Short one. And a bit loony;)


.9. One of Many Mondays


The Doctor swaggered off, hands in his pockets, whistling quietly and turning his face towards the pale, August sky. He opened the TARDIS's door with a snap of his fingers and walked inside, still with much gusto, tails of his coat billowing behind him. He snapped again and the door closed.

"Lovely people, the O'Learys," he said. "You should have tried their stew, Donna. Delicious. Funny how some things don't run in the family."

He took off his coat, and threw it to the floor.

"The girl, Penny, she's positive," he continued, taking off the jacket and rolling up shirt's sleeves. "It's all hidden, just ticking underneath the surface, invisible and unrecognisable, and completely benign. But I've sonicked her and it is there. That little splinter of the Snow Queen's mirror. In her blood. In every cell of her body. In her very DNA."

He grabbed the screen and turned it towards him. The screen blinked, some random Gallifreyan numbers popping up and disappearing in a haze of white noise. The Doctor knocked his knuckles on the screen.

"Come ON!" he shouted. "Just one last trip, please, my old girl! Huh? Pretty please?"

There was painful dissonance in the TARDIS's response. Her engines were wheezing breathlessly. Even the light was different, not so much amber, as greenish; a sickly, pale colour, turning the Doctor's face into the one of a terminally ill patient. He didn't seem to notice it, though, completely preoccupied with controls. He pushed a lever and grabbed the mallet from under the panel to slam it on the control desk.

The TARDIS's rota trembled, whooshed up, hesitated, and then slammed back again. And up and down it went, picking up some sort of a rhythm – a quick, and angry, and terrified rhythm of escape. The light turned red and a Cloister Bell rang once, from within the ship's depths.

"Ha!" the Doctor yelled, running around the column and flipping switches on his way. "Who's panicking now? Ha? Ha?!"

The TARDIS shook and took off, vanishing from the sunny Irish street, from one of many Mondays, in one of many years in the past, just to dive into a vortex, picking up speed as she slid through an improbable tunnel in space and time. The impact of her take-off threw the Doctor well across the steering room. He moaned a little, getting up from the floor and rubbing his elbows.

"No need to get excited," he growled. "And I'm fine, thank you. All the better for your trashing me around. You've proven your point. You hear me? You're right. It's done."

He sprang to his feet gingerly. "So, let's go and do it."

The Cloister Bell rang again as little showers of steam and sparks exploded from the walls, hissing angrily. The Doctor ran through them, absolutely unaware of their presence, towards the dashboard, and started shifting levers. He grabbed a date selector, but hesitated.

"No, wait," he whispered. "Where was I? I wanted to rest. No! I went there, and it was Monday. And now it's all shifting. All around me, shifting, changing. I have to do it... I've done it. She said I had to do it, cause it had been done already. But what if it was another flux, another anomaly? How am I supposed to know?"

"Stop worrying," Donna said. The Doctor started and turned towards her, one hand still on the selector. "You're worrying too much."

"Am I?" He lifted one eyebrow. "I am as mad as a hatter, a hatter in batter, a battered hatter, so, of course I worry. See, now, I've just tried to set the course, but I couldn't. There's no course. It's all a labyrinth now. There are just walls, and walls, and walls, and walls, and walls..."

He doubled in pain. The ship trembled and jerked as a loud explosion tore the steering room's floor in half. The rota was whooshing up and down stubbornly, and the TARDIS's engines were howling. The Cloister Bell rang again, and the Doctor noticed it finally. He cowered in shock, his eyes almost popping out of their sockets.

"No!" he yelled. "Noooo! It can't be happening, no!"

He had to hold on to the steering panel for his dear life now, as the ship was shaking and rocking violently. Half lying on the dashboard, he grabbed the screen again and typed something on a keyboard underneath. The screen blinked orange and died. The Doctor pushed it away, stepped back from the steering panel, running his fingers through his untidy hair. His face was twisted in disbelief.

"All is wrong," he whispered. "All is wrong! There's nothing but anomalies. They are pulling us apart, but where are we?!"

"Outside the world," Donna proposed. "In the junkyard of possibilities."

"Yeah, lovely, but what does it mean?!"

He rushed towards the door and jerked it open. His face elongated as he looked out. The space was on the blink, constantly shifting, pulsating with light and darkness; shapes appearing in place of nothingness, just to be washed away into invisibility a moment later.

"It can't be..." the Doctor whispered.

"Well," Donna crossed her hands on her chest, taking a peek from behind his shoulder. "You're quite right. None of it can be, so these worlds cease to exist as you look at them. They are born and they die in an instant. Nothing is stable. Nothing is fixed."

"But that's... terrible!" the Doctor gasped.

"Oh, I don't know," Donna shrugged. "There were times when you wanted it to be just the way it is now – so... transient. No rules, no fixed points, no responsibilities, no... life..."

"No, but..." the Doctor whispered, his knuckles white on the doorframe, "there is life... there's Alfric, there's Eve, there's Penny... I saw them... I saw them all... and they were alive, they were fine, they were just fine!"

"So sweet, the way you've checked on them all, just to make sure that Donna Noble's bloodline is safe after what you did," she chided.

"I did? What did I do?" He faced her, pale and shocked. "When did I do it?"

"Don't you remember? A clearing in the forest. A man walking back to his hut. His young wife, very tired and very pregnant. Just a right spot in time; a place where the scales could be un-tipped. They sat by your fire and you offered them a drink. They drank as you watched. They thanked you and they left. Such a minuscule event, such an ordinary day. It was Monday, by the way. One of many Mondays."

"I... I can't... I can't remember..." The Doctor screwed his eyes trying to bring back the memory of the event. Unseen by him, worlds were exploding into existence, folding into themselves, twisting, imploding, fading, dissolving. Shapes and colours flowered and withered. Stars were rising and falling down.

The Doctor groaned and slammed the door shut. "I can't remember at all!"

"No wonder," Donna said. "Your mind has been tampered with. Lovely little Cells, hungry little Cells, devouring the remains of your reason. My poor Doctor, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but just when you tried to escape the TARDIS and find some rest, you were taken to the exactly right point in time-space continuum. Hence now it is not so continuous anymore. You have shattered it. Happy? Happy-happy?"

"NO!" The Doctor dashed back to the control panel and clutched on levers as is they were a lifeline. "NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! Stop it, Donna, you're wrong! I didn't destroy the world, I couldn't! How could I? There must be a way... a way out of here... Cause... It is just a place where paradoxes die, isn't it? Yes, that's what it is! A scrap-heap of paradoxes! And I have to find my way out of here!"

"That'll be tough, what with you being the greatest paradox of them all," Donna said, but she gave him a warm smile at the same time. She watched him, working frantically on the ship's controls. Suddenly she reached out and placed her cusped hand on his cheek. She stroked it gently. "Sorry, sorry. My poor, silly Martian. Your poor, silly brain. It can take a lot, can't it? But it was a bit much, even for you. Still, you'll be all right, Doctor. You'll be just fine. It'll all fall into place, just you wait. Just you wait, my boy."

He looked at her, tears rising in his brown eyes.

"WHO ARE YOU?" he whispered intently.

She smiled again.

"I am what's holding you together, Doctor," she answered. "Now, try to recalibrate matrix boosters. There's a screeching sound to them, can't you hear it? Nasty little bugger. And if you'd just pumped the circular stream relocator up a notch... Just like that. And switch off that interference loop shunt, it gets on my nerves... There's lovely. You know you could fix that chameleon circuit? Oh, no, sorry, I forgot, you like it the way it is."

"You're me," the Doctor gasped. "You've been me all the time. You're the sane part of me. Donna, you are what's holding me together! My wonderful, my brilliant Donna Noble!"

He grinned at her, tears still shimmering on his eyelashes. The TARDIS was groaning and screaming as she was falling through the paradoxes-riddled universe.


To be continued...