Hoping you'll find this chapter exciting and satisfying! Climactic, perhaps? Though as our heroes are aware, the fight is far from over!
FIFTEEN
He had Hilde Weth, the Tertia Trochos who now knew his name, incapacitated. But it wasn't going to last.
The Doctor stood in front of the talisman on the desk, the epicentre of the ritual and the debris blowing in the air of the office. He closed his eyes and concentrated. Almost immediately, he felt instability, sensory overload, full exposure to the Anosychos Void. He felt the driving panic and fear from the humans within, he heard screaming, sobbing, white noise, he heard Martha's voice insisting that no-one give up, keep the faith, know that the Doctor…
"Martha," he said out loud.
He heard a cry of joy from her, and few exclamations of confusion and happiness from her cohorts.
He martialed his concentration, and did what he could to stabilise the Vestibule, and get the humans back on their feet, and not dangling above a terrifying nothingness that led to a horrible kind of somethingness…
It was time to talk to Martha, work through their Mochthos without the interplanetary couples' therapist who ruined lives.
They could all hear – the other five humans, and the Tertia Trochos. But he didn't have time to be a stickler about privacy. He had to do it.
He suddenly felt he was dangling before something… could be terrifying.
But it also could be wonderful. If he played his cards right…
He opened the journal to a marked page, and looked hard at the purple letters, and the red annotations he had made.
"Martha, did you wonder why I wasn't more worried about Weth digging into my hang-up on my ex? I mean, I've never called her that, but who am I kidding? Certainly not you. I know you wondered. I know you wondered why I didn't realise that just because we weren't married, weren't even a couple, our real partnership could be ruined by it."
"I did wonder, yes," she said, and her voice seemed to travel on the purple waves of energy zipping about the room like a paisley pattern. "Doctor, what are you doing?"
"I'm so sorry I didn't see it. Because what we have is real. It's always been real," he told her, looking at the word real underlined three times in red ink. And now he read directly from her words. "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. Martha, I'm so sorry. This has never been what I intended. But it's clearly what I've wrought."
"Doctor, seriously, what are you doing?"
"I'm being honest," he said. "No more Elephants in the Room. No more ghosts."
"No!" he now heard Weth cry out.
This had been exactly what she had been trying to prevent all along. The two of them elucidating this issue without her.
"It's important that you know, though, that the ghost is not her. It's not Rose, or anyone else. The ghost is my neurosis. She's gone, but my complex is quite present, and that's on me. Weth knew it, you knew it, and I just wouldn't listen. There are so many things I should have been listening to, Martha. You've been trying to tell me something for months!"
"Okay," Martha said, now sort of curious as to where this was going. "Doctor, can't this wait?"
"No, it can't."
"Well, you've definitely got my attention."
He turned backwards in the journal a bit, aware that Weth was starting to stand up.
"I've been an idiot," he said. "A hopeless, to-my-own-detriment idiot. Do you hear me?"
She now recognised her own words read back to her: hopeless, to-my-own-detriment. Only she had used them to describe how much in love she was. With him. The man saying the words now.
"I hear you. But how do you know…"
"I've got your journal in my hand. I'm sorry to invade your privacy, but it was the only way I could figure out how to be a true partner to you," he said, and now shut the book. "Though, if I'm honest, I knew how before, I just needed a push. My stubbornness is what's keeping us from being together together. It's not that I don't care. It's not that I don't…"
And suddenly he was pushed off his feet by a surprisingly strong Tertia Trochos, and the journal tumbled out of his hands. Weth had found her faculties again, was fighting back, and she kicked the journal under the credenza in the corner.
But he didn't need the journal, strictly speaking. He reckoned he could just speak from the heart, and was surer than ever that it would work.
Because why would Weth throw him down now, if she weren't afraid that what he was doing would derail her?
"Martha, can you still hear me?" he called out, ignoring the protestations of Weth, who was down on her knees, at his level, and yelling right in his face. He backed away like a crab, managed to filter her out, and hoped that Martha could too. "Because if you can, the Elephant in the Room… I see it now. We're not together together, but we should be!"
"No!" Weth screamed.
His back was to the wall, and she was advancing forward like a jungle cat, still screaming, still hoping to interfere with their communication.
"Sorry… say that again?" Martha said from inside the Vestibule. And he honestly didn't know if she hadn't heard him because of the chaos, or if she was simply incredulous.
"I've known for some time, I think," he said.
"Stop it!" Weth said, and she went suddenly in the other direction, stumbled for the talisman, and tore it down off the desk.
The Doctor got to his feet and martialed his concentration as the energy converter hit the floor, and maintained his own psychic connection, so that though the purple lights in the room dimmed slightly, they did not disappear.
"Know what?" Martha asked. "I'm… I'm…"
"Are you having trouble hearing me?"
"No, I'm having trouble believing it's you!"
"Martha, it's me. Trust me. Be sure. Just as I'm sure of you, okay? If you never had faith before, have it now!"
"But none of this sounds like you, Doctor!" she said, and he could hear her voice breaking.
"Oh God," he groaned. "I'm so sorry. I only don't sound like myself because I would never let myself sound like this! I'm making room for you now in my heart – metaphorical heart. Of which I've got only one."
Weth now began throwing anything she could find, and screaming, yelling, cursing in a language that was not human. Books, paper weights, her shoes, a plant… only to disrupt the energy swirls in the air, but nothing could stop them, unless a full-room sized object could interrupt all contained links. She knew that the Doctor only needed one little thread to talk with Martha, to tell her what he needed to tell her. He didn't need to reverberate throughout the Void and the Vestibule to solidify a partnership that could not be torn apart by her, nor Monoklino.
The Doctor, much to her chagrin, ignored every form of her protest, but he did hit the floor again. He made his way to the other side of one of the armchairs to shield from flying debris. But he was still talking to Martha.
"Please, just… damn it, come back! Come back here and see that I'm me!"
"Seriously!" Martha cried out, and it was impossible to tell whether she was exasperated or ecstatic. His guess was that she was a little bit of both, and cautious to be either one.
"That is enough! Eeeeee-nooooough!" Weth continued to scream. With that, the armchair toppled over, and he could see a bust of Sigmund Freud coming toward him. He moved out of the way just in time to dodge Weth's attack. She fell forward over the sideways chair, and cursed.
He got his back to the side wall of the office as Weth got to her feet and hurled a vase at him, missing his head. The wet mess splattered all over the wall, and the right shoulder and arm of his suit coat, and mouldy flowers went splat on the carpet. "I say how this ends! I say when and where the Mochthos is found and exploited! Me! This is mine, my moment! Martha is mine, and now a servant of Monoklino!"
Weth went for a hardcover DSMIV, and tried to throw it, but it didn't get very far.
"Martha, please come back!" the Doctor begged. "I swear, all the secrets are gone – I have nothing left that I would keep from you. Any roadblock I know about… I'm ready to dismantle it. I want to wrestle that ghost out of our lives, clear the air, and give it a solid try."
He could hear the voices of Martha's new friends comforting and encouraging her. It was soft, but unmistakable.
"Are you crying?" he asked, though he knew the answer. He needed her to communicate, validate him, complete the partnership.
"A solid try?" she asked, voice breaking, answering his question. "You mean with me?"
"Of course with you. With us!"
"Is there any way I am misinterpreting this? I mean, are you…"
A snow globe shattered on the wall beside his head, and Weth's screaming started up again.
"…serious? Yes," he answered. "And not just because it will save your life. If you're wondering if it all goes back to the status quo once this little adventure is over, then don't. I'm all in. If I weren't, this wouldn't work."
"What wouldn't work?" asked Martha.
Weth began to sob. She was reduced to throwing things that were coming out of her desk drawers: bottles of Liquid Paper, pads of sticky notes, pens…
She was discouraged, weak, and exhausted. And quite possibly, terrified.
He got back to a standing position and swatted away the office supplies coming toward his head, and set the eagle-shaped energy converter back on the desk. Weth seemed unable or unwilling to stop him, but continued throwing office supplies.
"Bring her back," he said to the eagle statue. "She doesn't belong to the Vestibule. Cannot belong to the Vestibule. Bring her back to me! Bring her back, bring her back…"
And the energy converter seemed to hear him, transferring words into energy, and the air in the office changed. He could feel an openness, a vulnerability that had not been there before. It was a portal – he could feel it. Suddenly, a little ball of light appeared in the air.
"Nooooo!" Weth shrieked once again, anguished, pained.
It glowed brighter and brighter, first blue, then fading into green, then a brilliant yellow.
The ball unfurled like a scroll into a seven-foot-tall light-radiating rectangle. It then shrank down to about five-foot-two, human-shaped, and became Martha Jones.
"Ha!" she breathed, flexing her fingers. "Doctor!"
"It worked!" he shouted, and he lifted her off her feet in the sort of hug that might have been life-affirming, if the best wasn't yet to come.
He turned her back to the barrage of mechanical pencils coming their way, and closed his eyes to shield them. They held on tight and just for a moment, enjoyed being in the here and now, because the fight was far from over.
Obviously, in ordinary life-or-death circumstances, the Doctor would not put something like "strengthening a relationship" ahead of taking down the bad guy. Making his partner happy, letting her read and feel the words he had written for her in a moment of maudlin regret, the most poetry he felt he was capable of, that would be an after-the-fight sort of priority. But not today.
He broke their hug, went over to the credenza and bent down, and pulled the journal out from under. He flipped quickly to a page where he had responded to her thoughts fully, in red ink. He handed it to her, and when she looked up at him in some sort of wonder, he just gave her a nod. "Read it," his eyes said.
She ran a glance over it, but then said, "Doctor, we've got to save my friends."
"I know. I'm only giving you this because I can't lose you again."
And Weth had stopped throwing things, was now pressed against her own wall, as the Doctor had been, still sobbing uncontrollably.
Suddenly, she began to push herself up to standing, and spoke again in her native language.
The Doctor's eyes shifted to her as he heard what she was doing and saying. "No!" he shouted at her. "Hilde! Not yet!"
She did not listen. She continued to talk. The Doctor and Martha could both understand her words – she was supplicating, summoning the spirit of Monoklino.
"Hilde, stop!" the Doctor shouted. "The consequences to you will be…"
"Stop calling me that!" she snapped at him. "Hilde is not my name!"
"Fine," he said. "You, whoever you are, stop your ritual! Just stop! Let us get our bearings, let us…"
Once again, the energy converter engaged. Now it glowed on its own, a strange gold that seemed to blink in and out with purple tinges.
"Skasíla," a voice said through it. "Explain!"
"Master," Weth said, tears streaming down her face. "I offer my confession and supplication."
"Don't," the Doctor said to her. "It's not going to listen! Supplication or not! Monoklino is not a god, it's just an thing that feeds! It's using you!"
"You have failed," the voice said. "I cannot consume five. Six is the requisite. I was promised six!"
"I am so sorry my Master!
"You have had ample time, Skasíla. I require a sixth. The trinities cannot be complete with five. I count only five in the vestibule."
"Hilde, Skasíla," the Doctor said, and he tried to get closer to her. "Tell it…"
"Stay away from me!" she screamed.
He backed up a step or two, but then said as quietly as possible to still be heard, "Give it a time frame. Tell it you'll have Martha back in there in whatever time frame it will agree to, otherwise…"
"You leave me no choice, Skasíla," said the voice of, apparently, Monoklino. "I'll have to take you instead."
"Otherwise it will do that!" the Doctor hissed at her.
She ignored the Doctor. "I know, my Lord! You have shown benevolence beyond what I am due! You, in your infinite wisdom…"
"Silence!" it demanded. And Weth was chastised, once again, sobbing. "The moment is now! I was promised six!"
Weth closed her eyes, and prepared to be taken.
The Doctor stepped in between her and the energy converter. "Wait!" he shouted, now spreading his arms as if to shield her from whatever it was about to do.
"Doctor! Don't!" Martha cried out, afraid he would be taken instead.
"What is this? Skasíla, explain!" said the voice.
"It's an interloper, I'm so sorry!" said Weth/Skasíla. "He's a Time L…"
And the Doctor turned and placed his hand over his mouth to silence her.
To the voice, the Doctor said, "I'm an operative. I've been working with Skasíla. I want to make a deal."
"An operative of what sort?" asked the voice of Monoklino.
"Give us a day," the Doctor said, holding Weth still, one arm across her back and shoulders, the other over her mouth. Interestingly, she was not fighting him, but looking at him with curiosity. "One of the prisoners has escaped the Vestibule. Give us one day to get her back."
He looked at Martha with apology in his eyes, and a little shrug.
She knew this was what he had to do, but she didn't know to what end yet.
"A whole day?"
"One whole rotation of the Earth," the Doctor said. "You can monitor it. We will get her back. If we can do that, then you won't have to sacrifice Skasíla. She has been a loyal servant to you – let her be. Give her a day to get her prisoner back."
"This is not the practice."
The Doctor took a chance and released Weth from his grip.
"If you are truly as wise and benevolent as Skasíla believes you to be," the Doctor argued. "Then you will know that no being in this universe is perfect. We all make mistakes, and your grace for Skasíla just now would display an infinite…"
"Silence," it repeated, this time at the Doctor.
The Doctor, however, was not wont to be silenced today any more than any other.
"One day," he said. "Twenty-four Earth hours, that's all we ask."
"Very well," said the voice. "Skasíla, until today, you have, indeed, served me well. I shall show a wise sort of grace. But one rotation of the Earth is all. There will be no more!"
Weth/Skasíla was in tears. "Thank you, Master, but I don't…"
The Doctor, once again, placed a hand over her mouth, and held her still. "Thank you, we'll be in touch," he said to the voice, as though he were ending a business phone call. Then he got Martha's attention. "Oi, that paper there…"
She approached and picked up a piece of paper that seemed to have an incantation on it.
Though the words were written in Skalísa's native language, the TARDIS translation circuits were working, and Martha read aloud, "In all the graciousness of my noble lord, I now take my leave and conclude our discourse. Until our next encounter, I bid thee farewell."
She wasn't sure it would work for her to do it, but…
The energy converter glowed, and transferred those words, a command, to an end to the overflowing energy. Any swirling lights and air in the room got sucked back into the "talisman," and all was quiet.
Skalísa threw the Doctor's hands and arms off her. "What did you just do?" she screamed.
"I bought you some time!" he shouted back. "You do not want to be dragged across the universe and sacrificed to Monoklino!"
"That's the pledge I made, Time Lord! The likes of you could never understand…"
"Really? You don't think I understand sacrifice and dogma and throwing yourself on your sword when the going gets tough? Blimey, do your research, would you?" he said to her. He walked around in a tight, exasperated circle, then, "Fine, you don't like me saving you? I can handle that. What's more important is that there are five innocent human beings in that Vestibule who don't want nor need to be sacrificed to Monoklino, and I don't care what you think about that. Not even a little bit."
She lunged for the talisman, but he got between her and her target. Martha now picked up the ugly eagle statue, prepared to take it, along with the journal tucked under her arm, wherever they were headed next. "Right. Now what?"
"You and I go back to the TARDIS and work out how the rest of this drama is going to go," he said. "And we take that sinfully ugly statue with us."
"No!" Skalísa protested, lurching toward Martha. The Doctor took on half a step in her direction, and she stopped. "You cannot have that! It's mine! That's theft! It belongs to the Tertia Trochos! It is the property of our council! You can't!"
She looked about for something to throw, but there was nothing left within reach.
"What about her?" Martha asked, gesturing toward the alien woman they had once known as Hilde Weth.
"Judging by the reaction to our stealing her eagle buddy, I'm going to say she's pretty harmless without it," he said. "That's actually what it is – like the Globe and the Carrionites. Words converted into power."
"Really?" she said, looking at the statue in her arms. "Hunh!"
"It's a talisman!" Skalísa spat. "A totem of ultimate power!"
"Whatever," the Doctor shrugged. "The statue can't do anything without her, and vice versa. Speaking of which…"
He began to look at pieces of paper that had flown about the room. He was able to find a few that had been written in her native language, that were clearly commands for opening and closing, furthering communication via the energy converter.
"You have bought me time, Doctor," Skasíla said, whilst he searched. "That was a big mistake! I will find my sixth. You and I both know I will never be able to get Martha away from you again, now that you've been so reckless! But I shall not have to sacrifice myself either. I will find my sixth, mark my words!"
"It took you like a month and a half to break us up, and that was only because you got impatient," Martha said, cutting through the earnest little monologue. "You're going to do all of that in twenty-four hours?"
"I've got what we need," the Doctor said. "Let's go. Want me to take that?"
Martha handed the eagle statue off to him, and he tucked it under one arm. With the other hand, he took hers, and they walked out of the office to the sounds of a shrilly protesting, mostly defeated Tertia Trochos.
A few more problems remain to be solved, but at least the Partnership is back intact - whew! And headed into its own new chapter, eh?
If you're reading this, I would love it if you'd drop me a review... been getting crickets! Some human noises would be nice! ;-) Thank you for reading!