A/N: As of now my only plan for this fic is to try out interactions between Matt Smith's Doctor and people who knew David Tennant's Doctor. I may expand into other drabbles if I feel like it, or may not continue at all, but in either case I'll try to warn you. As of now, I'm only planning to write short blurbs, but I may have to expand some of them into bigger stories if I feel the need. If you see any stories that are especially appealing to you and you want to hear more, ask me, because I'm considering trying to take some of these ideas and put together a bigger story with them. Also, if there's anybody from Ten canon that you want to see Eleven meet, let me know and I'll see if I can work something out.
"Doctor Jones, HQ wants a word."
"Patch them through." Martha Smith – or Martha Jones, the name she had stuck with professionally even though her married name had changed – waited until her aide back at base had connected her line to the call from headquarters. "Jones here."
"It's me." Her husband's voice prompted an involuntary smile from Martha. "Listen, things are getting even worse here. Is your end any better?"
"No." She shook her head, glancing out over the devastation she could see from the window of her helicopter. "Things are really awful, Mickey."
"I think we need to call in the Doctor."
Martha felt an involuntary thrill. It had been nearly seven years since she left the Doctor, and though she'd spent time with him during the Sontaran invasion two years after their initial parting of ways, she'd only caught one brief glimpse of him since then, when he'd rescued her and Mickey from a Sontaran scout they'd gotten on the wrong side of during a mission.
The irony; it was always Sontarans that gave her opportunities to reconnect with the Doctor. This would be the third time.
"Martha?" Mickey's voice snapped her out of her reverie.
"Yeah, sorry, I hear you." She responded. "You want me to call him?"
"Do you still have the number?" He questioned.
"What do you think?" She shot back dryly.
"Great." His response was obstructed by a pulse of static.
"I'll tell him to be there when I touch down at base." Martha decided. "I'll brief him on the way to HQ."
"That'll give you two some time to catch up." Mickey agreed. "I gotta go. Love you. Smith out."
Martha switched him off and activated the audio interface with the UNIT-issue computer installed in the helicopter. "Search the information saved from my cell phone for a mobile number under the name the Doctor."
It was a moment before the computer dredged up what she was looking for. "One result from cellular device formerly registered under Martha Jones." It read her off the number.
"That's it." Martha grinned, feeling a redoubled twinge of excitement. "Call him."
There was a long buzz before someone picked up on the other end. It wasn't the Doctor's voice, though; it was female. "Hello?"
"I'm trying to reach the Doctor," Martha raised her voice, hoping there wouldn't be too much static interference.
"Uh, can you hold?" The speaker questioned. "He's got his hands a bit full with a stampede of miniature rhinoceros – rhinoceroses? Rhinoceri? What's the plural of rhinoceros, Doctor?"
"He's got his hands full with what?" Martha echoed, eyebrows lifting.
The woman on the other end began to respond, but broke off to exclaim, "Rory, be careful with that! What do you expect us to tell the triplets if you smash their eye? I had to lasso a steer in zero gravity to get them to give us that! No! Rory! Don't let the rhinos near it!"
"Who is this?" Martha asked.
"Amy Pond, at your service." The voice on the other end responded brightly. "Who's asking?"
"Martha Jones!" She exclaimed impatiently. "I need to talk to the Doctor!"
"Doctor, someone needs to speak with you." Amy called. After a moment, she spoke into the phone, "He says sorry, but he's busy and can you call back?"
"Tell him it's Martha!"
"She says her name's Martha." Amy reported.
There was a long pause, then another voice replaced Amy's. "Martha Jones?"
"Yeah, it's me!" She replied eagerly. "Is this the Doctor?"
"Yes, it's me. Well, one of me anyway. Probably not the one you meant to call." His voice didn't sound quite right, but she had no doubt that it really was the Doctor. "Martha! It's great to hear your voice. How are things with UNIT and Mickey and whatever?"
"Actually, that's why I'm calling." She grimaced. "UNIT's fighting another Sontaran invasion right now and we're in way over our heads."
"Always the Sontarans with you, eh?" The Doctor commented. She could have sworn he was genuinely amused.
"Can you meet me at 1100 hours at Westminster Abbey on Wednesday, September sixteenth, 2015?" She got straight to business. They could have a longer conversation face to face on the way to headquarters. "That's where my base is."
"Earth, right?" He checked.
"Did you hear the Westminster Abbey part?" She questioned wryly.
He laughed shortly. "What, you think you're the only planet with a Westminster Abbey?"
That took her aback; trying to get her head around that, she managed, "Yes, I meant Earth."
"I'll be there right on time, as always." This was accompanied by a chuckle at his own funniness. There was no doubt about it – something about him sounded different. The same Doctor-like lines, but delivered in a different fashion.
Before she could inquire further, though, he exclaimed, "Rory! The eyeball! What do you think you're doing? Martha, I've got to go. I'll see you there!"
The line went dead.
Martha had hardly touched down when she was out, already looking about for the familiar blue phone box. The only thing she saw, though, was the Westminster base captain striding toward her across the grass. "Doctor Jones!"
"Good to see you again, Captain Blake." She headed in his direction. "Is everything alright?"
"We're picking up a massive radiation spread west of here." He told her. "I think we may be compromised."
She glanced at him sharply. "You think they're coming?"
"Could very well be." He nodded urgently. "And they could be here any second, so you need to get going right away. There's a vehicle ready for you."
"I can't go yet." She interrupted. At his questioning expression, she explained, "We called in the Doctor. He's meeting me here."
"The Doctor? The Doctor?" His face lit up. "He's coming here?"
"Any minute now." She nodded.
Just then a noise in the distance alerted both of them. It was a sound they recognized all too well; the sound of Sontaran air speeders, and lots of them. The pair lit out at a dead run for the doors, Blake yelling into his comm as they went, "Red alert! We're under attack! The Sontarans are here! I want every gun ready by the time I get through that door!"
"How big is the team?" Martha shouted as they raced for the shelter of the Abbey, the volume of the speeders increasing rapidly behind them.
"It's just me and four men right now!" He yelled back.
Martha risked a glance over her shoulder. "It sounds like we're outnumbered, then!"
Captain Blake's only response was to run even faster, reaching the entrance several strides ahead of Martha. The Sontarans had already gotten alarmingly close; they were streaking across the lawn now. As Blake went to slam the door behind Martha, the first of them leaped off his speeder mid-flight and crashed into the door, knocking it wide open before they could bolt it from the inside.
There were seven of them, and in seconds they were all off their airborne speeders and dashing through the entrance, guns ready, as their leader barked, "Surrender or die, human scum!"
"Really?" Martha shouted at him. "The human scum thing is so old!"
But her voice was lost amid the chaos of Blake and the Sontaran commander both roaring orders to their underlings. Within moments, the base team had done the wise thing; those of them who were armed dropped their weapons, and all stepped into the open with their hands up. If the Sontarans were going to kill them, they wouldn't have called for surrender – that wasn't the way they operated. Therefore the team was at least postponing what would be certain death if they made a stand against the Sontarans here and now.
Captain Blake was obviously seething internally as he and Martha stepped into line with the others per the Sontaran leader's orders. The enemy commander strutted back and forth along the row of them; in any other situation, Martha would have made a wisecrack about how she had to look down at the top of his head as he passed.
It was a moment before the commander demanded, "Which one of you is the female called Doctor Jones?"
Martha didn't bat an eye. If she could just drag this out till the Doctor arrived, she was confident he would turn the predicament on its head.
Just then a shadow fell through the door, which was still hanging ajar. Martha's heart fluttered in anticipation, then dropped. She'd expected to see the Doctor, but this was an odd, slim fellow with a wild head of hair and an eccentric outfit complete with a bowtie.
Whoever he was, he was noiseless as he glided across the room toward the Sontarans, who all had their backs to him. A second behind him, a scrawny young man and a redheaded girl appeared in the doorway. Shooting them a grin that was cheerful to the point of childishness, the first stranger pointed silently to the nearest Sontarans and made a gesture like he was swinging a hammer.
That prompted Martha to notice that each of the trio was armed with a hammer. They must have somehow been aware of the susceptible spots on the backs of Sontarans' necks, even though nobody outside Torchwood knew that.
Just as the strangers had crept nearly all the way up behind the three Sontarans closest to the back of the room, the commander turned to pace the line in the other direction and caught sight of them. As he began to bark out a warning, the eccentric stranger threw stealth to the wind and landed a hearty swing of his hammer across the neck of the Sontaran in front of him.
His two companions moved nearly as quickly as he did, and just like that, in the blink of an eye, three Sontarans were out of commission.
The others were spinning around, leveling their guns; the oddly-dressed man dropped his hammer and caught hold of the end of one gun, forcing it up to point at the ceiling. At the same time Blake, Martha and a couple of the other base team members broke from their line and tackled the Sontarans before they could open fire on the three strangers.
Now that they were outnumbered, the Sontarans were the ones at a disadvantage. There was a brief scuffle, but the humans came out on top, incapacitating each of their foes with the back-of-the-neck method, which was still the only known way to effectively debilitate a Sontaran.
As the last opponent crumpled to the ground, the eccentric stranger flashed a playful grin at Martha. "That was exciting, wasn't it?"
Even he appeared to be taken by surprise when Martha spun him around and slapped a handcuff onto one of his wrists, shoving him against the wall as she growled, "You had better have a really good explanation for how you found this place!"
"Hang on a minute!" He spluttered, his tone ringing with confusion. "Did you miss the part where I just brilliantly saved your life?"
"That would be we just brilliantly – ow!" The redheaded girl's correction was cut off as she and the scruffy young man were both pushed against the wall beside their companion and cuffed.
"Yeah, it's really convenient that you just happened to show up right when the Sontarans attacked us." Martha nodded sarcastically. "I'm sure you've got a great reason for that."
"You told me to come." The bowtie-bedecked stranger still seemed confused; then his expression lit up as if he'd just remembered something. "Oh! Martha!" She stepped back more in surprise than anything else as he spun around, the handcuff attached to his one wrist flapping – she hadn't secured his other wrist yet. "It's me!"
"That's probably the worst explanation I've ever heard." She shot back guardedly.
The other two strangers had been allowed to move away from the wall once they were cuffed. At this point the redhead interjected, "Oi, I'd love to get these handcuffs off one of these days, if it's not too much trouble!"
Her bushy-haired companion flashed her a smile. "Sorry, Amy, I wasn't paying attention. Got a thing happening." He reached into the pocket of his tweed jacket – instantly, every gun in the room was trained on him.
With a big grin at Martha, he announced, "It's not a weapon, don't worry."
"He couldn't fit a gun in there anyway." Captain Blake commented critically.
"Oi, you!" The stranger, his hand still in his jacket pocket, shot a glance at the offender. " 'Course I could. I've fitted no less than three cheesecakes in here all at once, and that was with my skateboard." He winked at Martha. "They're bigger on the inside."
She froze, trying to process. It couldn't be . . . ?
"You have a skateboard?" The redhead was questioning dubiously.
"What, I don't look like a skateboarder to you?" The eccentric man demanded.
She put on an expression that clearly stated she couldn't care less if he was a skateboarder. "Handcuffs, remember?"
"Right." He finally whipped his hand out of his pocket; all the gunners tensed, but it was nothing more than a handheld probe with a glowing green tip. It blinked and shrilled, and both his companions' handcuffs popped open.
"Hey!" Blake leaped toward him, sweeping the probe out of his hand and slamming him into the wall once again as both the other two were simultaneously seized by their guards.
"Stand down, Captain!" Martha's sharp order startled the others. As Blake stepped back, Martha moved closer to the slapdash stranger, staring hard into his eyes.
"It can't be!" She muttered aloud, clearly speaking directly to him. "You've got the, the, the sonic and the pockets and the hair and the weird outfit . . ."
"Why does everybody say it's weird?" He demanded, throwing a pointed look at his redheaded companion. "Bowties are cool!"
"If it's you, try this." Martha challenged. "Sally . . . ?"
"Sparrow?" He finished the name.
"Four things and?" She demanded.
He grinned. "And a lizard!"
"Hah!" Martha beamed. "Wibbly wobby!"
"Timey wimey!" He laughed aloud as he answered.
"Who's the face of Boe?"
That nearly childish smile was back again. "Jack Harkness!"
Martha's eyes were huge as she grinned disbelievingly at him. Her voice was hesitant, nearly hoarse as she whispered, "Doctor?"
A/N: that's all I'm planning to write for this one. If you want to hear how this story plays out, let me know; maybe I'll write another part to it. Remember, I love reviews even more than chocolate! :D