FicWad

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Miranda hesitated deliberately, not sure what conclusions, if any, she could draw from that. "Doctor...?" she prodded hopefully.
The stranger's smile grew knowing. "Just the Doctor."

"As in, capital 'D'?"

"I suppose you could put it like that, yes," the stranger affirmed, clearly starting to enjoy her confusion.
For some reason, Miranda got the impression that this fellow had danced to this tune before, and was only waiting for her and the Doctor to complete the steps. She looked away from the stranger, to the Doctor, who was still eyeing the man with a volatile mixture of suspicion and confusion. For the first time since she'd known him, the Doctor appeared at a complete loss for words. The silence began to grow awkward for Miranda. "Uh, well, that's really funny, 'cos it so happens that my friend here also calls himself Doctor. That's an odd coincidence, isn't it?" She surreptitiously tugged on the Doctor's leather jacket, eyeing him. "Isn't it?"

"Something is very wrong here. What's going on?" the Doctor spoke up finally, his eyes never wavering from those of the stranger.

"I think we ought to go inside, actually," the stranger chirped mildly, indicating the brick walkway to the front door.
"Best if you two followed me, I think. The old chap's probably laid a few other surprises between here and the door."

Miranda began to feel the situation sliding away from her. Clearly the Doctor knew who this man was, and there was no doubt the other man knew the Doctor knew, so why was he (the other man) acting so nonchalantly about it, when the Doctor looked about to blow a gasket? Miranda's mind fled back a year, to that tense standoff she'd witnessed in the console room...the only time she'd ever seen the Doctor wield a weapon with deadly force; a memory she had hoped never to revisit. This man couldn't be another old enemy of the Doctor's, could he?

The stranger headed back onto the brick walkway and the Doctor followed. But Miranda, heart pounding recklessly, couldn't find the courage. Not again, not so soon. She felt the blood drain from her face.

"It's all right, Miranda, the rest of the ground is quite solid," the stranger assured her from the walkway.
Miranda couldn't even compose an answer. Her stomach was flipping wildly and she was aware that she must look completely strange, but to hell with how she looked. She had been deceived by charm and kindness once before.

The Doctor turned around to look at her. "What is it?" he asked quizzically.

Miranda could only look him in the eye, hoping his alien sentiments were close enough to a human's that he would understand what it was. Maybe he was used to walking into lion's dens, the kind of life he led, but Miranda hadn't his long experience with it, and was growing ever more certain that she didn't want to.

The Doctor came back and stared down into her face, which Miranda suspected must have looked as colorless as the drab sky. He didn't seem to be catching on.

"Wh-who is that?" she finally managed through her tight throat.

The Doctor scratched his temple self-consciously. "Ah, well, that's going to take a bit of explaining, see-"

"Indeed it will, especially once you've come inside," the stranger piped up from behind the Doctor.

The Doctor turned to him, evidently picking up a vibe lost to Miranda. "What's inside?"

"Well, the tea, for one thing. Please, just come inside and I promise everything will start making sense. Well, sort of, anyway. As much as it can, given the circumstances."

Oddly, the Doctor's heavy suspicion seemed to melt away. "You had me at 'tea.' Come on, Miranda." He patted the back of her head in that way he knew irritated her and loped back towards the house after the other man.

Miranda smoothed her hair reflexively, her panic subsiding. The Doctor wasn't acting as if they were in the company of a mortal enemy, and that was something she had seen firsthand. This guy, whoever he was, must be safe enough. She commanded her rubbery legs forward and joined the two men on the bricks. As she followed them up the wide steps to the front door, she saw the cloaked figure had returned to lurking at the corner of the house. She shot him a severe look and felt an upwelling of satisfaction when he withdrew out of sight.

The stranger held open the door and waved for the Doctor and Miranda to enter. Stepping out from behind the Doctor, Miranda's sneakers sank into lush burgundy carpeting. She immediately recognised the room as a richly furnished Victorian parlour. It reminded her of how the console room of the TARDIS had looked when she'd first come aboard, before one of the Doctor's more catastrophic redecorating fits. The mantle above the cold fireplace was even lined with clocks, filling the small room with ambient, rhythmic chatter.

Another man, this one in red-striped pants and scuffed white sneakers, sat in a chair beside the fireplace, a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses perched on his nose, and a book open in his lap. As the door shut behind her, Miranda saw the man look up with a start and snatch the glasses off of his face. "Oh, new arrivals!" he remarked with the merest surprise. Then his face lit up with what was so far the most charming smile of the day. "Come to think of it, I thought I heard the transmat a short while ago." He jumped off the chair with surprising energy, considering his middle-aged appearance, and extended a hand towards the Doctor.

"Oh really? And who is it this time?" a slightly rusty and rather bombastic voice queried from another room. Miranda watched the Doctor's entire frame seem to stiffen at the sound.

A third gentleman entered the room and everyone else seemed to fade from existence. His portly frame was squeezed into the most elaborate dress coat Miranda had ever seen, a mishmash of bright colours with plaid lapels and a huge, blue, polka-dotted necktie; yellow striped pants and a fringe of white curls ringing his reddened scalp.
Benjamin Franklin in a clown costume, Miranda thought suddenly. She glanced at the Doctor for some kind of clue. For his part, the Doctor looked dumbstruck, his mouth frozen in a wordless "o." The clown man pulled off one scorched oven mitt and looked the Doctor over, as if sizing him up. To Miranda's surprise, he appeared dubiously unimpressed.

After the politeness and smiles of the other two, Miranda found his response strangely refreshing.

"I don't believe it," the Doctor finally spluttered.

The man with the reading glasses seemed to give up getting a handshake from the Doctor and instead directed his outstretched hand to Miranda. She reached to accept it. "Anyway, I'm the Doctor," he said.

"You're what?" she blurted, hand freezing short of his.

"Oh, it's worse yet. I am also the Doctor," the clown man added ruefully.

Miranda stared at each of the three men in turn. "I-what?" She looked at the Doctor-her Doctor-helplessly.

As if on cue, he melted into his broad smile. "Well hullo, Doctors! This is Miranda. Miranda, meet the Doctors!" he clapped her cheerfully on the back. "If I'd known there was going to be a reunion, I'd have worn a different jumper."

Scrambling to make sense out of all this, Miranda could only assume this was some kind of absurd, poorly executed prank. "So what's this place, Casino Royale?" she quipped.

"Sorry?" the reading glasses 'Doctor' queried innocently.

"Nineteen-sixties James Bond spoof?" Miranda explained. Glancing around, she couldn't believe all four of them seemed to have no idea what she was talking about. "Wrong crowd, I guess," Miranda muttered, feeling even more awkward. Recovering, she began again. "So, sorry if I've totally missed something here, but what do you mean, you're all called the Doctor?"

"Er, no, we are the Doctor," the original stranger said, sounding slightly embarrassed. "Each one of us is the Doctor. The same person." He turned to her Doctor. "You never told her about it, then?"

"Why would I? It's not really something that comes up in conversation, believe it or not," the Doctor retorted in umbrage.

"Tell me about what?" Miranda asked.

"But more importantly, what are all of you doing here? What am I doing here with all of you? This is completely wrong," the Doctor continued heedlessly. "And what's happened to all of you?" he added suddenly.

"What do you mean?" the clown one demanded.

"Tell me about what?" Miranda repeated a little more forcefully. With such a mousy voice, she was used to being ignored.

"You all look terrible!" the Doctor said plainly. The others all seem to take offence at that (and rightly so, in Miranda's opinion).

"You're one to talk!" the clown one spat. "Exactly what sort of life form is that you're wearing, anyway?"

"You're having a go at my outfit, Patches?" the Doctor sneered in disbelief.

Frustrated, Miranda shut her eyes. "TELL ME ABOUT WHAT?" she repeated quite loudly. When she opened her eyes, she saw all four men giving her their undivided attention. It was a little embarrassing, but it did the trick.

"What's the trouble?" the reading glasses man asked openly.

"How can you all be the same person?" Miranda tried very hard not to snap, quickly tiring of this run-around.

"Oh that! Quite simple. I regenerated. Again," the clown one remarked succinctly with another disapproving once-over of the Doctor.

"It's a Timelord trick," the first stranger added. "Every time my body dies, I regenerate into a new one. By the way, which regeneration are you?" the stranger eyed the Doctor curiously.

"Eighth. Not bad, eh?" the Doctor took a moment to pose on display, once more all smiles. Miranda shook her head sadly.

The stranger looked a bit worried. "All that to look forward to..." he murmured mysteriously.

"Yes, well now that we're all acquainted with one another," the reading glasses man spoke up, "I suggest we discuss our more pressing concerns before Goran-"

SNAP! CRZZZ!

Miranda yelped and jumped back as a bright light exploded where the Doctor was standing. It was gone in a flash, and she noticed, once she blinked the big white spots away, so was the Doctor.

"-activates the transmat," the reading glasses man finished lamely.

Miranda stared stunned at the empty air that had been the Doctor. First the TARDIS, now he was gone too. "What happened?"

"That was fast," the stranger remarked, completely unconcerned.

"One less for tea, then," the clown one observed simply. "Speaking of, Miranda, how do you take yours? Sugar, cream?"

This was too surreal. Miranda could only blink stupidly at him. Tea? Tea?! The Doctor goes POOF right in front of them and he's asking her about tea?

"Oh, bother, I'll bring the tray, you can suit yourself, how does that sound?" His puffy face crinkled in a jolly grin. "If you'll excuse me, chaps." He started humming a little tune as he walked out of the room.

The reading glasses man picked up his book and settled back down into his chair, popping out his wire frames, seemingly without a care in the world. "Pull up a chair. There's nothing to worry about," he advised.

"Well now! Seeing as your friend won't be back for a while, what say I give you the grand tour?" the stranger exclaimed with an eager smile on his face, as naturally as if a man hadn't just disappeared in a flash of light from the middle of the room.

"What? What do you mean? What just happened?" Miranda demanded shrilly.

"Happened?" the stranger looked puzzled.

"To the Doctor!"

"Oh, that! Just Goran's transmat beam, nothing to worry about," the stranger reiterated.

"Excuse me, but how do you know?"

"Because that's what he does. We've all been through it. More than once. Not my favourite hobby, I'll admit, but at least the accommodations are-"

"Who's Goran?"

"Oh, merely the zookeeper," the man with the reading glasses remarked, not looking up from his book.
"Did his teleport take the TARDIS, too?"

"I suspect so," the stranger said.

"Why? What for? Why are you helping this guy?"

"Helping? What on Earth gives you that idea?" The stranger asked.

"D'you know I've reread this same passage over three times now?" the man with the reading glasses commented with thinly veiled annoyance.

"Why? Is it something interesting?" the stranger quipped. To Miranda he said, "There's a perfectly sensible explanation for all of this. I recommend we sit down, have a cup of tea, and-"

Enough was enough. Miranda was out the door and halfway to the front gate before she could realize that she didn't know where she was going. Anywhere but back in that psycho ward, for sure. Maybe flag down a car on that road.

"Miranda, wait!"

She whirled around, still backing towards the gate. "No!" she snarled at the longhaired stranger following her. Unfortunately, her voice lacked the depth to do much better than a screech. "I don't know what's going on here, and you guys aren't making any sense at all! Just...don't bother me!"

The stranger stopped on a dime, an injured look on his careworn, aristocratic features. "I'm sorry, it's just that we've been here quite a while and sometimes forget-"

"I don't care, just like the rest of you! We're trapped here, now the Doctor's missing, and all you want to do is drink your stupid tea! You're...strange!"

"The Doctor will be returned, you're overreacting."

"You're damn right I am!" She yanked the gate open angrily, aware that at least part of this outburst had been simmering inside her for a considerable time.

"Where will you go?" he asked.

She paused. "I don't know. Hitchhike to someplace where everybody's not insane!"

"There aren't any."

She shot him a venomous glare before staring out through the gate again. "Think you're funny?"

"That's not I meant! I meant there's nowhere else to go," he amended himself quickly. "We were all brought here against our wishes, like you, and whoever's done it has made certain there's no way out. Sorry to have to tell you, but we're trapped."

"There's a road."

"That ends here, both ways. I don't suppose you had time to notice, but there's an identical gate round the back. The road starts here, goes a few miles and dead ends back here."

"That's stupid."

"But the truth, I'm afraid," the reading glasses man chimed in. "There's a spatial limitation field in place. Walk long enough in any direction and you'll come round to where you started."

Miranda turned. The reading glasses man, hands in his pockets, stood in the place where the Doctor had encountered the tripwire. A breeze flapped his red-hemmed coattails and tousled his pale, shaggy tresses, revealing a badly receding hairline. In the watery light, neither one of them came off very well. Rather haggard and worn out, in fact. Their tired acceptance of the situation was a far more distressing symptom, however. Downright creepy. "Then I guess I'll be seeing you later," she spat, marching through the gate and throwing it closed behind her.

As she walked away from the house, she heard one say contritely to the other, "You'd think we'd be better at this by now."

*

SNAP! CRZZZ!

For a moment, the Doctor's body felt squeezed so tight that he worried his head would pop. A tremendous, luminous blast blinded him at the same second and he lost all sense of orientation, until his feet were jarred by a solid surface and he fell onto his backside, head throbbing.

Transmats were generally reliable, but these crude versions were practically a form of torture. The Doctor shook off the lingering discomfort and looked around. Well, this was familiar enough-a holding cell. Impenetrable plasteel walls, tamper-proof lighting fixtures and air vents out of reach in the ceiling, too small to be of use, anyway. Especially since there were no pieces of furniture or amenities of any kind in the bland, cream-coloured space. Walking to the transparisteel door, the Doctor looked hopefully for some kind of locking mechanism, but came away disappointed. Must be remote-wired. That narrowed the timeframe to somewhere in the-well, it wasn't any primitive era, to be sure. Plasteel cell construction was frustratingly standard technology everywhere, it seemed.
Beyond the door was an equally bland, utilitarian corridor the likes of which the Doctor had encountered too many whens and wheres to keep track. He reached inside his jacket for the sonic screwdriver. Maybe he could bounce a resonance frequency off of the door that would tell him the rate of molecular decay. He honestly didn't know what good that would do him, but it was better than standing around like a lump-

Out of the corner of his eye, the Doctor spotted a shadow move in the corridor. He froze; hand half-buried in his jacket and waited expectantly. He felt a quick thrill when the shadow condensed into a bipedal form coming up the corridor. Inductive reasoning was all well and good, but it could never take the place of a good, old-fashioned Q and A. When the creator of the shadow stepped into view, the Doctor couldn't help cracking his huge grin.

To the casual eye, it looked like a lean humanoid wearing a close-fitting, armoured body suit and cowl. But as it stepped up to the cell door, the Doctor noticed that each of its steps was precisely the same size, and made with a fluid grace no organic muscle could match. When it came to a halt, it didn't even waver. Not a movement wasted or miscalculated. It appeared to eye the Doctor with disdainfully, a mean trick considering it had no face.

"Well, look at you!" the Doctor exclaimed admiringly to the android. It was one thing for it to be so functionally perfect, but whoever built this one obviously had an aesthetic sense, as well. As he studied the gleaming chrome breastplate and gauntlets and the sleek design of the helmet, he failed to recall anything quite like it.

The android placed one hand out of sight beside the door. "Stay relaxed and calm," it said in a mechanical voice that was surprisingly primitive to have come from such an advanced machine. The words themselves struck the Doctor as being a slightly strange thing to say.

"Good advice, considering I've just been kidnapped and imprisoned with no explanation. Well done. Say, you couldn't put in a word with housekeeping about getting me a different cell, could you? This one doesn't even have a cot."

"Stay relaxed and calm," the android said again.

"Hmm. Not programmed for interpersonal interaction, eh?"

FSSS!

The Doctor sobered instantly and turned around. The ceiling vents had been switched on. With his next breath, he felt an odd tingle in his chest. Anaesthesia. Feeling his chest tighten further with tendrils of panic, he whirled around and pounded on the door.

"What are you doing? Stop!" he wheezed.

"Stay calm and relaxed," the android repeated.

The Doctor could feel the potent chemical seeping into his muscles and beginning to cloud his brain. He sagged heavily to his knees. Too late to trigger his respiratory bypass. He fought to keep his mind above the rising flood of unconsciousness, but he was already beginning to drown.

"Stay calm and relaxed," he heard vaguely as the thick, velvety blackness rose to envelop his senses.

*

Miranda walked quickly, only slowing once she had passed the hillside where the TARDIS had landed and was certain those men could no longer see her from the gate. Then she stopped. Ahead, the road shot in a straight line as far as she could see. She glanced behind her at the house, then back to the road.

Those 'Doctors' didn't know what they were talking about. 'Spatial limitation field'? Maybe that worked on lesser minds, but Miranda knew bull crap when she heard it. She kept walking, each step bleeding a little more frustration out of her. She felt quite normal, now. That twitchy sensation was gone entirely.

Perhaps, she began to reflect, she should have kept a cooler head back there. As convoluted and strange as the situation was, no one had given the slightest indication that either she or the Doctor were in any grave danger. She probably should have drank their tea and calmly asked what was going on before deciding to completely freak out.
Wasn't she usually a bit more sensible than that?

What was usual, anymore?

Bottom line, she realized, was that she was growing very tired of all these unplanned stops when things went wrong and the Doctor expected her jump in with both feet. It wasn't her strong suit, but when she took these long trips away from him it was that much harder to get back in practise. Maybe it was time to re-evaluate her priorities.
The countryside was largely flat and treeless and Miranda didn't hear any birds or insects. A cold, damp breeze gave her a chill. She was definitely regretting her outburst. And not bringing a coat. She usually kept a backpack in the console room with essentials in it-such as a sweater-that she could bring just in case, but she hadn't bothered repacking since getting back.

Up ahead, a dense fog was drifting across the road. What a rotten day. Crossing her arms, she pressed on through the cloud, feeling goose bumps arise on her exposed arms and legs. Almost immediately the fog began to condense on the lenses of her glasses. For appearing so suddenly it was surprisingly thick. If not for the road beneath her feet, she would have worried about getting lost. As it was, she slowed down and moved to the inside edge of the road. So far it had been deserted, but wouldn't it be just her luck to suddenly encounter traffic?

Sure enough, a few feet further she came nose-to-mortar with a brick structure of some kind. She must have run into a building built right on the road's edge. Miranda listened carefully, and hearing no vehicles, started across the road, tracing the wall with her fingers, feeling for its edge. She was in the middle of the road when she began to suspect that it didn't have an edge. Why would someone build a wall right across a paved road?

She had part of her answer when her fingers found a gap between cold metal bars. A gate. She pushed on it experimentally and it creaked inward. Miranda stepped inside and immediately left the fog behind. Within, she saw a pond, several large shade trees and a few sorry-looking landscaped beds, and the back end of the manor house.

"What the-?" Miranda looked back into the fog. She'd been on the edge of the road and was sure she would've noticed a sharp bend, bringing her back this way. And even so, before the fog rolled in the road was straight as far as the eye could see. "Spatial limitation field," she muttered distastefully, pulling the gate closed. "Why not?" She noticed the sky was a good deal darker than it had been before she walked into the fog. Probably going to rain.
As much as she wasn't looking forward to walking back into that house, Miranda was lost for an alternative. If those guys were right about the limitation field, maybe they were right about the Doctor coming back. At the very least she could play along with this bizarre charade long enough to find out what was going on.

She began picking her way through the yard and passed under a thick, gnarled tree, when something suddenly dropped around her neck and pulled taunt.

*

"Hello? Are you awake, Doctor?"

Consciousness charged through the Doctor's body like a bolt of electricity. He jerked his limbs and realized he was restrained. Opening his eyes, he discovered he was now lying inside a clear, cylindrical tube of some sort, braces securing his ankles, wrists and chest. Peering down at him through the mildly distorting material of the tube was a wizened, furry face topped with two small horn nubs, and floating above a badly rumpled mess of a lab coat.
"I'm sorry to have drugged you earlier, but you and I both know you wouldn't have given me another choice," the creature, some kind of alien the Doctor had not seen before, commented in a halting, rusty voice as he poked at an adjacent bank of machinery.

"So that was your android? Who are you? What are you doing?" the Doctor tried to ask through vocal cords that still seemed slightly paralyzed from the anesthesia.

"My name, if it really matters," the alien sighed, "is Goran. And what I'm doing right now, sadly, is hurting you." He gazed at the Doctor with a mixture of resignation and pity. "So sorry." He flipped a switch on the panel.
Pain erupted in every nerve fiber the Doctor had. A loud buzzing filled his head and his jaw clenched so hard he worried his teeth might shatter. He couldn't breathe. It felt as though his organs were bathing in acid. Every muscle rigid in agony, the Doctor sensed his mind begin to turn inward, retreating from the physical distress. His insides twisted suddenly and he broke out in a cold sweat. Light started to well up at the back of his eyes and for the first time in a very long time, the Doctor felt a surge of real panic. He knew what was coming next. He always knew when it was coming, and he always dreaded it.

The Doctor fought to keep himself in the moment. He'd driven off the inevitable once before. He'd been considerably younger then, but his will was as strong as ever. But the pain was just so intense. Through teary eyes he saw Goran watching him with an unreadable expression, his finger gently prodding a lever, pushing it higher.
The pain was so bad that the Doctor began to wonder if it wouldn't be better to stop fighting it and let nature take its course. It would be so easy to give into the warmth and detachment welling up inside his tormented body, to slip back into oblivion and wake up a new man. So many bad memories when he looked into the mirror. Maybe this time would be easier.

Hold on, now I'm getting delusional, he realized abruptly. If anything, the process got more onerous each time. And what a ridiculous way to snuff it-trapped inside a plastic bubble by some squirrelly little alien he hadn't even had a proper dialogue with! No, that wouldn't do at all. Not to mention the tedious explaining he'd owe to Miranda when he came back looking like a completely different person. No, the Doctor decided, he definitely wasn't in the mood to regenerate today.

Gathering his senses together, he forced his eyes to stay open, willing his body to stay as it was. He could feel his tissues spasming in protest, but he simply stared hard at Goran, living in the pain. Goran watched him dispassionately, and then pressed a button.

The Doctor cried out in agony as a fresh jolt of pain shattered his reserves. He desperately tried to hold on, but he could feel his body slipping out of his control and the energy beginning to build up inside him as his cells began reorganizing themselves. Suddenly it started to go wrong.

His body felt like it caught on fire and a hazy cloud of golden vapors diffused out of skin, through his clothes and into the tube. But there it stopped. He could feel his cells straining to complete the change, to renew themselves, but something outside his will was holding him back.

Then the pain was gone, leaving a stinging exhaustion in its wake. The tube began to rumble and the gold vapors were sucked out. The Doctor watched in helpless horror as Goran shuffled off behind the tube, then reemerged holding a sealed cylinder that glowed with hazy gold light. Goran appeared to study it minutely, then walked over to an adjacent bank of machinery and slid open a metal cabinet. He set the cylinder on end beside several others, all glowing in different hues, then slid the cabinet closed.

Goran stood there, his back to the Doctor, one hand on the cabinet handle, and didn't move for a long moment. The Doctor saw his stooped, rounded shoulders rise and fall emphatically, as if the small alien were sighing heavily or shuddering.

Then his hand dropped from the door and he turned to face the Doctor's tube. "Well, that wasn't so bad, was it?" the alien remarked.

*

Miranda grabbed the thing around her throat and yanked in a slight panic. It came off in her hands so she threw it as far as she could. She straightened in time to see the mysterious, hat-wearing weirdo from earlier drop from the branches with an undignified WHUMP! Draped around his shoulders and trailing off to where Miranda had thrown the other end was a ridiculously long woollen scarf. He appeared momentarily stunned by his fall.
Suspicion momentarily taking a back seat to concern, Miranda leaned towards him. He lay flat on his back, hat popping off his head, letting loose a wild array of white curls.

"Hey, are you alright?" she asked.

The man blinked and sat up suddenly, a hand protecting his hat. He looked up at Miranda with a bemused expression contorting his bird-like features. He was an emaciated-looking figure buried inside his heavy overcoat and baggy trousers, his cheeks and chin drooping with age.

"Oh," he said in a remarkably deep timbre. "Oh dear. I seem to have made a grave error in judgement. You look nothing like Davros at all!" He glanced around the yard in slack-jawed confusion. "You haven't seen him, by any chance? He'd be rather hard to miss, I should think, as there aren't all that many psychotic megalomaniacs who travel by dodge-em car."

"I'm guessing that's a 'no,'" Miranda muttered to herself.

"Hmm? Oh, that's too bad, you see it's terribly important that I find Davros. You might even say the universe depends on it."

"The universe?" Miranda repeated dubiously.

The man stood up, brushing himself off and winding up his scarf. "Well I suppose not, but he does owe me a tenner, shifty bloke."

"Who?"

The man held up a silencing finger and turned away from her, holding his hat on his head. "Hmm? No, no Rassilon, I couldn't possibly fit you in," he paused, "Oh, I'd say at least a fortnight." He paused again, looked up at the tree and took a measured step away from it, adjusting his hat. "I said maybe in a fortnight. Yes, half-past will do nicely." He took off his hat and made a few (imaginary?) adjustments to it, looking at her grumpily. "I do wish these old fools would stop bothering me with their trifles. I'm President! Don't they realize I'm busy?"

Miranda made no effort to hide her confusion.

He plunked the hat back on his head and stared at her as if only seeing her for the first time. "Oh! How do you do, my dear? I'm the Doctor. Yes I know, shocking, isn't it? I didn't used to be a duck, of course, but that's regeneration for you. Still, I do like the feathers." He fished around in his pockets and produced a crumpled brown paper bag.
"Would you like a jelly baby?"

Miranda eyed the proffered bag suspiciously. Not quite all together, this one. But not wanting to appear rude and possibly upset him, she reached into the bag and pulled out a pebble. From the feel of it, the bag was full of pebbles.
"Uh, thank you," she said, discreetly pocketing the small stone.

"I'm rather fond of the green ones myself. Good for clogging the breathing apparatus of Cybermen," he continued conversationally.

"Cybermen?" Miranda repeated incredulously.

"Oh yes, do be careful. Only today I buried one in an avalanche and lured a second to its death in a ditch."

"Maybe somebody should call a cyber-exterminator," Miranda suggested, playing along.

"Not much point, seeing as I'm already here," he said.

"Several times over," Miranda added, watching his response.

"Yes, so they would have you believe. But rest assured, my dear, there is only one Doctor, and it's me. But we're losing valuable daylight. Come with me, you can help me with something," he switched tasks instantly and hurried towards a badly overgrown hedgerow in the nearest corner of the yard.

Miranda followed him out of sheer curiosity. He seemed harmless enough. Approaching the hedge, she saw that a rectangular piece of sod had been dug out of the ground.

The man picked up a rusty spade shovel lying in the grass and held it out to her. "Are you any good at digging?"

"Why? What is it?"

"Oh, an addition, is all," the man sighed distractedly, squinting into the dingy twilight.

"May I ask, what to?" Miranda pressed wearily. So little about today was making any sense!

"What to? What to?!" he repeated indignantly, "This!" He reached into the hedge and pulled several boughs aside.
Miranda cautiously stepped forward and looked into the gap. Crosses. Broad, flat, wooden crosses. Four of them, in a neat row. Miranda gazed at the man suspiciously, hoping they weren't what they appeared to be. She leaned forward and looked harder and saw, to her dismay, that there was a name burned into the crossbeam of each small crucifix:

Leela. Turlough. Tegan Jovanka. Melanie Bush.

Growing sick with dread, Miranda turned to him in horror. "Are those-are those...graves?" She didn't need him to answer. The truth was distressingly obvious. "Who-who were they? And-" she stared at the shovel in his hands and the partially dug grave at this feet "-whose is this?"

His response turned Miranda's blood to ice. "This? Well, yours, my dear."