Restoration [Companion to Deleted]

Restoration

You were eight years old when you were visited by an angel.

After the Doctor left you the first time, you stained your hands blue with crayon and marker, pasting the walls with pictures of that mysterious, gigantic blue box. Every night you sat on the edge of your bed, pulling back the curtains and looking to your front yard below, waiting for that machine to appear somewhere in the grass.

And that didn't change – not even when you grew up.  

~

"What are you looking for out there?"

You stepped back from your living room window, letting the curtain cover the view of your apartment complex parking lot. You felt a familiar weight settle in your gut as you accepted, for the thousandth time, that there was no blue box waiting for you outside that window.

Darren was waiting for you on the couch, cradling a bowl of popcorn he had made while you stood at the window. "You know," he said, a mouth full of popcorn, "I find it more than a little insulting that you think a concrete parking lot is more visually stimulating than yours truly."

You rolled your eyes and sat down, grabbing a fistful of popcorn from the bowl. "I invited you over here to watch a movie. That implies that I don't want to be looking at you, doesn't it?"

Darren smirked, the freckles on his cheeks wrinkling. "That hurts, Terra. It really does."

You leaned your head against his shoulder as he un-paused whatever pay-per-view movie you had both decided to watch. "You're the one who's leaving for New York, of all places. Insulting you is the only way I'll get through this."

Darren's arm slid behind you on the couch. He leaned his chin on the top of your head so that when he spoke, you felt it reverberate through your skull. "You could come with me."

It wasn't that you hadn't thought about it before. You and Darren had been dating since senior year of college – it was now just coming up on your year anniversary, and maybe, leaving your college town together for bigger adventures would make sense. It made a lot of sense, when you thought about it objectively. What was there for you here?

There was the Doctor. You had stayed in one place for so long – you had gone to college in your hometown so that he wouldn't lose track of you. So you remained where he could find you, content to find adventure inside a blue box instead of outside your town lines.

There was no way Darren would understand. There was no way anyone would understand – no one you had told had ever believed you.

You shifted against him and tried to focus on the opening credits on the screen. "I have a life here," you lied.

You'd had this conversation at least a dozen times. But Darren exhaled and said the same thing he always did: "You could make a life somewhere else. That's what people do, they move on to new places and adapt."

"You know I'm not good at adapting," you said, but you tried to keep your voice light. Tried to circumvent an argument. "I almost had a heart attack when they changed the wallpaper in this building's lobby."

He laughed, but you wouldn't have recognized it as one if you hadn't felt his sharp exhale of breath through his t-shirt. It was quiet, and disguising something else. He pulled you tighter. "I'm going to miss you," he said quietly, into your hair.

You lifted your head so you could look at him. "I'll always be right here," you said.

~