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“Why did you let me keep my memories?”
The question’s been lingering in her mind ever since he lowered his fingers from her temples and frantically shooed her out of his office, as if the decision was one that could be reversed if he thought about it for too long. With her memories still at his mercy and the flood of relief overwhelming most of her thoughts, it hadn’t occurred to her to do anything but accept his change of heart and get the hell out of there.
The next thing she knew, he was standing in front of her again with that blue box and inviting her onboard, and well, who has time for questions like that when you’re being whisked off to 40th century Mars, where they have self-serving cocktails and the most wonderful landscapes she’s ever seen?
But now, they’re sitting in his office again, the Doctor behind his desk and Bill in front, in a silence tailing a companionable (at least she thinks it’s companionable, it’s hard to tell with him) conversation about that man whose cocktail had hit him in the face after once it thought he’d had enough (she could think of a few people on Earth who could use something like that). Her initial unquestioning gratefulness has given way to burning curiosity, the thrill of the adventure is waning, and his current (possible) good mood has emboldened her, and so the question falls off her lips without her consent.
Bill immediately longs to put the question back in her mouth. The easygoing atmosphere vanishes instantly, a thick cloud of tension taking its place. The Doctor’s chin comes to rest on his folded hands, and his face becomes glued in a contemplative expression, and she thinks for a minute that he’s going to pretend that she didn’t say anything. She’s all too ready for him to jump out of his chair and put his eccentric professor persona back on, beginning a long ramble about the nature of time or mathematics or anything other than what she had asked. So it comes as a bit of a surprise when he his eyes come up to meet hers and he speaks, without any of the wild impossibilities and grandeurs that she’s come to expect from him.
“You asked me to imagine how it would feel if someone did that to me,” he says.
Well then. She supposes that is an answer, but not exactly what she was looking for.
“And?” She pries, unsure if he’ll budge any further.
“And I didn’t have to imagine,” he finishes, eyes falling away from hers and focusing on nothing.
Oh. With that realization settling in her understanding, Bill simply nods, not asking him for clarification. She figures a man as old as (or possibly older than he looks, who knows how aliens age) the Doctor must have endless stories, but whatever chapter of his life his mind is currently engrossed in is one that she’s not been invited to read. He’s been full of mystery since day one, and she reckons that’s not going to change anytime soon.
Sensing that perhaps she’s strayed a bit too close to personal territory, she takes the heavy silence as her cue to get the hell out of there, and stands from her chair.
“Well, see you at six tomorrow, right?”
He seems to snap back to reality, eyes coming up to meet hers. “Yes,” he says. “See you then.”
“See you,” she replies. She’s aware of him rising from his desk as she heads for the door, presumably to read a book, or grade some reports, or maybe to jump in his impossible spaceship, visit 10 different planets, and be back in time for his lecture the next morning. It’s hard to tell with him, she thinks. She’s learned so much from him, but so little about him (and finding out that he’s a time-travelling alien has only deepened the mystery, to be honest).
For a second, she wants to turn back and ask him every question in the world— Where is he from? Why did he come to Earth? What memories did he lose? Would he like them back? Is he trying to get them back? –but she doesn’t. She swallows her questions down, far as they’ll go, and then walks out the door so there’s no chance of them ever reaching him. She’s not here for his life story, she’s here to learn from him (hell, not even that, she’s really just here to serve chips). Not to say that she wouldn’t listen if he ever felt like sharing it—she surely would—but if she’s learned anything from working in the canteen of the university she can’t attend, it’s that it’s best to not allow her hopes to reach too high.
Bill pushes her questions down even further when, at six PM the next day, she’s greeted with open TARDIS doors and a promise to go wherever she chooses. She redirects her curiosity towards the endless buttons on the console that can seemingly take them to endless places— questions that the Doctor is only too happy to scoff at and give (probably) made-up answers to (there can’t really be buttons for condiments, right?). These, she thinks, are the questions she needs to stick to, the safety zone. The Doctor is an impossible riddle, and she’ll let him stay that way for as long as he wants.
And who knows, she thinks as the Doctor flies around the console, telling her about what a sonic screwdriver is and all the different types he has. Maybe she doesn’t have to give up her curiosity about him. Sometimes you can’t solve riddles until you give them some time.
She suddenly notices that he’s gesturing to her.
“What?” She asks tentatively.
“Pull it,” he says, nodding at the lever beside her.
She does, and then that distinctive whooshing sound fills her ears, the top of the console spins around, the floor rocks beneath her, and she can’t think of any other time in her life when she’d ever been so excited for the future as she is now.