Dreams May Come True 02
Nova looked up as the Doctor came into her room. It had been about three or four hours since she had seen him last, and that was guessing. Keeping track of time was virtually impossible in a room with no clock.
The Time Lord was grinning triumphantly. "Guess who gets to get out of her room today?" he asked happily.
She grinned enthusiastically and jumped off of the bed. "Where are we going?"
He took her hand in his and started to lead her through the maze of corridors. Of course compared to the TARDIS' hallways, the Valiant was easy to navigate. "The Observation Deck. Allons-y!" He smiled at her giggle as the pair of them practically bounced along.
Nova mentally shook her head at his antics. She was used to his personality and mannerisms, but being included was new. She had seen him do all sorts of things in this incarnation. But now he was doing things with her, instead of with his companions or by himself. It was odd and enjoyable. She liked it.
While his idiosyncrasies carried them along, Nova noticed that he didn't speak much, which made her nervous. The man talked all the time. He never shut up! So his silence was unnerving and the longer it lasted the more apprehensive she became. What was he thinking? Was he trying to do something to her mind? She knew that touch increased telepathic ability, but had thought he needed to specifically touch her temples and maintain eye contact. Was that wrong? Thoughts swirled in her mind one after another.
The Observation Deck was a large room with a floor to ceiling window as one wall. There was an oblong meeting table, the chairs pushed in. As they walked into the room, the nearest wall had a raised dais with a large throne-like chair. One area held a small one-person tent, a couple of dog bowls, and various electronic doodads.
Nova froze as she saw television screens on the wall closest to the throne that showed various places on Earth: camps, shipyards, and missile bays. The humans were wearing dirty, torn clothes. Several were obviously starving as she could see their ribs prominently. She reached out a hand as if to touch the screen before abruptly pulling back. Her blue eyes saw one middle-aged man fall as he had over exerted himself carrying an obviously heavy crate. She saw as a floating metal ball flew toward him and shot out a red beam of light. She gasped in horror as she realized the ball had killed him. "Oh god…" she said quietly to herself. She had seen the Master do horrible things many times, but this? This was a new version of hell. Usually the Master just killed people. It was quick and painless. This? This was torture.
A hand startled her, making her eyes shift to the Doctor. His brown orbs met her own, filled with compassion and pain. He didn't say anything; he didn't have to. He pulled her gently away from the screens to sit at the conference table, facing the giant window.
The pair of them were quiet for long moments as the Time Lord let her collect herself, offering silent support. Her mind was a tornado of thoughts and images. All the questions she truly wanted to ask, she couldn't. If she did, it would alert him to her knowledge. She had to pick and choose her questions carefully. Finally, she settled on "What are they?" she asked quietly.
The Doctor sighed and took a deep breath. "The Master calls them the Toclafane." He had figured out what they truly were months ago, and as the Master had promised, it broke his hearts. The Doctor wouldn't tell her though; she was having a hard enough time as it was, she didn't need to know yet. The information could push her into another depressive state. Which reminded him… "Here. You need to take this." He reached into a pocket, pulled out a small round light-blue pill and handed it to her.
As expected, the human just looked at the tablet for several seconds. He watched her eyes shift from the pill, up to his face, and then down again. "Why? What is it?" She made no move to take it.
"A low-dose anti-depressant. Like Prozac, but better." A guard came over with a glass of water before blending back into the escort she hadn't noticed until then. "You need to take care of yourself. Any longer the way you are and you'll go into a major depressive state. This will help your neurochemistry come back into balance within a few days." He extended his arm again and she reluctantly took the tablet. Nova knew there was no way she could refuse. Even if she did, the man was stubborn and would find another way to give it to her without her knowledge. Better to take it, knowing that she did, rather than constantly wonder when and where he would sneak it to her. As she swallowed, he continued. "Good. You'll have to take one with breakfast for about three days. After today, it will be on your food tray. I'll be monitoring your brain chemistry to make sure it's stabilizing and if the dosage needs changing."
He caught her eyes, his expression serious. "Nova, you need to eat. You can't keep starving yourself-"
She broke in. "I know." She had a response prepared if this particular topic came up. "The food tasted weird." Nova winced. She had started out strong, but had finished the small sentence softly, looking at her shoes. She was a horrible liar.
Amazingly though, he seemed to accept it. Or at least, he didn't call her out on the lie. "Fine. Make a list of your favorite dishes and I'll make sure that there is something you can eat. I know Americans have odd tastes." He thought it was because the rations she had been served were British! Nova blinked in amazement, but kept her eyes on her shoes with effort as she nodded immediately to his suggestion. "Now, there is one more thing we need to talk about."
Blue eyes met his own. "One of the conditions of your getting to leave your room is that you eat, take your medicine, and answer all questions truthfully." She froze, her heart in her throat as she blinked at him. "I know you've lied." He saw her fear and reached out a hand to reassure her. "It's alright. You have no reason to trust me. But it has to stop now. You need to trust me." He huffed out a small breath. "Your life may depend on it."
She gulped and shook slightly. The Doctor was terrifying when he wanted to be. In some ways, he was scarier than the Master. The man sitting before her had locked away a family into endless torment not too long ago. That dream had been relatively recent, so was fresh in her mind. He had taken each of the four and given them exactly what they wanted: eternity. The poor idiots had no idea what they were asking for…and he had been vindictive enough to give it to them. Before she had seen the TV monitors, she would have said that the Master had more mercy; he just killed people, quick and clean. The Master only wanted to hurt the Doctor. Everyone else was superfluous. The Doctor though…Nova shivered as one of her dreams from several years previous drifted across her mind. That Doctor was too horrible to think about; he was so far apart from being the Doctor he had given himself a different name, a name that she tried desperately never to think.
She wasn't the superstitious sort usually, but in this case the idea of 'speak of the devil' was too much to chance. That Scary Doctor was horrifying enough that even his minute probability of showing up was too large.
Nova shook herself physically and mentally out of those alarming thoughts, shoving the dreams away back into their temporary bookshelf. "Because of the artron radiation?" she timidly asked, anything to get her mind off of the Scary Doctor.
The Doctor was one of the best empaths in the universe, and being this close to Nova had him feeling everything she did. He felt her excitement at getting out of her room, her anguish when she saw the human killed, and now her absolute terror. After twenty-seven rels, she buried that fear deep within herself and she asked about the energy. He filed away her reactions to analyze later. "Partly. The radiation is fading, but not as quickly as it should be. Artron radiation is deadly in large quantities." He felt her fear spike again and hurried to reassure her. "It's alright. You seem to be doing fine so far, but I want to keep it that way. So, I will be giving you medical tests to keep track of the energy levels and I will find a way to leech it out of your system. It will just take time."
Nova snorted once in amusement at such a comment coming from a Time Lord.
"Do you think you can trust me?" The Doctor pushed out with his empathic ability, infusing the last two words with confidence and assurance. He grinned hugely at her hesitant nod. "Fantastic!" He pulled her to her feet and led her over to the window. He wanted her to focus on the now. In her mild to moderate depressive state, reminders of the atrocities being committed was the last thing she needed. "Check out this view!"
She laughed quietly at his antics, shaking her head in amusement, but obediently focused her attention onto the clouds rolling by. "It's beautiful."
"You can come here every day." He said enthusiastically. "And…" he reached into his extra-dimensional pocket and pulled out a bundle with a flourish.
Nova glanced at his eyes before taking the TARDIS-blue fabric-wrapped box. It almost looked like a sewing kit, but smaller than any she had seen. "Oh wow!" She gasped softly when she saw the half dozen brightly colored pieces of fabric and the bottom compartment was filled with ever color of embroidery floss she could possibly need or want. A top panel held different sizes of needles and pins. It was the needlepoint kit from heaven! She blinked up at him and gave him the biggest smile he had ever seen from the girl. "Thank you so much! I love it!"
Given the chance to be herself, with this man she had known all her life and felt so comfortable with, Nova momentarily forgot the horrors being committed below. Forgot the Master lurking in the ship. Forgot about how she had to be so careful on what she said. She forgot because of his kind gift and hugged him tightly.
He smiled over her head as he awkwardly returned her affectionate gesture.
Her first conversation with the Doctor made Nova realize several things.
Nova was many things: writer, mathematician, and daughter to name a few. One thing she definitely wasn't; she was not stupid. Of course, having said that, compared to the Master and the Doctor, she had the IQ of a carrot. Nova gave a great sigh at the depressing thought. Just how was she supposed to keep all of her knowledge to herself at all times?
Habits are difficult to break. She had a lifetime of habits that she had to try desperately to ignore. One of the biggest was her habit of speaking her thoughts out loud. In her dreams, no one could see or hear her and she had always spoken aloud her observations because there had never been a reason not to. Speaking helped her organize her own thoughts into coherent conclusions. Now though, just one wrong word getting to the Doctor's or the Master's ears would spell out trouble the likes of which she could not properly imagine.
Writing was another habit. She liked writing. She had been writing down her dreams for years before she ever thought to publish. As soon as the Doctor had left her room his first visit, she had jumped out of bed and rounded up all the pages upon pages filled with the Doctor's adventures. Then discovered a problem: no way to dispose of them. The best way to destroy them would be by burning, but she had no lighter. Tearing them into pieces was discarded as well because it would just alert the Time Lords that there was something on the pages that she didn't want people to see; which is enough of a reason to diligently put the pieces back together again. Nova had been frantic as she came up with and discarded a half dozen ideas on how to get rid of the words: the window didn't open, no way to start or contain a fire, no floorboards to even attempt to pry up, nothing sharp to tear the seams of her bedding, etc. Finally, she mentally threw up her hands in frustration. She gathered up all the pages into six even stacks and placed them carefully beside each other under her mattress lengthwise. Hopefully, they were arranged in such a way that even the maid who changed her sheets would never know they were there.
Nova also knew as long as the artron energy wasn't self-replicating, it should theoretically dissipate given enough time. As far as she knew, artron energy was only found on a TARDIS. So, there should be no reason for it to self-replicate inside her. Of course, it really shouldn't be inside her at all, so she could be really wrong. She hoped that all she had to do was wait for it to gradually disappear. As soon as the radiation was gone, there would be no reason for the Doctor and the Master to keep her around. That is, as long as she could keep her dream-obtained knowledge to herself.
So, Nova now had a clear goal for her immediate future: be unremarkable. If she could pull that off, then she could (hopefully) find a way home. If she got the attention of the Doctor or the Master in a bad way…they would never let her leave their sight. She wouldn't be surprised if they kept her on a leash. She just knew way too much. The artron energy was interesting, but it would go away. Her mind? Can't really get rid of that!
As soon as the pages had been taken care of, she looked around the room and blanched when she saw her nightgown. That patch of embroidery, her first project after learning the stitches, was obviously the Doctor's TARDIS. And both Time Lords had seen it. Before either of them asked about it, she had to come up with a believable lie; that had its own problems.
Time Lords had senses much greater than humans: sight, sound, and smell were all heightened. They would be able to tell if she was lying even if she was really good at the task, which she decidedly wasn't. She also knew that their senses were better, but never really could find out to what degree. Could they hear whispers? What about if the person whispering was across the room? Or in another room? Nova just didn't know. Given her habit of speaking her thoughts, and that her thoughts needed to be kept under wraps, her sudden lack of knowledge on this particular point made her heart clench with fear.
Another thing that she thought of was probably a copyright of the BBC show Sherlock, but if it worked it would save her. The mind palace. Known in the Harry Potter universe as Occlumency. In the ordinary world, it was called meditation. Basically, she was going to try to organize her thoughts and memories so that she could hide them in case the Doctor or the Master ever tried telepathy.
Thankfully, Nova already had a significant leg up in the department of organization. She was a mathematician. And math was severely logical and organized. Step two came after step one. Step four came after step three. A plus B equals C. She liked math. She was good at it. To learn math, she had to organize herself and her mind. She just had never done it on purpose like she had to do with meditation.
In short, more than half of her work had been done already without her ever realizing it.
It was a lengthy process taking a lot of her time, but what else did she have to do? Motivation was key and Nova wanted to go home. She didn't have much close family, but she wouldn't trade her parents for anything. She also hoped desperately that time moved more slowly in her dimension; less chance that her parents would notice she had gone anywhere at all.
The first thing she did was build up her house. She took her childhood home, along with the 2.5 acre yard, and replicated it as exactly as she could remember. Nova had briefly considered putting in landmines and tripwires in the yard, but had to discard the idea. The point was to be unremarkable. Having a mind palace at all was unusual enough. She could have no obvious defenses. Then she made the den into a memory library, storing all her non-Doctor experiences in books on shelves, organized by age and category. She put her favorite memories on display as pictures around the house, hoping to draw attention away from her primary goal.
After that came the Doctor memories, her dreams. She had to hide them, and hide them well. She thought long and hard on the best place for them. Once again, inspiration came from make-believe worlds. This time from Indiana Jones and The Librarian. In her home, attached to the den was her mother's sewing room. Nova rearranged the outside of the house so that from the yard you couldn't tell there was a room at all. Next she took out her memories of reading Shakespeare, put them all together on a shelf by the entrance to the now-hidden sewing room. Behind the book of A Midsummer Night's Dream, she placed a button that seamlessly blended in to the top of the bookshelf. The button made the entire shelf rotate 180 degrees, depositing the person into the sewing room. The other side of the bookshelf looked identical on both sides. Nova made sure of that.
Her mother also had a computer in her sewing room. Nova made that a decoy, providing another reason why the room was hidden, putting intimate non-Doctor memories on it: the night she lost her virginity, when she accidentally walked in on her parents having sex, etc. She hoped that anyone looking at that computer would see the first memory and be too embarrassed to look further. But just in case, there were no dreams on that computer.
No, her dreams were kept in the laundry room that was attached to her mother's sewing room. In the one place she could think of that no one would check: behind the dryer. In every dryer she had ever seen, there was a compartment about six inches high, the width of the machine, at around knee height. But it was only accessible from the back. You would have to disconnect all the cords and pull out the dryer, to get to the space. It was perfect. She put all her dreams into spiral bound notebooks, one for each dream, and gently laid them to rest in that spot. As one last added measure, she put a piece of metal over the hole and made it blend into the rest of the back. The piece would pop open by selecting the 'delicate' cycle; a cycle she never used.
She backed out of the room, and noticed that if you knew what you were looking for, it was obvious that the bookshelf entrance was sitting on a circle of rotating floor. Crap, that was a close one! Nova breathed a sigh of relief that she had caught the error and hurried to fix it. It didn't really matter in the sewing room, but she made the floor of the den into a pattern of concentric circles and lines. It made the circle the shelf sat upon much harder to see. She only could find it because she knew it was there.
Nova surveyed her mind palace with some satisfaction. It had taken her almost two weeks to build and secure. It was also ironic that meditation let her skip out on a lot of sleep, giving her more time to build. It was well worth the effort.
Now she just had to keep her frickin' mouth shut!
Nova's days had a routine to them. The Doctor would bring her breakfast, though as promised the anti-depressant was only present for three days, and check her artron energy levels. The pair would then move to the Observation Deck where she tried desperately to ignore the screens near the throne, and just focus on the fluffy clouds passing by as she stitched. The Doctor would stay with her for several hours, asking her various things about her childhood, her family, and how she arrived on the Valiant. She answered all of them honestly and if the answers to her previous life were much more detailed than anything else, he never commented. The man was sneaky too! He used the embroidery as a tool; get her attention on something else so her answers would be more free-flowing and honest. Several times she had caught herself right before she would have given him information she obtained from her dreams.
The Doctor seemed to realize that she was very self-conscious about people looking at her. He asked her about it the second day. "Why don't you look me in the eyes?"
She winced, her needle freezing mid-pull, and hesitantly explained. "I was bullied in school as a kid. I often stared into space because I was so bored with the curriculum. The other kids thought I was staring at them and would…well, they made sure that I wasn't looking at them. I learned that walls and shoes were safer to stare at." She finished pulling through the stitch and missed his brown eyes darkening momentarily in anger.
After that little tidbit of her past, the Doctor began to bring things to do with his own hands. Usually odds and ends of electronic devices that he fiddled with, but it kept his eyes on his work instead of her. Nova greatly appreciated the gesture.
Lunch would be served at the conference table, but mid-afternoon saw her back in her room. Dinner came with a new medication: a yellow square about a centimeter across. Nova always took it, reminding herself to ask the Doctor what it was she was taking in the morning, but kept forgetting. Unless something was on a note, or she did it right away, she had a bad habit of forgetting. One day she put a reminder onto a slip of paper and put it in her pocket, but she never put her hands in her pockets when she was with the Doctor and thus forgot again.
One thing that never came up in their conversations was the Master. The man had practically disappeared from her world. She never saw him anymore. At night when she lay in bed trying to sleep once again, it would occur to her that she hadn't seen the tyrant that day either and she would wonder why. The more days went by, the less she thought of the Doctor's childhood friend, and the more comfortable she became in her new life.
However, all things must come to an end eventually.
Nova had officially lost track of the days, weeks, and possible months that had passed since she came to the Valiant. She idly wondered if this how it would be trying to keep track of time in the TARDIS, but after a moment discounted the thought as ridiculous because the ship would always know how much time had gone by. Wouldn't it?
This particular day started as any other. Get up, shower, and breakfast. For some reason, the Doctor didn't show up as soon as she had finished eating. Maybe she had just eaten fast today. Disregarding the time element, Nova began to design a new needlepoint project to pass the time waiting for the man to show up. This one would be her largest yet at a full 8.5 by 11 inch design. A dragon curled around that of a Celtic knotwork cross.
As she sketched, Nova absently began to sing softly to herself, the music playing throughout her mind. "You know the bed feels warmer sleepin' here alone. You know I dream in color and do the things I want." The rhythm of the song and mental tempo helped relieve her fear for the Doctor. The longer she sang the louder and more energetic her voice became, blocking the outside world. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Stand a little taller; doesn't mean I'm lonely when I'm alone. What doesn't kill you makes a fighter, footsteps even lighter. Doesn't mean I'm over 'cause you're gone. What doesn't kill you makes—"
She was abruptly shaken from her thoughts and singing by a smooth tenor cutting in. "How do you know that song? It won't come out for another four years." Blue eyes shot up as her chest tightened in terror. The Doctor's expression she could only describe as utterly serious. This was the expression the Doctor had worn when he gave that family an eternity of torture.
Tell me what you think!Special thanks to my beta emptyvoices, and to LovelyAmberLight for her encouragement.