With all the work I've put into my 10Rose AU version of "Blink", I thought, why not do one for Martha and the Doctor in the good ol' TV-verse?
Here's my take on what happened on the other side of the Easter egg :)
As yet un-beta'd.
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. Nor do I get anything from writing these stories - except wonderful, constructive reviews. Wink, wink; nudge, nudge ;)
Chapter 1 - Don't Leave Home Without It
Martha Jones held onto the TARDIS' console for dear life. She let out a small scream as the ship dipped in a half-second free-fall, then was thrown back as they landed.
The Doctor scrambled up from his own place on the floor to set the handbrake.
Martha was at his side by the time he'd made it around to the scanner. She couldn't make heads nor tails out of the Gallifreyan symbols, but she recognized the Doctor's furrowed brow. "What is it? What's wrong?" she asked.
"It's nothing... much. Just a timey... wimey... blip," he said lightly, gesturing for her to head towards the ramp, but his gaze kept traveling back to the scanner.
"Doesn't look like nothin'," Martha countered. "Look, Leo can wait," she offered "Why don't we go an' see what's goin' on?"
The Doctor looked at her, surprised. "Do you want to?" he asked. "I mean, you asked for some time -"
"I've had time," she assured him, smiling.
After their stint in 1913, he'd dropped her off at a Quaspentian spa for a whole week. She wasn't sure what he'd done in her absence; he'd left with the Family in chains, and came back for her looking like he should be the one getting free massages - for at least a month. They'd gone to check in on Tim Latimer and his fellow WWI veterans on Remembrance Day, after that. Then, the Doctor had offered her yet another trip somewhere relaxing; but Martha had asked to just stop and visit her own family before they did anything else.
Hence, London, complete with timey-wimey blips. "'Sides," Martha reasoned, "if there's somethin' up here in London, I can brag about savin' his skin after it's sorted," she observed.
The Doctor grinned. "I'll whip us up a tracking device."
"Perfect timing," the Doctor said thirteen minutes later when he looked up to see Martha walking back into the console room. "You can help me with this." He beckoned her over to where he was seated on the floor, and held out a magnifying glass.
"What's that?" Martha asked.
The Doctor looked at his own extended hand. "A magnifying glass," he said, slowly.
"Thanks," Martha said, taking the tool. "But I meant the mess of spare parts and gizmos in your lap."
"Ah," the Doctor corrected himself. "We've materialized about two hundred yards from the anomoly, but I didn't want to move the TARDIS any closer. This," he said, "will help us find the source, or at least pinpoint the location."
"Of the timey-wimey-ness."
"Exactly!" the Doctor said happily, patting the device. "My timey-wimey detector." He picked up the trans-phasal modulator from the floor beside him, and carefully extracted the main crystal. "But, it's not quite done," he said to Martha. "And I could really use some help with getting this positioned just right."
She knelt down next to him, and he adjusted her arm so that she was holding the magnifying glass over the detector just where he needed it. "Perfect," he said, and picked up the sonic screwdriver from where it lay on the grating on his other side. Ordinarily, he'd be doing this sort of work at his desk, but the components he needed had all been here in the console room, and it was really just this last part that needed a delicate touch...
"Almost done?" Martha asked.
"Just a little more..." he said, as he screwed the crystal into position. "Done!" he exclaimed, and snapped the cover on as he jumped to his feet. "Trade?" he asked, holding out his hand for the magnifying glass and depositing the detector in Martha's arms. He tossed the glass in under the grating, kicked a few cannibalized contraptions in with it, and closed the floor. "Come on then," he said, helping Martha up and relieving her of the device. "Let's go make this detour worthwhile, shall we?"
Martha closed the TARDIS doors while the Doctor fiddled with the timey-wimey detector. It looked to her like some sort of hand-held hoover with fairy lights and a radar screen. "So, how's that work?" She asked.
The torrent of techno-babble that came from the Doctor's mouth left her stunned. "Martha, you alright?" the Doctor asked.
"Yeah, sorry," she said, shaking her head. "All I got out of that was somethin' about particles, an' it bleeps at you when you're close." She shook her head.
"Sorry," he said, appearing genuinely contrite. He clicked the sonic screwdriver into a receptacle on the side of the timey-wimey detector, then put on some bright pink earbuds that were wired to the device.
"Nice earphones," Martha commented. "What're we lookin' for?" she asked.
"Shh," the Doctor hushed her. "Can't here the bleeps," he added, twiddling a dial.
Martha looked around while the Doctor fiddled. They were just outside of a gated estate. "Wester Drumlins," the sign read. The house looked well and truly abandoned - as did the car next to the TARDIS.
She walked over to the vehicle parked on the grass. Its engine was running, but she couldn't see anyone inside. "Hello?" she called as she approached, but as she looked in the open windows, she could tell that it really was empty. "Odd," she said to herself.
"It's definitely in there," the Doctor said, waving the detector from side to side towards the house. "Shall we?" he asked with a grin towards Martha.
"'S what we're here for," she answered, returning to the gate.
The Doctor disengaged the sonic from the detector, and opened the large padlock on the gate. Closing the gate behind them, he reinserted the sonic and led the way towards the main building.
"Whaddya think it is?" Martha asked in a hushed voice.
"There's trace artron energy," he answered just as quietly. "Could be a time-traveler, could be where someone traveled from, could be any number of things." He glanced away from the readings on the device to give Martha a wink. "Only one way to find out."
"Sounds like it's upstairs," the Doctor observed, resuming his detecting after having sonic'ed the front door. He still couldn't quite make sense out of the readings he was getting, but the bleeps were definitely closer together when he pointed the sensor up.
Their own footsteps were the only sounds in the house as they climbed the staircase. They reached the landing, and followed the detector's signals to the room at the end of the upstairs hall. The door was ajar, so he toed it open.
Inside were three, stone statues.
"Angels?" whispered Martha.
"'Weeping Angels, hiding their shame eternally'..." The quote sprang instantly to mind at the sight of the statues, but there was something else in the back of the Doctor's mind that was trying to work its way to the forefront...
"Is this it?" Martha asked, whispering. "The anomaly?"
The Doctor scanned the three - no, four, he now saw - statues with the detector. "Definitely more to you than meets the eye," he said to the stone figures.
"They look like plain, old stone," Martha observed.
"It's... weird," he admitted. "They are stone, but look at these readings. There's the artron energy, but they haven't been through the Vortex." He pulled the sonic free of the detector and scanned them with it on a different setting. He had an idea. "Hold this for a minute?" he asked Martha, handing off the detector.
"Got it," she said, taking it from him and tucking it under her arm.
He pocketed the sonic and pulled out his TARDIS key and a length of string. He quickly tied the key onto a loop which he then held out in front of him on the tip of a pencil. "Not nearly as impressive, but let's see what it does," he told her, extending the pencil towards one of the statues.
The key twitched.
Martha let out a small gasp, and grabbed onto the sleeve of his trenchcoat "So, not just stone," she whispered.
The Doctor looked closely at the Angel in front of him. "Have we met?" he asked, trying to sort through his memory. "Because you seem awfully fam-" Ah.
"Doctor?" Martha asked as he began backing them out of the room.
"Just keep away from them, Martha." He had seen the statues before. Just for a moment, in a photograph in an envelope that he'd stashed away without investigating. "Sally Sparrow," he said. "That's how I know you. Nineteen Six-"
"-Ty Nine."
In a flash, the statues had vanished, together with the old house; and had been replaced by a London street complete with a double-decker bus heading straight towards the Martha and the Doctor.
The Doctor could tell Martha was still dazed by their sudden transportation, but thanks to his faster recovery he was able to move her quickly and safely to the pavement.
As the bus rolled by, the Doctor looked back at the crunching, snapping sound coming from beneath its tires.
"What was that?" Martha asked groggily.
"My timey-wimey detector!" he answered, realizing Martha must have dropped it in the street. He quickly seated her on a nearby bench and darted in after the bus to try and salvage some of the pieces, ignoring the honks of protest from the oncoming cars.
"Doctor, what just happened?" Martha asked as he stepped back out of the street with a woefully small percentage of the device in his hands.
Just as he was about to answer, the Doctor looked at the pencil in his hand. He shifted the wreckage of the detector into one arm while he patted down his pockets. "My key," he said distractedly. "Where's my TARDIS key?" he asked, looking around on the pavement. "In the street?" He didn't see it there, either.
"Doctor?" Martha asked again.
"No. Please, don't let them have it," he said, hoping against hope.
"What's goin' on, Doctor?" Martha asked, calling him back to himself.
The full weight of their dilemma settled in the pit of the Doctor's stomach as he answered lightly, "A bit of time travel without a capsule."
"Without a capsule," Martha repeated. "Without... what? Without the TARDIS?"
He nodded. Without the TARDIS, and he may have just handed the Angels the means to take the TARDIS for their own.
"How? Where is it?" Martha asked. "I mean, when are we? Looks like London, but we've gone back, right?" she asked, looking around.
"It was the Angels, whatever they are," he told her. He didn't need the sixties-era clothing on the passersby or the old style double-decker to know exactly what year it was. "And we're in 1969."
To be continued...