So, the reason I said that Martha might be judged in the previous chapter was that she agreed to give the Doctor some space, but rationalized herself out of it, finding her own reasons to follow him anyway.

Some of you felt that she should be judged for staying with him after he apologized and tried in vain to explain himself. I agree that before they have their little chat, she probably should have just got the hell out of there, but when a friend tells you he's going through something and just needs your support and understanding, how can anyone say no? Especially when he says that it's really not a good time to be on his own just now. I really don't feel Martha is the sort just to say, "I don't care what you're going through, just get me out of here." She loves him and is naturally a caretaker - of course she wants to stay and help... and investigate.

And sure, the Doctor's been kind of an ass, but trust me when I say, he is genuinely going through something big that he genuinely feels he can't share with her. Of course, this being the world of Doctor Who, we know that the problem can't really be solved until Martha gets involved, but the Doctor doesn't know what we know, does he? ;-)

Most of you seem to have figured out what's going to happen in that bar in midtown Manhattan, but there might also be some minor surprises here too... hope you enjoy them!


7

It was a sleepy, chic little bar with haphazardly (but intentionally) painted black walls and Mark Rothko prints hanging about. There were chalkboards on two walls detailing the specialised Martinis they served, all of which were named for modern artists or jazz singers. The music bordered on beatnik, the barstools were dull chrome with black leather seats, and the overhead lighting was, of course, dim, with a purplish tint.

The place wasn't too crowded, as it was a Wednesday night, and it wasn't quite nine o'clock yet. Martha walked with a heavy gait so as not to be recognised, and snuck to the back and chose a booth, hiding behind the brim of her hat.

Not long after she'd settled in, the Doctor was sitting at the bar beside a woman, Martha guessed she was between twenty-five and thirty, with spectacular hair. It was long, with giant, perfect curls, and dyed almost like stripes, in honey and graham cracker tints. When the woman turned her head, Martha could see that the face matched the hair. She was darker-skinned, perhaps Puerto Rican, with perfect, almond-shaped eyes and lips that looked to have been sculpted from clay. She was dressed in jeans that seemed painted on, and a royal purple satin top that tied behind her neck once, and four more times across her otherwise bare back. She was attracting glances and stares from many a man in the room, all of whom Martha suspected had been pining, and/or working up the courage to talk to her. But only the Doctor had had the audacity.

Martha spied him handing some money to the bartender, and over the next few minutes, watched him chat up the honey-and-graham-cracker-haired woman. After a bit, the woman's friend kissed her on the cheek with a knowing smile, and left. The bartender brought the Doctor and his new friend each a drink, though Martha noticed that the Doctor didn't touch his. The woman had a couple of greenish Martinis over the course of the evening, but did not seem to drink excessively. She leaned on the bar with her legs crossed in his direction, her head resting on her hand, fingers laced through her hair - a clear sign of interest. Any touching of the hair is flirtation - Martha knew this from experience. She smiled softly, and looked at him with amazement as she listened to him talk, and threw hear head back gracefully when she laughed.

And as the night progressed, Martha ordered three drinks, one of them alcoholic, two of them not, and received more than a couple of surly stares from the waitress. She tried not to drink any of the gin and tonic she had requested, for fear it would dull her.

Plus, for most of the evening, she was suppressing an acute nausea.

But it wasn't jealousy.

Well, of course it was, but it wasn't just jealousy.

It was the overwhelming feeling that there was so much more going on than she could handle. What was there about this scenario, this chatting-up of a beautiful woman, by this ridiculously charming, bold Doctor, that he couldn't share with her? Of course, she knew the easy answer to that question. But what sorts of "issues" could he be sorting through in this way? Somehow, when the Doctor did mundane things, she felt that it was anything but mundane. He was acting, more or less, like any other good-looking guy with an edge, but he wasn't just a good-looking guy with an edge. He was a Time Lord. This had to be a guise of some sort, the wrapping for some other secret agenda. He had issues he said he didn't know how to work out. How did this woman play into it? Was she a malevolent alien with a shiny, silken candy coating? What if she wasn't? What if she was an innocent bystander who was about to get pushed, pulled or dragged into the Doctor's dark side? He had sworn he wasn't hurting himself, but Martha hadn't thought to ask if he was hurting someone else. She hated herself for thinking it, but she had to consider all possibilities, now that she was in it.

By midnight, the bar was packed, and Martha had been forced to give up her booth. She stood in the corner beside what used to be a phone booth, and just watched. She watched as the Doctor and the woman leaned in closer, ostensibly to hear one another over the growing din. She watched as he reached up with his right hand and gently ran two fingers across her cheek, and she let her hand crawl forward to rest on his thigh. She watched as he used those same two fingers to trace circles up and down the woman's perfect, bronze arm, and as she used her plastic skewer to pop candied cherries into the Doctor's mouth. At last, he leaned forward to tell her, apparently, the most profound of secrets, and when they pulled back from one another, their lips brushed together very lightly. And then, not so lightly. And then, they pressed against each other, open and searching. Martha averted her eyes from the snog, and flagged down her waitress to pay her bill. She felt she had seen enough.

But then, as she was waiting for the waitress to return with her credit card, the Doctor grabbed the woman's hand, and the two of them stood up and headed for the door.

"No bloody way!" Martha said aloud.

Upon reflection, she didn't know why she was surprised, but she was. And then pushed through the crowd so as to see which direction they went.


They turned left as they exited the bar, and Martha followed, once again, half a block behind. In fact, they walked straight past the TARDIS, all unnoticed against a building on 34th Street. They caught a subway to Brooklyn Heights and finally, she tailed them to a Brownstone home. As they entered, to her horror, she saw a soft, orangish light come on in a ground-floor window. She had been hoping they would go at least to the next floor up, so she couldn't spy on them anymore.

She waited a few minutes to see what would happen, and then slowly, hating herself, approached the window and peered inside. She told herself that if anything destructive was going to happen, it would happen in the flat, not in a public bar or on the subway.

And what she saw through the half-tipped venetian blinds surprised her. The Doctor was sitting on the sofa looking through a photo album, occasionally laughing or asking questions, and the woman was just getting settled in beside him, with a glass of white wine for each of them. She pointed out photos, sometimes sheepishly, and he followed what she was saying with avid interest. They laughed, they joked, they made lingering eye-contact, and seemed to be having a wonderful time together.

When they finished the album, the two of them turned and faced each other, leaning on opposite ends of the big, plush sofa. There was no more lip-mashing or gentle caresses - not yet, anyway.

Someone walked past her, and muttered "pervert" under his breath, and it snapped Martha out of her reverie. She stomped one foot on the pavement and swore, and ploughed up the sidewalk in exasperation. She reached the end of the block and crossed the street, and for a few moments, she stood opposite the flat, where the Doctor seemed to be having a lovely evening, a heart-to-hearts with some woman.

Martha tried not to think of her as some other woman; technically she had no claim on him, other than a fairly intense friendship. She felt cheated-on, but that wasn't really the case.

And in any case, her feelings were not the point. The mystery of the Doctor's secretive, erratic and downright weird behaviour was the point. She knew she should be worried, not angry nor jealous.

And for the most part, worry was at the forefront of her mind.


For the next hour, Martha paced back and forth in front of the flat opposite. She sat on the steps for a few minutes, then paced again. She walked to the end of the street and back, and even took an intense stroll around the block - anything to ward off the urge to look into that window again. Twice, she walked back in the direction of the subway station where she had got off, but those little excursions always ended up back here, right where she really shouldn't be. She couldn't tear herself away, and she didn't know why. She was not an obsessive person, she was not the sort who followed people back to their flats and spied on them while on a date. She scolded herself over and over, but then swung back in the direction of wondering if he really was involved in something dire, and needed her help, and was somehow prevented from saying so.

At last, she couldn't take it anymore, and she tore across the street. The blinds still had not been closed all the way, and she could still see them on the sofa. This time they were sitting side-by-side, just holding hands. Their temples were pressed against each other and they were talking intimately - the woman might have even been crying. Still, nothing of what one might expect of two attractive people who met in a bar. The Doctor was still wearing every bit of his usual ensemble, including the shoes, completely laced up, and the woman still had all of her kit intact, including painted-on jeans and knee-high boots.

No, they weren't here for a shag; they were connecting, which just made things so much worse.

But if making connections was what the Doctor had been doing when he was out all night, even in Amsterdam and in Prague, then why skip town so soon? Perhaps this woman was the first with whom he'd found a real spark? Perhaps they'd find themselves lingering in New York a bit longer than two nights...

"Oh, God," she groaned, before she could stop herself. She turned and pressed her back against the Brownstone wall, to keep from passing out. What if he's shopping for a new companion?