Chapter 26
The Doctor pushed the TARDIS doors open and smiled. "See?" he said, stepping back so Rose and Martha could admire the woodland meadow they'd parked in. "The perfect planet for a picnic."
After two weeks of palace revolutions and natural disasters, the consensus that morning at breakfast had been for a quiet day. Even the Doctor, much as he loved running, was ready to relax, so he'd taken them to Pabaro for a hike, followed by a picnic.
They were only half a mile from the TARDIS when a shudder of unease ran through the Doctor. He held up his hand to indicate to Rose and Martha that they should be still and silent, and he listened.
"Are you sure, Son of Mine? We heard there was only one left."
"Positive, Mother of Mine. Can't you smell them?" The sound of sniffing filled the air. "Time Lords."
The Doctor cursed. Hunters, and they had his scent, and Rose's. He spun around and pointed back down the path, and the three of them sprinted for the TARDIS.
A moment later, they heard heavy footsteps pounding through the underbrush. "We are close, Father of Mine," another voice said.
"The scent is getting stronger, Daughter of Mine."
The Doctor, Rose, and Martha burst out of the woods into the clearing where they'd parked the TARDIS. The Hunters came through behind them, and once the trees were no longer obstructing their view, they withdrew their weapons and began firing.
"Remember we are not shooting to kill," Father of Mine said. "If we kill the Time Lords, we will not be able to possess them."
The Doctor didn't take much comfort in the idea that they weren't shooting to kill. He reached the door first, wrenched it open, and dove inside. "Get down!" he yelled to Rose and Martha, wincing when an energy blast whizzed over his head and hit the console.
When he heard the door shut, he jumped up and pulled Rose to her feet. "Did they see you?"
She blinked at his sharp tone, but answered right away. "No, they couldn't have. We were running away before they caught sight of us."
He nodded, her certainty making him feel marginally better, After taking a deep breath, he spun to look at Martha. "What about you, Martha? Did you see any of their faces? Could they see you?"
"I…" She licked her lips. "I don't know."
"Did they see you?" He grabbed her by the shoulders. "Did they see your face?"
"I don't know." She blinked rapidly, and her arms trembled beneath his hands. "No, it's like Rose said." She took a deep breath and shook her head. "We were too busy running away for them to see anything but our backsides."
The Doctor raked his hand through his hair, feeling marginally better. They could hide, if they had to. He glanced up at the device hanging from the ceiling, then ran to the console. Let's try running away first.
"Off we go!" he said, taking the TARDIS into the Vortex.
The TARDIS immediately detected their pursuer. She jumped time tracks, but the Hunters followed effortlessly.
The Doctor growled. "They're following us."
"How can they do that?" Martha asked incredulously. "You've got a time machine."
"Stolen technology." The Doctor adjusted the navigation controls, putting the TARDIS on autopilot in the vortex, jumping time tracks. That would buy them time to figure out what to do. "They've got a Time Agent's vortex manipulator. They can follow us wherever we go, right across the universe. They're never going to stop, unless…" He ran his hand through his hair, staring at the monitor.
Rose looked at the Doctor. There was something he wasn't saying. "Martha, would you give us a minute, please?" When she was gone, Rose put her hands over the Doctor's hearts. "What is it?"
"I could stop them now," he told her. "If we landed, I could easily defeat them—they wouldn't stand a chance."
Rose frowned. "You always give them a chance."
The Doctor took a deep breath and covered Rose's hands with his own. "There is a way… but it isn't easy."
"Let's do it."
"I haven't even told you what it is."
Rose turned her hands palm up and took his. "Doesn't matter. When have we ever taken the easy way out?" she asked.
He nodded slowly. "Martha, you can come back in now," he called out, then bent down to rummage around underneath the console.
Martha returned to the console room a moment later. "What's going on?" she asked.
The Doctor jumped back up, a smile pasted on his face. "Ah, there you are. Okay, I reckon the two of you would like some sort of explanation."
Rose sat down on the jump seat and watched him pace in front of the console.
"Those creatures are Hunters. They typically operate in groups of four, calling themselves the Family of Blood. They can sniff out anyone, and Rose and I, well, we're unique." His eyes met Rose's, asking again if she wanted to go this route, and she nodded. "They can track us down across the whole of time and space."
Martha leaned against a strut and let out a half-laugh. "And the good news is?"
The smallest smile appeared on the Doctor's face. "They can smell us, but they haven't seen us. And their life span'll be running out, so we hide. Wait for them to die."
"But they can track us down," Martha pointed out.
The Doctor ran his hand over his already impossibly messy hair, then looked at their friend. "Not if we camouflage ourselves. The thing is, if we do this, we'll need you to look out for us." His eyes bored into Martha's, and Rose wanted to tell him to ease up, because he was scaring their friend.
"If you do what?" Martha asked. "I'll help any way I can, but you haven't actually explained anything."
The Doctor finally revealed what he'd dug out from underneath the console—two pocket watches, one silver and the other gold. "You need to take these watches, because our lives depend on it. These watches, Martha. These watches are us."
Martha looked at the watches, then back at the Doctor. "You're not making any sense at all, Doctor."
The Doctor dropped the watches in his jacket pocket and flipped the lever that lowered the chameleon arch from the ceiling. "Never thought I'd use this. All the times I've wondered."
Rose circled the console to stand next to him. "What does it do?"
He couldn't look at her, at either of them. Instead, he kept his eyes fixed on the headset. "Chameleon arch. Rewrites our biology. Literally changes every single cell in our bodies." He took the gold watch and snapped it into place. "I'm setting it to human."
Rose made a quiet sound, and he knew she'd connected the dots. He wanted to beg her to change her mind, but he knew she wouldn't, so instead, he finished getting the device prepared for her.
"Now, the TARDIS will take care of everything. Invent a life story for us, find us a setting and integrate us." He shot Martha an apologetic smile. "She can't do the same for you. You'll just have to improvise. We should have just enough residual awareness to let you in."
"But, hold on," Martha said. "If you're going to rewrite every single cell, isn't it going to hurt?"
The Doctor looked at Rose soberly. "Oh, yeah. It hurts."
Rose stepped forward and took his hand. "But we have to do it," she said again, "because it's the only way we can give them a chance to give up. Right?"
He nodded. "This species, they're incredibly short-lived. We'll land on Earth somewhere, the TARDIS will set us up with a new life, and then after three months, Martha can make sure we open the watches and we'll be back."
Rose's eyes twinkled up at him. "Three months playing domestic on Earth?" she teased. "Are you sure you can handle that—even a human you?"
"Stuck on Earth with you, Rose Tyler?" He grinned down at her. "That's not so bad." The familiar banter lightened his mood, and he was smiling as he finished adjusting the headset.
Martha cleared her throat as he stepped away from the device. "So… I don't want to overstep, but something's occurred to me." The Doctor and Rose both turned to look at her. "The day we met, you said Rose couldn't get pregnant without some… jiggery-pokery. When I found out you're an alien, I figured it was because of cross-species issues. If you're both going to be human…"
The Doctor felt his ears turn red, but he nodded. "Quite right. Without knowing ahead of time where the TARDIS will take us, we can't guarantee birth control will be available." He looked at Rose. "If I give you an injection after you've changed, would that be all right?"
Rose worried her lip between her teeth. "That's fine, but… If we do land somewhere without birth control, aren't I going to wonder why I've gone three months without my period, and yet I'm not pregnant?" She frowned. "Actually, won't I think I am?"
He shook his head. "Thirty-first century shot," he explained. "Targets ovulation without messing with your hormone levels."
Her face relaxed. "Yeah, okay."
"Excellent. Thank you for pointing that out, Martha." The Doctor leaned against the console. "It'll be a half hour or so before I'm ready. In addition to the contraceptive for Rose, I want to leave you a few notes, Martha—things that might come up, reminders, that sort of thing."
"Do we have half an hour?" she asked.
"Not a problem," he assured her. "The TARDIS could jump time tracks like this all day and not get tired."
"All right. Call me when you're ready for me." Martha looked at the chameleon arch one more time, then left the console room.
To the Doctor's surprise, Rose followed her. "Where are you going?" he asked.
"To pick up our room a little," she said. "If we're taking a holiday, I don't want to come home to three-month-old dirty laundry on the floor."
oOoOoOoOo
The Doctor heard footsteps on the grating and knew without looking that they belonged to Rose. A cup of tea appeared in his line of vision, and he took it gratefully.
"I thought you could use a super-heated infusion of tannins."
He could feel the nervous anxiety under her teasing, but he followed her lead and ignored it. "Just the thing for soothing the nerves, as well as healing the synapses," he agreed. Her determination was unmistakable, but he had to ask anyway. "Rose, are you sure…"
"Yes." She carded her fingers through his hair and he tilted his head back with a sigh.
"The TARDIS has promised we'll be married in the lives she arranges for us. Beyond that, I don't know any details, but I wasn't going to spend three months without you."
"Yeah, definitely not."
The Doctor thought about the rest of the TARDIS' promise and winced, fairly certain he knew how Rose would react to it. "And to that end, she's going to provide us with rings."
He felt Rose's quick denial as her hand automatically clenched into a fist to keep her ring from being taken from her. "Why can't we wear our own?"
The Doctor looked at his wedding band, engraved with Circular Gallifreyan. "Well, for one, not being able to read the inscriptions in our own wedding rings would probably confuse our human selves."
Rose sighed, then slowly pulled her ring off. "I'll go put them on my vanity and bring Martha with me on my way back," she said. "Because everything's ready, isn't it?"
He swallowed hard. "Yeah." The Doctor handed her his own ring, then slouched on the jump seat while he waited for her and Martha to return.
He didn't move, even when he heard them coming. Rose rested her hand on his shoulder, and he looked up at her.
"Let's do this," she said, and somehow, she managed a smile.
The Doctor stared at the chameleon arch for a long moment, then he reached for Rose's hand. "You first, love," he whispered. She watched him unblinkingly as he hooked her up to the machine, and the trust in her eyes killed him.
Hey.
He looked up at her and realised his vision was clouded with tears.
We're going to be all right, you and me.
He blinked the tears away and looked at her smiling face. Forever? he asked, gripping her hand hard.
Rose brought his hand to her mouth and kissed his palm. Forever.
The Doctor took an unsteady breath, then pulled the headset down and fastened it to her head. I'll be there when you wake up, he told her, and she nodded encouragingly.
Martha watched their silent goodbye, then the Doctor took a step back from his wife and pressed the button with a shaking hand. Rose's back arched as a current ran through her body, and her screams were horrifying. Martha the friend wanted to close her eyes to shut out the agony on Rose's face, but Martha the physician watched carefully, though she wasn't certain what she could do if something went wrong in a situation like this.
As Rose continued to scream, Martha heard a muffled sound from the Doctor and was alarmed to find him swaying on his feet, watching Rose with glassy eyes. His fingers twitched towards the controls more than once, and she knew he wanted to switch it off, to just turn tail and run and forget about this crazy plan. Instead, he clenched his hands into fists so tight she knew his nails must be digging into his palms.
Rose's body sagged when the current cut off, and the Doctor caught her just before she slumped to the grating. She was still whimpering in her sleep when he unhooked her and gently carried her over to the jump seat.
Martha watched him brush a strand of damp hair from her face. "Why did you ask Rose to go first?" she asked. He looked up at her, and she shrugged. "It's just… it seems to me that she handles it better when you're hurt than the other way around."
He laughed shortly. "Oh yes. Rose has always been braver than I am. However…" He looked over at Martha. "We told you about the bond, remember?"
As soon as he said it, she felt a little dumb for not figuring it out—though in her defence, the idea of a telepathic bond was completely foreign to her. She looked the Doctor over, taking in the light sheen of sweat on his forehead and the hand that was still clenched into a fist. It wasn't emotional pain she was seeing—he'd felt every sensation that had passed through Rose.
The Doctor nodded when he saw she'd gotten it. "I wasn't going to make her feel that twice."
"And are you ready to go through it yourself now?" she asked.
The Doctor shrugged. "Ready or not, I don't really have a choice. Rose will only be unconscious for an hour, maybe two." He pulled a hypospray out of his pocket. "But first…" He pressed the device to Rose's neck and clicked the button that dispensed the contraceptive.
He looked up at Martha. "Now, let me explain what comes next. The TARDIS has prepared suitcases for all of us; they're waiting in the wardrobe room. There will be a bag for you with instructions for our new life, and any local currency you'll need to get us there. There will also be period appropriate wedding rings in the same bag. I have no idea what or where we'll be, so I can't really give you any more details than that."
"What about me?" Martha asked. "You said you'd have enough residual awareness to let me in, but what does that mean?"
The Doctor tugged on his ear. "When you find out what life the TARDIS has arranged for us, you can choose how you want to fit into it. Whatever you say, we'll be conditioned to believe you. I wish I could do more for you, I really do." He brightened momentarily. "Ah! You can take this," he offered, handing her the sonic screwdriver. "You know a few of the most useful settings."
Martha took the tool from him and slipped it into her pocket. When he'd said they'd need her to watch out for them, she hadn't known he was asking her to basically be their caretaker for three months.
"We'll need you to get us to our home. You can leave us wherever you want, though the living room or bedroom would raise the fewest questions when we wake up." He hesitated, and she knew what was coming next. "I know this is going well beyond the call of duty, but if we land somewhere with a vastly different dress code, would you put Rose in a nightgown before leaving?" He ran his hand through his hair. "It isn't fair, but a man dressing outside the norm is much less likely to draw attention from anyone, including from human me. But if Rose is dressed… well, it wouldn't do for me to start questioning the truth of our lives on the first day."
Martha nodded. "Of course I will," she said, grateful he hadn't asked her to change him, too.
The Doctor bent over his unconscious wife and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "I'll see you soon, love," he whispered. Then he pulled down the headset to the chameleon arch and hooked himself up. "Let's get this over with."
oOoOoOoOo
"Okay, Doctor, I've changed my mind," Rose shouted as they ran down the stairs. He looked up at her, and she grinned. "That tux is definitely bad luck."
John Tyler opened his eyes slowly. It took a moment to come out of the dream, but reality returned finally. He was still in his bedroom in Farringham in 1913, not flying around in the Doctor's magnificent space ship, saving the Earth time and time again.
The weight on his shoulder shifted, and he nuzzled into his wife's honey blonde hair. At least this Doctor is lucky enough to be married to you, he thought, tightening his hold on Rose's waist.
Her leg was draped over his, and he ran his free hand over her hip and down as far as he could reach, remembering the scandalously short dress she'd been wearing in his dream. Rose sighed and burrowed closer to him, and he realised he needed to get out of bed now if he was going to make it to the school on time this morning.
Rose grunted when he slipped out from underneath her, and John grinned down at her. She wasn't awake until she'd had her first cup of tea every morning, so out of necessity, he'd learned to make tea the way she liked it.
He pulled on his dressing gown and made his way to the tiny kitchen. Once water was heating on the hob, he put two slices of bread in the toaster and started bacon frying, then withdrew the pot and tea from the cupboard.
When the tea was steeping, John went back to the bedroom. He bent over his still-sleeping wife and kissed her on the cheek, getting another unintelligible noise out of her.
"Wake up, love," he told her. "Your tea will be ready in a minute."
He turned to reach into the wardrobe for his clothes, but he could hear the covers rustling and knew she was stirring. When he turned back around, she was sitting up, blinking at him.
"You said there's tea waiting?"
John nodded, and she slipped out of bed and pulled her own dressing gown on before shuffling out of the room.
Rose smiled when she saw that John had not only made their tea, he'd started breakfast. He teased her and said it was a self-preservation tactic, given that she had a tendency to burn things in the morning when she was too groggy to pay attention, but she knew several women who hated mornings just as much as she did who still had to cook breakfast.
After drinking some tea and pouring a cup for John, she flipped the sizzling bacon and retrieved the butter from the cabinet just in time for the toast to finish. John swept into the room and snagged his tea from the counter.
"Isn't this an incredible invention?" he said, popping two more pieces of bread into the toaster. "A self-turning toaster! Even the school kitchen doesn't have one of these yet—they're still turning the bread manually."
Rose grinned affectionately at her husband's back as he rummaged around looking for the jam. He could talk about anything, and always with so much excitement. She giggled when he crowed triumphantly and whirled towards her with the marmalade in hand.
"Marmalade is good, Rose," he reminded her.
"Just as long as you don't eat it with your fingers." He ducked sheepishly and quickly set the table while she took up the bacon.
The clock on the mantel chimed the quarter hour as they were finishing their breakfast, and John jumped to his feet. "Time for me to go, I'm afraid," he said.
Rose walked to the door while he put on his coat and collected his satchel. He smiled at her as he approached, and she turned her face up to accept his goodbye kiss.
"You and Martha have a good morning, and I'll see you for lunch," he promised, then exited the house.
Their cottage was only a short walk from the school, and John arrived in plenty of time to attend the compulsory morning assembly. It was a little unconventional for a professor not to live at the school with the boys, but the headmaster hadn't been able to turn away a man with his credentials. However, the man had made it quite clear when John had been hired that even though he wouldn't be living in the bachelor quarters on the school grounds, he would be expected to join in all school activities. And so he sat on the hard pew at half seven, singing "To Be a Pilgrim" with the rest of the school.
The lecture for the senior boys that morning was on the end of the Napoleonic Wars. As he read aloud from the textbook, he was surprised yet again by how much he loved this—loved teaching, loved focusing on this narrow human vision of history… and where had that thought come from?
John shook his head and continued on, pacing as he read. "The French were all but spent, with only two battalions of the old guard remaining. A final reserve force was charged with protecting Napoleon, but by evening, the advance of the Allied troops had forced them to retreat."
He kept his eye on the clock and wrapped the lecture up two minutes before class ended, assigning them an essay on the Hundred Days and the Battle of Waterloo. As they left the classroom, he called out to one of the boys. "Mr. Latimer, stay behind a minute, would you?"
The slight blond boy blinked rapidly and his hands fidgeted as he tried to control his obvious fear, although John suspected it wasn't fear of him as much as it was fear of his classmates, who were already taunting him. "Go on," he said sternly to the rest of the class. "There won't be any excuses for being late to your next class this morning."
They cleared out of the room, leaving him alone with the timid young man. "What did you need, Mr. Tyler?" he asked, shifting from one foot to the other.
"Your essay last week on the Seven Years' War was very good, Timothy. I was particularly impressed with your comparison of the siege of Madras to Mafeking. I think I have a book in my study that you might be interested in. Would you come by this afternoon—no wait, I'm busy today—tomorrow afternoon to borrow it?" Timothy looked at him hesitantly, and John smiled as benignly as possible.
Finally, he nodded. "Yes—yes sir, I'd like that."
"Excellent. Now hurry along to your next class. Although, if you are late, I would be willing to write you an excuse." Timothy shook his head and slipped out of the classroom as the group of second years walked in, and John prepared for his next lecture.
When the students filed into the mess hall for lunch, John slipped out the side door and walked quickly back to the cottage. Most of the professors ate lunch with the students, but none of them had a lovely wife waiting for them at home.
Rose was waiting for him when he walked through the front door, and instead of accepting the little peck she tried to place on his cheek, he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close for a proper kiss. Her soft sigh against his lips made him smile, and he pressed two more kisses to her mouth before pulling back.
"What did you and Martha do this morning?" he asked after he took his coat off and laid it over the back of an armchair.
"We made scones to have with tea for the next few days, and then we called on Mrs. Cartwright."
"Scones?" John sniffed the air, catching the scent of sweet baked goods layered with the aroma of good soup.
"For tea," she repeated as she ladled soup into bowls.
John looked at her with wide eyes and let his lower lip jut out just a little bit. "But I'm sure you made enough for me to have one now," he wheedled.
"Maybe." She shot him a teasing look over her shoulder, then turned back around to cut two generous slices of bread.
oOoOoOoOo
After they finished their scones, Rose leaned against the table in practised nonchalance. John raised his eyebrow, and she knew she hadn't fooled him.
"Did you realise the village dance is this week, John?" she asked, not bothering to pretend she didn't have a purpose in mind.
A furrow appeared between his eyebrows. "That's next week, surely," he protested.
Rose hid a smile and got up to clear the table. "Today is the tenth, and the dance is on the eleventh," she reminded her sometimes absent-minded husband. "Martha and I walked through the village this morning on the way back from calling on the Cartwrights, and I saw a flyer hanging on thecommunity board. From the chatter I heard while we were at the butcher's, it sounds like almost everyone will be there."
John stood up and pulled her close. "Do you want to go to the dance, Mrs. Tyler?"
His eyes twinkled down at her, and Rose's breath caught in her throat the way it always did when he turned on the charm. She tamped down the excitement, used to this game they played.
"It might be fun." She ran her hand down the length of his tie. "I have a new dress you haven't seen, after all…"
The twinkle darkened into something more seductive, and her heart sped up. "Then we will definitely need to go to the dance," he said, his low voice making her heart race.
He brushed his lips across hers, and Rose sank her fingers into the thick hair at the nape of his neck. John groaned and sucked her bottom lip into his mouth, but he pulled back entirely too quickly.
"I need to get back to school," he told her, rubbing his thumb over her lip.
Rose nodded and took a step back. "I'll have dinner waiting for you when you get home," she promised.
oOoOoOoOo
Martha's knees were killing her, and she'd only been scrubbing the floor for twenty minutes. When this was all over and they were back in the TARDIS, she was going to have a talk with that ship about sending them to a time and place when a single girl didn't have many options besides going into service.
The Doctor walked into the school, a jaunty bounce in his step that Martha knew meant he'd gone home to have lunch with Rose. No matter who he was, it seemed the Doctor would always be crazy in love with Rose Tyler.
"Afternoon, sir," she said, returning his smile.
"Hello, Martha!" he said. "Thank you for the scones—they were excellent."
He took the stairs two at a time. Jenny looked at Martha when he was gone, shaking her head. "How is it you work for them as well as the school?"
Martha sat back on her heels. "I don't actually work for the school. Not really. I'm Mrs. Tyler's companion, but they don't have a room for me in that tiny cottage, so in exchange for room and board at the school, I do a few hours' of housekeeping here every day."
In truth, that had suited Martha's needs perfectly. Without some sort of reason to be at the school, she would have had a much harder time keeping an eye on the Doctor.
She rolled her eyes. "And I take Mr. Tyler his tea every afternoon. He tends to forget meals," she explained, "so Mrs. Tyler asked me if I'd take it to him personally and stay long enough to make sure he actually gets a cuppa and eats something."
A furrow appeared in Jenny's brow. "You talk like they're your friends, not your employers."
Martha blushed. "They're just kind to me, that's all. Not everyone's that considerate, what with me being—" She pointed at her face.
"A Londoner?" Jenny nudged her with her shoulder.
"Exactly." Martha stopped scrubbing for a moment and grinned broadly at her friend. "Good old London town."
Unfortunately, their laughter caught the attention of two senior boys walking by. They stopped and looked down on the maids with a look of haughty disdain.
"Er, now then, you two," said Jeremy Baines, posh derision dripping from his voice. "You're not paid to have fun, are you? Put a little backbone into it.""
"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir," a subdued Jenny said.
Hutchinson looked at Martha, and she'd seen that look enough times in her life to know what he was going to say. "You there, what's your name again?"
"Martha, sir. Martha Jones."
"Tell me then, Jones. With hands like those, how can you tell when something's clean?" Baines thought that was hilarious, and the two of them walked off laughing together.
"That's very funny, sir," Martha muttered to their backs.
"Careful, now," Jenny tsked. "Don't answer back."
Martha held her tongue when they were in earshot, because letting her temper fly wasn't worth the backlash she'd get. But as soon as they couldn't hear her… "I'd answer back with my bucket over his head," she snapped.
Jenny laughed. "Oh, I wish. Just think, though," she continued, contemplative. "In a few years time, boys like that'll be running the country."
Martha sat back on her heels. She tried to forget the year, tried not to think about what was coming for these boys, but sometimes she couldn't. "Nineteen-thirteen. They might not."
Thankfully, by the time they finished the floor, it was time to take the Doctor his tea. Martha joined the other maids in the kitchen, loading trays for the professors while around them the kitchen staff prepared the simpler fare for the boys. The cook huffed when she saw the basket of scones Rose and Martha had made that morning, but Martha didn't care what the old bat thought about Mrs. Tyler's insistence on making her husband's tea herself.
She carried the tray carefully up the servants' staircase, entering the corridor with the professors' studies from the opposite end of the main staircase. The Doctor's door was ajar, as it had been every afternoon since he'd realised how difficult it was to balance a tea tray and knock on a door at the same time.
He was sitting at his desk when she walked in, hunched over a notebook. The glasses he wore as John Tyler were slipping down his nose, and he pushed them up impatiently.
Martha set the tea tray down on the side table, counting the seconds off to herself. Her comment to Jenny about Rose being worried John wouldn't remember to eat was completely truthful. More afternoons than not, he was so busy when she walked in that he didn't even notice her until she'd set a cuppa down on the desk in front of him.
Today, the spoons rattled on the tray as she set it down, catching his attention. "Is it time for tea already?" he asked, looking at the clock.
"Yes sir. Three thirty in the afternoon." She spooned far too much sugar into a cup, added a splash of milk, poured the tea, and brought it around to him.
She nearly dropped the cup when she saw what had kept him so engrossed. The notebook was obviously a journal of some sort, and over the top of some of the ramblings was a sketch of a Dalek.
"Sometimes I have these extraordinary dreams," he said, and she realised her fixed gaze was drawing attention.
She forced herself to move away from his desk and started dusting the room. "What about, sir?"
"I dream I'm this… adventurer. This daredevil, a madman. The Doctor, I'm called. Rose and I, we travel together." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "And last night I dreamt that you were there, as our companion."
"A housemaid travelling, sir?" she said, shaking her head. "That's impossible."
"I'm a man from another world, though," John told her, and his cheeky grin was so much like the Doctor that it frightened her.
Martha raised an eyebrow, trying to hide her racing heart. "Well it can't be true because there's no such thing."
What did the Doctor say about their memories? She wracked her mind, trying to remember that part of his video.
John picked up his tea and wandered across the room with it in his hand, stopping in front of the mantle. Martha cursed silently when she realised his fingers were resting on the silver fob watch, the one that contained him. Why did I leave them where he could find them?
"This thing," he murmured. "The watch is—" She waited for him to finish the sentence the way he had on the TARDIS, to say that the watch was him, but his voice trailed away, and a moment later he turned around and walked back to his desk.
"Ah, it's funny how dreams slip away," he said as he leaned against his desk. "But I do remember one thing; it all took place in the future. In the Year of Our Lord two thousand and eight." Martha's fingers clenched around her duster. "I was almost surprised when I looked at the morning paper and discovered it's Monday, November tenth, nineteen thirteen."
"That's right," Martha agreed. "And you're completely human, sir. As human as they come. Rose too," she added for good measure.
John considered his dreams as he took a sip of tea. "That's me. Completely human," he said when his mouth was empty. He was completely human, and completely happy to be human. That didn't make the dreams any less fascinating though.
Still, something made him put the journal with the other books he was taking home for the evening. Maybe he could amuse Rose with his stories.
oOoOoOoOo
Rose drained the dirty dishwater while John dried the last dish and folded up the tea towel. "Come sit with me in the living room?" he asked with a soft smile, as if they didn't sit together every night. She smiled back and untied her apron, hanging it up on the kitchen door before following him over to the couch.
He wrapped his arm around her shoulder when she sat down next to him. She noticed a leather bound journal on the coffee table and picked it up curiously. "What's this?" she asked, running her fingers over the soft cover.
"Well, that's… I wanted…" He ran his tongue over his teeth.
Rose raised her eyebrows at his stammering. If there was one thing John could do, it was talk. "John?" She pulled his arm down and took his hand, stroking her thumb over his.
He took a deep breath. "I've been… I've been having these dreams," he said. "Almost every night."
"What kind of dreams?"
"They are quite remarkable tales. I keep imagining that I'm someone else, and that I'm hiding."
A flicker of unease went through Rose, but she calmly asked, "Hiding? In what way?"
"I have them almost every night."
Rose frowned; that wasn't what she'd asked. She opened her mouth to push for an answer to her question, but John kept talking, and she forgot.
He glanced sideways at her. "This is going to sound ridiculous."
"Tell me."
John rewarded her interest with a brilliant smile. "I dream, quite often, that I have two hearts."
Rose put her hand over his heart. "Just one," she promised him. "I love to listen to it while I fall asleep." She didn't tell him she'd dreamt he had two hearts, too.
"Would you like to…" He pointed to the book in her hands. "We could look at it together for a bit, if you like."
In answer, Rose opened the front cover. "A Journal of Impossible Things," she read from the front page.
The pages of the book were filled with John's handwriting and pen and ink illustrations. "I didn't know you could draw," she told her husband as she slowly turned the pages.
"Just a bit of sketching," he answered modestly. "It's nothing compared to what you can do."
Rose's protest of that died on her lips when she saw the creature on the next page. The overgrown pepper pot had haunted her dreams too, with its oft-repeated cry to "Exterminate!"
Her fingers fumbled in her haste to turn the page, and John put his hand over hers. "What's wrong?"
"That… whatever that is… it just looks so menacing," she explained.
"Well, they certainly aren't from my happier dreams," he agreed, and turned the page for her.
The creatures on the next page didn't look much friendlier, but they didn't incite the same visceral fear in Rose. And then she turned the page and saw a face she knew very well.
Rose touched her image with her finger. "I'm in your dreams?"
"Of course you are," he said. "We travel together across time and space, having all these extraordinary adventures." He nudged her with his shoulder. "Did you think I'd want to do this without you?"
On the next page, a picture of a blue box made Rose inexplicably homesick. In her head, she heard a man with a Northern accent say, "Time and Relative Dimension in Space," but she kept quiet.
"Ah, that's the box," John said, pointing at it. "The blue box. It's always there. Like a… like amagic carpet. This funny little box that transports us to faraway places."
"A bit small for long distance travelling," Rose said, looking up at him through her eyelashes.
"Oh, well, it's bigger on the inside," John explained, just like she'd known he would.
Rose pushed aside her growing unease and focused on John's journal. Another page was filled with smaller sketches of nine other faces. One in particular jumped out at Rose—she'd seen this man in her dreams, though she hadn't understood how her dream self could be so in love with a man who wasn't John.
"I sometimes think how magical life would be if stories like this were true," John said.
Rose nodded weakly. "If only."
"But it's just a dream." John tugged the book out of her hand and snapped it shut. "I may not be able to give you the stars, Rose Tyler, but tonight is an excellent night for looking at them. We're right in between two different meteor showers, and if we're lucky, maybe we'll see something. Would you care to take a stroll with me?"
Rose stroked her hand over the cover before standing up. "Of course I would, John. And would you mind if I looked more at your journal tomorrow?"
A shy, pleased smile crossed his face. "You really liked it then?"
"It's fascinating. I'd love to read the rest."
"I'm so glad you liked it. I was a little afraid you might think me mad," he admitted. "Dreaming that I'm an alien from outer space with a ship that can travel in time…"
Rose shook her head. "I'd never think you were mad just because of your dreams, John." She paused for a beat, then grinned up at him. "Now, for other reasons, perhaps…"
oOoOoOoOo
"Do you want to walk to the pub for a pint?" Martha asked Jenny when they'd finished their plain supper.
The other woman grinned widely. "Aye, I could do with a drink this evening."
Martha's enjoyment of the evening fizzled when she remembered after paying for their drinks that as women, they wouldn't be allowed to sit inside. She sighed and took the two pints outside to where Jenny waited.
"Ooo, it's freezing out here," she said as she set the drinks down on the small table. "Why can't we have a drink inside the pub?"
"Now don't be ridiculous," Jenny chided. "You do get these notions. It's all very well, those suffragettes, but that's London. That's miles away."
Martha leaned over the table slightly, her body clenched tight against the cold November night. "But don't you just want to scream sometimes, having to bow and scrape and behave? Don't you just want to tell them?" she asked, gesturing for emphasis, almost like she was taking the collective sexist world and shaking it by the shoulders.
Jenny looked at her and shook her head, a half-admiring smile on her face. "I don't know. Things must be different in your country."
"Yeah, well they are. Thank God I'm not staying," Martha added, mostly to remind herself.
"You keep saying that."
Jenny's smile said she was humouring her, and Martha couldn't bear to be patronised by another person.
"Just you wait," she insisted. "One more month and I'm as free as the wind." A familiar pang of guilt struck her—the thought of leaving her friend behind to a life of servitude didn't sit well. "I wish you could come with me, Jenny. You'd love it."
"Where are you going to go?"
"Anywhere. Just look up there." Martha looked up at the stars, wishing she were back out there. "Imagine you could go all the way out to the stars."
Jenny giggled. "You don't half say mad things."
"That's where I'm going," Martha said firmly. "Into the sky, all the way out."
A flash of light high in the sky cut her off. "Did you see that?"
Jenny sniffed. "See what?"
"Did you see it, though?" Martha stood up. Her heart was racing with fear. That wasn't a regular astronomical phenomenon, she was sure of it. For the second time in less than 12 hours, she tried to remember the Doctor's warnings. "Right up there, just for a second."
"Martha, there's nothing there."
Martha slowly sat back down. She'd have to visit the TARDIS tomorrow. If that was a ship, then the Family might have found them.
The ale tasted off, fear making her tastebuds funny. And her fear didn't diminish when the school matron came running down the road a moment later, looking completely spooked.
She stood up again. "Matron, are you all right?"
The older woman practically skidded to a stop. "Did you see that? There was something in the woods. This light."
"Martha thought she saw something too," Jenny said, looking between the two women.
Two more familiar figures appeared on the road, the Doctor and Rose, walking hand in hand as usual. "Anything wrong, ladies?" the Doctor asked. "Far too cold to be standing around in the dark, don't you—"
"There, there. Look in the sky." Matron Redfern pointed to a bright light flaming across the night sky.
"Oh, that's beautiful," Jenny said.
The Doctor smiled at Rose. "There, you see, love?" he said. "I told you if we took a walk tonight, we'd see some meteorites." Rose looked at her husband as if he'd arranged the stars for her, not knowing that on more than one occasion, he'd very nearly done just that.
"That's what that was, by the way ladies," the Doctor said to the rest of them. "Just rocks falling to the ground, that's all."
"It came down in the woods," the matron said breathlessly.
"No, no, no," the Doctor corrected. "No, they always look close, when actually they're miles off. Nothing left but a cinder. Now, would anyone like an escort back to the school?"
"I would," Nurse Redfern said.
Martha's gaze was focused on the sky. "No, we're fine, thanks," she said absently.
"Then we shall bid you goodnight." The Doctor and Rose walked back towards the school and their cottage, with Nurse Redfern walking on the other side of Rose.
Martha broke out of her daze long enough to watch them walk away. She had to find out what that was so she could protect the Doctor and Rose, if need be.
"Jenny, where was that? On the horizon, where the light was headed?"
Jenny looked at the sky, then back at Martha. "That's by Cooper's Field."
Martha took off running down the road. She needed to get to Cooper's Field so she could satisfy herself that it had been nothing more than a meteorite.
"You can't just run off," Jenny yelled after her. "It's dark. You'll break a leg."
Martha heard footsteps following behind her, but she didn't slow down. Jenny caught up with her when she left the road and started cutting across country, and a few minutes later, they reached the spot where it looked like the meteorite had come down.
"There you are," an out-of-breath Jenny said. "Nothing there. I told you so."
Martha looked at the empty field. She couldn't see anything, but the instincts she'd honed over two months of travelling with the Doctor and Rose told her there was something there. "And that's Cooper's Field?"
"As far as the eye can see, and no falling star. Now come on, I'm frozen to the bone, let's go. As Mr. Tyler says, nothing to see."
Martha took one last look at the field before turning around to follow Jenny back to the school. The Doctor might not think there was anything there, but he wasn't exactly the Doctor now, was he? For once, she knew more about the situation than he did. She renewed her resolution to visit the TARDIS when she had a chance the next day.