He emerged from the library two Gallifreyan weeks – almost ten human weeks – later, still in the clothes he'd been wearing and with enough facial hair for small animals to begin to nest. In his hands he held a stack of papers so thick he could barely wrap his hands around it. Every bit of the papers was covered front and back with small, interlocking circles. Calculations for the trip through the vortex in the language of his people, the only language with words and concepts for the insanity he was about to attempt.
He stumbled into the console room, dumped the pages on the captain's chair, and staggered away, completely ignoring the way the papers had promptly toppled and spilled over the side of the chair and onto the floor. He needed to sleep, eat, and shower – in that order. Everything else could wait.
ooOO00OOoo
Showering was like coming alive, and the Doctor felt his mind begin to move again. To run back over the calculations he'd done while sleep-deprived; checking their accuracy now that he was back at one hundred percent. Thus far, they were holding. He could do this. The Master had damaged his beautiful TARDIS greatly while she'd been at his non-existent mercy, but she'd taken the time he was in the library to heal herself and she was almost as good as new. It was really only a matter of luck that he'd not discovered what the Doctor had done in removing the slave collar. They were bruised by what they'd survived in the year-that-never-was, but they weren't beaten yet. They had survived the destruction of Gallifrey; they would survive this, too.
What they both needed now, was a goal. Something tangible to accomplish to take their minds off what had happened. And getting Rose back was the best goal of all. To that end, only one thing was left: the chameleon circuit.
Police boxes didn't exist in his people's history, much less blue ones. He would have to repair the circuit so that he drew as little attention to himself as possible. This trip was going to be quite out of the ordinary. He was going to have to keep an extremely low profile. He was going very far back in his people's history. Far enough that they would only have the basest of time travel working. Time but not space. Assuming they would have even that much. He dare not kick up a fuss. Dare not do anything memorable.
He thought up names to use while he was repairing the circuit. Theta Sigma was his old Academy name. They'd simply given the applicants numbers to go by until they'd chosen their own. He was applicant number nine thousand two hundred. So, theta sigma he was. But that was out of the question now, for obvious reasons. As was using his true name. Even if he could have said it. He toyed briefly with the idea of translating 'Doctor' into Greek letters, to continue the theme. But that would make him 'Delta Omicron Tau Omicron Rho', which would be annoyingly long to say when introducing himself. Considering that he was doing this for Rose, he then thought about translating 'Rose' to Greek. It would be the much shorter 'Rho Omicron Sigma'. But…no. Knowing Rose, she would somehow manage to worm it out of him that he'd used her name and then where would he be? He shuddered. No. Best not to go that route.
But what to use, then? Something normal. Something common. But not so common as to rouse suspicion. In the end, he decided on Bititzio. It was the shortest of all the ancient names he could recall, and had the added benefit of not having any sort of attached meaning to it. The Gallifreyan equivalent of John Smith.
With the chameleon circuit repaired, there truly wasn't anything stopping him from racing through the annals of time in a mad quest to build a door to an alternate universe and rescue Rose. Second thoughts (oh, who was he kidding? He was up to two hundred thousand now.) rose in his mind, but he pushed them down ruthlessly. He'd been over and over the plan. Everything was as safe as he could make it. And he would get Rose back.
He approached the console and delicately laid one hand on the upright time rotor. Like he had all those months ago, he reached inside himself for the connection he had with the TARDIS, trying to capture her attention. He would need it if he had any hope of navigating the traps and obstacles the Time Lords had put in place for the express purpose of keeping someone like him from doing exactly this. If he was any less brilliant, had any less experience piloting a six-man console by himself; if his TARDIS was any younger with any less experience than she did, if their bond wasn't so strong…then this endeavor really would be impossible. As it stood though, it was merely extremely dangerous and more than a little likely to end in disaster.
Once more, the Doctor held the plan up to his ship, asking if it was possible, plausible, correct. They could do it. Maybe. But should they? Tell me this is the right thing to do, he pleaded with his TARDIS. She, who could see more of time and space than he could. Tell me this is good and true.
He felt her respond, felt the rotor under his hands and the grating under his feet come alive in a way he'd felt few times before. She had come.
When he opened his eyes, he could not help but gasp in amazement. The room was alive with swirling eddies of golden particles dancing and spinning together in rivers of light that streamed over, around, and through everything. He laughed aloud and spun in delight, his arms out and head thrown back.
"Hello, Sexy!" he sang.
The lights spun with him and for a while, they danced together.
ooOO00OOoo
The Doctor input the partial coordinates into the console, marking a spot farther down the time corridor as their destination, rather than a landing location along its walls. He braced himself, feet shoulder width apart. This was quite likely going to be the bumpiest ride of his very long life. He looked up at the glow of the TARDIS' presence and nodded once in determination. Then he flipped the lever.
Instantly, the TARDIS began to shake. Slowly and subtly at first, it was nothing more than a slight increase in the normal vibrations that ran through it. But as he navigated them through the Vortex, as the TARDIS slipped closer and closer to the Time Lock surrounding the Time War, the capsule began to shake more and more violently, the peaks and troughs getting larger as the frequency increased. He ran around the console, pressing buttons and throwing switches at lightning speed. The shaking continued to escalate, causing him to stumble as he reached for the trans-dimensional thrusters to adjust their feedback flow. Timelines and futures bloomed before his eyes. A dozen a second whirled before him as he reached for the lever in slow motion. But he wasn't fast enough. He wouldn't reach the lever in time to keep the temporal storm outside from slamming him quon-ways (a direction parallel to, but not actually associated with, the typical three dimensions humans understood) into the grasping, destructive fingers of the Time Lock. All that effort put into freeing the TARDIS from its control collar, and he was going to fail.
But then the gold mist of the TARDIS' consciousness swirled around the lever and slid it smoothly into place. He straightened out of his stumble, eyes wide, as he watched the TARDIS fly herself, adjustments to her trajectory and speed made with an efficiency he could only stare in awe at.
He jumped in the air and gave a whoop of victory, "That's my girl!" Then he stepped forward and grasped the dimensional stabilizers with one hand, and the squark stick with the other. Together, they would make it through.
Which ended up being a much more difficult endeavor than it had sounded on paper. Even with the help of the TARDIS herself, the Doctor still found himself scrambling around the console as he tried to navigate them around the Time Lock. It was alternately smooth and slick, like a marble, trying to glance them off its surface in a random direction (a feat it had managed a few times), and hard and spiny, like a porcupine, with long fingerlike protrusions built to reach out and snare (then destroy) any passing ship foolish enough to get too close. It hadn't succeeded in that part – yet.
Once again approaching the Time Lock, hoping to slide around it and farther down the timeline, he watched the monitor carefully for it to switch from porcupine to marble. Sure, it would be easier to pilot the TARDIS close to the lock while it was in porcupine mode, but it would also be exponentially more dangerous. He couldn't tell Rose he loved her if he was in a million pieces.
With one eye on the console monitor, one eye on the TARDIS dust, and one on the rest of the console room, wary of any more fires that might spring up – wait that was too many eyes…
The room rocked violently as the Lock began to emit the energy signatures signaling a shift into defense mode.
"Hold on, Old Girl! We're going for it!" He threw the throttle forward into max, removed the stabilizers altogether, and took four of the remaining ten directional guidance switches directly to hand.
The TARDIS settled on the console, completely wrapping the rotor and all its assembled controls in golden eddies of light. And this time, this time, they finally managed to slide around the Time Lock without being summarily ejected from the surrounding area. He gave a cheer of victory, but didn't stop moving. Practically, they'd only managed to move backwards in time by one second. He still had a billion trillion Gallifreyan years to go.
"Allons-y!"
ooOO00OOoo
The TARDIS landed with one final soft bump and the Doctor watched as the glow of the TARDIS consciousness swirled around him once, then faded away. Alone again, as he ever was. Not that he begrudged her the rest. Focusing her consciousness down to one single point in time was incredibly difficult for her. To then follow it forward linearly while still inside the Vortex? While navigating around the toughest barriers and traps his people had been able to conceive?
Well, she deserved a rest.
In fact, the Doctor thought as he pried his poor cramping hands away from the controls, so did he. He stumbled his way down the corridor that lead to his bedroom, mentally and physically exhausted. He approached his bed and flopped down on it face down, the force of his fall caused it to swing from where it was suspended from the ceiling. Within seconds, his eyes were closed, and for the first time in a long time, silence reigned in the TARDIS.