Title: I Get By With A Little Help
Author: PrincessOfQuestionableMorals
Genre: Action/Adventure, Friendship, Romance
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Ten/Rose, Donna, Sarah-Jane, Jack, Torchwood, Martha, Sally Sparrow, the Master...?
Summary: Rose returns to her world, alone and with no way to contact the Doctor. Will she, Donna, and Torchwood be able to save the world from the not-quite alien threat that is slowly taking over without his help? Pre-s4, AU s3.
A/N: Some of these ideas come from the Doctor Who book The Stone Rose.
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Chapter Five: From Ianto Jones
Rose's inquiry was met with stunned disbelief.
"Genies?" asked Donna, breaking the silence. "Like, Aladdin?" She snorted, sitting down in a chair. "You're bonkers."
Then, all of the sudden, everyone was talking at once.
"It's obviously just a blip," dismissed Owen, carelessly. "Or Tosh's computers messed up—"
"My computers do not 'mess up'." replied Tosh hotly.
"Maybe it was an aftershock of you coming in, Rose?" suggested Gwen.
"What the hell do genies have to do with—" started Jack.
Rose looked on helplessly as everyone talked over each other, spouting theories and ideas at louder and louder volumes. She caught the eye of the only member of the team not taking part in this exercise (Ianto, she remembered) and gestured helplessly. He replied with a small smile and picked up a tray off a nearby table. On the tray was balanced a precarious number of teacups.
He quickly schooled his face into a "Who, me?" expression before dropping the tray. It landed with the clattering and ringing sound of breaking china that instantly silenced the group.
"Oops?" he offered, winking at Rose, who took the opportunity to speak to the now silent team.
"Mickey found a statue of me in an art museum once, only it dated back 2000 years." Rose began. "The Doctor knew that this meant that we had to go to Ancient Rome, where the statue was from, so I could get sculpted. Only I didn't, because this guy was actually turning people into statues." She saw the looks on their faces, and held up a hand. "Long story. Anyways, we met a girl, Vanessa, who came from the future by way of a genie, which was now granting wishes. But not a genie like from Aladdin. It was a Genetically Engineered Neural Imagination Engine from the future that was made to grant wishes. But it kept going wrong, so we destroyed the genies except for one, which went to an uninhabited planet where it didn't have to grant wishes."
She sat down, sighing. "The only thing that makes sense now is that the genies started getting made in Torchwood in Pete's World, and one stumbled upon us testing the dimension cannon, and transported it and me here."
"But that means…" started Donna.
"If we don't find that genie, we are in a lot of trouble." Rose told them, gravely.
"And not a Doctor in sight." Muttered Jack.
Rose smacked him gently in the back of the head. "Luckily for you, Harkness, you've got the girl who saved the Doctor from the genie." She stuck her tongue out. "And I've gotten to kiss him. In both forms. Which is more than you can say, Captain." She mock-saluted, before striding over to Tosh's workstation, where the two women huddled in whispered conversation.
"Both?" question Jack to the air.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Abby Jenkins stood at a bus stop, gripping her bag tightly in her hands and stepping from side to side to ward off the cold.
The bus arrived with a screeching of brakes, stopping almost directly in front of her. She nodded shyly to the driver and paid her fare, drawing her bag closer to her out of a sense of territorialism.
She had an uncle in Cardiff, she knew, because she had heard her parents talk about him, though often in a deprecating way. She also knew he was part of Torchwood, who everyone knew dealt with aliens.
If anyone would know what to do with the two foot scaly reptile currently laying unconscious in her bag, it would be Ianto Jones.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
He found himself next to her on a beach, both of them staring across the water towards the setting sun.
"There's an old legend about this beach." She said, quietly, eyes trained on the distant horizon. "A woman—a goddess—lost her love and the stars cried a river for her."
"You're not supposed to be here," he found himself saying, staring at the blonde woman.
"Aren't I?" she asked, smiling sadly. "It's your dream after all."
He seated himself next to her, not quite able to bring himself to force her out of her reverie as she stared across the incoming tide.
"It wasn't supposed to be like this. It was never supposed to be like this!" she said, shockingly vehement and finally tearing her eyes from the horizon, and he was shocked to see gold swirling through them.
"Doctor…" a look of sadness crossed her face. "It's time to wake up."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
When John Smith awoke in his bed in Farringham by the cheerful knocking of a maid, he tried to remember the details of the vivid dream he was sure he had had, but all he could remember was a girl with blonde hair and gold eyes, and a sadness so deep he thought he might drown in it.
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