OMG! Signs of life! There is actually more than one person reading this fic! Hallelujah! I ask only one thing: if you are reading, please review! I want to know you're out there, and it's so heartening to know what people are thinking. Fanfic should be a reciprocal relationship - it's only fair!

And by the way, thank you!

So, the next few chapters are shorter than the last few, just FYI. And in spite of the weirdness and possible ickyness of this chapter, it might be my favorite one so far. :-D There is some "exposition" in this chapter, and I hope you find it seamless rather than, "Giles, what's going on?" "Well, Buffy, let me explain." (Sorry, crossing fandoms there.)

THE TRUTH

The Doctor stepped out from behind the three trunk and pushed his way through the bush. Martha stood about ten feet away, waiting. The look on her face was impassive, unemotional, like a brick wall.

"Martha, you don't want to do this," he said to her.

"Oh, you're wrong about that, Doctor," she told him. "I know you're not used to my saying that, but you'll get over it."

"I'm not wrong - this is wrong. They infiltrated you," he said. "Slithered inside when your guard was down!"

She put her hands on her hips and looked at him with tedium. "Look who's talking," she muttered with a sardonic lilt. The Ti'urb wanted for a lot of basic decency, but one thing they never lacked was a sense of irony.

"You've been violated, don't you see that? They got into you and began changing the composition of your being and consciousness from that first moment. They have changed you, Martha, changed who you are, and what you are. And they didn't give you a choice in the matter!"

"Well, there's no way that a human Martha Jones would ever have consented to this, so they had to take action. And now I will be exalted!"

"Exalted? By becoming a being made of sound?"

"By being free of things, of matter, of the filthy human coil of existence," she said, distaste spreading across her lovely features.

"Listen. Think about what you're doing! You've got a family! A life here..."

"...here with you?" she asked, then laughed. "My life with you was the filthiest bit of all, don't you understand that?"

He rolled his eyes. "Oh, okay, I get it. I pushed you to this."

"If anyone keeps me grounded, if anyone keeps me embedded in human drama..." she took a pause, and looked him over slowly, like a long sip of a hot drink. "If anyone keeps me drowning in my own body, it's you."

"Drowning in your own body?" He noisily sucked in air through his teeth. "What an image. Actually, that's quite poetic, thanks," he said lightly.

Her face scrunched into a look of disgust. "Ugh, enough," she said. "Humans are all food and possessions and sex."

"Ah, but I'm not human."

"Near enough."

"Thanks."

" And when I was with you, I was oh-so-human," she said. "You never let me forget it."

"Nope, I didn't, did I?"

She smiled, and changed the subject. "So, you know of the plan, Doctor. For how long?" she asked.

"Longer than you. In fact, I'd have thought you'd catch on quicker than you did. Frankly, I thought you were being a bit obtuse by refusing to realise what was right in front of you," he lied. Actually, he hadn't expected her to know what was happening to her until the bitter end. The Ti'urb would have seen to that. If she had, for a moment, suspected that she was becoming one of them, she'd have fought a lot harder, back when she had the wherewithal. She would have known better what to fight.

For a moment, he thought to wonder if perhaps he was the obtuse one. How could he have let it get this far? Well, things had progressed, especially today, a lot more quickly than he had anticipated. She had turned on a dime since this morning.

"Obtuse?" she asked, somewhat amused.

"Of course," he scolded. "How the hell else could you have been able to remember a song word-for-word, note for note, after only one intangible hearing, and after having more or less declared that you couldn't remember it very well? How else could you have willed me to hear that Elaine Paige song? I The only beings in the universe I know of who bother to do that sort of rubbish are the Ti'urb! Well, and Time Lords, but we can do a lot of cool stuff - that's hardly here nor there."

"Modesty was never your strong suit," she muttered flatly.

He ignored this. He spoke to her slowly, condescending on purpose. "Really, it never occurred to you that their abilities were seeping through your pores, and therefore, soon you'd be in the fold with them? Martha, I'm surprised."

She shrugged. "Well, part and parcel of the human experience. Ignorant of the obvious, focused on the trivial. Fortunately, I'm past all that."

"Past being human? Oh, I doubt that. You might be morphing into a Ti'urb on the inside, but on the outside, you still look awfully good to me," he told her with a smirk, looking her over slowly, drinking her in. He knew it would disgust her, and that was good.

She turned and looked at the hulking, heavily-breathing, brown thing behind her. "Do I have to look like this forever?" She sounded as if this had never occurred to her. Her voice was high-pitched, almost panicked. She held out her arms, as if she didn't want to touch her own body with them.

"Well, Martha, you must understand..." it said.

"Oh-ho! They're going to keep you looking human so you can infiltrate, et cetera, et cetera, kind of like our old friend Vancheré, except you won't need the glamour. It means you'll always be used by them. You're going to be a decoy! And that means you'll always be an outsider. Do you really want to live like that?" he said. He looked her over lasciviously again. "Because, frankly, my dear, if you want to come back and live with me, I'd be fine with it. I'd rather aggressively dampen your psychic abilities, of course, just to keep the peace in the TARDIS. Your insides would be rendered benign, and you might hate me for a time, but you know, your outsides are the most engaging bit of you anyhow. My bed has always had room for two, love. 'Course, I'd probably also have to do something to solidify you a bit more, since you're now made of sound. That, as you can imagine, just wouldn't do at all. It would be a fairly simple process."

Again, it was a lie. Her outsides were nothing to sneeze at, of course, but he absolutely could not live without Martha Jones' brain, heart and gut.

She was, as he expected, disgusted, and far enough removed from herself not to realise that he was being purposely facetious and audacious. The Ti'urb had a sense of humour, but just now, Martha was fully engaged in severing herself from the very thing that had been keeping her from "exaltation." She was in no mood to play.

"Ugh, Doctor!" she spat. Then, after a beat, "Actually, you know what? I don't know why I'm surprised by any of this. You're just like them - those humans. They're so rooted in their wants - hunger and lust, food and sex, all fat and lazy and constantly wanting satiety with things they can squeeze and possess. Knocking about through space and time for eight centuries with them has made you weak and corporeal. You're a Time Lord, for God's sake! You're supposed to be a cerebral being!"

He shrugged. "I'm a rogue. Ask anyone. But you already knew that."

"Indeed. Because even after you learned the truth about me," she said with mocking, slithery malice. "You still wanted me in your bed. You still had an undeterred gluttony that you did not hesitate to take out on me. Or put into me." She shuddered.

"Correction," he said, suddenly quite serious. "It was after suspecting only one of the possible truths, that I went about my life, and decided to make love to the woman with whom I share my life. There is a difference."

"No, there isn't. You knew I was, in your mind, tainted, and you still..."

"...loved you? Yeah. Sue me." After a quick pause, he added, "And by the way, I would never call you tainted. You were a victim."

She sighed, almost in resignation, and smiled. "Don't worry, love," she said. "In a few minutes, you won't care anymore."

"Well, that's not going to happen," he argued, without moving his lips, but watching her very closely.

"I'll see to it," she said, gently.

"I see," he said. Then he addressed the loathsome, spongy, potato-like being, still looming behind her. "Are you sure you want to let her do that? 'Cause if I stop caring about her, then your insurance policy is kaput. I'll be free to destroy your weird little planet, its inhabitants and all of its history. I'll be able to erase it from existence, throughout time, without compunction, even with her on it."

"Yes, well..." the thing said, slowly, with its deep, sickening, gurgling voice.

"Your brilliant plan to bring her into the fold so that I couldn't touch you... well, if you let her repel me from feeling anything for her, then..." he shrugged as if to say, you see?

"Martha," said the pillowy Ti'urb. "Perhaps it would be..."

"Shh!" she snapped at it.

It sputtered a few protestations, as if it were experiencing righteous indignation over this treatment at the hands of a lowly human. Or, at least, from a new recruit.

She took several steps forward until she was close enough the Doctor could smell her.

Or, rather, he would have been able to yesterday, or the day before. Today, she was just barely present anymore.

She reached up and cupped his cheek with her right hand. Significantly, he noticed that her touch was cold, and that it wasn't really a touch at all.

He had been hoping to keep her talking. He was going to continue being by turns audacious and maudlin, just to keep her revolted and occupied for a while. Because while she was here biting him with malice, she could not fly away with the brown blob behind her. This would buy him time.

Or, could have.

But like everything else in this debacle, everything was happening too fast...