2: Counselling
Donna woke the next morning in a good mood. At first she wondered why she was in such a good mood and why she was lying in an unfamiliar bed, when she remembered what she had done last night and that she was on the TARDIS with a time travelling Martian.
She got up and dressed quickly, before heading to the TARDIS kitchen for some breakfast. She was only a little surprised to see the Doctor already there, his back to the door and his hair extremely tousled, dressed in blue pinstripes and red Converse trainers.
"Good morning!" she said cheerfully, and he turned round.
"Hello! I was just making some toast. Do you want some?"
Donna grimaced. "No thanks. Can't stand the stuff. Do you have any cereal?"
The Doctor nodded and turned back around, tapping a cupboard to his right with his foot and saying, "In there."
Donna crouched down beside him and pulled the door open, taking out a box of Shreddies and a bowl. She set both of these down on the table in the middle of the room and headed to the fridge to collect some milk. When she turned round, the Doctor was holding a spoon out in front of him for her.
She took it from him and smiled, uttering a word of thanks. He said nothing and went back to standing by the toaster, his elbow resting on the surface and his head in his hand as he waited for his breakfast to be ready.
"Some things you just can't do, am I right?" Donna questioned, slightly amused at how the Doctor had a magnificent time machine and could travel wherever he wanted, and yet he had to wait for his toast to pop. She poured the milk into her bowl, having already put the Shreddies in there, and sat at the table.
"I know, you're quite right," the Doctor said, feigning misery, "it constantly gets me down."
Donna laughed and began to eat, watching the Doctor from across the table. Suddenly, a popping noise filled the room and the Doctor reached forward to take the toast out. He winced as he touched it and drew his hand away, sticking his fingers into his mouth after rubbing them vigorously.
"Hot?" Donna queried, with a slight smirk. She shoved a mouthful of Shreddies down her throat and got up, chewing as she went. She grabbed a clean washing up cloth from where it was hanging on a hook on the wall, wrapped it around her hand, picked up the bread, and pulled it out for him, depositing it onto his plate. She swallowed her cereal and said calmly, "There." She then went back to the table, sitting down and continuing to eat her breakfast.
The Doctor didn't say anything as he took some jam from a shelf above his head and unscrewed the lid. He began to spread it onto the toast, his back to Donna. She couldn't help thinking how childlike he was at the moment. Something had really affected him, something big. Donna took it upon herself to find out what it was.
When he came to the table and sat down opposite her, Donna made small talk to while away the time. It was difficult to know when it was the right time to bring issues up with him, and she was an impatient person, so she decided to get it over and done with as soon as she possibly could. Maybe then he wouldn't have such really quick mood changes. That was her job, after all.
"Doctor."
"Yes?"
"Talk to me."
The Doctor looked up from his toast and licked his fingers thoughtfully, his eyebrows knitted together as he thought. "All right. Today is the 24th of March. The weather outside is mild, and right now two boys are walking past the TARDIS. One of them is the same boy who spray painted graffiti on the outside of her… ooh, a lifetime ago now. I was a different man back then. He's the same boy I made scrub it off. Bit older, but still the same boy. He won't be spray painting graffiti on the TARDIS ever again, I'll tell you that…" He trailed off. "You're staring at me."
"Yes, I am," Donna said impatiently. "I meant about what's happened since we last met. It's like… it's like you're always trying to forget something. Have you talked to anyone about it? How you feel? Anything?" His eyes darkened, and he grabbed his toast up again, taking a large bite out of it. "Doctor!"
He looked at her pitifully, and said, his mouth full of toast and jam, "No."
"Doctor, that's disgusting. Not just the fact that you're talking with your mouth open, but because you need to talk about your feelings, however painful they are."
The Doctor had swallowed the food that was in his mouth and was about to take another bite when Donna mentioned how he 'needed' to talk about his feelings. "What would you know about that?" he said, bitterly.
Donna made a noise in her throat, pushing her empty cereal bowl away from her. "In case you'd forgotten, Doctor, I became a widow on my wedding day. Sort of. I loved Lance, even if he… even if he didn't love me. I still miss him."
The Doctor's expression softened, and he took another bite of toast – although smaller this time, and he seemed to chew it a lot more. Donna could tell that she, for once, had his undivided attention.
"I went to a counsellor not long after it happened. My parents recognised I needed the help, and they helped me to see that I needed it, too. I didn't tell the counsellor exactly what I'd seen, of course. I didn't say anything about you, either. I mean, I didn't want to be sectioned." Donna laughed a little. "I said that Lance had been killed by the Christmas star, because everyone had seen that, and people had died. It was tragic. And it was so difficult to talk about it, because… because I loved Lance, and he was tricking me, and I lost him. But by talking about my feelings, I worked through it."
There was a pause as the Doctor finished off his toast, licked his fingers, and nudged his plate to the side. He then rested his elbows on the table. He looked very tired, Donna noticed, but he was still listening to her.
"So talk to me."
The Doctor sucked in a breath and visibly swallowed a lump in his throat. Donna could tell that this… this was going to be difficult, if he did choose to talk about it, because if he never talked about his feelings, everything was going to come out now.
"He's dead," the Doctor said monotonously. "He's dead, and it's my fault. I didn't see her. I couldn't stop her. No one else saw her either. But they should have done. I should have done. We were too busy talking to notice… we were too busy talking… we just dropped it and let it lie there…" Donna remained silent. This was an improvement, and she wasn't about to interrupt it.
"Harold Saxon." The Doctor paused to rub his face with the heels of his hands. "He was a… he was like me. He was a Time Lord. He was called the Master. He… he was on the… he was made Prime…" The Doctor broke off, and Donna could see that he was trying not to lose control. He swallowed heavily. "He was made Prime Minister," he continued.
"I wasn't the last one!" he said, and laughed, slightly hysterically, for a few seconds, before continuing. "I wasn't the last one…" His expression turned dark quickly afterwards, however. "He's dead now. And he's not coming back. He's not… he's not coming back. I'm alone now. Completely alone. The last."
He was too busy reciting his story to notice the tears that were now falling from his eyes. He only realised when a teardrop fell onto his hand. And then, just after he discovered that he was breaking down, he covered his face with his hands and his body shuddered as he let out heart wrenching sobs.
Donna had almost been expecting this. She'd realised that he had been hiding his feelings for so long, that all his emotions were bubbling to the surface and he couldn't stop them from doing so. She had done the same thing to the counsellor when she'd first talked to him. And she did the same thing the counsellor had done to her, for the Doctor. She got up and she went to his side, wrapping her arms around him, leaning over him slightly as though protective of him. He let her do so, and even slid his arms around her waist and held her close, sobbing into her chest. In any other situation, in any other moment in time, especially the first time she had met the Doctor, Donna would have thought this was ridiculous. But he was hurting, he was grieving. He sounded so helpless that she found herself near to tears as well, but she held them in.
"Why didn't you find anyone?" she whispered into his hair. "I told you to find someone."
"They left me," was his quiet, pitiful response, and Donna squeezed him tighter to her, wishing that somehow she could heal his pain.
A mobile phone ringing loudly broke them apart. Donna released the Doctor and he quickly wiped his eyes. They were puffy and red, and his face was still tear streaked, but Donna knew it was a good thing. In the end, it would be a good thing.
He pulled a phone out of his pocket and looked at it mournfully. Donna realised what he was thinking and snatched it from him, picking up. "Hello?"
"Hello?" the voice on the other end said. Donna looked confused and didn't respond for a moment, until the voice continued, "Hello?"
"Who is this?" Donna demanded, looking at the Doctor, whose gratefulness was evident in his eyes and facial expression.
"It's Martha – Martha Jones. Are you with the Doctor?"
"Yes, I am," Donna said. "What do you want?"
"To talk to him."
"Uh…" Donna looked away from the Doctor and considered what to say. If she handed the phone to the Doctor, he'd only start sobbing uncontrollably. Actually – she doubted that he would do that, but he would sound distinctly teary. Something told Donna that he wouldn't want anybody to know about this. "He's underneath the floor at the moment, fixing the… fixing the… fixing something. Who are you, anyway?"
"I'm Martha Jones," the voice on the other end of the phone repeated, sounding irritated now. "I used to travel with the Doctor. Who are you?"
"I'm Donna. What do you want him for?"
"I… he… are you sure he's so busy that I can't speak to him?"
"Yes, I'm sure," Donna said, using her 'duh' voice. "I wouldn't have said it if I wasn't." She wasn't even sure if this was a trap or not, an enemy wondering whether the Doctor was with her or not so that if he was, it could come and kill them both.
Martha grunted on the other end of the phone. "Could you pass a message on?" Donna gave a murmur of assent, and Martha continued, "Could you tell him that I need him to come to my parents' house as quick as he can? There's something weird going on and I think he'd like to know about it."
"I'll pass it on," Donna said sharply, and hung up. She held the phone out to the Doctor, who took it and slipped it into his pocket. He still didn't look up to talking, so Donna explained, "It was a woman called Martha Jones. She says she wants you to come to her parents' house as soon as you can, because there's something weird going on and she thinks you'd like to know about it." She accompanied the words 'something weird going on' with air quotations, and managed to make the Doctor smile.
"You think you're up to it after all that running from giant bugs with huge torches intent on killing us?" the Doctor asked, and his voice was trembling ever so slightly.
"I am, yeah," Donna replied. "Are you?" His face fell, and Donna felt terrible. "Go and clean your face. I promise, it all gets better with time."
The Doctor stood and allowed himself another smile. "Thank you."
"Go on then. Hurry up, we've got 'Martha Jones' to think of now." He left the room quickly and Donna muttered under her breath, "God forbid anything happen to Martha Jones…"
About twenty minutes later, Donna was clinging on to the TARDIS control panel for dear life. The Doctor had come back into the room looking distinctly better after he had washed his face, and he had proceeded to press buttons on, pull levers attached to, and hit mallets against the TARDIS' control panel.
The ship didn't particularly like him doing this, it seemed, as she began to rock them about as she skidded through something that the Doctor had called the time vortex – although Donna knew much, much better than to ask.
"The TARDIS doesn't like Martha Jones then!" Donna yelled over the noise of sparking wires, and the Doctor hitting the floor all over the place.
"What makes you say that?" the Doctor asked with a grunt, grabbing on to the edge of the console to prevent himself falling over again. "She's just being – ow! – difficult!" He reached for the mallet but his hand was sparked before he got there, and he withdrew it. "Argh! Right, it's going to be a crash landing; she won't let me near her controls! Find something to hold on to, Donna. And when you've found something that's suitably fine to hold on to, hold on to it really, really tight."
"What?" Donna hollered, not having heard a word he said.
"We're going to crash!" he bellowed, wrapping himself around one of the TARDIS' support pillars. He knew he probably looked ridiculous, but he rather valued this body.
"Doctor, what are you do–"
Whatever Donna wanted to say was either drowned out by the noise of them crashing, or she was unable to continue because of them crashing. Painfully. Even though the Doctor had been holding on with all his might, he was thrown backwards into the console. He gave a cry of pain – it hurt, after all – and slid to the floor.
"Ow!" he managed to say, before stumbling to his feet. "Donna?" he asked, looking around for her. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," came a muffled voice, and the Doctor looked down, in between his feet, below the grating of the floor. Donna's head was there, and he had to admit, he was surprised.
"What? What are you down there for?" he asked.
"I thought I'd get some rest." The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "I fell!" Donna added, in a shout that he knew he was going to have to get used to, and scrambled out. She brushed herself down and the Doctor couldn't help admiring the dignity she'd come out of that situation with.
He looked up at the console panel and stroked it gently, murmuring to it concernedly. "It's almost as if she doesn't want us to be here," he said, his brow furrowed. "Almost as if we shouldn't be here." He patted it down affectionately.
"Doctor."
"Yes?"
"Might it be… a trap? Someone trying to lead you here to kill you, or something? I thought that as soon as I picked up the phone; although I don't know this Martha Jones like you obviously do, so maybe I'm just being–"
"Paranoid?" the Doctor cut in. "Yes Donna, yes you are. Martha's fine. This is her parents' house and something weird is going on. It's our job to find out what that something weird is, don't you think?"
Donna sighed and fiddled with the ends of her hair thoughtfully. "I suppose so. But if you're wrong, I'm blaming you, Martian!"
"Always the alien's fault isn't it Donna?" She gave a nod. "Well then," he said, rather breathlessly, and rubbing his back at the same time where he'd whacked it as he fell off the pillar. "That's fair enough, I think. I'm here, you're here, the TARDIS is here, safe to say, I think we've arrived. Time to go and find out about something weird, yes? Grab your jacket!"