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chapter eight- he was a time traveller

Three minutes later and he was listening to the clip of Rose, Adam and the Doctor- the other Doctor- in Adam's house, having their last conversation.

The Doctor was no longer in the room, but Rose was, and she was uncomfortable.

"I miss his old voice..." she said softly to herself, and then seemed almost to forget that she'd said it. So Mickey did too.

He finally decided he'd heard enough, and sat back thoughtfully.

"Maybe..." he said helplessly, "if you went back to that exact point, right, and..."

"No," the Doctor said. He had returned. "That's not an option."

"Why not?"

"Because, Mickey, that's the sort of thing that would bring on the Reapers."

Rose shuddered.

"So..." Mickey said uncertainly, "I..." But he couldn't help saying, again, what he really wanted to say, even though it was stupid and might get him in trouble and all sorts of other things. "Why were you...just why'd you do it like that? He said sorry. He was begging an' all...and his mum came in! You must've messed things up for his family as well," he said, and he realised only once he'd said it just how much that was bothering him. "To have her son changed like that, like he was suddenly a different person..."

"I didn't know," Rose said glumly. "If I'd known..."

"But you didn't," the Doctor said. "Rose, it's not your fault."

"I have an idea," Mickey said, and they all looked at him.

"You go back to the day after you left him on Earth. And then you take him back and get rid of that thing."

Rose nodded- after all, she was willing to try anything at this point- but the Doctor shook his head.

"We...could," he muttered. "But the last time we went right back into Adam's past, we made something terrible happen, and I'm afraid..."

Mickey stared at him. The words I'm afraid just didn't seem right coming out of his mouth.

"So, no?" he guessed, letting him off the hook. "Shall I go back to Adam's house, then? Because...I want to talk to him. In a way."


He stood outside Adam's house, all on his own. But he was rather glad he was on his own; if Adam saw Rose again...

He wondered what she was doing right now, if she was worried for him.

He rang the doorbell.

Adam answered.

"Oh, it's you," he said. "Where are the others?"

"They're not here. I want to talk to you." Mickey said.

"What could you possibly say to me?"

"That I know how you felt."

Adam stared at him.

"You what?"

Mickey pressed on. "You know Rose? She was my girlfriend. Then the Doctor showed up and she went off with him instead, and 'cos she didn't come back for a year everyone thought I killed her."

"Really." Adam said, in a toneless voice.

"And she kept leaving with him, and I wanted her to stay on Earth with me. But she didn't. You getting all this?" But Adam didn't answer, so he went on. "He didn't like me-"

Adam interrupted him. "Come in."

"What?"

"Come on in."

Mickey came in. The house was completely uninteresting- uninteresting and bare. He sat down warily on a sofa, and Adam on the opposite one.

"You understand, do you?" Adam said. "And did you come here to tell me you understand, or come to tell me not to kill Jackie Tyler?"

"So you are going to kill her?" Mickey whispered. "What'd she do to you?"

But Adam just smiled insanely.

"You never know," he muttered. "what could make someone crazy."

"Right." Mickey said. Clearly, this wasn't working, and he got up to leave before Adam shot him or something. But Adam held him back.

"So...d'ya hate him?" he said. "You must do after what he did to you. I've got plans...I could use you, you know things-"

Mickey didn't even think about it. He just jerked away in disgust.

"No!"

Adam glared at him, a pathetic sort of child's glare, and Mickey suddenly felt sorry for him.

"You're not going to kill Jackie Tyler," he said, "because Jackie Tyler's done nothing to you."

"But Rose Tyler has."

And Mickey finally lost his temper.

"You're such an idiot! Why d'ya want to hurt Rose, or anyone anymore? You could've done anything else! You could have used that thing in your head to do something useful! I dunno what, but..."

The but was the catch, but he carried on anyway.

"Why didn't you try and prove that you weren't, you know, useless like they thought? You could have done!"

He stopped yelling and the room was silent. He was surprised. He couldn't quite believe he'd done that. It was weird...

Adam was staring at him.

"You'd just let them get away with it?" he hissed. "The Doctor and Rose ruined your life and you didn't- you didn't do anything about it? You didn't fight back? You've got no right to lecture me, you coward."

Mickey's mind went oddly blank. He felt a bit like he'd just been hit. And through the blankness he could think of just one thing to say:

"Adam. Don't kill Jackie. Please."

"Oh, I won't." Adam said, but his eyes were glittering madly and Mickey knew he'd screwed this up. He turned and ran out of the house, and Adam did not follow.


When he was a little away from the house, an idea suddenly came to him. An idea so blindingly obvious he couldn't believe it had taken him this long to think of it.

He went to a phone booth, and dialled the police.

"Hello? Listen. There's this guy and I think he's gonna do something stupid. I think he's gonna kill someone."

"Do you have any proof?" came a bored voice on the other end.

He couldn't very well say I know 'cos I'm a time traveller- so he had to try and explain. "He's slightly crazy-"

"And?"

"Well, I just think he will- in fact, I'm convinced he will-"

"That's not proof, sir. Now stop wasting our time."

The person at the other end hung up. Mickey stared in horror- surely things couldn't have changed that much? Surely people weren't this stupid now? It was only the year 2038...

Everything had changed that much.

In despair, he tried again. He got a different person but the same answer. No-one cared.

No-one cared that Jackie got shot soon, shot by Adam. No-one except him and Rose and the Doctor. All his plans had failed, so unless someone else came up with something brilliant...Jackie would die. And then, later, hundreds of people on the Powell Estate would die.

And he couldn't do a thing about it.


Back to the TARDIS, and the people waiting for him there.

"It didn't work," he muttered to Rose, who'd come running down the corridor to meet him. "It didn't work. He's insane. Oh God, we need to think of something."

Rose started crying again.

Mickey desperately tried to come up with something.

"We go to...200whatever," he told the Doctor, who was standing silent nearby, "and grab Adam before he does anything stupid."

"Yeah," Rose said, nodding frantically. "Yeah...yeah, something like that."

"Or...before he shoots Jackie, we grab him, or grab Jackie...we get Jackie out of the way before she gets shot..."

"There's a risk," the Doctor said.

"Of what? Reapers?"

"No. Of something else going wrong somewhere. The estate burned down, and trying to save it lead to Jackie's death, and unless we're careful, so very careful, saving Jackie could lead somewhere worse..."

There was a terrible silence. Rose had stopped crying. Somewhere during that short conversation, Mickey realised, she'd got her determination back. She was going to save Jackie if it killed her.

"Right," Rose said fiercely, and the Doctor looked at her and smiled, as if glad to have Rose back again, even in this dire situation. Or something. Mickey didn't know. "Right. We're going to go back to 2038, and see what changed. If anything did. We've got to be careful and to keep going back to check, that's being careful, right?"

"Yes," the Doctor said simply. "We'll do that."


All three of them stepped out into 2038.

It did look different. It wasn't as destroyed! Some of the buildings were still standing! Mickey's heart leapt- they'd changed something. They'd changed something after all. Maybe Jackie wasn't dead, and maybe no-one had died in the fire.

Maybe.

He looked out for Sam. Sam wasn't there. What if he was dead? No...

"It's changed," Rose said. "My God, we changed something. Some of it's still standing."

"Yes," the Doctor said thoughtfully.

"Mickey, what'd you say to Adam?" Rose demanded. "What exactly did you say? Cos...I think you've done it! If the estate's still standing, maybe he never shot Mum! "Um, I told him..." He felt so embarassed all of a sudden. "I told him 'bout...you leaving me."

"...Oh..."

"...and he said maybe I should stay and help him, and I said no, and he called me a coward. And then I said something like, why didn't you prove that you weren't useless after all...and I said don't kill Jackie and he said yes. But I didn't think..." He was running out of breath. "I didn't think he actually would not shoot her!"

"You must have done it!" Rose almost shouted. "Oh my God, you must have!" But before she hugged him, practically crushing him with overwhelming gratitude, Mickey caught a glimpse of the Doctor's face- and he looked pretty devastated.

"We don't know about Jackie yet," he spoke up. "We don't have any proof."

Rose let go of Mickey. "But..."

"We need to find out, Rose...I'm so sorry, but we might not have done it yet."

Rose's face fell. "But we will?" she whispered.

"We will."

In the silence, Mickey noticed something. Someone. "Oi. Sam's over there."

Sure enough, he was. He looked different too. Cleaner and better dressed. He clearly wasn't living in the wreckage anymore.

Mickey decided to go for it.

"Hey, mate," he called to Sam. "D'ya mind if we ask you a question?"

Sam hesitated and slowly came towards them. He looked at each of them in turn. "Yeah?" he asked. "What is it?"

"Have you ever heard of Adam Mitchell?" Mickey asked.

Sam gave him a very odd look, and said. "Yeah. He burned down the estate."

"Right- I knew that," Mickey said hastily. "Er, is there anything else...what else did he do?"

"Well, he had to escape from prison to burn down the estate." And Sam was backing away a little now, as if spooked.

"Yeah, um, what'd he go to prison for?"

"Shooting someone," Sam said, and Rose gave a little sob and Mickey's heart sank. Sam looked at Rose, puzzled, and then said to Mickey. "Um...it's creepy..."

"What?"

"You look just like...this bloke...and it's so weird you wanted to know about Adam..."

And he mumbled a goodbye and left.

"What?" Mickey said aloud. The last two times he'd met Sam, he hadn't been anywhere near so freaked out about him cropping up, and had accepted his story about really being called Ricky, and hadn't even considered that he might be Mickey from the estate who mysteriously hadn't been around for years...so why?

What was going on? And had he done it?

Rose was drying her eyes.

"So he shot someone..." she said, and hiccuped and started again. "What do we do now?"

"We do our research," the Doctor said, and he put his arm around her like he always did. Mickey felt oddly relieved to see that, and he had no idea why. Maybe because...here was someone who was always going to look after her. And even though he'd always thought that was his job, looking after her...

...he wasn't jealous.

"Mickey," the Doctor said, "we need your laptop again," And he gave this bizarre, really rather sad smile- as if he'd guessed what Mickey was thinking, and was proud but strangely guilty.


Back in the TARDIS, Rose returned to her room.

"I'm sorry, Doctor," she said tearfully. "I thought I was stronger than this."

"You are, Rose," he answered. And then, mysteriously, "Much stronger than me." He let her go. Mickey watched her walk away and then watched the flickering screen of the laptop.

"What are we looking for?" he asked.

"Anything. Any information. Sam said he shot someone. He didn't say who."

They went through pages and pages of information. They read Adam's name a thousand times. They found out more about him than they had ever wanted to know. His father had shot himself. He'd dropped out of university. He'd vainly tried to get his girlfriend to come back.

Mickey felt angry. Not angry at anything in particular, just at the world. At the bizarre and frightening situations it threw at you, and the way it made you want them. Why was he doing this? Why was he sitting in a time machine checking if one of his best friends was dead?

Sam hadn't said who...

And then they found out who.