Chapter Text
Rose was shaken from sleep by a soft whooshing sound. She was almost able to believe that it was part of the gentle breeze that was currently pulsing through her open bedroom window, but there was an odd grinding within the sound - like gears scraping against one another - that made the noise distinctly mechanical.
She made a half-conscious groan as she twisted in bed and turned closer to the sound. Her body felt heavy, like it was trying to convince her to give up and slip back into unconsciousness. However, the strange noise roused something deep within her that instantly perked with curiosity and excitement.
She gave another sleepy moan and forced one eyelid to open as the sound of approaching footsteps suddenly replaced the wheezing noise. The warm smell of coffee wafting through the air was the final incentive that Rose needed to completely abandon sleep.
“Morning!”
The bright, cheerful voice was far too loud for someone who was barely awake. However, instead of groaning again in irritation, Rose’s eyelids slipped shut and a pleased smile curled up her lips. The voice was as warm and familiar to her as her own cozy bed. It made her feel safe and content.
As soon as she managed to force herself to sit up, warm styrofoam filled her hands and the scent of coffee completely overwhelmed her senses. Rose’s eyes remained shut as she inhaled deeply and breathed out a pleased sigh.
“Smells so good,” she mumbled through her dreamy haze. “Thank you.”
“Anything to get you out of that bed,” the cheery voice replied.
Rose hummed again and slowly cracked her eyes open once more to gaze at her companion. He was holding a coffee cup to match her own and was slouching in a relaxed stance a few feet away from her bed. His features appeared blurry to Rose’s sleep-muddled senses, but she didn’t need to see him to know each and every single detail of his face. She swore that she could see his bright blue eyes sparkling in the early morning sunlight as he watched her with a small, fond smile on his face.
“But bed is nice,” Rose insisted weakly. “Bed is warm and comfy.”
Rose could hear her companion exhale a small, amused chuckle at her weary declarations.
“Bed is good,” she continued. “See?” Rose paused to run her hand invitingly over the warm, sun-soaked sheets.
“Yes, it looks very nice, indeed,” her companion agreed patiently.
“No, you don’t see,” Rose insisted. She patted the bed next to her exaggeratedly as another smile stretched her lips. “Bed is so good. You need to experience it to understand. Come and see.”
Her companion heaved a long-suffering sigh, but he didn’t seem to require any further encouragement. Rose positively beamed as the bed dipped beside her and the other’s familiar shape filled the empty space at her side.
Rose immediately latched onto his arm and snuggled her face into the warm material of his jumper. It wasn’t nearly as soft and warm as her bed, but it still filled her with a sense of comfort that was deep and true.
“See?” she continued teasingly. “So nice.”
“S’pose it is rather nice,” her companion agreed quietly.
They stayed like that, cuddled up in her bed, until Rose’s coffee cup was half-empty and the first dose of caffeine finally began to rouse her. She groaned lightly as she removed her head from her companion’s shoulder and began slowly stretching her sleepy limbs.
“Better?” her companion asked.
“Better,” Rose agreed. She hesitated for a moment in thought before she added, “No, actually … it’s fantastic.”
Her companion chuckled warmly in response. “Fantastic,” he echoed brightly.
Suddenly, the wind outside of Rose’s open window began to pick up. She turned and scowled in annoyance at the sheer curtains as they stretched out towards her bed and rustled against her sheets. The wind had flipped her golden hair into her face and ruined her warm moment.
The birds outside voiced their own complaints, their noise rising with the wind like an ocean tide.
Suddenly, Rose’s head began to swim and her thoughts turned hazy and half-lucid once more.
“Blimey, what …?” She couldn't even seem to thread a full sentence together. Words seemed somehow outside of her reach at the moment.
“Doctor …” she tried again. The birdsong was still swelling in her head, drowning out all of her other senses. “Doctor, I’m … Doc …”
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“Doctor!”
Rose came to with a gasp, the Doctor’s name bursting from her lips in a strangled cry. Her strained breath and panicked noises seemed to echo off of the walls around her. As she slowly regained control of her senses, she realized that she was in her room on the TARDIS, exactly where she had fallen asleep the previous evening.
Rose groaned and brought a hand to her spinning head. How long had she been out? She searched her recent memories in an attempt to piece together some sort of reason, but everything seemed to be just outside of her reach.
The dream she had woken from had seemed so real.
The sound of heavy footsteps quickly approaching her bedroom door instantly startled Rose out of her half-conscious reverie. Her entire body tensed in preparation to defend itself, even though she wasn’t quite sure how she would be able to do anything in her disoriented state.
The person in the hallway opened her bedroom door without hesitation - as though they had every right to be intruding on her personal space.
“Rose …?”
The new accent accompanied by the wide, brown eyes and wild, dark hair sent Rose’s head spinning once again. She wasn’t sure why, but she realized that she had been expecting a northern accent instead.
“D-Doctor?” she stuttered hesitantly.
The man in her doorway blinked at her for a moment in silence. The Adam’s apple in his throat bobbed before he asked, “Are you … okay?”
Rose nodded silently in response, though she continued to watch the man in her doorway with wide-eyed confusion. Of course she knew that this man was the Doctor. She had been traveling with him for months. They had been through everything together, and she trusted him with her life. She had been with him when he first transitioned into this face, and she planned to be there to see each one that followed afterwards. So why did she feel as though she were staring at a stranger?
She blinked hard and shook her head slightly, as though that might help clear the images of blue eyes and leather jackets from her head.
“I, uh …” she began lamely. “I just had a … weird dream.”
“Yeah.” The Doctor was nodding slowly, but his brown eyes were unfocused and he seemed to be staring hard at nothing. “Yeah, me, too.”
The concern in his eyes focused Rose in a way that her own pounding heart could not. If the Doctor was worried, then she knew that she needed to be there to help him.
“Was it bad?” she asked gently. “Was it a nightmare?”
She knew that he suffered from dark dreams far more often than he cared to admit. She had caught him pacing the TARDIS halls at all hours of the night far too many times. When she had first joined him, she had half-believed his excuses of alien anatomy and the need for less sleep than humans. However, it hadn’t taken her long to realize that these were all just stories he told to avoid the truth - that sleep for the Doctor was a dangerous, difficult experience.
“Er, no …” the Doctor replied. His brows furrowed over his dark eyes as he blinked and slowly refocused his gaze back on Rose. “No, it wasn’t a nightmare. Not a bad dream at all, really. Just … strange.”
“Yeah.” Rose’s brows furrowed to match his own as she recalled the sharp colors and sounds of her recent dream. She’d never experienced anything so real before in her life.
“You, too?” the Doctor surmised.
Rose could feel her lips pressing into a tight line as she nodded her head silently.
“Want to share what happened?”
Rose dropped her gaze from his as her face flushed with embarrassment, but she could still feel the Doctor’s intense brown eyes focused on her. She’d had frivolous daydreams in the past, of course - but never had she had an experience as vivid as this.
“It was … nothing,” she replied awkwardly. “It’s silly, really. It’s just … I’ve never had a dream like that before.”
“Like what?” the Doctor continued to press.
“It was like … I was there.” Rose shook her head slightly as she nervously raised her gaze back to the Doctor’s. He was staring at her with that familiar intensity that always sent butterflies flocking to her stomach.
“I’ve never had a dream feel so real before,” she added quietly.
“I have.”
Rose blinked in surprise as the Doctor’s gaze seemed to bore right through her. However, they stayed like that for only a moment before the Doctor instantly reverted back to the calm, professional demeanor he always took on when he was trying to avoid some uncomfortable truth.
“Common enough thing for the Time Lords, really,” he explained. “Dreams often appear quite life-like and real, only …”
The Doctor had gone still and was staring off into space again. After a few moments like this passed, Rose quietly prompted him, “Only … what?”
“Only … they’re usually memories.” The Doctor began to pace distractedly in the small space of Rose’s bedroom door. There was barely any room for his gangly limbs, but it was clear that his thoughts weren’t focused on his present surroundings. “When I sleep, I normally re-experience past events, often in exact detail. It helps the brain record and remember events for future use. It’s quite an efficient system, really. It helps document events and keep records of history - basically a Time Lord tradition. But this dream was different.”
The Doctor’s words paused for a moment, but his distracted fidgeting never ceased. “This dream was … familiar, but it wasn’t a memory. It was more like … an old daydream.”
“A daydream?” Rose repeated. She swallowed nervously before deciding to take a stab at humor to lighten the mood a bit. “And what do Time Lords daydream about, I wonder?”
She flashed the Doctor a teasing grin, but it went completely unnoticed. In fact, it seemed that he was doing everything in his power to avoid meeting her eye entirely.
Rose’s grin quickly melted from her face as the Doctor suddenly froze in place and all of his nervous energy instantly dissipated.
“Rose …” he murmured quietly, still not quite meeting her gaze, “do you hear that?”
Before she could ask what he was talking about, the distant sound of birdsong slowly began to echo within Rose’s ears. She opened her mouth to say something, but her words were drowned out by the noise, which swelled to a deafening roar in the matter of seconds.
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Rose’s entire body jolted, tearing her away from the soft, warm arm that she had been leaning against just moments before. She groaned in pained annoyance as she raised one hand to an ear. “Too loud …” she murmured groggily. “Doctor, shut the window. Those birds are making too much noise.”
The man at her side had leapt to his feet before she had even finished her request, leaving her slightly unbalanced and cold without his welcome presence next to her. However, he didn’t heed Rose’s command to close the bedroom window. Instead, he stood in the center of her room, breathing heavily and scanning the area around him with wide, frantic eyes.
“Doctor?”
Rose rubbed her eyes in an attempt to help her focus. She had been with the Doctor long enough to know when he was worried, and she had learned over time that his concern was always a precursor to something bad.
“What’s wrong?” she asked quietly. “Sorry I nodded off, there. I was just having this … really weird dream …”
“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed distractedly. “Or … more like a daydream?”
“S’pose.” Rose frowned and furrowed her brow at him as something within her head began to pound uncomfortably. “Wait, a second … No, that’s … Weren’t we just talking about this?”
“Were we?” The Doctor’s blue eyes were still wide and frantic as he inspected every spare inch of her room. “Or were we sitting here, enjoying a morning coffee?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Rose murmured, though the pounding in her head was making it difficult to be sure. “We were having a morning coffee and then I must have drifted off for a moment.” She paused for a moment as she attempted to convince herself that this was true. However, no matter how hard she tried, there was no escaping the vivid lingering sensations of her dream. “That dream was so real, though.”
“Yeah, and that sounds familiar, too,” the Doctor muttered distractedly.
“Wait …” Rose forced herself to focus on the figure of the man standing in the center of her room. He was so similar and yet so different to the man who she had just left behind in her dreams.
It had taken her longer than she cared to admit to acclimatize herself to the process of regeneration. Some part of her had always blamed the Doctor for not preparing her for the outcome of the situation - but even now, when she knew to expect the strangeness of the shift, it was difficult to reconcile the two men within her head.
“Are you saying … we just had the same dream?” she asked tentatively.
“Looks that way.” The Doctor’s roaming gaze finally slowed and settled on where Rose still sat amidst the crumpled sheets of her bed. His blue eyes were just as intense as the brown that Rose had just been dreaming about.
“But … how is that possible?” Rose insisted.
“Not sure,” the Doctor replied. “But I intend to find out …”