I laugh. I laugh and laugh and laugh. My paradox children circle around me, asking questions, some of concern, others of anticipation, others completely unrelated to the situation at hand. “Children,” I say, “you’ll get to live forever.” I deliver flowers to him. I taunt him with them, with their meanings. Rose, for love, for his love, for the one I tore away from him. He still doesn’t know it was me. Amaranth, for immortality, another thing I’ve stolen from him. I’ve stolen it from him, from the planet and the species he’s grown so attached to, just as he stole it from me, from us, from our planet and our great ancient civilization, because we didn’t matter to him as much as the Earth, because winning didn’t matter, victory didn’t matter. What kind of a Time Lord is he if victory didn’t matter? And lastly I give him hellebore, which means madness. A reference to what he thinks of me. A subtle admission that perhaps he’s right. Perhaps I have gone mad. I watch him as he stares at the roses. Stares and stares and stares, not seeing anything else. He is losing hope, after all these months alone. The Doctor is losing hope, the one thing he has left after all this time. He doesn’t realize there’s another meaning behind the hellebore. He doesn’t realize I’m not the only one going mad. I grow a garden of amaranth, roses, and hellebore, right beside the paradox machine. It’s exhausting. Humans are exhausting. Even as I watch the Doctor’s hope vanish, the humans below on the surface keep on hoping even as their world falls apart around them. Love is the Doctor’s downfall. Immortality is the humans’. And madness, that mad hope, that human hope, that’s mine. Even after everything, my garden stays.
