Author's Note: "Wibbly Wobbly", Part III.

I told you in "Paradox" that this was going to happen! If you don't remember, reread "Paradox", chapter 27.

Rose was originally in "Not a Sword", but it got too cluttered. So I pushed her off to this story. And... yes, I know that she doesn't usually give her name, with the dimension cannon! I explain this later!

EDIT: Look, just... do me a favor, and don't review. I get it. This sucks. You guys are all angry about it and whatever. But... just don't. I've had a truly horrible day, today, and I just don't need this on top of everything else.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go cry myself to sleep, so I can wake up early tomorrow and listen to people yell at each other over money. Or try to make me the middleman for requests for money. Forgive me for failing at the one creative outlet in my life right now.

There may be an update, tomorrow. Or not. I don't know. I've got a headache.


Part III

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The Doctor came over to Dawn, and crouched down beside her chair. He wasn't really sure how to go about this sort of thing — he'd always kept it a secret, even with the Princess Astra. And if Dawn had simply been another one of the many humans who came and went in his life, perhaps he would have continued to do exactly that.

But he couldn't.

Maybe it was because Donna was dying in some emergency room, somewhere, and he couldn't bear the idea that Buffy would feel that kind of emotional pain. Maybe it was because Dawn and Donna had gotten along so well. Maybe it was because Dawn was so very, very young.

Or perhaps it was simply because of… Buffy.

"You and Buffy have a fight?" Dawn asked him.

"I told her I needed to speak with you alone," said the Doctor. "But… before I start… I need you to promise. Promise you'll never tell your sister about this. Any of it."

Dawn gave a half-shrug, her eyes still locked on the emergency room door. "Yeah, whatever."

The Doctor cleared his throat. When he spoke, he did so in a soft voice — so soft that Dawn could barely hear him. He didn't feel right telling her out in the open, like this — he should tell her in the TARDIS, or in some place where no one could overhear. But… if he didn't tell her now, the Doctor wasn't sure he'd ever get up the courage to tell her again. "A long, long time ago — so long ago, that perhaps it never really happened at all — some terribly stuffy higher dimensional entities foresaw a terrible conflict — a war with enough destruction to completely destroy the universe."

"Yeah, Buffy told me about that," said Dawn. She seemed completely disinterested in what the Doctor was saying. "You fought in some Time War against metal pepper-pot things that shout exterminate, and then zap, no more home planet, and now you're all super traumatized and stuff."

Which was an accurate, if somewhat dismissive summary of a War that had nearly ripped apart the fabric of time and space.

"But this was long before I ever existed," said the Doctor. "Maybe even before the Dark Times. No one knows, really. Well, I say no one. Eternals probably did, although they fled this reality a while back." He took a deep breath and continued. "But, see, these higher dimensional beings knew they'd need something to stop the destruction of the universe. Something with enough power to completely stop and start time across the entire infinity of existence. Can you imagine how much power that is?"

"Yeah," muttered Dawn. "Cool. Whatever." She still didn't seem very interested. Probably thought the Doctor was trying to tell her stories to comfort her while she waited for news about her mom and Donna.

Perhaps easing her into it was a bad idea. Perhaps he should just break it to her all at once. Like ripping off a band-aid — it would sting, but it might be easier to handle than in little tiny chunks.

"Thing is, that power source," the Doctor said, "it was broken into segments. And one of those segments is—"

And that was when it happened.

A feeling like the Doctor's insides were being all tangled together into a knot and then yanked straight again, with sudden force. As if time were shifting around him, like sand seeping through a sieve. The world froze and wavered, just for an instant. And the next thing the Doctor knew…

He was in the TARDIS. At the central console. His hand about to type in the spacio-temporal coordinates.

"…really, she didn't deserve him," Donna continued, legs crossed, sitting on the jumpseat in the TARDIS console room. "Great big handsome bloke like him with a skinny crying little nothing from…" She trailed off, as she noticed the Doctor. "Oi, what's gotten into you?"

The Doctor realized he was staring at her.

He remembered this bit. It had happened before — all of it. Donna on the jumpseat, him at the controls, the TARDIS in flight. They'd lived through this moment in time before, both of them. This was the moment before the Doctor had plugged in the coordinates for Sunnydale. This was the moment before the Doctor had set in motion the events that led to Donna's near-death. They had zipped back in their own personal timelines.

And Donna was fine.

The Doctor took his hand away from the spacio-temporal coordinate panel. Then he ran over and swooped Donna into a great big hug. Because this was Donna, Donna Noble, and she was alive! Unharmed, chatty as ever, and perfectly, wonderfully alive!

Donna seemed a little taken aback by the Doctor's behavior. She pushed him away.

"Oi!" she said. "What was that for?"

She didn't remember. That was bad. That was a terribly bad sign. That meant that it wasn't a time loop (it hadn't felt like a time loop — the Doctor knew what that felt like, and time hadn't done that), it wasn't anything easily fixable. It was something extra-temporal, some part of the universe compensating for a perilous near-collapse.

Something having to do with Dawn Summers, and the Key to Time. No, something about the Doctor's telling Dawn that she was the Key — that was the event that had triggered it.

"Is something wrong, Spaceman?" she asked.

Yes. There was something wrong. There was everything wrong. Time had just rewritten itself and pushed them out, the universe had very nearly collapsed, and there was still a seventh segment to the Key to Time that the Doctor realized (more and more) he didn't have the heart to get rid of. Time and space could collapse, the universe could be ripped apart, the time vortex could completely destabilize — or even shatter.

But Donna was okay.

"No," he answered. And he meant it.


Buffy blinked. That was weird. It had felt like… a shudder crossing her spine. No, a shudder crossing the spine of the entire world.

She looked over, and found Riley, loitering a little ways away. She ran over and took his hand.

They needed to find Dawn. Find out about Mom.

(Why were they just waiting around here, anyways?)

As Buffy raced out of the waiting room with Riley, she thought she could hear an English sounding voice, behind her, asking about something called a "Police Box." But Buffy didn't know or care what that was.

She raced over to her sister.

It was shortly thereafter that Buffy discovered what the Initiative had really done to Riley — that Riley was sick, dying even, and his mind was twisted in a way she didn't understand.

Even as Buffy learned this, she had an odd feeling of déjà vu. Like she'd done this all before. Except… she hadn't. Of course not. That would be stupid. None of this had happened before. And nothing was fundamentally wrong with the world, either. As soon as her mom was out of the hospital, and Riley got that operation to fix what the Initiative had done, everything would be fine.

(So why did Buffy keep feeling like something was missing?)


By the end of the day, Riley had been fixed and patched up, whatever the Initiative had done to him had been reversed, and he was well on his way to being his normal self again.

Buffy had gotten him back home, tucked in, and then given him a good night kiss. She had wanted to stay with him, but she needed to make sure things were all right at home. So she walked back home, hands in her pockets, trying to process everything that had happened that day.

Buffy nearly ran into the blond girl walking the other way.

"Sorry," said Buffy.

The blond girl looked at her. Buffy thought there was something weird about this girl. Like… she should be feeling something towards her. But once again, nothing.

"Buffy?" the girl said. "Buffy Summers?" It was that same voice from earlier, back in the hospital. An English accent — broader than Giles', but still decidedly English. The girl's hazel eyes studied Buffy, curiously. "That's you, yeah?"

"Yeah…" said Buffy. "How did you…?"

"You beat up Jimmy Stone," the girl said. "Amongst other things. Only… not yet. It's a little complicated." She gave a friendly smile. "I'm Rose."

"Hi," said Buffy.

Rose looked around, and gave a small sigh. "I'd better get going," she said. "I'm on a deadline, and it looks like he isn't here."

"Who isn't?" asked Buffy.

"The Doctor," Rose said, as she faded into the air.

Buffy stared at the spot where Rose had once been. She knew she should be worried about Rose, about the disappearing thing, about all of it. But her brain just fixated on that last phrase that Rose had given her — the Doctor. As if it were so very, very important, even if she couldn't quite figure out why.

She shrugged it off, deciding to mention it to Giles, the next day. It was probably nothing. She was just a little frazzled by everything else. And… and… wait, what had just happened? She'd been… talking to someone, hadn't she? No, she hadn't. She'd never been talking to anyone.

Buffy went home.

There was a bright red notebook on her desk, in the spot she'd once kept her diary. One she didn't remember ever buying. The pages looked worn, bent, as if she'd poured through them over and over again. She flipped through it.

Every single page was blank.