A/N: I did do a bit of research for this, but make no claims of real historical accuracy.

P.S. - I'm still working on The Trouble With Mickey, just taking a brief detour here for a holiday-related quickie. This was intended to be a oneshot, but since I came up with the idea a mere week before Yule and I write far too slowly to have it completed in time, I'm splitting it into two parts so as to post at least some of it before the holidays. No more than two chapters, I promise.

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Hag: The hag is a fairy from the British Isles. She is said to be the traces of the most ancient goddesses. The hag is regarded as the personification of winter. In the winter months she is usually old and very ugly looking. At the change of the season, she becomes more and more beautiful and younger.

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Proper footwear, Rose thought, was never a thing to be underestimated.

No, for walking through a darkened, snowy wood at 6:00 in the morning with only moonlight to see by, well, trainers were simply not adequate. Something waterproof would be a vast improvement. Waterproof and insulated sounded like a slice of heaven just now.

She was doing her best to focus on the numbness of her feet, which would – hopefully – serve to distract her from the painful tingling in her fingers and her increasingly cold and wet trousers. Not to mention the fact that she had been up all night and was ready to topple over from exhaustion.

And then there was the matter of the trickle that was emerging from her nose.

She made a mental note to keep some tissues on hand in the future.

She caught sight of the Doctor up ahead, ran a few steps to catch up, and was reminded once again of the difficulty of running in two-foot deep snow. She slowed again and cried out, "Doctor, wait!" for what seemed like the thousandth time.

He did not respond, for what also seemed like the thousandth time, but plodded on single-mindedly, like a man possessed.

Transfixed. Intoxicated. Controlled, perhaps.

Controlled, was precisely what she suspected was happening to him.

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Somewhere near Deva Victrix, Britannia, 280 A.D., nine hours earlier

The door to the TARDIS squeaked open as Rose emerged, followed closely by the Doctor.

They stood and surveyed their surroundings. It was a dark, clear and cold night with the moon shining brightly overhead, reflecting onto the snow on the ground. They were in the middle of what appeared to be a small village of crudely-built homes. The village was surrounded by woods.

"A good time," Rose muttered to herself as she pulled her hood over her head and buttoned her jacket. "I asked for a good time, as in 'a few beers down the pub' or 'nightclub dancing till 3 in the morning with a dark-haired Spaniard named Ramon.' Instead, he gives me Sherwood Forest at the full moon after a blizzard."

"You wanted a good time, I'll give you a good time, Rose. Try opening your mind for once in your life," replied the Doctor.

"So what's this, then?" she asked. Her unspoken words still came across loud and clear: What's so fun about a night in the freezing-cold snowy woods with no central heat or plumbing?

"Bit of a festival," replied the Doctor. As if to prove his point, they suddenly spotted a group of revellers who had just come round the corner into the centre of the village. Some were singing, a few had fiddles, and all of them had clearly been imbibing in some rather potent drink.

Rose noticed that some of the men had antlers tied on their heads. "Is that the medieval equivalent of wearing a lampshade on your head?" she asked, nodding in the general direction of the revellers.

"It's the Horn Dance," the Doctor replied, terribly pleased with himself. "They're trying to coax the sun to return."

Rose looked at him blankly, prompting him to elaborate. "It's the Solstice," he explained, and when she failed to look even a little more cognisant, he continued, "longest night of the year? When the darkness is at its peak. These people are farmers. They depend on the sun. They've watched the days grow colder and shorter for the past six months and now's the day that everything turns round. It's a time of tremendous celebration and hope."

Rose watched as the group of revellers knocked on the door to one of the houses. The door opened, and the group proceeded to perform, some of them playing fiddles, some singing, some dancing, to the family standing at the door.

"Is that like Christmas carolling?" Rose asked.

"Where do you think the tradition came from?" replied the Doctor. "Oh, and by the way, it's not medieval times yet, you're over a century too early."

Rose shot an annoyed glance back at him and asked, "So do we just go and join them? Is this the 'good time' we've come for?"

"Yeah, it is," he replied with a silly grin. "Go on, you might even recognise some of the songs," he egged her on.

"Aren't you coming too?" she asked.

"Oh, I'll be along. Just going to have a look around first."

The Doctor set off armed with the sonic screwdriver while Rose complied, hesitantly at first, and started over towards the group of revellers. As she approached, her eyes met with one from the group, a man in his twenties or so, who was engaged in the act of dancing a dance with two of his cohorts that vaguely resembled a jig. As he saw her approaching, he reached out towards her, linked arms and swung her into the dance at top speed.

She stumbled through, utterly failing in her efforts to pretend she knew the dance, but nobody seemed to notice (or, more likely, they didn't care), and a few minutes later, she stood facing her partner, out of breath, and laughing in merriment.

"And who might you be, lady?" asked the man, whose longish dark hair and stubble would've made him a perfect fit on Survivor. "I haven't seen you round these parts before."

"Rose," she replied. "I'm a...I'm just passing through."

"A flower with hair like gold and some very fetching clothes from a strange land," he observed, eyeing her up and down. "Well, Rose, I'm Emsley, please come and have a drink and another dance with us."

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And in the end, the Doctor was right, of course. Rose could hardly remember when she'd had more fun.

Once the group had completed serenading all the houses in the village, they spent the following hours round a sizeable bonfire at the edge of town. The scene was, in many ways, not unlike a particularly wild Christmas party, with a pine tree that had been adorned with crude decorations, bits of metal, and candles. A spicy scent lingered in the air, which the Doctor informed her was incense – frankincense and myrrh, to be specific. The musicians played tirelessly, and the drink flowed endlessly, of which Rose was only too happy to imbibe in, which led to her being quite convinced that she was getting the hang of the dance steps after all.

She wasn't really, though.

The Doctor did not dance, nor did he partake of any beverages, but seemed content to hang back and watch Rose enjoy herself, as he occasionally nibbled on some bread and dried fruit and glanced up at the night sky. Every so often, Rose would make her way over to him and try to entice him into a dance, but infuriatingly, he would not be persuaded.

So Rose continued dancing and drinking amongst the crowd which, by the way, included more than a few young, handsome males, a fact that was not lost on her.

But she was definitely not flirting, she told herself. Nor was she trying to make the Doctor jealous.

And even if she had been trying, it wasn't working.

Until the mistletoe, that is.

It turned out that sprigs of it had been hung from the trees overhead. There was so much of it, in fact, that it was hard to miss once Emsley had pointed it out to her in the midst of one of the slower dances. She had been hesitant at first, unsure if the significance of the green leafy plant was what she knew it to be, but a quick glance around her, revealing the other celebrants sucking each other's faces off, demonstrating conclusively that mistletoe's significance over the years had not changed a bit.

She stole a look over at the Doctor, who seemed for a moment to be watching her with some intensity, but quickly became very interested in a stone stuck to the bottom of his shoe. So with a deep breath and a fleeting thought as to whether she'd had garlic with her lunch earlier, she leant in towards Emsley and their lips met in a warm, sensuous, and very abbreviated kiss.

Rose looked over in the Doctor's direction again and found him looking right at her. The bonfire reflected in his eyes, and she was reminded of the Superman movies she'd seen when Superman shot laser beams from his eyes.

And then somebody was shoving another mugful of drink in her face, and another dance was starting up that involved progressively changing partners, and Rose thought that this evening was shaping up to be very, very interesting.

Infuriatingly, the Doctor continued to give her a wide berth, betraying no dismay at the events except for his very white knuckles on his left hand that clutched the sonic screwdriver.

The dance continued, Rose danced with (and snogged) a progression of men, and the Doctor still steadfastly refused to locate himself anywhere near any of the mistletoe.

And finally Rose decided she was feeling just tipsy and flirtatious enough to go grab him by the hand and pull him, whether he liked it or not, into what had become a snog-fest of massive proportions.

But she never got the opportunity. As she made her way over towards him, the air was suddenly filled with figures swooping down from the sky. After a moment, Rose realised in surprise that there were only three of them, but they circled and dodged the revellers in mid-air at a pace that was entirely inhuman, making it seem like they numbered in the dozens.

Dozens of what, Rose was not sure, but as one of the figures hurtled directly towards her, forcing her to duck in order to avoid being smashed head-on, she was able to make out a shrivelled face and hooked nose underneath a black cape and hood.

Witches, she thought. Or hags, and suddenly wondered if the Doctor could have mixed up his holidays.

It wouldn't be the first time he'd made such a mistake, she thought.

tbc