CHAPTER SIX

The Morning After

Eyes open. The Doctor drew in a sharp breath. The gentle fragrance of fabric softener and flowers, sweat and strawberry shampoo. He wasn't alone. There was a woman lying next to him. River. Safe. This was her apartment, in the days before her Doctorate. He remembered coming here.

He shut his eyes again, and rubbed a hand over them. Cool breeze - the ceiling fan was on. And something else. Something wrong. Even half asleep, he could feel it. He remembered the night before - the date, the Silence, the marks on his palm... coming "home" to the safety of her living room, the conversation. The sex. He had to admit, that had caught him a bit off guard. Not that he was complaining.

He remembered watching her fall asleep on his chest. He remembered carrying her to bed, and smiling as he let his own eyes slide closed. It had all been very perfect. But now something was wrong. Something he couldn't identify that made his senses tingle and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

Time was wrong.

He drew in another slow breath and did something he almost never did: he looked at a clock. Not just as a reference point but with genuine uncertainty. What time was it? A half dozen senses finely tuned to the passage of time, and he had no idea what time it was. He was disoriented, confused. Nine o'clock. Eight hours, since he'd fallen asleep. He hadn't slept for eight hours in... decades. But that didn't account for the feeling in his chest. Eight hours was too long, but it wasn't long enough. More time had passed than eight hours. He could feel it in every fiber of his being.

He sat up.

"What's the matter, sweetie?" River asked softly. She was still mostly asleep, only stirring because he'd moved. He cast her a quick glance and saw her eyes still closed, arms pulled in close. She was snuggled into the blankets for warmth.

"Nothing," he lied, quietly and evenly. "Go back to sleep."

"Are you leaving?"

"Not just yet."

She sighed, and a soft, contented sound escaped her throat as she smiled and buried her face in the pillow. He watched her for a moment, watched her drift back off into her dreams, then turned and stared again at the clock. 9:02. But what day was it?

He stood and stumbled - less than gracefully in his sleepy state - down the hallway and to the living room, gathering up his clothes. Sleepy... why was he sleepy? Eight hours was as much as he normally slept in a week. Of course, hit hadn't really been eight hours if the feeling in his gut was right. He'd lost time. He didn't know how much time, but it had been a lot longer than eight hours. That said, he had no idea what had happened or how long he'd actually been asleep. It might have been only a few minutes.

Why was he so groggy? Was he drugged?

Screwdriver. He needed his screwdriver even more than he needed his clothes. As he fumbled through the pockets of his jacket - much more difficult when he wasn't wearing it - his eyes lingered for just a moment on the palm of his left hand. He'd marked it the night before, when he'd seen the Silence. The mark was gone now.

Standing half-naked in the middle of River's living room and caring surprisingly little for that fact, he spun to survey everything about his surroundings. Nothing was out of place. No sign of a struggle. Except... His eyes lowered to the jacket in his hands. His clothes. They were on the floor beside the lounge chair. That wasn't where he'd left them. He'd left them by the sofa.

Somebody had been here, and he didn't remember it.

"River?"

Dressing as he walked, he checked for lingering energy signatures in the living room, the hallway, the bedroom. They were there, but too weak to codify. He might have better luck in the Tardis, where he could amplify the readings. He probably wouldn't be able to amplify them enough to get a precise explanation, but it would give him something more than just a feeling.

Somebody had gone through a lot of trouble to make it look like they hadn't been there. Like they hadn't... what? Kidnapped him? He frowned at the thought as he hopped a few steps on one foot, trying to get the other into his trousers. Coming here to meet her had, technically, meant that he was going back on his own timeline. But he ran no risk of running into himself and it would only be dangerous if someone identified that he was here from a time after he'd "died" at Silencio Lake. In fact, in that sense, it was less dangerous for him to be here than to be with the River from his own time - which was why he was here in the first place. There, he was supposed to be dead. Here, everyone knew he was alive.

Everyone...

"River, wake up." Pants fastened but shirt still unbuttoned and loose, he stumbled back into the bedroom.

"What's wrong?" she muttered, rubbing her eyes. She held the blanket close to her chest as she sat up.

"I need you to tell me what you remember about last night."

"What?"

Stronger energy traces here. They had been here longer, in this room. But who were they? He checked his arms again, although he was pretty sure he'd already done that. The Silence altered and erased memory. If he'd lost time, the answer to how and why seemed obvious. No marks, but he hadn't had his clothes. He hadn't had a marker. Come to think of it... he didn't have one now. Eyes widening at that sudden realization, he darted back into the living room, ignoring River's confused calls after him. The marker was in the pocket of his jacket, just where he'd left it. He held it in his hand as he turned full circle, as he checked every room. No marks appeared on his arms. No disorientation or loss of time. They were alone here.

River was standing in the doorway to the bedroom, wrapped in a sheet. "Do you realize that it's six o'clock in the morning?"

He spun to her, and stared for a moment. She stared back, still bleary eyed, hair frizzing everywhere. "No it's not," he said confidently. "It's nine o'clock in the morning."

She frowned. "It can't be. My alarm didn't -" She cut off as she turned and actually looked at the clock. "Oh. That's strange."

"What's strange?"

"I could've sworn it said six. And I always wake up at six, even without the alarm. I must've read it wrong..."

He took a step closer as she rubbed her eyes, as if to bring them into better focus. Energy traces on her - she was teeming with them. So was he, for that matter. But it had been hours, at least. They were just as faint where they clung to them as where they lingered in the rooms. He saved the data anyway. He would try and get a better look at it later.

"What are you doing?" she asked, eyeing his screwdriver warily. "What is that thing?"

"It's a screwdriver, River, listen." He set his hands on her shoulders. "What is the last thing you remember about last night?"

"Why am I so groggy?"

"River, please."

"Um..." She rubbed her forehead, eyes squeezed shut. "We were talking. You were telling me about your... about Julia. I think. I fell asleep."

He remembered that. In the daylight - a stark contrast to the warm safety of the darkness - he didn't allow himself to bring those memories to the surface. Luckily, his mind was elsewhere.

"Do you remember anything else? After that?"

"No. You woke up this morning. You woke me up."

The Silence wanted to kill him. More precisely, they wanted River to kill him. If they were going to go through the trouble of kidnapping him - something that in and of itself didn't make sense - it hardly seemed likely that they would put him back in bed when they were through. Besides that, he didn't know how long they'd been "away," but it was certainly too long to be continuously staring at one of them. There weren't even fragments of memory in his mind.

Maybe the obvious answer wasn't so obvious.

Alright, think. He turned away from River, pacing down the hall, ransacking his brain. Had it been the Silence or some other entity? If some other entity, what means did they have of purging his memory? It could be done; it had been done. There were several regenerations in his past that were full of holes - blanks and gaps of varying length. But to clear his memory if he was unwilling was no easy task. Who had that kind of technology? Was it technology at all or, like the Silence, some form of physiological capability?

"Is everything alright?"

He could hear the worry in her voice, and kept his own as even as possible. "Yes, River, it's fine. I'm thinking; just let me think."

She quieted. His mind raced. Could he have gone willingly? Could he have been asleep the whole time?

"Gone where?"

Seemed he was thinking out loud. "Somewhere," he said, turning back to her. "I don't know. But more time has passed than a single night; can't you feel that?"

"No."

He stared at her. Not Time Lord in that way, then. He moved on.

He could go to Kavorian and politely inquire if she had anything to do with this, but that was a hell of a risk. Besides, why bother? It wasn't as if she would tell him anything. And then, the larger question, was he even supposed to know? Was River supposed to know? He was definitely back on her timeline here. Was this something he'd caused by being here or something that was always supposed to happen - always did happen? If it was something he'd changed, would his investigation change it more?

Of course, whether he should leave well enough alone was the only thing in question, not whether he would. The curiosity would eat him alive and besides, losing time from his memory was a very bad, very dangerous thing.

He was thinking out loud again. And River was staring at him blankly.

"So the question becomes: what do we do about it?" he continued, not even trying to keep quiet now. "We could park the Tardis here, in this flat, last night - invisible, of course - and watch what happens. That would be fun for a number of reasons, but I don't really like that idea because it does mean crossing back on our own timeline and that's very risky. And besides, depending on what we're dealing with here, we may not find anything at all."

River yawned. "If it's nine o'clock, then I have class in forty-five minutes and I'm going to take a shower."

"Yes. Good. Do that."

He didn't turn to look at her until after she'd started down the hallway, dragging her feet on the way to the bathroom. Then he frowned. She wasn't right. She wasn't even interested in what had happened to her in the past... however long it had been. Whatever had taken away her memory, had it also implanted an aversion to recovering that memory? And if so, why wasn't it affecting him?

In the end, it didn't matter. Not right now, anyway. She was safe enough in the shower and he needed to think. "Why?" he muttered out loud, to himself. He was a Time Lord. She was an assassin half-Time Lady. Sort of. Complicated. But the point remained, "you don't just kidnap Time Lords at random. This was professional, well done, very precise. Whoever did it knew what they wanted and everything went according to their plan so what... was their plan?"

Standing in the mouth of the hallway, he looked around the empty, silent living room as the sound of the shower hissed to life somewhere behind him. He frowned as he realized he didn't have an answer to that question. More than that, he didn't even have a speculation.