Smoke swirled from the room as the door slid open, Penny's footsteps ringing out as she stepped out. Head held high, she smiled, doing her best to hide the fact that her eyes were watering as she waited for the smoke to clear.
"Um… Are you all right?" asked Greg. "You're… um… you don't look like you're breathing."
"'Course I'm all right," snapped Penny, breaking down into a glare as the TARDIS cleared the smoke she'd instructed it in making. "I'm the Doctor's Daughter, aren't I?"
"Um… are you?" he asked, looking vaguely confused as he looked around the room. "It's… bigger on the inside."
"Isn't it just?" she grinned, before jabbing him in the chest. "You, though, have absolutely no sense of dramatics, young man. Honestly…. I might as well have just waltzed out dressed in pink, and you would have been more impressed."
"Um… I thought you said you were eighteen?" he muttered, stuttering as he tried to regain some semblance of order over his thoughts.
She sighed in response, rolling her eyes as she silently wished for a pair of glasses to look down on him with. "Of course I'm eighteen! I also happen to be nine hundred," she snapped, ignoring the inconsistency as she closed the door behind her and strode towards the control room. "But if anyone asks you, it's bloody eighteen, and you'd better not ask questions about the nine hundred thing either, or I swear, I will jam this sonic screwdriver where your eyes can't look."
She drew the proffered screwdriver from the TARDIS as she spoke, mindlessly twirling it from her fingers as she yanked levers. "By the way," she added, nonchalantly grabbing onto the panel as the TARDIS shook beneath their feet. "You might be wanting to grip onto something."
She smiled as the sound of the TARDIS reached her ears, a familiar whirring that was nevertheless completely alien to her. She stifled a giggle at the sight of Greg tumbling across the ground, switching a few controls as they disappeared from Earth.
"What are you doing!" he demanded, breathlessly clinging to a beam.
"Hmmm? Oh, right, should have let you off…" she muttered under her breath, smacking a few buttons. "We're going to see my Da's ex girlfriend, so that I can get the key to the TARDIS. Don't now if it'll ever open for me again without it."
"Your… you mean, this thing can travel?" he whispered, looking in disbelief around them.
"'Course it can travel, it's a bloody space and time ship! What did you think it was?" She paused, thinking for a moment. "Don't answer that. Or hit any buttons. Particularly not the blue one - you never hit the blue button, understand me?"
He nodded, fidgeting a little under her stare before turning away.
She smiled at his back before fidgeting with a few more controls. "You might wanna prepare yourself, this is going to be a little bit bumpy. Rose lives in an alternate universe, and all. Thick walls, but I know how to get through…"
"So, wait, this thing can travel to an alternate dimension?" he demanded, eyes squinted shut as he tried to wrap his head around everything that had been happening.
"'Course not," she grinned, hands gripping tightly on a lever as she pulled. "That would be ridiculous. We're just gonna go through one of the randomly occurring cracks that Da was always too scared to look for. Girl looked into the heart of the TARDIS. The ship itself can find her, if I give it enough head way and don't mind breaking a door or two…" She grinned as she spoke, smashing her fist down on a button as the TARDIS began to shudder. She felt it come to a standstill below their feet, the air rippling as the dimensional barrier itself squeezed down on them.
With a pop they burst forward, a familiar whir marking their entry. She smiled as she headed to the door, the light splaying across her skin as a bird chirped in the distance. "Wait here, will ya?" she asked, stretching a little. "This is gonna be a bit tough…." Her eyes glazed for a moment as she looked around the house, small and boring. She noted the scenery in the distance with a slight hint of distaste, the beautiful rolling hills seeming out of conjunction when she thought of the "Rose Tyler" in her mind.
"Doctor!" came a voice, a woman running out with her suitcase in hand. Penny blinked at the woman, youthful as ever, blonde hair tumbling across brown eyes as she ran forward. "Doctor! I knew you'd…. You'd…." she hesitated, staring for a moment as her eyes focused on Penny's for a moment. "Doctor?" she whispered.
Penny hesitated, tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth as memories and thoughts conflicted with her. Running with Rose in a time before she'd even been born, hugging her, loving her, holding her. Bad wolf, her getting trapped across the dimensions, leaving her. Never having known her in the first place, because Penny had never been there at all. "S-sorta," she whispered after a moment, scrunching her foot against the ground. "It's… um… It's been…"
She felt her cheek pushed back, reeling in surprise before she had time to register the fact that she had been slapped. "That is for abandoning me in this place, and telling me that you weren't coming back," she snapped. "For three whole weeks - I almost unpacked!"
Penny gawked, staring at the woman for a moment before she felt hands grip her stinging cheeks, and lips pressed against hers. She felt the tongue sliding into her mouth, opened in muffled protest, the lips moving up and down. Something inside her said it felt good. The rest of her reacted.
"What the hell do you think you're doing!" the girl demanded, pushing Rose away and choking. "I'm a girl!"
Rose's eyes flashed hurt for a moment before she glared. "Well, so am I, Doctor, but I figured I liked you enough to try it out."
"I'm not the Doctor! I'm his daughter!"
Rose hesitated, looking down at the girl in front of her with wide eyes as she spied out the various similarities not seen between regenerations. "His… daughter?" she asked, after a moment.
"His daughter," she repeated, half wanting to gag, half wanting to do it again. She shook her head to try and remove her father's tastes from her brain, wishing as always that this planet had already invented brain bleach. "You can call me Penny," she said.
"But…" Rose stared at Penny, blinking her eyes a bit. "But you said you were…"
"I said I was sorta the Doctor," clarified Penny. "I've got all his memories, lives… The TARDIS… Did I mention he's forgotten everything?" She added, blushing a little under Rose's stare. "He's been thinking he's John Smith since before I was born… If I hadn't inherited all his bloody memories, the poor ship would still be rotting in a field like it has for the last twenty some years."
Rose swallowed hard, sniffling back a tear. "So you mean the doctor… forgot…"
"The Doctor never forgets about anyone," muttered Penny. "It's bloody John Smith that's the problem. Trust me, I've got every tear jerking memory he's ever got about you. Including about three dozen rescue plans for you he never dared to use. Da had commitment issues."
"Oy, and you don't?" laughed Rose, looking at the girl.
Penny blushed again, feeling the eyes scrutinize her, weighing her to see if she matched up to the Doctor Rose remembered. "No, I don't," she muttered, firmly. "I have abandonment issues, instead. Makes me far clingier. So, you going to get in the time machine, or am I just here for the key?" she smiled, weakly, not entirely certain why she did. "We still need to go visit Barcelona."
Rose smiled back with a sigh, taking Penny's hands in her own. "First, we go in for tea."
Penny groaned, even as she let herself be led. "Your mum is going to bloody love this, isn't she?"
(While I'm here, by the way, I'd like to thank Automicwalrus for the fave, and Mouseycat for the editing - you both rock!)
