"Gallifrey?" echoed Martha.

"Or what's left of it," said Jack touching a small pile of rocks that crumbled to ash under his fingers.

"Oh my god," breathed Martha, looking around as if seeing it all for the first time. "I thought it was destroyed."

"No," said Donna flatly. "It burned. This is all that's left."

"I still don't understand how we got here," Martha said finally. "So the game that was really a bomb that was really a transporter?"

"It was a trap," said Jack. "A trap for the Doctor."

"Why would someone want to set a trap-- one that would send him back here?"

"Oh," said Donna, looking off into the distance, "the Doctor has plenty of enemies."

"But he saved the world-- lots of worlds," Martha protested, "He helps."

"Don't you get it?" Donna sounded tired and heartbroken. "Look at this-- what do you think happened here?"

Martha starred at her, not understanding. "It was destroyed in the Time War. He told me that much."

"But he didn't tell you who destroyed it, did he?" asked Jack gently.

She shrugged, "the Daleks I assumed."

Donna shook her head. "No. He did." She threw a glance at the Doctor's still form. "The Oncoming Storm."

"And if he did this to his own planet--" began Jack.

"Then imagine what he did to his enemies." finished Donna.

"So someone wants to punish him," Martha explained, more to herself than to the others, "by sending him home-- to the home he destroyed."

"Looks like it's working," said Jack grimly.

"At least he's quiet now," said Martha, realizing that she hadn't heard a sound from him in several minutes. Only the sound of the ashen wind remained. She caught the look exchanged between Jack and Donna. "It is good isn't it?" she asked uncertainly.

"I'm going to tell you both something" said Donna after a moment, "something that I don't think the Doctor would like any of us to know." She took a deep breath. "After the Time War ended-- after he ended it, it drove him mad." She let that sink in for a moment. "He took the TARDIS into the void and... well not even he knows how long he let her drift there. But, in the end, he... he just let himself die."

"He killed himself?" said Martha, "but..."

"He let himself die," corrected Donna, "and then he regenerated. That was a while before you meet him, Jack. That Doctor was angry, a little broken, but the regeneration was enough to bring him most of the way back from the edge." She looked down, "until now."

"He never said..." Jack shook his head. "Of course he wouldn't..." He turned to the Doctor, jaw clenched. "But now it's different. Now he has us." He covered the ground between them and knelt at the Doctor's side. "We need to get him into some sort of cover," he said determinedly.

They looked around the wrecked, wind-swept landscape. No structures stood, just lumpish remains.

"Over there!" Martha pointed at a low rise to their left. "It looks like there might be an opening of some sort-- could it be a cave or tunnel?"

Jack jogged over for a closer look and came back at a run. "It looks like it leads underground. There's a least enough room for the four of us to get inside. Maybe it opens up further down." He knelt next to the Doctor and hefted the limp body into his arms. He got back to his feet, steaded himself, and headed towards the rise.

"Guess it's a good thing he's so skinny," said Donna to Martha, with a weak hint of a smile.

They followed Jack into the shadows. The opening led down a few feet, opening up to a wider space just below the surface, but beyond that a wall of rubble blocked their way.

"Well, it's better than nothing," said Jack, putting the Doctor back down. He took of his coat and balled it up as a pillow. "But I don't think I'd call it comfortable." Jack didn't take his eyes off the Doctor. Even unconscious, the Doctor's brow was wrinkled, his mouth pinched, shoulders tightened as if under some invisible attack. "I don't know what else we can do for him."

Martha picked her way around the rubble and knelt down beside him. She ran a hand along his arms and legs, checking for injuries. She lifted each eyelid-- though in the dim light it wasn't very informative. She could feel his hearts beating (something she wouldn't never, ever, get used to), and his breathing was steady-- if a bit ragged. "He doesn't have any physical symptoms-- not that I can run any real tests. Or would know what to make of them if I did, what with his crazy alien biology."

She took him gently by the shoulders and gave a little shake. "Doctor? Can you hear me? We need you! We need you to wake up!" There was no response. She shrugged and backed away. "Thought it would be worth a try."

"The problem isn't with his body," said Donna. "It's his mind. I think he's trapped inside-- inside his own anger, his own guilt. He's given up again."

"So, what? We're just supposed to let him die?" said Jack. "Wait for him to regenerate? Hope that the new Doctor has his act together enough to save us?" He looked at each of them. "Well, I'm not. I'm not going to loose another Doctor, and I'm not going to spend a minute longer on this planet than I have to." He went over to the wall of rubble. "Maybe this was a tunnel, maybe it leads somewhere-- somewhere unaffected by whatever happened out there. This was the home world of the Time Lords-- something must have survived. Maybe something that could help us."

"That's a lot of 'maybes'," said Martha quietly.

"You got a better idea?" Jack shot back.

"I might," said Donna. She had settled down next to the Doctor, her back against a large rock, one of his hands in hers. The both looked at her expectantly. "I think maybe I can go get him-- bring him back from wherever he's gone lost." She could read the question on their faces before they had a chance to say anything. "Back on Earth he-- he could read my mind. He said it was a side effect of the metacrisis, something that happened when we were close together. I can feel that connection now," she held up his hand in hers. "Maybe I can use that to call him back."

Jack nodded. "You try that. I'm going to see how thick this wall of rubble is. Even if you get him back, we're still going to need a way out of here."

"I'll help," said Martha, throwing a glance at Donna and the Doctor before following Jack.

Donna watched them go, then closed her eyes, feeling for that tingle of connection between her hand and his. His hand was cold, almost deathly so, but she knew that was normal and tried to ignore it. She tried to focus on the part of her mind that was his. She could feel a slight buzz from the biodamping ring on her other hand as it worked overtime to keep the Timelord mind from overwhelming her. She let her conciousness flow along the connection, the sound of her heart beating in her ears-- or was it is hearts?

She felt a jolt, a presences, a sense of recognition followed by a barrage of emotions. Some were too alien to put a name to, others quite simple: fear, anger, guilt, exhaustion. She'd found the Doctor, locked away tight in his own mind.