Yowzah Oneshot Collection (2)

50(G)

so i wait for you like a lonely house

     mygalfriday (BrinneyFriday)

So I wait for you like a lonely house until

you will see me again and live in me.

Until then my windows ache.

– Pablo Neruda

A few years into his long stay on Christmas, he begins to paint again. He used to paint all the time. It was a way to pass the hours between adventures with his Ponds, or something to do when his wife was sleeping and he needed to be quiet. He studied with all the greats and this body seems to have an artist’s touch – at least in front of a canvas – but he lost the desire a long time ago.

Aside from a brief respite to paint his mystery girl Clara during his stay at a monastery, waiting for her to cross his path again, he hasn’t touched a paintbrush in centuries. He has no intention to begin again but the children change his mind. Children are always doing that.

He tells them stories of his adventures, all of them gathered around him with wide round eyes as he regales them with one unbelievable tale after another. He tells them of an old man and the most beautiful blue box running away together, of Star Whales and fish vampires, robot dogs and clockwork people. He tells them of a Roman who waited and the red-haired girl who remembered the whole universe into existence. He tells them of the one woman who mattered, the one who saved him over and over again, even if he could never quite return the favor. He tells them about a still point in the middle of all of history happening at once, his hand wrapped around a bowtie and the way her eyes outshone the eternal twilight around them.

Children are visual creatures. They want to see, not just hear. They draw him pictures of his stories and he cherishes every single one of them. He plasters them all over his walls, colorful etchings of some of the best, happiest moments of his life. It’s a nice reminder, here at the end of everything.

It’s a late, quiet night when he ransacks his old little house looking for supplies. The ghosts in his head are restless tonight and he hopes, perhaps in vain, that putting them down on paper will quiet them. Canvas is easy enough to come by and paint he can make himself with the right ingredients. He just needs a brush. He empties cupboards and upends sofa cushions, finding pens and pencils and quills but not a brush. His search leads him upstairs, to the attic room he never ventures into.

He stands in the doorway, glancing around at the white sheets covering furniture, protecting it from dust and age. The only thing that isn’t covered is the antique desk sitting right in front of the balcony and the Doctor knows if daylight lasted longer than a few minutes on Christmas, the light would have been perfect up here. The desk is made of dark, heavy wood, the edges worn away and the once shiny handles dulled a smooth brass. The desktop is scratched and stained, weathered by time.

It calls to him in the starlight, like a warm fire in the cold. He approaches slowly, inspecting all the tiny drawers and wondering at the secrets they might hold. There are cubbyholes stuffed with brittle papers and glass wells filled with long dried ink. The Doctor pays them no mind and his hand reaches out like he has done exactly this a million times before. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for but he knows just how to find it.