THIS STORY TAKES PLACE ABOUT SIX MONTHS AFTER "THE LAST OF THE TIME LORDS."
FAIR WARNING: IT'S GOING TO GET DISTURBING. BUT PLEASE REVEL AND ENJOY. OH, AND REVIEWS ARE OUR BREAD AND BUTTER!
ONE
She was a lovely woman, but now looked haggard. In fact, there was a time when she was considered a great beauty, a nubian goddess, beautiful and brilliant. But worry had clouded her features, added a few wrinkles and stolen the shine from her eyes. She had lost too much weight, and her once-strong mind had gone into a kind of underdrive. She spent most days in a fog, a daze, mechanically taking care of the needs of her family, unable to really help, unsure of what else to try.
She and the man she loved sat silently, expectantly, at the breakfast bar in the kitchen. He was reading the paper and eating a toaster pastry. She stared at the white tile beneath her mug full of tea, around which she wrapped her hands for warmth. She still did love him, but silence had become their primary language. It hurt too much to speak – all conversations seemed to lead back to the same place. She had stopped willing him to say anything comforting or clever – she now understood that he was in as much despair as she was. The Jones family was collapsing, and he was as powerless to stop it as she was.
That's why she'd finally made the call. It was her last hope.
It had taken her weeks to decide to try to find him. After everything they had been through together, what they had both endured at the hands of the Master, she was afraid that seeing him again would awaken memories that she dared not face. It had taken months to rebuild her life, fall in love again, stop having dreams about her servitude and his helplessness during the Year the Never Was. But necessity had won out.
Though he had proved a more difficult man to track down than she had thought. She thought she could just pick up the phone and reach him, but she should have known it would never be that easy. He was a busy man. Aliens to fight, people to save, he couldn't be expected to hang about waiting for the phone to ring. Phone calls, texts, voice messages left, bribes offered, people in positions of authority denying his very existence... she had waited six weeks to get word. Finally, yesterday, the phone had rung. It was him.
He was jovial at first. She had learned during her year in close quarters with him that he had a joie de vivre which seemed to mask an inner struggle. Himself versus eternity – it was quite a tough lot to face, for anyone. She actually sort of admired this quality in him. But once she had explained to him why she'd been trying to find him, his brightness faded. His voice became deadly serious, and he agreed without hesitation to come to the front lines and help.
And so here they waited, in the kitchen, with tea, wordless, like proper British.
And then the doorbell rang. Her heart palpitated just a bit as she and her not-quite-husband looked at each other. He was here.
She rose slowly from her stool and made her way to the front hallway. As she passed the mirror near the coatrack, she caught a glimpse of herself. She seemed to be looking at herself for the first time, and wondered who this old, hollow-eyed person was looking back at her. She went to the door, and a bony, brown hand reached for the knob and pulled.
There he was. A tall man in a long coat, handsome and familiar, unchanged since last they met. This was perfectly natural – it was part of who he was. But she found that she resented it. Heartache and strife had aged her considerably, while he remained as youthful as ever.
Nevertheless, she was so glad to see him, she wept. Without a word, they fell into a hug, and he kissed the top of her head as she cried. When she got control of herself, she pulled away and wiped her tears, a bit ashamed of her lack of decorum. She invited him inside and thanked him for coming.
By this time, the silent man from the kitchen had come to the foyer to greet the guest whom he hoped would be their saviour. The two shook hands solemnly, their eyes meeting fleetingly in recognition both of each other and the dilemma in which they now found themselves. The man of the house offered his guest some tea, and the guest declined. He wanted to sink his teeth in this problem as soon as possible.
"Where is she?" asked the newcomer, picking up the briefcase he'd brought in.
"She's upstairs in her bedroom," answered the lady, with a heavy swallow. "Same place she's been ever since... it happened."
"Take me to her."
The two of them padded up the stairs while the family's breadwinner escaped off the work. When they reached the bedroom at the end of the hall, she gave the tall man a meaningful look. He touched her shoulder reassuringly, and they both took a deep breath. She pushed open the door.
There, on the bed, sat the tiny figure, dressed only in an oversized white tee-shirt with some corporate logo on the front. She was trembling, all curled up with her knees at her chest, and her eyes open wide like saucers. She gasped and turned her head, bird-like, in the direction of the door. Her breathing grew heavy, as the light streaming in made her nervous. She recoiled from it, turning her body away, attempting to crawl back into herself, it seemed.
Francine Jones and Captain Jack Harkness stood in the doorway and stared.
"Dear God," he whispered to her. "I'm so glad you called me."
"She's been like this for almost six months," Francine told him, her voice catching a bit in her throat. "I had to do something. You were my last hope, Jack."
He stared for a few moments, marveling at how things had changed. Last time he'd seen Martha, she was just coming off from having walked around the world on a crusade to stop the Master, tough as nails, both inside and out. Now, she was here, cowering and shivering like a leaf. He felt a surge of rage toward whatever, or whomever, had done this to her.
"Where's Tom?" asked Jack.
"He left," Francine told him simply. "About a month after it happened. Went to stay with an aunt in Ireland for a bit. He couldn't handle... this," she said, gesturing bitterly toward her eldest daughter, reduced to a quivering mass in an upstairs bedroom.
"Bastard," Jack whispered.
"Well, I can't really blame him," Francine said. "He... he tried his best to take care of her, but in the end... he was so torn up."
"Yeah," he sighed.
A thought was nagging at him. It had been at the back of his brain since yesterday when he'd spoken to Francine on the phone. It occurred to him that he, Jack Harkness, was not exactly the first choice for the Jones family to call in a time of this type of crisis. But he had refrained from asking. But over the last twenty-four hours, that thought at the back of his brain had worked its way to the front, and now could not stop himself from asking, in a whisper, "Francine, why didn't you call the Doctor?"
Her eyes welled with tears once more. These days they seemed to be always just below the surface.
"We did," she told him.
"And?"
She took a deep breath, trying to control herself. "He came."
Jack waited.
"He made it worse."
"He made it worse? How so?"
She pulled the door shut. The two of them now stood in a pristine white hallway.
In a low, wispy voice, she explained, "After the attack, when the doctors – the medical doctors – couldn't help her, Clive recalled Martha saying she'd left her mobile with the Doctor – the proper Doctor – and he could be reached anywhere in time and space. So we called. Of course we did! We didn't hesitate!"
"And he came?"
"He came," she sighed. "And the instant she saw him, she began to scream. She threw herself into the corner, away from him, and screamed bloody murder. She hyperventilated. She pushed him away when he tried to get close, even kicked him, scratched him until she drew blood. I've never seen anyone fight that hard."
"And hasn't done that to anyone else who's tried to help?" Jack asked.
"No, her father or I change her clothes for her every day," Francine said, shakily. "Her sister feeds her sometimes, her brother reads to her, and she's never reacted that way. Only the Doctor. Before he came, she was just sort of... robotic, like, in a walking coma almost. After he came, she was... well, you saw. She's frightened of everything, she won't speak, won't eat on her own, can't get herself to the loo..." she broke. Tears flowed freely now.
"I'm sorry," Jack said. He didn't know what else to say.
She stared at nothing, beyond him. "Her reaction to him, Jack," she whispered. Then her eyes narrowed angrily and shifted to his, and penetrated. "If you could have seen it... so violent, so terrified of him. It makes me wonder..."
"Now, now, Francine," Jack stopped her. "Don't go there. Just tell me about the attack."