Chapter Text
Despite all appearances, she was surprisingly calm, considering she was about to be sucked into a dark void, never to be seen again.
Yes, alright, she was screaming, but that was to be expected when you think you’re dying, right? It would be weirder if she wasn’t screaming, which, in all honesty, she would have preferred, if she had been given the choice. She kind of didn’t want to spend the rest of eternity with a sore throat — or was that not how it worked? Whatever, it didn’t matter, Rose was going to die, anyway, end of story.
…or, as it turns out, not quite the end of the story after all.
Apparently, landing (could you even call it landing?) in the void between her Earth and Pete’s World felt like falling down on grass, and you could hear people, teenagers, they sounded like, talking distantly in the background.
She pulled herself up from the ground with a grunt, still very disoriented. “ Christ… ” She muttered, standing up and trying to get the worst of the dirt and grass off her.
Rose heard a voice more clearly, and she is a slave to curiousity, so she strained to listen“ Hey guys! This… all, but… ” Oh, get they’re American, just what she needed.
Another voice, more feminine, “ I have to… -ome .”
“ We’re almost there !” Came another.
“ Sorry, man, curfew… on, let’s go. ” Said the first voice.
The second said, “ Good luck .” Rose couldn’t help but become more interested in what had been going on before she fell to the ground. But, what she was more interested in, was how she ended up there. This definitely wasn’t the void, it was nothing like how The Doctor described it.
The other voices, and more, continued talking, though Rose was uninterested in their conversation.
“Uh, who are you?” Rose thought she recognised that voice.
She bit her lip. Shit. Okay, play it cool, Rose. Get in character, you’re a cool American 19 year old girl. “…nothin’.” Rose said, in a horrific fake American accent.
“You look pretty rough, do you want to go to my place?”
Rose was about reply, when—
“ El ! You just can’t invite random strangers to your place, she could be a murderer!”
This “El” looked at him with a look on her face that Rose couldn’t quite figure out. She dropped the accent and said, “If it’s any consolation, I’m not a murderer. And a place to stay would be rather nice.”
“I’m sure Hopper won’t mind!”
The other kid — she said kid, but really they didn’t look that much younger than Rose herself — sighed and walked away, muttering something. “Who’s Hopper?” Rose asked, still not exactly sure what the hell was happening and why she accepted.
“The chief? You don’t sound like us, are you not from Hawkins?”
Rose narrowed her eyes. Surely El was joking, right? Or did she genuinely not know about England? Rose knew a lot of Americans weren’t that up to speed with their geography, but really ?!
It turned out that Hopper did mind, a bit. Well, not so much about Rose staying, more for offering her to stay when she was a complete stranger. Though, he was significantly less worried than Rose thought that he ought to have been. Her mother almost threw her out of the house a few years ago, well, a few years in the future, for bringing her then-boyfriend around that her mum had met and heard about multiple times. Or maybe her mother was just very overprotective.
“I never asked — what’s your name?” Rose asked. She thought she knew El’s name, but it was likely that it was a nickname.
“El. Short for Eleven. You?”
“Rose.”
“Pretty name.”
Rose smiled. “Thanks. Your name’s pretty too.”
Eleven’s friend from before, which Rose now knew was actually her boyfriend and named Mike, had come back to her house and they were in her room doing whatever teenagers in relationships did.
Rose had gone out for a little bit of a stroll around town, to get a bit of a feel of the place, so she had missed whatever had happened with Hopper, Eleven and Mike, leaving her very confused as of when she came back. She decided not to pry.
That night, while laying down on the sofa, Rose realised something. She should have figured it out when she saw just about everything in Hawkins, but yet she still hadn’t put the pieces together yet. Rose wasn’t in 2006 anymore. She was… well, she didn’t know the exact year yet, but maybe sometime in the 80s?
She, as quietly as she could, tiptoed over to where her jacket was hanging discarded over the back of a chair and pulled out her phone.
The door creaked as it opened, and the cool night air bit at her skin and made her desperately wish she’d at least put her jacket back on before going out.
Rose found herself going call someone — but who? No one. Everyone she was close with was in another universe… except maybe The Doctor. No… calling him would be too cruel, if she was still in her world. And she couldn’t call Mickey, or her mum, because as far as she knew they were in Pete’s World, and her phone may have been able to phone anyone in any time from any planet, she wasn’t so sure on different universes altogether.
She sighed, and went back inside, hiding under the warmth of the two blankets she had been provided with.
It wasn’t the ideal sleeping situation, but it would have to do, because Rose didn’t have a house and El and Hopper didn’t have a guest bedroom for her to stay in, so the sofa, or couch, as they would say, would have to do for now, at least.
Rose struggled to get to sleep, and when she did, she’d be woken up by something that usually wouldn’t bother her, had it been any normal day.
She clutched her phone in her hand, under the covers, and waited for sunrise to roll around.