Stargazer, Heartbreaker
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me. Title is from Paloma Faith's Stargazer. The briefly mentioned History of Love is by the wonderful Nicole Krauss.
--
He experiences, for a split second, the feel of her naked hips hooking up around his waist, her hair (longer now than when they first met, even) tumbling forward over her breasts and his shoulders. He can recall, as if from the sharpest moment of a blurry, fading dream, the sound of a zip as his fingers skim up her side, can catch the scent of her perfume – the same one, even a universe away – as she turns to press a kiss to his neck in thanks. He wakes in the grey dawn after restless, fitful sleep marked by the fingertips of her ghost, inky bruises scattering his arms, branded by her touch from another life, her cries echoing through to his waking hours.
He could stop all this, perhaps, if he chose to. End this teasing and torture, this constant self-reproach for his weakness and the sickening, voyeuristic guilt deep in his stomach. It wouldn't even take any specialised technology or drain his ship's resources – just pure, determined concentration.
After so many years searching, his mind wide open for the slightest hint of another Time Lord as much as whispering into the long, heavy silence, he is not quite sure that he knows how to shut that door.
He's not sure what he would be without it.
--
It is, afterall, a door that opens both ways.
They are alone when it happens, curled together in a winged armchair in a living room of the Tyler mansion that he has fashioned into a library (complete with fluffy rugs and magnifying glasses and a sliding ladder). She is dozing off, he can feel it, lulled into slumber by the beat of his single heart; her eyelashes fluttering slowly closed against the skin of his neck, the soft strokes of her thumb over their joined fingers slowing almost to a stop.
When the all too familiar prickling, burning sensation begins at the back of his mind and the end of his fingertips, he does not need to question what is happening. Though for him it does not grow much stronger than a fever, he knows it cannot be long before she notices. He puts their book – The History of Love – down with a sense of soft finality, careful to keep the page, trying to stand without waking his sleeping lover and quite unable to answer her questioning frown as she stirs and he paces.
And so it goes, her gentle, worried fingers bracketing his face after he falls, one of his hands clutched to the fierce burst of light in his stomach, the other uselessly employing the mantlepiece above the fireplace as a brace. They fall to their knees together before the flames, his shivers palpable despite their warmth and his own considerable heat. He accepts her comfort without question and without answer, in all honesty not thinking of her as perhaps he should until he feels the drip and roll of her mascara-laced, saltwater tears upon his own skin.
He had not expected it to be so soon.
When he looks up, gasping, to meet her frantic gaze, the light of the fire has warmed her hair to the same golden hue as the faint glow behind his eyes.
Two simple words suffice, in the end: "He's gone."
Her cool, trembling fingers brush across his too-warm forehead, such a contradiction to the norm. She knew the moment she saw him collapse, the moment she saw that too-familiar glow across his face and couldn't attribute it to the colour of the fire. Of course she knew. He never did give her enough credit for this sort of thing.
"Was he on his own?" she asks, her eyes imploring his for a truth he cannot give. What would hurt her more, the knowledge of her replacement or the certainty of his loneliness?
"No," he lies. He is under no illusions about the depth of her love for him – either of him.
--
Head bowed, drinking in the sound of her approaching voice in these final minutes, he recalls the memories of her that he did not make like a once-drowning man forgetting the water. This time, this last time, the connection that has rewarded and plagued him for more than a year is momentarily extinguished. He is free to remember her as he knew her, as he will always know her, so far away from that life of money and comfort and doorstep kisses before work.
And so here he is, collecting his final reward, creating a secret which only he will ever possess – one single memory of their life together that is not shared by another man. Even as he is dying, something deep inside him relishes the thought of a few, precious seconds that are theirs and theirs alone.
The last seconds of a life she near enough created and she doesn't even know his name.
You know what? I bet you're gonna have a really great year.
–
It is not until she catches sight of him three years later on New Year's Eve, leaning casually against their front door beneath the gentle snowfall, that she realises with startling clarity exactly what she had seen all those years ago.
Remembering the look in his eyes that night, she doesn't say a word.
That night at midnight, they kiss on a bridge in the middle of London as Big Ben chimes and she knows he can feel the heartbreak on her lips.
She tells herself that somewhere out there, he can feel it too.