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When they were half-delirious with thirst in the empty desert, stretched beneath the fine scattering of stars over their tent, Susan turned to look at Ping-Cho with words on her dry lips. "It's horrible that they're making you marry someone you don't even know!" Susan said.
Ping-Cho shifted on the bedcovers, tipping her head contemplatively. "I didn't know you," she said quietly. "Not at first. But they put us into the same tent, and now look at us." She smiled. "Maybe my marriage will be like that."
"Is that how marriage works? How love works?" Susan asked.
"Haven't you experienced love before?" Ping-Cho questioned.
Susan shook her head. "Not in a hundred universes, no. Grandfather says I'm too young."
"I'm as young as you, and I'm of marriageable age," Ping-Cho said. "How can we be too young for love if we're not too young for marriage?"
"No, see, you don't understand. Grandfather thinks I'm too young for marriage, too." Susan turned away, tracing a few fingers down the thick canvas that separated them from the dry darkness of the night sky.
"Do you think you are?" Ping-Cho asked, her dark eyes earnest. "Too young, I mean?"
"I don't know." Susan took a breath. All too suddenly, the air inside the tent felt smothering, wrapping her and Ping-Cho in a weighted blanket that lay too-heavy on Susan's shoulders. "If‒ If this is how love can be, then I think I'm old enough, but I feel so naive and stupid sometimes, so what if‒" Susan stopped to swallow, her mouth dry enough that the words had started to catch at her tongue.
A warmth pressed into her hand. Ping-Cho's fingers, curling around her wrist, intertwining with Susan's own fingers.
"I've never kissed anyone before," Ping-Cho said softly, after awhile.
"Me neither," Susan said. Her fingers followed the lines on Ping-Cho's hands absently.
"I always wanted to try it, once, before I'm married," Ping-Cho murmured. Her hand was very warm in Susan's grasp.
Susan glanced up slowly, breathlessly, and her gaze met Ping-Cho's. "We can, you know," Susan said. "Try it."
Ping-Cho leaned across the gap between them and caught Susan's lips with her own. The kiss was soft, without the grittiness Susan had grown accustomed to in the desert, without grains of sand that caught in her skin, in her clothes, in the folds of the blankets between day and night.
When they separated, Susan noticed that a mote of dust haloed Ping-Cho's head, and she giggled. "I think I like love," she said, her voice full of wonder. Then she drew back a little from Ping-Cho, her smile falling. "When you get married, tell your husband that I'm jealous."
"Why?" Ping-Cho asked.
"Because he gets to spend the rest of his life with you and I don't." Susan stared down at the floor. She didn't want to think of the stars, now.
"Why can't you?" Ping-Cho reclaimed Susan's hand, which she'd dropped during the kiss.
"Because I can't stay here. I can't stay anywhere. It's like... I'm one of the stars. I can see so many places, and so many people, but I always have to stay far away from them. I can look, but I can't really be there."
"But you're here now, aren't you?" Ping-Cho asked softly.
"Yes." Susan met her eyes again, knowing as she did so, that this was never going to be an easy goodbye.
That night, in the desert, between flickers of candlelight, Susan kissed Ping-Cho again.
Weeks passed. Ping-Cho returned to their room one night in a flurry, her movements rushed and nervous. "It's tonight, Susan," she said hurriedly.
"What's tonight?" Susan's heart pounded.
"The last night. The last time we'll be able to share a room before my marriage." Ping-Cho sank onto the bed beside Susan, her body shaking. "I don't know what to do. I'm not ready," she said.
To quiet her, Susan kissed her. To comfort her, Susan kissed her.
Ping-Cho felt small and breakable in her arms. Susan wondered if she felt small and breakable, too. They were just sixteen. Maybe that was too young for the weight of love after all.
"You are ready," Susan reassured her. She didn't know what words to use. She didn't know how to get rid of the sinking feeling lodged in her throat like the desert parchedness.
"Show me. Show me I'm ready," Ping-Cho said, her voice betraying unusual intensity.
Susan didn't know what to do, so she kissed Ping-Cho again. When she closed her eyes, she could almost see the stars in the sky, cold and bright like little lights on a grand machine. But Ping-Cho was warm and alive, and Susan forgot about the stars when Ping-Cho returned her touch and a shiver rippled through them both. She forgot about the stars when all that was between her and Ping-Cho was heated skin and shared breaths. She forgot about the stars until she and Ping-Cho lay curled around each other beneath the blankets, and there was no other direction to look save for up, and up, and up.
As they got dressed the next morning, Ping-Cho said, "Say goodbye to me. Before you leave, I mean."
And Susan started to cry, because her face would have to be dry then. "Oh, I will, you know I will!"
Ping-Cho cried, too, and they embraced for a few breaths, then wiped their tears and finished getting ready. They kissed, once, before they rejoined the outside world.
It could be said that everything went better and worse than could be expected.
After Susan squeezed Ping-Cho's hand for the last time, as she stepped into the TARDIS to rejoin the stars, her eyes stayed dry, her entire body sandswept and smooth. She cried later that night, alone in her bed, silently and as impassionedly as the stars, trying to avoid waking Barbara.