Written by Black Alaya Wolf, edited by Furyism. :)
Episode One
Rose and Jones, Part II
"Run!"
Martha didn't need telling twice, even with Rose pulling her along. They sprinted out of the room, slamming the door behind them, and down the hall in the opposite direction of that weird guy. Martha heard a terrible crashing noise and dared to glance behind her to see the door to Mr. Stoker's office splintering open as the courier-person barreled right through it. A shot of pure fear and adrenaline raced its way through her veins. She couldn't help but secretly marvel in the rush of the feeling.
They flew down a set of stairs and careened around the corner on the landing to the next one, but Rose stopped her, "No!", pushing Martha away from the top of the stairs after she'd jumped down the last few ahead of Martha. They ran off again, down another corridor. Martha looked over her shoulder to see that the Judoon were down the staircase Rose had kept her from running down and that they had joined the chase.
There was not much time for further thought, however, because the courier-person was right behind them. They raced down the corridor, then turned into another one, and another, until finally they came to another set of stairs and Rose lead Martha down, and down, and down, until they came to a door that Martha assumed lead to the basement.
Rose threw open the door, ushered Martha inside, then slammed it closed and bolted it. A dim light lit the room from one corner, and Rose jogged over there. She opened another door to what appeared to be a closet of some kind and paused in the doorway, beckoning Martha toward her. Martha hesitated.
A loud boom shook the walls of the basement, originating from the general direction of the door. Thus encouraged, Martha took a leap of faith and joined Rose in the closet.
It was dark, but in the gloom Martha could just make out Rose fumbling for something around her neck.
"What are you doing?" she hissed.
Rose ignored her and gave a tiny cry of triumph when she finally retrieved what she was looking for. She nudged Martha aside, so that she had to press herself tightly against the wall, and reached an arm out like a zombie, feeling for something in the dark.
Another boom shook the walls. Martha saw Mr. Stoker's door splintering open again in her mind. Then she saw Mr. Stoker, pale and drawn, thankfully unconscious, getting sucked dry by some kind of alien vampire. Martha panicked and bit back a whimper that was rising its way up her throat.
"There she is," Rose whispered at last, confusing Martha. There was the sound of a key being inserted into a lock, then being turned, and finally a door opened with a soft creak, flooding the closet with golden-green light that was blinding after their brief time in the murk. "Quickly," Rose urged Martha, shoving her gently inside.
"Where –"
Martha stopped, voice caught in her throat. Rose ignored her, closing the door behind them and clambering swiftly up the ramp to the mushroom-like structure in the middle of the…huge room.
"Right then," Rose said, spinning around suddenly to face Martha. Martha was craning her neck to see where the ceiling was. She was pretty sure the basement of the hospital didn't reach that high up, but she could be mistaken.
"Martha!"
Martha jumped; Rose was grinnning at her amazement.
Something pounded at the doors and Martha spun around to face them.
"Jumpy?" Rose laughed. Martha could only fight to catch her breath. "Don't worry, they can't get in here. Hell, the armies of Genghis Kahn couldn't penetrate the TARDIS, or so I've heard."
Huh?
"Tardis?"
Rose nodded, smiling slightly. "T-A-R-D-I-S," she confirmed, spelling it out. "Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. I guess you could say…she's my ship." She looked a little disturbed by this, as if just realizing that her cat was really a dog in disguise.
"Ship?" Martha deadpanned.
The things outside pounded on the doors again, trying to get in. Martha's gaze darted fearfully from Rose to the doors and back again. Rose faced the central column of the room, on which there appeared to be a messy array of buttons and levers that Martha could not make sense of if she tried. Rose beckoned Martha over to a screen which displayed the outside of the, er, ship, or wherever it was they were. The courier thing was looming in the dark. Martha looked away quickly.
"It's called a Slab," explained Rose. "It's like a slave; does anything that old woman tells it, I reckon. Could be made of anything: wood, wool, steel. I ran into one that was glass all the way through. My friend shattered him – the idiot, got cuts all over us from that."
"How do we kill this one?"
"Well, it's obviously not glass, so we can't just shatter it. Smelled like leather, actually. Know anything that can completely destroy leather?"
Martha shook her head. Her brain felt fried. "Fire?"
Rose shook her head. "Not quick enough."
Rose frowned and looked to the central column, seeming to be staring at something beyond the greenish neon glow emanating from it. It may have been Martha's imagination, but she was almost certain that the light flickered a little.
"Oh, well, that could work, I guess," she muttered quietly. "But it's dangerous."
Martha stared at her. Barking mad, this one.
"What's dangerous?"
"Roentgen radiation," Rose replied as though it were obvious.
"What, like from x-rays?"
Rose nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, exactly. We – I have an infirmary on board, it's got x-rays. Well, really really advanced x-rays, but something similar enough that uses roentgen. A good dose of that would completely destroy the connection between the Slab and that old woman we saw."
"And that would kill it?"
"Well, it wouldn't be able to do anything anymore, at least."
Martha smiled. "Great! So shoot it with...with roentgen beams or something!"
Rose shook her head and Martha's smile faded. "Not that simple. But...oh, hold up...no, I got it! I got it! Martha, thank you thank you thank you! I got it! Thanks!"
"Erm...you're welcome?"
The light flickered again and Rose bounced up and down. She removed a panel of metal grating from the floor and tossed it to the side before jumping down inside the bowels of the TARDIS. She came back up with something that looked like a flattened rubber fire hose.
"What's that?"
"The thing that's gonna shoot roentgen beams!" Rose called, once more lost in the semi-darkness below.
Martha crouched down and peered at the back of Rose's head. She could hear switches being flipped and mild cursing when one of them spat sparks out at her.
"No wonder he was always fiddling," Rose mumbled incomprehensibly. "I'll have to too, I suppose." She jumped up and Martha stood up, backed away. "That should connect roentgen radiation from the medlab to the huon conductor, now I just have to crank the power and..."
She grabbed the flattened fire-hose-thing – huon conductor? – and examined the end of it. There was a dial on the thin rectangular metal ring around the opening and Rose bit her lip as she turned it precisely three notches.
"...and focus the beam so we don't die, of course."
Martha didn't know how she should feel about that.
Rose pushed a few buttons by the screen. The keyboard looked very strange, Martha noted. Everything did.
"Okay, Martha, this is very important," Martha looked at her with wide eyes. "I'm going to open the door and let the Slab in. I'll aim the huon conductor – that's the thing we're using to kill it – at the Slab. As soon as I say, you need to push this button here, 'kay?"
She was pointing at a globular brass thing set into the console. Martha nodded. The task sounded simple enough. But she had a queasy feeling in her stomach when she glanced at the monitor; it was glowing a foreboding mauve color and flashing words in characters Martha didn't recognize.
"Okay," she said.
Rose snatched up the huon conductor and held it carefully in one hand. She marched to the doors and before Martha could do anything – warn her, convince her not to, cry – she had thrown them open and backed up several paces. The Slab lurched forward and stretched its arms out like a zombie, heading straight for Rose.
Rose's spine straightened as she expertly aimed the conductor at it.
"Now, Martha."
Depsite Rose's calm tone, Martha was no less urgent with the swiftness of her response. As soon as her hand slammed on the button, a blinding bluish-white light consumed Martha, burning her eyes and her skin and – well, everything, really, and she had a moment of pure terror where she thought Rose had miscalculated something, that she was going to die here, in an impossible ship in a hospital being torn apart by space rhinos searching for a vampire posing as an old woman with leather bodyguards on the moon.
And then, maybe years, maybe a second later, it was over and Martha could breathe again. Rose stood victorious over the crumpled form of the Slab. She carefully replaced the huon conductor, flicked some switches, and covered the floor with its grating while Martha stared at the thing that could have killed them. She walked over to it and nudged its side with her toe.
"So," she said uncomfortably. "Ms. Finnegan is a vampire. You ever seen a vampire?"
"Can't say I have," said Rose, bemused. "Poor Mr. Stoker."
"Yeah," Martha agreed dully. She had the insane urge to run away, run home, crawl underneath the covers of her bed and sleep this nightmare away. Mr. Stoker's pale face was branded into her mind and no matter how hard she tried to see the Slab in front of her, all she could see was Mr. Stoker, dying. "Guess the wolf got him."
Rose looked at her sharply. "What?"
"What?" Martha was confused.
"What did you just say?"
"I don't –"
"You said 'the wolf got him'."
"I did?"
"Yeah."
"So?"
"So nothing." Rose turned away quickly. "It's nothing."
Martha made a noise of doubt, which Rose dutifully ignored. She made her way to the doors, Martha following.
"Who was he?"
"Who?"
"Mr. Stoker?"
"Oh," said Martha. She shook her head, trying to clear it of the fuzz that had accumulated there. "My instructor. I'm going to be a doctor some day."
Rose smiled. "A doctor," she said, "that's nice."
"S'pose so."
"I'm sorry."
Martha almost laughed. "None of this is your fault!"
Rose didn't reply. She closed the door of the TARDIS and made sure it was locked, then walked toward the door of the basement.
"Weird, though, isn't it?" Rose commented, halting suddenly and facing Martha, who nearly ran into her. "Why would she kill somebody at a time like this? It doesn't make any sense, she should be hiding…"
"Maybe she was," Martha suggested. "Maybe Mr. Stoker knew about her and she had to kill him to cover her tracks." Rose looked at her oddly. Martha shrugged
"Martha," said Rose slowly. "You're…bloody brilliant."
"Erm…thanks? Hey, wait!" Rose had spun on her heel and bolted for the door. "Where are you going?"
"To find Ms. Finnegan," Rose exclaimed, exasperated, ahead of her.
"We don't know where she is!"
"Martha," Rose admonished as they traipsed up a set of stairs, "if you were an alien hiding from galactic police with scanners that could tell you were non-human, what would you do?"
"Try and make them think I was human," Martha answered breathlessly, confused, as they came around a corner.
"And if there was the slightest chance of that failing because the police are going to execute everybody anyway?"
Martha opened her mouth to answer, but couldn't. She didn't know. Rose stopped, panting, and grabbed Martha's shoulders. "Think, Martha," she commanded. "If you're scared, and cornered, and a criminal, what're you gonna do?"
She didn't know how she was supposed to know the answer to that, but she did.
"Lash out."
"Exactly. And as far as we know, she hasn't been discovered yet, yeah? So she's got time to plan her move. Make it as powerful as she can. She needs a powerful enough machine to lash out properly. Something that could cause a whole lot of damage if it was messed with – say, its power magnified times a thousand if necessary. It's probably simple for her. And the one machine closest to her when she killed Mr. Stoker was…?"
Martha thought furiously. "The MRI," she whispered in horrified realization. "She's gonna do something to the MRI!"
Rose nodded grimly. "There's no telling what she knows or what kind of damage she could cause. We have to find her before she does something that could blow us all to hell."
"C'mon, then!" Martha felt a rush of adrenaline synchronizing with a sense of urgency. They had to get moving.
"Wait!"
"What is it?"
Rose grimaced. "We're running out of air."
Martha groaned in frustration. Could anything else go wrong?
As though fate were on her tail, the second Slab chose that moment to round the nearest corner. Rose cursed and shoved Martha in front of her, behind a nearby water cooler. Martha glared at her when she nearly bumped her head on it, but Rose didn't seem to notice.
"They always travel in pairs," Rose mused quietly. "The one that survived after the D – after my friend killed its partner went kind of insane. Wouldn't listen to its master, just wanted to destroy everything in sight."
"What about you?" Martha asked her as the Slab went around the corner and vanished from sight. "Haven't you got someone?"
Something indecipherable flashed across Rose's expression, but it was gone so quickly Martha almost thought she imagined it.
"Nope," she replied cheerfully. "Just me."
"What, on your own?"
Rose gave her an incredulous glare. "We're in a hospital, on the moon, running out of air, chasing after a criminal bloodsucker who may or may not try to blow up the Earth, hiding from rhino space-police and a retarded leather slave, and you're asking personal questions?"
"Just curious," Martha defended herself indignantly. "No reason to get all snappy on me."
Rose rolled her eyes and stood, pulling Martha to her feet. "Come on. We've got to find that vampire."
"Don't know why we're hiding from the rhinos anyway," Martha groused; "if we're both human. Assuming you even are human, and I'm not completely convinced of that."
Rose shot her an amused glance just before they rounded a corner.
Martha's heart jumped a beat when they came face-to-face with a Judoon squad. The nearest one immediately began to shine its blue scanner in Rose's face. After several seconds and a longer moment than Martha was sure it had taken them to categorize the other humans, the Judoon finally proclaimed, "Unknown species, part-human. Detain for further questioning!"
Rose and Martha's jaws dropped. "Oh my God, you're really not," Martha breathed. Rose shook herself from her stupor as the Judoon started toward them with guns and chains.
"And again!" She started off down the hallway once more with Martha hot on her heels. They ducked as they were shot at by some type of ray gun which Martha thought more belonged in a B-movie than in a hospital. They turned sharply around a corner and down a short flight of stairs. Rose lead them through another door, which she bolted behind them.
"Never gets old," Rose muttered. Martha looked at her like she'd lost her head and grown three new ones. With tentacles.
Rose glanced at the hand of a patient who was lying in the hall, sleeping off oxygen starvation. Martha felt her own lungs straining for breath and a wave of dizziness threatened to blacken her vision. But there something more important to be done than passing out, she thought, and stayed standing through sheer force of will.
"They've done this floor." Rose said, also out of breath. "With any luck, they won't come back to it. Let's go."
When they were almost to the end of the hall, Martha spotted Swales and put a hand on Rose's arm to stop her.
"How much oxygen is there?" Martha asked Swales.
"Not enough for all these people," the student answered. She looked weary and rather oxygen-starved herself. "We're going to run out."
"How are you feeling?" Rose asked Martha. "All right?"
"I'm running on adrenaline." Martha replied with a smile.
"Welcome to my world." Rose said dryly.
"What about the Judoon?" asked Martha.
Rose shrugged. "They're the cause of it, they probably have some sort of protection or other," she said. "I wouldn't count on it slowing them down. This way, right?" She pointed and Martha nodded.
When they approached Mr. Stoker's office, Martha put a hand on Rose's arm.
"Hang on." She said.
She crept cautiously into the office. When no bloodsucker with a straw popped out to drain her dry, she jogged the rest of the way in and knelt at Mr. Stoker's side. Rose watched from the doorway as she gently ran the pads of her fingers over his cold, pallid eyelids to close them. She straightened and looked Rose in the eye, then nodded once at the unspoken question she saw there and left the room.
"It's down at the end of that hall there," Martha gestured with her head.
Rose bit her lip, thinking. They couldn't just rush in, Martha realized with some consternation.
"Something still doesn't fit," Rose muttered, mostly to herself. She talked so fast and so quietly Martha could barely understand her. "Why would she kill Mr. Stoker? Yeah, if he knew there was something strange about her, but then she could have just locked him up. Killing him and then just leaving him there runs the risk of the body getting found. And then what? The Judoon could use the body to find her. It just doesn't make sense. Unless…the blood…and she drank it, so…"
They desperately needed a plan. Martha watched as Rose's face slowly hardened into a mask of solemn determination. Martha opened her mouth to speak but, before she could, a pandemoneum of noise from the direction in which they'd come had them both spinning. The Judoon were double-checking the patients.
"Find the non-human. Execute," they chanted, and a chill crept up Martha's spine.
Now what?
She heard Rose sigh. "Look, don't know how it's possible, but apparently I'm not completely human, or at least their scanners don't think I am. Martha, I have an…an idea, but I need you to hold them up just long enough for me to do it."
"Do what? And how do I hold them up?"
The Judoon were growing closer.
"Martha, why hasn't she been caught yet?" Rose didn't wait for an answer; "Because she's hiding, right? But how can she hide so well? Mr. Stoker's blood! She drank it, must have done something with it to make her seem human so the Judoon couldn't catalog her as anything else. But it's been a while since then, she must need more to stay completely human. So, logically, if she had a taste of my blood, the non-human part of me and the non-human part of her would actually –"
"Oh, no you don't," Martha interrupted sternly, but Rose shook her head quickly.
"We don't have time to argue! Martha, I need you kiss me." Martha stared at her, utterly flabbergasted. Rose rolled her eyes. "Or let me spit in your mouth or bleed in your ear or something, whatever suits your fancy."
"Oh." Martha blinked, finally understanding where this was going. She glanced over her shoulder; the Judoon were only a few feet away. Shit. Well, when it's life or death…"Right, then." Swiftly, she stepped forward and pressed her lips to Rose's own. Rose yielded her mouth to hers quickly and they swiped tongues once before Rose hastily stepped back.
Rose stepped back and glared at Martha sternly. "Don't take too long, now. I still need you to save my arse." Then she turned and ran down the hall.
Immediately thereafter, the Judoon were bearing down on Martha. She resisted the urge to rub her mouth on the sleeve of her labcoat and spit out the too-sweet taste of Rose.
"Now listen!" Martha said, and the Judoon paused, looking at her. "I know who you're looking for. She's this woman; she calls herself Florence –" she was interrupted by the now-distinct sound of cataloguing. Martha went cross-eyed looking at the source of the blue light in her face.
"Human," announced the Judoon after a pause in which Martha nearly held her breath, "with non-human traces detected."
She almost breathed a sigh of relief. It worked. Her tune changed, however, when two of the Judoon drew their weapons and the one with the scanner shoved her against the wall with an arm.
"Non-human element confirmed. Authorize full scan. What are you? What are you?"
Several moments later, the Judoon stopped waving the scanner in her face.
"Confirm: human. Traces of facial contact with part-human." Martha inwardly grimaced at the memory; now she did wipe her face with the sleeve of her coat. The Judoon marked her hand with a black 'x' with the tip of its scanner, then spoke to its comrades. "Continue the search."
"You will need this," another Judoon shoved a plastic-like papery thing with barcodes into Martha's hand while the others proceeded into the MRI room to continue their search.
"What's this for?" Martha asked.
"Compensation." The Judoon said. Martha shrugged and stuffed it in her pocket.
She waited until she was sure they couldn't tell she was following, then sprinted after them. What if she was too late? What if Florence had killed Rose? What the freak would she do then?
Martha heard Florence's sickly sweet claim that a "poor young lady" had died of fright. Trying not to panic, she pushed her way to the front of the squadron of Judoon that had assembled, apparently right after the Judoon in the hall had figured out that Martha wasn't the person they were looking for. They were scanning the body on the floor – Rose.
"Confirmation," the one with the scanner declared. "Deceased."
Martha's blood ran cold.
"Oh my God," she breathed, and rushed forward. A Judoon stopped her, a firm three-fingered rhino hand on her shoulder.
"Stop," it ordered. "Case closed."
'Case closed'? That was all they had to say? But what about…?
"But it was her…" Martha's voice trailed off, locking eyes with Florence the vampire. She rounded furiously on the Judoon, trying to ignore the clouds that lack of oxygen was starting to fog in her vision. "She killed her! She did it; she murdered her!" and partly all she could think was it's all my fault, I should have been faster, it's all my fault, it's all my fault, itsallmyfaultgodammit…
"Judoon have no authority over human crime," replied the Judoon tonelessly.
"But she's not human," Martha desperately protested.
"Oh, but I am human," said Florence, holding up right hand, which was marked with a black 'x'. "I've been catalogued."
"But she's not!" insisted Martha desperately. "She – wait a minute," her panic and her guilt faded just enough to clear her mind or, more specifically, her memory. Rose's plan. She grabbed a scanner off a Judoon to her right and pressed the button she found on the top. She shone the light into Florence's eyes, who still wasn't getting it.
"Oh, all right. Scan all you like." Florence said confidently, not even trying to dodge the scanner.
The Judoon examined the results.
"Non-human," it said, a bit of disbelief coloring its otherwise emotionless voice.
"What?" exclaimed Florence, shocked.
Martha lowered the scanner triumphantly.
"Confirm analysis," said the Judoon, taking the scanner from Martha.
"Oh, but it's a mistake, surely," said Florence a little too hopefully, too desperately. Martha shook her head pityingly at her. "I'm human. I'm as human as they come."
"She gave her life so they'd find you," realized Martha, not completely sure if she should admire that or be appalled. How could she just throw her life out the window like that, like it didn't even matter?
"Confirm: Plasmavore," the Judoon said harshly. Plasmavore? Martha thought. Not vampire? "I charge you with the crime of murdering the princess of Patrival Regency Nine."
"Well, she deserved it," spat Florence, finally giving up all pretense of innocence; "with those pink cheeks, blond curls – and that simpering voice! She was begging for the bite of a Plasmavore."
"Do you confess?"
"Confess? I'm proud of it! Slab! Stop them!" She ordered and ducked around the partition that guarded from them the controls of the MRI she'd clearly modified. She plugged two giant red extension cords together as the Slab started forward. Rose had been right. About…everything.
A Judoon stepped in front of Martha and shot the Slab, the leather dissolving into nothing.
"Verdict: guilty. Sentence: execution."
"Enjoy your victory, Judoon!" gloated Florence. "Because you're going to burn with me! Burn in hell!"
As one, the squadron pointed their weapons at the screen. Martha ducked instinctively, falling to her knees at Rose's side. They shot clean through the screen, disintigrating the Plasmavore.
"Case closed."
"But…what did she mean 'burn with me'?" said Martha logically, though logic certainly felt far beyond her at that moment. "The scanner shouldn't be doing that; she's done something!" The MRI machine was, in fact, sparking wildly. Surely the Judoon could see that! Fear clouded her mind now nearly as much as oxygen starvation. She was panting, lungs heaving, and her bones trembled with terror.
The Judoon turned to the scanner and held his own scanner to it. "Scans detect lethal acceleration of monomagnetic pulse."
Mono-what?
"So fix it!" Martha snapped. She starting to feel light-headed.
"Our jurisdiction has ended." A Judoon told her. "Judoon will evacuate. All units WITHDRAW!"
As the Judoon left, Martha felt an urge to run after them, scream and beg that they put things right, but they were running out of oxygen and Rose was just lying there, helpless,dead, and she had to do something, because she didn't know how to stop the overload and Rose was their only chance.
Gritting her teeth and breathing shallowly until she needed the oxygen for mouth-to-mouth, she initiated CPR, pumping her hands on the woman's chest, pleading silently for her heart to restart. "Come on," she whispered aloud, tears threatened to spill over onto her cheeks. "Don't do this to me now. The world needs you, Rose Tyler."
She tilted the blonde's head back, plugged her nose, took a deep breath, and breathed into her. Drew back, did it again, and then again, and again, then went back to pumping her heart. BREATHE! she wanted to order her, but she couldn't spare the breath. She thought back to that morning, to the music she had heard alongside the beat of Rose's mortal heart: the ethereal singing that made no sense but which resonated deep in her mind. She tried to recreate that; tried to make it form in the forefront of her mind, hoping that somehow Rose would hear it.
Not much oxygen left, dammit. She sat still and panted for a second, then closed her eyes, sucked her breath in, and then poured it into Rose, her mind resonating with the otherworldly song.
Rose gasped to life, sitting bolt upright and coughing as she tried and failed to adjust to too-thin air.
"She…did something…" Martha said weakly, collapsing to the floor. Black spots danced before her eyes. "Over there." She pointed to the partition.
Rose nodded, forced herself to stand, pushed herself to the melted screen and stumbled around it. She groaned mentally when she saw her two options: blue plugs or red plugs? She didn't have time, dammit. Why couldn't Martha have done this? It was so simple a caveman could do it! But which one?
With a start, Rose realized that she wasn't even breathing – not at all. There was no oxygen left to breathe. She didn't have time to wonder why she was alive and conscious without any oxygen available. She prayed that the Judoon would at least transport the hospital back to Earth. They'd got what they came for, why let a whole building full of people die for no reason? Then again, they would all die anyway if Rose did not make the right choice.
Hissing breathlessly with the indescribable pain of motionless lungs, she crawled forward and grabbed the red extensions. Without a smidgen of hesitation, she yanked them apart. Immediately the MRI sizzled out and powered down. Danger averted. Lucky. Rose would have sighed with relief if she were able.
Weakness pulled at her oxygen-deprived muscles, but she forced herself to her feet again and to the ward across the hall, staring despondently out the window and pleading, silently, with the enforcers of the Shadow Proclamation: Let us go, dammit!
She smiled feebly when it began to rain, leaning solely on the window for support.
Look, Martha, she thought. It's raining upside-down on the moon. The Doctor would have loved that.
ΘΣ … ΘΣ
Martha sighed as she got dressed for Leo's party, listening to the news and wondering where Rose Tyler was now. She had woken to find her long gone, nowhere inside or outside the hospital, so she had had no choice but to simply go home. Rattled by events, and particularly by her own part in them, she had refused an interview, but that didn't mean she couldn't listen to what others had to say about it.
"Eyewitness reports from Royal Hope Hospital continue to pour in," blared the reporter excitedly, "and it all seems to be remarkably consistent." Of course it does, thought Martha glumly. Because it's true. Just because you idiots are too blind to see it… "This, from medical student Oliver Morganstern –"
"I was there. I saw it happen," said Morganstern, appearing on the screen, "and I feel uniquely priveleged. I looked out over the surface of the moon." Martha smiled, remembering for herself the incredible experience of standing next an amazing person on the balcony off the patients' lounge as they 'looked out over the surface of the moon', standing in the earthlight and seeing the kind of beauty that could well be seen only by a select few others, ever. It was extraordinary, and she loved it. She only wished she'd had more time with Rose, to learn more about her, about what she did for a living. Dare she say she even missed her a little? The danger and the thrill she seemed to carry around her shoulders like it was just another accessory?
"I saw the Earth suspended in space, and it all just proves Mr. Saxon right. We're not alone in the universe. There's life out there; wild and extraordinary life."
Extraordinary. And Morganstern didn't even know the half of it. But it was more than that, she realized. It was everything. There was so much that she now realized she didn't know, so much to see and experience and discover and do. Where on Earth was she going to go from here?
She shook her head and wondered if she really wanted the chance to find out, on Earth.
ΘΣ … ΘΣ
And here they all went. She knew this was going to happen, and on any other day and in any other life – any ordinary life – she would have tackled the problem like a true life challenge or something. Now, she was certainly in no mood for it. These petty little problems seemed so…pointless now, after the first true taste of the universe she'd gotten.
Maybe it had all been a dream after all, as she wondered sometimes. Maybe none of it had ever been real, just wishful thinking on her part. But then…her life was forever changed by that single dream.
"I am not staying in there to be insulted!"
"She didn't mean it sweetheart, she was just saying that you look healthy!"
"No, I did not! I said, 'orange'!"
"Clive! That woman is disrespectin' me; she's never liked me."
"Oh, I can't think why, after you stole my husband!"
"I was seduced! I'm entirely innocent! Tell her, Clive!"
"And then she has a go at Martha, practically accused her of making the whole thing up!"
She and everyone else in the world, Mum.
"Mum, I don't mind. Just leave it." As usual, no one listened to her. No one cared. She was different from them, and she could see it more clearly tonight than she ever could before.
They continued to fight until, at last, Annalise broke, having had enough.
"Oh, I'm never talkin' to your family again!" And she stalked off. They continued to yell after her, but Martha didn't join in. Why should she? It wasn't like anything she could have to say would make a difference. Annalise was always heading for trouble, in the end. So she just stood there until eventually her family were all gone.
Then, over by the corner, she noticed something. A familiar figure silhoutted against the wall: Rose. She was watching without any identifiable expression on her face, but as soon as she caught Martha's eye she smiled. Hands in her black leather jacket pockets, she deliberately turned and walked away and out of sight.
She didn't even have to think about it; jacket in hand, Martha followed. She peeked around the corner into a barely-lit alley and walked down to the end, where Rose was waiting patiently outside a tall blue box.
Martha sighed with relief when she saw that she was still there and not off disappearing again.
"I went to the moon today," she said, now fully believing it.
"A bit more peaceful than down here," Rose commented, gesturing with a hand back the way they came, to her dissipating family.
"You never even told me who you are!" She complained, one of the many things that had been nagging at her since she'd disappeared.
"I'm Rose Tyler." Rose deadpanned.
"But what sort of species? It's not everyday I get to ask that…"
"Human!" volunteered Rose, raising her hand like she was at school. "London, Earth, jus' like you."
"Really?" Martha raised a skeptical eyebrow. She'd never met a human quite like Rose before. "What about that thing with the Judoon, then?"
Rose shrugged. "Must be a flaw in their scanners. Dunno. I've got one heart, normal human body temperature, I'm definitely not allergic to aspirin…" her voice trailed off.
"Who's allergic to aspirin?" asked Martha, startled.
"People are born that way. Well, some people. Well, when I say people…" Rose trailed off at the look on Martha's face.
"Right. So, what's with your so-called 'ship', then? Where is it?"
"You're looking at it."
"What, this thing?" Martha laughed, touching the panels of the blue box. "Definitely fit inside a cupboard, but the inside…" She shook her head and laughed again. Rose smiled knowingly, then exhaled deeply.
"I just thought, since you saved my life and I've got a brand new sonic screwdriver which needs road testing," she pulled out a thin silver tube-thing that looked vaguely like a pen from her jacket, twirling it between her fingers; "you might fancy a trip."
"What, into space?"
"Well–"
"But I can't," she stopped her before it became far too tempting. "I've got exams, I've got things to do! I have to go into town first thing and pay the rent. I've got my family going mad –"
"If it helps," Rose interrupted with an inexplicably dark look, "I can also travel in time."
"Get out of here."
"I can." She was dead serious, but Martha could not believe her; she just couldn't.
"C'mon now; that is going too far."
"All right, I'll prove it." Rose suddenly grinned at Martha, tucked her screwdriver-thing back inside her jacket, pulled out a key from the chain around her neck and disappeared inside the blue box.
A few seconds later, to her shock, the box began to disappear, a strange grind-and-roar noise filling the alley, a breeze riffling lightly across her forehead. As soon as it faded out of existence, however, it started to come back, just as solid as before, with the same wheezing noise it had made when it had disappeared. Martha backed up until her back hit the bins, which supported her as her legs wouldn't.
Rose stepped out casually, smiling smugly. She was twirling a pen in her hand.
"Here you go," she said. "Promised I'd give it back, didn't I?"
"I know, but…" Rose started to grin. "That was this morning!" She remembered, just, before it all began – or when it all began, depending on how you looked at it. The complete stranger who had purposefully bumped into her for no apparent reason, stolen her pen, and then wandered off without so much as a 'by your leave'. That really was her!
"But…did you…" she found it rather difficult to form coherent sentences, which was actually rather embarassing. She took a breath and tried again. "Oh my God, you can travel in time!" She ended up saying, like Rose didn't already know.
Rose smiled somewhat indulgently.
"But hold on," Martha started, realizing something. "If you could see me this morning, why didn't you warn me not to go into work?"
"Because then you wouldn't be standing here asking that," she replied frankly. "Crossing into established events is strictly forbidden." She sounded like she was quoting someone. "Believe me, I learned that the hard way. Besides, I already knew I had stolen your pen, though not why, and where you were at the time." She shrugged. "It was written into the timeline. Why would I change that?"
"And that's your spaceship?" she asked, walking up to the box in awe.
"It's called the TARDIS," reminded Rose.
"Time and Relative Dimensions in Space," Martha recalled aloud, mesmerized. She ran her hand across its surface, surprised to find that it felt like what it looked like. "Your 'spaceship' is made of wood," she told her, shaking her head. "And there's not much room. Bit cozy, isn't it?" She raised a suggestive eyebrow.
Rose rolled her eyes and opened the door.
"Take a look," she offered, gesturing like a hostess welcoming Martha into her home.
Martha looked her, wondering if it really looked like what she had seen in the hospital, despite all evidence to the contrary. She stepped inside, Rose following just behind her, stared for a moment, then walked back out past that…that…impossible woman, eyes wide in utter disbelief.
"Oh, no, no," she muttered. "But…it's just a…box."
Inside, Rose leaned against the railing near the door and sniggered softly.
"But it's huge!" called Martha from outside, and Rose snorted. "How's it do that?"
She was by the door again but not willing to go back inside, looking back and forth between Rose and the console. Rose shrugged, biting her lip. The Slab was gone, thankfully. Martha knocked tentatively on the open door.
"It's wood."
"Yeah, I think we've established that," Rose muttered.
"It's like a box with that room just…" she paused, stepping inside again, "rammed in."
"Never heard it put quite like that before," Rose admitted.
Martha stopped at the top of the ramp, staring at the time rotor.
Rose rolled her eyes, sensing that Martha was just…about to… Ah, there it was. She mouthed along with Martha's breathless whisper behind her back; "It's bigger on the inside!"
"Is it?" said Rose, feigning surprise. "Would you look that! I hadn't noticed."
She laughed at Martha's gobsmacked expression, shutting the door and bounding past Martha to the console.
"All right, then, let's get going. Allons-y! Oh," she frowned, pausing. "Ew. Allon-sy? Allonsy. No, no, definitely not right. That's just wrong. So wrong. That's his."
Martha shook herself from her stupor and followed her up to the console, staring at the numerous buttons and switches and levers and nobs that littered the surface.
"But…is there…a crew? Like a navigator and stuff? Where is everyone?"
"Just me," said Rose. She looked at the time rotor, briefly, and Martha could have sworn some kind of communication passed between captain and ship. Then, suddenly, Rose was everywhere, flicking switches and pressing buttons and shifting levers all over. It was like a kid hopping around on a sugar high.
"You're all on your own?"
Though she'd already asked once, Rose was still caught off guard. She grinned, though.
"Oh, sometimes there're…guests. Occasionally. Sort of. Sometimes. Now. Anyway, one quick trip to say 'thanks', then you'll be back home before anybody'll know the difference."
"One trip, yeah? All right, sounds fair enough." She paused, like she wanted to say something else, then shook her head and stopped.
"Well then," said Rose, moving around the controls and glancing briefly at the column again. "Close down the gravitic anomalizer," she pressed down on a lever that seemed too stubborn to budge an inch – she managed anyway, of course; "fire up the helmic regulator," she slammed her fist down on a button; "and finally…the handbrake. Ready?" she asked Martha.
"No," she replied, but had to smile anyway.
"Off we go, then." She threw another lever by the monitor. Immediately, the ship jarred violently, and Martha was forced to hang on to something – anything – for dear life. Rose fell to the ground in a heap, but came back up in moments, laughing with manic delight as the TARDIS shivered and shook around them like it was falling apart at the seams. Martha thought she was going to get sea-…or, well, space-sick.
"Blimey, it's a bit bumpy!" Martha exclaimed.
"Welcome aboard, Miss Jones!" Rose yelled back.
They somehow managed to shake hands across the console.
"It's a right pleasure, Miss Rose," she replied, grinning in spite of her discomfort.