It's all AU.

Romana was, finally, not quite hiding. She was in the middle of New New York, on a park bench, reading. She looked quickly up from her book, at a familiar face. Just a much younger version or it.

"Jack?" she asked, clearly not sure.

Eric was moving to the bar. He had a duffle bag slung over his shoulder, filled with his clothes. There was a very decent basement at the bar.

A man was walking a few paces ahead of him, and something was bugging him about him. Until he narrowed it down. Two heartbeats.

Long strides easily had him catch up with the two-hearted creature. "You're one of these aliens," he stated.

It took him several days, but in the end he could no more stay away from Jean-Claude in this place than he could avoid himself. It was less about desire than need -- had it been about desire he certainly wouldn't have found himself rapping lightly at Jean-Claude's door, waiting on the (beautiful) bastard he loved as much as he loathed.

Brant was sitting on a sofa in the lobby of the hotel. There was a cup of tea in his hand, but his hand (and the tea, obviously) were both resting on an end table beside him. He wasn't just pale, he was *white* to the lips, and his eyes were closed. The contrast between his eyelashes and the pallor of his skin would have been pretty. If he'd looked less like a corpse.

Koschei was on the room of a tall building, working on a sensor array to gather data and start on his 'trick time into moving' project. In a slightly foul mood that he couldn't find Theta to show off to and talk at, but not enough to stop working. Driven, was the word for it.

Working made the drums manageable, if not an any way quieter. Everything feel into rhythm. Funny how that worked.

Brant let himself into the room and smiled easily toward Jason. He stepped out of his shoes while he locked the door. "Hey. I hear you need a hot-water bottle with a pulse."

Jack had a bag on his shoulder, and for once, was free of his greatcoat. Back in the t-shirt and jeans that brought back memories of easier times, he was planning on making the most of the sunshine - or planetshine or whatever it was - and there was one person he really wanted to do that with.

"Got a few minutes?"

After indirectly getting confirmation that Brant was appearently getting eaten by a vampire, he couldn't help it. He had to go check on him. So he went and knocked by Brant's door. Easiest thing.

The Doctor literally ran into Brant in the hallway of his TARDIS. Stopped. "Hello, Brant. Did you need something?"

Waking in this pocket universe was not quite similar to waking in Jean-Claude's own world. His body still seemed to follow the cycle of day and night, but with the absence of any true sun, the pull and sense of sunrise and set were lacking. Less demanding.

It meant that he woke slower, opening his eyes on darkness to know from scent and the shifting air currents in the room that he was not alone. "Mon lupe, you have closed the light?"

He spotted the Master and darted across to the sidewalk, where he fell in step with him.

"You." That came out a little steelier than he'd expected, and took even him off guard. He cleared his throat and tried again, aiming for a lighter tone. "You're not avoiding me are you?"

"I need a gun," Brant announced to no one in particular. "A really big one. You want to go shopping for one with me?"

Brant was frustrated and confused. He got himself a cup of coffee, added a lot of cream and sugar and asked the person nearest him in the lobby: "Does being tied up and fucked ever really fix anything?"

There was no way to be certain that just because the man in the park looked like the Master he'd met with River that he was. No way by looking, anyway. The fact that it was also the Master who'd unlocked Brant's memories made things simpler. Jack might not have had direct contact with the man, but that distant faint connection gave him a 'flavor' of the Master's mind, distinctive enough to identify him with the faintest, politest brush of contact.

He settled on the bench, wrapping his coat around him against the chill of night, reminded himself that the Master could always say no, and waited to be acknowledged.

Theta grabbed a bottle of milk then headed into the aquarium in New New New New York. He peered through a tank then waved at Brant. "Hello."

Jack had meant what he said to the Master - he didn't believe in rivals. At least, not emotionally. That didn't mean his thoughts or emotions were any clearer when he left the Time Lord in the hotel lobby.

He'd intended to go to find Brant. Instead, his steps took him up the stairs. Up, and up, until he came out on the roof, hands pushed into his pants pockets, coat pushed back from his hips, head tilted back as if it made it easier to breathe, eyes closed.

It wasn't like the fall would kill him if anyone pushed him, anyway. Not permanently.

The Master got laid. And slept a lot more. When he finally emerged from the TARDIS, he looked significantly less like shit.

Time to go looking for his people. Like Brant.

continued from here

The TARDIS that the man led them to - and it took seeing the TARDIS for Jack to actually connect he was another version of the Doctor, which given that he'd already seen the sonic screwdriver and heard him mention the TARDIS, was a pretty big indicator of how preoccupied he was with Brant's condition - wasn't the same one Jack knew, but similar enough that he didn't pay much attention to the differences. He just carried Brant in to the console room, mentally reached out to greet the TARDIS with a mildly obscene caress, and looked back at the Doctor. "Which way?"

He actually had to look for the Master. Fortunately, he didn't have to look very hard. He saw The Master's Jack leaving the room, remembered what he'd heard about them staying togehter and knocked on the door.

He'd meant to just step outside for some air. It had been an eventful day, though in his experience, weddings usually ended up being pretty dramatic, even without alien intervention. This one, though...Jack shook his head, and chuckled, looking up at the night sky. Rhys had a lot to cope with, and yeah, he was probably good enough for Gwen. If he kept trying hard.

Taking a sip from his champagne glass, he turned to head back into the building, intending to go back to the function room and supervise the clear-up operation.

Only the building he went back into wasn't the one he'd just left. He looked around, recognized New New (he'd not quite identified how many times) New York through the window, shrugged, and lifted his glass in the direction of the back of the nearest (familiar-looking) person. "Here's to you."