Chapter 5: Piecing Together the Puzzle
The air tasted different as she drew it into her lungs, her breath coming in fast pants as they raced through the almost unoccupied corridors of the building. Before, the air had tasted normal if she could ignore the faint metallic odour of weapons and ammunition. Now something was different.
Something was wrong.
Her steps faltered as a wave of weakness washed over her. "Doc- "
She didn't have a chance to finish saying his name before he turned his head to look at her. Though his expression didn't change, his eyes reflected a mixture of worry and despair. "Hurry!"
"What's..." Her question was forgotten as he doubled his pace and she had to devote her attention to stumbling after him.
The Doctor kept pulling on her hand, encouraging her to keep up her speed. He kept glancing back at her, and each time the worry seemed to double in his eyes. Something was wrong.
She knew it.
He knew it, too, but wasn't telling her.
The weakness grew and she stumbled again. The edges of her vision seemed to darken, washing out the colours as if the universe was preparing to sneeze. Only the Doctor remained in full Technicolor.
Only the Doctor...
She felt him grasp her arms and the universe snapped back into focus. His concerned face loomed large in her sight and he lifted her into his arms. "Hold on, Rose," he said. "Hold on."
He ran faster. Dodging through doors and down hallways. Only the touch of his hands upon her body seemed real.
Nothing else did.
It was like a dream, she realised. Only the Doctor was real. Nothing else was, or could be.
She knew that something was wrong. Something was terribly, irrevocably wrong. She could tell it was from the frantic look in his eyes and the desperate clutch of his hands against her body. However, she couldn't ask. She couldn't distract him.
He would sort it. But, to do that, he needed to concentrate on running. She tightened her grip on the history books in her arms and their sharp edges pricked at her skin. Anything not touching her seemed out of focus, distant and blurred.
What was happening to her?
"We're almost there," he said, cradling her close to his chest. He seemed to know what was happening, but he wouldn't say.
As his grip tightened, her vision sharpened once more. The world wavered between reality and a dream, and she turned her face into his shoulder. It was too disorienting to look away from the Doctor. Nausea built within her, even as she felt herself grow weaker. "Doc-"
She felt him fish into his pocket, somehow juggling her and the books at the same time, and withdraw his key. She heard, rather than felt, him open the door and step inside.
And everything changed.
Strength returned to her limbs and she sighed as her earlier weakness faded away. Now their desperate run to the TARDIS seemed the dream as reality snapped into focus. The Doctor lowered her gently to the ground but, before she could say anything, she found herself engulfed in an almost desperate embrace.
The books were pressed uncomfortably against her chest, their edges digging into her ribs but she didn't care. Something had almost happened to her. She knew it from his hug and, as he drew away, she could see it in his eyes.
"You all right?" he asked, staring intently at her.
"Yeah, 'm fine. Doctor, what was that?"
He dropped his gaze and shrugged. "Dunno. The Sontarans, perhaps. But we've got to get to the library. Evening of research and then sorting out this mess of a timeline. Should be fun."
She knew him well enough to know when he was lying. She could push him into telling her the truth. She could do that.
But she wouldn't.
The last time she had seen his eyes look that haunted was after the Dalek, when he had thought her dead. She couldn't do that to him.
Instead, she slipped her hand into his and entwined their fingers. "'Kay. Then let's go."
He shot her a grateful grin and led the way deeper into the TARDIS.
Temporal grace.
Never before had he been as grateful for that aspect of his beautiful, wonderful, fabulous ship. He had almost lost her.
Two seconds.
That was all that she'd had left as he had been fumbling with the lock.
Two seconds later, two seconds slower, and she'd have been gone. Ripped apart, dissipated into her component atoms, because Time abhorred duplication. Of the two Roses in the current universe, only the 'true' Rose – the Rose from this Time – could survive. It was not his Rose. She'd almost died. He'd tried, but even his abilities as a Time Lord to drive back Time were finite.
He'd almost lost her.
Which meant that his gravest fear was true.
This was not an alternate universe.
This was a divergent timeline. The "true" timeline had been torn asunder because of some change in the past.
Now history was re-setting. Time was re-setting, picking apart the pieces that should and shouldn't exist, and fixing them as it knew how. The only thing keeping him, and the TARDIS, safe was that he was a Time Lord. Gallifrey, and by extension himself, didn't exist. Not anymore.
He was outside Time, beyond its petty effects and manipulations. Gallifrey was gone, destroyed, turned to rubble and ashes. His people were gone, dead and destroyed along with his planet. Everyone except for him. Time had granted him that boon. He was Time's Champion. Beyond it. Above it.
He couldn't be erased, tied into a tidy parcel and tossed out with the rest of the rubbish from the timeline that should be but wasn't. Rose didn't have that protection.
He tightened his hold on her hand, needing to reassure himself that she was still with him. She was alive. They had made it in time.
The library doors groaned in protest as he swung them open. The last time he'd been inside had been in his previous life and he suppressed the memory of his frantic search for something, anything, that could've prevented the destruction of Gallifrey.
Books were powerful tools. They could even be weapons in the wrong hands. But that day, oh, so long ago, they'd failed him.
They wouldn't fail him again.
He left Rose by one of the heavy oak tables, directing her to take a seat while he sorted through the books. Thousands of books lined the bookcases – memories and writings from worlds that never existed, had existed, or might exist.
He had organised the shelves in his eighth life, sorting them by planet and author. He'd split the task between himself and Charley, just before he had been called to Gallifrey. It had been the last moment of peace he'd known.
Shaking off the memories, he found his 'Earth' section. Unsurprisingly, it was the largest in his collection. He traced the spines of first edition Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Clarke, and Bradbury books. The historical...ah, there they were. He selected two of the most detailed histories and carried them to the table. It'd do for a start, at least.
"Right. Easiest thing to trace is political history. The movers and shakers of history, that sort of thing. Might want to start with Prime Ministers. Trace it back in Bambera's books and compare with one of these." He slid one of the books across the table and tapped the cover.
"An' what're you gonna look for?" Rose asked.
"Anything else. Everything else. Fast reader, me. 'Sides, might be something in my memories that can help us. Been around the block a time or two, y'know." He grinned at her as he flipped open his book.
"You're so full of it!" she laughed.
She had no idea how happy he was to hear her say that. That she could say that. How glad he was that she was still alive, still with him. His grin widened. "Sort of, yeah."
A comfortable silence filled the room, broken only by the shuffle of papers, and a muttered word as they read the books. He knew just how daunting a project this could turn out to be. The source of the time change could be as simple as a choice – someone decided to turn left, when they should've turned right. It could be as complicated as someone dying when they should've lived.
However, each change had effects – ripples – upon the fabric of time and space. A butterfly could flap its wings in Beijing and a hurricane could thrash the shores of Bermuda. A death where there should've been none might influence political parties, writings, or children in such a way to alter the course of history.
Time was delicate. It could stretch and bend, yes. But it could easily break. That was why he, and the other Time Lords, had had several hundred years' worth of training. Claiming Lordship over as fickle a subject as Time mandated responsibility. It mandated care.
Yet, he suspected that he'd failed. A moment's weakness, a lapse in his responsibility, and something had changed. It might not have been him; it might not have even been Rose. But somehow, some way, he'd failed.
Some Time Lord he was turning out to be.
"Doctor! Found something." Rose's excited voice interrupted his melancholic thoughts. "Ramsay MacDonald wasn't PM. He should've been PM according to this book in 1924 an' from 1929 to 1935. But in this other book it's like he never existed."
"Never existed," he repeated. "Is he mentioned in the book? In some other context?"
She frowned as she flipped back to the index. She seemed to have spotted something as she shifted through the pages. "Yeah, he's mentioned almost like an afterthought. Wrote a pamphlet that protested against something called the Fabian Society."
"Fabian Society. Fabian Society. Why's that familiar?" he asked as he flipped through the pages of Bambera's history book. "Ah. Here it is. Fabian Society. British socialist intellectual movement that – in this current timeline – advocated change through more violent means. Helped form the basis for the Labour Party. Betcha that MacDonald was sponsored by the Fabian Society in our timeline..."
His grin widened as he found it in the 'real' history book. "Yes! He was. Narrows it down. Rose, look for the Fabian Society in Bambera's book. Must've been something that caused it to change."
He tapped his chin as he considered what they had learned. The Fabian Society had promoted change by working with the system in their timeline. Here it'd become more violent. Why? What was different?
"It says here that it was created in 1872..." Rose said as she traced the words with her finger.
"1872?" He flipped through the 'real' history book. "It should've been created in 1884."
"Also says that it was created to protest against the defeated Trade Union Act of 1871."
"Narrows it down," he muttered. "So why'd the Act fail?"
Rose shrugged helplessly. "Doesn't say. Just that the Act didn't pass through the House of Commons."
He shook his head. Anything might've caused that. Anything at all. "Keep looking into that. See if you can figure out why it didn't pass. I'll see what else there might be."
"'Kay," she replied and returned to her search.
Political history was easy. Simple to spot changes there. It was harder to trace expansion – empires could be built and fall within a day. The question was had something changed? Within, say, the British Empire? Had India, Australia, South Africa, Hong Kong, or the Americas been under Imperial control? Military conquests, battles won or lost, generals promoted or demoted, a battle fought on land that had never seen war? Anything could've changed.
He suspected that he was missing something. Something fundamental. Something that he should've guessed from the moment Rose had mentioned Ramsay MacDonald. How far back did this change ripple? Where was the source?
Time travel must've been the instigator. A traveller disturbed the environment, interacted with the wrong person, something.
Question was who? Him? Rose? Or was it one of those blundering idiots from the so-called Time Agency?
What could've happened? What could've changed to cause this altered history? It could have something to do with what Rose had found. But it might not. Could be any time. Any century. Any country. He just knew what was happening in Britain. Hadn't even stopped to ask about the rest of the world. Stupid, come to think of it. But time hadn't exactly been on his side. Any delay and Rose would've been gone.
All of history was at stake and he was contemplating possibilities. What ifs. He shook himself irritably. He needed to concentrate. The answer was in the books – had to be.
They just had to find it.
She'd never thought of herself as a researcher before. Normally their brand of adventuring never required research. Book research, that was. More brainstorming. It was find a problem, the Doctor (or, in some cases, herself) finds a solution, and they implement it. Sprinkle that liberally with running, megalomaniacs, and some sort of jail-time and that was a normal day in the TARDIS.
This time was different. History had changed. Her Dad was alive. The Doctor was dead. Was it petty of her to consider that if she had to choose, if she had the choice of one of them to live, she'd pick the Doctor? Not just for herself – though that was a large part of it – but for everyone, everything.
She'd seen a world without the Doctor. She'd seen her alternate self without him. She'd seen a planet ravaged by alien invaders, her Dad turned traitor to save her alternate self, and the other Rose's haunted eyes. She didn't like that world. She never wanted to see, to experience, a world like that.
A world without the Doctor?
No. Never. She bit her lower lip as she flipped past pages that described the history of British trade unions. There had to be something here, something they could use.
She almost missed it the first time. A name that was prominent in the 'real' history book was strangely missing in the other. Frederic Harrison. Excitement built within her as she focused on the pages. In one world, he'd lived. The other he'd died. In one world, her world, he'd been one of the most influential voices that sponsored the Trade Union Act of 1871. In the other, he'd not been there, hadn't lobbied for the Act and it had failed.
That was when she spotted it.
Frederic Harrison had died in 1869. Christmas Eve 1869.
In Cardiff.
"Oh god," she whispered. Dread rushed through her as she suddenly understood what must've happened. They must've done something. Had to. It was too coincidental. Too obvious not to be true.
Her words must've caught the Doctor's attention as she felt his eyes upon her. "What?"
She met his gaze, her expression grave. "I think I found it. Doctor, in the 'real' world, a man named Frederic Harrison sponsored the Trade Union Act of 1871. In this world, he died in 1869." And now for the biggest blow. "On Christmas Eve. In Cardiff."
She gripped the edges of the book, feeling the sharp edges dig into her palms. "God, Doctor, what have we done?"
His expression was equally grim as he replied. "I don't know."
To be continued...