AN: I'm back! Although I haven't really gone away because there's been so much of Retrograde. This is also the PENULTIMATE storyline. Of the entire fic. Although I do have a bunch of ideas for Retrograde which does directly carry on the future continuity (I'm gonna have them go to the French Revolution at some point, and find a genie at another).

DAY 162

For She's a Jolly Good Fellow

Martha

"For she's a jolly good fellow, for she's a jolly good fellow, for she's a jolly good fe-ellow! And… and… and she's a jolly good fellow! Nobody can… fellow!" Rose Tyler sang, and then she hiccupped.

"I swear to god," Amy Pond began through gritted teeth, "If you don't shut up, I'll strangle you."

"Why's nobody else singing?" Rose slurred, disappointed.

"Because nobody else is drunk," Donna snapped at her. There were a few long moments of silence when all they heard was the lapping of the waves outside and the creaking of the ship. Then Rose coughed and broke into song again, her own wonderful remix where she got half of the words wrong. While she sang, she rolled side to side against the wall of their cell, holed up in a grotty corner Martha didn't dare go near. She was standing up with her arms crossed rigidly, Amy and Donna side-by-side perched on the edge of an iron cot. Clara was leaning against the criss-crossing bars with her arms looped through them.

"This is absurd," Clara said, "Even for us. We've really pushed the boat out today." Martha glared at her. "I mean… not the boat… the… land-based-vehicle we could have also potentially pushed out…" Quiet again, and then Rose piped up once more.

"What do we do with a drunken sailor, what do we do with a drunken sailor, what do we do with a drunken sailor… early… throw… 'something' in the water," she stumbled. The wrong words again.

"How much have you actually had to drink?" Martha questioned her. She mumbled something incoherent. "Excuse me?"

"'M not drunk," she repeated herself, lolling around. She was drunk, they'd seen her consume an ungodly amount of alcohol so far that day, the rest of them all straining to stay sober. Of course, Martha had the excuse of being pregnant (not that anyone aside from Rose knew about that), but the others had struggled quite a lot to resist Rose's pressuring them to join her in chaos.

"Better she stays drunk," said Clara, "If we find ourselves with a seasick, hungover idiot in an enclosed space like this…"

"I can smell it already," said Amy sourly.

"This is great!" Rose announced, beaming.

"How is this great!?" Donna demanded of her. The four of them had been trying to get away from Rose in her corner, distancing themselves. "You know you're getting married tomorrow?"

"Boo!" Rose protested, "You're spoiling the fun!"

"Oh, I'm spoiling the fun? Am I the one who got us kidnapped by pirates?"

"They're giving us a lift!"

"Where could they possibly be giving us a lift to?" Amy asked.

"Pirate Land," said Rose knowingly, nodding.

"Why do I bother…"

"Are you so drunk where you missed the part where we were dragged onto this ship at gunpoint?" Martha continued. Rose said nothing. "You're literally delirious."

"Is not that bad," she mumbled.

"What part of it isn't 'that bad'?" Donna asked her, "We've been kidnapped by pirates, the day before your wedding, robbed of our phones, our powers aren't working, and nobody knows where we've gone. We'll be lucky if we're not made to walk the plank."

"Walking the plank is actually historically inaccurate," Amy interrupted, "They never did that. It's more likely that they'll keel haul you."

"What's that?"

"It's where they drag you around the underside of the ship and across all the barnacles."

"Oh, great. I'll look forward to that then, shall I?"

Amy shrugged, "It's just history…"

"Why would our powers just stop working, though…" Clara thought out loud. That was bothering Martha, too, far more than having her phone stolen by a couple of criminals so they couldn't call for help. But at the most vital moment, their superpowers had all miraculously failed. "Maybe…" Clara began, then stopped.

"What?" Martha prompted her.

"What if, like… what if we're in a simulation?" she suggested.

"How could we be in a simulation?" Amy asked, "I remember clearly everything that's happened today."

"What if the morning was part of the simulation, too? I mean, it makes sense, don't you think?"

"Not particularly," said Martha, who, like Amy, could remember quite clearly all of the morning's events with no lapses or gaps. Typically, being stolen and sucked into a simulation caused at least some failure of memory, "Why would anyone put us in a simulation where Rose is drunk and we've been kidnapped by pirates?"

"You says," Rose began woozily, "You don't not remember… but I don't not not remember…"

"Rose," said Amy firmly, "I will kill you. Don't test me." Rose stuck her tongue out. "Look, let's just go through the day's events again, slowly, and see if anything sticks out as being… simulation-esque…"

A Few Hours Earlier…

"Why do babies need so much stuff?" Mickey questioned her that morning, the two of them sitting in their bedroom eating breakfast – just cereal – at a small table. There hadn't always been a table in their room, just a bed really and a small TV that was never used, but they'd been sinking into the solace of each other's company much more since the news had come out. He was trying to make a wish list of everything they would need to buy on his phone.

"What do you mean?"

"Well… they can't even do much. They're so expensive, and they just…"

"What a nice attitude to have towards our child," Martha said, but she was only joking. She knew he was only worrying about money, but he wasn't very appreciative of what she was implying. "I'm kidding. Look, I'll talk to Leo, he might still have some stuff from when Keisha was a baby we could have. In fact, I'm sure he does still have a pram, because mum's always complaining about it taking up space."

"When do you think we'll tell your family?" he asked. Martha was the only one of them who had any family to tell.

"After the chaos of this wedding is over," she said, "I'm not… I'm not trying to keep it from them. Mum's going to be over the moon. Although…"

"What?"

"You know what my mum's like. She's not going to give us a second of peace, trying to get involved with everything, asking where we're going to live, if I'm going back to work, all that… Just, don't worry about it for the moment," she said, being a tremendous hypocrite because she spent most of her waking moments intensely worried about their future, "After the wedding, it'll all… I don't know."

"At least it's tomorrow," Mickey said.

"How's it feel?"

"How's what feel?"

"Having to go watch your ex-girlfriend get married to the man she left you for," Martha said, again, joking.

"Ouch. I wasn't even thinking about that. How's it feel watching a man you used to be in love with get married to the girl you tried to replace?"

"Point taken."

"Maybe we shouldn't go."

"Why?"

"Neither of them came to our wedding. And the Doctor – what's his excuse? We tried to invite him, and nothing!" Mickey argued. He brought that up more than Martha thought was necessary; the Doctor was, well, the Doctor. He'd probably missed the message, or it arrived in his future or his past. She was sure he hadn't skipped their wedding on purpose, out of any kind of malign intention.

"We have to go. She's in the running to be godmother."

"What do you mean 'in the running'? 'In the running' with who?"

"I don't know – Gwen?"

"Well, Gwen hasn't asked, though, has she? It'd be a bit rude to overlook Rose when she's been begging," Mickey said.

"Okay, so you don't want to go to her wedding, but she's your number one pick for godmother?"

"I just don't like wearing suits, you know that," he said. She did know that, it was a struggle trying to get Mickey Smith to wear anything even remotely formal. Not that she was a big fan of formalities herself; she'd choose jeans over a dress any day. "You know, he came to brief me when I was making tea earlier."

"Who came to brief you on what?" she asked, confused, continuing eating her cornflakes (at least she hadn't been craving Clara's disgusting cereal again.)

"The Tenth Doctor, about how they want us all staying in this hotel."

"What? When?"

"Tonight."

"Tonight? She hasn't told me anything about that. Where is this hotel?"

"Haven't got a clue."

"Ugh. We already all live on the TARDIS, why do we have to go stay in a hotel now? How much is that going to cost?"

"She's paying for it with that stolen credit card she's using to fund the entire thing."

"We better not get arrested for being, I don't know, accessories to fraud. I don't care if they arrest Rose, but I'm not giving birth in prison," she complained.

"We'll just deny everything," Mickey said.

"Sounds like a great plan," Martha muttered sarcastically, "Probably works for everybody." He yawned and stretched in the exaggerated way he sometimes did, which had always irritated her a little but when she mentioned it he argued he was 'only stretching' – despite the fact he ended up kicking her under the table as he did so.

"I think I'm gonna have a shower. Before I get to packing."

"For our hotel trip?"

"Well, I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself."

"You think I'm going to hurt myself packing an overnight bag?"

"You could pull a muscle."

"I doubt that any muscles would be involved. Just leave it, you always pack wrong anyway."

"How do I 'pack wrong'?" he asked, standing up.

"You do. Do you remember our honeymoon? When we went to Greece? And you forgot to pack any socks?"

"You're so rude to me. It's out of order."

"I'm having your baby, so I'll talk to you how I like," she said, which defused the situation quite well because he could never stop the overwhelming feeling of joy which swept through him whenever the baby was brought up. Whenever she brought it up, really, because deep down she was still coming to terms with the realities of having a real-life child.

Nevertheless, Mickey eventually vanished off into the en suite to have a wash, leaving Martha to finish off the leftover milk in her cereal bowl. Unfortunately, it was during his brief absence that everything decided to kick off, and she heard shouting from the Bedroom Circle which sounded distinctly like Rose Tyler telling someone to stop trying to have sex with her. Thinking that could potentially be something serious, and even if it wasn't serious it was certainly a weird thing to overhear at ten o'clock in the morning, Martha's sense of duty and responsibility forced her to investigate.

"I am not trying to have sex with you, I'm just trying to stop you from-" Clara Oswald was halfway through her sentence, hands on Rose's shoulders, when Rose's knees buckled, and she collapsed right onto Clara.

"You're touching me," Rose said, "Pervert."

"I'm – you fell on me!" Clara argued, trying to get Rose back on her feet.

"What's going on?" Martha asked, approaching.

"Careful, Marth," Rose said, "She might try and shag you, too."

"For god's sake…" Clara muttered.

"But… maybe you'd enjoy it."

"Excuse me!?" Martha asked, suddenly thinking that Gwen Cooper was her new first pick to be the unborn baby's godmother.

"She's drunk," said Clara, finally pushing Rose back onto her feet properly, though Rose continued to sway uneasily.

"She's-!? It's ten AM!"

"It's five o'clock somewhere," Rose said, staggering towards the wall, "This is a time machine. Don't be so boring Martha. Come out with me."

"Out with you? Where?"

"For my hen party!"

"Your what? You had a hen party yesterday."

"There was nothing to drink. Can't have a hen party without drink."

"And how long have you been drinking for today, exactly?"

"Early birds, n… worms," Rose nodded to herself.

"That's comforting…" Clara mumbled.

"Have you been drinking?" Martha asked her next.

"At this time on a morning? No, I most certainly have not. I'm supposed to be going out for a quiet lunch with my husband before the inevitable chaos of this one's wedding tomorrow, but she almost kicked the door down just now shouting about how she wants to go and get pissed," Clara explained.

"Don't you have important wedding things to be doing?" Martha implored Rose, "Why don't you go have a cold shower and I'll make you a coffee? Sober up?"

"But I don't wanna be sober," Rose said, punching the wall so hard she dented the metal.

"Okay," Martha said, backing away a few steps, "Well… we'll just, uh…"

"We're having a hen party," Rose said firmly, "This is 'important wedding things.'" The commotion prompted another intervention as people came into the Circle from Nerve Centre. Martha was really hoping it was the Tenth Doctor or Jack, since they were the only two she could think of who might be able to talk some sense into Rose, but it was only Donna and Amy. Martha thought she saw Amy in Donna's company far more often than Rory's. Rose cheered drunkenly when she saw the pair of them. "Now it's a party!" she announced. Amy frowned at her.

"What's going on?"

"Rose is drunk," said Martha and Clara at the time time.

"I am not drunk!" Rose shouted, then she tripped over her own feet. Clara again went to steady her, but Rose made a very angry sound that made her think twice, and so she stepped away to join Martha in keeping her distance. If there was one thing more dangerous than a human being with the power to control reality, it was a drunk human being with the power to control reality.

"You've been drinking the morning before your wedding!?" Donna demanded of her.

"It's my hen party!"

"What was wrong with the hen party Jack and I planned? It took us ages to sort that out!" She was absolutely livid. Martha wondered how successful she'd be if she tried to sneak away back to Mickey and let Rose ruin her own wedding if was that hellbent on it.

"There's no booze! Doesn't count!"

Donna was about to start shouting at Rose, but Clara of all people jumped to her defence to try and stop the situation from escalating, "There's no point having a go at her when she's like this. You're best to hold onto it and bring it up later, when she's sober." It was a good point; after all, they all knew Rose could be a very unpleasant drunk depending on what she'd been consuming.

"I just wanna have fun! Why don't you want me to have fun? It's my last night of freedom!"

"Technically, it's your last morning of freedom," said Amy dryly, "Y'know, since it's not even noon."

"You're all just mean. Why don't you want to come on my hen party with me?"

"Oh, we're invited?" Amy continued with her sarcasm, "Looks like a bit of a one woman show from over here." Rose was too out of it to pick up on the fact she was being mocked.

"Everyone's invited! Every girl! The hens! All the single ladies!"

"We're literally all married," said Clara.

"We're going out!" Rose declared, "I don't care. It's my wedding day."

"It's not," said Amy, "And, we're sort of busy."

"Yeah, I've got plans with Mickey all day," Martha said, which was true of every day now because they had so much on their plate.

"No!" Rose exclaimed, "That's it!"

Martha hadn't realised before that Rose was capable of teleporting people without touching them, and if she'd known that she probably wouldn't have even left her room hearing the commotion. It might not be anywhere near as unpleasant or jarring as a vortex manipulator, but getting taken to a random point in space and time was the absolute last thing she needed – even if it was what all five of them got. They were plucked out of thin air on the TARDIS and dropped on a shoreline in the middle of the night, seawater washing over Martha's legs.

"Oh, no," she said, "No, no no no no no… this isn't happening…" She sloshed about in the shallows until working out which way the beach was, white sand glowing in moonlight and the shore dotted with firelight: a town, most certainly, but not a modern one.

"What the hell have you done!?" Amy shouted at Rose, who was also wading through the sea towards the nearby lights and wooden shacks.

"Now this is a great place for a hen party!" she said as she stumbled through the seafoam and onto the beach, the other four forced to follow. Martha's socks squelched when she finally made it out of the water, rowdy but jovial cheers reaching her from the settlement.

"Where are we!?" she asked anybody who was willing to answer.

"Tropical island, I think," said Clara, pointing out a palm tree. However, when Martha's eyes strayed down the trunk she saw something much more sinister strung up by a rotten rope: a corpse, hanged, and left to become carrion for the birds. It wasn't the only body, either; though the shadows were thick at that time of night, Martha eventually made out at least half a dozen in varying states of decomposition; some could have just been killed yesterday, while others must be months old.

At the opposite end of the beach a long stretch of docks had been erected from shoddy pieces of driftwood, and the silhouettes of more than a few large ships were visible against the horizon and the night sky. They weren't any kind of ship Martha had seen outside of a theme park.

"Someone please tell me this is an extra part of Disneyland in the future," she said. In the distance they heard a gunshot, and Rose cheered and whooped, heading in the general direction of all the commotion. "Rose? ROSE!"

"What!?"

"What are you doing, bringing us here!? Take us home," Martha ordered her.

"No!"

"Yes!"

"It's my universe."

"No, please," Martha grabbed her shoulders as they staggered across the beach, "Please, Rose. I have to go home, back to Mickey." She tried to get Rose to meet her eyes, but Rose was somewhere else entirely. "You stay here if you want, but I've got to get back to the TARDIS."

"Just one drink, Marth."

"No, not one drink, I can't be here," she hissed.

"Why can't you just drink by yourself like any other budding alcoholic?" Amy quipped.

"I'll take us back," Donna volunteered when Rose wasn't budging on her ridiculous, drunken stance. Donna then did a bizarre hand motion in the air in front of her, which resulted in absolutely nothing happening. She frowned. Tried again. Nothing. "Hold on… third time's the charm…" Unperturbed, she tried once again to conjure one of her portals, and once again it failed. "I'm, um… this never happens, honestly."

"Rose, seriously," Martha continued to implore, "I'll come and hang out with you while you get drunk back on the TARDIS, where it's safe and there aren't any dead bodies hanging up." Rose squinted, and finally something within her must have had a genuine thought. "I promise, I'll spend the whole day with you." Better waste the day with Rose on the TARDIS than out there on a desert island.

"Alright, alright… if you promise…"

"Yes, fine, whatever you want," said Martha, "It's your wedding, after all." She could always force Mickey to come along as well, she supposed; let him field Rose's endless baby-related questions.

"Let's go, then…" Only… they didn't. They stayed right where they were. Rose grew incredibly confused.

"If you tell me you're too drunk to teleport…"

"Shh, shush," Rose waved a hand at her, then scrunched up her face and closed her eyes very tightly. Just like with Donna, nothing happened.

"Uh… this might be a bad time to point out that my powers aren't working, either…" Clara interrupted. At that, Martha desperately tried to make a flame in her hand, something which was ordinarily incredibly easy. Yet no flames appeared, no heat whatsoever.

"Uh-oh…" said Amy.

"This doesn't make sense, how can our powers just be gone?" Martha said. Rose was walking again. "Rose! Don't wander off! We don't even know where we are!"

"I'll ask around!" she said, continuing her quest towards the buildings.

"No! We should stick together!" Martha protested as Amy followed in Rose's tracks.

"We might as well see what's going on," she said, "There must be some reason our powers have just stopped."

"I'm so tired of getting stuck on tropical islands with you," Donna said pointedly to Amy, "That's the second time this week…"

"Donna! We shouldn't… they've got guns!" Martha was left with only Clara by her side, watching the other three vanish.

"Come on," Clara said quietly, "Amy's got a point. And we can't very well call anybody to come and get us if we don't even know when or where we are."

"This isn't safe!"

"We'll be fine if we don't piss anybody off," said Clara, who was naturally very good at pissing people off.

Martha was forced to give in. "Alright! But I'm telling you now, this is a terrible idea."

AN: Minor spoiler: they definitely are not in a simulation, it's something else going on which is vastly more interesting.