Pairing: TenToo/Rose. Hints of Eleven/Rose, I suppose
Age Restriction: PG just to be safe
Context: Set any time you want it to be set as long as it’s after Journey’s End.
Creative License: Use, reblog, edit, destroy etc as you will. I don’t care. Just if it is used for fic or art in some way please consider linking me? I love reading/looking.
Author’s Note: Yes, I know most evidence points to the fact that the Doctor doesn’t sleep. This thing is flirting dangerously with crack in every aspect – I honestly think Eleven dreaming should be the least of your rationality’s worries.
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Mostly, the Doctor dreamed of white. When your mind can see all that was, all that is and all that could be there isn’t much left for your brain to have to imagine through while you’re asleep. Memories and possibilities and fantasies and nightmares plagued him when he was awake – asleep, his conscience offered him some respite. Awake, he couldn’t stand still in an empty, quiet space for more than two minutes; he had to keep busy. Asleep it refrained from being a prison and turned instead into a cocoon. Awake, the endless activity protected him from himself. Asleep, his mind allowed him nothing, so nothing would hurt. Mostly.
Mostly, the Doctor dreamed of white. Sometimes, however, this time when his guard was at its lowest – it wasn’t down. The Doctor never really let his guard down – was the time when his mind was breached. It had happened a few times before, when he’d been younger: there would be nights where he would dream something that was a mixture of pure fantasy and what was both his past in one body and his present in another. Mostly, the laws of many different things kept him from dreaming about what another him was currently doing in their timeline in his past. They did slip through, though, and they were memories but far more painful because he was aware that somewhen he was happy with people his current-when did not (could not) provide him with.
These fantasy-realities had grown a lot more frequent as of late. To an average human, they would be categorized by that funny little saying ‘once in a blue moon’. But time to humans and time to him were two laughably different concepts. So whereby human standards they hardly happened at all, to him they came often. Too often.
He often wondered how quickly and easily they’d stop if he really wanted them to.
Instead of dwelling on that question – another deep one that should not (would not could not please don’t) be answered – he let himself experience the dream that was around him then. It wasn’t ever terribly difficult to tell what was the actual event that was happening (it wasn’t a memory; it was so much more than that) and what was the dream his mind was cushioning the reality in. In this case, reality was a normal park, complete with swings and a slide and a roundabout. The dream was what his Time Lord mind had turned the park into: there was no differentiation between earth and sky and instead the entire backdrop was a burning plethora of stars. The swings hung out from the heavens, like insignificant nods towards a planet he’d known once that had hung in the sky despite the overwhelming allure of a black hole. The slide was impossibly long and drifted off into the far distance; a snaking road along the galaxy. The roundabout, when it spun, lifted right off the ground and flew itself straight into the sky, as though it was a plastic ring wrapped around an invisible stick.
The rest of the not-dream-dream was lost to him. He found what he was looking for on the spinning apparatus.
She was wearing white; a white as blinding and as whole as his dreams usually were. The wind from the roundabout’s passage was blowing her hair back (it was longer than it had been) and exposing the shining happiness on her face for what it was. She was going fast, but she did not blur; in every part of the revolution he could see her as though she were in colour and the rest of the starry brilliance that surrounded her was crudely drawn black and white. Suddenly, she gripped one of the bars and let herself lean back. Her dress and her hair flapped wildly around her, seemingly flowing in time with her delighted laughter.
She burned then as much as she had on the day she’d stepped out of his TARDIS on Satellite Five.
The roundabout started slowing and she started dancing, picking her way from one compartment to the next, always smiling that shinning smile and always floating and swaying in the wind of her journey in circles. When it came to a stop she stopped too, running an absent hand through her locks and untangling the strands that had caught on her earrings. As soon as her hair was free her tongue became caught between her teeth.
“Lemmie go again?” It was partially a plea and partially a demand.
From the backdrop of stars stepped him. The once-him. The never-him-but-still-him. The crisis that had cost so much to people who were dearest to him.
The not-him-him grabbed a bar and began to push, and once more she was floating like a goddess, laughing and bending in the wind and the movement. He ran and he pushed and she came more than alive under his actions, burning so that the stars seemed to be her creations and worthy of nothing more.
“Come on!”
Just when the roundabout was spinning at its fastest and almost too far off the ground for any normal human to reach, she called out. Held out a hand, sure and inviting and searching. And he took it. He’d be a fool not to. She pulled and he was on the ride with her, being whisked upwards and around, being wrapped in first her dress and then her hair and then her tight embrace as she held him, laughed into him, told him secret things that he could forever claim were only his.
They lay down together on the spinning roundabout, arms around each other and feet dangling over the edge. She watched the stars as they spun around her entire body and he watched her. Their expressions were matching; awe, love, exhilaration, compassion…
She looked away from the stars and at him and those eyes held a look that he could remember seeing directed at him. Him-him, not the him-but-not-him-him. Hands gripped tighter and the roundabout rose higher and the pink and yellow girl in white gave him a kiss.
The dream-reality exploded at that moment. With her, it had always exploded at the end instead of fading out and letting him awake softly. Always; even back when he’d dream-seen-remembered watching her on a beach a world away. Ever since that day, the non-white dreams had become more frequent. Too frequent. He supposed that was one of the things that happened when another you (not-you-you) was living a timeline basically parallel to yours.
He often wondered how quickly and easily the dreams would stop if he really wanted them to.
Instead of answering himself, he piloted the TARDIS to a park on a quiet little planet with a great view of the stars. His roundabout didn’t rise upwards. He supposed that was because she was not there. He held hands with another, and forced himself to allow that to be enough.
