Chapter Two

The Doctor frowned for a moment at his other incarnation, disappointed and understandably curious but mostly relieved. It would be easier to get to the bottom of things with the two of him. Sensing his future self wasn't in a social mood he gestured with his rolled up hat back toward the three companions. "I suppose one-way introductions are in order. Which of me are you?"

The Doctor's defiant glare remained for a moment and he glanced back up the steps nervously, it seemed, before coming the rest of the way into the room and unclenching his arms. "Ninth," he said quietly, suddenly thoughtful and a trace bewildered, thinking again as the indignance faded. His eyes went from his younger face to the others, nodding at Nyssa and a very deservedly nervous Turlough as they moved forward. His expression changed slightly when his eyes fell to Tegan, standing where she had been since he'd erupted, shouting, through the door, shoulder to shoulder with the man he'd been, her mouth a thin, determined line, her gaze sharp despite her confusion. "Tegan, wonderful to see you again. I thought about dropping in but…".

"… but there's always something coming up… nothing changes. So, you're the Doc', too. Great, maybe we'll get the end of the world sorted out in time for tea." She turned slightly and looked up at the man she was suddenly thinking of as her Doctor. He sighed and took the cue, the unspoken admonishment that the weirdness had passed for all of them and it was time to get down to business.

"So, was it something you came back to fix or something you accidentally did that brought all this about?" His tone was light but unyielding.

The Doctor shrugged lightly, looking at the stone walls, the wooden benches stacked near the door, the huge folded up tent, anywhere but the other eerily familiar blue eyes. "Not me, my companion. She… caused a paradox."

"I see. I assume then she's Human or the opportunity wouldn't have existed."

The Doctor brought his head up, still not meeting his own eyes, calmer ones to be sure, not understanding himself why he was driven to avoid them. "Oh yeah, she's Human, too Human. I did warn her, but she couldn't stop herself in the end."

The Doctor sawed patiently on his heels for a moment, knowing he was trying to decide how much to tell himself without creating another paradox for the reapers to feed on, one made of Time Lord essence. Nyssa had come up to his other side and was studying the man he would be with her most common expression, polite worry. The man was definitely out of sorts, as much about the woman upstairs as the situation she had created. It was another glance at Tegan, who had taken a breath to speak, that moved him. "Stop herself from what?"

"I'm trying to figure out if I should tell you."

"Oh, I see. Well, let's reason this out, shall we? If you tell me and it contributes to our straightening this mess out, chances are a time line as catastrophically affected as this one will right itself at such a severe turn that even my memory will be wiped of the incident. That prevents one paradox. Alternately if my knowing doesn't help and we're all consumed by reapers it won't matter all that much anyway. Now, since I know that, there's little reason you shouldn't so… out with it or I shall allow Tegan to carry on with the questions." He said the latter with a slight smile and tapped himself on the chest with the rolled up hat.

Defeated, frustrated, and avoiding Tegan's already irritated gaze (although he didn't know which of him had earned her ire after that last threat), the Doctor threw up his hands again, not quite as far. "She saved her father's life."

The Doctor froze in mid-breath, calculating the ramifications of the five simple words he'd just heard. Under other circumstances, they would have been warm, wonderful, loving words that told of devotion. Under these circumstances, they had meant the creation of a paradox that was destroying the world. He finished the breath and looked back at his companions, knowing their frailties all too well himself. "All right, how did it happen?"

"A road accident."

"Yes… and…?"

"She knocked him out from in front of a car."

Another long thirty seconds passed. The Doctor shoved his hands into his trousers again and scowled. "Look, I know this is difficult but if she accidentally saved her father's life there may be a loophole we can util--."

"I told you, you fool, I told her not to!" The Doctor exploded, wondering that his other self didn't seem moved by the show of temper. Tegan opened her mouth but fell silent after one look at her Doctor's unfazed expression. "I told her not to and she bolted anyway, right past where the two of us were standing from the last try, headed for the street. She's a gymnast, right, moved so damned fast I couldn't stop her. The next thing I knew---."

"Now just a moment," the Time Lord interrupted himself hotly. "You were already there from a time before, a triple paradox?"

"She wasn't supposed to save him, I told her we couldn't---." The Doctor ground his teeth for a moment and looked at the floor, arms folding again. "I told her over and over we couldn't interfere, not with this. It wasn't like---."

"You idiot, you complete idiot! What the devil have I become?" Tegan and Nyssa ducked back as the Doctor's hands snapped out of his pockets and looked as if they were next to go to his own future throat. His face had darkened with rage that none of his fellow travelers had seen before and the air in the room suddenly seemed charged with a malignant force that crept along every nerve in their own bodies, all emanating from the younger of the two Time Lords. His other self seemed somewhat cowed but still angry and defiant, and suddenly somewhat embarrassed as he slouched against the stone wall.

"She only wanted someone with him when---."

"I don't care what her motivations were and I can't imagine how you justified tempting the fate of a world for one girl!" The Doctor paused for breath again, his face still glowing. His gaze went to Nyssa as she dared approach him again, trying to be, as always, a reservoir of calm for them all despite the empathic torment they must both have been inflicting on her.

"Doctor, I don't exactly understand, but if we can help…," her usually steady voice faltered with frustration.

The Doctor did find himself calming outwardly as her saw her distress but his rage remained undimmed. "Oh, it's very simple, Nyssa, so simple-minded someone with your sense wouldn't dare think of putting someone through it, and knowing me now you'd know I'd know better as well." His voice rose and darkened again with disbelief and disappointment, "At least for now." He gave himself a recriminating glance. "He took her back, Nyssa, back to see her father die."

The Doctor straightened slowly under the dazed yet somehow horrified look in Nyssa's eyes, her innocent disapproval somehow wounding him far more than that of his former self. "Rose… she didn't want him to die alone. You understand alone, Nyssa, better than any… almost." His voice broke but then caught as their gazes locked and he desperately sought the sympathy he always remembered there.

"I know you do. You had no choice." The desperation in him struck her empathic receptors like a waterfall of raw plasma and Nyssa caught a momentary glimpse of an agony that had briefly eclipsed his mind, a recovery that was pretense on more levels that she could grasp in such a brief moment. He suddenly retreated but she stepped forward and took his hands lightly in her own, taking what she could of his pain into herself, sharing the part of herself that had enabled her to survive incomprehensible loss.

"I do, Doctor, I understand," Nyssa replied, almost whispering, transfixed and confused by the power of her empathic response, one far more powerfully attuned than it had been with the Doctor she traveled with now. It was if what had wounded her had been the beast that wounded him, its claws tainted with the same soul-poisoning toxin. She released him after a moment and he let go of her slowly, a lingering ache in both their minds, a renewed agony and a tortured gratitude.

The Doctor felt Nyssa's hands fall from his and bit back a small moan. Of all the people he knew and had known, it was Nyssa alone who would understand having one's world torn from them, or perhaps imagine the guilt of being responsible. He would have gone to her eventually, he knew, visited her at Terminus, told her what happened, learned how to survive it or survive it better. If he had the chance to meet with one soul before the world ended at least he'd had one moment of true understanding before he no longer existed.

The Doctor frowned as he watched the long, strange moment pass between his companion and his future self. The fact that he'd taken this Rose back to her father's death seemed to have been lost completely on the Trakenite the moment she had met the eyes that would someday be his. "Nyssa?"

The young woman turned quickly when she did move but he knew she had taken a moment to compose herself before she faced him. "Doctor?"

"Are you all right?"

She pulled a smile out of nowhere and, seeming anything but, reassured him she was before going to sit down on the folded tent, her eyes not meeting his gaze. The Doctor turned back to continue his brutal assessment of taking a companion back to such a horrible event and found that he had disappeared.

They were, of course, just as he'd left them, frozen in the moment where he had commanded Time to hold them. It wasn't fair, of course, the Universe never was. If this was his end, twice over now – just like Rose, then there was no more unfair version of himself he could've had to deal with, the one who had embodied the gentlest aspects of himself, his patience, his wisdom, and then Nyssa. The destruction of her world seemed right now as if it was his fault, too, perhaps if the Master had hated him so much…

He walked through them slowly, wincing at the shadows that sailed past outside, thinking furiously and letting Time slip back to its normal rhythm.

When it did he felt another glitch in it and broke into a run, knowing on what it was focused, feeling a tiny stab of illogical, painful hope. Time was making an effort to right itself, and besides himself and himself in the basement, there was only one other force on Earth at the moment capable of manipulating time --- manipulating time… and relative dimensions in space.

The Doctor headed up the stairs that lead to the upper floors, to the office that overlooked the courtyard of the church. Pete was there, her father, the man who shouldn't be, stepping past the table on the far side of the room to join him as he headed toward the window. "There's smoke coming up from the city but no sirens. I don't think it's just us. I think these things are all over the place, maybe all over the world."

Pete was right, of course, cleverer than he gave himself credit for being but the Time Lord only heard him from a distance. Moved from the corner where it had been, the small gold car that had killed him was swooping around the corner before the old church, appearing and reappearing from one turn of the corner to the next.

Nyssa still wouldn't meet the Doctor's gaze and despite having a mind that applied logic better than any he knew she now seemed less concerned about what was going on outside than what she had seen in his future self. Turlough was sitting beside her and the Time Lord experienced a childish moment of mild indignance when she turned and responded to him. She had almost seemed catatonic to that point.

Nyssa's response to his future self, had not, of course, escaped her best friend but Tegan also could not take her eyes from the huge shadows that sailed past the small windows above their heads. On occasion a scream, dimmed by stone and glass would reach them, frustrated shrieks from the things the Doctor had called reapers; more rarely the shriek was Human and filled with terror. Tegan scowled at the shadow that had just now flitted past and softened her expression when she looked up at the Doctor.

"So, these things are out there because the person traveling with him saved a single man's life?"

"It isn't a matter of who she saved, Tegan, but that anyone was saved at all."

"But we've interfered with the past ourselves. Why would it make such a huge difference for them? These things never showed up for us."

"Yes, Tegan, we have interfered but only as a counterbalance to forces that would otherwise have turned the course of history from its normal path in its time stream. One has to be a Time Lord to know what that path would be, what form that interference should take." The Doctor sighed and dropped his hands into his pockets, "What was on his mind, I can't begin to understand, and that disturbs me the most of all, even in light of those things out there."

Tegan glanced at the window again and kicked off her shoes after a look at the relatively clean floor. She wasn't about to let her feet kill her before she vanished from existing. "He seemed more rattled to see all of us than to see you, Doc'. Maybe if you talked to him alone you could get to the bottom of all this, figure it out between the two of you. We'll look after Nyssa, maybe you should…", she suddenly smiled and then gave a thin, edgy laugh, "go find yourself."

The Doctor smiled in return, quietly admonishing himself for his initial regret that Tegan had rejoined the TARDIS crew. She was his reminder that intricacies of technology and time travel sometimes got in the way of solving problems brought about by technology and time travel. "Yes, you're right. I should, and I should find out why these reapers aren't being stopped by the High Council." He withdrew his hands from his pockets and folded one arm tightly across his chest as his other hand worried at his chin for a moment. "Two Time Lords running about with all those people would create even more havoc, but I do have a way around that. It is vital that the three of you stay down here and remain alert. And something's changed in the last few minutes – I can feel it -- that also bears investigating." His head lifted and looked from Tegan over to Nyssa and Turlough. "I have to go upstairs to have a chat with… myself, get to the bottom of this. All of you need to stay here, however. I'm sure things are complicated enough upstairs."

Turlough came to his feet, working nervously at his stringy, black tie. "Now hold on a moment. What if those things outside try to get in here? I thought you said ---."

"It is the building that is protecting you, Turlough, not I. Given the fact that we are in the foundation, I would daresay that you'll be safer by remaining here, with or without me." The Doctor gave him a look of mild challenge and Turlough frowned slightly and tried to keep his face in front of the two women, especially the smirking Human.

The Doctor made his way to a small side-room of the large, white-walled chapel, a room dimly lit with a small array of white candles and a single window. There were two people in it, frozen in time, a young blond woman with dark eyes that were bright and intelligent. She was wearing a blue jacket and gripping the arm of a man with thin red hair wearing a gray suit. His face was in a rictus of a nervous smile. The Doctor studied them for a moment, knowing he had found the paradox and the young woman who would be his companion in the future. She looked the type, quick on her feet even locked in time, smart, athletic, spirited. He'd chosen well or would.

"She's just what you're thinking," a voice intruded, oddly enough his own save for the hook to the accent. His future was standing on the other side of the incongruent father and daughter, not looking at him, immune to the temporal field he was exuding. "Saved my life, this one, without a blink our first scrape together, even took it well when we hopped five billion years up and she got to see the end of this world, well the before this end. She met the last Human alive and smart-mouthed her almost right off. You should know the concept."

The Doctor smiled thinly and briefly, not wanting to be drawn from his goal when so little time remained. They could only stop it within the haven of the ancient walls. "There's more to all this than what you've told me. I can understand why you didn't want to say anything in front of the others, especially Nyssa; she's had a world end already but it's only you and I here now, or me and me, if you like."

The Doctor's arms folded across his broad chest, closing his jacket over the olive sweater. "We can't do anything to make them stronger, not if we have a way out of this. There's too much I can't tell you for us to even start." He suddenly offered the other Doctor his best manic grin. "You're going to have to trust yourself on this one."

"Am I? I find that rather difficult in light of the fact that you created this appalling situation with sentimental, amateur blundering," the younger Time Lord answered, his voice rising in pitch and volume. "Let's get to the second part of this nonsense, shall we? Why hasn't the High Council stopped the reapers? What explanation could there be for letting them scour the Universe? Even they couldn't be that callous about eliminating temporal aberrations."

The Doctor facing him over his companion's outstretched arm didn't answer him. He seemed to become as near-catatonic himself as his encounter with Nyssa had left her. It lasted only a moment and he looked into his companion's unmoving eyes the next and began shaking his head.


"Not that -- you can't know that. It won't stop this world ending. It can only speed it up. We have enough paradoxes here already without us, me, bringing about the end of everything else."

"Everything else," his fifth self echoed, his eyes on the temporal beast that was clawing at the windows outside, giant claws skittering against the age of the brilliantly-colored glass. "You're talking about a Critical Event Paradox, all because of something you've done, we've done, perhaps I've done."

"No, I'll tell you that much, not you, not your time 'round." The Doctor shook his head slowly, his eyes still locked on his companion's deathly still ones. "It won't be you, but you've got to let this alone. Knowing why the reapers came here is one thing, knowing why they aren't being sent off is another."

"Have you at least notified Gallifrey?" The Doctor demanded, hands on his hips, his chin outthrust. "Are you that worried about their recrimination that you would let Earth be temporally sterilized?"

"You know better than that, you fool!" The Doctor exploded, finally glancing away from his companion's face to meet the rage and confusion of his younger self. "All right fine. I'm the fool. I have to make sure this won't happen again with her if we get out of this, that's all, and I've said too much already. I know why you came up here, away from the others, but the Universe doesn't care about us now, we're on our own, but there might be a way. We have to work this out on our own, the TARDIS and I. The Universe might not care about us but we still have to worry about it. I can't tell you more and believe me… that leaves me a lot more to live with than it does you!"

The Doctor watched the retreating back of his future self as he stalked away, back to the chapel, back toward a middle-aged blond woman sitting in a pew next to a brightly-colored cloth baby carrier. He had walled his mind off so harshly that his younger self barely knew he existed. As shell-shocked by his other's behavior as Nyssa had been, he stumbled back down the stairwell, and let time back on its course.

Tegan looked up at the opening of the door and started when she saw the Doctor come through it. His cricketing outfit was perfectly pressed and clean, the ridiculous stalk of celery unwilted, his shoes white and trim, yet she'd never seen him look worse so far in this life, even when he'd almost been dead. She sighed and turned to Turlough, pulling him to his feet and not speaking loudly but with the tone in her voice he knew better than to cross, Black Guardian or not. "Take Nyssa into the other room. Do some looking around. Get her mind off things. He's worse off than the other one was. Go on. Get moving"

Turlough scowled but nodded, as glad to be away from Tegan as he was to help Nyssa. He truly had nothing against the girl. She was very kind to him by contrast and didn't possess the suspicion that practically emanated from the Human woman like a force-field. At the moment, if he squinted a bit, he could almost see it glowing around her. He went back to Nyssa and with a few simple words encouraged her to join him as they went to explore the large basement area beneath the main chapel.

The Doctor watched them go with a relieved and distant expression. Tegan had taken charge of the situation with her usual tact but right now he was grateful for her blunt and effective methods. She'd been with him no longer than Nyssa but she was older in ways that years didn't count. He also knew the state his conversation with his future self had left him in and wanted no part of harming Nyssa further. As far as Turlough was concerned there were still too many questions in his mind about the boy's motives, if not the volumes of them that were in Tegan's. All of which went through his mind as she steered him to the pile of canvass next to the outside door and handed him a glass of something she'd gotten from somewhere. "Here, I never thought I'd say this but you need a drink. It's just you and me, you silly Time Lord; let's hear it."

The Doctor took the glass stiffly, nodding, feeling a dim smile on his face. Red wine, he realized when it came close enough to his nose. "This is supposed to be sacred you know."

Tegan took the glass from him when he'd emptied it and placed it on a crate just inside her reach as she sat beside him. She turned back with a half-smile, noticing the flush back in his cheeks. "Well, this is the Apocalypse, right? I can't think of a holier mess we've been in …this week."

"Trust me; this is by far the worst mess we've encountered. Trust me because I know it'll be my fault, and I can't even find out why. It's not just a matter of some ridiculous, sentimental mistake. The reapers shouldn't be here at all - the High Council should have stopped them," he paused for a breath and tried to ignore the expression of worry on Tegan's face. "On top of all the rest, if I have a future, it seems I'll be going mad. What a wondrous thought that is, even if we do survive I'll forget all this anyway and be unable to prevent any of--."

"Doc! Hush up, I don't know what to tell you right now but… you trust me… rambling nonstop never makes anything better. Haven't I taught you that yet?" She suddenly stood up and moved close enough to him to loop her arm through his tightly and grip his other hand as it closed gratefully over her wrist.

"There is some other evil going on here of Galactic proportion, something my future self is refusing to share, for good reason perhaps but his judgment is certainly in question for taking such a foolish chance with this reality. We haven't much more than minutes to straighten it out and I am being prevented from being part of the process because of a future where I'll have lost one of the things that I value the most about myself."

Tegan tightened her grip on him gently, "Then just stop for a minute, Doc. Dwell on what we do know. If anyone has a chance of getting through to that bloke, it's you, maybe that's why we ended up here."