Rec: Timepiece

[nonelvis]

Story: Timepiece
Author: LizBee
Rating: All Ages
Word Count: 5,485
Author's Summary: Unscrupulous temporal engineers and a major breach in the laws of time lead Rose Tyler and the first Romana to join forces to rescue the Doctor. Both of him.
Characters/Pairings: Romana I, Rose, Four, Ten
Warnings: None

Recced because: This is a delightful character study – sure, there's a plot about rescuing the Doctor before he accidentally gets erased from time, but it's completely secondary to the interactions between Rose and Romana. Romana is her usual clever and competent self, but still needs Rose's human ingenuity to save them from a scrape or two on their way to locating their wayward traveling companions. The dialogue sparkles – lizbee always does a beautiful job writing Romana – and as I commented on her journal when she posted this, this story made me miss Romana I.

Rose heard voices as they approached the processing room. Distorted by distance and echoes, but the tones were definitely conversational. Not, Rose thought, an interrogation or -- anything.

In fact, she decided, it sounded more like a lecture than anything else, and she suddenly had a good idea of which party possessed a low, booming voice and enjoyed having an audience. The exasperated sigh that escaped Romana's lips confirmed Rose's suspicions.

"This," she whispered to Romana, "is the most pointless rescue I've ever seen."

"Sssh," said Romana. But a moment later she added, "you'd think they were just waiting for us to turn up. And will we get any thanks?"

"You can wait for it. I've only got one lifetime."

"It will be, 'Oh, Romana, so glad you got here, we were just discussing the latest in--' oh, in shackles or something. And then he'll offer us a jelly baby."

"Why?"

"To annoy me, I expect."

Comments

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you so much for this rec! I'm utterly chuffed. *goes away to preen for the rest of the day*

[nonelvis]

You're welcome! And actually, this fic saved my butt, because I realized at the last minute I was short one rec for the week, I wanted to rec a story with Classic Who characters, and then I remembered I'd read something really nifty with Romana and Rose.