SIX
The Doctor was staring at the dictophone as if it were possessed. The tape ran down and snapped itself off. No one said anything for quite a while. Jack's day had been rife with awful silences, and he was sick of it.
"Does any of it mean anything to you, Doctor?" he asked.
"Yes, she's mixing up two separate, unrelated events. One was a ship that had mined a living sun for fuel, and the sun particles were possessing members of the crew – including me. It burned people alive, it was horrible. We saved the ship from careening into the sun," the Doctor explained, still staring.
"You mean the moon?" Donna asked, having remembered the description on the tape.
"No, I mean the sun. The moon image probably came from the other time period," he said. "We got zapped by weeping angels into the year 1969 and watched the moon landing on the telly. She was so excited by it, I'm sure it's burned into her consciousness somehow. As is the graffitti I left on the walls of that house, as are the weeping angels themselves..."
"What are the weeping angels?" asked Jack.
"The question is," the Doctor said, ignoring him, and beginning to pace again. "What does it mean? She turned to stone, she feels trapped."
"The burning's got to mean something," Donna offered.
"Okay," the Doctor said, gesturing encouragingly. "Okay, but what?"
"There's subservience in the 1599 vision," Jack mentioned. "Chains, whips, a predatory smile on your face. It was kind of... you know, S&M-ish."
Luckily the Doctor heard him, but chose to ignore the innuendo.
"Okay, building, building," the Doctor said. And then he stopped dead. He siezed the dictophone suddenly and listened to the last part of the recording again. Jack's voice came through the speaker.
"She couldn't move or speak, but she could hear him screaming at her. I think his words were 'it's your fault, you should have scanned for life.' And then he said 'if you don't get rid of it, I could kill you. It will use me to kill you.' And then..."
"Oh dear oh dear oh dear," the Doctor whispered to himself.
"What?" asked Jack. "Do you know something? What do those lines mean?"
"Well," the Doctor began, rubbing the back of his neck uneasily. "They're all things I said while we were on that ship and I was possessed by sun particles."
"But there's a deeper meaning, isn't there?" asked Jack.
The Time Lord stared at him meaningfully.
Jack smiled. "You're not going to tell me right now, are you?"
The Doctor shook his head subtly.
"Well, what should I do, then?"
"I need you to go back there tomorrow and find out what else is bouncing around in her head. I might know what's driving the dark visions, but not yet what's causing them. Just tell Francine you're still trying to work it out, and get as much intel as you can. I've got some repairs on the TARDIS I need to make, and Donna can go home and visit with her grandfather."
"Repairs on the TARDIS? At a time like this?" asked Jack, semi-incredulous.
"Yes, repairs on the TARDIS. What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing, I guess," the Captain answered, shrugging. "It's fine. I've told Francine that I'm trying to get back to the time when you and Martha first met, since she already saw you as a predator in 1599. I think if we can trace it back to whatever it is that scared her in the first place, we can put an end to it, don't you think?"
The Time Lord stared at him meaningfully again. Then said, "Yes, I do." Very simply.
He's hiding something! Jack thought. He knows what that one awful event must have been! What the hell happened on the day they met that could be so twisted in her mind as to cause a dread of that magnitude?
But Jack didn't let on. He simply made his excuses, and his guests left. They made arrangements to meet again tomorrow at the hotel and discuss what they'd found.
Donna went home for a visit, and left the Doctor parked down the road in his blue spacecraft. He circled around the console contemplatively, thinking about the warm light beneath the panels that makes up the heart of the TARDIS. It hears and sees and senses everything that goes on inside the craft. And it was the only sentient being in the universe, other than himself and Martha, who knew. How could some random alien know enough about it to use it to bring Martha this kind of misery?
He needed to check for interfacing. Had a telepathic hacker been able to access the TARDIS' memories? That would be exceedingly bad, for all parties involved.
He opened the console, and looked inside. As he made adjustments, switched this, cranked that, communed with his ship, the memory came back to him. It was something he thought about only when it snuck up on him. Normally he pushed it away...
After the affair on New Earth, speaking with the Face of Boe, Martha had been alternately smiling and crying for about four days. He tried alternately to smile with her and to comfort her as the occasion warranted. He tried desperately to hide his true thoughts, but the longer he waited to tell her, the harder it would become. He made a resolution to tell her as soon as she woke up that day.
Except that she wasn't well that morning. It wasn't the usual, either – it was possibly something tugging at her insides, swallowing her mind, slowly killing her. It was starting. Sick or not, he HAD to say something today, and help her resolve her dilemma. Well, their dilemma.
After several attempts on his part to help, she finally told him to go back to his navigator's stool and stay there until he was asked to move. He'd done as he was told – if she needed to be left alone, she needed to be left alone. Finally, sometime in late afternoon, she stumbled into the control room. He let her have his seat, and then asked, "All right?"
"Been better," she answered.
"Want some lunch?"
She stifled a gag. "Please don't say that ever again, okay?"
A long minute passed while he pretended to be navigating the ship, but really he was looking at her. Her colouring was off, and she was sweating. Vomiting and dry-heaving for 12 hours will do that.
"Martha," he said softly. "We have to discuss what's happening. I mean really discuss it."
"What do you mean?" she asked absently as she attempted to keep from falling dizzily off the stool.
"I mean," he said, coming around the console to stand in front of her. He took her by the shoulders gently, and willed her to make eye contact. Finally, she did. "This thing... it's not meant to happen."
"I know," she said, her eyes half closed. "I kind of gathered that much. I mean between the fourth and sixth hour of being violently ill."
"It might kill you," he told her.
She blinked lucidly at him. "Well. I didn't see that coming. I mean, I knew it wasn't exactly normal, but... well."
"But then it might not."
"Hasn't this ever happened before?"
"Yes, lots of times," he said. "But it's always the same, in that it could go either way."
"So how will we know?"
"The how is dodgy, because... well, it's all biology and enzymes and..."
"Hello? It's not like I'm training to be a bricklayer here," she said, a little insulted.
"Let's just say, if humanity is the primary leaning, you'll be fine," the Doctor told her, getting close and pulling her eyelids open for a closer inspection of her irises. "But if certain other characteristics are in play, then..."
"Then what?" she asked, pushing his hand away from her.
"It will overwhelm your mind and we will have to wipe it clean," he told her, sadly. "I'm so sorry, Martha."
"Wipe what clean? My mind, or the..."
"Either. Possibly both."
"God," she whispered, tears coming to her eyes. "I can't do that! Do you think you could do that?"
"I would if I had to," he told her, tears coming to his eyes as well. "I'd do it if it meant saving you."
"God," she whispered again, and put her head against his chest to cry. He'd spent a lot of time holding her this way over the past few days, but this time was different...
The Doctor, coming back to himself, pushed the rest of that conversation out of his mind. There were some moments too delicate to be revisited, for fear of shattering.
