The Doctor went back to the village and spent the remainder of the week simply puttering around. He wanted Rose back desperately, of course he did. He wouldn't be going through all the trouble of trying to break into Pete's World if he didn't. Hell, he loved her. Loved her with all of his eleven hundred years and both of his hearts. But he loved his people, too. And he would never, never, never again be able to see them in any fashion. More than just soaking up the atmosphere and eating the food, he was systematically acquiring things. Recipes from foods that he remembered, seeds and seedlings from every plant he could get his hands on. Knowledge about the weaving of fabrics and the cuts and styles of clothing. At night, he would sneak back to the TARDIS and squirrel the stuff away. Every item, each plant and book was studied carefully before he picked it up to ensure that its removal wouldn't alter the timelines in any way. He passed over some fantastic things because they might have changed something. He dare not change anything. Far, far too much was at stake.
At the end of the week, he headed back out, looking for the diamond rocks to mine. He found the large cache he sought two days later, far away from the village and That Damn Schism, but a convenient few-hundred meters from a very nice cliff begging for an inexplicable half-completed bridge to be built upon it.
"All right!" he said, throwing off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. "Rose Tyler, here I come!"
ooOO00OOoo
The Doctor threw himself down on the red grass and stared up at the orange Gallifreyan sky. He was tired and dirty, and his arms felt like cooked noodles, while his back was begging to be snapped in two; if it would just end the pain. But he was satisfied. Happy, even. He'd finally finished digging up all the rocks he needed. Now he just had to pair them off, put each set into a state of quantum entanglement, travel forward to the point where Pete' World diverged from this one and…somehow build a bridge from both ends at once.
Hmm.
He jumped to his feet, snatched up his jacket and took off running. He would need to visit the village one more time.
To say goodbye.
ooOO00OOoo
When he skidded into the town, it was to the very unusual sight of a crowd in the town square. He approached the edges and addressed the nearest person. "What's going on?"
The man beside him turned his head slightly, speaking to the Doctor out of the corner of his mouth even as he kept his eyes riveted on the mass of people before them. "Someone went into the cursed forest and came back out again."
"Cursed forest?"
The man's eyes flicked over to the Doctor, trying to identify who it was that didn't know about the cursed forest. "The one on the west side of town. We call it the cursed forest. People go in and don't come back out."
"But he…" The Doctor asked, gesturing towards the center mass, knowing the answer. He was here at the very beginning of the Gallifrey he knew.
What started as a small provincial town would grow exponentially under the influx of the scientists eager to understand the phenomenon that was the Untempered Schism. What was now just a small tear would be carefully widened; a base and a frame built for it to contain the hopping that made it so dangerous for explorers. And all the while, the city around it would be growing steadily. There were still other cities and even countries across the planet, of course. Until it was discovered that close, constant proximity to the contained, enhanced Untempered Schism prolonged the lives of the people and provided extra time-sensitive senses that made understanding – and even slightly controlling – the Schism that much easier. At which point, all the peoples of the world would leave en masse for this one city, making it the only city and inadvertently uniting the world under one leadership.
And once they had a world government, well. Things went much faster after that. All of the world's smartest minds would be gathered in one place; all of them bent around the singular goal of discovering the Schism's secrets. Time travel would quickly be discovered, and from there all the possibilities of the galaxy would be laid at his people's feet. Their rule over the galaxy assured, until one sole Time Lord. Far, far down the road, a Time Lord would be loomed that would one day destroy them all, for the love of the universe.
And all that started right now.
"Well, he came back!" the man answered the Doctor's forgotten question.
"Ah," the Doctor said, the only thing he could say when faced with the knowledge of how momentous an occasion it really was. This was the start of everything.
The man turned back to the crowd and the Doctor took the opportunity to slip quietly away. Originally, he had wanted to stick around for another few days, to properly say goodbye. But that was no longer an option. He had to leave. Now.
He made quick work of checking out of the bed and breakfast, gathering his belongings and returning to the TARDIS before news of the man's miraculous return could spread farther than the town square. He dumped his travel bag just inside the door and started up the long dormant engines. "All right, you sexy thing. Time to do some dancing."
The Doctor made a careful jump sideways in space while maintaining his point in time. Then he loaded the trenilio rocks into the TARDIS. They were much more suited to the endeavor than the daygum rocks he'd originally planned on using.
Putting pairs of rocks in states of quantum entanglement wasn't a particularly difficult job. Well. If by 'difficult' you meant 'required several pieces of rather large and specialized equipment' and by 'task' you meant 'an endeavor of sufficient length and complexity that it took a team of scientists several days to complete'.
Still, he managed it – if after a significant amount of time. The problem, of course, was that he wasn't looking at simply nuking a pair of rocks with some microwaves and presto-zapo! the rocks were entangled. No, it was a bit more complicated than that.
The Doctor took the first pair of rocks, called Alpha and Omega for laughs, and inserted them into the wide end of two carefully crafted cones, their small ends dovetailing together where they met an unassuming bit of crystal. Using his time-senses, he waited until he knew the entanglement would be a success. Then he fired a photon going near light-speed at the crystal, splitting the photon into two smaller photons which then embedded themselves in the rocks in a process the humans called 'spontaneous parametric down-conversion' but which he called 'really fiddly splitting of really small bits into even smaller bits'.
It was ninety percent boredom and ten percent frantic calculations as he tried to exactly time when to release the photon.
When he finally finished imbedding the entangled photons into the rocks – thereby ensuring that the rocks themselves were entangled – the Doctor trooped back to the console room and set the coordinates for five human hours before Pete's World split off. He would need a little time to prepare. Then he went to the doors of the TARDIS and stepped onto the grass of his homeworld for the last time.
He took in the silver trees and the red grass, the orange birds flitting across the sky as one sun set and the other rose. He breathed deeply of the air, relished the fact that he couldn't feel the turn of this planet…and turned away. He closed the TARDIS doors behind him and approached the time rotor without a glance behind. Rose was all that filled his thoughts.
He was now on step three of the six step 'Get Rose Back' plan: Follow the world forward until the formation of Pete's World. The last three would go rather quickly. He hoped.
He slid the dematerialization lever and left this time behind. Outside, a large and rather oddly shaped rock slowly winked out of existence.
ooOO00OOoo
When he arrived at the cliff top location, the Doctor wasted no time in unloading the two sets of rocks, keeping them carefully separate. All of this would be for naught if he was to mistakenly keep the pairs together. He picked up one of the first two rocks he had entangled, Alpha, and placed it in the ground, well back from the edge of the cliff. Then he took Omega and carefully set it inside the TARDIS. From there, he took one half of each of the pairings and embedded them in the ground, building the bridge one diamond brick at a time. Once it was complete, he gathered the remaining rocks at the edge of where the TARDIS had shown him the break would occur. Taking up Omega, he tossed it up and down in his hand a few times to test the weight of it. He had only one chance to make this work.
Then, his preparations complete, he waited.
The divergence began and ended as nothing more than a ripple. A wrinkle. A small point in time that folded back and occurred twice, once for each decision causing the split, causing a sense of déjà vu in the people involved.
For the Doctor, outside the event itself and somewhat removed from the physical location (the people involved in making the decisions were standing at the base of the cliff he was about to throw the rock over) it manifested as a slight queasiness in his stomach and a heat wave shimmer in the air. The Doctor skipped two fast steps forward to build momentum and hurled the rock at the waver, hoping that his calculations were correct. This was his one chance to do it right. Omega flew true, blinking out of existence for one brief moment as it passed from this universe and took up residence in a similar – but distinctly separate – universe. Then it reappeared, imbedded in the ground of an alternate Gallifrey that was rapidly unfolding into existence before him like an origami creature unfolding into its original flat shape. But that only lasted for a moment before the window began to fold closed over the still-developing world.
"No!" he cried, and picked up another rock, hurling it through the rapidly closing window. He saw it land neatly next to Omega, just as its partner was nestled next to Alpha. Encouraged, the Doctor picked up the next rock in line. Then the next and the next. Each one was thrown through the shrinking gap. He continued, even after it had vanished…for the rocks continued to vanish as well. Not one of them fell down towards the base of the cliff. Finally, he was done. There were no more rocks to throw.
He looked at the half-a-bridge warily. This wasn't exactly how he'd expected it to go. He thought he'd be able to see Pete's World. Not this…gap of air leading all the…way...down…my there were some sharp rocks down there. The only way to know for sure if the diamond rocks had successfully bridged the way in a manner that would allow him to cross over was to…cross over. And hope he didn't fall to his death instead.
He turned and went back to the TARDIS. "Well, Old Girl," he said, pacing slowly around the console, lovingly touching the knobs and levers as he went. "This may or may not be good-bye." He reached up and put one hand on the silent rotor. «This will work, won't it?» He bowed his head, hoping for an answer. But she remained silent.
He patted her twice, then turned away and exited, locking the door behind him. Then he walked to the cliff and threw himself off the bridge.
ooOO00OOoo
Author's Note: *shrug* I just felt like giving you two today.