Warnings: Strong Language

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Chapter Two: Fourteen Months

I paid the cab driver and stepped out into the sunny street. Flowered bushes lined the walkways surrounding the uniform red brick townhouses with white trim.

The street was fairly familiar. I had seen it on Doctor Who. The first episode of the new series. Rose.

I had started to lose my mind a bit after the first few months. Doubts about my understanding of the situation had plagued my every thought until I had been on the verge of a breakdown.

Confirmation. That's what I'd needed. That's what I was here for.

I paced down the street slowly, checking every address twice before moving on. I got some strange looks, but I was more concerned with knocking on the correct door than I was with looking like a weirdo.

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The months had ticked by slowly. I learned a whole new meaning for the word patience as well as a whole new low for the mental health bar.

Yeah, depression, anxiety, and identity crisis' became a common occurrence in my daily life.

It hadn't taken me long to locate the buildings that Jackie and Rose lived in.

I couldn't stay in a hotel for a year, so I made the decision to move in to one of the apartments near the Tyler residence pretty quickly.

From there, I would get a job to occupy my time and wait it out.

It was a very loose plan, but at least it was one.

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The correct address, scrawled in silver on a black metal plate, danced into view.

How could I be certain that the Doctor existed?

Rose and her family existed, but it got to the point where that wasn't enough. Was this really like the universe I had seen on TV?

I needed someone to tell me. I needed to talk to someone. But who could give me a straight answer?

Jack Harkness came to mind first.

Jack was funny and kind, at least on Doctor Who, anyway. I was sure that he would be happy to help if I asked.

Except I had no idea how to find him.

Well, I did. He was working for Torchwood now, right? That was canon in both Doctor Who and Torchwood.

I had researched a travel plan to Cardiff and had even packed my bag, but then I chickened out.

What if I got it wrong? I couldn't just show up at Torchwood and claim to be from another universe, with Jack's support or not. What if Jack refused to see me for the sake of continuity? What if he just didn't want to see me at all?

I knew I was being stupid, but I had let my mind run away with me, so there was no going back.

I guess I just wasn't ready to stick my neck out.

Despite all I had been through, I literally could not handle the thought of meeting Captain Jack Harkness in the flesh. He was too important… and too fictional. I wasn't ready for that yet.

So that's how I ended up standing in the exact place Mickey's yellow car had sat, would sit, when Rose would visit Clive in a few month's time.

I grit my teeth decisively and knocked on the door.

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One of the biggest obstacles I had faced was me. As in, both my personality and my new body.

For starters, I needed to grow up. The old me was not one that would do well in the world of aliens and time travel. I had to learn how to cope with getting out of my comfort zone and build some kind of self confidence - especially since I had none.

Secondly, I was not okay with wearing the face of the Mirror Girl. I needed to be me, even if 'me' wasn't the person that I had been in my original universe. So how was I supposed to have my own identity while hating my old personality and my new face?

Well, by creating someone else.

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There was a bit of a scuffle and shuffling around inside the house before a woman, assumably the curly haired woman with the laundry from the episode, Clive's wife, elected to answer the door.

"Hello?" She asked cheerfully. "How can I help you?"

I plastered on my best smile and pretended to have never seen her before.

"Hi! I'm looking for Clive? I emailed him about the Doctor?"

Clive's wife surveyed me curiously before smiling amicably and turning to call for her husband.

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Naturally, my mind had gone to Star Wars for advice.

"Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to."

So that's what I did. I took my past self and I killed her.

Not actually, of course. But she had to go. The only way I was going to cope is if I wasn't her any more.

I started with getting my hair cut. The red Rupunzel thing wasn't working for me, so I had it cut into a lob similar to how I had had it in the other universe. Then, for good measure, I had the stylist put in purple underlights, something I never would have done with my parents around.

The very same day, I got a tattoo. Once again something I never would've done if I hadn't been alone and making my own decisions. Well, my parents would have let me if I had really wanted to, but the judging would've been more trouble than it was worth.

So, I got a tattoo in dark blue - nearly grey - ink of an apple blossom with leaves and vines trailing elegantly from it, spanning from my right side at the base of my ribs and working up to the bottom of the right shoulder blade. I absolutely loved it.

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"He must be back in his shed," Clive's wife informed me as she opened the door for my admittance. "If you just want to come through here."

The curly headed woman guided me through a kitchen and sitting room that had not been shown on TV and out into an unfamiliar yard to a slightly more recognizable shed.

"Really, a pretty girl like you reading a website about the Doctor?" She chatted pleasantly.

"Yeah, well, you know," I laughed wearily.

"Clive? You've got a visitor," the woman called into the structure.

The door swung open immediately, revealing the chubby man with a round, friendly face.

"Hello, I'm Clive, if you hadn't already guessed" he greeted with his trademark awkward cheer, extending a hand for me to shake.

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That night I spent a long time staring at myself in the hotel mirror, resting my elbows on the sink.

About an hour previously, I had decided that I needed a new name. My old one simply wouldn't do - every time I started to say it in my head, the sounds of my friends and family saying it would ring in my ears, dredging up the pain that I would rather stayed suppressed.

So, my next hours were spent on the cold tile of the bathroom floor with my laptop, browsing for names and occasionally popping my head up over the counter to see if I looked like a (insert whatever name that was on the computer screen).

It was weird, picking my own name. I had been on baby naming websites for the creation of fictional characters before, but never for a real person and definitely never for myself.

I wanted something that carried personal meaning.

After ages of dicking around, I ended up testing out the names of fictional characters - it seemed fitting, since I was in what had once been a fictional world.

Star Trek. Star Wars. Supernatural. Sherlock. Harry Potter. Etc. Nothing stuck. The problem was that I wanted a nerdy name that couldn't easily be identified as a nerdy name. I didn't look like a 'Hermione' anyway.

Then I stumbled upon something interesting: The show Buffy the Vampire Slayer didn't exist here. For some reason, it never got started up.

At first, I was scandalized. What kind of universe didn't have Buffy?

Then, I understood the opportunity.

Buffy was a badass, but no one other than me knew it here.

I stood tall in that bathroom mirror and said out loud to the girl in it. It fit. She didn't look like Mirror Girl anymore. She looked like a Buffy.

Oh. I needed a last name too.

But I didn't care as much about that.

I spent ten minutes randomizing last names until I found something that sounded good with Buffy.

Reid. Buffy Reid. That had a nice ring to it.

I was Buffy Reid.

I am Buffy Reid.

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"And you must be Buffy," Clive finished, stepping back so I could enter the shed-turned-conspiracy-man-cave.

"That's me," I confirmed amicably.

"Sorry that I had to ask you to come here," he continued, pacing around a tall wooden workbench that was covered with stacks of papers. "But I was worried about sending this stuff to you online. It's all very weird, and seems like the stuff people would intercept."

"But I take it I'm not the first person you've shown it to?" I asked absently, picking up a sheet and scanning it without actually reading what it said.

"No, I've had a couple of people look at it before. There was even this one group of people, fans of the Doctor, they said. Bit obsessive, if you ask me." Clive laughed. "Which is saying something, coming from me."

"You're not obsessed?"

"Well, I suppose. But the people that came in, they practically worship the man. Want to find him. I just want answers."

"Me too."

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I wish I could say that I handled the next few months as well as I handled those first few days.

Buffy Reid was a strange person, caught somewhere between a fictional character and someone that already existed.

She was skittish but aggressive.

Awkward but flirty.

Daring but timid.

Do you see my problem?

I had never made my own doctor's appointment before this, so how was I supposed to handle renting an apartment?

After hours of self-prep. I did it.

I had never been to a bar before, but Buffy sure as hell went to a few - rocking the purple dress (which fit her like a dream, btw).

I was a virgin that had never gone on a single date, but Buffy went to dinner with a guy and home with him afterwards.

I was two different people playing tug-o-war with a body, and I had to let Buffy win most of the battles.

I'm no psychiatrist, but I'm pretty sure that I was displaying signs of some kind of multiple personality disorder.

All I could do was hope that some form of middle ground would solidify.

And somewhere around month ten, it did.

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"Right, so here we go," Clive retrieved a file folder from a shelf. "If you dig deep enough, the Doctor keeps cropping up all over the place. Political diaries, conspiracy theories, and even ghost stories. No first name, no last name, just 'the Doctor'."

"And you think it's the same person?" I asked carefully, already knowing the answer.

Clive nodded. "Yeah, just look here." He held out the folder to display the same pictures of the Ninth Doctor that he would show Rose in a few months. At the Kennedy assassination, with a family that very nearly sailed on the Titanic, a drawing right before Pompeii erupted. "Is that the man you saw?"

"Yeah," I murmured.

"Though, mind you, it could be a little more realistic," Clive tried to reason, "a title passed down from father to son, that sort of thing."

"But you don't believe that," I interrupted, "and neither do I. A man doesn't look exactly the same as his great-great grandson. That isn't how genes work."

"Exactly." Clive began to get excited, feeding off the energy generated from talking with a seemingly like-minded person. "I think he's the same man. An immortal."

Looking at the pictures was interesting. When I had seen the pictures on the episode, they were very obviously photoshopped. The Doctor's picture hadn't matched the surroundings, it was just sort of melted in with all the ability of a medium budget BBC show in 2005.

But now, it looked very real. The Doctor wasn't staring at the camera in the same position that the fake image had been, he was looking at Kennedy and the parade, like a spectator should be. He looked real. He looked alive.

"The Doctor is a legend woven throughout history," Clive started his dramatic spiel. He must have practiced it, as it was the same as he would give Rose. "When disaster comes, he's there. He brings the storm in his wake. Always with one constant companion."

Instead of giving Clive his dramatic 'death' moment, I decided to deviate from the script.

"Or maybe he's in the storm's wake, " I murmured.

"What?" Clive asked, thrown off by the comment.

I looked up from the picture of the Doctor at the Kennedy assassination. "You said 'he brings the storm in his wake.' But that's not right. He follows the storm, it doesn't follow him. Not all the time, at least."

"What makes you say that?" Clive inquired with a fascinated, if not slightly suspicious, expression.

Crap. I had to force myself not to wince. Just started, and I had already given away too much. Time to backtrack.

I tried a vague shug. "Just seems more likely. He didn't exactly cause the Titanic to sink or Krakatoa to erupt. Looks more like he's following chaos, rather than the other way around."

Clive seemed satisfied with the answer, but I could see the conspiracy-theory geared mind of his beginning to toy with the idea that I knew more about the Doctor than I was telling.

"That's enough of my story," the round man tried to follow up on whatever his new suspicions were. "Tell me about what got you so interested in the Doctor."

Fuck.

"Is this man," I jabbed the picture of Nine with my right ring finger, "the only one that appears in correlation with the Doctor? Or are there others?"

"No, actually! He's just the one I have the most evidence of." Clive dropped his guard again and began bustling around for other papers. "I just didn't want to frighten you off with over-the-top ideas. There are more."

He opened up a folder and held it out for me to see. Pictures of Four, Eight, Ten, and Eleven danced before my eyes in a whirlwind of laminated paper and over enthusiastic explanations from Clive.

"...I was starting to think that it's a group of people. An organization of some kind. Maybe, or…"

"They're all the same person," I commented dryly.

"Maybe," Clive acknowledged solemnly. "People don't usually pick that up. How'd you think that?"

I'd done it again. I was about to backtrack once more, but then I remembered what would happen when the Doctor came to town. Near the end of the episode, Clive had died.

Guilt prickled in my chest. This wasn't a TV show. Clive would die. He was real. A real person with a wife and kids.

"Just a guess," I murmured vaguely. I flipped the folder shut with an air of finality. "Thanks for letting me go through your stuff, but I should get going."

Clive deflated a bit. "Oh. Well… I'll walk you out."

I followed Clive back through his house to the front door.

I had stepped out onto the walkway with a swimming head and a heavy heart. I knew I was in trouble when I glanced back to see him watching me from the door. He grinned when I turned and lifted a chubby hand in farewell.

Damn it.

"Clive," I gritted out, already regretting the decision. I walked back to the confused man and looked him straight in the face. "This is going to sound ridiculous. But you have to listen to me."

"You realise who you're talking to? Ridiculous is kinda my thing," Clive chuckled nervously.

"Seriously, your life may depend on it," I growled at him, causing him to serious-up too. "But in a few months, I'm not exactly sure when, but at the shopping centre, sometime at night, the Doctor will be around and the mannequins will start walking. Don't stop and stare at them. Just run."

With that, I spun around on my heel and ran off, leaving a very confused and slightly frightened Clive in my wake.

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Once upon a time, I loved Christmas.

It wasn't the actual Christmas Day that I loved, either, it was the season. There was always a sense of magic and wonder that seeped through the crack of the unknown to manifest in the form of happy music and colorful lights.

My family would always gather for the season at my grandmother's house, cousins, family friends, and all. The best time was Christmas Eve, when we would go and see the lights that were put up at the park and meet up afterwards to have a family dinner of waffles drenched in an absurd amount of chocolate syrup and whipped cream, followed by an exchange of Christmas Eve presents while we watched Christmas movies.

This year, however, it sucked.

Obviously, I was alone this year, and it was horrible. Christmas, having previously been such a happy time for me, was inadvertently the worst period of this rather long, tumultuous year.

A smart person with half decent coping methods and a sense of self worth might have gone out, made friends, and gone to parties in order to handle the crushing weight of dread and overcome the urge to fall into the pit of loneliness and despair.

I was not that person.

Instead of trying to make the season easier by doing what I knew I should be doing, I minimized the pain by going to extreme lengths to keep from experiencing anything that reminded me of Christmas at all.

Impossible, you say?

Yes.

That's part of the reason why it was such a shitty coping mechanism.

Basically it involved me cutting off every form of human contact (excluding the take-out delivery guys) and not going outside at all.

That's the other reason why it was such a shitty coping mechanism.

Should I have just gone out and faced my problems?

Yes.

Did I?

No.

Well, I went out once because the lady downstairs needed help finding her cat (it escaped out of her window while she was hanging a crude version of the Grinch on her windowsill) and was rewarded with a basket of cookies and a Christmas card, so that was kind of nice.

Somehow, I managed to crawl out of the Christmas season like a sleepy, half-dead Gollum without slitting my throat. Though I still had to get through the other dreaded time of the year.

January.

Specifically, the eighteenth of January.

The Anniversary of my Arrival in this bizarre hell-hole.

Twelve months in hell. I had Dean Winchester beat.

If Dean's four months in hell equaled out as forty years, that's ten years per month.

So really, I had been here 120 years.

Well, not actually.

But it felt like it.

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I was sitting at a coffee shop, and it was the eighteenth. After suffering the horrors of the Christmas season I had finally admitted to myself that I should at least be around people on the day that my mental health was forecasted to be the lowest, if at least to give me a reason not to burst spontaneously into tears.

I hated crying in front of people.

So, that's how I ended up sitting in the window booth of my new favorite coffee shop. It was one of those weird ones where people would read poetry every couple of hours. But the coffee was good and the people were nice, so I had started coming here a lot.

I was sitting with my back against the window, my legs stretched out in the seat with my laptop in my lap.

There were laptops in 2005, but mine was still from 2018, so I was pretending that it wasn't a touch screen and hoping that no one noticed that it was thinner and more streamlined than everyone else's. I mean, I could have just bought a new (old?) one, but I still hadn't gotten a job, and I wasn't actually sure where the money on the black credit card was coming from, so I didn't want to use it on anything other than necessities.

I was rewatching Rose again, having nothing better to do, and fighting off a mental breakdown by speculating when the events of this episode would kick off.

I had worked through it a thousand times, but I was doing it again.

Basically, I had noticed that the companions' time tended to go in order. Rose started in 2005/2006, Martha was in 2007, Clara lived somewhere around 2012, and Bill worked at and went to the University in 2017. So, realistically, the episodes where the companions were at home could be used as markers, as in surefire dates that I could use as reference.

Or, so I hoped.

My main concern at the moment was that Rose aired on March 17, 2006. I would OFFICIALLY lose whatever sanity I had left if I had to wait another year.

But it was mentioned several times that she met the Doctor in 2005.

When Ten regenerated and went back to see her, Rose told him that it was 2005, to which he responded that she would have a 'really great year'.

My hope was that the show had started with Rose living in 2005 so that when the Doctor accidentally dropped her off a year late, the episodes would be parallel with the audience's 'modern' date, making the events of Rose still in March of 2005.

God, I hoped I was right.

God, I hoped the Doctor was who I thought he was.

I sighed and took a sip of my coffee.

I worried constantly about the day I would meet the Doctor. What would I say? Just run up to him and say 'hi, I'm from another universe where your life story is a television show?' There was no version of that explanation that didn't sound simultaneously lame and batshit crazy.

Fear tightened my chest.

Would he even like me? Even though I was definitely more confident and self sufficient than I had been twelve months ago, I was still generally anxious and a quiet, dull person. What if I froze in a dangerous situation and somebody got hurt? What if he thought I was a burden? What if he didn't believe me and just left me behind? What if he thought I was like Mickey?

A frustrated whine bubbled in my throat.

Mickey the idiot. Buffy the idiot. I didn't want to be a Mickey. Sure, Mickey went through some character development and was a badass in the end, but that didn't change all the times the Doctor had thought he was worthless.

I bit my tongue and forced down another sip of coffee even though it tasted like ash in my mouth.

First of all, there was no reason to think that the Doctor wouldn't believe my story, and I knew way too much for him to just leave me behind. As for the rest, well…

I would just have to do my best.

No sense in worrying over something that hadn't happened yet.

Unfortunately for me, knowing that there was no sense in something wouldn't stop me from doing it.

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I was dragged out of my thoughts by movement at the end of the booth I was sitting at, accompanied by a man's rich voice singing out 'Red Robin' like it was in the Red Robin restaurant jingle.

I was half tempted to respond with the appropriate 'Yum', but was too startled by the cheeky, grinning face of the man that had approached me.

"Mind if I join you?" The man asked cheerfully and, without waiting for an answer, moved to sit down.

Instead of sitting at the other side of the booth like a normal person or even asking me to move my feet, he lifted my legs and sat down with them settled in his lap.

"What's the matter, Buffy-bird? You look like you've seen a ghost."

I stared at the man in shock. I had been caught so off guard by his sudden appearance that my brain literally refused to recognize him.

But the trademark WWII coat and flirty grin had given him away.

Jack's smile didn't falter as I gaped at him, trying to process his very existence. "I know it's early, Buff, but I always got the impression you already knew me. Any ringers? Or should I start dropping hints?"

"Jack," was the only word that I managed to choke out.

Captain Jack Harkness, in the flesh, the real one and not John Barrowman playing a character, was sitting at the same booth as me, grinning in amusement with my feet in his lap.

His smile broadened. "Good, I was starting to get worried. Though I take it this is our first meeting." He extended a hand for me to shake. "Captain Jack Harkness."

"Hi," I returned the greeting falteringly as I took the proffered hand. Instead of shaking it, Jack gave it a fond, reassuring squeeze.

"2005. You haven't even met the Doctor yet," Jack began, still holding my hand. "You were pulled out of your universe, what, a year ago? Don't worry, I know all about the TV show thing." He released my hand and rested his on my knee. "Must've been scary. I had been planning on visiting sooner, but I had an issue in Madagascar that… well… Weevils. Let's leave it at that."

"Weevils," I repeated, finally coming to my senses. "How'd you know I'd be here?"

"Because you told me," he scoffed, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Well, not here exactly, but that you were lurking around Rose before you met the Doctor, and I knew you like coffee, so…"

"You've been hanging around coffee shops."

"Exactly." Jack scowled in mock annoyance. "Twenty different coffee shops over a ten mile radius. You really need to get out more."

For the first time since my arrival in this version of reality, I smiled. An actual real smile too, not one of the fake ones I had become accustomed to providing in order to prevent people from thinking I was more bitchy than I actually was.

"Not much reason to get out," I admitted sheepishly. "Though my flat isn't hard to find. I'm just a building over from Jackie and Rose."

"Didn't want to get caught poking around there," Jack explained, shaking his head. "Rose doesn't know anything about this yet. Didn't want to risk contaminating the timeline."

"Ah." I recalled Jack saying something along those lines to the Tenth Doctor, about how he had considered visiting Rose during his time waiting for the Doctor. "You came to see me, though."

"You're already so full of foreknowledge that there isn't much more I can add," he snorted. "Though I guess I have a few tricks up my sleeve. I know how you affect the timeline, but I'd bet you still know a lot more about me that hasn't happened yet." He gave me a wary side glance. "And a lot of stuff that already has."

"Does it follow the actual timeline?" I pressed, already knowing what he was about to ask and dreading the answer I would have to give him. "The TV show, I mean?"

"From what I've seen, yes." Jack hesitated, drumming his fingers on my shin. "So, I have to ask… you know what happened to me?"

"Yes," was my sad reply.

"And?" Jack light grey eyes were pleading. It made my heart sink.

"Rose did it, I think," I explained softy. Maybe I shouldn't be telling him at all, but it was just what the Doctor would tell him in a few years, anyway. "She looked into the time vortex and used it to kill the Daleks and bring you back. But she got a little carried away."

Jack gave a tired sigh and rubbed his face. "Is it reversible?"

I shook my head sadly.

I had watched Torchwood, and so I knew how much Jack had been through, how much he secretly hated not being able to die. It had broken my heart then when he had been fictional. Now it shattered it and sank the pieces all the way to the bottom of the ocean.

Jack let out a tired, watery laugh. "Figures."

He looked so bummed that I couldn't help but reach out and rest my hand on his shoulder and he reached up with his own hand to cover mine.

We sat like that for a few seconds, me sitting silently while he seemed to speed through the five stages of grief right before my eyes. Eventually I felt some of the tension in his shoulders melt away.

Suddenly, Jack shrugged off my hand and straightened up, returning to his initial easy-going demeanor so fast that it made my head spin.

"So tell me, red robin, how's all the waiting going?" He asked easily.

I shrugged. "About as well as it can, I guess."

"That bad, huh?"

I shrugged again, not really willing to burden this already troubled man with my own problems.

"How much longer do you have?" Jack inquired conversationally, though his voice had softened a bit.

"Probably another two months." The familiar anxious prickle tightened in my chest. "I hope, at least."

"What's more freaky, having to wait longer or knowing that you're going to meet the Doctor?"

I let out a weary laugh. "What makes you think I'm freaked about meeting the Doctor?"

Jack grinned slyly. "I don't know," he drawled. "Maybe most people would be… let's say… uncomfortable… with meeting a fictional character."

"Well, I'm handling meeting you pretty well," I countered, feeling the corners of my mouth twitch up.

"Except that little part when your eyes popped out of your head," he teased. "But that's an appropriate reaction to little old me. This is the Doctor we're talking about. Shouldn't you be a little more… excited … to be meeting him?"

I narrowed my eyes at Jack's tone, which was seemingly innocent with a suggestive hint.

"I mean, I guess? I've been waiting for him to show for a year now." I raised my eyebrows at him. "What are you trying to say?"

"Nothing." Jack waved me away. His eyes darkened seriously again. "But honestly, how have you been?"

For some reason, the sudden change in mood caught me off guard and even loosened my emotional barrier a bit.

I shrugged and tried to ignore the dampness that was starting to sting in my eyes.

"Hey. Come on now, Buffy-bird." Jack shifted my legs out of his lap and pulled me up into a sitting position for a hug.

I leaned my head on his shoulder for a few moments, pulling myself back together and refusing to let the tears threatening to fall run their due course. When I had regained control of my tear ducts, I straightened back up, though Jack didn't take his arm from around me.

"Alright now?" He asked gently.

"Yeah. I'm fine," I insisted firmly, with more energy than I was actually feeling. "It's just been a long year."

Jack clapped my shoulder. "Don't worry, it'll get easier."

"In the future… am I… okay?" I asked hesitantly, not entirely sure what I meant.

"Okay?" Jack let out a disbelieving laugh. "What do you mean 'okay'? You're incredible!"

"I mean…" I tried to rephrase earnestly, worried that he wasn't understanding. "I don't know… Well suited? Handling it well? Compatible with the lifestyle? I… just… okay?"

"Why wouldn't you be?" Jack cooed nonchalantly, though I didn't miss the concerned confusion that flickered across his face.

"I… uh…" I stammered agitatedly. Verbal communication had never been my strong suit, not to mention that I hated talking about my own feelings. It always made me feel wimpy and needy, even though I always encouraged my friends to unload their burdens on me. So trying to tell Jack freaking Harkness that I was convinced I would be a horrible companion for the Doctor was something that was almost causing me more anxiety than it was worth.

Too late now though. "Just…" I managed to find some words. "Traveling with the Doctor takes… uh… certain… personality traits that I… uh…"

"Don't have?" Jack finished, his look of concern softening into something I guessed was compassion.

I nodded.

"More like you don't think you have," Jack corrected gently, but firmly. "It's like... " He paused thoughtfully. "Remember when you first went to college, and you had trouble riding the buses because you'd never done it before?"

"How do you know about that?"

"Take a guess," he scoffed. "And how you wouldn't go to the dining hall for weeks because you had only been there once with one of your roommates, and were worried about going through the scanner ID thing?"

"I told you about that too?"

Jack laughed. "How did you get over that?"

"I guess by…"

"By trying it out and getting used to it," he completed. "You had to ride the buses to get to your classes on time on that huge campus, and you realized that it was stupid not to eat at the dining halls since you were already paying an… I believe you said 'assload'... of money so that you had the option of eating there. So you did it anyway, got used to it, and it became easy."

"Though I would only go to one of the dining halls because I was too chicken to go to any of the others," I added dryly.

Jack laughed. "The logic still applies. But aliens and time travel work the same way, it's just a big leap. Acclimatization. Just another bus."

I nodded. "The TARDIS is one hell of a bus, though."

"It is, but you'll get there," he confirmed with a cheeky grin. "Young and untested, but once you take the first steps, I guarantee that walking on an alien planet will be the new visiting the dining hall."

"What about being chased by things that want to kill me?"

"Ever been chased by an angry dog?"

"Okay, I see your point," I said, feeling slightly better. Though I still had one more question plaguing me. "But what about the Doctor… I mean... does he even like me?"

For some reason, this struck Jack as hilarious. "Does he like you? Does the DOCTOR like BUFFY?" He drawled. He giggled to himself for a moment before continuing."Thank you for that Buff. I really needed it."

"You're welcome?" I responded hesitantly, my brow furrowed in confusion. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? "I think?"

"'You think' right," Jack chuckled. He was about to say more but his vortex manipulator, which I had just noticed strapped to his wrist, started beeping. "Though it looks like our meeting is at an end. Duty calls."

"But what am I even here for?" I pleaded urgently as Jack released his hold on me and slid out of the booth. "How did I get here? Who brought me?"

"Funny how those questions came after the 'does the Doctor like me' question," Jack commented playfully as he fiddled with the device strapped to his wrist. "I like your priorities. And I don't know… well, kind of… but I think that's for you to find out." He flipped the cover back over the vortex manipulator and faced me with a rather wistful smile. "Well, Buffy-bird, until the next time. Which, for you, should be whenever you get to 1940s London."

"I'm not going to see you again until then?"

"Unfortunately not, sweetheart. Me coming to see you once was just a guilty indulgence." He took a few steps toward the coffee shop's door, but paused to look back. "Any chance as to when I'll be seeing you again?"

When did Martha start traveling with the Doctor? "2007, I think," I offered hesitantly. "Though that's if I understand the timing right."

Jack threw me a salute and turned to walk away, but paused again. "And I mean it, Buffy," he said in all seriousness. "It'll be okay. It'll get easier. You'll be okay."

Then he walked out the door and was gone.

.

~0~0~0~

~0~0~0~

.

"Hello, Buffy," the friendly female voice greeted.

I looked up from the cracked asphalt underfoot and froze at the sight of the eerily familiar blonde.

"Hi, Rose," I returned cheerfully, somehow managing to hide how unnerved I was.

I had been walking across the space from the bus stop to my building, studying pieces of broken glass, when I ran into the blonde. I had spoken to her a couple of times, but was too freaked out by her to really try to make any kind of connection beyond polite neighbor.

"Me and my mate Shareen were going to get a pizza," Rose explained, "and we were wondering if you like to come."

Caught off guard, I stupidly replied, "Really?"

"Yeah." Rose did her adorable tongue-between-teeth smile. "We're about the same age and practically neighbors. It's been, what, a year? Don'cha think it's time we started being friends?"

I blinked at her for a second, not really sure how to respond. I had thought about befriending Rose numerous times, but always started to feel unsettled by the thought any time I started to approach her.

Because how was I supposed to interact with her, knowing what I did? Have pizza with Rose Tyler, and not let the future slip? The Doctor, aliens, and the Bad Wolf? What about that year she would be missing? Getting stuck in another universe?

I spent ten minutes with Clive and given in to the urge to hand out spoilers, so how could I handle keeping it from Rose?

More likely, I would fuck up in the form of trivial knowledge. I knew a good bit about Rose Tyler. If I was going to screw up, it would be because I accidentally mentioned something that I wasn't supposed to know, like about her dad or something.

"And besides," Rose continued, oblivious to my internal delima, "Shareen's got a boyfriend that's a cheating pig, but we can't prove it. Even Mickey thinks so. So we could really use someone to go in and shake things up a bit."

"Oh, you need someone to catfish." I nodded understandingly. I made a quick decision, and smiled. "I can do that."

Rose returned the smile gleefully and we walked off together to meet up with Shareen.

I had changed my mind in that moment about being friends with her because it was February, so I only had about a month left. Less time to make a mistake.

Also, if I we were going to be traveling on the TARDIS together, I should probably have some kind of pre-existing friendship with her. Theoretically, it would be easier to deal with aliens and crap if we already knew how to deal with each other.

Just another bus.

.

~0~0~0~

~0~0~0~

.

It was March, and I was freaking out. All the reassurance Jack had given me had worn off, leaving me as lonely and anxious as I had been before.

Though I did have Rose now. Catfishing Shareen's boyfriend as gone as well - or as horribly - as it could have, depending on what qualified as 'success'.

Her boyfriend - a beefy asshole named Jeremy - had flirted right back and even tried to take me home with him. Rose had been smug, Shareen sheepish, while I had found the whole ordeal hilarious.

I think that boy still has whiplash.

Rose and I weren't close though. I had been to her flat a couple or times. Met Jackie, who kept trying to set me up with the son of one of her friends. I met Mickey too, who was every bit as dorky as he had been in the show.

But we still didn't talk much. We were friends, but only slightly more than acquaintances.

That's probably why I wasn't on her list of informants when the apartment store she worked at blew up.

For the past month, I had kept my television on the news channel 24/7, determined not to miss my cue.

My heart almost stopped when I heard the reporter informing all of London of the explosion. I couldn't believe my ears.

The first thing I did was text Rose to make sure she was okay.

She was, meaning that tomorrow was the day the Doctor would show up at her flat and be attacked by a plastic arm.

My heart pounded and all I could hear was the blood roaring in my ears.

The fourteen months were up.

Just another bus.