CHARLOTTE ::: DW¹

xlii. john and the doctor

Hearing that said, he sunk in the chair. "It was just a tumble, that's all."

"Have you checked for a concussion?"

Joan raises her eyebrows at Martha. "I have. And I daresay I know a lot more about it than you."

"Sorry. I'll just..." she looks to John, waiting for him to say something, but he was still wincing. "Tidy your things." Going to his desk, she began to clean the top.

Remembering Mary's comment on Martha in the morning, John says, "I've been telling Mary... um, Mary Thomas, Martha Jones. Martha, Mary." The two women smiled at each other. "I've been telling Mary about my dreams." From where she was tidying things, Martha glanced at them in interest.

"They are rather remarkable," says Charlotte, moving from her spot to the couch beside him. "Continue."

"I keep imagining that I'm someone else and that I'm hiding..."

Charlotte tilts her head. "Hiding? How so?"

"Um, almost every night." He laughs to himself. "This is going to sound silly..."

"Tell me," she urged, crossing her legs on the couch.

"I dream, quite often, that I have two hearts."

Pretending to be surprised, Charlotte's eyes widened. "Oh, well, that's just impossible."

Joan began putting her things back in her bag, and John turned to Charlotte. "I have written some of these dreams in the form of fiction," he tells her, "... not that it would be of any interest."

Charlotte pats his hand. "'Course I'm interested."

He grins before seeing Joan packing her things. "Leaving?"

"I am still working, Mr. Smith," she said, before smiling at Charlotte. "Have a good day, Mary."

She returned the smile. "You too, Joan."

Once Joan left, and it was the two of them left with Martha, still tidying up, he takes the leather-bound journal from his desk, giving it to her. Sitting beside Charlotte on the couch, he watches as she opened it to the first page. "'Journal of Impossible Things,'" she read aloud.

She flips through the pages like a magazine, looking at the pictures, some bits unable to read with his messy handwriting, and others she couldn't see from the blur the TARDIS gave off even when she was outside of the ship.

A Slitheen, a gas-masked child, a Cyberman, a Dalek. "You drew these from memory?" she questions him.

He nods. "It's become a hobby."

She passed a page she couldn't read. A drawing of two autons were in the corner, followed by the clockwork robots she had yet to meet. "This is..." Mary turned the page again, only to find her name beginning a section. Quickly, she tried to discern what he said, but the text after her name was blurred.

"Who's Charlotte?" she asked him.

As if thinking deeply, John's eyebrows furrowed. "Well, I'm not positive, but... Do you remember that book you were reading the day we met? The atlas?" She nods, finding it embarrassing how she got mad when he flipped to the page on the Dumbbell Nebula.

"Well," he started, "the night after I saw that nebula, I had this dream that I, the Doctor, was there with her."

Charlotte looked to the ground, nodding, she was looking back on the one time she was there, before going back to listening when he continued.

"I sometimes think how magical life would be if things like this were true," he commented, and, to her surprise, she wished for him to know the truth. It would be easy to tell him, however, she knew she couldn't just yet.