Yeah, everyone's done one of these, so here's my two cents into the pot or hat or whatever.
This, though, is the first story in what will hopefully be a trilogy. As generally kind of an introduction more than anything else, this will be light on adventure and heavy on the feels. I hope you forgive me for what I have done and will continue to do to the Pete's world characters of DW.
P.S. I am still very much in the midst of writing my story. So I can't really promise regular updates or even fast updates. Some will come faster, some not. That's it. And I don't have a beta. If someone has an inexplicable urge to become my beta, that would be a rather welcomed development.
7 years after Journey's End.
Rose woke up in the middle of the night. She was having the golden dreams again. They would come and go periodically, each bout of dreams longer than the last. It was not as if they were bad in any way, just strangely intense, as if the gold light surrounding her was sentient somehow, ancient and powerful. She could never go back to sleep after them.
Her side felt cold. She was alone in bed. For a while now, the only sleep the Doctor would allow himself were a couple of hours after dinner when he would fall into their bed exhausted. And then she would not see him again until breakfast.
Rose sighed and got out of bed, slipping on the dressing gown she had by the bed. She had a good guess at where he most probably was at this time of night. Rose went downstairs, out the house and across their backyard to the secluded, walled off garden at the back of their lot.
The secret garden was like a picture from another world, though not of just any strange world; it was like the plantations on Gallifrey. Or so the Doctor said. She could see it in his eyes every time she saw him enter the garden, though. After years of this, and it still so obviously hurt to have such a tangible reminder of all he'd lost.
In the middle of this relatively extraordinary garden, though, stood a very ordinary and rather Earthy shack, rickety and nondescript. But the exterior was deceiving; its insides were even stranger than the surrounding garden. A complicated-looking system of machines, a metal and wire ragtag of human and alien technology, all that the Doctor could get that might slightly resemble the technology on Gallifrey, surrounded, humming and beeping, a large cylinder tank of water, inside of which was the new, young TARDIS.
The strange flora in the secluded garden was a direct result of the TARDIS growing and consuming, altering the DNA of the environment around her in the process. Everything, in a way, reminded a flower, a tree, a plant on Earth, but was not quite right. Just like the Time Lords – they look like humans, but they most certainly are not.
She spied him sitting on the park bench against the far wall where, during the daytime and if the weather obliged, the sun would create the brightest, warmest spot. She hesitated for just a moment and then approached him. He was looking at the sky. It was august and the Milky Way was on display in its full splendour. He would do this; every time they were out after dark, he would immediately turn his eyes to the sky, seeing stars and planets and constellations even when there were none to be seen.
She stopped in front of him. Just as she looked up at the sky, he looked down at her.
"Anything interesting pop up tonight?" she asked, marvelling at the stars.
"No," he replied with a sigh. "Same old Milky Way galaxy. Well, not quite. Same old parallel Milky Way galaxy."
She looked at him and there was a moment of silence between them. It was heavy. She licked her lips nervously.
"Come to bed."
He turned his gaze away. "I'm just waiting on a scan analysis. This patched up Earth technology is not nearly fast enough. I'm not nearly done for tonight."
"All right," she said with a sigh. "I'll just… I'll just be back in the house then."
The Doctor's eyes snapped back to her face, studying it carefully. "You're not gonna go back to sleep?"
"No."
"It's the dreams again," he surmised immediately. "How long it's been now?"
"A couple of weeks."
"A couple of…? Why don't I know about this?"
She shrugged a shoulder. She didn't know why he always got so upset about them. They were merely dreams. And he didn't know because he hadn't slept beside her once during the entire time.
His look was slightly beseeching. She pressed her lips together so as not to snap at him.
The small tableau next to him on the bench chirped. It was his remote control to the technology helping grow the TARDIS. He looked torn for a moment, between what Rose had said about the dreams and the analysis results on the small screen.
"I…" he faltered, "I need to see to this." He waved the tableau. His eyes flickered between Rose and the screen as he pushed and slid his fingers along its surface.
"Yeah, sorry. I'll leave you to it then." And she left him there pushing and prodding at the tableau.
The TARDIS needed what she needed. That's what Rose told herself day in and day out.
She didn't see him watching her walk away from him. Didn't see the look of longing as he took her in, clad only in her light little dressing gown that barely reached mid-thigh and his highwellingtons that she had slipped into only because it had been the fastest option.
It's short, I know. Consider this chapter as just a taste of the story yet to unravel.