Irrational Talk

The pollen was gone now, he knew it, and the TARDIS kept on telling him it was fact, but he was afraid. Afraid of himself, of the darkness in his own mind. Of meeting with the supposed 'Dream Lord' once again.

The problem now wasn't necessarily that. The problem now was he hadn't slept in close to a week and he was exhausted. He found it harder to think, he found it harder to keep up to Amy and Rory, he found he could barely keep his eyes open right now.

Now, he was sitting on the chair in the console room, staring bleakly at the time rotor and wondering whether it would be worth going to bed, if only for a short nap. That'd be enough rest. Even for only an hour.

He was getting too old for this sort of nonsense. Why was he getting scared over shadows and things that weren't necessarily real to begin with?

'Because,' the nasty voice inside his head stated, clear as day, 'you know it's the truth, not just your imagination.'

Sighing and rubbing his face with his hands, he got up off the seat and made his way to the console, set on going somewhere else after the rather boring trip he'd just been on.

If he had to think too hard on it, he'd swear the TARDIS was taking him to places that didn't need help, which the TARDIS knew he'd find boring. To places she knew he'd have trouble staying awake.

Amy and Rory had been enjoying themselves though, thinking it a right good holiday. It was lively enough for them, without the near death experiences. For him it was bordering on deathly dull. Dull was not good for him, at all.

"Hey," came a voice behind him and he whirled around, not knowing how he had manage to let Rory sneak up behind him. He looked around for Amy but she was mysteriously absent. Since the whole Dream Lord thing, those two had been together continuously.

"Rory, my friend! Anywhere you'd like to go this time? Haven't really asked you that much. If at all. Sorry. Guess I've just been trying to take you two to...fun places. Well, fun for you and Amy anyway...but that isn't the point!"

Rory stared at him for a while before shrugging and pointing towards the corridor that led to his and Amy's room. "Amy's sleeping. She'd kill me if I went anywhere without her."

The Doctor frowned. "She would too. Ah well, later then." Before he could say anything else, he felt himself slide to one side of the console, and barely stopped himself falling flat on his face. In front of Rory. Oh wow, he was getting to be as bumbling as his companions. Not good. Very much not good.

"You need to sleep," Rory said from out of nowhere, and the Doctor quickly straightened himself up and ran a hand through his hair.

"Oh? What would you know about anything like that?"

Rory grinned at him, and he shifted on the spot. "I'm a nurse. Maybe not as high up and mighty as a proper doctor, Doctor, but I can tell when someone is exhausted. You haven't slept since that whole dream world thing."

His face fell when he realised that he may not have been hiding his state as well as he thought he was. "Oh. You know about that?"

"Yeah. If it helps, I don't think Amy does."

It didn't help, but oh well, at least Rory was trying to make him feel better. It made a difference from Rory being the one to tell him what he was doing was wrong and bad. Not that that was what the boy kept telling him...oh, he was getting himself confused.

"Have you ever had an irrational fear of something that you needed?" he blurted out, before he could stop himself. He almost covered his mouth afterwards, but refrained from doing so. Mainly because the question made Rory start shuffling about.

"When I was a child, I was taken to this posh type of restaurant. My parents thought it would be a fun night out. All the food had been coloured, you know, with food dyes. I refused to eat anything at all that night, convinced my parents were trying to poison me. And if you laugh at that, I'll hurt you."

The Doctor nodded and didn't laugh. Honestly, he wasn't in the mood to do so right then, because he understood right then what Rory must have felt like. A child, a plate of food brought out for him with all the food the wrong colour. Sleep was his food, and it had been painted black by one single event.

"I can't face...'him' again right now. But it's all I think about when I think of sleep. It's getting hard to stay awake."

Rory nodded for a bit, going over to the seat and sitting himself down on it. "That's one of the problems with it though, isn't it? You think too much about it, it becomes all you can think of, and you end up afraid. Next morning I was starving. I ate breakfast, because what was the point in my parents trying to kill me when they were eating the same food?"

Grimacing, the Doctor nodded. "Been a bit over a few hours for me. Truthfully, I've been thinking it for a long time. A very long time. Once I met in the waking world an amalgamation of all the darkness and evil in me. First thing he tried to do was kill me so he could live fully, because only one of us could live in the real time or...something. I'm not exactly too clear how it worked to be honest. But I know if it ever came to pass, it isn't now, but that doesn't stop me afraid that if I fall asleep, he'll take control and nothing good would happen. An evil me is...well, evil."

Rory was silent for a while, before he shrugged, grinned at him and stated, like as if he wouldn't know. "Well, there's this saying us humans are rather fond of. Best way to beat your fears is to face them. You can't stay awake forever, Doctor, though you have a far better go at it then a human would."

He grinned and hmmed at that. "You're right. Like I said. Irrational." Oddly, that had made him feel better. He never thought that he'd be able to relate in any way to Rory. Especially on something so mundane as fears. Yet again, not all fears were mundane. Some people had very good reasons to be afraid of what they were afraid of.

He didn't leave the console room right away though. Not until Rory got up off the seat, gave him a pat on the shoulder and gave him a light shove in the direction of the bedrooms and said in a very clear and rather demanding voice. "Goodnight Doctor. Go to bed."

He went.

By the time he reached his bedroom, he was basically asleep on his feet. In the end, he kicked off his shoes, fell onto his bed and was out like a light within seconds.

He slept a solid 12 hours.

He found out later, Rory had been hard pressed to keep Amy from barging in to wake him up. He'd never felt as good to have the other man on board as he had when finding that out. It was a wonderful feeling really. He was being looked after, and in return, he looked after them.

Life had gone back to what it had used to be. Once again, there were no parents to worry about. It was just him, his companions and the universe.

Just the way he liked it. No matter how irrational it may seem sometimes.

Not all irrationality was bad after all. If it wasn't for the irrational he wouldn't be here travelling in the first place.

All he had to do was look on the bright side, and stop dwelling on the dark. What would come would come.

It always did.