—

"How long are you going to stay with me?"

—

He closes the door behind him, allons-y and he's off into the stars, pinwheeling around the console as if he's not a man running from the end of his own song, as if the lives he's saved today mean he'll somehow be spared his own fate.

They've forgotten all about her, the box at their feet, the one that brought them here to begin with, and here she sits, relegated—just waiting, watching.

It's fitting in a way, and she smiles. He (each him, every him), is clever but not so clever as her, and he is (or will be?) the man who forgets, and thus it goes and will go and did go.

Eventually, he notices and reaches for her, mystified, almost remembering—and once again…she sees.

—

This moment happened.

It's a slice of time he preserves, a locked secret for only himself, brushing his mind over it, gentle and tremulous, whenever he needs to remember. They stand together, side by side, craggy rocks beneath their feet as pterodactyls dance lazily above their heads. She knows this, she sees all of him and parts of the woman she'll never be, and she sees her too. This moment has almost as much power over him as the war itself, and he carries it with him—it's a part of him now, engrained into his hearts even more than his home, even more than his name.

She knows what she needs to say—and she's in his head now, it's in her power to say or unsay it, making or unmaking his story once again in the process. Still, she pauses—but only for a moment. This moment, her moment, what she is and could be, a woman who scattered herself through time and space, but he's the lord of all that and so she's scattered inside him too, a billion trillion pieces of love and longing and loss and…. hope.

She pauses a moment more.

—

"Where are you?"

"Inside the TARDIS. I'm burning up a –"

—

She sees the explosion before she hears it, sees the screeching of the lasers, the Daleks and Gallifreyans alike bathed in a sea of fire—and him, with his spray of bullets and cryptic messages.

It's a slice of time that shouldn't?won't?can't?will? exist, but it happened (or did it?), because of her, and he's a coward every time so how could he ever really make that choice?

It's a big, big ruby-rose-red button that should never-ever have been pressed, and she knows this—she creates this—she creates herself, after all. The red rock glistens almost as brightly as the white one on her finger that she wears?wore?will wear (or is it the other version of herself, the one with the him in blue? She always mixes that up). The ring flickers against her skin, a five-point star, and it leads the way home, and he's home to her, and she wonders if it led her to this today—led her to him, or if it's the other way around.

—

"… just to say—"

—

Time slows then, glistening threads of infinite plausibilities and impossibilities, and she can't help but reach out and wrap a golden tendril around her finger and twist it just so, loop it around itself back and around into a recursion into the pocket universe spanning the unlikelihoods between what should happen and what could happen, and then maybe–

She gasps—it burns her as well as everything around her.

She turns to face him, golden eyes and honey tears as she disintegrates everything that would hurt him. It's the last act of the time war, and it's love, and she knows—she knows—what's coming. She can't stop it: beaches and walls and goodbyes, all in a universe beyond even her reach. And…it hurts.

Time on her lips, she sighsmeltsbreathes into him and he catches her as she falls into his embrace and—

—

"How much time have we got?"

—

The pterodactyls continue to weave above their heads… and he's still waiting for her answer.

He smiles at her then, knowing what she'll say almost before she says it, because he knows her, too. It's a look that is at once gentle and tremulous, singed with dusk and smoke and the haze of time and battles that may never now be ended in the way they were meant to be. It reels them back and forth, together and apart, over and over again, and for the first time she wishes he could see her, really see her. Her heart breaks for him, just a little.

His words are an echo of her own, just as she is an echo of herself, rippling back upon herself in an endless web of ebbing possibilities linked together.

She pauses, then smiles.

She says "… forever" because she could never take that memory from him. It happened that way for him, and some things are better left unchanged. And it could so easily be forever—that's what she told him after all, wasn't it? That's when he gave her the ring on her finger (wait—yes—no—her?—which her—him? Which him? Same man, different casing). He reaches for her hand, hope etched into his face where the greying lines of loss used to be. He looks better this way, she thinks, and it breaks her, too, to do this to him.

But she knows what the real answer is – "… only a moment," –but she keeps it to herself, silent and hushed, and carrying that burden will be her punishment. This is more important: she can give him this. After all, he wanted (wants? will want?) one last day with his beloved, and it may as well be this one.

His lips brush against hers, ruby-rose-red, a promise of both forever and never-ever, pressing ever so gently against hers, and it's enough—it will have to be enough. She could never take this away from him, she could never rewrite his story, not one line. As he pulls her into him, the heavens flare and Gallifrey falls and the stars collide above them—and she—

—

"—goodbye."