Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who.
a black hole to forever
She is happy. Mostly. She has to be happy—this man, this moment, this world, it's all more than she had any right to expect. The Doctor has given her a gift. He's given her a lifetime—a universe—of stories, and he's given her an ending.
But sometimes, in the middle of the night when John lies snoring beside her, her world closes in. It feels small. He loves her. And God, she loves him. She loves him because of his memories, because he can speak of the blaze at the end of the world and his dream-filled brown eyes tell her of ages, of millions of years and of nights, mornings, afternoons in the TARDIS, spinning on the webs of the universe. He has seen the time vortex and he has seen her and he knows her from before and from after. She loves him mostly because of the after, because in this world, the one where she will die but not the one where she was born, he is beside her. In this world he holds her hand in the street and he has stories about aliens and he knows and in this world he snores beside her.
But he also doesn't know. He doesn't know what is happening in the TARDIS at this moment, at every moment from now until the end. He doesn't know how lonely his first self is—he doesn't know if the life that gave him all those memories still exists. John cannot know if the three hearts tied to all that past, all that future, the whole fucking world, he cannot know if they all still beat, or if only his single heart does. And so she hates him. She hates him because he gave her an ending, he gave her the chance to live and grow old with him. She has someone to compare grey hairs with, to map wrinkles with. She has John to love in the now and the future and the Doctor to love in the past. She had two hearts beating for her and now she has one and that should be enough.
She lies there awake next to John and she thinks too much. She thinks too much because she loved too fiercely, because her ending aches with regret. As much as she thinks about the way stars look at their birth and at the ending, of the way the sky goes on forever and ever and ever and as much as she imagines the continuous pull of the black holes, as much as she remembers all that, as much as he remembers all that, neither of them will ever experience the universe again. They are locked in time and space; they had goodbyes and they had hellos, but at night she wishes for a dance in the TARDIS and a view of the Milky Way and the feeling that her life is always beginning—always starting and never ending.
But then John's arm falls over her waist in his sleep and she's happy. Mostly.
A/N: Just a little drabble, because I miss Rose and I miss Ten. I think technically Ten's duplicate isn't given a name, I just sort of assume that he'd take on the Doctor's human alias and use John Smith, which I hope didn't confuse anyone.
I appreciate reviews!