Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 60th cycle. Now cycle 61!

"Salvage"
Doctor Who: 9th Doctor, Rose Tyler
Glee: Sam Evans, Artie Abrams, Schuester & New Directions
Original character: Gemma Lucas/Ginny Harrison
Doctor Who/Glee crossover series #3
sequel to "Padra's Run"

1. Here She Comes Again

Lima, Ohio – January 2012

There was still something in the air in the halls of McKinley these days. Maybe it was a residual of Mr. Schuester's proposing to Miss Pillsbury, but there was something like positivity hanging around, and they were not complaining by any means. For his part, Artie was had no problem taking this in stride. He had almost forgotten about the moment, small as it had been, a few weeks ago. Then the word had come about that a certain substitute teacher had returned among them.

This was only her second posting here, and he had only been aware of her through word of mouth, he hadn't actually seen her until the very last day, and only for a few seconds. But a few seconds was all he had needed to know he had seen that face before. Except when he had known her, her name was Gemma, not Ginny Harrison.

He had only been a kid at the time, but he hadn't been so young that he couldn't remember a face, especially for where he had known her and how. The crazy thing was she looked exactly the same as she did then, although maybe it wasn't so crazy, considering the company she kept.

Only now she was here, and he was sure it was her. He had no way of knowing whether she would come back ever again, whatever she had come to do was probably done and now she would be gone forever.

If she was back at McKinley though, then it changed everything. And he had to know for sure.

By his best guess, he had gone to check out whether she might be around the principal's office, and he was proven to have made the right call before long, spotting her come back out through the glass doors. He watched her stand there, a folder in hand, and a frown on her face as she read through it.

There was no way he was wrong. That was her; that was the woman he had met when he was eight years old, the one who travelled with the Doctor.

The moment she had looked up vaguely in his direction, he had wheeled out of sight. It had been instinct, but for now he chose to listen to it. She should be here for a few days at least. He would regroup, figure out what his plan might be.

X

Sometimes she did almost trip when she had to give her name. She had lived as Ginny Harrison for over a month now, ever since she had been sent here. It was one thing for her to get sent in to one time or another to achieve something, but this half of her task was not the easiest thing to work out, because her name was not Ginny Harrison, and she did not live in Lima.

They would have been hard-pressed to find any proof of her existence. As far as her cover went, she had no concerns; the Doctor was very thorough that way. There was plenty of information for her to maintain a regular life for as long as she required. But then if they had gone looking for Gemma Lucas, then they would have been in for something of a surprise, and then all of this would have been for naught.

Of course at the moment, the idea of having to leave did not seem like the worst one, especially as she saw where her posting was now taking her. After her stint as the home economics teacher, she was going to have to muster up the energy to pose as something even worse… a gym teacher. She had half a mind to call the Doctor, kindly decline, and let this trusty vortex manipulator carry her off to some resort three galaxies and four millennia away.

She would have thought that, after her task with Sugar, with Padra, she would move right along to whatever needed to be done next. Except, according to the Doctor, what needed to be done next was nothing at all, nothing but doing… nothing. She needed to stay right where she was, live as Ginny Harrison, waiting for the next time she would get sent in to teach at McKinley. It apparently did not matter that she could simply travel forward in time in the blink of an eye, a point she had regretted making as soon as she had begun to receive the long and specific reasons why she did need to stay.

She had spent these last few weeks existing as Ginny while making the effort of not being so obvious that certain people would get to do much talking to her if they should happen to see her. When the call had finally come for her to return to McKinley, she had all but jumped at the opportunity. There was only so much she could do in her apartment before she lost her mind.

Now as she walked through the doors of the gym and saw all the boys looking back at her, she was re-evaluating her previous claim. Maybe it wasn't too late to flee.

Hearing some laughter to the side, she had looked and spotted him in the corner, standing around with a few other boys. Sam Evans… She didn't know too much about him yet, not over here, not now, but he wasn't precisely her concern at this point. If there was one small comfort about this particular task, it was that, unlike with Sugar, there was one thing she wouldn't have to worry about: There was no way that Sam would ever recognize her; he hadn't met her yet.

TO BE CONTINUED (SUNDAY)