Originally beta'd by hibari heza, before I went and rearranged things.

Chapter 11 - Let's Do This

Billy Shipton awoke, beating at the air over his bed. In his dream, he had been fighting his way out of a tightening circle of stone angel statues. Now, he found himself in a lit, strange room. It only took a moment for the afternoon's events to come back to him, and he sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the still-made bed. He rubbed at his face, then stood, finding the en suite and trying to plan out his next move.

If he was to believe what was being told to him, he was in the middle of a sci-fi, time-traveling tangle, complete with his older self telling him from the even more distant past to trust the two characters that had picked him up.

If he was to question the story, he was at the complete mercy of those same characters - if they even existed - since they were apparently capable of altering his mental state beyond any drugs he'd ever heard of. He couldn't guess what they might be after, it wasn't like he was a secret government agent or anything. All of the investigations he'd participated in were a straightforward matter of public record. They weren't trying to rob him - they were the ones giving him the checquebook...

Billy decided to try and hear them out. The more they tried to explain, the more information he got, the better he could see whether the pieces actually fit. And just for now, he'd keep the letter's existence (and the van and bank account) to himself.

Of all things, even more than a letter from himself, it was the kitchen of the Tiny TARDIS that finally put Billy Shipton's mind at ease.

Pots, pans, plates, utensils; it was all laid out as a larger-scale duplicate of his own flat. He didn't need to search for anything in the pantry; everything was right where he would have stored it. He even found his habitual Tabasco sauce assortment - a large, opened bottle in the 'fridge; and several, travel-sized bottles stored with the dry goods.

Once Martha and the Doctor had caught on to his discovery, they put their services at his disposal. Billy had Martha frying the potatoes, while the Doctor sliced vegetables and ground some ginger root.

But the last straw for the (former) detective inspector was when he took a look in the freezer. There, in the back, he'd found a Tupperware container of his personal, mother's-own-recipe, pre-made, Yorkshire puddings - labelled in his own handwriting, of course.

After their dinner, the Doctor had seen to it that the corkboard timeline was somewhat sanitized before inviting Billy over to have a look. Martha and the Doctor's first meeting with Sally Sparrow had been removed, now reading simply as the TARDIS' line from "Future". The date of Sally's second meeting with Billy (and all further dates in her timeline) had disappeared, as well. Also, Billy's two meetings with Sally Sparrow no longer shared a single pin; but, rather, the strings were almost imperceptibly separated.

"This board doesn't give you a headache?" Billy asked from where he sat in one of the two chairs at the workbench, tracing the strings with his eyes.

"Oh," the Doctor said, standing from where he sat on the opposite edge of the table, next to Martha's chair. He reached a hand into the front right pocket of his suit jacket. "Jelly baby?" he offered, proffering the bag of sweets. "It takes some getting used to," he allowed, while Billy opened the candy, "but the gist is simple enough. Your mission is to see to it that 'A', the Easter egg with the TARDIS' control program is encoded onto every single DVD in Sally Sparrow's personal library," the Doctor picked up the list of seventeen DVDs from where it lay on the workbench, "and 'B', to tell her - when the time is right - to look at that list."

Billy accepted the paper from the Doctor. "Her entire library... only seventeen? Really?"

The Doctor ignored the comment. "The next time you see her," he reiterated, "you'll give her this message: 'Look at the list.'"

Billy waved the paper "Why don't I just hand her the list?" he asked.

"She'll have it already," Martha explained. "She just needs to know that the list is the next step."

"And," the Doctor put in, urgently, "once the disks are encoded, once every movie's been published, that page needs to be destroyed."

"Why's that?" Billy asked. "Why not give it to her sooner, or send it to her. We could actually explain -"

"You can't," the Doctor told him, not unkindly. "The pieces have to come together exactly the way they came together. You can't see her at all, not until she finds you."

Billy's eyebrows rose, disbelievingly. "Just because future-me told her that's what you told now-me?"

"More than that," the Doctor insisted. "If you don't destroy that list, if you do anything to alter events as they've played out for Sally Sparrow or for any of us," the Doctor fixed him with his most stern, don't-mess-with-the-Oncoming-Storm glare, "it could rupture the entire paradox, tearing a hole in space and time and destroying two-thirds of the universe!"

"Two-thirds," Billy repeated, wide-eyed.

Martha shrugged, "More or less," she amended, significantly diminishing the effect the Doctor was going for. Then, she reached for Billy's hand. "An' we're really sorry, Billy, but you haveta hear this. That day you see her again," she said, glancing back at the Doctor. He nodded. "That one and only time," she said, turning back to Billy, "that's the day that you're goinna die."

"Die?" Billy looked from Martha, to the timeline, and back to the Doctor.

"Once you meet her," the Doctor confirmed, "you'll have until the rain stops."

"It was raining just before, when we met," Billy said, sitting back in his chair as Martha gave his hand a sympathetic squeeze. "Do I get to know when it'll be?" he asked, looking between her and the Doctor. "Or, do I spend my whole life searching for her whenever it's cloudy?"

"You'll be in hospital," the Doctor allowed. "And it will have to be sometime after your first meeting."

"So, I've got at least until 2007, but no promises, after."

"No promises," the Doctor confirmed. "I'm sorry."

Billy looked hard at the page in his hands. "So, how does she get the list, if it's destroyed?" he asked.

It was Martha who answered. "As long as everything goes the way it went, she'll just have it by the time you see her, again."

"On the day I die," he reminded himself. "And you're not going to tell me how you even know all this?"

Martha let her hand slide away from Billy's and glanced at the Doctor, who shook his head and answered. "Sally'll figure that out for herself. And that's why you can't ever know."

Billy took several, long moments, before folding up the paper and sliding it into his jeans pocket. "So, this list," he said, resting his hands on the tabletop. "It's the next step for Sally Sparrow when I meet her again, but it's not all that we have to do. What's next for us?

Billy looked around the BBC Television Centre's video recording hub, still not completely believing he was there.

The Doctor and Martha had told him their plan: to get some sleep at the Tiny TARDIS, then spend Monday tying up the wallpapering and video-taping loose ends of the paradox.

"Why not tonight?" he'd asked. "I'm not getting any more sleep with all this buzzing around in my head. And it was an earlier time zone where I left."

They'd taken the bus to Television Centre, since Billy still wanted to play his future-past's letter close to the vest. He had felt bad, listening to Martha talk about heading back into work the following morning; but if this late night excursion went according to plan, he'd offer to drive her into work in the morning himself, so that she could quit.

As they had approached the building and the Doctor went to open the first, locked door, Billy's eagerness had deserted him. "I - I can't do this," he'd stammered out. "I'm a police officer!"

"Not here," the Doctor had reminded him. "Not anymore."

The monitor for the studio the Doctor had chosen flickered to life, and a red light glowed by the intercom switch on the recording console.

The Doctor's voice asked, "You all set, Billy?"

Billy pressed the switch. "I'm getting the camera feed, hang on." He started the recording. "Taping, now."

He heard some muffled interaction between the Doctor and Martha, this time from the camera's mic. Then, the Doctor, himself, appeared on the monitor, sitting fairly still while the camera swung to center him and focus.

After a few more moments, Martha called, "A-and, action!" Then, "Uh, no, hang on - can you?" The Doctor moved out of frame, then Martha's voice was heard, again. "'Kay, got it. Action!"

The Doctor appeared, once again, resuming his seat in front of the camera. He put on his eyeglasses, then waited a few beats before beginning. "Yup. That's me... Yes, I do..." he said, following the blacked-out transcript they had brought with them.

Billy just shook his head, at the ridiculousness of it all.

"I'm a time traveler," the Doctor went on. "Or, I was. I'm stuck in 1969."

Martha suddenly appeared at his side on the screen. "We're stuck," she corrected. "'All of space an' time', he promised me. Now I've got a job in a shop. I've gotta support him!"

Billy's guilt at keeping his bank account a secret returned, and he resolved to tell them the truth as soon as they finished here.

"We have got big problems, now," the Doctor continued with his message to Sally Sparrow. "They have taken the blue box, haven't they? The Angels have the phone box."

Billy remembered the moment, as if it were that morning... which it actually had been. Sally had just left the impound garage, with that beautiful blush coloring her cheeks; and he had turned back to the police box, surprised to find the stone Angels surrounding it.

"Creatures from another world," the Doctor's voice narrated.

Billy had - stupidly, he knew, now - walked right up to them, and everything he'd known had vanished in an instant.

The Doctor's demeanor on the transmission suddenly changed, as he announced, "And that's it, I'm afraid. There's no more from you on the transcript; that's the last I've got." He pulled off his glasses, again. "I don't know what stopped you talking, but I can guess. They're coming. The Angels are coming for you."

Sally Sparrow, thought Billy. If all of this was going to somehow save her - and finish off the Angels in the process - he supposed it could be worth the trouble.

"... And don't blink," the Doctor warned. "Good luck. A-and, cut! That's it, Billy." The Doctor pocketed his glasses, then pointed off-camera. "Make sure we take that with us, Martha?" Then he stood and walked towards the camera. "I'll just get the -"

The image winked out as the Doctor presumably shut off the camera in the studio.

Billy stopped the recording and removed the tape. Picking up a marking pen from the recording console, he wrote, "Angels - Don't Blink - 1969" on the label.

To be continued...