Hi there! It's been a year since I've posted here, but finally the plot bunnies returned to their nest. I love writing meaningful sci-fi smut, the challenge, of course, is finding REASONS for two characters to shag, when they wouldn't normally. And as a wise woman once said, "Accidentally inhaling magical sex dust doesn't count." So I do try not to go down that road... and that's where the plot bunnies are handy!

This is a three-part story (I believe, anyway) and it's a little bizarre, as are most of my stories. There is a bit of science fiction here, but as usual, it exists to support the objective of eventually getting our heroes into the sack together. And THAT, my friends, is a noble cause! ;-)

I must include a disclaimer: I cherry-picked what I liked from the lore of the Eye of Harmony as it suited me. I didn't make up anything, though. In my research I found that the fan theory that the Eye inside the Doctor's TARDIS is a remote link to the main Eye has become a piece of "fanon," accepted, apparently, by the BBC. Which is extremely convenient for me.

I think you will find that this first chapter is intriguing as well as frustrating, and as you reach the end you may see where it is headed!

Hope you enjoy... please leave a review!

I

Bong! Bong!

Something that sounded like a gigantic church bell jostled Martha Jones out of her sleep.

"What the hell?" she croaked, sitting up, looking around, trying to get her bearings. "Did the Doctor land us in the middle of The Hunchback of Notre Dame?"

Bong! Bong! she heard again.

She waited another few seconds, and then heard the sound a third time. She wondered whether she should get out of bed to investigate, or just wait for it to stop, and ask questions later. She knew, in her grogginess, what she wanted to do, but…

Just then, she heard the shuffle of Time Lord feet passing by her bedroom door, out in the hall. They were moving fast, as if running at full-pelt.

That made her decision for her. She stood up and shook off the sleep. She didn't even bother to put on a pair of shorts or flip-flops before leaping for the bedroom door in her oversized light blue night shirt.

She had heard the footsteps disappear down the hall to her left, so she ran, also at more or less full-pelt, in that direction. She listened for more sounds of running, but she could only hear her own bare feet slapping on the hard floor now. Though, she did find that the sound of the church bell became louder as she ran. She reckoned she was getting close to the source.

She found herself in a rotunda-like space, and stopped short. There were five tributaries from the main hallway here, and every branch looked the same. She reckoned she'd better bloody well know what she was doing now, or she'd have the potential to get lost in the TARDIS forever.

"Doctor?" she called out.

To her surprise, he answered straight away. "In here," he called out.

The voice was coming from the corridor to her right, so she followed it, and soon discovered a wide opening that led into a singular space for the TARDIS' interior.

The room was round and large, and the ceiling, walls and floor were panelled with highly polished, light-coloured wood. About five feet from the wall, almost all the way around, there was a series of white upside-down V's, each about eight feet tall. It gave the effect of a very large zigzag pattern. Intermittently along the inside of the V circle, there were potted plants – each delicate, lacy-looking, lightly-coloured and growing about as tall as Martha herself. There were also three simple benches, equidistant from one another, each white, rectangular, no detail.

In the middle of the room, there was a round, elevated platform, about two-and-a-half feet above the floor. Its circle was lined with a row of the same lacy plant that was in the pots. Except, one area remained open, and that was where the Doctor stood, in his pyjamas and an untied pair of Converse having been hastily donned. He was gazing into the middle of the circle.

"What is this place?" she asked, wistfully gazing round.

"The Cloister Room," he said, just before the bong, bong sounded again. Inside the room, it was almost deafening.

"What's that bell?" she shouted, in the short interval before the next bong.

"That's the Cloister Bell," he answered calmly. "It signals me when the TARDIS is in distress."

"Where is it?" she asked.

Bong! Bong!

"That's a good question. Hard to explain. It's in the consciousness of the TARDIS, which itself is rooted, in a way, in this room. That's why it's so loud here."

He still stared into the middle of the circle of plants. It seemed to her he had not blinked.

Bong! Bong!

"What are you looking at?" she asked him softly, coming up closely behind him.

"Come look," he said, and he bent a bit to offer his hand.

He helped her up onto the platform, and she peered into the circle, as the cloister bell continued to alert them every twenty seconds or so. It was what looked like roughly one-third of a section of something globular. If she could see the entire sphere, she estimated that it would fill up her entire flat in London. What she could see of it was entirely covered in the same wood panelling as the rest of the room, and also, elaborate carvings of Gallifreyan language. There seemed to be a slit in the middle, open about six inches. Inside, there was only blackness.

"It's beautiful," she told him. "What is it?"

"It's called the Eye of Harmony," the Doctor said. "Or rather, an Eye of Harmony. It propels the TARDIS. It, along with the Vortex, is a primary source of the TARDIS' power."

"Oh. And… it's in distress?"

He nodded subtly.

"What's wrong with it?" she asked.

"For a start, it's not supposed to be open," he said. "It's only been open when it's been tampered-with."

"It's been tampered-with?"

"I don't think so, not this time. But it's still not exactly glad tidings. As long as the Eye is closed, it is looking into itself, concentrating on its own energy. When the eye is open, energy escapes and causes space-time distortion."

"Oh. That sounds… unpleasant."

"Well, it won't actually happen until the Eye has been fully open for a couple of days. And it'll take a while for it to open fully."

"How long is a while?"

He shrugged. "Four, maybe five days at most."

"Okay, so let's work out how to close it."

"That's just it – I have no idea how."

"Why not? That's not like you."

"Not like me, not to have a plan?" he chuckled. "Ah, Martha."

"It's your TARDIS, and you don't know how to fix it! That is not like you."

"Because the original Eye of Harmony was…" he gulped. "On Gallifrey. This Eye is a remote link with channelled energy from the original Eye, and powered the TARDIS… wirelessly, if you will. Manipulating this eye used to depend upon that link, upon going to the source."

"I see," she said sadly, and she placed a consoling hand on his shoulder.

"And given that the planet is destroyed, there is no way to link up this Eye in order to even diagnose the problem," he said, pushing his hand through his more-than-usually mussed hair. "Although, if I had to guess…" He sighed heavily, and turned away from the Eye, jumping off the platform.

"If you had to guess?" she coaxed, jumping down herself.

They both noticed, though did not mention, that the cloister bell had gone silent now.

He headed for the exit. "If I had to guess, I'd say that the Eye is simply running low on its power stores. The remote link was broken a while back… I guess I should've realised we've been running on fumes."

"Well, come on, Doctor," she said, following him out of the Cloister Room and back down the hall. "There's got to be something you can do. I mean, what's the alternative? Let the TARDIS power down forever and you get a flat and a job?"

"Yeah, I know," he grumbled.

"I think I know what you'll say, but… well, I suppose it's already occurred to you just to go back in time to a point when your planet was still safe, and link up with the original Eye."

"It doesn't work like that, Martha," he told her. "Most of Gallifrey, throughout all of time, became time-locked when the planet fell. A Time Lord trick. It's better that way. I'll tell you, though, it's good for the universe in the long-run, but a damn frustrating little fail-safe."

"So, in this whole big universe, with all of time at your fingertips, there isn't someone, somewhere, with the resources you need? A power source that can mimic the original Eye? A wise man who knows how to establish an artificial link? Whatever that means… I don't know."

He stopped short and faced her. "You know, you're kind of brilliant."

He was quite serious, and the tone disarmed her.

"Erm, thanks."

"You just gave me an idea. Go back to bed, we'll go looking for a solution tomorrow."

"Okay,'' she said, uneasily. "Good night."

And they went their separate ways for another few hours' rest.

When she didn't find him in the console room the following morning, she went straight to the Cloister Room. The Doctor was sitting on the platform, staring into the black hole in the middle of the Eye of Harmony, once more. Martha noticed that the opening seemed to have got a bit wider during the night.

"I don't suppose it's fixed, and you're just sitting here, resting on your laurels?" she asked, by way of hello.

"No such luck, I'm afraid. But I think I do have a way to fix it."

"Do tell," she encouraged, sitting down, cross-legged, beside him.

"There's a civilization called the Rambaja. They're a smallish population in an isolated region of a largeish planet. They have the power to create these monstrously effective… well, for lack of a better phrase, psychic links. And they owe me a favour."

"Well, that's a good start. Solid psychic links!"

"Yeah, but it's not what you think. I'm wondering if they could put out feelers across the universe for, like you said, a mimicking power source. I don't want them to try and link us to Gallifrey – that would be unbelievably dangerous…"

"You just want them to help us do research," she said with a smile.

"Yeah," he confirmed. "Because we not only need to find a power source that is similar to the one on Gallifrey, but we need to find one large enough to give us a boost, and maybe not just this once. A source that is near-infinite, if possible. We also need to find one that does not have beings dependent upon it. I won't have life in the universe depleted in any way, or thrown into chaos, because of it."

"Fair enough."

"And if we tried to find it ourselves, it would take… well, longer than the six day maximum that we have, before the Eye remains open for too long and time space begin to distort."

"What does that mean – distort?"

He hemmed and hawed a bit, cocked his head back and forth a few times, shrugged his shoulders, with a long expression of, "Welllllll…" Then he said. "Basically, time would essentially bend, in any place or time where this TARDIS has been. One instance of its arrival somewhere will try to meet up with another instance of its arrival, and if it can't find something local, it will find something across galaxies. Moments and places will be squished together, seemingly at random. And in locales where the TARDIS has landed more than once, like in front of your flat, or in the estate where Rose used to live, those moments will reach backwards and forwards to meet one another, and there will essentially be a zigzag of time energy that cannot be broken, or a swirling time loop into which a passer-by could be sucked. But given that the biggest danger exists in parts of the universe where the TARDIS has flown in space, and that it could cause a crease that would make all of existence fold in on itself, I'd say that the time loop thing in various London neighbourhoods is a fairly low-toll risk."

Sge took a breath and sighed. "So, basically, life as we know it… ends."

"Yeah."

"Well, we have to ask the Rambaja for help, then. Looks like we are choiceless."

"Yeah."

The infirm TARDIS landed upon a beach, stretching left and right with perfect, soft sand as far as the eye could see.

In front of them, however, there was clearly a kind of city behind walls. Immediately before them, they spied three pyramids, one prominently in front, the other two slightly behind on either side. Torches burned, lighting the vicinity, as night was falling.

The Doctor unconsciously took Martha's hand and walked forward. "Come on," he whispered.

And as it did whenever he touched her, her heart began to beat a bit faster, and her mind began to race. Was it a good thing that he was so comfortable just seizing her hand, or was it another sign that she would only ever be his very good friend? Was he doing it for comfort? And if so, whose? Camaraderie? Solidarity? Or, dare she wonder, just affection? Tired as she was of this train of thought, she could not turn it off.

She felt a little frisson shoot through her whole body, followed by a rush of heat. Whatever the surroundings, whatever the danger, if he took her hand as he did now, or pulled her close, hugged her, looked at her with admiration, her attention became focused on him. Sometimes, she rather enjoyed the crush she had on him, because she enjoyed thinking about him and obsessing, in idle moments, over his eyes and his movements, his lips and hair and the mightiest thing of all: his brain. But other times, she understood just why it's called a crush. Considering what it occasionally (increasingly frequently) did to her heart, it was an apt name.

Because he never seemed to look at her twice – at least not in the way she would like. As far as she knew, he thought she was brave, intelligent and athletic, but had never given a second thought to her looks, her sweeter side (or for that matter, her naughtier side), or her capacity for love.

And yet, she trusted him completely. They were best mates, relied on each other, and were, in most ways, simpatico.

And so, she went with him to the foot of a steep staircase that seemed to lead nowhere. When they reached the top, Martha saw where it led: to a pond.

A glassy, silver, round body of water separated them from the first pyramid, and the platform in front of it – almost a balcony.

On either side of the pond was a walkway that led to each of the side pyramids. She observed that there was a single door that seemed to lead into each of the triangular structures, and a symbol above each door.

"This is mad," she exclaimed, quietly. "That staircase is terrifying."

"Yeah, a bit."

"What do those symbols mean?"

"The one on the left is the symbol for male. The one on the right is female. The one in the middle is unity."

"That's nice. What do we do now, just stand here?"

And that's when a woman appeared on the platform across from them. She stood at the front of it, and she had a kind smile. She had skin the colour of chocolate, and a rounded body. She was wearing brightly-coloured robes and a headdress that let Martha know very clearly, she was a queen or a shaman (shawoman?)… someone powerful and in-charge.

"Doctor," the woman said with a voice that seemed to float like a feather upon the air. "It is you, isn't it?"

"It is," he said. "Sorry about the face… couldn't be helped."

"That's all right," she said. She gestured into the sand lot behind them. "I recognise your TARDIS well enough. How are you?"

"Well, actually, the TARDIS is the reason why we're here."

"First things first. Who is your Companion?" asked the woman.

"Oh! This is Martha Jones. Martha, this is Wissance, the current Queen of the Rambaja, if I'm not mistaken."

"Right you are, Doctor," said the Queen. "It's nice to meet you, Martha."

"Last time I was here, Wissance was serving on the Council of Egress," he said. "Keeping tabs on who left the city, and whether they went to safety."

"I was elected Queen a few years back," she explained. "After the fall of Queen Gessa, and her power-hungry minions."

The Doctor sucked in air through his teeth and winced. "Ooh, I heard about that. Ugly business, that."

"So," said the Queen with a big smile. "You say that your TARDIS is the reason you've come?"

"Yes," he said, and then proceeded to recount the trouble he was having with the Eye of Harmony, and why he couldn't just fix it himself.

"I see, that is indeed a very perplexing problem. So you've come to us for...?"

"I was hoping you could do a search for me," he explained. "Maybe attempt to locate a mimicking power source that is not only potent, but available for the taking."

"Oh, well, that's quite a tall order," she told him. "That will take all four of our councils, and then some."

"Yeah, well, that's not the worst bit," he told her. "If we don't get it repaired, it could destroy the universe."

"Oh," Wissance said flatly. Her features went expressionless. "Please tell me that is the worst bit."

"Depends how you choose to look at it," he said. "The last piece of the puzzle is this: we only have six days. Well, let's call it five, just to be safe."

Wissance laughed. "Well, Doctor! When we owe you a favour, we really owe you, don't we?"

"Sorry," he said sheepishly. "I wouldn't ask, except…"

"I understand," she said, consolingly. "I think that what you're asking can be done, it will just take some… we'll call it, personnel management. That's all."

"So you'll try?"

"Yes, we'll try," she granted. "Come inside the city, and we will begin preparing the necessary resources."

"Brilliant," he exclaimed. "Thank you."

"You and Martha will just have to make a formal greeting, and then you can be admitted into our city."

"Oh, right. The formal greeting," the Doctor said, sounding suddenly both crestfallen and nervous. "Forgot about that bit."

"What? What's that tone for? What's the formal greeting?" Martha wondered.

As an answer, two more people appeared then, through the doors of the side pyramids. It was a woman on the left, who made her way toward them, across her own platform, and then along the walkway leading to where the Doctor and Martha now stood.

Martha watched her. Her skin tone was akin to Wissance's, but she was taller, more lean and lithe, and had the air, frankly, of a runway model. Her hair hung black and loose down her back, and her bright purple and green garb covered only her breasts and nether regions. Her lips were the colour of red wine, her eyes were light brown, almond-shaped and mysterious, and Martha could find absolutely no outward flaws.

She was vaguely aware that someone was headed across the walkway on the right as well, and when she turned to look, a very beautiful man stood there within arm's reach of her, with a gentle smile. By contrast, he was light-skinned (though somewhat tanned from the sun), well-muscled, and wore only what amounted to a loin cloth. His hair was sandy blond and just long enough to cover part of his ears on the sides, and to hang charmingly in his eyes slightly, in the front.

"Doctor, you will copulate with Nedea. Martha, you will copulate with Elbon. We'll see you on the other side," Queen Wissance announced, and with that, she turned away. She made to walk back through the doorway into the middle pyramid, as though this sort of thing happened every day.

The man whose name seemed to be Elbon took Martha's right hand, while the Doctor still held her left. The blond man tugged, and she stumbled toward him, losing contact with her Time Lord friend.

"No!" Martha protested. "I'm not doing this. Are you mad?" She yanked her hand away from him and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Yeah, I thought this might happen." the Doctor, who was not following Nedea, though she was pulling, commented.

Everyone stopped. The Queen turned to face her. "But this is the formal greeting: copulation with our chosen surrogates."

"That's just… that's…"

"Careful, Martha, this is their religion," the Doctor warned.

"Sorry," she said. "I mean no disrespect. But… just no."

The Queen attempted to lull her. "Martha, it has nothing to do with love or relationships or sexuality. It has to do with unity and submission to our deities. It is a ceremonial act. Nedea has been chosen from our populace to be imbued with the essence of our Great Goddess, and Elbon has been chosen to be imbued with the essence of our Great God. If you'd prefer, you can be with Nedea, and if the Doctor doesn't mind…"

"No, that's not the problem," Martha said.

"No-one gets into our city without a formal greeting," the Queen told her. Martha had to give her credit for being just really, really nice.

"Then, I'm not coming into the city," Martha said with finality.

"Just give us a mo'," the Doctor said to Wissance. He extricated himself from Nedea and walked toward Martha.

When he was in whisper-range, she asked, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I forgot!" he insisted. "It's been about five, maybe six, hundred years since I've been here. I've had a thing or two to think about since then! And truth be told, I thought they might make an exception because we came in together. Martha…"

"Listen, don't even try to talk me into this, Doctor. I am not copulating with someone just to gain entry into a city. I don't care if…"

"Shh," he scolded. "I'm not going to try and talk you into it. If you don't want to do it, then don't."

"Oh. Thanks."

"But we don't have much time, Martha, and these people probably have what we need."

"So what do you suggest?"

"I don't know," he said. "But I'm not going in without you, so if there's a way around it, then we'll have to find it soon."