It begins with a tremor in her hands, a slight rise and fall that makes her curse when she accidentally swipes nail varnish on her pinky and can't find the remover to clean it.
She walks further into the TARDIS, her bare feet whispering on the floor in search of her favorite bathroom, a pink and gold chamber that smells like vanilla and home.
The remover is in a small bottle on the ledge below the ornate mirror; she glances into it as she reaches for the bottle, and stops, transfixed at the sight of her flushed cheeks and glistening mad dark eyes.
"Oh, not no—" she begins, and barely manages to avoid the corner of the sink pedestal when she collapses.
-----
The chemical burn singed taste of nail varnish remover against her tongue and the feel of the Doctor's cold hands wrapped around the bend of her knees, the curl of her upper back. She is floating somewhere, lights and whirls and sounds fuzzy against her tongue, the back of her eyelids.
The Doctor looks down at her with pale eyes and a set face, all angles and shadows and solid, so solid, and she sounds ragged and old when she sobs, "I missed you."
He was so changed from what he used to be, the TARDIS hums in the deepest layer of her subconscious, a golden voice twisting through half-forgotten memories and the slender threads of consciousness still tethering the Bad Wolf in this tiny cage. Shall you change for him too?
"Hmmm," Rose replies, sleep dulled and fever hot, and is asleep before she can say anything more.
-----
Cross-legged, hands tucked away neatly on the denim rasp of her best pair of jeans, Rose looks at the stars sighing around her, small pinpricks in the inky fabric of this place that is somewhere beyond darkness.
How do you see here?
THAT IS NOT THE POINT OF THE EXERCISE. The being in front of her says, the bone-white crescent of its grin the only thing she can make out in the gloom.
Then what is?
THAT'S UP TO YOU TO DECIDE. I'M JUST HERE FOR THE COMPANY.
Oh, right then, she sighs, looking about her and feeling foolish for it. A star near what she thinks is her left knee pulsates, a constant repetition of expansion and contraction, in and out ad infinitum, mimicking the rise and fall of her ribcage. Where am I, anyway? I've never seen this part of the TARDIS before.
THIS IS THE ABSENCE OF PLACE.
What? She asks, voice sharp with her bewilderment. A star flares sharply beside her right hand and she reaches up, stretching a finger out towards it. She turns her hand over, palm facing upward and stretches out her other fingers, gesturing, and the stars around her flare and drift out into the empty space before her.
IT'S A GOOD DEVICE, THE ALL-CAPS THING, the being in front of her says, its grin shifting and drifting as it slides its head down to look more closely at her. PITY THIS WOULD ONLY WORK IN YOUR HEAD.
Rose inhales and stands up, stomach lurching as the absence of solid ground below her asserts itself; she swallows and flings herself forward, stars flaring and twisting out of her way, then settling quietly back into their slow pulsing.
Who are you? Fear twists her words, makes them catch and prick like burs in her throat. She waves her hand, making the stars flare again into brightness, displaying a pale and solemn face wearing an ancient grin.
MY NAMES ARE LEGION, the Doctor says.
-----
In the not-place that is neither dreams nor memories the Doctor says something about disease, it's so human, and makes patterns from the numbers on the printouts recording her blood pressure, her heart rate, the slow rise and fall of her chest.
"You know, they say the answer to everything is 42," he sighs, staring off somewhere to the left of the monitor. "It's not."
She never responds.
-----
She leans forward to press a tender kiss against the cool plastic of his face shield, breath fogging the molded surface for a miniscule constellation of seconds.
He turns and squares his shoulders, an orange blur that seems to glow as brightly as any sun she has ever seen in this dreary place.
The gentle hiss of waves at her feet distracts her and she looks down, studying the colorless ocean lapping at her bare toes. When she looks up again he is nowhere to be seen, the violent shock of his spacesuit hidden somewhere beyond the curve of the beach.
"What if I never know?" She yells, suddenly afraid of this place, of the soft crumble of sand clumping between her toes, the howl of wind that tangles her hair around her shoulders.
The Doctor never returns.
-----
Jack Harkness carries the stench of death wrapped tightly around him, a slick wall of other that makes Rose's fingertips cold with regret when she slides her hand into his.
"How do I even know this?" She asks, not looking at him, hoping the Doctor will appear; this place will fade away, leaving her free of this guilt crushing her slowly.
"You don't," he replies, turning to look at her with the eyes of an unseeing corpse. "The wolf will never sing of this to you, you small human child."
In the distance Jackie appears leading the Doctor—the first Doctor, all leather and anger and sorrow—gently by the hand across the empty courtyard near their old flat, while Jack grins like death.
"Mum!" Rose calls, waving, trying desperately to move away from this knowledge, from the dead man standing beside her. Jackie turns, places a hand on the Doctor's arm to stop him briefly. Together they look at her, the Doctor's eyes hooded and Jackie's head tilted slightly while she contemplates the girl in the distance.
"They all leave, love. Best you learn it now." She calls, and tugs the Doctor after her, disappearing into the darkened stairwell on the far end of the courtyard.
What was once Jack Harkness laughs.
-----
The fever rises, up up up until the Doctor is frantic with worry that it will cause cerebral damage, and gives her everything he can think of in the Infirmary before resorting to placing her in a tub to bring the temperature down.
Thirteen minutes after he does this she sits up, eyes unfocused and rivulets of water sliding down the curves of her cheeks, says, "I'd burn for you," and collapses back into the water with a sigh.
-----
On the ancient planet Solorialis the Doctor takes her hand and they turn their faces up to the rain, quiet with awe as the falling raindrops burst against their skin and bloom briefly into different colored petals, aqua lavender crimson golden like the stars she'll never tire of seeing.
"What is it?" She asks, turning to look at him, blue and pink and silver petals tangled in her sodden hair. The waves of her voice undulate outwards, caressing his wet skin and the layers of his clothing and he grins back at her, one sodden clump of green petals stuck in a tuft of his hair.
"Something rather like synesthesia."
"Oh, it's brilliant," she exclaims, flinging herself into his solid warmth, not caring that she doesn't know what he's talking about, that somewhere the TARDIS is crying for her to return, it's been too long; instead she unfurls her mouth against his, the rain staining their skin and petals drifting sadly off of their shoulders to be swallowed by the dark ground below their feet.
It is enough; it is almost enough.
(It will never be enough.)
-----
"I'm not afraid of you," she tells the Beast, fists clenched by her sides and the hot thump of her heartbeat rushing in her ears.
"Of course not," it intones, the syllables wrapping around her skin, threading themselves gently through the strands of her hair. "Why would you be when you have him to fear?"
She licks her lips slowly, the rasp of her tongue against her skin excruciating as she contemplates this. "I don't fear him. He's given me everything I wanted."
"Yes," the Beast whispers sadly, "and that gives him the power to take it away from you."
-----
Theirs is a careful balance of not-enough; the absence of his hand upon the sharp curve of her hip, the way she never quite looks at him when he gives her a certain look that is something so far beyond love he will never be able to say it.
In this place that she does not understand he whispers to her of love and forever and takes her hand to lead her to his bed.
"It's wrong," she whispers, but the words are forgotten in the feel of his skin against hers.
-----
Her dress whispers against the smooth skin of her calf, pale pink chiffon as soft as the bloom of the first flowers after the chill of winter. She is picking her way across a desolate wasteland littered with the jagged shapes of long-dead stars, the white horse below her snorting softly to itself.
Near a particularly large husk the horse stops and she swings her leg over, sliding gracefully done to the ground. Dust puffs under her feet as she moves forward quietly, reaching out a hand to run fingers through the snarl of the horse's mane.
The star before her hums, and she crouches down, slowly moving around it, careful to avoid any sudden movements. On the other side she glimpses a huddled form draped in a jacket curled into the least jagged shadow of the star, and she straightens up and says in a voice that echoes with the weight of stardust and dead stars, "I didn't save you so that you could spend your time hiding here."
He looks up at her, pale eyes the exact same shade as the mare she has already forgotten about. "Same could be said for you."
She grins, razor sharp wolf teeth and pink gums. "Then why did you call me here, Time Lord?"
The Doctor stands, towering over her, something behind his eyes shifting, softening as he surveys her. "Because you have to wake up."
Bad Wolf grins, indolently, enjoying the feel and smell of this smaller being before her and steps forward, dress floating softly around the borrowed skin of a young girl. "And return to that cage? I think not."
He laughs then, the sound mocking. "Don't you see? You're just as trapped here."
"Perhaps," she shrugs, surveying the sweep of land before her, enjoying this moment before the whirlwind of movement and destruction as she rights the universe aain and returns them both to their rightful places.
She screams when the splinter of star in his fist pierces her chest, scraping against a rib; kicking his shins with bare heels in her desire to escape from this agony.
"You'll not have her." He hisses, voice cold and still, and twists the splinter deeper.
-----
She wakes screaming, the sound so loud and raw it bounces and skitters around her mind. There is a brief second where she is awash in mindless terror as she stares around the room she is in, utterly lost.
The Doctor's room, she realizes finally, the painful staccato of her heartbeat calming slightly at this insight. The Doctor is nowhere to be seen, off somewhere steering the TARDIS or picking up more milk or repairing some random part, she assumes, and sighs deeply to calm herself.
It is easy enough to slide out of the bed, though she has to pause to overcome the dizziness that assaults her when she tries to walk towards the door. It passes eventually and so she continues on, bare feet silently padding across the cool floor of the TARDIS as she searches for the Doctor.
She finds him in the Infirmary, shirtsleeves rolled up and muttering about drug interactions under his breath while he stares at the wall of cabinets before him.
"Doctor?" She says tentatively, throat aching, and steps over the threshold into the room. He whirls to stare at her with wide eyes, face slack.
He breaks into a mad grin suddenly and bounds over, scooping her into his arms without much grace, with an exclamation of, "You've been out for ages, I thought I was going to have to travel to an actual ascleipeon to find the right cure for you." He leans back to look down at the top of her head pressed into his shirtfront. "What have you been doing, anyway?"
"I was remembering," she says after some thought, looking up to give him a familiar smile.
-----
Somewhere, caught in the tangle of dreams and memories and what will be, what cannot be, in the sheer artless act of living, Rose Tyler forgets.
It is better this way, perhaps.
1. Title taken from John Doone's poem The Dream.
2. "He was so changed from what he used to be"- a line from Anne Bronte's poem The Captive's Dream.
3. CAPS LOCK dialogue is a reference to the character of Death in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, the first two books of which were published before 1987, making it entirely possible that Pete read them to Rose when she was a newborn.
4. 42- a reference to Douglas Adam's famous unknown question.
5. synesthesia- a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sense automatically stimulates another. (For example, a person sees the colors of numbers.)
6. ascleipeon- an ancient Greek temple of healing.
7. white horse- traditionally artists depicted a nightmare as a white mare with staring blue eyes.