A/N: This is me, not doing my homework. But technically it's educational, because I ramble about astronomy! Or something. Also, I figured out the horizontal line thingy and the bold text thingy. Yes, I am extremely bad at technology, thanks for asking. Oneshot, post-Doomsday. Ramble-y ramble. Spoilers for the end of Series 2, obviously enough. Series 1 also, if you squint and...know what happens at the end of Series 1.
The Turn of the Stars
She'd always loved the night sky. As a child, she'd stared up at the heavens– what could be seen of them from the Powell Estates, anyway, which was not a lot – the bright lights eclipsed the distant stars. She'd dream and dream, a tiny child shrouded against the cold; staring, waiting…she would pick stars, randomly, tell herself that one day she would go there and make friends with the stars. See everything there was, all at once, fall in love with Prince Charming, and live happily ever after. Well, she had been seven.
Seven and unable to see past her own nose. During the day, her life occupied her fully. She was inquisitive and bright, she had friends, and her daydreams were reserved for night. If that even made sense. At night she could see past the glare, and notice all that her life was lacking. But it wouldn't be until many years later that she would notice her dissatisfaction with her life. It seemed empty once you realized how big everything was.
It was late October, but much colder than that. But she was always cold now. Empty and aching and fighting to hold off the darkness, clinging to light and heat and hope and meaning, now that her main source of these things was gone. Wrapped in a brown parka and boots, she pulled up her hood and just stood. And stared.
The skies were a lot clearer, so much larger than she ever could have imagined as a child. The Pleiades…Cassiopeia…Orion…even Cygnus, so much harder to see. All spread out in front of her – many more, she was sure, whose names she did not know. Clear and mapped and perfect.
She knew that the light and the twinkling she was seeing was millions of years old, that, though the skies appeared orderly and pristine, the dainty points of light were burning and dying and collapsing and crushing. But that wasn't the destructive part. That was life. The strange thing was the cold end…losing the vitality it had had for so, so long. Just…ending. Stars, huge, unimaginably huge, just gone. Finished.
But maybe…somewhere, a star was being born, condensing, flickering into existence. Maybe planets just starting to coalesce, the world that will be the basis of a shining galactic kingdom…just being made. And she was staring right at it.
But for now, she couldn't see it. She saw the moment of transiency – no stars going out, but none lighting their flame for the first time. The cold hadn't taken over, nor had the light won.
They just stood. She stood. Turning, drifting. Not burning, but not yet burnt out.
She closed her eyes, and suddenly, everything that had happened in the past three years fell away. She was nineteen, so young, and innocent, and just a little bit stupid. Or a lot. And a strange man with a leather jacket had just blown up her job. And now they stood together, hands joined, for only the second time, as he told her, for the first, really, who he was.
Her hand grasped at air, seeking one to hold, but for the first time in so long, the absence hadn't sent her crashing to the earth.
"I can feel it, Doctor," she murmured through the burning cold tears she hadn't even known she was shedding. "I can feel it."
"It's turning, it's flying. And I can feel it."
A/N: Ta-da. I wrote a story. Sort of. More like a ramble/procrastination attempt.