A Day In The Life (Eleven/Emilie)

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Along with the help of Jamie and Zoe, the Doctor had just defeated the Ice Warriors for the second time. And now he was ready for a somewhat warmer adventure. Maybe a beach somewhere nice like Spain. But, as the TARDIS dematerialized again, the Doctor knew that he was probably going to open up the doors and find that he was anywhere but a nice beach in Spain. The TARDIS simply didn't work like that; she took him to where he needed to be, never where he wanted to be.

He might as well get his disappointment at finding himself anywhere but at the beach over with by checking the scanner first before heading out of doors with Jamie and Zoe. He turned towards the TARDIS console and fiddled around with the scanner control...only nothing was showing up on the screen. "It's nothing to worry about," he said, before Jamie could even think about getting in a snarky comment, "It's simply a slight malfunc--" Before he could finish his sentence, the Doctor heard the distinct sound of his two companions' effort to open up the TARDIS doors.

They were outside before the Doctor could even think about stopping them. Running into things was much simpler than trying to fix the scanner but also much more foolish too. However, he didn't need to think twice about what he needed to do, namely find Jamie and Zoe before they got into trouble. He made his way outside, closing and locking the TARDIS doors behind him, but there was no sign of his companions to be seen. "Jamie! Zoe!" he called out, knowing that it was useless.

The two of them were off exploring on their own right now, and the only way the Doctor would be able to find them is if he went off exploring on his own. Their paths were bound to cross eventually. He stood where he was, letting the silence envelope him. It was then that he noticed the faint sound of waves lapping up against a shore. Straight ahead of him all he could see was what looked like an ancient, yet civilized, city but turning his head to the left or the right all he could see for miles out was water.

He was standing on a city in the middle of the sea. How very interesting! It was as close to a beach in Spain as he was going to get where the TARDIS was concerned. He looked down at the ground to see where Jamie and Zoe's footsteps led, and that's when he noticed another curious thing: the sand up here was considerably damp--damper than it should be, considering the waves could never reach this far, seeing as the city was raised up out of the water a considerable distance.

The Doctor bent down and ran a finger through the sand, clumps of it sticking together as he did so. "Interesting," he mumbled to himself, "I'd say that not more than six hours ago this whole area was submerged underwater." And if that went for this particular area, did it also apply to the rest of the city? Only one way to find out! The Doctor began to head towards the city.

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Emilie was the first out of the TARDIS, as usual. If she had run to the door a little faster than normal because of the lingering remnants of awkwardness she'd felt after Libra, well... surely he would not judge her too harshly for that. Assuming he stopped petting the TARDIS long enough to notice.

Not that Emilie blamed him. She rather loved the girl herself, but that was not going to stop her from giving him some alone time.

She was surprised to find the earth so damp beneath her feet. They were on an island, dominated by architecture that she didn't quite recognize, although her history was nowhere near as good as the Doctor's.

Still, the very first thought to come to mind was, "Doctor? Are we on Atlantis?"

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"Atlantis? Atlantis is boring," The Doctor claimed as he exited the TARDIS, closing and locking the door behind him, "In fact, Atlantis wasn't even a human built civilization, but that's a story for another time." He was looking around, "What's more interesting to me is, where has this city come from." He took a deep breath in through his nose.

Then he exhaled from his mouth, "Yes, I can smell it, not long ago, this entire city had been submerged in the ocean. Curiouser and curiouser, don't you think Emilie?" He moved about a bit through the empty street. He pondered, if this city had been submerged and come back up, what kind of people had lived here before? If they couldn't live underwater, surely this city was now a ghost town.

Also, the odd feeling that they'd encountered a place just outside of time. Like it was freshly out of some kind of Time Lock. Interesting enough, for 1634.

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The Doctor soon reached the city and wasn't in the least bit surprised to see that the buildings here appeared to be as damp as the sand was near his TARDIS. This whole city had been submerged about six hours ago and was now exposed to the sun on this relatively cloudless day. Either this city had been inadvertently placed underwater and the inhabitants were more than glad to be back above it or this city had been brought above the water when the inhabitants needed to be down below it to survive.

That could be why the streets were so desolate right now. The inhabitants were hiding in their houses because they couldn't stand the rays of the sun. The Doctor could only reach the conclusion that that meant trouble was going on here. Someone had deliberately raised this city above the sea for some nefarious reason. And that meant that he needed to find Jamie and Zoe all the sooner just in case whoever had done the dirty deed was lingering around this city.

After awhile, all of the streets in the city started to look the same. He was just about to turn around and try to find some new path to wander down when he spotted off in the distance a tall, lanky man and a beautiful young woman. They didn't look like they belonged here anymore than he did but right now all the Doctor cared about was finding Jamie and Zoe. He would worry about how these two newcomers got here later. They looked harmless enough from this distance.

The Doctor hurried over to them. "Excuse me!" he said, once he was near enough for them to hear. "You wouldn't happen to have seen a young man and a young woman in the city, would you?" It was a long shot but it was worth asking, nonetheless. "My friends have a penchant for getting into trouble," he added as a way of explanation for his desire to find them as soon as he could.

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The older Doctor could feel it before the younger had even gotten near them, there was another Time Lord nearby. He could feel it sinking into his bones. This feeling was the one he got when he ran into The Master, or The Meddler.

That's when he'd arrived, calling out to them. The Eleventh Doctor heard the voice calling out to them, he and Emilie turned to face the voice's owner. That's when The Doctor's smile grew a mile wide. There he was, so young, so full of hope and joy. This was one of his favorite times in his life.

The bow tied Time Lord looked the Second Doctor over for a moment and said, "Jaime and Zoe, I assume? No, they haven't been around here Doctor." A smile curled up across his face, "But I'd say you're about to have quite the adventure finding them." He wondered if his younger self could feel it, that he was talking to himself, or at least to another Time Lord, "Emilie, you're speaking to a very good friend of yours, be polite and say hello."

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Atlantis was boring?

Emilie stared up at the Doctor, her mind boggling at the thought. Surely only he could draw that conclusion.

The Doctor was already busy trying to solve their new mystery, but it wasn't his murmuring about the city being submerged that caught her attention [she was really more curious about what had brought it back up].

No, what captured Emilie's attention was the large voice of a dark, man around her height just a little stretch away inquiring after his missing friends.

Another man with a bow tie, she noted, as he drew closer. Then the Doctor surprised her yet again, although perhaps it should not have, by knowing the names of this man's friends.

"Emilie, you're speaking to a very good friend of yours, be polite and say hello."

She was?

Trusting in the Doctor, Emilie turned to this new man with a courteous smile.

"Hello there."

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When the tall man mentioned the names of his companions, the Doctor's hope that he was on their trail was momentarily raised but then the man went on to say that he hadn't seen them and then called him 'Doctor.' But before the Doctor could even think about asking the man how he knew who he, Jamie, and Zoe were, he was being introduced to the woman.

Well, not so much introduced but, rather, reintroduced, as if the Doctor had met this woman before. But the Doctor had never seen her in his life. Still, he put a polite smile on his face. "Hello," he said to her, "I'm the Doctor." He offered her his hand to shake. There. Now the two of them knew each other.

And now he could turn his attention back to the man who knew too much about him. If he hadn't been so worried about finding Jamie and Zoe, then maybe he would have at least been able to realize that he was talking to another Time Lord. But his companions' safety being on his mind, the Doctor didn't realize it. "How do you know who I am, my dear fellow?" he asked. By knowing the answer to that question he would then know how this man also was aware of Jamie and Zoe.

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The Doctor always got a kick out of this part of the conversation with himself, no matter how many times it happened, or which regeneration he was at. He smiled brightly, looking to his companion, "Emilie, remember when I explained regeneration to you?" He nodded back to his younger self, "This is me. Well, the second me to be exact."

He ignored proper etiquette at this point, it was his body he was looking at right now, he could do what he saw fit to himself. The older Doctor wrapped his arms around the younger and said, "It's amazing to see me again, this young, gosh, it's been hundreds of years now."

The Eleventh leaned out and laughed a bit, "So, you're with Jaime and Zoe now? So much fun ahead of you my good man. What a ride. That said, isn't it funny, we've reached a time that's been locked till just now, I should have expected that another one of me would be running to see it as well. Actually, I'm surprised there aren't more of us."

Having rambled on enough, the elder Time Lord quieted down, so that he could allow his younger self a moment catch up.

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Hello. I'm the Doctor.

Emilie eyed her Doctor, then this man claiming to be. How...?

Oh yes, that was right. Regeneration. When near death or forced, the Doctor could survive by changing every cell in his body.

Slowly, Emilie relaxed into an amused smile. Especially when the Doctor described the age difference as being hundreds of years. Knowing her Doctor, that probably meant at least a thousand.

"Maybe the others remembered meeting you and decided it was best avoided," she teased her friend gently as she shook his second self's hand.

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The answer to his question was soon revealed to him, and the Doctor wasn't sure that he liked what he heard. "Oh, my word!" he said, his voice a mixture of dread and joy. The Time Lords hated him enough already for breaking their non-interference policy and they were going to hate him even more once they learned that he had run into one of his future selves. Oh well, it's not like he could demand himself to leave. That would be rude.

Before he could get much of anything else out of his mouth, he was hugging himself. "I'm glad you enjoyed being me so much," he said with a slight chuckle. The Doctor wrapped his arms around himself. "We used to be so grumpy before." He was always going to hold the greatest respect for his first self but he enjoyed the change that came after exhaustion forced him to regenerate for the first time.

There were so many questions he wanted to ask himself but he knew better than that. He let go of the other him and decided to focus on this strange city that they had both landed in. "An underwater city is time locked, released, and then raised out of the water. It makes absolutely no sense at all." Why not just let the city remain time locked? Whoever had raised it above the sea had to either really hate whoever lived here or just loved to destroy civilized life for no particular reason at all.

The Doctor shook Emilie's hand and listened to her tease himself (that was something that was going to be hard to get used to). "I don't know why," he said, "I seem like a decent enough man in the future. At least I have a good sense of fashion." The suspenders and tweed jacket were nice enough but it was that bow tie that brought the whole outfit together. The Doctor found himself unconsciously straightening his own bow tie out as he looked at his other self's same garment.

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"Of course I loved being you, I still had my recorder when I was you, now I can't find the blasted thing anywhere! Keep an eye on it for me, would you? I'd hate to lose it again." The Doctor was joking, there were far more fun things he'd done in his second body than play the recorder"You think we were grumpy then," The Doctor teased, then shot Emilie a tiny grin as well, teasing her about something that had not even happened yet. Well, at least to her.

"Well, before I go spoiling anything else for you, we should get back to business. Time locked island and all that, you just said all that. Gosh, repeating myself already." The older Doctor grinned and looked around, "I'd imagine that this wasn't a human city at any point, the architecture is too advanced for any early period of history."

When his younger incarnation mentioned his outfit, a massive grin broke out from the Eleventh, "See Emilie, what have I told you? I told you and all the others, bow ties are cool. There you go, finally a man with good enough fashion sense to match my own. Me." The Doctor was a horrible narcisist at times.

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"I'm sure you are always a very decent man, Doctor," Emilie responded sincerely, a quirk of her lips in a smile her only reaction to the 'good sense of fashion'. It was bad enough having that conversation with only one Doctor, with two... Emilie could scarcely imagine how it might go down.

Best to avoid being pressganged into an agreement.

She found herself flushing slightly at the Doctor's teasing smile. She wasn't precisely sure what he was talking about, and yet, at the same time, it felt as if she should know. As if she did know and couldn't remember, or perhaps had not encountered it yet. It was a very odd feeling.

There you go, finally a man with good enough fashion sense to match my own. Me.

"I'm sure you two will be very happy together, Doctor," Emilie smirked slightly before nodding towards the quiet city. "But if you say this isn't human, and it's not Atlantis... well, who would timelock and sink a city on Earth?"

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The Doctor didn't relish the thought of losing his recorder. When he needed to concentrate it was the perfect tool to help him do just that. That a future him could ever lose it...but that was how things worked, wasn't it? He became a new man each time he regenerated; there was no need to be surprised that one of the future hims saw no need for the recorder anymore. "I'll keep two eyes on it at all times." The Doctor patted down his jacket. "Excepting right now," he added, somewhat sheepishly. Their recorder was safely aboard the TARDIS for now.

He listened to himself speak. "You're--I'm right. Definitely not human." Aliens living underwater on Earth--one of the few places on the planet that humans couldn't inhabit. The Doctor turned towards Emilie as she began to talk. He shook his head after she had finished. "No one, my dear Emilie, sunk the city. It had always been underwater. Someone raised it up."

The Doctor put a hand on his chin as he took a moment to think things through. He walked up to one of the buildings and inspected its workmanship. "These buildings are older than even the earliest human settlements," he said, "which means whatever creatures live here were living on Earth even before humans came along." He looked at his older self, wondering if he had ever encountered anything like this before.

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"Very good Doctor!" The older version exclaimed, he was always impressed with himself. The Doctor turned around to face his younger self, "I'd say we're dealing with a race that's been living on Earth longer than humans were." It seemed obvious to him now.

"Perhaps," he started, "Perhaps the time lock was placed before the asteroid that supposedly wiped out all life prior to the, first, ice age." He put emphasis on first, because he knew very well about the second. Though he did not go into detail, it would be spoiling the ride for Emilie. The pieces were beginning to come into place, The Doctor was sure of it now.

He grinned, "How very interesting, we're getting a glance at some of those early races that did not survive the first twenty fifth of Earth's existence." The Doctor turned back toward Emilie, noticing the look on her face, "Oh relax Emilie, you live in the second twenty fifth, the Earth will go on for much longer than anyone you could ever know's life span." Right now, the city itself was far more fascinating, "Well then, let's take a walk and see what we find. Care to join us Doctor? I'm sure Jaime and Zoe will turn up as we look, they always do."

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Emilie couldn't help but feel just a little pleased that this much younger version of the Doctor called her dear. He barely even knew her, and yet... it still made her happy.

Listening quietly to the Doctor brainstorming with himself, she remained quiet until her Doctor invited his previous self to join them. Having two Doctors along did not really bother her, it was intriguing, really, but it was the first time she could really interject again.

"Are we talking about some sort of fish people, then, Doctors? Well, maybe not fish, they could clearly build... but, they would probably need gills to survive underwater, wouldn't they? Or did they live in some sort of air bubble? That last just sounds terribly inconvenient..."

Only, she found herself worrying for these pre-human inhabitants of Earth. Her species was not noted for its tolerance of anything different, whether the 'different' had a better claim or not. Even less, actually, if the Europeans versus the Indians were anything to go by.