"Stay"

Part Three

"I've taken up running, I'll have you know."

"No!"

"Yes," she assures him and he shakes his head. "Oh, I know. It's nearly unbelievable, it is. One night I just got up from the table, changed shoes, and took off out the door. My poor mother looked like I'd sprouted another head or something."

The Doctor smiles, imagining Sylvia's expression. "Oh, I just bet she did."

"So I took off out the door, and just started running. Came in about an hour later, just short of three miles gone," she recalls, shaking her head. "I just kept doing it, night after night. When people ask I have to make something up about getting fit or whatever, which is a nice little bonus. The truth is that I feel better when I'm running. Safer, I guess."

"Safer?" he asks. "Are you in any danger?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that," she denies quickly. "Just… there's something back there that's comforting in the running. I feel like I'm protected like that. I don't know, it must be all the running we did together. Trying to survive and all that."

"Motor memory runs deep," he observes, nodding.

"All memory does, I'm finding," she says sadly and he looks down to see tears gathering in her eyelashes. It feels like a kick in the chest to see his friend, the woman he loves, in such pain.

"Donna?" he questions, unfolding his arms and turning to face her. "Donna, what is it?"

"I just… oh, you'll laugh at me," she says and shakes her head, immediately bringing her hands up to wipe the salty drops away from her eyes.

"You know I won't do that."

She sighs wistfully. "I just miss you, that's all."

"I miss you, too," he says, his words heartfelt. It was true – he missed her desperately. It warmed him slightly to hear that he'd been so important to her, too.

"It's – it's more than just missing you," she says distractedly. "I don't know how to describe it. Like a phantom body part or something… like part of me is missing and I can't get it back no matter how many times I reach for it in the night."

She takes a step forward and starts to pace fretfully in front of him. "I just know, deep down inside me, that I'm supposed to be with you. She knows it too, Doctor. Every day when we get up and go to that job where we have a little desk with Gramps' picture in a frame and we stare a little too long at the skinny mail boy… we know. She can't put a name to it, but I can. It feels like the universe was just snatched away and we can never touch it ever again, no matter how often we dream about the stars and everything else that's out there.

"Nothing will ever be the same and yeah, sometimes I get downright angry thinking about it. Furious, even! Sometimes I want to have a good cry. Either way, it passes because what else can it do?" she asks, not actually expecting an answer. The Doctor remains quiet. "The next time it comes around I greet it like an old friend, knowing it's been exactly three days, eight hours, five minutes and eighteen seconds since last I'd felt so completely desolate."

He picked his head up and looked at her, studying her carefully. They certainly shared more traits now than they ever had before the metacrisis. It wounded the Doctor to see that his burden was now hers as well. Donna rambled, unfazed. He was no longer sure if she cared that he heard her. It seemed to be a relief just to say the words aloud.

"This new awareness of time and distance is just awful. Magnificent but awful," she says, summing the paradox up beautifully. "I am aware of every second I'm apart from you because every second of it aches. It is absolute agony knowing you're banished from the only place in the universe you'd ever truly belonged. Banished from the only person in the universe you'd ever truly loved."

His breath caught. Loved?

"That's right, you idiot spaceman," she says, very nearly reading his thoughts. "I loved you all that time, needed you desperately for every moment we were ever together, and I can only say that once I've lost my ability to touch you at all. How's that for irony!" She let out a sob into the air between them. It echoed around the Tardis and he had to close his eyes to brace himself against the sound. "God, if I'd known. If I'd even guessed that this would be what it all came to, I never would have agreed to your 'just mates' nonsense. I would have taken you right there against the door and let you worry about the rest later."

His eyebrow arched instantly, nearly reaching his hairline. When had this conversation shifted to… to that? Not that he minded the image that presented in his head. No, he didn't mind that at all.

"In the end, I feel like it's you that's making it impossible for me to let go and just… disappear," she says and his hearts suddenly ache, feeling like he's losing her all over again. "She knows you, she senses your loss and the fact that she never had you in the way she really wanted you. It's why she won't let me go either, I think. She knows I'm the key to getting back something that's been taken from her and in a way she's not wrong. In the end she never really got her closure. She got a lot of missing time and the dreadful ache of grief that she can't place."

"Is that why you're here, then?" the Doctor asks, trying not to sound as angry as he could feel himself becoming. "To placate her and then die? To torture me even more for failing to protect you in the first place?"

She scoffs. "You can't be serious."

"Can't I?"

"No, because now I'm doing the same thing you did to save me the first time!" she yells angrily. "I am getting myself what I need, what she needs, to finally give up searching. She's looking for you, Doctor, even if she doesn't know that's what she's looking for. How long will it be before she forces the memories back?"

"That shouldn't-"

"What? Be a problem?" she interjects incredulously. "Okay, so you've told Gramps and my mother about it. Did you get the memo to everyone else on the planet? Because there's bound to a come a time when someone says the wrong thing at the wrong moment and then it's all over. At that point she can either blow them off or really give it some thought to see if it fits with what she feels has gone missing from her head. Which would you prefer to happen?"

He does nothing but stare her down. "You know the answer to that."

"Course I do."

"Well then?" he asks, "What would you have me do?"

She smiles sadly. "I want you to let me tell you I love you, and I want you to say you love me."

"What?"

"That's it," she murmurs. "Just let me have my goodbye, a real proper goodbye, and then I'll go. Closure, Doctor. It's all I'd ever really wanted."

"You've never needed me to tell you that, Donna," he says assuredly. "You had to have known that I loved you from the very first insult you'd ever hurled my way. You had to have seen the longing in my eyes every time I looked at you. "

"No," she sniffled. "I never did."

"Oh, what I wouldn't have given for you," he mutters passionately, his voice rough. He lifts his hand, moving to touch her but painfully aware of the fact that he can't. "I would have given everything I'd ever had for one brush of that skin against my own. If there was a single thing I wish you had never doubted, it should have been my absolute and undying love of you, Donna Noble."

Without thinking he reached up to wipe the tears from her eyes, admiring the sparkling blue, but before he could remind himself of her corporeal limitations his hand met cool, wet skin. Donna looked up, obviously shocked, and met his eyes.

"How…?"

"The Tardis," he answers easily. "It looks like you have some help."

She laughs and it takes all of a second for her to stand up on the very tips of her toes and plant her mouth against his. He wastes not a single second on the concept of surprise. Wrapping his arms around her and pulling her body tightly against his, he inherently matches her rhythm and kisses her as though he had been doing so for millennia. Why hadn't they done this every second of every day they'd ever shared? Why had he let thing, such inconsequential things, come in between them?

"Doctor," she whispers suddenly, pulling away. "Doctor, I have to go now."

"What?" he gasps. "Why?"

"Because my energy has just about used itself up," she replies and as soon as she utters the words he can see the truth of them. Donna has lost a little of her usually vibrant color – her entire image is graying, as though she's quietly fading away. "The Tardis can only help so much, poor girl. She's probably sick to death of helping me by now."

"Don't be ridiculous," he scolds but it's of no use – their time together is ending, and quickly.

"I love you, m'kay?" she reminds him gently, rubbing his shoulders. He can barely feel the touch at all. "Don't forget that."

He puts his chin up. "Wouldn't dare."

"Good man," she says and places another kiss gently at the corner of his mouth. "Bye, then. Be safe or I'll murder you."

The Doctor laughs without a trace of humor. "I love you, Ms. Noble. Don't forget that."

She smiles, just a gentle upturn of her lips, and then she's gone. He doesn't even have the chance to try and convince her to stay. She'd vanished in front of him, like he'd imagined the entire thing. Only the Tardis' low murmur of sadness convinces him of her sudden appearance and their exchange. The Doctor turns around, pinches the bride of his nose above his glasses, and leans against the railing. Every aching breath convinces him of a single thing:

He would never be able to give her up.

{End}

[ Author's Note ]

Be on the lookout for my upcoming multi-chapter fic - "Sooner or Later", inspired by the remarkable Basmathgirl.

"Hunted by the Family of Blood, the Doctor has to strand himself in 1913 Earth without the benefit of a companion. There, John Smith becomes attached to Donna Noble, a fiery woman with a delightful sense of humor and more secrets than she's willing to share. As his terrifying dreams begin to hint at the existence of another man, he'll be forced to confront darker matters than just the disappearances of a few townspeople. When the Family catches up with him, John will have no choice but to decide his true identity - man or Time Lord - and who will be left behind.]