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The first time the Doctor meets himself, the self he will be, he’s in Amsterdam. Clara is in the process of falling off a bicycle. Across the canal, he sees another Clara, also falling off a bicycle. The man standing next to her waves. The Doctor waves back.
He doesn’t remember this.
The second time the Doctor meets himself, the self he evidently is doomed to become, he’s on a space station orbiting Mars. Wait, no, it’s the first time, surely. He’d remember such a momentous occasion. But it does feel like - anyway. The first time he meets himself, he’s attempting to enjoy a frozen banana daiquiri.
A shadow drops into the booth across from him. A shadow, a ghost, a possible future: an angular, unwelcoming man. The Doctor hides his shudder behind the umbrella and crazy straw poking out of his drink.
“Daiquiris are rum and lime juice,” the man says, frowning as if personally offended. “Not pudding in a martini glass.”
“More of a frosty ice-treat than a pudding,” the Doctor says. “Sorry. Who are you?”
The man is staring at him, still frowning. The Doctor does his very best to pretend he doesn’t know who he is. That there isn’t a stomach-churning sense of dread building inside him at the thought of what will happen, what has to happen, to turn him into this. Old and alone and so terribly weary. Judging himself for his beverage preferences.
“23-A,” the man says suddenly, sharply, as if that explains everything. He snaps himself up out of the booth and skitters off into the crowd.
He remembers long enough to pick the right drawer in a room packed with hundreds of filing cabinets, then promptly forgets.
The first time the Doctor meets himself, the person he’ll be reborn as when he dies, he’s on Revlix IV. There’s a lovely harvest festival on, all fireworks and rowdy music, elaborate candy he keeps accidentally shoving up his nose. He’s having a good time. Clara’s having a fantastic time, joyous and giddy and almost overwhelmed by how new everything is, how strange and wonderful the universe can be.
A stranger sidles up to him. His hands are bandaged, he smells like he’s recently been on fire. Blue-black and exhausted. Gloomy, what is it with the gloom, why does he have to be a miserable rain cloud on what was previously a perfect day? The Doctor glares at him from behind his lollipop.
“Sorry,” the man says. “I shouldn’t be here, I really - I just, I wanted to remember. How it was. The good old days, yeah?”
The Doctor’s hearts sink right down to his shoes. “Been here before, then?” he asks. As if he doesn’t know.
“Yeah, once.” The man is watching Clara with a horrible mix of adoration and nostalgia and loss, with a shaky half-smile and tears in his eyes. He seems, just about, like he’ll fall apart entirely, when it all snaps back suddenly into place. A very neat facade, such a familiar thing.
And then he’s gone, vanished into the crowd.
“Who was that?” Clara asks, bounding back over to him from the impromptu dance party she’d managed to get sucked into.
“Who was who?”
“What?”
The Doctor pauses. “For a second, I thought - but it’s nothing. Deja vu, you think you have it bad now, just wait until you’ve been traveling on the TARDIS for a few years.”
The first time the Doctor meets himself, he’s five hundred years into an unwinnable war. It is the first time, yes? He’s certain that it is. Only his memory’s been going a bit, lately. Time Lords don’t fare so well when divorced from the vortex, it turns out, and his mind, his mind - well.
There’s a shadow, in amongst all the other shadows. They’re rationing energy, his study tends to stay dark.
“How goes the war, soldier?” the shadow asks.
The Doctor eases himself into his armchair. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says, aiming for his patented mix of flippant and intimidating but it comes out small, tired. He sounds old. When did he get so damn old?
The man perched on his desk is older still. Bloody ancient, really. Except, somehow, not: a spark in his eye, a fluidity of movement, a general sense of youthful energy despite the wrinkles and grey hair.
So he gets young again, then. So this eventually ends.
The man, the thing, the himself-he’ll-become, is reaching out to him.
“Blinovitch!” the Doctor yelps. “End of the world! No touchy!”
“It’s fine. Trust me.”
Maybe this is how he dies, in a dimly-lit room on a planet he’s only just begun to think of as home, in the middle of the second-worst war he’s ever fought, because he couldn’t keep his own bloody hands off himself. He flinches and holds his breath.
But he doesn’t. Die, that is. There’s just a hand on his cheek, sliding back through his hair, pulling him in close. The universe hasn’t imploded, he’s just. Being hugged. By himself. It’s an odd sensation, even by his own standards.
And the himself-he’ll-become is holding him, is rubbing his back, whispering soothing nonsense, fragments of old lullabies. The Doctor is possibly crying, or maybe that’s just the dust in the air. He lets his defenses slip, and there, oh, the psychic contact, rough and scarred but so impossibly happy.
So he gets happy again, then. So this war will eventually be over.
“Brave heart,” the man is saying. He’s cupping the Doctor’s face in his hands, leaning down to kiss him gently on the lips. The Doctor closes his eyes. He keeps them closed as the man steps back, as the drawings on the walls rustle with the wind of the TARDIS dematerializing. The memory ebbs and drifts away.
The Doctor opens his eyes. Why’d he come in here, again? He knows he’s here for a reason, but it’s gone. He scans the room, searching for a clue. His journal? His jaunty hat? The little toy wagon he’d fixed for what’s-her-face? The wagon, yeah. Probably. Almost certainly. Toy wagons, always important.
He picks it up off his workbench, straightens his bow tie, and makes his way slowly up the stairs.