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It's almost a relief, he muses contentedly as he leans back against the ancient standing stone and surveys the expanse of the rolling moors. Purple heather blankets most of the ground, jetting up from rock outcrops and meandering lazily along the undulating hills. In the near distance, a pile of large rocks creates a man-made pyramid, presiding over the valley below: a Neolithic burial cairn or perhaps just the effort of laughing young boys out for a wander years or centuries ago. The place is ideally suited for quiet and solitude, deep thoughts and existential angst, but luckily there is none of that today.
Several children climb the rock pile, one flaxen-haired girl with a long stick standing triumphantly at its apex, shouting playful demands long lost into the wind. To the right, a group of four or five adults with a painstakingly transported picnic table are busy unwrapping sandwiches and salads all while shouting light words of warning to the toddlers playing in the heather. Teenagers kick a ball across a flat patch of earth, narrowly avoiding the cluster of young adults animatedly chattering while sunning themselves in the uncharacteristically warm spring afternoon. Long branches and logs are stacked in the bed of a pickup truck parked just out of sight down the hill a bit, only the top of the wooden mountain peeking over the grassy mound like a giant in wait.
Maybe not a relief, more like a comfort, that satisfied, blissful feeling right before falling asleep after a long day. He plucks a strand of heather with shaky, wrinkled fingers and proffers it to the girl reclining next to him, her legs outstretched and flush with his. She'll always be a girl to him, full of innocence and zest, of naïvely endless compassion and a belief in magic. Magic in the cooing of an infant, magic in the elegance and design of the universe. Magic in him, even when he doesn't deserve her faith but makes him strive every single day of his time with her to live up to her blind conviction.
And yet. And yet. She isn't the child whose hand he'd grabbed in a dank department store another universe away. It’s not the soft lines that frame her face, radiating out like sunbursts, like a halo. It's the sun they were flung from, the luminance in her eyes that burns like a supernova. Those eyes… They've seen anguish, have observed the inequities of the world, witnessed rejection time after time by the man (men) she loves… And still. Still, they shine with hope, with trust, and most of all with determination. With age the fire in her eyes flashes less, more often replaced with the soft glow of cooling embers, but it’s there and it’s smoldering. He takes her fragile hand and strokes the translucent skin with his thumb.
-- 99 years ago--
First brushing kisses along those short curls he adored at the nape of her neck, the ones that only appeared when they were curled up together in the warm afterglow of lovemaking, he gingerly crawled out from under the bedclothes and let his legs hang off the edge of the bed. Their bed. He couldn't get over it, still couldn't believe that she was his, although it was much more that he was hers. Running his hand through his sex-rumpled hair but not entirely fixing it (she liked it like that; one of the amazing facts about her he’d only recently had the privilege of learning), he considered their next destination.
It was her turn to choose from the enormous galactic atlas they'd picked up on one of their early trips, but she had graciously just pointed to a chapter on aqueous planets and told he she wanted to swim in a warm lagoon or ocean. The rest she left up to him and he'd been planning an itinerary for the past two days. Today was the 137th day since they had been together, together, and to a Time Lord who viewed time not linearly but in unending circles, 137 was the golden angle, the angle created by dividing a circle by the golden section. Beautiful, that golden angle; beautiful that rosy and golden angel asleep in their bed.
In the couple of months since the other Doctor left in the TARDIS, they had gotten rid of her depressing white apartment near the estates and instead bought a crumbling 17th century stone cottage in the moorlands of Scotland. And even though they only stayed at the cottage between intergalactic trips and (shudder) visits to Jackie and family in London, he noticed that the time they stayed in between adventures was growing longer and longer each time. That he actually looked forward to danger-free rambles through the moors in his new wellies, repairing leaks in the roof, snuggling up behind her in their soft feather-down canopied save haven. She was the secure base to his avoidant attachment, the fixed center around which his compass drew perfect circles; the timeless stone cloisters of their cottage were the symbol for his magnetic north.
The Athenean solar system was on the docket for their next adventure, comprising four planets specifically colonized for the purposes of tourism. They were named after the four Grecian categorizations of love, agape, éros, philía , and storgē, and although he thought it to be bunk (as if anything as complex as love could be slotted into boxes) he had grand plans for their latest jaunt. There were amusement parks on Storge, open-air safaris on Philia, secluded lagoons and waterfalls on Eros. Agape he was most excited about; the entire planet was shrouded in secrecy, confidentiality and non-disclosure clauses required of all guests, but it was known throughout the galaxy as the ultimate pleasure planet.
He reached for his jiggery-pokeried iPad, determined to uncover some sort of clue as to the planet's attractions, its terrain at the very least. In all his years of travelling he'd always wondered about it but had never been; being in a committed relationship was a non-negotiable requirement, despite his best efforts and ruses on several occasions.
Just as he was making progress hacking into the Agape computer mainframe, a movement of light in his periphery caught his attention and he turned to look at Rose. He froze, his mouth slack and gaping, and the tablet clattered to the floor.
She was literally glowing, shimmering strands of flaxen light dancing off her skin and scintillating into the cold morning air. He could almost taste the electric regeneration energy overtaking the room, filling every crevice with golden light. It hung in the air for a second, still and breathtaking, before abruptly roping together in a long strand and streaming back into her body. Into her body right below her navel.
Respiratory bypass kicked in.
Time stood still, or maybe his time sense stood still.
"Rose," he choked. She mumbled something incomprehensible and turned onto her stomach, snaking her arm under the pillow.
The entire multiverse contracted into the tips of her eyelashes, the angle of her hips, the involuntary movement of one finger. There was nothing else.
It might have been a full four minutes before he remembered how to engage his lungs normally, the muscle actions needed to blink. As the numbness of shock and disbelief waned, a warmth began to profuse through his shaking limbs centered in the middle of his hearts. Gone was the cotton wool that had packed down his thoughts a second ago, replaced with oxytocin and what could only be described as relief. Release, as if his entire life had unknowingly been spent in agonising pain, integrated as part and parcel of sentient existence, and then without warning it vanished. He felt curiously raw, hollow, like that pain had been physical and there was a gashing hole in its place.But then the warmth surged into that space and he was whole again. Lighter, but whole.
He smoothed back a strand of hair stuck to the side of her face. "Rose," he whispered again, but she didn't answer. Reluctantly pulling his hand back, he fumbled for his forgotten tablet on the floor. He had work to do.
--
When she finally sloughed off sleep's veil with a moan and a smack of her lips, he was waiting. Bouncing back and forth on his feet with anticipation at the side of the bed, he waited impatiently for her to open her eyes.
"Morning," she mumbled through a smile when she saw him, "come back to bed. It's warm and cozy under here…"
"Nope!" he exclaimed, "You've been sleeping for far too long. It's almost 9am, the sun is up, the sheep are lowing in the meadow…"
"Mmm," she hummed but didn't move.
"And there is tea in your mug." That provoked her head to lift up, shifting to her side to grab the cup on her bedside table. Blearily she lifted it to her lips, her eyes still half closed.
"New tea?" she wondered, mulling it over in her mouth.
"Yep, got it at the village store this morning. Do you like it?"
"Mmm, yeah, it’s interesting. It's a little bit fruity… blueberry?
"Correct!"
"You've already been out?" she asked, seemingly waking up a little more.
"Uh huh, had to gather supplies for our trip."
"Right." She blinked and then was fully awake. She sat up in bed, still cradling the tea between both hands. "Brilliant. I can't wait to ride that massive rollercoaster in the brochure, I can't believe they actually catapult you into that pool of foam at the end!"
He shuddered at the thought, an unexpected swell of protectiveness rising in his chest. "Well, about that… I'm very pleased to say that our plans have changed."
She narrowed her eyebrows in confusion. "Really? Why?"
"We are instead going on a low-tech tour of…drumroll please…Earth."
She cocked her head to the side. "Earth?"
"We have a zeppelin flight to Italy booked in two hours, luckily it's picking us up here, and from there a train down the Italian Riviera coast. The weather is perfect, 26-30 degrees, and there are turquoise beaches and all the pasta you can eat."
A slow smile rose up her face. "Italy?"
"Italy," he confirmed. "Sound good? I've booked a few hotels but if you'd rather go somewhere else, they can be changed, and…"
She blinked, surprised. "You've booked hotels?!"
"Yep!"
"You. Mr. Fly by the Seat of your Pants?" She edged out of bed and stretched.
"Special occasions call for special measures." He let his eyes slowly drift up and down her mostly naked form.
She laughed at his blatant lasciviousness and walked over to give him a kiss. "Italy sounds amazing. And with a zeppelin there's very little chance we'll accidentally end up in Cardiff, huh?"
She started to walk toward the kitchen, still gloriously unclothed, but he caught her waist and drew her into his arms. He ran his fingers up her arms for a minute, his nose in her hair, and then pulled back so he could see her properly. Brushing his fingers down her jawline, he held her gaze with awe in his eyes.
"Rose…You make me happier than I have ever been and until this morning I didn't think it was possible to cram another atom of joy into my soul…" He trailed off, suddenly unsure of himself. This was a sensitive subject, he knew from her past experiences, and regardless of the ecstasy bursting out of every pore in his skin he realised that she might not feel the same way.
She burrowed her face into his chest, sniffing contentedly at the freshly washed white oxford. "You're acting decidedly strange this morning, but no complaints."
"Do…Do you want to know why I changed our travel plans?" he asked, twisting a strand of her long hair around his fingers.
"You realised you weren't competent to actually get us somewhere out of our own galaxy?" Her eyes twinkled with mirth.
"What? The cheek!" he gasped, mock affronted, "I'll have you know I could get us there with my eyes closed."
"Why, then?" she laughed.
He bent down to kiss her forehead. "Well, Miss Tyler, as your Doctor, I'm going to have advise against the vortex manipulator as a form of travel for the near future. A year, let's say, perhaps a few months less."
"Did you break it?" she deadpanned.
"Oh, it's working just fine," he murmured as he bowed his head to meet her forehead.
She swallowed and he saw a micro-expression of hope flit across her face followed by a clamping down to restrain it.
"Yes," he whispered.
She looked down at her stomach and back up to his eyes. "But…"
"Yes." His voice was no longer a whisper but it had a marked husky undertone.
"Are you sure?" she choked out, closing her eyes.
"Yes." There. That time the word was unwavering, confident. Proud.
Opening her eyes, she bit her lip. "We haven’t talked about… and you're—"
"Thrilled? Overjoyed? Elated? Over the moon? Using every ounce of self-control to stop myself jumping up and down and screaming the news out across the valley?"
Her laugh was shaky and almost fell apart. "And it's, um, healthy?"
"That tiny zygote in there is part Time Lord. Or, er, Time Lady." A smile broke out across his face as he considered that packet of information on the genome. "Strong survival instincts. And I can sense her, or his, timeline already. It's beautiful, Rose, so many branches and offshoots… The complexity is overwhelming, and he, or she, is all ours…"
Full out sobbing ensued and he pulled her close, rocking back and forth. "Are these happy tears?" he asked after a moment, his cheek pressed to her hair. He was pretty sure he knew the answer but his hearts needed to confirm. She nodded into his chest, sniffing and breathing hard. Pulling her chin up, he kissed her, surrendered his whole self into her lips.
"This is it," he murmured into her ear later, wrapped up together in the duvet, "this is the start of our forever."
--Present day--
"Quite an empire we have here," she observes, pretending to look around at the beautiful throng but only having eyes for him at the moment. She squeezes his hand gently.
"Quite a life we've had," he returns, smiling as a whoop goes up from the rock castle.
"Better with two?" she asks, a smile quirking her lips.
"Better with you," he confirms. He'll never tire of that verbal routine; it’s the only vow they took at their Earth wedding, much to Jackie's dismay.
"Regrets?"
A complete lack of regrets. That's where the peace and relief must come from; wearing thin from joy. A life he wouldn't change for anything, rapture and pride beyond measure. For everything there is a time, a time to be born and a time to die. He glances at the rock pile again, swarming with children. The rock pile that will be his funeral pyre; an ancient among the ancients.
"Not one." He leans over and kisses the hair along her temple. "This past century… there aren't words."
"That's a first," she banters, snuggling closer into his side. He lets go of her hand to wrap his arm around her shoulders, moving his other hand to reclaim it again. Twisting the simple silver band on her finger, he sighs with pleasure and lifts her hand to his lips.
"Any regrets on your end?" he queries but knows her well enough to predict her words almost verbatim.
"Just the inevitable march of time," she whispers, only a hint of trembling in her words, "That there can never be enough."
"And yet forever is spread in front of us." He nods at the giggling toddlers running after a bird in the grass and then at their great-granddaughter, her belly swollen and her husband crouching down to rub circles in awe.
"Forever," she agrees with a smile, her tongue peeking out from between her teeth.
White light begins to march politely from his peripheral vision into the center and he knows it's time. She knows too, can read him like a book to the very end. She swallows and presses her eyes closed for a second and then calls out one of their daughters and nods meaningfully. His eldest nods right back, tears springing to her eyes but with a resolved expression on her face. Instantly all the adults and children run to gather in a semi-circle around the still intertwined couple.
Heads bowed, they form a chain around the patriarch, his daughter holding his left hand and linking fingers with all the Time Lords and Ladies in age descending order. Rose places her finger into the tiniest infant’s reflexive grip to complete the circle; the unrelated husbands and wives wrap their arms around their respective loved ones. All is silent, even from the squirming babies.
He gazes at his family in reverence and awe, the triumphant rebirth of his species merged with the centre of his universe. He fixes his eyes on her, pink and white and quiet in his arms but strong to his very end, and closes his eyes for the last time.
A wave of love and energy passes through his fingertips into another core of his soul: his beautiful daughter; forever’s beginning at his end. It passes along the chain of touch telepaths, growing stronger with every transfer until it reverberates through Rose and back into his hearts. His last thoughts are flooded with love and memories so strong that his neural implosion is more of a stellar explosion and he is the supernova in her eyes and he is the fire and he—