Out of Shape and Out At Sea

Martha

It wasn't the best plan they'd ever had, in Martha's opinion, jumping headlong into the inky black ocean in the midst of a storm. It was, in fact, what quite a lot of people would call 'suicide.' She'd spent enough time with Captain Jack Harkness and Owen Harper to hear their brutal experiences with the afterlife, or lack thereof, but had still personally held onto some shred at hope that there might be something, at the very least a void where she was still aware that she had once existed as a conscious being.

She didn't need to be a doctor to know that she wasn't dead, however, but it was more the fact that she had slipped unconscious at some point in the choppy ocean and hadn't realised she'd slipped unconscious that bothered her. If she had died out there, she wouldn't have even been aware that she was dying. She didn't remember the moment where she'd disappeared. Truthfully, though, deep in her heart, Martha's wellbeing wasn't the first thing on her mind when she coughed up a hefty amount of sea water she'd inadvertently swallowed onto the beach she'd washed up on; no, he first thought was about the wellbeing of the unborn baby. So maybe she had more motherly instincts than she knew, because she was suddenly furious at herself for even being in that situation, for even risking the life she was carrying around, for having the audacity to almost drown in the open ocean while she was 'with child.'

And Martha's second thought, too, wasn't about her, but about Mickey; how he would cope. He'd gone to shower, that was all, what if he left the shower to find her gone, the last time they'd ever spoken? Eventually, perhaps, her body would be picked out of the Caribbean and he would have lost both his wife and the foetus she was propagating. Would he cope at all?

But again, Martha Jones was decidedly not dead. The icy sea was lapping at her legs as she crawled away from it. Her eyes stung, but all they could see was the murky darkness of some tropical trees – maybe a small crab – and little else. Driftwood, and – bodies? Were they bodies? She continued her ragged crawl over to the nearest one, finding a pale wrist where she could look for a pulse.

But she didn't need to find a pulse, because the body heaved and spluttered. Martha pushed it over so it wouldn't choke right about the moment she realised it was no anonymous pirate, but Amy Pond, sprawled out on the shoreline. There was one other body, and after rubbing her eyes and squinting she thought it might be Clara, but she didn't have the opportunity to check. The storm had lessened now, the wind still blowing but the rain stopped, the only liquid on the air blown onto land from the surf, but loud voices carried over the breeze towards her. She didn't know what they were saying, but they were male, so she assumed they weren't friendly. If that was Clara, though, she didn't see anybody else.

"Where are we?" Amy mumbled after spitting water onto the sand. Martha was scrambling to get to her feet, desperate to head in the opposite direction of the voices. She was dumbly aware that her powers still weren't working, thanks to her futile attempts to warm herself up, so decided to be sensible for the moment and drag Amy away.

"Get up, hurry," she hissed, tugging on Amy's elbow after she'd finally managed to stand, though her entire body was aching. She finally succeeded in getting Amy up, "We've got to hide, quick!" They only escaped another encounter with the rogues of the high seas by the skin of their teeth, heading in what she hoped was the opposite direction of the oncoming voices to hide within the thick foliage and shadows at the edge of the sand. They were in a bay, she decided, after examining their surroundings in the moonlight, curved around like a horseshoe.

"I can't believe we're not dead," was the first proper sentence Amy managed to string together, "Is that Clara?"

"I think so," said Martha, at the moment two figures appeared from the gloom on the opposite side of the horseshoe. They were far away, but they looked to be dressed like soldiers – they were redcoats, though the coats themselves were torn and sullied.

"We have to go help her," Amy said, until Martha stopped her.

"How do you suggest we do that? They're soldiers," Martha warned, "We're no match for them, they've got swords." She could see their swords very visibly, glinting in what little light there was that evening. Amy decided that Martha was right, and so lurked uncomfortably by her side in the brush. They were forced to watch the soldiers pick up Clara, who didn't wake, and carry her away, utterly useless. That wasn't what the Doctor would have done, he would have been able to improvise something very witty, but suddenly Martha's priorities were completely skewed. Even she would have ordinarily jumped in to wake Clara, try and show the soldiers they were more trouble than they were worth, pelt them with coconut shells – anything. But now all she could think of was self-preservation, or, more correctly, the baby. Going out there to face them would put the baby, her baby, in jeopardy, and she couldn't do that in good conscience.

"That's three we've got now," one soldier said to the other, "I wonder where these women came from – they look too clean to all be stowaways." The other one mumbled unintelligible, but then their outlines – and Clara's – disappeared back into the trees, returning to wherever they'd come from.

"They must have Donna and Rose, too," Amy whispered. Inexplicably, Martha burst into tears, and she really didn't cry very often. It took quite a lot to get her to break down, being a doctor. "I'm sure they'll be alright," said Amy unconvincingly, "…Are you alright?"

"I'm not even worried about them…"

"Aren't you?"

"It's just – it's stupid – I – I keep thinking about, what if something happened? To me? Not me, not even me, the… the baby. What if something happened to the baby? All this, now, today-"

"You can't think about that," Amy told her, "What ifs have never helped anybody, you have to focus on what has happened, and what's happened is you're fine, just a bit banged about from the sea."

"Nearly drowning isn't good for the baby."

"So… are you excited about it?" Amy questioned, putting a hand on her shoulder to try and comfort her while she kept crying about the potential fate of the foetus. "You just seem a bit, uh…

"What was it like for you? When you found out?"

"I found out when I went into labour, so it was mostly confusion, pain, and panic. And, you know, I was also a flesh doppelganger of myself without even realising, and ended up… liquefying. Then, suddenly, I wake up in a space prison and I'm giving birth to Melody. Honestly, you're lucky," Amy said. Martha hadn't had a clue that that was how River Song had been born. "And then she was programmed from birth to be a weapon capable of killing the Doctor, so… I mean, I love her, obviously, and so does Rory, and we sort of did grow up with her without knowing – raising her, in a way – but… well. I'm infertile now, whatever they did to me…"

"I'm so sorry," said Martha, "I didn't know the whole story."

"I don't like to talk about it. Before the Crash we were thinking of adopting, actually," Amy explained, "But you know how it is, the Doctor shows up and everything gets put on hold. Not that the Doctor has much time for the pair of us anymore." She joked, but Martha could hear a very real note of sadness in what she said, about Eleven's time being absorbed by Clara now.

"And speaking of that…" Martha began, huddled in the trees with a cold wind blowing around them, "She did just get kidnapped. We should probably do something."

"Well…" Amy turned her gaze towards the rest of the island, looking out across the horseshoe. The skies were clearing, which was good, but it was still the middle of the night. "What's that?" Amy pointed past Martha's head at the sky. Martha squinted.

"What?"

"Over there – I think I can see smoke." Martha had to strain her eyes quite a lot, but sure enough, there was a thin trickle of something in the sky. And with the storm, any fire had to be recent, recent enough to coincide with their arrival on the shore. "What do you think?"

"I think that's our best and only plan," Martha sighed, the tears gone from her eyes now; her emotional blip was over, thank god. "Do you remember what happened after we fell into the sea?" she asked as they left the shelter of the trees, hoping the soldiers didn't reappear to scavenge the beach again. All was quiet so far, aside from the wind.

"The Queen Anne's Revenge sank the William," Amy explained, "Carried on on its own, and then… I don't know, I suppose the storm got the better of us."

"Lucky we all washed up on the beach."

"As far as we know – maybe it's not Donna and Rose they've got captured, could be anybody. Could be Bonny and Read." Martha hoped it wasn't. "It's going to be dark in here… wish we had a light."

"They'd see us coming," Martha pointed out.

"I suppose. But, here's the thing," Amy said, "I don't think the William was captured until 1719."

"Jack's ship?"

"Right."

"And what year are we in?"

"1718."

"Maybe you misheard, or someone got it mixed up," she shrugged, "It's only one year's difference."

"Yeah, but the Queen Anne's Revenge sank early in 1718, in North Carolina."

"How do you know that?"

"I like pirates," Amy shrugged, "How do you know… I don't know, the symptoms of different diseases? The names of all the bones in the body? It's a lot easier to remember pirate trivia than become a doctor."

"I suppose. But what does it matter where it sank? It was a ghost ship," Martha pointed out.

"How does that even work? A ghost ship? Ghosts of people, sure, but not the ghost of an entire ship. And it was remarkably solid – its cannons did real damage, they had real swords," Amy continued as they trekked through the forest, whispering, trying to keep an eye on the thin trickle of smoke in the distance.

"So? What's your point? Look, didn't Clara say that book, or whatever, is inaccurate?"

"Well, yeah…"

"You're overthinking, what we need to be focusing on is how to rescue the other three, since we have no powers, no weapons, no phones or means of escape. Unless you know how to fence?"

"Uh… not really. Not against a troupe of trained Royal Navy officers. What about you? You worked with Torchwood, didn't you? And UNIT?"

"I know how to fire a gun, but we don't have any guns, and I don't think my expertise extends to flintlocks and muskets. Strangely, UNIT don't teach their recruits how to swordfight…" The conversation dwindled while they both continued to think. "We can't all die out here. The female Doctor is still married to Clara in the future."

"Clara's got nanogenes, they might still be working," Amy pointed out as they continued their journey, tripping and stumbling through vines and branches, "I already had to find my way through one jungle this week… you know, I think Jenny's got the right idea, moving to get away from all this."

"I'm just glad she's finally listening to me," Martha said, "We're planning on leaving."

"Probably for the best. You definitely don't want to try and raise a kid on the TARDIS."

"Even without that, though… just feels like maybe it's time. We both turned down offers to travel on the TARDIS full-time before."

"Rory and I were settled, had jobs, a car, a mortgage… managed to get all that again in the 1930s, too, only for this to come along… do you know what you're gonna call it? The baby, I mean."

"Oh. No, we haven't talked about that. Mickey reckons he's gonna be a stay-at-home-dad."

"A house-husband? What a dream. You'd better hang on to him. I suppose you'd only need the one income; you must get paid a lot, right? An experienced doctor?"

"Maybe. I thought I'd try to get a job as an emergency doctor somewhere, in a proper hospital for once."

"Oh yeah?"

"I think I'd be able to manage with the stress and high stakes. Provided we don't die in this jungle."

"Frankly, I think dying might be preferable than having to go to Rose's wedding tomorrow."

"I'm not convinced there's even going to be a wedding at this rate…"

"That'd be the day. Let me have a lie-in. Shit… do you hear that?" They stopped dead, now very close to the smoke stack, close enough that she could smell it along with the rain and also close enough to hear voices, talking. After a few moments of listening they recognised one: Donna.

"I really don't think you want to do this," she argued. Martha and Amy continued advancing in silence. Eventually they saw the flicker of a fire through the trees and out of the shadows loomed a makeshift camp. There were tent-like structures made of driftwood and broken branches, a shoddy firepit in the centre of all the little, wooden constructs, a few full crates and sacks. She and Amy were forced to lie down in the mud to get closer and found themselves prone in a mess of green foliage, wet and filthy, but camouflaged.

There were three soldiers: the two from the beach and one more, who was wearing blue rather than red. Martha knew enough to say that he was their commanding officer, though all three uniforms were in dire straits. Shredded and sullied, the cotton fibres were barely holding together, and they didn't have a full pair of shoes between them. Their feet were black with mud and old blood, faces filthy; surely, they could use the sea to have a bit of a wash, even if the water was undrinkable? Or find a stream, or pond.

"I don't know why you're complaining, ma'am," the officer addressed Donna, standing on a box and posed like he was getting his portrait done while the other two fumbled about with a length of twine. "We'll save you for last."

"Why last? Why not first?" Donna argued.

"Why do you want to go first?" Clara hissed at her. The both of them were tied up inside one of the 'tents', had their arms wrapped around a tree trunk. Rose, too, though she was still unconscious – or worse. Could someone as drunk as her really swim? Sickening as it was, Martha wouldn't be too surprised if Rose had drowned, with no powers to save her.

But then Rose moved and heaved up quite a lot of water, didn't say a single word, and curled up on her side in the dirt.

"That one's first," the officer drew his sword with a flourish, a rusty old rapier, and pointed it at Rose. "She won't last long anyway. There's no point extending her suffering."

"Funnily enough, I think if you roast her on a spit, you might make her suffering worse," Clara said. Amy and Martha exchanged a panic-stricken look – they were going to cook Rose!? Cook all three of them!? How long had they been on that island for?

"How long does it take to roast a human being?" Amy whispered urgently to Martha.

"I don't know, a few hours at least? On a fire like that? Though, it would take less for extensive burn damage and psychological trauma to set in," Martha replied quickly.

"But that's good, isn't it? Means we've got a while to work out what-"

"The wood isn't going to be strong enough to hold the girl," one of the redcoats interrupted their whispers.

"Well, she'd keep for a few days, in one of the barrels. Just shoot her," the bluecoat commodore said, indifferent.

"You were saying?" Martha hissed at Amy.

"We need a plan, and quickly… what's say we go out there and threaten them?"

"Threaten them how? We don't look like much. They've already got three kidnapped women to eat, I'm sure they'd love another two."

"Alright, alright… so we need to… shit, I don't know… what's in these sacks?" Amy asked, nodding at them. The officers were now arguing about their twine, while Clara and Donna desperately tried to persuade them not to shoot Rose. "They're all full."

"So?"

"So – they're obviously not full of food, or they wouldn't be trying to kill Clara, Rose and Donna. But they must have something useful in them, because otherwise they wouldn't have dragged them out here whenever their ship wrecked, right?"

"I suppose? Maybe it's just weapons."

"Waste the energy carrying surplus weapons across the island? They must have valuables in them. Things they could trade to hitch a ride on a passing ship…" Amy carefully began to stand.

"What are you doing?" Martha hissed, trying to grab her ankle and stop her, but Amy just shushed her. She reached out closely enough to touch the sack that was closest, the three soldiers all occupied. Clara, however, was facing directly towards them, and very clearly saw this. She didn't say anything, obviously, but had her eyes firmly set on Amy's outstretched arm, ghostly in the moonlight. Amy fumbled with the cloth sack, finding a hole in it, and something fell out: a thin stream of white powder. Immediately, Amy retreated into the bushes, Clara still fixed on their position; she better not give them away to the soldiers… "Well?" Martha prompted.

"It's sugar," said Amy, "A big sack full of sugar."

"Great, we can make them some tea."

"No, don't you get it? Sugar is flammable. That sack will explode if it gets sparked."

"But we don't have anything to make a spark, they're all gathered around the fire, you wouldn't be able to get there, grab a burning hot log, and get back here before they grab you as well," Martha said, "And then what? Blow us all up?"

"It wouldn't blow us up, but it'd burn this camp down."

"Start a forest fire, you mean?"

"No, the trees are too wet. Look, we can use this to bargain, or as a distraction: do what we want, or we'll burn down your camp and all your valuables, right?"

"But my powers aren't working!"

"There's a fire right there."

"So you're going to pick up that massive sack of sugar and lob it over there? You're not strong enough. I don't even think both of us would be strong enough," Martha said. Amy paused to think; she was right, it was a very large sack, and throwing one onto the existing fire might not have the desired effect, since that fire was in a specially dug-out firepit and a few metres away from the rest of the small camp.

But then Amy had a epiphany: "Clara smokes, she has a lighter."

"Which has just been in the sea!"

"Maybe it's waterproof! Do you have a better idea?" Amy challenged.

"Well… no, alright? No. How are you going to get Clara's lighter? She's tied up; even if she wanted to throw it over here, she couldn't," Martha said.

"All we have to do is circle around this little clearing," Amy began to crawl awkwardly backwards, into the shadows, Martha forced to follow her lead, though she wasn't convinced of the viability of Amy's plan; starting a fire in the middle of a jungle seemed like a way to get all five of them killed.

They walked as quietly and quickly as they could, very aware of the looming threat to Rose's mortality; without her powers, she wouldn't be able to survive a bullet to the head. She wasn't even sober enough to try pleading for her life, that was being left to Donna.

"You don't need to kill us – can't you go fishing?" she suggested, "Surely there's animals out here? Fruit?"

"But why would we waste our time with that when it's much easier to make use of the resources god has given us?" the bluecoat said.

"God wouldn't give you women to eat," Clara argued, "That's not how any deity works. Maybe god wants to test whether you're good people or not – if you help us, you are. If you kill and eat us, well, you'll definitely go to hell."

"We're servants of the King directly," said the bluecoat, "The King is put on the throne by god, therefore, we are serving the Lord. We're being rewarded for our loyal service." They were obviously insane, they'd probably been on the island too long and it had all gone a bit Lord of the Flies. Martha wouldn't be surprised if they'd eaten the rest of the crew and those three were the only ones left.

Amy and Martha crept up behind the 'tent' the other three were being held in, but were blocked from being able to pickpocket Clara by a sheet of canvas, or more specifically, a torn shred of a ship's sail they'd hung up to make their shelters. They could get their hands underneath it quite easily, but couldn't see if any of the soldiers were looking in their direction. Plus, the bluecoat was barely six feet away from them now, keeping his watchful eye on his prisoners.

Amy had to lower her voice even more and whisper in Martha's ear the next stage of her scheme, "We get the lighter, then I'll sneak back over there and distract them while you untie these three, then I'll light the sugar and we all make a break for it. That way, towards that mountain," she nodded in the direction of a craggy shadow in the distance. Martha hated that this was their best idea. "Do you know which pocket she had it in?"

"She might be able to reach and get it herself," Martha said.

"But how do we tell her?"

"…I know," Martha said, picking up a rock next to her. It was relatively large, nearly twice the size of her fist, and she stood carefully in the shadows, praying she wouldn't be seen.

Martha threw the rock across the camp. Luckily, it was too dark for them to see it – the trio so focused on rigging up their spit – so they didn't notice anything until it crashed against a tree trunk on the opposite side of the camp. And to Martha's great joy, they didn't realise it was a projectile, and all turned their attention towards where it had landed.

"What was that?" the bluecoat asked the girls.

"How should we know!?" Donna protested, "Maybe it's a pirate. There were two pirate ships out there, we were on one of them, but there's at least fifty all heading this way."

"They're a blight upon the good name of the empire," the bluecoat grumbled, drawing his sword again and taking it upon himself to investigate. The other two paused to watch what happened, and Martha took the opportunity to sneak forwards, out into the open, close enough to the canvas to whisper through while they were occupied.

"We need your lighter," she hissed at Clara's shadow, visible through the cloth, "Push it under the canvas." She retreated, seeing Clara start to fumble.

"I can't believe that worked," Amy said once Martha was hidden again. Because of the awkward way Clara's hands were bound, not around the tree but first behind her back, with a second rope around she and Donna's middles, she did have access to her lighter, able to throw it underneath the small gap once she retrieved it. Amy lunged and managed to snatch it just before the bluecoat gave up his meagre investigation.

"Must have been a bird. Or maybe you brought some rats with you from those pirate ships." Amy made her move next to Martha once the bluecoat had regained his regal posture, standing as though he still had a ship to command. She disappeared into the trees, leaving Martha to lie in wait for the moment when she could pounce and release their friends.

"Don't you want to stab her, sir? Drain the blood?" one of the redcoats asked.

"Shooting is cleaner."

"I think the water has dulled the gunpowder. We couldn't get a pistol to fire yesterday."

"What were you doing with the pistols?"

"Trying to shoot birds, sir."

"What are we going to do with one bird between us?"

"With all due respect, sir, at the time we didn't have any birds between us."

"You were trying to push me out, eh?" the bluecoat continued, "Get a bird for the two of you to enjoy? A parrot for you both? Let me starve?"

"Of course not, sir. We're loyal to the last."

"This is why I'm getting first pick with these girls. I want all the thighs to myself."

"The arse is probably your best bet," Clara interjected, "Although, you'd have to clean off all the shit. Unless you want to eat shit. If you want to eat shit, I won't stop you."

"Silence yourself, or you'll be on the spit first. You're the smallest, after all."

"I'm sure it's not her first time being on the receiving end like that," Donna muttered.

"Really? We're about to die, and you're going to take the piss?"

"If you carry on offering to shit on a plate for him, I don't see why-"

"OI!" Amy yelled from the other side of the camp. Donna and Clara had been doing a pretty good job of keeping them distracted already, but Amy was going to pull out all the stops, Martha was sure. She was holding out Clara's lighter above the sack of sugar, and remarkably, the flame was lit. "You can stop what you're doing with those twigs right now." At least they'd mistakenly revealed that their guns weren't working; it was Amy and a bag of explosives versus three goons with swords.

"By the devil, woman – what's in your hand?"

"A lighter," said Amy, "Fire. And you know all this precious sugar you've got? It's flammable. It's going to go up like a shot if I move this naked flame any closer. You won't have a camp and you won't have any commodities. And what's in these barrels? Rum? Alcohol? More accelerants?"

"Who are you? Where did you come from?" the bluecoat demanded.

"Me? I'm a pirate. Amelia Williams. Washed up here. And I don't like the idea of a bunch of demented Englishmen killing and eating some innocent, young girls. Don't you have any common decency? You're degenerates, all of you." Meanwhile, while Amy talked very loudly and insulted them, Martha pulled up the sheet behind Clara and Donna and started to untie the bindings on their hands. She wished she had a knife – maybe Clara had a knife as well as a lighter? She didn't want to ask and risk being heard, Amy keeping the soldiers thoroughly busy.

"That sugar is more valuable than your life, I guarantee it, Miss Williams," the bluecoat said, "We won't hesitate to shoot you. We have guns."

"Really? Where? I don't see any guns on you at the moment." Martha freed Donna, leaving her to crawl over and drag Rose – covering her mouth to make sure she didn't give them away – while Martha continued to help Clara.

"What do you want? Do you want some sugar?"

"From you? Not in a million years, no. What else have you got? Any gold? Treasures? I know – how about your uniforms?"

"Bah! How dare you suggest something like that! Removing our clothes would… well, it would practically be treason!"

"Really?" Amy continued, "Even for me?" And to think, earlier she'd made fun of Clara for faux-seducing somebody. Now she was trying to blackmail three dirty men into stripping. What a weird day they were having.

Martha finally got Clara's arms undone, and the two of them went to help Donna with Rose. All they had to do was get out of there and Amy would be able to start her fire – they just needed to trust her and get going towards the mountain.

"Wow. A beautiful woman shows up at your campsite, says that if you take your clothes off, she won't destroy all your possessions, and you still have reservations?" Amy continued. The other four were heading into the treeline; Rose had woken up but they were so far managing to stop her from kicking up a fuss. Perhaps the midnight dip in the stormy ocean had sobered her up. "You know what? It doesn't matter. If you won't take them off, I'll just have to burn them off." And with that, Amy dropped Clara's lighter in the big sack of highly volatile sugar.