The final chapter. I hope the metaphor here brings closure to you as it has to the Doctor and Martha. And I hope you had fun! Thanks for reading!
CHAPTER X
The Doctor sonicked the floor panel, locking seventy stone cherubs underneath the water tower at the Torchwood Hub.
"Are you sure this is the right thing to do?" Martha asked him.
"Well, you and I can't look after them," he said. "Besides, if we let them live in the TARDIS, it would make her weaker because they'd always be snacking on the vortex in the heart."
"Don't worry, Martha – we've got room," Jack assured her easily. "They'll be fine."
"Isn't it kind of dark in there?"
"It's perfect," he said. "No chance of them seeing each other. They can shuffle about to their little hearts' content."
"How long do they live?" she asked.
"Well, the big guys are millions of years old," the Doctor told her. "But I know almost nothing about the little ones. I'd assume a few hundred thousand years…"
Martha groaned.
"Martha, there was no choice," he insisted, stroking her arms. "Anywhere we could take them that's uninhabited would cause them to starve because they couldn't zap and couldn't feed. Anywhere where there's life, well, there is the potential for chaos and paradox and destruction if they keep forcing other beings to cross their own timelines and swallowing chunks of temporal material..."
"I know, I know, I get it," she said. "I'm just…"
"You're just being compassionate as always," the Doctor said, smiling. "But you're thinking about it as though they're human. They're not. They don't need to be free and have choices and go drink cappuccino. All they want is to frolic and feed. With a locked floor panel and an infinite amount of time energy bleeding into that room from the rift, they can do both. Until the end of time, if need be."
"Or until this place gets levelled," Jack chuckled.
"Which, let's face it," said Gwen. "Could be next week, could be a thousand years from now."
"True."
"Where's Gwen?" Ianto asked, walking unsurely into the Torchwood conference room.
"I sent her home," Jack said.
Ianto then zeroed in on the guests sitting across the table from his boss. "Hello," he smiled uneasily, setting the box-top filled with Chinese food on the table. "Doctor. Martha. I'm Ianto."
"I recognise you," the Doctor said, standing, shaking his hand. "Nice work with the Earth-towing-home thing."
"You too, sir."
"Oh, don't call him sir," Martha said. "He doesn't like it."
Jack laughed out loud. "Okay, someday you are going to tell me how you found that out!"
Martha looked at him with confusion, followed by disdain. The Doctor simply rolled his eyes.
"Well, it's a pity Gwen's gone home," Ianto commented, pulling white take-out boxes from the makeshift tray he'd brought. "I got her favourite."
"Which is?" asked Martha.
"Tofu in garlic sauce. Fancy a Chinese?"
"Sure."
"So Gwen," the Doctor said, chewing on some Kung Pao chicken, holding the white container in his left hand, chopsticks in his right. "What's she got to go home to?"
Next to him, Martha picked the snow peas out of the tofu container she was working on, and they crunched between her teeth. He looked at her and gestured without speaking, she nodded, and the two of them switched containers and each began picking at an entirely different entrée.
"A nice, normal husband," Jack answered, after he'd swallowed some shrimp fried rice. He smiled. "That was really cute what you two just did."
Martha and the Doctor stopped chewing in their tracks and looked at each other. "What did we just do?" he asked.
"And it was without even speaking," Jack said, crossing his arms. "Beautiful."
"What? Switching meals?" Martha asked. "That was cute?"
"Totally," said Jack.
Martha and the Doctor looked at each other again, shrugged, and went back to their Chinese food.
"Wow," commented the Time Lord. "Her working with you lot, that's an understanding bloke."
"Who?" asked Ianto.
"Gwen's nice normal husband."
"You'd better believe it," Jack chuckled. "Man's got some mettle."
"What does he do?" asked Martha. "Detective? Fireman? Military intelligence?"
"He drives a truck," said Jack.
"Really?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. "I'd have thought she'd want a man of action!"
"No, that's you," Jack said, winking. "In your relationship, you are the grounding influence, Martha. In Gwen's, well… she's the one who needs the grounding influence."
"So Gwen's the action one, and her lorry driver is the normal one?" Martha asked.
"Yep."
"That's nice."
"Besides," Jack continued. "Detectives are high-strung, firemen are unfaithful and the military renders all things unimaginative. Who needs that kind of baggage? All we really need is someone to hold, someone who knows what we want and need, what makes us happy, what makes us crazed with lust…"
"…when we wish to switch Chinese containers?" Ianto added.
"Exactly," said Jack.
Martha and the Doctor looked at each other again. This time, they smiled.
"I'll agree with that," Ianto said, and he held out his white container, and Jack bumped his against it, as though they were toasting.
"Yeah," the Doctor agreed, nodding as though he were realising it for the first time. "I mean, I'm not exactly human, but all of our basic visceral needs are simple."
"Not his," Ianto muttered, gesturing toward Jack. Martha nearly choked.
"To love and be loved," the Doctor continued. He looked at Martha once again. "To depend on someone. That's it."
Later, as the TARDIS refueled and Jack prepared an old bunker in the recesses of the Hub for the Doctor and Martha to stay overnight, the two lovers walked along the water, hand-in-hand.
After a long silence, the Doctor said, "It's okay, you know?"
"What is?"
"The angels," he said. "Putting them in that room. But it's okay, because they're like us – their needs are simple."
She smiled. "How did you know that's what I was thinking?"
"I didn't, necessarily," he told her. "But I know you. And I know you're still not okay with leaving them there."
"I'll cope," she said. "Especially if I know you're right. And I always know you're right."
"Are you sure?"
"Are you?"
"Martha, sentient beings can pretty much handle anything when they have their affective needs met," he said. "For humans, it's food, shelter, affection. Haven't you ever felt as though you could face down the army of Onkor-Fing itself as long as you had some basic necessities?"
She smiled up at him. "Yes, I have. And I don't know about that army, but… well, Daleks, posessing sun particles. Joan Redfern. I had you, so I was all right."
"Even back then? Even before…"
"Mm-hm," she said. "I loved you, and that's all I needed to know."
"Well then," he said with finality. "There you have it. You're an angel, and I'm your dark room."
She smiled into the night, and said, "I think I'd like to switch roles."
He stopped and looked at her with a surprised, but amused expression. "You're very cheeky, Martha Jones."
"Thank you, Doctor."
END
