A/N: For the first time in 5 years I'm back in my Doctor Who phase, in a big way. Re-watched 42 and this fic came about, inspired by the bits where he's possessed and threatening the humans aboard the ship. I imagined how terrifying it would be to have the Doctor *consciously* trying to kill someone, rather than just being controlled like a zombie or puppet. I don't know how long it'll be, but I do suspect it might get a bit dark.
This first chapter is safe for everyone (and a bit sweet, in my opinion) but after that, if a roguish, morally unencumbered and slightly possessed Doctor isn't your cup of tea – proceed with caution.
1
It was a bolthole in the depths of the library, tucked away from towering shelves and spiralling balconies: buried in the labyrinth of the archive. A place far beyond the classics, miles down from the galactic encyclopaedias, just above the crypt of sentient scrolls. Isolated, even, from the grandiose distraction of the domed skylight that swirled perpetually with space, full of stars and gasses as creation flew by.
It was a private place, curated with the intention of solitude. A place which had dutifully fulfilled that purpose for some seven-hundred years.
Until tonight.
Through baroque doors and around a short, twisty set of stairs, the Doctor's study hid like a well-kept secret in a castle. The grand leather armchairs faced each other, angled before the hologrammatic fireside. A pendent lamp moved gently with the creaking sway of the time machine, filament flickering ever so often, spreading deep warm shadows across the curve of the porous walls.
The room reminded Martha of her grandfather's attic. Cramped and messy and lived-in, packed with broken things and odds and ends: the mismatched, magpie curios of a long and full life. Books reached to the ceiling and beyond, but none of the thousands here were written in English and none of their titles translated for her. Ancient tomes towered and dwindled like mountainous terrain heaped upon the floor, bindings frayed and peeling with age. Great dusty stacks of sacred knowledge were improvised as footrests and coasters and teetering side tables, holding unfinished novels, Post-it notes, faded tea rings.
Unlike the rest of the TARDIS, this secluded little chamber felt personalised. Intimate. It felt like someone's home.
And tonight, unlike so many others, out of it carried laughter.
"It's now or never, Martha Jones." The Doctor leant back in satisfaction, a smug twitch playing at the corner of his lips. Both arms folded across his chest and his eyes fixed squarely on hers. "Your move."
They twinkled with the challenge behind his tortoiseshell specs. Soulful, fathomless, razor-sharp. Brighter than normal in the dim, bronzed glow of the room – like copper in the firelight.
Beautiful, Martha thought. A crushing kind of beautiful that made her breath catch and her soul ache. She was savouring the sight more than ever tonight, because not so long ago, those lovely eyes hadn't been his. They'd been lethal. Otherworldly. Flooded by the white-hot rage of a wrathful sun. Blazing, destroying, to a chorus of his own agonised screams.
Burn with me.
It was how she'd ended up here in the first place: on the heels of a nightmare plagued by those haunting words. Jarred awake, her head full of terror and heat and blistering death, Martha had taken to roaming the TARDIS's empty, glowing corridors in her pyjamas, hoping a good wander would help get her mind off things. After a series of mindless turns and twists she couldn't possibly recall, she came upon an archway which, unlike the rest of the TARDIS's craggy, tunnel-like architecture, was not tightly sealed. The round door was rolled half open, lazily ajar, a dense gloom beyond it spilling shadows onto the light.
And she had long since learnt that open doors in a sentient vessel were never a coincidence.
Even so, in spite of the invitation, it still felt strangely like housebreaking as she tipped into the looming dark. She'd never quite grown used to the feeling of stepping into one world tucked inside another; the transition threw off something innate and hardwired in her brain, built for understanding only three dimensions at a time. In the space of a single step, she transported from the humming warmth of a spaceship corridor into the vast, towering shadow of Victorian library. A place she'd never before seen, never knew existed aboard the TARDIS.
Breathtakingly grand, of course – he did so love to show off. A city of books and gleaming mahogany, ceilings and catwalks spiralling higher than she could fathom. It made her stop in her tracks, grasping the railing and leaning over, just to take in the overwhelming splendour of it all. But despite the kneejerk delight of the medical student within… something about the enormity of the library, the ringing emptiness of it, unnerved her. It was deathly silent inside. Cold in a way that made her feel unwelcome.
It felt like a forgotten place. Not haunted or creepy: just terribly, endlessly alone. Too great of a palace for just one man.
Pushing away the rise of emotion with a little shiver, Martha hugged her arms to her chest. She crept down winding stairs from the balcony she'd entered upon, her breath held so as not to disturb the tomblike hush – wincing as her flipflops flip-flopped louder than she'd like. At the bottom of the stairs there was a great ornate rotunda, a brightly-lit clearing in the forest of books. The heart of the library. She wandered into it, her small footsteps reporting noisily, slapping the polished floor. It appeared to be the only spot in the unfathomably large chamber that wasn't cloaked in layers of dark and dust, and, curious, she craned her neck back with a squint to find the light source. When, seemingly out of thin air:
"Martha."
She spun around, gasping a little, her stomach jolting with butterflies. To her confusion, the aisles immediately behind her were empty.
Then the voice came again. "Up here," it said, and her eyes darted northward.
In his shirtsleeves and reading specs, sitting along the rungs of a ladder with a book splayed in his lap, the Doctor was looking down on her. Converse dangling, head cocked inquisitively, he seemed startled to see her. "You're up early," he'd observed, eyebrow raised as he glanced at a wristwatch he wasn't wearing. "What's the occasion?"
Then he peered over his frames to look down at her properly – and turned solemn in an instant.
"Martha, what's wrong?"
When the tears welled, brimming over in a sudden overflow, Martha couldn't do anything to stop them.
Of course, the Doctor reacted as he was wont, in the face of any kind of emotional outpouring. Alarmed, concerned, uncomfortable. Well-meaning, but ultimately a bit useless. He'd hurriedly dismounted from his perch to receive her, tossing his book aside, taking her by the arms and stooping to look into her eyes: worry flooding off him in waves, gaze flickering over her tensely as though he thought she might've been hurt. "What is it?" he said, brows drawn into a deep, troubled furrow. "What's happened?"
A question so ridiculous only he could've asked it.
And it prompted the misadventure to unfold in her mind, in gutting, rapid-fire bursts. A young medic burned to death in her own infirmary, nothing but a soot stain on the corrugated wall. Erina's last scream, crackling through the comms system. A woman ripped into the vacuum of space, the corpse of her dead husband in her arms – bodies drifting toward a sun in frozen embrace, revolving toward a galactic cremation.
She still saw the Doctor framed in a tiny porthole, silent and dire, imploring her with his eyes as he mouthed over and over again: I'll save you. She still saw him in the stasis chamber. His white, frosted features wracked in agony. Icicles clumped in his eyebrows and hair, webbing across his colourless skin. It was that memory that'd woken in her in such a state, hyperventilating, pouring sweat and tears. His eyelids scrunching tight around the light that razed behind them, body writhing in agony. The feel of her metacarpal bones crushing under the terrified force of his hand clinging to hers. The sound of his voice, gone high and fraught, broken and breathless – admitting to fear, to dread, to not knowing what happened next. His voice, screaming. Cracking, changing… agony giving way to menace.
I could kill you. I could kill you all.
Burn with me, Martha.
"Martha?"
She forcibly regained control of herself. Roughly shaking off the memories, scrubbing her eyes dry with her forearm and a hard sniffle. "It's nothing," she breathed, gulping hard. "Nothing. I'm fine."
The Doctor let her go but made no attempt to look convinced. "Are you sure?"
She gave a brusque nod, swiping at the lingering tears and feeling herself burn with embarrassment. She turned around and, desperate for anything else to focus on, looked back up to the ceiling, attention fixing on the skylight above.
She felt the Doctor looking at her for a moment, studying her profile. For a moment she worried he was going to press the subject. Then he just sighed and followed her gaze upward, sticking his hands in his pockets. They both regarded the dome of the library in quiet for a few seconds.
It was the light source she'd wondered about. A kaleidoscopic dusting of nebulas, suspended in nothingness – the stippled light of long-dead stars inside the deepest, darkest, most ravenous black. To tour the universe was one thing, but to see it laid out like this before her, put into surreal perspective, nearer than ever and yet still so incomprehensibly far…
"It's…" Martha shook her head and expelled a heavy breath in lieu of a sufficient adjective, breaking the silence after awhile. "It's just…"
"Mm." He offered a murmur of agreement, though she hadn't finished the thought. "Beautiful, isn't it?"
"Terrifying," she replied quietly.
"Tom-ay-to, tomato." The Doctor looked down at her. "In my experience it's rare you ever find one without the other."
"Yeah," she almost whispered, her breath hitching a little. And then she pointedly broke his deep, contemplative gaze, re-crossing her arms and licking her lips uneasily. "Erm, I… I didn't know you were still up. Didn't mean to intrude."
"Nah, you haven't," he dismissed easily, batting her concern away. "Course you haven't. Mi casa es tu casa, and all that – library included."
She gave a faint smile, eyes flicking to her feet. "Okay."
"Though all bets are off if I ever catch you dogearing." His head tipped forward and he gave her a rather serious downturned look. "That's grounds for eviction, that is."
Her smile twitched. "I'll remember that." Grateful for the change of subject, she nodded her head at the heavily creased and repeatedly folded-over paperback that he'd tossed on the velvet arm of a nearby wing back chair. "And I see we take tenancy laws very seriously here."
"Hmm?" He followed her line of sight – before raising an eyebrow with good-natured sternness. "As I say, Martha, not as I do."
"Fair enough. Your casa, your rules…"
"My hypocrisy. Exactly," he finished, to her amusement.
She peeked at the title of his book. Then leant closer with a slight frown. "Hang on, is that really what you're reading?"
"What?" he said, piping up a little in automatic offence. He scooped up the tattered paperback as though to protect it from her. "What's wrong with it?"
"Well, it's…" She repressed a little smirk. "I mean. Sort of on the nose, isn't it?"
He shrugged. "Eh. Call it a guilty pleasure. We've all got 'em, there's no shame. Mind you," his head rolled thoughtfully to one side as he thumbed through the pages, "it didn't actually happen this way. I never could have in good conscience just left the Eloi there to be massacred by the Morlock. Our friend Herbert was quite generous with the creative liberties."
Martha stared at him, both fond and exasperated. "You are not the protagonist of The Time Machine."
The Doctor scoffed. "Well, of course not. Haven't you read it? Pure self-insertion. All that indulgent nonsense about Weena – to this day she's still complaining. But then, take repressed Victorian attitudes into the future…"
"You did not travel with H.G. Wells!"
He only gave her that lopsided smile: enigmatic and impish all at once. Then he leant his hip on the arm of the chair, crossing one ankle over the other and his arms in a nonchalant way. He held her eyes through his lenses and said rather kindly, "Was it a nightmare?"
The gentle question made her face drop and her heart skip. But the look in his deep eyes willed her, and she found herself nodding mutely.
"About today," he said. It wasn't a question.
Again, she only nodded, biting her lip – but this time there was heat burning in her eyes, blurring over her vision.
The Doctor regarded her with concern. Then he asked, "Would it help at all to talk about it?"
Two tight, silent sobs wracked her body before she could stop them, tears tracking down the sides of her face. "No." Her voice broke over the word, and she had to draw a quick, brittle inhale to steady herself.
When she failed to say anything more, he searched her eyes intently. "I never would have let anything happen to you, Martha." He was as grave as he was soft. "You know that. There was no chance you were going to die in that pod. Or on that ship."
She shook her head feverishly, and breathed, choked up, before she could stop herself, "But you could have."
He frowned, and blinked a bit; as though this was a new consideration. "Yes," he conceded, after a slight pause. "But… I didn't." Then there was a brilliant, mad grin – like the sun rising after an endless night. "Don't you just love it when that happens?"
Fresh tears rolled hot down her cheeks and wiped the smile right out.
"I couldn't take it," she whispered, her breath starting to come in hiccupping fits. "If something had happened to you today, I just – couldn't."
It was deafening, the real admission in the smallness of her voice. Anyone in the universe, without knowing who they were or what they did, could have picked up on the breathless, emotional undertones of that confession.
The Doctor, historically hard of hearing where her feelings were concerned, did not.
He went for the literal interpretation – promised her that the sun was gone, purged, never coming back. He told her she was safe. He offered her a reassuring smile. A vigorous, stilted, disturbingly fatherly pat on the shoulder (he never seemed to quite know how to touch her, outside of mortal peril).
And in the wake of the shallow comfort, she'd expected him to return to his ladder, or better yet, vacate the area entirely. Abandon the scene of the consolation with haste, and leave her there crying between the shelves.
But he hadn't. For once, he hadn't pretended nothing was wrong. Hadn't vanished into the shadows of God-knows-where and left her to stew in her own turmoil. To his credit – and her endless surprise – he had seemed to sense that she needed more from him this time. That the paper-thin assurance of 'you're safe' wasn't going to cut it tonight.
The hug was engulfing. It was like every other great big Doctor hug she'd ever been on the receiving end of: warm, snug, all elbows and squishing, strictly from the waist up. But rather than heave her off her feet or swing her round, rather than turn it whimsical and hollow – he simply held on, patient and quiet. He didn't shush her, or tell her not to cry, or say that everything was okay when it demonstrably was not. He just put his chin on top of her head and folded her into his chest, squeezing her like he could wring all the sadness out.
For the first time since she'd met him, it felt like he understood what she was going through. Or was trying to, at least. If nothing else, it felt like empathy, after so long of feeling that she was on her own.
More to the point, it stopped her crying, which she supposed was probably his only goal in the end.
After a bit, the Doctor let her go and looked down at himself. His eyes went to his shirt and tie. "Aw," he said, a bit mournfully. "Look, you've got me all soggy."
Martha gave a flinch and started to stammer a blushing apology – but she fell silent in surprise, inhaling sharply when he ran his thumbs under her wet eyes.
Her breath caught in her throat. It felt startlingly tender, and for a moment she couldn't move, couldn't think of anything to say.
Then he smeared a finger under her running nose.
"Doctor!" she spluttered, recoiling with a snort that was more shock than anything.
He grinned maniacally at her reaction. "Ah, that's better! There's that smile."
"You're disgusting," she accused, still laughing despite herself.
"What? It's just mucus, we've all got it. Bit of mucus never hurt anyone! There's entire oceans of it on Altuptrus Prime. Keeps the respiration caves nice and lubricated, whole planet would be lost otherwise." He paused then, looking down at her carefully, seeming to size her up. "I don't suppose you want to go back to bed?" he ventured.
Martha shook her head immediately. She looked around and pointed out, sniffling, "I wouldn't know how to get back from here, anyway."
"Well, that won't do at all."
She blinked. "What won't?"
"Can you walk in those things?" His attention had dropped rather precipitously to her feet.
Warily, she peered down to her own plastic flip flops, hastily donned to avoid the TARDIS's freezing grates. "Why? Are we going somewhere?"
"Oh yes!" It was loud, terrifyingly so, startling her a foot into the air. She grabbed her heart and glared at him. "Into the unknown! Weeelll, the unknown for you, at least. What do you say to a mandatory tour?"
She'd opened her mouth to make the point that there was no sense in asking her what she said if it was mandatory – right as he grabbed her arm and began to drag her down a dark, looming aisle of bookshelves without preamble.
"Don't think I've ever given you one proper," he carried on, hauling her behind him so briskly she tripped over her sandals. "Long overdue, really, I should have showed you round the library ages ago! Can't have you getting lost in the periodicals and starving to death – come on, then, keep up, chop-chop! Allons-y! I'll show you the archives first. Oh, you'll love those, Martha. There's this slide…"
It had led here, in the end. His study. She'd never have known it even existed, had she not happened to notice the dark, grand doors camouflaged inside a bookshelf and wondered, "Where does that go?"
On any other night, he'd have satisfied her curiosity with a casual lie and dragged her away to some different attraction across the library. But perhaps something about their traumatic ordeal on the SS Pentallion had rattled loose a few feelings inside him as well, because he'd just sighed a little fondly and said, "Well, no harm in a peek, I s'pose."
Of course, with her inquisitive nature and his affinity for storytelling, it became more than that. Her delight and amusement over his hoarded collection of trinkets led to an animated recounting of a few of the exciting tales behind their acquisition. The evening found her here, enjoying the rambling lull of his voice, sitting in front of the holographic fire on the lush Persian rug – flip flops off at his insistence, "No shoes, Martha, that rug's older than your civilisation!" – curling her bare toes into the dark, lush reds and blues and golds. Because the Doctor insisted upon conducting himself as though he were English, there was soon tea involved, seemingly conjured out of thin air: an obligatory hot mug pushed into her hands once she'd gotten comfortable. Before too long they were both on the floor, the Doctor on his knees next to her as he rifled through the otherworldly bric-a-brac on the bottom of his shelves and laughed at things he hadn't looked at in centuries.
That was when Martha had spotted the out-of-place Earth board game buried down there, papered in a thousand years of dust. And they'd had a good laugh over that as well.
Then the amusement waned, and as he held the dusted-off Scrabble box in his lap, he'd fixed her with a suddenly expectant look. A pointed, daringly arched brow.
"We can always go best two out of three, if you fancy." The Doctor was smirking openly now, a single self-satisfied eyebrow aloft. "I mean," he drawled, "maybe you are as good as you claim after all. One game's not really a proper sample size, is it?"
She rolled her eyes. "One game's plenty, thanks."
"Oh, ho!" His head tossed back with the laugh. "Someone's cocky, blimey! Now, now, Martha, don't be a sore loser. There's no shame in coming a close second. Let's just wrap this one up with a graceful concession and play another –"
"Oi!" She swatted at his hand before he could disturb their progress. "I'm thinking. Hang on a second, would you?"
"All right, all right. As you wish." The Doctor let go of an indulgent sigh and crossed his legs, settling against the base of the armchair with a lazy smile. "In your own time, Miss Jones."
It felt good, pretending they were normal mates with a normal life and a normal kind of affection for one another. She was well aware she was only being afforded this privilege because of his own internalised guilt – because his recklessness today had made her cry. Because the day's harrowing events had shaken him up as bad as her. She also knew full well that once he was no longer so disturbed, once the guilt waned to manageable levels, he would revert to his old ways of avoidance and deflection, his tried-and-true methods of pretending she didn't exist outside of their usual daytime operating hours.
Still, this was the closest Martha figured she was ever going to get to him truly letting her in. This silly little interlude of play-normality, between two people who were anything but.
Most times, she found her love for him embarrassing. Something to be bottled-up, battered down and repressed at all costs. But other times – rare, quiet times like these – she could appreciate it for what it was. When they weren't wrapped up in insecurity and resentment and shame, she could contain all the feelings he stirred up in her. She could meet his eyes and smile back. She could see the bigger picture, and be grateful in its clarity. Of all the times and places he could be, and all of the people he could be there with, this timeless, ancient, beautiful being… he was choosing to be here. With her.
Maybe that was enough. Maybe it would have to be.
The projected fire brazed in a frothy crackle beside them as she looked down to the flimsy cardboard they'd been squaring off over for half an hour. She pretended to consider her moves with a careful poker-face before glancing back up at him. She could see the fire reflected warmly in his lenses, in the dark of his pupils.
Again, almost unconsciously, she found herself admiring his eyes. Something about them was different in the low, intimate glow of the study. There was a light there she seldom saw. Something gentler, less guarded; nothing like the shuttered, hard-edged coolness she'd grown so used to. They were aglow with mirth, a hint of good-natured sympathy, as he observed her with that patronising amusement on his face. That little crook of his lips, the smirk he couldn't quite seem to suppress.
Condescending git. God, she adored him.
"Nineteen, you said?" Martha asked as she reached for her tray.
He wiggled his eyebrows at her. "Nineteen."
"Right. Got it."
She laid her tiles deliberately, and didn't look up at his customary high-pitched calling card of outrage.
"What?"
The Doctor launched forward onto his knees and almost capsized the entire Scrabble board, and her cuppa, in one go. "What!" he cried a second time, tearing his glasses off and squinting hard at the board. "What kind of rubbish is that?"
Martha bit her lip and failed to repress a tiny giggle as she slid the final letter across the plastic. "Sorry."
"'Asphyxy?' That's not even a word!"
"Yes, it is," she cackled, gleeful, toppling onto her side. "And it's twenty-five points!"
In rising disbelief, he inspected the game board, then lifted his eyes to hers sharply. "Did you cheat?"
She laughed again. "Oh, just admit it! You lost! I beat you!"
He clambered around the board on all fours and ordered harshly, "Sleeves, now."
Still wracked with giggles at the absurdity of it, Martha obediently stuck out her arms to him. He shook one first, then the other. The lilac satin of her pyjamas fluttered.
A handful of wooden squares tumbled to the carpet.
The Doctor was aghast.
"Martha Jones!" he bellowed.
She bust out laughing all over again.
"In my defence," she huffed once she caught her breath long enough to speak coherently, "I didn't even have to use them. You are rotten at Scrabble!"
"I am not!"
"I mean," she pointed at the board with another uncontainable giggle, "what the hell is an ood? Like I said: rotten!"
He didn't lose the severity, nor the betrayal, in his wide-eyed glower. "I can't believe you'd cheat."
"That's rich coming from you, Mister! I saw you putting vowels in your pocket before we started!"
He blinked very fast and spluttered a little, caught off-guard by the accusation. "I did no such thing, thank you!"
"No?" Martha lilted sweetly – and then, in a sudden, agile burst of movement, she lunged at him.
The Doctor recoiled, eyes widening as he reeled back sharply. "What are you doing?" he demanded, voice sliding up an octave. He fell back onto his rear and pushed away across the rug on socked feet as she pursued him. "What are you – stop it!"
She cornered him against the grating of the fireplace with a light clang, eyes bright with teasing menace. "Turn out your pockets."
"What? No!"
"Well, if you haven't got anything to hide…" Martha took the initiative herself, reaching for his trouser pocket and ignoring his creaky "Oi!" of protest. It was snugger than expected, warm with the heat of his leg – but before it could feel awkward, the smuggled handful of tiles were easily recovered.
She put on a look of scandalisation and gave a theatrical gasp. "Oh, for shame."
He glared at her as she tutted in dismay. With snide flourish, Martha pulled the tiles out and tossed them on the rug with her own where they tumbled in a heap of incriminating As and Es. "How do you care to explain this, then, Mister Smith?"
"That was just… insurance, is all!"
She laughed outright. "Insurance for what? To make sure you didn't lose to a lowly human?" She cocked her head with a mock pout, poking out her bottom lip. "How's that working out for you, then?"
"I cannot believe you'd be so underhanded, Martha."
"You were underhanded first!"
"Yes, but I'm allowed to be underhanded! You're not supposed to…"
"What?" She lifted her chin. "Are you really going to 'as I say, not as I do' me?"
He scowled up at her for a moment longer. But eventually the expression softened at the sight of her triumphant delight. "All right, then," he said, with reluctant finality.
"What?"
"Game's yours. You win." He smiled at her lopsidedly. "Very well-played, Martha Jones."
She grinned wide, breath slowing. "Thanks."
"I see I underestimated you."
"Wouldn't be the first time," she chuckled without thinking about it.
His brow furrowed slightly. And then he said in a low, rather pensive tone, "No, I don't suppose it would."
And suddenly Martha became conscious of the unusual proximity between them. It was a strange place to be, in the Doctor's personal space; she'd gotten too close, forgotten herself in the fun. She could smell him, the pomade in his hair and the spice of his aftershave. She could feel the warmth from the faux furnace juxtaposed against his very real body heat, radiating stronger than she'd ever felt.
Looking into his eyes so brazenly, she felt herself flush, hyperaware of the lengthening silence. Her smile started to slip, and as she heard her own heartbeat quicken she feared the Doctor could hear it too. His expression betrayed nothing, entirely undecipherable – his eyes settled unmoving on hers, fixed with a startling concentration. Even in the firelight, suddenly they seemed dark. Startlingly so.
Unbidden, a flush of helpless arousal washed over her.
Martha abruptly drew away. She sat back on her heels, managing an awkward chuckle as she broke his gaze and shyly tucked her hair behind her ears. "Tell you what," she said, clearing her throat. "I suppose I could be amenable to a rematch, but only if you promise—"
And then the Doctor sat forward without warning, gathering her into a hard, crushing kiss.
