Title: Manipulation of the Mind
Author: Trustno1
Disclaimer: Doctor Who related things property of the Beeb. Story, other characters and the Voice property of my disturbed little mind :-)
AN: Thanks to everyone who still reads and reviews!
Chapter XXIII
As Rose's sobs gradually diminished, she drew up the courage to open her eyes and ascertain whether or not she was still dreaming. Slowly opening her eyes, she blinked at the sudden brightness of her surroundings, and she had to quell the rising terror inside of her as her immediate thoughts were that she was indeed asleep. Blinking a few more times however, the room came into focus, and she realised with relief and slight embarrassment that a combination of sleepy eyes and a white room that reflected the light back at her caused the initial shocking brightness, and not another nightmare.
A cursory glance around the room told her she must be in the Medical Bay, though it smelt nothing like Earth hospitals, more like a pine forest in spring. At the moment though, she couldn't actually remember how she got there in the first place, although she didn't feel disconnected anymore, which was a plus.
Furthermore, she had been clinging to the Doctor during this investigation of her environment, and the fact that he had not turned into a monster, swollen to twice his size and engulfed her, or completely disappeared, indicated she definitely wasn't dreaming. In fact, the Doctor clung to Rose with equal bone crushing intensity. And the relaxing circles he was rubbing on her back, and his slow, rhythmic breathing was beginning to lull her back to sleep. She shifted positions in their embrace slightly so her head was resting just below the Doctor's shoulder as opposed to on top of it, and she could feel and hear the alien heartbeat against her cheek, sending her further back into sleep. The Doctor felt her movement and ceased rubbing mid-circle, leaving his hand resting in the small of her back.
"Rose?" he whispered, not wanting to move too much and disturb her. She hummed in response feeling sleepier by the minute. "You okay?" he asked, louder this time, and Rose felt him speak rather than heard him, and a small shiver travelled down her spine.
"Hmm, yeah." She shifted further, tightening her grip around his chest, feeling herself drifting off. "I told it I could hear you coming back," she whispered sleepily, then fell into a peaceful, dreamless sleep before the Doctor could ask her what she meant.
Despite being very comfortable with Rose sleeping in his arms – and this time he didn't allow any small voice in his head to contradict him, or tell him it wasn't appropriate – he had to go stretch his legs and check on the upgrade, which had been temporarily paused whilst they were on Newtonia. He gently lowered her onto the pillows, then hesitated briefly, before placing a chaste kiss on her cool forehead and walking out of the room.
The next time Rose woke up she opened her eyes almost instantly. The lights in the Med Room had been dimmed significantly, and a strange machine that beeped intermittently cast off a neon blue glow over the right side of her bed, not dissimilar to that of the sonic screwdriver. The Doctor was no-where to be seen, but this didn't worry her.
She felt as though she had woken from a daylong slumber – which, she thought, she may well have done. However, her throat felt dry and raw, like the mornings after she'd been out clubbing and spent all night yelling over thumping music; her wrists and ankles felt sore too, though she couldn't think why.
For a while Rose lay in bed listening to the beeping machine and her own steady breathing, trying to remember what happened over the last two days, which, at the moment, felt as though she had lived through shrouded in fog. She knew there was some thought or dream buried at the back of her mind, in the place where certain memories lurked for months, years, decades. These thoughts rarely ventured forth to the front and light of her mind, preferring to fester in silence in the gloom, but one feeling crept out slowly. The sense that something was missing. Rose didn't know what however.
From past experience, she knew that the harder you tried to remember something, the quicker it slid away, so she decided to just lay there and let it come to her.
Rose's thoughts wandered. They wandered over to the beeping machine and looked at it for a while, wondering if it was monitoring her. Then she wondered, that if in fact it was, how was it going about it? As far as she could see there were no wires attached to any part of her. She supposed it was scanning her, like the sonic screwdriver did. Then this thought wandered a little further, and wondered why she was being monitored in the first place – she didn't appear outwardly to be injured, and she wasn't in any pain…
And that was when the memory shot out of the shadows in a flash of light, bringing with it a ghost of the remembered pain. Rose did recall something now. Pain. A lot. Terrifying, agonising, screaming-fit inducing pain.
And following close behind, in the way a faithful dog follows its master, was the memory of the cause of this pain. The memory of the Voice slithered out of the shadows of her mind, bringing with it ghostly whispers of past suffering and taunts, lasting all but a second in reality, and seeming to last an eternity to Rose. The monitor beeped more insistently, and she forced herself to breath slowly and deeply, ashamed of herself for panicking like that. If recollection was correct, she had refused to give in to the taunting and painful punishments over the last… day at least, and she was damned if she was going to give in to a mere echo of a Voice, a memory that her own mind conjured up. She closed her eyes, her face resolutely set, and continued to breathe slowly and deeply, as fragments of memories continued to make their way to the forefront of her mind.
End Chapter XXIII