to die.
She looks out at the burning planet below her and could cry, because what was once so beautiful in the photos is now disgusting and brown and burning.
She has a moment to consider what is going to happen, as the Dalek creeps into her field of vision, before the lights on its head flash four times, and the glass shatters.
There is a moment of absolute silence and freezing cold, before she plummets out the window.
Wreckage
His life's a train wreckage; he just hasn't stopped moving yet. He's outlived everyone, he's now even older than the Doctor himself, and it feels odd, that he hasn't changed at all. He wonders what he will look like in five billion years, and part of him distinctly doesn't want to know.
He's seen far too many people die today. Most of them were his friends.
And suddenly, he understands how the Doctor feels. When one life touches so many and ruins them all. Yet it's only one person in a million who would give it up, even when they travel at the cost of their sanity.
A/n: Leave a little review? (And I think I got all of them for the new series. If I've forgotten someone let me know.) –shakes tin imploringly-
