Finally... Part 7. So sorry for the long delay.
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Rose woke. Her head felt like it had been split open with a particularly sharp pickaxe and her mouth tasted stale and medicinal. She ran her tongue over her teeth and swallowed trying to clear away the sour flavour. Light and dark spots, a shimmering haze of shadow and highlight, danced in and out of her vision, making her feel as if she were swimming underwater. It took her a few moments of repetitive blinking to clear her sight and take in her surroundings. She was in a small room, smaller even than her old bedroom back at the Powell Estates. The walls were draped out of red fabric, much like the walls of the tent she had just been in. There were no windows; only a wooden door, oddly set into the fabric wall. She blinked again and tried to refocus on her surroundings. The outside edges of her vision were blurry now, making her feel as she was looking down a long corridor.
The floor was dirt, covered by an ancient-looking, frayed rug that might once, perhaps, have been beautiful, but now just looked faded and ill-used. She was lying on a small bed. Well, a cot really, just a thin mattress spread over a rusting, wrought-iron frame. A small kerosene lamp on the bedside table spilled smoky, flickering light across her surroundings. The light didn't travel far from its source, causing shadows to gather like puddles of spilled ink in the deep recesses of the room. Sitting up abruptly, Rose immediately regretted the decision. Her head whirled and her stomach flipped violently. Choking back nausea, she pressed her forehead to her knees and waited for the room to stop spinning. After a few moments of deep breathing, Rose uncurled herself and stood on wobbly legs in the centre of the room. She wondered briefly if the Doctor had realised yet that she wasn't where she was supposed to be, or if he was still busy with the Judoon. She bit her lip, thinking about the Doctor's possible reactions to her disappearance. He was going to be irritated, followed quickly by worry and then he was going to be very very angry. At the moment, she wasn't sure who he was going to be angrier with, her or whomever was behind this.
Noticing an old-fashioned washstand pushed into the far corner of the room, she stumbled over to study the chipped porcelain jug and basin. She tentatively lifted the jug, watching a clear stream of water pour into the basin with thirsty eyes. She only hesitated a moment before cupping the water in her hands and tipping it down her dry throat. After drinking her fill, she splashed the rest on her sticky face and pushed her hair off her forehead and away from her eyes, so that she could have a better view of the room. Her gaze ran over red fabric of the walls, stopping abruptly as she noticed something pinned into the wall above the cot she had been laying on. She suddenly felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of icy water on her head; chills ran down her back and her arms. Rose moved, as if in a dream, slowly closer, only vaguely aware that her heart had started to beat frantically in her chest.
It was the butterfly. It was always the butterfly. It had hovered through her dreams, been present or near while she had seen and heard and felt all those horrible things. She had seen it in the market and it had been in the tent right before she had been brought here. This butterfly had been skewered to the wall above the cot, a silver pin thrust cleanly through its golden torso. Its blue wings glimmered in the diffuse light, a marked contrast to the blood red of the fabric walls. It was obviously dead, displayed on the wall as if it were part of someone's insect collection. She shivered and backed away. Nothing had been right since she had started having those dreams. All of her recent awkward interactions with the Doctor, all her pent up longing, all of her insecurities about her future seemed somehow seemed pinned to the dreams and to the butterfly.
Rose turned away from the eerie image of the butterfly and stepped up to the door. She wasn't exactly a novice at being held prisoner and she knew the door would probably be locked (prison doors generally were), but it was worth a try. She placed her hand on the cool metal of the door handle and turned. To her surprise, the knob twisted easily in her hand. The door opened and she stepped out into a corridor. The walls made of the same deep red fabric as the room she had just come from. The hallway was long and deserted, set sporadically with wooden doors that marched down the corridor like a row of battered soldiers. The passageway was dimly lit, much like the room she had just come from, but here she couldn't tell where the light was coming from. For a reason she couldn't quite put her finger on, it reminded her vaguely of the lighting in the TARDIS.
Standing in the hallway, Rose wasn't sure where to begin. All of the doors looked the same and they couldn't all possibly be unlocked could they? Deciding that the best course of action would be just to try each door individually, she reached out and tried to open the closet door. It opened easily and she peered into another weakly-lit room. Her eyes widened in surprise, the room was full of white marble busts, both alien and human. They were piled around the room, sitting on the floor, arranged in curio cabinets. Some of the nicer ones had been set into wall niches. The smaller statues had been placed on simple wooden tables. The arrangement was haphazard as if someone had run out of room to place them all. There was hardly any floor space at all. Rose thought she recognized Julius Caesar, and maybe a large carving of William Shakespeare, although it was set back into a far corner, and partially obscured by the white silhouette of an alien with a myriad of gleaming blank eyes. It was odd seeing sculptures of humans intermingled with so many alien features. It looked like the storeroom of some sort of intergalactic museum.
The next room Rose tried was full of rusted sundials, cuckoo clocks, digital clocks, grandfather clocks, and baskets full of fob watches and wristwatches. Some of the time pieces looked quite old, whilst other looked incredibly advanced. It was strange to see them all in the same room, all of their numbers and hands pointing and blinking different times. She continued to move down the hallway, peering into rooms full of books, vases, ancient crumpling amphorae, one room was full of porcelain dolls, glass eyes peering out at her from under matted ringlets. All of the rooms were lit the same, with one or two kerosene lamps, or in some cases low burning candles set in shallow bowls. Rose wandered vaguely, why all the rooms, except the hallway, were lit this way. Why were there only kerosene lamps or candles? Why wasn't there any electricity or plasma power or any of the other variations of light that she had seen in her travels? There had to be some explanation for it.
Unbidden, in the midst of her discoveries, an ineffable comparison arose in her mind between these rooms and the old army base in Utah that she had visited with her first Doctor. In Utah, everything had been placed under glass cases. It had all been carefully tagged and catalogued. Everything was clean and efficient. In this places the rooms were crammed full, but almost lovingly so, as if each piece had its own unique spot, despite the clutter. It had not been like that in the army base; that place had been cold and sterile, filled with the whir of filtered air and the heavy clank of military boots. There the man who had collected alien artefacts had wanted them for the power they could bring him. Here… well, this place felt different. This place was loved. She shivered abruptly and goose bumps rippled across her arms. Maybe, this place was loved too much. She wasn't sure why, but she knew it was true... these things, this place, everything was off somehow.
The hallway seemed to go on forever, an unwavering corridor clothed in red, the colour of dried blood. She felt dislocated, not only because she was a trapped in a strange place, but also because there was nothing to ground her. There were no windows, no sounds, no smells beyond stagnant air and the musty smell of dust and the tang of decay. She was floating in space. The odd thing was that she had spent the last two years of her life floating in space... but before – well - the Doctor had always been there, hadn't he? Before, when she was overwhelmed or missing home or so happy that her heart had felt it might burst from sheer joy, she had had his hand to hold. He was her anchor, and now she was lost, drifting, alone, in this strange shadowy place. All around, her dreams were mixing with reality. The macabre image of the butterfly pinned above the cot she had been lying on, the ominous feeling in the pit of her stomach.... all of it made her head ache and her thoughts sluggish.
She forced herself to move on. She had to find a way out and the best way to do that was to the open each door, marking off the possibilities for escape. The next room she came too was full of animal pelts. Most of the furs were dark, thick with long shaggy hair that captured both light and shadow in their thick depths. The majority of them were piled up on the bare floor, but a few had been hung up carefully, like tapestries, on the walls. She took another step forward and abruptly recoiled as her gaze caught what was hanging on the wall across from her. A large wolf head was mounted onto the far wall. Taking several steps back, her mouth opened in a strange silent cry as the wolf's glassy, dead eyes caught the light of the single sputtering lamp and became alive again, something strange and powerful flickering in its gaze. She couldn't move, her feet were pinned to floor. It was room full of wolf pelts. All wolf pelts.
She couldn't take her eyes away from the wolf's smooth flat gaze. She was caught up, mesmerized. Something, swirling, angry, golden, burning, came to life in her stomach. It rushed its way up her throat, across her tongue, and tried to force its way over her teeth. Rose bit back the snarl, turned on her heel and fled the room. She could feel the eyes of the wolf on her back, searing their way through muscle and bone. She quickly shut the door and leaned up against it. Swallowing hard, she clenched and unclenched her fists, waiting for the burning in her stomach and throat to subside.
Who had brought her here? And why? Why let her wander around so freely? Why show her all these things? She was confused, muddled by the dim lighting, the eerie feeling of familiarity, the after effects of whatever drug had been used on her, and a desperate longing to see the Doctor. She desperately wanted to see him, to lace her fingers through his and apologise for everything that had happened in the library two days ago and in the market... not because she thought she had been wrong, but because she wanted everything to go back to the way it was before. She wanted to hear his voice. She wanted to be laughing with him in the TARDIS, curled up on the jump seat with his arm wrapped securely around her shoulders. She wanted him to tell her that it would all be all right. But he wasn't here and he didn't know where she was. She had no doubt that he would find her eventually, but that could be days away. For all she knew, it had already been days. For the first time in a very long time, since the day she had run into the TARDIS grinning and happier than she had ever been, she was on her own.
She bit her lip hard to stop herself from crying, and pushed herself off the wall. She reached out to open the next door. It swung open and she got a good look at what was in the room. She blinked in shock, stumbling backwards and landing with a hard, undignified thump on her backside. The whole room was covered in butterflies. Butterflies, pinned to the walls, to the floor, to the ceiling, their bodies pierced with delicate silver pins. They had all been placed carefully against one another, in perfect lines, as if they were all on display in a glass case. Their wings and bodies formed shifting layers: indigo, navy, cerulean, gold, sapphire, cobalt and aquamarine. They covered the whole room, enveloped it, devoured it in tiers of paper thin wings and delicate antennae. The light winked stubbornly off their tiny dead red eyes and she quickly swung the door shut with her foot, scuttling backwards until she hit the hallway wall. For a moment she remained on the floor, her head and back throbbing.
She felt defeated, lost, and immensely alone. She was set adrift in an endless wilderness of red fabric, wooden doors, and rooms full of items that she couldn't understand. It was grotesque, a twisted snarling mass of dream and reality. She set there a few minutes more, her face and throat burning with unshed tears. Clenching her jaw in determination, she stubbornly climbed to her feet, standing on trembling legs. She would find a way out of here. She would find her way back to the Doctor. She needed him and he needed her, and she would fix this. She would set things right and get herself out of this mess, or whatever was this was that she had blundered into.
She moved down the hallway and opened the next door. She was badly frightened now, even more so than before and once again she began to wonder if any of this was real. She was looking into the room from her dream, the dream that she had had only last night. It was the same room, down to every detail. The room was over crowded. Before, all of the rooms she had looked into had been sorted by like items, but this room was the same jumble that she remembered. There were the same bins of old and scratched daguerreotypes, shadow boxes full of exotic insects pinned to cardboard, stacks of dog-eared books, piles of ancient scrolls, glass vases, a wall display of wicked sharp knives, and hundreds of odd alien tech devices that Rose still couldn't recognize. The room was as small as she remembered it, devoid of any furniture except a few overloaded tables pressed against the walls. But... she felt odd and the burning golden thing, which had reacted so violently in the room full of wolf pelts, became active again... it was that feeling again, just a tickle in the back of her mind saying that this place was bigger on the inside. She couldn't explain why she felt that way, she just very much knew that was how she felt.
Rose went into the room and then turned to face the door, something telling her to wait. The last time she had seen this room, someone had been in it with her. She shut her eyes and saw a flash of a red cloak, a beckoning hand, hundreds of butterflies, their bodies, their wings, pounding, pressing against her arms and face. Shivering she opened her eyes again and kept them trained on the open door. She didn't have to wait long. A figure appeared in the open doorway, and the golden feeling the in the bit of stomach intensified, until she felt surely that her insides must be glowing with white light.
The figure moved forward, its voluminous red cloak trailing on the ground. It threw back its hood, revealing the face of a wizened old man. His skin was so thin that it was nearly translucent, she could even make out the blue veins running across his heavy eyelids. His glittering black eyes were lost in the deep papery folds of his face, and they stared out at her from under a pair of dark shaggy eyebrows with a feverish intensity. What hair he had framed his head in a diffused silver halo of frizz. His lips were thin, colourless, and slightly turned up at the corners; they twitched convulsively as if he were perpetually laughing to himself. He was slight and short, maybe an inch shorter then Rose.
The old man stepped into the room, his eyes never leaving her face, "Oh, here you are, my dear. I did wonder where you had got off to. I've been expecting you." His voice was high pitched and as clear as a bell.
Rose simply stood there, her heart pounding, her stomach ablaze. The moment the old man had entered the room everything around her had sharpened, become less dreamlike, and her senses were trying desperately to catch up.
"I've been calling. It was very naughty of you to be so long about finding your way to me." He spoke to her as if she were a wayward child.
"Calling? You've been calling me?" she stuttered.
"Oh yes, oh yes." He started to hum a little and Rose got the feeling that he was very very happy about something, perhaps happier than he had been in a long time.
Rose took several step backwards, ramming her lower back into a table behind her, as a blue butterfly, identical to the ones she had seen pinned to the walls, fluttered into the room, and flitted around the man's head. "What the hell is that thing?" she asked instinctively, her hands clenching into fists.
"Oh!" The old man shook himself from his reverie. "Yes, I had forgotten." He held out a finger and the butterfly settled onto it. It was as if the insect was in his thrall. "This is a Dream Feeder. That is the closest that I can come to an exact translation of their name in their native language. They are a rare race, nearly extinct actually, the last of their kind. I rescued them from their home planet, Arcadia, where they were slowly starving to death. Now I breed and train them myself. They are beautiful, aren't they?" He had seemingly asked the question more of himself then of her and Rose didn't bother to respond. The man continued his monologue, "You see, they feed off the energy of dreams."
A series of images flashed before Rose's eyes; a burning orange sky, a woman in grey, holding a leather bound journal in her hands, a man with blood on his shirt and on his hands, madness glittering in his pale brown eyes, Jack's voice whispering in her ear, a young girl dancing in the TARDIS, a grandfather stargazing on a lonely hill. "The dreams - my dreams. You… you sent me those dreams, you brought me here." She paused, her thoughts rebounding wildly against one another and then clicking into place. "You put all those horrible images in my head," she finished, her voice a horrified whisper.
The old man nodded. His pale cheeks were flushed pink with excitement. "Yes! Yes! Very good! I did send you the dreams. I sent a Dream Feeder to guide you!" He looked lovingly down at the butterfly perched precariously on his finger. "They are excellent astral projectors, capable of entering into nearly anyone's mind. The butterflies don't create the dreams, they only enhance them, make them more vibrant, so that it is easier for them to feed and easier for you to remember. That's part of their charm, all that lovely power packed into such an innocent package."
"They're parasites," Rose gasped, her eyes locking onto the butterfly. She suddenly understood why she had felt so drained, so exhausted, after each of her dreams, why the images had been so vivid, why the butterfly had been the one constant through each of her nightmares.
He shrugged, "I suppose some might call them parasites, but they seldom cause any lasting damage. I sent them to you because I knew you would see them in your dreams and then be tempted to follow one here. But as for whatever or whoever you saw in your dreams… " He shrugged again, carelessly. "Well - you had already seen all of that."
Rose shook her head, anger and fear battling for dominance inside of her. "What does that mean, already seen? What had I already seen? And why choose me?"
Surprise and then disappoint passed over his face. "But I thought that would be obvious! Your head is full of beautiful things. Unique things. You've seen timelines, altered timelines, created timelines and you don't even know it. You're mind is full of wonderful events, people, places, both past, present, and future." As he spoke his voice became lower, almost reverent, as if he were revealing some arcane secret. His dark eyes glittered strangely. "You glow. You burn like the sun." The last sentence had come out in a hiss and he crept several steps closer to her, as if her own personal gravity was sucking him in.
Rose tried to take another step back, avoiding his fervent gaze, but she had retreated as far she could, and now stood pressed up against the far wall. She struggled to sift through his words, but none of it made any sense. Panic broke over her, and her eyes darted past the man and out the door, searching desperately for an escape route. But how could she escape when she had no idea where she was? She forced herself to look the man in the eye, "What is this place?"
His eyes burned brighter ever brighter, until she thought that they would absorb all the light in the room, twin black holes burning in the deep hollows of his face, widening to devour the universe. She had a sudden vision of the black hole hanging above Krop Tor. "This is my home. My home is full of wonderful things, almost as many as in your mind. When you first came to this planet, nearly two days ago now, I could feel your mind." He paused, as if to savour the memory and then continued, "So unique! So colourful, as varied as a butterfly's wing. So powerful," His gaze sharpened, his voice once again became lower, sonorous. "I knew I had to have your energy."
Rose was pinned against the wall, unable to move from shock and fear. Another wave of panic, washed icy cold over her, and she fought to keep her hands from trembling. "My energy?"
"Yes! Exactly. With the power of your mind, I could run my compound for years!" He gestured wildly around him and the shadows in the room flickered, casting charcoal coloured shadows across the angles of his face. "I could even expand!"
Rose shook her head in disbelief. How could this be? The Doctor had said it was impossible, impossible for anyone else to have that kind of technology. "This place… it's bigger on the inside?" She suddenly didn't need him to answer her question, she already knew the answer. She had known since she had had the second dream. She had even voiced her fears to the Doctor without know their importance. That strange feeling lurking in the corner of her mind, the odd disproportionate feeling too all the rooms that made her think of the TARDIS... it all made sense now.
He nodded his head, and some how she got the feeling that he was pleased that she had caught on so quickly to his great secret. "Yes, of course How else would I store my collection?"
She hesitated, searching frantically for the right questions, her generally pragmatic mind pushing into overdrive. "How… how did you get the technology?"
He shook his head, chuckling to himself. "I told, you I'm a collector! Not only of rare artefacts but also of knowledge, of machinery! I came across this ship many years ago now… when I was still a young man barely out of adolescence. I had travelled to the planet Arcadia, hoping to find a few artefacts of that lost civilization. Once there I not only discovered the Dream Feeders, nearly wiped out, I also found this place, hidden under a fall of loose rock. I soon deduced that it was some sort of spacecraft, abandoned on the surface of that lonely planet. I studied it for years, wandering the dimly lit corridors searching for anything that would help me learn more, but I found nothing..." He was lost in memory now, and his eyes had dimmed somewhat, foggy with recollection. "I found nothing, nothing but books I was unable to translate. The ship was badly damaged. Its power cells were nearly drained, and soon I found that the interior of the ship was shrinking. A room that had been there just the week before would suddenly disappear. I knew I had to do something, save it somehow, because I could use it." He took another step towards her, his long red cloak dragging across the ground.
Rose shook her head again, trying to follow is explanation.
"Don't you see?" he cried. "It's become the perfect place to store my collection! I had the ship transported here to the bazaar, where I could continue to study its inner workings and continue to acquire new artefacts. Over the years I've been able to mould the technology to fit my needs, disguising the ship as only another tent in the bazaar. But the original power supply grows weaker every day. The whole place is shrinking." His eyes regained their maddened glow, sharpening again as he looked at her. "The lights and the temperature controls, no longer work. I've had to resort to primitive means…" He paused here to gesture at the single kerosene lamp in the room. "I've never been able to find a compatible power supply. I had resigned myself to watching my collection become jumbled, like this room, and then fade away… until two days ago…".
"Two days ago when I came here…" Rose whispered, another puzzle piece clicking into place.
"Yes, two days ago, when you came here." The man smiled at her, his thin lips twisting upwards. "The ship felt your presence right away, alerted me and then I sent the Dream Feeders out to lure you in… and here you are!"
Rose's eyes narrowed, and she felt a surge of anger rise up from her stomach, "And now you want to hook me up to your… ship, like a battery, and drain me till I'm dry."
He frowned, the corners of his thin dry lips twisting downwards abruptly. "There's no need to be crude dear. Would you like some refreshment, a drink perhaps?" His voice had become kind again, his eyes no longer gleamed with frenzied light. "Tea? I know humans are so fond of tea."
His calm demeanour was unnerving and Rose shook her head shocked at the abruptness of the offer.
He shrugged, as if to tell her that it was her loss, and then turned and began to shuffle towards the door, apparently satisfied with her for the moment.
He was almost across the threshold when Rose whispered, her voice laced with steel, "The Doctor will find me." She had no doubt now that he would. The Doctor would find her and she would see this old man tremble in fear.
He turned back to face her, his voice still gentle, but there was a hard edge to his expression that had been missing a moment before. "The Doctor? Who is that?" His tone was nonchalant, but his face was taunt with suppressed emotion. There was a new and odd gleam in his gaze. Rose wasn't sure if it was jealousy or anger.
"He'll find me, and he's not going to be happy with you." With each word she uttered, she felt a little braver, the memory of the Doctor and her feelings for him, rose up in her and bolstered her courage.
The manic light returned to his eyes and he leapt forward, clenching her wrist in a vicelike grip, and pressing a gnarled hand to her temple. "Ah, the Doctor! Your companion. Oh! A Time Lord!" He stopped to think, his fingers pressing hard into her head. She wriggled away from the pressure and he let her go. "You travel with a Time Lord, how fascinating! I thought they had been wiped out, but no!"
Rose cradled her wrist gently in her hand. She could already start to see the bruises forming from where he had gripped her, deep purple blooms began to blossom against her pale skin.
The old man continued, "He must keep himself well shielded. I detected no trace of him until now, it's a wonder he did not think to do the same for you, but he's never even looked into you mind has he?"
She didn't answer and the old man continued his assumptions. "You travel with a Time Lord, a great telepath and he's never even let himself look into your beautiful mind. What a pity... But I have found that we often have a blind spot concerning the things we love." He stepped backwards, retreating towards the door again. "Well, no matter, he may search for you, but he won't find you."
"He will." Rose's voice was hard and matter of fact.
The old man's eyes narrowed, studying her face carefully. Finally, he shrugged. "No matter, even if he does find his way here, there is no escape. I will add him to my collection as well, but I dare say you are the true prize. I would much rather have the only something in creation, rather than the last."
