THE DANCE

They were sitting across from one another, cross-legged, on the hard surface which had served somewhat as the Doctor's "bed" for the past two nights. The Doctor had spoken to Martha about his plan for keeping her safe, now that all of the beta blockers were consumed. She seemed to understand that it was a test of personal control, that it might be difficult to maintain…

…and most importantly, if she (or they) failed, it didn't make them any less together. It didn't mean they weren't connected on a very profound level.

Although, in his own mind, the Doctor had high hopes. The two of them had been able to literally move an object through time and space using this method, so it was more than possible they would be able to escape using this method as well, and no-one would get hurt.

He reached across with one hand, and cradled her jaw, then leaned in for a kiss. When he pulled away, she gave him a weak, tired smile. "How about we lay low for a bit after this?"

"Don't say things like that," she chuckled. "That's what jinxes it."

He smirked. "Okay, well, failing that, we could revisit the idea of settling down. Kids, dog, insurance policies."

"You keep bringing that up."

He shrugged. "There's more to the universe than just exploring every corner of it, Dr. Jones."

She laughed again. "I'm just thinking of you, writing an insurance cheque. And mowing the lawn. It's kind of entertaining."

Now he laughed as well. "I've done both of those things. Well, not insurance cheques so much as bribes, but in my world, you know..."

"We aren't really talking about this are we?"

"Not if you don't want to."

She was silent for a few moments. "Later," she said, at last.

"All right then. Let's continue the chaos, shall we? Tally ho!" Then his tone changed to something soft and comforting. "Close your eyes. Clear your mind."

She took a deep breath, and tried to do as he asked. After about thirty seconds, she said, "It would help if you could talk me through it. I liked the stuff you said before about the bedroom wall…"

"Okay," he said softly. "Focus on your exhaustion. Think of the fight that lies ahead, and how tiring it all seems… then think of how you don't have to worry about any of it. Just let go. There's nothing you can do just now. It's useless to worry or try to help. In fact, the less you do, the better off we'll both be."

Another thirty seconds went by, and the Doctor continued, "Just picture yourself holding all of our struggles in your hands… the thinking, the doing, the worrying, the plotting. Even the violence. Yes?"

"Yes."

"Now hand them off to me."

She sighed, and tried to put it all on him. "Oh dear," she breathed.

"I'm taking them, absorbing them. Thank you. And it's all right. I'm up to it. I want to do it," he assured her. "You can turn your mind off, knowing that I've got it sorted. Trust me. Breathe. That's all you have to do to save our lives. Trust me, and breathe."

"Trust you, and breathe," she repeated.

"Sink into your comfy bed at home, and let go… let go," he continued. "Your head and shoulders come into contact with the cushions, and your body relaxes. There's nothing to look at except the bedroom wall. Nothing you can do now. Just sink."

And like before, he continued for a few minutes to talk in this vein. He did not encourage her to fall asleep… just to be non-present, here and now. Again, the little narrative worked.

"Now isn't the time for planning, or being a hero," he said. "Because you gave it all to me. Trust. Do not act. It's okay. Doesn't it feel good, for once?"

And for a while, they were both silent.

Then, again, after an unknowable amount of time, the Doctor said, "I'm going to enter your mind now, is that all right?"

"Of course," she mused.

This time, she did not feel anything familiar probing at the periphery of her mind. She simply took a deep breath, and he was there, inside her consciousness.

"I want to share my equilibrium with you," he said to her, without speaking. "Feel my hearts. Feel that rhythm – eighty beats per minute or so… it can't be changed. It's fixed. Just like us – fixed together."

And that's when something truly extraordinary began to happen.

In her mind, she imagined the Doctor taking her right hand in his left, and wrapping his right arm around her waist. From there, they danced a waltz, at eighty beats per minute. Mozart's Spring Song played on a loop, and they stepped and spun.

She knew that this was all of his orchestrating, he'd reached across to her, and some part of him was now dancing with some part of her. He had given her mind something to cling to, something familiar to conceptualise, so that he could bring her in further along with him, and keep her on an even plane of eighty beats per minute. The dance served a practical purpose. Even in the reverie, she knew precisely what it was: an illusion created as a means to an end.

But even dancing with him in the self-conscious, invented dancefloor in their minds, she knew that when it was over, there would be a new awakening. The dance wasn't just a dance, it was a deeply-seated entwining taking place. It seemed to put them in a new field with one another. His lofty, Time Lord mind had hers on the level with his. She could, in a sense, understand and know him better now than she ever could. At the moment, it was literally true that they could read each other's minds, but she knew that the figurative telepathy that lovers share would have boosted tenfold, at the end of this adventure.

Of course, he realised what she was thinking, and he smiled. Her wonder, her knowing, her love, they were literally all around them, enveloping them, as were his power and concentration, his ingenuity and passion.

There was a synchronising happening, of more than just heartbeats, but on the inside. Of souls.

She didn't know if he'd intended this profondeur of interaction when he'd entered her mind this time, or if it was just a by-product of the process. It didn't matter. For Martha, the proverbial "damage" was now done. She felt that their relationship was ageing by a decade, in just these minutes.

They spun on a black lacquered dancefloor, and it felt as though they were spiralling down deeper into something. Down, down…

The sound of the cell door opening cut into the illusion just a bit, and the Doctor whispered, "The guard is coming in. He's here to give us our breakfast. Whatever happens, just keep dancing, Martha. He means nothing to you."

"Just keep dancing…" she mused.

The Doctor stood up from the pallet, and approached the guard. "Morning," he said, affably.

"Yes, it is," said the guard.

The Doctor saw that today's breakfast was something that looked like rice, and some sort of raw green vegetable next to it, served, as usual, on stone plates.

Usually, the Doctor or Martha would take the stone tray from the guard when he appeared to give them their meal, but not this time. The Doctor moved to the side, and gestured to a spot on the pallet near Martha, and when the guard moved to set the tray down, the Doctor got between him and the door.

He hated violence. Loathed it. The thought of what he had to do now was nerve-melting and made him feel a little bit sick, and he almost balked, in favour of finding a more cerebral solution. But he'd thought of a cerebral solution… the sort of thing he does best. And to get there, this had to come first…

He forced himself to swat away his doubts. His passive-aggressive, non-violent, hippy leanings would have to be squelched now, because if not, he and Martha were both dead sometime in the next few hours.

He willed Martha to hold on tight to her reverie.

The guard stopped for a moment after setting the tray on the pallet. He stared at Martha, then turned toward the Doctor.

"What's the matter with her?" he asked, referring to her faraway expression.

"She's in something like a trance," the Doctor answered. "Maintaining a heartrate of eighty beats per minute."

"Why?"

"Because, under normal circumstances, she'd be prone to get far too nervous, when I do things like this," the Doctor said. And with that, he surprised the daylights out of the guard by throwing a full-bodied, back-handed punch to the side of his head.

The element of surprise had been crucial, because the punch itself hadn't been hard enough to befuddle the guard on its own.

"What the…" was the guard's disoriented response. He stepped back instinctively from the Doctor, trying to shake off the bit of fog the punch had caused. The Doctor took advantage of these moments. He grabbed the stone tray, and threw it behind the guard, strewing food everywhere, and causing the tall man to trip, and begin to stumble.

"Doctor…" Martha said, worriedly.

He tried to assure her psychically that the plan was his to execute, she should just keep dancing…

As the guard moved unsteadily backward, trying to get his balance, the Doctor again took advantage and shoved him, ensuring he'd fall to the floor.

Quickly the guard sat up and unsheathed his laser-like weapon from his hip holster, and fired it at the Doctor. The latter dodged the shot, which hit the wall at the other end of the cell. This made the wall look blurry for a moment, and then there was some blowback from the impact. The wall had absorbed some of it, but what bounced back at them felt like standing directly in front of an industrial-level air conditional for about three seconds.

Absently, the Doctor thought a Q-09 blaster, meant for long-range combat. What a daft weapon to give a prison guard.

In the moment when he dodged the Q-09, he dived behind the guard, trying to get his arm crooked around his neck, but the guard twisted away before the Doctor could get a tight enough grip.

The guard got to his feet, whereas the Doctor was on the floor.

The Doctor panicked slightly. This man was trained in hand-to-hand combat, and the Doctor had now lost the element of surprise. He was at a disadvantage now, and the tables had turned.

This is why I never use physical violence. I'm rubbish at it.

I should just stick to outsmarting…

He saw the weapon in the guard's hand, and thought fast. He grabbed the tray again, lying nearby on the floor.

He backed up to the wall. "Oh, you've got me now," he said, rather sarcastically.

"I have," said the guard.

"Except, based on the evidence, you're such a crap shot, you wouldn't be able to hit water in a bucket!"

"You insolent Time Lord scum!"

The guard took two steps forward and fired again. The Doctor held up the tray in self-defence, knowing exactly what would happen. Some of the weapon's blast was absorbed by the stone (less so than when the weapon was fired at the wall, though), the rest ricocheted back at the guard, and disoriented him.

Once more, the guard was stumbling, and the Doctor got to his feet and again positioned himself behind him. This time, though, he pushed the guard forward, so the man would fall to his knees. When he did, the Doctor used the tray to deliver the final blow that knocked him out. He fell sideways onto the stone floor.

"Blimey, why didn't I just do that in the first place?" the Doctor asked himself. "I tell you, I'm rubbish at this close-quarters stuff."

He looked at Martha. She was eerily calm, and when he pulled into himself momentarily, he could see that she was still dancing. She was not unaware of what was going on around her, but she was putting her concentration into the waltz at eighty beats per minute, so that fear could not get the better of her.

"Amazing job, Martha," he said to her. "You're doing beautifully."

"It's all you, Doctor."

"It's really not. But no time to argue."

As quickly as he could, the Doctor got out of his own clothing. Then he peeled off the man's black uniform, and black rubber helmet. He had never seen the actual face of a Sercatonian before – he found the guard's visage disturbing. It was almost half-human and half-reptile. It was both familiar and alien to him, and he was glad that most of the time, he couldn't see the eyes of his captors.

Taking the guard's clothes off, especially while pressed for time, was quite a task; he actually contemplated asking for Martha's help, but any interruption might mess with the equilibrium she'd found. So, she simply watched weirdly impassively while he took on the guise of a Sercatonian prison guard.

He then dragged the limp guard into the attached room that served as a loo, then threw his suit and trainers into the hole in the floor. He shut the door behind him, so that anyone checking the cell would not immediately realise what the Doctor had done. If they were lucky, other guards would assume that the trial and executions had been moved up, and the prisoners had been taken early.

The last thing to do before they could leave was donning the rubber head-covering.

"Martha, I'm going to cover my face now. I'm going to look like one of them, but you can rest assured it's me," he said. "You know my voice. Just listen."

"I can see you on the inside," she said. "I'm fine."

He pulled the disturbing thing down over his head, and could now see through the guard's dark goggles. The goggles served also as a computer screen, and over to the right of his vision, the number twelve, in Sercatonian, appeared in the display. He didn't yet know what that meant, but he reckoned he'd learn.

He found he could breathe just fine through the sharp-looking grate over the mouth.

He took her by the arm, and urged her to stand up. "I have to handle you roughly. I'm sorry."

"It's all right."

"Are you ready to run, if need be?"

"Yes, I think so," she said. "But are you? Beta blockers may hamper the fight-or-flight response."

"I'll do my best," the Doctor said. "It might not be too bad. My metabolism works a bit differently."

"Two hearts…"

"Double the fun. Shall we?"

He led her out the door into the corridor. He gripped her tightly, and held her arm a bit above where felt natural to her, so that she wouldn't walk comfortably, and it would seem that he was dragging her about.

"Do you know where you're going?" she said, inside their minds.

"Not really," he said. "I'm hoping to explore a bit, and get a sense of how the place is laid out. I've seen a hundred of these compound-type things… there are a few different intuitive variations, but mostly, they're all the same, if you know how to see the big picture."

And he tried. They twisted and turned down the corridors, heading nowhere in particular (at least, not just yet), but it was difficult with the myriad distractions…

They ran across other guards, a few with prisoners, though most without. In spite of his new uniform, the Doctor felt wicked conspicuous. All of the guards they saw were taller than he, and their builds were generally more soft and thin, like pulled taffy. He hoped no-one would be looking at their fellow guards closely enough to notice that he was not like them.

To his relief, some of the guards greeted the Doctor, and he greeted them back, but no-one seemed to think he was out-of-place. Though, of course, they were quite inscrutable, since he couldn't see their faces properly, behind the unnerving helmets.

Then someone stopped him. "Hey, there, Sabrak, is it?"

"Er, yes," the Doctor said, trying not to curse under his breath.

"This is Martha Jones, isn't it?"

"Erm, no," the Doctor riffed. "This is a prisoner from Pervander X. Charged with spreading propaganda. She's being moved."

"Hmm," the other guard said. He touched the side of his goggles, and said, "Are you on frequency twelve?"

The Doctor had seen the twelve on the periphery of his goggle-vision, and reckoned the answer was, "Yes."

"Okay, let's double-check," said the other guard.

With that, an image of Martha appeared in the Doctor's field of vision, inside the goggles.

"Oh, damn," the Doctor couldn't stop himself from muttering.

"That's Martha Jones you're seeing, Sabrak," said the other guard. "I don't know what you've been told, but that prisoner you've got is one and the same. I'll take her from here."

"What?" the Doctor asked, as the image in his goggles disappeared, and he could now see the other guard once more. "You'll take her from here? No, no…"

"Yes, yes," said the other guard. "I'm under orders."

"I'm under orders as well," the Doctor protested.

"I outrank you, Sabrak," the other guard admonished. "My orders supersede yours. Hand her over."

"But…"

"Judge Rabic's plan is to be carried out starting now."

"But, she hasn't even been tried yet."

"I know. She'll be injected before the trial - that's the only way it will work."

"Injected?"

"Rabic told me himself – I'm to do it personally." There was a pause, and then the other guard said, "In fact…"

Then, much to the Doctor's horror, the guard quickly pulled a syringe from his belt, took off the blunt cap. The Doctor tried to pull her out of the way, but wasn't fast enough. The guard plunged the needle into Martha's arm, depressing the plunger rapidly with his thumb, emptying some substance into her bloodstream.

Oh no! Jeez, what've they done to our Martha? Best laid plans, eh? Even the Doctor's.

Well, who's out there reading? I've been getting silence again from most of you - take this opportunity to leave me a review, and make my weekend!

Thank you again for reading! :-D