You know, I think Shenelope is pretty much the first (technically) non-canon pairing I have shipped. This is a pivotal moment.
Disclaimer: …-runs sobbing into the corner-
SIAPNIAN: I have tea! It is excellent.
Non-Warning: You already know who betaed this. :P
Reminder: This is a parallel universe. Any canon-tweaks are… uhh… totally intentional. To, y'know, add to the… atmosphere? …um… yeah. Whatever's wrong with this chapter, I meant to do it. –innocent look- (Translation: I haven't watched Torchwood past the first episode and Jack wouldn't be there in this timeline anyhow.)
SHAMELESS PROMOTION TIEM: Okay. You know Brona19, yes? I beta for him and he is awesome? He has a fic. Which is shiny and doesn't get read enough. It's a Doctor Who/Babylon 5 crossover, but knowledge of the latter is not required (which is helpful, as I haven't watched that yet), and it involves… well… awesomeness. So Yeah. You should read it.
-BAD WOLF-
As it had really been an inordinately long time since the timeship's last visit to the Rift, she'd have to be there for a while. And that was alright, Rose thought; running around and getting into trouble was wonderful, yeah, but… Every now and again, it was nice to just stay—by choice—in one spot for a bit and not have to worry about getting shot at. So, when the ship materialised, she was looking forward to a long day of just that.
She really should have known better by now. For the past few years of her life, it had been repeatedly pounded into her brain that the Doctor = trouble, Cardiff = trouble, Rose Tyler = trouble, therefore the Doctor + Rose Tyler + Cardiff = all hell breaking loose.
Actually, it wasn't so much all of hell this time. More like just a fragment of it. The… squeaky, strangely cute frog-like fragment that bred like tribbles and had been kept in a ridiculously inadequate cage.
In a spaceship that had gone through a… rather rough landing.
The multicoloured tentacled things that owned the spaceship—and therefore the tribble-frogs (what had they called them? Giz… g… whatever)—had happily volunteered to assist in the tracking and capture of the creatures. Which would have been fine if they hadn't been multicoloured tentacled things on a planet that hadn't even figured out that first contact had happened ages ago.
Or just didn't want to admit it. Humans were good at that and when had she started criticising her own species?
Anyway, whatever else happened, the aliens couldn't exactly go running around. The area around the Rift might be slightly more used to odd-looking things wandering about, but it was probably still a bad idea. Rose had contacted the impromptu Torchwood team that had been monitoring the Rift and they were being very helpful in their own way, but in the end she was still left chasing an alien frog down the street.
She took some comfort in the idea that the Doctor was being forced to do the exact same thing. Not much, though.
The creature, seeming to understand that it was going to be quite efficiently trapped if it kept going that way, gave a panicked croak and turned around, barrelling towards Rose as quickly as its odd little legs would take it. Luckily, though, she still had the instincts from her days of catching strays (her mum's cat-flap-related procrastination was proving to be quite helpful after all). The frog put up a valiant effort, but couldn't quite evade her.
"Doctor!" she shouted, her arms very full of terrified alien pet. "I've got one!"
She heard his answering shout, although she wasn't entirely sure what he was saying. Either way, she wasn't going to be able to figure out where he was and hold the giz-whatever at the same time, so she just flopped to the sidewalk and waited for him to show up.
Her phone rang, startling the frog. She growled a bit, resting her head against the wall. Her mum would call her when she had absolutely no way of answering without letting go of a surprisingly adorable alien creature…
The Doctor rounded the corner, chirped a greeting, and took the frog from her.
"Thanks," she mumbled, digging her phone out. "Hello?"
It was her mum, as it turned out—not that anyone else was in the habit of calling her very much while she was "travelling". She patiently reassured her that she was perfectly fine, the Doctor was fine, they hadn't been tied up and dangled above a volcano for a week and a half (actually true this time), he was taking care of her, she was taking care of him, etc. etc.. She had pretty much memorised the first two minutes of all such conversations, so she could afford to dedicate half her attention to watching the Time Lord attempt to stuff the tribble-frog in one of his pockets.
Rose caught a now-familiar grating squeak and scrambled to her feet.
"I've gotta go," she interrupted. "Found another one."
"I haven't talked to you in days—"
"I know. Look, just… uhh…" He had managed to get most of the creature in his coat and, therefore, had a hand free. "Talk to the Doctor for a minute, okay? I'll be back in a sec."
He valiantly tried to protest, but she unceremoniously deposited the device in his hand and took off running after the sound. She really, really hoped he wouldn't say anything stupid. He probably would, but… still. She hoped.
Another squeak. She froze, listening, watching, waiting…
Something small and green-grey darted across her vision, and she burst into motion. She hoped it didn't run too far—her sense of direction wasn't that good, and the Doctor had her phone. Although she supposed he could probably track her biosignature or something. Didn't the TARDIS key have a unique… something?
She'd worry about that later, she decided. The frog gave a panicked croak and sped, ungainly legs momentarily tripping it, into a narrow chink of space between two buildings. Rose gave an annoyed huff and followed. At least, she thought, there probably wouldn't be an exit.
There wasn't—but there also wasn't a tribble-frog. There weren't any windows or other similarly-disguised escape routes, and unless it had spontaneously sprouted wings, there was absolutely no way it could have gotten away. It just… wasn't there any more.
The area, however, was not entirely empty, and Rose ignored the issue with the frog in favour of examining the object before her.
It looked like an angel. Not figuratively, either—there was… a statue of an angel just sitting there in front of her, covering its face with its hands. Who would put a statue there? Why?
Maybe, she thought, it wasn't a statue. Maybe that's what had happened to the frog. It had touched it, or gotten too close to it, or something… Weirder things had happened. Just in case, she backed up a couple of steps so that she was well out of range.
She didn't know not to blink.
-BAD WOLF-
The Doctor had valiantly tried to keep up a normal conversation with Rose's mother, but slipped up after he was asked how many near-death experiences they'd had in the previous week. Lying, he told himself, was a very useful skill to implement in such situations. Unfortunately, he hadn't thought about it until after the words were out of his mouth.
In his defence, he had been distracted. Gizka were not the easiest things to shove into a pocket, after all, even if that pocket was dimensionally transcendent.
Even so… She'd hung up forty-seven seconds ago and his hearing still hadn't entirely recovered, but he doubted he'd be getting much sympathy from Rose. She didn't like it when people upset her mother—and, unfortunately in this case, her definition of "people" included aliens.
He wasn't looking forward to their next visit with Jackie, in any case, and how long had she been gone? He frowned, a little concerned. Suddenly, he recalled her mild inability to walk while holding gizka—maybe she'd caught it and just couldn't tell him.
No, no, no, he thought. This was Rose. She was probably causing a revolution on a planet a thousand light-years away by now. The woman was as good at finding trouble as he was. Which was, he considered with some amusement, probably why they'd run into each other in the first place.
He slipped her phone in his pocket and set off in search of her, hoping that for once in her life she hadn't wandered too far.
-BAD WOLF-
Hmph. Well, this could be interesting. Which is, come to think of it, not a good thing—the Doctors are once again utilising their incredible talent to get into trouble at the exact same time. And the original one doesn't even have a companion right now… I'm trying to rectify that, of course, but they just keep on missing each other. It's infuriating.
Anyway.
Altie—I quite like that name; I think I'm going to use it—is a bit stronger than I thought. I'm going to have to actively mess things up to keep her from getting properly absorbed in that world. He'd be no match for me if we were occupying the same universe, of course, but with me distracted and having to influence things from across the Void, he has a chance. I hate to admit it, but he does.
I can fight just as dirtily as he can, though. More so, because at least I can cover my tracks. I probably won't actually harm the timeline right now; things are going to get tangled enough as is. But I do know quite a few things that our dearly beloved alternate doesn't, and I think it's time I started bringing those into play.
He can't keep her there if she chooses to go, after all.
-BAD WOLF-
Rose opened her eyes and abruptly crumpled, nausea and a sudden, piercing headache momentarily incapacitating her.
She groaned, curling up on the floor, trying to focus on the reassuring chill of the smooth tiles and not the overwhelming urge to vomit. She hated time travelling without a capsule; she always came out the other end feeling like…
Her eyes shot open. Time travel without a capsule.
Without the TARDIS.
Ignoring the uncomfortable lurch of her stomach, she scrambled to her feet and frantically examined her surroundings. She was definitely on Earth (in someone's kitchen, to be slightly more precise), and definitely surrounded by recognisable appliances—maybe she'd only travelled in space… But no, there were tiny changes, little idiosyncrasies in the shape and size and colour of things. Other people might have been able to remain in denial, to assume they were just in the remarkably well-preserved house of someone who hadn't bothered to change anything for several decades, but she knew what being in a different time felt like. She knew the symptoms.
She also knew that without the Doctor or the TARDIS, there was no way back home.
Rose sank back to the ground and rested her head on her knees.
-BAD WOLF-
The Doctor was starting to get seriously worried. Normally, when she wandered off, there were helpful signs indicating her destination—screams, explosions, that sort of thing. But there was nothing.
He'd managed to fine-tune his temporal senses to the anomaly that perpetually followed her around, and he was currently following the faint ruptures in everyday life that occurred as a result; he couldn't sense the error itself—or, rather, herself—, but that could always be because of the Rift… right?
He followed the tiny abrasions in spacetime to a rather narrow alleyway, but no further. And then he began panicking. There was nothing there—no spatiotemporal rift (at least, not a new one), no teleports or time capsules or anything out of the ordinary. There was the faint tang of confusion, of something that should have not happened but was about to but couldn't anymore, but that wasn't exactly helpful.
He went back to the TARDIS. Hopefully he'd be able to trace her key, find her. If she had been teleported too far, even he wouldn't be able to sense her presence—but his ship would be able to detect the part of herself Rose carried with her no matter where she was.
When she was would be an entirely different problem, but he decided not to think about that just now. Jackie had already yelled at him once today; he wasn't about to give her a reason for another tirade.
The door creaked reassuringly when it opened, and he let himself relax, just a bit. He'd find her. He'd find her and he would save her from whatever danger she was in now and everything would be fine again.
The TARDIS whirred questioningly at him, his worry echoed in the hum of her machinery, but he just patted the console and started the scan.
There it was. He blinked, stared. Not too far away, either, strangely enough. He was startled and slightly suspicious of his luck.
Not one to question it, though, he quickly mapped out the route in his mind and darted out the door.
He ran into a mild setback when he spotted an angel statue on a nearby balcony.
-BAD WOLF-
Rose was only left to a few seconds' contemplation of her plight (and how she was to get out of it) before she heard the telltale creak of a door opening. Her head jerked up and she stared, wide-eyed, at the woman who had just emerged from the hall.
For several moments, nothing happened. Then, both of them began speaking at once.
"Who are you?"
"Sorry, I just got… really, really lost… don't know where I am…" She trailed off for a bit before she realised she'd asked her a question. "I'm Rose."
The newcomer—presumably the owner of the place—raised an eyebrow at her, not unkindly. "Must have been one hell of a party," she quipped. "I'm Andrea."
"Hello," she returned, waving a little. "Look, really, sorry. I didn't mean…"
Andrea cut her off with a quick hand motion. "Hey, we've all had nights like that, right?"
Rose gave her a shaky smile. "S'pose."
"And since you don't look like a murderer…" She grinned. "Hung over?"
She considered. Well, there was one way of putting it, she supposed. Of course, the effects of non-TARDIS time travel wore off more quickly, but… still. It was an easier explanation, and went along with the rest of the story.
"A bit," she said.
Andrea made a lightly disbelieving noise. "I'm jealous," she said, stepping into the kitchen and starting to root around in the fridge. "I wouldn't even be talking if I were you."
Rose stood up again. "I, uh… Where am I?"
"Cardiff."
She nodded. "Good. Still in the same city."
Andrea gave her a dubious look. "You really were out of it, weren't you?"
She gave a noncommittal grin—and then her eyes focussed on something hanging on the opposite wall.
Her breath froze in her throat and it took a conscious effort to speak. "What's…" She swallowed. "What's that?"
The woman turned to follow her gaze. "Oh," she said. "Just something I sketched. It's been a theme recently. I liked that one, so… I hung it up." Her brow furrowed. "Why, does it matter?"
She was barely listening. Two words, seven letters scribbled across the bottom of a portrait of a snarling wolf—seemingly unimportant, and yet it felt that the entire universe was tipping.
It was still following her. It wasn't over.
It wasn't over. What could possibly be next?
Rose hesitated, blinked, wavered.
"It's nothing," she murmured, and turned away.
-BAD WOLF-
I just realised that this has more actual past!content than the last past!episode. Oops. XD
Anyway… yeah. Here we are again. Whee!
Also: Lookie! I'm actually on time! :D :D :D HAIL THE MENTAL!SHELDON AND HIS EPIC NAGGERY.