fic: the promise of blue-velvet dark (dw; martha jones)
title: The Promise of Blue-Velvet Dark
fandom: Doctor Who
characters: Martha Jones; mentions of Adeola & The Doctor
rating: G
words: ~1,100
author's notes: Spoilery from Army of Ghosts through Smith & Jones. Title from Stars by The Weepies. Originally posted at banui_love.
Written for my dearest faeriemaiden, on the occasion of her 17th birthday.
~~~
Martha doesn't accurately recall where she began (or perhaps when she began is a better way of putting it), doesn't remember what it was that caused her to take that first step toward the woman she has become (the first must have been minuscule, a shuffle, as others that followed have or have not been).
What she can recall are little flashes of things from her childhood, tangled together in so many ways, but all with a common thread that has come to define her. Ady was the first to name that thread, back when they were children, gathered up by their grandmother for a scolding and an admonition to share their playthings; selfishness led to things breaking - as they were all now well aware - and who would want to play with broken things? "Martha would," Ady had whispered in sulky defiance. "Martha's always liked broken things best."
The small flashes have somehow got out of chronological order over the years, and Martha doesn't know whether her need and desire to fix (or if not that, love) broken things began with a doll that Leo had broken and Tish had cast aside and Martha had rescued; or the time Ava from two houses over had fallen and hurt her ankle and Martha had stayed with her until the others got back with someone to help; or from playing doctor with her cousins; or the day she'd rescued a broken-winged bird from one of the neighbourhood cats; or, or, or.
What she does remember is lying with Leo, and Tish, and their cousins on a rough woollen blanket, out in a field a short distance from London, all of them forming a circle with their heads in the middle and hands clasped on each side, scanning the sky for the glimmering final fall of meteors. "They're magic," Martha had breathed at one point, not quite aware that she was talking; Ady had been quick to correct her with her superior knowledge - "It's really just broken-up rubbish from a comet" - and Martha hadn't spoken the rest of the night, marvelling at the idea that broken things could be beautiful without being healed.
(Most nights after that, she presses her face up to the window of her bedroom: watching as the sky slips reluctantly into the blue darkness that never turns black, not here in the city, waiting for the stars to reveal themselves, slowly at first, one-by-one shimmering through, and then suddenly they all appear at once, as though something has been lifted aside: pressing her face up against the glass until her nose is no longer shaped like her nose. And if she presses long enough, the ache in her nose and the ache in her soul from the wonder of the stars are just enough to cover up the ache of a family falling apart.)
---
Stars became her escape from something she was too young to define back then, the sounds and electricity and emotions of love and a marriage and five lives being ripped apart by something within themselves, creating wounds (or maybe just one gigantic wound) that she and Leo and Tish now spend so much of their time trying to patch up with bandages that keep getting torn off, leaving the brokenness a little more obvious, a bit more painful each time.
The stars, the universe, the beyond, they have always been her source of peace, what she returns to when she wavers, when she's uncertain, when she forgets that even the wounds and destruction she'll never be able to fix can yet be beautiful, when she's burning up with the pressure of being Martha Jones, Lover of Broken Things.
For in spite of the image she so often projects, Martha is very aware, in the sort of painfully heavy awareness that one ever so carefully ignores, that she is very possibly more broken than most of the people she spends her time learning how to fix - yet having learned to find the beauty in that, she is fairly certain that her brokenness is what draws her to this, to these broken people, and secretly, she wonders about most of her fellow students and about the doctors she follows about every day, wonders if the confidence she sees in their eyes is a mask for their own brokenness (she tries not to wonder why they don't seem to see the unmasked soul in her eyes, tries not to theorise that they might be too calloused to see what there is to love in broken things).
And there's no doubt in her mind that everyone she knows would laugh at seeing her, 23-years-old and independent and strong, with her face pressed up against a windowpane in her flat, nose no longer shaped like her nose, gazing upward, eyes straining toward the stars that the brightness of the city tries to outshine, soul reaching out for that healing ache of wonder.
---
Then one day, after a morning that would have been almost disturbing had it been less hectically mad, Martha’s standing in the earth light beside possibly the oddest man she’s ever encountered in all her life - not least in the very basic physical aspect of two hearts.
When they speak of Christmas, and the battle, and Ady, when he says, “I was there,” she sees a brokenness more profound than any she’s seen before. Something sparks through her in a mad spiral, the familiar feeling of her soul reaching out to fix and to love and to be Martha, and a flash of something else she doesn’t recognise. So she grips the edge of the balcony railing, determination colouring her words as she steps into her role and promises hope.
“I’m the Doctor,” he says, and her breath catches in her throat as the unrecognisable flash uncurls itself into a glow of kindredness, a fragment of a thought that maybe, here was a soul who matched Martha’s own, here was another lover of brokenness. Somehow the conversation continues, goes on: he says, “Just the Doctor,” and her mind thinks he’s being ridiculous, but her soul sits tentatively, waiting, perhaps for some sort of sign. (So when she tells him he has to earn the title, it’s really her soul asking for proof.)
The ships come from overhead and she’s some sort of dichotomous being now: rational side paying attention to everything at once, carrying on conversation, following the Doctor’s lead; soul-controlled side unable to stop noticing the brokenness in his eyes whenever she catches a glimpse of them. And as they dash through the corridors, she’s wondering less about the madness of aliens and the moon and a forcefield, and hoping that maybe, in all those nights she spent soaking in the healing splendour of the stars, he was somewhere else doing the same.
~~~
fandom: Doctor Who
characters: Martha Jones; mentions of Adeola & The Doctor
rating: G
words: ~1,100
author's notes: Spoilery from Army of Ghosts through Smith & Jones. Title from Stars by The Weepies. Originally posted at banui_love.
Written for my dearest faeriemaiden, on the occasion of her 17th birthday.
~~~
Martha doesn't accurately recall where she began (or perhaps when she began is a better way of putting it), doesn't remember what it was that caused her to take that first step toward the woman she has become (the first must have been minuscule, a shuffle, as others that followed have or have not been).
What she can recall are little flashes of things from her childhood, tangled together in so many ways, but all with a common thread that has come to define her. Ady was the first to name that thread, back when they were children, gathered up by their grandmother for a scolding and an admonition to share their playthings; selfishness led to things breaking - as they were all now well aware - and who would want to play with broken things? "Martha would," Ady had whispered in sulky defiance. "Martha's always liked broken things best."
The small flashes have somehow got out of chronological order over the years, and Martha doesn't know whether her need and desire to fix (or if not that, love) broken things began with a doll that Leo had broken and Tish had cast aside and Martha had rescued; or the time Ava from two houses over had fallen and hurt her ankle and Martha had stayed with her until the others got back with someone to help; or from playing doctor with her cousins; or the day she'd rescued a broken-winged bird from one of the neighbourhood cats; or, or, or.
What she does remember is lying with Leo, and Tish, and their cousins on a rough woollen blanket, out in a field a short distance from London, all of them forming a circle with their heads in the middle and hands clasped on each side, scanning the sky for the glimmering final fall of meteors. "They're magic," Martha had breathed at one point, not quite aware that she was talking; Ady had been quick to correct her with her superior knowledge - "It's really just broken-up rubbish from a comet" - and Martha hadn't spoken the rest of the night, marvelling at the idea that broken things could be beautiful without being healed.
(Most nights after that, she presses her face up to the window of her bedroom: watching as the sky slips reluctantly into the blue darkness that never turns black, not here in the city, waiting for the stars to reveal themselves, slowly at first, one-by-one shimmering through, and then suddenly they all appear at once, as though something has been lifted aside: pressing her face up against the glass until her nose is no longer shaped like her nose. And if she presses long enough, the ache in her nose and the ache in her soul from the wonder of the stars are just enough to cover up the ache of a family falling apart.)
---
Stars became her escape from something she was too young to define back then, the sounds and electricity and emotions of love and a marriage and five lives being ripped apart by something within themselves, creating wounds (or maybe just one gigantic wound) that she and Leo and Tish now spend so much of their time trying to patch up with bandages that keep getting torn off, leaving the brokenness a little more obvious, a bit more painful each time.
The stars, the universe, the beyond, they have always been her source of peace, what she returns to when she wavers, when she's uncertain, when she forgets that even the wounds and destruction she'll never be able to fix can yet be beautiful, when she's burning up with the pressure of being Martha Jones, Lover of Broken Things.
For in spite of the image she so often projects, Martha is very aware, in the sort of painfully heavy awareness that one ever so carefully ignores, that she is very possibly more broken than most of the people she spends her time learning how to fix - yet having learned to find the beauty in that, she is fairly certain that her brokenness is what draws her to this, to these broken people, and secretly, she wonders about most of her fellow students and about the doctors she follows about every day, wonders if the confidence she sees in their eyes is a mask for their own brokenness (she tries not to wonder why they don't seem to see the unmasked soul in her eyes, tries not to theorise that they might be too calloused to see what there is to love in broken things).
And there's no doubt in her mind that everyone she knows would laugh at seeing her, 23-years-old and independent and strong, with her face pressed up against a windowpane in her flat, nose no longer shaped like her nose, gazing upward, eyes straining toward the stars that the brightness of the city tries to outshine, soul reaching out for that healing ache of wonder.
---
Then one day, after a morning that would have been almost disturbing had it been less hectically mad, Martha’s standing in the earth light beside possibly the oddest man she’s ever encountered in all her life - not least in the very basic physical aspect of two hearts.
When they speak of Christmas, and the battle, and Ady, when he says, “I was there,” she sees a brokenness more profound than any she’s seen before. Something sparks through her in a mad spiral, the familiar feeling of her soul reaching out to fix and to love and to be Martha, and a flash of something else she doesn’t recognise. So she grips the edge of the balcony railing, determination colouring her words as she steps into her role and promises hope.
“I’m the Doctor,” he says, and her breath catches in her throat as the unrecognisable flash uncurls itself into a glow of kindredness, a fragment of a thought that maybe, here was a soul who matched Martha’s own, here was another lover of brokenness. Somehow the conversation continues, goes on: he says, “Just the Doctor,” and her mind thinks he’s being ridiculous, but her soul sits tentatively, waiting, perhaps for some sort of sign. (So when she tells him he has to earn the title, it’s really her soul asking for proof.)
The ships come from overhead and she’s some sort of dichotomous being now: rational side paying attention to everything at once, carrying on conversation, following the Doctor’s lead; soul-controlled side unable to stop noticing the brokenness in his eyes whenever she catches a glimpse of them. And as they dash through the corridors, she’s wondering less about the madness of aliens and the moon and a forcefield, and hoping that maybe, in all those nights she spent soaking in the healing splendour of the stars, he was somewhere else doing the same.
~~~