DW: Warmth

Sleep was not easy for Donna Noble that first night.  Her room felt strangely alien to her as she reassembled her belongings within; where once she had heard a quiet murmur promising life deep within the walls of the beautiful old ship, she now felt only silence beneath her fingertips against the smooth wall.  
She supposed she shouldn't have been surprised.  Her absence had lasted over a year, more than enough time for the TARDIS to forget about her.  The trusting hum would return in time; at least, she hoped it would.  Perhaps if she prayed into the walls, the floor, the very atmosphere of the ship…
It didn't take her long to sort out her things; she didn't have much, not anymore.  In her first series of adventures with the Doctor, she had imagined it akin to taking a safari or a summer getaway, and had packed nearly everything she owned.  This time, the romance of travelling to distant galaxies was all but lost; she knew she could die.  
She pulled off her clothes then and slipped into a pair of pajama shorts and a tank top.  Pushing her soft, cottony comforters to the side, she slowly brought herself to sit down on the mattress, letting her fingers knead the fabric of her high-thread-count sheets pleasurably.  Only the best.  
As she tugged the covers over her shoulders, feeling a distinct chill in the air, her mind was clouded by thoughts, thoughts and regrets.  
She regretted, of course, ever leaving the Doctor.  It was all an accident.  She was visiting her family while the Doctor took care of a few things he assured her needed done; those few things drew out to a year.  While Donna prayed he'd kept the best intentions in mind, she imagined in those months he'd put her on the backburner while he enjoyed the time of solitude.  In a strange way it seemed logical, for alone he had no one's life on the line but his own.  Still, the thought of him alone for a year, coupled with her own year of loneliness, had somewhat muted Donna's gladness upon his arrival.  
That was not to say she hadn't been excited, thrilled even, to return to the life she adored.  He promised the moment he stepped out of his blue box and into her waiting arms that he had found a brilliant planet for them to visit, where the grass grew silver and the rain fell in a mist of water crystals that filled the air with rainbows.  She could not wait.  
But within the silent, lonely walls of her bedroom the night before their newest adventure would begin, Donna could not help but feel the weight of her doubts and fears double upon her shoulders.  What if he had been happier without her?  What if he left her behind again, and this time never returned?  
Or what if she became too scared, too weak, too fragile to handle things?  
She had nightmares every night, back in Chiswick, every single night.  She could see the Ood and the Vespiform, the Sontarans and the Pyroviles, the Racnoss queen, and always, always the ice in the Doctor's eyes the night he killed her.  She woke so often drenched in her own tears, and more than once her mother and granddad had caught her sleepwalking in the kitchen, within dangerous proximity to the carving knives.  What if she broke down here, within the TARDIS, or out there in the universe where millions of dangerous creatures skulked?  She would be a liability.  
She realized suddenly that her shoulders were trembling; her arms were covered in goose bumps and even beneath the thick comforters she felt so, so cold.  Before she realized quite what she was doing she pushed herself upright, kicking her feet over the edge of her bed.  
After a few minutes of searching with her toes to find her slippers, she kicked her feet gently into them and stood shakily, arms about her shoulders.  Her feet carried her to the doorway, and with a quick turn of the screechy knob she entered the hallway; there was little more warmth there, but she knew where there was warmth.  
The worst part of it all, of being there in Chiswick for that year, was being so cold.  On the hottest day of the year she hid herself inside, curled under the covers praying for some warmth, the warmth that too a year to return.  
His door was ajar when she reached it.  It was dark within, but opening the door just a degree more a streamer of light fell upon the rippled covers fallen at the base of his bed; opened enough to step through, she could see the paleness of his skin against azure sheets.  His mouth was open so slightly, his lips drew closer as he inhaled and farther apart as he exhaled.  His eyes were closed peacefully, and he looked more docile than ever had Donna seen him.  
Donna took slow, cautious steps forward, cocking her head to the side curiously.  There was something far more strange than she had imagined waiting for her as well.  
The Doctor slept on one side of the bed; on the other, the covers were flipped up at the corner.  So that a person could slip in easily.  
Donna's mind was past thought.  She could feel her own temperature rise as she approached, from numbingly frigid to acceptably warm, and as she drew even closer, to a comfortable heat.  She lifted the covers with a few fingers and set herself upon the sheet, sliding each foot in carefully so as not to disturb the resting angel.  
It was with no small amount of satisfaction that she pulled the covers up to her chest, but there was also a security about the situation that made her skin buzz.  She was in bed with her best friend…and she had never felt safer in her entire life.  A year of death became just a wait, a long wait for this breath of life.  
She slowly turned herself so that she faced him, and admired him in approval.  The contour of his shoulders, the gentle rise and fall of his bare chest as he breathed, the absolute vulnerability he seemed to radiate…there was nothing about him Donna would ever change.  
She placed her hand on his chest gently and pulled herself into his side, nestling her head against his shoulder as if in retaliation to every moment she spent insisting that they were nothing but friends.  There was something more than that to them, something more powerful than friendship, more powerful than any conventional relationship.  Some strange sort of love that they had waited long enough for, indeed.  
As the Doctor stirred in the morning, feeling the welcome, if surprising, tickle of soft, ginger hair on his chest, he felt a smile forming on his lips, and he knew that he was without a doubt the luckiest man in the universe.