I just saw the trailer for the rest of the series and was like "you stole my imagery!"- Rose and Donna in a London street, at night, in danger, wondering wtf is going on. THIEVES! But (adopts blasé tone) they can have it, I don't care, because frankly, as soon as I stopped saying "you stole my imagery!" I started saying something along the lines of "Squeeee! Rose is coming baaaaack! Yaaaay!" so that made it all alright. Also there's the fact that I stole their characters and set-up and storyline in the first place, and I don't want to be a hypocrite...

This chapter is slightly less than canon (certain events in a certain spin-off go un-noticed, for the most part), but, erm... Shut up. Does it matter? Really? Think about Darfur, and the Chinese earthquake (and just the problems in China in general...) and suddenly, you feel guilty about caring whether or not the story makes sense. Don't you? Don't you?

Ho-hum. Disclaim, disclaim, disclaim...

--

Chapter Four: MP For Flydale North - Outside the Government

--

The seemingly impossible task of getting past governmental security is, they find, not impossible at all. Neither Rose nor Donna is especially surprised by this. They've met the Doctor, after all. It is, in fact, their having met the Doctor which explains the total lack of surprise at seeing Downing Street (and most especially number ten) as an anonymous pile of security guard-less rubble.

It looks, as it is, like the apocalypse. Blackened craters have made mountains and pits in the ground around the area, and Donna swallows back a scream when she sees a hand sticking out from under the wreckage, the body seemingly buried underneath a heap of fallen ceiling beams. Two men are trying desperately to lift the debris away to save the poor trapped man, but even from a reasonable distance, as Donna watches, she can see it's useless, and that he can't possibly be alive.

Pieces of office equipment are strewn haphazardly across the road- printers and computer chairs and filing cabinets, all resting on their sides, charred or twisted or otherwise broken, litter the scene. Men and women in a mixture of smart and torn suits are wandering the area on mobile phones, some sobbing, some fighting, some frantically trying to put out small fires that emerge from various pieces of electrical equipment and live wires left frayed by the bomb. It's like a piece of political modern art, especially when you see the receptionist, bluetooth earphone hanging perilously from his ear, standing on a collapsed pile of bricks, smoking a cigarette with his eyes closed, presumably trying to block the hell from his mind by blocking it from his sight.

Rose tries not to let any sympathy warm her, knowing that none of this is real, anyway. It hasn't happened- it didn't happen, even if it's here, right in front of her, like a building site without the builders, and with the uncomfortable smell of death floating ominously in the gloom. She fights the urge to close her own eyes, instead shouting out as loud as she can in the hope that the Doctor (past, present, future, any form of Doctor, really. She isn't fussy) will hear and come to help them figure this all out, be their salvation.

"Doctor! Doctor, are you-"

"Rose!"

She spins around, full of exhilarating hope, then can't stop her face from falling with disappointment as she sees a middle aged woman standing ten feet away from her with a look of shock and a handkerchief balled in her fist.

"Oh God. Harriet."

"You were dead! You died! You and the Doctor, you died!" She runs and hugs her close whilst Rose stands perfectly still, arms rigid. Harriet pulls back and studies her with wonder. "You got a haircut!" She glances down. "And you're carrying... a gun!" She looks at her closely, confused. "Rose?"

"Harriet Jones! Oh my God!"

Rose jerks out of her arms as Donna races up to them, seemingly awed.

"Erm..."

Rose sighs dramatically, realising she has to make introductions. "Donna, this is Harriet Jones, current MP for Flydale North. Harriet, meet Donna Noble."

Graciously, Harriet offers out a hand to be shaken, a perfect politician to the last- reserved, courteous, polite. Pretending she hasn't almost jumped out of her skin because she's been recognised by someone she hasn't met for probably the first time ever. Almost like she's a celebrity. Almost like she's a politician that matters.

"Pleased to meet you."

Donna accepts the hand and shakes it vigourously, smiling broadly. "Too right! I voted for you, you know!"

Harriet's eyes widen. "You... You live in Flydale?"

"Right, she does." It strikes Rose how complicated this could get, and how much she needs to get a move on. And that Donna doesn't seem the type to just let this go. "Sorry, ladies, but we don't really have time for this." She gestures over her shoulder to the bedlam behind them. "Harriet, what just happened in there?"

"But..."

"Yes, yes, I know, I was there." The older woman still looks lost for words. Rose sighs at the all too human reactions to scientific weirdness for the millionth time that day. The woman's just met the Slitheen and still can't be trusted to fathom the idea of a paradox. And as confident as she is with her knowledge of the chaos that ensues in the aftermath of such a phenomenon, she doesn't really feel like trying to explain right now. "Post traumatic stress disorder, alright? Can't remember a thing. What was going on?"

Harriet nods, accepting the story, if not believing it. "The Slitheen- The acting prime minister, he..." She trails off, renewed horror lighting her eyes as she remembers. "Good Lord, Rose, how are you alive? He said it landed right on top you! I was near an opening in the rubble, so I battled my way out, but you and the Doctor..." She looks as if her sanity is seesawing precariously over a cliff, like she's about to have a breakdown.

Rose grips her shoulders, noticing but not reacting to the little shiver Donna has given next to them.

"Harriet, what happened to Mr Green? Where is he?"

"He's... Um..."

Her thought processes appear to have gone out of the proverbial window, and she's mute. Rose shakes her gently as the disturbed Prime Minister-to-be stares over her shoulder, eyes wide, into the distance.

"Hattie, what are you..."

Donna taps her on the shoulder resolutely- "Rose."

"What? I-" A large man in a black suit waddles swiftly past them, dabbing his head with a yellowing handkerchief. "Oh."

A smart, brown-haired woman in her fifties is running after him, holding a Dictaphone, barking questions at him desperately.

"Mr Green, can you please tell us what's been going on here? What's happened to the Prime Minister?"

He carries on without topping, trying to get away from her. "I'm sorry, I can't talk to any members of the press right now, you'll have to excuse-"

Rose's heart leaps in recognition as the woman slams into her without apology. "Sarah Jane!"

The reporter turns to her distractedly, not a hint of recollection in her eyes. "Yes?"

"It's you! Here! I just..." Rose feels like her smile is going to fall off her face through over use. All the pieces are falling together, she's nearly home, all she needs now is-

Donna gives a small cough, and she's brought back to Earth with a steady thump. Shaking her head like a dog with water in its ears, she looks away, still grinning. "Nothing."

Sarah Jane looks confused, but too busy to care. "Quite." She looks around and sees the sweating acting Prime Minister, who's leaning against a half melted lamp post, looking fearfully like he's about to have a heart attack. She whips out the Dictaphone once more and shoves it in front of the politician's face. "Mr Green, can you please tell-"

Rose clears her throat, pointedly, just loud enough for Sarah Jane to look around. "Erm, you might not want to do that."

The journalist looks at her haughtily. "I think I know what I'm doing, thank you. The public has the right to know."

"No, really, you don't want to do that."

She sighs, exasperated. "Why ever not?"

"Because he's an alien!" Donna interjects, burstingly joining the conversation. Harriet, who's been staring desperately at Mr Green, twisting her handkerchief, flinches.

Sarah Jane stares at her disbelievingly, eyebrows disappearing behind her fringe. "I beg your pardon?"

Rose instantly chimes in, feeling introductions are needed. "Oh, right, sorry. Sarah Jane Smith, this is Donna Noble." Donna offers her hand to be shaken with a grin. "Donna Noble, this is-"

"Sarah Jane Smith, freelance journalist." She looks at Donna's hand, rather than taking it, as if it might be a trick. She glares at Rose. "And how, exactly, do you know my name?"

Rose answers wryly. "Like she said, the acting PM is an alien. How do you think I know your name?"

"There's no..." The older woman pauses distrustfully, then her hand moves slowly up to her mouth, shaking, a look of hope filling her eyes as they begin to glisten with tears. "Doctor?"

Rose snorts. "Ha! He'd kill you if he knew you said that! I'm a friend of his." She sticks out her free hand for the older woman to shake and sighs jovially, rather enjoying this little jaunt down memory lane. "Yeah, I know, the assistants get younger as he gets older, you've met the Loch Ness Monster and I killed the emperor of the Daleks, we're even."

Sarah Jane shakes the extended hand, nervously, and Rose realises that she's looking at her in probably the exact same way she was looking at Donna earlier. Like she's looking at the newer model. Jealous, but sort of... relieved he has someone, even if it can't be her.

"I don't quite know what to-"

"I think Rose has that effect on most people," Donna interposes again, moving closer to the two women, dragging an unspeaking, seemingly dumbstruck Harriet by the wrist. "Can I just say something, though?"

"What?"

"Duck!"

She roughly pushes the three women to the ground just in time to avoid being stampeded over by a burly man sprinting past in a long leather coat. Winded and shocked, Rose watches him pin the nearby acting Prime Minister to the remains of a nearby wall. He speaks gruffly, businesslike.

"Mr Green, we have reason to believe that you, Sir, are an impostor." He studies at the sweating man victoriously then grabs him violently by the upper arm and shoves him back against the piece of collapsed wall as he yelps. "I'm afraid your time in charge has come to an end."

The politician squirms difficultly, like a bullied child trying to escape their captor in the playground, shoved up against the back of the science block by the biggest boy in the year. His voice comes out in miserable wheezes, sounding vaguely asthmatic. "I, er... I rather think-"

Mr Leather Coat interrupts dramatically, silencing the man, just as a group of four weapon wielding men and women, dressed in conspicuously smart black, sprint to the scene, once more knocking over the confused gaggle of women who are only just beginning to come to their feet.

"Don't think. Just get ready to- No, wait..." He pauses, and lets go for a moment. Mr Green sags, relievedly, and he looks irritated for a second. "I forgot to say, this is Torchwood. Beyond the police, outside the government, yadda yadda yadda." He beams, dashingly, shoving him with a thud, pinning him again against the crumbling red brick. "Which gives me the authority to kill you."

He knees the sweating statesman in the groin, leaving him moaning, buckled, collapsing forward until he's kneeling, hunched over piteously, curling into a ball. The triumphant Torchwood operative pulls a pistol from a holster at his belt and walks back until he's at optimal shooting range, then clicks the safety off, his face serious.

Donna gives a little scream. "You can't just murder him!"

He looks at her, noticing for the first time the presence of anyone other than himself and the impostor. Gun still pointed at the (acting) acting Prime Minister, he smiles callously. "Can't I, ginger?"

"No! That's-"

"That's Torchwood."

Donna looks pleadingly at Rose for back up. "But it's..."

The blonde shakes her head sadly. "No, he's right, Donna. that is Torchwood." The leader gives Donna a triumphant look and nods respectfully at Rose, who scowls at him, practically spitting a retort. "Even if it is bloody stupid."

One of the team, a short, Japanese woman with glasses and an automatic, cuts in, gesturing at the girl angrily with her weapon, presumably wondering how Torchwood might have become public knowledge. "Sorry, but who are you, exactly?"

"Rose Tyler." She answers automatically, and no one reacts. She expands with a sigh, praying she doesn't sound smug, or worse, like she's been gifted with the horror of nepotism. "My father owns the little establishment you lot make a career out of."

"No he doesn't, don't be stupid. It belongs to the Queen."

Rose glares at the woman. "Not where I come from it doesn't. There is no Queen. And like you said, outside the government." No one moves. "And seeing as my dad isn't here, that makes me the highest authority in the room. Well, ex-room. Rubble." Everyone's staring at her, and she feels oddly like a child in show and tell, giving a speech. She coughs, signalling that she's finished, and bows her head. "Thank you."

Still no one speaks, guns still hovering in mid air, bewildered. Donna makes a face. "They still shouldn't kill him."

"No, they shouldn't," Rose agrees, giving the chief a curt shove. "Put the side arm away, skipper."

Mr Green looks up at her gratefully, still on the floor. "Thank you-"

She shushes him, purposely condescending. He did, most likely, kill her, after all. "Ah-buh-bup-bup-bup! Don't talk to me until I tell you to. I just need this sorted out before two universes explode. Or implode." She grins at the bemused squad leader, who's frowning at her resentfully, as if she's taken away his Christmas presents. "I was never too great at physics."

She feels a light tap on the shoulder and turns cheerfully to see Donna, flagged by Harriet and Sarah Jane, who have matching looks of petrified shock on their faces. Donna swallows, sounding strained. "Er, Rose?"

"Sorry, Donna, I'm trash talking the enemy right now, can it wait?"

Donna shakes her head. "Probably not, no."

"Are you sure?"

She nods evenly. "Pretty sure, yeah."

Rose sighs, resigned. "Well go on then, what is it?"

Donna gestures briefly over her shoulder, and she turns, then stops still, frozen. "Oh, my..."

--

Cheap cliffy! Any guesses? You won't be right, of course, but please humour me. It's all kicking off... finally! Took me a while, but... well, yeah. All systems are go. For a very long time, Jack was in this chapter, and then I realised that that would make absolutely no sense whatsoever, and cut him out. That's why this took a million years to post. Yes, I know this chapter is kind of weird. It worked better when it was Jack-ish.

Nonetheless, review, my pretties! Review! Review! Please? Like, really, please. I'll be really grateful. A lot of people read and alert and still don't, and it's mean (sobs in a corner)...