Hello again! Something new has arisen, and I'm kind of excited about it! But as it turns out, it is different from some of my previous work, so here are a couple of thoughts/warnings: a) The chapter-lengths are inconsistent, and generally a lot shorter than I normally like. This will probably change in the second half of the story, but who knows? b) Unfortunately neither the Doctor nor Martha are entirely likeable in this piece. Hopefully their motivation is clear, if not entirely ethical, and/or will become clear as the story comes to a climax!
This first chapter is more of a prologue, planting the seeds for what will begin to happen after this point. As such, I can't say that it's a true cliffhanger...
As always, please leave comments and I really hope you enjoy this!
1 (Prologue)
She sat thinking, trying to wrap her mind around the last few hours, but she felt she was in a vacuum, grasping at nothing. This life, this mad old life, travelling with the Doctor - sometimes it could do this to her. Sometimes she really wondered what it was all for, and why she should bother to cling to anything when it would just be taken away or die, or try to dump her back at her flat with no warning at all. Part of this sense of futility, she was used to.
But the difference today was: the Doctor was sitting right next to her, also emptily trying to make sense of it. The barrenness was all-consuming today. And it wasn't really barrenness; it was a harrowing grief that would not leave them alone even after the threat had gone, a sensation that something malevolent had got inside them.
For the Doctor, that was almost literally true. He had been possessed by a sun, and seen the despair within. He had looked into it, and it had crept inside his body and brain. When it left him, it seemed to sap his energy, pull a little of his strength and Doctor-ness with it. The effects were temporary, but today, that knowledge was of no help.
For Martha's part, the experience of seeing the Doctor so back-to-the-wall frightened was something she was likely to have nightmares about for weeks to come. Not to mention, the experience of drifting toward an angry sun in an unprotected escape pod with a stranger. She and the Doctor had both come within a hair's breadth of being swallowed up, incinerated by a planet-sized churning mass of gas and fire. Life snuffed out in the blink of an eye.
Granted, it wasn't the first near-miss they'd had... this was their life. They had just come off the debacle with Richard Lazarus, and Martha had nearly fallen from the bell tower onto the stone floor of Southwark Cathedral. The Doctor had been nearly decapitated by the pincers of a crustaceous monster that had once been human.
Before that, they had been nearly exterminated by Daleks, electrocuted by a gammon ray, eaten by Macra, swallowed up by the howling wilderness of the Carrionites and suffocated to death on the moon.
But something about the experience on the Pentallian felt different. Was it the scale of it, the utter largeness of an angry, living sun? The sheer arrogance shown by the humans? Was it the violent and systematic killing of almost everyone on-board? Was it the fact that it had invaded the Doctor himself, and come to roost so close to home?
"You okay?" he asked flatly.
He sat beside her on the sofa with an uneaten quarter of a sandwich in his hand. He looked at her sideways, almost without having to turn his head. Martha had leaned forward a few minutes before to pick up a part of the sandwich from the plate on the coffee table, and had frozen there, with her knuckles against the porcelain.
"Oh," she croaked, shaking off the daze. "Yeah. You?"
"Mm," he grunted, and finally bit into the sandwich. "Is there anything you'd like to talk about?"
He had never asked her this question before.
"No, I'm just tired," she answered, though it wasn't the truth. She had a million questions, but she didn't know where to start.
"You sure?" he asked.
She closed her eyes. There were places she didn't want to go, emotionally, with the Doctor, not with the way things were. Additionally, there were places where her mind just never wanted to go. But she had learned in her travels through life that nothing painful ever just faded away when ignored, so she took a deep breath and spoke.
"What would have happened to me and Riley in that pod, if you hadn't got us back?"
He frowned. "How do you mean?"
"I mean, I know we would have died. But, would the pod have melted away, leaving us to fall into the sun? Or, would the whole thing have been swallowed up, and burned from the outside in?"
"That's pretty morbid, Martha."
"I know," she shrugged. "I'm just trying to understand. I keep picturing..."
"You and Riley would have been, for lack of a better word, cooked first. You would have been dead before the sun touched the pod. Then, as the flames actually licked at the unit's surface, it would have taken about five seconds for the whole thing to become ash - the pod, and you and Riley."
She thought about this. As horrible as it all sounded, it helped somehow, to know.
"Then, what would you have done?" She wasn't sure she wanted the answer.
"I probably would have cooked as well, in a manner of speaking," he told her, now taking a bite of his sandwich at last. "There would have been no-one to blast me with cold. All the other crew members were busy doing other things."
This had been the most disturbing image of all - the Doctor in the ice chamber, screaming in pain from the blast. He had had to keep his eyes shut, had had to cling to her, desperate, confessing in the lowest moment that he was so scared. She felt the real pressure of being his permanent companion, and realised there was no turning back now.
"Doctor, when you were in that chamber, you were trying to tell me something," she said. Like fingers itching to pick at a scab, her mind could not stop reliving those moments.
"Yeah," he said, staring at the floor.
"I interrupted you. I'm sorry I did that. You were saying something about when you're about to die, and I wouldn't let you finish because I couldn't bear the thought of..." she stopped short.
"It's okay, it doesn't matter now."
"Now, come on, Doctor," she coaxed. "You made me say my piece. Say yours."
He sighed. "It's no big deal, Martha. I was just going to tell you that there's this thing that happens when I'm about to die. Moments before death, my body transforms itself. I regenerate. I can cheat death, live on a little while longer." He took a big bite of sandwich and chewed heartily, blocking up any further commentary.
Her jaw dropped. "How exactly is that no big deal?"
"Well, sorry, it's no big deal to me," he said through a barrier of ham and Swiss. "It's happened nine times already. It's a fact of who I am, a fact of being a Time Lord. I just wanted you to be aware of it, so if I died and came back as a new man, you wouldn't try to murder me because you didn't understand who I was."
"A new man?" she asked, her voice rising.
"Yeah. I change. My body, my personality - everything except my memories. And some core beliefs."
"And this has happened before?"
"Yes. Nine times. You are currently sitting beside my tenth body."
"What? And you always look different?"
"Yep. Vastly different looks, vastly different voice."
"Oh my God! I had no idea!"
"Course not. How could you?"
"And your memories remain, so you'd still know me?"
"Yep. I've regenerated most times right in front of my friends and companions, and for me, it's a blip. I close my eyes, and open them, and the same people are still there and I can usually pick up where I left off. But for them, it's much more traumatic. There's a new bloke to get used to."
"Is that why you told Richard Lazarus you'd had experience with that type of transformation?
"Yep. His cells regenerated almost in the same way mine do," he said. "Just took a big milkshake maker to do it. A lot more firepower to do a lot less. A lot more."
"So when we were in Lazarus' chamber and it was trying to shake us to death, did you feel anything? Anything familiar?"
"Not really," he said. "But I was busy trying to find a way out of there. Any changes would have been subtle, and I didn't have time for subtle."
She contemplated again. "A completely new guy?"
"Yes, Martha," he said with a smile. Her incredulity was making him laugh, and also feel she was being a bit obtuse, all at the same time.
"So, how long have you been... ten?"
"I don't know - I've lost perspective. The TARDIS would know. A few years, maybe. I changed while Rose was with me. When I met her, I was a bit taller, a bit broader, and rougher. And I was only in that body for a short time. Before that, I was rather non-descript, and it suited me fine, but that body died in the Time War. I have no say in who or what I am the next time round, it's just a spontaneous shifting of cells, like a localised evolution in the space of thirty seconds."
Oddly, these heavy revelations about the nature of the Doctor's existence had lightened the mood. Martha no longer felt the weight of the Pentallian, she felt a storm of curiosity about the Doctor's previous bodies, voices and personalities.
"Blimey! Do you have photos or anything of your previous selves?"
"The Time Lords were not long in remembrances, at least not of that sort. And I don't exactly live the sort of life that allows me to stop and pose for a photo op."
"Maybe we ought to start!"
"What, like, hey, there's the Raining Starfire of Floccomatar, and it's about to destroy the planet, but before we help, let's say cheese!"
"Well, if you're going to be all reasonable and use real-life examples... blimey, what a buzzkill you are."