"... of course we want to contain events and keep them from impacting the rest of time and space but we're finding leaks in the safeguards we've setting up so ... what is it? What's wrong?"
"Oh, it's nothing much," Tweedy-Doctor said as he picked himself up off the floor. "Just pieces of ourself being stripped away rather abruptly. You didn't notice?"
"No. Can't say as I did."
"Which means," Pinstriped-Doctor chimed in, "that it's happening somewhere between him and me."
"That might explain why the grumpy one hasn't turned up yet," Tweedy-Doctor said. "I do hope he's all right."
Rory stepped into the middle of the collected Doctors. "Excuse me a moment here, I just want to get a few things straight." He addressed the one he'd known all along as the Doctor. "Are you saying that you three ... you're all the same person, just...?"
"Earlier versions of me, yes. It's a bit complicated to explain just now..."
"And one of these earlier versions has gone missing."
"More or less, yes."
"But if you ..." he looked around to Pinstriped-Doctor, "if you both are later versions of the same person shouldn't you remember what happened to him?"
"You would think so," Tweedy-Doctor said. "But timestream-crossing does some funny things to a person's memory."
"Define 'funny,'" Rory said.
"Worst-case scenario, it could completely wipe a person's complete memory of everything that happened before he crossed his own timestream," Tweedy-Doctor said. "I've ... we've ... done this sort of thing before and we know what we're doing so the effects are more subtle."
Pinstriped-Doctor picked it up: "it's a bit like reading a book you'd forgotten you'd read before. It all starts to feel very familiar and you remember being there before, but details only fill themselves in as you keep going forward."
"Seems awfully inconvenient," Amy said.
"I know, right?" Tweedy-Doctor answered. "And that's the best-case scenario."
"Right," Pinstripes interjected, turning toward Victorian Doctor. "So, where are the others?"
Victorian Doctor looked confused. "The others...?"
Tweedy cut him off, impatiently. "The others. Teeth and Curls, Technicolor Dreamcoat, and the rest."
"The Time-War doesn't involve them."
"I'd say it does," Pinstripes said.
"We're the one who started it," Tweedy said. "We antagonized the Daleks and dragged the Time Lords into it. Or did we antagonize the Time Lords, and drag the Daleks into it?"
"In any case, it's our war ... all of ours, like it or not," Pinstripes said.
"Still," Victorian said resolutely, "I've chosen to keep them out of the thick of it."
"Probably for the best," Pinstripes murmured. "They'd probably just get in the way."
Tweedy just shrugged. "So what exactly are we doing here?"
"I've been explaining that," Victorian said in exasperation. "If you'd been listening..."
"...instead of writhing on the floor as large bits get torn out of our past, yes, we're so sorry."
"There are leaks in the timestream," Victorian Doctor went on, pointedly ignoring the commentary. "We've found a scattering of time-corridors..."
"Yes we've noticed," Tweedy said. "At least I noticed, and I assume that's why he's here."
"And more than a scattering," Pinstripes said.
"A whole network," Pinstripes said. The Victorian Doctor was brought up short by that.
"A whole network? Are you sure?"
"Reaching out to some of the worst wartime atrocities throughout time and space," Pinstripes said.
"And centered right here," Tweedy said. "On Gallifrey."
"Well," Victorian said. "It seems like this is worse than I thought."
"Isn't it always?" Tweedy said.
"That's always been my experience," said Pinstripes.
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