Shattered Grace

888

He winced with the flare of pain that shot across his temple. His eyes flashed open to the medium light of wherever it was he was. He slowly looked around without turning his head. High ceilings, soft wood tones filled the room. He looked down to see his feet protruding from a dark blue, fleece blanket on a short sofa. Above him was a ceiling fan slowly turning. He turned his head to his right and saw a coffee table with a stack of reddish towels and a basin of water. A sharp twinge burned at his shoulder. He grunted as he slowly rose into a sitting position. It was at this point he realized that he had no shirt on. He slowly slung his feet around. On a wicker chair across the room he saw his blue leather jacket and satchel.

His feet found the floor, his skin brushing against the furry carpet. He eased himself upwards carefully testing his ascent so not to fall in case he was under the influence of some drug. His left knee throbbed, he reached down and rubbed his patella feeling the coarse fabric of his pantaloons. He surveyed the room carefully. Definitely uptown, he concluded; with designer furniture made to look old and worn. The woodwork on the walls was classical, as were the paintings. Here and there a piece of African folk-art was placed.

He edged his way around the coffee table. His shoulder spasmed again as a pain shot through his arm. He grunted and reached up feeling the bandage. He looked to see the white piece of gauze ever so lightly tinged with red, taped to him. His eyebrows knitted slightly. He couldn't remember what had happened. All he knew was that he needed to find out where he was, he needed to leave. He felt dizzy as he heard the humming tones of music coming from the next room. He knew that music, in his mind his memory grasped it. He knew that play, Madame Butterfly. His head screamed as someone came around the corner. He could feel his knee kick as he stumbled forward and then there was a shout and darkness.

There were flashes, explosions. A gonging sound, he leapt up. His eyes flashed open. The room was gone. It was replaced with a street, no, not a street, an alley. A dumpster, boxes, crates, standard leafs of loose paper rustling in a cold, exhaust-filled breeze populated the area. It was a good alley, a decent alley, a dirty, dingy alley. He grunted as he pushed himself wobbly to his feet. His head throbbed. There were voices, thousands of voices, no not thousands that was hyperbole, fifty maybe, it was hard to tell. Some of them were in Mandarin, some in Hindi, some in English, not British English but American. He smelled salt on the air. He braced himself against a brick wall and closed his eyes. It was pre-Thirty-second century they hadn't fixed that little hitch in the planet's rotational period, yet. From the gravitational and magnetic forces at place he assumed temperate zone, coastal, the salt tasted Pacific not Atlantic. His eyes caught a street sign but it was too far away to make out succinctly. It was warm but not summery warm, more winter but in a warmish place type of warm.

He looked down. He was clothed now. It was a dingy green jacket. A satchel was slung over his right shoulder. He put his hand on his left shoulder feeling for a phantom injury. He slowly made his way to the street. He looked up at the night sky, bathed in the orange of city lights against a cloudy sky. Then that voice, the humming, that song, it was coming up the street. He turned to face the person, when the dizziness started again. He staggered backward as if he had been shot. Someone screamed. Had he been shot? He reached up and felt his shoulder instinctively, as his body crashed to the ground. He was so confused so dazed that when the back of his head hit the concrete he had no way of defending against his body's automatic defenses and everything blinked into darkness.

There was a wheeze, a shuttering groan he felt the entirety of whatever he was lying on shaking violent. He rolled and fell crashing stomach first onto the ground. He grunted as he picked himself up and opened his eyes. His face was in grass. He stood up quickly, deftly, expecting an attack. He grunted as he spun around. Trees, people cavorting, fresh sea air, behind him was a bay, gray, shrouded in fog. It was sunny where he was though. He looked down. He was in an emerald jacket, something that a movie costume person would imagine a fancy-dress cowboy to wear. A gray cravat was tied around his neck and he wore cotton pantaloons. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a slim metal implement with a rounded head and looked at it, inspected it. Why, he didn't know, the sonic screwdriver didn't have a read-out, you just listened to it, it was sonic after all. He reached up and ran his fingers through his long locks, pulling one out to see the auburn curls.

That's when someone jogged past him. He blinked. Half a second that's all it was, a spinning half of a second on a CD in a clear plated CD player. She was humming that song. It was a she! He looked up, and immediately wished he hadn't as a wave of internal disorientation smacked in him the face and sent him tumbling backwards onto the metal bench he'd fallen from. There was a gasp not from him, as he felt his head swim and the world fade into dark. He had to fight it, had to warn her…

There were pops and flickers and the acrid smell of smoke. Somewhere far away the whirr of fans burrowed into his skull. He opened his eyes, and braced forward against a metal and glass table. He started slightly and looked around. A hedge, a yard, a stone patio, he looked up it was the sun. In front of him was a tea cup and a small plate of biscuits. He looked across the table at the sound of the humming.

"Are you ok?" the hummer stopped, and asked. "You look like you just woke up from a nightmare."

He narrowed his eyes slightly. She had auburn hair. She was wearing a very conservative sun-dress and was holding a medical journal. He smiled as the euphoria flushed over him. It took everything for him not to up-turn the table and grab her into an rib-crushing hug.

"I-I…I finally did it…" He said struggling between elation and flabbergasted.

"Did what?" she asked.

"I got to you." He said quietly.

"What are you talking about?" the woman said.

"I need to get you out of here, now." he said sharply, standing abruptly knocking the metal patio chair over its back. He pushed around the table. He grabbed her hand, and turned to pull. "Now where's my TARDIS?"

"You don't know?" the woman asked quickly. "It's in the garage, where it appeared!"

"Great let's go, now!" he said quickly, with as much encouragement as insistence.

"Go, you just got here, I can't go, I have work tomorrow." the woman retorted, resisting his pulls.

"Time machine, Grace, time machine, I'll have you back before today." He said quickly, hurriedly as he dragged her out of her chair, onto her feet and towards the glass sliding doors of the back of a house. "If there's a today left to come back to…"

"What are you talking about?" Grace yelped as he pushed the sliding door out of his way and clambered into the house.

"We'll be fine in the TARDIS, probably." he said as he rushed about the house. He stopped realizing he was completely lost. "Where's the garage in this thing?"

Grace stared at him as he was a surrealist painting. She lifted a finger and pointed about ten feet to his left to a door. He took deep, frequent breaths. He could feel his hearts pounding. He could feel the pressure of it pushing against him as he re-affirmed his grip and pulled the woman with him as he pushed towards the door.

He pushed the door open and staggered down the stairs, falling haphazardly against her BMW. He looked up to see the police box standing on the other side of the car. There was a hissing screaming in his head and a terrible pressure. He shook his head hard and fought back, pulling her behind him. He reached into the pocket of his jacket, the dingy green one again, fishing out the key. The sound of it thrummed painfully against his brain. He roared in anger as he pushed hard against the TARDIS door and threw Grace inside as he fell just barely into the cathredal-esque innards. He struggled to his feet the pressure issuing in from the outside. He turned and pushed against the heavy stone doors and felt them crash closed. He huffed and puffed heavily as he leaned his head against the stone. Some day he had to get smaller doors put on.

He turned, leaning his back against the wall and slid down the masonry and simply breathed. The pressure was fading. Grace was staring at him like he was insane. A wild look of fear and shock and absolute ignorance. He grunted as he stood up and walked towards the console, up the couple of steps to the dais. He leaned heavily on the steampunk assemblage of dials and knobs and blinking lights. As if by instinct he reached up and pulled a lever and the crystals inside the center column shuttered to life as the entirety of the surroundings shook and the whole of groaned and wheezed with each pump of interlocking crystal.

"What are you doing!?" Grace shouted. "You can't just abduct me!?"

"Calm down, Grace, just give me a few seconds to explain…" He started as the whole of the ship shook violently. He was thrown of his feet and barely saved himself by grabbing one of the metallic pylons that encircled the dais.

"What's going on?" Grace asked sharply. She was staggering against the pitching and the yawing of the floor.

The groaning and wheezing became more sinister sounding as bits of the console burst into sparks, and some of the lights flickered as circuits broke and fuses blew.

"She doesn't like this!" He gritted as he pushed himself to the console. He flicked switches and pulled dimmers and toggled zig-zag toggles. He turned dials and gritted his teeth as he pushed multicolored buttons. "Hold on, just a few more…"

There was a loud 'cha-cha-cha' followed by an angrily relieved hiss, which was accompanied by a spire of steam coming out from some fitting between the console and the center column. The shaking stopped, the chugging stopped. He looked to Grace. She looked to him. Her arms were crossed over her chest. She was standing, tapping a foot and her eyes were narrowed. Her lips were pursed but not in a good way.

"Well?" Grace said sharply.

"What?" he replied, turning to look at the console.

"Explain." Grace tersely replied.

"That could be…"

"You said seconds, as in, 'give me a few seconds to explain'." Grace said hotly. He soon found her next to him glaring at him.

"Might have been a little - imprecise there." He replied giving her a sheepish look before deciding to put the console between himself and her, by striding around it and looking at her through the center column's glass. "I assure you this is for your own good."

"Kidnapping me? Abducting me with no notice?" Grace shouted loudly, walking sternly towards him.

"Funny thing about that, used to be a bit of my modus operandi when I was younger…" He laughed as he circled the dais keeping distance from her. He stopped and looked wistfully into the distance. "I was so much older then…"

He'd wished he hadn't stopped as she caught up to him, and then grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. "What is going on?"

"A war." He said quickly, but not sharp, not threatening, but very thoroughly. He looked at her; he could see the shock in her face. The ten million questions were boiling just under her skin but the shock was damming them up. He sighed and pulled away from her grasp and turned back to the console, bracing his hands against the bronze surface. He bowed his head looking at the blinking lights on the console. "I have been trying to save you now for weeks, months, it's really hard to say…without context, without a frame of reference, I could've been at this for centuries."

"I've only just seen you today, this last fifteen minutes. You showed up out of the blue." Grace said shaking her head. "I haven't seen you since the night you left, and that was, eighteen months ago."

"For you." He said quietly, he lifted his head up and stared at the aquamarine crystal tubules in the center column. "For me it's been…I don't know. That's where it gets complicated."

"Complicated how?" Grace asked, leaning against the console her eyebrows still furrowed.

He laughed slightly and looked at her. "Where do I begin?"

"How about the beginning?" Grace offered.

"Which beginning? Vampires or Vortisaurs?" he asked, as he reached up and rubbed his temples. Grace shrugged, and he sighed quietly. "Well, there was Sam, I found her with some vampires, which you helped fight with a serum?" He said with a question as his memories attempted to agree. "and then I lost her for a long time but found her and then we met Fitz and then there was evil Sam and the TARDIS blew up the first time…if I remember correctly, I got a new TARDIS named Compassion but the Time Lords wanted to breed her. Then Gallifrey blew up, when the TARDIS blew up the second time, but it didn't really stay blown up, and then I fell in love with a woman and then I had a child except she wasn't mine, and then Anji showed up and I caught up with Fitz and something about one of my hearts and then there was Beatrix and hive of moon bees or something it's very foggy. Of course that's not including Charlie the girl who should've died but didn't, and the anti-time and I and Charlie got banished to another universe with an alien temporal scaffold, and we found a chameleon monk and then we escaped and the monk died and Charlie left and then there was Lucy and then Lucy and my Great Grandson…died…and then there was Molly and that's when things get really interesting….and that's not including Izzy and the Cyberman named Kroton, which is a completely different beginning…did I mention that I met Mr. Fantastic once?"

"The super hero?" Grace said squinting slightly in incredulity. She shook her head and put her hands up. "Wait, just hold up," she sighed quietly and looked at him again, "what?"

"At the core of it is the war." he said quietly. "There's this war going on out in the cosmos." He took a deep breath. "Remember I told you my home was Gallifrey? My people, the Time Lords, are at war with a species called the Daleks. As you may have guessed, a war with a civilization calling themselves the Time Lords isn't…conventional." He looked at her, she was still looking at him, but was still fundamentally lost. He closed his eyes. "They utilize weapons that mess with time, and as the war has gone on they've utilized bigger weapons."

He reached across the console and flipped a switch. The air above the dais shimmered and then shattered. There were explosions across its surface a raging fire that burned everywhere at once.

"Is that…is that what the universe really looks like?" she asked as she watched things she wasn't entirely sure how to describe twist across the images before simply disappearing.

"Now, yes." he said quietly. "The Time Lords detonated what can only be described as a temporal cluster bomb near Earth. I did my best to shield what I could but at least for now, Earth's history is shattered into a billion pieces."

"But what does that mean?" Grace asked looking at him.

"Time doesn't simply flow from one event to the next." He explained quietly. "It sort of is bundled together into a kind of consensus around a theme. That's why Hitler never gets killed by time travelers, or non-avian dinosaurs don't survive the Cretaceous. The very extremes of these bundles can and do split away forming quantum parallels creating alternative universes. However, that used to be rare because the Time Lords tended to deter such things from happening. However, now, the Time Lords have basically blew up the bundle, and history and time are shattered within the localized region of Earth." He pursed his lips as he watched her soak this in. "Each historical strand is flailing about in the vortex slapping against other strands haphazardly, even against the alternative universes."

"So instead of one consistent history…" Grace looked up as the splintered image as shards crashed into one another.

"You experience chunks of completely unrelated bits of history all at once." He said quietly, staring up. "Only you don't experience it. You simply are whatever, and either ignore the inconsistencies or go insane. There is some good news, though, kind of."

"And that's why you abducted me?" Grace started.

"Err…well, yes." he replied quietly, not making eye-contact. He took a deep breath. "You see the universe is very good at smoothing itself out. Admittedly it's early days, with an extreme stress at a very specific geo-temporal position but, it already is naturally consolidating the chaos into order. If you look closely you can see that parts of the shards are starting to form a network of meshes to recreate a web of time."

"Well, that's great, right?" she asked, looking at him. He still wasn't looking at her. She stepped closer and grasped his jacket. "Doctor, that's good right?"

"Good is in the eye of the beholder." he said quietly. He looked down at her sorrowfully. "The universe is creating new fixed points in its new web of time." He swallowed slightly and closed his eyes. His lips thinned. "One of the points it is consolidating around is…is…"

"Is what?" Grace urged in annoyance.

"You dying." he replied, almost angrily.

"I see." Grace said, slightly deflating herself as she pulled back from him and leaned her back against the console. She looked off into the middle distance and furrowed her brow, crossing her arms over her chest as he could see the gears turning in her head. After a few minutes she turned and looked to him. "Everyone dies eventually, I've seen a lot of people die. I saw you die, sort of. It's not so bad, not a bad reason either, saving the universe."

"It's not that kind of death." He said solemnly. "You don't grow old. If it was that I wouldn't be here."

"Oh, so what? I just get in a bad accident?" Grace said, blinking several times as she attempted to work through the shock.

"I can't tell you." He replied quietly, looking away from her for a second.

"Wait, if I'm going to die saving the universe and it's going to be unpleasant I should know!" Grace replied her voice sharp and demanding.

"I can't tell you, not because I am keeping a secret but because I don't know." he said quietly, his fingers running absent-mindedly along the trimmings of the console. "The universe hasn't decided the specifics just the point in time and space. I've been so busy trying to avert it, I've seen a lot of the choices. Gang war shooting, car accident, hit by an asteroid, Dagon destroying the Golden Gate Bridge with you on it, Bandrils shot you in one instance, Cybermen converted you and then a UNIT squad took you out, Sutekh the Destroyer got freed from his time tunnel and laid waste to the Earth, ancient fishy undead things from an alternate future rose from the ocean and drained you of blood. Admittedly those are the edited highlights, most of the instances are mundane household accidents or equipment malfunction or some form of larceny." He said running through each event in a very long list. He looked back to Grace. "I've been jumping from shard to shard, history to history trying to stop it, trying to save you. This is the first time I've actually gotten to even talk to you. Usually the inertial forces of history stop me."

"But you said my death is what the universe is using to tether history together, if you save me then…" Grace looked at him suspiciously.

"How can I explain it in terms you'll understand?" He looked at her and thought for a second and then smiled a clever smile. "Bone remodeling."

"What?" Grace shook her head.

"If a bone heals wrong what do you do?" He asked as he pointed at her.

"We'd re-break it to reset the bone." Grace responded nonchalantly.

"Exactly! So, um, I'm hoping that if I save you, and keep you from dying horrifically that the universe will simply reset itself a bit, choosing a different event cascade as the historical consensus." he said with a broad smile on his face.

"Would that actually work?" Grace asked looking at him with a side-long glance.

"Well…" He looked up at the image floating above their heads.

"Doctor…"

"You lose a lot of people." he said quietly. He looked back down at her, seeing her anxious, needing face. "I mean, I lose a lot of people. Some chose to leave, others, don't." He took a deep breath and looked up at the image. "That's only gotten more complicated since the war. Some find that they no longer ever existed and simply never were. That's the most frightening of all. I try my best to remember, my best to keep their existence alive, but I don't even know how many I've lost." He stared off as if he was searching for someone. "The dead leave impressions behind, the erased - don't even get that dignity." He looked down at Grace. "You saw me out and you led me in. You were this body's first friend. It's my fault." He turned his head and closed his eyes. He felt his fingers dig into the palms of his hands. He frowned as he let his internal dialogue burn. He opened his eyes, newly moistened as a hot searing tear streamed down his cheek. "I'm the one killing you, Grace. The universe is using you because of me. You are the one consistent point of reference in my life since this damned war started. You are event one. Undeniable. If you had never met me, you would've never been…"

"If not me, it would've been someone else." Grace said reaching up and gently holding his arm. "You can't blame yourself for…" She lifted her free hand upward to the images, "this."

"I don't want to lose you." He said quietly. "I don't want your life to be defined by a death forced on you because you knew me. I will fight it. I can take you anywhere, any when, we can run away, forever."

"Not forever." Grace said shaking her head. "Eventually you have to face the inevitable."

"But…" he looked at her in surprise. He shook his head. "Not this time. I have a time machine; summer need never end!" He said with a smile, like a golden retriever. "We don't ever have to stop."

"Doctor, it's ok." Grace said quietly, clasping his arm now with both hands. "I'd much rather go, knowing I made a difference, than simply get old and die in a wheel chair somewhere."

"I never got to take you anywhere though." He said he turned and gently pulled himself from Grace's grip. He flipped some switches. "At least let me take you somewhere. Barcelona, not Spain, it's an artisanal colony on the outer rim of the Calphus Extension. They've bred a dog with no nose. Absolutely fascinating."

"If you think I'm going to ask how they smell…" Grace started.

"I should hope not, it's rude; the dogs are self-conscious." He said absent-mindedly as he worked around the console. He stopped and peaked around the center column and gave her a wide grin. "But the poodles smell absolutely horrible when wet."

"Doctor…" Grace groaned.

"Fine, fine, no Barcelona. How about the Eye of Orion?" he said as he punched some buttons. He pursed his lips slightly. "Admittedly, it will take me some time, the Eye has some properties that the TARDIS for some reason doesn't like, she refuses to land there first try. There are the Diamond Gardens of Midnight. Resort planet, orbiting a Class V6 Pulsar. Can't go out on the surface but there's a fully shielded hotel with some very pleasant trips out to see the diamond fields. I've heard amazing things."

"Doctor!" Grace said this time more forcibly.

"Castravolva was nice, shame it wasn't real." He murmured ignoring Grace intentionally as he clicked toggles. "How about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?" He looked up at Grace. "I've been meaning to get my payment on that bet I had with Nebuchadnezzar, it'd almost be a business trip."

"Doctor, please, stop." Grace said taking a step to block his progress around the console. "Will your plan work?"

"No." He said, almost angrily. "It never works. There are too many streams feeding into your loci. I have been running programs since I got you in here. You are only alive because we are sitting in temporal orbit outside the chaos. The moment we land, the moment you leave the TARDIS, within minutes something will find you. Some course of events will solidify around you and you will die a violent, premature death, and there's nothing I can do to stop it."

"Then why are you? Why are you fighting it?" Grace said. She looked at him with a bemused smile.

"I had to try." He said looking at her with a surprised look. "I've lost so many friends in the war, because I couldn't do anything. Because I let things get out of control, I put them in that position. I just wanted once, just once, to be able to save someone."

"You tried." Grace said quietly, gently taking his hands in her.

She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. He felt his face flush and saw her smile slightly. He nodded slowly, and turned to the console. He pulled a lever. The TARDIS grunted and then groaned and then wheezed as it slid back into the chaos. He closed his eyes as the TARDIS's noises wound down and there was a slight elevator bump as the ship finished pushing its dimensions into reality.

"I'm sorry." he said, it was almost a whisper. He half-hoped she hadn't heard it. He couldn't bear to look at her.

"You tried, but some things, just have to happen." Grace said quietly. He could hear her voice quivering.

He turned to her, she was staring at the TARDIS doors. Tears were running down her cheeks. She sniffled quietly and shook her head. She looked back to him, her eyes were reddening. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, offering it to her. She took it and wiped his nose and tears.

"Dr. Grace Holloway, you won't be forgotten." He said quietly, looking at her. He struggled to find more words, something, anything more, but there was nothing. There were no words of comfort to give to the sacrificial lamb, no solace for the unintended martyr.

He reached and turned a dial. The stone masonry doors opened. He watched as Grace looked up at the streams of light coming from the outside. The sunny day outside belied some nefarious cosmic plot.

"I'm not sure I'm strong enough." Grace admitted, as she stood on the dais and looked out the door. "Knowing what I know."

There was a creaking sound that seemed to come from the walls of the TARDIS. Somewhere deep in the bowels of the ship a gong thrummed. He looked around the vessel and then walked over to Grace. He took her hand and together they walked forward. He was aware of her crying. He put an arm across her shoulders. They came to the edge of TARDIS, and both looked out as if they were about to step off some precipice.

He could feel the pressure of it. The universe, the inertia of history was bearing down on the TARDIS. The creaking was the old girl's bones bracing against the weight of reality, trying to force her to give up its desired prize.

"It's not too late." He said finally. "The universe can wait a little longer."

"The longer we wait, the more difficult it'll be to just do it." Grace said in response nodding to herself.

She closed her eyes and took a breath and turned to him and gave him one final kiss on the lips. While he was still stunned she pushed away from him out into the open. He stood there and looked. He wanted to stop it, wanted to interfere, but in the end history won the day, it always won eventually. He turned and the doors closed sharply behind him as he crossed the room and stepped up to the console. He reached up and put his hand on the head of the lever.

His hand trembled. Could he continue like this? Could he keep trying to save them? It seemed to only prolong the suffering, only extend the pain of the inevitable. Was it just? Was it fair? Did he have the right? He pulled the lever and TARDIS shifted silently away.