Normally the TARDIS took him exactly where he wanted to go, but not this time. The console sparked and sputtered. The engines made a strange groaning and stuttering noises. The lights flickered and the TARDIS seemed to be pulled in a direction he did not expect. He used every trick in the book he could think of to right the TARDIS and put her back on track. Then he realized the TARDIS was not only moving in time, but space as well. He was going somewhere totally different. The machine was fighting him on the issue. This was needless to say strange. The TARDIS had other ideas about where to go.
"Oh, what? What are you doing? Are you against me too, girl?" He whined. He tried desperately to get the ship to obey. Strangely, this seemed familiar, but that didn't make sense at all. The TARDIS always took him exactly where and when he wanted to go. He threw his hands up into the air. "Fine, just do what you want to do, see if I care." He was about to leave the console room then he turned around. "And since when did you develop a personality?" He listened to the humming and grinding of the engines, There was an odd shake as if the TARDIS could not hold together. He noticed that if he got rid of some of the room the machine just might hold together. He deleted Clara's room and the room that was intended to have dance classes. It was Amy's idea after the wedding. She was sure the Doctor did not know how to dance and was determined to teach him. Deleting those rooms seemed to help as the TARDIS steadied a bit. This was the this was the last time he was going to lose the Zero room.
He went back to the console and leaned against the control panels. His head hung as he gathered up his wits. He was speaking to the machine. Since there was no one else to speak to, he raised his head back up. His face went with his thoughts as he spoke, "I am officially going crazy, as if the universe needed another mad Time Lord. Might as well, no one else around."
"Ok girl, sorry I yelled at you. Where are you taking me, Bessie?" He remembered his car he had back in the 1970's Earth years. That didn't feel right. He disregarded the notion of naming the TARDIS, it was a machine anyway. He swung the screen around so that he could get a better look at what the TARDIS was doing. . "Do you want to cause the universe to explode? I can't go there. I can't go back to then." The TARDIS stopped and he stepped on the broken tea cup had gotten from the East India Company.
He went up to the doors and tapped lightly against the wood. He fidgeted with the bow tie he was wearing and put a grim determination on his face. He took several deep breaths as he readied himself to find what was behind those doors. He opened them and saw Dalek ships surrounding his home world. The world below burned by constant fires that seemed not end. He could feel the force of the blasts coming from the defensive troops. He was in the middle years of the Time War.
To himself, "Why are we here?" He didn't need to see this again. The want for something stronger than tea came back too strong to ignore anymore. Of all the days he had to be brought here it had to be today, the start or end of a string of failures.
There was a call coming in on the console. He closed the doors and routed the hail to come through the internal speakers. "This is TARDIS 40-304. You're coming in loud and clear."
"I am in TARDIS 40-305" It was an older man speaking and the voice was all too familiar. Upon hearing that voice the Doctor paled to a shade of white one would expect a ghost to take on. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"
"This is the Doctor. And that is what I am trying to find out. I am not even supposed to be able to be here. My TARDIS seems to have developed a glitch, took me to this time period. I don't even want to be here." He held on to the panel as a force blast shook the ship.
"Type 40's seemed to always have one glitch or another. Wait. Why? You know what don't…" The conversation was cut off by a loud bang, as if some kind of bomb blew up.
The Doctor was silent listening to the dead air. "Are you there Warrior? Come in."
"I'm," there was a cough as the person on the other end recovered his breath. "I'm fine. I am to answer your question, obviously"
This was the last person he would have ever wanted to speak to. Of all his past lives he would have chosen it wasn't him. He pounded the console and leaned his head back trying to calming his emotions. He was that doing very well. " Meeting up like this, there must be a reason. Where should we meet that would be safe. I would rather not die here." Under his breath he muttered. "Though, I know where we end up"
"I know of a place. I will send you the coordinates. "The other end abruptly ended.
The Doctor was not looking forward to this meeting. The coordinates came through in the graceful circles of his language. He disappeared into the corridors of the TARDIS before he left. He went to the Pond's liquor cabinet. He really didn't care about how it would taste, tea simply was not enough with this situation. He used the sonic and opened the cabinet, since it was locked because of the jerky movement of the TARDIS.
He searched the bottles sniffing for something he might be able to stand. He found something called Guaro. It smelled sweet but had that alcohol smell that usually repulsed him. He took a taste and almost spit it out. He went ahead and swallowed it. It was sweet and bitter at the same time. Like him and his moods lately. He found a decorative flask and filled it with the drink. He took another drink and decided he could drink this stuff. He landed the TARDIS at the designated coordinates and approached the doors. Before he exited he took another sip, letting the stinging sensation take his mind off his problems for a minute. He opened the doors and stepped out. The stark desert landscape filled his vision. Sand flying in the desert wind blew into his eyes and he blinked to keep the grit out.
He walked out as casually as he could muster taking a drink from the flask again. He decided he liked the contrasting sensations of the drink. He stared at the TARDIS that was now before him. It was blue and had Police Call Box written across the top. The Doctor looked at it and tilted his head in confusion. He walked up to it and rubbed the surface. The texture was of wood but there was no wood for miles and miles around. He had never seen it before. Something nagged at him inside his head. This TARDIS should have been the right one. He took another swig since the alcohol seemed to dull the sharpness of these strange feelings.
The doors to the blue TARDIS opened and out walked an aged man, the years of the war was written over the man's face but it had not reached his eyes. The Doctor knew when that would happen. He took a drag off the flask and put it in his pocket. He turned around to the person that emerged. "Hello, Warrior."
"Hello Doctor, what's wrong with your TARDIS?" The older man's eyes grazed it over.
"What's wrong with your's? Mine never looked like that." The Doctor countered
"It's been like that since we left mid-20th century London." The Warrior was trying to be as friendly as possible. Two of the same people meeting like this you could never tell what was going to happen. There were stories of sometimes two incarnations of a time lord would end up fighting each other over some bad decision that the younger incarnation had not made yet, always a messy situation.
"You are the Doctor, or were, right?" There was sheer befuddlement in the Doctor's voice. The Doctor blinked out some of the sand that had gotten into his eyes. He could not take his eyes off the Warriors TARDIS. He found he was fiddling with the flask as he was speaking and decided to take another nip.
"Aren't you a little young to be drinking like that?" The Warrior indicated the flask that had now become part of the Doctor's hand.
"No grandpa." He found a boulder and sat down on the hot surface. He offered the flask to the Warrior. The Warrior turned it away.
"Sorry, there Doctor, I'm on duty." The Warrior sat down on the other side of the large boulder.
"Since when did we obey the rules?" The Doctor glanced around at the landscape. He couldn't have been but a few miles from where he had done "it".
"Why did your TARDIS bring you here?" The Warrior glanced into to the younger man's eyes.
"Don't know. Maybe bring me back to something familiar. Figures it would bring me here." There was some longing to be here, but then the man's posture looked as though he wanted to run.
"So do we win? Do we beat back the Daleks finally?" The older man's voice was hopeful but resigned.
"Spoilers."
There was a long pause as the Warrior contemplated this simple word and considered the reaction to the Warrior. Then he looked at the Doctor as he took another nip from the flask. The Doctor was looking at everything except the Warrior.
"When did you start drinking, Boy?" The Warrior looked at the younger man with the floppy head of hair.
"Boy? I am older than you by, well I don't know how old anymore. And today actually, seemed like as good a day as any." He watched as the light from one of the sun's glint off the shiny metal of the flask
"What could have brought you to this?" The Warrior looked concerned at the Doctor. Something was not right about this. He didn't know this face so it must be a latter regeneration.
"As if you don't know, you and I have lived the same life. Why didn't I start sooner?" He wasn't yelling. He was cross, but his voice barely went over a low soft tone.
"What do you mean? We have had a great life. Ok, maybe we lost a companion or two. That was always sad, but things worked out in the end?" The man tried to sound jovial but there was a tone there with the Doctor that set his mind that something was wrong.
"What about Perri? Huh? What about killing the Daleks in their early stages. We frightened Grace away. Ace? We destroyed her."
"What are you talking about? Peri was taken from us by the Council sure, but we were told she was fine."
"What?"
"Grace made out fine after we left and she even wanted to see us again eventually, did you ever see her again by the way?"
"You're not making any sense, Warrior."
"We certainly didn't kill any baby Daleks. Sure, I was going to but I decided against that. A random Dalek did that itself. Of course I didn't mean to drop the wires where I did."
The Doctor looked at the Warrior totally confused. "You are the same person right?"
"I am beginning to think not"
They sat quietly for a few minutes. The Warrior decided to take the Doctors offer and take one swig from the flask, mostly so that the Doctor didn't drink the whole thing alone.
"Tell Me what happened, Doctor. " The Warrior looked into the Doctor's eyes.
"Too many spoilers"
"We wouldn't be allowed to meet like this if there wasn't a reason."
The Doctor was hesitant. He closed his eyes and made sure that the timelines weren't going to be affected. The time lines ran side by side. This Warrior's was pure; his was the same red color he had seen before. "The Great Intelligence is what happened." The Doctor looked about ready to cry "He stepped into the time stream. I don't know what happened afterwards. My companion jumped in after. She died. Isn't that a common theme for me, us." It was not a question.
The Warrior thought about all this for the moment. " So this great intelligence stepped in and what corrupted your timeline? He wasn't so intelligent then was he. You can't change time by wiping someone out like that. The worst you can do is change them, change things around and undo, but not erase."
"You have different memories, May be you are an alternate of myself. Stranger things have happened." That came out harsher than he wanted it to. He couldn't for the life of him think of anything that was stranger than this. "Sorry been doing that a lot lately"
"Perhaps, but let's check that. Come into my TARDIS." The Warrior got up and turned to the younger looking man
"Why?" The Doctor was curious. He took a drink out of the flask mostly to wash down the sand that had blown into his mouth.
"Let's just see what happens. I can scan you and see if we are the same person."
The Doctor seemed to not see any harm in that. Though he wished he didn't have to go into another Time Lords TARDIS. He hated that strange feeling. The entered the blue TARDIS, the Doctor blinked as he felt the alcohol buzz kick in and his head swam suddenly. This was kind of fun, he thought to himself. He was warm for once and he liked this feeling.
"I will run a scan looking for temporal and other such anomalies." He flipped some switches and a light passed over the Doctor.
The Warrior checked the readings. Concern crossed his eyes. "Well, besides being well on your way to being drunk, you and I are indeed the same person."
"That makes even less sense." He placed his hand on his forehead, right now. "Ok, we are the same people no changes in temporal energy, yet we have lived two separate lives. How is that possible?" He hit himself to clear his mind of his other racing thoughts. "Come on, Doctor, think" he berated himself.
"Take me to where you were when this happened." The Warrior was preparing the TARIDS to be left for a while.
The Doctor shook his head. "The Two of us, near our grave? What do you think will happen? I would rather face the entirety of the Dalek parliament than go back there. No, I can't. It happened at our grave, on Trenzalor"
"I have a feeling it is your grave now not mine."
"What?" The Doctor blinked uncomprehendingly." you think We have diverged because of the Great Intelligence. Why weren't you touched, then?"
"You tell me?"
"Let's just say I bury you."
"You must have buried me so deep that the great Intelligence couldn't reach? Why?"
"Spoilers."
He thought back to what happened. There was a blank. "Give me your hands Warrior. I think you are right, a divergent time stream, you are right. I buried you very deep into my psyche. I set you apart. You are not the Doctor."
Those words stung the older looking man to his core. He pressed on. "I want to travel down your time stream and see if things went wrong. "
They joined hands and they both closed their eyes. The Doctor went into a meditative state that seemed to clear away the slightly drunken fog that had penetrated his mind. He found the Warriors Time stream and sped down the twisting route. He saw himself through the man. Everything was wrong. But was it him or the Warrior who was wrong?
He was instantly sober. That timeline felt right, yet he had lived this one, or did he? They broke the connection. The Doctor wondered if he should take another drink and decided he would.
"This had brought up more questions than answers." He put the flask in his pocket and ran his finger through his hair messing it up.
"I saw your timeline as well. I see where the confusion is coming from" The older gentleman leaned against his control panel.
"What does it mean? Both of us can't be wrong and both of us can't be right. Why you? You should have been affected by the Great Intelligences meddling, why weren't you? I clearly remember being a big mess in my Ninth time around."
"Because like you said, I am not the Doctor. For once it seems that is a good thing."