Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor who and that's probably for the better.

11: [Innocence]

Most people lose it over time.

The very ability to be in awe like that.

It almost made him feel guilty, like he was doing that simple street a deep injustice because his eyes weren't widening like hers, because there wasn't such a mass of excitement spreading through all of his frame, bone by bone, limb by limb, as if it was on the verge of sending her spinning.

Had he ever done that when he came here?

He should have, because it was another world and he had always dreamed of other worlds, which was why he had left in the first place; But he had also been a refugee, cut off everything he knew, and despite everything still quite a product of the society he fled from, forced to make do with scraps for spare parts and the local cuisine for chemical supplies, a constantly swelling, accumulated frustration that had kept him from revelling in the moment his dreams come true, barely recalling anything special about the instant he set foot on this planet; He had not known that he would find himself here, eternities later, having, for the first time in decades, stood on this ground at the side of someone who was a stranger to it. Sure, Jack hadn't been from this time, but he was still human and very much a fan of the past; there is a difference in seeing something out of history book and being overtaken by the marvel of a whole new world.

Seeing her react like that, seeing others who saw this world from the outside made him realize just how much less of a stranger he had become.

That warmth that had spread within him then, in the heat of the ruined corridors, was perhaps the closest he would ever come to experience the feeling of being home.

He hadn't seen it anymore, the simple truth of the meaning that this place held for him, just how lucky he was to be able to stand on this suspiciously empty street with its little shops and the fresh, cool scent of the Terran night.

He had needed her to make it visible.

Her innocence, her openness, her ability to give it all a chance, take nothing for granted and see it all as it was without any bias clouding her sight.

Yes, most people lost it over time, this light, the will, and sometimes even the ability to see it. Sometimes he felt like he was losing it, too. As someone who had always known the darkness ever since he was a boy, he had learned to detect even the tiniest silver of its presence, but more and more often, he found himself unable to find it and wondering whether it had drifted too far away from him this time… or whether he had just gone blind.

The very idea of losing that spark terrified him beyond words; It was all that was good in this world, all that could save it, and him as well.

Innocence like hers.

Now, he certainly didn't mean that embellished distillation of ignorance that some romanticists confused with innocence; As a man of reason and knowledge, he heeded the principle that one was never better off as a fool.

Instead, the kind of innocence he referred to was something that could be considered a prerequisite for the pursuit of wisdom or knowledge – Something that, without a doubt, had to be indescribably precious if it caused her to beam witch such gratitude and exaltation after having seen what was just a normal street to him after spending years dreaming of such an opportunity; it wouldn't even have occurred to her in the slightest to be disappointed at the fact that what she got to see was just a street, or that their trip was cut short; No, she valued every little thing, took in every minuscule detail, basked in the light of street lights with foreign isotopic signatures and stars that were arranged in different constellations, as if the hand of some bored god had taken the edges of the canopy and shaken up its contents.

And as she speaks her words of awe, her eyes shining as if the afterimages of these brand new constellations still visible on her cornea, he feels his own wishes renewed as he finds them anew, reflected within her, as if someone had taken a blindfold of his eyes and shone a light on all the things his personal burdens sometimes obscure from him.

He feels it burning anew, that flame, that curiosity, that light he thought was lost, and the knowledge that he had, if anything else, lived his dreams, and as he contemplates showing them to her, the same things that sometimes weigh heavy on his shoulders feel like a vast heirloom, a boundless treasure, a dream to share, and he feels again why he loves his life, because it gives him the freedom to make this very dream they shared come true, and he is glad to be there because it means he met her.

She was just a simple waitress, probably unable to afford the very uniform she had been put in like some sort of Barbie doll to be part of the decoration with a year's worth of her wages, only here to do her job and longingly look after these super-rich people many of which treated her no better than cat litter as they ordered her around and went off to explore the new worlds she had wanted to touch, and yet, her reactions had convinced him that she was the one who deserved to be here most of all.

Initially, he had approached her because she made the impression that she could use someone being nice to her to brighten her day, but soon, he believed to have stumbled upon the next person to follow in the line of those who were destined to be at his side.

To these silly archaeologists who would try to chronicle the events of their voyage, it would probably be a mystery what would draw a simple, young, inexperienced poor waitress and an ancient cosmic vagabond like him together, but to them, it was fairly obvious by the time he had finished a sentence that she might not have been able to complete for lack of the eloquence that came with education or the repertoire of expressions and comparisons that came with experience, but still described the exact feelings that stirred in both their souls.

The dream of standing beneath another sky, spreading their arms out to feel the warmth of an alien sun.

Smiling at the less-than-accurate descriptions of the Earth, he became aware that he had been far too concerned with lamenting that what he saw when he looked up was not nectarine-coloured but blue, that he had almost forgotten that it was azure and not orange.

He knew that she would appreciate it, if he took her hand and led her there, pointing at the borderless blue, explaining to her how its particular came from the particles of the atmosphere bending the light, revelling in her excitement and disbelief as if it was his own, as if he were seeing it for the same time.

She could not yet describe these things they both lusted after, but he knew the best remedy for that… when he was a child, he had thought this world a huge and frightening place, scared of mythological horrors, the emptiness of his mansion and most of all of these formless, invisible bonds between the other children that he couldn't seem to understand. Now, that he had understood how it worked, it all came easy and the jumbled mess that others seemed to call "the world" for the lack of another world resolved itself into large structures and deep truths, like complex equations as they were being simplified.

She would blossom into something great once she understood it, too, maybe not all of it, but as much as he could show her as they ran through the veins of history…

He absorbed the sight of her appreciation and multiplied it with the impressiveness of other wonders of this and many other worlds, picturing how much she would love all that, how grateful she would be, how happy it would make her, how she would enjoy all these things he had enjoyed before, and how they both would marvel at the mysteries they still had to uncover, hand in hand, their faces alight with overwhelming fascination.

If she had kept smiling at him like that, he might have come to hope that there was some good in his continued existence and that it might not be that bad that his kind lived so long… as long as it took him to completely tire of it all and end his aimless journey with his own hands.

Perhaps that day wasn't quite so far ahead, or perhaps it had come and gone a long, long time ago, and he was just too much of a coward to admit that he had outstayed his welcome on this world…

None of his fantasies of what could have been retain any of their promising radiance when he looks back on them; that which dimmed them was the knowledge of how exactly that turned out, as their time together was cut short much like their brief visit to Earth.

Still, just like would one day relate it to a certain redhead, while life brought both good and bad things with it, neither of those cancelled the others out.

The rescue of an entire planet could not soften the loss of a few friends and a loved one, but neither did the pain and the loss he felt taint the genuineness of the good times that had preceded them;

At the time, he had been devastated at his inability to save her, but revisiting those memories after a long time, he did see that he made it possible for her to see at least one other world and give her heart away at least once before she died.

Yet, there is always that small, accusing voice in the back of his skull telling him that he's just trying to convince himself, and even when it's not taking physical form and teleporting itself around just to annoy him with a twisted version of his own sense of humor, that final speech of prosecution keeps eternally ringing in his ears, acidly reminding him that she went after him, that she entered that blasted fork truck for his sake.

Sure, she did it all of her own free will, making a firm choice, well aware of its consequences… but it wouldn't have happened if she hadn't met him.

Should he not have been here at all…? Would the planet have been saved without him?

Should he not have been gentle to her, should he not have offered her to make her dreams come true when it was so easy for him? If that doomed her, what should he have done to save her? Should he not have shown her the interest she deserved, should he have dropped the funny remarks, or the charming smile? Should he not have tried to reassure her and try to make her feel safe, did he make her believe that he knew it all and could be relied upon?

After a tragic events or a less-than satisfying conversation, you always wound of thinking of things you could have done or said later that you didn't think of earlier, questioning your own questions for days and hours, discarding convoluted thought constructs that wouldn't have helped you anyway and growing desperate contemplating solutions you didn't think of at the time…

If he had only… been able to grab her hand, to get hold of her some time… if he had told her to jump out of her vehicle, would she have been able to make it out in time?

It seemed so absurd… He was old and rotten, she was young, innocent, and had just gotten started at really living her life, so why was it her who was dead?

Why was she rewarded with plummeting into the ship's engines, when she had done her best to comfort and look after the rest of their dwindling party (including him), while people like that insensitive, selfish financier who'd done nothing but to demoralize everyone else got to live?

It certainly wasn't anything someone could choose, nor was he claiming that his personal likes and dislikes were the measuring tape by which the rest of the universe was to be judged.

It wasn't like that, not really.

It was just a lonely old man exaggerating a bit as he raged at the heavens in the process of lamenting that life is unfair, something he should have stopped being upset about a very long time ago.

It almost scared him when he found himself considering that he should finally, after all these years (It felt like less and less of a stretch to say "Almost a millennium") grow up and accept that he couldn't fix it, just like he couldn't fix her.

It should have been clear that she would follow after him, at very least after her little "parting gift" that probably wouldn't have surprised anyone other than him, the rather cute way in which the petite, golden-haired woman had bridged their almost comical difference in height to uh, follow an old tradition.

(Of course, it was her taking the initiative. He couldn't do such things without feeling like he had to apologize afterwards. Not anymore.)

He should have known that she would not let him deal with it all on his own – something he was admittedly hadn't been capable of, not this time and not at any other time.

But that was beside the point.

Truth be told, he was rather ambivalent about his own fate, but that was nothing but a piece of trivia he couldn't care less about in the face of her death.

Just as he had decided that just about enough of these people's lived had been wrested from his grasp, destiny chose to see that as a taunt.

In that translucent instant of truth, where she had looked into his eyes one last time, he had understood that she had resigned herself to her fate.

It was a fast, soundless farewell that left no room for these three words or any words at all, over before he had time to react with anything besides devastation and short lived denial, the latter of which was extinguished fast enough when she fell into the fireball below her, like the jaws of hell itself had spontaneously opened to swallow her as she reached for a hand that would never make it in time as the metres spread out between them in a matter of seconds.

All these lives, nearly everyone on this ship… wasted.

For a reason like that.

He didn't know if she had known that her desperate action would reset the robots' command chain, but she had effectively reduced all their problems into thin air.

Well, it were his problems now, because there wasn't really a "them" anymore;

Solemn, drained, yet strangely regal, more his own ghost than anything else, he commanded the robots to escort him to the bridge.

The planet is saved, but his so called "success" is dry and shallow – and yet, he just cannot give up yet, not just her, others, good people, brave people.

He just wants to… keep that feeling of powerless from consuming him from the inside, which is probably just as selfish as it sounds – it's not like he was able to save her.

So he stands there, having grown weary of it all, one step closer to beginning to accept that the free fall that inevitably followed when all was lost and you found yourself all alone was just where he belonged.

It's a cruel thing, another of these freaks of technology. To be forced to practically see her before him, and yet, at the same time, being forced to accept that she was beyond saving by this very same fading image.

The faint echo of her voice sounds incredibly lost, she's calling for him, but his words don't seem to reach her in a way that would produce any effect; Locked between being and nothingness and unable to find her way to either side.

He has no right to keep her in this state any longer.

So, he lets go.

There's only one proper thing left to do, anyway.

He wraps his apology into a farewell kiss because the odds of her noticing that are ever so slightly higher than they would be if he tried talking to her, and scatters her remains into the vacuum so that she could become part of the cosmos she wanted to see, even if it was only in death.

Had he been in her place, his actions probably wouldn't have been any different from hers.

And he would have been content.

But her…?

He couldn't exactly ask her anymore, and as well as they might have connected, they did not have much time to do so.

Of course, somewhere in a corner of his being, he was able to tell that she made her own decisions, that she would be grateful to at least have been given that one chance to live her dreams, and that she wouldn't have traded it for anything else in the world.

He was a self-hating mess, not out-of touch with reality.

Not that this knowledge made the doubts fade away.

It actually made them worse, knowing that she had willingly marched to her death, that he was to blame for that…

Still, she would have appreciated the little she got…

And actually, so did he.

He appreciated the little time they had… and he, too, was grateful for the chance he had been given, no matter how much pain lay ahead on the path he had chosen.

He just wished that he'd had the opportunity to tell her that.

Of course, he didn't, and this is perhaps what he regrets the most.

Ah, poor little Astrid :( Such a cutie, but of course, they couldn't afford to hire a proper pop star for an entire series, so she had to die. Still can't believe it's the same person who also makes these music videos where she's barely wearing anything. She really CAN act... Oh, and I strongly suspect that the number of hours RTD used to spend wondering about how to make a given character suffer and/or die in the most tragic way ever is directly proportional to their cuteness. Which probably explains why poor Ten could never catch a break. Or maybe they just wanted to make good use of DT's incredible talent at making his face look like a suitable picture for a wikipedia article on "desperation". Ah, good old DT. You get quite nostalgic rewatching stuff.

In any case, I'll finish my rambling by telling you that the next chapter will be called [Concord] and will adress the wonderful Lady Christina de Souza. This might sound downright blasphemous to some, but Ten/Christina has always been my favourite pairing involving the Tenth Doctor. Technically, River appears before her, but I'm intentionally saving her for last since her story is still ongoing.