Who? The Doctor & Rose Tyler. Where? Oriens 101. When? About 2am. What? Rose has had a nigthmare, and needs to ask the Doctor some questions about her future. COMPLETE.
Rose awoke from a nightmare, her hand flying to her mouth to keep from screaming. It was the third night in a row, and it was the same nightmare. Daleks - millions of them everywhere. She couldn't wrap her mind completely around the nightmare, but she knew it involved she and the Doctor being separated. It wasn't dark, it was light... a lot of light... and she'd been falling. Rose struggled to catch her breath and control the urge to cry as she scrambled out of bed, pulling on a pair of shoes and a hoodie over her sweatpants and t-shirt. She had to see the Doctor, immediately. It was nearly two in the morning, but she knew that he didn't sleep anyway - she was only mildly concerned about waking his roommates as she ran across the street and up the stairs to his apartment where she knocked as loud as she dared, waiting for someone to answer.
Rose was right to assume that the Doctor wouldn't be sleeping, even though he no longer had anything particularly interesting to do at night-time. He just couldn't bear the thought of lying in the dark for hours on end, doing nothing. So, he was sitting in the living room, flicking through one of his flatmates magazines while simultaneously answering all of the questions on a late-night quiz show under his breath.
He was a little surprised when there was a knock at the door, but he was glad for the distraction. He flung the magazine back onto the coffee table and half-skipped toward the door, swinging it open enthusiastically without bothering to check the peep-hole. "Oh! Hello!" he exclaimed as he realised who was visiting. "Can't sleep?" he asked, stepping aside to let her in.
She was still trying to catch her breath when he opened the door. Rose wanted to fling herself into his arms, but simply walked into his flat instead. "I... no, I can't sleep," she confirmed. How did she do this? How did she ask him this? "I had a nightmare, I've been having it for days," she said, turning to him with fear in her eyes. "You've been acting so strange around me sometimes and I don't know if I'm seeing things from my future, if I'm imagining things and connecting them to the past or if it has to do with me absorbing the time vortex or what but I wake up and I have to stop myself from screaming in terror," she told him, unable to control the hitch in her voice. "Do I die? Doctor, do the Daleks come back... do I die?" she repeated.
He tried to follow her incoherent babble, his forehead creasing with concern as he let the door close behind her. Prophetic dreams? How was that even possible? Had the Artron energy from the TARDIS done something to her?
He was clearly caught off guard by her final question, flinching visibly as she suggested that the daleks would kill her. "No... no, you don't die," he promised her, trying to make his voice sound as soothing as possible, although there was a strangely anxious edge to it. What had happened to her... would she think it was worse than death?
Rose held up a finger as if to hush him. "Doctor... don't start going on about the universe imploding if you tell me about my future. We're stuck in some alternate... hell," she exclaimed, "and I'm having nightmares about... Daleks," she said, barely about to say the word aloud. "What's happening to me? Why am I seeing these things, and what aren't you telling me?" she begged of him.
"I'm not, it's not that, you..." he took a deep breath, trying to compose himself enough to actually talk sense. "I'm not lying, you don't die," he reiterated, hoping to at least get the fact straight.
"The Daleks came back, more than once actually, but... maybe it was just a flashback?" he suggested, not quite willing to accept that she was dreaming about the future. How was that possible?
She tried to gather her thoughts, put them into coherent words. "This was... I don't know where I was. It was just... white, lots of white and Daleks everywhere," she recalled, trying to picture it. "It wasn't like when I was with you and Jack because you were definitely you... you and not the other you, you know?" she babbled, shrugging for probably not making much sense.
"What happened to me that day? After you sent me back to my mum, you said I came to you and I had absorbed the vortex. That's the last thing I remember... and you told me that you took the vortex from me and that you became... well, you," she gestured to the man standing before her... looking oh-so adorable in his pinstriped suit and slightly rumpled hair. Rose shook her head a little, clearing those thoughts. "This dream... it's something completely different..."
When she said the word 'white', his mind rushed into over-drive, like a computer pulling out all the relevant files to replay to him once again, as if he'd ever had the chance to forget that room. At times like that, he hated the picture-perfect Time Lord memory - this was exactly why he'd been told that emotional attachment could lead to madness - the stabbing pain in his chest, the ringing in his ears as he heard both of their screams mixing together, the rush of air... his hands balled into fists, he could almost feel himself holding onto the clamp, unable to save her.
He wasn't sure how long he spent lost in his memories; it could have been seconds or minutes. "It's not the same day," he murmured, although he was sure she'd figured that much out by now. "You shouldn't be having these dreams, I don't know why you're seeing these things," he said, his voice strangely mechanical as if he just wanted to get to the bottom of the dreams, rather than explain what they meant.
Rose crossed the small space between them, grabbing him by the arms. "You have to tell me! You have to fix this, you have to tell me what's wrong!" she exclaimed, wanting to shake him and force him to tell her. "Something's not right, it's written all over your face and I'm scared!" she admitted, wanting to just cry and beg him to hold her. "What's wrong with me?" This was her Doctor, whether he had a new face or not and she needed to be able to trust him.
Her touch seemed to shake him a little, his eyes growing wide as he realised just how serious she was.
"You don't have to be scared," he told her, trying to make his tone gentler than it had been. He wanted to look inside her mind, find the root of the problem, know for certain the cause of her dreams. He wanted to have the self-control to be able to pull out those troubling thoughts and take them into his own mind, but when it came to Rose... he wasn't sure he'd be able to keep it strictly professional; he wouldn't be able to help himself, he'd wander where he wasn't welcome, probing her her emotions... and knowing his luck, find out something he didn't really want to know.
"It's probably just an after-effect of absorbing the time vortex. It won't do any long-term damage, it might just be shifting your subconscious to different places in time..." he suggested, his shoulders tensing. He just assumed that she was scared of the dreams, not of the event itself.
Her grip on his arms lessened a little, but the images kept playing in her head. He didn't get it; he wasn't waking up at all hours of the night, frantically looking around the room for the monsters in the dark. The Daleks had taken the Doctor from her once, she couldn't live with the idea of it happening again. But Rose saw the ghosts in his eyes, saw the pain that he was keeping from her - the Daleks did something to him again and judging from his reaction, it involved her.
She took the smallest of steps away from him, her arms hanging at her sides again. "Right, no one is supposed to absorb the vortex so what's happening to me isn't normal," she reasoned. "What am I seeing, Doctor?" she asked him, though part of her knew that he was just going to dance around an answer anyway. "And why can't you be honest with me? I feel like you've been hiding things from me since we met here. I thought..." Rose didn't know what she thought.
The Doctor exhaled sharply, crossing his arms over his chest as if creating a personal barricade. "I'm only trying to protect you. There are some things people shouldn't know about the future. You should get to go back, not worry about what's going to happen," he tried to explain, turning away from her to switch the television off, not because it was distracting him but just for something else to do.
"You still have a lot of growing to do. I don't... I can't put all this on your shoulders, not yet," he told her quietly. "You're fine, though. You don't die, you live, you really do, you have your mum and Mickey and... your dad, and... even more, eventually. It works out okay, you know? You're fine," he tried to explain, although even he knew it was barely convincing. He just hoped the part about her dad would distract her away from her original question.
He was placating her? Rose swayed a little - more from shock at his words then from being tired. Too much in one night, and she'd gone to him looking for more answers. Maybe he was right, maybe she did have a lot more to learn, but it didn't sound like he was offering to help her. "But, I'm here now... and I'm with you. I want to stay with you!" she told him, protesting though no protesting was necessary. It appeared that they were stuck there for the time being. "The one person here who could listen to you and understand a little bit about what's going on and you're not letting me in! Do you want me to go? Do you want me to just forget the nightmare and... I don't know what to do, Doctor! You're telling me things that don't make sense, like I'm going to be with my dad! Where did that come from! Doctor, you're telling me things but not explaing them! Are you trying to drive me away! I have no problem just walking back out that door but I don't want to! I want to be with you!"
"Rose, come on, calm down," he insisted, taking hold of her shoulders as if to make her focus, but his tone sounding a little more patronising than he had intended it. "Of course I don't want you to leave, but the way things will eventually work out, the way they already have worked out for me..." he trailed off, letting his hands drop again.
"When we go back, you'll have to go back to your own time, and I just don't want you worrying all the time about what's going to happen. I don't want you waiting for it. You get to go back and have all those adventures! We do so much, and I don't want it tainted by something... hanging over us," he tried to explain. "You don't die. Isn't that enough? When it happens, just... hold onto the idea that it does all work out for the best, eventually. I know you want to know know, but don't be so eager to wish it all away. I lo..." he stopped, his voice catching a little as he failed to finish the sentence he'd tried to say three times now. Instead, he found himself staring at the wall, just a few inches away from looking at her properly.
Rose tried to push him, shake him off, but he just kept talking and kept insisting that she listen. Rose never realized how strong of a grip he had. Then it stopped and he just stared. She tipped her head up again, trying to catch his gaze. There was no way he was about to say that - it wasn't like him. "Doctor..." she froze, her own hands reaching up to grip his arms. "I trust you; I've trusted you from day one," she reminded him. "You have to trust me... I'm not going to freak out... well, again," she added, seeing as she had been freaking out only moments earlier. "I don't want any of this to go away... but these nightmares are scaring me because I'm so scared of losing you. I'm finally getting used to the idea of you being you and I... I can't lose you," she whispered, not sure if she could say the words he nearly said as well. Though... wasn't that how she felt, too?
Her words stung, even though she was being nice. She didn't want to lose him, and yet all he could think was that he had already lost her, even while she was standing in front of him. "You won't," he lied, "you'll always have me, in some form or another," he added, thinking of the clone, but not even sure how to explain it. He'd already told her about his clone, but to then tell her that it was him she ended up with? He wasn't sure he could say it.
"Don't worry, maybe we'll never get out of this place, and you'll be stuck with me forever," he suggested, a little more manic than he had intended.
"Then why does it feel like you don't want that?!" she exclaimed, breaking his hold on her. "I gave up everything for you because I wanted to see what you were willing to show me! I stayed because... because..." Rose felt the tears pricking at her eyes and she wanted to scream that she felt something more for him that she traveled with him - in whatever form he took - because she knew that she was falling in love with him. The look in his eyes - to her - suggested that he didn't feel the same.
"I'm sorry I bothered you," she said, looking toward the door. "Maybe I can get something prescribed to help me sleep and... I won't be a bother," she said. "It's... probably nothing, like you said. Just... a bad dream..."
The Doctor wanted to say something to make her stop, he wanted to explain everything, but all he could manage was a gentle shake of his head. "I'm... sorry. I'm so sorry," he muttered, not even making eye-contact as she headed for the door. He really wasn't equipped for coping with this kind of situation, so it was probably better just to let her leave before he made it all even worse.