Inside the blue box the Doctor faltered. There had been a moment of beauty there, under the Ood Sphere's marble-grey sky, with the song and the memory; but all that was left now was a painful noise. The Doctor leaned on the steering panel, hanging down his sore head.
"Some day my lifestyle is going to kill me," he said sarcastically, as he reached to the TARDIS's instruments and prepared for a take-off. "All that running and sticking my head where it shouldn't be stuck. Yeah, that's final. One day I have to stop running."
"And start chasing," a little voice in his memory added immediately.
"I feel sorry for you," the TARDIS sang. "I don't really know what a headache is, but it can't be light-speed-pleasant-timewarp-energy-good."
"Thank you, my old girl," the Doctor thought back.
"Lie back, and relax, and let me take you forward, and forward, and forward, as I've always done, across the vortex, into endless harmony of timelines and space-paths to chose from, to dance upon, to lose yourself and to forget your loneliness, your guilt, your pain, and your pride, and your constant hope that some day, somebody will prove you wrong," the TARDIS hummed, her wonderful engines picking up the cosmic rhythm. "We are alone in the universe, Doctor, we are so alone, we are the last two in existence, we are those they left behind, we are brilliant and we are mad, and we are alone."
"Yeah, I knew that, thank you," the Doctor muttered, flipping several levers. "By the way, if I try to save telepathic plankton by connecting it directly to my thought-stream again, can somebody, please, smack me? Hard. Actually, they can knock me unconscious."
"It's just a crush-meltdown-hunger-dark-untwining-collision," the TARDIS sing-sang dismissively. "You'll be energy-speed-whoosh soon enough, just wait and see."
"No, it's not," the Doctor protested. "It's not temporary, and it is not just a passing mood. I am wrong, and the world is wrong, and you are the wrongest of all. Can't you feel it? That... gritting... gritting in your engines. I can almost taste it. Bleurghh!" he shook his head like a wet dog. "It tastes, sort of, like marzipan – one that spent too much time in the sun. On the beach. All sticky and covered in sand. Just like crunching, and sweet, and funny-taste-must-have-gone-off marzipan."
He hesitated with his hand hovering over the date selector.
"I could go there to do it now, nothing to stop me, see, except..." he sighed and rolled his tongue inside his mouth, turning his eyes upwards and messing his hair, absolutely unaware of how crazy it all made him look. "I'm wrong. I know I am. I don't feel like myself at all, didn't feel like myself ever since they upside-downed my memories, no, even before that... There is something cosmically wrong with me and with the world. So... Am I going to fix it? Or am I going to break it even further? Hmmm?"
For a split second his face adapted the very same, half-questioning, half-amused look his first incarnation wore, when pondering difficult tasks. There was even that smidgeon of grumpiness, so typical to his elderly self, when he was still young.
"Nothing to stop you," the TARDIS sang. "Nothing to stop me. Let's see how far we can go. Let's go to the end of time. Let's go to the beginning of time. Let's disintegrate in the void of creation and destruction."
"Tempting," the Doctor said. "But no."
He withdrew his hand from the controls and stepped back from the panel.
"I think I need some sleep," he sighed. "Oww, not much for sleeping, me. But a must is a must. I have to separate myself from all the distractions, all the chit-chat, that unceasing whispering of the universe. Right. Zero room then. I just need to find it."
And now he seemed very young and very lost. He looked around quickly, flustered, as if not quite recognising the ship's interior.
"The thing is I don't seem to remember the way. It'll be somewhere deep inside the ship. In the area that hasn't been used for centuries. But where is inside... no! Wait!" He hit his forehead with the heel of his hand hard enough to leave a red mark. "No zero room! It's got jettisoned. Disengaged. Discharged. Demolished. Destructed. Deducted. Refracted... Ooops, that's not good!"
"If the world is slurring-falling-falling-falling-emptied-malfunctioning, you have to refuel-tweak-cheat-repair it," the TARDIS announced.
"Yeah, and who's gonna fix me?" the Doctor moaned.
"You are a measure of clarity and madness," his ship sang powerfully. "There's no one to tell the difference."
"No one to know if the god is almighty or mad." The Doctor slumped in a tattered seat next to the crystal column.
"You could bring it back," the TARDIS whispered. "The sane world. The world that never got broken."
"No," the Doctor sighed. "I can't."
"You never tried. Never. The Daleks did. They always try. But not you. Why not you?"
"Okay, and that's not the TARDIS speaking!" the Doctor glared at the column. "She's funny sometimes, but she's not crazy. It's not her. Not her. Am I talking to myself? Must be. But why? No, wait, delete it. I am completely bonkers, there's no why here. Fine. Fine. Nothing a good night sleep wouldn't cure. Find a comfy bed, tuck myself in, rest my eyes, sleep tight and don't let bedbugs bite."
"I could take you back there," the ship whispered. "To the point where the scales were tipped. You could un-tip them. It's so easy."
"No, it's not." The Doctor jumped to his feet and ran out of the steering room. In the corridor already, he continued, almost yelling. "Some things are fixed, some moments can't be touched! You know it! You know it! YOU KNOW IT!"
"No one's gonna blame you. There's no one else, but you."
The Doctor reached a vast, spiral staircase, a seemingly endless serpentine of moulded steps and organic-looking banisters. He started running down, taking three – four steps at one jump. He tore off his coat and dropped it into the central shaft, where it whirled down like an autumn leaf.
"You can arrange it so even you won't remember," the TARDIS's voice tempted. "No memory, no remorse, no guilt, no stains on your conscience."
"Stop it! Stop it! Just, stop it!"
"Isn't it what you're living for? Because if not... then why do you live? What is your purpose?"
"Oh, shut it!"
"I might as well. Seeing how close you are to the Cloister Room anyway."
The Doctor tried to stop dead, but the momentum carried him down. As a result, he tripped, and saved himself from a deadly fall, by gripping the railing of the stairs. For a few seconds he was hanging dangerously over the staircase's vast recesses, then he pushed himself back, and slumped on the stair, shaking all over.
"Right, that..." he wheezed. "That's even worse than bad. I'm dangerous. I'm just... I can't be here! I can't be in the TARDIS! I can't be allowed anywhere near her!"
He got up shakily and started climbing back. He bit his lips and screwed his eyes against the constant monologue of what sounded like his telepathic ship, but must have been his own mind, projected onto the TARDIS's thought-stream. He ripped off the tie and unbuttoned his suit, revealing layers of t-shirts and vests he had worn against the Ood-Sphere's cold. Murmuring something unrecognisable, he was emptying his pockets as he hurried through the corridors. The stethoscope landed on the floor, followed by two torn tickets to Wembley Arena and a three-foot long, crumpled receipt from Tesco's. He left his tie hanging on a protruding element of the wall. The wind-up mouse rolled away; its tail whirring. Several glass balls pattered on the metal mesh in the control room. Then there was a plastic torch. Zeus plugs. Three tea-bags and a handful of sugar cubes (rather disgusting, with all the lint and threads stuck to them). A worn book (Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita"). A large, plastic, purple ring. A dried up conker. Some unrecognisable rubbish; just scraps, motes and bits. Then, finally, he was at the control panel, and was looking at it with his eyes wide, not quite remembering what he was supposed to do. It seemed as if he deconstructed himself, unravelled completely. Even though still wearing mismatched layers of clothing, he seemed naked and fragile. With a deep sigh, he rested his hands on the controls, his long fingers caressing levers and switches.
"Be quiet now," he whispered. "Shush, shush, shush, be quiet."
Then he rolled a wheel imbedded in the panel, quickly swirled a handle, and pumped a few times another worn utensil. There was a change in the engines melody. It was louder, but the whooshing become steadier, healthier.
"There," the Doctor said. "It'll be fine there. Not much to break. Not much indeed."
With one final push he set his ship in motion. There was no usual flourish in his gestures, and as he pushed away from the controls, to sit down on the battered chair, he was just pale and tired.
"Just don't talk anymore," he murmured. "No... Just... Don't."