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Donna's asked him where he comes from. He hates this bit.
They’re in the kitchen together and the fact that the TARDIS has provided a chicken casserole out of nowhere doesn’t make up for the fact that he’s very cross with her. The TARDIS, that is. Wouldn’t have killed her to have let Donna have a gentler introduction to travelling with him. But no. She had to go for sodding Pompeii, AD79.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d had to put Donna in considerable danger sorting out something that should never have crept into the timeline in the first place, provoking all sorts of awkward questions about why he changed all that stuff and then let thousands of people die.
She’s done yelling at him and now she’s crying. He can’t hug her because they’ve agreed that’s off-limits and anyway she hates him right now and she’d probably slap him.
She hasn’t touched the chicken. She might even decide she wants to go home.
At least she’s got a home. All right for some.
He tries to explain it again. “Some things are fixed, some things are in flux, and Pompeii is fixed…That’s how I see the universe. All the time, every waking second: what is, what was, what could be, what must not. That’s-”
He stops. Decides not to come out with the old “That’s the burden of a Time Lord,” thing because she’s an intelligent woman and he knows the questions it’ll lead to. Anyway, the funny thing is, ever since Martha joked, “Not pompous, then?” he’s been a bit more careful about saying what he is. Realised how it must sound. Time Lord. A bit up himself, really.
If some of the things he says give other species the wrong idea, he’s got to start taking that seriously. Whether he wants to is neither here nor there. This is his life now. Get used to it.
“Well, it’s not how I see the universe,” she retorts.
He walks around the kitchen - he still hasn’t sat down, or even taken off his coat, and his hands go into the deep pockets while he thinks. There’s a little lump of first-century pumice in the left-hand one, a funny little hedgehog thingie Rose once bought for him in the other. His hands clench around them, particularly the hedgehog, which by some near-miracle The Master never discovered.
“It’s not as if I have a choice,” he complains. He lets go off the pumice stone and combs his fingers through his hair. “It’s just what I am. You can’t choose not to be human-”
“So what are you then?” she demands, and he realises he’s fallen right into it.
He’s not going into all that tangerine towers and marmalade skies bit again. Where’s the point? What matters is what’s here and now. “Make it up,” he told the journalist the other day. Good idea. Except the last time he lied to a companion about that kind of thing, it all went pear-shaped alarmingly fast.
He likes Donna. He liked Martha, but he wants to get it right this time. He doesn’t want to spin her a line and then have to tell her later that he lied. Funnily enough, he can see it from her point of view. Someone who’s just said he can see the universe, every waking second shouldn’t follow up that kind of statement with a barefaced fib. It hardly inspires confidence, does it?
But he still doesn’t want to say he’s a Time Lord. Where’s the point? There’s no such thing any more. They’ve fallen off their perch. Demised. No longer a going concern.
“Where was Gallifrey?” she asks.
He’s gobsmacked for a minute. It takes him a while to remember how she knows the name in the first place; when he does recall saying it, he’d prefer to forget. But there’s more. She’s said “was”. Past tense. Right in the middle of the most terrifying experience of her life – so far – she picked up every word he said.
No doubt the fact that he was committing genocide at the time wasn’t lost on her, either.
But still, she’s here.
Suddenly, she shovels in a mouthful of chicken and says, “Sorry. Me and my big gob.”
“It’s all right,” he says. Not lying, for a change. When did that become all right? Or at least, all right to tell someone about?
“Does it happen a lot?” she asks, a little dribble of chicken gravy running down her chin.
“What?”
“Planets getting lost?” She sort of points to the other plate on the table. “You might as well eat something; it’s going cold.”
“And take your coat off,” she goes on. “You not stopping, or something?”
He hangs his coat on the back of the chair, sits down and starts working his way through the chicken, not saying anything. He’s a fast and focussed eater because he lives the kind of life where the arrival of the next meal is by no means certain, or even a very high priority. She’s just sitting there, letting him think. No threats, no ultimatums, no “I’m not going anywhere until…”
When he’s finished (he’s even lined up his knife and fork neatly on the plate, for some reason) she comes back to it.
“Gallifrey. It’s a nice name.”
“It was a nice planet,” he says.
“Was?” she repeats. The silence stretches out between them, a silence only the TARDIS and his memories can fill.
“What is it with you and losing things?” she asks, and gets up to put the kettle on. He thought she was so insensitive when he first met her. But he underestimated her. She can’t be that insensitive if she realises that some things can only be said when a person’s listening, but not looking at you.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I think it’s the curse of the Time Lords.”
“Bit dramatic, that,” she says, sloshing water into a mug. “My mum always said I was away with the fairies, that was why I kept losing stuff. Never did find my geometry set. I got detention for that.”
“Sorry,” he said, not really listening. “I’m being pompous. It’s probably genetic. We did think rather a lot of ourselves.”
“Time Lords,” she repeats, with her big voice and starey-eyed face. “With a name like that, I’d never have guessed. That’s sarcasm,” she added, helpfully. “Three sugars, wasn’t it? You should try cutting down, you know. It’s not good for you. Rots your teeth. Or do you have special alien teeth that don’t rot? I mean, you look normal. Bit odd, but sort of normal.”
“Oh thanks,” he says, and realises he’s just laughed, in the middle of a conversation about Gallifrey.
“I always wanted to be ginger,” he says, wistfully.
“You what?” He gets the feeling she’d have taken the two hearts on board more readily than this. She points to her flame-red mop and says every word with a full stop between them, the way she does. “You. Wanted. This?”
“Well, I’ve been everything else,” he sighs. “White-haired old geezer like your grandad, explosion in a spring factory, straight, blond and baby-faced, big ears and a Number Two haircut-”
She’s standing there with her arms folded and her mouth hanging open. “Excuse me. What are you going on about, exactly?”
“I’ve had ten different bodies,” he explains. “When I die, I change. Not just the suit,” he adds, quickly. “Sometimes I don’t even wear a suit. In fact, next time it happens I’ll probably wake up and find this one’s far too small. Last time I had my old leather jacket on and it felt like chain mail. I wondered how I’d put up with it all that time. And the time before I looked like Lord Byron – all cravats and stuff. Once I played the recorder.”
She’s obviously decided to go with it, because she’s snorting with laughter now, her hand over her mouth. “I learned at school,” she tells him. “You never heard such a racket.” She takes her hand away and starts miming halting fingering, stretching for notes her seven-year-old hands were too small to reach. “London’s burning, London’s burning, Fetch the engines, fetch the engines…and then you’d do something wrong and get this horrible squeak…FIRE, FIRE!!” and he’d rather have a duet of sonic screwdrivers than have to listen to her doing that.
But he’s laughing with her. “I was bit of a clown in that body,” he says. “Useful technique. People tend to dismiss you – can be handy, that. And then I got into trouble.”
“Never!” She’s slack-jawed in feigned astonishment. “You? Get into trouble?”
“All the time. And my people exiled me to your planet. They never quite knew what to do with me.”
“Me neither. I was sent home on the first day of school for biting.”
“I hated school. They called it Brain Buffering when I was a little lad. It was all done by robots. And then I went to the Academy for a hundred years-”
“A hundred years? Oh, hang on. I suppose the years were different on your planet, weren’t they? Different sun, and everything.”
“There were two suns,” he says. “Red mountains, and silver-leaved trees and the Citadel in a great glass dome. It was…nice.” He stops and rubs his neck. Can’t quite believe he just said that.
“Did you take any photos?” she asks. “Before you – er – lost it? Look, seriously, how do you lose a planet?”
“Yeah, I’ve got pictures.” He decides to ignore the second question. “Not that it matters.” He gets up and throws his plate into the dishwasher. It misses, probably due to his lack of practice. “I mean, there’s nothing worse, is there, having to sit through someone else’s photo album and pretend you’re interested?”
“I think I could just about stand it if it was an alien planet,” she replies, bending down and scooping up the broken plate. “You got a bin in here?”
“Over there,” he says, pointing, halfway out of the door now. “She’ll just absorb it.” Knowing women, that’ll lead nicely into a discussion of housekeeping on the TARDIS. Crisis averted.
“Man-eating plants,” she says, getting that Out There look in her eyes. “Seas of liquid methane. I can’t wait.” He wonders which would be worse, having to do an illustrated presentation on Gallifrey or let her wander around the universe with this travesty of it in her mind. “You can skip the volcanoes, though,” she adds. “Seen enough of them to last me a while.”
Oh, she’d forgiven him for Pompeii, then. Five top dates to avoid – on Earth, at any rate. 2001, 1945, 1666, 1912…Especially 1912. And when was the Black Death exactly?
“Is it true there’s canals on Mars?” she asked.
“Oh, come on!” he exclaims. “Have you any idea what the surface temperature of Mars is? Minus 87C! And the atmospheric pressure’s too low for liquid water to stay on the surface, anyway. There’s plenty in the permafrost but you’ll have to wait over a thousand years, until Olympus Mons activates again-”
He shuts up quickly. He’s never noticed it before, but volcanoes seem to be like London buses. You go ages without mentioning one, then suddenly they’re popping up all over the place.
“Is there life on Mars?” she asked.
“Oh, now, I’m not going to spoil it for you,” he says, wagging his finger. “If you’re that interested, we could go. 1382 Arean, that’s a good year…”
“I’m Aries,” she says, and his hearts sink. She’ll be trying to feng shui the control room next. Or saying there must be something in aromatherapy, even if Prince Charles does agree with it.
“You’re what?” he groans. “Oh, come on. You don’t believe all that rubbish, do you?”
“See, you’re just a typical Scorpio,” she taunts him. “Question everything but underneath there’s a streak of idealism.”
He rolls his eyes.
“Anyway,” she goes on, “my bum’s killing me on these chairs. If we’re going to have a photo session, have you anywhere more comfortable?”
“I’ve got a library,” he says, sounding ever so slightly pompous. “That’s full of sofas. And books and…stuff.”
“Oh yeah,” she says, and now she’s the one rolling her eyes. “And a billiard room, and a cinema and a swimming pool?”
“The swimming pool hasn’t worked for a few hundred years,” he says, apologetically. “Why – d’you like swimming?”
“Can’t stand it,” she replies. “Never learned. Tried everything but they couldn’t get me to take my feet off the bottom."
"Hang on, didn't you say you'd been scuba diving?"
A blush spreads over her not-so-delicate features and even he can see he's touched a sore spot.
"I didn't actually do the diving," she confesses. "Oh, all right, I just sat in a boat with a glass bottom and looked at fish and coral through it. Pathetic, aren't I?"
“Yeah,” he agrees, "But now you're looking at galaxies. That's progress." He can't help feeling a little bit chuffed that this time someone else has been caught fibbing. They both laugh, and he realises with a shock that he’s going to be getting those pictures out after all and the nice thing about Donna is she’ll tell him when she’s bored. He’s in no doubt about that.
He opens a cupboard and shakes a pack out into a bowl. “Metheriakroplopitan Tortilla Chips,” he points out. “Make everything better. Wait until you try the salsigrass flavour.”
And there she is, standing right in front of him and holding out his coat. “Put this away on the way to the library,” she says. “If you think I’m gonna start clearing up after you, you’ve got another think coming, sunshine. You lose any more planets, you clean up the mess yourself.”