A/N: To everyone who reviewed...thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Really. Thank you.

I think this chapter turned out okay. Thank you.

xxx xxx

"N-nice m-m-monster."

The creature snarled in reply. Its skeletal head was almost human, but elongated to the point of mutilation. Close in appearance to a canine skull. Clumps of dark hair clung to the back of the skull, yellow eyes glistened from within the black muscles behind its eye sockets. The teeth were long and thin, like needles, and the mouth shone red with gore.

"Rose! Are you okay?" the Doctor's voice was distant. He was fifty yards or more down the slope.

Rose didn't dare answer. The creature circled her, exposed ribcage swelling and shrinking with each breath, body all the more obscene for its mockery of humanity.

"Coee! Rose!"

The creature turned towards the Doctor, then back to Rose. It stopped pacing. The slick black muscle of its throat began to quiver. Almost lost to the wind there was a sound, a whisper, of human voices. Muffled, indistinguishable words, like the conversation of hushed students in a classroom.

With its throat still vibrating, the creature lowered its gruesome head. The whispering voices were louder now, more frantic. The creature charged.

xxx

The Doctor awoke to the sound of human voices. Low, murmuring, incomprehensible voices, but human nonetheless.

"Hello?" he wheezed.

Fire raged in his chest. He felt flat, trampled. A cold weight pinned him to the ground. He could still hear the voices but there was nothing else, no footsteps or rustles of movement to indicated there were people nearby.

The Doctor opened his eyes. The world was silver and black, lumpy and jagged, and very, very cold.

Where was he? Had he fallen? Surely, this wasn't the TARDIS, so he mustn't have made it back. And the weight on top of him, was it...?

His eyes widened as a long, webbed foot crushed the ground next to his head. Claws clicked on the ice beneath the snow. The whispering human voices were closer now, almost right above him.

The creatures!

The Doctor couldn't help but gasp as a sudden pressure drove him further into the ground. The pain in his chest was intense. He bit his lip hard to stop from screaming.

There was a snarl from the creature on top of him, and the pressure on his chest was lifted. Two webbed feet stomped down next to him. A bony tail snaked over his body, twitching sporadically, angrily.

The creature was facing away from him, though. It seemed to be snarling at some unseen foe. Ice and claw hit and again and again as the creature danced back and forth. With a strangely human wail, the creature raced away from him.

For a second, it was lost behind a screen of churned up snow. The flickering tail slapped against the Doctor's cheek, then went limp. A moment later, with black blood spraying from its belly, the creature crashed backwards.

There was silence. The creature, its skeletal head mere inches from the Doctor, flailed lamely in the snow. A second, then a third and forth set of webbed feet marched silently over it. By time they were gone, the creature on the ground was still.

xxx

Rose braced herself for the attack. Time seemed to crystallize. She covered her face with her arms, leant forward, waited.

Waited, waited.

"What are you doing, you mad duck?"

"Huh?"

At glacier speed, Rose lowered her hands. The Doctor was standing over her, grinning. She had seen that expression often enough to recognise the lines of worry at the corners of his eyes.

"What- where- how-" she stammered, "Why didn't you help me?"

"You are a mad old thing." he said, shaking his head, "You're the expert here. What could I possibly help you with?"

Rose gaped at him. It took her several attempts before she finally managed to say, "That thing! That creature! It was about to rip my bleedin' throat out!"

The Doctor, watching Rose carefully, licked his lips. He was still smiling, but now it was nervous, like he expected at any moment to be shot dead.

After an awkward pause, he asked, "Um, when?"

"Right then!" Rose cried, "That big skeleton thing! With the gorilla arms and the-" she pointed to her head, "The skull. It was right here!"

She got to her feet. The Doctor flicked his gaze away from hers, to the snow covered ground. His frown deepened.

"There's no foot prints." he said, sounding grim, "Was it a very small creature?"

"No! It was at least as high as you. It was all black and bones. Look, it's got to be around here somewhere..." Rose glanced over her shoulder.

Above them, the slope was perfect and untouched. Nothing as substantial as a shadow marred the smooth surface. Aside from the curving toboggan tracks and their own foot prints, the only feature on the landscape below was the occasional copse of tall black rocks.

A mile or more down the slope, there was a lake, circular in shape. The lake water looked to be ash grey, or black. It was hard to tell which, because the surface was partially obscured by a noxious yellow fog. Beyond that, and all around, there was only mountains.

No monsters. Not even any birds, which usually flourished in some form or another in alpine areas. Not so much as a tree.

"I don't think so, Rose." the Doctor said, his voice soft, "Beta is a dead planet."

Rose gulped. Her anger was fading quickly, but the fear was still there. She looked up at the Doctor.

"Do you really think that I...imagined it?" she asked.

He flashed her a quick smile, and said, "We're at quite an altitude here, and the atmosphere is different to what you're used to. It can make your mind play tricks on you."

Rose tried to meet his eyes, but he turned away from her. She felt suddenly cold, and very alone. The image of those blood-stained sickle teeth closing in on her still loomed large in her mind. It sure as hell didn't feel like a hallucination.

"We've still got all day, ay?" she said, forcing her fear down, like she had so many times since meeting the Doctor, "We shouldn't waste it standing around and being mopey."

The Doctor relaxed visibly. When he met her eyes, his gaze was warm, and grateful.

"That's right. Besides," he grinned fiendishly at her, "I haven't gotten to do what I want to you, yet."

Rose couldn't help but laugh. Her tension evaporated, and she stuck her tongue out at him, "You haven't caught me, yet." she said.

"You better run, then."

With a squeal, Rose took off down the slope. The Doctor waited a moment before running after her. He shouldn't have bothered though, because while Rose moved through the snow like a fox, leaping and sliding but never loosing her balance, he couldn't stay on his feet for longer than a few steps.

In the end, he fluked catching her. Rose had taken to jogging just out of his reach, then ducking away whenever he tried to seize her.

"Come on, Doctor!" she called back to him, "How is it you've mastered time travel, but you can't walk three feet on snow?"

He moved to lunge, to take her by surprise. Instead, he slipped again, and crashed straight into her. Rose was knocked off her feet, and the pair fell in a jumble of limbs, rolling head over heels before finally coming to a stop at the foot of a boulder.

"Are you tryin' to kill me now?" Rose demanded after glancing up at the rock.

"Well, we survived, didn't we? Maybe if you hadn't been going so fast I wouldn't have ran into you. Maybe if you had wanted to go to the beach instead of this then I wouldn't fall over all the time. Do you know what the chances are of us getting hypothermia are now we're all covered in snow? Do you know..."

The Doctor had been looking at Rose during his lecture. Now, as his words trailed into silence, he seemed to be looking passed her.

"What? What is it?" Rose punched him playfully, "Is there a Dalek behind me, or somethin'?"

"It's uh," the Doctor tore his gaze away from whatever had grabbed his attention, and smiled faintly at Rose, "It's nothing."

She grinned back at him, "Good," she said, voice a little rougher than usual, "I wouldn't want anything to interrupt us."

The Doctor stared blankly at her, absently fiddling with the sonic screwdriver in his pocket. He was close enough that Rose could feel the warmth radiating off him. There was only inches between them, and she liked it.

"Rose." he said. The smell of her perfume was driving him crazy. She smelt so close. But when he looked at her, wrapped in her brightly coloured winter clothes, she seemed so far away...

The Doctor shook his head, and grinned at her. "You up for another toboggan ride?"

Rose sighed.

xxx

By time they were ready to leave, it was almost dark.

"We have got to do this again some time." Rose said, leaning against the Doctor.

He had an arm around her shoulders, holding her close to him while they started up the path towards the TARDIS.

"We should go skiing next time." he said, smiling at Rose, "And don't forget, there's a desert on the other side of this planet. We could always go sand tobogganing."

Rose giggled, "Not if you're as bad on sand as you are on snow. I can't believe you didn't break anything! I would have been all snapped bones by now, if I fell over as much as you."

The Doctor shook his head, but didn't say anything. For once, he seemed happy with the amiable silence between them.

Rose smiled to herself. She was already looking forward to their next adventure. She loved going places with the Doctor, despite the fact he had no sense of balance, and was prone to talking to himself.

She glanced up at him, and her smile faltered. He was talking to himself, but his mouth wasn't moving. Odd. And then, when she tried to understand what he was saying, she couldn't make anything out.

Of course, he could have just been speaking a different language. He did that, too, sometimes, when he didn't want her to know what he was thinking.

The Doctor turned to her. "Did you say something, Rose?"

Rose felt her blood run cold. Without slowing her stride, she glanced back. The path behind them was empty. Rose strained to hear the murmuring. It had stopped.

"What's wrong?" the Doctor asked.

She looked at him. And there, on the very peripheries of her vision, she saw it; a flash of red and tainted white, flickering for just a second six feet above the path. Then, half a second later, a glimpse of two disembodied black fingers, just above the ground.

Rose gulped. She struggled to make her voice work. Cold sweat trickled down her back.

"Rose, what is it?" the Doctor was frowning now. He'd never known Rose to talk to herself. Maybe the altitude really was too much-

"Run!" Rose shouted.

She pushed ahead of him, running dangerously fast on the narrow path.

"Rose!" he called, "Stop!"

"Run!" Rose shrieked. She was already a dozen yards ahead of him.

What in the universe did she think there was to run from? Puzzled, the Doctor glanced back at the path.

It was empty.

"What the-"

And suddenly, the path wasn't empty. An animal, a creature, seemingly all shining black muscle and exposed bone, burst out of the thin air behind him. Literally melted out of nowhere.

He raised his hands up to defend himself, but the creature simply shoved him out its way. Its watery yellow eyes were fixed on Rose. Running on its thick hind legs, the creature moved fast, certainly much faster than any human.

"Rose!" the Doctor shouted, "Run faster!"

He was about to chase after the creature, to try to stop it somehow, when a second monster appeared behind him. This one wasn't interested in Rose.

This one was headed right for the Doctor.

xxx xxx xxx

I went to the snow yesterday (hurray Southern Hemisphere!), to get the feel for things. I discovered that snow is both cold and wet.
Thanks to Matt for taking me tobogganing (which I suck at).
I'll update soon if you like it. Thank you again for the reviews!