Rose Tyler, while stuck in Pete's World, had been working and fighting to get back to her universe, to her Doctor. She'd made a dimension cannon, and tested it herself many times, albeit unsuccessfully. Most times she'd ended up in another universe, just not /her/ universe. She had liked a few of the universes she had landed in, her favourite had been a beautiful garden. It was massive and reminded her of the Rose Garden, the planet the Doctor had taken her to as an apology for ruining her new outfit when they were supposed to be going to a party but were chased away by large disgusting creature that was called Aughthithathaliplip or something. The garden had seemed hazy, it was odd, and then there had been a man watering flowers, who'd smiled as he neared her. "Greetings, fledgling." He'd said, and at Rose's confused look he's chuckled to himself and returned to watering the flowers. Rose had been pulled back moments later, but for some reason had landed a lot worse than normal. Rose had been done for the day after that, and so went home feeling fatigued but not tired. Rose slept very little that night, and didn’t feel hungry or tired the next morning, which was very unusual for her. She made herself eat a bit of breakfast because she had always regretted skipping it, and went to work. That day she’d learned about Donna Nobel, and the next few weeks had been devoted to that, and she’d saved Donna, and Donna had saved the Doctor. Then she’d found the right universe, and she’d dealt with the immediate emotional turmoil of that day, and then they were back on Bad Wolf Bay, and her Doctor was next to her, and so was a human version of him, and she was supposed to stay here, with this copy of her Doctor, who only had one life. But Rose wasn't sure she wanted to, but then he’d whispered to her the end of the sentence she’d wondered about for what felt like forever, and he’d said what she knew the other man never could, or at least never would, and before she could process she’d moved she was kissing him. The Timelord had left, and it was just Rose and a metacrisis, and she looked at him as they walked away from the shore of Darlig Ulv Stranden. She could see it, far behind his eyes, but still there, she could see that he wanted to run. He wasn't going to run yet, she wouldn't let him, but eventually he would run, and no one would be able to stop him. Rose and her metacrisis lived in the flat she’d moved in to as soon as she got over the worst of her depression when she’d first been stuck in Pete’s World. They lived there for three months. Rose felt the need to sleep less and less, though she never mentioned it and ‘John’, as he had begun calling himself, never noticed. Rose also felt the need to eat less and less without ever feeling hungry, but she still tried to rememebr to eat a normal amount every day. She felt like something heavy was on her back constantly, and a few times she'd checked to make sure she didn't have a beetle on her back like Donna, but when she’d told John he said her soulders were always tensed when she was working so it wwas probably that. Rose agreed and dismissed it. Everything seemed like it was getting better, everything seemed like it would be okay, for three whole months. Then the aliens came. Of course, aliens had come and gone quite a few times in those three months, but these aliens weren't lost or stupid, they knew what they were doing. Rose never learned what they were called, she could hardly remeber what they looked like, but they were violent and smart, they made plans and didn't share them, even with people they were about to kill. They accountefd for variables, they were direct and to the point about their invasion. Military. Everything The Doctor seemed to never be. Rose had tried to stop him, but the stubborn alien metacrisis had charged into the aliens ship, in central line of fire, with only maybe the beginnings of a very bad plan and no idea what the species even was. He was shot dead by one of them, shot twice, once in the head and once in the heart, then, as Rose was the only witness and was hidden, they'd very efficiently collected him, beheaded him with a horrible sound and an ugly blade, and desintagrated the corpse. It had been so sudden, and unexpected, and Rose couldn't accept it. She knew what she was doing though, she retreated to Torchwood and went through the motions of remotely carrying out the plan her team had put together, and then numbly returned to her apartment after the aliens were most definatly gone far away and not coming back. Rose had locked the door and fallen to her knees in the sitting room, the heavy weight on her back again but she ignored it. She cried for a very long time, she lost all track of time while crying and staring blankly ahead, and three days later, having not moved from her kneeling position to eat or sleep or anything(though she didn't feel hungry or tired at all), she rose to her feet with more strength then a human who had been in one place for three days should have, and she walked out her door, leaving it open, and took a cab to Torchwood. She didn't aknowladge anyone and she made her way straight to the basement, directly to where the dimension cannon was stored, nobody having gotten around to dismantling it. Rose powered it on, didn't check the coordinates but didn't really care. She put everything in position and fired herself across the Void. -----00000----- Rose landed, lighter then she probably should have, on her hands and knees in dry fading green grass. In someone's back garden. Rose looked up when she heard a squeaky door open, there was a petite women in a yellow sundress with a pastel blue jacket and wearing black converse shoes with no socks. She had dark blue eyes and a round doll-like face, and her hair was dark and wavy and went just past her shoulders. The woman, who looked to Rose about 23 years old maybe, had a small dark purple backpack on and was holding a rectangular device with what looked extremely like a pink version of the glowy bit of the sonic screwdriver jutting out of the corner. "Who are you?" The woman asked in a very American accent, looking from the device in her hand to Rose and back again, and hitting the heel of her hand against the side of it. "I'm Rose Tyler" she answered automatically, and tried to stand up but felt weighed down by something. Rose knew she should probably leave any second now, she realised that risking shattering the walls of her universe was probably a bad move, but this universe felt right. She didn't know why, but she thought she should at least scope it out, /just in case/. Maybe she was lucky. The woman nodded, looking confusedly at the thing in her hands that Rose had concluded was probably a scanner of sorts. "Bad landing?" She asked, seeming to accept what the readout on the scanner was and she slipped it into the side pouch on the backpack. Rose tried to hide her surprise and confusion that the woman knew she'd landed, rather then just climed over the fense. "Yeah, a bit. Haven't done that is awhile, 'm a bit outa practice, I guess" Rose said, deciding to go along with it. The woman smiled, which reassured her for some reason. "Alright, so what brings an out-of-practice member of the God Squad to my backyard this time? Any why couldn't you lot just make Cas come? Oh god, is Cas okay?" The woman asked, suddenly looking very worried. "Who? What?" Rose asked, not understanding what the woman was talking about, and distracted by the heavy weight on her back as she successfully stood up. She felt like there was something brushing against her arms and pressing against her shoulder blades and... It was odd, she felt a heat behind her, but it was like it was part of her. Rose tried to ignore it though, she could investigate later. "Castiel, your brother or however your weird 'one big huge angelic family' thing works. Is he okay?" There was the muted sound of flapping wings and suddenly there was a man standing next to the woman, he had dark raven hair and sharp bright blue eyes. But the thing tht stuck out the most about him to Rose was that he had dark wings folded neatly on his back. They didn't seem colourlessly black, and when they ruffled in the slight breeze many dark colours could be seen within them. "I'm fine, Epsilon." He said in a low gravely voice. He looked directly at Rose as he spoke, and Rose felt like he was staring more at her soul then her. He was an angel, apparently, so maybe he /was/ looking at her soul. The woman, Epsilon, he'd called her, looked relived when she saw him. "Cas, she just landed out here and she has an angelic energy signature, but she seems so confused and /human/" Epsilon hurriedly explained to him. Rose was staring at the man's wings though, he was actually, really, an angel. And Epsilon thought she was, too? "I know, Epsilon. She is a fledgling, I was sent to inform you that we trust you will be taking care of her while she learns what that means." The man-angel-Castiel-whatever she was supposed to think of him as, explained to Epsilon. "What?" Rose spoke up, because who was this woman, and Rose could take care of herself, not that she'd be staying here much longer, the little Dimension Canon remote had made a little sound that meant she could leave again. Castiel looked at her and the little device that would take her back to Pete's World started to heat up, so she instinctively dropped it. It then sparked, exploded, and all the pieces caught on fire simultaneously. What the hell? "Cas, what was that for?" Epsilon asked, sounding vaguely amused. That made Ross angrier for some reason. Castiel looked back at Epsilon, "I will return to aide you when necisary." He stated, and Rose's eyes widened when his shiny black wings opened and flapped powerfully twice, and he disappeared. Epsilon sighed like a child would having just been told to do the dishes, and looked back at Rose. "Hello, my name is Epsilon Tesseract, if someone comes to the door looking for Anna Smith, that's me. Don't ask about my past unless I bring it up, and please don't set fire to anything in my secondary library or front yard." She said, stressing the bits about where not to set fires. "What?" Rose asked, so very confused, then there was a slight breeze and she shivered, and she was reminded of her previous internal struggle when she instinctively wrapped the appendages around herself. Rose looked at the silvery feathers that were covering and warming her arms, but also pinning them to her body tightly. They were shiny and felt silky on her skin, and they seemed to be an infinite number of shades of silver. Rose couldn't tell if they were mostly light or dark, they seemed to almost fluctuate. She freed one of her arms and ran her fingers though the feathers, they felt light and staticy and not entirely there, but also sharp and dangerous, like petting the dull sides of knives. She ran her fingers though he feathers again, it felt good, her wings were somewhat sensitive between the primary feathers. Whoa, where had that come from? Had she really just accepted that she had /wings/ all of a sudden? Rose Tyler had done a lot of accepting and moving on in her time, but this was her all of a sudden having /wings/. And only being mildly surprised. Huh. "You say that a lot. C'mon then, /Rose Tyler/, you look cold. You can pick a spare bedroom, claim it before Hunters start showing up because the local motel fills up fast this time of year and they know the likelihood of me turning their sorry asses away is pretty damn low." Epsilon said, and grabbed Rose's hand, pulling her towards the back door of the house. Rose instinctively folded her wings tightly against her back as she followed Epsilon, who led her up stairs inside the house, to a hallway with several doors. They were all very different from eachother and as a whole it reminded her a little of the 'domestic' corridor in the TARDIS. A plain dark wooden door at the end of the hall was labeled 'BATHROOM' in big white block letters, and there was a green door on either side of it, and they had little signs on them. The door on the left said 'SW' in light blue with a very good sketch of a moose next to it, and the sign on the right said 'DW' with a sketch of a car on one side and a piece of pie on the other. A few doors over, there was a light wooden door with a dark purple 'E' on it, or maybe it was the Greek letter Epsilon... Epsilon pointed at the light door, "That's my room, the bathroom is labeled for ease of access, the two green doors are claimed, the two boys who claimed them come often with no warning so I just let them keep junk in their rooms. I can hardly go two months without then stopping by for some reason or another, half the time I think they just make something up so they can raid the fridge." Epsilon chuckled quietly to herself, "but you can pick any of the other rooms, they're pretty much exactly the same inside so you can just pick a door you like unless you have some picky thing about windows." "Okay, thanks" Rose said as she looked at each door in turn. She stopped at one that was the exact shade of blue as the TARDIS, and she stepped over to it, resting her hand on the door handle, the only one that wasn't a knob in the whole hall. She pushed it open without really thinking and peered in. The interior of the room looked like any other spare room Rose had seen in her life, minus any decor whatsoever. It was a brown carpeted room with off-white walls and a dark grey, possibly faded black, ceiling. There was a single twin-sized bed with no bedding on it, an old sturdy-looking dresser, a matching oak bedside table and a rocking chair in the corner of the room. A few piles of bedding were folded and piled unorganisedly in the corner of the room, several bright colours prominent. "Did ya want that room? I keep the loose blankets in there so you'll have to move them to another room, but I don't think anyone will fight ya for it" Epsilon said, stepping up behind Rose in what once would have felt like an invasion of personal space, but with the people she'd spent the best parts of her life around it was hardly even alien. "Yeah, yes, um, thank you" Rose said and smiled at Epsilon, immediately going to pick up the piles of bedsheets. Something bit at the back of her mind /wait, you're just staying there?!/ but she ignored it for the moment. She was confused and just not yet ready to actually comprehend what the last week of her life had brought. "I'll make a sign for your door, and don't bother arguing, I make everyone a door sign, even if they're only over for a few days or if they don't intend to sleep in the room." Epsilon was partially talking to herself, but then stopped, as if catching herself before going off on a rant. "I'm gonna have to start minding my phones soon, pick some blankets and make your bed." Epsilon said this with a mother-like authority and then started down the stairs, presumably to wherever the phones were. Rose moved all the spare bedding to the yellow door across the hall from her claimed room, save for a magenta bed set that she made her bed with. She sat on her newly made bed and looked around the otherwise empty room, the entirety of the past week suddenly crashing over her. She was stuck here, the only way back to Pete's World destroyed. The human version of The Doctor was dead. She was apparently an angel all of a sudden, complete with wings. She was apparently staying in some American woman's house. She hadn't eaten or slept in probably 4 days, and she wasn't hungry or tired. Maybe, Rose thought, maybe she'd died when the aliens had come and this was just residual craziness her mind made up to entertain her on the way to Judgement. There was a knock on the door that startled Rose from her contemplation, the room had darkened considerably and Rose realised she must have been sitting there brooding for hours. The door opened and a little stream of yellow light formed on the floor, Epsilon peeked her head in. "Rose? I finished the sign and would like your approval, also I brought some clothes I think would fit you, I don't know if you change clothes, Lord knows Cas doesn't..." Epsilon started, she souned like she wanted to start rambling about whatever the last thing she said brought to mind but stopped herself, like how The Doctor did when he started rambling when she had a headache and glared at him murderously. A lot about this woman reminded her of The Doctor, though maybe that was just because she missed him. Rose stood up and walked to the door, stretching her wings wide as she went. The tips of her wings touched the walls, and Rose briefly wondered what her wingspan was as Epsilon opened the door all the way. The odd woman was holding a basket full of jeans and tee shirts and jackets in one arm, and a little sign in the other. "Here, look at this and tell me what you think" Epsilon said, forcing the little sign into Rose's hands and walking past her over to the oak dresser. The base of the sign was dark blue that matched the door, and on the front was a black piece of plastic with the letters 'RT' in white, in what Rose was almost positive was the exact same font as the sign on the top of the TARDIS that said 'POLICE BOX'. On the right side of the initials, in gold, was a wolf howling upward. The wolf had intracate silver wings spread wide behind it. On the left side of the initials, in red and dark green, was a rose. The stem spiralled upwards against the T, small thorns looking realistically sharp, and the bright red rose in perfect bloom with a single petal blown off by the wind, frozen where it had been lightly drifting down to the ground. "It's beautiful..." Rose said in awe. "I'm glad you like it," Epsilon said absently as she sorted clothes into drawers, "I'll hang it up in a sec." Epsilon closed the drawer and trotted over to Rose, pulling something out of her pocket. She took the sign and a little remote-control looking object and scanned over the back of the sign with it. The device made a quiet mechanical sound that reminded rose painfully of the sonic screwdriver. "What's that?" Rose asked as Epsilon scanned the door with a slightly different sound. "Magnetiser, I made it, you wouldn't understand. To sum it up in your language, it changes the atoms' charges, so when I put the two things together," she put the sign against the door and it stuck, at a very slight angle, "they fuse." She tapped it and it shifted slightly, then fell to the floor, the door with a slight indent where the molecules had been relocated. "Usually. Damnit. Well, good thing I have superglue." Epsilon said, looking crestfallen and pouting at the device in her hand before putting it in her pocket and taking out a small bottle of superglue, setting to work on making the sign stay. Rose almost laughed. "You remind me... So much, of my friend" she said quietly. "Well, I've never heard that one before. Even Sam said the only person he could possibly compare me to was Gabriel, and I'm a lot nicer then him, Gabe acts like a Trickster God, I know." Epsilon stopped herself, obviously about to launch into a rant about anything and everything that came to mind. "Except my friend wouldn't have stopped talking for anything, he'd go on for hours if the world didn't end or no one stopped 'im" Rose said, remembering a few different occasions when she had considered doing extreeme things to get the bouncy alien to stop running his gob. "Ah, see, the whole stopping-talking thing is still kinda new to me. Well, conciderably new. Ish." Epsilon smiled sheepishly for a second, then seemed to remember something. "You should come eat food, Cas sent me a weird angel-y epiphany thing about baby angels or whatever, but the gist of it was you're not gonna get tired or hungry for a few weeks, and then only a little, but you should still try to eat and sleep. Also you won't need to eat or sleep at all after a few months-to-a year. And if you feel invincable, you're not. It was a kinda long message." "Okay" Rose thought about how little she'd been eating or sleeping lately, and she briefly wondered how long she was sitting in her flat before fleeing to Torchwood. Epsilon smiled again and pivoted around so she could walk quickly back downstairs. That left Rose with nothing to do, so, looking at the mismatched doors of the hall, she was reminded of her favourite pastime on the TARDIS: exploring. Rose closed her door and peeked in each of the empty bedrooms, they were all pretty similar to hers, but with different coloured walls and ceilings and floors, a few even had carpet. The bathroom was pretty standard, a good sized shower/bathtub and a white sink with a slightly smudge mirror above it. A giant pack of extra toilet paper rolls sat next to the toilet, and an array of different towels of colours and sizes and patterns was stacked on a little table in the corner, the only real colour in the primarily blue-green and white room. The main source of light was a line of bulbs a live the mirror. Rose didn't look in the three rooms with signs on them out of respect for privacy, and by the time she was done inspecting the bathroom the smell of meat cooking came from down stairs. Rose went slowly down the solid wooden stairs, her wings tight against her back again, and they ended in the kitchen where Epsilon was humming something that Rose was positive she recognised but couldn't put a name to where she'd heard it, and frying bits of chicken. "Heyo, baby angel! I dunno what you're accustomed to eating but I've got chicken, potatoes, crap salad from the QD down the street, and a dire need to go shopping." Epsilon said cheerily as she shifted the chicken with a large wooden spoon. Rose was about to respond when a phone on the wall next to her rang. She looked at the wall and the line of phones on it, the one ringing was labeled 'ELPD', written with black ink on manila masking tape. "Oh, hey, don't let this burn" Epsilon said, handing Rose the spoon and picking up the phone. "ELPD disbatcher Anna Smith speaking" Epsilon listened to what the other person said, assured them 'Annalise Yusuf' was her best DI and should be allowed access to anything to do with the crime scene, then hung up and returned to the pan, plucking tr spoon out of Rose's hand as she passed. "Sorry about that, the phones usually stop about an hour ago but I forgot Annalise's in town, and she's a bit late when she works, night owl, kinda" "It's alright" Rose said, slightly confused at why Epsilon had called herself Anna Smith on the phone, and just who she was. Rose looked at the phones on the wall again, among other things the labels tht stuck out to her were "Sparrow H-Up" "FBI" "A. Shelter Insp." and "Clinic" Epsilon put the chicken on a plate and moved it to a little wooden table next to a plastic black bowl with obviously store-bought salad. "The potatoes should be done in a few minutes, you can start eating now, or ask all those questions I can hear lightly buzzing behind your eyes" Epsilon said, leaning against the counter and looking at Rose with amusement. "Who are you?" Rose asked after a second "I'm Epsilon, I already gave you the majority of that speech. Keep up, don't ask stupid questions." "Alright, er, why are there so many phones?" Rose tried, unable to properly sort through all of her questions "Ah, see now that's a good question. Well, I'm sorta a Hunter base of operations for this particular time zone" Epsilon said, sparking more questions, but also causing Rose to realise she wasn't sure when or where she was. "Where are we?" She asked "My house, in East Lansing, Mitchigan, United States of America, Earth, Quadrent CdB5" Epsilon answered easily, like it was something she explained to people daily. That part at the end, Rose was pretty sure he'd heard The Doctor say that when describing the location of Earth to an alien once. "You don't look or sound like a hunter, and your house, or what I've seen of it, doesn't look like a hunter's house" Rose told her, dismissing the spatial coordinates Epsilon had said part of. "Ah, well, I don't hunt animals, and I like to keep this part of the house as weapon-free and clean as sadly possible." "What do you hunt if not animals?" Rose asked suspiciously "Well, because you don't already know this mat shock you a bit," Epsilon paused and Rose motioned for her to continue, "I hunt the supernatural, and occasionally the extraterrestrial, but most Hunters don't get into that." "So you hunt... Ghosts and aliens?" Rose tried to clarify "I hunt ghosts, demons, vampires, werewolves, any other shit you can think of, and occasionally aliens. I usually try to get the aliens to leave peacefully though, do isn't work out too often..." Epsilon looked sad for a moment, and just for a second Rose saw a look in her eyes she'd only ever seen in The Doctor's eyes, when he was thinking about lives lost. But before she could think too much on it, Epsilon's eyes brightened with excitement, covering it up the way the Doctor did. "But yeah! Made good friends over the years, on the run from several different parts of the government, and I've got this fantastic house to myself most days!" "You really remind me of my friend, it's a bit freaky, you're like the girl version of him" Rose said "I'd like to meet your friend, you should call 'im and talk him into coming here sometime" Epsilon said, and then she turned abruptly and opened the oven, pulling three potatoes out one at a time with a towel, putting then on the table. They were wrapped in tin foil and so didn't roll away. "Now we eat" Epsilon said happily plopping herself down in a chair after closing the oven again. Rose sat across from her and shifted her wings until she was semi-comfortable. Epsilon put a but of salad and chicken on her plate and a potato on the edge, and passed it to Rose. "You can say grace or something if ya want, I think some of the angels listen, I don't think they care all that much though." Epsilon said as she stabbed a bit of her chicken with a fork "I don't usually, thanks for cooking though" Rose said as she split a piece of her chicken with her fork. She really wasn't hungry but she still intended to eat. Her wings shifted uncomfortably to rest in a different place, stretching to be on the floor behind her, and Rose wondered, not for the first time, why Epsilon couldn't seem to seem to see her wings. "I woulda cooked even if you weren't here, thank the farmer if you're gonna thank anyone" Epsilon said dismissively, then a cell phone rang and she pulled a flip phone from her pocket, "Becase you have this number I'll assume you're a close Hunter," she answered, there was a pause and Epsilon held the cell phone a little ways from her ear while there was shouting at the other end. "My phone died, it's charging in the other room I didn't hear it ring." There was another pause, "calm down Sam, I'm fine, Rassilon, you make it sound like I've got a friggin demon in my living room," 'Rassilon', Rose was sure she'd heard The Doctor say that once or twice as well... "Well that's just Cas being cryptic! Listen, if you honestly think I, of all people, need /help/, then you can drag Dean's ass over here with you." Epsilon hung up and took a bite of her chicken. "Who was that?" Rose asked, curiosity winning over manners "Sam Winchester, who apparently thinks Castiel told him I'm home alone with an archangel or something. Him and his brother are gonna are gonna be here in less than 6 hours if I know them." Epsilon informed her before returning to her meal. "Alright" Rose said, seemingly falling back into a pattern of 'accept and move on', "You said 'Rassilon'" Rose remembered "Yeah, sorry about that, it's hit been a habit for a long time." Epsilon apologised "My friend would say tht sometimes" Rose said quietly. Epsilon pretended not to hear her.
