Title: Return to Gallifrey
Rating: PG/K+
Summary: The impossible has happened and the TARDIS takes the Doctor and Donna back to Gallifrey just days before the Last Great Time War. But whatever is happening there is not a part of history. Will the Doctor save a dying world? Takes place between Fires of Pompeii and The Doctor's Daughter.
Word Count: 6,482
Disclaimer: Like the many fandoms before it, I do not own Doctor Who. Quotes and background facts were acquired from meshyfish and the TARDIS index file wiki. Many thanks to sapphirechild for the sources, feedback and unwavering support.
"Can you imagine silver leaves waving above a pool of liquid gold containing singing fish? Twin suns that circle and fall in a rainbow heaven, another world in another sky? If you'd like to come with me, I'll show you all this - and it will be, I promise you, the dullest part of all. Come with me and you will see wonders that no Human has ever dreamt possible. Or stay behind and regret your staying until the day you die."
- The Doctor
"So what's it going to be," the Doctor asked Donna, as he checked the display on the TARDIS console, bouncing from station to station as he always did, "the crystal caves of Night Everlasting?"
Donna was seated, examining her nails and stifling a yawn. They had spent the last three weeks visiting leisure planets and serene, beautiful landscapes. They had met dozens of interesting people, like the ambassador from Xerxe who removed his head as a form of greeting, and the lady with the dog who had in fact turned out to be a dog with a lady (really, the dog was an inhabitant of Taulos Fo, the humanoid its pet). Donna was sure she had made some horrible faux pas over that one. It had all been lovely but, dare she think it…tame.
"Nah, we've done caves," Donna replied, "they're dark and cold."
"All right," he replied, fiddling with the dials, "how about the gold beach on Suprima 6?"
"We've done beaches too," she said. "Is it possible I'm getting tired of the universe?"
The Doctor glanced up at her for just an instant and shook his head, "Impossible. I'm just not trying hard enough. How about… the purple grotto on Valarius' second moon? Heated by sulfur springs, when the moonlight hits the water just right it sounds like a choir of angels."
"Now that sounds interesting," she said, more out of kindness than anything. He really was trying so hard to impress her that she didn't wish to disappoint him, "have you been there?"
"Never," he said with a smile, "First time for both of us. What do you say?"
"All right then," she agreed, "the grotto it is."
She leaned back into her seat and watched as the Doctor entered the coordinates. The symbiotic relationship between the Doctor and his TARDIS was fascinating to watch. They really were like a pair of lovers. His concentration focused, hands on the controls, the ship responding as though it could read his mind. It probably could, Donna thought, in fact she knew it had the ability to get into the travelers' heads and translate languages for them. She wouldn't have been surprised if it knew the Doctor better than he knew himself, anticipating its master's every need like a Victorian butler, or a dutiful wife.
When he was finished he hit the start button, but instead of a smooth takeoff, Donna found herself face down on the floor. The TARDIS had made a violent lurch and they were being pulled at some tremendous rate of speed. She felt pressure building up in her ears and chest as she held onto the nearest thing she could, the base of the chair that was bolted to the floor.
"Doctor!" she cried, "What's happening?!"
She might have heard a response, she wasn't sure. There was too much ambient noise – a whirring engine, the groan of metal, and a steady bang she couldn't identify. The room spun and she felt herself being pulled from one end to the other. She screamed, then she heard the Doctor shout and they fell together in a tumbling heap, all arms and legs, bouncing about on the rattling floor. They were still moving, shaking so badly she couldn't see straight, but she knew enough to know something had gone horribly wrong. It was a sensation of falling, but in every direction at once, like being pulled apart.
She tried reaching out for the Doctor's arms but there was nothing there, she was alone again. The lighting was dim, like the TARDIS had fallen asleep at the wheel. They were helpless. Accepting her situation, Donna put her arms up over her head and tried to curl up, assume some sort of crash position. Seconds after she did, everything stopped, an angry hiss of steam escaping the TARDIS core.
Donna picked up her head and looked around her. She was pressed against an outer wall, far from where she was first seated. She looked around quickly for the Doctor and found him several feet away, already bounding to his feet to assess the damage, his Time Lord brain working a mile a minute.
"Donna, are you all right?" he called out absently as he surveyed his precious ship.
"I think so," she responded, pulling herself upright and standing on unsteady legs, "Just a bit shaken. That wasn't supposed to happen, was it?"
"What?" he said, from his position at the console, his back to her, "What??"
"I said," she repeated as she came closer, "that wasn't supposed to happen was it?"
"What?!"
It was the third what that told Donna that he hadn't been speaking to her. Something on the screen had caught his attention but it was all in some alien language she couldn't read.
"Doctor, what is it?" she asked him.
"No," he muttered, still entranced, like she wasn't even there. "It can't be. It can't… this is wrong…it's impossible."
"What's impossible?" she asked sharply, leaning in and around and raising her voice this time until his eyes finally snapped up to face hers, "Where are we?"
"We're not," he said, backing slowly away from the controls with his hands out as though the TARDIS had just brandished a weapon at him. "We're not here. Not here."
"Please," she pleaded, softening, "just tell me, what does it say? Where is here? Whatever it is, we'll manage it." She couldn't imagine what could possibly have upset him like this.
The Doctor looked at her, and then pointed at the screen, "According to…that…the constellation of Kasterborous, galactic coordinates 10-0-11-0-0 by 0-2 from Galactic Zero Centre. The Shining World of the Seven Systems."
"What does that mean?" asked Donna, confused.
"We're on Gallifrey."
"Gallifrey?" said Donna. "Your home? The one that was destroyed?"
"It must be a mistake…" he began pacing round the TARDIS, muttering wildly, running his hands through his hair until it stood on end, "Gallifrey is gone, and if it's not gone that means it's here, and if it's here that can only mean one thing and that is that we've gone into the past but I can't be here in the past because this planet's history is timelocked and what's more it's my own history which makes it my own timeline and I can't be here, I simply can't… I can't risk it…anything could happen, anything at all…."
Donna thought it best to let him exhaust himself rather than interrupt him. There was no use when he was like this anyway, and she was nearly as shocked as he was by this news. He was back on his home world, intact, a wish he hadn't dared to dream. They were both so surprised by where they were that neither of them had yet bothered to check on when they were.
"Doctor," she said gently, placing a hand on his shoulder before he flew past her again to let him know she was there, "what's the date?"
He stopped suddenly when she spoke and sprinted back to the screen, reading the information that had mocked him only moments earlier. "Two days before the start of the Last Great Time War. I can't understand how we managed to get here. The entire period was timelocked. We shouldn't be here…yet here we are."
She didn't know what to say, but in her mind this was still a happy occasion, so she decided a bit of positive spin was in order.
"Well, never mind that," she said smiling, "you're home! Isn't that wonderful?"
The Doctor turned to her, seething, "Donna you don't understand, I can't return here, I can't change what's happened, I can't visit my own timeline."
"But what if you didn't?" Donna tried, "What if you didn't change anything? Couldn't we just have a look?"
"No," he shook his head vigorously, "it's too dangerous. We should leave now."
He returned to the console, bent down over the controls, shutting her out, and attempted to chart a new course to just about anywhere. He entered coordinates, turned knobs, pressed buttons, again and again but the TARDIS stayed silent.
"She's not moving," he said finally, "We've got power but she refuses to budge. We're stuck here. Why did we have to be stuck here?"
He spoke as though to the TARDIS, demanding a response. With one last outburst of frustrated rage he kicked at the console. Donna flinched. With leaving no longer an option, she thought she'd try one last time.
"Just a peek from somewhere we can't get into any trouble?" she asked. "You may never get this chance again."
"I'm not supposed to have it now!" he insisted.
"We won't talk to anyone," said Donna. "Just a look, and then we'll leave."
The Doctor exhaled. For an instant he looked every bit his 900 plus years. "Donna, I lost this world once, I don't know if I can bear to go through that again…"
"But don't you want to see it?" she tried again.
"I can't," he said softly, with less conviction.
"I know you can't, you've said you can't," she said. "But don't you want to?"
Utterly defeated, he looked at her and allowed a smile to escape for the first time, "Yes of course I do."
The TARDIS had set them down on an isolated hilltop overlooking the Capitol. The Doctor had poked his nose out carefully, and only when convinced they were alone, did he venture out slowly to smell the air. He looked suspicious at first, holding on to the door of the TARDIS as if for moral support, searching everywhere, senses heightened, and breathed deeply and relaxed once he knew it felt right.
He was home.
Donna had never seen anything so breathtaking. The sky was orange like flame, and the trees on the hilltop shimmered with silver leaves, breezes blowing through them creating a sound like gentle wind chimes. She had to shield her eyes from the glare of the sunlight, which reflected off the trees and caused everything around her to glow. The earth in the valley below them shone in furious golds and reds.
She wanted only to share the experience of this glorious view, but when she glanced at the Doctor standing at her side, his eyes were closed.
"Come on, have a look," she prompted him.
"It's too much to take in at once," he explained, eyes still closed as if meditating. "So I'm just listening."
Donna closed her eyes and tried listening too, but heard only the light breezes in the trees. Then she remembered that the Doctor had at least some telepathic ability, as he had once demonstrated to her with the Ood. She hated to disturb him but she had so many questions.
"So where are we exactly?" she asked after a time.
He broke from his trance and told her, "These are the Mountains of Solace and Solitude," he pointed down into the valley towards a domed city. "That's the Citadel, home of the Time Lord Academy. It's where I was raised. There are young Time Lords there right now being inducted, taking the oath. I can hear them. I'd forgotten what it was like to hear so many voices, so many minds."
Donna wondered herself what it must be like. Combine the sounds with all the other vivid sights and sensations and it must surely be overwhelming. It was too easy to forget how different they were sometimes, she and this skinny Spaceman.
Then he began to recite out loud what sounded like an oath.
"I swear to protect the ancient Law of Gallifrey with all my might and brain. I will to the end of my days with justice and with honour temper my actions and my thoughts." He turned to her, "That's what they're saying. I can hear it. It's like history repeating itself."
Donna smiled, pleased to see the Doctor so happy, after all that he had lost.
"It's lovely," she said.
They stood for several more minutes in silence, the Doctor lost again in some faraway place in his thoughts. All at once he came back to attention.
"Right, that's enough," he declared, wiping at his eyes quickly in such a way that he must have hoped Donna wouldn't notice, "Time to go."
Donna turned to follow when a flash of light caught her eye immediately behind where the Doctor stood. Two uniformed guards materialized there. Before she could shout out a warning, one of them raised a device to the Doctor's back and fired. He collapsed unconscious to the ground.
"What are you doing?" Donna demanded.
One officer stood as the other bent down, searched the Doctor's coat pockets and removed his sonic screwdriver. Looking up at the other officer for his assent, he then placed a wide metal cuff around the Doctor's wrist.
The standing officer spoke. "By authority of the Chancellery Guard, we place this Time Lord under arrest."
"Why? What's he done?" asked Donna.
"The Time Lord does not belong here in this time and needs to be contained," the officer replied.
"Why haven't you done that to me?" she asked. "I'm with him."
The guard looked at her as though she were a bug he had just stepped on. "You are a human and as such you have no power here and pose no threat. The Time Lord will be identified and charged in accordance with our laws."
"But wait! Where are you taking him?!" she shouted, but in another flash of light the officers were gone, taking the Doctor and the TARDIS with them.
Donna stood for a moment, shocked at the speed with which it had all happened. Alone on a Mountain of Solitude, she thought ironically. She had to find him, and the only place she knew to look was in that domed city below.
It was a four mile hike down the hillside and into the capitol city. Donna's feet ached, protesting the march but she kept going, asking anyone and everyone she passed where prisoners were taken. She was directed to an enormous, official looking location, all marble and stairs, at the top of the main thoroughfare. She entered and approached reception, who directed her to a clerk's office with several windows and a line out the door.
As it turned out things weren't so different anywhere. The long walk into town paled in comparison to the effort required to fight through Gallifreyan bureaucracy. After an hour she reached the front of the queue, and when she stated that she was there to see a prisoner who had just been brought in she was handed, of all things, a form to fill out. She stepped aside, completed the form as best she could and returned to the end of the line.
An hour later, she explained her situation once again to a new clerk and was told she had the wrong form. This process repeated itself until the once peaceful Donna was ready to clobber everyone in the room responsible for this system.
"But the last clerk said I needed the pink form!" she told the fourth clerk.
"That form isn't pink," the disinterested clerk replied.
"Well it looked pink to me!" Donna cried. "I've done the blue, the green, the yellow and this… pinkish reddish thing! What's next? Triplicate? I've been in this queue five times! I want to see your supervisor."
The clerk rolled his eyes and pointed to the left with his pencil to a longer queue down the hall.
"That line there, and don't forget to take a number," he said. "Next!"
One number, two hours and three supervisors later, she was granted special dispensation for being an "offworlder" (Stupid lowly human more likely, she thought to herself) and was taken to a small room with a table, two chairs, and a large observation window. She sat and waited until a guard opened the door, ushering in the Doctor.
Donna jumped out of her seat to embrace him.
"Donna, are you okay?" he asked her.
"Yeah, you?" she replied.
"Aw, don't worry about me," he said, taking at a seat opposite her. "I've been in tighter spots before. Well…not many. But it's just a misunderstanding. I'll explain it to them… somehow."
"They took the TARDIS," she told him.
"I know, its standard procedure," he said. "She's locked in storage, but she's safe."
"Has anyone recognized you?" she asked him.
"Not yet," he said, "I looked…different when I was last here. But they're checking the records now so it won't be long. I don't have much of a defense I'm afraid, I'm not supposed to be here."
Although he surely didn't mean it that way, Donna felt the weight of accusation fall upon her. She looked down at her hands on the table. "I know. You tried to tell me. This is all my fault."
The Doctor reached out and lifted her chin to face him. "It's not," he said clearly, making sure she understood. "If anything it was mine. I knew it was a crime if we were caught but you were right, I wanted to see it again, to smell the air, hear the sounds…I took a chance," he smiled, "and it was worth it. Besides, you didn't bring us here, the TARDIS did and we still need to figure out why."
"To prevent the War?" Donna suggested.
"No, it can't be, that event in history in fixed, so it must be something else," he replied. "Keep your eyes and ears open for anything unusual that might explain why we're here."
Donna thought about the people who had waited in the clerk's office with her, going about their business. "They don't even know it's coming," she said, "the end of their world."
"And they can't know," he reminded her, "this is not like Pompeii, no one is getting saved. No one. Well…apart from us."
For once she didn't argue. She knew he was right, and anyway she felt she had caused enough trouble for one day. She was about to ask what came next with his arrest when the guard returned.
"Time for your trial, Doctor," he told the Doctor, and took him from the room, leaving Donna alone once again.
"Already?" Donna remarked to the air, "that's not like a bureaucracy at all."
Donna left the room and followed into what looked like a courtroom. She took a seat in the back amongst a few dozen onlookers to watch, looking around for anything unusual like she was told. The sign on the high bench identified the man up front in the posh red robes as the Cardinal Judge, Inquisitor of the Court.
He waited until all were seated and then he spoke, addressing the Doctor who was made to rise down front. "We but administer. You are imprisoned not by this Court, but by the power of the Law. The Valeyard as court prosecutor will read the charges."
The prosecutor rose and spoke, "The Time Lord known as the Doctor has been charged with violating the Laws of Time Article I, section A stating that no being shall interact with his own personal history by traversing their time streams, as well as Article IV which states that no Time Lord shall travel into Gallifrey's past."
The Judge waited until the prosecutor finished and then turned back to the Doctor. "What say you in your defense?"
"Yeah, well, see I did do that, but it was the TARDIS, she just brought me here, I didn't plan it," said the Doctor.
"You blame your actions upon your TARDIS, a vessel that cannot speak in her own defense?" mocked the Judge.
"She'd back me up if she could," he replied.
"And I suppose you will next state that your TARDIS would not allow you to leave?" sneered the Judge.
"Actually, I was going to say that yeah," said the Doctor.
"Doctor, this is a busy court, I'm sure you can understand. You admit your guilt and admit further that you are unable to leave and correct your error. Therefore, your continued existence on this planet is a danger, a threat to the fabric of space time. I have no choice but to convict and pass sentence."
"Wait! I was brought here for some reason, if you could just let me work out what I need to do I can fix it and go," he reasoned.
"Perhaps your TARDIS is simply malfunctioning and ought to be destroyed," replied the Judge.
"What? No, you can't! Something is going very wrong here and we have to find out what it is!" he said.
"I pronounce a sentence of execution by vaporization," declared the Judge.
At the words Donna shot up out of her seat.
"What?!" said the Doctor and Donna together.
"The remains of the criminal are to be dispersed through time and space to the nine corners of the universe and all records of the Time Lord's existence are to be deleted," the Judge said, and he rose to end the proceedings.
Donna rushed forward to where the Doctor stood, still shocked by the ruling, but the guards were already preparing to take him away. She stormed the Judge's bench, furious.
"Oh yeah?" Donna shouted at the departing Judge, "You won't get away with this! I'll tell you what you can do with your Court! Oi! I'm talking to you!"
The minor chaos caused by Donna's outburst suddenly gave way to something bigger as the building started shaking. At first she thought her own voice had done it, but then shouts of panic and screams drifted in from both the courtyard and the great hall outside. Bits of the ceiling rained down on their heads, and a thunderous crack broke the room in two. Donna froze staring up at the now visible sky, and the Doctor broke away from the confused guards to run towards her.
"Donna, get down!" he called, tackling her to the floor just in time to avoid being picked off by what looked like a giant black bird with enormous talons.
She chanced another look up to see two more, entering through an enormous hole in the roof, descending upon people and objects alike and carrying them off into the skies. The Doctor grabbed her hand, pulled her up and ran out into the hall. They spotted the main entrance and headed for it, intending to escape along with everyone else. A stampede crossed their path and they dodged it. Finding an opening, Donna took the lead and sprinted for the way out. They were just about to cross the threshold when the Doctor remembered something.
"Donna wait!" he yelled and then as she ran out his hand was ripped from her own.
Donna heard the sound of an impact and turned round. Instead of crossing the opening like she had done, an invisible barrier knocked the Doctor flat onto his back, dazed, as though he had run straight into a solid wall.
Donna gasped and ran back, against the tide of screaming citizens while more birds circled overhead. She grabbed his arms and pulled. "Doctor, get up, you're going to be trampled! What happened?"
"It's this," he groaned, holding up the security wristband he still wore. "I need to get it off, come on."
He led her back into the guard's room, searching the locked cases until he found what he was looking for. "There you are," he said, and with his elbow he smashed the glass and removed his sonic screwdriver, which he then used to remove the cuff.
"You there, stop!" cried a fleeing guard, "You can't do that!"
"Sorry, no time to be executed today," said the Doctor, dropping the cuff to the floor and taking Donna's hand again, "I'm sure you can understand, I'm very busy."
By the time they exited back out into the main hall it was largely deserted, apart from a half dozen of the birdlike creatures who were picking away at what had been left behind, including the fallen. Donna thought they looked a bit like Pterodactyls, with elongated razor sharp beaks, pointed heads and large leathery wings. Crouching back down and hiding behind the main staircase, Donna watched with revulsion as they fed.
"What are they?" she whispered to the Doctor.
"Carrions," said the Doctor, "a vulture-like race that feeds off the remains of dead worlds."
"But Gallifrey isn't dead yet," she said.
"I know, but they're not just early," he said, "This never happened."
"So is this what we're here to stop? You can get involved now and stop it? You're already sentenced to death, what have you got to lose, right?" said Donna.
She fully expected him to agree with her and step right out and confront them, but the Doctor was uncharacteristically quiet.
"Doctor?"
"What's the point?" he said, expression dark, "Even if I manage it, the planet will be destroyed anyway in two days' time. They won't get away with it one way or the other. Maybe we should just find the TARDIS and get out of here."
Donna didn't have time for a depressed Time Lord. She turned around and slugged him on the shoulder.
"Ow. What was that for?" he asked surprised.
"What about that oath to protect your world?" She reminded him, in as loud and as forceful a voice as she dared, "Didn't you take it too? It doesn't matter what's to come all that matters is right now. So stop feeling sorry for yourself and get on with it!"
His shocked expression faded away into a familiar smile. "Fine. If that's how you want it, Donna Noble, they must have a ship or base of operations somewhere."
"Well come on, let's go find it," she said, relieved to have knocked some sense into him.
She started to creep out but the Doctor hesitated again.
"What now?" Donna asked.
"My family," he explained, "if they saw me out there, they'd know it was me."
"Your family?" said Donna, "You have a family, they're here?"
The Doctor smiled, "Alive and well."
"That's wonderful," she said.
He turned serious. "No it isn't."
Donna nodded and took his hand, "Well all the same, I would like to have met them. But for now we'll just have to keep to the alleyways."
They traveled in the opposite direction of the people, following the Carrion from a safe distance, observing their behaviour. The streets were nearly empty now, but Donna could identify what appeared to be small shops and homes. She wondered whether the Doctor's family lived nearby but didn't dare ask. The roads were littered with the signs of a riot – overturned bins and out of control fires – with Carrions picking up the best bits for removal. She noticed that they communicated with one another, but they were too far for her to make out what they were saying. Clearly, though, this species only looked like birds.
"How did the Carrion get here, if this place is timelocked or whatever?" asked Donna.
"I don't know, but however they managed it, it must have brought the TARDIS back too, allowing us to follow them through whatever rift they created," the Doctor replied.
"Wait, I just thought of something," said Donna, "If we're here in your timeline might we run into you? Maybe you're already here fighting those things."
The Doctor shook his head, "No, I was traveling."
"Even then? I'd have thought all that had started after you lost your home," she said.
"I was always a traveler, always searching." He looked around at the ruined street and frowned. "I was never content with this place, never appreciated it really."
"To hear you talk about it now, I find that hard to believe," Donna observed.
He looked at her with a sad smile and a voice that seemed to speak with the wisdom of the ages, "You never know what you've got until you've lost it."
Donna imagined that the Doctor had learned that lesson more times than he had cared to, and she let the matter drop. They watched from the shadows as a group of Carrions methodically descended on the streets, lifting things with their sharp claws and taking them away.
"What are they doing?" Donna asked.
"Scavenging," he answered. "That means they should have a nest nearby, come on."
Watching the skies, they followed the birds to the edge of town, and what appeared to Donna to be an ordinary city dump. Hidden among the mountains of rubbish they discovered three Carrion seated on thrones. The leaders watched as the scavengers returned with the collected items and dropped them into the mouth of a huge machine connected to large vats that smoked and whirred. Donna and the Doctor tucked themselves away, the machine standing between themselves and the Carrion.
"What's that big machine for?" Donna asked.
"It's a matter energy converter," said the Doctor. "They're processing the matter from the planet and extracting the time energy that's unique to Gallifrey. That's what they're after. With enough time energy fuel they could travel to anywhere, anytime and take whatever they please."
They looked up when they heard a scream. A Carrion was flying towards them carrying a young woman.
"Oh my God," gasped Donna, "they're putting people in there? They're getting fuel from people? And you said this didn't happen before, the Carrion aren't a part of your history, so why are they here now? Why now?"
The Doctor realized. "They knew."
"Knew what?"
"They knew this world was about to die," he said, pieces falling together, "so they've come back to this time and are looting the planet, taking whatever they can before it's all gone, nothing but dust. The Time War then becomes the perfect cover and no one would ever know they were here."
"Look!" says Donna, pointing to the terrified woman screaming from a Carrion's claws and hovering over the processor.
The Doctor clenched his jaw and stood up. "We'll have no more of that," he said.
Then he took several steps out into the open. Donna crouched further down in the dark corner.
"Oi!" he called out to the Carrion in the air, "Stop that! Put her down! I demand to speak to your leaders!"
The Carrion looked down in surprise and released the woman safely to the ground, who promptly ran off. The creature landed and faced the Doctor, and was quickly joined by two others who encircled him. The Doctor held his ground and turned to address the three on the thrones.
"You look like you're in charge, I'll talk to you," the Doctor said.
"Identify yourself!" demanded the Carrion in the high centre throne.
"I'm the Doctor and you're not meant to be here."
"If I am correct, then neither are you" the Carrion replied.
"Right, good point. Wasn't our fault, you dragged us here, riding your wave, which brings me to my next question -- how did you get here anyway?" he asked.
"We salvaged technology from another world from which we extracted anti-time," the creature stated proudly. "It enables us to disregard the laws of time in our travels."
"Anti-time?" repeated the Doctor, "But that's theoretical, it doesn't exist."
The Carrion laughed. "The arrogance of the Time Lords, believing you know all that exists in time and space."
"Okay, let's just say you're right, just…for the sake of argument. Even if you had anti-time, how would you control it? A collision with time could send you anywhere, it would be too dangerous to use. You would need a teleport, but not just any teleport, that wouldn't contain it, you'd need something powerful, something as powerful as…" he stopped as the final piece fell into place.
"…as a TARDIS," he said. "Oh, that's why you're here, and it's also how you got here. All that travel without regard to the laws of time. You've created a paradox -- your collision brought you to the very thing you needed, and you used it to get here."
"Excellent, Doctor," said the Carrion, "Your world will soon be no more. What use does a Time Lord have for his TARDIS now on the eve of his destruction? Dispose of him."
One of the Carrion flew up and grabbed the Doctor's shoulders, hoisting him up into the air. The Doctor struggled, trying to reach for the screwdriver in his pocket but couldn't manage it. He was taken to the processor and held over the mouth of the roaring machine.
"No, no, no, wait!" he yelled, "You don't know what you're doing! You could never control a TARDIS it's too powerful. You'll rip the universe apart it will be no use to you anymore. There'll be nothing left to salvage anywhere!"
With everyone's attention on the Doctor, Donna crept to the machine. Hitting all the large buttons and switches with abandon, she tried to find the one that would turn it off, but it still hummed. Then all at once, the Carrion let go and the Doctor fell. Donna flipped the last switch, and halfway through the Doctor's descent, the machine shut down. Reaching to one side he grabbed onto the rim of the opening, climbed over and slid down the back to where Donna hid.
"Hello," he said smiling as he landed.
"Hello," said Donna.
"Capture them!" ordered the Carrion leader.
The Doctor and Donna took hunks of metal and bits of furniture from the nearest rubbish pile and used it to make a barrier between themselves and the approaching Carrion. The creatures could still fly overhead but they were large, so they wedged themselves into a tight area alongside the time energy processor controls. Each time a Carrion dove down at their heads Donna would grab a metal pipe or piece of scrap and hurl it at them. After a moment Donna realized she was the only one defending the fort, while the Doctor was fiddling with the machine.
"You do realize we're trapped here," Donna told him as she fought. "What are you doing?"
"Time and anti-time," the Doctor said as he worked frantically, "I know how to stop it now, release the anti-time into the processor. I have to blow it up."
"But you said you couldn't control it," she argued, "we could end up anywhere."
"Anywhere is better than here," he reasoned.
"What about the Carrion?" she asked.
"It should send them back where they came from as well, if we're very, very lucky," he said. "And if we're even luckier than that, it will close the rift they made."
"And not make a new one?" she said.
The Doctor looked at her and shrugged, "I said we had to be lucky, didn't I?"
"And this explosion," she asked, "it won't be the thing that destroys this world?"
"No," he told her with a trace of bitterness. "No one's altering history today. Gallifrey will burn just as it once did."
"I'm sorry," she said.
"There's nothing for it," the Doctor put the sonic screwdriver back in his pocket and wrapped his arm around hers, holding her hand tightly. "It's ready. Just hold on to me and don't let go."
Donna nodded and the Doctor threw the switch. There was a bright flash of light. She closed her eyes and held her breath. Then there was nothing.
"Donna! Donna, wake up! We're in the TARDIS! We're back!"
The floor was hard beneath her but it throbbed with a pleasant warmth as though it had a pulse. It was the TARDIS, no other ship felt like that; even she had learned to recognise it. She opened her eyes slowly, head pounding, adjusting to the light. He had been leaning over her, checking her out with that screwdriver that seemed to do everything. As soon as he saw she was awake he smiled and bounded back up and over to the TARDIS controls, from one patient to the other like a wartime field medic.
"How did we get here?" she asked.
"I'm a genius that's how," he said, checking the readouts again and smiling. "The rift is closed, the Carrion are gone and we're right back on course for the moon of Valarius, like it was all a bad dream. I'd say we've earned ourselves a holiday wouldn't you?"
Donna sat up and waited for the room to stop spinning. An instant later the Doctor was there again, offering her a hand up.
"And what about Gallifrey? Has it been… put right?" she asked.
His smile faded. As soon as she was steady on her feet he turned from her, back to his beloved TARDIS, his only home, his shelter in a storm.
"Yes," he said, facing away. "It's gone."
"How do you know?" she asked.
"I know," he said simply.
"Yes, but how can you be sure? If the rift is closed to us and you can't go back to check…," she started.
"I know," he replied more loudly, turning back around, "because they're gone. It's all gone, Donna. I can't feel them, or hear them. I'm alone again. That's how I know."
Donna chided herself for her lack of tact. Of course he would know, and there was nothing that could be done about it. It had all happened before, and was already part of history. Still, bad enough to lose your home world and everyone you ever cared about once, no one should have to go through it twice.
Maybe that's why Time Lords have two hearts, she thought, because they get broken so often.
She dared a step closer and squeezed his arm, as if to remind him that she was real, and she was here.
"Well you've still got me," she said. "I'm not much. I know I can't replace a whole world, or your family, but…"
"But you don't have to," he told her softly. "I'm just glad you're here. And in spite of everything, I'm glad you convinced me to have another look. It really was beautiful wasn't it?"
He promised to tell her more about it someday, and about his family, but not now. For now it was time to move on. There were other worlds to explore, other times to encounter, and places where you could forget your troubles, blend in among the thousands of species in the universe and never feel lonely again.