#donna;

DOCTOR: I just want you to know there are worlds out there, safe in the sky because of her. That there are people living in the light, and singing songs of Donna Noble, a thousand million light years away. They will never forget her, while she can never remember. And for one moment, one shining moment, she was the most important woman in the whole wide universe. SYLVIA: She still is. She's my daughter. DOCTOR: Then maybe you should tell her that once in a while.

Donna finds him lying in the middle of a bedroom, spread on all over the floor. The floor is a mess, he knows there will be some cheeky comment about how he’s drugged all the pillows from every room in the TARDIS to this room just to spread wide to look up at the high vaults. Much to his surprise the comment never comes, but she clings to the side of the door and does not dare to step over the threshold, she just looks down at him as he looks back—his world turned upside-down. The goofy grin on his face still ever present as he invites her in and she almost dares to turn on her heel and laugh. That would have been the thing he would have bet on—

However, she lets go of that life-raft of a doorframe and wades through the pillow pile and lays down beside him, mocking his motions, hands folded over her chest as hair spilled around her face—he catches himself as he’s about to laugh, but he lets his arms go and the TARDIS turns the vaults to stars, just so he can show her why he’s laying on the floor. She quips that he has the real thing right outside their door, and that’s true—but he explains there is something almost humbling about this; it makes him feel like he’s in his place in here, not a lonely god—and not a Time Lord. Part of him hopes she shushes him, mainly so he’ll stop and snap out of this funk he’s been in for a while now, but she doesn’t. Donna just listens and relaxes, arms falling to her side as he spread his arms across the sky, still talking. It was relaxing—almost needed, oh he enjoyed the run and the chase, but watching her and talking at her was another thing he enjoyed. It was a thing he really enjoyed with Rose as well, but there was something about the ginger—with her hair splayed across the pillows and falling all around his face. It brought a bigger smile to his face, watching her features light up as the TARDIS churned, turning the sky for him and allowing him to show her the cosmos in a worry free setting.

No, risk of getting maimed, no risk of falling off a building or being called a ninny, no—she’d taken to just watching, laying back in the pile, pulling a blanket over herself as he talked astrophysics and watched her in one of the rare moments they weren’t yelling at one another. Of course this would be considered one of those romantic corny scenes he’d seen so many times before—one would lean over and kiss the woman, wooing her and winning her heart, but this was Donna Noble and his best mate. No—there was no wooing to be done, not when she was nodding off on his shoulder and she was possibly the best thing about him without all the romantic entanglements.

Soul mate bubbled to the front of his mind for a moment, but that was used for someone that was romantically entwined with another and would not be the word he would use for Donna Noble. Oh she took so much hold of him…even just as a friend—as something else he couldn’t tell, most likely no—his mind couldn’t fathom it, but he let his hands fall to his side as he felt her breathing hitch and slow, becoming even and deep. Warmed two hearts, oh he had been so frigid and frozen towards Martha, and he had regretted that—but he couldn’t be what she wanted and needed. Donna had fixed him, put him together and he couldn’t imagine a life without the ginger snoozing on his shoulder.

 Hopefully he’d never have to imagine a life without her, but—there would be that day and he’d have to give his best friend back to reality. Now was not that day, so there was no worry in his mind, no hesitation in his motions as he moved and placed a kiss on the crown of her head.

Then he relaxed.