"I thought I told you not to wander off," the Doctor reminds her but she ignores him.
"I changed my mind," Cherry muses, a small smile playing on her lips.
"You want to go home?" The Doctor assumes and she shakes her head.
"No, of course I don't,"...
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Cherry does gradually start to feel more and more like herself again as the days go by. Travelling with the Doctor, Amy and Rory certainly helps more than wallowing in Leadworth did. It takes time, and there are still days where the Doctor has to force her out of bed to eat food and do anything but lie around and weep, but there are good days littered amongst them where she doesn't cry at all. Days where she wakes up in the morning and she's the one pulling the Doctor out of bed and demanding he take her some place nice. He's more than happy to oblige. He does everything he can to keep her happy as the time goes by, and they even meet up with River from the future a few times. That helps. Seeing her happy in the future, having River tell her mother that leaving her in that hospital was the best thing she could've done for her eases the guilt of it a lot.
It still hurts. Even on the best days, it hurts. Like there's something missing. Something is not quite right. It feels like someone has hollowed out her chest, and even though she grows used to the feeling, she always knows it's there. It doesn't ever really go. Even when they're with River, Cherry mourns what could've been. She mourns for her baby.
The Doctor has gotten pretty good at cheering her up by now. On the days when she doesn't want to go travelling or leave the Tardis, he doesn't have to force her to get up and watch a film with him or read a book or eat some breakfast. He just has to sit and talk with her for a while, play with her hair, reassure her, and then she eventually joins him for those activities on her own accord. They don't speak about what happened on Demon's Run, and they don't talk about the Doctor's approaching death that they are both well aware of by now. Cherry just hopes that he has some sort of plan, something he can do to save himself because she's wracked her brain for months since she saw it and none of her plans are ever plausible.
"What are we thinking today?" The Doctor asks, tying his red bow tie in front of the mirror as Cherry lies silently in bed, eyes trained on him. "Maybe we could find another cyber legion and blow it up... oo, or we could go to Apalapucia. I was going to take you there before. Great word, Apalapucia."
"I don't know," Cherry mumbles, shrugging her shoulders with a frown and the Doctor sighs. Okay, not a good day.
"There's an art gallery there," the Doctor tries to convince her, smiling down at her, but she just rolls over and groans. "What's wrong?"
"I just want to stay in bed," Cherry whines and the Doctor walks over to her, sitting beside her on the edge of the bed and placing his hand on her back.
"Why?"
"Tired," she grumbles, and he shakes his head, laughing.
"Charlotte, you had more than enough sleep. I know you did, I made sure of it," he tells her and she rolls onto her back, staring up at him with furrowed eyebrows.
"What does that mean?"
"It means, I don't really need to sleep, and you sleep for hours," the Doctor says. "I counted how many hours of sleep you got last night and you got plenty."
