A/N: Well, my only words of advice is don't read this at 2am. If you're of a nervous disposition, you may like to skip over a certain portion of this chapter. Though if you are, how on Earth did you get this far into my fics anyway? :P

Review reply imminent! Fire away :)

Chapter 7: Recovery

Jack arrived back at their living area to find Panacea in the corner, Theo sitting on a chair and Leah in a panic, kneeling on the bed with her fingers pressed to her dad's temple to establish a telepathic connection. The Doctor was lying there in bed just as Jack had left him, only now he didn't seem to be moving.

'Leah? What happened?' Jack asked quickly, moving to check the Doctor's pulse. Still going.

'He was talking and then he froze!' Leah squeaked. 'He says he can feel his limbs but he can't move!'

'All life signs are reading as normal,' Panacea said in that calm, even tone.

Jack turned to Panacea. 'Side effect?' he asked.

'It is not a side effect we have seen before, but it seems to be so.'

'Any idea how long it might last?'

'I do not have enough data in my prediction matrix, but it should last no more than a few hours,' Panacea replied.

'Doc, don't panic. It's just a side effect,' Jack said. 'Temporary stuff.'

Leah closed her eyes a little harder with her face screwed up to get a telepathic reply from him. 'Daddy says he's not panicking, he's just terrified, and also could you sit him up cos he's really uncomfortable.'

Jack smiled as he paused, thinking for a moment. 'All right,' he decided and moved over to the head of the bed. He grabbed the Time Lord under his arms and hauled him to sit up, resting his head in the crook of a pillow to make sure he was comfortable. 'We're gonna stay here today and play some games. Right?'

He looked at Leah and Theo, who both gave a nervous nod.

Jack had meant to tell the Doctor about the woman in the Celene as soon as the Time Lord had regained the ability to speak, but as the hours passed and the Doctor didn't improve, the issue completely evaporated from his mind.

For three hours they played games and Time Lord remained completely immobile, only really able to blink, move his eyes and have telepathic conversations with Leah. When the kids went for lunch, Jack stayed with him and attempted to communicate telepathically. His grasp of telepathy was extremely limited compared to the gallifreyans, but he managed to get a hold of him so they could have a silent conversation that the kids couldn't hear.

'It's been hours, Jack,' the Doctor's voice came into his mind, fading in and out slightly.

'I know, just give it a little longer,' Jack replied. 'Hang on in there. Just temporary. We knew something like this might happen. Need anything?'

'No.'

'Let me know when you get hungry so we can try and feed you somehow.'

'I … ugh!'

Jack braced, looking at him. He hadn't moved. 'What? You okay?'

'Sudden ice cream headache,' he moaned.

'I'll get Panacea to get something to take away the pain.'

'I don't need … ugh ... Okay, yes, good idea,' the Time Lord conceded.

The hours dripped by like a leaking tap, and the Doctor only slightly improved. He could now move his mouth to form a few words that came out incredibly slurred, but otherwise. he was completely immobile.

Eventually, despite the Doctor insisting he wasn't hungry, Jack fetched some tomato soup and settled to sit on the bed and feed him like a baby, holding up his head for him.

'Here comes the aeroplane,' Jack joked, winding a spoon filled with soup to the Time Lord's mouth. He managed to swallow it.

'Didja make dat cosh itsh dishgushting,' the Time Lord commented, with a bit of drool escaping the side of his mouth and running down his chin. Jack quickly wiped it clean with a cloth.

'I looked it up, there's a big kitchen somewhere in the depths of this place full of robots that can make meals in three seconds, with cuisine from anywhere in the universe,' Jack told him. 'They use recipe books from planet chefs to make the food.'

'Thish musht be a Delia Shmith one,' the Doctor murmured, drooling again. 'Shtill not as bad ahs her boeuf bourguignon.'

'How the hell did you manage to say boeuf bourguignon?' Jack asked as the Doctor drooled little more. Jack patiently wiped his chin again and scooped up some more soup.

'Gad pleashe no,' the Doctor begged.

'C'mon it can't be that bad,' Jack said and tasted it himself. As the distinct flavour of tomatoes, basil, and mud washed through his mouth he pulled a disgusted face. 'Ugh.'

'Shee?' the Doctor said.

'What the hell is that?' Jack wondered, and then it clicked. 'Oh.'

'Whad?'

'Well you know I said they get it all from recipe books? Well, what if there was a typo in the book? So instead of salt, they put in … silt.'

'Ugh,' the Doctor moaned. Half a second later, his entire body jolted.

'Doc?' Jack asked, dispensing with the spoon.

'Imma fro up,' the Doctor gasped out.

'You're gonna throw up?' Jack asked, and set aside the soup immediately. He took hold of his best friend and turned him on his side, holding his head over the edge of the bed. 'Okay, go.'

The Doctor immediately vomited over the side of the bed in a chorus of coughs and gasps. It felt almost surreal to Jack as he held him, making it went on the floor.

After forty-five seconds he paused, just lying there gasping. Then he threw up two more times and finally seemed to relent. Jack obligingly pulled him to lie on his side on the bed and wiped his face with the cloth to clear the sick and a thin sheen of sweat that had built up. He was like a ragdoll.

'Sorreh,' the Doctor moaned.

'Don't be an idiot, it'll be Delia Smith's tomato and silt soup,' Jack assured him, and quickly noticed he was shaking. He instinctively rested a hand on the Doctor's forehead. 'Wow. Panacea?'

'The biosuit is detecting the Doctor is currently running a fever,' Panacea stated, suddenly appearing in the corner.

'But he's freezing,' Jack muttered, checking the Doctor's pulse. It felt slower than usual.

'I am already administering medications and temperature adjustments to regulate homeostasis through his biosuit, but he is not responding,' Panacea said informatively.

Jack sighed and brushed back the Doctor's hair from his head. He suddenly looked so awful. 'God, sorry,' Jack told him and wiped some more drool away.

'Sh'ok, I felth awful before dah shoup,' the Doctor slurred out. 'Ugh, ederything hurtsh.'

'It'll pass. Just a side effect.'

The Doctor swallowed, a little moan escaping him just as there was a sudden knock on the door. 'Daddy? Uncle Jack?' Leah's voice asked.

The Doctor's eyes connected with Jack's. 'Dun't ledda see meh,' he begged.

Jack nodded, moving to the door to slip out. He closed it behind him, meeting an anxious Leah staring up at him with wide eyes.

'What's going on?' she wanted to know.

'Dad just needs to get a bit of rest,' Jack replied.

'But he feels really bad,' Leah said quietly.

'Through the bond?'

'Yeah.'

'I won't lie, kid, he's got sicker, but Panacea's giving him treatment.'

'Can I help?'

He smiled. 'No, but I'll let you know.'

'But I wanna do something.'

'So do I, but Dad's gotta get through this himself,' Jack told her. 'He got himself into this and it's up to him to pull through. But you know what he's like, he'll be fine.'

As if purposely seeking to contradict Jack, over the following day, the Doctor went from being mildly drowsy and slurry to becoming seriously ill. From that slightly sleepy but fairly normal Time Lord, after his complete paralysis and spate of throwing up he seemed to crash faster than a light aircraft loaded with bricks.

Jack, Leah, and Theo watched and waited, repeatedly assured by Panacea that it would all pass. But he just seemed to get worse. Soon he was slipping between altered states of consciousness, with his hearts rate soaring from a steady, even, and healthy dual rhythm to beating out a constant triple-step tango. His arm swelled beyond belief, looking more like a balloon than a limb. Despite everyone's best efforts, he wouldn't eat or drink, and the one time Jack managed to get some food in him which wasn't from the book of Delia Smith, he threw it all up again.

Pretty soon he lost all awareness. Whenever Jack tried to talk to him, he drew a complete blank. The Time Lord didn't seem to be able to process anyone or anything around him, and after thirty-six hours, one of his hearts stopped. Even Panacea seemed to be baffled by it. Eventually, she called in the medical team who had managed to get his second heart going again, but not much else.

Day three, and his fever was nearly double his normal body temperature and his physiology was clearing working overtime to prevent his organs from becoming a Sunday roast inside his own body. All Jack could do was watch and wait and try to reassure the kids that dad was going to get through it, just like he always did. But it was becoming very clear that despite the Time Lord's exceptional resilience, it wasn't going to be an easy ride.

All they could do was watch, wait, and hope.

'Help me.'

At the sound of Rose's voice in his ear, the Doctor snapped his eyes open to meet a dark and empty room with his hearts hammering in a panicky, heightened rhythm. He quickly turned his head to the left, but Rose wasn't there.

In his scattered, hot, and busy brain, he clung onto the reasoning that it had just been the end of a horrible nightmare. A nightmare he - thankfully - couldn't seem to remember.

His eyes scanned where he was; a windowless and doorless room that was cold enough to make him shiver. It was dead silent, and Jack or the kids were nowhere to be seen. He checked himself - he was lying on the bed completely naked, with the exotronic vanished from his arm. He couldn't move.

'Help me,' Rose's voice whispered again into the darkness, this time very clearly.

He abruptly realised that it wasn't the end of a nightmare ... it was the beginning of one.

As soon as he realised, Rose appeared on his left, shimmering into a hazy existence. There she stood, covered in blood, with her hair long, unkempt, greasy and dirty half-covering her dead and soulless eyes. Her clothes were in rags, and in her hands she was holding some sort of device. What was that?

She moved forward a little into the light and he managed to discern what it was. It was an electric carving knife.

'No,' the Doctor gasped as he realised what she was going to do with that. 'Wake up,' he told himself. 'Wake up!'

'It's okay, Doctor,' she said, with her voice whirling in and out like he was being spun around repeatedly on a sadistic roundabout. 'I've got an idea, yeah? I'm gonna take all the pain away. You just gotta trust me.'

'Rose, please, no,' he begged, his voice sounding like something he was watching on television.

'You're just a bit sick, but you'll get better,' she said as she took his dead arm with her left hand, raising his wrist to her mouth and kissing it affectionately. 'I'll make it all better, Doctor,' she said softly, still smiling as she switched on the electric knife.

'No, Rose!' he cried out. 'You're not real, you're not real, you're …'

She tightened her grip on his hand and raised the carving knife to his wrist. It whirred and buzzed.

'Wake up!' the Doctor shouted to himself, but nothing happened. He couldn't get out. He couldn't fight. He couldn't move. Blind panic set in as she lowered the blade and cut clean through his wrist in one fell swoop like it was made of jelly.

He screamed as the pain hit him triple-fold, with a pool of blood immediately spurting out of the jagged stump of his wrist. Everything whirled and pulsed in his vision, with the sounds of his screams echoing back to him sounding distorted and distant, yet precise and near at the same time.

'WAKE UP!' he screamed to himself, but he couldn't. He could only watch as Rose held up his still twitching severed hand, showing it to him before she threw it aside and took his arm again.

'The itsy bitsy spider went up the waterspout …' Rose started to sing in a high-pitched, distant voice as she cut off another chunk of his arm as though casually darning a sock. 'Down came the rain and washed the spider out …'

'WAKE UP!' he screamed to himself again desperately as the pain soared to new, incredible heights and the blood on the sheets turned from a pool into a river, dripping down onto the floor.

'Out came the sun and dried up all the rain …' Rose continued, throwing away that chunk and immediately cutting off another so his arm was now a bloody stump at his elbow.

'Please,' he begged in a gasp.

'Now the itsy bitsy spider …' Another chunk came off in her hand.

'ROSE!'

'Went up the spout …' she dropped the chunk, and it landed on the floor with a plop. '... Again.'

'Rose!'

'The itsy bitsy spider went up the waterspout … Down came the rain and washed the spider out ...' she started again as she took the final stump of his left arm, and placed the carving knife right at the point of his shoulder. 'Out came the sun and dried up all the rain …'

He gave up, just lying there crying in pain as the final piece of his arm jigsaw was cut off and dumped by the bed.

'... Now the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again.'

He cried profusely in pain and anguish, his watery vision just about registering the bloody stump that used to be his left arm. He immediately squeezed his eyes shut, desperately trying to get himself to wake up. But he couldn't.

'Oh, Doctor,' Rose's voice whispered from right next to his ear. 'Isn't that better?'

He forced his eyes open to look at her, now standing over him like an angel of death. He could barely see through the tears as his arm continued to throb and burn and scream in pain. He could barely think as she leant forward and kissed him, tongues and all. More pain erupted as her nails suddenly dug into his chest and carved out six precise and painful lines from his neck to his navel.

'Please,' he begged. 'Let me go … please …'

She giggled insanely. 'You're never gonna wake up, Doctor. You're stuck here. Forever.'

'Please!'

'How can I help you?' a new voice suddenly asked from the other side of the room. Rose suddenly looked very confused, looking up along with the Time Lord to see Panacea standing there, calm and collected as always.

'Get out of his nightmare, bitch!' Rose screamed, moving towards Panacea. 'I'm in charge, here!'

Panacea didn't move, just stood there rooted to the spot. 'How can I help you?' she asked again.

'I said get out!'

'How can I help you?'

Rose's eyes suddenly widened. 'No! No! Don't wake him up!'

'How can I help you?'

'No!' Rose howled, and disappeared on the spot as the Doctor's entire world jolted, and he opened his eyes again to find himself in his room in his living quarters. His entire body was still screaming with pain, but as he looked to his arm he saw it was still in one piece, and he was dressed in his biosuit.

For a moment, he just breathed, trying to clear the tears in his eyes as his panic reduced.

'I'm coming!' Rose suddenly shrieked like a banshee.

His eyes jumped around the room, his hearts immediately jumping back to what they were. He was still in a nightmare!? He couldn't see her, he couldn't ...

'How can I help you?' Panacea's voice sang.

'Doctor!' Rose screamed again.

'Your health is my priority.'

'I'm right here!'

'Shut up!' the Doctor screamed at the voices. Rose's image swirled into his vision as she seemed to move closer and closer like she was going to smother and suffocate him. He snapped his eyes shut, and immediately started sobbing in utter terror. 'Help me!'

Finally, he seemed to be able to move. He threw himself out of bed and ran through the door, tripping over his own unsynchronised feet in desperation to escape. He screamed in pain as he hit the floor and turned over, and saw Rose standing in the other doorway, her eyes streaked with black. On her right was a Dalek covered in blood, gazing at him soullessly through its eyestalk.

'Doctor,' Rose said.

'Get away!' he screamed, getting to his feet and moving to the food area. He scrambled for a weapon, eventually grabbing a knife and throwing his arm out to point the sharp end straight at her. 'I'm warning you! Back off!'

'What the hell are you doing!?' Rose gasped, suddenly looking terrified.

'Get out! Don't touch Leah or Theo!' he screamed, his entire head throbbing and filled with voices saying words that made no sense.

'Doctor, it's us!'

'I know!' he roared, tears streaming down his face as he thrust the knife forward a little more. 'I won't let you have them!'

'Quick, run!' Rose cried to the Dalek.

'Everyone stays right here!' the Doctor ordered, causing them all to freeze in place. 'Get in the corner!'

'Doctor, calm down, yeah!?' Rose cried, her hands in the air.

'I said GET IN THE CORNER!'

Rose and the Dalek moved slowly and cautiously to the near corner of the room.

'Doctor, calm the hell down, who do you think we are!?' Rose asked, reaching out her hand.

The Doctor took a defensive swipe at her. She immediately stepped back.

'DADDYYYY, PLEEEASE STOOOOP,' the Dalek said.

The Doctor suddenly paused and blinked. As the pulsating, terrifying world ebbed back into stark reality and all of the voices in his head fell into sudden silence, he realised what he was doing.

He had backed Jack and Leah into a corner, holding them at knifepoint.

'Doctor, drop the knife,' Jack said calmly, his arms stretched out again. Leah was almost in tears.

Shocked and appalled at what he was doing, the Doctor did. It hit the floor with a clatter. He sank to his knees and broke down in tears.

'I'm sorry,' he gasped. 'I'm sorry.'

'It's okay,' Jack assured him. 'It's okay. I promise it's okay.'

'Oh god, I'm so sorry …'

Jack stepped towards him, pulling the knife away and throwing it away a safe distance. Leah made to move forward.

'Leah, stay away,' Jack ordered.

Leah ignored her uncle and stepped forward to her daddy. She boldly wrapped her arms around him in a hug.

'It's okay, Daddy,' she said quietly. 'It's cos you're really sick.'

He just cried.

Leah had held him for ten minutes as he'd sobbed uncontrollably, until eventually he calmed down. Jack tried to get him to go back into his room to get some sleep, but he refused to. The utter terror he was feeling from the thought of going back into that room again was palpable.

Instead, Jack got him a cup of tea and the two of them sat at the dining table where the Doctor explained his nightmare to him in fully-fledged detail. All of the stress and panic and fear and anger had since dissipated, just leaving him feeling empty and numb inside.

'Sounds like the Lanwa's took advantage of the state you were in and managed to get right into your head,' Jack said.

'... Yeah,' the Doctor muttered.

'But you woke up.'

'Only because of Panacea,' the Doctor muttered, glancing briefly at the silent terminal across the room.

'You probably made her up,' Jack said. 'To protect yourself.'

The Doctor shrugged. 'I couldn't wake up, Jack,' he murmured, his eyes flickering to the immortal. 'I knew I was in a nightmare from the start ... but I couldn't wake up.'

'It was just a nightmare,' Jack stated, 'mixed up with a hallucinogenic fever. But you seem okay, now. Better than you've done for days. The Lanwa's can't hurt you. If it could, it would have then.'

The Doctor swallowed briefly. 'I think it can.'

'Why?'

The Doctor looked pointedly down at his chest. There, where the Lanwa's had scratched him down his chest, were a few light vertical rips that looked suspiciously like fingernail tracks. He wasn't marked, but the rips were definitely there.

Jack gazed at it for a moment. 'That doesn't prove anything,' he said quickly. 'You were probably thrashing around and it tore.'

The Doctor looked at him. Maybe he was right.

But he still wasn't going to risk sleeping to find out.