A/N: So yeah, Karen's hair is becoming an issue. Or an inspiration. I'm going with it. Enjoy and review. I don't own Doctor Who.

Doctor:

Some people call her fiery. They say she has hair like flames. He thinks that they are wrong. Or at least not always right. She can burn hot like fire – usually with anger or fierce protectiveness – but mostly she is like cinnamon; warm and spicy on the tongue. Or perhaps like sunlight, drifting through the autumn leaves that rustle in the gentle breeze.

She is fleeting. And like the leaves, she has a delicate strength. She carries an air of sadness around her, a weight on her shoulders that he cannot lift despite his trying.

(When the sunlight passes, the bright bouquet of reds and oranges mutate into faded brown tatters that crumble underfoot. The trees are left bare.)

He does not want her to fade away and become empty. But she will. They all do.

She cannot remain vibrant and alive forever. Time Lord he may be, but even he must obey the natural order of the universe. All things have their time and everything dies. He hopes leaving her when she is still warm will allow her to continue breathing for a long time (by human standards).

He hopes her colours will never deteriorate, that she will always be a shining beacon of joy.

Even if she doesn't, he will remember her that way. Bright, alive and smiling.

(Not blood red spilled across hard ground on the edge of burning fields of silver grass with the screams of the dying ringing in bleeding ears and resounding in his pounding pounding head.)

Flames always were bad. Spices and sunlight have much better smell-taste-touch memories.

He doesn't like people calling her fiery. It's insulting, and wrong. They don't know her at all.