Rose blinked groggily awake some time later; minutes or hours, she couldn't immediately tell. Minutes, she decided, sitting up and rubbing her head, and noting that a scratch on the back of her hand was still welling blood, not having had time yet to scab over. She frowned and surveyed her surroundings. A hole, she concluded in short order. Bloody brilliant. Don't wander off, he'd said, and she'd managed to tumble who knew how far and get stuck in a hole.

It was, at least, a dry hole. She craned her neck to gauge its depth. Pushed herself to her feet and reached up on tiptoes for the edge; then sighed and slumped back against the dirt wall. Nine feet if it was an inch. Wonder she hadn't broken anything. She rubbed her lower back and grimaced. She'd be bruised and sore tomorrow, in any case. Felt like every part of her body had been put through a grinder.

Well, nothing to be done for it now but to swallow her pride and admit she needed help. "Doctor!" she shouted, then sighed. He was going to laugh at her. Affectionately, of course; but he was going to laugh and make one of his avowals of confusion as to why humans couldn't follow simple instructions. Stupid little apes, wandering off and getting lost because they'd seen something shiny. She wanted to smack herself in the forehead, but it hurt enough already. "Doctor!" she yelled again.

And again.

When some twenty minutes had gone by without a response, she began to worry. What if he couldn't find her? What if he'd gotten to tinkering with the TARDIS and not even noticed she was gone? No, that was ridiculous. Of course he'd notice. What if – and here a cold fist gripped the pit of her stomach – what if he'd been hurt somehow? "Doctorrrr…" her voice trailed off in a frustrated whimper as she thudded her fists against the wall of her makeshift prison. She jumped; clawed; tried to find a root or a crevice or any kind of handhold but the dirt just crumbled beneath her fingers. Maybe, she reflected darkly, she could tunnel out. With her fingernails. She sighed and sat down at the bottom of the pit, resting her chin on crossed arms over her knees. She thought wistfully of her phone, which was usefully sitting on her bedside table in the TARDIS. "Idiot," she muttered.

"…lo?"

Rose snapped her head up, startled. Was that a voice? "Doctor! I'm down here!" she cried with renewed vigor, scrambling to her feet.

"Yes, I can hear you," the voice called back, faint through the heavy air. "Stay put, I'll come to you!"

"Where else am I going to go?" Rose wondered caustically under her breath, watching the rim of the hole. A sudden thought occurred to her. "Careful, there's a big—"

A head popped into view over the edge of the pit. It was not the Doctor. No big stupid grin, no big stupid ears. Just a pair of absently friendly eyes and a mop of longish wavy brown hair.

"…hole," Rose concluded belatedly, recovering from her surprise. Evidently the planet wasn't as empty as all that, then. And he wasn't even a big slimy monster. He looked human.

"Hello," the man greeted amicably, as if they'd just run into each other in the park and she wasn't, in fact, trapped at the bottom of a great bloody hole.

"Little help?" she replied, with an embarrassed grin.

He returned it brightly. "Right. Sit tight… not that I'm sure where you'd run off to. But I thought I saw some vines back there. Have you out in two shakes." He disappeared abruptly from view.

Rose shook her head and rubbed her eyes. Like moths to a flame, she seemed to attract the odd ones. A few minutes later, a ragged-looking vine of dubious durability arced over the lip of the pit and swung down, nearly hitting her in the face. "Little warning next time?" she called up as she caught hold of the makeshift rope. It oozed some manner of nasty sticky sap that instantly bonded with her skin. She sighed. Better sticky than trapped at the bottom of a hole, she supposed.

The face popped back into view a moment later. "Sorry," he said, sounding genuinely contrite. "Best I could do in a pinch."

"It'll do fine," she assured him. "Safe to climb up, then?"

"I tied the other end round one of those boulders. As long as the vine doesn't snap…."

"Great moral support, you are," Rose observed through a determined grin, hauling herself up the rope. Chiltern Street Junior School Under Sevens Gymnastics Team bronze medallist, that was her. Her rescuer crouched by the side of the hole to give her a helping hand up once she was in reach. Gratefully, she extricated her right hand from the sticky vine and slapped it into his equally sap-stained hand. With surprising strength he heaved backwards and pulled her the remainder of the way out of the pit, whereupon they both promptly lost their balance and landed in a tangle of limbs and sticky plant fibers.

His eyes, Rose noticed, were green. No, aquamarine. No, green. She noticed this because hers were now some three inches from them. He smiled winningly. Quite expressive lips, she observed, set in a finely-boned face of the sort the Doctor would doubtless term 'pretty'. With this realization she startled back to her senses and awkwardly rolled off of him with a mumbled, "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," he replied, sitting up and batting quite futilely at the sleeves of a dark green frock coat which were now irrevocably covered in sap. He gave up the effort with a dismissive shrug and pushed to his feet, dusting his hands together and looking about briskly like a man with a purpose. Rose stared at him. Odd enough there should be someone else on this empty rock; odder still that he should be human (good-looking too, she had to admit in spite of her better instincts); and even odder yet that he should be dressed in full Edwardian gentleman's garb (he was wearing a cravat for god's sake – the stickpin was badly off-center). But on top of all of that, she could almost swear she knew him from somewhere.

"Have we met?" she blurted.

He gave her a bemused look, all wide-eyed innocence. "I don't think so." He extended a hand to help her up from her inglorious seat on the ground, and grinned, "Why, do you come here often?"

"Oh… yeah, loads," she found herself smiling back. "Thinking of building a summer home here, actually."

"Really? It's my first time." His gaze wandered past her face and roved in a distracted manner over the featureless hills, as if he were trying to find the reason one would want to keep a summer home in such a place.

"I was joking," she qualified slowly.

His eyes snapped instantly, unnervingly, back to hers. "Oh yes, I know," he said in a matter-of-fact manner. He clapped his hands together, like an eager child on some new fun adventure. "Well then, where do we go from here?"

Rose was not particularly accustomed to leading expeditions on strange planets. That was the Doctor's job: to dash headlong into whatever danger beckoned, while she held onto his hand did her best to keep up. "Well, I should check on my… companion, really. He went off exploring a while ago. Should've been back by now."

"Yes, companions are good at that sort of thing," the man agreed amiably. "Where'd you leave him?"

Rose frowned, rubbing the back of her neck as she turned slowly around, squinting. "I'm not sure, that's the problem. I fell down some sort of hill…"

"Like that hill?" He pointed, mildly, at the rising slope to the east: the only one of the otherwise indistinguishable hills that bore the obvious recent skid marks of a tumbling body.

Rose felt her cheeks warm in embarrassment. "Ah… yup. That would be it."

"Well then, what are we waiting for?" Her odd rescuer bounced ahead, starting to trek cheerfully up the hill. Rose could almost swear he was whistling. Then she realized he was rapidly fading into the thick mist, and hurried after him.

"Hey, wait up!" He paused, glanced back, and upon realizing how quickly he'd left her behind, courteously offered a hand up over a particularly steep bit. She huffed as she clambered, noting with mild irritation that he didn't even seem to be out of breath. "So," she panted between breaths, "Bit of an odd place to just happen onto someone, isn't it? How'd you end up here?"

"Believe it or not," he smiled, his eyes on the ground ahead, picking out the best path, "I—" he broke off suddenly, standing stock straight and tilting his head as though listening for something.

"What?" Rose had her eyes on the ground and nearly ran into his back.

He held up one hand in a shushing motion; which quickly turned into a grabbing motion as she wobbled and almost lost her balance at the sudden stop. "D'you hear that?"

She listened. "No?"

"Shh… there it is again. This way!" he proclaimed, striking upward at another angle. "Hello," he called, cheerily, "who's there? We come in peace!" Straining her ears, Rose thought she could discern a faint response. Her escort glanced back. "Rose? Is that your name?"

Relief flooded her. "Yeah – that must be my friend. So he's looking for me after all."

"Well, that's what friends are for. Let's see if we can find him first," he grinned mischievously, hopping over a dead purple log and glancing solicitously back to see if she needed another hand.

This was fortunate, as it turned out, because just as he turned, the fog parted a short distance up the hill to permit the passage of a familiar tall figure in a familiar battered black leather jacket. Rose's knees shook as she cried out in relief, exhaustion suddenly overcoming adrenaline. The man in the green frock coat saw this and leapt down quickly to catch and steady her about the waist. The Doctor was upon them seconds later, his hands infinitely gentle as he helped ease her down to sit on the log; but his eyes barely passed over her, settling instead in a displeased glare at her new friend.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded in a clipped tone.

No 'Hello Rose, good to see you, glad you're alive and in one piece,' hell, not even a, 'I thought I told you not to wander off.' Rose snorted indignantly. Honestly, he could be such a child about her happening to run into good-looking blokes.

Said bloke sat down on the log next to her, leaving the Doctor to loom over them both. "Well I didn't come here on purpose. My TARDIS broke down, actually," he explained calmly.

Rose startled and snapped her head round to stare at him. "You've a TARDIS too?" she blurted. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"You didn't ask," he replied simply, his eyebrows climbing at the notion that this was information he should have volunteered.

Rose was beginning to work it out, now. "Wait – you're a Time Lord too?" She ignored his puzzled mouthing of the word 'too' and chattered on. "Of course, that's why you weren't tired climbing up that stupid hill. You've got two hearts, right?"

The Doctor cleared his throat loudly. "Scuse me, but I'm here too you know—"

"But he's a Time Lord, Doctor; I thought you said all the Time Lords were—"

"Hush, Rose!"

It was the sharpest tone the Doctor had ever taken with her, and her voice instantly shriveled into a squeak, her mouth still working as she blinked at him in shock.

The man seated next to her, meanwhile, repeated the word 'Doctor' in a mystified whisper, his eyes darting between them. He rose abruptly to his feet with a startled, "Oh!" And then gave the Doctor a very hard look, culminating in a small gasp of understanding and a more significant, "…oh."

Rose looked from one to the other, frowning. "D'you two know each other?"

"In a manner of speaking," the Doctor replied shortly.

The smaller man seemed to recover his composure, even in the face of the Doctor's disapproving stare, and smiled brightly at him as he stuck his hands in his pockets. "Well, I don't remember being you, so I presume you must be from my future. If you don't mind my asking, which one of me are you?"

The Doctor crossed his arms over his chest and replied in a draggingly reluctant tone, "Nine."

"Well then, we didn't miss each other by much, did we?"

Rose slammed her hands down on the log to either side with a disgruntled, "Oi!" that caused both men to startle and blink at her. "Will someone please explain what is going on!"

The Doctor extricated one of his hands and made an irritated gesture at the fellow with the… hair. "Rose, this is the Doctor. The previous Doctor, that is."

She squinted at them. "What, it's like a title?"

"Nonono, that's my name," the other man corrected, then touched a hand to his chin, thoughtfully. "Or as good as one, anyway," he murmured; then snapped back to the present. "You see, I have thirteen lives—"

"Oi, she's my companion, I can explain it, thanks," said the Doctor… Rose's Doctor… shortly. He took a deep breath and fixed her with a serious gaze. "Rose, I have thirteen lives."

The other Doctor threw up his hands in silent bemusement, shaking his head and wandering a couple steps down the hill, rummaging absently through his pockets. Rose barely afforded him a distracted glance; her attention was centered squarely on the man in the leather jacket now. "Thirteen lives," she repeated, wondering if it really sounded as silly as she thought it did. "What, like a cat?"

The Doctor granted her a little sarcastic smirk. "Yeah, like a cat, only totally different. Look," he touched the bridge of his nose as if trying to figure out how to explain it without giving him a headache. "When a Time Lord dies, his body can regenerate itself. Twelve times. New body, same memories, different personality and such."

"And such," Rose aped him again, nodding as if she understood.

"Right." He seemed to take this as a success. "And this right here," he tapped his chest, "would be my eighth regeneration – the ninth… me."

Rose frowned. "So wait, you're saying there's… twelve others of you, just running round the universe right now?"

"In a manner of speaking, yeah."

She threw a dubious look at the other man calling himself Doctor; he had discovered a small white paper bag in one of his pockets and was now rummaging through that. "So he's…"

"The eighth me."

Upon hearing this, the eighth Doctor glanced up and began to pay attention again. "Yes, quite." He withdrew something red from the paper bag and held it out as an offering. "Jelly baby?"

Rose's Doctor rolled his eyes. "Was I really ever such a prat?" he softly asked no one in particular. Rose, however, took the proffered candy in hesitant fingers, and slipped it thoughtfully into her mouth.

Eight beamed an encouraging smile at her, then looked up bemusedly at his counterpart. "I have to say, I'm not particularly looking forward to being you, either. No offense," he added quickly.

Nine smiled crookedly, the corners of his eyes crinkling with that wry amusement that served to somewhat calm Rose's concerns that he was about to pick a fight. "None taken," he replied brusquely. "No doubt if Ten were here we'd both think he was an insufferable idiot."

"No doubt," Eight agreed, and held up the bag invitingly.

The ninth Doctor hesitated, the frown returning for a moment, then shrugged and dipped his hand into the bag, withdrawing a yellow candy which he promptly bit the head off of. "Wonder how many laws we're breaking right now," he mused as he chewed.

"You're keeping count, now?"

"Course not!"

Rose choked out a laugh. Both of them broke off to stare at her, chorusing, "What?"

The oddity of the whole situation was beginning to overwhelm her. "Are you really… you're both the Doctor?"

"Yes," said the man who had pulled her out of the hole.

"You don't believe us?" asked hers, defensively.

"No, no," she giggled, "clears up a lot of stuff, actually. Except one thing," she sobered. "What are you both doing here?"

The Doctors exchanged looks.

"Must have been your TARDIS that hit us in the Vortex."

"My TARDIS? D'you really think I'm that poor a pilot?"

"I don't have to think; I remember!"

"Well I'm sure I didn't go jumping any time streams, so if anyone was off course it was you."

"Oh sure! Knowing me – you – you probably swerved to avoid hitting a bit of pre-primordial ooze and didn't notice you'd jumped tracks."

"Honestly!" Rose burst. "D'you know what you both sound like?"

"I seem to sound like I'm from the North," replied the eighth Doctor, his brow furrowed puzzledly.

"Oh, shut up."

"Cor, like a coupla children, you are," Rose scolded, and stood up to plant herself between them, hands on hips. "Doesn't really matter who hit who, does it?" She poked her lanky Doctor in the chest. "How do we get out of here, that's the question."

He gave her an indignant look, rubbing the spot where she'd jabbed him. "Why're you asking me?"

"Well," and here Rose was quite proud of her deductive skills, "if you've been here before, as him," she chucked a finger at Eight, who attended with half a knowing smile as he chewed on another jelly baby, "then you must remember how you got out, right?"

The Doctor shot an annoyed look at his counterpart, who merely shrugged innocently, as if to say, 'Oi, she's your companion, you can explain.' "It doesn't quite work that way," he huffed finally.

"But you said you kept your memories? Don't you remember running into yourself on some ball of foggy rock in the middle of nowhere? I think I would." Rose raised a challenging eyebrow.

The ninth Doctor gritted his teeth. "Yes, I remember meeting myself. But I didn't remember until just now, because it didn't happen until… just now."

She frowned. "Isn't that some kind of… paradox, or something?"

"I seem to be good at those," the eighth Doctor chipped in helpfully. He stepped over and draped an arm over her shoulders, offering another candy from the bag. "Help yourself. Comfort food, you know. I find it's easiest to just sit back and enjoy the ride." Nine glared daggers.

"Oh what, you're not jealous of yourself now, are you?" Rose couldn't resist a shot, grinning cheekily and leaning her head briefly against her sartorially-attired alien friend's shoulder, sap-stickied as he was. He didn't smell quite the same as her Doctor, she observed curiously, now that she had a point of reference to work from. But still… old. Very old. Smelled like time. And a bit like… sandalwood? A lock of his hair brushed against her face and she stifled a sneeze.

"Good luck with that," her Doctor snorted caustically, turning on his heel and tramping back up the hill.

Rose straightened abruptly, staring after him, then back at Eight. "What's that supposed to mean?"

The Doctor shrugged unknowingly. "Never could quite understand my other selves," he replied. "Well, come on then. We'd best stick together." He helped her the rest of the way up to the TARDIS; for which she was quite grateful, as her muscles were beginning to stiffen and ache quite demandingly from the fall. But he did not offer to hold her hand.