"Do I dare disturb the universe? In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall. Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume?" - t. s. Eliot

In many ways her life began and was forever changed in a series of moments.

The moment she first stepped into the TARDIS. The moment she met the Doctor. The moment she first started loving him. The moment Adric died. The moment she left.

Each tiny fragment of time like a puzzle forming her life, changing, altering, shaping...

She wonders how different her life might have been if she'd chosen another police box that day.

Or if another of those moments would have changed everything.

Perhaps it was Adric's death that had been the final nail in the coffin, the last straw that had broken them both. Adric, so vibrant and full of life, so young, suddenly and violently snuffed out in a senseless instant. She couldn't believe it had been for a greater good, couldn't accept that he had saved the world. No, Adric was dead and it didn't matter who he had saved or how he had sacrificed, only that he was gone.

Perhaps it was many things, slowly building like a house of cards that finally came crashing down on her, crushing whatever made it fun, made their world seem safe.

If he'd begged her to stay would she have turned back?

He wasn't human, after all, and not bound and cursed with the emotions that drove her race. For all his inborn compassion he valued time above everything..above life, and above love. Head governed heart.

Love. She'd shut the thought out of her heart long ago. It was impossible, unimaginable.

Yes, that was the word. Unimaginable.

She would like to simply forget, to blot it all out of her mind as if it had simply been a dream, as if that police box had contained nothing but a telephone and not the rooms and corridors of a space craft.

Perhaps she had only imagined it - the carnage, the tragedy, the fleeting moments of happiness, or the awe of the TARDIS hurling itself through space.

Perhaps she only imagined the times he looked at her, the quickly hidden smiles, the words of praise, the quiet companionship between them.

Perhaps she only imagined the color of his eyes and hair, the boyish charm, or the flashes of remorse and bitter sorrow.

Perhaps she only imagined that he cared.

Yes, she decides, it was only a dream and nothing more.

"Brave heart, Tegan."

He's somewhere above Earth, five years after she left him, and he left her.

She must have moved on by now. Married, perhaps, even a child. Earth bound in every aspect, and - he hopes - content.

If he'd begged her to stay would she have turned back?

He looks down from the console room, hand pressed against the glass as if holding back the years, holding within any regrets and sorrows.

For an instant he imagines that he sees her, a microscopic dot on the face of earth, a fragile body containing a vibrant soul.

A faint smile lifts his lips as he remembers the sound of her voice. "Mouth on legs" indeed.

He remembers that final goodbye, hands firmly grasped at arms' length like a business deal. He wonders if that's all he was to her..a intergalactic tour guide and nothing more.

Perhaps he only imagined the light in her eyes, the look that sometimes was cast his way when she thought he wasn't looking.

Some memories are burned into his mind, some scars too thick, some wounds too deep to heal. And yet, if he could only convince himself that it never happened, he could move on and forget.

Perhaps it was all a dream.

He reaches forward, and with a steady hand, turns the TARDIS away from Earth.

"Brave heart, Tegan."

She's somewhere in the midst of Earth, in a secluded park, alone on a Saturday evening. Stargazing, maybe, or simply remembering.

Her eyes lift toward the darkness above, to infinite time and space curled around the universe, to a vast landscape of stars, and to - for just a moment - a faint flash of blue that quickly vanishes.

And then she's left with the stars and the memories.