Steady as the Beating Drum
Chapter 13: The Doctor and his regrets
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It's all very well and good to say that you love someone. It's easy. All across the universe there are people falling in and out, every second. Every nanosecond. People do it all the time without even trying.
Words are wind, but the Doctor's hearts are mountains.
The Doctor has never purposely loved anyone, but it's the sort of thing that happens without your consent or not at all. He loves them all, the little human scattered across the globe, and later, the cosmos. Every single one of them earns his love just by existing.
His people were the same. And it was worse than dying when he had to kill them.
He loved his family, his wife, sons and only daughter, his granddaughter and her family after that.
Every companion he brought aboard was a creature who owned a little chunk of the old fool's heart.
Because it was that easy for the Doctor, to fall in love with the wonderful people he finds along his travels.
He loves Mickey, who he had greatly underestimated in every iteration, who frustrated and annoyed him beyond comprehension. He had an unparalleled ability to better himself; a drive to improve. A way of loving that was so steadfast it required no meat to feed it.
Mad Martha, he hadn't deserved (then again, he didn't deserve any of them). She was so good, loyal and fun. Like when the snow melts after a long winter. She forced him to be better, by being an example of everything he'd ever fought for.
Clara, Amy, Rory, River, Jack, Rose, Sarah Jane, Ace, Mel, Peri, Tygan the list went on and on…
He would do anything for any one of them.
In theory.
But he hadn't let Donna die when she had the chance- when she'd begged him too.
It wasn't worse to delay what was apparently inevitable. For a man with infinite time on his hands, he tended to value every second of it. Every extra second with Donna Noble in the universe, was a blessed age.
But what fresh hell would the Master conjure for the woman who trusted him more than anyone else in the universe?
The Doctor was not keen to find out.
Donna was ripped backwards into a pair of arms, the Master calling his own name filled her ears. She understood what he wanted her to. That the man whose arms encircled her body and kept her struggling at bay, was the man who she believed had plucked her from her life with the Doctor and made her forget all about it.
Well. She wasn't wrong.
The Doctor, the real one, held on until the disorientation of travelling via vortex manipulator wore off.
"GET OFF ME!" Donna shrieked, wrenching free with a huff. She whipped around to face her kidnapper, to find that he was a tall skinny man with angry looking eyebrows. "Have you been following me?" She demanded sharply.
Her eyes darted around searching the room she now found herself in. It was very small, with concrete walls and one way out. A steel door with one of those spinny bank safe-locks like on the telly. "Where have you taken me? WHY have you taken me?"
The Doctor took a step forward and she positively leapt back to create space. She threw out a hand in front of her, splayed in defense. As if that would save her if he really wanted to do her harm. He took another step and she slapped him hard, right across the face.
"Oh for the love of- Donna!" The most dangerous man in the universe raised his hands above his head in surrender. "Not touching. See? Hands."
Her arm lowered to her side, but she reversed until her back was scraped by the rough texture of the wall, even through her blouse.
"Do you know who I am?" he enunciated slowly
"You're the Master," declared Donna with a defiant rise of her chin. She glared down her nose at her stalker.
His laugh was a quick and bitter thing, sickly and tired. "I am most certainly not."
"Yes you are."
"Donna, calm down. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm just trying to stop the Master-"
"You're the Master, Nitwit, you talking in third person now? Gone further off the bend than usual?"
"I'm not- you know what. It's fine. Whatever. I'm keeping you from the Doctor. That's who he says he is, right?" the Doctor waved his hands around to illustrate his exasperation.
"Oi! He is the Doctor, you're not gonna go all Time Lord on my mind. It's not going to work!"
Oh the irony.
"I will do no such thing! And point of order; you, Donna Noble, have been following me."
Earlier in the Doctor's Timeline…
Martha stood off too the side and watched the strange scene unfold.
Mickey was operating a forklift upon which the Tardis was being lifted. The door was open, out of which hung the Doctor, his arm carefully outstretched towards Mickey. He inched along, closer and closer to the rift.
Martha waited with a thundering heart and baited breath.
It reached the point where the lift was tilting forward into the void and then finally reached the point of no return. Forward it toppled and they disappeared in a blink.
In the void, Mickey climbed out the side of the lift as quickly as he could and leapt for the Tardis as the forklift fell away into the dark nothing.
There was an instant where he thought he wasn't going to make it.
And to be perfectly honest, when he felt the Doctor's hand grasp his and saw the blind panic in the unfamiliarly young eyes, Mickey was surprised. He was a little angry at himself for it, but he didn't know this man the way he thought he had. He was older, stranger and cold. His anger no longer simmered below the surface, but bubbled up, overflowing into every interaction he had. This man was so different than the two he remembered, but he supposed-
-Not that different.
The Doctor hauled him into the Tardis so fast that they both fell on the floor, tangled up in pile of limbs.
"That was closer than I wanted that to be."
"At least Martha didn't see. She'd've taken both our heads off."
"At least it wasn't Martha."
They found their feet and quickly approached the console.
"Do you know where we are now?" Mickey squinted and corrected himself "When, I guess?"
"Of course," he scampered around the console scanning screens and screening scanners, his coat trailing behind him in flashes of red. "Alright Old Girl, first thing's first. Where oh where in the universe is Donna bloody Noble?"
a/n: I know it's a short update but it had been a while and I didn't want to leave you guys hanging!
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