The road less travelled...

Title: A Time of Endings 4/9
Author: katherine_b
Rating: PG
Summary: The End of Time with Donna in it. Wait, she already was. So why am I bothering to do this one?

Part IV

As he steps out of the TARDIS onto the road in front of Donna’s house, he can hear, very faintly, the sound of a familiar laugh that has never failed to make him smile.

Except for right now, when he thinks he might cry instead.

Driving away the tears, he studies the various windows of the house, trying to work out where Wilfred might be. He doesn’t want to have to go any closer in case he stumbles on Donna, or worse, Sylvia. However he finally catches a glimpse of movement in an upstairs window and ducks back around the TARDIS until he hears the familiar sound of Wilf’s footsteps.

“I lost him,” he begins as he covers the short distance between them in a few long strides. “I was unconscious. He’s still on Earth. I can smell him, but he’s too far away.”

Wilf’s concerns, however, are naturally not with the Master. “You can’t park there,” he protests. “What if Donna sees it?”

For once, however, the Doctor won’t let himself be distracted by talk of Donna. He remains focussed. “You’re the only one, Wilf,” he explains impatiently. “The only connection I can think of. You’re involved. If I could just – work out how.” He leans forward in his urgency, only realising how far when the other man takes a step back. “Tell me, have you see anything,” he demands. “I don’t know, anything strange, anything odd.”

“Well,” Wilf begins with obvious reluctance, “there was a…”

“What?” The Doctor pounces on this. “What is it – tell me!”

“Well, it was – ” He sees the man deflate and knows that a refusal is coming. “No, it’s nothing.”

“Think, think, think,” he begs. “Maybe – maybe something out of the blue, something connected to your life. Something!”

“Well,” the words come slowly, and Wilf has a cautious look in his eyes, as if he’s afraid of bringing up the topic again, “Donna was a bit strange. She had a funny little moment this morning, all because of that book.”

“What book?” he asks, mystified.

“Come with me,” Wilf orders, before waving a hand at the TARDIS. “And can’t you keep that thing, I don’t know, hidden?”

“She won’t see it,” he promises as he follows Wilf into the back garden. “She can’t. Only you can.”

“Stay here,” Wilf orders and ducks into the house.

The Doctor ensures he’s out of sight, but he can’t help glancing through the window, unable to help hoping for even the faintest glimpse of Donna. When that fails, he lets his gaze roam over the room. His eyes fall on a picture of a little girl with red hair in a dark purple sundress and he feels himself smiling, although his eyes are suspiciously damp again.

Wilf reappears the next moment, and almost shoves the book at him. His eyes fall on the cover and he feels recognition flood through him.

“Right, his name’s Joshua Naismith,” Wilf tells him.

“That’s the man!” the Doctor exclaims. “I was shown him by the Ood.”

“By the what?”

“By the Ood,” the Doctor repeats, forgetting that he’s talking to Wilf and not Donna.

“What’s the Ood?”

“Oh, just the Ood. It’s all part of the convergence.”

For the lines of convergence are being drawn across the Earth.

“Maybe…” He stops for a moment, as several pieces click together in his mind and he looks up. “Maybe touching Donna’s subconscious,” he suggests, his mind moving at its usual million miles per hour. He even manages a genuinely happy smile at Wilf. “Oh, she’s still fighting for it even now. The DoctorDonna.”

Wilf returns the smile, although it’s clear from the confusion in his eyes that he hasn’t really understood much of what the Doctor was saying.

“Dad, what are you up to?” says a voice from inside, and then Sylvia appears the next instant.

The Doctor draws the book under his arm and takes a step back, seeing as Wilf actually moves in front of him, as if protecting him from the onslaught they both know is about to arrive.

He refuses to draw parallels between this moment and the one where Donna stepped between him and the roboforms under the direction of the Empress of the Racnoss.

Sylvia’s eyes narrow in an instant and she glares at him.

“It’s you!” she hisses furiously. “But – get out of here!”

“Merry Christmas,” he offers in an attempt to placate her.

“Merry Christmas,” she returns automatically, before rushing on, “But she can’t see you! What if she remembers?”

And almost as if to prove her point, Donna’s voice interrupts the silence. “Mum, where are those tweezers?”

“Go!” she insists softly, gesturing at him.

“I’m going,” the Doctor agrees, turning away.

“Yeah, me too!” Wilf says somewhat surprisingly.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Sylvia tells him, and he can hear her footsteps following them as he crosses the road to the TARDIS, fishing the key out of his pocket as he goes.

The Doctor can still hear Donna’s voice calling in the house and the fear of what Sylvia might do if her daughter caught sight of the Time Lord hurries him on. However Sylvia herself is still following them – or more particularly, her father.

“Dad! I’m warning you!”

“Bye bye!” Wilf says in would-be cheerful tones. “See you later!”

“Stay right where you are!” Sylvia shrieks after them.

The Doctor slides the key into the look as he looks at Wilf, who is at his shoulder. “You can’t come with me.”

“Well, you're not leaving me with her!” he insists as he gestures towards his clearly irate daughter.

“Dad!” Sylvia exclaims again, the fury audible in her tones, and the Doctor makes up his mind.

“Fair enough,” he agrees, opening the door and stepping inside, hearing Wilf’s feet on the grating behind him as the door slams shut.

He dashes up to the console and sets the dematerialisation sequence going. He had enough of mothers in the TARDIS when Jackie accidentally went with him. He’s not about to take Sylvia, too!

However he also switches on the scanner so that he can catch a glimpse of what he’s leaving behind in Chiswick.

“Just you listen to me,” Sylvia is shrieking. “I forbid it! Get out of there! Doctor! Bring my father back right now! Come back here!”

The Doctor looks down in time to see Donna come out of the front door of the house and he can’t help the grin that crosses his face as he realises Sylvia is still gesturing wildly at the spot where the TARDIS had been standing and shrieking for them to return.

“Are you shouting at thin air?” Donna asks mockingly, in much the same tones as she had once used while asking if he was an alien.

“Yes,” Sylvia responds, with astonishing meekness, the Doctor can’t help thinking, as her head flicks around to where the TARDIS had been, before she looks back at her daughter. “Possibly,” she adds. “Yes.”

All but laughing out loud – and he can’t remember the last time he did that – he switches the scanner to its usual view as he begins to set the destination.

“Naismith,” he announces as he shoves the book into Wilf’s hands, delighted to have someone to bounce ideas off. “If I can track him down…”

He happens to look up at this moment and realises that his passenger is still standing at the head of the ramp, his mouth open as he gazes around the TARDIS.

“Ah,” he says slowly. “Right. Yes. Bigger on the inside. D’you like it?”

Wilf makes a few meaningless noises before he manages to get a sentence out. “I thought it'd be cleaner.”

“Cleaner?” The Doctor glares at him, pointing a vaguely threatening finger in his direction. “I can take you back home right now.”

“Listen, Doctor.” The man takes a few unsteady paces towards the console as he continues, “If this is a time machine, that man you're chasing, why can't you just pop back to yesterday and catch him?”

“I can't go back inside my own timeline,” the Doctor tells him. “I have to stay relative to the Master within the causal nexus. Understand?”

“Not a word,” Wilf assures him.

The Doctor only just manages not to grin as he offers his hand. “Welcome aboard.”

“Thank you,” comes the breathless reply, and he gives the Doctor’s hand a feeble shake.

They arrive at their destination the next moment and the Doctor knows as soon as the TARDIS begins to materialise that the Master is here. He can smell him.

The Doctor nods for Wilf to open the door and then follows him down the ramp.

“We’ve moved!” the man exclaims in shock. “We’ve really moved!”

“You should stay here,” the Doctor suggests, although he doubts he’ll have any more success keeping Wilf out of danger than he had with Donna.

“No, not bloody likely!” comes the immediate reply.

“And don’t swear!” the Doctor scolds, stopping before he puts the key back in his pocket. “Hold on!”

He aims it at the TARDIS and presses the concealed button he had created. The blue box flickers and then disappears as he had programmed it to.

“Just a second out of sync. Don’t want the Master finding the TARDIS. That’s the last thing we need!”

He suppresses a shudder at the disaster that was last time and leads the way out of the stables where they have landed, cautiously keeping an eye out for any movement as they walk along the outside of the building. Wilf is a few paces behind, but the Doctor can see that he is working valiantly to keep up as well as he can.

Heading around a corner, the Doctor is about to dive for a door he has just noticed when he hears footsteps and dashes back to where he was, gently pushing Wilf out of sight just as two guards march past on the other side of the archway.

“That book said he’s a billionaire,” Wilf offers. “He’s got his own private army!”

Fishing out the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor waits until the coast is clear before running back into the archway.

“Down here,” he calls softly to Wilf, hearing the stumbling footsteps of his unexpected companion following him as he unlocks the door and heads into the basement.

The Doctor leads the way through several dark passageways and past the foot of a flight of stairs, heading for the hum of machinery he had been able to hear even outside the building. Florescent lighting points the way to their destination, and he ducks around to the other side of an opening, gesturing at Wilf to stay where he is, as he hears a female voice.

“Shatterthreads have harmonised. The fibrelinks have densified. The multiple overshots have triplicated.”

“Nice game,” he remarks, poking his head around to look at her, having already realised that there are no guards present.

“Hello!” Wilf says cheerfully from the other side of the doorway.

“Don’t try calling security,” he warns her, stepping into the room, “or I’ll tell them you’re wearing a shimmer. ‘Cos I reckon anyone wearing a shimmer doesn’t want the shimmer to be noticed or they wouldn’t need a shimmer in the first place.”

The female in front of him – he can’t quite tell what species she is yet – does a respectable job of playing dumb. “I’m s-sorry, what’s a ‘shimmer’?”

He raises eyebrow and points the sonic screwdriver at her. “Shimmer!” he announces cheerfully.

She sighs and the pretence drops at the same instant as her shoulders and her human form. He isn’t that surprised by her actual appearance, but clearly Wilf is.

“Oh, my lord, she’s a cactus!” he suggests thoughtlessly.

The woman glares at him as a voice comes over the small speaker on the desk. “Miss Addams? Miss Addams!”

“Got a friend, have you?” the Doctor suggests as he begins wandering around the room, looking at the various computer displays. “The two of you are a long way from home.”

“No further than you,” she snaps. “That sonic technology isn’t anything anyone here could come up with – pathetic lot they are!”

“Hey!” Wilf exclaims, clearly insulted.

“Well, you did just call her a cactus,” the Doctor reminds him idly as he studies the readouts from one of the computers, watching as symbols appear in neat rows across the screen.

The next moment, the screen in front of him turns red and he can detect the power surge through the room. He lunges across to one of the other computers.

“He got it working,” he tells the others, “but what is it? What’s working?”

Footsteps suggest the arrival of the other alien, as does a tremulous voice. “What are you doing here?”

“Shimmer!” the Doctor tells him, aiming the sonic screwdriver at him but without taking his eyes off the computer.

There is a flash of green out of his peripheral vision, but the Doctor doesn’t give the two non-humans time to do more than exchange glances.

“Now, quickly, tell me, what’s going on,” he announces, hurrying on as the male shakes his head. “Harold Saxon. Skeletor. Whatever you’re calling him. What’s he doing up there?”

There’s silence from the two green people and he glares at them. “What's your name?” he snaps at the male being, having already pegged him as the weaker of the two.

“R-Rossiter,” comes the tremulous reply.

“And you are?” the woman demands.

“I’m the Doctor,” he tells her. “And this is D – Wilf!”

“D-Wilf?” Rossiter asks curiously.

“Just plain Wilf,” that man says for himself, with a knowing glance at the Doctor.

“So come on,” the Doctor says impatiently, before Wilf say anything else, “tell me. What’s he doing? What is all this? Because believe me, whatever the Master says he’s doing, he won’t be!”

“But I checked the readings,” Rossiter tells him. “He’s done good work. It’s operational.”

“Who are you though?” the Doctor asks suddenly, although he’s not talking about names this time. “‘Cos I’ve met someone like you. He was brilliant. But he was little and red.”

“No, that’s a Zocci,” the woman says in annoyed tones.

“We’re not Zocci, we’re Vinvocci!" Rossiter adds. "Completely different.”

The Doctor can’t quite think of an answer to this, so he merely shrugs.

“And the Gate is Vinvocci,” the female Vinvocci goes on. She sighs with obvious impatience. “We’re a salvage team! We picked up the signal when the humans reactivated it. And as soon as it’s working, we transport it to the ship.”

“But – what does it do?!” he demands in aggravation.

“Well – it – mends,” Rossiter says slowly, as if talking to an idiot. “It’s as simple as that. It’s a medical device to repair the body. It makes people better.”

“No.” The Doctor shakes his head suspiciously. “There’s got to be more. Every single warning says the Master’s gonna do something colossal.”

Wilf, meanwhile, has wandered back in the direction they came from and is now peering into the room glowing with green light.

“So that thing’s like a sickbed, yeah?” he says to the woman.

“More or less,” she agrees.

“Well, pardon me for asking, but why is it so big?”

“Oh, good question!” the Doctor interrupts, impressed. “Why is it so big?”

“It doesn’t just mend one person at a time,” the female says, scoffing.

“That would be ridiculous,” Rossiter agrees.

She looks at him almost pityingly. “It mends – whole – planets.”

Suddenly all of the pieces – well, most of them – click into place and he steps away from the computer, staring at them in shock and horror.

“It does what?” he asks weakly.

She shrugs, clearly not understanding his concerns. “It transmits the medical template across the entire population.”

The Doctor stares at her for another long second as things begin to make sense and then he takes off, hauling his glasses off his nose as he runs out of the room and heads for the stairs and the upper floors.

He follows the sound of electronic interference up through the empty rooms of the massive mansion belonging to a man who is clearly obscenely wealthy. In some ways, the Doctor is reminded of Henry van Statten, as Joseph Naismith clearly has a similar interest in alien artefacts if the pieces the Doctor’s eyes fall on are any indication.

Without warning or introduction, when the Doctor finds a room full of people, he runs inside.

“Close the Gate up right now!”

“At arms!” exclaims a man in a crisp suit.

“No, no, no, no, no, no,” he protests, holding his hands up in a gesture of demonstration. “Whatever you do, just don’t let him near that device.”

He gestures at the Master before pointing at the Gate, borrowing the name from his conversation with the Trickster during Sarah Jane’s wedding.

“Oh, like that was ever gonna happen!” the Master says mockingly, before hauling off what looks like a straightjacket and a collar and leash the next moment, then using his new power to fling himself right into the mouth of the Gate with a roar.

The Doctor spins around to stare at the only other Time Lord in existence, who is standing in a waving field of energy. He still isn’t entirely sure what the Master has planned, but he does know that it may well make the mass control over the population with the use of the Archangel network look like a picnic.

“Homeless, was I?” the Master declares mockingly. “Destitute and dying? Well, look at me now!”

“Deactivate it! All of you!” the Doctor orders. “Turn the whole thing off!”

However there is a muttering from everyone around him, and they are shaking their heads in what looks like confusion and mild pain. The Doctor can hear the echo of the mocking laugh that the Ood showed him.

“He’s… inside my head,” Joshua Naismith mumbles, shaking his head as if to get rid of the strange thoughts.

The Doctor casts his eye over everyone in the room, seeing that they are all reacting in the same way. It’s clear that he is the only one unaffected in this room.

Across the entire population

Or, depending on the wavelength the Master is employing, possibly the only person unaffected on the whole of the Earth.

“Get out of there!” he orders, diving at the Gate to try and remove the Master by force.

However the Master fires a jolt of power in his direction, although it burst into a ball of flame before it reaches him. Still, it’s enough to knock him to the floor.

“Doctor!” a weak voice states, and the Doctor looks up in time to see Wilf stagger into the room. “Doctor, there’s… there’s this face.”

Momentarily giving up on trying to get the Master out of the Gate, the Doctor scrambles to his feet and runs to Wilf. “What is it, what can you see?”

“Well, it’s him!” He gestures towards the Master. “I can see him! I keep seeing his face.”

“Something’s wrong,” the woman on television announces. “It seems to be – affecting the President.”

The Doctor crosses the floor to the small screen to see that man with his face in his hands. He dashes to the computer in an attempt to shut it down.

“I can’t turn it off!” he exclaims as nothing reacts to his attempts at typing.

“That’s because I locked it!” the Master sneers. “Idiot.”

As a thought strikes him, the Doctor grabs Wilf and pulls him in the direction of the protective booth for the nuclear bolt. It’s a faint hope, but it’s possible that the glass – which he knows is Vinvocci rather than Earth – might, if he boots the shielding enough, be able to block the signal. He lets himself into the empty booth and watches as Wilf removes the occupant of the other room before getting into the second half of the box.

“Just need to filter the levels,” he explains as he plays with several of the dials.

“Oh, I can’t see him now,” Wilf exclaims in a relieved voice. “He’s gone!”

“Radiation shielding,” the Doctor says curtly. “Now press the button and let me out.”

“Do what?”

“I can’t get out until you press the button,” the Doctor explains impatiently, gesturing. “That button there!”

That button there!

The memory of Donna using those exact words in the Crucible floats back into his mind and he wonders – hopes – that the dormant Time Lord consciousness in her head will be enough to protect her from whatever the Master is planning.

“Fifty seconds and counting,” the Master announces as the Doctor steps back into the room.

“To what?!” he demands in aggravation.

“Oh, you’re gonna love this!” the Master says, chuckling in evident satisfaction.

A ringing sound is nothing more than a vague distraction, although he dives for the computer in the hope that it will be something he can use to stop the Master. However the faint sound of Wilf’s voice from the booth suggests it’s a phone call and he sighs impatiently as he ignores the conversation and keeps trying to stop the computer.

“What is it?” he begs at last. “Hypnotism? Mind control? You’re grafting your thoughts inside them, is that it?”

“Ooh, that’s way too easy!” the Master says mockingly. “No, no, no. They’re not gonna think like me. They’re gonna become me!”

He holds out his arms in a gesture of demonstration – and victory.

“And – zero!”

The Doctor feels the pulse of energy from the Gate pass through him and he can detect the echoes as it throbs across the entire planet. The mocking laughter of the Master fills the room as his head twitches once and then shakes violently from side to side. Everyone else in the room – except for the Doctor and Wilf – begins to shake their heads from left to right, and gradually he catches glimpses of the nightmarishly familiar features of the Master.

“You can’t have!” the Doctor begs as he finally understands the magnitude of what the Master had planned.

“What is it?” Wilf demands from the other side of the glass.

And finally, when everyone stops, the room is full of copies – absolutely identical duplicates – of the Master.

“Doctor!” Wilf calls suddenly, and something in his voice makes the Doctor look over from his attempts at reversing the process. “She’s starting to remember!”

Before the Doctor can say anything, however, Wilf turns to the man still standing in the Gate.

“What is it?” he bellows. “What have you done, you monster?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, are you talking to me?!” the man demands.

“Or to me,” remarks an identical voice, although it’s coming from the person wearing Joshua Naismith’s clothes.

“Or to me. Or to me…”

The voices sound loudly through the room, before others come from the television as the Doctor sees the Master step out of the Gate. He backs away from the computer, realising that it’s too late to change anything.

“The human race has always been your favourite, Doctor,” the Master tells him with a smirk. “But now there is no human race. There is only,” he spreads his hands wide in a gesture of demonstration, “the Master Race!”

And as mocking laughter echoes in his ears and the Doctor looks helplessly from one identical face to another, before his eyes fall on Wilf, who is clearly deeply distressed by Donna’s returning memory, he can’t help feeling that, this time, the Master might just have come up with the ultimate way of taking over the planet.

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