Victoria awoke early two days before Christmas Eve with her heart thudding and her body trembling. She knew she'd just woken up from a disturbing dream, but she couldn't remember much that occurred in it besides seeing a frightened face with eyes that remained wide open the whole time, without blinking for even a second, followed by a cloud of what looked like golden dust filling up her sight and then the sound of dozens of people screaming. For some reason, she recalled a feeling of relief at some point in the dream, as if someone was about to do some good deed to save lives, but then having this feeling replaced by horror upon hearing all that dreadful screaming. Could it be that someone was trying to achieve justice by killing people? Victoria thought as she was getting dressed. Does this mean that whatever must be done to save the Doctor could involve some sort of sacrifice?
But almost as soon she thought this, she shook her head and turned her attention towards brushing her hair. She had to stop believing that all her dreams were a prophesy of disasters to come just because it occurred only one time. If she'd truly had anything even closely resembling Rose's gift, she would have seen dozens of invasions and other disasters occurring since she'd left the Doctor. When she was living with the Harris family, she would sometimes have frequent nightmares of being attacked by the dozens of adversaries she'd encountered when traveling, and yet the worst thing that would happen when she was awake would be some embarrassing moment in school or another misunderstanding amongst the Harrises.
However, if some powers truly remained dormant for a long time before an incident triggered them, could this mean that she…?
She was interrupted from her thinking from the sound of the phone ringing. Dropping her hairbrush and practically racing to pick the phone up, she said, "Hello. Who is this?"
"Hey, Victorian girl, how are you doing?" Laura's friendly voice came through the phone.
Victoria smiled, glad to know that it was a friend. "Hello, Laura. I'm okay, although I didn't sleep that well last night."
"Are you having one of those strange dreams again?" Laura asked, guessing exactly what was on her mind.
"Yes," Victoria admitted. She'd told Laura about how she'd unknowingly dreamed about the murder of Hannah Lewis, and she'd been interested in knowing about any similar incidents ever since. And so now she described what she remembered of her dream as best as she could.
"Oh man," Laura said after hearing it all. "Whatever is going on here, I can tell that it's all starting to bother you a little too much."
"Laura, you're not trying to suggest that I may be unfit to continue helping you out, are you?" Victoria asked in alarm.
"Of course not, Victoria," Laura said. "I can't tell you how many times I haven't been able to get a good night's sleep, especially with what's happening now. That's a given with the sort of work I do, and I can only imagine how many times it's been the case for you, what with losing your father and meeting some of the scariest aliens in the galaxy. So, don't worry too much about me not wanting to work because of it."
"That's good to know. You startled me for a second there," Victoria said. "Now, I'm afraid I've distracted you too much now. Can you tell me why you're calling?"
"Well, I don't know if this can be considered good or bad news, but somehow, Ace and Nina were able to get the TARDIS working for the first time in two years," Laura said.
"Why, that sounds wonderful," Victoria said. But upon thinking through, she then said, "Unless there's something you don't know, of course. Did they at least inform UNIT on where they are so far?"
"That's exactly the issue we're having," Laura said. "Ace likes keeping it all secret, and kept making silly threats when Uncle John demanded to know at least something about their whereabouts. And the best Nina could do was say that they were getting close to their destination, but they wanted to make a stop somewhere first. All we could figure through our devices was that they're still on Earth, so at least we don't have to worry about them being stuck on Venus or Skaro."
"Oh dear," Victoria said. "Looks like those two got a little too caught up in their…"
Just then, she heard a low wooshing sound, which she and many others had considered to be the best sound in the world. After believing to have heard it several times before, she'd long dismissed any hopes of it ever coming from the place she most wanted to be. Now, looking through the window of her first-floor flat, she smiled as she saw the old blue police box standing on the other side of the road.
"Victoria, what is it?" Laura asked, wondering why she wasn't speaking.
"Laura, the TARDIS is here!" Victoria exclaimed, laughing in astonishment. "Of all the places they could have gone, they're here at my place! Can you believe it?"
"Well, it looks like you got lucky!" Laura said. "Although whether they intentionally stopped by to visit you or if they got here by accident is something you'll have to find out."
And the two travelers were out of the TARDIS in seconds, appearing obviously surprised by where they landed. "Well, this doesn't look like sixteenth- century France at all, Nina," Ace complained, scanning the streets closely. "If anything, it looks an awful lot like modern-day London."
"Of course it's modern London, Ace," Nina said. 'Didn't you read the TARDIS time scan before stepping out?"
"Why would I want to bother with that when I'm too excited to stay in the TARDIS?" Ace scoffed. "After that quick stop in the middle of a medieval archery game where I was beating the pants out of King Arthur, coming back here seems so dull in comparison."
"With the endless messages we were getting from this UNIT group, how long did you expect us to stay there?" Nina said with a sigh. "You act so childish sometimes, Ace."
"Better to be childish than another stiff busybody," Ace said.
Victoria laughed. This didn't seem so different from the quarrels the Doctor and Jamie would have with each other, and she wondered how much those two were aware of this. However, she knew she had to get their attention somehow, and so she tried the trick she'd learned from her days looking after both children in rural Japan : she opened up the window, let out a high whistle (it took her years to get this right), and shouted out, "Hey girls! If you're looking for a place to stay after your adventures thorough time and space, my doors are always open to time travelers. It helps that I was one myself a long time ago."
And then, a grin flashed across Nina's face. "Why, you must be Victoria Waterfield, the nineteenth century orphan who the Doctor left in the twentieth century. I don't think we could have found a better person to welcome us here in London." She waved in Victoria's direction, and Victoria gave her a bright smile in return."
"I could think of at least five people who the Doctor described as more interesting than the lovely Victorian girl," Ace said in a mocking tone. "From what he said of her, she was always jumpy and scared, waiting for her knight- in- shining- armor Jamie McCrimmon to rescue her. Sounds worse than Mel to me."
Victoria then turned bright red, and Nina glared at Ace. "Now Ace, you can't go around insulting the one person who's willing to let us stay with her. Don't they teach you British girls manners anymore?"
"Hey, I was just joking," Ace said. "Victoria actually seems better than I thought she was back when the Doctor described her, although I can do without that jolly attitude of hers. Also, I think most British girls have always been brats, myself included. Didn't you notice how Lady Morgan kept glaring at you when she realized that you talked so differently from everyone else in Camelot? It's something that's been passed down to us for ages, if you ask me."
"Now, I don't want to get into another one of these talks, Ace. Let's just go in and see what Victoria Waterfield has in store for us. I've been curious to see what her life's been like on modern times ever since I heard the Doctor's stories about her," Nina said as they started walking up to the entrance of the flat.
Once they were inside Victoria's place, Nina shook hands with her, saying, "Bonjour, Mademoiselle Waterfield. My name is Nina. It's a pleasure to finally be meeting you, especially since the Doctor thought it would be impossible to do so when he told me about you."
"Why good day, Nina," Victoria responded. "It's a pleasure to be meeting you as well." Then, turning to Ace, she said, "And you must be Ace. It's nice to see you as well."
Ace did her best not to burst out laughing upon hearing Victoria's overly formal way of speaking as she shook her hand. "Nice seeing you too, Victoria. You didn't happen to hear what I was saying outside, did you? Because if you did, I am sorry about it. I was joking around."
"I did hear you over there, but don't worry about it," Victoria said laughing. "It was an accurate description of how I was in the old days, after all."
"I wasn't expecting you to look so young, though," Ace went on, examining her appearance closely. "Based on how old you were back then, I expected you to look as if you were in your forties or even older than that if possible. Did traveling through time slow down the aging process for you or something?"
"I don't know for sure. I think your suggestion is the closest I could come up with for an explanation though," Victoria said. "Anyway, the Victorian girl inside of me just loves looking as young as I did twenty years ago. I've even wondered if I might be immortal sometimes, but of course, I'm wise enough to never test out my living abilities, so I've never known for sure if that's the situation."
"Still sounds pretty cool though. Who knows if I might have that ability as well?" Ace said.
"You'll have to wait a couple more years to find that out, Ace," Victoria said.
"True enough," Ace said. Scanning the dining room table, which had the books Victoria was teaching alongside the cereal she was going to have for breakfast, she said, "So you're an English teacher, right?"
"That's correct," Victoria answered.
"Sounds lovely," said Nina, picking up the paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye and flipping through the pages.
Ace scoffed. "Sounds boring to me. I don't mind reading, but teachers always took the fun out of it when I was in school. And it doesn't look like you're doing a better a job at it. Emma and Catcher in the Rye are some of the worst books ever, and it doesn't help at all that the characters are as obnoxious as hell. One of them turns her nose against anyone who isn't as classy as she is, and the other thinks everyone's a phony and is such a downer all the time."
"I heard the Doctor once say that he met both Emma Woodhouse and Holden Caulfield in the Land of Fiction," Nina said. "They could be quite heroic when they put their minds to it, but he did admit that hearing them talk in person was quite torturous , especially Holden, who kept thinking the Doctor was a fake half of the time."
"I can only imagine how awful it was for the Professor," Ace said. "Probably worse than getting stuck in all those seventies movies with Romana because of the trickster."
"And they weren't the worst characters there. He also had to put up with Cathy Earnshaw, Rabbit Angstrom, and the Queen of Hearts, amongst several others. They all proved to be useful in the end, but they weren't the most pleasant of company," Nina said.
"Oh, dear," Victoria said with a chuckle. "But anyway, Ace, I am trying to include some books students were actually interested in reading for the next term. So far, I'm thinking of doing a science fiction unit, including books like Ender's Game, A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and The Time Machine. You just can't avoid those books after having lived through similar stories,no matter how inaccurate they are. Did the Doctor meet any of the characters from those stories, Nina?"
"No. As a matter of fact, there weren't as much science fiction characters as you might expect," Nina said.
"Could it be because the Doctor himself is one?" Ace asked jokingly.
"Who knows," Nina said with a smile.
"How about we get back to business now, girls?" Victoria said. "So, as I'm sure you're both aware, we've managed to get both UNIT and Susan Foreman involved in the situation with Rose. Susan insists that having the TARDIS at a close distance from the hotel will help free both him and the hotel's spirits because of the presence of the time vortex, which will help remove the spirits from the past, put them to rest, and help the Doctor return back to his physical form."
"And will that be enough to help the girl?" Nina asked.
"They don't know for sure," Victoria responded. "Once the spirits are gone, they won't bother Rose and her mother anymore, and so that's supposed to settle Rose's mind a little more, making it easier for the Doctor to get back to the way he was before."
"So, will it be necessary to get the TARDIS over to the hotel, or can we leave it here?" Ace asked.
"We'll have to ask UNIT about that," Victoria answered. "But because I only live about five miles away from Northern Horizons, I believe the vortex could still do its work within that sort of a distance."
"Good, because it proved a lot harder to get the TARDIS working than I'd originally thought," Ace said.
"And you're going to have to pitch in some way, Nina, considering how you were the one who brought the Doctor into Rose's mind." Victoria said.
Nina nodded, but she didn't say anything, appearing as if she was trying to listen to something which neither she nor Ace could hear.
"Nina? Is everything all right?" Victoria asked.
"This isn't the first time I've seen her like this," Ace said. "She also became like this minutes before a dragon attempted to attack King Arthur in our visit to Camelot. Merlin and I managed to kill it with my Nitro 9, of course, but if she hadn't warned us once she snapped out of it, I don't know if we would have been that lucky."
"Should I just leave her be?"
"Probably your best option," Ace agreed.
But shortly after, Victoria started hearing the screams from her dream again, much louder and eerie than she'd remembered them to be. And as she looked at Nina, with her eyes now closed as if she'd just dosed off, she saw the face of a wolf flashing through, its sharp teeth sticking and its dark eyes staring straight in Victoria's direction. It then jumped up and howled, looking as if it was trying to attack her.
Victoria had to clench her teeth to avoid screaming and possibly scaring Ace.
But apparently, that wasn't necessary, since the next thing she knew, Ace was shaking her shoulder anxiously and saying, "Victoria, what's wrong? You've gotten just like Nina now!"
It was now that Victoria let out a startled gasp. "Oh, Ace, I'm so sorry for scaring you! It felt as if I was having a vision just now, if not a waking nightmare."
"What did you see?" Ace asked.
Victoria then described the awful screams, and seeing the face of the wolf who then jumped as if to attack someone.
"Didn't UNIT say that the message they found on the hotel walls was "Bad wolf" spelled backwards?" Ace said.
"Yes. So you believe that's why I had that vision?" Victoria asked.
"From what I know, that's the only explanation we could..." Ace began.
Suddenly, they was a loud knocking on the door, enough to rouse Nina and get Ace and Victoria to immediately walk up to answer it.
And standing there was Rose Tyler along with a dark-haired woman and another girl who appeared to be her daughter.
"Rose? What are you doing here, and who are these people?" Victoria asked.
"It's my mummy, Victoria. She's in big trouble now," Rose answered in a quivering voice.
"I'm Eleanor Oswald, and this is my daughter Clara," the woman answered. "Clara was somehow able to warn me that there was some sort of trouble at a hotel she'd been staying in a month ago, and there we found the caretaker in a terrible state with her daughter looking terrified."
"What was your mother doing, Rose?" Victoria demanded.
"She..." Looking anxiously at Eleanor, Clara, and Ace, whom she probably assumed would believe she was speaking nonsense, Rose was clearly considering whether to tell the truth to Victoria. But despite her insecurities, she must have decided to go forward with the truth, since she said, "She saw the hotel's ghosts, including the dad that killed his girls. I also found her drinking again when I found her, and she was acting as if she'd gone crazy. And if Eleanor and Clara hadn't found me, I think she could have done something bad to me!"
"It's the rising of this wolf," Nina said as Victoria put her arms around Rose. "Whatever it is..."
"It's me!" Rose cried out. "I'm supposed to be the one that saves everyone, but I don't know how I can! It all seems too scary to me."
"A wolf?" Eleanor asked. "Clara, do you understand what she means?"
"I think so, Mummy. I might have dreamed about it once," Clara said.
"So Rose is supposed to be this bad wolf?" Victoria asked.
"From what I could sense, yes, it's clearly her," Nina said.
"And even if she's supposed to save these ghosts, is this power really a good thing for her?" Ace asked.
"I don't know, Ace," Nina admitted.