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AN: This chapter occurs around a month or so after the last one, looking at Martha's progression along America
Broken Faith
As she stood silently in a small clump of trees at the side of the road, waiting for her transportation to her next destination, Martha couldn't help but wish that she had a better idea of how things were progressing.
She was doing what she could to pass the message on, of course- after spending some time in Australia she'd managed to get a lift to South America in a boat, passing on her message to a few cities in that area as she progressed on to a ferry that would take her to North America-, but she was rapidly starting to reach the point where she just didn't know how widely she was spreading her message. Even with the occasional lifts she was receiving from some of the people she'd met- the Master had only allowed some of the general population to retain cars and other such means of transport under specific circumstances, such as providing medical aid to the 'workers' or moving food around, although a few people had managed to find a way around that-, she could still only cover so much ground by herself, and she was growing increasingly concerned that even after all the people she'd met assuring her that they would pass the message on further there were still going to be some areas where nobody heard what she had to tell them…
The sound of an engine approaching her position prompted Martha to glance along the road, smiling slightly as she saw that the approaching car matched the description her contact had given her of the vehicle she should expect to pick her up; a dirt-covered jeep that gave the impression that it had been used to travel through more than a few war zones in its time (According to her contact, the jeep's owners had made big money in the stock market before the Toclafane came down and had managed to use some of their pre-Toclafane resources to set up a few safe houses and transportation runs to help the general population in secret).
As the car pulled up just in front of the trees where Martha was currently waiting, the doors opened and a man and a woman stepped out, looking around themselves. The man appeared to be in his early to mid-thirties, dressed in a battered leather jacket and blue shirt and jeans, with a few days' worth of stubble on his chin- shaving was rapidly becoming something you only did out of necessity any more-, while the woman beside him had short blond hair and was of average height and build, dressed in a casual dark shirt and trousers as she looked around herself.
"Timing's just another relative dimension for you then?" the man said loudly as he glanced around himself.
"Only in spatial terms," Martha replied, smiling slightly as she stepped out from the trees to walk towards the two figures after completely the relevant code phrases.
"Oh, so you're Martha Jones, huh?" the woman said, smiling over at Martha as she walked over to shake the other woman by the hand. "Good to meet you at last; we've been hearing a lot about you-"
"Uh, not meaning to be rude, but can we get moving?" the man asked, indicating the jeep with a slight tap. "In case you've forgotten, these things aren't exactly legal right now…"
"Oh… right," the woman said, nodding slightly over at the man before she looked back at Martha. "You'll have to excuse me; my husband's always reminding me we need to be more cautious these days…"
"Not used to the rough life, huh?" Martha asked, her tone giving no indication of her thoughts about that as she moved to climb into the back of the jeep, the other two taking up position up front.
"Just fell out of practise with it," the woman said, shrugging slightly as she climbed back into the passenger side, the other man- her husband- getting into the driver's seat and starting the engine once again. "Actually made a living as a con artist before things picked up for me after a very particular job; I got used to living by my wits back in those days, but I guess some old habits just got lost a bit earlier than others…"
"Talking of which, forgot to introduce ourselves; sorry about that," the man said, nodding at her with a slight apologetic smile visible in the rear-view mirror as he indicated the blonde woman beside him. "I'm Fitz Krenier, and this is my wife Trix; we've been looking forward to meeting you for a while."
"You have?" Martha asked, looking slightly uncertainly at the two new arrivals, her initial relief replaced with caution; even after the modifications Toshiko had made to her key, she still felt slightly uncomfortable when dealing with humans after they made any kind of comment like that in case they turned out to be agents of the Master.
"Oh yeah; Trix and I heard your story, and… well, we're pretty sure you know a friend of ours," Fitz said, smiling slightly at her.
"Really?" Martha replied, allowing a slight smile as she looked back at Fitz, already realising what he meant even as she went over possible questions to confirm his intentions. "Would your… friend… happen to spend his time travelling a lot in a box?"
"While using a certain device based on sound?" Trix added, smiling back at Martha as she nodded in confirmation. "Yeah, that's him."
"And… what did he look like when you knew him?" Martha asked, looking more pointedly at the people before her as she moved on to her 'secret' information (As she'd come to think of her knowledge about what past Doctors looked like based on her dream; the Master couldn't imagine she possessed that information, so why would he bother giving 'mere' humans more than they 'needed' to know to trick her?).
"Well… a bit taller than me, long brown hair, often dressed in green velvet and a waistcoat?" Fitz said, looking uncertainly at Martha, clearly wondering why she had asked that question.
"Oh, that one," Martha said, nodding in confirmation as she sat back in the seat and nodded at the driver before another thought occurred to her regarding what she knew of that Doctor's life.
"Uh…" she began, looking slightly uncertainly at the man before her before she decided to just take the plunge and ask the question she really wanted to know. "When you… travelled with him… did he… know who he was?"
For a moment there was an uncertain silence- what Martha could see of Fitz's expression in the rear-view mirror suggested that he was trying to think of the best way to answer that question- before he turned around to look at her.
"Well… when I left him, he still didn't remember his past exactly… but he implied that he was going off to do something to correct that…" he said uncertainly, as he looked curiously at Martha. "Why do you ask?"
"Well, I heard from… another friend of his… a while back that he didn't remember where he came from or anything like that when he was… like that; I just wondered when you knew him…" Martha explained, wishing she could think of a better way to say what she was trying to say; working out the chronology of a time traveller's life was hard enough at the best of times…
"Oh, you met Anji?" Trix asked, turning to smile at Martha herself.
"You know her?" Martha asked, taken aback at this particular coincidence; past companions were one thing, but this was the first time she'd met past companions who knew some of the other people she'd met in her travels.
"Oh yeah; met her when I went looking for the Doctor after Gallifrey-" Fitz began, only to stop himself mid-sentence as he looked suddenly uncomfortable.
"Gallifrey?" Martha repeated, looking at Fitz with renewed interest (Not to mention more than a little apprehension at the implication of that last statement). "You… you saw the Time War?"
For a moment there was only silence in the car, Fitz sitting in silence as Tri looked between him and Martha, clearly uncertain what, if anything, she should say, before Fitz finally spoke again.
"Yeah… I saw it," he said at last, his tone grim as he stared at the road ahead, seemingly only aware of the essential details of his surroundings as he spoke. "The Doctor tried everything… he fought with everything he had to find another way to do it… he even tried to change his own history to pull it off…"
He sighed. "But, in the end, all he could do was destroy everything…"
Martha's eyes widened at the implications of that last statement.
She'd known that the Doctor was the last Time Lord (Before he found out about the Master's survival), but hat Fitz had just said…
"He destroyed Gallifrey?" she said, looking at Fitz in horror.
Surviving the destruction of your home planet when everyone else died was bad enough, but the idea that the Doctor had been the one to destroy it…
Even if she knew he'd only have done something that drastic if he'd been certain there as no other choice, what he must have been trying to cope with since making that call…
"If there'd been any other option he'd have taken it," Fitz continued, confirming Martha's own thoughts as he briefly glanced back to glare at her- the road ahead was currently empty and fairly straight-, before he turned back to the job at hand, sighing slightly as he spoke. "But… there wasn't. In the end, after all the worlds he'd saved… all the people he'd helped… he couldn't help his own people see sense until it was too late…"
If it had been possible for Martha to feel more sympathy for the Doctor after learning that he was the last of his race, she felt it now; nobody should have to live with the knowledge that they'd destroyed their own people…
Maybe that's why he lost his memory before Anji met him… Martha mused, before shaking that thought aside; speculating on psychological explanations for an old case of amnesia would accomplish nothing.
"I'm… I'm sorry you had to see that," she said, nodding briefly at Fitz. "I… I can't imagine what that must have been like…"
"Thanks," Fitz said, nodding back at her before falling into silence, Trix clearly uncomfortable with the current topic- evidently she hadn't been present at Gallifrey's destruction herself- and thus uncertain what to say at present.
"So…" Martha said at last after a brief pause, looking at Fitz and Trix with a slightly encouraging smile, "on a lighter topic, did you two go anywhere… interesting… while you were with him?"
As thought that question had been a signal, Fitz smiled wistfully even as he continued driving, and even Trix couldn't restrain a brief grin.
"Well," she said, smiling at Martha as she turned around to look at the younger woman, "Fitz spent more time with the Doctor than I did, but I was with them both when we confronted a race of sentient crystals that were trying to become the new Time Lords, discovered a bunch of windows that could show you the future, and confronted a race of living dead who reproduced using psychic energy generated in an asylum; how's that for interesting?"
Martha couldn't help but smile slightly at the other woman's recollection of her travels.
She'd long ago stopped worry about trying to 'out-do' any past companions she might meet with tales of what they'd encountered with the Doctor- with the universe the size it was, it would be ridiculously unlikely for the Doctor to encounter similar problems more than once, so their experiences were likely to be so diverse as to make comparison pointless-, but it was still entertaining to share the stories of what they'd encountered over their time in the TARDIS…
"Interesting, I'll give you that," she admitted, smiling slightly at Trix. "Still, if you want strange aliens, how about this; a living sun, a giant jellyfish-like thing that used other peoples' minds to do its thinking for it, and angel-like creatures that send you into the past to live yourself to death?"
Despite her best intentions, Martha would have been lying if she said she didn't enjoy the surprised look on Trix's face.
"A… a living sun?" Trix repeated, looking incredulously at Martha; evidently the other two were slightly more plausible than the first possibility. "You're kidding me!"
"Hey, when I was with the Doctor we apparently encountered a creature that essentially ate concept- I never saw it myself, but the Doctor gave me a pretty detailed description of what it could-; after that, a living sun's easy," Fitz added, smiling slightly back at Martha. "Talking of interesting things, how about a weapon from the far future that turned a guy into a man/wasp hybrid?"
Martha couldn't help but shudder briefly at that image, but shook it off with the recollections of her own encounters with alien technology.
"Interesting, but how about an alien weapon that not only thinks for itself, but actually turned against its creators because it got bored before ending up in the Wild West?" she asked, trying not to think too much about how close she'd come to losing the Doctor on that occasion; the memory of him having to fight that Clade weapon because he'd needed it to save her life still hurt sometimes…
"A world where the inhabitants all lived in a massive virtual reality system?" Fitz 'countered'; clearly he was enjoying the current 'back and forth' nature of their conversation jut as much as Martha was.
"I did visit a prison ship where the inmates were kept contained by a creature that created a virtual environment based on their dreams; does that count?" Martha asked with a slightly teasing tone; she could definitely see Fitz and the Doctor getting along well when they were travelling together (Even if she had to remind herself that he had travelled with an earlier Doctor than the one she knew best)…
As the drive continued, occasionally travelling off-road to avoid some of the more obvious roads- the Toclafane might not be able to monitor everything on the planet, but none of the people in the jeep wanted to attract more attention than they had to-, Martha, Fitz and Trix continued to share some of their stories about their time with the Doctor, Trix occasionally telling Martha some of the stories she'd heard from Fitz when Fitz was forced to particularly contrite on some of the rougher terrain. It was only when Martha glanced at a nearby road sign that she realised they were almost at the town where she was catching a boat to North America, prompting her to ask the question she was particularly interested in knowing the answer to.
"So…" she said at last, looking uncertainly between the two of them. "Why did you stop travelling with the Doctor?"
For a moment, Fitz and Trix were silent, exchanging reflective glances as the jeep drew past the roadsign, before Trix spoke again.
"Well," she began, looking back at Martha, "we actually left him about… I'd say it was four years ago, during… you remember that incident with those giant fly things a few years back, right?"
"What, with that second 'moon' showing up for a while and all those giant bugs flying around that big mountain they stuck together?" Martha asked, looking curiously at the other woman (She was one of several people who still wasn't clear on what had happened during that whole mess; given that it had culminated with most of the people who had been declared dead during the initial attack by the fly creatures turning up alive- and none of them had been anyone Martha knew personally; it made it hard to know that something like that was real when you hadn't experienced it yourself- and the 'mountain' they'd apparently used as a base vanishing before anyone could investigate it, that one had been far easier to dismiss as a hoax than such encounters as that ship appearing above London on Christmas Day, especially since nobody outside the military had actually seen the mountain). "What about it?"
"Well… that was actually caused by one of the Doctor's race," Trix explained.
Martha's eyes widened in shock.
"Hold on; a Time Lord did that?" she said, staring incredulously at the other woman; the Master's attempt at conquering Earth was one thing, but the idea that a Time Lord would unleash that kind of destruction for no apparent reason (The fact that she hadn't heard even rumours about someone being responsible for that suggested that the Time Lord hadn't even tried to take advantage of the chaos caused by the Vore to try something).
"Well, it wasn't something he did deliberately; the Vore- those fly things- were drawn to Earth when some of his equipment caused some kind of breach in the TARDIS that attracted their attention…" Fitz said, shrugging slightly as Martha looked quizzically at him. "Hey, the technical stuff was never my strong point, and I never even met the guy who did it; he died during the confrontation with those suckers and Trix and I just got filled in by the Doctor on what he'd been up to afterwards."
Shaking his head slightly as he turned into a side street, Fitz continued. "Anyway, Trix and I had already been thinking about leaving at that point- we both felt we'd just seen enough, really-, and after I nearly ended up getting killed by the Vore before the Doctor figured out a way to stop them- Trix spent a few days thinking that I was dead; something about the Vore allowed them to spray people with this chemical that left all observers convinced they were dead and disregard anything that might tell them otherwise-, well…"
He shrugged. "The Doctor saved everyone he could, don't get me wrong, and I knew that he'd never let anything happen if he could help it, but I just… for the first time in what seemed like forever- even before I met him I never really fit in-, I felt like I had somewhere I wanted to live, and someone I wanted to live there with; I didn't want to spend the rest of my life going through time without an actual home."
In her way, Martha couldn't help but sympathise with that; even when travelling with the Doctor, she'd still felt like Earth when she'd left it was the place where she belonged (Although the TARDIS was definitely somewhere else she could see herself living, it wasn't quite the same just spending time with a… friend… when you could be making a life with someone you… loved)…
"Something up?" Trix asked, breaking into Martha's train of thought.
"Mmm?" Martha asked, looking up at the other woman apologetically; she'd been so distracted she hadn't even realised that the jeep had parked in an alleyway. "Oh… just thinking; it's nothing important."
With that, she grabbed her bag and got out of the car, walking over to stand beside the driver's window as Fitz rolled it down.
"Thanks," she said, smiling slightly at the older man, her words making it clear that she was referring to more than just the lift to her current location.
"Any time," Fitz replied, nodding in confirmation. "We're a member of an exclusive little group, Martha Jones; if we don't look out for each other, who will?"
He smiled slightly as he looked at her. "Besides… it's good to know that things worked out for the Doctor in the end; it might have been the right time for me to leave him, but it's good to know he did OK for himself afterwards as well."
"And hey," Trix added, smiling slightly at Martha, "if you need help passing on your message to some parts of the world around here…"
Her smile broadened as she looked at Martha. "Let's just say that I learned a few interesting tricks when it came to disguising myself a long time ago."
Martha couldn't help but smile back at her fellow companion, but the smile faded as she processed the implications of Trix's statement.
"Hold on, you can't-" she began.
"I spent a few weeks in a ridiculous padded costume that made me look like I'd been binge-eating for the last month to find out what a crystal skeleton had to do with time anomalies; compared to that, disguising myself as you would be easy," Trix interjected, smiling reassuringly at Martha. "Trust me; all I need is a few quick pointers on where you've been already- so I know where not to go to avoid any possibility that of someone learning the truth-, maybe a few suggestions about where I could go in North America once we're done here- you take part of the continent and I deal with the rest; gives you more time to get back to Britain-, and I can help make sure your message gets around to any areas you might not have managed to reach yet."
For a moment Martha simply stood staring uncertainly at Trix, before glancing over at Fitz.
"And… you'd be… OK with this?" she asked, looking uncertainly at Fitz. "I mean…"
"After what I said about leaving the Doctor because we'd had enough, why would I want us to do something that puts us in danger again?" Fitz asked, smiling slightly at Martha. "That's the thing about knowing the Doctor, Miss Jones; once you've met him, you realise that you can't stop trying everything you can to make the world better when you've got the chance."
Martha couldn't argue with that; even if she'd never considered herself selfish before meeting the Doctor- she was training to become a doctor to help people, after all-, she knew already that, even when she left him, she'd find it hard to stop looking for other opportunities to help people after being inspired by his example.
"If you're sure…" she said, looking slightly uncomfortably at Trix and Fitz.
"Hey, it's nothing the Doctor wouldn't do if he could," Trix said, smiling reassuringly at Martha. "We were already doing what we could against the Master; this strategy just gives us a more organized plan."
An hour or so later, as the jeep drove back off into the streets, its remaining passengers now with a rounded itinerary that had been pieced together- mostly consisting of the western coast on the grounds that Martha would want to stay on the same side of the continent as Britain-, Martha couldn't help but smile slightly as she looked after the two people who had been her travelling companions for such a short time.
The Doctor had definitely left quite an impression on them; according to Fitz, he'd been little more than a sixties slacker back when he and the Doctor had first met, while Trix seemed to have been more interested in making money than any finer motives, and now, here they were, working to help others in a world that had fallen apart simply because it was the right thing to do.
If anything, Martha envied them; they'd been through so much with the Doctor- particularly in Fitz's case, if he'd actually been present during the final battle of the Time War-, and they'd still managed to find someone they wanted to spend their lives with.
Could she ever find someone who looked at her like that?
After all she'd been through with the Doctor, was there anyone out there who could really understand…?
Martha pushed that thought aside and turned back to the matter of finding her way to the docks; she had a boat to catch, and getting bogged down in speculation like that wouldn't accomplish anything more than leaving her feeling frustrated.
AN 2: Another Classic Who update; Fitz Krenier travelled with the Eighth Doctor for the majority of the Eighth Doctor Adventures series published by the BBC, originally meeting the Eighth Doctor in 1963 when the Doctor arrived at a sanatorium run by Doctor Charles Roley- Fitz's mother being one of his patients-, only for the patients to subsequently fall victim to madness-inducing alien leeches (A story revealed in more depth in "The Taint"), forcing the Doctor to kill them all and leaving Fitz with no other option but to travel with him to avoid being accused on murder. Despite being a bit of a slacker with no real drive when he met the Doctor, Fitz grew to become a highly capable companion, standing by the Doctor against such diverse crises as the destruction of the TARDIS ("The Shadows of Avalon"), Faction Paradox's invasion of Gallifrey ("The Ancestor Cell"), the Doctor's subsequent amnesia ("Escape Velocity"), the loss of his second heart ("The Adventuress of Henrietta Street"), and the final confrontation with the Council of Eight as they sought to erase alternate timelines ("Sometime Never…"). Trix was a con artist hired by the Doctor's enemy Sabbath to acquire the pages of a diary at an auction the Doctor was also attending, who sneaked into the TARDIS because she was intrigued by the possibilities time travel offered her line of work, later proving herself to be an able companion and a compassionate woman in her way, apparently leaving the Doctor in 2005 after she and Fitz fell in love and decided to start a life together based on stock market tips Trix had acquired on their trips to the future.