Author's Note: So my muse stopped by last night and I was able to get a big chunk of this chapter done, so no wait! Hooray! And I didn't get the job but I've decided to look at the pros. Thank you for all your kind words on the last chapter; it really did make my days better. You are lovely and I love you.
Whovians, thank you for your patience! Here is the lovely Martha Jones!
Martha took a moment to catch her breath.
It seemed like that was a lot of what she did, these days: run, and catch her breath. But that last jump out of Japan had been almost too slow, and she couldn't deny the adrenaline flooding through her veins.
She couldn't deny the relief at the familiarity of her surroundings, either, although she was fully aware that at any minute it was going to be perverted by the Master's machinations. Every other place she'd been to had been. But while it lasted, she allowed herself a moment to be glad that she was alive. She'd mourn the dead later.
She ran quick fingers over her vortex manipulator, making sure like she did every time that it hadn't been damaged in the jump. It looked fine, but she knew that it was old and used, and each time she worried that it would fail her. She'd barely made it out of Japan before—
No. Not the time to think about that.
Hands on her knees, she let her breathing return to normal, let the trembling in her limbs fade until she could stand steadily. She felt a numbness in her ankle that she knew was going to blossom into pain soon enough, and did her best to not think about it. A sprained ankle wasn't too high a price to pay for a jump as sudden as the one she'd just made. She didn't even take a look at it; it would just make it hurt worse, she decided. She passed a hand that barely trembled at all over her face, and took stock of her surroundings.
She found herself in a wooded area just outside of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. An odd place for the Master to build anything—well. Maybe not odd so much as unsettling, because Martha knew, in the true grand scheme of things, how important Sioux Falls was. The Master shouldn't know. It gave her an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach to think that he might have figured it out.
Of all the places in America she thought she'd come to call her second home in the course of her travels with the Doctor, rural South Dakota wasn't on the top of her list. He'd brought her to so many fantastic places, planets she'd never dreamed of, times she'd only read about in history classes, and yet there was a part of her that truly thought nothing had been as wonderful as Sioux Falls, because Sioux Falls had become something more for her. The taste of the air, the wide expanse of sky, everything about it felt like home now. It felt like home, and in these terrible months, she'd wanted nothing more than her second family.
That was the worst part, Martha thought as she started to walk again despite the aching of her legs. Stopping too long would only make it worse, she knew, so she walked. The worst part of it all was that she was home, in a way that was almost more home than London, now. A way that was almost TARDIS-home. And there were two things about that fact that broke her heart.
The first was that anything could have happened. The Great Decimation was months ago, and that left a one-in-ten chance that any one of her South Dakota family was dead. Of course, she knew that they were survivalists in the absolute most literal sense of the term, but that wouldn't matter against the Toclaphane if they targeted them. Any one of them could be dead. All of them could be dead.
(Well, two of them, in any likelihood, if she was going to be realistic instead of morose. She knew the other two hadn't been around for the Great Decimation, and one of them even the Toclaphane would find hard to kill in any kind of permanent way.)
The second thing was that when she got home, nobody would know her, and she knew her family well enough to know that they were likelier to welcome her with knives and rock salt than open arms. And she couldn't blame them. But after so many months without a friendly face, without a familiar pair of arms to hold her in her exhaustion, it was just going to hurt. She had to prepare herself for that. She was just so tired. She wished that going home would bring her a little bit of rest, but it would only be harder, because she knew it would take more than a couple of rumors of a stubborn girl with a magic gun to convince any of those paranoid boys to trust her.
She followed a wrongness in the air to the place she needed to be. The air here had always smelled crisp and fresh, felt so good in her lungs, but there was something else in it now: a faint, acrid scent of industry, a bitter metallic tang that assaulted her senses with how out of place it was, how wrong it was.
That would be the work camp. She'd seen and smelled enough of them to know. Hopefully South Dakota wasn't on the top of the Master's priority list, so the camp here wouldn't likely be as well-guarded and closely-surveilled as other camps she'd been to. Tokyo, for instance. Moscow and St. Petersburg, definitely. She could tell already that it was a smaller camp than she'd been to before. That acrid scent wasn't as heavy in the air here as it had been in Japan and in Russia, but she had no problem recognizing it: she knew it by now. She knew it by heart.
She stayed low, keeping close to trees in case she heard that low buzzing sound that she knew equally well, that sound that meant that the Toclaphane were near. The smell was easy to follow, and eventually, she could make out the noses of rockets above the canopy.
She crouched at the edge of the clearing that had been hastily made—jagged stumps of the trees that were felled to make way for the Master's camp still visible where they hadn't been strictly necessary to remove—and saw the camp ahead of her. Her breath hitched in her throat a little bit.
There were people she knew in London who were in the work camps there, she was aware of that. But somehow this was worse. The thought that one of the boys was here, that Bobby was here, was unbearable. She needed them to be all right.
It was just that she knew they weren't.
If the Master had a camp in Sioux Falls, it was because he had some inkling of the Doctor's connection to the Winchesters. Maybe (hopefully) he didn't quite know what that connection was, but there was no way that he had a base in South Dakota without having made sure that he was neutralizing whatever allies the Doctor had here. It was just a matter of who he knew was here, and who he knew was connected to the Doctor.
Which meant that Sam was in the most danger. The Doctor said he'd known very early on in their association that something was different about Sam, so there could be signs that would tell the Master, too, that Sam was different.
She made note of the security cameras, and quickly calculated a path wherein none of them would catch her. She moved carefully, cautiously, her eyes darting around, watching for the poor UNIT soldiers who were forced to serve as security. She didn't see anyone, and made her way slowly to the fence.
She crouched by it, and made a low noise, a hissing sort of sound, and a woman who had been hovering by the fence turned around.
Martha's eyes widened.
"What the hell?" the woman hissed back, glancing around for soldiers. She crouched by the fence next to Martha, keeping an anxious eye on the camp. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Martha swallowed hard past the curses that rose in her throat. Of course, of all the people whose safety could be confirmed to her so quickly, it would be Ruby. Ruby, who didn't know her any better than the Winchesters would at this point; Ruby, who had no reason to know why Martha would hate her. Ruby, who probably would have better information than anybody else about what Martha needed to know.
"I'm looking for someone who ought to be in this camp," Martha said. "This is extremely important. I need to find him."
"Who are you?" Ruby asked, her voice sharp. "Other than an idiot."
Martha gritted her teeth. "Martha Jones," she said, and barreled through past Ruby's widening eyes and the questions that budded on the woman's (demon's) lips. "Listen to me. I'm looking for Sam Winchester. Is he here? Have you seen him?"
Ruby grew still, and Martha's heart sank. "Not since yesterday," Ruby replied quietly. "He never came back from his station yesterday. There are rumors that he was transferred."
Martha sat back a little, letting the fence take some of her weight. She pressed the heels of her hands against her temples, and decided firmly that she was not going to cry. Transferred. Transferred usually meant killed, but she knew better in this case. The Master wouldn't kill Sam. He could use Sam.
After all, the new Time Lord Empire needed as many Time Lords as possible, and the Master would take what he could get.
"Are you really Martha Jones?" Ruby asked, and Martha was startled at the quiet hope in her voice. She watched the demon for a moment, studying her dark eyes and unhealthily pale face. Ruby was frightened, and now she was alone.
The Doctor would be kind to her, if he were here. Despite what she'd done.
(The Doctor doesn't know what she's done, a nasty part of Martha's mind hissed. Sam wouldn't let you tell him. If he knew he'd kill her.)
Martha knew that wasn't true. But she thought it anyway.
But the fact was that Ruby was crouched in front of her, wanting to believe in the story of Martha, her eyes begging for an ounce of hope in a world slowly but surely going to hell (and Ruby should know), and Martha just couldn't deny anybody hope in these times.
"Yeah," she said, and Ruby exhaled. "Yeah. I'm really Martha."
"Have you found the gun?" Ruby asked.
Martha forced herself to smile. "I'm working on it. I know where the pieces are. I've got two."
Ruby smiled back, and the look of vulnerability on her face was so foreign to Martha, so odd to see on that face that she hated so much. But she didn't have time to dwell on it, so she leaned in a little closer, and Ruby leaned in to meet her.
"I need a favor from you," she said softly, and Ruby nodded. The gesture was almost eager. "I'm going to tell you something, and I need you to spread the story."
"A story?" Ruby echoed doubtfully, but quieted at the look on Martha's face, a look that betrayed just a little of her true feelings for Ruby. "I'm listening."
"I've traveled across the world," Martha began, as she always did, and Ruby was rapt. "From the ruins of Jakarta to the fusion mills of China. And everywhere I went, I saw people just like you, living as slaves. But if Martha Jones became a legend, then that's wrong, because my name isn't important. There's someone else. The man who sent me out there. The man who told me to walk the Earth. His name is the Doctor."
"The Doctor," Ruby interrupted, looking aghast. Martha stopped, unused to being cut off, and frowned.
"Yes, the Doctor," Martha said, "and don't ask Doctor who?, he's just the Doctor."
"I know," Ruby said. "I know the Doctor. You're working for him?"
"Is that a problem?" Martha asked, a bit testily. "Because by all means, if you want to be left out of the world-saving bit, I'll pass on the message."
"No," Ruby said quickly, and a little too loudly, and she glanced around herself. "No, I'm sorry."
Martha pressed her lips together, taking a moment to compose herself, taking a moment to push aside all her questions about how Ruby knew the Doctor. Because she said she knew the Doctor, not she knew of the Doctor. Of course Ruby would know of the Doctor; all demons knew about the Doctor. There wasn't a demon in existence who didn't know about the Time Lords who'd destroyed their home world, and the Doctor, who'd destroyed the Time Lords. It made sense that Ruby would have heard stories of him.
Know him? That was a different story.
"Now listen," Martha said, "if you know the Doctor then you can probably guess what I'm going to say. You probably know what he's done for this planet, for all of us." Not you or your kind, but the rest of us, Martha didn't say. "He's never asked for thanks, never stopped to tell us he's saved us again. And we need him now."
"Yeah, we do, so where the hell is he?" Ruby snapped, and Martha stared at her. "Sam waited for him. Sam's still waiting for him, if Saxon didn't have him killed. He never stopped believing the Doctor was going to come save him. Where is your precious Doctor? Why hasn't he stopped this yet?"
Martha tried to keep her temper. She did. She fought against the heat rising in her face but ultimately she couldn't, she was too tired and too angry and too frightened and too full of hate for the sneering face of the demon in front of her, and she laced her fingers through the chains of the fence and got right up in Ruby's face and hissed, "He's doing everything he can, you ungrateful creature. He's keeping Saxon occupied. He's submitting himself to torture you can hardly imagine to keep Saxon from turning any more of his attention on you. And you're going to ask me where he is? He's orchestrating the only rescue effort the human race can count on. Because the rest of the universe? They've given up on us. We're cordoned off, nobody in or out, waiting for the extinction of this planet. So if the Doctor's plan—because this is the Doctor's plan—if it fails, that's it. We're done. The human race, totally obliterated."
So maybe she put a little too much emphasis on the words human race; she thought she could be forgiven for indulging in pettiness, just a bit. She was in the middle of saving the world, after all.
Ruby took in a breath to reply, but Martha wasn't quite done yet. "And don't you dare suggest that Sam should have stopped believing in the Doctor. The Doctor is coming to save him. The Doctor will always save Sam Winchester." Martha inhaled, a bit raggedly, and said, "Always."
The fact that Ruby couldn't know that it was a threat didn't make it any less of one. But there must have been something in Martha's tone or in her face that gave Ruby pause, because the demon only said, "What do you need me to do?"
Martha released her hold on the fence, and said, "I need you to tell everyone about the Doctor. Everyone you can find. Tell them to pass on the word. You know who he is; tell them a story. About the man with the blue box who's saved them more times than they can imagine. And when the time comes, you all need to think about him. To believe in him."
"When the time comes?" Ruby echoed. "What does that mean?"
Martha stood. "You'll know," she said. "I promise."
She took a step to go, and Ruby said, "Where are you going?"
Martha didn't turn back, but a bitter grimace that was almost a smile crept onto her face. "I couldn't stop him from taking Sam," she said. "It's not a mistake I'll make twice."
She stumbled a step as she walked away, leaving Ruby and any further questions she had in her wake.
She didn't trust Ruby. She barely trusted Ruby far enough to have any kind of confidence that the demon would tell the story she needed to tell. But this year was changing everyone, and there was little of the brash, manipulative, spiteful Ruby she knew from before left. (Or rather, that Ruby hadn't been created.) This Ruby was small and scared, and a little broken. Maybe this Ruby was frightened enough to put some faith in the Doctor.
She hadn't seen hide nor hair of a demon since she started traveling until Ruby. Maybe they'd decided that Hell was better than here, and Martha wouldn't blame them. Hell was at least protected from the Master; using the TARDIS as a paradox machine, he couldn't use it to travel, so Hell wouldn't be affected by his dominion. They'd have to content themselves with the souls they'd already stolen, but it was better than letting their hosts be subjected to the mercies of the Toclaphane. Because the Toclaphane could get a few good hits in before the demons could escape back to Hell, Martha knew.
So that was one plus.
She squinted up at the sun, judging the time and her direction. She knew her coordinates, at least roughly, and she knew that she needed to walk north to get to Singer Salvage. So she started walking.
She only stumbled one more time, gritted her teeth, and did not look at her ankle. Looking at it would make it worse. Martha knew that. She'd deal with it later.
She trudged north, rehearsing what exactly she'd say to the barrel of Bobby's shotgun (or to Dean's shotgun, or to Castiel's outstretched ready-to-smite hand). Hi, I know you have no reason to believe me, but I'm Martha Jones, the girl everybody says is going to save the world. Can I crash at your place?
Maybe Hi, I know you haven't seen him in half a year and that the last time you saw him things didn't go exactly swimmingly and that he couldn't stop you from going to Hell, Dean—good to see you by the way—but the Doctor sent me to tell you a story so could you not shoot me please?
Or maybe just don't shoot me, please would be the best place to start.
That awful industrial scent finally stopped assaulting her senses, and she breathed deep, closing her eyes for just a moment. It wouldn't do to stop being vigilant, but for just a fraction of a second she allowed herself to pretend that she was just going to Bobby's after some adventure, Dean and Sam behind her, calling each other names in adrenaline-fueled good cheer, the Doctor striding ahead of her with his hands stuffed in his pockets, babbling about how that particular type of tree is related to another kind found on a planet in the constellation of Orion, only its leaves turn opalescent in the fall.
Bitch.
Jerk.
You know, Martha, it really is a marvelous sight, I ought to take you and the boys there after we take a breather, I think all three of you would really enjoy it, but especially you and Samuel, of course, do you think you three'd be up to another trip so soon? If not we can always...
She had to stop. She couldn't let herself be sucked into the comfort and softness that a dream like that would bring her; this was no time to lose focus. Not now. She had to hold on to reality, at least for a little bit longer.
If Bobby or Dean didn't shoot her, she could close her eyes then, for a moment. She promised herself.
So she blinked memory and sweat out of her eyes. It was hotter than she thought it would be, this time of year. What month was it? September. It was September. She really felt like it shouldn't be this hot.
She was pondering weather patterns in early fall in South Dakota when she heard it.
A buzzing filled her ears, coming from ahead of her, and she ducked quickly behind a tree, gripping the TARDIS key on a chain around her neck with trembling fingers. She closed her eyes tight, but then opened them wide.
A sound. A sound that was not the buzzing of the Toclaphane, but the snap of a twig.
There shouldn't be anyone out here but her, so there were only three people it could possibly be.
She knew which one it was.
She peered around the tree, ahead and to her right, and her fears were confirmed. Dean Winchester was walking towards her, but worse, towards the Toclaphane.
He wouldn't know about them. Or at least, he wouldn't know enough about them to know to be afraid.
Or, she thought sardonically, he would know enough to be afraid, and would just stubbornly refuse to be afraid anyway. Any of the three was likely.
So she gripped the TARDIS key so tight that it hurt, and ran towards Dean.
He saw her as she neared, and his eyes widened. He raised a pistol, but she got to him before he could make any threats, pressing herself against him and knocking him back against a tree. He gave a grunt, and she slapped a hand over his mouth. Luckily he was surprised enough that she was able to catch him off-balance, and she drew him down the trunk.
"Be quiet," she whispered, kneeling over him. He stared at her in disbelief. "Be absolutely quiet, and get as far underneath me as you can."
His mouth moved under her hand, and she could just barely make out his words: "Usually you have to take me to dinner, first."
She forced herself not to smile. Not the time, Martha, she thought, and schooled her features into a stern expression. "If you want to survive," she breathed, "do as I say. Please."
Dean looked conflicted for a moment, but maybe he figured that if things got violent he could take her. Something convinced him, and ultimately Martha didn't care what, because he curled up a little and let Martha cover him.
The buzzing got a little louder, and Martha felt Dean freeze. She did, too. The TARDIS key bit into her palm.
She felt the shadow of the Toclaphane over her, and she held her breath. Not now. Please. Don't let this be the time that the key fails, the time that the Toclaphane can see her. Let the TARDIS protect Dean, too, like it had protected her over the months.
After an unbearable five seconds, she felt the shadow lift over her, and the sun return to beat down upon her.
She let another ten seconds pass before sliding off of Dean, falling on all fours and forcing her breath to return to normal. Dean sat up against the tree, and she could feel him staring at her.
"Who the hell are you?" he asked, and Martha Jones ignored the pain in her heart that the question caused.
"I'm Martha Jones," she said. "And I'm here to help."
"Right," Dean said, and Martha restrained a sigh. Some things never changed. "Here to help."
"I'll explain everything," Martha insisted. "But we need to get somewhere safe. We need to get to Bobby's."
She bit her lip as Dean's eyes widened, then narrowed. Oh, hell. "How do you know about Bobby?" Dean ground out.
"It's...complicated," Martha said hesitantly. Dean's hand was covering the pistol that had fallen to the ground, and Martha tensed. "Just listen to me. I'm with the Doctor. All right? I'm the Doctor's Companion."
"The Doctor," Dean echoed in surprise. "You're with the Doctor?"
"Yes," Martha said eagerly, "I'm Martha Jones. Bring me to Bobby's; he'll know about me, I swear. And if he doesn't, you can, I don't know, shoot me or whatever it is you want to do. All right? Can you do that? I'm not armed. I'll go with you."
Dean thought about it for a second, his green eyes studying her, looking for some hint of malice or deceit. Finding none, he stood, and grabbed her by the elbow, pulling her up with him. She bit back a whimper, almost successfully, when her weight was put back on her ankle. Dean's harsh expression flickered for a moment into concern, and it was so close to right that Martha relaxed for that moment into his grip. The concern then changed to confusion.
"You hurt?" he asked shortly.
Martha shook her head, paused, and nodded. "Just a sprained ankle," she said, settling her weight on her good foot instead of Dean's arms. "I'll be fine. I can keep up."
"Good," Dean said, "because I'm not waiting around for you." He took off into the woods, and Martha followed him with a breathy sigh.
Home sweet home.