Title: Martha vs Mrs. De Winter
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Auntie Beeb's running the show. Rebecca belongs to the Daphne Du Maurier estate, Harry Potter belongs to JKR/Bloomsbury/Warner Bros.
Summary: Martha makes a resolution about the woman who came before her.
Spoilers: Mention of The Shakespeare Code. If you've not read/seen Rebecca then this will spoil the ending.
Author's Notes: This is written because I like Martha, but miss Rose.
This was the second time Martha was sleeping in a bed made before flea-spray had been invented. The first time around the excitement of Shakespeare being so nearby – and the excitement of being in a time where meeting Shakespeare was possible – had put thoughts about the bed beneath her from her mind.
She shifted closer to the Doctor. If there were bedbugs, she felt safe from them next to him.
They were in Wales now, 1799, children as young as three were working in coal mines. So far ten young boys had disappeared down in the dark. They worked as 'trappers', their jobs to sit and open ventilation doors all day in the dark and with rats scurrying around their feet.
In comparison maybe bedbugs weren't so bad, she decided.
The Doctor was staring up at the ceiling. Actually he was staring far beyond that, as if he could see right through out into the galaxy above them. She half expected him to point out a constellation.
A longer look proved that he was in no mood for chatter (a rarity). He looked as though he were in a staring match with the universe, just waiting for it to back down and do things his way.
Possibly he was angry that every day thousands of children worked in mines. Or maybe he was angry that something was preying on these children that was Not Of This World. It might even have been that it was plain old Martha Jones next to him and not Rose, Martha thought. Maybe it was all three.
"Goodnight," she said, to test the waters.
"Hmm?"
He spared her a glance finally. More than a glance. His whole attention was on her, waiting to find out what was so important.
She squirmed under the blankets that smelled like the innkeepers hadn't washed the wool since it had been on the sheep.
"I was just saying goodnight," she said. How mundane must she seem to him, nodding off while the universe rolled out behind his eyes.
"Oh." He turned back to face the unseen heavens again.
Would Rose have nodded off?
It was like living in a Daphne du Maurier novel. Martha had never liked the unnamed heroine of Rebecca – she'd been so girly and weak. She'd allowed everything she did to be measured against Rebecca without ever trying to ask her husband about his first wife.
Now Martha just felt sorry for the second Mrs. De Winter while at the same time being jealous of her. There was no way that Doctor had secretly hated Rose in the same was Max De Winter had turned out to hate his first wife.
Still…she wasn't weak. She wanted to ask. She only had to say it once and then she would have proved her strength, regardless of the answer she did or didn't get.
Fear of the name increases the fear of the thing, as good old JK had put it. Fear of the subject in this case.
"Tell me about Rose," she said.
Martha forced herself to look into his eyes, which were back on her again now.
Perhaps she had caught him off guard, or maybe (as she had suspected) Rose had not been far from the surface of his thoughts when she had asked, because no defensive wall sprang up.
"She was…"
He stopped. His eyes were no longer looking at her or a galaxy only he could see, they were gazing into the past now. He might not have been there at all except for the rustle of his clothes and the visible puffs of his breath in the cold.
Martha was worried that he was rebuilding that wall and that any moment he'd burst out with something that was unrelated to Rose and that would force her to drop the subject. ("Did something just bite me?", "You know…I think we should take a look at this mine for ourselves.", or even "Look! There's a patch on the ceiling that looks just like Elton John!)
"She was what?" she pressed. "Perfect?"
His eyes snapped back to hers. "No. Perfection is boring…It's hard to explain."
So eager was she for information on Rose that she leaned forward, her eyes imploring. "Try…it'll help."
He was gone again. "No," he said in a far-away, desperate voice. "It won't."
That was the end of it for now, Martha decided. But she wasn't going to tiptoe around the subject in the future. She'd asked once. She could ask again.
She wasn't going to spend her life desperate to know about the woman, building an image of her in her mind, but afraid to mention her aloud. Fear of the name and all that – Martha was much more of a Hermione Granger than a Mrs. De Winter.
The Doctor sprang up suddenly. "You know…I think we should go take a look at this mine for ourselves," he announced. "We can't lay here thinking about the problem and not doing anything to find out about it."
Martha hopped out of the bed thankfully, grin on her face. "My thoughts exactly," she said.
The End
Second Author's Notes: I always promised myself that I never would write fanfiction for Doctor Who (touching cult classics makes me nervous) but I've had terrible writer's block and I thought by doing something I swore I'd never do I'd test myself a bit. I'd love to know that my broken promise wasn't in vain.
Oh yeah. And I do actually love Rebecca.