The pizza parlor is around the corner. His pace is quick and determined. He'll walk in and he'll see her, they'll reunite, and everything will fall back into place. Everything will go back to normal. Just like how it was before, back when everything was perfect.

He stands in front of the door. He stops walking and faces the glass structure. Uncertainty hangs in the air. His plans could go awry, and he could destroy the lives of everyone in the restaurant, everyone in the city, and everyone on the planet. Everything could go wrong. Everything could go very, very wrong. He takes a deep breath. He has a very important decision to make, a very life-changing decision.

She stands behind the counter, right next to the cash register. Her golden blonde hair is in an untidy ponytail and she smiles while waiting for a customer. He walks over to the counter and stands right in front of her. He is so hopeful and yet so doubtful at the same time. They're so close, they are merely inches away. So close that he could just reach out and embrace her.

"Hello, how may I help you?" she asks, like he was just another person ordering pizza. He should be more than just a "hello" for her. His words catch in his throat.

His eyes scan her body for signs of recognition. "What do you mean?"

"What do you mean, 'what do you mean'? I need to take your order. Personal pizzas are only four dollars today."

"So, you mean to say, that you don't have a clue of who I am?"

She shakes her head. "No. Should I?"

He pauses and rakes his hands through his hair. She should know him. They've spent years together, they've traveled farther than the edge of imagination. They've witnessed history unfold before their very eyes, yet she can't remember a thing.

He should just walk away, and he knows this. Tempering with her mind, her fragile memories could be disastrous. Reawakening the hidden could spoil everything. But for some reason, they needed her thoughts. There's something in her brain that they saw as important. Perhaps it's for the best, if she has no idea who he is, what he's done, or where he's from. She could live a normal life, the kind of life that wouldn't involve him.

"Should I?" she asks again. Yes, she should know him. Very well.

"Yes." His voice is cold, damp. Grave.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I don't recognize you. Are you mistaking me for someone else?"

"No," he says with certainty. He knows her like the back of his hand. The impatient, growing crowd behind him bustles, customers growing angry due to their delayed service. "What time does your shift end?"

"Eight," she says, uncertain if she should tell this strange man this information.

"After eight," he says, "May I speak with you? Right outside of this restaurant door. At eight."

"That would be alright. Now, if you don't mind, I need to get back to work."

"I understand," he says with a nod, and leaves. He disappears like it's well practiced.

"Who was that?" a curious employee asks her, appearing at her side behind the counter.

"I... I don't know."

Eight o'clock strolled by lazily, taking its sweet time. That's good, it gave him time to think, time for his anger to stew and boil. They messed with her mind and stole from her, stole from them, what they had. They had no right, and he was not one to leave a score unsettled.

She carefully exits the pizza parlor, dusting off the remaining flour from her hands. She loosens her hair from the ponytail and sits on the nearby bench. The sky is dark and the lights advertising the pizza parlor reflect off of the pavement. It had rained recently and the black road was slick. Part of her is anxious to know what the man has to say to her, what is so important, but a part of her also never wants to meet him again. As she debates, he arrives, precisely at eight o'clock.

She stands and faces him. "So, who are you?" she says, trying to sound confident.

"I think the real question here, dear, is who are you?" He says the last three words slowly, pronouncing every syllable with care. His voice leaves an impression.

She hesitates answering. "What?"

"Do you mean to say that you don't know, that you don't know your own identity?"

"Of course I know who I am!" She defends herself.

"What's your name, then?"

His question stops her.

"I don't know." She can't answer.

"What was your favorite television show growing up?"

"I... I can't remember. That was ages ago. Nobody remembers that."

"What size of jeans do you wear?"

"What, are you stalking me now?"

"What's your preferred brand of shampoo?"

"Why do you need to know all this?

"Because you don't!" His voice escalates in volume, and she stops, her words sticking in her throat. She has no words to say. "Something happened to you that wiped your brain. So that all of the experiences, all the laughs, all the tears," he says, "are gone." He spreads his hands in the air, reenacting the memories dispersing and vanishing in an instant.

She crosses her arms in front of her chest. "Okay, so what if I don't know my preferred brand of shampoo. I probably use whatever's cheapest, seeing that I work at a pitiful pizza parlor."

"How long have you been working there?"

"That isn't important."

"Ah, but it is. Because you don't remember," he pops the consonants.

"Whatever. I need to go home and get some sleep. This is exhausting me. When I return to work tomorrow, you'd better not be there, or... Or I'll call the police."

"One more question, dear, before you go. Then I'll leave you alone."

She sighs. "And what's that?"

"Where's home?"

She doesn't answer his question. She can't answer his question. She had been feeling lost, but didn't know why. But she now realizes, she doesn't have a home. There's simply nowhere to go. No safe place to go to and cry. She begins to doubt everything that she knows, every fragile building block of her life. But, the tower has fallen. Something larger than herself has knocked her down, and she needs to rebuild her life. And that mysterious man has something to do with it.

He probably knows who she is and what has happened, but for some reason he is withholding that information from her. He wants her to want him, so that she'll comply with him.

She turns away and starts walking, but she doesn't get very far because she has no destination. She doesn't want to look at him, him with the answers. What if he had erased her mind, but he wants her to think that it was someone else? He surely doesn't look evil, not at all. His mouth looks like it was made for smiling, and his eyes have permanent crinkles at the side. Pale freckles dot his otherwise plain face. Dark brown hair sits untamed on his head, his eyes the same wry color, sparkling with anticipation.

Footsteps sound behind her, but she doesn't look. She sees his shadow engulf hers, making one, larger shadow. She sniffs, making sure that her cheeks are dry.

"What am I supposed to do now, that I literally have no life?" she tries to smile, and a small chuckle comes from the man.

"I suppose that we try to recover your memories. Only if you want them back. Not all of them are pretty, I must say. However, you can't pick and choose between which memories to keep and which to toss, but I must say, that, in your case, the good heavily outweigh the bad."

"Really? You sound pretty certain."

"That's because I am. Most of my favorite memories, my fondest moments of my long life, contain you. And, if I am correct in saying so and I do think that I am, you'd have to agree."

That sounds really good to her. What kind of things did they experience, she wonders. She can't even begin to imagine, and she gets to live them all again.

"What would I... What would we have to do, to get my memories back?"

"Well, we'd have to find who took them. They might have some sort of trigger, like a set of dominoes that uncovers one memory and then the next and the next after that."

"How would we do that?"

"Honestly, I don't even know where to begin," he says, shrugging. "Come with me. There's something I need to show you." She follows him without even thinking, hugging her jacket close to her body. They walk for a few blocks and she struggles to keep up with his long strides.

He stops suddenly, in a seemingly random place. She almost runs into him.

"I suppose... We'll have to start where they left off," he says.

"And where would that be?" she asks.

"In the future. Where your last memory would have taken place. Where else would there be the technology to wipe memories?"

"Oh, silly me."

"Yes, you can be a very silly girl." He smiles, looking back at her fondly as if remembering a time when she was acting silly. He pulls a key out of his pocket, a very simple-looking, silver key.

"Wait," she says, looking up at the structure that they had stopped at. "This... This is a police box." She almost laughs out loud.

"You're right. Non-functional, though."

"Why are we going in a police box to go into the future, then? Where are all the gizmos and switches and flashing lights? That doesn't make very much sense."

"I prefer the term TARDIS. And, nothing makes sense. Not ever, not once in history do people or their decisions ever make sense."

"Right. Like why someone would want my memories, that doesn't make any sense."

"Well, that's a bit more clear. There was something there they wanted, and so they took it."

"And who would that be, some sort of monster out to get me? Lived under my bed?"

"You're actually quite close, dear. They're aliens."

"Of course. And, and what? You're their mortal enemy? With an undying hatred for each other?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

"And who would that be? Who would hate you so much?"

"The Daleks," he says, very much like someone would state a fact. She got the feeling that it was, that it was just a fact to him.

"Another made up word! First the TARDIS, and now, now you're telling me there's such thing as a Dalek."

"I'm saddened that you think I'm lying."

"You're not lying, you've just gone mad. You've got this made up world in your head."

"Really, then? You should join me, and come see this world in my head."

"Yeah, that's rich. Oh, and, one more thing."

"What would that be?"

"Who are you?"

He laughs like she's a broken record, a question people ask over and over for decades. A question that can never really be answered, but still they wonder. "I'm the Doctor." He slides the key into the slot, and unlocks the blue telephone box. He pushes the door open, and extends a hand to her before he enters. She takes it, and joins him.