It's all AU.

John had had it to the back teeth with the cell he was in. 

He'd had a go at jimmying the lock with a nail he'd found stuck in his boot sole, with no luck. Well, he hadn't really expected it to work, but it had been worth a go. This place wanted him here, as did Jack, and to a certain extent, John himself, so it wasn't letting him out in a hurry. Didn't stop him from glaring at the lock every few minutes, daring it to stop it's annoying habit of shifting.

He'd paced out the cell dimensions, going through mathematical puzzles with the numbers. Had made several small origami cranes out of the crappest books Jack had left him, and practiced headstands until he was dizzy. He'd even had a wank, but that only served to make him think of sex, and that just made him want to get out again.

John wanted a drink, a shag and something to eat, and he wasn't too fussy about which order or combination they happened in, as long as it was soon.

Looping his legs over the halfway horizontal bar of the cell door, he was swinging upside down when he heard the door of the jailhouse open. He swung up and jumped to his feet. "About bloody time, I'm dying here."

Jamie chewed at the cuticle of his thumb; the nail was too short now to do any quality biting. He was half-curled in a chair in the lobby of a hotel, writing in a bound book, neat hand tiny on the mostly empty page.


He was swearing softly in a language that wouldn't be invented for five thousand years from his time.

The Master was sitting in the park with his back against a tree, whittling a small branch into a stake.

Romana was headed towards the library to return a book, and pick out some new ones, when she spotted the Doctor from behind. A Doctor, at least, the tall thin incarnation in the suite, that seemed to correspond with after the war. Well, she could try to talk to him without the ghost effect. She hurried to come up beside him, and tilted her head back to beam up at him. "Hello, Doctor," she said, in fairly good cheer.

There was a good reason Jamie was stretched out on a bench in just his boxers.

Really.

His eyes were closed and he was sprawled out, soaking up the sun. His clothes were in a pile beside him.

Another day, another meal in the - what sort of felt like a sun. Romana looked up to see a young woman settling a table over.

"Pardon my forwardness," she called out, "But there are so many men about. And so few of us. Would you mind joining me, so that we may despair of their ways?"

She didn't usually give one damn about who anyone's gender was. Except, as she'd told the Doctor, the imbalance was interesting. And Doctors kept making such a fuss about it. So, she was annoyed. And curious who this woman was.

He walked out of the kitchen and into the dining room, carrying a cup of tea and actually eating a piece of celery. A night with the Master curled half on top of him was so peculiar that if it had been later (or any time at all, actually), and he'd been a different sort of man, with different physiology, he'd have wanted a drink.

As it was, it wasn't. It wasn't late, it was morning (as far as he could tell). He wasn't a different sort of man, he was him. He was a Time Lord, he had the physiology he had, and he wasn't having a drink, he was having tea and celery. He made a mental note to find some nutella next time, as he glanced around the dining room.

He narrowly saved himself from choking to death on his tea when he spotted Romana. Oh, well. It rather quite figured that she'd be here, and he couldn't imagine it being any less startling than his encounter with the Master had been. He walked over, sat down and smiled pleasantly.

"Hello. Been here long?"

Romana sat on the grass in the park, munching on an apple, studying the sky. She probably should be far more interested in why it had changed and had kept shifting, the last few days, but it didn't seem to be tied to anything malevolent. She couldn't summon up the energy to really care beyond that, and besides, it was comforting.


She saw movement out the corner of her eye and turned to smile at nice looking young man walking by, and to say hello. Well, a nice looking, young looking man that also appeared to be fixed point in time and space. Interesting. She gave him her most gracious politician's smile. Not quite real, because she was startled, but a very very good approximation.

Romana had, in all honesty, been hiding out a bit. Reading in the library. Poking around shops. Enjoying the pleasant days outside. Eating lots of food. But not being sociable. This was a forced vacation, and she was allowed to hide a bit. Besides, most of the conversations she'd had here were a little on the upsetting side, no matter who they were with, it seemed.

She was beginning to get bored now. She didn't want anything too daring, or exciting - she knew she'd get plenty of that when she went back home. But she was certainly willing to give being sociable another go.

She sat in chair in the hotel lobby, a mug of tea in hand, planning on making conversation with the next person who walked past.

It seemed to Estelle that more and more people were showing up in Elsewhere -- she'd taken to calling it that in her head ever since her discussion with the professor -- every day. She wondered where and when they were all from; how they'd ended up here.

"Well, you're not going to find out unless you talk to more of them!" she exclaimed, mostly to herself, as she took a seat in the lobby of the hotel.

The Doctor lay dozing on the grass in his favourite spot in the park, beside the skins of the three bananas he'd just eaten. He'd go and put them in the bin when he could be bothered to get up.

He was relaxed and content, continuing to enjoying his holiday from the real world and all its responsibilities and memories. There were things he was going to have to face eventually, but he'd been doing a really good job of avoiding them so far.

Toshiko had been slowly working her way through the library since she'd run into Yana there; she was still in the As mostly because she was going book by book, afraid she'd miss something important if she went skipping about the shelves.

"Now, let's see. Where was I?" she asked, trailing her fingers down the books. She almost wished for the alien reader device.

He was soaking wet, as he walked into the dining room. Really dripping, all over the carpet.

The truly strange part was that he didn't seem to notice. He took a cup of tea and a chair, ignoring the 'squish' when he sat. He swiped a stream of water away from his nose to keep it dripping into his cup, and looked around. "Well. That was fun," he said, to no one in particular.

Romana wandered out of the hotel and down the street, looking for any sign of the Doctor, whatever point in time he might come from. Being brought here and her encounter with the Master had rattled her, but she was still determined to try to discover the rules of this strange place, and get back to her proper time, if possible. She was fairly certain that if the Doctor had been here for while, he'd be investigating too. He might even have answers. And despite what the Master said, she was sure he'd be happy to see her.

Romana had been going for one of her walks alone, at night, in the long corridors of Citadel. The Citadel was never completely quiet, of course, but at night she was much more likely to have some time alone to clear her head. She had finally managed push away her worries, and to concentrate only on the process of walking and breathing, when she turned the corner and was abruptly *not* in the Citadel.

She looked to be in a lobby of an Earth-style hotel, in fact. Possibly in the late 20th to early 21st century. How had she gotten here? It seemed real. She didn't want to think that this was some sort of trick, but it was possibly even worse if it wasn't. What could have possibly been powerful enough to yank her from Gallifrey without warning?