Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all associated items are property of BBC. The Doctor's tenth regeneration was largely shaped by Mr Russell T. Davies, creator of the new Doctor, and Mr David Tennant. No copyright infringement intended.
Rating: PG
Warnings: possibly triggering topic - sensory deprivation, mildly depressive, sickness, slight spoilers for series 3. Set after "The Family of Blood".
... ~ oOo ~ ...
First Doctor Who fic I posted here, so please be kind, but I also appreciate feedback on whether it was in character. Thank you for reading!
In retrospect, Martha reflected, she should have expected something of the sort. The Doctor might look pretty much like a human, but she had learned from the first that he was anything but. She wasn't quite sure why she was surprised that he maintained a constant telepathic link to the TARDIS, especially after he had already told her that this ship of his got into her head and translated everything for her – that is, except its own controls and the yellow post-its that seemed to appear out of nowhere in the console room, but must have been written by the Doctor. He never talked about them, never mentioned them, and Martha never caught him exchanging them, but change they did, and had long piqued her curiosity. But that had to wait until later. More specifically, until they had found the TARDIS.
One minute, they had been strolling through a lively fair on some planet the name of which Martha couldn't even begin to wrap her tongue around, which was why she had stuck with the rough translation the Doctor had offered her: Planet of Harmony and Joy ("Well, when I say joy... It's more like exuberance, delight, glee... You get the idea, Martha.")
Anyway, the other minute the Doctor suddenly froze in his track and then disappeared into an alley where the colour and the hustle bustle of the indigenous population seemed far away. He was gasping, little shallow breaths that caused her to hurry to his side in concern. She instantly assumed that it had something to do with his cardiovascular system, which seemed to be the most delicate part of his physiology, anyway. "Are you all right?"
She half expected him to grin at her, saying "I'm always all right." but the Doctor didn't. He just stared at her and then whispered: "It's gone."
"What's gone?" she asked, confused.
"Follow me!" he said, racing off into the direction they had come from.
But the fair on the Planet of Harmony and Joy continued towards the horizon, and Martha just knew the Doctor had lost his bearings when he suddenly trailed to a stop, turning on the spot. She caught up with him, panting. "What is it?" It seemed odd that the Doctor should get lost – he had always been able to lead them back to the TARDIS before, even the one time they had been in a very dense alien jungle and night came rather suddenly...
"Okay, Martha, this is very important. Do you know how to get back to the TARDIS?"
"Didn't you mark the way?"
"Do you know where to go?" he insisted, ignoring her astonished question.
Martha looked around them, all colours and movement and people, and every alley looked the same to her. "No idea. Why? Why do we need to get back all of the sudden? Don't tell me it suddenly struck you that we are lost and you just randomly raced of."
"I don't get lost," the Doctor said, sounding a little small. "I never get lost, because I don't have to rely on landmarks and stuff; I don't notice them, because I don't need to – there's a telepathic link between a Time Lord and his TARDIS, and it allows me to always, always find my way back. Except..."
"Don't tell me. It's gone."
"Yeah... I can't feel her any more."
Martha couldn't help but noticing that a dark shadow had fallen over the Doctor's deep brown eyes. "And that's bad, yeah?"
"Very. It means I can't find her, and quite probably something is very wrong." He gasped. "No, no, no, no, no!" The Doctor staggered away from her, hands coming up to press against his temples.
"Doctor!" Martha cried, horrified. Emotions were flicking in rapid succession over the Doctor's face – confusion, pain, fear, despair – and then, nothing. His expression was entirely blank as he lowered his hands, straightening. "That's impossible."
"What is?"
"I'm a Time Lord, Martha. I can see time, all the time. I can see what has been, what is, what will, what can be. All the time. Every single timeline, every single event. It's like an instinct. It never stops, and never goes away."
"Your head should burst," Martha said.
"Nah, I'm a Time Lord. I can handle it. But it's gone. All of it, it's just gone. Time has ceased to exists. That's the reason I can't feel the TARDIS. She's a time machine. There's no use for a time machine when there's no time. She... died."
"How can time cease to exist? I mean, things are still happening? This conversation, yeah? The people over there, celebrating? Time is moving on – isn't it?"
The Doctor shook his head. "Time isn't linear. It's hard to grasp for your humans, because your mind makes up that notion to protect yourself, but it's nowhere near as simply as that. Time's a sort of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff. It's not moving anywhere. It's always there, and it's always changing, but not moving... and now, it's gone."
"How?"
"I don't know."
They lapsed into silence, two still figures standing in the middle of a cheering and chattering crowd, and Martha became worried about the blank expression on the Doctor's face. It was just like after he had stepped out of the Chameleon Arch, still cradling the fob watch, the same emptiness in his eyes – as if something essential to him had been taken away, stolen.
"Doctor? If we find the TARDIS, can you fix it?"
"The TARDIS is gone, Martha. Even if we find her, she'll just be an ordinary blue box now."
"You don't know that. Maybe something is disrupting your connection to her, like... like an interfering transmitter. Come on, I think it's this way." Martha led the way through the crowd, trying to recall the stalls they had passed. But even as she walked, she noticed that she could no longer understand the inhabitants of the planet – the TARDIS had ceased translating for her. She was just glad that the Doctor could apparently talk English, even though it wasn't much use right now. He was uncharacteristically silent, striding alongside her, but with only a trace of his usual confidence and with more of the awkwardness of John Smith.
"Doctor? I'm sure it will be all right. It can't be that bad, can it? You look like you've been drained."
"You wouldn't understand."
"Try me."
The Doctor frowned. "Aren't you the least bit worried? We could well be stuck on this planet forever. You can't even speak the language."
It had, in fact, occurred to Martha, but she was convinced that if anyone could fix this mess, it was the Doctor. Besides, she hadn't really noticed any difference, except in the Doctor. She shrugged. "You are just saying anything to avoid talking about how you're feeling."
The Doctor fixed her with an indecipherable stare. "I'm a Time Lord, Martha. There's not much use for a Time Lord when there's no time."
"Are you telling me you feel human now?"
The Doctor did not seem to be in the mood for her teasing. His face, if that was even possible, had taken on an even darker expression. "All my life, I have been prepared for being a Time Lord. Trained for years and years and years, to be ready for this information, instinct, sense. And since then, it's always been with me, always. It's who I am, Martha. And now it's gone."
"I'm not sure I understand."
"Have you ever tried passing the day with earplugs on?"
"No..."
"But you can imagine it, right? That's how I'm feeling. Isolated, lost, empty, deaf."
"Right. We get it back, I promise."
The Doctor didn't reply.
They walked in silence as Martha suddenly spotted a familiar stall and turned into an alleyway – and there it was, the TARDIS, as blue and whole as ever. To her surprise, the Doctor looked neither happy nor relieved, but moaned quietly.
"What is it? We found the TARDIS, didn't we?"
"Yeah..." the Doctor murmured. "Go on, open it."
Martha frowned, but dug the key out of her pocket and opened the softly humming time machine, hesitating on the threshold. It gave her that odd feeling of 'not right' of the whole 'bigger on the inside'-stuff, but she had to watch the Doctor, who still stood where he had been, staring past her into the vast interior of the console room.
"It doesn't look dead to me," Martha said, trying to yank him out of his trance.
"It's not." The Doctor stepped past her into the TARDIS, striding up to the central column and running his hand over the controls, not adjusting anything, just touching. "This is so odd. I assume that's what you humans feel all the time." He cringed at the use of the word time, his hand lingering inches above the controls. "It's just wrong."
"Well, I get that with the bigger on the inside." Martha pulled the TARDIS door shut behind her. "Every time."
"I can see she's alive. I can hear the humming. But I can't feel her. Or time."
"Can't you take us away from here? Maybe it's something about the planet we're on?"
The Doctor shook his head and murmured something in a language Martha did not recognise.
"What was that?"
"Right! Yes, sorry – I was saying that I can't fly the TARDIS without the telepathic link, or without the timelines. I could never take her into the time vortex – we could travel in space, of course, but no, I don't think that's really the matter."
Martha yelped as a bright blue light, beaming down from the ceiling suddenly engulfed the Doctor. "What's that?"
"Stasis field," the Doctor replied, his voice a little muffled by the forcefield surrounding him, but looking a little less lost. "Oh, beautiful, clever ship! She recognised me, and must have figured out that something's wrong! She's trying to fix it."
"So it's you?"
"Apparently." The Doctor stood perfectly still in the stasis field, letting the soft light washing over him. It was a comfort, even though he still couldn't feel the telepathic touch that usually accompanied every medical procedure of the TARDIS'. It felt as though his senses were muffled, as if he had called a cold... maybe that was exactly what had happened, some virus he didn't recognise. Talk about surprises after 900 years of travelling in time and space.
He hardly even noticed that the TARDIS was putting him to sleep until Martha called his name, but he didn't put up a fight, allowed himself to succumb to the healing touch of his ship.
Martha raced up to where the Doctor had slid quietly to the floor, the blue forcefield finally releasing him. Disturbed, she searched for his pulse, and finding it low and steady, backtracked a bit. The Doctor was sleeping.
Martha had never really seen him sleep before – of course there was that time when they were visiting Shakespeare and shared a bed, but his had just lain there with his eyes wide open, and somehow she hadn't had the impression that he was really asleep, especially after he had raced of with barely a moment's pause at the scream... But now, he was apparently truly asleep, resting quite contently on the metal crating of the TARDIS. Martha would have taken him to his room, if she'd known where it was, and whether it even contained a bed. So, she just fetched him a pillow of hers and sat beside him, waiting for him to wake up.
In fact, it took him quite some time. Martha was dozing of herself when the Doctor finally stirred and pushed himself up to his elbows with a contended sigh. "Ah, that's much better." And he flashed her one of his brilliant smiles.
"Time's back then?" Martha asked, trying to keep up with the Doctor's rapid movements as he whirled around the console.
"Was never gone, like the TARDIS. It was all me."
"I told you."
"Hm."
"You'd caught a virus, then?"
The Doctor stopped, idly fiddling with some controls. "Well, sort of. Well, I say sort of..." He cleared his throat. "More like neglecting something... err... well, sleep."
"You were exhausted? Just like that?" Martha asked, incredulous.
"Hmm, much like that, yeah." The Doctor pulled the lope of his ear, his other hand still busying itself with the controls.
Martha laughed. "And you made such a fuss!"
"Oi! It wasn't funny!"
"Right..." Martha grinned, and to her delight the Doctor grinned back. "I'm just glad you've got the TARDIS to take care of you. I would never have figured that out, not after you made it sound like the world was ending."
"So am I," the Doctor replied, patting the console affectionately. "Anyway, Martha – fancy a trip to the world exhibition in Paris? We could see the Eiffel Tower when it was brand new!"
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