Well, friends, once more (at least) around the block with the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones! Sorry for the longish absence of 10/Mar fics from me... I've been working on a "Good Omens" story that has well and truly dug under my skin! The muse was screaming at me to finish, and it hasn't been an easy feat.
Anyway, here we are.
This is a sequel to "Drawing Swords," in which a very artistically-talented autistic man named Curtis Malmay discovers that he is able to literally draw things and beings into existence! He learns, eventually, that this is a result of his unique brain chemistry, and a quirk of astrophysics. He causes havoc upon Leeds, where he has just moved with his brother Tim, by creating a dragon, and two opposing warriors, who destroy property, overwhelm the police force, cause an outcry for social justice, and land at least one human in hospital. And when UNIT gets in over its head with this insanity, who do they call? Yep - you guessed it. The Doctor ends up depositing all three beings on separate planets where he believes they can find a sense of belonging.
During the adventure, the illustrious UNIT Chief Medical Officer finds herself once again at the Doctor's side, and sees that his attitude toward her companionship has morphed somewhat. ;-)
If you have not read "Drawing Swords," obviously I'm going to recommend it! However, you shouldn't absolutely need it, in order to understand this story.
ENJOY!
I should probably insert a bit of a trigger warning here. Issues of sexual assault, the meaning of consent, the consequences for perpetrators, etc. are present in this story. If that's not something you feel you can handle, please don't go any further. I'll see you down the line in my next story. 3
ONE
It had been the best, and the longest month of Martha Jones' life.
Also frustrating and titillating. Exciting, terrifying, occasionally subdued, all at once.
Actually, all of those words could have been used to describe her travelling partner as well.
Approximately four weeks ago, she had left her job at UNIT because the protocol, bureaucracy, compartmentalisation, et cetera, et cetera, had been too much for her. As someone who thought quite a bit outside the box, and who had had more "field" experience than all of the senior officers combined, UNIT's policies and procedures were just no longer something she could abide.
A debacle in Leeds with a dragon, and two heroic(ish) characters who looked as though they had just stepped out of a Dungeons and Dragons game, had been the tipping point. Her superiors wanted her to stay within her area of expertise, which technically, was medicine. But, she also had experience with alien weaponry, astrophysics, espionage, negotiation, talking Time Lords out of doing stupid stuff, and saving planets, including, most notably, her own. But she'd gone all too often ignored within UNIT because she wasn't a soldier. They had tried to rush through the problem in Leeds, not understanding the nuance and finesse required to actually solve the problem, instead of just sweeping it under a rug. And she'd had enough.
She had subsequently chosen to turn her attention and skills back to a life she had actually already left.
Well, sort of. Chosen wasn't quite the right word.
He'd basically ambushed her as she was leaving UNIT for the last time.
"So, Dr. Jones," the Doctor had asked, after luring her a bit unwittingly into the TARDIS and engaging her in a somewhat comical conversation in which they discussed the fact that Colonel Mace believed that Martha worked for the Doctor. "How would you like to come back and not work for me?"
"I don't know if I can answer that question right now."
"Why not? You're unemployed, and we work so well together… honestly, Martha, so well. It's like a well-oiled machine…"
"Doctor, I walked away two years ago for a reason," she argued, her voice betraying exhaustion.
He nodded. "I know. But I've already told you that I'm willing to start telling stories and stuff," he said, referring to a conversation they'd had during the previous day. "And I meant it."
"What stories are you going to tell?"
"Ones that I'm hoping will make you want to stay," he said. "Just… tell you what. I'm going to need help building devices that will let our Dungeons-and-Dragons-flavoured friends get in touch with me from their respective rescue planets. Two weeks. Give me that much time out of your life. Help me with this. And if you don't want to stay after that, then I won't stand in your way."
"If I stay for two weeks, then you'll tell me your stories," she said, arms crossed. "You'll start being honest, and you'll make me want to stay? Are you one hundred per-cent clear about why I left back then?"
"Yes."
"The part that wasn't to do with my family?"
"Yes."
"So you know the thing that might – not will, might – make me stay."
"I do."
"And you have to tell me in the form of… stories. You can't just say it? Like, ripping off a bandage?"
He looked at the floor, and shuffled his feet, then took a big breath, and let it out with deep exasperation. "Oh Martha... ugh, this is hard. You know me. You know I'm not the most communicative guy sometimes, and this… Martha, this is…"
"Okay, okay," she interrupted. She couldn't bear to watch him squirm that way. Clearly, whatever he was going to tell her, he needed two weeks to work up to it – he wasn't ready yet.
But she felt that the stories would be worth hearing.
And now, twenty-eight (or was it twenty-nine?) days had gone by. They had, indeed, worked out a way for their "Dungeons-and-Dragons-flavoured" friends to reach out to the Doctor. Their existence required maintenance, and there was a system in place, however, if anything went wrong, it was vital that they be able to communicate.
During that time, the Doctor had, indeed, told stories.
For example, the day they met, from Martha's point of view, had been exactly that: one day. She had passed out, and awakened in the back of an ambulance, where he caught her eye, waved goodbye and disappeared. That evening, he had turned up outside her brother's birthday party, and whisked her away from her sniping family, with the promise of "one trip," an adventure through time and space.
"I thought that you should know… actually, it was a couple of weeks," the Doctor said. "Not one day."
"Excuse me?"
"I carried you to the ambulance and left you there with the medics – reckoned you were in good hands – then handled a couple of questions from police, and when I saw you again, you were awake, so I waved goodbye and took off. When I left the planet, there was an almost immediate distress signal coming through on the console from Shin-Fang 13, because Shin-Fang 11 was attacking them and had been siphoning off their natural resources for months without their knowledge… and without their fossil fuels, they weren't able to fight back. So I went and scared the pants off the Elevens, but it took some doing. I was thinking, I wish I could be in two places at once, because the Elevens needed distracting while I rigged the Thirteens' explosives to maim but not kill."
"Yikes, Doctor," Martha said, holding her finger in place, where he had asked her to, whilst he welded something with an outer-space welding gun.
"The point is, I just kept thinking, blimey, I wish Martha Jones was here."
"Oh. Why?"
"I just thought you'd have been the perfect person for the job."
"Were there injuries?"
"No," he shrugged, blasting green fire into a small black communications tool.
"Ow!" she shrieked, pulling her hand away and shaking it.
"Sorry," he muttered. Then he grabbed her hand again, examined it, was satisfied that he hadn't actually burned her, and put it back in place. "No, there were no injuries. I just thought you'd be perfect. That's all."
"Why?"
"Because you're clever. And cool in a crisis. And fast. And open-minded…"
"And hung on your every word?" she asked, with a smirk.
"That too," he chuckled, smirking back. "But honestly, there have been others who have hung on my every word, but I've never…"
He was silent for so long, that she looked up at his face. He was frowning while he worked.
"Never what?"
He sighed. "I've never quite felt that way about them."
"What way?"
"You know. Wanted them around me after one meeting. One and done, and then pined after them during life-and-death…" he cut himself off again, a bit embarrassed at having used the word pined. Though it was indicative of how he'd felt.
After leaving Martha off with the medics in the back of the ambulance, he'd felt an inexplicable, yet familiar, emptiness. He had been, of course, still reeling at the time from losing Rose, someone he genuinely loved, even though he hadn't fully realised it until she was gone. She was weighing heavily upon him, as was her absence. She had been an excellent companion – clever in a totally practical way, innocent, sprightly, and worshipped him.
He had to admit, that last bit didn't hurt at all. This particular face and body and personality seemed to invite that sort of thing, and though it was a new phenomenon, he wasn't hating it.
But suddenly, there was this other feeling: wish Martha were here. And he'd only met her once.
Martha? Really?
Yes, Martha.
"At first, it scared me," he continued, rather tight-jawed, tying off a group of wires and standing up, crossing the room for another tool. He crossed back, and sat again on the stool. He seemed to wind up for a few moments, and steel himself for what he was going to say. "I mean, first of all, I was already feeling… you know, icky and lovesick and pining after someone else. The last thing I needed was more of that in my life, especially if it was someone in whom I really had no particular investment."
"Sure," she said, shrugging. "I get that."
"Can you hold these two pieces together so I can wire them? You'll need both hands… like this."
Martha did as he showed her. He wired, he sonicked. And then he talked a bit more. It was not lost on Martha that stories like this tended to come out in moments when they didn't have to make eye-contact.
"But second of all," he said, and then he sighed. "Do you remember me telling you that you were not her replacement?"
"Vividly."
"It scared me because I wasn't ready to let go of her yet, and I could not fathom anyone else creeping into my consciousness, in a wish she was here sort of way. I wondered, why wasn't Rose the first person I thought of when I was dealing with Shin-Fang 11 and 13?"
"And what was the answer?"
"The answer was… I have no idea."
"Interesting."
"Afterwards, torturing myself over it, I also realised that at no point during my adventure in the hospital with you and the Judoon and Florence and the leather fetish guys, did I wish Rose were there. She only crossed my mind once, and it was only because you asked whether I had backup."
"Sorry. I didn't understand how personal a question that was, at that time. How loaded a question."
"I know - don't worry about it. The thing was, over the next few days, I decided that there was something dangerous about you. How could one woman, in one afternoon, have the power to eclipse two years' worth of a fairly intense relationship? Well, not eclipse completely, but… Martha, that debacle at Royal Hope was the first thing I'd ever found that could make me forget her for any length of time. And then, the Shin-Fang thing. And the only thing those two crises had in common, that previous crises did not, was you. I'd met you. I'd been thinking about you."
"And somehow, this made you… not want to see me again?"
"Yeah," he said, actually looking at her. "It was terrifying."
"I suppose I could see that."
He went back to wiring.
"A week went by, and more thoughts like this… I ruminated a lot. Thinking of her, thinking of you, and feeling guilty for having the two of you in my brain alongside each other."
"I know that one," she muttered. "I went through that with Tom, and you."
He chuckled, completely able to see what she meant. "I guess you must've." He paused, and continued, "And then, the worst happened."
"What?"
He stopped, and again, seemed to steel himself. "I had a dream about you."
"Oh!"
"Don't worry, it wasn't, you know… one of those dreams. That didn't start happening 'til a couple months later, after the Pentallian."
"What?"
He looked up at her with surprise, apparently, genuinely surprised he'd said that out loud.
"Oh, erm…" he began.
"Never mind. What was the first dream about?"
"It was about you walking on a beach," he sighed. "And if you had a window into my mind, and my particular angst at that time, you'd know how significant that was."
"A beach?"
"Yeah, just walking by yourself. Walking away from me. And I couldn't bear that you were getting farther and farther away, so I ran after you, but I couldn't run. It was like I was running in chest-deep water. I watched you go, and desperately tried to catch up, but it was all in vain. Eventually, you turned around and looked at me, and smiled sort of sweetly. And I realised, hardly for the first time, that…"
Again, he'd trailed off at a key moment, and Martha knew it was no coincidence. "You realised…?"
"That you're kind of stunning," he said, quietly.
There was a longish silence, before she whispered. "Thanks. So are you."
"But I felt, in that dream, like I was seeing your insides – all the things that had touched and stimulated my mind and hearts, right when I first met you. Just laid bare, right there. Your razor-sharp brain, and amazing kindness was showing. It was exposed to me, and it took my breath away." He put down the tools he was working with, and sat back on his stool, and just talked. "But all it was, was just… your face. Your smile. It touched my mind and hearts because the rest of you shone through when you looked at me, and I saw that all the parts of you are just this staggeringly beautiful package. I thought that perhaps I was witnessing a perfect human being. Just…"
"Doctor?"
"Is any of this true?"
He looked at her wearily. "Every word."
She took a deep breath, exhaled, and nodded.
He continued, "And over the next few days, I thought of Rose, yes. But you… you were there. You were in my mind. You were in my dreams, practically begging me to come and find you. I resisted as much as I could, but…"
"So you came to Leo's party."
"I did. I didn't know where you lived, and anyway reckoned it might be creepy if I turned up at your flat," he said. "So I went back to that day when we met, and I called around, to see if I could find out which restaurant had a booking for the Jones family, and a twenty-first birthday party."
"And that's not creepy?" she laughed.
"Well…"
She laughed a bit more. Then, "You know, for a guy who'd been having all that angst over the course of a couple of weeks, you were awfully cool."
"Cool is my M.O., don't you know that? Anyway, I didn't want to seem too keen," he shrugged. "And, I'd got it into my head that I could get you out of my system if I just took you on one trip. Just one more adventure with Martha Jones, to satisfy the urge. Well, you know how well that worked out."
She stared at the floor for a long few moments. "This explains a lot, Doctor."
"The flirting, following by the arm's length?"
"Yeah. As for example."
"I'd forget myself. I'd forget that you weren't a drug or a toy, sometimes, and I'd push you away a bit too harshly because I always got scared if I had you too far under my skin."
"Did you ever find a way to let me exist alongside Rose in your mind? Or become comfortable with the fact that I was there, and I could sometimes eclipse her?"
"No," he said. "Not until it was too late. I thought that much was obvious."
"I suppose it was," she said, then she chuckled a bit bitterly.
"What?"
"It's just interesting," she told him. "Not too long ago, I was talking with Tim Malmay about her, and how she eclipsed me. He said she must've been bloody brilliant if she could do that."
"Well, Tim was sweet on you," he mused. "And that, Dr. Jones, is another story of my personal angst, but I'll save it for another day."
She smiled. "I think I already know that story. I saw it unfolding upon your face."
"I'll just bet you did," he said, staring at her, admiringly. Then his tone changed back to wistful, apologetic. "I suppose I so very badly wanted Rose to eclipse you, because it would have been an altogether much more comfortable state of affairs for me as a man, and frankly, as a sentient being who is supposed to know how these things work. So I forced her to. I manufactured a situation in which she eclipsed you, and let myself believe it, even though… well, the dreams."
"Will you tell me about those, someday?"
He smiled wearily again. "I'll have to have a couple of drinks first."
"Okay. For now, how about just a sandwich?"
"Perfect," he said. "I'm famished."
"Me too." She stood up and made to leave the room. "I'll use the intercom thingie, and let you know when it's ready."
There were more stories like this, as they worked on the contraptions. The Doctor was frank about the driving panic he felt as he watched her in the drifting space pod, as it floated away from the Pentallian, toward the sun. He discussed bringing her home out of the blue, and the sort of fear and tightly-coiled longing that caused it. He told her about how he'd wanted to give her a TARDIS key long before he finally did, and why it took him so long. He told her about the guilt and self-loathing he'd felt after the John Smith persona died, and he'd emerged from underneath it, with full memories of how he'd treated her. He tried to explain the loneliness of spending that year with the Master and her sister and parents, while she trekked around the world on his command, coupled with the constant fear of never seeing her again. And he tried his best to illustrate how he felt when she'd left. The emptiness, the despair, the regret, the ultimate confusion…
"So it must've been really weird to have me and Rose in the same room," she chuckled, as they finished up on the second communication device.
He did not chuckle. "Weird doesn't even begin to describe it," he said, flatly.
"Sorry. I didn't mean…"
"It's all right. Martha, I don't want you to get me wrong," he said, screwing two metal casings together. "I've… I've never really stopped loving her."
"I can see that. Even now."
"But then, there's you. And I've never stopped feeling that either. That thing, whatever it is, that makes me want to see you, be around you, work with you, watch you fly."
She nodded. "I understand. I've been there. Remember, I've been engaged since the last time we travelled together."
"I suppose you do understand," he said. "I can't shake off any of it. Rose is… well, she's Rose. And I'm the Doctor. It's a thing – there's no way around it. It'll always be a thing. But more often than not, I think, I wonder what Martha would do, if she were here, and damn it, I wish she were here."
"Well, now I am," she said, tenderly, with a little smile.
"Are you?"
"Yes. Of course."
He swallowed hard, trying to force down a little sob of relief.
And one night, after a nice dinner and a few glasses of wine, they retired to the media room, ostensibly to turn on a film. But Martha, emboldened by the magic of Merlot, asked about the dreams.
And he described one of them to her. A bit more wine allowed him to do it in embarrassing detail.
He leaned his head back on the sofa. "In dreams, you see things… and though you've never actually seen them, you can't unsee them. You see?"
"Weirdly, I do."
"And there are things I can't unfeel."
"Like what?" she asked, shyly, breathlessly.
He looked at her, eyes glazed over with alcohol and… something else. "Ways that you touch me when you're just there, in my mind."
The frankness over the past weeks had been growing. The closeness, the honesty – it was all developing, as Martha's qualms fell away. This moment had been a long time coming, and in spite of the sudden heat that his words had brought about, it felt totally right. It was natural. It was time.
She leaned in. He leaned in. It was to be their second kiss ever, and this one would hold a promise, an agenda…
But they never got there. Because the TARDIS was jostled and they were both thrown to the floor, a split second before alarms began blaring, and the vessel was pulled off-course, off its trajectory, out of the vortex, and a materialisation was being forced, and the Doctor found he could not override it.
Even after he ran down the hall to the console room, he couldn't stop it.
She followed, of course. "What's causing it?"
"No idea!"
Uh-oh! Yet another tender moment ruined by the TARDIS crashing into something! That crazy blue box!
Thoughts? Feelings? Wonderings? Leave a review!
Thank you for reading!