It took the best part of a week feeding in the memories relating to Clara with only short stops for rest and food. Once he got to the Timestream everything involving her became deeper, multilayered and intense, packed with rich emotion and detail which he had absorbed easily at the time, but which now took time to rebuild. These were memories filled with love and they were an exhausting task.

This he had to admit was more difficult than he had anticipated. He thought he could download each memory again in an orderly way and allocate it not only space but an appropriate emotional response. No going overboard, no losing control. So far he was clinging on by his fingernails but no less addicted to the next chip and the next. It was roulette. He couldn't stop looking, listening, seeing what came next even when he knew it hadn't ended well, even though he knew he had had to wipe his memory in the first place and make all of these little chips to protect his sanity.

Good memories were wonderful.

Bad memories tore him apart all over again and he punished himself. Telling himself he should stop, that at the very least he should go slower with the download. But then his mind said the next one might be better. The next might be beautiful and healing so he stayed where he was in his chair; he just carried on feeling drained and vulnerable as he watched each private movie in front of tired eye, as each event settled into his synapses and stimulated his emotions. He kept hoping the next chip held something magical to make it all better.

Time Lord memory was as vivid as day and in order for these snippets to take root properly again in his brain they had to play out as life, each detail, each sound as though he were back there. He watched as they had grown closer and closer, felt the love swell in his chest again and fear grow with it. Obsessive protective fear, he remembered the way he had watched her every move, analysed her speech, taken her aside and almost begged her to stop. He had told her in so many ways how much he needed her to be careful, and now looking back it was a tragedy waiting to happen. Inevitable and doomed.

He had come to the last chips in the box, so far avoided because when he scanned their brief contents with the sonic they flashed up warnings. They covered the Clara's descent into recklessness, the Raven and Gallifrey, and what had happened to him afterwards.

Sitting on the console waiting to be played. For a minute he considered leaving them there. A little stack of misery. He knew she had died and he suspected he had a ringside seat. He didn't want to see, but he had to. He had grown to love her again and he owed it to her to be strong enough to look, as he had the first time, not to leave her alone.

So he pressed download and sat in the dark letting those moments wash over him. It could only have been a matter of minutes but it was such a depth of feeling, such a vivid memory that each second played out slowly, again and again as his brain tried to deal with it. It didn't know what to do with such pain. It didn't fit and it sucked the air from his lungs as he wrestled with it.

He must have grieved, he thought, and healed gradually. Maybe if he remembered that process he could settle these memories. So he tackled the confession dial.

It wasn't contained in those final few chips. He had to go back to the warehouse for this one and had hoped he might avoid it completely. He would have to upload memory after memory because he could still lay claim to all four billion years by a fluke of Time. Even though he had been reborn and reborn every few weeks his Time Lord brain still somehow absorbed every moment. He opened the door to his store room and counted what was there. There were boxers and boxes and boxes of memory, all roughly the same. All painful. A warehouse full of his grief for Clara, the identical containers lining the walls and dwarfing the rest of his existence. He couldn't avoid it, not when it loomed over his life that way.

Resignedly he brought up the contents on a screen and watched himself defeat the Veil. He thought that a single tour or two around that fort would be memory enough but he added another and another. Curious about each turn around the dial. Curious at how fresh his grief remained and how powerful it felt. Had he really lived through all of this for her? He analysed each turn around his own private hell; his desperation and loneliness. His love never wavered.

He ended up reinstalling all of it and sitting that night in his library replaying important parts. The painting he slowly did over centuries. The way her memory meant he never gave up hope. He'd been missing that these last few years; the drive and determination she gave him. He knew it was a fine balance between that and obsession but…

… he needed to remember what love felt like and why she above all others had commanded that kind of power. It fascinated him and he had to admit it was intoxicating. Nothing else in his life had come close to Clara and now he could see why again, could feel it in his blood. But he was in control, he told himself. This time he had knowledge at his fingertips, he could learn from his mistakes; had learned from them on Darillium. This time around he wouldn't go wrong.

The Doctor emptied the warehouse boxes and tidied the neglected console room. He was running late for something. Somewhere he went every year, waiting in the trees until the woman he recognised, but didn't know, had left. This time he went not out of duty to a name he knew he had loved, but out of love for the woman who owned that name.

She'd be there, he was certain of it.

XXXXXXXXXXX

He proved to be a creature of routine, even if that routine was yearly. From her secluded vantage point Clara watched the TARDIS dematerialise near a particularly large angel figure and the doors open, casting bright light over the darkness of the early evening. The sun had set an hour before and now only the eerie orange light of streetlamps lit the graveyard. The ground sparkled with it like embers. It made her think of a time she had stood amongst fire and threatened to destroy each key to the TARDIS; a time she betrayed him and he just took it. She'd learned since how rare that kind of love is.

There he was, just as she remembered, and it brought tears to her eyes to see him. Tall, elegant, his hair thick and silver, the Doctor, dressed in the velvet coat she had loved so much, picked his way through the graves with a practised movement. She wondered if he wore that jacket for her, if he associated it with the message she had left for him, or if he actively remembered she had told him it suited him. How much did he remember?

She watched him come towards her, her pulse thumping. His path was well chosen and exact, practised for years, and he quickly found himself in front of Clara's headstone. He stood a moment, the bouquet of oddly shaped and coloured flowers in one hand. He bent and inhaled its scent and then jiggled the bouquet a little activating something within, a biological secret from an alien world, she supposed. The flowers glowed brighter than the streetlamps, a cool blue. He must always have waited until she was gone, she would have noticed those on her grave before now.

He bent slightly as though he was about to lay them next to Rigsy's, when he stopped and turned slightly, cast his eyes towards the trees where Clara lurked, watching. He frowned, the light from the flowers casting shadows on his face. For a second he looked about him and she could see him deciding what to do next. Finally, he looked down at his bouquet and addressed it.

'If you want me to give these to you personally you'd best come out,' he said. 'I am assuming it's you, I've seen you here before but I usually let you finish before I make an appearance, less complicated that way, what with the memories and the hybrid and so on….' He tilted his head back and looked at the stars. 'Well…' he said, 'I had half hoped you'd be here…'

There was a beat and then he added softly, 'Clara….' The old way he said her name made something in her chest break. He knew her, she could hear it in is voice. She was no longer just a name. She stood and stepped around the bench and trees and saw him carefully lower his head again, let his eyes fall into her gaze. He appraised her silently for a moment as she approached and she saw him swallow hard.

The Doctors cheeks were damp. Clara reached for his arm and in a slightly unpredictable movement he held the flowers out towards her in an attempt to look relaxed which failed utterly. Clara took them and did as he had done, inhaling their scent.

'The one place a time traveller must never go,' he said, 'Is their own grave. That's a basic one. You remember where we ended up when I did it… Impossible Girl.'

'I know. Don't regret it though.'

'It's still a bad idea, Clara.'

'Probably.'

He nodded as though that was all the repercussion he could manage. Clara stepped a little closer towards him and he watched her side on. The surreal atmosphere was throwing her. They hadn't seen each other for decades. So much had gone on between them, both in happy times shared and painful separation. Here he was, she was close enough to touch him, but she stood uncertain and frozen, her brain racing too fast to be of use.

'I needed to… I don't know… ground myself?' she tried to explain and watched him nod slightly, 'Find a starting point for this version of me? I started coming here years ago. It reminds me that everyone dies eventually, of what it is to be human, I need to hang onto that and remind myself one day I have to go back.' Clara said.

'How long have you been… like this now?' he asked. She could feel him looking her over, frowning, unsure if he liked what he was seeing. It must be obvious to him, more so than other people. He would perceive the change.

'Oh a few decades, I lose track, I'm looking good om it though,' she joked. He didn't respond or find it funny and she immediately regretted it. He nodded again more to himself than to her.

'Yes its quite the achievement,' he said with a touch of bitterness.

'Doctor?' she asked, nervous of his answer, but wanting confirmation. 'Do you remember me or have you just worked out who I must be, pieced the clues together?'

He finally raised his eyes to meet hers although his body looked guarded. 'Oh I remember, Clara, I remember all of it,' he let slip a tiny smile, 'All of it,' he sighed. 'You did a good job on the memory wiping device, it was about as useful as a television remote, but I played along. We needed time apart for everyone's sake. So I boxed up my memories of you for years just to allow me to live outside of misery… but I've recently put them back.' He held her eye, 'There's nothing missing.'

'So you remember… all of it…?' Clara double checked, 'No blank bits?'

'No blank bits,' he looked at her with meaning, 'You must know how that works by now?'

She was too absorbed in his confession to respond. 'The Cloisters?' she asked, 'You remember them?'

The Doctor looked up at her sharply and even in the gloom she saw him blush. 'Y..yes.'

Clara giggled in despair. 'All this time,' she said in mock frustration, 'All this time you could have remembered and we've been living lies.. again. Why do we never get it right? Why do we always cover things up, or lie, or exaggerate?'

'Because we care,' the Doctor said, 'Too much as we demonstrated last time. Because we try to do the right thing but its obscured by… by… how we feel. It was safer not to contact you, to pack it all away for a time. I couldn't… I didn't trust myself.'

She looked at him sadly and knew what he said was no exaggeration. The lengths he had gone to to bring her back were immeasurable. But she wanted so badly to believe in change.

'We've had a little time out, maybe we're better at this stuff now. Besides, the universe hasn't ended and we're both still in it,' she said hopefully.

'But not together,' he observed wistfully his mood altogether melancholy. She thought she saw him take a small step towards her as though he was being restrained by an unseen force but defying it anyway. He opened his mouth then shut it again, stuck between what he felt he could say and what he could manage.

The wind rustled through the trees behind them and played in Clara's hair. She swiped it back from her face.

'You must be cold,' the Doctor said.

'I don't really get cold,' she smiled.

'Ah,' he considered her with something like disappointment in his eyes, 'No, not anymore…' he glanced at the TARDIS unsure of what to do next.

'But yes I would like to come in for a coffee,' Clara said.

'Coffee…' he was thinking something over, she could feel it, something he was struggling with. Was he regretting speaking to her already? Then he seemed to draw himself up a little. 'Coffee…' he gestured for her to go first towards the TARDIS, 'After you, Clara Oswald.'