Fic: Companionship (1/3)
This got long...a lot longer than I ever planned for it to be, and in ways I wasn't expecting. So I'm splitting it into three parts for posting to DW/LJ, but if you'd rather, you can read the whole thing at AO3. I'd start talking about the whys and hows of writing it, but that would be a long post in and of itself, so I'll save that for another time, if anyone's interested.
Companionship (16324 words) by
akamarykate
Fandom: Early Edition, Doctor Who
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Summary: Trading stories, reasons, and hope in the dark.
Thanks, ever and always, to Jayne Leitch, for beta reading, support, and asking all the right questions.
Part 1 of 3
Chicago's just another ruined city, a dark blot in the middle of the United States. It's become the perfect hub for more than one group; Martha's contacts in the resistance tell her there are thousands of people, maybe millions, within a day's walk. Most have been forced into work camps in the old steel mills and shipyards along the southern curve of Lake Michigan, but the resistance is there too, using the old highways and waterways to reach into Canada and the central United States. When she stops in the outskirts of the city, Martha has access to an eager audience, beginning with a group of resistance fighters who gather in an abandoned petrol station to hear her story.
"You've done a good thing," the leader, a grim older man named Matthews, tells her when she's done. "Lotta people around these parts need to hear what you have to say. Let me get someone to take you around."
Martha doesn't want an escort. She has the TARDIS key to keep the Toclafane from noticing her movements; there's no sense putting anyone else in danger. But Matthews insists. "Luisa knows this area better than anyone. Girl's like a cat, the way she gets around." He looks over Martha's shoulder, out the long-broken front window toward the dark, crumbling skyline. "And I'd rather have her with you than fighting traitors and Toclafane." In another life, Martha thinks, Matthews and her mother could team up and teach postgraduate courses in motivation through guilt.
Luisa is sixteen years old, earnest and quick and a little bit star-struck. "Wait 'til I tell my brother I met you!" she gushes. She shakes Martha's hand with both of her own. Her jacket gaps, and Martha sees a handgun tucked into the pocket of her jeans, where she no doubt carried a mobile or an iPod a few months ago. "I mean, that story--your Doctor--it's brilliant, isn't that how you say it in England? This is going to be the most brilliant thing since--" Her smile cracks for a second, but she pulls it together and gives Martha's hand another firm pump before releasing it. "Totally brilliant."
Matthews raises an eyebrow, and Martha swallows back a sigh. "Brilliant."
As it turns out, Matthews is right about Luisa knowing the area. Even better, she has a knack for finding groups of people tucked into all manner of nooks and crannies. In three days' time, she slips Martha into apartment buildings, schools, and department stores that have been converted into dormitories for workers and hideouts for the small, but growing, resistance. She's never lost, and she keeps them well away from the worst of the factory smoke and smog. They move through what used to be a network of suburbs and small towns, and as they walk, Luisa tells Martha tidbits of their histories. "Someone has to remember," she insists. "One day, we're going to build it all back."
She steers them around the city itself, explaining that once it was stripped clean of usable steel and other building materials, the citizens--those who were left alive--were rounded up and taken away to the camps. Martha doesn't need to see the devastation close-up; by the end of the third day, she's sure the story of the Doctor has taken root. It will spread through the area on its own, though Luisa will no doubt help.
"You change it every night," Luisa says the fourth morning, as Martha braces herself to tell the girl good-bye. They spent the night resting in another resistance outpost, one that used to be an office of some kind. Now it holds a two-way radio, a few guns, rows of sleeping bags, and a makeshift kitchen where they sit on the floor eating stale boxed biscuits for breakfast. "I mean, it's always about the Doctor, but every time you tell about different things he's done--different ways he's saved us."
Martha nods and passes their thermos of tea to Luisa. "Lucky he's done it loads. Saves me boring myself." She smiles, but there's an uneasy flutter in her stomach. She isn't bored, that's not the word for it, but she is...tired. Tired of following the Doctor's instructions blindly; tired of wondering if the hope she's giving people like Luisa is only a temporary dressing on a wound that won't ever heal.
She's been collecting names and stories since she started this journey, and she spent last night running down her list over and over again, from Jorges Azales, an ex-librarian who's organizing the resistance in Mexico City by sneaking post-it notes in picture books passed through the refugee camps, to a woman named Yancey who teaches songs with coded subversive lyrics to children in Australian work camps. It's a long list, and it steadies Martha when her faith wavers, but there are nights that her fear for every single person on it keeps her awake.
Luisa has her eyes fixed on Martha even as she gulps down tea, so Martha keeps the smile pasted on her face. "Luisa, you've been a wonderful guide, but it's time I moved on. Can you tell me--"
"No." Luisa puts the thermos down so hard the tea sloshes out. The other people in the room, a couple who look to be around Leo's age, glance over at them. "You can't go, not yet."
"I have to keep going, you know that." Martha doesn't say where she's going, not even in which direction. If Luisa's ever taken for questioning--she pushes an image of Luisa aboard the Valiant, Luisa in the Master's hands, out of her mind. It's much better if she doesn't leave a trail that can be followed. She brushes crumbs off her hands and gets to her knees, ready to stand, but Luisa reaches over and grabs her arm.
"Please," she whispers. Just then, the man and woman get up to leave, murmuring good-byes to Martha. Luisa waits until they leave the room to go on, and even then, her voice is pitched low. "There are people in the city--where the city used to be. People who are hiding from the work camps and the roundups because they wouldn't survive them and they can't run from them. No one's supposed to know. I wasn't even sure I could take you there, not until I knew you, but now I know you won't tell about them. They need your story." Luisa looks younger than ever--or maybe it's just that Martha feels decades older.
"I shouldn't."
"Please, just one more time. It's--" She gulps. "My brother's there."
Martha knows better than to waver. If she gives in to every plea for just one more night, just one more story, there will be no hope at all of the Doctor's plan working. But she's tired, and Luisa is right here in front of her. The Doctor is not.
"If we can do it quickly, I suppose I could spare--"
Luisa jumps to her feet. "We can go right now. There's no one else left in that part of the city. The Toclafane don't even bother with it most days."
Martha picks up her bag. "One day, Luisa. That's all."
* * * * *
Luisa's right about the center of the city being deserted. By the time they reach what used to be Chicago's downtown, they haven't heard vehicles or seen other people for hours. The buildings are marked with graffiti, but those who painted all the curses and exhortations for the Toclafane to go home have long since gone away themselves.
"They tore down the skyscrapers right away," Luisa tells Martha. "Said they needed the steel. They cleared almost everyone out, then they punched out the windows and made it rain glass. They even pulled up the L tracks and most of the bridges along the river. What do they want all that metal for?"
Surely Luisa's heard the rumors. "Rocket ships, maybe. Missiles." Martha isn't sure, and doesn't want to know. Her job is to thwart the Master's intentions, not understand them. Her boots crunch glass, and she stares at a hole in the ground where a building used to be.
"My brother Max, he was one of the ones they made work on the bridges. He didn't know anything about construction--or destruction, I guess it was." Luisa keeps up her brisk walk as they skirt a block of knee-high grass and saplings, a city park grown wild. "One day he stood too close to someone with a saw. I had to look in three hospitals--that was back when we still had some of the hospitals--and when I found him, his leg was gone. They said he'd have to go to the special work camp, the one for people who are disabled. They said the work would be easier there, but..."
Luisa trails off, and Martha looks sidelong at her. A little over a month ago, she went along on a resistance attempt to liberate one of the special camps. She'd hoped she could put her medical training to good use. But when they arrived, the camp was empty, just a handful of ramshackle buildings and damaged medical equipment.
"I couldn't let them take him," Luisa says, facing straight forward and blinking hard. "He's all that's left of my family. One of the doctors told me about the tunnels, so I took him there."
"Tunnels?"
"There are freight tunnels under the city. No one's used them, not in a hundred years, maybe, and some of the resistance set up--" Luisa flashes a lopsided grin. "--actually they got talked into setting up--a place for people like Max. He's not useless. He just needs a crutch to get around, but the way they talked about those camps scared me. We did a Holocaust unit in school a couple years ago." She shoves her hands in her jacket pockets and her glance darts to Martha for a second, then forward again.
"No one comes home from the special camps," Martha tells her. "You did the right thing."
"I know," Luisa says, "but Max misses the sun." She leads Martha around a corner to another street of empty buildings that ends at a river, or perhaps it's two rivers--one bends and flows into the other, forming a Y shape. "You'd think it'd be the worst place on the planet, but the thing is..." Her steps slow, and Martha doesn't know if she's trailing off because she's trying to find the next turn on the route, or because she's not sure how to finish her sentence.
"The thing is, Max is alive, and so are the others. And you're right--they need to know about the Doctor." Martha makes her tone a little teasing. "But you could have told the story yourself."
"I can't tell it nearly as well as you do." Luisa heads for a graffiti-covered building. She traces a white symbol, a small plus sign--or maybe it's a cross--inside a circle, then turns right, into a narrow alley. "Besides, I thought you'd want to meet Max and --well, all of them. I know they'll want to meet you." Halfway down the alley, she stops. "They're here."
Martha doesn't see a soul, not a sign that a living person has been down this alley in weeks. "Luisa, what--"
Luisa pulls two torches from her backpack and hands one to Martha. Even in the shadowy alley the beams are barely visible, until Luisa directs hers into a gaping manhole. Like all the others, it's missing its cover. "This way."
* * * * *
Marissa adds more water to the pot of canned soup, wondering when their stores will run out. She wonders, too, how much longer the generator that keeps the hot plates running will hold together; it's been rattling all morning, and not in a comfortable, rhythmic way. It makes her even more jittery than usual; she jumps at familiar sounds, like the clomp of Crumb's boots across the dining section. A chair scrapes the concrete floor, and he plops down next to her stove with a sigh.
"Lunch'll be ready soon," she says. "But it won't be much, and we had those three new arrivals last night, so--"
"Don't worry. It'll be enough."
It's been their refrain to each other since this whole thing started: "Don't worry. They must be alive somewhere"; "Don't worry. It's bound to get better"; "Don't worry. I'm gonna get us someplace safe"; "Don't worry. Gary will find us when he can"; "Don't worry. No one'll bother to look for a band of misfits like us."
Don't worry, because worry doesn't change a thing. But they do it anyway. Worry's about the future; the past is too painful to think about. Worry's the only currency they have left.
"I'll send a couple kids up to raid the Jewel on Wabash. There were still a few cans and boxes there, last time I checked." Crumb hesitates, then adds, "But we've got to move camp soon," proving that he's worried, too. "There's too many of us, and we're getting too comfortable. Someone's gonna notice all the stores around here've been stripped of candles and flashlights, and one of the traitors'll remember the tunnels and figure it out."
Marissa doesn't stop stirring the soup, but she grips the ladle so tight her knuckles ache. "How much longer do we have?"
"Dunno. A week, maybe a little more. The guys in the resistance think we have longer before anyone finds us, but I don't want to cut it too close."
"Whitney's baby is due within the month. If we're going to settle in somewhere new, we should go before she has it." The last thing she wants is the Toclafane, or any of the people who've sided with them out of fear or something darker, something she doesn't want to even name, to come through the tunnels while they're preoccupied with Whitney's labor. Saxon, or whatever his real name is, has as little use for newborns as he does for people who are less than perfectly able to do his gruntwork.
"We're not settling anywhere for long," Crumb reminds her, as if she needs reminding. "But yeah, we'll find a place to keep her safe while she's--you know. There's a cave-in about a mile from here; if we can break through it, we might be able to find a space that's big enough for this crew of yours."
It's not just her crew. It's both of theirs, all of theirs. But Crumb insists on calling it hers, and she's not sure if that's because he's trying to build her up, or because he doesn't want the responsibility. She knows it's at least in part because he doesn't like to admit, especially to himself, how much he cares.
It's almost time for everyone to troop in for lunch; they have to keep a schedule down here, or time will stop meaning anything at all. She has to ask the question while they're still alone. It's part of the ritual, just like "don't worry", strict mealtimes, and assigning chores.
"When you spoke to your resistance friends, did they say...did you ask..." She swirls the ladle through the soup, faster and faster, until Crumb reaches over and touches her wrist.
"Nothing new," he says, and his voice is weirdly gentle, the way it always is when they try to talk about Gary, or about any of the dozens of people who should be here and aren't. "Marissa, maybe..."
He won't say what he thinks, that Gary must be dead, or they'd have heard from him. She stiffens, and he pulls back. But then he says something that isn't part of the routine. "He'd be proud of you, you know."
It isn't funny, but it makes her laugh and shake her head. "He'd be up above with the resistance, getting himself shot at or worse. And I'm not doing this to make anyone proud. We're all just down here trying to survive until..." She trails off, because there's only one end she can imagine to all this. Crumb must be so uncomfortable; he hates anything emotional, but there's no one left for her to talk to about it all.
"Keep fighting," she whispers, and finally sets the soup ladle down. She has to, to brush tears off her cheeks. "That's the last thing he said to me."
He'd shown up at her house in the middle of the night. The paper had come early and he'd said it was covered with half-headlines and dire warnings. "It's more than just the president, Marissa, but I think it starts with Saxon killing him," he'd said. "If I can stop that, maybe the rest of it won't happen." She'd tried to talk him out of going to the Secret Service--they both knew President Winters's government would take Gary's warnings as threats. But he didn't see any other way to stop what was about to happen.
"I promised if he didn't come back in a few hours, I'd find him," she tells Crumb--as if he doesn't know, as if he wasn't right there with her trying to find Gary at the moment everything changed. "He said, 'You just keep fighting, whatever happens.' And instead I'm hiding down here with a pot of watery soup."
"There's more than one way to fight. Listen--" Crumb pauses, and she hears the nearing voices and shuffling feet. Lunchtime. "You're keeping them all alive. That's nothing to sneeze at."
"And what is it you're doing here, Crumb?"
"Who, me? I'm just in it for the grub."
Marissa forces a smile. "I thought you were sweet on Mrs. Harvell."
"That old bird could run rings around me. She's gonna outlive us all."
Ban Eng and Drew come over to help serve the soup. Marissa's about to join Crumb at one of the tables when someone taps her on the shoulder.
"Luisa's here," Max says. "She's brought someone. She wants to talk to you."
Marissa swallows back a sigh. She unfolds her cane, already running down a mental list, trying to figure which of the alcoves they've set up as sleeping rooms has a free cot. "Just one person this time? Luisa's slacking."
"No," Max whispers, an edge of excitement in his voice. "It's not that. I told them to wait in your room."
He follows her away from the dining section, toward the curtained-off area that's been her sleeping space for nearly a month now. "Why the secrecy?" she asks as they tap their way down the tunnel, she with her cane, he with his crutch. Luisa wouldn't bring anyone down here who might be a danger, so she can't imagine what's going on. They're twelve steps from the door, ten, eight--
"Because it's her," Max bursts out in the reverential tone he might have used for a movie star a year ago. "I never thought she'd come here, but Luisa talked her into it."
"Who?" Marissa finds the shower curtain that sections off her sleeping space and pulls it aside.
"Marissa!" Luisa's right there, and she gives her a hug. "You'll never guess who's here."
"Apparently not," Marissa says. There's a warm laugh from just to her right. "Maybe one of you could tell me?"
"Right," says Luisa. Oddly, her voice is tinged with a new accent--or maybe an affectation--that's almost, but not quite, British. "Marissa Clark, I'd like you to meet Martha Jones. She has a story she wants to tell everyone, but I thought you'd like to meet her first."
Martha's handshake is as warm as her laugh. "It won't take long, I promise," she says, and Marissa understands why Luisa sounds like she's been watching Masterpiece Theatre.
"Why not?" Marissa's still not sure who this person is. "We could all use the distraction."
Luisa gasps. "It's more than a distraction! Haven't you heard of Martha Jones?"
"I don't get out much." Marissa turns to the new arrival. "I don't mean to be rude, Miss--."
"It's Martha, and you aren't. Trust me, I'd rather I wasn't so well known."
Marissa's even more confused, but the soup's getting cold. "Martha, then. Come have lunch with us."
* * * * *
The dining room--really just a section of tunnel crowded with mismatched tables, benches, and chairs--is lit with candles. Martha follows Luisa to a table full of children and a young man brings them soup. Max sits with them, folding paper airplanes from pages he rips out of an old magazine. The children keep chattering at them long after all the adults in the room have fallen silent, staring at Martha.
Not quite all the adults. Martha watches Marissa Clark make her way to the back of the room with the help of a cane that can't properly be called "white" any longer, as it's held together with three different colors of duct tape. There's an older gentleman back there, tinkering at a generator with a single screwdriver. If only it were sonic, Martha thinks, and it's a long moment before she can swallow her soup again. Over in the corner, Marissa says something to the man, and his gaze darts to Martha for a split second. He shrugs and goes back to work, saying something that Martha can't decipher. Whatever it is, it makes Marissa grin, and she sits down on a bench against the back wall.
Before long, two teenagers start clearing the dishes, but no one gets up to leave. "Are you ready?" Luisa asks. Martha just has time to nod before Luisa's calling for everyone's attention and leading her to a place near the front of the room.
There must be at least four dozen people: children perched on tables and laps, elderly men and women, one girl not much older than Luisa who's so pregnant, and making such odd faces, Martha starts a mental review of everything she knows about obstetrics. There are a few who, like Max, are missing limbs, and several who have wheelchairs or walkers. A small group gathers around the boy who sits directly in front of Martha, translating her story into sign language.
Still, the reaction is the same as always: the upturned faces, the initial disbelief when she starts to tell them about the Doctor, the dawning hope that stills the whole room. Max even stops folding his paper airplanes and rests his chin on his hands to listen. It's only when she's near the end, when she says, "He's saved you over and over again without your knowing it. He never stops, he never stays, he never waits for anyone's thanks," that the afternoon veers off script.
There's a muffled sound from the back of the room, followed by a clatter, and Martha hesitates for a split second. Marissa's dropped her cane and has one hand over her mouth. Her eyes are wide, as if she's trying to see Martha, or something past her. Martha's about to ask what's wrong when Mr. Fix-It walks over to the bench. Luisa nudges Martha, and she picks up the story where she left off.
"I've seen what the Doctor can do, and I'm here to tell you he does care. He cares so much he's come up with a way to stop this, but he needs your help. He needs you to believe, and I know it sounds impossible, but it's going to work. You just have to believe that he'll come through." She goes on, the words she's spoken hundreds of times coming out of her mouth of their own accord while she watches Marissa cover her face with her hands and crumple into a tight wad of shock or misery or...whatever it is she's feeling. Mr. Fix-It doesn't hug her, doesn't even hold her hand, just sits close enough for their shoulders to touch.
Martha may not have completed her medical rotations, but she knows what's happening, even if she doesn't know why. She's watching scar tissue, barely healed, being ripped open all over again. And it's her words that are doing it.
Mr. Fix-It knows as well. The scowl he directs at Martha lets her know this is all her fault.
When she finishes her story, there are handshakes and hugs and a cavalcade of words. It all washes over Martha, the wave of gratitude and newfound hope. Usually it's the best part of her day, but this afternoon she's more interested in the one thing that's not routine.
It isn't that no one ever cries when she tells the story. People cry for all kinds of reasons; hope after too many long, dark months can smash through defenses and numbness like a wrecking ball. But no one's ever reacted quite like Marissa Clark. When almost everyone is gone, Martha looks toward the back corner. Marissa seems to have pulled herself together. She's standing, talking quietly to Mr. Fix-It, who sees Martha watching and shoots another daggered glance her way.
"Martha?" Luisa's at her elbow. "Should we set off?"
"Not as soon as all that," Martha murmurs. At Luisa's confused look, she adds, "Would you like to spend time with Max before we leave? I know if I could see my brother right now I'd--" She winces to hold in a tide of longing. "--I'd want to make it last."
"You're the best!" Luisa goes off in search of Max, leaving Martha to approach the pair in the back of the room on her own. Most of the candles in the room have flickered down to nothing or been taken away, but the one on the table nearest the generator gives off enough light to see that Mr. Fix-It still doesn't trust her, enough to see Marissa square her shoulders and settle her features into what's probably supposed to be hospitality. But she has the swollen eyes of someone who's been holding in far too much for far too long.
Martha clears her throat. "I'd like to apologize," she says. "Not for the story, because I have to tell it, but it's upset you--I've upset you--and I'm sorry for that."
"No," Marissa cuts her off. "Don't be sorry. I hate that word."
Mr. Fix-It snorts and rolls his eyes.
"It's true, Crumb--"
"Oh, believe me, you've told me. More than once. But she oughta apologize, coming in here when every Toclafane on the planet is looking for her. You've practically led them to our doorstep--"
Martha reaches for the TARDIS key dangling from its cord around her neck. "No, I didn't--"
"--just so you could tell some cockamamie story about a guy who knows what's gonna happen. Tell me this, if he's so smart, why didn't he stop all this in the first place?"
"Crumb, don't." Marissa's voice cracks. "He tried. He must have tried, just like--" She turns to Martha. "He did try, didn't he?"
"Of course he--yes. He tried." Martha's spent endless hours trying to convince herself the Doctor did the right thing, that somehow, in the grand scheme of things, letting the Master kill all those people and take the Doctor, Jack, and her family captive was a better option than just killing him outright when they had the chance. Much as she trusts the Doctor, she hasn't quite reconciled that one for herself.
But these people don't know all that. They must be talking about--or around--something else. Marissa puts a hand on Crumb's arm, and when he looks at her his scowl melts. "Martha didn't do this to hurt anyone, least of all us," Marissa says. "She's trying to help. She did help. She just doesn't know about--about what we know."
"It's not like we know anything anymore anyhow," Crumb grumbles. "Not like I ever knew what it was I wasn't supposed to know." Somewhere in that tortured syntax there's a message, but for the life of her, Martha can't imagine what it means.
"You're telling the truth, aren't you?" Marissa asks Martha. "About your Doctor--he--he knows how to help."
So she was listening, even at the end, Martha thinks with no small amount of relief. Whatever caused the breakdown, at least she didn't totally fail in the storytelling. "It's all true, I swear it. If you only knew him--"
"Actually, I do. We do," Marissa says. She stands straighter, sets her jaw. For one half-second, Martha wonders if she's somehow another companion, like Jack. "Not your Doctor exactly, but someone who does the same kinds of things."
Martha has to laugh at that. "No one's like the Doctor."
"No one's like Hobson, either," Crumb says. "For which I was always grateful."
Martha doesn't miss the wince Marissa makes at the "was". "Hobson?"
"He's--" Marissa begins, but stops when a scream echoes down the tunnels.
Martha starts toward it, Marissa and Crumb at her heels. A woman who has to be at least eighty years old hobbles down the dimly lit tunnel. "It's Whitney," she calls over another scream. "Her baby's coming. Says she's felt funny all day, but she didn't want to interrupt the story."
"I thought you said she had a month," Crumb growls, as if a teenager going into labor is a personal affront.
Marissa shakes her head, and for the first time Martha sees fear. "Maybe she's early. I don't know--"
"She's asking for you, Marissa," the old woman says. "Get a move on."
Martha touches Marissa's arm. "I have medical training. I can help."
"Thank God," Marissa says, and sounds as though she truly means it. "Crumb, it might get loud down here."
He's already backing away. "I'll make sure we've got people stationed at the entrances."
The old woman chuckles and hobbles toward a shower curtain decorated with yellow ducks. "Just us girls, then!"
Marissa follows, sweeping short arcs with her cane. "She's only sixteen," she tells Martha under her breath. "They nearly worked her to death in one of the steel mills, even after they found out she was pregnant. It's a wonder she survived at all."
Martha should check herself for whiplash; she's gone from guilty to almost giddy at the thought of helping to deliver a child. For once she's not being asked to fix someone who's horribly broken. "Even the Master can't stop babies from coming. Let's you and I make sure this one meets its mother."
* * * * *
Whitney's daughter is tiny, but alive. Marissa cleans her off with hands that still ache from being crushed for hours as Whitney struggled not to scream. The baby makes up for it with a wail that must be echoing through every tunnel in the system. For once, she pushes away her fear that they'll be heard; joy is so rare, and so many children have been lost--
--she can't think about that, not with this life in her hands. She wraps the baby in a flannel blanket, which Luisa swears came from a store raid and not someone's home, and hands her to Whitney. Martha comes to stand beside her. "Congratulations, Mum."
Whitney makes a sound that starts out like a laugh, but hiccups into tears.
"What's wrong?" Marissa asks.
"She's just so gorgeous," Whitney sobs. "And tiny, and p-perfect, and how am I going to take care of her d-down here?"
Marissa kneels and soothes Whitney's hair while Martha gives the pep talk: women have done this for thousands of years, Whitney has more help than many of them ever did, babies are so much more resilient than they're given credit for...
Every once in a while the baby kicks Marissa's arm with her tiny, blanket-wrapped foot, and it's almost more than she can bear. Despite Martha's assurances, she isn't sure any of them are going to last until the Doctor's countdown, not unless it comes tomorrow.
"Marissa?" Whitney asks sleepily. "Can we really do this?"
"Of course," she says around the lump in her throat, and hopes she looks more confident than she feels. She rubs the bottom of the baby's foot with her thumb. "We've lasted this long, haven't we? What's her name?"
Whitney doesn't hesitate. "Galadriel. Tim made me promise, before they took him away." She's on the verge of tears again, but so is Marissa. "I know it's silly, but he loved those books. I have to give her something from her daddy."
"It's beautiful," Marissa tells her, even though she thinks it might be a bit much for such a tiny girl to carry. "And brave, just like her mother."
They help Whitney give Galadriel her first meal, which, short as it is, wears them both out. Mrs. Harvell offers to stay in the room and watch over them while they rest.
The hallway is quiet, though surely no one is really asleep. Marissa wonders who took care of the evening meal and cleanup, but for once, it isn't her problem. "Martha--thank you. If you hadn't been here, I don't know what we would have done."
"You would have figured it out," Martha says, and she sounds more relaxed and confident than she did when she was telling her story. "As I said, women have been doing this for thousands of years. The Master can't take that away from us."
"I won't call him that." Marissa leads the way into her little room. "Does he have a name of his own?"
"No idea," Martha says.
"Crumb has a few choice ones for him." So does Marissa, though her grandmother would come up from her grave and scold her if she said most of them out loud. But she doesn't want to think too much about the man who put them all here; she just held a newborn baby in her hands, and she feels... light. Almost happy, if that's even possible. "Would you like to sleep here tonight?" she asks Martha. "It's just a cot, but you're welcome to stay."
"I couldn't take your bed. And I'm not sure I can sleep. This is the first time in months I've done something other than hide from the Toclafane, tell stories about the Doctor, and patch up wounds. It's all rather...wonderful. That sounds strange, doesn't it?"
"Not at all." Marissa wraps her arms around herself. It's always the same temperature down here, but when she knows it's nighttime, it feels colder. "Would you like some tea? Or maybe something stronger?"
"How much stronger?"
Marissa smiles. "I know a great bartender."
* * * * *
Part 2 on DW
Part 3 on DW
This entry was originally posted at http://akamarykate.dreamwidth.org/311904.html. You may comment either here or there.
Companionship (16324 words) by
akamarykate
Fandom: Early Edition, Doctor Who
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Summary: Trading stories, reasons, and hope in the dark.
Thanks, ever and always, to Jayne Leitch, for beta reading, support, and asking all the right questions.
Part 1 of 3
Chicago's just another ruined city, a dark blot in the middle of the United States. It's become the perfect hub for more than one group; Martha's contacts in the resistance tell her there are thousands of people, maybe millions, within a day's walk. Most have been forced into work camps in the old steel mills and shipyards along the southern curve of Lake Michigan, but the resistance is there too, using the old highways and waterways to reach into Canada and the central United States. When she stops in the outskirts of the city, Martha has access to an eager audience, beginning with a group of resistance fighters who gather in an abandoned petrol station to hear her story.
"You've done a good thing," the leader, a grim older man named Matthews, tells her when she's done. "Lotta people around these parts need to hear what you have to say. Let me get someone to take you around."
Martha doesn't want an escort. She has the TARDIS key to keep the Toclafane from noticing her movements; there's no sense putting anyone else in danger. But Matthews insists. "Luisa knows this area better than anyone. Girl's like a cat, the way she gets around." He looks over Martha's shoulder, out the long-broken front window toward the dark, crumbling skyline. "And I'd rather have her with you than fighting traitors and Toclafane." In another life, Martha thinks, Matthews and her mother could team up and teach postgraduate courses in motivation through guilt.
Luisa is sixteen years old, earnest and quick and a little bit star-struck. "Wait 'til I tell my brother I met you!" she gushes. She shakes Martha's hand with both of her own. Her jacket gaps, and Martha sees a handgun tucked into the pocket of her jeans, where she no doubt carried a mobile or an iPod a few months ago. "I mean, that story--your Doctor--it's brilliant, isn't that how you say it in England? This is going to be the most brilliant thing since--" Her smile cracks for a second, but she pulls it together and gives Martha's hand another firm pump before releasing it. "Totally brilliant."
Matthews raises an eyebrow, and Martha swallows back a sigh. "Brilliant."
As it turns out, Matthews is right about Luisa knowing the area. Even better, she has a knack for finding groups of people tucked into all manner of nooks and crannies. In three days' time, she slips Martha into apartment buildings, schools, and department stores that have been converted into dormitories for workers and hideouts for the small, but growing, resistance. She's never lost, and she keeps them well away from the worst of the factory smoke and smog. They move through what used to be a network of suburbs and small towns, and as they walk, Luisa tells Martha tidbits of their histories. "Someone has to remember," she insists. "One day, we're going to build it all back."
She steers them around the city itself, explaining that once it was stripped clean of usable steel and other building materials, the citizens--those who were left alive--were rounded up and taken away to the camps. Martha doesn't need to see the devastation close-up; by the end of the third day, she's sure the story of the Doctor has taken root. It will spread through the area on its own, though Luisa will no doubt help.
"You change it every night," Luisa says the fourth morning, as Martha braces herself to tell the girl good-bye. They spent the night resting in another resistance outpost, one that used to be an office of some kind. Now it holds a two-way radio, a few guns, rows of sleeping bags, and a makeshift kitchen where they sit on the floor eating stale boxed biscuits for breakfast. "I mean, it's always about the Doctor, but every time you tell about different things he's done--different ways he's saved us."
Martha nods and passes their thermos of tea to Luisa. "Lucky he's done it loads. Saves me boring myself." She smiles, but there's an uneasy flutter in her stomach. She isn't bored, that's not the word for it, but she is...tired. Tired of following the Doctor's instructions blindly; tired of wondering if the hope she's giving people like Luisa is only a temporary dressing on a wound that won't ever heal.
She's been collecting names and stories since she started this journey, and she spent last night running down her list over and over again, from Jorges Azales, an ex-librarian who's organizing the resistance in Mexico City by sneaking post-it notes in picture books passed through the refugee camps, to a woman named Yancey who teaches songs with coded subversive lyrics to children in Australian work camps. It's a long list, and it steadies Martha when her faith wavers, but there are nights that her fear for every single person on it keeps her awake.
Luisa has her eyes fixed on Martha even as she gulps down tea, so Martha keeps the smile pasted on her face. "Luisa, you've been a wonderful guide, but it's time I moved on. Can you tell me--"
"No." Luisa puts the thermos down so hard the tea sloshes out. The other people in the room, a couple who look to be around Leo's age, glance over at them. "You can't go, not yet."
"I have to keep going, you know that." Martha doesn't say where she's going, not even in which direction. If Luisa's ever taken for questioning--she pushes an image of Luisa aboard the Valiant, Luisa in the Master's hands, out of her mind. It's much better if she doesn't leave a trail that can be followed. She brushes crumbs off her hands and gets to her knees, ready to stand, but Luisa reaches over and grabs her arm.
"Please," she whispers. Just then, the man and woman get up to leave, murmuring good-byes to Martha. Luisa waits until they leave the room to go on, and even then, her voice is pitched low. "There are people in the city--where the city used to be. People who are hiding from the work camps and the roundups because they wouldn't survive them and they can't run from them. No one's supposed to know. I wasn't even sure I could take you there, not until I knew you, but now I know you won't tell about them. They need your story." Luisa looks younger than ever--or maybe it's just that Martha feels decades older.
"I shouldn't."
"Please, just one more time. It's--" She gulps. "My brother's there."
Martha knows better than to waver. If she gives in to every plea for just one more night, just one more story, there will be no hope at all of the Doctor's plan working. But she's tired, and Luisa is right here in front of her. The Doctor is not.
"If we can do it quickly, I suppose I could spare--"
Luisa jumps to her feet. "We can go right now. There's no one else left in that part of the city. The Toclafane don't even bother with it most days."
Martha picks up her bag. "One day, Luisa. That's all."
* * * * *
Luisa's right about the center of the city being deserted. By the time they reach what used to be Chicago's downtown, they haven't heard vehicles or seen other people for hours. The buildings are marked with graffiti, but those who painted all the curses and exhortations for the Toclafane to go home have long since gone away themselves.
"They tore down the skyscrapers right away," Luisa tells Martha. "Said they needed the steel. They cleared almost everyone out, then they punched out the windows and made it rain glass. They even pulled up the L tracks and most of the bridges along the river. What do they want all that metal for?"
Surely Luisa's heard the rumors. "Rocket ships, maybe. Missiles." Martha isn't sure, and doesn't want to know. Her job is to thwart the Master's intentions, not understand them. Her boots crunch glass, and she stares at a hole in the ground where a building used to be.
"My brother Max, he was one of the ones they made work on the bridges. He didn't know anything about construction--or destruction, I guess it was." Luisa keeps up her brisk walk as they skirt a block of knee-high grass and saplings, a city park grown wild. "One day he stood too close to someone with a saw. I had to look in three hospitals--that was back when we still had some of the hospitals--and when I found him, his leg was gone. They said he'd have to go to the special work camp, the one for people who are disabled. They said the work would be easier there, but..."
Luisa trails off, and Martha looks sidelong at her. A little over a month ago, she went along on a resistance attempt to liberate one of the special camps. She'd hoped she could put her medical training to good use. But when they arrived, the camp was empty, just a handful of ramshackle buildings and damaged medical equipment.
"I couldn't let them take him," Luisa says, facing straight forward and blinking hard. "He's all that's left of my family. One of the doctors told me about the tunnels, so I took him there."
"Tunnels?"
"There are freight tunnels under the city. No one's used them, not in a hundred years, maybe, and some of the resistance set up--" Luisa flashes a lopsided grin. "--actually they got talked into setting up--a place for people like Max. He's not useless. He just needs a crutch to get around, but the way they talked about those camps scared me. We did a Holocaust unit in school a couple years ago." She shoves her hands in her jacket pockets and her glance darts to Martha for a second, then forward again.
"No one comes home from the special camps," Martha tells her. "You did the right thing."
"I know," Luisa says, "but Max misses the sun." She leads Martha around a corner to another street of empty buildings that ends at a river, or perhaps it's two rivers--one bends and flows into the other, forming a Y shape. "You'd think it'd be the worst place on the planet, but the thing is..." Her steps slow, and Martha doesn't know if she's trailing off because she's trying to find the next turn on the route, or because she's not sure how to finish her sentence.
"The thing is, Max is alive, and so are the others. And you're right--they need to know about the Doctor." Martha makes her tone a little teasing. "But you could have told the story yourself."
"I can't tell it nearly as well as you do." Luisa heads for a graffiti-covered building. She traces a white symbol, a small plus sign--or maybe it's a cross--inside a circle, then turns right, into a narrow alley. "Besides, I thought you'd want to meet Max and --well, all of them. I know they'll want to meet you." Halfway down the alley, she stops. "They're here."
Martha doesn't see a soul, not a sign that a living person has been down this alley in weeks. "Luisa, what--"
Luisa pulls two torches from her backpack and hands one to Martha. Even in the shadowy alley the beams are barely visible, until Luisa directs hers into a gaping manhole. Like all the others, it's missing its cover. "This way."
* * * * *
Marissa adds more water to the pot of canned soup, wondering when their stores will run out. She wonders, too, how much longer the generator that keeps the hot plates running will hold together; it's been rattling all morning, and not in a comfortable, rhythmic way. It makes her even more jittery than usual; she jumps at familiar sounds, like the clomp of Crumb's boots across the dining section. A chair scrapes the concrete floor, and he plops down next to her stove with a sigh.
"Lunch'll be ready soon," she says. "But it won't be much, and we had those three new arrivals last night, so--"
"Don't worry. It'll be enough."
It's been their refrain to each other since this whole thing started: "Don't worry. They must be alive somewhere"; "Don't worry. It's bound to get better"; "Don't worry. I'm gonna get us someplace safe"; "Don't worry. Gary will find us when he can"; "Don't worry. No one'll bother to look for a band of misfits like us."
Don't worry, because worry doesn't change a thing. But they do it anyway. Worry's about the future; the past is too painful to think about. Worry's the only currency they have left.
"I'll send a couple kids up to raid the Jewel on Wabash. There were still a few cans and boxes there, last time I checked." Crumb hesitates, then adds, "But we've got to move camp soon," proving that he's worried, too. "There's too many of us, and we're getting too comfortable. Someone's gonna notice all the stores around here've been stripped of candles and flashlights, and one of the traitors'll remember the tunnels and figure it out."
Marissa doesn't stop stirring the soup, but she grips the ladle so tight her knuckles ache. "How much longer do we have?"
"Dunno. A week, maybe a little more. The guys in the resistance think we have longer before anyone finds us, but I don't want to cut it too close."
"Whitney's baby is due within the month. If we're going to settle in somewhere new, we should go before she has it." The last thing she wants is the Toclafane, or any of the people who've sided with them out of fear or something darker, something she doesn't want to even name, to come through the tunnels while they're preoccupied with Whitney's labor. Saxon, or whatever his real name is, has as little use for newborns as he does for people who are less than perfectly able to do his gruntwork.
"We're not settling anywhere for long," Crumb reminds her, as if she needs reminding. "But yeah, we'll find a place to keep her safe while she's--you know. There's a cave-in about a mile from here; if we can break through it, we might be able to find a space that's big enough for this crew of yours."
It's not just her crew. It's both of theirs, all of theirs. But Crumb insists on calling it hers, and she's not sure if that's because he's trying to build her up, or because he doesn't want the responsibility. She knows it's at least in part because he doesn't like to admit, especially to himself, how much he cares.
It's almost time for everyone to troop in for lunch; they have to keep a schedule down here, or time will stop meaning anything at all. She has to ask the question while they're still alone. It's part of the ritual, just like "don't worry", strict mealtimes, and assigning chores.
"When you spoke to your resistance friends, did they say...did you ask..." She swirls the ladle through the soup, faster and faster, until Crumb reaches over and touches her wrist.
"Nothing new," he says, and his voice is weirdly gentle, the way it always is when they try to talk about Gary, or about any of the dozens of people who should be here and aren't. "Marissa, maybe..."
He won't say what he thinks, that Gary must be dead, or they'd have heard from him. She stiffens, and he pulls back. But then he says something that isn't part of the routine. "He'd be proud of you, you know."
It isn't funny, but it makes her laugh and shake her head. "He'd be up above with the resistance, getting himself shot at or worse. And I'm not doing this to make anyone proud. We're all just down here trying to survive until..." She trails off, because there's only one end she can imagine to all this. Crumb must be so uncomfortable; he hates anything emotional, but there's no one left for her to talk to about it all.
"Keep fighting," she whispers, and finally sets the soup ladle down. She has to, to brush tears off her cheeks. "That's the last thing he said to me."
He'd shown up at her house in the middle of the night. The paper had come early and he'd said it was covered with half-headlines and dire warnings. "It's more than just the president, Marissa, but I think it starts with Saxon killing him," he'd said. "If I can stop that, maybe the rest of it won't happen." She'd tried to talk him out of going to the Secret Service--they both knew President Winters's government would take Gary's warnings as threats. But he didn't see any other way to stop what was about to happen.
"I promised if he didn't come back in a few hours, I'd find him," she tells Crumb--as if he doesn't know, as if he wasn't right there with her trying to find Gary at the moment everything changed. "He said, 'You just keep fighting, whatever happens.' And instead I'm hiding down here with a pot of watery soup."
"There's more than one way to fight. Listen--" Crumb pauses, and she hears the nearing voices and shuffling feet. Lunchtime. "You're keeping them all alive. That's nothing to sneeze at."
"And what is it you're doing here, Crumb?"
"Who, me? I'm just in it for the grub."
Marissa forces a smile. "I thought you were sweet on Mrs. Harvell."
"That old bird could run rings around me. She's gonna outlive us all."
Ban Eng and Drew come over to help serve the soup. Marissa's about to join Crumb at one of the tables when someone taps her on the shoulder.
"Luisa's here," Max says. "She's brought someone. She wants to talk to you."
Marissa swallows back a sigh. She unfolds her cane, already running down a mental list, trying to figure which of the alcoves they've set up as sleeping rooms has a free cot. "Just one person this time? Luisa's slacking."
"No," Max whispers, an edge of excitement in his voice. "It's not that. I told them to wait in your room."
He follows her away from the dining section, toward the curtained-off area that's been her sleeping space for nearly a month now. "Why the secrecy?" she asks as they tap their way down the tunnel, she with her cane, he with his crutch. Luisa wouldn't bring anyone down here who might be a danger, so she can't imagine what's going on. They're twelve steps from the door, ten, eight--
"Because it's her," Max bursts out in the reverential tone he might have used for a movie star a year ago. "I never thought she'd come here, but Luisa talked her into it."
"Who?" Marissa finds the shower curtain that sections off her sleeping space and pulls it aside.
"Marissa!" Luisa's right there, and she gives her a hug. "You'll never guess who's here."
"Apparently not," Marissa says. There's a warm laugh from just to her right. "Maybe one of you could tell me?"
"Right," says Luisa. Oddly, her voice is tinged with a new accent--or maybe an affectation--that's almost, but not quite, British. "Marissa Clark, I'd like you to meet Martha Jones. She has a story she wants to tell everyone, but I thought you'd like to meet her first."
Martha's handshake is as warm as her laugh. "It won't take long, I promise," she says, and Marissa understands why Luisa sounds like she's been watching Masterpiece Theatre.
"Why not?" Marissa's still not sure who this person is. "We could all use the distraction."
Luisa gasps. "It's more than a distraction! Haven't you heard of Martha Jones?"
"I don't get out much." Marissa turns to the new arrival. "I don't mean to be rude, Miss--."
"It's Martha, and you aren't. Trust me, I'd rather I wasn't so well known."
Marissa's even more confused, but the soup's getting cold. "Martha, then. Come have lunch with us."
* * * * *
The dining room--really just a section of tunnel crowded with mismatched tables, benches, and chairs--is lit with candles. Martha follows Luisa to a table full of children and a young man brings them soup. Max sits with them, folding paper airplanes from pages he rips out of an old magazine. The children keep chattering at them long after all the adults in the room have fallen silent, staring at Martha.
Not quite all the adults. Martha watches Marissa Clark make her way to the back of the room with the help of a cane that can't properly be called "white" any longer, as it's held together with three different colors of duct tape. There's an older gentleman back there, tinkering at a generator with a single screwdriver. If only it were sonic, Martha thinks, and it's a long moment before she can swallow her soup again. Over in the corner, Marissa says something to the man, and his gaze darts to Martha for a split second. He shrugs and goes back to work, saying something that Martha can't decipher. Whatever it is, it makes Marissa grin, and she sits down on a bench against the back wall.
Before long, two teenagers start clearing the dishes, but no one gets up to leave. "Are you ready?" Luisa asks. Martha just has time to nod before Luisa's calling for everyone's attention and leading her to a place near the front of the room.
There must be at least four dozen people: children perched on tables and laps, elderly men and women, one girl not much older than Luisa who's so pregnant, and making such odd faces, Martha starts a mental review of everything she knows about obstetrics. There are a few who, like Max, are missing limbs, and several who have wheelchairs or walkers. A small group gathers around the boy who sits directly in front of Martha, translating her story into sign language.
Still, the reaction is the same as always: the upturned faces, the initial disbelief when she starts to tell them about the Doctor, the dawning hope that stills the whole room. Max even stops folding his paper airplanes and rests his chin on his hands to listen. It's only when she's near the end, when she says, "He's saved you over and over again without your knowing it. He never stops, he never stays, he never waits for anyone's thanks," that the afternoon veers off script.
There's a muffled sound from the back of the room, followed by a clatter, and Martha hesitates for a split second. Marissa's dropped her cane and has one hand over her mouth. Her eyes are wide, as if she's trying to see Martha, or something past her. Martha's about to ask what's wrong when Mr. Fix-It walks over to the bench. Luisa nudges Martha, and she picks up the story where she left off.
"I've seen what the Doctor can do, and I'm here to tell you he does care. He cares so much he's come up with a way to stop this, but he needs your help. He needs you to believe, and I know it sounds impossible, but it's going to work. You just have to believe that he'll come through." She goes on, the words she's spoken hundreds of times coming out of her mouth of their own accord while she watches Marissa cover her face with her hands and crumple into a tight wad of shock or misery or...whatever it is she's feeling. Mr. Fix-It doesn't hug her, doesn't even hold her hand, just sits close enough for their shoulders to touch.
Martha may not have completed her medical rotations, but she knows what's happening, even if she doesn't know why. She's watching scar tissue, barely healed, being ripped open all over again. And it's her words that are doing it.
Mr. Fix-It knows as well. The scowl he directs at Martha lets her know this is all her fault.
When she finishes her story, there are handshakes and hugs and a cavalcade of words. It all washes over Martha, the wave of gratitude and newfound hope. Usually it's the best part of her day, but this afternoon she's more interested in the one thing that's not routine.
It isn't that no one ever cries when she tells the story. People cry for all kinds of reasons; hope after too many long, dark months can smash through defenses and numbness like a wrecking ball. But no one's ever reacted quite like Marissa Clark. When almost everyone is gone, Martha looks toward the back corner. Marissa seems to have pulled herself together. She's standing, talking quietly to Mr. Fix-It, who sees Martha watching and shoots another daggered glance her way.
"Martha?" Luisa's at her elbow. "Should we set off?"
"Not as soon as all that," Martha murmurs. At Luisa's confused look, she adds, "Would you like to spend time with Max before we leave? I know if I could see my brother right now I'd--" She winces to hold in a tide of longing. "--I'd want to make it last."
"You're the best!" Luisa goes off in search of Max, leaving Martha to approach the pair in the back of the room on her own. Most of the candles in the room have flickered down to nothing or been taken away, but the one on the table nearest the generator gives off enough light to see that Mr. Fix-It still doesn't trust her, enough to see Marissa square her shoulders and settle her features into what's probably supposed to be hospitality. But she has the swollen eyes of someone who's been holding in far too much for far too long.
Martha clears her throat. "I'd like to apologize," she says. "Not for the story, because I have to tell it, but it's upset you--I've upset you--and I'm sorry for that."
"No," Marissa cuts her off. "Don't be sorry. I hate that word."
Mr. Fix-It snorts and rolls his eyes.
"It's true, Crumb--"
"Oh, believe me, you've told me. More than once. But she oughta apologize, coming in here when every Toclafane on the planet is looking for her. You've practically led them to our doorstep--"
Martha reaches for the TARDIS key dangling from its cord around her neck. "No, I didn't--"
"--just so you could tell some cockamamie story about a guy who knows what's gonna happen. Tell me this, if he's so smart, why didn't he stop all this in the first place?"
"Crumb, don't." Marissa's voice cracks. "He tried. He must have tried, just like--" She turns to Martha. "He did try, didn't he?"
"Of course he--yes. He tried." Martha's spent endless hours trying to convince herself the Doctor did the right thing, that somehow, in the grand scheme of things, letting the Master kill all those people and take the Doctor, Jack, and her family captive was a better option than just killing him outright when they had the chance. Much as she trusts the Doctor, she hasn't quite reconciled that one for herself.
But these people don't know all that. They must be talking about--or around--something else. Marissa puts a hand on Crumb's arm, and when he looks at her his scowl melts. "Martha didn't do this to hurt anyone, least of all us," Marissa says. "She's trying to help. She did help. She just doesn't know about--about what we know."
"It's not like we know anything anymore anyhow," Crumb grumbles. "Not like I ever knew what it was I wasn't supposed to know." Somewhere in that tortured syntax there's a message, but for the life of her, Martha can't imagine what it means.
"You're telling the truth, aren't you?" Marissa asks Martha. "About your Doctor--he--he knows how to help."
So she was listening, even at the end, Martha thinks with no small amount of relief. Whatever caused the breakdown, at least she didn't totally fail in the storytelling. "It's all true, I swear it. If you only knew him--"
"Actually, I do. We do," Marissa says. She stands straighter, sets her jaw. For one half-second, Martha wonders if she's somehow another companion, like Jack. "Not your Doctor exactly, but someone who does the same kinds of things."
Martha has to laugh at that. "No one's like the Doctor."
"No one's like Hobson, either," Crumb says. "For which I was always grateful."
Martha doesn't miss the wince Marissa makes at the "was". "Hobson?"
"He's--" Marissa begins, but stops when a scream echoes down the tunnels.
Martha starts toward it, Marissa and Crumb at her heels. A woman who has to be at least eighty years old hobbles down the dimly lit tunnel. "It's Whitney," she calls over another scream. "Her baby's coming. Says she's felt funny all day, but she didn't want to interrupt the story."
"I thought you said she had a month," Crumb growls, as if a teenager going into labor is a personal affront.
Marissa shakes her head, and for the first time Martha sees fear. "Maybe she's early. I don't know--"
"She's asking for you, Marissa," the old woman says. "Get a move on."
Martha touches Marissa's arm. "I have medical training. I can help."
"Thank God," Marissa says, and sounds as though she truly means it. "Crumb, it might get loud down here."
He's already backing away. "I'll make sure we've got people stationed at the entrances."
The old woman chuckles and hobbles toward a shower curtain decorated with yellow ducks. "Just us girls, then!"
Marissa follows, sweeping short arcs with her cane. "She's only sixteen," she tells Martha under her breath. "They nearly worked her to death in one of the steel mills, even after they found out she was pregnant. It's a wonder she survived at all."
Martha should check herself for whiplash; she's gone from guilty to almost giddy at the thought of helping to deliver a child. For once she's not being asked to fix someone who's horribly broken. "Even the Master can't stop babies from coming. Let's you and I make sure this one meets its mother."
* * * * *
Whitney's daughter is tiny, but alive. Marissa cleans her off with hands that still ache from being crushed for hours as Whitney struggled not to scream. The baby makes up for it with a wail that must be echoing through every tunnel in the system. For once, she pushes away her fear that they'll be heard; joy is so rare, and so many children have been lost--
--she can't think about that, not with this life in her hands. She wraps the baby in a flannel blanket, which Luisa swears came from a store raid and not someone's home, and hands her to Whitney. Martha comes to stand beside her. "Congratulations, Mum."
Whitney makes a sound that starts out like a laugh, but hiccups into tears.
"What's wrong?" Marissa asks.
"She's just so gorgeous," Whitney sobs. "And tiny, and p-perfect, and how am I going to take care of her d-down here?"
Marissa kneels and soothes Whitney's hair while Martha gives the pep talk: women have done this for thousands of years, Whitney has more help than many of them ever did, babies are so much more resilient than they're given credit for...
Every once in a while the baby kicks Marissa's arm with her tiny, blanket-wrapped foot, and it's almost more than she can bear. Despite Martha's assurances, she isn't sure any of them are going to last until the Doctor's countdown, not unless it comes tomorrow.
"Marissa?" Whitney asks sleepily. "Can we really do this?"
"Of course," she says around the lump in her throat, and hopes she looks more confident than she feels. She rubs the bottom of the baby's foot with her thumb. "We've lasted this long, haven't we? What's her name?"
Whitney doesn't hesitate. "Galadriel. Tim made me promise, before they took him away." She's on the verge of tears again, but so is Marissa. "I know it's silly, but he loved those books. I have to give her something from her daddy."
"It's beautiful," Marissa tells her, even though she thinks it might be a bit much for such a tiny girl to carry. "And brave, just like her mother."
They help Whitney give Galadriel her first meal, which, short as it is, wears them both out. Mrs. Harvell offers to stay in the room and watch over them while they rest.
The hallway is quiet, though surely no one is really asleep. Marissa wonders who took care of the evening meal and cleanup, but for once, it isn't her problem. "Martha--thank you. If you hadn't been here, I don't know what we would have done."
"You would have figured it out," Martha says, and she sounds more relaxed and confident than she did when she was telling her story. "As I said, women have been doing this for thousands of years. The Master can't take that away from us."
"I won't call him that." Marissa leads the way into her little room. "Does he have a name of his own?"
"No idea," Martha says.
"Crumb has a few choice ones for him." So does Marissa, though her grandmother would come up from her grave and scold her if she said most of them out loud. But she doesn't want to think too much about the man who put them all here; she just held a newborn baby in her hands, and she feels... light. Almost happy, if that's even possible. "Would you like to sleep here tonight?" she asks Martha. "It's just a cot, but you're welcome to stay."
"I couldn't take your bed. And I'm not sure I can sleep. This is the first time in months I've done something other than hide from the Toclafane, tell stories about the Doctor, and patch up wounds. It's all rather...wonderful. That sounds strange, doesn't it?"
"Not at all." Marissa wraps her arms around herself. It's always the same temperature down here, but when she knows it's nighttime, it feels colder. "Would you like some tea? Or maybe something stronger?"
"How much stronger?"
Marissa smiles. "I know a great bartender."
* * * * *
Part 2 on DW
Part 3 on DW
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