A/N: Hello! This is the fourth story of the Blood and Time series, but you do not need to read the others to understand this one (unless you really care about understanding the fish-vampire-moon jokes, in which case you should read The Moon Thesis). Just know that this is the first time Angel has met 11, though Angel has met both 9 and 10 before. Angel has been on the TARDIS before, but only the console room, and with 9/10's interior decorating.

For the Doctor, this is sometime between The Big Bang and The Doctor's Wife. For Angel, it's sometime during the Baby!Connor era, but where exactly doesn't matter.

Thanks for reading!

Chapter One

It was an unfortunate time of night.

It was those wee hours before dawn when Angel was just starting to get tired and Connor was just starting to get hungry. The rest of the hotel was silent, with Lorne and Fred blissfully asleep and unaware of each of the tiny noises that Angel seemed to pick up all the time now. He wondered if the hotel had always been so creaky and if he could convince Cordelia to let part of their next paycheck go to finding a plumber that could make the pipes stop wailing. Connor did that enough.

He was testing the heated formula on his wrist when it happened.

Not a creak, and certainly not the plumbing, but a deep vwoooshCRASH followed by the raining clatter of debris on the floor above him. Connor startled and screamed. Angel lifted him from his crib, tucking Connor safely into the crook of his arm, listening for more signs of aggression.

Connor's screams were making listening to anything difficult. "Hush," Angel told him, putting the bottle in his mouth to try and calm him, "it'll be alright… Daddy just needs to go murder the intruders upstairs…"

Connor found the nipple of the bottle and immediately settled. God, he loved this kid.

Lorne pushed through the door, wrapped in a blue silk robe. "Angel? I think there might be a rat situation upstairs."

"Yeah. Shh," Angel told him, pushing Connor into Lorne's arms.

Another clatter sounded upstairs followed by the trample of footsteps.

"Out! Out! Out!" a voice said.

"Watch him," Angel hissed to Lorne, who nodded as Angel ran out of his room and up the staircase.

The intruders were very easy to find. A cloud of dust billowed from a doorway halfway down the dark hall, followed by more shouting.

"What was that?" a panicked man's voice shouted.

"It was…unexpected," another man replied.

"You think?"

"Yes, calm down! Keep yourselves together, Ponds. It's just a slight…infestation."

There was a pause and more scuffling feet followed by a dread-filled, "Doctor, where's Amy?"

Doctor? Angel ducked his head around the corner of the doorframe, already rolling his eyes before they caught sight of the telltale glowing white lettering on the TARDIS.

The ship had landed badly by the looks of it: an old bed had been shattered when it appeared and it rested at an angle in the debris, smoke pouring from the open doors. In the middle of the smoke cloud, two men were spinning frantically, looking for the missing "Amy."

So the Doctor had changed his face again, Angel concluded, stepping just inside the room. The guy must die more often than Angel did. A few moment's observation revealed the taller man with the pointy chin to be the Doctor. The other man with the prominent nose was revealed to be "Rory" in the shouting.

A few more rounds of twisting in place and the Doctor seemed to spot Angel through the smoke and dust. He stopped turning, leaning his now broader shoulders forward. "Shhh," he said, holding up a hand to Rory, "there's someone here." He took a step forward, catching the rest of his body up with his shoulders. His arms swung forward into a clap. "Hellooo!" he called happily before settling into a more embarrassed, "Sorry about the mess. Had a bit of a crash landing, I'm afraid."

Angel was about to make a snarky comment about the "bit of a crash landing," but then he realized that the room wasn't all that much more destroyed than it had been. So instead he asked, "What happened?"

"And he's friendly!" the Doctor turned to tell Rory before he moved forward again. Now they were close enough that Angel could make out the finer details of his features in the smoke: A broad forehead half-covered by a ridiculous flop of hair, wide eyes that glinted even in the dark, and a smile that overtook all of his features as he recognized Angel. "Well, not friendly!" the Doctor exclaimed, "but friend,nonetheless!"

Before Angel could grunt in reply, the Doctor wrapped both arms around his shoulders and dragged Angel into a hug. "Hello!" he repeated, slapping Angel's back and pushing him away again before Angel had time to comprehend what had happened.

"Hello," Angel replied in a bit of a daze. "Uh…" But he had nothing to follow up with. It seemed that this version of the Doctor was no less chatty than the others, but a little more physically affectionate. Great.

Angel wondered which order these versions came in. Clearly, the Doctor knew him, so it was after the one that wore a leather jacket, but was it before or after the one that had taken them to the moon? Damn time travelers. Angel's life was complicated enough.

"Doctor?" Rory asked, stepping up next to them. "Where are we? Where is Amy? Who's this guy?" He held up a placating hand to Angel, "No offense."

Angel shrugged. He was wondering the same thing about Rory.

"Introductions! Right." The Doctor rested a hand on each Angel's and Rory's shoulders, tugging them a bit closer against both of their wills. "Rory, this is Angel. Angel, this is the Great Rorificus Pond."

"Rory Williams," Rory corrected, like a mother following behind a child to clean up the mess left behind. And, like a large, mess-making child, the Doctor didn't seem to notice.

"Pleasure," Angel said, though there wasn't really much that was pleasant about any of the introduction so far.

Rory half smiled and nodded back. At least they seemed in agreement on the introductions.

The Doctor let go of their shoulders and clapped his hands. "It so happens," he said to Angel, stepping through the space between Angel and Rory and waving for them to follow as he walked back into the settling cloud, "that you are just the man we need. I'm having vampire difficulties. And I'm missing a friend. We really do need to find Amy."

"Vampire?" Rory asked, "like the fish vampires in Venice?"

"No, don't be silly. He didn't look a bit like a fish!" the Doctor made a face at Rory to indicate how ridiculous this question was.

"Wait, fish? Like the fish on the moon?" Angel found himself asking.

"There are fish on the moon?"

"No! No! No!" the Doctor yelled. "Vampire. Big, leather-wearing, bloody-mouthed vampire!"

Angel shifted uncomfortably. "Doctor…" he said quietly, trying to ignore Rory. He shuffled a bit closer to this tweed-clad, bowtie-wearing, floppy-haired version of the Doctor. "You know I don't...do that. Anymore…right? The blood-drinking thing?"

"Wait," Rory objected behind them, "he's a vampire?"

"Well he's not a fish," the Doctor grumbled. "But he's nice." The Doctor looked Angel up and down and corrected, "Well, not nice per se...he hits me an awful lot and with little provocation..."

Angel sure didn't think so. The provocation part, anyway. The punching part was entirely true.

"-but no, Angel, not you either. There's a legitimately nasty vampire on my ship who doesn't seem to have any, uh, dietary restrictions shall we say?" He pointed at the crooked TARDIS.

Angel followed the Doctor's finger and grimaced to himself. The ship looked particularly sinister, leaning to one side, door hanging open to a dark interior like a gaping mouth. The light glowing on the top seemed dimmer than he remembered it from previous encounters. The shadows around it lengthened and the blue appeared almost black. He listened for a shriek of the missing and supposedly threatened "Amy." All he heard was the low humming that the TARDIS made.

"How'd it get on the ship?" Angel asked. "Doesn't it need an invitation?" He suddenly glared at the Doctor. "I thought I warned you about vampires."

At least the Doctor managed to look embarrassed. He scuffed his boots on the floor, muttering something about there being a "slight misunderstanding."

"You let it in?" Rory demanded.

"I thought he was..." the Doctor hunched his shoulders again and mumbled some more.

Rory and Angel raised an eyebrow each.

"Look," the Doctor shouted to press through the building accusations. "I might have a subroutine on the TARDIS to look out for on-planet mention of a particular individual called, 'the Master' who would be very good to pick up and stop him from poking about on Earth any more than he already has if he happens to appear again. I got a hit. I picked him up… I found out that Master is a fairly common name for...uh..."

"Psychopaths?" Angel suggested.

"Uh, yeah, that."

Angel gave a short nod and an even shorter sigh. "So you kidnapped my grandsire," he said, pressing his fingers against the bridge of his nose, trying to prevent what might be an inevitable headache.

"Oh, god," Rory said in exasperation.

"Oh," the Doctor said, wincing. He held out a hand indicating height. "This tall? Really pale? Kind of bloodstained around the mouth?"

"Annoying? Thinks he's Satan's gift to vampirekind?" Angel added. "Yeah. That's him."

"We didn't really chat," the Doctor said, "but he rudely tore out a good bit of wiring under the console." He inched a little closer to Angel, his right hand fingers rubbing at his cheek, "Is this going to be awkward...what with family and all…?"

"Nah," Angel shook his head. "I hate the bastard, and the feeling's mutual. But I'm not looking to have a family reunion any time soon." Angel paused to listen for Conner a floor below, but he was still quiet.

Angel took a step toward the TARDIS door, thinking. It was going to be tricky: it wasn't like he could kill the Master. Buffy needed to do that. But the Master wasn't exactly easy to just hold in one place while they returned him to wherever he needed to go. Angel had always thought of himself as stronger, more cunning, and all around more evil than the Master, but he couldn't deny that there were powers the Master had that Angel didn't. He wondered idly how much older he'd have to get before the powers of mental influence started to kick in. Finally, Angel asked,

"Where did you get him from?"

The Doctor smiled again, bouncing towards the TARDIS doors. "Let's have a look, shall we? The TARDIS has had enough time to clear out the air and start the reboot." He paused the the gaping TARDIS doorway and leaned his head in. "Helloooo!" he called. "Mr. Other Master Guy? Amy? Amy if you can hear me, go to the console room!" With that, he casually marched into the TARDIS and up a flight of stairs, disappearing into the darkness.

Rory caught Angel's eyes for a second before he jerked his head at the doorway. "Amy will kill me if we let him get eaten..."

Angel considered Rory for a moment. "And if she gets eaten?" he asked.

"I'll kill him." Rory faltered a moment after saying this. He tipped his shoulders into his walk after the Doctor. "I'd try, anyway. 'm not overconfident about my chances."

Well that was an interesting dynamic. Rory seemed to have a half affectionate toleration for the Doctor and half carefully controlled fear. Angel watched Rory walk away for a moment, noticing the way that he cringed almost invisibly as he entered the TARDIS.

Angel followed Rory in and shut the door behind him. Filing away that observation for later, Angel turned to the Doctor and told him in a tone very close to Demanding to lock the door as he ascended the steps to the console. And then Angel realized that he was ascending steps. He stopped and looked around in confusion, squinting in the darkness. The interior structure had changed. That was...disconcerting. Angel suddenly wondered if this was a different Time Lord Doctor that somehow knew about him. Or maybe…

"Can we talk about how your face keeps changing?" He stopped next to the Doctor, whose-yet again-different face was lit by the only working screen.

"Oh, right!" The Doctor stood up and twisted around like Angel had asked him to demonstrate his outfit. "What do you think?"

"Confusing."

The Doctor grinned. "Well, we just need to see each other more often. I haven't seen you since that trip to the moon. That was ages ago. Rory, remind me to tell you the story, it was brilliant."

"Right," Rory said, nodding the Doctor back toward the screen.

The Doctor spun back to the screen. "I'm pulling up the tracking logs for where I received the signal," the Doctor said, tapping on the screen to indicate several shifting circular symbols. "We've crashed a few years from where I picked him up. Once I get this up and running we'll need to backtrack to..." he ran his finger across the screen and tapped on one of the smaller circles. "1937. If we want to plunk him back where he came from." The Doctor squinted at the screen. "Looking at these connections, it looks like that might be ideal temporally."

"What do you mean?" Rory asked, coming up on the Doctor's other side.

"I mean it might be a little messy for the timeline if we don't put him back where I got him." The Doctor typed a few commands into the computer and the circles shifted and grew in size and complexity.

"How messy?" Rory asked. "Are we talking the Sunday comics don't come out that week, or we blow a hole in the universe?"

"I'd like to think somewhere between those two extremes," the Doctor said, dropping to his knees and climbing under the console.

Rory let out the same short sigh that Angel often used when trying to communicate with the Doctor, and he caught Angel's eye. "He'd like to think," Rory repeated. Yes, Angel had caught that, too. Placing a hand on the console for balance as he bent down to continue the conversation with the Doctor, Rory said hopefully, "Can't you just...beam him down?"

"Do you think he'd agree to stand really still over there while I did three hours of repairs?"

"Right." Rory stood up again, swinging his arms and eyeing the darkness around them.

"I'll go get him," Angel said with an edge of resignation. "Bring him back here. Shove him out the door into 1937." That sounded like a plan. "But in the meantime," he pointed at the door, "that's locked, right?" He hadn't seen the Doctor press anything in response to his demand to lock the door.

"Rory!"

"Oh, right." Rory jumped and scanned his eyes over the console. "I know this one..." he said slowly, running his fingers over a series of toggles until he found a hopeful row. He counted three in from the left and switched it. Angel heard a small click come from the front door.

"So," Rory said, swinging his arms, "are you really excited to keep us locked in here or him locked in here?"

"Him," Angel replied, eying the various staircases and deciding which one to choose first. "My son is out there."

There was a clunk from under the console. The Doctor reappeared, gripping the top of his head. "Your what?" The sonic screwdriver made its screeching appearance.

"Congratulations," Rory mumbled, looking between the Doctor and Angel.

Angel looked down at the Doctor's wide-eyed expression. "My son," he repeated. It gave Angel an odd, proud, swooping, terrified thrill every time he said it. He loved that feeling. Hated it a little bit, too, but mostly loved it.

The Doctor eyed the sonic screwdriver skeptically, shrugged, and dropped it onto the console.

"Brace for hugging," Rory suggested softly.

Angel barely had time to register the suggestion before the Doctor grabbed him around his chest.

"Maybe a few seconds earlier next time?" Angel suggested to Rory, but he only shrugged back. That was probably the earliest warning available. Angel reached up with one of his pinned arms and awkwardly patted the Doctor's tweed-covered back.

"Well done!" the Doctor said, letting Angel go again. "We'll have to meet him, won't we?"

Rory shrugged, "Doctor, Amy."

"With Amy, of course," the Doctor said. "Find Amy, visit Angel's family."

"Get rid of the vampire?" Rory glanced apologetically at Angel. "The other vampire."

"That, too!" The Doctor slapped his hand on a large yellow button and the whole room lit up, making all of them wince at the sudden brightness. "Emergency lights! Now we're cookin'!" He beamed around at Rory and Angel, waiting for a reaction that never came. His smile flickered out, leaving a frown behind. "I'm never saying that again."

Angel thought this was a wise decision.

Slightly distracted by the sudden impression of drowning in a rainbow of colors (Angel thought he preferred the other TARDIS more so far), as the Doctor dived back under the console to tend to yet more repairs, Angel took the moment to look around more thoroughly at the new layout of the TARDIS.

It was brighter. He would have been inclined to say cleaner, too, if it didn't look more jumbled than ever before. It had the aura of a place that had had all of its shelves emptied and dusted, but no one had taken the time to replace the items on the shelf. The brass, and there was a lot of it now, all gleamed in the light, but the controls on the console had lost any resemblance to anything sensible or familiar. They had been replaced with absurdly bright and colorful switches, levers much larger than was probably necessary, balls spiked and sunk halfway into the console, and bright, unlabeled blinking lights.

Two sets of stairs curved up and away from the glass platform that they stood on, disappearing into right and left options for walking deeper into the ship. It occurred suddenly to Angel that there was a deeper into the ship. While he had certainly never thought the Doctor did everything solely in this one room, Angel had also never really thought about what the rest of the ship might contain. The addition of hallways onto the already-too-big-for-its-container ship was more than Angel's mind could wrap around.

So Angel stuck with what he knew. He prowled around the console, sniffing for the Master amongst the jumble of alien scents. He picked up the Doctor first: a cool, organic scent that had a lingering hint of something sharp, like gunpowder. His two human friends were also easy to pick out, and he took note of the hint of redheaded female and stored it in his memory in case he needed to catch her trail later.

Rory, (whose scent was of a brown-haired male, with predominant layers of grass and soap) stepped around the room after Angel. Since Angel was just circling the console, it was more than a little weird. He spun on his heel so fast, Rory nearly ran into him.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing!" Rory said, holding up his hands and taking a step back on pure instinct. He regained his composure enough to nod at one of the stairways. "I just..." he shrugged, "are we going to look for Amy?"

Angel glanced at the Doctor. "I think I could track her," he said.

"You're just a barrel of useful monkeys today," the Doctor yelled out from under the console. "Wasn't I just saying that I knew all sorts of useful people, Rory?"

"Last month," Rory said impatiently. "Listen, Doctor, how about you do..." he held out a hand at the console, trying to think of a word for what the Doctor was doing, "...whatever you're doing. Angel and I can find Amy."

The Doctor ducked back out to look at Angel and Rory, suddenly deeply concerned. "Alright," he agreed, "but stick together! The security system is still on the fritz, but I'll try to get something operational. I'll catch up."

Angel nodded and led the way to the staircase where the redhead's trail was strongest. Just before disappearing down the hall, he turned.

"Doctor."

The Doctor looked up.

"The Master's annoying. And an idiot. And really melodramatic. But if you run into him...don't underestimate him."

The Doctor's smile at that was the first truly familiar thing that Angel had seen on this new Doctor. It had a different shape, but the undertone of crazy held steady from the Doctor that Angel had met in that field. "Wouldn't dream of it," he said happily.


The Master had clearly underestimated the magician's power. One moment he had been in the stinging air of a church surrounded by his followers, the bleeding bodies of the ritual sacrifices, and the smoky smell of a hundred candles, and the next he had been surrounded by brassy and organic smells with cold moving glass and rippling lights of some magical origin. Before him, looking just as surprised as the Master had felt, had stood his captor.

Just as surprised, but far more unarmed. The Master had taken this for an unfortunate accident by an unlucky magician. An accident that he wanted to make sure was far more unfortunate for the magician than for the Master himself.

He would have ripped the scrawny man's throat out that instant if he hadn't wanted information on where exactly he'd been relocated. He was on a schedule, after all.

He had reached out his mind to subdue the insolent magician, and in doing so noticed the surging power source directly next to both of them. It was disguised as a mutated mushroom covered in buttons, but there was no mistaking that from it, the magician channeled his power.

The Master had assumed that this contraption was what young magicians took for impressive these days. When he ruled the world, they would be the first to go. Followed by anyone who thought the printing press was a good idea. Also things that breathed.

But maybe, just maybe, he should have thought twice about punching his fist into the switch-covered metal of the power source and ripping out a chunk of metal entrails. The magician had apparently been upset and a tad more competent than the Master had originally thought. The whole world had tipped, sending him tumbling into this accursed labyrinth.

The Master prowled down yet another long, green hallway, snarling at the doors as he passed them. Occasionally he would wrench one open to reveal a tea room, a garden, a room so colorful it assaulted his eyes, a room of fish that darted cheerfully about in a dark fog (the Master had plucked one from the air and crushed it), a billiard room, a cave, and a reading room filled with books only about dog training.

"Come forth horrid little magician!" the Master challenged. "And I will make your death easy."

The magician did not come out. He lurked, playing this little game of sending fantasies that even the Master with his powerful mind could not distinguish from reality.

He pulled open a door and spat in disgust into the closet containing nothing but wooden buckets. "I will pluck out your eyes," the Master cooed soothingly. "I will gnaw on your bones. I will peel the skin from your muscles and live on your blood for a decade while you beg for death."

The corridor suddenly took a turn for the fuscia.

The Master snarled, suspecting that he was being mocked by someone. He nearly turned back, but a sweet smell caressed his senses. A human female... Well, he reasoned, no sense going hunting on an empty stomach.

The Master's ill mood improving by the slightest degree, he stalked along the hallway, following after the scent of his next meal.