It's all AU.

He'd thought he was doing fairly well keeping his mind together, but when a stuffed bear in a coat and hat walked through the hotel lobby he was forced to reassess. He put his newspaper down, got up and went out into the hall. It was gone. He came back in and demanded, of whoever happened to be handy, "Did you see that?"

Rhiannon curled up on a park bench with a basket of chips and a cheap novel, humming as she took the chance to relax. After all, this place would spit her back out when it was done with her, and she might as well enjoy herself. And it was an interesting cheap novel.

She looked up at movement in her peripheral vision, closing the novel with a smile when she saw a familiar face. "Doctor!" She held up the basket. "Care for some chips?"

Jack hadn't really expected to bump into the Doctor again so soon, but when he came across him sitting all alone outside a cafe he sighed, swallowed the last of the burger he'd been eating, and pulled out the chair opposite him.

"Hey," he said, sitting down with a faint, apologetic grin.

He left his TARDIS and started walking away from it with his hands pushed deep in his pockets. He spotted the Master - or rather a Master - in the distance, leaving another TARDIS. He narrowed his eyes just a bit, lenghtened his stride to catch up and headed straight for him.

"Have we met?" he asked, as soon as he was within speaking distance. "Never mind, it doesn't really matter. Would you care for a drink?"

"Oh, I am all over the place aren't I?" he asked, when he spotted a very familiar face on the street. He approached casually, hands in his pockets. "More Time Lords in one place since Gallifrey, and most of them me. That's just asking for trouble."

Theta had an odd look on his face, slipping his hand into another, larger one. "Do we lose all sense of proper public behavior when we get older?"

It didn't take a genius to figure out that it was some sort of temporal anomaly. The TARDIS was malfunctioning, there were more than a few Time Lords rattling about, and his time sense felt scrambled and muffled.

Something was going on out there.

The Doctor wanted to know what, and why.

He wouldn't mind figuring out how, either.

He made sure the TARDIS was secure - not just locked but dead-lock sealed - and walked away. Twenty first century architecture, the strangest sky he'd ever seen and not a single constellation that he recognized in it.

It took ten minutes of walking for him to reach the hotel. He walked through the front doors and into a lobby. When he saw someone else there he met their eyes, unflinching and steady. "Hello. I'm the Doctor. Who are you?"

No matter if the face they were wearing was familiar or not - the answer would tell him something. About when and where, if not how and why. Those things could come in time. Maybe.