The Time of Change

A Doctor

"I told you!" I squeak, rushing out of our TARDIS as she parks herself next to the Tenth's. Both Doctors follow me as I almost run toward the Warrior, who is crouched beside the clockwork object he brought with him when I first saw him. Our feet slip across the dusty wooden floorboards of the desert shack. "He hasn't done it yet." I reach out to touch the old man's shoulder but pause when I notice the Moment watching me interestedly from behind him. The smile she gives me is one full of pride.

"Go away, now, all of you!" the Warrior shouts without turning.

The Tenth's fingertips brush my shoulder, and I glance at him. His gaze is stone-set on the man in front of us, his brows furrowed. "These events should be time-locked," he says softly. "We shouldn't even be here."

"So something let us through," my husband concludes on my left.

"You clever boys," the Moment whispers, grinning. It seems I'm the only one who hears her.

The Warrior gets to his feet, and the interface rises up on a platform. "Go back," he orders as he turns toward the Doctors and me. "Go back to your lives. Go, and be the Doctor that I could never be. Make it worthwhile." There is such intense shame in his words that I feel the air thicken around us.

The Tenth takes a step closer to him and sighs noiselessly. "All those years, burying you in my memory..."

"Pretending you didn't exist," continues the Eleventh, "keeping you a secret, even from myself..."

"Pretending you weren't the Doctor when you were the Doctor more than anybody else."

My husband folds his arms over his chest, saying lowly, "You were the Doctor on the day it wasn't possible to get it right."

His past self puts a hand on the Warrior's shoulder. "But this time," he tells him.

"You don't have to do it alone."

The three of them face the box and place their hands one on top of the other. All at once, they rest them on the button, and none of them notice me tense to a taut wire, eyes widening. The Warrior looks at his future selves tearfully. "Thank you," he chokes.

"What we do today," the Tenth clarifies, whether to himself or the others I'm not sure, "is not out of fear or hatred. It is done because there is no other way."

The Eleventh's thoughtful eyes move between them. "And," he adds almost silently, "it is done in the name of the many lives we are... failing... to save." He glances back at me just as a tear falls from my eye. I blink rapidly and look away to stop any more from betraying me. In my peripheral vision, I see those familiar wrinkles appear on his forehead. "What?" he asks, his voice a roll of gentle thunder. "What is it?"

"Nothing," I whisper.

"No... it's something. Tell me."

I brush the tear track from my face and sniffle, shaking my head slightly. "You told me you did this," I say, "but I just—I never pictured you doing it. Any of you."

"Take a closer look," the Moment pleads from her corner.

Suddenly the room around us goes entirely black for a few brief seconds before blurred images start to flit past. "What's happening?" I ask shrilly.

"Nothing," the Warrior soothes. "It's just a projection."

I squint at the forms as they resolve themselves more sharply, my heart pounding out of my chest. Men, women, and children all flee for their lives with expressions of unequivocal terror engraved on their faces.

"It is a reality around you," the Moment corrects him in a firm tone.

Fire licks at my skin from all angles, the heat so realistic I worry I may be scorched. Daleks scream at the innocent people scrambling to survive. Buildings collapse on every corner. I start to rotate on my feet, staring around at the chaos as the blood in my veins freezes to ice. The atmosphere is thick with smoke but heavy with fear, and I can almost feel their panic as if it is my own. A single sentence reverberates in my brain, spoken in millions of different voices that all hold the same dread-soaked timbre: I am going to die.