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Description
"Right then... Christmas with the Ponds out of the way, loved the turkey, and the pud! Gotta have the pud, too, so human, isn't it, making something lovely and setting fire to it, there's a complex in that somewhere, alcohol did that, rather a lot of alcohol actually,ooh, and there's something else, something very strange... maybe that's why bits of my face seem to have gone numb, and why am I holding this kipper? Does the TARDIS need a kipper? Ah, I remember, it's to hit the talking cake with. Silly old Doctor. Have at thee!"

The Doctor flailed at his TARDIS' central console with a hammer for some considerable time, after which he held a long conversation with his left knee and sat by a window making faces. After that, he glued several large sheets of paper to the console covered in pictures of the Forest of Cheem drawn in dribble and had a sleep.

*******

"What do you MEAN you don't know what it is? You poured it on the flippin' pudding!"

Rory cringed in front of his wife, who was currently doing a convincing impersonation of an apoplectic tomato with high blood pressure. "I... I don't know what's in the bottle, Amy. I didn't even know we had it in the house. Must've been here when we got it."

"No, Rory. I'm not buying that. You brought this... this whatever-it-is up here and dumped it on the Christmas pudding! Look at River! Look at what day it is! Now tell me it wasn't your fault!"

"Look, Amy, I really didn't mean to, alright? I didn't buy it and, well, after we'd had a load to drink I brought up this instead of the brandy for the pudding. I'm sorry."

"You... Rory, how could you possibly mistake this for brandy?"

"It's dark in that cupboard."

"Rory, it's purple and glowing!"

"... It's really dark..."

From the corner, River Song continued arguing about the palaeontology of Artagosh IV with a small blue dog made of porcelain. Amy sighed and gave up.

*******

"... urrrrr... head... fire... shouty... whyz larm clock s'loud..." The Doctor hammered at where his bedside table should have been and missed entirely. This was because he was in fact passed out in front of the console, which he worked out at roughly the same time as he worked out why everything felt rather warm, namely that much of the contents of the TARDIS' bridge were on fire. He scrabbled to his feet, wobbling considerably, and tried to bat out the flames as best he could. This done, he slammed open the doors of his TARDIS and looked out onto-

"Excuse me, sir, are you well?"

"AAAARGH!" The Doctor skidded backwards and slammed the front door shut, then hammered away at the controls as best as he could without opposable thumbs. "Why here, why here, anywhere but here!" The great machine lurched into life and disappeared from view, only to reappear a few feet above a roof. It smashed down through the thatching and landed with a crunch on the ground floor. Glowing orange smoke rose up from the hole like the devil's own chimney, and Rarity galloped over to check on the occupants.

"Sir! Oh my, are you alright? HELP!"

The Doctor stumbled out of the doorway. "Oh, yes. Absolutely. I go from a Christmas learning experience in 1941 and a Christmas dinner in 2011 to my TARDIS on fire and being interrogated by a... a pointy horse! Nothing could possibly be better!"

"Well, I... how ill-mannered! This is the house of Dr. Hooves, and he shall be extremely annoyed that you've crashed your time machine through his ceiling. Good day to you." Rarity huffed, spun on her heel (no mean feat for a quadruped) and marched off primly with her nose in the air, an aura of righteous indignation surrounding her. The effect was lessened somewhat when she walked into a lamp-post.

"Oi! I didn't want to come back here again, I got drunk, which by the way never happens, and my TARDIS just hurtled through a Seven-Point Barrier to get here! And how did you know it was a time... machine... oh, this isn't good. This is extremely very not good."

A softly-spoken question hurtled towards him. He knew somehow that it would be asked; he did not know how, but he knew it as surely as he knew that he couldn't answer.

"Where's Rose?"

*******

"Doctor, look out!" Rose screamed. The Doctor ducked the gout of flame just in time, a few stray sparks singing the back of his suit jacket. It was that split-second that cost him. A surge of power flooded through the central column and the resultant pulse of temporal energy smashed headlong into the blonde. The rest of the wave seemed to catch itself and swirl around her.

"Help me!"

"Rose, I'm trying! The time vortex isn't supposed to do this, we must be near somewhere bad, somewhere very very bad indeed, and it's looking to you because it knows you! It knows that you can hold it! Prove it right! Focus on me! Trust me!"

"Doctor, it hurts, I-" She was cut off by the tolling of the cloister bell, seven times in quick succession. Blood drained from the Doctor's face.

"Come on Rose, focus on me..."

Fire spewed from the console's column, lashing the Time Lord all over with pain. He didn't mind. If anything, it felt like penance for one more sin.

The sin unfolding before him.

Rose's back arched and she screamed without a single sound. From her body poured the unbridled energy of time, infinite in its impermanence, the power that it took to make the present roll on in a tidal wave of destruction and recreation. The Time Lords had harnessed it, filled themselves with it as much as they dared, but humans had never even got close to being ready and now...

"DOCTOR!"

She was gone.

*******

"... You know what happened. Tell me." The gunmetal-grey eyes of the Doctor bored into his counterpart's. He could feel them stinging and ignored it.

"By this point, you've met everyone important. You know why I can't. You know where that path goes."

"I know..." The brown Doctor sank to his knees and felt a comforting hoof from his counterpart across his shoulders. "That doesn't make it any better, though."

"It never does. I remember a very wise, very old being saying that the lot of the eternal is to watch all they love change." Both Doctors sighed slightly. Neither moved for a very long time.

"Wait... wait a minute, we're touching! No feedback, no paradoxes, no tempovores, absolutely nada! That must mean we're from parallel universes and that must mean she's still-"

"The Master pulled a similar trick once, Doctor. This time it was an accident."

The Doctor rounded on his future, greyer self. "How do you know that's true? How do you know?"

"Because I remember it."

And the Doctor looked into the eyes of a Doctor from his future, his subjective future, and felt like a companion. Upon landing, he'd just assumed that he'd gone brown because, well, he wore a lot of it, but this stallion was grey and he knew why. The spark of youth in his eyes had been replaced by the lukewarm afterglow of age, like a sparkler at the end of the display.

"Well," said the Doctor, jarring the younger one out of his eye-gazing stupor, "since my TARDIS is going to be stuck here for a while, might as well make the best of it. Tell me, is there anywhere I can buy a stetson?"

The Doctor smiled, weak as a kitten but meant. "I think I know somepony who can help you out. Come on, I'll show you around."

"Actually, that's something I've been meaning to ask you..." The Doctor asked of his younger self.

"Go on," replied the aforementioned younger self, bracing himself for more hurt.

"Why... pinstripes?"

The Doctor was puzzled, then glared at his future self. "Why bow ties?"

"Why those three-dee glasses that didn't work properly?"

"Why that top hat?"

"Well, that's not strictly part of it, usually it's a fez-"

"Oh, we have got to ask Rarity to make you one of those! I think she might actually explode."

"Worst possible thing?"

"The worst."

It was all bravado, of course. Neither one was hurting any less; both knew it it. But they also knew that it didn't matter. And so, smiling a little, the two Doctors went to see a unicorn about a fez, and life went on.

Description
"Right then... Christmas with the Ponds out of the way, loved the turkey, and the pud! Gotta have the pud, too, so human, isn't it, making something lovely and setting fire to it, there's a complex in that somewhere, alcohol did that, rather a lot of alcohol actually,ooh, and there's something else, something very strange... maybe that's why bits of my face seem to have gone numb, and why am I holding this kipper? Does the TARDIS need a kipper? Ah, I remember, it's to hit the talking cake with. Silly old Doctor. Have at thee!"

The Doctor flailed at his TARDIS' central console with a hammer for some considerable time, after which he held a long conversation with his left knee and sat by a window making faces. After that, he glued several large sheets of paper to the console covered in pictures of the Forest of Cheem drawn in dribble and had a sleep.

*******

"What do you MEAN you don't know what it is? You poured it on the flippin' pudding!"

Rory cringed in front of his wife, who was currently doing a convincing impersonation of an apoplectic tomato with high blood pressure. "I... I don't know what's in the bottle, Amy. I didn't even know we had it in the house. Must've been here when we got it."

"No, Rory. I'm not buying that. You brought this... this whatever-it-is up here and dumped it on the Christmas pudding! Look at River! Look at what day it is! Now tell me it wasn't your fault!"

"Look, Amy, I really didn't mean to, alright? I didn't buy it and, well, after we'd had a load to drink I brought up this instead of the brandy for the pudding. I'm sorry."

"You... Rory, how could you possibly mistake this for brandy?"

"It's dark in that cupboard."

"Rory, it's purple and glowing!"

"... It's really dark..."

From the corner, River Song continued arguing about the palaeontology of Artagosh IV with a small blue dog made of porcelain. Amy sighed and gave up.

*******

"... urrrrr... head... fire... shouty... whyz larm clock s'loud..." The Doctor hammered at where his bedside table should have been and missed entirely. This was because he was in fact passed out in front of the console, which he worked out at roughly the same time as he worked out why everything felt rather warm, namely that much of the contents of the TARDIS' bridge were on fire. He scrabbled to his feet, wobbling considerably, and tried to bat out the flames as best he could. This done, he slammed open the doors of his TARDIS and looked out onto-

"Excuse me, sir, are you well?"

"AAAARGH!" The Doctor skidded backwards and slammed the front door shut, then hammered away at the controls as best as he could without opposable thumbs. "Why here, why here, anywhere but here!" The great machine lurched into life and disappeared from view, only to reappear a few feet above a roof. It smashed down through the thatching and landed with a crunch on the ground floor. Glowing orange smoke rose up from the hole like the devil's own chimney, and Rarity galloped over to check on the occupants.

"Sir! Oh my, are you alright? HELP!"

The Doctor stumbled out of the doorway. "Oh, yes. Absolutely. I go from a Christmas learning experience in 1941 and a Christmas dinner in 2011 to my TARDIS on fire and being interrogated by a... a pointy horse! Nothing could possibly be better!"

"Well, I... how ill-mannered! This is the house of Dr. Hooves, and he shall be extremely annoyed that you've crashed your time machine through his ceiling. Good day to you." Rarity huffed, spun on her heel (no mean feat for a quadruped) and marched off primly with her nose in the air, an aura of righteous indignation surrounding her. The effect was lessened somewhat when she walked into a lamp-post.

"Oi! I didn't want to come back here again, I got drunk, which by the way never happens, and my TARDIS just hurtled through a Seven-Point Barrier to get here! And how did you know it was a time... machine... oh, this isn't good. This is extremely very not good."

A softly-spoken question hurtled towards him. He knew somehow that it would be asked; he did not know how, but he knew it as surely as he knew that he couldn't answer.

"Where's Rose?"

*******

"Doctor, look out!" Rose screamed. The Doctor ducked the gout of flame just in time, a few stray sparks singing the back of his suit jacket. It was that split-second that cost him. A surge of power flooded through the central column and the resultant pulse of temporal energy smashed headlong into the blonde. The rest of the wave seemed to catch itself and swirl around her.

"Help me!"

"Rose, I'm trying! The time vortex isn't supposed to do this, we must be near somewhere bad, somewhere very very bad indeed, and it's looking to you because it knows you! It knows that you can hold it! Prove it right! Focus on me! Trust me!"

"Doctor, it hurts, I-" She was cut off by the tolling of the cloister bell, seven times in quick succession. Blood drained from the Doctor's face.

"Come on Rose, focus on me..."

Fire spewed from the console's column, lashing the Time Lord all over with pain. He didn't mind. If anything, it felt like penance for one more sin.

The sin unfolding before him.

Rose's back arched and she screamed without a single sound. From her body poured the unbridled energy of time, infinite in its impermanence, the power that it took to make the present roll on in a tidal wave of destruction and recreation. The Time Lords had harnessed it, filled themselves with it as much as they dared, but humans had never even got close to being ready and now...

"DOCTOR!"

She was gone.

*******

"... You know what happened. Tell me." The gunmetal-grey eyes of the Doctor bored into his counterpart's. He could feel them stinging and ignored it.

"By this point, you've met everyone important. You know why I can't. You know where that path goes."

"I know..." The brown Doctor sank to his knees and felt a comforting hoof from his counterpart across his shoulders. "That doesn't make it any better, though."

"It never does. I remember a very wise, very old being saying that the lot of the eternal is to watch all they love change." Both Doctors sighed slightly. Neither moved for a very long time.

"Wait... wait a minute, we're touching! No feedback, no paradoxes, no tempovores, absolutely nada! That must mean we're from parallel universes and that must mean she's still-"

"The Master pulled a similar trick once, Doctor. This time it was an accident."

The Doctor rounded on his future, greyer self. "How do you know that's true? How do you know?"

"Because I remember it."

And the Doctor looked into the eyes of a Doctor from his future, his subjective future, and felt like a companion. Upon landing, he'd just assumed that he'd gone brown because, well, he wore a lot of it, but this stallion was grey and he knew why. The spark of youth in his eyes had been replaced by the lukewarm afterglow of age, like a sparkler at the end of the display.

"Well," said the Doctor, jarring the younger one out of his eye-gazing stupor, "since my TARDIS is going to be stuck here for a while, might as well make the best of it. Tell me, is there anywhere I can buy a stetson?"

The Doctor smiled, weak as a kitten but meant. "I think I know somepony who can help you out. Come on, I'll show you around."

"Actually, that's something I've been meaning to ask you..." The Doctor asked of his younger self.

"Go on," replied the aforementioned younger self, bracing himself for more hurt.

"Why... pinstripes?"

The Doctor was puzzled, then glared at his future self. "Why bow ties?"

"Why those three-dee glasses that didn't work properly?"

"Why that top hat?"

"Well, that's not strictly part of it, usually it's a fez-"

"Oh, we have got to ask Rarity to make you one of those! I think she might actually explode."

"Worst possible thing?"

"The worst."

It was all bravado, of course. Neither one was hurting any less; both knew it it. But they also knew that it didn't matter. And so, smiling a little, the two Doctors went to see a unicorn about a fez, and life went on.