Thank you, Lori, for helping step into another fandom. Even with these baby steps!
For Miss Andromache who requested a Rose/Ten fic, and simply because I love her.
She knows that the dreams started after Norway, not long after that day on the beach. They always start out the same but break up at different points; never reaching a conclusion, never finding her answer. The dreams have her waiting, wanting and searching.
Sometimes the dreams are simply memories. Memories of a beautiful day, the air filled with the tantalizing scent of apple grass and all she remembers is how perfectly happy she was in that moment. Memories of his hand reaching for hers as they ran and ran and ran. Despite the danger, all she remembers is the warmth of his hand clasping hers and how safe he made her feel.
There are times that the dreams are not memories, simply new conversations with her interchangeable doctor. Sometimes it's her first doctor, with his intense blue eyes and brooding nature. "Don't you remember anything about time? Didn't you learn even that much?"
"I don't understand. What are you talking about?"
"Of course you don't. Just try. Remember time should be linear for you. Think like you humans should, think linear."
In the dreams with him, she always got the sense that he was urging her towards something, needed something from her. In the mornings, the lingering scent of leather and the sense of loss always overwhelm her.
Sometimes it's her "new" doctor, all manic energy and cheeky smiles. He swirls at her talking at a hundred miles an hour and she just lets the words flow over her, a balm to her fractured heart. At times he asks her to remember this time, or that moment. It's when he gets serious, his smiles fading to a dark visage that she really listens. "Remember how fragile it is?"
"What is?"
He grabs her hand, urging her to understand. "Time. Use it, Rose. Let her do what she can." He lets go, and she instinctively reaches out for him but he is already moving away.
"Please, Doctor. Stay." But he is already gone and once again she wakes from these dreams, her face riddled with tear stains.
Close to a year after being left behind, he's there again, waiting for her. His tie is crooked, hair still rumpled and a soft smile on his face. "Rose. It's time."
He reaches out for her, and pulls her close. She inhales the scent of him, his so familiar scent and clings tightly to him. "For what? Time for what? Doctor?" But he is already moving away from her, fading slowly.
And this time, when Rose wakes up, she knows, finally knows what he has been trying to tell her all along.
Standing on the beach here at Dårlig Ulv Stranden, over a year after the Doctor said his good-bye, Rose is finally ready to say hers. She had spent the past year living in a haze of sorrow and regret, selfishly clinging to a past that doesn't exist for her. All she wanted was to go back, not caring who she left here, wishing she could change things for her and her alone. She didn't allow herself to realize that she had been given a second chance to have a family, a real family.
It was time to let go.
So she stands there stoic, in the bitter cold, and finally lets time do what it is suppose to do, what the Doctor had been trying to let her know. If she allowed it, time could break her, change her into something unrecognizable. Instead she will let time heal her, help her move forward.
After that day on the beach, in Norway, Rose never again dreamed about the Doctor.