When last we saw our Doctor, approximately 8 million years ago (sorry, I'm bitter about not being able to write more often), he had just talked with Martha via diamond-enhanced communication device, and he had just had another gross run-in with Weth...

...and it was dawning on him what he needed to do, to save Martha. His feelings have been evolving anyway, and now there's the question of what a "true partnership" entails. In short: he's been reading her journal, but it's for a good cause.

Here, we continue here in that vein. We also learn about a similarity between the Tertia Trochos and a foe the Doctor has faced in the past (which will make the talisman and the "trinity" element make more sense), and Dr. Weth takes things up a notch!

Before we jump in, I just want to say how thankful I am for the Doctor Who community on the whole; the fans, the creators, its legacy. I have my complex reasons for saying so at this moment in history; but the feeling of gratitude is quite simple... so thank you. All of you!

Enjoy this chapter!

THIRTEEN

"Was that him? That was the Doctor?" asked Holly, wide-eyed, having heard the conversation through a makeshifted speaker made from components of a lamp. Bella had thrown it together in her room, to accommodate Martha's mobile phone and diamond ring idea.

"That was him," Martha answered.

"That smile," Danielle said, pointing out the delighted expression on Martha's face. "Not-husband-colleague-man, marriage ruse, diamond ring…"

"Enough, enough," Martha said, with a hand trying to abate the implications. She knew very well how silly she must look, because she knew how her insides were absolutely leaping for joy. Some of it was relief because she was in danger, and once again she might be saved. But a lot of it was just him, and getting to hear his voice... and she didn't need anyone pointing it out. She blustered, and tried to cover. "But now you know… I mean, you've heard him. He's real, and he knows things that no-one else knows, and can most likely get us out of here!"

"All I heard was that he understands where we are, what's happened to us, and what's going to happen to us, not that he knows how to get us out," Petra said, leaning on one hip, and crossing her arms. She wore a black tee-shirt underneath a green spaghetti-strap dress, and had limp brown hair and pouty pink lips. She stood most of the time with her arms crossed over her chest defensively. The whole tableau seemed perpetually worried and cynical, though she didn't speak very often.

"Yeah, but he's the only one who understands that stuff, Petra," Walt pointed out. "At least the only person we've come across! That's huge!"

"Understanding how it starts," Martha said, smiling at Petra excitedly. "Data gathering. Understanding the nature of the problem. Until you do that, you can't solve anything. That's true of anyone, even the Doctor. He just does it a lot faster and on a bigger scale than anyone else. Which is what we're going to need here."

"A big, showy masterstroke," Walt agreed. "That's what I'm hoping for."

"I'm sure you won't be disappointed," Martha chuckled.

Petra shifted her weight to the other hip, and sort of nodded. Then she said, "Fair enough. Now what?"

"Not sure," Martha said. "For me, the waiting is the hardest bit. I'd say we try to learn as much as we can about this place and see if there's anything we can do to help things along, but... it seems like this dimension only lets you know what it wants you to know. Or, when you do learn something, it's by accident."

"Well, I was at the top of my game with knowing about the diamonds," Danielle shrugged.

"And me with the electronics," said Bella.

"And me with the nursing bit, even though I was bloody useless," Holly said. "I am, however, quite good with comic relief, and standing about with a cute smile. So we've got that going for us."

The Doctor took Martha's journal to the kitchen and made a cup of tea. He had found a red pen in her room before leaving, and was now re-reading entries 18 and 19 while he waited for the water to boil. Tea was a not-un-comforting tradition of the British people, something in which he had learned to find a bit of solace over the years, when he needed to ruminate. Tea had revived him on the day of his most recent regeneration, and had given him the chutzpah to save the day…

He was hoping it would do so again. Along with calming his nerves.

He poured the water into a cup with a bag in it, sat down at the table and began annotating Martha's journal with the red pen. She was definitely going to find out that he had read it – that was the whole point. So, he reckoned as long as he was doing this, he may as well do it right.

He answered questions, added his own thoughts, filled in blanks for her, and added comfort for her, hoping she would read that bit someday.

Eventually, he began entry #20, which described Weth digging, once again, into the Mocthos. He no longer thought of it as too-close-to-the-truth. It was just truth.

Why isn't he worried about this? Why does he dismiss it, as though the fact that "we're not married" matters? Because the fact is, there is an actual partnership that could be at stake here. It's not a marriage, nor even romantic or sexual, but it's real.

He underlined everything from "there is an actual…" to "it's real," in red. He knew it was a no-brainer at this stage, but he was also aware that he needed a reminder from time to time.

We live in each other's worlds, and there's no-one here but us… at least physically. Psychologically, however, there is another person, a ghost hovering about all the time.

"I'm so sorry. This has never been what I intended," he wrote on the page opposite, having drawn an arrow from the phrase all the time. "But it's clearly what I've wrought. It's important to understand, though, that the ghost is not her. The ghost is my neurosis. She's gone, but my complex is quite present."

Now that was a revelation. He had written it before he'd really thought about it, and now he stared at the words.

Yes. He had needed to know that about himself, about Rose, about the whole blasted situation. The woman herself is out of his life for better or for worse – the preoccupation is the ghost that won't leave. And that was on him.

Why can't he see that there are problems in our REAL partnership that could be (and perhaps are being) played upon like piano keys? One would think that an adventure such as this would cause him to be on guard, to home in on those things that could make us vulnerable, but I guess his mind just doesn't go "there," when it concerns trusty old Martha Jones. Like a comfy pair of slippers.

"That is not what you are, nor is it ever what I wanted you to be," he wrote, also on the opposite page, at the end of an arrow leading from slippers. "And of course my mind goes 'there.' It goes a lot of places with you - how could it not? Have you met you?"

But apparently, Weth did not give enough. I almost wanted her to just to pounce today, if only to make things go faster.

"We can't make this decision here, that's the bottom line. I know that you seecertain truthsin this room, Dr. Weth," he said to her, very pointedly. "But I can't just walk away from a marriage. Martha and I need to be mutually certain – or in this case perhaps mutually uncertain of each other."

Well, fantastic. And so it goes on.

I entertained myself as we walked down the front steps by imagining her overturning furniture in her office.

When's our next appointment, then?

There was a big open space leftover, as this was the end of Martha's journal, for now.

Only for now.

He resisted the urge to write down absolutely everything he was thinking, because he needed to talk with her. It would do no good to become "true partners" with her journal.

But in the interest of having her someday feel reassured by the red markings in entries 18, 19, and 20, he wrote, "I'm sorry for dragging it out – I see now how much that upset you, and why. You wanted her to pounce, and so did I, but I was waiting for the right moment, a moment when I knew I could 'afford' to lose you. When I had the knowledge to get you back. Ironic how very, very, very little knowledge I actually had for keeping you in my life, isn't it?

"When I see you again, Martha Jones, I will make that mistake no more. There will never be a time when I can afford to lose you – I will hold on, no matter what. Hilde Weth spouted a lot of rubbish, but I hope that one thing holds: true partners cannot be torn apart by an outside entity. And if you're reading this, then that's what we are."

One half hour later, he was back in the console room, doing what he does best: problem-solving, computering, examining nebulous data, and beginning to rig his existing equipment to do something it wasn't intended for. Though, it's not as if it would be the TARDIS' first rodeo... he trusted her. He had to.

But first things first. What was Weth packing in that office? He had scanned the space the last time he'd been there, "wondering" about Martha's whereabouts. He now had the sonic screwdriver plugged into the console to analyse the data he had taken from the eagle statue on Weth's desk. He had not had time to dampen the sound that the screwdriver makes before his burst-in, so he had had to keep it in his pocket, and had begun shouting to cover the noise. He was also shouting, of course, because his anger and panic were very real.

"Okay, so…" he said aloud to the TARDIS. "A talisman is a magical thing. An inanimate object that rather inexplicably holds some sort of power. And there's no such thing as magic, only the mysteries of the universe, eh, old girl? So in reality, what the hell is that eagle statue? I mean, it's an inanimate object that holds some sort of power, to be sure, but it's certainly not inexplicable."

A display of data popped up on the screen, and he whispered, "Of course. A power converter. Converting powerful words into literal power, which opens a portal. And where, ladies and gentlemen, have we seen a power converter recently? That's right! The Globe Theatre!" He took a moment to move data about, and save it to the place where he wanted to be able to access it.

He started to laugh at himself. This felt like a no-brainer, this revelation… now. The Tertia Trochos' planet is in the same galaxy as that of the Carrionites, and the materials and energy use would be the same.

"Converting psychic energy via three vessels, requiring participation of a trio, to open and/or activate a portal," he said, with a smile.

The Tertia Trochos' M.O. and ultimate goal was different and more complicated, probably because Monoklino had proselytized somehow to the Tertia Trochos. But the portal worked similarly…

Which meant, that without the active contribution of the usurped partner (him), the portal would be working at 2/3 capacity, and get a bit confused as to where and how it was meant to open, and how to handle someone coming through. The person could potentially arrive in pieces.

He did a quick bit of math, and realised that he was, theoretically, right.

"Oh, dear," he groaned.

Of course true partnerships can't be broken up, and this is why. Though it doesn't stop unscrupulous sorts like Weth from trying. And he had given her just enough leeway to do a hell of a lot of damage.

But now he knew the nature of the "talisman," it didn't change anything about how he planned to get Martha back. And he needed her back, now more than ever. If for no other reason than to apologise for what he had put her through, for what Weth had put her through because of him… and of course, to tell her a thing or two.

The energy converter revelation only gave him a clue as to what was next, after he had his partner safely back in the TARDIS where she belonged.

Hilde Weth was pacing back and forth in her office. She muttered confusedly in her native language. She had been so close – so close – to another consumption, another cooperative crossing-over, and an undoubtedly very pleasurable affair with…

…ugh, someone who turned out to be a meddlesome Time Lord! Weren't they meant not to interfere with the goings-on of the universe? Though, perhaps this Time Lord had made an exception because he'd discovered the Vestibule dimension's time-anomalous nature.

"Oh no," she said aloud, and stopped in her pace.

A horrible possibility had just occurred to her. What if all of her marks on this planet had been Time Lords? She didn't think the Time Lords had any interest in Earth, but clearly at least one of them did. She didn't understand it, but if one was here, then a bunch of them could be here. She had heard that they had all perished in the war, but she had also heard speculation that "stragglers" who had been off-world at the time had survived, which made sense.

She hadn't noticed a dual heartbeat in any of the others – and she had been intimate with them, clothes off, and all. She supposed she could try and track them down – they were all still out there somewhere, starting new lives, she reckoned. But that didn't mean she hadn't missed the four-heartbeat pattern somehow, or that they hadn't found a way to mask it from her. It also didn't mean that the cast-out partners were not Time Lords. She really had not bothered to learn much about Walt Ilsman, or Arabella Henning, or Holly Warren, or Petra Greenlee, or Danielle Watson… or Martha Jones, for that matter. Those names could all be Time Lord aliases used on Earth, and their Mochthoses could have been fabricated! Had she got complacent and cocky enough in this "cushy" Earth existence not to notice when a Mochthos wasn't real?

But it had really felt like Martha and "John" were cracking because of it... the ex-wife hangup. But how could that be? "John" wasn't even a real person!

She was angry at everything, including herself, and she wanted to hurl another vase at the wall. But instead, she wrangled herself into thinking logically.

If the Vestibular dimension were full of Time Lords, they would have brought it down by now. Wouldn't they? Wouldn't just their presence there cause instability?

Moreover, she didn't know the nature of any of them at this stage, but most signs pointed to clueless humans. None of them had behaved knowingly with her, looking at her with quizzical awareness as "John" had, and he was the only one she knew for sure was onto her.

Time Lord worm. Weasel. Insidious creeping virus! He knows who she is, what she's trying to do…

Though probably not why, which was something. However, she didn't figure that state of affairs would last long, and evidence suggested that he was probably one step ahead of her.

She couldn't let him learn anymore! She had been ordered to keep the sacred bond between the Tertia Trochos and Monoklino secret forever – all of the operatives had sworn to it. Monoklino's wisdom and benevolence must be allowed to continue in his Abyss, and no-one in this universe, save for a select few civilisations, could comprehend his modes and wonderments.

But the Time Lord had had his hand on the eagle – which in and of itself would not allow anyone, not even a Time Lord, to become aware that it is a potent talisman. But "John," or whatever his name was, she knew he had examined it somehow. She had to operate under the assumption that he knew everything…

She needed to recommence the ritual sooner rather than later. Martha and the others were not quite ready yet, and she was loath to force them, as their union in Monoklino's Abyss would be more tenuous in that case.. But she could not afford to be caught. She could not afford for a Time Lord to penetrate the ways of the Tertia Trochos, and work out how to collapse the Vestibule, thereby destroying all the work that Weth had done on Earth. She could not afford to disappoint Monoklino, and not send her forged trios into his abyss, weak-willed or not. She would be cast out of her society, excommunicated from the cult… perhaps worse.

Though, she had been conditioned to believe that excommunication was worse than annihilation.

"It has to be now," she said.

And she extracted from her file drawer the ancient parchment that contained the incantation, the words that would send the two trios across the oscillating void, into the Abyss forever.

Don't worry, we won't carry the Carrionites thing too far! I just felt like some of the similarities should be pointed out... but the T.T. definitely have a different purpose and M.O.

So... a review would be wonderful and amazing just now... why not drop me a quick line to let me know your thoughts?

Thank you for reading!