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The Doctor bent over the TARDIS console staring down at his hands. At the ring on his little finger with the strange symbol on its bezel. What was it? Some sort of winged creature? What deeper meaning might it hold?
Ruby was sleeping, exhausted by the excitement of their Regency adventure. His human companions needed that kind of rest so much more often than he did. He hated it - being alone with his thoughts. In that silence, the Doctor could feel all the absences of those who were no longer there crowding around him. His ghosts. And now it seemed he had added one more to their number.
"I met someone," he said softly into the quiet hum of the TARDIS. "I know, I know. Bounty hunter. But still, it was like ..."
The Doctor knew that he had met himself before, though the memories and feelings surrounding such events were often vague and jumbled, like something out of a dream. He had always come away from those encounters with a sense of what had occurred, but little more. The theory among the Time Lords had been that it was impossible to clearly recall meeting oneself because of asynchronicity of the time streams. Was this what those meetings had felt like in the moment? A sudden, unexpected kinship?
It had not been like when he met one of his human companions for the first time - that thrill of knowing he was teetering on the precipice of something grand - something new. He had learned to recognize that feeling well over the centuries, and reveled in it every time, even knowing it must end in heartbreak.
This felt more like something old. A deep familiarity. A rare resonance of spirit dimly recalled from the days of his youth. That had been a time of great friendships, and of making grand plans for the future - a future built around those intense bonds and shared experiences.
The laugh that burst from his lips was half a sob. This was mad. He had known the man for only hours. Just one more of the hundreds and thousands of people who had passed briefly through his long existence only to vanish once more, leaving nothing but a memory and a bruise on his hearts.
He had let down his guard and allowed himself to be caught up in the romance of the moment, nothing more. He was much too old to succumb to such foolishness. Those intense connections were a thing of the past. If he hungered for them still, well, that was only natural, he supposed. But they were gone forever, along with Gallifrey and the Time Lords, all but one. And that one - the greatest friend of all, who had become the greatest foe -
That gave the Doctor pause. No, that was impossible. Rogue could not be the Master. He had not even seemed to know what a Time Lord was. The TARDIS had been a wonder to him. True, he was a time traveler, but he was human. Wasn't he? The Doctor had not thought to ask the TARDIS to scan him. But then, it would not be the first time the Master had disguised himself as human.
Could it all have been artifice? Was it possible to counterfeit that echoing sense of loss and loneliness that he recognized so intimately? That look of raw hope and trust in Rogue's eyes at the end?
"Find me ..."
The Doctor shook himself. It did not matter who he was. He could not leave the man imprisoned in a barren dimension with none but the Chuldur for company. And if Rogue was a hidden Time Lord, especially that Time Lord? All the more reason why he must be found.
"I found Rose again, didn't I? That should have been impossible, too."
He did not know the man's true name, nor his planet of origin, nor even his species for a certainty, but he had the ring, and he had the ship. Perhaps the first step was to trace where Rogue had been, and to learn more about the technology behind the Triform Gate.