**Notes: Ok, last part of Last Christmas... then I've got some ends to tie up. After that, this series will slow down a lot. It's not over... I'll at the very least be rewriting the tv show episodes with some stuff in between and if I get an idea for this group, I'll add that too. But I've got another story idea brewing and it's going to take over my brain for a bit once it gets going. Don't worry, we'll fix all the loose ends first though.**
Chapter Twenty-Five - Last Christmas: Part Four
Leaving the lab, everyone walked back into the monitor room to confront the impossible man that had supposedly rescued them from the Dream Crabs earlier. They overheard him on his mobile, talking to one of his delivery teams.
"No, no, no. I need you to do the East Coast right now. Well, otherwise you'll be delivering to the islands in broad daylight. Yeah, listen... Please try and remember that our mugshots are on every Christmas card. Yeah, just get it done. Head towards the Northern Lights. Yes, I remembered to switch them on!" He switched off the phone and turned to face the group.
"The Helman-Ziegler test. The only reliable dream test that I know," Evander said as he grabbed four matching books off of the shelf. "Your base manual. I take it none of you have memorized this?"
"I haven't... I haven't read it," Shona admitted. No one seemed surprised by her admission.
"These books should be identical in the real world. But as they don't exist in your memory, in a dream, they can't be. Agreed?" he asked and they nodded back at him. "Clara! Give me any two digit number."
"Fifty-seven," she replied. Clara fidgeted a bit as she looked around the room for any more clues that this might be a dream.
Alex and Rose stood to the side while they waited for the rest of them to realize that this was really true. A few more minutes wouldn't make much difference when they had apparently already been dreaming for what felt like a month.
"Alright, all of you, turn to page fifty-seven and look at the very first word," Evander instructed. "Right, when I point at you."
Pointing at Ashley, she said, "Isotope."
He moved to point at Bellows who looked back and forth between him and the book in shock.
"Well?" he asked.
"Extremely," she replied nervously.
"Inside," Albert said as the Doctor came to him.
"Chocolate," Shona said harshly. "Why did I get chocolate? What's that about?"
Albert was still in denial as he said, "This can't be right. We must have got it wrong, that's all."
"So do it again," Rose offered as a solution.
"Try page twenty-four," Alex said.
"Twenty-four," Evander agreed, gesturing towards the people holding the books and they began flipping through the pages.
Pointing at each in turn again, Ashley began with, "We."
Bellows said, "Are."
"All," Albert supplied.
There was an ominous pause and Evander asked, "Shona?"
With a shake to her voice, she whispered, "Dead."
"Since the attack in the infirmary, nothing has been real?" Ashley asked as she accepted the reality of the danger they were in.
"The attack is still going on. This is it!" Evander exclaimed.
"We've been dreaming since then?" Albert said, still struggling with the proof.
Suddenly, Santa Claus interrupted their interactions, "Oh, for Easter's sake! Of course you've been dreaming! Haven't you been paying attention?"
"Rudolph. Did you see the nose?" the elf in the red jacket prompted.
"The North Pole? Come on, with stripes?!" said the one with "wolf" on the back of his vest.
"This..." said the first.
"Is..." added the second.
"A dream!" shouted the trio including the elves and Father Christmas.
"How much more obvious do you want me to make it?" Santa asked. "Because I can text the Easter Bunny, you know."
"Seriously, are you trying to help?" Alex asked him. Santa scowled at him as Alex spun back towards his wife's side.
"As you stand here, chatting, chatting," he said as he made a talking motion with his hand, "your lives are ending. Unless you wake up, unless you free yourselves from these dreadful creatures, they're going to destroy you."
"You're a dream... who's trying to save us?" Shona asked.
"Shona, sweetheart, I'm Santa Claus. I think you just defined me," he responded.
"Come on, you lot!" Alex took over, "The Dream Crab tries to make the dream as real as possible to trap you inside it. It creates dreams within dreams so you can never be sure if you are really awake. But, your brain knows something is wrong. Your subconscious fights back."
"THIS is your mind, trying to tell you this isn't real," Evander concluded pointing to Father Christmas.
"So, it gives you me. Sweet Papa Chrimbo!" the man in red said with a smile.
"That's a really rubbish nickname," Rose interjected.
"Yeah, don't let me say that again," he admitted.
"It gives you comedy elves, flying reindeer..." one of the elves said.
"Exactly," Evander agreed.
"... a time travelling scientist dressed as a magician and his two spouses," Santa added with a smirk.
"Classic!" the elves laughed.
"No, no, no. Hang on. No, no, no... You will NOT suggest that they are a dream," Evander argued, pointing at Rose and Alex, desperately believing that they had to be real.
"Living in a phone box," Wolf added.
"It's a spaceship in disguise!" Rose shouted.
"You see how none of this makes any sense?" Santa asked pointedly.
"Shut up, Santa," Alex said angrily as he hugged Rose close to him.
"I've watched over you all your lives. I've taken care of you from Christmas to Christmas," Santa continued despite Alex's demand.
"But you're not real," Bellows argued.
"And yet, that never stopped me. All of you, come near. Come here, come on! Join hands," he instructed as he motioned them all into a circle.
"No, look, we don't need all this touchy-feely stuff," Evander protested, but Alex and Rose took his hands and pulled him into the group between them.
"Shut up, Doctor! Join hands. Come on, concentrate," Santa said as they all gathered together.
"Why?" Bellows asked, trying to understand what was expected of them.
"You are deep inside this dream, all right, and it is a shared mental state. So, it is drawing power from the multi-consciousness gestalt which has now formed telepathically..." Father Christmas explained, but was interrupted by an irritated Evander.
"No, no, no. Line in the sand. Santa Claus does not do the scientific explanation!" Evander groused.
Rose started laughing and pulled him back to her side and away from the face off he was heading towards with their imaginary rescuer.
"Alright, as the Doctor might say, 'Aw, it's all a bit dreamy-weamy!'" Santa teased with a bad Scottish accent.
"Why don't you just go and make a naughty list?" Evander snarked back at him.
"I have, mate, and you're on it!" he replied harshly.
"Don't give me that look," came the glowering reply.
"ALRIGHT!" Rose shouted between them with a hand on each of their chests. "That's enough. Can we please get back to saving Christmas?"
"This is very sweet, but right now I have an alien life form wrapped around my face and apparently, it's digesting my brain," Ashley commented. "When you speak, how do I know it's not the Dream Crab?"
"Ooooh, that's a good question! I like that!" Alex said and bounced on his toes.
"Spoken like a scientist," Santa proudly proclaimed.
"Can I put it another way?" Clara spoke up, "Why would the part of our brain that is trying to keep all of us alive choose you for a face?"
"Is anyone else asking that?" Santa questioned with open arms.
"Yeah, yeah. Yeah, all of us. All of us, why you?" Shona stumbled over her words.
"Well," he began. "It's the North Pole, it's Christmas Day. You're dying. Who you gonna call?"
"Ghostbusters?" Rose said cheekily.
Santa shot her a chastising look and continued, "Just one last time, huh? One last Christmas, as if your lives depended on it. Please! Ho, ho, ho! Believe in Santa!" He motioned them all together to hold hands and stepped back from the group.
"This is all very Christmassy, isn't it?" Alex asked with a manic grin.
"Ok, so what do we..?" Ashley began and trailed off as she looked around the room.
"Where did he go?" Bellows asked as she also noticed the absence of the man that had just been lecturing them.
"We're waking up. That part of the dream is over. We're on our own now," Evander told them.
"Well, then. What do we do?" Albert asked frustratedly.
"That pain in your head. Make it worse. Head towards it," Evander replied confidently.
"So, when we wake up, what do we expect?" Ashley asked as she closed her eyes and tried to follow the instructions.
"Only a few minutes will have passed at the most," Alex explained. "The attack is still in progress and dream time never matches reality."
"I'm scared," Shona said meekly.
"Congratulations. That means you're not an idiot," Evander told her curtly.
"Doctor! I think you might be even more rude now than you were in pinstripes," Rose chastised him.
"Good luck," Ashley told all of them. "Stay calm. And God bless us, every one."
They all concentrated on the pain digging into their skulls and in a flash of bright light, they were all lying on the infirmary floor, coughing violently. Looming over them, were the four sleepers who seemed to be clutching their abdomens in pain, but were straightening as the people on the floor recovered.
"Run!" Alex shouted as he tried to usher everyone through the door to the other room.
In the commotion, one of the sleepers grabbed Clara's arm and she shouted for help, "Doctor!"
"Clara!" Evander shouted and dragged her out of the creature's grip towards the door.
"Out, out now! NOW!" Ashley called as she pushed them all through and slammed down on the button to close the doors. One of the sleepers squeezed an arm through the closing gap and Ashley shoved it back by striking it with the butt end of her gun.
"Everyone alright?" Evander asked as they all caught their breath.
"Yeah," Ashley said and the others nodded.
"Good, now we get to wake up again," Rose told them, breaking the bad news.
"What do you mean?" Shona asked with wide eyes.
"I mean, that we're still dreaming. We saw Father Christmas before we even arrived here. There's another level of dreaming still to get through. Think about it, all of you. When we first met in the infirmary, what were you doing, Shona?" Rose asked.
"It's a long story," she said quickly, without thinking.
"Ashley, what is the mission of this base?" Rose continued, knowing that the dream had been supplying this answer to fill in the odd blanks all along.
"It's a long story," Ashley replied and looked a bit confused as to why she said that.
"Bellows, what brought you here to the base?" Rose asked, further proving her point.
"It's a long... story," she said, trying to stop the automatic response as it fell from her lips.
"Ok, why are they all giving the same answer? Because that is a tiny bit freaky," Clara asked.
"Dreams, they're funny," Evander said with a hollow laugh. "They're disjointed, they're silly, they're full of ... gaps. What did we even do during our last three weeks with Jack?"
"It's a long story," Alex answered and raised his eyebrows in shock at the reply coming against his will.
"But you don't notice," Evander continued, "because the dream protects itself. Stops you asking the right questions. Unless you're Rose, of course, who had this level of the dream figured out ages ago. But you, why do you have four manuals, one each, when you have a crew of eight? Or did you forget about your friends in the infirmary here?"
"But we woke up!" Albert protested.
"Dreams within dreams! Haven't you been listening?" Alex shouted. He'd honestly had enough with the man's constant denial of the facts in front of him.
"But this isn't a dream. I know it isn't," Bellows insisted.
"No one knows they're not dreaming. You can't ever be sure," Rose replied.
"Clara? Page number. Make it a good one," Evander prompted as the scientists grabbed their manuals once more.
"Twelve," Clara said shakily.
"Very," Ashley snapped.
"Very," Albert said as if it being the same word proved his own point.
"Very," Bellows said, seeming to still have some reservations.
Shona hesitated for a moment before answering, "Dead."
After giving them a moment, Evander asked, "And who's going to be the first to admit it?"
"Admit what?" Ashley asked.
"That the pain is still there," he replied.
"Actually, I think it's getting worse," Shona admitted as she rubbed at her head.
"Well... there's an alien organism eating your brain. Of course it's getting worse," Alex said as he began angrily pacing around the room. This was all taking too long, someone was more likely to get hurt with each passing minute.
"Doctor? What are they doing?" Clara asked and everyone looked to see what she was referring to.
On the monitors showing the infirmary, they could see the four sleepers climbing out of their beds and pointing up towards the cameras in the room.
"Factually, getting up. Significantly, sensing the endgame," Evander replied with a nervous glance towards Alex. Their eyes met and they both agreed that this was about to get even more dangerous.
"How?" Clara asked.
"I don't understand," Ashley added.
"Well, look at them. Go on! Look at them properly. Look who they are," Evander prompted and motioned for them to take a closer look at the monitors. "They're you. The sleepers are you."
"How can they be us?" Shona asked.
"Because we're dreaming, all of us," Alex explained. "This base isn't real. None of us are actually standing in this room. Rose and I might still be in Victorian London for all we know. Who knows where the rest of you might be, probably scattered all over the world."
"But, wherever you are, scattered in space and time, the Dream Crabs have got us, and we're all being networked into the same nightmare," Evander concluded.
"What are they doing?" Bellows asked as the sleepers on the screen seemed to be reaching for their counterparts.
"It's your subconscious again. The sleepers represent the part of your mind that's already surrendered to the attack. There are dream images of what's coming to kill you," Evander told them quickly as he tried to ascertain the best way out of this situation.
"That's me... That's actually me!" Albert said as he leaned closer to the monitor.
"No, it's a metaphorical construct representing a psychic attack within a shared dreamscape. Do please keep up," Evander sighed frustratedly.
"But it's me!" Albert said, almost excited by the idea.
"Don't get too close!" Alex warned, but it was too late as the screen started to distort.
"Why?" he asked, not seeing the danger that was already claiming him.
"Because this is a nightmare!" Evander cried as Albert was sucked, head first into the screen and the other scientists were reaching towards their respective sleepers against their will. "Look out! They're coming through! Out! Outside, now!" he bellowed as the creatures leapt through the screens and into the room with them.
Alex got the door to the outside open and was hurrying everyone through it. "Run, run, run! All of you, go!" Alex shouted as he slammed the door behind him and Evander sealed it with his sonic.
"We'll freeze to death out here," Bellows protested.
"But it's just a dream," Shona argued, thinking that would keep them safe somehow.
"This dream just killed your friend! Denying it isn't going to save us," Rose replied as her tension level snapped. They had gone the last month, maybe even longer where no one had died; not a single person. That alone should have been a clue that something was wrong. Not that she wanted people to die, but the dangerous situations that they were always getting into, meant that more often than not, there were casualties. But in the past month with Evander, all the victims were rescued and all the perpetrators were arrested or sent home.
"Where's Albert? Where's the professor?" Ashley asked in panic.
"He probably just woke up somewhere in the real world, dead," Evander snapped. "If we don't wake up now, we'll do the same."
"But how?" Clara asked desperately.
"I don't know," Evander admitted reluctantly.
The door they had just escaped through started to buckle as the creatures on the other side pounded against the metal.
"The TARDIS! Come on, everyone!" Alex shouted and pulled Rose along behind him.
"But it's not the real TARDIS," Clara argued.
"Well, let's hope that I dreamed it really well then," Evander replied, following along with Alex's suggestion.
The door to the TARDIS opened and out walked sleeper versions of Clara, Rose and the Doctors. The creatures stumbled towards them through the snow.
"It's us," Clara said in shock.
"Of course it's us. We're dreaming too," Evander replied.
"Oh my god!" Shona gasped as she pointed towards the dozen or so other sleepers that were now shuffling awkwardly towards the group that was shivering both due to the cold wind blowing and the terror they were facing.
"How is that possible? How can there be so many?" Bellows said as she grabbed at her comrades for support.
"The logic of a nightmare," Alex answered.
Ashley had pulled an emergency flare from one of the pockets in her uniform and lit it. Rose wondered if they really needed a better view of the creatures that were coming to kill them all.
"So, tell us how to wake up," Shona demanded. "Because you're always talking like you're so clever. You and your partners, going on and on. So, tell us what to do!"
"We have to leave. Get away from the threat, physically," Alex decided.
"Leave?" Clara asked.
"How do we do that?" Bellows asked. It wasn't as if they had a bunch of snowmobiles ready to go.
"Use your imagination," Evander said matter-of-factly.
"Of course!" Rose shouted, happily. "We have to dream ourselves home!"
"But how?" Bellows insisted.
"Come on, it's Christmas! The North Pole, who you gonna call?" Evander shouted to the dark, snowy sky.
At the sound of bells, they all looked up to see a sleigh flying through the sky, pulled by three reindeer. The one in front blinked a red light and they heard Santa shouting, "Hyah!" as they flew a tight arc down towards them. As the sleigh came to a stop between them and the sleepers, he called, "Woah! Get in the sleigh. Fortunately, I know all of your home addresses. Hyah!"
With a flick of the reins and a mighty lunge, they were off into the sky, leaving the frightful creatures behind. Rose hugged her Doctors from behind as they both sat in the front of the sleigh with Santa. Beside her sat Clara and Ashley. In the back seat, were Shona and Bellows.
"So, what happens now? This is us just waking up, right?" Clara asked.
"Could be. Well, I hope so. Waking up or..." Evander trailed off in thought.
"Or?" Clara panicked.
"Let's just say that we should be waking up now... probably," Alex interrupted.
"Hey. You want to take the reins, Doctor?" Santa offered to Evander.
"You're a dream construct, currently representing either my recovering or expiring mind," he argued.
"Yes, but do you want a go?" Father Christmas said with a roll of his eyes.
"Tell you what. I had a chance with the flying shark, let's let Alex take it this time," he replied with the first real smile he'd managed since their aborted trip to Vienna.
Alex smiled as brightly as Rudolph's nose and jumped over Evander's lap to sit next to Santa and took hold of the reins. Evander slid over to sit in front of Rose and leaned back to twine his fingers with hers. With a snap and a whistle, the sleigh jerked faster and looped through the air over London. They circled Big Ben as the bells chimed and Evander pointed towards the Millennium Wheel as he took Rose's hand with a smile.
"Look at me! Woooooo hooo hoooooooo!" Alex shouted with glee. Suddenly feeling a little worried about crashing into something, he asked Santa, "Maybe you could...?"
"Yeah, yeah," he replied with a chuckle and retook control of his sleigh.
"I work in a shop," Shona said suddenly.
"I'm sorry?" Ashley asked.
"I thought I was a scientist. That's rubbish," she replied.
"Finally, something that makes sense," Bellows interjected with a smirk.
"Oi! I used to work in a shop!" Rose retorted forcefully.
"And you've always been brilliant, love," Alex added over his shoulder.
"Perfume," Ashley said in sudden realization.
"What?" Shona wondered.
"I'm an account manager for perfume. Does this mean we're waking up?" Ashley asked.
"Possibly. With any luck, we'll all wake up in our proper times and places," Evander responded over the sound of the rushing wind.
"Proper times?" Clara asked curiously.
"Well, I'm pretty sure that Rose and I were in Victorian London, with Madam Vastra when we were taken. We didn't know the information she gave us and hadn't met up with Evander yet. I don't think there were many perfume account managers in the Victorian era," Alex replied.
"We might not know each other? Not any of us?" Shona asked, sounding really sad with the idea.
"No, possibly not," Ashley said quietly.
"Well, you know what we should do? We should swap numbers! We should have a reunion," Shona insisted.
"Bellows!" Ashley cried. As they all looked back, they saw that she had disappeared. They all took a second to calm themselves as they realized that she must have just woken up.
"Um, now I'm pretty sure I can remember my number so... if you memorize it, then you text me, we can go for a curry," Shona rambled, desperately hoping to keep her new friends.
"The chances of you remembering any of this are very slim," Evander told her, sadly.
"Well, don't say that. We'll remember, won't we, Ashley?" Shona said with hope in her voice. "Ashley?"
Looking over, they noticed that Ashley too had disappeared from the sleigh.
"Am I next?" Shona asked, "Is it me now?"
"Shona, you're going home. You're surviving," Clara told her reassuringly.
"Do you want to hang out sometime? We can just hang out," Shona said, on the verge of tears.
"Sure," Clara said with a small smile, allowing her the delusion of a reunion for them all.
"Santa, can I stay a bit longer?" Shona asked and in a blink, she too was gone.
"Clara, you ought to go home too. Whether you remember this or not, we'll come for a visit, I promise," Rose told her with a brief hug.
"I'll hold you to that, Rose. You keep them in line," Clara said and she closed her eyes. With a resigned sigh, she was gone.
"Will we remember, Doctor?" Rose asked her husbands. "Are we still really married, or did I dream it all?"
"We should remember, but even if we don't, you still have that setting on your sonic to call the TARDIS. We WILL find each other and we all know what we want. Don't worry, darling, if I haven't found you yet, then I will," Evander said reassuringly.
"Not if we find you first," Alex added cheekily.
"You did tell me what you wanted for Christmas, Doctor. I wouldn't take your present back. Not now that you really can have Rose back by your side," Santa told him with a wink.
In the courtyard of Madam Vastra's manor, Rose and Alex gasped and coughed as beside them they each saw a pile of black dust. As they tried to calm their racing hearts, they clutched at each other as if they might disappear in a flash of light.
Jenny ran outside to see them gasping on the ground. "What in the world happened?" she asked as she ran over to help them up. "It's only been a few minutes, but I saw you laying on the ground out here. Do you need me to fetch the missus?"
"Dream Crabs," Alex choked out between breaths. "Best not to think on it too much. We don't need more of them coming around."
Jenny nodded dumbly, knowing that answers from the Doctor often didn't make any sense.
"Should I use my sonic now? To call the TARDIS here," Rose asked Alex.
Before he could even form a reply, they heard the familiar wheezing of their beloved ship as it materialized right in front of them.