Ordinary World. Extraordinary Girl (1/2)

Martha Jones knelt before The Master on the flight deck of the Valiant. Her heart raced in time with the countdown that would reveal a plan hatched a year ago on that very bridge.

"Such a disappointment, this one…" The Master gloated. Martha allowed him his insult. She had a year to come to terms with her feelings for The Doctor and the seemingly unfair comparisons to her predecessor, Rose Tyler, lost forever to a parallel dimension and missed by both the Doctor and Jack. He prattled on, to a captive global audience and mid flow, Martha laughed. The Master hadn't a clue! Traipsing the world looking for the only weapon in existence that could kill him? Her reaction caused him to stop. "It doesn't matter. I've got her exactly where I want her."

Other way around, pal! Martha thought. She took her time explaining the story, ever mindful of the countdown as she tried to keep the Master distracted until Zero. "I told them if everyone thinks of one specific word at one time… Right across the world, one word… one thought at just the right moment."

Instead of puzzlement, the Master smiled. "My Archangel network? A telepathic field." Martha's face dropped. He wasn't supposed to know. How could he have known? "Everyone across the world thinking the same thing at the same time." He had that condescending tone in his voice and a gloating grin on his face as the countdown hit single digits. "And that one word? Master." Martha stood, horrified. The countdown hit Zero and the Master started to glow with unlimited power generated by billions of people thinking and chanting his name.

"No… This is wrong. It's not supposed to be like this!" Martha screamed at him.

The Master waved a hand around the room. First, Martha's family were turned to burning ash, then Jack. The Doctor, tiny and Yoda-like in his cage wasn't spared the carnage. Everyone around her obliterated by a manically laughing monster… And then The Master turned his gaze to Martha. "Thank you." He grinned at her. "First you freed me, Martha Jones, then you made me a God." His hand reached out and stroked her cheek, the skin searing red hot before turning charcoal black.

She gasped as the burning spread down her neck, her torso, her arms. Watching flesh turning to ash…

"No." Martha jerked awake. Not quite 'sitting up, screaming from a nightmare' beloved of horror films… nothing quite so dramatic. Her heart continued to race as a trembling hand reached out to check the time on her alarm clock. 3.15am. Two straight hours without waking up, which was an improvement. It hand been close to 18 months since Martha Jones had enjoyed a full night's sleep. To all but a handful of people, it was seen as 6 months because 12 of them no longer existed. A year of horror and hardship obliterated from the minds of the populace when the Paradox righted itself. Blissful ignorance Martha thought and for a moment, she hated ever single one of them because they lived free of the memories that plagued her dreams.

When everything had returned to "normal", Martha threw herself into her studies. Three months of hard graft to take her mind of, well, everything that wasn't her studies. She passed, of course. Not as high a mark as she would have liked, but under the circumstances, it was impressive. The job offer from Jack to work with Torchwood in Cardiff followed within a matter of days and Martha had turned it down. It was too far away from her family. Francine argued that if she was still travelling with the Doctor, she'd be even further away.

"Yes," Martha said with a strained tone. "but if I was needed here, I could be back within minutes from the TARDIS. Virgin Rail might take a bit longer."

"Martha, it's not that we don't need you." Francine smoothed a stray hair from Martha's face. "But you need to leave for your own sake. You won't talk to us about what happened to you and you need to stop seeing us as your problem to fix and go back to seeing us as your annoying, overbearing family that you can't wait to be rid of once you've graduated." She finally raised a smile from her middle child. "You've graduated, Martha. You're a doctor with a great job offer. Now please be a good girl and run away from home!"

It hadn't taken long for Martha to find her place in Torchwood. The team, dysfunctional as they were, accepted her into their numbers and she enjoyed the work… She especially enjoyed working with Jack, who had been so helpful in getting her settled with her meagre personal possessions in a beautiful apartment that came with the job. There were a few items that hadn't been completely destroyed in the explosion at her old flat and pride of place in her new home was a rescued metal picture frame. Originally it was pretty and decorative with silver coils made to look like vines weaving around a trellis. But now, the bottom left-hand corner was mangled and discoloured after melting. New glass had been put in, and the family photo, taken when Martha was 7, was copied again from the original. It couldn't have cost more than £20 and Jack even offered to replace it as a housewarming gift, but Martha wouldn't hear of it. It was tarnished and damaged, but still standing… a bit like Martha herself. Instead, he opened a bottle of really good red wine and shared it with her. They'd had an easy start to their friendship on Malcassairo and when it all went to hell in a hand basket, he had been an ally, a trusted confidante. Jack had spent a year with her family and kept them going and for that, she would be eternally grateful. It wasn't that she was in love with him, or anything like that, but she did enjoy a bit of a flirt with him now and again. It seemed to be Jack's modus operandi. Martha suspected it was his coping mechanism. It had her coping mechanism of "ignore it and hope it goes away" beat hands down… but it couldn't be ignored for long.

It was heading on for 4am and Martha Jones was beyond tired. A crèche had been infected by an alien organism. Her colleague Owen Harper was confident that they could come up with an antidote before any of the children were seriously affected by it, but it was taking a long time. Owen had put his head down for a couple of hours, at Martha's suggestion, while she monitored the experiments. It was inevitable that she nodded off at the desk, her head resting on her folded arms. Not long after that, the nightmare started. First the twitching, then the whimpering. Jack had been keeping an eye from his office, not minding that she'd fallen asleep. What he did mind was that she seemed caught up in a bad dream. He quietly left his office and went to the heart of the Hub where Martha was and stooped down beside her.

"Martha?" He whispered, gently placing a hand on her shoulder,

"No!" Martha's eyes bolted open and she shoved Jack hard, back to the ground. "You're not real. You're dead."

Jack quickly realised that Martha was still asleep and was having a sort of waking nightmare. He spoke gently, as he rose from the floor. "It's okay, sweetheart." Placing one hand on her neck and the other around her waist, he drew her into a secure hug. "You can wake up now." He felt her jerk against his chest and try to pull away from him, but he kept his grip on her. "It's alright Martha. You're safe, okay?" He felt her arms move around his waist and her head burrow into his shoulder. From the shake in her shoulders, he could tell she had started to cry. "Talk to me Martha, tell me what's going on in your head."

"No." Came the muffled reply. "It's not fair to dump my issues on you when you've got your own to deal with."

"And I'm dealing with them. You're very obviously not." Jack pulled back to look her in the eye. "You have to talk to someone before it either kills you or drives you round the twist."

"Because telling a shrink about a year that never happened when the world was being systematically destroyed by the British PM is not a fast track to the local loony bin!" Martha rolled her eyes and released herself from Jack's embrace.

"Who said anything about talking to a shrink? Talk to me."

"I can't. I'm not adding my traumas to yours when it was all my fault in the first place."

"What?"

"It's okay. It doesn't matter." Martha smoothed down her lab coat and stood up straight. "I'm fine." She hunched over a nearby microscope. "I need to check the results on these. There's some very sick children waiting on a cure." The walls were up. Jack knew there was no point in pursuing it, for the moment.

"Sure." He said, adopting the same business-like tone as Martha. "Let me know when you have a workable vaccine." And as much as it killed him to do it, he left her to her work. The Martha Jones working for him was a shadow of the brilliant, feisty, resourceful woman whose first instinct was to resuscitate when she found Jack dead outside the TARDIS. It had been a rare pleasure to come back to life looking into those beautiful, expressive eyes and seeing a smile that could light up a room. The eyes seemed darker and the smile a lot less frequent since they defeated The Master.

Back in his office, Jack made a phone call. The first time he had dialled this number, he thought he was ringing Martha to offer her a job, unaware that she had given her phone to the Doctor…

"Martha!" the Doctor exclaimed, delighted to hear from her.

"Um, no." A decidedly male voice said. "It's Jack."

"Jack!" The Doctor exclaimed in the same happy tone.

"Why have you Martha's phone?"

"She gave it to me."

"Why?" Jack asked.

"So we could stay in touch." The Doctor replied like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Has she called you?"

"Um… No. Not yet."

"She passed her exams." Jack said. "Martha's now a doctor, Doctor."

"Doctor Doctor, heh. I like that!"

Jack had been surprised at how serious the call had gotten after that, with both talking openly about how they were getting on. The next call couldn't have been more different. Just one simple exchange.

"She needs you."

"I'm on my way."

True to his word, The Doctor arrived within minutes leaving the TARDIS parked in its usual spot on Roald Dahl Plas, absorbing power from the Rift. Jack quietly left the Hub and fished his key from around his neck. It slotted easily in the lock and let him in. "How's my girl?" Jack said quietly, looking around the TARDIS' console room and placing a gentle hand on one of the coral struts. "You look great. He better be looking after you properly."

"That's what I was going to say!" The Doctor smiled emerging from under the console. He strode to Jack and embraced him tightly. "Captain."

"Doctor." Jack revelled in the hug. "Much as I'm enjoying this, we have something else to take care of."

(TBC)