Fic: I'll Meet You on the Other Side (6/?)
Title: I’ll Meet You on the Other Side (6/?)
Characters: alt!Doctor, alt!Martha, OC, alt!Ianto, alt!Jack Harkness
Word Count: 3145
Rating: R, eventually
Spoilers: S4 through Journey’s End
Thanks to persiflage_1 for awesome beta action!
Disclaimer: I don’t own the Whoniverse.
Story Index
Standing Still
Jack watched Martha dress John’s wounds, her fingers nimble as she wrapped his slender chest with the bandages. He was beginning to feel like the third wheel, and that feeling was becoming more and more uncomfortable. He’d never expected that he would win with Martha in the end, but had never considered the possibility that he’d be a witness to the relationship that would pull her away from him.
He thought about how he’d found them moments before, Martha seated on the desk, John standing so close to her, his hand touching her cheek in a way that Jack had never been allowed-or allowed himself, if he was honest-to touch her. He’d now twice intruded on some moment between them, and he understood that when he was gone, things happened to bring them together. His absence was easily filled with John’s presence.
Jack’s second visit to the investigator’s flat had yielded the screwdriver and some information that verified what he had already begun to suspect about the man supplanting his role in Martha’s life. He wasn’t a Time Agent, he wasn’t a criminal, and he certainly wasn’t a bad guy. He was, however, clearly out of his time and, if that book was as true as Jack was certain it was, out of his dimension as well.
As he watched Martha tending to John, and watched John watching Martha, he remembered the last time he had been in this room, when she’d performed a similar, although more serious, office for him. He’d made another tremendous mistake, and Martha had been quick to come to his side when he’d called for her help.
After the incident with Adeola, he’d drifted along through time, stopping off at the roughest and meanest spots of the roughest and meanest moments in human history to indulge in a surfeit of pain. He’d certainly got his fill of everything, including sex for comfort to blunt the edge of the horrors he witnessed on a regular basis. After a time, though, he stopped visiting post 21st century disasters; the growing telepathic abilities of the human race amplified the impact of each situation more than he found he could bear. He stuck to the pre-psychic eras, where he could maintain a safer distance from the loss and pain. When John Hart found him watching as a group of young girls, thin and pale from months of abuse, were being marched into the chambers, he’d made a perverse joke about Jack turning into a voyeur. Something in Jack had snapped and he’d turned on John, engaging him in a fight that ended with a knife in Jack’s abdomen and John’s disappearance. He’d had just enough presence of mind to travel to the hospital and to call Martha for help.
By the time she’d found him, he was nearly unconscious, deathly pale, and had lost a great deal of blood. The equipment at the hospital was primitive, but she knew that what she needed was there; she quickly gathered the necessary items and brought them to the room where Jack lay. She worked fast, stabilizing the wound, removing the weapon, and suturing the skin. She’d brought him to her home to care for him, trusting neither the hospital system nor the UNIT facilities with any knowledge of him. She was still angry with him-the visit to Adeola had so transgressed her boundaries that she couldn’t ever forgive him-but he’d frequently saved her life in their travels, as she’d frequently saved his, and she couldn’t let him suffer when she could help. After he’d recovered enough to travel, they’d parted ways.
Jack had returned to the 51st century newly aware of the place of suffering in the context of human existence. After his tour of sorrows, during his time convalescing at Martha’s, he’d remembered other, brighter points in time, and had begun to see the ebb and flow of universal emotions like joy and sorrow as natural; while the acts that precipitated pain were all too often the results of aberrant human actions, he had witnessed tremendously moving acts of human kindness through the worst conditions. John Hart’s taunt had shamed him because he was right; he was finding some strange thrill in witnessing the suffering. By continually holding it up as the object of his gaze, he had blinded himself to the good in the world. When he left Martha’s home, he left with the knowledge that this was what had drawn him to her, the way that she accepted suffering as part of life, but refused to let it rule her choices. She had accepted him, with all of his projected pain, but hadn’t let him infect her with his sickness. She’d been true to her own course and he wanted nothing more now than to find his own path so that he could be worthy of, if not her, someone worth being worthy of.
He smiled at her. She was so beautiful. She and John were poring over the documents he’d brought from his side-trip to the UNIT medical labs; after he’d seen Martha’s building, he’d put off his worry for her safety by traveling back to the moments before the explosion. His heart had broken as he watched John kiss Martha, then had nearly stopped as they flew from the building when the bomb detonated. Once they’d got up and begun moving into the shadows, he’d decided a bit more intel was in order. A few hops later and he’d secured evidence of Prince’s secret research trial and his connection to Lumic. Jack smirked at the memory of how ridiculously easy it was for him to get the evidence. Well, easy for someone who can move beyond walls. Why did the bad guys always leave a paper trail?
The room grew quiet as Martha and John stopped talking and turned to Jack. “We’re trying to work out a plan, but we’ll need your help. It might be dangerous. Are you in?” Her eyes were playful, and for a moment it was as if their sad history had melted away.
He flashed her a charming grin. “For you, Doctor Jones? Anything.”
∞
The three of them were waiting for the phone to ring. They’d decided to contact UNIT directly and to work through Colonel Mace, who Martha felt she could still trust. The documents that Jack had procured seemed to be wholly unrelated to him and entirely focused on Prince’s malfeasance. Martha had been incredulous at first-Prince had recruited her and had seemed her ally when she’d discovered the project the first time-but as she delved deeper and deeper into the files, she began to see how carefully he’d covered his tracks and how truly malevolent he was at heart. The man was cold; the carefully outlined plans for the research trial demonstrated a clear disregard for human suffering and medical ethics. They also, though, were capable of destroying her career if they were to become part of any public record.
As Chief Medical Researcher for UNIT, Martha oversaw many research projects, and while her main focus had been the telepathy work, she’d managed to keep up with the other activities of her colleagues until the end of her own project came about. There had been such a flurry of activity that she’d handed off some of her oversight duties to her assistant, Oliver Morgenstern, whom she’d known from her med school days, and had trusted to carry out her orders. Her trust wasn’t entirely misplaced; he did carry out her orders. He reviewed every document, made sure that the required research protocols were in place, and stamped her seal of approval on each one. Unfortunately, Oliver didn’t share Martha’s particular moral code, so he had no compunction about the nature of the research project; he’d actually been interested in working on it as he saw tremendous potential in the project. He remembered her reaction to her cousin’s death as well, and consoled himself with the reasoning that she was biased because of her personal connection to the technology.
Morgenstern’s wibbly morality, though, had placed Martha in a very precarious position, and she, John, and Jack had to think quickly to come up with a plan that would extricate her before she was dragged down into the muck with UNIT. They knew that it was only a matter of time until Prince discovered that Martha had survived his trap and began hunting her. She’d called her mother and sister to let them know she was alright; Francine had been frantic when she’d heard the news about the explosion. While Martha was concerned that her family might be under surveillance, she couldn’t let them think that she was dead. The trio had decided to force a confrontation, and were waiting for the phone call from Colonel Mace that would put their plan into action.
Jack was pacing the room, wanting to be active, and while John could certainly understand that feeling, his body was a bit too tired at the moment to reflect his internal energy. He and Martha were waiting it out on the couch.
“Martha?”
“Yes John?”
“Is this the life you wanted? I mean, when you were a kid, was this what you dreamt about?”
“Some of it, yeah. Helping people, discovering things, doing something important-I wanted to do those things.” She played with the ring on her right hand. “I didn’t really expect it to be this dangerous though, or to find myself on the point of being killed and disgraced.” Martha rubbed her temples with her fingertips, and John could see her aging before his eyes. She shot him a weak smile. “Bet you’ve got much more than you bargained for tonight?”
“Are you kidding? Toxic telepathy chips, bio bombs, rogue time travelers with sonic pistols, megalomaniacal military officials-used to be just another day’s work for me! Although, now that you mention it, I’ll certainly think twice before accepting a pint from a stranger, no matter how beautiful she is.” He winked at her, and was glad when her smile widened. “But really, I placed myself right in the middle of this mess, didn’t I? I mean, if I hadn’t stolen that hat, then you’d still have a flat and a job and-“
“No. Don’t.” Martha’s voice was terse. “Because you stole that hat, this plot is out in the open. If you hadn’t, I would have never discovered it until it was too late. Your thievery may end up saving many lives.” She looked at Jack, who was standing across the room now and guarding the door. “I don’t want to think of what would happen to humanity’s future with that technology available.” Her voice was tender, and John knew that for all the tension between them, she and Jack cared for each other greatly.
“When this is done, do you think you’ll start traveling again?”
She shook her head. “No. It was fun for a while, but there’s plenty in the here and now to discover for several lifetimes.”
“Yeah,” he said softly and took her hand in his. With his fingertips he traced small spiral patterns in her palm. Martha could see a faraway look in his eyes, and she wondered where he’d traveled, and when, and who with. “What about you? Do you miss it? Traveling?”
“Sometimes. Lots of times.” He sighed and released her hand to run his fingers through his hair. “But that life’s done for me.“
Martha could detect traces of sadness and longing, as well as a hint of bitterness, in his tone. On a different day, under different circumstances-if she hadn’t just been within inches of death, if she hadn’t felt some hope mingled in with his sadness-she might have been angry with the universe for sending another broken time traveler her way. Right now, she just wanted to comfort him. She rubbed his back with one hand, and brought the other toward his cheek to stroke it. He took her hand in his, brought it to his lips, and kissed it.
His voice was small and soft as he spoke into her skin. “The smallest moments, Martha, the most ordinary, can be the most important, the best in our lives.” He beamed at her then, and she could see the hope beating back the sorrow. Maybe not so broken after all, she thought. Not so broken as-
Martha’s phone rang. She read the incoming number on the mobile. “Mace” she said through gritted teeth. She took a deep breath; the waiting was over and it was time to put the plan in motion. She wanted her freedom, her research, her life back. “Here goes nothing.”
John listened to her half of the conversation. Martha made the arrangements as planned; Mace would meet her at the café they’d chosen two hours from now. She hung up the phone and turned to John. “That’s my bit done. Your turn.”
“I need a phone.” He shook his head as she offered hers. “No, not that one-likely to be traced. Jack, have you got one?” There was silence. Jack was gone. “Now where has he gone off to?” John groused.
“I think I know where to find him,” Martha replied, and he followed her back out of the building. He could see Jack in the distance, standing before the small memorial. When they were about fifty yards away, Martha stopped. “Let me? Trust me?” she asked. John nodded and watched her walk to him.
∞
Martha placed her hand on Jack’s back as she came up behind him. As he turned to her, she could sense an urgency about him, the same urgency that usually accompanied an ill-advised attempt to do what he thought was the right thing. He clasped her hands, looked into her eyes and kissed her quickly. “I don’t know how this is going to end,” he said, his eyes closed and forehead resting against hers, “but I do know that you have to live. I don’t trust them, I don’t entirely trust him”-he gestured toward John-“but if I’ve learned anything, it’s to trust in you and your judgment.” Martha started to protest-she’d clearly made some wrong turns, had trusted in the wrong people-but Jack wouldn’t let her continue. “No Martha, don’t doubt yourself; you trusted them and they made you believe you could, but that doesn’t mean that you were wrong. If I’ve learned anything from you, it’s that we have the power to choose what we do, and that we have to be ready to accept the consequences of those choices.”
He pressed his wrist strap into her hands. “I want you to have this with you.” He could see that she was confused and concerned for him. “I’ve already programmed it to teleport you to the safest location I can imagine. If something goes wrong, and I mean anything, use it. With any luck, I’ll meet you there.”
“What if you don’t, if you can’t? I don’t want you to be stuck here.” Martha felt the tremendous significance of Jack’s gesture; he meant only to protect her and damn the consequences for his own life, his future. “I don’t feel right doing this, taking this from you. You know that I can’t ever lo-“
Jack covered her lips with a finger to cut off her declaration. “I know that you can’t love me, not the way that I want you to. I’ve known longer than you might think.” He gave her a sad smile. “But that won’t stop me from loving you and wanting you to be safe. Thank you for being my friend.”
The further this extended farewell progressed, the more concerned for everyone’s safety Martha became. “Jack, you’re frightening me. What do you think is going to happen? Why won’t you tell me what’s got you feeling so fatal?”
“They’ve already tried to kill you once Martha, and they blew up an entire building to do it, which means they aren’t particularly concerned about collateral damage. Governments don’t like their dirty laundry getting out and they’ll use anything they can to keep it hidden. I don’t really understand why this is happening, what’s gone wrong in UNIT, but until we isolate the problem, I’m going to prepare for the worst.” Jack didn’t tell her that nothing in his historical knowledge of the period had prepared him for what was happening. He knew Martha’s fate, had read her life story, and he knew that this situation wasn’t part of the record. Either today’s events had been very well-contained or someone was meddling with her timeline.
∞
John stood there for a few minutes, then sat as his legs were getting tired. He closed his eyes. He could feel the pain of the last few hours, the last day, throughout his body. The adrenalin rush he’d been working from was starting to fade and he knew that he’d need another good burst before undertaking the next step. He couldn’t rest until he knew that Martha was safe; he felt responsible for her situation, for putting her in this danger.
She was so very different in so many ways; experience and life had made her so. In essentials, though, she was the same-caring, resourceful, inquisitive, strong, and trusting in other people to do the right thing. She was brilliant-she’d sorted out telepathy-but still compassionate. It wasn’t the path his other-Martha had taken, but it was impressive all the same. She’d dedicated her life and work to give people back the control that Lumic had taken from them. He knew that he might not see her again after tonight, but he hoped he would. He wanted to know more about her, and he realized how little he’d really known about that other-Martha, about the small human things.
He watched her speaking to Jack, her face all friendly concern (he could see that now, he understood a bit better, though not entirely, what had passed between them). His hand reached up to touch the lips that had now kissed her twice (once, just once each), and he wondered if this feeling in his chest was merely the result of the bruised and broken ribs or something a bit less clinical and a bit more human.
Martha was walking back toward him, with Jack not far behind. He stood slowly-his chest and legs were sore-and prepared himself for what he had to do next. She stood before him, Jack’s mobile in hand. “Got that plan ready? We don’t have much time to get it in place.” His hand brushed hers as he took the phone from her.
“I’m ready. It’s going to be OK, Martha. I promise you.” John took a deep breath and called the Tyler mansion.
Characters: alt!Doctor, alt!Martha, OC, alt!Ianto, alt!Jack Harkness
Word Count: 3145
Rating: R, eventually
Spoilers: S4 through Journey’s End
Thanks to persiflage_1 for awesome beta action!
Disclaimer: I don’t own the Whoniverse.
Story Index
Standing Still
Jack watched Martha dress John’s wounds, her fingers nimble as she wrapped his slender chest with the bandages. He was beginning to feel like the third wheel, and that feeling was becoming more and more uncomfortable. He’d never expected that he would win with Martha in the end, but had never considered the possibility that he’d be a witness to the relationship that would pull her away from him.
He thought about how he’d found them moments before, Martha seated on the desk, John standing so close to her, his hand touching her cheek in a way that Jack had never been allowed-or allowed himself, if he was honest-to touch her. He’d now twice intruded on some moment between them, and he understood that when he was gone, things happened to bring them together. His absence was easily filled with John’s presence.
Jack’s second visit to the investigator’s flat had yielded the screwdriver and some information that verified what he had already begun to suspect about the man supplanting his role in Martha’s life. He wasn’t a Time Agent, he wasn’t a criminal, and he certainly wasn’t a bad guy. He was, however, clearly out of his time and, if that book was as true as Jack was certain it was, out of his dimension as well.
As he watched Martha tending to John, and watched John watching Martha, he remembered the last time he had been in this room, when she’d performed a similar, although more serious, office for him. He’d made another tremendous mistake, and Martha had been quick to come to his side when he’d called for her help.
After the incident with Adeola, he’d drifted along through time, stopping off at the roughest and meanest spots of the roughest and meanest moments in human history to indulge in a surfeit of pain. He’d certainly got his fill of everything, including sex for comfort to blunt the edge of the horrors he witnessed on a regular basis. After a time, though, he stopped visiting post 21st century disasters; the growing telepathic abilities of the human race amplified the impact of each situation more than he found he could bear. He stuck to the pre-psychic eras, where he could maintain a safer distance from the loss and pain. When John Hart found him watching as a group of young girls, thin and pale from months of abuse, were being marched into the chambers, he’d made a perverse joke about Jack turning into a voyeur. Something in Jack had snapped and he’d turned on John, engaging him in a fight that ended with a knife in Jack’s abdomen and John’s disappearance. He’d had just enough presence of mind to travel to the hospital and to call Martha for help.
By the time she’d found him, he was nearly unconscious, deathly pale, and had lost a great deal of blood. The equipment at the hospital was primitive, but she knew that what she needed was there; she quickly gathered the necessary items and brought them to the room where Jack lay. She worked fast, stabilizing the wound, removing the weapon, and suturing the skin. She’d brought him to her home to care for him, trusting neither the hospital system nor the UNIT facilities with any knowledge of him. She was still angry with him-the visit to Adeola had so transgressed her boundaries that she couldn’t ever forgive him-but he’d frequently saved her life in their travels, as she’d frequently saved his, and she couldn’t let him suffer when she could help. After he’d recovered enough to travel, they’d parted ways.
Jack had returned to the 51st century newly aware of the place of suffering in the context of human existence. After his tour of sorrows, during his time convalescing at Martha’s, he’d remembered other, brighter points in time, and had begun to see the ebb and flow of universal emotions like joy and sorrow as natural; while the acts that precipitated pain were all too often the results of aberrant human actions, he had witnessed tremendously moving acts of human kindness through the worst conditions. John Hart’s taunt had shamed him because he was right; he was finding some strange thrill in witnessing the suffering. By continually holding it up as the object of his gaze, he had blinded himself to the good in the world. When he left Martha’s home, he left with the knowledge that this was what had drawn him to her, the way that she accepted suffering as part of life, but refused to let it rule her choices. She had accepted him, with all of his projected pain, but hadn’t let him infect her with his sickness. She’d been true to her own course and he wanted nothing more now than to find his own path so that he could be worthy of, if not her, someone worth being worthy of.
He smiled at her. She was so beautiful. She and John were poring over the documents he’d brought from his side-trip to the UNIT medical labs; after he’d seen Martha’s building, he’d put off his worry for her safety by traveling back to the moments before the explosion. His heart had broken as he watched John kiss Martha, then had nearly stopped as they flew from the building when the bomb detonated. Once they’d got up and begun moving into the shadows, he’d decided a bit more intel was in order. A few hops later and he’d secured evidence of Prince’s secret research trial and his connection to Lumic. Jack smirked at the memory of how ridiculously easy it was for him to get the evidence. Well, easy for someone who can move beyond walls. Why did the bad guys always leave a paper trail?
The room grew quiet as Martha and John stopped talking and turned to Jack. “We’re trying to work out a plan, but we’ll need your help. It might be dangerous. Are you in?” Her eyes were playful, and for a moment it was as if their sad history had melted away.
He flashed her a charming grin. “For you, Doctor Jones? Anything.”
∞
The three of them were waiting for the phone to ring. They’d decided to contact UNIT directly and to work through Colonel Mace, who Martha felt she could still trust. The documents that Jack had procured seemed to be wholly unrelated to him and entirely focused on Prince’s malfeasance. Martha had been incredulous at first-Prince had recruited her and had seemed her ally when she’d discovered the project the first time-but as she delved deeper and deeper into the files, she began to see how carefully he’d covered his tracks and how truly malevolent he was at heart. The man was cold; the carefully outlined plans for the research trial demonstrated a clear disregard for human suffering and medical ethics. They also, though, were capable of destroying her career if they were to become part of any public record.
As Chief Medical Researcher for UNIT, Martha oversaw many research projects, and while her main focus had been the telepathy work, she’d managed to keep up with the other activities of her colleagues until the end of her own project came about. There had been such a flurry of activity that she’d handed off some of her oversight duties to her assistant, Oliver Morgenstern, whom she’d known from her med school days, and had trusted to carry out her orders. Her trust wasn’t entirely misplaced; he did carry out her orders. He reviewed every document, made sure that the required research protocols were in place, and stamped her seal of approval on each one. Unfortunately, Oliver didn’t share Martha’s particular moral code, so he had no compunction about the nature of the research project; he’d actually been interested in working on it as he saw tremendous potential in the project. He remembered her reaction to her cousin’s death as well, and consoled himself with the reasoning that she was biased because of her personal connection to the technology.
Morgenstern’s wibbly morality, though, had placed Martha in a very precarious position, and she, John, and Jack had to think quickly to come up with a plan that would extricate her before she was dragged down into the muck with UNIT. They knew that it was only a matter of time until Prince discovered that Martha had survived his trap and began hunting her. She’d called her mother and sister to let them know she was alright; Francine had been frantic when she’d heard the news about the explosion. While Martha was concerned that her family might be under surveillance, she couldn’t let them think that she was dead. The trio had decided to force a confrontation, and were waiting for the phone call from Colonel Mace that would put their plan into action.
Jack was pacing the room, wanting to be active, and while John could certainly understand that feeling, his body was a bit too tired at the moment to reflect his internal energy. He and Martha were waiting it out on the couch.
“Martha?”
“Yes John?”
“Is this the life you wanted? I mean, when you were a kid, was this what you dreamt about?”
“Some of it, yeah. Helping people, discovering things, doing something important-I wanted to do those things.” She played with the ring on her right hand. “I didn’t really expect it to be this dangerous though, or to find myself on the point of being killed and disgraced.” Martha rubbed her temples with her fingertips, and John could see her aging before his eyes. She shot him a weak smile. “Bet you’ve got much more than you bargained for tonight?”
“Are you kidding? Toxic telepathy chips, bio bombs, rogue time travelers with sonic pistols, megalomaniacal military officials-used to be just another day’s work for me! Although, now that you mention it, I’ll certainly think twice before accepting a pint from a stranger, no matter how beautiful she is.” He winked at her, and was glad when her smile widened. “But really, I placed myself right in the middle of this mess, didn’t I? I mean, if I hadn’t stolen that hat, then you’d still have a flat and a job and-“
“No. Don’t.” Martha’s voice was terse. “Because you stole that hat, this plot is out in the open. If you hadn’t, I would have never discovered it until it was too late. Your thievery may end up saving many lives.” She looked at Jack, who was standing across the room now and guarding the door. “I don’t want to think of what would happen to humanity’s future with that technology available.” Her voice was tender, and John knew that for all the tension between them, she and Jack cared for each other greatly.
“When this is done, do you think you’ll start traveling again?”
She shook her head. “No. It was fun for a while, but there’s plenty in the here and now to discover for several lifetimes.”
“Yeah,” he said softly and took her hand in his. With his fingertips he traced small spiral patterns in her palm. Martha could see a faraway look in his eyes, and she wondered where he’d traveled, and when, and who with. “What about you? Do you miss it? Traveling?”
“Sometimes. Lots of times.” He sighed and released her hand to run his fingers through his hair. “But that life’s done for me.“
Martha could detect traces of sadness and longing, as well as a hint of bitterness, in his tone. On a different day, under different circumstances-if she hadn’t just been within inches of death, if she hadn’t felt some hope mingled in with his sadness-she might have been angry with the universe for sending another broken time traveler her way. Right now, she just wanted to comfort him. She rubbed his back with one hand, and brought the other toward his cheek to stroke it. He took her hand in his, brought it to his lips, and kissed it.
His voice was small and soft as he spoke into her skin. “The smallest moments, Martha, the most ordinary, can be the most important, the best in our lives.” He beamed at her then, and she could see the hope beating back the sorrow. Maybe not so broken after all, she thought. Not so broken as-
Martha’s phone rang. She read the incoming number on the mobile. “Mace” she said through gritted teeth. She took a deep breath; the waiting was over and it was time to put the plan in motion. She wanted her freedom, her research, her life back. “Here goes nothing.”
John listened to her half of the conversation. Martha made the arrangements as planned; Mace would meet her at the café they’d chosen two hours from now. She hung up the phone and turned to John. “That’s my bit done. Your turn.”
“I need a phone.” He shook his head as she offered hers. “No, not that one-likely to be traced. Jack, have you got one?” There was silence. Jack was gone. “Now where has he gone off to?” John groused.
“I think I know where to find him,” Martha replied, and he followed her back out of the building. He could see Jack in the distance, standing before the small memorial. When they were about fifty yards away, Martha stopped. “Let me? Trust me?” she asked. John nodded and watched her walk to him.
∞
Martha placed her hand on Jack’s back as she came up behind him. As he turned to her, she could sense an urgency about him, the same urgency that usually accompanied an ill-advised attempt to do what he thought was the right thing. He clasped her hands, looked into her eyes and kissed her quickly. “I don’t know how this is going to end,” he said, his eyes closed and forehead resting against hers, “but I do know that you have to live. I don’t trust them, I don’t entirely trust him”-he gestured toward John-“but if I’ve learned anything, it’s to trust in you and your judgment.” Martha started to protest-she’d clearly made some wrong turns, had trusted in the wrong people-but Jack wouldn’t let her continue. “No Martha, don’t doubt yourself; you trusted them and they made you believe you could, but that doesn’t mean that you were wrong. If I’ve learned anything from you, it’s that we have the power to choose what we do, and that we have to be ready to accept the consequences of those choices.”
He pressed his wrist strap into her hands. “I want you to have this with you.” He could see that she was confused and concerned for him. “I’ve already programmed it to teleport you to the safest location I can imagine. If something goes wrong, and I mean anything, use it. With any luck, I’ll meet you there.”
“What if you don’t, if you can’t? I don’t want you to be stuck here.” Martha felt the tremendous significance of Jack’s gesture; he meant only to protect her and damn the consequences for his own life, his future. “I don’t feel right doing this, taking this from you. You know that I can’t ever lo-“
Jack covered her lips with a finger to cut off her declaration. “I know that you can’t love me, not the way that I want you to. I’ve known longer than you might think.” He gave her a sad smile. “But that won’t stop me from loving you and wanting you to be safe. Thank you for being my friend.”
The further this extended farewell progressed, the more concerned for everyone’s safety Martha became. “Jack, you’re frightening me. What do you think is going to happen? Why won’t you tell me what’s got you feeling so fatal?”
“They’ve already tried to kill you once Martha, and they blew up an entire building to do it, which means they aren’t particularly concerned about collateral damage. Governments don’t like their dirty laundry getting out and they’ll use anything they can to keep it hidden. I don’t really understand why this is happening, what’s gone wrong in UNIT, but until we isolate the problem, I’m going to prepare for the worst.” Jack didn’t tell her that nothing in his historical knowledge of the period had prepared him for what was happening. He knew Martha’s fate, had read her life story, and he knew that this situation wasn’t part of the record. Either today’s events had been very well-contained or someone was meddling with her timeline.
∞
John stood there for a few minutes, then sat as his legs were getting tired. He closed his eyes. He could feel the pain of the last few hours, the last day, throughout his body. The adrenalin rush he’d been working from was starting to fade and he knew that he’d need another good burst before undertaking the next step. He couldn’t rest until he knew that Martha was safe; he felt responsible for her situation, for putting her in this danger.
She was so very different in so many ways; experience and life had made her so. In essentials, though, she was the same-caring, resourceful, inquisitive, strong, and trusting in other people to do the right thing. She was brilliant-she’d sorted out telepathy-but still compassionate. It wasn’t the path his other-Martha had taken, but it was impressive all the same. She’d dedicated her life and work to give people back the control that Lumic had taken from them. He knew that he might not see her again after tonight, but he hoped he would. He wanted to know more about her, and he realized how little he’d really known about that other-Martha, about the small human things.
He watched her speaking to Jack, her face all friendly concern (he could see that now, he understood a bit better, though not entirely, what had passed between them). His hand reached up to touch the lips that had now kissed her twice (once, just once each), and he wondered if this feeling in his chest was merely the result of the bruised and broken ribs or something a bit less clinical and a bit more human.
Martha was walking back toward him, with Jack not far behind. He stood slowly-his chest and legs were sore-and prepared himself for what he had to do next. She stood before him, Jack’s mobile in hand. “Got that plan ready? We don’t have much time to get it in place.” His hand brushed hers as he took the phone from her.
“I’m ready. It’s going to be OK, Martha. I promise you.” John took a deep breath and called the Tyler mansion.