Well, on the up-side, the torture is over. On the down-side, they've still got to escape with Martha's life!

So, I don't know how you will feel about this chapter... hopefully the Doctor's explanation for his actions seems airtight enough. For me, it feels right, even if it is a bit of a "cheat."

Enjoy!

THAT'S JUST CHEATING

It was not difficult to find Colin. He was standing nearby, just offstage, still cradling Martha. For Donna, this was quite an emotional sight, even though she couldn't see Colin's face or anything else that identified him as human.

Another official was examining Martha with some semi-familiar-looking medical equipment.

"She's dead," the official said, and he looked at Donna. "Well done, madam."

Donna heard a very subtle hitching of Colin's breathing through his helmet.

She resisted the urge to comfort him, or reassure him that she was likely just very very close to death. Though, she wasn't sure how reassuring this would be…

"I'll escort you to the pyre, Captain Reakand," said the medical officer.

"The pyre, right," Colin said, standing still, trying to buy time.

Damn it, Donna thought. Didn't see this coming.

"Yes, the pyre," the medical officer said. "Where they will burn her body. Remember? Procedure?"

"Right, yes," Colin said. "But, I was thinking… seeing as how the crowd came here expecting to see the Doctor killed, and they were disappointed by that, and now the TARDIS can't even be moved to the stage – this lot is going to have to watch it on screens… nah, never mind."

"No, no, say what you're thinking, Captain."

"I was just wondering, considering all of that, why are they not making the burning of this body a part of the spectacle? Wouldn't that go even further in pleasing the crowd, and vindicating the planet Sercaton as the destroyers of the Doctor's companion?"

Nice, she thought. Good and morbid, Colin. There's hope for you at this trouble-shooting, skulking-about rubbish that we do.

"Hm," the medical officer said. "That's an excellent question. Do you mind if I ask Judge Rabic about it myself?"

"By all means," Colin said. "I think it would be a wonderful spectacle, if we could work out the logistics…"

"Indeed. I'll be right back."

With that, the medical officer disappeared out onto the stage, where Judge Rabic was still attempting to hold court with the spectators.

"Go!" Donna said, and she and Colin began to dash, with Martha's mostly lifeless body, toward a staircase they hadn't used before. They knew that it was neither of the staircases that led down the sides of the stage, nor underneath it…

They still didn't know where it would lead when they reached the practically pitch-dark bottom of the stairs. Though, they could still see that there was a door in front of them. Encouragingly, it was fairly obvious that the door led outside.

Donna tried to open it. It was locked.

Colin tried hard to kick it open a few times, to no avail. He turned his back on it, and used his entire bulk to try and budge it.

"I can't do that again without risking bashing Martha's head against something," he said, his voice practically breaking.

"Hang on," Donna said. "I don't know what setting to use, but it's worth a shot."

She pulled the sonic screwdriver from her hoodie pocket, and tried the door.

No luck.

She adjusted the head slightly, and tried again.

Still no luck.

"Donna, we don't have all the time in the world!"

"What?" she shrieked. "It's better than kicking it!"

She adjusted the sonic a few more times, trying it each time…

At last the door clicked open.

"Thank heaven!" Colin cried out.

And they ran.

The TARDIS was at full-strength, but now Martha was near death. A day or two ago, it was Donna.

Could he never just have all of his allies functioning at once?

And he realised, not for the first time, that he could not think rationally when Martha was in danger. The TARDIS was one thing – she was old, she had her own reserves, they'd been together for eight centuries, he was used to having her in peril, and they always found each other again.

But Martha was a different story. She was clever and resourceful, but human. Soft. Vulnerable. And their relationship was new. She touched a nerve much closer to the surface, something more fiery and somewhat adolescent in him. His body, as well as his mind.

He hadn't been able to effectively problem-solve weeks ago, when she was being threatened with rape and branding unless he helped imprison the human race, and he hadn't been able to come up with a plan today, as long as he had to hear her screaming...

Thank goodness for Donna. She had known this weakness of his, practically anticipated it, and she had worked out what to do. He could not, at this moment, imagine what the current situation would be like if the TARDIS had not brought Donna and Colin to Sercaton. Would he and Martha both be on the gallows? Both of them dead by now?

So, thank goodness for all of them, really.

He felt horrible going into retreat, and not coming in with guns blazing to save the woman he loves. But he could do things that no-one else could, and that was for the greater good. And so, here he paced, in the TARDIS, having done all that he could for now, waiting… waiting!

He was waiting for someone to deliver into his arms the limp body of Martha Jones, whose death he had sanctioned risking, in order to save them all.

He cursed, and kicked the base of the console in anger.

Once again, the Doctor considered Colin's suggestion of "settling down" for a bit. Mortgage, job, family? Christmas, public transport, tax… everyone safe for a time?

It all sounded mightily inviting, given what was going on outside the door.

And it wasn't just about Martha, necessarily. When her side of the meditative reverie had effectively died, the Doctor had been thrown, despondent, back into reality where, to his horror, there were two crews outside the TARDIS. One seemed to be something like a camera crew, apparently set to record the TARDIS' destruction, and another was a group meant, he assumed, to destroy it.

Two slats now adorned the TARDIS' main doors, and daylight spilled through copiously. These were the result of two hatchet strikes from the wrecking crew, before the Doctor had used the "hard shell" to throw them off. This action amounted to a hard punch to the face for anyone standing nearby, so when he'd looked outside, he'd seen the hatchet-men, lying on the ground being treated for facial trauma, unprotected by the silly rubber helmets the officers wore.

This "hard shell" function tired the TARDIS out, so he had been very reluctant to use it, given that she had only just recovered from her first foray onto Sercaton. Not to mention, Colin and Donna would have a hard time getting in with the shell activated.

Fortunately, he'd been able to undo the shell after a couple of minutes, without the crews outside knowing. They now believed that some kind of forcefield either surrounded the TARDIS, or that they would be violently rebuked if they came near… and they weren't necessarily wrong. But it was just a matter of time before they realised the forcefield wasn't currently up, and they could rush it any time they wanted.

He heard a sudden commotion outside, and the TARDIS groaned. The Doctor cracked the door, and saw a Sercatonian officer, shorter than the average, running toward the TARDIS, carrying the body of a woman. Another woman ran along with him, blazing ginger hair, piercing voice…

… it was them.

"What're you doing? Why do you have her body? Where are you going?" were only a few of the questions amid the din that rose up as Colin ploughed through the gathering crowd.

"I've been instructed to move her to an undisclosed location, until the spectacle pyre can be made upon the stage, now move out of my way!" Colin responded through his rubber helmet.

As he approached the TARDIS, warnings of, "Don't get too close to the blue box – there's a forcefield around it. It will throw you off like you're a dead leaf!"

But as soon as Colin and Donna crossed the threshold of where the other officers thought there was a forcefield protecting the TARDIS, the commotion grew much bigger, and all of the officers began to charge.

With a frustrated cry, the Doctor ran up the ramp, and then used a rarely-used console function to throw open the door, then he stepped out of the way so no-one could see him from the outside. They couldn't know he wasn't dead somewhere in the complex.

"Come on! Come on! Come on!" he shouted.

He poised his hand over the yellow button that would activate the hard shell once more.

"Faster! Don't let them touch her! Come on!" he shouted.

He could hear Colin and Donna's voices, still trying to lull the crowd, still trying to convince the officers chasing them that all of this was part of the process, sanctioned by Judge Rabic, etc. He had no idea whether they could hear him or not.

Donna tripped through the threshold first, though Colin had to slow down and turn sideways so that he didn't bang Martha's head or feet against the doorjamb.

The Doctor's hand came down satisfyingly hard on the yellow button, and the entire crowd of people, currently closing in on the TARDIS were thrown back a hundred feet with a big whoosh, and grunts of disbelief, and pain.

"Lock the door!" he shouted, and Donna did so.

Colin walked up the ramp and began to desposit Martha on the floor, but the Doctor, amid the sounds of the TARDIS grinding away from this location, told him, "No, not here – the infirmary. Donna, you keep watch here…"

He guided her hand to the right spot on the console, and explained briefly how to make sure they were safely away from Sercaton.

Then he ran down the hall, desperate to see the whites of Martha's eyes again.

Her stomach needed to be pumped, her heartbeat needed stimulating, and her blood pressure needed careful monitoring.

On two occasions, she needed extra measures to stop her violently rejecting the alien medication she'd been dosed with, that regulated her heartrate, but had never been meant for humans. And because of said alien injection, her liver was damaged, so all nourishment and medications that now went into her body needed to be carefully chosen, and timed.

And that was just for the two types of heartrate-regulating chemicals she'd been given, the things that had put her near death, but had facilitated her escape.

There were still both deep and shallow cuts to treat, all over her body. She was badly burned in over most of her abdomen, and part of her chest. She was bruised just about everywhere. Her lungs were damaged and had small amounts of fluid in them (despite Donna's best efforts), and a body scan revealed inner-ear damage that could possibly affect her ability to do… anything, really. She had lost blood. She had a broken scapula and collarbone…

Over the course of three days, Colin and Donna assisted as much as they could, but it was the Doctor who sat nearby, twenty-four hours a day, working and waiting. His companions tried once to convince him to leave her side and get some sleep, but it was in vain. They didn't try again. They simply brought him meals when it was time, and stood nearby on the rare occasions when he nodded off…just in case.

Martha would wake for short periods, but her mental state was such that she still needed to retreat from pain. Either that, or the pain medication kept her loopy. She was disoriented and was not really able to make eye-contact with anyone, nor understand where she was or what was happening to her.

On the third night, sometime in the wee hours of the morning, Donna wandered in, unable to sleep.

"How are things in here?" she asked.

"Same," he said, his voice scratchy from disuse.

The Doctor had been uncharacteristically uncommunicative during Martha's "down" time; he simply had no desire to speak to anyone, except for when one of them asked about Martha's state, when he needed assistance with her, or to thank them for bringing him soup.

"How are you?" she wondered.

"Same," he repeated.

"So… despondent, depressed, grief-stricken…"

"Yeah."

"Blaming yourself?"

"Yeah."

"She's going to be okay, Doctor. You said she's out of the woods."

"She is," he said, injecting her IV with something, and adjusting an alarm.

Then he tossed the syringe into a bin, and sat down in the chair beside Martha. He took her hand, pressed his forehead to it, and rested his entire upper body against the bed. Donna pulled up a chair and sat beside, him, stroking his back. After a time, she, in turn, leaned her head against him. She reckoned he really needed a friend.

"Donna, she never asked for any of this," he muttered. She could hear the barely-contained sobs.

"I beg to differ, Doctor," she said. "She knew that life with you could be dark, painful… we all knew, and yet, here we are. Even Colin. Even with everything that's happened, he's still not talking about going home."

"None of you ask for torture. Martha didn't ask to have her legs slashed open. She didn't ask for her torso to be blistered with burns. She didn't ask for broken bones and bruises…" he retorted, now losing his composure. He wept. And through tears, he said, "And it was all for me. All because they wanted me."

"You're right, she didn't specifically ask for torture, or any of it," Donna agreed. "But she did ask to be with you. She did take on the very daunting, dangerous task of being your companion… and not just that. She's your lover, your partner your… girlfriend? Blimey, that sounds wrong for someone like you, but whatever. She bothered to fall in love with you, and cultivate something real with you, and she knew what she was getting into. And if she were awake, she would tell you the same thing."

There was a long silence, and the Doctor said, "They strapped her down and burned and beat and cut her."

"And you were able to penetrate her mind, and take away some of her pain," Donna reminded him. "Who else could have done that? Doesn't that count for something? Can't you give yourself a little bit of a break? I mean, you get us into stuff, but you always get us out."

"Maybe."

"Look, there's no question that Judge Rabic needs to pay for what he's done, but there is no reason for you to beat yourself up over this. She and I have both been through the wringer for you, and we'd both do it again. Guaranteed."

"Still," he said, quite suddenly standing up. He sniffed, and pulled his hand down over his face, eliminating any trace of tears, though his eyes were still red. "She's an innocent in this. And I've spent the last day or so nursing a revelation: it was the Time Lords who pissed off the Sercatonians, not even me. And certainly not her."

His intense mannerism was growing a bit scary, and Donna wasn't sure what was coming next. He was pacing, and he had that look in his eye that said he'd had a terrifying, daft idea.

"Doctor, what sort of bee have you got in your bonnet?" Donna asked, standing up along with him. "Don't do something you're going to regret."

"I'm going to cheat."

"You're going to what?"

"Anything natural or normal I could do with human medicine for her human body, any way you look at it, she's going to have scars. Scars, pain, bandages, disfigurements forever, that she doesn't deserve."

"So, how do you cheat?"

"The Time Lords got her into this, they can bloody well get her out."

He walked over to a cabinet and extracted something. Donna gasped. "Doctor, what do you need with a scalpel?"

He did not answer. At this stage, he was barely aware of Donna's presence.

He went to the sink. He used the scalpel to make a three-inch slash across his hand. Donna winced, and blood dropped into the metal sink with a ping, ping sound.

And that was when his hand began to glow.

"What the hell is that?" she asked.

"It's regenerative energy," he said, maniacally, studying the gold light surrounding his wound. "It's what keeps me from dying. If I'm near death, this stuff will regenerate my entire anatomy. If I'm wounded, it will just regenerate a few cells…"

"Always?"

"If I internalise the pain, the wound… if ask it to, in a manner of speaking."

"Because I've seen you wounded before."

"Normally, it's not worth it for little cuts and scrapes. This time, it's worth it. I'm holding the energy consciously at the wound…"

"Doctor, you can't use that on Martha."

"I don't know if it will work on a human, but it's worth a try."

"No, I mean, because it's wrong. Isn't it?"

"Probably," he said, walking across the room, cupping the blood in his hand, carrying the regenerative glow to Martha. "The Time Lords would definitely say so."

"See?"

"They would say that they're privileged to have this energy, it's part of our legacy, our heritage," he said. "It's what makes us us. It's what evolution has gifted us with, for having superior intellect and perspective, and to allow a human access to it would damage that heritage. Cheapen it."

"And you would say?"

"Rubbish," he told her. "I would say, these are the pompous arses who tried to hold the Earth hostage in seventy-year time loop to punish them for their technological advances. They tried to police Sercaton, and look where it got us! They put me on trial for myriad things, colluded against me with the Master on more than one occasion, failed me out of the academy on a technicality, and countless other things that we don't have time for."

"Are you sure about this, Doctor?" Donna asked, watching him uncover Martha's blanket-clad body, then expose her stomach and thighs, riddled with bandages, covering terrible burns and cuts.

"I reckon the Time Lords owe her one."

So it was a questionable decision. Yes? No? Maybe? On the Doctor's part, perhaps...

Well, for one thing, I didn't think it would be sporting for me to end another story that way (the previous story saw Donna in long recovery), and for another, this little "cheat" has one more sort of handy application.

In any case, let me know what you think! Feedback is ALWAYS the best gift you can give a writer! Thank you for reading. :-)