It's a babblefest. But there's a method in this madness. I just don't know where =D.
.14. Timelines
"Do you have any plans?" Jack turned in his chair; golden lamplight drawing shadows on his face. "What are you going to do?"
"Wait for her," the Doctor said simply. He looked around the ruined office, not really seeing any of its features. His eyes were tired. "She needs some time with her family."
"You assume that she'd still go with you?" Jack sneered. "After all what happened?"
The Doctor sighed. "I don't think she has much choice in that matter. It's not safe for her to stay here, on Earth. It's not so safe for the Earth either."
"What do you mean?"
"The Rift playing up lately?"
Jack drew a long, whistling breath through his clenched teeth. He shoot an angry glance at the Doctor, taking in his wizened, battered face and his wide open, still slightly crazy eyes.
"Was it because of Donna?" he asked.
"I don't know." The Doctor shrugged his shoulders. "But I don't intend to stay and see for myself."
"What if she doesn't want to go with you?" There was an envious undertone in Jack's voice. His eyes sparkled.
"It's possible. She refused me once." The Doctor shot Jack a quick look. "You fancy her, don't you?"
"What?"
"You fancy Donna."
"I... I... No, I don't... Even if... None of your..."
"Of course. Sorry."
Jack shifted in his chair again. "I just think she's brilliant," he said harshly. "Don't you?"
"I've never doubted that." The Doctor smiled wistfully.
They looked at each other, straight into each other's eyes, and there was an instant understanding between them, an instant pace treaty. And then they looked away, sliding into their own worlds again. The Doctor was fiddling with the paperweight he'd picked up from Jack's desk, and Jack's eyes followed the beautiful item with a bit of cautious concern. The Doctor looked up, noticed Jack's expression, and replaced the paperweight on the desktop, in between a broken space resonator and a burnt-out gravity booster.
"You still owe me some explanation." Jack got up suddenly, hands clenched. "You owe me."
„Do I?" For a moment the Doctor glared at him with an expression of superiority on his face; a godlike creature scrutinising a lesser being. Then his face relaxed. "Maybe you're right."
"She's with her family now, laughing and prattling; no headache, no nosebleeds, no funny time disparity. A couple of days ago she was dying. She was in stasis, but she was slowly dying. I'd put her to the sarcophagus with an absolute certainty..." Jack swallowed suddenly, his blue eyes getting glossy. "Absolute certainty that she would never wake up again," he finished with effort.
"I know," the Doctor said quietly.
"But she's fine now. She's Donna. She remembers you and us, and she's Donna. How did you do that?"
"I cheated," the Doctor said. He made a move as if he wanted to get up from the chair as well, and leave the office before the next question could be asked. He didn't do it. He was just pushing around the objects on Jack's desktop, as if trying to find a perfect arrangement. Such behaviour was so unusual for the Doctor, it seemed unreal.
"I know you did," Jack growled. "But how?"
"I've altered the timeline," the Doctor said simply.
Jack was silent for a while.
"You're supposed to express your horror now," the Doctor murmured.
"I've been expecting something along those lines." Jack glared at him. "And I have expressed my horror already. You still have nice panda eyes to prove it. Now, I want to know the details."
"You'll never know the details." The Doctor shook his head. "You wouldn't be able to grasp them all."
"Thank you for pointing out my mental inferiority. Again. Just tell me, how do you alter timelines?"
"I went to the past and I've changed something. Something very small. A minute manipulation, but one of powerful consequences," the Doctor said , his voice flat and even. "By changing the past I've changed the present. And the future. The thing I've changed forced me to go and change it."
Jack shrugged irritably. "Will you tell me what it was?"
"I'd rather not."
"Doctor..."
"There was no other way," the Doctor whispered. He rubbed his chin, and looked down, as if ashamed. "Well, there was, but obviously, I didn't take it. Anyway, it had already happened. It was already in motion. All the alternations, cracks, rifts, the sheer fact that Donna remembered... Don't you see? I went and I've changed the past already. It was a circle in need of closure. If I didn't, she'd never remembered, and I'd probably die, killed by Adam Mitchell. Or not. I don't know. I have no way of knowing for sure."
"So you've changed your own timeline." Jack furrowed his brow. "But that's impossible."
"Oh, I don't think that anything is impossible." The Doctor shrugged. "I don't believe in impossible. Very dangerous, fine. But undoable?"
Jack hesitated. "I've told you about Light. He... It predicted some catastrophic events, and then we had an earthquake, and a meteor shower, and a blackout. It was a close call, really. I'm not even gonna ask... You have one Harriet Jones to answer to, anyway. But... is it over now? Are we safe? Or is the world going to end?"
"Eventually." The Doctor looked at him, slightly surprised. "Why?"
"Oh, stop it! Stop fooling around! Is the world going to... I don't know... collapse... or implode... or fall to pieces, because of what you did?"
"No, I don't think so... Weeell, it might. I dunno."
"Doctor!"
The Doctor sighed. "Jack, time is quite flexible, so is the world. You can alter it and twist it, you can stab at it, but most wounds tend to heal. On other occasions the minutest events disrupt the continuity so completely, the whole universe ceases to exist. One life where there should be death... I know what I'm talking about, believe me. But... usually it heals. Just scabs over and heals. Otherwise no time travels would be possible, and you should know that, being a Time Agent and all."
"Yeah, an ex Time Agent, and I almost destroyed the world once, thank you kindly." Jack grimaced.
"With all the interventions, meddling, time scoops, chaotic jumps, cheating and wild stabs at improvements my own people performed over centuries of so-called no-interfering, the universe should go to hell ages ago." The Doctor waved impatiently. "Time is flexible and time heals its wounds."
"But it is Donna we're talking about," Jack whispered.
"It's Donna," the Doctor repeated. "Exactly. 'cause, you see, there was always something drawing us together, some forces at work, I couldn't understand. All the coincidences, our meeting, our second meeting, premonitions, alternate worlds wrapped around her; it didn't stop. It's not over. I think those forces are still pulling at us. I don't know where they want us to go, but, frankly, I don't care that much."
"Doctor, what I mean is – it's Donna. It's not some minute event. She's not an ordinary human being. She is Donna Noble, the woman, whose brain you'd filled with the Time Lord's consciousness. She's a complete anomaly."
"She is, isn't she?" the Doctor grinned. "Just like you. She's a fact."
"Well, well, well, another eyesore," Jack muttered with angry humour. "Shall you skedaddle from her as well?"
"I don't intend to. I think I've got used to facts."
"Sweet."
"Yup."
"It doesn't change the fact the Rift has been acting up like mad. The world is not all right, Doctor. Your intervention..."
"Caused ripples?" the Doctor interrupted. "Is that what you mean?"
"I was aiming at tsunami."
"They're echoes," the Doctor said. "They're waves crisscrossing, seemingly chaotic, but drawing a very mathematical picture. They will come and they will fade."
"You've just destroyed half the world!"
"No I haven't. I actually saved the world from destruction. Weeell... ok, so I've started it all, unwillingly, but I've started it in the future, I mean, in the past, but it had ripples I saw in the now, so I wanted to undo it, by not doing it, and I went to the future to see the outcomes, and they were bad, which made me realise, that I really had no choice. It's all very wibbly-wobbly... Ummm... You know what I mean?"
"No."
"Me neither. But what you've called a blackout; it wasn't the worst thing that could have happened. It was just an echo of that worst thing. Just a wave."
"So when Donna had been talking as if she were ahead in time before..."
"Waves. Echoes. Precognition is often an effect of something being changed in the past."
"Is it so simple, then?" Jack sneered.
The Doctor sighed again. "Not really. No, it's not simple at all. You want me to be honest with you? Oww, that was a daft question, wasn't it? I don't suppose you would want me to lie to you, would you?"
"Doctor!"
"Fine. Right. Honestly, I don't think we are still in the same timeline we were several months ago."
"What do you mean?"
"I believe that a new timeline branched off from the old one to accommodate the Donna-fact. I cheated and as a result the parallel timeline had been created, to allow for the change." The Doctor put his hands together and then moved them apart to illustrate his words. "There may be another universe, a parallel universe, in which Donna never remembers, and she lives happily with her family, oblivious of our meeting, missing all the important events and horrible catastrophes. And I continue to travel alone. Or maybe I meet a new companion. No way of knowing for sure, the walls of the worlds being impenetrable again and all. And we never meet again, just as I planned when I was erasing her memory. A sad, sad, parallel universe." There was a pale smile on the Doctor's wizened face.
"Are you saying that we are not in a real universe anymore?" Jack asked angrily.
"Who's to decide which one is real? Or real-er than the other? They are parallel, you see. They're equally important. Besides, you are in the other universe as well. I mean, the other Jack is. The Jack-with-slightly-less-problems-to-worry-about."
Jack rolled his eyes. "Okay, so basically you are implying that in this other world you had never gone to the past to change this minute thingy, and as a result Donna never started to remember, therefore her life was never in danger. Therefore you are solely responsible for all the misery she's gone through."
"I should've remembered I was talking to the Time Agent," the Doctor sighed. "Should've been more careful."
"I'd like to punch you in the face right now," Jack said. "So, are you responsible for all that madness, or not?"
"I'm not sure." The Doctor shook his head. "Maybe. But these forces, these drawing-us-together forces... I don't think they're my doing. I don't think I've seen the end of it all. I do not think that the parallel-world-Donna is completely safe. I don't know how the parallel-world-Doctor will deal with it. But I am here, and I don't think I could do anything else, anything different. I don't think I had any choice in that matter. I just... don't think it's over."
Jack sat down heavily in his chair and folded his hands on the desktop.
"You know what?" he said quietly. "I've just realised you're trouble. You're one big fucking trouble and you're drawing us all in your messed up world of continuous troubles. I'm going to talk to Donna and I'm going to insist on her staying here. I don't like the talk about unrecognizable forces and not seeing the end of it all. I don't like branching timelines, and ripples, and precognitions. I don't like the idea of you taking care of her."
"I need her to take care of me," the Doctor said after a long while. He smiled briefly; a small, sad smile of somebody very tired and not quite sane. "Apparently, I'm rubbish on my own."
To be continued...