These Frost Bitten Hours
By eternitywaits
*Originally posted on LiveJournal November 15, 2009
It's absurd how his existence is tied up with the human woman, Martha Jones. The tangled strings of their fates cross into knots, and it's not all his doing, although their time lines are a mess because of him.
The first time he meets her, she saves his life. It seems to signal something, a pattern. He should see it, but he doesn't. Instead he sees her, lying on the cold hospital floor, gasping, her eyes are wide, her hair splayed out beneath her like fine black feathers. She saves his life, and almost dies. It sets a precedent.
She gives him her last ounce of breath, the last beat of her heart, the last shred of her strength.
The Doctor looks down at her, and bends slowly to touch her, running his fingertips along the smooth soft skin of her face. The delicate shape of her cheek, the graceful curve of her neck. He lifts her in his arms, as though she weighs nothing, but he feels the pull of eternity swaying beneath them, dark eddies trying to pull them in. He carries her with him. Even though he has no place to go, he carries her with him.
It's one year later, if he forces himself to perceive time in a linear way, like parceling out pieces of thread, measuring carefully along a loom, weaving. It's what he does. He is standing alone in the TARDIS, but her energy clings to him like a shroud. Her aura of indigos and scarlets and golds, of verdigris and champagne and thin rivers of silver. Martha Jones.
Her absence leaves a peculiar girl-shaped hole in the TARDIS. The console moves slowly, as though reluctant to carry on. The weight of centuries upon centuries are finally bearing down on it, causing the shadows to lengthen and deepen and the lights to flicker, pale green.
"You can't miss her," he tells the glass and metal. "It's not right," the ship creaks and moans as ancient gears shift through their million year cycles. "It's just not done. A TARDIS mooning over a human! If we were back on Gallifrey-" the words die in his throat. There is no Gallifrey to go back to and, because of certain crossings of the time line, there never was.
It's in the past and also several thousand years in the future, and on another planet, and the Doctor is sitting with Martha Jones in the rain. it falls lightly, warm and sparkling in her hair.
She watches him with eyes that are soft and brown, luminous as he tells her that his home planet is gone, that his family is gone, that all of his people, all of his civilization, has been burned from time and space and even the memory of them has been corroded into something like a myth.
She tells him it's okay, that she will stay with him. He tells her that she doesn't matter, and she takes his hand, and looks at him with her lovely, infinitely understanding eyes, and says she will stay, anyways.
"She was only a human. I really need to stop associating with humans. Always humans. They look like us, but okay, that's superficial, isn't it? I could visit with those charming cat people. Maybe one of them would want to travel with me. I like cats," he stares at the console.
"Alright, I don't. They scare me. Cats always know what you're thinking. I could build another dog," he considers this, his gaze trailing around the empty room. He remembers the warmth of her hand pressed in his, how small and fluttering, like a fallen bird. "But I'd just end up sending it to her, anyways."
He abandons her for the first time in Manhattan. It's the 1930's. He tells the Daleks they can kill him, if they want to. If they do, Martha Jones never sees her family again. All things considered, it's better than what he does to her later. Or, earlier.
In 1913, he abandons her to life as a servant, humiliated and degraded and the only person in the entire world who can protect him, and resurrect him. She saves his life in 1913. He's lost count of how many times she has done so.
"It's too late to say you're sorry," he says, kicking the metal base of the console and throwing himself into the seat, long legs splayed out in front of him. He nudges a bundle of cables with his converse. "It's too late to say you miss someone, when they've already gone. I know you're a time machine, but that's not really the point, is it? Every time I go back to her, I get it wrong. I make things worse."
It's the end of the world. The sky is full of dark clouds, only they aren't clouds, they're alien machines, millions and millions of them, raining down on the cities below bringing fire and blood. The screams of billions rise out of the ruins of a planet that had been beautiful, peaceful, hours before. The planet that had been Martha's home.
Does he have to destroy every world he touches?
He's not there with her. She watches the destruction alone, wind whipping long black pieces of hair into her eyes. He leaves her alone, again, to pick up the pieces, to put him back together again, to save him, to save everyone.
The first time she sleeps with him, is in 1599. The bed is too narrow and too hard, candlelight flickers in the cold, damp room. Outside, the blackness is more complete than in the world she's used to - a world of streetlights and headlights and the flickering glow of television sets through people's front windows.
He expects her to be afraid of the darkness, but she isn't. She's excited. She won't stop talking about how amazing it is - people's clothes, their faces, the smells, the noises. Her heart is racing.
When he finally pulls her down to their bed, enfolds her in his long arms, she's so sweet, she's so warm, she's burning with life like it's a fever and her kisses are full of love. She stirs feelings in him he thought he'd long discarded, and he runs his hands over her greedily, hungrily, he can't get enough.
He sends her to walk the Earth alone, with the skies full of fire and the human race being extinguished around her in prison camps and in the rubble.
"This is me, getting out," she tells him, she puts her hands on his chest, searching his eyes with her own.
He wants to tell her how sorry he is, only the things he's done to her, they aren't the sort of things you can say you're sorry for. She pauses, like she wants to say something more. And then she kisses him, despite it all. Her kiss is like summer rain, and candy apples and the sweet taste of true love.
And then she leaves him.
*****
When he gets Jack's call, it's almost too late, he misses her again, like the tide of eternity is pulling her away from him.
He sees her smile over her shoulder at him, all excitement and brave new worlds to explore, in his mind's eye, she is reduced to memory and dream.
"What do you mean she's dying?"
"She just got sick. One day she just wouldn't wake up. They thought it was exhaustion, at first. And I mean, Doctor, she did walk the globe. But she wasn't getting better. Then the specialists thought it was some kind of sleeping sickness, they asked me if she'd been traveling anywhere exotic. What was I supposed to tell them? She's been traveling everywhere exotic? Everywhere? She's been everywhere?"
The Doctor hears Jack's voice, crackling and distant over the mobile. He stands by the console, fingers wandering over switches and dials. He's staring into the distance, remembering.
"They tested her for everything. I mean they tested a lot, presumably she was exposed to more diseases then they know about. I got my team on it. They ran more tests. They got stumped. I don't know... Doctor, if Martha dies... Well, she can't die. Not this girl, Doctor," there's pain in his voice.
Jack is with him as the world ends, as Martha walks for them, fights their battles.
"She won't die," he says, his own voice sounds distant to him, "Jack, it's Martha she walked the Earth for a year she's not going to let some alien flu get the best of her." He is afraid his words sound uncertain. His hearts have already begun to beat faster, his mouth is dry.
Jack is eerily silent for several moments. "Look, she was lucid for a few minutes this afternoon. She wanted me to tell you that she wasn't scared. That it didn't hurt."
It's the Doctor's turn to be silent.
"But it did. And she was."
*****
When he arrives at the Royal Hope Hospital, Martha is unconscious. Her skin has taken on a sickly tinge and is clammy and cold to the touch, like frost. She is incredibly thin and tiny and still in the hospital bed, her chest barely rising with each breath. She looks fragile.
Jack is no longer there, when he arrives. Her sister, Tish and brother, Leo are there, and her mother and father. Her mother looks at him with daggers in her eyes, as though he's the one responsible for this, which he probably is. Her father just looks sad and tired. Leo and Tish act like they can't see him at all.
"He said he couldn't stand to be here," Tish says finally, still without looking at him. "Jack, I mean. He said he couldn't stand to be here with her like this and her not even knowing he was here. He cried," she pauses. Tears are sliding out the corners of her eyes. "She's going to die, isn't she?"
Death is an impermanent state. Even if Martha Jones dies here, now, she's still alive in 1599, sharing his bed, and in 1913 reminding him who he is, and thousands of years in the future, sitting with him in the rain on an alien world. He's thinking this, but he doesn't say it. He's learned something of human nature in his long life, enough to know they would not appreciate these sentiments or fluidity of time.
He's staring at Martha Jones so hard he feels his eyes begin to burn. This is not right. Everything about this makes him angry.
He's not supposed to cross his own time line. That's what he said to her, although the first time they met, the first time she saved his life, that's exactly what he did.
He's walking down a crowded street, he picks her face out of the crowd, smiling, glowing, talking animatedly on a mobile phone. He steps directly in front of her. She looks up in confusion, a curious smile on her lips.
He takes off his tie. "See?" That sets a precedent.
The Doctor leaves the narrow and crowded hospital room. He hates hospitals, anyways. He sweeps out, his coat billowing behind him. He feels Tish's teary gaze following him, but no one says a word to stop him.
Anyway, Jack was right. She isn't going to die, not Martha Jones, not today.
The TARDIS is glowing brighter when he enters. She thrums beneath his touch, the column rising and falling. He's not sure exactly what he needs to change, but he knows enough things that he has to make better, that he did wrong, that he can make right, because she's Martha Jones, and she deserves it.
The console spins, the TARDIS vanishes.
It's a sunny day in London, and Martha Jones is walking towards the Royal Hope Hospital, talking on her mobile phone...
END