Author's Notes: As it is usual with my drabble fics, all the thanks to Timepetalsprompts over on tumblr for their inspiring weekly themes. This time I chose - Hidden.
She looked at his face and wondered. Wondered if the man she came to know and love was still there. Hidden. Underneath the surface, waiting to come out. Looking at him, she could almost believe he was.
But then he moved. And then he talked. And he laughed and it was all wrong.
The hair looked strange and the face was different. Thinner lips and brown eyes and a smaller nose. Looked entirely too pretty to be him.
So she realized that he wasn't. Hidden. Underneath. As she hoped.
What did she know of aliens, anyway? They could change back and forth; they could hide inside the skin of other people… It shouldn't be so difficult for him to change back, should it?
So she hoped. And then she asked.
He said no. She cried that day.
Not in front of him, no. She couldn't - still didn't want to let him down.
She thought she could get used to this man who smiled more, but said less.
With time.
Maybe.
But that day she mourned. She cried and wailed and pounded her fists into the pillow on her bed, lay exhausted in a pile of pain and hurt, and waited for sleep in vain.
And when she stepped out of her room the next morning to face reality, she made a promise:
I'll never forget you.
A promise she kept all through the new new smiles and the adventures and the stuck-with-you-not-so-bads.
In the end, years later, a lifetime later, a lifetime spent with a man she grew to love again - who was very much not the same, but oh so similar in many ways - she did remember.