This story takes place between "The Runaway Bride" and "Smith and Jones" during the third series of the new Doctor Who (season 29). We have no idea how long the Doctor was traveling on his own after he left Donna and before he met Martha Jones. It could have been hours or it could have been years. This postulates that the time between the two stories was a matter of years. This story can be considered AU (alternate universe).
(Added after posting Chapter 3...) Okay, I've change my mind about when this story takes place as there is a certain character that has been hopping in my brain, shouting "Pick me! Oh, pick me!". The story is now COMPLETELY AU and takes place just after The Last of the Time Lords (or after Voyage of the Damned, if the Doctor is alone at the end of that episode - don't know yet and won't know until - oh, the horrors of living in the US, having to wait so long to watch it! - probably mid-July).
Oh, and by the way, PLEASE REVIEW! Please, oh please, oh please!
Thanks:D
Dreams and Nightmares
Chapter 1
The Time and Relative Dimension in Space ship, Type 40 TT, flew through the cosmos at a steady, undisturbed pace as her sole occupant lay in one of the many rooms inside, staring up at the ceiling.
Alone again, the Doctor thought solemnly. But perhaps it was better that way. Every time he found companionship, it never lasted long. Most of his traveling companions had been dear friends; some had even brought out a fatherly or grandfatherly attitude from him. But there were a few – a very small few – that had meant so much more, whose loss had left aches in his hearts that felt impossible to mend.
Sarah Jane Smith had been one of those people. Having traveled with her for some years, it hadn't taken long for him to fall completely for her uniquely fragile and yet amazingly strong personality. She was extremely smart with a wit that most of the time rivaled his own. She was a lady and a warrior at the same time. And when he had left her on Earth for the last time, his hearts ached for his loss. It had been good to see her again in that school, saving the day once again with her and K-9. But, while for her it had been a meager twenty-five years or so since they last met, it had been several hundred years for him. While he couldn't admit it while they had traveled together, he knew now, and could admit to himself, that he had been in love with her, just as he had been in love with Rose Tyler.
Rose had been his salvation. He had been a broken man when he'd met her in that shop basement. The interminably long war – The Last Great Time War – had left him with nothing: no family, no friends, not even a home or a people. He'd laid in the TARDIS, just as he was now, still dressed in the clothes from his previous life, thinking about how utterly alone he was going to be for the next several hundred years. He hadn't even looked in a mirror since his regeneration, disgusted with himself for what he had done and yet knowing deep down that he had had no other choice. It was either destroy the Daleks along with his own people or let the Daleks destroy the universe and become the only race in existence.
When he finally did change his clothes from the stolen Edwardian Wild Bill Hickock New Year's Eve costume which had become his favorite outfit for the past couple hundred years, he chose an outfit that reflected his soul and clad himself completely in black. A plus was that he didn't have to look in the mirror to be sure that he looked fine in the outfit. Everyone looked good in black, even if it wasn't exactly a color that everyone should wear. Not that he cared whether he looked good or not.
Perhaps it was a streak of self-destructive behavior that caused him to visit the places that he did. Or perhaps it was just a case of a miserable person needing to be near more miserable people in order to feel better. He wasn't really sure which it was that had led him to take a trip to 1962 to witness Kennedy's assassination. Neither was he sure why he had taking that trip to Sumatra, just hours before Krakatowa revealed its most destructive eruption. A part of him told him that he wanted to die, that he was trying to encourage himself to take the step he felt too cowardly to do: take his own life. The self-preservation reflex however was too strong. Perhaps it was a last ditch effort on his part to end his existence when he booked a cross-Atlantic cruise on a doomed ship. It was a trip that would begin his journey to salvation.
He'd left the TARDIS in an alley, determined that, should anything happen to him, the timeship would become another ignored oddity in the big city of London, another box sitting on a corner, covered with dust. Then, dressed in the best Victorian era outfit he could find in the wardrobe, he made his way into the city, deciding that he should at least enjoy the sights before becoming a witness to yet another one of humanity's greatest tragedies.
He'd been in the hotel for less than a day when he met the Daniels'. They were an eager and enthusiastic group of people and he found himself taking to them just as easily as they took to him. When he discovered that they were going to the United States on the same ship he had booked passage on, he raged against the unfairness of the situation. He didn't know what would become of the family if they did go on the journey but he did know what was going to happen to the ship. He couldn't lose anyone he cared about ever again, no matter the reason. After all, it was one family. They could have been among the survivors the first time around.
And so he did something that was completely against the rules governing time: he deliberately altered history, convincing the father to cancel his plans at the last minute. Only after the deed was done did he realize the implications of what he had done. Did he just condemn the entire human race to extinction? Seeing that the change hadn't made drastic and irreparable damage to spacetime – no Reapers appeared to purify the Earth – he felt relieved that he hadn't made a horrible mistake in saving the Daniels'. He could only guess that they had indeed survived the journey originally. At least now they wouldn't suffer the trauma he knew awaited so many others.
After saying his goodbyes to the Daniels', who insisted on having a photo taken with him, he boarded the Titanic and headed on to his destiny, not knowing that his destiny wouldn't be anything he had ever planned. When the "unsinkable" Titanic had hit the iceberg, the Doctor was sure that it was over. But it seemed fate had other plans for him. Instead of joining his people in the final and irrevocable sleep, he found himself soaked with freezing water, clinging to an iceberg. Even with his Time Lord physiology, he found himself shivering. He knew it couldn't have been from the cold. Time Lords could withstand temperatures as low as -200 degrees Celsius. The only explanation he could think of was that he was shivering with fear. He was afraid of death, of drowning on an alien world far from his orange and red world of Gallifrey, despite the fact that his home was now dead. He stayed on the iceberg for hours, helping people onto the chunk of ice floating in the ocean if they came close enough for him to reach, mourning the dead as they floated by.
There on that iceberg, the Doctor remembered why he started traveling in space and time in the first place. It wasn't just to see history happen as it was happening. He decided that being the last Time Lord meant that he had to continue to fight for the rest of the universe just as he had always, especially for that one race that had captured his imagination: the Human race. After all, the only thing he had left in his life, other than his TARDIS, was his long-time home away from home – now the only home he would ever know – the planet Earth.
Soon, sheer exhaustion was the only thing he could feel, the cold sapping his strength. For a short while, he wondered if he would regenerate there on that iceberg but the change never came as he slipped into blessed unconsciousness. He didn't even notice being pulled off of the iceberg and onto the rescue ship.
When he regained consciousness, it became obvious that the well-intending human medical personnel were going to give him a check-up, something he couldn't allow. After all, it was Victorian England. He doubted that they could cope with the realization that they had an alien life form in their midst, despite their fondness for the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. Seeing that the doctors were still helping those who really needed their help, he carefully slipped away and, pulling out the TARDIS key, called on his oldest and dearest friend – at that time, his only friend – to come to him.
And she did. Like a miraculous spectre, the TARDIS appeared on the ocean below, the door open and beckoning to him, reminding him of the one truth in his life: people and places come and go but the TARDIS has always been there for him since he rescued her from the stockyard. What was more she knew exactly what he needed to mend his guilt-filled soul, or at least a start to the process. The Doctor, like so many beings in the universe, needed someone to care for as much as he needed to be cared for himself. And being the universe's great defender wasn't going to be enough.
That being the case, the TARDIS had guided him to Rose Tyler. Yes, the Doctor had been tracking down the Nestene Consciousness. But it was the TARDIS that pointed out the Nestene Consciousness' attempt to take over the Earth once again, knowing that he would come across Rose. Sweet, beautiful, street-wise Rose. The star in his black world. The Doctor had been immediately impressed by her the moment they met. He fell in love with her shortly afterwards. She was everything he admired about the human race: courageous, curious, and caring – the three big Cs in his opinion. She always seemed to say exactly the right thing at exactly the right time, sparking his imagination and awakening his perceptions. She was worth the loss of one of his lives… and she was worth the breaking of his hearts at Canary Wharf. Despite her best intentions – and in part because of his – they were now forever separated from each other, her being now forever on the other side of a sealed temporal rift. The Doctor's only solace was that she was being well cared for. She had her mum, that idiot Mickey Smith (whom, the Doctor had to admit, wasn't really such an idiot after all), and most importantly the father she never had all her life, a Peter Tyler from another universe. Furthermore, she was continuing what he had taught her, that one person could change the world with the simplest of deeds.
With Rose no longer in his life, the universe seemed more unkind, adding to the unkindness brought on by the destruction of Gallifrey and all of the Time Lords. That is, all but one. Himself, alone in the universe again.
Sitting up, the Doctor took a breath. "No point in dwelling on things you can't control," he berated himself. He couldn't bring Rose back anymore than he could resurrect the dead. He had to live on without her and without his people. At least there still was the universe and there was his TARDIS.
Stretching, the Doctor stood, glancing at his watch as he did so. He frowned slightly as he noted the time that had passed. "We should be there by now," he told himself. "Shouldn't take that long to get to AD 1683." He didn't know what happened that particular year but that was what was fun about time and space travel. There was always the unknown adventure just around the corner.
Giving a brief yawn, he walked through the spacious bedroom and started down the hallway just outside, taking two lefts and a right before arriving at the console room of the TARDIS. Approaching the console, he grinned slightly as he brushed his fingers over the copper-colored coral-like frame almost like a lover caressing a woman. Even as he did so, however, the TARDIS lurched violently, forcing him to grab the console to keep from falling to the floor.
"What?" he exclaimed incredulously, steadying his footing just as the timeship jolted again. Swinging the monitor over so that he could read it, he stared at it as his eyes widened in shock. "We're way off course! How did we get to Sigma Alpha Theta Twelve?!"
Sigma Alpha Theta Twelve at one time was a thriving civilization at about the same technological level as Earth was in the mid-1960s. However, unlike Earth, the inhabitants of the planet had over mined their planet, causing it to implode upon itself. All that remained of the planet and its civilization was an asteroid belt that completely circled SATT One, the sun at the center of the planetary system. The only real problem with the TARDIS suddenly materializing at Sigma Alpha Theta Twelve with no explanation was that Sigma Alpha Theta Twelve was nowhere near the Solar System.
"The Directional Locator!" the Doctor surmised. "It must be damaged." Feeling the TARDIS lurch violently as a small asteroid struck the outer surface, he staggered to regain his footing again. "Well, we can't stay here. We'll get ourselves turned into mulch at this rate. Emergency dematerialization!"
There wasn't any time to reset the coordinates much less figure out what went wrong in the first place. Without thinking about the consequences, the Doctor quickly dematerialized the TARDIS, praying that the action would effectually rescue him from becoming a permanent part of the SATT System. Even as he did so, however, a low and ominous bell rang through the TARDIS as the timeship shook more violently than she had before, causing the console to light up with arching sparks.
"No no no no no!" the Doctor shouted in rapid succession, running around the console, desperately trying to keep the TARDIS under his control. "The time vortex is fading! But… that's impossible! Unless…" he started, checking the readings quickly, hoping that his thoughts would be instantly contradicted. They weren't. "The beacon is gone," he murmured with trepidation. "I could end up anywhere. Anytime. Or I could never land at all. Stuck in eternity."
Another violent shake caused the Doctor to lose his footing, sending him to the floor just as girders from the ceiling came crashing down. The Doctor screamed in agony as he was pinned under the falling ceiling. One final catastrophic jolt rocked the timeship and the TARDIS was suddenly silent except for the cries of pain from her lone pilot and the ominous distorted ring of the cloister bell.