Maybe the Doctor just doesn't want anyone to know what she knows.
That's what Donna thinks when he advances on her, hands outstretched. It's a motion meant to heal, but Donna recoils.
She doesn't want to forget.
Donna pleads. She cries. She doesn't mean to cry but the tears burn and push out of her eyes, salty and bitter and thick as blood, the neurochemicals in her brain firing and misfiring in response to emotional stimuli and hormonal imbalances and Donna knows she can't stop it, it's all her treacherous body running on automatic, but she tells herself that if she seems strong, then maybe he'll stop.
(He won't, and she knows it.)
She thinks that the pity in his eyes is worse than anything else, the pity and the concern and the disgusting sadness. It's so human. They're both so human, both of them, and she thinks at least she can't help it, but he can, he can be better than this. He can shut those human feelings down and let Donna live like this for however long she's got, because living with this freedom, this knowledge, this sense of power and importance and connection with the universe is worth trimming down the remainder of her 15,330 days, 13 hours, and 4 minutes. It's not his decision to make, how long the rest of her life should be.
What was the point of all of this if she doesn't remember?
She tells him "forever," and thinks maybe it tears him up under that sad stare; she has a distant memory of another woman telling him the same thing on a windswept moon, and him taking her hand in his, and him believing her. And she realizes how short "forever" can be.
Donna knows that she is dying, can feel her brain withering as her synapses burn out. She knows that in order to survive, the Doctor will have to hollow her out. But how can she go back to living the way she was, with everything she's seen, done, become? Will she really forget it all? Is the Doctor really so cruel? Can she really live like that?
She can't, she realizes, as darkness clouds the edges of her vision and his cool fingers press against her temples. She watches the memories and knowledge, a lifetime of his and over a year's worth of hers, fly by her eyes like an unraveling film, images of Pompeii and Daleks and snow and fire. He only thinks he is saving her, but really, she'll be dead all the same. He's murdering the person she has become, even if he's doing it in the kindest way possible.
He has been sorry for so many people, and now he's sorry for her.
The nicest killer you'll ever meet, she thinks before consciousness slips out of her grasp.
Donna wakes up with one hell of a headache, still has her clothes on and everything, and she thinks that will be the last time she binges on peppermint schnapps. Really, who let her drink that much? She bets it was Neris. Probably let her get sloshed so she'd make a fool of herself all over the place. Oohh, she's going to have some words with that little tramp, she really is.
And what's this about the earth moving? The earth? Moving? The whole world's gone bonkers, it has. Has everyone but her lost their marbles?
She natters on the phone for a bit and tries to ignore that strange, watery look that Gramps is shooting her way. Maybe Gramps got into the schnapps too.
There's a skinny pinstriped bloke hanging about the place as well, but Donna doesn't recognize him. He looks miserable as hell, though. Poor sap. Donna manages to feel sorry for him for approximately .009 seconds before the convo on the other side of the phone shifts dramatically in tone and suddenly she finds herself gossiping about Veena's dating habits. Planets in the sky, the earth moving, cute bartenders and two for one lagers, Donna's not stupid.
The sad skinny bloke says goodbye to her before he goes, almost like he knows her or something.
Something about him makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand on edge. And just for an instant, she has a flash of him cradling her in his arms, rocking her gently, whispering how sorry he is over and over and over again, and she can feel down to her bones how very, very much he hates himself.
She shudders. What a weirdo.