The road less travelled...

Title: Nightmares and Daydreams – Moving On 2/5
Author: katherine_b
Characters: The Doctor (Nine, Ten) and Donna Noble
Spoilers: Everything up to Journey's End.
Summary: The Doctor has found Donna again.
A/N This is all juliet316's fault. After reading Time in Flux, she would begin hypothesising about how Nine might meet up with Ten and Donna again. So thank you, hun. Hope you like this!
A/N 2: Clearly, when I wrote the extra piece for Time In Flux that contained Nine’s thoughts and dawning realisation of what happened to him, I didn’t expect it to become another whole story. Therefore, if you’re struggling to remember what happened in what is now Part I of Moving On, I suggest you read it again.

Part II

After their somewhat traumatic adventure in 1987, the Doctor is happy to leave Rose visiting her mother for a few hours. He heads out into the Powell Estate, strolling through the streets until he comes to a large park. The open gates seem to invite him to enter the leafy environs and he follows the shady path until he comes to an area where several benches are set up within a smaller area that is almost entirely surrounded by tall trees.

All but one of the benches is empty. A woman is sitting on the furthest seat eating a sandwich as she reads a book.

Dropping onto another of the seats, the Doctor tilts his head back, feeling a sense of peace wash over him as gentle sunlight warms his face. He's begun to appreciate such moments more since the loss of Gallifrey. His life has never had many quiet times and now he values what little there are more than he ever did.

A bird cheeps overhead several times before falling silent, so much that the Doctor can hear the woman turning the pages of her book. The Doctor smiles as he listens to her chuckle at something she's reading.

A muffled groan, however, cuts his musing short and he looks around to find that he's not as alone in this small area as he thought.

A man in a brown suit, a strangely familiar man, is leaning against a nearby tree.

And beyond that – the Doctor all but gasps aloud in confusion and horror – is the TARDIS.

An instant later, however. he knows that it's not his TARDIS. The mental 'voice' that echoes in his mind is different from the one the Doctor is used to, and he knows that that changes when the Doctor does.

This man, as he has already realised, is a future incarnation of himself.

The other Doctor, however, has paid no attention to him. Instead his attention is focused on the other occupant of the park, whose ginger curls are gleaming in the beams of sunlight streaming through the trees.

Ginger...

And when he turns back to the man nearby, he knows for sure, and he can't quite help the joyful leap his hearts make in his chest.

He's found them at last!

It's really her!

But, as he looks at the miserable expression on the other Doctor's face, he knows that something is terribly wrong, and that unhappiness stops him from rushing over to greet her the way he wants to.

He can't help himself, he has to know what's happened and whether he can talk to the woman who helped him so much.

“Can you tell me the time?” he asks carelessly, watching out of the corner of his eye as the man standing nearby starts, shaken out of his reverie, turns – and then tenses as he sees the man who asked the question.

As he remains silent, the Doctor arches an eyebrow expectantly, wondering if the other Doctor is about to say who he is. He doubts it, though, because he knows he'd never admit the truth if he happened to meet an earlier version of himself.

“What are you doing here?” the other Doctor demands.

“What?” The Doctor is genuinely confused by that response.

There's a wariness in the other man's eyes that suggests he's not sure whether the earlier incarnation of the Doctor has recognised his later self. For an instant, he watches him wrestle with the correct response.

“Nobody ever comes here.” The man in the suit takes a step forward. “Not at this time.”

“It's a public park.” The Doctor shrugs so that his jacket crackles, his voice careless, but his eyes watching every movement the other man makes. “Nothing stopping me, is there?” He pauses for a very long, almost awkward moment of silence, before adding, “Doctor.”

The other Doctor narrows his brown eyes. “You know who I am,” he says warily, backing towards the TARDIS. “We shouldn’t be here. Not together.”

“She kind of gives it away,” the Doctor replies, nodding towards the blue box and seeing as the other Doctor – the future Doctor – takes another step away. “Don't worry, I’m not about to grab you. Wouldn't want to disappear again. Only just popped back into existence.”

“Where's Rose?” the other man asks, looking around as if searching for her, apparently no longer desperate to escape.

“Home.” The Doctor shrugs, rolling his shoulders back and closing his eyes as a beam of sunlight warms his face. His coat crackles. “Visiting her mother. She insisted I stay here and…”

“…there’ll be hell to pay if you’re not here when I get back,” the other man says in a very fair imitation of Rose’s accent. “I remember. Reapers all gone?”

“Mmm hmm.” The Doctor suddenly turns a suspicious glance on the other man. “Rose isn't still with you then?”

“Not anymore.” The reply comes in hoarse tones. “Treasure her, Doctor. Value every minute. Because you don’t know when it’s going to end.”

“Who’s that then?” The Doctor nods at the woman in ginger hair. “Because, unless I’m mistaken – and we both know I never am! – she means almost as much to you as Rose does.”

“It’s different.” The other Doctor speaks in a whisper, dropping onto the seat, looking almost bereft. “Completely different. Donna – she’s amazing. She saved the Universe.”

“Donna?”

“Donna Noble.” A half-smile curls the Doctor’s lips. “You’d have liked her. But she doesn’t meet you. She meets me.”

“And now you’re stalking her.” The Doctor laughs at the proud, almost possessive, tones in the other man’s voice. “Before or after you meet her properly?”

“After.” The misery is writ large in the other man’s features and he doesn’t respond to the Doctor’s amusement. “Months after for her. Not that she can remember. Me or the TARDIS or anything.”

The Doctor narrows his eyes. “Why?”

“She had to forget.”

“Nobody has to forget,” the Doctor objects. “They just do.”

“Sometimes they do.” The other man looks momentarily lost. “Sometimes it’s the only way to save them.”

“What did you do?” he demands.

“I took it away.” The man leans forward, his shoulders hunched as he rests his elbows on his knees, staring at the ground. “I had to. She was going to burn up if I didn't.”

“Burn up?” The Doctor narrows his eyes, knowing that something's wrong, although he isn't quite sure what. “Time Lords burn up. Regeneration. Humans don't.”

“For a moment,” the other Doctor's lips twist, “one shining moment, she was a Time Lord. Meta-crisis. Everything in my head was in hers.” His eyes sink to the ground. “But there can never be a human-Time Lord meta-crisis. You know that as well as I do. So I had to take it all away.”

The Doctor turns his eyes back to that vaguely familiar ginger-haired figure sitting on the other side of the park. He can't suppress the curiosity that the other man's words have prompted in him, but he's not about to ask for more information because he can hear – almost feel – how much it hurts the other Doctor to talk about what happened.

Instead, he wants to ask the other man about the hours and days following the change from his eighth body to this current form. He would love to clear up some of the details that are still so vague in his mind, but it takes time for him to think of a way to approach the topic. In the end, he asks about something that he knows is still going to be a difficult topic for both of them, but which might, if only briefly, distract the other Doctor from his pain.

“Have you been back to Gallifrey?”

“You know I can't.” The other Doctor's expression is grim and angry. “You locked it away.”

“I did.” For once, the Doctor isn't letting himself sink into his usual guilt. “And, after I did, there was someone with me after I regenerated.” He narrows his eyes. “Two people. You were there. And so was she.” He nods at the woman on the other bench. “I'm positive it was her.”

“I regenerated alone.” The reply is swift. “There was no-one else there.”

For a moment the two men sit in silence. The Doctor knows he's met other incarnations of himself – more than once, in fact – but he was certain he'd been with this particular version of the future Doctor on two occasions. Now it seems like they may have only met once – or, if this individual never had the meeting with his fifth body – not at all. In addition, he's not sure he's ever met a parallel version of himself, and definitely not one in the same version of the Universe. This, he realises, could be very complicated indeed.

“So, another version of me,” the man beside him says slowly, and the Doctor knows that they're thinking along similar lines, “the one who was with you when you regenerated – he was still with Donna?”

“Mmm hmm.” The Doctor nods. “I don't remember much, but I have a vague memory of hearing them talk and they sounded happy.”

The other Doctor slides his fingers through his hair in what this Doctor is certain is a nervous habit. “How – how was she?”

“Lovely.” Remembering, he smiles. “Gentle. Kind. But,” he adds, grinning properly now, “she didn't let me get away with anything.”

“No.” The man beside him also smiles, although his eyes are still dark with tragedy. “She wouldn't. And she was still travelling with a version of me...” He sinks his face into his hands so that his next words are all but inaudible. “I wish I was him.”

The words come out as an almost soundless whisper, but the Doctor can see the pain on the other man's face and understands the depths of his longing and desire. However he makes an effort and shakes himself out of that mood, nodding at the woman sitting on the other side of the park.

“That Donna Noble isn't like the one you met.” His lips twist into a painful smile. “Not anymore. She's loud and brash and – well, she can be gentle. And kind. Thoughtful. But you've got to dig through a lot of superficiality before you get there.”

“But she wasn't like that when she travelled with you,” he says knowingly. “Was she?”

“At first.” His admission is reluctant. “She changed though. Started to embrace things.”

“You?”

“No!”

The reply is indignant and comes so immediately that the Doctor laughs and even the man beside him has to chuckle, perhaps understanding his reaction.

“You want her back?” the Doctor ventures after a period of silence.

“I can't have her back.”

“You miss her.”

“So much.”

That raw, desperate, almost hungry tone is back in the other Doctor's voice as they watch Donna rise to her feet, brush crumbs off her lap and head across the grass, tucking her book into her bag as she goes.

“Do you watch her every day?” the Doctor prompts as the other man gets to his feet once Donna has disappeared through the trees.

“She's my reward.” The other Doctor's voice is husky. “My reason to keep going. Even if she'll never know it.”

He tilts his head up towards the sky and blinks furiously. The man in black remains silent, unable to help wondering just what she did to prompt these emotions in this future incarnation of the Doctor. He knows he has his own reasons to be grateful to Donna Noble – although not this Donna Noble – for everything she did, but he has to wonder what adventures the Doctor and Donna had together that led to her involvement in the meta-crisis that the Doctor mentioned.

“I have to go,” the man in brown says suddenly, leaping to his feet as if desperate to get away. As he stops in front of the TARDIS door, however, he stops and glances back over his shoulder. “Thank you, Doctor.”

He smiles. “I'm very welcome,” he says teasingly, remembering the words he used in his fifth incarnation when he met the Doctor in brown for the first time.

They exchange grins, somewhat weakly on the part of the other man, before the Doctor disappears into his TARDIS, which dematerialises the next moment.

Next Part