Chapter III: Like Seeing Your Reflection
The first thing the Doctor did was to start mingling with the locals as to ascertain the importance of why he had been drawn to this particular time or place.
"Excuse me sir, might I ask whose ball is this?" the Doctor asked one of the gentlemen in attendance.
"The Lady Cunningham sir. I believe she is throwing this soiree as a welcome party for one Madame Vastra of London." the man replied.
"Vastra, hmm, doesn't ring any bells." the Doctor muttered.
When he went to ask another question the man was gone. So in good fashion he stumbled upon a young lady to inquire upon.
"Excuse me miss, now I know this might sound like a silly question but could you tell me where we are?" the Doctor asked.
"Why Lady Cunningham's Estate of course. Haversham England." the woman replied.
"Thank you, you may return to your revelry." the Doctor said dismissing himself.
"Wait aren't you going to ask me to dance?" the young blonde woman called out to him.
"I'll ask you to dance." said a man with a thin black moustache that came waltzing towards her with the intent of sweeping the lady off her feet.
"Haversham, so right place, wrong time." whispered the Doctor.
"Come with me. We need to check around outside." the Doctor told Rick.
After making their way through the elegant ballroom Rick and the Doctor went outside. They could always come back and check on things later, perhaps meet with this Madame Vastra to see if she could shed some light on the situation. In the meantime the Doctor had an idea; maybe just maybe the TARDIS had been compensating for them. Perhaps they had the place right but wrong idea of when to go so it took them to the proper time. With that in mind the Doctor led Rick out into the wheat fields, now ripe for the harvest, to the location in which the crank file said that a zombie like event had occurred at some future date.
Rick and the Doctor searched around the area for about an hour and found nothing.
"What are we looking for again?" Rick asked.
"A zombie, I mean a walker." the Doctor replied.
"I don't see anything." Rick commented.
"Shh... do you hear that?" the Doctor asked.
"Hear what?" asked Rick.
The Doctor's hearing was acutely better than your average human's and for the amount of times a gun has been fired in close proximity to Rick's head it was a miracle he retained as much hearing as he did. Then he heard it, a faint rustling in the tall wheat stalks several rows in the distance. Rick drew his gun and followed the Doctor as they both crept carefully into the field following the sound. The noise grew louder as they drew closer, now unmistakably indicative of someone else moving through the fields. After passing through many more rows of tall wheat hissing, gasping and growling sounds could be heard. They were drawing very near to the source of the sound now. Without warning it was upon them. A walker dressed in torn military attire lunged at the Doctor through the row of crops ahead of him. The walker grabbed a hold of the Doctor and leaned in to bite down on the Doctor's shoulder. Before the teeth of the undead could shut and dig into the cloth of the Doctor's suit a gunshot rang out and the walker's head exploded from a .45 caliber bullet pounding through its skull above its right temple. The Doctor turned back and saw Rick holding the smoking gun.
"Now was that really necessary?" asked the Doctor.
"I just saved your life. A little thank you should be in order." Rick replied.
"Why, thank you then." the Doctor replied.
"You're welcome." Rick said.
The Doctor had hoped of catching a zombie alive but he would have to settle for a dead one. He leaned over and examined the body. The walker was no ordinary zombified country dweller. It was certainly out of place here. First of all it was wearing the uniform of a 20th Century SAS commando not a 19th Century farmer. The Doctor took out a glass vial and scraped some of the walker's flesh into it before sealing it. He also took some of its putrid blood to take with him back to the TARDIS for analysis.
"Puzzling, very puzzling." the Doctor mumbled to himself.
"We're going to have to burn the body before it can infect anything else. That estate should have something we can use." the Doctor told Rick, bidding him to follow on their way back to Madame Vastra's country estate.
Upon arrival the Doctor was greeted by a couple, a man and a woman, coming out of the front door of the estate as he was coming in. He was a dashing young man in a gray suit with a charming bow tie. She was a frizzy haired middle aged strawberry blonde in semi-professional attire that looked to be a bit out of place for this time period. Both of them appeared to be in quite a hurry. The man in his haste bumped the Doctor and knocked his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and onto the ground.
"Excuse me. I'm terribly sorry." the man said.
The man stopped, stooped down and picked up the Doctor's sonic and handed it back to him.
"Hello, I'm the Doctor." the man introduced himself.
"Doctor who?" the Doctor asked.
"I figured I would have gotten used to hearing that but nope, still worth a chuckle every time." the bowtied man laughed.
"It's just the Doctor." he continued.
"Hey, that's what you call yourself." Rick told the Doctor.
"Bingo! You see I am him, well I will be. That's why I can remember him and he has no idea who I am." the bowtied Doctor exclaimed.
"So you're telling me this is what I become?" the tenth Doctor asked while moving his hands up and down with all fingers pointing towards the outline of the eleventh Doctor's figure.
"Oh I am so not looking forward to regenerating." the tenth Doctor quietly groaned.
"Don't be so vain. It's not that bad. I'm still a snappy dresser and it could be worse, you could've gotten all old and such." the Eleventh Doctor said.
"So who is this? Your new companion?" the Tenth Doctor asked.
"This is Professor River Song. You've met haven't you?" the Eleventh Doctor asked curiously. Surely they knew each other. He distinctly remembered meeting River when he was in the Tenth Doctor's body.
"I can't say I have." the Tenth Doctor replied.
"Great Library, Vashta Nerada, any of that ring any bells?" the eleventh Doctor asked.
"Shhh.. spoilers." River hushed him.
"Oh, well never mind that then. So what have you been doing lately? That way we don't jumble up all the timey wimeyness here. Cliff jumping? Opera? Maybe a little spat with the Jidoon?" the Eleventh Doctor asked.
"No you see I just brought Rose back after fighting the Cybermen in a parallel universe where we ended up on a version of Earth populated by zombies and that's where I met this guy." the Tenth Doctor replied.
"Say, where is Rose? Is she still traveling with you?" the tenth Doctor asked.
He had started to develop an unspoken attachment to the girl and would think that it would have carried on, the two of them, Rose Tyler and the Doctor, traveling to the ends of space and time for the rest of her days. Nonetheless perhaps she had moved on as all humans eventually had to do. it was also very likely that he wouldn't regenerate again until long after Rose had passed away and this new form of his was hundreds of years older than he.
"Oh well, umm. . ." the eleventh Doctor began to say. The failing of his countenance and the somber aura of his voice conveyed a sense of sorrow between the two Doctors.
"Spoilers." River reminded him.
"Right, you'll have to experience that part when it comes." the eleventh Doctor told him.
"Why? What happens?" the Tenth Doctor was tempted to ask but didn't. He could tell that whatever it was it wasn't good.
"All I can say is enjoy every moment you have together." the Eleventh Doctor told him.
"Thanks. I intended to anyways." the Tenth Doctor replied. That was even more concerning to him.
"How are there two of you and you're supposed to be the same person?" Rick asked confounded by the multiple incarnations of the Doctor.
"It's a timey-wimey time lordish kind of thing. I'll explain it to you later." the Tenth Doctor told Rick. With an infected corpse out in the field that urgently needed to be disposed of he didn't have the time to go about explaining how a Time Lord's regeneration cycle worked.
"So what are you, I mean me, umm I mean you doing here?" the Tenth Doctor asked.
"We're just out celebrating our honeymoon. We wanted to go to the rainbow seas of Vierta Prime right on the day of a rare three moon eclipse which illuminated an island of pure diamond. It's most beautiful if you haven't been." the Eleventh Doctor explained.
"Honeymoon? Dear don't tell me I get married in the future. I swore I would never. . ." the Tenth Doctor started to ramble.
"Hush with the spoilers dear!" River chastised the eleventh Doctor.
"Oh where are my manners, but yes we were headed to Vierta Prime but instead the TARDIS took us here so I guess it's a fanciful Victoria honeymoon after all." the eleventh Doctor said with a beaming smile.
"What might I ask are you doing here? I don't particularly recall this chapter from my memory." the Eleventh Doctor inquired.
"The timelines are crossed so you probably won't remember anything that happened since leaving the parallel Earth where the Cybermen were created by humans. You're what I should become and I am what you never should have been." the Tenth Doctor explained.
"Right, that whole alternate dimension thing kind of jumbles things up a bit. Time is one thing I can handle, reality is a whole different story." the Eleventh Doctor commented.
"Why we're here, funny you should ask you see our TARDIS brought us here instead of to 1983." the Tenth Doctor
"What's in 1983? You miss the New Wave?" asked the Eleventh Doctor.
"No actually we were tracking down the origin of the zombies in this man's world. I believe he's from 2015 or 2016 something like that. That is what we were doing before our TARDIS acted up. It won't even let us leave now." the Tenth Doctor answered.
"You too. How peculiar." the Eleventh Doctor mused.
There were now two incarnations of the Doctor, both drawn to this place against their will by their TARDIS. Why were they here? Why this place at this time? What was next? Was the Doctor to expect more versions of himself to show up after taking a forced detour to this Madame Vastra's house. Something strange indeed was afoot.