Archive of Our Own

It was quiet on the pebbled beach, the Doctor was the only one there, as far as he could tell.
It was a long way from the Nobel family home, so he’d had to come in the Tardis, after assuring Donna he wasn’t swanning off to the 49th century when he was supposed to be resting of course.
He stood with his easel and his watercolours, but the image forming on the canvas did not resemble the beach before him.
Strokes of red, orange, yellow and brown made up the unmistakable landscape of Gallifrey, the capitol in the center.
All from memory of course, that’s all he really had now, minus the ruins. His home, his birthplace, or so he thought until recently. Still, it was the closest thing he had to a home and now it was gone. Again.

‘A man is the sum of of his memories, a Time Lord even moreso’ he had once said. The earliest he could remember was growing up on Gallifrey, a childe of the house of Lungbarrow.
He could remember being at the Academy with the Master and lying back in the grass with his father on a warm Gallifreyan night. No memories of ‘The Division’ or his adoptive mother Tecteun, barring recent events.
So functionally, the Doctor had to wonder, was that Timeless Child, that other Doctor, really him?
Then again, the memories he did have weren’t exactly compatible with each other to begin with. If a man is the sum of his memories, what did that make him?
‘I’m half human, on my mother’s side’
Doctor Who?

He was like an unfinished jigsaw, a jigsaw that fitted together any number of different ways and had a huge portion of the pieces missing.
Then he remembered, that was what he had said, the Toymaker.
‘I made a jigsaw out of your history, did you like it?’
Was this his doing? Had he made the Doctor’s past such a mess of contradiction, re-writing him when he wasn’t looking?
The Toymaker had mocked him for what happened since leaving Donna. Losing Amy, Clara and Bill. Had the Toymaker played a part in their fates too? Was the Flux part of his ‘fun’?
Had everything that had happened to him since the very beginning been down to him somehow? Was the Toymaker the reason he ever left Gallifrey to begin with?
He felt like he couldn’t be sure of anything anymore.

The Doctor stopped, took a deep breath and tried to put it out of his mind. It was so hard for him to slow down his brain once it got going, building up momentum like a steam train. His and Donna’s encounter with the ‘Not-Things’ had highlighted that only too well.
He continued to stroke the brush against the canvas, trying to get the glass globe of the capitol just right. The glass globe that was cracked and broken the last time he saw it, just like the rest of the planet, his home-
“No” the Doctor told himself out-loud, “Stop”.

“I say”, a voice from a ways behind him called out, “Were you talking to me?”.
The Doctor turned around with a jolt. “No. Sorry, I was just talking to…”
It was an old man, with a familiar face.
“…myself.”
A very familiar face, one that the Doctor himself had worm once, except older. What was once a mop of brown curly hair was now short and grey, a hawk like nose, big eyes and an unmistakable grin. “Never forget a face, aye?” The man’s voice was just as recognisable, “One of the old favourites I see, just like I said”.
A memory came back to the Doctor, one he hadn’t had since a few regenerations back. One missing puzzle piece back in his hands.
The Doctor smiled back to the man. Same software, different face. “We’ve met before haven’t we?”
“Almost ten years ago I should think.”
“The Under-Gallery, 2013” the Doctor quipped cheerfully, “You were the curator”.
“The Great Curator, the definite article. You were all chin and bow-tie as I recall.” The Curator stood next to the Doctor, observing his painting. “Funny how history repeats itself. You, Me, a painting of Gallifrey.”

“‘Gallifrey Falls No More’, hmm.” The Doctor’s smile dissipated, “I wonder what I should call this one.”
“‘Again’” the Curator replied.
The Doctor looked sullen, “‘Gallifrey Falls Again’? Well it’s fitting if nothing else”.
The Curator turned to him, wide eyed, “No no no, just… ‘Again’”, a dramatic wave of his hand.
Turning back to the Curator, the Doctor’s face turned to a mix of confusion and hope. “Do you mean…?”
Eyes still wide, the Curator tapped his nose. That familiar, toothy grin returned.
The Doctor stumbled over his words, “B-but after the Master a-and the death particle, surely none of the Time Lords-”
“You know, there’s a word my wife used to say a lot…” the Curator interrupted with a knowing look.
“…Spoilers” the Doctor finished.

Trying (and failing) to hide a mischievous smile on his face, the Doctor remarked, quite casually: “But of course, if this conversation is anything like last time, I won’t remember this anyway.”
Now admiring the skyline, it was as if the Curator was pretending he hadn’t heard what the Doctor said. “You know, I’ve just been to my niece’s 90th birthday party.”
If this was an attempt to distract him, the Doctor thought, it almost worked.
The Doctor closed his eyes and shook his head slightly, trying to divert his attention back to the point. “Gallifrey…” he insisted, gesturing towards the painting, “…the Time Lords, do they come back, one day in my future?”
“Well it depends really…” the Curator responded casually, “…in some timelines yes, in others no. It’s all relative really.”
The Doctor looked exasperated. It was obvious though really, he should have known, even now with his presumed future self standing in front of him, nothing can be certain. His future was full of as many contradicting possibilities as his past.

“Just one question for you if I may, my memory is a bit touchy of late. Did you ever get around to patching the telephone device back through the console unit?” the Curator asked.
“Well, I did but the console’s been reconfigured at least twice since then, I’m still getting used to this new one, I’m not sure yet if-”
The Curator interrupted again. “I only ask because… Well, the answers that you’re searching for may be at the end of a telephone line.”
The Doctor looked puzzled. Then, in the distance behind him from vaguely the same location he remembered parking the Tardis, he could hear a telephone ringing.
Suddenly two more puzzle pieces came back to him, two more memories of the Tardis telephone ringing, once for the eyebrows, the other for rainbow-shirt girl and now again for him. He knew that somewhere his next self, the one with the mustache and the nice legs, would probably be getting a phone call too, as well as who-knows-how-many Doctors after that.
The memories still weren’t clear though, it was like they were gradually trickling back into his head (and would eventually trickle out again presumably). What happens next, who was calling him? Was it an invitation? A wedding? A funeral? A trap? A call for help? Only one way to find out.

The Curator gently took the brush, still wet with bright-beige paint at it’s tip, from the Doctor’s hand. “Now I really would love to keep chatting but I’ve been meaning to get back to this painting for quite a while.” He winked. “You’d better get that.”
Giving him one last smile, the Doctor took a deep breath and ran back to the Tardis, as the Curator turned his attention to the canvas.
Stopping short of opening the Tardis door, the Doctor called back to him. “Did you ever open it? The fob watch, with all those old memories inside?”
The Curator, still focusing on painting, called back “Like I said, it’s all relative”.
Thinking for a moment, before suddenly remembering the phone ringing, the Doctor hurried inside.

After hearing the sound of wheezing, mechanical groaning fade away behind him as a he painted, the Curator realised it was suddenly very quiet on the pebbled beach, now that he was alone. It was also quite cold.
It was a long way from the Curator’s home, but traveling a long distance in a short time was trivial for him. Though he’d had to assure his niece he wasn’t sneaking off to Venus when he was supposed to be resting.
As he stroked the brush against the canvas, trying to get the clear shining glass globe of the capitol just right, he remarked out loud to himself: “I could do with a nice hot cup-a-soup”.