It was on days like these that Martha hated herself more than her circumstances. She and Orla were out in the yard, tufts of burgeoning dandelions brushing her skirts as they plodded through the grassy stretch of land with bushels of laundry hefted onto their hips. She drank in the sun, not bothering when the uniforms she clipped to the lines struggled against her in the late-summer breeze, the damp slaps a welcome contrast to the heat that was so seldom in the English countryside. She enjoyed it. And she hated herself for enjoying it.
Orla was further off, shaded by the woodlands, crouched and prodding at foliage with an outstretched stick in one hand, her empty laundry basket in the other. She'd finished her pinning with unnatural speed, wanting to use the basket to haul back the odds and ends she usually convinced a begrudging Martha to shove down her pockets and cleavage once her own were full to bursting. Martha had hated that particular habit of hers at first, too. But secretly, it was another one of many things she'd begrudgingly come to enjoy.
Mostly because when Martha first helped with Jenny's ankle however long ago now, offering to do the same for anyone else who needed it, she hadn't anticipated just how often the servants neglected their health for fear of the Matron.
Severed fingertips, iron deficiencies, pregnancies. God were there pregnancies, but it just made her all the more grateful for Orla and her many talents. The girl was far too modest about it, calling her contributions to their bootleg doctoring practice "highland rubbish" and "nothing but folk remedy" all while praising Martha for the most rudimentary of treatment suggestions. Many of which, regretfully, entailed simple "rest" in lieu of the ibuprofen she so desperately wanted to haul back from the TARDIS in barrelfuls. The prospect of throwing all of 1913 into some temporal catastrophe, however, was enough to dampen her desires.
But god, would she kill for some antibiotics.
For now, Martha would have to make do with Orla's more natural, though admittedly quite useful, treatments. Ginger could be used for nausea, valerian root for insomnia, feverfew leaf for the general aches and pains of physical labor. More often than not, Orla was able to couple prescriptions of "rest" with a tea or brew that could actually help with that rest. No melatonin, just a good old prodding stick, the Farringham woodlands, and sometimes a laundry basket, if Orla was feeling fancy.
In fact, she seemed just about done with her forging, tailing it back to Martha with a basket tipping over with greens and goods and a face full of smiles. That smile dimmed into an amused quirk, however, when she caught sight of the clothes pins wiggling and worming their way out of Martha's grasp.
"I ken now why this has been taking ye so long," Orla laughed as Martha fought with another pair of flapping trousers.
"What?" She grunted, dropping a few of the clips as she readjusted her grip.
Orla didn't bother answering in words, setting down her basket to pick up the forsaken clothespins before proceeding to pry the others from Martha's clenched fist. She watched on curiously as Orla kindly clipped a row of them to Martha's apron, the sleeve of her left arm, and anywhere else that could be reached with ease. Martha remembered the girl doing the same to herself when they'd both first begun with the laundry, assuming it was another one of her many ridiculous 'fairy tricks'. Martha blushed now, realizing it was a trick of practicality, not superstition.
Martha tested the strategy. She positioned a collared shirt on the line with both available hands, plucked a pin from her apron, and clipped it on with ease. "Suppose that makes my life a bit easier, doesn't it?" she ventured, with some chagrin.
Orla only smiled. "I wonder about ye, Martha Jones. Competent as anythin', but sometimes you go about the cleaning bits in the most peculiar ways," she shook her head with a laugh.
Martha had noticed much of the same thing, if she was being honest. She'd only had the one service job at Tesco when she was 17 after her father had insisted she get some 'real world experience'. Martha had stuck with it long enough to know how to hold a mop, but not how to look like she knew how to use it. Sweeping, she had down better, though the old-fashioned brooms they used at Farringham, with the long sassafras handles perfect for a witch's arse and those awful twig bristles, certainly took some getting used to.
It was much the same with all of her cleaning duties. When she'd first started, Martha had to be taught 'how' to make the beds, as if what she'd been doing before hadn't been perfectly okay.
How to dress, she'd learned from Orla, indirectly, of course. And so it seemed laundry, too, had its own insider technique. God did she miss her dryer back home.
More than anything, Martha could tell all this fuss on how to clean, and how to do it quickly, all stemmed from a certain pride the servants took in their work. And the more Martha tried to emulate their practices, the more she felt that pride was heartily deserved.
"Well, you know," Martha struggled for an excuse. "Working as a housemaid doesn't require nearly as much efficiency as a big school like this one does. Never needed to learn the shortcuts."
Orla seemed satisfied with that answer, plucking a shirt from Martha's basket and pinning it to the line in a show of hurrying her along. "Aye, I s'pose that makes sense. But dinna fash yerself, Martha," she said. "Twas only joking with ye. I ken ye're made for better things, anyhow."
Martha glanced at her with interest. "Better things?"
Orla scoffed, as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe. And the universe, too, would've agreed if only Martha had bothered to ask.
"You're a skilled healer, love. If someone's dying, it doesn't matter what the person keeping them alive looks like," she paused, seeming to mull over her next words. "Ye could leave. Go out there and help people. Do what ye love, because I ken this isn't it. What's keeping ye here?"
Martha sighed. How to explain? She wanted to, desperately, but mayfly-adjacent aliens who were hunting through time and space to kill and exploit the lifespan of her employer, Mr. Smith, who was, in fact, an alien himself? Yeah, there's no good way to break that news.
But there were other conversations they could have, Martha reasoned. Ones she had with herself in the middle of the night. Ones she couldn't bring herself to have with the Doctor, not really. And ones that often started with What's keeping you here?, too.
"It's not forever," Martha relented. "I'll leave eventually. When the…when Mr. Smith leaves me behind, I suppose."
Orla pinned another shirt to the line. "But ye think he'll leave ye? Take along another maid?"
Martha shrugged, trying for blasé. "Yeah, some day. His last, uh, maid, Rose, I don't actually know what happened to her, but yeah, she's gone now. And we don't just leave by choice, do we?" Martha shook her head, annoyed with the gravel in her throat and the sting starting to build behind her eyes. "But this life—it wears you down, doesn't it? You get tired, less naïve. You run until you can't keep up anymore. And then you're discarded, I guess."
Martha could feel Orla's stare burning into the side of her face and did her best to ignore it. She felt as though she'd given too much away, and still not nearly enough. She pinned another pair of trousers to the line, trying her best to remember how to breathe.
"So I ask again," Orla pressed, her voice stern, but not unkind. "Why don't ye leave?"
"I can't," Martha said simply, bending to grab another damp shirt. "I can't leave Mr. Smith," she amended after a moment, and it was only half a lie.
Orla stepped between her and the laundry basket, making herself harder to ignore. "Martha," she tried again, a strange flicker of desperation on her face. "What are ye no' telling me?"
Martha wanted to spill. She really really did. But the look in Orla's hazel eyes spelled no nonsense, and yet, anything Martha could try to tell her would sound exactly like that. Nonsense. Some days, Martha didn't even believe what her life had become! What she had become.
The only times she felt herself was in the attic of Farringham, inspecting bruised knees and jaundiced eyes, but even then, it all felt like some grand game of pretend. Somehow faker than the nebulas she'd witnessed from an impossibly bigger-on-the-inside box, and somehow realer than her old life, the one she both mourned and couldn't fathom picking back up. It was like the worst form of purgatory.
The silence extended, and through Martha's frantic thoughts, she'd forgotten to speak.
Orla broke their eye contact, swiping up the last shirt, snapping a clip off Martha's apron, and pinning it up with some force, if that were possible.
"Ye want to ken what I think?" She spoke casually, though her actions said otherwise. "I think neither of ye are what ye say ye are."
"What?" Martha whispered.
Her heart panged, frantic with fear. But behind that fear, insistent and so stupid, was the niggling hope that maybe Orla did know.
She couldn't, could she?
"I ken what he is, Mr. Smith."
A breath.
"What do you mean."
Martha wasn't sure what she wanted Orla to say, but she was sick of pretending, that was for certain. It would be easier if Orla knew, she reasoned with herself. Two people to keep an eye on Mr. Smith, to keep the Doctor safe. But it was also another person that could break his cover.
This was bad. Objectively so. But why did it feel so hopeful?
Orla fidgeted with the spacing of the clothes on the drying line, shuffling around the clips with a nervous air. It was the same thing Martha had been doing earlier—avoiding the other girl's eyes—but now she was painfully all ears.
Martha may not be able to spill, but maybe she didn't have to. And the suspense was killing her.
So, she tried again. "What is it, Orla?"
The girl's brows furrowed with a shaky determination as she found her next words: "He's a faerie, isn't he?"
What?
"He's seduced ye to the Land of Fae," she accused, her voice gaining back weight, anger, even, "and what's worse is ye don't even seem to ken it!"
"What?"
What?
"Oh, don' play dumb, Martha. I've spoken with him. I have evidence," she paused. "Strange enough, though, I think even he's forgotten. Like he's glamoured himself, or–or, I don't know. But I think he thinks he's human. But I ken better. I ken the Fae." The words exploded out of her like she'd been holding onto them for quite some time. Maybe as long as she'd known the pair. Mr. Smith and Martha Jones. Fairy and…seduced?
What's worse, Martha wanted to laugh. She could feel it bellyaching up her throat, begging her to throw her head back and cackle, but the look on Orla's face, deadly serious, was enough to kill all humor out of the situation. Kill her relief, just as well, because when Martha really thought about it, Orla's account of their situation, this glamour or whatever, was strangely perceptive for as wrong as it was.
And then, Martha thought about how much she'd wanted to confide in Orla, not a minute before. How she thought, knew, rather, that whatever she could possibly tell Orla would sound like complete and utter nonsense.
Orla must've gone through the same thought process just now. Any sane person had to know an accusation of non-human entities was bound to be scrutinized through the lens of skepticism—alien or faerie. But Orla had gone through with it anyway. Allowed herself to look ridiculous even when Martha, who knew the truth, wouldn't. Something had seemed urgent enough, dire enough, that Orla felt it needed saying despite whatever retort might be bubbling up in Martha now.
It reminded Martha of when she'd first met the Doctor, at the hospital. When she, too, knew him only as Mr. Smith. He'd asked her on the balcony what she thought had brought them to the moon. There was no other explanation but aliens, of course, but then again, London had seen their fair share before. Confirmed their existence.
All Orla knew were faeries. Didn't have the same knowledge, the same world view, the same world as Martha, arguably. It was bloody 1913 after all! Orla might be wrong, but it was a decent guess at that. A good one, even.
And strangely, Martha felt a profound respect for the girl that'd had the guts to tell her the Doctor was a faerie.
"Okay…" Martha ventured. "What makes you think that, exactly? Your evidence?"
Maybe she could deescalate the situation, reassure her roommate nothing was afoot. Martha knew better now. Orla didn't know, and she couldn't know. That was that. She would make sure of it.
Orla sighed a breath of relief at being given some credence. As determined as she seemed, the girl was certainly on edge.
"How about we take a break, yeah?" Orla pointed to a nearby tree and was off before Martha could either agree or disagree. "I can tell ye don' believe me," she called over a shoulder after some distance, "so I need to get this right."
"Fair enough," Martha said after joining her, sliding down the bark to plop down in the dense grass. She found she couldn't stop imagining the Doctor, all legs and hair, tiny iridescent wings pressed flat against his flesh through all the layers of his suit and trench coat, sonic screwdriver pointed in his grip like a little magic wand. It was ridiculous, but then again, the Doctor was ridiculous.
And despite herself, Martha was far too intrigued by the conversation to come.
This took longer to update than I would've liked because I was trying to write one super long chapter and it just wasn't working (too much happening). So instead, I've uploaded this half, and hopefully the second will be up soo since it's already kind of written. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this slightly underwhelming update, and hold out for the next one! It's definitely more exciting (or at least I think so)