Sometimes he dreams
Sometimes he dreams. Not often, dreaming requires sleep, not falling down unconscious where ever you were and waking with someone screaming at the latest disaster that you couldn't prevent with a crick in your neck and a strange crease across your face from the pressure of the...book, keyboard, glasses half askew, pick one. But sometimes he dreams.
He dreams of a world of magic, a world where the planets weren't individual worlds, but pictures and meanings of their own. In the dreams he was still an angry, bitter man, though also still a driven one. Different motives, same need to keep going, to push farther. Magic and science, they weren't that different, and in that world as this, he was a master, and he would tear the world apart to get what he needed, if only he could remember what it was, exactly. He still looked at the stars, but their meanings were unrecognizable and unacceptable to his rational mind, as his scientific explanations were to his dream self.
In this world, he was a slight man in crumpled and unkempt clothes, always cold but not particularly caring. In dreams he wore silk and leather, and was very careful of his appearance. He spoke in a high pitched sing song when he spoke to others, and giggled in a way that would send Eli fleeing blindly, and flamboyant mannerisms that were the opposite of his economical movements. Instead of long straight hair, the dream man was a riot of curls, gold green scales, and eyes with oversized pupils. He had claws instead of nails, and he knew the monster he was, because it showed clearly on his face, instead of hiding in his mind. He didn't even look human, not that he felt human here most of the time.
Then the dreams changed. Now sometimes there was a girl, flowing chestnut hair, more red than his own Gloria for all that he tried to pretend it was her when he saw her from behind. But Gloria didn't have those curls. When she turned, and those blue eyes settled on him with love, he felt a guilt that woke him from his sleep, as if he was betraying them both. He tried to stop, to tell himself that it was only a dream, and it meant nothing. He worked until he fell down, and there were no dreams in unconsciousness, if no real rest either. But even he couldn't keep it up.
Besides, they were only dreams, certainly it wasn't being unfaithful to his dead wife's memory to feel the love of someone who wasn't him, in a dream. Dreams didn't matter, he told himself, and if they made the sleep that he got better, well, he rarely slept enough to dream anyway.
But the dreams remained, and he came to welcome them. A castle full of darkness, objects scattered on dusty shelves, things and a girl made of light. It was nothing, really, he was a man of science not magic, and dreams were nothing but misfiring neurons; the flotsam and jetsam of a subconscious weighted down with guilt and fear. When they didn't go away, finally he started to anticipate them, an escape from the cold and ration bars and uncertainty. In the dreams he was rarely uncertain, except where the girl was concerned. Seemed he couldn't escape his guilt about women, even in his dreams.
It was a routine day, a routine mission to a routine planet. He went to the gate room when they called with something to show him, shoving his glasses back to pinch the bridge of his nose to try to forestall yet another headache. The away team returned, and they certainly had something to show him. They found life, Young said as they came through. Behind him came a girl, a woman, one with long chestnut curls. She looked up and their eyes met, blue eyes meeting brown as if they were the only two people in the gate room, in the whole ship, the only thing in a strange hostile environment that made sense.
And somewhere inside, Rumplestiltskin woke up.