Echoes of Summer - Chapter Forty-Two: Crossing Timelines (Part II)
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.
Chapter Forty-Two: Crossing Timelines (Part I)
Chapter Forty-Two: Crossing Timelines (Part II) :
He came to a stop, his words dying on his lips at his double’s words.
“What did you see? And why can’t I see it? Why didn’t you see it?” his younger self asked him, his voice hoarse with anger. “What are you not telling me, after saying yes to her? Does it split the worlds, crack them like shells? Are there reapers? Paradoxes? Are you to blame? Am I?”
He didn’t reply for a long moment, his lips moving but no sound coming forth.
“Do we destroy this world, Doctor?” he asked his future self and his voice was full of what could only be loathing. Perhaps directed at himself.
With eyes slowly falling out of focus, he thought back to his Rose, asleep in bed, the weary lines across her face. He whispered faintly, “We destroy her.”
His double came to a stunned stop. “What?”
“She’ll go insane. And she’s so powerful. So absolutely powerful. If you thought the sight of a paradox machine, the sound of the cloister bell was enough…you haven’t seen anything. Not when she becomes the Bad Wolf again.”
Feeling a small ache deep inside at the mere thought of her seeing visions of the other timeline, being driven insane in a place where she was supposed to be safe, he said softly, “Just…never saw it, never saw it coming. A residual effect of the Bad Wolf Entity once she returns. And she does return.” He eyed his younger self. “That and a timeline that was just…fragile to begin with, constantly changing, constantly in flux.” He sighed and lifted his hands, holding them parallel to each other, palms facing in. “A timeline, a solid timeline, is constant. Fixed. But to have a secondary timeline branch from it, cross, not remain parallel, to even be taken over at some points…I don’t know,” he mused wearily, blankly, hands falling away at his sides. “I just never saw that outcome. I suppose it’s why I did it in the end, why I made my way back to her. I didn’t see how it would turn out. She never let me.”
He glanced at his double to see him standing before him in complete confusion.
“All right. I will explain it and from there you will make your decision,” he said to his double softly. “But you must make your decision as a Time Lord. Not as…not the way I made it. Do you understand?”
His double nodded reluctantly.
With a deep weary breath, the Doctor began. “The timeline I come from, the future I originate from, is not your future. Or rather, I hope it won’t be. It was a mistake, that timeline. But getting back to the subject at hand, this timeline I’m standing in will branch. In twenty-four hours, it will branch into an alternate timeline. And you won’t see that timeline’s future. You won’t see anything of it because you aren’t meant to.” He paused, gauging his expression. “Do you follow?”
His younger self was thoughtful. “Why wouldn’t I see what is to happen?” he questioned.
He fought the smile that threatened to curl his lips. “It would seem a certain form of a mindlock is placed on us. We will be completely unaware of what that specific future holds.”
“A mindlock?” his younger self seemed flabbergasted. “How does that even work? Who instates it?”
The older Doctor waved away the question. “At this point, it doesn’t really matter. What matters comes after. Once you bring Rose back, the walls of the new timeline begin to crack. Things that you can’t see begin to happen and only she will see them. Rose. She will see what was meant to be but she will not understand. Even now she doesn’t really understand. She will see people and events from the proper timeline. On top of it a future version of myself will send back people in time to see her. To stop her.”
“Stop her from what?” his double questioned.
“From becoming the Bad Wolf, aren’t you following anything I’m telling you?” he asked him rapidly, frowning. “Ah. Rude of me, yes. You wouldn’t understand it the way I do. Once she becomes the Bad Wolf she will create a paradox machine to maintain the second timeline…while she…”
His double leaned in slightly, prodding him on wordlessly.
“While she tries to fix the timeline herself,” he finished.
His younger self recoiled once more, eyes wide. “Why would she do that? Why wouldn’t you do it? Why wouldn’t…” He broke off, at a loss for words.
The Doctor smiled at that, his face soft. “I had wondered that myself from the moment I understood. And all I could really come up with is that…she wanted to maintain the timeline as it had started. Returning to the world she called home. To the world she was no longer a part of. She wanted to stay here, go on with life as it should’ve been. I think she maintained the timeline, created the paradox machine to maintain it, so that she could try to fix it. Little quirks here, a small fix there. Anything to make it work. And I think in the end…she realized she couldn’t.” He hesitated, looking off blindly and seeing the Bad Wolf dying in his arms once more, Rose’s face looking so very sleepy. “Not with the time she had left. She just…ran out of time without finding the proper solution. If there is one at all.”
His double was reluctant. “Ran out of time?” he asked softly.
He merely looked at his double knowingly. “A human can not possess the energies of the time vortex for long. You know that. It killed you once, after all.”
His double fell into silence.
Sighing, looking around the console room once more, the Doctor stood in silence for a long moment. “It was all just…wrong,” he murmured thoughtfully, seeing everything that he had done and realizing what it had led to. “One big loop of…confusion. The Bad Wolf recreates herself, creates the paradox machine, allows the Doctor, allows me, to send people who would originally help to create her while she works in the background to fix the entire thing.” He broke off, his voice faint. “What did she think would happen once she restored the TARDIS? Once she restored herself? As if she even could.”
His double chuckled at his side, bringing him to look at him. “I don’t think she really looked that far ahead. As daft as that sounds, seeing as how she could see all of time and space.”
He smiled with his double. “I think…she was willing to sacrifice herself to make that timeline work. The one where she was reunited with me. I think she wanted that…more than even she would know.”
His double stood quietly, staring at him even as he continued to murmur to himself. “We’re in flux. Right now,” he said to him, loud enough to cut into his older self’s thoughts. “This very moment, we’re in flux. This can go any which way.”
“Yes,” the older Doctor whispered tiredly.
“But…you want me to leave her behind,” his double said. He paused for a moment, thinking furiously. “But if I find a way to bring her back to me, knowing what you’re telling me, I can help her. I can change-“
“No!” He looked at his counterpart, anger suddenly rising inside him at the mere suggestion. “I came back for this reason, to stop you from doing anything else after your goodbye. Nothing else!”
Shaking his head at his words, his counterpart gestured with open palms and pointed index fingers. The way he knew he did when he was confronted with imminent danger and was attempting to ramble his way out of it. “But I understand,” his younger self continued. “Coming back to our world, I can help her. I can help her through whatever happens. I can fix it-“
“You don’t even know what there is to fix!” he shouted at him and he slammed a fist down on the console of the TARDIS, bringing her to hum loudly. He looked down at the knobs, at his fisted hand opening and spreading, deriving strength from the cold metal of the TARDIS. “You can’t…fix this.”
His younger self shook his head. “You don’t know that-“
“I do know that,” he cut him off in a whisper. “All the people who were sent back, all those lives lost because of…of...”Shutting his eyes wearily, he staggered a bit and sat down on the jump seat, falling back and feeling the need to melt into the seat, to become liquid and just dissolve away into nothingness. Settling limply, his head falling back to look at the ceiling of the TARDIS, he gazed blindly at the golden walls, the pale blue light of the core. “All those lives lost.”
His double remained as far away as possible, it seemed.
Inhaling deeply, he composed himself in the silence. A moment later, he took in the sudden faint scent of Rose and felt his eyes drag sideways a bit, noticing the sweater next to him on the seat only then. Reaching out wordlessly, he took it into his hands and stared at it, stretching it across his lap and remembering it. A red zip hoodie. The sweater she had worn the first time she had become the Bad Wolf. The same one she had worn when she had gone through the window, bleeding from her hands on the kitchen floor in New York.
His double watched him, jaw clenching a bit as he held it with both hands and merely stared at it.
“Do you remember-“ he asked his younger self, seeing the sweater almost blindly. Her scent was overpowering then, drifting from the material in his grasp.
“Yes,” his double cut him off shortly.
He looked at his counterpart, a faint smile curling his lips. “Of course,” he murmured, fingers brushing the fabric. “She’d been so scared when I…when we regenerated. And hurt, she told me later.” He eyed his past self as his double looked at him in confusion. “She never told you but she told me. Wandered off one night, hospital on the moon. Judoon. All in good time.”
He came to a slow stop at the thought. The Judoon. Hospital on the moon. Was he destined to experience all that with Martha Jones then? So much was being explained, becoming easier to understand now that he saw bits of what was to happen.
He shook himself from his thoughts a moment later. “Anyway,” he continued, still gazing at the sweater and rubbing it between his fingers, catching her scent as the friction of his fingertips across the material released the perfume. “She told me she had felt betrayed for a bit because we had never told her about regeneration, had never warned her. She came around in the end, of course, but she really had no choice in the matter. Had to settle in between the running.” He wasn’t seeing the sweater anymore, only her face in the street light as she had told him, had come clean about that. What else had she thought that she would never get the chance to come clean with? Was there anything else after having seen into her mind? He didn’t wish to venture a guess. “But I’ll never forget the look on her face…” And then he remembered and a mirthless laugh rose from him, equal parts sarcasm and bitterness. “Or maybe I will, eh?” he questioned and his counterpart merely looked at him in bemusement. “Maybe I will forget that look on her face. Almost funny, that.”
His younger self remained wisely silent.
Leaning back once more, his arms fell limply in his lap, the sweater wrapped around his wrists. He went on quietly. “The timelines. They splinter and they crack. And everything you will go through here overlaps with what we went through in our world. She saw things I couldn’t. People. People who were sent back to stop us. She will begin to plan. It’s already happening, really. Has been for over a year. Well,” he shrugged, sniffed a bit as he gazed at the sweater. “Doesn’t matter.”
His double took a step closer to him, hands rising to find their way into his suit pockets.
“It happens almost immediately,” he added, going on in an absentmindedly blank tone. “As soon as I bring her back. She took a walk, went to a café, she said. Saw an image of me. Of you,” he corrected himself, nodding his head slightly. “Was never me. I’d never been to that café. But then she looked again and you weren’t there. Whatever the case, later that night she went back home and she saw me again. And that time it had been me. But not yet. Or maybe it was you as well. Who can really know anymore?”
His counterpart frowned a bit.
“Two years,” he went on in that same thoughtful yet numb voice. Monotonous, almost. “She asked if she would ever see me again. I asked her for five and a half hours. And I spent almost two years trying to make my way to her.” He snapped his jaw shut for a moment, nodding faintly to himself. “Two years hopping around space and time, attempting to make my way to her world to bring her back. Once I had it I went back to her on that beach. Norway,” he piped up, glancing at his past self at the word. “You’ll understand later. You’ll know…later. But I never told her about the two years. She thought I’d only been gone two hours. Even told me I was early.” He laughed at that, a real laugh filled with humor. It ended suddenly and the cheer vanished almost immediately from his face, his expression wavering as he began to blink rapidly.
Staring at him, his counterpart felt his own hearts begin to break. That was what he would become, this shell of a man, the shell of a broken Time Lord. If someone had told him that Rose Tyler would one day make him a miserable tired old man he would never have believed it. But before him, on the jump seat, sat the proof. He was weary, defeated at last. Dark circles under his eyes, his face gaunt. His future self was thinner if it were even possible. And it was becoming quite clear that his future self was very much alone.
This is our story. The story of the last Time Lord.
He didn’t want to become that. Ever. Even if he was meant to be alone always, he did not want it to be at such a price.
“I’m going to leave you with something,” his older counterpart said to him. “I’m going to leave you with certain memories I have. Not all of them. You do have to live your own life after all.” The statement was said with a bit of cheek to it. “I’ll connect to the TARDIS, my TARDIS. She’ll have enough power to send back the projections to you. I can’t touch you to do it myself.”
He nodded that he understood.
Seeming reluctant as he set aside the red sweater, he merely brushed his fingers across it nonetheless as it settled on the seat beside his weary frame. “Gardenia,” he suddenly said. He looked at his past self with a goofy grin, eyes twinkling. “She smells like a mixture of Gardenia and Freesia. And something else in there…”
“Honey,” his younger self supplied. “With a bit of coconut…”
His counterpart nodded, realization dawning on him. Then a comically confused expression crossed his face. “What does she do, lather herself in honey and throw herself into flowers? I’ll never understand it.” With a small sigh he rose to his feet.
And faltered.
His past self waited for him as he braced himself against the jump seat, his chest suddenly heaving. As he met his eyes he understood, the same way his younger self had understood the moment he’d lost strength in his legs.
“I guess you convinced me,” his counterpart said to him with a dismissive shrug, hands firmly in his pockets, staring as his older self attempted to rise to his feet once more and barely managed it. Looking toward the TARDIS console his double glanced at the monitor, narrowing his eyes at the screen. “Your readings are off the chart,” he murmured, motioning, and the future Doctor looked at the monitor with a frown. “The energy your TARDIS is harnessing, storing…it’s astounding. And it’s erratic, the readings. Unstable. Your TARDIS is…” He broke off with a sharp intake of breath. “Your TARDIS is in the midst of a collapse. But the energies…is it from-“ His jaw dropped open for an instant, his eyes widening. Circling the console and coming up to the right of the older Doctor but maintaining a respectable distance, he tapped a few keys on the keyboard, mouth hanging open. “A hypernova?!” A smile broke his face, his eyes gleaming excitedly. “That’s brilliant!”
The elder Doctor took several clumsy steps away from the console, slowly making his way to the ramp. He couldn’t seem to support himself on his own two feet, a feeling of weakness washing over him. This was what it was then. An end in sight finally. He was being rewritten, perhaps even being written out. Even as he realized it, he couldn’t seem to muster the fear it should have brought. He couldn’t seem to feel anything other than pain. “All you’ll need is a supernova. Trust that,” he threw over his shoulder in a warning tone to his counterpart.
Looking at him and straightening away from the console, the past Doctor stared after him, mouth snapping shut. “She does know, doesn’t she?” he called to him, his voice betraying him a bit. “She does know that…after everything…”
Sighing faintly and leaning against the rail of the ramp, he looked over his shoulder at his past self. Even now, gazing at his younger self, he couldn’t help but feel sorry. He still couldn’t say those words. He bowed his head as he thought it, as he felt it through his weariness. His own TARDIS was humming loudly; he could hear her clear through the gentle rumble of this TARDIS he stood in. She was beckoning him to return to her, that she would protect him. She would shelter him from the collapsing timeline for as long as she could. “Oh…” he murmured, inhaling raspily. “She knows.”
And with that, even as his counterpart stared after him, he staggered down the ramp and pushed his way out the TARDIS doors, out into the night.
The reaper was gone, leaving behind only his own blue phone box awaiting his return.
Next Chapter - Chapter Forty-Three: Never Stop Running
As he stared at the readings on the monitor he found himself finally understanding. With the Bad Wolf gone and the paradox machine of the future disintegrating, his current timeline was shattering and collapsing at last, falling away into the void. All that was now maintaining this erroneous timeline was his own TARDIS, burning through the remaining power of the hypernova in the process.
How strange to face the end of the world and yet feel completely calm.