(Untitled)

[white_flowers]

She spends more time outside than in, lately, drifting along the lakeshore or through the trees, a living ghost among so many others here at the ends of worlds. At night, the dark, dry-blood red of her gown seems nearly black, and the grey gauze veil over her hair and her lower face gleams coldly in the light of moon and stars. In the day, of

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[thedoctorwho]

"Oh, yes. The gasses compress, the fusion forms the star, and gravity sends it spinning away into the galaxy."

He looks out into the stellar nursery and stares for a long moment.

"You asked me why I fight," he finally says, not looking at her. "Why I struggle against the darkness. This is why. I want to be a star. I want to be... beautiful."

[white_flowers]

He may not be looking at her, but he has her full attention.

(fire to burn away the dark)

The blue-diamond brightness of her regard is focused completely on him, without even a flicker to spare for the nebula outside.

"To be beautiful," she murmurs, very softly. "And is it you think that you need be of light itself to have that?"

[thedoctorwho]

"Is it such a foolish goal?" He leans against the door and sighs. "I'm the last of my race, Blodwen. If I fall into darkness and despair, there's no one else to do the things I can do. And no one to stop me if I go too far."

[white_flowers]

"Now, and I did not say it was foolish," she tells him.

"But oh, so lonely it does sound."

[thedoctorwho]

The Doctor nods slowly. "Lonely doesn't begin."

[white_flowers]

She nods back.

"Perhaps it is that is why you visit that place, there at the ends of all worlds?" Blodwen suggests, quietly. "For there it is, to be sure, you can find others, even if not exactly like."

[thedoctorwho]

"Perhaps." Though, for him, it can be just as lonely in a room full of people as it is alone in the vastness between the stars. "It's a special sort of person who can find the way to the end of the universe. Not just anybody can make it, as I'm sure you've noticed. The best of the best, you might say. Exactly the sort of people I prefer to travel with. And except for Milliways, I don't come across them very often."

[white_flowers]

"A good reason that would be, to be sure," she murmurs. "And no, cariad, I cannot say you are wrong about that."

[thedoctorwho]

The Doctor stares out over the panorama for a few more seconds, and then sighs heavily and closes the doors. "I... should take you back," he says, though his expression says he'd rather do anything but.

[white_flowers]

She raises her eyebrows and looks up at him, straight and direct, with no sign of evasion.

"Should you?"

[thedoctorwho]

"Unless you've reconsidered my offer," he answers simply.

[white_flowers]

"To go with you?" she murmurs. "From place to place to place, throughout all of space and time itself?"

Blodwen hesitates, for long, long seconds, studying him with almost unfathomable intensity in her diamond-bright regard before she says,

"... if it is that you are sure, Doctor; that you are certain you mean it, that you wish it so--"

"--then yes, I will." She smiles, a little. "For at least a while."

[thedoctorwho]

He answers her small smile with a bright grin. "Time is just a series of whiles strung together with stretches of boring. Let's go find us one, eh?"

[white_flowers]

She laughs, clear and chiming with the musical ripple of silver bells.

"Oh yes," Blodwen agrees. "Let us do just that."