Drabble: The almost daughter

[pamymex3girl.livejournal.com]

Title: The almost daughter
Author: pamymex3girl
Rating: PG-13
Character: Doctor, Jenny
Warnings: spoilers for the doctor's daughter, in case somebody hasn't seen it.
Summary: He sits alone in the console room, hunched forward, face burried in his hands.
Author's Notes: I've always wanted to write a Jenny story, I've just never really had an idea. Not sure if this is any good.
Word Count: ~472

He sits alone in his console room, hunched forward, face buried in his hands.

Donna ignores him, leaves him to his pain, and he thinks – for a second – that she must think that he is crying. But he isn’t, though he wants to, because if he starts crying now he’ll never, ever stop. He’s not sure how long he sits there, nor what happens while he sits there; he just sits there trying not to think about it. And all he can think about, all he can focus on, is that it really shouldn’t hurt this much. Because he really should have known this was going to happen, he should have known this would be the end, because this is the way it always ends.

So it really, really, shouldn’t hurt this much, but of course it does.

After all this is what his life is, just a string of ‘almost’, ‘maybe’ and ‘could have been.’ That is really all they are in the end – his companions, his friends, his family – at the end of the story, when it’s all said and done, they are the ones who almost make it.

It’s a mantra going on constantly in his head: almost, almost, almost.

She’s one of them now, the almost-companion, the almost-daughter and she’s the worst of them all. Because she almost makes, she almost gets there, on board the Tardiss to different worlds and long forgotten times. She almost makes it to where she always should have belonged and she almost makes it forever. Because she’s like him, too much like him, and she would have stayed, would not have been like his friends, she was a Time Lord, just like him.

They could have travelled the worlds forever.

So he sits there, hunched forward, face buried in his hands, trying not to cry. Trying not to think of the things they almost did. Trying not to think of how long it took him to accept her, to understand that she was real. She was the almost – daughter, the one who was not quite real, the one he couldn’t accept.

Until Donna made him listen to her hearts and he could hear them beating just as steadily as his.

And then it was over, just as fast as it started, a simple shot took everything away. And now he’s here, alone again and he realizes, suddenly, that he doesn’t even have a picture of her, not that he could forget her.

They almost make it, the last Time Lord and his daughter, but it is taken away just as fast as it was given to him. And he’s left with the memory of what could have been but never will be.

And the knowledge that this blow, on top of all the others, might be the one he won’t recover from.

Comments

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

Ohhh, this broke my heart. Poor Doctor. I just...poor JENNY.

*HUGS*

[pamymex3girl.livejournal.com]

I loved Jenny, I still hope she'll turn up again. I just wish she'd stayed longer, for a few more episodes (I've been working on an idea for a fic where she travels with the doctor.)

Hugs back

[shaviva.livejournal.com]

Such a sad time for the Doctor - they really glossed over it in the episode so it was great to read your version of what might have happened next. And to think, she's out there somewhere still ... if only the Doctor knew! Well done :)