It's all AU.

He'd only stepped back into the TARDIS for a moment, to grab his hat.

Then the ruddy old girl had gone mad - some sort of power surge. He'd lunged for the controlls, but none of the readings made any sense at all. They stopped spinning, but they still didn't make a lot of sense; Time didn't just stop like that.

The Doctor frowned, smacked at the console and got no respose. He gave up and went to the door to poke his head out and look. "Peri-" he bagan.

This was not where he'd just been, and Peri was most certainly not here. The look of slight confusion deepened, along with the wrinkle between his eyebrows. He leaned back into the TARDIS, looked around and then shrugged philosophically.

He stepped out, closed the door securely behind him. He approached the first person he saw and said, very politely: "Pardon me, I seem to have taken a wrong turn. Could you tell me when I am?"

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.

He'd been keeping an eye on that particular TARDIS. When he first saw a Master (the Master, for him, in many ways) come and go, he'd mostly been relieved. He figured it meant he'd actually heard something Jack had told - or tried to tell- him.

When no one appeared for a while after that, he got worried - and convinced himself to get more worried, until he let himself in to check. Then of course he discovered things were just fine, thanks.

At that point he more or less stopped, head to the side and looked confused.