It was raining again.

It was late afternoon, but the thick cloudy sky made it seem much later. Rain drops pebbled up the dining room window, smearing the view of the front lawn. The distant clattering echo of the rain upon the roof filled the house with a gentle, soothing roar. Tegan clutched her mug of orange pekoe tea and stared at the world outside.

She was supposed to go to work today, but she'd called in sick. She'd lain in bed for hours, listless, huddled under the sheets, doing nothing but staring up at the ceiling and listening to the sound of the rain.

She was supposed to go out to dinner with Daniel tonight. She hadn't bothered to call and tell him she wouldn't be coming.

She couldn't shake this fugue that seemed to pull at her from somewhere deep inside. She stared out at the window, but her eyes were drawn to her partial reflection, cast against the glass by the growing darkness of the sky outside. She looked shorter somehow. She'd shrunk over the past few years. She wasn't sure how. It didn't seem fair. She was never tall in the first place. Fortunately, the table hid her hips from her view; they were a work in progress lately… in sort of a 'gone on strike' kind of way…

She lost her train of thought.

She couldn't even find the energy to get depressed about the state of her thighs…

Not a good sign.

She hadn't been able to face work today; didn't know if she could face it tomorrow, to be honest. After all, what was the point? It didn't matter. None of it mattered.

She hadn't even gotten dressed. Couldn't be bothered. She still wore the boxers and t-shirt she slept in. She'd stained the shirt with strawberry jam from her toast around noon, but didn't see the point in bothering to change.

The one thing Tegan had held on to after all these years was her stubborn belief that… well, just stubbornness, actually. But it was gone now. There was no anger, there was no righteous bitchiness, there was…

She was tired. So tired. So lost.

She'd done so much when she'd traveled with the Doctor. Or at least seen so much. Everything else since she left that warehouse seemed so empty, so meaningless. No matter how hard she worked, it just seemed to inconsequential. At one point, during this long morning, she'd thought about forming a support group for ex-time travelers, left stranded and dazed in a world full of stupidity and pop culture.

Tegan wasn't a big fan of deep thoughts, but she'd been having a lot of them lately. And the dreams.

Or the memory of a dream.

Of when she was younger, dreaming of waking up in caves full of monsters and fire and…

But it was gone, the images slipped away every time she tried to focus, to remember.

Tegan shook her head slightly and swatted at her bangs that dipped into her face. She didn't like herself like this. She wasn't this sort of person. She was a doing kind of person, not a moping kind of person.

But try as she might, she couldn't think of anything to actually do that would help. Or make a difference.

So she closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the rain, the steam from her tea tickling her nostrils.

She thought she heard a sound then, an achingly familiar sound. She couldn't be sure, but it felt as if it were coming from outside, out back, behind the house, in the garden. She flew to the back door, the sound of the coffee mug clattering to the floor echoed in the hall behind her as she ran, as she lunged for the door handle and wrenched open the door to see

Nothing. There was rain. There was the flagstone patio and an array of desolate, puddled flower pots, the withered remains of stems and twigs standing lonely in the muddy water, but no TARDIS, no blue box. Just the rain.

Tegan stood in the doorway, completely leveled, the icy rain peppering her face in quick, sharp bites and realized that she was crying.

Weeping.

And it really, really annoyed her.

She clutched at that. Embraced it.

She was weeping. Gushing like a child, waiting for daddy to come home and make everything all right.

She stopped crying and got angry.

So she couldn't travel through time. So she couldn't do or see wondrous things or even tell anyone about them. But she damn well wasn't going to sit around waiting for a man, or close enough, to come back, if he ever was.

Tegan turned her head up into the cold rain and felt the droplets dash away her warm tears, felt the iciness soak into her hair.

This was her life. It was all that she had. And she was doing the best she could do. And someday, she would die. And that was that.

In that moment she accepted what she'd done and that there was only so much she was going to be able to do. The realization startled her; just as the wind nipped at her skin, so did the thoughts chill her heart: she'd been living the last few years of her life hoping that someone would take her away from it all, or, worse still, end it.

And it was time to finally let go and accept that whatever time she had left was hers.

Goodbye Doctor. She'd said it once, long ago, and she thought it again now as she looked up into the sky. She shivered as a sudden chill took her. Tegan shook her head in irritation, realizing she had to get out of her damp clothes and do the laundry. With a sigh, she turned away from the dismal weather and walked back into the house, pulling the door closed behind her.

Long ago, in a Universe far, far away.