The One Thing He Doesn't Like

A/N: Warning-Do not read this if you haven't seen Series 7 Episode 13. (Unless you really don't care about spoilers…hahaha…)

Okay, so I lied. But, with the turn of events in "The Name of the Doctor," I had to write this epilogue for my own piece of mind. Because my tear ducts basically attacked the rest of my face. Anyway, OTP = perfect. That's basically it.

That She's Everywhere

He can never really get away from this woman. It seems like wherever major trouble is brewing, she's involved somehow, if she's not too busy causing the aforementioned trouble in the first place.

And through decade after decade, reminders that she knows more than he does-from strange rooms cropping up on the TARDIS that he's pretty sure aren't in any of the ship's current databases, to messages of varying urgency on his psychic paper always signed the same way, to suspicious pieces of period wear he's certain even he would never be caught dead in that somehow keep showing up in his closet-thickly pepper his life.

Of course, there are the insane, grand-scale messages she leaves, too, as well as her presence in far more of his library's history books than anyone deserves the pressure of being in.

…But none of that matters. Because she's gone, now. She's gone and she's still here.

Her Library copy follows him everywhere. She thinks she's merely a meaningless echo that he can't see, but he can't bring himself to tell her that she is so much more than that. Not when he's suffocating from the guilt. Not when memories of a life he wishes she could still have haunt his already tortured mind and fill him with more sadness than he cares to admit. Not when admitting that he sees her all the time will force him to accept that she's really gone.

And it's not only when her data imprint is in his presence. Whenever he's running through false paradises and hidden wastelands and is about to do something incredibly foolish, he hears her voice in the back of his mind berating him for even considering such a thing. Whenever he has a spare moment-one when he isn't running or tinkering with his beloved ship or having a spot of tea with his companion-he thinks of her. Even in death, she's still everywhere.

And the Doctor realizes that he's finally come across a problem he doesn't know how to solve. Which is why he asks her for help. After the pain of seeing her suffer becomes too much to bear, he finally, willingly bares what's left of his soul and revels in her closeness for the last time. It's far better than he could have imagined and infinitely worse. So she guides him through how to say good-bye, as she has guided so many others-especially him-through so many things. When she fades for the last time, the Doctor feels both of his hearts breaking all over again.

But despite everything their story has brought, from the hiding of futures and awkward stabs at romance to the slapping and assassination attempts, he knows that he wouldn't change any of it.

Not one line.