Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters contained herein, I merely make them dance in what I hope is true to their rhythm.

Chapter Five

Martha in the Meantime

Martha stared at the door of the TARDIS. It was still whining and shaking, and she had no idea as to where she would end up. She didn't even know where she had just been. All she knew was that the Doctor had been grabbed out of the TARDIS, and then been left behind when it jumped again through time and space.

She rushed to the monitor and began typing furiously. She wasn't exactly sure what she was hoping for, just that the time machine would stop behaving like it was.

All at once, the shaking and vworping stopped. The TARDIS seemed to have landed. Martha looked at the viewscreen to the outside. It was very nondescript. She frowned. What was she supposed to make from a random grassy field? She could be anywhere, in anywhen. She typed in "where and when am I?" into the system, hoping against hope that she would get a response.

To her surprise, she did. On the monitor in front of her, a location and date popped up. "Huh," she said. "Of course."

It was back in London, in 2007. She shook her head in disbelief, then stopped herself. There was another her out there in 2007, along with her family, and Captain Jack somewhere, and the Doctor in his old body. As much as she wanted to see her family, she knew it was too dangerous. She pulled up the last communication the TARDIS had, which was with Sean, but the connection was bad. All she got was snow on the screen and static from the speakers.

"Agh!" she screamed. "Why not?"

LINK NOT YET ESTABLISHED flashed across the screen in big bold letters.

"You're supposed to be a time machine!" she shouted. "Can't you send messages through time?"

She knew, of course, why it wasn't working. The Doctor wasn't here. The Doctor would know what to do. But what, and how could she get him back? She ran a hand through her hair in frustration. At that moment, though, the door opened, and a familiar face poked its head in.

"Doctor!" she exclaimed.

But this was the Doctor she had known the best, not the man he was now. This one was tall and skinny, dressed in a brown suit with blue pinstripes, and long brown coat. She didn't know if she'd ever been happier to see someone.

He, on the other hand, didn't look pleased at all to see her. In fact, he looked downright terrified. "Martha," he said. "Wait out here for a moment." She started toward him, but he stepped inside and closed the door. He walked toward her very slowly.

"Who are you, and what are you doing in my TARDIS?" he asked.

Martha was hurt. "I'm Martha Jones!" she said. "You just said my name! Who else would I be?"

He shook his head, frowning deeply. "No, no," he said. "Martha Jones is standing outside right now, waiting for me." He stood now in front of her with a hand on his chin, and he was examining her very carefully. "You may be Martha Jones, but you may be someone else." He looked around. "The outside is the same," he said. "And it is bigger on the inside, so it's definitely a TARDIS. My TARDIS, judging by the outside. I don't recall this desktop though, and I've had this TARDIS for a long time. Now tell me," he said. "Are you my future self?"

Martha burst out laughing. "No, Doctor," she said, giggling. "I am a doctor, but there is only one The Doctor. I really am Martha Jones, and I'm from your future. This TARDIS is from your future!"

He looked around. "So I've redecorated then," he said. He frowned. "I don't like it."

Martha rolled her eyes. "I'm glad you're here, Doctor," she said. "I could really use your help."

He raised an eyebrow and smiled. She had to keep from swooning. She really missed that smile.

"You know I can't say no to a request for help from you, Martha Jones," he said. "Give me a moment, though, I have to go tell you to wait for me."

She smiled. "I know," she said. "You're going to tell me to go get a coffee and meet you by the light pole outside in twenty minutes." He looked impressed. "I told you, Doctor, I'm from your future, which means I'm from her future, too," she said, pointing outside. "I remembered."

He laughed. "Well, let me just go do that, and then we'll get down to business." He ran to the door, opened it and peered out. Martha heard her own voice give confused words of assent, and then the Doctor popped back in and closed the door.

"This isn't going to take longer than twenty minutes, is it?" he asked, looking concerned. "I know what an awful amount of trouble I can get into, and it usually takes me about forty five minutes to get out of it." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "It's almost exactly the length of an hour long show on the telly, minus the commercials, come to think of it."

Martha shook her head. "You'll be fine," she said. "Think of it as a sitcom amount of time. I remember, remember?" she added, grinning.

He grinned back at her. "It's all wibbly wobbly time wimey!" he said.

She shook her head and rolled her eyes, though she was still smiling. "Here's the thing, Doctor," she said. "The TARDIS was analyzing code from Windows Vista."

"Ugh!" he said, interrupting her and sticking out his tongue. "Whatever for? Why would you want to do that to her?" He looked around and patted the nearest surface. "What have I done to you, girl?"

"It's the Master," she said.

Instead of looking terrified, he looked simply confused. "I haven't seen him in ages," he said. "How do you know about him?"

She shook her head. "It's something we're dealing with right now, and of course I can't tell you, because of the whole paradox thing, and not knowing too much about your future."

The Doctor appeared to be looking into space, trying to process all of this. "So what are you doing here, telling me all of this?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you, Doctor," said Martha. "The TARDIS was analyzing the code and all of a sudden it took us, that is, you and me, somewhere else. He looked outside, and a moment later something pulled him out, and the TARDIS brought me here."

The Doctor thought for a moment. "Didn't he... I... check to see where or when we were before going out?"

Martha threw up her hands. "We tried, but we weren't getting any readings. He went outside to look." She shrugged.

The Doctor took a moment and went to the monitor. He typed a couple things into it and it pulled up a place and date. "He's in the late sixteen hundreds, in America."

"How did you find that out so quickly?" Martha asked.

The Doctor laughed. "The TARDIS knows me well enough to know to give me what I want. It doesn't matter what kind of code is messing with her, I know how to help her out of it."

Martha raised an eyebrow. "Whatever you say, Doctor. Can we go get you now?"

He grinned. "The desktop may have changed, but she's still mine," he said. He stepped to the console. He gave her a sly wink and pulled a lever. "Allons-y!"

The TARDIS whined and shook, and a moment later, the Doctor was stepping to the doors. "Coming, Martha?" he called over his shoulder.

She grinned and ran after him. They went out the doors and looked around. Martha hadn't seen past the Doctor before he had gotten pulled out, so she had no clue what to expect when she went after him.

It turned out to be some sort of military camp. It was exceptionally primitive, but she figured that was just because of the time that she was in. Looking around, she saw that the soldiers running around were carrying what appeared to be muskets. "Doctor," she said. "Maybe I shouldn't come out with you."

"Why not?" he said. "You're not worried about the color of your skin, are you?"

She shrugged, looking at the ground. "This is America in the late seventeenth century," she said, and gestured around. "All of these soldiers are white. These sorts of men would have seen me and wondered what I'm doing out of chains, let alone in the kind of clothes I'm in."

The Doctor nodded, and took a necklace out of one of his pockets. It looked like the TARDIS key on the end of it. He put it over her head. "There now," he said. "How's that?"

She smiled. "I had forgotten about this," she said. "Thank you, Doctor."

Now unhindered by the fear of being seen and judged because of the color of her skin, Martha followed the Doctor threw the camp. All of the walls looked like river rafts, as though they had simply been cut down logs lashed together. This of course is exactly how they had been built. The buildings in the camp were crude tents, and the Doctor was headed towards one particularly large tent from which a booming voice was shouting. He raised his eyebrows in Martha's direction.

One other thing Martha noticed was that it didn't seem that the soldiers were noticing the Doctor either. He didn't have a necklace on, but she supposed when you looked like you knew where you were going, or walked around like you owned the place, people tended to stay out of your way. She shook her head in disbelief.

The Doctor pulled back the large tent's flap and walked in with Martha close behind him. The booming voice was coming from a short but rotund man dressed all in purple.

"I want to know who this man is!" the voice was saying. "He comes sauntering out of this big blue box in the middle of an Indian raid, and you just decide to grab him and bring him with you back into our camp."

"But sir," said a taller, but much more timid man, "he's clearly British, judging by his accent. I could never leave a fellow countryman to the mercy of those savages."

"I resent that remark," said another voice that was familiar to Martha.

"What?" said the first man, who appeared to be the leader, and Martha moved to the side.

There she could see the Doctor being guarded on two sides by soldiers, and he winked at her before going on. "I refuse to allow you to call the native peoples of this land savages," he said. "They have not given you any reason to believe such a thing about them."

Martha grinned. That was the Doctor all over.

Then her Doctor spoke up. "That goes for me as well," he said aloud, and for the first time the soldiers turned and saw him. The other Doctor was silently laughing.

Her Doctor reached into his coat pocket and pulled out something that looked like a wallet. Martha knew it to be his psychic paper. "Ministry of her Majesty," he said. "I mean His Majesty of course," he amended. "I'm here to ensure that no undo harm comes to the natives of this land, this new world, as my colleague has said." He eyed the other Doctor, who nodded. "I'll thank you to release him and allow him to show his credentials as well."

The man in purple looked at the psychic paper. "Huh," he said. "It seems he's telling the truth." He looked over at the two soldiers guarding the other Doctor. "Let him go," he said. "Take a look at his credentials just to make sure."

The Doctor took out his psychic paper and let the guards look at it closely. "It's okay, sir," said the man who had apparently brought the Doctor here. "It's legitimate."

"Thank you," said the Doctor. "And thank you again for pulling me out of that unfortunate incident with the Native Amer... er, native peoples. I'm sure your two peoples will get along famously from here on out, once you've sorted out your differences." He looked at Martha and shook his head slightly so that only she could see.

"And what gives you the idea that we will allow them to continue living here?" asked the man in purple. "They have attacked us over and over ever since we got here."

"You're an invading army!" said the spiky-haired Doctor. "I know all about what happens when an unknown army invades a place that people already have a claim to. What exactly did you expect to happen?"

The man in purple frowned. "Who exactly are you?" he asked.

"I'm the Doctor," said the Doctor. "And just to get it out of the way, so is he," he added pointing at the Doctor with the bow tie. "The real question is, who exactly are you?"

The man in purple pulled himself up importantly. "My name is Ratcliffe," he said. "I am in charge of this expedition, and I will not allow my men to be slaughtered by people who are not people at all!"

The two Doctors looked at each other and nodded. "Then I'm afraid," said Spiky.

"That we will have to force you to sit down with each other," continued Bow Tie.

"And have a meal together." finished Spiky.

The man who called himself Ratcliffe furrowed his brow and narrowed his eyes. "You'll force us to what?"

"You heard us," said the Doctor. "You'll sit down and have a meal with each other, and discuss what each of you is thankful for. You will go on a hunt together and find turkey to bring back to the table, and you will have corn and cranberries."

"And you're going to enjoy it so much, it will be a tradition in what will be this country for centuries and millennia to come," said the other Doctor.

Ratcliffe's eyes narrowed further. "What makes you think we'll listen to you?" he said slowly.

The Doctors showed him their psychic paper again. "If you don't, we will have to report you to His Majesty," said Spiky. "And he will have you called back and reprimanded for disobeying a sacred decree from His Majesty."

Ratcliffe sighed. "Fine, then," he said. "You're just lucky that I like turkey." He nodded to his soldiers, and they all left the tent.

The Doctors and Martha were left alone in it. "Let's go," said the Doctor, and they all went back to the TARDIS.

"Well done, you two," said Martha once they were back in the box. "You just helped bring two peoples together, and potentially saved countless lives in the process."

Spiky shrugged. "We can't say that for sure, but we at the very least influenced one man to be more peaceful," he said. "Now let's get me back to my Martha, and get you two back to where you came from. And apparently to where I'm going."

They took Spiky back to London, where he gave Martha a hug and slapped Bow Tie on the shoulder before running out the door, big brown coat flapping behind him.

"I do miss being him from time to time," said the Doctor, smiling.

BEEP BEEP went the TARDIS.

"Incoming message from Sean," said the Doctor, glancing at the monitor. "Let's see what he wants."