"I'm going to die." The sentence falls onto the table like a lump of lead. He stares at me, or past me, or through me; his eyes burn like twin suns.

"Well, so am I one day." I try to inject some humor into the moment.

"Don't you dare!" he replies with surprising ferocity.

Perhaps arriving late to the war left me with a boyish sense of immortality. "All right, I'll try not to."

"But I was told," The Doctor pauses, takes a breath as if a weight is pressing on his chest. "'He will knock four times.' That was the prophecy: knock four times and then..."

"Yeah, but I thought, when I saw you before… your people could change like your whole body." I was a simple man before Donna stumbled onto the Doctor. Sold newspapers on the street, looked up at the stars once in a while. Now I'm sitting across a cafe table from a time traveler.

"I can still die. If I'm killed before regeneration, then I'm dead." He leans in closer, staring at me. "Even then, even if I change, it feels like dying. Everything I am dies. Some new man goes sauntering away... and I'm dead." The last words are a whisper.

I look past him as Donna appears in the window. The Doctor turns and looks over his shoulder. "I'm sorry, but I had to. Look, can't you make her better?" I don't know everything that happened when she traveled with him, but it must have been amazing. It must have been wonderful. I could see it in her eyes. Eyes that are so lost now.

"Stop it."

"You're so clever, can't you bring her memory back? Just go over, just run up to her and say hello," I plead. I miss the old Donna—but in a way, I guess this is the old Donna. Donna as she was before she traveled with the Doctor.

"If she ever remembers me, her mind will burn and she will die." A policewoman approaches, and Donna gives the woman a piece of her mind. We both laugh. "She's not changed."

Shaun walks up with a bag of packages. "There he is: Shaun Temple. They're engaged; getting married in the spring."

"Another wedding." He blinks. "Hold on she's not going to be called Noble-Temple, is she? Sounds like some sort of tourist stop."

"No it's Temple-Noble."

He stares out after her. "Is she happy? Is he nice?"

"Nice enough." She never did explain what happened to Lance, but I suppose it was too awful to think about. "Mind you, he's on minimum wage, she's earning tuppence so all they can afford is a tiny flat. And sometimes I see this look in her eyes like she's so sad and can't remember why." I see a hint of that look in his eyes now.

"She's got him," Perhaps I only imagine the hint of jealousy in his words.

"She's making do." But so much of her life was like that, just trudging along in the daily grind. She needed someone to call her brilliant, someone who listened to what was underneath her screaming.

"Aren't we all?"

"What about you? Do you have someone?"

"No, I'm traveling alone." He swallows again. "I thought it was better. But I did some things; it went wrong…"

Went wrong. I have done things that went wrong, but what can a minor mishap compare to his words? He means something significant. Everything about him is significant.

So what is he doing sitting here in a café with me?