Part 2
Chapters 7 (Part 2) - 11
Rose was sitting in the chair by her desk, but she was not looking at the map of postcards that she had arranged on her desk. She was looking at the Doctor's bed, which had sat untouched since that Sunday morning five weeks ago. She had made it, so it would be ready for him when he returned. If he returned.
For quite a while she had refused to use the conditional. But ever since this last postcard had arrived from Florence, and nothing thereafter, refusing had become harder and harder. She had been angry at first, and disappointed. No postcards meant no words of love. Had he stopped loving her? Had she changed too much in the years they had been separated? Had she done something wrong at Bad Wolf Bay, said something wrong? But she had kissed him, with all she was worth, when he had whispered the words that needed saying into her ear. She had wanted him to stay with her, had chosen him over the One Who Left—who had struck her as the alien he was for the first time since she had met the Doctor. More alien than during his regeneration or when he had made her feel the world moving.
The One Who Left had left without saying good-bye, refusing to tell her how he felt. The One Who Stayed might have been born in battle, and he might have committed genocide – but he had saved all other living beings in doing so. He had saved everyone's souls, had had to make a choice, and had done so bravely. He was a destroyer of worlds, true, but he never destroyed for the pure pleasure of it, or because he could, or for the greater glory. He always had done so for the greater good. And the greater good always came at a cost.
Rose wiped away the tears that were—again—running down her cheeks. This time, there was nothing she could do. She had lost his trace; even if she went to Florence she would never find him in her teeming streets—if he was still there. Maybe, probably, he had moved on to other places. Places without postcards. Or a reliable postal service. Or—and something froze inside her—he did not have enough money left to afford love letters.
She would not allow the idea of an accident take shape in her head.
And suddenly, she remembered.
She turned around to face her desk again, arranged the Doctor's love letters in a neat pile and switched on her laptop, established a connection to the internet. One didn't need to be with Torchwood to look for people in your own universe.
Then she googled Donna. She had spent several weeks looking for Donna Noble in another universe, and she had found her, time and again. If she was lucky, Donna Noble had a twin in Pete's World, a twin who went by the same name—she remembered Mickey's counterpart Rickey; if the twin wasn't called Donna she'd be stumped—and a twin who was still alive. And finding her here was certainly going to be easier than on Earth.
She breathed deeply when the search engine came up with a modest list of results.
Most of the results turned out to be inconclusive, because the references were too old or contradictory or located on three different continents—one of them, luckily, in Britain, a student of medicine presenting her research. No picture, though, to confirm it was her Donna. Rose smiled. So much for super temp. It was a step forward, but she was still hesitant to do anything based on this rather old information. Quite a few things tended to happen in fifteen years. She bookmarked the site anyway, then decided, on a whim, that it couldn't hurt to search for pictures.
The search engine came up with more recent pictures: an obituary and a birth announcement. With trembling fingers, Rose clicked on the thumb of the obituary. And held her breath. Sylvia Noble had been killed in an accident. Donna was listed as bereaved family, together with someone called Mark and Samuel, under the name of Mullen, followed by Wilfred Mott. Her grandfather.
Rose's heart was going so fast she needed to get up and take in a deep breath. She had not expected to find Donna so quickly, not after the initial search results. Rose went into the kitchen to put the kettle on for a cup of tea. What now? She hadn't known this kind of weakness in herself. When she had been looking for Donna Noble, she had done everything in her power, without thinking twice. But she knew what the difference was with Donna Mullen: she didn't know the Doctor. Her life was blissfully devoid of his presence (considering what her twin had experienced, even if she was now unaware of him). Like the Donna she had made turn left.
But then again, all she wanted from Donna was to see if she had met the Doctor. If she hadn't, Donna would go back to her life and forget about the scene. No harm done. Her search would continue, but no one was going to be harmed.
But what if she knew the Doctor? Rose found that suddenly she was quite afraid of what would happen if Donna actually knew the Doctor.
She dropped a teabag into her favourite mug, added milk and sugar, and took the piping hot drink back to her study. Thoughtfully, she stopped in the doorway and looked at the Doctor's bed. How close was she to finding him, to getting him back – or to losing him forever? Rose felt sick.
The birth announcement, she found out after she had finished half of the tea, was Samuel Mullen's. He was six years old by now. The picture made the hairs in the nape of her neck stand on end. Now there was no doubt. Donna Mullen was the woman she was looking for. She was in the picture that went with the birth announcement, with baby Samuel in her arms and Mark wrapping his arm around her. She looked exhausted but utterly happy. Just like her mother had when her picture had been taken with Tony in his arms. Only that her picture had drawn more attention, being the Vitex wife and all.
Rose picked up the phone and used the one-touch dialling to call Jackie.
"Mum?"
"Hi, sweetie, I've been meanin' to call you. You haven't forgotten about tonight, right?"
Tonight? Rose's head was spinning as it was. She sat heavily in the armchair opposite her desk.
"Rose? Love, you alright?" Jackie sounded positively worried.
"I think I've found Donna," Rose blurted.
For a beat or two there was only the soft static of the line.
"She's the most important woman in the universe. The Doctor kept telling her. I remembered. Mum," Rose explained quickly, "Mum, what if she knows where the Doctor is?"
Again, silence answered her.
Then: "What if she doesn't?" Jackie asked kindly, softly. She was hurting for Rose already, and what she didn't want was for her to hurt even more when she found out that–
"There's a Donna Noble in this universe?" Jackie asked in surprise.
Rose's voice was still trembling. "Yes, Mum, and I've found her."
"What if she doesn't?"
"Then at least I'll have tried, won't I?" There was defiance in Rose's voice.
Jackie sighed. "I don't mean to spoil this for you, sweetheart. But you have to be careful there. Don't let him break your heart again."
Rose had to admit that her mother was right. She wiped away a tear that had escaped. Again. She was so sick of crying. She was so sick of this.
"What's this thing tonight, anyway?" she asked, attempting to be cheery. She didn't feel like going out, but she knew Jackie would appreciate it. And maybe it would take her mind off things. Off the Doctor, the idiot.
The grating was cutting into his flesh, particularly into the bony bit of his ankles, but he didn't care much. All he could feel was Jenny's cool hand grow colder in his own, and if he could, he would have given her one of his hearts, one of his lives to save her, his daughter who was a bit too much like him and yet not like him enough. He had pointed a gun – a gun! – at someone. He, the man who never would, had been tempted, on behalf of a daughter that was created in war, to kill her killer. The shame of it, the revulsion made him sick to the core. Where it mingled with the pain and sorrow of losing yet another one dear to him. It all ended with him alone.
He flew, howling, into a rage.
There was a terrible pain that cut white-hot through the swirling multicoloured patterns that danced before his eyes. He curled up in on himself as best he could, trying to become one with the dark, quiet corner and unforgiving hard floor. He could barely breathe, and his whole body was shaking with his sobs and pain.
There was a soft, gentle voice, a bit unsteady at first, but it grew into something calming but powerful, just like the hand he was becoming aware of. It rested on his shoulder lightly, and he could feel the untiring thumb stroking him through the t-shirt. Eventually, the other hand was ghosting over his temple at first, then brushing gently, always accompanied by a never-ending stream of words.
"John?"
He recognised Chiara's voice, and he allowed her to draw him up and into an embrace. She held him tightly, and it was only then that he noticed her whole little body was shaking.
"John," she repeated, followed by more words that made no sense, but weren't intended to anyway. She was stroking his back. He relaxed a bit more in her arms, conscious suddenly of his bulk that his body must be to the girl, and he moved to accommodate them better.
"John."
There was something red on the shoulder of her nightie when eventually he drew away. He looked into the girl's eyes, wide with fear. Her fingers wandered up to his temple, and when she withdrew them, they were shiny with his blood.
"I'm," he was choking on the words, and it was hard to from them, even in Gallifreyan, "I'm so sorry, Chiara, so sorry. Thank you, thank you for being here, my little angel." He kissed her forehead, and when he made to climb to his feet, he remembered that he couldn't, and let the arms that appeared out of thin air lift him up and pull him into a wheelchair.
"I'm so sorry, Chiara," he repeated, the words coming easier now, "you shouldn't have done that. But thank you anyway. Chiara." He knew she couldn't understand him, so he put as much meaning into his eyes as he possibly could.
They tended to the cut on his forehead, and this time he watched calmly as they pushed up the short leg of his boxers to inject him with a powerful sleeping drug.
The papers had had a field day at the Tyler's party. They had expected to see some more of the Vitex heiress and her mysterious beau. The man had turned up virtually out of thin air as far as the media were concerned. They had, of course, made inquiries and had conducted research, but for all they knew the Prince Charming had disappeared just as quickly as he had appeared. Already, they were calling him Cinderella. And when there was no trace of him at the latest charity event at the Tyler Mansion that only proved their point.
The papers were full of Rose's pictures the next morning, and she had never looked sadder. Everyone noticed that, even those who were not known to be particularly sensitive. "Where is he?" was what most of the headlines boiled down to. The press loved Rose, because she was usually quite accommodating, and in return the press treated her quite respectfully. Most of the time.
Rose had stayed overnight at her parents', and she was in her room, sipping at her tea when Jackie came in. She was sitting at her dressing table, absentmindedly playing with the silver butterfly that she had worn in her hair the previous night. The party had been a nice distraction, after all, but she didn't have to see her pictures in the newspapers to know that she was rubbish when it came to acting.
Jackie stepped up behind her, picked up the hairbrush and began to work through her daughter's dark blond hair strand by strand.
"I'm sorry for last night," Jackie eventually offered.
"Yeah," Rose mumbled. "Don't." Yet she relaxed visibly under her mother's ministrations.
"No, sweetheart, I really am," Jackie insisted. "I am just so angry at that silly Time Lord of yours. How dare he do that to you? How could he?" She huffed, but to her credit she was still careful with the hairbrush.
Rose hugged her knees. "Yeah."
"Look," Jackie put down the hairbrush and squatted next to her. She held out a sticky note for Rose.
"Wha's that?"
"Donna's phone number."
Donna picked up the mug to finish her tea, but only realised the mug was already empty when she put its edge to her lips. Sighing she put it down again. Lost in thought, she looked at the picture on the rag one of her colleagues had left for the rest of the doctors to peruse. She normally preferred a newspaper with less pictures and more text, but when she was taking a break while on duty, a tabloid was most welcome. Took your mind off things in an undemanding way. She usually had forgotten about what she'd read the minute she left the lounge.
But Rose Tyler's sad eyes would not leave her alone. Apparently, she had had an affair of some kind, something supposedly serious, and now the poor girl was left broken-hearted. Donna had not realised that the Vitex heiress had been seeing someone. But then again she had more important things to do than follow celebrity gossip. It was bad enough as it was, but with the press drooling and gloating having your heart broken must be even worse. She did not envy that poor rich girl.
She retrieved her mobile phone from her locker and rang the hospital in Florence. She wanted to confirm her ETA with Giorgio, and of course check how John was doing.
When she closed her phone all she wanted to do was get on that train to Florence. Immediately. Something was going very wrong, and with no one there to speak for him ... but there was nothing she had been able to do, except tell Giorgio to have a little faith.
"He hurt himself last night, Donna," he told her. "He was having a particularly bad nightmare. He could have hurt Chiara."
"Who is Chiara?" Donna had asked, pushing the fact that he had hurt himself to the back of her mind for the moment. She probably was a nurse she hadn't met, on the night shift.
"She took care of him," Giorgio explained.
"That's very kind of her, I'll have to thank her."
"Donna," Giorgio said urgently, "she's twelve. She's a patient."
Donna felt a lump form in her throat. "I ... I can't leave any earlier here, I'm afraid. Please, please don't count him off as crazy. I know he isn't."
"He speaks in tongues," Giorgio continued. "No one can understand him. I'm afraid we'll have to do something."
Donna's heart sank. There was nothing she could say to explain that fact away. "What're you going to do?"
"I ..." he paused. "I see what I can do. You are going to come, yes?"
Donna nodded. "Most definitely." And, after a brainwave: "Look, can I talk to him?"
"He's in physio now."
They made him hobble around on crutches, just like Chiara. He still felt very ashamed of himself for the previous night's episode, and he had nothing to give her. He leaned heavily on his crutches in front of her room. The door was open, but he couldn't bring himself to enter.
Chiara was sitting on her bed, reading a book. Her notebook and her pencil case sat on the bedside table next to her. There were no flowers, no fruit, no sweets, just a jug of water. He was still debating whether to go to her, when she sensed his presence and looked up from her book.
She was actually smiling. "John!"
He hobbled over to her and sat on her bed, so he could give his bad leg a rest. He had hit it pretty badly during his nightmare the previous night, and it was still smarting. Just like his head.
Chiara touched her temple in the place where he had injured himself. He mirrored her movement and smiled. It was okay, he was such a silly man, it meant to say.
He pointed at her notebook, and when she nodded, he pulled it towards him and under Rose's name he wrote, squinting, stretching as far away from the notebook as possible: "I'm sorry." In the hope that maybe Chiara had enough English to understand.
Chiara bent forwards to read the words. She smiled, and nodded. Then she added something.
But before he could react, the dark cherry haired nurse returned. If she was surprised at finding him by Chiara's side, she didn't show it. But she couldn't hide a brief flicker or relief. She spoke to Chiara, and Chiara replied. Both mentioned his name, John. Chiara showed her what he had written.
A wave of embarrassment washed over him. He wasn't quite the calligrapher, being new to Latin script and all, but he knew that he could write better than he had in the notebook. The letters looked awkward and squiggly.
"Chiara," he said, catching the girl's attention. He didn't know the nurse's name. Just like the previous day, he resorted to mimicry to tell her what he needed. Glasses.
And the dark cherry haired nurse suddenly realised. The young doctor came, and another one, and he had to undergo more exams in strange apparatuses that left him bleary-eyed and nearly blind, but the next morning – he had willingly accepted more sleeping drugs – Chiara gave him a pair of spectacles.
"Molto bene!" he exclaimed in delight when he tried them on and he could see things. "Molto bene!"
For the first time in ages he felt human again – how ironical – and he borrowed Chiara's notebook and her pencils and drew what he wanted most.
Rose.
And then another little wonder happened. The dark cherry haired nurse showed him a newspaper, which he wanted to refuse at first, but when she unfolded it to show him there she was – Rose.
"Rose," he said tenderly, and when he noticed the sadness in her eyes and shoulders, he hung his head. He leaned into Chiara, who could not be made to leave him, and wept.
Donna took a taxi from Santa Maria Novella to the rehab unit John had been taken to that morning. She would meet with Giorgio for dinner, but she had to see John first. She had no idea what she was going to accomplish with that, since his vocabulary did not extend beyond a couple of names and molto bene. But that was ... molto bene in a way. It proved her right, there was more to John than met the eye. And she had an idea of what it might be, but to confirm her suspicion, she had to see him first. And if she was right ... well, then all the more molto bene.
The taxi was taking her outside the city, into the hills of the Chianti via narrow, winding roads that rose and fell with the landscape, through quiet villages whose inhabitants spent most of their lives outside the shuttered stone buildings that lined the road, on vine-shaded arbours and benches in front of their homes, dogs sleeping by their side and children playing under the cypress trees in the piazza by the church.
The car's windows were open, and Donna enjoyed the wind playing in her hair. She was exhausted from the long hours on the train – she had booked a bed in the sleeper from Munich to Florence, but her busy mind had made more than dozing for fifteen minutes at a time impossible, unthinkable. But she couldn't wait to see John. After that disastrous night he seemed to have recovered a bit, to be doing better.
The combined chirping and vibrating of her mobile phone woke her from her thoughts. She flipped it open, but did not recognise the caller. Who was calling her from Britain, anyway? Only a select few knew she was here, and she had left the hospital's mobile at home.
"Yes?"
"Am I speaking with Doctor Donna Mullen?" Donna didn't recognise the female voice. She sounded young, though. After she had confirmed that yes, she was the woman in question, the voice continued, obviously quite relieved, but laced with a trace of apprehension: "I'm Rose Tyler."
"Yeah, right. Is that why you're calling me on my holiday? To pull some kind of prank on me? Listen, honey, this is not funny, okay?" Donna replied. Strictly speaking she was not on a holiday, but that was not the point.
"No, but I am," the woman said. And something in her voice sounded so serious and urgent that Donna believed her. "I am Rose Tyler."
"Yeah."
"Your husband was kind enough to give me your number," Rose explained. "I realise it's your holiday, and I'm awfully sorry for disturbing your well-earned peace and quiet. But you are the only person in the world that can help me now."
Donna could not imagine why that should be so. "Go on."
"Do you know a man called the Doctor?" Rose said.
"Look," Donna began, drawing on all her professional patience, "I am a doctor. I work at a hospital. How many people called the doctor d'you think there are in such a place?" Knackered as she was, she failed completely and utterly. "I'm sorry."
"What about a John Smith?" Rose suggested.
"No, sorry," Donna said, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear.
"A Doctor James McCrimmon, by any chance?"
"May I ask why you're looking for him?" Donna asked softly after she had had to deny again.
"He's ... a friend." The way she said this suggested to Donna that they were talking about more than just a friend. They were quite possibly talking about Cinderella.
"Look, I wish I could help you, Miss Tyler, but things are a bit complicated at the moment." She was expecting Rose to ring off, when she had an idea. "I'm a bit rubbish with names, but if you have any chance of sending me his picture I might be able to help."
Rose Tyler didn't really sound relieved, but hope was definitely something Donna heard when she agreed. She rang off, having told her to ring her again in a couple of minutes. Then she waited for the picture to arrive, so she could tell the woman that she didn't know the man and be over and done with with this bizarre story. She needed to get to John, and quickly.
Her mobile chirped, and she opened the message to have a look at the picture.
Donna stared.
Rose dropped the phone and slat heavily on her bed. It had taken her two days to finally work up the courage to dial the number on the sticky note. Her mobile hit the soft carpet with a dull thud, no damage done. Jackie rose quickly, demanding from her daughter what was the matter, but Rose was rigid with shock. Her lips were moving, but no sound came past them. The phone ... Jackie found it, and when she asked Donna if she was still there, she felt her pulse quicken.
"Are you absolutely sure?" Jackie asked, again, after she had introduced herself. The funny thing was, that woman was just as puzzled as she was.
"We've been looking for his family for ages," Donna told her.
"Oh, but we're not family," Jackie replied. "The Doctor is Rose's ... whatever. They're very close."
"The Doctor? Is that his name? And we've been calling him John," Donna repeated, chagrined.
"Nah, don't worry, love. He'll answer to John," Jackie said. "Thank goodness we've found him. Tell you what, I'll take care of Rose, and she'll call you back when she's better. It's been a bit of a shock really. Ta!"
Donna was in mid-protest when Jackie rang off.
"Mum!" Rose had composed herself enough to protest, but she was trembling all over. Donna did indeed know the Doctor. But how come, she had no idea. Donna knew him, and that was the important thing. Brilliant Donna. The most important woman in the universe all over again. Even if she wouldn't save the universe, she at least would save Rose's little world. If there was anything salvageable. Rose still had no idea why the Doctor had left her. Well, she had an idea, but she wanted to hear him tell her.
Which would be a bit of a problem what with him not speaking English.
"Here, love, drink this," Jackie said, pushing a mug of tea into her hands. Rose hadn't realised she'd been gone.
This new room looked like the one he had booked in the hotel but never really used, and the room back at the hospital In Florence. Still, it looked more like a room for sick people, even if it was friendly and cool, not only a pristine white, with the dark beams in the ceiling exposed to the eye, and the smooth marble floor. There was a proper table in this room, and chairs that looked inviting, and an old wardrobe. Not that he had much of anything to keep in it. He possessed nothing beyond the things Donna had brought, and the sketch-pad and pencils Chiara had given him this morning as a going-away present.
He still could not believe they had not taken him to a mental institution, not after what had happened. But as they had pushed him in here in his wheelchair (they had cut away the cast the day before and replaced it with a removable splint), he had seen other people in wheelchairs and on crutches or walkers. People of all ages. And none of them had looked crazy.
No sooner had he arrived in this room than he was wheeled out of it again, to a whole morning of seeing strange doctors and exams after exams and prodding and grabbing – some of it made him screw his eyes shut in pain. His teeth hurt afterwards, because he had clenched his jaws so tightly.
When he was returned to his room, he felt he had run a marathon, and for the first time this day he was glad that he had been given this wheelchair. He was sure that he would not have gotten far on crutches.
There was someone in his room when he pushed open the door. Oh, and all he wanted to do was stretch out on the bed and sleep, sleep the midday heat away, and without fear, too, for he never dreamed during the day. But then he recognised the person's posture.
"Donna?"
She turned around, and true, it was Donna, but he could see, even in the twilight of the shuttered room, the cool room, that she was exhausted. Why had she returned? What was she doing here?
"John," she replied, smiling. And then she said something that ended with "Doctor".
He held fast to the rails on his wheels to let the nurse know he didn't want to go any further. He felt her let go of the wheelchair and leave the room, her shoes clap-clapping away on the marble.
"Doctor," Donna repeated.
She was using his name. How come she knew his name? The image of an enraged Rumpelstiltskin briefly flashed through his mind – the part of it that had been Donna's. She was by his side with a few quick steps, and she wrapped her arms around him. Before he knew it, he was returning the gesture, remembering despite himself the comfort he had always found in Donna's embrace.
Later, when they were having lunch together on the shady terrace, she had to push the fork into his hand again, but this time because he was still so surprised that she was there that he simply forgot.
"Molto bene," he offered.
This time, he watched her talk, even when he didn't understand a single word of what she was saying. Her presence and her care made him feel so much better, and he listened to Donna's small voice echoing in his mind that he should bloody well not feel ashamed for it. Still, he could not bring himself to learn. He did not want to hurt anyone, least of all this woman, to whom he was a total stranger, and whom he had already caused a lot of distress.
He reached out across the smoothly polished wood of the table and covered her hand with his. He even attempted a smile. It felt good to touch Donna's hand again, it was like homecoming in a way, but it was strange to see that she was wearing a wedding band. He withdrew his hand a little, and brushed across the smooth gold with his fingertip. A powerful feeling of gratitude washed through him. The fates of Pete's World had dealt her different cards, better ones, considering. But then he didn't know anything about her.
They spent the hottest part of the day in companionable silence in the dappled light of an arbour overgrown with greenery. At one point in the crickets' incessant song Donna dozed off, and he realised that she had come straight off the train to come and see him. And while he was grateful that she was there, something, somebody was still missing. He wanted nothing more than write to Rose, tell her that he was all right. Which was a lie, of course, but only the Donna in his mind knew that; and Rose would understand.
The Doctor moved to be next to Donna, and kissed her temple. "Donna?"
Donna stirred and looked at him, momentarily disoriented. "Doctor?"
He tried to ignore the ache where his second heart would be, and pretended to write something. "Rose," he said, and repeated the gesture.
Donna, bless her, had understood. She nodded, smiling, but hesitated for a beat. Then she patted his arm, and got up. The Doctor followed her retreating form with his eyes, wondering why she had paused.
A nurse came to take him somewhere, but he engaged the brake. "No," he said. "Donna."
The nurse nodded and left.
That was easy.
Eventually, Donna returned with a postcard and a pen. He took both and the book Donna offered him to rest on. She turned tactfully away while he was writing, to contemplate the scenery. The terrace they had chosen overlooked a valley below, with the small village that nestled there, surrounded by vineyards and olive groves, and with the cupola of Florence in the distance, hazy and shimmering in the afternoon heat.
When he had written the two short sentences that comprised his world, he realised that he did not know Rose's address. He had never bothered to learn it by heart, and now it was lost; like the TARDIS coral.
What good was anything now?
Shoving the postcard off his knees, he growled in frustration, which raised Donna from her discretion.
"Oi!" she shouted, followed by something that in another world would have been along the lines of "Watch it, space boy!" He tore the glasses off his nose and pinched the spot between his eyes that offered comfort.
"No," he muttered. "No Rose."
Donna had picked up the book and postcard, and in doing so, her gaze had inadvertently fallen on the few words he had written. She smiled at him, pointing at the blank space beneath Rose's name, her chest and her temple. She would find out her address for him.
"No," he said tunelessly, and wheeled away. The nurse was waiting.
Donna cursed herself. She should have called Rose when she had the chance instead of getting up to collect the postcard for the Doctor. Instead of wanting to surprise him, she should have called Rose then and there and given him the mobile to talk to her – or rather listen to her. Whatever. But the moment had passed, and now it was too late.
She cursed herself again. Some doctor she was! You did not want to surprise people who suffered from post traumatic stress syndrome. He had warmed a bit when she had called him Doctor, something had flashed in his – Donna was reluctant to use the word, but she couldn't think of anything better – in his doe eyes. And he had felt safe in the memory of Rose Tyler, and the same memory had shattered him when he realised that he didn't know her address. Dammit, she should have called the woman. Taken advantage of this good moment. But now he had retreated again, and the expression of self-loathing and loss in his face had sent shivers down her spine.
Her eyes travelled back to what he had written: Rose, I love you. I'm sorry. Followed by a word – was it a word, or just an ornament? – that looked like a mixture of Arabic and Tolkienesque script.
Had Rose not called her and told her personally that she knew the Doctor, Donna would have been seriously worried. Women like Rose Tyler received all kinds of weird attention, and one had to be careful with fan-boys turned stalker. But the Doctor meant it. In a good way. Donna had gleaned as much from her short conversation with Rose and her mother. The Doctor was Cinderella, this thin streak of nothing of a man with the oldest, wisest, saddest eyes she had ever seen; a lost boy.
But whatever was it that had happened between the two of them? And why did he go by all those different names? And how come he knew her name?
It had been with mixed feelings that Rose had got on the train, first to Paris, then to Munich. It had taken her some time to recover enough from her initial shock that she had actually found Donna, and with her the Doctor, even. She wanted to drive down to Tuscany, but Pete had taken the keys. He was not going to let her go by car alone – and alone she wanted to go. So she had to take the train. Again. And now that she was sitting on the train, in the darkness of the Channel tunnel, gnawing at the back of her thumb, she was glad that Pete had put his foot down.
The train, of course, was faster than her little car, and she could travel without having to take a break, without being stalled by heavy traffic. And yet she felt she was at the mercy of someone else, some faceless engine driver who didn't realize how badly she wanted to arrive. She couldn't eat, and she couldn't read, and sleep – when it came – was restless and filled with the most absurd of images, some of which made her flush; with shame, and with rage, and once she woke up with tears rolling down her cheeks. The cold night of Brenner Pass rose her back to her senses, and she deeply, gratefully inhaled the clean, dark air of the mountains as they had to wait for the engine to be changed.
And yet she was unable to still her busy mind. Donna had not told her much about the Doctor, only that she knew him, and that she was with him. A ripple of static – probably caused by one of the occasional aftershocks they still experienced while the universe was sealing itself off again – had interrupted the call and made communication impossible. That's how it went. Those static ripples tended to take down the satellite network for hours at a time. And there was no way she would ring Donna in the middle of the night.
The attendant eventually woke her with a discreet knock on the door, an hour before the train pulled into Santa Maria Novella. Her stomach was rumbling, but the pastry, when she pecked at it, tasted bland, and the double espresso did nothing for her if not increase her nervousness.
Would he be wanting to see her at all?
Would he be all right? Donna's replies had been short and cryptic, and Donna was a doctor; expert at beating about the bush.
Rose just made it back to her compartment when the sickness overwhelmed her. Afterwards, she brushed her teeth, shocked at the pale face that looked back at her from the mirror, but she couldn't be bothered with make-up. The train had come to a halt.
She found Donna on the platform easily enough. She looked just as she remembered her, all thoughtful pout, attentive eyes and ginger hair swept up in a loose bun to allow the occasional breeze to cool the back of her neck. Rose pushed her sunglasses up into her hair, tightening her grip on the handle of her wheelie suitcase. The heat of the place would need some getting used to.
The Doctor wasn't there.
Did he at all know she was coming?
"Hello, Donna," Rose said, walking toward the older woman. After an awkward moment, Rose embraced her; she couldn't help herself.
Donna smiled at her, relief evident in her face. "I feel like I should know you, but I don't," she said. "You don't look too well. Have you had breakfast?"
"No," Rose admitted. This Donna was as disarming as the other universe's. "I ... I was too nervous."
"We can't go on an empty stomach," Donna said, taking her suitcase. "Believe me."
They went into a little café in one of the side streets off the station. Donna ordered breakfast for the two of them, hearty sandwiches – panini was what they were calling them here –, fresh orange juice and coffee. After Rose had taken the first few bites rather unenthusiastically, she felt the comforting qualities of the food calm her down. The two women finished their breakfast in companionable silence.
"Now, whose story first?" Donna eventually began.
Rose, despite herself, decided to begin. She had a feeling that with the help of what she knew, it would be a lot easier for Donna to make sense of what had happened, of the Doctor. "How familiar, exactly, are you with the Stolen Earth?"
Donna shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "I was here when it happened, learning Italian. My family were back home, and ... well you can imagine. Those Dalek things were everywhere; those overgrown salt cellars with those plungers ..." Donna was literally trying grasp the concept of the aliens as she explained what they looked like.
"The Doctor, you, some others and I defeated them. And brought Earth back," Rose said, waiting for the information to sink in.
"What do you mean! Me?"
Rose then explained to Donna the concept of parallel universes, and the fact that while she herself did not have a twin here, Donna certainly did. And Jackie and Pete. In a manner of speaking.
"So how did I end up saving the universe? How come I was there with you and the Doctor?" Donna's voice was infused with incredulous laughter.
"I'm afraid I don't know how you ended up travelling with the Doctor. You see, he travels in time and space, in a ship that looks like a police box. And sometimes he travels with a companion. I used to travel with him that way, until ... until I got trapped here, in this universe. Then he travelled with Martha, who helped return the Earth, and then it was ... you. Donna, the super temp from Chiswick," Rose said.
"I'm temping in the other universe?" Donna couldn't believe it. She went off to buy another latte macchiato. "So, and now the Doctor travels this universe?" Only I clipped his wings was what she added in the privacy of her thoughts.
"No," Rose inhaled deeply, still nursing her first cappuccino, finishing the frothy milk with a spoon. She was debating how much she could tell Donna without hurting her. Decided, that in the end, it was best just not to tell her everything. "No, this Doctor doesn't travel the universe anymore. You see, an accident happened on the Crucible, which left behind a half-human ... clone of the Doctor. This half-human version stayed behind here, with me. The Other returned to his original universe with Donna."
Again, it took Donna a while to digest what she had learned. "So ... the Doctor is an alien. Is that what you're trying to tell me?"
Rose smiled for the first time that day. "Yes and no. He has the mind of a Time Lord – that's what he is – but he has the body of a human."
"What does he look like ... you know, as a Time Lord?"
Now, that was a tricky question. Rose decided that honesty was the least Donna deserved. So she told her about regenerating.
"That's quite the eye candy among aliens, then," Donna replied, laughing to hide her amazement.
Rose finally relaxed. "You could say that, yes."
"And you're in love with him?"
"Yes, I am. Very much so." Somehow it was liberating to tell this a relative stranger. Rose felt the spirits return to her, but with them came the anxiousness that had been her companion for the past couple of weeks.
Sensing this, Donna took a postcard with a Tuscan landscape from her handbag and handed it to Rose. "He wrote that yesterday."
Rose read the message, and although it was very familiar, it brought tears to her eyes. She wiped at her eyes surreptitiously, laughing at the same time because he still loved her. "Thank you."
"No, don't thank me," Donna said, unable to meet her eyes. When she looked up again, Rose couldn't quite read the expression in them, and Donna's inability to find the right words to begin unnerved her. A most powerful feeling of having seen and lived through all this before grasped her.
"Go on," she encouraged her, bravely. "Say it." Even if it's not good. Now I'll learn why he's not here, why he didn't come with her. Rose closed her eyes to fight back the new wave of nausea and light-headedness that threatened to take her away with them.
"There has been an accident," Donna said, and the ease with which she was slipping into her professional mantle did not go unnoticed. Rose envied her that kind of training. She wished she could stay as calm as her, but she tried anyway, focusing on the facts. There has been an accident. A perfectly neutral sentence. A sentence perfect for destruction. All she had to do was listen, perfectly neutral.
"How bad is it?"
"He suffered a concussion, some minor cuts and bruises," Donna said. "And he broke his left leg, rather badly. He's going to be all right, given some time and physio. But at the moment he's in a wheelchair."
The knuckles on both her hands, Rose noticed, stood out white against her skin as she wrought her fingers. "How did it happen?"
"He stepped into the road without looking. There was no chance of avoiding it. It happened so quickly."
The Doctor was alive. He'd had an accident, but he was going to be all right. That silly man, steps into the road without looking. Travels time and space, fights the scum of the universe only to be hit by a car.
Rose breathed deeply, forced the muscles in her shoulders and neck to relax. And there she had feared the worst.
"There is something else I have to tell you." Donna's words cut into her thoughts, caught her unawares. "I know all this because I was there when it happened. I was driving."
-:-
The rehab unit had a little shop. It had to, and it did. There was a paper bracelet they had tied around his right wrist, paper that was hard to tear and that didn't melt away in the shower, and he showed it the shop-girl when he had found what he was looking for. The girl noted down something in a ledger, nodded and smiled at him, a "Molto bene" on her lips.
The Doctor wheeled away with a small blue box of what seemed to be chocolates in his lap. His leg was hurting, his whole body felt sore after a session of physio earlier that morning. The removable splint, once again firmly in place, gripped the slack flesh of his leg tightly. Also, the heat of this place didn't do much for his well-being. Already, his skin felt hot and sticky, and he longed for the slatted light in his cool room, for the peace and quiet it offered him.
Donna was gone, once again, and perhaps it was better this way. He wouldn't hurt her, he wouldn't be tempted to open up to her, to give in to her encouraging and disarming compassion. But then again, this wasn't his Donna. This was Donna of Pete's World, Donna-Who-Didn't-Know. Donna-With-a-Bad-Conscience who only put up with him because there was no one to blame her for what she had done.
He gritted his teeth.
A nurse approached him. Again. Couldn't they just leave him be? He felt the muscles in his jaw work. But he didn't engage the brake when the nurse stepped behind him to grab the handles and wheel him outside, the tyres soundless on the marble, her shoes flap-flapping. Out into the brightness and the heat of the day, where everything disintegrated into a shimmering haze in the distance, with the crickets to keep him company. Just as well. He didn't care much.
She took him down the path, into the cooler part of the garden, where she parked him in the spicy shade of a tree, where already a jug of water and a glass were waiting for him. Why did they make him drink so much, when they knew that getting up to use the loo was painful and awkward and difficult and everything else take care of that out of the question? He did have that much pride left, thank you very much.
He allowed her to help him settle down in the deckchair that sat waiting there for him, the sooner to be left alone. It was just as well that she took the wheelchair, but he would have loved one of those chocolates.
As his body relaxed into the softness of the deckchair's cushions, his eyes drifted shut, and he felt himself drift into the kind of weightlessness that carries you from waking into sleeping, and because he was so tired from the morning's exertions, he let his mind follow his body's lead.
He didn't know how long he had lain like this, but he felt ... the absence of pain when he squinted into the light that filtered through the silver canopy of olive leaves above him, flecks of light dancing on his skin. For the first time, there was no pain, not in his leg, not in the emptiness that was his chest, where his second heart used to be. The grass felt soft and prickly at the same time, tickling his skin.
He had not taken any painkillers, had he? Or was it something they had added to his water?
He pushed himself up to his elbows, and in doing so he noticed the delicious drowsiness that he had last felt ... too long a time ago, in another time, in another universe. A blonde woman had lain with him, not in the grass, but in soft, luxurious sheets, with blonde hair that was too long and a face that was all too perfect. The woman who had left him in a hearse. The loss as her weight was lifted from his body weighed down heavily on him, and there was another shadow darting around the curtains and draperies, the phantom of a woman with the perfect pony tail and the face that was perfect in its small imperfections. He wanted to reach out for her, to rise and call out her name, but he couldn't. The single syllable of her name wouldn't leave his lips.
His arms gave under the immense weight that had been crushing him down, centering on his chest, making it hard for him to breathe, impossible, but he was not in a panic, the respiratory bypass would kick in, soon enough.
But instead, the pain returned, shaking him awake.
With a gasp, he surfaced, finding himself curled into the deckchair under the spicy tree. And there was not a trace of the woman with the perfect hair. She would leave him, again and again, even in his dreams.
He was lying on his left side.
"Rose."
There was no tone in the single syllable.
Rose swallowed hard, picking up the spoon only to drop it back onto the saucer a beat later with a bright clatter. She had done this to him. Anger welled up inside her, raw and all-consuming because of the additional pain she had caused this man who had been hurting all over anyway.
No.
It had been an accident, and it forced him to stop his running. There was no place here nor anywhere else in the whole universe he could turn to to get rid of his demons. The running kept his too clever, too brilliant mind busy as he faced the demons of other worlds. Oh, he would be fine at one point, relatively speaking of course. Rose had seen it happen before. But there was a limit to everything, and if she was honest with herself, just as she had been at Dålig Ulv Stranden, when the pain had overcome her, raw and shocking, she was not so sure if she could nurse the Doctor back to health as she had before.
"Yes," Rose said, more to herself than Donna. She looked up to meet her eyes. "I'm glad it was you. It must sound cruel," she conceded, acknowledging Donna's incredulous expression. "But I would never have been able to find him if it hadn't been for you. Can you understand that?"
"I'm trying, but if I'm being honest I can't say I really do," Donna replied, laughing nervously. She had obviously expected hell to break loose at her confession, but what she got was … this.
Rose explained herself. And Donna understood.
"I think he suffers from PTSD," Donna eventually said. "And what you've told me about him backs it all up. It's rather difficult to come up with the right diagnosis with patients who don't speak. He's not always been that quiet, has he?"
Rose laughed. "No, usually you can hardly get him to shut up." But that had already changed at Bad Wolf Bay, when his words had been well-measured.
Donna nodded. "The nurses and Chiara have told me about his night terrors." She told her about the twelve year-old who had so bravely approached the Doctor when he had been at his most forbidding.
"He's always had nightmares," Rose mused. "I guess it's worse for him now that he has to sleep just as much as the rest of us. As a full Time Lord he could do with very little sleep."
"Which is lucky when these hours tend to be full of nightmares," Donna agreed. "But night terrors are different. They are worse, because they affect the whole body." After a brief pause she asked Rose if she was ready to go.
To her surprise Rose felt she was, really was ready to meet him for the first time since that Sunday morning.
They put Rose's suitcase in the back of the little car Donna had hired, next to a bag with clothes for the Doctor. "It's the least I could do for him," Donna said. Then they zoomed through the scenery, less confident than the cabby, but both safe and fast enough for the women's liking.
"'s beautiful," Rose said, enjoying the warm breeze in her face.
"Wait till you see the view from the rehab unit's arbour. It's breathtaking."
The rehab unit turned out to be housed in an old manor and Rose thought that there could be no better place to recover than this. Modern extensions had been added carefully and tastefully. There even was a small guest house for relatives – part of the old manor –, but Donna could not convince her to go there first. Gone was her insecurity from earlier that morning, replaced by anxiousness so overpowering that it took a lot of patience on her part to allow the receptionist to take down her name and wait for her visitor's bracelet. Luckily enough, she literally ran into the nurse who was in charge of the Doctor, and so the search for him came to an end sooner than expected, and rather abruptly.
Rose only realised that she had been clinging to Donna when she let go of her hand to finally meet the Doctor. He was curled up in a deckchair in the shade of a gnarled old olive tree. As she stepped closer she saw the removable splint on his left leg, and the nakedness of his good one. Together with the t-shirt and the boxers he was wearing, she felt an intimacy in the scene that was more vulnerable than the kiss they had shared in Norway.
She covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a cry that was lodged in her throat. He was staring into the distance, totally oblivious to her and Donna's presence. Rose sat on the deckchair, in the small space of the crook that was his body, and touched his cheek. It was damp with sweat, and he was breathing heavily, shaking even.
"Doctor," she said softly. "Wake up, it's just a dream. Doctor."
He focused on her, and for an awful second it did not seem that he realised who she was. But then he broke into the brightest, happiest of his smiles, the smile he treasured just for her, and he sat up to draw her into a crushing embrace.
"Rose!" he cried, followed by a stream of Gallifreyan that sounded more musical than ever, and which Rose could not understand, of course. Rose turned her head to kiss whatever her lips could reach of him, and returned the hug with all her might.
Then the Doctor let go of her to look into her eyes lovingly, a gaze that made her want to mould her body close to his so they might never be separate again. He ran his fingers through her windswept hair and thus cradling her head drew her towards him in a kiss. It was infinitely tender and slow, so utterly without any rush, very unlike the embrace, and it almost felt as though it was a kiss good-bye.
Which it was, Rose understood, as he trailed the backs of his fingers down her cheek. His hands dropped into his lap, and he leaned back into the cushions, his eyes closed, but smiling to himself.
People smiled like that in their sleep, when they were dreaming.
Was this what she had become for the Doctor? A nice dream?
The sob she had tried to suppress earlier escaped her before she could cover her lips, aquiver with the tears that were already filling her eyes. In a half-hearted, timorous attempt to wake him, she covered his right hand with her hers, where it lay in his lap, limp and unusually warm – for a Time Lord, perfectly normal for a human.
She felt Donna's hands on her shoulders. She rose and allowed her to make her sit in a chair she had drawn up from somewhere. "He's asleep," Donna reassured her. "What just happened is probably just a dream to him. Let me take care of him for the moment, will you?"
Rose knew Donna was right, the Doctor looked very much asleep – not that she could tell for sure, having rarely seen him sleep – but she still couldn't shake the feeling that something was amiss. She knew that kind of dream that seemed so real, even in a slumber as this. It would be all so very real, and yet at the same time you realised it was just a dream. You knew it couldn't be real. That's what the Doctor was going through now, Rose told herself, he had no chance of knowing that she was really there, that it had not been a dream. She cleaned her nose in a brave attempt to pull herself together.
It was all a little bit much, and Rose had now reached the point at which it came all crashing down on her, the tension of the past months, tension that had been building since the first trials of the dimension cannon, tension that should have been resolved – for a bit at least – a couple of weeks ago.
Their reunions had been so very different from what she had expected, and the worst thing was that it had always caught her unawares, despite her better knowledge, despite the warnings from Pete and Jackie and Mickey and all the others at Torchwood. The first time, the Doctor had been cut down by a Dalek and had died in her arms. And now? He had been run over by one of his own, and had learned the painful way what having a limited human life-span meant. He could be dead, Rose suddenly realised, if Donna had driven any faster. Or if he'd been run over by someone else, someone who knew their way round the narrow Florentine streets.
What wouldn't leave her alone, was the intensity of the gaze, the expression in his ancient eyes. And for that tiny instant that the memory needed to flit across her mind, Rose's resolve faltered, and she had to look away.
Donna was right. The view of the valley below was breathtaking.
The Doctor could feel the softness of her lips on his, the wisp of her perfect blonde hair as it had fallen across his cheek like a shadow, and the press of her breasts against his chest. It had all felt so real that he knew it couldn't be, that this was all just a dream, but it had not kept him from looking at her. It had, in fact, made it easier to bare his soul to her in that brief intense gaze they had shared. Naturally, his mind had seized that opportunity to punish him, for the happiness he had seen in her light brown eyes had been overshadowed with weariness. Her eyes had aged.
He knew he was the reason for that.
He held on to sleep, successfully, driving away that dream in which Rose had laid her small hand on his. End this wonderful, awful dream, end it, end it. As he turned in the cushions, she disappeared, and he sank into blankness again. The blankness that he so craved for in his daytime naps.
"Doctor?"
The voice was Donna's. But who else would it be but her, only she knew his name. Ever loyal Donna. She would return to him, not matter what, even when she didn't know him at all in Pete's World. She would not leave him, when Rose even left him in his dreams.
The Doctor opened his eyes, and he covered Donna's hand that was resting on his shoulder with his. He met her smiling eyes evenly, and removed her hand from his shoulder to give it a light squeeze.
"Bene?" Donna asked.
He felt himself nod. She deserved his best efforts, what with what had happened yesterday. "I'm sorry," he croaked. Not using his voice did this to him. He sipped the water that had warmed even here, in the late morning shade.
Donna smiled and nodded. Bless her.
It was then that from the corner of his eye he noticed movement, someone coming to join them. The nurse, probably, to take him somewhere for more exams or exercises. When he turned his head to acknowledge her arrival, his single heart recognised her before his mind did, and he grasped Donna's hand hard.
Rose was standing there, in the dappled light of the silver leaves that reminded him so much of home it hurt.
His hand slipped from Donna's and he barely registered her saying "It's not a dream, Doctor, she really is here." He meant to rise but his injured leg reminded him with a stab that he couldn't, but he didn't care, for Rose dropped to her knees next to him and wrapped her arms around him, just like in the dream he had just had. Only better.
Donna withdrew as she saw the Doctor and Rose so lost in each other and in each other's arms. She got goose flesh as she saw how utterly happy the Doctor could be before he buried his face and beaming eyes in the crook of Rose's neck and shoulder. When they started to kiss again, more passionately this time than in the Doctor's dream, she turned around and went up the path to the house, smiling to herself.
She took the bag with the things she had brought for the Doctor to his room before she unloaded Rose's small suitcase from the car and checked her in at the guest house, where she was given a lovely room in a quiet corner of the building. The Tylers weren't only popular in Britain, so she felt she deserved some privacy – even at a rehab unit like this that did not invite the public as a principle. But better safe than sorry, for Donna had noticed the curious glances she and Rose had received in town that morning. Thankfully, Rose had not bothered with any makeup and hidden her tiredness behind a pair of sunglasses. She knew, of course, how to deal with paparazzi.
Funny. This young woman did not come across like any of the other heiresses and sons-of their-father that quenched the public's thirst for scandal in the rags. Rose was a very kind, mature person, desperately in love with a man. Who happened to be half alien. And with whom, in another world, Donna herself had travelled.
She sat on the bed in her own room at the guest house, and picked up her mobile phone. There had been no calls or messages in her absence. Visitors were not encouraged to carry the devices around with them for the sake of the peace and quiet of the place, a notion that Donna appreciated very much. It was, after all, what she had come here for in a way.
Although she hardly knew Rose, and had not yet caught a glimpse of the Doctor's personality, she felt very happy for the two of them. She had seen both of them on their own, had sensed how miserable they had been. To see them in each other's arms …
If the Doctor really suffered from PTSD the two of them still had a long way ahead of them, and the fact that he had to adapt to life as a human would not make it any easier. She dearly hoped that their relationship was strong enough.
Life as a human.
Half alien.
She having a twin in a parallel universe, a universe that Rose had come from originally.
Travel in time and space.
And she – her twin – had done that. And not got the t-shirt.
As hard to believe as it was – or should be, rather – Donna could for some reason not find it in herself not to believe Rose. It was as if ever since she and the Doctor had stepped into her life there had been something, something which she couldn't quite grasp yet, that lent it all credibility, that didn't have her question any of it at all. Like she should, as a good scientist.
She would find out what that was.
