Her Overactive Imagination

Doctor Who Fan-fiction

Her Overactive Imagination

She glared out between the blinds of her windows, looking for something, anything out of the ordinary. She'd been fooling herself for the last couple days, thinking at any moment the TARDIS could appear and her Story could start. Well, not really thinking, hoping. …. Wishing. …. Daydreaming. Still, it kept her entertained, made her acute to every sound and sight and disturbance.

It wasn't a bad way to see new things about the world.

She turned back to her physics, her only observation a small blue-ish light further down on the road. She was giving herself a small smile, amused by her own childish fancy. She was too old to dream of Stories and Adventure anymore. But god, how she wished.

Earlier that day she had heard a music staff scrape across the ground—eerily like the starting engines of a blue police box. She had snapped a quick 180, but I identified it quickly. Had a laugh. Wished it had been real.

Doctor Who had overtaken her life recently, but it wasn't that surprising—to a creative, imaginative girl like her, she had never stood a chance. The Doctor had embodied almost everything she ever liked in a character—near omnipotence, silliness, intelligence, darkness, pain, happiness, wisdom; a sarcasm, cheek, and nonchalant-ness that could only belong to a man who had earned his confidence. The supporting characters were fantastic, too—smart, cheeky women who brought the Doctor back to earth, a pansexual heartthrob with a knack for flirting and being a hero, and a montage of brave barely-named minor characters who were willing to sacrifice everything for the good of the world. There were amazing villains, too—the Master was her favorite kind of villain, strong and dark and cunning and crazy, and vulnerable, too, with an intensely-tied past to the Doctor. The Daleks were always beaten easily and survived like roaches, but it still made her go "Oh shit!" whenever one would appear in the sky, or their crackling metal voices come out of the distance.

She threw her pencil down, abandoning her homework as pointless, and watched episodes on her iTunes until she fell asleep.

As creative as she was, she had never been anything but a skeptic. Strange noises in the house were the pipes, or washer, or dryer. Footsteps were her parents. Strange noises were discounted as imaginary. Fantasy, and imagination, and ghosts and fairies and all those wonderful, terrifying things were imaginary, only. As creative as she was, she knew the lines between fantasy and reality.

But the slight humming, fading in and out, was a little too much for her.

She opened her eyes slowly, groggy from sleep—or lack thereof—and laid still for a moment, listening. It was still going, that humming. That clear, obvious sound of the TARDIS engines.

She sat up slowly, quietly, tapped her touch-activated lamp until the room was suffused with a gentle glow. She squinted painfully, but she still didn't see anything unusual. She looked up on her bookcase, in case her TARDIS piggy-bank had fallen down and activated the sound. Except it was still sitting there, peacefully, the little lantern at top wasn't glowing, and she had already turned the sound effects off.

She could still hear them, the engines. But surely it was her imagination; she'd had nothing but Doctor Who dreams the last couple of nights, surely she was just being an idiot.

Still, with an imagination like hers—one sometimes worried to delete threatening chain-letters in case they might be that one real one you see in the movies—she turned slowly to her door, considering getting up and investigating.

It must be all nonsense—it always was. She made herself hear what she wanted to hear. And as delirious as she was from waking up, she must have been creating the sound—so she really should just go back to sleep. She never acted at weird sounds, or slight hunches. She just had an overactive imagination.

The humming was gone. She didn't know whether to be resigned or sad. The TARDIS had never been there; that was impossible. But what if she had missed her one chance to meet the Doctor, travel with him?

She had already decided that should the chance ever come ("should" being 99.9% hypothetical), she would go in an instant. Who needed school and a job and books when you could see all of space and time?

She walked back to bed, not even aware she had walked to the door until she found herself needing to navigate her cluttered floor back. Her eyelids were fluttering again, already tired once more.

And then there were voices.

Normally she would have expected it to be her parents—even if it was unusual for him to be awake at the obscene hour of 3 a.m. But the male voice was too high for deep father, and the woman's voice too young.

She was totally awake now, and creeping towards her door before her body had time to register a desire to move. She pressed herself quietly against the door, straining her ears. She could hear voices, and that they were talking. What they were saying she hadn't the foggiest. But there were definitely people in her house.

Part of her was scared—what if this wasn't the Doctor and Amy Pond ("if"? "IF" they weren't the Doctor and Amy Pond?). What if, driven to madness by desire and sleep-deprivation, she was imaging what they sounded like, putting "known" identities to the voices of burglars? What if they attacked her? Killed her? She didn't want to die just because she was stupid enough to believe in some fantasy.

There footsteps coming down the staircase, now. Near her room. The voices were a little louder, a bit clearer.

"I told you the sensors were pointing to somewhere around here!" the man's voice chided smugly, sounding altogether amused with himself. "Now all we need to do is locate the source and find a way to cancel the neural-emissions opitcal-izer-ma-thingy and stop the materialization of these bizarre manifestations! Hmmm, that sounded too similar. Materialzation, manifestation, mani, mani… Hmmm, I do like manatees—cute things, maybe we should adopt one—do you think we could call them manateeezations? Oh, or is that still too similar… Ouch! I never was fond of stairs…"

"Will you shut up?" came a snappy female's voice with a Scottish accent.

Her heart was pounding somewhere behind her ears, her breathing shallow or entirely stopped. She wasn't actually sure. Either way, it couldn't be true. She was fooling herself. This was all nonsense! The Doctor wasn't real; the TARDIS wasn't real, there WAS no Sonic Screwdriver, 3D glasses did not let you see Void matt—

"Oh look, someone's awake." Her heart stopped completely as she realized her touch-lamp was on. Just a little bit, but enough to make a yellow crack glow from under her door.

The footsteps approached closer, and she had no idea what to do.

The door handle turned, and she sprung backwards, almost tripping over tossed-aside clothes and an ill-positioned bean-bag chair. The door opened all the way, and a man peeked his head inside.

He had a face both old and young at the same time, with floppy brown hair and an idiotic smile. And a bowtie, right under his chin.

"Why you're the one setting off the sensors!" he said happily. He came full-on into the room, looking around with satisfaction. "Oh, yes, I can see it!" He looked around the walls, focusing mostly on the pictures she had drawn and tacked up above her desk. "Come look at this, Pond! Just the kind of mind that's perfect for hijacking and using as a creation hub!" He finished looking about the room, resting finally on the bookcase to his left—he gave a quick happy laugh and clapped his hands, one of which was holding something. "Look, it's the TARDIS! I told you we were a show on the telly in a parallel universe! Ah, it's even the old kind from back before I regenerated! Isn't that adorable, Pond?"

She stared at him, barely believing her eyes or ears. It was him. Matt Smith. No, no, the Doctor. The actual Doctor. He looked just like Matt Smith, but Matt Smith was just an actor—an actor on Doctor Who. Did that mean Matt Smith (and David Tennant, and Christopher Eccleston, and Tom Baker) were all parallel-universe-realities of the Doctor?

Oh, they'd flip!

Another face appeared around the edge of the door, a young face with flaming red hair. She caught sight of her and blinked.

"Oh, sorry about this," the girl said in her Scottish accent. "We'll be out of your hair in a tick."

"You're… Doctor…" she found herself stuttering. The Scottish girl—Amy Pond—blinked in surprise and turned to the Doctor.

"How does she know about us?" she asked, playing with the end of her long red scarf. The Doctor was running a green light over her pictures—the Sonic Screwdriver she realized as her heart skipped a beat—and humming a strange, discordant rhythm to himself.

"I told you, Pond! This is an alternate reality, a parallel universe. In this universe, we don't exist, nor ever did. Except! that a couple very clever people with some knowledge of our universe knew about us, and made a show on the telly chronicling our adventures! Isn't that cool?" he asked, clapping his hands and drawing out the "cool" like he did on the TV show.

She didn't do drugs, so her thought of "I have to lay off!" went by rather meaninglessly.

He pointed towards the TARDIS on her bookshelf and nodded to Amy. "See? And by the looks of this TARDIS model and that tossed-aside Doctor Who Magazine wrapper (I have a magazine? Oh, that's cool!) she's a rather large fan, as well." He walked up to her, running his sonic screwdriver over her a couple times.

"W-why are you guys here?" she asked, fighting to keep her voice normal. This was what she had always dreamed of! … Well, starting a week ago. But still! It was happening! And she was terrified! "You can't be real! I'm not crazy, and I'm not stupid! I know the Doctor and Rose and Martha and Amy Pond and Rory are all made-up, someone else's creations! Oh god, I'm going insane," she moaned to herself. The Doctor was just smiling tremendously and looking very amused.

"You are well versed, aren't you? Well, I have to say that I am one hundred percent real! Well, maybe ninety-five. Eighty. … Two. Well, regardless! I'm here, and we need your brain!" She jumped five feet in the air and Amy Pond executed a beautiful, text-book face-palm. Without any ceremony whatsoever, the Doctor grabbed her face and pulled up her eyelids one by one, shining the sonic screwdriver into each in turn.

"You see, you're actually asleep right now. No, no, this doesn't mean it's a dream, it just means you're asleep. You see, you're brilliant! Well, not as brilliant as me, but you have such a mind for creating things! Like you're more discovering these worlds and characters of yours instead of making them, right?" He stood up straight, pushed his sonic screwdriver into the inside pocket of his shirt, and turned back towards the walls. She was just nodding dumbly.

"Well, Pond and I have been chasing a rather clever alien whose been nesting inside the brains of brilliant little children like yourself—" he pinched her cheeks as he said this like he was her grandmother— "and has been using their creative powers to manifest monsters to attack Pond and I! Materialize. Manateelize."

"DOCTOR!"

"Right, so, we've been chasing him from person to person and he's finally rested in your—" he poked her forehead "—head, and we've managed to corner him this time, and we should be able to get him out just fine!"

"Am I in danger?" she asked weakly. Her knees were shaking and she was feeling weak. Meeting the Doctor wasn't as wonderful as she had thought it'd be. She was being used as some alien puppet, and she did not like it.

"Not at all! Well, maybe some. But we should be able to get it out just fine!" he shouted confidently, snapping his fingers. The volume reminded her of her sleeping family, and she felt a moment of panic.

"My parents, my siblings! What's happened to them?" she shouted, grabbing the edges of his tweed jacket. His eyes widened in alarm, taken off guard, but he quickly righted himself.

"Nothing, they're fine! Honestly! Time Lord's honor!" Amy flashed him a quick look like she couldn't believe he'd mentioned he was a Time Lord, but he pointed for a moment at the TARDIS and then turned back to her. "The alien currently residing inside your head has put up a barrier around this house that causes everyone inside it to fall unconscious. Amy and I aren't asleep because I'm a Time Lord and Amy has the TARDIS wrapped around her brain, and you're moving around because you're dreaming!"

"Because the alien's in my head?"

"No, no, because your mind works differently!" he replied as if that was something to be happy about. "You're too creative and imaginative to let little things like this affect you; the power of your thoughts just carries you right through, and even though you are unconscious and asleep, you're still tangible!"

His explanation didn't make any sense, but she had a feeling they weren't usually supposed to.

"Okay," she responded weakly, still holding onto his jacket. "How do I get it out of me?" He beamed at her.

"There's a smart girl! Now, in order to stay with you, he's had to hide himself deep inside your brain, ghosting about in the areas where you create this brilliant little projects of yours!" He tapped her cheek a couple times. "So, I need you to focus on this alien—this alien you have absolutely no idea of—and create him. Think of a form, a personality, details, anything. Your mind is powerful enough to draw him out of the recesses of your brain and make him materialize in front of us, much the same way he's been manipulating that brilliance of yours to make monsters to run a muck in our universe!" She stared at him, open-mouthed and gaping.

"I can't create something that I don't know of!" she gasped. The Doctor shook his head firmly.

"But what about all those stories of yours? You didn't know them before you made them. It's the same here!"

"But this thing actually exists, it has properties that must be adhered to because they already are, and, and… a mind, and a will, and a body, somewhere, and—" she protested, starting to feel panicky. Amy shook her head and smiled at her, silencing her.

"This alien thingy is feeding off your thoughts and integrating itself into you—you have absolute control over it. If you create it in this reality and call it forth, it'll be exactly as you think it is and exactly as you create it," she assured her.

"Then I could make it a cute, fuzzy, harmless bunny? Or one of my actual characters? I could make anything I want?" she asked, looking between Amy and the Doctor. The Doctor shook his head, sending a not-much-believed-in-anyway wave of disappointment sweeping through her.

"Just like you feel like you're 'discovering' your stories, you'll be 'discovering' the alien, as well," he explained. "Except that you actually will be discovering the alien." She gulped nervously and nodded.

"So that's all I do? Imagine it's will and create it?"

"That's it!" the Doctor agreed enthusiastically. "It'll try to fight back by resisting you and making you forget parts of it, but you just have to keep fighting it and drag it into creation! When you do, I'll zap him with the sonic screwdriver and he'll dissipate into harmless little psychic particles. Sound good?"

She didn't entirely know how to respond to that. So she just nodded.

"Excellent!" he cried, clapping his hands together. "Now, we need a nice wide space in order to give us as much room as possible. Ah! That upstairs room of yours should do nicely! Shall we go up there and let the fun begin?" he finished in an odd, playful voice. She felt a shiver move down her space, but nodded numbly and followed him out her room and up the stairs.

He pushed the couch back a little and shoved the Total Gym out of the way until they had a wide area around them. He clapped his hands, satisfied, and spun back towards her, Amy sitting comfortably on the top of the couch and watching the proceedings.

"Alright! Ready to begin?" he asked. She nodded, and he clapped once more. "Oh, I'm clapping a lot, aren't I?" he noted after a moment, looking at his hands and clapping again. "I rather like it! So!" he clapped once more and looked back to her. "What you need to do is close your eyes and picture the alien in your head, perfectly! Every sight, every sound, how it would feel, how it would move, as much detail as you can! No matter what, don't open your eyes, alright? You'll break your concentration and it'll go right back into your head! Okay, you can start whenever you want to!"

She blinked a few times, reeling. She couldn't believe this was real. It was all happening so fast, like a whirlwind. But it couldn't be real! The Doctor and Amy Pond didn't exist! She was dreaming, just like he said, but she was dreaming of them. She had to be, it was the only thing that made sense.

But she did know when she was dreaming. And she didn't feel like it, this time.

She screwed her eyes closed and tried to focus as much as she could. Alright, and alien. Something strange and wriggly living in her head. She tried to imagine what it would look like. Amorphous, blobby, if it was good at getting in heads. Not entirely tangible or solid (er… liquid), since it could get into thoughts. A bit see-through, then, to show how not-there it was. And black, a deep, terrifying black that bubbled in and out like something alive. Well, it was alive! And there were teeth… hundreds of small, jagged, needle-teeth that grew in a mouth that could be any size at all it wanted.

"Good, good, keep going!" the Doctor shouted. She started to smile, but suddenly she felt a wrenching in her mind.

What color was it? No, she couldn't think of anything! She fought desperately for it, for those thoughts. Color, color, black—black had a long history of being associated with evil, and whatever this thing that was living in her head was, it had to be evil. Evil with nasty teeth like the most terrifying monsters, beady eyes that couldn't really see. It left furrows in the carpet in its wake, depressed under not only its blobby body but just its very presence. It could make growling sounds, deep, angry. And the smell… well, it smelled like nothing. Because it was nothing.

There was a high-pitched, electronic whining and a horrendous roar.

Her eyes flew open of their own accord, and sitting before her on the floor of her living room was an enormous, black blob, slightly transparent, roaring murderously at the Doctor as he tried to use his sonic screwdriver to dissipate it. The alien was a black, moving blob set on low opacity (what a time to revert to Photoshop terms!) with a fearsome mouth she could just see, teeth like shark teeth after being struck by hammers.

It suddenly turned on her, small, black eyes flashing, and she screamed as it dove towards her, back towards the mind. The whine of the sonic screwdriver became even more intense, and the Doctor shouted "No!"

With a sudden puff of white-silver lights that looked much like snowy stars, the alien vanished. She was breathing hard, her heart pounding, the Doctor looking like he'd been under strain, too. His eyes caught hers and he smiled widely, a smile that said "We won."

"You did it!" Amy shouted, leaping and hugging the Doctor from her safe place several feet away. She let go of the Doctor and ran to her, hugging her as well. "Good job! You were brilliant!" She let herself have a smile—she was tired and scared and high on adrenaline, but triumphant, too, and it felt wonderful. Amy Pond let go and the Doctor came over as well and hugged her; her heart skipped a beat for an entirely different reason than any before, making her blush. But he didn't seem to notice.

"What Amy said! Very well done! What an ugly brute he was, eh?" he asked jovially, letting go of her and taking a few steps back, swaying back and forth as if he was so pleased he couldn't contain himself. "Brilliant, absolutely brilliant!" He turned to Amy. "Now this means we should be able to get to our universe just fine!" She felt fear for a moment, a sudden panic.

"Wait!" she shouted, grabbing the Doctor's jacket once again. "Can I come with you? Please! I won't be a nuisance, I won't slow you down, I won't make stupid requests and try to change times in ways it can't be changed! Please, I'm so bored with my ordinary life, I want adventure!" His look was sad and patient, and she felt her stomach freeze over and her heart go numb.

"I have no doubt you'd be brilliant," he told her gently, resting a hand on hers, "but the connection that drew us here was severed when the alien was destroyed; we're only able to stay in this universe for a little while while the connection fizzles out. I could take you with us," he continued, "but it would mean you could never see your family again. You could never see your friends again, or this house again, or this life again. You couldn't even call them on the phone, or send messages-in-bottles to them through space and time. Traveling between universes is tricky; this alien attacked us and thus brought us here, but we can't guarantee that happening again."

She stood there quietly, thinking about that. She had made up her mind what seemed a long time ago to go with the Doctor should the opportunity show itself, that she would leap aboard the TARDIS and run off to new times and places and peoples. But that was because she thought she could call her parents whenever and say "hi". That she could come back on the day she'd left, if she wanted to, and finish her schooling, and be an author, just like she'd always dreamed. That she could come back and visit, sometimes.

She loved her family so much, she didn't know if she could just leave them.

"But I want to go," she said quietly, feeling tears drift down her cheeks. He put a hand on her head and leaned his forehead against hers.

"Having a good family is a wonderful adventure," he assured her, smiling comfortingly. "And with what you can create, I'm sure the universe would just seem boring and dull and orderly to you. Anything you can see you can imagine—especially with a mind like that. You'll be happy here, I know it." She looked up at him, their eyes meeting, and he smiled approvingly to her.

Scratchy radio music blared over her speakers—loud enough to make her panic and wake up for school. She slammed her hand on the top of her alarm clock and sat up, cursing the public school system and alarm clocks and dreams too good to have to wake up from.

For a moment she was confused by this last thought, but then she remembered her dream.

She fell back onto her bed, moaning quietly. It had been a dream. She knew it! What a fool she was, to think it was real. Still, it'd been great. And terrifying. But fun! Getting to meet the Doctor, and Amy Pond, and see the Sonic Screwdriver. Oh, if only she'd been able to see the TARDIS before she had to wake up, at least! And she'd fought an alien! It had been great and fantastic, and a dream she'd never forget.

She put her hand down on the box that served as her bedside-table and blinked in surprise as her hand came down on a quarter she hadn't remembered putting there. She scratched her head, stared at the quarter for a moment, then with a fond smile got up to put it in her TARDIS piggy bank.

She lifted it off the bookcase, flicked the switch on the bottom to "ON", and replaced it on the shelf. Inside was a picture of the Tenth Doctor (her favorite, but don't let the Matt Smith-looking Doctor know), and Martha, and when the doors opened a small audio clip of either Martha or David Tennant in terrible quality would play. It had been $20 and a TARDIS and totally worth it, though she'd already heard all the phrases. She smiled at it warmly for a moment, then pushed on the double-doors to make them open.

"Bowties are cool!" the audio clip came, crisp and clear as if the Eleventh Doctor was standing right next to it. She froze for a moment, shocked, an image of the Doctor pointing his sonic screwdriver at the little TARDIS piggybank before he left flashing in her head.

She laughed ecstatically and hugged the TARDIS with all her might.

[END]

A short Doctor Who fan-fic, featuring the Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond, and myself -SHOT- Based off the line "her overactive imagination" and the real-life occurrence of looking out the window and seeing the blue light. I tried to not be too awful, but there's a very fine line between main-character and Mary Sue, and I think I crossed it a couple times. XDDDD I didn't feel too bad until I had the Doctor keep telling me I was brilliant—but I had to make myself special somehow, and he does have a habit of lavishing the humans he's dealing with with praise anyway. XDDDDD strikeThat's no excuse! LOLLLL/strike This was fun to write, and I enjoyed it immensely, and that's all that matters. ^_^ Certain facts have been falsified since I plan on putting it on dA. ;)