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Zinda's managed to wheedle the replicators into giving her some slacks and shirts (she's still not quite sure what kind of blue jeans to ask for -- Helena and Dinah both favor the kind that sit so low on their hips Zinda's sure they'll fall right off if they're not glued on), but she's back in uniform today, humming to herself as she strides along the corridor towards Ten Forward, whistling half the chorus and singing the rest under her breath as her boots keep the rhythm.

"Do doo, do doo...the boogie-woogle bugle boy of Company B."

Maybe Steph's around, or that fine Captain who was so pleasant after he holstered his gun, but Zinda? She's up for company of just about any kind.

As long as she can get a drink during it.

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Rose laughs.

It's true about the free food and drink, and she had momentarily forgotten it too. And of course, there was also the rumour that the drink, at least, was all completely synthetic. (Which is a bit rubbish, honestly.)

"It definitely is the thought that counts," she agrees. "Thank you.

"I'm Rose, by the way."

"Well, it's a little selfish," she admits. "I hate drinking alone."

She sticks a gloved hand out to shake, smile going wide and shiny with easy camaraderie. "Zinda Blake. Nice to meet you, Rose. I haven't heard an accent like that in a while."

"Zinda. That's a really nice name. Haven't heard it before."

Rose takes her hand briefly.

"Yeah? I s'pose there aren't many Londoners about." Certainly fewer East-Londoners at that. "Or d'you mean in general, back where you're from?"

The doors to Ten Forward slide open and Rose steps inside.

"Both, sorta."

She follows Rose in, and heads straight for the bar with a firm step: Zinda is a woman who rarely questions where she's going or why, even for something this minimal. "I was posted in England for a while. Got kinda used to hearing it around now and again."

Rose follows along, keeping pace with the other blonde.

"Right," she says, leaning into the bar for a moment, head tilted towards Zinda. She gives her uniform a glance and says, mostly for her own benefit, "You're a soldier, obviously."

She smiles ruefully, shaking her head.

"Weird, you know, I hardly even gave your uniform a second glance."

Has she gotten so used to being out of her own time that everything is what it is already?

"A friend of mine dresses similar. He's got this big fancy coat from the War that he's always wearin'."

"Pilot."

Which isn't entirely the same thing. The Blackhawks were a resistance group, only tangentially related to the official military.

It was a war. Everyone did what they could. But -- "Big coat?"

She thinks for a second, and throws her head back, laughing. "Funny, I met a fella like that just the other day. I don't guess your friend is one of our little group of castaways, is he?"

She nods, amused.

"And his name happens to be Jack Harkness, yeah?" Rose adds, a laugh bubbling up in her throat.

Well, Zinda's gorgeous, and she's got a similar uniform, and they've obviously experienced the same time (even if from different, parallel worlds) so ...

She's not entirely surprised.

"That's right! Captain Jack Harkness."

Tipping her head back as she laughs, it's not hard to see why the military would use her to plump up recruitments: she's all sparkling blue eyes and tossing hair and carefree delight. Add in an imagined wistful sigh of I just love a man in uniform, and her poster could just about double the sudden willingness of young men to run off and fight for their country. "He's a kick."

And then some.

"But you aren't military, are you?" Rose wears a style of clothing Zinda's unfamiliar with -- slouchy hoody and wide-legged jeans -- and her hair and makeup are a fair step away from military precision, even if she is cute as a button.

Not to mention Zinda'd been under the impression that Jack was from her time. Well -- close enough, anyhow. "Funny how you both ended up here, ain't it?"

"Oh, no, definitely not," Rose says with a laugh. "Just a regular ex-shop girl from the 21st century."

The thought of her being in the military is an amusing one, that's for sure. She's not cut out for something like that. She'll fight someone off if she has to, but being part of a bigger, greater army is not really something she'd ever want to do. There are plenty of much better people suited to it than she.

Nope, space/time-traveling is going to be her occupation for the rest of her life.

"It's lucky, really, that we did," she goes on, now that they're talking about Jack. "I hadn't seen him in a while. We sort of ... lost each other for a bit. I don't think we're from the same time, but ... time's always a bit funny traveling around with the Doctor, so I'm not exactly surprised. I'm just glad to see him again."

"Huh," she says, a little vaguely, but don't think it's rudeness, Rose, she's just lost for a second in thoughts of her own teammates from times gone by -- ones she'll never see again, except she guesses she's the lost one, not the other way around. Tossed out of time and back in again, and even if it doesn't hurt to think about so much anymore, there's still a wistful pull at her heart that tugs every time she thinks of those boys -- her boys.

They reach the bar; she drags out a stool and sits, mulling over Rose's words. "What d'you mean, time's funny?"

There's something cautious behind the overt friendliness that's always a part of her conversation: she'd be interested even if it weren't personal, but, well -- she can't say there isn't something there to pique her curiosity.

"Well, the sort of travelin' I do isn't ... it's not the 'get on a plane and head to Egypt' sort of thing. It's more like -"

Rose isn't sure how best to describe traveling with the Doctor, because it's kind of beyond words.

"It's more like head to Egypt, but we could see Cleopatra. Or see what happens to Egypt after the pyramids have gone and a new race of aliens have settled in. Somethin' like that.

"Time and space are sort of flexible with the Doctor." The Doctor and his TARDIS.

"Cleopatra --?"

Zinda whistles, long and low, and shakes her head in disbelief. "I'm a pretty good pilot, but that kinda travel is a little beyond me. How the heck d'you do it?"

And how come Rose is still here, if she can travel through time and all over creation so easily? It's not that Zinda doesn't like the Enterprise -- quite the contrary -- but if she could go, she probably would.

"He's got this ship? It's a time and space-ship," says Rose, smiling.

She's actually pretty fond of the TARDIS, for what it's worth. The sound of the engines whining and screeching is familiar and exciting, always managing to send little electrical pulses through her like bringing her to life.

It always means that the Doctor's coming, to save the world, or whisk her away.

"Bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside, too."

"So how come you're stickin' around here?"

She misses the Aerie One, the controls of the Citation-X leaping to life under her hands, misses holding it aloft and sending it soaring through the clouds. "If you don't mind my askin', I mean. Seems to me you got a ticket right on out of here."

"Whatever's pulled people here pulled us too," Rose answers. "M'not sure it's even working anymore, and no one'll let the Doctor down there to see whether he could fix it."

They were lucky to land at all, their trip through the time vortex had been so rough. And she remembers the systems shutting down, everything going dark save the emergency lighting, allowing a dim enough glow to let them out.

"But we're workin' on it. And it's not like we could leave everyone else behind."

That's not really a thing the Doctor and his Companion does.

"Uh-huh."

Her mouth twists in thought, and she ponders this for a minute, thinking hard. "So you 'n your friend are plannin' to bring everybody back home, is that right?"

If she sounds a little skeptical, well, maybe it's because she is. Heck, if she had a ship that could travel through time and space, she's not sure she'd go around advertising it to this crowd: nice as everybody seems, that's no surety that there's no one here who wouldn't use that information for their own ends.

She knows it sounds impossibly daft, maybe even a fool's mission. If she hadn't experienced it herself, hadn't seen what good saving people can do, she might think the same.

"Yeah. If there's a way to help," Rose says, "there's no harm in trying, especially since we're all in this together. It'd be the right thing to do, innit?"

"Well, there's no harm in bein' an optimist," Zinda says, diplomatically opting to cut the topic off at the pass, and reaching over to give the girl a friendly thump on the back.

The right thing to do is often a lot murkier than Rose seems to think, but there's no gain in pointing that out, either, so why bring her down? There's more than enough of that going around already. "You drink, Rose?"

"Yeah. Yeah, of course."

Rose maintains her smile - and all right, her optimism. She isn't entirely lost on Zinda's less-than-enthusiastic support, she isn't even sure she'd be so optimistic if she'd been with anyone other than the Doctor.

But she's seen things, lived impossible things, and with that kind of experience, it's easier to keep herself hopeful that not only can she and the Doctor get off this ship in due time, but they could help everyone else too. Because that's what the Doctor does.

"I'll have whatever you're havin'."

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