The Fate of Persephone (10/OC) (DISCONTINUED)

Chapter Twenty One: Welcome Home

    

          Do you know that feeling when you just fall asleep or just wake up and half of your mind is still in a dream state but the other half is in the real world? It's disorienting because you can't tell what are hallucinations of your own mind and what is actually happening. This was what it was like for Persephone when she woke up. She didn't know how she got to her room or when she fell asleep, or why there was a little orange tabby cat in a nun's wimple trying to take her pulse, but didn't question it. After all, no one questions what they see in dreams until they wake up.

         The next moment, she was sprawled out on the ground beneath the loft of her bed, a dull ache in her right hip and shoulder. Had she fallen out of bed? Must have. The cat was gone, but she had already forgotten about it. Out of sight, out of mind. She hoisted herself unsteadily to her feet and looked around.

             The world was incredibly blurry. The walls, the ceiling, the furniture, everything seemed to be swimming in and out of focus like a very strange kaleidoscope. No thoughts were coherent and those that were were instantly forgotten. There was no sense of weight, or fear, or consciousness.

             Like she was trekking through soft clay, Percy struggled toward what her mind thought must be the door. After all, it was tall and more or less rectangular in shape, but—

Oh. It was a person.

             There was no alarm in this realization, as she had no conscious thought or will. Looking up through strained eyes, she could just make out the form of a man in dark clothes with dark hair. He was tall, she thought somewhere in the back of her mind, but not as tall as the Doctor. She couldn't seem to comprehend his face through the haziness of her mind, but she could just make out the flash of white teeth in a big grin. He looked almost...familiar. Then he turned and walked out of her range of vision. When she turned to see him once again, he was gone.

             After a few seconds of slowly blinking, Percy finally found the actual door and blindly groped for the handle. After a minute of trying to push the door open when she was supposed to pull it, the Tardis took pity on her and switched the frame around. Unfortunately, in her disoriented state and because she had been leaning all of her weight on the door, the poor girl tumbled out into the hall with a crash. Somewhere in her muted senses, she thought she could hear a strange humming noise that sounded oddly sympathetic, but thought nothing of it.

           After a few moments of struggling to get her feet under her, the young Time Lady began to make her way down the hall. Where she was going, none could say, but there wasn't exactly logic in dream land.

~*~*~*~*~*~

In the kitchen, Jackie and the Doctor were frozen.

"Was she supposed to come back today," the Doctor hissed urgently.

"Yeah, isn't that why you came," Jackie whispered back.

"No! The Tardis set the coordinates. She must have accidentally chosen today!"

"Well what's so wrong with that? I though you'd be thrilled to see Rose!"

            "She's not the issue! It's Percy! I haven't had the chance to sort things out with her. We've still got to go back to New Earth for the results. Plus, I thought I'd have more time to figure out a way to introduce them."

              Jackie understood what he meant. While Rose was usually a total sweetheart, she could also be a monster when jealous and she figured the girl would not appreciate another woman in the Tardis. She'd see the girl as competition, which (bless her heart) was not much of a competition at all, since Persephone and the Doctor were basically soul mates.