I don't own Doctor Who.

Happy Christmas! In this timeline, the Ninth Doctor took Rose Tyler back to her home time and left her there, before Donna Noble appeared in the TARDIS and everything changed. Let me know what you think.

Through the Looking Glass.

Divergence on Father's Day.

Rose walked into the console room, and she saw the Doctor was sitting in the pilot's couch, lightly bouncing a dark crystal ball in his hand. She licked her lips, wondering how the Doctor would take this; she knew the Time Lord had lost his entire race in the Time War against the Daleks, so he would let her see this, right?

"Peter Alan Tyler - my dad. The most wonderful man in the world," Rose began shakily, but she carried on before she lost her nerve. "Born 15th of September 1954. Mum always said he'd had adventures, that's what mum always says. So, I was thinking... could we? Could we go and see my dad when he was still alive?" Rose said to the Doctor.

The Doctor eyed her curiously. In all the time that he had been travelling with Rose, she had never truly asked him to take her somewhere; their first trip to the year 5 billion during that mess with Cassandra, she had never really asked him to take her anywhere. She had just let him decide. "Where's this come from, all of a sudden?"

Rose let out a breath. "All right then, if we can't, if it goes against the laws of times or something, then never mind, we'll just leave it."

"No, I can do anything," the Doctor replied quickly, realising how much she really wanted this. "I'm just more worried about you."

"I wanna see him."

The Doctor knew how she felt. His eighth incarnation had run away from the Time War, foolishly ignoring it because he hadn't liked the way his people had fallen from grace "Your wish is my command. But be careful what you wish for.

He stands up and starts up the TARDIS engines.

X

After seeing Rose's parents get married, the Doctor escorted his friend back to the TARDIS. After he got the ship working and back in the Time Vortex, Rose told him about how Jackie remembered how nobody had been with Pete as he lay on the ground, dying. "I wanna be that someone. So he doesn't die alone."

The Doctor knew how she felt, "November the 7th?"

Rose nodded jerkily, scared and nervous, "1987."

After he set the coordinates, the Doctor started the engines. Rose watched the rise and the fall of the time rotor and listened to the engines apprehensively. When they stopped at last, she looked at the door. On the other side she knew they would be in 1971, on the very day her dad died. Seeing him in the flesh and hearing him speak at the wedding had been an eye opening experience for her, but seeing him get hit by the car was something else.

The Doctor gently pulled her arm and they stepped out of the TARDIS. It was a still, quiet sort of day. Someone was playing music in the distance but otherwise it wasn't an unusual day. "That's so weird," Rose remarked as she looked around while the Doctor closed the TARDIS door and stood next to her with his hands folded behind his back. "The day my father died... I thought it'd be all sort of grim and stormy, it's just an ordinary day."

While he was tempted to make some inappropriate remark himself about how Rose was a cheery one, although he knew she wouldn't appreciate it, the Doctor looked around. "The past is another country. 1987's just the Isle of Wight," he looked down on Rose apprehensively himself although for totally different reasons.

A part of him was doing this to see what Rose would do, but he was worried about what she would do in turn. "Are you sure about this?" He asked, knowing for himself how tempting it was to use time travel in this manner. And he knew the dangers, too.

But this was a good way of seeing what Rose would do with it. This was the first time she had ever asked him to take her anywhere specifically, so it had raised his curiosity. "Yeah," Rose said quickly.

X

1987 or 2005, the Powell estate was the same regardless, and after a quick walk close to the Tyler flat, Rose and the Doctor stood on the curb of the pavement, waiting, side by side. The Doctor looked around curiously, already seeing thanks to his Time Lord senses the timelines, the possibilities in this place.

His senses said one thing that all Time Lord students were taught to avoid unless it was to observe.

Fixed Point.

The death of Pete Tyler was a fixed event in Rose's personal timeline of course, but what never failed to stun the Doctor was how a one man or sentient being could be a part of the universal processes. He remembered Azmael's lectures on time and temporal theory (while he had hated the academy there were a few classes he had shown a more fonder interest in, and while Azmaels' knowledge of spatial physics was off at times, he had known a great deal about time) and how everyone was connected to one another in the universe regardless of distance.

A baby could be born on one world, and on another a world could go to war with another world, and halfway across the universe a supernova could engulf a solar system and reduce it to atoms.

They needed to be careful. Rose's voice brought him out of his thoughts, "This is it. Jordan Road. He was late. He'd been to get a wedding present - a vase. Mum always said, that stupid vase."

She sounded as though she is trying to fight off tears at the end, making the Doctor squeeze her hand in sympathy before they heard the sound of an engine, making them turn in its direction. The engine came closer until the car rounded the corner. Rose continued, "He got out of his car…"

The car pulled over. "... and crossed the road," Rose went on listing the exact sequence of events from what was pieced together.

The car stopped. Rose's breath caught in her throat, making him tighten his grip ever so slightly to give her strength and to remind her he was there, "Oh, God. This is it."

A slightly older version of the Pete Tyler that they'd seen stumble across his vows in the registry office, oblivious to what was in store for him, got out bent down inside his car and he picked up the vase from the passenger's seat. The Doctor gently held Rose's hand in his, intertwining their fingers. Pete got out of his car, unaware that another car has just rounded the corner and is headed straight towards him. The Doctor felt Rose stiffen as she watched how her father, oblivious to the danger stopped when he turned and froze. The Doctor thought he saw the other driver throw a hand over his eyes in panic, so either he was a new driver or he hadn't expected Pete to freeze like that. Whatever was the answer, it was the wrong thing for a driver to do. Rose quickly hid her head behind the Doctor's shoulder. They both heard the vase fall to the floor and smash to bits. Behind him, the Doctor sensed rather than saw as Rose lifted her head to look at her father, who is lying on the road, twitching.

"Go to him. Quick," the Doctor said instantly.

But Rose didn't.

She ran off.

The Doctor sighed as he took off after her. He found her leaning against a wall while she was crying. He sighed again and he stood next to her, offering his quiet support when they heard ambulance sirens sound. "It's too late now," Rose said, making the Doctor looks at her. "By the time the ambulance got there, he was dead."

Her voice faltered, choked up with tears. The Doctor looked away in silence, remembering not only the Time War when so many of his friends were killed by the Daleks but so many innocent lives as well and how everyone in the universe turned against the Time Lords, but knowing what Rose was going to demand he do. "He can't die on his own," Rose said, and something in her tone made him look down at her again as he felt his hearts chill as he realised what she was going to say, "Can I try again?"

The Doctor looked back at her stonily with worry. He knew it would be a bad idea, but he couldn't deny her especially since he was testing her.

X

Travelling back in time wasn't difficult for a time travelling TARDIS, but the Doctor was forced to disable several security systems in the ship that prevented the old girl from travelling back to a moment where a younger version of the ship and her pilot were going to be. The Doctor had felt through his connection with the TARDIS the old girl's worry, but the Doctor had pushed her and he was left hoping this was not going to be something he would come to regret.

It was eerie for him despite his long experience as a time traveller and meeting himself over different regenerations to see his current self standing by the curb with Rose. Looking around the corner (he noticed the bright yellow 'Bad Wolf' but this wasn't the time to comment on something they'd seen for some time now), the Doctor watched worriedly at his younger self and Rose waited for Pete to arrive. The Doctor looked seriously at Rose, hoping that this test didn't go badly since what had happened had already raised red flags. "Right. That's the first you and me. It's a very bad idea, two sets of us being here at the same time. Just be careful they don't see us. Wait 'til she runs off and he follows, then go to your dad."

For the second time, Rose's father's car drew up. The Doctor tensed; due to the vulnerable point two sets of himself and Rose being here, he could see timelines where Pete Tyler's death had to happen.

They could hear the first Rose saying, "Oh, God. This is it."

Pete picked up the vase from the passenger seat. Again. "I can't do this," Rose whispered.

"You don't have to do anything you don't want to, but this is the last time we can be here," the Doctor replied while he hoped they did stop this or Rose actually went to her father.

Rose stared at her father getting out of the car, breathing heavily and tensing. Then, before the Doctor could stop her, she ran out towards her father. "Rose! No!" The Doctor shouted, but it was too late.

The car rounded the corner again. Rose ran past the first set of the Doctor and Rose, and knocked her father out of the way of the oncoming car. They both tumbled onto the floor. The first set of the Doctor and Rose look bewildered for a few seconds, then disappeared. The Doctor looked on in horror, his temporal senses going mad as time rippled.

The stupid girl….

Meanwhile Rose stared at her father as he got slowly to his feet. "I did it!" Rose began in disbelief before she cheered, "I saved your life!"

The Doctor stiffened. He had wondered if Rose would do something like this, and getting confirmation like this, that she had planned something like this was horrifying. Suddenly he could see things clearly.

This was why she had wanted to travel with him, so she could save her father from dying, not knowing that doing so would cause terrible damage. But something else came to mind.

Rose didn't care about the consequences. Pete's voice broke him out of his thoughts and he took more notice of the conversation, and he saw Rose's father looking in the direction of the car and back at his adult daughter, "Blimey, did you see the speed of it? Did you get his number?

Rose just stared dreamily at Pete, "I really did it. Oh, my God, look at you! You're alive! That car was gonna kill ya!"

"Well, give me some credit, I did see it coming. I wasn't gonna walk under it, was I?"

"I'm Rose," Rose introduced herself, looking at him expectantly but what was behind that thought the Doctor didn't know and didn't care after the stunt she had just played. "That's a coincidence. That's my daughter's name."

Rose smiled in delight, "That's a great name. Good choice, well done."

There is a few seconds silence as Rose smiled at him, unable to take her eyes off him, and he looked as though he doesn't quite know what to say next. The Doctor watched on, seeing for himself how awkward and how uncomfortable Pete was with how Rose was staring at him like that. He didn't blame the other man. "Right, I'd better shift," Pete said at last as he came to a decision to likely get away from the blonde fan girl. "I've got a wedding to go to."

But Rose refused to let him go, "Is that Sarah Clarke's wedding?" Surprised Pete nodded in confirmation, "Yeah, are you going?"

"…Yeah." Pete noticed the Doctor's presence, "You and your boyfriend need a lift?"

He gestures in the Doctor's direction, and Rose turned to her Time Lord friend with a smile. When she saw his dark, displeased look, Rose's smile faltered.

X

The Doctor didn't say a word the entire time that Pete escorted them back to the Tyler flat. He just listened as Pete yakked on and on about his plans and he had not even said a word while Rose had showed off some of her father's products, talking about how clever he was, and all that, and one glance at the table with the schematics for solar power told him that it wouldn't work.

In fact everything that the Doctor could see of Pete Tyler so far showed him that the man was just incapable of doing anything like that. The Doctor hadn't said a word as the increasingly desperate Rose who wanted him to speak for the first time since she had rushed out to save her father told him that she would tell Pete he wasn't her boyfriend.

Finally the Doctor spoke, his voice hard, unyielding. Angry.

"Time Machine."

Rose blinked at him, wondering what he was getting at. Of all the things she had expected him to say, this was not it. "What?"

"When we met, I said 'travel with me in space'. You said no. Then I said 'time machine,' and then you came rushing into the TARDIS. But you don't tell me where and when you like to visit. You leave it all up to me, and the TARDIS. But the only time you want to visit is…here?" The Doctor gave her 'do you seriously expect me to believe this wasn't something you'd had in mind' look.

He hadn't intended to say all of that, but after he had given her little talk about how wonderful it would be having her father in her life without thinking about what it would mean for the wider universe, he had looked back on his time with Rose…

And he had found it strange; his control over the TARDIS had varied across the centuries, across his lives. He had gained a reasonable degree of control of the TARDIS during his third incarnation after being exiled to Earth, and while his later lives had been better at controlling the old girl than his original self's days with Ian and Barbara, his companions had been more than welcome to ask him to take him to here or there.

But Rose…

Their first trip in the TARDIS to see the end of the world when the sun expanded didn't really count, not in the Doctor's mind. That was just a one off. She preferred to leave it all to him to decide. Even when Adam had boarded the TARDIS briefly before the Doctor took him straight back to his own time, she never suggested anything.

Had she been waiting for this the whole time? The Doctor felt that she had. And it disappointed him. He should have seen what was going to happen when she ran off when they first saw her father getting run down by that car. He should have said no, but he hadn't.

And why not? Why hadn't he seen it? Because of his past in the Time War, and the way he had used the Moment on the Time Lords after he had discovered their plan to use the Ultimate Sanction.

He had fought on the frontline ever since Cass's ship crashed on Karn, and he had regenerated from the romantic Edwardian git into his wartime incarnation; at the time the universe was convulsing with shock after Gallifrey, led by Rassilon after Romana had been deposed as part of the insane plan by members within the High Council to bring the tyrannical ancient Time Lord back from the Matrix, had thrown an entire planet's timeline into reverse so it simply never existed. Rassilon had justified the destruction of Ysalus as a necessary sacrifice, a show of strength to not only deprive the Daleks of the kind of oil their time machines needed in order to work properly, but it was just another reason why the Doctor had refused to even consider fighting.

In that time Romana and Narvin had both tried to assassinate Rassilon, and they failed, they were both exiled in an old TARDIS and thrown into the Time War. It almost seemed like a tragic twist of fate that the Doctor had followed Cass's ship after he'd picked up her distress call, believing that he could continue to travel the universe and ignore the fighting unless he was drawn into it, such as when he had travelled with Bliss. But it wasn't until she had spat at him with hatred, yelling for him to return to his battlefield, that the Doctor realised he couldn't avoid the war altogether despite stubbornly clinging to his principles in the Sisterhood's cave.

His wartime self had discarded the name of 'Doctor' and he had gone off to fight in the Time War, but it wasn't until hundreds of years had passed that he had not only grown tired of the fighting, but the Time Lords led by Rassilon were planning to ascend to become beings of consciousness alone. The Doctor had become sickened by the Time Lords long before that, their arrogance, their beliefs in their own superiority and their self-entitlement had always disgusted him before the war even started, but when Cinder died, the Doctor had snapped. He had travelled back to Gallifrey, prepared to use the Moment, but he had hacked into the High Council records, hoping to find something he could use.

And then he had discovered their plan, Rassilon's big scheme. He knew before that point Rassilon had planned something with 'ascension,' but he had discounted it and he had just fought on, using his centuries of experience to fight the Daleks. But he'd had enough, and he was seeing his own people transform into bloodthirsty savages determined to destroy the universe for just one race. He had so many regrets in the aftermath, of course. He hadn't tried to find Romana, Narvin, or any of the friends he'd made over the centuries so he could get them off planet and now he was the only one left in the universe, the last Time Lord.

That was why he had agreed to Rose's plea to bring her to 1987, really; he knew how it felt to lost someone, and while he couldn't slip back to Gallifrey, he could take Rose back to her father. "It wasn't some big plan-," Rose began, breaking him from his thoughts.

"Oh, like I'm expected to believe that," the Doctor interrupted scornfully, glaring at her.

"It wasn't! I just saw it happening and I thought... I can stop it."

The Doctor looked away for a moment, shaking his head slowly, a bitter chuckle leaving his mouth. "I did it again. I should have known; all the signs were there, of your selfishness, your arrogance, the way you defended that Dalek in Van Statten's museum where you believed that you knew it all despite only travelling with me for such a short time. I've done it again, I just can't believe it. I picked another STUPID ape. I should've known. It's not about showing you the universe - it never is. It's about the universe doing something for you."

Rose glared back at the Time Lord, listening to his diatribe against her. She was startled he would ever say anything like that to her when she had helped him pull himself together following the Time War. "So it's okay when YOU go to other times, and YOU save people's lives - but not when it's me saving my dad-."

"I know what I'm doing, you don't," the Doctor's voice rose as he glared at Rose. "Don't think for a second what you just did you have a clue what you have just done. Two sets of us being there made that a vulnerable point."

"But he's alive!"

"Rose, my entire planet died. My whole family. Do you think it never occurred to me to go back and save them? It did, believe me. That's why I brought you here in the first place, because I know how it feels to lose people who matter to you."

"But you wouldn't have thought of saving them, right?" Rose sneered.

The Doctor felt his expression harden. "Oh, it would. The only difference between us is that I know precisely what could happen if history is changed."

"But it's not like I've changed HISTORY," Rose protested, still not understanding. "Not much, I mean... he's never gonna be a world leader, he's not gonna start World War Three or anything…"

"Oh, but you're wrong; you did change history. He doesn't need to be a Dictator, Rose, to have an effect on the wider universe. Everyone's destiny is linked to each other, and if you affect that chain, it could have consequences," the Doctor shook his head in frustration as he realised he had to explain some of the basics. "There are certain moments of time which are fixed, others are flux-."

"What the hell does that even mean?" Rose interrupted.

The Doctor seethed, realising she wasn't even listening, but he had to try to get through to her.

"Fixed points are moments in time which are important because they shape the future, Rose," the Doctor snapped, angry at the interruption. "Your father's death was a fixed moment in your timeline. It shaped your entire life. Everything that you have done, everything you have achieved…all of it came down because of your father's death. It's also a fixed moment in your mother's timeline, too. Because of his death, Jackie worked long and hard to provide you with everything from care to education. You cannot change those moments when they are a part of your life!"

"But my mum and I don't have to live like we did before, Doctor," Rose protested, and the Doctor realised that he had been wasting his time and breath explaining temporal theory to Rose at all. "Dad can now do all the things he was gonna do, all the things mum said he would-."

"Yeah, and what would happen if we returned to your time like nothing happened, and we discover your entire history has changed?" The Doctor demanded as he took a few steps towards her until he was looming over her.

"What do you mean? I know it would change, my dad would be alive-."

The Doctor waved her reply away harshly, his glare shutting her up quickly. "But what if your life isn't going to be better, like you imagine? What if your parents divorced, and you were caught in the middle of the whole mess? What would you do then?"

"That will never happen, Doctor."

The Doctor was beginning to get increasingly angry and frustrated by the stubbornness of the idiot girl in front of him. "How do you know that? What you've done is already changing events around us. I can feel it, Rose! Don't you remember what happened with Adam? I kicked him out of the TARDIS because he was trying to change the future, 200,000 years worth of history. You have done the same thing!" A sudden thought struck him, a memory of his time with Rose Tyler.

"Rose, when we were in Cardiff, and I said that time can be rewritten, did you really think I meant these events could be changed and you thought I would let it happen?" The Doctor asked. "How long have you been planning this?"

"You said that time doesn't go in a straight line, and that some events can happen and change-," Rose said, but he interrupted.

Oh, no. If she really thinks that's how time works, then she was going to do this anyway, the Doctor thought to himself.

"Rose - there's a man alive in the world who wasn't alive before. An ordinary man, that's the most important thing in creation. The whole world's different because he's alive."

"What, would you rather him dead?" Rose spat.

The Doctor groaned inwardly, cursing the girl's stubbornness. Even as he formed a response to assure Rose that he wouldn't want Pete to die, the Doctor decided to be honest. But he knew Rose was not going to like it.

"Rose, he has to die, it's fixed history, you-," but Rose but his head snapped back at he felt a stinging slap to his face. He looked at her shocked even as he felt a stinging place in his cheek.

Rose stared at him in shock as she took in what she had done, but she wasn't sorry about what she had done. "For once, YOU'RE not the most important man in my life."

The Doctor stiffened as he glared at her, his cheek still stinging from the slap and he was sure her rings had dug into his skin, seeing completely that he had been wasting his time with Rose.

Not just here, but in general.

"Let's see how you get on without me, then, give me the key."

He held his hand out. Rose just stared back at him in angry confusion, not getting what it was he wanted.

"The TARDIS key. If I'm so insignificant, give it to me back. GIVE IT TO ME, NOW!"

Rose got the key out of her pocket, "All right then, I will."

With that, Rose slapped the key down into his hand, hard. The Doctor raised an eyebrow at the frankly childish manner she did that. "Well, you've got what you wanted so that's goodbye then," the Doctor said to her in disappointment.

He turns on her and walks down the hallway to the door. Rose followed him out to the hall just as he reached the door. "You don't scare me, Doctor," she glared at him, quickly getting over her shock of what she had just done to him before she stood in front of him and got in the way. "I know how sad you are."

Sad, does she mean what I think she means? The Doctor thought to himself. She…she is, she's using the Time War to score a point! The disgusting little ape!

Unaware of where his thoughts had gone, Rose carried on ranting at him, "You'll be back in a minute. Or you'll hang around outside the TARDIS waiting for me."

Am I really that pathetic in her eyes? If that's so, then she's going to be in for a really rude awakening.

The Doctor stared down at her for a few moments, shocked by what she had just said, although he wasn't sure why he was so surprised by what she was saying to him after what she had done, but if she was really prepared to use physical violence to prove a point, and was willing to sink so low as to throw in his PTSD in his face, then he should never have travelled with her.

Finally he had had enough, of Rose, of the Tyler family in general. then pushes past her, opening the door. Rose's voice rose behind him as he left the flat behind. "And I'll make you wait a long time!"

X

Still fuming, the Doctor left the Tyler flat and he headed down the stairs, but he caught sight of his reflection in a window. After a few turns of his head to see it more clearly, he found that he had a few cuts on his face from where Rose had slapped him in the face.

For a moment he wondered how Rose had given them to him to cut him like that, but then he remembered Rose wore rings. They must have caught on his skin.

The Doctor's face hardened angrily before he stormed out of the block and he walked down the road, furious with what had happened, not only with Pete Tyler but what had happened with Rose just now.

He couldn't believe what Rose had done - it was one thing to change history but using physical violence to solve an argument was low, and his mind was left whirling as he tried to work out what he was going to do now to put everything right, but he was too angry with Rose to really concentrate on what he needed to do. All of his Time Lord instincts, everything he had been taught and what had guided him on his travels so he wouldn't choose to break the Laws of Time, everything he had sworn to do when he had left Gallifrey in the TARDIS with Susan, were yelling at him to focus on the change in history, and put it right.

But…he couldn't, at least not until he had reasoned out his thoughts for Rose Tyler.

In some ways, bringing her back in time to see her father die had been out of his sympathy, because he knew how it felt to lose family and not be in any position to do anything about it. In a way this had been a test, a test of character but Rose was found to be wanting, and he didn't like it.

This time, he had the facts, and after he had just seen for himself how immature and selfish Rose was, now he had to reason everything out in his mind.

All of this time, she had been using him; he did not have a clue when she had decided to go through with it, but somehow he believed she'd had this in mind the entire time since he had revealed to her the TARDIS was a time machine. She was merely choosing her moment, but what surprised him the most was how she decided to do it now when Adam Mitchell had tried to change history, after Rose had invited him into the TARDIS.

But when he had invited Rose into the TARDIS, the Doctor hadn't even realised that Rose had some kind of hold over him, a hold he couldn't understand now.

That had never happened before.

Never.

Not even with Susan, Jo, Vicki, Victoria, Jo, or Ace, the companions he had always felt parental over had that kind of grip on him. So what had changed? But while Ace might have been capable of doing the same thing Rose had, she had learnt not to play games with history.

Susan and Vicki had both known enough about time although Susan was the true expert thanks to her Time Lord heritage to know you don't disrupt fixed points, and Vicki had known enough of the theory to know there were dangers too, her time had been more knowledgeable with temporal theory than humans of the 20th-21st centuries.

He had travelled with dozens of people over the years, but none of them had ever been able to manipulate him the way Rose had. And when had she been able to do it?

After he had told her she was the Last of the Time Lords.

That sickened and angered the Doctor the most, really; the fact a human girl had taken advantage of his survivors' guilt and his pain at being virtually alone in the universe, and she had gone out of her way to be there for him, all the while telling him she would fill the void the Time Lords had left when they were wiped from history.

And all that time, she was using him. She was using his TARDIS and his knowledge of time travel to give her precisely what she wanted. He had only told her about the recent past since his last regeneration because he had decided to be brutally honest with Rose after she had gotten emotional at the destruction of her planet in the far future, deciding she deserved to know what he had gone through, but it would be a while before she discovered the enemies of the Time War.

But what sickened him the most, especially after their confrontation in her parents flat only a few minutes ago, was the way she seemed to imply that he could not live without her in his life.

She really thought so highly of herself if she was prepared to say something like that, and it made him furious. But what really made him angry was how he had allowed himself to be chained up like that, to a human girl who was just not worth it. He could see it now, Rose Tyler was immature, and she was incredibly selfish. Prior visits to the Tyler flat, as well as his first trip there when he had been hunting down the Auton arm he had foolishly let out of his sight while he was trying to track down the Nestene's base, where he had listened to Jackie talk about how Rose's job at Hendrik's had given the girl 'airs and graces,' but the Doctor had a feeling it wasn't recent.

No, something told him Rose had always been like this. The only problem was he didn't know when it had happened, but he was starting to not care.

The Doctor had heard of cases of traumatic situations encouraging others to bond with someone else, making them latch onto people who normally wouldn't be suitable for their needs to make up for the people whom they'd lost. Cases such as losing a parent like a mother, or in this case a father at a very young age while seeking close relationships with older men to form father substitutes.

Was that how Rose had seen him?

If that was the case, it made sense why she was not listening to him, although she had rarely done so in the past. Rose was right since she now had Pete in her life, although it was going to be extremely brief, if he had his way.

But what the Doctor didn't understand was how Rose honestly believed that she'd still travel with him if she changed her own personal history. Hadn't what happened with Adam taught her anything? She had been there when the Editor while the Jagrafess had been anchored to the ceiling above them revealed that hologram of Adam with that stream of information being taken out of his mind to be read, giving the Editor and his alien boss (he really needed to investigate that properly, to make sure history wasn't further screwed up; but right now, he saw it as yet another example of how the timeline was shifting since the loss of Gallifrey and the other Time Lords) knowledge of the TARDIS.

She had been there when he had taken Adam home.

She had seen him leave the boy, the so-called 'genius' who'd hacked the defence systems, and nearly set off World War 3 and played it off as a joke, at home!

What made her think she could just change the past without him doing anything about it?

But why had he let her do it?

Because of his need to connect to people following the loss of Gallifrey, the loss of all of his people and their presence in his mind, and being alone in the TARDIS following his regeneration into his current incarnation where he shouldered the whole extent of his survivor's guilt despite what the Time Lords had been planning on doing by igniting the Ultimate Sanction, the End of Time as part of Rassilon's insane scheme.

He had latched onto Rose despite trying to get rid of her twice, first at Hendriks' when he blew the place up to destroy the Auton's relay, and secondly when he made the mistake of throwing away the Auton's arm and he'd tried to throw it out because he hadn't been concentrating, he had been so focused on the task at hand that by the time he realised what he had done, it was too late, so he had gone to the flat, and he was forced to shut her out again. It wasn't until he had met her again at that restaurant that the Doctor accepted he wasn't going to get rid of her so easily.

And he had enjoyed her company, and he had invited her into the TARDIS as a result.

He didn't want to think of her anymore.

In the end, she had taken advantage of his pain and grief, and she had put herself up on a pedestal and he'd let her do it. Only Rose had become fairly arrogant and blase, especially when it came to travelling. The first real sign of her arrogance had come when they'd been in Van Statten's bunker, and she had defended the Dalek there! A part of the Doctor wondered if she would have defended it had she known of the history of the Daleks, but he dismissed it quickly; it led to possibilities that he didn't want to consider.

The walk did the Doctor a world of good.

By the time the Doctor looked up and he realised he was almost back at the road where the TARDIS was currently parked, he felt that he had rationalised his thoughts towards Rose Tyler. And they had led to a really dark revelation, that Rose Tyler was a selfish manipulative girl who had latched onto him, and she had planned to use him to get her what she wanted.

Once he had reasoned that out in his head, the Doctor was able to focus on Pete Tyler. He didn't need to focus on a manipulative little ape anymore.

Thousands of years of Time Lord presence in the universe - the time when the Time Lords were gone originally when he and the TARDIS negated the Grandfather's timeline and he was left with his memories compressed by the Matrix before the confrontations with the Council of Eight and Marnal had made him create a new timeline where the Time Lords were back, and Gallifrey was safe before the Last Great Time War began didn't count - had made the processes and the consequences of changing history easy to predict.

But not anymore, no the golden days were gone. The Last Great Time War had made the Web of Time more malleable than it should have been, even before the return of Rassilon and his subsequent decisions which saw several worlds wiped from history, and now the Time Lords were gone along with the whole of Time Lord technology, even the Doctor didn't know what would happen if somebody seriously altered history.

It was now really easy to create alternative timelines now in a universe where the Time Lords simply did not exist, and only he was left to pick up the slack.

And if a timeline came in and shoved the main timeline away then the universe would lose billions of years off of its lifespan. That was one of the reasons he had kicked Adam out of the TARDIS.

The Doctor rounded a corner to the road where the TARDIS was parked. He was always making plans to get inside his ship, take off once he took a look at the timelines, and he would think of a way of making sure Pete died. As he headed for the ship, he heard a bird cawing. The Doctor took out the key from his pocket and then he looked up at the sky through the bare branches of a tree.

Something did not feel right.

Something felt wrong.

The Doctor squared his shoulders and he unlocked the key to the TARDIS, making a promise to check the console to see what was going on here. The sight which greeted his eyes as he opened the doors of the TARDIS filled him with horror. The inside of his ship had disappeared. There was no sign of the console room, or any sign that this police box shell had been his old Type 40 TARDIS which he had stolen from Gallifrey all those centuries ago. Frightened, the Doctor stepped inside and patted and felt around the walls, but there was no sign of the ship; it was just an ordinary police-box.

He took a deep breath as he realised what had happened.

In saving her father, Rose had created a temporal shockwave that was rippling back and forth through the timelines. The shockwave had severed the TARDIS interior with the outer shell. That meant….

The Doctor's eyes widened in horror, "Rose!"

He went running down the street, remembering seeing the wedding invitation as he'd walked in and left the Tyler flat for the wedding where Pete was going to be. While he had made up his mind with Rose, he was not going to let her die, because he knew they would get to the idiot girl first. Hopefully by the time he got to her, the effects of the Reaper's presence would be cumulative, and nothing would happen before he got to her.