"What is this place?" Donna asked.
"I believe it's something that people would call a spaceship," the Doctor answered back, stepping out of the TARDIS, beside her.
Donna rolled her eyes, "Don't get sassy with me. I know bloody well it's a spaceship, but where are we? Past, present, future? Location? Any alien species? Speak up, string bean."
The Doctor smiled a little bit, "Alright, alright. We're about three thousand years into the future, from your time. But as far as alien species go, the TARDIS didn't detect any alien species on board, so it looks as though it's completely deserted."
"Well come on then," Donna tugged his sleeve a bit, "why don't we go somewhere a little more exciting?"
"Oh, come on, it'll be fun!" and at that, the Doctor took off at a stride down a dimly lit corridor, with Donna following behind him. "You see, the odd thing about this ship is that it's running on full capacity."
"So?"
"It's running at a high enough capacity to punch a hole in the universe! But we aren't moving. All that power has to be going somewhere, and I want to find out where that is, exactly."
The Doctor quickly halted, causing Donna to bump into him from behind. He turned to the right, into a small room, and they approached a simple, stone fireplace. It was attached to a small piece of wall, covered in gaudy floral wallpaper.
The Doctor crouched down to look at the softly burning embers, "Not something you see in your every day spaceship." He stood up, and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. As he began to sonic the fireplace, a soft voice came from within the fireplace.
"Hello?"
Donna and the Doctor stopped and looked at each other.
"Did it just-" Donna started.
The Doctor crouched down again, and peered into the fireplace, "Hello?"
"Who are you?" a small voice asked. The voice hadn't been coming from the fireplace itself, but rather from a room behind the fireplace.
"My name's the Doctor."
He could hear a soft creak that sounded as if someone was rising from a bed, and a young girl appeared before him, kneeling on the floor. The glow from the small fire was so faint that the Doctor couldn't make out her features easily, but he could see she looked about eight or nine years old.
"Why are you in the fireplace?" she asked.
"I'm, uh...I'm cleaning your fireplace for you. But I'm rather clumsy and seem to have hit my head. Could you tell me where you are right now?"
"We're in Sutton..."
At this point, Donna was curious to see who this little girl was, but there was no room for her to crouch down beside the Doctor, because for the first time, his skinny arse was taking up too much space!
"And could you tell me what year it is?" the Doctor asked.
"It's 1977."
"Fantastic! That's all I needed to know. Thanks for your help, and goodnight!"
"Goodnight." the small girl smiled at him and disappeared once again into the darkness.
"Oh come on, I want to look into the fireplace, too." but as Donna crouched down, the little girl had disappeared into the dark room. As for the room itself, she couldn't see anything beyond the carpet at the foot of the fireplace.
"I used to live in Sutton when I was a little girl," Donna said thoughtfully as she stood up
"Really?"
"Mhm," Donna nodded her head.
The Doctor started running his hands along the fireplace, "Remember when I said this ship was generating enough power to punch a whole in the universe? I think we may have just found where all that energy is going."
"But why would anyone want to create a portal...thing-y to 1977?" Donna asked.
"That's what I'm going to find out. Are you coming with me?"
Donna didn't know why, but she felt a little on edge about the idea, "No, I think I'll...uh...keep watch or something."
The Doctor simply shrugged, and continued running his hands along the smooth stone and the wall, until his hand grasped the light fixture attached to the wall. "Ahah!" he triumphantly yelled out, and turned the fixture downwards, to the left. The fireplace and the flooring beneath the Doctor immediately began to rotate into the little girl's room.
"Be careful!" Donna couldn't help blurting out, as he disappeared into the next room.
The Doctor blinked, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. "Hello?" he whispered, but received no response.
After a few moments, the bedroom door opened and the bedroom light flicked on. The girl gasped, and the Doctor shushed her.
"Shh, shh, it's me, the fireplace man." he reassured her.
Now that the room was lit, the Doctor could see that the girl had messy, cherry-red hair, with freckles sprinkled across her face.
She relaxed and closed her bedroom door, "What are you doing here?"
"I was just cleaning out the fire place, remember?"
"No. That was weeks ago." she looked up at him, frowning in confusion.
"Was it? I suppose time seems to pass so fast, I-" the Doctor stopped as he looked upon the weathered looking clock resting on the mantelpiece of the fireplace. He picked it up, staring at the unmoving hands of the clock, and had become acutely aware of the ticking noise still resonating through her room. "How long has this been broken?" asked quietly.
"I dunno."
"But..." the Doctor paused, "if this clock is broken, where is that ticking sound coming from?"
The little girl's eyes widened in fear as she, too, became aware of the very-present ticking noise sounding within her room.
The Doctor's eyes darted towards the dark space beneath her bed. "Now, think. If you were a thing that ticks, and you were hiding in someone's bedroom, what's the first thing you do? Break the clock. Two different ticks? Too easy to notice. But one tick...quite easy to go unnoticed," he turned his attention to the girl, and quietly urged, "Stand as far away from the bed as you can, and don't shout."
She bit her lip, backed up against the wall and nodded stiffly1.
The Doctor pulled the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and knelt down to look under the bed, only to be smacked out onto the floor, sprawled upon his back. The girl started to let out a high-pitched yelp and covered her mouth. He scrambled to his feet, to see a tall man standing before him. He was dressed in high-wasted bell-bottom pants, with a maroon button-up shirt, neatly tucked into his pants. It was wearing a rubber mask that covered its entire head, with small holes in the eyes of the mask. The mask imitated the look of a young man with a shaggy, 70's haircut.
Laughter burst from the Doctor's mouth, despite his attempt to stifle it. He let out a deep breath, to calm himself down, knowing there were other people in the house.
"You really do look ridiculous," he glanced over at the girl, "Are you-" he abruptly stopped. Doing a double take, he strode over to her, and turned her in a half-circle, so he could keep an eye on the alien at the same time. The Doctor kneeled down and focused his attention to her eyes, "Hold still, I just want to look," he said, looking deep into her eyes. After a moment, the Doctor exclaimed, "Hold on...you've been scanning her brain!
"What could possibly be worth creating a doorway in time by generating enough energy to blow a hole in the universe, simply to scan a child's brain?" he demanded.
"What does it want with me?" the girl asked fearfully.
The alien's head twitched to one side, looking at her, "You are incomplete," it said robotically.
"Incomplete?" the Doctor asked, confused.
The alien did not respond.
"If you can answer her, you can answer me. What do you mean 'incomplete'?"
The alien jerked its head in the Doctor's direction, and robotically approached him, pulling a knife out of its pocket. Jabbing its arm out to stab his stomach, the Doctor quickly leapt to the left, towards the fireplace. The alien turned to face him and slowly raised its arm above its head. Guessing what it was planning to do, the Doctor only just ducked out of the way as its arm came down. With frightening speed, it whipped the knife into the wall where the Doctor was standing only a second before. The knife was embedded deeply into the wall above the fireplace. As the alien attempted to free the knife, the Doctor saw his chance to get the alien back onto the ship.
Just as he was about to yank the light fixture, he said, "Oh, I never asked for your name!"
"It's Donna...Donna Noble!" the little girl called to him, just as he began to disappear to the other side of the wall.
The Doctor simply gaped at the freckly, young Donna, until the fireplace had completely rotated. "Oh shit." was all the Doctor could say.
Donna leapt up off the crate she'd been sitting on, and cried out, "Doctor!"
Jolted from his stunned state, the Doctor realized the alien had wretched free the knife from the wall, and was turning its attention back to him. Before it could lift its arm once again, Donna had grabbed a gun attached to the wall, and bonked it on the side of the head. But having the opposite affect she had intended, the alien's head did not budge; instead, it turned towards her, preparing to project its knife into Donna's chest. But the Doctor was quicker than the alien, and quickly lifted a second gun off the wall, and sprayed it with ice. The alien convulsed for a moment, before going stiff. Donna immediately ducked under its arm, out of the corner it had her trapped in.
When the Doctor was sure the alien wouldn't move again, he rubbed his hands together and said excitedly, "Alright then, let's see what we have here."
Unsure she wanted to see what lurked beneath the unnerving rubber mask, Donna interjected, "Doctor, don't-"
The Doctor lifted the rubber mask from its head with ease. Underneath was a clear, round shaped head, that contained gold colored gears, still slowly turning.
"Oh, you are beautiful!" the Doctor fumbled to put his glasses on to get a better look, "No really, you're gorgeous! Space age clockwork, look at that! I love it! Oh, it truly would be a crime, an act of vandalism to disassemble you," the Doctor regretfully looked at the robot, "but that won't stop me." He reached into his pocket, to pull out his sonic screwdriver - but it was empty.
As the Doctor desperately searched through his other pockets, Donna inspected the robot from a distance, "Would you please explain to me what exactly is going on here?"
Digging through and pulling various objects from his pockets, he explained, "The reason why they're generating a massive amount of energy is because- oops, forgot to give those back to Elizabeth," the Doctor muttered, pulling a pair of 16th century undergarments from his pocket, before stuffing them back in, "because they've created a doorway to that specific point in time to scan y- …that little girl's brain," his eyes darted over to Donna, who hadn't noticed his voice falter.
"Why?"
"I don't kn- damn it!" the Doctor cried, "my sonic screwdriver must have flown from my hand when this thing knocked me to the ground! Donna, I need you to stay right here with the robot, I'm only going to be a few seconds."
"Why can't I come with you this time?" Donna asked desperately, anxious to be left alone with the alien that had just tried to kill her.
The Doctor placed his hand reassuringly on her shoulder, "I need you to make sure this robot doesn't go anywhere. You'll be just fine. Just keep that ice gun in your hands, and if it starts to move again, hold this button," he demonstrated on the gun, "and simply spray it with ice again."
Donna nodded, and the Doctor gave her arm a gentle squeeze before once again rotating the fireplace into the young Donna's room. The reason he didn't allow Donna to accompany him was only half true. The real reason he wanted her to remain on the ship was to keep the two Donna's separated. A single touch between the past and present versions of herself would throw them into a paradox, which he had experienced with his former companion, Rose. The massive amount of power being generated by the ship was placing them in a precarious situation as it is, so contact between the two could be disastrous.
The Doctor looked around the room, expecting to spot his sonic screwdriver lying on the ground, before he realized that several more weeks or even months would've passed. It was now daytime, and he started to feel anxious. He hadn't wanted to leave Donna all alone with the robot, so he desperately began to rummage through Donna's drawers. Sitting at the bottom of one of her drawers, he discovered a very thick notebook with a golden script across the front that read: Diary. Under other circumstances, he would've discarded it aside without a second though, but he hoped that she may have written down in her diary as to where she had placed his sonic screwdriver.
Opening the book to a random page, the date read at the top: June 19, 1982. He knew he shouldn't waste time, but he was intrigued to know what Donna was like when she was younger, so he quickly skimmed through the journal entry:
Dear diary,
I just had my first kiss today-
Quickly flipping the pages to an earlier date, the Doctor decided that maybe it was better to focus at the task at hand. He continued to flip backwards through the pages – he certainly wasn't going to flip forwards, not knowing what exactly he might find after that…first kiss – and as he skimmed through the pages, he sighed in relief as he finally came across a page with the word 'Doctor' on it.
March 23, 1980
Dear diary,
It's been a long time since the doctor came out of the fireplace – "Humph, that's capitalized, for your information, Miss Noble," the Doctor huffed – but I still keep his grey bleeper in the drawer of my bed side table, just in case he comes back for it. I've told mum about the doctor, but she doesn't believe me. She always rolls her eyes and tells me that I'm too old to have an imaginary friend. I think granddad believes me though. He always listens to me. I wish mum didn't have to get so annoyed so easily.
Finishing reading the diary entry, he opened her side table to find that she really had kept his sonic screwdriver for several years. He smiled to himself, sliding his sonic screwdriver into his inner jacket pocket.
Reaching up to pull the light fixture, a girl's voice came from behind him.
"Doctor? Is that you?" she asked.
He turned around to see a she'd grown into a young teenager, with slightly gangly limbs, and her hair was as red as ever.
He turned around, and gave her a half-smile, "Yeah. It's me, Donna."
She smiled shyly "I thought you'd never come back."
The Doctor's stomach twisted with regret upon entering the fireplace in the first place. This was never meant to happen. If anything went wrong, he had no idea what could happen to him and adult Donna's relationship. He half-smiled and said, "I came back to get my sonic screwdriver, but I'm afraid I have to leave again."
Donna eyes fell, "Why can't you stay longer?"
"I have a friend who's waiting for me, and I'm afraid she may be in a dangerous situation, so I have to get back as soon as possible."
"Can I come with you?" she asked him with puppy eyes.
Regret twinged in his stomach once again, as he forced himself to shake his head, "No, I'm sorry. I wish you could come, but it would be too dangerous."
"Will I…Will I ever see you again?" she asked hopefully.
The Doctor smiled and nodded, "Yes, I certainly hope so." And with that, he gave her a little wave and a sad smile as he rotated once more into the spaceship.
Turning around, he expected to see Donna and the robot waiting behind him, but the room was completely empty.
He groaned in frustration, slinging one of the ice guns over his shoulder, and breaking out in a sprint, desperately hoping he would find Donna in time before anything happened to her. But soon enough, he heard a familiar shriek coming from the down the corridor.
"Donna!" he cried out, following the shrieking noises to a wooden door.