He's holding her in his arms, and it's over. She's over.
Fifteen years for her, innumerable for him. All over in fifty-five seconds.
She's still warm, still buzzing with regeneration energy, but the Doctor knows better. Nothing could have saved her. He'd had far too many years and three regenerations of his own to think about it, and nothing. Donna Noble was dead.
The UNIT soldiers barge in, and the Doctor can barely hear them, barely manages a response. He'd lost her before, and it killed him. Now, he's lost her again, and again, it was all his fault. Always his fault, dragging her into danger and countless near-misses, until the last one scraped too close. And he'd lost her. And it had killed him.
He's clutching her body like it's a lifeline, like he'd done with too many friends dying in his arms. His eyes are wide; he thinks if he closes them he might entirely lose touch with reality.
And then… she wakes up. And the loss has become inexplicably another near-miss.
He's getting too old for this.
"I really do remember, though. Every second with you."
They're back in the TARDIS now, and she's inexplicably, miraculously alive.
"I'm so glad you're back, 'cos it killed me, Donna." He fiddles with the new TARDIS interface, more to distract himself than much else. "It killed me, it killed me, it killed me."
"We can have more days, can't we? I mean, why is it always such a big goodbye with you?" Her voice is so real. More real than any nightmare he'd had in the past centuries with her in it. "'Cos you could visit! With my family! We could do outrageous things. Like have tea, and dinner!"
"Point is…" He fiddles with more buttons and levers. She's asking the impossible of him, even if she doesn't know it, and he's barely able to hold back his emotions. "You've been given a second chance. You can do things different this time. So why don't you do something completely new, and have some friends?"
Her words hit him like a gut punch. Have some friends. The bitterness of this old face threatens to bubble up in him, and he quickly shoves it down, but not before he sees flashes of what having friends did to his past lives. To the friends he tried to have. To the ones he couldn't save. He sees Amy and Rory, and the tragic end they endured, and the countless tragedies they faced even before the Angels.
He sees Clara, how being with him made her like him, and how she died because of it. His final night with River, at the Singing Towers, fated to die to save him. He sees Bill, her torment at the hands of the Cybermen. His mind reaches further back, to Martha's living hell in the year that never was, to Jack's endless lives, to Rose…
"...yeah. Maybe, yeah," he musters his reply, moving around the console so she wouldn't see his face. But then she does, and he can't hide it anymore.
"Donna…" he manages, and her face softens, and his crumbles.
"Oh, spaceman," she murmurs, and a tear manages to escape. He crushes her into a hug, his chest shuddering.
"I've missed you so much," he whispers into her hair. "After you left, Donna… and I thought you were dead…"
"Shh. I know. It's alright. I'm here now."
He pulls away, chuckling through his emotions. "Thing is, you're right, you've always been right, Donna Noble," he said, running his hand through his hair and heaving a breath. "From the start. I do need someone." He shook his head. "I'm rubbish on my own."
"Yeah, 'course I'm right," Donna grinned. "Now. Here we are, then. Let's just start with this. Sitting here, having a coffee. What could possibly go wrong- OH MY GOD I'VE DONE IT AGAIN!"
The console burst into flame sizzling with her spilled coffee, and the Doctor and Donna Noble were off once more.