Title: What I Want For You
Author: Tess/mihane_echo
Rating: Rated Awwwwwwh for Ship/Pilot squish
Word Count: 342
Spoilers: None, surprisingly. Set during 4.01 Partners in Crime
Summary: She's watching him close himself off and she just can't have that.
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it belongs to the Beeb and I'm borrowing it to play with. I promise I will return them (marginally) unharmed. ;3
Author's Note: This is an incredibly wordy way of expressing a very simple idea. Ugh, I'm so long-winded; my bloody icon says what the fic says in four flippin words. Anyway... Written for Weekly Drabble Challenge #15 at doctor_donna. Prompt was watching.



They can see it.

The whole of time and space. An intricate web of possibilities, of maybes, second chances and what ifs. Strands of time, the lifelines of people and stars and events, collide and entwine, curling into and over and around each other into a puzzle the human eye could never decipher.

But then, they aren't human.

He watches the flow of time as though he is outside of it, the only one who can tell the difference between the things that haven't happened but must, and the things that have but must be rewritten. He separates himself from everyone else, shouldering his heavy mantle of being the last one, the lonely god, the only one who can claim responsibility for the universe.

And she watches him.

She knows, better than he, how like everyone else he really is. Time weaves around him the same as it does around everyone else, presenting an infinite number of paths before him to take. Opportunities he's missed. Doors he's not opened.

Chances for him to be happy that he hasn't taken.

She watches her precious pilot, the one she loves most in all of time and space, close himself off over and over again, afraid of his own future. What if he's never happy again? What if he is? What if he grasps that happiness again, and loses it again?

Better to just separate himself.

She watches him, grieves for him. He needs something more, something she can't give him. He needs flesh, and touch, and voice and laughter, and she wants him to have it. She wants him to be happy.

He almost had happiness with the blond shopgirl. And she can see in his future that he could have happiness with a pushy archaeologist.

The TARDIS grumbles to herself as she weighs her options.

This just won't do.

And then she plants herself down by a little blue car in a back alley.

She loves him, and she isn't selfish.

That doesn't mean she can't be picky about who he's happy with.

end