Echoes of Summer - Chapter Forty-Two: Crossing Timelines (Part I)
Disclaimer: Neither Doctor Who nor any characters, items or materials of any kind pertaining to Doctor Who or the Whoniverse belong to me. I’m just looking for a good time. Hee. Trying them out for a bit, see how they fit.
Plot Summary: He was left with his lips against her jaw, her figure pressed to him as if she belonged there. One of many moments between the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler after he breaks his own rules to retrieve her from Bad Wolf Bay. The walls between worlds begin to fall, two different realities merging. And on the horizon a threat rises that threatens to destroy everything the Doctor holds dear.
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Beta: bratflorida
Rating: Starts at PG. Runs the gamut straight through to NC-17.
Spoilers: Oh yes. Series One through Series 4 Specials.
Timeline: AU after the end of Series 2. Spoilers up to, including and going past Series 4 though. I’ve seen all of Series 1 through 4, including the series 4 specials but am not very familiar with the Classic Who much. As such, if I happen to include anything that really touches upon Classic Who, other than it being unintentional, I’ll be surprised out of my head. Really. You’ll probably see a lot of familiar things in the fic that play into the series of DW. Bear with me, it all ties in together.
Quick Note: If you follow this fic on fanfiction.net normally, for some reason it isn't letting me update the fic at the site so I might have to wait until tomorrow to post there. But I guess you already read the chapter here so we're good! LOL!
Chapter Forty-Two - Crossing Timelines:
Upon stepping foot from his TARDIS he encountered the doors of another TARDIS, another blue phone box standing a mere twenty feet away at the foot of a path. Her path, the small alley in front of the Powell Estate. He stared at the doors and he understood. He understood where he was, when he was. What he had been doing there in the late hours of night.
He had positioned himself there all that time, both before and after the day on Bad Wolf Bay. He’d forced himself to concentrate on the problem at hand always, except when the TARDIS had directed him to settle certain matters. Just a blink when it came to the life span of the Gallifreyans, to the Time Lords, but that small amount of time had weighed so heavily on him and his soul. He had been worn down by hours of trying to come up with a way to reach her. There had been nights when he had been so exhausted he had been filled with rage to merely look at the TARDIS console. On those occasions he had ventured forth from the blue box, stepping foot out into the night. The sight of the Powell Estate had filled him with purpose once more, had put his thoughts in order and had brought her face to mind. He had done all this for her. All that work, those months, years, of calculations, of effort. It had all been for her, to bring her back, to pay for his mistakes in leaving her stranded so far from home even though she had been left with her family. Even though he had promised to never leave her like that to begin with, to always bring her home. It had been his penance in the end to find a way to bring her back and to right all his wrongs when it had come to her. To one Rose Tyler.
Now, looking from the flats of the Powell Estate to the TARDIS at the end of the alleyway, he felt an overwhelming sense of pain and misery.
I'm in there. Trying to figure it all out. Trying to find a way to bring her back. Or to say goodbye. And for what? To have the worlds blend and fall apart, implode. Because of what I needed.
Inside that TARDIS he was scrambling for an answer, a way to bring Rose Tyler back to Earth. Such a futile gesture, humbling himself and his people for the sake of a human girl. Everything he had done, it had been a mistake to put everything he had ever believed below his feelings for a girl.
Don't lie to yourself. And don't belittle it.
He felt a grimace cross his face and felt a slight ache in his back. Almost like the pain an old man felt from too many years of labor, when his body began to fall apart on him. He was an old man in the end who had just wanted to hold on to the feeling of being young, of being in love. Of needing her. He felt his pain almost blossom into a mental one, his chest heaving under the weight of a single breath. Just one more moment with her. One more minute. One more anything. Just with her, with her in his arms. It was all he could ever ask of any deity, any belief. Anything. Just one more.
Bowing his head, he shoved his hands into his coat pockets and walked the path to the other TARDIS. As he came closer he felt the air change, shift. Almost immediately the light at the head of the other TARDIS began to blink haphazardly, a current zapping the air around him. He ignored it, ignored the air as it seemed to spark. To his left, in a sudden implosion of sound, a large winged creature came into being.
“Ah,” he murmured then, staring at the reaper as it materialized and then merely touched down to the ground silently with a flap of its leathery wings. “Don’t worry,” he said to the creature, feeling its eyes on him, watching him intently. “I’m here to sterilize the wound as well.” He turned his attention from the reaper to the doors of the TARDIS, remembering the words of the Bad Wolf.
“Ah. My Doctor. My Oncoming Storm. The man present at the beginning of time. At the end of the universe. The one who can open the TARDIS doors with…a mere thought. A snap of his fingers.”
Standing five feet from the door of the other TARDIS, he simply lifted his hand, his eyes purposeful as he did so. And hesitating only one small moment, he snapped his fingers at the TARDIS doors.
The doors opened to his wordless command.
Inside, at the head of the ramp that led from the doorway, with red lights flashing around his stiff frame, his younger self waited amidst the clanging of the cloister bell. "You can't be here," his double said to him from inside, his eyes angry. "You can't do this. You can destroy us with this-"
"I just want a word," he said to him quietly. He didn't wait for a response from him. He merely came into the TARDIS, stepping foot through the open doors and hesitating before the ramp, his movements slow and pained.
His double stepped away from him a respectable distance, his face registering cold irritation.
Turning back to the doors, he shut them behind himself and merely rested there for a moment. Then he pushed his hands into his pockets once more, head bowing as he took a few steps and marched up the ramp. Upon reaching the higher level, causing his double to recoil from him, he began to circle the TARDIS console. "Hello there, girl,” he greeted the TARDIS core and controls. “How are you?"
The TARDIS was silent except for the slight flare of her core at the softness of his voice. In the end, even if he found her to be his true home, she saw him the same way, just as Rose did. He was her home. And she was his, always. After another silent but pulsing moment, the red flashing lights died away as did the chime of the cloister bell and he was left with golden silence, standing at the core of the TARDIS and gazing up at her. She was majestic. Extraordinary. Beautiful. And as of yet, untouched by a hypernova.
“What are you doing here?” his younger self demanded. “What are you thinking, doing this?”
His eyes shifted toward his double as he let his head fall back, his lips sounding out words that came to him unbidden. “I’m thinking…that this is what she wanted me to do all along.”
His double didn’t come any closer, his hands clenched into fists at his side. “You shouldn’t even be here. The TARDIS should have run from you. We should’ve fled-“ he hissed, teeth tight behind thin lips.
“Oh, don’t start,” he cut off his double, effectively silencing him with the mere dismissal in his tone. “I know perfectly well where I am. When I am. What I’m doing here. Just…stow it for a moment so I can collect my thoughts.”
I don’t even know what to say to you.
Bowing his head and leaning forward to rest his hands on the console of the TARDIS, he allowed his eyes to roam over her, over the little dials and controls upon her face. He treated her like a desk most of the time, he understood vainly, looking at all the sticky pads and papers he had taped to her. She had been with him for so long that he had begun to think of her as his own and not some stolen piece of empathic equipment. She was his. “I needed to come here. To see you. To talk to you.”
“About what?” his double retorted.
He threw himself a glance, eyes heavy. “About what you’re doing. About what you’re thinking of doing. And I suggest you don’t,” he added with an arch to his eyebrow.
His double was silent for a long moment, looking around the TARDIS as if he was about to be ambushed. “Explain it to me first.”
Had he always been this brash? Yeah, probably. He let his head hang low for a moment, urging his thoughts to cease screaming through his head and focus, to allow him to voice what needed to be said. What needed to be done. “You’re trying to see her,” he said quietly and he didn’t need to look at the monitor of the TARDIS nor the diagrams strung haphazardly around the console.
“When are you from?” his double asked him quizzically. “The future, obviously. How far? She’s gone, isn’t she? Do I succeed?” His eyes narrowed, attempting to read his frame, his gestures and words. “Do I…fail?”
One tiny little gap.
He didn’t reply for a moment, his eyes focused on the console under his hands as he rested his weight wearily on his palms. “Do you wish to succeed?”
His double hesitated, seeming to be caught by surprise with the question. “Shouldn’t I?”
He lifted his eyes to him then, stern. Shouldn’t he have been able to see anything off about it? But he realized the truth a moment later. His eyes had been clouded to the creation of the secondary timeline from the beginning because she had blinded him from it. Just like that, she had hidden the very existence of the corrupted timeline from him as if it had never existed. From the very beginning. Which meant the moment he gave her hope on the beach, he would cease to see what the decision would bring about. “Do you wish to succeed?” he questioned once more, his tone cold.
His double was a fool to even think of lying to him. He seemed to understand just that a moment later as they locked eyes. “With all I am,” he replied in a tight breath.
With a small sigh at his words, he rose to his full height, pulling away from the console of the TARDIS, and he crossed his arms over his chest dismissively. “I suggest you not,” he said in an offhand tone and he glanced down to his side, reaching out to toggle a switch on the console absentmindedly.
His younger self hesitated all of a small second before lifting a hand to run it through his hair in exasperation. “Blimey, I’m cryptic,” he said with what seemed to resemble awe. “Do I always come across like that? To everyone? No wonder they were always irritated with me. I irritate myself! Which isn’t a new experience, sadly. A bit sobering though. Well…” And he seemed about to say something more before merely allowing his hand to fall at his side once more.
He eyed his double silently, fingers still toggling the switch on the TARDIS’ console.
“Will you tell me why not?” his younger self asked softly. “Or is that just…reaching?”
Shifting his eyes to the console, to his fingers playing across the controls, he pursed his lips at the question. “I can,” he answered with an absentminded nod. “I can tell you that and more. For the mere reason that I know that if I were to tell you nothing it wouldn’t deter you from doing what I came here to make sure you didn’t do. If that makes any form of sense.”
His double shifted. “Crystal, actually.” He gestured futilely to him, his own eyes darting from his future self to the TARDIS console, the jump seat. Anything almost, just not his other self’s face. “Tell me something. Anything. It’s why you’re here after all.”
He straightened at his words, coming to his full height. “Actually I came here to tell you not to attempt this any further. I had no intention of telling you the motive behind neither my trip nor the reasons why it would be a bad idea.” He looked at him, head still bowed and spared him a glance as if he wore glasses and was peering over the rim at him. Almost like a disappointed grade school teacher.
His double met his gaze, his jaw clenching a bit. “That’s not why you’re here.”
He didn’t waver. “Isn’t it?”
His double cocked his head at him, a frown creasing his forehead. “This is why you came here?” he demanded loudly, pointing at the floor between them, at the TARDIS grate under their feet. “This is why you came? To tell me nothing?”
He paused, his face darkening in the midst of his double’s sudden emotion. “I already explained to you why I’m here-“
“Don’t!” his double shouted at him. He motioned to the console of the TARDIS, to the core as it seemed to make a whimpered groan at their confrontation. “I know what I’m doing! I’m saying goodbye. I need to say goodbye to her!”
He gazed at his younger self, stunned for a moment. An instant later he understood. He was a day off. A mere twenty-four hours off his mark. He had been expecting to find himself already working on the solution of the hypernova. But he hadn’t yet stumbled on the solution of the supernova. He had asked whether he would succeed in saying goodbye, not in bringing her back. “Yes, you do,” he whispered rapidly, quickly refocusing enough to continue. “Need to say goodbye, that is.”
His double came to a stop at his words, his face registering confusion. “Then what? What is it you don’t want me to do? Because I’m bamboozled at the mere fact that you are standing in front of me as if this visit wouldn’t rip the foundations of our reality apart!” He paused, gesturing across to his older self and then back to himself. “What would I possibly do to warrant such a risky action, other than say goodbye?”
Looking at his younger self, at the barely-lined face, he realized suddenly what would put those lines there in this timeline. Himself. He himself would put those lines on his own face. It was a silly little paradox that would not matter in the end if everything went well. “She will ask you a question,” he murmured numbly. “She will ask to see you again. And you’ll say yes.”
His double stared at him, lips parted at his words. “But…I can’t. Why would I say yes? It would tear the worlds apart, would rip down the walls. I can’t.” His eyes shifted to the side in disconcerted thought, his jaw working. “It’s not…”
“You’ll say yes,” he repeated and he almost reached out to his double, almost went to grab him to make him understand. “She’ll ask you and she will cry and it will break your heart. Both of them. Just as it did mine.”
His double’s eyes darted back to his, disbelieving.
“If I can stop you from even saying goodbye, I would,” he said to his younger self, a hand held out absentmindedly. “But for me to tell you that, to try to stop you…it’s foolish, really. You’re going to go anyway, whether you hear me or not. Simply because you know that a mere projection through a breach in the wall would not alter that world in any way, shape, or form. You know it as well as I do, which is why I won’t ask you not to say goodbye. You owe it to her. I owed it to her.”
His double merely stared at him, looking confused. “Then why are you here?” he asked. And as an afterthought he added, “Doctor.”
Why indeed?
Allowing his hand to fall limply back at his side, realizing that he would have to tell him, he tried to find a way around it. But was there really a point in not telling him? In doing so he would be able to convince him not to go back for her, not to splinter the worlds. He would make sure that the timeline continued as it should have.
“I’m here to tell you that after goodbye, there is nothing else. You won’t see her again. And she will ask you. She will ask you if she will ever see you again and you will have to say no,” he explained quietly, his eyes falling away and coming back to the console of the TARDIS. He became aware that she was pulsing gently, almost heaving the way he wanted to just explaining to himself what he had to do. As if even the TARDIS mourned what was to come, what was to be of his life after Rose. “You will want to say yes. Because I could never say no to her in the end, even knowing that I could risk reapers, I could risk the entire timeline. And I shouldn’t have.”
His double could only stare at him, mouth open to say something.
“You won’t see. You won’t see the repercussions because you’re not meant to. But there’s more, after this,” he said to him and by the expression on his counterpart’s face he knew it was not what he had wanted to hear. “You will be in a dark place after this, the dark place she took us out from. Of that I have no doubt-“
“And yet you wouldn’t know,” his double whispered dully at him. He looked aside and his eyes betrayed what he saw in his mind, the visions he was conjuring, his frame stiff. No doubt visions of more time with Rose, of holding her hand and running and laughing as if there had never been an alternate world to be left behind in. “You said yes after all.”
He came to a stop, his words dying on his lips at his double’s words.
Chapter Forty-Two: Crossing Timelines (Part II)