SEVEN

"What did you find out?" asked the Doctor, as he walked through the door of their room. She was pacing nervously.

"What? Oh, nothing."

He was confused. "Then... why scurry away so fast?"

She stopped and stared at him, put her hands on her hips. "He asked me to dinner."

"Well, of course he did. You're beautiful, and you were flirting like mad. You touch my thigh, I'm going to want to whisk you off somewhere too."

She blushed. "Sorry. Thought it might be useful, but all he did was tell me the names of everyone in the room and toss around acronyms."

He waved away her apology. "Don't be sorry. As long as you leave the party with me, it's all in the name of intel, right?"

"Of course," she smiled, walking toward him. She slipped her arms around him. "I'll always leave the party with you. Speaking of which, what did you find out from Nicolette Dorsey?"

He seemed surprised that Martha had known her name. "As much as you did," he muttered. "Only instead of acronyms, she threw around the names of about twelve different British people she knows, asking if I knew them as well. One of them I actually did, but I didn't say."

Martha laughed. "Yep, heard a good bit of that myself."

"But she didn't say anything important. Just that Walter Morritz was usually there."

"Yeah, Vincent said the same thing," she offered. "He said his absence is definitely felt down there."

"Been going to that social every night for years," he thought. "If I didn't know better, I'd say the virus was in the wine."

Martha gulped. "You don't think..."

"Hm? Oh, at this point, it could be anything."

"Doctor! Why didn't you warn me?"

"Why? I said it could be anything. We were taking a big risk just by coming to this lodge – for all we knew it was in the heating ducts or the water or the towel fibres! Still could be. Do you feel anything coming on?"

"No, you?"

"No, but I'm not human."

"Right."

"You let me know, though, the minute you feel anything strange."

"Don't worry. But you know, it might worth looking into the wine since it's mostly imported," she suggested. "That might answer your question about the vegetation, do you think?"

"Grape vines don't grow in tropical climates," he said. "But it doesn't mean that there couldn't be a plant species in common. We should really check out the bottles – maybe something will ring a bell."

She put her hands on her hips again. "Want me to go distract the bartender?" Her face registered tedium.

He smiled. "You'd be good at it, but I was thinking we'd go down tonight after everyone's gone. Middle of the night, even."

"Okay. What do we do in the meantime?" she asked, sitting down on the bed.

He approached her. "You could distract me for a while."

She looked up at him and took his hands. "Do you need distracting?"

"Always."


There was time to kill and love was in the air.

With the Doctor's earlier revelations of the Time War, which he had never discussed with anyone, they both felt a deepening of their bond, a strengthening of their love. The Doctor was determined to open up to her, as soon as he felt he could, and she was determined to listen when he did. But for now, they let their hands do the talking while their lips stayed silent and pressed against each other. She undid his coat buttons painfully slowly while their tongues danced, and then untied his tie. Normally, she would have tugged at it until it was loose enough for him to climb out of it, but this was not their usual I-must-have-you-now fare. This was about taking time, deepening, strengthening.

Then the shirt buttons went, equally slowly, each of which revealed a fine little patch of flesh underneath which Martha found hot to the touch. He pulled aside the v-neck of her blouse and kissed her collarbone, covered every inch painstakingly with his lips. He nibbled her ear and felt her lean into him as he did so. When he pulled her shirt up over her head, she backed away and lured him toward the bed. He joined her, and they resumed their slow, slow burn.

She felt, as she hoped he did, that this was all a metaphorical dance foreshadowing the literal purging that was to come. She wanted to hear everything – she wanted him to finish the story he had started earlier. She was scared, though – what if he confessed something awful and she inadvertently freaked out? That would ruin the whole thing. She explored her feelings a bit. What was the worst thing she could hear? She tried to prepare herself for anything.

She already knew some fairly disturbing things about him. On a more benign level, she knew he was nine hudred years old and had almost always travelled with a companion, most of them human. She knew for sure that there was at least one (other than her) with whom he had been in love, and probably more before that. She knew he had changed his face a few times (though she wasn't sure how many), and had a very vague idea, after talking to Rose, of what he had been like before he'd regenerated into the Doctor she knew.

On a different level, she knew he'd fought in the war, he'd said he was the only one who could end it. He had probably killed and maimed, dropped bombs, relished in the deaths of another species – that was war. All the things he now despised, she was now sure, embody the spirit of war, a spirit which must have inhabited him at the darkest time in his long, long life. She felt that she was prepared for all of that, and all that that implies.

But then, shamefully, her mind wandered as the Doctor's mouth drifted down her body and his fingers undid the button of her jeans. Could he have killed in cold blood, felt that bloodlust and enjoyed it? Could he have tortured or raped or buried someone alive? Worse still, could he have done that to a companion or a loved one? She began to wonder at the myriad of different ways a Time Lord could violate a human if he so desired. Mind probes, dream visitation, imposed insomnia or hypersomnia, physiosonic or psychosonic manipulation, involuntary enthrallment... and those were just the ones she knew about. Those were the ones she could get her mind around. There were others she hadn't heard of, and still more that she couldn't understand even if she tried.

Not that she was losing trust in her Doctor. She didn't for a second believe he could kill or rape or torture her any more than she could him. But war is war. She actually managed to lose herself once again in the moment after thinking this way. She had been learning to let go of certain thoughts until they suited her – it was a handy skill to have.

Unfortunately, with passions ignited and clothes still unpeeled, the major distraction came in the form of a loud clamour coming from somewhere nearby within the building. It sounded like a rock band trashing a room. The Doctor and Martha sat up with a start and looked at each other with alarm. When they heard more clamour, they dashed for the door and listened for a few moments through the wood, exchanging an expression of utter dread. They both knew what it meant: more victims. Voices were murmuring in the hall. The sound of a gurney being moved about, totally distinctive in Martha's ears.

Suddenly, a man's voice yelled out, "Hold him back! Hold him back!"

Another man screamed, "I got him! You got him?"

"Yes!"

"One, two, three!"

Then the sound of screaming from the full throat of a grown man, and sounds of struggling from at least three or four others. The Doctor opened the door just a tad, and they observed three men holding down a red-faced man, while another man strapped him to the gurney. Down the hall beyond, a red-faced woman lay on a similar gurney, waiting to be taken down to the ambulance. She seemed to be sedated, and a couple of female paramedics stood guard.

Finally, they restrained the man and shot him with sedatives, which began to take effect almost immediately. A woman wandered out of the room which the Doctor presumed was the man's. She was holding a wallet.

"Got an ID?" asked one of the men.

"Yeah," she answered. "His name's Vincent Bidwell."

"Oh my God!" Martha whispered.

"Is that the guy you were talking to?" asked the Doctor, also whispering.

She nodded, her eyes wide with worry. "Doctor, the wine."

"I know, I know," he said. He shut the door completely and took her in his arms.