Archive of Our Own

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Interviewer: We know Mark Zuckerberg didn't cooperate, but did you ever meet Eduardo Saverin, the character played by Andrew Garfield?
Aaron Sorkin: Once Eduardo signed that non-disclosure agreement after his settlement, he disappeared off the face of the earth.

 

1 |

 

It's lunchtime on a Thursday, and Eduardo Saverin has the beginnings of what promises to be a very bad headache.

He tries not to breathe too deeply, because the exhaust fumes coming off the taxi cabs in the street are sending hot spikes of pain right in between his temples, but not breathing is a lot more difficult than it seems. He's been up since dawn and the morning's meeting with Fox's advertising department was unproductive in the worst way possible, and he's feeling so low that it doesn't even seem like much of a loss of dignity to just stop walking and sit down.

He's not far from Times Square; congested, noisy traffic on all sides, and there's some kind of bright blue booth tucked up against the side of a building. It's probably a photobooth for tourists, albeit not like one he's ever seen before, and Eduardo doesn't particularly care. He sits down at its base, sparing only a moment's thought for his dry-clean-only slacks, and leans against the wood. It's cold to the touch, which is strange for something that's been sitting in the New York summer heat.

He checks his phone: he has no new messages and no missed calls, and it's 9:45 AM in California, which he determinedly tells himself means absolutely nothing at all.

He sighs, and closes his eyes in defeat, resting his forehead against his wrist.

Which is when the door to the blue booth pops open. A man tumbles out, spots Eduardo, and lets out a very undignified yelp.

Eduardo leaps to his feet, fumbling both phone and briefcase while trying to hold up both hands harmlessly. "Sorry, sorry," he goes. He catches a glimpse of something softly golden and glowing over the man's shoulder before the door to the booth swings shut. "I didn't realize anyone was in there."

"Quite all right," replies the man, seemingly on instinct. He's got thin, nervous hands and a bit of a lantern jaw, and he's wearing a red bow tie: Eduardo didn't know people actually wore bow ties, outside of really fancy dinner parties and some of the older-fashioned professors at Harvard.

Eduardo's about to excuse himself when the man's expression suddenly clears, and he goes, "Frank?" in this joyous, incredulous voice.

He finds himself on the receiving end of a very abrupt hug. It's not helping his headache. "Um," he says helplessly, but the man takes no notice, letting go of him as suddenly as he grabbed him.

"No, hang on," he goes, backing up a step, fingers at his mouth. He points at Eduardo questioningly. "This is ... not 1930, so why --" he spins in a circle, taking in all the buildings around him before coming right up into Eduardo's space, so close that his eyes blur into one giant one. "Tell me, Frank," he says, slowly and persuasively. His breath smells like ginger, and something that could possibly be turkey. "Do you come from an old New York family?"

I want to go home, Eduardo thinks. "No," he answers, trying to lean away and having nowhere to go. "No, my whole family's from Brazil."

"Are you sure?" the man says, which is a stupid question. "No, wait, stupid question," he's correcting himself before Eduardo even finishes the thought. He squints thoughtfully. "You are absolutely identical, I could have sworn ... spatial genetic multiplicity, then? It's happened before -- very lovely girl in Cardiff, could talk to ghosts. Tell me, what's your name?"

"Eduardo Saverin."

For some reason, this seems to be a better answer than all the others combined. The man's eyes double in size. "Are you really?" he goes, as absolutely delighted as a child on a scavenger hunt. "That's brilliant. I loved how they portrayed you in the movie."

"What?" Eduardo goes, so horribly confused.

"No?" The man's eyes flicker back and forth between his. He's still much too close. "No, I've gotten it wrong again, that hasn't happened to you yet. You're still so young."

Eduardo's head is throbbing. He closes his eyes.

Something touches his temple, and they fly open again, startled. The stranger is watching him, sympathy cut deep into the corners of his eyes. He strokes the hair at Eduardo's temple with the very tips of his fingers.

"It's very nice to have met you, Eduardo Saverin," he says softly. He steps back, pulling his suit jacket together and buttoning it. He's got patches on the elbows, and Eduardo can't tell if they're real or they're aesthetic. "Oh, and --" he hesitates, before offering Eduardo a thin smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "A piece of advice. Keep your lawyers on speed-dial, why don't you."

 

2 |

 

It's lunchtime on a Thursday, and the window of the law office has an amazing view of the hills; the fog's all burned away, and even the San Francisco Bay is visible, a smudge of navy blue to the east. Eduardo stands with his hands in his pockets, watching the noon crowd below on University Ave: the kids from Stanford heading for the wifi-enabled cafes, ducking through the footpath that snakes under the El Camino bridge; the accordion player playing in the courtyard outside Pizza My Heart; the tourists with razor-thin cameras.

He's alone: even Gretchen has gone. She has a dozen and one things she needs to file before she gets her lunch break. She prefers the sushi place on the corner of Emerson; so did he, once.

And Eduardo ... well, now, there's the rub. Where does Eduardo have to go?

He hears footsteps behind him, two pairs, but he doesn't turn around.

"Mr. Saverin," someone says. He recognizes the voice; she's one of the interns ("guards, is more like," had been Mark's comment, delivered to his notepad in the middle of a particularly vicious scribble, "making sure you don't set foot where you don't belong and you don't say a word to anyone you're not supposed to be talking to. You call them interns, but they're only marginally more aesthetically pleasing than the potted plants.") "Your documentation is ready. Do you need anything else?"

"No, thank you," Eduardo says, still not looking away from the street.

She makes a neutral noise in her throat, and her heels clip-clop professionally away.

"No," Eduardo sighs, giving into melancholy and the need to be dramatic about it for a moment, because he deserves it by this point. "I don't need anything."

"No, I suppose you don't," comes another voice, male this time, his tone mild. Eduardo looks over his shoulder. A man leans against the glass doorframe, mousey-haired and colorless, wearing a raggedy-looking suit and square-toed shoes. He looks familiar in a way Eduardo can't place, but that doesn't mean anything -- he's met a lot of people in the past week, both friend and foe.

He shakes himself off, turning his back to the hills and the brilliant sky. "Sorry," he goes, dredging up a polite smile and fixing it onto his face. "Did you need the room?"

The man doesn't answer, though he does push himself off the door and walk around the deposition table. "Eduardo," he says, dragging it out, his accent very not-from-here. He studies Eduardo's face, his mouth curved at the corner. "Eduardo Saverin, who tried so very hard and waited for so very long and never won. You look older now."

There's something about the way he says it that pings familiarly in the back of Eduardo's mind. He narrows his eyes. "Sorry," he says again. "Where do I know you from?"

"It'll come to you, Frank," the man replies, brightening a bit. "I looked into that, by the way, and I was right -- it is genetic multiplicity, which is very odd to see with generations as close together as yours is. Usually a couple hundred years pass before a copy pops up, and rarely ever along lines of direct descent. But! Frank, the real Frank, not you, is --"

"My maternal grandfather, yes, I know," Eduardo says. He's having the biggest deja vu feeling: where has he had this conversation before? "I looked into it too. He moved to South America on a job in 1933. It was very Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He married my grandmother and they had my mother late in life."

"Yes!" the man points at him. "Which was surprising, not going to lie," he adds to himself, mostly as an afterthought. "As Frank didn't seem the reproducing type, if you know what I mean."

Eduardo shrugs. "To be honest, my grandmother was rather butch."

The man throws his head back and laughs, a full-on, very loud "ha!" and Eduardo shoots him a grin; it feels uncomfortable on his face.

Then, "hang on," he goes, everything clicking into place: the name, the jacket with the worn elbows, the man with the blue photobooth who sounded like he was genuinely happy to see him. "Are you -- how. It's been years since I was in New York, how did you -- who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor," says the man with a smile. He says it like he's saying, I'm the Queen of England, or the way Sean Parker had said, you know what's cooler than one million dollars? "Someone gave me a call, said you could use a friend. I'm actually surprised I made it, to be honest: usually when I'm trying to get a specific date and time, I wind up about thirteen years off and someone tries to burn me at a stake." He makes a face, and focuses his attention back on Eduardo again. "So where are you headed now, if you don't mind my asking?"

Eduardo snorts and makes a show of checking his watch. "I think by now my name should be back on the masthead, so maybe I can show my face again at my parents'. I'm sure the six-figure addition to my bank account won't hurt there, either."

The Doctor smiles again, sadly, slow and without teeth. "Let me rephrase that," he goes, quiet. "Eduardo Saverin, where would you like to go?"

 

3 |

 

Inside, everything is golden, organic, multi-tiered and impossibly spacious. Eduardo flattens himself up against the door and finds himself trying to look at everything at once.

The Doctor waltzes towards him, his eyes dancing -- the blue light of the console (what is that?) catches and reflects in them, purely magical, purely alien. "I love this part," he comments to no one in particular. "Their expressions are never the same thing twice." He spreads his arms in welcome. "This is my TARDIS. She's my spaceship. Well --" he corrects himself humbly, and around him, everything seems to breathe. "My time machine."

"How --" Eduardo starts, reaching out and curling his hands around the railing. He almost expects to feel a pulse. "This is --" And he can't finish.

"Yeah, we get that a lot. Takes the definition of hiding out at home and talking to no one to a whole new level, doesn't it? I think I've got a warp hole stashed in the linen closet down on the sixth level." He frowns at his feet. "I should do something about that before one of you lot stumble into it on accident. Warp holes are kind of messy."

Eduardo huffs an incredulous laugh in the back of his throat.

The Doctor beams. "Think! All of time and space and no obligations! Where to, Mr. Saverin?"

Eduardo's gaze snaps back to him. "Away," he answers, feeling it stretch up underneath his heart, pressing against his ribs, his skin; the urge to leave. "Far, far away."

 

4 |

 

The Lost Moon of Poosh is still called the Lost Moon of Poosh, although Eduardo isn't altogether sure why, since it's not exactly hard to find. Apparently it went missing for awhile, and nobody seems to know where it went (the Doctor ducks his head and smiles at nothing when the locals on Poosh bring it up, which makes Eduardo suspicious.)

After Poosh, where the people walk backwards, the sky is yellow, and the mailboxes are carnivorous, they wind up on the crew deck of the Santa Maria, one of the very first pioneer spaceships to ever leave the Milky Way. Eduardo spends hours on the observation deck, his neck craned backwards; the Doctor's off meddling somewhere, and none of the crew members seem to mind: a lot of them come by to do the exact same thing, the same awe and wonder on their faces, like the proximity of the stars makes it okay that two strange men just popped onto their ship out of nowhere. Eduardo used to swap between NASA images as his desktop background, but this is an entirely different thing altogether, seeing nebulas as if they're close enough to dip his finger in.

So he's the first one to notice they have company.

"Wha --" he starts, startled out of his mind as it ghosts up silently alongside them; something that big shouldn't be able to sneak. Its eyeball takes up the entire window of the observation deck. Eduardo stares up at it as it stares down at him and thinks this is probably what a heart attack feels like.

"Shh," says the Doctor from right behind him, just as he opens his mouth to yell. "It's friendly. Friendlier than you can imagine. One of the friendliest creatures in the universe, even."

The eyeball blinks and turns away, and Eduardo gets a glimpse of slug-like skin and enormous flippers. "What is it?"

"It's a star whale," says the Doctor. The line of his mouth is relaxed and fond. "A biological miracle of an animal: it has no need for respiration, no need for food or drink, and I have absolutely no idea how they breed. It's a mystery." He leans over the railing, his nose inches from the glass. "Oh, you beautiful, majestic creature."

"Why is it here?"

The Doctor looks at him over his shoulder. "To help," he says. "These lot are pioneers, hunting for life-sustaining planets because Earth's resources are strained to the breaking point. Who better to lead them than a star whale?"

It gets a lot more complicated than that very quickly, because that's when the ship encounters an unexpected asteroid belt (how is an asteroid belt unexpected? Eduardo wants to know,) and for the next couple hours, alarms are shrieking everywhere, the Doctor waves the sonic screwdriver around ("does that help?" Eduardo asks. "Not particularly," the Doctor answers, keeping his voice low. "But it looks impressive, don't you think?"), security storms the bridge and marches them off and Eduardo spends a very terrifying forty seconds in an airlock before somebody has the brilliant idea that maybe instead of trying to harpoon the whale (why does an expedition ship even have harpoons for? That's just asking for a misunderstanding,) they should try communicating with it.

"Thank you," the Doctor says darkly when they're finally released, tugging on his suit jacket, ruffled.

"Is this what your life is usually like?" Eduardo goes once he finds his voice again.

"Stupid question," says the Doctor, which isn't an answer.

Three days later is Eduardo's birthday ("of course we're going to settle, Wardo," Mark had said snappishly, "I don't want to have to keep doing this across a table on your birthday," which nobody had known what to do with, because taken completely out of context and the vicious way he'd spat it out, it almost sounded kind, but Eduardo caught the way Marilyn hid a smile and disgustedly wondered if he'd been prompted,) and he spends it up to his knees in the sewers of an Earth colony in the Morpheus quadrant, caught in the middle of a congressional debate.

The head of state-turned-overnight tyrannical dictator had exiled all his Congress members in a stunning upset, so they had nowhere to convene but beneath the city to discuss what they were going to do. It's obviously a deeply poignant moment in history, even Eduardo can tell that, but he still takes a moment to mourn a little: by this point, his suit is unsalvageable.

What the head of state hadn't seemed to take into consideration before he overthrew all representative rule was that the military was still loyal to the Congress, and with them, the nuclear warhead department.

It takes the Doctor all of four minutes to overtake the speaker at the makeshift podium and command all attention. "Nuclear weaponry," he begins, pointing his finger. "Is a very, very bad idea."

Eduardo supposes that what follows is a powerful speech -- the Doctor is certainly direct and to the point, with very eloquent "LISTEN TO ME"s and "YOU CAN'T DO THIS"s, but Eduardo is watching the Congress members, and he can see that a lecture on morals is the last thing they want to hear: the Doctor is losing them. He kind of gets where they're coming from: they were callously and cruelly expelled from their homes and their jobs (.03%, he thinks, smiling sardonically) and now have to meet down here where it smells like piss, and pulling an ace out their sleeves like, oh you know, a nuclear warhead probably looks pretty golden right about now.

Right then, Eduardo thinks, and before he has time to double-guess himself, he pushes through the fringe of the crowd and joins the Doctor on the podium. "Get out of my way," he says brusquely.

The Doctor fish-eyes him, cut off mid-rant about history and legacy and being better than this. "What are you doing?" he hisses.

"Leave it to me," Eduardo says, leaning close to his ear. "I'm an economics major, I got this."

Spinning around to face the sea of faces -- thin, pale, and lined with anger -- the pressure and importance of the moment strikes Eduardo hard: this is a point in history on par with George Washington crossing the Delaware or Guy Fawkes trying to blow up Parliament, and it isn't even Eduardo's home country. It isn't even his home planet.

Then he rolls his neck. You survived initiation into the Phoenix, he tells himself. This is nothing.

There's a lot of things you can say about Eduardo Saverin, but this is true: he is fantastic under pressure.

And what he understands, and what's going to speak loudest and clearest to these people, is money, the movement and exchange and flow of it. You can't say Eduardo isn't a brilliant investor when backstabbing best friends aren't in the equation, and the Congress is used to power, wealth, influence. When you get into doing what's right versus what's cheap, guess where their priority is going to lie? Nuclear war is costly, and will be the kind of expense they're going to keep paying for for years to come.

No one wants that. There's got to be another way to get their new tyrannical dictator. Some bureaucratic technicality. There's always a bureaucratic technicality.

When he stops for air, he can hear a murmuring, a rustling, people putting their heads together. He relaxes his shoulders and eases back onto his heels, turning to smile at the Doctor, who's looking at him like he hasn't really looked at him before. There's respect in that look.

Did I just stop a world from turning to nuclear warfare? Eduardo wants to know. I think I did. Happy birthday to me.

The next place the Doctor takes him, the denizens are the size of skyscrapers. The fact is a little hard to miss, since the Doctor parks the TARDIS in between the salt and pepper shaker on a table the size of an Olympic stadium. It's basically Thumbelina meets Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and Eduardo has never before had to worry about getting sat on, squashed, or accidentally baked into a pie, so it puts a lot of things into perspective.

In 1956, outside the plantation barracks thirty miles upstream of Nova Friburgo, there's a little girl playing with a doll in the sunshine. Eduardo stands at the end of a dirt road and watches his mother very carefully fasten a bib to the doll's neck, chattering all the while.

A man and a woman come out of one of the barracks, and the Doctor elbows him sharply in the ribs. "Head's up," he goes cheerfully. "This is what you're going to look like in thirty years." And then he's off, striding down the length of the building, shouting out, "Frank!" the same joyous way he did when he first met Eduardo.

Apparently in thirty years Eduardo is going to lose a good portion of his hair (this is fairly depressing, as Eduardo has always kind of secretly liked his hair. So had Christy and Mark, if the way they once fisted their fingers in it in order to hold him still for a kiss was any indication,) and develop the worst, languid, drawling accent on the planet. It's absolute torture to listen to him say anything at length.

"Stop!" he goes, clapping his hands to his ears and wanting to cry. This is even more painful than the time he tried to teach Mark a couple polite things to say so he didn't wind up accidentally insulting Eduardo's sister over winter break. "That is horrible, absolutely horrible!" He swings on his grandmother. "Why on earth did you marry him? He's butchering our language!"

She laughs delightedly, and Frank sulks. "I was born in Tenessee, I can't help it," he protests, indignantly switching to English. It's odd to look at him, sitting there in the sunshine bouncing Eduardo's mother on his knee, though probably not as odd as it is for Frank to see him. "I'm an awful long way from home." He tips his hat to the Doctor, "though not as far as you, I imagine, Doctor. Where'd you get the new face, if you don't mind my asking? It's not --"

"No, not anything as strange as Dalek-human hybridization," the Doctor says cheerfully. "This happens naturally. What do you think? I'm not quite sure about the jaw, yet, myself," he tilts his head into profile for them.

Eduardo has never met his maternal grandparents, and it's the maybe the strangest thing that's happened to him yet, star whales and foreign planets aside; he sits down to lunch in a barrack where the Star of David is nailed to the doorframe, and his grandfather tells him about what it was like to build the Empire State building (and what its actual purpose for, which boggles his mind; do you think he can blame an evil mass-murdering alien influence for why he couldn't get advertising in New York?) and the Doctor tries to explain spatial genetic multiplicity, but keeps on having to stop and say, "but it usually never just skips a generation like this, I wonder what's so special about you two," and then flings his hands up and goes, "you copycatted! I don't know!" and Eduardo's grandmother laughs behind her hand and goes, "that's very scientific, Doctor, thank you," and then a little yellow gecko crawls across Eduardo's plate.

Nothing explodes and nobody dies and when they leave, Eduardo walks backwards so he can keep his eyes on his family; Frank with his arm around his wife, and his mother, age six, standing in between them with her doll in her arms, all of them waving.

When he can't see them anymore, he turns around and jogs a little to catch up to the Doctor. On instinct, he slips his hand into his and squeezes it. "Thank you," he goes, quiet.

"A little birdie suggested that you might like it," the Doctor replies, smiling from the corner of his mouth. He jiggles Eduardo's hand to get his attention. "Now, what do you say we go risk our lives doing something brilliant?"

Eduardo beams. "Deal."

With the exception of a drunk-driving/black-ice incident back at Harvard and his break-up with Christy, Eduardo has never honestly feared for his life before. One week in with the Doctor, and he has almost been eaten, blown up, vacuumed into space, and stapled to an inter-department office memo.

My father was right, Eduardo thinks happily on the next planet, wiping some thick, mucosal substance off his face as the Doctor yells "gasundheit!" to something he can't see. I make horrible life choices.

 

5 |

 

"Brace yourself," the Doctor mutters out of the side of his mouth, and that's all the warning Eduardo gets.

"Doctor!"

A woman comes flying out of nowhere, and Eduardo gets an impression of very, very long legs and a lot of red hair before she flings her arms around the Doctor's neck with a squeal. He laughs in delight, clasping her tight around the waist somewhat awkwardly, because she has something rather cumbersome-looking attached to her back.

Just as quickly, she lets him go and punches his shoulder, hard enough to make him rock back on his heels. "It's about time you showed your face! We've only been calling for ages."

The Doctor waves his hand at this, like it's a technicality. "Amy Pond," he goes, dragging her name out like it's taffy. She's dressed in dark camouflage, and when she tilts her head, her mouth pursed, they get a clear look at what she's carrying on her back. "And spawn!" the Doctor goes, shocked, circling around her. Like the black-and-white pictures of Native Americans in Eduardo's old textbooks, she's got a basket strapped to her back, and out of it, a little pale face and dark eyes look out at them curiously.

The Doctor doesn't seem to know what to do, wringing his hands and staring back at the baby. "Blimey, I leave you alone for five minutes --"

"It's been three years," Amy corrects, without rancor.

"Humans," the Doctor goes, like it's the start of a very long rant, but before he can get into it, Amy spots Eduardo, hovering awkwardly to the side. Her eyes widen fractionally with interest, gaze slipping up and down and the corner of her mouth curling, and Eduardo lifts his eyebrows at her, because she is checking him out.

"Is this your latest, then, Doctor?" she asks.

"Amy Pond, Eduardo Saverin," the Doctor introduces them distractedly. He's got a look on his face like he's thinking of poking Amy's child just to see what he'd do.

"Hello," says Eduardo politely.

Her eyebrows tick upwards. "American and hot," she comments approvingly. "That's good, Doctor. I was beginning to think you only liked to take young, nubile girls with you as companions."

"I am very insulted by that," the Doctor declares without any change in tone whatsoever. "You were never nubile. Also," he waves a hand at Eduardo. "I woke up one day with a craving."

Both Eduardo and Amy flat-out stare at him. Amy's mouth opens, and he knows she's going to say, "for a hot American?" because it's in her eyes, but she never gets the chance. In the distance somewhere, there's a very abrupt, very distinct whumph, and everything flashes away to white. The Doctor reacts instinctively: he grabs them both and yanks them down as, mere seconds later, the force of the explosion clubs them, knocking them onto their sides. The roar that follows deafens everything: his own yelling, Amy's baby crying, the howling of the trees and the earth.

When it finally fades, Eduardo looks up, his ears ringing. Amy's arms are caged around the basket her baby's in, her eyes blazing. The Doctor's grinning back at them. "Looks like we got here just in time," he says.

"Amy!" comes from the direction of the trees; a man's voice, yelling and frantic. "Amy, answer me!"

"We're here!" Amy pushes herself upright just as a man comes bursting out of the trees. He's wearing the same dark, dirty clothes she is, only he's got a stethoscope around his neck and he's carrying a medkit like a briefcase: it looks like any Red Cross first-aid kit Eduardo's ever seen. He beelines immediately for Amy, catching her close and pressing their foreheads together for reassurance, before stroking and kissing the soft downy head of the kid, relief all over his face.

"Rory, Rory, Rory Pond," says the Doctor, staggering to his feet and clapping both the man and Amy on the shoulders. There's debris in his hair and his eyes are dancing. "What have you two been up to?"

The story is this: the border moon of Parovillia is a very nice place, make no mistake ("have you ever gone somewhere on, say, honeymoon or vacation and just never wanted to leave?" Amy explains as they go. "That's this place. At any given point, we're 75% locals and 30% booming tourism." "That's 105%," Eduardo points out with a frown, and she hipchecks him in retaliation,) but the dichotomy between the very small percentage of wealthy landowners and the moon's scavenging poor has always been problematic.

"It honestly just seemed like one of those things you see in every society," says the medic Rory, who, Eduardo is discovering, is actually a very stilted, awkward person when he's not frightened out of his mind for his wife and child. "But then Yolanda -- that's that moon over there, you can just barely see it in this light -- had a revolution and the effects of it snowballed over to this one. We've been hovering on the brink of civil war for weeks."

"And of course, Amy Pond could never resist a fight for the underdog," the Doctor finishes, and Amy beams at him like he just paid her a compliment.

"Question," pipes up Eduardo from the back. "Are the class structures strictly rigid, or is there movement in between the socioeconomic brackets? And has this been going on your whole lives?"

This earns him a very puzzled look from both Ponds. "Oh, we weren't born here," Amy informs him after a beat. She keeps on having to reach back and pull her hair out of reach of her child, who seems to have decided it's the only fun thing to do from his narrow vantage point. "We moved here three years ago. We used to travel with the Doctor, you know, but when we found this place, it kind of felt like home, you know."

"I don't know why you'd chose this moon over the whole of time and space," the Doctor says a little spitefully, hopping on one foot to peel something slimy and seaweed-like off the arch of his shoe.

"And thank you for telling Eduardo here all about us. It makes us feel so special to be mentioned like that."

"It's not like I have a PowerPoint of all the companions I've had!" the Doctor retorts.

"We're from Earth," Rory offers in a friendly tone, with the air of someone very used to stepping into arguments before they can dissolve into bickering. "Leadworth, in England."

"Oh?" Eduardo says. "What year?"

"2010."

His eyes widen. "Really? You're from the future. I'm from 2005, don't tell me what happens!"

Amy looks ecstatic. "Oh my god, Rory, do you remember what we were like in 2005? We were, like, seventeen, weren't we? Yes, we were, because I remember that was the year that Jeff wouldn't stop telling everyone about all the spots you had on --"

"Yes, thank you," Rory cuts in. The back of his neck is red.

They reach the camp where Amy and Rory have been living for the past week or so, and it's humming, alive, people moving back and forth looking like they're doing something important. Almost the instant that they come out of the trees, Amy and Rory are both swarmed. Everybody here wears the same outfit, and all of them look worn and a little bedraggled and keep on demandingly ask if they saw that explosion and what did it mean. Amy unbuckles her basket from her back and sets her toddler down on his feet, holding on to both his hands and walking him in front of her. He looks relieved to finally be out of it; his mother shares the sentiment, if the way she keeps gratefully rolling her shoulders is any indication.

According to Rory, the protestors and the picketers have come from all the shantytowns all across the moon to gather at the capitol, so they've set up these sort of tent communities in the woods outside the city walls, where everybody returns at night to catch some shut eye before they pick up their signs and do it all again the next day. Some, like the Ponds, have even brought their kids -- Eduardo can hear a group of them laughing nearby.

The Doctor bounces around from person to person, asking probing questions and invading personal spaces left and right. Eduardo, Amy, and Rory pretty much just ignore this behavior, as they're used to it.

So, somehow, it isn't altogether surprising when, scarcely an hour after the Doctor has gotten a rundown of the entire political history of the moon since the first settlers stretched out from Parovillia itself, the camp is invaded. Rory's the first to hear the yells and the screams, frowning and stepping forward to cut the Doctor off mid-tirade. Then spotlights flood the clearing; a hovercraft descends from the heavens, and as soon as it's close enough, men in shockingly white uniforms leap down to the ground.

They're carrying guns.

"Run!" the Doctor yells, like anyone really needs prompting.

Mayhem ensues.

Rory makes a grab for Amy, but she bolts, darting sideways out into the open. Eduardo hears her screaming somebody's name, and sees, seconds later, someone in all white snatch her by the arm, twisting her and shoving her to the ground. She's winded now, but still perfectly audible, roaring, "my son! Where's my son!"

Her husband makes a wounded noise, ducking out with his hands already lifted in surrender. Eduardo hesitates only a heartbeat before he follows, palms raised to the sky. In his peripheral, in between the tents, he catches sight of a cornflower-haired woman with a familiar crying boy in her arms. She catches his eye and then melts into the trees.

"Safe, Amy!" he cries. Rough, gloved hands grab him and force him down, too. "He's safe!"

She subsides, hair in her face and mud streaked up her arms. They stay there until the shouting and the light-waving dies down. Eduardo loses all feeling in his knees, his neck uncomfortably twisted. The Ponds have their hands stretched across the space between them, their fingertips touching. The Doctor's eyes are flicking back and forth, narrowed in contemplation.

"It's only because you're here," Amy comments to him in an undertone, sounding a little put out. "Nothing exciting has happened here in weeks, and then you show up and we have an airstrike and an ambush in one day. What is it about you?"

"Trouble can't resist this face," the Doctor responds, still shrewdly eyeballing their captors.

"I knew it couldn't just be me," Eduardo mutters.

Amy scoffs, not moving her mouth much. "Oh, just you wait until he tries to tell you you're the most important person in the universe. That'll make you really feel special."

Finally, they're escorted onto one of the hovercraft. Eduardo's never been on one before, and feels he would enjoy it so much more if only there wasn't a gun pointed at him. There are six guys in white to the four of them, including the pilot. That's five guns. Eduardo doesn't fancy their chances at overpowering them.

They've been in the air three minutes before the Doctor says in his cheerful way, "So! If you don't mind my asking, where are you taking us this evening? If you wanted a date, honest, a good pinot and some carnations would have worked fine, you didn't have to go to all this trouble."

A shifting amongst the soldiers. The one in the middle, the tallest one with the broadest shoulders, speaks up first. Eduardo smiles at the grating between his knees, because one of the first things a economics major at Harvard learns is how to profile, divide, and conquer the competition. The men in white just designated their leader. The first mistake.

"We're taking you to our superiors," says the tall guy, voice muffled by his helmet.

"Okay, fine, that's original," says the Doctor equably. "But why?"

"Our superiors want to discuss matters with the persons of interest from the dissenting side."

"Ooo, Ponds, did you hear that?" The Doctor sounds thrilled. "You're considered persons of interest. I've never been more proud."

"Discuss?" Rory echoes waveringly. "That sounds questionable."

"It is," Big Guy agrees readily, which wipes all traces of humor from the Doctor's eyes. "And they certainly don't need all four of you to make it, now do they?" A movement, and suddenly, the muzzle of his gun is inches away from Amy's face. "You, stand up."

She goes very slowly, her eyes crossed to keep the muzzle of the gun in her sight like a snake charmed. Her boots clunk against the grating and she stumbles slightly. Rory makes a stifled sound -- Amy's hands are shaking, but he looks twice as terrified as she does. Eduardo shoots a sideways look at him, and as he does, he notices the Doctor's hand slipping incrementally towards his pocket.

"How about we kill you know?" Big Guy is saying to Amy pleasantly. "It'll be quicker and more painless than a brain aneurysm. And I would know, because that's what these guns do," he waves it a little bit for emphasis, and Amy's throat bobs.

One of the other guys puts his gun against the hull of the hovercraft so that he can fish something small and flat out of his back pocket, which he then holds up to Amy like he's trying to take her picture, or maybe scan her. Eduardo feels his heart skip a beat. That's six soldiers, four with guns, two now unarmed. Depending on what type of jiggery-pokery the Doctor performs...

"It's so clean," Big Guy keeps on, like this is all par for the course. "So preferable to the weapons of old. And certainly much nicer than what awaits you in prison, I promise. It's never nice to be a woman in prison." And that's definitely a leer, which makes Amy's mouth thin. She tilts her head up defiantly.

"What a lousy excuse for a soldier," she goes loftily, and the temperature in the hovercraft drops to the kind of cool that could probably bring a hard frost to hell. "Go on, then."

"Sir," goes the soldier with the scanner. He steps over to Big Guy and whispers urgently in his ear, gesturing with the equipment a little. From Eduardo's angle, it looks kind of like the concept sketches for the iPhone that Sean Parker had hacked into Apple databases to show off to the pencil-skirt interns. He scowls at nothing -- Sean Parker is the last person he wants to be thinking about in life-or-death situations.

The helmets obscure all facial expressions, but when Big Guy next speaks, there's a noticeable lilt of disappointment in his voice. "Change of plan," he says to Amy. "We can't kill you. Step down, ma'am."

"Well, that's rude," says Amy crossly, not moving. Only a muffled, hurt noise from Rory makes her go back to her knees on the grating. "Why not?"

"We aren't monsters," says Big Guy without a change of tone. "We won't harm a pregnant woman."

"WHAT." Amy's arms drop, and it's only the menacing shift-click of four men with guns that makes her put them back up again. Her eyes are saucer-sized. Rory's mouth is hanging open.

"Blimey," goes the Doctor, leaning forward minutely. "I think I'm starting to get a clear idea of your hobbies, Ponds. I should never have let you off the TARDIS."

Eduardo wants to elbow him, but doesn't, on account of immediate threat of death. Amy's head whips around. "OI."

"No, but seriously," Eduardo cuts in. "Congratulations! That's wonderful!"

And then the muzzle of Big Guy's gun is hovering in front of his nose. "We'll take him instead," he says mildly, like it's no more a concern than weighing fruit. "Stand up and come forward. We'll send your body back to your camp after the alloted three days."

Amy's vehement objection is immediate. "He's not even important!" she says forcefully, sending a panicked look Eduardo's way. "What do you want to kill him for?"

"You know what," Eduardo is already on his feet, fingers laced behind his head. It's probably a sign of how warped time traveling has made him (is there such thing as Stockholm Syndrome if it's the Doctor?) but he feels so much better standing, because while he's not a bulky person, he's tall, and there's enough of him that he's blocking two or three of the gunmen from getting clear shots at Amy, Rory, and the Doctor. "I'm Jewish. I don't think we'll ever get an answer to that question."

He shifts his weight a little, and then --

From behind him, sudden movement! Finally! Eduardo thinks, adrenaline surging.

But it's not the Doctor, it's Rory! Rory with his stethoscope in hand -- the only thing he'd gotten out of camp with besides the clothes on his back -- and he's throwing it like a boomerang. It clobbers the pilot across the ear, and he jerks the throttle. The hovercraft dips sharply to the left.

In the ensuing chaos, everybody tipping in every direction and the Doctor's sonic screwdriver squealing, Eduardo knocks the gun askew in Big Guy's grip and drives his shoulder into his solar plexus like a linebacker. They go down together.

It'll probably be embarrassing, later, just how easy it was for Big Guy to flip them over and incapacitate him, but then Rory comes out of nowhere and Big Guy slumps on top of Eduardo, unconscious. When he twists his neck around, he sees four of the other guys already on the floor and Amy cold-cocking the guy with the scanner with the butt of someone else's gun.

Eduardo stares up at Rory -- Rory! -- in shock.

"There's a --" Rory says, stammering. "In the neck -- with your hand. Knocks them out. I learned it in med school," he finishes on a mumble.

"Rory Pond," Eduardo goes with fervent amazement. "You are the most kickass person I know."

"What, I don't get any credit?" the Doctor demands from up at the controls, his fingers flying, occasionally pointing the sonic screwdriver at something over his head. "You're lucky I soniced those guns before they could fire, or you'd all be a lot more dead than you are right now."

"Doctor!" Amy screams, and a skyscraper swings past the bubble-window of the hovercraft, alarmingly fast and alarmingly close.

"Okay, you still might be a little more dead than you are right now. I can't -- !" the Doctor starts frustratedly, and the next second Eduardo has Big Guy hefted off of him and he's on his feet, scrambling to grab the throttle.

"Is this --"

"Yes," says the Doctor, still flipping switches and jabbing buttons. "Hold her steady, Eduardo, and try not to crash us into anything while I try to land us!"

"Right," says Eduardo, elbowing the unconscious pilot out of the way and wrapping both hands around the throttle. "Okay, Dustin," he goes under his breath. "Let's see how much I actually absorbed from watching you play hours of SimCopter."

The capitol is a close-knit city of interlocking spires and buildings, with not a lot of space between them and apparently no room for anywhere wide open enough to land a hovercraft on. As a bonus, there also seems to be an air-rail whose tract is made out of something that practically blends in with its surroundings, so Eduardo can't see it until proximity alarms wail.

"This is the worst game of Frogger ever!" he shouts, as they pass within inches of an air-train, close enough to see the shocked, oval expressions of the commuters.

Finally, Amy points and yells, "There, look!"

It takes a lot of shouted directions from the Doctor and Amy both before Eduardo gets them on the ground in what seems to be a parking lot. They lose some of the landing gear, which makes the whole thing lean pathetically to the right, but he figures that considering they're not dead, everyone can deal.

They tie up the soldiers and, with a little fiddling, the Doctor sonics their guns into permanent uselessness, just as a precaution. They leave them there, hopping down out of the hovercraft onto the pavement. There are people out and about, dressed in the same blinding, pure white that the soldiers were, who eyeball their dirty clothes and cross to the other side of the street, but Eduardo can't be bothered with them. He drags in deep breaths -- every time he almost dies, the air tastes that much sweeter -- and suddenly, finds himself with an armful of Amy.

"You were wonderful!" she exclaims, shrill and delighted, and she doesn't give him any warning at all before she grabs him by the shoulders and kisses him full on the mouth.

This is about as surprising as a gun to the face, and for a long beat, Eduardo doesn't even recognize the warmth and the wet in between his lips as Amy's tongue, and then he has no clue what he's supposed to do. "Mmphh?" he protests, hands hovering above the sway of her back. Somewhere on the other side of her head, he can hear the Doctor laughing and Rory going, "hey!"

She lets him go, and he's already saying, "sorry!" preemptively, even though she was the one that kissed him. It just feels like the thing to do.

Rory's got a long-suffering expression on his face. "No, hey," he goes when Eduardo looks at him, deer in the headlights. "Considering I once had to compete with him --" he gestures at the Doctor, "-- you're really not high on the list of threats to my marriage. Sorry," he adds belatedly, like he thinks Eduardo might find this insulting.

"You," Amy cuts him off, grabbing him by his jacket. "You shut up, you were brilliant," and she's laying one on him, too.

Rory's eyes lid with bliss, and Eduardo can't help but laugh, turning away from them to look at the Doctor, who's concentrating on some kind of read-out on his sonic screwdriver.

"I feel like you've been left out," he announces, wry, and the Doctor looks up distractedly, going, "hm?", but then Eduardo steps forward and presses a kiss to the side of the Doctor's mouth, the way you would to a best friend or a favorite grandfather.

When he pulls away, the Doctor spares him a bemused, fond look. "Just when I think I have you lot figured out," he comments to no one in particular, and then he darts forward, grabbing Amy and Rory and pulling them out of their liplock. "Come along, Ponds! Come along, Saverin! We have work to do!"

Fifteen minutes later, the oligarchy topples.

The celebration that follows is one of the best that Eduardo has ever been a part of, and he's including the Phoenix parties he never got to attend (thank you, Mark and Mark's possessive jealousy.) The bonfires go as tall as skyscrapers and the picketers don't stop hugging each other. There's food that Eduardo can't identify beyond everything tasting like smokefire, and the locals teach him how to dance. He thinks he's probably insulting generations of their ancestors by even trying to attempt it, but then the Doctor comes out and suddenly, Eduardo feels rather adequate.

Amy and Rory are loudly and joyfully reunited with their son, and after a soft discussion, disappear into the med tent. When they come back, Rory doesn't even wait before he shouts out, "They were right. We are pregnant!"

Eduardo squeezes his eyes shut as he punches the air, but he's pretty sure the force of the crowd's following cheers shake the very stars in the sky.

He and the Doctor don't leave until the next morning, the dawn bright and dew clinging new to the grass. The Doctor hugs Rory and Amy at least a dozen times each, telling them again and again that they can't just call him for every minor societal revolution, he's a very busy man with lots of societies to save, you know. Finally Amy loses her temper and tells him to shut it, he loves this stuff and he'll come running every time. He gets sniffy at the brush-off and disappears into the TARDIS to sulk.

Eduardo follows more slowly, looking all around at the trees and the sky and the distant mote of the city. He's hovering on that strange edge of drunk and sleeplessly hungover, where everything seems too bright and sharp and he wants to look at it all.

There are footsteps behind him, and then Amy skips up to his side, looping her arm through his. "How long do you think you're going to stay with him?" she asks softly, and there's a seriousness to the set of her mouth that makes him straighten his shoulders, shaking the daze out of his mind.

He looks her in the eye. "I don't know, but I honestly don't have anything to go home for."

She takes this in its due course, nodding like it's not a surprising answer.

"Amy," he says, and she lifts her face to him. "What can I do? What makes him happy?"

Amy thinks about it, looking up at the sky of her adopted planet, her mouth pursed in concentration. "A happy ending," she says finally. "Not being alone and not losing the good people. The opportunity to show off. Jam."

They're at the doors of the TARDIS now, and Amy reaches out suddenly, grabbing him and pulling him into a tight hug, standing up on tiptoe so she can hold on. "Good luck, Eduardo," she goes against his neck.

"You too," he says into her hair. The door creaks open and the Doctor pops his head out. He makes a face at them.

"You can't keep him, Pond," he informs Amy with a miserly expression. "Find another babysitter for your brood of Pondlings."

He can feel Amy roll her eyes. It's a physical thing. She pulls back, and the Doctor steps out of the way to let Eduardo slip into the TARDIS. He hears her drag her voice out thoughtfully as she says, "Eduardo Saverin. Where have I heard that name before?"

"He's the co-founder of Facebook," the Doctor chirps easily, and with a parting, "so long, Ponds!" he closes the door on her shocked expression.

"What'd you tell her that for?" Eduardo asks, as the Doctor hops up to the TARDIS console and happily begins lifting levers. In precaution, he grabs onto the railing, because this part isn't usually gentle. "She's never heard of me."

The Doctor leans around to grin at him. "Well, how do you know that? She's from 2010. A lot can happen in five years." He throws a switch and off they go.

 

6 |

 

On New (New New New) Singapore, Eduardo gets separated from the Doctor at an intergalactic job fair.

This isn't surprising, since the Doctor comes to these kinds of things and spends two seconds at every station, muttering variations of "wrong!" and "I like the nano version better" and "come back in hundred years, and then we'll talk 'advanced'," so when Eduardo looks up and finds the Doctor nowhere in sight, he just rolls his eyes and keeps on browsing.

New Singapore is the Kokoxomoso galaxy's leading hub for technological development, so everything new and hip and upcoming and every golden opportunity for young entrepreneurs is shown off here. According to the Doctor, at this point in time, the real name is something that's all consonants and no vowels, since human beings haven't even crawled out of the primordial soup yet. Eventually, they'll come and colonize and rename the place New Singapore, but not right now, so all this tech is alien.

"But it looks --" Eduardo starts, looking back and forth.

The Doctor flashes him a smile. "Curious, isn't it? So many different kinds of life developing everywhere in the universe, and yet you lot all wind up on parallel tracks sooner or later, doing the same things and making the same kind of technology."

"Oh, is that what it is?" Eduardo drums his fingers against his tie thoughtfully. "To be honest, I was wondering if the TARDIS was doing something."

"Do you think she's doing something to you?"

"Besides translating everything in my head? Well, that's it, exactly. Is she still translating? Like, she'll translate languages, but in order to understand something, you need to translate a lot more than words -- you need both syntax and semantics. Is she altering how I perceive these planets, so that I can recognize some local kind of domicile as a building the way I have experience with buildings? Is she altering how I see and smell food so that I recognize it as food?" This earns him a rhetorical, look at you, aren't you adorable? from the Doctor, which he steadfastedly talks over. "Is she altering what I see at this job fair so that I'll look at that and know it's --" he gestures vaguely at the nearest booth, because to be honest, it looks a bit like a --

"Three-speed blender, yes," the Doctor confirms, looping a circle around him in order to get a closer look. "I've always wanted one of these! I stuck a plant in our last one, and now I have an infestation in the pantry." He suddenly looks thoughtful.

"No, Doctor," Eduardo jumps in preemptively, because he knows that look. "You can't nick it."

The sky in New Singapore isn't a real sky: it's a thin net of a hologram, set to change every couple of hours to reflect the effects from various planets. Eduardo stands on a street corner for awhile, watching very something similar to the Northern Lights dance far up above his head, and feels an inarticulate joy swell up in his chest, because how is this his life? How is he this lucky? His cheeks start to hurt, and it's only when he lifts the back of his fingers to them does he realize that he's smiling that hard. He covers his mouth and laughs: it feels like fireworks inside his chest.

Sometime later, he's watching a presenter demonstrate what basically amounts to a car, only when you get out of it and press a button on your keys (it even beeps!) the car folds -- kind of like a Transformer, now that he thinks about it -- and folds and folds some more, until it's the same size and shape of a cigarette lighter. She then cheerfully tucks it into her purse and goes on her way.

Eduardo's still geeking out a little when his phone rings.

He fishes it out of his pocket, thumbing the accept button as he lifts it to his ear.

"Doctor!" he calls out in greeting, and he knows he sounds so stupidly, inanely, ridiculously happy, but he doesn't even care. The Doctor should know. "Doctor, you need to come see this! I think someone stole your idea, you know, the bigger-on-the-inside one," a thought occurs to him, and he doesn't even pause for breath, "and please hold off on sticking your nose in any intergalactic warfare for the next hour or so, I'm not done with this floor."

There's a beat of silence on the other line.

And then.

"... Wardo?"

Eduardo stops dead in his tracks.

Everything mutes; the alien chattering on every side, the PA system announcing the next set of presentations, his own breathing. Everything cuts out except for the rush in his ears and the nothing, the nothing coming from the phone, until -- yes, yes, that's the clacking of fingers on a keyboard.

"Mark," he says flatly.

"Hi." It's a syllable, just a syllable, and still, it's hardwired in Eduardo to peel every meaning out of it: that's all him, not the TARDIS. In "hi," Eduardo can tell that Mark is as thrown-off as he is. "I ... you said -- where are you?" he asks abruptly.

"Singapore."

"Why are you in Singapore?"

"I live here," Eduardo lies, and it's that obliviousness that has every one of his walls coming back up. He wonders how long it's been since the deposition, and he wonders what Mark's been doing, alone by himself on his tiny little Facebook anthill. "Mark," he says tiredly. "What do you want?"

"No, you're right," Mark says, brisk now. "I don't have time for a game of Where's Wardo anyway. Listen, do you remember where we put the --"

Something with six legs and an awkwardly-proportioned proboscis bumps into Eduardo from behind. They both apologize reactively and maneuver around each other, but it makes Eduardo feel clammy, like he wants to crawl out of his own skin, and this -- this is what Mark does to him. He is light-years, galaxies, even millennia away, and he still makes Eduardo feel hunted and claustrophobic.

He pushes through the clusters of aliens stopping and examining the booths. He needs to get outside now.

"-- hello?" Mark goes impatiently on the other line. "Wardo, did you hear anything I said?"

Why am I still on the phone? Eduardo thinks, like a light bulb flicking on. He slides his finger up to the End Call button, jabbing it with a dull throb of satisfaction, because Mark Zuckerberg already has so much of him, he doesn't get a second, a heartbeat, a breath more.

It's too late, of course, and where's the fairness in that? He escapes, finding somewhere less crowded and more quiet. He sits down under the pixellated sky, breathing hard, and he's the first human being to ever set foot on this planet and see this idea-exchanging mix of alien races, and all he feels now is numb. How come, when all the way across the universe their ancestors are just one-celled organisms floating around trying to decide if maybe there's something to this newfangled mitosis thing, Mark Zuckerberg can still make him feel like shit? Mark has always made Eduardo feel like shit during some of the best moments of his life, because that's just what he does. The others he hoarded for himself, demanding Eduardo's attention and setting his teeth to his jaw once he got it, like the half-crescent mark served as some kind of serial number, saying, this, this, your happiness belongs to me, too.

At the time, Eduardo had been willing to give it all.

This is how the Doctor finds him, an unspecified amount of time later. He's still by himself when he hears the Doctor's cheerful, "Aha! I wondered where you'd gotten off to. Did you see the auto car that could fold into this lighter-looking thing-a-ma-bob?" His voice lilts up, "Someone's trying to copycat Time Lord technology. It's never going to work: the thing has abysmal safety ratings -- Eduardo?" He's standing in front of him now; Eduardo can see the odd, squared toes of his shoes through the fan of his eyelashes.

He lifts his head.

"Ah," says the Doctor, blinking back at him. And then, "oh dear."

"Tell me something, Doctor," Eduardo says tonelessly. "Is this what Mark Zuckerberg does? Is this what his legacy is going to be -- ruining the lives of anyone who's ever offered him anything?"

The Doctor takes a deep breath and then squats down in front of him. "I was wondering when you were going to ask about him," he responds, his voice low. He reaches out, fitting the palm of his hand against the curve of Eduardo's skull, dragging him close so he can press a kiss against his hairline.

"Eduardo," he says heavily, mouth rolling against his skin. "Oh, Eduardo Saverin." He pushes himself up to his feet. "Come on. There's something I need to show you."

 

7 |

 

The TARDIS door creaks on her hinges, and the sunlight's so bright it blinds Eduardo momentarily; in the space in which everything is shot to white, he can hear children laughing, a splash. There's the unmistakable watermelon smell of cut grass.

Then his vision clears and he stops squinting and he sees they're outside a community pool, the kind you can find anywhere in human existence. It's summer, the sky is endlessly blue, and he can hear the wet smack of children's feet against the cement, another splash. The Doctor leans a shoulder against the TARDIS and makes a shooing motion with his hand, so Eduardo goes up to the fence.

And there, sitting along the edge of the pool with their feet in the water, a red lifeguard floatie draped over their laps, are the twins. He recognizes them instantly, for all that he only met them a couple times in person, the last of which was over a deposition table -- they're that distinctive. This is clearly in their future: there are crow's feet visible around their eyes even from a distance, and they've no longer got the bulging arms that scream I'm an Olympian athlete! Eduardo guesses they're in their mid-forties: the kind of mid-forties that can lifeguard at a pool without shirts and lose no dignity doing it, but he doesn't think the Winklevosses are the type to ever fall to ruin, not even in the face of old age.

As he watches, a woman walks through the gate. The twins look over at the loud squeal the metal makes, and their faces light up with identical expressions of surprise and delight. They fling the floatie to the side in their haste to get to their feet. She's not in a bathing suit and she's wearing shoes, which probably breaks about fourteen pool rules, and she's got thin brown hair that tumbles all across her shoulders; it's all Eduardo can see of her from this angle.

As she walks towards them, one of the men breaks into a run, and Eduardo catches a snatch of the other one yelling, "what is wrong with you, Tyler, you don't run at a pool!" but it doesn't matter, because Tyler reaches the woman and grabs her up into a hug, the kind where her feet leave the ground and he spins her around in a circle. He sets her down so that the other twin can hug her too, all of them talking over each other ("It has been entirely too long since we saw you last, woman, what is this" "I've forgotten how ridiculously tall you two are!") and then Cameron steps back and Eduardo feels the second sharp stab of surprise in between the ribs.

The woman is Erica Albright.

Ask Eduardo to write a list of the last people he'd have expected to see, and she would have been on there, somewhere in between George Washington with an ax and the goddamn Batman. He curls his fingers around the fence wiring, as Tyler goes to wrap an arm around Erica's waist and she squirms away, damp patches already showing on her clothes from where they hugged her.

"The thing that people tend to forget," comes from behind him. Eduardo startles, looking over his shoulder at the Doctor, who ghosts up next to him, fingering at his suspenders. "Is that we get along with far more many people than we quarrel with. Our friendships last longer than our grudges because friendships are so difficult to lose."

Eduardo looks back; Erica's hair is grey at her temples, but when she throws her head back and laughs, the sound is as joyful and young as any of the sun-darkened children splashing about in the water. "They're happy?"

"Mark Zuckerberg is nothing but some insignificant glitch in their past," the Doctor confirms, and reaches out, curling his fingers around Eduardo's where they're still gripping the fence. "That's what time is so very good at doing: it puts distance between you and the pain of heartbreak, so that you can go on and make friends with people on their own merit, for your own reasons, and be happy in the end. Most people learn this lesson by living it, but I think this is a spoiler that won't hurt you to see a little early."

Eduardo takes a deep breath, and lets go of the fence, letting his fingers lace together with the Doctor's as they fall back to their sides.

"Come on," says the Doctor, squeezing his hand. "One more stop."

 

8 |

 

He recognizes where he is immediately, and it guts him, hooks inside of him and rips everything out and he's airless, spinning inside his own head like a kaleidoscope.

He stands at the end of the hallway in Peter Thiel's office and watches himself come out of the elevator. Himself several years and one lawsuit younger, nervously fingering at the button on his suit jacket and constantly turning around so he can smile hugely at Mark: Mark, who looks exactly the same, with the heavy Neanderthal brows and the soft-to-the-touch clothes and the enigmatic half-smile at the corner of his mouth. He lifts his head every time younger Eduardo comes near in order to reflect his own joy back at him, amused and tolerant.

It takes everything in Eduardo not to stalk down the hallway and grab him around the throat and throttle him, because this is what he could never shake, this is what kept him up at night: the idea that maybe he could have seen the double-cross coming, that there was something in Mark's demeanor this day that was off, something Eduardo didn't recognize because he was too stupidly, wonderfully happy and trusting. He has gone over this moment in his head again and again, trying to find something.

And now here it is, in front of him again, and his worst suspicion is confirmed: Mark Zuckerberg lead his CFO to his death sentence with a smile on his face.

How can you look so calm? Eduardo's brain screams at him, watching his younger self catch at Mark's cuff, pulling him in to whisper something in his ear like a child, smiling a million watts the whole time. The evidence of his own happiness is twice as painful, the second time around. HOW. You plotted this. You KNOW. You KNOW what's going to happen, you miserable backstabbing --

Behind him, movement. The Doctor.

"Why did you bring me here?" Eduardo goes lowly, and doesn't recognize the strangled thing that comes out of his mouth as his own voice. "This is the last thing I want to relive."

This is the day he signed the angel investment papers. This is the day he shook Peter Thiel's hand and afterwards, Mark slipped into the office, fingering out the last bit of a text message and lifting his chin up to smile when Eduardo spun on him. Is this satisfactory? he'd asked, lifting his eyebrows imperiously.

This is the day he grabbed Mark by the shoulders and pinned him against the glass window, held him there while San Francisco glittered and moved below them and Mark complained, shifting and mumbling something about having no time for this, come on, Wardo, priorities.

Shut up, Eduardo had told him cheerfully, leaning in so that his entire world was nothing but Mark and glass, holding him there by the hips and the thighs. He dropped his voice to a murmur, low and humming, This is the happiest I have ever been.

I know, Mark had replied in that simple, straightforward way of his. Out of everything, Eduardo remembers this the clearest; Mark had looked right at him, studied him with an easy, assessing flick of his eyes, and then he smiled and he said, well, come on, then.

Ask a man to stop being a smug bastard for thirty seconds ... And then Eduardo had fisted his hands in the collar of Mark's shirt and pulled him up to his mouth; Mark's neck bent bonelessly against the pressure, his hair tickling against Eduardo's forehead and making it itch. They'd stayed there for a long time, kissing, the window cold against Mark's back and people bustling by with folders and Sean Parker off in the building somewhere where Eduardo really, really didn't care about him. The memory itself feels like glass, too bright to touch, and it presses hard against his ribs until they feel like splintering.

"Because," says the Doctor slowly, laying a hand on Eduardo's shoulder. "Because this is the moment, Eduardo, in which you are the most important person in the whole of creation."

Eduardo chokes on a laugh. "How?" he goes, cracked and too loud, and the Doctor transfers his grip to his elbow, pulling him into an empty room before they attract unwanted attention. "How, Doctor?" he implores when the door clicks shut behind them. "How am I important? Did you see me out there? I'm just a kid. A dumb, stupid, gullible --"

"Shhh shh," goes the Doctor, pressing his fingers to Eduardo's lips to quiet him. He grips the back of Eduardo's neck and gives him a shake. "Oh, Eduardo, if only you can see. Listen to me. Listen very carefully. Are you listening?"

Eduardo swallows, and nods.

"Good. Now, everywhere there is an important decision to be made, the universe splits in two, and nobody even feels it, because they can never see the consequences of what they do: there are hundreds of thousands of billions of parallel worlds all layered along this one, and every single one of them extends from one little person standing somewhere and trying to decide whether to turn left, or turn right. This is your turn left moment. This is where you decide the fate of your world. You can change it, you know. Right now -- you can send a note over there and remind yourself to have your own lawyers look at those papers, you can do it right this minute, and bam! Everything you know changes. That parallel universe becomes this one."

His voice is so weak he can barely hear it. "What will happen?"

The Doctor looks at him, sympathy cut deep into the lines around his eyes. "Mark never betrays you," he confirms, not much louder than a whisper. "But Facebook fails."

Eduardo makes a noise that's half a cry, half a sob. He drops into the empty seat, burying his head into his hands, gripping fistfuls of his hair, because Mark was right, Mark was right; it was him or the company, and a universe in which Mark is right is a universe that sucks.

"I'm glad I've had 900 years to sort this out, because I always wind up having to explain it to one of you little beautiful mayfly creatures. What you've never learned --"

And the Doctor is right there, kneeling in front of him. "What you don't trust," he says slowly. "Is your own significance. You have the power to change Mark Zuckerberg's mind. You've always had the power to change his mind. If you catch the clause in the paperwork and if you confront him, he will turn on Sean Parker to save his own skin. Since the first time you gave him advice on how not to scare off every girl he talked to, he's looked to you to be a conscience, to be the rhyme to his vast quantities of reason. You win, Sean Parker leaves, and Facebook booms for a year, maybe two, and then it fades into the same kind of obscurity that MySpace and LookBook have. Mark moves to Singapore with you and helps with company start-ups, and you live relatively happily. How could you not? You know nothing else."

"Someday you're going to explain to me how it is you know all this," Eduardo says, but he's listening.

"Oh, someone sat me down and very patiently described it to me," the Doctor goes, unrepentant, and closes his fingers around Eduardo's knee, squeezing it for emphasis. "But, do you realize that 68% of all the 21st-century advancements in the field of communications technology happened because somebody was stuck in a boring meeting or stuck in the back of class and wanted nothing more to do than check their Facebook feed? You studied business: supply and demand is what charters all things. Facebook revolutionized social networking, which revolutionized technology, which revolutionized the very process of human relations. Without it, without every new thing it inspired, the world never advances."

Eduardo lowers his hands and looks at the Doctor for a very long moment. "So what you're saying," he says eventually, fighting the ridiculous urge to laugh or cry, he doesn't know which. "Is that I have to choose. It's either Mark or the world?"

"Not to put too fine a point on it, yes."

Eduardo does laugh then, leaning back and sinking down into the chair, his throat constricted. He laughs helplessly, because who can make this up? How is this his life? He laughs until he finds his eyes stinging and his cheeks hot, and those are tears. Why offer him a choice at all? It's not even a choice!

"I can't --" he gasps, sobs, all sense of dignity gone. On the other side of the door, existing here and in his memory simultaneously, Peter Thiel is deciding how much longer he's going to make those Facebook kids sweat. Sean Parker keeps on smoothing his hair down, grinning. There's a solid foot of space between him and Eduardo on the bench, whereas Eduardo is close enough to Mark to be pressed together knee to hip to shoulder. And Mark, clueless, clueless Mark, is probably sitting out there thinking about Java script. He knows the trap he's set, but does he know that Eduardo is going to pin him to every surface of his room when they get back, is going to pin him down and lick every part of his body he can get his tongue on, so full of happiness he'll be drunk on it. Does he know that Sean Parker will pound on the door and yell, put your panties back on, ladies, there's a party out there with our names on it! and Eduardo will lift his mouth from Mark's stomach and shout back, fuck off, Sean! as Mark laughs from deep in his throat. Does he know how he's going to look, naked as a jaybird under Eduardo's hands, his mouth stung red and his eyes so bright they're like glass. Does he have any idea.

Mark loved him. Mark probably still loves him, Eduardo knows that, he knows that, he can't not know that, but Mark loves mercilessly, endlessly, with the same relentless force of the sun burning. There's no comfort in loving someone like Mark, because hard as Eduardo tried to be faithful and unfailing as an html code, he can't feel enough for two people. "I can't!"

And the Doctor's arms are around him now, less like a hug and more like the act of anchoring. Eduardo fists his hands in the Doctor's jacket and buries his face into the side of his neck and holds on, because it's all he can do.

"Eduardo," the Doctor's voice is a murmur in his ear. "Eduardo Saverin, the biggest bleeding heart in the world. Facebook may be Mark Zuckerberg's legacy, but right here, right now, this is yours. Nothing has the potential to be more dangerous than a bleeding heart. Nothing. Just like nothing can be more wonderful."

 

9 |

 

It's lunchtime on a Thursday (although they call it Apple-Dash Day on this planet,) and consider Eduardo's mind blown. "Centipedes?"

He straightens, swinging to face the Doctor, laughing at the absurdity. "They use centipedes to send letters? I thought you said this was the 45th century. What is this, where have you taken me?"

"Bite your tongue!" the Doctor retorts, putting a hand to his chest in mock offense and pointing sternly with the other. "They're incredibly loyal and useful creatures, and I'll have you know Her Majesty's Royal Postal Service is the most respected institution in the nation. They have a flawless record! They deliver eight days a week, and they never get caught in the plumbing." So, ha! he adds with a lift of his eyebrows.

"Oh, no, of course not," Eduardo smirks.

The Doctor claps his hands together, wringing his fingers and pacing back and forth. "I'm serious, though. I have a very important letter to send, so shoo. Go entertain yourself for awhile, and try not to start any civil wars. Or stop them, whichever the case may be. Without me, I mean."

"Got it." Eduardo pulls on the cuffs of his suit jacket and wanders off.

Wherever the Doctor's taken them now reminds him a bit of a very, very large lobby; the kind with sweeping marble floors in every direction, expensive-looking reception desks, and far too many ceremonial-looking pillars than could possibly be needed for form or function. There doesn't seem to be any people around, humanoid or otherwise, and once Eduardo is far enough away from the Doctor that he can't hear his muttering and the soft, put-upon screeching of the sonic screwdriver, it's a little eerie.

He ducks through a door at random, finding himself in a room that's all grey everything -- flat, cubed gray surfaces, the floor, the wall, something that might be desks or counters or anything at all.

"Well, this takes minimalist design to a whole new level," he comments quietly, and takes a step forward.

Immediately, the floor splits and a panel rises in front of him. It's also a flat, grey surface, kind of like a podium, and it stays in front of him with the distinct waiting air, like it wants him to do something.

He reaches up, and tentatively touches his fingertip to the panel.

It's like touching the surface of a lake. From the place where his finger pressed against it, the panel erupts into color, rippling outwards in rings of violets, greens, oranges, so much all at once that Eduardo almost shields his eyes, because it's shocking to see after all that grey.

"Eduardo Saverin," the computerized, cool, androgynous voice comes from everywhere at once, and the panel turns a solid off-blue color. Woah, Eduardo thinks, startled, because it's always creepy to have your name just announced out of nowhere like that. "Age: 2520."

"No way," he says to no in particular.

"Occupation," the computer continues, dispassionate. "Time traveler," which makes Eduardo smile, and then he goes cold all over when it continues, "and shareholder. Welcome, Mr. Saverin. You're expected on level three C, room 114."

"I'm what?" Eduardo says blankly.

"You're expected on level three C, room 114," the computer repeats helpfully.

"How can I --" he turns in a circle on the spot, like something else might pop out of the floor and explain things to him. He turns back to the panel, not sure if he's addressing it right. "Um, not to sound, you know, ignorant or anything, but I'm pretty sure you have the wrong person, and also ... how do I get to level three C?"

There's a soft noise, and Eduardo looks to the right just as the outline of a door appears there, etched into the wall in a deep crimson color. "Please state your destination clearly. If you have any other need of assistance, we are happy to help."

"Thank you," says Eduardo, polite. He moves to the side and takes a few careful steps over to the cut-out door. The lines of red are glowing faintly, which isn't menacing at all, no. "Um," he addresses it, ever-eloquent. "Apparently I need to go to level three C?"

Walls shoot out of nowhere, too quick for the eye to follow, boxing him in. Eduardo yelps, but just like that, everything else has been shut out. There's a distinct feeling of being lifted, like he's in an elevator. It doesn't last long, because soon the walls are retreating again, folding back like partitions, and he finds himself in a hallway. It's completely different from the flat lounge below -- it looks like any hallway in any building Eduardo has ever been in, white walls and wooden doors, and the familiarity is soothing.

The main tract underneath his feet is the same grey material as the panel had been, and when he walks forward, it lights up under his shoes, splashes of color marking his footprints.

"That's actually kind of cool," he comments, looking over his shoulder to watch the rainbow trail he leaves, colors shifting and blending into each other.

The doors are all numbered, and Eduardo follows them, counting to himself as they work towards, until --

"Room 114." He opens the door.

It looks like a classroom, lecture-style, with seats that fan upwards into tiers. At the bottom, front and center in front of the whiteboard, there's a woman in a wrap-around white dress, the train of it dragging on the floor. She's sitting on a desk, twirling the chamber of what looks like a pistol, and she's got a mop of kinky, curly hair sticking out in every direction; it's enough to make the memory of Mark's Jew-fro look tamed and respectable in comparison. Behind her, his back to Eduardo, is a stoop-backed old man, the top of his head shiny and bald with only a few tufts of hair still clinging around the ears.

He's complaining bitterly when Eduardo arrives. "-- it's glitching again. Stupid. I miss the days where there was the HP and that was it. No Sony Vaio, no Macbook Air, none of this --" he gestures at the whiteboard, as aggravated as any crotchety old professor Eduardo had at Harvard. "Is he here yet?"

"You know, you keep asking that question, and I promise you, it's not going to --" the woman looks up, her expression long-suffering, and catches sight of Eduardo standing in the doorway. She stops mid-sentence. "Yes, actually."

The man whips around, surprisingly spry, and then double-takes.

They stare at each other. He shoots a look at the woman. "Doctor Song," he says, a bit testily. "You neglected to tell me exactly how young he'd be."

"It's not my fault you're old and he's a heartthrob," and the woman winks up at him, cheeky. Eduardo's starting to feel a lot like how he did the first time he met the Doctor; hopeless, confused, and a little like he has an oncoming headache. Being a time traveler, he's getting used to things not happening linearly, but it doesn't make it any less baffling.

The old man squints up the aisle. He's got a very large forehead and heavy brows -- it would be easier to overlook if he had any hair, but as is, it makes him look like a caveman. "I forgot how much hair you had. What do you use to cut it, a weedwhacker?"

"I -- um?" is Eduardo's intelligent reply.

Doctor Song throws her head back and laughs. "Oh come down here, sweetheart, we don't bite."

And then the old man does the impossible. He straightens up, sticks his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and says, simply, "Wardo."

Eduardo jerks as if struck by a lightning rod. His feet move without any direction whatsoever from his brain, taking him down the sloping aisle in between the seats. Like in the hallway, his footprints light up in riots of color, leaving imprints on the floor, but he doesn't pay them any mind. The doctor puts the gun down onto the desk and crosses her legs at the knee, and her eyes sparkle when Eduardo's gaze flicks to her briefly.

The old man watches his approach, his mouth pulled back at one corner in a way that Eduardo has seen a hundred times before, more familiar to him than even his own father's face.

He reaches the front row and stops, a pace or two away. The old man reaches out, snagging the can at the edge of the desk and tipping his head back to take a drink like it's a nervous habit, and it strikes Eduardo in the gut, recognition shivering through all the way to the ends of his fingers: apparently energy drinks are the same in the 45th century as they are in the 21st, because how many times has he seen that movement?

"Oh my god," he says blankly.

Doctor Song laughs again. "Good Lord, boy, sit down." She looks sideways. "And here I was, thinking 'he went as white as a sheet' was just a figure of speech."

Mark -- Mark, old Mark, Mark here Mark! -- chuckles ruefully. "You should have seen him the morning they published the article in the Crimson regarding his cruelty to animals." At Doctor Song's questioning look, he elaborates, "Forced cannibalism. He had a chicken eat chicken."

"Oooo, forced cannibalism. That one never gets old."

Eduardo finds his voice. "Stop!" he goes, loudly, raising his palm. "Just -- stop that. You can't --" he looks at Mark, Mark with wrinkles and no hair and age spots on the backs of his hands and pocked into his skull. "-- this can't be. This is the 45th century. What are you doing here?"

A horrible idea occurs to him.

"Oh god no," he says faintly. "Oh god, please don't tell me you're actually two thousand years old. You discovered the cure for the death and the secret to eternal life, of course you did that, that is such a Mark thing to do."

"You idiot," says Mark, and Eduardo's eyebrows fly up, because Mark's smiling again, that smug, self-satisfied smirk he gets when he knows something Eduardo doesn't. It's a hundred times worse on a face that old. "Do you think if I'd found a way to preserve myself, I would have chosen to keep myself like this?" He holds up his gnarled hands and runs them over his head, dragging them in the pits around his eyes. "I'm a ruin. No, I got to this age the long way, but I got to this century via a shortcut."

It's perhaps the biggest shock of Eduardo's entire life, and that's including the bit where he walked into the Facebook offices to find his shares got diluted down to .03%.

"No," is all he manages.

Mark hums in the back of his throat.

"No way," says Eduardo, disbelieving.

Mark lifts his eyebrows.

"But I hate you!" Eduardo blurts out.

"Do you really?" says Mark flatly, like it's the first time he's heard of it. "That sounds really boring."

Eduardo clenches his fists. "You forced me out of our company."

"And you got into a time machine with a complete stranger and you didn't do a thing to change that," Mark points out levelly. He folds his arms and leans his hip against the desk. "There's a difference, Wardo, between good men and successful men, and I've always known the difference, just like I've always known which category I fell into, and which category you fell into. It never occurred to me that you weren't able to see the same thing. Look at this way --" he spreads his hands. "I created a website that helps people obsessively stalk their significant others and the people who bullied them in high school, and you've saved the universe."

"Twice," Eduardo points out.

Mark's mouth curves. "Exactly."

He looks down at the floor, scuffing at it a little with his toe, and Eduardo studies him, still a bit floored at seeing his Mark inside this old, worn-down body. He thinks, inexplicably, of the way the Winklevoss twins pulled Erica to them, their arms dark against her small shoulders, thinks of what the Doctor said, about how people try to hold onto friendship more than they do a grudge.

"Do you remember the first office building Facebook was in?" he asks without thinking.

This startles a laugh out of Mark; a dry, croaking sound. "3505 University Ave," he answers immediately. "On the corner. We decorated it very tastefully, all glass and stainless steel, which I was told was very hip at the time, but it didn't change the fact it was one floor and one room. We had to put the servers up against the window: I practically had an fit every time it rained." He tilts his head. "We were right above that little Persian restaurant. It was only open at odd hours."

"It smelled like falafel," Eduardo remembers.

"Every damn day," Mark goes, droll. "We moved, you know, after we hit membership in one hundred countries. Needed more room for the servers. Of course," he lifts his palms. "Now we're galactic. We're on seventy-five planets, two thousand nation-states, and one-hundred-fifty space stations. They don't call it Facebook anymore, as that's discriminatory language: what about our users who don't have faces? But they still use it: I recognize hacked versions of my own code, even if it's thousands of years old," he sniffs.

Mark Zuckerberg, ladies and gentlemen and all variations thereof, Eduardo thinks dryly. Still an asshole.

The pause stretches on for awhile, and then, suddenly, Doctor Song makes an exasperated noise and throws her arms up. "Why are you still here?" she demands of Eduardo, loudly, startling him back into the present.

Eduardo shoots a look at Mark.

"I'd tell you, but it hasn't been written for you yet. Trust me, it's not like you're going to have to twist my arm." Mark says, turning back to the whiteboard. "I'll just be glad it's not another lawsuit."

And just like that, the very last piece clicks into place. Eduardo's hands fly to his head, fisting his hair.

"Oh my god," he goes, scrambling to process it. "Oh my god, it was you. It was you the whole time! Or it will be you. You're the one that told the Doctor to come get me on the last day of the depositions! You told him all that stuff about Sean, and your motivations, and my grandparents. You called him."

"Don't be stupid," Mark deadpans, dismissive. He touches his fingertips to the whiteboard, and soft ripples of color spread out across the surface, solidifying into large chunks of block text. "I left a note on his Wall."

Eduardo throws his head back and laughs, and he's going, he's going to turn on his heel and dead-run all the way back to the TARDIS, to the Doctor who will look at him and say in his fond way, Eduardo Saverin, the boy with the bleeding heart, who will take him home and to whom he will say good-bye because he has a future with his brilliant genius backstabbing best friend and someday somehow they'll wind up here, but before he can take more than one step, Song's hand closes around his arm in a vice-like grip. She leans in.

 

10 |

 

"I have a spoiler for you, sweetheart." She smells like gunpowder, and her lips brush his ear when she whispers, "It's a happy ending."

 

 

 

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fin