"It's beautiful here, Doctor."
"It is. And there's a great big secret hiding underneath."
The Archivist frowned and looked down at the ground beneath her. "There is?"
"Step right this way, ma'am," the Doctor took her hand and tugged her towards a very special spot on the sidewalk.
He stopped right in the middle of a particular tile on the sidewalk and they stood there a moment before Archie gave him a puzzled look. "Um, Doctor?"
"Just a moment. Jack must be out, otherwise we'd have been brought down much quicker. It'll just take a moment for whoever is there to scan and determine that it's safe to bring us down."
Suddenly the ground under them seemed to shake. Archie grabbed the Doctor's arm with her free hand just as the sidewalk square began to lower into the ground. She gasped as the Torchwood Hub began to appear as they were lowered.
"Doctor, can I presume your newest companion has gone through the proper checks and is safe to bring into the Hub?"
"First off, Gwen Cooper, I'd like to think you'd know better, by now, than to question my choice for companions. Second of all, the woman standing before you is not my companion."
"Then who is she, Doctor?"
"That will remain unexplained until Jack is present. Where is the Captain?"
"He should be back any minute now."
Just then, as if on cue, the main hatch of the Torchwood Hub rolled open and two familiar faces came running through.
"Hah! Pay up! I told you he'd be down here!" Jack exclaimed as he and Martha Jones came over.
"Jack! Martha! Perfect! You're both here!" The Doctor grinned as he hugged his old companions.
"Doctor, who's your beautiful friend?"
"Jack!" Martha swatted at his shoulder before turning and trying to put up a better impression than the one Jack was providing. "Hi, I'm Martha Jones. Are you traveling with the Doctor now?"
The Archivist smiled. "Um, yes—yes, I suppose I am."
"Oh, still new to it, are you?" Martha asked, assuming based on the woman's answer.
"Well, in a manner of speaking, yes."
Martha looked a bit confused, but before the Doctor could begin to explain, Jack stepped forward and took Archie's hand. "Captain Jack Harkness, ma'am—it's a pleasure to meet you." He leaned over and kissed her knuckles. "What was your name?"
"If you'd stop flirting a moment, Jack—I could get around to explaining."
Martha frowned. "Her name requires explanation?"
"Well, on Earth I've been known as Christine Madison," the female Gallifreyan began to explain.
"On…Earth?"
"But amongst the Time Lord's, I'm known as The Archivist."
"Amongst Time—" Martha repeated her.
"Time Lords? You're a Time Lord?" Jack interrupted.
A few minutes later the Doctor and the Archivist had finished explaining the story of her arrival on Earth to go into hiding.
"You've been on Earth this entire time? Doctor—there was another Time Lord out there the whole time—"
"Well, I have brought her forward from the time she spent. When I first met Archie as Christine it was the year 2001 in New York City."
"He saved me and a whole lot of other people from a bomb in the building I was in for a meeting."
"Christine Madison—that name seems familiar."
"I was an author."
"So you had to use the chameleon arch like the Doctor did when I was traveling with him."
"Yes, except I was masked as a human for almost twenty years."
Martha's eyes went wide. "Twenty years? That's—that's incredible. How—did you not have a companion traveling with you?"
"I did—but things got—complicated."
"Martha, it's only been a day since Archie reawakened as a Time Lord. We were wondering if you'd mind giving her a bit of a check-up."
"You keep calling her Arch or Archie—but if her name is The Archivist—wouldn't it be, Arky? Or Ark?" Gwen questioned.
"Doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?" The Doctor shrugged. "Besides, it's based on spelling, not phonetics."
"Archivist, we can head to the medbay now, if you'd like me to go ahead and check you out?"
Archie looked a bit uncomfortable, but nodded. "Yes, please." She followed after Martha, and the Doctor was on her heels.
When Martha noticed, she stopped. "Doctor, ladies only, please."
"Oh—um—Arch, you okay?"
Archie blushed. "Yes, Doctor, I'll be fine."
A few minutes later, the Archivist sat on a medical examination bed in the med bay of the Torchwood Hub. Martha stood at her side with a tablet in hand.
"So, let's start with pertinent medical history. Other than your recent transformation back into a Time Lord, any previous regenerations?
"Twice."
"Blimey—so, as I expected, the Doctor's ten regenerations are as a result of negligence and aren't quite so typical of a Time Lord?"
"Well, the Doctor saw a lot more action than I did. I was stuck in a library, he was exploring. Not so many enemies in a library. Well—unless you're considering the Library the Doctor visited that once. But that was with Donna, after you stopped traveling with him."
"How many stories has he told you of his adventures?" Martha asked, getting distracted.
"He didn't tell me per-se, It's my job to record the history of the Time Lords, so the Doctor and I spent several hours earlier today covering the past hundred years or so of his history for me to write down."
"You wrote down a hundred years of history in a few hours?"
"It's—complicated."
Martha nodded slowly, then went back to her medical questions. "Any gender changes via regeneration?"
"No, I've remained female since my birth."
"Any surgeries or major medical incidents I should be aware of?
"Yes, actually. In fact, that's really why I wanted you to see me, Dr. Jones."
"Please, call me Martha. What's happened, Archivist?"
"During my twenty years as a human I was pregnant twice. The pregnancies and childbirth was difficult, but the babies were both healthy."
Martha's eyes went wide. "You gave birth twice while masked as a human? And your children?"
"Both human, if there was anything different about them, no one noticed, including me. They were happy, healthy children."
"Were?" Martha emphasized her repetition of the word. "What happened to your children?"
Archie looked down at the floor and swallowed hard. "My children were visiting their father at his job one day. I was at meetings all day and they had received special permission to have the day off from school so they could see what their father's job was like." Archie paused. "My husband worked at the World Trade Center, Martha. The day they visited was September 11, 2001. I lost them all that day."
Martha gasped, her hand clapping over mouth. After a few moments of silence, Archie continued. "I had just met the doctor a few months before that." She chuckled as she remembered. "I refused to travel with him. I wouldn't even let him show me his TARDIS. It wasn't that I didn't believe him. I did."
"He came back for you?"
"He did. I had told him I didn't want him looking into my future to see how things turned out for me. He did it anyway. No surprise there. So, when he looked me up, of course, the first thing he saw was 9-11. He came back as soon as he could. The TARDIS wouldn't let him any closer than October of the next year."
"And then you started traveling with him?" Martha was so caught up in the Archivist story, she'd forgotten all about what she was supposed to be doing.
"No. I still refused. But, I allowed him to come visit me. I made him promise that he'd wait the same amount of time between visits that I had to. No skipping forward in time. He came back to visit almost once a week, on the date I'd give him. I made him play by my rules."
Martha almost choked. "That must have been a change of pace for him."
Archie smiled "It was."
Archie was quiet and didn't reveal any further details, and after a moment Martha finally got back to business. "So, what are your concerns?"
"I need to know if the regeneration energy healed any…damage…that might have happened as a result of the pregnancies and C-Sections." Archie looked down at her abdomen. "To be frank, Martha—I want to know if I can safely have babies again."
Martha's eyes went wide again. She quickly put two and two together but kept her mouth shut. It took her a moment to recover before she was back in her professional demeanor. "Of course, let me pull out the ultrasound machine. But—am I going to be able to figure out your reproductive organs? How similar are they to a humans?"
"Very similar."
Twenty minutes later, Martha was moving the ultrasound machine back to the corner. "Absolutely no signs of scar tissue internally or externally. In fact, if you hadn't told me, I would have assumed you'd never had children."
Archie's shoulders relaxed, but inside, her heart clenched. It took her a moment before she responded. "So the regeneration energy expelled to return me to my Time Lord state took care of everything. That's a…relief." Martha looked as if she was working herself up to a question. While Archie could guess what it was, she decided to give Martha the opportunity to ask herself. "You have a question you want to ask me, don't you, Martha?"
"You—you and the Doctor?"
"We've known each other a long time—from the time we were children. We attended the Academy together. I—I was quite fond of him all those many years ago. Very fond. For him, it was while I was Christine. We spent a lot of time together."
"So the two of you—you're—"
"We're still figuring things out. I'm sorry, if this is awkward for you, Martha. I assumed since you and Mickey are together now that—"
"No, no—it's fine—everything is fine. I'm sorry. I'm just not used to the Doctor being in an actual relationship with someone and it's a bit of a shock."
"Knowing what I do now about these last few years, I can see how that would be the case."
"I guess I don't know Time Lord traditions and customs and dating and all that. It just seems a bit early to be discussing—"
"Martha," Archie interrupted. "We're not going to be attempting to reproduce anytime soon, if that's what you're worried about. However—we care about each other very much, and we are the last two of our race. It puts things in perspective. It came up in a round about way and—well, I immediately feared it was a moot point—that I might not be able to even consider having another child."
Martha smiled. "Well, you can put your mind at ease. While I don't know anything about Gallifreyan pregnancies, I think you'd be fine. You're in great health."
"Perhaps, down the road, if things did work out that way—I could let you borrow a few books from the library, that is—if you'd be willing to help."
Martha's smile grew even wider. "Really? You'd want me to help?"
"Martha, the Doctor trusts you implicitly. That is a high honor and one that I take seriously. If he trusts you, I do, too."
"But what library are you talking about?"
Archie hopped down off the table and grinned. "Oh, there is still so much to tell you."
"I wish I had time to make you sit down and tell me everything now, but Mickey and I have plans later tonight."
When the two ladies came back out, the Doctor and Jack weren't in the main hub area.
"They're upstairs in Jack's office discussing something or the other," Gwen said as she nodded up to the second platform.
Archie looked up, barely able to make out the Doctor's form through the window blinds in the office.
"If I wanted to get some fresh air, what's the easiest way for me to get back up to street level?"
Gwen pointed towards the large round doorway. "Straight through that door, follow the hallway and you'll see the elevator to take you up. You'll come out in another small hallway that leads to a storefront that masks the primary hub entrance. Our teammate Ianto will be there keeping an eye on things. I'll give him a head's up you're on your way."
"Thank you, Gwen."