TWELVE
She felt so small at this moment, so insignificant in the grand scheme of his life. And yet, she felt a huge responsibility. After he'd lost his people, then a great love, he couldn't afford to lose anything else. The way he clung to her now, the way his lips sought to devour her, the way his arms crushed round her middle, she knew she had to be a rock. She couldn't get captured or killed or do something daft and wind up exiled. Martha Jones would be the one who wouldn't go, not until they had had a complete and fulfilling life together.
She climbed into his lap with a knee on each side of him, faced him, and continued the embrace. She buried her hands in his hair and pulled back a bit. He looked up at her, the lust having returned, having replaced the sadness. They had so long been in need of catharsis, and now that the emotional bit was over, they were ready for the physical.
"I'm not finished yet," he told her with a husky voice.
She smiled. "Nor me."
"There's so much more to tell."
"I don't doubt it," she answered, releasing his hair and beginning a slow path of kisses down the side of his face to his neck. She loosened his tie and undid the top button of his light blue dress shirt, pushing the fabric out of the way to give herself access. She used her tongue to trace loops around his jugular down toward his collarbone, and he let out a moan that seemed to come from somewhere ancient and primal. From where she sat, she felt him beginning to harden, and she smiled and tugged one more time at his hair before planting her mouth on his again.
His fingers slipped underneath the back of her shirt and crawled up her back slowly, relishing the smooth flesh underneath. He unhooked her bra, which made her giggle a little. He began to tug at her shirttail, signalling that he'd like to pull it over her head and throw it aside. She moved to let him do so, when they heard an unwelcome sound.
Behind her, the television stated, "And in other news, Mad Red has reached critical mass in Tibet. Hospitals in and around Lhasa have reported upwards of five hundred hard cases of the mysterious disease in the past twenty-four hours, and thousands of mild cases. Hospitals have been asking families to keep their mildly afflicted loved ones under lock and key, but the numbers seem to be growing so quickly, authorities are not sure how long they can sustain this system. Higher numbers have been rolling in more and more quickly each hour, and there has been no sign of dropping off."
With the Doctor's bottom lip caught between her teeth, Martha muttered, "Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" She pulled away and looked at him, her jaw set askew in disgust.
The Doctor himself groaned. He threw his head back against the wall, and shut his eyes tight. "World in peril. Must gather faculties..." His knuckles plunged into his eyes, and he let out a ragged "aaaaagh" sound as he inflicted upon them a bracing rubbing. When he tugged his head back up, Martha's lovely face was waiting for him, looking disgusted.
He smiled in resignation. "I guess we're not meant to..." his eyes widened and his head gestured in lieu of saying the words. "...until we crack this case."
"I can't accept that," she said crossing her arms across her chest like a child.
"Martha," the Doctor said. "Critical mass."
"Yeah! Tell me about it!"
"You heard the pretty lady on the telly."
"Right, 'cause the media never exaggerates."
He gave her a scolding look. With those eyes.
"Okay," she pouted, climbing off. They both stood up and looked at the television. Martha noticed that the TARDIS had not yet pinpointed the next epidemic location in central Asia. She smiled, and took the Doctor by the lapels. "The good news is, I win the bet." She planted a nice juicy smooch on him.
He groaned, this time in a whimsical way, feigning disappointment. "Damn."
"Mm-hm," she said, flirting again. "I suggest repeating the phrase Watermelon Lillian about ten thousand times to get your tongue ready." She walked off toward the console room, leaving him to stare after her with the shivers.
He had taken a few moments to calm down, to re-button his jacket, re-tie his tie and make sure that all surfaces were smooth before entering the console room. Martha's bra seemed to be properly back in place by the time he entered and she was staring at the screen again.
"Okay, so," he burst out as he entered, clapping once loudly. "Lhasa."
"Isn't that in China?"
"Yes, but they call it the Tibet Autonomous Region. Dalai Lama's former stomping grounds."
"Right," she said. "Let's just get this done."
Eyebrow cocked, cranking instruments on the console, he asked, "You okay?"
She slumped down on the stool. "Frustrated."
"Yeah," he smirked. "Try living a century that way."
"Not helping."
"Sorry."
The TARDIS, once again, made its signature whoosh and when it stopped, they were in Lhasa. They opened the door upon what should rightfully have been a bustling city centre, a garish tourist trap set up with shops and restaurants. But it was empty today, likely voided for fear of Mad Red.
"Blimey," Martha whispered, looking about. "This is so sad." The sun was bright, the air was crisp and cold, though, and the Doctor stepped back inside for their coats. Martha put on a leather, he climbed into his trenchcoat.
"And we can't count on the air or the dirt or the water or fire," the Doctor reminded her. "It's something else entirely now."
"The elusive fifth element," she sighed.
He took her hand, and they walked forward.
The shops looked as though they had been ransacked. The Doctor tried the door on a few of them, and they were all still unlocked. The place had been deserted as though the apocalypse had come to roost. Maybe this lot felt as though it had.
Martha peered through the window of what looked like a middle-range hair salon. On the floor, lay a normal-looking woman with a small gash on her forehead.
"Doctor!" Martha cried out. "I'm going in!"
She disappeared inside the salon as the Doctor, who was half a block away, jogged toward. But before he reached the spot on the pavement where Martha had stepped away, he was accosted from his left. He hadn't seen the man before, but suddenly, there he was, six inches from the Doctor's face. Well, he would have been if he'd been a lot taller, anyway.
"Hello," the man said, wide-eyed, desperate.
The Doctor was tripped up in his tracks, and his face scrunched as he stopped and said, "Hello yourself." He glanced up at the door through which Martha had gone, willing her not to go anywhere else.
The man had a closely-shaved head. The Doctor looked down at the man's garments, and saw that he was wearing a bright orange and yellow robe. A Buddhhist monk. In Tibet. Hey, go figure.
"You are a doctor, did I hear that correctly?" asked the monk.
"Er, yes," the Doctor replied. "After a fashion."
"There are many who require assistance," said the monk. "You have been looking into the shops, yes?"
"Yes, and a friend of mine has gone into that one," the Doctor told him, pointing. "So, come with me, because I want to make sure she's all right."
"Yes," the monk said. "Of course."
He followed the Doctor into the hair salon, where they found Martha kneeling on the floor in front of a woman who was sitting in a shampooing chair sipping water. "Try to breathe normally, all right?" she was saying. The woman nodded and put her cup on the armrest as she concentrated on breathing.
Martha stood up and crossed the room. "Hi. I think she's got concussion," she said to the Doctor.
"What happened to her?"
"Got between an infected co-worker and a sandwich," she replied as she washed her hands in another of the shampooing sinks. She extracted a towel from the cabinet above and soaked it. She looked directly at the monk. "Hello."
He bowed. "Hello, miss." He did not look at her. He really wasn't allowed.
"What's your name, then?"
"I'm Lobsang Samten."
"Nice to meet you, I'm Martha," she said. Of the Doctor, she asked, "Did you find anyone else lucid?" She pressed the wet towel to the woman's forehead to compress the gash. The woman eventually reached up for it and held it there herself.
"No," the Doctor said. "Just him. And he sort of found me."
"Doctor," said Lobsang Samten. "I was hoping you could help. You are western. The government here mistrusts westerners, so they tell us nothing. But you... a western doctor!"
The Doctor looked at Martha and shrugged. "Well, I guess lots of planets have a west." Martha shrugged back.
"Tell me, doctor," said the monk. "What is causing this?"
"Well," the Doctor said. "It's nothing... that... well, we haven't been able to pin it down, exactly, but we're trying."
"That's what the government here is telling us, too," he said, crestfallen.
"I'm afraid this time, the government is right," the Doctor said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "But perhaps we can advance the cause. I don't suppose you know anything about the epidemic here?"
"Only in our monastery," Lobsang Samten told him. "I am trained in nursing. It's what I did before I came to the meditative way of life. They sent me into the city to try and help."
"What's happening in your monastery?" asked Martha. "Aren't there any cases?"
"Yes, a few," he answered. "But we cannot help them. I was sent down here to do as you are doing, to help those who have been injured in the chaos. There do not seem to be many. She is the only one I have seen, and it seems as though you have cared for her own your own, Martha."
"You actually have cases of Mad Red holed up in the monastery?" asked the Doctor, seeming a bit too excited for the occasion.
"Yes, sir. Four cases."
"What were they doing when they began showing symptoms?"
"Nothing," the monk told him. "It's our way of life. We meditate, we do nothing, we take ourselves out of the karmic cycle. We want nothing, we affect nothing."
"Hm," the Doctor muttered, walking contemplatively toward Martha. "The Rachnoss were not an overly meditative society. It's unlikely that's the cause."
"But you said they were peaceable until the drug," she whispered.
"Lobsang Samten," the Doctor said. "How many monks in your order?"
"Thirty-seven."
The Doctor looked back at Martha. "Well, if it's meditation, then why only four monks out of thirty-seven?"
"Funny thing was," the monk began, thinking. "Our order, all the monasteries, in fact, stayed clean for a few days while the rest of the town went insane with Mad Red. And then, yesterday..."
"What? What happened?" asked the Doctor softly.
"Well, we have a pair of brothers in our monastery," said Lobsang Samten. "Proper brothers, I mean. Blood brothers. Their elderly parents came for a visit yesterday. As they were saying hello, their demeanours changed, and by the time they had taken lunch together... well, they were lost. The Mad Red had them."
"All of them?"
"Yes, all four of them. The two brothers who are monks, and their parents."
"And no other monks?"
"No, not in our order."
The Doctor stared at him contemplatively for a bit. He approached the woman in the chair, sipping water. "What's your name, love?"
"Kumiko," she answered, putting her hands in her lap. The gash on her forehead appeared to have stopped bleeding.
"Japanese," the Doctor commented. "Long way from home, eh?"
"Yes," she said. "I came here with my fiancé three years ago. He was Chinese and the government posted him here. But he left me. And I'm still here." She sighed heavily.
"What does your family think of that?"
"I only have one brother back in Japan, and we don't speak. My parents are dead, I never had children. It's just me."
"Have you felt any symptoms? Any facial discolouration, any change in your eyesight?" he asked, shining the sonic in her eyes like a physician's scope.
She flinched and instinctively pushed him away. "No, nothing."
"Is your appetite normal?" he wanted to know.
"Yes, as far as I can tell."
The Doctor turned, his face alive with an idea, and faced Martha and Lobsang Samten. He approached the monk and put his hands on his upper arms emphatically. "Go back to the monastery. Tell your brethren not to allow any more family members onto the grounds until this thing gets sorted. Then, tell other monasteries the same thing. Just live your regular, zen, isolated lives, all right?"
"All right," Lobsang Samten agreed. "But why?"
