Cause and Effect

...

Arrrrggghhhh! Productivity! It burrrrnnnnsss! Get it away, get it away!

This should have been done ages and ages ago. It was supposed to be up for last Christmas, as a pressie for Des (remember when I asked you who your favourite companion was?- god, that was so long ago!).

Anyway, here it is, finally, a little idea that struck me after watching 'Let's Kill Hitler'. Thanks to Des for Beta'ing. :D

…

"Where shall we go this time, Ms Jones?" The Doctor asked cheerfully, bouncing around the console as it shuddered and rocked about mid-flight, the usual adventurous 'danger is my middle name' grin plastered across his face and his brown hair sticking out at impossible angles.

"Oh, I don't know, Mr Smith," Martha Jones replied, cheekily returning the grin as she tightened her grip on the metal railing around the circumference of the console. "Why don't you surprise me?"

The two exchanged looks, the glint of a challenge within Martha's eyes being impossible for the Time Lord to resist, and he flicked an important looking switch on the console. "Very well, then. That's set the date-recollector to random," he said, his grin widening as the TARDIS began rocking about more and more violently, sending him headfirst into the pilot's seat. Martha, laughing, just barely managed to hold her grip on the railing.

For several more seconds, everything shook about viciously while the old machine flung itself through the Vortex and the very fabric of Time and Space, groaning away as it did in its own unique way. Finally a growling, whirring sound filled the room and everything stilled, announcing to all that the old girl had landed. Both Martha and the Doctor had ended up in unceremonious heaps on the floor in this process.

"You couldn't do something about that landing?" Martha grumbled, and her companion scoffed.

"What is it with you humans and wanting a stable landing?" he complained, rolling onto his stomach to peer at her, "I've been travelling for nine hundred years through Time and Space in this thing, and you haven't heard me complaining about the landing. Not once!" the Time Lord said in a mock-serious manner. Martha could only laugh.

"Where are we?" she asked, excitement overcoming all other emotion as she hoisted herself back to her feet, ignoring the ache in her back where bruises were no doubt beginning to form.

"I don't know!" The Doctor cried, a look of childish delight upon his face as he too bounced back to a standing position, and skipped around the console to where Martha was standing and grabbing onto her shoulders. "And isn't that just amazing? Spectacular! Brilliant! Fantastic! Through those doors, there could be anything! Anything at all, in time and space; the Amethyst caves of Crystania, Paradise Planet in the Serenity System, or maybe some yet undiscovered (by humanity, anyway) corner of the galaxy! But wherever we are, Ms Jones," he said, looking at her with a sparkle in his eye, "There is only one thing that I know for certain we will do."

"What?" Martha asked, barely containing her excitement now, her eyes fixed on the man before her.

"Run!" He whispered with a wink, and suddenly he was off, running down the ramp on his ridiculously long legs towards the door, scooping his long brown trench coat from the coral where it hung along the way. Martha took a second to look after him, an admiring look on her face, before dashing off as well, pulling open the door just as it closed and taking a step out into the fresh air.

"Well…" she said, her smile fading a little with a sweeping view of her surroundings. "I don't think this is the Amethyst Caves of Crystalia or wherever you said."

The TARDIS had landed in a green park, consisting of a square patch of freshly cut grass bordered on all sides by road and quaint little English buildings, a red telephone box, benches and a small duck pond (that was currently devoid of birds of any kinds) all sitting comfortably within the boundary of a low chain rope fence.

"Doctor, I think this is Earth. In fact, I think this might be England, in my time," Martha pointed out, frowning. All of Time and Space, and they ended back on Earth? What were the chances of that, infinity to one?

"Yeah, I think so too," the Doctor replied, sounding a little more than disappointed. He looked at Martha with an expression that clearly said 'whoops' and ran his hands through the back of his hair, before turning his attention to the blue police box that stood behind them.

"Still, she must have brought us here for a reason," he whispered, reaching out to stroke the blue wood, a concerned look on his face, as though the box was less of a ship and more of a living thing. Martha, who had seen this look before, shifted uncomfortably in the background, feeling, as she often did, like a third wheel. "What are the odds, in all the infinity of time and space, of us landing back on twenty first century Earth…?" he trailed off, looking intensely at the door as if the answer was written there.

"Get your Leadworth Chronicle here!" A voice suddenly bellowed, breaking the Doctor's immense concentration and causing Martha to jump. As one, they both looked in the voice's direction to see a scruffy young man standing outside one of the little buildings waving a newspaper around in the air. The man was obviously trying to sell them, as the table next to him was piled high with the freshly printed tabloids.

"Leadworth's crop circles, a hoax or a message to the stars?"

Eyes wide, it took about three seconds for both the Doctor and Martha to exchange glances, and then start running towards the man, jumping over the low chain rope fence to get there. The Doctor's trench coat billowed out behind him as he went.

"I'm sorry, but did you just say crop circles?" the Time Lord said by way of greeting, arriving first because of his longer legs and snatching the newspaper out of the poor man's hand.

"Er, yes?" the man said, evidently surprised at the Doctor's sudden appearance, looking even more startled when Martha skidded to a halt beside him. The man glanced nervously around, shifting slightly on his feet and giving a nervous little laugh, obviously uncomfortable. "Where have you been, it's been all around the village since yesterday afternoon."

"We're tourists, just arrived," the Doctor explained off-handedly, flipping open the paper to scan the related article.

"Yeah, tourists," Martha quickly agreed.

"Tourists?" the young man said with a disbelieving whoop of a laugh, his discomfort disappearing to be replaced by a smile at what was obviously some private joke. "Yeah right! Why would you possibly want to come here for a holiday?"

"Why, the duck pond, of course," the Doctor joked, his eyes not leaving the page.

"These crop circles, when exactly did they appear, do you know?" Martha asked the young man, receiving a quick, approving glance from the alien for her trouble.

"Sometime mid yesterday, I think, miss. The police discovered them when they found a stolen car parked right in the same field," he replied, as he picked up another paper from the table to replace the one the Doctor had taken.

"Brilliant, thanks," the Time Lord said in a distracted tone. The next thing Martha knew, he had turned and was hurrying away, back in the direction of the TARDIS without another word. She groaned at his rudeness.

"Oi, you didn't pay for that paper!" the newspaper man yelled after him, now looking quite annoyed.

"Don't worry, I'll pay," Martha said, completely bewildered as she pulled her purse out of the back pocket of her jeans. She placed some change in the man's hands, before turning and running off after the Doctor. "Thanks!" she yelled belatedly over her shoulder.

"Uh, no problem!" the man replied, sounding a little bit bewildered himself.

Martha caught up with the Doctor just as he re-entered through the blue double doors of the TARDIS, stuffing his key back into his pocket as he did. "Doctor, what's happening?" she asked, rushing after him up the ramp to the centre console. He had dumped the paper onto the pilot's seat by the time she made it to the top.

"That man said that the crop circles were a message to the stars, but aren't they usually-wait, what are you doing?" she said, now really quite confused, as he began to going through the motions she was beginning to associate with take off, darting around the console like he had not minutes earlier.

"Going back in time, about twenty-four hours," he stated distractedly, as though that explained everything. It didn't. If anything, things became more confusing and unclear as ever.

"What? Why? We just got here, aren't we going to investigate?" Martha cried, her confusion evident in her frowned face. "And why twenty-four hours?"

"Because, about twenty-four hours ago, someone in this village was trying to contact me." The Doctor snatched up the paper from the seat and threw it at her, barely sparing her a glance as he dashed past to slam a mallet down onto a keyboard. She jumped at the ensuing crash."Look at the picture on the middle page," he then instructed, running around to the other side, still armed with the heavy hammer. He hadn't taken off his trench coat, so it fluttered out behind him in his wake.

Martha did as she was told and opened the paper to the correct page. She felt her jaw drop at what she saw; a bird's eye view of a wheat field, obviously taken from a helicopter or plane, but the commanding feature of the picture was the word, spelled out in crushed wheat within the field: DOCTOR. Through the middle of the word, a long, straight line was ruled through it, like it had been crossed out by a child with a giant pencil.

"But that's…"

"Exactly! See, I told you, Martha; there had to be a reason the TARDIS brought us here." The control room was jolting again, while the Doctor once danced around, joy written across his face, pulling levers and pressing buttons. There was a sense of purpose in the air now, along with a palatable sense of excitement, which filled Martha up as she clung to the railing again.

The TARDIS landed once more and with a sense of déjà vu, the Doctor bounded for the door, Martha following urgently in his stead after replacing the paper upon the seat. They emerged on the top of a small shrub-dotted hill, overlooking a large, familiar-looking wheat field, the ground beneath their feet springy and healthy.

"That's the field, isn't it?" she questioned, squinting hard at it, a hand over her face to battle the sun's glare. The wheat lay undisturbed, the only entrance to it a long dirt track that ran off to the left and connected to a distant road."The message isn't there yet. But I still don't understand, who would be trying to contact you?" she inquired, peering curiously up at her alien friend. "And why?"

"I don't know!" the Doctor sighed back in reply, the words tumbling out as he once more ran his long fingers through his lanky brown hair so it became more tousled and scruffy than ever. "Brilliant, isn't it?"

She couldn't help but agree, nodding despite not quite understanding the exact brilliance of the situation, infected by the Doctor's enthusiasm. She then took a few seconds to marvel at the fact that the Time Lord didn't know something, and filed the moment away for later purposes.

He seemed to suddenly perk up, standing straighter and pointing down the hill, "Well, Martha, you wanted to know why they are trying to contact me. How about we go and ask them?"

Martha's head whipped around, and sure enough she saw it; a creamy brown mini trundling its merry way down the dirt road at a cautious speed. It stopped just beyond the boundary of the wooden fence surrounding the field and a young woman with flaming red hair (that Martha could see even from the distance) jumped out to move the gate aside for the driver to drive through. Martha made to take a step forward, but was stopped by a restraining arm from her friend.

"What? Aren't we going to talk to them?"

"Not yet. Cause and effect, Martha," the Doctor said in his all-too serious, 'Last of the Time Lords' voice. "We'll go and see them after they've finished. If we go too early, they mightn't get a chance to complete their job, or maybe even do it in the first place. Then where would that leave us?" he left the sentence hanging suggestively and with a pointed, raised eyebrow.

The medical student took about a few seconds or so to think on this puzzle, in which time a cool breeze picked up and rustled through their clothes and hair, combating the heat of the midday sun. "If they never make the message," she started slowly, "then we'll never get the newspaper and feel the need to come here. It would be a paradox!"

"Exactly right! I've taught you well," the Doctor exclaimed cheerfully, smiling at her with his hands in his trouser pockets. She glowed at the praise and the prideful look in his eye, that reminded her of her Grade 9 Biology teacher, who had nurtured Martha's interest in medicine and pushed her towards the necessary path for becoming a doctor. A proper doctor, mind.

"So what now, stand here and wait until they're done?"

He huffed a long suffering sigh and a withering look was sent her way. "Torturous, I know, but there's nothing for it."

"What, you couldn't have landed us a little later?" She added with a hint of a teasing smirk.

"Oh, shut up, you know how it is."

As one, they turned in a silent vigil, watching as the woman hopped back into the mini, pulling something out of her pocket as she did. After a few minutes of nothing, in which it seemed the two occupants of the car argued vehemently with each other, the car spurred to life and started weaving its way through the field. It snaked and turned with efficiency, racing through the crop, spending several minutes looping for the massive 'O'. It slowly began to bear resemblance to the photograph in the paper, sans the straight line through the middle, which was a puzzle in itself.

During this time, Martha watched on with amazement, the Doctor with narrowed eyes. It was really quite a feat to witness; the small brown car zooming though the field like a boat through water, the plants rustling and bending in its wake.

Then, when it finally seemed like the job was nearly complete, and the couple almost victorious in their complex mission, a sound started pulsating through the air, a very familiar groaning, wheezing noise, and the Doctor's eyes flew open with panic.

"Martha!" he cried, suddenly tense, "We need to leave. Now!"

The dark-skinned medical student looked at him in alarm, then to the blue box still standing loyally behind them, shifting her eyes between him and the space ship."What? But we haven't even-!"

"That doesn't matter now, just get to the TARDIS, I'll explain later!"

Martha, though convinced by the urgency in his voice, didn't move quite yet, instead turning her view suspiciously back towards the field, eyes drawn to the middle of the giant 'O' where something box-like and blue was materialising in flashes of light. The sound was louder than ever."But that's the-?"

"NOW!" the Doctor practically bellowed, grabbing onto her arm and throwing her backwards, turning around himself in her wake.

"All right, all right!"

Spurred forward by this, Martha stumbled a little, and then scurried to the blue doors to throw them crashing open, glancing back just in time to see another set of blue doors open down in the field, and an unfamiliar man step out. The man waved something in their direction, and the Doctor, backing over the threshold, nodded in some sort of understanding, slamming the doors with a bang so she saw nothing else. He then raced past her up the ramp again, and for the third time in a short time period began jumping around the console. The ship quickly juttered to life.

"What the hell just happened, Doctor?" Martha had to yell, hair frizzled, arm and back twinging, as everything shook about once more. Things had happened so quickly that it was an effort to process the events that had occurred in the short amount of time since they'd landed on the hill. The couple in the car, the message, the other TARDIS and the Doctor's sudden desire to leave all raced through her mind.

"Sorry! Bit of a mix up!" the Time-Lord replied with an attempt at a charming smile from behind the flowing pillar, marred by the fact that he was slightly out of breath. "Seems we're a bit early to be answering this particular message."

"How early, exactly?" Martha cried.

"Oh, an entire regeneration, or so. Did you see that man in the other TARDIS, down in the field?" She nodded, reeling forward to grip onto the railing as everything shifted sideways. "Well… that was me, me from the future, anyway. Sorry, I needed to get the TARDIS out of there quick before the Universe ripped in two. Two of the same TARDI' from different points in time aren't technically supposed to be in the same place at the same time, but I guess that because we were part of established events, we were given some leeway. Still, I needed to get us out of there quick, before we overstayed our visit. Who knows what might have happened if we'd been even a second too slow! Cause and effect, remember?" This explanation came in true Doctor fashion: fired off in a rapid succession of confusion. However, after some careful thought, Martha managed a get a loose grip on the situation, along with a tighter grip on the patch of metal pole.

"So that message was supposed to be for the future you, we were just too early in getting it, and the reason we needed to get out of there quick was to avoid a paradox?" Martha said, braving a standing positions approaching the console to grip onto the brown covering.

The Doctor looked up from pumping a bicycle pump to beam at her again. "Exactly," he said, before adding, "Well, it's a little more complicated than just that, but that's the general picture."

"So, does that mean you'll have to wait a while to find out why those people were trying to contact you?" Martha coupled this comment with a sympathetic look, knowing how the loss of potential adventure would affect him. He looked crestfallen at the realisation.

"I guess so." He then cheered up considerably, visibly reflating to his usual bubbly self. "Oh well, what's life without a little mystery to look forward to!"

A sad thought struck Martha as she watched the Doctor collect the Leadworth newspaper from the seat again, folding it carefully and smoothing it out. "The future you was alone… I don't suppose I'll still be travelling with you at that point, then," she said quietly, biting her lip. It was a sad prospect, but she was enough of a realist to recognise the sense in it. After all, she couldn't travel through Time and Space forever.

The Time Lord avoided her eye, concentrating on the paper and clearing his throat awkwardly. "No, I suppose you won't," he said, a smidgeon too bluntly, and a few seconds of heavy silence followed.

"So," Martha said finally, forcing a grin onto her face, "Where are we off to next? No offence, but you might want to just pick a location this time setting the date-recollecting thingy again."

And suddenly it was like the awkward moment had never happened, almost like the entire mis-adventure had never happened. The Time Lord sent her a grin and then bounded off around the console again in his Doctor-like way, babbling along. A smile of adoration found its way onto her face again, although now it looked sadder than before. The newspaper had disappeared, and Martha, despite her loyalty and her adoration, would never know what happened with it.

…

The Doctor felt old as he stepped out of the TARDIS and into the field that day, every bone and muscle aching, face lined and worn and grey. He didn't actually look old, but he felt it within his very being, all of his 900 or so years. Within his hands was clutched an old yellowing newspaper, and it was with heavy hearts that he turned towards the small towering hill and waved it at the two pinprick figures upon it. He caught his last view of Martha Jones that day, his last proper one, anyway. A holo-projection didn't count.

…

Not entirely happy with it. But, it's 2 am and I need to do stuff tomorrow. At least it's done. :/