Yep! This is the start of the next part to my story epic, Help!
Help!
Part 2
Chapter One
Everything was chaos.
Martha was off in some other part of the Royal Hope Hospital, seeing to unimportant things as far as he knew, Tish was busy crying her heart out in his arms and Donna was trying, unsuccessfully, to get his attention.
He did not want to go into the room they were in front of. He didn't know if it was a reaction to the botched suicide attempt of Leo, or if it was because if he did he'd have to see Francine and face her grief. He'd done that before and things hadn't gone too well.
He had no idea apart from what Tish had told him what had taken place, and he was both itching to know and dreading it.
Would they blame him? Would they look to him to try and understand why someone would try to kill themself? God, he hoped not. He was feeling a lot better, or at least he had been a few short minutes ago...now he was feeling cold and shaky.
He did not need either a lecture or a bunch of questions about this type of thing fired at him. He didn't want this to be happening at all.
Too bad that Tish had just made it part of his personal timeline. If it wasn't he could have accidentally arrived in Leo's room and stopped him in the first place. He couldn't do that now, as it was already a fixed point for him.
Why did the bad things always happen to or around him? Couldn't he ever be happy for over a few hours at a time.
Tish lifted her head and stared at the door to the room which held her mother and brother. She sniffed and rubbed at her eyes.
"Sorry. This is really bad," she said and he nodded.
"Yeah. Sorry to hear what happened."
She nodded and leant into him, and he let her, because at least it was keeping him upright too. His vision was going blurry, but there weren't any tears in his eyes, and a high pitched buzzing sound was in his ears.
He turned a bit too fast when Donna tapped his shoulder and the world spun around him.
She was telling him something, but the buzzing was so loud, he couldn't catch any of the words she said. He managed to utter a small "Wha..." before his sight abandoned him entirely.
His last memory of that time was falling. He didn't even know if he managed to hit the ground or if Donna had kept him upright. He may have even dragged poor Tish, who really didn't deserve that, to the ground.
Donna had gotten so fed up of waiting for the Doctor to tell her what happened, she couldn't help but go up to him and tap his shoulder. He turned to face her, his skin a weird shade between white and grey, and swayed slightly.
"Oh god, he's going to pass out," the woman who was holding the Doctor stated, changing her grip to keep him upright.
Donna couldn't help it. She looked into his rather vacant eyes and asked him if he was alright. He gave her a short "Wha..." as an answer, not even getting the whole word out, and then she watched his eyes roll up in his head and he slumped towards her.
The two women holding him up glanced at each other, gave awkward smiles, before they begun shuffling him towards the nearest seat. Leaving him in one, they soon had grabbed the seats on either side of him, Donna making sure his head was leaning against her shoulder, so it wasn't straight back against the wall, or he slumped forwards.
"Hi," she said in introduction. "I'm Donna. Currently travelling with this skinny lump."
The woman smiled back, held out her hand and they shook in greeting. "Tish Jones. Well, it's Letitia really, but everyone calls me Tish. I'm Martha's sister. She's talked of you."
Oh! So, this was Tish. "Yeah, Martha talks quite a bit about you and your mum who I met the other day and your brother, Leo. Never thought I'd actually meet any of you though."
Tish got wide eyes at the mention of her brother, took in that they were in a hospital and put as much of this as she could. "What happened to Leo?"
Donna wasn't expecting the reply she got, but it proved a lot about the Doctor's sudden odd behaviour and waking her up to get here.
"He tried to hang himself...I don't understand why. Why would he do this to us?"
She shook her head. "I dunno. I'm sorry. Maybe he'll tell you himself one day." Donna knew she wouldn't be much help in this situation. She'd led a pretty crap life too, spending most of it being let down and told she'd never amount to anything, or be good at pretty much anything, but she was more a person to prove people wrong then someone who gave in to the pressure and took their own life.
She still didn't understand how the Doctor could have tried, even given what she knew of his world and people all being dead. He was just so...full of life.
And speaking of the Doctor...he began to stir against her, groaning loudly as he gained consciousness. He felt her shoulder for a few seconds, as unobtrusively as he could, before snorting loudly.
"Donna, why am I slobbering all over your clothes?"
She sharply looked down, to see he was right, he was slobbering all over her clothes.
"Oi! See, this is what I get for being nice to you, Spaceman, you ruin my stuff! You passed out. If it weren't for me, you'd be an undignified lump on the ground being walked all over, and this is the thanks I get. You leave saliva all over my clothes."
He blinked up at her, rubbed at his mouth with a sleeve and grimaced. "Sorry. Don't know what happened. Turned around too fast I guess, it made me go all woozy."
Sighing loudly, trying to sound as put out as possible even though they both knew she wasn't truly angry, she patted his shoulder, before smiling down at him. "No harm done. You didn't hit the ground or anything. Us two girls got you to a seat." She pointed at Tish, and he went pale again as he remembered where and why they were there.
"Oh god, have you found anything else out?"
"No," Tish replied to him, and Donna sighed loudly.
"You could have said something instead of going off on your own and not giving me a clue as to where we were, Doctor..."
He buried his head in her shoulder and shuffled closer, and she wondered if it was out of a need for comfort or a need for warmth. He was a bit colder than normal. He mumbled a short sorry into her neck before sighing, and the heat of the move made her sigh too.
"So, we wait then? Is there anyone else in there?" the Doctor asked, moving himself so he was seating up properly in his own chair.
"Mum, Leo and Shonara. Oh, and Jeremy was called in about 5 minutes after I got here. He's in there too. Not too happy either."
Donna watched the Doctor's face at that, knowing the last thing he wanted was to see Jeremy right then. He'd been avoiding making the call to him for the past day as far as she had observed. Yet again, time in the TARDIS tended to get wobbly.
She hoped not too wobbly in this case, because though he may hate it, it's done him a world of good to talk about things. Except, of course, when he went like this. Well, in his defence, this time he had an excuse.
A good one.
She remembered what it felt like after the Doctor decided off the top of his head to regenerate by drowning himself. Thankfully, Jack had stopped him then. She had no idea what she'd do except try to keep him out of trouble if he tried with only her as company.
A sudden flash of memory of him drowning in the flood after the Racnoss from the alternate world she had created in Shan Shen flashed through her mind. She reached out and grabbed his hand. Hopefully someone would always be around to stop him from giving up on life fully.
He squeezed her hand slightly, before going as still as he went. A still Doctor was not a right Doctor. "You okay?"
He sighed loudly and glared at her. "Someone I know just tried to kill themself. Yeah, I'm fine. It makes me feel happy..."
Her jaw dropped open. She knew he used sarcasm and dark humour sometimes when he was in a bad mood, but this was so completely not the right time for it. Tish must have been following her thoughts, because the next second a loud smack echoed along the busy corridor of the hospital and the Doctor was looking like he'd just had the worst news of his life told to him all over again.
"You deserved that," she said quietly, when the Doctor turned to her for what she could only presume was a defence. His face fell further than it already was, but he nodded.
"Yeah, maybe. Sorry. I don't take bad news well lately. I didn't mean that, Tish. I'm just...I'm trying to find a way to reason through this, and I'm coming up with blanks. I've never really been in this type of situation before. Well, not from..."
The rest of the sentence was obvious to her, but Tish looked a bit confused. Sighing, Donna took his hand and squeezed it again. "Yeah. Well, just so you know, this whole thing isn't making me too happy and I don't even know this Leo."
He looked at her and, a bit to her surprise, leaned back against her again and sighed into her neck. "Yeah. I never really...thought about it. You know, from someone knowing someone like this. I'm so sorry."
She didn't think there was one single conversation she had ever had in which every single thing each one of them said was 'yeah'. The Doctor was usually...wordier than this.
All conversation for quite a while stopped as they settled down into their separate and private worries. It wasn't until she heard the Doctor snuffling at her side that she realised he had fallen asleep and gotten her hair caught under his nose. She grinned at the sight and moved her hair out of his face, but hoped it didn't wake him. He was sleeping better but still was pretty much exhausted from stress and fear.
At least, she hoped that was it. He tended to sleep more the more depressed he is.
He only slept for an hour, before waking up on his own. By that time, Donna had been bored almost to sleep herself. Tish hadn't been too interested in talking and she knew no one else there.
"Anything happen?" he asked when he was sitting straight in his own seat again, grimacing at the crick in his neck.
"No," she and Tish said at the same time.
The Doctor grunted at that, got up and stretched. It was then that Martha showed up, looking tired and worried. Tish immediately jumped to her feet and went over to hug her sister. The Doctor sat heavily back down in his seat and rubbed at his neck. Donna smiled at him, hoping that he didn't take it in any way other than a calming gesture.
He smiled slightly back at her, which was a good sign. Martha nodded at them both, before taking the seat Tish had been on. Once again, silence fell among them.
Having been kept away from the room Leo had been put in since she had found out he had been brought there in the first place, Martha was relieved when her shift had ended and she was free to visit.
She had been working in A & E for the past few hours, sick with worry at what she would find out about Leo. For all she knew, he had suffered brain damage from lack of oxygen. All she knew was that he had tried to hang himself, but that he was alive.
She had heard that her mum and sister were with him, and that his psychiatrist had been called in. She had managed to get hold of Tish between patients and gotten her to call the Doctor, but she hadn't been sure he'd show up until she got off and found him and Donna waiting with Tish.
Silence had been like a deep dark cloud around them for too long. Sighing loudly, Martha shook her head and got up. "Well, if no one else is going to do anything, I'm going to see how Leo is doing."
Tish grabbed hold of her arm and shook her head. "Martha, don't. Mum's screaming at anyone who enters. You haven't seen her like this before. She's scary."
"Trust me, she's not joking..." the Doctor replied, frowning slightly. "I am getting kind of bored with all the waiting though. Think I'd prefer the waiting then to go in there when your mother is in the mood she's in..."
Rolling her eyes, she nodded. "Well, your advice is noted. But I've been kept away from here long enough and I want to see my brother."
Ignoring Tish's pleas to leave the room alone, Martha walked up to the door, gave it a short knock, before poking her head inside. Her mum, regardless of what Tish said, wasn't screaming her lungs at anyone. She was sitting at Leo's side, holding her brother's hand and silently crying.
Jeremy was off to one side of the room, sitting in a chair. Both were silent.
"Hey. Just wondering how Leo is. We're getting pretty worried out here waiting."
Her mother looked up and frowned at her, before turning all her attention back on the still form on the bed. Leo was sleeping as far as she could tell. She knew he wasn't dead and he wasn't attached to anything, so it was probably a good thing she'd walked in when she had. Shonara was sitting in another chair, asleep, half draped across the bed.
Jeremy walked over to her and led her out the door again, coming out while he did and taking in the small crowd around the door. "Hmm, you haven't called."
For one second, Martha thought he was talking to her, but noticed the look of sheepish guilt on the Doctor's face. Martha brought his attention back to her. "Jeremy. How is he?"
"Sleeping at the moment. He's not very talkative when he's awake though. We can't know until he begins to talk if he suffered any lasting damage, and until then, we wait."
She nodded in response. While the Leo she knew from before the Year That Never Was differed slightly to the one after that time, it wasn't too bad a change. He smiled less often, but that had been it. There had been nothing to prepare them for him doing something like this.
He had still been him though. Her mum had changed quite a lot, as had she herself. Tish was a bit quieter, but still Tish. And her dad was the same guy as ever, if a lot more protective than he was before her parents originally split up.
"He's going to be on suicide watch tonight. He may be in here a few more days, depending on how...cooperative he is. He hadn't been up there for very long, but it was long enough to lose consciousness and stop breathing. If he's lucky, there won't be any damage done. Physically."
Leo was the only one out of the family who only went to the family sessions, and not singular ones too. Looks like that was about to change. Martha sighed. "Well, it was good while it lasted..."
"What was?" Tish asked, looking at her from where she was, now poking her head in the room to see how Leo was doing herself.
"Having one family member not needing psychological help."
Tish stared at her and frowned. "You're as bad as him!" her sister stated, pointing to the Doctor.
"Oi! Don't drag me into this any more than I already have been," he replied scowling at Tish with a look she rarely saw.
"You can suffer just as much as the rest of us! What do you know of this anyway?"
The hall suddenly went quiet and it was only then that Martha realised that it had been almost vacated of people since the last time she fully looked. She was either losing time, or too busy worrying to see straight. Either way did not please her at all.
Donna lunged for the Doctor, but he was already on his feet, towering over Tish and looking at her with one expression she knew pretty well. It was the look he got when he was in a mood to stop some evil in a bad way.
"A damn lot more than you do! What do you know of it?"
Martha closed her eyes and shook her head. Tish didn't know. She had seen him try to get himself killed so many times she had lost count. The latest being a few weeks earlier when he tried to drown himself. In that case it would have been straight suicide. The other times he could have shaken it off as a noble sacrifice of himself for others to live. Either way, he was trying to get himself killed.
"I know this is your fault! If it wasn't for you, he'd still be happy and wouldn't be here."
Martha's eyes sprang open at that, and she turned to stare in wide eyed shock at her sister. She remembered blaming the Doctor when her family was being captured by the Master, how it had been his fault that it had happened. It hadn't been really, but at that moment she had told him much the same thing. But this...this was totally a different situation. Someone he had known had just tried to kill themself, something that would probably hurt the Doctor more than Tish realised.
The Doctor had gone completely still, except for a shaking that started and she didn't know whether he was going to hit Tish, or turn in the opposite direction and walk away.
In the end he did neither. Jeremy stepped in between the Doctor and Tish and took the Doctor back to the seat he had been in earlier. He turned to look at her. "Martha, could you get a blanket. He needs a bit of warmth right now."
Nodding, she went to the nearest supply closet, got one of the blankets and went back to where the others were waiting. She was just in time to see Donna smack Tish so hard Martha could hear it from where she was.
Right then, she was glad that Donna had done it, because she was tempted to herself.
"Here," she said, placing it around the Doctor herself. He looked bleakly at the floor, barely noticing her at all. "Doctor? You in there? Come on, Tish was just being silly. I don't blame you and he's my brother too."
"My fault..." he whispered to her, and Martha could feel tears in her eyes.
"No. It's not. Come on, listen to your doctor. It is not your fault. Leo did it. No one made him. And soon enough we'll know why."
"Easier," the Doctor replied, still looking at the floor instead of her. "It's just...easier."
Martha didn't ask, because she thought she understood what he was on about. Life for her had gotten more than a bit hard for her while she had been walking the Earth in the Year That Wasn't. She had spent every day not knowing whether or not she'd be found, killed, would starve. There had been so much uncertainty, there had been so much death, there had been so much wrong happening around her, it had completely changed her view not only of Time Lords and the Doctor himself, but of humans and what they were truly capable of.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Tish replied, and Martha sighed loudly, shaking her head. It wouldn't end. She'd seen this type of arguing between Tish and Leo all the time.
"Tish, drop it. It's not the Doctor's fault."
Shaking her head, Tish glared at her. "If he hadn't decided on some stupid whim to take you with him, then Leo wouldn't have done this!"
The Doctor shook his head and grinned in a slightly crazy way. "What makes you think that?"
Martha turned to look at him. "Doctor, please, just drop it?"
He turned to look at her and the look in his eyes was deep and it disturbed her more than she ever thought possible. "Did you ever think about it? During that year? All those people dying, dropping like flies all around you? Being hunted every single second of every day, knowing that if someone actually saw you and they were the wrong people, you would be just as dead as most of the rest of the world."
Her jaw dropped. How could he be asking that to her? "I thought about death all the time. Not the actual thought of just let me die and get it over with, but more let me live just this next minute so I can keep on going. But yeah, I thought of death a lot. I had no choice."
"How many times did you think that it was too hard? That dying would be easier. Just get it over and done with and end it. End the pain, end the misery, end the loneliness. To stop the endless motion of hiding to save your life, to stop being afraid of what was around every single corner. To stop being a soldier. To stop trying to be the hero. To just leave me and your own family and just die, because you just couldn't do it any longer."
Tears formed in her eyes, but she stubbornly refused to let the Doctor make her cry again. "I never gave up. Not once. And yeah, it was hard, and it was scary and it was lonely and I never knew what was around the corner, but I knew I had to do it, that it was the only way to not only save my family and you, but to save the world. And I could never give up on that!"
He stood up so fast it startled her back a few steps. "Oh, that's nice to know. All I'm good for is giving up? Well, fine! You're so much better at this than I am, go ahead and do it. I'm leaving. See how much you like it when it is all you do, when you can't escape it. Have fun! I'm sure you'll enjoy it."
This time she did begin crying. She knew the Doctor was upset, but did he have to take it out on her? Without thinking, she smacked him hard across the face. It was then that Donna grabbed her and stopped any more harm being done.
She wiped furiously at her eyes, just in time to see Jeremy put a hand on the Doctor's shoulder and steer him towards an empty room not too far away. Martha hoped in that moment, that Jeremy gave him Hell.
"You alright?" Donna asked her.
She didn't know what to say to that, so shook her head. "Not really, no. He's contradicting himself though. He doesn't mean it, and I know that but...it doesn't stop that from hurting like hell."
Donna frowned and nodded, and Martha only saw understanding in her eyes. "He gets like that when he's hurt. He turns everything into anger, that one. He's done the same thing to me. He'll apologise for it later. He does to me at any rate. Probably because he knows I'd bloody hurt him more if he doesn't."
Nodding, Martha turned to where he sister had started off the fight, and found her gone. She sniffed and rubbed at her eyes again. "Where did Tish go?"
"Jeremy sent her in with your mum and brother. She was a bit upset too."
Sighing, Martha nodded, not feeling up to joining her family just then. Instead she sat down on one of the seats and stared at the door. "Everything's falling apart. What happened?"
Donna shook her head, sat down next to her and pulled her in for a hug. "Dunno. You'll find out soon enough though."
"Yeah. Soon enough..."
It couldn't come fast enough for her.