Making history

The TARDIS wheezed and groaned, wind picking up briefly as the incongruous blue box came into view. The door swung open, and the Doctor and Amy Pond walked out onto dusty ground, with patchy grass and loose straw underfoot.

Amy sniffed the air and turned up her nose.

"Ok. Boring," she said. "Can we keep going?"

"So soon?" the Doctor said. He took another step forward, grinning. "Middle Ages, 11th century according to the instruments and, ooh," he stuck his tongue out, apparently licking the air. "Tastes like Coventry. Nice place. Amazing coffee shop, that's probably not open unless you want to wait around a while."

"Doesn't exactly look impressive," Amy said.

"It's your past!" the Doctor said.

He seemed about to continue, being halfway through spinning around to face Amy again, when a figure sprinted past them. The figure seemed human, or at least humanoid, though its face was concealed behind what was obviously a mask, though what it was a mask of was less obvious. It reminded Amy, disturbingly, of bone.

The Doctor froze.

"Doctor?" Amy said.

"Ok. Uh. Really not going," he said nervously. "That's- we should really do something about that."

"Doctor!" Amy said again. "What is it?"

"Uh," her turned to face her, expression a worrying mix of trepidation and- was that fear? "Time Lords."

"What?" Amy said. "I thought you said they were..."

"They were! Are!" the Doctor said. "But, well, time travel, it gets confusing. I could pop back in time and meet myself and any Time Lords I encountered, have a nice cup of tea, if I had some way to stop the universe and all of space and time unravelling around me. But I shouldn't- I really shouldn't be crossing time streams to meet other Time Lords, unless..."

He started running. Closing the TARDIS door behind her, Amy followed.

All the while the Doctor was murmuring under his breath; Amy caught a few dates and places, though couldn't make much sense of it.

They followed the masked figure to a castle in the centre of the town, brushing past the locals, mostly peasants, on the way. As they neared the castle however they passed guards; the Doctor stopped and knelt by one.

"****," he said. "That's... good. Probably."

"What's going on Doctor?" Amy said. "You can't keep running off in the middle of explaining things."

"Can't I? Always worked before," the Doctor said. "It's... Ok, so Time Lords, Lords of Time, does what it says on the tin. But then there are some that are less... responsible."

"Like you?" Amy said.

"No!"

"Sure?"

"Amy," the Doctor said. "Compared to them, I am the most responsible person you will ever meet."

Amy paused.

"That bad?" she said.

"Worse," he said gravely. "Some Time Lords became... fascinated wth paradoxes, doing things to the timeline that should never be done. Running around in their own relative futures, after their deaths, is their idea of a fun holiday. Though... if they're not killing, I think this is just some kind of initiation. Which means the one we saw is definitely messing with history, just not as much as they could be. More apocakerfuffle than apocalypse. Hopefully."

"That's not a word," Amy said.

"It should be," the Doctor said. "And if I'm right, I think I know when we are."

"Where?" Amy said.

"Coventry, like I said," the Doctor said. "And for historical events in this period, and in this location, the only one that stands out is Lady Godiva and..."

Amy's eyes widened. Ok, who hadn't heard of that? The woman riding naked through her whole town.

"I take it back," Amy said. "Let's stick around. Can we watch?"

"Oh that's just typical," the Doctor rolled his eyes. "I try to show you a bit of history, and you're only interested if it's... There's more to it than just the horse ride you know! It was a protest, a way to show-"

"Weren't you chasing the paradox-obsessed Time Lord?" Amy said, eager to curtail the Doctor's explanation.

He paused, blinked, then nodded.

And then he was off again. Amy followed past the **** guards, and past a trail of more. It wasn't hard to pursue the fleeing figure.

Down a hallway, up a spiral staircase, down another corridor, and into a rather ornate room-

Just in time to see the figure in a bone mask hold up what looked like a weapon, pointing at a woman in a rather elegant dress. There was a flash of light and the woman was gone.

"Stop!" the Doctor shouted, too late.

The Time Lord turned, the mask rendering his face impassive, almost eerie as it regarded them through unseeing eyes.

"Temporal displacement weapon," the Doctor said. He buzzed his sonic. "Looks like... just a couple of hours into the future. Long enough to... oh no, no. Bring her back, right now!"

The figure didn't move. The Doctor lowered his voice.

"Amy, don't let him leave the room," he said. "He'll want to get back to his TARDIS. If we can stop him, we can make him-"

There was the sound of groaning. The figure pulled its robes tighter around itself, and slowly faded out of existence. The Doctor reached out uselessly.

"His coat! Of course it was his coat, why wouldn't he keep it with him? Not good, not good..."

"Doctor, what happened?" Amy said. "Did he just kill Lady Godiva? Tell me I did not just watch someone kill Lady Godiva."

"No, no, she's alive," the Doctor ran a panicked hand through his hair. "Just displaced a few hours into the future. Which means, if he wants to make a paradox, and he definitely does, today must be the day. And skipping forward a few hours, she misses her window, never goes on her famous horse ride, and everything that resulted... The stories, the idioms, the artwork, all blinks out of existence. Meaning of course that he'd never have come back in time to stop this and, hey presto, paradox. Just like he wanted."

Amy hesitated. She wouldn't pretend she understood half of this time travel stuff, but the uncharacteristic seriousness of the Doctor was enough to unnerve her.

The door to the room opened. A smartly dressed figure moved in, then froze rather quickly.

"Countess, it's time for- what is going on in here?!"

The Doctor moved quickly, pushing the man out of the room.

"Lots of things, lots of- give us a couple of minutes ok?" the Doctor said. He spoke quickly, and before the man could respond he was suddenly on the other side of a closed door.

Still looking panicked, the Doctor turned back around.

"Ok," he said. "If that faction's the chaotic side of Gallifrey, then the best solution would be to do what the boring people would do. If history goes awry..." He screwed up his eyes as though recalling some long-forgotten school lesson. "The story can change, just so long as the end stays the same. So.. ah-ha!"

He'd been spinning around far too much. Finally, though, he came to a stop while facing Amy.

"I've got it!" he said.

"You can bring her back?" Amy said.

"Not without more advanced tech than I have," he said. "But she's fine. She'll be standing here in a few hours wondering where he'd gone. No, but I can stop there being a paradox. History just needs to record that it happened anyway."

"What?" Amy said.

"You know the story," the Doctor said. "A woman rode on horseback, wearing nothing whatsoever, through the streets of Coventry. Godiva's a Countess, chances are no one out there actually knows what she looks like, so it could be anyone, just so long as the basic facts are the same. So-"

"Oh, no, no," Amy's eyes widened. "No, no way-"

"It's for history!" the Doctor said. "Someone has to, and you're the only woman here that knows what happened, and won't have any risk of spilling the truth later."

Amy took a nervous step back.

"Amy," the Doctor said. "The consequences of a paradox are... Look, just take disastrous, catastrophic, and fiasco and throw it all into one. Even a small paradox like this has huge implications. Time can't sustain one. You have to take her place, or all of time could be..."