A/N: Just a little angsty thing I found in the back of a notebook. This story takes place in the same universe as my other one-shots, i.e. one where the original Doctor gave the Alt!Doctor and Rose a grow-your-own-TARDIS.

Disclaimer: Not mine, BBC's. No money being made by me. Promise.

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But

For ChellusAuglerie - My new favourite Libra ;)

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On nights like this, with the moon waxing in a cloudless sky, he sits outside and watches the stars. He waits for her to come and join him, and she always does. She's never fazed by the cold, or the damp of the grass, and if his silence upsets her she tries not to show it. Some nights she'll start a conversation and he'll join in merrily. Other nights they're both monosyllabic.

Often she sits beside him in silence, and he watches the reflections of the constellations in her eyes.

"Not long now," she tells him this night, jollity in her voice, "soon you'll be up there. Like the old days."

She nudges his arm and smiles up at him, but the smile doesn't reach her eyes; it cuts him to the bone.

Cassiopeia twinkles brightly above them, and in his mind he checks off every star. All the names, systems, beings he knew. He wonders what the chances of similarity are.

He doesn't answer her.

"Where will you go first?"

Orion. Too many stars in his belt. An extra star, an extra system. Untold wonders and horrors waiting, glinting, taunting.

A sharp gust of wind blows between them, and he shivers involuntarily; she doesn't move. A single cloud obscures the moon, and he bites his lip to taste blood.

Ursa Minor, Lyrae, Castor.

"I'll miss you."

She says it so quietly he's not sure he's meant to hear, but when he turns to look at her she's watching him; tears in her eyes and wet on her cheeks.

He wants to rage and scream and tell her that he hates her, because if she'd ask, if she'd just ask, he'd take her everywhere, anywhere. Hide her away in his magical ship and never ever let her go.

She doesn't ask, so he asks instead.

"Why?"

She reacts like she's been stung; a flinch and a pained expression. He doesn't know who she thinks she's fooling.

Artucs, Bellatrix, Rigel.

The wind pulls the words from her lips before she can speak them, but he hears them clear as day in his own mind. The truth he's convinced of:

Because I'm meant to.

His skin feels like burning, and he knows, as she knows, how dangerous he'll be without her. He thinks she might be scared, or trying to be, but when he looks back into her eyes all he sees are the stars in her tears.

Sirius, Pollux, Andromeda.

"I love you," she says.

He waits for the but.