Fic: Burning Up (1/1)
Title: Burning Up
Author: bazoolium
Character/Pairing: Ten/Rose
Spoilers: Anything up to Doomsday.
Rating: G
Summary: She knows, that it’s just a painful dream; a terrorless nightmare. But she can’t seem to wake up from it. Rose Tyler dreams. Or is it just a dream?
Disclaimer: Not mine, not mine, not mine. Everything Doctor Who belongs to the BBC.
Author's Notes: This fic is pretty much random. It just came to me and I wrote it. Um, yeah.
She burns. Her heart and head pound in time, the pulsing beat driving her on. She doesn’t know where she’s going, but she knows that at the end, she’ll find what she’s looking for. So she keeps walking forwards. The seemingly endless tunnel is dark, but if she half-closes her eyes, she can see golden flames dancing behind them.
After a while, she finds that she gets used to the dark, like when you’re a kid and you’re scared of the dark, but when your eyes get used to it, it’s not so dark and scary anymore. Although, in the tunnel, there’s nothing to see beyond the dark. There’s blackness and more blackness; that’s all that there is. But the shadows seem more welcoming now and less territorial. Almost like they’re scared - but that’s a silly thought.
She tries to clear her head of all her distracting thoughts, but she finds the pain is more acute when her mind is empty. But she can’t think of anything but the pain now. The fire, blazing deep inside of her; and the throbbing, resonating throughout her body. That’s all she can think of. That’s all she can feel. With every step, the pain becomes more and more intense. She knows, somewhere inside her brain, that it’s just a painful dream; a terrorless nightmare. But she can’t seem to wake up from it.
And soon her pace picks up, so that instead of one pace to one count (is it a minute? or is it something else?), it’s five paces to one count. Before she knows it, she’s running in the dark; running somewhere, but she doesn’t know where. She realises that she has been in this tunnel for what must be 2 hours, but it all looks the same in the blackness. There are no markers, nothing to show her her progress. She could have been walking about in a circle. This could all be a circle, an endless pathway.
But she carries on - what else is there to do?
Nothing changes. The heat, the speed, the darkness. But she knows that she’s definitely moved on since she last thought about it. How could she have been in here for this long and not noticed that she was just going nowhere. She would have known for certain and it’s with a similar certainty that she knows that she’s going somewhere. Whether it is in the right direction, towards whatever it is that she’s trying to get to, she doesn’t know. Even what she is searching for is unknown to her. It’s all part of a sick joke, she reckons, some sort of plan to scare her.
Eventually she stops. She has to stop - it’s becoming too hard. The air is becoming thicker and stickier, the humidity catching in her hair. She leans against the wall of the tunnel and breathes in deeply. A faint smell of sweat and fire wafts past her.
Then she hears it.
That familiar, bittersweet sound that she’s never forgotten. Her heart pounds in time with the whirring. A single, solitary tear runs down her face. She breathes in, catching her breath. It can’t be. It’s impossible. How many times has she thought that she heard it before, only to be completely wrong? But this isn’t just the familiar sound - there’s the wind, too. Her hair is blowing around her face, like tendrils of gold, lit up in the darkness by a blue light.
For a second, she pauses, uncertain of what to do. But then the sound of home stops and she finds herself running again, because this time she has a destination. The walls seem narrower than ever and the path more winding than before. But it feels like only a few minutes when she sees the TARDIS again.
The tears are coming thick and fast now as she sprints to her goal. Her legs feel like they’re burning (it’s been a while since she’s ran like this; at Torchwood, they generally refuse to let her do anything that exciting ) and she feels like she’s fighting against the air to get there; the heat catching in her breath and tugging at her clothes, but when she places her hand on the dark blue wood, she feels like she’s home again.
She’s almost collapsed against the TARDIS now, relying on the spaceship for support. Her fingers dig into the grain of the wood as she struggles to get upright again. With one hand, she reaches for the key around her neck and takes it off, clumsily, before slotting it into the keyhole. She turns it, just once and the door swings open. Inhaling one last breath of the murky air, she steps inside the TARDIS and starts to cry. The flood of memories that attacks her is painful and before she knows it, she’s kneeling on the floor, her head in her hands. Her knees have scraped against the grating and she’s further away from the entrance than she thought she was.
The fire inside of her, however, is not quenched by the memories, or her tears. In fact, it uses all the recollections to burn brighter and fiercer inside her. This time, however, it doesn’t hurt and it gives her strength. She is still reluctant to move and wishes to dwell a little longer on all the times she was happy. But slowly, she stands up, wiping her tears away with the back of her hands; the black mascara leaving smudged trails across them. She has just about composed herself when she hears footsteps against the metal, soft and quiet. For one second, she dares herself to stay still and stare at the golden walls. Obviously she had forgotten to close the door behind her and something, someone, has gotten in.
‘You should have worn waterproof mascara,’ an all too familiar voice says, quietly. Her heart speeds up at the sound of the syllables and she can feel a smile forming on her face.
‘I didn’t know what I was going to be doing today,’ she replies, her voice shaking a bit. Slowly, she picks up the courage to turn around, pivoting on the spot.
It’s definitely him. He’s still skinny and pinstriped, with a mess of hair that looks like it’s never been brushed, but this time the suit is blue and his eyes are lit up like he’s never seen her before. He’s smiling as well, a great big grin spread across his face. Her smile gets bigger at the sight of this and soon she’s laughing and crying at the same time. She doesn’t know whether to be sad that it didn’t happen the way she thought it would, or just happy that he’s here, so she settles for both.
Still grinning at her, he answers back quickly. ‘You should have been more prepared. Honestly, Rose, have you forgotten all I’ve told you?"
She shakes her head and smiles back at him. ‘Never.’
All of a sudden, she’s running again, throwing herself across the room and towards him. She’s running with a true purpose now, not just some half hoped dream. It might not be fast, but it’s efficient and determined. Soon enough (or maybe not soon enough), she’s in his arms. He clutches her to him, like he might never let her go. She hugs him back just as tightly, putting her head on his shoulder and breathing in that scent of dust, bananas and time, that is him and only him. She doesn’t want to let go, but she supposes she has to. Unlacing her fingers from behind her neck, she slides back down to the ground, without even realising that he had lifted her up in the first place.
‘Hello, Doctor,’ she whispers, giddy with joy and laughter. Her head is spinning, but this time it’s in a good way, and his presence has seemingly doused the burn.
He laughs at her awkwardness. ‘Hello. You look like a mess.’
‘Charming,’ she says, laughing with him. ‘Still rude, I see.’
He winces, but then laughs even harder. She’s still laughing with him and for a moment, she imagines that she never left and that today’s just an ordinary day. It’s not, however, and he’s not about to let her forget that. He stops laughing for a minute and then he pauses.
‘On that beach...I was about to say,’ he starts, looking intently at her. ‘I l-’
‘No, don’t say it,’ she says, interrupting him. ‘Please, don’t. Otherwise this dream will end. There won’t be any point to it, not anymore.’
She grabs him by the blue and red striped lapels of his suit and drags him down towards her. She starts to kiss him gently, but then he’s kissing the living daylights out of her and all she can think about is him. Somehow her arms are around his neck again and his arms are around her waist. He’s too close for comfort, but it’s in a good way and she wonders why they’ve never done this before. It’s a while before she remembers to breathe and when she comes up for air, looking distinctly flustered, though the Doctor looks exactly the same, she grins at him again.
‘Rose, what did you mean about this dream?’ He asks, looking puzzled. ‘What dream?’
She thinks about it for a moment, then struggles to explain. ‘If you had said...well, y’know, then this dream wouldn’t continue. There would be nothing more to it; nothing else that could be done.’
‘No, no, no,’ he says, waving a hand in frustration. ‘But what dream? This isn’t a dream, is it? That felt...It seems too real for a dream. And, besides, I wasn’t sleeping.’
She opens her mouth to speak, to tell him that of course it’s a dream, it’s impossible, but then she notices that the walls of the TARDIS are peeling away; the gold being stripped away for the awful blackness again. Her eyes are wide in shock and he sees that, as he turns around and mirrors her look of horror. She can feel herself becoming awfully faint, like she’s substanceless, made of nothing and oh God, she’s not about to lose him again. She can’t. She won’t. She’s made of stronger stuff than that. She won’t let them take him away, not again, not when she was so happy. She just has time to whisper one last, ‘I love you,’ and watch him scream her name, countless times, before everything, even his face, goes black.
She wakes up in her room. It’s still dark outside and she’s covered in sweat. Her heart is heaving and she feels like she’s got a hangover. Her head is still pounding and she feels like she’s just about to throw up. She can’t believe it was just a dream. He was right, it felt too real. She tumbles out of bed, wanting to get a glass of water, hoping that it might help to ground her back down to earth again, to rescue that part of her that’s still lingering in the TARDIS with him. Her feet touch the ground and it feels like the ground beneath her is swaying. She shakes her head, but that makes it worse. Slowly, she creeps along the corridor until she reaches the kitchen.
One hand on her head, she grabs a glass from the cupboard and places it beside the tap. She turns the tap on and shoves the cup underneath, welcoming the cool water washing over her skin. When it’s full, she turns the tap off and perches on the table. Slowly, she drinks her water, gulping it down until she feels a little cooler at least. It does nothing for her headache, or that inexplicable feeling of bile rising in her throat, but it helps her a bit.
She dashes back to her bedroom, but she knows she won’t be able to sleep. So she pulls open the curtains and looks out at the sky. That’s strange. She could have sworn that there were more stars in the sky. She hasn’t memorised them like she’d memorised the ones in the other Earth, but it’s a cloudy night and it looks oddly empty. Yawning again, she curls up in the chair next to her bed. It’s a moment or two of harsh silence before she hears the unmistakable beep of her mobile. She grabs it from the bedside table and scrolls through the texts.
It’s Torchwood. Honestly, do they never sleep? She thinks, wryly, before she opens the message and reads it quickly. A small smile appears on her face as she reads it again, just to be certain that she read it right.
Miss Tyler.
The dim. cannon is working. Please come to HQ as soon as you have received this message.
Thank you.
Torchwood Tech.