Collaboration fic: Don't Blink - 2/?
Title: Don't Blink - 2/?
Authors: rosewarren and ladychi
Characters: Rose, Ten
Summary: AU. What if Rose had stayed through Doomsday and was the one to end up in 1969 with the Doctor?
Rating: PG
Author's Note: The idea for this fic sprang from a comment made during a recent sexyoff. I wrote the first chapter to see where it might go, and now I'm thrilled to bits to announce that ladychi and I will be collaborating on this story. Not only is she is a fabulous writer, she writes a mean Ten.
One
The next time that she saw a spider, Rose vowed to herself, she was going to stomp on it with all the force she could muster.
“Are you all right?” Donna crouched down beside her.
“How come you’re all wet?” Rose blinked up at her. “How come I’m all wet?”
Donna put a hand under Rose’s arm and helped her stand.
“That spider empress knocked you down. I grabbed you before you fell down that hole after Lance.”
Rose glanced at the deep hole and shuddered. “I remember now. I fell down and hit my head.” She touched the back of her head, which was hurting and throbbing. “Where’s the Doctor?” she asked suddenly, looking around.
“He’s coming. He saw you fall and hit your head. We both thought you were dead - no one should have survived falling that far.”
“Oh.” Rose was silent, pushing wet strands of her hair away from her face. “He did the Oncoming Storm thing, didn’t he?” Bits and pieces were coming back to her.
“Made it rain,” Donna affirmed, without catching Rose’s real meaning. “Drowned the spider woman and all her babies. He would have drowned us, too,” she added indignantly, “if I hadn’t stopped him.”
“Rose!” It was the Doctor hurrying to her, soaking wet.
“What’d you do?” were the words she greeted him with. If they sounded accusatory, well, she’d gone unconscious and the next thing he did was try and destroy the world. Seemed like she was allowed to sound accusatory.
“Are you all right?” The Doctor ignored her question as he looked her over, running his hands over her arms and looking closely at her face.
“I’m wet,” Rose stated. “I am very wet.”
“So are we all,” Donna said. “Can we get out of here, please? I’m freezing.”
The Doctor looked at Donna, his hands still on Rose’s shoulders. He seemed to shake himself free of his fear for Rose's safety.
“Yes. Right. Okay, Donna Noble, we’ll take you home.”
Outside of Donna’s home, Rose and the Doctor said goodbye.
“Good luck, Donna,” Rose said. “I’m sorry about Lance.”
Donna shrugged. “He wasn’t the right one for me, was he? He always was a tosser. I'll be all right.”
“What will you do now?” Rose asked.
Donna shrugged, gesturing at her ruined wedding dress. “Go inside. Change my clothes. Have Christmas dinner.”
Rose nodded slowly. “If you wanted,” she said tentatively, “you could come with us.”
“Come with you?” Donna repeated. “What - in, in that?”
“It’s called the TARDIS,” the Doctor said, a bit testily.
Donna ignored him and smiled at Rose. “Thank you. Really. But I’m not really the sort of person who travels around in a spaceship.”
“Okay.” Rose smiled. “Well, happy Christmas.”
Donna hesitated on her way to the door. “You two want to come in for Christmas dinner? Oh come on,” she said, seeing the look they gave each other. “It’s late and dark and cold and there’s a massive feast in there, and I could use the support.”
The Doctor could see the look in Rose’s eyes. He was not going to deny her that.
“We’d love it,” he said with a tight smile.
Just then Rose sneezed, and he swiftly changed his mind. “Sorry, Donna, but I need to take care of Rose. Good luck.”
He waved goodbye and closed the door to the TARDIS over Rose’s protests.
Donna smiled and stood outside, waving, until the blue box disappeared. Then she took a deep breath, straightened the skirt of her wet, dirty, ripped wedding dress, and went inside where her family was waiting.
“It would have been nice to have dinner with them!” Rose complained.
“Yes, that would have been the best Christmas ever,” he said absently. “You’re wet, Rose. We need to change.”
She couldn’t argue with that, but she did anyway. Setting her mouth into a pout, she stalked off to her bedroom.
The pink walls greeted her when she opened the door. The TARDIS had turned the lights on for her.
“Thanks,” Rose said to the TARDIS. She couldn’t remember now when she had first started to think of the TARDIS as a living creature. No, she did, actually. When she had looked into the heart of the TARDIS. The ship was alive, and Rose knew it well now. She might not have understood the song, and she didn’t always hear it, but she knew it was there.
Standing in the middle of her bathroom, Rose stripped off her black pants. Pulling off the blue angora sweater, she decided that she was never wearing it again. She tossed it into a corner and stepped into a hot shower.
By the time she was done, she was wetter than she’d started. The tears had come. Tears for Jackie and her friends and for all of those killed by the Daleks and Cybermen. Even for those poor men killed by the spider empress.
When Rose stepped out of the shower to get dressed, the blue sweater was gone, as were all of the clothes she was wearing. The TARDIS knew her very well.
“Thanks,” she said again, wiping at her eyes and running an affectionate hand over the TARDIS wall. “Don’t ever want to see those things again.”
The impact of everything that had happened was finally hitting her. Her family and Mickey were gone, lost to her. She’d just watched the Doctor nearly destroy everything with water, watched him destroy living creatures.
Rose pulled on clean clothes, soft sweat pants and a white t-shirt. Over her shirt went the matching hoodie jacket. She quickly dried her hair and did her makeup because it was a way to avoid having to think. But at last there was nothing else to do, and she knew that she had to find the Doctor.
He was in the console room, staring at the controls to the TARDIS. Just standing there, staring - so still and so unlike himself that her heart stopped for a beat. His hair was dry and he’d changed into a dry suit. His shirt and tie were different. Sensing her standing there, he turned and smiled.
“Hello. All dry now?”
“Yeah.” Rose stepped over to him. “You okay?”
“Of course,” he said, surprised. “Are you?”
She could feel his concern so clearly. No matter what had happened, he was worried about her.
“I’d like some tea,” she said, surprising them both. “Come on?”
“Sounds like a good idea,” he agreed, leaving the TARDIS spinning in the Time Vortex.
In the kitchen Rose poured hot water into mugs. “So it’s Christmas,” she said. “At least it was down there.”
“Time is relative,” the Doctor agreed absently.
Rose sat down across from him. “Happy Christmas.”
“Happy Christmas,” he responded. “Bit different from last year, isn’t it?”
She looked around the kitchen, noting the absence of Christmas crackers or decorations or other family and friends.
“Just a bit. But we have each other.” That would be enough. It had been enough before.
He covered her hand with his for a brief moment. “Always.”
Rose stirred her tea with a spoon. When she got the courage to look up, she saw that the Doctor’s eyes were on her, calm and steady and comforting.
“What is it, Rose?”
“Back there, at H.C. Clements, right before I passed out-”
His face darkened. “You fell. The empress was concerned only with feeding her children.”
“Well, you can’t really blame her for that,” Rose said fairly. “Well, you can, but, well, you know.” She waved a hand through the air. “Anyway. She knew you. She knew your home.”
“My people killed the Racnoss,” he confirmed quietly. “They had to be stopped. We did what was necessary.”
“You don’t talk about them,” Rose said suddenly. “About your home, about your family. You don’t say.”
Pain flashed in his eyes. “They’re gone, Rose. They’re all gone.”
“I know. But you still never say. It was called Gallifrey,” she said tentatively.
“Gallifrey,” he confirmed. But he didn’t continue. What was there to say? His family, his friends, all gone. To think about it, even after all this time, was too painful to stand. That the Time War had happened was bad enough. That he had been the instrument that caused his planet’s destruction was more than he could take, most of the time.
But Rose was never one to let things stand. “What was it like?” she persisted.
He frowned into his tea, not really wanting to remember. But there was Rose, her big brown eyes looking at him, half-smiling. She had just lost everything she had in the world, too, and he heard himself talking without planning to.
“Gallifrey.” The Doctor sighed, drawing the figure for “courage/bravery/strength” in Gallifreyan on the table. “It was brilliant. You should have seen it, Rose. The Shining World of the Seven Systems. The suns would rise in the morning and light the orange sky - and the mountains, they would shine. The trees were silver, and when they caught the light every morning, it was like the forest was ablaze. When the autumn came, it would blow through the branches like a sun.”
“It sounds perfect,” Rose said softly, almost mesmerized by the calm rhythm of his voice.
That jarred the Doctor out of his reverie. He took a sip of tea. “Perfect to look at, maybe. In the mountains...the Citadel of the Time Lords sat in the mountains. The oldest and most mighty race in the universe, looking down on the galaxies below. Sworn never to interfere, only to watch.” He had started now, and he kept going, kept talking because to stop now would be to let the pain keep building and it would build until it sliced him into two.
“Children of Gallifrey are taken from their families at the age of eight to enter the Academy. When they’re taken for initiation...there’s a gap in the fabric of reality.” The Doctor expanded his hands, as though to demonstrate. “You can see the hole of the Vortex through that gap, Rose. You stand there, eight years old, staring at the raw power of time and space. Some would be inspired...some would run away...and some would go mad.”
Rose nodded, understanding some of it now. “What about you?” she whispered. “Which did you do?”
He took another sip of tea and smiled at her. “Oh, I was one of the ones that ran away. I never stopped.”
“Not ever?” she questioned, but the TARDIS lurched suddenly before he could respond.
Getting to his feet, the Doctor hurried to the control room, followed closely by Rose.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s happening?”
He was pulling at knobs and levers, trying to find the source of whatever was agitating the TARDIS.
“Something’s wrong,” he said tersely. “What is it?” he asked his ship. “What is it?”
The ship responded by lurching them out of the Time Vortex, pulling them both to the floor. Rose winced as she hit the grating. She stayed where she was, on her back, until the TARDIS came to a stop.
The Doctor popped up to look at the computer. Rose got up more slowly, rubbing at her bruises.
“Where are we?” she asked, standing next to the Doctor.
“Earth, not too long after we left Donna at Christmas dinner,” he answered. “ Something's here that shouldn’t be here. Come on!”
“Where?” she cried, hurrying to keep up with him as he ran to the door.
“Wherever here is,” he said, grabbing his coat and putting it on.
The first moment of stepping out of the TARDIS onto unfamiliar land was always exciting. Rose followed him outside eagerly, then came to a halt.
Well, sometimes it was more exciting than other times.
They stood in the yard of an old house. The gardens were overgrown and overrun with weeds. A stone statue of an angel was on the edge of the lawn, reminding Rose of the statues sometimes placed in cemeteries. It gave her a creepy feeling, even though it was hiding its eyes with its hands.
“What is this place?” Rose started to walk around, kicking at leaves and debris on the ground.
“Inside,” the Doctor said. “It’s inside. Come on!”
“What’s inside?” Rose cried, following him running to catch up with him. “Doctor, are you sure we ought to be here?”
He opened the door and stepped into the house’s hallway. Rose made a face at the smell.
“It’s like no one’s been here for years and years.”
Behind them, several meters closer than before, stood the stone statue she had seen outside.
“Probably not,” the Doctor agreed, walking quickly around the room. “Not in here. Come on!”
Rose followed obediently, watching his flapping coat move in front of her. Something made a noise behind her, and she spun around in alarm.
A scream started in her throat before she realized that it was just another statue, standing at the end of the hallway.
“Blimey,” she muttered to herself. “Who puts a stone angel in the house?”
“What was that?” the Doctor called back to her.
“Nothing!” Rose yelled. “Where are you?”
“This way! Come on!”
By the time Rose reached the Doctor he was on the second floor, wielding the sonic screwdriver and taking readings.
“I don’t get it,” she complained. “There’s nothing here. It’s just an empty house.”
“It’s not just an empty house. There are readings here that shouldn’t be here.”
“Uh huh,” Rose said, somewhat rudely. It wouldn’t be the first time he made an impressive statement only to have it turn out to be nothing at all. “Maybe there are rats in the walls.”
“Rats,” he repeated, turning to frown at her. “Where’s your imagination?”
“Cats, then,” she suggested, just to watch him wince.
Which he did, of course.
The room had a faded carpet on the floor, a pattern of roses barely visible. Wallpaper was peeling off of the walls, and there was a bit of a draft coming from the window.
Rose walked to the window and pushed aside moth-eaten velvet drapes that she thought used to be a dark blue.
“Oh!” Startled, she jumped back.
“What is it?” The Doctor was at her side in a moment.
“It’s nothing. Just saw a statue out there on the ground. Saw one in the yard and one downstairs, too. This place is full of them.”
“Statues?” he repeated.
“Stone angels,” Rose said. “See?” She pulled aside the drapes again and screamed. The stone angel that had been on the ground outside was now right outside the window.
“I don’t get it,” she whispered. “What’s goin’ on?”
The Doctor spun around at a sound outside in the hallway. “Oh, no.” He raised the sonic screwdriver again. “Oh, no.”
“Doctor?”
“Rose.” The Doctor’s voice was very still. “Don’t blink.”
“What?” Rose turned to look at him.
“Don’t move!”
Startled, Rose swung back and swallowed a gasp. The stone angel stood directly in front of her, inside the room now, meters closer than it had been moments ago.
“Doctor?” she whispered, “wanna tell me what’s happening?”
“Don’t look away from them. Don’t blink. We need to get to the TARDIS.”
Eyes held open wide, Rose took his cue and slowly began moving to the door.
“Come on,” the Doctor murmured.
But one of them - they never decided which one - blinked.
Rose screamed. The Doctor flung himself on top of her and held on tight.
When they opened their eyes they were standing on a street corner. Rose looked around cautiously, as best as she could with her head smashed against the Doctor’s chest.
He slowly released her, holding on to her arm. “You all right?”
“My head,” she said faintly.
“We’ve time traveled,” the Doctor said. “Doing that without a capsule is not pleasant.”
“Time traveled? But we’re in London. What happened?”
“Those statues you saw back there,” the Doctor said, “they’re called the Weeping Angels. They send you into the past and let you live out your life, and then in the present they consume the energy of all the days you would have had.”
“That’s...that’s just crazy,” Rose said slowly. “Who does that?”
“Psychopaths,” said the Doctor, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and scanning the area, and then pocketing it again. “They're peaceful psychopaths, I'll give them that. They live on potential energy, Rose. They've stolen our potential and here we are - nice way to kill you, if you think about it. Far nicer than falling off a radio tower, for instance.”
“Back in time, you said. But we’re in-” Rose broke off as a woman in teased hair, a miniskirt and go-go boots walked by. “London,” she finished.
The Doctor scratched his head. “Well, I don't suspect we'll be here long. Fancy a jaunt through the 1960’s?”
Three
Authors: rosewarren and ladychi
Characters: Rose, Ten
Summary: AU. What if Rose had stayed through Doomsday and was the one to end up in 1969 with the Doctor?
Rating: PG
Author's Note: The idea for this fic sprang from a comment made during a recent sexyoff. I wrote the first chapter to see where it might go, and now I'm thrilled to bits to announce that ladychi and I will be collaborating on this story. Not only is she is a fabulous writer, she writes a mean Ten.
One
The next time that she saw a spider, Rose vowed to herself, she was going to stomp on it with all the force she could muster.
“Are you all right?” Donna crouched down beside her.
“How come you’re all wet?” Rose blinked up at her. “How come I’m all wet?”
Donna put a hand under Rose’s arm and helped her stand.
“That spider empress knocked you down. I grabbed you before you fell down that hole after Lance.”
Rose glanced at the deep hole and shuddered. “I remember now. I fell down and hit my head.” She touched the back of her head, which was hurting and throbbing. “Where’s the Doctor?” she asked suddenly, looking around.
“He’s coming. He saw you fall and hit your head. We both thought you were dead - no one should have survived falling that far.”
“Oh.” Rose was silent, pushing wet strands of her hair away from her face. “He did the Oncoming Storm thing, didn’t he?” Bits and pieces were coming back to her.
“Made it rain,” Donna affirmed, without catching Rose’s real meaning. “Drowned the spider woman and all her babies. He would have drowned us, too,” she added indignantly, “if I hadn’t stopped him.”
“Rose!” It was the Doctor hurrying to her, soaking wet.
“What’d you do?” were the words she greeted him with. If they sounded accusatory, well, she’d gone unconscious and the next thing he did was try and destroy the world. Seemed like she was allowed to sound accusatory.
“Are you all right?” The Doctor ignored her question as he looked her over, running his hands over her arms and looking closely at her face.
“I’m wet,” Rose stated. “I am very wet.”
“So are we all,” Donna said. “Can we get out of here, please? I’m freezing.”
The Doctor looked at Donna, his hands still on Rose’s shoulders. He seemed to shake himself free of his fear for Rose's safety.
“Yes. Right. Okay, Donna Noble, we’ll take you home.”
Outside of Donna’s home, Rose and the Doctor said goodbye.
“Good luck, Donna,” Rose said. “I’m sorry about Lance.”
Donna shrugged. “He wasn’t the right one for me, was he? He always was a tosser. I'll be all right.”
“What will you do now?” Rose asked.
Donna shrugged, gesturing at her ruined wedding dress. “Go inside. Change my clothes. Have Christmas dinner.”
Rose nodded slowly. “If you wanted,” she said tentatively, “you could come with us.”
“Come with you?” Donna repeated. “What - in, in that?”
“It’s called the TARDIS,” the Doctor said, a bit testily.
Donna ignored him and smiled at Rose. “Thank you. Really. But I’m not really the sort of person who travels around in a spaceship.”
“Okay.” Rose smiled. “Well, happy Christmas.”
Donna hesitated on her way to the door. “You two want to come in for Christmas dinner? Oh come on,” she said, seeing the look they gave each other. “It’s late and dark and cold and there’s a massive feast in there, and I could use the support.”
The Doctor could see the look in Rose’s eyes. He was not going to deny her that.
“We’d love it,” he said with a tight smile.
Just then Rose sneezed, and he swiftly changed his mind. “Sorry, Donna, but I need to take care of Rose. Good luck.”
He waved goodbye and closed the door to the TARDIS over Rose’s protests.
Donna smiled and stood outside, waving, until the blue box disappeared. Then she took a deep breath, straightened the skirt of her wet, dirty, ripped wedding dress, and went inside where her family was waiting.
“It would have been nice to have dinner with them!” Rose complained.
“Yes, that would have been the best Christmas ever,” he said absently. “You’re wet, Rose. We need to change.”
She couldn’t argue with that, but she did anyway. Setting her mouth into a pout, she stalked off to her bedroom.
The pink walls greeted her when she opened the door. The TARDIS had turned the lights on for her.
“Thanks,” Rose said to the TARDIS. She couldn’t remember now when she had first started to think of the TARDIS as a living creature. No, she did, actually. When she had looked into the heart of the TARDIS. The ship was alive, and Rose knew it well now. She might not have understood the song, and she didn’t always hear it, but she knew it was there.
Standing in the middle of her bathroom, Rose stripped off her black pants. Pulling off the blue angora sweater, she decided that she was never wearing it again. She tossed it into a corner and stepped into a hot shower.
By the time she was done, she was wetter than she’d started. The tears had come. Tears for Jackie and her friends and for all of those killed by the Daleks and Cybermen. Even for those poor men killed by the spider empress.
When Rose stepped out of the shower to get dressed, the blue sweater was gone, as were all of the clothes she was wearing. The TARDIS knew her very well.
“Thanks,” she said again, wiping at her eyes and running an affectionate hand over the TARDIS wall. “Don’t ever want to see those things again.”
The impact of everything that had happened was finally hitting her. Her family and Mickey were gone, lost to her. She’d just watched the Doctor nearly destroy everything with water, watched him destroy living creatures.
Rose pulled on clean clothes, soft sweat pants and a white t-shirt. Over her shirt went the matching hoodie jacket. She quickly dried her hair and did her makeup because it was a way to avoid having to think. But at last there was nothing else to do, and she knew that she had to find the Doctor.
He was in the console room, staring at the controls to the TARDIS. Just standing there, staring - so still and so unlike himself that her heart stopped for a beat. His hair was dry and he’d changed into a dry suit. His shirt and tie were different. Sensing her standing there, he turned and smiled.
“Hello. All dry now?”
“Yeah.” Rose stepped over to him. “You okay?”
“Of course,” he said, surprised. “Are you?”
She could feel his concern so clearly. No matter what had happened, he was worried about her.
“I’d like some tea,” she said, surprising them both. “Come on?”
“Sounds like a good idea,” he agreed, leaving the TARDIS spinning in the Time Vortex.
In the kitchen Rose poured hot water into mugs. “So it’s Christmas,” she said. “At least it was down there.”
“Time is relative,” the Doctor agreed absently.
Rose sat down across from him. “Happy Christmas.”
“Happy Christmas,” he responded. “Bit different from last year, isn’t it?”
She looked around the kitchen, noting the absence of Christmas crackers or decorations or other family and friends.
“Just a bit. But we have each other.” That would be enough. It had been enough before.
He covered her hand with his for a brief moment. “Always.”
Rose stirred her tea with a spoon. When she got the courage to look up, she saw that the Doctor’s eyes were on her, calm and steady and comforting.
“What is it, Rose?”
“Back there, at H.C. Clements, right before I passed out-”
His face darkened. “You fell. The empress was concerned only with feeding her children.”
“Well, you can’t really blame her for that,” Rose said fairly. “Well, you can, but, well, you know.” She waved a hand through the air. “Anyway. She knew you. She knew your home.”
“My people killed the Racnoss,” he confirmed quietly. “They had to be stopped. We did what was necessary.”
“You don’t talk about them,” Rose said suddenly. “About your home, about your family. You don’t say.”
Pain flashed in his eyes. “They’re gone, Rose. They’re all gone.”
“I know. But you still never say. It was called Gallifrey,” she said tentatively.
“Gallifrey,” he confirmed. But he didn’t continue. What was there to say? His family, his friends, all gone. To think about it, even after all this time, was too painful to stand. That the Time War had happened was bad enough. That he had been the instrument that caused his planet’s destruction was more than he could take, most of the time.
But Rose was never one to let things stand. “What was it like?” she persisted.
He frowned into his tea, not really wanting to remember. But there was Rose, her big brown eyes looking at him, half-smiling. She had just lost everything she had in the world, too, and he heard himself talking without planning to.
“Gallifrey.” The Doctor sighed, drawing the figure for “courage/bravery/strength” in Gallifreyan on the table. “It was brilliant. You should have seen it, Rose. The Shining World of the Seven Systems. The suns would rise in the morning and light the orange sky - and the mountains, they would shine. The trees were silver, and when they caught the light every morning, it was like the forest was ablaze. When the autumn came, it would blow through the branches like a sun.”
“It sounds perfect,” Rose said softly, almost mesmerized by the calm rhythm of his voice.
That jarred the Doctor out of his reverie. He took a sip of tea. “Perfect to look at, maybe. In the mountains...the Citadel of the Time Lords sat in the mountains. The oldest and most mighty race in the universe, looking down on the galaxies below. Sworn never to interfere, only to watch.” He had started now, and he kept going, kept talking because to stop now would be to let the pain keep building and it would build until it sliced him into two.
“Children of Gallifrey are taken from their families at the age of eight to enter the Academy. When they’re taken for initiation...there’s a gap in the fabric of reality.” The Doctor expanded his hands, as though to demonstrate. “You can see the hole of the Vortex through that gap, Rose. You stand there, eight years old, staring at the raw power of time and space. Some would be inspired...some would run away...and some would go mad.”
Rose nodded, understanding some of it now. “What about you?” she whispered. “Which did you do?”
He took another sip of tea and smiled at her. “Oh, I was one of the ones that ran away. I never stopped.”
“Not ever?” she questioned, but the TARDIS lurched suddenly before he could respond.
Getting to his feet, the Doctor hurried to the control room, followed closely by Rose.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s happening?”
He was pulling at knobs and levers, trying to find the source of whatever was agitating the TARDIS.
“Something’s wrong,” he said tersely. “What is it?” he asked his ship. “What is it?”
The ship responded by lurching them out of the Time Vortex, pulling them both to the floor. Rose winced as she hit the grating. She stayed where she was, on her back, until the TARDIS came to a stop.
The Doctor popped up to look at the computer. Rose got up more slowly, rubbing at her bruises.
“Where are we?” she asked, standing next to the Doctor.
“Earth, not too long after we left Donna at Christmas dinner,” he answered. “ Something's here that shouldn’t be here. Come on!”
“Where?” she cried, hurrying to keep up with him as he ran to the door.
“Wherever here is,” he said, grabbing his coat and putting it on.
The first moment of stepping out of the TARDIS onto unfamiliar land was always exciting. Rose followed him outside eagerly, then came to a halt.
Well, sometimes it was more exciting than other times.
They stood in the yard of an old house. The gardens were overgrown and overrun with weeds. A stone statue of an angel was on the edge of the lawn, reminding Rose of the statues sometimes placed in cemeteries. It gave her a creepy feeling, even though it was hiding its eyes with its hands.
“What is this place?” Rose started to walk around, kicking at leaves and debris on the ground.
“Inside,” the Doctor said. “It’s inside. Come on!”
“What’s inside?” Rose cried, following him running to catch up with him. “Doctor, are you sure we ought to be here?”
He opened the door and stepped into the house’s hallway. Rose made a face at the smell.
“It’s like no one’s been here for years and years.”
Behind them, several meters closer than before, stood the stone statue she had seen outside.
“Probably not,” the Doctor agreed, walking quickly around the room. “Not in here. Come on!”
Rose followed obediently, watching his flapping coat move in front of her. Something made a noise behind her, and she spun around in alarm.
A scream started in her throat before she realized that it was just another statue, standing at the end of the hallway.
“Blimey,” she muttered to herself. “Who puts a stone angel in the house?”
“What was that?” the Doctor called back to her.
“Nothing!” Rose yelled. “Where are you?”
“This way! Come on!”
By the time Rose reached the Doctor he was on the second floor, wielding the sonic screwdriver and taking readings.
“I don’t get it,” she complained. “There’s nothing here. It’s just an empty house.”
“It’s not just an empty house. There are readings here that shouldn’t be here.”
“Uh huh,” Rose said, somewhat rudely. It wouldn’t be the first time he made an impressive statement only to have it turn out to be nothing at all. “Maybe there are rats in the walls.”
“Rats,” he repeated, turning to frown at her. “Where’s your imagination?”
“Cats, then,” she suggested, just to watch him wince.
Which he did, of course.
The room had a faded carpet on the floor, a pattern of roses barely visible. Wallpaper was peeling off of the walls, and there was a bit of a draft coming from the window.
Rose walked to the window and pushed aside moth-eaten velvet drapes that she thought used to be a dark blue.
“Oh!” Startled, she jumped back.
“What is it?” The Doctor was at her side in a moment.
“It’s nothing. Just saw a statue out there on the ground. Saw one in the yard and one downstairs, too. This place is full of them.”
“Statues?” he repeated.
“Stone angels,” Rose said. “See?” She pulled aside the drapes again and screamed. The stone angel that had been on the ground outside was now right outside the window.
“I don’t get it,” she whispered. “What’s goin’ on?”
The Doctor spun around at a sound outside in the hallway. “Oh, no.” He raised the sonic screwdriver again. “Oh, no.”
“Doctor?”
“Rose.” The Doctor’s voice was very still. “Don’t blink.”
“What?” Rose turned to look at him.
“Don’t move!”
Startled, Rose swung back and swallowed a gasp. The stone angel stood directly in front of her, inside the room now, meters closer than it had been moments ago.
“Doctor?” she whispered, “wanna tell me what’s happening?”
“Don’t look away from them. Don’t blink. We need to get to the TARDIS.”
Eyes held open wide, Rose took his cue and slowly began moving to the door.
“Come on,” the Doctor murmured.
But one of them - they never decided which one - blinked.
Rose screamed. The Doctor flung himself on top of her and held on tight.
When they opened their eyes they were standing on a street corner. Rose looked around cautiously, as best as she could with her head smashed against the Doctor’s chest.
He slowly released her, holding on to her arm. “You all right?”
“My head,” she said faintly.
“We’ve time traveled,” the Doctor said. “Doing that without a capsule is not pleasant.”
“Time traveled? But we’re in London. What happened?”
“Those statues you saw back there,” the Doctor said, “they’re called the Weeping Angels. They send you into the past and let you live out your life, and then in the present they consume the energy of all the days you would have had.”
“That’s...that’s just crazy,” Rose said slowly. “Who does that?”
“Psychopaths,” said the Doctor, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and scanning the area, and then pocketing it again. “They're peaceful psychopaths, I'll give them that. They live on potential energy, Rose. They've stolen our potential and here we are - nice way to kill you, if you think about it. Far nicer than falling off a radio tower, for instance.”
“Back in time, you said. But we’re in-” Rose broke off as a woman in teased hair, a miniskirt and go-go boots walked by. “London,” she finished.
The Doctor scratched his head. “Well, I don't suspect we'll be here long. Fancy a jaunt through the 1960’s?”
Three