Title: Family
Author: me
Characters: Donna, Ten, Jenny
Pairing: None, it's Gen
Rating: PG
Spoilers: S04E06 (The Doctors Daughter)
Summary: Donna thinks about the Doctor and what he's lost.
Author's Note: Please note the spoiler warnings!
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who, nor the characters. They are the property of the BBC.
BETA: The lovely Atari-Chan



Donna wonders how she never realised it before. For all his talk – and there was a lot of it – the Doctor never said anything. He spoke about anything and everything, but when it came to things that mattered he’d shut down. Refuse to talk because of the pain it seemed to cause him. Everybody had their secrets and the Doctor seemed to have more than most.

This didn’t stop her wanting to ask. She wanted to hear more about Gallifrey and its dark skies, of how and why it burnt. Martha had told her the little that she knew. What it was like to grow up there as a child, and how strange it would seem to her. She wanted to talk about the time lords, and the Doctor’s family, of everything he had lost. The Doctor was a father; the thought was so strange to her. She wasn’t sure she quite believed it. If she did believe it she wasn’t entirely sure how to process the thought. He looked so young, but she knew he wasn’t. She didn’t have a clue how old he was, but the way he spoke said everything.

She wanted to know about his child, such an important part of him. She’d be happy with anything, even just a name. Then there was the child’s mother, the most important woman in the Doctors life. The woman that must have been so special, so unique, to mean so much to the Doctor.

She knew they were both dead, destroyed in the Time War. How or why she didn’t know. She just understood that the Doctor was alone, last of the time lords. She couldn’t help but think of her own family, and how much they meant. How empty her life would be without them. Yes, her mother could be bossy and over-critical, but when Donna needed her she was there, always had been as far back as she could remember. Then there was her grandfather who Donna loved so much. She’d got her love of the stars from him. So many nights just sitting on the hill, gazing at the stars. He’d been so happy when the Doctor came along, because Donna would get to see all the things he couldn’t. He’d always thought she was meant for greater things.

Surely the Doctor had similar stories of growing up, of his family and friends. She wondered if the Doctor would be better off forgetting it all than remembering, going by how much it seemed to hurt. The Time War had taken everything from him and left him alone.

This fact was never far from the Doctor’s mind; that much she could fathom. It was clear in his sometimes ominous dark looks and coated words. She wondered if he ever stopped thinking about it. Well, he certainly couldn’t if his mind ran as fast as his words.

It occurred to her that the Doctor always travelled with someone because he needed them. Not only to stop him when his conscience disappeared – a vision of Christmas past, thousands of the Rachnoss burning and the Doctor standing over them like some vengeful god – but because it was so damn quiet.

He didn’t want to travel on his own because it left far too much time for thought. He travelled because he had nowhere to go. So he threw himself into the adventure and the noise, delighted in it, because he had nothing left.

Jenny had almost given him that, a reason to live. He claimed there was always one, but she knew how much it must have hurt. He’d said himself that he saw those he’d lost in her. Perhaps it was better that she was gone than the Doctor live haunted with that.

No, Jenny had been something special. The Doctor would have gotten over that, started to finally see her for what she was: her own person, not the ghosts of people long since dead. Donna would never forget the look on the Doctor’s face when he’d heard that double heart-beat, how haunted he’d seemed. How sad he’d been when he lost her. Jenny might have helped him heal, escape the past.

That chance was lost now, and as she looked at him she wondered if he’d ever get any better.