When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice. ~William James

Chapter One

There is a time when people get tired beating around the bush and making guesses and assumptions. At these times, people tend to want to hear what's going on straight out with no fuss and mess, just plain, simple truth.

For Martha, this was one of those times.

"No, no, too much to do, let's keep going," babbled her companion, ushering her past the chip store.

"Doctor, I'm hungry," Martha snapped, on edge from her recent world-saving experience and more than a little tired. "This place is cheap, they've got good chips, and we can catch our breath. Why not?"

"Martha Jones, it's a potato. If you want to eat, that's fine, but let's find somewhere else," he said, looking around for another shop. "Oh! Look at that! A veggie store! Let's pop in for a salad! Love a good salad, me. Once, I was with the King of-"

"You hate salads," Martha said flatly. The tall man next to her froze, as if he hadn't expected her to call his bluff.

"Well, who said I was going to eat?" The Doctor said finally, sticking his hands deep into his pockets. "You should though, you're right. Humans and their silly tolerance on vegetables," he continued, rocking back and forth on his heels.

"Potatoes are vegetables," the dark-skinned woman pointed out with a roll of her eyes. The Doctor opened his mouth to protest, but then froze, one finger raised in the air as if to make an excellent point he had yet to think of. "Look, Doctor, I'm just gonna be a minute. You can come with me or stay out here, but I'm gettin' some chips." With that, the med student turned on her heel and stalked over to the chip shop with the aurora of someone who couldn't be stopped and was done listening to nonsense.

After a pause, she heard the Doctor's footsteps behind her. Bloody alien, Martha harped mentally, although she was secretly pleased that he was coming with her.

After ordering her chips, Martha found her way to a picnic table just outside the little shop. Sitting down, she took in the view of the park just across the road and pulled her coat tighter around her to block out the biting wind. The Doctor sat down across from her, following her gaze to the grassy park.

"Want one?" Martha offered after a moment, as way of apology for snapping at him earlier. The Doctor cast a look at the chip basket, but shook his head.

"No thanks," he said with cheerfulness that seemed a little forced. "Who needs chips, eh?"

"Suit yourself," Martha shrugged, popping the finger food into her mouth. "You been here before?" She continued around her mouthful of potato.

"Once or twice," he replied in a clipped voice that Martha had learned to recognize. It was his "don't-ask-this-has-to-do-with-my-painful-mysterious-past" voice. What on earth could be painful about a chip shop? Martha wondered, completely baffled.

"Recently?" She pushed, deciding that this time she wasn't going to let him hide behind brief answers. It was a little restaurant, for goodness sakes! Of all things, he can definitely talk to me about this, she decided firmly, waiting for his answer.

"I'm a time traveler, Martha. 'Recent' is a hard term to define," he said evasively, dodging the question with ease that didn't escape his companion.

"Within the last eight months?" She pressed, and the Doctor shifted uneasily. "I'll take that as a 'yes', then." The Doctor looked away, but didn't argue. "Alone, or with friends?"

"You almost done?" He asked as if he hadn't heard her. Martha looked pointedly at her mostly-full chip basket by way of answer. "Right, then. Hurry up. We've got places to go, people to meet, planets to save," he said brightly, still in a tone the med student thought sounded forced.

Why does he hate this little shop so much? She wondered, beginning to feel frustrated. He all but admitted he'd been here within the last year. And dodging a simple question about company? Honestly! At the thought of company, Martha froze.

"You were here within the last year," She said slowly, vocalizing her thoughts as if to help herself think through a particularly difficult problem. The Doctor, on the other hand, looked uneasy, as if she was getting closer to a deep secret he didn't feel like revealing.

"Doctor, did you come here with Rose?" Martha asked, looking him right in the eye and hoping he'd say no.

He didn't say no. Instead, he sighed and said, "It was her favorite place to eat. She loved chips…" He trailed off, a nostalgic look on his face.

"Oh," his companion said, pushing the chip basket away from her as if she'd swallowed something bitter. "Right." Suddenly she wished she hadn't asked. She knew how he was; once she'd opened the floodgates, there was no stopping the memories he'd relive, at least in his mind, right in front of her.

"That was our first date," he grinned, not looking at her but instead out over the park, lost in memories like a child lost in a candy store.

"Sorry?" Martha asked, their roles reversed. Suddenly he was the happy one and she was the uneasy one.

"Chips," he clarified, looking back at her. "We went out for chips."

"'Course you did," Martha said, unable to keep the hint of bitterness out of her voice. She'd long suspected the Doctor's feelings for Rose, but no girl wants to hear about her crush's old dates, and Martha was no exception. So what she blurted out next surprised her as much as him- she hadn't meant to ask. Didn't even want to know, really. And yet she did.

"What happened to her? Rose, I mean."

"Sorry?" He asked, raising both eyebrows in surprise as Martha yanked him off memory lane and back to reality.

"What happened to Rose? You've told me she's alive and in some other universe, yeah, but what happened to her? Did she just pick up and leave?"

The Doctor's eyes darkened at the question, but for once he didn't avoid the inquiry.

"She didn't want to leave. She just couldn't come back," he said, the cheerful happiness gone from his voice and replaced by some other emotion Martha couldn't quite name (or didn't want to).

"What happened?" She pressed, hating herself with the words but needing to know what had separated the Doctor and the famous Rose Tyler.

"The Battle of Canary Warf happened," he told her bitterly. "She was sucked into a parallel universe. If I could have gotten her, I would have. But both universes would have collapsed. Everyone would have died," he finished softly, staring at his hands and, for the first time since Martha had met him, sounding defeated. "I tried everything. It was just… impossible."

"You said she got sucked into a parallel universe," the med student began uncertainly. "I thought that was just a myth from movies and stuff. They don't really exist, do they?"

"'Course they do," the Doctor scoffed. Martha couldn't help but wonder if she imagined the relief in the Doctor's voice, to turn from himself to the facts, or if it was really there.

"Right, sorry," the med student said in slight irritation. Excuse her for not knowing as much as a 900-something alien!

"Every choice you make creates an alternate universe," he continued, speaking as if Martha hadn't said a word. "For example," he said, turning to a boy playing in the park. "That boy is playing kick, yeah? Well, if I don't do anything, he'll miss the ball and won't kick it. But if I take that choice away…" As he finished talking, he stood up and yelled, "HEY!" Across the street to the little boy. Startled, the boy missed the ball and it rolled past him into a small pond. The Doctor then sat down as if nothing had happened.

"Because he didn't get to kick that ball, he never made that choice. Some parallel universe just ceased to exist," he finished his explanation with a nod, as if agreeing with his own logic.

"What?" Martha, on the other hand, was horrified. "They just… vanished? Gone like that?"

"Yup," The Doctor said, popping the 'p'. Then he paused, thinking. "Well… not exactly. I just yelled at him, right? That was a choice. Besides, if he had had the choice, he would have missed the ball anyway. So it's more likely the universe was just altered. Like a game resetting itself, or something." He seemed proud of his comparison, and looked to his companion to make sure she'd understood.

"So nothing in that universe really changed?" She clarified, needing to make sure.

"No, I told you, it's like a game resetting itself. If there's something in that universe that shouldn't exist or for some reason has gone wrong, it'll be set right. Haven't I mentioned before that the universe always has a way of correcting itself?"

"I dunno," Martha shrugged. She tried to keep up with his ramblings, but sometimes things slipped past her. He could have easily mentioned it before and she'd just missed it. Then a new thought struck her.

"Wait a minute. Rose shouldn't exist in that other world, right? So if you managed to get her universe to 'reset'…" Martha trailed off, raising an eyebrow at the Doctor.

"I thought of that," he admitted glumly. "Problem is, every choice creates a parallel universe. Every. Single. Choice. That's trillions of billions of universes- it's beyond the imagination! I'd have to know the exact choice that created her universe, and…" he took a deep breath before saying, "I don't."

"Oh," Martha said, looking over at the boy who was now trying to fish his ball out of the pond. "I see." She did see. She saw the sheer odds against something like that happening, and she saw why it was a pointless cause.

She also saw that she was living in the shadow of a girl trapped an entire universe away. And she wasn't sure she was ever going to be able to escape it.

Neither the tall man nor the dark-skinned girl could see the universe with Rose Tyler in it. If they had, they might have left the chip shop thinking very different things. As it was, they couldn't see.

So they left, not knowing that worlds away, Rose Tyler's universe was resetting itself.