lizbee | FIC: "In the Wrong Order" (Five/Rose, PG-13)

Title: In The Wrong Order
Summary: Crashlanding in 2006, the Doctor encounters his most terrifying aliens ever - Rose and Jackie Tyler.
Ships: Five/Rose
Rated: PG-13
Spoilers: "The Christmas Invasion".

In the Wrong Order
by LizBee

"The future always arrives too fast... and in the wrong order." --Alvin Toffler, futurologist and writer

The TARDIS shuddered. Thrown off-balance, the Doctor grabbed for the console and pulled himself straight. It wasn't just him who was disoriented, he realised; the TARDIS was hurtling off-course, still bound for Earth, but the wrong place and year.

At least, he reflected as he landed -- if you could call it that -- at least Nyssa and Tegan were safe on the resort planet of Noasa, and if he was going to crash land, it would be much easier without Tegan's commentary.

He just hoped he'd be able to persuade the TARDIS to go back for them.

It was an unremarkable enough place for a crash landing; regrettably populous -- it looked like a residential estate, London, according to the scanner, late 2006 or early 2007 -- but fortunately free of immediate threats. Tegan would be miffed to learn she'd missed out on a trip to her near future. Or perhaps relieved. The Doctor put her out of his mind and turned back to the console, frowning.

"What's got into you?" he asked quietly, but if the TARDIS had anything to say, she got no chance to reply.

There were footsteps outside, running towards the TARDIS, and to the Doctor's great surprise, the outer door was thrown open and a girl appeared in the console room, shouting, "Doctor! What happened, I thought you were out with Mickey, and the TARDIS is still..."

She trailed off as she looked around the console room, mouth opening and closing as she took it all in. Her eyes widened when she saw him.

"Doctor?" she said uncertainly.

"Well, yes," he said, "but I don't believe we've met yet."

"What do you mean?" She laughed, or tried to. She was, he realised, very young, no more than twenty. "Have you regenerated again? Doctor, what's happening?" She crossed her arms, and a pugnacious expression crossed her face. "If this is a trick," she added, suddenly hostile, "the real Doctor will throw you into a supanova, or at least give you a really good talking to, and you could be an old man before he finishes. And then my mum'll start."

He held out his hands and did his very best to look non-threatening. "I am the Doctor," he said, "and this is my TARDIS, and you, I imagine, are not a stranger, but a friend I haven't met yet. Yes?"

She was still frowning, but she nodded slowly and said, "Rose. My name's Rose Tyler."

He'd have doffed his hat if he'd been wearing it; he settled for shaking hands and saying, "Lovely to meet you, Rose. I don't suppose you'd have any idea why I landed here? I was rather aiming for the National Portrait Gallery in 2010."

"Your TARDIS -- I mean, my Doctor's TARDIS -- is in mum's flat," Rose suggested.

The Doctor examined the readings. "Perhaps I should have a look at it," he said. "I shouldn't, but something pulled my TARDIS off-course ... a vast amount of temporal energy and radiation, spilling out into the vortex. I wonder what could have caused it?" He added lightly, "I don't suppose I'm going to go around opening the heart of the TARDIS in my old age, am I?"

"No," said Rose, a little too quickly, "but Margaret -- I mean, Blon Slitheen, the TARDIS opened for her, and she turned into an egg. And..." she trailed off, looking a touch lost, as if she was trying to think of a forgotten word or phrase. "There was something else," she said eventually, "but it's all gone." She reached up as if to touch her head, but instead wrapped a strand of blonde hair around her finger. "It comes and goes, like a dream -- sometimes it's clear in my head and I can even talk about it, but then it's gone again..." She blinked and gave him a wide smile. "Come on," she said, "I'll take you up to the flat. Watch out for Mum, though, she's in one of her moods."

The Doctor let her lead him through the estate's courtyard. The air was cold, and most flats still had fading Christmas decorations on their doors. Rose took his hand, an unconscious gesture, he assumed. He'd have liked to ask about her blocked memories, but he strongly suspected she wouldn't be able to answer.

The Tyler flat was crowded and comfortable, although the doors showed signs of recent repairs and there was an unusual amount of alien technology spread across the table. The TARDIS, looking the same as ever, stood in a corner beside the television, which was broadcasting a news item about Harriet Jones's imminent resignation.

"That can't be right," he muttered, "she's barely in her first term."

"Sorry?" Rose asked.

"Nothing," the Doctor said, and made a mental note to check back on that next time he ended up in the right year.

"Rose," a woman called, "is that you?"

"Yes," Rose answered. "I just have to--"

"That Doctor," the woman appeared in the doorway, an older, plumper version of her daughter, "he's gone and left his alien junk all over my table. 'You'd better tidy that up,' I told him, but where's he gone? Down to the pub with Mickey. Men!" She caught sight of the Doctor, standing behind Rose. Her spine straightened. "You didn't tell me you were bringing a friend around, Rose," she added, in a quite different tone.

Rose sighed. "Mum," she said, "this is the Doctor. Doctor, this is my mum, Jackie."

"He knows who I am," said Jackie in her normal tone. "Is this going to be a regular thing, then, changing bodies?" She looked the Doctor up and down. "It's not bad," she said. "Give him a haircut and some proper clothes and he'd be almost normal."

The Doctor opened his mouth to ask what, precisely, was so improper about his clothes, and why he should trust the sartorial advice of a woman wearing velour. Then he stopped, said, "I'll be in the TARDIS," unlocked the door and went in.

"Can't he try for Johnny Depp next time?" he heard Jackie ask before the door closed.

He barely had time to register the changes in the console room before the door opened and Rose quickly let herself in.

"Sorry about that," she said. "Mum hates the week between Christmas and New Year's. Especially this year, with -- wait, I shouldn't tell you about future things, should I? I mean, things that happen in your future."

"Certainly not," said the Doctor.

They stared at each other for a moment, and the Doctor was quite sure that, like him, Rose was thinking of all the things this meant they couldn't discuss. His mouth twitched, and Rose giggled, and he gave up and started laughing.

"Did I regenerate recently?" he asked in spite of himself.

"A few million years in the future," said Rose, "on Christmas Eve."

"I always did have excellent timing."

"For passing out, yeah." Rose leaned against the console. "It must look pretty different to you. The TARDIS, I mean."

"It's quite nice." He ran a hand over the smooth, warm bannisters that circled the console. "Very bio-mechanical. Quite old fashioned, really. I hope I'm not going to turn into a traditionalist."

"I've gotta say, you don't accessorise with celery anymore."

"It's a very underrated vegetable." He was examining the console now, and Rose was right; this TARDIS was positively glowing with temporal radiation. It was a wonder that his future self wasn't mad. "I don't suppose you know where I'm going to keep my laser wrench, do you?"

"No idea. Can't the sonic screwdriver do it?"

"I haven't had that since the seventeenth century." And he was absolutely not going to borrow a new one from his future self, no matter how useful it would be. Really. "Try the box at the bottom of the second linen closet," he suggested. "I'm sure I put a toolkit there once."

Rose gave him a skeptical look, but returned within minutes, bearing the toolkit and a look of triumph.

"Laser wrench," she said, sitting beside him as he knelt at the base of the console. "Also, I found the can opener you're going to accuse me of leaving on that pinky-purple moon."

"Oh, good. We can go on a picnic."

She grinned. "Sounds nice."

"Warm sun, a stiff breeze--"

"After this week, that sounds like heaven."

"--A friendly game of cricket--"

"You can play," said Rose, "I'll sleep in the sun and pretend to watch."

He opened the TARDIS's inner panel, and he and Rose both leaned forward to look inside.

"It looks so ... mechanical," said Rose. "I mean, I know the TARDIS is a machine, sort of, but you expect it to be more..."

"Radiant?" he suggested. "Glowing with arcane energy harnessed by an ancient and mysterious race?"

"Yeah, something like that."

"Nonsense. Cheap Time Lord propaganda. Really," he adjusted a wire and removed a faulty power cell, "it's all very--" there was a spark of light and the lights flickered, died, then reacivated, "simple," he finished.

Rose laughed and threw her arms around him in a tight, victorious hug.

"I knew it!" she said. "That's my Doctor, brilliant in any body!" She pulled away. "Not that I'm thinking about your body," she added, with a blush that gave the lie to her words. "But still -- is that all? Is the TARDIS fixed?"

The Doctor climbed to his feet and said, "I'm going to have to spend less time in the pub and more time upgrading her circuitry, poor old girl." He walked around the console, poking at buttons and examining read-outs. "It looks like she's been exposed to some sort of external power source, and it's obvious she hasn't been home for a good few centuries. Not that I'll be complaining." He gave Rose a quick smile, which she returned after a second's hesitation. "But the major radiation leak has been plugged, so my TARDIS can leave, and your version of me can effect proper repairs without risk of a paradox."

There was a little stack of blank sticky-notes on the console, and he scribbled a reminder to that effect, sticking it squarely in the middle of the little viewscreen.

"So," Rose said with a smile as she moved around the console to stand beside him, "will we be risking a paradox if we go for that picnic?"

"I think we've been risking a paradox since I landed," he admitted, "I'm going to have to work very hard to forget that any of this happened." Rose looked crestfallen, although she tried to smile. He touched her arm and said, "it's complex."

"I know," she said, "and it's not like I'm never going to see you again, is it?"

"Of course not."

"It's just," she bit her lip, "you're like ... my best friend and a stranger, all at once. It's..." she regarded him for a second, head tilted upwards, eyes bright, then she leaned forward and kissed him.

The Doctor stiffened, and would have pulled away, but her hand was on the back of his head. Her fingers were in his hair, and he could feel the warm metal of her rings on his scalp.

Rather to his own surprise, he found himself kissing her back.

"There," she said when they parted, "there's something I wouldn't get to do every day." Her smile was positively cheeky. "You'd better go," she said. "The boys'll be back any minute, and I'm not going to let the universe rip apart over a snog."

"Quite right, too," said the Doctor, "although nothing rips apart when I meet another incarnation. It's just terribly awkward and one never knows what to say."

"Yeah, well, there's that, too." Rose was blushing again. It was quite charming.

She preceded him out of the TARDIS -- her mother was thankfully nowhere to be found -- and they made their way down to the courtyard in companionable silence.

"And you're not allowed to tease me," she said out of nowhere.

"I'd never dream of it."

"I don't go around kissing strange Time Lords just for fun, and you're the one who's going to say time travel's like visiting Paris."

"I am? How sensible. One should always kiss strange Time Lords in Paris. That's the whole purpose of the city."

They were standing outside his TARDIS now, and the Doctor felt suddenly awkward.

"It's not goodbye," he said. "I'll see you again in a few lives' time."

"Yeah. I know. And you're going to forget me, so it doesn't matter."

"That may be more difficult than I anticipated," he admitted. A smile spread across Rose's features, and he leaned forward to kiss her cheek. Then, before he could do anything potentially paradoxical, like invite her to come with him on the hope that he could get her back within a few minutes of her departure, he stepped inside the TARDIS and closed the door.

end

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From:

rosa-acicularis.livejournal.com

"I always did have excellent timing."

"For passing out, yeah."

This wins at...pretty much everything, ever.

Going into my memories, to be filed under 'awesome'.

From:

Saving the world through the power of, um ... oh dear.

FIC: "In the Wrong Order" (Five/Rose, PG-13)

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