2

A million times, a million ways, Martha had imagined this moment.

Never could she have known just how woefully her dreams would pale in comparison.

She gasped so hard she squeaked and clutched at his cuffs, nearly tumbling over – hanging on for dear life as their mouths collided.

The initial force behind the kiss was urgent, almost distraught; but at her muffled exclamation against his lips, the high and wanting "Mmm?" forced out her chest, suddenly it gentled. Suddenly he slowed, as if he'd remembered himself, as if he were cautious of hurting her.

Suddenly there was a mindless, irresistible rhythm come to life between them, lips seeking, grasping softly, compulsively. He held her by the jaw, fingers stroking the hairs at her ears and nape, the soft, wisping curls her flat iron never quite tamed. Tracing the apples of her cheeks with his thumbs, following the ghost of the tears he'd warded off.

It was slow, and delicate, and weepingly tender.

For an impossible time – for a stretch much longer than that three-second, blink-and-you-miss-it ruse on the Moon – the Doctor kissed her.

And Martha let him do it. Had nothing even resembling the willpower to resist.

The intimacy was too much, too frightening. And drowning in it, suffocating in its thrall, it all came back to her: crashing back up like the tide flooding in.

Martha, Martha where are you?

His voice, frantic and choked, ringing in her head.

I'm scared, he'd gasped, squeezing her wrists purple, I'm so scared.

His screaming at the push of a lever, completely unrestrained, all pretence obliterated by total agony. Watching his spacesuited legs thrash and his body convulse as he went through hell by her hand. Digging her nails into her fist so hard blood rose, all to keep herself from ripping every plug out of the chamber, to root herself to the spot, to merely close her eyes tight and think over and over: I love you. I love you. God, please don't let me kill you.

She whimpered, eyes squeezing tight against the sweltering, disorienting memories – but there he was, entirely real, pulling her back up out of them. Drawing her back into the moment, and into him. His lips, unbearably soft. Soft, dry, lukewarm: flavoured by tea and spices she couldn't place, utterly intoxicating to her. His warm scent enveloped her, in a heady haze of closeness, distilled deliciously in the proximity. It rang in her senses, the natural musk that lived on the suede of his coat and wafted in his saunter. Burning hickory, potting soil, patchouli. Fresh-baked bread and dust in sunbeams. The herbs growing in her nan's kitchen window.

He filled her every breath. Her every thought and molecule.

It felt too painful to be a fantasy, too powerful to be a dream.

And if she had loved him before – for what she felt then, in that moment, there were no longer words to suit.

His hands slipped from her face, all the way down, falling heavily to her hips – fingertips bunching the satin with a hushed rustle. His hands, ancient hands, touching her body. Stroking light circles through her pyjamas, sensitising the soft skin, skimming over the silk. Lulling her into a half-drunken stupor with their gentle surety, with the soft hint of suction on her bottom lip.

Martha heard her own voice as though from underwater, breathing an involuntary moan. Without any conscious intent, suddenly she was running her fingers up sideburns, grasping at the back of the hair, nails dragging desperately through the short strands.

Something like a rumble sounded from his throat.

It seemed right then, inescapably, that there was only one place it was going. One way this senseless little collision was going to end.

But then, of course – it didn't.

It threw over them like ice water, dousing the fervour in a flash: a noise bigger than any Martha had ever heard. Thrumming the air violently, booming up her spine like a gong the size of a moon.

She gave a half-cry of shock. They started away from each other in sync – eyes widened to their limit, breaths mingling fast over the crackling of the hologrammatic hearth, the brass-tinged earthquake that had begun to toll around them.

"Whuh," gasped Martha, hands clapping over her ears. The attempt at speech was a categorical failure, and she was forced to try again, mouth hanging open. "What… what the hell is that?"

"Not supposed to happen," muttered the Doctor breathlessly, raking a hand back through his hair. His gaze turned to the ceiling. "It's the Cloister."

She squinted, utterly bewildered – brain struggling to regroup, higher functions scrambling to reengage. "What, like… for monks?"

"Bell," he elaborated in a heavy sigh, looking back to her. "Cloister Bell. Basically, the temporal equivalent of a fire siren."

Her mouth formed a small o. "That sounds… serious."

"Yes, it is." And he stared at her.

In the deep gaze she read intensity, frustration – but most terrifyingly of all, heat. An entirely different sort than the terrors of their day had wrought.

A shiver coiled hard in her spine, an ache so penetrating it pressed her thighs together.

Then the Doctor blinked. His face twitched slightly, like someone had changed his channel.

"Yes," he repeated, rather abruptly, "it is." Then sprung to his feet, so unexpectedly it all but toppled her.

"Wha…"

"C'mon, up you get!" He grabbed her by the wrists and pulled her up to a standing position with, seemingly, no effort whatsoever. "No time to tarry."

It took her a few false starts to get her legs to bear her weight. "Um," she tried, closing her eyes briefly.

"Here."

They opened, to the sight of her plastic flip flops in his grip, extended back to her.

She took them hesitantly, feeling like she was trying to think through treacle. "Erm, Doctor…"

"Might be dangerous."

She paused, frowning. "What?"

"The Cloister Bell," he said. "Usually is dangerous, when that thing goes off – means the TARDIS is innately disturbed by something. You don't have to come along, if you aren't up to it."

"I'm… up to it, I just…"

"Sure?" He peered at her. "Didn't get your normal eight hours."

"Medical student," she reminded him distantly, through a shake of her head. "Sleep deprivation's kind of our thing. But I don't…"

He grinned. "Brilliant," he said, and took her by the hand.

"Doctor…"

He whisked off past the remnants of their fraud-riddled Scrabble match, towing her behind. Barely in her flip-flops, Martha followed at a half-stumble, tripping over books, staring at the back of the pinstripe suit in a kind of dawning bewilderment.

She could taste him on her lips, still. Her body hadn't stopped aching.

Her mind was rebooting with a kind of frazzled, delayed panic.

What the bleeding hell just happened?

"Careful," he said from the doors of the study, sticking his head in to watch her wobble up the curve of stairs, her hands grasping uncertainly at the rugged dunes of coral wall.

When she finally surfaced, and stepped back into the library, he threw the great embossed doors shut behind them.

At the deep, tomblike kerthunk of their close, Martha felt her heart drop right into her gut.

Somehow, she already knew she'd seen her last beyond them.

He led her back through the echoing gloom of the library, through the archives, down the slide, past the apothecary shelves of philosophic inhalants, the heavily-stuffed stretches of loose leaf poetry – the gust of their passing wafting sheets from the shelves.

Back in the starlit rotunda, back underneath the neon variegation of nebulas, the rapid, suctioned flip-flopping came to a sudden halt.

"Doctor."

It was so tense it was nearly strangled, nearly hurled-up; utterly pleading.

Well ahead of her, halfway up the stairwell, he looked sharply over his shoulder, frowning down in question.

She stood planted in the centre of the gleaming atrium. A determined set to her shoulders, directly contradicting the fear in her eyes as she stood there, hands in fists: small, rigid, vulnerable as anything in her shiny-soft pyjamas.

"Why did you kiss me?"

The Cloister Bell tolled, faintly vibrating the room around them, the chairs and books and bodies within.

For a moment, he was unnervingly still. Leaning there over the balustrade, staring down at her steadily, looking so knowing and frightening and insurmountably old that she wished she wouldn't have opened her mouth at all. Felt nothing but small and petulant, standing there under the weight of his even scrutiny.

There was a silence just long enough to unsettle, and the Cloister rang against it, outside of it, dull and deep and baleful. Calamitous, deafening: driving home in every peal the inconsequence of her heartache.

Her inconsequence to him. To the universe.

Peering down from on high, the Doctor tilted his head forward at her, staring meaningfully. Looking down on her in every sense of the phrase.

She felt like wilting, frozen there under the stars: doused in the shame, reeling in the indignation of it. Burned by that mild, half-smiling dispassion. The gentle, condescending reproach of that gaze.

Come now, it lulled, chiding; You know better than that.

That, she heard in echo, snapped so sharp and blunt it stung to the ends of her nerves and back, was a genetic transfer.

He'd had her whole body, every fibre of her being alight with need and tension, melting into desire and euphoria and all-consuming, mad, screaming love…

… and it was the same trap she'd fallen into, all over again.

It means nothing.

"Come along, Martha Jones." He held his hand out over the guardrail, wiggled his fingers in beckoning, cavalier as ever. "We're on call."

Her feet moved as a means to an end. Simply a way to escape his line of sight, to remove herself from the moment.

When she joined him on the stairs, he rather casually snagged her hand in his.

Honestly. Nothing.

Outside in the corridor, he began to pull her left; seemed startled, when she tugged right. "Where're you going?"

"I can't run in these." She lifted a foot by way of explanation. "And I'm in my pyjamas anyway."

"So? Doesn't get more Arthur Dent than that. And it suits you!"

Her smile at the quip was faint, almost withdrawn, barely a flicker of her lips. "Yeah, well. I'll only be a minute."

"Don't dawdle," he warned her, letting go of her hand.

"Do my best," mumbled Martha, turning away down the corridor.

He watched her disappear the way she'd come.


Since that moment, nothing had been the same.

Braced against the console, he stared into the blue-fuzzed reflection of the monitor, feeling numb as he relived it.

It was horrific. It was beautiful.

"It's alive," the Doctor whispered, gaze alight with the inferno.

Hanging on by a thread against the dark of space, he clung white-knuckled to the scorched hull of a cargo ship, transfixed in the open hatch. Somewhere faraway there were voices in his ear, distant speech warbling through the broken static of the intercom in his helmet. Pod remagnetised. Heat shield integrity lost. Airlock deteriorating.

He could no longer hear them past the blood in his ears.

The sun spewed and roiled, a violent blaze on black: a mass of swarming light in the endless cosmic deep. And it was mesmerising. His eyes filled with it, reflected its fury, the flame and vapour and haunting whorls of orange.

For just one paralysing instant – he could feel It staring back.

Two ancient entities regarded one another, as eternity recognised itself and sized its mirror up. The shadow of a man against the blazing eye of a beast.

Two formidable minds. One highly perishable body.

The experience was, without fail, the most violating the Doctor had ever had. Left him in scrabbling, desperate, inconsolable terror. Filled him with gnashing, visceral rage, so much pain and bleeding and hopelessness it made him want to scream.

Resistance, disturbing though it was, had been futile.

Instinctively, he ripped off his helmet: and suddenly the world was spinning, whirling wildly, flattening. He fell hard to his knees, a tortured groan tearing from his throat, crawling blindly across corrugated floor. His eyes twisted shut and he gasped and growled at the pain, foreign thoughts flitting about wildly in his head, muddled and screeching and angry. There was heat blistering his throat, bubbling under his skin, inside his skull, and then – "Get out of my head!" – rushing and smouldering behind his eyelids, desperate to blaze free.

It was like no pain he had ever felt, the compulsion to open his eyes. He shuddered. He boiled. He prayed to die, over and over, willed his body to shut down before he lost control.

The sun ravaged his memories, desecrated every part of him, every close-held belief and intimate weakness. Left no stone unturned – not even his name. Ripping at his autonomy, trying to take hold. Its intent to kill blackening his impulses, turning his gut like a sickness.

He saw a young, rosy-faced woman with short cropped hair – screaming. Her pink skin flaking to ash, skull melting from the teeth out. Saw a curly-headed medic cowering with a clipboard, cornered, terrified: razed to meat and bones as the light hit her, as the heat of a star ground her down, charred the screaming skeleton to soot, scrubs and all.

And what he felt on these horrific memories was worse than anger. Worse than rage or vindication or even sadistic pleasure.

On seeing the murder of innocents, the Doctor felt indifference.

They were not executions, not a revenge-killings nor retributive attacks. In spite of the pain, in spite of the rage: there was no hint of vengeance. No thought of retaliation or punishment.

There was very simple reasoning; an almost childlike calculus.

Humans were simply things. Things causing It immeasurable pain. Things which needed to stop.

The half hour of deathly, full-scale horror – reduced to something as unclimactic, as reflexive and innocuous, as swatting a nit at the sight of a sting.

The creature in his head had never known another species. Had never known emotion, nothing as peculiar as sentiment, not for a billion years; had never been given cause to feel before.

And the onslaught of being inside the Doctor's psyche was so disorienting, so utterly and uniquely upsetting, that It struggled to overtake him. Crippled by death and loss and guilt, by the immeasurable whirlwind of emotion inside its chosen vessel. He had time to stagger to the infirmary, on a last-ditch plan. Time enough, desperate to hang onto something, anything solid, to reach out for Martha in his blistering delirium.

Through her own anguish, she tried to comfort him, tried to be his anchor in the agony.

She'd done, he was now realising, rather too good of a job.

Comfort. To a billion-year-old sentience, which had seen eternity, yet never known the beautiful extreme of living it; it was a jolt. A rush.

A high.

The first feeling It ever felt. Inflicted by this tiny little fleeting thing, holding his hand, promising him she had him, that it would be all right.

In the end, she was right: though by his own admission he had cut it rather fine this time.

The rage churned out of his body, the blinding seethe of his eyes melting back to brown. For a moment, rolled onto his back, he had laid still, panting, feeling the heat leave him. Waiting to feel the presence go with it.

Waiting. And waiting.

"It's gone," he whispered to himself. "It's gone."

It had to be.

And yet, he knew. Knew, right then, something was off.

It began when they shared their joyful, glowing reunion. When she appeared around a corner, saw him standing, blinking, alive – and got a running, squealing start.

Exhilaration, adrenaline, a devastating relief. Flung into his arms, heaved off her feet, she'd attached to him at the neck. He'd been giggling into her ear, giddy with the adrenaline, the simple triumph of being alive. And she held onto him just as tight, laughing just as breathless, every last bit as relieved and joyful.

There had been no discernible voice in his head, no overt awareness of a presence, of anything Else inside of him. Nothing alien, no twinge of evil or malice.

What the Doctor felt was much, much worse.

His only awareness had been of Martha. Not the usual awareness of her fright or her wellbeing, of her pain or remaining stamina – awareness of her person. Of the jasmine-sweet singe of her mechanically-straightened hair, the salty sweat and singular softness of her, wrapped around him in glee. A kind of fringe curiosity, creeping over him. To hear that happy panting go thin and hoarse, to hear those girlish little giggles turn high and strained.

A rather unaccustomed urge to push her bodily into a corrugated wall, bury his face in that otherworldly scent, peel and pry at those painted-on jeans until…

His fist came down on the controls with such force something banged loose, a growl grinding between his teeth. In the console room, steeled by the tolling of the Cloister, the Doctor stared at his own reflection, jaw tight, chest rising and falling angrily.

He'd been left to his devices all night, in some kind of stiff, paralysed denial. Holed up in the library, biting his thumbnails to shreds, so nervous he hadn't read a word.

At any point, it could've taken the reigns. Had a joyride right across the universe. Laid waste to eternity. And yet – nothing. Nada.

Not until Martha had wandered, sniffling, into the picture.

Her tears. The proximity. Bloody Scrabble.

She was there in his mind's eye, golden in the firelight of his study, smiling shyly in those liquid silk pyjamas that hung and slipped on every curve. She was a haze of expensive body wash and pheromones and human: gasping and whimpering as he grabbed her, kissed her, whole body molten and caramel like sugar on a skillet, so unsteady and fizzling and hot. And all at his behest.

Had it not been for the Cloister, the things he could've... would've…

"Stop it."

He gripped the sides of the controls, leaning forward, gaze burning into the light brown eyes staring back.

"You leave her alone," he breathed into them, chillingly grave.

And could've sworn he saw them smile in response.

The footsteps came rattling up the ramp not a moment later.

"What'd I miss?" said Martha, adjusting her headband. Back in street clothes, jeans and a low-slung blue top, she appeared ready for action.

He jumped a little at her sudden manifestation – shoving the monitor away, sending it swivelling wide around the console.

It did not escape her notice. She stopped short and frowned a bit. "You all right?"

"Looks like," he said, backtracking around the console with a clear of his throat, "there's a disturbance in a local timeline. Something strange in the Obscurion system, tangling up a temporal thread. Coincides with a distress signal from a passenger starship in that area. Odds are, that's where we come in."

"Right."

"You ready to go?" He peeked at her exaggeratedly, head sticking around the central column.

With a sigh he could see but not hear, she extended one black boot. "As I'll ever be."

"Brilliant! Well, off we go, then. Locking on…" He tossed some levers and winded a crank furiously.

At the fling of the handbrake, the floor juddered, sending her stumbling against the console.

"Ugh!" she huffed, grasping on, narrowly reclaiming her balance. "Would you please be careful?"

"Oh, you're used to it," he dismissed, batting a hand, darting round the controls. "You know it's a bumpy ride!"

The next jolt was enough to find Martha sprawled on the floor, and the Doctor not far behind her.

Her glare spoke volumes.

"Okay, bit… bumpier than usual. That isn't me," he muttered, clambering back to the controls. "Looks like she's cottoned on, the TARDIS. Knows where we're going, and wants no part of it."

"What, since when does she have an opinion?"

"Since always," the Doctor sing-songed. "Ordinarily she's very polite about it, but when something really gets her on edge…"

The floor jumped again, walls rattling. Still on the floor, Martha was all but shoved airborne, then deposited again on the grating rather harder than before.

"Ow!"

"Whoa, come on," he urged. He stood up on his tiptoes and pressed the flat of his palm to the aqua, churning Time Rotor, splaying his fingers apart and stroking softly. "Easy, easy."

From the floor, grasping her bruised knee, Martha was taken back, unbidden, to the study. To his hands spread apart on her hips, his fingertips ever so gently…

"Come on," he said softly, rubbing the glass column in gentle, soothing circles. "I know it's nasty, I know, you can do it…"

And miraculously, with a grind and a hearty clank, the TARDIS began to vworp; landing not a moment later with a big rattle and solid, reverberant thrum.

The Cloister Bell went silent at last, room still quivering with the force of its ring.

He gave the central column one last tender rub and said warmly, "Attagirl."

Martha swallowed an irrational flush of jealousy. Resenting an appliance was a new low, even for her. She climbed to her feet tentatively and checked for injury.

The Doctor snatched up his coat and spun it on, all in one fantastic movement. He bounded to the doors and put his back against them.

"Ready?" His gaze sought hers.

She consciously avoided it, looking intently at the doors. "Ready," she confirmed, following him up the ramp.

He nudged it open with a thumb and gestured her out first.

It was a mistake.

Because the moment she stepped out, with a flailing kick and a swift-muffled scream – Martha was gone.

The Doctor's hearts stopped.

He shoved out of the TARDIS in mindless reaction, a flare of something red and utterly terrifying loosing in his veins.

But then he found himself stymied.

Martha had stopped kicking. Stopped fighting altogether. In fact, now, even with her back to him, he heard… laughter?

A man's strong arms wrapped around her shoulders, leaving her feet dangling: a sight which did not sit well with him. He set his jaw and plunged his hands in his pockets.

When the arms finally let her down, he found himself eye to eye with her accoster.

Rugged, scruffily bearded and brilliantly blue-eyed; marked now with age, yet somehow as puppy dog as the day they'd met.

Riley Vashti looked at him with tears in his eyes.

"Thank God," he breathed to the Doctor, all but buckled in relief. "You came."