He's seen wars and death and life and people who have been copies of themselves years before. He's gained broken bones and knife wounds and a voice hoarse from threats and turn back the way you came, while learning that sometimes you have to pay a price to keep what you treasure most safe.
His hands have been scarred by rope burns years in the making; months spent tugging and dragging and pushing the cube which held her safe in it's space. There have been days; months; years; decades, where the only sound in the world that didn't drive him mad was the memory of her voice chastising him or that accent in her voice or the way it would trail when her affection nuzzled through it; times when the only thing he can see no matter what his eyes found were the red strands of her hair and her skin pale and that furrow of her brow.
It does occur to him that maybe he should stop; once, during a month where there was a coldness lying deep in his plastic and his breath was frosted in the air; where his hair was slightly iced over and despite his resolve he couldn't feel human in his littlest of fingers. That was a bad time when he was stuck in more than just place.
And yet despite this he loves her just the same; perhaps more, perhaps with a warmth that settles like embers waiting to be re-lit by her appearance. Like a campfire beside him, that sometimes kicks him in her sleep (and leaves bruises in the morning, thank you Amy.)
His love is that which makes him the Boy Who Waited, and which hammers the image and legend of the Centurion and his Box into the walls of history, and that which shatters himself and rebuilds exactly as he was. Without it, this little bubble that gives this plastic soldier life, he would not be any of this.
He remembers the pulse of his determination like the taste of her kiss on his tongue, and the humored bit of disbelief stirred with exasperation of a man who both enriched their lives and ruined it and yet bandaged them up all the same; leaving them with scars that ache on bad weather days but not on good ones.
"Why do you have to be so...human?"
"Because right now I'm not."
—-
Inspired by a post on Tumblr from the doctorwhotumblr.