It's all spinning in his head, the past day.  It probably hasn't even been an hour, since he met Sarah Jane, and in that time he's run for his life and pressed her for answers and help her unlock the TARDIS, and defeated a Weeping Angel, and met another stranger and talked to him across time, crammed his head full of a new alien time-travel logic.  And everything about the mysterious blue box that's dogged his thoughts - it's a person, it's a spaceship, it's bigger on the inside, it knows him and it's been talking to him and it likes him, it's a she, should he be calling her it if she's a person?  The man who called himself the Doctor called her an it, but he also called it a her.  And it's his friend, and the only way it's safe for him to fly her back to Sarah Jane is to hurt her.

It's so much.

And yet he doesn't want to cry, not really, which is insane in itself because when doesn't he cry.  The world's gone insane around him - or maybe he's gone insane, maybe he's just huddled in that alley hallucinating all of this - and it could just be an adrenalin high, but he feels like - even as it whirls in his head, even as he lets it whirl in his head and just walks, in a circle, around the console - he feels like he's getting a grip on it.  Everything else can fall away, it doesn't matter what happens except in the next five or ten or thirty minutes.  He's focused in, on this.

He stares at the console.

All things considered he should probably talk to the TARDIS about this.

He walks up the catwalk and leans on the console and looks up.  At the pillar.  He doesn't know why, but it feels right.

"Hey."

Hey.

"I've been talking to - the Doctor.  I don't know how much of the conversation you were following.  Or if you could."

"The gist of it is - he and Sarah Jane are both stuck back in time.  Sarah Jane is hurt, so he wants to travel back and make sure she's okay; and he thinks it's dangerous for him to stick around in one place for a year, without you around."

Reasonable.

" - I keep - feeling like I'm hearing things from you.  Am I?"

<333

Yeah, you are~

Little grin.

"I hope that was a yes."

"So - he wants me to pilot you back in time, to pick him up or to pick up Sarah Jane.  But - I don't think it'd be safe for me to really fly you, and I don't think he does either - so he suggested something else, something called a Catalax maneuver, which would be easy for me but I guess hard or painful or - unpleasant - for you."

Spin up for a short journey and then hit the emergency brake and the nitro boost at the same time.  She's familiar; she's done it once before.

"Was it - okay?"

Some models are designed for it, but this one isn't; she'd need to recuperate for a little while, heal up her brakes.  Not the most fun she's ever had.

But she'd be okay.  It was her idea, the last time.

"I didn't want to do something like that without asking."

He's a sweetheart.

But it's a good plan, and she's up for it.  Not like he's planning to make this a regular thing.

He smiles, and - feels himself welling up, a little.

"What does it feel like?"

Like landing on your feet when you should've rolled, maybe.  Not that she has feet.  People with bones and nerves and things might have it worse, she's not sure.

It's sweet of him to worry.  But he can tell the Doctor she's okay with the plan.

"Okay.  Thank you."

He sits back down and resumes both recordings.

"Hey.  I, uh, talked to the TARDIS.  She said she'd be okay with trying a Catalax maneuver."

"You talked to her?  Like a proper conversation?"

"I think so.  She said it was her idea, the last time you did it, and... she called me sweet, for worrying."  He can't help but smile, as he says that.

"She really does like you."