SPOILERS FOR 10:6
Given that I spent years as a fully signed-up member of the "Trust in Snape" contingent, I'm no stranger to being canon-shafted. It's nasty at the time, but I'm of the opinion that when you come to the end of a series it actually provides more inspiration for fic writers than the alternative. What's the point in writing a lengthy alternative universe story in which your favourite pairing finally get their happy ever after if they've already done it officially?
The Kudos writers are a bunch of complete c*nts if you're a romantically-minded fan of the tv show, particularly if you're one of the people who spent years composing and sending postcards in the Bring Back Ruth Campaign. However, if you've already slipped over the edge, and into the land of make-your-own-stuff-up-anyway, then things can be okay if you want them to be. To the imaginative fic writer, death really is no obstacle, especially for a series in which coming back to life after your televised funeral is perfectly within the rules ;-)
That said, playing with the tragedy can be cathartic. And this odd little fic seems the right place for me to do it...
He told her that getting away from the service – from him – and creating some semblance of a normal life would be her crowning achievement.
Standing in a kitchen in Suffolk, staring out of the window at a garden made for two, he realises the utter pointlessness of such a statement. They are twin stars; their mutual gravity is the only force strong enough to keep them steadily orbiting each other, in a quiet galaxy, in a parallel universe somewhere. Here, she would have imploded. She would have collapsed in on herself, the absence of love leaving a black hole in which she would have been destined for oblivion.
oOo
Previously, he had always wondered at the people who stayed in their family homes once the children were gone and the spouse was dead. Why on earth did they subject themselves to such pain? Why didn't they escape to somewhere that didn't continually bathe them in memories?
Now he sits at his desk, listening to the telephone ring. Now he knows that people stay in familiar surroundings, bathing themselves in the memories, because anything else would simply be unbearable.
'Do you ever find yourself thinking that you can't go on, Ruth?'
'Can't go on. Must go on.'
He picks up the phone.