Running away from the reflections, along the infinite support frames towards the white nothingness...
"Where are we running to, Doctor? Everything's the same here, isn't it?", asked Harry between breaths, unable to slow down or he would have fallen behind instantly.
"We're running towards the exit, Harry!", the Doctor called back from the head of their little party, upon which Sarah was quick to add a remark.
"You don't even know where that is!", she yelled back.
The Doctor stopped so abruptly that Harry and Sarah almost would have stumbled into him, as he suddenly changed corridors by climbing through a random frame. It made no difference, though. A quick glance over his shoulder told the Lieutenant Surgeon that, despite the change in their escape route, they were still being followed. At least the reflections were only super-strong, but not super-fast on top of it. Right now, Harry was immensely grateful for that.
"No, I don't!", the Doctor admitted eventually. "But where would we be without some wishful thinking?"
Next, he was sprinting down the corridor, with his companions close on his heels. Just as Harry's feet began to burn as a means of protest to this ongoing chase, a new shape appeared in the distance. At first nothing but a very large speck of brilliant blue, the box-shaped object soon came into clear view. A smile crept its way on Harry's face.
It was hope! There was no better word to describe the feeling that spread within his mind, and Sarah's most likely, too, at the moment their eyes were met with the sight of the old thing.
"The TARDIS!", Sarah cheerfully called out, and there was a laugh between her panting and the words she had squeezed out.
"That's… the TARDIS?" Very unlike for him, the Doctor wondered about it not only for a moment, but it even caused him to slow down as he caught sight of the object.
Before he could fall behind, though, Sarah had grabbed him by his wrist and was pulling him along. "Don't stop and stare!", she ordered him.
Harry had never seen a police box looking more out of place than here, in this strange, infinite mirror world. It sat squeezed between two lines of support frames, the doors facing their way, almost as if it had been waiting for them. A feasible escape plan finally in sight, Harry's burning feet were soon forgotten, and between the sound of his pursuer's footsteps and the sight of the TARDIS, he gave it his all to run a little faster. So did Sarah and the Doctor, and they arrived at the box's doors a little earlier than Harry. They stopped so short of it that they would have almost crashed into the front side. Eager to get past the doors, Sarah was trying to push the right side of the entrance open, although she should know as well as Harry that it would be locked.
"Are you sure all three of us will fit in there…?", the Doctor asked warily, suddenly distracted by the box's outer dimensions, yet neither Harry nor Sarah had the time to help him out of his confusion right now.
"Key, Doctor! The key!", the young woman demanded, while panicking slightly. Her shaking hands were raised, ready to pull the chain from the tall man's neck if he failed to act quickly enough.
Harry wished he had not looked back, but the reflections were catching up very fast now that the three of them had stopped to examine the police box's doors. It was only a matter of seconds until he and his friends would be subject to a serious beating if they did not manage to get into the TARDIS immediately.
Thankfully, albeit not entirely aware of what was going on, the Doctor was still quick to react. He lifted the TARDIS' spade-shaped key from underneath his scarf and unlocked the door as he was supposed to. Since Sarah was already pressing against the door, the three of them quite literally tumbled in as the door swung open.
==== ==== Sarah-Jane Smith ==== ====
Once inside, there wasn't really much time to get a good look at the console room interior. Sarah rose immediately back to her feet to help her friends clear the time machine's entrance. Once she had pressed the door shut behind them, Harry placed himself with his back against it, trying his best to keep it closed as already the first reflection crashed into it from outside. Sarah felt the door shaking so violently underneath her hands that, for a second, she thought it might burst open, and the two of them would be thrown off their feet by the impact.
"LOCK the door, Doctor!", Harry called out. "I won't be able to keep them out for long!" He was holding onto the door frame with all his might, but Sarah feared he was looking to the wrong man for help.
The Doctor stood a few steps away from the door, amazed by his surroundings. He looked around the console room as if he had never seen it, or anything like it, before. Although Harry's call for help reached through to him eventually, he merely began to look about himself more hectically. It was obvious from his reaction that he had no clue what to do or how to react. This mental setback came at the worst of times: If anything, Sarah would have expected the TARDIS to break loose a tidal wave of memories within her friend. Yet whatever the sight of his trusty time craft was doing to him, it appeared to have added only to his inner confusion and conflicted state of mind.
Meanwhile, however, Sarah was not going to place a bet on Harry's capability of holding back three reflections at once. In a flash, she ran past the Doctor towards the hexagonal furniture piece in the middle of the room to pull down several of its wooden covers until she eventually found the lever, which – she hoped, at least – was the control of the door lock. Once she had thrown it, the young woman turned her head around to look back at the door. There was a snapping sound coming from behind Harry, and he took a few unsteady steps away from it, while he still eyed the double doors warily for another five seconds. He had very good reasons to do so as well, because there was still a faint banging coming from outside.
Sarah glanced at the Doctor from her place at the console. Before, it had been difficult to tell about the confusion in his head just from his expression, but right now it was very plain to see. His eyes searched the room still, taking in every detail of the interior lining. "It's...uhm...", he began and lifted a hand, but failed to find the right words.
Sarah stepped away from the controls and hurried back to his side to complete the sentence for him. "It's bigger on the inside, yes, we know.", she hastily said, but he could hardly spare her a glance.
"...It's the concept of dimensional transcendentalism put into active use!", he eventually decided to finish the sentence himself, albeit differently. A broad smile had spread on his face for but a moment and a spark of fascination had appeared in his eye. "Oh! I'd always imagined it would be at least as impressive as this!", he added, truly overwhelmed by the design of the machine he had travelled in for centuries now. Unfortunately, his suddenly good mood did not last for very long.
Eventually, his sight had to fall on the brass coated contraption hanging from the TARDIS' ceiling. The joy disappeared from his face, and instead he eyed the machine fearfully and confused. Sarah could almost see the burning trail of the memory which must have scraped past his consciousness like a meteor scraping Earth's atmosphere. The disorientation in the Doctor's stare revealed to his best friend that he had, in fact, remembered nothing at all yet, and was acting merely against the vague notions of thought that were pouring out of his subconsciousness again.
Sarah, too, cast her gaze at the head gear for a moment and discovered that she remembered the events from that day on the French coast all too well. In fact, now that she took a look around by herself, it seemed that not much had changed inside of the TARDIS since then. In one of the room's corners laid a hat stand which had toppled over during the attack on the time machine, along with the Doctor's floppy fedora next to it.
The Doctor didn't ask what had happened or why he was obviously feeling the way he did, and Sarah didn't explain, either. Instead she studied his face attentively for the signs of more memories returning to him, while, with some effort, he pulled his eyes away from the brass head gear and continued to look around.
On the edge of her field of vision, she noticed Harry approaching them. There was a worried expression drawn on his face as he pointed back at the door to remind her of the danger outside, but Sarah held up a hand to signify him not to interrupt the Doctor. She held firmly onto the hope that the Time Lord might still be able to break the spell out of his own accord. This was his TARDIS, after all! It had to do the trick!
A few more seconds passed in silence, and the Doctor's gaze met some objects on the floor next to the time machine's entrance. Not too far from it, just down the few steps, someone had tossed to the parquet his red coat and multi-coloured scarf. If Sarah had to guess, it had been most likely the Doctor himself, and it must have been not too long after the Master's escape with the TARDIS, too, judging by the control room's overall state. For a moment, the assistant wondered what had happened to the Master, even though she realized that there was no one around to provide an answer to the question.
In the meantime, the Doctor was staring vacantly at the impossibly long scarf on the floor – though it looked less impossible now that it laid there in a disorderly pile of wool. His fingers reached up to run through the tassels of the much shorter piece of knitwear he had bought some weeks ago. It seemed that the metaphorical cog wheels in his mind were working, trying to figure out what all these déja-vus meant.
But just at that moment, another, slightly louder banging from the door reminded the three of them of something much more important: The reflections were still out there, and they would find a way in, sooner or later. After all, the TARDIS key hanging visibly from its chain on the Doctor's neck meant that his double also had a copy of it. As soon as their enemies had figured out if and how their key worked, the danger would be inside of the time machine with them!
His thoughts disturbed, the Doctor raised his gaze from the floor, but his lack of words and the frown on his face meant that his confusion had still not let up.
"Doctor, I hate to rush, but we really need you to remember right now.", Sarah begged him, and he finally turned his face towards her again. This uncertain look in the eyes of a man lost in his own mind was not becoming of him, and she felt twice as sorry that it was necessary to insist on her request. "You have to fly the TARDIS out of here."
A brief smile crossed his lips. "Fly? A police box?", he asked laughing, as though she had made a joke.
But Sarah was not joking. In fact, her mind could not be further from it. "Yes, fly. Or de-materialize. Whatever suits you best. But only you can do it!" He worriedly knitted his brows, somewhat overwhelmed with the sudden pressure, as Sarah placed her hands on his arms and began to push him into the direction of the console. At first, he allowed himself to be directed forwards by her, but as they neared the inner railing, he locked his feet suddenly in place, and looked back at her over his shoulder while Sarah stumbled slightly into him.
"How? How do I do that?", he asked.
"Take a look at the controls.", Sarah said in a breath, in an attempt to calm herself as well as him. "Don't think, just… feel your way around it. I'm sure something will come back to you if you just try." She gave him a light, almost begging, smile, but she could hardly hide the bitterness she felt. Although she had enjoyed to see him in a human life for a while, she could not wish more for his true self to return than in this moment. It was too painful to see him act so differently in this familiar environment.
He nodded his approval before he finally continued to walk towards the central console. This time, out of his own accord, and so Sarah waited and watched patiently. Once or twice he glanced back at her, seeking her reassurance as he familiarized with the many buttons and switches, but very soon the controls had his full, undivided attention. His hands hovered over them, and moved about in a pattern that overlapped with Sarah's memory of him. She could not tell for sure, but she assumed it was the sequence for setting the coordinate program and taking off. Of course, the action he had performed the most often...
"Muscle memory...", the Doctor muttered quietly, as he must have come to the same conclusion. Mentally preparing himself for what he was about to do, he hesitated another second before he decided he had to give it a try and ran eventually through the pattern once more, this time not just imagining the actions, but performing them.
The interior light of the TARDIS lit up a little brighter. Before, it had not been as bright as it should be, but not as dark as it had been back then at the French coast, either. Still, Sarah could only hope that the trusty old time craft would not fail them right now. The chances that someone had repaired her during the Doctor's absence were looking rather grim, she imagined.
Finally, the familiar wheezing and groaning sounds of the TARDIS' working de-materializing circuits filled the silence in the control room, echoing down the corridor nearby. Sarah remembered catching her aunt in the act of cleaning a harp, which had produced a similar noise – but now she was thinking how much different, how much better the original was. And how she had longed to hear it again!
Harry's face lit up as well as he exclaimed: "Well done, Doctor!" and he exchanged happy smiles with Sarah next to him.
That was before they realized they had gotten their hopes up too early...
Within another five seconds, the sound of the TARDIS began to jitter, and the interior lighting began to flicker, too.