Disclaimer: Fine. I don't own the Doctor. Have it your way. The world would be better if I did.


Universe Rise

The skies, they are so beautiful, bittersweet and fire bursting overhead. Below grows the mighty Citadel, encased in a great glass bubble, reaching forever upwards with its icicling peaks and spires.

She rests on a hillside of deep red grass, my back to the endless mountain expanse that shimmered with the silver trees. A twin sun glints through the bubble.

Sitting besides her, he begins to talk.

"A far more glorious dawn awaits us, Ksi. Not just a sunsrise, but the universe rise. A morning filled with time and space at our fingertips."

She looks up at him. He is facing the Citadel but is not looking at it. She scoots closer and lean against his arm and sighs in agreement before looking up at him, grinning.

"If you can even manage pass your capsule flying test", she teases. He glares down at her playfully and flicks her head. She cries in protest, ducking away. She tries to give him a stern look but can't keep the smile away. He smiles and sighs, looking back at the Citadel. She wiggles my toes in the grass. A silence falls between us. A moment passes.

She stands up and holds out her hand, pulling him up. He looks at her curiously. She grins.

"Dance, Theta!", she laughs and twirl them around in the red grass. He breaks out into the familiar grin she knows and dances them around wholeheartedly, humming an upbeat tune. She starts to sing along loudly to the outdoors, outside the bubble. Their laughter goes distances.

They let the tune come to a end and collapse back down on the hillside, breaths ragged and grinning wildly.

"Ksi." She hears Theta say.

"Mmm?", she says as she turns her head towards him to see his eyes locked on hers. He props himself up on an elbow.

"Dance across the universe with me, Ksi. We can go places, visit planets, galaxies, entire races! See all the things we hear and study. Wouldn't you love to, Ksi? Wander the cosmos?"

She turns her head back up to the sky. She closes her eye and a soft smile plays at her lips.

"I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move", She quotes.

"Robert Louis Stevenson", Theta says. She opens her eyes and turns her head to grin at him.

"I would, Theta", she says, "I would love to." And she leans to connect their lips in a quick, chaste kiss.

Pulling back, she grins again before flinging herself off the ground and running up the hill, away from the bubble.


"Where ever did you get that thing, Theta?"

He grins up at me from nailing stakes into the soil.

"It's called a tent. Humans use it to go camping in the wilderness. They make fires and roast food over it and sing songs. The only race in the universe to do so."

She laugh. He becomes so exited so quickly over Earthling culture. She had no doubt the planet was going to be his first destination.

"Breaking the statistic, then, are we?", she kids. He laughs.

"That's us, meddling with the universe's data files." He stands up from the ground, brushes off his trousers, and looks at her.

"Lady Ksi", he grins, opening a flap in the tent and gesturing inside.

"Why thank you, Lord Theta", she laughs and duck inside. She stands up but her head hits the top of the tent as she looks around, surprised to see nothing different on the inside. It wasn't... "It's not bigger on the inside", she calls outside. She hears him chuckle and step into the tent.

"Of course not, silly girl. It's a tent."

She turns around. He, as she is, is stooped from the short height of the tent. She scowls at him and he grins back, plopping himself on the floor and patting the ground next to him. She rolls her eyes and sit directly in front of him. Keeping eye contact and a solemn face, she puts her palms out to face him. He struggles to hold back and laugh and does the same. They both start chanting and clapping hands.

"Patty cake, patty cake, baker's man.

Bake me a cake as fast as you can.

Roll it, and pat it, and mark it with B.

Put it in the oven for - "

Theta's composure cracks and a slow grin spreads across his face.

"HA!" she shouts and rolls over backwards in a somersault. Facing him again, she tallies up the score. "That's another point for me!" she laughs again as he playfully scowls and leaps at her with his demon fingers. They attack her midsection, relentlessly tickling her ribs and stomach. "Theta! What in the - ah! S-stop! You - ah! Stop it, I can't bear it! - crazy lory!", she squirms, shrieking and giggling, "Let me - ah! - go!" His fingers finally disappear and she collapses, breathing deeply. Peeping an eye open, she sees him munching on a banana.

"'aunt 'um?", he mumbles, offering her the fruit.

"Crazy lory", she mutters. He laughs through banana.


The stars twinkle in the now-purple Gallifreyan sky. A small, tired fire crackles nearby. After trying many a time to manually build a fire, Theta had given up and she had rolled her eyes when he had reached into his shirt pocket for a laser.

Now she curls up in his lap as he leans against a silver tree, whispering in her ear of all the different stars and planets he would go. Dido with its gentle sand beasts; Pandatorea, the planet covered in green lakes; Avalon and its six moons; the lust, green world of Castrovalva; the Orion Nebula and its star nursery; Biblios with every book in the universe; Earth. He talks with such passion and desire to feel, witness, and experience all these planets and galaxies and stars and aliens. Their tales, trials, triumphs, culture and wars flutter their way into her ear as he continues to talk though the night.

The sunsrise comes with the pair of them still awake and watching. Theta quiet now, trailing patterns with his fingers on her shoulders. She snuggling deeper into his chest, an eye poking out to watch the sunsrise.

"Gallifrey", he murmurs, "A beautiful planet to say the least. Beautiful skies, beautiful grass, beautiful trees, beautiful inhabitants, beautiful culture...", he trails away. She looks up at him.

"Beautiful sunsrise."

He looks down at her and smiles, running a hand through his dark hair. She smiles back and continues.

"Beautiful sunsrise", she says again, getting up. She walks a distance away and spreads her arms wide, spinning around. "Beautiful planet!", she shouts. She stops spinning to look at Theta. He had risen. She walks over to him to stand inches away. He tilts his head down to look at her. She grins up at him and leans up to press her lips to his. She feels him kissing her back, his arms wrapping around her waist as hers drape around his neck. They break away. She reaches up on her toes to whisper in his ear. "But we've seen that." She senses him smiling. She pulls away and grab his arm, dragging him with her down the hill. She hears him laugh.

"UNIVERSE RISE!", she shouts.