The Doctor stared at the green can in his hand as if it were a bomb.

"No," he whispered softly to himself. "This is bad. Very bad." His hand tightened on the can, crumpling it.

He turned abruptly and rushed back into the TARDIS. Setting the can down atop the console, he settled into the seat nearby and stared at the green cylinder.

"It's times like this that I miss having..." he paused a moment, his brow furrowed. someone to talk to. But he felt sure he had been going to say a name, not just someone. He had no idea who that could be. Sarah Jane? Romana? Amy? None of these seemed right, not even the one name he was deliberately avoiding thinking about.

Realizing he was getting distracted again, he began to talk aloud. It always helped him to talk things out, even if no one seemed to be listening. He imagined, for a moment, that there was someone nearby, looking at him expectantly. Teasing him about his ego, but still clearly hanging on his every word. Young, blonde... he shook his head. That way madness lies. Instead, he changed the blonde hair to brunette, large dark eyes, short hair swept behind her ear. That would do. For some reason, her face was blurred, as though it had been an image on television, adjusted for anonymity. Still, there was a curious comfort in the vaguely defined image.

"Okay, let's think this through." He addressed the brunette, gesturing to illustrate his points. "A teeny tiny hole in reality. And we all know what a teeny tiny hole in reality will do."

The brunette looked at him blankly for a moment. He rolled his eyes. "Tear a hole in the universe and drop this planet into the void, of course."

The brunette looked annoyed. "Okay, but you said this was only a teeny tiny hole."

He looked at her as though she had dribbled on her shirt. "Look, reality is like like a jumper. A big, ugly knitted jumper. But it's old, and what happens when a knitted jumper has a teeny tiny hole in it?"

The brunette answered cheerily, "It starts to unravel!"

"That was a rhetorical question," he muttered. "So now we have a hole, and it's going to get bigger. And that's going to be a problem. But what made the hole, or better yet, who?"

The brunette smiled knowingly. "Well, who made the hole last time?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Daleks, Cybermen... and others. Well, never mind. You don't know about last time. I never told you about that." He looked up, and the brunette had gone.

He shrugged off the disquieting feeling the conversation had left, and examined the readings on the TARDIS scanner. The anomaly was plain to see now. He suspected it had grown a little just by pulling the can through. What was interesting was looking at the waves of distortion. Outward, always outward. As though it had only ever emerged in this world. And that meant that it had come from elsewhere. He picked up the can and sighed. Pete's World, with its billionaire inventor of the Vitex 'health drink' was the last place he wanted to go.

What else could he do? And yet, he found himself contemplating running away. Traveling the universe, this universe. Going anywhere else, anywhen else. Taking a deep breath, he consciously slowed the beating of his hearts. He was a new man now, two times over. In a real and significant way, he wasn't even the person who had traveled to that world and had left her there. That had been what, over a thousand years ago? He had been avoiding thinking about it for that long.

What are memories, when you're over 2000 years old? The human brain, so much more fragile, breaks down, flushing extraneous memories to make room for new ones. Thanks to his additional brain lobe, he had been able to more effectively manage his memories. Time Lord meditation techniques had also allowed him to efficiently sort them, so that he had been able to retain access to all the memories he cared to keep. Others, he chose to remove. Sometimes because they were simply unnecessary. Other times, because he no longer wished to have them.

In general, the Doctor did not like removing memories because they haunted them. Even traumatic memories contained pearls of wisdom, and if he lived his life constantly losing emotional touch with his failures, he would never grow. He thought of Ashildr suddenly. Not even a library of her own diaries would let her recall what it felt like to make the mistakes she read about. For a moment, he truly understood why she had become the person she had grown to be.

There were some memories, however, that the Doctor did not wish to remove from his mind, but also did not want to confront on a daily basis. To collect so many painful memories with perfect recollection would have made it impossible to live, much less achieve the things he had. The worst of the horrors of the Time War. Adric's death. Leaving Susan. Driving away from Jo's engagement party. His last moments with Donna. So many more. All of them, filed away and locked in a collection of imaginary boxes, carefully shelved in an imaginary mental room. Opened at leisure, in melancholy or self-loathing moments. Not able to sneak up on him and deal a crippling emotional blow at awkward moments, as grief so often aims to do.

Among all those boxes, in that imaginary room, there was one particularly large one. One he rarely even peeked into, better left alone and untouched. In his mind, it had collected a thick layer of dust. It had been so long. The time finally seemed right to open it, reach in tentatively and examine its contents. He sat comfortably and closed his eyes, for a brief moment feeling the exhaustion of his age. In his mind's eye, he picked up the box. It was warm, and covered with a layer of black velvet. Embroidered into the top in beautiful red and gold thread was a single flower, a rose. As he opened it, he breathed in. The box contained the smell of her. Her laugh echoed in his thoughts. He almost shut it then, but drew upon all of the cold distance he had embraced when he began this particular life and continued onward.

Cautiously, like someone stepping through a minefield, he began to reach into the box, pulling out memories one by one to examine. Memories that were his, but made by other men. A blonde girl in a big shop, grabbing her hand and telling her to run. Her teasing smile, tongue between her teeth. Better with two. Saving her life, only to watch herself sacrifice herself for him. Saving her life again, this time sacrificing himself. A kiss that never seemed to end until it did. Becoming a new man, shaped around his love for her. Adventures that never seemed to end until they, too, did. A terrible loss, grieving, trying to find solace in the company of others and finding none sufficed. A return, and a brief, shining burst of hope of return to their former life. That hope shattered, and a decision made. A gift of a life he could never give her, with and without him. A last glimpse, a conversation while dying.

He had sealed those memories away, in those moments as he died of the radiation poisoning. He hadn't forgotten, but they couldn't hurt him, locked in a velvet box and filed away in a mental room he studiously ignored. And he had been able to move on and embrace his new self, and live a new life. A life he had fully expected to be his last.

The memories didn't hurt him as much as he had feared in the past. They no longer glowed bright and hard, painful to look at. Instead, they were the warm glow of firelight. There was one, though, that was different. Standing on a rocky world, watching the ray-like creatures soaring across the sky.

"How long are you going to stay with me?"

"Forever."

No, that one still had sharp edges. He put it back in the velvet box, and closed it. That one would remain there for some time.

Right, if it has to be done, it has to be done. He began looking at the scanner and making calculations. The anomaly could be increased in size enough to allow him through, without significantly adding to the immediate risk it already posed. He would have to hurry and seal it though, if he wanted to prevent any permanent damage to either world. He hoped that locating and dealing with the creator of the anomaly would be simple. Pressing a key on the console, a wailing riff from an electric guitar played in the console room. He smirked and entered the destination, then ran frantically around the console, adjusting a dozen other controls. The TARDIS began its familiar wheezing, and any trepidation he had felt was quickly replaced by the familiar thrill of starting a new adventure.