Title: A Shift in Perspective
Author: Persiflage_1
Characters/Pairings: Martha Jones, Fifth Doctor, Torchwood Team, other canon characters
Rating: G
Spoilers: Black Orchid
Summary: The Tenth Doctor goes missing and it's up to Martha Jones to track him down again, but it proves both harder and more instructive than she expects.
Disclaimer: I don't even own my brain any more, never mind Doctor Who!
* * * * * *
Martha's arrival after her next jump was greeted with a shriek and she couldn't help wondering if there going to be a lot of shrieks in the near future. She opened her eyes and found herself almost face to face with a young blond man who was dressed, rather incongruously, in a red Chinese silk robe, a pair of light coloured trousers and shoes.
"Where did you spring from?" he demanded, sounding shocked.
"Sorry, I'm looking for the Doctor, is he here?" she asked quickly.
"Who are you? And where did you come from?"
"I'm Martha, Dr Martha Jones," she answered, scanning the room and taking in the dark wood-panelling on the walls, the free-standing mirror, the paintings, and the dressing table with its various accoutrements. It looked a bit like one of the stately homes she'd been taken to see on school trips as a child. She also noticed the Pierrot costume on the bed, alongside a jacket, jumper and shirt.
"You still haven't told me where you came from," the man said, sounding irritated at her lack of explanations.
"Sorry." She looked at him again. "Are you the Doctor?"
"I am." He managed to maintain his dignity despite being bare-chested.
She took a moment to digest this. He'd shrieked when she'd arrived, but then so had Jo, and although she'd never experienced it, she supposed it must be pretty unnerving to have a total stranger appear out of nowhere in a sudden burst of Vortex energy.
"Sorry I startled you. I'm hoping you can help me to help you, I mean a future incarnation of you."
"You've come from the future?" he asked doubtfully.
Martha nodded. "I travelled through the Time Vortex."
He gaped at her. "That's impossible. You can't travel through the Vortex without a capsule of some kind to protect you, otherwise the Time Winds would tear you apart."
"If you've got one of these, though, you're protected," she told him, tapping Jack's wrist computer.
"May I see that please?" he asked.
She crossed to his side, her legs still feeling a bit wobbly after her jump, and handed it to him.
"Here, sit down," he said, pushing aside his clothes.
"Thanks." She gratefully sank down onto the bed and rubbed her legs.
"This technology is anachronistic," the Doctor muttered, peering at the controls over the top of a pair of gold wire-framed glasses that he'd pulled from the pocket of the jacket beside him.
"It's 51st century Time Agency technology," she told him.
"You're a Time Agent?" he asked, sounding surprised.
She shook her head. "No, I'm a Medical Officer with UNIT. I've come from the 21st century."
"So why are you here, and equipped with 51st century technology?"
She took a deep breath, then began to explain about the Doctor she knew being snatched from the street in Cardiff, and the small group of former companions who had provided information and technology to track him down.
"Jack's wrist computer needs to be fine tuned by each incarnation of you so that I only meet each one of you once," she said, explaining that she'd met his third incarnation twice before he'd realised that the device needed to be recalibrated.
"So if you could just do the necessary jiggery-pokery with your sonic screwdriver, I can continue my search for my Doctor," Martha finished.
"Ah." He gave her a regretful look.
"Ah what?" she asked worriedly.
"I don't have a sonic screwdriver."
She raised her eyebrows, puzzled by this revelation. "Of course you do. Your third incarnation had one, so did your ninth, whom I just met." Then her frown disappeared. "Oh! Wait, are you the first incarnation, and you haven't built one yet? Did I just cause a paradox?"
He shook his head. "No, you haven't caused a paradox. And no, I'm not in my first incarnation. This is actually my fifth body. I did have a sonic screwdriver, but it was destroyed recently by a Terileptil, one of a race of space-faring aliens with very advanced technology, and I haven't had a chance to build a new one so far."
"Really?" asked Martha, surprised. "Your tenth self's sonic screwdriver was destroyed during my first encounter with him, and he built a new one within a few hours. He told me that he loved his sonic screwdriver."
"You surprise me," he said.
"So, how are you going to recalibrate Jack's wrist computer? Because, no offence, but I really don't want to keep bouncing through Time until I run into you at a time when you still have a working sonic."
"I can use the TARDIS," answered the Doctor quickly.
"Great. Where is she?"
"At the railway station, well Cranleigh Halt, a few miles away."
"And where's that?" asked Martha, disappointed that the ship wasn't nearby.
"I'll draw you a map." He picked up his jacket and began taking things out of the pocket: a yo-yo, a cricket ball, a paper bag full of jelly babies, and an apple (which he gave to Martha and she gratefully accepted).
"Hang on," she said, fishing in her own, less-than-transdimensional jacket pocket. She pulled out a notepad and a pen and handed them over. She knew of old just what the Doctor was like for carrying vast amounts of odds and ends in his jacket pockets, and she didn't want to be there for hours while he found a pen and some paper.
"Thank you." He took the pad and flipped it open, then accepted the pen and drew her a map of the route to the railway station.
Then he fished in the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a key on a piece of string. "You'll need the TARDIS key," he said.
Martha pulled her own key from the neck of her t-shirt. "I've got one."
"Ah yes." He inspected it. "I'm not sure that one will open the door at present. She has a tendency to change the lock every so often, so take this one, just to be on the safe side."
"What about you?" she asked.
"Oh I've got a spare, don't worry. Now, you must make yourself at home when you get to the TARDIS as I'm not quite sure how soon we'll be able to get away, but it might be a few hours before the ball ends."
"We?" asked Martha, surprised. She had assumed he was on his own, just like his ninth incarnation.
"Ah yes, you haven't met my companions yet. Well Nyssa, Tegan and Adric are all around somewhere, probably down on the terrace enjoying the food and dancing."
"Okay then. I'd better not keep you from the party." She stood up, accepting her notepad and pen from the Doctor, and the TARDIS key. "Thank you. I'll see you later."
He nodded and watched as she slipped quickly through the door.
Martha made her way quickly and quietly down the stairs from the Doctor's room, and then out of the house. To her relief, everyone seemed to be round on the terrace at the side of the house where there was dancing and tables of food; all the servants she saw were too focused on their tasks to spot her moving away from the house.
She didn't really relax until she was off Lord Cranleigh's property and out on the public road, and even then she felt exposed, aware that she stuck out like a sore thumb. She was reminded powerfully of her trek around the world and wished her TARDIS key still possessed the perception filter. However, she walked briskly, adopting the Doctor's 'walk around like you own the place' attitude, and hoped that she could pull it off as well as he often seemed to do.
By the time she reached the station, Martha was hot and tired, and thinking longingly of a cool drink and a chance to sit down and catch her breath. However, she was forced to abandon her immediate plans by the sight of the TARDIS being loaded onto a flat bed truck, an operation that was being supervised by a very officious-looking policeman.
"Typical," she muttered, drawing back into shelter and watching closely. She wondered where they planned to take the ship, and how she was going to follow when she was on foot and didn't have any money for this era. Then she saw her chance: the policeman, lorry driver, and the three other men who'd helped lift the police box onto the back of the truck, all went back into the station, leaving the TARDIS unguarded. She ran across the street and pulled herself up onto the back of the truck, then tugged out the key the Doctor had given her. Unfortunately, before she could get the door open, she heard the voice of the policeman as he returned, so she ducked down alongside the ship and waited, her blood pounding in her ears.
"We'll take it to the police station," the policeman said from somewhere close at hand.
Martha shrank down beside the TARDIS hoping no one would think to look in the back of the truck.
"What should I do if anyone comes asking for it, Sergeant?" asked another man.
She carefully peered between the wooden slats that edged the bed of the truck and saw someone whom she took to be a railway official, judging by his uniform, standing next to the Sergeant.
"What you do, Cook, is send them to me," answered the Sergeant, "and perhaps they'll be able to explain just what a police public call box is, and what it was doing on the down platform at Cranleigh Halt."
"Very well sir."
Martha waited until the truck began moving, then edged back towards the doors of the TARDIS, but she quickly realised that her plan of letting herself into the ship before it reached the police station would not work: over the top of the tailgate she could just see the roof of a car following them. If she opened the door, whoever was driving the car would notice it, and they would undoubtedly stop the lorry driver to report it. And although she would have time to get inside the TARDIS, they would undoubtedly attempt to break in, and she didn't think either the ship or the Doctor would appreciate it if the TARDIS was damaged by over-curious policemen. She would just have to bide her time and hope that an opportunity arose to slip inside unnoticed.
After a bumpy and rather uncomfortable ride – although the discomfort was relative, since Martha doubted anything could match the discomforts of travelling the Time Vortex protected only by the bubble generated by Jack's Vortex Manipulator – the lorry pulled into the yard at the police station. She moved back along the side of the TARDIS, keeping low just in case the driver chanced to look in his rear view mirror and see her movements. She heard car doors opening and closing, and surmised that the Sergeant had travelled in the car that she'd seen following the lorry. Then she heard the Sergeant talking to the lorry driver somewhere close by; a few moments later she felt the vibration of the driver's cab door banging shut and she waited tensely to see whether they were going to move the TARDIS immediately.
Fortunately she heard footsteps moving away from the lorry, so she quickly and quietly made her way back to the front of the TARDIS; she darted a swift glance over the tailgate and saw that the car was empty. Another glance showed that the police station yard was also deserted, so she scrambled to her feet, the TARDIS key already clutched in her hand, and let herself into the ship. Closing the door behind her as soon as she was safely inside, she drew in a deep breath, then let it out again with a sigh. It was only then that she noticed the vast difference between the TARDIS interior she knew and loved, and this one.
This control room was a stark white room without any clutter; it had a smaller, much less haphazard console; Martha abruptly realised that this was the TARDIS when Gallifrey still existed and the Doctor could still take his ship home for repairs, instead of having to make do with whatever bits and pieces he could lay his hands on.
She walked forward, examining the console nervously: this stark white interior made her feel exposed and uncomfortable, as if she was an unwanted visitor.
"Hello," she said softly. "It's me, Martha Jones. I know we haven't met yet from your point of view, but I'm a companion of the Doctor in the future, and we were, are, friends – at least as much as it's possible for a sentient ship and a short-lived human to be friends."
She stopped, feeling foolish, but then she felt a response from the ship – the mental equivalent of a cool hand brushing against her skin, and she felt less unwelcome.
"Hello," she repeated, less softly this time. "I'm waiting for the Doctor. He's at some fancy dress ball not too far away and I've no idea when he'll be back, but soon I hope." She sighed. She had been slightly disappointed at this incarnation's lack of urgency about her 'mission', and rather surprised that he was running around without his sonic screwdriver, but she knew she had no right to expect him to drop everything when she burst into his life.
She shook her head, trying to push aside her worries, and decided to go and get herself the cool drink she'd been wanting since she arrived at the railway station.
Martha found the kitchen almost immediately and she patted the wall by the fridge, murmuring her thanks as she felt certain that the ship had helped her out. Opening the door, she spotted a carton of her favourite fruit juice, which she seized with delight. She found a glass and filled it with juice, then drank half immediately, before topping up the glass and returning the carton to the fridge. Then she set out to explore this version of the TARDIS.
* * * * * *
Jack had found himself unable to settle to anything since Martha had left three hours ago – all he could do was wonder where she was, and if she was okay. He knew that she was perfectly capable of looking after herself, particularly after that year, but he still worried about her, just as he worried about the members of his team. If the truth was told, while she might never join Torchwood Three, he considered her to be an unofficial member of his team.
The door to his office opened and Jack span around to see Gwen standing there. "Any news?" he asked eagerly.
Gwen shook her head. "No, I came to say I'm going home for a few hours. Rhys has phoned three times to find out where I am."
Jack glanced at the clock, surprised. "Sorry Gwen, I'd completely lost track of the time. Of course you should go home, and don't come back until lunchtime, okay?"
"I'll be back by ten," she said.
"Noon," Jack corrected her, wagging a finger. "It's 4 am now, and it is Saturday."
"Okay, okay. But you'll ring me before that if there's any news?"
"That's a promise," Jack agreed readily, knowing how well Gwen and Martha got on. "Now go and get some sleep."
As Gwen opened his door again, he suddenly remembered the other member of his team. "Where's Ianto?"
"Asleep on the sofa," she answered.
Jack frowned, following her out of his office and down into the main part of the Hub. Sure enough the young Welshman was stretched out on the sofa, fast asleep. Jack went over and shook him awake.
"Come on," he said. "Bed. Go and use mine, and I'll keep any eye on the Rift Monitors."
Ianto mumbled something indistinct and Jack sighed, then guided him across the room and up the stairs to his office. "Just don't fall down the ladder," Jack said, "since Martha's not here to patch you up, that means I'll have to do it and you might not appreciate it."
"Yes sir." The younger man smiled sleepily, then made his way down into Jack's quarters.
Meanwhile his boss had gone to get himself some coffee, then he settled in what used to be Tosh's work area in order to keep an eye on the Rift Monitors, just in case the being that had taken the Doctor brought him back again. He wished he could talk to Martha and find out how her search was going, but her phone had been switched off the twice he'd tried ringing her. He knew that made sense because they had no idea where the Doctor had been taken, and her phone ringing at an inopportune moment might reveal her presence to someone she'd rather stay hidden from, but he still wanted to talk to her. He sighed heavily, then made himself focus on the screens in front of him as he began sipping his coffee.
* * * * * *
Martha had found the TARDIS library in her wanderings and she settled in there to do some reading, hoping she might find a clue about the being who took her Doctor. She knew it was a long shot, but she had to do something while she waited for the current incarnation to turn up again, and she disliked wasting time. After a couple of hours she fell asleep, worn out by the time-jumping that she'd been doing; she awoke abruptly to the knowledge that the Doctor had returned, although she didn't know how she knew that, until she realised that the TARDIS was humming at her.
"Thanks for waking me," she said softly. She put back the books she'd taken from the shelves and then set off along the corridor to the Control Room.
As she got closer, Martha recognised the Doctor's voice: there was a strained quality to it, however, and she hesitated outside the half-open door, listening and peering through the crack. She saw the Doctor, dressed in a Pierrot outfit, a uniformed policeman, another older man with a ruffled shirt that momentarily reminded her of the Third Doctor, a young boy and two young women. She guessed that these last three were the Doctor's current companions: Adric, Nyssa and Tegan. She wondered who was who: presumably the boy in the peasant outfit was Adric; but she had no way of knowing whether the girl in the floaty blue dress or the girl in the pink skirt and green top was Tegan, and which was Nyssa. The three companions and the Doctor had their backs to her, their attention clearly focused on the policeman and the other man.
"Unbelievable. Quite unbelievable," said the older man. "I must say all this is going to be rather difficult to explain in my report. In this sense you are owed an apology."
"In this sense?" asked the Doctor. Martha thought he sounded annoyed.
"Well, there is still a murder to be explained," answered the older man.
A murder? Martha could hardly believe her ears. She wondered what the Doctor had been doing in the last couple of hours if he was being accused of murder.
She saw him turn and begin fiddling with the controls on the console, and the voice spoke outside the open door of the TARDIS.
"Sir Robert?"
"Come in," called the Doctor. She could see he looked a little strained now he had turned in her direction.
Another policeman came through the door. "Strike me pink!" he exclaimed as he saw the interior of the ship.
The older man spoke, identifying himself as Sir Robert. "What is it Cummings?"
"A call from Lord Cranleigh, sir, up at the hall. He's found another body, a man called Digby."
Martha saw a look of relief sweep across the Doctor's face as he turned at Cummings' news. He moved away from the console and put his hands in his trouser pockets.
"His neck's broken," continued Cummings, "just like the servant, James."
"The man in the cupboard," said the Doctor.
Martha frowned, wondering what he meant: this whole situation had become very perplexing.
"Yes, thank you Cummings. Come on Markham." Cummings had already gone out of the door and Sir Robert moved to follow him, the Sergeant, Markham, close behind.
"I could get you there soon," the Doctor observed.
Sir Robert stopped and turned to look at the Doctor. "You could?" He looked at the Sergeant whose face was impassive beneath his helmet. "All right, you do that." He smiled at the Doctor, who immediately turned back to the console, shutting the TARDIS door.
In the corridor Martha bit her lip worriedly, then set off for the library again. Whatever the situation was, with two men dead, it was clear that she wouldn't be getting any assistance from the Doctor just yet, and as she was uncertain whether he had told his companions about her presence (she suspected not in the circumstances), she thought it was prudent to take herself out of the way until the Time Lord could recalibrate the Vortex Manipulator.
* * * * * *
Martha was thinking about her arguments with Tom: she had finally decided to tell him about the year that the Doctor had rewound, something she hadn't dared to talk to him about before. She had thought that the business with the Daleks and the planets being moved would make it easier for him to believe her, but he'd proved her very wrong. It had taken her a couple of hours to explain about meeting and travelling with the Doctor, what the Master had done, and her subsequent trek around the world. His reaction had been scornful and dismissive, and when she'd tried to reason with him, reminding him of the business at Canary Wharf with the Daleks and the Cybermen, the spaceship over Earth on Christmas Day a couple of years ago, the spaceship that had crashed into Big Ben, he had accused her of watching too much sci-fi, and then, during the ensuing argument, he had told her that she needed to see a psychiatrist.
They had spent the three days of his visit from Africa in arguing about it, until he'd stormed off to see his parents, and she'd fled to Cardiff to visit Jack.
It was about an hour after the Doctor, Sir Robert and the others had left the TARDIS that Martha heard voices in the corridor outside the library; she quickly got up and hurried across the room. She reached the half open door in time to see the Doctor's three companions heading in the direction of the kitchen, and she noticed that the Time Lord wasn't with them. As soon as they were out of earshot, Martha hurried back to the Control Room and paused by the half open door.
"You can come in," the Doctor said from the other side.
Startled, Martha went through and found the Time Lord, now dressed in a cricketing outfit, fiddling with the console. He looked up as she approached.
"I'm terribly sorry that you've had to wait so long," he said. "Things got rather out of hand."
"So I gathered," she answered. "Have they found the murderer?"
His eyebrows shot up. "So you heard about that, did you?"
"The TARDIS let me know you were back, but I thought I'd better not just pop up like last time so I waited in the corridor and heard the conversation with Sir Robert."
"The TARDIS let you know?" he asked, sounding very surprised.
Martha nodded. "She and I formed a strong bond when I was travelling with you – your later incarnation, I mean. I was in the library when you returned earlier and she let me know you were back."
"How?" He looked so curious that she sought for a way to express in words what she'd experienced.
"It was like a mental tap on the shoulder, I suppose. A nudge in my mind that told me without words that you were back."
"Interesting," he breathed. "She must really like you. I've only ever known her interact so directly before with other Time Lords."
Martha shrugged. "As I said, we formed a strong bond."
He seemed to sense that she didn't want to talk about it, because he suddenly became very business-like. "Yes, well, much as I'd like to discuss this with you at length, I've kept you hanging around for quite long enough already. If you let me have your device, I'll see about recalibrating it for you."
"Thank you." She unfastened the wrist strap and handed it over.
She watched as the Doctor placed the wrist computer on the console, and connected a couple of wires to it, then flicked some switches. It buzzed momentarily, and then he disconnected the wires and handed it back.
"There you are."
"Thank you very much. I'm sorry I've added to your hassles today."
He shook his head. "You're looking for my later incarnation, how can I mind that? Will you be all right?" he asked as she strapped the device back onto her wrist.
She looked up. "Of course."
"It's just, well, you seem awfully young to be hopping through Time on your own."
Martha quirked an eyebrow at him. "I'm not sure what my age has to do with it. My Doctor is missing and I need to get him back to his proper place in Time."
He raised his hand in a placatory gesture. "I'm not saying you're not capable," he assured her. "I'm just a bit worried. You never know who or what you might run into."
"I've dealt with Daleks twice, and others who were quite determined to destroy me. I'm still here to tell the tale, and they're not."
"Clearly I must bow to your courage and experience," he said.
She wondered if he was being sarcastic, but then realised he wasn't; she wondered if she was becoming too suspicious. She fished the TARDIS key he'd given her out of her coat pocket and handed it over. "Thanks again for your help."
"Take care of yourself." He opened the TARDIS doors for her and she hurried out, then made her next jump.