Disclaimer - I don't own Doctor Who.

All I own is this parallel universe version of the Doctor, who left Gallifrey in his/her third life, and went on to becoming a mercenary who alters time for wealthy clients.

In this universe, the Ninth Doctor is portrayed by Suranne Jones. I got the idea after seeing a page showing actresses who played the Doctor instead of actors like William Hartnell and Tom Baker.

Readers may note this short-story is similar to That Unsightly Dent in the 1980s, by Sparkling Cyanide. But I did ask for permission long ago if I could write my own version.

The Designer - Father's Day.

The Doctor knew her expression was stormy as she stood to the side while Pete Tyler yapped on and on in the Tyler flat - the Doctor yearned for the tidier flat she was used to, this was just a junk heap - while Rose listened and looked at her father with a loving expression. The Time Lady was too angry to be paying much attention to the two moronic humans right about now and she didn't give a damn about his stupid money making schemes - she wasn't impressed or even interested in Pete's ideas, all she wanted to do was try to fix the mess she'd allowed Rose to make. If she could, but there were two problems that she would need to check out when she returned to the TARDIS.

Finally, when the human left and Rose was left with just the Doctor, the Time Lady was too angry to say what was on her mind to the girl while she showed off awards and bottles of something called 'Vitex' to her, but the Doctor didn't care. She didn't care about what Jackie had done with Pete's things over the years.

Rose Tyler had been travelling with the Doctor for a good few months now. In the past, the Doctor had never really travelled with anybody ever since she had left her world behind after growing bored of the never ending monotony of her people - Lucie, Tamsin, Liz, Helen, Molly were the exceptions. There had been times when she had been tempted to grab a human or two and just travel the universe with them before her previous incarnation had taken charge, but while she found some of their history fascinating to play around with, given her profession and her interests, she had decided against it for the most part. She swallowed the bile in her throat at the memory of the Time Lords and the desperate plan she and her previous and future selves had cooked up to save their race from being destroyed in the Time War.

When she had first invited the girl into coming with her on her travels through time and space, Rose had no idea why she'd been asked - the Doctor had been rather short with her at times during that mess with the Nestene consciousness, but it wasn't until the Doctor told her about what happened to Gallifrey that the penny dropped for Rose.

The Doctor was hurting from locking her people away in a parallel pocket universe which or may not have saved her people, and she needed companionship to push past the pain she felt for their loss.

But Rose sometimes proved to be a handful. The Doctor didn't know much about humans at the age of nineteen or what they were meant to be like in their early twenties, but she was quite sure that they were meant to be more mature than Rose proved to be often. Or would they be, she wondered to herself, swallowing her disappointment while she fixed a stormy glare on her face directed firmly at Rose.

Finally the human noticed her annoyance - Rose pretended to be empathic and caring, but she was too into her own little world, like a certain Mr Van Statten and a certain Adam Mitchell to realise that not everything revolved around her - and she looked at the Time Lady sheepishly as if she'd just noticed the bad mood she was in.

"'kay, look, I'll tell him you're not my cousin, okay?" Rose said.

The Doctor couldn't care less what Pete Tyler thought of her. "Time machine," she said coldly.

Rose blinked in confusion. "What?"

Was that as far as this girl's grammar went? The Doctor thought to herself before she forced herself to speak what was on her mind. "When we met, I said come with me in space," the Doctor went on, "you said no, you wanted to take care of your mum and your boyfriend. I left but I go back, say I have a time machine, and you rush into my TARDIS. But you don't suggest a specific time and place you want to see, but when you do, you decided to come here-?"

"It wasn't some big plan. I just saw it happening, and I thought," Rose shrugged, "I could stop it."

The Doctor nodded, partly out of sympathy for Rose's desire to save her father, but that sympathy didn't run too deep. Rose didn't understand the inherent dangers of what she had just done. But the Doctor just wanted to leave this time period; there was a growing temporal anomaly here, and she didn't like it, not one little bit.

"I should've known," the Doctor said deciding to take refuge in one of her issues with this mess, "it's never about showing the universe, is it? It never is. It's just what the universe can do for you."

The Doctor hadn't had any long-term companions join her on her travels before her eighth incarnation broke the mould. But that didn't mean one or two humans hadn't spent time in her company before, and while they had been awed and amazed by what they had seen in the TARDIS the Doctor had quickly become tired of their attitudes.

"So its okay when you go to other times and meddle with history, when you get those jobs from rich clients to alter time," Rose said, her eyes growing dark with resentment and anger at what the Time Lady had just said to her, "though I dunno why you left Adam at home, but when I want to save MY dad-."

"Ah, but I know what I'm doing, you don't," The Doctor raised her voice a fraction. "When I get those jobs to alter time and when I decide to interfere with history I don't pop back over myself like we did today. Two sets of us were there on that street, Rose, two sets. That's a vulnerable point in space-time."

When Rose spoke next the Doctor realised she was essentially wasting her breath. "But he's alive!"

The Doctor lowered her voice, hoping the volume would show how angry she was getting. "Rose, my entire planet is lost, I don't know whether or not its still out there, whether my family is still alive. My whole family, do you get that? We're not so different. Do you really think it never occurred to me to go back and save them?" she asked scathingly while hoping that the little half truth she knew lurked behind her statement wasn't picked up by Rose, but she doubted the little monkey was that smart. She hadn't really told Rose about her Blinovitch Limitation Effect Limiter.

It was possible for her to sneak back into the Time War and use the Blinovitch Limitation Effect Limiter she had learnt about before she left Gallifrey in her third incarnation, only for her to break into the vault on Altrazar during her third incarnation after learning about it. It would have been child's play to use the limiter to avoid the paradox produced by her other incarnations as well as the presence of her current self and rescue her family, and perhaps a few other Time Lords and their TARDISes.

With that kind of support, they might be able to raise a new Time Lord colony somewhere out there while the rest of their kind was locked away, but the Doctor had decided against it; the Time Lords had been taken by surprise when they'd witnessed her use the same paradox their laws forbade and had written into their very beings just to save them after all they had done in the Time War while one of her future selves had snatched the Moment from the security archives and used it on the Daleks, though some of them vermin might have survived.

But the Time Lords might have picked her up, or perhaps the Daleks themselves. The last thing the Doctor needed was for her current incarnation - her ninth - being injured before her time, or being locked away on Gallifrey with the rest of the Time Lords. If that happened then she might not be able to pass on the equations needed to lock Gallifrey away.

"But it's not like I've changed history, not like what you do; wasn't it last week you and I stopped that dictator being born when you stopped his parent's meeting? I haven't changed history that much, okay? He's not going to become a world leader, he's not going to start World War 3-."

"Do you really believe that?" The Doctor asked pointedly, ignoring the little digs at her and her time meddling.

Rose looked at her in disgust. The Doctor knew why she was disgusted, it was because she had done something that she hadn't done, because she had had the courage. But Rose didn't realise that she had the courage, but her knowledge of time travel and what could go hideously wrong kept her from going back in time and trying to help some of the Time Lords escape before the stasis cube did its job. "Rose, there's a man alive who wasn't before. An ordinary man, the most important thing in creation. Everything is different because he is alive," the Doctor said, hoping that Rose would see sense. Part of her was just tempted to say what was on her mind, but she knew if she did Rose wouldn't listen. "Do you really think things will go wonderfully for you because your dad is alive?"

"Of course it will be fantastic, Doctor-," Rose said.

"No, it won't. Your dad's death was a fixed point in your timeline; his death shaped your life, Rose. It shaped the events in that baby girl that is your younger self's future, and it also shaped Jackie's future. Rose, seriously, what do you really about your father? What do you really know about his relationship with Jackie? You can't answer because you do not know. You can't just rewrite history like that-."

"Why not, you do!"

"That is different. I alter time, but I don't interfere with people's established histories-," the Doctor tried to explain for the dozenth time, but once more Rose interrupted her; the Doctor was beginning to ask herself why she was bothering. Rose was not listening to her, and she was beginning to lose patience.

"Would you prefer him dead?" Rose asked angrily.

Tact completely left the Time Lady at that point, she was just so fed up with Rose not listening to her. "Yes, I would," she said.

Rose's eyes flashed angrily and then she slapped the Doctor. The Time Lady had been slapped by Jackie Tyler, and the experience had been painful enough.

The Doctor staggered back from the slap, but she stepped closer to Rose angrily. She knew she had deserved that slap but she hadn't anticipated it. Rose looked horrified by what she had done, but the Time Lady no longer cared. She had had enough, okay fine - she could feel time, but it hadn't been as badly damaged as she'd expected, so that was possibility one out of the way. She hoped. She stuck her hand out. "Give the TARDIS key, now!" she shouted.

Rose quickly took the key out of her pocket and handed it to the Doctor, and the Time Lady turned her back and walked to the door. But Rose followed her, guessing what she was about to do. Rose got in the way just as the Doctor was about to open the door.

"You don't scare me, Doctor," Rose jeered, her bravado returning after being shocked by what she had just done. "I know how sad you are, you'll be hanging outside the TARDIS waiting for me."

The Doctor was tired of this, her cheek was sore from where Rose had slapped it, and she just wanted to get out. She bit her tongue to hold back the number of insults she wanted to hurl at this stupid little human and just stepped around Rose as though she was just some inanimate object in her path than a real flesh and blood individual.

The Doctor had barely gotten out of the flat when she heard Rose say, "And I'll make you wait for a long time."

Once outside of the flat and away from Rose, the Doctor headed back for the TARDIS. Anyone seeing her forbidding expression and the tenseness of her shoulders would tell she was angry. When she reached the TARDIS, disguised as a car parked against the curb with a fresh parking ticket stuck to the windscreen wiper, the Doctor unlocked the time machine and stepped inside. She only just managed to resist the urge to slam the door shut again - the TARDIS didn't deserve that. She had done nothing wrong at all, no all this was her fault; she should have realised that Rose was too selfish for words.

No, actually, that was not true. Besides, the Doctor herself had done just as much ever since her first incarnation had briefly worked in the Celestial Intervention Agency before she left the Time Lords to become a renegade. The Doctor was not just a Time Lord. She was a Designer, a time traveller who was hired to alter time. The Doctor had left the CIA to become a renegade, but became a Designer out of spite, even if the profession was technically banned by the Time Lords centuries beforehand anyway. Designers changed history for a variety of reasons - many if not all of her clients were wealthy individual or corporates who wanted to change a specific aspect of the past for some reason that would be in their favour.

But the Doctor was also a time meddler.

By the time she had regenerated into her third life - oh, agents in that Rassilon be-damned organisation usually always regenerated once or twice every 150 years - the Doctor had seen the truth about her people, she had seen in the Agency that the Time Lords changed history and mitigated the effects afterwards so then the Web of Time would be relatively unaffected. Some Time Lords might compare her with the likes of the Monk, another time meddler who had worked for the Agency like her earlier selves had, but the two were completely different - the Doctor was hired to alter time along the established timeline. The Monk just dropped into events and altered them, then went ahead to see what happened next.

When the Doctor interfered with history, she (or he) was very subtle about it. They also didn't go after events that were fixed, though even the Monk had proven that it was sometimes possible to interfere with temporal nexus points, it wasn't advisable.

The Doctor took a deep breath and checked the controls at the console, glancing at the monitors and she set the controls to take her away from Earth. When she was finished she dematerialised the TARDIS, setting the controls to random, hoping that the next destination would be better than the 1980s - she had just about had enough of the Earth for the time being. Perhaps she could go to a tropical planet and just get a tan, or something like that without the likes of Rose Tyler to bring her down?

Thinking of Rose made the Doctor rub her cheek from where the teenager had slapped her in the face. The Time Lady doubted she would or could ever allow another human to travel with her again, not after that. Why of all the humans she had to choose to come with her, she had to bring along a girl who was so selfish and immature? No more, she thought to herself, deciding that if she was going to travel with anyone, they would have a few trips together, and if they caused her problems then they could go straight home.

No second chances.

But then again, maybe she would just travel alone? The thought of being alone to cope with the eerie silence inside her mind where there were once the voices of the Time Lords frightened her.

But thinking of Rose made her check the timelines. Rose didn't know it, but the Doctor knew that it was far from being all over. Despite being a time meddler and a Designer, the Doctor understood that some moments in time were fixed and others were in flux, but there were moments in time where there were nexus points, meaning the future could unfold any way. The events in 1066 had been such a nexus point, and it was there she encountered the Monk and ensured history remained on its remembered track.

Time Lords had the means to tell when events were fixed and when they were in flux. Fixed events were impossible to break without time falling apart around you, whereas flux points were more malleable, and it was by manipulating time around those points it was pathetically easy to improve history, whereas Designers altered time along established history. More or less.

She had met dozens of people over the course of her lifetimes since she'd left her planet and while she could have invited them to join her on her travels, but some of their lives were fixed, so no matter if she liked them or not they had to remain in their own times. But with Rose Tyler… the Doctor had taken her because there was a lot of flux in her timeline, far more than what was average in typical humans.

As the Time Lady thought about it, walking over absently to one of the chairs she kept in the console room, and closed her eyes. She had tried on several occasions to work out what was about Rose Tyler, not to mention that Bad Wolf nonsense which had been following the pair of them since the girl had begun travelling with her, but the Doctor had decided to let it play out so she could gather more information about it, and with Rose to work out why the universe seemed to consider her to be so unimportant.

It was cruel, but it was true. For all her haughty arrogance I'm-so-wonderful attitude, Rose Tyler was just unimportant and special. When Rose had changed her own personal history by saving Pete, and creating a time bubble by rushing past her own past self like that to reach him and get him out of the way of that car, there had been two possibilities - the first was she would create a wound in time, and from that creatures from time known as the Reapers would appear to sterilise the wound, destroying everything, but the second possibility was Rose was the cause of a time paradox. By scanning the timelines, the Doctor breathed a sigh of relief that the effects of the paradox were limited only to this point in Earth's general history, but there was still the matter of the paradox she had just left behind, the one Rose had created just a few minutes ago. The Time Lady wasn't too bothered by it. Soon the paradox would be solved, it would be its own solution.

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Rose was delighted to have the chance to get away from her screaming parents, who were having their shouting match in front of a stunned and awkward crowd at the church where Stuart and Claire were getting married; Rose had known the two for years, mum had made sure of that, but seeing them here now, both so young before their marriage, it was an eye opener.

So too was seeing her parents together, and that was a disappointment. Sure, saving her dad had been the highlight of the day and she was pleased she had succeeded there, but she had hoped that once she had saved her dad everything would unfold like a fairy tale. She had hoped that when she revealed who she was to her mother, and had come back to save her father Jackie - the Jackie of 1987 - would welcome her with open arms.

Unfortunately the Jackie of this time was unlike the Jackie she had known and loved all her life, and all the stories she had told Rose about her father….. Rose was beginning to see they might have been exaggerated by Jackie because she wanted to remember her husband as a fantastic man and to give Rose the impression Pete was not a useless Del's boy, but was, in fact, a businessman who was just getting started in life.

Now her parents' younger selves were fighting, swearing divorce while Rose's baby self-was crying her head off, distressed by the noise.

Growing tired of the noise and how both of her parents were using her in their little war - her mother was calling her Pete's latest and Pete was just saying she was someone he'd met, though that had hurt, Rose had walked away desperately to get as far from the fighting as she could.

Now she was walking back to the TARDIS where the Doctor was probably nursing her bruised feelings, and her cheek. Rose bit her lip, knowing that the Doctor would come around eventually after calming down from her tantrum. She'd be back. She couldn't live without Rose to hold her hand and help her get over being lonely.

Rose didn't really care about the Time Lady's feelings. Why should she? The woman was so easy to take advantage of while she showed Rose the wonders of the universe, and she had the nerve to tell her she couldn't change history whenever she felt like it when she changed it constantly?!

When she came around the street corner where she knew the TARDIS was currently disguised in the shape of a car - Rose loved the way the TARDIS blended in, though sometimes it drove her crazy because whenever she and the Doctor were running back, it was irritating to remember what shape the TARDIS was in - she was shocked when she saw the time machine was missing.

For a moment Rose thought the TARDIS was in another street - there were dozens of streets like the one they'd parked in around this part of London, but she checked and it was the right street. The Doctor was gone.

She shook her head. "Is this the best you can do, Doctor?" she muttered to herself. "Very funny."

Rose wasn't worried. She knew the Doctor would be back to pick her up, all she had to do was wait. Rose wondered what she could do to make the arrogant Time Lady squirm before she 'generously forgave' her when she suddenly felt dizzy and nauseous. At first it started off like a bad headache mixed with aches like cramp throughout her body, and then she began to feel lightheaded.

Rose winced. "Doctor?! Where are you? Get back here, something is wrong with me. I need you!"

Letting out a groan when her stomach felt terrible, Rose found herself on the ground of the pavement, and she got a good look at her hands. Time travel movies had been more Mickey's things than hers, but even she had watched Back to the Future. Her hands were becoming transparent.

"Doctor, please!" Rose begged as she began to realise she had made a mistake saving her dad, though she couldn't imagine how it was possible since she had saved her dad's life and she was alive in this time. She tried to hang on bravely even when pain shot through her body and she began to fade out.

She still kept calling out to the Doctor even when she ceased to exist.

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The reason why Rose Tyler ceased to exist happened five minutes before Jackie Tyler was finally doing the best thing she should do, walk away from Pete. She hadn't meant to do this, not on today of all days when two of her friends would be getting married, but Pete's lies and that blond girl he'd brought with him to the wedding, she had just about had enough! And that blond girl, standing there looking so stunned, didn't she have any decency?

Well, she was walking away now, but not until she had spoken to Stuart and Sarah, and telling them she wished them well though the two who'd soon be married must have wondered if their own marriage would turn out to be nothing but shit like hers had turned out to be before she turned her back on him - hoping to go as far from the man who was as useless a failure as they came, clutching Rose to her chest like a lifeline. Rose was crying her head, distressed by the argument.

"Shh! Calm down, sweetheart," Jackie whispered to her daughter as she walked away from the church to get away from the arguments, the disappointments Pete put her through, everything. She was going to divorce the bastard and perhaps she would finally get some peace and quiet. Jackie stepped off the curb, just walking away to get away from the marriage that had bogged her down, driven her mad whenever Pete came back with all kinds of tat, making her wonder just how far he'd go for their next meal and dreading the Old Bill turning up at their flat, away from her friends and the wedding.

Distracted by the cries from her daughter and already upset by Pete's general stupidity, Jackie was so upset and stressed out she didn't notice the car coming around the corner…..

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Inside the TARDIS, sitting in her chair and lost in thought, the Doctor sat upright when she felt it. It was an uncomfortable sensation in her head and it made its way to her binary hearts. Jumping out of her chair, the Doctor began to scan the local timelines with the TARDIS's scanners to try to locate the disturbance, though she had a good idea what it was.

The TARDIS picked up the disturbance in 1987, November the 7th.

"Rose…," she whispered, nodding as she realised that it had happened, the paradox had been solved.

Switching on the scanner and accessing the time/space visualiser she had built into the system when she had refitted the TARDIS long ago, the Doctor studied the disturbance on the screen. She watched as Pete Tyler argued with a younger version of Jackie, who had in her arms Rose's seven-month-old self, while the older Rose stood nearby, looking awkward, particularly whenever she was mentioned or noticed by her arguing parents.

Looking at Rose's sad and worried face, the Doctor worked out what Rose had hoped would happen - she must have gotten the idea into that stupid little head of hers if she could show up with her father, her mother would open her arms out to her, but clearly, that hadn't happened.

Finally Rose walked off back to the street where the TARDIS had landed in, but the girl found her missing. The Doctor folded her arms and watched on as Rose began to flinch and moan in pain before she began to call out for her. The Time Lady knew it was impossible now, it had happened. There was nothing she could do about it, well she could but she wasn't going to.

Her hearts ached with pity when she saw a tearful and very upset Jackie walk away from the church t get away from her husband, and so she didn't notice the car coming around the corner.

Pete, however, wasn't as oblivious as his wife. "JACKIE, LOOK OUT-!"

But by the time Jackie heard the cry, it was too late, she had just turned when she was hit by the car and Rose was thrown into the air, screaming all the way before she hit the ground with a crack. The Doctor winced and swallowed as she heard Pete's cries as his family were killed by the hit and run driver, who just drove on.

Switching off the visualiser, the Doctor felt physically sick after watching the scene she'd just witnessed played out before she studied the temporal readings before she nodded. A now defunct timeline now existed, stretching between 1987 to 2005 and then looped back, twisted upon itself into a paradox bubble. 1987 was now a pattern of timelines that had been twisted into a pretzel, but it had resolved the paradox.

The paradox...The timeline stretching 1987 and 2005 was the Doctor's potential relationship and companionship with Rose Tyler. Examining the timeline and letting her eyes scan it in more details, her mind and senses screamed should never have been.

Time Lord minds were capable of perceiving temporal dimensions a human mind was unable to perceive. It was that ability, being able to tell what should be and what should never be which allowed the Doctor to be good at meddling and interfering with time even beyond the ability of computers that had been specially designed and built to try to work out the mind-numbing concepts of cause and effect.

But this timeline…..

The Doctor let out a sigh, it was clearly not important and besides it broken away from the main events in the Time Vortex. The paradox hadn't needed any interference from her, though it had been careless of her to bring Rose back through time, to begin with. Moving to the controls, the Doctor began setting the controls to take her away from here.

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What do you think?