Part 2: Telling Jack
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The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS, quite relieved to find himself on Roald Dahl Plass outside Torchwood. It was fast becoming his second home, if you didn't count London. Only he was trying not to think of London, and Chiswick in particular, because it was all still too painful.
Chiswick represented Donna, her storming out with the duplicate Doctor, and leaving him all alone without her. It took all his efforts not to break down and sob at the injustice of it. He'd planned things so that he could stop feeling guilty about Rose and leave himself set up with Donna. That entire plan had gone out the window. Instead, Donna had thrown a pink fit about a certain aspect of his plan; she had been livid that he had wanted to appease Rose by leaving the duplicate Doctor with her like a fairground prize. Rose was not a crackpot winner on a coconut shy stall, Donna had loudly pointed out, and the duplicate was not the goldfish she had won! He could see her point, but he wasn't convinced enough to change his mind.
So she had walked out of the TARDIS taking the duplicate, his carefully thought out plans, his life and his soul. He had been left bereft! And evidently the TARDIS thought he should tell Jack. Well, Jack would be sympathetic; he'd had his own fair share of difficult decisions to make in his long life.
Jack was amazed to find the Doctor sitting on the edge of the water fountain on Roald Dahl Plass looking completely stunned. "Doctor? Are you okay?" Jack anxiously asked as he knelt down.
The Doctor slowly shook his head. "She left me, Jack; she actually left me," he stammered out.
Jack looked at the TARDIS sitting majestically nearby and then back at the Doctor. "I thought Rose would never leave after fighting her way back to you," he admitted with surprise.
"Who?" The Doctor lifted his head and returned Jack's puzzled expression. He waved his hand vaguely in the air. "Not Rose! I took Rose back to the alternative universe soon after I dropped you off; but I wasn't talking about her."
Jack frowned in confusion. "Then who were you talking about?"
"Donna, of course!" the Doctor cried; and his face crumpled before he hid it behind his hands. "She took the metacrisis with her and left me."
"But… I don't understand. The way you were all acting in the TARDIS I thought things were completely different," Jack spluttered in his confusion. What on earth had happened for the Doctor to be this morose over Donna? Yes, there had been a vibe that had stopped him from hugging her in case he provoked the Doctor's wrath; but Rose had been confidently possessive, he realised, after that. Rose had hung on the Doctor, not the other way around. She had gone to him. So did that mean he had other plans the whole time, while he had intentionally kept himself back from her? It did make you wonder.
"I was pleased to see Rose, ecstatic even, but I couldn't give her what she wanted from me. I couldn't give her domesticity and a mortgage; so I was going to do the next best thing. I was going to give her my duplicate to live that life with," the Doctor explained.
Jack listened in open-mouthed fascination. He realised that must have been an awfully hard decision. "What went wrong with the plan? I'm assuming it didn't go smoothly," Jack said to encourage him to continue his explanation.
"Donna finding out is what happened," the Doctor said bitterly. "She argued with me claiming he was not just an item you pass on like a family heirloom but a living breathing part of us that deserved the chance to do what he wanted to do."
"And did he? Did he want to go with Rose?" Jack asked, already knowing the answer.
"No he did not. He refused to go back to Pete's World with Rose. He insisted that he couldn't give her what she wanted from me neither." The Doctor's expression saddened even further. "Donna told me that if I couldn't appreciate him for being who he was she certainly could. So I told her she'd better find somewhere else he'd be welcomed, and she shouted that she knew just the place. It turns out it was back in Chiswick and away from the TARDIS."
He held back a sob, and Jack didn't know what to do. He decided to keep the Doctor talking. "When exactly did she leave you?"
"After I dropped off Rose. The walls between the dimensions was closing so I had to drop her and Jackie back as fast as I could otherwise they'd be trapped. Donna and him left me to do that on my own, so it wasn't much beyond 'here is your life, have a good one' I'm ashamed to say," the Doctor answered.
"Poor Rose," Jack sighed. "To do all that to find you and then be dumped back there without you."
"She had heard us arguing, and she had a life there; a family. She had to go back," the Doctor said firmly. "I never told her Donna was packing to leave at that point. You should have seen her, Jack. Like a man-of-war battleship in full flight. She was magnificent as she tried to argue me into the ground. I've never seen anything like it."
Jack noted it was obviously a bittersweet memory the Doctor was recalling. It also had a strong emphasis on Donna rather than Rose. "What are you going to do now?" he asked.
The Doctor sagged even more. "I don't know. Carry on, on my own, I suppose. I can't face choosing someone else yet."
What should he do with a bereft Time Lord? This was Donna's job to deal with. Jack had no idea what he should do to appease the Doctor as he sat so dejectedly.
As he resolved to phone Donna at the first opportunity and use emotional blackmail if necessary, Jack tried to tempt the Doctor down into the Hub. Jack had a sudden brainwave. "Why don't you borrow my trainee for a while? It would do her good if you don't mind having a temporary companion."
The Doctor gave a wry laugh. "Another temp? I'll think about it; after all, the last temp turned out okay."
It was only after an hour or so later, having fed the Doctor copious amounts of cake washed down with numerous mugs of tea, that the atmosphere lighted considerably.
"Doctor, I'd like you to meet Catherine," Jack introduced her, taking away the Doctor's last opportunity to dip out of his decision to consider a temporary companion. Standing in front of them was the newest addition to Torchwood: Catherine McKenzie.
She stood enthusiastically before them, hope shining in her large brown eyes that the Doctor would genuinely choose her. She'd read a lot about him in the Torchwood files. It looked a really glamorous lifestyle, walking among aliens in all of time and space; so she'd jumped at the chance when Jack had suggested it to her. The fact that the Doctor wasn't bad looking for an old bloke was a contributing factor in her readily made decision. With that in mind she stood anxiously waiting for him to give the last word for this arrangement.
The Doctor sat critically examining her as he supped the last of his tea. He didn't want to be bamboozled into anything that could backfire horribly on him. Catherine was pleasant enough to look at, with Martha's height, Rose's build, and a younger sense of style. The difference was that she wore her brown hair down in a neatly cut bob that framed her face, nicely displaying her elfin features to their best advantage. It was obvious why Jack had chosen her for his team.
"Do you have much family, Catherine?" he asked her.
Why did he want to know that? "The normal," she replied. "Mum, Dad, and my sister Chloe. She's younger than me by three years."
The Doctor could tell how anxious she was as she stood before them like a specimen in a jar. He breathed an inner sigh of relief that she had a family; he didn't want her using him as a surrogate father. She looked young enough to be his daughter; she couldn't be much more than twenty two at the most. "When can you be ready to come and be my temporary companion?" he eventually asked.
"Just give me ten minutes," Catherine almost squeed in her excitement. This was turning out to be the best day of her life.
It was turning out to be one of the worst decisions of his life. Why had he allowed Jack to talk him into this? It wasn't as though the girl had no intelligence – obviously she did or Jack would never have considered her in the first place – but she didn't seem to know how to apply the knowledge that was in her head.
Knowledge like learning the simple geography of the TARDIS. Well, he thought it was simple despite what some of some of his companions had complained about over the years. Things like rooms going missing, being led down confusing corridors, or the rooms mysteriously rearranging themselves within the TARDIS. Personally he thought it helped relieve the possible boredom of the place; but he had received numerous complaints about the TARDIS.
Only one person hadn't complained, strangely enough; and that had been Donna. She had laughed with delight when the swimming pool room had been moved close to her bedroom, and had hugged him ecstatically when the Jacuzzi appeared opposite. It hadn't been changed on his orders but he had happily passed on Donna's delight to the TARDIS. After that, Donna was always giving the TARDIS little strokes of gratitude, and the TARDIS loved the attention. It had made that aspect of their lives extremely pleasant, especially as the TARDIS almost lived to please Donna from then on. Still their... oops!... her bedroom had been given a beautiful en suite with a bath tub that could have held two people, if he'd have been able to persuade Donna to take such a bath with him. But he had to stop thinking of it as their bedroom now. All that was gone and finished. He would never have her back again unfortunately.
"Doctor!" Catherine shouted, bringing him out of his thoughts. "Good grief! I have been trying to get you to answer for the last ten minutes."
"I think that's a slight exaggeration," the Doctor commented before he could help himself. "It couldn't have been more than thirty seconds."
Catherine glared at him. "I still don't know where the kitchen is and I'm starving! You promised me something decent to eat."
He led her down the corridor to where the kitchen now dutifully sat, and opened the fridge. There was nothing but milk for his tea. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "Let's look in the cupboards." Reaching up he opened various wall cabinets, only to find a very meagre choice.
"Is there anything at all?" she asked frantically.
"Not much to write home about, unless you fancy tinned pears with pasta. And I have no idea why I have tinned pears in my cupboard!" he griped testily. "We'll have to go out to dinner."
"Ooh goodie!" Catherine declared at the chance to avoid cooking. "Do I need to go and get changed?"
The Doctor eyed her up and down, trying to stall her need to dress differently. "No, you look fine," he said dismissively, and headed out to the console room to set the coordinates.
"Isn't this romantic?" Catherine jokily asked him as she stepped out into the crisp night air and whirled round in delight. "You brought me to a sunset."
"Did I?" he asked vaguely in return. He hadn't intended to do that at all.
She playfully waggled a finger at him. "Anyone would think you are trying to chat me up, you naughty Time Lord!"
"I'm not; I'm really not," he answered, but she was taking no notice of his words and had practically danced away to look at the restaurant menu hanging on the wall outside.