He takes my hand and steps closer, so close my bones are jittery. He smells like the Magic Pumpkin and fresh deodorant and cinnamon, and it’s a scent I want burned into my memory. I want it on my clothes. I want his gaze, the way he looks at me – like I’m the last star in the night sky and the first one at dusk – branded on my heart.

She reaches out to take the jacket. I hesitate for a moment, like Frodo with his Ring, but then I remember ow much crap Frodo walked into and I’d rather not end up like Frodo. So I give it to Sage.

Maybe everything does die – but maybe, somehow, everything that dies someday comes back.

My dad said that anyone could be Carmindor,” she says. “That anyone can be Amara. That we have bits and pieces of them inside us. We just have to shine them off and let them glow.

At this point I’m sure he’s more plastic than person, but most people who hate wrinkles become Daleks over time, anyway.

If you believe in yourself and have a few good friends, then you can do anything. You can be anything.

There are dark sides of every fandom. The pockets filled with a certain kind of nostalgia where everything is sacred and shouldn’t be tampered with. Where new things are always trash, or judged too harshly, or not up to some unknown holy standard. Where new people with new ideas can’t touch an old sinking ship even if it’ll repair it – make it better than before.

Sage thinks that I hate Amara on the principle that she’s a lying double-crossers, but I hate her because I can relate to her. I’m the one tossed into the Black Nebula. I’m the one lost, in a life, a world, a universe that is no longer mine.

Because I will follow you anywhere, to the ends of the galaxy, if I have to. I want to exist where you exist, and that is enough.

All we had was a moment. Just a moment in an impossible universe waltzing that beautiful, impossible waltz.