All right, folks! Here it is! First Multi-Chap story I've written. This is with the Tenth Doctor and Martha, and set sometime after 'Blink' and before 'Utopia' . Enjoy!
He really should know better by now. 905 years and all that. Should've taught him something. The TARDIS took him where he needed to be, not always where he wanted to be, or where he thought he should be. It was a fact. A simple fact, and one that he grudgingly admired. Yes, She got him into trouble more often than not, but he always got out of it. After fixing a giant mess. Always a big, bloody mess to clean up.
And on a Thursday, to boot! Thursdays were his Happy day! (Well, technically every day was a happy day, but he had a soft spot for Thursdays. Close enough to the end of the week to guarantee something fun, but not so close that he had to expend a lot of effort to save the Universe. He usually saved that for Saturdays. Or Mondays. Though Mondays tended to leave a huge mess when they left. Saturdays he could count on Fun. Which was the whole objective, after all...)
He had been so proud of himself too, staying out of trouble for this long. He had actually fooled himself into thinking he could get on and off this ice ball of a planet with nothing more than a waltz around the huge, stony landscape, and frostbite for a souvenir.
He ended up with a bit more than frostbite.
7 hours earlier...
"Oh, come on, Doctor!" pleaded Martha, "You promised!" Honestly, he was acting like a 5 year old child.
Not that that was anything out of the ordinary.
After that disastrous, and initially terrifying experience with the Weeping Angels, she could do with something a bit less... life-threatening. Maybe another Planet, even! That would be fun. The Weeping Angels weren't exactly her idea of adventurous New Horizons Extraordinaire. Wouldn't mind never seeing those again. Ever.
She edged toward the TARDIS console, flicking her fingers out toward a dial that looked for all the world, like a sundial. A sundial?
Whatever. She teasingly tapped the dial on top, trying to get his attention.
"AhAhAh- Stop that! What are you doing?!"
"You promised." She furrowed her eyebrows. Added a small pout just for effect. The Doctor looked at her, putting on a very exaggerated, exasperated glare that melted into a cheeky grin.
"Of course, I did promise you, didn't I?" His eyes grew far away for a brief moment, as they often did- and Martha was used to it by now- but just as quickly danced back to their brilliant audacious gaze. The Doctor swept his hand over the console.
"So," he invited, smile wide and eyebrows high, "where do you want to explore?"
Martha's eyes widened. "Y-you mean- I can pick?" He tipped his head pointedly.
"But I don't know all the planets! There could be amazing ones out there that you know all about but I'll never know unless YOU take me there," his curious, eager companion emphatically emphasized.
"Aw, but see, where's the fun for me in that? You could pick someplace I'VE never even been to!" he threw back at her with that slightly wild, glittering look in his dark eyes. Oh, the possibilities... Martha smirked at him, tilting her forehead pointedly, and then huffed.
"Oh, fine. Which button do I push?"
The Doctor grinned, and pointed to the main lever. "Oh, I'll set the time calibrators; you just tell me when to stop." He moved towards the familiar set of dials farthest from the door, and started turning. Martha smiled eagerly, and after about 14 seconds, she pressed on the handle of the long lever, and with a grinding screech, wrenched it down. A familiar hum began, and Martha nearly giggled with anticipation.
The Doctor actually did. He always did enjoy tickling the unpredictable. Threatening habit, one might say. Not that the Doctor cared about advice concerning his life. Even if it did originate from his own subconscious.
The objective was always the same.
Fun.
The TARDIS suddenly vibrated violently, throwing them to the floor. And then, strangely enough, it felt like they were moving rather quickly.
Very, very quickly. Which was incredibly out of the ordinary.
Normally, you could never tell they were moving at all; Most of the time, all the TARDIS did was seem to shake and shiver, and then appear somewhere. Of course, Martha knew it could move; after all- that's how they got from planet to planet. She just never remember being this physically aware of, well, actual speed.
A keen pitch began, and the Doctor struggled to his feet from the violently vibrating floor, exclaiming "No, No, don't you be like that now!" and something muttered in a language that Martha didn't recognize but that quite possibly was a Gallifreyan curse. They were, after all, universal for the most part, no matter what language they were in. The Doctor flipped some switches and grabbed the screener with his free hand (after a couple of flailing grasps!) and his face contorted into something in between a grin, and a grimace.
"Ooooh, Martha Jones!" he yelled above the high pitched whining, "I do believe we're going to crash!"
"WHAT?! We've never crashed!"
"Weelll, that's because normally I'm driving-"
"I thought you WERE DRIVING!"
"I was! AM! But now we need to Hold OOOOONNNNN!"
The last 'On' was drawn out as the TARDIS jerked violently and threw the Doctor 6 feet backwards into the wall, as Martha tumbled forwards, gripping the bottom of a railing and hanging on for dear life. The whining grew louder and louder, until she felt her eardrums would surely rupture! She scrunched down her face into her arms, shutting her eyes tightly.
"DOCTOR!" Are you alright?! she wanted to scream. But she had no breath left. The TARDIS heaved and rattled, and right when Martha was pretty sure it would implode-
...There was stillness.
The TARDIS rumbled; it was almost an animal sound, unfamiliar to Martha's ears. Of course, admittedly, she hadn't been traveling around with the Doctor for that long, but still. It sounded... wrong.
Or was it the TARDIS? Could it have been something outside?
No! There it was again! A distant, deep calling sound, within the TARDIS somewhere.
Distress.
A warning, perhaps?
Somewhere behind her, she heard a faint groan.
"Martha?"
"It's fine. I-I'm alright. You okay?" She took a few deep breaths to slow her racing heart, calming after a few moments. It was amazing how quickly panic fled when you simply stilled and focused.
"Yeah... I think. Nothing broken. I hope," he grunted, holding his head and massaging the back of his scalp, wincing at the bruise that was most definitely as big as a dinner plate. "Ah! We've landed. Whatever happened to cause such a disruption in the time vor-" But his words fell short on his quickly recovering companion.
Quivering with both uncertainty and excitement, Martha jumped up from the floor and cautiously made her way toward the door.
"Ahhhh- Martha Wait. I'm not entirely sure-"
"Oh, come on, Doctor; it has to be something fun if it was this much trouble to get here,"
She cracked a smile at him and wriggled her eyebrows.
Hesitating a split second, she cracked open the door.
She inhaled sharply as a wall of cold pressed into her. It was sharp, and thick, but not so cold for her to be fearful. She smiled softly as a few snowflakes drifted slowly to the ground. She did so love snow. They never got much snow in London... it made her feel like a little girl again, gazing up at the big bright moon and wonder what her life was going to bring... She shook herself out of her reminiscing and looked and around at the surrounding landscape.
Stone mountains, or rock-formations, similar to the stone pillars like in the south-western United States, only dark gray instead of sandy brown. Snow. Snow and stone. And still.
Very still.
The next thing that stuck her was that it was dark, but not night-dark. Or even overcast-dark. More like dim-dark. Like the sky was too big and the sun wasn't big enough for it. Was there a sun? Ah yes! She thought she could make out something sinking behind those huge... bluffs? Canyons? mountains? Pillars? in the distance, but if it was, it was a small sun. Or maybe a bright moon in a dark navy blue-gray sky.
As she looked around more, the smaller she felt.
Big. It was too... BIG.
Or maybe she was too small.
Oppressive. That's what it felt like. She had never seen a sky quite like it.
Martha was awed, but did not think she liked it. At least, definitely not a place she wanted to live.
Did anyone live here?
Well. They would find out.
"Doctor?"
"Yes?"
"I'm going to have to borrow a coat."
The Doctor arched an eyebrow at her. "Oh yeah? Cold eh? How cold?"
"Cold... enough." She grinned at him, "I'm going to need if we're going out. We... we are going out, right?"
"Yeah! Sure. Why not? Not exploring is for the weaker heart," he cracked excitedly as he grabbed an extra coat for her and came to the door, stepping out onto the soft snow.
And stood there, gazing at his surroundings, taking in a million bits of data at once.
Martha loved to see his brain move, to watch him think, it was so fascinating.
She watched him now, trying to see those intricate gears spinning through his eyes, but to her surprise, instead of the unfettered glee of the unexplored, his mouth straightened, and his eyebrows furrowed the more he took in. Yet he still did not speak a word.
Slowly, the Doctor turned around, observing, looking, thinking, seeing, hearing, feeling...
Martha frowned slightly. Admittedly, she hadn't been around the Doctor any long period of time (by his standards, at least!) But if there was one thing she knew wholeheartedly by now, it was that The Doctor was never one to let a comment slide, let an opportunity pass without a witty explanation, a humored thought, or even theoretical rambling.
He didn't like silence. Silence was too big for him. So he filled it with a thousand murmured ideas, with bright descriptions and brilliant observations with childlike glee.
So why was he so silent now?
Right after they crashed, The Doctor quickly ran a visual diagnostic of the quantum time calibrators and the detection spectrometers, and was slightly surprised to see that the TARDIS didn't appear to detect their current location. Well. Wasn't the first time it had happened. He did tend to end up in tough spots every now and then.
Okay, pretty much every day. Nothing he couldn't take care of. Besides, if the TARDIS didn't know where they were, then he was pretty sure he would know when he stepped out the door. In cases like this, he just preferred to be the first one out the door. He had to keep score, after all. Martha begged, and he let her go, not sensing anything of immediate danger, and she was just peeking out. After that convoluted mayhem of a spin, he wanted to make sure all the instruments were working properly. A few fluxes here and there, but nothing overtly abnormal, which was the opposite of what he was expecting.
Oh well. Make his job easier, if less eventful.
As if.
His life really couldn't be more eventful if he tried.
He heard Martha suck in a breath, and felt a faint whiff of cold air. His senses perked and the hair stood up on his arms as his mind subconsciously strained to detect any familiar elements.
Cold. Nothing else.
The Doctor was not used to unfamiliarity. (Now there was a topic for discussion!) It didn't make him nervous, per se, but if he didn't know about something, he found out. Period. It just wasn't something that happened often. There were, after all, few places he hadn't been too, especially during his long life, but those that he hadn't seen, he wanted to know all about and explore. He just normally did that when there weren't any companions around. Just in case, you know, things got messy. However, they were in a familiar quadrant, and he highly doubted it was someplace he didn't know.
Martha mentioned needing a coat, and that was all it took. He grabbed an extra one sitting in one of the side rooms on his way to her, and without further ado, blasted outside to discover this place.
Stopped.
Listened.
Felt.
A million different whispering sensations.
A million of nothing.
Of silence.
Soft, light snow fell, giving the already dark environment an eerie feel rather than a peaceful one.
A world silent for a millennia.
Silent, and... angry. Brooding, that's what he would say.
All things were alive in someway. Each object had it's own song. A song that he could hear, feel and respond to. The ground whispered into his feet, it's song flooding into his veins telling him the tale of its spent years, a thousand pitter-patters of the many feet that had once walked upon these stones, the song pounded with his hearts, wove into his blood... the air blew by his ears, a snowflake brushed his cheek...
...and he heard nothing.
A secret world, this. A hidden world.
A world simply waiting for the slightest intrusion to begin to rumble.
Like a beast asleep in fathomless caverns, the only sound it's moaning, powerful heart, slowly, steadily keeping time in the endless years.
Just waiting.
He was not unfamiliar with the feeling; but the frequency that he felt it.
Few and far between, worlds such as this.
He had felt it, but there had been centuries separating his consciousness from the experiences.
He had kept those memories suppressed for a reason. However, it was not often they had any reason to surface.
The Doctors ears were well-attuned to sounds. Not just sounds, but everything. He heard music everywhere, felt the smallest vibrations in the air, in the ground, could tell his location and time simply by inhaling breath. Felt the flutter of time beneath his fingertips as grass on a child's hand. The universe was his playground, his meadow, his castle. His to watch over and his to protect.
Silence was too big for him.
A gaping wide reminder of all that he had lost. Of emptiness.
"-Doctor?"
Yet silence was a sound too. And when the words finally came, the whisper was more to his own mind, a question unto himself, more than to Martha.
"I have no memory of this place."
Aha! First chapter of my very first multi-chap story! You know... it's weird- I am such a sucker for... well, that would give away the plot, but this is very very different from my usual fandom and interests, but it's the first multi-chap story I've written out all the way. Hehe, but suffice to say, this is going to crossover into another fandom, just so you are adequately warned, but I'm keeping it in the Doctor Who category for now. Just another one of his adventures! ;)
For now.
Enjoy!
~KFJ