It's all AU.

A dark haired boy with a Welsh accent had found him and told him to look for the crankiest Jack he could find. That was. Vague and disturbing enough that the Doctor actually started looking, combing the town.

"Grandpa? You know the thing that went on last week, with Yerpie-boy an' the loups-garoux and all? Well, here's me thinking that it might just be over and I could get back to becoming Head Man, an' then this goes and happens.

You ever tried to walk into a room and find yourself out on the street, Grandpa? Not just out like being thrown out or nothing, either, really in a different place. Cuz I've walked through a door and been inside a miracle, but this ain't no miracle."


Perhaps it wasn't a normal immediate reaction, speaking to one's purse-comm immediately after finding one's self in a completely new place, but Rosa Caiman had never been normal, she'd always maintained.

(Besides, talking to her Grandpa had always stopped her from freaking out, even with the lobo-king on her tail, so it had been a calculated risk. Calm down and have people think she was crazy for talking to her wrist, or panic. She'd take being thought crazy any day.)

She didn't think it was Rio, and Rio summed up her entire experience with towns; they didn't have buildings like this back home, and she'd been about to enter a roadside diner before she'd ended up here.

Once he was finished talking with Susan, Jack only had one thought in his mind. The Doctor. His Doctor was here, somewhere here, and probably the only person in all of space and time that might possibly be able to tell him what the hell had happened to him.

Why he couldn't die.

If there was anything he could do to change that.

Hell, it's enough to send his feet in the direction of the bar. Might even be enough to have him break his habit and even drink something with alcohol in it.

The sight of a very familiar, and much missed back covered in a very familiar leather jacket, and the back of a head sporting very familiar ears standing near a much (or at least frequently) missed dartboard stopped his heart and breath for a moment, settling a low ache in his chest.

Definitely something with alcohol in it. Shit, this place was going to be hell on his carefully maintained liver. Collecting a beer from the bar and resisting the urge to ask if they knew how to mix a decent pan galactic gargle blaster, he made his way over to the dartboard and took a seat safely out of the line of fire.

Adam wasn't in any hurry to get back. He didn't want to have to face his mother, explain what had happened and what he'd done, and then try and convince her that he hadn't gone completely nuts while he was out in Utah. More than he was worried about explaining things to his mother, he hated the idea of having to face his father, knowing that he had been so close to getting the information that would have helped him get better. Still, it wasn't as though this place had many attractions to its credit. There were a few buildings, the essentials basically, but other than that...

Which was why Adam was left wandering the streets until he spotted the back of a familiar leather-clad figure, "Oy! You!" Adam shouted instantly, raising a hand to wave him down.

He hadn't left this place yet and some part of him regretted it while the longer part was looking on it as a vacation. Maybe his pysche had created this place to prevent it's fracturing. He almost liked that idea, except it meant that some people he'd met weren't real.

On the other hand, it meant that some of the people he'd met weren't real.

The Doctor whistled absently, juggling apples as he headed out of the hotel and onto the street.

Brant had eventually gotten some sleep. He stumbled out of his room, disshelved and rubbing his eyes, and right into what felt like a leather wall. He actually bounced back into the wall, dropped his hand and glared. Or tried to glare, since he wasn't nearly awake enough to glare.

"Wow, your ears are huge," he said, as he tried to recover. "But your coat's fantastic."

He'd gotten some sleep. He had not woken up, yet.

Having left the Doctor with his TARDIS somewhere on a floor above (she couldn't find any symbols to indicate which floor was which), Martha made her way down to stairs and followed the distant sounds of voices and the smell of food to find the dining room. There were a few other people there, but no one she recognised at first glance, and it wasn't too busy for her to find a table, get some of that purple stuff the Doctor had mentioned and some food she vaguely recognised.

Settling back in her chair, she looked around the room again, stopping when someone lifted their head to meet her gaze, and she gave them a somewhat hesitant wave.

He was looking for Jack.


It was surprisingly difficult to find people when you were actually looking for them. But he eventually did, in a library, coming up behind Jack, saying smoothly, "Captain."

He was poking about behind the bar, not looking for anything particular so much as just looking. He popped up just in time to spot a very, very, familiar face. He grinned, broadly. "Hello! I know you!"

Susan had experienced a lot in her short life, but the sudden dark and silence that had washed over her was something entirely new and disturbing. She had meant to step back inside her house, but instead she had ended up somewhere... Somewhere... Oh, Rassilon only knows. Wherever it was, she felt as though space was closing in on her in the vast expanse of darkness.

Or rather, the short expanse of darkness, Susan corrected herself as she raised an arm into it and ended up smacking her hand against a wall. No wonder she was feeling so encased. She was in some kind of cabinet or closet. How she had ended up there, she couldn't say. But at least it was something that was vaguely familiar. Groping in the dark, Susan eventually found the handle to the door, pushing it open slowly and peeked out. "Hello?"

Jack had spent the day eating, dozing and thinking - turning his discussions with Owen and Ianto over in his head, picking them apart for information, then using that information to form and test theories. After the sun was down he left the room he'd taken for the day, and headed outside through the bar.

He was just there, now. Out of the way of any traffic through that door, coat pushed back and his hands in his pants pockets. He tilted his head back to squint upward into the sky. Into a sky with the hazy light of a galaxy spread across it, points of light scattered in no configuration he recognized.

"You have any time or place you want to go?"

That was the last thing he remembered before he'd been seperated from the Bad Wolf. He shook his head. Slid sideways through time and space, instead of skipping across the waves. Not what his... teacher? He frowned, then nodded to himself. Not what his teacher's computer was supposed to do. He didn't think she meant to come here, either. Somewhere... somewhere where he could hear more than just lonely howls from someone who couldn't connect on the same level as he remembered connecting.

He shook his head again, looking around a moment before settling down into a nearby chair, just watching the people around him. Looking for someone who wasn't all bound up in regimented time and a short lifespan and blinkered senses.

The TARDIS had landed here without any actual intent on the Doctor's part. Still. Nice little town, ...somewhere. He poked the console; the readings were all strange, spinning and jumbled. Which meant he wasn't going anywhere until he fixed it.

"Oh for..." He groaned, stripping off his jacket, grabbing his screwdriver, and rolling up his jumper sleeves. He took off the outside panel and crawled under the console, feet poking out. The inside of the console was a mess of wires, jury rigged over hundreds of years. He had to be more careful. Before he couldn't get new parts. Now he couldn't get new parts. He closed his eyes for a moment; he'd spent a lot of time under here.

He worked for hours; the readings were still wonky and his eyes were burning from focusing for so long. He slid out, rubbing his eyes, mumbling, "Must be missing somethin'."

He rolled down his sleeves and grabbed his jacket, locking the TARDIS door behind him as he stepped out onto the street under the dim glow of the arch of the street-lamp. He rubbed the back of his neck and headed down the street. The weather was cool. The town looked like earth, twentieth century. Figured. TARDIS loved this time on this planet.

It was easy to love this time.

He headed into a bar, part of a hotel, and sat at the counter, ordering a coffee. "Nice night," he said absently to the person sitting next to him.