Author's Notes: Many thanks to my wonderful beta, commodore Norrington. This story is dedicated to celticsky, for her birthday.

Disclaimer: Strange a concept as it may seem, I actually do not own either Doctor Who or Stargate Atlantis, nor do I own any of the characters of said shows. I'm merely playing with the ideas, no profit is intended.

Timeline: Doctor Who: Ninth Doctor, post The Long Game. Atlantis: pre-Stargate program backstory.

Rodney hated many things.

He hated the fact that his parents were too busy arguing to notice that they had kids. He hated the fact that because of this he had to take care of Jeanie in their place. He hated the fact that if he hadn't taught himself how to cook, he and Jeanie could have starved to death and he didn't think his parents would have noticed, except to blame each other.

He hated the fact that they only paid attention to him when he had another allergic reaction. He hated the fact that neither one of them had cared that he'd stopped taking piano lessons. He hated the fact that neither one of them had ever noticed how smart he was, how he'd blown his science and math teachers away. He hated the fact that, because they didn't care enough to listen and sign one tiny little six-page form that he'd already filled out in triplicate for them, he couldn't do the advanced program at the local university, even though the one good science teacher he'd ever had had written a long letter of recommendation to get him into the program a year earlier than he should have been eligible.

And right now, he especially hated the fact that he was packing up to run away and he knew they wouldn't even care enough to look for him. Jeanie sat on the messy bed in his room, staring in wonder as he shoved more clothes into the large black duffel bag. She was eight years younger than him; if he thought he could actually take care of her, he'd take her along with him. But an eight-year-old girl didn't belong on the street, and he wasn't sure he could earn enough working part time to take care of her and take those college courses. She'd be safe enough here, but he couldn't live one more day in this house.

He didn't bother sneaking out; he just gave Jeanie a hug and walked out the front door in the middle of the afternoon. It wasn't as if his parents would notice either way, and he'd have less trouble leaving in the middle of the day. People remembered a teenager on the bus late at night, but that same teenager in broad daylight? Absolutely invisible. And while Rodney hated to be invisible, he'd use it for his own ends and not blink twice.

He'd just cut through the corner of the park and out onto one of the small side streets that would shave an eighth of a mile off of his walk when he heard it. Something that sounded like a motor revving up, with a weird cross-harmonic on it. And when he turned to look into the alley it was coming from, he saw a large blue box fading into view.

This was impossible. Nobody had the technology to do this yet. Whether this was some sort of cloaking device that had failed, or whether that box had actually been transported here from somewhere else, there was no technology that he'd even heard rumors of that could do this.

By now it had come completely into view: a large, dark blue box, absurdly, with the title "Police Public Call Box" emblazoned on it. A door in the side opened suddenly, and a tall, dark-haired man with big ears jumped out before turning and leaning back into the door he'd exited. "Rose, c'mon, I'm not going to wait around all afternoon for you to finish putting your makeup on," Rodney heard the man say. Idly he wondered about the accent, it wasn't anything he recognized immediately, though it sounded vaguely British.

He heard a woman's voice, shouting out from inside the box, "Alright, alright, I'll be out there in a minute. God, it's not gonna kill you to wait five seconds, now is it?" Her voice sounded off, somehow, as if she was calling from far back inside the box. But that was impossible, there wasn't room inside that thing for her to be calling from any distance whatsoever. For that matter, how the hell could the man have been in there at the same time without them being far too close for comfort?

The man turned with a sort of loose-limbed energy, looking with interest at the alley walls, until his gaze fell on Rodney's shocked form. Rodney felt the man's eyes sweep over him, taking in everything from the battered black duffel bag to his untied lace on his ratty sneakers. He heard the man sigh before shouting, "Oi! You over there! You going to do anything but stand there with your mouth open looking like an idiot?"

The insults actually helped Rodney. He'd lived most of his life as the slightly unhealthy geek in a society which favored jocks, far too long to not to be on familiar terms with insults. His active brain and agile tongue had gotten him into trouble, although if the brainless jock had happened to have a sense of humor and more than two neurons to rub together, it had also often gotten him out of that same trouble. The man might have been trying to intimidate him, but it merely got him angry instead.

"An idiot would still be standing there wondering what you were doing in a blue telephone box, not calculating how many of the laws of physics you just disproved by having the interior of that thing be larger than the exterior. An idiot would be wondering where the hell you came from and blaming the fact that he'd seen that box appear from nowhere on having gotten drunk last night, not trying to determine if it was an attempt at a cloaking device that had failed or whether you'd managed some form of matter transmission. And an idiot would be running back to his mommy begging for protection from the scary man, not standing here arguing with you!" His voice had steadily risen throughout his rant; by the time he was done he was only a decibel or two away from full-on bellow.

The man snorted, but his frame relaxed slightly. He looked more amused than annoyed. "Well, at least you've got some spirit. Come on, we might as well gab in comfort, if you're going to want explanations." With that, he turned and headed back into the box.

Rodney might have earned a deserved reputation for being overly cautious about some things, though he was quick to point out that if seemingly ordinary foodstuffs could kill you you'd be a little more careful too, but wild horses couldn't have held him back from following the man into that blue box.

He stepped in, and it was like entering a new world. Suddenly he understood why the woman's voice had sounded so far off. The main room was easily ten times larger than the area inside the box should have been, and he also saw various different doors, which presumably led into other rooms. He dropped his duffel bag in shock as he stared at the room, the graceful supports arching around like something organic, the curving walls, the main console standing on a raised platform in the center of the room. It was fabulous, and utterly impossible. "How did you, I mean, this is beyond anything anyone could possibly do on Earth. This is amazing…who are you? Or should I say what?" he asked.

The man rolled his eyes before speaking. "Articulate lot, you humans. No, no human on Earth could build something like my TARDIS, but then again, I'm not human. I'm the Doctor."

Before Rodney could even figure out which question to start with, like what the hell a TARDIS was, or exactly what this Doctor was a doctor of, they were interrupted by a gorgeous blonde only a few years older than Rodney himself.

"Doctor? Who're you speaking to?" she said, as Rodney stared at her. She also had some kind of accent, English he thought, although it didn't sound like the fancy accents in all the bad B-grade movies that he'd seen. She was dressed casually, in jeans and a T-shirt, but a girl who looked like that didn't need to wear anything fancy to get his hormones revved up. Genius he might be but he was still sixteen, and a pretty girl was definitely still a pretty girl.

The Doctor turned to face her, his expression briefly softening, before he glanced back at Rodney and spoke, "The kid saw the TARDIS land, Rose. Couldn't just let him run off without an explanation. And he hasn't fainted or called me a thing yet, so he's doing better than Rickey or Pretty-Boy ever did."

The girl, Rose, sighed, as if she'd had this argument too many times and only went through the motions because the Doctor enjoyed it. "Mickey'd just been rescued from a vat of living plastic that had eaten him. It's not something that happens every day to us humans, you know. He did much better against the Slitheen." She turned to Rodney and asked, "Right then, since the Doctor is useless at this sort of introduction, I'm Rose. Who're you?"

Ignoring the Doctor's indignantly muttered comments about the relative usefulness of humans versus time-somethings, Rodney responded, "Rodney McKay. Would someone like to actually explain anything here, or should I just keep trying to figure out how many laws of physics have been rewritten just by this "TARDIS", whatever it is, existing?"

Rodney McKay had some spunk, Rose would give him that. The Doctor was at his most Time-Lordly attitude, and over the past three weeks she'd heard far more than she'd ever wanted to about the general stupidity of her species. Sure, Adam had proved to be both worthless and greedy, but did that mean the Doctor had to take it all out on her? And now, of course, this kid. Funny, she'd guess she wasn't more than a few years older than him, but she felt infinitely more mature. Traveling with a Time Lord had affected her more than she'd normally consider.

But that last comment of his was going to drive the Doctor mad. She'd only been with him for a few months, but it was obvious. No one insulted the TARDIS. You could tease him about it, but only once he knew you loved it. Hoping to prevent a war from breaking out in front of her, she spoke up. "It's a time machine. TARDIS is an acronym, stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space."

That did it. The look of shock, or was that glee, on Rodney's face would be enough to deflate the Doctor's ire at his earlier antagonistic stance. She'd already seen that if the Doctor didn't get frustrated with how slowly she grasped a concept, he enjoyed teaching. And this kid, whatever else, wanted to learn.

Sure enough, only seconds after she'd told him what they were in, he exploded into a stream of questions, interrupting himself to correct and answer his own questions half the time. He lost her in the technical aspects about three words in, but he certainly seemed to be enjoying himself. The Doctor, for his part, had relaxed and looked like he was just waiting for the torrent to slow down a bit so he could make himself heard before he started answering.

She was about to head back into the kitchen for an extra cup of tea, since it looked like the two of them had settled into a nice long jargon-filled debate when Rodney dropped the big question.

"Can I come with you?"