Well, it took me a loooong time to translate. I've been busy. Had to scrape my old TARDIS and buy a new one (well, not exactly new; let's say - used but still good). Everyone who ever had to buy a new TARDIS (I mean used but still good) knows how hard it is. And scrapping the old one breaks your heart completely. Plus, I've been watching the Winchester brothers and scribbling a crossover of Doctor Who and Supernatural "Who Sows the Wind vs the Storm Reaper" (everybody invited:D). I am sooo sorry you had to wait. But I'll be good now, I swear.
Disclaimer: I know that the Doctor does not belong to me, but I cannot stop myself. I am mad! Therefore I cannot be found guilty.
.4. Dreams and Nightmares
He materialised in his chamber and immediately looked down, at his feet. He was still barefoot. He puffed irritably. Donna looked at him with a crooked smile. She was seated on a soft, leather sofa, arms wrapped around her knees.
"Did you plan to achieve something?" she mocked. "Or just waste a few minutes?"
"I don't understand it." He ran his fingers through his hair. "I just don't get it."
He stared, his eyebrows knitted, at a small computer interface, now completely dismantled, with bundles of wires jutting left and right and with a bunch of blinking optical fibres hanging nearly to the floor.
"It is almost as if there was something conscious, something alive, something intelligent."
"It is the most powerful computer in human's history," said Donna. "Excluding the Library."
"The Library!" yelled the Doctor. His face went white in an instant. He rubbed it with both his hands. "Owww!"
"Just don't you try and go there," warned Donna. "Vashta Nerada, remember?"
He slammed his hand against the wall.
"I need its computational power!" he burst out. "Just for a moment; just for a brief, tiny moment! But it won't give me access! Three quarters of its memory stuffed up with idiotic little plots; you should see them; they're pathetic! Humans! They get the best, the biggest, the fastest computer, that could help them speed up their development, help them evolve to a new level of knowledge, and what do they do? They play 'Quake'!"
He spun around quickly.
"And you!" He pointed accusing finger at Donna. "You have no right to be here!"
"Oh, now you're getting rude," she pouted.
"You have no right to look like her... and act like her... and even sound like her. Bloody hologram; but where is it coming from? How does the computer know so much about you?"
"After all, it is the most powerful computer in human's history," she repeated with a smile. "Why do you assume that it has no room for Donna Noble, a woman who saved the universe?"
She stretched on the sofa.
"Don't know about you, but I'm peckish."
The Doctor snorted irritably.
"It doesn't make sense," he snarled. "It's pointless. A waste of time."
"Oh, don't give up so easily."
"Easily?! You call it easy?!"
The Doctor tried to wrench the bunch of optical fibres from the interface, and when it resisted his efforts, he kicked the wall violently. Donna chuckled.
"I've got no shoes." The Doctor's voice was strangely even and quiet.
"No, you've not," confirmed Donna.
"Ow!" said the Doctor.
"Exactly."
The Doctor hobbled towards the TARDIS, parked in between the lounge and a beautiful, mahogany bar.
"Ow! A waste of time, ow, I told you, ow, a waste of time."
Donna waved him goodbye, wriggling her fingers. The Doctor yanked the blue box's door open and marched inside, carried by his own anger. Donna was waiting with a mocking smile. There was a sudden rumble as if something banged hard against a thin plywood wall. After a while the Doctor emerged from the TARDIS, walking backwards, one hand pressed to his forehead, confusion written clearly across his face.
"Oww!" he said. "What's going on?"
"I was just wondering when you would notice it," said Donna.
"Notice? What? The TARDIS... It's not the TARDIS!"
"What do you think swallowed your converses?" asked Donna, boredom in her voice and in her posture.
"I'm inside the projection," whispered the Doctor. "In a game. In a whatsitcalled... adventure!"
"It is, after all, the Adventure Emporium," Donna sighed.
"But how? When? I didn't initialise any programme, and I certainly didn't go to bed. Oooh!" He slapped himself across the forehead, grimaced and rubbed the spot he had earlier banged against the fake TARDIS's wall. "You're not a hologram! And this is not a computer interface! And nothing had swallowed my plimsolls, I still have my plimsolls, it's just that it isn't real, nothing here is real, no more than that lake and the Excalibur! Of course!"
He looked around quickly.
"All right. I still have some control. There has to be an exit gate somewhere here; there's always the exit gate, some way out of the game. A red door? No, I haven't seen any red door. Anyway, the colour is not important. So maybe..." He hobbled towards the chamber lock, jerked it open and looked out. The corridor seemed to stretch for miles in both directions – monotonously green, dotted with lights and shadows.
"Well, not really. So..."
He marched across the lounge and cautiously cracked open the balcony door. Although the artificial Emporia's sun was shining through the glass, outside the door the Doctor found another corridor, this time a stuffy, dark and strangely familiar one. He made two hesitant steps forward, his eyes opened wide, unaccustomed to the darkness. He outstretched his arms and touched the corrugated surface of the walls. For a brief while he was feeling it carefully with his fingertips, trying to recognise the shapes with a sense of touch alone.
They were book spines! Untouched for a very long time, dusty book spines!
He returned to the lounge at full pelt, shut the door and rested his back against it.
"Something's wrong?" Donna asked sweetly.
"Did you have to remind me the Library?" the Doctor said with accusation in his voice. "Out of all possible places and times, the Library?!"
"It was you who remembered it," she corrected. "As you are well aware, I'm not here."
The Doctor mumbled something sounding suspiciously swear-word-like. He pulled the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and started changing its settings but hesitated and glared at Donna questioningly.
"It isn't a real sonic, is it?"
"Noooo..."
"I hate when it happens!"
Donna got up from the sofa, stretched again and walked up to him, shaking her chestnut hair off her shoulders. She smiled, took the sonic screwdriver from his hand and carelessly threw it away. She looked the Doctor in the eye.
"Did you know that smart is sexy?" she said resting her hand on his chest, just above his left heart. The Doctor stepped back, surprised.
"They are your memories as well," she rebuked him, moving her hands higher, to his neck, entangling her fingers in his hair. Her warm and very real body leaned against his. "Or your fantasies."
"My fa..." She interrupted him with a kiss, but the Doctor jerked his head and held her away at the arms length. "They are not my fantasies!"
"Of course they're not." She smiled and suddenly they were running through a tropical jungle, full of slanted sun beams, overwhelming scents, swirling dust particles (or Vashta Nerada), strange animals' calls, and the flutter of colourful wings. The Doctor looked back and saw Jenny rushing behind them, her brow sweaty, her fair hair flying and her eyes sparkling. Her brilliant smile was still untouched by loss and pain.
"Run, dad!"
"NO!"
In a split second surprise and bewilderment gave way to ice-cold fury. The Doctor halted abruptly, scowling, anger in his eyes.
"ENOUGH!"
"It's just an adventure," said Donna, coming to a halt next to him. She lifted her hand and wiped the sweat of her brow. "Stick to the plot or else..."
"Or what else?" The Doctor glared at her.
Jenny shrieked and dashed towards them, but before she managed to take a step, from the surrounding jungle emerged people in military uniforms. Their guns spouted bullets and Jenny was almost blown away, pushed aside, into the thick undergrowth. Warm, red drizzle covered the Doctor's face. Jenny's blood. His whole body twitched, but he could not move towards her. He was watching his daughter, her body torn by bullets, dying on the damp ground.
He felt Donna's hand slipping into his.
"Run!" she yelled. And although he did not want to, although everything inside him was screaming and falling apart, he followed her through the beautiful forest vibrant with strange sounds.
"Otherwise your fantasies will become your nightmares," shouted Donna, still running. "And we both well know what the nightmares of the Time Lord are."
"Jenny!" the Doctor gasped, trying to look back.
"Just call her again. Just bring back her memory. It is an adventure, Doctor, nothing here really dies and nothing really ends."
"Jenny is dead."
"Everybody lives here. Everything lives."
They crossed over, at full speed, from green jungle to the vast, windswept plateau. The grass under their feet changed colour; it was fiery red now. The sky above a monumental mountain peaks on the horizon was the shade of burned ochre and orange. On the left, under a crystal dome, up rose the towers and spires of a resplendent town.
"Gallifrey," Donna said.
The Doctor faltered. He moved his head, slowly, dreamily, not quite sure if he really wanted to dismiss this vision. He was breathing laboriously.
"Everything you've ever wanted..."
There was Rose standing next to the Doctor; older and self-confident Rose; Rose dressed in a traditional gallifreyan robe, her hair pinned up and sparkling with gemstones.
"Everything you couldn't change..."
The Master materialised behind Rose. With small, mischievous smile he crossed his hands on his chest and nodded towards the Doctor.
"Everything that was taken from you..."
Jenny grabbed his arm clinging close to his sleeve. Her hair was bound in a pony tail this time. She wore jeans and a cotton T-shirt, "Oxford Rocks" across her chest.
"Everything you pushed away..."
"NO!" He wrestled his arm free from Jenny's hug, moved away from Rose. "It's not real, nothing here is real, no one! Stop, Donna, please, stop doing this! Stop! Stop, let me go! Please! Please! Please!"
He was surrounded by people he loved and needed, and he was spinning helplessly trying to find a way out of their circle. He lifted his hands in defence, but did not find courage to hit them or push them away. He did not want to hurt them. He was turning, tears in his eyes, their faces blurring like images seen from a speeding merry-go-round. Donna, the Master, Rose, River, Jenny, Astrid, Sarah, Reinette...
A grey face with slanting, glistening eyes, something resembling a knot of rather disgusting spaghetti hanging in the spot where humans have their mouths. A strong hand squeezed the Doctor's arm, stopped him from spinning.
"Wake up in three... two... one..."
Everything disappeared a the blur of milky light. The Doctor blinked and screwed his eyes. The Ood's face appeared again in his field of vision.
"We have a serious problem, sir," he said, holding his translator ball above the Doctor's head. "There's a malfunction. All the personnel dead. Humans in danger of extinction. We need to check on the Cells."
"The Cells?" The Doctor sat up slowly on his game bed, startled and upset. He didn't even react to the hateful 'sir'.
"Regulating Cells," said the Ood. "Situation is very serious. Human song is getting weaker. Human melodies are fading."
"Does that mean that people are... dying?" the Doctor asked. "People in the Emporium? In their chambers? In their adventures?"
"Help me," said the Ood. "I can't wake up the others."
With the corner of his eye the Doctor spotted the TARDIS waiting patiently between the lounge and the bar; the real TARDIS, his way of escape. He could still see the faces of all his dear ones, like a horrible afterimage. Beloved faces of the nightmare.
"I have to serve," said the Ood.
"I know," whispered the Doctor with a sigh. He looked away from the blue box and down at his feet in dusty white plimsolls. A ghost of a smile appeared on his lips.
"I know," he repeated. "We have to serve. It's just the way it is... I'm the Doctor by the way, you?"
"Designated Theta 1034."
"Nice. Not as nice as Alonso, but you can't have it all." The Doctor jumped off the bed. "Enough lazing about. Let's get down to work, Theta! Allons-y! Avanti! Tak v pieryod!*"
With the sonic screwdriver in his hand he rushed towards the door.
* Tak v pieryod – Russian "Forward!"