Title: Perchance to Dream
Author: Gillian Taylor
Rating: K+
Summary: If the Doctor was a dream...she did not want to wake up.
Characters: Doctor(9), Rose, Jack, Ace, Doctor(7)
Spoilers: Up to the first Jack episode

Disclaimer: The Doctors, Rose, Jack, and Ace are not mine. I just like playing with them sometimes.

A/N: Thanks to nnwest for the betaing.

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"Perchance to Dream"

by Gillian Taylor

Dreams

The dream began as it always had. As sleep began to take her mind, she would find herself within the familiar trans-dimensional walls of the TARDIS' control room. However, and this was the part she hated the most; she was a mere observer in her body. She could not force her dream-self to hug the Doctor, nor could she force herself to grab Jack's arm and ask them why they had not come for her.

"Oi! Would you stop conspiring with my TARDIS?" the Doctor complained loudly as he wiped away the splatter of oil from his cheek. "You," he glared at the console, "Are supposed to be on my side."

"She just knows who's right in this case, Doctor," Jack grinned, "That would be me." He patted one of the support columns fondly.

"Jack, stop flirting with the TARDIS," Rose laughed, "And you," she turned towards the Doctor, "Try fixing the TARDIS without hitting her with the mallet this time."

"I'll have you know that sometimes you have to use brute force," the Doctor replied, somewhat tersely, "I don't like doing it, but that's all she'll respond to."

The TARDIS' console emitted a sound that was similar to 'BLAT!' as if the ship itself were disagreeing with his words. Rose only laughed harder at the noise as the Doctor looked at her balefully.

The Doctor shook his head and muttered something about 'silly apes' under his breath as he climbed back under the console. However, before he fully disappeared under the machine, the Doctor looked directly at Rose. In direct odds to their previous teasing, his face was serious, "Rose Tyler, don't forget. I'm coming for you."

The Doctor's words reverberated through her sleep fogged mind and she vaguely wondered just why he had told her that so fervently. His expression had been fearful, as if there was something important that he could not tell her about because of some antiquated law of time.

"Doctor?" she whispered as she opened her eyes.

There had been far too many nights like this. Nights where she had sat huddled in a blanket, after the dream, curled against the wall of her tiny cell and listened to the rain pour in sheets outside. With each rumble of thunder, she could imagine that she heard the sound of the TARDIS materializing on yet another amazing world. If she closed her eyes, she could almost see the Doctor and Jack as they explored the universe together. She missed those days no matter what the so-called doctors told her.

By her calculations – and the scratches on the wall – she had been in the asylum for ten days. Ten long and arduous days wherein Doctor Jenkins had told her, in his too smooth voice, that there was no such thing as the Doctor, or Jack, or the TARDIS, or any one of the magnificent things that she had seen over the past two years. He had insisted that she had invented them as some sort of coping mechanism after she had been caught in the explosion at Henriks. Rose denied it, of course, but as each day passed with no rescue she had to wonder – what if Jenkins was right?

Was the Doctor nothing but a dream? She still denied it. How could she not? Deny that she had seen the end of the world? Met Charles Dickens? Met Jack after falling from a barrage balloon in WWII London? That she had walked on a planet called Woman Wept? How could she deny those adventures? It would be like denying a part of herself.

If the Doctor was a dream…she did not want to wake up.