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The World of Paradox

"So," Rose asked, sitting beside the Doctor, Amy and Natalie near the back of the church, as the TARDIS's golden outline continued to become more solid at the front,

"when time gets… sorted out…?"

"Everybody here forgets what happened," the Doctor said solemnly. "And everything stays the same as it is now."

"In other words, I'll still be alive," Pete put in, his tone bitter as he glanced at Rose from the seat behind her, her silence answering Pete's question more than anything she could have said. "That's why you didn't have anything to tell me about my life; I never did anything."

"Just because you haven't done anything doesn't mean you don't mean anything-" the Doctor began.

"Rubbish," Pete countered bitterly. "I'm so useless I couldn't even die properly. Now it's my fault all of this has happened."

"This is my fault…" Rose said, leaning back to place a hand on his arm.

"No, love," Pete said, looking at Rose with a sense of solemn sorrow that served as a sharp contrast to his earlier bitterness. "I'm your dad. That's my job for it to be my fault."

"Her dad?" Jackie said, the four looking up to see Rose's mother standing over them, staring between Pete and Rose incredulously. "How are you her dad?"

"Oh no…" Amy whispered, exchanging anxious glances with Natalie.

"How old were you?" Jackie continued, still glaring at Pete as the Doctor leaned forward to try and avoid this inevitably awkward conversation. "Twelve? Oh, that's disgusting."

"Jacks, listen," Pete began, quickly getting to his feet. "This is Rose-"

"Rose?" Jackie cut him off. "How sick is that? You give my daughter a second-hand name? How many are there? Do you call them all Rose?"

"Oh, for God's sake, look," Pete said, reaching out to take the baby from Jackie's arms. "It's the same Rose!"

"NO!" the Doctor, Natalie and Amy yelled, all three leaping to their feet just as Rose found herself holding the infant. Natalie grabbed the baby out of Rose's arms as the girl stared at her younger self in shock, but the bright flash that had filled the room as the two Roses made contact made it clear that it was already too late. As the three temporally-displaced women looked up, one of the Reapers appeared, floating in the middle of the central hall with its wings folded loosely around itself like a bat, spreading its wings as it let out a chuckling sound.

"Everyone behind me!" the Doctor yelled

"No-!" Amy began, looking at her friend in horror.

"I'm the oldest thing here," the Doctor said, the finality in his tone as he stared solemnly at the Reaper leaving no room for argument.

As the Doctor walked forward, Amy didn't know what to do; she couldn't let the Doctor die, but he'd said himself that he was the oldest thing inside this church, Natalie was obviously too young for them to be sure she could hold this thing back even if Amy and the Doctor would let his daughter do that…

Her mind was racing so rapidly that Amy almost missed it when the Reaper dived down to envelop the Doctor, the two aliens coming together in a brilliant flash of light that faded to reveal no trace of either. Spinning around, Amy saw the golden TARDIS outline vanish before it could finish solidifying, the young girl running over to pick up the fallen key and K9's discarded whistle.

"It's cold," she said, turning around to stare at Natalie as the Doctor's daughter hurried over to join her fellow TARDIS traveller, the infant Rose having been handed back to her mother. "The key's cold… it's not linked to the TARDIS…"

"Which means it's not linked to Dad," Natalie said, turning to glare at Rose. "Which means he's dead… because of you."

"What…?" Rose said, looking shakily at Natalie. "But… I'm sorry about-"

"He did this for you!" Natalie yelled, moving so quickly Amy could barely see the motion, as the engineered solider moved from standing beside Amy to pressing Rose against a column in the church, the young woman showing more rage than Amy had ever seen from Natalie. "The Faction gave you this chance because they knew that you had met Dad; if you had been anyone else, he'd have dealt with this the moment it started-!"

"He wouldn't."

"He would!" Natalie turned to yell at Amy, tears prickling in eyes that Amy would have sworn before this couldn't cry. "He just did this because-!"

"Because he's the Doctor," Amy said, fighting down the urge to cry herself as she looked at Natalie, understanding the reason for the soldier's grief even if she couldn't control it. "He put more effort into this because he knew Rose… but he'd never be that ruthless, and you know it."

Natalie simply stared at Amy for a few moments, before she simply threw her arms around the other girl and began to sob, Amy unable to do more than wrap her arms around Natalie and give the young woman a squeeze.

She knew that Natalie looked like the older one of the two of them, and she still wasn't sure how much time had passed for Natalie before they found her on Uxaerius after her 'birth', but in a strange way, at least for the moment, Amy felt like a mother trying to comfort her daughter.

It was crazy to imagine that Natalie needed any kind of parent when she was a trained soldier, but after spending the last few weeks seeing Natalie with the Doctor, it was clear that the girl needed emotional support to face the wider universe, even if she could handle herself physically against anything that tried to attack her.

After Amy had helped Natalie into a seat by the door of the church, the two women sat in silence, Amy alternating between looking at the TARDIS key in her hand and the young woman sitting alongside her, lost for what she could do in this mess of a situation.

She'd come so far since those days when she'd been sent to psychiatrists because they thought she was crazy or paranoid, but this wasn't like trying to outwit the Faction's latest schemes; time had been broken because of one act of kindness, and she couldn't bring herself to put it right…

"That Doctor fellow…" Pete's voice said, Amy looking up to see the man looking solemnly at her. "He cared for Rose, didn't he?"

"She… was there for him at an important time of his life," Amy said; talking about regeneration and what little the Doctor had shared about that time of his life would be too complicated, but she could give Pete the bare facts. "He tries to save everyone, but… Rose meant a little more to him than that."

"Which is why he didn't want her to go through this again if there was another way," Pete said, his tone increasingly solemn once again. "Now there isn't."

"…What?" Natalie looked up at Pete, as Rose got up from her seat and walked over to join them.

"The car that should have killed me," Pete explained, looking over at Rose as he shrugged on his jacket. "It's here. The Doctor worked it out way back, but he, er… he tried to protect me. Still, he's not in charge anymore. I am."

Amy saw no sense protesting that; she and Natalie weren't in any state to try and establish their own authority in this situation, and even if she was fairly sure she knew what Pete was about to say, she didn't have the strength to protest about it.

Maybe that made her a bad person, but this was the Doctor's life they were talking about here; if there was any way to get him back…

"But you can't," Rose said, tears in her eyes.

"Who am I, love?" Pete said, reaching out with one hand to caress Rose's cheek.

"My daddy…" Rose said, sounding so much like a little girl even Amy felt like giving her a hug.

"Jackie," Pete said, looking over at his wife as the other woman walked over to join us. "Look at her; she's ours."

"Oh, of course," Jackie said after staring at Rose for a moment, moving to hug the weeping Rose, Rose's sobs becoming more intense as she wrapped her arms around her mother.

"I'm meant to be dead, Jacks," Pete said, smiling as the two women ended their hug. "You're going to get rid of me at last."

"Don't say that," Jackie said.

"For once in your life, trust me; it's got to be done," Pete smiled tremulously. "You've got to survive, because you've got to bring up our daughter."

With that 'instruction' given, Pete shared one final kiss with his wife before he turned back to Rose. "I never read you those bedtime stories. I never took you on those picnics. I was never there for you."

"You would have been," Rose said, still tearful even as she seemed to accept the situation (Amy noticed Natalie tensed for action, but didn't bother to criticise her fellow traveller; the situation was too high-stakes for them not to be cautious right now).

"But I can do this for you," Pete nodded firmly. "I can be a proper dad to you now."

"But it's not fair," Rose said, sniffing sadly.

"Any more fair that she loses her dad so a useless lump like me can keep going?" Pete said, indicating Natalie with a sympathetic smile.

"He wouldn't-!" Natalie looked up urgently, only to bow her head when she realised what she was about to say.

"And that's why I'm doing this for him," Pete said, smiling briefly at Natalie before he looked at Rose with a broader, yet sadder smile. "I've had all these extra hours; no one else in the world has ever had that. And on top of that, I got to see you… and you're beautiful. How lucky am I, eh? So come on; do as your dad says."

On some unspoken understanding, Rose reached over to pick up a wrapped vase from a nearby chair and pass it on to Pete.

"You going to be there for me, love?" Pete said, waiting for Rose to nod in response. "Thanks for saving me."

With those last words, Pete picked up the vase and ran out of the church, Amy, Rose and Natalie hurrying after him to take up position around the door. Reapers could be heard gathered above the church, and Amy saw one appear on the other side of the street, but then Pete was running towards the end of the street, and a beige car suddenly appeared in front of him…

At the sound of something hitting the car, the Reaper that had been charging towards Pete suddenly vanished in a brief burst of gold, and then it was as though the sun had come out from behind a cloud. The day was suddenly normal, the church behind them sounded like it was full of people once again, the faint sounds of life in the city could be heard if Amy strained her ears…

"Go to him," the Doctor's voice suddenly said, the Time Lord appearing from behind the three women, his gaze fixed on Rose even as his hands went to Amy and Natalie's shoulders. As the younger blonde ran towards her father, the redhead and his daughter wrapped their arms around the returned Time Lord, the small trio moving away from the church doors to a position up against the wall around a corner, eyes squeezed shut as they all fought the urge to laugh for joy at this turn of events.

"So…" Amy said, as she finally pulled away to look at the Doctor. "If you… you're back, then that means…?"

"History's back on track," the Doctor confirmed, indicating where Rose was now sitting on the ground alongside her father while the driver of the car that had hit him stared in horror at what had happened. "As far as the rest of the universe is concerned, Pete Tyler missed getting hit by that driver earlier while he was purchasing a wedding gift, only to get hit by that same driver by sheer coincidence while he was coming to the wedding."

"Nobody remembers us?" Natalie asked, indicating the people now filing out of the church, including a couple of figures Amy was sure hadn't been inside when they'd been hiding from the Reapers.

"Because as far as they're concerned, we were never here," the Doctor affirmed. "Rose will probably remember hearing stories about a strange woman who was there for her father when he died that might inspire her to want to come back here in the first place, and that driver will decide to stay instead of running away because he felt guilty over the previous near-miss, but our presence here… it doesn't work in this timeline."

"Right…" Amy nodded uncertainly, before she smiled at the Doctor. "So the Faction didn't win?"

"Reality's take a couple of knocks, but the fine details are still the same; the Faction would have wanted Rose to save her dad completely, or at least put me in a position where I would have had to save him and bend my own rules…"

The Doctor trailed off, shrugging uncomfortably as the two young women looked at him. "I'm not happy things turned out this way, but considering what could have happened…"

"And it's easier when you didn't… Pete chose what happened, right?" Natalie asked.

"Sometimes the only good option is the least of a series of bad options," the Doctor said solemnly, his expression uncomfortable even as he nodded in confirmation at his daughter. "If I'd had the chance to save Pete, I would have, but as a Time Lord…"

"Bigger picture, right?" Amy smiled at him in understanding. "We get it, Doctor; you save everyone you can, but if you could save everyone, you'd just be a better version of the Faction."

"Better version?" Natalie asked.

"I'd be choosing who lives and who dies based on what I feel is right," the Doctor explained solemnly. "Maybe I'd be doing it for better reasons, but benevolent dictatorship is still a dictatorship; the people of the universe deserve a chance to make their own mistakes and live their lives in freedom, not have me or the Grandfather deciding to make sure things happen the way we want them to."

The three stood in silence for a few moments, each contemplating what they had just spoken about, before the Doctor stepped away from the young women and walked over to where Rose was still crouched beside her father.

"Come on, Rose Tyler," the Doctor said, indicating the blue box on the opposite side of the street, the ship apparently fully restored once the timeline had stabilised itself. "It's time to take you home."

"Ri… right," Rose nodded at the Doctor, swallowing and rubbing her eyes as she stood up from her father's body. "Let's… let's go."

The way Rose phrased that made Amy wonder; she had never explicitly been a neglected child, but she had enough experience of avoiding the truth when questioned to realise that there was something Rose wasn't telling them…

AN: Of course, getting Rose back to her own time isn't going to be simple, but that's not going to be because of any issues relating to the TARDIS's usual steering problems…