I discovered new things every day. I saw things I had never seen before, done the most impossible things. The Doctor filled my days with learning, immersing himself in method, believing that the more I saw, the closer I would be to remembering. Every so often I would get a tickle in the back of my mind, on the threshold of a memory, but it would slip away. It was as if I had opened the door but couldn't quite step inside, couldn't see what was beyond the thick frame. I tried not to let it get to me, and I was growing used to failure.

Sometimes I overheard River and the Doctor talking, but I wasn't sure I was supposed to even understand what they were saying. From what I could gather, River had never stayed in the TARDIS for this long. She had "other obligations" to attend to on various planets, which I had a sinking suspicion they involved a younger version of me. Time travel was complicated, but I knew that I had not spent my entire life on this ship, and the time off it I lived with River. They would speak in angry whispers, arguing over big, complicated things about their time streams.

Frem was the constant, not in the sense that he was always the same, but in the way that he was always unpredictable. He could surprise me in ways that nothing else in the universe could. He could make me absolutely furious sometimes, with his whining and moping, but sometimes he knew just what to say to keep me grounded and sane in this mad box.

We had stopped in Cardiff for a fuel stop, something which normally took a short time, but my parents decided they needed a night out. Grinning mischievously, they were out the door faster than I could register, yelling back to call them and to stay inside for a few hours. I stared at the closed door, shaking my head. It was unlike them just to leave us, or at least I thought it was.

And then I realized it was the first time I had ever really been alone with Frem.

And then I realized that it shouldn't make me nervous, but it did.

When I found Frem in the kitchen, he was cooking. It was a familiar smell, something I couldn't quite place, but I had smelled it before. I could taste the spicy fish in my memories as it sizzled on the stove. Realizing I had been staring at him for a while, I cleared my throat. "So Frem," I started casually, leaning against the door frame, "We're all on our own for a bit. The timelords are out for dinner."

He spun around quickly, a bewildered and heated look on his face. "When…," he started, the trailed off, shaking his head and wringing his hands. Something faded in his eyes, probably expectation. I raised my eyebrows, waiting for him to say something as I watched him have some internal debate. "Sorry. Ok. Long story." I waited again, knowing he would tell it because that's what Frem does. He tells. "Yeah, well, it's just that you used to always say that when they left us alone in here. Those exact words, every time. And sometimes we would stay, but you knew how to fly the TARDIS so we could leave if we wanted to." He stopped himself there, that haze I had come to recognize beginning in his eyes.

I sat down and watched him work, distractedly chopping and mixing, sending comforting aromas into the air. The spices… "Frem." A memory pushed itself with brute force to the front of my mind. "I can cook that."

He looked up again, the same fiercely hopeful expression on his face. "You… You remember this? What do you remember?" Cautiously, he walked over to me and sat down across the table. "Ari," he breathed, searching my eyes pleadingly.

I didn't, I couldn't say anything; I was too afraid the feeling would leave me. I stood confidently and moved towards the crackling meal on the stove. I was out of my own body, watching my own hands deftly move, combining and mixing, creating something; it would certainly be a catalyst to another flashback. My mind was working overtime, moving from one instruction to the next before I had time to register what it was. I wasn't sure how long I worked, but when I snapped out of it there was a plate of food in my hand, and another in front of Frem on the table.

He was looking at me like I was a crazy person, which was to be expected, I suppose. "Um," I breathed. "I remember how to do that, kind of. I knew how to make it subconsciously." When he didn't say anything I sat down. He was absolutely still, a mask of numbness, something I had never seen on him before.

I shifted closer to him, locking my eyes with him. "What were we going to do Frem?" It was a quiet, honest question. It was time, time for me to know what I was truly missing out on, what Frem had to live with every day.

He snapped out of the silence abruptly, smiling forlornly. "We have a little house picked out near the city. Two floors, two baths, three bedrooms, the most marvelous garden. You wanted a garden." He laughed, his mind swimming in some private joke. "You wanted three kids and a dog; you were ready to settle down. Of course we would travel often in the TARDIS. You wouldn't give that up, you even wanted to try growing your own." It seemed that the conversation was partially with himself rather than with me. I could almost see him grasping at the ideal reality of it, perfect and simple, yet frustratingly out of reach.

"Did you want all that?" I asked solemnly, not ignoring the fact that he had listed what I wanted. I tried to read his face, but I wasn't sure I liked what I found there.

He sighed in exasperation, as if he had this conversation hundreds of times. "Of course I wanted it. Still do, if that's even possible. I just wanted- want, I mean, to be with you." His voice triggered something in me, a longing I hadn't felt around him before.

I felt like crying, but I pushed it away, for it would be useless. Something positive was going to come out of this, I was determined. By the end of the night, I would remember something about Frem. It would happen. "I'm going to want that again, Frem. I promise." It was a tentative promise, something that was more of a wish than a goal. "But in the meantime, what's the significance of the fish? Why that memory?"

He laughed softly. "It's something of a tradition with us. I made it for you on the day I moved in here. You liked it so much you demanded I teach it to you. And, of course, since you're Ari, you make it even better than I do." He took a bite in affirmation, closing his eyes at the taste of the memories.

And I found the day, a door in my mind. I could see it, just waiting for me to open it and regain what I had lost. I was missing something though; I needed one more thing to push me closer to the door. "What else happened that day?" I kept my eyes closed, focusing with everything I had.

He must have heard the urgency in the question because he stumbled over his response, testing for a reaction. "You helped me carry in my stuff, we, um, messed around a bit, uh, I don't know… we listened to the entire Queen Greatest Hits album five and a half times…," his hand touched mine, trying to get a gauge on what was clicking in my mind, willing me to flashback.

It was the music… I heard a humming in my ear, a faint but tangible sound.

It was me. I was the one who was humming the familiar melody…

"Where do you want this?" I called to him blindly, stumbling through the TARDIS corridors towards his new room. I had a huge box of clothes in my arms; Frem had insisted on keeping his own clothes, not wanting a new wardrobe courtesy of the TARDIS.

I rounded the corner sharply. "Who needs this much clothing anyway," I muttered, trying to at least see where my feet were going.

"Whoa there," Frem laughed as I ran promptly into his chest with the box. He took it from me with a smirk.

"Ugh, there you are! I thought I was doing all the work here, running all your junk back and forth," I teased, following him into his room and falling onto the huge king bed with a sigh. The bed was a new and very thoughtful addition I had surprised him with last night.

"That's everything," he said, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. "I'm in. No turning back now. Now, scoot." He plopped down on the bed next to me, letting out a long breath. I watched him as he put his hands behind his head and crossed his ankles, looking so at home in the new and unfamiliar room. "Why do you think your parents agreed to this?" It was a fair question; it wasn't like them to take on a human companion. The only other humans that we had traveled with were my grandparents for as long as I could remember, even before I was born.

"Because you are so-," I leaned over to kiss his cheek, "good-," I rolled on top of him, kissing his chin, "looking." I pressed my lips against his, delighting in the feel of them. It never quite got old, kissing Frem. He deepened it, and I sighed into him, feeling the heat exchange burn my skin. I pushed my fingers through his hair, down his face, over the planes of his defined chest…

"You left the door open," he whispered huskily in my ear, sending shivers down my neck. He winked at me as I rolled my eyes at him.

"I love you Frem, I do. But really, just shut up. We don't need to close the door," I spoke quickly, not concerned about anything except Frem's hands tracing circled on my bare hips.

"Oh, but don't you?" The voice came from the door, frightening me. It was Dad, covering his eyes but smirking at us in pompous glory. "And you wonder why I gave him a separate room, Ari."

"Bloody hell, Dad," I groaned, rolling off Frem reluctantly. "I'm not a child. Give me some space."

"Yes, but you are a child. Don't forget that." He pointed at me, then Frem, then left us, off to fly us to some lovely distracting planet, I was almost certain.

I turned back to Frem, laughing quietly. "Welcome home."

Then the door shut, and my eyes opened to the cold reality in front of me. My life with Frem was real; I really did have a past with him, and I should have a future with him too.

He was waiting for me, for an answer that he already knew. His tenaciously hopeful face was gone, replaced with a display of certainty: certainty in me, in my memory, in the future. I couldn't form words at first, couldn't feasibly summarize what I had seen. Before I could even attempt to speak though, he beat me to it. "You remembered me. I know. I can see it in your face. The day I moved in… well, it would be that day, wouldn't it. The day we started our life together."

"Yeah, and with my dad," I got out, a raspy laugh escaping.

Frem laughed loudly, looking more alive than I had ever seen him. "Your father is an amazing man. I mean, not only did he agree with my decision to propose to you, but he also put up with me for 136 days when we were all insanely messed up."

I had shifted closer to him unconsciously. "It was real, wasn't it? I mean, I always believed you. But seeing something like that… it's almost too good to be true, us being that happy."

His fingers reached up to brush against my face, and moved slowly to tuck a wayward strand of hair behind my ear. "Just because you don't remember it doesn't mean it wasn't real. You're proof of it. It was more real to me than anything else I've seen in this strange universe."

I knew where this was heading, and it didn't scare me in the least bit. To kiss Frem now would be the most natural thing in the world. And when our lips did meet, I felt the same passion from the memory burst between us. There was no stopping us. As we kissed, the world around us dissolved to dust, and we were just a normal boy and girl, no depressing backstory or mental trauma. Just us.

The momentum never stopped. Somehow I wound up in his lap, legs almost wrapped around him entirely. But nothing in my head told me to stop; I let him deepen the kiss, immersing myself in the familiarity of it, gaining a sense of what my past had truly been like.

Too soon, he pulled away. "It's not fair," he said with a sad smiled. Confused, I reluctantly disentangled myself from him, bringing myself back to the present. "We can't… just go back to being… this, not after what's happened."

Irritated, I contested, "But I remember, that's the point. I saw what we were. I need to get back to that, to get back to you. I know you now."

"You really don't, though," he said quietly. "That was me, in that memory. But I'm different now. You're different now. We can't change what's happened. You can't just pick up where you left off, it's more than that." He saw the look on my face and continued, "I want you, I do. But you only think you want me because your memory tells you to."

"That is absolutely not true. You want to talk about not knowing things, well, you don't know how my mind works. That one memory doesn't change how I feel about you. You're still the most kind, brave, and annoying person I've ever met. And my subconscious is screaming at me about you. I know that being with you now, in this frame of mind is the best thing for me to feel like I did in the past. And you're lying if you tell me you don't recognize me as I am now." I was not going to sit idly by and watch "noble" Frem sacrifice his happiness because it wasn't "fair." It was perfectly fair, at worst, and extremely helpful at best.

He stared at me, seeing into my mind for a moment. "You're right. You're always right about those things." He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I don't know what we are, then."

I laughed, reaching up to pull his face back to mine. "Neither do I," I whispered, "but I think it's going to work."

And, finally, a start to mending things in Ariadne and Frem's relationship. This chapter took a lot longer for me to write than normal, as I struggled a bit with translating what I felt should happen into a realistic chapter. I still am not 100% satisfied with this, but I think that the more I edit it, the less real it will be.

Thanks for reading, please feel free to leave a review for me, as they really make my day better!

xJessica