While the Storyteller had the human sleep standard of eight hours, the Tardis' Thief spent that same time hidden beneath her console, thinking.

Loudly.

The grief her Thief had waded through after losing their Wolf had hurt his mind. The Tardis had been able to sense that her Thief's telepathic barriers were weakened ever since they'd burnt up a sun to give their Wolf a message.

Her Thief, however, hadn't noticed until he had emerged from her protective shell and encountered other species again.

With no other thoughts buzzing through the air, Thief had not sensed the chaos within his own mind and then, as things tended to around her Thief, things had begun to spiral.

Carrionites waded through his mind for a name. The Face of Boe, while benevolent, had still been a strain against her Thief's paper-thin barriers. He had realised then, by how easily the Storyteller had pried the history of the Time War from him, that he needed to do maintenance inside his head.

And although she had tried to hide the vortex readings from her Thief, so that he would take the Storyteller home and work on his barriers, her troublesome Thief dug them out and threw all three of them into the distraction.

Then had come the Daleks. The terrors of the Time War were ever-present at the edge of her Thief's mind, and now that the Wolf that guarded his back was missing, those memories were sneaking up on her Thief and there was little that the Tardis could do to help if he continued to ignore the problem.

She brushed against her Thief's mind angrily, sending sparks out of the wire that he was buzzing his little device at, and her Thief yelped in response, grasping at his head in pain from her telepathic touch.

Guilt immediately ran through her systems, and the lights in the console room dimmed in contrition.

"What was that for?!" Her Thief demanded, crawling out from under her grating, and the Tardis hummed at him until his expression darkened, still pressing one hand to his temple.

"Yes, all right. When Martha wakes up I'll take her home and sort it out," he promised, and the Tardis shook in the vortex.

"No, I'm not waking her up just to throw her off," her Thief argued, narrowing his eyes at her central column.

"I know it's important, but if it's waited this long it can wait a few hours more," he told her firmly, and she could sense within his mind that he had no intention of giving up.

Slowly, and reluctantly, the Tardis subsided, wondering if her Thief would notice if she dropped the temperature in the Storyteller's room.

"Sleep well?" The Doctor asked Martha when she next appeared in the console room, and he faced her with a bright grin and sparkling eyes, trying to ignore the reluctance simmering in the back of his mind.

'Maybe I don't have to take her home just yet?'

It was the reluctance to be alone again that let the thought float to the surface, he knew that, but when the Tardis gave a careful press against his mind and he had to smother a wince as pain lanced through his head, he relented.

If even her gentle touches were beginning to trigger headaches, he knew he had to settle down somewhere and fix up his shields, so he moved around the console and began setting coordinates.

"Like a log," Martha answered him, grabbing hold of the edge of the console and the Doctor nodded as he leant around her to twist a few dials.

"Well-rested then, good. That's good," he told her, and she grinned back at him.

"So, what's the plan for today, then?" She asked, and the Doctor frowned down at the controls, forcing his guilt not to show on his face.

"Hang on, this is a bit of a delicate landing..." he warned, dodging her question and manoeuvering into the woman's small apartment. Despite his words, the Tardis was actually being on her best behaviour, and they settled almost lightly into his companion flat.

"There we go! Perfect landing," he announced with false cheer, slamming the handbrake on and resisting the urge to berate his ship for never landing that precisely under normal circumstances.

"Landing like that isn't easy in such a tight spot," he added, slipping his hands into his trouser pockets as Martha slowly released her death grip on the console.

"You should be used to tight spots by now," she told him, and he sobered quickly.

Yes. Bringing her home was the right thing to do. Not just because he had to reconstruct his telepathic barriers, but because he'd put her in too much danger already.

Glancing at the doors for a moment, she turned back to him, her grin widening and he steeled himself. He hated goodbyes.

"Where are we?"

"The end of the line," he answered, watching as she ran down the ramp and stopped before opening the doors to glance back at him. "No place like it," the Doctor added with a resigned sigh.

She tipped her head for permission to leave and he nodded back, encouraging her to step outside and slowly moving down the ramp to follow after her.

"Home," she said when he stepped out of the Tardis beside her. He could hear the disappointment in her voice and forced himself not to react when she turned to face him, confused.

"You brought me home?"

The Doctor forced a grin onto his face, tongue pressing to the back of his teeth as he considered how to answer her. He let his eyes roam around the small flat, his expression easing into something more natural as he took in all the small, personal touches, that said this was her space and hers alone.

"Back to the morning after we left," he confirmed, and he'd triple checked the date and time coordinates before landing too. No dropping off a companion a year late a second time, or he'd never live it down, no matter how long he lived. "So you've only been gone about twelve hours. No time at all, really."

He couldn't meet her gaze. Not knowing that there would be some combination of anger, rejection, sadness and confusion in there. Instead, he shoved his hands into his pockets and moved to peer at the pictures on the student's mantlepiece, grinning at the baby pictures of what he assumed were her siblings.

"But... all the stuff we've done," she protested, "Shakespeare, New New York, old New York...?"

"Yup, all in one night. Relatively speaking," he answered, deciding quickly to play the ignorant alien card.

He was so very good at that one, he admitted to himself, before turning back to Martha, his smile once again fading away and leaving behind only innocent obliviousness.

"Everything should be just as it was," he told her, glancing around for something to distract her from questioning him too deeply. "Books, CD's... laundry..."

That would do, he decided, picking up a pair of her knickers and letting them swing from a finger before she snatched them away flushing with embarrassment.

"So, back to where you were. As promised," he finished, leaving her no room to argue and feeling like a complete arse because she'd been brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

"This is it?" Martha asked, but the instant he even considered wavering, the Tardis gently brushed against his mind again reminding him why Martha couldn't stay right now.

"Yeah, I should probably... umm—"

Ring-Ring...

Any other time, if he'd been saved from an awkward goodbye by the ringing of a phone, he'd have slipped away in the Tardis, but Martha was between him and his escape, so he found himself just standing in her flat as they waited for the answering machine to do its job.

"Hi, I'm out. Leave a message."

"I'm sorry," Martha apologised as the machine beeped, but he just offered her a smile.

"Martha, are you there?" came a woman's voice, "Pick it up, will you?"

"It's mum... it'll wait," she told him, and he nodded as he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet.

"All right then, pretend you're out if you like. I was only calling to say that your sister's on TV. On the news of all things, just thought you might be interested."

Martha's mother hung up the phone abruptly then, but Martha was already reaching for the control box and flipping channels until she found the news.

"How could Tish end up on the news?" Martha muttered, but the Doctor didn't have an answer for her. He did, however, take advantage of her distraction and moved around her to stand beside the still open doors of the Tardis, but his curiosity made him hesitate to leave.

"Tonight I will demonstrate a device which will redefine our world..." the elderly man on the screen was saying.

"She's got a new job. PR for some research lab," Martha told him, and he let himself make a soft humming sound, feigning interest as he waited impatiently to leave.

Goodbyes weren't his strong suit anyway and dragging them out always made them worse.

"With the push of a single button, I will change what it means to be human!" The old professor declared to the reporter's before Martha flicked the off button, and turned back to him with a sad smile.

"Sorry, you were saying we should...?"

He froze for a long moment, going back over his memories and fought off a smile. He'd never said 'we' but he nodded anyway.

"Yes... yes... we should..." he hesitated but placed a reassuring hand on the Tardis door frame before the time ship could prompt him again. He couldn't take Martha with him this time. He needed to deal with the damage to his mind first.

"One trip is what we said," he reminded her softly, smiling at her final attempt at persuasion, even as she smiled.

"Yeah. I suppose things just... kind of escalated," she offered and the Doctor hummed with a playful frown.

"Seems to happen to me a lot," he admitted and her hopeful smile shifted, resignation settling in.

"Thank you," she finally said quietly, "for everything."

He felt himself soften instantly and gave her a genuine smile. The kind of soft smile he'd not been able to draw forth since faced with a white wall and a supernova and a cold, damp beach in Norway.

"It was my pleasure," he promised gently.

Any other day, any other time, she would have had a standing invitation to travel with him and he half-promised himself that he'd come back for her, but he knew he wouldn't.

He never went back. Never asked or offered twice. Never did visits. Sarah Jane could attest to that. He was determined to remember her now, as she was, with memories of starlight in her eyes, and with that, the Doctor stepped back into the Tardis quickly before he could talk himself into staying any longer, or offering just one more trip.

Moving to the console at what could almost be considered a run, he flipped the handbrake off and slammed the dematerialization sequence into her console, before leaning against his hands and groaning with a mixture of frustration and pain.

Something beeped on the Tardis screen, and he lifted his eyes wearily.

Without a companion onboard to distract him, his post-Dalek exhaustion was hitting hard and it took him a moment to figure out what the Tardis was showing him.

He sighed when he realised that she'd reinstated the Zero Rom and slowly he began to undo his tie.

"Alright, old girl, alright," he muttered softly, before heading into the Tardis corridors without another word of argument or even token resistance on his part.

And although the Tardis avoided brushing against his bruised mind, she let a comforting hum follow through the corridors after him.

As the door to the Zero Room sealed behind him, the pressure in his head ceased and the Doctor let out a soft sigh of temporary relief before flopping to the floor.

It only took him a matter of moment to sink into his own mind, eyes falling closed while he focussed, and then time became irrelevant as though he stood inside a dream.

He could still feel the passing of the universe outside of his body, but in the time it took for a single nanosecond to flick by he had sorted through the memories of his first regeneration and tucked them away where they belonged.

Moving on, to neaten up the life of his second form, took just another moment, and on he went.

Each of his many lives had their own space in his head but the maelstrom of emotions he'd been through since losing Rose had made a mess of his mind.

The barriers aided a Time Lord in remaining sane by partitioning hundreds of years of memories in their head into manageable sections, but right now his barriers were weak and in some cases broken down entirely.

It was no surprise that he'd been having memory leakages, he realised when he finally reached his ninth self and saw the golden mists that indicated his memories of Rose scattered through his head.

She was everywhere. Permeating everything and warming the memories that had once been cold as ice.

He couldn't leave it as it was, no matter how much her presence soothed him. Those flashes of memory, and the opinions of his past regeneration leaping into his mind, were both distracting and dangerous, so he reluctantly tidied up those parts of his mind as well.

Even so, once he was done clearing away his darker thoughts, and they had been returned to their designated shelves and cupboards under firm lock and key, they still retained the hint of warmth they'd absorbed from his memories of Rose.

Only once his past selves had been separated properly did the Doctor turn his attention to the mental protections of his mind from outside influences and winced at the tattered state of them.

What should have been a strong wall that an outside intrusion would find themselves slamming against was gossamer threads spider-webbing across his mind and he shuddered at what could have happened if he'd encountered some of the more dangerous telepaths in the universe.

Seeing the state of his mind he wondered how he'd not noticed.

Wondered how he'd borne the Tardis' mental presence for as long as he had before the pain made itself known.

The only answer he could think of was that the pain in his hearts, the despair at losing Rose, had drowned it out, but he pushed that thought into a locked box on a shelf almost as fast as it had formed in his mind

He spent a long time soothing the bruised parts of his mind and slowly rebuilding his defences. Walls to keep people out. Watchtowers to alert him to any attempts at getting into his mind. A multitude of locks and chains to keep the Oncoming Storm under tight control. Traps and dungeons to catch anyone who did manage to get in. All of it built around the soft, blue glow that was his link to his beautiful ship, her own abilities reinforcing his structure.

Only then, at the end of his repair job, did the Doctor begin to organise his more recent memories.

His experiences since he regenerated into his current body weren't as strictly controlled as his past regenerations and he only brushed through them briefly, straightening stacks of information and trying not to linger over the multitude of glowing golden threads that smelt of vanilla and rang with her laughter.

He stumbled into the memory of saying goodbye to Martha and took shelter there from the waves of pain that thoughts of Rose were bringing to the surface, wrapping himself in the recent memory as he struggled to get himself back under control.

As he stood, once more, in her small flat taking several deep, steadying breaths and fighting off tears, he heard Martha switch the TV on again.

He focussed on the reporters this time as he pushed away the thoughts of Rose trying to drag him back out of this more recent memory.

"With the push of a single button, I will change what it means to be human..." The scientist said. The Doctor's freshly organized and properly defended mind latched onto the words, and he frowned.

Blinking his eyes open suddenly, the Doctor darted to his feet ignoring the Tardis' groan of complaint as he dashed out of the Zero room and, instead of heading for a bed to sleep in, he made a beeline for the console room.

"Oh, come on!" He snapped at his ship a short time later when he realised that she'd been moving the corridors on him, "I've fixed my head. 'Change what it means to be human' is pretty suspicious!"

The Tardis didn't answer him for a long moment, but then his bedroom door appeared and he rubbed his face with his hands in open frustration.

He was tired, he couldn't deny it even if he wanted to because his ship was in his head. Sleeping after a reorganization of his mind was advisable too, to set the changes he'd made into position more firmly, but the scientist's words worried him.

It was when the Tardis trembled with a slightly offended hum that he caved and opened the door to his room.

A short snooze couldn't hurt, he finally conceded. After all, he did have a time machine.

While her Thief was busy performing some self-maintenance, the Tardis took the opportunity to check on the convergences of the various timelines she was monitoring.

To make sure that things were progressing as she hoped they should.

She'd finally gotten her Thief to listen to her. To take the Storyteller home in time to hear what he needed to, and in time to protect his mind from the Madman.

The Storyteller had been with them long enough to sense her Thiefs' loss, to empathise, but not long enough to become a problem.

Her Wolf.

For her Wolf, the Tardis cried. She missed her Wolf, but for her Wolf, their separation had been much, much longer. It was only acceptable because her Wolf was strong enough to endure it.

Now the threads were drawing tighter, leading the Wolf home. She'd experienced and done things that would be necessary in the future, or the past. The separation had been unavoidable, so the best that the Bad Wolf had been able to do was ensure that their time apart had a purpose.

The Fixed-One was hard to see, hard to look at, and harder for her to understand, but he was needed too. He helped to heal her Wolf and to guide her back on the hunt for their Thief.

The Wolf finding the Fixed-One was important too. Together they would come home, and trigger the Tardis' instinctual revulsion to the Fixed-One's creation. It was necessary. It would help her to face her own pain, and drive her unerringly towards it.

As for the final piece on the board, the Madman.

The Tardis flinched away from looking at that timeline, but she knew it was vital.

The echo of her own agony drifting through the vortex made her afraid.

Her Wolf had endured the loss of her and their Thief with bravery, and so the Tardis knew she would endure her captivity with the same strength, but there were things she knew she needed to do that would have far-reaching repercussions throughout the Timelines.

Nineteen-Seventy-Three.

It was a pivotal point in time. It was burned into her circuits by the decisions of the Bad Wolf. It was integral to everything.

Without Nineteen-Seventy-Three, there would be a paradox that even she couldn't contain.

She just hoped that, after everything, the timeline that took precedence was the one in which her Wolf would forgive them.