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“Edward.”
“Gentleman.”
“How… how are you?”
“Just fine mate.”
“Really? …. Good. That’s good."
“What? Expecting a different answer?”
“No! I … just… I’m glad you’re doing well Edward."
“I mean no, why would me being abandoned on Earth after telling you I loved you make any difference to my wellbeing? Of course I’ve not been doing good, you idiot. But I’ve survived.”
“You know, I had no choice.”
“No. You made a choice for us without consulting me, there’s a difference.”
“You nearly died Ed.”
“But I didn’t.”
“You nearly died because of me”.
“It wasn’t your fault. I’ve had a lot of time to think in recent months, but it wasn’t your fault. It was my decision to go out there, people needed saving and I could do it. But it wasn’t your fault I got caught in the crossfire.”
…
“I have a duty of care.”
“Is that what we’re calling it these days?”
“I could have ruined you. Lost you. I cannot have that on my conscience because I was showing off.”
“You’ve lost other people.”
“Other people aren’t you ”
…
“I didn’t get a message to you because I wanted your apology anyway. I’ve made my peace with it. You can’t handle any sort of grown up feeling so you ran away at the first opportunity but the world needs you. We encountered a problem.”
“We?”
“Me, Izzy, Fang.”
“Your friends. They must have missed you.”
“They did. I’d missed them too. Took them a while to believe me when I told them where I’d been.”
“Yeah there’s not an easy way to say you were hanging out with a time travelling 900 year old alien is there?”
“Just hanging out?”
“You know what I mean.”
...
“We set up a sort of….organisation.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Well I pined for you desperately for a couple of months, wallowed in despair, spent most nights staring up at the stars willing you to come back to me.”
“I’m sorry-”
“Don’t. I’m over it.”
“Ed -”
“Will you let me finish?! It’s just… I was something with you. Helping people with injustices across the galaxy and across time and space.”
“You have always been something, you didn’t need me to prove that.”
“Shush. I needed to channel that again. Or you know, just do something useful.”
“That’s healthy.”
“So we started this organisation. Just the three of us in Izzy’s garage which he’d been trying to turn into a home gym for years, but we’re all nifty with computers. So we started keeping an eye on things. Checking any weird anomalies or space phenomena. We stopped a couple of low level threats, a rogue Slitheen -”
“What, really? God, they get everywhere.”
“I know right. An escaped Adipose, some Autons. We dealt with it. Izzy and Fang believed me fairly swiftly after that. I just wanted to … carry on. We call ourselves Revenge. Staying secret for now but I feel better. It got me through the rough patch. Your old pal Lucius at UNIT even reached out, told us to carry on with a twinkle in his eye.”
“Sounds like him.”
“But then I noticed a pattern, huge energy spikes out at sea. Thought it was just an anomaly at first. But it keeps happening and they are getting bigger by the day. There’s something… down there. Something alien. I can’t handle this with only a laptop and my oldest friends sat in a dusty old garage. I need you. My - THE man from the stars. You can help. That’s why I called you back, not for me, for the planet.”
“I understand. Impressive by the way.”
“What is?”
“That you still had faith in me."
...
"Yeah, well. I had to hope even if you abandoned me, you didn't abandon the Earth. Hacking into the Black Archive with the signature Blackbeard left behind, I figured you’d work it out eventually. Even if I have shaved the whole actual black beard off now.”
“I like it.”
“What, my horrible naked chin?”
“I like all of you. Everything about you. Breathing the same air again, it’s nice....”
“You still left me.”
“I didn’t want to.”
“Doesn’t change the fact you did. You told me you’d be right out and then you dematerialised away in the Tardis leaving me alone. I was a mess, crumpled right up for weeks. You showed me the universe and you left me back outside my flat in London. I hated you.”
…
“Hated? Past tense."
“You don’t get it, do you? Because betraying me made no difference. I still love you.”
“Ed you can’t-”
“YES I CAN. I do. Of course I do, you absolute menace. You gave me everything. You are everything to me.”
“Ed I age so much slower than you. You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I cannot spend the rest of mine with you. I cannot watch you be put in danger because of me, it would break both of my hearts ten times over to watch you grow old and leave ME behind. My face will change one day, I become a different person.”
…
“I don’t care. Isn’t it better to love me now? Because I know you do. We fell in love in that little blue box of yours and I don’t think any amount of danger I could get into travelling with you would hurt as much as you leaving me behind again.”
"I didn't leave you, I've been watching you this whole time! How could I just leave YOU behind? It was for your safety. I had to save you Ed, save you from myself."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
“Let’s go look at these energy spikes shall we?”
“Stop deflecting.”
“You called me here to look at them!”
“Tell me you love me first .... I'm waiting.….. Oh that’s a classic move. Shutting down when it gets too much or too real again, you might be a Time Lord but you’re a -MPPH”
…………
……………….
……………………..
“You kissed me.”
“Come on. Let’s go save the world one more time Co-Captain. We’ll talk later.”
…..
“ If you keep kissing me we’re not going to get anything done Edward.”
“The world can wait one more minute.”