1.
"Did you see her face?"
The twin doors of the TARDIS swung open, spilling a square of sunlight across the darkened interior as the tall man in a long brown jacket strode inwards, followed closely by a laughing blonde, both of their clothes covered with streaks of dust in every conceivable color - blue and purple and green and red and more.
"Wasn't my fault! 'Ow was I supposed to know that she'd react like that?" his companion protested, wiping cheeks smeared with yellow and orange. "S'not my fault you never told me Malorians were offended by sneezin'."
"You didn't JUST sneeze, though! You sneezed in the Queen's direction! It's a very serious offense. Besides, how was I supposed to know you were going to develop a sudden case of hay fever? I can't be responsible for your inferior human systems..." The Doctor grinned cheekily at Rose, hands jammed deep in the pockets of his long trench coat - a trench coat that was even now smudged with every hue of powder and glitter imaginable.
"I thought her head was going to jus'... pop!" Rose gestured widely with her hands.
"Lucky for you capital punishment on Maloria is death by good ol' fashioned powderin'." The Doctor spread his arms, looking down at his color-smeared clothing. Rose mimicked the gesture, wrinkling her nose as she picked at what had been a solid pink sweatshirt but was now almost every other color instead.
"I don' see how this is supposed to do anything but ruin your outfit..."
"Oh, it doesn't do anything but stain. But that's the thing, Malorians have skin a lot like the fabric of your sweater. The color'll come out of your skin, but it wouldn't out of a Malorian's. They'd be ridiculously colored, forever. Though, next time we're sentenced to capital punishment, p'haps not laughing in the middle of it might be smart, yeah?"
He fixed her with a strict gaze. Rose affected an innocent look. "Wasn't my fault! It was just so ridiculous - them all throwing handfuls of glitter at us and actin' like it was the end of the world an' all... C'mon, you have to admit it was a little bit ridiculous."
The Doctor kept that stern look on his face only for a moment more, ruining it with the sparkle in his eyes - a sparkle quickly followed by one of his ear to ear grins. "All right, quite ridiculous then. Anyway, all done with that. Go an' wash up an' we'll decide where to go next."
He turned to the ship's consoles as Rose headed deeper into the TARDIS, tilting his head back to regard the tall funnel in the middle. She was strangely silent, which worried him. If there was one thing he knew about his ship, it was the hum of her, the constant noise of her. Tonight, however... Tonight, she was thoughtful. Pensive - if one could use such a word to describe a ship, sentient or no. He pressed his palms to the controllers, frowning deeply.
"What's wrong, old girl?" he murmured, under his breath. The console was warm and smooth under his palms, but the ship remained stoically still.
By the time his blonde companion returned to the console room, his coat and suit were, mysteriously, powder-free. She was pulling a brush through her long, bleached hair, clad in clean jeans and a white tee. She strolled across the floor to lean against the central panel, crossing one leg over the other as she eyed him.
"So. Where we going?"
Even before the words had finished leaving her lips, the walls around them shuddered. The entire ship convulsed, the floor underneath their feet bucking hard as the screech of protesting metal ripped through the air.
"Doctor! What's happening?" Rose wrapped her arms around one of the upright metal fixtures on the TARDIS's central control system, clinging for dear life as the ship around them rocked back and forth, the normal groaning-woosh of the systems taking on a frantic and terrified tone. Rose had never heard the TARDIS sound terrified before.
"I don't know - the TARDIS has gone crazy! Hold on!"
Several of the dials on the TARDIS's console exploded in small cascades of sparks, scattering pieces of glass across floor, panels, human, and Time Lord alike. Rose shrieked, hiding her face against her arm as the Doctor clung to several levers, trying vainly to re-exert some form of control over his ship's crazed movements.
With a ripple of pops, several of the transparent circles set into the TARDIS's skin shattered, the entire ship groaning once again as the ship jerked in a different direction. Rose nearly tumbled from her grip on the central console, her wide, frightened eyes finding the Doctor.
"Make it stop!" she yelled. The Doctor half-growled a response that Rose was pretty sure contained language the TARDIS would normally translate to nonsense. He was somehow still on his feet, despite the fact that the ship was dipping and carreening wildly and half of the controls were sparking wildly. The other half seemed to be flipping and twisting with a mind of their own, only tempered by the Doctor's mad attempts to rein them in.
"I can't! Something's got us and I don't know what! Where's that button, that blasted button-? Ah! Here it is!"
"What button?"
He paused long enough for Rose to see the maniac light in his eyes. It was a light that meant that whatever was going to happen was probably more dangerous than even he would let on. That look had gotten her into so much trouble... "The emergency brake!"
Then he slammed his hand down on the only big, mauve button on the console. Mauve, of course it was. Hadn't he always told her mauve was the universal color for danger? Fantastic.
The TARDIS ground to a halt, throwing Rose at last from her desperate grip and against the floor. A storm of sparks ricocheted from controls and displays around the ship's interior, then the lights blinked one final time and went out. The ship gave one last, low moan as it settled, and was finally still.
Rose wasn't sure how long it was before her head stopped spinning long enough for her to realize the Doctor was already over her, his hands warm on her arms.
"Rose? Rose, are you okay?"
"Wah? Oh... yeah, yeah, I think so." She got to her feet with his help, running her hands down the sides of her pants as much out of nerves as the desire to make sure that she really was in one piece, with all vital appendages still attached. The control room was filled with a fine, low layer of smoke, the central column dark and silent. "Doctor... Is the TARDIS... is she...?"
"Dead? No, not this time." He leaned over the controls, squinting through his glasses at several of the readings. "The last time we were dragged through to a parallel world, I made some minor modifications. Upgraded her firewalls, if you will. Created a system back-up, in layman's terms. Still, we're somewhere new. Somewhere she's not meant to go, and that means there's not enough energy to keep her quite as lively as normal."
He reached up to the center tube, patting it as lovingly and tenderly as she'd ever seen him. "She just needs time to regroup. She'll pull energy from the central matrix and the back-up arctrun stores I hooked up just in case this happened again and then we'll be back to normal, chips and gravy an' all."
Rose moved up beside him, looking up at his face with a furrow in her brow. "Hold on, Doctor. You said... 'last time'. Does this mean we've traveled to a parallel world again? Are we not in our own universe?"
"'Fraid not. Something got a good hold of us and dragged us right through the space-time vortex, just like reeling in a fish. Well - two somethings. Well - two somethings that were obviously fighting over us." His fingers flew over the panels and buttons, eyes darting from the main screen to the dials and toggles underneath his fingertips.
"Two somethings? Fighting?"
He pulled the main screen around so that she could see it clearly, pointing at the display as if the nonsensical symbols, wiggles, and strangely volatile line in the middle would make any sense whatsoever to her. She'd long ago learned that the TARDIS didn't bother to translate things that it knew she wouldn't in a million years understand, anyway. Thankfully, the Doctor was still jabbering on, and all Rose had to do was nod her head and stare at the line on the screen that started going out one way, then abruptly twisted in another direction.
"See, here, this is our original flight path. Then, here, something grabbed us. Hooked on to the vortex, to the heart of the TARDIS itself, and began to pull us along. I'm not sure how far we traveled - a long way, certainly - before suddenly we changed direction. Something else was pulling us, like a football being kicked mid-pass to another player. The question is... how would something lock on to us in the first place, nevermind two somethings?"
He stared at the screen as if willing it to divulge his secrets. Rose let him stare until it was obvious that he wasn't about to have any sudden epiphanies. Finally, she prompted him by leaning further into his view.
"Then where are we, Doctor?"
He turned to her and grinned. "No idea! Let's find out, shall we?"
In one motion, he grabbed his coat and hopped down from the central platform towards the main doors. "Doctor, wait!" Rose scrambled for her own sweatshirt, following him as he took both doors and swung them wide open. Light flooded into the dim interior of the TARDIS and they stood framed, once again, in the new air of an entirely new universe.
They were in the middle of a garden, a sea of multi-colored pansies nodding their bright heads at the clear blue sky overhead, gauzy white clouds slipping past the golden sun. In front of them, past the leafy reaches of a row of tomato plants, was a white-walled house with the paint chipping on the corners. It was a good, proper home, with a second floor, windows open to let in the warm springtime air, and a wide back porch with the back door slightly open to reveal the screen door beyond. Rose could see, however, rents in the roof as if something large like a tree had fallen on the tiles and dug out long swathes of them.
So, for the third time, Rose put her hand around the Doctor's arm and asked, "where are we?"
He cast an amused look at her, sliding his sonic screwdriver from inside his jacket. With a jerk, it was suddenly open and humming. He cast it back and forth for a moment before snapping it shut with a decided flick, tucking it into his pocket.
"Earth, the United States - Pennsylvania to be exact. Seems to be May 21st, 2015."
"Pennsylvania? Where in America is that?" Rose cast a low look around the garden. The backyard needed a good trimming, there were weeds growing up everywhere, but beyond the weeds were trees - old, big trees. Beyond their leafy boughs, however, they could hear the distant hum of traffic. A highway, then, or a main road. So this parallel world had cars, like normal. Like hers, rather.
The Doctor opened his mouth to answer when he was cut off by the most peculiar sound - the bugle of a horn. No, Rose thought a second later. It was much too large, much too brazen, to be a horn. It was something entirely different.
Then something large, something winged, and something blue dropped from the sky, landing on the roof of the porch and tilting its slim, wedge-shaped head back. It - the dragon - trumpeted, its wings flaring on either side of it as its head snaked down, whirling blue eyes focusing on Rose and the Doctor. It was blue - TARDIS blue, Rose thought irrationally - and its great maw parted to let a ripple of scalding air rush from between long, very sharp teeth. It was wearing a shining silver helm along its wedge-shaped head, rubies glinting from along the length of its snout. A breastplate with intricate silver guards lined its chest and the main part of its wings, completed by the twisting metal guards along its legs and framing metal claws over its natural ones.
"D-Doctor," Rose stammered, clutching at his arm. She could feel the strangest pressure right behind her eyes, like something in her head banging against the inside of her skull. Probably panic, she thought. "That's - That's a real dragon, yeah?"
He was, of course, no use, staring at the creature before him with this huge, goofy grin on his face. "Oh, that's beautiful. Look, Rose, a dragon! Isn't that fantastic?"
"Yeah, real fantastic, but don't you think, Doctor, that we should, I don't know, run or something?"
The screen door swung open, and a young woman stepped out, apparently oblivious to the giant reptile currently curled around the top of her house. She was young, looking only to be seventeen or eighteen - not too much younger than Rose herself, she realized. She looked normal enough with long, straight brown hair, clad in jeans and a short sleeved red button-up shirt. A strap hung across from shoulder to hip and at first Rose thought it a purse, but as the young woman walked towards them she realized what she'd thought was a purse was, in fact, a book. A very large, very old looking book.
Behind her, the dragon hopped down from the porch, wings still flared and swirling blue eyes staring at them, as if just daring them to move so it could deep fry them like cheap chips.
"The-the dragon-" Rose managed as the young woman drew up close to them, pointing behind her. The brunette glanced over her shoulder, then back at the both of them with an arched eyebrow.
"Good job, you identified the flying, fire-breathing lizard. Now, mind telling me what you're doing in my garden with a big blue box right in the middle of my poor pansies?" The young woman folded her arms over her chest, and Rose and the Doctor glanced at each other, a bit taken aback. Before they could answer, however, she rolled her eyes and turned towards the dragon, clearly speaking to it. "I know you're not a lizard, but - Listen, it was called sarcasm, you - Theo! Focus! Strange people in the garden! Sort of more important than your lizard-complex."
The dragon huffed. Quite literally, let all of the air in his lungs out in a very human-like huff, his wings folding back against his back. Then he turned back towards Rose and the Doctor, and she got the very strange sensation of thudding in her head again. Only, this time it seemed that there were snippets and fragments of thoughts that leaked through, like snatches of a conversation she couldn't quite hear.
"Doctor, my head-"
"I know," he said, low under his breath, flicking out his sonic screwdriver once more. The dragon's head snapped up again, clearly ready to incinerate them both, but held his fire when the Doctor flicked the small stylus around before frowning at it. "It's a telepathic message. Only, it's not working like it's supposed to, because we're not right, we're just a little bit out of sync with everyone else. Hold on, the TARDIS is compensating... All right then, that should do it."
He jammed his hands back in his pockets, and looked back at the girl and reptile in front of him, smiling once more. "Now then. Sorry 'bout that. I'm the Doctor, and this is Rose. If I'm not incorrect, your dragon there was just trying to talk to us. Unfortunately we were having a bit of a hearing problem if you can call it that - which, since the real explanation would take four days and three hours to go through we'll say yes, we can call it that. And who would you two be?"
The young woman stared at him. Then she looked at the dragon. Then she looked back at them. "You're... British?"
"I am," Rose volunteered. "He's... close enough."
The young woman sighed, pressing a hand to her forehead. "Well, that explains everything. Look, you two. I know things have been a bit hectic over there and yes, I know that your nation has more magicals per capita than just about any other place except most of the eastern seaboard, but... really. We established the Embassies for you all to direct your complaints there, to your respective Princess. Not." She fixed them both with a pointed look. "Teleported in to the middle of my pansies."
The Doctor reached up, tugging his ear as he glanced at Rose out of the corner of his eyes. She shrugged, as confused as he was. "Right... well, it seems there's been a bit of a misunderstanding. We're not... here for any particular reason. Well - any reason that we know of. Right now anyway. What'd you say your name was?"
~Don't joke. How do you not know who she is?~
Rose gasped at the sound of the dragon's voice inside of her head. It was like a flurry of bells all chiming in her head, somehow all making perfect sense as the words bloomed with hues of blue behind her eyes. It was one of the most amazing and beautiful things she'd ever heard in her entire life. The Doctor seemed less affected, patting Rose's hand reassuringly as he replied, utterly calm, "we're not from around here. And we've no clue what you're talking about, sorry to say."
"Where've you been for the past three years? How could you not know? I'm her - I'm the one you'll have heard about on the news and the like." The young woman stared at them as if she couldn't quite believe they didn't know who she was. But it didn't seem like she was proudly declaring it, Rose thought. No, there was the weight of responsibility in her tone, not some vain airiness.
"Sorry, not big news watchers," Rose interjected with a half-smile.
The brunette reached down and patted the book hanging from her side. "I'm Toby. I'm the Storyteller." And the way she said it, Rose couldn't help but look at the Doctor. Because she said it the same way he said his own name - with a great deal of heaviness and thoughtfulness, the words so much more full of meaning than three little syllables ever had the right to bear.
~They really don't know,~ the dragon exclaimed, his head tilting to one side just like a dog's would. It was a strangely endearing gesture.
Toby exhaled. "Just where are you two from?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," the Doctor said mildly.
The brunette folded her arms over her chest and fixed them with a steady look. Her eyes were green, flecked with strange bits of gold in them that never seemed to sit just normal. They weren't the eyes of a normal seventeen year old. They were so much older than their time; they were the eyes of someone who might just believe them.
Behind her, the dragon abruptly began to shrink, swirling blue pulling back from the edges of his form and drawing it with them, until he was no bigger than the size of a normal teenage boy. Claws became hands; a muzzle became a mouth, and swirling blue eyes settled in to a distinctly human face, disheveled, spiky blue hair and all. One hand rested on the hilt of a silver sword somehow sheathed at his hip.
"Brilliant," breathed the Doctor again, under his breath.
Toby didn't even glance over her shoulder, her gaze on the Doctor. "Try me."