Second-to-last chapter, everyone!
Martha's trials are over, thanks to a bit of a "cheat" (which most of you didn't seem to think of as a cheat!) on the Doctor's part. But one little matter still remains un-seen-to...
THE REVELS
By that evening, Martha was awake, and lucid. And it was looking as though she'd be able to stay awake this time. The pain was virtually gone – no more retreat from the horror, no more pain meds to render her insensible. The Doctor had helped her out of bed, and steadied her as she walked around a bit. He told her he'd like her to remain in the infirmary one more night, with monitors and instruments nearby, and then she could return to their regular bedroom, and finish convalescing there... if needed.
And now, they were all at dinner.
"I think it'll be another couple of days before you're one-hundred-per-cent," he said to her. "What do you reckon?"
"Feels about right," she said, popping a Kalamata olive into her mouth. "Although I suppose I'd have to have a look at my chart, to know for sure."
He chuckled. "Sorry, I didn't keep one."
"You rogue," she said, winking.
"How are you… you know, mentally?" Colin asked.
"I'm fine," she said. "It was traumatic, but honestly, I've been through worse."
The Doctor sighed. "On my watch, of course."
"You've been through worse," Colin said, evenly, though Martha knew him well, and she could see him trying to hold onto his anxiety over this fact. He'd seen a good bit of this mad old life, and she reckoned he'd been able to see why it was worth doing. Though, Colin was, at the end of the day, used to being protective of her, and old habits die hard.
"Of course," she agreed. "But it's not like I didn't volunteer for it."
"Still…" the Doctor began.
"Don't do this to yourself, Doctor," she scolded. "We all know what this life is like, and we stick with it anyway. We're your companions… we stick with you. Well, Colin's sticking with Donna, actually. But Donna's sticking with you, so, vicariously…"
Even Colin chuckled at that.
"Maybe so, but, even considering…" the Doctor sighed. "Even considering that you love me, you signed up for the danger, you want to be by my side…"
"Yeah?"
"Even with all that," he continued. "It seems extreme this time."
"Are you trying to make it worse for me?" she asked.
"No!" he said. His face registered surprise, and an 'oh!' expression. "God, no!"
"Relax," she said. "You couldn't make it worse – you could only make it easier to live with. But quit dwelling on it."
"Sorry," he muttered
She addressed all three of them. "Yes, I was tortured. It was painful and humiliating… for maybe an hour. But are you forgetting what the Master put me through?"
"No, I am not forgetting," the Doctor said.
"I don't know that story," Colin said, expectantly.
"Let's just say, the torture was for more than an hour. And in 1913, cooped up for three months… John Smith's literal servant. Listening to racial slurs from the schoolchildren day after day was my favourite bit."
"What?" Donna and Colin asked, in unison.
"I haven't forgotten that either," the Doctor assured her.
"I'm just saying… this wasn't that bad. You don't need to self-flagellate over this, okay?"
"Okay," he said.
To Donna and Colin, Martha said, "Has he told you what he did for me during the torture?"
"We had him in the TARDIS, trying to get her good and riled again, so she could get us out of there," Donna said. "could he do from there?"
"He got inside my mind, and was taking me away from the pain, and lulling me," she explained, taking the Doctor's hand.
"How does that work?" Colin asked.
"It's a telepathic thing…" Donna whispered. "Time Lord, companion, close relationship… psychic links. Don't ask."
The Doctor sighed. "I did my best."
"And it was a huge factor in keeping me sane, keeping me whole," Martha said. "Just when I wondered where the hell you were… there you were. Like always. Holding onto me, getting me through it."
Donna took a sip of wine, then chuckled. "It's funny. Back in Mallorca, when we were talking about how to 'traumatise' you enough to flush out that alien, we were sort of wringing our hands over how the hell we were going to jar you hard enough to actually ring your bell a bit, considering what you'd already been through."
"Wait, I haven't heard that story either," Colin said.
The Doctor cleared his throat pointedly, and said to Martha, "Anyway. You're through the woods now. And if anything else comes up, we'll get you through it."
"Yeah, you know, speaking of getting me through the woods," she said, with her hand pressed against her stomach. "You did a spectacular job patching me up."
"Thanks."
"No, seriously… I should have had, like, third-degree burns on my abdomen," she exclaimed, now looking down the neck of her gown. "But there are no marks on me. Nor are there any marks on my thighs. I was slashed up pretty bad, Doctor."
"You were."
She looked at him suspiciously. "So how'd you do it?"
"Martha…"
"I told you she'd ask," Donna muttered.
"And I didn't argue with you," the Doctor muttered back.
"Come on," she said. "If you don't tell me, Donna will."
He pulled his hand down over his face. "Do we have to do this now?"
"Call it a professional curiosity," Martha pressed. "I'm an A&E physician – I want to know! It's only been three days. I reckon you pumped my stomach for the beta blocker, yeah?"
"Yeah."
"And maybe some very exciting defibrillator action?"
"Yeah. And also some other stuff to treat you for the alien substances that had been put in your body… though you should be detoxed by now. Except, well, your liver is damaged."
"Okay, I can live with that… mostly because it will eventually heal itself, and I can understand it. But what did you do with my burns? My cuts and scrapes and bruises?"
"Can I not just enjoy having you back? Please?"
"He cheated," Donna said.
"Donna…" the Doctor began.
"Excuse me?" Martha asked.
"He cut open his own hand and this golden light started swirling around it…" Donna continued
"He did not," Martha breathed.
"Wait…" Colin tried.
"He did," Donna confirmed.
Martha turned to the Doctor. "You used your regenerative energy to heal me?"
He looked at her wearily. "You know I'd have used any trick in my kit to take your pain away."
"Well… did you, like, have to give up a regeneration or something?" she asked him, incredulous.
"No," he assured her.
"Really?"
"Really," he said. "I'd have done that, too, if necessary… but no. That would have been a lot more involved. If I'd pulled you back from the brink of certain death, then maybe. And also, I couldn't have just decided to use my own energy for that, I'd have to engage the… you know what? Just… no. I didn't have to give up anything for this. There is no loser here – just four winners, because you're awake, lucid, moving about, and the three of us get to enjoy you."
"I have to admit," Donna said. "It was pretty spectacular."
"I'm so confused," Colin groaned.
"The Doctor comes from a race of people who can regenerate their entire bodies," Martha said. "When he's about to die, he can engage this process, and as I understand it, he gets surrounded by glowing gold dust, and every cell in his body transforms."
Colin's eyes were wide. "Into what?"
"Into a new person," the Doctor said. "Same brain, same soul, but new body, new face, new voice, new personality."
"That's mental!" Colin exclaimed. "Okay, okay… I can see that we're off-topic here. But can we schedule a debriefing session soon, in which I ask all of the billion questions – half of which have arisen just in the last five minutes – and you lot answer them, bring me up to speed?"
The Doctor chuckled. "Yes. Count on it. Tomorrow night, if you'd like."
"Wonderful," Colin said, sitting back in his chair, with arms crossed. "Carry on."
There was a long lull. Finally, Martha said, "This has got to be wrong somehow."
"That's what I thought," Donna told her. "But he said the Time Lords got you into that jam, and they can bloody well get you out. It was hard to argue with that."
Martha looked at the Doctor, and he shrugged, as if to say, "Yeah, that's pretty much it."
She sighed. "Part of me wants to be appalled…"
Donna interrupted. "But part of you knows that because it was slightly morally questionable, and a total cheat, and it's the Doctor, who really tries hard to keep a moral compass about him, and it's energy that came from him, that makes it an act of love, and you want to thank him… probably by doing things that you'll never tell me about?"
Martha laughed. "Yeah."
"Wow," Colin muttered, clearing his throat.
"I know. I have the same conflict. Only without that naughty bit at the end," Donna declared.
"Do you know what it does for me?" the Doctor asked, suddenly very focused.
"Uh-oh," Martha said. "What?"
"It makes me realise that this little cheat might be the key to taking down Rabic," he said. "It makes me feel like if I'd done things the old-fashioned way, he'd never get his comeuppance."
"I was just about to ask what happened to him," Martha told him.
"Well," Colin interjected. "When he screamed at you to shut up, and then hit you, we all heard it through the tannoy, and the Doctor said he'd have Rabic's fucking head on a platter. But that hasn't happened yet..."
"Oh," Martha said, looking at the Doctor with a bit of trepidation. "Oh, God. What have you got on your mind?"
"We've got Martha through the worst..." the Doctor mused.
"Yeah, so what happens now? Is this the part where we get his fucking head on a platter?" asked Colin.
"Not literally," Donna answered. "The Doctor, at his best, is more about poetic justice than swift and blinding violence. Aren't you, Doctor?"
"Yeah."
"Seriously," she warned him. "Tell us what you've got planned, because I won't let you go in for some fire-and-brimstone revenge scenario, and you know I'm not bluffing. It's why you keep me around, remember?"
"I remember," the Doctor said, still focused, wide-eyed. "It's not fire and brimstone. If I know despotic leaders – and I do know despotic leaders – he'll be grandstanding for quite a while now. It'll be easy to get poetic justice, as you called it. And it's going to take all four of us. Donna and Colin, you first."
Four hours later, Donna and Colin walked back into the TARDIS from having been on the outside for a bit.
"Well?" the Doctor asked, from his perch on one of the railings that surrounded the console platform.
"It's as bad as you thought," Donna said, pulling the door shut, and locking it.
"It's four days later, and they're still celebrating," Colin complained.
The two of them had just been at a veritable ball, commemorating the end of the Time Lords, the TARDISes, and their accomplices.
"What was it like?" Martha asked. She sat on the lone navigator's stool in the console room, against the Doctor's advice that she have a kip.
"They're all still in the arena, and there's music and dancing," Donna said. "And there's a screen above the stage, showing the moment when Martha supposedly died, and the moment when the TARDIS was rushed by the guards, over and over again, on a loop. I've never liked seeing myself on film, and I've got to say, this hasn't helped."
She shuddered a bit, at the memory of watching herself "kill" Martha again and again. It was horrid, even though she knew it was fake, and Martha was fine.
"What a lovely little planet this is," Martha chirped, sarcastically.
"Between songs, occasionally, they play an audio of Rabic torturing you and taunting the Doctor, to remind the crowd that he was in the complex somewhere listening, and having a heart-attack over the whole thing," Colin reported, rolling his eyes. He asked the Doctor, "Do they think your dead body is in that building somewhere, and they just haven't found it?"
The Doctor shrugged. "Maybe. Who knows what they're telling themselves?"
"Well, the official narrative is that a Sercatonian officer – that would be me – carried Martha Jones' lifeless body out to the TARDIS to be destroyed along with it," Colin answered. "When we dematerialised, it was a result of some sort of Sercatonian technology, that killed it, and disintegrated Martha's body."
Martha scrunched up her nose. "And people are buying that rubbish?"
"Apparently," her cousin responded. "Because they're dancing about like it's bloody 1999."
"It's a power show," the Doctor said. "This whole execution thing was set up to show off the supremacy of Sercaton. It's a sector of the universe that never got on with the Time Lords, and they reckoned if they could be the ones to take the last of us down, they could reign over, well… this corner of existence."
"Could've been a solid plan, as megalomaniacal schemes go, except they didn't fully realise who they were dealing with, did they?" Donna asked.
"Does Rabic believe it?" Martha asked the Doctor. "Or is this just the load of rubbish he's feeding the masses?"
"My guess? Rabic doesn't know what the hell happened," the Doctor answered. "And he's agitated and confused."
"So now, without our intervention, Sercaton gets to be the boss of this part of the universe?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. "Which is why we're intervening. All right, Donna, Colin… next stop, the capitol city. We're going to need the Rebel Alliance if we're going to bring down Darth Vader."
One more chapter to go, friends! Hopefully I can get it posted in the next few days... in the meantime, let me know what you're thinking!