Worst Nightmare (darling you've always been mine)

It wasn't suppose to be like this.

One minute he's with Amy trying to get to Tamaran and the next he knows they've landed with the old girl refusing to budge on the wrong planet.

That planet, he thinks as he steps outside the door with Amy in tow, has a beach that looks exactly like the one in Cardiff that makes him avoid all beaches.

It replicates the Bad Wolf Bay he remembers. The water crashes against all other sounds, the sky stormy like it's unwilling to witness the scene again. There's slight prints in the sand, dragged by waves and winds and someone he doesn't think about.

It's so exact that if he just closes his eyes, and pretend he were another man, pretend he had a pinstriped suit and converse shoes and a girl who he doesn't think about, he could almost taste the words on his tongue. The words that he, that this other man, that's not him, never said. And he can imagine her, this girl who he doesn't think about, and the tilt of her voice as he, this man who he isn't, stares at her. He can almost hear it, the light and flighty tone as she almost reaches a hand out to this man who isn't him and she says-

"Doctor?"

For a moment he freezes before realizing that the accent's all wrong, and it's in the wrong tone -far too deep- and he catches red instead of blonde in the corner of his eyes when he opens them.

He can't tell if it's heartbreak or relief that he feels.

"Doctor, are you alright?" He hears off to his side, and tries to shake the feeling, the need to look left and right until he finds someone he doesn't think about.

"I'm always alright, R- Amelia Pond." He stutters through, only catching the familiarity of the phrase once it exited his mouth. It doesn't fit this mouth, he thinks, just like the teeth and the hair and the suit and how she will never see this him.

He should stop thinking about this someone who he doesn't think about. He will.

"This planet recreates your worst nightmares," he says, brazenly and suddenly and it cuts into the scene recklessly, clashing with the unsteady fall of the waves and what he was not thinking about. "It creates what you fear most, Amy, by feeding off your memories."

"And a beach?" Amy exclaims, eyebrows scrunched in a puzzled expression. "I've never been here before." She looks around at the sand, the clouds, the beach. She glances sideways at the Doctor to her right, tilting her head as she asks, "this is yours?"

He nods, because it can easily be said that he didn't and saying anything out loud would prove that he's thinking about something that he doesn't think about.

"Are you afraid to get wet or something?" She says teasingly, with twinkling eyes and a faint quirk of the lips that reminds him of the signature smile of someone he doesn't think about. He looks away and visibly swallows.

"It's more than that, Amy," he wryly says. What that is, he doesn't say. He tugs a hand through his hair and bites his lower lip. He knows what will happen, he know where he is. The exact spot where he is, the exact minute, second, when it will happen.

And like clockwork, a hologram of someone he doesn't think about appears where he -a man that isn't him- had appeared all those years ago. She looks like how she was when he first left, with mittens and a pink jacket and jumper.

He knows the script, she knows the script. The only one that doesn't know it is Amy who gasps at the sudden appearance.

"You look like a ghost," he says to her, this someone he doesn't think about, wondering if that's how he, not him, looked to her all those years ago. Her form is shimmering, wispy, like one strong blow from the wind will dissolve her already weak form.

She cracks a smile at his sentence, and murmurs, "Doctor, you've changed." Her voice washes over him, her smile is sad, pitying. Her eyes looks at him up and down, this new him, this body that isn't the Doctors she knew.

He's the Doctor, he's just not her doctor.

"Is it a good change?" he asks as he smiles, feeling his top teeth graze against his lower lip, just itching to bite down. His left hand fingers the edges of his bow tie and his right reaches towards his hair. He doesn't know why he's playing along with this. He shouldn't, really. He should just grab Amy and race back into the Tardis and not look back and think about someone who he doesn't think about.

Instead, here he is, thinking about what he shouldn't be thinking about with what he shouldn't be thinking about right in front of him.

He can see Amy's movement out of the corner of his eye, silently demanding him to explain. He doesn't, and instead plays with his bow tie again.

She smiles bigger, fingers twitching at her sides as if she wants to touch him. "No touch, I'm just a projection. Right." She gives a brief chuckle at that, and he finds himself laughing -gasping, but he's going to pretend it's laughing- with her. He feels tears at the corner of his eyes and he looks up, desperate in his wish not to cry in front of her.

"Your bow tie's crooked," she smiles, all teeth and tongue stuck out, "I like it." He grins, he doesn't know he wanted her approval, he just does. His hand stops playing with his tie and he looks down, attempts to straighten it.

"You got younger," she smirks as he looks back up at her. "The older you get the younger you are. Next you'll know you'll be a baby!" she teases.

He smiles back, "better a baby than an old grump with big ears, right?" His eyes crinkle and he can feel that his grin is lopsided.

"Or a pretty boy," she adds, "with sideburns." She's full out giggling, eyes closed with the wind threatening to blow her away. He wants to remember her like this. Young, happy, laughing like the universe isn't cruel.

"Rose Tyler," he starts, with a breath and a tone that sounds too confident to actually be so. "I-" he swallows.

"I know." She interjects before he could finish his pitiful attempt at a confession, with sad eyes and a sad sad sad smile. "Me too." She admits in a soft tone, the same tone someone would use to address a tombstone.

"No! If it's my last chance to say it! I swear Rose Tyler-" He screams in frustration, fully set on finishing that sentence before his lungs and his hearts betray him. "I-!" He collapse, his mouth still open but his throat closed. He can't say the words out, and he suddenly remembers why this is his worst nightmare.

"It's fine," she says, "does it need saying?" She moves closer to him, not leaving any footprints in the sand. She's close to him, so close he should be able to feel her breath on his face, but he doesn't.

"Doctor, I-"

She disappears, like the whole scene around him, and he instead is left staring at the blank white wall of a room that he will hate for the rest of his lives.

"No! Bring me back! Bring me back!" He pounds on the wall in front of him. "I want to go back!"

There's silence. There's been silence for the past few days. The wall doesn't budge under his pounding. While it is sturdy, it wouldn't be hard to break out of, he thinks. They had left him with his sonic screw driver. It wasn't impossible nor improbable to break out of.

Why he hadn't break out yet is purely just the fact that he seems to be a masochist. Everyday, he has the same vision, the same thing. He experiences his worst nightmare over and over again. He craves it.

And so he stays, with the silence in the air and the blank white walls in front of him and hate towards someone who he doesn't think about that's preventing him from going back to the old girl with the Ponds. He doesn't think about her, he doesn't, and he doesn't think about how a part of him, the part of him that isn't him who had a pinstriped suit and converse shoes and a pink and yellow human, can't stand to leave her, even if it wasn't the real version of her.

He, the he that isn't him, craves Rose Tyler, and if she's his worst nightmare he can stay here another day.