"There's no way to make this sound normal, so I'll just flat out say it... The groom (well, the man who would have married her if she hadn't disappeared in the middle of the wedding) had been bribed by a Racnoss (a spider-like alien) to secretly slip her huon particles so that the Racnoss could get its children (who would go on to consume the Earth if released) back, but the huon particles are extremely dangerous, so by giving her the huon particles, the groom was also willing to kill Donna, and in fact the only reason he married her was to shut her up and continue to be able to slip her the huon particles, and then he was killed by the Racnoss and Donna survived, and then I killed the Racnoss and its children." He gasped for breath, and I wasn't sure which to be more surprised by: his story or his lung capacity. I stared at him in silence for a while. "You don't believe me, do you?"
"I don't know... It's just a lot to take in." He nodded, and we kept walking. It felt like we had been walking for days, but I knew it couldn't have been that long.
"So what happened after the whole wedding incident?" I finally asked. He looked up.
"So you believe me now?"
"I'm still not sure, but I'm willing to believe that something went wrong at Donna's wedding and that at some point, the two of you became friends." The Doctor nodded and resumed his story.
"After she told me off for killing the Racnoss, I took her back to her house. I asked if she'd like to come travel with me, but she told me she couldn't live a life like mine."
"Well, your life does sound a bit... dangerous."
"You have no idea," he said with a joking tone of voice but a serious expression.
"What happened to Donna? You said she didn't want to come with you, but you also said that the two of you became friends."
"Well, I left, and then I met Martha, who traveled with me for a while."
'How many companions has this guy had?' I wondered, but at this point I decided it was better not to ask. Instead I asked, "What happened to her?"
"She left me for two reasons. The first reason was that she had seen the Earth almost destroyed, so she wanted to be there for her family and friends and everybody else. She went on to become a doctor, you know. The second reason was that she loved me and I didn't love her back. I mean, I cared about her and all, but not like that. So, she left."
"And then you called Donna and asked her to come back?"
"Actually, no. She found me. She'd changed her mind about traveling with me, so she started investigating the sort of things she expected me to be investigating. It worked."
"What happened?"
"I'd love to tell you the whole story, but we don't really have time." He thought for a moment. "I've already given a lot of details, and all the while, Donna is in danger." He started speaking faster now. "After we defeated the aliens, she came with me. As a friend," he said, looking pointedly at me as if to try to convince me. "We traveled together and had lots of fun, and then..."
"And then?" I asked, irritated that the Doctor wouldn't finish his sentence.
"Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey. Sorry, that's not a proper explanation." He took a deep breath. "I got shot by a Dalek and I was about to regenerate, but I didn't want to go, so I sent the extra energy into my severed hand that I had which had been chopped off after my previous regeneration, and then Donna touched the hand, so the hand turned into a person that was part me, part Donna (that process is called metacrisis), and then Donna got shot by a Dalek, and that woke up the part of me that had gone into her during the metacrisis, so she became the Doctor-Donna, part Time Lord, part human, except that a Time Lord mind can't stay in a human body, so I had to remove all memories of me from her mind and now I can never see her again." I had understood almost none of what the Doctor had said. I was about to ask all the questions running through my head, but when I looked up at him, I changed my mind. Tears were streaming down his face.
The Doctor was an enigma. The more I knew about him, the more questions I had. The more he talked about his friends, the more lonely he seemed. The more he revealed his tales of fighting aliens and traveling around the universe, the more human he seemed. The more he talked about the danger he had gotten himself and his friends into, the more I realized how many people he had saved. And the strangest part was this: the more it seemed like his life was dangerous, the more it seemed like fun and the more I wanted to join him.
“What do you need me to do?”
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