Still AU for S2, still a Nine/Rose.
All that being said, I own nothing, but I wouldn't mind ten minutes alone in the TARDIS.
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Chapter 2 – Intro to Physics
"Imagine that time is like a wet-willy."
They were sitting in the nearby shop, several orders of fish and chips laying in greasy decimation on the table before them. The Doctor had taken up a handful of serviettes and twisted them into a vaguely torus-like shape, which he now held up before her. She blinked in confusion at his sudden shift in topic.
"A what?"
"You know, wet-willy, balloony tube thing filled with goo, you hold it too hard and it slips your grasp? Try to keep up," his look was textbook 'Doctor-being-impatient-with-mentally-dim-life-form'. She rolled her eyes, which he ignored to continue, "So…time…wet-willy."
"Are you sure it's called a wet-willy?" she asked.
"Yeah. What else would it be called?"
"I don't know. But I think you're wrong. I think a wet-willy's when you lick your finger and stick it in someone's ear."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah," he might be all Time-Lordy, but this mentally-dim-ape obviously knew more about juvenile pranks than he did. She took great pleasure in flashing him a superior grin, "my mate Shireen's got an older brother. Right tosser he is, too. Used to do it to us all the time. I'll tell you, I'm not missing him."
"Well, then. What's this thing called?" he shook the napkin-torus for emphasis, "Is it a silly-willy?"
"Nah, that's a penguin."
"Oh," the Doctor considered this a moment, then shook his head and got back down to explaining, "Well then, imagine that time is a wet-willy that isn't a wet-willy. It's got gravity pulling at it from one direction, and the pressure of your hand squeezing it from t'other. Turn it sideways and you can make it stay still. Change the pressure of your hand and you can even make it move backwards and forwards – that's where the TARDIS comes in for us, by the way – but ultimately, the natural inclination is to move down and away, and the more you try to stop it, the more likely it is to just accelerate," he tried to demonstrate with the twisted wad in his hand, but being serviettes they were woefully inadequate to the task. He glared at them in exasperation.
"Right," she shook her head, verbally jostling him back on track, "so, how exactly is time like this not-a-wet-willy?"
"Well, it's got Creation pushing at it from one end, and Entropy pulling at it from t'other, like your hand and gravity on the wet-willy. That's why what you did in Satellite Five was killing you. What you did, with the Time Vortex, it was like squeezing the willy. Accelerating time towards Entropy," he stopped for a moment, a look of deep revelation crossing his features, "I suppose that's how time isn't like a wet-willy. Squeezing a wet-willy too hard doesn't end all of existence."
"Wait a bit…I thought you said it was killing me. When did ending all of existence come into it?"
"Rose, you destroyed the Dalek fleet. You scattered a concept through time and space," at her confused look, he clarified, "Bad Wolf. That was you sending a message to yourself. I'm fairly certain you brought Jack back to life—"
"I did what? I just…just assumed he was killed during—" she paused as shocked comprehension dawned, "And you just left him?!"
"Yes, I did. Because we'd already mucked with things enough. Bringing him with us, after you brought him back, it would have concentrated even more of that ripple energy on us. It would have made things much worse."
She was appalled that he could leave Jack behind so easily. It brought back all the questions and worries that she thought were placated through the conversation in the park.
"So, why didn't you leave me then," she couldn't quite keep the accusatory anger from her tone, "if it would make things so much easier, why didn't you just leave me there?"
"Oh, stop being daft. I thought we were past this," he slammed the forgotten napkin-torus to the table and fixed her with his intense gaze, "I'm not leaving you Rose. I may send you away for your own good – not that it'll work any – but I won't abandon you. Not ever."
"What about Harriet Jones?"
"What? What's she got to do with this?" It was his turn to be thrown off by a non-sequitor. He pulled back in honest confusion, fist still clenched around the increasingly dilapidated crumple of tissue.
"You and she…you were getting on so…and then she went and destroyed the Sycorax, and you just turned on her like it was nothing."
"That's different," he defended, "The Sycorax were…the Daleks are—"
"Oh, I know it's different," she waved away this distinction, "but it's only by degrees, innit? I'm asking you this, Doctor. What makes what I did right and what Harriet Jones did wrong?"
"The Sycorax were leaving, Rose. The Daleks never would have done. Sure, the Sycorax might have come back, or told some other species about Earth. We'll never know, will we? You can't do something like what Harriet Jones did based on what people might do. Time is too fluid. People are too changeable. The Daleks were going to destroy the Earth. Bugger that, they were doing…had been for ages. That's the difference. Everyone deserves a second chance," he waited until she nodded her acceptance of his distinction, then he continued, his expression darkening, "besides, I don't know that Harriet Jones was entirely responsible for her action."
"What?"
"Oh, I mean, the choice was hers and she's responsible for that. But there's something strange about the capacity she had to do it. Did you happen to overhear the name of the group she gave the go ahead to?"
Rose struggled with recollection, "Torchwood, wasn't it?"
"Yeah. Ever heard of them before?"
"No."
"Neither have I," his tone was ominous, "not in all of history. Never heard of them. So how did they get to be so powerful, if they never existed before now?"
"Wait. I have heard of them. They…in the Game Station. One of the Anne-droid's questions. The answer was Torchwood, I'm sure of it," she nodded her head in emphasis.
"Yes, but that was after I'd stepped into that timeline. We were already part of events there, and so was Bad Wolf."
"I don't understand."
Surprisingly, he didn't fix her with his usual exasperated look. Apparently, this was a complex enough situation that he didn't expect immediate comprehension from her.
"Do you remember what I said on Satellite Five, about how once I step into a timeline, I become part of it and I can't step back out to change things?" At her nod, he continued, "well, being part of a timeline is the only safe way to change the events of it. You see, time isn't fixed. When you're in the Vortex, everything is possible. Nothing is actual until it gets chosen and shifted into perspective. What you did, with the Vortex, was to change the timeline from outside of it. It's like, if all existence were a song, you rewrote a portion of the song. But all those possibilities that you wrote over, like the Daleks and Jack's death and Bad Wolf…it didn't just stop being. All that energy had to go somewhere. That's what I mean by ripples."
"And you think this Torchwood thing is one of those ripples?"
"Yes. And without them, the Sycorax might not have been destroyed, and who knows what effects that will have on this timeline, or what other things might have been brought into existence that weren't here before."
She scrunched her brow, trying to comprehend, "So, how does this fit with the not-a-wet-willy?"
He started and shot her the exasperated look she'd been expecting for most of the conversation, "I'm talking about the possible end of the Universe, and you're stuck back at my stupid example. Will you leave off the willy thing?"
"Well, I just want to know how it is that when I used the Time Vortex it created all these problems you're talking about, but it was alright when you used it to fix us," her voice was shrill in self-defense and the slight beginnings of panic.
"Well, that's just the thing. I'm a Time Lord. I've had ages of training to learn how to work my willy."
She blinked, then again. She couldn't believe he'd just said that. He was grinning like a madman and she took a strange comfort from it. After a moment, she began grinning as well. She shook her head, chuckling. Leave it to the Doctor to greet the possible end of all things with a cheery smile.
"So, what you're saying," she reached forward and wrapped her hand around his, which was still clutching the wad of serviettes. A smirk slowly spread across her face, "is that when somebody who doesn't know what they're doing starts messing with time, it feels like they're squeezing your willy too hard?" She tightened her hand slightly around his, tongue peeking out between her teeth as he blinked at her non-plussed. His grin slowly disappeared, and she could see his throat working as he swallowed.
"Er. Right. I think we've milked that metaphor for all that it's worth," he disentangled their hands and set the napkins aside, "Check please."
