Page One

by bumbleking

AU, post-Akhaten. "She had literally known him for all of one day when this happened. This... memory loss. And now she was stuck on an alien planet with an alien who had absolutely no idea who he was or how to get her back home. The worst part of it was that she had barely known him when he had all his memories, thus she had no idea where to start in order to get them back."

1. Chapter 1

Prologue

:::

He was roused by the wholly unpleasant sensation of someone shaking him, forcing him to open his eyes so he could ask whoever it was to please stop shaking him, he was trying to sleep for heaven's sake. Once he opened his eyes, however, they stayed open out of shock because he'd realized that he had no idea where he was or who this person was, staring down at him like she was relieved to see his eyes open. Her mouth formed into a tentative smile, and had he not been so shaken—literally—he would have thought that she was pretty. He still did, but he was more concerned with why she felt the need to shake him and shout for a doctor at him.

"Doctor," she said again, and he found himself annoyed that she'd woken him out of a perfectly nice nap on this perfectly nice floor to ask him if he knew where a doctor was. "You took long enough," she remarked, and he frowned mildly up at her. People these days, no manners whatsoever.

"I'm sorry?" he asked, because that was all he really thought to say. He looked around him, his brow furrowed because he honestly couldn't remember how he got here. He pushed himself up on his hands and the woman sat back to give him room. He returned his gaze to her. "Oh, this is interesting. Uh, sorry," he said again, because her smile was slowly fading and he didn't like that, "where am I?"

"Don't you remember?" She renewed her smile, like that should make him smile too, but he could only stare at her in confusion. It faltered. "Doctor, tell me you remember."

"Remember what? And who's this Doctor? Doctor wh—hey," he said in alarm because she was starting to look scared and unhappy, and that was even worse than the not smiling. "Uh, I think you've got the wrong person, but I can help you find him, alright? What's his name?"

"I don't—I don't understand," she said, and he gave a wincing sort of smile, apologetic.

"Neither do I, I don't think, but that's okay." He smiled, hoping that she'd smile too. "We can not understand together, if you'd like. What's your name?"

"Clara Oswald." Clara had gone from staring at him like she was frightened to scrutinizing him closely, and he fidgeted. Then, very carefully, like she was testing him, she asked, "What's yours?"

He smiled—grinned, really, because that was an easy question. He said as much. "Oh, that's easy! I'm—" The words froze in his mouth, and all that came out was an empty puff of air. Clara watched him as he struggled, snapping his mouth closed and frowning at his feet as he tried to remember his own name. He didn't understand—this was supposed to be easy! It was his name, for crying out loud. "I—I'm sure I had one a second ago," he said, returning his gaze to Clara. He remembered what she'd been calling him when she shook him awake. "You called me 'doctor'," he realized, and she nodded. "Do you know me? Can you tell me my name, please?" He knew names were the sort of things that people tended to need, although he couldn't recall how he knew this other than common sense.

He knew common sense, and yet he didn't know his own name. That wasn't right, but he didn't know how he knew that wasn't right. His head was beginning to hurt so he stopped trying to figure it out.

Clara exhaled and sat back on her haunches, eyeing him with something that looked like dread creeping around the edges of her face. "He ate your stories," she said quietly, so quietly that he almost didn't hear her, and he leaned in with a frown.

"Sorry?" Clara snapped out of her trance and looked at him again, rather than somewhere around his midriff. Her eyes were wide but her mouth thinned into a line as he spoke. "My what? My stories?" His frown deepened. "I don't understand."

She leaned forward, her gaze so intense that it made him lean back in turn. "You said you don't remember your name, but do you remember anything else?" As the silence stretched and he struggled to recall anything—his fear growing as he realized that he couldn't—Clara's face slowly grew grim. "Anything at all?" she pressed, but he mutely shook his head, bewildered. She sighed. "Didn't think so... Okay." Her smile was rueful and full of an irony that sailed right over his head as she said, with a half-laugh that really wasn't happy at all, "Let's start from page one, then."

:::