Chapter Text
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
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Time.
All stories begin with it, really.
It doesn’t matter where or when in the universe you look, and it doesn’t matter what kind of story you seek out. From great epics that span galaxies to whispered tales in the dark, comedies and tragedies and everything in between… even the very first fairy tales told to children begin with the immortal ‘once upon a time.’
No matter how different, no matter how complex or important, they all start from the same place.
They all start with time.
For humans, time appears relatively straightforward. It moves in a single direction, day leading to day as they go about their lives. They separate it into units and assign them names based on the movement of their planet…one rotation of the planet is a day, one journey around the sun is a year, and so forth. It’s always there, so much a constant that most don’t even notice; connecting cause to effect, action to reaction, and minute to minute. It’s linear, ever-present, and inescapable.
And it’s complicated.
Philosophers try to rationalize it, scientists try to quantify it…human beings doing what they do best, trying to make order out of the chaos that is so much larger than anything they could comprehend. Even humans can tell that nothing is ever as simple as it appears to be, nothing is ever truly straightforward, and that steady flow of time that everyone takes for granted is no exception. They struggle to understand it…like trying to glimpse a pattern when one is standing far too close to take it all in…some devoting their entire lives to trying to pin it down through equations or theories, trying to figure out how it all fits together. How it all works.
If there was a way to look at time from the outside…standing along the banks of the river instead of remaining immersed within it…to see it through senses few species were ever meant to possess…what might they see? What might be the consequence?
On Earth, there is a theory known as the ‘butterfly effect,’ a theory based in logic and common sense.
As with so many things, it’s complex and verbose, but ultimately it can be boiled down to the following: if a butterfly flaps its wings, it disturbs a tiny bit of air, the smallest breath of wind in an infinitely large universe. That current of air might then stir up another current of air, perhaps a fraction bigger, a fraction stronger. Then that current could stir up another one, and then that one might trigger another one, beginning a chain of events that could continue on and on, like falling dominos, momentum carrying that ever-growing air current onward until it could end up altering the path of a hurricane or a tornado.
Obviously, the butterfly did not cause the hurricane. But its action, however small, set off a chain reaction that ended up changing something far bigger than itself. It made a change, introduced a variable that would otherwise have not been there, and that change triggered a much bigger change. It changed the course of events…changed the outcome.
Now imagine that in the context of time.
Imagine that in the context of time travel.
Something as simple as a breath of air can change the course of a storm. Imagine the impact one person could have…say, an extra person on a street corner, adding an extra second to someone’s commute or a slight variation in routine. Who’s to say what impact that tiny change might have, who else might be affected by it and change their behavior accordingly…and how much of history occurred because the right person was in the right place at the right time?
Small things can make big changes.
That’s the theory.
The Time Lords would have called this theory ridiculous.
There’s some logic to it, admittedly. There’s no denying the impact that one individual can have, and there’s no denying that a change in action can influence the outcome of events…but the universe is not as fragile as all that. The whole of reality does not hinge on the flap of a butterfly’s wings…it’s more forgiving, more fluid than that. Cause and effect are not so clear cut, and time is so much bigger than numbers and thought experiments.
It’s so much more.
Even species who claimed mastery over it could never hope to understand it in its entirety (though they might have begged to differ at one point). They certainly understood it better than most, saw it in a way that very few others ever could, and they utilized and harnessed it in ways that most could only ever dream of. But even the mightiest of all beings is subject, in the end, to the whims and passage of time…no one can run forever.
Not even those who are born to run.
Most of the knowledge and technology of the Time Lords was lost in fire and war and…yes…time. Some might say the universe is better off in its absence.
But they saw time. They understood it, as best as anyone can. Saw its intricacies and its majesty and looked in from the outside, seeing the whole of the pattern, the larger picture. How it all fits together.
Not everything is set in stone.
That part of the humans’ theory is correct. There are events that are fluid, like a river changing course wherever the water leads. They are in flux, ever-changing, ever-moving, altering history as it happens because it’s all happening at once. Thousands of possibilities, an infinite web of potentials, where anything can happen and everything might. Lives can be saved, disasters can be averted, and entire worlds can be changed in the blink of an eye.
Time will accommodate those changes, forgiving up to a point, because past and present and future are not so straightforward when time ceases to be linear.
See? Complicated.
But not everything is like that. Not everything can be changed. Some things are in flux…but some things aren’t. Some things are fixed.
Some events cannot be altered. Some things must be allowed to play out as they were meant to, as they always must and always have. Some things are too big to erase, too significant to halt or change. Like rocks in the river, they cannot be moved. Humanity’s first voyage to the stars, for instance. It’s a pivotal moment in the history books, instrumental in shaping everything that came after it…and to change it would be to change too much.
Time is forgiving, fluid, yes…but only to a point.
Sometimes it’s obvious which events are fixed. Usually they’re the ones that make the history books, the ones that everyone knows about and the ones that leave an entire world forever altered. The events people know about, the way things are and were and will be.
But some of them are less obvious, pieces of a larger pattern that it’s impossible to make out with human eyes. The birth of a great monarch or a dictator is obvious…the life of their grandparent maybe less so. But without that piece of the puzzle, history is forever altered.
Fixed and flux.
Two ways time can be divided.
The two ways the Time Lords see the universe.
That’s how they know…the only way they could know, really. It’s not about equations and theories. It’s a part of how they see the world around them, a part of their reality itself. They see time, not only in what it is but what it could be, what must not happen and what should never be changed…the blessing and curse of the Time Lords. They might not be able to see every possible outcome (no one can know their own personal future, and fate is something usually reserved for those ‘once upon a time’ stories told to children), but the knowledge of what can and cannot be changed is engrained in them in a way that cannot be ignored or avoided.
However, there’s a third element of time.
Perhaps it’s not a true distinct element from the other two…perhaps it’s more like a mixture of both. More fluid than fixed moments, but more concrete and significant than those that are in flux. Subtle and powerful all at once. But these points in time, these moments that everyone must and will face, are perhaps some of the most important of all.
If life is a journey, if time is a river, than there will come times when a crossroads is reached. A place where the road splits, when the river divides, and where everything hinges on which way things will turn. The outcomes are more limited and distinct than those moments when everything is in flux, but there is no one way that things will end. These are the moments of truth, the moments where everything hangs in the balance.
The moments of divergence.
The timeline splits, parallel universes are formed, and nothing is certain. Everything depends on the outcome of that moment. There is no one fixed ending…but in the end, these are the moments that will dictate the outcome of events from then on. Whichever way things turn out, it will impact not only the lives of those involved, but quite possibly the very universe itself. Leaving everything changed in its wake.
Time holds its breath, and everything comes down to a moment. A choice.
To speak or to remain silent.
To turn right or turn left.
To hold on or let go.
Every step taken on the road of life, every page in the story, every minute and every action that is not nearly as linear as it appears…it all culminates in these moments.
And the hardest part is, it’s almost impossible to recognize these moments of divergence for what they are. Sometimes it’s obvious, true, but very often, it’s not recognizable for what it is until afterwards. Even a Time Lord would not be able to know for certain, would not be able to see the outcome. They might see the clouds on the horizon, might sense the storm in the air, but they cannot know the ending. No one can.
And no one can escape it.
No one.
All they can do…all anyone can do…is hold on to what’s important with everything they have, give it their all, and face the time when it comes.
Because it will come. It has been coming, from the moment the story began, maybe even before that. Every choice, every word, every action, all leading up to the moment that will decide things forever. The moment of truth.
The moment when everything changes.
There’s no running, not from this. Not anymore.
Because a storm is coming.
The valiant child must go to battle.
And all stories must end.