Chapter Text
This was a Tuesday, which are always problematic, on the newly-minted world named Earthish. The planet was ancient, her rocks had formed millions of years ago, evolutionary cycles had waxed and waned, producing endless species in endless variations leading up to this particular Tuesday and yet, all at the same time, none of this had existed a few days ago. All of that history, all of those billions upon billions of years, had been laid down in one fell swoop as a diligent garner puts down rolls of turf on a newly planted lawn.
Along the end of an unremarkable street in an average city on a continent of Earthish a sound developed, echoing and reverberating from the high whitewashed walls that hemmed the alleyway in. Papers and trash rustled in a sudden breeze, and the morning silence was broken by the noise which had never before been heard in a way that mere humans could process. The wheezing and groaning of the universe itself breathing, as an unobtrusive blue box faded into existence. All at once, the box had always been there, as anyone passing by would tell themselves. Of course it had, how could things be otherwise? Blue wooden boxes don't appear out of nowhere.
The children were finishing a meal at their favourite fast-food outlet, MacDonAldson's. It wasn't quite right, the colours were off and the food was just ever-so-slghtly wrong, but it was a close enough approximation to what they remembered. The food was good and the breeze was blowing and the sun was shining, and if the quality of the light was perhaps just a touch more yellow then they remembered from before, well why did that matter really? It was close enough.
Rose got up, wiping at her lips with a paper napkin, "I'm going to wash my hands, I'll be right back."
As she pushed into the ladies' lavatory she heard an odd buzzing whirring sound, and when she rounded the corner of the rank of toilet stalls she was confronted with a man on his hands and knees doing something under a sink. A greenish glow came from under there, and he was muttering something under his breath. She went to a sink as far away from him as possible, the man must have been some kind of plumber- though she found it hard to imagine a plumber wearing tweed to work- and although she accepted the need for plumbers and plumbing services in general she still found it vaguely distasteful to find a male here in the Ladies.
At the sound of running water he sat up suddenly on his knees, knocking his head awkwardly on the sink as he came up.
"Ow!"
"Oh I'm sorry, did I distract you?"
"Liar,"
"Excuse me?"
"You're not sorry at all," he pulled himself to his feet, it was like watching a scarecrow assemble itself- poorly, "you're quietly satisfied that I bumped my head."
He looked so serious, at first Rose didn't know what to say at all and felt absolutely dumbstruck, but then he cracked a wide grin and held out a hand.
"Hello! I'm the Doctor."
"Uhm, Rose," she shook the offered hand warily.
"Rose," he looked at her seriously for a moment. He face could adopt a sudden and very disconcerting mask of absolute gravity in an instant, she noticed, "that's a lovely name."
"Thankyou Doctor... ummm?" she raised an eyebrow expectantly, but the man had already darted off, he was now examining the door jamb of a stall, he had the tool he was using before out and was running the glowing green tip up and down the door as if measuring something. The tool was the source of the buzzing.
"Who doesn't matter. You should be asking why- why would a strange man be doing strange things right here and now, aren't you," he turned, "a little curious?"
Rose clenched her fists at her sides, she didn't like the self-assured way this man, this Doctor, spoke, as though he was already several paragraphs ahead in the conversation and waiting patiently for her to read ahead. She was getting the wary, clenched feeling in her stomach again, the same feeling she thought she had left behind her, the one that said danger! Something isn't right! But she had learned to conquer that feeling, just as she had learned to conquer danger. Just as she had learned she was in no way defenceless.
"Alright then," she replied, "I am curious. What are you doing here? What is that green buzzy thing?"
"This?" He held up his sonic screwdriver, "well, I suppose, it is a green buzzy thing, really. And as for what I'm doing, I'm trying to work out why and entire world, it's people and history is here and now where it's always been, when yesterday or the day before it wasn't and never had been."
He was staring at her again. Her throat clenched. He knows! No one is supposed to know! They are supposed to just be happy and that's the end of it!
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't I? Well then, Rose, it looks like I'm very lucky indeed that you're here to explain it to me then."
She turned back to the sink and began scrubbing her hands under a flow of water furiously. She refused to answer that. He pointed the screwdriver and did something- and the water stopped. No matter how she pounded the faucet nothing happened.
"How did you do that?"
"It's not important, but lots of other things are very important. There used to be a world here, a world I had grown very fond of and liked a great deal, and now there's this one instead and I'd say it's very important to find out why."
"Shut up!" She was almost screaming, her fists beat at her sides, "just shut up and leave it! Everything's fine now, it's all back to how it's meant to be!"
"You've been telling yourself that a lot haven't you Rose," he said softly, and she could see to her horror some measure of understanding in his eyes, as though anyone could understand what it meant to just start everything over and act like nothing had happened. "But I don't think this is right at all. It's a very clever thing that someone has done here, this world is very nearly right, isn't it? I'm no expert really, but even I can see that it's very close to Earth. But it's not Earth, is it? And you know something about what happened don't you, Rose?"
She was staring at him in naked horror, now. "Where did you come from?"
"Somewhere far away from here."
"No one is supposed to know what happened. There's nothing left from back then."
"Almost nothing. I've been gone for quite some time."
That much was true. The TARDIS barely had the energy to escape from the collapse that consumed the universe, a cascade reaction that had affected every point in space and time simultaneously. It had withdrawn to the only safe haven it cold find, a minuscule pocket-universe, a forgotten offshoot existing in a bubble of time safely apart from the rest, and there the TARDIS had waited until suddenly, miraculously, everything returned all at once. The entire universe collapsing and expanding again almost exactly as it had been. Almost, but not quite.
"I don't think I want to talk to you any more," said Rose quietly.
"Maybe later then."
"I don't have time for this," she pushed past him and left, to find the others. Even before she had gone through the door the usual smile she always wore was safely back in place.
"Time," said the Doctor, watching her go, "that's the one thing I do have."