[Multiverse Crossover] Incidental Strangers
Title: Incidental Strangers
Fandom: LOST/Doctor Who/Fallen/Highlander/Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Twilight
Author: kawaiispinel
Feedback: ...Is loverly.
Word Count: 2457
Rating: PG
Characters: Penny Widmore, The Doctor, Azazel, Methos (Adam Pierson), Buffy Summers, Alice Cullen
Pairings: Little bit of Desmond/Penny.
Summary: Five people Penelope Widmore never met.
Disclaimer: I own nothing in the multiverse, because if I did.... Crossovers would so be canonical.
Author's Note: Heylo, crossover that totally didn't kick my ass~! And... Wow. Why did "Set the Fire to the Third Bar" come on at this moment. Damn you iTunes and your oddly appropriate song choices.
I. She never met a Time Lord...
"It’s, uh," she said, struggling to find words to describe the vessel (that didn’t seem like the right word, but it was the only one she could use to describe this thing that had most certainly been a phone box on the outside).
"Beautiful?" the brown-haired man she had met earlier on her way home offered. (Although met was not an entirely accurate description. She was rather certain that meeting someone involved an introduction and perhaps coffee. This man had grabbed her off of the sidewalk, asked her a few questions that made absolutely no sense to her, and then asked her to hold some sort of contraption while he did something that may or may not have involved aliens... Oh God, she didn’t even want to think about it. It sounded mental even to her, even after having experienced the whole thing only hours before.)
"Strange," she finally confirmed, finding no other alternative word. "This sort of thing shouldn’t even exist."
"I’ve heard that before," he rocked back and forth on his heels, grinning like a madman. It was mildly unsettling.
"Why are you showing me this?" She asked, crossing her arms over her chest. "Or is this something you do for every woman you pick up off the street at random?"
"Actually.... Yes. Sort of."
She scoffed lightly, rolling her eyes. "I’ll try not to be offended by that."
"Well, I don’t do it for every woman," he added. "It’s just..." He paused, screwing up his face in concentration as he struggled to find the correct term of phrase. "....Something I do."
"What is?" She asked, arching a brow. She was getting a feeling that there was more to this than simply showing her the inside of a police box-that-wasn’t-a-police-box.
"Taking people with me."
"Where?" The unsettled feeling came back to her. This whole scenario seemed to be getting stranger and stranger as the seconds passed.
This was apparently the sort of question he had been waiting for her to ask. "To the stars. Across time, if you’d like. That’s sort of what I do... I travel."
"So... This is a spaceship?"
He made a face. "That’s such a limiting term... The TARDIS is-"
She held up a finger to silence him. "TARDIS?"
"Time and Relative Dimensions in Space," he raised his arms, indicating the whole of the circular spaceship-that-was-not-quite-a-spaceship. "This."
"And you want me to travel with you?"
He grinned sheepishly. "Well, you can say no. But it’s a chance of a lifetime. Personally, I wouldn’t turn it down for the world."
"Of course you wouldn’t." Something that wasn’t quite a grin crossed her features and she went silent for a moment, studying her surroundings, wondering what else there was in the universe that her feeble, sheltered mind couldn’t quite comprehend. Then again, she shouldn’t be complaining about strange things happening to her. It wasn’t like her boyfriend hadn’t gotten himself stuck on an island somewhere that she couldn’t find or anything. Some people might find that strange.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Fine. I’ll come with you." She noted his pleased expression and held up her finger again to silence him before he started talking again. "But I want you to help me do something." She might as well milk this situation for all it was worth. No one could ever say she didn’t inherit her father’s flare for business and negotiation.
"And what might that be?"
She paused. "Two things actually. There’s an island I can’t find... Do you think this thing-"
"TARDIS," he corrected her, somewhat pained.
"TARDIS... Do you think it could find something for me... An island?"
He cocked his head to the side, somewhat confused. "Like... Barbados? That sort of island?"
She shook her head. "No. Not that sort of island." She sighed. "It’s kind of complicated."
He shrugged. "Maybe..." He eyed the ship’s console. "It could be interesting to try though." He looked back up at her, grinning. "And what was the second thing?"
"Your name," Penny muttered. "I never got it."
"I’m The Doctor," he replied with a flourish, still grinning.
She stared at him blankly for a few minutes before realizing that he wasn’t kidding and laughed in spite of herself. "Of course it is."
II. She never met a Fallen Angel...
She didn’t usually go to pubs on principle unless she was with Desmond, although ever since he’d left, she found herself frequenting them more and more for no purpose other than the fact that drinking tended to make her feel the right sort of miserable, especially when that’s all she really wanted to be these days. Usually she could abide the drunks with their wandering eyes and occasional catcalls, the noise, and the general unappealing nature of the place, but what she absolutely couldn’t stand where the men who did more than just look. Most of the time, she could get those sorts of men to leave her alone with a few sharp barbs, but every now and then, she got an extremely persistent man.
"Fancy a drink, sweetheart?" A voice heavily laced with a London dialect spoke a little too close to her ear.
"I already have one," she responded dryly, taking a sip of it just to prove her point. This didn’t deter her would-be suitor who took the chair across from her and smiled in a way that didn’t quite reach his dark brown eyes. He was handsome- she’d give him that, anyway. And he was sober, which bothered her a little because drunk men were easier to ignore at least- they tended to be easily distracted.
"But I didn’t buy you that one," he pointed out. "Trust me, they taste better when someone else is buying, especially if that someone is me."
"That may be true, but I’m not really interested," she muttered. She gestured to a few girls at the bar who were eyeing her would-be suitor with jealous, lustful eyes. "I’m sure those girls wouldn’t mind a few rounds."
The stranger looked over his shoulder, winked seductively at the girls and then turned back to her. "They’re quite lovely, but they’re not nearly as radiant as you are...." He paused, indicating that she should state her name.
"Penelope," she said curtly. "Penelope Widmore." She didn’t like to drop her name to get her way, but sometimes it was the only way to get out of these sorts of situations.
Obviously, her suitor had been living under a rock before tonight, because he didn’t react at all to her namedrop. "Pretty name," he mused.
"Thank you," she replied, although hardly sincerely.
The stranger leaned back in his chair and clapped his hands together, grinning smugly about something. "Okay, Penny- Can I call you Penny?"
"No."
"Penny, I think we should just skip the pleasantries altogether. I’m attracted to you, and, despite your protests, you’re probably attracted to me- and don’t be embarrassed, because it’s unbelievably common. So! ....How about we leave and find a place a little more comfortable?" He winked suggestively.
A second later, her would-be suitor found himself wearing the remainder of her drink.
If someone had stopped her on her way out of the bar that night and told her that the man she’d just turned down (and poured a martini on) was one of the most dangerous Fallen Angels in the world, she would have laughed in their face.
And she still wouldn’t have regretted it for a second. That bastard had it coming.
III. She never met an Immortal...
"You’re lying," Penny squealed with laughter.
"I’m not!" The man across from her said, snickering. "I wouldn’t lie to you."
Despite how immature it was, she tossed the couch pillow at his head, and he had to maneuver himself accordingly to avoid spilling his beer. "I can never believe a word you say, Adam!"
"Do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?" He pouted. "Honestly, Pen, this is college all over again."
"You say college like you were just an immature schoolboy on his first way through at the time," she chuckled. "How many degrees did you have when I first met you? Six?"
"Seven," he replied. "It’s up to twelve now."
"In history," Penny added, scoffing. "And you were always pissing off our professors by arguing with them about fact and fiction... And then you’d stay on the phone with me for three hours after class ranting about it."
"And you never believed a word of it," Adam grinned, sprawling on his chair, a bemused expression on his face. "And you say history like it’s a terrible thing to invest in."
"It is," she wrinkled her nose.
"And English is so much better?" Adam rolled his eyes. "Studying Shakespeare-"
"I like Shakespeare."
Adam scoffed again. "He was a pretentious ass."
She threw another pillow at him. "I hate it when you do that," she muttered.
"Do what?"
"When you talk about history like you were there. That’s what used to get to me in college. You always knew too much." Her expression had suddenly become puzzled, almost despairing as if she’d been holding this thought in her head for some time. She hadn’t intentionally meant to dredge that up since she hadn’t seen Adam in years, but somehow it couldn’t be helped. There had just always been something off about him. She noticed that he had gone oddly quiet and was staring thoughtfully into his beer and instantly she wished she’d just kept to the pleasant catching up. Adam was nothing less than human, and his intimate knowledge of history was only because he’d been dedicated to it for far too long... At least that’s what she had to keep telling herself. "So tell me the rest of the story."
"You won’t believe it," he smiled. There was flicker of something behind his hazel eyes, something that didn’t go unnoticed by her, but she chose to ignore it.
"Try me," she grinned. "It’s not like you’re you’re trying to convince me that you're..." She fumbled for a good analogy. "Five thousand years old or anything."
She was surprised when Adam nearly choked on his beer the second she made that comment.
IV. She never met a Slayer...
She was stirred from her peaceful reading by a young female voice. "Excuse me?"
She looked up, lowering her sunglasses to access the stranger. She was blonde with a pretty face- sweet and innocent with just a touch of fire behind her blue eyes. Her voice seemed to imply that she was American, but she didn’t look like a tourist. The fact that she was shifting uncomfortably from one foot to another seemed to be for a completely different reason than anxiety about being in a foreign land. "Yes?" She asked.
"This is going to sound really weird," the girl started, continuing to shift uncomfortably. "But you haven’t seen, uh...." She muttered something quickly under her breath that Penny didn’t quite catch.
"Sorry?" She blinked.
"A guy... Well, not really a guy, but kind of.... Guy-ish.... With, uh... Horns."
Penny blinked again. "Horns?"
The girl nodded. "And.... Blue skin."
Another blink. "...Blue skin?"
The girl shifted uncomfortably again. "And he might have a tail. I cut it off, but I’m not sure if he’s something like a lizard and can grow it back or something."
Penny was silent for a long time. "....No. No, I haven’t."
The girl swore under her breath. "Thanks anyway," she muttered and then hurried off. Penny stared after her for a long time, still blinking before turning back to her book.
A moment later she heard something like a growl, followed by a girl- she could have sworn that it was the same girl- yelling several curses before a satisfying splat filled the air. Penny took a look around her wondering if anyone else had noticed this, but there seemed to be no reaction from the people around her.
With the tranquility of a saint, she stood up, slipped her book into her bag, and wandered off, wondering how quickly she could get a flight out of Rome.
V. She never met a vampire....
The first thing she noticed about the girl was her unearthly beauty. Her pale skin was practically translucent, her eyes shimmering like topaz stars- even her spiky black hair was styled in such a way that no hair ever seemed to fall out of place. And when she moved, it was like watching a dance. Penny found she couldn’t quite take her eyes off of her as she passed by.
The girl stopped short just a second after passing her, blinking in confusion for a moment before she turned back. "Penelope Widmore?" She asked.
Penny nodded, unsurprised that the girl had recognized her. It wasn’t like she wasn’t famous because of her father.
A smile broke out on the girl’s face and she playfully lowered her gaze to give herself an alluring, mysterious look. "You’ll see him again."
Her heart skipped a beat, knowing almost instantly what the girl was talking about without her having to explain herself. "How do you know?" She found herself asking.
The girl laughed, the sound as bright and airy as a pixie’s. "I just do."
She wrinkled her brow, obviously hoping for a better answer than that. "Who are you?" She asked.
"Alice Cullen," the girl responded, holding out her hand. Penny took it, slightly confused and shuddered involuntarily when she realized how cold the girl’s skin was. Cold and as hard as granite.
"By the way," Alice continued. "You might want to try your father’s communication system tonight."
"That old thing hasn’t worked in years," Penny muttered, rolling her eyes. She stopped short. "Wait... How did you-"
But the girl was gone before she could ever finish the sentence, flickering out of existence like a ghost. She’d never really know who or what "Alice Cullen" was... But she would eventually know that she was right. That night she did manage to get through to someone who informed her that Desmond was still alive.
And three weeks later, she did see Desmond again.