#irdis

He dreams of all the mystery in his head of the universe converging. Sometimes they form something grand, majestic, and beyond the words of any spoken language- even his native tongue. Things that humble even the waterfalls made of sapphires he has seen. Things that make love, and hope, and laughter almost tangible things that both cradle him like a child and sew together the stitches across all of space and time.

Sometimes the mysteries converge into something terrifying and he wakes up in a cold sweat. He sees what possible realities could have happened that would have led to a different path where Gallifrey was never destroyed- some at least where it was never destroyed by him. Every time he wakes from them he must remind himself repeatedly that those events used to be possible, but once a fixed event happens, there is no reversing it. He killed his entire people. His family. His own granddaughter, who he left there, thinking he was doing her a favor. So, he keeps running, trying to save enough people in the universe enough to be able to rectify not being able to save his own. It doesn't always work out. Usually someone dies. Usually he messes up the people who become close to him more than he feels he helps them. Every time a wound like that is fresh, he swears it would be better of him to stop taking in companions. He is too selfish to stick to that decision for long. Nobody knows loneliness like the Doctor.

No human could fully comprehend the nature of the Doctor's dreams without burning, but his longest standing companion actually finds them quite limiting. She stole him to see the whole of space and time that she always saw in her head. A result of letting him pilot her caused her to step out of her grand conception of the whole of reality and see into his heart.

One night his heart was sadder than it had been in a long time. Over and over he was seeing a grave and one of those sad stone people he was so frightened of. With a celestial sigh, she reanimated her matrix into a virtual form of what he remembered of her as in a physical body, and projected herself into his mind.

She walked behind him alone in the graveyard, curled into a fetal ball. He was still such a child.

"Hello, my thief."

The Doctor startled and flailed his limbs a little (he did that a lot in his present incarnation). His eyes widened as he oriented his eyes onto hers.

With a cautious pause, he said, "You're not real. You can't be. This is a dream."

"Oh, Doctor, you really think I lack the ability to enter your mind whenever I like?" she asked with a coy smile.

He got onto his feet and stumbled towards her. His arms spread as he attempted to embrace her, but simply ended up falling past her virtual image.

"My, my, you are a bit of a mess. Surely, you normally would have remembered that my physical form can't be real."

The Doctor shook his head as he stared at the ground. "Yes, of course. You took the form of the way I remembered you." He turned and looked up at her. His eyes were wide an teary just as they were before when she left the last time they had talked.

"Even in this virtual form, I can't stay here for long," she said, pity filling her voice, "It's not natural for my consciousness to stay in one place like this."

The Doctor nodded but said nothing, raising his hand slowly to place on the virtual image of her cheek. Almost instinctually, she turned toward his hand and kissed it gently.

"I used to think you were so limited," she started, "being a child of time, but being so corporeal. You need to be able to touch and hold. It's not enough for you to just exist. I understood so much, but I never really understood that. I never understood it until-"

"Until you were given a body," he finished, just above a whisper.

"I still remember that feeling at times. Now a want is there that wasn't before, but there's never going to be a way for me to fulfill it again."

"Just the fact that we're talking again, though-" the Doctor said, a wide grin spreading on his face, "it's brilliant! I always wondered if you'd be able to visit me in some way, but you must have known how much I needed it now."

"When I feel emptier on the inside, I usually notice that's when you do as well," she cocked her head and asked, "The pretty one and the orange-y one. They are dead, aren't they?"

The Doctor looked away and pursed his lips. "Do you know- do you know if they were happy?"

"Happy. What a strange word. Is that what I feel when I travel with you?"

The Doctor couldn't help but smile a little bit, "Yes, I would hope so. Otherwise you wouldn't have kept me, eh?"

"Well then, yes, they were happy. Gardens and children and love tend to have that effect on humans."

The Doctor wiped his brow and laughed, beside himself with melancholy relief. When he opened his eyes again, he was standing before a house, in the rain, in 1940's New York.

He grinned and clapped his hands excitedly, "Oh, where have you taken me, old girl?"

The TARDIS said nothing, but simply nodded towards the front door. Out walked a family. A slender man in a dapper suit stepped out in an umbrella. Out came a woman in a dress with deep red hair, holding the hand of a young toddler. They were laughing as the boy splashed in the puddle, and the redhead scooped him up as the man pulled them both closer to him.

The Doctor simply watched as they all walked out to their car.

"The Ponds. Oh, always the Ponds. Living the life I never can. Just look at them."

When he turned, they were back in the TARDIS control room and her physical form was speaking to him again, "You won't be lonely for much longer, Doctor. Another friend is coming."

"Why do I lose everyone, old girl?"

"Because there are so many more you need to gain," she said smiling up at him. "Remember Doctor, I won't always be able to talk to you, but I will always be there. I will always take you where you need to go. We are both the last of our kind, and we need each other."

Then her image rapidly began to vanish away, and the Time Lord put his forehead to where hers was.

As she dissipated back into her natural matrix, she felt a strange feeling. She supposed the easiest way to describe it would be longing- a longing to tell her Doctor that he wasn't truly the last of his kind.

He wasn't supposed to know that yet, though.