Fic: Always the Mothers [Doctor Who, PG]
It's been a while, but I've finally written more Who-fic, and this time it's not Ten/Martha (or not explicitly, anyway).
Title: Always the Mothers
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters/Pairings: Francine Jones, Jackie Tyler, Tenth Doctor, mentions of Rose and Martha
Rating: A tentative PG?
Spoilers: S4 (and, by extension, all of S3)
Author's Notes/Summary: Two very different women find out they're more similar than they'd like to admit. This was written for ragdoll, based on a conversation at lifeonmartha. I hope it sort of lives up to expectations, because it turned out a lot angstier than it should have. (I can make anything angsty. Anything.)
The first two minutes are spent determinedly not staring at each other. Francine looks indifferent, Jackie belligerent. They make an odd pair, as different from each other as night and day. An artist might have appreciated the contrast.
They certainly don't.
During the next minute, each formulates the perfect opening line, Francine's laden with as much arrogance as she can put into the words and then some, and Jackie's deliberately insulting, because she thinks to herself that the aloof, proud-looking woman in front of her has probably never had anyone dare to say that sort of thing to her before.
For another minute, each waits for the other to speak first, neither willing to be the one who breaks.
And then, they both speak at the same time, and their carefully prepared opening lines are forgotten.
"Martha saved a spaceship from colliding with a living sun," Francine says. She remembers the afternoon that Martha spent telling her about that ship ("Why don't you come round? I'll make something nice and we can catch up," she'd said that day, but she hadn't expected it to happen more than a year later).
"My Rose fought the Daleks," Jackie retorts, and she has to fight the tears as she remembers what happened next.
"Daleks," Francine says with as much derision as she can. "Martha saw them in New York, back in 1930." (That had been an interesting conversation. Francine rather thinks that Tallulah with three Ls and an H sounds like something out of a movie involving mobsters and dark alleys. At times like those, she almost feels envious of her daughter.)
"And Cybermen?" Jackie tries hard to forget that in another world, she was killed by Cybermen.
"Weeping angels," Francine counters. (She has the feeling that Martha never told her everything that happened in 1969; sometimes, when Martha is over and Francine puts on an old Beatles record as she makes them both a cup of tea, her daughter gets the oddest look in her eyes, like she's seeing something - or someone - that Francine cannot. She suspects that someone is tall and gangly and wears bright red Converse, but she never says anything, just in case - the look in Martha's eyes says those memories are too painful to talk about, even now.)
"Rose met Madame de Pompadour." Jackie found that one out almost by accident, when she was watching a miniseries on TV; she saw that look in her daughter's eyes that said louder than words that Rose was thinking about the Doctor again and got the story out later that night, marvelling at the way her daughter's voice throbbed with passion and longing and something like pain.
"Martha met Shakespeare." Francine is strangely proud that her daughter is - was? - Shakespeare's Dark Lady. After the Year that Never Was, Francine has often felt like her daughter's name should go down in history somehow.
Jackie forgets her animosity momentarily. "Really?" she asks. "And what was he like? Anything like Shakespeare in Love?"
"Martha said he was a bit of a flirt, actually," Francine says with a smile.
And then the two women remember that they most certainly Do Not Like Each Other, and each lapses back into silence.
Then Jackie speaks. "Rose was at Canary Wharf," she says quietly, and Francine feels strangely moved by the pain in the other woman's eyes. "She would have stayed with the Doctor, but she couldn't. She…I think part of her never left him. She hasn't been the same since that day, you know? Like something in her was gone. Oh, she moved on with life, got a job, threw herself into it, but sometimes, I see her when she thinks I'm not looking, and the look in her eyes…" Jackie trails off, realising she is saying this to a perfect stranger - a perfect stranger she doesn't even like.
"Martha left him," Francine says. Even now, she wonders how her daughter could have done that, given up the universe to stay with a family forever changed by a year nobody else remembered. "There was…a man, another Time Lord, he tried to take over the world and he won, but the Doctor reversed it and nobody remembers but us." Her voice is threatening to crack; she won't allow it. She is still, she tells herself, stronger than that. "Martha stayed here. To look after us, she says, though I think she's the one who needs looking after. Sometimes…she tries to hide it, but I know she still thinks about it all the time. Those faces haunt her in her dreams." Francine doesn't know why, but somehow, she feels as though this woman who is completely different from her is somehow also the same, like she is the only one who could possibly understand.
"I wish…if there was a way I could take away Rose's pain, I would do it," Jackie says. She doesn't bother to stop her voice from cracking just a little. She is past caring about appearances. "Because it almost killed her, the first few months afterwards, until she learned how to live with it, and there was nothing I could do. It was like there was this girl who was supposed to be my daughter, but in some ways she was a stranger, like I just didn't know her at all. But other times, she was so happy, so much like she used to be, that I thought I was imagining things, you know?" Jackie swallows. In her mind's eye, she sees her daughter, alike and yet not alike the girl she thought she knew so well. "But I'm not. I know that now. I just wish there was something I could do." Then Jackie clears her throat, looks down at the road, studying the cracks in the bitumen, and laughs nervously. "But you probably think that just sounds stupid."
To her surprise, Francine shakes her head. "I would have, a year ago or so," she says, and she is surprised that she is admitting this, because she hasn't gotten through life by admitting weaknesses. "But sometimes, Martha wakes up at night screaming, and she won't talk about it, but I know she has nightmares about the things she saw, that year. She will never forget it, the death and destruction, and the worst thing is that the people she saved don't even know she did any of it. They'll never know her name, or what she did, or how much she suffered. But for a year, she was the legendary Martha Jones, the only one who could kill the Master, and all she has to show for it is the circles under her eyes from another sleepless night." Francine's eyes are filled with that pain felt by all mothers who are powerless to save their children from the dark. "She could have had the entire universe, afterwards," she says quietly, almost to herself, because this is still the thing that amazes her most of all, and the reason she is so proud of her wonderful, beautiful, strong daughter. "But she gave it all up, for us." She hesitates. "I don't know if I could have done the same."
Jackie knows how much that admission must have hurt to make, and there is no response she can give. For a few moments, there is a heavy silence, but it is not as unfriendly as it was before. There is no longer dislike here; commonality of experience is breaking down all the barriers and each of them feels almost exultant as they realise that here is someone who knows, who understands in a way that nobody else can.
"You know, the Doctor was going to take my Rose to see Elvis," Jackie says with a small, sad smile. "But he got the country wrong, landed in London instead. They ended up saving everyone from a creature in the telly that was taking everyone's faces."
Francine laughs, because that is something the Doctor would do. "The Doctor got the two of them stuck in 1969 without transport," she says. "Naturally, the Doctor was useless, so Martha had to work to support them both."
Now Jackie laughs, because the Doctor she knows is the last person who would be useful in a situation that could not be solved by fast talking, the TARDIS or a random item in his coat pocket. "He took Rose to New Earth," she reminisces. This is one story she feels Rose hasn't told her in full, but she respects her daughter's right to keep a few secrets. "And they visited a hospital run by cat nuns who were breeding people for experimentation. They fixed it up, but you know - you'd think the Doctor could do a better job of a date, wouldn't you? Whole universe at his disposal and all."
"He took Martha there, too," Francine says, "and what does he do - almost straight away! - but lose her? He had to save the entire city to get her back safely, but she almost got eaten by monsters in the process. And," she adds, because she realises she is sort of exasperated with the Doctor and has never really gotten to tell him, apart from that one slap in the face, "she took him to a party - on Earth, in the present - and they both ended up running for their lives from a mutating, man-eating mad scientist."
Jackie laughs uproariously. "You'd think he'd take a little more care, wouldn't you?" she asks. Her eyes are twinkling, and Francine finds her smile is contagious.
"Obviously, he needs a good, long talking-to," she says sternly, but her smile belies her tone.
Jackie's face lights up. "If you look at it one way," she says slowly, "it'd almost be our civic duty to do it, wouldn't it? Just in case he takes on any more daughters in the future."
Francine's answering grin is positively wicked. "I'd hate to neglect my civic duty," she says, trying to keep a straight face and failing miserably.
And naturally, showing his usual gift for completely terrible timing, the Doctor chooses this precise moment to show up.
Jackie and Francine share a glance filled with almost savage triumph, then look at the Doctor, both smiling sweetly. "Doctor," Francine says in a voice that is deceptively mild. "We were just talking about you."
"Seems to us like it's time we had a little chat, you know?" Jackie, too, sounds mild, harmless.
But the Doctor has not survived for more than 900 years by not knowing when he is in terrible danger. He gulps, laughs nervously, runs a hand through his hair. "Really?" he asks, in a voice that is at least half an octave higher than usual. "Well, that's, um, it sounds really, we should definitely do that, but at the moment I'm a little, well, busy, so you know, gotta dash, lovely to see you both, really, but…" he trails off, knowing that his excuses are not working.
Jackie and Francine are moving forward now. "This'll take hardly any time at all," Jackie promises. The Doctor thinks it's unfair for her to sound so bloody reasonable. He could find a way to escape if she didn't sound so reasonable.
"We'll be as brief as we possibly can," Francine adds.
The Doctor's eyes widen. He feels very much like a deer, cornered by a pack of very hungry-looking wolves.
900 years, and you're going to be killed by a pair of over-protective mothers, he thinks. How oddly fitting.
"If you'll just come with us…" Francine says. Her tone hasn't changed at all. She sounds - and this is how the Doctor knows she must be a consummate liar - for all the world like they're just going to chat, like everything will be just fine.
His last thought as they drag him away is, at least I can regenerate.
All things considered, though, that's scant comfort.
Title: Always the Mothers
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters/Pairings: Francine Jones, Jackie Tyler, Tenth Doctor, mentions of Rose and Martha
Rating: A tentative PG?
Spoilers: S4 (and, by extension, all of S3)
Author's Notes/Summary: Two very different women find out they're more similar than they'd like to admit. This was written for ragdoll, based on a conversation at lifeonmartha. I hope it sort of lives up to expectations, because it turned out a lot angstier than it should have. (I can make anything angsty. Anything.)
The first two minutes are spent determinedly not staring at each other. Francine looks indifferent, Jackie belligerent. They make an odd pair, as different from each other as night and day. An artist might have appreciated the contrast.
They certainly don't.
During the next minute, each formulates the perfect opening line, Francine's laden with as much arrogance as she can put into the words and then some, and Jackie's deliberately insulting, because she thinks to herself that the aloof, proud-looking woman in front of her has probably never had anyone dare to say that sort of thing to her before.
For another minute, each waits for the other to speak first, neither willing to be the one who breaks.
And then, they both speak at the same time, and their carefully prepared opening lines are forgotten.
"Martha saved a spaceship from colliding with a living sun," Francine says. She remembers the afternoon that Martha spent telling her about that ship ("Why don't you come round? I'll make something nice and we can catch up," she'd said that day, but she hadn't expected it to happen more than a year later).
"My Rose fought the Daleks," Jackie retorts, and she has to fight the tears as she remembers what happened next.
"Daleks," Francine says with as much derision as she can. "Martha saw them in New York, back in 1930." (That had been an interesting conversation. Francine rather thinks that Tallulah with three Ls and an H sounds like something out of a movie involving mobsters and dark alleys. At times like those, she almost feels envious of her daughter.)
"And Cybermen?" Jackie tries hard to forget that in another world, she was killed by Cybermen.
"Weeping angels," Francine counters. (She has the feeling that Martha never told her everything that happened in 1969; sometimes, when Martha is over and Francine puts on an old Beatles record as she makes them both a cup of tea, her daughter gets the oddest look in her eyes, like she's seeing something - or someone - that Francine cannot. She suspects that someone is tall and gangly and wears bright red Converse, but she never says anything, just in case - the look in Martha's eyes says those memories are too painful to talk about, even now.)
"Rose met Madame de Pompadour." Jackie found that one out almost by accident, when she was watching a miniseries on TV; she saw that look in her daughter's eyes that said louder than words that Rose was thinking about the Doctor again and got the story out later that night, marvelling at the way her daughter's voice throbbed with passion and longing and something like pain.
"Martha met Shakespeare." Francine is strangely proud that her daughter is - was? - Shakespeare's Dark Lady. After the Year that Never Was, Francine has often felt like her daughter's name should go down in history somehow.
Jackie forgets her animosity momentarily. "Really?" she asks. "And what was he like? Anything like Shakespeare in Love?"
"Martha said he was a bit of a flirt, actually," Francine says with a smile.
And then the two women remember that they most certainly Do Not Like Each Other, and each lapses back into silence.
Then Jackie speaks. "Rose was at Canary Wharf," she says quietly, and Francine feels strangely moved by the pain in the other woman's eyes. "She would have stayed with the Doctor, but she couldn't. She…I think part of her never left him. She hasn't been the same since that day, you know? Like something in her was gone. Oh, she moved on with life, got a job, threw herself into it, but sometimes, I see her when she thinks I'm not looking, and the look in her eyes…" Jackie trails off, realising she is saying this to a perfect stranger - a perfect stranger she doesn't even like.
"Martha left him," Francine says. Even now, she wonders how her daughter could have done that, given up the universe to stay with a family forever changed by a year nobody else remembered. "There was…a man, another Time Lord, he tried to take over the world and he won, but the Doctor reversed it and nobody remembers but us." Her voice is threatening to crack; she won't allow it. She is still, she tells herself, stronger than that. "Martha stayed here. To look after us, she says, though I think she's the one who needs looking after. Sometimes…she tries to hide it, but I know she still thinks about it all the time. Those faces haunt her in her dreams." Francine doesn't know why, but somehow, she feels as though this woman who is completely different from her is somehow also the same, like she is the only one who could possibly understand.
"I wish…if there was a way I could take away Rose's pain, I would do it," Jackie says. She doesn't bother to stop her voice from cracking just a little. She is past caring about appearances. "Because it almost killed her, the first few months afterwards, until she learned how to live with it, and there was nothing I could do. It was like there was this girl who was supposed to be my daughter, but in some ways she was a stranger, like I just didn't know her at all. But other times, she was so happy, so much like she used to be, that I thought I was imagining things, you know?" Jackie swallows. In her mind's eye, she sees her daughter, alike and yet not alike the girl she thought she knew so well. "But I'm not. I know that now. I just wish there was something I could do." Then Jackie clears her throat, looks down at the road, studying the cracks in the bitumen, and laughs nervously. "But you probably think that just sounds stupid."
To her surprise, Francine shakes her head. "I would have, a year ago or so," she says, and she is surprised that she is admitting this, because she hasn't gotten through life by admitting weaknesses. "But sometimes, Martha wakes up at night screaming, and she won't talk about it, but I know she has nightmares about the things she saw, that year. She will never forget it, the death and destruction, and the worst thing is that the people she saved don't even know she did any of it. They'll never know her name, or what she did, or how much she suffered. But for a year, she was the legendary Martha Jones, the only one who could kill the Master, and all she has to show for it is the circles under her eyes from another sleepless night." Francine's eyes are filled with that pain felt by all mothers who are powerless to save their children from the dark. "She could have had the entire universe, afterwards," she says quietly, almost to herself, because this is still the thing that amazes her most of all, and the reason she is so proud of her wonderful, beautiful, strong daughter. "But she gave it all up, for us." She hesitates. "I don't know if I could have done the same."
Jackie knows how much that admission must have hurt to make, and there is no response she can give. For a few moments, there is a heavy silence, but it is not as unfriendly as it was before. There is no longer dislike here; commonality of experience is breaking down all the barriers and each of them feels almost exultant as they realise that here is someone who knows, who understands in a way that nobody else can.
"You know, the Doctor was going to take my Rose to see Elvis," Jackie says with a small, sad smile. "But he got the country wrong, landed in London instead. They ended up saving everyone from a creature in the telly that was taking everyone's faces."
Francine laughs, because that is something the Doctor would do. "The Doctor got the two of them stuck in 1969 without transport," she says. "Naturally, the Doctor was useless, so Martha had to work to support them both."
Now Jackie laughs, because the Doctor she knows is the last person who would be useful in a situation that could not be solved by fast talking, the TARDIS or a random item in his coat pocket. "He took Rose to New Earth," she reminisces. This is one story she feels Rose hasn't told her in full, but she respects her daughter's right to keep a few secrets. "And they visited a hospital run by cat nuns who were breeding people for experimentation. They fixed it up, but you know - you'd think the Doctor could do a better job of a date, wouldn't you? Whole universe at his disposal and all."
"He took Martha there, too," Francine says, "and what does he do - almost straight away! - but lose her? He had to save the entire city to get her back safely, but she almost got eaten by monsters in the process. And," she adds, because she realises she is sort of exasperated with the Doctor and has never really gotten to tell him, apart from that one slap in the face, "she took him to a party - on Earth, in the present - and they both ended up running for their lives from a mutating, man-eating mad scientist."
Jackie laughs uproariously. "You'd think he'd take a little more care, wouldn't you?" she asks. Her eyes are twinkling, and Francine finds her smile is contagious.
"Obviously, he needs a good, long talking-to," she says sternly, but her smile belies her tone.
Jackie's face lights up. "If you look at it one way," she says slowly, "it'd almost be our civic duty to do it, wouldn't it? Just in case he takes on any more daughters in the future."
Francine's answering grin is positively wicked. "I'd hate to neglect my civic duty," she says, trying to keep a straight face and failing miserably.
And naturally, showing his usual gift for completely terrible timing, the Doctor chooses this precise moment to show up.
Jackie and Francine share a glance filled with almost savage triumph, then look at the Doctor, both smiling sweetly. "Doctor," Francine says in a voice that is deceptively mild. "We were just talking about you."
"Seems to us like it's time we had a little chat, you know?" Jackie, too, sounds mild, harmless.
But the Doctor has not survived for more than 900 years by not knowing when he is in terrible danger. He gulps, laughs nervously, runs a hand through his hair. "Really?" he asks, in a voice that is at least half an octave higher than usual. "Well, that's, um, it sounds really, we should definitely do that, but at the moment I'm a little, well, busy, so you know, gotta dash, lovely to see you both, really, but…" he trails off, knowing that his excuses are not working.
Jackie and Francine are moving forward now. "This'll take hardly any time at all," Jackie promises. The Doctor thinks it's unfair for her to sound so bloody reasonable. He could find a way to escape if she didn't sound so reasonable.
"We'll be as brief as we possibly can," Francine adds.
The Doctor's eyes widen. He feels very much like a deer, cornered by a pack of very hungry-looking wolves.
900 years, and you're going to be killed by a pair of over-protective mothers, he thinks. How oddly fitting.
"If you'll just come with us…" Francine says. Her tone hasn't changed at all. She sounds - and this is how the Doctor knows she must be a consummate liar - for all the world like they're just going to chat, like everything will be just fine.
His last thought as they drag him away is, at least I can regenerate.
All things considered, though, that's scant comfort.