Chapter Three

She'd meant it. She was sorry. How could she not be? The stupid thing was his asking her, asking her if she was sorry for a moment of emotion that was suddenly ending the world. He wondered now if he'd simply wanted to give her the opportunity, wanted to make her his soul mate in destroying her own world when her decent side got the better of her. After all, he'd been doing the right thing, too.

Rose Tyler had looked at him with impossibly huge eyes, and even more impossible to ignore tears and told him she was sorry. For what, he wondered now, being Human? For loving the father she had idolized in her mind, the man he knew she sometimes saw in him. As if he'd not lived with enough guilt already, he was inflicting it on another innocent soul. He almost stopped then, given up, would have but for her. She had leapt into his arms, hope touching her once again… and faith in him. They had both felt it at the same time, the kinetic energy transmitted through the Vortex. The TARDIS had sent a signal to him from where its inner workings had retreated to find a way to bring them home, and maybe save everyone else, maybe save the world. It might have been impossible even for a being as temporally powerful as the TARDIS but not for two of them. The arrival of the second TARDIS into the corrupted time stream had given them the chance, if the two ships working together could only beat the odds now. If nothing else, it gave the frightened wedding party hope, wasn't that what these things were all about?

The Time Lord glanced about at the small sea of tense faces, all raptly watching the bizarre sight of his TARDIS drawing itself back out of the Vortex, its chameleon circuit still only able to produce a police box. It was probably the weirdest, most ridiculous thing imaginable to them, and now they had no choice but to accept their bizarre and dwindling reality for what it was and watch the TARDIS and its unseen companion somewhere outside struggle to simply be. He smiled as he sat next to Rose and realized why he loved Humans again. Weird as it was, they had taken the shock and simply accepted it, with no more explanation than he'd given them. He glanced at Rose as he sat beside her and moved closer without realizing it, his leg resting against her knee.

There was one more thing he had to do, let himself and his former companions know what was going on, that all might soon be right with the world. Perhaps he was missing something to help the TARDIS along that his counterpart might remember. He reached out again, holding them all in the instant, coming slowly to his feet and stepping past Rose as he headed for the side room that accessed the stair. He didn't look behind him, didn't realize that his leg was still touching her knee, that she hadn't been affected as the others had been.

His mind cringing at the thought of encountering his younger self again, the Time Lord nevertheless pressed onward, tuning out the sound of the reapers still stalking them, perhaps now sensing their prey had a chance. He was moving quietly as was his habit, his steps softening even more as he saw that the door at the bottom of the stairs was slightly open.

The Doctor stopped as he drew closer, looking through the small opening at his former self. He was sitting next to Tegan, his eyes closed, head in his hands, one of her arms was around him, the other was linked supportively through the arm nearer to her own. She was talking softly, so softly that he couldn't hear her, and an ironic smile straightened his lips as the future Doctor slowly sat down on the cold, stone stairs. Time was still convulsing around them and around the two TARDISes trying to fix it. He couldn't remember what Tegan had been saying, but if it were by failure of memory or failure of the TARDIS's efforts, he didn't know. He'd forgotten so much that was important. One of Tegan's no-nonsense lectures was something he desperately needed to hear for himself right now.

Rose stood at the top of the small stairwell and watched the Doctor for a few long seconds. She'd seen too much to be distracted by a thing like his freezing time, although the candle flame poised in mid-flicker gave her a moment's pause. She didn't dawdle though. He couldn't stop Time outside or he would have, she knew. He seemed transfixed by something in the room beyond the door, so transfixed that he didn't hear her walk down the stairs behind him until she'd reached the one just above him. He looked up at her with mild surprise but then gave her a worn but welcome grin. If he cared how she had escaped the effects of his bio-generated temporal stasis he didn't ask. He simply made room for her when she squeezed in beside him and stared at the two unfrozen strangers in the small room behind the cocked door.

"Who are they then?" She asked quietly, sensing his secrecy.

The Time Lord smiled and reached for her hand, taking it gratefully. "I hope you're ready for this. I don't have much time to make you believe."

"Make me believe?" Rose smiled suddenly and gently, "You're like Peter Pan. You can make me believe anythin', Doctor."

He smiled thinly in return and gave her a slow and measured nod, "Well then Wendy, you know how in different movies they could have different blokes being Peter Pan? That's sort of like this."

"Go on," she prodded, her lips folding into her mouth.

"Remember I told you I was 900 years old?" She nodded seriously. "The reason we can live that long, one of them, is that we don't always look like this. That bloke in there, he's … he's me, Rose, what I looked like a while back. The girl, her name's Tegan. She traveled with me for a while just like you, not a scientific brain cell in her head less you talked about aeroplanes but one of the bravest, cleverest people whoever hitched a ride in the TARDIS." His eyes went from the dark-haired woman to the blond one beside him, not many years younger. She was staring at him and his currently dispirited former self in turn, her eyes finally resting on the stone beneath their feet.

"D'you mean you might not be… you… someday?"

He shrugged, the leather jacket rustling against the fabric of his jumper. "Well, I'm always the Doctor, just the body changes, usually not the memory, but I had a tough go of it last time round. Mind it wasn't easy when I turned into him."

Rose was still staring at the ground but then reached up the hand not holding his to touch his face. "It's just… you know… I've gotten used to you being you, used to you grinning at me like you oughta' have a candle lit in your 'ead. I don't know if I could do with that sort o' thing. Why does it happen?"

"If I get hurt bad enough to kill me; it's called regenerating. That me, he gets poisoned, goes out giving the antidote to someone else. The one before 'im fell off a tower."

"Cripes, you're like a cat. I can't think what that…", Rose fell silent and looked back at the Doctor who wasn't her Doctor and the woman named Tegan who was cajoling him quietly about something, her hand moving on his back.

"Tegan stayed when I regenerated into him, that's the fifth one of me," the Doctor said almost absently, hoping it would help her accept the idea. This was Rose; she'd adapted already. "I suppose you should meet him."

"Well wait, you told me not to touch the baby 'cause it was me. Should you be around him?"

"It's different for Time Lords, we're anomalies as it is, especially me. We can circumvent the paradox, but you can't say anythin' about Gallifrey being gone. He can't know."

Rose shook her head quickly. "I don't ge' it? If he comes before you, when he runs about time, couldn't 'e stop what happened?"

"No, he couldn't and of all the versions of me I'd saddle with that knowledge, he's the last. Trust me, Rose, if you think this is bad, if he finds out about Gallifrey, those reapers will have a Universe and all of Time itself to devour." He stood and tugged her up with him, "Come on, it's time you met me."

Rose followed him up and kept her grip on his hand as they went down the last few steps and through the slightly open door. Tegan shot to her feet, standing before her Doctor and looking as if she wanted to challenge the new Doctor in some way but remembering he would be the Doctor at some point as well. She looked back the blond Time Lord as he came to his feet, an awkward smile on his face as he guessed her dilemma. Her eyebrows lifted for a moment and she turned to look at the young woman. The other Doctor smiled and nodded toward her.

"Rose Tyler, this is Tegan Jovanka, the only time the TARDIS had its very own Time hostess."

Tegan looked as if she might have smiled except that the end of the world insisted on continuing past the small windows. "You're a bit cheeky under the circumstances," she commented but shook Rose's hand after she very awkwardly disengaged it from the Doctor's. "It's nice to meet you, Rose. Guess you didn't have your good sense either," she offered, sighing.

Rose grinned back, "That and mostly I saw 'e didn't seem to have his."

Both women grinned up at the bemused smile on one Doctor's face and the long-suffering pout on the other's. Tegan twitched her head back toward the door that lead to the larger part of the main basement. "I think these two need to have a talk that'll make our heads hurt. There's someone else I think you'd like to meet and someone else I guess you'll have to… Let's leave them to sort this out."

Rose turned her glance toward her Doctor for a moment, her silent inquriy that he was all right to leave. Without a word he nodded and saw her off with a gentle hand to her back. His younger counterpart watched their interaction for a moment, nodding politely at both young women as they went through the door into the musty smelling room. His eyes flickered upward. ""She's very spirited. Must be quite a handful at times."

"Yeah, she's that."

"As in someone whose passions you know sometimes get the better of her?"

The Doctor's face, having dropped toward the ground, suddenly lifted, anger flickering in his eyes. "Back to that again, am I? Maybe you're right. She saved my life before she knew I was a Time Lord, had a ship that could make sure you never missed a bus. My mouth got the better of us when I told her she only came along for the ride to fix what happened to her father. She deserved better than that."

"She deserved better than you agreeing to put her in this position at all. What the devil was on your mind?"

The Doctor looked up at the centuries-old ceiling, less than a foot away from his head. "You really feel like hashing at this again, Junior? Look, she had an old hurt, one I could fix, just wanted someone with her Dad when he died, nothin' else."

"And so for this young woman, you risked every living person on her planet at the moment of her father's death and every one of them that came after, the future of a world? If she did as you said saving you, then you knew the danger, knew that she could act on the same very Human impulse for her own father." The Doctor sighed tightly to release some of the tension, feeling trapped somewhere between disbelief and confusion. His future self took a breath to answer but wasn't given the chance. "I know what you're about to say, why wouldn't I? You thought she was strong enough, that she could stand the strain? Well, I happen to know a great deal about companions whose strength eclipses every other perception. Let me remind you that on occasion that strength can lead to as much trouble as anything else."

The Doctor looked down from the ceiling, never having met the condemning gaze of his younger self, accepting his rebuke with ill grace and resignation. His gaze became distant again in moments, however, reminding himself of the things this part of him didn't know, the blur of pain that ran like a chronic hysteresis in the back of his mind, pain that had clouded his judgment.

A small bit of the tension resolved as the Doctor looked into his own eyes in the new face that was pale and haunted beneath a veneer of humor. A new theory came to his mind as he thought over the last few moments, had seen himself interact with a Rose who was not frozen in time. He'd risked a world for her, a companion whose hand he'd been holding so tightly it had been momentarily difficult for her to untangle it from his, had been red where his fingers had gripped. It wasn't like they'd been in danger from himself and Tegan or he'd been pulling her to safety; he'd been holding her hand more for his own sake than hers… then the moment of reassurance he was fine before she'd left with Tegan and the guilt that was upon his older self, guilt that he was trying to assuage through… The younger Time Lord sighed audibly as the realization firmed into understanding.

"You care for this young woman, don't you? This girl? Not the average friendship one has for one of our ---."

The elder Time Lord took a threatening step closer, fury on him brought about a strained and confirming silence. "Rose does mean the world to me, otherwise I'd never have forgiven her, but if she does mean that much to me then you can hardly talk, can you?" The Doctor pointed toward the door to the main basement, nodding once and sharply. "She started it, didn't she? I was there, I remember… Tegan, always jumpin' in, tough in a scrape, sayin' what we wanted to say. Funny the one who knew nothing about science you ended up calling the soul of the TARDIS." The Doctor's voice suddenly grew quiet and thoughtful as he continued on, his tone less accusing and more reflective. "Made sense in a way; she was a lot like 'er, stubborn, almost unbreakable, saving our neck. No wonder she nearly got past your guard, scared all of us afterward so much that we didn't dare keep any of them long but the kid." The accusation returned to the Doctor's voice again but this time it was blunted. "If Rose has got to me, it's 'cause your turn round, you handed out the key." He looked away as his younger self reddened with a mix of emotions, not all of them negative, and didn't speak for a long moment, either in denial or acceptance. He finally pointed toward the doorway through which their companions had disappeared.

"And that aside, we don't have much time. I'd prefer to spend it finding a solution if we can." The Doctor glanced at the door as Tegan, Rose Tyler, Nyssa, and Turlough reappeared. The younger Time Lord wondered for a terrified few moments what, if anything, Tegan might've heard but the gaze she fixed him with was one of simple inquiry, its fix broken as Rose Tyler closed on him.

"So, you're the Doctor, too, or were but you're here now, time travel and all that?"

The Doctor smiled disarmingly, "It's complicated, I know, but true. I would say I'll look forward to meeting you but if this all works out, I won't have the chance. You'll have to remember for us how lovely it was to meet you."

Rose grinned up at him, taking the hand he offered in both her own, his cool grip reinforcing that he was who she'd been told. His hands were smoother and gentler but she could also feel the strength in them that was not Human. "Trust me; meeting two different people who end up being the same person… it's not somethin' you forget."

Turlough was watching the future Doctor keenly, trying to keep the worry off his face. If this were indeed the ninth version of the Doctor, his mission had failed. The dark-haired Time Lord met his worried gaze with a quietly manic smile. "Glad this has almost sorted itself out, hmph, Turlough. It's been a pretty… black… day, 'adn't it?"

"What do you mean, almost sorted itself out?" The Doctor interrupted.

Rose scowled back at her Doctor, "You goof, you didn't manage to tell 'im yet?" Her question ended in an accusing poke.

The Doctor winced and frowned back at her, then grinned in a way that Tegan was beginning to find positively creepy. "Yeah, should get on about that, right? The TARDIS, mine, it's regaining its structure upstairs, materialing in here. Seems yours coming along stabilized it enough that it didn't fragment into the anomaly. We'll have this sorted out as soon as she pulls herself out of the Vortex. So, uh, --- looks like I owe you a bit of thanks for dropping in."

Tegan stared between the two Time Lords, her expression caught between amused and furious. "All that time we were snooping around in there and you're just now getting around to telling him?" Her eyes darted at her Doctor for a moment. "What the devil were you two talking about?"

The Doctor grinned again and seized Rose's hand tightly in his own. "Time's wasting. Tegan, great to hear you again. Nyssa, take care of them, would you? Turlough… Turlough… dump your pockets." His eyes dropped to the young blond woman. "Come on then, Rose, must dash."

And with that, they did, back upstairs to take their place amongst those held in Time, pretending they'd been there all along as it started flowing again.

The Doctor regretted it as soon as they did. It took only minutes for Pete and Jackie to start up again, Rose and her infant self caught in the middle. His warning came too late and the nearest reaper to the paradox of Rose holding… Rose materialized through the church walls.

Her infant self forgotten, Rose Tyler stood in the center aisle of the church mere moments later, clutching the TARDIS key, her grief overcoming every thought, even the thought of the end of the world, as she looked at the spot where her Doctor had been. She'd killed him, too, and somehow it hurt worse than killing the rest of the world because he'd trusted her not to be a fool.

The Doctor's harsh breathing filled the small sideroom of the basement with a sound that seemed like a dim echo of the TARDIS materializing. He waved Nyssa back as she reached for him and came slowly upright a few moments later, still hanging tightly onto Tegan and Turlough to either side of him. Nyssa watched him carefully as they put him down, her medical skills useless in a 17th century basement on Earth. She had a distinct feeling that they would have been useless in the finest laboratory on Gallifrey, however, and was forced to wait as the malaise that had gripped the Time Lord passed.

Turlough finally broke the worried silence. "What's the matter, Doctor?" He tried to sound sincere and knew he was failing in Tegan's ears.

"He's gone," the Doctor said stiffly, waving off the others as he came back to his feet, eyes locked on the ancient wooden door.

Nyssa's voice reached him next, calm and steadying, her own angst forgotten at facing his. "Who is, Doctor?"

The pale Time Lord looked down at her slowly, then his eyes swept to take in all three of his companions. "Me, I'm afraid."

Tegan closed her eyes and ground her teeth for a moment. "If you're going up there again, I'm coming with you. I'm not going out hiding in a basement. I guess you'll be staying here, Turlough?"

"You're all staying here." The Time Lord interjected, cutting off Turlough's rejoinder. "Tegan, don't argue. If there's yet to be a way out of this, I need to find out what's going on. The TARDIS is trying to tell me something but the interference is too great. I will… I'll come back with all of you if… if it seems---." He fell silent and escaping Tegan's darting hand, he disappeared, this time leaving his companions locked in time as well.

The Doctor walked through the small throng of people who didn't know he was there. He stood for a moment and watched the motionless tears on Rose's cheek as she clutched the TARDIS key, her expression a study of incomprehensible anguis. He turned from her with a sigh and followed where his instincts were leading him, up to a small loft room above the chapel.

The red-haired man was there, the one who shouldn't be, the one for whom the world was ending. He was standing facing a small window, having been squinting past its criss-crossed wooden trim, watching over and over as a small gold car erupted from one anomaly to vanish into another one. His vision much better than a Human's, the Doctor didn't need to squint to see the driver throw his arms up at some unseen obstacle just before the corruption in the continuum devoured him again.

This was it, what the TARDIS had been trying to tell him, that it had drawn the initial paradox to them, close enough to fix, close enough for one man to save a world. The Doctor watched it a few more times and then heard the bricks outside begin to crumble as the first of the reapers made progress against the ancient stone. Sighing, he reached out and touched the static Human. He whirled around to face the strangely-dressed man who for some unimaginable reason had a shaft of celery stuck to his lapel.

"Who are you? Where've you come from?"

The Doctor smiled thinly. This was always the hard part. "That's very complicated. Let's just say I'm an associate of the Doctor's and someone who cares very much for your daughter."

"She is latchin' onto the strangest blokes these days, hmph? Are you going to be able to help us? 'Cause 'e didn't have much chance at all once they were in 'ere. Saved the lot of us for a moment but ---." Rose's father's voice faltered under the cloud of confusion and the Doctor stepped close enough to him that he could turn him back toward the window.

"May I ask your name?"

The man turned slightly, "Peter, Peter Alan Tyler."

"Hmph… well good to meet you, Peter Alan Tyler. I've come to answer your… question. The one you've been asking yourself." The Doctor said quietly, struggling to meet the pale blue eyes.

Pete Tyler met the Time Lord's gaze with a thin, unsteady smile. "You lot are pretty clever."

The Doctor sighed more to himself than anyone. "I used to think so… but yes, I can answer this. It would work, Pete, and I'm afraid my time vessel is responsible for bringing the means of… correcting this, here, within your reach."

Peter Alan Tyler accepted the truth with a relieved smile. He'd been going to try it anyway. Now he knew, at least, it would work. The church shook again under a renewed battering from the reapers outside, eager to devour the last bastion of Human life for hundreds of miles, the source of their frenzy. Pale and shaking, he extended his hand to the Doctor and felt the cool skin, inhumanly cool skin, against his own.

"Better get on with this right?"

The Doctor nodded. "So it seems, but give me a few moments to return to my associates. You have enough time to speak to Rose."

"All right, thank you… uh?"

"Doctor, just another Doctor. It was an honor to meet you, Peter Alan Tyler." With that, with words so grossly inadequate, the Doctor retreated through to door and hurried back to the sideroom of the basement. Soul-weary, he stood between Nyssa and Tegan, wincing and gripping their shoulders as the screech of tires and a gut-wrenching thump reached his more sensitive ears. Moments later, the sound forgotten, his grip propelled Tegan and Nyssa gently through the front door of the TARDIS, searching a shop that sold celery and fresh ground coffee. They joined the crowd on the bustling street as they Doctor searched his pocket for currency that would work, wondering if Tegan still had her purse. A little tinkering with the bank computer and they could use her credit card.