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"What's wrong with the Doctor? I've never seen him this ... quiet." Rose had voiced one day while the girls explored the Tardis, touring the Tardis had to be done in shifts with some time and space shenanigans thrown in every now and then. So, far they had discovered a rainforest, a garden, a movie theater that would put any earth one to shame, three observatories, and a handful of bedrooms that must have belonged to the Doctor's old friends. Ella sighed as her mind traveled back to the Doctor, although her mind never really strayed far from him.
"I don't know, he's not talking to me. I thought we made it past this brooding and tendency to suffer in silence." The amount of distress calls they've been answering have gone up exponentially and the implications were troubling to the brunette. She knew that after a profound and life altering loss than sometimes one finds themselves trying to save everyone they can. The Doctor must be so filled with guilt, but one would be after just fighting in a terrible interplanetary war for centuries on end and through countless alternate timelines.
"You two need marriage counseling," Rose muttered as she looked through an opening on her right and discovered an arcade full of vintage pinball machines and modern first-person shooting games, along with various racing games. "Hey! Let's get lost in here for a while!" Rose rushed into the spacious room and immediately went for a pinball machine while Ella wandered about and saw a zombie game.
"We don't need counseling," Ella replied to Rose's comment from earlier as she loaded up the screen and took out the gun attached to the game. The blonde rose an eyebrow at her as Ella immediately began shooting zombies with the determination that someone might have if they really were surrounded by the undead.
"Clearly," Rose mumbled sarcastically, then a wide grin broke on her face because she got the high score on the pinball game she was playing. No one else's score was recorded so it wasn't that hard to beat, she quickly typed in her initials, RMT. After a few more games, trying to beat the high score she just got, Rose was bored with that one and meandered over to a racing game. Not too far from where Ella was yelling and cursing in French at pixelated zombies as they surrounded her character. Rose didn't want to wander terribly far from her friend, she was still new to the infinite time machine she was currently calling her home.
"This reminds me of Holo 3," Ella stated as she continued shooting down the undead, a messy carpet of decaying bodies at her feet already.
"What's that?" Rose wondered as she had to take a sharp turn in the racing game she was playing.
"Zombie planet." Ella answered nonchalantly and finally gunned down the last corpse, she managed to beat the second score on the list, so she typed in her initials to take her spot, ERD. Technically she didn't have to use her initials, but it seems like everyone else on the high score list did the same and used only their initials. It would have bothered Ella to the end of the universe if she was the one that messed up this mildly pleasing pattern.
"Wait, what?" Rose was preoccupied with passing cars in her race that she barely caught what Ella said.
"Planet where zombies come from. They transmit a virus that kills people and brings them back. Although according to the Doctor, they're not called zombies." Ella contemplated whether she wanted to play the game again to see if she could beat the highest score. She quickly changed her mind when she realized that she could never reach that number, maybe if she spent days in here, she could but she didn't have the patience for that.
"Did you go to the zombie planet?" Rose looked at Ella as she crashed her car, the brunette was hesitantly approaching a racing game near the one that Rose was still perched at.
"No, the Doctor wouldn't let me out of the Tardis. We had to tow them back to Holo 3 after they escaped to earth in the 1800's, which is actually how we got the word zombie." Ella beamed at Rose as she relayed the information.
"These racing games might actually help you drive under pressure." Rose joked as she remembered the one time that she saw Ella drive and she almost crashed them.
"I can drive." Ella defended her nonexistent driving skills as she mounted the fake motorcycle that was attached to the game. "I just don't like it when trees pop up out of nowhere."
"That tree didn't 'pop up out of nowhere'. It's been there for years!" Rose laughed at her friends' expense and went off to find another game to play.
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Later that night Ella sat straight up in bed with sweat clinging to her forehead. "It was just a nightmare," she promised herself. With a huff she fumbled around in the dark until she found her bedside lamp, her bedroom now bathed in a soft yellow light. Getting up from her bed and blindly reached around for her glasses, she began clearing up the mess of clothes on the carpeted floor. When every clothing item was properly put away in their appropriate areas she started in on her desk, throwing away papers that no longer held any importance to her. Finally, she organized her closet again.
When she was satisfied with how clean everything was, she left her bedroom to find another victim to organize. She wandered until she stumbled upon a room that was filled to the brim with junk. A small smile graced her face, "thank you," she whispered to the Tardis as she got to work. Assuming the telepathic ship put this room in her path. She got a mechanical whirring in response.
As she cleaned, the Tardis quietly listened in on the brunette's thoughts with a troubled scrunch of her nonexistent eyebrows. The nightmare has been bothering the human for days now and it just kept growing in intensity. There was a woman who must be the mother because she looked like the one traveling with her thief but older. The older woman's jaw would unhinge as an inky black shadow leaked out from her mouth, then the shadow laugh a familiar demented laugh. That laugh echoes in the human's mind, playing over and over in her subconscious.
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Screams of pain and shouts of extermination played behind his eyelids, the stench of death and ashes burned in his nostrils, he awoke with a start. "What is it," an image of Ella was projected into his mind. "What's wrong with her," the Doctor was already up and out of his bed before the Tardis showed him an image of the room that Ella was currently in. When he found her, he wasn't surprised to see her cleaning. "El?"
The brunette swiveled from her spot where she was vigorously rearranging some encyclopedias to be in alphabetical order, "ready to talk yet? Or still ignoring me?" she turned again and put the book that was in her hands in its rightful spot. The Doctor didn't know how to answer that, he hadn't realized that he had gone that long without speaking. The last time she got into this state was when they were trying to get back to earth and it must have been their eighth wrong turn and she got frustrated and started cleaning the Tardis.
"Have I really been ignoring you?" He pulled the same thing that her father did.
"Twelve," was all she replied with as she noticed a coffee table was slightly off center and moved to correct it.
"Twelve?"
"Twelve planets and you barely said anything. I've had enough of this shit from my dad, I do not need it from you." She tried not to linger on the emotional break in her voice. "What's wrong with you ... is it the war? It's okay to not be over it, you fought for a long time and lost yourself on the way."
The Doctor's mind raced with a trillion different thoughts "Do you ..." he began hesitantly looking down at his maroon shirt and fiddling with his long sleeves. "Do you remember when I told you about the last day," he glanced up after dropping his sleeves and quickly found wall art behind Ella to focus on, it might be easier if he didn't have to stare into her eyes. Those eyes saw more than most people he knew, which was ironic when he thought about it since she didn't have the greatest eyesight.
"Of course." Ella moved closer to him out of concern, maybe I shouldn't have pushed him. I just wanted him to talk to me before he too couldn't hear me. She slowly stood on her toes and pulled him into her warm embrace, he accepted the contact and closed his eyes. If she wasn't looking at his face, then his carefully constructed mask could fade away for a few seconds.
"My ... nightmares are getting worse. I can still hear the screams and smell the burning ... it feels like something is coming. I don't know what or who or if I'm just being paranoid, but I have a terrible feeling."
Ella didn't want to mention how she had a similar dread creeping into her gut with every passing day, he was barely holding himself together and she didn't want to push him over the edge. "Well, until a thing happens can we please stop with the not talking thing . . . I miss your voice." When she realized how needy she sounded she panicked and threw in what she hoped was a joke to deflect, "saving the universe isn't as fun without your running commentary." Ella had remembered that she was still hugging the Doctor and quickly released him from her hold with a red tint in her cheeks.
"Come on, I'll put the kettle on." He held his hand out to her and he knew it was a shameless attempt at resuming the earlier contact.
"But I'm not done with this room!" She had raised her voice a little and it sounded much more alive and happier than it did earlier.
"Yes, you are. No more cleaning tonight, you probably already cleaned it twice." Before she could protest, the Doctor grabbed her hand and led her out of the room and into the significantly brighter corridor. When he touched her hand, he got the usual flashes of images he always gets when he touches people. These images flickered too fast for him to see anything, but he did focus on something that caused a sliver of concern to grow within him.
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