Well, that's it. Here you go, the end. Feel free to ignore the massively long, 434 word, irrelevant author's note at the end. And there are only 1130 of actual story. Shocking.

And I still don't own (although it's my eighteenth soon and my dad says I can have something special, so y'know, fingers crossed).

-----------------------------------------------------

They're back at the grave. One last time, he tells himself. Never again.

It's not so cold anymore. The sun's come out from behind the perpetual clouds of winter. The grass is springing up under their feet, littered with daisies and buttercups and crocuses and all other kinds of childish springtime delights. The proverbial birds are singing. And it's over. It's finally, finally over.

They don't have to run from anyone any more. Any chance of the reapers, who never really came, once they think about it, has passed, and it's not as if the police will ever catch two time-travelling murderers. It's too strange to be true, and even if they handed themselves in they'd probably just be sent to the nut-house.

Jimmy's grave is in a different cemetery, miles away. She checked with his mum, under the pretence she wanted to visit, to say her last goodbye. She almost felt guilty when the kindly woman had believed her-ironic, when she considers what she's done.

Rose had never planned to visit the grave, and she's sure she never will-there's no need to say goodbye to Jimmy. He'll be with her every second for the rest of her life, like a ghost, a mark that won't come off her skin, no matter how she tries to purge herself, tries to redeem. Her life, her very existence, her chance at anything she might once have deserved has been scarred by it, by such a useless action that barely made sense at the time. Her life now revolves around his death, her mum's death, her father's death, and, as distant as it may be, her own as well. The Doctor won't forget his impending loss, won't ever let his guard down enough to allow himself to feel how he so easily could, and it will always be a reminder of what will eventually happen to her. She can't leave him, won't leave him, not ever, not when she has nowhere to go and nothing left outside his blue box. She will never be loved again, at least not by anyone who'll let himself show it. She'll never be as happy as she could be, and all that's left, in a way, is her waiting to die under the close watch of someone who so fully expects it every second that neither of them will ever be able to live, not like they used to. I don't want to die alone, she thinks, and can't stop a tear track its way slowly down her cheek.

She takes his hand, and even though he knows it won't help, he squeezes hers. They have exactly the same look on their faces, in their eyes, the same fear plastered across their features. She will die. He will live. And he'll be alone. And eventually all this will be swallowed up, smothered until it's nothing but a story told by a man so impossibly old he's practically a paradox himself. She's so terrified of dying she feels almost paralysed by it. And it's only his natural diffidence and reserve that stops him from falling apart at the thought of carrying on living as long as he has to if he'll always be alone.

They're together, again, as friends, as nothing more, as nothing less, than best friends. It's enough, and it's not. And it's too much. And it's not. They can't ever talk about how they feel, or how wrong this is, because it will break whatever is there. They feel for each other so much now that it's stopped being just a feeling, an emotion. It's an experience, for sure. It's a belief. An act. An impression.

She wants to grow old next to him and to have him grow old with her. To have his children. To be so close she can count the grey hairs, and tell him everything, and to be able to make herself vulnerable, and for that to be okay, because he's going through what she's going through and won't use anything she tells him against her. She wants to stop running.

He wants her to stop ageing, to be young and glorious and alive as long as he is, longer. He doesn't want either of them to ever have to sleep again. He wants to be able to tell her anything, and to know the secrets will always be shared, the problems halved, and that he'll never have to go back to his blue box alone, after having left her body lain in earth, or burned, or just lost, gone forever. He wants to listen to her laugh every day, and feel her arms around his neck, and her hands in his hair, to wake up with her forever more, and to see her smile whenever he wants to. He wants to carry on running, and he wants to run with her, and for it not to be running away, not again. He doesn't want to have to spend every moment praying to the Gods he never believed in for divine intervention he's sure doesn't exist.

They won't grow old together, and he'll never wake up next to her, and she won't count his grey hairs, or share secrets, although that doesn't really matter. She only has one now, and it's not really a secret anyway. But she still can't ever let the words leave her mouth.

They're both naive. They both know it will hurt, whatever happens. But they won't know the agony of it until it comes to pass. That will kick in much too soon. He can already see it, he sees it all the time, inside his head. She saw it once too, so she might try to understand, but it's just like he told her, it drives him mad. And eventually it will break him, beyond repair. Leading up to it there'll be scattered pieces of shattered hearts and battered wishes lain aside as they pass through the all too fleeting years, but those are just the casualties from their silent, unwanted war. Their lives are ruined. That will teach them for falling in love.

But for now, they'll just try to resist. Because even when she doesn't make it, when her body finally succumbs from what sadly won't be the old age they crave it to be, when he finally does have to accept the horror, the absolute horror and devastation that will so obviously accompany her death, at least he won't have made himself entirely vulnerable, he will (he prays) have stopped it hurting quite as much as it might have done. He'll thank himself eventually, he knows he will. Or, at least, he hopes he will. It's all just a matter of trying to keep his reticence.

----------------------------------------------

A/N: (Bawls into a pillow) Sorry. I had to do it, I'd always planned on doing it, from the very first day that I sat down, listening to "I Want None of This" by Radiohead, and decided to take a break from writing the great British novel to write something shorter and less depressing (seriously, this is an episode of Balamory in comparison).

But I promise I won't do it again.

I really, really won't. It bums me out too. I just wondered when the last time was anyone actually kept to the premise of "she's going to die, loving her would be like loving someone with a terminal illness". Do you hate me? I'm fully expecting hate. Or, um... flames? You might be able to tell I'm a bit nervous about posting this...

Coming soon malarkey: Since I wrote my profile and yodelled on in a semi-jokey fashion about first world war soldiers I've been dying to write a thing about a tommy describing his experiences of the front, so Tim from HN/FoB was an obvious idea. I've also got plans for some kind of reunion story (a happy one, in about a million parts), but most likely of a weirder kind than you normally see posted here. Or maybe I'll go straight down the line and surprise everyone by being normal and clichéd. Who knows? But be sure it will be littered with way too many adjectives and plenty of thought tracking in italics.

But anyway, most likely the next thing I'll post will be "Reticence-Chronologically!" or "Chronological Reticence" or something to that effect, just to prove that there aren't any plot holes and to get the damned thing straight in my head, so do tell me if this is a T or an M. I might add the "deleted scenes" into that too-there's the scene when Rose is in the loo of the caff (beautiful word) listening to the people talking about a dead East London Jackie; the scene where they replace the people talking in the bathroom with a recording and two more scenes: one with the Doctor and Sarah Jane, and one with Rose and Sarah Jane, book-ending the scene in the corridor, so maybe I could just slide them in for added back story... not that there's not enough of that in my FIRST EVER STORY. Aren't you proud?

Actually, probably not. Oh, what does it matter anyway? You probably all hate me so much by now that you're either not reading this or reading it to look for things to avoid...