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Tom decided to put his book aside, not even bothering to mark the page he was on. He didn’t find it that interesting anyway. “A Journal of Impossible Things”, it was called, but Tom didn’t care much for it, couldn’t get to concentrate on it. He didn’t care much for anything these days—not ever since his dumb fight with Matt. That had only been a week ago, but to Tom it felt like an eternity.
Tom was tired. He usually didn’t get tired until much later at night, and he couldn’t say that he had done anything that day that could lead to such a degree of fatigue. Or the previous days, for that matter. Yesterday had been New Year’s, the day before that of course New Year’s Eve, and he had spent those alone, at home. He preferred it that way. Good friends, ones that actually cared about you and who you could trust were hard to come by, and you could never count on family—not Tom’s anyway. Normally, he’d have celebrated the coming of the new year with Matt, but he hadn’t seen him or spoken to him since Boxing Day.
His neck was also hurting. He should probably exercise more. It was a bit late for a New Year’s resolution, the second day of the year already coming to an end, but it would be something to keep his mind off of Matt. Only thinking about it already made him dizzy. Or was that something else? Whatever it was, a glass of water couldn’t hurt. And something to eat—if he hadn’t forgotten to get provisions with which to refill his fridge. Tom stood up from his sofa. On his way to the kitchen he noticed that he was running short of breath. Yes, he really needed to exercise more. While he thought about the nearest gym to get a membership at, Tom fell. His heart ached, but not in the way it had been aching for the last week. He felt the pain coming from inside his chest. Only then did he realise he was dying.
In his last moments, his life did not flash before his eyes. His mind didn’t show him any highlights from his life. Not the good ones, like the day he’d met Matt, or the day they’d got engaged—nor the bad ones, like that very much unpleasant day on which he had last talked to his family. He wished Matt could be here with him now, but Tom knew that it was his fault that he wasn’t. He’d have to accept that, to die alone, in silence. Complete and utter silence. He usually quite liked that silence, at that time of night when the rest of the world was starting to go to sleep and it almost felt like he was the only living person on Earth. He didn’t enjoy it now, though, lying on the floor, dying. His eyes were looking sideways at the open kitchen window, and he felt as if he were watching a film with the sound turned off. And one of those weird surrealist films at that, probably, or else he wouldn’t be seeing a small, pink creature fly into his kitchen, would he?
The creature flew closer to his face. It reminded him of a butterfly, except for the fact that it had three wings. Three of everything, actually. Three legs, three eyes, three antennae. Its body rotated constantly around its axis, and Tom could see that it had a sort of leathery texture. It landed before him, closed its wings and formed a triangular, pink prism. That was no way to die, Tom thought. He deserved another chance, another go. He could do so much better. The creature agreed.
On that very same night, only a few minutes earlier, a blue box materialised in Sheffield. The Doctor, Yaz, Ryan and Graham were returning from a trip to the second moon of Clix, where they had helped solve the murder of an eccentric collector of Clom antiques. Now, back on Earth, the Doctor dropped her friends back into their lives. Ryan had mates to meet, and Yaz had promised her sister to be there for whatever her idea of a fun night was. The Doctor watched as Ryan quickly disappeared into the night and Yaz slowly made her way towards her front door, looking back one last time before going inside. Only then did she notice Graham still standing next to the TARDIS.
‘Graham!’ she exclaimed. ‘Almost didn’t see you there. I suppose you’ve got places to be as well?’
‘No, actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I…’ he hesitated, trying to find the right words. ‘I was wondering if you’d mind if I stayed here for a night, in the TARDIS. I’d go home but it’s still a bit empty, you know.’ It had been over a year now since Grace’s death, but sometimes the mere thought of her absence still seemed like a devastating impossibility to him. ‘Ryan’s got his own life, and I’m proud of him for it, but without him there the flat’s too quiet, too—’ he stopped himself before saying ‘dead’.
As he looked up to the Doctor he saw a mix of understanding and what seemed like relief.
‘All right, Graham, come on in! After all, the more the merrier,’ she said, running off to press buttons and pull levers on the console. Before he had time to even close the TARDIS door she continued talking with a break-neck speed. ‘I could make tea. Do you want some tea? I haven’t made tea in ages! I have these Venusian tea leaves, you’re going to love them. Well, the Schadmochian princess didn’t, but she was actually a Zygon, so I wouldn’t count on her opinion. Anyway, I just remembered I lost the last leaves I had to a gull on Kelados in a fight. Very rude gull, didn’t even ask for permission!’
‘Don’t worry about it, Doc,’ he replied. ‘I’ll just head over to the coffee machine, I’m collecting the coupons it spits out.’
The Doctor smiled and nodded absently, still fiddling with the controls.
‘I’m introducing the space-time coordinates, is there anywhere you want to go before landing here again tomorrow morning?’ she asked, without looking up.
Graham hadn’t even processed her question completely when he noticed that the Doctor was frowning. He wanted to ask what the matter was, but he could already gather that it wasn’t good. The Doctor was frantically running around the console, pulling levers, reading displays and showing a general sense of anxious unease.
‘No, no, no. This shouldn’t be happening! That is not good.’
The TARDIS took off in a much more brusque manner than Graham was used to. He tried to hold on to one of the TARDIS columns, but the glowing crystal was too smooth to provide any grip—so he fell.
As soon as the TARDIS landed—which was sooner than usual—the Doctor rushed towards him.
‘Sorry about that. Everything all right?’
‘No worries, Doc, I’m perfectly fine,’ he said, taking her hand as he stood up. He was a bit dizzy, that was all.
‘Wait, hold this for a second’.
The Doctor was emptying her pockets, producing one item after another and placing them in Graham’s hands. A red yo-yo, a tuning fork, a roll of sticky-tape, and a bag of jelly babies that indicated that its content should preferably be consumed before 1989. Graham was occupied trying to gauge how long these had been inside the Doctor’s pocket while she waved a strange artefact around his body.
‘What’s that?’ he asked, deciding to try one of the jelly babies.
‘Nothing, just checking for injuries. Or illnesses, or extra toes. Oh, your appendix is in great shape!’ She snatched the jelly baby out of his fingers. ‘I wouldn’t eat that if I were you, those must have expired some three-hundred years ago. Hold on.’ She tasted it with full concentration. ‘Nope, false alarm, they’re still good until Sunday,’ she said, putting everything she’d taken out back into her pockets—although she let Graham keep the jelly babies.
‘That’s good to know Doc, but what about the TARDIS? It doesn’t usually do that, and it’s not supposed to do that either, I reckon.’
‘Aha!’ Graham wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be an answer. The Doctor was looking at the TARDIS monitor. ‘It seems like we’ve moved, but not that much.’
‘How much is that?’ He didn’t know if the Doctor’s vague quantitative description of their displacement could be trusted. The words ‘not that much’ could mean anything from two millimetres to two galaxies, or a couple of centuries if she was referring to a temporal displacement.
‘Just a week into the future.’
‘And where are we now?’ He hoped they were at least still in Sheffield.
Instead of giving a straight answer the Doctor opened the door and stepped out, so Graham followed her out onto what was very clearly a cemetery. The Doctor immediately pulled our her sonic screwdriver and started scanning the area. There was some sort of signal, a strange reading, coming from one direction. She traced it to its origin, a grave only a few feet away. Tom’s grave.
‘Who are you, Thomas Pallister, and why is your grave giving off weird artron readings,’ she muttered to herself.
Graham didn’t know what any of that meant, but he understood that something had brought the TARDIS here against its will, and this something was somehow related to that grave or to the man lying in it.
‘Hold on, Doc, the second of January. That’s where we were just a minute ago.’
‘You’re wondering if that could have anything to do with our being taken here so suddenly. Well thought, Graham, that’s five points for you.’ Her voice was enthusiastic, but Graham couldn’t think about points or gold stars. All he could do was stare at the grave, at the difference between the date of birth and that of death. Not even thirty years. ‘Can you do me a favour?’ the Doctor continued. ‘I need you to find out anything you can about how this man died.’
‘How?’
‘You’re Graham! You’ve got your bus driver’s charm, there’s probably an information desk or something like that at the entrance? Do they have those at cemeteries? You’re humans, you love your information desks! Thomas Pallister, recent burial, young lad, they probably remember him. Oh, wait!’ She took out her psychic paper and held it out to him. ‘Take this with you, just in case.’
With that, she sent him away. She was now alone with Tom’s grave. For a moment she felt free, no longer needing to put on this constant energetic façade. Being around people drained her, constantly showing them her best side, no matter the situation. But that feeling lasted only a moment, before she got reminded that being alone hurt. Being alone was lonely, it forced her to cope with her own thoughts and memories. She had lived a turbulent life, with many dark moments. That was why she always had to pretend to be light-hearted, to protect her friends from the horrors of the universe. And yet, that hadn’t been enough to save many of them.
It hadn’t saved her most recent companions before meeting the fam. Turned into a Cyberman, killed by a bird executioner, doomed to live their lives in a foreign country’s past, forced to have their memories erased, banished to a parallel universe… It hadn’t been much better before the Time War either. In fact, the companions of her eighth incarnation had on average probably drawn the shortest of all sticks. But it had started even before that. The darker aspects of her life had pushed away Ace and Tegan. Adric had died a horrific death, and worst of all a preventable one. Even in her first incarnation the Doctor had been witness to tragedies such as those that befell Sara Kingdom or the young Katarina.
Remembering Adric, Sara and Katarina, a different thought followed. The three of them had died without the possibility of a respectful burial. Adric, who had lost his family before leaving E-Space, crashed into the Earth. Sara, who had lost her brother as a consequence of the Daleks’ machinations, had been turned to dust by the Time Destructor on an alien jungle planet. Katarina, the girl who had survived the burning of her entire civilisation, had launched herself into space to save the Doctor’s life. And now, something had happened, and this thing had led her to another dead man. Another dead young man.
She had to solve whatever was wrong, and quickly. She had to protect her friends, her fam. She couldn’t allow anything to happen to Graham or Ryan, nor to… nor to… Yaz. And, if possible, she intended on saving Tom’s life too… Her head was hurting. But it wasn’t her thoughts that were causing this. She scanned the grave again, same result. Low artron energy levels. Low levels. Why? How could something that produced such low readings derail the TARDIS this much, and without warning? There had to be something else, something obvious she was missing. Artron energy, a dead man—it reminded her of something, but she couldn’t make sense of it. Not with her head feeling as if it were statically collapsing, simultaneously imploding and exploding.
She opened her eyes again. Graham lowered his hands, uncovering his mouth and nose, his fingers still interlocked, and stood up. He had had to drag the Doctor back into the TARDIS after finding her barely able to stand on her own feet and clutching her head in pain. Once they had stepped in, the doors had immediately shut close behind them. As soon as that had happened, the Doctor had collapsed onto the floor accompanied by a sound that Graham could only describe as a groan from the TARDIS as it took off. After finding two slightly accelerated pulses and a faint breath he had put her into the lateral safety position and waited. For a long time he had watched attentively and sat silently on the steps that led to the console room, bathed in its dim blue light, hearing only its humming.
That light now changed to a much brighter orange hue as the Doctor seemed to recover. She had only been standing for a fraction of a second and was already racing to check the controls as if nothing had happened. Well, not exactly. She still had quite a frown on her face, but that wasn’t at all a rare occurrence, and she didn’t collapse that frequently, did she? He pushed that thought aside.
‘Do you need anything, Doc?’
‘Yes! Tell me, Graham, what did you find out.’ Was she not going to acknowledge what had just happened?
‘I meant if you need a glass of water, or a sandwich, or anything of that sort. Or maybe you should use that device-thing of yours on you. See if you’ve got any injuries…’ he stopped there, unsure whether the Doctor had any illnesses or extra toes that he wasn’t aware of.
‘What happened here is a serious temporal anomaly that may be endangering the entire fabric of space and time and I need to find its cause. Now, what did you find out.’
‘I got nothing! He died of a heart attack. In hospital. That’s all I know.’
‘Right,’ the Doctor nodded. ‘A bit unusual, considering his age. But there’s something else I don’t understand.’ She walked back over to the console.
‘What’s that?’
‘According to these readings, we haven’t moved. Only ten minutes have passed since we landed here.’ He’d thought she had been out cold for longer than that, but maybe his emotions had clouded his sense of time. ‘We haven’t moved one inch, not through space and not through time.’
‘But that’s not possible, I heard the TARDIS.’
‘Exactly. But check for yourself! Same place, same time!’ She switched the scanner on. They were still on the same cemetery, parked on the same spot—except…
‘Except now there’s a bloke leaving flowers,’ Graham pointed out.
It was only through looking at the scanner that he saw that the Doctor had already exited the TARDIS to approach that man. He followed her outside, both to hear what the man was saying and in case whatever had happened to the Doctor happened again.
‘They… They didn’t even let me in to see him.’ The man was crying, the tears reflecting the light off his umber face, but Graham immediately noticed something else: his age—or rather his youth. He was around thirty, maybe slightly younger. Just like the deceased Thomas Pallister. The Doctor seemed to already have gathered all the information she needed.
‘I’m so sorry, thank you very much. And I’m sorry for your loss.’
‘No, no. It’s… comforting, to know there’s still someone else out there who cared—still cares about him.’
The Doctor stood still, looking down. Her right hand was holding her left arm in a tight grip around the elbow. She gave the man a quick glance before turning, briefly giving Graham a worried look and disappearing into the TARDIS.
‘You know,’ Graham said, ‘we’d love to stay and chat for a bit, but we sadly have to leave right now. We’re probably already running late.’
‘No, yeah.’ The man took out a paper handkerchief to brush his tears away and turned to face the grave. ‘I have places to be myself. I have to take a bus, get groceries…’ as he said that, he carefully placed the one red rose he was carrying, just like the ones Graham used to place on Grace’s grave. They both gave each other a brief nod. After that, the man simply turned around and Graham watched him leave, go back into his life. Once the man had become only a small dot in his field of vision, Graham finally decided to step back into the TARDIS. The calm and quiet of the graveyard gave way to a hectic Doctor trying to pilot a machine that in response only produced weirder and weirder sounds.
‘What’s going on, Doc?’
‘I’m trying to convince the TARDIS to go back to the date of Thomas Pallister’s death, but she’s being really stubborn about it.’
‘And what do we want to do that for?’
‘To prevent it from happening, of course!’
Maybe she still hadn’t recovered completely. He’d heard her talk about the importance of not messing with history. He’d even seen her take drastic decisions to ensure certain events didn’t change, no matter how tragic those events were—first the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955, and later the death of Yaz’s nan’s first husband in 1947. And now she was suddenly talking about going back in time specifically to prevent a man’s death?
‘But wouldn’t that rip the space-time continuum apart or something? Maybe the TARDIS has a point.’
‘Maybe. But maybe not.’ Maybe she’d lost it, Graham thought. But then again, maybe not. Saying cryptic words that vaguely resembled nonsense was, after all, something she did more often than not. ‘Remind me how you said he had died,’ she added.
‘Heart attack. Why? What’s weird about that?’
‘How can a man who died of a heart attack also die from crashing his car fatally? Time was changed! That’s what I, as a time sensitive being, had such a bad reaction to. That’s why the TARDIS moved only to land on the same place again: it was the same place, but in a completely different time!’ Graham was only barely following her explanation. ‘But his body was already radiating artron energy before that. So not only was his second death wrong, his first one probably was too. If it really was his first death, who knows!’
‘Right. Got it,’ Graham lied.
‘Great! I thought I’d have to explain it again in simpler terms.’ She pulled the lever again, getting another screech from the TARDIS in response. ‘Argh! Come on, old girl…’
‘I mean, if you could still do that… just to make sure.’
The Doctor let the lever go and turned to Graham once again.
‘Time is already being ripped apart because Tom here is dying in ways he’s not supposed to. So we’re going back to fix things. Stop him from dying in hospital with a heart attack, or after a car crash, or in any secret third way.’
‘Got it. Actually got it this time. I think.’
‘Good. Now, if we want to stop the space-time continuum from breaking, you’d better hold on to something. Because we’re going, now.’
Graham held onto the console for his life, fearing a repeat of last trip’s fall if he didn’t.
‘How are you going to do that if the TARDIS isn’t cooperating?’
The Doctor pushed the lever and the TARDIS started its flight.
‘By not setting course to the second of January, but the first, and then—’ she said before dramatically pulling a different lever ‘—pulling the brake!’
Graham’s feet were pulled off the ground as the TARDIS shook violently for more than fifteen seconds before coming to an abrupt stop. He slowly and carefully let go of the console. The lights, both the blue that usually radiated off of the walls and the orange emitted by the central console, had shut off mid-flight. The humming had also stopped. They were now standing in complete, dark, silence.
‘There!’ the Doctor proudly proclaimed nevertheless. Graham wasn’t as sure as she was that the manoeuvre had worked.
‘And you’re sure we’ve landed where we were supposed to, on the second of January, close enough to this Thomas to save his life—instead of, you know, being shot through space onto Neptune in the thirty-sixth century,’ he inquired.
‘Neptune doesn’t have a solid surface to land on, so we’re definitely not there,’ the Doctor answered, caressing the console.
‘That wasn’t the question though, Doc.’
He didn’t know whether the Doctor was listening to his objections. She was busy gently pressing her face against the surface of the ship’s console. Not that he could see that. He couldn’t see anything at the moment. But it was only a short moment before the central console lit up again, shining a bright orange onto the Doctor’s cheek. The crystal columns quickly followed, and it wasn’t long until the walls also cast their blue shimmer once more.
‘Good girl’, the Doctor whispered.
The ship shyly resumed its eternal humming and switched on its scanner, proudly displaying a street with as little traffic as one would expect in Felton-upon-Trent on a Thursday—specifically Thursday the second of January 2020, as the TARDIS reading indicated and the Doctor was quick to loudly exclaimed.
‘It really is the right date.’ Graham was impressed, as he so often was by this stranger who had whisked him, Ryan, and Yaz away into the expanse of the universe. It didn’t matter that he barely knew anything about her, like where she was from, if she’d ever had a family, or whether ‘The Doctor’ was her actual name. He knew that, despite all the difficulties the universe could throw her way, and no matter how much it would take, you could always rely on her. Her heart was in the right place—or her hearts? Another thing he didn’t understand about her, but that didn’t matter either.
‘Of course it is!’ the Doctor smiled. ‘Sometimes the TARDIS gets a bit overprotective, but she always ends up taking me where I need to be. Isn’t that right, old girl?’ She kneeled down to address the ship face-to-console. ‘I’m sorry about that. When this is over I’ll make a general check-up on all your systems. Promise.’
The orange light of the console intensified for a short second before returning to its usual brightness. The Doctor was then forced back onto her feet by the sound of an alarm coming from the scanner, which was glowing red.
Graham at first wanted to check the scanner to see what might be wrong, but he changed his mind almost immediately, instead choosing to follow the Doctor as she dashed outside. He was quick enough to still see her jump to push a man out of traffic’s way.
The car honked and drove away. There was no-one else in the immediate vicinity. The man didn’t seem at all shocked by his near-death experience, but rather surprised at the fact that he was still alive. He picked up a piece of paper that had fallen out of his pocket in the fall and slowly stood up, all the while staring at the Doctor. She, however, was fishing for her sonic screwdriver inside her grey coat. Once she’d managed that, she seemed to have some difficulty holding it, blowing at it and generally treating it as one would a hot potato.
‘All right, high artron energy readings, no need to get so excited,’ she said, talking to her screwdriver. ‘It’s clear we’ve found the right man.’
Upon hearing that, the man—Thomas Pallister—ran as fast as he could in the direction that led him away from the Doctor. That direction led Tom to once again cross the street and immediately bump into Graham, putting an end to his sprint.
‘Watch it, pal, you don’t wanna get ran over again, do ya? I mean, we’re trying to save your life here,’ said Graham. ‘A “thank you” would’ve been appreciated.’
‘Who are you? You’re not supposed to be here.’ Tom seemed quite sure about that.
‘Graham, the paper.’ The Doctor gestured as if she were holding a badge, and Graham threw the psychic paper over to her. ‘See for yourself.’
Tom only gave the psychic paper a glance.
‘There’s nothing on there. And you’re not supposed to be here,’ he reiterated.
‘Very well then.’ The Doctor put the psychic paper back into her coat and produced the bio-scanner device-thing from her pocket, with which she proceeded to scan Tom. ‘I’m the Doctor, and that’s my friend Graham. Your heart doesn’t seem to be doing all too well. Explains the heart attack.’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘And how do you know about a heart attack that you haven’t had yet? I presume that has something to do with the creature you’ve apparently got sitting on your chest. Am I close?’
He didn’t ask again how she knew that. Instead, he looked her firmly in the eyes, then examined Graham in the same way.
‘Mate, it looks like you’ve got a lot of explaining to do,’ said Graham.
Tom saw himself forced to agree. He invited the Doctor and Graham over to his flat, made tea, felt hungry, got forcefully reminded that his fridge was empty, accepted Graham’s offer of a pickle and cheese sandwich, and started to explain everything.
He told them about the first night, about how he’d felt so utterly alone, how deafening the silence had been, how he had died. He told them about the creature, about how it had flown through the window, how he had felt it speaking to him and he had accepted its offer. He showed them the mark where it sat on his chest, the three wings forming a circularly symmetrical shape that resembled a glowing pink birthmark.
He told them how he had woken up, again on the same morning, and tried to stop his own death from happening. How he had gone to the hospital, waited for hours only to be dismissed at first. How he had still been there when the heart attack finally happened, how the doctors in the ER had tried everything they could, yet failed.
He told them how he had woken up, once again on the same morning, and tried to escape. How, not wanting to die alone, he had tried to drive to see Matt down in Leicester, but crashed with another car on his way to the M1. How he had survived for hours, in pain, long enough to hear the winning lotto numbers of the night, but also awake enough to suffer additionally when his family arrived. He told them how his family had been the reason he’d been hesitant to put a date to his wedding with Matt, the reason he’d fought with Matt, and how on that night his family had come not out of genuine care for him, but only to prevent Matt from being at his side in his final hours.
He showed them the paper that had fallen out of his pocket earlier. It was a lottery ticket, with instructions written on the back for the ticket to be given to Matthew Antony Hines in the event of Tom’s death. He told them how he wanted nothing more than to make things better, even if just slightly. How he had the power to change things, and that gave him the duty to try.
‘I know what we’re dealing with,’ the Doctor finally said. ‘That creature on your chest, it’s a Time Lepidopteran or Temporal Butterfly. It makes you go back on your own life repeatedly to feed off of the energy produced by the rewriting of the timelines. I’ve seen similar things happen before,’ she explained. Like the Weeping Angels, in a way, or like the Trickster’s Brigade. ‘There is only one way of stopping this. Renouncing the deal.’
‘But why?’ Tom asked, to both the Doctor’s and Graham’s surprise. ‘Did you not listen to a word I said? I have the power to make things better, if not for me then at least for Matt. And you want me to give that up? No.’
‘You’re tearing time apart, mate. That’s pretty serious,’ said Graham.
‘So what? This Time Butterfly can’t be the only one of its kind, and time still exists. And you…’ he looked both Graham and the Doctor intensely in the eyes, as if trying to look through them into their souls—or was that the creature? Graham felt a shiver run down his spine. ‘You know about all this. And you say you’ve seen things like this before. It’s probably not the first time that time gets rewritten, right? Then how am I still here, how does the universe still go on? It must have a way of healing itself.’
‘Yeah,’ said Graham, ‘and that’s us. Innit, Doc?’
She didn’t know if Tom’s assumption about the creature was correct. Some species did destroy their own ecosystems, like parasites destroying the bodies of their hosts. And maybe there actually wasn’t another Time Lepidopteran out there—just the one, jumping from host to host; there were more unique beings and last of their kinds in the universe than one would expect—she had met many on her travels, even thought she was one herself for a time. But did all that really matter?
‘Time, eventually, heals itself. But the wound is still inflicted, and it’s a nasty process. I’ve witnessed it before, and believe me, you’re glad that you haven’t.’
‘But it does heal.’
‘You are not in charge, the Lepidopteran is. It’s influencing your decisions, to act not for your own good, but to change as much as possible. First a small change, just trying to save your life. Then a bigger one, driving out of town, getting into a car crash, your family gets involved. Now you’ve got a winning lottery ticket, congrats. What will it be tomorrow?’
‘You’re dodging the question.’
‘There is no happy ending to this, where you create the best world and rest in peace! Because with every cycle, the Lepidopteran gets more and more powerful. It can’t let you reach a satisfying conclusion, because it needs you to go back and change things again, and again, and again. And you think you’re making things better? We’ve met Matt, spoken to him. You’re just creating and erasing timeline after timeline, and in all of them Matt still has to grieve your loss, again, and again, and again. Is that what you want? To multiply his pain through every possible future?’
‘What do you care!’ he bellowed back. ‘Be honest, Doctor, why are you here. I’m not cheating death! Why are you trying to rob me of the last thing I can do with my life? Of all the things that must be happening throughout all of time and space, why bother with me?’
Graham jumped in to defend her. ‘Because we happened to find you. Our ship started behaving weirdly after she dropped me and the others home today. It’s a coincidence, really.’
‘Oh, so that’s why.’ It was an accusation. ‘There it is, then. This is about how I’m affecting you. Your ship, your friends. This is about you being able to visit your friends in a stable time. Well I’m sorry to be selfish about my own life, but you’re being just as selfish about yours.’
Was he right? The Doctor realised that he was, at least partially. She hadn’t even stopped to think about what this would mean for her. But Tom had struck a chord. She was too time-sensitive, she wouldn’t be able to visit the centuries, or maybe millennia, that time would take to set itself right—not if it had to happen again and again without end—and the TARDIS wouldn’t be able to take it either. Least of all on Earth, where the event was focused. As things were now, she would never be able to bring Graham back home with Ryan. She wouldn’t be able to see Yaz ever again either. To her, she would have disappeared without saying goodbye, abandoning her. She hadn’t given it much thought before now, but could that be the actual reason she wanted to fix things so badly? It was certainly plaguing her now. She had simply jumped into action, impulsive and reckless as ever.
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Graham jumped in again. ‘You see, I haven’t known her for that long. A little over a year only—maybe a bit longer, with us nor living in sync with linear time or whatever. But if there’s one thing I know about her—and it might actually be the only thing I can say with absolute certainty—it’s that she’s anything but selfish. I’ve seen her do all sorts of things, always putting herself between anyone and danger. And I know that, if she had to leave her entire life behind just to help someone out there, even if it’s only one person, she’ll do it. Even if it meant never seeing me, or my grandson, or our friend Yaz ever again. ‘Cause I’ve seen her make that decision once for the sake of a living universe that was feeling lonely, and I reckon she’s done that sort of thing more often than anyone could ever count in the time before she met us.’
Something inside Tom didn’t want to trust these words, but somewhere else inside him, he knew that Graham was speaking the truth. He also saw it in the Doctor, her silent posture, trying to hide her embarrassment over the fact that her generosity had been exposed in a way she’d never have admitted herself.
‘But…’ Tom still thought he deserved another chance, a chance to do better. He refused to think that this had all been for nothing, that there was nothing else he could do. ‘No. No, there has to be something else, another way… the time loop is linked to today, but you have a time-machine. Why don’t you just take me out of here, to a completely different time and place, somewhere in the future when this doesn’t matter any more—or the past when it doesn’t matter yet!’
‘No.’ The Doctor’s reply was immediate, cold.
‘You didn’t even think about it.’
‘I don’t need to.’
Desperation gave way to rage, which Tom let out on Graham.
‘There’s your selfless friend. Behind the heroic adventurous masks hides a stone-cold selfish monster. She won’t even consider it!’
At that, the Doctor snapped.
‘Do you seriously think you’re the first person something like this happens to? Because you’re not.’ Her voice was stern. ‘I won’t do it because it’s not possible, because it doesn’t work, and I know that because I have tried. I have played this game for so long, tried to twist my way through the rules of time, cheat the death of friends, time after time, but it doesn’t work. I have kept running for so long, trying to defy the universe, and it always comes back to me. This me is not making the same mistakes. I don’t always like what the universe throws at me, but as hard as I may try, the currents of time are not ones you can swim against.’
The humming of Tom’s empty fridge was the only sound in the moments it took him to let the Doctor’s words sink in. He thought hard, trying to find a reason why she was wrong, a reason not to give up his current existence, as frail a replacement for life as it was. Not finding an answer in his thoughts, he turned to words. He mustered only one.
‘But…’
Graham put a hand on Tom’s shoulder, and that said all it needed to. There was no ‘but’, not in a way that Tom actually wanted. Even if the Doctor changed her mind and took him to a distant past or future, what would he achieve with that? He could maybe live for a while, but probably not for long before the same natural causes that had killed him the first time caught up with him, but most importantly it would mean leaving Matt behind, forever. They wouldn’t see each other ever again. To Matt, he would have disappeared without saying goodbye. He couldn’t stomach that.
‘If I— When I renounce the deal, what will happen exactly?’
‘I’m not absolutely certain, but I think all of this won’t have happened. This day has been tampered with too much, it’ll probably reset to the same point the Time Lepidopteran started its loops at. You’ll wake up and live one last day, one last time.’
‘One last chance.’ Tom chuckled. ‘And what do I have to do? Do I just think about it really hard and—’
Tom woke up.
That day, a lot of unexpected things happened. Down in Leicester, Matt got a call that convinced him to take the day off. He drove all the way to Felton-upon-Trent, where he and Tom talked over a meal in a fancy restaurant. There were explanations, there was forgiveness, there were tears. There was a group of lawyers that arrived during dessert, claiming to have been hired by a close friend of Tom’s and presenting many folders of neatly done paperwork that only needed one or two additional signatures. Tom spared Matt the details he didn’t need to know, and they spent the happiest day of their lives. Both of them had a smile on their face when they once again parted ways and Matt drove back to Leicester shortly before midnight. A few minutes later, Tom felt dizzy. This time, there was no butterfly. The night was silent and peaceful. As the rest of the world was fast asleep, Tom’s final day passed before his eyes and, for an instant, he was the only living person on Earth.