Chapter Twenty-Six

By the time Tegan got back, the radiation levels were going crazy.

I started to approach her to ask what took her so long, but she blew past me and went to Jack.

"What can I do, Jack? Tell me what to do!" Her voice cracked.

Jack started barking orders at her, and instead of rolling her eyes and cracking wise like she'd been doing, she followed his instructions to the letter, only stopping to wipe her eyes. I thought, Why is she putting herself through this? She knows how it ends.

"Come on, comeoncomeon!" She yelled over the alarms.

Jack put Tegan in charge of what he was doing, and then grabbed hold of two live cables. I ducked for cover.

"We can jumpstart the override!"

"Don't! It's going to flare!"

I wasn't surprised to hear Jack's screams, but when I heard another voice underneath his, I had to peek. Over the table I saw Tegan leaning against the machine she'd just been working on. Her hands were covering her face and she was screaming into them.

While Martha rushed to Jack and Chantho pushed the cables aside by the tubing, I edged closer to Tegan. She was rocking instead of screaming now, and I felt a little frightened to touch her—but I had to do something. "Tegan, it's me. Are you…" I swallowed and knelt next to her. "What's wrong?" I whispered.

She swiped her hands through her hair, taking a deep breath. "What?"

"What made you do that?"

When she looked at me, it was like she'd never had an emotion in her life. I cringed slightly, expecting some kind of harsh answer, but she just shook her head and stood up.

Martha started mouth-to-mouth.

"Without the couplings, the engines will never start," Yana moaned. "It was all for nothing!"

"Oh, I don't know." The Doctor walked up to Martha and tried to pull her off. "Martha, leave him."

She struggled. "You've gotta let me try!"

"Come on. Come on." He shook her gently by the shoulders. "Just listen to me. Now leave him alone." He turned. "It strikes me, Professor, you've got a room a man can't enter without dying. Is that correct?"

"Yes," said Yana, clearly not understanding.

"Well." The Doctor glanced down at Jack. There was an awkward pause where I started to wonder if something about the process had gone wrong and—

Jack gasped for breath, and I let out a sigh. You missed your cue there.

The Doctor removed his glasses. "I've got just the man."

Back on track, Jack wondered aloud, "Was someone kissing me?"

He and the Doctor promptly scarpered to the control room. We gathered 'round the computer while Martha pressed keys to get the sound to work. "We lost picture when that thing flared up," she said, then projected. "Doctor, are you there?"

His voice came through. "Receiving, yeah. He's inside."

"And still alive?"

"Oh, yes."

"But he should evaporate," Yana protested. "What sort of a man is he?"

Martha tried to explain. "We've only just met him. The Doctor sort of travels through time and space and picks people up." She stopped, rolling her eyes. "Gosh, I make us sound like stray dogs. Maybe we are."

'I sneaked into your time and space machine because I love you,' I thought in the voice of Doug from UP.

"He travels in time?" Yana started to turn, distracted, toward the TARDIS. Tegan watched him, expressionless.

"Don't ask me to explain it. That's a TARDIS." Martha thumbed over her shoulder. "The sports car of time travel, he says."

I looked back at the blank computer screen. It was more pleasant than Yana zoning out.

We listened in through the computer as the Doctor and Jack discussed his immortality. Rose came up, of course, and because I'm a shipper I ate it up. Until, that is, Jack asked, "So… not enough to time for you and her to pop out two daughters?"

"Tegan and Garace are…" I could almost imagine the Doctor casting his gaze heavenward in pleading. "…bloody insane. Don't believe a word."

Jack seemed, if anything, relieved. "So I don't have to worry about parental guid—"

At this point I introduced my head to the keyboard and groaned loudly. "Jaaack. Please stop it." I raised my head and stared at Tegan, who had her back toward the computer and was notably not freaked out. I wanted to remove us from the room and have a long chat about multiple-centuries-old men. And about the Master (who did fit that category) because my emotions had just strapped into a rollercoaster.

Nothing came through the speaker for thirty more seconds. "Oh, crap, I think I messed up the sound," I said. When we got back online, Jack was saying, "This new regeneration, it's kinda cheeky." I didn't want to know exactly where the conversation had ended up.

Martha shook her head. "I never understand half the things he says. And most of that I wish I didn't." She turned in the seat and started to see Yana still looking lost. "What's wrong?"

Chantho and I joined her and Tegan in looking at Yana. I felt my throat constrict.

"Chan—Professor, what is it—tho?"

"Time travel. They say there was time travel back in the old days."

I expected him to sound distant, but although Yana's eyes were faraway, not seeing us, his voice was close. Almost in my ear.

"I never believed," he said in that flat, too-close voice. "But what would I know? I'm just a stupid old man. Never could keep time. Always late, always lost—"

"Well, that's all right; the Doctor's much the same way," Tegan broke in with a huge smile that didn't reach her eyes. "I remember he told this story once about how he was trying to go to 1979, and ended up in 1879. Rather big difference, that."

She chuckled slightly, and after a moment, Yana joined her. Hearing Tegan's nervous voice interrupt was like diving into freezing water; I actually gasped for air. Chantho put her hand on my arm, steadying me, but she drew no more attention to me than I already had.

My eyes darted from Tegan to Yana to Martha. Martha looked confused, as if her subconscious knew that something had gone very wrong. "I never knew that," she said, "although it doesn't surprise me. When did he tell you that?"

"When we were going to buy that lollipop," Tegan said, eerily calm. She met my eyes and smiled again, this time just slightly—triumphant.

I reached out for her, but with my thoughts reeling, my hand closed on air a couple of time before I grabbed her arm. I held on as much to stay on my feet as much as to get her attention.

"Oi!" The smile dropped off her face. "What, you're hurting me again!"

"With me. Now," I stage-whispered, yanking her to the other side of the room too fast for the other three to react. It should take a lot of skill to drag someone unwilling across all sorts of equipment within a nanosecond, but it took me no more effort than falling with gravity.
"What do you think you're doing? You crazy—you idiot—"

Tegan's face flushed, but not with shame. "I think I'm stopping this!"

My eyes widened. "Exactly. Of course you are. You've been trying all along." My fingers dug in tighter. "Stop doing what you're doing. Stop it now." My voice sounded so—cold.

She fought through a wince. "Grace, didn't you hear me? This doesn't have to happen! None of it! Think of all the lives we saved – all the awful things that are never gonna happen! It might even keep the Doctor from regenerating in 'The End of Time.'" Tegan's large blue eyes pleaded with me. "You know as well as I do how Utopia, the place, ends."

I hated myself, every piece of me, down to the bone. "We can't, we can't, we—we—" I tried to catch my breath and gritted my teeth. "It's like—like the Skasis Paradigm. We want to act like goddesses, Tegan, but we're so very human. Please… please don't. You remember Time Lord Victorious. You can't mess with the timelines. We can't win against them."

Tegan stared hard at me. For a moment, I thought she was going to give in.

Then she said, "If this were to happen, six million people would die, and the rest enslaved. Six million! Entire families just like yours would be slaughtered." Her voice dripped with acid. "Tell them about the timelines."

She stepped away from me, and not until she'd divided us did I realize that I'd recoiled and released her arm.

What have we done? I thought. "The Doctor would never—"

"The Doctor," she snapped, "is going to leave the moment Jack's done. Tell Martha we're getting the TARDIS primed to go home." She whirled and stormed out of the room.

"I'm sure your sister will be back—for what that's worth," Yana said. I didn't want him to be there, obviously, or to correct him. Lose-lose situation.

I gulped.

"I've never seen you two argue," Martha said. Her eyes dropped. "Sorry. None of my business."

"I'm cold," I said, almost absently, hugging myself. "She's just gone to—to…" I couldn't think of an excuse, not with all of them staring at me.

With no lead in, I said, "So, Professor, you have trouble with time?"

They looked at each other, and Martha nodded slowly as if to tell them, "So she doesn't want to talk about it. So what? She's a teenager."

"Well, yes," Yana said with a slight shrug.

"Have—Have you considered getting a watch?"

He absently stroked his waistcoat pocket. "I have one, but even it never worked." He pulled out the fob watch, his voice edging close again. "Time and time and time again. Always running out on me."

Martha's eyes widened. "Can I have a look at that?"

"Oh, it's only an old relic." He smiled, sounding normal again. "Like me."

"Where did you get it?" Martha asked.

"Hm?"

Her eyes were earnest, intent. He thought about it. "I was found with it."

Her eyebrows raised, every part of her showing more and more desperation. "What do you mean?"

"An orphan in the storm. I was a naked child found on the coast of the Silver Devastation. Abandoned with only this."

I wanted to sag onto the floor. I wanted to run back to the TARDIS. I wanted to go home. Their words pounded over me, and I closed my eyes with the headache of it.

"Have you opened it?"

"Why would I? It's broken."

"How do you know it's broken if you never opened it?" Her voice trembled with excitement.

"It's stuck. It's old. It's not meant to be."

If only it wasn't.

"I don't know… Does it matter?"

"No. It's…nothing. It's…"

I opened my eyes. Martha had the watch in her hand like a treasure, but she forced herself to give it back and stepped away. "Listen, everything's fine up here. I'm gonna see if the Doctor needs me."

"I'll come too—to—to—make up with Tegan," I blurted.

"You really don't have to," she said, backing out the door. She was gone in a blink.

Time was running out. I couldn't stay in the room, couldn't face what I'd done. "I'm sorry," I said to Yana, my vision blurring again. "Chantho, come with me."

"Chan—why—tho?" she asked. "Chan—you'll be more comfortable without me, I think—tho."

I started to come forward, to take her hands and lead her out the door, but I couldn't force my legs to get any closer to the—Professor. "Please come. You'll see in moment."

Chantho looked back at Yana, fingering the watch, and I knew she wouldn't come. My first consequence.

I ran.