April 21st, 2002
It had been their first major argument.
It all started when Mark suggested that Rebecca shouldn't bother to buy another car after her previous one had been written off. His point was that having a car in London was a waste of money, as she hardly ever used it except to go to her parents', and she'd said herself that driving in London was insanely stressful and dangerous.
Rebecca's response had been to accuse Mark of calling her a bad driver. Which hadn't been his point at all. It wasn't Rebecca's driving that worried him. It was everybody else's.
Rebecca had been driving to Peckham for the weekly shop when, as she turned left at a crossroads, the car on her right jumped the lights and crashed into her. She'd been lucky to escape with whiplash and a dislocated shoulder.
The argument happened the following night. They were both overtired, neither of them having slept more than a few hours since the accident. Mark still had the stress of the day coursing through his system, and Rebecca kept being woken up as her painkillers wore off. Then they had a day of dealing with the police and the insurance. On top of that, they had to cancel their holiday in Paris which had been due to begin the following day.
That was what the final part of the argument had been about. Rebecca had accused Mark of being glad that their holiday had been canceled because it meant that he could go back to work. Mark hotly denied this, but the problem was, Rebecca knew him too well. The thought of returning to work had occurred to him.
And that's why he spent the night on the sofa in the living room.
~The Pros and Cons of Silence~
Rebecca woke as a jab of pain in her neck reminded her of her injury. Slowly and awkwardly, she eased herself into a sitting position and reached for the painkillers and water on the bedside table. She had to twist her waist to see what she was doing as she couldn't turn her head.
The alarm clock read 11:30. The other side of the bed was empty. For a moment, Rebecca thought nothing of it; she often woke after Mark had gone to work, until she remembered this was the first time she and Mark had spent the night apart since their wedding.
Rebecca washed and put on a fresh t-shirt, then headed downstairs, gripping the banister with her one good hand. She'd have a cup of tea and maybe watch the news. Today she should have been exploring the art galleries and museums of Paris with Mark; instead, she'd be spending it alone in a cold flat.
Rebecca stopped at the foot of the stairs. She could hear something sizzling in the kitchen and could smell the smoky aroma of pancakes. She wandered in to discover Mark at the oven with a frying pan in his hand, a string of garlic around his neck, and a beret on his head, humming 'She' by Charles Aznavour.
"What are you doing?" she demanded.
"Making crêpes. This is my sixth attempt. I think I've almost got it."
"I meant with the," she indicated the garlic, "and the," she indicated the beret.
"Oh. Idea I had. For the next two weeks, I've designated this flat as French territory."
"What?"
"If you can't go to Paris . . . then let Paris come to you." Mark slid the pancakes out of the frying pan and turned towards her.
"Please take that thing off, you look like Frank Spencer."
"I thought it made me look like Che Guevara," Mark countered. "I got it while I was out shopping. Couldn't get snails or frog legs, but we have croissants, pain au choclat, and later you have a choice of me attempting either coq au vin or ratatouille."
Rebecca noticed the five bulging supermarket shopping bags on the side.
"I also thought," Mark continued, "that if we're going to be stuck in the flat together for two weeks, we might need some entertainment, so I got a few DVDs and videos." He indicated one of the bags.
Rebecca rummaged through it. "Amélie. Cyrano de Bergerac. Betty Blue. Mon Oncle. Asterix & Obelix Take On Caesar. And the first two series of 'Allo 'Allo. . ."
"Can't get more French than that."
"Very true." Rebecca sniffed the crêpes. "So we're spending the next two weeks in the flat together, are we?"
"I mean, I could always go into work, if you'd prefer, but I thought, two weeks with my gorgeous wife Rebecca, versus sitting in a solicitor's office in Croydon. No competition really."
"Not when you put it like that. Is this your way of saying sorry?"
Mark handed her a pancake on a plate. "Overdoing it, do you think?"
"A bit, yes." Rebecca broke off some of the pancake and ate it. "But I strongly approve." She kissed him gently on the back of the neck. "Merci beaucoup."
"You're lucky. I very nearly bought an accordion."
"You have no idea how grateful I am that you didn't."
"And you're sure you're okay with having me hanging around, waiting on you, hand and foot?"
"I could get used to it," Rebecca teased. "I should get into car crashes more often. No, I think if I have to be stuck in the flat for two weeks, there isn't anyone in the world I'd rather be stuck with."
"So you're not annoyed, about not going to Paris?"
"Not anymore. I mean, it's not as if Paris is going anywhere. There's always next year."
~The Pros and Cons of Silence~
"Is this strictly necessary?" Rory asked as the Doctor ran the sonic screwdriver over him like a customs official with a metal detector.
Instead of giving an answer, the Doctor darted across the control room and repeated the process with the other Rory, the Rory from the future.
It was a weird feeling to be in the same room as your future self. That person over there, with the surprisingly large nose and gormless face, would be him at some point. Staring back at his past self, who as far as Rory was concerned, was his current self. Which was confusing if you thought about it, so Rory decided to stop thinking about it.
"Completely necessary," the Doctor finally responded, closing his sonic screwdriver with a flourish. "It's now safe for you both to be in the same room together."
"Eh?"
The Doctor went into explanation mode. "Blinovitch Limitation Effect. Two identical versions of the same person, at different points in their timeline, should not co-exist within the same space and time. All sorts of nasty potential for paradoxes. And if they should happen to make physical contact – bang!"
"Like with the two Marks?" Amy guessed.
"Like, as you say, with the two Marks," the Doctor agreed. "But now I've neutralized the effect. Ask me how."
Alex shook her head as the future Rory opened his mouth. "Don't," she told him. "He'll just say it's complicated and then probably something like, thanks for asking."
Amy and the present Rory snickered. The Doctor shot her a look, proving that she was right. "Thank you, Alex," he sneered.
Alex, hardly bothered, leaned back against the railing next to the future Rory and beamed. "You're welcome, Doc!" she chirped.
"So, it's now safe for me to touch my future self?" Rory asked, pulling them back to the present.
"Yes," the Doctor confirmed. "Although I would strongly advise you not to."
"Why?"
"Yeah, why not?" the future Rory wondered.
"Because it would look odd. Best keep your hands to, um, yourself."
"And it might give Amelia some ideas," Alex smirked.
Amy's face reddened. "Alex!" she cried, her eyes wide, though she didn't deny Alex's statement.
Alex giggled a little and smiled at her innocently. "Love you, Ames."
"Okay, you two," the Doctor chided, though even he was smirking a little at the girls' antics.
"So where are you from?" Alex asked the future Rory. "What happened to you exactly?"
"Um, well, I'm not sure how much I can say," the future Rory said hesitantly. "You know, spoilers and stuff. But we were all in this field, on the South Downs, on the night of the tenth of April 2003, and the Weeping Angels were there too, and well, I got zapped."
"Zapped?" present Rory repeated.
"Back to 2001. Which was a bit of a head-scratcher, to say the least."
"And then you came and found us?" the Doctor asked.
"Not quite. First I had to hang around for a month waiting for you to turn up."
"What?"
"I was sent back to the first of May. Four weeks I've been stuck in the past waiting for you!" Future Rory sighed indignantly. "I seem to spend half my life waiting for people!" Alex patted him reassuringly on the shoulder.
"Still, four weeks," the Doctor shrugged. "Give you a chance to catch up on old times and stuff."
"You try being dumped in the past with no money, no job, and nowhere to live! I could hardly go back to Leadworth, could I?"
"I'm sure you coped admirably. No need to go into the grisly details."
"Hang on," Rory cut in. "If this is going to happen to me, I'd quite like to hear the grisly details, thank you very much. Give me some idea what I'm in for."
"That's precisely why you mustn't know," the Doctor argued. "And why your future self mustn't tell you. You've heard too much as it is." He returned to future Rory. "Let me get this straight. It was the night of the tenth of April 2003 when you were touched by the Angel?"
"Yeah."
The Doctor swung the small monitor screen to face Rory. It showed the front page of a local newspaper. "Which was the night that Rebecca Whitaker died."
Future Rory nodded and swallowed. "Yeah."
"Right. Now, I need you to answer this as precisely as you can. When you were the Rory over there," the Doctor indicated Rory, "and your future self turned up, what did we do next?"
"What did we do next?"
"Yes. It's vitally important you remember."
"I do, it's just that I'm not sure I should tell you. You know, spoilers."
The Doctor let out an exasperated sigh. "Okay. Let me put it like this. I think the next thing I should do is that I should take us to the time and place where Rebecca was killed. If I were to do that, would I be changing history?"
"No. That's exactly what I remember you doing last time."
"Good. Then that is what we shall do." He turned to Rory. "I hope you're paying attention to this, I'll be asking questions later."
"Yeah, don't worry," Rory said, tapping his forehead. "Committing it all to memory."
"Good." The Doctor advanced on the console like a concert pianist about to give a recital, but before he could start laying in a course, he paused. "You know, it could potentially get a little confusing having two Rory's about the place."
"I'm not confused," Future Rory objected.
"No, me neither," Rory agreed. "I know which one I am."
"Yeah, and so do I," his future self added.
"Yes," the Doctor said. "But nevertheless, it would be useful if I had some way of telling you apart."
"What, like one of us growing a moustache?" Rory dryly suggested.
"Yes, but there's hardly time for that, is there?" The Doctor bit his lip as he thought. "Future Rory. Future Rory. 'F' Rory. 'F' Rory . . . ha! I know! I have just the thing!" The Doctor jumped down into one of the storage areas by the interior doors, pulled out a chest, and rummaged inside it before extracting a red cylindrical hat with a tassel. Alex let out a loud groan when she saw it.
"Fez Rory!" the Doctor announced. He strode over to Rory and slid it on his head. "Future Rory, Fez Rory!"
"You went and got another one?" Alex cried in disbelief.
"Er, Doctor, I'm not the future one," Rory told him. He pointed towards his future self. "He is."
The Doctor snatched back the fez. "You see, I said you'd start getting confused." He bounded over to future Rory and placed it ceremonially onto his head, either ignoring or just not seeing Alex's elaborate eye-roll. "There. Now, you have to keep this on. The fate of the entire universe may depend on it."
"Really?" future Rory questioned. "The entire universe depends on me wearing a fez? That's how these things work, is it?"
"Now, if you'll give me a moment," the Doctor requested, returning to the controls. "The sooner I get us to 2003, the sooner we can stop having two Rory's roaming about the place!"
"And the sooner I can get rid of that fez," Alex muttered.
The Doctor paused in his dial-turning and switch flipping to look over and eye her suspiciously. "What was that?"
"Nothing!"
~The Pros and Cons of Silence~
April 10th, 2003
At last, after nine years of waiting, the day had finally arrived. The day Rebecca died. Except this time everything would be different.
Mark drove through the narrow lane, squinting as the setting sun flashed through the hedges that towered over the road. In the distance, he could see the black thunderclouds of the approaching storm. In an hour or so, it would be pitch dark and bucketing with rain. But Mark would be ready. He'd left nothing to chance.
His mouth was dry with anticipation. He'd explored every option of how to prevent the accident. He'd considered simply stealing Rebecca's car, but what if a passing policeman caught him in the attempt? He'd spend the night in jail while she continued to her death. No. He would have to keep it simple, intervening only at the last possible moment. Only then could he be sure he would prevent the accident without being part of the chain of events that led to it.
The details of the accident were indelibly burned into his memory. At 10:26 pm, Rebecca was involved in a head-on collision with a heavy goods vehicle one mile from the village of Chilbury. She had just taken a blind left turn. The lorry was traveling at over fifty miles an hour. Because of the high hedgerows there was no way either of them could have seen the other. Mark had visited the site of the accident in preparation and knew every detail of the journey.
So, all he had to do was to stop the lorry before it reached the fatal corner. Mark knew that the lane continued towards Chilbury, with no junctions or intersections, but about a quarter of a mile further on, there lay a long stretch of road, the width of a single lane, that led uphill into the village. This was where the lorry had built up speed. This was where Mark's car would be blocking the road. The driver of the lorry would see it in plenty of time and be forced to come to a halt. And Rebecca, coming the other way, would also see the car and slow down. Only then would Mark move his car out of the way.
And then he'd have Rebecca again. All the years without her, all those long, lonely years of grief and regret, would be wiped out in an instant. They would never have happened. And if it summoned the Weeping Angels, then that was a small price to pay for the life of the woman he loved.
Almost without noticing it, Mark came to the point in the road where the accident had taken place. Would take place. Would no longer have taken place. He changed down gear, steered his SUV around the corner, and accelerated up the long, straight road to Chilbury. Then, at a small, gravelly lay-by about halfway up the road, he pulled in and switched off the engine.
He'd checked the area the week before. Even in torrential rain there was no chance of his car being stuck in the mud. He'd checked the engine, there was no chance of it failing or running out of fuel. He'd checked the police report after the accident – read it so many times he knew it by heart. In the ten minutes leading up to the accident, there had been no other traffic sighted on that stretch of road. At 10:16 pm, he'd move his car into the lane, then he'd be able to watch from a nearby field as the lorry approached from a distance of half a mile. He'd thought of everything.
There was a rumble of thunder and rain spattered against the windshield.
~The Pros and Cons of Silence~
Rory followed the Doctor, Alex, and Amy out of the TARDIS and immediately he flinched from the cold and hugged his coat for warmth. Thankfully his woolen chullo hat covered his ears, as the wind blasted icy rain into his cheeks. Beside him, Amy brushed her hair from across her face and pulled her hood over her head, while future Rory tried his best to look nonchalant whilst wearing an increasingly damp fez. Alex glared up at the sky and tugged the hood of her jacket over her head, making sure it shielded her whole face before putting up the umbrella the TARDIS had placed by the door as she walked out. It was the same one she had used back in Florida, the gold tip on top now reattached with duct tape. The Ponds really wished they had an umbrella.
Only the Doctor seemed immune to the freezing weather. "This is the place?"
Fez Rory nodded.
The Doctor handed them each a flashlight which they clicked on. The beams only extended a few meters into the gloom, the lights picking out an ever-shifting curtain of raindrops. Rory could make out uneven, mud-soaked turf beneath their feet. He'd have to be careful not to trip up.
"I'm getting wibbliness on an unprecedented scale," the Doctor told them as he took a reading from his wibble-detector. "Hard to pinpoint the exact source, but this is it. This is the tipping point, the moment where the future hangs in the balance." There was a sudden boom of thunder and a flicker of bright blue lightning. "The moment the Weeping Angels have been waiting for."
"The dinner gong?" Alex said.
"With a big, juicy, space-time event on the menu. It's time for the feast." The Doctor lowered his detector and clenched his jaw, his face filled with dread, then waved the beam of his flashlight downhill. "This way, I think."
As they followed the Doctor across the muddy field, Rory strained his eyes to see anything in the gloom. It was so dark he kept thinking he saw movement, but it was only his eyes playing tricks as they grew accustomed to the darkness. But then he saw it; a pale yellow light about a quarter of a mile away, at a point further down the hillside.
"There!" he cried. The light came from inside a car parked halfway up a steep country lane.
"That must be him." The Doctor turned to Fez Rory. "Am I right?"
"Um, yeah. That's his car," Fez Rory confirmed.
"Then there's no time to lose." Using his flashlight to pick out the ground ahead, the Doctor strode towards the light with renewed urgency. "But watch out. The Weeping Angels are here. And they will try to stop us."
Ten minutes later, Rory's shoes were soaked through, and his feet were numb. From here they could see that Mark's car had been abandoned in the middle of the road. Rory couldn't tell if the SUV's engine was running; all he could hear was the roar of the wind and the occasional crash of thunder.
"What's he doing?" Amy wondered. "He's just left it there. Why?"
"His wife met her death on this stretch of road," the Doctor informed them. "A collision with an oncoming vehicle."
"Which can no longer be coming," Alex concluded, "if a car is parked in the way."
"You two got all that from just a parked car?" Rory marveled, stamping some feeling back into his feet.
"He's left the lights on," the Doctor pointed out. "He wants it to be seen. It's a warning. Best way to stop a crash between two vehicles? Put something large and very obvious between them. It's what I'd do."
"Er, Doctor," Fez Rory interrupted. He indicated a figure standing about twenty meters away, between them and the car. A man in a puffy winter coat, his face ruddy from the cold. He stared defiantly into the glare of their flashlights.
"Mark!" the Doctor shouted to him. "Whatever it is you think you're doing, you have to stop!"
Mark shook his head. "Whatever I think I'm doing?" he yelled. "I'm going to save Rebecca. And there's nothing you can say or do that will stop me."
The Doctor began to slowly venture toward him. "After everything I've told you, haven't you learned anything? You have to move your car out of the way and let history take its course."
"No."
"You have to do it, Mark." The Doctor wiped his hair out of his eyes. His face and clothes were sopping wet, raindrops dripping off his nose and eyebrows. "Listen to me."
"In about seven minutes' time, a heavy goods lorry is going to come down that hill. If my car isn't there to stop it, that lorry will hit Rebecca's car. And I am not going to let that happen."
"You don't have any choice!"
"But I do. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here to try and talk me out of it," Mark challenged, his face lit up by a flash of lightning. "No. This time it's going to be different. This time she lives." There was another boom of thunder.
Alex shuddered at the sound. She'd never been big on storms, not just because they involved water, but because one had caused her parents to die. And now, it was helping to make sure someone else died.
"She dies, Mark. What has happened, has to happen. You can't change that."
"Why not?" Mark squawked. He began to back away from them, down towards the road.
"Because it's a trap!" the Doctor shouted, walking steadily towards Mark. "Everything that's happened, it's all been engineered by the Weeping Angels to bring you to this point."
For a moment, it looked like Mark believed the Doctor, his face twitching as he fought back tears. "They've given me the chance to save her," he protested, his chest heaving with rage.
"The Angels don't care if Rebecca lives or dies. They're just using her, and you, to give them what they want. A time paradox."
"I don't believe you!"
"Then look around you, Mark!" the Doctor screamed. "Look around you!"
The Doctor flashed his flashlight towards a marble-white figure standing in the pitch blackness five meters to Mark's left. The figure held its hands out before it, palms upwards, the rain spattering and dribbling over its stone wings and Greek-style dress. He then swung it to Mark's right, lighting up a second Weeping Angel in the same submissive posture.
Alex, Rory, Amy, and Fez Rory flashed their torches around them, illuminating the wet grass, the shimmering sheets of rain, and four more Angels emerging from the void of darkness, two to their left, two to their right, all with their hands palms out before them, as though in greeting.
"Oh hell," Rory muttered.
"You took the words right out of my mouth," Fez Rory agreed.
"You brought them here," the Doctor said with an edge in his voice. He took another step towards Mark. "Just as I warned you not to."
Mark backed away, his eyes darting between the Angels. "No. . ."
"Don't worry. They won't stop you. They can't get involved directly, you see, they need the paradox to be the result of someone else's interference."
"But as for us. . ." Alex trailed off, not wanting to think about that. The Doctor would get them out of this. He always did. And I will not go down to a freaking statue without a fight, she vowed.
As the Doctor and Alex spoke, Rory kept moving his flashlight between the Angels. They were all still standing in the same posture, but was it his imagination or were they moving nearer? Examination revealed that, no, it wasn't his imagination. The four Angels to their left and right had closed in, to cut off any line of escape. "Um, Doctor, the Angels are. . ."
The Doctor ignored Rory, keeping his attention fixed on Mark. "You think it's bad now?" he went on. "You have no idea what the consequences will be."
"I know what I'm doing," Mark protested, taking a stumbling step away from the Doctor. "I'm going to save Rebecca." Rory noticed that the Angels on either side of Mark had moved closer together. They were now only a couple of meters away from Mark, trying to get between him and the Doctor, to cut them off and prevent them from reaching the car.
"And you think that will make the world a better place?" the Doctor asked.
"How could it be worse?!" Mark screamed. "How could it? Answer me that! I've spent seventeen years without her. I don't care about paradoxes, I don't care about Angels." Mark blinked back the tears forming in his eyes. "I just want her back."
"You can't have her back. She has to die."
"Why?!" Mark yelled. "Why does she have to be the one who has to die?"
While the Doctor concentrated on Mark, Rory directed his torch into the blackness that surrounded them. With two Angels behind them, two to the sides, and two in front, they were effectively caught in the center of a circle.
The Doctor gave Mark a sympathetic smile, ignoring the two Angels who flanked him on either side. "Why do you think the Angels chose you, Mark?"
"I don't know."
"Exactly. It could've been anyone, they just happened to pick on you. Because everyone has something they'd like to go back and change." And it was true. Amy would probably like to change the twelve years she was left on her own, being ridiculed for her belief in her 'imaginary friend'. Alex might like to prevent the deaths of her parents, though she had never shown any desire or longing to. And the Doctor knew he, himself, if he could, would change some awful things in his past, like the end of the Time War.
"I just want to save one person," Mark sniffed, wiping more tears from his eyes. "Do you have any idea what it's been like, these last nine years? All the good people who have died, while I've stood by and done nothing. How do you think I felt on September the 11th, watching all those people die? But I did nothing. I followed the rules, Doctor. I did as I was told. I just want one life. Is that too much to ask?"
"Yes," the Doctor said regretfully. "I'm afraid it is. You can't change the past."
"Can't he?" Amy wondered. She had tears streaming down her cheeks. "You're always saying time can be rewritten. Why not now?"
"Because this isn't about one person's life. The Angels have arranged this deliberately so that any change in the timeline will have the greatest possible impact."
"But there has to be some way!" Alex cried. She knew she was grasping at straws, but she felt rather sorry for Mark. Everyone, even her, had somebody in their life they'd save if given a chance to do so.
Amy enthusiastically nodded in agreement. "There has to be something we can do!"
"No." The Doctor shook his head. "Rebecca's death is a complex space-time event. If Mark prevents it, he won't change the future."
"He'll change his past as well," Alex finished. She had known it all along, but for just a moment, she'd been hoping she and the Doctor were wrong.
The poor guy, Rory thought. All he wants to do is to save his wife's life. Rory thought about what he would do if he was in Mark's shoes, and it was Amy who was about to die. Would he risk everything just for the slightest possibility of saving her? Of course he would. Like a shot. Because the thought of her death, the thought of having to go on living without her, was simply too terrible to imagine.
Rory wiped the tears from his eyes and swung his flashlight around him again, almost grateful for the distraction. While the two Angels on either side of Mark hadn't moved, the others had each taken three or four steps closer and had raised their arms to either side, closing off any gaps between them.
"You're lying!" Mark accused. "You can't know any of this for sure!"
"Mark, if you save her, what do you think will happen?" the Doctor asked. "You think you'll just get to carry on from where you left off?"
"No—"
"No. You'll wipe out the events of the next eight years. All that time will be unwritten. But that's not all you'll lose. You'll lose the past nine years too. All the time you had with Rebecca will cease to have existed. All gone. Not even a memory. Every moment you ever spent with her will be lost without a trace!"
"Why?"
"Think. You've traveled in time. Your past, present, and future are inextricably bound up together. Think of all the times you've intervened in your own past. Would you have even got together with Rebecca in the first place if it hadn't been for your future self? No. But if she never died, you'd never have traveled back and so you'd never have got together. That whole timeline will be erased."
"I don't believe you," Mark stammered. "I don't believe you!"
"You'll lose her, Mark. And the Angels will feed, and they will grow stronger. And that will be the beginning of the end of the Earth."
"What? How do you know that?"
"Because I've seen it before! Do you think when the Angels are done with you that'll be the end of it? No. They'll move onto someone else. Put them through everything you've ever been through until they create another paradox. Then there'll be someone else, and someone else, until there isn't a single person left on this planet whose life hasn't been used by the Angels as a source of nutrition." The Doctor raised his eyebrows and spoke softly, pleadingly. "And I won't be able to stop them. They're weak now, but they won't remain weak for long. You're just the first. But you won't be the last."
Mark's face crumpled in pain. "I just want to save her."
"I'm sorry," the Doctor said, with the sadness of centuries. "But you've got to let her go."
Fez Rory coughed to get the Doctor's attention. While the Doctor had been trying to make Mark see sense, the four Weeping Angels had advanced even closer. They were now standing only four or five meters away, each with their arms outstretched, their faces eerily calm. "Er, Doctor, hate to interrupt, but we have a Weeping Angel situation here."
"Damn rain makes it difficult to keep an eye on them," Alex complained, glowering at the aforementioned rain falling down in front of her.
"It's like they're waiting for something," Amy observed from somewhere behind Rory. "Why haven't they attacked?"
"They're running low of fuel," the Doctor explained. "They won't do anything unless we try to escape or get to Mark's car. They'll want to conserve their energy until the paradox takes place."
"And then?" Rory said nervously.
"Oh, and then we're all dead," the Doctor nonchalantly replied. "It's either us or Rebecca." He turned back to Mark. The two Weeping Angels were now between him and the Doctor. Mark stood staring at them in horror, before stumbling backwards. Then he turned and broke into a run, quickly disappearing into the total darkness.
"Great," Alex groaned. "So what are we going to do now?" She waved her flashlight between the Angels. They were getting closer all the time. Soon they'd be within touching distance.
Surprisingly, the Doctor turned away from her, instead choosing to address Rory. "Rory. You know how you've always wanted to be my secretary?"
"No."
"Well, now's your chance." The Doctor rummaged in his pockets and retrieved a notepad and pencil. He rapidly scribbled a note on the pad, before handing it to Rory along with the wallet containing the psychic paper. "Look after this for me. May come in handy." He flipped a card out of his sleeve like a magician and gave it to Rory. "Psychic credit card, don't go mad."
"Sorry, why are you giving me your stuff?" Rory questioned, putting the pad, wallet, and card in his jacket. "And what do you mean, 'come in handy'?"
"You're going to run a little errand for me." The Doctor raised his eyebrows at Fez Rory, as though checking something. Fez Rory nodded. The Doctor nodded back, then turned to Rory and gave him a reassuring smile that only served to make him more worried. "I need you to pop back to the TARDIS. You think you can do that?"
Rory aimed his flashlight at the nearest Weeping Angel, the one cutting off their route back up the hill. It reached out towards him with both arms. If he was quick, he might be able to slip past it. "I'll give it my best shot," he promised. "But you still haven't—"
"Then go!" the Doctor urged. "Now! Go!"
Rory took a deep breath and hurled himself towards the Weeping Angel, all the time concentrating on keeping his flashlight trained on its face and not blinking.
Without warning, his right foot snagged on what felt like a length of rope and Rory tripped, landing heavily on his front. The flashlight rolled out of his fingers. For a moment, Rory had the sensation of being extremely cold and damp, his hands and face drenched in slimy mud. He strained his eyes to look around him but could only see darkness. He reached out, desperately trying to find the torch. But instead, he felt the touch of something made of stone.
And then Rory wasn't in 2003 anymore.
"Rory!" Amy screamed. "Rory! No!"
It had happened in an instant. There hadn't been a flash or a sound. Rory had simply disappeared into the blackness like a light being switched off. Amy aimed her flashlight towards where she'd heard him fall. The thin light picked out an empty patch of glistening grass and a Weeping Angel, reaching down towards the ground with an outstretched hand.
Amy's heart pounded. He was gone. Her brave husband Rory was gone. He'd been touched by a Weeping Angel.
"Amy!" Alex rushed over to her friend before she could start all-out panicking. She rubbed her shoulders soothingly, trying to ignore the dampness of Amy's jacket. "It's okay. It'll be alright."
"She's right," future Rory confirmed, removing his fez and handing it off to Alex. "He's just been sent back to 2001. Didn't hurt a bit. Though you do get this sort of garlic-y taste in your mouth which takes ages to shift."
"See, Rory's right here!" Alex smiled before grimacing down at the fez. She sighed and tucked it into her bigger-on-the-inside jacket pocket. Thank you, TARDIS wardrobe, she thought wryly.
"You mean, that was how you end up back there. . ." Amy turned and thumped the Doctor on the arm. "You knew that would happen!"
The Doctor nodded, then looked up in alarm. There was another flash of blue lightning and a clap of thunder. But instead of fading, the lightning lingered, sending bright trails of light zigzagging across the grass like bouncing snakes.
"Rory?" he asked. "Did you manage to complete my little errand?"
"Little errand?" Rory repeated, scoffing. "Hardly little. Insanely complicated, more like!"
Alex's brow furrowed. For once, she had no idea on what the Doctor was up to. "Sorry, what errand would that be?" she asked.
"Just before Rory went back in time, I jotted down a note," the Doctor explained, his eyes darting between the six Angels that surrounded them, as though daring them to move. "Containing instructions on what to do when he arrived in 2001. Well?"
"Yeah, I did it," Rory sighed. "Took me four weeks to convince the farmer I wasn't having a laugh. If I got it right, the 'on' switch should be on the ground somewhere around here."
"What 'on' switch?" Amy demanded as the Doctor and Rory swept their flashlights over the turf at their feet.
"Here it is! Yes! You beauty!" Rory cheered.
Alex snickered a little. "You do realize you sounded exactly like the Doctor right then, don't you?"
Rory made a face, looking almost appalled with himself. "Thanks for pointing out that slip-up."
"Oi!" the Doctor cried.
Snorting to himself, Rory used his flashlight to illuminate a thick cable twisting through the grass. It was so well-concealed, Amy and Alex would never have spotted it if they hadn't been looking for it. With a start, both girls realized that it was this cable that Rory – the other Rory, the one who had vanished – had tripped over only a few seconds ago.
"What's that doing here?" Amy wondered.
"Yes, will someone please tell us what's going on?" Alex begged. She really hated not knowing things, especially the plans that eventually got them out of trouble.
Rory's beam ran along the cable to where it joined several other cables at a black box with a big red switch. It was all very heavy-duty, the sort of thing you'd expect to find backstage at a rock concert.
"Found it!" he announced joyfully, before he gave a frightened yelp as his flashlight illuminated the two motionless white figures that were standing on either side of the switch, their hands outstretched, leering at him mockingly. "Oh. Whoops."
The Weeping Angels were between them and the black box. Whatever that red switch did, there was no way they could reach it.
~The Pros and Cons of Silence~
His heart thumping hard in his chest, Mark paused to catch his breath as he reached the gate, drawing in deep lungful's of ice-cold air, lifting his head to let the rain cool his face.
His SUV remained in the road, its lights on full-beam. Mark glanced up and down the lane but found no sign of any traffic. But in a couple of minutes, a heavy goods lorry would be accelerating down that lane towards him.
Mark wiped his eyes, wet with rain and aching from tears, and glanced back up into the field. Electric torches danced in the darkness. The Doctor, Alex, Amy, Rory, and the other Rory in a fez. Except there seemed to be only the four of them now. The Angels had formed a ring around them, as though performing a circle dance.
There was another rumble of thunder and flicker of electric blue light.
The Doctor's words echoed in his ears. It's either us or Rebecca. And what had he done? He'd run away and left them to die. But that wasn't his fault, Mark told himself. He couldn't save them, not from the Weeping Angels. He couldn't.
That wasn't the only thing the Doctor had said that preyed on his mind. If he saved Rebecca, then according to the Doctor, he would change not just the future, but the past. He would lose not just all those long, lonely years of grief, but also all the time he'd had with her.
Because if he'd never traveled in time, everything would have been different. That night at the student's union when they'd kissed on the rooftop wouldn't have happened. He probably wouldn't have gone to Rome with her, as he wouldn't have been able to afford it if his future self hadn't given him that winning lottery ticket. And even if he had gone, he wouldn't have got his wallet back after it was stolen, so they wouldn't have gone to the Capitoline Museum. And they wouldn't have got together at the museum had it not been for his future self, the Doctor, Alex, Amy, and Rory locking them in.
Mark thought back to all the other times he'd had with Rebecca. The most precious pages in his book of memories. All the times he'd met her for coffee to discuss their relationship troubles. Their wedding day. And the time after Rebecca had been in that accident and they'd spent two weeks in their flat together, watching videos and DVDs.
The saddest part of all that was that there weren't enough memories. He wanted more. He deserved more. He regretted to the core of his being all the nights he'd worked late when he could have been with Rebecca.
He would give anything, anything in the world just to have one more hour with her. To have just one more memory. It had been that single driving wish, that burning feeling of injustice that had kept him going for the past seventeen years.
He had to have Rebecca back. If he didn't, what was the point? What had it all been for?
But if what the Doctor said was true, then all those memories would be taken from him. And people would die. Innocent people would die, and it would all be because of him. Rebecca wouldn't want that. She wouldn't want to be the reason why that happened.
Mark looked back up the hill, to where the Doctor and his friends were surrounded by the Weeping Angels.
"I'm sorry," Mark choked, stifling a sob as he walked over to his car. "I'm sorry, Rebecca."
~The Pros and Cons of Silence~
Rory backed away from the two Weeping Angels in front of him, flashing his flashlight from one to the other. He backed into the Doctor, busy trying to keep his own two Weeping Angels at bay. "It's no good," Rory groaned. "I can't reach the 'on' switch. I messed up, and now we're trapped and are probably going to die."
"It's not over yet," the Doctor protested. "I should be able to activate it with this." He raised his sonic screwdriver. But it failed to light up or make any sound. He took a quick glance at Alex to see that she was holding up her sonic necklace in bafflement.
"Mine's not working either!" she announced. "The Angels are preventing us from turning them on."
The Doctor grimaced and with his free hand, tugged her close to him. "Yes, that would've been a lot more impressive had our sonic devices actually worked," he said to Rory. "No, you were right with the first thing you said."
There was another boom of thunder and crackle of lightning. It lit up the Angels' faces. They were snarling hungrily, their jagged teeth bared, their tongues lolling, their foreheads ridged in scowls of hatred, their eyes hideous staring blank orbs of stone.
Rory held them back using his flashlight. The light grew dimmer. He shook the device and banged it with the palm of his hand, but it didn't get any brighter. "Doctor. The torches—"
"The Angels are draining the energy," the Doctor finished. "I know. Hence Alex and mine's sonic trouble."
Rory flashed the feeble beam back towards the Angels. They were now less than a meter away, reaching towards him with their long, claw-like fingers. The torchlight was now so weak, he had to strain his eyes just to make out the shape of the Angels in the darkness.
"Rory," Amy spoke. "I don't think I can keep them back much—" Suddenly, she gave a short scream.
Rory spun around to see Amy standing perfectly still, her eyes wide with terror, a Weeping Angels' arm coiling around her neck, almost but not quite making contact with her skin. The Weeping Angel's mouth hung open lasciviously, like a vampire about to sink its fangs into her jugular.
"Don't stop looking at it, Rory," Amy begged, tears watering up in her eyes. "Don't look away. And please, whatever you do, d-d-don't blink!"
Rory kept his eyes glued to the Weeping Angel, but as the light from his torch faded away, it slowly but surely disappeared into the darkness.
Suddenly the roar of a car engine filled the air and Amy and the Weeping Angel were caught in the lurching beams of an approaching pair of headlights. Rory didn't dare look away from Amy, he didn't dare blink, even as he heard the car draw nearer and come to a halt, even as he heard the sound of the car door slamming and someone running towards them.
"Mark!" Alex gasped in shock. She certainly hadn't expected him to show up, but apparently, the Doctor's words had struck a chord in him.
"Press the big red switch!" the Doctor shouted to him. "On the ground by your feet!"
K-chunk! K-chunk! K-chunk!
There was a brilliant, dazzling light. Temporarily blinded, Rory blinked.
When he looked again, when his eyes adjusted to the brightness, he found that the Weeping Angel hadn't moved. It still had an arm wrapped around Amy, but the fact that the electric lamps had come on meant that the Doctor's plan had worked.
The Weeping Angels were still in a circle around them, all frozen in position as they lunged forward, clutching at the air. But outside the circle of Angels, about six meters away, there was a second circle of six powerful halogen lamps mounted at ground level, all shining inwards. And beside each of the lamps was a video camera, on a tripod, pointing inwards, and beside each camera was a television monitor showing six pictures from six different angles of the Weeping Angels. They were standing in the middle of a ring of cameras.
Mark was crouching beside the big red 'on' switch.
And the Doctor and Alex were kissing. By the looks of it, it was rather passionate and didn't look like it would be stopping anytime soon.
Amy glared at the two of them. "Oi!" she shouted. "Could you stop snogging for five seconds and watch the Weeping Angels? Some of us are still trapped, you know!"
"It's all right," the Doctor reassured her as he pulled back from Alex. "They're not going to move." With some difficulty, he and Alex helped Amy squeeze out of the Weeping Angel's embrace.
"What did you do?" Amy asked once she was free, shielding her eyes against the glare of the lamps.
"Nothing," the Doctor answered with a generous smile. "You have Rory to thank for this."
"Rory?" Amy and Alex repeated incredulously.
"Yeah, well, all in a month's work," Rory shrugged. "Though to be fair, it was the Doctor's idea." He pulled the Doctor's notebook out of his jacket. Flipping open the cover, he showed the girls the contents, a page of almost illegible instructions from the Doctor on what to do in 2001, along with a diagram on how to set up the video cameras.
"What was?" Amy questioned, turning from Angel to Angel, making sure that they'd stopped moving.
The Doctor pocketed his flashlight. "It's quite simple. The Weeping Angels are quantum-locked, meaning they can only move if they're not being observed."
"We know that," Amy argued.
"Yeah, you have mentioned it quite a bit," Alex added.
"So what we've done," the Doctor continued, "is to arrange things so that each Weeping Angel is not only being observed, but is also observing itself and all the other Weeping Angels."
Amy and Alex peered at one of the monitors. "You mean this is showing the pictures from all the cameras at once?" Amy guessed.
"And there's nowhere you can stand where you're not looking towards one of the monitors," Rory explained. "Every direction is covered." It had taken him the better part of a month to set it all up; traveling down to locate the exact spot, then persuading a video equipment company to not only set up a specific arrangement of lights, cameras, and monitors, but to do it on a specific date, two years in the future. And then he'd had to convince the farmer who owned the land to let them do this. Rory had only managed to get everything sorted the evening before he was due to meet the Doctor, Alex, and Amy. If he'd learned one thing during his time in 2001, it was this; it's amazing what people will agree to if you're prepared to pay cash in advance.
When they'd first arrived in the TARDIS, he'd been terrified that the Doctor might lead them to the wrong part of the field. But he needn't have worried; of course they would all end up in the right spot, because that's what they'd done last time. And although Rory had caught the occasional glimpse of the cameras, lamps, and monitors, because he knew where to look, they were all sufficiently well hidden by the grass not to be seen by the Doctor, Alex, Amy, his former self – or more importantly, by the Angels.
"So you led the Angels into a trap?" Alex said.
"Using us as the bait!" Amy shrieked.
"Bait and switch! They should know better than to put me in a trap!" And Alex, the Doctor thought. Ever since he met her, it was only Alex he could think about in dangerous situations. He could only think of getting her out first and then punishing those who had tried to trap her in the first place. And this time was no different.
But instead of voicing these thoughts aloud, he walked over to Mark. "You came back," he said delicately.
Mark nodded, blinking back tears, his breathing shallow. "I could hardly let you die, could I?"
"Had me worried for a moment there, though," the Doctor admitted.
"Doctor!" Alex shouted. "The Angels!"
The Doctor turned to see the five Weeping Angels begin to flicker and fade away, like the picture on a television screen during interference. "They're too weak to maintain their corporeal forms," he assured her, placing a hand on her shoulder. "And as they're quantum-locked, there's only one way left for them to go. . ."
In a few moments, they were all transparent, their stonework fizzling like static, and then, in an instant, they all vanished.
"Go?" Amy frowned. "Go where?"
The Doctor nodded to one of the monitors. On the screen, Alex could see the Weeping Angel, staring out at her in grainy, flickering black-and-white, its hands pressed against the glass as though it was trying to break through. Alex looked in the next monitor along. The story was the same. Each screen showed an Angel, trapped behind the glass, an indistinct gray mass.
"Caught in a closed circuit," she breathed. She whirled around and grinned at the Doctor. "Oh, you're extremely clever."
"You can kiss me later," the Doctor smirked. "But now's our chance. Do what I do!" He rushed over to one of the cameras, lifted it by the tripod, then positioned it so that it faced towards the monitor to which it was connected.
"What are you doing?" Rory asked.
The Doctor flicked a switch. "I'm sending them into infinity."
The Weeping Angel on the screen gained a line of identical, ghostly Angels behind it. This then dissolved into a swirling, lopping pattern of fog which rapidly faded to blackness.
The Doctor, Alex, Amy, and Rory repeated the process on the remaining Angels. It was only when they reached the sixth monitor and discovered that it was blank that Rory realized something was amiss. "Doctor. One of our Weeping Angels is missing."
"What?"
"There were six. One of them must've got away."
The Doctor looked briefly alarmed, but then he peered up at the night sky. There hadn't been a rumble of thunder or flash of lightning since Mark had returned. The Doctor turned towards him. "You moved your car. There's not going to be a paradox. History isn't going to be changed. That's what weakened the Angels. . ."
Mark nodded sadly and then turned back down the hill. The headlights of a heavy goods lorry flashed out of the darkness. It accelerated down the steep country lane, past where Mark's car had been parked, and onwards into the night.
And then, just for a moment, the lorry's red taillights illuminated the shape of a figure at the edge of the field. "Doctor, the Weeping Angel!" Rory exclaimed. "Where's it going?"
"The scene of the accident," the Doctor said bleakly. He took Alex's hand, and they began striding down the hill towards where the Angel had been standing. "Come on."
~The Pros and Cons of Silence~
They didn't see the crash. But they could see the orange warning lights that blinked on and off, lighting up the hedges that loomed over the lane.
The lorry had come to a rest halfway up the hedge, the cabin tilted onto its side, its radiator grille steaming, its warning lights flashing. The driver was slumped unconscious on his steering wheel.
"You leave the driver to us," the Doctor instructed, patting Mark's back.
Alex smiled sadly at Mark. "Go be with her." She nodded her head in the opposite direction.
Mark looked around in a daze, unable to take it all in, and then he spotted Rebecca's car. The force of the collision had sent it into the next field, rolling over until it came to a rest upside down. Thick smoke poured out of the engine, and he could see the tell-tale flicker of flames.
Standing about six meters from the car, caught in the sickly orange glow of the warning light, was the remaining Weeping Angel.
~The Pros and Cons of Silence~
Looking out across the field, Rebecca wondered why everything had an odd orange hue, as though lit by a streetlamp. Her seatbelt was so tight she could hardly breathe. She wanted to wipe the rain from her eyes, but her hands didn't respond.
Now that was weird. About six meters away, in the field, stood a statue, like might be found in a graveyard or a Roman museum. It was a statue of a young woman with coiled hair, a flowing robe, and two wings. An angel. The statue was hunched, burying its head in its hands.
The orange light blinked off, and Rebecca thought of childhood bonfires.
The orange light blinked on again. The statue of the angel was now staring towards her with blank, pupil-less eyes.
The light blinked off and on again, and each time the statue grew closer, closer, until it filled her view, looming over her, reaching out towards her with hands like talons.
Rebecca wished that Mark was here.
And he was. The statue had vanished, and Mark had taken its place. He leaned into the car and gently brushed the rain from her face. He smiled at her tenderly. She could see tears streaming down his face.
Why did he look so old? His hair was thin and flecked with gray, his skin was weathered, and his eyes were lined with crow's feet. They were the sad, tired eyes of a man who had suffered years of sleepless nights. But they were still the same eyes she'd fallen in love with, and they were still full of love for her.
Rebecca attempted to say his name, but no words came. She wanted to ask him what he was doing here. He should be working at the office in Croydon, not out here in the depths of Sussex in the wind and rain with her.
She felt him take her hand and squeeze it. His skin felt so warm against hers, like fire. Looking up at him, into his sad, tired eyes, she smiled. Because Mark was here. She knew everything would be all right.
And then Rebecca Whitaker felt no more worries, no more fears, no more pain. She slipped away into death with her head cradled in her husband's arms.
~The Pros and Cons of Silence~
Amy, Alex, the Doctor, and Rory watched in a respectful silence as Mark released Rebecca from her car and placed her body on the grass a short distance away.
Amy sniffed and wiped the tears from her eyes. "He couldn't save her."
"He never could," Alex said. Unshed tears glistened in her eyes despite her best efforts.
"The Angels just made him believe that," the Doctor added, wrapping an arm around Alex's waist and pulling her into his side. "To serve their own ends."
"So time can't be rewritten?" Amy asked.
"Not without people getting hurt."
"What about the Weeping Angel?" Rory wondered. "Where did that go?"
"It escaped." The Doctor indicated a metal box perched in the hedge by the side of the road a few meters from where the lorry had come to rest. The speed camera reflected the glow of the lorry's warning lights as they blinked on and off.
"But if it's in the speed cameras, it could go anywhere," Rory realized. "We have to find it."
"There's no need."
Alex looked up at him. "Let me guess," she said, in the kind of voice that indicated that she already knew what she was about to say was correct. "That was the Weeping Angel we encountered when we first arrived in 2011. The Angel that was trapped inside the television."
The Doctor nodded. "Exactly, Ally. In a desperate attempt to break the time loop. But by trying to change history, it ends up creating it. A prisoner of its own past."
"But why wait until 2011?" Rory asked.
"Recharging its batteries?" the Doctor shrugged. "And it couldn't send Mark back until he'd received the letter. The letter I imagine they dropped off at Mark's office a couple of days ago."
Another minute passed in silence, then Mark returned. His eyes were raw from tears and his breathing was shallow and weak, as though each inhalation caused him pain.
In the distance, Alex could see the headlights of a car through the trees. The driver that would be the first on the scene, the one who would call the emergency services.
"Come on," the Doctor said, moving his hand up to squeeze her shoulder. "Time we were gone."
~The Pros and Cons of Silence~
Mark was about to leave the office at Pollard & Boyce when his cell-phone rang. He checked the clock. Who would be ringing him at five past eleven at night? He pulled his phone out of his pocket. The caller ID read Rodney Coles.
Mark pressed answer. "Hello, yes?"
"Mark, it's, um, Rodney. Rebecca's father." He sounded oddly frail and distant, pausing between his words.
"Rodney. What is it?"
"It. . ." There was a long silence, which was never a good thing. "There's been an accident, Mark. Rebecca has been in an accident. She was driving home to see us when. . ." There was another long silence, leaving Mark listening to nothing but a faint hiss.
Mark swallowed and walked unsteadily over to his desk. He felt like he was standing at the top of a very high cliff, looking down over the edge. "She's all right, though, isn't she? Tell me she's all right."
"I'm sorry, Mark. She's gone. She, um, when they found her, she'd already, they said, she'd already died."
Rebecca was dead. Mark couldn't believe it. Even saying the words in his head, he couldn't believe it. He felt like he was suffocating. His lips were dry, his heart felt as heavy as a ton, and there was a terrible twisting sensation in his stomach. He felt like everything around him was suddenly distant, unreal, like he was watching someone else in a movie. Or a bad dream from which he might wake up at any moment.
But he wasn't going to wake up. Mark talked to Rodney for a couple of minutes, but his mind was elsewhere. The call ended and he sat in silence, looking at the photograph of Rebecca he kept on his desk. The photograph of her sitting on the balcony of their hotel room in Rome, in her summer dress, gazing out into the street, the morning sun shining in her hair, a contented, secretive smile on her lips. The photograph he'd taken the morning after they'd got together.
Mark picked up the photograph, his hands trembling. Rebecca was dead. He'd lost her. He'd never hear her voice again. Mark wanted to scream. He wanted to fall on his knees and beg the heavens, please, take time back. Let me go back just one hour, to before Rebecca was killed so I can save her. Anything, I'd do anything, if you'll just let me go back, and for this not to be now, for this not to be real, for this not to be forever.
Mark held the photograph to his face to try to stop himself from crying, because he knew that once he'd started, he might never stop.
~The Pros and Cons of Silence~
A/N: So Rebecca died. :( I think this is honestly the saddest part of the book, where Mark is forced to realize that all his efforts were for naught and that Rebecca would still die. It's especially upsetting since, for me at least, I had already sympathized with him and was hoping there would be some way to save Rebecca. Sadly, no. :(
Only one more chapter after this and then one that WILL contain Dalex fluff. Like of the first-date variety. . . :}
Notes on reviews. . .
NicoleR85 - Thank you! Hope you enjoyed the chapter! :)
bored411 - Lol, things definitely did get very wibbly in the last chapter, and this one as well. Hope you enjoyed the chapter! :)
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