Bill had left an hour ago. 58 minutes and 18 seconds, to be exact. The Dr had not moved from where he'd thrown himself, in his chair behind the desk, his fingers steepled under his chin. Bill's words had resonated, called out his own absent memories. The gaps in his memories were legion, but they all had the same shape. It hadn't taken him long to piece together the shape of what he'd lost by the holes she'd left behind. He assumed it was a she, because she had clearly been a companion and something, about her felt female. Maternal, perhaps. But memories that featured her were vague. Companions did fade eventually, some of them, but never during a life in which he'd known them. And she was not the kind of companion to be forgotten. He remembered Trenzalore – how could he not – but there was a sort of nothing where someone should have been. He remembered River, and the pain of his life being rewritten, and he knew that somehow, impossibly, the one he could not remember had saved him. He even had some theories about how she might possibly have done it, after all, but he did not know. It maddened him. How had he come to forget the face of someone who had saved him? He knew that she had been his grasp on sanity when he'd been imprisoned. How had he come to lose every memory of her? He had shattered glimpses of Galifrey and the cloisters. And he remembered meeting Me at the end of the universe, though the TARDIS was wrong somehow. There the fabric of his memories was so thin that he knew he'd lost her then, but he couldn't remember why. He'd even looked up her name once, though he avoided reading about himself whenever possible, but he couldn't even keep that information stored in his brain. It had nothing to connect to, and so it faded. He loathed himself for that. For not being able to hold on to the tiniest part of someone who had been so much a part of him.
He'd been in that well of self-loathing when he'd found River. Losing his memories of one person had made his rediscovery of the woman he loved even more precious. Having survived millennia of torture, the idea of spending 24 years with River in one place had seemed like a gift, not something to run away from. With every shock of disappointment she gave him – failing to recognize him, marrying a cyborg and trying to murder him, snogging someone who wasn't him, stealing his TARDIS, and storing liquor in the old girl – his admiration and delight grew. He loved seeing her in charge, like watching a super nova explode, or a star being born. His eyes crinkled as he remembered the diamond falling into her cleavage, and his chest ached again as he remembered her absolute conviction that he did not, could not love her. Even when he'd arranged time and space to provide her a physical metaphor, the towers at sunset, he suspected she didn't believe him. Older now, he could see past his own pain to acknowledge hers. She'd never hid the damage as well as she'd thought, but he'd been too wrapped up in his own pain and self-pity to really notice. When he'd bent his mouth to hers, her surprised flinch told him that it had been a long time since she'd seen a version of him who had known her as his wife. In that moment his mind rearranged events so that he saw them from her perspective. She'd killed him twice, three times if one counted the kiss on the pyramid, before he really knew her. He knew she'd always assumed their first marriage wasn't real, but he'd never thought she would attribute his visits to obligation. Really, she made a terrible psychopath, all morality and guilt. When he asked her, much later, after clothing had been shed and amends made, she shrugged and pointed out that he took all sorts of people interesting places. How was she to know the difference? His answer had been to make love to her again, slowly, with his mind open to hers, completely. He had whispered his name in her ear, over and over, a mantra of love, trust, devotion. He had felt the moment when her walls had crumbled, when she had accepted him into her mind as she had already taken him into her body. There was no more hiding, then, damage or otherwise. She saw his imprisonment and loss; He knew the pain of her childhood and the chaos he'd sewn in her life. She saw, too, her own death and his anguish, and understood she would have to forget it. They kissed each other's tears away and stayed cradled under the stars for hours, sleeping until they woke and unwrapped the gift of a Darilium night together.
Twenty four years. Another memory stolen at the end of it, because it had to be done, but this time done willingly. Bill had thrown the difference into focus. To choose to let go, as River had, as Amy had, that was ok. It was how time worked for humans, even humans plus. He still wasn't certain about Donna, who would have died, but then perhaps that should have been her choice. But maybe it wasn't his choice to make.