4

Inside of a dark, cold, upside-down dimension, Donna Noble had been desperately attempting to calm a child.

Meanwhile, at that very strange moment, her mother had been standing right outside that cold and darkened dimension: doing her damnedest to beat down its door with the head of a spade.

It is entirely possible that, without outside intervention, these curious events would have continued without end, cycling infinitely, twisting into a beautifully timeless loop of red-faced crying and futile soothing and unfettered, spade-wielding rage.

Instead, the military showed up just in time to ruin everything, as per usual.

The door to the TARDIS – which the Doctor had once deemed 'impenetrable' in the sort of smug, lofty tone that made Donna want to kick him in the knee – began to buckle inwards with shocking and terrifying force.

Oblivious to who was intruding, frightened for her life, Donna was attempting as best she could to hide. All things considered, it was a pointless effort, as nothing did in one's stealth quite like an armful of screaming toddler.

"Shh, it's okay, it's okay," she hissed at him, frantic. "Shut up, please, Doctor!"

Of course, she recognised that she was partly responsible. Even if he hadn't at all grasped the meaning of 'We'll be dead in days' – which, in retrospect, she appreciated was probably not the best way to go about reassuring anyone, no matter their age – the tone of her voice had obviously conveyed enough to upset him. The loud, dull hammering on the door wasn't helping matters. Neither, it seemed, was Donna herself.

He thrashed in her arms and kicked helplessly and wailed in the shrillest voice Donna had ever heard, wailed himself hoarse, wailed as if being held by her was the worst, most hateful agony imaginable. Perhaps his displeasure was mildly justified – in her panic, as the ominous pounding outside intensified, she had scooped him up a bit presumptuously, without taking the time to consider whether or not a nine-hundred-year-old alien inhabiting the body of a toddler would take objection to being carried.

But it wasn't as if Donna hadn't paid the price for manhandling him without his consent. When he'd dissolved into full-on sobs upon being lifted, panicking and squirming to be put down, she'd tried to mollify him with a hasty, "It's okay, it's me, your mate, Donna – don't you remember me?"

He didn't, of course: as evidenced not a moment later when his protests turned violent.

As the door rattled off its hinges, there'd been no time to try to negotiate. Carrying the child to safety had left her torso (and possibly several internal organs) generously bruised. Dodging kicking bare feet and alarmingly savage small fists, eventually Donna had wrangled him into what she'd intended to be a comforting embrace but under the circumstances had ended up as something a bit closer to a full nelson.

Now, she was gripping him tight, huddled out of sight in the thick darkness behind the bulk of a coral strut – trying, by any means necessary, to shut him up.

She felt like she ought to have known what to do in this situation, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that she was out of her depth. There were some things Donna remembered, albeit vaguely, from her time in the Library's computer. She'd knew she'd had children in that dream-world, and knew she had been an excellent mum. But now she was learning the hard way that the fabricated experience had not prepared her to manage a child in the real world. Her children had been obedient, angelic little strings of code, who played games and rarely fought and went to bed on time. Children who only cried (at inoffensive volume) when there was a clear and easily resolvable reason to: a skinned knee to kiss better, a fallen apple slice to replace.

Not real children. Certainly not mad Time Lord children, who were, as she had learned the hard way, prone to viciously biting when lullabies were hummed off-key.

Short of knocking him unconscious, she'd tried everything she think of. Shushing, tickling, bouncing. She'd even attempted to bribe him with the lollipop from the Doctor's jacket. Nothing worked. He would be neither placated nor silenced: evidently determined to get them both killed as he wept pitifully, surprisingly stickily, cried in quavering, ear-ringing bursts. He twisted and flopped like a beached whale, howling and getting twisted up in his own shirt, making it infinitely harder to keep a good grip on what was Time Lord and what was garment.

And finally – inevitably – her temper slipped.

"Stop it, Dumbo!"

The bellow was practically a reflex, after several months of cohabitation in a time machine with an alien who seemed to find her exasperation a source of enormous amusement. His response was usually to offer her an innocent, boyish smile, before deliberately continuing to do whatever had riled her in the first place; because normally, when she barked this at him, he was in his proper insufferable state.

But this miniature version of the Doctor was not equipped for Donna's brashness. There was no defiant smirk. He stopped bawling instantly at the frustrated shout. Eyes shot wide and fixed up at her, red and tearful, as though he couldn't believe she'd managed to generate a sound that terribly loud.

His lower lip trembled.

"No, no, don't start that again!" she begged, precipitously dropping back to a whisper – but it was much too late. A lone, sad bead of moisture rolled down his cheek, painting a fresh clean trail through the soot.

He pressed his fists to his eyes and dissolved into sobs all over again: his voice high, anguished, deafening.

The dreadful banging upon the door reached a fever pitch – at the very same time as Donna's fear. Dust and wood chippings raining from above, she gave up altogether on the gentle approach and clamped her hand hard over his mouth, forcibly muffling his cries.

The door caved with a splintering tear, and her heart nearly stopped.

She knew she was going to be found. She was also determined not to budge a single inch when she was. They – whoever they were – would have to drag him out her arms and incapacitate her before she stopped fighting to keep this little terror safe from harm. Not that the little terror was in any way appreciating her valiant plan of self-sacrifice, as his teeth had begun to whittle away at her palm with astonishing ferocity.

Donna was so terrified the pain barely registered. She'd closed her eyes tight, paralysed by the unknown, the horrible possibility of what could've broken in. It could have been anything in the universe. And anything able to infiltrate the TARDIS had to mean business, she knew. God only knew what nightmares were about to descend on them.

"You tell him to get out of there!"

The roar came from outside.

Donna's eyes popped open.

"You tell him to come out that box, right now! He's been hiding – he knows he's destroyed my garden! But I'll have him! He's not flying away before I get him! You bring him out of there! And Donna too!"

"Mum?" she gasped.

She all but dropped the Doctor and scrambled out from her hiding spot, peering up to the TARDIS's shredded, gaping doorway. She could see the backs of uniforms, shadowed against the sunlight. There were three men guarding the TARDIS's entry, all gently trying to calm her red-faced, nightgown clad mother, who was, for some unfathomable reason, holding a dented spade over her head like a battleaxe.

She was on Earth.

Upon further inspection of the landscape: the clouds, the line of the roof, the evidence of a horrifically maintained plot of petunias – she was in her own backyard.

Again, Donna considered the very comforting possibility that she was unconscious from the fall, and somewhere in reality the Doctor, at his proper age and size, was tapping her cheek impatiently, trying to bring her round to the real world.

"No," she said firmly, shaking her head. "There's no way. All of the universe, anywhere with gravity, any planet… there's just no way." She looked to the Doctor. "Did you do this?"

He was struggling for breath, wrapped protectively in his shirt, sniffling hard and glaring at her with absolute murder in his wet eyes. It didn't seem like he had any intention to reply, so Donna occupied herself with staring up at the doors incredulously instead.

A stirring of movement came from above. There was the sound of metal clanking, Velcro crackling, boots clomping. The soldiers shifted and Sylvia was ushered back – although far from willingly, if her distant squawks of fury were any indication – and then the dusty blue-white beam of a torch swept into the TARDIS, flickering around the upturned console room, gleaming and glancing off the roundels.

"…seems to be inverted," she heard a strong Irish brogue mutter confusedly. The analysis was followed by the sharp, high whine of a sliding rope. The shaft of light fell closer, making Donna shield her eyes with her palm.

"Doctor, sir?" called the brogue, quite politely. "Are you down there?"

"Who're you?" replied Donna warily.

The rope squealed closer and a soldier strapped into a harness materialised from the darkness, landing gingerly on the wire-strewn ceiling. He swung his torch at Donna.

"Oi! Would you mind not blinding me with that!"

Startled, he swiftly lowered it. Grimacing, spots still dancing in her eyes, Donna scanned him from head to toe: taking in the red beret, the dark bulk of the uniform, the gun in the holster. In the dark she could see anxious sweat on his brow. An extra harness hung limply from his gloved hand.

"You're with that UNIT lot," she said slowly.

"Er. Yes, that's correct." He cast his torch around worriedly, scanning the dark time machine. "Uh…"

"Do you usually go around breaking into other people's property like madmen?" she demanded.

He coughed a little and brushed at his sweat with his forearm, seeming rather uncomfortable. "Er. Well. The TARDIS crashed quite violently, miss. In the event of a Code 9 wherein damage to Earth-based property is incurred, it is protocol to establish contact with…"

At which point he caught sight of the Doctor and fell silent, staring blankly.

Static exploded on his radio, breaking his trance. He fumbled at it. "Er… Donna Noble, sir," was what he eventually stammered into the receiver, uneasily straightening his beret. "And, erm… an unidentified minor. Yes. Yes, Donna Noble."

The swift tones of an order came through the radio. He snapped himself out of his shock and into a nervous salute, attention leaping to Donna.

"Well, thank you," she said with a prim, unimpressed sniff, fixing her hair a bit, silently delighted by the gesture. "Is that for me?" She pointed at the harness.

"Er," he said once more, and looked down helplessly at the harness as though he'd forgotten he was holding it. "Actually…"

"Well, give it here, then. What sort of rescue do you call this?"

With no other recourse, he handed it over.

"Um," he hedged.

Donna sighed and turned. The Doctor – sitting unmoving in the shadows, glaring viciously at both her and the young UNIT soldier as though regarding the absolute scum of the universe – recoiled at her approach. She bit the bullet and hauled him up anyway.

He screeched. The soldier nearly fell over in shock, hand fumbling reflexively at his holster.

"I know you're going to ask," she said, tucking the kicking, struggling Time Lord firmly under one arm as she strapped her legs into the harness. "So, go on. Spit it out already."

There was an awkward, apprehensive moment, during which the elephant in the room was magnificently shrill.

"…Miss Noble?"

"Yep," she sighed.

A hefty, uncertain pause followed, in which he seemed to brace himself, unable to take his eyes from the raging toddler.

"Where is the Doctor?"

Donna raised a tired eyebrow. "Where do you think?" she said.