Chapter Text
Every time she sleeps, she dreams.
She wanders halls in the dark, moving slow like the air itself is mud, rallying against every movement forwards. Her surroundings flicker, twisting – the hall of a house, a school, or somewhere else entirely. She can’t say exactly where any of them are, but there’s something about them that she knows. Like the walls are calling to her, humming at the edges of her mind.
We know you.
She keeps walking.
You’ve walked these halls before.
Her surroundings settle, and she reaches a staircase with a wooden banister. She makes her way down it without even a hesitation, bare feet against worn carpet. She jumps the last step instinctively, and finds herself landing in a foyer. She doesn’t take a moment to look around – she knows where she is, even though she doesn’t – and instead makes straight for the door, her fingers moving over locks and latches like they have a hundred times before.
She pulls it open, and the night air rushes in, a biting wind that tugs at her hair. There are concrete stairs leading down to a tarmac road, upon which the TARDIS is parked, gleaming silvery blue in the moonlight. She moves down to it, entirely unbothered by the cold ground beneath her feet. She feels nothing. There is nothing.
(This isn’t real, something whispers, but the wind snatches it away).
She’s only a few steps from the van when someone grabs her wrist from behind. She twists against their grip, pulling away with desperation, but when she turns, she finds a familiar face behind her, looking at her with pleading eyes.
“Please,” says O, dressed in soft browns, and his eyes are so sad. “Please don’t go.”
“I’m sorry,” she gasps, a sense of urgency spiking within her because she needs to leave. She always does. She should have told him from the start – should have warned him what he was getting in for.
“No, Doctor –” he says, but she’s already yanking her arm away and pulling open the driver’s side door, clambering inside and slamming it quickly. It doesn’t matter anyway, she thinks distantly as the engine starts and she begins to drive away. The road is empty. O is gone, like he’d never even been there.
“Because he hadn’t,” Dhawan whispers, leaning on the back of her seat and whispering in her ear. She doesn’t jump. Part of her had known he’d been there all along. “He doesn’t exist. He never did.”
She catches a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror. He’s wearing his purple coat, and there’s a cut on his eyebrow, dripping with blood.
“Why are you here?” she asks, not really sure what she’s saying. There’s a part of her that knows more than the rest of her, a part of her that’s screaming underneath her skin. But she can’t hear it. Can’t understand it. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
He just laughs at that. “And when has something like that ever stopped me?”
She tears her gaze away, looking out at the road ahead – and brakes, because there isn’t a road, not anymore. It just crumbles away right in front of her, out into a gaping chasm that goes on and on and on until she can’t even see the other side. There’s just nothing.
He’s already outside, opening the door and offering her his hand. It’s slick with blood.
“It’s ok,” he says, and there’s something about the words that tug at her ribcage. Something in his eyes that feels like home, that terrifies her. “Just come with me.”
A skip and a lurch, and her hand is already in his. He pulls her out of the van, leading her over to the edge of the chasm. She’s wearing her boots now, and she dares to nudge the end of the tarmac with them. A piece falls away, tumbling into the dark. He squeezes her hand, still wet with red.
“Do you see it yet?” he’s asking her. “Do you see it?”
But there’s nothing to see – just the void, stretching out beyond her, ravenous.
“It’s gone,” is all she can say. “It’s all gone.”
And he laughs, low and dangerous – but she can’t look at him. Her eyes are fixed ahead of her, at the infinite darkness below.
“Oh love,” he says, a sneer, as he lets go of her and presses his hand against her back. “It’s never gone.”
And before she can even react, he’s pushing her, shoving her off the edge, and she stumbles, unable to save herself before she’s falling, tumbling through the endless abyss and staring up at the sky above her, as empty at the oblivion that is swallowing her whole. Not a single pin-prick of light. No universe. No anything. The whole of reality fallen into darkness.
“No…” The word slips past her lips, immediately snatched away by the nothingness. “I’d –”
She’d hoped there’d be stars.
– and then she’s jolting awake with a gasp, heart thumping like a wild thing in her chest. Her arms flail, grasping for purchase, and they find themselves tangled in rustling fabric. Panic flares for a moment, spiralling, but it cuts short with a lurch when her brain manages to catch up with what’s going on.
Sleeping bag. Right.
Not trapped.
She blinks, squinting blearily. Around her are the dark, familiar surroundings of the back of the TARDIS, the leather seat she’s lying on creaking as she shifts. Ragged breaths escape out of her mouth, and the air becomes vapour in front of her face. A glance out the window beside her, and she sees a few flakes of snow drifting past, threatening in their fragile beauty. There’ll be more. She remembers, distantly, looking at the forecast the previous evening and wincing.
Her heart rate, still thundering in her chest, begins to slow incrementally.
Right. Nightmare.
She lies back down on the seat again with a groan, burrowing herself deeper into the warmth of the sleeping bag, pulling her hat down further over her head. At this point, she’s not sure why she even bothered – each night since…well, since the thing that changed everything, she’s slept even worse than usual. Whenever she tries, without fail she finds herself bolting upright with a pounding pulse and gasping breaths– or, worse, with a strangled cry. And when she doesn’t try, she just stays up all night tinkering uselessly, or thinking, or trying to find a new case to research or anything. Anything other than sleeping. The result has just left her exhausted constantly.
The O’Brien’s had started to notice.
Which would be fine, if they didn’t keep asking if she’s alright. Because she can’t tell them the truth. She can’t tell anyone the truth, because –
Because, if she’s honest, she doesn’t understand it herself.
As she’s done so many times in the last couple of weeks, she flicks through the images in her head like pages of a book, turning back to the place where she’s left a permanent bookmark. The scene unfolds before in her mind in full colour. The cold, concrete roof in the dark. The glimmering gold lights of Manchester’s skyline. Dhawan, standing before her, his hair tussled by the winter wind, his face twisted in a desolate, wretched fury.
“– It’s not GONE,” he says,
desperate and broken,
“I KNOW it isn’t! I know
because I’ve seen it
in your eyes –”
She doesn’t bother trying to shake the images from her mind. When she’s this tired, there’s no point. It doesn’t help that she’s listened to the recording of the conversation far too many times, etching the words, the cadences into her memory.
“– how you looked when we fought.
How you looked when you saw
the Gallifreyan in my notebook –”
Her gaze flicks over to where her bag lies on the floor nearby. Within it are the two pages of his notebook, covered in the intricate swirls of her symbol cipher – their symbol cipher – that she doesn’t remember creating. She has no idea what it says. She needs to look at it, decipher it – but it’s like there’s a block in her mind. Even though her need to know what happened in her past is growing with every passing day, she can barely even manage to open up the pages to just glance at them, let alone sit down and translate it all. It’s stupid, so stupid, because those pieces of paper probably hold the key to figuring this whole thing out, to explaining everything that he did. Hell, she technically stole those pages from UNIT, and now she’s just going to let them sit in her bag and never be read?
Maybe, she thinks, feeling a little sick.
Her breathing has calmed. Somewhat.
It’s fine, anyway. She’s been following other leads. Looking at other things. Researching more about the foster home on Gallifrey Road that she and Dhawan both stayed at in the 90s. Trying to figure out who those soldiers at VOR had been – the Judoon. Trying to find out who UNIT are. Looking through all those bits and pieces that Brax had sent her from when she’d lost her memories in that train crash – all those things from when his parents had fostered her –
Wait.
Wait –
“I’m such an idiot,” she growls to herself, lurching into action and almost falling off the seat for her efforts as she gets tangled in the sleeping bag. She wriggles herself free, shuddering against the chill, before reaching for her bag and tugging it towards her. She yanks open the zip with a bit more force that necessary and sticks her hand in, rummaging around until her fingers brush against the familiar shape of her phone.
“Should’ve done this weeks ago,” she chides herself as she pulls it out, before fumbling to find the right number. It’s not one she exactly calls often. Which isn’t to say they’re on bad terms, but – well, they’ve never really been on good terms either, have they, she thinks as she hits the call button. She presses the device against her ear, listening as it rings, anticipation and desperation and something close to fear growing with each passing tone.
It takes him so long to pick up that she almost can’t bear it, and the moment he does she speaks before he can get a word in edgeways.
“I need you to tell me everything you can remember about when I lived with you.”
There’s a heavy sigh through the receiver.
“Theta,” says Brax, and she can almost see in her mind the way he’d be pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s three am.”
She rolls her eyes, not even bothering to correct him about her name. It’s a lost cause. He is, without fail, always like this. “Hi Brax, how are you? Terrible weather, isn’t it?”
Somehow, Brax sighs even heavier. “I’m irritated. Because it’s three am.”
“Well, when else am I gonna call you?”
“In the morning. Preferably sometime after eight.”
“When you’re heading off to work and have no time to talk, you mean?”
“Precisely.”
She resists the urge to growl. “Are you going to answer my question or not.”
Brax sighs again. She’s not completely sure if he just sighs a lot in general, or if it’s something he specifically reserves for conversations with her. “What part of this couldn’t wait for a reasonable hour?”
“Please just answer it.”
“I already answered it. Two years ago, Theta. Don’t tell me you lost your memories again? You should really start writing things down, if that’s the –”
“Brax,” she says, her voice cracking in a way that she hates, but at least it shuts him up. “Please. Just –”
She cuts off. He doesn’t say anything.
“Please just tell me again,” she says, her voice barely a whisper, lost in the darkness of the back of the campervan.
“What’s happened?” Brax asks, gentle. Like he might actually care.
On some occasions, she thinks he might do. Just a little.
Her eyes slip closed.
“I…recently realised I’m missing something important, memory-wise,” she says, anxiety bristling in her chest once more simply at the vague mention of the events of earlier that month. She’s not going to tell him the whole story. “From when I was at Gallifrey Road. And I tried to look up stuff but –”
But there’d been a fire. Gallifrey Road Foster Home had burnt to the ground, and any answers that had been held within its walls have long since turned to cinders.
“– I couldn’t get anywhere,” she finishes instead. “So, I just wondered if there – if there was anything you hadn’t said last time, or anything you’ve remembered since, or…”
She trails off, suddenly feeling acutely stupid.
Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea.
Maybe she should just hang up and –
“I don’t know much about that home you were in,” Brax says. “Hardly anything. Just what I told you last time – Mum said you moved from that group home to temporary respite in…must have been the end of ’99. Then she and Dad fostered you not long after that.”
She swallows, her grip on the phone tightening. “Do you know why? Why I moved from Gallifrey Road?”
“No-one ever told me. I don’t know if Mum or Dad knew.”
“Can you ask them?”
Brax scoffs. “You could ask them.”
Her face scrunches. “Don’t have their number anymore. Plus, they still think I stole the TARDIS.”
Brax gives a huff that she thinks is meant to sound exasperated, but it doesn’t quite hit the mark. She can’t quite help but smile a little, despite everything.
“Yes. I would prefer we kept it that way.”
“What? Still scared of getting in trouble because you gave me the keys?” she quips. This time, his huff is definitely exasperated.
“Let’s remember that I did give you the keys, and did you the favour of making sure they didn’t call the police about it,” he says pointedly. “But fine. I’ll ask them. At a reasonable hour. I expect they must have been given some information about where you’d been before and your history, even if they decided not to share it with me.”
She doesn’t say anything to that, anxiety and desperation crawling up her throat and twisting around her vocal cords, choking. She needs them to have information. She needs to know.
“I’m almost certain I gave you everything we had, though, Theta,” Brax says. “Or, at least, I gave you everything we had to hand. That seemed to have been enough for you, back then.”
“It had been,” she says. “It’s just – it’s different now. Before, I didn’t – I didn’t know what I was missing. It was just…kid stuff, y’know? I didn’t know it was anything –”
“– you accepted that there
were things you weren’t
going to get back and
decided that they
weren’t important,
but you have no idea –!”
She doesn’t finish her sentence.
Brax is silent.
“Could you just – ask them. Please. And maybe – look again. See if there’s anything you might have missed, anything that could help, because I just –” her face creases with distress – “I need to know what happened back then.”
He doesn’t reply for a long moment, and when he does, his tone is very careful. “You might not like what you find. I expect that it’s…not pleasant.”
Her fist clenches in her lap. Not pleasant. As if any of her life has been a walk in the park. “I don’t care. It’s my life. I want to know.”
She needs to know.
She needs to know who Dhawan is to her, and who she is to him.
“– because if you had
even a hint of an idea of
what I’d done,” he growls,
“you would know
better than to underestimate
what I’m capable of –”
“Fine,” Brax agrees with a huff. “I’ll get them to look.”
The Doctor lets out a breath, a fraction of the tension leaving her. “Thanks.”
“It’s fine,” Brax says, tone clipped. “Can I go back to bed now?”
She rolls her eyes. “Yes.”
“Goodnight, Theta.”
“Night, Brax,” she says – to the dial tone. He’s already hung up. She bites back a noise of frustration, if only because it feels wrong to disturb the silence that hangs heavy around her. She glances out of the window again with a sigh, watching the snowflakes drift down with increasing intensity. The roads will be covered in white by the morning. Driving will be interesting. But right now, it’s just beautiful. Cold – dangerously so, if she’s not careful, and doesn’t get back wrapped up warm in her sleeping bag. But beautiful. Calming. The flakes, illuminated by the light of the lampposts, look almost gold against the shadows of the night.
Graham and Grace will be stern with her in the morning. There’s a sort of unspoken rule that if it gets below freezing she really shouldn’t be sleeping in the van – like it’s not something she’d done plenty of times before she met them all.
But then, her friends have always worried like this, haven’t they? She remembers Donna, when she’d realised she wasn’t staying anywhere – how she’d insisted she stay over, despite the Doctor’s protests.
“No, I’m not doing that,” she’d said, hating the idea of being a burden, of being seen as vulnerable and of being tied down all at the same time. “I’m not setting a precedent. Because what’s gonna happen, huh? I sleep on your couch tonight, and then another night, and then you make me stay a week, and then what? You don’t want me as a permanent fixture, but then you’re going to feel too guilty to kick me out, and I won’t put you in that position. I don’t want your pity.”
“Well, I’m not just leaving you to sleep out here,” Donna had said, in that tone of hers that meant no arguments from anyone, but especially pesky journalists. “It’s bloody freezing in that thing.”
“It’s fine,” she’d said. “Besides, I’m used to it.”
“But you shouldn’t be. You shouldn’t have to be.”
The Doctor hadn’t said anything to that one.
“Please, Doctor,” Donna had said, and she can remember how sad she’d sounded. Sadder than she’d ever heard her, at that point. Of course, she’d trumped it plenty that last night she’d seen her. “Just for tonight, then. It’s not pity. It’s me being your friend.”
The memories are coming easily in the darkness. In these early hours where time smears and bleeds like ink under spilled water.
“If nothing else,” Donna had said eventually, “you can wash your things and have shower.”
The Doctor remembers laughing at that. “That bad, huh?”
“Well, I was going to bring it up –”
It’s been nearly ten years since she last saw Donna.
She turns away from the window, curling back into the sleeping bag with a shudder, turning to face the back of the seat and pressing her face against the cold leather. She should cherish these memories that she still has. The ones that returned to her after that fateful train crash, strong and clear as though they’d never left her.
There have been times, over these last two years, that she’s found herself almost wishing that they hadn’t come back. That she’d been left with only the good – the friendships, the laughter, those fleeting moments of belonging – and none of the heartache. None of the fear. None of the loss.
But she knows better than to wish away her memories now, she thinks, fists clenching into the lining of the sleeping bag. Now that she’s faced with such a gaping chasm in her head, she knows the agony of not knowing can be just as bad. Can burn her just as much as the guilt, as the grief.
Then again, maybe Brax is right. Maybe, when she finds the truth, she’ll wish for this. For the ignorance. For the emptiness.
She closes her eyes with a sigh, and tries to dream of nothing.