A/N: Hello there, me is back again. :D This is my first Doctor Who story outside the realm of A Christmas Carol, because I honestly think there were five pages of stories dedicated to that episode. If the writers wanted to be a little more subtle about any Doctor/Rose drama coming up...they're foreshadowing skills need a little work.

But...it started my obsession with Eleven/Rose, so I can't really hold anything against them.

Anyhoo, I hope you all enjoy. Reading is lovely, reviewing is awesome.

Enjoy!

When one fails to fall sleep it means another is borrowing one's subconscious to star in their dreams, because a soul can never be in two dreams at the same time, therefore the body suffers a restless night while the subconscious slips off to find an adventure, one the conscious mind might never discover.

That's why he never tried. To sleep, that is. If he never tried, he could keep track of all the levels of his mind, gathering them up before they could stray into dangerous territory. More specifically: people's dreams.

For dreams were such perilous little things, giving humans the hope that anything and everything they desired was within their reach. They just had to stretch.

But humans are so silly! Don't they realize that they never remember how far they have to stretch to reach these dreams they have? Not one of them can tell you the beginning of a dream, where the severe effort practically tears them apart, ripping them to pieces until they want to give it all up. Not a single one.

But when they finally break the barrier, the wall that prohibits these naïve creatures from accessing their paradise anytime they wish it suddenly starts to feel like it's all worth it, but they still have to work. They still have to claw their way through to the other side so they can forget, so they can misplace all the anguished thoughts they endured and be swept away by the bliss the human race so commonly calls a dream.

That's not a dream. It's a trap, one that laughs and teases and taunts, but yet they're drawn to it, addicted to its pain, returning night after night to suffer through its torture again and again and again.

None of his companions before had ever questioned his constant lack of the usual eight hours, they simply wrote it off as an alien-y, Time Lordish quirk and left it at that. Some of them never even knew of his ever-alertness. They had just assumed he went to bed late and woke up early, and there was never any harm in that.

But Amy was different, he needed to keep reminding himself of that. Brilliant, yes, but in no way unusual. Just a normal human girl who had a problem with authority and keeping her tongue in check—much like himself on occasion—and at one point her life just happened to not make any sense. When he, of course, righted it again the oddity of her sort of slipped away. She became domestic, but she was still his friend.

"Don't you ever sleep?" She asked him loudly late one evening many moons ago. He was pacing around the console, pulling random levers and whirling certain wheels, losing himself so far in his own thoughts that he didn't even hear her approach before it was too late.

He turned to her after he calmed down from his fright, cutting through her irritable glare with one of his own. "No," he said plainly, turning back to his beloved TARDIS and busying himself.

"Why not?" She asked again in that annoyingly condescending tone that he was sure was created just for her voice.

"Time Lord, Pond." He said brightly, bounding down the platform's stairs to stand in front of her. His eyes drifted over her pale body wrapped in a swatch of cloth that barely passed for a "robe". "Very different needs than a human, sleep is one of them."

"Liar," she retorted, grinning despite herself. "What's wrong?"

He didn't bother answering her, instead going over to the swing underneath the console. Why should he defend himself when there was no reason to? It was a Time Lord habit, nothing more.

"My brain's more advanced than a human's, Amy." He said quietly as she came to sit beside him, an injured expression haunting her eyes. "It doesn't need sleep like yours does."

"But you've been off," she said this like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Lately you've been less...like you, like you ate a pear or something."

His eyes softened as she struggled to fit the proper words for his recent turn of personality on her tongue. He'd been snappish and inconsiderate all last fortnight and she had just let him run his mouth, raging and angry and she didn't say a word. He smiled down at her gratefully.

"You've been acting very un-Amy-like, too, you know." He said thoughtfully, swaying slightly in the nonexistent breeze. She returned his smile gently.

These were the rare moments he cherished with his companion, with all his companions. It was something that he could pull out from that little nook in his mind and remember, no matter how far in the future, that in that instant something special passed between them. Unspoken, unseen, but felt in every part of his being. He could remember. He could always remember.

"You should at least lay down for a few hours," she pressed. He refrained from rolling his eyes, suddenly exasperated. "It'd make me feel better about yelling at you when you bite my head off for landing in the wrong place tomorrow."

He grinned at her and slowly nodded his head in assent, leading her back to her corridor. "Run along, Pond. I'm sure the handsome Rory is up and looking for you by now."

"Night Doctor," she said through her smirk, swiftly kissing him on the cheek. He watched her retreat down the hallway, soon disappearing from view.

What was he going to do for a "few hours" in his bedroom, if not sleep?

He could read, he supposed, but that would only make his eyes hurt. He could think, but that would lead to remembering, and he really didn't want to remember anything right now. He wanted to move, to run, even if it was in never-ending circles around his ship's console.

Eyeing the mattress sitting menacingly in the corner of his large room he sighed, shrugging before stretching out on its stiff surface. It felt foreign, like this wasn't supposed to be its manufactured purpose and he was using it wrong. He wriggled and squirmed, trying to make it the least bit more comfortable, but he finally gave up with a huff of frustration and a somewhat erect mop of hair.

But he wasn't paying attention, or at least not enough, and a small part of his mind wandered off, and suddenly a busy London street surrounded him, his unyielding mattress all but forgotten.

After giving himself a moment to have a little violent fit, which included hitting himself in the head multiple times for his complete and utter stupidity, he looked around for whomever's dream he was undoubtedly in.

People with faces he couldn't quite define bustled around him, jostling him, heading towards their own dreams. Horns and bells rang around him, and his head pulsed in the cacophony of it all. How could someone stand such a loud dream? He wished he could make it all just...stop.

And then...it did.

She skidded around a corner, head half turned all the way around in anticipation, waiting for something to catch up to her. She hugged the wall beside her, looking with frantic eyes for a face she couldn't find. He couldn't believe it: it was her.

But why did she look so scared?

She called out a familiar name—he could see the glorious way it fell from her lips—but the wonderful sound of its syllables were lost in the chaos of noise.

He wanted to go to her, run through the hordes of people and hold her tight. Never letting her go, fighting all her monsters, being with her forever. He wanted it so much it hurt.

Something shattered in her dark eyes: a broken promise, a disappointment—a memory, and she was running again, down the street and through the crowds: pushing past everyone that blocked her path to freedom, to escape, to reality. She called out his name again, like a battle cry, like a death wish, and then she disappeared.

He gasped as if he needed the oxygen supplied for him, horror-struck.

What was that?

When was that?

How did he get back?

He stared at the TARDIS ceiling, listening to her familiar hum, spluttering silently, and failing to wrap his enormous brain around what he just saw.

What if he had run to her? What if he revealed himself, said hello even, or asked her how she was?

Could...could it really be that easy?

A revolting little chuckle tickled the back of his ear.

Of course it wasn't.

But for the next week, he couldn't help himself. He needed to see her again. It didn't matter if Amy shot him a triumphantly smug smirk every time he went off to bed before she and Rory did, the more time he might have in her dream, the merrier.

Nothing worked though, no matter how hard he tried. All he ended up doing was falling asleep. Often, he woke up groggy and confused, his mind angry that he had wasted so many valuable hours on something so frivolous to him.

He gave up soon after that, his hope petering out to an oh-so-familiar ache of shattered hopes. It didn't seem fair, to give him that brief glance and then close the doors.

It was New Years Ever by now, the Doctor growing increasingly more frustrated with himself than he had ever been in quite some time, and Amy was picking a particularly nasty fight with him about their destination.

"Doctor..." Amy pleaded, following him around like a lost puppy. He scowled at her. "Oh come on! It'll be fun!"

"It most certainly will not be fun! I can think of a thousand better places to ring in the New Year then boring ole New York!"

"What if it's my birthday present?" She tried. The Doctor blinked, doing a double take before muttering, bewildered, "your birthday's not for another four months, Amy."

She let out an exasperated groan, "fine then! Rory's birthday gift! His is in twelve days!"

Rory, who had been sitting on the couch reading a book, gaped at her expectant look before meeting the Doctor's glare and quickly shaking his head. Amy stomped her foot.

"You grumpy old man! We always go where you want to and you can't even take us on this one trip! After all we've done for you? No wonder all your friends leave..."

He didn't know where he was, or how much time had passed. All he saw was red, all he felt was the scorching heat of his rage consume him. He heard something shatter, later deduced that he had thrown some intergalactic knick-knack, and secretly wished it wasn't the refractor from Licenap or the crystal jar from Syleniot.

He stormed through the TARDIS corridors with no destination in sight, and then he was suddenly stomping his way out into the middle of 32nd street.

He froze and looked around, not daring to believe it had been that easy, when a horn blared at him. He jumped back with a yelp, looking at the exasperated driver in front of him.

"Move!"

So he did. As far away from where he came from as he could.

Where was she? Was she even here?

"Doctor!"

He spun and almost collided with her twisted, running form. Instinctively, he moved out of her way, and for the first time in his life his mind worked too slow for the situation around him.

Blonde hair whipped around the corner, vanishing from sight.

She hadn't known he'd been there. She'd almost crashed into him head-on, but she didn't see him.

"Rose?"

But she was gone.

The TARDIS corridor appeared before him again so suddenly he had to brace himself against the wall, but it was different. Somehow. The foreign, yet strangely familiar, coral that enclosed him was entrancing, and he found himself lost in all its little dips and crevices, marveling.

"Oh you sexy thing," he murmured, but then another voice rang out, drowning his own, the coarse sounds of which he hadn't heard in such a long time.

"This is emergency program one. Rose, now listen—"

His hearts clenched painfully and his breath hitched: the first time he ever left Rose.

"...can only mean one thing," the hologram of his younger self was saying. Slowly, he made his way to the main console room, taking in the sight of his old ship with awed reverence. Rose was pressed up against the door, her eyes wide. He could see the question inside them clearly: what was going on?

"No!" She suddenly yelled, bounding towards him, or the old him. He couldn't be sure, as he had come through the back of the TARDIS; in her line of vision but slightly behind the large console. If he remembered correctly, though, his holographic self had just said he was about to die, which made her reaction more logical than if she had only seen him.

"And that's okay, I hope it's a good death." He instinctively cringed at his old, apathetic nature he had secretly become more and more like since her abrupt departure. "But I promised to look after you, and that's what I'm doing."

He didn't listen to anymore, not after those words. For even back then, he loved her. He always had, he supposed. The promise Jackie made him make so many years ago had no affect on him, for he had already vowed to protect her before he even met the woman.

He turned back, choosing not to listen to her painful cries and desperate attempts to drive the TARDIS. They'd only hurt him more.

Her screams rang through his ears, through his head, through his hearts, and he found himself pleading right along with her as he wandered back into his console room. The one that had never seen the likes of the feisty blonde shop girl dancing around in her Union Jack shirt, or never felt her beautiful laugh reverberate off its rounded walls.

His new home, that was devoid of everything Rose, and always would be.

"Doctor?" Amy's loud voice rang out, concern lifting the edge of her tone. He blinked, bleary-eyed but aware. "Doctor, are you there?"

Her voice was harsh where she had a certain delicacy about her words. Her skin was white while she was an array of all the pinks and yellows the rainbow could create. Fire blazed out of her skull, burning through the sun-baked cornfield that brushed against his cheek every time she hugged him until it was ash. Around him, inside him, all ash.

Amy was opposite, Amy was new, Amy was now.

But he would always want to go back.

Take me back...Take me back!

And so she did.

"Hello."

Disclaimer: I own nothing, because I've taken various things from various plots and mashed it all into this one, calling it my inspiration.