Dream a Little Dream (Of Me) Chapter Three: What Cannot Be

[isilienelenihin]

The mind is the most dangerous prison of all.  Rated M for disturbing imagery and sexual situations.

10.5/Rose, with Alt!Toshiko Santo, Alt!Martha Jones, and more.



A/N:  Nothing you recognize belongs to me!  Song lyrics are from "Dream a Little Dream of Me." One quote taken from "The End of the World," and another from "Hamlet," by William Shakespeare.


Say nighty-night and kiss me.
Just hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me.
While I'm alone and blue as can be,
Dream a little dream of me.

The Present

It was quiet in the way that tombs are quiet, he thought as he wandered through the ruins. Huge, weathered blocks of granite littered the hilltop. Vines crawled up the side, tenacious ivy that would not be stopped by mere stone. Trees grew in what used to be the great hall, their thick trunks echoing the demolished pillars that had held up a canopy of stone. The grass was thick and soft beneath his trainers. Sunlight streamed through the verdant leaves above him and cast dancing patterns on the ground. People lived here once. And then they died here. It happened like that often. Something about the scene pulled at him, something about nature reclaiming what was hers. He remembered saying something to someone, so long ago. You think it'll last forever, people and cars and concrete, but it won't. One day it's all gone-even the sky. He stood there for a moment, trying to hold on to the memory. He felt vaguely like he should be wearing leather, like his hair was too long and his face was the wrong shape.

Laughter floated on the breeze, loud in the stillness. He started. "Who's there?"

A face poked out from behind a block of stone, a woman's face. She grinned at him, the tip of her tongue peeking through her teeth. She was pretty, he realized, and familiar. Very familiar.

"You can come out," he called, holding his hands in front of him to show that he was unarmed. "I won't hurt you."

"Yes you will," she replied, the smile gone, but she walked around the stone to stand in front of him anyway. "You won't mean to, but you will."

He blinked. Was she someone from his future? "What's your name?" he asked.

She shrugged. "I have been called the lost girl."

She didn't look like a girl. She was wearing very small jean shorts and a layered white blouse with crocheted straps. He could just see her rose-pink bra through the thin material. Her bottle-blond hair hung long and loose and shifted with the breeze. She looked like a woman, albeit a very young woman. "You don't look lost to me," he replied offhand.

"You're not looking," she responded sternly and gestured for him to move his eyes away from her chest and up to her face.

"I wasn't!" he protested, but she turned away from him and moved further into the ruins. They climbed one of the partially-standing towers together. "It's going to rain, you know," he commented as they reached the top.

"Is the Oncoming Storm afraid of getting wet?" she asked with another tongue-touched smile.

"Of course not," he replied. "I was merely being polite." He paused. "You seem to know quite a bit about me," he said finally. "It's rather rude not to tell me anything about yourself in return."

She gazed out over the ruins and the landscape beyond. The view was breathtaking. Miles of rocky valleys and stone-topped hills stretched out in front of them, terminating only at the edge of the sea. "It's beautiful," she breathed, awe heavy in her voice. "But sad." She ran a hand lightly over the rough stone of the tower. "So many deaths." She did not answer his implied question.

"It is. But that's the way of things."

Yes," she agreed. "It is." And then the heavens opened and the rain poured down. He expected her to be angry, to shriek and dive for cover. Instead, she lifted her arms and turned her face to the sky. She was laughing, he realized, as the rain coated her skin and turned her shirt nearly transparent. Joy bubbled through her almost palpably. It was a storm, and it was bringing destruction and renewal, and she was laughing. She turned to him, her eyes bright and her smile wide.

He kissed her because he couldn't think of any reasons not to kiss her. He kissed her, and it was like coming home. She was beautiful and warm in his arms, responsive and passionate. He could taste her life, her boundless energy on her lips. Something within her called to him, made him want to hold her like this, to keep her there forever. Something inside him, something hard and cold and aching like an old wound melted away.

White-hot pain took him by surprise. He opened his eyes, stared at her in shock. She pulled back from him, a long, thin knife clutched in her left hand. She'd stabbed him in the back right through his single heart. Where had she gotten a knife? She looked at him then like she was lost, sad and lost and hurting.

"I'm sorry," she whispered as she cupped his cheek with her hand. Hot blood ran down his back and cold rain washed it away. "I'm so sorry. Remember, please remember."

He jerked awake. His hearts beat fast in his chest, his pulse pounded in his brain. Next to him Romana stirred sleepily.

"Theta?" she murmured. He stroked her hair.

"Nothing, love," he replied softly. "Go back to sleep." He lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling of the TARDIS. It had felt so real, that dream. As a Time Lord he rarely slept, and lately what little sleep he managed was plagued by dreams. They were disturbingly realistic, but even more odd was the sensation of having only one heart. He rested a hand on either side of his chest. His hearts beat beneath his skin, strong and steady.

He slid out of bed as quietly as he could. No use waking Romana. Susan had been running them ragged lately. He smiled softly as his thoughts turned to his little girl, nestled in her bed in the room across from theirs. She was a wonder, a miracle, the first Gallifreyan child to be born in centuries-not that the Time Lords would see it that way. She was a freak to them, a problem, the unpredictable and dangerous offspring of an unpredictable and dangerous man. And what exactly made him dangerous? He dared to love-to find a woman who matched his hearts and not just his head, he dared to feel, to allow himself to experience emotions and not lock them away in favor of simple logic.

They were banished. Part of him was glad, he'd always felt restricted, suffocated on Gallifrey. It was a planet seemingly full of bureaucrats-tiny people making tiny rules because they were afraid of anything bigger than themselves. Part of him also ached to show his daughter the places he grew up, the orange sky and silver trees, the red grass. He shook off the melancholy as he found himself in the console room. His TARDIS was ancient, older than he was by thousands of years, and it always needed repair. He laid a hand affectionately on the console. "Hello girl," he said softly. The lights pulsed in response. He rolled up his sleeves an pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket. "Let's take a look at those temporal stabilizers, shall we? They looked a bit dodgy last week." A sense of languid contentment settled over him as he slid beneath the humming control console. This was his home, the TARDIS and the women he loved.

She remembered.

She remembered her father and the reapers and Cassandra and the sun expanding and Gwenyth and Charles Dickens and the Slitheen and 'I could save the world but lose you' and chips and Jack and dancing and dancing and Daleks and Cardiff and the game station and-oh. Yes. That.

She remembered golden light and a song that echoed-echoes-will echo-through all of creation. She remembered the pulse of the universe and the scream of the Dalek emperor as he was turned to dust. She remembered 'I bring life' and her decision that Jack would live, would always live, whether he'd like to or not. She remembered Him, his lips soft and cool against her own, the way he pulled the burning gold out of her. She remembered that he died.

She remembered that she killed him.

The world around her crumbled, dissolved in the force of her memories. It was a lie, all of it. Her father was dead and that version of the Doctor was dead and she was living in a parallel universe beyond their reach. It was a pretty little lie, designed to keep her complacent, wrapping her up in the love that she'd craved for so long, but it was a lie nonetheless.

Someone was in her head. She did not take kindly to that. Someone was lying to her. She liked that even less. It was a moot point now, though. The lies had no power over her, not any more. She saw them for what they were.

The brown-eyed man, her Doctor, her part-human Doctor, stood in front of her for a moment. He wavered like a mirage in the desert. "Find me," he whispered. "Save me, Rose." And then he was gone and she was alone in the dark. The walls pressed in on her, suffocating her. She opened her mouth and screamed.

He was wandering again. He seemed to like to wander in his dreams. Of course, he liked to wander in real life, so perhaps his subconscious was just more obvious while he was dreaming. His last dream had been almost silent, but this one was awash with noise. Insects chirped and hummed, birds sang, and the underbrush crackled as he walked aimlessly, his hands stuffed in his pockets. Dappled sunlight painted the stubborn undergrowth in brilliant greens and deep shadows. A brook burbled somewhere out of sight, and he turned toward the sound. It was as good a destination as any. As he walked the ground became hillier and the forest was dotted with rocky outcroppings.

It felt like he'd been walking for miles when he finally broke into a clearing, but time was always odd in dreams. The brook cut through one edge of the open space and separated him from the rest of the green. Wolf cubs played in the brightly lit space. Adult wolves lounged by the stream and atop a jagged pile of rocks. It was probably their den, he noted. They eyed him with interest, but not intent. A flash of movement caught his eye, and he realized that there was a person with the wolf cubs. It was the woman. She set a particularly playful cub down and stood. Her hair was shorter this time, and it hung in loose waves around her face. She was wearing a white sundress, a demure little thing that left her shoulders bare and ended just above her knees. She was wearing a wreath of plants on her head.

"Hello?" he called. She held out her hand and gestured for him to come forward. He crossed the stream without difficulty and cautiously approached her. She was standing in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by the wolves. He had no desire to be anyone's lunch, even in a dream, but the animals made no move toward him. "I should know you," he said as he stood in front of her. "You seem so familiar. Why won't you tell me who you are?"

She brought her other hand from behind her back and set a wreath on his head. "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies. That's for thoughts," she murmured.

He took off the wreath and examined it. "And juniper for protection, hepatica flowers-beware, and oleander for anger." He replaced it on his head. "Quite an interesting assortment of flowers, added to rosemary and pansies, and wait a minute." He frowned. "That's from Hamlet. Usually I'm the one making the allusions."

"Is that a fact?" she asked with a cheeky smile.

"Oh yes!" he replied. "And if you're using that quote that would make you Ophelia." He considered her. She looked the part-young, pretty, handing flowers to strangers-but she had flowers of her own. "Your wreath is quite interesting," he mused, "and a bit of a contradiction. I see gardenia-innocence, pink roses-desire, oak leaves-strength, and cypress for mourning or death." He took her hand. "You seem rather alive to me, of course, this is a dream, so I could be wrong. But," he returned to his previous train of thought, "if you're Ophelia, does that make me Hamlet?"

She shook her head. "You're the king."

"Claudius or Hamlet the elder?" he replied flippantly.

The strange girl studied him for a moment. "Both," she replied finally.

He frowned. "What? How can I be both? They're two distinct characters."

"They're never on stage together," she pointed out and skipped away. "But you're wrong, you know."

He followed her. "Wrong about what?"

She turned to face him at the edge of the clearing, the trees casting her in shadow. "I'm not Ophelia, not only, anyway."

He smiled at her, bemused. "Really? Who else are you?"

"Little girl, little girl, where have you been? Gathering roses to give to the Queen. Little girl, little girl, what did she give you? She gave me a diamond as big as my shoe," she replied in a sing-song voice. He looked at her blankly and she frowned. "You have to remember. Please, say that you remember."

"Remember what?" he asked.

She shook her head. "That would be telling." He shifted his weight to take the first step towards her when a shaft of steel seemed to grow from her chest. Her eyes widened in shock and pain as a red stain spread around the blade protruding from her chest. "I love you," she whispered, and then the sword tilted down and she began to slide off of it, leaving a coat of red on the metal. He leaped forward and caught her body before she hit the ground. A thin line of red dripped from the corner of her mouth down her pale skin. More red stained his hands and his suit jacket. Loss clawed at him, savage and fierce for a girl he didn't know, couldn't remember. He turned his furious gaze on the killer and stared into his own eyes.

He stood at the edge of the clearing holding a sword that was coated in blood and he knelt holding the girl that he'd killed. The him in the blue suit threw the sword at his feet, turned, and walked away.

He twitched as he woke and smacked his head into the bottom of the TARDIS's control console. He groaned as he rubbed his head. Blimey, he must have been more tired than he thought. He hadn't fallen asleep unintentionally in years, not since his first body. He frowned. How long ago was that-a millenia, more? He couldn't remember. Was it important, though?

The TARDIS hummed and he felt a concerned whisper in against his mind. He patted the metal reassuringly. "Not your fault," he assured her. "Just getting forgetful in my old age."

Her heart was pounding and her pulse roared in her ears. Rose gulped air, fighting the panic that welled up within her. She was not in the Void. She was not alone. She could feel the walls behind her and the floor beneath her and nothing was trying to pull her under. The thick tentacles that had held her against the wall flopped away and hung limp. She staggered away from them and fell, scraping her knee and palms against the rough dirt floor. The momentary pain cut through her hysteria and brought her back to the present. The Doctor was nearby. She had to find him. She remembered the things pulling him away from her, but she couldn't see anything. She bit back a curse and closed her eyes, counting to one hundred. She needed to give her vision time to adjust before she blundered into something else.

When she was finished counting she opened her eyes. It was still dark, but at least she could see a few feet in front of her. She glanced around the tunnel and her eyes fixed on a familiar form hanging from the opposite wall. "Doctor!" she cried, and ran to him. Thick, slimy tentacles held him against the wall. He was paler than usual she noticed, and he had a strange, goofy smile on his face. She shook his shoulder. There was no response. She called his name, she took his hand, she even slapped him, but he continued to hang limply with that blasted smile twisting his features. She felt like crying; she felt like screaming; she felt like punching the wall. None of those actions, however, would do any real good, and punching the wall would probably only break her knuckles and add another discomfort to her growing list.

The screwdriver! She rummaged through his pockets, not yet bigger-on-the-inside, and pulled out his reworked prototype. "Is there a setting for tentacles, Doctor?" she muttered sarcastically. None of the settings she knew of would help. She picked a random number and aimed it at the creatures. Nothing. She flipped through several more, all nothing. Rose almost chucked the shiny silver tube, but then she remembered how excited he'd been when he showed it to her. The tunnel swam in front of her eyes and she wiped the back of her hand across her face angrily. No. She was not that girl. She was Rose Tyler, Torchwood Agent, inter-universal time and space traveler. She would figure this out and save the Doctor. She was the Bad Wolf. She'd looked into the heart of the TARDIS, absorbed the Time Vortex, and ended the Time War. These slimy worm-things were nothing compared to that.

They were slimy worm things, slimy worm things that had gotten into her head. They were telepathic! They had to be, in order to construct that world around her, but they hadn't been able to mess with her mind until they were touching her. Right now they weren't affecting her because she was loose. Finally she was getting somewhere! She frowned as she stood in front of the Doctor, careful not to touch the tentacles. He was telepathic too, she remembered. He'd done that thing with Reinette to find out why the clockwork drones wanted her. How had he-right, he'd put his hands on her temples. Like the worm-things, he had to be touching someone to get into their head, and Reinette had been able to get right back into his!

She needed to snap him out of the trance or dream or whatever the worm-things had him in. They were generating some kind of telepathic field. If she touched him and them, maybe she could get in there and find him. It wasn't much of a plan, and if her father had been there he would have ripped her a new one for trying it without any idea of what could happen, but it was the only plan she had. And anyway, it was the Doctor. She had to try.

Rose took a deep breath and placed one hand on his temple. With her other hand she grabbed one of the slippery tentacles. "See you in hell," she murmured, and then the world went black.

He was dreaming again. He knew this with the abstract certainty one can posses only in dreams. A familiar ache rested where his second heart should be, and the single one that beat in his chest seemed sluggish. He was unsure why in his dreams he possessed only one heart. Was it symbolic, or prophetic? Gravel crunched under his trainers as he wandered down-well, up-the path. It seemed to lead to a house-a huge stone building, a derelict relic, a shrine. It was vaguely outlined against the overcast sky. Even from a distance he could tell that no one had lived there for many years. The roof was gone, and the pale yellow grass that lined the path was waist high. He was still far off-the house was perched on the edge of a cliff-almost precariously. The path sloped upwards the closer he came to the house. The wind howled and bayed around him, flattening the grass in undulating waves and bringing with it the smell of the sea. He shivered. The wind was cold. How long had it been since he was cold?

A hand on his chest stopped his movement and his reverie. The palm sat firmly against his suit jacket, the fingers splayed wide. His eyes followed the hand up the smooth, pale arm to the soft lips drawn into a thin line to the deep blue eyes and the windswept, honey blonde hair.

"Romana."

"Stop." Her voice was low and soft and pleading. He blinked. Romana did not beg. "There is nothing down this path that you want to see. Please," her voice broke, "please. Go back." The pain in her words struck him, gave him pause, but something deeper than memory urged him on. He took her hand, lifted it to his lips, kissed it, and let it fall. She watched him, resigned, as he stepped around her and continued walking. He glanced back, and she was standing where he left her, arms clenched around herself. She looked forlorn and lost as the wind whipped her hair and the skirt of her deep blue dress.

A small hand grasped his. He looked down.

"Susan."

The little girl tugged on his hand. "Come back to the TARDIS. Don't go!" Her eyes were bright with tears and her voice was tinged with desperation. He knelt beside her and kissed her on the forehead. She stared up at him with her huge dark eyes, imploring silently. He couldn't explain why he had to continue, not in a way she would understand. He didn't understand it himself, only knew that something was waiting for him. She said nothing when he stood and let go of her hand. "Grandfather," she whispered softly as he moved away.

The closer he moved to the house, the steeper the path became. He was breathing heavily when he finally reached the top of the hill. The other side dropped away sharply, ending in a stretch of sandy beach. The smell of the sea was strong as the wind gusted around him. Leaden waves crested and crashed onto the sand. It was always a beach. He shuddered and turned away from the sea and the wind.

A rose bush climbed up one whole wall of the house. It was massive and ancient. The trunk was as thick as his waist at the base, and branches the width of his arms wrapped around moldering stone. Vibrant green moss and bluish lichen speckled the granite blocks beneath the twisting branches. Amidst the white buds and green leaves was the woman he dreamed of.

She hung on the flowers like Christ crucified. Thick, thorny stems wrapped around her legs holding her just off the ground so that her face was level with his own. Her arms stretched out to either side in the mockery of the preparation for an embrace. Long thorns tore at the flimsy material of the delicate white dress she wore, lodged in her flesh and scraped the delicate skin of her neck. Her blood watered the rosebush, coated the pale flowers and made the branches slippery. She smiled at him, tangled in the vines, a twisted version of a fairy tale princess.

He was no prince. He lacked the white horse, for one, although something prickled in his memory, something about France and clockwork robots. He cupped her cheek with one hand. "Who are you?" he asked. "Why won't you tell me your name? Why are you always dying? Why are you walking away?"

She continued to smile at him, and then she said the words, the words that rocked through his entire being. "I want you safe, my Doctor. I want you to remember."

"You're always saying that!" he snapped, suddenly angry. She knew him, knew the heart of him and he couldn't save her. He could never save her. Why was she doing this? Why was she sacrificing herself for him?

"Please," she asked and pain clouded her eyes. "Please."

His hand slipped from her cheek to the nape of her neck. "I don't even know your name," he murmured, and then his lips were against hers. He knew the moment she stopped breathing, the moment she died. Her blood was on his lips and in his mouth. It coated his hands and the front of his suit. He pulled away from her corpse and closed her eyes.

Rose hovered over the scene, a silent observer. She tried to reach for him, but she was intangible, a ghost in a dream. It was typical, she thought, as she watched him grieve. He cast her in the role of the victim, the innocent sacrifice that paid for his sins. Her mouth twitched. When would he learn? She wasn't some helpless bystander. She was Rose Tyler, Torchwood Agent, Bad Wolf, and Defender of the Earth. She died on that beach and like a phoenix she rose from the ashes of her old life and created a new one.

She focused all of her concentration on the dead woman-she refused to think of the thing as herself. He was hers and she would not leave him here, trapped in this strange limbo.

A strangled groan rent the still air. He whirled around. She remained tangled in the vines, but a strange golden glow seemed to radiate from her. "You will not have him," she rasped. The branches tightened but she continued to writhe. The glow strengthened and seemed to solidify. A sound that was something like pain seemed to come from inside his head. The branches shied away from the strange light. "Release him!" the woman said again. Her voice was louder, stronger. He thought it was odd that she would ask them-whoever they were-to let him go when she was the one restrained.

Then she turned her face to the heavens and howled. The rosebush was on fire. Branches blackened and fell away, charred. Buds turned to ash, and she was free. She drifted to the ground and stood before him, barefoot, no sign of the vicious thorn barbs that had punctured her skin and drained away her life. Soft golden light shone from within her.

"Who are you?" he asked, awed.

"Remember," she replied, and cupped his cheek in her hand.

Images flashed through his brain, a slideshow on fast forward. Thoughts, feelings, sensations poured into him like water onto parched earth. They overwhelmed him, drove him to his knees, but they kept coming. Fire, death, hopelessness, pain, fury, revenge, and blood, so much blood. Romana, Susan, dead. Gallifrey was burning. Thousands upon thousands of Daleks in the sky. Arcadia had fallen. The silence thundered in his mind as his single heart raced. Old wounds he had thought were healed ripped open again and bled.

He remembered. He remembered everything. Someone was about to have a very bad day.