Retcon
88
"I like it!" The Doctor said as he swept around the console. His fingers flipped switches as he looked through the center column to the grizzled face on the other side. Fitz shook his head.
"But the color, man…" the man on the other side of the console smirked as he lifted his cigarette to his lips.
"Fitz…." The Doctor grumbled as he walked around the console and pushed a button. A door opened on the console revealing a small tray. Fitz grunted and put the cigarette out in the tray. The Doctor continued tapping at the console panel in front of him. "I don't mind that you smoke, but not in the console room, sets off the TARDIS environmental protocols, you'll burn out the extractor fans with how much you smoke..." He furrowed his brow and looked through the column to Fitz, "plus never know when lighting up will make you the target of a caveman…"
"Don't try and confuse me with cryptic allusions to something else!" Fitz retorted, furrowing he brow. He looked around the central column. "I mean it just doesn't suit you…" He continued with their previous conversation, his thin frame leaning against the console, his arms crossing over his chest. "You gotta think how silly it'll look out there!"
The Doctor looked down at the jacket and pulled at the velveteen fabric. "It's red, I like it…plus I've worn…worse…I think…" He smirked and looked faux-ruefully up at Fitz. "Unlike you I don't have to wear the same leather jacket all the time!"
"It's high fashion!" Fitz replied as he looked at the jacket that hung on his frame.
"For one day, on Belthanada colony in 6234…because the Emperor of Hartoon had nothing better to wear!" The Doctor replied dryly.
Fitz was about to make a full-hearted response when he was interrupted. There was a loud dinging that plinked from the TARDIS console. The Doctor looked over to the console quizzically. He swept around the dais; his red jacket flaring as he did.
"What's up Doc'?" Fitz said smirking as he looked around the center column.
"Temporal incursion…" the Doctor whispered quietly. "Large one...could be…" There was a sound, that wasn't a sound, like a blaring white light that erupted in his memory. He grabbed his head and dropped to his knees.
"Doc-"
The Doctor looked up. The world still felt wuzzy. He looked at his hands, the green cuffs of his jacket felt tight so he loosened them slightly. He wobbily stood up and braced against the console. He half expected someone to brace against him and staggered slightly to the left. There was a numbing sense of disorientation. He reached out and grasped one of the metal pylons that framed the console's dais.
"Fitz…" The Doctor whispered quietly, his eyebrows bunched together as he tried to grasp onto the name.
"Fitz?" The Doctor turned to find a woman standing behind him.
"He's…" the Doctor started and turned to look at the console. "He's…." The Doctor's eyebrows furrowed as his brain seemed to fumble the ball. "He's…." His mental fingers swept through smoke and wisps of fog and then seemed to make contact and he perked up and pointed forward. "THIN!"
"Ah yes…well that explains…" The woman looked worriedly at the Doctor. She had vaguely auburn browning hair tied up in a bun-style ponytail. "Are you ok?"
The Doctor looked at the woman and frowned. "You're Helen!?"
"You don't look well…" The woman said as she reached out and gently grasped his extended hand.
"Something's gone wrong, something's not…right…" The Doctor said quietly as he turned and looked at the console. "The dinging…the dinging is upsetting me…"
"Dinging? There's nothing dinging…. What are you talking a-?" The woman asked but she was cut off as a sharp chiming started to come from the console.
The Doctor pulled himself away from the woman and staggered to the monitor. "Class V Eta temporal incursion, full-scale ontological cascade…."
"What's that mean, Doctor?" the woman asked quickly.
"Something's re-writing history on a universal scale!" The Doctor grumbled as he grabbed the edges of the console. His head was pounding, he felt dizzy, one would almost say giddy and he probably had when he was younger… He turned to look to the woman. "Helen go get Liv….Helen?"
The woman was gone.
"Who's Helen?" the young man from before said.
"My…she…" The Doctor started but a wave of dizziness sent him staggering backward. "Who are you?"
"Fitz, Fitz Kreiner, don't tell me your memory's gone again, Doc!" The man said standing tall, he winced.
"You're injured!" The Doctor said as he walked forward. "You weren't injured before…"
"Yes, those wasp things. Still a bit sore, been a few days though," Fitz grunted. He smiled. "Just bruises though…nothing serious. You ok, Doc?"
"Yes, yes, of course, of course…the moon…bit fuzzy if I'm honest.." The Doctor said as if the memories slotted into place. There was a nagging feeling in the back of his mind though, the sense he was forgetting something. "Where's Trix? Anji? You and Trix were together…"
"It didn't work out, you know after the wasps... Is something wrong?" Fitz asked as he looked up at him with concern.
"No…" The Doctor replied first and then he felt it sweep past him and he looked up. "Yes, everything…" The Doctor swept around the console and looked at a monitor. "Ripples, waves, temporal displacements everywhere…bouncing across reality…" The Doctor winced. "Something I've forgotten…no…something worse than that…."
"Worse?" The man asked.
"History is falling apart…" The Doctor breathed as a chime pulsed from the console and the monitor flared red. "Have to fly into the bow shock…have to…get to the center of it…" The Doctor grabbed a lever and pushed against it. The entire TARDIS shuddered. "Coordinates 10-00-11-00:2…but that's that's…." The Doctor narrowed his eyes he could just barely remember, then the word snapped into his mind. "Gallifrey!"
"Doctor, you really shouldn't go…" Fitz yelped as he staggered backward grabbing onto a steel pylon.
"She's not going to like it….hold on!" The Doctor growled as a deep, resounding bell gonged from the depths of the TARDIS.
"Like what?" the young man shouted.
"This!" the Doctor shouted and reached over with one hand and twisted a dial and with the full palm of his other hand slapped a bunch of dimmer switches as far to the left as they would go. the console exploded from on high and sparks rained down and the room was filled with smoke….
"Doctor, where are you taking us!?" a woman's voice yelled through the smoke.
The Doctor looked up his mind unclear what to remember. "Hel-en….Gallifrey, the source of the incursion is Gallifrey…except Gallifrey is gone…the Time Lords should be…" The Doctor frowned and looked at the monitor. He could see the planet, the traffic of thousands of TARDISes moving to and fro. The entire civilization was there as if it had never been destroyed but he was sure, he had memories of the entire world blowing up. "It can't…"
"I'm going to go get Liv, something's wrong, you're acting weird…." Helen said as she ran from the console room.
He breathed heavily staring down at the screen. Part of him still was taken back, yet another part of him was feverishly trying to understand why he was shocked. Gallifrey never went anywhere. Yes, the Daleks were playing up the growing conflict between themselves and the Time Lords but nothing serious was ever going to come of it, even that business with the retrogenerative particles was hardly as serious as everyone had gone on about…yet…
Suddenly there was a burst, that wasn't so much a burst but a wave. The TARDIS squealed and bucked and flung itself and the Doctor staggered jumping from the dais and catching one of the arm chairs he had decked around the console.
"Doc' are you ok?"
The Doctor looked up. A thin figure was standing next to him. He breathed and leaned forward. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw the red sleeves of his jacket. He smiled quietly.
"Fitz…." the Doctor whispered and he turned and ran up to him and grabbed the thin young man and kissed him passionately on the lips.
Fitz blushed brightly as he kissed the Doctor back. "Wow, whatever that was must've really riled you up…"
"Yeah…" the Doctor whispered quietly as he looked back at the monitor. A pulse was rolling through the web of time. He furrowed his brows. "No!"
"'No', what? I quite enjoyed that, actually…" Fitz smirked, and looked at the Doctor playfully.
"I have to stop it…I have to!" The Doctor charged around the console, pushing Fitz out of his way. "If I reconfigure our temporal harmonics, and re-consign the chronion feedbacks through the temporal buffers just as the ontological pulse hits, I can…"
"What are you doing!?" Fitz asked.
"Saving you!" the Doctor shouted almost angrily as he looked up at the thin young man.
"What's going on down here?" A woman's voice shouted. The Doctor looked to a doorway where two women were walking forward. "I'm trying to do a jigsaw and the ship's jumping around like it's hopped up on amphetamines and then Helen comes running in saying your-who's that?"
"Sorry, Liv, Helen, just…" The Doctor turned and looked at the monitor.
"When did you change jackets?" Helen asked.
"Hmm?" The Doctor asked as he looked down and noticed he was still wearing the red jacket.
"Who is that!?" Liv asked again as she pointed to Fitz.
The Doctor looked over to where she was pointing. Fitz was standing next to the console and, leaned against it as he looked at the two women.
"Wow…you can pick 'em…can't ya, Doc'." Fitz said as he smiled to the Doctor and looked to Helen.
"What?" Helen yelped aghast.
"Just everyone stop!" The Doctor growled as he walked around the console pushing buttons. The TARDIS chittered and growled, fuming and every once in a while snapped, releasing puffs of smoke from the console.
"What's going on?" Helen asked looking to Liv.
"No idea…" the other woman replied; she was tough looking, with dark brown hair. "Doctor, explain!"
"I like the jacket, it's red, I'm entitled to a change in wardrobe periodically!" the Doctor retorted shaking his head as he felt a wave of nausea wash over him. He stopped and leaned against a metal pylon.
"It doesn't suit you." the dark haired brunette said abruptly as she looked from the Doctor to the young man who was smiling towards her like a romantic lothario wannabe.
"That's what I said…the red doesn't look right." Fitz nodded.
"That's not what I mean, whoever you are! Who is this man?!" Liv growled as she glared at the thin stubbily shaven man. "and why have brought a bar rat onto the TARDIS!"
"Oi!" Fitz said sharply. "I'll have you know that I was here way before any of you and you lot just showed up out of nowhere!"
"Doctor, who is this, person?" Helen asked, as she almost hid behind Liv.
"Fitz Kreiner " The Doctor whispered as he slumped slightly. His head was pounding. "He's my…friend…from from…it's complicated"
"Are you ok?" Helen asked quietly.
The Doctor slid slightly on the TARDIS console and nearly collapsed onto the floor.
"Doctor!" Fitz dropped down to a knee and reached for him but the Doctor caught himself at the last moment. The Doctor waved his hand as he pushed himself back up, bracing against the pylon.
"It's fine, fine…Fitz, this is Helen and Liv…; they are my…companions…" the Doctor whispered as he closed his eyes and touched the side of his head. There were two conflicting sets of memories fighting in his head.
"Going round my back huh?" Fitz smirked and looked at the women. He stepped towards them to shake their hands.
"NO!" The Doctor snapped his hand out and grasped Fitz's. "Not yet…no…" The Doctor turned and staggered to the console. "Makes sense now…it all makes sense….the war never ended…the war never was…that….no…"
"What are you talking about?" All three humans said sharply.
"Time War….my people versus the Enemy or my people versus the Daleks…." The Doctor narrowed his eyes. "Neither were true, or rather both are true but for the wrong reasons…."
"You remember the War in Heaven?" Fitz asked uncomfortably.
The Doctor shook his head slightly and took off the red jacket and threw it over the console.
"For years, the Time War was discreet, simple almost too simple; two all-mighty forces clashing in the cosmic background warping reality around them…" The Doctor whispered, he winced. It hurt so bad this feeling of duality swarming through him. "It never was; the Enemy….were never some secret faceless creatures…." He looked to Helen and Liv. "It was us…it was always us…" The Doctor looked to Fitz, "and the best I could do was forestall it…."
"Right…I don't think I like where this is going…" Fitz whispered quietly.
The Doctor walked towards Liv and Helen and leaned against a pylon as he started to talk to them.
"The Daleks saw a weakness in Gallifrey's timelines because the Last Great Time War weakened the boundaries between causal nexuses…two time wars fighting for dominance in the background…of each other." The Doctor continued. "Each blow, rewriting history from the bottom up….worse yet the Last Great Time War instigated itself, because the war was never between civilizations, never between implacable foes, it was between historical canonicities… " He looked to Fitz. "It started because of our future, bleeding backwards into the past…causing the Time Lords to falsely attack the Daleks, which then had allowed the war to project itself forward into a divergent future…making itself inevitable and intractable… brilliant really…of course I created it…it would be brilliant…too brilliant…like me…" The Doctor smiled and then frowned and looked to Liv and Helen. "Oh I don't like haughty me, is this what I'm like with you two?" He looked over to Fitz. "Or is this how I'm going to be?"
"Am I the only one not following this…" Helen asked.
The Doctor waved his hand dismissively and turned to the console.
"The Time War, the real one was never between Gallifrey and some antagonist, named or not…it was between the wars themselves…wars fighting wars…that's just meta enough to work." The Doctor growled and shook his head, as he leaned against the console more heavily as he felt the implications of it; as two entire universes screamed through his head. "One side has to win…one side has to lose…and here I am…"
"Stuck in the middle with you." Fitz said, narrowing his eyes.
"This moment, this point in history, the two causal continuities touched…I have created a bridge, a conduit." the Doctor said quietly, slowly taking on more of his weight and pushing off of the console. "A single, living TARDIS strong enough to keep the incongruities stable…a paradox machine….from this point is the emergence of the Time War…two continuities bleeding into one another and I did it…I started the whole fiasco that creates this situation that creates the fiasco that puts me right back here…where I start the whole fiasco…" The TARDIS shook angrily from all around them. The Doctor painfully smirked. "Even the TARDIS has a headache thinking about it…"
"Doctor…" Fitz grunted as he looked at the man. "Why?"
"Every day, you exist and disappear, and are replaced by them, and then they disappear and are replaced by you…and sometimes it's even more complicated…" the Doctor whispered, he slowly looked to Fitz. "A million times a day, every second shifting and sloshing back and forth. Half the time I don't remember it, don't recognize it, but sometimes I do….I can't handle it anymore. It has to stop."
"Doctor?" Helen reached out.
"Stay back…" The Doctor hissed, holding out his hand. "It's not consolidated, the timelines are still faltering."
"How long, then, Doctor?" Liv asked crossing her arms over her chest.
"No idea…" the Doctor said quietly.
The TARDIS creaked loudly. There was a hiss and steam erupted from under the console.
"This can't work." Fitz growled softly looking at the Doctor.
"It can, I can make it work!" the Doctor growled, the sound of his voice was like distant thunder. He dragged himself around the console and pushed buttons. The steam stopped. Deep in the bowels of the TARDIS chimed the cloister bell solemnly.
"No, it can't!" Fitz shouted. "I'm not clever but I ain't stupid. What's happening? Tell the truth!"
"The TARDIS is like a chain tethering two monster trucks together going at full speed in the opposite direction, I just have to wait for the trucks to run out of gas…" the Doctor said, calmly as he flipped more switches. "I'm relieving as much stress as I can into the void while I build a timeline wherein all of you can exist…without annihilating each other on a atomic level if you touch…"
"And if you aren't fast enough, if the 'trucks don't run out of gas soon enough'?" Fitz asked.
"The TARDIS gets pulled apart and explodes…." the Doctor replied casually.
"Doctor, are you nuts!?" Fitz shouted.
"You disappear!" the Doctor returned, glaring up at Fitz. "You and Liv and Helen and so many more disappear, every second of every moment, you disappear, and are replaced, swapped, twisted and abused. For one brief second I saw an opening to save someone, anyone….just once…I can't…I just…I can't keep watching this…keep forgetting THIS!"
"If this plan fails what happens?" Liv asked. "If the TARDIS explodes…."
"Total event collapse, on both sides of the equation…" the Doctor said flipping hand into the air with airy annoyance. He continued to work without a note of concern. "Every sun will super nova in every moment of history…the universes will have never existed…everyone loses."
"Oh, is that all…well, totally worth it then!" Fitz said as he reached towards the console, glaring at the Doctor. "Stop it, Doctor. Now!"
"Fitz!" the Doctor looked up at the thin man in his leather jacket. "I don't have any control over it if I stop this!" He turned and looked at Liv and Helen. "It could be you or them, you're asking me to stand back and watch the universe play temporal Russian roulette with your existences…to stand back and watch someone's life disappear, asking me to sit back and ponder the gaping wounds of the erased! I won't, I won't…not if I can stop it! I don't care what risks there are!"
"Please, Doctor…you're scaring us." Helen said as she stepped forward.
"You should be scared!" The Doctor growled. "What I'm talking about is worse than death, we're talking about total oblivion; it should be frightening!"
"Doctor!" Liv retorted as she stormed towards the TARDIS. The Doctor rushed up stopping her from getting near Fitz. Liv glared into his eyes. "This is madness!"
"You'll really destroy everything? Just because you're afraid you won't be able handle the universe playing Russian roulette with us, fine, then the universe doesn't get to choose, send me away!" Fitz shouted, as looked down at the console. "Which button? Show me, I'll do it myself!"
"If I release the tether and you disappear, I cannot guarantee you'll have ever existed, you may never have been!" The Doctor shook his head.
"Yeah? In other words about every other Tuesday since I've met you then!" Fitz retorted. "Stop being selfish, and send me back before you do something you'll truly regret! Like I don't know, blowing up the universe!"
The Doctor stopped working and looked at Helen and Liv. He looked to Fitz. The young man was glaring angrily at him. Liv was sternly watching him and Helen was in fear.
"I'm serious, I can't guarantee anything, who exists and who…" He stopped and looked to Fitz, "and who doesn't."
"That's life, Doctor, never guaranteed another day." Fitz said.
"You may get even less than that…" the Doctor replied quietly.
"More than I ever deserved. I'm sure." Fitz said looking confidently cool in the face of the Time Lord. He straightened his leather jacket.
There was an eerie cracking sound, followed by a low cetacean rumble as if some great creature was crying in pain. The console pulsed and pow-ed as a crack slithered up the glass encasement of the center column.
"I-I…" The Doctor glared at the monitor, he could see the timelines twist around each other only to snap apart like two wrestling snakes striking and coiling around each other. Neither would back down, neither would stop, there was no equilibrium, no coalescence. The TARDIS was its limits, the paradox was too extreme, and he couldn't hold it together not forever, not for another five seconds even. He had to release the tether, he looked to Fitz but he couldn't, not again, not more of the same….
The Doctor furrowed his brow as pulses of causality washed back and forth. There was a sharp stab in his left heart. He winced, as the causalities lashed out at each other. The entire TARDIS shook, bits of the ceiling fell from the impossible heights above, Liv and Helen screamed. Fitz braced against a pylon as a portion of the console exploded, glaring at him. The field matrix was failing the TARDIS core was breaching; it was happening, the event collapse. He looked to Fitz once more, the young man was glowering at him and nodded insistently. The Doctor reached up and pushed the button…
The TARDIS jolted. The Doctor leaned forward and looked up. Liv and Helen were standing at the edge of the dais looking at him worriedly. His eyes slid over the console to a navy blue leather jacket that was hanging there. He took a deep breath.
"So…what was that all about?" Helen asked. "I went and got Liv like you asked…"
"Hmm?" The Doctor looked up at the two women on the dais. A wave of confusion as if he'd been woken from some dream swept past him. He blinked and looked over to the woman, to…Helen, yes that was her name. "Vortex turbulence…nothing to worry about…"
"You look as if it was something more?" Liv said, looking suspiciously at the Doctor.
"Was just worried, that the turbulence would upset your jigsaw…" The Doctor said smiling, he was lying, but he couldn't remember why he was lying. That unnerved him, as he looked at the two women, something was missing, someone was missing, except there was never anyone else… He looked at the console and frowned. "I think, I think, maybe it might be time to think about getting everyone home…" The two women protested but the Doctor simply shook his head. "It's dangerous…too dangerous….I think…yes…too dangerous…"
AN: Been a super long time, apologies. This idea has actually been sitting down in the bowels of my computer for the better part of well…a long time. The problem was I was going to incorporate a whole bunch more (like some of the comic strip characters….) but the problem is I lack enough info on some of them to get more across…and finally came down to keeping this simple (HA!) stupid. Helen and Liv are meant to be Helen and Liv but not being super familiar with them I tried drawing them as broadly as possible…