Just a Dream

The young boy slammed the door behind him, a large sob catching in his throat. On a normal day, he would get a kind of childish satisfaction about the loud racket the door made, but he couldn't bear to pay attention to that now.

He dashed across the small barn, feeling hay needles prickle the bottoms of his feet. The shadows stretched thick in here, but just enough light reflected off of Gallifrey's moons to let him see his surroundings. His hands closed around the bars of a short ladder. The boy tried to climb up to the hayloft, but it was difficult when his body was wracking with sobs.

When he reached the top, he threw himself into the center of the cot he had set up here long ago, buried his gangly limbs in the blanket, and continued to weep. Images of his cousins laughing mercilessly littered his memory. As he remembered the terrible things they did to him, he began to feel tears burn his cheeks. Why did they have to be so cruel?

Theta's sobs became louder, but not to get attention. Almost no one here cared if he cried. Sometimes, when he cried like this, it was because he couldn't stop.

Then, he heard one of the strangest noises emerge from the still quiet. He had a hard time even considering how to describe it. It was a sort of groaning, wheezing that filled the entire room. Just when he imagined the clatter would shift in his direction and settle over him, it stopped. The barn was almost silent, save for a dull humming. His throat constricted when he heard something creak. Was... someone?... here? Unable to stop them from coming, he sobbed harder.

"Rupert?" a feminine voice he didn't recognize called. Pause. "Orson?"

The young boy didn't reply. He couldn't. He wanted to disappear into his dreams, away from this. He didn't want this stranger to know he was here, but he also couldn't stop crying.

Then, he heard the door creak open, and loud footsteps padding towards him. More people were here. It took effort, but he managed to suck himself up so nobody could hear him.

"Why does he have to sleep out here?" he could hear his elder cousin Glospin scoff. Inside, he froze. Was he here to bully him again? Rassilon, he hoped not. Why couldn't the obnoxious staazula just lay off? All he wanted was to be alone.

"He doesn't want the others to hear him crying," another voice spoke up. It was light, kind. Innocet's. Thank goodness. She was the only cousin in the entire House who treated him with dignity. She must have known where he was going, and followed.

"Why does he have to cry all the time?"

"You know why," she said to him pointedly.

"There'll be no crying in the army!"

"Oh, hush."

The boy shrank into his bed even further, if it were possible, when he heard them climb up the ladder to the loft.

"Don't pretend you're not awake," Glospin muttered. "We're not idiots."

You're the idiot, were the words young Theta knew he was silently directing towards him.

"Come and sleep in the House," Innocet urged. "You don't have to be alone! If you can hear me, you're very welcome in the House, with the other boys. I'll leave the door unlatched. Come in, any time."

He heard the two descend down the ladder. Silently, he let out a breath of relief. Theta thought they were gone, but then he heard them speak up again.

"He can't run away crying all the time, if he wants to join the army."

"He doesn't want to join the army, I'm telling you."

"Well, he's not going to the Academy, is he, that boy?" Cousin Glospin insisted. "He'll never make a Time Lord."

Glospin always thought he would fail. He thought he'd never survive initiation without running away in tears like he did tonight. He said only other option for him was the army. The other boys would tell horror stories about the people who went there, and said almost all of them were eventually used as cannon fodder on distant worlds, when the Time Lords sometimes waged small wars. And that was if you were lucky.

"Why does he always come to this place?" the male cousin asked with a pained sigh.

"I don't know. It's where he always hides when there's trouble."

Theta heard the door slam shut, and then everything was silent again. Except for the breath under his bed...

Suddenly, a muffled voice shouted from somewhere in the dark. A man's, this time. "Clara! Clara!"

"Hello? Who's there?" he asked quietly, although he wasn't entirely sure he wanted an answer. "Hello?"

When no one responded, he swung his feet over the side of the bed. Slowly, they dropped to the wooden floor of the hayloft. He was about to stand up and investigate when he felt a warm hand clasp his ankle. Instantly, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and his breathing became an uneasy rasp.

The recesses of his mind reluctantly brushed against a morbid nursery rhyme his cousins often used to frighten the others...

Zagreus sits inside your head,
Zagreus lives among the dead,
Zagreus sees you in your bed,
And eats you when you're sleeping.

Eyes wide, he couldn't bring himself to look down, to see what it was that held him by the foot. What if nursery rhymes weren't all fictional? What if there was something there, preparing to consume him whole, without leaving a trace? Blood pumped wildly through his veins. Theta saw what little of his life he'd lived flash before his eyes.

And then, it simply let go.

"It's okay," the same unknown voice from earlier whispered, speaking quickly. "This is just a dream. Lie back again, just lie back on the bed. Just lie down again. It will all be fine if you just lie down and go to sleep. Just do that for me. Just sleep."

He didn't want to believe the voice. He didn't want to believe that no harm could come to him, that everything would be okay, but something in her tone made him want to trust her. Slowly, he crept back into bed, and lay his head on his pillow, facing the window. The moment he realized he hadn't cried in minutes, he began sobbing again. This time they were quieter, and less frequent. He wasn't sure if he was crying out of hurt or shock, anymore.

A hand began to stroke the hair on his head.

"Listen- listen," she whispered. Theta gradually stopped crying, as he began to hear her words.

"This is just a dream," the woman said. "But very clever people can hear dreams. So please just listen. I know you're afraid, but being afraid is alright. Because didn't anyone ever tell you- fear is a super power. Fear can make you faster, and cleverer, and stronger. Fear can bring you home."

She paused for a moment, thoughtfully.

"One day you are going to come back to this barn, and on that day you are going to be very afraid indeed. But that's okay. Because if you are very wise and very strong, then fear doesn't have to make you cruel or cowardly. Fear can make you kind."

The voice went quiet for a moment, and Theta wondered briefly if she'd left him already. His fears were struck down when he heard her breathe next to him.

"It doesn't matter if there's nothing under the bed, or in the dark," the young woman told him. "So long as you know it's okay to be afraid of it. So listen. If you listen to nothing else, listen to this. You're always going to be afraid, even if you learn to hide it. Fear is like a... a companion. A constant companion, always there. But that's okay," she repeated.

"Because fear can bring us together. Fear can bring you home."

His small body stilled, and his breathing relaxed. The mysterious woman stroked his hair one last time, and then she seemed to stand up beside him.

"I'm going to leave you something," she told him. "Just so you always remember... Fear makes companions of us all."

It was only after she had left, that Theta glanced up, and saw the plastic toy figurine sitting on the window sill, illuminated by the light of the stars and the moons. It seemed to be a sort of soldier, but was wearing a green uniform different than the ones that Gallifrey's army wore. What stood out most to him, however, was the fact that the toy soldier held no weapon. Its arms were positioned in front like it should have one, but it was nowhere to be seen. So how was this soldier supposed to save people if he didn't have a weapon? It seemed unlikely.

Or, perhaps the soldier was afraid, like he was. Only, this man used that fear like a super power...

~8~

{Hundreds of years later}

The Time Lord saw the familiar barn in the distance, a single point in time and space that shone out to him like a beacon of hope. Already exhausted, he shifted his dangerous cargo to the other shoulder, and continued to trudge through the red dirt.

He used to come here a lot when he was a boy. It was the only place in the House of Lungbarrow he truly felt safe. That was years ago now, a memory that had long since been buried because of the cruelties of the war. The Time War had been raging for centuries, and he could feel its burden pressing against his shoulders. Or was that the Moment? He laughed bitterly. He wouldn't care to tell the difference anymore. Imagination or reality, it made no difference. He was here to end this War, once and for all. No more.

"I'm sorry it had to come to this, Cinder," he muttered to himself. "I suppose I've fallen to their level, now. But I don't think there's any other choice I can make."

He continued to plot through the desolation, dust kicking up around his boots. There was almost no trace of his childhood home, if one could call it a 'home'. His barn was the only structure left standing, and that was because he'd left a defense barrier around it years ago. While everything else around it was destroyed, this barn stood resiliant. It was the only thing within sight he recognized. There used to be thick silver-leaved forests spread across this side of Gallifrey, but they were long gone, dead, along with the beautiful red grass. The sky- which used to be a burnt orange- had changed, and now had a blue tint like Earth's. It was the chemicals that had leeched from the war zones. They'd polluted the atmosphere, and changed its consistency. The Daleks, without realizing it, had taken away something the Time Lord never thought they could. He would never look up and see that glorious orange sky ever again.

As he approached the structure, a voice echoed in his mind. He couldn't put a face or a name to it, but there it was. Like a distant dream...

"One day you are going to come back to this barn, and on that day you are going to be very afraid indeed. But that's okay."

He was afraid. Very. But he had to carry through, because the fate of the universe depended on it. He couldn't let the Time War continue, not like this, not like the bloodbath it had become. Not when his own people were beginning to fall as low as the Daleks.

No more.

~8~

{Hundreds more years later}

The more the Doctor thought about it, the more awed he became. Why didn't Clara want him to look in the flight log and see where they had landed? Conjecture: because she knew they were crossing his timeline in a way that should be impossible.

The moment she walked through those doors, her expression suggested she'd seen a ghost. And technically, she had. He could remember everything now, the night he was crying in the barn and heard a voice. That was her. She had been there, she had comforted him.

And ultimately, she planted the dream, for better or for worse. Was there really any monster hiding in the dark, or under the bed? He'd likely never know. But if he ever found himself alone, perhaps he should listen. Because maybe- just maybe- something lurking out of sight and out of mind was just as lonely as he was.

"Because if you are very wise and very strong, then fear doesn't have to make you cruel or cowardly. Fear can make you kind."

I had great fun with this one. It's a lot different from anything else I've written, and personally, I think it's my favorite I've written yet.

The details I used to fill in the blanks about the Doctor's childhood come from a bit of research. I'm sure most know about Lungbarrow, the House the Doctor was loomed into. Glospin and Innocet were two of the others loomed in that house. Glospin bullied the Doctor mercilessly as a child, but Innocet was one of the few who was actually kind to him. I believe these two were first mentioned in a Seventh Doctor novel. All of those may not be officially canon, but it's one of the few sources that says anything about the Doctor's childhood, so it's become my head canon.

Lastly, that "Cinder" that the War Doctor briefly mentions originates from a new novel featuring him, called Engines of War. It's freaking awesome, and I completely recommend it.

If you got through this monstrous author's note, congrats. I don't make those often... :P Thanks for reading, everyone. Reviews are highly appreciated!