"What?!How could you not know where it comes from? What a story! Politics, freedom, scandal… well, you always have scandal when you're dealing with the crown…"
"Erm, Doctor, I really don't think this is th—"
"—Oh, but Martha, there's such a wonderful history behind it! You lot don't even know your own past! You probably think it's a modern invention, but the Romans had it—not only one but two types! The Pignus and the Hypotheca, and those clever old blokes had a whole intricate system worked about before your Saxon ancestors were making houses out of anything but mud. Ah, but those English, once they catch onto an idea there's no letting go is there! 'The purity of a fee-simple imported a power of…' of disposing of it or something like that, can't remember exactly, but ohh it is brilliant! Good old Henry the Third, what a mad fellow he was, I kept on telling him, 'Henry, you can't do that to the nobles, they're gonna get angry eventually' and he'd just laugh. He wasn't one for equality but right terrific trumpet players! Weeell, they weren't trumpets as much as pre-trumpets, being the 13th century and all… but… err…"
Martha and the bank worker were both staring at him.
"Right. Well, here's the paperwork then, I'll just sign it?"
"Probably for the best," Martha said frostily, knuckles white from clenching her knees. The man was still staring, but attempted to make conversation as the Doctor scribbled all over the papers.
"So… Th… this is your first mortgage, then?"
Martha wouldn't talk to him on the walk home.
"Oh, come on, I wasn't that bad, was I?" Martha glared back at him. He sighed, trying to play up the pity angle. "Look, I'm sorry, I was just excited to meet a new person." At that, Martha spun around and the Doctor realized he probably should have kept quiet.
"You aren't a sodding puppy! Puppies have an excuse to get excited when they meet new people; it's okay if they jump up and down and maybe knock something over and make a mess of things. You? You're an alien with a brain the size of a planet, or so you act. No, don't interrupt me, I'm trying to make a point. You" she poked his chest, "You are not allowed to act like a puppy. Not unless you also want to relinquish your high-and-mighty attitude as well, because you most certainly can't have both." The Doctor's mouth sort of flopped open and closed for a moment, and Martha took a bit of glee from rendering him silent. Then he caught up and filled the air with energy again.
"Ah, Martha Jones, you firebrand." He smiled warmly, though it didn't come quite as quickly as it might have a few weeks ago. "I was a fool to ever think I could fight with you." He took a step forward, arms outstretched in a hug, but she stepped back and looked so inexpressibly sad his hearts ached.
"Look, I'm going to go to the shop, see if they won't let me work overtime. Give me your jacket, it might get chilly later." He shrugged it off and handed it to her. "Just go home," she added, "and try not to blow anything up." As she walked away, he closed his eyes and grimaced.
He hated how she said 'home.' It made this whole disaster too real. Being stranded at all made his whole mind itch. Martha had to take a job to support them, but it wasn't enough. In his first body he had bought a flat in London in case of such unforeseen circumstances; he was nothing if not prepared, at least in other bodies. He'd paid off the entire cost, and once every so often would check up on it, move things around so that it wouldn't be condemned. Mostly, though, he forgot about it. Until, of course, emergencies rendered his paranoia completely legitimate… such as three weeks ago when he found himself on a park bench in 1969, Martha next to him pretending not to cry.
He could almost deal with being stranded, if he had to. More likely than not something disastrous would happen and he would be properly distracted. It had been three weeks; no such adventure. And now all these domestics, with taking a mortgage out so that they could continue to eat? He had ways of making money, but all of them were various shades of illegal; betting, mostly, on things he knew would happen. If he ever told Martha about supplementing their limited funds with money from the horse track, he imagined he'd get an even sterner talking to than the one today. He wouldn't let himself do anything to earn that look of disappointment. She did keep him honest, his Martha.
He shuffled dejectedly as he wandered closer to the flat. He found it all too stressful. He'd been running his entire life; standing still sent sickening waves of inertia through him, making him ill. If only he had something to distract him.
"Ah!" he yelped, scaring some nearby birds. He knew what he had to do: embrace the domestics, if only for a night. If he did a nice thing, she might forgive him. Turning sharply on a heel, he near-skipped away from the flat, hoping Martha would be away long enough for him to surprise her.
The shop was fully staffed, but Martha could not bring herself to start walking home. So she ducked into a little café and nursed a cup of tea, mulling over her earlier outburst.
She couldn't rightly blame the Doctor; he was just being himself, and thinking he'd be otherwise was betting against gravity. She simply wished he could acknowledge how hard this was for her, not just him.
On her third cup, Martha drew enough courage together to collect her things and go back. She had scribbled some questions down on some napkins, and stuffed them in the pocket of his jacket to ask him later. It was a game she had started, to pierce the silence that settled uncomfortably over them at dinner. She would ask him questions, fence his madness in as well she could.
Today she thought she had a good one, one that would start him off until she put a hand over his mouth. But when she walked into the flat, she was struck by the distinct lack of tinkering.
"Doctor?" she called out. Nothing. She walked through the flat but its emptiness echoed around her. Throwing his jacket on a chair, she laid down on the couch and promptly fell asleep.
About an hour later, the Doctor burst through the door, his own self-contained tornado. Immediately he stopped, seeing Martha sprawled out on the couch. He smiled and walked into the kitchen. After setting the bags on the table, he picked up his jacket and put it back on. He jammed his hands in his pockets, then stopped—and pulled his left hand back out. The napkin was crumpled, but Martha's tight handwriting still stood out.
"'Does a void have a temperature?'" He chuckled, a low sound. "Of course not, it doesn't have anything. Well, saying it has nothing is inaccurate because that implies the lack of something. A lack of something is a something-shaped hole, and that's still something. Nothing is most definitely still something, and a void doesn't have any of that. A void is a void, and I know that sounds like circular logic but we can go back and ask Aristotle if you like. But I don't need his say so, because I've seen a void. Can you even imagine that, Martha Jones? A void, voiding its way through the universe, existing but not. Does existence count as a something?"
He went back into the living room and sat on the arm of the couch, looking down at the woman who lay there.
"But think about it, a void. Not having temperature, how do you explain or understand that? You're a human, you literally can't imagine what it's like to be in a place without temperature or climate. It would implode your mind a bit, and I wouldn't be very happy about that. I like you the way you are, Martha, have I told you that? You're very much lacking a void. You're very full of somethings, aren't you; you'd make a void's head spin. You know, if it had a head. Or anything at all."
He sighed and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. Murmuring, she grabbed his hand and mumbled something about fried eggs. He grinned wildly as he was pulled down onto the couch with her. Snuggling close, he whispered stories of voids into her ear until she was deep in dreams again.
Martha was having the oddest dream, about floating through a void dancing slowly with the Doctor to Beethoven's 7th and somehow simultaneously eating fried eggs. It was almost lucid—she didn't step on his feet—except instead of kissing her like she hoped, the Doctor fed her egg and laughed when he missed her mouth and hit her neck.
When she woke up, the first thing she noticed was the smell. Of gas.
Jumping up, she ran into the kitchen. The Doctor stood in the middle of the room, covered from head to feet in flour, and looking very chagrined. She smothered her laughter and turned off the stove.
"Did the flour bag explode?"
"I was trying to bake a cake." He said with not a little embarrassment.
"For what? You don't cook," she said, trying not to sound too angry.
"For… to say I'm sorry, and that I missed you today, and that I care about you, and I'm sorry for the situation you're in, and I'm sorry for how awful this must be, and that I'll try harder but I can't promise anything, and that I—"
She took two steps forward and put a hand over his mouth, delighting in how his stubble tickled her palm.
"I missed you too." Their eyes snagged for a minute too long… then she turned away and looked around at the complete disaster.
"What did you do, exactly?"
"I don't know, but I don't think the oven likes me very much. It won't turn on."
"That's because you had the stove on, not the oven," she said. She walked to the counter, looked in the bowl, then put her head in her hands.
"Don't tell me you tried to mix the ball bearings in with the batter?"
"But they're so delicious, Martha, I couldn't leave them out!"
"Doctor, you put them on the cake, not in them!" Laughing (she would not admit it was a pale facsimile of the real thing), she grabbed a rag and started wiping the flour off his face. "Let's clean this up, and then bake one together. It's rather easy, once you remember a few simple rules. I'll even let you lick the spo—"
Her lips were suddenly covered by his, and she tasted flour and skin and dust. He tasted old, she thought, and then she stopped thinking altogether. Just as suddenly as he had leaned in, he stepped back. She had imagined the moment so many times, she knew exactly what she was going to say—except her mind was a glorious blank. They stared at each other.
"I didn't mean… you just looked so lonely," he said.
"It's funny, isn't it, that we're closer than ever but never been further apart," she murmured, more to herself, but he heard and sighed deeply.
"If you step into me, Martha, you'll fall forever," he said, trying to warn her, scare her, anger her, anything to send her away. He was too scared himself to live with her piercing eyes and their unasked questions.
"Falling has always been infinitely better than standing still, Doctor," she replied, and he nearly gasped at how easily she could see through him. His defenses snapped up, though he tired of them.
"Martha, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I can't do this. I can't bring myself to hurt you. Not like this."
"Don't you think that should be my decision?"
"I'm sorry, Martha, but you don't know what it's like to live lifetimes after, watching friend after friend fade away and die."
"Andyou're not the one who has to live day by day, with every regret and wrong decision weighing on you because they're all around you. I can't run away from the aftermath of my mistakes; you can. You think you have it hard? Try staying after you so-called save a civilization. Help them rebuild. Help them bury their dead. Help them through the civil wars you leave in your wake because you left a void of authority." A few stray tears fell down her face, and he listened in slow, mute horror.
"If you don't want to hurt me, let me be as reckless as you. Let me make my own decisions and be the owner of my mistakes. Can no one make them but you?" She took a step closer. "Can no one be the leader but you?" Her nose was practically touching his shoulder and then she grabbed his shirt, pulling down to kiss him fiercely. His tongue marveled at the flavor of saline crystals diluted by hints of smoky earl gray and wished he could make a perfume of her mouth's taste. She only just started going weak at the knees when he moved back again. She staggered, and he wrapped his arms around her back.
"How can you be so strong, Martha Jones, yet still know all of that?"
"Because I accept it." She kissed his neck. "Because I don't run." Her fingers traced down his arm, and he felt her warmth, began craving it the moment she stepped away.
"But we have time enough for all that later," she said, pasting a tired smile on her face—and he wanted to reach out and take the weight from her, to let her rest, truly, if only for a moment. "The ball bearings won't wait to be eaten much longer."