Absolutely nothing like Hollywood made it out to be, possession.
There were no treacherous voices slithering round her thoughts. She did not find herself plagued by any frightening religious imagery or unduly violent impulses. She had no unusual desire to crawl on the ceiling, slam doors, or contort inexplicably at the end of a dim hallway.
From the moment Martha was taken over, all that she was – it simply went quiet.
It was dark, inside her awareness. When the gas was in control, she felt like someone had thrown a weighted blanket over her head. She couldn't see a thing through it; could hear and feel somewhat still, but sounds and sensations felt muffled, dense, like her perception was wrapped in cotton. Like she'd been taken out the driver's seat, stuffed in a duffle bag and thrown in the boot of a car, inside her own mind: quite literally hijacked.
And it was exhausting, to try and make out what was happening beyond the veil; only particularly jarring sensory input filtered through. Everything, actually, about being possessed was exhausting. Even while her body was motionless, her psyche seemed to ache. Just remaining conscious felt like trying to run a marathon with a tire on her back – an intravenous line of sufentanil in her arm, for good measure.
When the veil did lift, it was a jolt to the system. The boot of the car throwing open, sunlight blazing sudden into the darkness – blinding and terrifying, as her captor allowed her a moment of unexpected fresh air.
The first time she was permitted the brief gasp of lucidity, she woke to a dingy, poorly-lit public toilet. Groggily came back around with the taste of gin and Coke on her lips, an unpleasant damp between her legs, and the very dim awareness that she'd been getting – for lack of a less violent descriptor – fucked to high heaven not a second prior.
There were no words in any language she knew to encapsulate the bone-hollowing horror that sluiced through her, upon looking up into the Doctor's wide eyes. Piecing together, like the threads of a looming and particularly ghastly cold case, that he knew what had happened.
He'd followed her.
He'd seen… everything.
And not by candlelight in the TARDIS's sprawling gardens, amidst words of adoration and love, as the pathetic romantic in her loved to shamefully fantasise, her hand buried desperately in her knickers in the middle of the night. No – he'd witnessed her full glory under harsh, flickering florescence, on the dirty, graffitied tiles of some filthy nightclub washroom.
With another man.
In bloody Cardiff.
The revelation was many oscillating shades of life-ruining, and after crying in front of him like a child, snot and all – she had to admit, she'd been rather glad of it when the veil had come heaving back down. The darkness blocked out the monstruous reality she was facing, swathing her back in comforting, low tones of nothingness, where she found herself safe, detached. No longer on the verge of cardiac arrest – nor considering its merits.
In the murk of her own unconscious mind, feeling rather traumatised by it all, she'd sunk into a much-needed sleep: hoping that she'd wake to find it had all been a strange, unsettlingly Freudian nightmare.
Unfortunately, when she was granted lucidity a second time, it was to find that the events of the evening were all too real.
The transition jostled her unexpectedly awake. She nearly crashed into the Perspex wall of what, very alarmingly, appeared to be a prison cell.
But before she could start to panic, the Doctor hit a panel, and the glass barrier shimmered away to thin air, freeing her.
The first thing he'd done, somewhat off-puttingly, was smell her. And he hadn't been coy about it, either. He'd leant in good and close, sniffing rigorously from her neck to armpit – while Martha merely stood there, alarmed, suitably flummoxed by the abrupt, rather disorienting intrusion into her personal space as the Time Lord went full bloodhound.
But evidently he'd found what he was hunting for, as when he finally pulled back, his face had been awash in relief.
"Martha," he'd exhaled. "You're back."
Then he'd graced her with a hug. Tight and warm and proper, his chin knocking softly atop her head as he folded her in close.
Which had been exceptionally nice, if equally puzzling, and she'd rather enjoyed it. Pity, that she had to go and get possessed for him to be demonstrative… but she wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
When he pulled from the hug, grasping her by the arms: he explained everything.
He had been required to do so more than once, as Martha's brain shut down the first three times he tried to tell her his plan.
"You're not serious," she'd reasoned, brows pulling together incredulously, head shaking slow. "I mean, you can't be…"
The Doctor just stared down at her.
She stared back, her heart beginning to skip in her chest. "You're not really suggesting…"
The eyebrow raised in a decidedly red flag sort of manner.
"Doctor, no way," she said.
"Martha, this is the only—"
"No, you're insane if you think I'm going to let that thing kill you! Absorb you! You said it was like a vampire!"
"Martha," he'd repeated, pacifying. "It can't kill me."
This brought her up short. A hint suspicious. "It can't?" she checked, wary. "Because that man in the club…"
"It couldn't deplete me even if it tried. Remember – the man in the club was human. Time Lords, we've got… well. Quite a bit of wiggle room, you might say, in the energy department. The alien inside you, it can only absorb as much as your body – its host – can contain. Which… no offence, but we're talking pennies here. It'd be suicide, to try and absorb all of me. That thing can do its worst and it won't even make a dent in my stores."
She was hesitant.
"Think of it like… I dunno, like…" His gaze flicked upward, tongue curled up behind his front teeth in thought. "Like… like powering a toaster with a jet turbine."
Her brow arched severely.
"Are you calling me a toaster?"
"I'm saying," the Doctor sighed, "that there's no risk to either of us, here. The alien's like a circuit breaker between us. No chance of you taking in too much energy."
"And no chance of you losing too much?"
"To a human body?" He almost smiled. "Martha, I've lost more energy to a sneeze."
She regarded him cautiously, not quite certain if she was convinced. The disturbing spectacle of a man reduced to sand still fresh, vividly horrific, in her short-term memory.
"So, we're…" She frowned rather hard. "We're meant to… I mean, you're going to actually…"
Seeing the extraordinary difficulty she was having with the notion, he sighed again and placed his hands on her shoulders. "Look," he said. "Why don't we meet in the galley in a bit, and… talk it over properly?"
If he were deceiving her, it was a dangerous bid, giving him time to refine the lie.
But she needed the out, for more reasons than one. The first and most pressing of which being that there was a stranger's semen trickling into her ruined knickers, and she could not under any circumstance carry on an extended coherent conversation with the Doctor whilst something so eye-wateringly offensive was going on below.
"I'll see you, then," he said at the doorway – as though worrying she might bolt into the bowels of the time machine and never be found again.
Rightly so, as the notion had most definitely crossed her mind.
"See you," she'd croaked, and flown to her bedroom.
She peeled out of her clothes, stuffed them into the deepest, darkest recesses of her laundry bin, and went about positively baptising herself in the shower. The water was so hot she almost lost skin to the downpour. When she kept cranking up the temperature, eventually it stopped responding, and she had a feeling the TARDIS had cut her off for her own good.
Once she'd brought herself to a steady boil, she scrubbed every last part of herself, on a single-minded pursuit to utterly scald away that bloody nightclub – paying special, vigorous attention to the bits which had been most thoroughly desecrated. By a man whose name she had never even learnt.
A man who had died, the Doctor'd eventually, hedgingly admitted, as a result of their little tryst. He had come clean about it with disturbing nonchalance: like he was copping to making off with the last Jammy Dodger, and not having witnessed an actual murder.
"Yes, ah, he got a bit… ehm." Eyes darted leftward, one hand scratching the back of his head as the other plunged in a pocket. "Well. Atomised. Sorry. Doubt he'd have felt it though, so no worries there. Must've been, oh, quite the way to go, I imagine. Couldn't have been helped, really, so no point in dwelling…"
Yet – Martha dwelled.
The man had been picked at random. For nothing else, she was ashamed to acknowledge, than his passing resemblance to the Doctor. Just some ordinary tall, dishy Welsh bloke in a denim jacket, who had eyes warm enough to send her synapses instinctually pinging. Enough to make the alien decide: that one.
She'd been so rude about it all, almost shoving the drink out of his hand, putting her thigh between his legs and kissing him furiously, as he managed, "Bloody hell, all right," laughing in delight against her advances. "It's not a race, love!"
She could almost remember him trying to ask her name, her mobile number – her, giving him nothing, all but towing him to the bathroom. God help her – he'd been sweet. Had breathed, "Thought this only happened in films," as she yanked his belt open.
Told her how fucking hot she was, how unbelievably brilliant she felt as he moved inside her.
Martha's eyes threatened to well.
She'd killed him.
"I'm sorry," she whimpered to the walls of her shower, in a voice so strangled it hardly registered.
Not that it mattered. He was already dead.
When she climbed from the shower, she wrapped in a towel, sat on the closed seat of her toilet, and cried a bit more.
It didn't help that the Doctor had been so bloody accommodating about it all. Holding her while she snivelled, promising it wasn't her fault, never looking at her with anything less than concern. No judgement, no disgust. He'd come seeking her out in a nightclub, for heaven's sake; and how unlike him was that? From her murky secondhand recollection, the alien inside her had more or less told him to piss off, after its attempt to snog him had gone awry.
And yet he had swallowed his pride and followed her. Just to make sure she was all right.
It was one thing to logically understand she'd no control over what the alien had done, and was therefore not responsible for any actions it had taken. It was another thing to feel the shame, the horror, of the things it had perpetrated in her body. To replay in her head, over and over, the Doctor discovering her that way, pinned to a bathroom wall, another man swearing and rutting inside her.
A man who'd probably had a family. Friends. People who loved him. Who would never see him again, and never know why.
Her vision blurred once more.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the steam-blurred mirror across the bathroom. It was pitiful. Small, shivering, red-eyed, hair soaked and limp around her face: doing its damnedest to curl up, in spite of the chemicals and flat iron she regularly berated it with.
As tempting as it was, she couldn't hide here forever. He was waiting on her. Waiting to discuss… his plan.
A plan she still couldn't quite come to terms with.
The headlines of her dilemma, of course, were stark. Still possessed. Inhabited by sex gas. Dead in nine hours.
But that was all well and fine and fixable, apparently, so long as she got her hands on some sort of intangible, ludicrously sci-fi energy.
"The specific sort of energy it feeds off, you see – it's not something that can just be replicated or mimicked. It's got to be, well, pure. From the source. You need it to stay alive, right now; your body is degenerating at the cellular level. But the energy, Martha – it can restore you. Reverse the damage. Problem is, we've already seen what happens when a human provides that kind of energy. I mean, poof. Goodnight Vienna. So, well – it occurred to me that perhaps I could – providing you're, ehm, amenable, of course – try my hand at it. Relatively positive it should still work, and it'll give us time to work out how to…"
He'd stopped.
"All right," he'd said, slowly. "You're staring at me."
His repetitions had not helped her reconcile what exactly he was proposing. She wondered if he even knew what he was proposing, or if he was just rambling some nonsense, purely-in-theory hypothesis he had yet to actually consider the practicalities of.
The creature, as she foggily understood it, fed off the energy produced by orgasms.
The Doctor was offering, of his own free will and sound cognition, to try his hand at giving it energy.
Offering to have an orgasm.
Ostensibly – inside of her.
It simply did not add up. She was putting two and two together and coming out with forty-seven every time.
There was nothing even resembling excitement within her at the proposition. Martha felt nothing but dread. A kind of queasy, lurching fear.
Of course, there were times when a certain kind of crisis could get her blood pumping; she had more than a little bit of adrenaline junkie in her, and it couldn't resist those moments. When she was shoved bodily into a tiny cupboard, hiding from lurking death against the warmth of the Doctor's body, his racing heartbeats and bated breaths. When, in the blinding-bright squeeze of Lazarus's de-aging chamber, a tall, dark, tuxedoed Time Lord began sliding his way down her body: with the lowly-uttered, eyebrow-lifted intention to improvise. When she found herself in a cramped escape pod, steamed-up to all hell, falling into the orbit of a sun – white-knuckling it with a rather cute space-cargo docker (who she would go on to snog thoroughly for his trouble).
In any of those situations, had the Doctor suggested that the only path to survival was a good, rigorous shag in a tight spot – well, suffice to say, her objections would have been few.
But not now. Not after the dreadful, roundly humiliating outing she'd had tonight. She felt depressed, exposed, exhausted. And not insignificantly slighted by the universe, either. The whole towering nightmare of it.
Sex, with the Doctor, as a means to an end.
It made her very spirit recoil. Something so meaningful, so personal, so inevitably life-altering for her: reduced to a missing puzzle piece. A matter of grim necessity. Not because he loved her, not because he wanted her.
A hardship he would hold his nose and endure for the greater good.
She wanted to be sick.
What she really wanted was to climb into bed for the next couple of eons, and sleep until it all faded to a distant, half-forgotten dream.
Not that she could. Not with nine hours left to live. Just five, according to the Doctor, before all of her organs and essential systems began shutting down; an agonising prelude to her turning to what was more or less, he'd vividly described, soup.
Delightful. Simply grand.
She'd no time to sleep the world away. No time to camp out in her bathroom and snivel.
Though, even if she wasn't proud to admit it, she found herself contemplating the coward's way out. Inaction. Spending her last few hours hunkered down behind a locked door, penning goodbye letters to all her family and friends…
But that line of dark contemplation hit a brick wall, the instant it conjured the Doctor's face.
Martha sniffled hard and rose to her feet. He'd be terribly disappointed in her, to know she'd even considered giving up as an option. It was one of the most important things he'd impressed upon her. No matter how hard, how frightening, how impossible, in the philosophy of the Doctor…
There was no giving up.
"No such word as can't, Martha Jones," he'd tell her, all the time. Stick his hand out, beckoning, reassuring. Hold her eyes with his, turn on her that deep, smiling gaze. "Trust me?"
And she did.
She had to.
The Doctor stood in the time-locked, spoil-proof larder, looking uncertainly between wheat and rye.
He couldn't quite tell a difference. Martha normally took care of their sustenance, and by extension, all the sandwich making.
"What does she use?" he asked of the cupboard itself.
The TARDIS was silent.
"Yeah, me neither," he muttered, squinting at the loaves he held. "We really should pay her more attention."
There was a shuddering puff from the ventilation which seemed to pointedly reply: "We?"
His shoulders stiffened. "Oh, leave off," he muttered. "I'm working on it."
Just then, the door to the galley rolled open. In its rounded arch stood a small woman in a pair of shorts and a loose-fitting vest top, looking damp, somewhat puffy-eyed, but none the worse for wear.
"Martha, excellent," greeted the cupboard. "Wheat or rye?"
She gave a weak smile at the disembodied voice. "Um," she chuckled. "You making a sandwich?"
"It's for you."
"Oh, that's… all right." She padded across the galley and quietly slid herself into the curved organic bench, nestled in the corner of the galley like a breakfast nook. "Not really hungry, to be honest."
There was the distinct rustle-squish of two opposing loaves of bread being tossed aside haphazardly. After a moment, the Doctor appeared beyond the opened door of the pantry.
"Ooh," he said, upon laying eyes on her. "That's different. What'd you do?"
She tensed. "Er, sorry?"
"With your hair," he elaborated, head tilting, spiralling a finger vaguely near his ear.
She felt herself warm up – rather startled, that he would even notice such a mundane cosmetic change. She'd long since stopped trying to get his attention with smoky eyes and plunging V-necks; had assumed he was either blind to the way she looked, or so indifferent he might as well have been.
"Erm, nothing," she answered, touching her edges a bit self-consciously. "Just didn't bother straightening it."
It had seemed rather silly, and not insignificantly vain, to fuss about with a flat iron while there was an ongoing countdown to her death. She'd merely put it up like always – just in a shock of coils, rather than slick spikes. She had also forgone makeup. It was, Martha realised, the first time he'd ever seen her this way, not done-up and ready for action.
"Oh." The Doctor gave her a crooked half-smile. "Looks very nice."
And God, she felt like an idiot, blushing so hard over nothing. "Thank you," she managed, hating how shy she sounded.
"Right then!" In his abrupt, disjointed way, he flung from the pantry to the worktop, rummaging with something she couldn't see from her perch. "Cuppa?"
"Er, sure."
"Milk, no sugar, yeah?" He was negotiating a chipped, overfull blue mug – already prepared, in the expectation that she would want tea.
It wasn't, of course, optional. He was a proper Anglophile; enough to know that the kettle being put on, and tea being had, was a prerequisite of all tough conversations.
"Yeah," she said, sitting forward. "Thanks."
He set the cup down in front of her on the table with a soft clink. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, an unusual sight; and Martha gasped a little as her eyes fell on his forearms.
"Oh, my God," she breathed, and reached out to grab his wrist without thinking. "What happened to you?"
"Hmm?" He frowned and looked down at himself. "Oh. That."
There were scars of varying size and shape scattered up his arms, all of them red and angrily raised – freshly inflicted. Like he'd reached into a box of broken razors. Or wrestled a feral cat.
"Yeah," he mused lowly, extending his arms, "er, our resident gas cloud wasn't too keen on going back to the TARDIS. Or going into quarantine. Or just me in general, I think."
The horror washed over her. "I did that to you?" she squeaked.
"No, the alien inside you did this to me. Nasty little beastie. Would you believe – it bit me? Incisors and all!"
Martha was absolutely mortified. "Doctor, I am – so sorry, I can't believe I…"
"You didn't do anything," he cut in, chuckling. "And really, I'm fine. Should be healed in a few hours, nothing to worry about."
With that, he retrieved his own cup of tea – steeped in the red mug, as was customary. Loudly, he dragged out a chair, flipped it the wrong way round, and straddled the seat, assuming his usual post sitting across from her.
The Doctor arranged his long limbs at the table, settling in. He took a deep draw of his tea, then fixed her with an attentive look. "So," he prompted, outstretching his arms and drumming his fingers on the lino. "Let's get down to brass tacks, shall we?"
"Okay," she agreed unsteadily, nervously licking her lips and taking a compulsive sip of her beverage.
"Penetrative intercourse."
The sip became a cough that became a wild, boiling splutter as tea spilled up her nose.
"Oh." The Doctor pulled a little oops face, lips downturning worriedly. He slid a serviette across the table to her. "Should've eased you into that one a bit more, sorry. Anyway – seems the most straightforward approach, for a clean energy transfer."
She buried her mouth in the proffered serviette, hacking, struggling to recover from the brief fit of suffocation.
"We haven't really got time to tiptoe around it, Martha. I apologise for being frank, but…"
"No, n-no," she managed, still choking a bit. "It's okay. I'm almost a doctor, y'know, it's… fine. Just… caught me off guard, is all."
He gave a slow nod, gazing at her steadily. "I suppose we should start with the big question. Which is, of course… are you okay, with all this?"
Her face was so hot she felt her pores opening. "Okay w-with…"
"Because if you aren't on board with it, that's entirely fine. We'll… find some other workaround. But…" His eyes flickered over her. "Are you okay with… you know? What we'll need to do?" His brow went up. "In theory?"
"I'm," she croaked, stumbling a bit – as what he was really asking hit her like a shot. "Y-yes, I… t-theoretically, I mean, I'm… yes."
God, she was a mess.
"Good," the Doctor exhaled, shoulders falling to a slump as the tension left him. "Because there isn't actually a workaround."
"No?"
"It's the only idea I've got," he admitted, scratching his jaw. "Just really hoping you'd be okay with it."
She picked at the table's edge, swallowing hard. "Well. Isn't like I've got much of a choice, is it?"
The Doctor's expression was intense.
"You always have a choice," he told her.
Her eyes fell from his nervously, retreating from the solemn intensity. "Yeah, but I mean… it's not like I'd rather die than…"
Her cheeks flushed. The hesitation lingered, a pointed and awkward lull.
"Well, there's a ringing endorsement." His brow lazed up tiredly, a sigh heaving out of him. "A night with the Doctor, better than death."
Martha winced. "You know I didn't mean it that way," she scolded softly.
"Martha, it's a rubbish situation all around. I know that. But this is our only way out."
There was a heavy, rather pregnant pause between them, as the gravity of it all seemed to sink in for the first time.
"There are some things we'll need to address, of course." The Doctor spread his hands flat on the table. "Things that are relatively important, if we're going to… proceed."
"Right." She heard her voice crack, and winced inwardly. "Like… what?"
He drew a long, cleansing breath and seemed to gather himself.
"Humans engage in copulation as a part of bond-forming."
It was a blessing that there was no more tea in her mouth just then, as she'd likely have drowned on it then and there.
She boggled. "What?"
"Well, don't they?" he said, patiently. "I mean, you've done behavioural sciences, haven't you?"
"I… yes, but…"
"Well there you have it, then. Human nature; it's a finnicky thing. I get that. I don't expect you to… you know, detach. Mainly because, biologically, chemically, you can't. It's no fault of your own. Just something we'll have to navigate."
"Right, sorry – what are we talking about?"
"Martha, you're human. You have…" He gestured broadly, let the breath out. "Feelings."
"No."
"Martha," he sighed, giving her a tedious, come now look.
"Yes, Doctor, I have feelings." Her fingers clenched hard around her mug; the ceramic burning her palms, the pain centring her. "Where is this going?"
He raised his eyebrows and settled his hands on either side of his tea.
"To the fact that some of these feelings," his eyes flitted about the general vicinity of hers, never squarely alighting, "are, well… about me."
And she wondered if it was genuinely too much to ask, for the gas to skip the wait and kill her then.
"Of course they are," she found herself retorting, defensive, rather too sharply. "You're my friend."
The Doctor pressed his lips together.
"Yes, but… some of these feelings." His tone was careful. "They occur… outside the context of our friendship."
She stared at him.
"Correct me if I'm wrong," he said, voice soft. "I wouldn't want to be… presumptive."
Martha was silent for a worryingly long time.
"It's okay if you do, Martha. Feel that way. Really. It's a perfectly natural, completely human thing."
And she put her hands to her face and groaned, almost heaving.
"Oh my God."
He made a point to lean across the table and pull both hands away. She resisted with surprising force. "Don't do that," he insisted. "These things happen. It's nothing to be ashamed over. I've lived a very long time, and if it makes you feel better, you're really not the first."
She moaned, miserable, into the clutch of her palms. "Oh, my God."
"Please," he said, finally relenting, letting go of her wrists. "Look at me."
It took her some time to work up to it. When finally her fingers parted and her hands slid down her face, he was discouraged – though not particularly surprised – to find tears brimming in them.
"It's okay," he promised, voice gentling. "Really. Look at me, I'm not just saying it."
"How long have you…" Her voice caught, breath trembling.
He glanced down briefly, sighing, then met her gaze again.
"Martha, this… well, it's a very delicate thing, isn't it?" He searched her eyes, frowning slightly. "What we've got to do… it might muck everything up between us."
She swallowed hard, wavering, gritting her teeth to keep from crying again. "Yeah."
"No matter how intellectual we resolve to be about it, no matter how clinically we approach it… that's just a fact of your being. A fact of your evolution. Having feelings is one thing, but add this on top… it changes things. I know it does. I'm not going to try to pretend it doesn't, all right? I'm, frankly… much too old, to play that game." His brow furrowed. "And I care about you too much."
She felt her heart jolt up into her throat, an uneven little hitch cutting into her breath.
He'd never, once, said anything to her like that. Anything even verging on sentiment.
And yet…
I care about you.
"You're my mate." He reached across the table for her hand. "And I don't want to lose that to some mad, rubbish alien."
She felt her heart beating deep, near-painful in her chest. Her fingers curled around his. "I don't want to lose you, either," she all but whispered.
His lips turned up at the corner, a shadow of his dimple deepening his cheek.
"See?" The smile was lopsided as he patted the top of her hand. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"
It was, quite possibly, the most fraught and heart-rending exchange Martha had ever had with another sentient being.
She put on a strained smile and gave a little tiny shrug, sniffing. "I s'pose not."
"Well, that was the main thing," he exhaled, demeanour seeming much looser now. "Now that that's out the way, we just need to hash out…" Again, he gestured vaguely. "You know. Logistics."
And Jesus Christ – how could he make such an utterly dry word sound so completely dodgy?
She desperately resisted the urge to squirm where she sat.
"Logistics," she managed, croaking a bit. "Of… of…"
His brow crooked meaningfully.
"The sex."
Fuck.
"Uhm," she stammered convulsively – certain she must've entirely changed colour, skin buzzing hot from her temples to her toes. Just the sound of the Doctor's voice, practically dripping off that word…
"Um, the… yes," she said, weakly, trying to tuck non-existent fringe behind her ears – forgetting it was all tied back. Pull yourself together. "Right. We'll need to… talk about…"
The Doctor took a sip of his tea, both brows rising over the rim of the mug – innocent as anything, almost amused. "Mm," he said, setting it down. "All the good things. And the bad things, that may be."
"You are not," she breathed, closing her eyes in dismay, "actually quoting Salt-N-Pepa right now."
"Unparalleled wisdom, Martha. Now – the bad, let's get that out of the way."
Reluctantly, she cracked her eyes back open, to see him gazing at her with a head-cocked contemplation she was not at all comfortable with. His eyes flicked over her, the scrutiny slow and pensive.
"You have done this sort of thing before, yes?" He regarded her intently. "And I don't mean with the nightclub bloke, as that wasn't you."
She felt her tongue promptly turn to lead, on the spot.
"It's fine if you haven't, of course," he offered kindly, sitting forward. "Just, asking so I know—"
"I, erm, I have." She swallowed hard, spasmodic. "I've… yes. Sort of."
A slight wrinkle creased between his brows. "Sort of."
She felt her cheeks glowing. "He was a bit, um…" She sucked in her lips and looked down, wincing. "Rubbish?"
"Ah." The Doctor's lips twitched. "I see."
"And it's…" Her thumbs interlocked, fiddling, nervous. "Sort of been awhile, as well."
"Mm? What's awhile?"
Dear Lord. If someone had told her she'd end the day discussing her embarrassingly non-existent sex life with the Doctor, of all people…
"Er. One and a half… maybe two years?" And then, reflexively – hearing the utter revolt of her sister Tish reverberating inside her head, Jesus, Martha, it will not kill you to have fun, once – she rushed to add, "But I mean, I've been busy, you know, with school and…"
The Doctor blew a loud, derisive raspberry.
"Two years?" he snorted. "Oh, Martha. Try three-hundred."
She stared at him, mouth half-ajar. "Three… hundred?"
"Oh, yeah."
"Wait, wait…" Her head shook, eyes narrowing. "How old are you, exactly?"
His head tilted. "How old do you think I am?"
She hesitated. Frowned a little. "I… don't know. I s'pose I've always just thought of you as sort of… timeless."
The Doctor blinked. Right. Sharper than he ever gave her credit for.
When he said nothing, Martha looked embarrassed, and ducked her face into the steam of her mug. "Sorry, if that's silly."
"It's not silly," he replied immediately. "It's… well." Troublesomely apt. "I'm nine-hundred and three."
Her eyes widened. And to his great surprise – she laughed a little. "And still counting?"
He smirked. "Well. Long since run out of room for candles, I'm afraid."
"Nine-hundred. Blimey." The urge to tell him he looked good for it welled in her, rather frustratingly juvenile. "That's… incredible."
His brow tilted up. "So, knowing that… you're still all right with everything?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
He chuckled. "Bit of an age gap, isn't it?"
"Just don't tell my mum," she said, smiling shyly.
His nose wrinkled outright. "Oh, I wouldn't dream of it. Like my jaw just where it is, thank you."
She laughed. "Still sorry about that."
He pushed his mug aside, then, and stood from his backwards chair with another loud scrape of wood on tile, reaching across the table to offer her his hand.
Martha took it, rather bemused – letting him guide her out the breakfast nook. "Are we going somewhere?"
"Eight hours," he advised her, rather seriously.
At the look on her face – which must've verged on outright, deathly panic, if it at all resembled the nauseous bolt that went through her stomach – he smiled sympathetically. "Just thought a change of venue might be appropriate," he assured her. "We've still got time."
"Oh," she exhaled, feeling the spike in her blood pressure gradually reduce.
"I was thinking the library, but I'm open to suggestions."
It took her a full five seconds to work out what he was saying.
"What, we're…" She almost lost her breath. "We're going to… now?"
"Like I said, we've got time, but Martha – your cells are deteriorating. We'll need to get cracking while you're still up to it."
Get cracking?
Oh, she was properly fucked.
"The library?" she rasped. Even just the thought of it… Christ. "No, no, we can't…"
"You're right. I did take that into account. Common space, heavily frequented. Well – I'd not want to impose and use your bedroom. We could go for mine. Course, there's always the pool as well, but realistically that's a bit…"
She shook her head violently – mainly to shake off the dizzying, steel-toed kick to the gut that was the Doctor suggesting they have sex in a pool – and managed, shrilling, "You have a bedroom?"
One of many enduring mysteries: solved, when he stilled, and tilted his head as though a new consideration had come to light.
"Good point," he said. "Very rarely used. Neutral location. We'll go with that, then."
And before she entirely knew what was happening, he was leading her to the door without hesitation, leaving their tea behind.
"Hang on," demanded Martha, as they stepped into the corridor – voice high and dire. "Just, wait a second."
He did, stopping, looking down at her.
"I… I need to, erm…" She floundered, helpless.
Mercifully, the Doctor seemed to read the mounting distress on her face. He let go of her hand, expression softening as he sighed.
"It's four lefts and a right," he said to her. "The TARDIS won't let you get lost. I'll leave the door open for you, all right?"
"Yeah, all right," she stammered.
"Whenever you're ready."
It was the last thing he said to her, before he disappeared down the corridor.
The minute he was out of sight – that was about the same time that Martha's heart stopped.
What the hell had she just agreed to?
