Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who, Martha, the TARDIS, Ace, or any other Who characters/elements. cries

Lost and Found

"We've stopped, Doctor. Have we arrived?" Martha called from her position on the floor of the TARDIS. Their journey through the Time Vortex had just come to an abrupt and rather violent halt, and she and the Doctor had been thrown to the ground. The Doctor had immediately bounded to his feet, of course, and was now frantically checking all the screens, dials, and readouts in his reach.

"Wha-WHAT? That's impossible! That is NOT possible!" He was staring helplessly at the nearest screen, and he was utterly confounded. This really wasn't possible. He closed his eyes and opened them again, thinking he was reading something wrong. Or hallucinating.

Martha was watching him with quiet amusement. "What is it?" she asked. "Where have we landed this time? Canada?"

He looked at her gravely. "That's the problem." he said. "We haven't."

"Haven't what?" Martha was confused. She could have sworn he just said they hadn't landed. But they were stopped, weren't they?

The Doctor was nervous. This had never happened before, not ever, to anyone. He tried to explain it to Martha while at the same time trying to believe it himself.

"We haven't landed, Martha. We're not on Earth. In fact, we're not anywhere. We're still in the Vortex. Something out there," he gestured vaguely toward the wall, "is blocking us. We ran right into it, and it's stopped us in our tracks. Which of course isn't possible, because no one but the Time Lords and a few Daleks could access the Time Vortex, and even then they'd need a ship, and they're all gone! There's only one Dalek left, and there's no way it could pilot a ship on its own." The Doctor tried to sort out the possibilities, but he was coming up blank. Even if that was a ship out there, the TARDIS wouldn't have stopped, because the other ship would be moving, too.

Martha looked blankly at the doctor before asking slowly "So we're stuck, out in the Time Vortex, and you have no idea why." She sincerely hoped she was wrong, but he just nodded. "Don't you have a window in here somewhere?" she thought she remembered one, once.

"Of course!" he cried, jumping towards a blank screen. "The viewscreen! Martha, you're a genius!"

He pushed a few buttons and the screen came to life. It showed the swirling blues and reds and greens of the Vortex, and right in front of the TARDIS sat a huge black form. On closer inspection it turned out to be a ship of some kind, surrounded by a glowing transparent shield. It was huge and black, with no windows. The Doctor stared at it, the oddest expression on his face, somewhere between fear and wonder.

"That's a Dalek prison ship, Martha." He said quietly, in a strangely emotionless voice. He didn't take his eyes off the screen as he spoke. "Daleks almost never took prisoners, but when they captured someone they thought had information they wanted, they sent them to a ship like that. The ships were completely automated. It was entirely self-reliant. It ran itself, not even using droids, and each prisoner was fed, watered, and tortured systematically and automatically. They were asked a series of questions, their answers being recorded, and if they didn't answer they were tortured. Every sound they made was recorded and gone over by Daleks later. If they got their answers, and found them to be true, the prisoner was killed. If not, the cycle of questions and torture continued until the Daleks got what they wanted or the prisoner died. It took a long time to die on a prison ship. The ships were programmed to inflict pain just to the point of death, without crossing the line.

"The Daleks were careful, Martha. They didn't want anyone to find the ships, so they enclosed them in a timesheild. The shield enabled the ship to be suspended, completely still, in the Time Vortex. They were extremely hard to find, because a ship traveling through the Vortex can't stop to look around. The only way to find a prison ship was to run into one, and that almost never happened. Because the ship didn't move, the time inside the shield never changed. It always remained the same instant that the ship was put into the Vortex, even though the people inside the ship could move around as if they were advancing through time. The only thing was they never aged. They always stayed the same age that they were when the shield was erected.

"One last thing, Martha- the ships were programmed to self-destruct when there were no live prisoners left on board."

The Doctor turned to look straight at Martha, and his eyes were bright with tears.

"The fact that that ship is there means there's a prisoner onboard. Someone is alive on that ship."

He moved very quickly after that. He programmed the TARDIS to bypass the timesheild and materialize inside the prison ship. He had to keep moving, keep his mind off of what was happening. If he let himself think, he might start having dangerous thoughts. Thoughts about being the last Time Lord, or maybe not. If the person on that ship was a Time Lord…

His thoughts were thankfully interrupted by the thunk of the TARDIS finishing her materialization. Not bothering to look and see if Martha was following, he tore out of the TARDIS and into the bleak corridors of the prison ship. The sound of a door closing behind him told him Martha was there. He gestured for her to follow and set off, following blind instinct. He hoped he'd be able to find his way back to his ship.

Partway down the corridor, he noticed a large black blast mark on the wall. Several more were evident further down. Seeing them, he stopped short, and Martha almost ran into him. He stared at the blast marks, stunned. "No…" he whispered. He ran over to one and sniffed it carefully. His eyes widened "No." He repeated.

"What is it?" asked Martha, concerned. He looked as though he was seeing a ghost.

"I know that burn pattern, Martha. I'd recognize it anywhere, and it shouldn't be here. Unless…" He looked down the corridor, then back at Martha, then down the hall once more. He felt a huge grin creeping over his face. "Come on, Martha." He raced down the hallway, Martha at his heels.

At the end of the hall was a single, unmarked steel door. He gazed at it thoughtfully, torn between terrible fear and painful hope. He looked at Martha, who was watching him worriedly.

"Do you know how to get back to the TARDIS?" he asked. She nodded. "Then go." When she opened her mouth to speak, he held up a hand. "No, don't argue. Whoever-whatever is behind that door, it may not be friendly. Who knows what might have happened to someone who has spent all these years since the Time War being tortured for information they probably already gave up, but there was no one to receive it? I don't want you getting hurt, Martha. Go back to the TARDIS. If I don't show up in an hour, the TARDIS will leave without me and take you home. Now go."

She nodded sadly and turned back. He watched her go, wondering why he had sent her away. Maybe he just needed to do this alone. He turned back to the door and, finding it unlocked, took a deep breath and went inside.

At first, he couldn't see anything. The room was pitch-dark inside, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. When they did, he saw a bare metal room with paneled walls made of the same steel as the door. He listened carefully, and was startled to hear low, raspy breathing coming from the corner. When he looked that way, his hearts almost stopped.

There, huddled in the corner, head bent down against the light, crouched a shaking figure. He walked slowly over to it and crouched down beside the person. Longish hair obscured most of the face, and the clothes had long since turned mostly to rags, but he could tell the person was female. The Doctor noticed that she was crouching on a large piece of some kind of black fabric, and he found himself wishing he could see what it was. He spoke softly to her.

"It's all right. I'm here to help you. I'm going to get you out. I'm called the Doctor. Let me help you, please."

"Oh, stop it." The broken voice came from the huddled form. "Haven't you done this enough? I know he's not coming back. He died, remember? So you can stop doing this. I know it's not real."

She finally raised her head to look at him, and he found himself looking into a pair of hopeless brown eyes he knew almost better than his own.

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