Even if he was rather excellent at hiding it, Peter Vincent was miserable. How could he not be? He'd had horrible old memories of his parents' deaths reawakened, lost his girlfriend, and then nearly was devoured by a pack of thirsty vampires all in the same evening. Regarding Ginger, you'd think he wouldn't really care, but he did. Oh, he did. Even if she was a bloody lazy pain in the ass, she was his pain in the ass, and now she was gone. Not just gone; dead; and it was all because of him. It was all his fault, just like everything always was. That's why he'd gone into hiding in the first place.

He couldn't stay in that flat in Vegas. He simply couldn't. Not after all the hell that had happened there. So, weeks after the tragic events of that night, he still found himself wandering from bar to bar and from city to city, trying to let go. Trying to forget is more like it, really, but he wasn't as good at that as he used to be; not anymore.

Peter had gone from New York to Los Angeles, and to countless smaller cities, but nowhere in America really did it for him. Sure, the strippers were all fine and dandy and the booze was just as good as it would be anywhere else, but it wasn't… home. If he was being truthful Vegas wasn't home, either. Eventually he found himself drawn back to that blasted city where his life fell apart, with its zepplins and its technology and that little flat that he felt certain was still deserted. After all; who would want to live somewhere that a vicious double murder had taken place? Eventually, Peter found himself drawn back to London.

It was just the same as ever, still dark and misty most of the time, still loud and bustling, and for a moment it was almost as if he had never left; for a moment, he began to feel like that shy, lonely little boy again, with his magic tricks and his friendlessness. It was awful, and he quickly retreated to the nearest pub, planning to drown his sorrows, along with every other possible emotion, before he even considered going to visit his childhood home.

One thing was different from before, though; no one wore earpieces anymore. That had been all the latest fad when he was a kid, and he'd expected them to have evolved and become even more high-tech, not to have disappeared entirely. Oh, well; trends come and trends go. There wasn't much he could do about it.

"Mint julep," he told the bartender solemnly as he took a seat on one of the stools, holding up a hand when he started to walk off to get it, "and don't go easy on the bourbon whisky."

With a nod, the bartender walked off again, and Peter sighed, scratching the back of his neck as he waited. He couldn't go back to Vegas now, even if the whim struck him; he was a joke. After Ginger's death, he'd seen no point in lying and told everyone who asked that she was killed by vampires. It wasn't long afterward that people started calling him a nutter, saying he'd started to believe his own illusions. Well, those people wouldn't be laughing when word of Jerry's death spread and some of his pals made their way into the city.

He'd been staring somewhat blankly off into the distance, contemplating what he was going to do with his life when a voice directly behind him grabbed his attention.

"Oh my God. It's really you…"

What, he had fans all the way in London? He'd have thought the people around here would have considered him a joke the longest, given that most of them knew of him from his boyhood and remembered the years he'd spent in orphanages, raving on about vampires and demons and monsters. He'd been kicked out of countless homes for scaring the other children.

Turning on his stool, Peter raised an eyebrow at the awestruck blonde before him, shrugging and doing a dramatic little hand gesture as he leaned his elbows back against the bar, "The one and only."

Tears sprang to her eyes suddenly and she lurched herself into his arms, causing his eyes to widen as he sat there with shock.

"Oh, I thought I was never gonna see you again!"

You'd think, after all of the years he had spent in show business, Peter would be used to having pretty girls throw themselves at him, but there was a fine line between girls who wanted to shag him and girls who were, for some reason, emotionally distraught upon seeing him.

"Sorry?" he asked, placing his hands on her forearms and putting a bit of distance between them with a confused frown. "Were you at one of my shows?"

"Shows?" the girl asked, her eyebrows furrowing as she wiped the tears from her cheeks, shaking her head when he pushed her away. "What are you on about? It's me."

"And you are…?" he questioned, raising an eyebrow. She clearly knew him from somewhere, but where? "Hang on; don't tell me. On a scale from one through ten, how drunk was I? Six?"

"What?"

"Seven? Eight?"

"What are you talking about? It's me, you ninny! It's Rose!"

"Rose? Rose. Rose, Rose… Nope. Can't say I remember a Rose. Don't tell me it was a nine. You'd really shag a man when he was a nine?"

"Excuse me?"

"Ten, then. I was a ten. On a scale from one through ten, I was a ten, and I still managed to get a blonde. Not bad, actually. Usually I'm off my game when I'm off my rocker-"

His words were cut off with a harsh slap to his face, and his eyes widened, snapping back to her face with shock. "Oi! What was that for?!"

"We didn't shag!" she choked out, her tears falling faster, and Peter frowned as he placed a hand over the spot where his cheek was undoubtedly turning red. Who the hell did this woman think she was? Rose who? What gave her the right to slap him? Then again, if he'd been a ten on the drunkenness scale, who knows what he'd promised her?

"Well then what? Because I don't have a damn clue who you are, Rose!"

She choked on her tears, looking at him with disbelief, horror, and what could only be classified as pain. "You really don't remember me, do you…?"

"No," he snapped, grabbing his mint julep from the bar when it was placed in front of him and taking a long drink, waving his hand at the bartender when he waited to be paid. "Put it on my tab. Vincent. Peter Vincent."

At that, the young woman, Rose, blinked with confusion. "What happened to John Smith?"

"Who?" Peter asked, and he was more than just a little exasperated at this point as she awkwardly held her arm, shaking her head.

"John Smith. That's what you always used to go by…"

"Look. Rose? Yeah, Rose; I really don't know what you're jabbering on about. I've never seen you before in my life, and I'm sorry, I really am, but I think you have me mistaken for someone else. I'm not John Smith, I'm Peter Vincent. Vampire hunter, magician, yadda yadda yadda."

She sagged at his words, trudging over to sit on the stool beside his with a forlorn expression. "I… thought you were someone else. You look like this friend of mine… I lost him."

His cheek was still tingling when the girl sat beside him, and Peter absently rubbed it in an almost nostalgic fashion. The last time his face stung like that, Ginger had slapped him for groping her in front of their opening act before one of the last Fright Night performances. Oddly enough, her harshness and fire had always been a turn on for him, and he had to swallow another large mouthful of the liquor before he could say something to this girl that would earn him another slap.

"You lost him? What'd he do, get off his leash? Run away when you took him out for a walk?"

"No," Rose snapped quickly, shaking her head with a frown. "We were together, and then… we weren't. There was an accident. You wouldn't understand."

Oh, he'd understand quite a bit more than she realized. Shaking his head, Peter finished off his drink and called the bartender over to fetch him another, looking over at the young woman beside him, who looked to be the vision of defeated. Clearly she really had lost someone important to her, and, if anything, he could sympathise with that.

"Do you want a drink?" he asked in an offhand tone, and she blinked, obviously surprised by his offer.

"I shouldn't…" she said with a shake of his head, and he rolled his eyes.

"You wouldn't be in a bar if you didn't want a drink, Rose. Now, do you want a drink or not?"

The way he kept saying her name in that pompous tone nearly set her teeth on edge, but Rose couldn't argue with his logic. She had come in here with the hopes of drowning her loneliness and misery with a few shots of tequila before she went home to her flat to sleep it off. Jackie and Pete had offered multiple times to let her stay with them in the mansion, but Rose always declined. She didn't want to be around any reminder of having been snatched away from the Doctor, and Pete was nothing but that. As glad as she was to see her mother happy, Rose couldn't bring herself to feel the same.

"Alright, fine. I'll have a go."

Nodding, Peter tapped his fingers on the countertop, rattling off his order to the bartender. "Another mint julep, and a screwdriver for the lady."

"A what?" Rose asked, her voice squeaking slightly, and Peter furrowed his brow at her reaction, turning to face her as the bartender walked off to get their cocktails.

"Don't tell me you've never had a bloody screwdriver before. Vodka and orange juice? It's the easiest fucking cocktail to make!"

She seemed shocked by his foul mouth, quickly shaking her head as she frowned. "Yes, I've had a screwdriver before. I just… oh, never mind. It's not important."

She was an odd little thing, wasn't she? Shaking his head, Peter examined his chipping black nail varnish with a sigh, glancing at her over his fingernails. "Tell me about this bloke of yours, then. What really happened?"

"I told you, you wouldn't understand," she snapped, and he shrugged.

"Well, my girlfriend was murdered by the same vampire who killed both of my parents. Try me."

She gaped at him when he said that, certain he had to be joking; but the look in his eyes was dead serious. What, was he some sort of an actor? Did he think this was funny?

"Alright, then," she stated, going along with it. If he wanted to know so badly, she'd tell him. "My bloke was a time traveling alien from the planet Gallifrey called the Doctor. We were sending the Daleks into the void, but I nearly fell in with them. All of this happened in a different universe, mind you. My dad; well, he's not really my dad, he's a different universe's version of my dad; caught me and brought me here, and I got trapped. Now we're separated by time and space and walls that can't be broken through, and I can't ever see him again. He's lost."

Peter raised an eyebrow, pausing the rim of his glass by his lips with surprise as she rattled off the ridiculous tale, and he kept quiet for a moment when she finished, just staring at her when she finished before bursting into laughter. Rose frowned at the hysterical noise which made him slop some of the mint julep on his leather pants, and she rolled her eyes as he tried to speak.

"What the fuck is a Dalek?"

"Your worst nightmare," she snapped in response, scowling, and he sat his drink down, placing his hands on her shoulders as he tried to reign in his laughter.

"Oh, sweetheart. Nightmares are afraid of me."

Her eyes widened at that, clearly having heard something similar before, and she stayed perfectly still until he gave her forearms a squeeze and let go. Once she was free, she grabbed her drink and took a long pull from the glass, fighting back her tears. This man might look like her Doctor, but he was no oncoming storm, even if he seemed to think he was.

"The Daleks are an alien race," she choked out once she swallowed, shaking her head. "They're ruthless monsters who hate anything that's different. They hate him; my Doctor." She was quite for a long moment, swirling the straw around in her drink before she spoke again. "They're the reason he's gone."

Peter's laughter subsided when he noticed her tears, and he raised an eyebrow, resuming tapping his fingers on the countertop. "You're not serious. If you are, you're mad. Aliens don't exist!"

"Neither do vampires!" she bit out, furiously wiping away her tears, and that made Peter pause. To just about anyone you'd ask, vampires were nothing more than myth; stories told to scare people. If they were real, who's to say aliens weren't? But this girl couldn't possibly be from a different universe. That was taking things a bit too far.

"Fair point. But I'm not buying the alternate universe shit. It's too sci-fi for my tastes."

Scowling, she finished her drink and slammed the glass down, getting to her feet. For the first time, Peter got a good look at her; she was around the same height Ginger had been, but that's where their similarities stopped. This girl was curvy, lithe, and ridiculously pink and yellow. She was… well, he might as well admit it; she was lovely.

"You don't believe my 'shit'? Look up Rose Tyler. According to all records, I don't exist."

With that, she swung around on her heel and stalked out of the pub, leaving him to his thoughts again. Although now he wasn't wallowing in misery; he was curious. A strange girl walks into a bar, mistakes him for a time traveling alien doctor and then claims she doesn't really exist? It sounded like a bad joke with an even worse punch line. He shouldn't care; he should just forget about the entire odd exchange and get on with things. But it was just so weird. How could she have come up with such a brilliant cover story on the spot if it were all lies? Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to do a little detective work…

… . … . … . …

Not only were the universes unkind; they were cruel. How was it fair to have a complete double of the Doctor here, in London, for her to just run into in a pub, only to have him be an obnoxious arse? As hard as she tried, Rose couldn't get herself to stop crying as she walked briskly away from the dank building and started for home. She just missed him, so much, and seeing this Peter Vincent fellow was like a punch in the gut. She's gotten her hopes up only to have them crushed. But why did he look like the Doctor? It didn't make any sense. To make matters worse, he was a complete nutter. Vampires? His girlfriend was killed by a vampire? He had to have been joking. Out of all the things she'd seen on her travels with the Doctor himself, vampires on Earth had never been one of them. Werewolves, maybe, but vampires? No.

In a way, it was almost as if fate had wanted her to run into him. That wasn't the usual pub she visited; she'd gone in on a whim on her way home from the shop she'd managed to get a job at; and when she walked in, there he was, sulking at the bar like a beautiful miracle. How could she have let herself hope? The Doctor was very clear when he said goodbye; she could never see him again. The walls between the universes sealed over. Whatever they'd had… it was done; over; finished. But she'd still dared to hope.

Peter Vincent. He'd said his name was Peter Vincent, didn't he? She'd never heard of him before, in this universe or her own, but he seemed fairly self-assured of who he was; magician and vampire hunter extraordinaire? That shouldn't be too hard to find some dirt on.

But as she unlocked the door to her flat and walked inside, the place painfully quiet, Rose wasn't sure she wanted to. This man, this Peter Vincent, was not her Doctor. He was just a man, a rude, vile man, who happened to look like him. Yet, if she let herself find enough information about him in order to find him again, she might end up doing something she'd regret during one of her fits of missing the Doctor.

Deciding it would be best for her to just sleep it off like she'd intended, she wrote down the name on a piece of paper and dropped it by her laptop computer before trudging off to her bedroom down the hall. Once she'd slept and had a clear head, she could make a decision about what to do regarding the strange bloke from the pub with the Doctor's face.

… . … . … . …

She had to have given him a fake name; there was no possible way that Rose Tyler didn't exist in this universe. There weren't multiple universes; that was mental. Yet that night, as he lounged on the black satin futon in his suite at the Hilton London, clad in nothing but his leather pants, scrolling through various pages on is phone, he found nothing. No Rose Tyler, no pink and yellow girl; absolutely nothing. The girl from the bar, by all records available, didn't exist. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Peter sighed heavily. There was one thing left he could search, but in order to do that, he would have to believe what she had said, even just a little, and he most certainly did not. Vampires were bad enough, but aliens too?

"Oh, I give up."

Muttering the statement to himself, he scrolled back to the top of the page with his thumb and selected the search bar, typing in "aliens in London." What he got were a bunch of articles from a few years ago, and a few more that were fairly recent, about something called 'cybermen'. Multiple invasions? Mind control using the earpieces? Upgrades, deletion, Cybus Industries; these weren't rumors or speculation, this was all genuine news. Had he had his head up his ass for the past ten years? Well, in truth, he'd been avoiding any possible reminders of London, so... yes, in a way, he had. But these weren't aliens; they were AIs invented by a madman that developed minds of their own. They certainly weren't what Rose Tyler had been talking about. Yet, when he zoomed in on one of the photographs of the encounter from a few years back, he could have sworn that a blurry figure with blonde hair looked startlingly like her.

No; he wouldn't get involved. He couldn't get involved. He wouldn't let himself. Tossing the phone across the room carelessly, he rose to his feet and walked over to the minibar to pour a glass of his signature green whiskey. It had been bad enough letting Charley rope him into getting involved with killing Jerry; it had brought back bad memories and threw him into a depression when Ginger got killed because of it. He never even really told the girl he cared about her; they just had a lot of rough, albeit often unsatisfying, sex and shared a flat. But she'd been his only friend, even if she hadn't always been that kind… where was he going with this?

Ah, yes; Rose Tyler. No, he was not going to get involved in her little alien dilemma. He was going to stay as far away from that girl as possible, preferably forget she even existed, spend the majority of his days drunk and figure out what he was going to do with the rest of his life. A lovely plan; just lovely. Scoffing, he dropped himself down onto the black silk sheets of the bed, downing his whisky and staring out the picture window at the city below. Perhaps coming back here hadn't been his brightest idea, but what else did he have anymore other than London? Parties, strippers, meaningless sex and an empty extravagant flat back in Las Vegas filled with weapons. Every bachelors dream had become a rut for him, and he wanted something new. If a different country didn't satisfy him, he wasn't sure that anything would.

… . … . … . …

Rose had a rather sleepless night. After crawling into bed when she got home early that evening, she managed to get around four hours of sleep before awakening again around midnight. As hard as she tried, she couldn't get that bloke off her mind. She had to keep reminding herself that, even if he looked the part, he was not the Doctor and he would never be the Doctor. Yet, she kept thinking over and over again about how easy it would be to find him again and let her lips do all the talking. He seemed like a regular lady killer; he'd probably go for a steamy one-night stand or two… or three… or four-

Stop it, Rose.

Shaking herself out of her reverie, she felt guilty for even thinking it. She loved the Doctor, the proper Doctor, and she could never do that. It would be like cheating, even though they'd never officially been a thing. It was her own fault for never plucking up the courage and telling him how she felt before it was too late.

"Rose Tyler,-"

How would that sentence have ended? Did he feel the same for her? She felt certain in her heart that he did, and she wished more than anything that she could have some kind of confirmation. It had been months now; months of loneliness and boredom and work and food and sleep. She'd reverted back to her old hopeless self, and she was even worse off than ever. She'd tried working at Torchwood for a few weeks, but she just… couldn't. It all reminded her of him, and it hurt too much. Now, here was this Peter Vincent, parading around with the Doctor's face as if just to taunt her. Who did he think he was?

That was her trigger point, and the next thing Rose knew she was seated at her computer, typing his name into the search engine. He had a website; a rather cheesy website with sound effects and everything; advertising his magic show in Las Vegas. There was also a blog sort of thing that he seemed to have taken to writing, and the last entry was from a few weeks ago. Evidently, some sort of an accident had occurred and his assistant, Ginger, was killed. He wrote that it was vampires and that he was lucky to be alive, and she assumed it was all a big publicity stunt until she read further and learned that his show was being canceled. No more Fright Night, yeah? Well, that explained what he was doing here instead of in Vegas.

Realizing that he hadn't been joking about his girlfriend dying, Rose began to feel a bit bad. The bloke was sad, in a slump, and she'd just assumed it was all a big front he was putting up to mock her. If she weren't so stubborn, she might have found a way to track him down and apologize. Rose Tyler was a lot of things, but she wasn't insensitive. She knew by now what it was like to lose the person you loved, and she understood what he was going through.

Worrying her lip, she leaned her chin against her fist, eyeing the phone on the desk beside her. He may not be the Doctor, but he was still a person; a person who might need someone to talk to and his number was right there on his website…

Her kind nature getting the better of her, she grabbed the phone and dialed before she could stop herself. It rang several times, and she was about to hang up when, finally, someone answered. It was a woman with a thick accent, and Rose furrowed her brow. It must be the number of the phone at his home in Vegas and not his mobile.

"Mr. Vincent isn't in right now."

"Oh. I, um… I'm sorry; I thought this was the number for his mobile."

"It's not. Who're you? Does he have a new whore on his leash already?"

Rose blinked with shock at the woman's rude words, wondering if everyone in Vegas spoke to people like this.

"No!" she exclaimed, shaking her head and struggling to regain her composure. "I mean… well, I wouldn't know. I only just met him a few hours ago. I called to… offer my condolences."

"Condolences? Ha!"

Correction; whoever this woman was, she might be even ruder than the man in question.

"For his girlfriend," Rose hurried on, feeling rather foolish. "He told me she… well, that she was killed by vampires. I thought he was joking, but then I learned she was actually dead. I mean, not that I believe him about the vampires, but… I still feel bad just the same."

She was rambling even more than the Doctor now.

"I'm sorry, I'll let you go. You're probably busy."

"Damn right I'm busy!" the woman spat, and Rose winced. "If you see Peter again, tell him to keep his cock to himself or it might get bit off."

Rose was mildly horrified, and she quickly hung up when the woman did, shuddering. That was easily the most awful conversation she'd ever had. Who was that, and what gave her the right to speak that way? Shaking her head, she shut off her laptop and hurried back to bed. She'd like to pretend that never happened.

… . … . … . …

"Who was that?"

"A little tramp looking for Peter."

Sashaying back into the room, Ginger scowled, walking over to the bar to drain yet another bottle of the man's prized whiskey. Currently, the entire flat smelled of booze and blood, and she wasn't alone. There were about five others there, all friends off Jerry's; all vampires. Peter really should have been more careful when he tried to dispose of the evidence of what had happened to her. Dumping her out in the desert? Did he even realize how long it took her to find a throat to bite into when she woke up, thirsty and furious?

"Where from?"

The man speaking was tall and muscularly built, with blonde hair that was cropped short and piercing blue eyes. He sat at a computer, evidently contacting more people to plot Peter Vincent's demise.

"London."

A girl, who appeared to be a startlingly attractive teenager with long, silky black hair and glasses to match, looked up from her own computer screen, pulling off a pair of headphones. Her laptop was hooked up to a wire which ran to the telephone in the room down the hall.

"The call originated from London, England. If that 'tramp' was telling the truth when she said she met Vincent a few hours ago, then I think we've finally got a solid location."

Starting toward the hall to go get dressed, Ginger held the bottle of whiskey up in the air in victory, calling back, "Let's go kill us a douchebag!"