For how long the Doctor had been inside Psychospace, he found it an annoyingly simple idea. Still though, he wasn't to blame; no human had ever been able to enter Psychospace before, Sherlock really was his key hope.
Sherlock built himself up, preparing for the mental bombardment of Psychospace. He cleared his mind, leaving a white canvas that he painted with one word: Doctor. He knew, thinking about anything else could cost him both his and the Doctor's life once they entered Psychospace. No, that wasn't it. He couldn't lose his life, he would lose his consciousness, which, in his opinion was so much worse. It was one thing to die a death with dignity, or even without, nothing wrong with that, but he couldn't imagine still being alive without his greatest asset: his mind. Without it, he was nothing. Without it, he had no desire to be alive at all.
The Doctor stared the the ground. It had gotten easy for him to enter Psychospace, after all these years. Gently, he just took in a breath and imagine what it was like, desired to enter the space, shut his eyes, and breathed back out. When he opened his eyes, a stark white door stood just before him and Sherlock. The both of them puffed out their chests, preparing to go in.
"Let's go, shall we?" Sherlock asked, "No time to waste." So, without waiting another moment, he walked forward and stepped through.
Sherlock took a moment to adjust to the normal, unsensible air of Psychospace. The Doctor was just beside him in a way, mentally, but no one was really beside each other here. Again, no space. But the Doctor was thinking about him, thinking his name over and over, and that made him close. Sherlock could feel as the natives approached. He knew what he had to do.
He cleared his mind, filling it with the Doctor and the Doctor alone. His mind, his body, all he knew about him. He thought about all he was, from the first time he knew him. The thoughts bombarded him, but stubbornly he thought about only him. He knew that he was getting closer to the Doctor's mind, where he needed to go. He could feel, in a way, the Doctor's presence surround him, and he could hear voices. It made no sense, they weren't a dialogue, just random sentences, and stranger still they were all different voices but Sherlock was convinced they were all the Doctor. They came closer to the Doctor's mind and it grew harder to pull him along behind him. It was like thinking too hard on a problem and hurting your head. The natives bombarded him like bullets.
The image of the red planet, whatever it was, was more vivid than ever, and voices spoke in an echoey tone, a thousand voices, all the voice of the doctor.
"Our destiny is in the stars, let's go and search for it."
"While you have been merely content to observe the evil in this galaxy, I have been fighting against it!"
" A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting,"
"There's no point in being a grown-up if you can't be childish sometimes!"
The pull grew stronger, Sherlock felt like he was being stretched like a rubber band that was soon to snap. The Doctor could hardly get close to his own mind without being pushed away, but Sherlock was slowly but surely dragging him in. The voices continued in a constant bombardment, that was, in a way, comforting.
"For some people, small, beautiful events are what life is all about."
"Small though it is, the human brain can be quite effective."
"Time will tell, always does."
"I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren't there."
"Great men are forged in fire, it is the privilege of lesser men to light the flame."
"Before I go, I just wanted to tell you that you were fantastic."
"Some people live more in twenty years than others do in eighty."
"We're all stories in the end."
As the last voice spoke and just as Sherlock feared he'd die right there, he and the Doctor were sucked into his own tidepool and everything went black. The last thing Sherlock remembered knowing was the final voice that spoke.
Darkness. It doesn't really occur to you that you can't see it in a dream. Of course, you can't truly see anything, only the backs of your eyelids while numbers and codes run through your head telling our to see different things. If you focus hard enough, you can almost read it like a transcript.
But even colors in a dream are fuzzy and lost just after waking up. There is no light. If something is there, it simply exists, and if it is not, there is only black. There is nothing hidden behind that iconic, unidentifiable curtain of black that can barely just be seen by its outline. There is never that gray haze leaving the monsters to crawl in the near-black. There is light, and there is black. There is not darkness.
Which may very well be the reason the Doctor could barely recognize it when that was what he saw. He looked around, just barely to make out the arching shapes in the distance, just barely a different color than the air around him. The air was shaded in by pencil, a rough sketch without color. Creatures dances and twirled behind the curtain of black. Not real, creatures, of course, only creatures of darkness. Spots and stars flickered like planets before his tired eyes. He peered into the dark, realizing what he was seeing, barely able to recognize it anymore.
He sighed softly in awe. He was in a chair, for the first time he could feel it. He wrapped his hands tight around the armrests, rectangular and made of metal. He could feel exactly where they were in space, each molecule remaining and precise, its mind made up on its texture and temperature and wetness and feel. For the first time in so long, it was solid. The Doctor ran his hands along the metal armrests, finding that each time he felt a part he'd felt before it was exactly the same, a perfect structure in space.
He laughed. At first a small, intuitive laugh, more of a sigh, but in feeling something, anything, everything, the air gently against his skin, the chair against his back, his laughter grew. He could hear, he could see, he could feel, time was fluid. Topospace, Tempospace, back again! He laughed not because it was funny just because it was over. He was aware that by now he must have sounded and been completely mad, but he couldn't help as it poured from his lips like lava from a volcano. He could hear it, too. He was breathing and hearing, he could count every breath he took, every hair on his head and it would be constant and remaining. He could feel where he was in space without even moving, aware of himself, aware of his own solidity. Oh, how he had waited for this… at long, long last…
He was awake.
"Doctor?" a voice spoke. It was… he couldn't say what it was, he hadn't needed many adjectives in so long. Let's see… feminine, Scottish… yes, he was fairly sure of those. He didn't answer her, he couldn't see much of her besides an outline.
"Some eternal torment," the girl mumbled, "What's so funny?" she asked. The Doctor didn't answer, laughter still coming from his lips. Awake. Alive. Awake. Alive. The words ran through his head, one by one, orbiting each other inside his mind.
"D-Doctor?" the girl asked, a worry that was almost fear rising in her voice.
"Doctor, what are you…" another voice spoke up, a male voice with a British accent, "Doctor, you're acting weird."
"Oh my God, it worked," The Doctor gasped collapsing back in his seat, his laughter finally stopping, "I made it… I made it… I made it…" he whispered to himself.
"Made it… to what?" Amy asked nervously.
"Hold on, I think this might be the light," the man said. The Doctor hissed, his eyes burning as the bright light shone into them. He shut his eyes instantly. Real light. It had been so long since he'd seen it. Slowly he opened his eyes.
It was a TARDIS. Perfect, detailed, sensical, solid. It was his TARDIS.
He let out a heavy sigh, moving from his hysterical sense of happiness to a gentle warm kind that settled right into his chest. It was over. It was over.
"Doctor, what's wrong?" the girl asked. He carefully stood. His muscles ached with sleep, but he was at least able to stand and walk over to his console, leaning over it and staring into it.
"Oh, nothing's wrong," he whispered passingly. He lowered his voice and touched his hand against the center of the console. "Oh, I missed you girl. I'm sorry I was gone so long. I didn't mean to get stuck there, really,"
"Doctor, what are you going on about?!" the girl insisted, taking a step back. "You were only gone for like, five minutes."
The smile fell from the Doctor's face and the happiness drained from his chest like a drain had been pulled. His face filled with anger and confusion as he whipped around in a split second.
"Five minutes?" he whispered dangerously, taking another step towards the girl.
"Doctor, what are you doing?" she asked, shrinking away.
"What did you just say?"
"Hey, back off her!" The man said, taking a few steps closer.
"Doctor, you're scaring me!" The girl cried. He ignored her.
"How… the Hell… could it have been five minutes?!" he shouted at the top of lungs, and she gasped as he raised his hand to strike her. In a split second, Rory slipped in, caught his hand, and punched him so hard he fell to the floor and all he saw was black.
The Doctor pulled his eyes open. The first thing he felt was panic, because what if he was back and that before was just a more vivid dream than he'd ever felt before? He was ready to jump to his feet, but found that a ring of metal was wrapped around his hand and was chained to the railing on the outside of his TARDIS. Same place, still awake. He sighed in relief. Still, though, he pulled against the chain, wondering why he was chained up at all.
He smelled something. Was that… yes, it was… tea. He looked down on the ground to see a hot, steaming cup of tea. He looked around to see who was around and found that the girl from before - now he knew her name, Amy, he thought - was eyeing him suspiciously, crinkled up against the console of the TARDIS, as far from him as she could be while still being in conversational range. She was practically crushed against the console, her fists clenched, her legs curled in.
"I made you some tea," she said fearfully, her voice barely over a whisper, "It sort of seemed like a British thing to make some tea… I mean, not that you're really British, but you have a British accent so I sort of just figured…" she trailed off, then began again, "Please tell me what's going on, Doctor. What's happened?"
The Doctor didn't answer at first. Oh god. Where to start? Before he was able to answer hers, he knew he had to ask a question of his own.
"You're Amy, right?" he checked, "We traveled?"
Her eyes creased with concern, "Yes, of course, don't tell me you've forgotten," she said hopefully.
"Well, I suppose I didn't, did I?"
There was a pause before she spoke again. "Why did me saying five minutes make you so angry?" she asked. The Doctor sighed.
"Have you ever been dreaming and the dream seems so long, you wonder how you haven't been sleeping for ages?" he asked.
"Yeah, why?" she asked.
"Well… because…" a chill ran down Amy's spine as a sort of anger that a sane man simply couldn't achieve subtlely crossed the Doctor's face. "I have been dreaming for more than five minutes."
The room felt like it got just a little bit colder and Amy squeezed in tighter. "How long?" she asked.
The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, but somehow felt he couldn't say it aloud at all. "Take a guess," he said finally.
"A week?" she asked. No response. "A month?" he shook his head, "A year?" he shook his head again. Her eyebrows raised.
"Doctor-" she said.
"Keep guessing," he insisted. For some reason, he had his mind set one somebody in the real world hearing the truth. She shivered.
"Two years?" no response. "Five years? Ten?" her face fell further and further with desperation the more she guessed, horror sinking deeper and deeper into her bones like rain. "Fifteen? Twenty? Oh… Jesus Christ… Fifty, fifty years. It can't be more than that!"
"You're still pretty far," The Doctor whispered, slightly smiling just because of her somehow charming ignorance.
"A… a hundred years!" she said, her voice cracking, "And I won't believe that it could be any more than that! That's just… impossible! It's less than that isn't it Doctor?" The Doctor's smile faded. He gave no response. "Isn't it Doctor?"
Slowly, he shook his head. "No, Amy, it's… it's not…"
She let out a shaky breath. "Well then just tell me, I'm not playing this guessing game with you anymore!" she insisted. The Doctor tried to speak, but he couldn't even say it. It was too long, it was too large a burden. He shook his head. "I… I can't… keep going up," he requested.
Amy swallowed again, tears starting to surface in her eyes. "200? 300?" The Doctor didn't hint that she was even close, and tears began to run down her face, "Please Doctor, just tell me, i can't… I can't guess it!"
The Doctor gave a heavy sigh, saying each word slowly as he stared down at the steaming cup of tea.
"Four… thousand… years…"
Amy gasped, horrified, her hands shooting up to cover her mouth. Immediately she broke down, her shoulders shaking with sobs. "Jesus Christ!" she shrieked in horror. How could she have let that happen?! How could it have happened at all?!
Rory ran over from around the console, hearing his wife shout, "What's going on?!" he demanded. Amy ignored him, springing up from her position and running over to the Doctor, wrapping her arms around him. "Oh, God, Doctor, I'm so sorry!" she sobbed. The Doctor, however taken by surprise he was, wrapped his arms tightly around his companion. A few tears slipped from his eyes. It had been so long since he'd had any human contact.
Rory's eyebrows creased with concern. If anything was out of character for his tough as nails wife, it must have been something like this. What on Earth happened?
"What's going on?" he asked. Amy pulled herself off of the Doctor, pulling herself together and wiping the tears from her eyes. Still shaky and crying just a bit, she explained the situation to Rory. He only froze, staring at the Doctor, simply unable to process.
"No… you can't-"
"I did," the Doctor assured him.
Rory stood silently for yet another moment, before leaning against the console, taking it all in little by little, "Oh my god," he said, awestruck.
"It's alright, though," The Doctor insisted, "It's all over now. I'm finally awake."