It was the moments when the guilt on his shoulders dimmed the light behind his eyes. When all the weight of the world crashed over his head and there was nowhere to go but down. Deeper, darker, spiralling into a hell of his own design. The mornings when she woke up sore because she'd slept next him all night long on the floor after he'd collapsed there. After another innocent victim was lost. These were the moments when she realized how young she was, how little she'd seen in comparison. How amazing it was that he still had the strength to get out of bed in the morning, to go on fighting in a world so unfair. How remarkable it was that he could even see beyond his memories. Could anyone tell him he was wrong if he simply gave up? But he didn't, and she couldn't help but think maybe she shouldered some of the weight. Maybe he needed her to face another day.
But it was the stolen moments of happiness that made life worth living. Laughing in death's face before running hand-in-hand in the opposite direction. Waking up in the morning sore because they'd slept on the floor all night after collapsing in fits of laughter. Landing on Barcelona, the city, not the planet, because of what couldn't possible be bad piloting. The tiny snatches of normalcy in a sea of the extraordinary. The Doctor is worth the monsters, someone once told her. She tended to agree.