Hope ths is good, sorry updates are taking so long, but real life is a bitch, as we all know. I am not abandoning this one, just need longer time between updates.
The car veered around late morning traffic. Martha chanced a look at the man next to her, and he chose to ignore her. "It's a lot to take in." she nodded by way of small talk.
"It's all bullshit, isn't it?" he asked her with a pointed look that nearly tore her heart into pieces. "This is all some crazy cooked up fantasy to make me as crazy as you are." He studied her for a full minute before going on. "Martha, are you sure you are feeling all right?" he gentled.
She nearly drove off into an embankment; his tone was one of a psychiatrist talking a mental patient off the ledge. She had expected that, had expected some level of assumption of loss of sanity after explaining things to him. What she did not expect was the honmest tone of his voice; the concern that seemed to leech through every syllable. He was, in his mind, trying to deal with a crazy woman. "I'm not crazy, John./" she insisted. "You are the Doctor, and I know it sounds mad and mental, but it's the truth. Martha looked at her watch and checked the nearest mile marker. "We're about an hour inside of London proper, once we get there, you'll see."
"See what?" he asked in that same gentle tone, but now edged with a tone of a man who was rapidly reachi9ng the end of his rope. "Oh right, the TARDIS." He nodded saliently, but spoke with that same tired and even tone. "We are going to the magical blue box that contains all of time and space. "
"It doesn't contain all of time and space." Martha answered with a shake of her head, "Just…has access to all of time and space. God she really did sound like a lunatic.
John nodded slowly and glanced into the back of the small ambulance. "I can't believe he is sleeping through all of this. " He shook his head as if that was the most incredulous thing he had heard today. The idea of it made Martha laugh out loud.
John answered her giggle with another cautious look, and Martha could have sworn she saw him check the door again. "Tell me where Addy comes from." John asked after the door offered no exit into sanity.
Martha nodded. I wondered how long it would take you to ask me that one."
"I almost don't want to know." He answered sadly. "He has been mine for six months. Longer if you count the pregnancy. For as long as I can recall, I guess." John finished with a resigned shrug.
In that moment she felt bad for him, miserable. He was like the John Smith that stood in the small cottage insisting he was a real person. John Bowman was no different, faced with the idea that his life, albeit short and riddled with memory loss, was nothing more than a lie, the middle aged musician pulled a face of absolute disbelief. "I don't know what to say, john." She shrugged against the honest look of woeful confusion on his face."
"Tell me the truth, that's all I ask Martha." John said in a small childlike voice.
Martha could do nothing but nod again, "Ok, I will tell you everything." She looked at her watch again and did a quick calculation. "Should be all done by the time we get to London."
John nodded his agreement and spoke. "So….Adric? where is he from. Really?" His eyes seemed to want to flow at any moment, and Martha sighed with exasperation. "He isn't mine, is he"
"He is ours in every way that counts." Martha asserted.
For the second time during the ride to London, Martha spoke about the Doctor in the third person.
Fifteen hours earlier.
"So you are holding a gun to me now?" John asked with a grin that spoke of the Oncoming Storm. A grin that, very nearly, made Martha put the gun away. Very nearly.
She looked at her husband coldly, head cocked slightly and eyeing the prone man for any sudden movements. "Yeah," she nodded slightly. "Yeah I guess I am."
John sneered at her but did not move. "You really expect me to believe you will use that on me?" he asked, but before the completion of his sentence, a whirring wind passed near his leg and left a tidy whole in the bed.
"Next question?" Martha asked in a steely voice. The room door flapped open, but Martha was fast to slide her foot behind her and bang it shut again. "Broken glass," she said without blinking. "I've got it/"
But the person on the other side of the door was insistent, and Martha was completely out of patience. She flung the nearby wheelchair. It was operational from folded with a mere flick of her free hand. "get in the chair." She ordered the still grinning man.
John didn't move, and Martha wondered if he would start screaming about being held hostage. Just when she was about to say something to him, he moved silently and carefully easing himself into the chair.
Martha moved her foot to allow for the entrance of the impatient staff. She grabbed the handles of the chair and wheeled John around toward the door. "Sorry, he had a little trouble getting up." She smiled at the two irate looking men. One was a nurse, but the other was clearly security of some sort, Martha noted the hard edged look on the man's features, as if a glower alone would keep injured psychopaths and would be baby thieves at may.
The security person noted the items on the floor, and then looked at the casted man. "Is everything all right?" he asked John with a small grin.
John nodded and raised his broken arm. "Got a little too friendly with the nightstand."
"And side table." Martha amended with a small smile.
"And side table." John added with little mirth.
"Anyway, we are going to go visit outr son in the NICU. Figured now would be a good time so you can clean the mess?" Martha asked as she wheeled John into the hallway.
"Yes, let's go visit our son, love." John pushed with an emphasis and a too broad smile.
They moved down the hall wordlessly, John seemed more in a pout than afraid of her, and Martha was still surprised that he said nothing to anyone about being held at gunpoint. By the time they reached the ambulance bay, Jack and another man stood there amidst a row of white busses. "I see you managed to convince your husband to tag along." Jack noted taking the wheelchair from Martha./
"Jack," John groaned, his head hit the back of the chair. "You're in on this madness too?"
Jack smile grew and he patted the shoulder of the injured man. "We need to get you and the Missus out of here, with Addy. " he turned to Martha then. "I found out what happened."
"Is it them? Is it the Mayflies?" she asked.
Just then, the man she did not know moved forward. He held out his arm, but Martha refused it with a withering look. "Scott Millerston." He announced with a less than smooth glide of his hand back into his pocket.
Jack began leading them to the last two ambulances in the row. "He's Torchwood, the one that screwed up." Jack answered with a tip of his head toward the ginger stranger.
"We didn't know, Jack. It wasn't as if we had a lot of dealings with this sort of thing...not like Torchwood two has."
"You deal with aliens every day," Jack spat back acidly. "You should have had someone there who knew who she was."
Martha flashed him a hateful look as they stopped between two ambulances. "So what is the plan?" she asked.
"You don't want to know what happened?" Jack asked helped to load the large incubator into one of the ambulances.
Martha shrugged as if a fly had landed on her arm. "I just want to get my son out of the fray. If it's Mayflies, then we need to get out of here, as fast as possible."
Jack helped her load the incubator into the back of the ambulance. Adric slept through the entire process, he stired slightly before curling into a fetal position. "He's going to want to know...you after he is him again."
"Then he can find out, I am not concerned with anything more than what I need to do to get us to the TADRIS before they figure out where it is."
Jack nodded resignedly. "All right, we take the spent watch in that ambulance, Scott and I will driv to try and throw them off the scent. Adric is pretty well encased in that incubator, should deaden the scent. But..." He turned to the man with the casted arm who still sat in the wheelchair sporting an angry look of absolute betrayal. "He is gonna need to open that watch and deal with them."
"Are there many?" she asked as she tightened the straps of the incubator, she secured the straps with her foot and pulled to take the slack.
Jack was on the other side, mimicking her actions they worked in unison. "Yeah, its them, not too many, at least not that we are aware of. But, we need to put a rush on this and get you folks on the road." He stood up afterward and looked at Martha. "It wasn't Adric or the Doctor that put them on the scent."
Martha stood then and glanced outside of the ambulance. John still sat in the wheelchair, Sctt stood at his side, a gentle but firm guard against any attempt he could make at running. "So what does that mean, Jack?" she asked still looking out the window.
"I think you know what that means, Martha."
She nodded then, "we need to get out of here before they come." Martha turned on her heel, leaving Jack to follow in her wake, nearly double stepping to keep up with the small woman.
"We are going to try to lead them North. "Jack spoke from the ab of the ambulance. "We are going to drive to your old house, then try to get back to Four. We are going to try to double back and come to London. You know where."
She nodded, of course she knew where. Martha knew she had to get the Doctor back home; back to his TARDIS. Getting him to open the watch was only secondary, she knew John Bowman would fight for his life, fight like John Smith had. Martha had tried everything then, even a stilted and rejected attempt at professing her love for him, a love she now realized was the foolish misguided infatuation of a spoiled girl. What she felt for the strange creature now was something different, yet still paled in comparison to what she would do for the tiny creature in the ambulance. To understand love, real love, one had to go outside of themselves, to become something different than what they had ever been. She had shorn that skin the minute she held Adric in her arms.
Martha had to get the Doctor back to the TARDIS, because he was the only one that could keep Adric safe. Anything she would do, could do, was only staunching the flow of the inevitable. With the baby's essence back into his tiny body, he was more vulnerable than ever.
They helped get John buckled into the front seat of the ambulance, and Martha was both shocked and saddened at the difference in the character. She had always hated how the Doctor could be so cold and emotionless, even with all of his manic smiles and cheeky speeches. He could walk into a situation and take control in one sentence.
Where John would not create a fuss, nor cause any undue stress in a situation, the Doctor was the fire burning in the center of everything. \she hated to compare the two men, but how could she not? Plenty of him had bled through, but there, in that moment when she climbed into the driver's seat of the ambulance prepared to be chased through the fires of hell, she truly wished for the man who always had flame retardant skin.
An oranges truck made a lazy turn around the parking lot of the hospital as the two ambulances pulled Away from the circular drive of the ambulance bay. The truck parked in front of the emergency doors.
Martha watched the scene unfold from the side mirror of the ambulance. The driver of the orange truck emerged, a man in his fifties who Martha could only guess was some sort of laborer. He raised his nose in the air and took a long pull of it into his lungs. Within seconds the man had brought his glare toward the ambulance in the rear, the one that Jack and Scott had placed the decoy watch in. "Looks like they are on to us?" Martha spoke out loud, knowing that John had no idea what was going on, but the man had not asked either, he simply allowed them to load him into the ambulance with little more than a petulant glare.
"Is it Jack?" John finally asked from what seemed to be a great distance, and Martha wondered if the human was mentally shattering like the cup he sent to the floor in his hospital room.
"No, that's not Jack following us, Jack is in front. " She spoke to him, in a tone that mimicked a tired mother explaining sun shine to a child.
"Don't talk to me like I am fragile, Martha. " he spat, but looked in his own rear mirror trying to get a glimpse of the man in coveralls who had now crawled back into his orange truck. "What makes you think that man is following us?" he asked with a steady gaze fixed upon the rear window.
"He is looking for you, for you and Addy." Martha assured him, pulling into evening traffic. The streets were empty now of the work crowds, filled instead with football mavens searching for their favorite pub in search of a place to enjoy the evening match.
The orange truck slid into traffic behind Jack, the driver's nose elevated ever so slightly as he followed behind Jack into the opposite direction of London.
Martha blew a sigh of relief as she continued onto the highway heading south, and held herself from waving to Jack and Scott as they passed.
XXXXXXXXXXXX
The lights of London dazzled as Martha drove through the predawn streets exhausted and feeling as if she had not slept inyears. He slept with his head against the passenger window. Her story had left him nothing but tired, and John still held the watch in his long fingered hands as he slept fitfully in the car seat. Martha had not seen the orange truck, and for that she was more than grateful. But, Jack had not called at all, and she was left worried about what they had encountered
Jack's alluding to the truth about the Mayflies finding them had worried her, it was worse than a mole in Torchwood. If in fact there was another time lord around, then that left only one possibility.
"You are in love with him." John spoke from across a distance. She hadn't expected to hear from him until Sarah Jane's, but he seemed to have alight on another fact he needed clarification on. "All that time, you wouldn't touch me, it wss him you wanted."
"John," she warned with a shake of her head.
"No, no." he spoke calmly, and for the first time since she had dragged him out of the hospital, Martha could see he was starting to come around, to be himself again. "No. It's been him the whole time. I knew, I guess, I knew it was something. I just didn;t think it was so..."
"Convoluted." she nodded. "Its much more than that, John."
"So, do you love him?" he asked again, begged really.
Martha looked at him and nodded. "Yes," she was reminded of a speech she gave the same man a confession of love that was not returned. This time, it was returned, but she was the one doing the hurting. John Bowman loved his wife, even after the separation, the living apart and the lack of a sex life. He loved her, that had bled through from the Doctor. "I love him."
"And I am not him," he said with a ragged breath. "And he is me, and all I have to do is open this bloody watch and you will love me."
"I do love you, John." she said his name like a remembrance of a sweet long melted in the mouth. He was him, but he was not, and no about of sugar coating could change that gleam in his eye that was not there when she looked at him.
"But its not the same." he sighed, "The heart wants what the heart wants." He looked out of the window as she eased onto the quiet road that lead to Sarah Jane's house. "It's not the same."
Martha parked two blocks away from the house and slid out of the driver's seat. She made her way to the incubator where Adric still slept. "Is he all right?" John asked/
"He is awake, moving around a bit." she tapped the plastic side of the box, the baby moved to all fours and brought his hands to the sides. "Can't take him out." she offered, loosening the straps that held the box in place.
"Why ever not? John asked, irritation in his tone. "Its cruel to leave him in there."
Martha shook her head. "Crueler to let those things know exactly where we are. They will take him, and you and devour you whole."
John ambled out of the seat and moved to offer her one good arm. "Can you walk?" she asked pushing the inubator in front of her. It was too early in the morning to cause to much attention, but Martha still covered the plastic box with a couple of hospital blankets.
He pointed to his casted arm and nodded. "Arm broken, legs still good." He looked around. "We going to Sarah's?" John's face fell in an instant at the look in Martha's face. "She's not really my sister, is she?" He still wore the robe he had been wearing when she found him in his hospital room. The edges of the long blue garment flapped against the late spring chill.
She shook her head as they moved through the cool pre dawn street. "She is very close to you though."
"I see," he said, and Martha caught the ote of disbelief in his voice. "SO, basically, what you are telling me is that my whole life is a lie."
"Only the last six months or so." she answered.
"Well, that makes it all better then." He ran his good hand through his hair. "I hope Sarah Jane has NHS on speed dial. I have gone along with all of this in the hopes...I thought maybe you were a little crazy after seeing Addy in that state, then my finding out that..."
Martha nodded, trying to keep his mind from the anger that he had exploded into earlier. "I know its all hard to believe. Sometimes I barely believe it myself. But its true." She looked at John to see him fingering the watch in his hand again. He had brought it out of the pocket of his robe and walked at an odd cadence as he twirled it in his long fingers.
A small face peeked from the curtain of Sarah Jane's house, a moment later, her small frame emerged from the door on the side, she too in a robe and looking more than a little put out.
She wordlessly ushered them in to the house through the same door he had exited, Sarah helped move the incubator into the living room. Adric was becoming more and more fretful housed in his cage. "We need to get him upstairs, he's gt to be tired of being in that thing." Sarah announced. Luke had come into the room in his pajamas, rubbing his eyes sleepily. The three of them got the infant upstairs with John at their heels. Martha knew he was as anxious to get the baby out as much as she was, but he seemed more than a little bothered at the casual attitude regarding the strange that the entire house seemed to live in.
"Why are we taking him upstairs?" h asked halfway to the attic.
It was Sarah who answered. She spoke only after an abiding nod from Martha, an understanding transpired breifly between the two women. "John," she nodded. "I know you feel as if you have been lied to, but this is all necessary for your and Addy 's safety."
"It's safe to keep my son locked up in a cage?" he asked bitterly.
"For now," Sarah nodded, speaking in that even tone that Martha had always appreciated. "We are taking him upstairs, to the TARDIS. Its safer in there and whatever is chasing you won't be able to detect his...uniquness."
They made it to the landing of the attic, the large computer bid them good morning. John looked around as if he had just fallen down a rabbit hole. "I'm glad you guys made it here, " Sarah Jane began, "when Jack called, he told me what had happened, but he didn't warn me I would have a guest."
"He didn't tell you we were coming?" Martha asked, moving toward the familiar blue box in the far corner of the large room.
"Oh, he told us you were coming." Luke finally spoke. As he movd to the side of the TARDIS, the door flung open nd a familiar blonde head popped out with a smile. "He didn't tell us she was coming." he finished.