It's All Too Much (Open)

[The Tenth Doctor]

The Doctor always somehow ended up back on Earth. He had adopted the planet as his own, and the TARDIS seemed unable to forget that fact. He had no logical reason to step foot on Earth again so soon after he had dropped of Adelaide and the others. But that had to be at least four decades into the future. By the looks of things, this was still the very early twenty-first century on Earth. Maybe it was a hint that he needed to try and find another companion because some of the best he had ever had had come from this time period.

He looked back over his shoulder at the TARDIS, as if she could read his mind and was going to give him some kind of a sign that he was correct in thinking that. But she was as incongruous as a police box could be in a small town somewhere in England. "All right. You win...this time," he told her, not feeling at all odd about talking to what looked like a big, wooden box because there was no one around to give him strange looks.

And that was because wherever she had decided to drop him off appeared to be one of those towns where the citizens were up by eight o'clock in the morning and locked inside for the rest of the night by five o'clock in the evening. The TARDIS really wanted him to find some brilliant human being here?! Fat chance of that happening...Oh, there he was being rude again. He should suspend all judgments until he found a living soul in the place that could tell him where he was.

The Doctor began to walk towards what he believed would be called the town's Main Street, although a street that appeared to have nothing more exciting than a post office and a small pond probably shouldn't be called a 'Main Street.' Finally, he did spot an old lady, carrying a large bundle out of the post office. The Doctor crossed the street. "Excuse me, ma'am, where am I?" he inquired. The old woman looked at him like he was a mad man but, in the next second, her expression softened as she realized what had probably happened here. A long night of drinking could make one forget where they were.

"I was your age once," she said, although the Doctor had no idea what she was talking about, "You're in Leadworth, my child." Leadworth? Could the TARDIS have picked him a more random town to drop him off at? "Thank you," he offered the lady, "Enjoy the rest of your evening." Instead of walking down the rest of Main Street, the Doctor began retracing his steps back towards the TARDIS. Leadworth seemed to be a sleepy town that was in no immediate danger of anything happening. Sure, the TARDIS had probably brought him here for a reason but that reason would have to appear before he reached her doors because he wasn't going to stick around here any longer than he had to.

[THE ELEVENTH DOCTOR]

Leadworth. Quiet. Pleasant. Pretty. Boring.

At least, that was the Doctor's opinion of the place. It wasn't an interesting town, at least... not yet. Well, maybe not. After hitting the rest button on the universe the Doctor had eliminated all the cracks in space and time... meaning no Prisoner Zero. No crack in little Amy's wall. No Atraxi coming down to threaten to blow the world up in order to contain its dangerous prisoner. Funny how all those memories didn't properly exist any more. Changing events on such a large scale, especially considering how it had influenced the Doctor's life so significantly... it really made one's head hurt if they tried to think about too much. Regardless, on the whole, Leadworth was a dull little place, only made interesting because Amy and Rory came from there.

Imagine, then, his surprise at finding a new and interesting thing about the boring little British town. Well, there had always been one little bit about it that had drawn the Doctor's curiosity: the duck pond. Amy had said there hadn't been any ducks. That there had never been any ducks. That made its title as a duck pond absolute rubbish, in the Doctors opinion. How could it be called a duck pond if there weren't any ducks?!

Well, turns out there was a good reason: the pond wasn't really a pond at all. It was a portal, hidden beneath the deceptively calm waters. And the Doctor had just stumbled through it from the opposite side.

Wet! Aah! The Doctor hadn't been expecting this! The Doctor burst the surface of the pond's waters, spluttering and coughing. He blinked, wiping the water from his eyes and the loose strands of his hair back from his eyes as he saw, to his surprise, he had landed in the familiar little town. Well, surfaced. That meant his TARDIS was back in Isstvan IV, where he had stumbled (rather clumsily, he had to admit) through the portal.

Had he a moment he would have been content to float there, working out the wheres and whys of this particularly-placed portal. Who'd put one at the bottom of a rubbish duck pond?! But he'd chosen to surface at a time of the day when people were actually out and about... and staring at him. Well. Surfacing in the local duck pond out of nowhere was a good enough reason to be stared at, he supposed.

It wasn't hard, hauling himself out of the shallow waters with an awkward smile, like a kid who had just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and was hoping to charm his way out of trouble. Then, with as much dignity as he could muster, he straightened his soaking wet clothes and shrugged. “Morning,” he half called to a gaggle of older ladies off to the post office. “Don't mind me. Duck pond inspecting.”

They only stared at him, muttering back and forth to one another. This made the Doctor slouch a little. Wrong excuse, then. No matter! He'd probably best be gone from here before the police were called. People liked to call the police at the most inopportune times. He doubted that men in bow ties were a common thing to come floating up from the pond.

Sooo, he'd best be off then. With a cheerful smile that was not returned by anyone, he turned and sauntered off as if this were the most normal thing in the world. Which, even for him, it wasn't. And now, with his TARDIS on the other side of a portal that he he had no idea on how to activate from this side at the bottom of a duck pond, he was stuck for the time being until he could hash something out. Thinking on the portal, though, it had to belong to a smuggling ring of some kind. The Yuuzan Ra, perhaps? A pesky little group, after petty things, some of which were easily available here on Earth. Made sense, then, to sneak a little portal here.

Shouldn't be hard to get home, then! The smuggling ring was more of a harmless little bother than anything else, and the Doctor had encountered them enough to know how they worked. Shouldn't be hard to---

His brain was derailed by the glimpse of a familiar jacket out of the corner of his eye. This caused the Doctor to pause, blinking in surprise as he swung his gaze to settle upon the back of a very familiar head. “What...?”

What was HE doing here?! Although he'd run across himself more times than was probably healthy over the centuries, it was always a little... off-putting to be seen coming across your younger self. Common sense dictated that he should let himself go, ignorant of the fact that he was staring right at himself, and focus on getting back to the TARDIS properly through the portal. Paradoxes and all that.

But this was the Doctor. He'd run across himself before, and many times. And damn was he on a big personal ego trip, saving the universe and all that. Again. Even the Doctor could disregard common sense sometimes... not to mention this one occasionally left his common sense back home. BESIDES! He'd done it before with little to no issue. Shouldn't be a problem this time around, eh?

“Oy! Doctor!” He called, trotting up to the previous incarnation of himself, not even bothering with a proper introduction. He'd figure it out soon enough. “What're you doing here? Oh no, don't answer, I think I may know.” That was always the odd bit about meeting in with yourself in the past; you got to remember the things doubly at once. Sure, remembering it as his past self always came in a bit fuzzy, but...! “Funny how that is, you know?”

-- -- -- -- -- --

Words- 978
Notes- Oh Eleven. You are an idiot.

[The Tenth Doctor]

A voice cut through the still of the evening...Well, cut through if you ignored the chattering of the people who had errands to run this evening. But those voices didn't matter; the only one that mattered was the one that had called out his name. The Doctor turned around on his heels expecting to see some face that he hadn't seen in who knew how many years. The Time Lord never forgot anyone he had ever encountered. But this face was one that he had never seen before. And he would remember someone who wore an outfit like that, and it appeared this man had just taken an evening swim in the small pond in town.

It didn't make sense that this man knew his name; it didn't make sense that this man apparently knew why the Doctor was here. Absolutely nothing was making sense right now! "The Doctor. Yes, that's me," he said, his cheerful smile crossing across his face. He could still be his general genial self, even if things were a tad bit confusing, because the Doctor always got the answers he needed eventually.

"And you are?" he inquired. Oh, what if this man was a fan? The Doctor had just recently run into his fifth incarnation and had been accused by his old self of being a fan. How ironic would it be if he had run into a fan now? The Doctor did the best he could keeping his existence from the general public but things still always seemed to find a way online these days--these days being the twenty-first century, of course. All of those paranormal, conspiracy, and whatnot groups out there, the Doctor was bound to draw some attention to himself, no matter how careful he was.

But, even if this man was a fan, it didn't explain how he knew what the Doctor was doing here when the Doctor had no idea himself why the TARDIS had brought him here. "What exactly am I doing here?" he asked, his voice filled with the doubt of someone who knew they were asking a silly question but they still couldn't help themselves from asking it nonetheless. He could blame time traveling on that one, usually have to ask both where and when he was.

This bloke was making no sense. It seemed he had been lost in his own thoughts when he uttered out his last question. "Funny how what is?" All the Doctor could do was ask his own questions in return. The sooner he found out what was going on here, the sooner he could figure out why he was here; and the sooner he found out why he was here, the sooner he could fix whatever he needed to and then be on his way again to somewhere more exciting and beautiful than Leadworth.

Notes: To borrow a quote from Eleven: "Doctor not following this. Doctor very lost." hahaha

[THE ELEVENTH DOCTOR]

As the Tenth Doctor could only respond at this meeting with confusion, the Eleventh Doctor could only roll his eyes and let out a short, exasperated sigh. Oh, rubbish! This nonsense happened every time he ran across himself. Well, not always. Sometimes. Other times he’d had the other Time Lords meddling in on his affairs. The nerve they’d had! Interfering with his own interfering.

Luck, then, that there weren’t any Time Lords left. Just him and…. er himself.

Funny then, how he was deducing who he was. As brilliant and as clever as the Doctor could be (if he didn’t mind saying so himself), sometimes he was… well, quite dim.

In the past, the Doctor had sometimes delighted in coincidences such as these. It was always a fun little game, trying to see how long it took him to work out who he was talking to. Oh, the excuses he had come up with over the years! But that game often required patience on this end of the whole affair, and the normally short attention span of the Eleventh Doctor was cut even more fine with the fact that he was thoroughly drenched. “Right. Well, you’d think you’d be better at this.” Straightening his sodden and wilted bow tie, the Eleventh Doctor’s face split into a smile. “Hello Doctor. I’m, well, the Doctor. Your replacement, to be more specific.”

There! That should sort things out well enough! Well no, maybe not. Would the Tenth want proof? Sometimes the younger Doctors would want proof. Pity he didn’t carry his recorder any more. He could have played a little ditty! Alas the instrument was misplaced somewhere in the TARDIS. Though… it had been centuries since he had last played. No doubt he would be terrible. Maybe it was a good thing, then, that he had left it behind.

Without giving his predecessor a chance to properly respond, the Doctor clapped his hands together, grinning broadly. “Well! That’s all settled then!” Hardly, but the Eleventh didn’t want to waste any times on details. That was slow and boring and not at all fun. “So! Fancy giving me a lift? I seem to have left my TARDIS on the other side of a rather bothersome portal and wouldn’t mind a ride back. Won’t be long, promise.” Offering his best devil-may-care smile, the Doctor peeled his tweed jacket from his sopping wet form… and almost immediately regretted it. It may have been a relatively pleasant day out, but he was still soaked to the bone, and in equally sopping clothing, it got cold rather quickly.

“Still don’t know what you’re doing here,” he added, furrowing his brow, his brow furrowing as he leaned in uncomfortably close to study his younger self. “Come to think of it, still don’t know what I’m doing here. Oh well!” Leaning back, he grinned once again. “Much more fun this way. Nothing but surprises!”

“And,” he added, his smile taking on an apologetic tone. “I seem to be rather wet. Might I also borrow a towel?”

-- -- -- -- -- --

Words- 506
Notes- So short. My apologies.

[The Tenth Doctor]

Time traveling was full of inherent problems, and one of those problems was running into people that may have met him in their past but their meeting together was still waiting in his future. The Doctor had to look no farther than Sally Sparrow or River Song. Sally had given him all of the information he needed to help her help him get the TARDIS back to him when he was stuck in 1969 with Martha. And the situation with River had been quite a bit more complicated. She had known his real name and just about everything else about him, while he had never seen her in his life.

The Doctor would have bet that that was what was happening right now. This man had already met him some time in his past. But then words streamed out of the other man's mouth that the Doctor was definitely not expecting to hear. The Doctor's jaw dropped open for a moment before he snapped it shut again. He was going to utter out a 'what?' but, before he could, the other him went began speaking again.

This is what he had to look forward to? Granted, this incarnation of the Doctor had lost his TARDIS on occasion but never had he found himself climbing out of portal that just happened to be in a pond. Still, meeting his future self couldn't be all that bad. With only one TARDIS on hand, they didn't have as much to worry about as when he had encountered his fifth incarnation. Despite the fact that the Tenth Doctor didn't want to think about his end coming, he couldn't help but let a small grin cross his face. "How brilliant is this!" he said, "Having to help my older self out."

Yes, interacting with the future him was dangerous and, yes, bringing him into the TARDIS might be even more dangerous but who wouldn't be intrigued with spending time with their future self? Even if your future self seemed to be a little...well, a little crazy, he supposed. And how could he not know what he was doing here? It was his past; how could he not remember what had happened?

But this Doctor had an idea now. "What's a portal doing at the bottom of a lake in a small town in the middle of nowhere?" he mused to himself...Well, to himselves. The request for a towel hadn't fallen on deaf ears but there were more important things to be worrying about right now than a wet him. Besides, it was his future self's fault for deciding to hop through the first portal he ran across without trying to figure out where it was going to send him to.

And there was something else on the Doctor's mind; less important than a mysterious portal but still on his mind, nonetheless. "And a bow tie? Really?" he said, his head slightly cocked to one side. "That's only slightly better than a decorative vegetable." That was the curse of regenerating. He just never knew what he was going to get.

Notes: No need to apologize! Post length never bothers me!!!