The TARDIS.

His TARDIS.

The Doctor's TARDIS.

The Doctor's home.

Here, he was free, alive, comfy, the way his bow-tie made him feel. He would be here forever, outside of time, inside the cracks in the universe. Sealed them all. He sealed them all and brought back the stars. Silence fell and the Doctor rose. He had vanquished the Silence. Hadn't he?

"Yes, Doctor. Keep forgetting. I'll remember for the both of us."

Funny, that. The Doctor was supposed to be the only one here. This was not-time/space, after all. Only a Time Lord could exist here, right? Was there another being that could exist here? No. Couldn't be.

"Typical arrogance, Doctor. You have rather a high opinion of yourself. Just because Gallifrey is the oldest and greatest civilization in all of time, doesn't mean there aren't beings above you."

The Doctor looked for the voice, and found its source. There, seated, apparently though the seat could not be seen was an elderly man, heavyset, with black hair in a black, sparkling robe. A vulture lay upon his head as a skullcap. The Doctor felt sick. Arrogance, indeed. There were beings greater than the Time Lords, and the Doctor, some time ago, had rather insultingly outsmarted one of them.

"I told you, didn't I? There would be a final reckoning. Not now, though. Now, you have a wedding to attend."

Then Amy Pond's piercing shriek shattered his eardrums. "You are late for my wedding!"

The Doctor sat bolt upright, as if spring-loaded. He felt his coat, for surely he was not appropriately dressed for a wedding. Nope. He was wearing a tuxedo, complete with cufflinks and coattails. He reached for his fez. Uh, no, that was a top hat. He felt around his neck and encountered a fine silk scarf, probably white. He should have checked, but didn't, as it was probably white. He looked down. Yeah, definitely white. Damn. He looked good. He even had perfect white gloves. He looked around the TARDIS console room. The Doctor had been sure that the Black Guardian had been there, but now there was no sign of him.

The Doctor stepped outside of the TARDIS, to find himself facing a crowd of stunned revelers. Rory Williams looked at his wife and back in shock and said, "How could we have forgotten the Doctor?"

Amy, for her part, could stun any mortal in her path. She stood tall in her wedding gown, her eyes set in an intense stare, directly at the Doctor. The Raggedy Doctor wasn't so raggedy. Even so, he wasn't missing her wedding. Of all of the invitees, the Doctor was one man whose attendance was mandatory. The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted.

"You could have kept the key," said Romana.

The Doctor looked over and there was Romana standing next to him. Amy and Rory were gone, as were the wedding goers. They were on a brick path walking along a copse. It was a beautiful day. The Doctor looked down and saw his trusty old knitted scarf, brown, red, and tan, exactly as he left it, and he breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment, he thought he was an idiot with an unhealthy obsession for bow-ties and fez's.

"No, I'm afraid not, Romana, that kind of power in the hands of one man is simply too much. The Key to Time is literally the power to reshape the very fabric of the universe. It is literally the power of God."

Now the Doctor remembered where he was. He had just scattered the Key to Time and rescued Princess Astra, thwarting the efforts of the Black Guardian. It had been a trick all along and the Doctor had very nearly fallen for it. He had not once met the White Guardian until after he outsmarted the Black Guardian.

"Couldn't you have kept it to protect it from the Black Guardian? Now he knows how to find it. Just because he can't gather it himself, he could easily have someone else do."

"Not quite. Gathering the individual pieces of the key require space travel, time travel, a certain degree of ingenuity. There are very few people in this universe possessed of all three. I am one, and you are another, but how many others, Romana?"

"Who's Romana?" asked Amy.

The Doctor looked around. Copse of trees? No. Romana? No. Just to be sure, he looked around his feet. No, there was no K-9. "Well that was interesting." He looked seriously at Amy. She was in her wedding gown, dancing a slow waltz with the Doctor, who was certainly not wearing an itchy wool scarf. "Are we quite sure this is the real universe and not just an illusion within the cracks of time?"

Amy opened her mouth to answer, but the Doctor cut her off.

"Don't answer that. I would have known if this were an illusion. It's not."

"Well, get on with it." Amy had that look on her face that crossed between deep fear and extreme rage. The Doctor didn't have to wonder which way she would slip if anything happened to Amy's wedding day. If the Daleks invaded now, they would run in terror, regretting even coming near Amy on her wedding day.

"Nothing to worry about today, Pond." The Doctor gave his most sincere smile. "This is your day. You're princess for a day."

The warning signs diminished, and Pond became her charming, congenial self again. "Honestly now, Doctor. Is something serious happening?"

"Nothing that can't wait. It's already waited for almost 300 years. It can wait until Amelia Pond has had her day."

The Doctor could feel the tug of time upon his shoulder. No. The Doctor said, No! I will play your game, but you started it! I get to lay a rule down first and my rule is, not today. Not this day. You can't have it.

Just like that, the tug relented. "How very...quaint, Doctor. To move time for an outmoded, primitive Pagan Earth ritual. What is a day to a being that embodies the very universe? Have it. Have all of the days you wish. My reckoning will fall."

It was a mere whisper in the Doctor's ear, and when the threat was done, the Doctor could scarcely remember the words. He looked to his companion and said, "Romana, did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

The Doctor began to wind the scarf around his wrists; bloody fidgety. He always got that way when he became convinced something was wrong. He was certain that for a brief moment, he had been the bow-tie obsessed man again. Romana had gone several paces before she realized the Doctor had stopped walking. She turned to look at him, concern etched across her features. Romana had regenerated recently. Knowing full well that only Time Ladies could alter their appearance during regeneration, she had teased the Doctor with a number of faces and bodies from Gallifrey that the Doctor would remember from his past. When she realized that he found all of those old faces from Gallifrey uninteresting, she had chosen to take the image of someone the Doctor cared more closely about, an alien, Princess Astra. She had only meant it as playful joke, but now she was no longer in her regeneration cycle, and now that she was stuck with the body, it occurred to her that choosing that form might have been rather cruel.

"Doctor, are you all right?" She asked.

The Doctor's eyes were wide, his mouth slightly agape. His over-large nose and thick, curly hair benefited the image, making him appear quite as frighteningly clever as he actually was, but this was not a good idea. The overall look of his expression suggested a bad idea.

The Doctor said, "Romana, either I am reliving my past and all of this has already happened, or I have acquired access to memories from my future."

Were it anyone else, it might have been funny, but Romana learned that however wonderful the Doctor's sense of humor might have been, this was the type of thing he did not joke about. "What is it? Are you being shown a war, your death, some unspeakable evil?"

"Twice, Romana, while I was talking to you, I fancied that I had become an incredibly young man, with an incredibly old mind. This man, who I am convinced is one of my future regenerations, has a rather humorous obsession with bow-ties and hats, strange hats preferably. As for what he is doing. He is in a tuxedo, attending the wedding of someone I suspect is his traveling companion. She is extremely important, meaning the fate of the universe rests in her hands, but this is a happy time, a wedding, and nothing seems to be amiss, except that the Black Guardian has promised his revenge."

"I don't like the sound of this." Romana was a Time Lady. She understood time in a way no human could. "This isn't a simple vision. Does the Black Guardian mean for you to cross your time-line with this future incarnation?"

"I believe he does intend that, and more. He's setting the stage, and I can't help but wonder how he's doing it. The Guardians have the power to do it, but they've never had the means. That is why the Black Guardian wanted the Key to Time. Oh, Romana, what if in the future, he somehow manages to acquire the key after all and his first order of business is to use it against me."

"He gets the key anyway and decides to use it to make you pay for denying him."

"Precisely. Come along, Romana. We have to get to the TARDIS."

"Who's Romana?"

The Doctor was struck with de'ja vu. He knew someone had asked that not so long ago, yet he couldn't remember who. The Doctor looked down at himself. Brown overcoat, blue suit and pants, red high-top shoes, just as always. Donna and Jenny looked at the Doctor with confused expressions on their faces. "I'm sorry," said the Doctor. "An old companion I used to travel with. Brilliant woman, that. She was from Gallifrey; a scientist. The only member of my species that ever traveled with me. I had a very strange moment just now. I relived a moment in my history. Just a walk through a park with Romana. She enjoyed quaint little getaways. Always learning about humans. But something was different. Time had changed." Then the Doctor realized where he was. "Time has changed! We have to get back to the TARDIS."

"What? Doctor, have you forgotten that we have lost Martha, are being hunting by soldiers, and are about as close to getting to the TARDIS as you are to carrying the Olympic torch?"

That wasn't right. That had already happened. Jenny had died. She had failed to regenerate. If Jenny really was his daughter, then she would see the changes in time. "This has already happened. We've done all of this."

Donna shook her head. "Sorry, Sunshine. Two more guesses or no points. We're doing this now! This is a fine time for you to go loopy."

"But we have." He looked to Jenny for help. "If you really are my daughter, the daughter of a Time Lord, you can see it. Donna solved the riddle: the numbers on the wall. They were the dates of the completion of each section. We learned that your age-old war had only been going on about a week and that the only reason it happened at was because of confusion over that cloning machine."

Donna's eyes were wide. Part of her thought the Doctor insane, but another part realized that he had solved this puzzler before they even figured out how much of a puzzle there was.

Jenny scrunched her face in concentration. "General Cobb shot at you, but I saved you because you were my dad and you were just trying to help us all."

The Doctor nodded, tears welling in his eyes. "Yes, you died."

Jenny shook her head. "No. It just took me a really long time to regenerate."

The Doctor threw his arms around Jenny. She returned the hug and buried her head in the Doctor's shoulder.

Donna said, "Right. Let's just clarify. We've already done this, you no longer consider Jenny an abomination, are in fact a loving father, and we still have to do all of this again. Did I miss anything?"

The Doctor, still with his arms around Jenny, said, "The Black Guardian. He's returned."

Donna nodded her head, "Right, I suspect that's a bad guy, speaking of which, that clip-clop you're hearing? Those are soldiers gaining on us."

Jenny grinned and asked, "More running?"

The Doctor said, "You bet." They all set off down the hallway, hoping to put some distance between them and the soldiers.

"Run, Doctor. Run, run, run, just as fast as you can. You can escape the soldiers. You can escape the Master. You can escape the Cybermen. You can even escape the Daleks. But Doctor, you should know you can't escape me. You flee, but wherever you go, I am there. I am always at the destination. I can be everything and nothing. There is nothing to run from, and everything to run to. Let's see you defeat me this time, Doctor."