Dreams of Time
If you've ever seen a watch having a nervous breakdown, then you know what time felt like in the TARDIS. Rory stared at his timepiece in confusion for almost ten, twenty minutes, not that you'd be able to tell the difference, watched the hands rearrange themselves wildly. It was quarter to twelve. It was twenty past seven. It was 37 minutes past 5, 5 to four, eleven o'clock on the dot. Time wasn't properly real, not in here. And Rory Williams didn't so much hate as mildly dislike the feeling of time passing backwards or horizontally, diagonally, whichever way the Doctor chose to take them in their whimsical tour of the universe's sights, sounds and smells (less of the smells would really be appreciated in future).
Worst part was the nights; at least Rory assumed they were nights, you could never tell. Sleeping was difficult when you weren't sure exactly where or when you were, what time it actually was.
When he'd raised his concerns about living on TARDIS-time, Amy had laughed "There's no time in here. Stop fussing, you big idiot." and she'd thrown a pillow at his head. She didn't understand. She was a natural time-traveller, she was, took to it like a duck to water. Rory was more of a time...tourist, fumbling along trying to make the best of things. He was getting better, he knew it, and besides, it wasn't like he didn't enjoy visiting alien planets with the most simultaneously human and alien alien ever encountered, by him or anyone else. The Doctor was, after all, his friend too. Wasn't he?
Leaving Amy in bed, fast asleep and snoring like a hog ('I do not snore' she'd shrieked, punching him on the arm, but she so snored it was actually pretty unreal), he wandered out into the TARDIS control room where he knew the seemingly insomniac Time Lord would still be awake and rushing around the place like a housecat on Red Bull. Did he ever sleep? As in, at all? Was that something his species did? Or...not? Stepping over a discarded coat and – why was there a stuffed crocodile on the floor? - he was unsurprised to see the Doctor working on some obscure contraption. Whatever he called it this time, it had to be more imaginative than the 'timey-wimey detector' he'd shown them proudly not too long back.
"Still awake then?" Rory ventured, trying not to stare at whatever the Doctor had done to his hair. It looked almost sentient. Rule 21, Rory. Don't mention it, whatever it might be, just...don't.
"Humans, forever stating the obvious." Insulting species, again. Typical.
"Amy's still asleep, I didn't want to wake her."
"I can hear that Amy's asleep, Rory. She doesn't half snore, your wife," the Doctor grinned, oblivious entirely that he had crossed a social line. For someone who was older than Rory cared recall, he really was an idiot. Especially regarding human etiquette – example a; Amy's snoring/lack of snoring.
"No," Rory insisted pointedly, hoping that for once the Doctor would catch his drift. "Amy doesn't snore."
Realisation, at last, hit the Time Lord's face and he mumbled something about it probably being the engines before sheepishly adjusting his bow tie and turning back to his suddenly riveting work.
On impulse, Rory decided to say something he was still in two minds about. "Thank you, Doctor. I've never said that. Just...thank you."
"For...what?"
Rory couldn't help but laugh. Sometimes the Doctor was this far-and-away genius, someone who Rory felt slightly embarrassed to stand next to, having only got a B in maths at GCSE. And then there were times like this, when it seemed as though the madman with a box was likely to trip over his own shoelaces, knock himself out on the TARDIS control panel and wake-up half an hour later with an idiotic grin plastered all over his face, as if he was proud of his sincere lack of spatial awareness. And it was so very human you could forget that he came from an entirely different planet and had saved the Earth so many times everyone collectively lost track. Sometimes, you wondered exactly how he had managed any of this. Presumably his earlier regenerations were...less hazardous?
"For bringing us with you," Rory finished, after he was done suppressing laughter at the Doctor's confusion. "I wasn't so sure at first, and I'm still not entirely convinced sometimes, but, well, I'm glad we came with you. Not matter how insane this gets."
The Doctor stared. He looked so thoroughly baffled Rory had to wave a hand in front of his face to make him snap back to reality. It looked almost like he was crying, and then he pulled Rory in for a hug – he was a huggy guy, the Doctor was, that didn't look likely to change any time soon.
"It's my pleasure, Mr Pond."
"Why do you call me that? You do actually know how surnames work, I know you do. So why...?"
"Do you want the truth?" Rory nodded apprehensively and the Doctor grinned. "Reminds me of those old Bond movies. Bond? Pond? Get it?" he beamed as if he was the cleverest man alive. Forget saving the Earth, no, this was clearly his proudest moment. "Amelia Pond, now, that's a fairytale name, got to keep that, but you now, Mr Pond..." the Doctor smiled wickedly "I've been expecting you."
"Please don't ever do that again ever." Rory backed away, a traumatised look on his face, then stopped. "I didn't think you'd be a Bond person anyway?"
"Of course I am, even if he does shoot rather too many people for my liking. Between you and me," the Doctor lowered his voice "I'm a little suspicious of that James Bond. His face changes rather a lot. Are we sure he's not a Time Lord in disguise?" Mischief lit up his face; meanwhile Rory rolled his eyes and tried not to laugh (Amy said it encouraged him and she knew the Doctor far better than he did, worryingly so actually). Bidding the Doctor goodnight, if it even was night, he headed back to bed, where Amy had stolen 90% of the covers and he didn't have the heart to appropriate them back so tolerated his meagre 10%, and fell asleep almost instantaneously, to dreams of exploding cuckoo clocks, as time burst around him.
The Doctor turned a dial on the control panel of the TARDIS. He yawned. It had been what, two weeks since he had last slept, a new record for him. His head slimped down on the panel and he too drifted off into dreams of...
into dreams of Gallifrey.
And the TARDIS drifted through space and time, drifted through dreams and so the TARDIS itself dreamt. What did it, that is, she, what did she dream of? Who knew? Perhaps she dreamt of freedom, that spiralling vortex of time she had stolen away with a rebellious Time Lord to. Perhaps she dreamt of life.
Who knows? Certainly not I, for I am only the writer. Who knows of what the TARDIS dreams? Not you, not I, not Rory or Amy, not even the Doctor. But still, she dreams.
Still. She. Dreams.
And she too makes a wheezing sound that might be considered snoring. If you asked the Doctor about it, he would give the same answer Rory did; 'The TARDIS doesn't snore'. So what does that say about him?
It is, one might muse, a strange sort of love, but love it is nonetheless.
So Rory sleeps. So Amy sleeps. So the Doctor, alas, the Doctor, thief in the night who stole her away (thinking on it, this could be either Amy or the TARDIS. Both. Neither. Whichever), so he sleeps.
Still she dreams, and still they travel on and on through the universe until- there.
Here we are. Where are we? Wherever it was the TARDIS dreamt us to. Listen-
"Doctor!" A voice cuts through the tumultuous crashing – sorry, I refer to of course, the landing - of time-machine.
He wakes.
He wakes.
She is unmoving now, but still yes, still, still she dreams.