The Keeper was the guardian of the Time Lord's matrix; the collected wisdom of all the travels of the race. The matrix itself was lost to legend when I was growing up, as the ways of our world were buried under red tape and bureaucracy, but it existed. And, in incidents such as the one I just left, after a fashion, it still exists.

When we were children, in our earliest training, it was well-known that the Keeper seldom left the archives. She was, to us, something of a joke. We called her the Librarian instead.

The face bled pale and peaceful before me is not the fusty old hag we used to laugh about. Strange, how a child's mind does that, turning everything into threats and fairytales.

And here is the fairytale ending.

The legend of the original Keeper was that she had, one day, vanished from the archives. Some said the President himself had cast her out. All we knew was that she had never returned.

The true story of the Keeper is that she went with some perfect piece of information to try and help me prevent a cataclysmic war and while I dallied around getting kidnapped and arguing out the finer details of timeline interference with Scone, she was murdered and that information stolen.

Murdered. Murdered is a better word than killed. You can be killed by lightning, by cancer, by space station debris falling from the sky. Murder is an act of will perpetrated by one being upon another.

Perpetrated. That's a good word too. It implies there is a perpetrator, which is good, because a perpetrator can be caught. Can pay the consequences of the actions which it perpetrates. It is a cold and sickening comfort that I gain from this fact, but comfort nonetheless.

The nearest sun to the cave is dying. In our darkest hours we must be thankful for these small fateful coincidences. I get the Tardis into orbit, safe distance, a couple of hundred lightyears away.

What goodbye can I say to the Keeper? The wicked witch of my childhood was only real to me for a few short minutes. Neither have I any worthy apology to give. Not in words anyway.

Perpetrator. That's a nice word. But then I explained that already.

The Keeper's vortex manipulator is preset for her return to Gallifrey. It is out of interest or desperation that I try it. And yes, her body stutters like a faulty lightbulb in front of me, but soon enough it becomes solid again. The time-lock. Too late to stop her murder and ahead of my time locking her out.

So I change the settings, and activate it.

This time, she disappears entirely.

Downstairs, I watch on the scanner as the sun beyond collapses into her, then flares forth beautiful, rejuvenated. In all of this I am acutely aware of saying nothing to mark the occasion. Humans do that. Humans say a few words. Gallifreyans would have said a lot of words, but then generally they said a lot of words about most things.

Me, for as much as I might chat away, with or without company to chat to, I have lived far, far too long for words. Or the empty ones, at least.

Somewhere behind me, that video recording is still playing. That ruthless blade, one then the other, I can hear them. As I watch the new sun, it plays on a while.

She says, "You don't remember me."

This time I tell her that I wish I'd known her better. Then I hear myself asking who did this to her. And I add, "Because I will find it, oh dear sister of the race. That thing in the mask. It will be found. And it will pay." And there will no grief, no apology, no few words to mark your death, until such times as that has happened.

"Could have," says the Keeper, from fifteen minutes ago, "Could have ended this."

"Oh," I tell her, "Oh, we will."

I am only drawn from reverie when the telephone rings. It's about three rings in before I even notice, so by the time I answer, Amy is on the other end, saying to Rory that I must be 'out'.

Which has always perplexed me because, being of no fixed abode barring the Tardis herself, I'm not necessarily ever in.

Nonetheless.

"Hello?"

"Doctor! Good, you're there. These pictures you sent, of the statue. Why is River there?"

"How long has it been?"

"Aren't you on your way back? Come back, I need to ask you about-"

"So it's three days?"

"Yes."

"Thank you."

I have no explanation and am not in the mood to try and explain regardless, and so I hang up. I set my course for the Ponds back on Earth and sit down.

Poor Scone, poor scarred and bitten and blinded Scone, still sits where I left him earlier. "I'm sorry," I tell him again. "I have to apologize to you, I don't have an action to make up for that. It was silly and thoughtless and the damage was irreparable."

The milky socket has turned, with time and neglect, into the mouldy socket. I am about to tell him I told him so, re: eyepatch, but then he reminds me of something. Jessica. The mad girl with the barely-English who tried so valiantly to fix Scone's visual impairment. The one that kidnapped us for our own good. She said, or tried to say, or rather implied in a fractured collection of sentence fragments, that I was to meet her at or as a result of the event I just visited. Or, in layman's terms, the death of the Keeper.

Murder. We were going with murder, weren't we?

I have one theory. One horrible momentary-madness of a theory. But Jessica seemed so precious, when she wasn't throwing punches. Sweet. Really the most charming, inarticulate little creature. She put her head on my knee.

Scone, despite having lost the replacement raisin since, still believes in her kindness, and concurs. Initial mad-moment theory must be wrong. Meeting Jessica must be some tangent of said event, rather than a more direct result.

"Well, Scone, I'd say I'll let you know how it turns out, but as I so recently discovered, you're nearing the end of your days." The Tardis judders because I've left the brakes on again, but Scone nearly falls off the arm of the chair. It has become commonplace to catch him. "Oh, don't get offended. All got to go sometime. You had a three-day lifespan. If you were a mayfly you'd be ancient by now. And you'd never have gotten so far. I think it best I take you home for the latter moments. That's what things want, isn't it? To finish it where it all began. Count yourself lucky, dear Scone, that you have the luxury."