Time… Whether a human or a Time Lord, time is strange. Of course, humans and Time Lords don't have the same understanding of it. Humans have barely touched on the theory of relativity – Einstein, of course, a brilliant guy and a superb billiards player – and quantum mechanics when Time Lords play with these concepts in their cradle. Humanity's point of view about time usually makes the Doctor laugh.
That's why they have so many expressions about time. "Time softens everything," Voltaire wrote, even if Martha pointed him toward that expression. The Indian proverb said "No hand can catch time," while the English and the French claim that "Time heals all wounds"… There were so many. Not one culture didn't have a pearl of wisdom, real or supposed, to share about the passage of time. And every other planet in the universe had its own. On Ostigon, the Doctor's favourite expression was "Eat time or time will eat you". They are all funny in their own way, both because they are both false and completely accurate.
On Gallifrey, Time Lords laughed off their total lack of understanding of time's twists and turns, but the Doctor always had a guilty affection for them. Unlike his peers, he's not blind to other species' wisdom, especially humans' vision of the world. Their expressions may be imprecise, but they translate feelings in a way a Time Lord had difficulties expressing.
And it is a fact that time's moving slowly around him right now, failing to heal his wounds and soothe everything, as they say. He's not used to time going so slowly. Usually, everything passes quickly around him, years, centuries, wars, companions... What do they say on Earth? A blink of an eye, and everything's already gone. He just has time to get attached to a companion that they've already gone, or so changed that he no longer recognises them. Rose, Martha, Amy, Rory, Clara, Bill, Yasmin, Graham, Ryan, and Dan, all gone. Jack's the only one who hasn't changed, but his very existence hurts the Doctor and reminds him of the loss of Rose, so he prefers not to think about it. There are so many things he prefers not to think about. So many people.
Of course, some things remain with him even if he leaves so many things and people behind, rarely because he wants to, most often because he has no choice but to run away. Mainly the pain remains behind, and the pain. Also shame, because each time the Doctor had lost someone, whether a companion or a stranger, he knew he could or should have done more to help. If he had grabbed Rose's hand, if he had looked after Martha and kept her from the Master's plans, if…
Both his hearts hurt so much when he thinks about it. Sometimes, he feels like they're going to explode. Maybe one day they will.
He can see things ending like this. One day, he would exhaust his last regenerations just from the pain of having loved so many people and places that are gone forever. After all, even a time traveller can't retrace his steps. Every time he's tried, it's ended in disaster. The Doctor always found it easier to run away, run forward, again and again, never to stop running, and never look back.
For the first time in a very long time, he finds himself rooted to the spot. Of course, his next version has given him a duplicate of the TARDIS, which means he's not really stuck here or now, but he has promised Donna and his future self he'd stay and, how would the Humans say it? Oh yes, he said he would take the time.
That's nonsense. But the Doctor promised, so the TARDIS stays in the backyard, with wisteria threatening to swallow it up, and the Doctor waits and waits, and waits, and time moves so slowly he wants to scream. Sometimes, he just stays in front of Donna's big clock in the kitchen to watch the big hand move with the snail's slowness across the dial.
"It's not supposed to be a punishment," Donna tells him on one such occasion.
She looks at him in pity and understanding. The Doctor would prefer her to be angry, or disappointed, or whatever, but Donna has always been like that. It's why he loves her so much.
Usually, when his companions discover others travelled with him on the TARDIS, they get jealous. The Doctor had never really understood why. Humans are as strange as they're fantastic. Apparently, they like to think they're the first people the Doctor took on adventures. Some are competing with people they would probably never meet. The Doctor still remembered with bewilderment the explosive meeting between Rose and Sarah-Jane.
They're wrong if they think the Doctor has ever ranked his companions or compared them to each other (except perhaps to Rose, poor Martha, who suffered so much from coming on board just after her). They were all extraordinary, each in their own way. He hadn't had a favourite companion. Okay, maybe he liked better some of them in one regeneration and felt indifferent to them in another. Maybe the pain born from some separations followed him longer than others, but he never had a real preference.
Still, Donna is his favourite. Or his favourite of the moment, or this incarnation, or something that amounts to the same thing, and that's why he forces himself to smile at her every time she gives him that look. He doesn't want to disappoint her or hurt her feelings.
"I know," he promises, not for the last time, and probably not for the last time either.
All he gets for his efforts is to make Donna sigh even louder.
"This is supposed to be a break to help you, Doctor," Donna insists, pulling him away from the clock and into the living room. "To give you time to think about some things."
"I know."
"Then why do you look like a man sentenced to death?"
The Doctor flops down on an armchair and sighs. He no longer has his gaze fixed on the clock, but his fingers move at the same tempo as the clock, despite himself. Donna fixes her gaze on his hand and refuses to let go. Donna never runs from battles.
"When I was Doctor-Donna, I had your memories and your intellect. But there is a question that I have forgotten to ask myself until now, isn't it?"
Rather than answer her question, the Doctor keeps drumming on the armrest. It's easy to understand how a four-beat rhythm had driven the Master mad. He may become mad himself just for the incessant ticking of a clock. He thought of stopping that damn clock, maybe to look for a hammer, but the ticking will always be there, waiting.
"I inherited so much of you during the meta-crisis," Donna says. "I had a Time Lord mind, minus all the aspects related to biology, which is the reason being the Doctor-Donna was killing me so quickly. Today I remember just enough to know that living like the rest of us, in a single place and a single time, would be hard for you, but it's more than that, right? And it has something to do with you being a Time Lord, not you being... well, you."
"You all say that I should slow down, that I should catch my breath, that I should take my time to settle in and heal. You say that as if it was easy. He does too, my next incarnation. But it isn't. I can hear every second that passes. I can feel the rotation of Earth, all things invisible to human senses but highly perceptible to my Time Lord senses. We didn't name ourselves that just because of our oversized ego. We feel time like you can feel the rain on your face or the cold on your fingers. It's not something we learn, it's something we do instinctively and. I. Cannot. Stop. Doing. That."
He marks each word by tapping his head on the back of the chair and glares at the kitchen clock through the wall, louder than ever in the sudden silence of the living room. Finally, Donna takes his hand and, for a moment, the Doctor sees himself again, so long ago now, taking Rose by the hand, brilliant, wonderful Rose, to give her a similar speech. He wanted to impress her and to make her want to travel with him. He blames himself for that because in gaining her company and her smile, he lost her for all eternity. Even today, losing Rose and Donna are among the top three most painful separations he suffered. At least Donna came back to him, mostly thanks to herself, but Rose is gone, forever.
"I didn't think it would hurt this much."
Even if Donna's compassion touches him, the Doctor can't contain a small amused snort. She overestimated his ability to endure the situation. Everyone did, even he and his future self. Right now, he only wants to run straight to the TARDIS and get lost on the other end of time and space. Of course, Donna is not a woman to accept that little laugh as an answer. She hit him on the arm, not violently, but not playfully either.
"No self-pity!" she scolds him. "It's the deal, remember? And don't play that with me, Martian boy! Is it that painful?"
"Even worse."
"Except that's not all, is it? Not all Time Lords travelled the universe like madmen until they dropped from exhaustion only you. They can deal with it and you can't."
"No, not me. I never could."
He doesn't know why he's like this. Maybe it's all the trauma dumped on him since he first stepped foot in the TARDIS, but no, it goes back further. The Doctor stole the TARDIS because he couldn't stand the immobility, even before he started running away. Maybe it's because of the Timeless Child. Maybe he's just a failed Time Lord.
"I don't know why I'm like that. I probably never will. There's so much thing I don't know about my past, so much more than I ever thought."
"I see. We should tackle the problems we know before we get to that," Dona says, half mocking, half relieved. "Talking about that. When the TARDIS abandoned us on that horrible ship, I saw the look on your face when you realised we might be stuck forever… I was too busy panicking and being angry because I thought I would never see Rose again, but there's something else, I see it now. I've forgotten most of what I saw when I was part you, but… had you ever tried to live like this before?"
"I tried, once."
"Which means you had no choice but to do it, at least once."
The Doctor lifts his head, sighs, and closes his eyes. Wonderful Donna, with her compassion and her incredible perception. Sometimes he wishes she were less so. If she were just asking out of curiosity, he'd refuse to answer, but she's just trying to help him, and the Doctor is able – finally, after all this time of denying it – to recognise he needs help. He can't refuse to answer, not when he's face to face with Donna's big, sad, understanding eyes. Sometimes he resents himself for putting her in the role of his nurse/governess/therapist, but he will never say so because Donna's all too happy to help him back in thanks for their shared adventures, even if she nearly died again and again. She said so herself since he took her offer to use the room she and Rose set up for him. That's what best friends are for, she says. The least he can do, to be honest. He owns her at least that.
"It was in my third regeneration, well I think it was my third. Who knows with that Division stuff? The Time Lords had exiled me to Earth in punishment for several things I had done, starting with stealing the TARDIS, at the very beginning of my travels when I was with Suzanne, my granddaughter, well, that and for interfering with historical events and the timelines of some people. They forced me to regenerate, and left me on Earth, with no memory of how to use a TARDIS or the mechanics of travel through time and space. That's where I started working for UNIT. Kate's father, the Brigadier, loved that man. He ran the show. He'd be so proud of Kate if he saw her today. So, I worked with UNIT and even had my car, Bessie. Met Jo Grant, Liz Shaw, and Sarah-Jane, although I met her after the Time Lords lifted my exile."
He smiles, remembering these dear companions, even if happy memories are mixed with a bittersweet feeling. He misses Sarah-Jane and the Brigadier and would love to see them again, they and so many other people he lost. The Doctor hates goodbyes, but he's at a point in his life where he can't help but wonder if running away really helped.
Donna smiles back.
"You'll have to tell me their stories one day. But I can't imagine you in the... sixties? seventies? You're already so frustrated with our 21st-century technology. Was there anything more advanced than a toaster back then?"
The Doctor groans and lets his head bounce against the back of the chair.
"You Humans with all your wonderful ideas, but why do you have to be so slow to implement them? Why should I wait twenty, thirty, fifty years for you to perfect an invention when I could go see the result directly after the hundred failures and quality tests you take to get to this stage?"
"Gallifrey couldn't have been built in a day. Don't tell me you discovered time travel and built the first TARDIS in less time than we took to go from the first computer to the cellphone."
"But that was before my time. Or maybe I forgot. I'm not sure. Who can be? Not me, apparently."
Donna holds up a hand to stop the flow. He's sure she's recorded everything, all the details he doesn't want to talk about, Susan, his conflicts with the Time Lords, losing the TARDIS, the past and future self he met, and the ones he can't remember. She'll bring all that again until he talks. The Doctor should have taken her to meet Freud. She would have loved it, but poor Sigmund may not have survived meeting Donna Noble.
"How hard was it, Doctor?"
"Bearable? Yes, let's say that. The Brigadier and UNIT kept me busy. And then there's always someone or something to threaten your little Earth and your wonderful humanity. The Silurians. The Sea Devils. The Master. But when the Time Lords gave me back access to the TARDIS, and to all of time and space…"
"You were relieved."
"I was, and I decided never to do it again. Linear time, listening to seconds pass one by one, that's not for me. But it happens, sometimes. There's an accident, or the TARDIS needs refuelling, or I get dragged in another direction, and, well."
"Did you ever try on purpose?"
"Yes. Once. The year of the slow invasion."
Donna frowns. The only thing that impresses the Doctor more than Donna's enormous heart is her ability to miss anything out of the ordinary. It's what's saved her life these past few years, but it's still unbelievable.
"The year of the slow invasion?" he insists. "The little black boxes? People going into cardiac arrest anywhere?"
"Oh, that! Wilfrid and Sylvia wouldn't let any boxes come into the house, and then I became unemployed, and then my mother tried to force me to telecommute or to take a sabbatical to look after Grandad and Rose. Then I broke my leg, and she insisted I stay in bed for months. Oddly enough, the television kept breaking that year, and I suppose she's the one to blame for that. She was too afraid I'd get my memory back. So what, you tried to stay through the invasion? Wasn't it almost a year before they disappeared? I thought it was a hoax. The invasion of the little black boxes. Laughable."
"More like an attempt at genocide of humanity. I was travelling with Amy and Rory at the time. Well, travelling isn't quite the right word. They weren't in the TARDIS full-time anymore. I was the one taking them on holidays. That was right before I lost them."
The Doctor closes his eyes and bites his tongue. Why does he always have to say out loud what he wants to keep locked away forever? Now Donna has more names to add to the never-ending list of questions she plans to ask him. But the Doctor doesn't want to talk about Amy and Rory. It still hurt too much, and what good would it do him? Still, Donna says it will help, eventually. Sometimes the Doctor wishes he could skip moments in his own timeline to skip painful moments like these conversations, but maybe he wouldn't experience much then. There are lots of painful moments in his life. Well, his successor seems balanced enough, which means leaving day by day will help, someday. It can't come soon enough.
"I told them to watch the cubes, to wait for something to happen," the Doctor says to stop thinking and remembering and dreading the future. "I told them there was nothing more important in the world."
"How long did you last? Two hours?"
"I'll have you know I can deal with things not going my way."
Donna's look is so cheeky that she should bottle it. She'd make a fortune selling it.
"Four days," he confesses. "I lasted four days. It was awful, being trapped with billions of inactive little black boxes and Twitter. Twitter! Before it became X, but still, Twitter! You can create the most incredible works of art and scientific wonders, and you invent Twitter!"
"I get it. And you lasted four days! Not too bad for you."
"I hated it. Every time I got stuck was worse than the last. I don't know how to stay in one place. I just can't."
"Why?"
The Doctor crosses his arms to stop himself from echoing the seconds ticking on the clock. It's the heart of the problem, the reason he can't stand living in slow motion among all these humans. It was bearable the first time, he could endure it the second time, but after that? He would choose electrocution over being forced to stand still. And yet, that's exactly what he's doing now. He's been here for twenty-one days, thirteen hours, twenty-eight minutes, and fifteen seconds. That's already longer than what he managed with Amy and Rory during the year of the slow invasion, when he had used the Wii to think of something else, anything else, before running away and spending ten years (three months for Amy and Rory) convincing himself he could do it, that he missed them too much and that he had to spend time with them before it was too late and he was left with nothing but regrets, again.
A few weeks later, he had lost them forever.
Through the window, the Doctor can see Rose Noble keeping company to dear old Wilfred Mott. He would like to say that the latter has not changed, but he sees the fatigue in every wrinkle on his face and even in his sparkling eyes. As for Rose, he has not seen her grow up. He arrived halfway, as he often does.
Donna also has new wrinkles. Usually, seeing them on a friend's face hurts because they remind him that the moment of goodbye is getting closer by the minute, but that's not the case for Donna. Despite those little lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, she has never been more radiant. She's everything he had imagined her to be when he met her. No, she became more than he ever dreamed.
Dear Donna. She wants to help but there are some things the Doctor cannot tell her, like the fact that every time he has taken her somewhere beyond the end of this 21st century, they have walked and breathed in a universe where Rose Noble lived and died without Donna noticing, that every person she meets may have walked on her daughter's grave or is one of her descendants and that somewhere, while she was running or laughing with the Doctor, the last fragments of Donna's bones were crumbling to dust. Donna, Rose, Wilf. They're all here, alive and happy. But they've also been dead for thousands of years, so what's the point of caring about their tiny lives?
The Doctor is sometimes oblivious to the fact that he hurts people, but he's never intentionally cruel, except to his enemies. He'll never tell Donna that she's dead. Rose's dead, and Wilf, and Sylvia, and Shaun, and Amy, and Sarah-Jane... He's leaving them behind so he doesn't see how their story ends because it's easier to imagine a happy life for them than to see them getting old. After all, time's running out for them, and imprisoning their young spirit, using their own bodies as a prison. The Doctor won't tell her that's how he sees the word, but she's still waiting for an answer and he's been silent for eight minutes and thirty-eight seconds and Donna's starting to worry about his silence. He's frantically searching for something to say that isn't just that he can't stand to see them grow old and die.
"I told Amy once, during this long invasion, that I wasn't running away, that I was running toward things before they were gone forever."
"And is that true?"
"Yes. No. True enough not to be a lie. It started like that and it's still true. There's so much to see, and I don't want to miss any of it. Some of it is repeatable. Sunsets on Matavis IV-Apple. A great chip shop close, but there's another just as good on the corner. Other things you can't do twice. You only meet people for the first time once. That's why I bring companions with me, because none of those unique moments would mean anything without someone to share them with. And then those things, those people, stay with me forever. I've never forgotten a single moment spent with any of you, not intentionally, at least."
"But you forced some of them to forget. You forced me to."
"Only when I had no choice."
"I know, Doctor, and I forgave you. If you hadn't taken my memories away, I would never have had Shaun, Rose, or all those years with my grandfather. All those wonderful things I would have missed! I wouldn't give them up for anything, Doctor, not even for a life in the TARDIS. And you gave me all that. I wouldn't have become the woman Shaun fell in love with without you helping me see I could be amazing too. Even with amnesia, I still had something left from all those fantastic journeys."
But she's still angry that the Doctor took the choice out of her hands. He understands. Or at least he tries. That's the new thing about this new/old body. He tries to understand people by putting himself in their shoes. Oh, he's always wanted to help people and empathise with their problems, big and small, but he often concluded he knew better than them.
At best, he pushes people to make the decision he thinks is best. At worst, he takes away their choice and lets them live with the consequences. Better not to ask himself how many times he has done just that, knowing full well how wrong it was.
Hubris has always been the sin of the Time Lords. And in that respect, he is no better than the rest of them. Knowing that never made him any better than them. The Doctor wishes he could save everyone. Sometimes that makes him want to behave like a god who can decide who lives and who dies, just because he can or because he doesn't want to see all these people ruin their lives for stupidity. His heart may be in the right place, most of the time, but in the end, he's no better than the other Time Lords.
"You know, Doctor, my mother says a lot of stupid things, but there's one thing she says that I have always found quite true. Dwelling on things you can't change never does the soul any good."
The Doctor glares at her, but his heart is not in it.
"I am over two thousand years old. At my age, I must have earned the right to dwell on things when I want to."
"There's dwelling on things and there's whipping yourself with crushed glass to make sure it hurts. Do you remember what the other Doctor said? You never stopped, neither from fleeing nor from running. I saw that when we travelled together and I almost remember some things I'm sure I didn't live through. He mentioned others that meant nothing to me. So many bad moments. But so many good ones too, isn't that right?"
On one side, the Flux, Logopolis, the Time War, losing Bill, and so many other catastrophes, big and small. On the other, so much joy, wonder, and laughter… he just has trouble remembering specific times and places.
"I need help."
It's the first time he dares to say it out loud. He blinks, surprised by himself, which doesn't happen often. Beside him, Donna's smile is as wide as it is sad. She's proud of him. He's not sure she should be.
"I know."
"The last face I wore… She looked at everything like a child. Or rather, she tried. But my heart wasn't in it anymore. Even before the Flux. It's like I can't see the universe's beauty anymore, even through your eyes."
"My eyes?"
"Yours, and my other companions' that came before and after you. You've helped me so much, without even knowing it most of the time. It's so easy to fool you and make you believe that I still have it, but I have lost something, in tiny bits, and I do not even know what."
"I know what it is. Wonder."
The Doctor silently articulates the word. That is it. Donna put the word on it, as always.
"How do you humans always find the ideal word to express things? I know more than a billion languages, and when it comes to emotions, you are the ones who always find the right word. On the other hand, when it comes to swearing, you're not half as good as you all think to believe."
"I have another word for you, Doctor. Depression."
He wants to laugh, to tell her she's wrong, or that his Time Lord brain is simply too powerful to be afflicted with such a petty human affliction. But that would be a lie, and they both know it.
Suddenly, Donna stands up and walks away, too quickly for the Doctor to catch her. She goes to the window and wraps her arms around herself. She looks small, in a way the Doctor has rarely known her to be.
"I lived the same thing for fifteen years, without knowing why. Some days, everything looked grey around me. Others, I had the impression I was the colourless one. Like I had no substance. Some days were good, but the greyness always returned. I've consulted so many psychologists, psychoanalysts, and brain specialists to understand why my brain was causing this to me and if it was linked to my amnesia. The worst part was when Rose was born. I was so happy holding her, and there was still this thing that I missed, that made me want to scream that I didn't belong and that everything around me was as fake as a movie set. But this little girl I was holding in my arms was real. Shey helped me more than all the psychologists in the world. It started again when Rose transitioned because I have never felt more inadequate. I still loved her so much, and I was so proud to see her finally happy after watching her fight for months against something invisible to me, but there was this little piece of my brain that told me it was my fault, that my daughter was unhappy because of me, because I hadn't even been able to give her the body that would have suited her."
The Doctor stands and takes her in his arms. Before he can even close them, she hugs him, but turns to continue watching Wilf and Rose. The young girl sits, her head in her hands. She listens attentively as Wilf tells her some story of his youth. She's radiant, and the Doctor's so happy to see her like that, but Wilf's hand shakes a little more than the day before and the Doctor wants to run away again.
"I've been at my lowest and highest these last fifteen years," Donna continues, without realising for once how ill he feels. "They were the ones who pulled me out of the greyness, every time. Grandpa. Mum. Shaun. Rose. Even when I tried to help Rose, she ended up helping me more than the other way around. And while I've heard a lot of crap from pseudo-specialists who were more interested in looking at their diplomas than the patients in front of them, I've kept that word. "Depression." I even looked up the etymology."
"From depressio, sinking."
"And that's it, isn't it, Doctor? The feeling of sinking into the ground that swallows you, with this enormous pressure on your body, on your torso, the earth entering your mouth, your heart beating in your ears like... the ticking of a clock, reverberating so loudly that you can't hear anything else. Am I right?"
If he speaks, the Doctor is afraid he'll collapse immediately, so he nods.
"Depression is curable or at least manageable for humans," Donna says.
"I'm not Human."
"I know that. Fifteen years of battling depression, even when it's actually the aftereffects of induced amnesia to avoid the deadly effects of a meta crisis, is a long time. Fifteen years have passed for me, but how many years for you?"
"I stopped counting a while ago. I give random numbers. Maybe I get it right, once in a while."
"That's awful."
"It is. It… It's strange. It feels good to say it out loud. It's awful. It's awful, it's awful, it's awful."
He whispers the word one last time. Silence falls in. It's surprisingly nice. The Doctor feels like he can feel something unravelling deep inside him, somewhere between his two hearts and his stomach. It's tiny and not enough, but the Doctor knows well that in a thousand years he hasn't admitted so much to any of his companions, because if he admitted he was crushed by the weight of the trials he'd been through, he would have broken into a thousand pieces, which he couldn't afford. A broken Time Lord is too dangerous for what's left of the universe. Just look at the Master, and the Doctor himself in his worst hours. The Time Lord Victorious is just one of the many times he's come close to the limit, and the Valeyard is yet to come.
These last few days, he's often come close to abandoning this experiment imposed on him by Donna, his successor, and just about everyone who's come into contact with him in recent weeks, to rush into the TARDIS and escape this untenable situation. He's not even sure what's stopping him when the only thing that keeps him going is telling himself that he can leave whenever he wants and that with a TARDIS he could never be stuck. Maybe it's the tiredness that makes getting up in the morning so hard. He's never slept as much as he has in the last few weeks. Many companions would have cried with relief to see him sleep so long, which would have saved them from running after him until they exhausted themselves.
But no, it's not that, or not only that. It's the hope that keeps him going because he's seen a spark in the next Doctor's eyes that disappeared from his gaze a long time ago. The wonder was there, like with some of his previous bodies, especially those who travelled the world with Amy and Yaz. It was a new wonder, for want of a better word, a young man's wonder that he was not even sure he had in his very first incarnations. The ones he remembers, at least. He wants to find that joy again. And if it was present in his next regeneration, isn't it because he did the hard work of therapy?
"One day you'll feel better," Donna promises, who doesn't need to be Doctor-Donna to read his thoughts like an open book. She's better at it than many of the Time Lords the Doctor has met. Her gifts will never cease to impress him.
"I don't know how to do it, Donna."
"Take it slow. Day after day."
"I don't know how to do that. I wish I could. But feeling time slip away around us makes me want to scream and run. I know I should do something else. I know it's not healthy. Of course I know. I've talked to enough therapists. I've helped some of them build their theories, or get rid of monsters that they ended up taking over through manifestations of their subconscious. But I think you only go to therapy because you can't run away like I do."
Donna chuckles.
"Probably. Nothing beats a little trauma caused by Daleks to forget your Earthly worries. But joking aside, I don't know what to tell you, other than platitudes. Take your time. Healing is not burying bad memories under tons of other problems and forgetting about them until they threaten to make you explode. It's making sure they lose their harmfulness. When you can look at them without feeling pain, that's when you've healed."
We must allow time to take its course. One of the human expressions about time that the Doctor hates the most. It means nothing, no matter how you turn it. How would experiencing time linearly rather than in a magnificent chaos of discontinuity help him heal? What is there more to this way of living that humans do than the way they live?
The answer is right in front of him. Humans don't run away with companions to impress them with their genius and the entirety of space-time at their fingertips. They build families, settle down in a house, pay taxes, and go on holiday to the seaside, only to complain about the bad weather that ruined their holiday. While he has sunk deeper into depression year after year, Donna has built herself solid steps to climb out of the same mud that he found himself trapped in. He called Yaz, Ryan, and Graham his "fam," but it was just a nickname. He never let them get past his defences, not even Yaz. Maybe he only overloaded himself with companions so they would bond with each other rather than try to force him out of his shell.
He never had a family. Time Lords don't build lasting emotional bonds, even with their children. If it weren't for Suzan, maybe the Doctor would still be stuck in that pattern of thinking. He hasn't got rid of it as much as he thought he would if he keeps repeating that he doesn't do families. And there could be worse things than ending up in the middle of the Noble-Temple family. He could be stuck with Jackie Tyler. Besides, watching Sylvia and Wilf grow older by the minute isn't so bad.
"I'm sorry," Donna says. "We nearly forgot you're not only there to rest, you're here to heal. UNIT must have specialised therapists that can help you, even if just by listening."
"No doubt. But... not now, okay? I don't think I'm quite ready for that. One day."
"One day," Donna repeats in a tone that makes him understand he had better not change his mind. "And until then, maybe a good way to untie this bundle of knots that is your head, is you tell us stories? I know for a fact that Rose would love hearing about your adventures, and even my mother, even if she'll deny it until her last breath."
"I tell stories all the time!"
"But never to the end, or in disorder, or to make people forget what you don't want to talk about. What I propose is that every day you tell me something sad, or painful, or that you'd like to leave behind. And then, a happier story. Rose hasn't heard the one about Agatha Christie yet. Could you do that? A sad memory for a happy memory?"
Yes, it's something he could do, even if he risks repeating the few happy stories he still has inside him before he's done with the bad ones. That's what he's here for, after all, to take his time and enjoy those he loves instead of letting them slip through his fingers. No one ever said it would be easy, but his headlong flight isn't any easier and he's tired of hurting everyone around him. Tired of punishing himself.
Why did he experience a bi-generation? Because of this face he wears always found it harder than others to say goodbye, but also because he had to find a way to generate a stable time loop just to prove to himself that he could find the spark of joy again. He had needed to see it with his own eyes to believe it. And now, he must follow the long road to complete this loop and rebuild himself. Donna's way is no worse than any other. He has always loved telling stories, and maybe one day, he will even be able to show all these wonderful places to Wilf and Rose. Of all the Humans he has known, few deserve as much to admire all the beauties of the universe.
"Let's do that," he tries to smile. He mostly fails, but the intention's there.
Donna steps aside to offer him a hand, which he shakes in the most solemn way possible. Some of the heavy atmosphere in the room disappears, but it still lingers.
"Should we start now?"
Donna hits him gently and hugs him again.
"We've covered enough sad topics for one day, haven't we? But if I'm not mistaken, Grandfather has almost finished the story about his old army buddies and he tires quickly. Shall we join them and let him take a few minutes to take his breath?"
She smiles so wonderfully. How could the Doctor say no? He puts a last kiss on her forehead and follows. He's almost surprised by the bright sunshine outside, so much brighter than what he feels deep inside. Donna's right. It is a beautiful day to tell a story, and he has a good many good stories in reserve, even if he has trouble listing them at the moment. Their adventure with Agatha Christie is a good one to start with, and Donna will help him remember others. Melanie should be able to help, too. She said she wanted to see him again when he had settled down a bit. Maybe now is the time to contact her again. Teagan and Ace too. The Doctor is a little ashamed of himself for having kept them so far apart from him during their reunion. If they haven't decided they want nothing to do with him anymore, which he would totally understand, he thinks he would like to see them again, despite their wrinkles that betray all the moments he has missed and the few moments he can still hope to spend with them. Replacing bitterness with bittersweet. That could even be enough.
The next day, all sorts of analog clocks have disappeared from Donna's house. The Doctor can still hear time passing and threatening to catch up with him, but the absence of the continuous noise makes it a little more bearable. No one mentions it, but even the watches on their wrists are free of the cursed second hand that gently taunted him. It's not much. It's huge. It's a good start.