The Doctor figured out that if he throws himself through the time-capsule portal, he can confuse it enough that it won't flatten the city. But it might kill him. :-o
When we left off, Martha was thinking of doing something semi-homicidal, in order to save the Doctor from having to do it himself. Let's see what happens... ;-)
TWENTY-NINE
The next thing any of them knew, the TARDIS was making is signature sound, the universe echoing in its heart, and the Doctor was saying, "Here we are, London, 2008, on time-capsule day. Blimey, it feels like we were just here."
"Where in London are we?" Donna asked.
"Hovering over Martha's neighbourhood," the Doctor said. "Take a look."
She opened the door carefully and looked out. "Whoa, that is creepy."
"What is?" the Doctor asked.
"It's like it's blinking in and out of existence," Donna said, her voice high and breathy… terrified. "All of London."
"And it must be volatile beyond volatile if you can perceive it," he muttered.
"You mean, a lowly human?" she asked, sardonically.
"I mean a human, yes," he answered.
"How are the people down there not losing their minds with fright?" asked Colin, keeping a safe distance from the door, though, still able to see the phenomenon from where he stood.
"They can't see it," the Doctor said, softly. "You three can see it because the TARDIS is surrounding you, giving you a leg-up."
There was a moment of silence, and then Colin mused, "All of London. I mean, I can see the horizon to the east. Looks like Rochester, maybe Canterbury, too."
"It's all of this planet on all of this plane," the Doctor corrected. "It's hanging by a thread. Which means, my friends, we've only got one shot at this, and we've got to do it fast. I'm going to dial up the TARDIS' perception filter so that no one will notice us hovering, but once I've fallen out, and through the capsule's portal, they'll know we're there and they might have something up their sleeves to stop us."
"So we have to turn the dial and throw the switch immediately, and come find you in 1938," Martha said, flatly. "Assuming you survive."
"Assuming the transformation to 1938 doesn't happen the way it should…" he said, trailing off, considering the consequences. Then, "And yes, assuming that I survive. Okay with that?"
"No," she said, her voice breaking, but showing hints of resolve.
"I'm sorry."
"I know."
He walked around the console with purpose and grabbed her by the cheeks and neck, and locked her in an intense kiss that completely disarmed her.
When it was over, he said, never taking his hands away from her, "I'm probably coming back. But just in case."
She nodded helplessly. Her eyes spoke a million words, but did not betray what she had on her mind. "Okay. I understand."
"I love you," he said.
She gulped. "I love you, too."
One more kiss, and then he turned to his instruments and read a display. "According to the TARDIS, the time capsule was detonated at 9:38:41 a.m., local time. I have to jump into the thing as close to that moment as possible."
Martha wandered down the ramp toward the door, ostensibly just to look out at the city she'd so recently seen levelled to the ground. She was just in time to ride the open TARDIS doors over the roofs of her neighbourhood, and glide up along Earl's Court Road.
"There it is, Doctor! Stop!" she called out, just as they were approaching the corner.
She and Donna both leaned against the door, and peered down at the crowd that had gathered at the corner, waiting for the time capsule's opening. A man in a tan suit stood atop a step-stool, and addressed the hundred-or-so people, with a megaphone.
"Blimey, that's eerie," Martha breathed as she watched London fade in and fade out. It was almost translucent, and she swore she could see the vortex beyond it.
The Doctor brought the TARDIS to a standstill directly above the crowds' heads, then lowered it down until they were hovering only about twenty feet up. He then employed some rarely-used instrument to navigate to precisely the spot over the capsule, so that he could jump directly down.
"They've got the slab of concrete pulled up already," Martha observed.
"What does the mouth of the actual capsule look like? Will I fit through it?" the Doctor asked, still adjusting at the console.
"It's got, one of those old-fashioned vault doors," she told him. "Like with one of those wheels that you've got to turn with both hands."
"Well, that'll be fake," he muttered.
"It's still closed, but if I had to guess… it looks like you'll fit," she continued. "From here it seems about the size of your average sofa cushion, so you might want to keep your arms straight against you."
"So, no flailing?" he asked, with a smirk.
"Definitely not," Martha replied. She could not understand the man in the tan suit through a megaphone pressed too closely to his lips, but could hear him finish up a speech of some sort, and hear the crowd yell. Then he got down from his pedestal, leaned over and opened the mouth of the capsule with both hands. Martha found herself staring into a black void. With a gulp, she said, "It's open now."
"Okay," he said. "Good. See? The door is fake. The detonation happens when Buford presses that button. It must be a high-powered compression release, workable from… oh, maybe that's why he had to stay in the annex…"
"Hush, Doctor," Donna demanded gently, though she seemed mightily nervous. "How much time have you got?"
"About ninety seconds," he said. "I'm going to take a running start. If I look out there, I might lose my nerve."
When he said that, Martha was staring down at the crowd again, and thinking about how far twenty feet could seem, when gravity's pulling you down into God-Knows-What. When she heard his words, she stepped back from the door, and resolved to do what he said – take a running start. Or at least a walking one. But she had to get to the door before him so she could beat him to the jump. In fact, she had to get to the door several seconds ahead of him, or he'd be able to stop her. Timing on this would be horribly difficult.
The four of them practically vibrated as they paced about the console room, waiting for the right moment.
Then, the TARDIS, all too soon, gave a loud beep.
"Fifteen seconds!" the Doctor shouted, as he came around the controls. From where he stood now, he had a straight shot out the door.
The next quarter-minute seemed to happen in slow motion.
Martha's heart thumped in her chest. She took her place against a railing on the ramp leading from the door to the console. She'd decided that this would be her mark, for beginning her jump. But the way she was standing now, it just looked like she was trying to keep out of the Doctor's way.
"You forgive me?" he asked her.
"We'll see," she said, with a terrified smile.
And then, inexplicably, Donna, who was still standing near the door, turned to Colin who was about three feet behind her looking befuddled, grabbed him by the collar, kissed him hard, and said, "Wouldn't you know it. I meet you, and less than a week later I've got to do this. But at least we had Madame Tussaud's eh?"
"What?" Colin said, frowning.
"See you on the other side, maybe?" she said, ticking his chin affectionately, with her knuckle.
Martha and the Doctor both realised what was about to happen, a fraction of a second too late.
Donna had turned, and without pause, jumped out the door of the TARDIS. As they all screamed her name and leapt toward the door, she fell feet-first through a square hole in the ground, fiery hair trailing behind her like a comet, just as the console's countdown sounded off. She had hit the mark at precisely 9:38:41, and they all heard a great cacophony of ungodly noise, as they knew the real time capsule was opened.
The Doctor, Martha, and Colin gathered, horrified, at the door. They looked with dread into the portal through which Donna Noble had just thrown herself, so as to save her friend from that fate, and preserve the Last of the Time Lords for the good of the rest of the universe.
Predictably, though, the man in the tan suit looked up with total shock, and spied the TARDIS. Because of the heightened perception filter, he had to squint to see what was hovering above, and then register what he was seeing… it was three full seconds, which was an eternity, in these moments.
"It's the Doctor!" he shouted. "Bogsdon! Activate the fail-safe!"
Off to the right, a man in a darker suit began running toward a black SUV, parked nearby.
"Who's Bogsdon, a what the fuck is the fail safe?" Colin shouted at the Doctor, moving away from the door.
"I dunno," the Doctor panted. "If the Time Lords gave them a way to get rid of me, it could be anything! And it could be bad!"
He was staring out the door, eyes wide, teeth clenched, Martha gripping his arm. Donna's actions had stunned him frozen, and he stood still at that spot, his mind running through all the possibilities of what could be happening to his friend, what might happen now, and what it all meant… Donna was, indeed, something of a chaotic time event herself, having travelled with him for several months. But she was human, not Time Lord, and was nowhere near strong enough to handle the onslaught of pure time energy now coursing through her.
And she had known it! Damn it, she had known! She sacrificed herself! What the hell had she been thinking?
Meanwhile, the man in the tan suit was shouting at him, but he didn't hear. Martha shouted back, obviously a bit more cognizant of what was happening around them…
The Doctor seemed unsure whether to keep an eye on the SUV or…
"Whoa," Martha said, grabbing onto the Doctor's collar. "Don't you dare think of going in there after her!"
He turned and looked at her, still shocked, still experiencing everything in slow motion.
Donna's gone.
Something in his body language must have suggested what had been on his mind. He looked back at the portal, then back at Martha.
"Doctor, no!" she shouted. "She did that so that you wouldn't have to!"
Donna's gone Donna's gone Donna's gone.
"Martha…" he began.
"Oh, no! No, no, no, no, no!" Colin cried out, and with it, he ran toward the console. "This is rubbish! What's the matter with you people?"
The Doctor turned toward the console in panic, though he still seemed unable to move. "Colin, what are you doing?"
"Just what you told us to!" he said. He turned the dial the way the Doctor had shown Martha and Donna. "I don't see anything happening out there, except some random fail-safe and existence still bloody blinking!"
But then, orange-ish light began to emanate from the portal, and slowly, below, the pavement began to turn to a different, whiter hue. The man in the tan suit shouted, "It's happening! Bogsdon! Do it!" just before he disappeared in favour of a blank, pre-World War II corner of London. The crowd below began to chatter, and disappear, layer by layer.
"Colin, wait!" Martha said, seeing the horror on the Doctor's face. She wasn't sure what it meant, but she didn't think it was a good idea to go moving the TARDIS with the Doctor's clear uncertainty, especially with time shifting around them.
"No!" her cousin shouted back at her. "If Bogsdon does what he's gonna do, then the Doctor will be dead, and Donna's lost! We all are!"
He flipped the switch, and as soon as he did, the TARDIS' gears began to grind, and a big ball of green light seemed to shoot across the space in the room, though it didn't do any damage.
The Doctor ducked out of its way, and stared at its trajectory with shock and horror.
"It went right through us!" Martha breathed.
"Because we're disappearing," the Doctor breathed back, gripping the floor with both hands, white knuckles and all.
"Was that the fail-safe?"
"Yeah," he panted. "It was a light-compression field, lit-up by dimensional transference."
"Light compression? Like a black hole?"
"A moving one, yes," he said to her, absently.
"Bloody hell!" she shouted. "What were your people up to?"
"Never mind, it went through us," he said.
The door of the TARDIS was still open, and they could see 1938 taking over all around them, and as the gears ground, the blue box seemed to settle into the time change, and the grinding stopped sooner than expected.
"What's happening?" Martha asked, trying to hold down the panic in her voice. "Why did it stop?"
The Doctor glanced out the door. They were still hovering in the same spot over the corner of Earl's Court and Bolton Gardens. "Because it met 1938 halfway," he mused. He stood up and darkened the open door. "It's the first of January again. The time change happened… perfectly. At the perfect pace."
"So, no damage?" Martha asked.
"Not that I can see," he said. "No blast, no knocking anything down."
"And it didn't seem like a slow leak that was going to last for three years…"
"No."
"So, we're good? 1938-wise, anyway?"
"Yeah," he agreed, his voice getting softer each time he spoke.
"It doesn't sound like we're good," Colin said, coming down the ramp. "What's wrong, Doctor? And how do we find Donna?"
The Doctor turned and looked at him. Sadness coloured his face. He was pale, and exhausted. "It's possible that we won't."
"How can that be?" Colin asked, his voice beginning to ramp up a bit.
"She knew that when she jumped, Colin," the Doctor said. "She knew enough to know that she would confuse the time energy in sort of the same way that I would… though, I would've expected it to spit her out a bit faster."
"What?" Colin shouted. "Did you just say spit her out?"
Martha added, stroking her cousin's arm in comfort. "But she also would have known that she'd be less-equipped to survive it than the Doctor would." Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. "Because I was planning to jump, and I knew it, too."
"Excuse me? You were planning… what?" the Doctor asked her, his voice and eyes tight with incredulity, his lips pursed open.
"I was planning to do, well… exactly what Donna just did," Martha confirmed. "Only she was faster."
"Wait, how could you… what were you… Martha, what good… why…"
"Doctor, stop," she said. "You know the answer to every half-question you just sputtered at me, okay? Bigger fish to fry now."
"How do we find Donna?" Colin asked, emphatically. "And don't tell me we won't."
The Doctor began to walk up the ramp. "Well, what might happen is, she'll appear on that spot, right where she disappeared, at some point today."
"You said might," Colin pointed out. "What are the odds?"
"The odds are good," the Doctor said. "Well, good-ish. Fifty-fifty."
"Okay, so we wait?"
"We could wait," the Doctor said, busying himself with the controls. The TARDIS' gears sounded, and through the still-open door, they could see that he had set them down on a corner, across the road from the slab of concrete where the time capsule might someday be buried. The perception filter was still heightened, so people were simply walking past, coming home from their New Years' celebrations, unseeing of the Police Box, and unhearing of its occupants.
"Would she appear there at the same time of day?" Colin asked, staring out the door at the spot. "Nine-thirty-eight, or whatever time it was in 2008?"
"I honestly don't know," the Doctor told him. Then he swallowed hard, and Martha could see that he was holding back tears. When he spoke, his voice came out broken. "But Colin, it's important that you realise… even if that happens, she might not be the same. Or even alive."
Colin turned on his heel angrily, and stalked up the ramp. "Are you saying, we may just be waiting about to find her dead body and bring it home to her mum?"
"Yes," the Doctor said, and now tears fell down his cheeks. "That's what I'm saying."
Donna... Noble indeed? Or just reckless? Let me know your thoughts! Thank you for reading.