She Sleeps, a doctor who fanfic

She Sleeps

Rating: K+ (just to be on the safe side!)

Pairing: 10thDoctor/Rose (9thDoctor/Rose hints).

Summary: "It's this crazy insomnia making her mull things over that's responsible for the tears she desperately wishes to shed." Rose is having trouble sleeping after the regeneration. Post Parting of the Ways, so obviously this contains spoilers for the series finale.

Disclaimer: Writing and idea is mine, characters etc. belong to various parties including but not restricted to the BBC and Russell T. Davies.

A/N: Well, I've never attempted a Doctor Who fic before as until the new series started it just floated on the edge of my consciousness rather than taking up 50 of my thinking time like it does now. ;) But I absolutely love this series and think the whole thing is just…wonderful, so when the idea for this fic just sort of…floated into my brain, I decided to try it out and see what happened. Personally I'm pleased with the result, but please tell me what you think by leaving a review. Constructive criticsm welcome, flames will be fed to my beta Okeanos.

Dedicated to: My beta Okeanos and all on the Britishisms thread at Fiction Alley, for giving me someone to debate CE vs. DT with.

She can't help but think that she's made a bad habit out of insomnia.

She's never had trouble sleeping before, but now, at the age of twenty, she's suddenly developed an annoying inability to sleep past 4.00am, and to be perfectly truthful it's starting to drive her crazy, lying there in the dead of night, her mind trying to get to all the thoughts she's pushed aside during the day.

Thoughts of…

No. No, she has to stop this. She can't let herself go there, to that place in her mind where things are still the same, where nothing has changed.

Because things have changed, and thinking about it isn't going to bring him back. She can hope and wish and pray, desperately pray, as much as she wants, but he's not coming back.

It's this crazy insomnia making her mull things over that's responsible for the tears she desperately wishes to shed. Sometimes the pain of holding them in is unbearable, and she has to get up and find a drink, her vision blurring as her shaking hands reach for the tap and hold the glass under a streaming torrent of water. But even then, as she gulps down the icy cold drink and lets it ease her throat, she won't let them fall.

Somehow she feels like it's a punishment, causing herself this burning, aching pain that feels as though it runs the entire length of her oesophagus. After all, it's her fault he's gone, isn't it?

He hasn't told her what happened of course – how could he? Oh, by the way Rose, it was you who did this to me – but in the end he hadn't needed to. Like someone who'd found an old photograph and was only now remembering the time within it, she would turn a corner and see something gold glinting in the sun, or catch that familiar scent of leather, and the memories would trickle through the little gaps in her brain and flicker before her eyes like flames.

And so through this it had come to her in bits and pieces. Oddly, she'd remembered the feeling of reshaping the Earth first; she'd been sitting eating her lunch, and for some reason something (she thought now that it might have been the lettuce in her BLT sandwich) had suddenly shot her backwards into her memories. Her hand had been tingling and her eyes stinging, almost unbearably, and she'd seen before her that tiny globe of a homeworld burning, being inexorably destroyed by the Dalek forces – and then rather abruptly a feeling of annoyance had swept over her, like you might feel trying to shoo a fly out of the window, and the continents had started reshaping and the screams of the dying had faded and stopped, and the Earth was whole again.

The rest had followed shortly afterwards. The destruction of the Daleks, the Bad Wolf, that excruciating throbbing pain in her head, all of it; but the bit that had broken her heart – really, really shattered it – was the kiss. Irony had followed irony and it had come back to her whilst foreign lips left their imprint on her mouth. She'd yelped and jumped away as though scalded, her mind and body shaking as the memory had inescapably engulfed her – the smell, the touch, the taste – it was all there, drowning her.

Killing her.

She'd passed it off as standing on something sharp, trying to laugh it off as he'd raised his eyebrows and bent down to brush a tentative hand over the floor in search of jagged shards. He could be gentle and so silly like that. So different.

But she hadn't carried on kissing him, saying she wasn't feeling well and wanted to lie down for a while. The tears had almost fallen then, as she lay on the duvet and hugged the pillow to her, but every time she shut her eyes she'd see it, feel it too – perhaps that was the worst part of all, feeling his lips on hers whilst the throbbing pain lessened and the time vortex – she was sure now that was what it was – drained away and left her to fall into night time, and sleep.

And she'd slept then too.

It had been the last time the dark had come willingly, unnecessarily, to her aid and given her a deep and dreamless sleep. Now it's all she can do to pass through the few hours of rest she receives without half-waking from some far-away, ephemeral dream of leather jackets and daft grins and the word fantastic searing itself across her brain.

It had been better when Jack was there, she was sure of that. At least then she'd had someone to lean on, someone who understood, at least a little bit, what she was going through. Finding him again had been the brightest point for her in those weeks after the regeneration; seeing his face had brought her a joy she wouldn't have guessed at. She hadn't been alone then.

But now he's gone, off on his own adventures without them, and once again she's lonely, longing for the company of someone who understands.

But she's alone.

The burning sensation is back again. She puts a hand to her throat and tries to swallow the looming pain away, but it sticks there, unmoving and unmerciful. The tears are rising again, and she has to stop them, has to keep them to herself because if she doesn't…if she doesn't…

If she doesn't he will hear her, and then after that…after that, she doesn't know.

"Rose?"

The sob escapes from her throat unbidden and she slaps her hand over her mouth as though to stop anymore from following; but it's too late, and her trembling body is wracked by another sob, and then another and another until she is crying uncontrollably into his shoulder.

"Rose," he murmurs and pleas, rocking them both gently backwards and forwards as they sit there in the dark in a tangle of linen and plum duvet covers, "Please don't cry Rose."

But she's held these tears in for too long and now they are as overwhelming as a tidal wave, flooding down her cheeks and soaking the soft skin in the crook of his shoulder. All she can see beneath her eyelids are the flashing, split-second images of a thousand memories stored deep within her head; memories of leather jackets and daft grins and the word fantastic searing itself across her brain.

She shakes her head against the noise, the light, the colour, but it won't stop.

It won't stop.

"Rose?"

His voice, gentle and entreating, draws her back a little from the edge she is so near, and she leans back to look at him through blurry eyes. She blinks the tears away softly and reaches a hand to his face, watching as he leans into it and turns his face slightly to kiss her palm. She studies the dark eyes that are looking at her through the shadows, the pale skin, the shock of brown hair and the still-long nose.

This is the moment when she realises that she loves him.

And although she feels as though it should come as a surprise to her, it doesn't. This man, who rose from that strange golden light like a phoenix from the flames, whose features resemble and differ from those of his forbearer so greatly, this man is the man she loves. She has only ever loved one man in her life, and he is him.

He has changed, and the change has taken her too, a little bit, but she realises now – only now? she wonders fleetingly – that she is still the same person, the same Rose who won a fancy dress competition at Butlins when she was four and fell in love with a Time Lord at nineteen; and in the same way he is still the same man who rescued her from the tedium of life with his little blue box – did I also mention it travels in time? – and the same man who finally showed her Barcelona, where you can tell the same joke every day and never get bored.

"Tell me what's wrong Rose?" he asks, in that strange very-British accent she's slowly gotten used to, his fingertips brushing over her damp cheeks.

"Nothing Doctor," she tells him and, for the first time in a long time, she feels a sincere smile forming on her lips – not that too-familiar facsimile of the last few months, but a true smile that makes her eyes crease in the corners and will be responsible for those first few wrinkles she knows she will hate. "It was a just a dream, that's all."

They are silent for a moment as they study each other wordlessly in the dark, and then she feels his mouth descend on hers and she loses herself completely to his taste. Except this time, it's not to block out the pain of losing someone else.

Because he's still here.

Afterwards she lies in his arms, a small smile on her lips as she listens to the double-hammer of his heartbeats slow down and finally steady, and at last the night, which has evaded her for so long, comes to her, and she sleeps.

She sleeps.