CHAPTER 9
Awareness came before sight. He was cognizant of throbbing in his head and of pain in his back before the shape of the TARDIS' domed ceiling came into view. It bubbled and shimmied before finally settling into focus, and he realised he was lying on the floor of the console room. He braced his hands on the floor and felt the metal press into his palms as he sat up.
Lying on the floor perpendicular to him was Martha. She was still unconscious, and like him, she was still wearing the dirt-coloured cloak. He knew it was a risk, given that he was just waking from an overload by sonic amplification, but in the absence of a normally-functioning sonic screwdriver, he planned to press his hands to her temples to find out if any damage had been done, or whether she was simply sleeping it off. It could cause more pain and unconsciousness for him, but he had to know.
He gathered himself, and got to a crouch, and leaned forward to touch her.
"She's fine," a voice said from behind him. "Don't do yourself any more damage."
It gave him a start. He turned, and found Mitéra, leaning against one of the rails that surrounded the console.
"Sorry," she said. "Didn't mean to startle you. After the ladies dragged you in here, someone had to sit and make sure you eventually came to."
"How can you be sure she's fine?" he asked with a scowl.
"Because you sustained a hundred times more reverberation than she did, and you're awake."
"She's human. I can stand a lot more reverb than she can."
"She actually stood up and spoke to us first, and then passed out. The pressure had ebbed."
"That's even worse!" the Doctor protested.
"Fine," sighed Mitéra. "I can't be sure. Just give her a few minutes before you start blowing up your brain again. If she's not awake in five minutes, you can probe all you like. And then, you really might want to disengage that sonic device from your mind. It's going to become a liability."
"Yeah, I'll get on it," he exhaled roughly as he made his way across the grated floor to be seated next to Mitéra.
They were silent for a few moments, while they both watched Martha sleeping, and willed her to wake up. And then, Mitéra wanted to know, "Who is she, Doctor?"
He sighed big. "Martha Jones. Other than that, I don't really know." Then he frowned, remembering how he'd felt when he first saw her.
Mitéra leaned so as to study his face. "Well, where did you find her?"
"Where did I find her?" he asked. "What, like, in what shop, on what shelf?"
"Okay, tetchy. How did you meet her?"
He stared for a moment, unseeing. "She's a medical student. I checked into the hospital because of some plasma coil activity I'd picked up. She helped. She was quick and brilliant and... " He sighed again.
"And you just decided to bring her along because you needed someone quick and brilliant?" The twinkle in Mitéra's eyes suggested that she suspected there was more to the story.
"No," he said, deciding to ignore the twinkle. "She saved my life. I wanted to say thanks."
"And the best way to say thanks is to show someone your inner sanctum? Trust them with knowledge of the universe?" Mitéra was gesturing toward the console.
"No," he repeated. "The only thing I have to offer anyone is adventure. So I gave her that."
"Please, Doctor," she chuckled. "That is not the only thing you have to offer. Especially in her eyes."
He smiled wearily. This had, of course, crossed his mind a time or two since travelling with Martha, but it was all too complicated. "Thanks, but... it really is all I have. I possess literally nothing, except this ship. It goes places, and does cool things. Everything else I've ever had is gone."
"If you say so," Mitéra sighed with resignation.
"And even this, even that sense of adventure..."
"What? What do you mean even this?"
"Martha is... well, rather worldly. When I met her, she'd been all over the place already. All over her own planet, that is. She had visited five of the seven continents on Earth - do you know how few humans can say that? She's well-educated, of course. She speaks four human languages, her parents are intellectuals..."
"So you do know who she is."
For the first time, the Doctor turned his head to look at Mitéra. He squinted. "No, I still don't."
"How is that possible?"
He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Mitéra, what she did out there, at the end, the thing that put out her lights... that was extraordinary. How could a mere human maintain that sonic connection as long as she did?"
"You were conscious for most of it. At least that's what I was told - I wasn't there. You were able to support her, you took the brunt of it, even as you were starting black out. And she must have made a huge, conscious effort not to fight it."
"That effort would be staggering for her."
"Yes, it would be. It would be staggering for anyone. She must think you're worth it," Mitéra speculated. "Not to shut it out, just as a reflex... her mind is open to you. Everything about her is open to you, Doctor."
"But it's not just that," he continued. "She gave me a huge push. She... I don't know... channelled something through me that caused the energy output to mushroom. Like..." He made a gesture with his hands that illustrated what he meant; a thing, burgeoning out, spouting like a fountain.
"Yes! She gave you her inner chaos - something volatile inside of her that touches you as well. You knew she would do that, Doctor, it was part of the plan!" Mitéra was smiling widely now.
"Yeah, I did," he conceded. "But it doesn't answer the question..."
"What question?"
"Your original question," he whispered emphatically. "Who is she?"
"You just told me who she is!"
He clicked his tongue with frustration. "No, no," he said, pulling his hand down over his face. "I didn't tell you the whole story about when we met."
"Oh?"
"Okay, that day in the hospital, it was not the first time I had seen her. That was just the... beginning of our relationship, as it were. When I saw her that day, I guess I freaked her out. I sort of followed her about and tried to get her to tell me about the plasma coils because - well, it turned out I was wrong - but I thought..."
But his words were cut off by a groan. Both the Doctor's and Mitéra's eyes jetted in the direction of Martha, whose head was now lolling slowly back and forth.
The Doctor began to move toward her, and observed her pressing her palms to the floor. "No, don't try to sit up," he said, pressing his hand gently against her forehead. "Just get your bearings."
Martha's eyes were still shut, but she smiled. "Oh, good, you're here," she sighed. "I was afraid I was going to have to embark on some sort of epic journey in search of the Doctor. And do it with a migraine."
"Not today," he told her.
"Are we in the TARDIS?"
"Yep," he answered. "Home sweet home."
"Did you bring me here?"
"No," said Mitéra, now getting to her feet. "Some members of the Coven brought you both here."
"Thank you," the Doctor said, looking up at her, quite seriously. "I never said."
"It wasn't me, but... you're welcome."
"Where are the rest of the women?" he asked.
"Outside," she answered simply.
"Is the ritual still going on?"
"No, it's over. For now, anyway... until the fancy strikes them again, I suppose. To tide them over, they've formed a camp - they're fine, they're having fun. But when you get ready, we'd appreciate a lift home. Just let us know."
"Okay," the Doctor said.
With a soft smile, satisfied that the Doctor was all right, and that he would ensure the safety of his Companion, Mitéra left the TARDIS for the time being.
Over the next fifteen minutes, Martha opened her eyes, was able to focus on objects (the roundels on the ceiling), acclimated to the nausea and headache, and sat up. The Doctor asked her a series of basic questions, all of which she could answer, until he was satisfied that no permanent damage had been done. Eventually, he helped her up to the stool, then went down the hall and fetched her some Paracetamol for the headache.
"That was quite the brain-scrambling you endured," he said, looking at her meaningfully as he settled in, leaning against the console.
"Yeah, you too," she countered.
"Well, I'm different."
"I know, I know. Big, strong, Time Lord brain."
"How long were you able to stay conscious after I checked out?"
"I have no idea. Could have been ten seconds, could have been three minutes. I just tried to fight as long as I could."
He sat back from her and studied her for a few moments. "How the hell did you do that, Martha? Your mind would reflexively push out that sort of influence, if it was hurting you."
"I could feel resistance, but you did tell me that once you passed out, the pain would diminish, and you were right."
He nodded. "Because I was the driving force of it - the sonic augmentation was in my brain, not yours. Once I was out, you couldn't sustain it on your own. It would stay alive for a little while through you because we have a connection... whatever it was that you gave me out there - that extra oomph of chaos - was strong enough to ensure that."
She looked at her hands in her lap shyly, ignoring the comment, more or less. "So, I forced myself to think about Parangelia," she told him. "What he's trying to do, and how wrong it is."
"That did it, eh?" He was sceptical.
"And what a smug bastard he is."
He smirked. "Oh, well, I can see how that would be proper motivation, then."
"And I thought about you."
"Me?"
"Of course," she smiled. "Really, I fought it, kept myself open, for you."
"You did?"
"Yes. I did it because you asked me to."
He smiled. "If I asked you to..."
"...jump off a bridge? Yeah, I probably would. But please don't ask me to, okay?"
He chuckled. "You have my word."
"The thing is, Doctor," her eyes fixed on some unspecified point on the console. "I don't know if you realise what this life is like for me."
Something flipped over in his stomach, and he wasn't sure why. "How do you mean?" he asked with a scowl.
"Well, not just for me, but probably for Rose, and... actually, she's the only other one whose name I actually know. But for all of us, any of us, the people who travel with you. This life is seductive."
"I see."
"The adventure, the drama," she mused. "The TARDIS... you. You make people want to do things, even if they think they can't. Even if they know they shouldn't. There's a word for that."
"There is?"
She nodded. "Temptation. Or maybe... seduction."
"Erm, Martha..."
"Chaos and temptation," she said, smiling slightly. Then she actually made eye-contact. "Just like Dionysus. Maybe you are more like him than we thought. Do Time Lords believe in reincarnation? I mean, regeneration is one thing, but... a soul passing from one Time Lord to another, once the final regeneration has taken its course. Is that possible?"
"I really don't know, Martha. Anyway, just because Dionysus' tenure on Earth was before my time, it doesn't mean he died before my time. He could have still been alive during the Time War for all I know."
"Makes sense. He probably died and regenerated after becoming a god on Earth. Weird to think of a Greek god regenerated and living into modern times."
There was a brief silence.
"Chaos and temptation," he repeated absently.
"Yeah. It's definitely palpable. Though, maybe it's just a Time Lord thing, not just a Dionysus thing. But with all of them gone, you must be the living embodiment of all of that, right?"
"I'm the living embodiment of chaos and temptation?"
She smiled, and looked away. "It sounds silly, but to me..." She stopped short, realising what she was about to say. He didn't ask her to continue. "Anyway, Dionysus was - is - the symbol of those things, at least on Earth. Even now. We know that he was sent in to fight the Apollonians because he was a Time Lord, he understood how to stop them bringing about the wrong kind of order, even if he seemed sort of incompetent. Maybe he's been underestimated for all these years. Dionysus, and now you."
"Dionysus started a religion with hedonism at its core," he argued with scepticism in his voice.
She shrugged. "Look what we just did out there."
He remembered that kiss, the big one, the epic moment that forced Martha's internal chaos through him, and mushroomed their efforts. The volatility that she carried inside that touches him as well, that she knew how to channel through him.
"I mean," she continued. "It wasn't exactly fornication in the dirt, but there was plenty of hallucination and dancing, and that ecstatic quality that was so crucial to the chaos needed to slow down Apollonian order. And you... you were the catalyst for all of that. Because you understand as well. You can see what Dionysus saw."
"I can," he said with some finality.
"What remains in chaos? What remains orderly? And how exactly can chaos equal order? It's a line few dare to walk, and most can't even fathom... at least, that's what I imagine. Parangelia is trying to turn the universe inside-out because he can't see what you can see, Doctor. He can't see the chaos for the order that it is. The universe is in flux, time breathes... and it's good."
She was staring into the Time Rotor now, watching the green light churn. "It must be like looking into a grain of salt and seeing the molecular structure inside. Like a crystal. Like, you see an old lady crossing the street, and you blink, and she becomes an atom, bonded intricately, and precariously, to the rest of the crystal, to other atoms, events in the universe. If one bond leads to her being hit by a car, will the crystal lose its integrity if you stop it happening, if you take that atom away? Or the bond? Or will the crystal hold true? Where is it, in the scheme of things? Can you save her, or does she have to die?"
The Doctor listened with something akin to amazement and dread. His face reflected both.
She looked at him. "God, that's a lot of responsibility. And you do it every day. You see everything that way. You can probably look at a person - or being, or entity - and know if they are someone's whose thoughts and emotions will reach across time and pluck at the string of ordered reality, and make it all fall to pieces. Do you see a glow, like a tincture of vortex on them? Or is it like a web, that person's relationship to all time and space? Are they part of the crystal, or is it something else? Maybe you can even see how, and from when and where across time will come that dreaded piece of sadness or joy..." she sighed.
"Martha..."
"You see that sort of chaos in me, don't you? You know that I'm someone who could strum reality out of existence, if Parangelia succeeds in making time linear."
"I told you I do."
"No, not just because I'm a time traveller alongside you, but... because of something in me. I reckon you could see it before we even said hello. I think that's why you chose me."
"I do see it in you," he admitted, his mouth having gone dry.
That first day in the hospital - he had thought she was someone else, someone specific. Someone who certainly did have ties across time and space, with certain serious implications for him. As it turned out, he was wrong.
But how wrong?
Her talk of the crystal, the web, the tincture of vortex had been just a little too close to home for comfort. It was not literally true, but... yes, when he saw an old lady cross the street, or a child cry, or a star explode, he could intangibly see an intricate forwards, backwards, sideways, diagonal non-sequential series of events and how they fit together with all of time and space. It could be compared to a crystal, a web, a network of roots, veins and arteries, or anything with connecting parts that support a whole. How could a "mere" human have that kind of perspective over his inner life? Most people he had known, they simply chose not to think of this aspect of him, or had let the idea of what he could know and see completely wash over them, overwhelm them to the point where it became meaningless. Had Martha really given it this much thought? Could thought really get her to this point?
Because, somewhere behind his eyes, he saw what she described. And he saw her in the crystal, as one of the atoms that made things move. She was part of the shape of things to come - he could feel it, ever since they met. But how did she fit in? How did she know?
And the extra dose of chaos she had given him - it was the sparking uncertainty of questions unanswered, of a circuit that was incomplete. Knowledge untapped. Intentions undiscovered. Not only that, it seemed impossible that she could have thrown something so powerful at him if she didn't have knowledge, if she weren't some kind of triangulating conduit in her own right. There was so much still to learn about her...
Who the hell are you, Martha Jones?
I'm quite fond of this chapter. Hope you are too! Let me know - leave a review! It's only fair. ;-)
