bungakertas (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bungakertas) wrote2008-05-10 05:04 pm
bungakertas) wrote2008-05-10 05:04 pm
Entry tags:
Into The Fire, Part II
Into The Fire
One ride on the local mass transit later, Martha and the Doctor were in the heart of the city. The exit from their platform brought them out to a street crowded with busy and official-looking individuals. There didn’t seem to be any sort of motor vehicles in use by the general population, but every so often a bell would sound and everyone would clear the road. A single vehicle would come zipping by, then they’d all return to walking wherever they pleased.
“This feels strange,” Martha commented as they walked along, taking stock of the buildings. They’d obviously entered the official section of the city, and there were government offices everywhere, and all the people moving around seemed to be busy.
“What feels strange?” the Doctor asked.
“An indoor city,” she explained. “The sound is different from how you’d expect. And the light. And all of it. It’s…sterile.”
“Sterile. A good word for Gallifrey, I’m afraid,” the Doctor sighed as they turned into a small park. “My people are very closed.”
Martha glanced over at him and smiled. The look on his face was a little bit sad. She nudged his arm with her shoulder. “Must be why you started traveling, eh?”
He smiled. “Indeed, it was.” They walked over to the center of the little park, where a statue had been set up on a plinth. A beautiful woman looked up above them. One of her hands was stretched out above her head, palm flat, and on it she held a sphere, with a stylized eternity symbol inside.
But the expression on her face was so cold and emotionless that Martha almost shuddered.
“The Rani,” the Doctor told her, “and a more heartless individual you will be hard-pressed to find.”
Martha looked down at the inscription on the plinth.
OUR BELOVED RANI
She Built Us Up From Nothing And Made Us Mighty
Our Power Is Her Legacy
“These are very ‘up’ people,” Martha sighed.
“The Rani took control of their world completely. I could never convince the Time Lords to step in,” the Doctor sighed. “Hidebound fools. They’d rather stay shut up on Gallifrey safe than risk doing good in the universe.”
Martha blinked. She’d never heard the Doctor say a word against Gallifrey before. I guess that’s the difference when you realize that even if you did want to go back, you really can’t any more, she thought.
They left the park, going down the street and ignoring the curious glances of the local people at their different skins.
It was Martha who spotted what they were looking for first.
“Doctor!” She dragged him across the street, so that they were a little bit farther from it, and therefore less conspicuous, and then pointed. “Look there.”
A very unassuming building stood tucked behind an imposing and heavily ornamented government building just down a short alley off the main street. It was only the one story, so it got lost among all the tall buildings around it, and if you weren’t careful, you’d miss it entirely. There was a gate, and a very unobtrusively placed guard just inside it.
“That building has a low-level perception filter on it,” the Doctor noted. “Even the filter on the TARDIS is a higher setting than that. Just enough to make you assume you don’t need to worry about it, but not enough to make you miss it entirely.”
“Sounds like the place we should try getting inside,” Martha grinned.
“My thoughts exactly, Martha,” the Doctor grinned. “Let’s see if we can’t find the back door.”
“Why don’t you just use the psychic paper?” she asked as they headed around the corner.
“Psychic paper?” The Doctor gave her a strange look. “Why would I have any psychic paper?”
“Because you always have psychic paper,” Martha answered.
“I must be loosing my touch in my old age,” the Doctor frowned. “It’s only a break in, after all. I did that all the time with Sarah Jane.”
Martha rolled her eyes and mentally prepared herself to spend the night in jail.
*~*~*
As it turned out, there wasn’t anything even resembling a back door to the wall, and Martha was even more shocked to discover this Doctor had no sonic screwdriver than she had been to find out about the psychic paper. With only one entrance and no way of getting in the front gate, Martha and the Doctor picked out a likely spot of wall in the back and clambered over. It was awkward, but they managed it, and when they both fell flat on their backs, they were astonished to see absolutely no guards headed for their position.
A back door to the building stood not six feet away, and they rushed over. The Doctor pushed it open.
A very loud alarm went off.
Martha rolled her eyes. “May as well make it worth our while,” she said and ran inside.
“Martha!” The Doctor shouted. He was after her in a flash. The door led straight into a stairwell and the two of them pelted downwards. Martha hit the crash bar at the bottom full-force, and they burst out into a long, empty hallway. She and the Doctor ran down to the end and ducked into the last door on their left.
“Why are we here?” the Doctor asked her. The expression on his face was sheer irritation, but Martha didn’t miss the little flash of excitement in his eyes. Never happier than when he’s getting into trouble, Martha thought fondly.
“This is, as near as I can tell, the room in this building that is the least accessible and furthest away from the street out front,” Martha answered him. “Start looking around. We’ve only got a few minutes.”
As it turned out, they’d only found the mail room, but the Doctor was soon absorbed in reading inter-office memos. “Martha, they’re doing research here into the genetic compatibility of Gallifreyan people with other humanoid species,” the Doctor said after a few moments.
Martha shook her head, having sorted through her own stack of mail. “They’re doing experiments on it. The research stopped being theoretical about two months ago.” She unfolded one and said, “Apparently humans have the highest rate of compatibility. According to their tests on a few subjects, a human only requires a few small alterations to be able to give birth to children that are 98% pure Gallifreyan.” She looked over at the Doctor, hoping that, just this once, he wouldn’t be so insightful.
“Yes, someone is attempting to create a new race of Time Lords. But why? Is there something wrong with the original?”
Martha suddenly felt more miserable than she had in a long time. It wasn’t fair what had happened to the Doctor, but she didn’t want to be the person that had to tell this one.
“Drop the papers. Hands in the air,” announced a voice from behind the Doctor. He turned and Martha saw five guards crammed into the doorway, kneeling. Five more had wedged themselves in above them. All ten were pointing guns right at their faces.
The Doctor and Martha were handcuffed and escorted out of the basement and to an office on the ground.
“Names,” one of the guards demanded.
“Doctor John Smith. And this is my colleague, Doctor Martha Jones,” the Doctor told him. “We’re inspecting your facility.”
“In the mail room?” the guard sneered. “My four-year-old lies better than you do. We know you broke in. Don’t insult my intelligence.”
“I wasn’t aware it was available to be insulted,” the Doctor quipped. Martha snickered.
The guard ignored the jibe. “Where do you come from?”
This time the two of them just glared.
He rolled his eyes and picked up a phone on the desk. He pressed a button and said, “This is security in the Khontarch Building. We’ve captured two intruders.” There was a pause. “They said they’re doctors. John Smith and Martha Jones.” The pause this time was a bit longer. Then the guard’s face lit up. “We’ll have them right over.”
He hung up the phone and turned to the Doctor and Martha, who were now quite worried.
“It looks like you two more important than I thought. You’re going to see the Lord of Miasimia Goria,” the guard informed them.
“Lord?” the Doctor asked curiously.
*~*~*
They were loaded into a sleek, black vehicle, and taken to a side door of that tall, central building. The guards brought them through a security check-point where they were searched. The guards removed their handcuffs and then loaded them onto a lift, headed upwards.
This lift was on the side of the building, surrounded in glass, and the rate at which the ground fell away was nothing short of terrifying. Martha leaned a fractional amount closer to the Doctor, hoping he wouldn’t notice too much. When he did notice, he reached over and gave her hand a gentle squeeze before releasing it.
“If I may ask where we’re going?” the Doctor said.
“Up,” answered one of their guards.
“Is the Rani still here?” the Doctor pressed.
“The Rani has been gone since before the Time War,” the guard replied.
The Doctor frowned in puzzlement. “Time War? What Time War? And if not the Rani, who’s in charge here?”
The lift dinged. They were close to the top of the building. They exited and Martha took in a breath. They’d walked into the entryway of a palace. White, tiled floors gleamed ahead of them. Gorgeous greens had been coaxed into growing in a water feature that dominated the center of the room. There were wide passages heading off different directions and a staircase behind the fountain. About halfway up, the staircase opened up and led upwards to two balconies running back the length of the room. Something that looked like ferns bearing white blossoms with yellow centers, spilled over from the railings.
They were led past the fountain and towards the staircase. Martha noticed what looked like a flat version of that “infinity sphere” the Rani’s statue had been holding set into the floor in gold.
“Doctor?” Martha asked curiously.
“The Seal of Rassilon, symbol of Gallifrey. In white and gold. Those are the Gallifreyan presidential colors,” he answered, distractedly.
They were led up the stairs and down an immense hallway into a stately receiving room, where two people waited for them. The guards fell away, melting discretely into the background.
Martha didn’t recognize the man. He was tall, broad, blue-eyed, and dark-haired, graying at the temples just a little. But that barely registered with her because she knew the woman. She had longer hair than when they’d last met, and she hadn’t been pregnant, but she was the same woman.
“Lucy Saxon?”
The wife of the former Prime Minister took two steps forward and slapped Martha so hard across the face it snapped her head around.
The Doctor was beside her in an instant, his cool hands coming up to her shoulders as support if she needed it. “That’s enough!” Martha didn’t lean into him, but the temptation to do so was nearly overwhelming. His solid presence behind her kept her fear even further at bay. She’d almost forgotten how much she missed the Doctor’s presence in her life.
Lucy, however, was not even slightly impressed by the Doctor’s actions and ignored him completely. “You do not speak my name, you filth! Thanks to you and your Doctor,” she spat the Time Lord’s title, “I had to leave my home and family behind. But here, my husband and I rule. You are beneath me. You’re worthless.”
Martha had learned a lot of things in her year walking the Earth on the run from this woman and her husband. Among them was how not to display that someone had hurt her when they had. Martha went on the offensive. “You killed your husband. He beat you, cheated on you,” Martha protested.
“Martha Jones, you fool,” the man said, in a light baritone. He came over and rested his hands on Lucy’s shoulders, imitating the Doctor’s hands on hers. “How could you think I’d ever betray my companion? I’m not like the Doctor. When someone pours herself out for me, I notice it.”
Martha stared at the man for a moment before it suddenly clicked. She looked at Lucy in shock. “He’s alive? His baby? Him?” Her brain refused to process beyond that point. Lucy gave her a small smile.
“Master.” The Doctor sounded tired. “You’ve regenerated.”
“Whereas you appear to have degenerated,” the Master answered with a huge grin. “The Doctor crossing his own timeline. You must have made an even bigger miscalculation than you can handle. Trouble with your time differential?”
“You were meant to be dead,” Martha spat.
“I was shot and then burned up. Even Time Lords have bad days occasionally,” the Master said with a nasty smile. “I’m glad that you remember me, though. It’d be a shame if you forgot your Master.”
“You were never my master,” Martha snapped.
“No,” the Master agreed sounding more speculative than angry. “No, I wasn’t. Out of all the people on Earth, you were the only one to escape me.” He refocused on her with enough poison in his gaze to steal Martha’s breath. “I suppose I’ll have to rectify that.”
The Doctor stepped up beside Martha. “I take it you all have history.” He leveled a menacing look at the other Time Lord.
“Doctor! Don’t interrupt.” But the Master frowned thoughtfully at him. “Now you…you are an unexpected problem. Because, you see, the established timeline says that you and I will meet many, many times yet before I come here. And while, normally, I have no problem at all in tampering with the established timeline, I have yet to think of a case where tampering in my own timeline would yield a predictable enough chance of benefit to me that it was worth my effort. And even I’m not brave enough to chance so large an alteration in the Time War as removing you from it. So I’ll have to think of something to do with you.
“You, Martha Jones,” he said with a feral grin, “are not a puzzle at all. In fact, the only thing I need to work out in your case is what manner of grand and public execution I wish for you to undergo.” He then said, “In fact, I think I’ll let Lucy choose.”
Lucy’s face lit up with genuine happiness. Martha looked away.
“What is this Time War that everyone keeps going on about?” the Doctor asked. His voice behind Martha’s ears was soothing and helped her to stay focused. “And why are you creating a new race of Gallifreyan hybrids?”
The Master’s smile grew even bigger. “Doctor, if you come in in the middle of the story, you’re going to be a bit lost.” He snapped his finger. One of the guards who’d faded into the background was suddenly present beside them. Martha looked around, trying to find options, a way out, some clue that the Doctor had an ace up his sleeve. Something.
The Master gave a nod, and Martha felt a sharp pain in the back of her head. Then the world went black.
*~*~*
Martha decided, on waking, that she’d have rather stayed asleep. Everything hurt, especially her retinas, where the light was stabbing them. A gentle hand came up behind her head, cradling it. Another shielded her eyes from the light above them.
“Take it slowly now,” the Doctor’s voice told her. “You’ve got a nasty bump back here.” His fingers gently traced some swelling on the back of Martha’s head.
“I hate being knocked out,” Martha sighed.
“It is a bit unpleasant,” the Doctor agreed.
She was focusing a bit better, and now the Doctor’s hand above her eyes was easier to make out. Martha sat slowly up and looked over at him. The Doctor had been relieved of his coat and hat. He looked odd with just his sweater and question-mark collar.
“Where are we?” Martha asked.
“I’m not sure, but I believe we’re in the same building,” the Doctor replied. “I heard the Master give orders to find the TARDIS before they brought us down here. He’s probably got it by now.”
Martha pulled herself wearily against the wall and rested her head against the cool surface. The cell they’d been thrown into was big enough for both of them to stretch out if they wanted, but there was only one cot.
“In any case, I do believe you have a great deal of explanation ahead of yourself,” the Doctor said.
Martha looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
“I want to know your history with the Master. And you need to tell me about this ‘Time War,’” the Doctor informed her. “At this point, the timelines are so hopelessly tangled I’ll have to forget all of this to prevent a paradox no matter what. Nothing I do or don’t know can prevent that, so it’s best if I know all I can. Tell me everything.”
Martha looked over to the tiny window above the cot. “Doctor, I…” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m so sorry, for everything I’m about to tell you. It’s…things don’t go so well for you, I’m afraid.”
The Doctor looked a bit alarmed.
Martha steeled herself and began. “You told me a little about the Time War once. Just once. So I don’t know all the details. But what you said was that your people—the Time Lords—fought the Daleks. Apparently the whole universe was at stake. Anyway, things went bad. Gallifrey was destroyed.”
“What?” The Doctor’s face drained of every last bit of color.
“Gallifrey’s gone. I asked you to take me once and you couldn’t because it wasn’t there to take me to. And out of all the Time Lords, you and the Master are the only ones left. At least, the only ones that we know survived,” Martha said.
“The ‘big fight with the Daleks,’” the Doctor said. “This is what you meant?” He looked furious.
“I’m sorry! I just…it isn’t fair,” Martha sighed.
“That you should have to tell the truth?” he asked angrily.
“That this should happen to you!” Martha shouted back. “Out of everyone I know, you’re the one who always tries the hardest to save the people who deserve it the least. You’re such a good man, Doctor. I just thought that since I couldn’t help the one of you that I know feel less lonely, the least I could do would be to spare this you from being saddled with it before you had to.” She looked away. “It isn’t…fair.”
“Martha,” the Doctor said, sounding much gentler. He laid his hand on hers, “I had you with me, didn’t I? I’ve never spent much time with my own people before. How lonely could I have truly been?”
Martha shook her head. “You let me travel with you, but you never let me in. I tried to be a good friend to you, Doctor, but I couldn’t…you put up walls that you made clear you did not want me trying to break down. Maybe I should’ve tried anyway, I don’t know. I did have you on a bit of a pedestal, and maybe I should’ve been less starstruck and more…I don’t know. Either way, I didn’t really help that much. I tried, but…”
The Doctor blinked. He pulled his hand back slowly and said, “I’m sorry, Martha, to hear you say that.” Then he looked down at his hand, and flexed it awkwardly. Martha thought it looked for a moment like he wanted to touch her hand again, but she dismissed that idea immediately.
Martha sighed quietly. “It isn’t really your fault, anyway. You haven’t done it yet.” She took a couple deep breaths and continued. “Anyway, a few months of travel after that, you and I got pulled to the end of the universe with another friend of yours.”
“Who?”
“Jack Harkness.”
“I must not’ve met him yet. Go on.”
“We met someone named Professor Yana, who turned out to be the Master in disguise. He’d used a Chameleon Arch to become human.”
“Clever. Painful, but clever.”
“Anyway, things went bad then, too. He killed his companion, but she injured him in return. He regenerated, and stole your TARDIS. Took it back to Earth. Jack Harkness was a Time Agent, so you fixed his watch thingy, and we followed him. The Master got himself elected Prime Minister, and used that as a step-stone to take over the world.
“I was separated from you…for a whole year, actually. You eventually rewound the year, though. At the end, everything went back to normal, and Lucy shot the Master. Killed him, I thought. I thought she’d learned what he was. I didn’t realize they really loved each other. I didn’t realize the Master could.”
The Doctor looked at her. “But why does he hate you, then? He seemed much angrier at you than me. Normally he ignores anyone who travels with me unless he can use them, but you’ve got his particular attention. Why is that?”
“He captured you. I got away. You’d given me a plan, but I was the one who had to carry it out. I was the one who did it. The whole world was tied into a low-level telepathic field, and I had to tell all of them to think of you, all at the same time.”
The Doctor shuddered. “That much telepathic energy…”
“You’d had a whole year to figure out how to channel it, how to fix it so it didn’t kill you,” Martha told him. “I knew you could do it.”
“I could do it? You are the one who spent a whole year wandering the Earth alone. And you succeeded? It sounds like I did virtually nothing, Martha Jones. It’s no wonder the Master hates you. You’re…you just needed a nudge and you saved the world.”
Martha shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, though. Look at all this. He’s breeding a new race of Time Lords to replace the ones that died, but they’ll all be…his. He’ll rule them.”
“We’ll find a way to stop him.”
Martha could only shake her head again. “How can we? You can’t destroy your own people. These…they’re… They’ll be the only thing that’s left. The only chance for the Time Lords to survive in any meaningful way.”
The Doctor frowned. “Yes, that is a problem. We’ll have to deal with that after we escape.”
She smiled ruefully. “Got a paperclip?”
The Doctor looked at her in confusion for a moment before he smiled in remembrance of springing her from that tiny little cell in the ship just a few hours earlier. Then he mused, “This explains the mix of technologies. The Master has picked out the bits Earth he and his wife like the best and integrated them with the bits of Gallifrey he wants to keep.”
“How multi-cultural of him,” Martha said drily. “I suppose the time experiments were to see what he could do to teach these new Gallifreyans without attracting your attention? How far he could push the limits?”
The Doctor nodded. “I would hope that it wasn’t so bad.”
“I…Donna said something about six hundred years of missing development,” Martha told him.
He made a frustrated noise. “I must’ve turned into either a raving lunatic or perfect imbecile. Six hundred years?” He shook his head and looked away for a moment. Finally, he said, “I still don’t understand something. I couldn’t have ignored you after you saved the Earth. I may have become unendurably thick, but I know I’ll never be that blind.”
Now Martha couldn’t look at him. She squeezed her eyes shut as he continued.
“The Master said ‘When someone pours herself out for me,’” the Doctor pressed.
“I was in love with you,” Martha said shortly, “okay?”
The Doctor was stunned into silence.
“It was obvious to everyone. Everyone but you. Jack noticed, Tallulah noticed, Chantho noticed, even William Shakespeare noticed. But you…you just didn’t seem to get it. I had to play your servant in 1913, I kept house for you in 1969, all of it. But you went and fell in love with Joan Redfern. And you would’ve thrown me out if she come with us. Not right away, but the time would’ve come when you’d’ve wanted me to go. You never apologized for that, you know? And you were always so lonely, but you’d never let me in. Not even a little bit. I tried so hard to help you, but…you kept running hot and cold so that I didn’t know which way to turn.
“So the Master noticed and he…knew that what he and Lucy had—”
“Martha,” the Doctor broke in.
Martha blinked. Somewhere in her confessional, she’d forgotten there was someone listening and now she found her face heating up.
“No, Martha,” the Doctor sighed. Martha looked at him in astonishment and instead of the uncomfortably pained expression that she’d seen on her Doctor when she’d told him, this Doctor was looking at her with a warmth and fondness that was almost too kind to bear. He moved close and pulled her tight to him. “Don’t be even slightly ashamed. You’ve got nothing to be embarrassed for. I shouldn’t have pressed you. I’m sorry.” His fingers rubbed comforting circles over her back. The scent of the Doctor’s aftershave—the same kind that “her” Doctor used—clung to the fabric of his sweater, filling Martha’s nostrils and soothing the ragged ends of her emotions. Martha happily slid her arms around his waist.
“I…feel like I should apologize for being a dunce, but the truth is that I can’t. I will do all these things but I haven’t done them yet,” the Doctor said. “Any apology from me would be of no use.”
Martha sighed. “And you’ll have to forget this conversation ever happened, too.”
“Not forever. I’ll remember it, in time.” He sighed. For a few moments, they simply sat together, both enjoying the reassuring presence of a friend. Finally the Doctor said, “You must be tired.”
“It’s been a long day,” Martha agreed.
“Why don’t you get some rest, Martha? We’re not going anywhere just yet, in any case,” he recommended.
Martha nodded and lay down on the floor, too tired to move up to the cot. She was asleep within minutes.
( Part I )
( Part III )
One ride on the local mass transit later, Martha and the Doctor were in the heart of the city. The exit from their platform brought them out to a street crowded with busy and official-looking individuals. There didn’t seem to be any sort of motor vehicles in use by the general population, but every so often a bell would sound and everyone would clear the road. A single vehicle would come zipping by, then they’d all return to walking wherever they pleased.
“This feels strange,” Martha commented as they walked along, taking stock of the buildings. They’d obviously entered the official section of the city, and there were government offices everywhere, and all the people moving around seemed to be busy.
“What feels strange?” the Doctor asked.
“An indoor city,” she explained. “The sound is different from how you’d expect. And the light. And all of it. It’s…sterile.”
“Sterile. A good word for Gallifrey, I’m afraid,” the Doctor sighed as they turned into a small park. “My people are very closed.”
Martha glanced over at him and smiled. The look on his face was a little bit sad. She nudged his arm with her shoulder. “Must be why you started traveling, eh?”
He smiled. “Indeed, it was.” They walked over to the center of the little park, where a statue had been set up on a plinth. A beautiful woman looked up above them. One of her hands was stretched out above her head, palm flat, and on it she held a sphere, with a stylized eternity symbol inside.
But the expression on her face was so cold and emotionless that Martha almost shuddered.
“The Rani,” the Doctor told her, “and a more heartless individual you will be hard-pressed to find.”
Martha looked down at the inscription on the plinth.
She Built Us Up From Nothing And Made Us Mighty
Our Power Is Her Legacy
“These are very ‘up’ people,” Martha sighed.
“The Rani took control of their world completely. I could never convince the Time Lords to step in,” the Doctor sighed. “Hidebound fools. They’d rather stay shut up on Gallifrey safe than risk doing good in the universe.”
Martha blinked. She’d never heard the Doctor say a word against Gallifrey before. I guess that’s the difference when you realize that even if you did want to go back, you really can’t any more, she thought.
They left the park, going down the street and ignoring the curious glances of the local people at their different skins.
It was Martha who spotted what they were looking for first.
“Doctor!” She dragged him across the street, so that they were a little bit farther from it, and therefore less conspicuous, and then pointed. “Look there.”
A very unassuming building stood tucked behind an imposing and heavily ornamented government building just down a short alley off the main street. It was only the one story, so it got lost among all the tall buildings around it, and if you weren’t careful, you’d miss it entirely. There was a gate, and a very unobtrusively placed guard just inside it.
“That building has a low-level perception filter on it,” the Doctor noted. “Even the filter on the TARDIS is a higher setting than that. Just enough to make you assume you don’t need to worry about it, but not enough to make you miss it entirely.”
“Sounds like the place we should try getting inside,” Martha grinned.
“My thoughts exactly, Martha,” the Doctor grinned. “Let’s see if we can’t find the back door.”
“Why don’t you just use the psychic paper?” she asked as they headed around the corner.
“Psychic paper?” The Doctor gave her a strange look. “Why would I have any psychic paper?”
“Because you always have psychic paper,” Martha answered.
“I must be loosing my touch in my old age,” the Doctor frowned. “It’s only a break in, after all. I did that all the time with Sarah Jane.”
Martha rolled her eyes and mentally prepared herself to spend the night in jail.
As it turned out, there wasn’t anything even resembling a back door to the wall, and Martha was even more shocked to discover this Doctor had no sonic screwdriver than she had been to find out about the psychic paper. With only one entrance and no way of getting in the front gate, Martha and the Doctor picked out a likely spot of wall in the back and clambered over. It was awkward, but they managed it, and when they both fell flat on their backs, they were astonished to see absolutely no guards headed for their position.
A back door to the building stood not six feet away, and they rushed over. The Doctor pushed it open.
A very loud alarm went off.
Martha rolled her eyes. “May as well make it worth our while,” she said and ran inside.
“Martha!” The Doctor shouted. He was after her in a flash. The door led straight into a stairwell and the two of them pelted downwards. Martha hit the crash bar at the bottom full-force, and they burst out into a long, empty hallway. She and the Doctor ran down to the end and ducked into the last door on their left.
“Why are we here?” the Doctor asked her. The expression on his face was sheer irritation, but Martha didn’t miss the little flash of excitement in his eyes. Never happier than when he’s getting into trouble, Martha thought fondly.
“This is, as near as I can tell, the room in this building that is the least accessible and furthest away from the street out front,” Martha answered him. “Start looking around. We’ve only got a few minutes.”
As it turned out, they’d only found the mail room, but the Doctor was soon absorbed in reading inter-office memos. “Martha, they’re doing research here into the genetic compatibility of Gallifreyan people with other humanoid species,” the Doctor said after a few moments.
Martha shook her head, having sorted through her own stack of mail. “They’re doing experiments on it. The research stopped being theoretical about two months ago.” She unfolded one and said, “Apparently humans have the highest rate of compatibility. According to their tests on a few subjects, a human only requires a few small alterations to be able to give birth to children that are 98% pure Gallifreyan.” She looked over at the Doctor, hoping that, just this once, he wouldn’t be so insightful.
“Yes, someone is attempting to create a new race of Time Lords. But why? Is there something wrong with the original?”
Martha suddenly felt more miserable than she had in a long time. It wasn’t fair what had happened to the Doctor, but she didn’t want to be the person that had to tell this one.
“Drop the papers. Hands in the air,” announced a voice from behind the Doctor. He turned and Martha saw five guards crammed into the doorway, kneeling. Five more had wedged themselves in above them. All ten were pointing guns right at their faces.
The Doctor and Martha were handcuffed and escorted out of the basement and to an office on the ground.
“Names,” one of the guards demanded.
“Doctor John Smith. And this is my colleague, Doctor Martha Jones,” the Doctor told him. “We’re inspecting your facility.”
“In the mail room?” the guard sneered. “My four-year-old lies better than you do. We know you broke in. Don’t insult my intelligence.”
“I wasn’t aware it was available to be insulted,” the Doctor quipped. Martha snickered.
The guard ignored the jibe. “Where do you come from?”
This time the two of them just glared.
He rolled his eyes and picked up a phone on the desk. He pressed a button and said, “This is security in the Khontarch Building. We’ve captured two intruders.” There was a pause. “They said they’re doctors. John Smith and Martha Jones.” The pause this time was a bit longer. Then the guard’s face lit up. “We’ll have them right over.”
He hung up the phone and turned to the Doctor and Martha, who were now quite worried.
“It looks like you two more important than I thought. You’re going to see the Lord of Miasimia Goria,” the guard informed them.
“Lord?” the Doctor asked curiously.
They were loaded into a sleek, black vehicle, and taken to a side door of that tall, central building. The guards brought them through a security check-point where they were searched. The guards removed their handcuffs and then loaded them onto a lift, headed upwards.
This lift was on the side of the building, surrounded in glass, and the rate at which the ground fell away was nothing short of terrifying. Martha leaned a fractional amount closer to the Doctor, hoping he wouldn’t notice too much. When he did notice, he reached over and gave her hand a gentle squeeze before releasing it.
“If I may ask where we’re going?” the Doctor said.
“Up,” answered one of their guards.
“Is the Rani still here?” the Doctor pressed.
“The Rani has been gone since before the Time War,” the guard replied.
The Doctor frowned in puzzlement. “Time War? What Time War? And if not the Rani, who’s in charge here?”
The lift dinged. They were close to the top of the building. They exited and Martha took in a breath. They’d walked into the entryway of a palace. White, tiled floors gleamed ahead of them. Gorgeous greens had been coaxed into growing in a water feature that dominated the center of the room. There were wide passages heading off different directions and a staircase behind the fountain. About halfway up, the staircase opened up and led upwards to two balconies running back the length of the room. Something that looked like ferns bearing white blossoms with yellow centers, spilled over from the railings.
They were led past the fountain and towards the staircase. Martha noticed what looked like a flat version of that “infinity sphere” the Rani’s statue had been holding set into the floor in gold.
“Doctor?” Martha asked curiously.
“The Seal of Rassilon, symbol of Gallifrey. In white and gold. Those are the Gallifreyan presidential colors,” he answered, distractedly.
They were led up the stairs and down an immense hallway into a stately receiving room, where two people waited for them. The guards fell away, melting discretely into the background.
Martha didn’t recognize the man. He was tall, broad, blue-eyed, and dark-haired, graying at the temples just a little. But that barely registered with her because she knew the woman. She had longer hair than when they’d last met, and she hadn’t been pregnant, but she was the same woman.
“Lucy Saxon?”
The wife of the former Prime Minister took two steps forward and slapped Martha so hard across the face it snapped her head around.
The Doctor was beside her in an instant, his cool hands coming up to her shoulders as support if she needed it. “That’s enough!” Martha didn’t lean into him, but the temptation to do so was nearly overwhelming. His solid presence behind her kept her fear even further at bay. She’d almost forgotten how much she missed the Doctor’s presence in her life.
Lucy, however, was not even slightly impressed by the Doctor’s actions and ignored him completely. “You do not speak my name, you filth! Thanks to you and your Doctor,” she spat the Time Lord’s title, “I had to leave my home and family behind. But here, my husband and I rule. You are beneath me. You’re worthless.”
Martha had learned a lot of things in her year walking the Earth on the run from this woman and her husband. Among them was how not to display that someone had hurt her when they had. Martha went on the offensive. “You killed your husband. He beat you, cheated on you,” Martha protested.
“Martha Jones, you fool,” the man said, in a light baritone. He came over and rested his hands on Lucy’s shoulders, imitating the Doctor’s hands on hers. “How could you think I’d ever betray my companion? I’m not like the Doctor. When someone pours herself out for me, I notice it.”
Martha stared at the man for a moment before it suddenly clicked. She looked at Lucy in shock. “He’s alive? His baby? Him?” Her brain refused to process beyond that point. Lucy gave her a small smile.
“Master.” The Doctor sounded tired. “You’ve regenerated.”
“Whereas you appear to have degenerated,” the Master answered with a huge grin. “The Doctor crossing his own timeline. You must have made an even bigger miscalculation than you can handle. Trouble with your time differential?”
“You were meant to be dead,” Martha spat.
“I was shot and then burned up. Even Time Lords have bad days occasionally,” the Master said with a nasty smile. “I’m glad that you remember me, though. It’d be a shame if you forgot your Master.”
“You were never my master,” Martha snapped.
“No,” the Master agreed sounding more speculative than angry. “No, I wasn’t. Out of all the people on Earth, you were the only one to escape me.” He refocused on her with enough poison in his gaze to steal Martha’s breath. “I suppose I’ll have to rectify that.”
The Doctor stepped up beside Martha. “I take it you all have history.” He leveled a menacing look at the other Time Lord.
“Doctor! Don’t interrupt.” But the Master frowned thoughtfully at him. “Now you…you are an unexpected problem. Because, you see, the established timeline says that you and I will meet many, many times yet before I come here. And while, normally, I have no problem at all in tampering with the established timeline, I have yet to think of a case where tampering in my own timeline would yield a predictable enough chance of benefit to me that it was worth my effort. And even I’m not brave enough to chance so large an alteration in the Time War as removing you from it. So I’ll have to think of something to do with you.
“You, Martha Jones,” he said with a feral grin, “are not a puzzle at all. In fact, the only thing I need to work out in your case is what manner of grand and public execution I wish for you to undergo.” He then said, “In fact, I think I’ll let Lucy choose.”
Lucy’s face lit up with genuine happiness. Martha looked away.
“What is this Time War that everyone keeps going on about?” the Doctor asked. His voice behind Martha’s ears was soothing and helped her to stay focused. “And why are you creating a new race of Gallifreyan hybrids?”
The Master’s smile grew even bigger. “Doctor, if you come in in the middle of the story, you’re going to be a bit lost.” He snapped his finger. One of the guards who’d faded into the background was suddenly present beside them. Martha looked around, trying to find options, a way out, some clue that the Doctor had an ace up his sleeve. Something.
The Master gave a nod, and Martha felt a sharp pain in the back of her head. Then the world went black.
Martha decided, on waking, that she’d have rather stayed asleep. Everything hurt, especially her retinas, where the light was stabbing them. A gentle hand came up behind her head, cradling it. Another shielded her eyes from the light above them.
“Take it slowly now,” the Doctor’s voice told her. “You’ve got a nasty bump back here.” His fingers gently traced some swelling on the back of Martha’s head.
“I hate being knocked out,” Martha sighed.
“It is a bit unpleasant,” the Doctor agreed.
She was focusing a bit better, and now the Doctor’s hand above her eyes was easier to make out. Martha sat slowly up and looked over at him. The Doctor had been relieved of his coat and hat. He looked odd with just his sweater and question-mark collar.
“Where are we?” Martha asked.
“I’m not sure, but I believe we’re in the same building,” the Doctor replied. “I heard the Master give orders to find the TARDIS before they brought us down here. He’s probably got it by now.”
Martha pulled herself wearily against the wall and rested her head against the cool surface. The cell they’d been thrown into was big enough for both of them to stretch out if they wanted, but there was only one cot.
“In any case, I do believe you have a great deal of explanation ahead of yourself,” the Doctor said.
Martha looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
“I want to know your history with the Master. And you need to tell me about this ‘Time War,’” the Doctor informed her. “At this point, the timelines are so hopelessly tangled I’ll have to forget all of this to prevent a paradox no matter what. Nothing I do or don’t know can prevent that, so it’s best if I know all I can. Tell me everything.”
Martha looked over to the tiny window above the cot. “Doctor, I…” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m so sorry, for everything I’m about to tell you. It’s…things don’t go so well for you, I’m afraid.”
The Doctor looked a bit alarmed.
Martha steeled herself and began. “You told me a little about the Time War once. Just once. So I don’t know all the details. But what you said was that your people—the Time Lords—fought the Daleks. Apparently the whole universe was at stake. Anyway, things went bad. Gallifrey was destroyed.”
“What?” The Doctor’s face drained of every last bit of color.
“Gallifrey’s gone. I asked you to take me once and you couldn’t because it wasn’t there to take me to. And out of all the Time Lords, you and the Master are the only ones left. At least, the only ones that we know survived,” Martha said.
“The ‘big fight with the Daleks,’” the Doctor said. “This is what you meant?” He looked furious.
“I’m sorry! I just…it isn’t fair,” Martha sighed.
“That you should have to tell the truth?” he asked angrily.
“That this should happen to you!” Martha shouted back. “Out of everyone I know, you’re the one who always tries the hardest to save the people who deserve it the least. You’re such a good man, Doctor. I just thought that since I couldn’t help the one of you that I know feel less lonely, the least I could do would be to spare this you from being saddled with it before you had to.” She looked away. “It isn’t…fair.”
“Martha,” the Doctor said, sounding much gentler. He laid his hand on hers, “I had you with me, didn’t I? I’ve never spent much time with my own people before. How lonely could I have truly been?”
Martha shook her head. “You let me travel with you, but you never let me in. I tried to be a good friend to you, Doctor, but I couldn’t…you put up walls that you made clear you did not want me trying to break down. Maybe I should’ve tried anyway, I don’t know. I did have you on a bit of a pedestal, and maybe I should’ve been less starstruck and more…I don’t know. Either way, I didn’t really help that much. I tried, but…”
The Doctor blinked. He pulled his hand back slowly and said, “I’m sorry, Martha, to hear you say that.” Then he looked down at his hand, and flexed it awkwardly. Martha thought it looked for a moment like he wanted to touch her hand again, but she dismissed that idea immediately.
Martha sighed quietly. “It isn’t really your fault, anyway. You haven’t done it yet.” She took a couple deep breaths and continued. “Anyway, a few months of travel after that, you and I got pulled to the end of the universe with another friend of yours.”
“Who?”
“Jack Harkness.”
“I must not’ve met him yet. Go on.”
“We met someone named Professor Yana, who turned out to be the Master in disguise. He’d used a Chameleon Arch to become human.”
“Clever. Painful, but clever.”
“Anyway, things went bad then, too. He killed his companion, but she injured him in return. He regenerated, and stole your TARDIS. Took it back to Earth. Jack Harkness was a Time Agent, so you fixed his watch thingy, and we followed him. The Master got himself elected Prime Minister, and used that as a step-stone to take over the world.
“I was separated from you…for a whole year, actually. You eventually rewound the year, though. At the end, everything went back to normal, and Lucy shot the Master. Killed him, I thought. I thought she’d learned what he was. I didn’t realize they really loved each other. I didn’t realize the Master could.”
The Doctor looked at her. “But why does he hate you, then? He seemed much angrier at you than me. Normally he ignores anyone who travels with me unless he can use them, but you’ve got his particular attention. Why is that?”
“He captured you. I got away. You’d given me a plan, but I was the one who had to carry it out. I was the one who did it. The whole world was tied into a low-level telepathic field, and I had to tell all of them to think of you, all at the same time.”
The Doctor shuddered. “That much telepathic energy…”
“You’d had a whole year to figure out how to channel it, how to fix it so it didn’t kill you,” Martha told him. “I knew you could do it.”
“I could do it? You are the one who spent a whole year wandering the Earth alone. And you succeeded? It sounds like I did virtually nothing, Martha Jones. It’s no wonder the Master hates you. You’re…you just needed a nudge and you saved the world.”
Martha shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, though. Look at all this. He’s breeding a new race of Time Lords to replace the ones that died, but they’ll all be…his. He’ll rule them.”
“We’ll find a way to stop him.”
Martha could only shake her head again. “How can we? You can’t destroy your own people. These…they’re… They’ll be the only thing that’s left. The only chance for the Time Lords to survive in any meaningful way.”
The Doctor frowned. “Yes, that is a problem. We’ll have to deal with that after we escape.”
She smiled ruefully. “Got a paperclip?”
The Doctor looked at her in confusion for a moment before he smiled in remembrance of springing her from that tiny little cell in the ship just a few hours earlier. Then he mused, “This explains the mix of technologies. The Master has picked out the bits Earth he and his wife like the best and integrated them with the bits of Gallifrey he wants to keep.”
“How multi-cultural of him,” Martha said drily. “I suppose the time experiments were to see what he could do to teach these new Gallifreyans without attracting your attention? How far he could push the limits?”
The Doctor nodded. “I would hope that it wasn’t so bad.”
“I…Donna said something about six hundred years of missing development,” Martha told him.
He made a frustrated noise. “I must’ve turned into either a raving lunatic or perfect imbecile. Six hundred years?” He shook his head and looked away for a moment. Finally, he said, “I still don’t understand something. I couldn’t have ignored you after you saved the Earth. I may have become unendurably thick, but I know I’ll never be that blind.”
Now Martha couldn’t look at him. She squeezed her eyes shut as he continued.
“The Master said ‘When someone pours herself out for me,’” the Doctor pressed.
“I was in love with you,” Martha said shortly, “okay?”
The Doctor was stunned into silence.
“It was obvious to everyone. Everyone but you. Jack noticed, Tallulah noticed, Chantho noticed, even William Shakespeare noticed. But you…you just didn’t seem to get it. I had to play your servant in 1913, I kept house for you in 1969, all of it. But you went and fell in love with Joan Redfern. And you would’ve thrown me out if she come with us. Not right away, but the time would’ve come when you’d’ve wanted me to go. You never apologized for that, you know? And you were always so lonely, but you’d never let me in. Not even a little bit. I tried so hard to help you, but…you kept running hot and cold so that I didn’t know which way to turn.
“So the Master noticed and he…knew that what he and Lucy had—”
“Martha,” the Doctor broke in.
Martha blinked. Somewhere in her confessional, she’d forgotten there was someone listening and now she found her face heating up.
“No, Martha,” the Doctor sighed. Martha looked at him in astonishment and instead of the uncomfortably pained expression that she’d seen on her Doctor when she’d told him, this Doctor was looking at her with a warmth and fondness that was almost too kind to bear. He moved close and pulled her tight to him. “Don’t be even slightly ashamed. You’ve got nothing to be embarrassed for. I shouldn’t have pressed you. I’m sorry.” His fingers rubbed comforting circles over her back. The scent of the Doctor’s aftershave—the same kind that “her” Doctor used—clung to the fabric of his sweater, filling Martha’s nostrils and soothing the ragged ends of her emotions. Martha happily slid her arms around his waist.
“I…feel like I should apologize for being a dunce, but the truth is that I can’t. I will do all these things but I haven’t done them yet,” the Doctor said. “Any apology from me would be of no use.”
Martha sighed. “And you’ll have to forget this conversation ever happened, too.”
“Not forever. I’ll remember it, in time.” He sighed. For a few moments, they simply sat together, both enjoying the reassuring presence of a friend. Finally the Doctor said, “You must be tired.”
“It’s been a long day,” Martha agreed.
“Why don’t you get some rest, Martha? We’re not going anywhere just yet, in any case,” he recommended.
Martha nodded and lay down on the floor, too tired to move up to the cot. She was asleep within minutes.
( Part I )
( Part III )