Chapter Forty-Nine—London, early morning, 7 October, 2007
Lost in thought, only peripherally aware of his surroundings, the Doctor made his way back through the darkened alley to his own TARDIS.
Time was in flux all around him. He could feel it. It was mutable, malleable, changing shape and form from one moment to the next, almost tangible in its intensity.
Usually the ebb and flow of time washed over him like the surf gently rolling up on the beach or flowed around him like a breaker hitting a boulder on a rocky shore. Very rarely, it was like riding the rough seas that signaled an oncoming storm.
This was a maelstrom, and he was at the center of it.
As he unlocked the door and crossed the threshold into the console room, he stopped, grimacing. With a hiss, he clutched the door frame, trying to stay upright. The pain, like the stab of a knife, began in his right heart and spread outward, shooting through his chest and shoulder and gut, threatening to bring him to his knees. It was clear, should have been clear from the beginning, that these pains had never been a result of the temporotoxicum poisoning.
And they were getting worse.
Breathing rapidly, gritting his teeth, he staggered across the room and collapsed on the jump seat. He took a deep breath. As he slowly blew it out the pain receded, then disappeared.
There was only one answer.
It wasn't just time in general that was in flux. His own personal time, the shape of his own past and future, was in flux.
He sat up and pulled the fob watch out of his trouser pocket. The chameleon arch hadn't needed to use a watch. Any small object that could be opened would have worked as a receptacle. But a fob watch was particularly suitable. If it had been programmed to be seen as a sentimental object left by a deceased family member, it would have been an item significant enough to be kept close, but not modern enough to be used on a regular basis, at virtually no risk to accidentally be opened prematurely. Particularly if it had also been equipped with a low-level perception field.
Plus, it just seemed fitting to have a timepiece used as a receptacle for a Time Lord.
As he examined the watch, turning it over and tilting it back and forth, it caught the light of the Time Rotor. For an instant, it appeared to glow with an unearthly blue light, making the interlocking circles etched into its surface stand out in sharp relief.
There was something odd about the engraving, something he couldn't immediately put his finger on.
Holding the watch in one hand, he pulled his glasses out of his pocket with the other and shoved them on his face. He peered through them, tracing with his fingertip the whorls that, not unlike block transfer computations, reduced the contents of the watch to complex mathematical equations.
He frowned. The last of the whorls was unfinished, that equation incomplete. That explained the lack of a background for John Smith, as well as his unusual abilities. The TARDIS must have been too sick to complete the process, turning him physically human but failing to create a history and persona for his new self. With no backstory to fall back on, his subconscious filled in the holes as best it could, allowing his previous self's own personality and some of his abilities to seep in around the edges.
No, it explained far more than that.
It explained his memories. There was an immediacy to them. He wasn't just remembering them as facts that had happened to someone else, he was feeling them as if he'd experienced them himself.
Which of course he had.
Shoving his glasses back in his pocket, he leaned back on the jump seat and rested his feet on the console. He stared at the arching ceiling, returning in his mind to his experiences as John. The endless days spent working at the garage. The daily searches on the internet for clues to his identity that would often stretch late into the night. The odd jobs done around the Estate for single mothers or pensioners who either didn't have the time or the skills to do the repairs themselves. And his belief that there would be no more to his life than that, that the rest of his existence would consist of work and telly and an occasional trip to the local when the loneliness became too much to bear.
And then there was the day everything changed. The day he met Rose in the garage's small office. And for the first time since waking in the alley, he'd felt alive.
As he himself had predicted at the beginning of all this, John, having retained a memory of Rose on some unconscious level, was instantly drawn to her, had immediately trusted her.
What the Doctor hadn't predicted, however, was how hard John would fall for her. And he should have. It had been inevitable, given his own feelings for her.
But how could he have predicted how intimate the relationship would become?
No, he should have predicted that too. John, fully human, not carrying the weight of being Last of the Time Lords, would have had no reason to pull away from her.
The real wild card in all this had been Rose. And even that he should have predicted. He'd known about her feelings for him even before the regeneration.
He closed his eyes, absently running his thumb along his lower lip, remembering the feel of her lips against his, the softness of her curves against the hard planes of his body. Moving with her in the most intimate of dances. And reaching up to caress her temple with his fingertips, longing for a deeper connection with her, seeking something he didn't understand.
Now that he had the memories, he realized he'd missed it, deep in his soul had always missed it, had always felt the loss of the relationship on a subconscious level. Which meant that this had always happened. But as with all time travel, time twisted and turned in unexpected ways. What was happening now was happening now. It would shape his future, his personal future, and his future was still unwritten.
The sounds of someone whispering jolted him to the present. Opening his eyes, he sat up abruptly and stared at the watch again. If he listened carefully with his mind rather than his ears, he could hear the voices of his past whispering to him from inside the timepiece. Urging him, pleading with him to open the cover.
But why did the idea of opening the watch feel like opening Pandora's Box?
He snorted. Perhaps because it was.
With a sense of inevitability, he stood, holding the watch loosely in the palm of his hand.
"To be or not to be," he quoted wryly. Then he took a deep breath and let it out in a rush.
"Blimey," he said. And then quickly headed to the Med Bay before he could change his mind.
~oOo~
As Rose sat on the examination table, swinging her feet back and forth, John paced the floor of the Med Bay, becoming more and more impatient with every pass.
"How long does it take to fly the TARDIS from the courtyard to the alley?" he asked.
"Knowing the Doctor? Anywhere between five seconds and a hundred years."
He turned and stared at her. "Are you kidding me?"
"Nope."
"Is the TARDIS that unreliable?"
"I don't think it's the TARDIS's fault," she said. "I think he's just that bad a driver. No offense."
"None taken." He sat down next to her. "After all, how would I know if you were wrong?"
"I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but the first time I went with you, we spent a couple of days traveling together. When we got back here, you told me we'd only been gone twelve hours. But it really had been twelve months."
"The year you went missing."
She nodded. "It was really rough on Mum, not knowing where I was all that time."
"I bet."
She smiled. "She gave you such a slap."
"I probably deserved it." He rubbed his cheek sympathetically, still a little sore from the last slap she'd given him. "Speaking of Jackie, has she always known who I was?"
"No, not right away, but she does now. She's known for months."
"I would have thought she'd be more upset with me. Particularly after you moved in with me."
"It was a long time ago," she said by way of explanation. "Honestly, I think she's just glad I'm here on the Estate rather than what she calls 'galivanting around the universe in that blue box'."
They fell silent, the only sound in the room the quiet hum of the TARDIS.
"I've been wondering something, Rose," John said eventually. "Ever since I realized all this is true. You said future me asked you not to tell me about all this. Does that mean you're from my future too?"
"Yeah."
"So, if you're from my future, where's my you?"
She hesitated for a moment before answering. "Back in the past where you left me."
"Why would I leave you in the past?"
"Because I turned you down the first time you asked me to travel with you. I only said yes when you came back and asked a second time."
"I don't understand. If I asked you a second time and you said yes, why did I leave you in the past?"
"Because you," she said slowly, "this you, haven't gone back and asked me yet."
"But you said we traveled together…"
"I've traveled with you," Rose told him. "But you haven't traveled with me."
"So when I turn back into the Doctor, I have to go back for you, but none of this will have happened for you yet?"
She shook her head.
"What, am I supposed to pretend none of this ever happened? How can I be with you, without being with you?" He jumped up and began pacing again. Then he remembered something else she'd said. He stopped in his tracks and whirled back to face her. "You told me, months ago, that you and the Doctor… me… we weren't together."
She bit her lip. "No, we weren't."
"Why?"
She looked down at her hands.
He answered his own question. "Because you didn't feel that way about me."
"No!" she said vehemently, almost shouting, snapping her head up to stare at him in the face. Then her expression softened. She added in a quieter voice, "No, it wasn't that."
"But the only other option is impossible," he told her. "You can't possibly be saying that I didn't love you."
She didn't answer.
He stared at her in shock and disbelief. "I can't imagine any scenario where I don't love you. What kind of a man was I if I knew you and didn't love you?" Dread began to pool in the pit of his stomach. "So, what you're saying is, if I turn back into the Doctor, I lose you?"
"You won't lose me. I promised you, I'll stay with you as long as you want me."
"But according to you, I lose this. I lose us." He took a deep breath. "That is just wrong."
He heard the sound of someone clearing his throat behind him. He turned around. Jack stood at the door. Rose jumped off the table.
"It's time, isn't it?" John asked him.
"Yep."
"So how does this work?"
Jack crossed the room and handed him a pocket watch. "This is gonna sound a little odd, but all you have to do is open this watch."
"You're kidding! No, of course you aren't." He groaned. "This is completely mental, but no more mental than any of the rest of this. I felt like I stepped through the looking glass hours ago."
John looked down at the watch in his hand. It was heavier than it looked and warm to the touch, as if it had sat in the sun for a while. Its cover was etched with a series of oddly familiar interlocking circles and would open by pressing a button at the top. He ran his thumb over the cover, barely able to feel the roughness of the engraving.
"I don't want to do this," he said softly. "What happens if I don't do this?"
"If you don't do it, you're gonna create a paradox," Rose told him.
"Not necessarily," Jack said. "Time Lords are different from the rest of us. Time flows differently around them. If he doesn't open it, an alternate timeline will be created, springing from this moment, both forwards and backwards. Time will heal, and it will be as if the original timeline never existed. The only people who will ever know differently are Rose, Mickey, and Jackie, and over time, even their memories will fade."
"But what about…" Rose started. She stared open-mouthed at Jack, who was pointedly not looking at her.
"Only you can do this, Doctor," he said. "The watch is tied to your genetics. It's all up to you."
As John stared at the watch, his mind running a mile a minute, he tried to calculate all the possible outcomes, intended or unintended, of the decision before him. But there were too many. Maybe a Time Lord could do it, he thought, but he couldn't. It was beyond his purely human abilities.
At the same time, the choice seemed so simple. Leave the watch closed and everything stayed just as it was. He and Rose could go and live out their lives, leaving behind aliens and Time Agents and blue boxes that were bigger on the inside. Or open it, and face the unknown. And, according to Rose, give up his love for her.
He knew what he was supposed to do, and he knew what he wanted to do, and as it seemed with most things in life, particularly the most important, they were mutually exclusive.
He looked up at Rose pleadingly. "What do I do, Rose? What do I do? Tell me what to do!"
"I can't." Rose's voice broke as she said the words. Oddly she glanced over at Jack for a moment before looking back at him. "I can't," she said again. "It's not my choice to make."
He closed his eyes, hoping that somehow by doing so inspiration would strike and he'd have an answer. It didn't come.
"Tell me about the Doctor again, Rose," he said finally.
"He's mad, and funny, and brilliant. He could talk for England, for the whole planet even, and he has. He travels the universe and helps people everywhere he goes. He's saved the world more times than I can count, and he makes people better just by knowing him. He taught me how to live a better life, to stand up for what's right no matter the cost. He's the best man I've ever met." She crossed the room to join him. "And you are him. That's who you are."
She took his hand, the one holding the watch, and in the instant that her finger brushed against the metal cover, he could see it. For a moment that could have lasted for an instant or a lifetime, he could feel the movement of the stars overhead and the spin of the Earth beneath their feet and the flow of time around them. And he could see the future, one possible future, spread out before him.
Rose in lace and finery, with him next to her, placing a ring on her finger.
His hands on her gently rounded belly, feeling the kick of an unborn baby underneath his fingertips.
The same baby in Rose's arms, looking up at him intently.
A little boy, with his ears and his mother's eyes, playing in the park.
Tramping along a path in a rainforest with them, the boy's hand tightly clutching Rose's, an infant in a baby carrier nestled against his chest.
Two children, a boy and girl, squealing with delight as they opened presents on Christmas morning.
Work and school plays, holidays in Spain and Africa and Thailand.
A wedding, this time for the boy now grown, followed by another for his sister.
A bevy of children swarming through their home as Rose laughs.
Lying in his deathbed, Rose, older but still as beautiful as when he'd met her, love and tears shining in her eyes as she holds his hand.
"Did you see that? We could have that," he whispered to her. "I want it so much."
Rose sniffed, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.
And then he heard it. The whispering coming from the watch, urging him, pleading with him to open it.
And the urge, coming from somewhere deep within him, to obey.
"But I can't have it, can I?" he said. He sighed heavily, resigned. "Just promise me one thing, Rose. Stay with me. Please?"
She nodded, the tears that had threatened starting to roll down her cheeks.
"And don't ever forget I love you."
I love you too, she mouthed.
With his free hand, he cupped her cheek and pressed his lips to hers. The kiss, all the more bittersweet because he knew it to be their last as John and Rose, left him shaken with its intensity.
He pulled back and met her eyes.
And he opened the watch.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jack grab Rose and yank her away from him. And then it felt like every cell in his body exploded outward. In the distance he heard screaming, and in the back of his mind he realized it was his own.
It was over as suddenly as it had begun. For a moment he just stood there, eyes closed, trying to get his bearings.
And then he remembered who he was. He was the Doctor.
And then everything else came flooding back.
His hands, his whole body shook as he felt the emptiness in his mind. He couldn't breathe. There wasn't nearly enough air in the room. On the planet. In the universe.
"No," he whispered. He staggered to the examination table and grabbed it with one hand to steady himself, clutching the edge of it so hard that the metal frame cut into his palm. "No, please God no." He swallowed hard. "I didn't… I couldn't…" He looked up and met Rose's eyes. "Oh my God, Rose. They're all dead."
She flew to his side and wrapped her arms around him. And as he buried his face in her shoulder, he saw Jack slip from the room.
~oOo~
A long while later, Jack returned to the Med Bay. The Doctor and Rose sat on the examination table, not talking, his arm around her and her head resting on his shoulder.
"I'm sorry to interrupt," he said from the doorway, "but I need to scan the Doctor to make sure that nothing went wrong with the transition."
As he crossed the room to retrieve the scanner from the trolley, the Doctor frowned, surveying the other man's tall, thin frame, his artfully styled hair and sideburns, his brown pinstriped suit and dirty white trainers.
"Rose, love, will you excuse us for a minute?" the Doctor said.
Rose frowned for a moment and then nodded. "All right. I'll be in the console room if you need me." She jumped from the table and slipped out of the room.
Once he was sure she was gone, he said, "How soon?"
The other man turned, a puzzled expression on his face. "I beg your pardon?"
"How long until I turn into you?"
The other Doctor chuckled ruefully as he walked over to him. "What gave me away?"
"Couple of things. First, there's no earthly way I'd let a pretty boy travel with Rose and me."
An eyebrow raised. "You'd be surprised."
"But what really nailed it is that I can feel another Time Lord in my head, and there are no other Time Lords."
One of the other Doctor's hands flew to his ear. "Oh yeah, forgot I took the telepathic dampers out."
"So…" the Doctor prompted.
"So?"
The Doctor groaned and rubbed a spot in the middle of his forehead. "Oh, please don't tell me that I not only regenerate into a pretty boy, but I turn into an idiot at the same time."
"Oi!"
The Doctor shot him a look. "If the trainer fits…"
The other Doctor scowled at him for a moment, and then grew serious. "In the grand scheme of things, not long. Couple of years."
He winced. "I hope it was for a good reason."
"The best."
"How long have you and Rose…"
"It's been about a year since we regenerated."
"Rose told me that she and the Doctor… that we weren't involved."
"No, we're not."
The Doctor took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "After three years together… No wonder she doesn't believe we love her. We do still love her?"
His future self shot him a look. "Does it even need saying?"
"No, I suppose not." He grinned. "That's a relief. I couldn't imagine any version of me in any possible universe that didn't love her."
The other smiled wryly. "Neither can I." He set down the scanner. "Well, if you already know who I am…" He reached into his pocket and pulled out the sonic screwdriver. The sonic whirred as he scanned him.
"Y'know, ever since I turned back, I've been sitting here wondering why."
"Why?"
"Yeah, why. Why you would risk it. After all, the watch was tied to my genetics. The Doctor's genetics. Why choose to take the risk of me not opening it when you could have just opened it yourself?"
The other man didn't look at him.
"And then suddenly it came to me. Somewhere deep down you were hoping I'd make a different choice."
The sonic abruptly shut off.
"Or perhaps not so deep down."
"You're fine," the other Doctor said expressionlessly, not meeting his eyes. "The transition back was complete."
"You need to fix this. Rose deserves better."
"You think I don't know that?" the other snapped.
"Then fix it, pretty boy! Or should I just call you Idiot?"
His other self glared at him.
"Fix this or I swear I'll come find you and Rose and fix it myself."
"Empty threat. You wouldn't know one way or the other. You won't even remember any of this, not till you're me at any rate."
"I wouldn't be so sure of that if I were you. And oh, guess what? I am!" He gave his older self a manic grin, one that quickly faded. His eyes narrowed. "Say you'll fix this or I will. Right now, timelines be damned."
The other closed his eyes and sighed. "It's not as easy as you make it sound."
"Since when did that ever stop us from doing anything?"
His older self opened his eyes and stared at him, eyebrow arching upward. "You're right."
The Doctor grinned. "Course I am. I'm always right. I'm the Doctor."
"For God's sake, do I always sound so arrogant?"
"Course you do!" he said cheerfully. "You're the Doctor."
The other Doctor rolled his eyes. He let out a frustrated sigh. "No wonder my companions find me so annoying."
