I do not own Doctor Who. I wish I owned Doctor Who, but I don't. I make no money off of this. Once again, I wish that I did, but. ;) Please excuse the sudden 15 minute…well, I find it hard to call it a story. Too short to be a story to my way of thinking. Drabble, then? Just not the usual 100 words. I can't say anything in 100 words or less, it seems. Lol Umm…review if you wish, but please be kind seeing as how this is my first 'almost-a-fic-but-closer-to-a-drabble'. I appreciate any and all constructive criticism. Remember the word 'constructive'. Enjoy!

A careless question, floating through his mind, crossing time, space, and dimensions. "Do you still love me?"

Shock. A question she never expected from a voice she never thought to hear again outside of her imagination. A gift the universe bestowed and not to be wasted. "Sometimes."

He breathes in deeply, taken aback by surprise. An answer. He closes his eyes and thanks the gods that he has never believed in. Because even if this is just a fantasy, it feels so real. "Only sometimes?"

"Sometimes I hate you." An honest answer. Never going to see him again. Never going to feel his hand in hers.

"Really?" A playful pout in his voice, hurt in his eyes. But that's right, she cannot see his eyes. Keep it light, keep it teasing.

"Hate you for showing me the universe and then abandoning me so suddenly." No playing from her. Time has passed so swiftly and her hope is fading. No second chances for them.

"Oh." The pain is in his voice now. An answer he never would have expected. Hate from the one who loved (loves, loved?) him so much that once she would have abandoned any hope of seeing her family again just to remain with him.

"Do you love me?" A question she can't stop herself from asking, the pain from that day in Norway coming back as though it had just been yesterday. So long ago…so lonely despite the new family she had come into.

"Sometimes." He tosses her answer back to her in a careless manner.

"Only sometimes?" She says it, but even sometimes is more than she had from him before. His cutoff words had haunted her since that day on the beach. Would he have said he loved her, that he appreciated her? But sometimes…sometimes meant something so much more to her than anyone would have thought it should.

"Sometimes I hate you." He had not realized it until she had said that sometimes she hated him. Her hate made him realize his own. Made him realize why sometimes he went to her room just to bask in what remained of her presence. And why sometimes he went in their just to find something he could destroy.

"Really?" Surprise on her side now. She would have thought that the other part of his sometimes would have involved friendship, or not thinking of her at all. Why hate her? What had she done?

"Hate you for showing me what life really is and then abandoning me so suddenly." The words are torn from him almost without his meaning them to be. Exposing the truth that he had kept hidden from even himself. Life went on for a Time Lord. New companion, continuing to save the universe from itself, so on and so on. But when she had said forever, he had wanted to believe her so badly. For a short time he had allowed himself the luxury of being blind to the truth. He had believed her. And then she was gone. Out of his world, out of his universe. Out of his reach. No longer able to just reach out and touch her hand, to give the joyous hug of having survived yet another event that should have killed them both.

Silence.

"We're pretty screwed up, aren't we?" She thinks of loving someone so much that she dedicated her life to being "fantastic" just so that she wouldn't disappoint him if he ever showed up again. Husband, children, grandchildren. If she manages to hold on for a few more months, even great-grandchildren. World peace. Universal peace, actually. And now reaching the end, still loving him…still hating him.

He thinks of the life he has led since she's been gone. Of those he's saved, some out of habit more than anything else, because once he found his way back to her, he wanted her to still have that admiring look in her eyes. The one that said he could do anything. The traveling companions he's picked up along the way because he knew, just knew, that she would not want him to be alone. And he hated her and he loved her. "No doubt."