The Doctor lay his head back, sighed, closed his eyes, and waited for it to begin.

It didn't happen immediately; after all, even with Academy training, and even as tired as he was after a day of slightly above average madness (which was saying a lot for him), it took him a moment to fall asleep. Falling was hardly even the word anymore, really. It had become more like jumping, diving, or, if he was going to be cynical, like drowning someone. That last really was what it was most like, he thought. He had to force his conscious mind roughly under the dark waters of oblivion, and hold it there until it gave up struggling and stilled. For struggle it did; it knew what lay beneath those waters, what lurked in the not-so-murky depths of his subconscious, just below the surface.

Even when he was awake there were flashes of it. Sometimes, if it was particularly quiet around him, or if his eyes were closed, or if he stood too still, it would start even if he was fully awake; the roar of that internal ocean was always there. It couldn't be stopped, or if it could he was at a loss to how. It could only be drowned out by senses and thoughts and Rose and Jack and being clever and saving civilizations…the whole bit together was usually enough to drown it out. But all of that went away when he slept. When he slept there was only one thing, one dream. Different times and different forms, different parts; but only one thing. It was all the same thing, really.

The knowledge that he hadn't dreamt of anything else in so long disturbed him almost as much as the dreams themselves did; this was not how Time Lords were supposed to dream. It was in their nature to dream, not of the past, but of the future, of the manifold possible futures that they half-sensed before them. It was rare for a Time Lord to dream of the past, of memories; he remembered in the old days he used to cherish those dreams. They were like doing the impossible and crossing his own timeline, reliving the moments of importance. He had felt that they gave him insight into himself, let him come to understand himself more. He didn't feel that way anymore. He did not want any more insight into the hours he now visited while he slept. And he certainly did not want to understand the man he had been then or the man he was now, the man that those hours had made him. Not anymore.

He dreamt of the War, of course. That was all. There was never anything else to look forward to in sleep, anymore. It was always the War. Even Rose hadn't managed to find her way into his dreams yet, and he hoped desperately that someday, one day soon, she would; he didn't quite realize consciously how badly he longed for that, how much he wanted to dream about her, something so very not the War, so alive and innocent and human and small. Everything the war was not. Maybe one day, he half-thought as he felt his consciousness begin to give up the struggle, realizing, as it did every night, that the rough hand of his training was stronger, that it would drown and might as well get it over with. Maybe one day he would get to dream of Rose.

But not tonight. Tonight, he sensed immediately as he slipped into darkness, it was the War again.

Some nights it the earlier days, and that wasn't so bad. It hadn't really been that bad, at first. The first few battles, the prison days, reuniting with old comrades from his academy days who weren't quite yet desperate enough to hide their disdain for him… and driving them all up the wall as a matter of course. It was still horrible, of course, the worst of all his adventures up to that point; but that was the thing, really. It was like part of the old adventures. He was still the man he had been, then. Long hair and dashing smile and slightly silly clothes. Eyes that people could stand to look into, at least when he wanted them to be able to. He would have almost enjoyed dreaming about the early days, if they hadn't reminded him so strongly of what came before and after; what he lost, and how he lost it.

Sometimes it was the end, watching from space as wave after wave of Dalek ships descended upon Gallifray, as the orange sky turned to the red and green of actual energy weapons – such a novelty by that stage of the war, when battles were fought in 18-dimensional hypertime from infinite angles of causality, space and para-consciousness, with the very fabric of reality serving as weapons, and the nightmares creeping in from all sides as the universe itself bled… But Gallifray was defended from that sort of thing, at least for a while, while the causality shields and consciousness locks held. So the Daleks had blasted through the first four dimensions of shielding with simple three-dimensional weapons, the kind they might have used in their racial infancy, when they might have been something of a threat to the lesser races, but could never possibly threaten Gallifray.

It took them a few hours to get through that way, after which the other 14 dimensions of shielding of course collapsed and the slaughter began in earnest, but in that brief time while the shields held Gallifray had remained an island of sanity in the indescribable madness that was the Time War, unravaged by horrors of the last tenth of the War, when it became not just a Time War but also Dream War, a Nightmare War, a Vortex War…a Reality War, and an Unreality War. Ironic, the Doctor had mused bitterly at the time, watching the lights of simple three-dimensional weapons in attack and defense, that Gallifray should be the last bastion of sanity in the timelock; everyone on the planet had apparently gone insane at some point since his last visit.

Sometimes it was the very, very end, and that was always the worst, reliving that; standing there, feeling himself push the button and end…everything. No, no, not everything, he had screamed hysterically in his mind; or had it been out loud? He'd never know. There had been no on there to hear it, because he'd killed all of them. Everyone, everything. No, not everything, please no, not everything, that's what I was trying to stop, and he knew on some level, in some tiny sane corner of his mind, that he had stopped it, and that it wasn't everything, but God it felt like everything. So much burning. Everything burning. Everyone burning. And then the fire took him too and he was glad of it, glad to feel his body burn away; let it boil down to the nothing below the smallest particles and start again, it was the only way he would ever be clean of this, could ever be cleansed of what he'd just done. But then the fires of regeneration had joined the fires of death, and he'd screamed at them with both his voices, old and new, that no, it wasn't time yet, he wasn't clean, he could still remember, he could still see it, and God they were still screaming…

It wasn't any of that tonight, however. Tonight began, as the nights always did, with random flashes, brief moments from the War, made up of only a few sensory memories. The full experience would come later, as he entered deeper sleep. He saw flashes of the battle of Antaria, which he'd lived through twice, once with the Nightmare Child and once without. This was the version without, the original version, when it was still a relatively simple five-dimensional temporal battle, without para-consciousness thrown in.

He saw the Medusa Cascade swarming with creatures from the Not-Quite-Void, and a thousand Dalek ships being devoured by them. He relived the realization of that moment; that it was possible to go too far with these new weapons. After that, of course, the consequences of reality weapons were well-known by both sides, and they learned how to minimize the strain on the walls of the world, and were prepared for the swarms that did come.

He never saw himself sealing the rift in that battle; they'd told him he'd done it, and she'd thanked him for it, but if he had, that moment was forever lost to him. He privately suspected that he'd had nothing to do with it, that he'd only fallen unconscious the once, not been knocked out, woken up and somehow magically sealed the rift, only to be knocked out again to find her standing over him, smiling that otherworldly smile and thanking him for saving all of them. The more he'd thought about that moment, the more sure he'd become that she was the one who sealed the rift, and that what she'd said after had been for her own purposes. Of course, it hadn't occurred to him not to take credit for it at the time. His memory had still been a bit blurry, and it did sound like the sort of thing he'd do, and one does not return to consciousness to be thanked by a beautiful, if tangibly unworldly, girl for saving her life and civilization only to reply "I did nothing of the sort," even when one is a Time Lord.

He heard, but did not see, a part of that memory. "You are meant t' do great things for this world," said the lilting voice, drifting across his sleeping mind.

He hoped that that would be the dream tonight, more of the battle of the Medusa Cascade. That had really been his finest hour in the War, even if his suspicions were correct and sealing the rift had not been his doing. But he felt himself slipping deeper after that unworldly voice faded, and the last remnants of consciousness braced themselves for what they knew was coming, as a reddish glow and the sound of screams began to fade in. Tonight would not be the Cascade, resplendent with light and heroics and noble self-sacrifice, but very little loss of life on the Time Lord side. Tonight it was the panicked, desperate flight, the infinite possible deaths, and the screams of his comrades in the fleet as they lived through every one of them.

Tonight, it was Arcadia.


To be continued...

Author's Note: Ooooh look at me, posting a multi-chapter story, aren't I shiny? This story has kind of a nebulous genesis; I wanted to write a oneshot or or two of battles in the Time War, because I'd read a few of those and wished there were more, and had my own ideas about the nature of the hell the War devolved into. But I was reluctant to write a serious 8fic when I've still not partaken of any official Eighth Doctor media and am still derusting as a writer, so the idea just kind of stewed for a bit. Then I separately wanted to write a short story about Nine dreaming, sort of in semi-preparation for a very odd story idea I have...and then I realized that Nine would probably dream about the Time War, and that if I combined the two ideas it would not only cover for any factual and characterization issues arising from my unfamiliarity with all things Eight and before, since it would be taking the form of a dream and therefore not necessarily what actually happened, but that I could slip in a few other ideas I had...and here we go. Will be updated upon sufficient review! If no one cares I'll just keep this story to myself. ;)