Doctor Who - 03 - The August Sky

.9. One of Many Mondays

The Doctor swaggered off, hands in his pockets, whistling quietly and turning his face towards the bright, August sky. He opened the TARDIS with a snap of his fingers and walked inside, still with much gusto, tails of his coat billowing behind him. He snapped again and the door closed.

"Lovely people, the O'Learys," he said. "You should have tried their stew, Donna. Delicious. Funny how some things don't run in the family."

He took off his coat, and threw it to the floor.

"The girl, Penny, she's positive," he continued, taking off the suit jacket and rolling up the shirt's sleeves. "It's all hidden, just ticking underneath the surface, invisible and unrecognisable, and completely benign. But I've sonicked her and it is there. That little splinter of the Winter Queen's mirror. In her blood. In every cell of her body. In her very DNA."

He grabbed the screen and turned it towards him. The screen blinked, some random Gallifreyan numbers popping up and disappearing in a haze of white noise. The Doctor knocked his knuckles on the screen.

"Come ON!" he shouted. "Just one last trip, please, my old girl! Huh? Pretty please?"

There was painful dissonance in the TARDIS's response. Her engines were wheezing breathlessly. Even the light was different, not so much amber, as greenish; a sickly, pale colour, turning the Doctor's face into the one of a terminally ill patient. He didn't seem to notice it, though, completely preoccupied with the controls. He pushed a lever and grabbed the mallet from under the panel to slam it on the control desk.

The TARDIS's rota trembled, whooshed up, hesitated, and then slammed back again. And up and down it went, picking up some sort of a rhythm – a quick, and angry, and terrified rhythm of escape. The light turned red and a Cloister Bell rang once, from within the ship's depths.

"Ha!" the Doctor yelled, running around the column and flipping switches on his way. "Who's panicking now? Ha? Ha?!"

The TARDIS shook and took off, vanishing from the sunny Irish street, from one of many Mondays, in one of many years in the past, just to dive into the vortex, picking up speed as she slid through the improbable tunnel through space and time. The impact of her take-off threw the Doctor well across the steering room. He moaned a little, getting up from the floor and rubbing his elbows.

"No need to get excited," he growled. "And I'm fine, thank you. All the better for your trashing me around. You've proven your point. You hear me? You're right. It's done."

He sprang to his feet gingerly. "So, let's go and do it."

The Cloister Bell rang again as little showers of steam and sparks exploded from the walls, hissing angrily. The Doctor ran through them, absolutely unaware of their presence, towards the dashboard, and started shifting levers. He grabbed a date control, but hesitated.

"No, wait," he whispered. "Where was I? I wanted to rest. No! I went there, and it was Monday. And now it's all shifting. All around me, shifting, changing. I have to do it... I've done it. She said I had to do it, cause it had been done already. But what if it was another flux, another anomaly? How am I supposed to know?"

"Stop worrying," Donna said. The Doctor started and turned towards her, one hand still on the controls. "You're worrying too much?"

"Am I?" He lifted one eyebrow. "I am as mad as a hatter, a hatter in batter, a battered hatter, so, of course I worry. See, now, I've just tried to set the course, but I couldn't. There's no course. It's all a labyrinth now. There are just walls, and walls, and walls, and walls, and walls..."

He doubled in pain. The ship trembled and jerked as a loud explosion tore the steering room's floor in half. The rota was whooshing up and down stubbornly, and the TARDIS's engines were howling. The Cloister Bell rang again, and the Doctor noticed it finally. He cowered in shock, his eyes almost popping out of their sockets.