"Oh… no, No, NO!" Staring at the console in fright, the Doctor raised his hands back over the controls. He knew he had caused a dangerous situation, but now he had to undo it somehow! Hurriedly, he examined all the buttons again, while his mind raced to pick up even the faintest traces of muscle memory. There had to be something that gave him a clue, just any hint at what action he had to take in order to stop the TARDIS' de-materialization process again. At first, the Doctor attempted to run through the previous procedure backwards, but the systems remained unresponsive. Sarah hated to see the expression on her friend's face as he frantically searched for another solution. The panic that showed in his features was almost unnatural for him. Maybe a part of him, too, had noticed that the operation of the TARDIS was supposed to be to him what riding a bicycle was to most humans: An inherent skill that could not be forgotten. Yet he had, and his lack of memory had left him behind lost, uncertain and frightened.
More than once he reached out towards a switch, but then he hesitated and decided otherwise.

In the meantime, the flickering lights began to dim, and the TARDIS' sounds became more and more distorted. Gravity, too, began to feel strange to Sarah. In her fingertips she noticed a strange sideways pull, and even though it was subtle, it alarmed her deep within. Secretly, the young woman awaited the dreaded sound of the cloister bell to fill her ears any moment now…

"Sarah!", the Doctor suddenly lifted his gaze off the controls to seek her help. "Is there a fail-safe system we can activate? Or an emergency stop button?"

Sarah shook her head as she raised her voice over the de-materialization sounds of the TARDIS. "I'm sorry, but – No, not as far as I know!" It was a horrible feeling that there was nothing else for her to say or do.

Meanwhile, Harry's gaze wandered between her and the Doctor. He, too, was frightened, but was also still looking at the man running around the hexagonal console with expectation, despite the pilot's obvious lack of skill. "Doctor, you've got to stop it before the universe folds in on itself or something…!", Harry begged of him.

"What do you think I'm trying!?", the Doctor snapped back rudely, glad to be given a reason to take his stress out on someone. Yet his frustration lasted no more than a few seconds before he turned back to Harry with a plea for assistance again. "If you have any idea how to operate this thing – please! - I'm open to suggestions!"

Two more seconds passed in which Harry tried to reply something, but failed on words. Obviously, he had little to no knowledge of the time machine, less even than Sarah. Before the medical officer was forced to admit to it, though, another slight shift in gravity caused the Doctor's attention to return to the TARDIS immediately. He rushed around the console once more. His hands were always hovering over the controls. "What do I do? What do I do!?", he muttered to himself several times, and not very quietly, either.

In an almost desperate act, the Doctor eventually decided for one of his many options, and flicked a switch on the console. As though he expected the machine to spit sparks back at him for doing so, he had pulled his hand away almost immediately again.
Thankfully, whatever he had done was the right thing, and the TARDIS' de-materialization sound finally ebbed away, the lights, as well as gravity, stabilized again. In a matter of roughly five seconds, the situation had calmed back down.

Harry sighed in relief, but unlike him, the Doctor was still coming to terms with his own lack of competence. He bit into the fist he held raised in front of his face as he retreated from the controls, staring at them. "I don't know what went wrong...", he said once he had found his speech again. "I know that I should know, and I've tried to get us out of here, but…" He shook his head as he left the sentence unfinished.

Sarah's heart cracked a little as she felt his distress and so she quickly walked back over to him, hopefully before the feeling could etch into his mind to cause further conflicts with his true identity. "It's okay, don't worry about it.", she told him swiftly. To help him snap out of it, she rubbed her knuckles against his arm until he turned to look into her face. "We'll find another way. We always do."

"I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised.", Harry added in an attempt to support her. "This machine is much too difficult to operate it on passive memory alone..."

"Or, maybe the TARDIS can't take off at all.", sighed Sarah, before she turned her gaze from Harry back towards the Doctor and the console in front of him. She tried to match her memory of him running through the de-materialization procedures against the actions he had performed a few seconds back. "I'm almost certain you've done it right, but if she's damaged, then maybe it's just of no use...", she mused.

Though the Doctor shot her a glance, he did not reply or comment in response to her and Harry's assumptions. He did, however, look very disappointed of himself despite the well-meant words of his friends. For a few moments he eyed the console from a safe distance before he eventually approached it again. He might have liked to give it another go, but on the inside he probably knew that it was pointless. There was no further fragment of memory returning to him, and so he just leaned on the edges of the furniture piece and hung his head in frustration.

Sarah looked at him with eyes of pity, wishing she had some actual advice for him, and not just shallow words of encouragement. But even she could not prevent the awkward moment of silence from settling between them. If it only was true silence... and not the sounds of the reflections still trying to break in and constantly reminding them of the danger a few yards away. As Sarah closed her eyes for a second, she wished that they would finally give it up.

"...By the way, Sarah, what is that?"

Sarah turned her head as Harry spoke up to see him pointing at the brass coated head gear hanging from the TARDIS' ceiling. "That's the… thing the Master used to… change him with.", she explained briefly, along with a short nod in the Doctor's direction. Since the former Time Lord was most likely as clueless as Harry, the topic managed to attract some of his attention as well. While Sarah moved closer to examine the strange contraption, she noticed the Doctor watching her out of the corner of her eyes.

Months back, when the Master had invaded the TARDIS she had gotten no chance to look closely at the mechanical arm. Now, her mind was trying to figure out the meaning of this thing, the part it had played in changing the Doctor's identity, and whether there was a way to revert the process with this. Maybe this was the solution to everything, and not the familiarity of the TARDIS? Sarah pulled the head gear down to her level. With her fingers she traced the edges of the socket into which the Master had inserted the fob watch while she continued to ponder about the matter.

"A device to change a person's physiology with? Why would the Doctor have something like this in his TARDIS?", Harry raised a very interesting question., but aside from the fact that Sarah could not give an answer, she did not particularly care about it at this moment, either. Not while she had to figure out how it was operated first.

"It's probably not what it is. It might be used for something else entirely, and the Master just abused its function.", Sarah hastily put together, before moving on to more important matters. Almost abruptly she turned back at the professor. "The fob watch, Doctor! Do you still have it with you?"

He blinked at her surprised once or twice, but then began to search through the pockets of his jacket. Very quickly, he had found the velvet pouch which contained the valuable object, and Sarah hurried over to take it off his hands. "What do you want with it? Do you have an idea?", he asked her and raised an eyebrow in suspicion.

Indeed, she had an idea. It was not firm yet, but it was developing rather fast.
Everyone watched as she carefully pulled the pouch open. Even before she had taken the fob watch out of it, its golden light was flowing out, stronger now than ever. In many, small, feather light streams, the particles were dissipating into thin air. Although it was as bright as the sun, the strange glow did not hurt Sarah's eyes. Quite the opposite, in fact, it appeared to have an unusually comforting property to it. She had to pull her sight away before she became completely mesmerized by it.

Harry must have had the same experience, because he just looked at it with his mouth gaping open, unable to utter an exclamation at the light's bizarre beauty.

While the Doctor's assistant ordered her thoughts, she covered the watch with her hands and walked back to the TARDIS' brass-coated fixture. Despite the damage to the watch casing, she would have been able to fit it into its slot easily, but then she remembered how the Master had activated the machine from the console. Unfortunately, her memory was not precise enough to tell her what he had done exactly, and so she was forced to realize that her first idea was, essentially, going nowhere. Apart from that, Sarah had no intention to force the Doctor back into the same painful procedure unless she was certain about what she was doing...
Luckily, though, she had not run out of ideas yet. As she turned back to her friends, she held up the palm-sized, glowing object for them to see. "I have a theory.", Sarah eventually began to explain. "I believe that this fob watch withholds the Doctor's memories." The basis for her assumption was simple: The first time she had seen the watch it had been barely glowing at all, but the more the Doctor remembered, the stronger was the glow. There was a relation between these two steadily progressing events which could not be denied. Although she had no evidence to prove which event was causing which, she believed personally that due to the damaged state of the watch, its lock on the Doctor's identity had begun to fail.

"So?", Harry raised an eyebrow at her after he had finally broken the mesmerizing spell of the light. "I say, let's open it, then."

Sarah lowered the arm with which she had presented the watch to them and began to rub the alien object between the palms of her hands instead. "Well, there's the problem...", she started, but the Doctor cut into her explanation to finish the thought.

"The lock is too bent. It cannot be opened.", he added, with a surprisingly serious look on his face.

"Yes.", Sarah agreed, and continued straight away. Although she had no idea why he was suddenly so displeased, she responded with the most confident, serious look she could muster. "But, with enough force, we could break it open." In truth, however, Sarah was not as confident as she tried to be. It was by far not the first time she had considered to destroy the lock of the watch, but the significance and uniqueness of the item had always kept her from it. Just like the Doctor in his current state, it was the worry, raised by uncertainty, which had kept her from taking an action.

Still, as the Doctor had translated the old Gallifreyan engravings for her: "As time will come, so time will tell." And Sarah simply felt the time was right to tell them now.

"I hope you're certain about that, because I'm not so certain we will be able to put it back together afterwards...", remarked Harry, ever so helpful to lend a voice to some of her worries.

Although he was more right than she wanted him to be, Sarah firmly insisted on her idea. Even if it was only because she had no better one. Someone had to take a decision. "Yes, I am certain."

"Sarah, could I have the watch for a moment, please..?"
The Doctor's sudden request caused both her and Harry to direct their gazes at him. There was a strangely blank expression on his face as he held out his hand in Sarah's direction.

Although she could not tell from the look on his face why he asked to have the fob watch back, she hoped secretly that a memory had crossed his mind which told him of the watch's true meaning. Only he could know for sure what to do with it. Nodding, Sarah willingly placed the glowing object into his palm. If there was even the slightest chance that he had remembered how to help himself, she did not want to risk making a mistake.

At first, the Doctor covered the fob watch with both of his hands, effectively suffocating its light, and then, while holding it close to his body, he began to walk slowly away from his friends until he stood on the opposite side of the hexagonal console.

Sarah quickly noticed that he held his head low and was avoiding her and the medical officer's expectant looks. "What's the matter?", she asked him. Since he was reluctant to reply, she tried again almost immediately: "Doctor, what's wrong…?"

As he finally lifted his head, there was a strange, new expression in his eyes that Sarah had never seen directed at her like this. Worried for the most part, yes, but also somewhat sorry about the things he was about to say and do. Only as he spoke, Sarah realized he was sorry for having become distrustful of his own, very best of friends.

"I don't want you to break it open.", he argued.