It's all AU.

"No, K-9, no," Theta scolded, kneeling in the grass and scolding the tiny metal dog. K-9's head drooped and his beep sounded very sad. Theta modulated his tone instantly, "To the twelfth decimal, not the tenth."

Jack raised an eyebrow at the shelf of books in front of him, a faint smirk coming to his face at the titles before he looked over his shoulder to see if the door that he'd stepped through was still there. Figured that he'd go to check up on the progress on the renovations to his office only to step through a dimensionally transcendent door that vanished as soon as he'd done so. And of the four species he knew had that sort of technology, three wouldn't drop him in a library.

"Amusing," he said out loud, glancing up at the ceiling for lack of anywhere else to direct the statement. "Hope you're better than the Doctor at getting me back to the time and place I left," he added before shoving his hands into the pockets of his trousers, sauntering down the aisle between the stacks.

Peering into an open space, he let a grin creep onto his face at the sight of someone sitting reading a book. He leaned against the nearest shelf, waiting for them to look up.

Susan had contented herself in this place. She'd almost forgotten that there was even somewhere that she needed to return to. Almost. She was starting to get a little homesick. Just enough that the idea of looking for an exit back was starting to strike her. Of course, she'd worry about that a bit later. Right now, there were much more important matters to attend to.

Carrying two cups of tea, Susan slid in next to the familiar individual and smiled up at him, offering him one of them, "You look like you need this."

Owen ran a hand through his hair and closed the text book. There were only so many muscles he could memorise at a time and he'd reached that limit five muscles ago, at gluteus maximus.

He grabbed his jacket and his mobile phone. Knowing his mates, they'd be in a pub somewhere. He'd text them on a way, he decided, and left the small apartment he rented near the hospital – and stopped dead in his tracks.

He hadn't stepped out on the stairs, he'd stepped outside. His apartment was on the second floor. And the outside wasn't Cardiff, either, it was a village. A village with grass and smell and countryside.

"What the fuck?" Owen asked and turned around. His door was gone.

So, he was in a strange nexus were people from all over time and space, and even alternate universes, kept finding themselves. No explanation. There was at least one alternate version of himself about. He didn't like to think about what he knew about that universe at all. Best to just go the other way, if he saw himself, until he'd had some time to digest this new information.

Still, it was hard to tell how worried about this anomaly he should be, so he should gather some more data. The town itself seemed real enough. Maybe he could find a place to get a spot of tea, and find someone else to talk to. He wandered down the street looking for a shop with tea, and other customers. He wondered if he'd see any familiar faces, aside from his own.

Having made up his mind that by landing him here someone up there was telling him he needed a rest after what had been one hell of a year, the Doctor had decided to make the most of his enforced holiday from saving the world on a regular basis.

He ended up at the library and pottered around a bit before selecting a battered old human text on theories of time-travel and settling down in a squashy chair with his feet up on another one for a good laugh.

This, admittedly, was not what he'd been expecting when he battered down the metal door. He wasn't entirely sure what he'd been expecting, but he knew that it wasn't a town.

Vaguely, he thought he might have been expecting a hospital, although he couldn't quite remember why.

And that was the problem, wasn't it? he mused, wandering over to a bench and sitting down, absently leaning down to scratch at his foot. It felt like something had got caught around his big toe. He couldn't remember why he was expecting a hospital, he couldn't remember why he felt as though his hair was just slightly wrong, and he really couldn't remember why he was wandering around in a blanket.

Perhaps someone else would know why? Or perhaps it would come to him if he waited. Whatever the outcome, it wasn't as though he could do anything but wait, at the moment. And rest, as his chest still hurt for some reason that, yet again, he couldn't remember.

Susan had gotten quite used to it here. She actually enjoyed it, really, despite the questions that it filled her head with and the worries that it caused. But those were easy enough to ignore until she had someone there to discuss them with who understood what she was talking about. Which meant she was ignoring them most of the time. Right now, she was settled outside, leaning back against one of the trees that dotted the landscape, a book propped up on her knees as she flipped through the pages, absorbing the information. In fact, unless one watched her very closely, they would have had trouble telling that she was more than just a statue. The only movement that she was making was to turn the page.

Enveloped in her own world, it would have taken quite a bit to get Susan's attention right now.

Rowan was starting to freak a bit. It took a while, but he'd gotten around to it. So he started trying to surprise the doors into giving him an exit, opening it very fast then shutting it then again

It was dark again outside. The Master stood at the window of an upstairs landing of the hotel and stared out over the town. Nondescript buildings of no distinctive period or style, separated by unnamed streets. He still couldn't make any sense of this place.

And he missed the Valiant. He'd been Lord and Master of Earth for three months now and he'd got used to having absolute power. Here, he was just another person, as lost as everyone else. And all right, Lucy had told him exactly what was going to happen when he got back to the Valiant and they'd worked out what he needed to do when he got there – but he had to get there first.

He fidgeted restlessly, wondering where to go to find someone who might help him find out what was going on. Or, you know, someone just to alleviate the boredom.

Susan was enjoying herself. A place outside of time, outside of her reality, where her grandfather and so many other wonderful people were was like bliss to her attention starved self. David wouldn't miss her. From what she had overheard, people were dropped right back into the same moment they were pulled from. So it didn't matter how long she spent here. She had several hundred years before her appearance would change enough to be noticeable. And it would make things so much easier if she aged here in long spurts rather than spending hundreds of years on Earth, watching everything wither and die around her.

It didn't hurt that the 20th and early 21st centuries were her favorites in all of Earth history. So this was a very enjoyable area to be. Not to mention, the library was amazing. Flipping through a volume on quantum mechanics that she had gotten out early that day, Susan leaned back in the comfy chair that she'd found in the lobby of the hotel.

He'd gone home; well. To the hub at least, walking right back into his office to see an instant message on his hub system from Jack, double checking he was coming down, and the same date on the computer- same time even- as it had been when he left.

He went down. He played chess with Jack, then had sex on Jack's desk. Time had gone by. Eugene. John and Diane and Emma. He woke up the morning after John had died in Jack's bed; they hadn't fucked, he just had been a warm body next to Jack, to make up for the cold one he'd died beside in Ianto's car. He walked through the door of the kitchen to get coffee in just his boxers and undershirt and ended up back in the hotel with a sigh and an understand of how Lane had felt.

"Must be Monday."

( Cut for length and irrelevance )

He settled down on a stool, a shimmering glass of something potent and silvery in front of him and, while he was definitely drinking it, he was also was doing a lot of just turning the glass on the surface of the bar. The reflection and bounce of light off the surface was pretty, the shine and gleam was distracting and he was.

Homesick, actually.

Realizing he was homesick prompted him to take a bigger drink than was really a good idea, his eyes went a little wide, and he coughed. "It's always the pretty ones," he murmured and wheezed.

He was one to talk.

In the middle of the night, most people would be inside where it was considered safe, especially in an area where they were unsure of the quality of the residents. But Susan wasn't most people. So instead of being inside of the hotel building safe in one of its many rooms, she was seated cross legged on the ground, leaning back on her hands with her face tilted up and upwards toward the sky, studying the star formation with a confused yet curious and enraptured expression. None of them were familiar (odd considering she knew the constellations for several different galaxies and galactic positions by heart), but that didn't stop them from being beautiful.

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?"