Disclaimer: Doctor Who belong to the BBC.

Author's Note: Spoilers up to and including Aliens in London.

I Follow Your Life...
Like you’re a fictional character

By Blade Mistress.

If you look hard enough you can find him.

He searches through fragments of apocalyptical poetry, through ancient crumbling text books and looks through mountains of downright scary websites. He finds him though, slowly but surely. Obscure references to someone who helped (save the world) – though sometimes they’re not even sure how. Often he finds a gap where he knows the name belongs, omitted but for a confused note from the translator. A small foot note will read “there is a reference to a doctor (a Medicus,Der Arzt, Doctor), but it seems completely out of context.”

Hundreds, maybe thousands of people have read those books, but Mickey’s the only one who understands. He’s the only one who knows where to look.

There is always a death tally; he just follows the blood.

Sometimes, if you look hard enough, you can find her too.

---

One day Mickey had always planned to take her to Paris. He knows it would sound more exotic if they lived in some far off country like America, rather than a train ride away. The thought was there though. He would take her to the Eiffel Tower and they would annoy waiters in fine class restaurants with badly pronounced French, she’d punch him in the arm but hold his hand across the table and say I love you too.

Sometimes he likes to imagine he would have proposed.

The Doctor could go to Paris any time he liked. He could visit the Paris’s of a thousand worlds and more. He could take her to the end of the world, to the end of the universe – if there is such a thing – and then take her back to the beginning to go through the whole thing all over again. Just the two of them.

Forever.

The Doctor could take her to Paris any time he liked. He could take her to the Eiffel Tower the day it opened or the day it was destroyed. He could take her to the finest restaurants and order in perfect French. She’d punch him in the arm too, and she’d probably even hold his hand (but that would not be at dinner, that would be after as they run away – together – again) and it would never even occur to her to say I love you.

And he’d never have to propose, because he’d never have to ask. He’s not her boyfriend – he’s more than the label could mean, like a word from a far off planet, untranslatable. Mine-yours-forever-and-more.

Mickey always knew no man was worth her, but he didn’t know it would mean this.

She’ll never come back 30 seconds later, or a year, or day.

Not to stay, anyway.

---

Sometimes he wonders if he’s getting a bit ridiculous. Photocopies of half-finished hieroglyphics with a figure that almost looks like its wearing jeans, and another with maybe a leather jacket. Or maybe, as Jackie points out, they just didn’t finish it, and that’s really a toga or whatever they wore before they had Gap.

He always looks for death, follows the trail of blood and sometimes he finds her. The references get more obscure and hazy the further he goes, the more he looks, but he keeps looking. As long as they’re there she’s still with him; still saving the world and the universe from everything and nothing.

But more importantly, as long as they’re there she’s still alive.

end