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The address belongs to a derelict building. Wilf checks his phone again, the text from the number saved as Doctor, but everything lines up.
He takes a deep breath and mutters under his breath as he approaches the door.
“Please, be here.”
The plaque on the door is dull and almost illegible, but he manages to make out Blue Box as he knocks – and the door creaks open under his fist.
The inside is dusty and empty, but the walls look stable. A single emergency light over the double doors on the back wall valiantly tries to illuminate the room, but its efforts are for naught. Everything is grey, the air is stifling, and Wilf once more checks the address on his phone as he carefully makes his way inside.
“Doctor?”
Instead of a voice, his answer is the door clicking closed on its own at his back. The emergency light sputters with an electric crackle, and Wilf realizes the doors underneath are open.
... He could’ve sworn they were closed before.
“Doctor, this better be you...”
His steps are silent on the carpet of dust that covers the ground, but they are still too loud. There's absolutely nothing in here, no scratching of rats or scuttling of bugs, or even the noise from the street.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Only a couple doors cracked open under an emergency light, the corridor past them cast in the deepest shadow. Wilf steps closer, squinting to see past the red light, but doesn’t manage to make anything out.
He brings a handkerchief to his face before he takes another deep breath, wiping away the cold sweat and covering his nose to keep from inhaling dust.
And then, he pushes the doors open and – and steps into the TARDIS.
Oh, it’s different, nothing like the old Doctor’s TARDIS, but despite the changes, it’s still unmistakable.
“Ah, there you are!” the Doctor chirps as he climbs up to the main level, wiping oily hands on a dirty rag. “You took your time. I was starting to think I’d have to go rescue you, or something.”
“But...” Wilf whispers, pointing over his shoulder as he twists around.
The doors are closed, and they look nothing like those in the derelict building.
“Chameleon circuit. I got it running again for this gig, but it’s already breaking down. The old girl wants her gorgeous boxy shape back,” the Doctor coos, flicking a couple of switches that make the room light up with a purr. “Yes, you do, don’t you?”
“But it’s a building out there.”
“No, it’s the TARDIS. This whole place is an empty plot of land. We just set shop here for a couple days to help Donna, and we needed a more human shape for that. Hence, clinic,” the Doctor explains, waving his hands around as he slips past Wilf to push the doors open.
Where the place had been abandoned before, now there’s a waiting room befitting a proper clinic, with potted plants, white couches, a receptionist’s desk, working lights... Wilf gawks for a second, but when the lights go dark, the Doctor immediately closes the doors.
“Yeah, breaking down now. I can’t blame you for being unsettled. We won’t be here much longer, so let’s get to it.”
And with a wave over his shoulder to signal Wilf to follow, he returns to the main console.
Still trying to wrap his head around the TARDIS, no matter how futile the effort, he obeys.
The Doctor’s smile has dimmed some when Wilf sits on the offered seat. The alien stays on his feet, leaning against the console, with his hands curling around its edge with a tightness that makes the knuckles go white.
“How’s Donna?”
Wilf doesn’t answer immediately. The Doctor’s voice is soft, but the TARDIS is quiet, and he has no issue hearing it. No, he just takes a second longer to process the question before he dares speak.
“She’s... She’s Donna. She complained a lot about the margaritas and bothered Sylvia in the kitchen when they were cooking, but she’s...” Wilf’s voice cracks, and he brings the handkerchief to his eyes this time. “She’s so happy. I don’t think... I didn’t think I would ever see her like... Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“It isn’t a fix, you know that?” the Doctor whispers, smile nowhere to be seen when Wilf looks up.
“She told us, she said it’s a chronic issue, but you fixed her, didn’t you? You did something alien, right?”
“Yes, no, and yes,” the Doctor huffs, lips curling for a second before he pushes off the console. “She has a brain tumour, I can’t take it out of her without killing her, and this is what I did.”
He brings his hand up, and a second later, Wilf finds himself holding a fobwatch.
“... I don’t understand.”
The Doctor gives him a full-bodied shrug, shoving his hands in his pockets with the gesture, and doesn’t look up from the watch as he explains.
“It’s a Chameleon Arch. It's what Time Lords use when they want to hide as a different species. All that makes the Time Lord them, all their memories and experiences, gets locked in there, while a whole new personality and history gets installed in their body. Brainwashing of sorts, if you want. Except, since this is Donna, all I had to do was get her medical file from the TARDIS and reset her to an early date. Well, I say all, but it was a lot more complex than that. I got the brain patterns and personality, but I had to take the memories from there, so that took a while and—”
The Doctor goes quiet as Wilf wraps his arms around him. He flounders for a bit, especially when Wilf buries his face into his shirt, but he eventually returns the hug with a sigh.
“It’s Donna. It will always be Donna. And she’ll still have weird dreams, and she may speak some weird things every now and again, but all the ‘Doctor’ part of her is locked away. If she follows my instructions to avoid overstimulating the dormant side of it, she’ll be alright.”
“But isn’t all of her...?”
The Doctor sighs and pushes away, and Wilf wipes his tears as the alien rubs the back of his neck with a scowl.
“Time Lords are... We aren’t like you, Wilf. We are not tri-dimensional. There are a lot more bits to us than you could even perceive. Now, obviously, Donna didn’t grow any extra dimensions, but the regeneration energy got her a... halo? Aura? An extra something,” he huffs, pacing around the console as he tries to find the words. “But not really. Not there. It’s just... Ugh, just take my word about this, alright? The oddness she got, I locked away personally. Her body has forgotten she has it, so she can’t access it. Like the appendix!” he explains, rounding on Wilf with a grin that is too wide for his humanoid look. “And just like it, she will only become aware of it if it gets irritated or damaged by something. So, diet and instructions and the whole list I put together for her.”
“I’ll... take your word for it. Donna isn’t human anymore?” Wilf asks, shaking his head softly.
The Doctor grimaces and gets back to his pacing.
“I mean, yes, technically, but maybe she counts as a, what’s the word... Not a time-sensitive, obviously, but maybe psych-sensitive? No, wait, wrong translation...”
“You’re worrying me here, lad.”
The Doctor stops, shakes his head almost violently, and turns to Wilf with a huff and a much more normal grin.
“Right, sorry. Donna is totally human. And healthy. The brain tumour is actually a Time Lord bit,” he explains, tapping his own temple. “But she’s human. It’s something of an anchor for the extra bit she got in the Metacrisis, like... It’s where the nerve-endings for the extra bit connect to the brain. But since humans don’t have such a thing, it pinged as bad.”
“But it isn’t.”
“No, it isn’t,” the Doctor confirms with a nod, and Wilf relaxes back into his seat. “It will stay as is if she follows my instructions. Dormant and completely harmless.”
“Thank you,” Wilf whispers again, bringing his hands up to his face.
The fobwatch is still in his grasp. The Doctor’s smile falls when both their gazes fall on it.
“Yeah, well. There's something else about the whole thing,” he sighs, stepping up to Wilf to tap the watch.
A tiny puff of glittery dust comes off it at the Doctor’s touch. Wilf could swear the watch is warm in his grasp, almost alive.
“The bit of Donna I locked away,” the Doctor whispers, and Wilf doesn’t know if it’s as answer to the dust or completely unrelated. “If this fobwatch opens, it will go back to her, trigger her back into the mess that is the DoctorDonna, and she’ll die. No do-overs, no second chances. Which is why I welded it shut.”
“Can’t you get rid of it?”
The Doctor takes his hand back, fingers curling with a snappishness to the movements that makes Wilf flinch.
When he looks up, all he finds is darkness.
“I’ve killed enough.”
Wilf tries to breathe, but the air gets caught in his throat. He tries again, and as it goes down at last, it’s cold.
He blinks, and the Doctor is once more standing in front of Wilf, eyes in the here and now.
“This is still connected to Donna. We can’t keep it away from her indefinitely,” he tells Wilf, gesturing to the fobwatch without touching. “So, take it. Leave it to her in your will, or something, so that it’s special. Make sure it is never fixed. Donna’s brain has been programmed to not notice the fobwatch, to forget about it, so she’ll probably leave it in a drawer and that will be the end of it. But she can’t throw it away. Talk about it with Shaun if you must, tell him everything if that’s what it’ll take, but I wouldn’t recommend that. He probably won’t believe you.”
“You could tell him,” Wilf suggests, cradling the fobwatch to his chest like he would a newborn kitten. “Show him space, or something alien. He'd have to believe you then.”
“I’m leaving, Wilf.”
The air is cold again, but the Doctor’s eyes are warm. His smile is a small thing upon his lips, barely quirking them, and Wilf feels his breath catch in his throat as he remembers an alien in a cafe, and a conversation about death.
“You can’t...”
“Of course I can. It won’t even be the first time.”
“Lad—”
But the Doctor doesn’t listen, already walking to the door.
“Now, off with you. We got to get going or we’ll be late, and I can’t be late to my own funeral. Again. That would be bad manners.”
Wilf wants to shout, to protest, to deny everything all over again. Instead, he gets to his feet and joins the Doctor at the door.
They don’t speak another word. With glassy eyes, Wilf engulfs the Doctor in a hug, squeezing as tightly as he dares, and feels it being returned tenfold.
“Thank you,” he manages to choke out, and when he pulls back, he reaches for the alien’s shoulders. “Thank you for everything, Doctor.”
The Doctor nods and opens the door. The derelict clinic is no longer there, so Wilf steps onto the street, but a whisper makes him turn back—
All he finds is an empty plot of land overgrown with flowers.