(Disclaimer: All of Doctor Who belongs to ever awesome BBC; I just play with the characters every once in a while.)
1.
It was a bit chilly in the TARDIS he supposed, well, for a human anyway. Rose had never complained about the heating in there…or then again had she? He found that the longer he went about on his own, the further away he was from those moments with Rose, the more he seemed to lose track of the little things. The everyday moments shared over tea, the way she stuck her tongue out between her teeth when she was feeling playful, the way she'd always been a little too eager and a little too naïve to understand the dangers that lurked outside the doors of TARDIS each time the old ship made her ungainly descent from the vortex…and how all of these things had made him care for her even more.
And now, here was this girl – this girl placed somewhere just a bit further up the path from Rose but still miles away from reaching her full potential, from finding her stride and strolling in and grasping her full-fledged adult status – and all he could think of to say was "you're not replacing her."
"Never said I was," she'd replied, with a glint in her eyes that clearly bespoke of her desire to find her own place, her own special space in the dimensionally-transcendent ship of wonders.
"Good," he'd said. For once he didn't want to plug the hole or fill the void with something new. He just wanted to... to get on with it.
"Welcome aboard, Miss Jones!" he'd said, flashing that manic grin that he knew could no longer fool Rose, but that might buy him some time to get himself together before this young woman in front of him bored into him with her eyes and made her diagnosis, leaving him open & unraveled yet again.
"My pleasure, Mr. Smith!"
He took her hand enthusiastically and noticed how different it felt in his, how she struggled to stay upright as the TARDIS buckled and grunted, and spun her way through the Time Vortex, propelling them towards their intended destination. He saw the look in her eyes, of desire (the same desire he'd played upon on the moon and again at the entrance to the alleyway) as he slid around a corner and employed the experience of 900 years in the subtle art of seduction and of yearning (not to escape her life as Rose had wanted), but to learn all there was to know about the universe around her, about him.
Part of him feared the kind of intimacy that such an understanding would engender, while part of him yearned to lead her by the hand and literally drown her in the expanses between the stars.
There she was: young and eager and willing to dive head first into his world, one of which she'd had no clue.
"Can we visit your planet?" she'd asked, and the pain had stung him more than he could have expected. The pangs of loss unending.
So instead he'd pretended, made believe that all was as it should be through a trip both into her past and then again into her future. He pretended so much that he almost forgot that it wasn't a diminutive blonde, with her tongue pressed against her teeth and her hands planted firmly on her hips, daring him to stand still for just a moment to catch his breath before they once again linked arms and continued on, making their way across the stars.
"You talk and talk, but you never say anything," the voice in the alleyway said.
Slowly the image before him had changed melting away from a dusky metallic to the golden burnished hues of the earth, the earth he loved so dearly, that welcomed him so many times with open arms and had given him the best, the most brilliant companions one could ask for. Solid, unchanging, grounded, secure. This is what she was to him; so like the one who had come before her, and yet different in every way that mattered.
And so for her, the one with whom life had always been an adventure – never slowing, never stopping, always moving forward — he pulled back the curtains and revealed just a glimpse of the man he had been and raised his eyes to the sky, as if the stars themselves could carry his requiem for Gallifrey across the void and into her heart.
All of this while the woman before him leaned in with tears glazing her eyes and imagined these words were being spoken for her.
2.
It was nothing really, just a pit stop in between larger and more complex adventures, and more dastardly villains (if they were actually villains at all because as the Doctor had tried to get Martha to understand time and time again, there was "nothing, absolutely nothing, humorous about slipping pears into an apple pie." Never mind that all the apples on Newton's tree had mysteriously become diseased – well by 'diseased' he meant grown arms and legs and eyes "eyes, Martha!" he'd shouted – and chased after them with a bloodthirsty zeal. There was nothing, nothing, worse than taking a bite of apple pie and instead being forced to swallow down PEAR) that Martha has sat there and told the Doctor about her life back home as he tried to recalibrate something or other that had somehow gone a bit wonky beneath the TARDIS console.
Never mind that there was absolutely nothing odd or off about the TARDIS and that the Doctor just hadn't wanted to be alone.
After all of that business with that Lazarus Experiment and the ensuing chase and near devouring of his companion, he found it didn't bother him nearly as much as he'd thought it would to hear Martha Jones natter on about all things domestic and educational and mundane.
He had to admit that while he didn't enjoy being the target of slap-happy mothers worldwide, he did enjoy the fruit of their labours.
"And then I said to Tish: well there's just no way that I could ever go for a bloke like that, fancy car or not…Doctor? Doctor??"
"Hm?" he said as he peeked out from beneath his cubby under the console.
"Doctor…am I boring you? I'm boring you aren't I? Talking your ear off with all of this…domestic fiddle faddle—"
"Martha Jones! Did you just use the term fiddle faddle?" the Doctor exclaimed as he popped up just enough to give her the perfect vantage point of his perfectly quirked eyebrow.
"Well, yeah. S'pose I did. Why? Do you have something against 'fiddle-faddle'?"
"Me?" the Doctor said as he climbed up from the workspace beneath the console. "Oh, not at all. In fact, there is a planet in the Zerborus system that is renowned for having the best Fiddle Faddle for light years around. Fancy a trip?"
Martha could only laugh at how quickly the Doctor's mind ran from one thing to another.
"Sure," she snorted. "Galactically renowned popcorn sounds great."
"Oh! But Doctor, before I forget, do you have a laundry aboard this thing?"
"First off, Martha, it's a she not a thing, and do I have a what??"
"A laundry? You know: a washer and dryer? Because I don't know about you Time Lords, but us humans like to wash our clothes on a semi-regular basis—"
This time it was the Doctor's turn to stifle a laugh (which instead came out as more of a rather unattractive snort) as he thought of Martha's array of knickers set out to dry in the living room of her flat.
"—and unless you want me popping home to my mum every few weeks to ask her to launder my knickers then…"
The Doctor stood stock still at the console, his hand hovering above the Gravitic Anomalyser. His eyes had that far-off look that Martha generally associated with one of three things: Rose, Gallifrey, or that someone else from his past that he mentioned once in passing (was it Roxanna? Rosanna? No Martha was fairly certain he'd said 'Romana'). Judging from the way he stood there, looking not at her, but through her, she was pretty sure that his mind had not drifted to lost planets and even longer lost friends. The way he looked right past her as if, not that she was quite invisible, but more so that he couldn't will his eyes to actually fall upon her, that look was pure "Rose."
"Doctor?" Martha said hesitantly.
And as easily as his mind had slipped away to somewhere that she knew held no space for Martha Jones, it came back.
The Doctor, for his part, just grinned at her and continued his intricate dance of piloting the TARDIS as if nothing at all had just transpired. He knew that he could never tell her where his thoughts had gone just then as much as he knew that Martha would never ask.
It wasn't her fault that Rose had insisted that they stop back home every few months so that she could have her clothes laundered properly by Jackie. No more than it was Martha's fault that hearing her talk of family and home had brought to mind lazy days fine tuning the TARDIS to the sound of Rose's cockney glib running on about Jackie, and Mickey, and Shireen, and that bloke from down the way that Shireen had been taking up with, and Mickey's new gig at an auto shop in town, or that new bloke down at the market that her mum fancied so much and how glad she was to be travelling with the Doctor instead of sticking at home for all of that.
Tish or Shireen.
Leo or Mickey.
Jackie or Francine.
In his mind, it was all one.
"So then! Fiddle Faddle from the 42nd Century. Try saying that five times fast!"
His smile was manic, his movements even more so. It was as if he believed that the grace of inertia would somehow keep his eyes from envisioning the rich brown eyes that were not there, and would stop him from looking into the sad brown eyes which were.
"Yeah…" Martha said as she settled back into the jump seat. "Fiddle Faddle from the future. Sounds…fantastic."
Martha never would acknowledge it (were you to ask), but even as the Time Rotor slowed and he ran down the ramp of the TARDIS, prepared for yet another (if more tame) adventure, his eyes still slid past and never found her own, afraid of what he wouldn't see as much as what she would.
In retrospect, he supposed that it was only fitting that he had somehow completely missed the Zerborus system and instead managed to land the TARDIS in the oddly barren apple orchards of Sir Isaac Newton.
Villainous things, those pears.
3.
"Aww! We're in the Torajii system; lovely! You're a long way from home, Martha. Half a universe away."
"Yeah. Feels it."
And isn't that always how it starts? With innocent banter and fleeting looks and oh – did she have to be so bloody brilliant?
_________________________________________________________
The Doctor wiped his brow and rubbed his dry fingertips together before his eyes. It had been 7 hours, 19 minutes, and 37 seconds since Martha Jones had saved him from being consumed by a living sun.
He had been so scared in those minutes aboard the Pentallian. Never before had he felt so out of control, so scared of what he might become. The thought had flickered across his mind that some way, some how, this living sun would not only manage to kill him, but would also survive within him, survive the regeneration process and meld into a kind of symbiote, feeding off his life energy as it used him to destroy everything around it. And that, simply wouldn't do.
He tried to explain regeneration to Martha, to get her to understand before it was too late exactly what he needed her to do in the event that it all went wrong.
But of course, that hadn't happened.
He was still here, still very much himself, in a body he had grown to be rather fond of. And Martha was there, as she always was, by his side, taking in the sights of the universe (when she wasn't saving his life that is).
Sighing, he turned and walked down the ramp out of the Control Room and towards the bowels of his beloved ship. He ran the back of his hand over his forehead. His temperature was still a few degrees above normal, but he supposed that was to be expected when one was inhabited by the essence of a live sun.
'The Oncoming Storm nearly defeated by a living sun,' he mused as he walked along.
How appropriate would that be?
He turned a corner and walked down another pathway, not quite sure of where he was headed, but reasonably sure that the TARDIS would somehow direct him to exactly where he needed to go. It had been ages since he had taken a proper stroll through the halls of the TARDIS. Every since the Time War, he found that he preferred to spend as little time as possible in any area of the TARDIS other than the Control Room. Showers and suit changes aside, he generally spent most of his time around the console, entering random coordinates and trying to forget every place he'd ever been before and everyone who'd been at his side.
And even now, when he had someone by his side that he – in another incarnation –would have loved to show all the wonders of the most wonderful ship in all the cosmos to, he found that he would most rather spend his time running from real & imagined dangers, or those which arose simply because he'd poked his nose in where it really & truly just didn't belong or (more likely) been just a tad too rude.
Rude and not ginger. That was him all right.
He rounded another corner and found himself face to face with the one room in the entirety of the ship that he did his best never to find and never to enter. He ran one hand over the Gallifreyan symbols carved into the door, and slipped his other down to the antique door handle. Taking a deep breath, he stepped inside.
Everything looked and smelt and felt exactly the same as it had on that fateful morning when they'd stopped over at her mum's to drop off the rest of her washing. Her clothes were still strewn across the bed in a haphazard manner; her makeup still sat out on the varnished top of the vanity facing her bed. Her scent still lingered in the room, as if she had just given herself a quick spritz and run out to the Control Room to join him for their next adventure.
A year had passed for him, relatively speaking, and he'd put neither hide nor hair inside of this room. He'd always imagined it would be too painful to see it, to be here, to imagine what it had been like before, when she'd laid there across her bed, reading her fashion magazines, and attempted to make the pieces in her wardrobe match the much more pricey ensembles pictured in the magazines.
Inevitably he'd make fun of her for being so interested in something as silly as clothes, and she would stick her tongue between her teeth and point out that there was an entire wardrobe in the closet with clothes from every era and planet imaginable, so he must be a bit of a fashion whore himself. Then they'd laugh, and he would flop down beside her on the bed and tell her some story of some planet somewhere that he may or may not have visited where even the wardrobes of Madonna and Victoria Beckham would be put to shame.
And she'd ask him to take her there. And he would say that he would. But instead, they would end up on some planet in the exact opposite direction where there would be precious little time for fashion, and lots more time spent running for one's life.
Though she teased him mercilessly about it, he was sure that she liked that bit the best.
The Doctor ran his hands over the discarded outfit on the bed: denim jacket, blue trousers, yellow top, and matching yellow earrings. He couldn't imagine her in these clothes. He'd always remember her in those black trousers and blue sweater.
He sat for a while, allowing himself for the first time in a very long time to run through the good times in his head, the times when they weren't being chased or hunted or dodging intergalactic weaponry. The times when they simply strolled down the streets of some alien faire hand in hand, and smiled at one another, content to simply "be."
The bed groaned a little when his legs finally decided that it was time to go. He turned around, looking at every corner of the room, memorizing every detail, even that smell. And then, he walked across to the nightstand, and turned out the light, walking out of the room in complete darkness. He shut the door behind him, and made his way further down the hall without looking back.
___________________________________________________________
"Martha! Where are you?"
"It's alright, I'm here! Just stay with me now."
The heat of the sun was so strong inside him that he realized that whatever control he thought he possessed was nothing in the face of an adversary such as this. All it wanted was to kill them all, Martha included; to kill anything and everything that got in its way. That sun was very much alive, and was incinerating each and every defense mechanism he'd established over his 900 years of life.
"I'm scared. I'm so scared…"
The last time he'd been strapped into a space suit and thrust into the unknown, he had almost unleashed something so evil, and so lethal that he couldn't even bear to acknowledge its existence until it had nearly been too late. And he'd almost lost everything because of it.
(Really, though, Doctor. Who are you?
Oh... the stuff of legends.)
But then again, even legends can die.
He thrashed and twisted and turned about on the bench in the stasis chamber, fighting with every inch of his being against the unrelenting wave of heat threatening to burn through him, mind and body. He needed to tell her, needed her to know. It couldn't be like the last time on that space station in 200,000 A.D. He didn't want Martha to have to work through the shock and the feelings of mistrust when he suddenly turned into a different man right before her eyes.
Rose had watched his Ninth self turn into a man she didn't know right before her eyes, even if that man turned out to be one she loved with fierce abandon.
A small part of him thought that maybe…maybe if this consciousness did break through every last defense he could muster and forced him to regenerate right then and there, then maybe things would turn out for Martha Jones much the same.
But was that what she wanted? What he wanted?
He felt the sun whispering in his mind, telling him to let go, to burn with it, to be a part of something larger than himself once more. And then he heard the soft voice of Martha Jones in his ear.
"That's enough! I've got you."
And he found that he wasn't ready to let go of this life just yet. Not as long as he had someone to hold onto, even if it was just a memory.
________________________________________________________
Right then left. One foot in front of another, a mental nudge from the TARDIS to turn this way, and then that.
And then, he was there.
He looked up and saw the Gallifreyan symbol carved above the door. It had been easy for the TARDIS to simply put the Gallifreyan word for 'Rose' above the door of his last companion. She'd known so little about her when he'd invited her on board that it had seemed the right thing to do.
But for Martha, a name which had no equivalency in his mother tongue, she had chosen to put a tattoo of something else upon her skin. He reached up and traced each letter of the word, making the guttural sounds of his mother tongue with each sweep of his fingers.
"Healer."
So simple, and yet so true. Martha Jones had been born a healer, grown up a healer, and was now ready to unleash her healing powers upon the universe, starting with him…if only he would let her.
That ache in his hearts that he always felt whenever his mind drifted to the adventures that he and Rose had had together, of the life that they'd shared, seemed to hurt a little less with each passing day.
He dropped his hand back to his side, and turned away from her bedroom door. He wasn't completely sure that he was ready to be 'healed' just yet.
4.
John Smith was not the Doctor.
He looked like the Doctor, walked like the Doctor, and sometimes – sometimes – if she squinted he even smelled like the Doctor. Something like a cross between peppermint and cinnamon but with an underlying layer of something else she couldn't quite put her finger on.
John Smith usually smelled like harsh soap and dusty books and chalk. He was, after all, not the Doctor.
But Martha respected and revered him as if he were, if only for the man she knew to be hiding inside of him.
____________________________________________________
Professor John Smith was well liked by his colleagues (especially the school nurse), and generally respected by his pupils. He was not one to raise a ruckus or cause a fuss. He stuck to the line and fervently preached to the boys about their duty to Queen and country, to the society that their fathers had helped to build.
But each night, in his dreams, he became someone else.
A rabble rouser, a misfit, a rogue of this most salacious type.
And he loved every moment of it.
He dreamt of other planets, of points in time that had not yet come to pass, of the next year to follow and the horrors that it would bring, casting a shadow across the world. He dreamt of a planet with orange skies and trees sprouting silver leaves, of a great Citadel and of a Prydonian academy ('was there even such a place?' he'd often asked himself) where he had studied the ways of his people along with the man who would become alternately his greatest ally and his greatest foe.
The dreams were so vivid, so real, he felt as if they must have been the product of an extraordinary life. Yet, they all existed within his head. And when he tried, upon waking, to reach out and grasp at the strands of his nocturnal existence, they fled away from him like petals on the wind.
Most upsetting of these dreams, were the adventures he had with his dutiful maid, Martha Jones. Together they'd traversed the expanses of time, travelled to planets named after days of the week, fought against talking super-machines who'd been made into gods by their creators, and even saved a town from the horrors of All Hallows Eve come to life.
Smith & Jones. Together, they were an unbeatable team.
He often found himself smiling as he woke, thinking of some amazing thing that the Martha of his dreams had done, or some witty thing she had said. He found that in his dreams, the hurt that had come with the loss of his dearest Rose had somehow lessened over the time he'd spent in the company of his maid-turned-medical doctor. The hole in his hearts (yes, he definitely had two hearts in these nocturnal excursions) had begun to heal and was slowly being replaced with something that felt not at all unlike love.
It was there that his dreams became more and more…flavorful, with the nature of his relationship with Martha morphing into something much less platonic and most definitely more amorous. Hugs became tighter, looks lingered longer, and thoughts tended to drift more frequently to thoughts of what certain portions of her anatomy would look like were she to shed some of the articles of clothing which were, in his most studied opinion, far too revealing for someone of her age and station.
Funny, that in his dreams he had the utmost respect for her, viewed her more as an equal than an inferior. He found that these thoughts tended to drift into his waking hours. Often he would find himself conversing with her over his morning tea about the news of the day, the state of the Empire, whatever he could think of to keep her there talking with him, smiling at him.
Seeing her was quickly becoming the highlight of each day, although he dared not allow anyone else to notice this. Even in his dreams there was always the sense that he could not simply let go, and take her in his arms as he longed to do.
Although for the life of him, he couldn't say why.
There were no social restrictions where he was from, no insensitive sods ruling the land who would forbid such a union to ever take place. It was only one word that stopped him, each time he desired to move further than they'd gone before, to take their relationship to something beyond awkward hugs and lingering looks.
"Rose."
________________________________________________________
"What was that sir?"
John Smith looked up from his journal of impossible things, and saw his faithful companion – no faithful maid, Martha Jones, looking at him with a cross between abject horror and sorrow in her deep brown eyes.
"Oh! Oh, nothing Miss Jones. Just a name. There's this young woman, a certain Rose Tyler if I'm not mistaken, who keeps popping up in my dreams."
Martha froze in the act of reaching for the breakfast tray she'd placed upon the table when entering the room.
"Really, sir?"
"Indeed, Martha. And in these dreams, this Doctor, that madman that I told you about, seems to be quite taken with her."
It was all that Martha could do to keep her hands from shaking and the tears, that were always threatening to fall after weeks of frustration and ill-treatment, at bay.
"Is that so, sir? Well, then I'm sure she must have been quite fetching, sir. This girl, in your dreams."
John Smith closed the journal that was upon his desk and looked at Martha. She looked the same as the Martha Jones in his dreams, although she most certainly dressed in less scandalous attire. She had the same quick wit, and affectionate smile that his alter ego so prized about the young doctor with whom he travelled.
And yet, there was something there, in her eyes. A secret lurking in their depths that only she knew. He wished he could devise a way or a reason for broaching the subject with her, but something always held him back. Told him it was not yet the time.
"Ah, yes. Indeed, she was. But it seems that this daredevil has lost her somehow, and has instead decided to continue his travels…with a new companion. In fact, Miss Jones, this new companion in my dreams bears an extraordinary resemblance to you."
Martha cracked a smile that she did not feel. "A teacher and a house maid, sir? That's impossible."
John Smith followed her with his eyes as she walked about his room, tidying items that hardly needed to be tidied and cleaning surfaces that had not a speck of dust on them.
"Hardly for a man from another world," he said as his eyes followed her flittering frame.
Martha stood at the mantle with her back turned to him. He did not see the small sigh that escaped her lips. 'If only that were true,' she thought.
Aloud she replied "Will you be needing anything else this evening, sir?"
John Smith thought that there was so much more he needed. Answers for one. A clear story of how she had come to be in his family's employ was another. And the key to the riddle which was this 'Doctor' who hijacked his dreams every evening with scenes of the adventures he could never have, and of a woman that only he – a man from another world – could ever be allowed to care for, or even love.
"No, no, Martha. That will be quite good." And as an added thought "thank you."
Martha flinched a bit at those words, remembering the recording she watched every time she visited the TARDIS, of the man she loved giving her instructions on how to care for each part of him, except for his heart. She turned to John Smith, and curtsied before leaving the room.
This would definitely be a night where she would welcome the warm mental embrace of the TARDIS, as they both grieved for the absence of the man they loved.
________________________________________________________________
John Smith picked up his journal of impossible things and turned to the page he was on last. There, looking back at him, were the earnest eyes and warm smile of Martha Jones, medical student, and companion to the Doctor.
He traced over the lines of her face with his finger tips, smudging the charcoal edges of the drawing. He thought of the events to come that night, of the village dance with Nurse Redfern, and of the girl in his dreams whom the Doctor lost so abruptly to the void of another world. He thought of Martha, who was there when he needed her to pick up the pieces.
Her eyes were so eager, he realized, with a desire to be loved by him – by the Doctor.
But this was not the world of lost princes and impossible things. This was Farringham, England in 1913. And such things simply were not allowed.
Slowly he tore the page from his journal, with a feeling as if he were ripping out his own heart. He rose from his chair and crossed to the hearth on the opposite side of the room. He took one more look at the rendering of Martha Jones, before letting the page slip from his fingers, down into the flames.
It was best he got ready for the dance that evening, and put away all of these foolish thoughts of travelling to the stars with a young woman who he, as an English gentleman, should never desire (no matter how piercing the urges grew within him).
For after all, even in his dreams, this Doctor that his sleeping world made him out to be, did not act on his desires either. The Doctor had Rose, and he had Joan. Nowhere in that equation was there room for Martha Jones, regardless of what his hearts told him.
5.
It had all happened so fast. One moment, there he was, chasing down an unusual power source in the grounds of Wester Drumlins, and the next, he was catching Martha as she landed quite unceremoniously on top of him in a back alley sometime in 1969.
He really should have asked Sally Sparrow which of them had landed first in 1969. Little details could turn out to be quite important later on.
In fact, ever since he'd got that amazing purple folder from Sally Sparrow back in 2007, he'd been slowly but surely working his way toward this time that they would end up stuck in 1969. Martha had asked him several times what was in the folder that the girl from the shop had given him, but he would never reveal what it said other than to say that at some point they would get trapped in the 60s and this folder told them what they needed to do then, but in order not to muck things up he couldn't look at it until then. After all, "it could cause a great gaping hole in the universe if I look at the contents of this folder before its time. You know, paradox and all that."
Martha had just smiled bemusedly at him, shook her head, and gone back to whatever it was that she did in the TARDIS while he banged on various bits and bobs in the Control Room.
________________________________________
The Doctor took out the folder and looked through its contents again to be sure that he had the date correct. Well, really he couldn't be sure about the exact date that he and Martha were to land in 1969. As Sally Sparrow had neglected to include it in her notes, he figured he would just have to pick a time and go from there. Preferably some time warm and less wet. Although picking a time when it would be warm and less wet in London was like picking a winning lottery ticket without the help of a time machine.
He'd wait each night, until their adventure for the day was over, and Martha was safely tucked away in her room (or barring that, safely tucked away in her cot in the prison cell they were currently sharing for some crime he'd been accused of committing six regenerations ago), and he'd leaf through the folder in search of clues, information about what they did in 1969, where they stayed, and how long they were there. And then he'd add his own little notes to what Sally had passed along. Things like 'I bet UNIT would have tons of spare parts lying around for the timey-wimey device' or 'make sure to line pockets with watches and jewellery for pawning' or 'look up Barbara & Ian' or 'find miniskirts in TARDIS wardrobe and hang on rack for Martha' or 'make sure to have a spare banana in your pocket' along with 'make sure to wear the brown suit – it's got bigger pockets!'
It had taken him about two months since Farringham (relatively speaking) to work everything out on how he would trap himself and Martha in 1969. Unfortunately for him, as with most of his plans, it all went to rot because of some silliness that someone, somewhere was involved in. In this case, it was an unexplained power surge coming from the grounds of Wester Drumlins.
___________________________________________________
"Wester Drumlins? You mean that old estate outside of the city? Are you sure about this, Doctor?"
The Doctor had put on his glasses and was staring intently at the monitor attached to the console.
"Yep," he said popping the 'p' a bit more than was strictly necessary. "Very unusual surge of power showing up on the TARDIS scanners, and it seems to be coming from right about there."
He pointed to a spot on the monitor that Martha could only assume was Wester Drumlins based on the blinking blip on the screen.
Martha sighed and leaned back against the jump seat.
"So I suppose there's no chance of taking the TARDIS to some relaxing spa planet somewhere or some-when, where's there's no foes to be fought and no strange bleeping on the TARDIS monitor from a very unusual power source?"
The Doctor turned to her and grinned like the cat who'd got the cream.
"Are you telling me, Miss Jones, that you've tired of being chased across the stars by various forms of alien life, and then running back in the TARDIS and making a very speedy, and often ungainly, getaway?"
Martha grinned back at the Doctor.
"That I am, Mister Smith!"
The Doctor ran his hands through his perpetually untidy hair and made as though he was weighing his various options.
"Wellll…how about we just go and take a quick, really, really, really quick look at whatever is causing this little blip? And once we've figured it out, we can jump right back into the TARDIS and head for this amazing spa planet I read about once in a travel brochure. Think it's called something like…Midnight…"
He turned around and looked at her with those same puppy dog eyes he used whenever he wanted something from someone that he might not actually, really and truly be entitled to. Like a little boy asking for another bowl of ice cream.
But mostly he used it because he knew that she couldn't resist.
"Oh alright, Doctor! Don't give me that look. Fine. Wester Drumlins, and then Midnight."
The Doctor lunged forward and wrapped Martha in quite possibly his most enthusiastic hug to date.
"Oh, Martha Jones! I like you."
And with that (and a few rattles and bumps later), they landed on the grounds at Wester Drumlins, with the Doctor spending the entire trip attempting to sell Martha on the many novelties of a genuine 1960s miniskirt (to no avail).
________________________________________________________
It had been late afternoon, when they'd landed. The Doctor took off running down the ramp at full tilt, eager to find out what exactly was causing such a large surge of vortex energy at an abandoned mansion somewhere outside London.
He'd run out the door, Sonic Screwdriver in hand, and swung his body this way and that, trying to pick up on the source of the signal.
Martha had run down the ramp behind him, although it was a touch harder in her skirt and boots. The Doctor had promised her that right after this excursion, they were headed to a glorious pleasure planet made of diamonds (or something like that), and she had wanted to make sure that she dressed the part. After all, he'd said something about there being a 60s revival going on there. Or was it a 60s themed planet?
Martha couldn't quite remember.
Besides, all this business at Wester Drumlins really shouldn't take that long for the Doctor to sort out. That is, unless something went horribly wrong.
"Doctor!" Martha called as she traipsed through the gardens of the deserted mansion. "Doctor! Where are you?"
"Over here!" the Doctor had yelled from the direction of the house. Martha shielded her eyes from the late afternoon sun and looked up into the second story window of the mansion. There stood the Doctor, hair wild and face slightly smudged with dirt. He was half-leaning out of the window frame, using his Sonic to scan the grounds from a higher vantage point.
"Doctor, have you found the cause of the energy surge yet?"
The Doctor continued to scan the grounds, confused at the readings his Sonic was giving off.
"Martha! Do you see anything unusual in the garden? Anything look out of place or, better yet, out of its time?"
Martha scanned the garden, blinking against the late afternoon sun. She turned and smiled back up at the Doctor on the upper floor of the house.
"No, nothing at all unusual unless you count a blue, wooden police box, a medical student standing in a freezing garden in a miniskirt and go-go boots, and a man waving a sonic screwdriver from the second floor of an abandoned mansion!"
The Doctor looked down and smiled at his companion. Perhaps she was right, and there was nothing unusual going on here at all. Well, nothing other than the weeping angel statues that seemed to be arranged in a semi circle around Martha.
He was quite sure that they hadn't been that close to her before.
"So does that mean we get to head over to that big intergalactic party you were raving about earlier?"
"Intergalactic wha—Ah yes! The party, I mean that party. Of course, quite right. Just let me do a few more sweeps of the grounds and then we can go. But Miss Jones? Would you mind terribly doing me a favor?"
Martha looked up at the Doctor, hands on her hips and mischievous grin on her face.
"Sure thing, Mr. Smith. What's the favor?"
"Well…if you don't mind terribly, could you turn around and keep an eye on those angel statues standing directly behind you? And by keep an eye, I mean, at least one eye on all of them at all times. No turning around, and most importantly no blinking. Got that Martha? No Blinking!"
Martha just rolled her eyes at this latest tirade from the Doctor and yelled a dismissive "ok" back in his general direction. She turned around and stared at each of the angel statues.
Had they been that close when they'd landed? Surely they had, only… She was sure that they had not been arranged in a semi-circle around her. And they definitely had not had those expressions on their faces, almost like…monsters.
Martha backed away uneasily from the statues, always making sure to keep at least one eye on them. She wondered if she kept moving, if she would eventually reach the TARDIS. If she did, then maybe, just maybe she could work out a way to get her key into the lock without turning around…
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The Doctor ran down the stairs as far as he could, while searching his pockets frantically for the purple folder from Sally Sparrow. It would appear that today was the day that he and Martha Jones took a brief vacation from their travels in Time & Space to live a life of domesticity in 1969. And if that was the case, he swore to himself that he would do everything he could to make up for the horrible treatment she'd suffered (much of it at his own hand) in 1913.
He pulled the folder out and skimmed over its pages. There was nothing here about the day that he and Martha disappeared other than the fact that they ended up in 1969. He supposed that he would just have to work the rest out for himself.
"Martha!" he yelled as he bolted out of the back door. "Keep watching those angels. Whatever you do, don't take your eyes off them!"
"Yeah, easy for you to say!" Martha yelled back, as she fought the urge to look over her shoulder at the sound of the approaching sound of the Doctor.
She raised her hand to the level of her eyes, in an attempt to shield them from the lowering sun. Her eyes watered at the strain from keeping the lids peeled back for so long. She fought the desire to blink as long as she could, and hoped that the Doctor wasn't far away.
The Doctor for his part was making his way across the lawn, sweeping his Sonic Screwdriver to and fro, trying to determine which statues were dangerous and which statues were, in fact, just statues. He was halfway across the lawn when he saw Martha edging her way along to the TARDIS, key in hand.
The rays of the descending sun had caught her perfectly in their grasp, illuminating her hair and skin. A slight breeze whipped her hair about her face, and the effect was stunning. She looked like the inspiration for a Michelangelo, or a da Vinci, the perfect muse come to life. He stood there on the lawn, staring at Martha, wondering how this beauty could have been before him all this time in the TARDIS, and he'd failed to notice. He stood transfixed by her ethereal glow until the sun lowered and beamed directly into his eyes.
And then, without thinking, he blinked.