The Timelord Victorious and his latest companion
Contains spoilers for Season 4 as well as an alternate interpretation of the 10th Doctor, as well as several of the other characters.
He had just seen himself. A younger, naiver version of himself, wipe out a Dalek fleet.
And the worst part was that he couldn't blame him.
The Daleks would not stop murdering, until there were none left. Just like The Doctor would not stop preparing humanity, for the horrors of the universe. Davros was right, he took people, regular people, extraordinary people, and he fashioned them. He turned them into weapons, because deep down, he was still a soldier. Maybe a soldier who preferred the plowshares to the swords but still a soldier…
He looked at himself, not himself, he had to remind himself. It was part human, the flipside to Donna's new amped sentience. It was intensely intelligent but without the luxury of a time lord's longevity. In its life, it would revolutionize technology in the parallel universe. It would solve all energy crisis, it would end climate change, it would ensure the alternate earth's safety against any more Cybermen that came crawling out of the woodwork.
And it would protect Rose.
Rose who had been chosen by the TARDIS to save him. Rose who tried to save everyone. Rose who had torn the universe apart trying to save her father. Twice. He could never tell her, never let her know, that this alternate place, where her father was alive and her family was rich and where there were no Daleks and no Timelords, had been created by her.
In trying to save Jack, she had cursed him with immortality. And by wishing to be with her father again, she had created the parallel universe t that the Cybermen had arisen from.
And now she had torn through the walls of the universe to get to him.
He couldn't let her do that again. Her inability to forget him was as much a threat to the fabric of existence as Davros' hatred toward all life.
She was too much like him. A traveler from another world, who could never return home. A hopeless romantic, but still human, still animal. He needed someone he could trust, who would watch her and stop her, when she needed to be stopped. She needed a companion, and a Timelord with the body of a human was as good a companion as any.
In truth, he knew his clone was not worse than him. How could he be? He'd not been the one to destroy Gallifrey, he'd not taken poor sweet Martha, who like him, wanted nothing more than to heal and protect and to cure, and turned her into a person willing to use that damn key.
No, his clone was better than he'd ever be, because he was human. Which meant he had to live with his decisions, he didn't get to jump in his Tardis and fly away as soon as things got uncomfortable. He was better and that's why he had to stay with Rose. Because she deserved someone better, someone who could say "no" to her. Someone who wouldn't ever replace her or try to forget her.
They all deserved better, Martha, Donna, Sarah…they all deserved better, but all they had was him.
Well, not Rose. Now she had a man who could love her and grieve for her.
Unconditionally.
It hurt, watching them kiss, but The Doctor was never meant to kiss a human, to tell her he loved her.
He didn't have the right after all he'd done.
Back in the TARDIS, his only true companion…off to a new adventure, a new time a new place…
"I thought we'd try the planet Felspoon. Just cause. What a good name, Felspoon! Apparently, it's got mountains that sway in the breeze! Mountains that move! Can you imagine?"
There was just one thing left to do.
"And how do you know that?" He asked, because he needed her to cognize the facts of her own existence.
"Because it's in your head!" She gave him that grin of smugness that she had, whenever she had noticed something that he should have. But everything was different now.
"And if it's in your head, it's in mine." She said, turning away.
She was so happy. She had finally found…a place in the universe. She'd finally found the confidence to be the person he knew she already was. She'd done everything right and now she was being punished for it.
But no one ever said the universe was fair.
"And how does that feel?" He asked, contemplating how this, too, was his fault. He'd turned her into a weapon, but this time he'd gone too far. He'd made her intelligent enough to comprehend the truth.
"Brilliant! Fantastic! Molto Bene! Great big universe, packed into my brain!" She said as she activated one piece of the console like it was second nature. "You know you could fix the chameleon circuit if you just tried hot-wiring the fragment links and superseding the binarybinarybinarybinarybinarybinarybinarybinarybinarybinarybinarybinarybinarybinarybinary-ahhh, I'm fine."
She turned away quickly. She knew. Of course, she did. She knew everything now and that was the problem.
"Nah, never mind Felspoon, you know who'd I like to meet? Charlie Chaplin! I bet he's great Charlie Chaplin! Should we do that? Shall we go see Charlie Chaplin? Shall we? Charlie Chaplin! Charlie Chester! Charlie Brown! No, he's fiction, friction, fixing, mixing, mixton, brixton-haaaaah!"
She collapsed onto the console, and he knew if he didn't act soon, she'd die. She'd go mad and then she'd die.
The only reason he hadn't done what needed to be done sooner was because he hadn't wanted to ruin everyone's fun.
"Do you know what's happening?" He asked, already knowing the answer. He knew so much, but his mind had been designed to organize and retrieve those facts when they were needed.
Hers had not.
"Yeah…" She admitted, already starting to cry.
"There's never been a human-timelord meta-crisis before now…and you know why." He explained.
"Because there can't be…" She agreed.
He'd witnessed atrocities. He'd failed himself and others countless times. But it was still hard…it was hard because she wasn't like the others. Rose had wanted him, had wanted to be with the man who was exciting and intelligent and who could fill all the holes in her life. Martha had wanted him to want her, she had wanted someone she could talk to without being called weird, someone who would never stop exciting her.
But Donna…Donna had just wanted to be loved. To be important to someone. And now he was sending her back, to that hell, without even the memory of all she'd accomplished. She was too good for it.
"I want to stay!" She declared, turning away, again trying to run from the truth.
He moved closer, knowing what she meant. She knew of her own impending mental collapse, she saw it, in the fabric of time.
And she wanted to stay.
"Look at me." He asked. She continued to fiddle with the instruments she should not have been able to understand. "Donna! Look at me." He persisted.
She turned to look over at him and he saw the terror in her eyes. In all their time together, in the face of the lava monsters and the giant wasps, even staring down the end of the universe itself, she had never felt this scared.
It was one thing to lose your life, but quite another to lose yourself.
"I was gonna be with you…" She said, eyes brimming. "…forever…"
"I know." All the knowledge in both of them and there was nothing they could do. Except to comfort each other.
"…the rest of my life…" She continued. "…traveling…in the TARDIS…the Doctor Donna…"
She recoiled, afraid of him. As well she should be. They should all be afraid, for he was nothing worth celebrating.
"Oh, no!" She said, shaking her head. "I won't go back!"
He put her hands on her arms and steadied her as she searched his face for some sign of the normal joy and passion.
"Don't make me go back!" She begged.
She'd loved her family, like Rose had. Like Martha had. But they had not made her feel loved and out of all of them, she had deserved escape the most.
"Doctor! Please…please don't make me go back!"
In her mind, swam a view of eternity, a memory which ran two ways and looped back on itself in a way that humans would never understand. In her mind rested the birth of the universe and the deconstruction of everything that she had ever thought was true.
It was no way for someone to live. But he had lived countless eons with it. He deserved the pain it brought.
"Oh Donna…Donna Noble…I am so sorry…" It was the only conciliation he could grant. They always left, because the longer they stayed, the worse it turned out.
She shuddered under his touch, shaking her head, refusing to accept the reality in the same pig-headed way she always had.
"…but we had the best of times…" She was his friend. He'd but he had not known a true friend since Gallifrey's destruction, and he still laughed to think of the day they'd first met.
"…the best…" He remembered her warning to him after their first adventure, that he needed someone to keep him on the straight and narrow.
She understood the psychology of this alien she called "space man", she understood that he was broken and that he needed someone to save him, as much as they all needed him.
She lowered her face, as the tears began to fall, and he lifted his fingers to place them on her temples.
"Goodbye."
She looked up sharply and her voice became a desperate crack, as she begged him not to do this.
She had the emotional breadth that war with time and space had long since killed within him. She could have saved the universe time and again, and never asked for thanks. She could have been the person that Rose, and Sarah and Jack all thought he was.
She begged him and it was rare that he could not answer the sound of someone's pleas. But he could not let her live with this torment, and he could not let his carelessness destroy her.
She would find love someday. She would have children. She would realize there was more to life. She would be happy. Happier than any of his other companions, that was for sure. Happy because she would not remember what she was missing.
She would pull herself out of the muck by sheer force of will and burn a bright hole through all social convention and expectation.
She would be happy. And that was the thing about being a Timelord. He could not see the future; it was too unpredictable. But in this moment, soaking in the psychic energy radiating from that mind that was gloriously like his own, but made better by mortality, he knew she was just as important, as an average woman, on an average street, as she had ever been.
He pulled out the piece of her which she'd taken from him and sealed it, inside a pocket-watch. It would remain with him. She would forget. But he would not.
