The Cloister Bell tolled.

Sparks spewed from the cracks in the white-round walls and rained blue and gold into the fires that consumed the console; the thunder of a collapsing star roared in the beams; the pillar shuddered and groaned and cracked and flashed with the light of the universe; the floor collapsed like a playing card, and the first thing the Doctor knew when he opened his eyes was the sharp of a broken lever in his clinging fingers and the swing of his feet in he air. For a silent moment he was weightless. Then the fiery console crashed into him; he crawled burned and bleeding and regenerating across the uneven floor, kicked the door and fell backward out of it, coughing, into the open sunlight and into the blood-sight of a reaper.

His eyes flew open, he threw himself to the side; the reaper's claws crushed the warm tarmac where he had been. The beast chirred, flashed its fangs, flapped its great leather wings, and leaped into the sky with a powerful wind.

He coughed and yanked at the scarf that was choking him. It fluttered to the tarmac while he scrambled to his feet and threw himself against the edge of the rooftop; the reaper disappeared into a tear in the sky. He craned his neck, breathed through his teeth, squinted through the clouded sunlight at the spot where the last of the monster's tail had vanished. He leaned forward and looked down over the Thames. His hearts stopped.

Beyond the open TARDIS door behind him, the Cloister Bell tolled.

---

He modeled his reflection in a boutique window at the London waterfront, rubbed his round head, flapped his ears, tried out a few rubbery expressions, straightened the lapels of the not-Doctor's old leather jacket, bruised and darkened and smelling faintly of the ash of a burning Gallifrey. It was only right that he kept one thing, one remnant of a people he owed so much, so he could with mild conscience shove the rest of the past hundred years' war into a locked room in the back of his mind. There were other things, right now, that demanded his attention. Things that didn't make sense. Things that twisted and snapped the limits of reality. Things like reapers, black smoke, collapsing universes, and a peculiar lack of ferris wheels at the south bank of London.

Nothing was wrong, yet everything was wrong. The streets were full of polished businessmen, phone-wielding tourists, teenagers with bright shopping bags. They were drinking coffee at cafe tables, taking selfies in front of old statues, walking and talking and never looking where they're going. But the London Eye had been dismantled, and houses were burning at the edge of the city, and like true Londoners they carried on blindly. Anger rumbled in his chest, and it surprised him.

His regeneration and the aftermath of what he'd done must have thrown the TARDIS into a pocket universe, where Something had happened that was never supposed to have happened. And he was stuck here, in this false timeline, until either he made this wrong happening un-happen or this universe collapsed on top of him and all the hapless humans in the city. He paused at a bin on the street, leaned over it with curious eyes, and he plucked out the day's Times. August 5, 2014.

A howling siren echoed throughout the waterfront, and -- while the Doctor stood blinking with an open newspaper before him -- everyone scattered. The businessmen ducked into coffee bars; the teenagers squeezed into alleys; police directed frightened tourists to the nearest safe zone, waving lights and cones. A rasping, hideous screech rose in disharmony with the siren, and the Doctor turned in time to see a reaper diving across the rooftops, its wings a shadow over the fleeing humans. As he watched, a black Torchwood van screeched around the corner; attached to its roof was a weapon he recognized as Dalek technology, bright and silver, aimed high at the screeching beast. The laser whizzed as it powered up, and the Doctor flinched when it fired with a force that shifted the van on its axles; in a burst of blue light the reaper disintegrated, leaving no trace at all that it had ever existed.

---

Hours later, the Doctor strode purposefully into a quaint little restaurant on the outskirts of the city, the folded newspaper in his hand and a friendly grin on his face. He'd been following the pattern of reaper sightings when he'd noticed, with a curious quirk of a brow, that without making so much as two left turns he'd passed this same local eatery twice. Never one to believe in coincidences, he dropped into a booth and cracked the newspaper open again. Surely there would be something here to nudge him in the right direction.

That obituary of Harriet Jones on page 10, for instance.

And like all the days before, nothing changed.

Well, if you ignored the generalised apocalypse taking place on what could reasonably be considered her general doorstep, that was. And even that was beginning to become part of the system - certainly not mundane, but even it wasn't new any more. They had drills and routines, people in high-vis gear on the telly with painted smiles and plastic stares telling them exactly what they need be doing in the event of a Reaper materialisation. There was procedure to be followed, there were forms to be filled out and so the slow collapse of society as they knew it became just another part of the bureaucracy, something to tide the Londoners over and give them something else to chat about other than the weather. If you ignored the chaos and the death toll rising week by week, it was almost refreshing. Instead of talking about the endless weather, you too could share what it was you were doing the last time you saw a monster swoop down from where there had been only grey sky a moment before.

But refreshing or not, apocalypse or not, Sorcha still had work.

'Work' may have been a strong term. Hours, weeks, months before and 'work' meant nothing more than sitting behind her laptop, typing page after page of her dissertation, all the while dreaming of the doors it would open and the life she would lead. Because that was the promise, wasn't it? They went through their educations like good little boys and girls, the best of them prancing off to university and shelling out thousands of pounds for the privilege of huddling into a damp hall and sitting through hours and hours of self-righteous lecturers, and it was all with the unspoken promise that it would be worth it. That they sacrificed their time and their money and the effort for the promise that the world would be their oyster - no door their fancy degree wouldn't open, no ceiling made of glass for them to rail against.

Six months later and she could look back and laugh at her hopeful naivete. Because what those unwritten, unvoiced promises had failed to mention was that this promise was made to every student, that her competitors numbered in the hundreds of thousands and the little girl from Scotland with her precious piece of paper couldn't hope to compete here in London. Apocalypse or not, they had standards and did not require someone of her inexperience, thank you very much for your time (but no thanks). She had been turned down from newspapers, theatres, magazines, bookstores even after a cursory glance at her CV revealed far too little and tellingly much. It had taken her three months to even gain a job waitressing - something she probably ought to be pathetically grateful for, yet when she slept through her alarm for the fourth day in a row, she couldn't help but wish they would just fire her already.

A hurried drag of a brush through long red hair, what could pass as a uniform dug from under half-read books and unfolded piles of washing, ten minutes and Sorcha was locking the door in time for the now-familiar screech to make her jolt, swearing as her latte dripped all down the front of her outfit as she was ushered to a 'safe zone', far more preoccupied with that as the threat was summarily dealt with. Well, at least her skirt was black, even if the white shirt now claimed 'multicoloured' as a virtue.

A half-hour later and she was ducking through the loathed doors of her financial salvation, gritting her teeth at the reprimands hurled her way. "Sorry, I'll have a word with those things about not attacking when I'm on my way to work next time, shall I?" The question was rhetorical; all too quickly she was ushered out, notepad in hand as she surveyed the room with the grim air of someone walking into a battlefield. The next three hours passed very slowly.

The bell chimed one more time, and Sorcha groaned under her breath. So much for her lunch (afternoon tea? Breakfast?) break. Fixing a bright smile to her face she sauntered over to the booth where the leather-jacketed man sat with no compunction (had he perhaps gotten lost on his way to the 80's?), flicking the back of his paper to gain his attention. Nobody ever said that customer service had been one of her strengths.

"Well aren't you a cheerful one, then?" She remarked, nodding playfully at the newspaper he seemed so absorbed in. "World's busy going to hell and you still find time to read the obituaries. Can I get you some comfort food with that?"

Well wasn't this the most ridiculous and useless obituary. No cause of death! No date of death! What's an obituary without a cause and a date of death? More like someone's missing and everyone else just stopped looking. Poor Harriet Jones, perhaps the greatest woman of the modern world, reduced to a paragraph on page ten. To be fair, though, the preceding nine pages were full of color photos and exclusive stories on the terrible monsters that were killing people every day -- and on the fact that no one in London could seem get out of London. Very interesting stuff.

The sentences blurred together as a sort of dizziness came over him. He swayed and closed his eyes while something tingly bubbled up his throat; very carefully he exhaled a lungful of regenerative energy that twinkled golden for a brief second, curled against the newspaper, then dissipated into the grease-heavy air. He kept his eyes shut against a momentary lightheadedness and listened to the strong quadruple pulse of new blood in his veins. He would never get used to this process. A shudder ran down his spine. He rather hoped he'd never have to.

But! He sniffed in a breath, opened his eyes, broke into a determined grin, straightened the newspaper with a snap. Right, then! There must be something in that strange obituary that he'd missed.

A flick of his newspaper was followed by a very good question, if the quick rumble of his stomach was anything to go by. "Oh yes! Please! I'm famished!" He smiled broadly with fish 'n chips on the tip of his tongue, and folded the newspaper down so he could get a proper look at this keen waitress of the apocalypse -- and he did a double-take. The long red hair. The brilliant and fiery eyes. The voice. The momentary shock on his face breached to a wide grin.

"Well look who it is!" he laughed. "Sor-cha Cooper!" he elongated the name in singsong, astounded and very pleased indeed. "I'm a huge fan. Your work is magnificent -- Lady Macbeth -- Christine Daaé, Phantom of the Opera. You stepped onto the stage and took the theater world by storm. Bull by the horns!" He shook his head with a grin. "But what's a brilliant lady like you doing waiting tables at the end of the universe? Researching a role?" He raised his eyebrows, folded his arms on the table and leaned forward expectantly -- but the look on her face was more than slightly troubling.

Well, they had warned her they got the occasional nutter in here. Admittedly she couldn't smell alcohol on him - not that she planned on giving him a whiff - but these were not the words of a normal mind. The smile on her face took on a certain deer-in-the-headlights quality as she flicked a glance towards Harry the cook; if the man would stop staring at her with that giant grin on his face then there'd be some pretty impressive pantomime going on as well. Namely to the theme of get out here with a rolling pin. Back in the old days it may have been more along the line of 'call the cops', but Sorcha was the realistic type; what policeman had time for anything less than a monster these days? Brown eyes blinked slowly as she regarded the stranger, pre-emptively taking a step back and taking her notepad with her. God only knew what she'd do if he started asking for an autograph; the thought itself was a bitter pull against what once she might have dreamed.

"Hang on," she interjected, brows drawing abruptly together. "Where did you get my name?" Her first name may have been printed on her badge as plain as day - which proved that whatever his ramblings, he was at least sober enough to read still - but her last name was hardly something bandied about as a matter of course. "Do I know you?" Heaven knew she ought to remember someone with ears like that, but these days you could make a friend for life in the course of five minutes; shared fleeing for your life had a way of bonding people together. The rest of what he said went determinedly suppressed, her head shaking in denial as this man, this stranger had the gall to drag all her hidden dreams and ambitions out into the light of day, mocking them for the world - or, rather, the entire restaurant - to see. "I don't know what you're talking about." She insisted, setting hew jaw stubbornly, ignoring the pull of his hallucinogenic spotlights.

This was what she got for making small talk for the customers. Next time she would just settle for a smaller bloody tip.

A deep breath and she summoned some semblance of an admittedly insincere smile once more. "I think you must have me mixed up with someone else, sir." Never mind his use of her name - someone out there there must be one far luckier Sorcha Cooper living the life that should by rights be hers. "Now, are you going to order something? Otherwise I think we'll need you to move along; the queue for a table today is terrible."

If by terrible you meant nonexistent.

His hopeful expression fell by degrees to one of solemn curiosity. Here was another thing that wasn't quite right: by now, Sorcha Cooper should be well on her way to a collection of prestigious awards, not shuffling coffee and beans-on-toast at a half-wage eatery on the edge of nowhere. Of course, there were a thousand things wrong with this universe (the man-eating monsters that dropped out of the sky, for starters) but for Sorcha Cooper to have never set foot on a big-time stage meant the time stream had gone wrong far earlier than he'd thought.

The grin reappeared on his face, and he shifted up straight. "Right then, sorry, my mistake." There was no reason to torture the poor girl -- it was obvious that she had dreams of the stage, and maybe a part of her knew she was meant for brighter lights, but persisting with thoughts of what should have been would only be cruelty at this point.

He grabbed a laminated menu and scanned it with keen interest, his stomach rumbling. "Fish 'n chips, please," he smiled amiably up at her, "and a cuppa tea." He thought he was finished, but glanced at the menu again. "Oh, and a side of bacon, and a side of mash with gravy. And a milkshake. Strawberry, with that swirly whipped cream on top, I love that. And sprinkles! Sprinkles would be fantastic."

He gave her the pleasantest of smiles, determined for all the world that she should have a better day than he was having. "And before you go, if you could tell me, Sorcha Cooper, how long ago was it these Reapers started showing up? When was the first one sighted? Where was it, who saw it? Has anyone given a guess about why? Has the city seemed to be shrinking at all?" The mild interested expression on his face was starkly juxtaposed with the intense gravity in his eyes. Should things go on the way they were, the lack of a stage would be the least of Sorcha Cooper's regrets.

The possibility of tips aside - and really, when did strangers (with the emphasis on strange) ever tip well? - Sorcha still wasn't entirely sure she was happy that the man chose to stay. However brief, his speech and seeming recognition had unsettled her. And she didn't like being unsettled. But he was a customer and by eventual proxy he was paying the rent on her flat, so it was with simply a set of rising eyebrows that she wrote down his order, only pausing to give him an incredulous look at the decision that apparently a strawberry milkshake was the best thing to go with his... varied meal.

She was so passing this one off to another waitress as soon as she got out back.

Composure somewhat recovered, Sorcha was about to turn on her heel when the man began talking again, this time on a somewhat more normal topic - the Reapers. Tell her six months ago that holding a conversation about great reptilian beasts that fell out of a clear sky and devoured anything (everything) in sight would become normal in the next year and she would have laughed in your face; now it was simply reality. "What, you been hibernating for the last six months?" She snorted, drumming her fingers against her side as she pretended to think back - a farce; who wouldn't remember the date the world changed? "February 2nd, just over six months ago. Just outside Waterloo station. 11.17, if you want to be so specific," she added archly; she'd been lucky enough (if that was really the correct word) to see what was commonly accepted as the first appearance. It was the sort of thing that tended to etch itself into your memory - and she'd missed her train that day, too. In summary: A Very Bad Day.

Her unease of moments past was quickly being replaced with something more akin to bewilderment - how could anyone possibly claim ignorance? These conversations had peppered uncomfortable train journeys and awkward social chit-chat alike over the last half of the year - when the apocalypse was slowly happening and you couldn't escape, it tended to take over every possible social convention. Sorcha had been under the impression there wasn't a soul in London that hadn't already aired their own private theories as to why it was happening.

"What d'ya think? Of course people have guessed, it's been all over the telly." She replied. "Last I heard, the most popular theory is that 'humanity is at last being punished for their sins'." An unladylike snort. "I've barely had a chance to sin yet, so that's rubbish." Her lips quirked briefly in dry amusement that quickly faded as she stared at the man in pure confusion. "How can you not know any of this? Nobody's been able to get in or out of London in six months, you'd have to be blind not to have noticed it before now."

"Not blind, just busy." While Sorcha had been talking, he'd been fidgeting and clinging to the table and making all sorts of odd energetic expressions as ideas burst in his head and fitted themselves neatly into the puzzle. He talked faster, half-standing in the booth, his eyes intense and intent on the establishment of understanding in Sorcha Cooper, who was right now -- he was sure of it -- the most important girl in this little universe. "And you're absolutely right, the punishment for humanity's sins theory is complete rubbish. The reason giant lizard-monsters are falling out of the sky and terrorizing the ignorant population of London is that something happened that wasn't supposed to happen -- or something didn't happen that wasn't not supposed to happen -- and the timeline fractured," he pressed his palms together and cracked them apart, then curled his fingers like he was holding a water balloon, "and created this bubble, this pocket universe that doesn't belong in the normal time stream, that's collapsing in on itself as we speak," his hands grew closer and he clapped them together, "that's why we're all trapped in London, it's why the barrier is getting smaller and smaller, it's why the Reapers are getting in through the folds, because this timeline, this city as you know it now isn't supposed to exist, your lives are supposed to be different, so much better than this. And the reason that thing that happened that shouldn't've or didn't happen but should've is you."

It hadn't clicked before he'd said it, but now he knew. Suddenly he was out of his seat, his voice raised to a near-shout in his eagerness to make her understand what he understood. "The world's gone wrong and it's all because of you, Sorcha Cooper, and it's mostly impossible but it's not completely impossible because it is, it's happening here and now. But don't worry," he walked around behind her and spun toward her with a smile, his back to the door, "we can fix it. All we have to do is go back to 11.17 on February Second at Waterloo Station, figure out what you didn't do that you should've done, and all this will be like it never happened. 'Cause it never will have happened, but you're the one who's got to make it un-happen." His face was suddenly serious, and he meant every word. "So whaddaya say?" He stretched out his hand to her with a flash of a grin. "Forget the milkshake, leave the nametag. Come with me and let's save the world."

He waited a few beats, just waiting for her to call him crazy.