Ch7: Consequences

● Hogwarts, Earth, 900 A.D.
With Original 24th Doctor Regeneration (Merlin)

The Doctor, know as Merlin, sighed. If he truly never existed, then who did Earth have so much life? After the Time War he brought several races, from various lost planets, together on Earth. Yet in this reality their planets never existed at all. They just naturally evolved on Earth. It must be some kind of echo based on what he did in the past. It was quite the headache to figure out what past actually happened.

Still he was alive, on a world that never knew him... on a world where King Arthur never took the Throne and united all magical creatures of Britain... in a world where the Founders never meet the Doctor... where the golden age of magic never happened because Merlin was never there... that had to be corrected.

The Doctor growled as he had to do this all over again, only this time he wasn't trapped in the body of a prepubescent child... strangely that actually made things harder.

A young Salazar marveled as he stepped into the Doctor's TARDIS. His friends, the other school founders, just behind him.

"This is ridiculous!" Lady Ravenclaw shook her head. "We can't just up and leave!!! Our school is barely open!!! We have responsibilities!"

"I can get you back here in 10 seconds." The Doctor waved her off. "We can travel the whole of space and time but on your world, only 10 seconds would have passed."

The Wizards looked at each other. Then back at the old beared man.

"GEEZ Merlin!!!" They heard the cry of a young voice. "This place goes on FOREVER!!!"

Looking over they spotted a gangly teenager. The boy was dressed in squire rags. He merely popped in for a second then, without introducing himself, ran back down a hallway.

The old man sighed. "My apprentice, Arthur. He won't be going to your school for a great many years. He hasn't even been born yet, from your perspective."

"THIS IS TOTES AWESOMELICIOUS!!!" the boy screamed.

"I've been letting him watch Television while exploring my TARDIS. He picked up some unfortunate vocabulary."

"Radical to the extreme!!!"

"Off the Disney channel," sighed the Doctor known as Merlin. "I thought I was being a good Governess by letting him watch that..."

"DUDE!!!! I found a lake!!!"

● Elemental Prime
With the 10th Doctor

Sarutobi was seated in his Office of the Hokage Tower, as this was an official matter. His nose glaring down at a God. After meeting the Doctor, Sarutobi's understanding of godhood had changed dramatically. If they were anything like the Lord Uzumaki, then they were weren't so far beyond mortal understanding. They were just incredibly powerful individuals. Just people, as annoying and lovable as any other. They merely had a different understanding of ethics, but that could be said of any different culture. Most importantly, Sarutobi had realized. Gods could be wrong. They made mistakes like mortal men, and even if they did have a greater awareness of the universe they did not know everything. The problem was they didn't realize that themselves.

"Why didn't you tell me what Itachi had planned!" The Hokage more accused then asked. "Or was it even Itachi's plan? The ANBU report seeing you speaking with him and then less then 10 minutes later he was massacring his clan."

The Doctor eyed him, a grave look about him. "I told you from the beginning, I'm going to have to let some very bad things happen in order to save your world."

"HOW DOES TALKING SOMEONE INTO KILLING AN ENTIRE CLAN SAVE THE VILLAGE!!!"

Despite that not being a real question, the Doctor knew he was expected to answer. It was just how conversations worked. "He would have done it anyway. I merely convinced him to spare the children."

Sarutobi's eyes widened as his mouth went dry. "He would have killed them as well?" The Doctor didn't answer. "Why?" Sarutobi needed to know. Not as the leader of the village but merely as a man, trying to comprehend such evil.

"They were planning on overthrowing you." Lord Uzumaki sighed, his young face had such a tired expression. An expression reserved for old soldiers who lived through far too many wars. "Or attempting to anyway. You don't need to be psychic to know they were destined to fail. The sheer number of power S ranked Jonin you have could easily crush their forces... but thousands would have died if you were made aware of it and tried to handle it with your usual sense of mercy."

"So you kindly decided to not burden me with that decision." Sarutobi clenched his fist.

"This was a fixed point. Yes, minor changes could have occur, but in the end the Uchiha clan were fated to die. You should be grateful I managed to manipulate things just enough so that their clan didn't go extinct." The only reason he was able to do that was the Uchiha clan would eventually rebuild from Sasuke's descendents. That allowed for some wiggle room.

The Doctor sighed. "Obviously the kids weren't involved, or even aware of what their parents had planned. I used that to convince Itachi to spare them despite his orders." Sarutobi didn't miss the word 'orders' and if the Doctor's story was to be believed those orders didn't come from him. "Still, he had his orders to stop them, and make it look like the actions of a rogue Ninja so as to not create a percieved weakness by the other villages."

"Ordered by who?" Sarutobi demanded.

"You know who." The Doctor eyed him.

The Hokage sighed out, "Danzo..." who else could it have been.

"It would seem attacking the council was a smokescreen for the purpose of assassinating the man who ordered the massacre. I didn't realize Itachi was going to do that after I convinced him to spare the children. He must have thought that was the only way to truly ensure the survivors safety."

"So what was your plan?" Sarutobi eyed.

"For Itachi to die by the ANBU."

Sarutobi stiffened. He knew the Doctor could be cruel but he effectively ordered a good man to let himself die a painful death. Someone who was willing to turn against his own clan if it meant the safety of the village... someone who didn't mind painting himself as the villain if it meant his clan's treachery didn't become public knowledge... a good man... that Sarutobi killed himself...

The Doctor was still talking. "This way the children would feel avenged and never learn of the treachery their parents had planned. I already erased all evidence of it in their compound. Nothing a paper shredder, a flaming metal barrel, and a few coats of paint can't fix. Itachi went off script to kill Danzo and ended up getting you involved, sorry about that. People do have minds of their own and if they are going to die anyway the bravest will do what they think is the best course of action for the people they care about." The Doctor sighed. "But now Root has no leader and will likely become an even greater danger to this village in the long run."

The Hokage glared for a moment, before an idea occurred to him. "Not if I appoint a new leader and sanction them to act outside my knowledge. Danzo and I had an unwritten agreement as such anyway. He tended to take it too far for my liking but a lot of what he did was necessary for the safety of our village."

"But who could you trust to act in the village's best interest without taking it too far?" The Doctor sighed. "Who wouldn't be corrupted by such a cloak and dagger department?"

Sarutobi just stared at him. The Doctor grew cold.

"No," the god refused.

"You already seem set on acting behind my back to insure the long term safety of the village, even if it means causing a lot of grief in the short term."

"I said no," the Doctor insisted.

"Think of this as punishment for not telling me about Danzo's plans, or the Uchiha's for that matter." The Hokage sat tall in his seat. "You don't have a choice, Doctor. It is either that or I ask you to leave the village, permanently. From what I have come to know of you over the years, you would leave if I asked. At least for as long as I rule."

"I would be taking Naruto with me," The Doctor threatened.

"I have come to love all your children, Doctor, and very much appreciate the rule of 'Grandfather' you have allowed me... but I will not prioritize our time together over the safety of my village. Either you stop half assing it, and offically accept the role you assigned yourself, or you leave. Even if it means you take the whole of the Uzumaki clan with you. You can even take them to another village on this world, if you wish. I will not cause issue for you."

"This isn't about a village!" The Doctor snapped. "The safety of your entire planet is dependent on Naruto staying here."

"That may be, but I only have your word for that, and you have proven your word means nothing if you think you know better. We will get by without you, even without your prophesized savior if need be. I will not allow you to continue on as a rogue element. You will accept the resources of Root and act with some sense of accountability, or you will leave."

The Doctor harshly ruffled his own hair, before sighing. He couldn't leave this planet without it's champion. If he did leave he couldn't, in good concious, take Naruto with him. The Hokage was effectively demanding, even though he was clearly trying very hard not to, for the Doctor to lead a more shady version of UNIT... or abandon his son. "When do I start?"

● Testimony

Itachi groaned, his head spinning, slowly opening his eyes he found himself in... an office? Blinking he looked around.

There was a women seated behind a desk in front of him, reading what appeared to be his case file. She was short and skinny, with small / close together eyes and a funny nose. Somehow these imperfections just made her more beautiful. She was dressed in strange clothing but very much looked the part of a civilian school teacher.

"Welcome to Testimony." The woman smiled.

Itachi blinked and looked around the room, it looked so... ordinary... mundane even. "I assume this is the 'pearly gates' the Doctor was talking about."

The woman smiled. "Not all universes come with their own heaven. Sometimes it's up to people to build it. Testimony is an artificially created afterlife. We exist in a massive super computer in an invisible time traveling spaceship.

"Each solar system gets one of these vessels. We like to call them 'Reapers', the ferryman to the afterlife. We also have a few vessels sailing the void between systems to look after the people who die in space. All these ships are connected by a Subspace form of Wifi... which you have yet to develop on your planet... hmmmmm think of it as computers that talk to each other over faster then light radio waves.

"I created this network to preserve the conciousness of individuals at the moment of their death. Normally I have my Oswin echoes process new souls, but I like to give special attention to those that die around the Doctor. Still cleaning up his messes after all this time." She winked as if Itachi was supposed to understand the joke. "What I am here to determine is are you a bad guy the Doctor had to stop, one of the people who died in his name, or simply an unfortunate bystander... or something else all together. Deaths involving the Doctor are always a priority of some kind. He sent us a message about you, asking us to be kind... that could mean something very good... or very bad. It could very well mean he is asking us to be merciful to a horrible enemy of his. A good word from the Doctor has damned more people then it has saved.

"Now then." She looked back at the folder. "Blimey, you are a hard one to sort out. Relax, we aren't actually into the whole 'divine punishment' thing. The universe is a bit to complex to look at it in black and white terms. It will merely determine how quickly you are reincarnated and just WHAT you will be reborn as. Your Karma, your spiritual balancing scale, can effect how you get reincarnated. Hitler spent a few lifetimes in a post apocalyptic world as the handicapped child to various molesters."

"Who?"

"Right, wrong planet. The gist is, if you do something very bad in your past life you get put low on the priority list for reincarnation. If your particularly fucked up we actively try to find you the worse place possible to be reborn. Someone is going to have to be born their anyway so it might as well be someone who deserves it. We also reincarnate you immediately and don't let you enjoy the benefits of the afterlife.

"Mind you not all, or even most of the people who are born into unfortunate situations actually did anything wrong. Most of them are new souls we have no control over.

"Despite what it might seem, the dead do not outnumber the living. More and more people are conceived everyday and will be born in greater and greater numbers, were as dead people get reincarnated to recycle psychic energy as those people plus new souls that are created. This process happened naturally, on it's own, until Testimony took an active rule in creating a sense of 'Cosmic Balance'. We like to think of it as our way of rewarding good people by making them reborn in loving homes.

"Most people get to stay in the afterlife, looking after the souls of their still living loved ones. They generally get to spend a few decades with their loved ones after they pass but inevitably we reincarnate their psychic energy and the conciousness attached to it.

"Punishing bad people isn't really our goal but the worst kind of person you were in life puts you lower on the priority list for reincarnation. AKA, the bigger of a dick you are, the less we care where you end up. They also tend to get reincarnated quickly as we don't want them here.

"You don't have to worry about winding up a cockroach in your next life, or something like that. We try to keep lifeforms the same category of species they were in life."

"Pets do like to be born as different animals, that way they can stay with their master in their next life. For Example that cat you had as a little boy, the one that got ran over by a wagon? She was later reincarnated as your current pet Tarantula. Awwwwww." She saw something in his file. "It seems your little brother is taking care of her for you."

"Anyway, due to their less evolved brains, lower animals are actually able to instinctively interpret memories from past lives. All creatures have a psychic field but lower animals can access it more easily due to running mostly on instinct without too complex thoughts. The brains of more evolved creatures, the one's that read minds and have psychic visions, have adapted to interpret complex thoughts and basic instincts. This can, occasionally, allow them to remember past lives. Unfortunately most lifeforms are too young, as a species, to comprehend both."

She looked back at the file. "Your Karma is... complicated... soldiers always are but we are more forgiving of them. Still... you have killed a lot of people... hundreds, thousands as of a few hours ago. More then a few of them in the name of the greater good. Sadly that will effect your Karma. The 'greater good' isn't as compassionate as you would think. When it comes time to reincarnate you it will put you relatively low on the priority list... what's this..."

Her eyes widened as she read over the file. Looking up at him she scrunched up her nose. "You don't look the self sacrificing type... suppose I have just become judgmental in my old age." She looked to be in her early 20s.

"For particularly noble souls we keep them on this ship for a while. Champions will train, advancing their psychic energies so that in their next life they are even more powerful then the last, hopefully to do even more good the next time around. Planet busters, and people with other such large Chakra reserves, are either that way because of the biology of their species... or because they died as heroes and spent the next ten thousand years training their raw psychic energy here in this heaven.

"Of course, well here, you may assist your surviving clan members at your leisure.

"You see, luck is a universal law the dead are capable of influencing to help the living."

Itachi just stared at her. "You want me to... what? Manipulate luck to help my world while training my Chakra to become a champion in my next life?"

"In a nut shell." Clara flipped through the papers in the folder. "Given your tendencies to look at the big picture, while ignoring the little people, you are probably going to become a tyrant in your next life with the resources we are about to give you... but we'll deal with that the next time you die. It's up to you how you use the tools we give you."

● Earth, 1981
Azkaban.

It had been nearly a week since the Potters died... a week since they vanquished the Dark Lord... a week since the line of Merlin was severed.

Few knew that Merlin was a hybrid. The Ministry liked to keep it hush hush. Fewer knew that Lily was born from a squib family line of that Hybrid. Dumbledore had been able to keep it quiet as to protect the girl...

Snape had known though... she trusted Snape more then anyone. She had taken Snape with her to see the universe... and what Snape had learned was all of the cosmos was a cruel and uncaring place. The universe wasn't a Fairy Tale. There was no happy ever after... everything and everyone died, even the planets themselves... Lily had stood against that. She was part of a guild of time travelers that protected this cruel universe... she was... amazing... and now she was dead.

Snape didn't want to be here, but he had to know, what became of the boy.

Snape walked through the halls of Azkaban until he got to one particular cell. Black looked up at him, his face dare to be tear stained.

"I guess you lot won then," he grumbled, as if he didn't really care. "Tell me Severus, is there any point to this without your Lord?"

Snape wasn't willing to stand here and hear these lies. "Where is the Potter spawn?" They had been looking for him, but couldn't find him. His body wasn't even in the ruins, nor was their evidence it had been vaporized. The boy had simply... disappeared... not even tracking spells could find him but they indicated he could be found, just not the where.

Sirius growled, "Even if I knew I won't tell you!"

"I have no need of you to tell me. The information is merely easier to find if the thoughts are close to the surface." Snape took satisfaction at the look of terror the man gave as they locked eyes.

It was only for a moment, but a moment was all Snape needed. The eyes are the window to the soul, and so Snape could use them to pull at the man's thoughts.

*FLASHBACK*
Earlier that night.

Sirius caught sight of the explosion and quickly Apperated to the Potter house. When he got there the house was off in the distant, smoking and in flames. Meanwhile the Sky burned gold, possibly from the sheer level of magic cast in the area.

In the bright light, Sirius could see what appeared to be a muggle... but only by his dress sense. Magic pulsed around him in harsh lashes. A woman walked ahead of him into a blue box. The man stopped shortly before hand, and turned his head towards Sirius. He looked on with uncaring pity. Somehow managing both, as if he knew he should feel an emotion here but he couldn't... and this man... was holding Harry.

Sirius started to run. The man didn't seem to care about that either. He didn't recognize Sirius as a threat... and Sirius knew he wasn't. Still he had to try. The man simply took the last few steps into his box, at an unnervingly casual speed, and a moment later the box faded out of existence with it's occupants.

Sirius didn't know what to do. A Merlin fragment just stole Harry! Still, he needed to get into the house. There might still be time to save James and Lily.

*END FLASHBACK*

Snape's mouth went dry as he witnessed all this. As he saw Sirius battle Lily's true traitor only for the man to kill a bunch of muggles and successfully get away. For Sirius to get caught at the scene and, in a moment of pure grief, loudly declare. "It's my fault! I killed them! I killed them!!!" The Aurors took that as a confession instead of the words of a grieving man...

Snape now had the chance to save his childhood tormentor. The horrific bully that plagued him his entire time well studying magic. Snape could either let him rot, and get his revenge for all the injustices this man had committed... or he could be the bigger man... save him... like Lily would have wanted... Snape had failed Lily in so many ways... could he truly live with another?