Charlie climbed down through a hatch in the floor.

And here it was, in the depths of the Time Lords' ship: the TARDIS!

He had never been so relieved to see the old blue box.

It stood resilient, amongst the whirring machinery, despite the battered wooden panels; a light beyond the windows glowing softly.

Charlie leapt inside, and slammed the doors shut behind him.

He faltered for a moment, as he turned around to take in the interior.

He was certain he was inside the TARDIS. The only problem was: nothing looked right.

The warm orange glow from the central column was gone. Everything was grey, uninviting. Harsh flickering light shone from the scanners, casting long shadows across the control room. There was no sound. No hum of the engines, no pulsing from the time rotor.

Usually, the TARDIS made him feel safe. This didn't feel safe at all.

It felt wrong, like being in a school at night, when all the kids have gone home. Something that should be full of life, now a decaying ruin.

Trying to reassure himself, Charlie tried the door. It wouldn't open. There was no turning back.

He made his way over to the console, and tried a few of the controls. Nothing responded. There was no resistance from the levers. Everything was dead. Even the strange panel filled with viscous alien jelly had lost its spark.

He looked around.

What should he do now? Wait for the Doctor? Where was he? And how long would he be waiting for?

"A little help?" he asked the TARDIS.

There was no response.

If this was a still nightmare, it was like all his others: he was alone, and powerless.

He made one last, useless attempt to slam a lever.

He had to do something. The TARDIS – the real TARDIS – was counting on him to save the Doctor's life.

It was typical, where the Doctor was concerned, that he hadn't been given clear instructions on how exactly he could achieve that.

Charlie hung his head, leaning heavily on the TARDIS console, as he tried to clear his thoughts, and formulate something which resembled a realistic plan.

There was a bang – something was outside the TARDIS, trying to get in. It scratched and pounded at the door, exactly as the nightmare children had done.

The Doctor had told him that nothing could get through those doors. Then again, this had been shortly before a creature had broken in, and tried to devour them.

Of course, the Doctor could have been lying.

The hammering was getting louder, more insistent. He could see the TARDIS doors shaking.

Whatever was about to happen, Charlie knew he needed to get out of here.

If there was truly no way out, there was only one way left to go. Inside the TARDIS.

Perhaps then, he'd find a way to restore the power, and perhaps he'd be able to find the Doctor again.

He sped through the sliding steel door, which led to the TARDIS' corridors, just as he heard the police box doors crack open. He ran without thinking – just putting as much distance between him and the thing as he could.

Already, he was in unfamiliar territory. Charlie had never ventured this far into the Doctor's time machine before. He hadn't realised how vast it was. The identical stretches of corridor were nothing more than a maze. He had been running for mere minutes, and he knew there was no chance of finding the way back.

The rest of the interior was just as dingy as the control room had been. Any rooms he found were too dark to see inside. He had to rely on his phone for light, and he was seriously worried that the battery would die.

Not only was the TARDIS a maze, it shifted and changed as he trekked through it; even turning back through a door he'd just entered led him to a different part of the ship.

Charlie tried to keep calm, but it was frustrating. Every step he took got him even more lost. Without the Doctor, he'd be stuck in the depths of the TARDIS forever.

To top everything off, he kept hearing strange, unearthly noises, sometimes just behind him, sometimes in the corridor ahead. Each time, he'd have to make a hasty escape in the opposite direction.

He was pretty sure there was something stalking him. One or more nightmarish creatures hunting him down.

Unless he was just getting paranoid. He had yet to actually see any monsters. All those noises could easily be his mind playing tricks on him. The Doctor would probably have explained away the groans and howls as part of the workings of the TARDIS, and then laughed at him for being so jumpy.

Charlie ducked inside a room, hearing the roar of some dreadful creature down the corridor.

He pressed his ear against the cold metal door, listening for the monster, waiting for it to pass.

He heard nothing.

He daren't go back out there.

Instead, he decided to scout the room he was hiding out in.

There was a polished brass plaque above the door, bearing the engraving 'armoury'.

Charlie frowned. It was unlike the Doctor to keep weapons. But if he did, then there was a chance he'd find something to fight with.

He looked around. There were rows of racks, and shelves, like a DIY store.

"I should have guessed…" he muttered, with a wry smile.

There weren't any weapons in here. If there ever had been, they'd been stripped out, and replaced.

The shelves were stacked with books. Old and new, future and alien. Objects that weren't even books.

"Best weapons in the world," he muttered.

Something the Doctor often said. The right word here or there, and you could change the course of history. Whole armies could turn and run at the drop of a name.

And there could be nothing more powerful than a good story, the Doctor often reminded him. He had sparked revolutions just by telling a story.

And the Doctor told amazing stories – he had so many. He often claimed that all of his stories were true.

Charlie was always in awe of the Doctor's tales. They could be extremely inspiring, but he never felt inspired to tell his own stories. He had never thought any story he could tell would be one worth listening to. They could never be as good, or as exciting, or as well versed.

In amongst all the volumes, there was an entire row filled with glass bottles, tightly packed together. They each contained different coloured gases.

Charlie picked one up at random. It whispered intently at him. The words were indecipherable; an alien language.

He carefully returned it, sliding it back into its dusty space.

Smash!

Charlie whirled round. He'd accidentally knocked one of the glass bottles off the end of the shelf.

He knelt down, to brush aside the shards of glass.

The previously contained gas was spilling out of the bottle, clinging to the floor like mist; blossoming and expanding.

Without warning, it exploded in a puff of black smoke, and enveloped him. The gas slithered into his nostrils, suffocating him.

It smelled of musty, damp straw. It was incredibly potent, conjuring up a memory from his childhood.

No – not his childhood – someone else's.

He was standing in an old hut, lashed together with straw and planks of wood. There was a pile of rusted machinery leaning against the wall, and the floor was buried under a desert of sand.

It was night; moonlight spilled in through the cracks in the walls.

The place seemed abandoned – nobody came here. It was just a dumping ground for old and broken things.

An old, cracked mirror perched on a bale of straw caught his attention. He looked into it for a moment.

The crack ran straight through the centre, dividing his face into two.

He reached towards it, half recalling there was something significant about mirrors in dreams.

That was when he noticed movement just behind his reflection.

Startled, Charlie turned round. There was someone else in here with him.

It was a kid, hunched in the corner. He was crying. He couldn't see the kid's face, buried in his arms. Only his dark, wavy hair.

It evoked memories of Poppy, and the other children in that orphanage. Except this boy was sobbing uncontrollably. He was trying to keep quiet, but he couldn't help the noise he was making.

Charlie's heart tugged at him. Should he say something? Or should he try and slip away without being noticed?

He wondered if this was a child the Doctor had met. Someone the Doctor had stumbled upon in his travels across all of time and space, and stopped to help. It was exactly the sort of thing he'd do.

He looked at the boy again. It looked like he'd been abandoned – left all alone in the dark. Perhaps he'd had a nightmare. Either way, Charlie knew how he felt. He couldn't just leave him.

He didn't really know what to say, but he needed to say something – try and comfort him.

"Hey…?"

The boy didn't seem to hear him.

"Hey, don't…"

Don't cry.

The words caught in his throat. What could he do? What could he say to make things better?

"Please don't…"

Please don't cry.

The boy's sobbing was softer, now. If he had heard, he wasn't making any effort to reply. But even so, Charlie's presence seemed to calm him a little.

Charlie sat down next to him, pressing his back up against the wall and cleared his throat.

"Actually, I can't think of a single reason why you shouldn't despair right about now. Especially not after what I've seen today."

He glanced nervously at the boy.

"Sometimes, I look at the world. The worlds. And there's… so much bad. So much fear, and hate, and suffering. And it makes me want to…"

Charlie shook his head.

"What I'm trying to say is, you might feel like you're alone. But you're not. Not really."

The kid didn't move. He still wasn't sure if he was listening.

Charlie sighed.

"You probably don't believe me. In fact, I know you don't believe me, because I never believed anyone who said that."

The kid had stopped crying, and looked up at him, face blotchy, red from tears, eyebrows arched.

"I had a nightmare," the kid mumbled, his voice fractured.

Charlie nodded, and tried to smile reassuringly.

"That's okay. I was having a nightmare too."

Charlie took a deep breath before continuing. "Everyone gets scared sometimes, I think. Even if they don't admit it. And sometimes the things that scare you aren't the things you think you should be scared of."

The kid frowned, apparently unsure what Charlie meant.

Charlie realised that his thoughts were drifting, and he returned his reassuring attention to the kid.

"Do you know how strong you are?" Charlie asked him.

The boy shook his head.

"All those nightmares, all the monsters, and the bad dreams. We can survive them," Charlie promised. "How do I know that? Because we always do. We're made of stronger stuff, you and me."

Charlie nudged him, but the boy looked shyly away again.

"It gets worse every night," he croaked quietly. "The nightmares are getting worse. And I'm just so scared, I can't go to sleep."

Charlie nodded. He understood. In those past few months, before he met the Doctor, he had nightmares. Nightmares so vivid, he had difficulty grasping the thought that they weren't real.

"Do you know what I used to do when I was scared?"

The boy turned to him again, his eyes wide and anxious, pleading for help. Desperate for something – anything that could stop the nightmares.

"I used to imagine there was someone out there – this… watcher, who fought off all those monsters. Protected us all. Made things better." Charlie smiled slightly at the thought. "I never thought he actually existed. But he does. If the monsters are real, then he is too."

The boy picked at a piece of straw, stewing in his sorrows.

"You feeling better, yeah?" Charlie prompted him.

"A little," he muttered.

Charlie nodded, and made to get up.

"Wait," the kid urged, "Please don't leave me alone."

Charlie hesitated. He really should go – he needed to find the Doctor.

However, he didn't have the heart to abandon this kid. He knew the Doctor wouldn't, so he sat back down again.

The morning could be a long way off yet – he had no idea what planet he was on – but he was prepared to stay with this kid, and keep him safe.

After a while, the boy leant against his arm.

Charlie wasn't sure what to do, so carefully put his arm over the boy's shoulder.

"You're not alone," Charlie muttered.

The boy rubbed away some of his tears, and managed a smile.

"Thanks."

Charlie didn't feel the need to say anything else to the kid. He just needed a friend to be with him right now.

Hours passed in silence. The only noise Charlie could hear were the rhythmic sounds of their gentle breathing.

Finally, a moment to stop running. A moment to rest.

But he knew this dream would come to an end, and Charlie was seriously dreading the moment the next nightmare came.