Title: Time Sense
Authors: Gillian Taylor
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Ten/Rose, Dorothée McShane
Summary: Time travel tends to do a number on semantics. How else can you meet someone for the first time for the second time? Sequel to 'Companion Sense'
Spoilers:'Companion Sense', little of the NA 'Set Piece', and minor references to the Fourth Doctor era.
Disclaimer: Don't own them. I just like playing with them...a lot.
Archive: Sure, just let me know.

A/N: Thanks, as always, to my fabulous betas WMR, Ponygirl, and NNWest. Additional thanks must, of course, go to the readers of the first story in this series. Their mentions of raising a 'sequel banner' got my muse moving in this particular direction. :)

"Time Sense"
by Gillian Taylor

Chapter 1: Murphy's Law

Oh, cruk. Cruk, cruk, cruk, frelling cruk. Here she was, Paris, 1913, without her bike, without any money, bleeding from a wound on her leg, wearing a torn and dirty frock, and an angry alien mob at her back. She didn't even have a bloody hopper available as a backup! Oh, yes, this was a wonderful day. Fantastic, really.

She skidded on the wet pavement as she tried to round the corner, cursing violently as her leg almost gave out on her. A glance - she could spare a glance - and…

CRUK!

They were almost on top of her. Great. One thing she didn't fancy was becoming the next meal on whatever-the-hell-they-were's menu. Hell, she didn't fancy running helter-skelter through the alleys of Paris. There were things in the refuse piles, and even just lying on the ground, that she was fairly certain she wanted to know nothing about. Let alone land in them when someone hadn't bloody cleaned up after themselves!

"CRUK!" She cursed violently as she picked herself out of the rubbish heap that she'd skidded into. Her leg burned from the impact and she didn't want to think about what sort of muck had got into the wound.

"MEAT!" The whatever-the-hell-they-were's leader shouted as it sprinted toward her.

"Oh, I don't think so," she replied and, spinning on her heel, she darted down the alleyway. She took the first left turn she could find. As long as she could keep running she'd be fine. Even wounded, she was faster than they were. Her little stint on the Cheetah planet ensured that.

Didn't matter that they had massive claws that would undoubtedly hurt once they caught her. No. She shouldn't even think about that. She'd be fine. All she had to do was find some way of getting back to the Rift, find her bike, her cash, and get the hell out of 1913 and grab some reinforcements. Well, what she really wanted was her stash of nitro. A nice explosion would do the whatever-the-hell-they-weres some good.

That was, of course, when she realised her mistake. Dead end.

She'd made a wrong turn. Of all the bloody worst luck to have, it had to be today. When she reached the end of the alley, she turned. She'd be damned if she'd face her death cowering in the corner.

Then again, facing the slobbering crowd of whatever-the-hell-they-weres would probably reduce most people to cowering. Good thing she wasn't 'most people'.

She grinned at them, ignoring the pain. "Anyone ever tell you that it isn't polite to try and eat them?"

"MEAT!" The leader repeated its earlier words.

"Oh, what an imaginative thing you are. 'Meat'," she repeated disdainfully. "Why not 'and here I shall grind your bones into dust, something, something, something'? 'Meat' is just so…so…"

"Camp?" a new voice suggested from somewhere behind the whatever-the-hell-they-weres.

"Exactly!" she responded automatically, before she realised the danger. "Oi! Get the hell out of here! They're…"

"Oh, I know exactly what they are," the voice said, irritatingly calm. Damn the whatever-the-hell-they-weres for being so bloody big! She couldn't even see what the owner of the voice looked like. All she knew was that he sounded like he was from London, had a great voice and, if she indulged her imagination, was probably tall, incredibly handsome, and might have a killer grin.

"Teralnishtapins! Oh, haven't seen these blokes for years. Though, really, they're not actually blokes. Or women either. They're sort of…androgynous, really. They just like to eat. Eat anything, they will. Meat, metal, plastic. They stay away from veggies, though. But, otherwise, lots and lots of eating for them. Meat's their favourite, of course. As I'm sure you could probably tell from their oh so eloquent speech patterns."

Wasn't that nice? Some of the Teralnish-whatevers were still eying her hungrily, but others had turned toward the owner of the voice. "Thanks, that's so incredibly useful."

The man sounded hurt as he replied. "But knowing's half the battle! Oh, wait, sorry, that's G.I. Joe. Love that cartoon. Anyway, we've got ourselves a problem here. Good thing I know just the sort of thing that'll get the Teralnishtapins to go back to where they came from like the nice little trained animals they are. Rose!"

Was he calling her Rose? Oh, wait. No he wasn't.

"Yeah?" a woman answered.

"Now!" he commanded. "Shield your eyes!"

She saw something arc through the air, gleaming in the faint light with an almost unearthly glow.

Was that a…?

Oh, cruk, he wasn't about to…

Of course he was. Belatedly, she covered her eyes as the object disappeared in the midst of the Teralnish-things.

The world turned white. Brilliant, blinding, painful white.

She could hear the screams of the Terals-whatsits and, moments later, she could hear them running away.

"What the cruk was that?" she asked as her vision slowly began to return. Even through the shield of her hand, she'd been blinded.

"A Dante-Katsume photon emitter, Mark IV," the man answered. He was still blurred by the reflected image on her eyes, but she got the impression of height and slenderness.

A Dante-Katsume photon emitter? The cruk? That hadn't been invented yet. Hell, the company wasn't even founded until the late twenty-second century. "Who are you?" she asked suspiciously. Sure, he'd saved her life, but she wasn't having a very good day. It'd be just her luck that he'd turn out to be one of those bloody Time Agents mucking about in her territory.

"Oh, Ace, I'm hurt. Don't you recognise me?"

Ace. He'd called her Ace.

Oh, no. It couldn't be.

"Professor?" she asked incredulously, still half-blinded from both the light and the agony of her wound.

She could almost, almost see his grin. "That's me! Hello!"

She figured that she could be forgiven as the pain reached a crescendo and she collapsed, unconscious, at his feet.

Oh, stupid, stupid, stupid. He should've noticed that she wasn't at her best. The blood on her frock should've been a dead give--

Blood!

"Ace!" he cried, kneeling next to her, ignoring the debris and rubbish that was scattered about the ground.

Right, blood. Lots of blood. He winced as he lifted away the soaked fabric to reveal a nasty gash in her thigh. If anything, it probably matched a Teralnishtapin claw. But, thankfully, it didn't look life-threatening. Just painful. And bleeding rather profusely.

First things first and next things next. Best to get it treated before she lost any more blood. He untied the knot of his tie and slid it off his neck. Wasn't necessarily his first choice for a tourniquet, but it'd do the job. He wrapped the fabric around Ace's thigh and tightened it to slow the blood flow.

He could hear pounding footsteps behind him, but he knew that pace. It was Rose.

"Dorothée! Doctor, what 'appened?" Rose asked as she skidded to a halt next to him.

"Oh, I'd say she had a close encounter of the Teralnishtapin kind." His jaw clenched at the thought. If they'd been only a few seconds later, Ace wouldn't've made it.

He firmly dismissed that thought. It was tempting to think that she would've been fine without them - after all, she had helped Rose rescue him from a gaol in Nova Paris - but he knew better. Time was constantly being rewritten. But, thankfully, she was fine. They were fine. And they had a mystery on their hands.

Rose's hand rested on his shoulder, giving it a brief squeeze before she spoke. She seemed to always know what he was thinking. Bad Wolf's influence, perhaps, but he wasn't certain if it wasn't just Rose being Rose. "Let's get her back to the TARDIS. We can sort out her leg an' then find out what sort of mess you've landed us in this time."

"Oi!" he protested as he carefully lifted Ace into his arms. Even unconscious, she managed to shift to help him easily accommodate her weight. "I haven't landed us in a mess." He wrinkled his nose as a waft of refuse-tainted air blew through the alleyway.

Rose grinned. "You haven't?"

He didn't deign to answer.

She bit her lower lip as she followed the Doctor back into the TARDIS. Dorothée would be fine. They'd just have to sort her leg. It'd be nothing more than a few minutes worth of work, really. Then, of course, they'd have to figure out whatever had caused the Teralnishta-whatsits to chase the other woman through the alleys of Paris.

To be truthful, she was getting rather tired of France. Admittedly, Nova Paris had technically been a massive city-state spanning the former countries of France, Spain, and Portugal. However, they'd still been in the centre of old-Paris. That'd been the first time that she'd meet Dorothée. Was a bit fitting, really, to meet her again in the same spot. Just several centuries earlier. And before she'd met her in the first place. Well, at least from Dorothée's perspective.

Time travel really did tend to do a number on semantics.

Tended to do a number on a lot of things, really. She suppressed a wince as she recalled Mickey's expression as they dropped him off in London for the last time. He'd noticed, well, of course he'd noticed, that things had changed between the Doctor and herself. It became a bit too uncomfortable for him, so he'd asked to go. Barely a week with them and he was already gone.

However, as the Doctor liked to say, 'that was then, this is now'. And now they had to help Dorothée.

She slipped in front of the Doctor as they reached the door that led into the medical room and held it open for him. With a brief smile of thanks, he brushed past her and put their friend - who, technically, had yet to become her friend...semantics again! - onto one of the beds.

The Doctor gently pulled back Dorothée's torn and bloodied frock from her leg, revealing a rather nasty-looking gash. "Mmm, looks worse than it is. Rose, I need the dermal regenerator and some water, please."

She nodded and quickly gathered the requested items. However, as she got closer to Dorothée's prone form, she felt strange. Lighter, somehow. Almost as if...

There was this singing…

All of time and space opened before her. Where normally there were infinite possibilities, like a multitude of pages in the book of time, she found only one.

Just one.

Terror caused her heart to beat quickly in her chest. Fear caused her breath to catch in her throat.

She realized the truth.

There was no future.

There was only darkness.

I think you need a…

She blinked, drawing in a gasping breath. She felt dazed, drained, as if a good chunk of herself had gone missing. However, the Doctor hadn't noticed. She was still holding the pan full of water, still holding the dermal regenerator.

The only change was that her hands were shaking, threatening to slosh the water onto the floor.

"Doctor…" she tried, before trailing off. How could she begin? 'Doctor, by the way, remember Bad Wolf? Well, it came back again, just now. An' guess what it showed me? The future? The future for the entire universe? It's gone. There's nothing but darkness.' Or should she try picking a page out of Dorothée's book? 'Doctor? We're crukked.'

"Yes?" he asked, not turning around.

"Where d'you want the water an' the regenerator?" She needed to tell him what she'd seen, of course, but Dorothée's injury must come first.

"Just set it on the bed. Once I'm finished with the dermal regenerator, we can see about cleaning her up a bit."

She nodded, though he couldn't see, and set the objects down on the bed and waited for him to finish his task. Once he seemed to be finished, she decided to try again. "Doctor? There's something else."

"What's that?"

There really was no good means of conveying what she knew. So, she settled for the simplest. "The future's gone."

He turned toward her, his brown eyes wide in shock. "What?"

To be continued...