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The World of Paradox

"They're not that close."

"Mmm?" the Doctor looked at Rose, unusually silent as he paced the church, occasionally glancing out of the windows at where the dragon-things- which he had identified as 'Reapers'; if he remembered his higher-dimensional species correctly, they were essentially the equivalent of monkeys for the Chronovores- still flew around London.

"My mum and dad," Rose said awkwardly. "I mean, back when I was growing up, she always told me Dad was this brilliant aspiring businessman, selling drinks, working on solar power, wanting to go travelling… and now he's alive, and she called him an accident waiting to happen, there was all this stuff about him getting caught with a cloakroom attendant, she says he just brings home 'rubbish'…"

"We all romanticise and idealise the dead," the Doctor said grimly, taking care not to pay attention to the beige car outside the church that appeared and vanished around one specific corner. "It's easier to remember the good days… because the bad days are what we're grateful we don't have to deal with any more."

"Oh," Rose said uncertainly. "You've…?"

"I've been there," the Doctor affirmed grimly. "It's the burden of owning a time machine; you can have the chance to see so many moments of your past, but at the same time you have to be constantly aware that you can't affect any of them, and the people you've lost are just lost no matter how much you wish you could have it. You can either romanticise their memory to focus on keeping the good memories alive, or focus on the negatives to help yourself feel better about it, and the second just makes you more bitter."

"You've got a time-?" Rose began, before she shook her head in frustration. "Of course you do; how else could you be here and still know about me?"

"I just didn't bother to mention it the first time around," the Doctor clarified, guessing what the young woman was about to ask as he took out the screwdriver to briefly wave it around the large hall. "I was… not in a good place."

"I can guess it," Rose smiled slightly. "I mean… no offence, but you looked a bit older back then…"

"It varies," the Doctor shrugged, recalling the oh-so-short life he'd lived in his ninth body; compared to some of his incarnations, it sometimes felt like that man had barely even lived a full life by human standards, never mind how long a Time Lord could live without regenerating if they had a calmer lifestyle than his own. "Whenever I regenerate, I normally get a younger body than the previous one, although the mentality at the time I change can be a factor in what's coming; you knew me… two bodies ago, if I remember correctly."

"Two?" Rose looked at him in surprise. "You've died twice since we met?"

"Things happened," the Doctor said, grimly remembering those last two grim regenerations, giving his lives to save those who had become caught up in his pointless conflict with the Faction's agents at a time when he was still denying his ability to do anything to them.

"I'm… I'm sorry," Rose said at last, looking uncomfortably at him.

"It was a while ago-" the Doctor began.

"I mean…" Rose cut him off, taking a deep breath before looking at him with a new sense of resolution. "I'm sorry… for everything."

"It's… not entirely your fault," the Doctor conceded, understanding her appeal and accepting it in the spirit it was intended. "You made a bad call, but you didn't know any better…"

Lost for anything else to say to that, Rose just turned around and walked away. Noting that she was heading to the same area that Pete had gone to earlier, the Doctor thought about going after her, but the sound of something attacking a side-door prompted the Doctor to check out that possible entrance, pushing back a curtain to reveal the small side-door.

Even if she talks to her dad right now, it's not like she can make this situation more temporally complicated…

Maybe it was short-sighted, but he had to prioritise the situation facing him right now; the question of whether or not Rose was going to reveal her identity to her father hardly mattered on top of everything she'd done to the timeline already.

Besides… while he was still working out how he was going to resolve the current paradox, the Doctor saw no sense in begrudging Rose the chance to have some kind of honest talk with her father.

"Excuse me, Mr…" a voice said, the Doctor glancing around to see the bride and groom walking towards him, the groom wearing a grey suit that he clearly wasn't entirely comfortable in while the bride was obviously a few months pregnant

"Doctor," the Doctor corrected, taking one last scan of the door with the sonic.

"You seem to know what's going on," the groom said, his tone rushed but comparatively controlled for the circumstances.

"I do what I can," the Doctor conceded, smiling briefly at the young couple.

"I just wanted to ask…" the man continued.

"Can you save us?" the bride finished, looking tearfully at him.

"Who are you?" the Doctor asked, moving away from the door to address them directly.

"Stuart Hoskins," the groom said.

"Sarah Clark," the bride added.

"And one extra," the Doctor smiled down at Sarah's pregnant belly. "Boy or girl?"

"I don't know," Sarah said, stroking it with a sad smile. "I don't want to know, really."

"How did this all get started?"

"Outside the Beatbox Club, two in the morning," Stuart said.

"Street corner," Sarah continued. "I'd lost my purse, didn't have money for a taxi."

"I took her home," Stuart said, smiling at the memory.

"Then asked her out?" the Doctor asked.

"Wrote his number on the back of my hand," Sarah smiled.

"Never got rid of her since," Stuart said with a satisfied smile. "My dad said…"

The way his voice trailed off, coupled with the way Sarah reached out to squeeze his hand, suggested to the Doctor that Stuart's father had been taken by the Reapers before he'd arrived on the scene. It was a further personal tragedy on an already difficult day, but there was nothing he could do about that right now.

"I don't know what this is all about," Sarah said, turning back to face the Doctor, "and I know we're not important-"

"Not important?" the Doctor cut Sarah off, looking at her with a warm smile. "Life shouldn't measure importance based on what's considered important to other people; it should be based on what's important to you. Street corner, two in the morning, getting a taxi home… I've been all over the universe, but I've never been able to live a life like that."

He'd tried to do it long ago when he'd first come to Coal Hill with Susan, but ever since his third incarnation's exile had ended and he'd regenerated into his fourth body, he'd realised that he couldn't stay in one place any more; his third incarnation had become comfortable at UNIT, but none of his other bodies had ever been able to find the incentive to stay somewhere on their own, despite such moments as his fifth self's time managing the Tempus Fugit. He had done his best to ignore his wanderlust so that he could be there for Amy while she was growing up, and he liked to think he'd pulled it off, but he'd still been able to go off on a few quick jaunts when time allowed and he was sure Amy would be safe…

He couldn't do it himself, but that didn't mean he couldn't give others that chance.

"I'll try and save you," he said, smiling between the couple. "Be sure of that."

"Doctor?" Amy called out from another part of the church, prompting the Doctor to give the couple one last reassuring smile before he hurried over to where his companion was sitting with his daughter.

"Problem?" he looked between the two women with a brief smile.

"Rose is talking to her dad," Natalie said.

"I noticed."

"You noticed?" Amy repeated, looking at him sceptically. "I get that I'm still basically the amateur in matters of temporal mechanics of the three of us, but isn't that a bit risky right now?"

"To be blunt, Pond, at this point the timeline's so full of cracks that one isn't going to sway the situation one way or the other," the Doctor said, rolling his eyes as he looked up at the ceiling in frustration. "Either we solve this problem and it doesn't matter what Pete Tyler knows about his future as it will either be irrelevant in the new timeline we've created or he'll be dead, or we don't solve it and he's deader than he would have been."

"…How can someone be deader?" Amy asked, looking at her friend in confusion. "You can't just be a bit dead-"

"He means Pete Tyler and everyone else will have been erased by those Reaper things," Natalie cut in, looking at her father with an edge to her expression that the Doctor didn't like. "So why aren't we just-?"

"That is not an option, Natalie," the Doctor countered. "Pete Tyler is innocent-"

"And what about all the other people who are going to die if this anomaly isn't stopped?" his daughter countered. "Dad, I get that you don't want to kill anyone, and I admire that most of the time, but don't we have a duty-?"

"We don't have the right to make that kind of choice, Natalie," the Doctor cut her off firmly. "Pete Tyler is an innocent victim of this situation; he didn't choose to be the catalyst for this mess, and he definitely doesn't deserve to die just because it's easier to do things that way."

"I get that you don't want to do it that way, Dad, but what if there isn't another way?"

"We are not the very powerful or the very stupid, Natalie, and we will not set ourselves as one and start acting like the other," the Doctor said firmly. "If we start assuming there's only one solution, we blind ourselves to the possibility that there will be other ways; right now, the priority is to make sure things don't get worse until I can find that alternative."

"How could they?" Amy asked. "You just said Rose talking to her dad isn't a problem-"

"But that leaves the risk of her coming into contact with herself," the Doctor finished, looking over at where Jackie Tyler was currently holding her baby and looking anxiously around herself. "Amy, keep a discreet eye on Jackie and that baby; if Rose so much as touches that child…"

"Are we talking Timecop here?"

"Timecop?" Natalie repeated.

"Time-travel film in the 1990s," the Doctor explained, recalling those early days of Amy's training when he'd sat down with her to watch all kinds of time-travel movies to get a better sense of her cultural expectations so that he could change them accordingly. "Actually, it wouldn't be quite that visually disgusting; Rose wouldn't merge with her infant self, but… well, one time a friend of mine was in the same place and time as his past self from six years ago, and the temporal energy released when they just touched each other's fingers was the equivalent of me dying eight times at once."

"That… sounds painful," Natalie nodded uncertainly.

"To say nothing of risky with those things out there," the Doctor nodded, turning back to Amy. "As I said, Pond; keep the Roses apart, and that should limit any further temporal disturbances while I work on what to do next."

"Check," Amy nodded, hurrying over to discreetly stand close to Jackie even as Rose's mother ran after a young dark-skinned boy in a tuxedo, who was now heading for a corner of the church.

"OK," Natalie said, looking curiously at her father. "So… what's the plan for stopping these things?"

"Still working on it," the Doctor said, shaking his head as he studied the church. "This church might be one of the last places left standing with people inside it on Earth, and it's not old enough to keep those Reapers out indefinitely. Without the Time Lords to sustain or undo the temporal paradox, I just don't have the resources to get it all in order, especially not without the old girl…"

Sighing in frustration, the Doctor sat down in a nearby pew and stared grimly up at the ceiling, before he sat sharply up, one hand reaching into his jacket to pull out a key and a whistle, each glowing with a strange golden energy.

"Is that…?" Natalie looked at her father's hands in apprehension.

"The TARDIS key and K9's whistle," the Doctor confirmed with a grin. "They're still trying to get through…"

"…The inside of my ship was thrown out of the wound," the Doctor concluded his hurried explanation from the pulpit of the church, holding the glowing key in the sleeve of his jacket, the remaining residents awkwardly sitting before him, looking at him in that manner he'd come to recognise represented people who weren't entirely sure what he was saying even if they were going along with his authority because they had no better ideas. "These objects represent a link to that interior; if anyone has some kind of power source, I can boost that link and restore my ship, which should allow me to fix all this. Does anyone have some kind of battery?"

"Would this do?" Stuart asked, standing up after a moment's thought and walking up to the pulpit to pass the Doctor a clunky mobile phone.

"Perfect," the Doctor smiled, walking down from the pulpit to take the phone and open the back, turning the screwdriver on the now-extracted clunky black battery. "Just give me a bit of time to charge this up, and we'll be on our way."

This was going to take a while, but since he couldn't use the sonic screwdriver's power source to do this without depriving himself of a vital tool, he had to adapt to contemporary technology and hope that would be enough…

"…never said why you came here in the first place," Natalie heard Pete saying as she wandered through the church. The father and daughter were currently sitting at the back of the church, away from the other would-have-been wedding guests, and Natalie had volunteered to assess the area while Amy and the Doctor waited by the glowing key. "If I had a time machine, I wouldn't have thought 1987 was anything special. Not round here, anyway."

"We just… ended up here," Rose said. From her position behind a pillar, Natalie wondered at the way Rose phrased that but decided not to worry about it; interrupting to correct a lie wouldn't help anybody, and now that she was hidden from view, she wanted to get a better feel for Rose as a person.

"Lucky for me, eh?" Pete smiled. "If you hadn't been there to save me…"

"That was just a coincidence," Rose cut him off. "That was just really good luck. It's amazing."

"So," Pete said, looking uncertainly at his daughter, "in the future, are me and her indoors still together?"

"Yeah," Rose replied with a smile.

"Are you still living with us?"

"Yeah."

"Am I a good dad?"

It was strange; Natalie had spent the last few hours hating Rose for the position the young woman had put her own father in, but listening to the Faction's pawn talking right now, it was almost easier to forget why she was angry at this girl who'd made such a foolish decision… who had put all of time at risk out of her own selfish desires… who genuinely hadn't know any better when she'd accepted the deal…

"You…" Rose said, looking between her father and some distant future. "You told me a bedtime story every night when I was small. You were always there. You never missed one. And, er… you took us for picnics in the country every Saturday. You never let us down. You were there for us all the time. Someone I could really rely on."

Natalie clearly heard Pete state that he didn't actually recognise that description of himself, which reinforced Natalie's idea that Rose was just thinking of what she'd always imagined life would be like with her father, but that detail almost wasn't important right now.

Listening to what Rose had wanted to experience with her father… it left Natalie wishing she'd had a chance to experience that kind of life herself.

Granted, she'd never even had any kind of childhood, considering the circumstances of her 'birth', and she understood that her father wasn't to blame for that shortcoming, but still…

She'd never have existed if it wasn't for the unique circumstances of her creation, but that creation had deprived her of so many opportunities so many other people took for granted…

And if we put everything back to normal, I'll be taking those chances away from Rose.