It's a subtle worship.

What you do when you're around her. You've seen beauty before, of course, and plenty of it—the transcendent, majestic, indescribable beauties of the universe, nebulas and gas lakes, caves of pure diamond and plants that can walk. You've seen it begin and end and it is beautiful every time. The women, too, you've seen the most exquisite faces; you only take the best. You're drawn to pretty as if it were a commodity you could put in a frame and hang on the walls of your box. And the famed dames of history, you count among your friends and some among your lovers. You see what legend can only tell; of Cleopatra, who you meet twice, real and feigned, with opal eyes evading questions; of Guinevere and of Helen, the nation-breakers, whose coyness made their influence all the more intoxicating; of Joan, the unflinching spirit that beguiled her people, her passion immutable, and perhaps the most resplendent of all—

—but none of them had hair like Amy Pond.

You almost lose her, once, and again. She's nearly taken away. It doesn't really matter to you that she was never yours to begin with; you're possessive with every fiber of your being.

You refuse her astutely, but not escaping an indulgent moment. She puts her mouth against your mouth and her body against your body and her hand runs down your side. You're the one she wants, and just then, that's all you need to know—your hand clutches the hair and the strands that grate your skin as they fall across it leave invisible wounds—and then you stop it. Now that she has nourished your profligate ego, you are satiated.

But it doesn't last.

You stroll away from the Byzantium with the still-equivocal Professor Song.

In the midst of other things being said, she turns to you.

Don't be stupid, sweetie.

You're not, you say.

She has such a way with glances, River Song, and it strikes you as unintelligibly familiar. The look she gives you is loaded—they always are—but you don't know what with, and you hesitate to ask, because you think you can see fear there. Her eyelids are caked in grey and the wind catches the wisps of her curls. She says,

You need to try, this time.

You don't ask questions. River is rubbish with questions.

The worship manifests in the attention you pay her. You watch so closely: you notice every tick and flinch and smug smile that vanishes in an instant.

You consider the freckles. You consider placing each one under a microscope and conducting a seminar on its individual merits. You consider mapping them like the constellations and waiting to see which ones you can spot at night.

You consider wrinkled noses at alien smells, and limbs like skyscrapers in a marble city. You consider the artfulness of curves. Elbows, eyelashes, fingertips—you itemize. After you've been absorbed in the details, you step back and remember the whole, and you consider that.

(You don't consider the hair, no, not consider. You do wonder whether, if you laid close enough to her, it might touch your skin, like a proxy caress.)

You consider porcelain, and think that metaphor is so apt.

Yes, you're quite proud of that concoction in the moment before she catches you watching and you have to look away.

You ask her to choose. Indirectly, as it's the only way you know how. Straightforwardness is too revealing.

She picks him, and though you don't disregard it entirely, there is no debate. She can love him, but she'll stay with you. For now, at least. And perhaps, you think, it's the staying that really resonates. That counts. You don't even wonder if this is a manipulation on your part—you are infallible. (The ego.)

You try to ignore her choice for as long as you can. You must suck every last bit of life from that little wanting spark she showed you in the bedroom one night.

It makes you sick to your stomach, at first, and then you realize that you're going to kill her. You think she realizes it too, perhaps, but you're acting like errant fatalists and you feel as if nothing exists to fix it.

Of course, you are not actually a fatalist. So you leave her before she gets the chance to leave you.

You're the same.

It's why you get so close.

You're two disenfranchised individuals and you're drawn to one another. You see it in her before she sees it in you—you're older, wiser, or something like that; but she does see it. Very old and the very last. You understand each other perfectly.

The Scottish girl in the English village, and the homeless man. You find connection in your disconnects.

Perhaps it is the connection that makes her trust you, so explicitly. You would never tell her not to get her hopes up. That's just not in your nature. You're living without reality, the two of you, and that's the idea. What would be the point in dragging her back down to Earth?

You don't want her in the carnal sense, except that you do, because you want the power. You want to impress her; for the gasp that strangles from her mouth to be yours, just like her smile—you want the whimper of ecstasy at your touch. You want her to beg for more of you the same way you can never get enough of her, even as the lengths between you seem innumerable. You long for the perspective of a perverted voyeur, for a glance into her most intimate junctures, as if it might make you the same as her. You will steal her youth if it means you might be together longer—you've been called a thief before. You will steal anything, if it means you might be together longer.

You are selfish. You've always known this and it never gets any better.

You destroy: her marriage, her mind, her faith. And you don't apologize; you just leave.

She tells you what you mean to her:

You're my best friend.

You nod, once, and smile a smile that's broken in half by a millennium of knowing.

You don't say what she means to you. You can't know everything.