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Their last trip had been... a lot. Not horrible or anything, but a lot. After they had made it back to the TARDIS, the Doctor had announced that he was going to take Ace stargazing.
It wasn’t the kind of thing she had ever done growing up. Her mother had never been that kind of mother. Her friends would have thought it was lame. Plus, with all the light pollution, Ace doubted that there would have been much to see anyways.
But that wasn’t a problem here. They were in England, but centuries before electricity had been invented. Ace laid back again the picnic blanket the Doctor had set out. Using her jacket as a pillow, Ace stared up at the stars. Their stars were so bright—certainly more impressive than back in Perivale.
The Doctor laid beside her. He seemed to have a story for every single star. She just listened to the familiar rumble of his voice, occasionally hearing the name of a planet she recognized.
Could she be like that someday? The Doctor seemed to know every star in the Earth’s sky. How long must he have been travelling, to know all that? The Doctor had always been cagey about how old he was. At least centuries old, she thought.
What would it feel like to be centuries old? Ace hadn’t even seen two decades.
“That’s the star of the Calaxi system,” the Doctor said. “They have great miniature golf there.” He frowned. “Or they will, in a millennia or two.”
Ace had never imagined her future much. It was kind of sad, but she’d never thought that she had much of a future, before she had met the Doctor.
But now, gazing up at the stars, Ace felt like she could be anything in the universe.