Chapter Text
The Doctor sighed and threw the 35th Century stress ball up in the air once more, watching it shift colors as it reached the vertex of its trajectory before falling back into his waiting hands. The synthetic sensory fabric was meant to change colors based on the holder’s moods--when the ball turned “blue,” the stress ball usually had accomplished its purpose. However, one of the biodata tracking mechanisms of the ball was heart rate, and naturally the developers hadn’t factored in the possibility of an ancient alien species with two hearts using their product, so the Doctor’s double heartsbeat had the poor thing at a constant, vibrant red at the best of times (and a deep, burning maroon at the worst). There was probably something profound and poetic about the idle toy interpreting him as constantly stressed, but he preferred not to think on that metaphor for too long.
Right now, the stress ball between his fingers was shifting unreliably between a brighter ruby and slightly darker scarlet, as if it weren’t quite sure what to make of him. He had to give the thing credit--he wasn’t stressed, per se, since the problem wasn’t necessarily urgent, but that anxiety certainly was present, and he was hardly equipped to handle such domestic issues in this body.
He hadn’t been equipped for those in his last two bodies either, but he’d learned quick. Had to, in fact, because Jackie Tyler was a force to be reckoned with if anyone threatened to come between her and her daughter, and his very existence was nothing but one large obstacle in her eyes.
This body, however, hadn’t had a precious pink and yellow human to rope him into domestic life quite so seamlessly (initial slap notwithstanding). There was a rather loud and sassy ginger but beyond that, it was quite hard to draw comparisons between Amy and Donna, and as much as he liked Amy he wasn’t at home with her in the same way he’d been with Donna and Wilf, not yet at the very least. He still wanted to help her, but he wasn’t quite sure how.
Amelia Pond. He’d just wanted to save her younger self, had seen a loneliness inside of her that seemed to mirror his own, and instead he was very possibly ruining her marriage before it even took place. He wasn’t sure where he’d gone wrong, honestly--he’d known she was attracted to him (she hadn’t exactly been subtle, though he tried not to think about that too hard considering sometimes he looked at her and still saw that seven year old face staring back at him) but he thought he’d been rather clear about rejecting her advances from the beginning. Clearly not enough, or perhaps not in the right manner?
Communication had always been a tricky thing for him. Time Lords had it… not easy, exactly, since Rassilon knew they were a stuffy, emotionally stunted race far too cunning for their own good. But easier, perhaps--telepathy had a wide range of advantages that he’d taken for granted over the centuries. Long-distance, direct communication. The ability to communicate with precision even when one was not perfectly articulate. The increased confidence in one’s ability to get an accurate read on another individual.
Humans, though--humans never really evolved into telepathic beings, even in the future when they at least improved in psychic prowess. That wasn’t to say they didn’t make do, though, what with their pagers and cell phones and, eventually, EarComms, though he hadn’t yet had a companion from that far in Earth’s future yet.
The Doctor sighed, wistfully remembering that very first trip out with Rose, when he’d tried so very hard to impress her and soniced her phone into a superphone just so she could check in with her mum. She’d been flabbergasted at the mere concept of universal roaming, and the Doctor couldn’t help but smile as he recalled the delighted wonder in her tone. She could comprehend the sentient, telepathic time-and-space ship (enough to get immediately angry about it, at least), but somehow the concept of advanced technical jiggery pokery baffled her--as if there were anywhere in the world he couldn’t get a silly little signal to. Child’s play.
Perhaps he should’ve considered something similar for Amy, prodded her to call Rory or something. Of course, he couldn’t have known they’d ended up engaged, in his defense; she hadn’t seemed all that serious about him the first time he’d met the man. And also, picking him up was just inherently better, wasn’t it? No need to upgrade their cell phones just yet--well, it could never hurt, just because one of them wasn’t stuck on Earth didn’t mean they wouldn’t need to call every once in a while--
As if there were anywhere in the world he couldn’t get a silly little signal to--
Just because one of them wasn’t stuck on Earth--
Rassilon, he was an idiot.
He was a bloody genius.
At least, he rather hoped so. It wasn't exactly as though there was an option for a test-run, in any case; this was an all-or-nothing sort of plan. The kind of plan that only came with one chance. The kind of plan that would break his hearts if it failed, and, in all likelihood, break his hearts in a completely different way if it succeeded. The kind of plan that risked absolutely nothing and yet held the weight of everything.
Universal roaming had been an easy achievement for someone of his technical capabilities; he would’ve been a rather sorry excuse of a Time Lord if he couldn’t reroute something as simple as a phone call to different points in time and space. All he had to do, then, was add one step to the equation, and voilà--multiversal roaming was born.
It was, actually, a bit tricky to set up, and still could fail--he rated his chances at about 88%, which was frustratingly low--anything below 100% was, for this particular project, unforgivable--but he could begrudgingly admit that it was likely the best he could hope for from an untestable prototype.
The key was directing the signal through time and space via universal roaming so that all of the calls were immediately rerouted to one specific date in history--the Battle of Canary Wharf. He knew precisely when the ghost shifts were timed, thanks to the scheduled carelessness organized by Yvonne Hartman, and therefore when he could transmit radio waves between the cracks as the Cybermen tried to phase through simultaneously.
That was where things got fishy, as far as the planning went. He had no way of confirming whether or not cell phones ran precisely the same way in Pete’s World, or whether radio waves travelled the same way through time and space in other universes (Rassilon, he would assume so, but the Vortex itself had felt different there, which left all sorts of otherwise-guarantees up to chance and fate). All he had to go off of was the knowledge that Rose and Mickey were able to access their phones when they’d first fallen through--all of the upgrades he’d made to the two phones in front of him relied heavily on the assumption that the same programming would work in both universes.
He’d chosen the phones carefully--he’d wanted to make sure the technology would be intuitive and easily usable for Rose, while also allowing them as many features as possible on the off-chance that his plan did work, and the even smaller off-chance that she would even want to talk to him. Ultimately, he’d ended up with smartphones from around a decade and a half into her future. Video calling existed by that point, which was his main goal--the quality wasn’t fantastic, but it hardly mattered. He would do anything to see her face again.
(It took him a couple of days to realize that he couldn’t video call her, not unless he was prepared to admit just how far into her future he was--if he was able to admit that at all. But the option was there, he supposed, in case the truth came out anyways.)
Given that it was a one-chance plan, he’d gone all in. One of the phones in front of him was painted a brilliant TARDIS blue while the other was a light, rosy pink. Both of them were engraved with his name and hers entwined in circular Gallifreyan--the very sight of it made his hearts skip while simultaneously making him feel like a pathetic teenager, but it hardly mattered. There was no one else in either universe that could read it; Rose would only recognize it as his native language from her time aboard his ship, but even she couldn’t pick out words after only a year or two of travelling with him. She would see the writing and recognize it instantly as his, though, and that was all that mattered.
He’d then soniced the damned things nearly to death, working to make them as indestructible as possible. They were waterproof, fireproof, shatterproof, dirtproof, and plasmaproof within the first five minutes, and then he’d spent a further five nights thinking of various scenarios in which Rose could potentially damage her phone (or, if he were being honest about the most-likely scenarios, potential ways in which he would probably damage his phone) and then finding a way to proof them against those dangers. He’d also boosted the hell out of the battery life and breathed a few years of regeneration energy onto them, just in case.
Lastly, for good measure, he’d dug out some nearly ancient Gallifreyan technology and attempted to link the two devices together. There was really no telling if it had any bearing on the success of a call--the tech was really made for sentient and telepathic devices or beings, and 21st Century human cell phones hardly qualified--but he figured it couldn’t hurt. All in, after all.
The final step of the plan should’ve been the easiest. It was the easiest, from a logical perspective. It was just also the most daunting: getting a phone to Rose Tyler.
It took three weeks for the Doctor to become comfortable with a plan and another two and a half days for him to be certain that Amy and Rory were asleep and not about to catch him and ask a million questions that he wasn’t prepared to answer. He had three hundred and seventy four of them, to be precise, and only one that he was half-confident in.
He settled early on for intercepting his Tenth self’s fateful trip to that asteroid bazaar where Rose had bought bazoolium for her mum. He spent ten days debating whether or not he should actually interact with the two of them and rely on his past self to wipe their memories, or whether he should only interact with Rose and take care not to reveal his identity, or whether he should simply try not to interact with either of them. His hearts, of course, were biased towards the first two, and his brain put up a valiant fight for the third.
He had to admit that this incarnation was far, far more prone to taking the leaps that his last two selves had lost so much sleep over. Part of it was bitterness--he’d done the right thing this whole time, see, held back his feelings, held back his hearts, held Rose at a distance to stop the both of them from sinking into a relationship that would have drowned the both of them without even the faintest hope of resurfacing, and for what? For him to lose her anyways? For it to still hurt like all hell?
Part of it was hopelessness, plain and simple--what did he have left to lose? What was he protecting, now that he’d lost Rose? Before it had been the universe, all of time and space, and then that suddenly he’d lost Rose and those words had lost their shine. He could repeat the mantra in his mind, greyed and toneless and heavy, and his hearts would never back them with the conviction that he’d once had.
And part of it was that feeling in his chest that never truly went away, not even when he changed bodies once again into a man that he was sure would never get the pleasure of hearing her voice, of seeing her face, of holding her hand.
So, all things considered, he was rather impressed with himself when his brain won the long-fought battle, though he wasn’t sure why--nearly a millennia of precedent could’ve told him that he had to pick the safest option to preserve the laws of time and that he always would. It was who he was, no matter the incarnation. And yet he returned to the TARDIS, deed done, with a mixture of desperate hope, shameful relief, and guilty disappointment swirling in his chest.
It had been easy to slip the phone into her bigger-on-the-inside sweater pockets when she and his past self had been distracted while talking to a vendor. Yet another perk of nearly bottomless pockets was that fact that a little added weight didn’t often register, especially when the wearer of said pockets usually carried around things like spare running shoes, emergency first aid kits, a human lockpicking set (for when things were deadbolted), acid-rain umbrellas (because of one incident that shall not be named), three flavors of chocolate bars, and an absolutely obscene amount of hair ties. Rose hadn’t moved a muscle when he’d slipped the phone in, hardly daring to look at her.
Not looking at her was hard. Not talking to her was even harder. Bringing himself to leave--without saying anything, without warning her, without hugging her one last time... That was nearly impossible.
But he’d done it. He’d delivered the phone and very, very carefully set a message to his past self’s psychic paper, only to be revealed to her and only after a couple of days had passed in her personal timeline, and the universe didn’t seem to be collapsing. Reapers hadn’t converged on the asteroid bazaar, and time didn’t seem to be unravelling. Everything had gone off without a hitch, and suddenly the Doctor found himself helpless once again, restricted to sitting around and waiting to see if his plan succeeded or if it failed.
His fingers twitched and with a sigh, he pulled out the other phone, opting to set it down on the console where he could watch it anxiously as time crawled by--
--only to bark out a slightly hysterical laugh when he did set it down--the gleaming pink phone--to stare at it.
“Almost without a hitch,” he chuckled to himself, shoving his hand back into his pocket and turning around with a sigh.
He’d made it halfway down the stairs when the shrill default ringtone nearly had him toppling down the last few, and when he turned around in trepidation, the screen was lit up with an incoming call.