Note: Just something I found buried away on my computer. I originally thought about making it into a series, but I decided against it. Inspired off of a Rose/Eight gif set I saw floating around Tumblr.
"Tell me, Amelia," the Doctor says in a way that sounds halfway like a question.
The Doctor, this Doctor, the man with the almost ginger hair and a light in his eyes that's so full of life. And it's kind of funny, ya know, how he can be so similar and so different at the same time. Because this man is the Doctor, her Doctor, and she can see it in the way his eyes soften around her or the way his lips press together just so when he looks at her. Yes, he's her moron alright, she doesn't doubt that for a second, because there's no one else who ever looks at her like that.
But he isn't the same man she grew up with. There's something different about this younger version of him; there's a happiness to him that she's never seen before, that she knows he'll lose one day, that will change the way he guards himself. One day – and she can't be certain how soon that day will come, but she just knows it will be soon – he will lose that hope in his eyes and retreat into the tired old man that hides his pain through flailing arms and stupid bowties. One day this man will die and the light in his eyes will die with him.
But it hasn't happened yet, at least not for him. He doesn't know the things that will come and destroy him, and she won't – can't – take that away from him. He'll carry enough pain for a hundred lives; he doesn't need any more. So he remains oblivious, and takes her hand instead, pressing her palm against his, measuring her hands as if they hold the secret to his universe. He doesn't care that the four suns of Sijak are in line for the first and only time in the history of the universe, and that he will never, no matter how many lives he lives, see this again. In that moment, all he cares about is his universe. About her.
"Do I," he asks, his palm pressed against hers, his eyes locked on hers, "fall in love with you?"
He says it as if it's the simplest question, as if any old moron could answer it, but she knows better than to think anything could ever be so simple with him, no matter what face he has. He knows the answer. What he wants to know is something else entirely.
He wants a confirmation, she knows, about her and about them. He wants to know how much she knows, and how much he's willing to tell her. Because the Doctor can fall in love with any old human, but trust? Trusting someone to know about it is something else altogether, ya know? But he doesn't know that he can't ever tell her, at least not the him he speaks of. He doesn't know what he will face, what he will lose, and what he still fears losing. And she can't ever tell him, so she does the only thing she can: she smirks and winks and says the only words she knows will suffice the bloody moron without revealing what he can't possibly know.
"Psh. Like you haven't already."
Her almost ginger Doctor with the silk scarf and the stupidly smooth voice laughs. He says something about conceding this time and losing the battle, and kisses her on the cheek. But one day, he promises, he will best her. He will win the war. She laughs in a way that sounds too true for him to decipher, but doesn't say another word.
She sits with her Doctor and lets him live in ignorance for a little while longer.