A/N: I haven't posted anything in a while, so I thought I would now. It's just a little Bad Wolf drabble as I have been busy preparing for NaNoWriMo. Anyway, I hope you enjoy.
A Dream Within a Dream
They were running. There were always running. Maybe that was the best part. Sometimes, it was just to the comfort and safety of the TARDIS, whose doors closed behind them and cut them off from the rest of the universe.
They were laughing.
"Did you see the look on his face?" Rose said, stopping by the console, unable to stop the wide grin that broke across her face. "'What do you mean you're not a physician?'" she mocked, lowering her voice into a rough facsimile of the bespectacled courier.
The Doctor just shook his head, smiling, as he worked on the controls. "That was a close one."
Getting her laughter back under control, Rose said, "I know I've said it before, but I love traveling with you."
"It is great, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
The Doctor already knew where he wanted to go next and he grabbed for a lever, about to pull it. "In that case, may it never end."
May it never end.
May it never end.
Never end.
I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself.
I can see everything. All that is…all that was…all that ever could be.
So much time had passed since the Game Station and so much more had passed since Bad Wolf Bay. The world was as she'd thought it was before she'd met the Doctor. All that had happened. Now, the Doctor seemed no more than a dream.
It was an easy lie to believe, or it would be if not for the voice in her head. The voice of Bad Wolf.
"The dream is coming to an end." It was an ageless voice, both old and young, male and female. "It is time to take up arms."
"But which one is the dream?" Rose wanted to know.
"You were placed in this world by design."
She stiffened, remembering the heartbreak of being torn away from her Doctor, of seeing him for the last time.
"Your path has led you here so that you can offer a warning."
"A warning? To the Doctor?" She dare not even hope. "I'm going to see him again?"
"The chain of events that will determine the salvation or destruction of worlds has begun. You are the link that will set them in motion."
She felt the low thrum of the Wolf's voice as it settled in her very bones.
"Right, then," she decided. "I'll warn him, yeah, whatever it takes. But he's a whole universe away. How do I find him?"
"The walls between universes are weakening. Seize this chance. And prepare yourself for an ordeal the likes of which you have never faced."
She remembered the running. She remembered the laughing. Through the good and the bad, it had always been her and the Doctor with all of time and space at their fingertips. The thrill, the feeling of her heart beating against her ribs and she'd never felt so alive. Such a thing couldn't possibly have been a dream and if it had, she was ready with all her heart and soul to jump right back into it. In the dark and endless night where the Bad Wolf slept, she clenched her fists and nodded.
"I'm ready."
She felt the grin in the vibration of the Wolf's voice. "Good," it said. "Now…wake up."
She was back. The sky was still dark outside her window and she went to it and opened it. The breeze was cold against her skin, goose bumps forming on the flesh of her arms. She inhaled deeply of the night. And smiled.
The dream of the mundane that had been the last two years of her life was over.
The stars were going out.