Secrets Never Known

The Doctor sat in his TARDIS, fingers tented together in front of his face. He'd been trying all afternoon, since he left the school, to figure out what he would want with the human teenager that was dreaming of him. In AnnaBelle's dream journal, in most of the entries in fact, whether she'd written them from her point of view or as if she was just the character in a story, it was mentioned that he was searching for her. She was lost and he was looking for her. But why? Why would he have any reason to be looking for her? He shouldn't have even known who she was. He always had been a free spirit, though. Doctor wondered what his plans were once he found AnnaBelle; for he knew that, one day, he would get her. He only hoped that it was for the good of the girl and not for his own gain.

--

"Shit," AnnaBelle cursed under her breath. She looked down at the cut that had appeared on the middle of her thigh. Her eyes trailed over the objects that surrounded her, trying to figure out which it could have been. The branch from the small tree, she supposed, was the one who'd done it. She wiped away the blood with one of her hands. She smiled, grasping the branch in the hand she'd just smeared with blood. "I forgive you," she whispered.

The branch snapped up high after she'd let it go, as if recoiling from her words. No matter how much she meant it, they never understood. It was as if they were afraid of her. She didn't understand, just as she didn't understand her dreams, but she wasn't put off by it, her abilities, either.

She continued walking through the wood that was a half-mile from her home. Anna knew exactly where she was going. She went there every day before going home from school. Her fingers tapped an oh-so familiar beat against the cover of her black notebook, which was clutched to the chest of her t-shirt as she stumbled over branches and leaves and rocks. Ten minutes of that and she arrived at her destination, a small pond she'd found two years previously. Careful not to slip into the murky water, she perched herself atop a very large rock.

Anna thought back to the early years of her childhood; back when the Madman really was just a man in her dreams. Before she became afraid of his capabilities and before she understood that he was looking for her. When she couldn't write, she would draw him. Her skills had grown immensely since then, but just like with the notebooks, she'd kept all of the drawings. Her mother never felt comfortable with asking about the dreams. She found them to be odd, and anything odd was nothing she wanted to be around. So AnnaBelle kept her dreams to herself. She'd write them down and draw a picture every once and awhile, and that was it. She had no friends to tell, and she preferred it that way.

She flipped through the pages of the newest notebook she'd started, just at the beginning of the month, finding the story from two night's previously. He had spoken, and she wanted to remember it exactly as it had been.

AnnaBelle heard it as soon as her consciousness had blinked out. Not the familiar hum of that odd room, not the four beat tapping, but a different sound; a bittersweet silence that loomed like a storm cloud over her head.

Breath baited, the suddenly fragile girl waited for the lightning to strike. Instead, a low rumble of thunder shook her senses and the tapping began. There he was. The Madman, back again, his fingers tapping that God forsaken beat in an absentminded manner as his legs carried him in a confident stride across her vision.

The thunder continued, almost louder now that she could see the man's mouth moving. AnnaBelle knew he wasn't speaking to her. He never knew she was there, so why would he acknowledge her to the point of conversation? No, the Madman was doing what every diseased man did. He was talking to himself. But even then, AnnaBelle got the odd sense that someone was listening to him and he knew they were.

"Past the three moons of Zeron - but I've been there. There's nothing but neuron particles and dying radiation fields. It's nowhere near habitable." His slim hands halted their obsessive pattern long enough to run down the length of his worn face. AnnaBelle counted five new wrinkles around his eyes. "Come on, girl. One more try." He leaned forward, hands resting silently on the cold metal console, his murky eyes trained on something AnnaBelle couldn't see.

The thunder continued without anymore sense. And she felt terrified.

A tear rolled down AnnaBelle's cheek as the scene came to a close in her mind. She could see it absolutely perfectly. The hopelessness he felt was normally covered by his determination, but every now and again it seeped through. It was one of the things that made Anna love him as much as she did. Sometimes, in the dead of night after she'd wake from one of these dreams that showed his vulnerability, she'd wish that she could go to him. He'd been looking for her over the course of her entire life. It wasn't fair that he got stuck with the bad end of the stick. Those were the times she forgot that he wasn't real.

The thing was, though, that it never felt like it was just her imagination. Sure she was a creative girl, but she wasn't that clever. She couldn't create a man like that. He had so much depth to him. He was as real as anyone she'd ever known. When she thought about it, though, she realized how crazy it was to even contemplate. He was just her mind's way of coping with everything in her life. He had to be. Because dreams were just dreams, nothing more and nothing less.

AnnaBelle wished there could be the slightest possibility that her Madman was a flesh-and-bones man. She wished it more than anything else in the world. He was always there for her. He may have scared her at some moments, but he was the only constant in her life. Every night of her existence he was there. She knew that the moment she drifted off to sleep he would be there; waiting for her, looking for her. She felt lost, because he knew she was. She wanted to be found, because he was searching. No one had ever been there to comfort her when she was sad or frightened. And even though he wasn't really there, he was in so many ways. She didn't know what she would do if the dreams ever stopped.

Anna loved the Madman. He was hers and she was his. He needed her, and she didn't know why, but she needed him too.