A/N: Whew! This is the longest chapter I've written yet for this universe. It was like the Energizer Bunny. It just kept going and going and going and …
And when is the best time for me to stop saying that this is a sequel and go read the first one first? Is it now? I think it's now. We're going with now.
Previously: "Tannin!" John exclaimed. "Tannin is an anti-oxidant, she needs tannin!" John ran off.
"Where are you going?" Kate yelled after him.
"To make some tea!"
Earth's Champion
John rushed into the kitchen, quickly setting a pot of water on to boil. Dashing to a cupboard, he grabbed the first jar of tea he saw and rapidly prepared the cup as he waited for the water. Kate finally arrived as he paced impatiently.
"Mind filling me in?" she requested.
"Tannin is an anti-oxidant found in tea. If I've interpreted the book correctly, anti-oxidants are what the Wolf's mind needs to repair the neural damage the regeneration caused. Assuming any kind of anti-oxidant works, that is. If not, I don't know what I can do. I've got nothing else," John explained at lightning speed, his pacing not missing a step.
"Okay, well, calm down John. Fretting until you're sick isn't going to help matters any," Kate said, resting a hand on this arm as he passed her.
John stopped next to her and sighed, scrubbing his face with his hands. He hadn't slept since waking up on the Game Station, and counting the four hours stuck on Earth after the Wolf sent him home, he was getting close to having been awake for fifty hours. As a surgeon, he had worked shifts this long and longer with only catnaps, but after the whole opening of the TARDIS deal, which he was still trying to remember the details of, he had been exhausted. And he hadn't been able to slow down since, not allowing himself to sleep as he kept vigil over the Wolf.
John's brooding was suddenly interrupted by the sharp whistle of the kettle. He snatched the pot, nearly scalding himself in his haste, and finished off the tea. He grabbed the mug to take straight to the Wolf. "Cool this off, girl?" he asked the TARDIS. That had been a wonderful discovery in happier times, the ship being able to cool food and drink so her inhabitants didn't get third degree burns in their mouth.
Kate followed him closely. "How are you going to get her to drink it?" she asked.
"Her reflexes should kick in. She won't choke as long as I don't give her too much all at once." As soon as he was in the room, John climbed up onto the bed behind the Wolf, carefully tilting her head up to rest on his knees as he brought the cup to her mouth. He gradually tipped in small sips, waiting for the Wolf to swallow before giving her a little more.
When half the tea was gone, John set the cup down, lowered the Wolf's head back to the mattress, and waited expectantly. "How long do you think it will take for it to kick in?" Kate asked.
"No idea. I'd say give it twenty or thirty minutes. At least. If nothing's happened by then, I'll look through the book again, try to find anything else." Both of them grew quiet.
Fifteen minutes later, Kate spoke up. "No chance you could fly this thing?" she wondered.
"I don't think so. Not anymore."
"Anymore?"
"The Wolf sent me back to Earth yesterday. We were trapped by Daleks. She got grazed by one of their lasers, and tricked me into the TARDIS and made it take off without her in it – come back here. After a while, and a lot of convincing, I got the TARDIS to open her heart, and I think I flew us back to the Game Station. Then the Daleks were gone, and the Wolf regenerated, and you know the rest," John replied, giving her a condensed version of his hellish day.
"If you did it before, why can't you now?"
"I don't know. It's almost like it's been wiped from my head, or at least most of it. I can remember bits, but not a lot of the details. It's sort of like something's warning me – like if I try it again, the whole universe rips in half," he explained.
Kate chuckled. "Ah. Better not then." Just then, the TARDIS gave a slight, almost unnoticeable shudder. The ship blipped once, then fell silent. "What was that?" Kate wondered.
"I don't know. Maybe something to do with the spaceship. We'd better go check the monitor again."
"What about the Wolf?" she asked.
John looked over at the sleeping Wolf sadly. "I'm not sure if it's going to work at all if it hasn't by now. I must have messed something up. Right now, that ship in the sky is the only problem we have the slightest chance of being able to handle. I'll try to wake up the Wolf again when that's taken care of. Or, the entire Earth's population will be dead, and it won't matter." With that, shoulders slumped, he walked out, Kate following behind.
Ten seconds after they left, the Wolf took a deep breath, expelling a cloud of golden energy.
"Anything on the news?" Kate asked.
"Nothing seems to have changed," John answered. "The government seems to be at a standstill, especially since most of them appear to be on one roof or another. Oh, here's some bad news. Harriet Jones, Prime Minister, her top aide, Alex, and Dr. Llewellyn, the head scientist on the Guinevere One project have all evidently disappeared from a secure location, along with a high-ranking UNIT officer. Odd."
"My father?" Kate asked, worried.
"Doesn't say."
"Well, I want to check outside, see these people on the roof for myself. See if anything's changed with them," Kate told him.
"Be careful," John replied absently, switching channels on the monitor. He vaguely heard the TARDIS door open as Kate took a couple steps outside.
Suddenly, a scream tore through the air, causing John to jerk his head up. "Kate?" he asked, worried. "Kate!" He ran for the exit, bursting through the doors to find himself somehow on what he recognized as the Sycorax ship from the UNIT video feed, and Kate being dragged toward another pair of humans by one of the aliens.
Two of the Sycorax spotted John's entrance and stalked toward him menacingly. John made a split second decision, leaping backwards to pull the doors closed before the two aliens were on him. They dragged him over to Kate and the others, and John suppressed the urge to thrash and fight his way free, not wanting to provoke the Sycorax to violence and possibly bring harm to the other three humans.
Once they were near, the two Sycorax tossed John towards the group. A pair of arms caught him when he stumbled and almost did a face plant. The Sycorax cheered.
"John! John! I've got you. My Lord. Oh, my precious boy. The Wolf, is she with you?" Harriet Jones asked quickly.
John shook his head, defeated. "No, we're on our own for this one."
"The spiky man. He has the clever blue box. Therefore, he speaks for your planet," the Sycorax that appeared to be the leader announced, with Alex, Harriet's aide, repeating at a slower pace.
"But he can't," Harriet protested.
Kate walked forward, looking like she wanted to give the aliens a piece of her mind, but John caught her before she could say anything and pushed her back to Harriet's side. "You, quiet," he warned the teen. "I'm getting you home to the Brig in one piece. I swear it. And I can," he told Harriet. "Someone's got to be the Wolf right now."
"They'll kill you," Harriet objected.
John shrugged. "Never stopped her." He turned to face the coliseum of Sycorax. I am an idiot, he thought. "Er, as one of the citizen's of Earth, I address the Sycorax," he began. "You have, with no provocation, invaded this planet unjustly. I demand, according to – Article Fifteen of the Shadow Proclamation, that you vacate this airspace immediately," John tried. He had no idea what that meant, but it sounded official and threatening. "I have seen creatures that would make your race quiver, and someone greater than you defeated them. If you do not leave this planet in peace, I swear by all of your gods, the Bad Wolf will see you pay," he warned.
The entire ship was silent for a brief moment before the Sycorax burst into a grating laughter. "You are very funny, and now you are going to die," the leader said.
"I warned you," John answered before Alex could translate.
"You understand them?" Harriet broke in.
"You still can't?" John asked Kate, looking back to see her shaking her head. "Why is she still translating for me but not you?" he wondered.
"Maybe it's the Wolf," Kate surmised. "Like she's part of the circuit, and she's broken?"
"That doesn't explain me, though," John denied.
The heart of the TARDIS, a voice whispered in the back of his mind in a musical tone.
"Maybe it's because of what I did," John told Kate, thinking his subconscious had a point. She just shrugged.
"Maybe. You didn't really tell me much, so I don't know," she replied.
"If I might interrupt," the Sycorax leader broke in, sounding impatient.
John turned back around. "My bad."
"Did you think you were clever with your stolen words? We are the Sycorax, we stride the darkness. Next to us, you are but a wailing child. If you are the best your planet can offer as a champion, then your world will be gutted, and your people enslaved," the alien threatened.
Alex hesitated in his translation. "Hold on, that's English," he said, bewildered.
"He's talking English," Harriet added.
John whirled around. "You can hear English?" he questioned. "He's talking English?"
"I would never dirty my tongue with your primitive bile," the Sycorax protested.
"Was that English? Can you still hear English?" John asked.
"Yeah, that's English," Kate said.
"Definitely English," Alex confirmed.
"I speak only Sycoraxic!" the leader proclaimed.
John turned back around to face him, now smugly confident. "If they can hear English, then it's being translated. Which means the TARDIS is working, which means –"
As one, all four humans turned to stare at the TARDIS as both doors swung open to reveal the Wolf in all her sweat pants glory, a self-satisfied grin on her face. "Did you miss me?" she asked.
With a roar, the Sycorax leader cracked his whip, but the Wolf caught it by the end and yanked, jerking it from his grasp and throwing it behind her. "Oi, you could have someone's eye out with that," she muttered.
"You dare!" the leader yelled. Another Sycorax charged the Wolf brandishing a club, but she just pulled it from his grasp when she side-stepped it, sending him hurtling to the ground with a blow across the back before breaking the club in half across her knee.
"You just can't get the staff," she complained. She marched forward, pointing at the Sycorax leader threateningly. "Now you, just wait. I'm busy," she warned him. That finished, the Wolf turned to face John and the rest. She did a double-take when she saw the teenager in the group. "Kate?" she asked, confused. Kate just waved. The Wolf grinned, giving her a hug. "Hello! And Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North. Blimey, it's like This is Your Life." She looked over at John. "Tea!" she declared happily. "That's all I needed, a good cup of tea! Superheated infusion of free radicals and tannin. Just the thing for healing the synapses. How did you know? Oh!" she exclaimed, abruptly changing topics. "But first things first. Be honest. How do I look?" she asked John in a very serious voice.
"Er," John stuttered, "different?"
The Wolf raised her eyebrows, skeptical. "Good different, or bad different?"
John shrugged. "Just different," he tried, attempting to not dig himself into a hole he would never escape from.
If possible, the Wolf got even more solemn. "Am I. Ginger."
John shook his head. "No, you're just sort of – blonde," he replied, waving his hand around his own hair.
The Wolf closed her eyes and sighed in relief. "Oh, thank the gods! I was almost ginger once. Dreadful color, that is. Doesn't suit me at all, wouldn't you say?" she asked, sounding cheerful. "But you!" she went on before he could answer. "Johnny boy. Brilliant you were at the end but you almost gave up on me! Oh, that's rude," she said, voice quieting down as John just stared at her, lost at the abrupt changes in conversation. "Is that the sort of woman I am now? Am I rude?" the Wolf wondered, completely ignoring everyone else. She cocked her head. "Rude and not ginger."
"I'm sorry," Harriet interjected. "Who is this?"
"I'm the Wolf," the Wolf said.
"She's the Wolf," John agreed.
"But what happened to my Wolf?" Harriet protested. "Or is it a title that's just passed on?"
"I'm her. I'm literally her," the Wolf clarified. "Same woman, new face. Well, new everything," she finished, smirking.
"But you can't be," Harriet denied.
The Wolf sobered. "Harriet Jones," she said seriously, "we were trapped in Downing Street and the one thing that scared you wasn't the aliens. It wasn't the war. It was the thought of your mother being on her own."
"Oh, my God," Harriet whispered.
The Wolf brightened. "Did you win the election?" she asked.
Harriet smiled proudly. "Landslide majority."
"If I might interrupt," the forgotten Sycorax leader broke in again.
The Wolf turned to face him. "Yes, sorry," she apologized quickly. "Hello big fella."
"Who exactly are you?" the alien asked, sounding put out.
The Wolf huffed in amusement. "Well, that's the question."
Out of patience, the Sycorax roared, "I demand to know who you are!"
"I. Don't. Know!" the Wolf roared right back before rapidly regaining her composure. "See, that's the thing. I'm the Wolf, but beyond that, I just don't know. I literally do not know who I am. It's all untested. Am I funny? Am I sarcastic? Sexy?" she winked at John, causing him to blush and look down. "Right old misery? Life and soul? Right handed? Left handed? A gambler? A fighter? A coward? A traitor? A liar? A nervous wreck? I mean, judging by the evidence, I've certainly got a gob."
As the Wolf rambled on, John couldn't help but notice how different this Wolf was from his first. Sure, the other Wolf had talked a lot, but this was taking it to a whole new level. She was also – almost sort of bouncy. She reminded him a lot of Tigger from Winnie the Pooh.
"And how am I going to react when I see this," the Wolf continued, sounding gleeful as she looked over at the platform behind the Sycorax leader, "a great big threatening button. A great big threatening button which must not be pressed under any circumstances, am I right? Let me guess. It's some sort of control matrix, hmm? Hold on, what's feeding it?" She ran up to it, kneeling at the base and opening it up, revealing a bowl containing some kind of fluid. "And what've we got here? Blood?" she wondered, dipping a finger in the bowl before bringing to her mouth.
"No, Wolf, don't put –" John started, but it was too late.
"Yeah, definitely blood. Human blood," the Wolf confirmed after tasting the blood, making a disgusted sound. "A Positive, with just a dash of iron. Ah, but that means blood control. Blood control!" she exclaimed, excited. "Oh, I haven't seen blood control in years! You're controlling all the A Positives," she realized.
"But I'm A Positive," Kate interrupted. "Why wasn't I affected?"
"Oh, the TARDIS protected you. She does things like that," the Wolf dismissed. "But that leaves us with a great big stinking problem. Because I really don't know who I am. I don't know when to stop. So if I see a great big threatening button which should never, ever, ever be pressed, then I just want to do this." Without warning, the Wolf slammed her hand down on said threatening button, causing the four humans to shout in alarm.
"You killed them!" Alex accused, shocked.
The Wolf looked over at the Sycorax leader. "What do you think, big fellow?" she asked. "Are they dead?"
"We allow them to live," the leader said begrudgingly.
"Allow?" the Wolf scoffed. "You've no choice. I mean, that's all blood control is. A cheap bit of voodoo. Scares the pants off you, but that's as far as it goes. It's like hypnosis. You can hypnotize someone to walk like a chicken or sing like Elvis. You can't hypnotize them to death. Survival instinct's too strong," she informed them.
"Blood control was just one form of conquest. I can summon the armada and take this world by force," the Sycorax threatened.
The Wolf made a considering face. "Well, yeah, you could, yeah, you could do that," she nodded, "of course you could. But why?" she asked. "Look at these people. These human beings. Consider their potential. From the day they arrive on the planet and blinking step into the sun, there is more to see than can ever be seen. More to do than – No, hold on." The Wolf looked down, confused, shaking her head. "Sorry, that's The Lion King. But the point still stands," she said, sounding annoyed. "Leave them alone!"
John narrowed his eyes when the Wolf started quoting Disney, but couldn't hold back his grin when she realized it and stumbled. This new Wolf was something else. Sudden movement drew his attention back to the confrontation in front of him, just in time to see the Wolf take a sword from a soldier and run back toward the TARDIS.
"I challenge you!" she declared, wielding a weapon that was almost as long as she was tall, in her sweatpants, but managing to look fierce all the same. There was a general roaring throughout the coliseum at the Wolf's words. She perked up. "Oh, that struck a chord."
"Wolf, what are you doing?" John hissed.
"Am I right that the sanctified rules of combat still apply?" she asked the leader, ignoring John.
"You stand as this world's champion?" the Sycorax commander asked, skeptical.
The Wolf raised her eyebrows. "Thank you. I have no idea who I am, but you just summed me up." She lifted her sword, pointing it at the Sycorax. "So do you accept my challenge, or are you just a cranak pel casacree salvak?" It sounded like and insult to John, but the TARDIS refused to translate that one.
The general stiffened. "For the planet?" he clarified, finally taking the woman seriously.
"For the planet," the Wolf confirmed.
Without warning, the Sycorax ran at the Wolf, and their swords met with a clang. The warrior released his blade with one hand to swipe at the Wolf, knocking her smaller body to the ground. He swung down at her.
"Look out!" John yelled as the Wolf rolled away from the incoming sword.
"Oh, yeah, that helps," the Wolf growled at him as she scrambled to her feet. "Wouldn't have thought of that otherwise, thanks."
John couldn't help rolling his eyes at the Wolf's snark, despite his worry. The Sycorax leader was the obvious better swordsman, but the Wolf managed to hold him off even as he backed her up a tunnel. Looking off to the side, she slammed a camouflaged button, opening a door to the outside of the ship.
"Bit of fresh air?" she asked, jogging out as several Sycorax and the four humans followed. John could now see that the spaceship was hovering over London, just inside the lower cloud bank.
The leader continued to drive the Wolf backwards until, finally, she was mere feet from the edge. Taking advantage of some mistake of the Wolf's, the Sycorax punched her square on the nose. She stumbled back. John took a step forward, wanting to do something to help, but the Wolf flung out her arm, stopping him in his tracks.
"Stay back!" she warned him sharply. "Invalidate the challenge and he wins the planet."
The Sycorax took advantage of the Wolf's brief distraction and knocked her to the ground, his sword quickly following. The Wolf's cry of pain was drowned out by the general's roar of triumph.
"You cut my hand off," the Wolf said in surprise.
"Sycorax!" he shouted to his subordinates, who yelled back their approval.
John wanted to run over to help the Wolf as she got to her feet, but her warning kept him still. He looked in horror at her right arm, which was now absent one hand. However, breaking through his fear for the Wolf, the medical part of his mind was curious as to why there was no blood coming from the wound.
The Sycorax leader turned back to the Wolf, obviously ready to finish her off, but she spoke, forestalling his actions. "And now I know what sort of woman I am," she told him. "I'm lucky. Because quite by chance, I'm still within the first fifteen hours of my regeneration cycle, which means I've got just enough residual cellular energy to do this." She held up her arm, which was surrounded by the golden energy John had seen before. A hand appeared to magically grow out of her shorn wrist, causing John's eyes to widen in amazement.
The Sycorax were stunned as well. "Witchcraft," the leader muttered uneasily.
"Time Lord," the Wolf corrected him.
John snatched a sword from the sheath of a soldier standing near him. "Wolf!" he called, tossing the blade to her hilt first.
The Wolf grabbed it out of the air. "Still sure I'm the Wolf then?" she teased.
"No arguments from me," John grinned.
"And d'you want to know the best bit?" she asked the Sycorax leader, spinning her sword. "This new hand? It's a fighting hand!" she proclaimed in a cowboy-Western accent. She quickly engaged the alien, taking advantage of his surprise and fear, disarming him and taking both swords. The Wolf walloped him in the gut with both sword hilts, knocking him to the ground right on the edge of the ship, where she had lay not two minutes before. She placed the tip of one sword just under his nose so that the leader had to cross his eyes just to keep an eye on it. "I win," she declared.
"Then kill me," he spat.
"I'll spare your life if you take this champion's command. Leave this planet, and never return," she warned. "What do you say?"
"Yes," the leader said begrudgingly.
That wasn't enough for the Wolf. She moved even closer, pressing the edge of the blade up against his face. "Swear on the blood of your species," she growled.
"I swear," he capitulated, sounding frightened.
And with that, the Wolf relaxed. "There we are, then. Thanks for that. Cheers, big fellow," she said blithely, tossing her sword away.
"Bravo!" Harriet cried as the Wolf walked over to them.
John applauded. "That says it all, bravo," he agreed, pulling the Wolf into a hug.
"Not bad for a girl in her jim-jams," the Wolf bragged. "Very Arthur Dent. Now, there was a nice fellow." She looked over when John took her replacement hand to inspect it. "I'm fine, Johnny," she said gently, extricating herself from his worried fingers. "See, look." She stooped down and grabbed a rock from ground, tossing it up in the air and catching it with her new hand. "Perfectly functional. Someone's been put on the Naughty List," she teased, showing John the black rock. "Would you like some coal?" she grinned.
"We're talking about this later," John said sternly, refusing to be distracted by her antics. The Wolf just smiled innocently up at him.
The Sycorax leader, forgotten, snatched the Wolf's tossed aside sword and ran at her back, roaring in fury. Hard-faced, the Wolf threw the rock that she had been playing with at a control on the spaceship hull. A piece of the wing opened up, dropping the Sycorax as he screamed.
"No second chances," she said stonily. "I'm that sort of woman."
Together, the two of them walked back into the interior of the spaceship, standing in front of the TARDIS with Harriet and Alex behind them. "By the ancient rites of combat, I forbid you to scavenge here for the rest of time," the Wolf declared to the masses of Sycorax. "And when go you back to the stars and tell others of this planet, when you tell them of it's riches, it's people, it's potential. When you talk of the Earth, then make sure that you tell them this. It is defended," she snarled. Without another sound from the aliens, the four humans and the TARDIS were beamed back to the Earth's surface.
John looked on sadly as the Wolf whispered something into Alex's ear, causing Harriet to panic. He truly liked the older woman, and he wished that she hadn't made such a huge mistake in blowing up the Sycorax spaceship as it retreated. He had thought that maybe the Wolf was being a little harsh in threatening to bring down Harriet's entire government, but then he remembered the thousands of lives on that craft. For all they had attempted to conquer the world, they had been leaving. They hadn't been a threat any longer.
So he remained silent as Alex walked away with Harriet following, still anxious. They and Kate stayed put, somber for a few moments, before a ring tone suddenly sounded. Kate started, but dug into her pocket, pulling out her cell phone. "It's my father," she told them, grinning as she answered. "Dad!" she said excitedly. "You'll never believe where I've been!" she bounded off to explain to the Brig in private.
John shook his head at her exuberance, and looked down just to find the Wolf doing the same. They smiled at each other in amusement, but John sobered. "Did you need to do that?" he asked her quietly. "With Harriet, just now?"
The Wolf scowled. "Earth is dangerous, John," she told him. "Future exploration not withstanding, this planet's first alien interactions are – rough, to put it lightly. And not all of it is because you were invaded. Your planet is a threat to peaceful species, as well. I'm sorry, very sorry, that Harriet is a part of the reason that that is your future, but she just planted herself there. She needed to be shut down before she took it further, because she would have," the Wolf finished, her eyes sad. "It's a shame. She is a truly lovely person."
John was kept from replying when Kate jogged up. "Hey!" she called. "Father said to invite you two to Christmas dinner." The Wolf opened her mouth, but Kate rushed to continue before she could interrupt. "And that before you protest, Wolf, to tell you that Mum insisted."
The Wolf blanched. "Well, we can't ignore a direct order from Doris. Blimey," she ran a hand through her hair worriedly. John grinned at the sight that at least one of her nervous tics had survived her regeneration. "There's a frightening thought."
A couple of hours later, John was in the kitchen, assisting Doris Lethbridge-Stewart, who was not nearly as terrifying as the Wolf seemed to think she was, with dinner preparations. The Wolf was nowhere to be seen, having disappeared into the TARDIS that was currently parked in the front yard – having carefully avoided Doris' flower garden – to change and, in John's opinion, to get out of helping with something as domestic as Christmas dinner. Kate was in the other room, talking at a mile a minute with the Brig about her exciting day.
"Kate apparently managed to have fun today," he observed.
Doris shook her head in exasperation. "I sometimes forget she's still just a teenager, she's so mature and intelligent. But she's too much like her father. Earth is never going to be enough for her. She wants to join UNIT after university, did she tell you?" she asked him.
John nodded. "She mentioned it once, after the whole Slitheen thing."
"I worry about that girl sometimes, I do," Doris sighed. "Kate's too curious and adventurous; she ends up in trouble more often than not."
John chuckled. "Sounds like someone else I know," he admitted.
Doris smiled back. "Yes, if I hadn't carried the girl myself, I'd worry she wasn't mine," she joked, surprising a full laugh out of John.
As he sputtered, the Wolf made her reappearance. Doris, still laughing a bit, had turned back to the stove, and the Brig and Kate were still deep in discussion, so John was the only one who saw her for a minute.
She leaned against the door frame, smiling fondly at the scene in front of her. John grinned over at her, appraising her new outfit. The sweats and tee were gone. Taking their places were a dark blue pair of jeans, not the black she had been fond of wearing, which perfectly matched the deep blue leather jacket she wore over a purple-y tank.
John thought her new outfit looked fairly normal, until his eyes went to the ground and he saw that she had bright red Chucks on her feet. He shook his head at the fashion statement. "Hey Wolf," he called, letting Doris know that she was there.
Doris turned quickly. "Oh, my dear, let's have a look at you," she said, walking over to inspect the Wolf. The Wolf fidgeted, but held still for the older-looking woman until she was satisfied. "Well, you just get younger, don't you, Wolf?" Doris asked.
The Wolf grinned. "You know I can't completely control what I look like, Doris," she teased. "I can only influence."
Doris harrumphed. "Some people are just lucky like that. Now here." She handed the Wolf a stack of plates. "You can go put these on the table, since you've decided to grace us with your presence now that most of the work is done," she ordered sternly, but with a twinkle in her eye.
The Wolf nodded, looking sufficiently cowed. "Yes ma'am." She moved toward the dining room, and nearly collided with Kate as the younger girl came running into the kitchen, barely managing to save the plates before they crashed to the floor.
"Wolf, sorry! Nice outfit," Kate apologized hurriedly. "You guys, you have to see this. It's snowing outside! Come on!" She dashed back out of the room, leaving the three adults staring.
Doris shook her head. "That girl," she muttered. "We'd better go and look, before she comes back."
The Wolf and John grinned and followed the woman out the front door, where the Brig and Kate were already standing. John looked up at the sky, the Wolf next to him, both of them silent as they stood a little ways away from the small family.
After a minute, John leaned towards the Wolf. "You know, it seems a bit too warm to be snowing," he mentioned quietly.
"That's because it isn't snow, it's ash," the Wolf confirmed, just as quietly. "And those 'meteors'?" She pointed, and John noticed the bright flashes crossing the sky. "That's the spaceship breaking up in the atmosphere."
"Not so beautiful, when you look at it that way," John agreed, grimacing.
"This is a brand new planet Earth. No denying the existence of aliens now," the Wolf observed. "Everyone saw it. Everything's new."
"And you?" John asked. "You just keep traveling?"
"Why, aren't you coming?" the Wolf asked worriedly.
John shrugged. "I thought maybe, 'cause you'd changed, you might not want me along," he said nervously.
"Of course I want you to come!" the Wolf exclaimed. The other three turned to look at John and the Wolf when they heard her outburst. Embarrassed, she quickly composed herself. "I'd love you to come," she repeated quietly.
John sighed with relief. "Oh, thank God," he said, smiling now. The Wolf smiled happily back and reached out her hand. John took it without hesitation. "So, where are we going to go first?" he asked.
The Wolf looked up at the stars, thinking. "Erm, that way," she said, pointing up. "No, hold on." She moved her hand a few degrees to the right. "That way," she decided, looking over to see what John thought.
He nodded. "Yeah, that way," he agreed.
A/N: To my guest reviewers, I see you, I read them, I can't reply to you privately, so this is me acknowledging that I love every single one.