Short follow-up, and conclusion to, Shattered, so helps if you read that first.

None of the characters in the BBC's Who-verse belong to me.

Shattered, again

He tried to gather the shards, to understand, make sense, rationalise, justify.

After all, Rose had ended up with the Human Doctor. The almost-him. The one who had told her he loved her.

He hadn't had to let her go. It would have been so easy to reach out and tell her the words she'd longed to hear, that he'd almost said on that beach long ago. But he couldn't. He hadn't.

Martha, too. Mickey shared her drive and her passion and so clearly reciprocated her love in a way that he had never been able to.

So they were happy. They got their happy endings. Because of him. Or in spite of him. The destroyer of worlds hadn't destroyed them.

So where was his happy ending?

He knew the answer before he'd even asked the question.

There was no happy ending for him, because there had been no happy ending for her.

They were supposed to be each other's happy ending. That's what they deserved. At least, that's what she'd deserved.

Instead, he'd destroyed her world, as a big thank you to her for saving all of them. Destroying his world in the process. His Time Lord consciousness screamed in agony that of the infinitesimal possibilities in all of existence, there hadn't been one for them.

Maybe this is what the end of time, my time, looks like, he thought. Not a war or an intervoid cataclysm or even the end of reality. But the realisation of a shattered heart that can never be whole again.