Return to:    Back In Time   Extra   Fan Fiction Title: Bad Dreams. Author: Herenya Characters: The Doctor (Nine) and Rose Length: around 1000 words Rating: G. No adult content, no spoilers. Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, it wouldn’t make it to air. Because I have no money. Summary: Reflections on time travel and bad dreams; Rose talks to the Doctor after being unable to sleep… Notes: I was wondering about time in the more practical manner of time-zones, jetlag and what sort of time system the TARDIS would follow and… it sort of wrote itself. Not completely light and fluffy. First real attempt writing fan-fiction, but certainly not first attempt at writing. * * * * * Rose awoke abruptly. It took several moments before she could orientate herself enough to sit up and more before she found the light. She hated jet-lag, and the disorientation that came with constantly jumping time was worse than what she imagined it would be like to constantly be jumping around different time zones. Normally, between adrenaline and exhaustion she managed to adjust and cope alright, but now didn’t seem to be one of those moments. She couldn’t tell what the time was. The Doctor had given her a strange clock that displayed relative time and Earth time and goodness knows what else. The Doctor had been so pleased with himself that she hadn’t the heart to tell him that it’s many dials and numbers meant as much to her as Greek did. Besides, she couldn’t even say that anymore – she’d tried it once and he’d given her his patient grin and pointed out that due to the TARDIS’s telepathic field she now would be able to understand any form of Greek, Ancient Greek included. Did she want to be taken to the Ancient Greek Olympics to prove it, he’d asked, as if her encounters with understanding alien babble every other day wasn’t enough to convince her otherwise. Rose, remembering exactly what the Ancient Greeks had worn for such occasions had decided that maybe that wouldn’t be the best idea. Especially given the Doctor’s predisposition to take childish delight in joining in where-ever they were… Which all still didn’t solve the problem of what time it was. Normally, she checked her phone, but that wasn’t beside her bed nor in the pocket of the jeans she’d worn the day before. She concluded that she must have left it somewhere and pulling a blanket around her shoulders set off down the TARDIS hallway to look for it. The reason she had woken so suddenly had completely slipped her mind. She was sitting in the kitchen drinking her second mug of a brand of cocoa she’d picked up last time they’d been on Earth and playing games on her phone when the Doctor had wandered in, looking surprisingly awake given that it was supposed to be four in the morning, picked up the unfamiliar hot chocolate tin and asked “what is this?” “Edible flavoured sugar,” she told him, not looking up from her phone. “Sugar is always edible,” he pointed out. Rose shrugged. “Anyhow, what are you doing awake at this unearthly hour?” Unearthly would be right, Rose thought. Unless the TARDIS had moved while she was asleep – more than likely, knowing the Doctor – the planet they were on in no manner resembled Earth. Sometimes Rose found it amusing, the very-human expressions the Doctor had picked up. “I was just looking for my phone.” “Ah, right. The human’s need to push little buttons and watch little lights flash…” “Like you can talk! The TARDIS juste seems to be to be a glorified version of just that!” She laughed, and pushed her electronic gadget away from her. “What are you doing up, Doctor?” “Oh, the usual.” He was very nonchanlent. “Couldn’t sleep and all that.” Something came back to Rose, some brushed-aside away memory. “Doctor?” “Mmmm?” “Do you ever get nightmares?” He looked up, startled. “’Course. Isn’t that a bit like asking if I have to clean my teeth or…” He floundered for the appropriate comparison. “Oh, I just thought, what with you being alien…” “No, I’m not that alien, sorry. Why do you ask?” “Oh, jut wondering.” The Doctor sat down opposite and picked up Rose’s phone, which he started fiddling with. “Hey, that’s my electronic gadget! Go find your own!” Rose insisted, and he rolled his eyes and surrendered it to her. After a pause, she asked, “what do you have nightmares about, Doctor?” He laughed. “Probably the same as you. Everyone has dreams where the assembled hoards of Genghis Khan are chasing you (“What do they look like?” Rose interrupted. “I’d always imagined them as looking like something from, you know, The Planet of the Apes…”) and you can’t get the TARDIS key to work (“everyone who has a TARDIS dreams that, you mean,” Rose again interrupted to point out. He ignored her.) Just the other day I dreamt we were chased by a group of medieval farmers through a marsh and half-way up a hill and across several ploughed fields all because they had taken one look at you in your bright pink t-shirt and decided that was not the attire of a respectable woman and hence concluded that you must be a witch. Or a changeling, or something which,” the Doctor concluded, looking at Rose’s uncombed hair and pyjamas, “is always a possibility…” “If you had actually told me that we were going to medieval Blackburn or where ever it was,” Rose pointed out, ignoring his teasing, “I might’ve dressed more appropriately! Besides, you can’t have dreamt that because it happened last Monday. I still haven’t got the mud stains out of my clothes.” “I didn’t know we were going to end up there, did I? I thought it was going to be somewhere where you could wander through markets and do some of that shopping you’ve been pestering me about. And yes, I did dream it, too. It was worse in the dream – you wouldn’t run, wanted to fly instead and the TARDIS had disguised itself as a – ” But Rose wasn’t smiling. She let him talk on and played with the blanket around her shoulders. “What is it Rose?” He broke off, looking at her face. Rose shrugged. She wished she hadn’t said anything. “Bad dreams?” Again, the non-committal half-shrug. “Rose?” “I s’pose.” She wasn’t sure she wanted to remember exactly why she’d awoken. Why had she mentioned it? But the Doctor was waiting, looking at her expectantly. “Oh, it was nothing,” she eventually said. “I just dreamt you – changed.” “Changed how?” “I don’t know,” Rose said, impatient with both of them for having this conversation in the first place. “I don’t know why, you just did.” “No, Rose, I meant how did I change?” “There was this man and he was the Doctor, I mean he was you,” she answered slowly, “but he wasn’t…” “Wasn’t what?” She got to her feet and attempted a smile. “It doesn’t matter. It was silly. Just a bad dream…”