A/N: The quote in the summary belongs to Abraham Lincoln. Doctor Who belongs to the BBC. Nothing belongs to me except the words.

The Dream of a Normal Death

The pain is catastrophic. Even after so many years, it still strips him bare; and this time the sheer, red-hot violence of it is blinding. His being shatters into a thousand pieces, is thrown upwards and outwards; while one, tiny part of him knows what is to follow. The moment of catharsis, as everything he was rages to the surface.

The death throes of a self.

The fire burgeons, and the memories flood in.

But they're the wrong ones.

Stranded on a beach in Norway, they sit and wait for rescue.

They climb aboard Pete's zeppelin, and all the way across to England he holds her hand.

She cries a little, for the life she could have lived. He asks forgiveness, for crimes he didn't commit.

They heal, gradually, as humans will.

Every year he grows a little slower, and she a little wiser. There is the faintest hint of ginger in his hair.

While they can, they run. They travel and they fight, for everything worth having. They begin to learn the art of making do.

Jackie dies, well into her eighties; Pete follows two years later. His single heart breaks, for them, for Rose.

They wither, gradually, as humans must.

Before long the ginger- and the brown- has turned to grey. The universe moves too fast for him now.

Illness seeps into him, an unwelcome stranger.

Rose sits beside him. Her hand is warm in his.

He burns, and dies, and screams back into life; a new man.