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The Doctor leans heavily on the console as he goes through the dematerialisation sequence on autopilot. He can't afford to do it slowly, but he has no energy left in him. He cuts time by skipping all his flourishes and the processes the TARDIS can easily do for him when she feels he needs her to.
He feels hollowed out, like someone had scooped out his insides and dumped them into the gutter. It's probably for the best he doesn't feel much, though; he can't afford to fall apart. His other selves will be here soon. The Doctor doesn't even know anymore which one of the three of himself he hates the most.
His future self, lying as easily as laughing, casually cruel with his mockery and judgmental eyes, casual about drawing yet another bright human into their mess. His past self, battle hardened, drawn with determination, the one who ends it all no matter the amount of blood on his hands. And his present self. Oh, who is he kidding, it was always going to be himself.
As if on cue, his other selves pile in, insulting his TARDIS interior right out of the gate like she somehow isn't a reflection of his mind, battered and bruised to match. So when she stabilises as his future self's version, he feels it as a keen betrayal, not to mention a stripping away of the comforting familiarity of an interior he'd at least recognise.
But there's no more time for self pity. The Doctors have an Earth to save and that they will always do, until the day they die trying for the last time.
If there's one good thing about his future self's presence here, the Doctor muses, it's that he will forget all this. Seeing his past self again, the four kisses and all. His future self doesn't remember it yet, the depth of the wound he twisted a knife in, with his "I'm not judging you" and eyes that said "you brought this upon yourself". He probably wouldn't have cared enough to hold back, either way.
The Doctor won't get to lick those wounds, or come to terms with the implications of his younger self knowing the name of Bad Wolf. He will have to lock all these memories away and wake up all alone in his TARDIS, hopeless, humiliated, tasting the tongue of another woman in his mouth with no idea how it happened. He will apologise to a Rose who cannot hear him and try desperately not to remember the Master's words, or anything about the Master at all. And eventually he'll pick himself up like so much broken glass and force himself to keep going.
Some day, it will be him not remembering, him mocking a younger self for being kissed by a zygon and a woman who isn't Rose Tyler, him lying about having never counted the children of Gallifrey, him laughing about how badly he handles loneliness. Until then, the Doctor can hold himself together by a thread.
