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When last we saw Martha Jones, she had just met two guys named Steve and Haroun, who were kinda sorta in the same boat as she. They had been zapped back in time by the Angels, and were following clues left in a set of documents from a safety deposit box and an old poster, to find Martha, and try to get rescued from the year 1980. She also AT LAST made contact with the Doctor, who hadn't been in touch for weeks (on her end, anyway), because the Rift and the Angels had made the TARDIS go wonky...

But now, there will be reunion, revelations, and planning! It seems as though Haroun and Steve are going to give the Doctor the last piece of the puzzle that he needs, in order to understand the whole debacle! Solutions are on the horizon... enjoy!

SIXTEEN

Sybil Penn had rung home around nine p.m. to say that she was planning to spend the night out, much to Martha's relief.

"No problem, thank you for letting me know," Martha said to her. "Were you planning to pop home tomorrow morning before heading to work?"

"Yes, why?"

"Around what time?"

"Erm, probably seven-thirty or so. Everything okay?"

"Yes, it's just… I have some news."

"Good news?"

"Yes. Well, maybe a bit bittersweet. But please enjoy your evening," Martha said. "I just wanted to make sure I'd see you in the morning."

"All right, if you're sure everything is okay. I'll see you then. Good night, Martha."

This was a relief, because it meant that Steve and Haroun could hang around for as long as needed to clarify things and discuss further plans. She had time to get her ducks in a row, talk with the Doctor one more time, and get a bit of rest before the TARDIS came to pick her up in the morning. She encouraged him to "cheat" and skip ahead to their appointed meeting time, so that nothing else could go wrong. A lot can happen in twelve hours in the TARDIS.

He agreed to see her in a minute, but it still gave her those twelve hours.

By the time the blue box materialised, she had already explained (as best she could, without mentioning time travel) the situation to Sybil, hugged her, thanked her profusely, and had said goodbye. She could tell that Sybil was dubious about Martha's leaving again with a team who had "abandoned" her, even though she was careful with her words. She invited Martha to stay and work with her, and vowed to find a place for her at the hospital, but Martha assured her of her confidence in her "team," and they promised to keep in touch.

Steve and Haroun had done likewise, tying up their own loose ends, and the three of them were waiting with bags packed, on Sybil's front porch, after the homeowner had gone to work.

The Doctor stuck his head out and asked, casually, "Anyone need a lift?"

Martha gave a little shriek and ran down the front stairs to meet him, without picking up her duffel. He lifted her off her feet, and she half-laughed, half-cried, with her arms and legs wrapped around him. He chuckled a bit, as it had only been a day or so since he'd seen her. Though, he knew that for her, it had been longer… and it had been a somewhat desolate time. Apparently ripping through a Rift in time and space with a time-sucking Angel on-board a vessel that tripped across the cosmos with time in its heart was not something that kept life on a linear trajectory… he should have known. And in this moment, feeling her shaking with relief to be back with him, he kicked himself for his own irresponsibility.

While still reminding himself that it needed to be done three more times.

When the snog began, Haroun and Steve weren't sure where to look… fortunately, Jack stuck his head out ten seconds in, and said, "All right, that's enough, you two. For goodness' sake – a little decorum please?" and went back inside the TARDIS, giggling.

Haroun picked up Martha's duffel, and the two men approached. The Doctor set Martha on her feet, and she introduced her new friends. Everyone shook hands, and she said, "Doctor, I think I know how to solve one of our big problems."

"Right, the internet problem?" he asked, gesturing for her to enter the vessel ahead of him. "Last I talked with you, before time went wonky, you said you had an idea about that."

But when Martha set one foot inside the TARDIS, she stopped short, eyes wide, with a terrified gasp. "What the hell is that thing doing in here?"

"Don't worry, it's just a statue now," Jack said to her, standing with his arm around the defunct Weeping Angel. "No quantum lock, no consciousness left."

Her eyes were still round as saucers, and she asked, "How's that, exactly?"

"Long story," said the Doctor, still outside the TARDIS. "But there's no need to worry – that hunk of stone is just a hunk of stone. While you were solving the internet problem, the gents and I were solving the quantum-locked-aliens-who-want-to-kill-us problem."

"So you made them all… what? Benign? Just statues?" she asked, excitedly, turning to face him.

"Alas, not all," he replied. "Just this one. Can't risk having all four in the TARDIS together – or even more than one. Just having this one, plus one disembodied inside the TARDIS' hard drive, nearly did the old girl in. That's when we'd get into switching-off-the-sun territory."

"Seems like neutralizing the other three is going to take some time," Glenn said, leaning against the console.

Jack agreed, "Yeah. But we'll get there. And locating all of the folks zapped from Oystermouth will be a long, tedious process too, but as the Doctor and I have already discussed, neither one of us is getting any older."

"Actually," Martha said, gesturing to Steve and Haroun. "Thanks to these guys, it probably won't take as long as you think!"

Martha and the Doctor entered the TARDIS properly, then stepped out of the way to let their two new friends through.

"Hey, we didn't do anything," Steve said, stepping inside. "We just… whoaaaa…."

What followed was the standard scene that plays out when humans enter the TARDIS for the first time. Disbelief, disjointed questions, walking around the outside to make sure they had actually seen what they thought they had, and the inevitable, "It's bigger on the inside."

"Yeah, it is," the Doctor said, running up the ramp. "Are we good? To depart, I mean?"

"We're good," Martha answered for the two men, as she pulled the door shut behind them.

"No Tammy, eh?"

"She said no – she wants to start her life over again here. I asked her eight times – they say it takes eight times to get someone to reveal their true feelings if they are in denial. I learned that, working with victims of abuse. But she held fast. She's staying in 1980, and possibly moving to Canada – she's not sure yet."

"What do you think – should we tell her husband?" the Doctor asked. He looked at Jack.

"We should," Jack said, with certainty, ever the empathetic human being. "Got to give him closure – we owe him that much."

"How are you going to justify how you know she's dead, without returning a body to him?" Glenn asked. He seemed to simply be thinking aloud. "I mean, I suppose you could tell him her remains aren't fit for viewing or returning, but that puts in mind a violent crime that someone should be investigating, and it might traumatize him unduly…"

"And therein lies the problem," the Doctor pointed out. "Welcome to my world."

"Guys," Martha said, with a chuckle. "She wrote him a note."

"Oh. A suicide note?" the Doctor asked.

"No, a Dear John," Martha answered. "It says she felt stifled in the marriage, and needed a fresh start, so she's sorry she didn't say a proper goodbye, but she's gone abroad. New name, new life, asks him not to try and contact her."

"You read it?" Jack asked.

"Course not," she said. "Tammy gave me the gist. It's about nine pages long."

"And you have the letter?" the Doctor wondered.

"Yes, in my duffel. We'll deliver it when we're all done."

He nodded.

"What if he wants a divorce?" Glenn wondered.

"I suppose he can contact us, and we can find her…" Jack said.

"We?" asked the Doctor.

"Okay," Martha said, trying to clear it all away, and move on to the next topic. "Point is, no Tammy, so can we go?"

Haroun said, swallowing hard, eyes still huge from the shock of seeing the TARDIS. Then he turned to Steve and said, "Wait, er, shouldn't we tell the Doctor our story first?"

"Yeah, probably should," Steve replied.

"Can you tell it to me in the early twenty-first century?" the Doctor asked.

"Definitely!" Haroun said, eyes alight.

"All right then. Allons-y!"

They had parked the TARDIS in front of the Potter's Wheel in Swansea early in their adventures, which seemed like centuries ago. It had served them well, so they reckoned, why not go back to the same spot?

So, once again the TARDIS was parked in front of the Potter's Wheel. Only, instead of being sat aboard a bus, the time travellers were inside the pub itself. It was 2007, and Haroun and Steve practically wept at seeing their home decade again.

Just to the left of the main door, the pub had a small private room, with one round table, and eight chairs around it – the TARDIS crew now occupied six of them. The room was usually used for birthday parties, but today it was their war room. Jack had done the honours, and obtained drinks for all of them, then shut the door to the room. It closed somewhat loosely and did not lock, but at least they were panelled with a glass grid so that they could see someone coming. Though why anyone would burst in on them, they had no idea.

Everyone except the Doctor now had a half-to-two-thirds-full glass in front of them (his was still completely full), and Martha had now heard the harrowing story of how they had managed to rip out the consciousness of the Weeping Angel from the console room, as well as the one that had wormed its way into the TARDIS' hard drive and Heart.

"So… you just let it chase you round the console?" she asked. "How could you take a risk like that?"

"Big picture, Martha," he argued. "The point is…"

"Well, blimey, if you were playing with Weeping Angels three inches from the Time Vortex, risking your life, and diving through the bloody rift, no wonder I couldn't find you for three weeks!" she practically shouted.

"Okay, those doors are not exactly soundproof, Martha, and that was awfully loud," he scolded.

"You can't do risky shit, and then tell her to keep her voice down," Jack said. "Just saying."

The Doctor frowned at him, in a way that seemed to say, stay out of this, but he didn't say anything. To Martha, he said, "As long as you were hanging about in New Canaan, handcuffed to Tammy, we needed to do something. Trying to get rid of the 1980 Angel seemed like the thing to do, once Glenn had read all the info he could get from it."

"And to be fair, we had no idea how violent it was going to be," Jack said.

"And when I begged you to take the easy road with Tammy, begged you not to stay in 1980, to come with us, you would not," the Doctor reminded her. "Because it's what we do – we take risks, we do the right thing, and that's why we're together, isn't it? You and me? Isn't that what you said?"

She sighed, and took a pause. "I did not understand how different it would be from 1969."

"Well, it worked out, didn't it? We're all here, together, aren't we?"

"Wait, what happened in 1969?" Steve wondered.

"The same thing that happened to you," the Doctor said. "Knocking about in 2007, suddenly we open our eyes, and it's 1969. We had to go through a whole process and lay clues across time, to get our motor back."

"Which reminds me…" Martha said, turning to Haroun and Steve.

"Right," Steve said, draining his drink, and sitting up straight.

He proceeded to tell, for the third time, the story of how a message got relayed from Russia to Japan to Argentina to the U.S.A, over the course of eighty-some years, leading him to find Haroun, and then Martha, which allowed them to come home to their own time.

As he talked, the Doctor's posture became more and more straight and rigid, his eyes got bigger, and Martha could see more and more hope appearing in his eyes, and cogs turning in his brain.

And then, Steve produced an envelope out of the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it over. It was a made of a robust material, and contained papers that looked to be in varying stages of yellowing and decay. The Doctor frowned at the pages. "This is my handwriting."

"Seriously?" asked Haroun. "Whoa."

"Where did this come from?"

"A safety deposit box… clues left for me," Steve answered.

The Doctor looked the papers over without saying a word, then shouted, "This is it! This is why it felt right!"

"What? What did?" Martha asked.

He stood up, practically toppling his chair behind him. "This is the key to rescuing all the folks zapped from Oystermouth, and why it just felt right that we should save them! Why I felt like it was inevitable, and would set things right somehow!"

Martha stared at the papers, and asked, "Because at some point in the near future, you write these notes yourself, and give yourself the tools to do it? To save them?"

"Yes!" the Doctor said. And leaving a glass of Stout still untouched on the table, he picked up the envelope and everything, and dashed toward the door. "Let's get started!" he shouted, and he was gone.

The five humans at the table were left looking at each other.

"I guess we're getting started," Jack said.

And they all stood up. Martha put out her hand, and said, "Let me. You lot, stay and enjoy your drinks."

The Doctor was not in the console room, but she hadn't thought he would be.

She found him in his bedroom, sitting at a desk at the bottom of the stairs leading up to a library loft.

He had begun writing the messages handed to him by Steve, a set of instructions for people in four countries, across eighty-some years, to get themselves rescued from being seemingly lost in time. What to say, what to write, what to do, where to go, where to place things… it was all there. Including where to meet the TARDIS, and when.

She came into the room, and shut the door behind her. Instead of greeting her, he said, "I can feel the TARDIS getting agitated. I might have to have you dictate the documents to me on a recording."

"Why?"

"Because having two versions of the very same letters in the same place is starting to make her nervous. Grate on her."

"Okay. Whatever you need me to do."

"We'll make a recording, then burn the papers. Once they cease to exist, we can write new ones, which, of course, are the same ones."

"Great, sounds like a plan."

Her tone was taciturn. "You okay?" he asked.

"Clearly not," she responded.

"What's wrong?" pen still in-hand.

"Can't you guess?"

He sighed, and put the pen down. "I'm sorry I disappeared for three weeks, Martha. I honestly didn't mean to. And I'm not just blowing smoke when I say that it was less than twenty-four hours for me."

"I know. I completely believe you. It's just… you don't know what it was like."

"I don't?"

She did something then that she had perhaps never done. She sat down on the floor at his feet, and rested her head in his lap. "Separated from you. By time! Might as well be by light years! No TARDIS, no phone contact, no way to talk to you, no way to say hello, or even goodbye…"

"Yeah, it's a rubbish feeling," he agreed, stroking her hair and neck.

"Having just discovered… you. You and me. All that time I spent longing, and then we finally earn our time together, and this happens! And I know what I said when I was refusing to leave Tammy behind, and all that, but the actual feeling of it, the emptiness. I swear to you, I felt physically nauseated for most of that time, Doctor."

"You think I can't imagine what that's like?"

She looked up at him, and he was looking back with a closed-in sadness that was like a gut punch.

"Oh, blimey," she sighed.

"Sorry."

"No, no, it's my fault," she said.

"Martha, it's something I've felt over and over again, in my travels with humans. Not just…"

"I know," she interrupted. "I mean, I know. I actually do. It's just not something I enjoy thinking about, or being reminded of."

In truth, she had never heard the whole story of how Rose exited the Doctor's life, but rather, only snippets. It had to do with Canary Wharf, the same time and place where her cousin Adeola had died. There was a didn't-get-to-say-goodbye scenario of some sort, an alternate dimension, a lot of tears, but at least Rose had her family… or did she? Anyway, someday, Martha reckoned, she'd be ready to sit down and listen. She wondered if they had reached that moment.

She put her head back down on his leg. He said to her, "Which is why I am so very, very sorry. Even though we both knew it was a risk. Actually, we were risking much worse, weren't we? But I'm still sorry that you felt such pain. It's the last thing I would want."

"Next time, I'll listen to you."

"No, you won't," he said, matter-of-factly. "And that's a good thing."

There was a long pause, while he continued to stroke her neck, and she relished in the moment. She took in his scent, felt his warmth, breathed deeply, so glad to be with him again. Then, she martialed all of her will power, and stood up. She then asked, "So, would you like me to record those notes for you?"

"In a little while," he said, reaching out for her hand, and pulling her in.

She sat down on his leg and wrapped her arms around his neck for their first private kiss in over three weeks (from her point of view). For him, it simply felt like the eye of a storm, and the perfect moment to take advantage of a calm window of time.

He wrested the elastic tie out of her hair and threw it on the floor. He buried one hand in her falling black locks, and pulled her head to one side. He attacked her neck with nips and kisses, she moaned at the sensation, and suddenly everything within her both tightened and surrendered.

About an hour and a half after abruptly walking out, Martha and the Doctor returned to the small private room in the Potter's Wheel, hand-in-hand.

"Hi all," said the Doctor. "Sorry to run out on you. Had a bee in my bonnet."

Jack smirked. "How's that bee doing now?"

The Doctor frowned. "Fine. Delayed for a bit. I mean, we hit a snag with the TARDIS and the papers Haroun and Steve gave me, and realised we had to alter the plan, so we decided to take a bit of a B-road."

"I'll bet you did," said the immortal man, still smirking.

He had caught onto the fact that the Doctor's tie had been re-tied and he was wearing a fresh suit jacket and a different pair of shoes. Likewise, when Martha had left the pub, her hair had been tied up on top of her head, with strands falling down naturally. Now, it was newly re-tied, no strands, and her lipstick had been reapplied. Their cheeks were not flushed, but their demeanour was decidedly different – much easier-going and affectionate.

He reckoned the other three gents didn't see what he saw, but none of them knew his friends the way he did. Hell, none of them knew sex the way he did, he was sure. He had been well-attuned to it before becoming immortal, and now over a century's experience made him practically psychic, where these things were concerned.

"Anyway," Martha said, loudly, cutting across Jack, understanding the innuendo. "Sorry to keep you waiting."

"'Sokay," Jack said. "We all do what we've gotta do."

"Yeah, it's all right," Haroun said. "Just been shootin' the breeze about time travel. Never thought I'd say that. Heh."

"And drinking, of course," Steve said. "But don't worry – we're all just on our third."

"Martha shared with me the idea she's had for the internet problem," the Doctor told the group.

"What internet problem?" Steve wanted to know.

"The fact that an image of a Weeping Angel, if repeatedly viewed, eventually becomes an Angel, with the same powers of an Angel, et cetera, et cetera," Jack told him. "And the photos taken by Tamara Litzinger of Oystermouth Cemetery, the day she disappeared, have gone viral."

"Oh! Shit!" Steve said, surprised. "That'll sober a body up right quick."

"How many people have been zapped via the internet?" Haroun asked.

"We've no way of knowing," the Doctor said. "All we know is we've got to stop it."

"And rescue them, as well?"

"I don't think so," the Time Lord sighed. "Just you lot, who were zapped out of Oystermouth in-person. It's a gut thing. And thanks to you two, I now know why it's a gut thing. I'm going to trust it."

"Great, so we have a way of stopping what happened to my mum and niece from happening to anyone else?" Glenn asked.

"Yep," the Doctor said. "It's a vaccine."

"A what?" asked Jack.

"Well, more like a virus disseminated to kill something malevolent… a vaccine. That's also a virus. So… a vaccine."

"Whoa. Martha, that's brilliant!"

"Indeed it is," the Doctor said, proudly. "We have always had three problems: the Angels, the internet, and the rescues. We now have solutions to all of them, but it's going to take all six of us. Everyone game?"

Is anyone reading this story? I would LOVE a review! Haven't had much proof of life in a few chapters, and it's making it hard to finish the story! (I'm needy.) Let me know you're there, and make my week!

Thank you for reading!