fic: preserving time lines and sanity (doctor who; rose; rating: pg)
Title: preserving time lines and sanity
Author: lily_268
Summary: post-Doomsday, crossover with Back to the Future. (No,...REALLY.)
Rating: PG
Author’s Notes: For my rose_lives ficathon prompt, given to me by netgirl_y2k: Time travel without a TARDIS (sorry, I took this one and ran with it....all the way to the McFly residence), meeting other companions, 'you can make anything sonic these days.' No Rose pining after the Doctor.
“You even listenin’?”
Sleepily, her eyes opened to see Jake snapping his fingers in front of her face. In her groggy haze she debated biting them clean off. Or at least assigning him scut duty for the next week. Luckily for Jake’s fingers and eardrums, a steaming cup of tea was shoved under her nose and she slowly sat upright in her chair.
“I said, how’re the Truskans?”
“Wha? Oh, right. Sorry. They're adapting quite well, the ones visiting Australia seem to be enjoying themselves the most. I’m going to put in a request to move them all there.”
“Any problems with locals so far?”
“Apparently their neighbors just think that they yodel and knit a lot.”
“Huh. Anyways, real reason I'm bothering you is that I’ve been sent here to split up the rest of your open cases between us - for the time being, mind.” As he said this, a cheery redhead practically skipped up to her desk and started picking up files.
“Wot? There a holiday I’m forgetting?”
The redhead exerted more weight on the corner of Rose's desk that she was now sitting on, using her hands to animatedly punctuate her excited comments. “Your own personal holiday. Gang decided you needed a break from running everything ‘round here.”
“Let me guess, Mum just so happens to be doing something to my flat while I’m gone?”
“Well, she did mention getting rid of your ‘orrible wallpaper.”
“It’s homey.” Rose protested.
“It’s tragic.” The redhead inputted, dropping all the files into Jake's open arms with a sense of finality.
---
Mickey set down a green duffel bag, tugging on his jumper. “Here’s your ticket. Try to have fun.”
“Yeah, sitting by a still body of water all day then getting wrapped in weeds. What’s not to love?” She smiled wanly, wishing that for once she wore a watch so she'd know how long until her train left.
“Be safe.”
Rose felt two warm arms encompass her before she had time to open her eyes. Hugging back, she clutched the fabric of Jackie's coat between her fingers. After all the goodbyes before an adventure, she finally felt hesitant when it came to a weekend of relaxation. She took a step back and bent down to the baby carrier that rested on the platform. "Bye hun, take care of Mum for me while I'm gone, yeah?"
As she watched them go, she double checked her purse for all the supplies that had now become second nature to have on her. She vaguely remembers a time when it wasn't necessary to carry her kit around, but the memories where these items saved her life hold more weight.
She was about to refresh her lip gloss when a small, white dog started jumping and yapping up at her. Smiling, she reached down to pet it and noticed a note attached to the collar, gasping when she saw that her name was on the note.
My name is Einstein, I belong to Doc. Your assistance is needed to prevent the end of the world.
"You got to be kidding me. I’m supposed to follow the dog?" Looking around for someone from her team to jump out with a laugh. The dog barked and started tucking on one of the luggage straps. With a sigh, she pulled her coat closed and chased after the dog.
---
It took a lot to stun Rose Tyler, after all, she had seen the Earth incinerated after the sun blew up. Well, the Other Earth, by the Other Sun that is. Funny, she normally has such an easy time remembering that distinction, the grammatical separation between then and now, Dad and Pete, airplanes and zeppelins. She decided to blame it on the smoke, which couldn’t be healthy for her to breathe in like this so she took a small step back, bumping into the trash cans that filled the alley.
A muffled voice from below the hood started shouting, “Watch it! The time lines must be preserved! No-one must look out and see you!”
She glanced around for evidence of anything living in this alley other than rats. “Yeah, I think we’re safe, I’ve never even been here before, no-one would recognize me.”
“Are you kidding? You’re Ros-right! Perfectly right.” A hand shot up from under the hood and started patting the driver’s seat, feeling it’s way around for something while mumbled words that sounded strangely like ‘fainting’, 'easy' and ‘Jennifer’ floated up.
Finally, a bushy head of white hair emerged from the engine, oil running down the cheek closest to Rose. “Why would they know you?” He ended with a nervous laugh.
“Still, just the same, mind wearing this cap?” Gingerly, she took the hat, examining it up close. “Do I have to? I’ve sorta gotten used to my Torchwood....style. Don’t want to go losing that.”
He looked her up and down, revealing the ripped and dirty clothes she was wearing, raising an eyebrow at her missing boot that had disappeared at the train station when she'd been grabbed. “Yup, I think I’ve got to stay loyal to this style. Terribly sorry.”
“Well, it’d only be temporary until Marty could find you two some modern clothes anyways.”
Deciding it was better to follow along than ask more questions; she tucked her hair behind her ears and pulled the hat down on her head. She was trying to see herself in the side mirrors when there was the sound like a cat had just been dumped into a bath.
“Great Scot! The modulating anbarics are unlinked!”
Looking up, she frowned at the furrows in the old man's brow. “That’s bad, yeah?”
“THIS COULD SPELL THE END OF THE WORLD!”
“Glad we’re not overreacting ‘bout it.”
Despite what she hoped was just a dramatic exaggeration, Rose was still worried when the sounds got louder and the smoke turned black. She’d handled near-apocalypses before, but that was in London, with her crew beside her. Still, she brought herself up to her full height. She may not exactly know what was going on here, but if the Snickette Invasion was any indicator, she knew a thing or two about handling a catastrophe. She just didn’t expect this evening of intended relaxation to be headed on a collision course with one.
----
Right now Rose wished to be anywhere but on her knees beneath a factory, crawling through thick black sludge that smelled suspiciously like cat litter.
To her delight, the clothes she had been given automatically cleaned and dried themselves as soon as they left the tunnel. She didn't feel great, but at least she felt more comfortable.
“Wicked, isn’t it? Wait ‘till you wear the shoes.” Said a teenage boy from behind her, an infectious grin playing across his face as his eyes very obviously assessed her body.
Pointing a finger, she guessed that this was the mysterious Marty and was glad that at least one of her captors seemed sane.
“McFly. At your service. Wow. Doc didn’t tell me that you’d be so...mature.” They circled each other for another 30 seconds before the Doc moved between them, practically pushing Marty towards the passenger's seat.
“Marty, what time are you expected home?”
“Oh, right. I guess I should...help.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Know anything about temporal physics and phase engineering?”
“Umm...sorta behind in my reading on the subject.”
“Oh well, your part to play will arrive shortly.”
"Can't you just use a sonic screwdriver?"
"A sonic what?"
She started to gesture and point with her finger until she felt silly and gave up.
"How odd. Although I suppose you can make anything sonic these days. But...a screwdriver?"
Instead of defending the usefulness of the glowing tool, she decided to try to get more information on exactly why she was kidnapped.
“So, is it aliens that you need help with?”
“Aliens? Don’t be absurd. No such thing.”
She rocked back on her heels, turning quickly to hide her smirk.
“Riiiight.”
“This is about the assassination attempt of Winthrop Smith, which leads to the almost-funeral games in Poland in his honour, which is where the Prime Minister of Estonia gets too drunk and offends a whole pub of nationalists, so they chase him and his entourage into Russia where they stiff their hotel bill when leaving suddenly because the terrorist group 'Black Hole Sun' who originally designed the assassination came looking for them.”
“Which makes much more sense.”
“It’s only the single most important event of the 22nd century! If __’s life isn’t in danger, WWIX could start! Don’t you read any of the books you wri-recommend to others?”
“Technically, still the future for me. So it’s not in a book yet.”
“So we want this guy to be in danger? Okay, well Doc, what happens if we can’t change the future in time?”
“Yeah, putting aside the fact that someone named their son Winthrop, it sounds like this bloke starts a serious war.”
The Doc let out an exasperated sigh. “This is why you shouldn’t meet your idols, Marty, they seem so much more knowledgeable before you get to know them. Still, it’s what the novel says, so...”
“I’ll take that as an ‘it’s bad’.”
“Precisely, m’dear.” He smiled at her, while tuning something that looked like an old fashioned radio from the fifties. It seemed as if he was finally warming to her.
“Doc, this is heavy. Think of the security they’ll have.”
“You’re forgetting one thing.”
They turned to see Rose, back lit and beautiful against the hazy light from the factory's smoke, holding a power drill like a gun up to the ceiling.
“There’s me.”
---
Two hours and four changes of clothes later, they were congratulating themselves on a job well done when there was a sharp squeal of brakes as the car stopped in what must've been the park three blocks from her flat, by the look of the shrubbery. Batting away the leaves that came in through the broken window, Rose pushed back a strand of her hair.
"Well, that’s a vacation I won’t soon forget." She beamed as she thought about telling this story to her team when she went into work tomorrow. Before she could get too ahead of herself, a small cough brought her thoughts back to the present.
"Umm...there seems to be a problem. We might have gone back too far."
"That's okay, I can amuse myself for awhile. How long will it take you to fix it?"
"It depends on the damage, all I know right now is that the clock seems off. Maybe I forgot to set it to Daylight Savings Time?"
"Sorry we can’t get you back to the future right away, Rose." Marty said through the Doc's mumbling without sincerity, looking hopeful at the prospect of spending more time with her.
"S’okay. I’m used to time machines being off."
"I don't think you're used to it being this far off." Doc said as he quickly reversed away from the dinosaur that had moved to graze closer to the DeLorean.
With a sputter and a clank, the car stalled, leaving them stranded mere feet from the chomping teeth of the massive figure. Rose immediately reached for her seatbelt and grabbed the nearest hand.
"Run!"
Author: lily_268
Summary: post-Doomsday, crossover with Back to the Future. (No,...REALLY.)
Rating: PG
Author’s Notes: For my rose_lives ficathon prompt, given to me by netgirl_y2k: Time travel without a TARDIS (sorry, I took this one and ran with it....all the way to the McFly residence), meeting other companions, 'you can make anything sonic these days.' No Rose pining after the Doctor.
“You even listenin’?”
Sleepily, her eyes opened to see Jake snapping his fingers in front of her face. In her groggy haze she debated biting them clean off. Or at least assigning him scut duty for the next week. Luckily for Jake’s fingers and eardrums, a steaming cup of tea was shoved under her nose and she slowly sat upright in her chair.
“I said, how’re the Truskans?”
“Wha? Oh, right. Sorry. They're adapting quite well, the ones visiting Australia seem to be enjoying themselves the most. I’m going to put in a request to move them all there.”
“Any problems with locals so far?”
“Apparently their neighbors just think that they yodel and knit a lot.”
“Huh. Anyways, real reason I'm bothering you is that I’ve been sent here to split up the rest of your open cases between us - for the time being, mind.” As he said this, a cheery redhead practically skipped up to her desk and started picking up files.
“Wot? There a holiday I’m forgetting?”
The redhead exerted more weight on the corner of Rose's desk that she was now sitting on, using her hands to animatedly punctuate her excited comments. “Your own personal holiday. Gang decided you needed a break from running everything ‘round here.”
“Let me guess, Mum just so happens to be doing something to my flat while I’m gone?”
“Well, she did mention getting rid of your ‘orrible wallpaper.”
“It’s homey.” Rose protested.
“It’s tragic.” The redhead inputted, dropping all the files into Jake's open arms with a sense of finality.
---
Mickey set down a green duffel bag, tugging on his jumper. “Here’s your ticket. Try to have fun.”
“Yeah, sitting by a still body of water all day then getting wrapped in weeds. What’s not to love?” She smiled wanly, wishing that for once she wore a watch so she'd know how long until her train left.
“Be safe.”
Rose felt two warm arms encompass her before she had time to open her eyes. Hugging back, she clutched the fabric of Jackie's coat between her fingers. After all the goodbyes before an adventure, she finally felt hesitant when it came to a weekend of relaxation. She took a step back and bent down to the baby carrier that rested on the platform. "Bye hun, take care of Mum for me while I'm gone, yeah?"
As she watched them go, she double checked her purse for all the supplies that had now become second nature to have on her. She vaguely remembers a time when it wasn't necessary to carry her kit around, but the memories where these items saved her life hold more weight.
She was about to refresh her lip gloss when a small, white dog started jumping and yapping up at her. Smiling, she reached down to pet it and noticed a note attached to the collar, gasping when she saw that her name was on the note.
My name is Einstein, I belong to Doc. Your assistance is needed to prevent the end of the world.
"You got to be kidding me. I’m supposed to follow the dog?" Looking around for someone from her team to jump out with a laugh. The dog barked and started tucking on one of the luggage straps. With a sigh, she pulled her coat closed and chased after the dog.
---
It took a lot to stun Rose Tyler, after all, she had seen the Earth incinerated after the sun blew up. Well, the Other Earth, by the Other Sun that is. Funny, she normally has such an easy time remembering that distinction, the grammatical separation between then and now, Dad and Pete, airplanes and zeppelins. She decided to blame it on the smoke, which couldn’t be healthy for her to breathe in like this so she took a small step back, bumping into the trash cans that filled the alley.
A muffled voice from below the hood started shouting, “Watch it! The time lines must be preserved! No-one must look out and see you!”
She glanced around for evidence of anything living in this alley other than rats. “Yeah, I think we’re safe, I’ve never even been here before, no-one would recognize me.”
“Are you kidding? You’re Ros-right! Perfectly right.” A hand shot up from under the hood and started patting the driver’s seat, feeling it’s way around for something while mumbled words that sounded strangely like ‘fainting’, 'easy' and ‘Jennifer’ floated up.
Finally, a bushy head of white hair emerged from the engine, oil running down the cheek closest to Rose. “Why would they know you?” He ended with a nervous laugh.
“Still, just the same, mind wearing this cap?” Gingerly, she took the hat, examining it up close. “Do I have to? I’ve sorta gotten used to my Torchwood....style. Don’t want to go losing that.”
He looked her up and down, revealing the ripped and dirty clothes she was wearing, raising an eyebrow at her missing boot that had disappeared at the train station when she'd been grabbed. “Yup, I think I’ve got to stay loyal to this style. Terribly sorry.”
“Well, it’d only be temporary until Marty could find you two some modern clothes anyways.”
Deciding it was better to follow along than ask more questions; she tucked her hair behind her ears and pulled the hat down on her head. She was trying to see herself in the side mirrors when there was the sound like a cat had just been dumped into a bath.
“Great Scot! The modulating anbarics are unlinked!”
Looking up, she frowned at the furrows in the old man's brow. “That’s bad, yeah?”
“THIS COULD SPELL THE END OF THE WORLD!”
“Glad we’re not overreacting ‘bout it.”
Despite what she hoped was just a dramatic exaggeration, Rose was still worried when the sounds got louder and the smoke turned black. She’d handled near-apocalypses before, but that was in London, with her crew beside her. Still, she brought herself up to her full height. She may not exactly know what was going on here, but if the Snickette Invasion was any indicator, she knew a thing or two about handling a catastrophe. She just didn’t expect this evening of intended relaxation to be headed on a collision course with one.
----
Right now Rose wished to be anywhere but on her knees beneath a factory, crawling through thick black sludge that smelled suspiciously like cat litter.
To her delight, the clothes she had been given automatically cleaned and dried themselves as soon as they left the tunnel. She didn't feel great, but at least she felt more comfortable.
“Wicked, isn’t it? Wait ‘till you wear the shoes.” Said a teenage boy from behind her, an infectious grin playing across his face as his eyes very obviously assessed her body.
Pointing a finger, she guessed that this was the mysterious Marty and was glad that at least one of her captors seemed sane.
“McFly. At your service. Wow. Doc didn’t tell me that you’d be so...mature.” They circled each other for another 30 seconds before the Doc moved between them, practically pushing Marty towards the passenger's seat.
“Marty, what time are you expected home?”
“Oh, right. I guess I should...help.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Know anything about temporal physics and phase engineering?”
“Umm...sorta behind in my reading on the subject.”
“Oh well, your part to play will arrive shortly.”
"Can't you just use a sonic screwdriver?"
"A sonic what?"
She started to gesture and point with her finger until she felt silly and gave up.
"How odd. Although I suppose you can make anything sonic these days. But...a screwdriver?"
Instead of defending the usefulness of the glowing tool, she decided to try to get more information on exactly why she was kidnapped.
“So, is it aliens that you need help with?”
“Aliens? Don’t be absurd. No such thing.”
She rocked back on her heels, turning quickly to hide her smirk.
“Riiiight.”
“This is about the assassination attempt of Winthrop Smith, which leads to the almost-funeral games in Poland in his honour, which is where the Prime Minister of Estonia gets too drunk and offends a whole pub of nationalists, so they chase him and his entourage into Russia where they stiff their hotel bill when leaving suddenly because the terrorist group 'Black Hole Sun' who originally designed the assassination came looking for them.”
“Which makes much more sense.”
“It’s only the single most important event of the 22nd century! If __’s life isn’t in danger, WWIX could start! Don’t you read any of the books you wri-recommend to others?”
“Technically, still the future for me. So it’s not in a book yet.”
“So we want this guy to be in danger? Okay, well Doc, what happens if we can’t change the future in time?”
“Yeah, putting aside the fact that someone named their son Winthrop, it sounds like this bloke starts a serious war.”
The Doc let out an exasperated sigh. “This is why you shouldn’t meet your idols, Marty, they seem so much more knowledgeable before you get to know them. Still, it’s what the novel says, so...”
“I’ll take that as an ‘it’s bad’.”
“Precisely, m’dear.” He smiled at her, while tuning something that looked like an old fashioned radio from the fifties. It seemed as if he was finally warming to her.
“Doc, this is heavy. Think of the security they’ll have.”
“You’re forgetting one thing.”
They turned to see Rose, back lit and beautiful against the hazy light from the factory's smoke, holding a power drill like a gun up to the ceiling.
“There’s me.”
---
Two hours and four changes of clothes later, they were congratulating themselves on a job well done when there was a sharp squeal of brakes as the car stopped in what must've been the park three blocks from her flat, by the look of the shrubbery. Batting away the leaves that came in through the broken window, Rose pushed back a strand of her hair.
"Well, that’s a vacation I won’t soon forget." She beamed as she thought about telling this story to her team when she went into work tomorrow. Before she could get too ahead of herself, a small cough brought her thoughts back to the present.
"Umm...there seems to be a problem. We might have gone back too far."
"That's okay, I can amuse myself for awhile. How long will it take you to fix it?"
"It depends on the damage, all I know right now is that the clock seems off. Maybe I forgot to set it to Daylight Savings Time?"
"Sorry we can’t get you back to the future right away, Rose." Marty said through the Doc's mumbling without sincerity, looking hopeful at the prospect of spending more time with her.
"S’okay. I’m used to time machines being off."
"I don't think you're used to it being this far off." Doc said as he quickly reversed away from the dinosaur that had moved to graze closer to the DeLorean.
With a sputter and a clank, the car stalled, leaving them stranded mere feet from the chomping teeth of the massive figure. Rose immediately reached for her seatbelt and grabbed the nearest hand.
"Run!"