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Cadge

"Rose?" The Doctor knocked gently on her bedroom door.

"Go away," she sobbed.

The Doctor sighed, this wasn't going to be easy, "Rose I'm coming in."

"No!"

He went in anyway, the sight that met him tore at his hearts, Rose was clutching her pillow tightly to her chest, mascara running down her face, her eyes puffy from crying. She looked up at him briefly before burying her head into the pillow.

The Doctor went over to the bed, determined to sort this out. He was not going to loose Rose. He couldn't. To many times had companions left him but Rose had promised she was going to stay. It seemed he had taken that for granted, not taken enough care of her perhaps, thought she could settle into this life.

How could she, he remembered how he felt when he had lost his home. Quite like Rose really, he thought. After all had he not spent so much time away from his home, even allowing himself to be exiled. He had taken the family he had for granted, eventually they had left him, even Susan.

Rose had left her mother to go on adventures with him. Rose had taken Mickey for granted and Mickey had left her, in pursuit of a better life, he had gone somewhere she could never follow.

So like me, he thought sadly.

Now Rose couldn't go home, just like him. The Doctor had lost his planet, in fact he had been the one to destroy it. As for Rose she had lost her home too, sure she was on Earth but this wasn't her time, it may as well be another planet really. And as fantastic as different planets are, you can spend so much time on one until you realize it isn't home and you are in fact homesick.

The Doctor too certainly wasn't happy with doing domestic but he had so far done a pretty decent job of keeping that to himself. He had made the odd comment every now and then, especially when they had gone shopping. However he had sensed a while ago that Rose was teetering on a knife's edge, her mood could drop any day, and it had.

Sitting on the edge of her bed her reached out a tentative arm. He draped it over her shoulder but Rose just shrugged it off. Not to be put off he pulled her into a hug,

"Rose I'm so sorry."

"Y...you...you should be f...furious, "she sobbed.

He was quite angry because she was being, in his opinion slightly selfish but as he saw quite clearly where she was coming form he was definitely not furious.

"Rose, please tell me what's wrong."

She sniffed, "I...I...The night...nightmare, I still get it."

"I thought as much."

She raised her head to look up at him, "I'm so sorry, I am."

"It's OK."

"No it's not," reached a hand up to gently touch the bruise on his forehead, "I hurt you."

"Sticks and stones Rose," If it was the nightmare causing her stress and making her like this then the Doctor knew what to do, he had made his decision. It would be tough, for both of them, but hopefully she could forgive him.

"Rose?"

"Yeah?"

I want you to try and relax, I'm going to get rid of this nightmare."

"How?"

"I would have done this sooner, I should have done this sooner, but I... Just please relax."

"Bu... OK."

The Doctor waited until Rose was properly relaxed, leaning against him. He brought his hands up and placed them either side of her head. Closing his eyes he began to concentrate on the person before him. He opened up his mind, stretching it out until he felt the wall of her conscience. Grasping hold of it he pushed himself through.

He was inside Rose Tyler's head. He had done this before, when he had taken the vortex out of her body, but despite the fact he had been kissing her back then, that time was nowhere near as intimate. That time he had been concentrating on the vortex alone, trying to find it and dislodge it.

Now he was searching through her dreams, things that were meant for her alone. Some of them made him laugh and made her laugh too and others, others made him blush a deep crimson, he nearly lost control, she was dreaming about me, like that!

"Doctor." She tried pulling away, she sounded so embarrassed.

"I'm sorry, I wont look there."

"No Doctor I...I can see your dreams."

"But I don't have any."

"Yeah... you do, but there more like nightmares."

"Rose," what on Earth was she talking about? "Rose I don't have dreams or nightmares."

"But all that fire, all those...oh."

And then the Doctor saw it too. He saw his home planet burning. It burnt with the light of a thousand suns. There was the Dalek fleet too. It was burning. They were screaming. Oh there was so much screaming. It was all his fault.

"He knows me as I know him, the killer of his own kind."

There! He'd found it. The images of Gallifrey burning were gone, replaced by a dark dripping tunnel. He could see Rose, walking along the tunnel. She looked frightened. She was speaking to someone, but the Doctor was only getting one half of the conversation. He needed to go in deeper, experience the dream as if he was Rose.

"Hold on."

It was if the dream was on fast forward, dammit he couldn't concentrate on it properly, Rose was too scared.

"Wake or truly die Rose Tyler."

He was Rose now, except he wasn't, was he? He was floating above her body and her body was decaying, it was horrific too watch, no wonder Rose had been so scared. And that voice, that nightmare voice, why was it so familiar?

He had to stop it, he focused even harder on the dream, Rose was whimpering but he had to ignore it. There was something about the dream. Something that was preventing him from destroying it. It couldn't possibly be Rose, she had no reason to want to hold on to it. Darn, he would just have to go for the next best thing. The faster he was out of her head, the better.

He imagined a cage, a large solid cadge, he placed the dream inside. If he couldn't kill it then he would shut it away. Shut it away in a cage with no keyhole, no door, where escape was impossible. He pictured the cadge in his head, in Rose's head. She would be able to see it too. She would be able to help.

"Rose I need you to lend a hand here. I need you to imagine the dream, imagine it being placed in the cage, can you do that?"

"I'll try my best."

The emotions that the dream was stirring in the Doctor seemed to intensify. The fear, the distress, the pain, they all grew. He had to fight them, Rose had to fight them.

"Rose I know it's hard but please try not to be frightened."

"I'm trying."

Her grip on his jacket tightened. The images the dream was conjuring seemed to weaken. As if water had been added to the gruesome mix of colours. The dream lost it's struggle and remained still, safely shut inside the mental cage.

They had done it.

The Doctor opened his eyes and found that Rose was staring directly at him. As he had feared she had managed to get inside his own head, and seen the consequences of his actions. Normally, he would of just kept the images from her. However he had had to use the majority of his mental ability to find and capture her dream, he simply couldn't have done that and blocked Rose from his head. She had seen what he had done. All those lives, ended. Right now he couldn't care less about living on Earth, these next few moments were for the past alone.

"Rose, I'm..."

"I'm sorry."

"What."

"I'm so sorry. I've just been pushing you away but you've only been tryin to help. I'm such an idiot."

"No your not," he started sternly, "Your one of the bravest people in the universe." He was so relieved that she hadn't brought up the subject of the Time War.

"I'm twenty years old and for nearly three months I've been crying over a bad dream."

It was more than a dream, the Doctor was sure of it. Something had happened but here he had no way of finding out what, of course he could take another trip into her head but he wasn't too keen on the idea. If the dream somehow came back, which he doubted because that cage was very good, it would take one devil of a nightmare to get out of that, then he would dig a little deeper, but right now it was just the two of them and they were hungry, time for some of those chips.

"Rose I'm nine hundred years old and I've cried over all sorts of things, you for one."

"You have?"

"Come on, I want chips. Do you want chips? I think you do!" He jumped up off the bed.

"Oh, well I'm a bit of a mess, can I just?" She wiped furiously at her face, "Actually no let's just go."

He gave her a dazzling smile, this was much better. He had successfully trapped a nightmare, made up with Rose and avoided an uncomfortable conversation. That was only half domestic.

Loved it? Loathed it? Please review :)

Well done to shrink To Be, chapter five will be focusing on how the Doctor really is feeling about all of this so you can expect another argument and a very guilty feeling Rose because yes she has been rather selfish, even though she doesn't mean to be.

Chibi Nightmare