The first time Sally Sparrow took a trip to investigate something weird, she told herself that it was just idle curiosity and it would never happen again. It was three months after she gave the Doctor the folder of information and there had been rumours on an Internet message board (found by Larry) about strange lights and unexplained animal disappearances in a small village in Devon. Sally had resisted the temptation for two weeks until it became too strong and she booked herself into a B & B in the village for a week.
By the end of the week, a rather nasty little creature had been handed over to some soldiers who had arrived in the nick of time and Sally felt quite pleased with herself. After all, it wasn't every day that the part owner of a small DVD shop could say that she had saved an entire village.
Unfortunately that first time was not the last. By the time she set off for her seventh little investigation, Larry decided that he had had enough and asked her to make a choice. Sally was torn for a while, but then she heard rumours of werewolves in Kent and she couldn't quite resist the temptation again.
Larry could never compete with werewolves and they both stopped trying to pretend that they could work past it.
After two months of not talking to each other and operating the shop through notes left in the cash register, a break-in at the shop (two teenage boys, not aliens) forced them to sit down together over tea and re-build their friendship. Sally sometimes felt that they worked much better as best friends than lovers and always had done.
For two years Sally had relied on rumours and built networks of contacts with unusual information sources. Not everything turned out to really be aliens, but she became very good at sorting the crazies from the real thing so that she rarely hared off on wild goose chases.
The alert about something odd at a ruined castle in Scotland came from one of those contacts with unusual information sources one winter. Sally suspected that he might have some kind of government connection because his information was always remarkably accurate and a small group of soldiers often turned up at just the right moment to take the bigger problems off her hands. Even Larry hadn't been able to trace him past his Hotmail email address and Sally was unwilling to frighten off such a good source by asking too many questions.
Despite the weather reports of heavy snow and Larry's dire predictions of ravening Scottish bogles, Sally immediately booked a B & B nearby, packed a suitcase and hopped into her little car. The drive proved to be much more tiring than she had expected and she had to give in and check into a Travelodge not far from York to get a few hours' sleep. She arrived at the B & B the following evening, tired, achy and quite ready for the soft bed that was to be hers for the next few days. Not even the prospect of a new mystery could pull Sally Sparrow from her rest that night.
The owner of the house, Mrs Phillips, insisted on feeding Sally with the largest cooked breakfast she had ever seen the following morning. Sally did her best but had to admit defeat with half her plate still covered by a mountain of sausages, bacon and scrambled eggs.
There was no snow on the ground when Sally left and the sky was the kind of bright, clear blue that deceptively made a person think it would be beautifully warm outside. Sally was no fool and did not believe the lie: she wrapped up warm, made sure that her car was well-stocked with shovels, torches and blankets just in case, and then set off for the castle.
It was the best kind of castle, ruined yet with enough walls still standing that Sally could imagine how it might have looked when it was whole. The empty square holes in the walls where floors had once been, the remnants of hearths ten feet above her head, the last few steps of a spiral staircase: all of this combined into a vivid picture in Sally's head of the ancient building as it might once have been.
Sally Sparrow had always had an active imagination. It was her curse and her gift, or so her mother had always declared fondly.
After clambering around happily on ancient walls for a while, Sally found the first sign that there was something genuinely strange here. Hidden in a tumble of rocks beneath an empty window something glinted in the sun. Sally took a couple of pictures and then carefully removed some rocks to reveal a small silver box with a tracery of lines etched into its surface. She couldn't find any controls or display, but it was definitely alien in origin and Sally was experienced enough to know that fiddling with alien technology was a very bad ideas. She took some photographs and re-covered it, trying to match the way that the rocks had lain from memory.
Larry always teased her about keeping her old film SLR rather than upgrading to digital. Sally hated to admit that he might have a point.
It was as she was carefully examining the ground that she heard the noise. A loud scream seemed to echo through the air, coming from above, and Sally looked up to see a thick trail of black smoke slashing across the sky. The scream grew louder and she realised that the smoke trail was coming towards her. Smoke resolved into a shape and Sally would have laughed at the sight of something almost like a children's rocket flying through the air if it hadn't been flying towards her.
The rocket grew so close that she could see it the hatch on the side and then it passed overhead, the wind from its passage knocking her to the ground. A moment later the concussion from its crash hit her and Sally covered her head as rocks dislodged from the crumbling walls fell around her.
Then all was silence.
Sally looked up. The rocket was easy to find. It was massive and only a hundred yards away. She contemplated calling Larry but Sally Sparrow was no coward and this was her mystery to solve.
There was still smoke pouring from it and Sally knew that it would not be long before the authorities started investigating. Nothing that huge could crash to Earth without investigation, not even in the Scottish Highlands.
The ship had ploughed into the ground, burying its nose partially in the soil and throwing out clumps of sod and heather everywhere. Logically the ship should have been incredibly hot after its journey through the Earth's atmosphere yet as Sally drew nearer to it she was surprised to find that it wasn't. Even when she reached out a cautious hand, the surface of the ship proved to be warm to touch rather than burning. There was the smell of burnt electrics but nothing else, not even the smell of scorched earth or burning flesh. Taking this as a good sign, Sally searched until she found a ladder that scaled the side of the ship to the hatch and started climbing. Whoever designed the ship must have anticipated the possibility that it might need to be accessed in a hurry because a lever next to it triggered something inside and the hatch slid aside smoothly.
A wave of warm air washed over Sally as the hatch opened and she caught a wiff of stale socks and engine oil. She could see very little through the opening and she was digging around in her bag for a torch when there was a metallic clang inside.
"Hello?" Sally called.
"Hello!" a voice called back.
Something inside the ship move, but the light was too dim for Sally to make out any details.
"Are you alright in there?" Sally asked.
"Pretty much," the voice called back. "I just need to...huh..."
The voice was female, light and cheerful despite the crash. Sally found a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth even though she felt sure that this was probably not the right time.
"Ah!" The voice exclaimed.
"Is everything OK?" Sally asked.
"Absolutely," the voice said, sounding much nearer this time.
The hollow sound of a boot against metal floated out of the hatch and Sally finally caught a glimpse of blonde hair and a pale face. The woman climbing towards her was pretty and younger than she had expected. Her hair was the bright yellow of a summer sun unlike Sally's dark gold and as she drew closer Sally could see that she was dressed in a military style T-shirt and combats.
One moment the girl was several feet away and then she was right next to Sally, so close that she could feel the girl's breath against her cheek. Sally scrambled down her ladder a couple of steps.
"Hello," the girl said again. "Am I on Earth?"
Sally grinned. "Yes. Is this where you wanted to be?"
"Pretty much. What year is it?"
"2011," Sally said. "Time-traveller?"
The other woman shrugged. "Sort of. Not really, yet."
She looked a little dazed but seemed determined, so Sally carefully descended to the ground and watched as the ship's occupant nimbly wriggled out of the hatch, swinging over to the ladder in one elegant movement. It would have been much more elegant if she had caught herself properly, but she fumbled and Sally's heart leapt to her throat as the woman tumbled down the side of the ship and landed with a loud 'oof' on the soft turf beneath.
As soon as Sally crouched beside her, she could see what had gone wrong: there was a long gash down her left arm that was still oozing blood.
"Ow," the strange woman noted. "I think something is wrong."
Sally hid her smile. "You've cut your arm."
The woman raised her head to look at the injury. "Oh. So I have."
"What's your name?" Sally asked.
"Jenny," was the reply. "You?"
"Sally Sparrow."
"Nice to meet you, Sally Sparrow," Jenny said.
"It's just Sally."
A bright, sunny smile crossed Jenny's face. "Sally. I like that. What are you doing?"
Sally had pulled off her scarf and was wrapping it tightly around Jenny's injured arm. "First aid. You won't get far if you're bleeding everywhere."
"Oh." Jenny watched thoughtfully as Sally wrapped and then tied the scarf in place. "Have you met any other time travellers?"
"Once," Sally said. "Just for a minute. It's a little complicated. Why?"
"I'm looking for one," Jenny said. "I built a Vortex manipulator but I wasn't sure that it would work."
Sally smiled reassuringly. "Well, you're on Earth and it's 2011. I hope that isn't too far off course."
"It's close enough, I think," Jenny said and then she shivered. "It's cold here."
"It's Scotland and it's winter," Sally said.
"I thought you said this was Earth?"
"It is," Sally said. "Scotland is a part of Earth and right now it's quite a cold part. Do you think you can walk?"
Jenny struggled into a sitting position and nodded. "I think so."
As they stumbled back to Sally's car, it became obvious that Jenny wasn't quite as unaffected by her crash as she pretended to be. She had to lean on Sally after a minute and she was shivering violently by the time they made it there. Sally got a blanket out of the boot and wrapped it around Jenny, swearing under her breath when she felt the touch of a snowflake against her nose. The clouds had come over while she was occupied and even London-born Sally knew that it was a bad idea to stay out with snow in the air. She helped Jenny into the passenger seat, showed her how to use the seat belt and settled herself into the driver's side just as a few more flakes drifted down.
"What's wrong?" Jenny asked.
"Snow," Sally said. "We need to get back to my B & B before it really starts."
"Why?" Jenny asked,
"You've not driven through snow before, have you?" Sally asked.
"No," Jenny said.
"Trust me, we really want to be somewhere else before it really gets going."
"What is a B & B?" Jenny asked.
There were a lot of "what is" question as they drove and Sally was starting to wonder whether it was really a great idea to rescue a girl from a spaceship. Perhaps the authorities would have been a better plan except that Sally had no great trust in the ability of the authorities to deal with anything that wasn't dangerous and somehow Sally felt that Jenny wasn't a danger to Earth. A danger to herself, possibly, a danger to pleasant Scottish countryside, definitely, but she did not seem to be a threat to the Earth.
Sally sometimes found that trusting her gut instincts worked much better than trusting her intellectual side. If she hadn't then she would never have investigated Wester Drumlins and a great many wonderful things wouldn't have happened.
The snow was thick enough that Sally nearly missed the turning to Mrs Phillips' house and she breathed a sigh of relief when they pulled up outside the door.
"You're my cousin," Sally said, thinking quickly. "You've just left your boyfriend and I was the nearest person you could find."
"I am? You are?" Jenny looked a little confused.
"You are for Mrs Phillips," Sally said. "Trust me, she'll believe that before she'll believe the truth."
Jenny started to reach for the door handle, but then she paused with a thoughtful look. "Why are you doing this?"
"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Sally said.
The snow, now falling more heavily than ever, made the few feet to the B & B seem like a mile and Sally was glad that she would not have to drive any further. Snow never came like this in the south and though she knew intellectually just how dangerous it could be, experiencing it was an entirely different thing.
There was the sound of a radio somewhere in the house and Sally held her breath as they snuck up the stairs. Her room was at the far end of the hall from the staircase. It was so dark that she had to turn on the lights as they entered. The flowery bedclothes and pale walls seemed oddly homely rather than chintzy with the snow falling outside. There was a fire laid in the hearth and Sally knelt to start it, hoping that would take some of the chill out of the air.
Jenny looked paler than ever and she held the blanket tightly about herself.
"Look, why don't you lie down?" Sally said kindly. "The bed is warm and comfortable and I'll keep an eye on you."
"Why?" Jenny asked.
"Why should you lie down?"
"No, why do I need an eye kept on me?"
Sally frowned. "You could have head injuries."
"My head is fine," Jenny said. "And my arm has stopped bleeding. Look, all better."
Feeling self-conscious, Sally took the arm that Jenny held out and felt the scarf. It was quite dry, although stiff with blood. Sally was unaware that she was holding her breath as she carefully unwrapped the scarf, expecting to see blood oozing out at any moment. Yet there was no blood and when the last winding of the scarf finally fell away, there was nothing to see except a pink scar.
"What are you?" Sally asked, a shiver running down her back.
Jenny shrugged. "I don't know. That's why I'm here, to find my father and ask him."
***
Jenny woke much later to find Sally asleep in a chair nearby, her dark gold hair tumbling across her face. She lay in the bed, just watching the flickering light from the fire trace patterns across the other woman and wondered at the odd, tight feeling in her chest.
None of this was turning out the way that she had expected. The Vortex manipulator had taken her to the right planet, to the time period that Donna had mentioned, but now her ship was damaged and Jenny had no idea whether it would be possible to repair it even if she could find it again. And there was this human woman, who had found her and helped her to leave before the human authorities could find her and been kinder to her than anyone Jenny had known in her short life.
Were all humans from this time period like this?
Sally stirred and Jenny closed her eyes, feeling embarrassed at the idea of getting caught staring. A moment later the bed dipped and Sally shook her shoulder.
"Hey, wake up," Sally said.
Jenny opened her eyes and blinked.
"Sleepy-head," Sally said fondly. "Hungry?"
"Yes," Jenny said. "Very."
Jenny's stomach rumbled to back her up and Sally's nose wrinkled as she smiled.
"So I hear," Sally said.
While Sally was off somewhere finding food, Jenny untangled herself from the blankets and sheets and dunked her head in a sink of water. Her green T-shirt was splashed with blood but her arm felt fine, the scar now only a line of faint silver against her pale skin. There were clothes in the wardrobe and Jenny felt guilty about stealing a shirt for approximately three seconds before shrugging and changing, dropping the soiled T-shirt into the sink of water to soak.
"Oh," Sally said when she returned and saw Jenny admiring the fit in the mirror. "I asked Mrs Phillips if I could eat up here. I've got to take the plate downstairs when I'm finished. My shirt's nice, isn't it?"
Jenny nodded absently, her entire focus shifting to the food rather than the question of ownership of the shirt.
It was awkward eating from one plate with a shared set of cutlery, but the meat and vegetables smelled delicious and Jenny did her best to be generous despite her hunger. She was a little embarrassed to find herself yawning as she handed over the fork for Sally to have the last titbit of meat.
"Sleep," Sally instructed, her voice slightly muffled by the food. "You need it."
Jenny obediently lay down on the bed again, pulled the sheets up and looked at Sally. "You should sleep, too."
Sally smiled brightly. "I will. That chair is...actually really uncomfortable."
"I don't bite."
"I bet you say that to all the girls."
"Not really," Jenny said. "You're the first."
Sally snickered and climbed into bed. "Go to sleep."
***
When Jenny woke again, it was morning. Bright sunlight streamed in through the small window, much brighter than Jenny had ever seen it. Sally lay on her side facing Jenny, her face still and sweet in sleep. Jenny had never really spent time watching someone so closely. She was usually too busy running, either with them or away from them. It was odd to see the way that Sally's eyelashes flickered as she dreamed and watch a strand of hair float back and forth in response to Sally's slow, even breaths.
Jenny felt that strange tightness in her chest again and her fingers itched to touch the soft skin of Sally's cheek.
It was instinct, that was the only way that Jenny could later rationalise it because she had hardly seen anything of the world or human relationships, and that instinct was what made her shift forwards a little and touch her lips to Sally's. She hadn't expected to feel the warmth and softness against her lips and that was why she tried it again, lingering for a few seconds before she moved away.
Sally was looking at her with a sleepily confused expression when she pulled back and Jenny realised that she might have overstepped some kind of line. Was there are protocol to these things?
"Do you often kiss strange women in their sleep?" Sally asked.
"No?" Jenny said uncertainly. "Is it wrong?"
"A lot of women would have a problem with it," Sally said.
Jenny sighed and sat up, wondering what the human protocols were for this sort of thing. "I'm sorry."
Sally sat up as well, crossing her legs and looking oddly sympathetic. "It's just...it's not a good idea here. I don't know what it's like in the rest of the universe, but here it's really not a good idea."
"I don't know what it's like in the rest of the universe either," Jenny said. "It's all so new."
Sally's look of confusion was quite cute and Jenny wished that she knew how to ask for a kiss properly.
"What do you do out there?" Sally asked.
Jenny grinned. "I save worlds. And run a lot. I like the running."
"How long have you been saving worlds?" Sally asked, the corners of her mouth twitching with a suppressed grin.
It was hard to explain everything without starting at the beginning and even though Jenny had only known Sally for less than a day, she thought that Sally might understand. That was why she explained the entire story, leaving nothing out, not even the war between the humans and the Hath that had so nearly devastated an entire world. Sally got a tray of breakfast from Mrs Phillips part way through and they shared bacon, sausages and eggs seated opposite each other on the end of the bed while Jenny told tales of worlds that needed rescuing.
"I met the Doctor once," Sally said at the end. "Just for a moment, but I helped him."
"That's why I came here," Jenny said. "His friend said that this was where she came from. I thought that if she came from here then the Doctor must visit and maybe I could find him again."
"What if he doesn't visit for a long time?" Sally asked.
"I hadn't really thought of that," Jenny said, feeling oddly deflated for a moment. "I don't know."
Planning wasn't something that Jenny did. To think was to act and it usually worked out in the end.
"Your ship has probably been found by now," Sally said. "The snow stopped in the night."
Jenny shrugged. "I like my ship, but if I find my father then I won't need it anymore."
"And if you don't?"
"I'll have to get my ship back," Jenny said.
For some reason, that made Sally laugh and Jenny thought it was one of the nicest laughs she had ever heard.
***
Despite Sally's warnings that the place would be crawling with military, they piled into her car, stopped for lunch in the village pub and then drove out to the ruined castle. They spotted the helicopters and Land Rovers long before they reached it and Sally decided they it would be best to leave the car a distance away and go the rest of the way on foot. The snow was several inches deep underfoot and the wind was freezing, but the sky was bright blue and the weather reports said that it would stay clear for a couple of days.
Jenny proved to be surprisingly good at sneaking through the snow and avoiding the soldiers and Sally could only follow her actions and hope that she didn't give away their position. The idea of a woman created from someone's DNA, pre-programmed with every bit of military knowledge her society possessed, was both creepy and intriguing. Possibly the weirdest, creepiest part was that she knew the man that Jenny had been grown from. Out of the millions of people in Great Britain, why had Jenny crash-landed beside someone who had met the Doctor?
As they crouched behind a snow bank and peeked over the top, Sally was also struck by how quickly they had learned to work together. The cold had given Jenny's cheeks a hint of pink and happiness and excitement sparkled in her eyes. For a brief moment, Sally wished that she hadn't stopped Jenny's kisses and then she wondered why she wanted that.
"There's my ship," Jenny said, pointing to the gleaming shape that was still partially covered by snow.
"Will they be able to use it?" Sally asked.
Jenny shrugged and grinned. "If they had all the memory crystals and a few key parts from the engine, maybe."
"Clever."
"Cautious," Jenny said. "I don't know much about time travel yet, but I know that this world shouldn't have that technology."
The two women watched the men in army fatigues and red berets examine the ship for a while before Sally started to lose the feeling in her toes. She nudged Jenny and they reluctantly slipped away. Something inside Sally felt desperately sad that Jenny might never see her ship again and another part of her wondered why she felt so much for someone she had only just met.
They managed to get back to the car without problems, although Sally was half-frozen by the time they got there and Jenny looked slightly blue around the edges. Sally turned the engine on and put the heaters on at full blast.
"I suppose it's time for me to go home," Sally said quietly. "Whatever else was active around here is probably gone. Aliens don't usually stay around after the military moves in."
"Oh," Jenny said.
Disappointment snuffed out the joy and beauty in Jenny's face, leaving her small and frightened in borrowed clothes. It wasn't usually like this: the aliens that Sally found weren't human and didn't want to stay on Earth, or if they did want to stay on Earth then it wasn't for good reasons. Sally had never actually liked one of the aliens or wanted to kiss them.
"What will you do?" Sally asked.
Jenny shrugged. "Look for my father."
"Do you need any help?" Sally asked before she could think better of the idea. "I did a bit of research on the Doctor, after I met him. He's always around when anything really big happens on Earth."
"You don't have to," Jenny said. "I'll be fine."
Sally Sparrow had always been a calm, rational sort of person not given to big emotional gestures. Kissing Jenny was possibly the most insane thing that she could have done at that moment, but Sally did it anyway.
She leaned over and kissed Jenny, lingering for just a moment because her lips were so warm and soft.
"I like you," Sally said, wondering why she was saying it when she was usually so cautious about people. "I like you and if you're going to stay here, I'd like you to stay with me. Maybe you could help me with some of the weird things that happen when the Doctor isn't around to stop them. It's not exactly saving the world, but sometimes I get to help people."
Jenny's fingers were cold when she gently touched Sally's cheek and her eyes were filled with wonder. Sally nodded to the unasked question and Jenny kissed her, sweet and fierce and gentle all at once.
"I think I'd like that," Jenny said after a while. "But only if I get to kiss you a lot as well."
"It's a deal," Sally said.