“do you like doctor who?” is such a loaded question. how do you safely explain the answer is yes but it sometimes makes you feel sick with longing and you miss liking it the way you used to and you are afraid to engage with it because the last time you checked in 13 was the doctor (at last finally after forever) and the doctor was safe and you do not want them to Not be safe, and if you think about m/offat and what he did to the doctor and to the story and to the franchise you are annoyed and exhausted and angry, and there is a strange little man in the back back back of your head who sometimes volunteers stories about iceberg lettuces when you’re out shopping or tells you jokes, and your friends are most of them rooted in this tv show and if you let go of it you’re sort of afraid that’s letting go of them, and you have sort of let go of it anyway, and you don’t keep up with the show anymore but the doctor is still there, and the TARDIS is still his first and deepest love, and who says infinity doesn’t have anything to offer?, and there is this extraordinary hope and capacity for laughter and sliver-of-cruel and you miss it.
in terms of that poem: do i like doctor who? no i loved it. i have had to deal with that
Finding a whumpee post-collapse, sprawled loose-limbed and vulnerable on the ground; finding a whumpee just before the collapse, in time to see the fear in their eyes as they feel their body giving out.
Finding a whumpee where they’ve been abandoned: in an alley, or a field, or a ditch, or a riverbank, or on the caregiver’s doorstep.
The way the person who finds them just takes in all those injuries, offering a new perspective on what’s been done to the whumpee. The way they freeze, for just a moment, in shock and horror. The way they have to decide how to touch the whumpee because there’s no easy answer, no ‘this part doesn’t hurt’.
Finding a whumpee where they’re being held captive:
The rescuer can see the place which will haunt the whumpee’s nightmares later, can see the tools and the restraints and the hollow gaze the whumpee is barely able to lift to the door. Alternatively, the whumpee is unable to look up to see who has just entered; maybe the most they’re able to do is flinch at the sound of the door, or maybe they don’t stir at all.
“I get you out of these cuffs, you do not get in my way.” This was the trade-off: it would have been just as easy to leave her there. The Doctor wasn’t going to leave anybody to die, but that wasn’t really what was at stake here - he would save her life, really. She’d just be stood in the one spot while he did it, which actually sounded awfully convenient (humans wandered off and he had absolutely no doubts in his head that Donna Noble would do precisely that) - the only issue with it was that the Doctor could imagine being stuck in one spot while all of the world-saving was going on and he’d tried very hard to ignore the guilt gnawing away at his stomach as he walked the lengthy corridor away from her, footsteps echoing - and then he’d groaned and turned right back around.
Fine. Fine! Fine. But if he got her out of those handcuffs, then she was going to have to not disappear and loudly ignore everything he had to say about anything, and he knew - intimately - how very challenging that task could be for her. (Actually, he really quite hoped she DID wander off, in the opposite direction from him, because she had no business knowing him at all, he shouldn’t have been here, only he could not bring himself to leave her handcuffed in place, down here.) “I don’t have time to go chasing you down. If you wander off you could die.” One hand was frozen on her wrist, sonic in the other - he was waiting for her confirmation. Being deliberately short with her, to boot, so that she did not have any wild ideas about befriending the nice young man he was - he wasn’t a nice young man, he was a grumpy old man, and she’d better believe it. “You’ll just have to leave. I’ll show you the exit, and you get to it. Do you understand?”
No, that wasn’t right. He swallowed again, and whatever effect her words had had on him, he seemed to close off even more; the Doctor withdrew into a sudden silence, staring at her with a look best described as dumbfounded and numb. Wounded.
Donna Noble wanted to know how it had hurt him. Because she wanted to know that it was equal, that they’d somehow been just as bad off as one another, that she no longer needed to get even. The harshness of this realisation left him reeling and he scrambled to correct it: that wasn’t Donna Noble. However he’d thought about her just then, that was him. Alone too long. It wasn’t Donna Noble. He knew her like the back of his hand; the Doctor and Donna Noble, inside the TARDIS, allons-y, fighting and roaring with laughter, usually at the same time. So he dismissed whatever thought had been holding him back, and took a deep breath.
“We’re best friends,” he repeated, as though that would answer all of her questions. And then, stumbling, the Doctor realised what she wanted, what until now he had missed: the way she looked at him, the demands for answers, and the memory of a conversation he hadn’t had, muttered in his ear because he needed to make sure she knew. She didn’t believe she was anything special. She didn’t believe that these months could’ve passed without her in them, that he could still care.
“Donna, you are my best friend.”
That hadn’t changed. It wasn’t going anywhere. And this was so domestic and silly and look at them, arguing like an old married couple ‘cause neither of them could say what they meant, and he dragged in his first real breath of air since this had all started. “Even losing you like that, I… you were right, Donna. Sometimes I need someone. I thought if I just kept you alive, if I dropped you home and made sure you were safe, if you travelled the world, if there was still some kind of YOU…” But he’d been wrong.
He’d been wrong.
“You were too important to me. That’s why.”
She wouldn’t ever find the words to describe how she felt in those moments, hearing the sincerity in his voice and seeing the raw emotions in his eyes. It made her go back to a hazy memory, where he (no not HIM but still so very much him) had kept talking, bulldozing through her and hitting her essence. Perhaps that’s what he thought to as well, perhaps that damn metacrisis connection wasn’t all that broken, and she would be glad. Because it meant that he understood her need, the wall obstructing her to him, and it made her shoulders sag with relief.
This time she lets the sobs come out, head falling onto his chest and arms thrown around his neck, and all she can whisper is, “It’s alright, I’m back.” And she is, she’s back on the TARDIS with her memories and her best friend. Her best friend that still believes in her, always believed in her, and she can start to believe that a little bit more now.
That had been her doubt. That had been the answer she needed. She couldn’t believe she was that important to him, was important at all, that her disappearance had actually affected him. But seeing how he took in air, looked at her with wide brown eyes, and finally SPOKE to her, she could see that maybe she did matter. To him, at least.
She still mattered to her best friend.
Not letting go, but her sobs having calmed down, she shook her head against his chest. “Silly Spaceman,” she whispered, “you just ‘ad to talk t’me. Don’t lock up like that, yeah?” She lifted her head and put her hands back on his chest, looking up at him with a shy smile, and gave a small nod. “We’re best friends, no hidin’ stuff, yeah?”
“But that’s just it, though, Donna, don’t you see? I didn’t.”
And at last, the Doctor looked at her. Really, properly looked at her, with no mask and no limit and no anything; for a moment he was completely transparent, and in that moment there was confusion, and hurt, and a little breathy sigh that sounded like a hitch of the voice and suddenly he was vulnerable. “I tried travelling without you, Donna, I almost undid the laws of time, itself. I tried travelling without anyone and I –” and, non-existent god above, his voice broke. He looked back down. “And I can’t. I just… can’t.” And if losing her just like that had done this much to him, then picture what her death would have. He didn’t even need it to be her, she could go, she could go and be Donna Noble and she could be brilliant but he couldn’t face losing her like she’d wanted him to. He wasn’t… “I just can’t.” good enough. He wasn’t good enough. Strong enough. Enough of the man she wanted him to be.
Furious, though not with her, he went back to the dashboard, the knobs and buttons and twisty bits. Swallowed, in some desperate attempt to remove the unwelcome lump in his throat. Every single one of his friends, whether he took their memories or not, every single one of them – he knew what he did to them. Wasn’t blind. Show someone his sort of life, show them how to run, and then dump them back on Earth – leave them to live a normal life – did she think he didn’t see what it did to them? Did she think he didn’t know what he’d done? It took him a second to compose himself.
“Imagine that. Just for a second, just imagine me, thinking you were dead.” And this was what finally came out.
He was afraid of who he was when she wasn’t with him.
“I couldn’t.” Not how she’d wanted. Not like that. He sniffed; looked away; swallowed; nodded. “I’m sorry.”
There he went again, using that damn word. With a closed-mouth scream, she slammed her hand on the console. She stalked over to his side and gritted her teeth, her finger pointing accusingly at his face. “Stop using that word, Doctor. Stop sayin’ you’re sorry an’ instead, for once in your life actually TALK!”
He had been talking, had actually been telling her what had happened, and while hearing it had taken the wind out of her, she needed to hear it all. She needed to hear just what he had been doing, what had happened to him once he DESERTED her (that’s all it would be for her, until she can wrap her head around just how much they NEED each other) to finally believe that they had both suffered. Without that, she would remain bitter, her image of him flying away on the TARDIS with yet another human on board, no REAL guilt on his conscience, would be the only one in her mind.
“I can’t see, I can’t because I wasn’t there an’ you-you keep HIDING.” She wasn’t giving him credit, she knew that deep inside. For just a few seconds ago he had bared himself to her, agony written clear on his face and she had wanted to soothe his demons away, but now she needed to throw that to the corner. “I don’t know what you’ve been doin’, where you’ve been—- I didn’t know YOU for these past few months! Don’t you get it?” She takes a deep breath and it comes out as a series of hiccups, face flushed and messy with tears. Donna lowers her hand, taking a step closer and placing them on his hearts.
“Doctor, if you don’t talk to me, I won’t ever know. I might not forgive you,” she pauses to swallow, hating how her hiccups have torn into her words, “but I could understand. We’re best friends, aren’t we? I trusted you with my LIFE, an’ if you would just let me know how-how-how this all hurt you, I would like to trust you with it again.”
But he jabbed at the TARDIS’s console, cutting himself short. There it was again. ‘I’. That was what his thought process had been and he’d think it again, too, if he ever had to think about it ever again then every single time, it would be ‘I’. Because he couldn’t lose her. Not like that. Not because of… though he worked the controls, the TARDIS was not moving anywhere; it was just something to do with his hands, something familiar. There was an uncomfortable sort of hunch to his shoulders. Tense. A whole lot of bloody ‘I’s and he wouldn’t lie to her about that. About a lot of things, but not that. If she was going to travel with him, there could be no pretences, no falsehoods.
Sometimes, not always but sometimes, ‘I’ would be all he had to say.
What would you have done? He burns with the question, every single fibre of him. It’s on the tip of his tongue. To help her see, maybe, or perhaps to absolve himself of something, somehow. The Doctor made a point of looking distracted, suddenly far too interested in his craft.
“Yes,” he said, eventually. Curtly – or maybe not curtly, but there’s something in his tone there, something begrudging and quiet and asking her to just drop it, please, though it would snow on the moon before Donna Noble ever did that, he was sure. More daring than he was, and without his permission, his eyes wandered back up to meet hers. He was scared, but not of being wrong. Emotional, but determined. An ultimatum: take it or leave it.
Take me or leave me.
Her voice had been sharp, had been curt, and the very essence of hurt. She had thought that perhaps it would snap him as well, would make him realize that she needed words, actual words that were something besides more pointless apologies. Those had long stopped meaning something to her in this regard, those words that had flowed from his lips so easily that it always made her doubt whether he truly meant them at all. She knew all too well how much of a fast-talker he could be, how impressionable he could be—-
How much he LIED.
It was just one word, one syllable that broke through his lips and tore straight into her. The man she trusted in all the world, in all the universe, her best friend above all and everything, and he was cutting her off. It didn’t feel as if they’d spent months traveling, equally bringing down each others barriers and sharing themselves, having faith in each other. She had always followed his lead, never took more than he offered and gave the same to him. But with that short, “Yes,” he took it all back, and she could only follow in kind.
Donna met his eyes, her gasp caught in her throat and tears pooling over at the hard look in them. He wanted her to stop, to just leave it, but couldn’t he see that she couldn’t? She couldn’t live with half-answers, with explanations that drifted away, and glances she couldn’t meet anymore. That’s not the life she had lived (not with him, and that’s what had made him special), and not even for all the world would she start to.
“So that’s it?” There’s not a hitch in her voice yet, but her whispers are breathless as her vision continuously blurs. “You’re not gonna talk, just gonna… leave it? Leave me? I don’t…. I don’t e’er thInk I’ll understand, an’ you obviously won’t understand why dyin’ would’ve been better, so much better than all the chaos I’ve had to live with, but—-”
“You went on with your life. Kept on going, the Good Ol’ Doctor savin’ lives and planets. ‘Coz what’s one lost human,” she spits out the word, head bowed and fists clenched, “to the mighty Timelord?” Now she hiccups, and she hates that she’s moved from the jumpseat because all she wants to do is fall into it and scream. “You went on. I didn’t, Doctor.”
She wants to forgive him, wants to just go back to being the pair of confidants traveling in a wonderful ship throughout the universe. But she knows she can’t do that yet, not until she gets actual answers. She wishes it were as simple as accepting his apology, smiling, and keep on going. How she wishes it were that simple.
It never was just that simple, nothing ever was, not with the Doctor.
She still remembers how panicked she felt as he had looked at her, wanting to find some sort of sign that he wasn’t going to do that, not that. Instead, he had just come closer, sorrow clear in his eyes and she had known exactly his plan. It filled her with such fear, not having wanted to cry and beg, but he had already betrayed her– what did her pride matter?
With the silence swallowing the air between them, his expression broken into something she can’t quite read (and how that infuriates her, that she can’t read him as well as before, and she misses it), and it snaps her patience. Donna is used to him hiding behind run-on sentences and exaggerated syllables, but she thought (and wasn’t that her ultimate fault, THINKING) that they had gotten past that.
“Is that all you have to say?” Her voice turns mocking, eyes bored raising and hands gesturing wildly, “Oh, I’m sorry! I’m so so sorry! I, I, I, just a whole lot of bloody I’s?!”
It had been wrong, and he’d known it was. He’d done it anyway. The Doctor’s gaze dropped back to the TARDIS’s controls, hands working absently and without purpose. Ashamed. He did not wear the emotion well, nor with the sort of pride he wore everything else. “I’m sorry,” he said. There had been no choice. Which was a lie, because of course there had been, she’d begged him for it, to choose anything else, because it was her right to choose and she didn’t want to go back to that life, working as a temp with nothing to her name and being bored without even knowing it and waiting, constantly waiting, for something she couldn’t even remember. But if it happened again, he wouldn’t hesitate to repeat himself, and that was the silence that filled the empty ship, who – perhaps out of respect for the subject – had fallen silent, herself. Not even the hum of the engines.
“I –” and for a moment he almost dared to speak, head whipping ‘round so his eyes could meet hers, but the words died in his mouth. He couldn’t just let her die. Not after everything, not after all of that. And he’d known without reservation or even hesitation that she would be brilliant, that she could do so much, even if she’d never met him. Even if she believed she never had. His gaze dropped back to the console.
love how i was like “new blog new me! not bringing anything back!” and then gwid mentioned one (1) thread and my resolve crumbled faster than an oreo in milk
reblog it you coward i want to read it again or send me a link
