Past Lives || Dottore

40

But how much was a dream?

Was everything he had experienced a dream?

His heart began to race. Could he even believe anything he had experienced in the dream?

His eyes flicked to the woman on his shoulder. Y/n. She was asleep; her face peaceful. She had been asleep for a while.

Dottore looked away from her, his heart beginning to slow down. Now he was wondering when he had fallen asleep.

Was it after she had rested her head on his shoulder? Before?

Was the soft kiss she gave him just a part of the dream?

She mumbled under her breath, a sleepy mess of words that made no sense to the doctor. Fortunately, her incoherent words helped him out of his downward spiral and back into the present.

He took ahold of her hand, using the comforting warmth of her hand as a way to ground himself. He sighed, closing his eyes once more. Everything was okay, nothing happened to her. She was okay. She was alive.

A knock sounded on the carriage door.

"Sir? We have arrived at the path."

Dottore said nothing in reply. The person at the door opened the door, peering inside. He spotted the doctors mistress sleeping on his shoulder, only giving the doctor a slight nod before closing the door.

This would be one of the only times the carriage would go down the path, as it is usually too dangerous to do so. The uneven path, the narrowness of the path was few of the reasons for this. However, the couch knew better than to wake the doctor's mistress for a cold walk down a path.

He would get transformed into a monster! A ruin beast, just like one of his old assistants, Winston. He didn't quite like Winston, but he knew that he didn't deserve such a fate.

Dottore squeezed Y/n's hand lightly, feeling a soft squeeze back. She was awake.

"Darling, is everything alright?" He grew concerned, shifting to face her once she had moved off of his shoulder. She blinked at him, still in the moments of waking up.

"Of course." She smiled at him. "The carriage stopped, and I thought we were home."

"No, not yet." He kissed the top of her hand lightly. "We will be soon though."

She made no sound, only watching him as he planted a kiss on her hand. "I actually woke up when you did."

He froze. Did she notice his behavior? "Oh?" He placed a smile on his face, masking the fear of her figuring out what panic he was going through when he woke up.

"Did you have a nightmare?"

Ah. She figured it out. There was no point in trying to hide it anymore. He looked away from her, staying silent and staring out the window, watching as the trees passed the carriage slowly. She took his hands into hers, squeezing them gently.

"It's okay, love." Y/n whispered. "I'm not going anywhere."

He let out another sigh. He knows this, yet his mind and body are screaming at him otherwise. He can't trust what she says, because it was the same thing the past had said. He wants to trust her; he wants to trust what she says.

But his body tells him otherwise. It tells him to leave her, to leave before the pain gets too much. To leave before she does.

"Can you tell me about your nightmare?"

His eyes snap back to her. She looked at him, her eyes filled with worry. And so, he did.

He told her about how she was hurt, dying in his arms. He told her about how he wasn't sure if her body was going to accept the transformation in immortality. He told her about how panicked he felt when he could feel the live drain from her body as her blood did.

Dottore left out the part where he said that he was a failure, because in reality, he did. He did feel like a failure. Everything that went wrong in the past was because of him. Everything that happened to her past selves was because of him.

She died because of him.

Y/n listened to him carefully. At the end of his memory, she let go of his hands and moved to hold his face. She smiled calmly at him, wiping away the tears that had formed on his eyes with a soft kiss. She muttered sweet nothings to him, allowing him to calm down in her embrace.

The carriage stopped, and a knock sounded at the door.

"Sir, we have arrived."

"Thank you." Y/n replied, giving Dottore one last kiss. He inhaled deeply, calming himself further before moving to open the door and climb out. He didn't look at the person who knocked on the door as he moved back to the couch seat, only looking at the woman in front of him.

She took his hand and climbed down from the carriage, moving a safe distance away from the carriage before it moved back down the path to where it originally came from.

"Let's get inside, okay?" She squeezed his hand, allowing him to snap back out of his daze. He looked at her.

"Okay."

The door opened by his child segment. The child looked at the lady beside Prime and stared. She couldn't tell if it was a good stare or not, but she simply smiled at him, ignoring the comments he had said to her back when she first arrived at this house. The two passed the child, who kept staring at the woman until she moved out of his sight.

Only then did he return to his senses and close the door. The snow was getting in, and Prime didn't like that.

The child looked to the area where the woman had disappeared and frowned. He didn't know if he liked her. He turned and moved away from the door, disappearing down a different hallway.

Y/n guided Dottore to their room -if she could even call their room, but she had woken up in this room too many times to count, so she might as well- and began changing her clothes to something more comfortable than a heavy ballgown.

Midway through taking off her bra, she was stopped by a hug from behind. She stopped what she was doing and allowed the bra to drop to the floor. Dottore had his face buried in the crook of her neck. She kissed the side of his head and stayed in the position until he decided to move.

However long that may be.