Wasteland (5/?)
Title: Wasteland (5/?)
Characters: Ten, Martha
Word Count: 2,998
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine. *sniff*
Spoilers: Up to “The Last of the Time Lords.”
Summary: The Doctor receives the phone call that sends him running back to Martha Jones, but all is not well with his former companion. What begins as a reunion for the travelling partners becomes something far more sinister, and the two must mend bridges, confront old demons and face new ones as they struggle to save the Earth (yet again).
Author’s Notes: Eternal thanks must go, once more, to the magnificent eponymous_rose, who is the beta queen (it's official. She's got a crown and everything) and without whom none of this would make much sense. To give fair warning for future chapters, up until this point I've had chapters done (mostly) in advance. (Yes, this has been me 'updating fast' *hangs head in shame*) I'm hoping on getting a big chunk of writing done within the next few weeks, but the posting on this puppy might be a bit slow(er) for a bit. Sorry for the many delays, guys! That being said, feedback of any sort is always appreciated and thanks for your time!
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
“It started with the shooting a year ago, and at first I didn’t suspect anything besides the obvious.”
Martha was walking ahead of the Doctor at a pace he found himself struggling to match despite his longer legs.
“A kid high on drugs, a horrible accident that resulted in two deaths,” she threw over her shoulder, her gun disappearing into the waist of her jeans as they went out into a crowded street.
That was London for you. One thing that hadn’t changed throughout the twentieth century was the fact that it could be three in the morning and yet the streets would still be crowded.
“It wasn’t easy to accept,” Martha continued, shrugging the familiar red leather jacket onto her shoulders and covering the hostler of the pistol. This was the jacket she had grabbed along with the backpack she was currently slinging over her shoulder when they had crawled out of the back door of her dead fiancé’s house as gunmen attempted to blow it, or them, to bits.
And although the Doctor had often heard of unwarranted aggression against buildings, he somehow doubted that the house was the true target of the gunmen’s fury.
Not that he was saying that Martha was right about his being the target of said fury, of course.
Just that she might be a bit more right than he originally suspected.
“But I did,” she finished. Martha’s eyes were in constant motion, scanning people as they passed by, as they crossed the street, as they pulled away in taxis. She was watching the buildings too, eyes glancing upwards through windows, looking carefully at roofs, underground entrances. The trained, watchful, eye of Torchwood, hard at work.
Or maybe, the trained eye of one who had walked a broken and bleeding earth for a year.
The Doctor didn’t know how he felt about that, Martha Jones turned into an agent of alien control. He liked to ignore the fact that it was he, not Jack, who had instigated that change. Now the development had simply been highlighted for him, the ease with which the medical student handled a gun terrifying the Time Lord. The Doctor was going to have a serious chat with Jack about that, as he knew full well that he was the only source she could have obtained it from.
Martha Jones was a doctor, and doctors should never need guns.
“Anything else would have been wishful thinking,” Doctor Martha Jones said as she turned a corner, checking to see that he was keeping up. “Hoping that Tom died for some greater purpose, that it wasn’t just a stupid mistake that could have been avoided.”
He thought her heard her voice lose a bit of its certainty as she looked away, scanning the area once more.
“But then it happened again. Or almost.” Her tone showed no signs of weakness now, and he almost believed he had imagined the quiver. “A month later Tish’s flat was set on fire.” She let out a bitter laugh. “An arson, the police said, but with no suspects. And it wasn’t her entire building either, just her flat. Luckily she had been at work, special that night for an event.” Another lifeless chuckle. “If it hadn’t been for that stupid diner…” She trailed off, completely unwilling to finish the statement.
The Doctor didn’t press her. He knew where such a tale would have ended, had circumstances only been the slightest bit different. He had plenty of stories like those himself.
“Where is she?” he asked, remembering the tall, pretty, woman who had helped them stop Lazarus not so long ago. Just years. “Tish?”
“Moved to the States,” Martha said blandly as they reached a street corner, waiting for the light to change. “We got in a fight not long after that.” She looked at the cars passing in front of them, the buildings blocking out the sky, the people waiting next to them. Anywhere but at him. “I told her she wouldn’t get anywhere here, in London. Not if she really wanted to make something of herself. Said that she was being a fool, that she was scared of becoming her own person.”
The light changed and Martha began striding into the street.
The Doctor didn’t move, feeling the wave of people move past him as his feet remained glued to the pavement. “You made that fight happen, didn’t you?” he accused quietly, watching as Martha turned to him guiltily. She had thought she could fool him and maybe, if he hadn’t been so familiar with the careful art of the unsaid, she would have been able to get away with it. “You did it on purpose.” Shock kept him from moving.
Martha had made Tish leave, had made her angry just to get her to go, to flee London, go somewhere she’d be safe. And he knew it because he had, in the past, done the same thing. Hurt the one he cared for to keep her safe, tricked her to make her stay away, to stay where she couldn’t be harmed by forces far more malevolent than his own clumsy and well meant manipulations. Of course, he thought with an amused ruefulness, he had never been able to fool Rose as thoroughly as he had wanted to.
But Martha had obviously mastered it. The Doctor had seen the dedication Tish had that night in the church, and he knew that she would have noticed when something was wrong, wouldn’t have allowed Martha to push her aside like she had done with the rest of her family. Tish would have demanded explanations and answers, would have created problems for Martha’s plan of isolationism. She, unlike the rest of her family, wouldn’t have allowed Martha to protect her.
And so Martha had done the only thing drastic enough to keep Tish safe from harm. She had made her sister hate her, made her closest ally abandon her, and had been left completely alone.
And the Doctor had never had the strength to make Rose hate him.
The Doctor didn’t realize he still wasn’t moving until he felt small fingers tentatively seize his own, pausing for a moment before pulling him along, guiding him through the mass of bodies.
Always so uncertain, Martha Jones. One would hope that, after saving the world and all, she’d be a bit more inclined to take charge of things.
And then the Doctor remembered the gun Martha had tucked in the waist of her jeans, inches away from where his hand was being clutched tightly in hers.
Maybe it wasn’t taking charge of things, then. Maybe it was taking charge of him.
“A week after Tish’s apartment caught I was coming back from Tom’s grave.” She paused briefly and gave her head a small shake. “Anyway, I got hit by a truck near the cemetery,” she continued calmly, still pulling him along, grip gentle but firm around his fingers. “They sped off before I could get a good look at it or who was inside, but I knew this time that it wasn’t an accident. When I was in hospital I called Torchwood and quit.” She sent him a small, resigned, smile over her shoulder. “They didn’t say it, but I knew the team didn’t believe me, and who could blame them? I was so frazzled, wasn’t sleeping, I almost didn’t believe me either. Not to mention I was injured, and all things considered I was becoming more of a chore to have about than an asset. Besides, the longer I stayed the more likely it would be that headquarters would be discovered.” She gave a self affirming not. “It was for the best, really, all of it. I stopped speaking to my family after I got better, began breaking off contact.” Another nod. “All for the best.”
But it hadn’t been, not at all. “Martha-”
But she seemed determined not to let him say it. “Since then my food’s been poisoned,” she interrupted before he could get the words out, quickening their pace. “I’ve been hit once more by a car, the house was broken into twice, Leo’s best friend at work was killed in an ‘unfortunate accident,’ two of my patients have died without reason, and I’ve been mugged once or twice.” Said like she couldn’t quite remember, like she had forgotten, even if they both knew that forgetting wouldn’t have been possible.
She stopped suddenly, her eyes fixated on the back of the hand that wasn’t gripping his, the limb held out in front of her and being examined as if it belonged to someone else.
The Doctor came closer, glancing over her shoulder to look as well, noticing the odd indentations, the unnatural arch that jutted out from under the skin. “They broke four of the bones in my hand.”
A doctor’s no good without her hands.
She briskly straightened herself, abruptly releasing him and crossing her arms in front of her chest, hiding her hands as she faced him. “And so you see, Doctor, it didn’t take me too long, after those first few months, to figure out that they were after you.”
Still reeling from the knowledge of everything he had missed, the Doctor didn’t follow the comment. “After me?”
“They didn’t kill me,” she clarified, staring him straight in the eye. “They didn’t want me dead, they wanted me scared.” She took a breath. “They wanted me to call you.”
And in that instant of recognition, as all of what had happened slowly came to focus (Martha’s fiancé, Tish, Torchwood, the gun, her family, her patients, Tom’s house, the poison, the cars, her hands), the Doctor became angry. “Then why didn’t you?” he demanded, exercising as much restraint he could muster, refusing to yell or grip the woman in front of him by the shoulders and shake her until she told him why. Why she had allowed herself and those she loved to suffer for so long, why she hadn’t come to him for help.
“Forgive me, Doctor,” she replied, an icy tone matching his barely restrained fury. “But I’m not used to asking the people I care about to die for me.”
“I could have stopped it,” he insisted, running a hand through his hair in frustration, trying not to tug at the odds and ends that met his fingers before throwing his arm down in frustration. “I could have helped!”
“Like you are now?” she asked sarcastically. “Bringing them to my parents’ front door? To Tom’s house? Giving them the TARDIS?”
“And what about all the other people who have died? Your patients, your brother’s friend? If I had been here they wouldn’t have been killed!”
“You don’t know that!”
“And what about you, Martha?” he continued, ignoring her. His eyes went to the hand still hidden under her arm, the disfigured limb representing far more than broken bones. “If you called me I could have stopped them from doing all of this!”
She saw the direction of his gaze and moved her hands behind her back, stepping forward and glaring up at him. “I was protecting you!” she stated fiercely, eyes hard as she stared at him.
And that was the problem. “I never asked you to protect me!”
“Didn’t you?” she demanded, furious for an instant before she took a breath and seemed to deflate in front of him. In the next moment her fierce anger cooled to exhaustion, and she looked at him in a manner that was almost helpless.
“Didn’t you, Doctor?”
And with that question, with her eyes locked to his and the evidence of the damage he had caused given to him in the terms of lives lost, the Doctor realized that he had.
The Judoon, the mutants in New York, Lazarus in the Church, the space station and the sun, 1913, 1969, and the year that wasn’t.
From the moment they had met he had made Martha Jones fight his battles for him, and she still was doing it, two years after leaving.
She seemed to notice his fury change, but instead of being pleased, Martha’s face morphed into an expression of annoyance.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said smartly. “The past is the past and it can’t be changed.” She let out a large sigh. “We’re here now and we both have to deal with that.”
Knowing the issue was far from resolved, but rather concerned by the fact that they had been standing still for so long after having recently been shot at, the Doctor thought it best to get along with this dealing process, before they were subjected to more attempts of bodily harm. “And where is ‘here,’ exactly?” he asked, swallowing his anger and guilt as he glanced around the darkened and empty street with an odd sense of having been there before.
Martha allowed a bitter smirk, turning towards the gated off building they were standing next to. “Not-so-recently renovated flats.” She pointed to his pocket. “You want to open this?” she asked, gesturing to the gate.
The Doctor obediently took out the sonic screwdriver and distractedly buzzed it at the gate as he frowned at the structure in front of them. “Didn’t this used to be your building?”
“Yep. Got shut down after my flat went up in flames.”
The Doctor pushed opened the door and raised an eyebrow at her. “And no one’s bought it in two years?”
“When a flat randomly blows itself up with no reason identifiable to human technology, its market value tends to go down,” she muttered with a smirk, pushing ahead of him and gesturing to lock the gate once more.
He dutifully changed the setting on the sonic screwdriver and began to relock the entrance.
There was a moment’s pause as she allowed him to work before she asked, “You’ve still got your key don’t you?”
“My key?” he asked as he finished with the lock, looking at her in confusion.
“The one with the perception filter?”
“Oh, that.” He frowned, putting the sonic screwdriver away before he plunged both hands into his jacket pockets, riffling through all of the items he had stored there through the centuries. A yoyo or two, some jelly babies, a towel (you always need a towel, you know), oh and is that where his recorder went?
After a few more minutes of riffling, during which Martha struggled to keep a straight face (for all of their traveling with him, humans never did really get the whole ‘bigger on the inside’ thing), he pulled out the key with its small piece of twine victoriously. “Ah, there it is.”
Martha grinned at his overly triumphant expression. “Put it on, then.” She strode ahead of him confidently, walking up a nearby staircase and heading up to the second floor, where her flat had been.
“And what about you?” the Doctor questioned as he followed her.
She pulled at a piece of string she had hidden beneath her shirt and jacket. “I’ve been keeping it on all the time for the past few months, except when I’m at work.” She stopped at the door to her old flat, turning the knob and roughly pushing it open, struggling a bit against the dried paint.
She smiled grimly at the stark white (no teal) walls. “Home sweet home.” She let out a sigh and wandered into the flat, dropping her bag at the entryway and striding purposefully into the room. “We should be able to stay here.” She entered the largest room of the three-room, plus loo, apartment and gestured for him to make himself comfortable.
Looking around at the empty space, the Doctor shrugged and sat on the carpet, leaning against a wall and crossing his legs out in front of him.
“I haven’t seen anyone hanging about here except for some homeless folks, and it’s locked. Thanks to the sonic screwdriver we should be safe, for a while at least.”
He found himself nodding along, startled by having so little to say or do. He wasn’t used to following someone else’s lead.
He was still nodding when Martha began to retreat toward a door at the other end of the room.
“Wait, where are you going?” he asked, surprising himself with the note of alarm in his question.
She turned to face him. “To bed.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t there more we should talk about?”
“I’ll give you more information tomorrow. I’ve been researching, keeping my eyes open, paying attention.” She let out a small breath, looking incredibly tired. “But that can wait.”
“Why not now?” he pushed, needing to take action. He wasn’t about to let events happen without him. Not again. “This needs to stop, Martha. This should have stopped a long time ago.”
She gave a small smile. “It’s been a few months for you Doctor. I’ve been dealing with this for a year. It can wait.”
“For what?”
“Sleep.” She sighed, seeming to be resentful of the word. “I have to sleep.”
“The sooner we start-”
“Going somewhere tomorrow?” she asked, temper obviously snapping. “No? Then we wait.” She began moving once more. “Like I said, I need to sleep.”
“Over there?” He pointed to the opposite end of the living area, where she was headed.
Martha shook her head. “In the bedroom.”
“But why?” He grinned. “Carpet in there a bit comfier?”
She reached the door, opening it and giving him an almost bitter smile as she stepped through the threshold. “Thought I’d give you your privacy and space, Doctor.”
And hadn’t that been what he had always wanted from Martha Jones?
But Martha didn’t say that. Instead she stopped smiling, obviously sensing how insincere it was, and simply shook her head gently before saying, “Goodnight.” With that she closed the door, shutting out the rest of the world and going to a place where he couldn’t reach her.
A part of the Doctor wondered if she had been in that room all along.
Characters: Ten, Martha
Word Count: 2,998
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine. *sniff*
Spoilers: Up to “The Last of the Time Lords.”
Summary: The Doctor receives the phone call that sends him running back to Martha Jones, but all is not well with his former companion. What begins as a reunion for the travelling partners becomes something far more sinister, and the two must mend bridges, confront old demons and face new ones as they struggle to save the Earth (yet again).
Author’s Notes: Eternal thanks must go, once more, to the magnificent eponymous_rose, who is the beta queen (it's official. She's got a crown and everything) and without whom none of this would make much sense. To give fair warning for future chapters, up until this point I've had chapters done (mostly) in advance. (Yes, this has been me 'updating fast' *hangs head in shame*) I'm hoping on getting a big chunk of writing done within the next few weeks, but the posting on this puppy might be a bit slow(er) for a bit. Sorry for the many delays, guys! That being said, feedback of any sort is always appreciated and thanks for your time!
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
“It started with the shooting a year ago, and at first I didn’t suspect anything besides the obvious.”
Martha was walking ahead of the Doctor at a pace he found himself struggling to match despite his longer legs.
“A kid high on drugs, a horrible accident that resulted in two deaths,” she threw over her shoulder, her gun disappearing into the waist of her jeans as they went out into a crowded street.
That was London for you. One thing that hadn’t changed throughout the twentieth century was the fact that it could be three in the morning and yet the streets would still be crowded.
“It wasn’t easy to accept,” Martha continued, shrugging the familiar red leather jacket onto her shoulders and covering the hostler of the pistol. This was the jacket she had grabbed along with the backpack she was currently slinging over her shoulder when they had crawled out of the back door of her dead fiancé’s house as gunmen attempted to blow it, or them, to bits.
And although the Doctor had often heard of unwarranted aggression against buildings, he somehow doubted that the house was the true target of the gunmen’s fury.
Not that he was saying that Martha was right about his being the target of said fury, of course.
Just that she might be a bit more right than he originally suspected.
“But I did,” she finished. Martha’s eyes were in constant motion, scanning people as they passed by, as they crossed the street, as they pulled away in taxis. She was watching the buildings too, eyes glancing upwards through windows, looking carefully at roofs, underground entrances. The trained, watchful, eye of Torchwood, hard at work.
Or maybe, the trained eye of one who had walked a broken and bleeding earth for a year.
The Doctor didn’t know how he felt about that, Martha Jones turned into an agent of alien control. He liked to ignore the fact that it was he, not Jack, who had instigated that change. Now the development had simply been highlighted for him, the ease with which the medical student handled a gun terrifying the Time Lord. The Doctor was going to have a serious chat with Jack about that, as he knew full well that he was the only source she could have obtained it from.
Martha Jones was a doctor, and doctors should never need guns.
“Anything else would have been wishful thinking,” Doctor Martha Jones said as she turned a corner, checking to see that he was keeping up. “Hoping that Tom died for some greater purpose, that it wasn’t just a stupid mistake that could have been avoided.”
He thought her heard her voice lose a bit of its certainty as she looked away, scanning the area once more.
“But then it happened again. Or almost.” Her tone showed no signs of weakness now, and he almost believed he had imagined the quiver. “A month later Tish’s flat was set on fire.” She let out a bitter laugh. “An arson, the police said, but with no suspects. And it wasn’t her entire building either, just her flat. Luckily she had been at work, special that night for an event.” Another lifeless chuckle. “If it hadn’t been for that stupid diner…” She trailed off, completely unwilling to finish the statement.
The Doctor didn’t press her. He knew where such a tale would have ended, had circumstances only been the slightest bit different. He had plenty of stories like those himself.
“Where is she?” he asked, remembering the tall, pretty, woman who had helped them stop Lazarus not so long ago. Just years. “Tish?”
“Moved to the States,” Martha said blandly as they reached a street corner, waiting for the light to change. “We got in a fight not long after that.” She looked at the cars passing in front of them, the buildings blocking out the sky, the people waiting next to them. Anywhere but at him. “I told her she wouldn’t get anywhere here, in London. Not if she really wanted to make something of herself. Said that she was being a fool, that she was scared of becoming her own person.”
The light changed and Martha began striding into the street.
The Doctor didn’t move, feeling the wave of people move past him as his feet remained glued to the pavement. “You made that fight happen, didn’t you?” he accused quietly, watching as Martha turned to him guiltily. She had thought she could fool him and maybe, if he hadn’t been so familiar with the careful art of the unsaid, she would have been able to get away with it. “You did it on purpose.” Shock kept him from moving.
Martha had made Tish leave, had made her angry just to get her to go, to flee London, go somewhere she’d be safe. And he knew it because he had, in the past, done the same thing. Hurt the one he cared for to keep her safe, tricked her to make her stay away, to stay where she couldn’t be harmed by forces far more malevolent than his own clumsy and well meant manipulations. Of course, he thought with an amused ruefulness, he had never been able to fool Rose as thoroughly as he had wanted to.
But Martha had obviously mastered it. The Doctor had seen the dedication Tish had that night in the church, and he knew that she would have noticed when something was wrong, wouldn’t have allowed Martha to push her aside like she had done with the rest of her family. Tish would have demanded explanations and answers, would have created problems for Martha’s plan of isolationism. She, unlike the rest of her family, wouldn’t have allowed Martha to protect her.
And so Martha had done the only thing drastic enough to keep Tish safe from harm. She had made her sister hate her, made her closest ally abandon her, and had been left completely alone.
And the Doctor had never had the strength to make Rose hate him.
The Doctor didn’t realize he still wasn’t moving until he felt small fingers tentatively seize his own, pausing for a moment before pulling him along, guiding him through the mass of bodies.
Always so uncertain, Martha Jones. One would hope that, after saving the world and all, she’d be a bit more inclined to take charge of things.
And then the Doctor remembered the gun Martha had tucked in the waist of her jeans, inches away from where his hand was being clutched tightly in hers.
Maybe it wasn’t taking charge of things, then. Maybe it was taking charge of him.
“A week after Tish’s apartment caught I was coming back from Tom’s grave.” She paused briefly and gave her head a small shake. “Anyway, I got hit by a truck near the cemetery,” she continued calmly, still pulling him along, grip gentle but firm around his fingers. “They sped off before I could get a good look at it or who was inside, but I knew this time that it wasn’t an accident. When I was in hospital I called Torchwood and quit.” She sent him a small, resigned, smile over her shoulder. “They didn’t say it, but I knew the team didn’t believe me, and who could blame them? I was so frazzled, wasn’t sleeping, I almost didn’t believe me either. Not to mention I was injured, and all things considered I was becoming more of a chore to have about than an asset. Besides, the longer I stayed the more likely it would be that headquarters would be discovered.” She gave a self affirming not. “It was for the best, really, all of it. I stopped speaking to my family after I got better, began breaking off contact.” Another nod. “All for the best.”
But it hadn’t been, not at all. “Martha-”
But she seemed determined not to let him say it. “Since then my food’s been poisoned,” she interrupted before he could get the words out, quickening their pace. “I’ve been hit once more by a car, the house was broken into twice, Leo’s best friend at work was killed in an ‘unfortunate accident,’ two of my patients have died without reason, and I’ve been mugged once or twice.” Said like she couldn’t quite remember, like she had forgotten, even if they both knew that forgetting wouldn’t have been possible.
She stopped suddenly, her eyes fixated on the back of the hand that wasn’t gripping his, the limb held out in front of her and being examined as if it belonged to someone else.
The Doctor came closer, glancing over her shoulder to look as well, noticing the odd indentations, the unnatural arch that jutted out from under the skin. “They broke four of the bones in my hand.”
A doctor’s no good without her hands.
She briskly straightened herself, abruptly releasing him and crossing her arms in front of her chest, hiding her hands as she faced him. “And so you see, Doctor, it didn’t take me too long, after those first few months, to figure out that they were after you.”
Still reeling from the knowledge of everything he had missed, the Doctor didn’t follow the comment. “After me?”
“They didn’t kill me,” she clarified, staring him straight in the eye. “They didn’t want me dead, they wanted me scared.” She took a breath. “They wanted me to call you.”
And in that instant of recognition, as all of what had happened slowly came to focus (Martha’s fiancé, Tish, Torchwood, the gun, her family, her patients, Tom’s house, the poison, the cars, her hands), the Doctor became angry. “Then why didn’t you?” he demanded, exercising as much restraint he could muster, refusing to yell or grip the woman in front of him by the shoulders and shake her until she told him why. Why she had allowed herself and those she loved to suffer for so long, why she hadn’t come to him for help.
“Forgive me, Doctor,” she replied, an icy tone matching his barely restrained fury. “But I’m not used to asking the people I care about to die for me.”
“I could have stopped it,” he insisted, running a hand through his hair in frustration, trying not to tug at the odds and ends that met his fingers before throwing his arm down in frustration. “I could have helped!”
“Like you are now?” she asked sarcastically. “Bringing them to my parents’ front door? To Tom’s house? Giving them the TARDIS?”
“And what about all the other people who have died? Your patients, your brother’s friend? If I had been here they wouldn’t have been killed!”
“You don’t know that!”
“And what about you, Martha?” he continued, ignoring her. His eyes went to the hand still hidden under her arm, the disfigured limb representing far more than broken bones. “If you called me I could have stopped them from doing all of this!”
She saw the direction of his gaze and moved her hands behind her back, stepping forward and glaring up at him. “I was protecting you!” she stated fiercely, eyes hard as she stared at him.
And that was the problem. “I never asked you to protect me!”
“Didn’t you?” she demanded, furious for an instant before she took a breath and seemed to deflate in front of him. In the next moment her fierce anger cooled to exhaustion, and she looked at him in a manner that was almost helpless.
“Didn’t you, Doctor?”
And with that question, with her eyes locked to his and the evidence of the damage he had caused given to him in the terms of lives lost, the Doctor realized that he had.
The Judoon, the mutants in New York, Lazarus in the Church, the space station and the sun, 1913, 1969, and the year that wasn’t.
From the moment they had met he had made Martha Jones fight his battles for him, and she still was doing it, two years after leaving.
She seemed to notice his fury change, but instead of being pleased, Martha’s face morphed into an expression of annoyance.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said smartly. “The past is the past and it can’t be changed.” She let out a large sigh. “We’re here now and we both have to deal with that.”
Knowing the issue was far from resolved, but rather concerned by the fact that they had been standing still for so long after having recently been shot at, the Doctor thought it best to get along with this dealing process, before they were subjected to more attempts of bodily harm. “And where is ‘here,’ exactly?” he asked, swallowing his anger and guilt as he glanced around the darkened and empty street with an odd sense of having been there before.
Martha allowed a bitter smirk, turning towards the gated off building they were standing next to. “Not-so-recently renovated flats.” She pointed to his pocket. “You want to open this?” she asked, gesturing to the gate.
The Doctor obediently took out the sonic screwdriver and distractedly buzzed it at the gate as he frowned at the structure in front of them. “Didn’t this used to be your building?”
“Yep. Got shut down after my flat went up in flames.”
The Doctor pushed opened the door and raised an eyebrow at her. “And no one’s bought it in two years?”
“When a flat randomly blows itself up with no reason identifiable to human technology, its market value tends to go down,” she muttered with a smirk, pushing ahead of him and gesturing to lock the gate once more.
He dutifully changed the setting on the sonic screwdriver and began to relock the entrance.
There was a moment’s pause as she allowed him to work before she asked, “You’ve still got your key don’t you?”
“My key?” he asked as he finished with the lock, looking at her in confusion.
“The one with the perception filter?”
“Oh, that.” He frowned, putting the sonic screwdriver away before he plunged both hands into his jacket pockets, riffling through all of the items he had stored there through the centuries. A yoyo or two, some jelly babies, a towel (you always need a towel, you know), oh and is that where his recorder went?
After a few more minutes of riffling, during which Martha struggled to keep a straight face (for all of their traveling with him, humans never did really get the whole ‘bigger on the inside’ thing), he pulled out the key with its small piece of twine victoriously. “Ah, there it is.”
Martha grinned at his overly triumphant expression. “Put it on, then.” She strode ahead of him confidently, walking up a nearby staircase and heading up to the second floor, where her flat had been.
“And what about you?” the Doctor questioned as he followed her.
She pulled at a piece of string she had hidden beneath her shirt and jacket. “I’ve been keeping it on all the time for the past few months, except when I’m at work.” She stopped at the door to her old flat, turning the knob and roughly pushing it open, struggling a bit against the dried paint.
She smiled grimly at the stark white (no teal) walls. “Home sweet home.” She let out a sigh and wandered into the flat, dropping her bag at the entryway and striding purposefully into the room. “We should be able to stay here.” She entered the largest room of the three-room, plus loo, apartment and gestured for him to make himself comfortable.
Looking around at the empty space, the Doctor shrugged and sat on the carpet, leaning against a wall and crossing his legs out in front of him.
“I haven’t seen anyone hanging about here except for some homeless folks, and it’s locked. Thanks to the sonic screwdriver we should be safe, for a while at least.”
He found himself nodding along, startled by having so little to say or do. He wasn’t used to following someone else’s lead.
He was still nodding when Martha began to retreat toward a door at the other end of the room.
“Wait, where are you going?” he asked, surprising himself with the note of alarm in his question.
She turned to face him. “To bed.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t there more we should talk about?”
“I’ll give you more information tomorrow. I’ve been researching, keeping my eyes open, paying attention.” She let out a small breath, looking incredibly tired. “But that can wait.”
“Why not now?” he pushed, needing to take action. He wasn’t about to let events happen without him. Not again. “This needs to stop, Martha. This should have stopped a long time ago.”
She gave a small smile. “It’s been a few months for you Doctor. I’ve been dealing with this for a year. It can wait.”
“For what?”
“Sleep.” She sighed, seeming to be resentful of the word. “I have to sleep.”
“The sooner we start-”
“Going somewhere tomorrow?” she asked, temper obviously snapping. “No? Then we wait.” She began moving once more. “Like I said, I need to sleep.”
“Over there?” He pointed to the opposite end of the living area, where she was headed.
Martha shook her head. “In the bedroom.”
“But why?” He grinned. “Carpet in there a bit comfier?”
She reached the door, opening it and giving him an almost bitter smile as she stepped through the threshold. “Thought I’d give you your privacy and space, Doctor.”
And hadn’t that been what he had always wanted from Martha Jones?
But Martha didn’t say that. Instead she stopped smiling, obviously sensing how insincere it was, and simply shook her head gently before saying, “Goodnight.” With that she closed the door, shutting out the rest of the world and going to a place where he couldn’t reach her.
A part of the Doctor wondered if she had been in that room all along.