Doctor Who
Because You're Special
A Scottish Midget, a Ginger Gremlin and a Creepy Time Lord
Inside the TARDIS, Donna circled the glowing green column of light and metal and noted the switches and gears on the control. As a temp, she often had to sort out high-tech (or ancient) computers, printers, labelers and other gadgets without assistance. Because of this, she had learned to fiddle and push buttons until she forced the technology to give her the desired result. However, this console seemed both old and new somehow, and controlled a vast mysterious space-ship. As much as she was curious, Donna didn't touch anything. She just sort of leaned over the console and peered intently at the copper-colored knobs, battered little television screens and, what had to be Time Lord language—which sort of resembled hexagons half-eaten by hungry circles and squares—labeling certain mysterious features.
Maybe, if they finished scuba-diving, James Bond would give her a trip in this police-box. Less fashionable than first-class air-travel but entirely more interesting. Anywhere in time and space…it was sort of breath-taking. Donna gripped the console's edge, filled with a deep giddy joy at the idea of just leaving her ordinary life behind and taking off into outer-space, into that dazzling, terrifying adventure that the Doctor always stepped into. Donna turned, dragging her tired, emotionally confused body onto a tattered little couch. Finding a teeny aqua-colored hoodie hanging off the couch's back, she folded it into a pillow and tried to make herself comfortable. "Thanks, Rose." Donna patted the hoodie and closed her eyes.
It was so quiet in here. She heard nothing of the banging on glass at her window, the sound of the madman's deep voice or the sounds of the hotel or city. Whatever those wooden blue walls of the police-space-box were (and she doubted they were wood) they were marvelously soundproof. She hoped that meant they were bad-alien-proof too. Donna listened to the light the purring, thrumming sound coming from the resting space-ship. She wasn't sure if the "breathing sound" came from the green column or beneath the grill-work floor. It could be coming from something that served as the space-ship's engine or maybe the breathing was just that, the breath of a living space-ship. With the Doctor, she'd believe anything now.
Relaxed, Donna felt her body begin to sink into sleep.
Then, there was a horrible jarring of the space-ship and Donna was nearly tossed out of the couch. Clinging to the back, fingernails digging into the rough fabric, Donna listened to the unearthly chiming and clanging of some bass church bells coming from deep within the TARDIS. "
Oh my god," Donna burst from the couch, struggling to try and get to the doorway. Her Doctor need to be alerted that something was going terribly wrong. The idea of being trapped in a taking off blue-rocket-box—or, worse, an exploding one—was absolutely terrifying. Maybe it wouldn't be as scary if James were here, but as she wasn't any sort of special Time Lord genius, Donna didn't know what to do. She hadn't the slightest bloomin' clue how to fix whatever had gone wrong.
The metallic floor tilted crazily and Donna screamed as she slid back, slamming into the couch. Pain shot from up from her spine and she gasped. Unable to get enough of a foothold to rise from the floor, she dug her fingers into holes in the grating on the floor and tried to anchor herself. The spherical control room spun around her and that terrible, invisible, echoing bell continued its morose warning sound.
"Professor!" A youthful English voice, somehow a mixture of sweetness and boisterousness, came unexpectedly from behind the TARDIS console. Intangible, glowing, rippling and silver-outlined, the form of a girl appeared. Her long hair, tied back in ponytail, was a plain unimpressive brown. She wore a wrinkled black leather jacket that was spotted with something that looked like boy-scout badges. Oddly, the jacket had eighties-like thick, heavy shoulder-pads. "Professssooor!"
"….Yes, yes, I hear the cloister bell, Ace. No need to bellow. Let me see…" Another figure, silvery and strange like his companion, appeared inside the green-lit room. He braced himself against the console, trying to stay upright with the space-ship's shudderings.
Donna unlatched her throbbing fingers from the floor-grating and moved to cling to the couch, half scooting out of sight behind it, as best as she could. She observed the newest intruder. He was a dark-haired midget dressed in a strange brown and tan suit, with the rest of his outfit accented with bright red patterns and question-marks. Presently, he peered down at the controls, tilting his tan hat's brim up, to get a better look. "I wonder…"
"Hold up," The girl spun about, eyes darting over the TARDIS's walls. Looking confused, she tugged at her friend's sleeve. "Professor, the TARDIS is all…different. What's with those tree-things over there…?"
"Hmmm?" Her stocky, vaguely Scottish sounding friend barely looked up from his frantic tapping at the control panels. The professor shook his hand free and stared up at the large greenish column in the center of the console. "We're not moving through the vortex…"
The girl, Ace, punched the Professor in the arm and pointed to the wooden-like coral columns that ringed the room. "Never mind that we're parked, Professor. The TARDIS set off the cloister bell to announce an interior make-over! That's well odd, isn't it?"
"I don't think that was the…" The professor's words trailed away as he frowned at the controls in front of him.
Ace glanced around. Donna figured that a young girl who had so much life ahead of her should be little concerned about the fact that she was trapped in a space-ship that was having some sort of heart-attack or spasm. But Ace showed no signs of distress and was, actually smiling. "You have to admit though, the TARDIS's new look is a little wicked, Professor."
"Come now, Ace, it is not 'wicked'." The Scottish midget scolded mildly, sighing slightly, still staring perplexed at the bouncing controls before him. Half of what he said, Donna couldn't hear as he muttered to himself. "….hideous, dismal, coral theme...what's the point of themes, anyway? I suppose it was in that theme pack with the others Four bought…You really can't see a thing in all this gloom."
"I think it's well old, not all new and pale as death. Much better than being blinded by white-everything…" Finally drawing her attention away from the décor, Ace moved over to the Professor's side. "Have you sorted the problem, yet?"
"Yes. Unfortunately. I ran into a similar problem ages ago. Which is also why this "desktop theme" looks so familiar. We have crashed and merged into a future version of my TARDIS. And that is…" His voice trailed off and he wandered to the other side of the circular control-board. With a few sharp clicks of switches, the cloister bell faded and instead the room was color-tinted in a sickly wash of gray-lavender. The Doctor, which ever Doctor this clownish bloke was, tapped at some controls.
"You mean, all this time, we could have been traveling in something cool? Not in something that looks like it belongs in a hospital?" Ace's complained like a typical teenager. She had crossed her arms as if she was trying to look older and cooler than Ace knew she actually was. "Hold up, why'd you just change to the TARDIS's color-scheme to pink, Professor? Pink? Come on, nobody likes pink."
Even in the dire situation, Donna smiled wryly. Tell that to her Gran. That woman had loved pink with a passion that made Romeo and Juliet look like school-children with crushes. Of course, her Gran had also loved sardine and apple-jam sandwiches, so perhaps the woman's sense of taste was unique in the world.
Ace moved to follow the little man around the room. The Professor seemed a bit unnerved by Ace constantly, accidentally, ending up in his erratic path about the control room as he checked…well, whatever those controls were. He sighed irritatedly. "Ace, stop chattering for once and be observant! It isn't pink, it mauve. The universal color of distress. I switched all that clatter off for a color-alert instead."
"You've gotta be kidding me," Donna muttered. An ugly feminine color signaled an outerspace SOS? Space and time certainly was weird. She was, however, quite glad that the head-ache causing deep-throated banging of the "cloister bell" had stopped. What did cloister bells have to do with this blue-box-ship-thing anyway? Had this spaceship been an old monastery or something? Donna wouldn't be half-surprised if that were true because she'd noticed that, with the Doctor, the weirdest, unlikeliest things were suddenly entirely possible.
James's spaceship was not moving or spinning about as violently as before. Apparently, the professor had enforced some type of calm over the machine. Donna, still dressed in Celino's beautiful creation, slunk farther behind the couch and out of sight. Silent observation seemed best…at the moment.
"If both TARDIS's have merged, that's bad enough. But they have managed this partial merger with both of our temporal shields stable and fully-functional."
Ace stared at the console as if it was as meaningless and mysterious to her as it was to Donna. "And that's bad?"
"What could it mean?" The man pulled his umbrella off his arm and placed it on one of the console's hooks, so that his umbrella hung next to a huge mallet.
Donna frowned. What was with all these other Doctors and their umbrellas? She tried picturing her Doctor with his leather jacket, carrying an umbrella and managed to come up with something. Donna's mental image was rather freakish. It was of her Doctor happily, unnaturally, dancing in the rain and swinging about lamp-post like Gene Kelly.
Ace was speaking again. "Well, whatever has caused this…it must be pretty powerful, eh, Professor?"
"Yes…I believe I'll make a time-traveler out of you yet, Ace. But your power for noticing the obvious a bit too late is still terrrribly distressing."
"Question is, how do we pull them apart without blowing them both into smithereens? I don't fancy being blown around the universe as tiny little bits."
"Nor I, Ace. My fifth incarrrrnation," he rolled his 'r's in a dramatic fashion, "was able to separate them by creating an explosion to cancel the implosion. But this area is riddled by fascinating time-distortions—I have never seen anything like it—so will the same trick work twice? I wonder…"
"Well, stop wondering and tell me if you need me to whip up some nitro-nine for that explosion for yours."
"That won't be necessary…" He paused, turning his head to stare into the shadows near Donna's location. He lifted his hat and held it mid-air above his head. "Hello there. I'm the Doctor and this is my assistant, Ace."
Donna checked behind her shoulder, just making sure there wasn't another Doctor at her back and that the Scottish Time Lord wasn't addressing him. One never knew where he was going to pop up these days. She rose carefully, shoving a handful of hair from her face and then grabbing onto the jumpseat as the TARDIS lurched slightly. Trying not to sound too aggravated, she managed a curt introduction. "My name's Donna."
"How do you do…Donna. The name Donna means 'lady', Ace—which might explain the dress." He smiled brightly, "For all our talk of bombs, we're really quite harmless."
"Unless you're a Dalek and then we show no mercy! Right, Professor?" She beamed at him, as if it was the two of them together to the end of the universe and back or some inside-joke.
"Ace, Ace, that's quite enough noise at this moment, please." He turned back to the console, staring at some screens and buttons and puzzling over them. "Donna, I don't suppose the Doctor—the future Doctor—is available for a consultation about delaying our impending doom?"
"He's not in the space-ship at the moment." Donna said, feeling like that bloody recording you always got on when someone wasn't in. A great useless space-ship answering service, that was about all she was good for at the present time. Her fingers gouged into the fabric of the seat as the ship rocked again. "Actually, we were just supposed to be on holiday in Spain, just scuba diving and then everything's gone…bonkers."
"You scuba dive, Professor?" The brunette teenager scoffed. Donna wondered, briefly, if Ace looked anything like that other girl that James Bond ran around with. For all James' talk of Rose, she'd yet to see the woman.
"Scuba dive? No. Not yet." The short man glanced up at Donna. "Can you be more specific? It might be important."
"Dalek—whatever they are and whatever they do and whatever they look like—are messing with the time-stream. Apparently, they've been trying to bring me—who knows why—and you—any of you Doctor-things—together. That's why you're seeing all the time-manipulations in the area, at least that's what the other Doctors have told me."
"Spain," The professor straightened, "Donna…I seem to recall nearly running you over."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing, nothing. But why you?" His soft Scottish voice grew thoughtful, and his eyes grew distant. "Why would the Daleks find you so important?"
"Well, I don't know! I keep telling everyone that I'm not important and I'm sick of you outerspace-dunces pretending that I am!" She shouted back.
"Easy," Ace added, showing a little aggressive street-punk attitude in her attempt to be peace-maker, "We're all friends."
"Acquaintances at the least… No need to be at each other's throats." And with that quiet statement, the Professor turned back to the control-board.
There was a flickering, barely visible out of the corner of Donna's eye and she turned to see another indistinctive shape materializing. Beyond the glossy wavering silver outline and mystical radiance, Donna could see that it was another man. This one wore black, a weird alien robe with triangular shoulder pads edged in gold and a dark skull-cap on his head. He sort of looked like a combination between a medieval lawyer, and in body language—at least—one of those silly cartoon devils with a red pitch-fork and demon horns.
"You're wrong, Ace. No one is at each other's throats yet…but that doesn't mean there isn't a need for it." The man spoke with a smooth calm, and held his hands together in front of him like a monk. For all his outer tranquility, Donna could see fury and evil in the man's eyes.
"By Rassilon, whatever are you doing here?" The midget Doctor seemed shocked by stranger's entrance, but even more so by the man's face. It was like Donna was watching either two old foes meeting after assuming the other was dead or maybe some sort of terrible and unfortunate family reunion.
"Trapped in combining TARDIS's…same as you. We're all piled together into one combustible pile of technology and time-eddies. Unexpected, unforeseen, for you… old, rather boring history for me. Shall I make it more exciting for us?"
"Professor, who is this? The Master?" Ace moved a little closer to her friend, but tightened her hands into fists and maneuvered herself so that she could watch every move of the man in black.
"I'd rather not say." Ace's Doctor said in a bland tone, and reported from the screens on the console, "He's right. Three TARDIS's have merged. And since Donna is the drawing point of these time-incursions, it is her TARDIS that is the dominant one."
"So our TARDIS has been crushed and we've been dumped onto hers?"
"Only in appearance, Ace, our TARDIS is still here, all around us, merged in with Donna's…and…" The Professor narrowed his eyes, "…his TARDIS. We are able to interact because the merger has been so precise."
For some reason, the cold stare that the Scottish Doctor was giving the intruder, seemed almost menacing. It was weird. The little professor looked more like someone who would be on a listing of some university's teachers rather than some-sort of dangerous man. But the Professor, like most of the Doctors that Donna had encountered—especially hers and that rainbow-coated one—had that dark, cunning, powerful Time Lord look. She didn't know what to call it but the look was always there. Hidden under smiles and cleverness, maybe, but the look always spoke of ego and triumph and of violent last resorts. Seeing it so openly made her shiver.
However, the man in black saw the look and only chuckled. He cast his own Time Lord dark look in Donna's direction. His eyes were cold too. But they flickered about with energy, somehow putting into Donna's mind that he was a terrible villain. Powerful, intelligent, determined, self-righteous, an oncoming storm that destroyed lives without a backward glance.
Long words and jumbled phrases she'd never heard before tumbled about her brain, all about the Doctor, all about what he had been and would become. Foreign hateful fearful words that she'd known, always known, but were rippling to her from another place, another time. She blinked rapidly. She was going to be a bloody fruit-cake by the time all of this was over… a bloody fruit-cake? That was a rather unappealing dessert. Donna shook her head slightly, trying to force her sleep-deprived brain to focus on what was going on before her.
In his shadowy corner, the new intruder was monologuing. "…a mere drawing point, a victim of destiny, is that all you are… Time Lady?"
"What are you blathering on about now…Doctor!" She shot back, naming him. She'd seen enough of the man, she'd seen enough of that look, to pick out that this black-wearing villain was another one of the Doctor's regenerations. Although, this one seemed to be the worse one yet.
"Such forged innocence," He smiled slightly, tilting his head, "Why deny what you are? What you will be? You've known it for so long…that you can change the world, that you can become brilliant and terrible as I am; and that frightens you, Donna Noble…as well it should."
"You're Gallifreyan?" The Professor stepped away from the console, moving over to take another look at her. Donna backed up until her backside hit the railing around the room, raising her hands as if to fend off both of the looks and accusations. Ace's Doctor stopped, while the other one—the bad one—stayed where he was, smiling triumphantly and staring at her.
"I'm nothing, I'm just a temp." Donna swallowed, hot tears splashing down her cheeks and she tried to determine what had caused them. Oh, right… fear.
"You're not really nothing." A new voice, masculine, smooth and higher-pitched, arrived in her ear. She could have sworn that she also felt hot breath against her neck. Donna jumped, seeing a true midget—small person—with bristly red hair and a cunning vile smile, balancing on the rungs of the railing. Besides his tiny creepy face and his sudden nearness, Donna also noted that he was not translucent like the others had been, but he moved with a slight jerkiness. It was like when someone was trying to watch a movie frame by frame.
"Who the hell are you?" She backed away from it.
"Don't you recognize me? You did such a good job just a minute ago. You must be losing you're touch 'Sunshine'. Must be this outfit." He brushed his hands across his chest, standing firm on the railing, like a little acrobat. As his fingers moved against his tweed jacket, the jacket vanished into a blue pinstripe suit with a long brown overcoat.
He glanced up, smiling horribly, "No? Not yet? Ah…time manipulation, the devil you know best is…" The little creature rubbed the pinstripes on his chest away and began replacing it with, Donna realized with fear and disgust, her James Bond's leather jacket.
"Donna, what do you see?" Ace's Doctor inquired, sounding puzzled.
"That's right, Donna, what do you see? An old friend, a traveling companion…or," he smiled wickedly, "the future?"
Donna back-pedaled until she reached the console and whatever safety Ace and the Scottish Doctor offered. "You want to know what I see? I see another of you horrid Doctors! That's all that I ever see! Well, you can lay off your threats, mate, because if you take one more step near me, I'll—I'll…" She grabbed the question mark umbrella from the console and jerked the point in the direction of the two new Doctors, her attackers, "I'll…club you!"
"Professor…?" Ace looked to her mentor for guidance. "There's nothing there, right? I don't see anything."
"Yes, most curious," The Professor wrenched his umbrella away from Donna, before peering into the gloom where Donna saw the little ginger demon. From the Professor's body language, Donna knew he couldn't see it. The Professor straightened, "Yes, yes, well, your own doctor will have to sort that out—I have to be brilliant, clever and rather marrrrvelous to save all of our lives from an explosion much larrrrrger than Belgium." With a doffing wave of his hat, the Professor turned his back on Donna and her fears and went back to the console.
Ace moved to Donna's side, looking at the new Doctor. Not the "invisible" red-haired gremlin, but his dark robed older "brother". Ace nodded at the villainous Doctor, "He gives me the creeps too." She called back to her mentor, "Don't you know any nice people, Professor?"
With a clucking, sighing sound from the console, the professor called out, "Ace, He's not people, he's me. Unfortunately."
"That's well creepy." Ace muttered and Donna could only nod in agreement.
"Maybe he just regenerated 'crrrreepy'." The Professor lectured, "I've regenerated classy, clownish and child-like at different times. Why not creepy?"
"Professor, I don't think outer-space heroes are supposed to be creepy."
"Who ever said anything about being a hero?" The black-robed Doctor commented flatly, tilting his head as he observed the women.
"Creepy." Donna and Ace announced at the same time.
"Stop it." The nice Doctor chided them, looking for all the world like he simply wanted to ignore the intruder and the intruder's effect on the two human women. Donna noticed a little blush in the Professor's cheeks. Almost as if that, by seeing this scary version of the Doctor, she had actually seen his deepest secret or sin. Like the Professor was ashamed of his future reincarnation, but, strangely, not frightened of it. The Professor leaned toward them, hands on the controls. "Crrreeepy as this regeneration is, I'm sure he will meet a nice assistant and redeem himself."
Ace frowned at the Scottish Doctor's claim and turned around to look at him. "Is that the way it usually works?"
"Almost always," The professor answered blithely.
"It must be that I'm not so nice then, Professor, 'cause you've gotten creepier the longer I've known you." There was an edge of anger and sorrow to Ace's youthful voice. She turned back to stare at the New Doctor, crossing her arms and trying to look tough.
"I hate to be the voice of common earth-sense, here you stupid Martian!" Donna couldn't help shrieking at the Professor, as she spat out her opinion, "but that Doctor-thing can't be bloody redeemed by a good influence when he's obviously psychopathic!"
"Ah yes," The leprechaun-like Time Lord clambered over the railings edge and sat on it, like a naughty school-boy, "that's what I am, a psychopathic psychic projection created especially for you."
"She doesn't understand," the man in black's voice came like an eerie whisper inside Donna's skull as it conversed with the miniscule version of the Doctor, "She doesn't can't comprehend that our future is her future."
"Stop talking!" Donna shouted. She wasn't sure what was happening—except, of course, that her happy little vacation was turning into some sort of horror-film sci-fi nightmare—but she guessed that Time Lords were psychic. No. Wrong word. Telepathic. Anyway, having the voice of an evil alien in her head made her feel strangely isolated. It was the same feeling that she'd get if someone was crawling in the window of her apartment to hurt her and no one knew and no one cared.
"Donna…are you okay?" Ace spoke calmly, in a tone that had been perfected by psychiatrists and doctors and used when they addressed crazy people. Ace touched Donna's shoulder reassuringly. "Are you hearing voices now too?"
Tears splashed down Donna's face. Woodenly, she answered, "No. Not voices."
"Dark threads," The tall dark Doctor spoke again, a telepathic 'sound' that rattled against the insides of Donna's ears, "coiled in my soil and casting shadows on your future…hmm…too poetic?" He smiled silently, "I'd be clearer but that would take all the intrigue out of this moment."
The little Time Lord picked up the hinting monologuing seamlessly, "Our curse is your curse, Donna Noble. Our darkness is yours." The gremlin leered at her with his tiny eyes, "Or will be."
Donna glared back at the "ring-master" of her insanity, the tall and dark Time Lord-creepy. She scraped hot tears off her checks, "And what the flippin' do you want me to do about it!"
"Nothing." The shadowy figure smiled gently, speaking audibly for once. "I just thought I'd mention it."
Donna cursed. "Spice things up a little bit, eh?"
"Time Lords!" The professor called out, irritatedly, "all this telepathic flotsam is giving me a head-ache and I have three-TARDIS's to save single-handedly—unless someone is willing to help me out…?"
"I'm not a Time Lord." Donna said shakily, moving out of the Professor way to sit on the control room's jump-seat. She clung to the seat, clinging to the idea that she was just a temp too. Her? A Time Lord? One with psychopathic tendancies like her Doctor? Next thing the little psychic projection monster would be telling her was that he was her father in a Darth-Vader/Luke Skywalker moment.
"For the record," Ace muttered, moving out of the Professor's path as well, "I'm usually very good at figuring out our adventures all by myself, but this one is a doozy, Professor. Don't expect me to be able to sort it at the end."
The sweater-wearing Scottsman glanced up. His forehead was slick and there was a tense look about his eyes, but his voice was calm and quiet, "I believe… I requested silence."
The New Doctor chuckled. "Don't be so anxious, Seven. If we die, it really doesn't matter. Time will bend and flow and fill in the cracks."
"Thank you," The Professor noted sarcastically, "I'll be sure to calm Ace down with the comforting thought that even if we die, Time Lord's will correct the time-stream as best they can." Darting around the controls like a frantic madman, the Professor shouted, "We may all die horrrribly, Ace, but the universe will be saved!"
"Is that what Time Lord's do? I mean, the normal ones?" Donna couldn't help asking. If they were all going to die, she didn't want to die uninformed. "Keep the timeline on track?"
The New Doctor, the evil one, froze. For the first time, she thought he actually looked sad. He almost looked human, rather than a monster from the future. His eyes went to the floor. "Yes, when they are alive."
"I said, silence!" The Professor glared them all down. In the gloomy pinkish light, the expression on his face was no less than that dangerous look that Donna had seen recently on the other Doctor.
Donna closed her mouth and held on to the jump-seat as the TARDIS began buckling and spinning again. Ace grabbed a coral column and was hanging on for dear-life, the Professor braced himself against the controls best he could and their menacing "friend" creepily seemed to feel no need to bother moving to a safer position. The color-alarm, the ghastly mauve color, deepened like twilight.
"Interesting, isn't it? How my mood and personality changes as I fancy? An ever-changing storm, sometimes lightening, sometimes gentle rain." The gremlin, dressed in a black tuxedo, appeared at her side, lounging next to Donna. He placed his head in her lap and sprawled out as if to get comfortable. Unlike the rest of them, he wasn't real and the rocking motions of the space-ship did not affect him. But, for being a psychic projection, he felt heavy and solid against her legs.
"Get off of me." Donna growled. She was afraid to push him away and thereby lose her grip on the seat.
"It will all be over soon, Donna." The gremlin squirmed as if to snuggle down for a nap. He reached up and, too familiarly, patted her cheek. "It's been fun, though. Seeing you again."
Did he mean that they were going to die? But they had to live…right? This New Doctor came after the Professor…didn't he? So he had to survive this so he could become creepy and evil…what did that mean for her and Ace? Donna shrieked as a panel of grating fell from the sky and barely missed striking her.
"Professor!" Ace screamed. She had lost her grip and was rolling down the side of rounded wall, her body banging hard against the metal.
"Hold on, Hold on!" The professor flung himself into his work. His hat had been flung from his head and his sweaty hair was sticking up in mussed clumps. How he managed to stay upright was a mystery.
Donna thought of her Dad, Grandad, Mum, Alice…even that stupid cat that Alice had made her take in. Would they ever know what happened to her? She could picture her Mum bitterly recounting to everyone at the funeral, "I told her not to go to Spain…and look what happened…" Would her Doctor be killed by what happened here? By the deaths of his other selves? Or would the explosion take out the hotel and the town? All of Spain? All of Europe? The whole Earth? How big was Belgium anyway?
"They are separating!" Ace cried. Donna looked and saw that Ace had gotten a black-eye in all the tumbling but she was smiling. Slowly, Ace's form became less tangible and glowed with silvery radiance. "Blimey, Professor, you've done it! I can see our TARDIS!"
"It was simple…" The Scottish Doctor wiped sweat from his forehead, breathing out his words in a shaky voice. He released his death-grip on the console as the mauve lighting of the room turned back to a healthy coppery-green color.
"Simple?" Ace questioned before vanishing completely.
"Yes…all I needed to do was…" The Professor began fading, rippling with silver light before blinking out of Donna's TARDIS. Donna missed what he had done to separate the space-ships but since most everything was over her head these days, she figured she wouldn't have understood anyway.
She hoped that they had gotten back to their own white-TARDIS control room and that the odd pairing would have safer adventures in the future. The mothering part of her also hoped that the Professor would be aware enough to see Ace's black eye and treat it properly. Usually men weren't good at that sort of thing. Donna rose from her seat, rubbing her sore hands together.
"I see it is time for me to go as well." The Time Lord in black bowed slightly to her, and he began shimmering. Beside him, the red-haired gremlin stood. The New Doctor laid a hand on the projection's head, as if the horrible little monster was his child or a part of him. Who knows? Maybe that's all the gremlin had been—not another Doctor—but an imagined creation of the Creepy Doctor's sick mind. The Time Lord spoke again, "Take care, Doctor, I may try to kill you next time we meet."
"The doctor's already gone." Donna said harshly, nodding to where the Professor had just vanished. She ignored the way her heart was beating faster now that she was completely alone with this evil nut-job.
The New Doctor tilted his head, eyes meeting hers. He smiled wryly, "Is he? Or is he yet to come for you?"
"All this…nonsense…crazy Time Lord future-talk…was it just to mess with my head? Just to mess me up?" Donna rubbed her arms. She wasn't cold, but she didn't like the way he was looking at her. She didn't like him. And that was weird, considering how harmless and likeable most—well, at least some—of the Doctors had seemed.
"Maybe. I am a psychopath, after all." The Time Lord's face was only a faint outline now. In a minute, in a glorious minute, he would be gone for good. Back to his own vile little TARDIS with his vile little gremlin thing he made. The tiny monstrosity was also fading away, but before the creepy little man did, he bowed grandly and spoke, "Or maybe, it's a warning…"
Then they were gone.
The TARDIS door opened. Her Doctor's head popped in, the faint hairs of his buzzed hair glistening in the light of the morning sun. He smiled boyishly. "Hello, did I hear the cloister bell?"