Optional/recommended background instrumental tracks for this arc (note arc and not just this chapter):
River Understands Simon - Greg Edmondson - Firefly Soundtrack
Vision of Jenny - Christophe Beck - Buffy The Vampire Slayer Soundtrack
A/N at bottom.
I'm not calling you a liar, just don't lie to me
I'm not calling you a thief, just don't steal from me
I'm not calling you a ghost, just stop haunting me
And I love you so much, I'm gonna let you kill me
I'm Not Calling You A Liar - Florence and the Machine
"You know, I don't know why we didn't ask the TARDIS to put a window in this kitchen before," the Doctor said to Aliya as they stood near the new window and enjoyed the fake sunlight and the image of a garden that wasn't really there.
"Yeah, it's nice," she agreed. She had both hands around her glass of juice and he was leaning against the counter with a relaxed smile. "So, do we have plans for today?"
He nodded. "I was thinking of a little planet with some lovely docile wildlife, Turran."
"Ooh, I've always wanted to go to Turran!"
The two Time Lords looked towards the door of the kitchen and the new speaker, only to both gape at her.
"River?!"
River Song blinked at them innocently. "What?"
"You...you," Aliya stammered, "That's my shirt!"
"And you're not wearing pants!" The Doctor added, his hands flapping while his eyes very obviously tried to keep away from the curves of her exposed legs.
"Well, it's just you two, so why bother?" River asked, moving past Aliya to make herself coffee. "Unless Aliya's been harbouring a secret crush on me all these years and might find it difficult to restrain herself, but if that were the case all she'd have to do was ask."
Aliya felt her cheeks burn while the Doctor turned an interesting shade of red. "River!"
"You might be oblivious to how adorable she is, sweetie, but I'm not, I mean if she blushes just at that, can you imagine-"
"Oh my gosh River please stop," Aliya said, not even able to look the other woman in the eye.
The Doctor frowned at his wife. "You're married! To me!"
River stared at them both for several moments before her entire face split into a huge grin and she burst out into hearty laughter. "Oh you two should see your faces! I was kidding! Mostly." She winked at Aliya, who let out a tiny laugh and just rolled her eyes. "Alright, I'll put on some proper clothes if you finish making my coffee, sweetie. Don't let Aliya touch it, either, I need it to be drinkable."
"Hey!"
River left the kitchen on that note, her hips swaying. The Doctor moved to make River's coffee and within twenty minutes they were in the console room, all dressed and having waited for River to finish her drink and rinse the mug before they had made their move to exit.
Turran was a planet that could have been a twin of Earth if not for the royal blue grass underneath their shoes. Almost immediately a flock of magenta birds surrounded them and landed on their shoulders, arms, and hands. The travellers started laughing with delight, and the birds were unbothered by their sounds of joy and didn't flee.
As she looked over at her two best friends in the universe, Aliya found herself thinking with both surprise and clarity that she was happier than she could remember being in her entire life.
The first thing she registered was that she was warm and comfortable and in a place that smelt very familiar. After a moment it became clear that the place was her bed. How had she ended up here?
Six seconds after waking Aliya realised she'd been dreaming. Dreaming of an ideal world, a world where they'd rescued River from the library. Something far too good to be true.
It was so vivid, she thought. Especially given that she almost never dreamed due to her sleeping pills. Dreams usually only came if she and the Doctor ended up sleeping side by side somewhere, which hadn't happened over the last couple of weeks. The Doctor, for a reason she couldn't pinpoint, was almost avoiding her. Not enough for her to be able to justify mentioning anything or prove it, but enough that she was almost certain she was right.
Unless I'm becoming paranoid, or clingy. I thought I'd moved past the latter. Still, there was little point dwelling on it all, so she swung her legs out out of the bed and got dressed into a blouse and jeans while her mind moved elsewhere. In the dream, the three of them had been so content, and she herself had been at her happiest, and the memory of the feeling was impossible to shake.
"Stupid, fanciful dream," she muttered as she did up the buttons on her shirt. Her eyes wandered to her wall of photographs, and when she saw the one of Jack and Jenny, she had to frown. In her dream, she'd not known of Jenny, because she'd never worked at Torchwood. The idea that she could have forgotten such important details in lieu of an enticement...it made her feel pathetic.
When Aliya came into the console room, she saw a pair of gangly legs poking out from under the console.
"Morning," she said, and the Doctor slid out to smile at her.
"Morning! Having a few issues with the helmic regulator, but should be sorted by the time you have something to eat and head back here."
"I'm not actually very hungry. Besides, if I help, then the job will be done even faster."
"No, really, I'm fine-"
She knelt beside him. "Doctor," she said firmly, "You've never let me touch her. Not since the Time War and maybe only once before. Don't you think that's a little unfair? I'm a mechanic and engineer. This is what I do, and you're depriving me of it."
The Doctor frowned up at her. "Well, yes, but...she's-"
"Please?" She asked it of him quietly, and she could see in his eyes that he understood the gravity of the request.
Eventually he sighed. "Fine," he said melodramatically, "Roll your sleeves up and get down here then."
Excitement bubbled in her chest. She hadn't exactly been expecting him to agree. "Thank you," she said, lying down next to him, "You know, once I get started, you'll realise you should have let me do this years ago."
"We'll see about that," he muttered. Despite that, when they both turned their heads towards each other, he returned the grin she sent him. "You're lucky I've got a soft spot for you, Ali, or you'd never get away with this sort of thing."
Completely without her permission, Aliya's hearts doubled their speed at hearing him call her by the nickname, considering he hadn't to her memory used it in about three years. All she could do was try and disregard it and hope that he couldn't hear the pounding considering he was shoulder to shoulder with her.
"I thought that was a myth, your soft spot for me, you certainly don't act like it most of the time," she teased. "You're not even nice to me."
He gaped, looking surprisingly offended. "I'm always nice to you!"
"Are not."
"Are too."
"Are not."
"Are too."
That time she just stared at him, unwilling to continue the childish game. "You also haven't called me Ali since you were convincing me to run away with you again."
He frowned. "Endearments can lose their meaning if they're used all the time."
"I wouldn't call it an endearment that time, it was a downright low move."
"How is calling you by a nickname a low move?!"
Aliya turned her head to look back across at him. "You know I'm-" She tried to not be aware of the fact that their noses were within an inch of each other or that his vivid gaze hadn't shifted from her in over a minute. "...at a loss...when you call me that."
He gave her an odd and rather curious look, one that happened to make him look more attractive than was helpful for her continued oxygen flow. "A loss of what?"
A hundred different words clogged her throat. Breath. Resilience. Self-control. Self preservation. Sense. Whatever I'd call what holds me back from the impulse that has me wanting to snog you silly. Pick one, or five.
She couldn't stop her eyes from flicking to his lips as she considered which was the best to voice aloud. "Sense?"
He laughed at that but the sound did little for her rather compromised frame of mind. With a gulp, she abruptly rotated her head to be looking back up at the mass of wires and circuits. As luck would have it, it proved an adequate distraction.
"Doctor, this is an atrocity!" She all but yelled. "It's not just the helmic regulator, these couplings are attached in all the wrong places and look to be non-operational besides. There's no way this TARDIS is anything but dead in the water!"
The Doctor scratched his cheek sheepishly. "I thought I'd be able to get it fixed before you wanted to go anywhere."
"You? Fix this in that sort of time frame?" She snorted at the very idea. "Even with the two of us, I don't even know where to begin, and I doubt you do either. What have you done to her?"
"Nothing!"
"Well there's only the two of us here, and it wasn't me, so it had to have been you, with all your tinkering."
"I didn't break it!"
"You must have!" Aliya gestured to the pandemonium above their heads. "If it weren't entirely impossible, I'd have said this was deliberate sabotage."
The Doctor also studied the mess. "Entirely impossible, yet I see your point. You're right, this is gonna be a tricky one. We need tea. Or in your case, hot chocolate. Come on, we can brainstorm in the kitchen."
It was a relief to be able to slide out from the tiny space full of both physical and emotional mess and head up the stairs with thoughts of a sugary fix.
"Aliya! Aliya!"
A hand on her shoulder jolted the blonde Time Lady awake. The computer screen in front of her bore a random amalgamation of letters from where her head had fallen onto the keyboard. She jerked her head around and saw that Jenny was the one who had woken her.
"Jenny?" She asked. Her head swam with confusion. Hadn't she just been on the TARDIS?
Except, she hadn't. She'd been filling out a new alien species profile for the Torchwood database. And it was July. She hadn't seen the Doctor in almost a year, not since they'd screamed at each other until she'd been evicted out into the rainy Cardiff street.
Your dreams have reached a new level of delusional, she told herself sternly, and you need to stop it immediately. This is your life now and that won't be changing.
"Guess your whole 'I only need sleep once a week' claim isn't so true, huh?" Jenny said, giggling. "You should try every four or five days. That's what works best for me."
"Don't lecture me, Princess," Aliya told her, poking her in the arm and grinning. "I am a good millennia older than you, and I'll sleep when I want to sleep."
"I'm still not sure I buy that, you know," Captain John Hart said from a few metres away, "You being a mighty old alien from myth itself."
"It's a good thing I don't require your belief to exist, then," she retorted as she got up from her chair and stretched a little to discard any traces of drowsiness left in her body. "I don't know what you expected. The human race aren't the only species to have unremarkable specimens. If you'd received our equivalent of Barack Obama then I'm sure you'd have been more impressed, but sadly you just got me. I was a mechanic, not a public figure."
Hart considered her point with a tilt of his head, then a little smirk. "Fair point."
That was when Marion entered the working area and surveyed them all. "You look pale," she said to Aliya dispassionately.
"Bad dreams will do that to a person," Aliya muttered, more to herself and Jenny than in reply to Marion.
Jenny put her hand back on her shoulder and looked at her with concerned blue eyes. "You don't normally dream."
"I don't normally sleep without sleeping pills."
"What was the dream?"
"Just impossible things I either don't want or could never have."
Any vulnerability that had been lingering in her after waking up had more or less faded. She felt like herself again - with no wish to see the Doctor's irritating face now or in the next century, content with only Jenny and some members of Torchwood for friends, and not entirely happy with being stuck on Earth but not hating every aspect of it either.
"Jack and Gwen want your advice on something," Marion said as she headed for the medbay.
Aliya went to head up to Jack's office but stopped when her ears picked up a foreign sound. "Is that...are there windows here that someone opened?" Jenny, Marion and Hart all stared at her. The urge to retract the question rose in her but she couldn't ignore what she was hearing either. "Jenny, there's birds, I can hear birds."
The worry that had been visible in Jenny half a minute before resurfaced tenfold. "Aliya...there's no birds. Why would there be?"
"Eyecandy, I think you should sit down," Hart said, frowning a little. Aliya was about to refuse when her vision blurred and her knees suddenly felt extremely weak. She scrambled for the nearest chair and barely got herself into it before everything went black.
"Aliya? Aliya, sweetie, wake up."
Aliya opened her eyes to see River's face hovering above hers and feel her soft hands on her cheeks. "River? What-"
"We don't know, sweetie," the other woman said immediately. "You two just collapsed, I couldn't wake you. It was a good five or ten minutes, I was worried sick." When Aliya sat up, she looked across to the Doctor who was doing the same, having also apparently ended up lying in the blue grass. Then she turned her attention back to his wife, and in a burst of unexpected emotion, hugged her tightly, so tightly she could feel River's alarm. "Sweetie? What's wrong?" When Aliya finally released her, River touched her face curiously. "What's gotten into you?"
"Um…"
Aliya didn't know how to explain what was going through her head. Two other worlds of events were in there and contradicting the world around her. In those worlds, she had believed this to be a fanciful dream, but this had to be reality. She could sense it. Everything was alive. Everything was right. How it should be. Did that make those other worlds the dreams? How else could it be explained if they weren't? She didn't think she was losing her sanity.
When she did her best to keep her attention on her surroundings, she noticed that the Doctor seemed similarly disorientated.
A thought that was simultaneously chilling and liberating hit her. Had he just experienced what she had? If she asked him about the broken helmic regulator, would he still claim he could have fixed it without her? Did he remember laughing with her under the console about nicknames?
There was no way to ask him without River thinking they'd both lost their minds.
Besides, most likely, the other two places were just dreams, and an unexpected element in the atmosphere had knocked her and the Doctor out, allowing her to dream up some crazy ideas.
The Doctor, during her lengthy journey of thought, got to his feet and offered her a hand up, which she took only to have him turn away from her the moment she was standing.
"Do you think it was something in the air that reacted badly with your Gallifreyan biology-" River didn't get a chance to finish her theory before the Doctor was kissing her breathless. After ten seconds of very passionate kissing that had Aliya averting her eyes, the two finally broke apart. "Sweetie, what on Earth was that about?"
He just gave River a funny and almost sad smile. "Just...just glad to see you, dear. Now, there should be a village not too far off. With cat people, who will be only too happy to give us directions to where their distant cousins - the spotted lions of Turran - hang around at this time of day."
His fingers knotted themselves with River's and he dragged her along while Aliya followed behind with a lump in her throat. She'd never been so aware of how much she hated not knowing things until that exact moment. She had to know if the world around her was reality, and if so, why the others had seemed to be but weren't.
She caught the Doctor's head peeking over his shoulder at her a few times as they all walked, and his expression was completely impossible to decipher.
After a good ten minutes of walking, there was still no village in sight.
"I don't understand, it should be here!" The Doctor complained, gesturing emphatically to show his annoyance. "Nice little village, full of cat people…though its absence could explain the apparently large quantity of birds nearby."
"Birds?"
"Yeah, their singing is nice," Aliya said, smiling as she looked upward to try and locate the source of the sound.
"I can't hear anything," River told her, and when the Time Lady lowered her eyes, she saw the Doctor frowning at River even as the human looked at them with a matched worry in her eyes. "Doctor, can you?"
"Yes, as it happens."
That was when his body lurched and fell into River's. Only her strength kept him upright. Aliya, meanwhile, found the sound of the birds to be overpowering. She squeezed her eyes shut and covered her ears in an attempt to drown out what had been beautiful but now clouded her mind until it was blank.
Startled exclamations of a small group that could only be the Torchwood team (or part of it) replaced the sound of birds. Aliya cracked her eyes open to see Jack kneeling in front of her chair.
"You okay there, Alibear?" He asked, and her mouth quirked a little at the unintentional rhyme.
"I don't know," she said honestly. "Something is happening to me that I can't explain. Namely because I can't comprehend it myself yet."
"Could you try?" Jack got back to his feet. "Because in my experience, Time Lords, or even humans, don't tend to drop in unexpected naps like what Jenny described to me. And she said that you thought you heard birds?"
"Yeah," Aliya murmured, rubbing her temples and thinking about how ridiculous it all sounded. What she needed, as much as she loathed to admit it, was to talk to the Doctor. She might hate the man but if she wasn't going insane then he was somehow involved in all of this, and possibly experiencing the same inexplicable events that she was. "Birds. And having dreams that I'm not so sure aren't real, but contradict anything I thought was."
Jenny and Jack exchanged sceptical yet worried looks, while Hart merely seemed thoughtful.
"Not making a lot sense right now, Eyecandy," he said, and Aliya just grimaced.
"Don't I know it." She bit her lip, overwhelmed by fear and confusion, and a rush of anger as result of both. "But there's a good chance I'm just going to fall asleep again and I'll be able to finally ask him what's happening."
"What?"
"Don't worry," she said, "Just talking to myself." The idea that she could even be considering talking to him a necessity or possibility, the idea that she might need him, made her want to be sick. And that urge collided messily with the memories of her dreams, where he was still her best friend and she did think that she needed him.
He'd never returned, never apologised, and so she'd become accustomed to living without him and considered herself stronger and better for it. But what if he had? She could remember it now, with more clarity than dreams should allow, him pleading with her and taking her hand in his and speaking those beautiful soft words that had made her throw everything to the wind.
Damn him to hell!
"Who?" Jenny asked, with great alarm, and Aliya cringed when she realised she'd said the last part aloud.
"Take a guess," she grumbled as she got out of her chair.
Jack patted her shoulder comfortingly. "Maybe you should go home and get some sleep, Ali. None of this is going anywhere, and you're obviously not alright."
"Sleep, quite possibly. Home, no."
"You're acting really strange, Aliya," Jenny said, a slither of fear in the girl's eyes, "I think you should rest until you feel better."
"I'm not so sure there's actually something-" She faltered and frowned. "Wrong...with me." The chorus of birds had returned. "Jack, in about two seconds I need you to catch-"
"Ow!"
Aliya propped herself up on her elbow and squinted at the Doctor, who was clutching his head and whining about it like a baby. "Doctor-"
The sound of his name had him whirling towards her and yanking her up onto her feet. They were in the corridor and had both been sprawled on their backs. "Aliya. How did we end up on the floor?"
"I don't know, I-"
"Was asleep," he finished. "Me too. Now this is important: what were you dreaming about?"
"I was at Torchwood. And I'd always been at Torchwood, you'd never come back, we'd never-" Aliya had to take several heavy breaths to keep herself in control of the mass of overpowering emotions within her. "What's happening? I don't understand-"
"Was there another dream?"
"Yes. We were-"
"With River," he said in a unison that continued with the words, "On Turran."
Her hand flew to her mouth with shock. On Turran, in that dream, she could remember suspecting that he was experiencing what she was, but the confirmation of such an absurd notion…
"Doctor," she whispered, feeling her entire body shake, "Please. If you know what's happening, then tell me because I am scared. I am scared out of my mind."
The Doctor regarded her with solemn eyes and an expression she could only describe as protective. "I have a theory. Something this happened before, once." He took her hand and pulled her back to the console room. "Did I ever tell you about when Amy and Rory and I were given two worlds, and had to decide which we thought was real?"
"I...I feel like maybe you mentioned it, once, but never in too much detail."
"This feels the same. Shifting dreams, only with three worlds. And with the two, they felt like forward and backward flashes. These are three distinct paths, three distinct sets of memories." He planted his hands on her shoulders. "Tell me: do any of the worlds feel more real to you than the others?"
Desperately, more than anything, she wished she could say that one of them did. "No," she had to say, "I mean, each one feels the most real when I'm in it, but more objectively...they're all so vivid."
"And the memories are all as intricate as each other," he said, nodding, "I think about meeting Cecily and I can't be sure if I was passing you off as River's sister or my wife. I think about the fight and I don't know if I went back and begged for your friendship or if I'm still drifting at the other end of the universe because I haven't forgiven you yet." That last thought had him frowning deeply and releasing his hold on her with a new reservation in his eyes. Similar sentiment from her memories of the Torchwood dream had her crossing her arms and being unsure of how to feel about him just as he clearly was in regards to her.
"How did the dreams work? What initiated them the first time? They can't have come from nowhere."
"There was...someone...controlling them."
"Who?"
The Doctor didn't answer, and instead just clenched his jaw while seeming to mull over how best to answer. Before he could, however, another voice did.
"Why, that would be me, dearest."
The two Time Lords spun to see a small man leaning against the railing of the console platform and smirking at them. He was dressed in clothing that was an eerie mimicry of the Doctor's and his eyes were cunning and sinister as he regarded them all too smugly.
Despite his unassuming appearance, there was something about him that chilled Aliya to the core. On instinct alone she took a step closer to the Doctor and only crushed her crossed arms closer to her chest.
"Who the hell are you?" She demanded.
"All in good time," he said rather dismissively, flapping his hand at her and keeping his attention on the Doctor, who was glaring at him.
"Why are you doing this? What's the point? I worked you out last time, you can't control any form of reality," the Doctor all but growled, "All we have to do is kill ourselves in each dream and we wake up in the real world where you can't touch us."
The logic was sound enough that Aliya nearly relaxed on the spot, until she realised that the mysterious newcomer was completely unperturbed by it.
"Ooh, Doctor Clever are you, so quick to know everything," the little man sneered, "Are you sure they are all dreams? Would you bet your life on it?"
"Yes."
"What about hers?"
The Doctor opened his mouth to answer, only to shut it again promptly. "You can't control reality," he finally said, still firm in his belief.
"Reality? No. You, on the other hand...it wasn't so hard to take over your mind briefly to get you into a perilous situation and fabricate two dreams to make an even three, Doctor," their adversary said, almost casually as he spoke of his supposed temporary dominance over the Doctor's mind that had both Time Lords frozen. "But the question is...did I send you to Turran's twin planet, known for its incredibly dangerous inhabitants? Or did I send a signal suggesting that the Daleks invade Earth? Or did I do something as simple as sabotage your TARDIS and send you careening into a star? Those, by the way, are the deadly dangers you'll face in Round 2."
"Why are you doing this?" The Doctor asked him, steel in his voice. The other man chuckled.
"Oh, Doctor...it's simple, really. Last time, it was Amy's choice. This time, it's yours."
While the Doctor fell into an uncharacteristic silence, Aliya repeated her initial question.
"Who are you?"
"I'd have thought it was obvious," the stranger said, with a hint of something that could be irony or surprise, "Really, you're meant to be brighter than him. I am the Dream Lord." A predatory glint in his eyes made her shiver. "And as for you, Aliyanadevoralundar...I'm your worst nightmare."
*villainous cackle*
Finally writing this arc is a dream come true (pun not intended). Which means faster updates for you lot, definitely!
Thanks to all who reviewed the last chapter, I love you guys! *blows kisses* Feedback on this particular arc will DEFINITELY be appreciated since it's definitely trickier than what I'm used to, but hey, who doesn't love a challenge?
AND RIVER. DARLING RIVER. I have missed writing her so much. The River/Aliya flirting was entirely her and not me, I promise. (Though it may have something to do with the fact that I've come to ship Doctor/River/Aliya A LOT more since River got killed off, oops!)
So I'll be back soon with a less confusing chapter filled with my favourite thing is all: angst and emotional turmoil! *cackles again*
Let me know what you thought, and until then, love you all,
-MayFairy :)