Work Text:
Since ‘Commit Deja Vu’ is currently on the backburner, but still useful in explaining the resulting events in ‘After All, I Collected You,’ I’ve written a summary explaining how exactly this timeline works (in the fic versions, at least.)
Benny is in the late New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield era.
There are firmly two or more Braxiatels around, and the original Dellah/Collection Brax and Legion/Later Gallifrey Brax are very different people.
The Braxiatel Collection needs to happen for a few reasons- one being the anomaly in Bernice’s timeline is going to worsen and unravel without it. For example, in the audios/later books, it lasts for about thirteen years, then ceases to have existed- but before Theatre of War where Benny first met Brax, it’s thousands of years old.
To alleviate the problem the best that can be done and protect the universe- Legion Brax ‘comes across’ Collection Brax’s money, then asks for Bernice’s advice to keep him on the straight and narrow when setting it up, and manipulate time the least that can be safely done.
This results in many altered events:
-Bernice pretending to be Braxiatel’s assistant
-Her identity being revealed when a shard of Avril Fenman’s crystal makes her switch bodies with her younger self
-Jason being hypnotized specifically to no longer love Benny, for his own safety
-The Fifth Axis occupation is much shorter, only three months as opposed to a full year
-When it’s over, Brax leaves for the Time War rather than run away after Cantus, so his hiding is a different nature and Maggie isn't made, but her ship still exists
-The Mim were never actually threats before Braxiatel’s manipulation, and because he didn’t, they aren’t
-Jason survives
-Braxiatel orders that Adrian, the new Bernice, and Peter leave the Collection while he keeps Jason in order for it to be safer
-The Deindum have still been wiped
-Once things are locked in place, it becomes a closed loop, the timelines switching every cycle.
The new timeline results in a Braxiatel with a personality much closer to early Collection years, with the memories of Legion and much further along than that. Theatre of War happens in this one because he knows Benny and the Collection survives.
Since he made his best effort to fix mistakes, the original Benny is best friends with him again, though not without caution. Because even though it technically never happened, Brax’s perception of time and memory is being warped and he can’t always remember what’s real, and Benny will still never be quite the same. However this does drive them close in some ways, because he's also the only one around who remembers any of the original events and can relate to her.
You… may need to read this a couple times. It’s very contrived for a fix-it plotline. Commit Deja Vu will be completed one day and make a lot more of this make sense, but that’s it for now I’m afraid.