Chapter 1
There was blood, 'they say blood will have blood', so much blood. So much for viewing life through rose-tinted glasses; her vision was blurred and smeared with deep, swelling crimson, her tongue sluggish and furred in an acrid, irony tang, her cheeks damp with life giving, ruby tears as her soul was rent apart and her body pulled and compressed in quaking breaths of emotional exhaustion.
She tilted her head to the side, like a curious magpie spying something with a silvery shine and knelt on the stained floor by a crumpled, pale body. 'Hush little baby, don't say a word. Mamma's going to buy you a mocking bird…' A blue-tit fluttered in from a nearby window, though outside the curtains, was the gaping maw of a glutinous, black hole. It held a lilac foxglove in its beak and chirped around the mouthful.
She accepted the gift, smiling and traced its petals along the plump, blue lip of the man before her. With wide eyed curiosity she huffed closer to his still, slack face and methodically traced every freckle and latent line where muscle once tensed. He was hers now. She could look her fill. Imagine anything, reality would never encroach again.
The blue bird flew graceful over to perch on the lens of an old-fashioned camera and morphed, in an obscuring, grey, viscous cloud, into a Raven. "Never more," it shrilled and she laughed heartily with sugary sweetness. "Mine," she intoned and hummed soothingly as she tousled thick, sleek hair.
She bent low and blushed, "Do you really think I'm beautiful?" She lifted his right limp hand and smoothed it down her cheek, turning her nose into his palm and kissing the blanched, whorled fingertips.
"I love you too, Doctor," she grinned unabashedly and trailed his puppeted appendage down her neck, over the creamy, olive skin of her slender shoulder and around the curve of a breast. She laced her fingers through his and squeezed his frustratingly unresponsive digits closed, lifting and massaging the ample flesh. She moaned watery and wantonly. "Tit for tat," she giggled playfully slapping the hand away that plummeted under the force of gravity, like the dead weight it was, as she leaned over and began to run her restless hands down his chest and between his legs.
"Do you want to live forever?" a man in a stained, white shirt and braces breamed giddily down at her from behind the camera. The raven squawked. "You'd never have to leave his side? You'd always remember him?" the man encouraged, seemingly thrilled with his deduction.
"Really?" she beamed.
The raven shifted again into a dense, black shadow that loomed over the cowering trio in magnitude and strength. "There is a season for all things," it boomed. The man started to wail mournful and she turned to see him cradling a deformed baby, bloody and marred with remnants of mortal flesh, still and silent in his arms.
Suddenly she felt sick, the room began to spin, her heart, no hearts, hammered in her chest and the air tasted like dust and quenched her lungs with nothing but ash that seemed to reignite, burning like a returning phoenix. "I don't want to live without him. He's everything," she coughed and retched as something ripped and shredded her throat, forcing its way out from within.
A purple flower, a foxglove, stemmed from her larynx, filling her mouth with plush, velvet leaves as the sickly sweet flavour of asphyxiation trickled like water into her lungs.
"And if that mocking bird don't sing, Daddy's going to buy you a diamond ring…" the man cackled dementedly from behind, rocking back and forth on the grimy, creaky floorboards, babe still at breast and she tried to scream, she tried so hard but no sound would come...
The Doctor approached his companion's door as if it held all the secrets of the universe in its gnarled, synthetic wood. It was a portal of trepidation and exhilaration. For an accustomed adrenalin junkie whose glands had long since desensitised and hardened, the fluttering fever in his veins was new and delightfully thrilling.
The Doctor had crumpled himself up into the corner of the old, thread bared sofa in the second library and poured over forgotten copies of 'Mills and Boone' with psychological curiosity and gentlemanly disgust. In the end, though he could insinuate himself into any time and space, contemporary in their environs, he decided that the antiquated values and courtship of his first formative centuries felt more comfortable even in this fashionable, geek chic skin.
He favoured the simplicity and double entendre of the single, pink rose in his hand though knew that the gesture was so shockingly unlike him that it would jar in absurdity with any notion of subtlety.
His magnificent T.A.R.D.I.S. seemed to hold her breath with him as they coalesced their attention on the large, opaque door. Every thought, memory and scheme shuttered to silence in watchful reverence and anticipation in his mind's eye. Perhaps this acuteness was what nudged his senses to the soft, ragged breaths from within. His superior hearing discerned the textured squeak of hands grabbing at silken sheets, the stampeding heart rate, mournful sobs and the traction of slick, sweaty skin tossing to and fro in earnest. His throat suddenly felt constricted and dry and he swallowed painfully as he gently levered the door open, peering inside with darting, concern filled eyes.
The room was dark but not pitch as the T.A.R.D.I.S. was assisting by casting a soothing, amber glow from her coral walls but Rose's anguished face was as heartbreaking as he imagined. Her mewling cries grew in volume and frequency as he quickly crept to her side, never moving his gaze from the damp, furrowed brow and pert, pained mouth.
"Rose?" he whispered as he soothed a hand across her forehead and into her clinging, moist hair. He softly and efficiently checked for any injury. Nothing but drenched bed sheets and a writhing, whimpering Rose.
"Rose, sweetheart?" he shook carefully at her shoulder.
"Doctor?" the word was wrenched from her throat with such pitiful agony.
"Shush, Rose, I'm here. Wake up."
Her eyelids fluttered, opening slightly and she drew her legs up to her chest hugging them desperately.
"You're gone and…and…I never told you…I never said…"
"No, Rose I'm right here. It's only a nightmare. Please open your eyes," he pleaded, hating seeing this amazing women look so vulnerable and childlike in her long, cotton nightdress.
"Don't want to," she half shouted. "Don't want to see…don't want it to be real…I can't…" she started crying properly now and the Doctor gave up all restraint. He drew back the covers and curled around her foetal form, letting her feel his weight, his warmth and protection. He let his tense body mould into her as he breathed her in and unexpectedly felt tears form in his own eyes.
"Please, Rose. I need you. Come on back to me."
She stilled suddenly and shakily traced a hand down his arm to his fingers that held her around her waist with loving pressure.
"Doctor?" she turned abruptly onto her back, the Doctor moving quickly out of her way, and questioned him with wide, teared streaked eyes.
"I'm here. You were having a nightmare," his intense eyes bored into hers and his voice was soft and caring.
Rose seemed to shake herself fully to awareness at the realisation that she was being observed.
"Oh, gross! The bed's soaked. I'm sorry, didn't mean to wake you. It was silly, irrational…the raven and the way I was touching…I should…hmmm…shower and change the sheets," she was standing already, if unsteadily, on her feet and bumfling up bed clothes and padding around her room in bare feeted distraction.
He rose and took her hand stilling her, "That can wait. Are you ok?"
She thought he looked beautiful in the diffused light, like something not entirely of this realm and maybe, she supposed, he was.
"Yeah," she coughed and in a second the Doctor had her sitting on the edge of the bed with a mug of water.
"Sorry bout this," she muttered through sips.
"Don't be silly." The Doctor was rubbing her back in calming motions and she felt so young and embarrassed but blissfully safe and cared for. She smirked at the thought of the Doctor, domestically 'Mother Henning' her.
He put his arm around her and leaned in to place a chaste kiss on her cheek but continued to rest his head against hers. Rose began to shiver involuntary as the clinging cotton cooled against her flushed skin.
"Sorry."
"Stop that," he playfully chided and pulled a fragranced, fresh pair of pyjamas from her drawer.
"Here. Go splash some water on your face and put these on, eh?"
Numbly Rose shuffled into the bathroom, emerging looking fresher and more content a few minutes later.
He simply took her hand then and led her out of the room, down two corridors, around the fountain and across the hall.
He opened the door to his bedroom and guided her inside, "Sleep here tonight."
"Where will you sleep?" she asked in a quiet, uncertain voice, feeling stupid at the assumption that he would sleep at all and at the timidity of her question. She hated feeling vulnerable but that dream had been so vivid, the images still warred for dominance in her mind, and had left her reeling with confusion and anxious fear.
"Right here," he said, "If that's ok with you?"
Staring dumbly at the familiar spiky haired alien before her, Rose finally managed to nod her head.