Long gaps between chapters does not bode well for this story, but I gotta do what I gotta do!
As a refresher: in the previous chapter, the Doctor was "letting himself into" a banquet center, where he had followed an alien that was gunning for him, in hopes of finding it before it found him... and accidentally wound up working for the caterer prepping for a banquet that evening!
In the process, he found himself reminiscing about his time with Martha Jones, and we find out that their relationship brewed a lot more beneath the surface than met the eye. Namely, when he told her his secrets about Gallifrey, he began to feel close to her/possessive of his secrets, and tried to "own them," and her... but she recognized the misguided sexual advance for what it was, kept a clear head, and defused it. Suffice it to say, it begins a pattern.
And now we pick up back in present-day with Martha, who's got something serious on her mind. And some memories of her own. Enjoy!
CHAPTER 2
"Well... damn it," sighed, Dr. Martha Jones, Chief Medical Officer of the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, London Branch. "Just brilliant."
Martha took a long pull off a strong cup of hot coffee that a secretary named Callie had just delivered to her, and felt the invigorating, almost scalding heat slide down her insides, before giving her computer screen another look, and diving back into the disturbing website she had found. From there, she clicked around a bit more, seeing what there was to see… and what there was, she did not like. She had already read plenty, and was convinced that she needed to report what she saw.
Her job, of course, was that of a doctor: overseeing the care and health of UNIT personnel, training medics in specific (weird) skills, and dispatching the right ones to outposts to join troops in the field to deal with injuries and anomalies, and sometimes dealing with them herself. Most interesting of all, she received right of first refusal to physically examine (or autopsy) any alien entity apprehended by UNIT within the London office's jurisdiction (which included all of the British Isles and most of Western Europe).
But because of what everyone euphemised as her "field experience," she could not help but expand, on occasion, into other areas of interest within UNIT: namely Media Surveillance and Control. This department tried to make sure that the "wrong" information concerning alien activity and the governments' response to it, did not escape into undiscerning public hands.
In this day and age, with social media on the rise and bloggers in every corner of the internet, it was getting more and more difficult to control information. Obviously, not every little tidbit of intel could be censored or hidden or deleted, just logistically speaking. And UNIT would not want to completely squelch any and all information about aliens; it did believe in the public remaining reasonably informed. However, certain factoids or ideas could be inflammatory and/or incorrect, perhaps even premature, and needed to be vetted, corrected, or suppressed until such time as it could be deemed safe for public consumption.
Martha didn't love the mission statement of Media Surveillance and Control department, given how subjective it all was. But she recognised that it was necessary.
Besides, there was one facet of the work of the MSC department that fascinated her, and she had been, indeed, asked to assist them from time to time, given her personal familiarity with the topic.
The topic was the Doctor.
One entire MSC operative had been hired, once upon a time, to deal solely with monitoring the internet for activity concerning the Doctor, but due to funding, that particular operative had had to split his time between the Doctor, alien GMO topics, and alien vaccines. (No alien species had ever introduced a GMO nor a vaccine, for any reason, good or bad, to the planet Earth, but that didn't stop material from proliferating, claiming otherwise).
UNIT understood that it was fairly unlikely to find and identify the work of the Doctor himself in the matrix of the internet, but there existed a plethora of webpages and blogs either dedicated to the Doctor, or regularly featuring him. His presence was seen and felt in the lives of a certain type of "open-minded" citizen, especially when anything "weird" happened. Although many people felt that he was either a myth, or an amalgamation of several people who worked in secret. Either way, the Doctor-related internet chatter was pretty loud, if one knew where to listen for it.
And this was one area of alien intel which was allowed to be as inaccurate as possible. UNIT's philosophy was, the less accurate the information, the less threatening it was to the Doctor… which was the opposite of its usual mode of operation. The thinking was that inaccuracies were more likely to keep people away from the Doctor, and therefore keep him safe from the "tin foil hat set," as some within the organisation liked to call them. Thus, it guaranteed that the Doctor could be free to continue putting out fires throughout the universe, intervening on Earth, and in general making UNIT's job much easier. Or in any way manageable.
Martha agreed wholeheartedly with this one mission of the MSC department: she wanted the Doctor safe, though not just because he was useful. She knew better than almost anyone that the Doctor faced a myriad of threats every day, and that "safe" was a word to be scoffed at. But she could do her part here on Earth to help make sure that he did not come to harm at human hands, nor become hampered by any "researchers" who didn't know what they were dealing with. It was a small favour she could do for him in his absence.
So, when the MSC department asked for her assistance, she agreed to dip her toe into media surveillance every few weeks, just to help out. And to make sure that the specific details of the life of her good friend, the most extraordinary man in the universe, remained a carefully guarded, secure, secret.
She took another long sip of her coffee, picked up her laptop off her desk and went down to the office at the end of the hall, and knocked. Colonel Mace invited her to enter.
"Look at this," Martha demanded, as soon as the door was shut.
"Good morning, Dr. Jones. I'm fine, and you?"
"I'm great. Look at this," Martha said, plopping the laptop onto the pile of paper on the Colonel's desk. "She's using a different name, but this is definitely her."
He looked down at the screen, a bit nonplussed, and saw a sea of text in white, with a royal blue background. At the top of the page, there was a logo: a box, in a different shade of blue, with a candle sticking out the top.
"Subject Blue, a blog by Bougie Boca," said Colonel Mace, reading off the screen. "Ah, very interesting."
"Look at her archive!" Martha practically shouted. "It goes back over four years! Look, her first entry is July, 2004!"
"I see that."
She was exasperated at his calmness (though this was nothing new). "Colonel! This person has been operating for four years without us realising it!"
"Again, I see that."
She picked up her laptop hastily, and sat down in the chair across his desk from him. "This is just madness," she said.
"Well, as you know, Dr. Jones, we do allow a bit of berth in these matters, where the public is concerned," the infuriatingly calm Colonel said to her. "Perhaps this has been seen by the MSC department, and they've deemed it non-threatening."
"Listen to this," she said, ploughing past him. "There's a menu down the side that allows you to navigate the website by topic. Revival, interventions, the box, associates, sightings, the Kennedy files…"
"The Kennedy files?"
"Yeah!" Martha said. "Victor Kennedy, that nutter who founded LINDA a couple years ago, before the entire group went missing, remember? UNIT was keeping an eye on them, and then poof."
"Oh, yes. That rings a bell now."
"The point is, Colonel, is that the category on this blog is the Kennedy files because LINDA is a word that gets flagged by MSC tech filters. So is regeneration, so she calls it revival. The word TARDIS is flagged, so throughout the whole blog, she never uses that word… only the box. And the Doctor himself, she calls him Subject Blue. Colonel, this is how she's got under the radar! And it's so bloody simple!"
"Well, she's not under the radar any longer, is she, Dr. Jones?" Colonel Mace said, almost condescendingly. If he had been a different sort of man, he might have tried to pat her on the hand.
"This could be someone we've already taken down a few times, but she keeps learning from it each time, streamlining, finding new ways to post… a different name, a different domain…"
"So I take it Bougie Boca is not a moniker you have heard before?"
"It is not," she said, with tedium. "Clearly. No-one's name is Bougie Boca. It's obviously a nom de plume. I can have computer forensics look into this – it's possible this very blog is one that has been identified in the past, and the data just keeps popping back up, smarter. Could be that she's changed her domain several times, even since opening this particular blog. Blimey, that would make her like a moving target. Well, perhaps it takes one to know one."
While she spoke, Martha was clicking around more, reading about "Subject Blue," and his "Interventions" on planet Earth, and beyond.
"Dr. Jones, are you quite sure that this merits our time? Again, I will remind you, that we allow a certain amount of leeway in matters of the Doctor."
She looked at him with droopy, already exhausted eyes, then said, "Yes, I'm sure. I know that I am a known associate of the Doctor – that has been confirmed through UNIT…"
"… yes, and MSC has deemed it a safe piece of intel, as you are protected by the Taskforce."
"Yes, fine. But this Bougie Boca not only has my name, but also Rose Tyler, whose name has never been mentioned specifically in any blog – and her mother, Jackie Tyler, née Jacqueline Andrea Suzette Prentice! How?"
"Is that indeed her mother's full name?"
"I actually don't know," Martha admitted. "I'm going to ask the Doctor. He probably knows."
"Wait a moment. Why has Rose Tyler never been mentioned specifically? That seems unlikely, given her very recent association with the Doctor, and her proximity to the events at Torchwood."
"My guess would be that the Doctor has intervened on that, for whatever reason," she said. "Even though there's no possible way that anyone can get to her. I mean, if he can't, then no-one can.
"Which means that Miss Tyler is in no danger."
"Yeah, she's in a parallel universe or something… again, no-one, not even the Doctor, can get to her. I'm not worried about her safety, Colonel, you're missing the point!" Martha said, again, shouting. "The point is, no one is supposed to know her name!"
"All right, all right," Colonel Mace said, leaning forward. "What else is there? Convince me."
"Well, again, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, Josephine Grant Jones, Sarah Jane Smith, Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart… these are all known associates, and we let them slide. They know they are known associates, and there are mechanisms in place to protect them, just like me, yeah? But here's a mention of Gwen Cooper in Cardiff, which is dangerously close to Jack Harkness, a Dr. Grace Holloway in San Francisco, and a Dorothy McShane, who lives and works here in London.
Colonel Mace turned to his own computer and began clicking at the keys. "Dr. Holloway, we know, is a surgeon who either caused or facilitated somehow the Doctor's seventh regeneration. She has been questioned and asked to remain silent on the matter – she is a solid operative, like you. It is worrying that this person has her name in association with the Doctor. It leads me to wonder whether Dr. Holloway is not as stalwart as I had originally thought. She is American…"
"I'll bet you anything it's not her opening her mouth. It's Boca, moving in mysterious ways."
"Possible."
"What about the other?"
"Yes, quite. I'm looking up McShane," he muttered. "Dorothy Gale McShane, born May, 1971 in Perivale, works for a company that contracts out to the police and helps monitor and archive CCTV footage. Never married, no children, took the police exam ten years ago but never joined the force. Enrolled in a martial arts course two evenings per week."
Somehow, to Martha, everything about this made perfect sense, though she had no clue about Dorothy. It just seemed like a logical trajectory for a companion of the Doctor, after their time with him is over.
"What else do you know about her?"
"Nothing else, unless I bypass some security protocols... do you want to contact her?
"No, just to find out exactly how accurate this bloody blog is."
"Just…" he shifted uncomfortably in his chair, and said, "Okay, if you'd like to tell me more... What else is in that blog that disturbs you?"
"I've convinced you?"
"Somewhat. Keep talking."
"Under 'Interventions,' there is mention of the Weeping Angels," she said. "And tells people exactly where to find them – Wester Drumlins, out near Ham Common! Do you know how dangerous that is?"
"What else?"
She sighed, trying to keep her rising temper under control, knowing she had already showed her hand a bit. "Look, Colonel Mace, with all due respect, I realise I'm a physician, not a PR rep – I usually leave that to my sister. But the Media Surveillance and Control department asked for my help for a reason," she said, shutting her computer in her lap. "Because I know the Doctor. I know him well, and can recognise when someone is getting too close. The Doctor is coveted. Hunted. He expends a lot of effort hiding who he is, making sure no-one knows him unless he allows it. Trust me on that one. Unless this Boca Bougie is herself an associate of the Doctor, she knows too much, and we need to pursue it."
"All right," he said. "Your most damning evidence consists of the identification of Rose Tyler and her mother, neither of whom live in this universe any longer."
"It's really the agglomeration of evidence..."
"I'll have Dr. Holloway looked into, to see if she's been compromised… it is possible that she talked. In which case, this Boca person is nothing more than a highly efficient, and persuasive, piece of sleaze. McShane may or may not be a risk, or at risk, and probably merits a visit one way or another, and Wester Drumlins we can have razed to the ground if need be."
"Are you saying I'm tilting at windmills?" she said, rage rising.
"No, I'm saying… thank you for your input. I'm saying, Dr. Jones, that every now and then, someone comes along and tries to take a bite out of the Doctor. I understand why that's alarming to you, but this may or may not warrant further investigation. I'm reluctant to panic, to begin shouting into the media office for more manpower and what-have-you. I will suggest to the Secure Taskforce that they may want to find out who this individual is."
"Great, thanks," she said, agitated. She stood up and left, slamming the door behind her. "I guess it's down to me. Rescuing the Doctor."
Every now and then, someone comes along and tries to take a bite out of the Doctor. I understand why that's alarming to you, Colonel Mace had said.
I seriously doubt you do, she thought, returning to her office with her mind in the recent past.
The day had not ended as she had predicted. This morning, she had awakened in the TARDIS and been quite promptly delivered home, as if nothing had ever transpired between her and the Doctor. Emotional or otherwise.
The Doctor had tried to dump her.
It was only the cryptic, terrifyingly grandiose language of Richard Lazarus on the television that had brought him back to her. So, if anyone had asked her this morning how the day would end, she might have said, "Confused, angrily eating mum's meatless lasagna leftovers, cold from the fridge."
But what came next was a breakneck fight with an arrogant human being, who thought he could live forever. It's the most human urge of all the human urges: immortality. And yet, grabbing for it in any way other than leaving meaningful legacies for the next generation… always disastrous. She had nearly died in several different ways, and had nearly got her family killed as well.
She had hardly had time throughout the day to wonder what had caused him to try and be rid of her, but now that it was over, and she was back in the TARDIS, it all seemed clear.
A month back, the Face of Boe had said "You are not alone," and then, in spite of his best efforts, Martha had made it so. By forcing him to tell her his biggest secret, she had, in his words, taken on a piece of him inside herself. She had laid open his scars, made him not alone. He had been so scared by this, that he had attempted, in a way, to take back that piece. The vulnerability had thrown him for a loop, and he'd made a grab for her, to claim her, and any part of him that she might hold.
Voices in her head had been screaming at her (not the mention the lascivious way in which her body had spoken to her) to seize this opportunity, this thing she'd been wanting since she'd laid eyes on him. And yet, she could not. Not without a promise of tomorrow and the next day, and total truth. More vulnerability.
He couldn't manage it, and more importantly, she believed he did not want to… and she hadn't been surprised.
And today, the Doctor had told Lazarus, in discouraging him to seek immortality, "If you live long enough, the only certainty left is that you'll end up alone."
If this was truly how he perceived himself and his existnece, and given his recent trauma with a previous companion (whatever that might look like, she still didn't know), it was little wonder he had thrown it all to the wind, and tried to drop her at home. He had opened up himself, then tried to open her up… and failed. It was reinforcement that he was right: he would eventually wind up on his own again, and it was better to cut his losses than to let her in, and give himself to someone new.
And tonight, he had agreed to take her on as a travelling partner, indefinitely. He was taciturn, however, and though she knew with absolute certainty that she could not make a dent in his grief, she felt compelled to try. It was her most human instinct. And just as she had exercised it in New New York, she exercised it today.
"When you were talking to Lazarus, I know you were drawing on your own life, Doctor," she dared to say, as she placed her rucksack filled with changes of clothes and toiletries on the seat in the console room. "But ending up alone is not a certainty for you. You'll never really be alone."
He was unfastening his bowtie, eager to abandon the tuxedo. He smirked at her, and immediately, she realised that his demeanour was more wistful than it was taciturn. "Think?" he asked.
She cleared her throat. "Well, look. You've already outlived everyone you know, but you've got a time machine! You can revisit humans whom you don't see anymore. And not long ago when we were in New New York, that's a time when everyone I know is dead, as well. And yet, here we are, back in 2007, and I just saw my family!"
"I suppose that's true," he said, sighing. "But I have to be careful crossing people's timelines."
"I know, but as long as you've got the TARDIS, it's all at least possible. And by the way, you've got the TARDIS as well."
He smiled. "Thanks, Martha. I appreciate that. Sometimes I do need reminding."
Though, she could see behind his eyes that there were so many buts that he would have liked to say, and so much that she was missing.
Still, she chose to believe that he appreciated her efforts. So, without really knowing why, she delivered that most mundane, frustrating of platitudes: "It's going to be okay."
She regretted it as soon as it was out of her mouth. Fortunately, he didn't mind, and he said, "Ultimately, I believe you're right. And as such, d'you know what I think we should do?"
"What?"
"Toast."
"Toast?"
"Yeah, toast. Clink glasses to celebrate. We didn't get a chance at the party, what with the running and screaming and hanging from church towers and all."
"Er… okay! Do you have champagne?"
"Psh," he scoffed. "Do I have champagne? Do I have… actually, I don't know. But I'm sure I've got something. Four-hundred-year-old whiskey. Orange juice. Spielerade," he said, walking toward the doorway that led to the inner-reaches of the TARDIS, and motioning for her to follow.
"What's Spielerade?" she asked.
"An intergalactic sports drink that adjusts its sodium levels to the needs of any carbon-based life form."
"Wow. Interesting."
The kitchen was just fifty feet or so from the console room, and when they arrived, the Doctor began scouring the cabinets for something, anything, with which they could toast.
"Well, I don't have champagne," he said, pulling two unmatched (but clean) glass tumblers out of a cabinet. "But much to my surprise, I do have a bottle of Bavarian Eiswein that I picked up in 1892."
"Sounds lovely," she chirped, taking a seat at the breakfast bar.
He produced a bottle that could not have been more than 250 millilitres, and uncorked it. He poured a small measure into each glass, and handed her one. He sat down in the swivel chair beside her, facing her, and clinked his glass against hers.
"To… being not alone," he shrugged, and they both took a sip.
The Eiswein (or Ice Wine in English-speaking, cold-weather vineyards) was super sweet, warm, with raspberry and anis notes, and reminded Martha of a light Port. It felt good, warming and loosening her sensibilities almost immediately, and she took a deep breath, daring to close her eyes, and relax for a moment.
Ordinarily, she would have been much too guarded around the Doctor to close her eyes and do any sort of unwinding in his presence.
But something about this moment made her let her guard down. It wasn't the alcohol, but it might've been the formalwear. And the look on his face. And the fact that she felt a bit pursued, whereas she was normally the pursuer. At least on the inside, and with only one notable exception that felt like an incredible anomaly…
And yet, did it?
When she opened her eyes, she caught him studying her, and he didn't pull his gaze away as though she were a hot stove he ought not to be touching. He wanted her to know she was being studied. He sipped his wine, and still did not take his eyes away.
"Thanks for… well, pointing out that I've got options," he said, smiling softly.
"That you've got options?"
"Yeah, options that don't include winding up alone. I do have a time machine, which I like to pretend is complicated and stuff, and it is, but… it does afford me a lot more than most people get."
She nodded her head. "You're welcome."
"And more importantly, thank you for the much simpler, but much more difficult job of simply rescuing me from that solitude. I mean, having someone around is great just for the sake of it, but having someone who can also, like you just did, help me think about things from a different perspective. Remind me to stop living in my own head. You did that for me back in New New York, and you're doing it for me now." He rotated his legs twenty degrees to the right, and leaned his back against the breakfast bar, and lounged sideways toward her, with one elbow propped on it. He crossed his legs in her direction.
It was a warm gesture, and it made her feel close to him, caused her to lean into him as he was leaning into her… only in her mind and heart, rather than with her body.
"Well, again, you're welcome," she said, feeling relaxation set in, in spite of herself.
And suddenly realising that they were sitting awfully close.
She had been facing forward toward the breakfast bar when she'd taken this chair, but his settling in beside her, and the toast, had caused her to rotate twenty degrees to her left. The Doctor often shifted himself to take up a lot of space – he was tall, but not that tall… it was more of an intentional stretching-out sort of thing, like a lizard on a rock. It was both annoying and sexy. Sort of a microcosmic trait of the man himself.
In this moment, though, she was not annoyed. And now, his left leg and her right were practically flush up against each other. She could smell the hints of raspberry and anis on his breath, as well as the usual aroma of the Doctor's life and presence. His skin, his aftershave (or whatever it was that he used), a hair product…
"Especially lately," he sighed. "I've really been needing that particular rescue, Martha."
He clinked glasses with her, and took the last bit of liquid from his tumbler. When he set it down, his hand quite naturally moved to the side of her face. And the moment quite naturally ushered her lips toward his.
As soon as their mouths touched, she knew what was coming next and why, but it was absolutely lovely, this moment. She gave an involuntary voiced sigh, which sounded a bit like a moan, and she somewhat regretted it, but also simply gave herself permission just to feel. It was the most authentic of sighs, in a beautifully uncertain moment.
His head turned only slightly, and it signalled a change… the kiss was deepening. When his tongue ventured out, hers was there to meet it, and happily engage. She pushed her body forward so that only the edge of her bum was now on the chair, but the top half her body was pressed against the top half of his, and her left hand fell onto his thigh. His hand on her cheek, jowls and neck stroked her skin, directed the kiss, leading as though it really were a ballroom dance.
After a few minutes, his lips trailed down the side of her neck, and his free hand curled around her waist. "Thank you for not letting me walk away from you. Again," he whispered in her ear, kissing the tender skin behind it.
And her head swam with the pure stimulation, her body thrummed with desire.
But even with that sensation pulsing through her, insistent like a church bell at high noon, she had a conscious thought… "When I force him to come towards me, he can't resist me… or doesn't want to. And then he wants to claim me. It's like a reflex… if I'm leading the game, he has to take it back."
Once again, she knew that all she had to do was give in, and she could have him. She could have him rapt and helpless inside of her, and not just his confessions. More mysteries could be revealed to her, she could feel him move with her, could feel how he tenses and thrusts and releases, all of these things which she had designed within her mind, simply extrapolating from how he does all of those things when he's saving the universe from evil…
But she could have them for real. Know them. And he could relieve this absolute driving, panic-like ache within her, and she could relieve his, as well…
…well, another ache. He actually seemed to have several.
But even with all of that, she managed to keep her wits together.
"Oh, Doctor," she said, as his tongue found a perfect point, just behind her earlobe. Once again, her head swam, and she could not, on one level, believe this was happening.
His tongue. On her skin. Making her vision blur and everything about her to become so much less solid.
Her hand squeezed his thigh with the impact, and his response was to echo her little moan from a few moments ago.
"Doctor, you're still needing a rescue from the same thing," she said, practically whimpering. The voice-breaking whine came from the force of his body and mouth exploring any area between her upper arms and her ears, as well as from the despair of what she now had to do.
"Mm?"
"It's still about your loneliness, your vision of loneliness, the way you go about handling solitude as though solitude itself were more of a companion to you than I'll ever be," she said. "Which is not the case."
He stopped what he was doing and looked at her. "Excuse me?" He seemed genuinely confused.
"You want me… no, you want this, for the wrong reasons. You need to be saved from the same emptiness as before, and I still say it has my face on it because I'm here just now, and you know how I feel about you. But what you actually need has got nothing to do with me."
He was just a bit breathless. "But doesn't the needing of a rescue always have the face of the person you're with?"
"But you're not really with me, are you? You've said you can't give me both hearts and all of the truth. Has that changed?"
He stared at her with disbelief, tinged with sadness. "I'm not ready."
"I know, and that's why I'm asking… what are we doing?"
He turned his chair so that he could stand up and circle back round to the other side of the breakfast bar. "Making another mistake, I guess."
He poured another few ounces of Eiswein for himself, and took a sip. Martha knew that it was more of a fidget, a way to hide, than it was an effort to get alcohol into his bloodstream.
"No, don't be like that," she scolded. "We're stopping ourselves from making a mistake. That's what we're doing."
"Yeah," he retorted, pouting.
"It's just, Doctor," she said in a pleading way, pulling at the air, leaning toward him over the bar. "This morning you weren't even sure you wanted me around anymore…"
"I wanted you around, Martha," he said.
"Then why did you try to dump me? Cutting your losses?" This revelation had come to her earlier, and she was convinced that she was correct.
"Maybe," he told her, which was confirmation.
"You need something big. You need something real. And you keep throwing yourself at me when I force you to realise it, almost as though you can't bear for me to direct the game, not be in control of it yourself. Almost as if you could finesse me into submission, and come out on top… so to speak. But none of this is because you want something real from me. At least not now. Not yet. Maybe not ever."
A long, long silence passed while the Doctor stared into the purplish liquid in his glass, but did not move to drink it, nor do anything else. Long enough that Martha said, "Am I wrong? Out of line?"
"No. You know you're not."
"Would you like me go give you another chance to leave me off at home? I won't protest this time."
"At this stage, I'm more worried of you not wanting to stay with me, than me not wanting you to stay. I'm afraid of making things too hard for you…"
"No, you're not making things too hard, and I do want to stay. The fight you fight is worth the fighting, and I want to be a part of it. And I very much enjoy watching you do battle."
Thoughts, feelings? Your feedback would be greatly appreciated - just let me know you're out there! Thank you for reading!
(If I messed up with Ace's character, I apologize!)