A/N: I'm sorry I took so long to update. Exams. You know how they go. I had thought that I would be able to write out this chapter in between all the exam madness but the last two weeks of it was insanely stressful for me. Oh, well, it's all over now and I have a couple of months free before life catches up so I'll do my best to finish this fic and start on new chapters for They Dream of the Stars until then. Which brings me to the part where this chapter is not the final one. There'll be another one and then two bonuses. So keep reading and reviewing because that's what inspires me to write.
PART FOUR: We Are All Mad Here
By the Valiant Child
Hello? Hello?
C-can you hear me?
I can be your china doll
If you like to see me fall.
~Lana Del Rey: Without you
She visits the TARDIS whenever she possibly can.
It's being kept safe in the Hub so that the Family doesn't get any tips on the Doctor's whereabouts. That is, if the Family can cross over to this world in the first place. But none of them want to take any risks.
She also watches the video he left her every time she pops by. Not for the instructions; she practically has those memorised, but just to see his face and hear his voice. Because John isn't the same, you see. The Doctor says so in the video, and even if he may act so much more like the Doctor than Rose had expected, he isn't the Doctor. The Doctor is inside the silver fob watch that Rose carries all the time with her. And John may like bananas and Jammie Dodgers and fawn over fezzes and wear tweed like there's no other fabric in the universe and talk a hundred miles per hour about everything and nothing and give her the longest, most fantastic hugs and hold her hand like he never wants to let go.
But he isn't the Doctor.
That's what she's been trying to convince herself for weeks, at least. It's just so very difficult when John behaves exactly the way you'd expect the Doctor to. And then there's the amnesia to boot. That wasn't on the list. John was supposed to have fabricated memories of a normal human life, but he's entirely blank. He does, however, remember Rose. Or her name at least. And other little bits about her, mostly her habits.
The video addresses that issue, as well. The Doctor had said that John would have enough residual awareness to let her and Amelia in. But John doesn't remember Amelia. Only Rose. Luckily, Amelia is excellent in making up details, and John trusts Rose impeccably.
The ongoing theory about John's memory is that the Chameleon Arch couldn't input any since the TARDIS had crossed into a world it isn't originally from. Jack even went to ask this world's Doctor if such a thing was possible and the Doctor had affirmed.
Jack doesn't tell Rose whom he'd asked though. The Doctor had repeatedly warned him not to. He only tells her that he'd asked an "expert". Rose seems quite lost for the first few weeks and she doesn't bother to ask Jack further about this unnamed "expert". She has other things to worry about.
Three more months, Rose tells herself, and then he'll be back. Her Doctor. And things will get back to normal.
Right?
He has been having the strangest dreams. Of a magic blue box, a Lord of Time and his Rose.
His Rose? Did he say his Rose? Sorry, he didn't mean that. She's not his. Although he wishes she was. And he, hers. But she likes that Jack bloke. He just knows it. He can tell. Amelia says different but what does she know? She's only seven. And granted that she acts much more mature than he at times...okay, most of the time; but that does not mean that she's right about this.
Anyway, what was he thinking of? Oh, yes, his dreams.
He has them every night, every single night since the day he woke up with no memory whatsoever. Apparently he was in some accident that no one knows the proper details about. Rose says she wasn't there but she came rushing the moment the hospital called.
He's grateful for that. Grateful for her. She feels like home when even his own sister feels alien to him.
Which is not so say he doesn't like Amelia. He likes her very much. But she feels like a stranger somehow. There's also the fact that they look nothing alike, and she's Scottish and he can swear that he's not. Amelia tells him that their father was English and he's more like him. She, on the other hand leans towards their mother. He doesn't remember either of their parents though. Not a shred.
But surprisingly, he remembers Rose. Well, not particular memories but he remembers little things like how she likes her tea and her favourite book. Maybe it's because they've been friends since they were children. And also maybe because he might possibly be in love with her. But he hasn't told her the last bit. She fancies Jack after all. Stupid Jack Harkness with his stupid flirty habits and stupid pretty face and stupid American accent.
That's why he hasn't told her about his dreams. Or specifically the content of them. Particularly the bad ones. She knows he has bad dreams but she never asks what about. She merely hugs him if he ever wakes up screaming, which he has been doing quite often as of late. He always apologises for having woken her up but she reminds him each time that she doesn't mind.
At times like these, he thinks that he'd be lost without her. He actually thinks that quite often. Especially since his entire life feels so strange to him now. Even his own body doesn't feel quite right. Or his name...John Pond. What kind of name is that? Pond is fine but John and Pond together? Blech!
Lucky Amelia, getting the fairy tale name (and the lovely ginger hair). What kind of terrifying thoughts had his parents been thinking to have named him John Pond? Thankfully Rose just calls him John. Or Pond. Never John and Pond together. He'd rather she call him "Doctor" though, like she does in his dreams where he's his great adventurer who travels though time and space in his sexy blue box. He doesn't tell her that though. She'd think him mad. He doesn't want his Rose to think that he's mad. That would make more difficult for him to compete with Jack for her affections.
She thinks she knows what he dreams about. He never tells her but she thinks it's about the Doctor. She has even caught him crying out for her at nights; asking her not to leave and that he'll burn another sun to keep her if he has to. She wakes him up just to stop the screams because she can't bear it and stays with him for the rest of the night even when he doesn't ask her to.
It's become a bit of a routine really. They go to sleep in different room but before dawn, end up together. It's no longer even awkward like the first night was. He stammered a lot back then. And even in the darkness of the room, she knew that he was blushing. They'd started off on far sides of the bed but when morning came, Rose woke to find herself wrapped in John's arms and her head tucked in the crook of his neck.
She likes this arrangement because she has bad dreams too. They're mostly about losing him but there's this one where she's burning up from the inside and there's a song that's tearing at her mind. It scares her more than anything but she hasn't told him about that. She hasn't told anyone about that because she thinks that sometimes she can hear the song even when she's awake.
She fears that she might be going mad.
She's some sort of super spy or the like. At least that's what he thinks. Rose hasn't exactly disclosed the specifics of her job but he's caught certain words in hushed conversations with Jack. Who, also happens to be a super spy.
That makes it even harder for him to compete with Jack. He doesn't even have a job. That's why, a week later, he gets one at the University in the Physics department. This also helps in justifying his love for tweed. There's also the congratulatory hug which Rose gives him that makes him think he's made a good decision. Although Professors still can't beat Super Spies.
Damn it.
It's not that he dislikes Jack though. Jack's actually very nice. He even helped retrieving the paperwork needed for applying at the University. But he does seem to have some sort of a special relationship with Rose. John doesn't know the specifics and Rose has only told him that Jack, too, is an old friend but only very few details have been provided about that.
So, while he does like Jack, it doesn't stop him from being jealous.
She's happy for him when he announces with pride about his new job. She's also terrified that the Family might find him. Sure, they haven't had any indications that the Family has made it through to this world but she can't help worrying. But he's so very happy about being a Professor that his excitement is contagious. Plus, she can't just tie him up and keep him locked inside the flat all day.
Though, she wishes she could. Especially when he tells her about River Song. Professor River Song from the Archaeology department. She's rather nice, he tells Rose. He talks a lot about her, in fact.
Rose merely smiles through gritted teeth and listens to all his tales about the wonderful Professor River Song, but at one point she snaps and almost bursts a blood vessel trying to prove that River is an alien. She isn't able to dig very deep before Jack suggest that he take over before she kills River just by glaring at her photo online.
Much to her disappointment, River Song is completely human. So, Rose tries to convince herself that that's a good thing. And maybe John doesn't like River like that. He's incredibly dense about these things anyway. And so what if he does like her? He's John. He can like whoever he wants. He's not the Doctor.
And yet, she still wishes she could tie him up and keep him in the flat for the next two months.
He likes River. She's nice, funny, and clever, and she keeps trying to convince him to confess to Rose. Okay, maybe he doesn't like the last part. She just doesn't seem to get that Rose fancies someone else. It's like talking to Amelia.
Maybe they're secretly related.
She comes by his class every day to ask him how much progress he's made with Rose. None, he tells her every time. She even gets him drunk one time to elicit enough courage but that's as useful as trying to convince a Korkop to do the pelvic thrust. At first they're both surprised that he can get drunk (after he initially spits any alcohol she offers him) and then they're both surprised when she ends up getting drunk.
Things get a bit hazy after that. He remembers singing the Bohemian Rhapsody in the middle of the street, dancing like a chicken with River, inviting complete strangers to travel with them in his brilliant time and space ship and having a lengthy debate about how silly and stupid Archaeologists are (that one ended with his bowtie being a sacrifice to the fire gods for his insensitivity).
He doesn't know how he got back to the apartment but he does remember throwing himself at Rose and telling her how much he missed her, clinging to her and burying his face in her rain-scented hair like that was the first time he'd met her after being separated for years. He passes out then so he doesn't know how he ends up in his jim-jams and tucked safely under the sheets and come morning, his head aches so bad that he doesn't care.
Rose calls Jack to take the day off and takes care of him. John would have thrown his fist into the air and shouted in triumph if he didn't feel so ill. It's strange, he repeatedly tells Rose. He shouldn't, he really, really shouldn't have even been able to get intoxicated as he had. A dozen hyper-vodkas have never done him in before. Whatever these hyper-vodkas are. What are hyper-vodkas anyway? Ugh, he might have known had his head not been trying to split into two. Really though, his biology should superior than that.
"And yet, here we are," Rose tells him, patting his arm sympathetically but he can see the smile on her lips.
After Amelia leaves for school, (something John is immensely glad of because he'd felt as though her voice was booming through the room and when he'd asked let to speak a little softer, or whined that seven-year olds shouldn't scream so much, to be more precise she'd merely made a face and informed him that nine year olds shouldn't drink alcohol and slammed the front door on his face, leaving him to splutter to himself that he's nine hundred, not nine) Rose makes him the most disgusting but effective cure and they spend the day watching movies.
When they fall asleep with their heads pressed together and find that they've drooled on each other after being woken up by Jack, who'd come to check on John, he feels that this has happened before. Something about a hide and seek game and falling asleep inside a closet. Even Rose's laugh as they wash up is achingly familiar...like déjà vu.
She catches him staring and splashes him with the tap water and it ends up turning into a full blown water fight. Jack wanted a naked water fight but Jack wants everything to be naked. Like hide and seek.
John thinks that he might be starting to remember.
Or maybe he's going mad. He can't tell the difference.
It started out well enough and he'd been getting snippets of things...normal, domestic things like getting mistaken as a pervert and kidnapper by Rose's mum the first the they met, getting slapped by Rose's mum for being a pervert and kidnapper, Jack asking him and Rose to get married, spending Christmas with Rose and her family with paper crowns in all their heads and laughing like there's no tomorrow, getting sick and being taken care of by Rose and her mum, baking Rose an inedible cake for her birthday...
And then there were the impossible memories...like saving Rose from shop window dummies, being saved by Rose from shop window dummies, fighting ghosts with Charles Dickens, blowing up 10 Downing Street to save the Earth from farting, green aliens, taking Rose to the past to meet her Father, meeting Jack during the London Blitz, Rose surrounded in an ethereal golden glow, Cats in wimples chasing them, fighting a werewolf, Bazooliums and bazaars in Klaf'alch, white walls and menacing pepper pots...
He doesn't know what to believe. They all seem real. The realistic ones and the impossible ones. He can even recall the exact smell of the smoky air in the bazaars of Klaf'alch and the taste of the snow in 1869 Cardiff (he and Rose had tried to catch the falling flakes on their tongues right before they'd met good old Charlie Dickens).
He's probably going insane but he doesn't want to give up these memories. They seem like they fit. Like they're really real and whatever else that he knows about his life is all fabricated.
And they're all centred around his pink and yellow human. He can even swear that he hears this voice when he's hugging her at times. It sounds like his own and it asks him to keep her safe.
Like it even needs asking.
"Hey, old girl," Rose says softly as she runs her fingers across the console. "How are you?"
She thinks that there is a faint answering hum. It could be just her imagination but she doesn't care. The TARDIS is the closest to home she can get these days. This and when she's with John. He may not be the Doctor, she reminds herself but they're both so very alike that sometimes she loses herself. She has no idea how she'll break the news to him about the Doctor when the time comes to open the watch that resides in her pocket. Or how she'll ever kill him (because that is essentially what's going to happen) even of it's to bring her Doctor back.
"I'm sorry I don't visit often," Rose mumbles, sitting down on the metal grating. "Been busy, you know. I think the Family might be here."
She bites her lip. She got the news when she came to work that morning. It isn't for sure but there was an incident, something like a comet crashing down that might very well be the Family. Following it had been two disappearances. Jack has been trying to reassure her, saying it could be something else but something inside Rose tells her that this is the Family. They're here.
"Don't worry though," she tells the TARDIS. "I'll protect our Doctor. I'll protect him."
And even as she says it she's not sure how competent she will be. She's going mad, she's sure now. She can hear it everywhere. The singing. It always there, at the back of her mind. Sometimes she can drown it out but sometimes it drowns her. All her dreams are of burning up now. Burning up, dying and taking the Doctor along with her.
She wakes up shaking each night and this time, instead of her keeping John's nightmare away, he's there to hold her until she's stopped sobbing.
And yet there are times when she thinks that it is her madness that's keeping her sane. She doesn't know what she will do without the song in her head. It is like a sweet torture. She's almost addicted to it. She hates it and loves it in equal parts. It scares her and soothes her at the same time. It's become a part of her.
She's gone mad, and she likes it.
A/N: This is kind of like the prologue to the end, if you will. If I had added everything here, the chapter would have been too long. Plus, I wanted to get something out for you guys to read.
Anyway, I'll try to finish the next part in a week or so. While my exams have ended, I seem to have run out of inspiration. Maybe your reviews will get me going. ;)
So, you know what to do. Hope you liked this chapter.
Big thanks to the following people for their reviews, favourites and for following this story: JollyRoger1, Independent.C, Laikayanel , The Doctor Rose, blue sky, hotsasukefan, skidney, DarkGoddess90, You Light The Sky, ladyamadaun, Kawaii Kumori, Lady Skywalker94, aFFpenname, yorushihe, shadowneko003, hotsasukefan, Inoue Orihime15, RainbowGlory97, antienoftheshadows and Autumn embers.
And an ever bigger thanks to Valerie E. Mackin, the best beta reader one could ask for.