"Ex Memoria"

9. What Must Not

Chicago, Illinois – in the year 2021

The Doctor had left Mike, Tina, Amy, and Rory to wait for him in the middle of a park. He needed to go somewhere and needed to minimize the spread of the painting's 'infection.' Mike had been about to point out they could hide out at their home, but Tina had stopped him. It wasn't until Amy and Rory had wandered off in search of food that the Changs had a moment to speak amongst themselves.

"It's so weird," Tina had to say. "He hadn't met us yet, but we knew him. But then at some point he'll go to Lima, and he's going to see us, and he'll know who we are, but we won't know him."

"Well we knew some things," Mike countered, but it clearly didn't count for her.

They still remembered that field trip, where they'd eventually come to realize their friends had been working together to get them to know about and believe in the existence of the alien Doctor. It wouldn't be so long after that that they would actually meet him, for the first time, and they would know their friends had spoken true.

"What if he finds out," Tina aired her true concerns. "If he, or Amy, or Rory gets one of our memories about that time? If he knows everything before, won't it make trouble? Like… contaminating… time… or something?"

"Maybe," Mike understood now, and the concerns passed to him as well.

"How do you think it works?" Tina wondered aloud. "The memories, I mean… Do they just go at random, or do we have to be thinking about them in some way?"

"I don't know, it might. Until we know for sure, we should be careful not to think about any of it."

"You know we will. As soon as anyone says 'don't think about it,' it's all we can think about," she sighed.

"Think of something else," Mike told her.

"Like what?" Tina frowned.

"Anything you don't mind losing. Childhood nightmares, annoying songs…"

"Fake stutters," she jumped in, and he smiled.

"I kind of miss that, sometimes," he admitted. She smacked his arm with a laugh.

"Fine, I'll find something to think about."

"So now we know why Gemma said she'd be staying away this time," Mike nodded, looking up to make sure Amy and Rory were still away. "If she came, she might be infected, too."

"The Doctor has to know about her by now," Tina pointed out. "Even if they don't," she indicated Amy and Rory.

"We still can't tell him, or them. If we do, they'll know we're hiding something."

"No, right, of course," Mike nodded.

"You know, it still feels like she'd hiding something from us."

"Who, Gemma?"

"Yeah," Tina bowed her head. "It was normal before, I think, with what was coming, but that's over now, so what's there to hide?"

"I have no idea," Mike replied, although now that she'd mentioned it, he did sort of understand what she meant.

"I think Artie knows," Tina continued. "He called a couple weeks ago, and we talked, and that whole thing sort of came up. I can't really explain, I just think he knows something about her that we don't."

It had been easier for some of them, in the last nine years, to put the whole Doctor thing behind. It wasn't to say that they'd forgotten, because they could never do that, but it wasn't a part of their active lives anymore. There were still some of them though, for one reason or another, who thought about it more than most. And Mike and Tina, being mildly aware of an eventual encounter, had been two of those.

Whenever they heard of anything strange happening, they would wonder if it meant the Doctor would be here, somewhere on Earth. They would wonder if it meant that they would be seeing him again soon. But it always ended up being a fluke, or something not as strange as they'd believed. Either way, there had been no encounters. Not until today…

When Amy and Rory came back toward them, Mike and Tina forced themselves to focus, pushing thoughts of Lima in 2012 to the backs of their minds and covering themselves in a shield of bad songs and past embarrassments. They weren't sure what it would do, and they sort of felt bad, if it would mean the Doctor's companions would be saddled with those bad memories, but it was better than any alternative they had. It was for their own good.

They briefly considered telling the other couple the truth, about the fact that their meeting the Doctor today, the way they'd done, had not been random, that they'd been there, the better to join him, and them, as instructed by one of his… her… future companions.

They decided against it almost just as soon. They didn't know what to expect of the next little while, and unless it became absolutely necessary, it was better to limit the flow of information… especially if that information could be spirited away into anyone else's mind they might encounter.

The four of them ate in a relative and almost awkward silence, like they were all working individually to guard their memories.

It was some time before the Doctor returned, and after a while, they wandered some more, only to discover the TARDIS had been there all along. Now this left the four of them with some questions. For one, if he hadn't taken the TARDIS to go see whoever he'd gone to see, where had he gone? And if he had left the TARDIS behind, then why did the rest of them have to wait in the park instead of the ship?

TO BE CONTINUED (TOMORROW)