In the beginning, there are just a few things he knows about her:

First – She is possessed of a rare and fearsome brilliance, a vast and untapped power inexplicably contained in the shape of a girl; Upon their first meeting, she introduced herself by performing a feat he'd deemed impossible.

Second – Her will is a force of indomitable power, an act of defiance even in the darkest of circumstances, an adamant refusal to ever give up that not even the Daleks could break

Third – Though he's met many beings that, in their own ways, could have been his match, she is his kindred in a variety of ways both apparent and lying in wait to be discovered, not just the two factors listed above; With her, the devil is in the details, in the peculiar combination of qualities that transcend the different makeup of their flesh;

Fourth – He has a debt to her that he might never be able to repay, extending much further than just his measly life, and even now, he's only beginning to realize just as far it extends.

Even after all his travels, she is a being unlike anything he's ever encountered, a singular phenomenon he can't quite put his finger on, but he knows that she has touched his life and left him dazed in her wake, hanging on to the glimmer of a chance that he might encounter her again: The oldest story in the universe, this, or any other.

He doesn't know her face, or even more than an approximation of her name or an artificial reproduction of her voice, he can't connect her with gestures, or expressions, or more than a mere handful of significant facts; He does not know the reasons of what she does and why she exists, but he's willing to find out, and every day,he succeeds a little more, yet never in full.

He loves her like he loves the universe, so well-known to him in it's fundamentals and intricacies, and yet forever eluding complete understanding, vast in layers of meaning and yet bluntly humbling in her simple truth, she is the answer he's always been seeking since that faithful day in the barn, the truth that has been by his side all along, she's the light that appears before him whenever he's about to lose his way, and the darkness that he willingly plunged into; She's the sacred simplicity of a trusted friend who stays by his side, and she is engulfing madness of a thousand names; She is the seeker that keeps always thinking, always asking questions, seeking to see the world as he does, ever ambitious to learn from his ways; she yet seeks to teach him things when he'd given up on himself for a long, long time, and, for once, to give back to him what the universe did not, even if that left only her to bear the burdens.

She and him are the enrapturing of deep fascination, complete possession of body and soul, of mind and will; She and him the undeniable magnetism of two equal mysteries that draws them together time and time again, in all of their forms, on all of their paths, in all the many aspects of their existence; If he'd chosen to define himself as a question, then she would always be the answer.

This is not the sweet spring blossom of innocent young love or the intimate steadiness of mature companionship; This is the realm of the tainted, star-crossed and forbidden, fast & furious volatile, and yet more devotion that the world can literally contain; They were written in the stars and yet, chosen by no one other than themselves.

The story of them was the kind of tale that launched a thousand ships, the stuffing of paintings and verses, the inspiration behind serenades and prophecies, the language of flowers and literally allusions; heaven and hell themselves caught in the space inhabited charged gaze of the two dauntless explorers.

In spring, they seemed to be always embracing, his fingers finding the shapes of her neck and face with a strange familiarity, like he'd already held it once before, and sometimes he can't shake off the feeling that he's known her for a long time, and merely somehow failed to notice her up until now; All the losses and humblings on the past cry out for watch out for trap and freeze him in caution and hesitation, and yet all her thoughts are full of her always, heavy with the feverish heat from the rapid oscillation between the youthful elation and vibrancy that her presence restores to his weary life, and the private torment of their hours apart, where he whacks his brains about how to anticipate the inevitable springing of the trap, for he'd seen enough of this cruel cosmos to dare think it could ever be so generous as to deliver her back into his arms after she'd been lost to him by means of his own failure, but it wasn't the world's generosity that preserved his life's work in the cinders of Trenzalore, but hers.

In summer, they know knowing, and they know perhaps some of their greatest victories, and what's more, through knowing, the boy who always kept his secrets and the girl who always kept her mask became each others' closest confidantes. After she had fallen through his life, accompanied him in the endeavor of raiding his own tomb and learned several of his most well-kept secrets in the process, after they'd somehow learned to read each others every eye flutter throughout their games of hide and seek, she had, against all his expectations, not run, but stayed by his side, stayed steadfast in her belief that he was worth saving, the finger-snipping and diary-reading principles were a mere formality, or at most, a further step in the steady intertwining of their lives. Those were golden days, and for once, he had respite, and dared to let himself believe.

For so long, he'd held it for certain that the only possible reaction for the things he kept locked away from everyone and anyone could be repulsion, but at the very contrary, the person at his side ended up following into him into his darkest day, and knowing him even when he couldn't recognize himself.

Yet sooner or later, fall came, and the howling winds of Trenzalore left the flowers that they'd grown together abruptly interrupted, cell walls pierced by the spines of ice crystals, crumpled, discolored leaves falling like a strange sort of curtain before either of them could fully comprehend the events that had transpired, and in that confusion, things were said, assumptions were made, and steps had been taken.

In the weeks that followed, both of them spent many silent hours wondering if maybe this had been the unavoidable flow of things, if they'd only deluded themselves in the sunny days long past. Maybe they had grown complacent, even arrogant, thinking that something as dynamic and complex as a person, let alone an existence that particular person, could be fully and completely predicted. Maybe they'd forgotten their places and been to quick to look beyond their differences that were now back with a vengeance, or perhaps their mistake was to let down their guards, to drop their masks and veils so fully and expect to be welcomed back all the same.

Forced to question what truly drove them to seek each others' presence time and time again, they could still not deny that they owed each other so much to run for the hills at the first sign of adversity; Whatever else they might or might not be, they were friends, and they were comrades in their pursuits, and friends did not leave each other behind in times of uncertainty and need; Just as people in pursuit of righteousness would labor like a peon in times of harvest just to understand and conquer the unknown anew, for even if neither absolute knowledge and absolute righteousness were within their reach, they would never know if they did not make the attempt, and neither of them was the sort of person who could ever be satisfied with that.

There were many times where they doubted, perhaps some needless mistakes and entanglements made along the way, but in the end, whatever madness drove them to persevere eventually bore fruit, and just when they believed themselves to be at the edge of parting ways forever, they came to recognize their choices and trials of their convoluted journey as a path that all along, had been leading them closer together instead of further apart, and their tempestuous collision as the natural waning and waxing, ripening and deepening of a love that was stronger for their stark knowledge of each others' truth, and the understanding they could give each other for even their failings and weaknesses, and the wild and dark path they had both chosen of their own free will.

It was in these days that she learned of his lost children and the things hidden in his bookshelves, and stopped giving too much weight to the question of whether his arms would ever close behind her as she guided his tense, angular form to relax in her arms;

As far as she was concerned, the heavy branches that were once covered in flowers now bore fruit, and this life, with all of it'd danger and ambiguity, was what she considered her calling.

But just because she had reached a semblance of an opinion, the reality of the situation she'd maneuvered them both into would not be diminished in any way;

There was more to consider than just them both now, more than just one person she would have owed an answer to, and with the weight of her sins crawling on her back, she herself was the one to unleash winter upon them.

Ridiculous, that he should ever have feared the day he would let down his guard, despaired over the anticipation of the springing of a trap, a knife lodged in his back, or the cost of the truth escaping from his lips; Laughable were all the times he'd struggled with a sentence the exact wording of which he had eventually just done without.

It all paled before the overwhelming truth of this moment: Nothing of what he might call or refuse to call her, nothing of what she did could make their days up until now mean any less to him, or diminish the pain and disappointment he felt now as a consequence of it. So should be the one to tear it all down for an action he of all people should be able to understand the best? Oh, the things he'd done out of guilt; The things he would have been capable of doing if not for one person or another recognizing what he could clearly recognize right now as he looked into her large, tear-filled eyes, the mess she was in, the circumstances that had driven her to these lengths.

Forgiving himself after such a blunder had never seemed believable to him, but once it was her he would have to forgive, the reasons why became all to apparent, and if she could believe in him and show him the path on his darkest day, he damn well could do the same.

Buried seeds and shielded embers could outlast a winter; After all, it was always darkest just before the dawn, and even the darkest, longest nights would be followed by the solstice, and after it, the night of their reunion.

Perhaps it was fate, or coincidence, or her undiminished presence in his still-yearning thoughts, perhaps even something else entirely, but one way or another, their paths did cross again, and once that happened, how could they not have departed together?

It seemed not right that they should part just after the events that had revealed the depths of their devotions and strengthened their understanding of each others' reasons? And why should they find themselves punished for the willingness to put each others' happiness first even if it meant facing loss on their own? Why should they be left on their own at all if both desired to support each other? How could they part when they had still so much destiny to fulfill, and before he could find an opportunity to repay his debt to her in full, each of her numberless deaths throughout eternity?

The year before, she had just assumed that he would always be there the next day, that her own heart was something she could easily control. But after spending weeks in seeming certainty that she'd never lay eyes on him again, after tasting so much loss the past year, she would not repeat that mistake.

In the end, there were reasons why they'd held back, especially him; He knew full well that with his lifespan and unsteady, dangerous lifestyle, nothing could ever stay in his life forever, even one of the few people or entities who seemed to have been an inescapable part from it from the very beginning.

He knew that in a way, she would always be all around him, through the scattered versions of her 24 year old self, but all that was already long over from her point of view; Any such encounter would be a shard of the past with only one inevitable end, a version from her who wouldn't remember him, from before Gallifrey, before Missy, before she cut her hair; His only chance to pay back that debt, to have a future with her and become part of her unique, unfolding life was now, the future that was not yet consecrated, but hers and hers alone was still very much a finite thing, and that would not stop weighing on his mind just because he had decided that he'd rather spend that time with her instead of running away from it.

That was why he'd always held himself back to begin with, but this time, he had actually resolved to do it, to stick it out until the bitter end, to give himself away in full as they both ate up the gifts with reckless abandon while they still could

- maybe it had been out of maturity, or perhaps just because he couldn't keep himself away from her; Or perhaps after all this time, some part of him wanted to know what it would be like to let it happen for once, to know how it would be.

And many things did indeed happen, but the only part of it that he gets to take with him as an answer is an inkling that it involved devastation like he'd never known before.

In the end, there are just very few things he knows about her.

He cannot describe her face, her gestures, or even her smile; But if he knows one thing, it's that this should not be an obstacle – The truly important things, the lessons, the deeds, the lingering melodies, those would always remain with him.

He'd loved and searched for her long before he'd had a face or an explanation to go with it, and he'd continue to do so long after.