Disclaimer: This is a fanfiction story and not written for any financial gain of any kind. All rights to Doctor Who and any associated material belong to the BBC and any other affiliated entities. Thanks. Also, the story of Lady Silverhair comes from Neverwinter Nights 2, which is the property of Atari, Obsidian, Wizards of the Coast and any other involved parties.

A/N: OK, if you've read this far you know that this is a blatant Super!Martha fic, and is a Martha/10th Doctor romance. Please hit the back button if either of these things offends you. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to review, I really appreciate it. Please feel free to put in suggestions if you have them.

Thanks also to the very patient Persiflage for beta reading.

Part Eleven: The Forest of the Dead

"I do not distinguish by the eye, but by the mind, which is the proper judge."

Seneca

The Doctor

He was not happy until he received a mental call from Martha to tell him she was safely on board the TARDIS. There was cause for concern, however, because apparently there was no sign of Donna. Martha said she would investigate, so he put it to the back of his mind for the moment. It was all he could do, when the people out here were still in mortal danger.

"Where did she go? Why didn't she take any of us with her?" demanded Mr Lux, after he'd witnessed Martha's disappearing act.

"She went to our ship, and she can't take you with her because you're human." The Doctor explained, looking down at the floor and discovering that Proper Dave now only had one shadow. That was not good, not good at all.

"What do you mean, 'because I'm human'? So is she!" Mr Lux protested.

"No, she's not, now shut up!" the Doctor retorted angrily, turning back to Proper Dave. "Just stand still, alright – they're never gone, and they never give up."

"Hey! Who turned out the lights!?!" Proper Dave suddenly shouted. The Doctor got him to turn around, and was dismayed to see the man's visor had gone dark. The Vashta Nerada were inside his suit.

Proper Dave's body shook for a moment, but even though he assured them he was fine, the Doctor knew the truth. He was dead.

The swarm, still in the suit, attacked him then, grabbing him by the shoulders. River drove it off with a blast from her sonic screwdriver. She then opened an escape for them, by blasting a wall with a squarness gun, and they ran through the square shaped hole. The suit chased them, looking pretty horrifying with Proper Dave's skull looking blankly at them through the visor.

After running for quite some time, they found a place to hide among the stacks. The Doctor used his sonic to try and boost the lights which were hanging from the ceiling. He was still glowing, thanks to Martha, but he didn't know how long that would last.

"Light doesn't stop them, but it can slow them down," he explained to the others, and assumed that that was why his wife had made him glow, it was a bit like an armour of light.

River Song came over to help him, holding her own sonic screwdriver up to the light fitting. Hers seemed to work much faster, and better than his.

"Your screwdriver looks exactly like mine." The Doctor observed suspiciously.

"Yeah, you gave it to me," River replied, and though the Doctor didn't know it, River was remembering when he and Martha gave it to her. It was a congratulations present, on gaining her Professorship at the University.

The card attached had read, "To River, the most beautiful and brilliant daughter in the world, love Martha and Pretty Boy, aka, Mum and Dad."

"I don't give my screwdriver to anyone," the Doctor declared, getting really suspicious now.

"I'm not anyone," River asserted.

"Who are you?" the Doctor breathed softly, but she ignored him. He sighed, but played along. River's true identity could wait, the Vashta Nerada could not.

"I teleported Donna back to the TARDIS, Martha's gone there too. If we don't get back there in five hours, Emergency Programme One will activate."

"And take Donna home. Though, can't Martha stop that?" River asked and he frowned.

"Well yeah, she could, since the TARDIS will take orders from her – how in the Nine Hells do you know all this?" he demanded and River smiled sadly at him.

"I wish I could tell you, but I promised I wouldn't. You know how it is, timelines, paradoxes – I can't tell you." Any further questions the Doctor intended to put to River, were laid aside when his wife contacted him.

"Doctor, she's not here – she's not anywhere on the TARDIS!" Martha practically screamed in his mind, and he put a hand to his head for a moment. That was something they needed to work on – not overwhelming each other when in a moment of extreme stress.

"She's not there – Martha says Donna's not there!" he exclaimed to River.

"Maybe the coordinates slipped, the equipment is ancient," she suggested.

He ran to a nearby courtesy node and asked it to locate Donna. When it turned around, the appearance of the facial aspect made him stare with horror.

The node was wearing Donna's face.

"Donna Noble has left The Library. Donna Noble has been saved," the node kept repeating to them.

Donna

Donna woke to find herself sitting on a bed in a nondescript room, wearing blue pyjamas, with no idea how she got there. Before she could get stuck into a right old panic, there was a knock at the door and a man in a dark suit with wire framed glasses came in.

"Hello Donna," he said warmly.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"I'm Dr Moon; I've been treating you since you came here, two years ago," he replied, and suddenly she could see it in her mind.

"Oh right, Dr Moon, I'm so sorry. What's wrong with me? I didn't know you for a moment there," she said, feeling flustered.

"And then, you remembered," he replied. "Shall we go for a walk?"

She was walking in the grounds with Dr Moon, wearing a purple coat, and he was asking her about her dreams.

"The Doctor, the blue box, time and space?" he was asking her. She looked around, astonished.

"How did we get here?" she wanted to know.

"We came down the stairs, out the front door – we passed Mrs Ally on the way out," he said and she suddenly she could see it.

"Yeah, yeah, we did," she said, "I forgot that,"

"And then you remembered," Dr Moon said with a smile. "Shall we go down to the river?"

"You said river, and suddenly we're feeding ducks," Donna said with a frown. A voice from behind them almost made her jump.

"Dr Moon! Good morning!" A dark haired man was coming towards them, carrying fishing gear.

"Donna Noble – Lee McAvoy," Dr Moon introduced them. Lee had some trouble pronouncing her name since he had a stammer. She told him to skip straight to a vowel – they're easier, she said.

"How did we leave it, him and me?" Donna asked Dr Moon as they were walking away from the river.

"I got the impression he was inviting you fishing, tomorrow," Dr Moon told her.

Donna found herself stepping into Lee's room, dressed up to the nines.

"So," she said, "fishing?"

Lee smiled at her from where he was standing by the windows.

Donna was sitting under an umbrella by the river with Lee. He was trying to say something to her.

"Gorgeous, and can't speak a word," she said, looking at him. "What am I going to do with you?"

Lee was carrying Donna across the threshold of their new house, she was wearing a wedding dress. Part of her noticed it was the same dress she wore to her not-wedding to Lance. But the idea slipped away from her mind so fast, she didn't register it.

"Welcome home, Mrs McAvoy," Lee said.

Donna was walking into her living room, bringing Dr Moon some tea, and her twins were running riot through the house.

"Stop it, stop it now – we've got a visitor," she scolded, and went to sit with Dr Moon on the sofa.

"You've done so much in seven years, Donna," Dr Moon said to her.

"Sometimes it feels more like seventy," she told him. "Mind you, sometimes it feels like no time at all."

Dr Moon stood up and retrieved his briefcase. "Can I just say what a pleasure it is to see you, fully integrated," he said. Then suddenly the image of him seemed to waver and the man she recognised from her dreams as the Doctor appeared in front of her. He was muttering something about interference and a signal from a moon.

"Donna!" he called out and she backed away in fear.

Then, just as suddenly as the other man had appeared, Dr Moon was back. "Sorry, Mrs Andrew's rhubarb surprise – will I never learn," he said reassuringly.

"The Doctor – I saw the Doctor!" she said and Dr Moon nodded.

"Yes Donna, you did. And then, you forgot," he said.

Donna stared into space for a moment, and then got up. "Dr Moon! Oh, hello. Shall I make you a cup of tea?"

The Doctor

He followed River as she blasted another hole in one of the walls with her squareness gun. They had arrived at another atrium of sorts, unfortunately, the light overhead was fading.

"Sunset's coming," River said, looking up at the sky. "We can't stay long,"

The Doctor wasting no time, immediately got started on scanning for swarms.

"Have you found a live one?" River asked and he frowned.

"Maybe, it's getting harder to tell," he said, banging his screwdriver for a moment. "What's wrong with this thing?" he puzzled aloud.

"We're going to need a chicken leg, who's got a chicken leg?" River asked her team. Other Dave handed one over, which River then unwrapped and threw into the shadows in front of the Doctor. Just like before, it was stripped clean in less than a second, the stark, white bone bouncing as it hit the ground.

"It won't attack until there's enough of them," the Doctor said, "but they've got our scent now."

He carried on with his scanning, doing the best he could, but his screwdriver was being temperamental. It was almost as if there was something interfering with it – another signal.

River's team had started questioning her, talking softly, completely unaware that he could hear every word. If Professor Song really knew him as well as she seemed, she would be aware that he had superior hearing. What the significance of that was though, he didn't know.

"Who is he?" Other Dave asked. "You haven't even told us – you just expect us to trust him," he added,

"He's the Doctor," River said simply.

"And who is the Doctor?" Mr Lux asked, sounding pretty annoyed.

"The only story you'll ever tell, if you survive here," she replied, still sounding breathless from the running they'd been doing.

"You say he's your friend," Anita pressed on, "but he doesn't even know who you are, neither did the other one, his wife."

"Look, all you need to know is this – I'd trust them both to the end of the universe, and actually – we've been,"

Anita glanced at the Doctor for a moment, before turning back to River. "He doesn't act like he trusts you, and she barely even –"

River interrupted her, "Yeah, well there's a tiny problem – they haven't met me yet!"

She rose and made her way over to the Doctor, who was still having problems with his scanning. He was holding the sonic up to his ear, trying to work out why it wasn't working.

"What's wrong with it?" she asked, and he frowned.

"A signal, coming from somewhere, interfering with it,"

"Well, use the red settings," she suggested, and his frown deepened as he looked up at her.

"It doesn't have red settings!" he retorted sharply.

"Well, use the dampers, then," she returned.

"It doesn't have dampers!" he shot back.

"One day, it will," River replied, proffering the screwdriver she had been using earlier.

The Doctor rose to his feet. "So, sometime in the future, I just give you my screwdriver?" he queried and she smiled.

"Yeah," River confirmed.

"Why would I do that?" he wanted to know. Her eyes narrowed.

"I didn't pluck it from your cold, dead hands, if that's what you're worried about," she declared.

"And I know that, because?" he demanded.

"Listen to me, you've lost your friend, you're separated from your pregnant wife, you're angry – I understand. But you need to be less emotional, Doctor. Right now,"

"Less emotional? I'm not emotional!"

"There are five people in this room – still alive – focus on that! Dear God, you're hard work young!"

"Young? WHO ARE YOU?"

He was really starting to lose it now, but before he could go any further, he felt Martha's mind pressing closer to his.

"Don't take it out on her, darling. She's only trying to help. This must have happened to you before – meeting someone who knows you from your future," she said silently to him, and he took a deep mental breath.

Inside his mind, where it was only him and Martha, he dropped his facade, and showed her just how scared he really was. After receiving the mental equivalent of a hug from his wife, he turned his attention back to River Song.

"Oh, for heaven's sake! Look at the pair of you! We're all going to die here, and you're busy squabbling!" Mr Lux had got up and was shouting at them from across the room.

"Doctor, one day I'm going to be someone you trust, completely. But I can't wait for you to find that out. So I'm going to prove it to you. And I'm sorry. I'm really sorry," she said, her eyes sad as she looked into his.

She leaned in close to him, placing her hand on his arm, out of sight of the others. He glanced down, and watched as she pulled her sleeve back, exposing a small patch of bare skin on her wrist. She angled it towards the light coming from the ceiling, what there was of it, and moved closer to whisper in his ear.

"Look at my wrist," she moved back then, but kept her skin exposed for a few moments. He sent the image to Martha, hoping she might see something if he didn't.

The saw it pretty much the same time, however. River had a tattoo, similar to the ones they gained after their bonding. Only, River's was red, blood red. She must have seen his expression change and realised he had seen it, because she began to withdraw.

He placed his hand on her arm, directly on the tattoo, and he felt their minds join for a moment. In that moment, they both knew.

He and Martha, they knew who this woman was. They knew how she had got the tattoo, and the screwdriver, and how she knew the two of them. They didn't know when or what would happen to bring it about, but they knew – River Song was their adopted daughter.

The tattoo was part of blood adoption which was common among the peoples of Abeir-Toril. The Doctor was guessing that they had used that particular ceremony, because they had wanted her to be biologically related to them, and there was no such practice in Gallifreyan culture. If you weren't a full blood Time Lord then you had no status on Gallifrey.

He wondered why she had said she was sorry. Was it because she had broken the rule about imparting knowledge of future events? But, given the situation, he could understand. They needed to work together if they were going to have any chance of survival, and this was the fastest way for her to show him that she could be trusted.

Of course she could be trusted – she was family.

He was certain the rest of her team had no idea what had just transpired. To them it would look like she had whispered something in his ear.

"Are we good?" she asked, looking anxiously at him. "Doctor, are we good?" she pressed as he stared at her, trying to pull himself together.

"Yeah," he breathed, his mind racing at a hundred miles per hour, wondering where he and his wife would meet her, why they would adopt her, who she was before she met them...

"Yeah, we're good," he replied, before impulsively reaching out and giving her a hug. She returned it warmly, and when he released her she put her screwdriver away and joined the rest of her team.

He heaved a great sigh, and then also joined them, acting a lot more like his old self.

"Now, what's interesting about my screwdriver, it's very hard to interfere with – there's virtually nothing strong enough... well apart from some hair dryers, but I'm working on that. So, there is a very strong signal, coming from somewhere, and it wasn't there before – so what's new? What's changed?" he asked, pacing around the team.

They just looked at him blankly. "Come on! What's new, what's different?" he demanded.

"Moonrise," Martha whispered in his mind.

"Moonrise," he repeated aloud, thanking her silently, glad and reassured that she was paying such close attention to them. "Tell me about the moon, what's there?" he asked Mr Lux.

"It's not real, it was built as part of The Library, it's just a Doctor Moon."

"What's a Doctor Moon?"

"A virus checker," Mr Lux told him. "It supports and protects the main computer at the core of the planet."

He got the screwdriver out again and showed the others that someone was alive and communicating with the moon. Or, alive and drying their hair. He tried to isolate the signal, but ended up producing an image of Donna. He tried desperately to get her back, but he was being blocked.

Tragically, Anita called for their attention at that point – she had two shadows. The team put their helmets back on, and the Doctor tinted Anita's visor, hoping to fool the swarm into thinking they were already inside her suit.

He glanced around, looking for the best way out of there, and spotted the sixth person in the room. A person who had not been there before. The swarm in the suit of Proper Dave had caught up with them. He quietly drew River's attention to it, and then it was back to the running for their lives.

Donna

A note had been put through her door, asking her to meet someone in the playground at the park, the next day. She had seen a woman all in black walking away from her and Lee's house, and so when she spotted the same woman sitting on a bench in the park, she made her way over to her.

What she found out horrified her, but she had suspected all along that something wasn't right. This world she was living in, her children, her marriage – none of it was real. She had been transferred into a computer system when the Doctor tried to teleport her into the TARDIS.

Good God, that meant the Doctor and Martha had no idea where she was! They must be going frantic – which was not goof for Martha or the babies! But what could she do from in here?

Nothing, that was what. Nothing.

Suddenly, she found herself at home, the sky had turned red and the children were terrified.

What was happening?

Doctor

The Doctor, River, and the remainder of her team were running along one of the walkways between the many towers which made up The Library. The Doctor told them to go on ahead, he wanted to try and talk to the Vashta Nerada, try to broker a deal of some sort – anything, in fact, to ensure the safety of his family and friends.

"It's a carnivorous swarm in a suit! You can't reason with it!" River protested, but she obviously knew him well enough to know when he couldn't be moved. She told Other Dave to stay with him and pull him out when he was too stupid to leave. Clearly, she knew him very well indeed.

"Hey! Who turned out the lights?" came the voice of Proper Dave.

"There, you hear that? That's the very last thought of the man who wore that suit. Before you climbed inside and stripped his flesh. That's a man's soul, trapped inside a neural relay, going round and round forever. Now, if you didn't have the decency to let him go, how about this – use him. Talk to me!" The Doctor was edging away, as with each step the swarm drew closer.

"It's easy," he went on. "Neural relay, just point and think. Use him, talk to me."

"Hey! Who turned out the lights?" came the voice again.

"The Vashta Nerada live on all the worlds in this system, but you hunt in forests, what are you doing in a library?" he demanded.

"We should go! Doctor!" Other Dave called out to him.

"In a minute," he said, gesturing behind him and not looking away from the swarm. "You came to a library to hunt! Why? Just tell me why?"

It took a few tries for the swarm to work it out, but eventually he managed to speak with it and realised that the trees which had been used to make the paper for the books in The Library were from the forests of the Vashta Nerada. Their spores were caught in the pages of the books, and from the books they had spawned.

Tragically, while he had been waiting for him, Other Dave had been killed too. The only thing left for the Doctor to do was use his sonic on the floor, and escape to the underbelly of the walkway.

When he found the others, River was talking to Anita about her future travels with him and Martha.

"...and open the doors with a snap of his fingers. The Doctor and Martha – in the TARDIS – next stop everywhere!"

"Spoilers!" the Doctor scolded from behind them.

They got into a brief argument about whether it was possible to open the TARDIS with a snap of the fingers, with him insisting it couldn't be done, and River insisting it could. He didn't pursue it though, instead he went to check on Anita.

She still had two shadows, and after hearing what happened to Other Dave, Anita wondered why they hadn't taken her yet. She also wanted to know what River had said to him, which made him trust her, thinking that whatever it was would cheer her up too.

"Don't worry, your secret is safe with me," she assured him, and something flickered in the Doctor's mind.

"Safe...safe... you don't say saved, you say safe!" He swung around to look at Mr Lux. "The data packet, what did it say?" he asked.

"4022 saved, no survivors," Mr Lux reminded him.

"Doctor?" River asked, probably wondering what had just occurred to him.

He worked it out then. 'Saved', meant literally 'saved', as in, saved to the hard drive. The hard drive, biggest one ever, which was at the core of the planet. Before they could formulate a plan as to how to resolve the situation, alarms blared out and the terminal they'd been using stated that the auto-destruct had been engaged.

The timer was set for twenty minutes.

Mr Lux told them that the Doctor Moon was designed to protect CAL, and that it would stop the auto destruct, but instead of the destruction being stopped, all the systems were taken offline.

"What is it? What's CAL?" the Doctor demanded of Mr Lux.

"We need to get to the main computer," Mr Lux answered reluctantly. "I'll show you," he promised.

"But that's at the core of the planet," the Doctor protested.

"Well then, let's go!" River said brightly, walking back to the centre of the room and pointing her sonic at the pattern on the floor, and opening it to reveal a gravity platform.

"She's a chip off the old block," Martha observed silently to the Doctor.

"You're not wrong there," he sent back.

When they got down to the core of the planet, they tried to access the main computer but were having no luck. It was as if it was asleep and dreaming.

"It is dreaming," Mr Lux told them. "Of a normal life, a lovely dad, and every book ever written," he said, taking off his gloves and opening a cabinet. He pulled a lever, and a door opened to their left.

Inside, they discovered, was the main computer node. The face attached to it was exactly like the face of the little girl they'd seen in the terminal above.

"She's not in the computer," Mr Lux explained. "In a way, she is the computer. The main command node. This is CAL," he told them.

"CAL is a child? A child, hooked up to a mainframe? Why didn't you tell me? I needed to know this!" the Doctor asked, outraged.

"Because she's family!" Mr Lux retorted angrily. "CAL – Charlotte Abigail Lux. My grandfather's youngest daughter. She was dying, so he built her a library, and put her living mind inside. With a moon to watch over her – and all of human history to pass the time. Any era to live in, any book to read. She loved books, more than anything. And he gave her them all. He asked only that she be left in peace – a secret! Not a freak show."

"So, you weren't protecting a patent," the Doctor realised at last. "You were protecting her."

CAL had saved everyone in The Library when the shadows came. She had folded them into her dreams, and kept them safe. But she had barely enough space to do so, and her systems were failing.

The Doctor planned to lend his own memory to CAL to help her download the people she had saved, which would in turn make the computer reset and stop the countdown. River tried to argue with him, but he sent her away.

He was surprised at the silence coming from Martha, he thought she would try and fight him too. But when he connected to her, he discovered she had worn herself out in the transport and, with some encouragement from that old mother hen – the TARDIS – had finally succumbed to sleep. He did his best not to wake her, hoping that by the time she did wake up, the download would be complete, and she would never know how much danger he had been in. He hoped.

The Doctor had sent River and Mr Lux upstairs to look for data cells, and it was only him and Anita left. Anita questioned him on the Vashta Nerada, and he told her then what he already knew.

She only had one shadow.

The Vashta Nerada refused to make any kind of deal, at first, stating that The Library was their forest and any living thing in it was their meat. He pretty much lost his rag at that point.

"Don't play games with me! You just killed someone I liked, that is not a safe place to stand. I'm the Doctor and you're the biggest library in the universe. Look me up!"

There was a long pause where the Doctor assumed the swarm was doing just that, and then suddenly the shadows in the room receded.

"You have one day," The swarm told him, and then Anita's suit collapsed.

River ran back into the room a moment later, and bent down next to Anita's corpse.

"Anita!" she cried, and the Doctor glanced over his shoulder at her.

"She's been dead a while now, I'm sorry. I thought I told you to go?" he asked, turning back to the terminal he was using.

"Lux can manage without me," she replied and he was so focussed on what he was doing, he didn't hear her getting up. "But you can't," she added, and he turned just in time to see her fist flying at his face.

"Auto destruct in two minutes," was the first thing he heard when he swam back to consciousness.

"There you are, Doctor. You've been out for a little while," Martha's voice sounded in his mind. "What happened?"

"You've been asleep. Let me show you." He sent along a copy of his memories, rather than trying to explain the whole thing to her, and waited for her to catch up on what had happened while she was sleeping.

"I see. Seems our daughter is just as stubborn as her father. Can you get free?" Martha asked, seeing through his eyes that he was handcuffed to a railing, and River was sitting not far from him, wiring herself into the mainframe.

"No I can't. Can you get here?" the Doctor asked hopefully.

"Oh, I wish I could. But the power drain – with the babies, I just don't know... oh God! What should I do – our boys, our daughter..." Martha was practically wailing at the end, faced with such a dilemma.

"Martha, you know, and I know, you can't risk it. Even though we've only just met her, you know River wouldn't want you to either – I guess, we can't stop her," He said, fear and melancholy warring for dominance in his mind.

Martha's end went quiet as his wife tried to reconcile herself to what was about to happen.

"River, no, please – that's my job! I'd have chance, you don't!" the Doctor shouted, trying to change her mind.

"You wouldn't have a chance and neither do I! I'm timing it for the end of the countdown, there'll be a blip in the command flow, that way it should improve our chances of a clean download."

"River, please," he begged, but to no avail.

"Funny thing is, you've always known, you and mum; you've known this how I die. You knew I would be coming here, and... the last time I saw you both – the real you, the future you, I mean, you both turned up on my doorstep. Mum had a new hairdo and you had a new suit. You took me to Darilium, to see the singing towers. What a night that was! The towers sang, and you both cried. You wouldn't tell me why, but I suppose you knew it was time. My time – time to come to The Library..."

"River, you can let me do this!" he protested again. But their daughter really was as stubborn as her father, and her mother, come to think of it.

"If you die here, then it means I never met you. And please, don't take that away from me. Please, don't – please!" Tears were welling in her eyes, and he could hear them in her voice. "It's OK, it's OK, it's not over for the two of you – you'll see me again!"

"River, you're our daughter! You're family, please, let me do this for you!"

"Hush, now," River replied, connecting the wires to begin the download, and filling the room with blinding light.

When the light disappeared, River was gone.

Donna

Try as she might, she could not find Lee anywhere in The Library. Apparently, there hadn't even been anyone in The Library called Lee on the day the computer sealed the planet.

She'd found the Doctor, and told him what had happened to her while he'd still been out here, in The Library. He'd told her about River, his daughter, and her death. When he told her that Martha was still in the TARDIS, Donna couldn't help herself, she ran towards it, needing to see her friend.

Whether it was their connection or some other womanly instinct, Martha must have known that Donna needed her, because she opened the doors of the TARDIS and stepped out, just as Donna entered the room.

"Donna? What is it? What's happened?" Martha asked, and Donna discovered she couldn't speak, she was just too upset.

She burst into tears, and buried her faced in the smaller woman's neck, and held on for dear life.

Martha

Over Donna's shoulder, Martha saw the Doctor walking towards them, looking just as done in as Donna. Martha held out her free arm, and he gratefully joined the two women in their hug.

After several moments, the three of them pulled away from each other, each heaving a deep sigh, and wondering how they were going to move past this. Martha noticed River's diary and her sonic in the Doctor's hands and asked him about them.

"Are you going to bring them with us Doctor?" she said, pointing at the items in question.

"No, better not. Spoilers, and all. I was just going to leave them here – out of the reach of temptation," he told her and Martha frowned.

"I wonder why you gave her your sonic," she mused and he looked down at the screwdriver in his hand.

"That's a good point, why would I? Was it a present? Or – we – the other we that is – we've always known this was going to happen, we've had all that time to think about it, so why would we give her this sonic?" He looked at it closely and discovered a hinge where there shouldn't be one, and when he opened it, there it was.

A neural relay, with only three bars left.

"Ha! You see! We did it! We saved her!" The Doctor dashed off, silently telling her he was going to upload the data from the neural relay into the core computer.

River would have life, of sorts, and though Martha and the Doctor would not see their daughter again – this was not the end of her.

Martha sometimes wondered if they had been jinxed somehow. Because it seemed that while they were in the TARDIS, they were fine. But whenever they stepped out, trouble and strife seemed to converge on them.

She supposed that it was the truth of life with a Time Lord. The Doctor went where he was needed, and that was that. As much as she might wish for peace and quiet sometimes, she would never ask her husband to be someone he wasn't.

And, truth be told, she did not wish for a so-called normal life either.

Two point four children, a Volvo, and a semi, really weren't things she'd ever envisioned in her future. She had wanted to be a doctor, and here she was – doctoring the entire universe. It was heady stuff, at times, but she had her own Doctor to support her, as she did him – and they both had Donna to ground them.

It was rough sometimes, but on the whole, Martha decided – life was good.