A/N: OK, so I know that it's now pretty much mid-October, but I actually wrote this on the last day of last month and put it on AO3 on the 30th. I've started writing this month's, so I'm hoping it'll be up soon-ish, but I hardly have any free time at the moment with Uni and work and all, so finding time to write is actually becoming quite difficult. Hopefully, with reading week the week after next, I might find some time, but we shall see.

Hope this alright - it's a little bit angsty and for that I do not apologise :)

September

It was Autumn now, the leaves had started to turn and the nights were drawing in earlier. When it rained, it poured, leaving wet leaves and muddy pavements in its wake.

It was raining today. It had been raining for three days straight now and showed little sign of stopping. It mirrored his mood perfectly, though.

He was feeling down; had been for a few days now. It had only hit him the other day, though, as he walked into town. He had heard the sounds of children laughing; saw a group of four year-olds just starting their first year of school, their hands held tightly in their parents'. That should have been him, and Rose. They should have been there, walking into the school gates with their child about to drop him off for his first day of school.

But they weren't there. Not this year. Not like they should have been.

It had been a while since he had thought about the child they has lost in this way, often choosing not to focus on it at all. Rose had fallen pregnant less than a year after they had come to this world after the Daleks and he remembered feeling over the moon knowing that he could have this life.

But nine months later, he realised that, although now part human and allowed to be with the woman he loved, the universe still wasn't ready to let him have this. They had lost their child. Stillborn.

It had hurt them both and for months it felt as though this might be the thing to tear them apart. But it didn't; they got through it together. And eventually, the pain started to fade. But it was still there. It would always be there, underneath the surface.

It had been nearly five years ago now and since they had not consciously tried for any more children. They just weren't ready. Not yet.

But since he saw the children from their area start the new school year, and saw the youngest start for the very first time, he realised that this was something he wanted more than anything. He wanted to be at those gates, holding his son or daughter's hand, waving them off before heading on to work and then meeting them in the afternoon. He wanted to tell them that things would be alright if they were scared about starting. He wanted a family.

And realising that this year should have been the year he and Rose were at those gates just made him long for what he could have had.

However, he refused to let the memories of what had happened consume him. In a handful of years he would be back and that September would go as this one should have.

It was all just a matter of time and not giving up.

The universe couldn't surely hate him that much, now, could It?