Hey, look what Jonn Wolfe did! :D mediafire (dot) com (slash) download (dot) php ? 3n0e3tjbarh0eah BEHOLD THE SHINYFULNESS.

Disclaimer: You do realise I'm only putting these here out of habit, right?

SIAPNIAN: Hail the Mental!Sheldon! Also, I need a hug. Also also, I don't think I've ever actually fangirlled over a fellow ficcer before… Hey, alliteration!

Non-Warning: -smirk-

-BAD WOLF-

Rose left the flat as soon as she felt she could. Andrea was a lovely girl—really, she was—which was, oddly enough, part of the problem. Normal people didn't take random women appearing in their homes in the middle of the night in stride. And as for abnormal people… well, they usually weren't quite that helpful unless they were about to burst out of their humanoid disguise and eat her face off.

She wondered exactly when it was that such thoughts became the norm for her.

She wondered how she was going to get home. A brief look at a nearby newspaper (why mess with classics?) had informed her that she had been transported backwards very nearly forty years. Which quite effectively cut her off from the traditional wait-until-your-timelines-coincide plan; she didn't exactly relish the thought of only meeting up with him again when she was too old to keep up.

Her thoughts instinctively shied away from that concept and she quietly closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the wall. Travelling with (and, if she actually let herself think about it, being rather attached to) a semi-immortal alien had its downsides.

Unimportant. She was Rose Tyler. She'd nearly ripped the universe apart to get back to him once; she'd find a way to do it again. Preferably without hurting anything, but she knew very well that there would eventually come a time when she wouldn't care.

Her mind flickered back to the picture, the caption, and an indefinable emotion scrabbled at her lungs. She'd seen it a couple of times after it had no longer related to anything; she'd just assumed that she had put too many warnings there. She hadn't thought that the phrase was still useful.

She certainly hadn't thought she would see it again; Bad Wolf Bay had been its last appearance, if she remembered correctly. Of course, she had spent some time trying her hardest to forget that entire chunk of her life, so she might have simply… ignored it.

Rose groaned quietly, wishing that she had at least had the decency to leave herself more understandable messages. As it was, she knew that the sudden recurrence meant something, but… did it mean she still had a chance to get back to her current Doctor? Her previous Doctor? That she was supposed to stay around Andrea, or run the hell away, or…

She fought the increasing urge to bash her head against the wall.

She could figure it out later, she decided with a sudden violence. Now. What could she do? Assets, she thought, assets…

No TARDIS, no Doctor, not even a Vortex manipulator, and those weren't assets. Pull yourself together, Rose. It's not the end of the world. Yet.

Her sonic screwdriver was… yes, it was still in her pocket. Okay. That was a start. She also had a pen and some chocolate. And lint.

That was it. She was a bloody intergalactic time traveller and the only helpful thing she had on her was the screwdriver. Which, admittedly, would have been her best friend in pretty much any other situation; as it was, though, she'd kill for some psychic paper.

Maybe she could persuade the Doctor to get her some of that, too. She hadn't tried testing the full range of her eyelid-fluttering powers on this one yet; hadn't really had a reason to, barring simple curiosity.

She'd figure that out when she got back, she decided. As it was, though…

Thoughtfully, she reached up and pulled the TARDIS key out from under her shirt. It and the ship could detect each other; if there was a TARDIS, any TARDIS, any Doctor, in the vicinity…

…It and the ship could detect each other.

Rose stood up straight, stepping away from the wall and farther out into the parking lot. If she just put it somewhere where it wasn't likely to move for the next few decades, where she could frequently return without being eaten…

Her mind flickered back to an unusually-understanding woman, to the drawing on her wall.

Andrea opened the door and promptly smirked. "Hello, Rose."

She grinned weakly and wondered exactly when she had beaten the Doctor in sheer insanity.

-BAD WOLF-

Hey, she's getting better at that. I would have thought that she'd completely ignore the message entirely, considering how my luck's been recently.

I'm an amazingly powerful, hyperintelligent, pan-dimensional being with incredible spatiotemporal abilities. I shouldn't even have to think about luck. But these creatures are so stubborn… Andrea's nice, though. Very susceptible to my persuasion, which is always good. There need to be more people like her in the multiverse. It would make my life so much easier.

I wonder how helpful I can make her be before she figures out something's up. It'll be interesting to find out, I think. And definitely more enjoyable than trying to twist my host and her current Time Lord into doing what should be obvious to them even without me throwing my name all over the place…

This is an improvement, at least. Rose has figured out that something is going on, at least, even if she doesn't quite know what it is yet. She'll find out eventually, though, I'm sure. She's a clever girl. I wouldn't even exist if she wasn't.

Of course, the Doctor is (apparently) rather intelligent as well, and he's being completely useless. Not to mention his counterpart—err—original; he's still happily bouncing around and being entirely oblivious. And of course Donna isn't helping; she doesn't even know that she should —as far as she knows, Rose is gone permanently. She'd be incredibly helpful otherwise, of course, but with the Doctor being, well, himself, I'm not entirely sure how I could even begin to explain it to her. Not without adopting her as a host, anyhow, and I'm still saving that as one of my last resorts. She seems like the sort to fight back against that sort of thing, and I don't want to have to damage her. I like her.

I also like her habit of not snogging my Doctor. It seems to be an increasingly rare companion trait as of late. Admittedly, the last couple of versions have been much more attractive to human eyes, but that doesn't excuse them…

I am not rambling!

-BAD WOLF-

"Ah," the Doctor said succinctly, not taking his eyes off of the statue.

He thought for several moments. This was hardly normal Angel territory—far too much traffic, too many eyes wandering around, looking at things. He supposed the proximity to the Rift might be enough to overcome some of their trepidation, but… it was still a city. This was… This was not good. This was very much not good. This made the imminent gizka invasion look like…

…actually, the imminent gizka invasion never was very important. Torchwood could handle it; it was what they were there for. He'd just taken part because he was bored.

Not that he was going to tell Rose that, of course. She actually liked doing nothing of significance every now and again, despite all of his (and presumably his counterpart's as well) attempts to sway her.

Anyway.

Good news: it was a city. He didn't have to stand here and stare at the Angel himself for all eternity. Statues weren't exactly the most obviously alien-in-disguise things out there, but people did look at them all the same.

Bad news: it was a city. Angels didn't go in cities—at least, not the parts of them where even incredibly distracted Time Lords could spot them. Not unless…

…unless there was something really startlingly wonderful that was, or was about to be, there. Something they could sense before it even arrived, something… something with the kind of temporal backlash that would keep the creature fed for ages. Possibly literal ages.

Worse news: this might not be the only Angel around here.

He needed to go and find Rose now.

Deciding that there were enough people around to keep the creature safely locked in statue form until nightfall, he took off running.

-BAD WOLF-

A puzzled frown had overtaken Andrea's features roughly two seconds into Rose's explanation. It hadn't gone away since. She wasn't exactly surprised about that—this was the majority of the reason why she didn't actually tell people the truth about her life—but right at that moment, she couldn't really think of an easier way to get her point across. She'd learned a while ago that whoever actually tried to tell other people what happened to her and the Doctor on the daily basis… well. Sometimes, the human race's insistence on ignoring the obvious was quite helpful.

The woman blinked. "So… let me figure this out," she began. "You travel in time, but the guy who actually owns the machine ditched you—"

"Not on purpose," Rose clarified. "I got lost."

"—and you need to keep your key here so he can trace you… backwards… using that?"

She winced. "Basically, yeah."

Andrea stared at her for a few moments. "You're mad," she said. "Or drunk. Or both."

Rose chuckled—a high, breathless, slightly hysterical noise. "I'm really not. Uhh… hang on a sec."

She rooted around in her pocket, produced the sonic screwdriver, and started playing with the lights. And the stove. And the radio.

"Alright," she said. "Point taken."

-BAD WOLF-

This should be it—a fairly innocuous building full of fairly innocuous doors hiding fairly innocuous flats. Everything was very normal.

That worried him far more than it should have. Why in Rassilon's name would Rose be here? There was absolutely nothing that could possibly get her here—no aliens, no explosions, no family members (that he knew of, anyway). The only excuse that he could immediately think of was that she had been chasing the gizka, but considering her impatience with the matter, he wouldn't have thought she'd have bothered to pursue the thing all the way over here. Besides, she could run very quickly and had proven herself to be quite good at catching the things in the first place; it couldn't possibly have evaded her for this long, and since she didn't have any methods for containing multiple gizka…

Well, there was that explanation neatly disproved. Which left him with… well, with nothing, really.

He eyed the door suspiciously. Nothing, he thought, could possibly look that harmless. Not while actually living up to its appearance, that is.

His companion was behind that door. Probably getting eaten while he sat there, having a staredown with an inanimate object.

He knocked. Waited. Knocked again.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," came a slightly impatient voice. "I can't move as quickly as I used to, you know."

Human, female, mid-sixties. Or at least something that was pretending to be such. This could not possibly end well.

The door swung open. The owner of the voice blinked at him, looking almost entirely unsurprised by his presence.

"Oh," she said. "It's you."

He blinked at her. "I'm sorry?" Human, female, mid-sixties, and she had been expecting him? She was going to start cackling and revealing her fangs any minute now. There might even be scales. Possibly wings. Oh, and a spaceship preparing to blow up the planet.

"Rose told me you'd be showing up," she said conversationally, backing up and leaving the door open. He didn't exactly want to follow her inside, but if she had her…

"Rose?"

"Yes," she said, slightly annoyed. "Rose. You traced her key, right?" She started wandering from one side of the room to the other, evidently searching for something.

"Yes," he replied warily. "Where is she?"

"Oh, she's not here," the woman answered breezily. "Ah. Found it." She drew something out from under a small pile of clutter on the table. "Took it out a couple of days ago; she said you'd show up around today, and I didn't want to have to look for it when you did." She handed it to him.

He stared at the TARDIS key sitting innocently in his hands, and one of his hearts froze a little. "What's happened to her?" He already had at least one Angel to deal with; if she was in danger on top of that…

"Hell if I know," the woman grumbled. "Every time she tried to explain, I only understood five words in the lot. Something about time displacement and an angel statue."

He stared at her. "An angel statue," he repeated. "It got her?"

She shrugged. "Apparently. Here." She gave him a piece of paper with neat scribbles on it—a date and an address. "I offered to have you show up earlier, but you both said something about… I don't even know what."

He let himself relax. "Thank you," he said quietly.

"My pleasure," she replied. "Oh, and Rose says that if you don't get rid of the aliens before you go pick her up, she'll kill you herself."

He grinned. That woman knew him far too well.

-BAD WOLF-

"So how long do you think it'll take until he comes back?" Andrea asked.

Rose shook her head, observing her tea. "No idea," she said. "'S the thing about time travel; he'll show up whenever you'll have told him to."

She grimaced at the tense. "I'm just glad you're the one who has to worry about all that and not me," she said. "I can't wrap my head around it."

The blonde smirked at her a little. "Takes some getting used to, yeah," she agreed. "'S not that hard, though, once you figure it out."

Andrea made a sceptical noise.

"Anyway, could be weeks." Or months. Or years. A thought suddenly struck her. "I'm gonna need a place to stay," she realised. "Do you know—"

The woman stood up, grinning a little. "I'll go make up the sofa," she said.

Rose stared at her. "What, seriously?"

"Let me put it this way: you've got a magic wand thingie and I've got stuff that keeps breaking."

She blinked, smiled a bit. "Sonic screwdriver," she corrected. "Why are you being so nice to me?"

"You might not say that after you actually see the couch." She sighed. "Look. I don't know much about time travel, but I'm pretty sure you can't just call your mother up twenty years before you were born. You don't have anywhere else to go and, frankly, I'm pretty sure I could take you in a fight."

Rose laughed outright then. Recalled the two-word message scrawled on the picture, relaxed a little; maybe nothing big or scary was happening this time, she thought. Maybe she was just… looking out for herself.

She hoped so.

-BAD WOLF-

You idiot.

-BAD WOLF-

…Hi!

In other news, I forgot how much I love crack!fic.