A/N: Ties in with the 'Night and the Doctor' episode Bad Night. This story doesn't really have a point – there's no real message or moral to it (except maybe be nice to cats). I wanted to have some practise with the Doctor Who characters before I did anything serious, and this idea wouldn't leave me alone. But I had fun with it none the less.
All of the hugs to Isis the Sphinx for betaing!
OOO
Morning After
There were certain things, Martha Jones believed, that it was worth getting up early for on a Saturday. Hot coffee before a morning shift at hospital was one. Sending a lost alien home was another. Waking up long enough to listen to Mickey failing to sing in the shower was another (but nobody else got the pleasure of that but her).
And Martha believed that waking up early to get to the pet shop when it opened was another. It just gave them more hours in the day to play with their new kitten.
Mickey had of course grumbled that he was still exhausted from chasing that colony of hoix out of Brighton Pavilion the day before yesterday (so much for a quick relaxing break to the seaside), but he had relented. It had after all, initially been his suggestion. They had agreed not long after getting married that if they could find time to care for a hamster in their busy life of running from aliens, then they could care for a cat. And if they could care for a cat, then they would consider make the step to children. Since Will the Hamster was still alive and well after two and a half years, it was time to get a cat.
It also bought them a few years to get all the adventuring out of their systems. Settling down was still a long way off for them yet. But the next step sat just through that door, and Martha would be lying if she said she wasn't a little bit giddy.
"Done," her husband appeared at her side, parking ticket clamped awkwardly between his lips while he wrestled the car keys back into his pocket and continued to whine about parking metres. "Five quid I'll never see again..."
Obligingly Martha took the ticket from him. "Well let's not put it to waste. In you go!" she ushered. The bell gave a pleasing ring as they both pushed inside and were instantly bombarded by the smell of sawdust, food and fur.
The shop was almost empty, for which Martha was thankful - the animals were noisy enough on their own without scores of customers to compete with. A bored looking blonde teenager was parked behind the cash register, tapping at her iPhone with dark blue nail varnish, apparently unconcerned by customer service. Another staff member's backside was just visible through the store room door, straining and heaving as he hauled bags of feed and bedding around. Aside from them and two other customers, the shop was empty – unsurprising for nine am on a Saturday.
The cats were at the far end of the store, wedged between the rabbits and birds, and were the only animals that were not caged. Martha wondered as to the wisdom of this arrangement, for two of the four kittens had left the safety of their basket and were watching a trio of squawking parrots with wide round eyes. A handmade sign made of cardboard and bright pink highlighter proclaimed "Kittens – 9 weeks. Need a good home". The lack of price did not surprise Martha. Cats were not usually stocked at this store, but the owner was a friend of Tish's and had told her that she was giving them away.
"Maybe not those two," Mickey suggested wisely, nodding at the hungry looking kittens by the aviary. "They're already checking out the ones lower down the food chain, and I don't want to come home one day and find the cat's been nibbling at Will."
It really did not bear thinking about, so Martha elbowed Mickey in the ribs and settled down to look at the two remaining kittens. The black and white one jumped out instantly and began nuzzling Martha's hand. The grey tabby blinked sleepily at her before stretching and joining its sibling.
"Do you have any idea how insane that sounds?!"
The voice was low, but hissed in such a way that Martha caught wind of it. Withdrawing her hand from the kitten, she turned to look, and her jaw dropped. She had dimly registered the two other customers in the shop, but now she could not understand how she could possibly have missed them. Whereas she had come to the pet store in jeans and a t-shirt, the woman two display shelves down was wearing a deep gold dress and rather impressive high heels. As she watched, a man popped up from behind a shelf, his top hat easily visible over the hamster cages. He wore tails, and a frantic (borderline manic) expression.
"River there are a hundred and fifty nine goldfish in this shop! It could be any of them!"
"Sweetie I'm not going to ask the shopkeeper which of these fish looks like the queen!" the woman said, frustration evident in her voice. Her hair must have been tied up neatly at the beginning of the evening, but now it was starting to come free, mad blonde hair corkscrewing around her face. They had clearly been up all night.
Martha blinked slowly. In all her life, and all the mad things she had seen, this was definitely ranked up there with the maddest. Catching her husband's eye, she jerked her head towards the couple, and watched Mickey's brows arch as they always did as the prospect of a mystery to solve.
"The only other option is to search one hundred and fifty nine goldfish!"
"Then we search one hundred and fifty nine goldfish," the woman responded, with the practised tone of 'you-will-agree-with-me-because-sleeping-on-the-so fa-is-cold'. "And we do it quietly, so the shopkeeper doesn't think we're mad and call the police."
"And I thought you got on so well with the law," the man retorted sarcastically, but he was defeated, and he seemed to know it. The woman smirked.
"Oh I love causing trouble, but we have a commonwealth at stake here, and I'd rather not waste time...and besides, you know you love it when I get into trouble," she purred, and the man's cheeks flushed the exact same shade of red as the reptile tank next to him.
"I shall say nothing on the grounds that I will be misquoted later," he insisted, but Martha could see the eager smirk trying to appear on his lips. "Start checking the tanks at the other end. Search for morphic residue. The transformation might have left some kind of sign behind."
"So commanding," the woman said, pulling a small handset out of her bag. "I like it." And she marched off to the other end of the fish row as the man felt around in his jacket pocket.
Martha gasped at the sight of it. It might be a different size and design, but that was definitely a sonic screwdriver. Carefully she nudged Mickey and pulled him back to the safety of the cat basket.
"Did you see-"
"Yeah," he nodded. "D'you think that's him?"
Martha shook her head. "I don't know. I thought - well I thought that after last time..."
He nodded again. They had both been sure that something must have happened to the Doctor the last time they had seen him, but they had not caught wind of him since. They knew that he had regenerated – there had been rumours of his death, tied up in a rogue faction of UNIT and a race of intergalactic undertakers called the Shansheeth a couple of years ago, but no picture of him was listed on file. Martha knew Sarah Jane had been present, but all she had managed to prise out of the older woman had been that he wore a bow tie and tweed now. Chancing a careful glance back around the shelf, Martha could see the suit (definitely not tweed) and sure enough, dangling forlornly from his neck was a tie that she would bet had been tied in a neat bow earlier that evening.
She exchanged a look with Mickey and the two of them started giggling.
"Wow, Sarah Jane wasn't joking," Mickey chortled. "Baby faced or what?"
Martha jabbed him fondly in the ribs again. "Be nice." She could sort of see what he meant, but she would never admit it. "I wonder how long it's been."
She felt Mickey shrug. "God knows." They stifled chortles as the Doctor crouched at the far end of the fish tank and began puffing his cheeks out against the glass.
"Hasn't changed much, has he?" Mickey snorted.
"Nope."
"You wanna go say hello?"
"Yup!" Truthfully, Martha was dying to get over there and tease him about how young he looked in this regeneration, so it was with a giddy laugh that she took Mickey's hand and started to drag him over to the shelves.
"Oi!" the Doctor pulled back from the tank and frowned furiously at the offending goldfish. "That's really rude!"
"Oh what did the nasty fish say?" Mickey teased. "Insult your time machine or tell you that the bowtie looks dumb?"
The Doctor's expression was one that would remain engraved on Martha's memory for the rest of her life. He tumbled over on to his backside in a tangle of flailing limbs, before catching sight of the smirking couple and cheering.
"Martha Jones!" jumping to his feet in a flash he seized her in a hug and almost swung her into the fish tank. He quickly dropped her before tackling Mickey into an equally ferocious hug. "And Mickey Smith! Look at you two!" He held them at arm's length like a grandfather surveying his favourite descendants. "Blimey that takes me right back!" He grabbed them both again and Martha swore she saw her husband rolling his eyes over the opposite shoulder.
"It's good to see you too, Doctor," she assured him, taking a step back to get a proper look while Mickey massaged the back of his neck. "And never mind looking at us – we're not the ones who've regenerated!"
"What do you think?!" He asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet and reaching for the trailing bowtie automatically. He seemed a little put out as he remembered that it was not done up.
"Weird," Mickey said honestly.
"Oi!" the Doctor huffed. "I look cool, Smith!"
"You always told me that bad things happened when you wore a suit!" Martha pointed out. The Doctor glanced down as if to remind himself of what he was wearing.
"I don't normally wear it!" He protested. "There was a thing – sort of a party, but don't tell Amy, or I'll never hear the end of it – and we got into a squabble with some ambassadors – me and River, not me and Amy, Amy is still asleep on the TARDIS with Rory the Roman, hopefully, but you know what humans are like, always running off when they're not supposed to-"
Martha could not help herself, and she started laughing again. "Oh you really haven't changed. Still don't stop talking."
He looked terribly indignant. "You are just as rude as the goldfish!" he proclaimed, before his eyes lit up. "Oh! Goldfish!" he smacked himself in the head and reached for the abandoned screwdriver again. "Sorry! Saving the commonwealth by being clever. Would love to stay and chat – really, this is brilliant!" He beamed. "But really should get this done before people get cross."
He swept down to the floor, and seized a bowl with lone goldfish inside bumping its head into the glass. Still brandishing the sonic screwdriver, he marched off down the row of tanks, the familiar hum of scanning in his wake.
Feeling a little windswept, Martha turned to give her husband a look. He was outright grinning.
"Wanna go with him?"
"Always," Martha admitted, linking her arm through his and hurrying after the frantic alien.
"So what exactly are we doing?" She asked as he began to scan the third tank.
"Long story. We're after a goldfish."
Martha observed the fishbowl tucked under his arm and rolled her eyes. "Obviously."
"Oh please don't tell me the goldfish are aliens," Mickey whined. "It's too early to fight, and I didn't bring any weapons."
"It's not an alien," the Doctor rolled his eyes, scanning the tank. "It's the queen."
It was the second time she had heard him say it, and it still made no sense to Martha.
"What, the Queen of the Fish?" Mickey asked, snickering.
"No, the Queen of England."
...nope. Still did not make any sense.
"...what?" Martha asked.
"Sweetie!" the woman from earlier – River, Martha presumed – appeared from the other end of the row of tanks. "I found it!"
Crowing, the Doctor sprinted off.
"River Song, I could kiss you," he announced, dropping to his knees next to her and peering through the tank at the cloud of orange fish.
"I'll hold you to that later," the woman promised, glancing up from her handset at the couple. "Don't mind him – he's just excited."
Mickey waved a dismissive hand. "We're used to it," he assured her.
"Sorry, sorry," the Doctor flapped his hands and pointed the screwdriver at them. "Martha Jones, Mickey Smith, this is Doctor River Song. She's my...well, sort of my..."
"I think the word he's scrambling for is 'wife'," River interjected smoothly, with a smile. "Lovely to meet you both."
Martha was momentarily floored. "Wife?" she demanded.
"Yes, that thing," the Doctor turned his flapping back to the tank. "Now which of these little fishies is our dear queen..."
"As in married?" Martha asked, eyeing the blonde woman up and down (why was it always blondes, she wondered to herself). She was definitely older than most of the Doctor's recent companions, though in the scheme of the Doctor's centuries of life, that did not mean much. Judging by the handset she had been using she was not based in the twenty first century, and indeed, as she looked closer, she noticed the familiar strap of a vortex manipulator on her wrist. Now Martha was moving past astonished into genuinely curious. How did a time travelling doctor from the future wind up married to the Doctor?
"Yes married – like you two, only with less of the job and mortgage and supper round the telly..."
River rolled her eyes. "What he's trying to say is that it's not a conventional relationship. Our timelines are all over the place, so it's mostly him breaking me out of prison at nights, hence our current predicament."
Dying for a story, Martha opened her mouth to ask more, but the Doctor gave a shriek of indignation that made them all jump.
"No Copernicus! Bad cat! We do not eat Her Majesty!"
The subject of his ranting was the rambunctious black and white kitten from earlier, who had somehow clambered up to the tank, and was now dipping his paws into the rippling water, his eyes fixed on the delicious fish within. The Doctor's efforts to shoo the curious visitor away only ended with the startled feline overbalancing on its tiny uncoordinated feet and tumbling into the tank with a splash. The fish scattered in terror, and Copernicus the kitten surfaced with an unhappy yowl as the Doctor plunged his arms in to rescue him.
"So much for not ruining this suit," he grumbled. The drowned youngster glared at him in a reproachful manner that only unhappy cats can achieve. They both looked so accusing that Martha burst out laughing, with Mickey and River following suit not a second later.
"Well I'm so glad the prospect of a collapsing nation is amusing to everyone!" the Doctor huffed, thrusting the sopping feline into Martha's arms. "Here. Have a cat. I have a sovereign to rescue."
He crouched, tapping at the tank, where the terrified fish were just starting to re-emerge. "Now which one of you is the right one? I don't want a mistake like last time."
He shot the fish bowl at his feet a dirty look.
"They all have similar markings," River shrugged, her scanner beeping helplessly. "It could be any of them. The residue will have dispersed by now – I was only able to localise it down to this tank."
Frowning and fidgeting in his crouch, the Doctor pondered. "If we had more time I could probably work it out from behaviour differences – even a transformed fish will have some habits from being the queen that it won't be able to let go of-"
"Have you tried just asking?" Mickey folded his arms and gave the alien a calculated look. Martha snorted as the Doctor's train of thought came shuddering to a halt, and a grin spread across Mickey's face.
"Seriously? Did I just have an idea before the Doctor could think of it?" his grin became smug. "Oh man I'm good!"
"And not the least bit cocky," Martha smiled, but it was the fond look of a woman who was used to her husband's antics by now, and found them more endearing than annoying. Mickey swaggered forward and leaned over the tanks.
"'Scuse me Your Majesty," he began, only now realising how daft he probably looked to bystanders, and rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. "Mickey Smith – hi. D'you think you could just swim under that pink castle over there, so that we can identify you a bit easier?"
In addition to the bright turquoise pebbles, the fish tank contained a gaudy pink plastic castle, and an open clamshell with a mermaid sitting inside it, and sure enough, after a moment's hesitation, a single goldfish paddled its way beneath the archway, and settled onto the bottom of the tank.
Mickey gave a quick saluted. "Much obliged ma'am."
"Nice thinking Mickey!" the Doctor patted him on the shoulder, and picked up the fishbowl from the floor. His hands scrabbled for something and he spun in a perfect circle in search. Martha was rather impressed that he managed to do it without spilling any of the water.
"Erm...anyone got a-"
"Right here, Sweetie," River said, producing the green plastic fish net. The Doctor blinked at it.
"Where did you get that?" He asked, astonished. "D'you keep these things in your hair?!" He frowned suddenly and gave it a poke as though expecting it to suddenly rear up and bite him. "What else have you got in there?"
River gave him a look. "Oh wouldn't you like to know? Now hurry up. While I love people thinking I'm up to no good, now isn't the moment to be arrested for shoplifting."
The Doctor muttered something that sound like "bad bad girl" to Martha's ears, and she suddenly became very interested in petting the kitten. The Doctor meanwhile scooped the goldfish out of the bowl and into the tank, letting it zoom off to join the others before he delicately scooped up the Queen and deposited her in the bowl instead.
"Mrrroww..." the kitten in Martha's arms growled at the bowl of water.
"No, it's not a fish, so you can't eat it!" the Doctor explained impatiently. "Stay with these two and they'll get you some nice tuna."
"Mrrr..."
"No they're not slaves! They're Martha and Mickey, and they're very cool people!"
"What are you doing?" Mickey frowned. Martha too was slightly concerned for their friend's sanity (not that he'd had much to begin with).
"I speak cat," the Doctor declared, handing the fish net back to River. "And young Copernicus here is being obnoxious!"
He tweaked the kitten on the ear, and the grumbling immediately stopped.
"...that's his name?" Martha asked. True it wasn't a bad name, but it was a bit of a mouthful for such a tiny kitten...
"Well can you tell him that if he comes and lives with us, Will the Hamster is not on the menu?" Mickey said. The Doctor spluttered.
"You named your hamster after Will?!"
Martha gave him a look. "It was either that or Carrionite. I know which one I preferred." Copernicus purred in her arms.
"He says its fine – he doesn't like hamsters. They're all fur and not much meat," the Doctor tucked the fish bowl safely under his arm. "Right! We'd better go sort this mess out – we'll get back to the TARDIS while you two distract the shopkeeper-"
"Why is it our job to distract the shopkeeper?" Mickey asked.
"Because you're taking Copernicus home with you," the Doctor said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "We'll just be a minute, and we'll meet you outside!"
And without another word, he darted off behind the shelves again. River shrugged apologetically before racing after her husband.
"How does she run in those heels?" Martha found herself wondering, before Copernicus nibbled on her finger as if to say 'well, get on with it!' Beeping his nose, she took Mickey by the arm.
"Come on," she muttered. "Think we've found our cat."
Martha wondered, as they explained to the unimpressed cashier that they wanted to adopt the cat, if this was what everyone's visits from the Doctor were like after they left the TARDIS. Certainly it was like that for people like Jack and Sarah Jane, but then she and Mickey had not seen the Doctor at all in a long time. What made each of his companions so different to him?
It was only half an hour later, as they exited the pet shop with Copernicus fast asleep in the cat basket, that she got her answer.
"Her Majesty delivered safely and soundly!" The Doctor proclaimed, leaning against the TARDIS gleefully. He had changed out of his suit, and sure enough, wore tweed with a purple bowtie. Behind him, River leaned out of the door in a white vest top and jodhpurs. "And the Ponds are awake! So I think it's time for breakfast! Is there anywhere around here that does tea? I could murder tea and an egg muffin!" He gave a wry laugh. "Blimey three married couples at once – never done this before!"
Yeah, that was the answer, Martha realised. Sometimes there was just no intention at all. The universe was huge and magnificent, and sometimes just enjoyed turning queens into goldfishes, naming cat after famous astronomers, and throwing old friends together for a breakfast muffin.
And Martha liked it – it was far more exciting that way.
And inside his basket, Copernicus purred at his new servants contentedly as he fell asleep once more.