Note: Sorry about the weird tense-shifting in the first chapter. I've updated that one, so hopefully it's not as dodgy. Serves me right for not having a beta, eh? Anyway, I wanted to get this chapter out because I'll be out of town for the next few days. It's not as good as I want it to be, but oh well, a deadline's a deadline and I didn't want to leave anyone hanging. Of course, there's still a chapter or two (or three?) to go in the story, so stay tuned.
p.s. Since I rushed to get this chapter out, I apologize in advance for any errors in spelling, grammar, or tense. Thanks.
The alien crowds that had gathered so thickly before had by now dispersed, and only the Doctor and Donna remained on the promenade in front of the now darkened view screen. The sudden quiet of their surroundings had made Donna feel like they were the last clingy revelers to leave a long-since ended party.
The Doctor gripped his sonic screwdriver with a tight fist as he waved it frantically across the adjacent touchpad. Instantly, the tiny view screen flashed with digital readouts and maps at a frenetic pace. The Doctor's hair was disheveled in a wilder pattern than usual, which would normally indicate to Donna of his increasingly unstable state. At this moment, however, the gears of her mind clicked with an angry velocity and she was too busy being jilted to notice his appearance.
"I thought you said Martha was off saving lives being a Doctor and tending to her family and being bloody perfect," she started, folding her arms tightly.
The Doctor continued at his manic pace, waving the screwdriver and reading the screen. He didn't answer.
Donna continued unabated. "I mean, pardon me, but that don't look perfect, that looks pickled. If that's what happens to your old companions, I quit."
Turning on his heel, the Doctor quickly moved down the corridor without giving Donna a second glace.
"Wait, where are you going?" Donna called, running after him.
The Doctor entered a station lift and Donna flew in behind him just before the doors closed. "According to the station computer, the Excursionist is docked on the upper level," he explained, keeping his wild eyes straight ahead as the elevator began its ascent.
They rode in silence until the desired floor was reached, and without saying a word, the Doctor got out. Donna, of course, was not far behind.
"I thought you said you quit," the Doctor said, finally taking a moment to look at her.
"I do! I will. As soon as we get her out of that tub thing."
They reached the docking bay of the Excursionist, and outside of the archway of the door, a gruff looking Peels security officer stood.
"Fine then," the Doctor snapped.
"Good," Donna replied as she watched the Doctor take out his psychic paper.
Martha sat cross-legged on the faded felt seats in front of the TARDIS monitor, looking at her reflection critically with her compact. She smiled to herself at the quiet that surrounded her. Without the shouting, jumping, sprinting, wild-eyed Doctor to fill the void with stories and technical chatter, the mythical spires of the TARDIS-- now shrouded in silence--felt more like the hallowed halls of a cathedral. Even now, for this short moment alone, she missed the Doctor; but for the time being, she knew enough to appreciate the fleeting calm.
She was just finishing the last triplicate of lines on her cheek with her eyeliner when she heard it: a slow, deliberate scratching. Martha looked towards the doors—the unmistakable outline of a police box that meant entry to another world. That's where the scratching sound came from, and it was getting louder, faster.
Martha gulped. "Doctor?" she called. No response, only scratching.
"Oh, get off it, girl, you're in a Time Machine for god's sake," Martha said to herself, shaking off her fear as she jumped off the seat and threw her makeup in her purse. She made her way towards the scratching door, but then after a moment, she doubled back to pick up the large mallet off the floor that the Doctor was fond of using for the TARDIS's frequent 'percussive maintenance.'
"Oi, who's out there? I'm warning you…" Martha said, getting into her best hitting stance.
Suddenly, the doors flew open, and Martha shut her eyes and swung as hard as she could at whatever bounded into the room. The mallet made contact, and the interloper shouted "Oof!" as it fell to the ground.
Martha opened her eyes to see a zombie mask and a familiar blue suit sprawled out on the ground in front of her. "Oh, no! Doctor! Doctor, are you all right?" Martha cried as she dropped the blunt instrument and knelt beside him.
The Doctor sat up, pulling the mask off of his face. "Trick or treat," he whimpered.
Martha sat back on her haunches, relieved. "You know, you shouldn't scare me like that. I thought you were an actual monster."
"All in the spirit of the holiday, or so I thought," he coughed, holding his side. "Blimey, you can swing."
"So?" Martha said, eyeing the shopping bag that was lying next to him. "Did you get it?"
"See for yourself," he said as he watched Martha excitedly look into the bag. Giggling, she pulled out a black headband with two pointed ears attached. "Oh, it's perfect!" She pulled it over her hair and posed for him. "How do I look?"
"Like you escaped from New New Earth," he grinned. He jumped up and gingerly threw back on his zombie mask. "5 quid says I can get more candy than you," he said, tilting his zombie head towards his squatting kitten companion.
"You're on," Martha replied as she bounded up past him and out the TARDIS doors. As she stepped out, though, her feet were met not with the concrete she was expecting, but of warm, sugary sand.
"Doctor Smith? I'm Doctor Jer. I've been told that you've expressed interest in meeting our human acquisition."
The Doctor turned to find himself face to face with the same woman from the broadcast. She seemed to be taken aback by his and his companion's human appearance, and so the Doctor made sure to flash his psychic paper once again.
"Quite right," the Doctor said as he brandished his paper. "Dr. Noble and I are hoping to write a scientific paper on your... ingenious discovery." He smiled at her, turning on the charm.
It worked. The blue woman smiled proudly. "Follow me," she said. As Doctor Jer led them down to the engineering room, Donna hurried to match her stride with the Doctor's.
"So I'm a fellow doctor now, eh?" she said in an aside to him. "At the last checkpoint, I was just your lowly assistant."
"I've never had to use my psychic paper this much," he said under his breath. "Martha must be quite the valuable commodity," mused the Doctor, "and therefore, well-protected. If I told Doctor Jer you were just my assistant, you'd be fetching us coffee right now."
Donna bristled at this. "Good thinking then. I'd have spit in her coffee."
"This way," Doctor Jer called as she led them into a large, humming, machinery-filled room. The Doctor found Martha instantly, almost breaking into a sprint as he made his way towards the anomaly drive pod. It was parallel to the ground, with wires and tubes coming out of it in all places, snaking through the room and connecting to various machines and consoles.
To Donna, it looked like a white sarcophagus that had been overrun with transparent vines. As she followed the Doctor, she could see the former companion's small frame come into view. Donna studied the unconscious woman, and tried to comprehend that this was the great Martha Jones, the one she'd heard so much about.
Doctor Jer could hardly hide her pride as she stood over the pod. "I know what you must be thinking," she smiled.
"No, I doubt that very much," Donna said, unable to resist.
"How can a human power an anomaly drive?" Jer continued, ignoring Donna. She rested a hand protectively on the side of the pod.
"But this isn't your typical human," the Doctor said, kneeling down beside Martha's pod to check the readings on the hardware underneath.
"Indeed. We were very lucky to find her. For some reason, she is unusually powerful."
"Is she conscious?" the Doctor said, putting on his glasses.
"She wakes up occasionally, but most of the time she's in a comatose state. We think it's a coping mechanism."
"You think?" the Doctor's head snapped up, his eyes fierce. "You've taken a human being and you're sucking the life out of her to power your ship."
"The ends justified the means," Doctor Jer replied, confused at his behavior. "We needed her to get back home."
"What do you mean 'get back home'? You were on Earth?" The Doctor stood, taking off his glasses.
Doctor Jer narrowed her eyes. "Of course; I thought you knew the story by now. Our ship crashed. Our artificial anomaly drive was damaged irrevocably. We had no way to get back home."
"So she just offered herself up? I don't believe it."
"We had acquired one anomaly source already, but this one was insistent we take her instead. She assured us she would be a greater source of energy than her sister, and she was correct."
"Oh, I see." The Doctor looked back down at Martha, understanding.
"She understood the sacrifice. She accepted her fate," Jer continued.
"She wasn't doing it for you, she was doing it for Tish." Instinctively, he tenderly stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. "She's so cold."
As soon as he touched her face, he could hear it: the strong, soothing pulse of the ocean crashing upon a shore. Fascinated, he placed his fingers at her temples and closed his eyes.
The Doctor found himself on a crescent shaped beach, bathed in the golden fading light of a setting sun. It was a beautiful scene, with the sand, and the water, and the sky, but there was no sign of her. He spun around, and put his hands to his mouth.
"Marthaa!" The Doctor called. "It's me! I'm here! MARTHA!"
As though she was an apparition, she appeared behind him suddenly, grabbing his shoulders and turning him around.
"Oh, hello," the Doctor cooed happily as he looked into the deep brown eyes of his long lost companion.
"No, it can't be," Martha shook her head. Her hair was down, and a few tendrils of it were caught in the sea wind. The long blew dress she wore flowed around her as she stood in front of him, her hands still gripping to the sides of his arms. "Doctor?"
"You look lovely," the Doctor replied, looking her over. He looked past her, his gaze following the coastline. "In fact, everything does. I can understand the coma if you're going to spend it in a place like this. Fabulous view. Where is this exactly?"
"It's nowhere," Martha replied, still in shock. She let go of the Doctor and turned to look out at the ocean. "I made it up. I saw it on a billboard in a tube station once, and I've dreamed about it ever since. But you.. you shouldn't be here, Doctor. I've dreamt about this place long before I met you. How are you here?"
The Doctor looked at her and his face darkened. "I'm not. I'm onboard the Peels' ship. I'm linked with your mind."
"But how did you get on the ship? My mother didn't call, did she?"
"No, total accident, really. The TARDIS is on a space station that the Peels' ship happened to dock with. The whole place wouldn't stop chattering about some human powered ship, which, frankly, you don't hear about every day, so I used the psychic paper to—wait a minute, hold on, why didn't your mother call me? Or any of your family? You were kidnapped by aliens, for god's sake!"
"They don't know you have my phone," Martha said quietly. "I told them I lost it."
"Why?" The Doctor was suddenly angry. He grabbed Martha's shoulders, shaking her. "Why would you let them do this to you, Martha? Without any hope of escaping? Why?"
Martha just looked at him with sad eyes. After a moment, the Doctor softened his grip as he began to understand.
"Because you knew that if they get their hands on a Time Lord, or, moreover, a TARDIS, they'd have a battery the size of Europe," he sighed. "They could power their entire fleet indefinitely, and that's an offer too good for gluttons like the Peels to refuse. You were trying to protect me."
She smiled at him weakly. "There's only one Time Lord left in the Universe. I had to keep you safe. Besides, there's plenty of humans."
"Not like you, Martha Jones," the Doctor smiled back.
Martha blushed and turned away. "Anyway. Once the Peels get back home I know they'll let me go. They said so."
The Doctor made a face. "Mmm, not so much, no."
Martha's eyes widened. "What do you mean?"
"Well, like I said, I'm on their ship. I'm about two feet away from one of the engineers right now. She didn't say anything about letting you go."
"What? But they can't do that! I only did this because they had Tish--"
The Doctor nodded. "I know."
"--and I said to her, I said, don't get too close to the crash site, but she wanted to take pictures of it with her mobile and sell it to the tabloids, can you imagine? A year of slavery under the Master as does she learn anything? No, of course not!"
The Doctor smirked at her as Martha finally stopped for breath. She looked up at him. "God, it's good to see you," she sighed.
In response, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in for a hug. "So," he said after a short while, "Fancy a rescue?"
"Well," Martha said, rolling her eyes playfully. "I suppose. If you must."
"Right. Ok, well, enough dilly-dallying, I'm off to save you, then."
And even though it wasn't real, even though it was all in her mind, Martha Jones began to hope. Suddenly, though, the Doctor disappeared. Martha awkwardly stumbled forward, realizing the spry man once supporting her embrace had evaporated into the salty air. "Good luck," she said quietly to no one at all.
The Doctor lowered his hands from Martha's temples.
"Well?" Donna said, folding her arms. "Did you find out anything?"
The Doctor looked down at Martha, his eyes shining. "It's been fun, though, hasn't it?"
Martha blinked. "What?"
The Doctor's face fell. "Traveling. With me. Didn't you like it?"
"Oh. Yes of course," Martha answered abruptly. She shook her head, confused. "Hang on, weren't we just.."
She looked around, realizing they were in her flat, back home. There was something familiar about everything, but, also, very strange. Sure, there was a police box in the middle of her bedroom, probably on top of a stray pair of knickers, but that wasn't it.
The Doctor just looked at her. "What?"
Martha strained to remember. Sand. She remembered sand. "I thought we were somewhere.. nevermind." She shrugged and smiled up at the Doctor. "Anyway."
"So what do you say? One more trip?"
Martha looked away in thought. "No. Sorry."
"What do you mean? I thought you liked it," the Doctor replied with a face of bewildered innocence.
"I do," Martha said with pleading eyes. "But I can't go on like this, 'one more trip'. It's not fair."
"What are you talking about?"
"Well, I don't want to be just a passenger anymore, someone you're taking on for a treat. If that's how you still see me, well… I'd rather stay here."
"OK, then. If that's what you want."
"Right. Well, we've already said goodbye once today, so it's probably best if you just go." Martha turned from him, hurt. She studied her bedroom wall that was spackled with posters, pictures and a calendar; a symbol of the normal life she left behind, and vowed to embrace again. To hell with him.
She waited patiently for the sound of the TARDIS engines, but after a moment she realized she hadn't even heard the squeak of the police box door yet. He was still standing there.
"What is it?" Martha turned round again, still stone-faced, still committed her decision.
"Well, I said OK," he said, his face still blank.
"Sorry?"
"OK!" he almost shouted as he cocked his head towards the TARDIS.
As the realization sunk in, Martha's resolution melted instantly. She flew towards him, her feet barley touching the ground. "Oh, thank you! Thank you!" she squealed into his ear as he hugged her firmly.
"Well, you were never really just a passenger, were you?" the Doctor teased as he released their embrace. He held the door of the police box open and watched, proudly, as she entered.
When the door shut behind her, though, Martha found herself in total darkness. "What—" she said, and reached her hands out to feel the claustrophobic truth that the walls were only an arm's width apart. Panicked, she felt her way back to the door.
She stepped out again, relieved to see fresh air and light. She looked back, quizzically, at the wooden blue doorway that just spat her out. "But it's just a box. It's not the TARDIS. Is this some kind of joke? Where's the TARDIS, Doctor?"
Martha looked over to see the Doctor facing away from her. She touched his shoulder and turned him around. As she did so, she could see that the man in front of her was not the Doctor at all. He had the right build, the right hair, even the right suit and jacket, but the face was one she did not recognize.
She stepped back, her mind unraveling. "You're not the Doctor," she whispered.
The strange man smiled at this, and began to clap. Soon, all around her could be heard the roars of applause.
Martha turned and found herself on a stage, surrounded by high, tiered walls filled with people, all of them clapping. In front of her, in the pit, a mass of people smiled and cheered at her. Bewildered, Martha looked to her left and saw the stage backdrop had been painted to resemble her room.
The unfamiliar man next to her stepped forward and bowed to the crowd.
"Wait a minute, I recognize this place. It's the Globe," she marveled. "This is a dream. I'm still in my head. It isn't real."
The teeming mass of people in the audience suddenly went silent.
Onboard the Peels' ship, Martha shifted in the anomaly pod, causing some of the protective water to ripple.
"Aha!" The Doctor shouted as he watched approvingly.
Jer's head snapped to attention. "What did you do?" She ran over to the device, shoving the Doctor out of the way so she could check the controls. "You've corrupted the anomaly drive," she said as she hurriedly typed in data to the pod. "She's rejecting the system."
The Doctor tilted up his head and looked down at her. "You told her you were letting her go. I think it's time you lived up to that promise."
Jer returned his blistering gaze. "How did you—Oh, never mind. Security!!"
Instantly, two very large Peels men arrived and approached Donna and the Doctor. Donna took a step back and put up her fists. "Watch it, mate," she warned.
"It's all right, Donna," the Doctor said calmly as he raised his hands. "Martha will figure it all out soon and she'll be awake, and you lot," he said to the handful of Peels busily running around the engineering room, "will be dead in the water."
"We'll see about that," Jer sneered at him smugly. "Doctor Fai!" she snapped, "Bring me the quertizone. 5 milligrams."
The bumbling Peel from before skittered towards them carrying a syringe. "I've already got it ready," he said as he handed it over to his superior.
The Doctor's eyed widened as he watched Doctor Jer take the syringe. "What are you doing?" he shouted.
Ignoring him, Jer turned towards the stirring Martha and lifted the companion's right arm.
The Doctor tried to step towards Jer, but was halted by one of the security guards. He struggled against the giant blue alien, shouting, "You leave her alone! Stop that!"
Jer expertly pulled out a fiber optic tube with one hand, and with the other, injected the contents of the syringe into the helpless human. "Get those two out of here," she ordered over her shoulder as she plugged Martha's cable back in.
"Fai!" she shouted, watching the security officers drag the two strangers away. "I need an update on our engine strength. How are the anomaly readings?"
The silence was deafening. But then, Martha heard a moan, and soon after that, a wail, followed by the sound of feet shuffling on dirt, and finally, the sobering resonance of a prison door closing.
Martha pulled herself up from the ground and stretched. She felt like she'd been asleep for days, and her muscles ached as if in confirmation. She walked over to the barred door of her room and absentmindedly pulled a piece of straw from her hair.
"Hello?" she called out through the bars. "Anyone there?"
A few moments passed, and then a dirty, muscular man in a leather tunic appeared, carrying a whip at his side. "How now, my lady," he said, smiling at her from the other side of her tiny prison cell.
"Hi there," Martha said, smiling back. "Where am I, exactly? I can't seem to…" she trailed off, wrinkling her brow.
"Bedlam. A home fit for a queen, if she be a mad one," the man said, chuckling to himself through his stride.
Martha looked at him vacantly and watched him pass. "My main engines are at sixty five percent," she called, resting her hands on the bars, "and my anomaly drive is functioning at full capacity."