DAY 159

Seo Lǣċes Ġiedd

Martha

They had talked about having children before, she and Mickey, and she had always thought that because she was a doctor she would have a relatively calm pregnancy; she'd be able to tell if something was wrong far more than with simple feminine intuition, and she'd be able to eat and exercise properly and be healthy and do everything right. Everything she knew people were supposed to do when they were pregnant she was doing, diligently, cutting out all kinds of foods and drinks and behaviours – but it wasn't making it any easier. If anything, she was more paranoid, more of a hypochondriac, and she didn't want to talk to Mickey about it. After all, what would he think if the actual doctor out of the pair of them was constantly worried that something was wrong? He wasn't exactly calm and collected as it was.

That was why Martha was sitting in the medibay at the ripe time of five-thirty in the morning, after awakening from a nightmare which was on the brink of becoming habitual about something going terribly wrong with their month-old foetus. Princess Sparkle Tutu and her stumbling, waddling litter were in a decently-sized cardboard box in the corner of the room. They were all asleep save for the glowing, tentacle one, which floated a few inches above its brothers and sisters and meowed occasionally. Every time Martha saw that cat she worried that her own child was going to be born with tentacles - but her allergies prevented her from seeing them too often.

"Embryo displays traces of Artron mutation and a genome abnormality consistent with the contraction of Corrupt Strain 25EFX4," Helix told her. The same thing Helix told her every single time she wandered into the medibay on her own and requested another scan, multiple scans a day, all revealing the exact same thing – that the baby was going to be a Time Lord Manifest hybrid but aside from that was perfectly healthy. She didn't have any medical reason to believe otherwise, either, it was growing just as it should, just like it did in every other pregnant woman she'd ever examined in her career or learned about during her training. The medical equipment of the 21st Century wouldn't even show the genetic abnormalities of the Manifest virus or exposure to the time vortex – though there was still a month before anything much would show up on an ultrasound.

"You're sure everything's fine?" Martha asked the robot voice yet again, sniffing as the cat dander in the air irritated her noise and made her eyes water. She hoped Rory couldn't hear her. At least, half of her did – the rest of her was secretly wishing that he did overhear, or that Mickey told him something by mistake and he worked out what was going on, since he was the only other genuine medical professional on board. Of course, she thought the TARDIS would let her know if something was wrong, and Jack had lived for centuries and had many forgotten children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so on and so forth. Then there was the Doctor – but the Doctor was so busy, all the time, planning his wedding. And then she didn't know if she wanted to tell Nine or Eleven about something so personal – it wasn't like either of them had heaps of time to spare, either. She sometimes went days without seeing the Ninth Doctor anywhere.

So who else was there to ask for help? Who else that she trusted? She was very close to contacting Flek Phisj who had proven herself many times to be a more knowledgeable doctor than Martha seemed to be because she was from so far in the future, but contacting Flek meant going through Oswin, and Oswin would work out something was the matter within seconds and would probably work out exactly what was the matter within just a few more. She was desperate for a deeper kind of expert, one who wouldn't question her, one who didn't know her, but one who could actually tell her something substantial about what was going on, someone she trusted more than her own paranoid hypochondria.

Satisfied by Helix's limited diagnosis of the health of the foetus she was carrying (at least for the time being), Martha sighed and jumped down from the gurney she had been sitting on and meandered over to look at the kittens for as long as she could before she began to have a more extreme allergic reaction. Princess Sparkle Tutu hadn't worried about the health of those kittens, and they had all turned out relatively fine, aside from the one with the tentacles and the Maine Coon which lurked in dark corners and attacked people, behaviour not generally seen in kittens which were a mere two weeks old. Now it lay there, sleeping, bloated with milk while the kittens kneaded its belly in their sleep. Why couldn't she be as calm as that cat? Why was she jealous of a cat? Why was she practically losing her mind with worry about this baby they were having?

The medibay doors began to slide open and absolutely scared the life out of her, making her jump and back away as though somebody unsavoury were going to come through. Or worse, Mickey, asking why she wasn't in bed – then she would have to share her unfounded fears with him and he'd start panicking as well. They couldn't both panic, she needed him there to talk some sense into her. To ooze the same aura of calm as that cat. She breathed a sigh of relief (which turned into a sneeze) when she saw it wasn't Mickey, it was only Rose, out wandering at that time in the morning for who-knew-why. Maybe she was pregnant too and had also come to interrogate Helix.

"…What's going on?" Rose asked her immediately.

"…Nothing," said Martha, "I was just… checking on the kittens. See if they're okay. If they're feeding. They can be very fragile. I'm the closest thing we have to a vet, after all."

"They need to be taken to a vet?" Rose asked.

"No, I don't think so. Not unless you can find a vet who knows how to replace tentacles with legs. You don't happen to know a vet who can replace tentacles with legs, do you?" she asked. Rose narrowed her eyes at her. She wasn't doing a very good job of not being suspicious.

"Aren't you allergic to cats?" Curse Rose Tyler for remembering things about her. "Your eyes are all red."

"I'm only a bit allergic," said Martha, though the volume of six cats in the room at once (though one of them was hairless) was becoming quite overpowering. "…What are you doing up?"

"Looking for you."

"And you looked for me in here? You haven't woken Mickey up, have you?"

"I didn't check your room."

"You didn't check my room?"

"No, I came straight here. I knew you were here."

"You knew I was here?"

"The time vortex lets me know all kinds of things." Martha felt hot, burning hot, anxious that Rose may have discovered exactly what was going on. She didn't seem like she had, though – Rose had, after all, been so thoroughly excited when they found that cat pregnancy test weeks ago that if she found out Martha, an actual human being, was pregnant, she wouldn't be able to contain it long enough to be enigmatic about what the time vortex was up to. "You need to come with me – I had a vision, it's urgent."

"A vision about what? About me?"

"Sort of, I don't know," Rose said, "It's hard to explain. It was us, in the future. The near future, today, I could tell, we have to go somewhere."

"Where?"

"I don't know that, either. If I teleport though, the time vortex will take us there. It'll make sure the future happens. All I saw was us, walking across a beach and through a forest. It was dark and it was raining."

"It's five in the morning, I can't just leave following one of your visions. The last time you had a vision it was about somebody being possessed by the devil and the Doctor wouldn't shut up about those sausage rolls," Martha reminded her.

"We saved a lost, confused alien," argued Rose, "All because I had a vision."

"And because the Doctor was there."

"She was supposed to be there. It was just us in this one, and it was definitely today – the time vortex wouldn't make sure we go to a certain place at a certain time unless it was important, Martha. Anyway, do you have anything else to do? Other than run scans on these cats you're allergic to?"

"How do you know I was running scans?" Martha asked quickly. Rose frowned.

"I don't, I was just kidding. Were you scanning them?"

"Yes," she lied, "To check their… progression." Maybe she should be watching the cats more closely. After all, they were sort of lab rats, in the world of mysterious, time traveller pregnancies. The cat hadn't had any issues during its actual pregnancy.

"How old do they have to get before you can give them away to people, anyway?" Rose asked.

"I don't know," Martha said. She really had no idea, she'd never had a cat. "What did the Doctor think of your vision?"

"You're not serious, are you? I wouldn't tell him if I had a vision. He goes mental about me being connected to the time vortex. He annoyed me so much last time he was talking about it that I ended up going out and getting drunk."

"I know."

"With Clara."

"I know that, too – you mentioned it the next day. It was very recent," Martha reminded her. "So, he doesn't like you having anything to do with the time vortex? Even though you can't help it? Did you sneak away?"

"I didn't have to, he's in the library, he's there most nights, I think he's trying to write his vows, or something."

"When are you getting married, again?"

"Four days," said Rose, smiling, then she paused the smile vanished. She repeated, "Four days… that's not a lot of time, really, is it? God, and I'm having to spend today following this vision… You know I wouldn't ask you about it if it wasn't important. We still haven't arranged the seating plan, I was meaning to ask people where they wanted to sit. It's a free bar, by the way."

"Oh, brilliant," Martha said, but felt she was being unconvincing, "Can't wait for that." The number one thing you shouldn't do when you were pregnant: ingest any kind of intoxicant. No drugs, no alcohol – probably best to cut out caffeine, too, and maybe even gluten, and certain kinds of vegetables, and things with more than an incredibly miniscule sugar content, and red meat and fried meat and anything else with a large proportion of salt or starch. But definitely no alcohol. "You don't think that you're rushing a bit, or anything? You've only been engaged for, like, three weeks. Not even a month." Less time than she had been unknowingly pregnant.

"Not really," said Rose. "It'll be fine. It'll work out. He'll get used to the time vortex thing."

"And you don't think you should have made sure he was used to it before getting married?" Martha asked. Rose narrowed her eyes at Martha. "You know what, forget I said anything. It's nothing to do with me. I'll look forward to the free bar and free food. The food will be free as well, won't it?"

"Sure, but we haven't decided on a menu yet. The Doctor is insistent on having Gazpacho soup for the starter, for some reason…* I don't get it, it's served cold. I said why can't we just have chicken soup for the starter? Or even better, garlic bread. But he was like, 'garlic bread will make the rest of the food taste funny.'" Rose rolled her eyes. "If I get my way, there'll be some garlic bread somewhere. Even if I have to have a buffet at the reception while people are doing karaoke."

"You're having karaoke?"

"A wedding's not a wedding without karaoke."

"I'd say a wedding's not a wedding without two people who want to get married, but…" she shrugged, "We didn't have karaoke, me and Mickey. Didn't stop people standing up and singing when they were drunk, but at least there wasn't anybody arguing and competing over who can sing Sex on Fire the best when they're all shit already."

"I'll be sure to put in a special request for Dr Martha Jones to get up and sing Sex on Fire. You're the only one who can really sing that your sex is on fire and have it be the truth, too. You know, with the burning. Clara got all those blisters, didn't she?"

"I'll kill you. That is, if I don't kill you before you even get the chance to compile this godforsaken karaoke playlist."

"You'll be drunk anyway," Rose shrugged, "No one gets away with going to Rose Tyler's wedding and staying sober."

"Mmm…" Martha said, unsure.

"Donna told me Amy wants the complete discography of Abba, or something."

"Oh, bloody hell… I hope you realise, I'm going to commit suicide," Martha said, and Rose laughed.

"Lighten up. I'm sure you and Mickey can just sneak away together in the dark since you're so attached to each other recently."

"…What do you mean? We're already married, we don't need an excuse to spend time together." Though they did actually have a very good excuse of talking about the looming baby they were hopefully going to have – unless a devastating and unforeseen event got in the way, like Martha was so terrified of happening. Even if the baby was physically fine, that hadn't stopped Melody Pond from being kidnapped at birth and brainwashed into becoming River Song. And she liked River, as a person, but certainly didn't want her own child to go through the same thing.

"Yeah, but… I don't know. It's like you've been glued at the hip. Everyone's noticed."

"Really…" Martha said. She hadn't realised. Should they be more careful? She didn't want anybody working out what was going on until they were ready. The TARDIS crew should wait until after she told her own mum, at least, which she still hadn't. But then, if Captain Jack knew, maybe Rose should know, too? Rose who could see the future and control the universe?

"Are you alright, mate? You keep zoning out."

"I'm fine. Just tired. It's five in the morning."

"Yeah… this vision, though… it must be important. We need to follow it. Make it come true and find out why it matters."

"Okay," Martha sighed. Maybe the time vortex actually wanted them to find out something useful, after all. Something genuinely helpful. "I'll go get dressed and leave Mickey a note, he'll get worried otherwise. He won't just not think anything of it if I vanish in the night." Even if she wasn't pregnant, Mickey would definitely not like her wandering off without letting him know first. The existence of their unborn child only exacerbated his anxiety tenfold, just like it had done hers.

"Brilliant – I'll see you in ten minutes. I might take some lunch, do you think we should take lunch?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the Doctor never takes any lunch anywhere and we end up out fighting aliens and saving the world all day on an empty stomach. Unless you like jelly babies. And in my vision, I'm not sure it's the type of place that would have a convenient petrol station with a cheap sandwich meal deal."

"Not sure any petrol station has a cheap sandwich meal deal," said Martha, "More like an overpriced sandwich meal deal you have to get because there's literally no alternative." Rose shrugged.

"I'll get some sandwiches for the road."

"Tuna," said Martha.

"Tuna? Eurgh what's wrong with you? Eating tuna."

"I've just been craving tuna lately."

"Weirdo. I'll have chicken, like a normal person who doesn't hate themselves," Rose said as they left the medibay together. Rose was already dressed, all ready to leave in pursuit of the truth behind her vision.

"Tuna is a very common sandwich filling," Martha argued, heading towards the doors into the Bedroom Circle.

"Yeah, for weirdos. Bring a rucksack out with you, could you?" Rose requested. She sighed.

"Sure, sure…"

"Cheers. See you in a bit."

"Yeah, yeah… see you…"

*Chapter 965, "American Eulogy" – you may want to go and re-read Thirteen's farewell letter to Oswin and Adam Mitchell because it DOES still accurately predict the future, and there's still one major prediction left.