IT OCCURRED TO ME AFTER WRITING THAT LAST CHAPTER THAT PERHAPS IT WASN'T THE WISEST THING FOR MARTHA AND THE DOCTOR TO DO, GIVEN THE CIRCUMSTANCES. SO, I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE THAT THEY DISCOVERED SOME FORM OF OUTERGALACTIC CONTRACEPTION THAT GUARANTEES THAT THEY ARE NOT COMPLETE MORONS FOR LOVING EACH OTHER.
ANYHOW, THIS IS THE FINAL CHAPTER - THANK YOU TO VOICEGRL WHO HAS STAYED WITH ME, AND WHOSE IDEA I STOLE IN ORDER TO CREATE THIS STORY. AND THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO READ!
EIGHTEEN
And now, their fire having burned itself greedily down to embers, they lay staring at the glass ceiling and the stars beyond, his head resting on a large purple satin throw pillow, hers resting on his arm.
"Mmm," she said, closing her eyes to savour the moment. "Life should always be like this."
"Agreed," he answered. "I've missed this."
"Me too," she admitted, opening her eyes now, to gaze into his.
"When was the last time?" he asked, smiling childishly.
"For us? That night in the warehouse after Jack fell asleep," she remembered.
"Ah yes," he joined in. "Thank heaven he snores."
She chuckled and turned sideways, settling into a comfy position with her head on his chest and her arm across his middle. Neither of them said anything for a long time, but Martha felt as though the old elephant had come back into the room. Either she had to ask now, or the conversation would become more awkward than it already threatened to be.
"Doctor?" she asked.
"Mm?"
"My parents always taught me that life is just a series of choices. There is no 'greater meaning,' no secret to happiness... only choices."
"Mm," was his only response.
When he didn't say anything more, she probed, "Do you agree?"
"Somewhat," he said simply.
"Me too," she told him. "But why do you agree only somewhat?"
He'd known what she was getting at, but he was still pulling his thoughts together. This was a delicate matter, and needed to be handled with the utmost care.
"I choose to think of it as... just a series of circumstances. Sometimes there are choices to be made, and it's important to make the right ones, yes," and he looked down at her and caught her eyes. "And sometimes those choices get taken from you. And all you can do is survive."
Now it was her turn. "Mm." She contemplated what he'd said. Sometimes those choices get taken from you.
"I've never been certain, Doctor..."
"I know," he told her, stroking her hair. "And that's my fault."
"Is it something you can tell me, or are there more secrets?"
"No, no secrets," he promised. "It's just that... I wasn't certain myself until the Master zapped me with his laser screwdriver, and then I wasn't exactly in any position to be confessing things."
She had been following well enough until now, but the Doctor seemed to have switched gears unduly. "Come again?"
"The choice got taken from me, Martha," he said. "After you told me about the three hearts, there was a choice. It was you, or..."
"Yeah," she said. "I'm with you there."
"And I had long since decided it had to be you," he said. "If it meant losing you, I didn't want to have a child. So I had to think about what to do. There were choices to be made there too."
"And that's the part I've never been certain of."
"I told you. The choice was taken from me. What happened to you... that wasn't me."
Her relief was so great, she burst into tears then. He stroked her arm, her hair, and numbly let her cry upon his chest. This was it: this was the thing that had caused her nightmares of him to go so dark, this is why her subconscious had seen him as a kind of predator. Because she had never been certain. Now she knew that when the little Time Lord inside her had wasted away and been so brutally expelled from her body, it had not been the Doctor who had induced it.
Even though she knew that had circumstances not taken this course, the Doctor would have had to have been the one to do it, and even though she knew that had that been the case, it would have been to save her life... she was still immeasurably relieved to know that it was not the Doctor. The choice was taken from him, just as much as it was from her.
She thought back. When she'd finally collapsed in his arms, they were safely inside the TARDIS, and had just left the Lazarus experiment. In fact, she was still wearing that purple dress she liked so well, with the shoes the Doctor admired. In an excruciating gush of blood and screaming, it was over in two minutes. All at once, the knives that seemed to be twisting her insides were gone, and she was relieved of her duty. Of course, he had known exactly what to do to take care of her, and after she'd passed out, she awoke in his bed, warm but exhausted.
At first, she was simply thankful that the whole thing was over. Later, the resentment set in. Yes, her life had depended on this very thing happening, but how could he? HOW COULD HE? It wasn't rational, but these things rarely are. And how could he not give her any warning as to when it would happen? She had assumed he would take her in a room and perform some kind of... procedure, not that he would do something remotely. She wondered if he'd poisoned her, or doused her with something while she hadn't been looking, or maybe infected her with some type of parasite. But then again, women had miscarriages every day, and this wasn't any ordinary pregnancy, maybe it was just a natural occurrence. Perhaps serendipity had taken pity upon them and decided to take matters into its own hands... but why won't he say?
Of course, by the time the Family of Blood tracked them down, she'd realised that there were bigger fish to fry, but it was always there... even when he was in Professor Smith's office kissing Joan, even when they were holed up in 1969, making love, not war... it was there. The doubt, the resentment.
She shook the memory away. No need to dwell there anymore. Her questions were answered. She tried her best to dry her eyes, and asked, "So what caused it?"
"At the time, I wasn't sure myself," he told her. "At the time, I had my own doubts. I thought maybe I had done something to cause it. Sometimes Time Lords have psychic connections with one another. I've had that before with my other children, and I thought perhaps, I don't know, that I'd willed it to die."
"Could you really do that?" she asked, propping her head up on her elbow.
"I don't know," he confessed, sitting up. "I thought it was just possible. But then the Master explained about his laser screwdriver, how he had contained all of that 'Lazarus energy,' as he called it, into one little device, and then he advanced my age by 150 years. Then of course, he did it again with the full 900 years. That's when I knew. Your being inside Lazarus' machine is what caused you to... collapse that day."
"You're kidding," she said in disbelief.
"When the machine turned on and started jostling us about like a milkshake," the Doctor explained. "Lazarus had put the setting on 'forward' at that point. That's what I was trying to do with the panel in the floor, reverse the polarity, so at least we'd stay put. But before I could do that, the power was just enough the cause the baby to push through all thirteen regenerations."
"Excuse me?"
"Time Lords are given a standard thirteen regenerations," he told her. "It is possible for us to 'earn' more, but we're all only born with thirteen. Lazarus' machine, and the Master's screwdriver, they all use the same sort of regenerative power that the Time Lords use, but there is such a thing as a lethal dose. Someday, I'll tell you about the time vortex and Rose, and why Jack won't die."
"Oh my God!" she exclaimed.
"Near as I can tell, the baby got a lethal dose then regenerated. Then another lethal dose, followed by another regeneration. It took several hours for the whole process to run its course, and then, as you know, you collapsed in the TARDIS."
"Oh my God," she said again.
They both stared off into space for a few minutes, contemplating their entire relationship. They were both usure of where to go from here – she supposed she'd go back and try to finish up her medical degree, and he'd go back out into open space with Donna. The pregnancy had been one small, but giant, reminder of why they could never really be together, but this was hardly the first time she'd realised it.
"What are you thinking?" he asked.
"Just that... I have to get a life now," she said.
"Yeah," he said. "Have you considered working for UNIT? They always need a medical advisor."
"Yeah, I should look into that," she said enthusiastically. "Bet they'd rush me through the training programme what with all my field experience."
"Bet you're right."
They both laughed, and gazed at each other for a bit.
"Martha, how do you feel?" he asked her. "I mean, after all this... it's okay to be not okay."
She examined herself on the inside. The greatest weight of her life had now been lifted, and she found that she was fine with it. "I'm okay," she said sincerely. "Now that I know the truth... I'm fantastic!"
"Good," he told her. "I'm sorry I didn't clear all that up sooner. Being encaged in the Master's conference room didn't seem like the best place to tell you, and then you left..."
"It's okay," she said. "Let's just leave it."
"I'll make it up to you," he promised.
"Well... you're here," she said sitting up and scooting closer. "And your clothes are over there. That is a very good start." They kissed softly.
He reached over and poured two glasses of champagne. He handed one to her, and kept the other for himself. "Would you like to toast something?"
"Yes," she told him. "Life."
He held up his glass, and said, "All right then. To life." Their glasses clinked and they sipped.
