Chapter Text
It wasn’t exactly the Doctor’s fault when everything went wrong.
One minute, everything had been fine and dandy- spinning through the vortex, Rose laughing, the Doctor’s hearts swelling with his affection for her. He’d been showing her how to keep the TARDIS stable in flight (artificial horizon, the black lever on the panel that was supposed to be used for inflight instrumentation) when the TARDIS had suddenly flipped arse-over-teakettle and gone hurtling straight down.
“Down” was a relative thing in the vortex; there was no such thing as up or down or any cardinal direction because there was nothing for it to use as a frame of reference, just swirling artron as all the timelines of all reality coalesced in a miasma of whens and nows.
So when the TARDIS plummeted like a bird that had just been shot in the wings, the Doctor’s stomachs dropped too.
Rose yelped, and he reached out and grabbed her hand as they both started to rise up from the floor; the TARDIS was falling and they were floating upwards like gravity had suddenly decided it didn’t need to work anymore, either.
“DOCTOR! WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?!” Rose screamed in terror, a noise the TARDIS was echoing with a shrill siren from under the console.
“I DON’T KNOW!” he yelled right back, struggling to be heard over the sliding of ship against vortex and the screeching of the TARDIS as she fell and fell and fell into the unending abyss. His mind was racing- what could possibly cause a TARDIS to act like this during a perfectly normal flight? No malfunction he’d ever heard of before.
There was one thing, but that- that was impossible. Utterly, utterly impossible.
There were none left. There couldn’t be any left.
…couldn’t there?
The plummeting began to slow, like the TARDIS had deployed a drag chute (Which she didn’t fucking have, but nevermind, that was neither here nor there at that point) and the Doctor squeezed Rose’s hand tight and pulled her towards him, yanking her against his chest and flipping them so he’d be the one to break her fall when they inevitably-
-Slammed into the grating with a bone-shaking THUD, the TARDIS mewling mournfully and Rose whimpering in pain. It was like she was vocalizing the hurt he felt.
He sat up slowly, looking over Rose to make sure she was okay. A quick brush against her mind- faint enough that it wasn’t an invasion of her mental privacy. Just checking for a concussion. She was fine, healthy in mind and body if a bit scared and sore. The Doctor pulled back and helped her to her feet.
“What the hell was that?” Rose repeated, and the Doctor shook his head.
“Don’t know. Haven’t experienced anything like that in…ever, actually. It’s like something pulled the TARDIS out of the vortex…” he flicked on the monitor to check the atmosphere outside, and his eyebrows went up.
“We’re on Earth,” he said, “Hull, Quebec.”
Rose walked up to him, squinting at the monitor in confusion.
“Why would we fall out of the sky and land in Canada?” she asked, and the Doctor shrugged.
“The date…ah. February 15th, 1996.” He said, raising an eyebrow.
“What happens today? Something big?” Rose frowned and scrunched up her face, struggling to remember something, “Wasn’t there something about some terrorists in Montreal?”
“That was in the 1970’s. Long since sorted. My tailor used to have a little shop right near the epicentre of- nevermind.” The Doctor said, “That’s not important. I don’t know what’s supposed to happen today. But I do know how we can find out.”
He grinned at her, and Rose (despite their rough landing) grinned back.
They joined hands and stepped out of the TARDIS together.
And instantly, the Doctor knew what was wrong.
The air was crisp and cold, a bright greyish-blue sky soaring overhead. Trees like scraggly sticks ringed a giant throng of people, some with air horns, almost all with Canadian flags they were waving proudly. Official looking cars ringed the scene, and at the far end of the gathering was a stage with a podium that looked like it had been recently vacated.
In the middle of the crowd, there was a man in a black jacket with one hand wrapped tight around the neck of another man in a toque.
And everyone, and everything, was jittering back and forth. The flags twitched side-to-side. The strangler was squeezing the throat of his victim a little, flexing his fingers and releasing, flexing and releasing.
Everyone was trapped in a one-second time loop.
Everyone except the Doctor and Rose.
Rose grabbed the Doctor’s hand and gave it a squeeze.
“What’s happening?” she asked in a hushed whisper, “who is that man? What’s he doing?”
The Doctor shook his head.
“I don’t know what those humans were doing before or after this. But I do know this: at one point, one of my people thought that this moment was so important to the web of time that they set a trap.”
Rose whipped her head around to look at him. The Doctor wasn’t returning the pressure of her affectionate hand-squeeze, and his tone was flat and blank. He was staring at the ground like it wasn’t even there, eyes glazed over and somewhere else entirely.
“Your people?” Rose echoed, knowing full well what a rarity it was for the Doctor to even broach the topic of the other Time Lords.
He nodded, lifting his head and locking his gaze onto a nearby tree.
Rose followed his sight and her own eyes went wide.
The trees in this park had been planted in an evenly-spaced fashion, ten or so paces between them. All except one.
One single tree was sitting between two others, breaking the symmetry of the landscaping and ruining the park’s carefully considered aesthetics. One tree that was glowing a faint, sickly red, just around the outside.
Rose gave the Doctor’s hand a squeeze.
“What is that thing?” she asked quietly, and the Doctor swallowed.
“That’s a SIDRAT.” He said, pronouncing it like “sigh-drat”, “I thought they were all gone. All of them, wiped out. They shouldn’t exist. They shouldn’t…” his voice trailed off, and he looked away from her.
Rose tightened her grip on his hand, reeling him back in, trying to ground him. She knew that prying was a bad idea, but at the same time- if this SIDRAT was keeping them here, they needed to figure out how to defeat it.
“So…what is it?” She said, “It’s like a TARDIS, right?”
The Doctor nodded.
“In the old days, a SIDRAT used to be like a remote-controlled TARDIS used by some very bad, bad people to do some heinous things. I…I put a stop to that. But then. Then the war came. Do you know what happens to history in a time war, Rose?” the Doctor said, and again his eyes glazed over and he was lost.
Rose bit her lip and said nothing.
The Doctor straightened up, jerking himself out of his daze.
“It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that my people…we…some of them…” his voice faltered, and he looked at Rose despairingly.
Then he glanced over his shoulder at his own TARDIS.
“A SIDRAT is a temporal landmine.” He said, “It’s an area denial weapon. You plant it and forget it, and when your enemies pass too close, they’re sucked in and destroyed. And just like landmines, SIDRATs don’t go away after the war’s done. No, they stay where they’ve been parked, because to make a SIDRAT you take a TARDIS and- and-“
His voice trailed off and he shuddered.
“-And she’s trapped there.” he said, jerking his head at the errant tree, “She’s been trapped here for spans of time I can’t even begin to guess at.”
“So…we’re stuck here?” Rose echoed, “If it’s a trap, then…how come we aren’t frozen like everyone else? If this moment’s been frozen, how…how did history continue after this?” She was clearly struggling with her words, and the Doctor shook his head.
“Time’s not “frozen”, per se. It’s… “protected.” What happens here in this instant…someone thought it was critically important. So much so that they didn’t want anyone tampering with it. So they put a SIDRAT here to safeguard it. You can’t alter this moment. You can try, and you’ll be tossed right back to the start of this loop. The people here aren’t “trapped”- from their perspective, this moment comes and then it goes and they get on with their lives. It’s only us- time travellers- who aren’t part of that “protected” group. Think of it like a weir on a river. As water cascades over an old weir, it makes a turbulent loop at the bottom in which things get trapped. The SIDRAT is the weir- she’s creating this vortex at this point in the timeline. These people are the water- they flow over the weir, through the loop, and on with their lives. But we’re the flotsam stuck in the middle of the vortex. Trapped. Forever. Until we drown.”
Rose shivered.
“So…is there anything we can do? Any way we can get out of this?” she whispered, looking the Doctor dead in the eyes.
“Yes.” The Doctor replied, “Yes. Maybe. I can get in there and turn her off. I think.” his voice faltered again, “But I don’t know if it’s safe to do that. For me, or for this moment. For one thing, I heard stories of SIDRATS planted at key points in history, the legions they slaughtered-“
He shook his head.
“And for another, they stabilise the web of time. Like…like a foundation on a house. Just existing there roots the present, makes it more secure. You can’t create a paradox with a SIDRAT about. You can’t change history with a SIDRAT about. It’ll lock the moment it’s trapped in across the whole of the universe, make it impossible for anyone or anything to alter anything about that slice of time. So…they’re good, I suppose. But the process to make one-“ he shivered, gripping Rose’s hand tight.
For a few moments, they stood there. The frozen air around them crisp and biting. The human crowd jittering, the wispy branches at the end of the dormant trees trembling. Silence reigned over the whole scene, and Rose felt the horrid sinking in the pit of her stomach that came with knowing that the entire universe was like this.
One second. The whole universe.
Sealed up, a frozen snapshot in time.
Trapping them there.
The Doctor finally jerked out of his reverie and took a step forwards, and then another, Rose trailing after him.
She kept her death grip on his hand the entire time. He needed her. This- this was a nightmare from the War, and it was a wonder he hadn’t just run into his TARDIS and hid. His strength, as always, astounded her; and she would stand by him, no matter what. Rose’s one heart was nearly overflowing with her worry for this madman she’d run away with; she hoped that this would be a brief encounter. After all, if SIDRATS were made from TARDISes, then this one should be reasonable. Right?
The walk between TARDIS and SIDRAT was brief- about twenty steps or so. Rose cast her eye over the tree as they approached- some North American species she couldn’t identify, like all the others in the park. The only thing that marked this girthy tree out as different was the faint red glow all along the outside of the tree.
The Doctor swallowed and reached out a hand, touching the trunk.
Instantly a seam hissed into life and two doors swung out of the bark.
The Doctor took a step back. So did Rose.
Because out of the SIDRAT tumbled a collection of horrible things. Parts that the Doctor recognized as bits of a Dalek’s armour, and a jumble of distinctly-human bones that instantly sent Rose’s stomach churning.
The Doctor stooped down and picked up a small leatherbound object from the middle of it. A vortex manipulator. He shoved it in his pocket and looked at the inside of the SIDRAT.
The part of him that always, always sought to run and run and keep running for the rest of his days was horrified at what he saw. Rose was, too, grabbing his hand and trying to pull him back, away from the monster his people had made.
The inside of the SIDRAT was no bigger than a coffin. Room enough for one occupant, the walls made of the same roundels that the TARDIS herself had. No light. No space. Nothing.
“How- how are you going to turn it off?!” Rose hissed, “there’s nothing there!”
“I’m going to ask nicely,” the Doctor said, his hearts in his throat.
“Doctor…” Rose said, a warning edge on her tone, “that’s a terrible, terrible-“
“Yes. Yes it is.” He agreed, folding his arms and looking at her, “But unfortunately, it’s the only plan we’ve got. My people built these, they don’t have off switches, so if I don’t go in there and convince her to let us go, we’re not going anywhere, for the rest of time. And that’s assuming she doesn’t just decide to kill us on the spot by collapsing this time loop and drowning us in it. So if you wouldn’t mind, I already don’t want to do this, so-“
He cut himself off, then. Rose looked hurt at his outburst, and the Doctor’s hearts clenched with guilt. She’d only wanted to protect him, and here he was making her upset. He pulled her close into a hug, burying his face in her hair and taking a deep breath. Strawberry shampoo and Rose’s perfume.
Rose gave him a tight squeeze right back, and the Doctor pulled away.
He fished his sonic out of his pocket and slapped it into her palm.
“Five minutes.” He said, “If I’m not out in five minutes, sonic the door open and get me out of there. Got it?”
“What if it kills you?” Rose asked, her eyes falling on the human skeleton in disarticulated pieces at their feet.
The Doctor shook his head.
“It- shouldn’t. Wouldn’t. I think. I hope.” He said, and before Rose could say another word-
He climbed inside the SIDRAT.
The doors slammed closed behind him.
And the Doctor was trapped in darkness.