Court Martial
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Doctor Who
Copyright: BBC
As soon as the sound of the departing TARDIS faded from the back yard of the house on Paternoster Row, Strax turned to his comrades and cleared his throat with the air of a man about to make an announcement. Vastra sighed. She had just come from the tomb of the Doctor, watched her wife die before her eyes and come back – twice – and whatever the little Sontaran was about to say, he had better make it quick.
"All right, Strax, what's the matter?"
"Madam," he declared, "I confess myself guilty of high treason against a superior officer. I attacked you without provocation and I submit to your judgment."
He turned his back on her and knelt down on the cobblestones, giving her an unobstructed aim at the place where, if he had been wearing armor, his probic vent would have been.
Vastra's fingers itched; the Silurian warrior in her was almost tempted to draw her pistol and give him what he asked for, especially since the hateful names he had called her during that twisted timeline – vile reptile, abomination, impure – still burned under her scales. The part that had spent too much time with mammals, however, resisted – and Jenny's reaction sealed her choice.
"Don't be silly, Strax," the maid exclaimed warmly. "Get up from there, you'll ruin your trousers!"
She let go of Vastra's arm and circled around Strax to help him up, but he refused to budge and swatted her away.
"Do not interfere, Flint," he snapped. "This is the only honorable course of action."
"You're not actually going to it, are you, ma'am?" Jenny's wide brown eyes appealed to Vastra for mercy. "He couldn't help himself!"
"Of course he couldn't," Vastra agreed, following Jenny so she could meet her stubborn comrade's eyes. "Strax, do be reasonable. You were caught in the ripples of a timeline where you'd never met us, and therefore could not possibly have known me as your superior officer. As far as you were concerned, you were facing an enemy species. You only did what every self-respecting Sontaran is trained to do."
Strax looked up, and there was something in his narrow black eyes she had never seen before. Jenny drew in a short, hissing breath, the same sound she had once made at the sight of a dead sparrow on the windowsill.
"That, madam, is the problem," said Strax, in a quieter voice than they had ever heard him use. "I have never been a self-respecting Sontaran."
"What do you mean?" asked Jenny, reaching out a hand and drawing it back in case another display of sympathy might offend him.
"Among my own people, I was a nurse," he went on, still subdued. "A shameful position, but at least I knew the rules. This time, this planet, everything - " He gestured abruptly with both hands, referring to his butler's uniform, the two women in front of him, Paternoster Row and London in general. " – confuses me, and makes me act like the incompetent fool my instructors always said I was!" He raised his voice to its familiar pitch of aggression. "Look at me – I'm a walking contradiction. The two of you belong to inferior species, and yet my loyalty is yours. I feel remorse for trying to kill you. I am not Sontaran, I am not human, I don't know what I am! What is there left for me but an honorable death?"
He glared up at them, shame and fury and the loneliness of the exile in every line of his round brown face. In the silence that fell, Vastra caught herself making Jenny's sound of pity. She thought of her own mother and sisters, whom she had not seen since before being frozen with her fellow soldiers beneath the earth's surface. How disgusted they would be if they could see her now.
"Well then," she said, taking out her pistol and aiming it squarely between Strax's eyes, "If you insist."
"Vastra, no!" Jenny exclaimed, for once too horrified to be polite.
"Thank you," said Strax, closing his eyes.
"And when I'm finished," Vastra added, smiling wryly, "I'll just have to do myself in as well. A Silurian who shares her bed with a human? Tch, tch. It simply isn't done."
Jenny's smile of relief was quickly overtaken by a glare.
"I do not comprehend your meaning, madam," said Strax, squinting up at her in confusion.
"She's trying to be funny," Jenny stage-whispered, elbowing her mistress in the side. "And it's not working."
Vastra stepped forward, used all her considerable strength to haul the still-kneeling Strax to his feet, and dusted the snowflakes off his coat with more care than was strictly necessary.
"We are all walking contradictions," she said. "Look around you. Think of the Doctor, who destroyed his own species for the good of the universe, or Clara, an ordinary girl who did such an extraordinary thing tonight. Living is complicated, my friend, so much more complicated than dying – which means it takes a warrior's spirit to face it. Are you a warrior, or are you not?"
Strax drew himself up to stand at attention, saluted Vastra by thumping his chest with a closed fist, and bowed.
"Commander Strax of the Sontaran - " He checked himself. " – the British Empire, at your service!"
Vastra solemnly returned his salute. Jenny, unable to resist her human emotions any longer, ruined the dignity of the moment by throwing her arms around them both.
"Oh, come here, you daft potato!" She rubbed the top of Strax's head with her knuckles, as if he were her son or younger brother. "As if you didn't know how lost we'd be without you."
"I object," he grumbled, his voice muffled by several layers of fabric. "Sontarans do not engage in displays of affection."
"Neither do Silurians with mammals," Vastra retorted, "Or ladies with their maids. Where's the fun in being conventional?" She kissed Jenny on the cheek, making her giggle, before they stepped apart.
"Now if you don't mind, Commander," said Vastra, "I need to make sure my wife is quite recovered."
She exchanged a tender look with Jenny over Strax's head.
"You wish to mate with her." Strax rolled his eyes at their predictability. "Of course."
As the couple walked ahead of him into the house, arms linked, he called after them with what, by his standards, passed for humor: "How many times must I remind you? Keep the curtains closed!"