James looks up from her phone, blinks, looks down again. She vividly remembers that she had twenty percent battery when she was leaving her apartment to run down to the 24/7 convenience store-because her phone is her life-, but sometime between her looking up and looking down, it had gone dark.
Her hands skirt up to her bare forearms to rub them for warmth, because suddenly, it's freezing. The cold shocks her out of her drowsy 3 am buzz, and she realizes something is very, very wrong with the world.
It was snowing.
She blinks again. Nope, still snowing. In August. And everyone seemed to have known it was going to be this kind of weather, because they were all bundled up in a parka or a coat, laughing cheerily with their friends as they went about their friends and family, quite a few bags in everyone's hands. Weren't they worried about extreme, unforeseen weather most definitely due to the rapid speed of global warming? And why were the streets so busy? It was 3 am, for fuck's sake, and the trees were decorated with Christmas colors, the band was yammering some holiday song that was guaranteed to stay stuck inside her mind forever and-
Oh, fuck.
The screams fill the air a brisk moment after she sees the murderous mask-wearing Santas of the band blowing...fire out of their trombones. James scowl, because the flamethrowers are not yet directed towards a direction for her to be worried about and she doesn't know if she should be worried at all. Those are fictional villains. From Doctor Who. That cheesy sci-fi show she had been obsessed with when she was 12 or 14 or something like that.
Her body is pushed back, because everyone is either screaming their heads off or getting the fuck out of there. She wonders why nobody is taking pictures, or videos, because if you put this on YouTube, your soundcloud's guaranteed to explode. And she turns her head, trying to get closer to the Murderous Santa Band, wading past a stream of people, and she does a double-take.
Billie Piper and a guy that plays her ex in the show is being chased by the Murderous Santa Band. Piper ducks, and a fireball passes overhead, close enough for James to wince. And then she's wondering whether's she in a brain coma or something, because this was not how this Tuesday night was supposed to go.
Her legs stay planted in their place, because her mind is rolling, rolling, and rolling, trying to come up with explanations and justifications. The most likely one is that she's dead, and this is some kind of hell, specially designed for people like her who did nothing with their lives but watch crappy tv shows and god, this is depressing, she hadn't wanted to die yet. She had wanted to slip away into the non-existent afterlife after living good years, hopefully in her sleep, and-
Billie Piper and her ex twists directions, and suddenly they are running right at her. Her eyes meet with Piper's and the girl is waving her arms, screaming something British at her, and James realizes if this was hell, they were doing a good job, because it seemed like James was going to have to start running and she hated that.
Piper snatches James's arm and shoves her forward, and she stumbles into action.
"Are you insane?" The pretty girl is yelling. "Do you want to die?"
I'm pretty sure I'm already dead, she thinks, and would have replied if she had the breath. But then they are running behind some stands and running in front of some stands and continuously fucking running, and James can't form another single coherent thought until Piper and her ex is getting on a taxi and the car door is about to close.
She grabs the handle, crumples her body inside, and when they stare at her she shrugs. "I need a ride."
There's a brief moment of silence, and then Piper is telling the driver where to drop them off and the ex is looking at James's bare arms, frowning, not in a creepy way.
"Aren't you cold?" He asks, then shakes his head. "Bloody tourists." The word is filled with disdain.
She ignores him, even when he hands her his jacket, because the running and the events and the prospect of everything has caught up to her mind. Her breathing shudders, and she closes her eyes and repeats there is no hell under her breath until Piper nudges her arm, from the seat next to the ex.
"Hey," she says, and there is some concern in her voice. "You okay?"
James shrugs again. "Not exactly."
"What was that?" The ex demands, head turned toward Piper, or well, Rose, she was going to have to call her.
James saw two options now. First, this was hell. She was going to rot in eternal taco bell, running forever. Or second, this was Doctor Who. She was inside a tv show about aliens and time and space, and she was going have to run forever.
In both options, she was going to have to run forever. But, well, in the latter option, at least she got to see the stars. She decides to go with it.
"They're after the Doctor," Rose answers, then glances at her, probably wondering if she was supposed to keep the Time Lord a secret. James looks outside the window, grounding herself with the view whizzing past the car. She couldn't freak out. She had to keep calm, eyes wide, and knuckles clenched.
Rose and Mickey-what a stupid name- argue all the way to Rose's apartment, and when they leave the cab James intones the lines she'd prepared.
"I'm on vacation, and I got lost," she says, and Rose's eyes widen in sympathy. "Can I stay with you until my friend comes to pick me up? If you just tell me the address-"
"Of course," Rose answers immediately, kind look, until urgency takes over in a heartbeat. "But you won't be safe with us," she says. "You saw the Santas, didn't you? They're after someone with us."
"I don't mind," James answers simply. "America's way crazier than that."
Rose and Mickey exchange a look, and then Rose sort of shrugs and they rush up the stairs. Brits are bonkers, James thinks, raising her toes to keep her slippers on as they tap against the cement stairs. Do they really think fire-blowing Santas are a daily occurrence in America?
They burst into the door, James following a bit behind. It's eerie to see the house in real life, but it's just a normal apartment, doesn't even look like a show set. It's tiny, though, and she can see the kitchen and the Christmas tree in the living room and the entirety of the house from her vantage point.
"Get off the phone!" Rose yells, and Jackie turns around in surprise, hand clutching a old telephone that was probably made before James was even born. James scowls, looking at the calendar splayed on the kitchen table. She was three, right then, in 2005. She's fucking three years old.
"It's only Bev! She says hello-"
Rose snatches the phone away, and now Jackie's staring at James with an odd expression.
"Is she another one of your aliens-"
"No, Mum!" Rose says loudly, and James raises her shoulders with a tilt of her head.
"I am an alien," she says. "I'm from America."
Rose and Jackie have a pretty scary stare-off, and then they're scrambling to figure out where to go, and James spends the time trying to think of ways to stay as far away as she can from the tree. And then she finds herself in one of the bedrooms, standing over the 10th Doctor, arms hugging her body.
"Huh," she lets out. The man sleeps as if he's dead. And looking at his face was really making her further panic, because fuck, she was in Doctor Who, wasn't she? And now she was realizing she valued her life too much to throw it away for some pretty face, even if that meant she got to see the stars. She would rather look for her parents, look for a way out of here-
Jackie screams, and Jingle Bell has begun playing insanely loudly, and she steps outside the room to face a murderous spinning Tree and yup, she does not want to die. She scrambles back inside the bedroom and shakes the Doctor's shoulder.
"Wake the fuck up," she says, and he does not move. Rose and Mickey and Jackie are now in the room beside her, barricading the door-I'm gonna get killed by a Christmas tree, Jackie squeals-, and James turns to his jacket on hooked on the coat hanger, finds the sonic screwdriver in his left pocket and pulls it out. Rose sees her and the pretty girl gapes, eyes wide.
"How did you-"
The tree smashes through the wardrobe that had been placed in front of the door and James points the screwdriver, hoping any button did the trick, because if it didn't she would die pointing a useless screwdriver against a Murderous Spinning Tree, and that would be a pathetic thing.
She pushes a panel, and it gives out under her finger and the tree splutters and explodes. James blinks, lowers her arm, and a hand wraps around her wrist. She spins around.
"Who are you?" The Doctor asks, gaze guarded, and the only thing James can think is oh now you wake up.
