The TARDIS' whir and groan as Donna lands them in the warehouse that houses ATMOS industries. The place is teeming with UNIT soldiers, as it had been the first time they had arrived. Donna deliberately chose an out of the way place to land, worried that they might run into themselves and wary of creating a paradox.
"Right, call Martha."
The Doctor looks up from his side of the console at her words with a raised eyebrow.
"What? Why" he asks, but Donna notes with a smile that he reaches for the mobile before she can answer. There is some wonder in the fact that he trusts her enough to follow her instructions.
"Well, it would be nice to know if we're here already, wouldn't it Spaceman?" she asks him with a crocked grin, trying not to feel to nervous. Too many things have gone wrong recently. If only this is a short stop, then maybe she can get back to her work with the sensors before the day is out.
The Doctor nods and dials without comment.
"Yes, hello," he pauses, "Martha? This might sound strange, but are we already there?" he asks, rolling his former companions name in what Donna assumes is an attempt to sound casual that he completely fails at.
"Oh, we are?" he asks and meets Donna's eyes with a raised brow, scratching at his stubble with his other hand. A nervous twitch that has been absent for a while.
"No, no, nothings wrong, precisely," he tries, weaving his head from side to side as if the gesture will somehow comfort Martha, who can't even see him.
"No! No, don't tell other me that we're," The Doctor shrugs at Donna, apparently struggling for words that are simple in Gallifreyan, but hard in English, "also here. It's just something with the time-streams, actually could you meet us when Other-us have left?" he offers, his over exited hand going to his hair.
All his scratching makes him look like he's got lice, Donna thinks to herself with a fond little grin as she jiggles a switch absently, already readjusting something with half a thought.
"Yeah, that would be great, we'll land just outside the warehouse once the hubbub is over. Ta!" He explains with his usual good humor that can cover over anything at all. It is dishonest in a way that Donna hasn't seen from him for a good while, and it tightens something in her to see it now.
Well, this doesn't have to take long, Donna thinks to herself as The Doctor ends the call and replaces the mobile in its little stand on the console.
"It's a good thing I've you to tell me these things," The Doctor jokes with one of his odd smiles, "or we would have run straight into a paradox."
Donna isn't sure what to make of his tone, if he is as tense about this situation as she is, or if he finds it exiting rather than worrying. He would, probably, she thinks as she starts up the TARDIS' engines again and resets the coordinates for some hours forward.
Jenny joins them shortly after Donna has them back into the vortex. The younger redhead wanders in and rubs at her eyes, her hair gathered in a messy pony tail, several wisps of red pulled free of their band. It isn't just her hair that looks messy. Her blue and grey striped sweater is covered in what looks like bread crumbs, while there are several strange stains on her khaki trousers.
"I feel sick, mum," she murmurs pitifully, to Donna's concern, then slumps down in the jump seat.
Donna shares a worried look across the console with The Doctor. She raises a commanding eyebrow and pokes at him mentally. She needn't have, as he is already in motion when she does so. He strides around the console so quickly that Donna is a bit impressed that he doesn't catch on any of the levers as he twirls past them.
Donna sets the new course, then joins them.
"What's wrong, sweetheart?" she asks with a gentle voice and places a careful hand on her daughter's shoulder to steady the girl as The Doctor scans her.
"My head hurts and I feel weird." Jenny answers with a moan.
"Hmm," The Doctor sounds, frowning at his screwdriver, then up at their daughter. "Right, into the Medbay with you, my dear child." He says, at once standing and grabbing a hold of Jenny's arm to pull her up.
Donna looks at him with dismay, but helps their daughter up and stands nearly completely behind her to steady the wavering girl.
"Why? What's wrong?" she asks, gamely helping Jenny walk towards the Medbay.
The Doctor sends her a quelling look over top their daughters head, and gently leads the young redhead to a bed.
"We'll know that in a moment," he answers once Jenny is situated. The Doctor goes to one of the rarely opened cupboards and brings out some manual scanner or other, Donna thinks, only to be proven wrong when he brings one of Jenny's fingers to it and their daughter flinches.
The little machine spits out a strip of plast that he then brings to another cupboard, inside which is a large and complex, if sleek-looking, machine that he sticks the plast bit into. The machine whirrs and beeps for a while, then stops.
"Oh dear, this is unusual." The Doctor mutters, then manipulates the controls to get other readouts.
Donna can't help but worry, the tightly locked chest of her anxiety over Terry practically vibrating in her mind in concert with this new fear. The Tinker really knows nothing of medical practice, nor or what the readouts are saying.
The Doctor turns back to Jenny, but pauses when he catches sight of Donna's expression.
"No, no, don't worry, Love. She'll be fine, it's just a bout of temporal sickness." He explains, to Donna's intense surprise.
"What?" Donna looks down at their girl, who has managed to fall asleep on the bed. Sickness in connection with time-travel is practically unheard of with Time Lords, and since she hadn't felt even a twinge when she had first started traveling with The Doctor as a human, she had assumed that he had found some way to prevent it in all passengers.
The Doctor smiles comfortingly at her and goes to fetch an injection which he promptly administers to the young redhead.
"Well, I assume it's to do with Jenny not having had a look through the untempered schism. Her mind lacks the information that the structures of her brain are built to work with. It's treatable, though we really need to have her exposed to the schism." He explains softly, though Donna sees the grim line his mouth has taken now that his attention is back on their daughter.
"The Untempered Schism isn't exactly available to us at the moment." She reminds him sharply, unconsciously reaching out and rearranging Jenny's hair on her pillow so she looks more comfortable. The hard line of The Doctor's mouth deepens for a moment, his eyes going dark in an unfamiliar emotion, before he turns and repeats the reassuring smile from before.
"We'll just have to find another access point."
They leave Jenny sleeping and sedated in the Medbay to meet up with Martha. The young doctor meets them directly outside the doors to the warehouse. She looks a bit frazzled, but surprisingly put together for what she's recently been through.
"Doctor, Donna," She greets them with a welcoming smile, and reaches out to shake Donna's hand. Donna bypasses the offered hand and hugs the young woman, then holds her out in front of her to have a better look.
"Martha, good to see you again, you're looking well." She says with only the slightest pause, because Martha does look well, if tired.
"I'd say the same, except I've just seen you a few minutes ago, and it seems worrying to have you pop up again so soon." Martha says with just a bit of what Donna thinks might be exasperation as she turns and hugs The Doctor, much to his surprise.
Martha backs up and sticks her hands in her back pockets, while she takes a good look at them. "So, how long has it been for you, then?" she asks with some curiosity, then preempts them both, "No, actually, don't tell me. I don't have the energy for that, why don't you tell me what's going on instead." She says and gestures for them to preceed her back into the TARDIS'.
Donna and The Doctor share a look. Donna raises a questioning eyebrow. The Doctor shrugs. Donna frowns and gestures towards the hallway and the Medbay. The Doctor purses his lips thoughtfully, but just shrugs again, so Donna sighs and leads the way into the console room.
Martha follows, passing The Doctor in the doorway, before stopping short in front of the console and looking around, her eyes wide and her jaw slack.
"What happened?" she bursts out after a moment, only a bit of apprehension wafting off of her form.
Donna has grown so used to the way the TARDIS' have integrated that it actually takes a moment to realize what Martha means. She turns another raised eyebrow at The Doctor as he steps in and closes the door, but once again he just shrugs. She is dismayed to see him walk up to the console and start to fiddle with the fonts again.
"Well," Donna starts to formulate some kind of story, but after a moment gives it up, her mind too full with everything to make something up. "I had to integrate my Tardis into Old Girl, The Doctor's Tardis here, to repair some rather severe damage, that's why it looks so different in here." She explains shortly, then walks over and hip-checks The Doctor away from the console.
"I've told you to stop fiddling with the fonts, you daft martian." She huffs at his look of betrayal.
Martha stares at them, her mouth actually open in astonishment. "You have a tardis?" she asks, her voice going up several octaves by the end of the question.
"Yes, she most certainly does." The Doctor says with a cheeky grin and a wag of his eyebrow at Martha that Donna can't even begin to understand.
"Though, of course you can't mention this to us the next time you meet us, because that will be past-us again, the timelines depend on it." He says seriously. "Not the TARDIS'," he says with a wave of his hand to encompass the changes, "Not Donna being a Time Lady," he continues, ignoring the fact that Martha actually looks like she might faint, "and most importantly, you can't mention the kids."
Martha sits down in the jump seat quite hard.
They try to explain the situation to Martha, but they don't really know enough for it to make much sense, especially to someone who doesn't have the intricacies of the gallifreyan language to fall back on.
"Wait, you mean that this thing with ATMOS had already happened for you when I called you, but somehow the past-you knew to come here, even though I only got through to you? Isn't that a paradox?" Martha asks with some alarm.
"In a way, yes," The Doctor answers in an oddly gentle tone that sounds to Donna as if he is talking to a frightened victim in some far off world.
"It is a paradox, but since past-us don't know that we're here at all, we're relatively good on the time line front." He says as he ruffles his hair one-handedly and paces in front of the console.
Donna watches him from her place by the engineering console. He seems agitated, but his voice remains gentle, so clearly there is a story there, but she isn't going to ask just yet.
"I'm not entirely sure about how past-us knew to come," The Doctor starts.
Donna interrupts, as this is actually one of her areas of expertise and letting The Doctor explain things like this invariably lead to metaphors involving string, or the word 'wibbly'. The view screen obliges her and draws up a neat illustration for her.
"The time line split before Martha called us, but stuck closely enough to the original that a plicae formed, allowing past-Martha and now-Martha to merge again, along with the timeline." She explains, gesturing to the two intersecting lines. Two dots move along them, both labeled Martha, and eventually merge towards the end when the lines twine and merge.
Donna frowns at the image, thoughts swirling fast behind her eyes. "This is actually really unusual; Time lines don't usually intersect like this at all, the smallest change usually makes it impossible to match up again."
"Could someone be manipulating the time line, like The Master did?" Martha asks anxiously, apparently over her shock. She gets up and joins Donna by her console, though she is careful not to touch anything which Donna appreciates distantly, her thought caught up in what Martha's question.
"The Master?" she questions, recognizing the name of a prominent Time Lord, and the tense and unhappy set to The Doctor's shoulders.