Reckless Abandon
A Tenth Doctor and Rose story

Title: Reckless Abandon
Basic Summary: A trap, dormant since the beginning of time; a parallel Earth, struggling to survive; a child, whose secret could destroy the multiverse. The Doctor will have to face more than just his past when his faith in everything around him is put to the test.
Long Summary: While Martha and the Doctor are on the hunt for something that's sapping the strength out of time, can a parallel Earth in a parallel universe survive the consequences from a war that should never have happened? And just how far is the Doctor willing to go to avoid the past he's been trying to escape? The answers reside in that of a child; a child whose secret could bring about the destruction of the multiverse. A tale of love, hate, betrayal, secrets and prophecies that conspire to give one hell of an apocalypse. Can the day be saved after all?
Author: Avoria
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Martha Jones, The TARDIS, Captain Jack Harkness, Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Jackie Tyler, Pete Tyler, Jake Simmonds and others to follow.
Original Characters: Phoebe Moore, Brahnz Nörvich, Jacob Grace, Melaine Tyler and guest appearances from other minor characters.
Disclaimer: The story is mine. The characters, names, accents, personalities, clothes, hair styles and God knows what else from the Beeb are not. I couldn't buy them with all the money in the world xD
Rating: T – for theme, language, general concept and – knowing me – a bit of romance thrown in as well. If it changes, either way, there will be sufficient warnings.
Spoilers: Seasons 1 & 2 of Who (possibly 3 & 4, if you already know what's happened); at least Season 1 of Torchwood and probably bits of Season Two.
Setting: Post Doomsday, about eight months after Ten has picked Martha up. This is AU s3 of Who and, consequently, most of Torchwood.
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, AU, Drama, Fantasy, Humour, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Supernatural, Suspense.
Author's Note: This story has been written, slowly, since the summer of '06 and as yet is still a WIP. It's the biggest thing I've done. I'm posting it here first, without beta, just to start the ball rolling and hopefully convince me to finish it. Once it's finished, a full, edited version will appear on livejournal, which I will link to from here.
Dedication: For Rach, who always wanted a Martha she could like.

Prologue – Things You Don't See

Galaxia II, Year of the Hawthork. A sofa, an undefined time in the morning.

It unnerved the Doctor when he had a dream he couldn't tame. He had slept before, he had dreamt before; it was natural for his mind to let out its backlog by showing him explosive colours and emotions in his head from time to time. It was usually why he preferred not to sleep. However, more and more these days, the need for sleep outweighed his disdain for doing so. Just occasionally, every now and then, he would feel more tired and more worn than normal. Perhaps he was getting old, he mused with a wry smile.

He lay on his back, on a sofa, staring up at the chipped paintwork on the ceiling. Arms folded behind his head, he was quite happy to lie here and mull things over. Tiredness occasionally prodded at the corner of his mind, asking the on-going question as to whether he was weak enough to give up yet. But, like always, he shook it away as he would a persistent animal, and would simply concentrate on the patterns above his head. Constellations moved for him, creating pictures and stories in front of his eyes that no dream could ever beat.

The Doctor frowned, his fringe tickling his forehead as he did so. He wrinkled his nose then sniffed, all the while trying to make sense of the thoughts that had been chasing one another around his head for the past few hours. He was used to dreaming colours. He was not used to being surrounded by nothing but a voice.

…Find me… Please… Don't you remember?… You have to find me… There isn't much time…

The frown thickened.

"Who?" he asked aloud, and it surprised him how tired his voice sounded. "It's all very well asking me to find you – but I don't know who, what, when." He sighed belligerently and shifted his spine into a more comfortable position. "You realise I can't sleep because of you, don't you?"

He was answered by the little voice in the back of his mind that had so many times previously kept him calm in situations where most would be a raving mess. It told him that before he needed to sleep, he hadn't wanted to sleep; and since the recurring dreams of nothing, his curiosity to continue dreaming was exactly what was stopping him from doing so. He knew that something out there, somewhere, was calling to him and asking for help. It was simply proof of his luck that it had picked the last Time Lord to prey on, wasn't it? Just when he was beginning to enjoy the freedom of travelling again, something he couldn't explain was trying to attach itself to him and weigh him down.

"I won't let you," the Doctor argued into the empty room, with much the same tone in his voice as a petulant child. "I'll help if I can, but don't you for one second think that I'm going to designate all my time to trying to find you. My time is for Martha and no one else. Well, almost no one else. Wouldn't mind another crack at Shakespeare, I suppose."

A faint smile tickled the corner of the Doctor's mouth as memories flashed back into his mind; but they soon faded. He knew that he was simply speaking to himself, and that the – whatever it was – that was trying to communicate with him could not be contacted by words alone. It had resorted to the plane of dreams, no less, which in any book was always a last attempt at connection, and it meant that any contact back – if he had the wit to figure out how to reverse the signal in the first place – would probably involve some sort of weird ritual. With dancing. There was always some sort of dancing, he mused.

…Doctor… There's no one else… You have to find me…

The Doctor groaned and rolled over onto his side, the gloomy shadows of the sitting room suddenly more interesting than the ceiling above.

"No, there's never anyone else," he muttered, the cushion tickling his lips. "Is there? It's always 'the Doctor'. The one and only. Last man standing." With a further groan, he found himself covering his face with his hands as he exhaled loudly into his palms. "They're all mad. Or maybe I am."

The same voice, which was his own with a stranger's words, had been around his head so many times this night that the Doctor could not even recall if he had slept or not. Any resting he had done would have been brief as he drifted in and out of consciousness. What he wouldn't do for a –

Footsteps.

He could hear footsteps coming up the hallway. For some inexplicable reason, the Doctor felt that being caught awake right at this time was a very dangerous occupation. He quickly rolled over onto his back again, reached for the book that had dropped to the floor during the night (he left the sonic screwdriver where it had fallen – nothing wrong with a bit of inconspicuous mess, after all) and pretended he was asleep. He had no need to worry however, as when the door to the hotel room opened, he found that he could feel Martha's presence hovering in the frame. He had allowed her this time to go off and do some exploring for herself, given her a chance to be the 'pro' for a change. Too late he remembered that he'd agreed to stay back in the hotel room to examine the architecture of the building and not, in fact, to go to sleep. He must have become sidetracked. Yes, that was it. Whatever would she think of him?

"Poor thing. Must be exhausted."

Martha looked into the sitting room with tender eyes. Her search had done nothing to aid her earlier suspicions and she had come to find the Doctor to ask if he fancied staying put for another couple of hours. She knew he was restless (or so she'd thought), but she just couldn't put her finger on what was odd about this place. What she expected to sneak up on when she returned to the hotel room was a rather bashful looking alien who was poking about places that he wasn't allowed. It had happened before, after all, only she had suspected that he'd secretly wanted to be caught. However, what she saw had thrown her into a startled state and she was now leaning against the door frame in shock, her arms folded across her torso and her eyes scouring the scene.

His lean frame was stretched out on the sofa, coat all in a twist around him and one arm draped over the side. On the floor, just short of his fingers, lay the sonic screwdriver. An open book, its pages slightly creased, lay on his chest and his glasses had sunk a little down his nose. His mouth was open very slightly, letting soft breaths escape. He was fast asleep.

She had never seen him sleep before. She knew that he did – even with his 'superior Time Lord physiology', as he liked to remind her almost daily. But there was a difference between knowing that it happened and actually seeing it in front of her. The first thing she noticed was that his breathing was extremely languid and slow, as if it were more of a habit than a necessity. She put it down to his binary vascular system and smiled to herself. He was different from her in all these quaint little ways and yet, no matter how different they really were, it didn't seem to matter. They were still the best of friends.

The Doctor, as it turned out, was the sort of sleeper Martha felt she could watch for hours. There was just something about him that drew her interest and on more than one occasion she found her eyes carefully studying the contours of his face and body. He finally broke her out of her reverie when he gave a half-moan in his sleep and rolled over. The book dropped to the floor with a thud, the pages fluttering closed. She walked over to him, with the intention of waking him, but he was already sitting up and blinking by the time she was there. Martha bent down and reached for the book.

"Inter-Dimensional Time and Space Travel and its Effect on Sonic Devices," she read from the cover, frowning slightly.

The Doctor yawned and stretched. He was always good at playing pretend. "Bit of light reading," he elaborated, arching his arms backwards in a very feline-esque way.

"Light reading?" Martha snorted, turning the book over in her hands to read the information from the back. "Next you'll be telling me you read dictionaries for fun."

"I'll have you know that a lot can be learned from a good dictionary." The Doctor pointed a finger at her and admonished, "Just you remember that. Did you find anything out?"

Martha shook her head and sat beside the Doctor on the sofa. "Not a thing. I guess I was wrong about this place."

"No, I know what you mean," the Doctor agreed. He took back the book Martha handed him and concealed it inside his coat. "There was something about this place that just didn't agree – but I think it was the ambience. The animals here are just plain weird; have you seen them?"

Again, Martha shook her head.

"No," she replied with a sigh in her voice, "I only really talked to the porter, and he wasn't up for spilling information. At first I thought he was trying to hide something, but now I'm beginning to wonder if he's not just stupid."

The Doctor snorted, but said no more. His mind, quite by its own accord (for he would never have let it do so given the choice), drifted back to his dreams of earlier that night. Specifically, to an idea that had been flitting in and out of his mind for weeks now, ever since the voices had started: it was an idea he wasn't sure if he liked, or even wanted. It was an idea, a sort of dreaded hope, that took the form of a memory he had long tried to forget. It was a memory that hurt to think about, so – taking back control of his mind – he stopped.

A strange sound of mechanical birds began to wail through the window and Martha flinched. They had not been on this planet for very long, but she already didn't like it. Perhaps the sooner they got back onto the TARDIS, the better. At least then they might have a shot at being normal, though she wasn't even sure what normal was any more – the word somewhat lost its meaning when travelling with the Doctor.

Normal certainly wasn't wandering into one's bathroom, dreary with sleep, to find a Time Lord poking about at your feminine toiletries like they were something that should belong in a museum. Although, credit where it was due, he had only done that to her once. That she knew of.

She wasn't quite sure how long they were quiet for, but eventually she stood and stared at the clock on the mantelpiece. It made no sense to her and, suddenly, she wanted something familiar.

"Tea?" she asked, turning to look at the Doctor. "Back in the TARDIS? I could quite go for a cuppa now; not sure there's much more here we can look for."

The Doctor grinned the most beautiful smile she had seen in a while. After picking up his sonic screwdriver they began to make their way to the door.

"Do you know, Martha," he said, placing a hand in the small of her back to lead her out of the room and back home, "I think that's the best idea you've had all day."