AN: Crazy times guys, I've finally got internet in the house and have spent more or less this whole day so far writing this chapter. I actually really regret not doing this Mickey & Martha storyline - or even any Mickey & Martha storyline - earlier because they're actually really cute in this one so far. At least, I think so. And straight, for once, and it's really a rarity to see that in this fic.

DAY 151

Right Behind You Baby

Martha

They had migrated from the bathroom into the bedroom now, which was messy as always because neither of them had ever been the neatest people. She'd spent too much time studying and working and partying in her life with her overbearing mother to ever learn to habitually tidy up, and Mickey… well, he was a man. Even with the TARDIS cleaning up after them somewhat, there were still dirty clothes and old mugs and plates around the room; they were both immune to the smell by this point.

Martha sat with the plastic test between her fingers on the edge of the bed while Mickey paced around in front of her with a hand on his chin. He kept rubbing his face and she thought she could see him sweating as he checked his phone to see if they got any news from Jack, though Jack had already responded to their text-request for him to join them (when he hadn't picked up the phone) saying to just give him a few minutes to 'finish off Ianto.'

"Do you ever think that he thinks the entire universe revolves around his penis?"

"Who?" Mickey asked. He had not been listening at all, engrossed in his thoughts. Martha was trying not to think about the things Mickey was definitely thinking of, because it was too big to think about, like staring into the sun. Even though the evidence was cold and hard in her hand, she was finding it unnervingly easy to make herself detached. One of them had to keep their head.

"The Doctor," she said sarcastically because he hadn't paid attention.

"Yeah…" Mickey mumbled. Still not listening. Then he paused. "Wait, what? The Doctor thinks everything revolves around his knob?" Martha shrugged. "…Does he even have one?"

"If he doesn't then I don't know what Rose and Clara spend their evenings shrieking about."

"You should ask one of them."

"I should-? No!"

"Say it's your… medical curiosity."

"You want me to tell Rose Tyler that I have a medical curiosity in her fiancé's penis?"

"No. You should tell Clara. She'd tell you."

Very carefully, Martha proceeded to ask, "…Why would Clara tell me anything?"

"She fancies you."

Martha did the most unbelievable and awkward scoff that anyone had ever done before, "Pfft, no, that's… crazy."

"She fancies everyone," Mickey said absently. Martha watched him sharply, but he was still preoccupied thinking about the, uh… other stuff. Which was the stuff she should be thinking of too, really. Not worrying about if Mickey had ever actually managed to discover that whole debacle with the alien aphrodisiacs on Paredenio 7*, which she was still quite glad she couldn't remember. Every time she even thought of it she felt violated.

Finally, Captain Jack decided to show his face, knocking once on the door and then swaggering in when Martha called out that he could enter. She held the pregnancy test in her fist and moved it so that she held it next to her where he would not immediately see it and work out what was going on. Mickey stopped pacing while Jack trailed Ianto in as well, both of them looking a complete state. At least Ianto had tried to make it look like they hadn't been fornicating for the last two days solid without any kind of respite; Jack didn't care nearly so much. He hadn't even done up his fly.

"Ugh," Mickey just scoffed at them disapprovingly, then crossed his arms.

"What's going on with my favourite M&Ms, then?" Jack asked, grinning. He was so post-coital it was painful to look at. "Not something too personal for Ianto's ears?" Mickey exchanged a glance with Martha to ask her if she minded Ianto's presence, Ianto who looked as though he knew he was possibly imposing a little. Martha just shrugged. If she was going to have a baby, everyone was going to find out sooner or later.

"I thought we told you not to call us that?" Martha remarked.

"Sorry, guess I must have forgotten. I've been distracted recently."

"Yeah, well, prepare to be un-distracted," she muttered. Mickey didn't say anything, and Jack finally realised that there was something serious going on. And to think, normally he was so much more intuitive.

"What's going on?" Jack asked, finally zipping up his fly. He must have known it was undone the entire time. Typical.

"I'm…" Martha began, but the words got caught in her throat. Mickey was tapping his food very fervently, and she looked at him for a moment and finally stood up and just held the test out to Jack to see. "Here." Jack took it from her and stared at it, then at Martha, then at Mickey, and then at Ianto who had been squinting at it over Jack's shoulder.

"Is this real?" he asked.

"It appeared in the bathroom this morning," she said.

"So whose is it? Someone's pregnant?"

"No, not – I – yes, someone – the TARDIS made it appear to me, and I… on a whim, I just… it's mine," Martha admitted, "It's mine. I'm pregnant."

Five Years Ago

Three days after the last episode, she had another one. Again, she was screaming into her pillow when she was awoken by her inability to breathe, and finally forced herself upright gasping and sobbing. She panted and was completely soaked with her own sweat, as were her bedsheets, practically making a puddle in the cotton. She stayed with her head in her hands and cried into her palms, sniffing back snot and pitching backwards and forwards. Eventually she dragged up her knees and curled into a ball, seeing the memories of people dying in front of her still scorched into her eyelids. It took all her strength and most of her courage to find her phone where it was on the floor, with no missed calls from Jack this time and just a stifling sensation of being alone, and dig through the contacts enough to find Mickey Smith's name.

It was just when she touched a finger over the red button to hang up and save herself the humiliation of the phone ringing out that she heard the click, and then silence for a moment. She very nearly hung up again waiting for someone to speak.

"Martha? Are you there?" Mickey asked hoarsely.

"I'm sorry, I woke you up-"

"No, I was awake," he said, and then she heard him yawn, "I'm always awake at this time."

"At two AM?"

"Yeah. What's wrong?"

"…I had another, um… a bad dream."

"I know this café in the train station that's open all night during the week," Mickey said after a pause where he had to think, "It smells a bit and it's a bit cold but it's out of the rain. And cheap. If you want to talk to somebody, I mean – in person – but I can stay on the phone, if-"

"Yeah," she said hoarsely, "I know where you mean. I'll see you soon."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Mickey asked her over a cup of coffee in the empty station café. The one person who was on shift was an adolescent boy with a pockmarked face, and he was loitering in the kitchen. Martha thought she could smell weed coming through from where he was, but she couldn't be bothered lecturing some disillusioned twenty-year-old about drugs. And at least he wasn't there to overhear them.

"Probably should," she said, lost in thought. She hadn't had a shower and was paranoid about if she stank of sweat or not, because if she did stink she didn't really want Mickey to notice. But she really did look a mess whenever she caught a glimpse of herself in the window as she watched the sparse trains roll in, none of which were carrying a very many people into the Welsh capital. "It's just, I should really see a professional. But I can't see a professional. I'm the closest thing to a professional we've got at Torchwood."

"A professional what?"

"Psychotherapist," she sighed, "Self-diagnosis is never a good thing, but here I am with all the hallmarks of PTSD and nobody who's actually qualified to turn to, because I can't walk into any random office and start talking about the things I see in my nightmares. I'd get committed. You know? Not that I don't appreciate you… coming out here in the middle of the night, just to…" she stopped speaking and met his eyes for a second, then got back on track of what she had been saying, "It means a lot to me," she leant over and touched his hand across the table, "It's just that I don't know how much damage has been done. And you're not a shrink."

"I suppose I'm not," Mickey said, looking at her hand just when she moved it and picked up her cup of coffee to drink. It really wasn't good having caffeine at that time of night, but something told her she definitely wasn't going to be getting back to sleep.

"Thank you," she said, "I don't know why you'd come running to see me at this time of night, but… thanks. I would call my mum, but I don't want her to worry. She has a hard enough time dealing with all this as it is."

"What is 'all this'? What is it you have nightmares about?" he asked seriously, "I only know bits and pieces."

"Okay, well, while you were off gallivanting on a parallel Earth, the Master basically took over the whole planet and became a dictator and I had to… well, I had to save the world, more or less. But it lasted for a year, and he did some horrible things, and I saw them. I saw people burn alive in Japan when he razed it to the ground, and he turned all of Russia and China into gigantic missile silos so that he could wage war with the entire universe. The Doctor managed to change history and erase it all for everyone except the few of us in the inner circle who remember."

"I guess I see why you can't go to therapy. Can't you prescribe yourself something?"

"Not really, looks a bit dodgy. I don't want to develop an addiction to prescription drugs," Martha said, "I'll end up like him in the kitchen. Or worse, I could get struck off the medical register." Mickey looked over his shoulder and saw the youth was completely zoned out and l wearing sunglasses, even though they were indoors in a train station in the middle of the night. She suspected he'd had a bit more than the odd spliff. "Probably beyond a lot of shrinks, anyway. How often does it happen that the initial traumatic event gets erased from history?"

"Feel like I'm a bit out of my depth here, to be honest. Sorry…"

"Oh, don't be sorry! You've come all the way out here at two o'clock in the morning for god knows what reason," she said, then paused and moved on, "And besides, I'm not sure anyone would actually be in their depth."

"Must be a bad habit of mine," he said jokingly, but she didn't know what the joke was.

"What is?"

"Coming running when people say they need me." She had not said she needed him, but she also did not dispute him. "Never seems to work out."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know, Rose."

"Oh. Rose."

"Why do you say it like that?"

"Just seems like everyone is always obsessed with Rose."

"Don't worry, I'm not obsessed with her. I'm not sure she was ever really a very good girlfriend."

"Because she ran off with another man?"

"Well, exactly. And if I ever got a new girlfriend, it'd be nice if she didn't do stuff like that," he said, "She just sort of strung me along, really. Made me drive all the way to Cardiff because she wanted her passport and she didn't even need it – and you know what, I went, at the drop of a hat. Probably means I'm a pushover."

"It doesn't mean that," Martha said, "Clearly she took you for granted if you were willing to drive from London to Cardiff on a whim. And to come out here to talk to me. And I seriously don't think I appreciated how long the drive between London and Cardiff is until moving here, especially since I go back home quite a bit."

"Do you?"

"Do you not?"

"Haven't really got anything to go back to in London. Family all dead, friends all in another universe. Except for the people here. I'm not from a big family like you."

"I wish I wasn't from a big family sometimes, too. It'd feel a lot smaller if mum and dad were still together and he didn't have his bloody girlfriend Annalise."

"Did they not mind you moving so far away?"

"A bit, but… well. I've walked across the whole planet, so I suppose the distance doesn't seem all that huge, just a bit inconvenient. Besides, I'm doing good work here, for Torchwood. They trust Jack a lot more than they trusted UNIT when I worked for them."

"'Good work' is a funny way to describe chasing after a toilet killer." Martha frowned.

"How do you mean?"

"What?"

"What?"

"Uh…"

"Toilet killer. What's that about?"

"It's coming through the drains, isn't it."

"…It's… hang on, what makes you think it's coming through the drains?"

"Elvis Presley died on the toilet, before that there was that massive open sewage grate Gwen pointed out. You remember, she said she was gonna write to the council about it being a safety hazard," Mickey explained, and Martha stared at him. "What?"

"We've all been really bloody slow. There's Jack thinking it's something to do with people eating larvae and the larvae destroying them on the way out, but you've worked out this whole time that it's going through the drains… which explains how it got into the locked apartment, why nobody saw it. Why didn't you mention this?"

"I thought it was obvious!" he protested, "And Jack's been trying to put me on admin all week, I've barely seen or heard anything about the entire case."

"Because you're squeamish," she pointed out.

"Oi! Anyone would be squeamish when faced with that mess. Do you think we should tell Jack?"

"Not right now."

"Why not?"

"Because he'll have us all trailing down into the sewers," Martha said, "I don't want to go into any sewers right now. And it'll interrupt our…"

"Our?" he prompted.

"Thing."

"Thing?"

"This thing," she nodded, "You know, we're… hanging out. Being friendly."

"Friendly?"

"Yeah. Why? Were you thinking-"

"I was thinking about being friendly," he cut her off quickly, "I'm always friendly, to everyone."

"Well. There's such a thing as too friendly, you know," she muttered.

"You'll have to tell me all about being too friendly."

"Maybe I will."

"Go on, then."

"I'm gonna get some more coffee," Martha's chair scraped when she stood up and very nearly tripped over, Mickey half getting out of his seat to help her if she fell, out of a reflex. "I'm fine," she waved him away, not looking at him because her cheeks suddenly felt very hot, especially when she looked at him.

What the hell had just happened to her? What had she been grumbling about? Mickey being 'friendly to everyone'? No, it wasn't that. Well, it was a bit. It was because of the elephant in the room, she knew, as she tried to wave to get the attention of the acne-ridden dropout in the kitchen to ask for more coffee. She didn't even need more coffee, she hadn't finished her last cup, it was still half-full and warm, she had just wanted to escape the situation.

Ultimately, she had to give up hailing the junkie down, because he was too high to pay attention. Defeated, she returned to her seat, and saw with horror that Mickey had realised she hadn't even drunk her coffee. What a devastating faux-pas.

"Oh, would you look at that? I still have loads of coffee left," Martha said, "That's lucky."

"Yeah," Mickey said incredulously, "Lucky. Are you okay? Apart from your nightmare?"

"Course I am." She sipped her drink.

"It's just that – Gwen mentioned something about – you broke up with your boyfriend recently." Martha stared at him.

"He was my fiancé and it was four months ago. That's not recently," she said coolly, "Why were you talking to Gwen about Tom?"

"I didn't even know his name was Tom."

"It is, and he's a paediatrician who specialises in foreign aid. Goes to where famines and pandemics are and tries to help sick children," Martha explained, "I met him when the Master took over the world, and then the Master killed him, and in this timeline I found him."

"Wow," said Mickey with an unusual tone of voice, "Sounds like a hero."

"He's in Africa right now, something to do with Ebola," she said.

"What? You're in touch?"

"As far as break-ups go, it was a pretty amicable one. We were both way too busy all the time, and I could never really tell him about work or the Doctor or even about why I tried to contact him in the first place, which was to see if he was still alive. I just don't think it was ever really meant to work out. Anyway, you were just going on about Rose. Maybe it's time someone lived in the shadow of one of my exes for a while."

"Okay, so I'm in his shadow?" Mickey seemed annoyed.

"What? That's not what I meant, I just mean everyone always goes on about how great Rose is and how clever and how… blonde," Martha complained.

"I wasn't going on about any of that stuff."

"You were talking about her."

"How she was a bad girlfriend."

"Well…"

"And then you start going on about your child-doctor ex-boyfriend who's off risking his life to deal with plague outbreaks."

"Well he is."

"And who you're still friends with."

"You don't have to hate someone to break up with them – it's not like you hate Rose. And I told you, he was my fiancé."

"Wow, good for you, having a fiancé," Mickey actually sounded angry.

"Are you jealous?"

"Am I jealous? Why would I be jealous of all the women being obsessed with these heroic men who go off selflessly to faraway places?"

"Alright, so you are jealous."

"I'm not jealous. Why do you think I'm jealous?"

"I don't know, you're just acting jealous."

"Well I'm not."

She paused. "Maybe I just don't want to be with some doctor who goes wandering off to exotic places to rescue people all the time. It might be nice just to have someone I know is always going to be there," she said, and he quietened, so then she decided to dig a fresh knife in just because he had annoyed her, "Or maybe it would be nice for me to stay on my own." He looked down at his hands under the table and she watched him for a moment.

"…Sorry. I'm not… listen, I should tell you that I-"

Martha's phone rang and he stopped talking. She dug it out of the back pocket of her jeans.

"It's Jack," she sighed. If it had been anyone else, she might have ignored it and let Mickey continue. But it was Jack, and he would only be calling her at that time of night if somebody somewhere was dead. "Hello?" she answered.

"You answered quickly this time."

"I was already awake," she said.

"Good, you're gonna need to be alert for this. We've got a third body. This one's a woman, also died on the toilet like our good buddy Elvis. Had two kids, the oldest is about ten, went to go to the toilet in the middle of the night and, uh… let's just say a referral to a very good psychiatrist is gonna be in order," Jack explained, then gave her the address.

"Right. Mickey and I will be right there."

"You two are-?" Martha hung up on him and then lifted her jacket up from the back of her chair.

"Another murder," she said, "We'd better go. Do you have money for a taxi? I've only got a fiver."

"Uh, yeah, sure," Mickey said, following suit and standing up.

"You'll have to tell him all about your toilet theory," Martha jibed. She didn't think he heard her, he was preoccupied counting out the change from his pocket. Then he looked up and bit his lip. "Don't tell me you haven't got any cash."

"I haven't got any cash."

"I said don't tell me."

"It's fine. It's a train station, there's bound to be a cashpoint around here somewhere."

"You'd better hope so; if there isn't we've only got the one umbrella between us. Might get a bit intimate with the rain so heavy."

"I can think of worse things," he said quietly, quietly because he wasn't sure if it was something he should let her hear or not. She pretended she hadn't, but couldn't help smiling when she was sure he couldn't see her. "Let's go, then."

*chapter 775

AN: Two questions for you: 1) Do you think Mickey and Martha are cute? and 2) I AM going to write Nios and Cohen on their date (I've started drafts of it already) but do you guys want to see it after this storyline or after the next one?