Five Phone Calls Martha Jones Made To The Doctor (Doctor Who, PG, not-quite-shippy)
Title: Five Phone Calls Martha Jones Made To The Doctor (And One She Didn’t)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Martha Jones, cameos by others
Word Count: 4368
Rating: PG
Summary: Martha Jones promised to call the Doctor.
Author’s Notes: This pretty much fell out of my head whole after watching “Last of the Time Lords”. As such, spoilery for the entire third series. Doesn’t quite gibe with what we know about the fourth series, mainly because I started writing it before the BBC made all those announcements. Mostly unbetaed, but thanks to powerof3 for putting up with me testing dialogue on her. She also suggested a few things. This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by persons and entities included but not limited to the BBC, Russell T. Davies, Phil Collinson and Julie Gardner. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.
I.
The phone calls start shortly after the Doctor finishes up tidying up the mess aboard the Titanic. It was all a rather bog-standard (and frankly, boring) alien plot to abduct - and consume - the inhabitants of the doomed ship. He’d had some unwanted and completely unnecessary help from his ninth incarnation and, oddly enough, his fourth, and in the end, the ship regrettably went down as scheduled. History, after all, has to be maintained.
He jumps at the mobile the first time it rings, only to disappointedly find that it is a wrong number. The second time it rings, though, it is Martha, giggling uncontrollably and gleefully into his ear when he answers. “Hello?” he says.
“I passed my exams!” she shrieks. “I’m a proper doctor now! Not just an almost doctor anymore, me. A real true proper doctor!”
“Well, that’s good, I suppose,” he says, tucking the phone under his ear while he tweaks two wires underneath the TARDIS console that don’t really need tweaking. “What are you planning to do now?”
“We’re - hush up, Shaz, I’m on the phone - we’re going -” There is a burst of high-pitched female voices in the background. “Hang on,” says Martha. The Doctor sighs and transfers the mobile to his other ear.
Martha comes back on the line. “We’re going down the pub, apparently. Tom says he’ll meet us there and Julia says she knows the bartender, so maybe we won’t end up paying a packet for a few rounds. And Shaz says we’re going dancing after that.”
“Oh,” the Doctor says vaguely, keeping his voice neutral. The wires won’t - “Who’s Tom? Bloke from school, is he?”
“Tom? No, he’s a doctor already. He’s been a doctor already. Pediatrician at St. Basil’s. He’s - I’m sort of seeing him. For a couple months now, actually.”
The Doctor pushes the wires together harder than he intended to and they spark, singeing his fingers, making him quickly drop them. “Oh. Well. That’s,” he says, and then he isn’t really sure what it is, so he lets the sentence trail away. “So you’re not - not calling because -”
“No, Doctor.” Martha’s tone is gentle. “Not yet. I will - it’s just - there’s so much . . . my family and Tom . . . and I’ve been studying for this so long -”
“No, no,” he says. “No, it’s all right. Don’t worry about it. It’s okay. Don’t rush yourself on my account.”
“I will call you when I’m ready,” she promises. “You’d better answer when you see it’s me. I’ll be angry if you don’t.”
“Yeah.”
“Look, I really have to go now, Doctor. I just wanted to let you know. Sort of - keep you up on things. You know, right?”
“Right.” He pauses. “Congratulations, by the way.”
“Thanks. I - I miss you, you know.” He hears the catch in her speech and knows she was about to say something else.
“Yeah. Bye.”
“Goodbye, Doctor.” The phone beeps as Martha rings off. He flips the mobile shut and slips it into his inside suit pocket.
“So . . .” He sighs and looks round the TARDIS, empty except for him. “Barcelona, then, old girl? We’ve never quite managed to make it there.”
II.
The second time Martha calls him, he is running for his life. The Most Holy and Revered Praetor of the Kthiolian Empire has become convinced that the Doctor stole the ancient Klyte Crystal, and - well, all right, he has stolen the Klyte Crystal, but it’s for a good cause and besides, he’s going to put it back when he’s done with it, so there’s really no need to send an entire phalanx of Praetorian Guards after him with orders to shoot on sight.
The mobile rings, and he has a brief and interesting moment trying to juggle the crystal and the phone while skidding around a corner in the Praetor’s castra with seventy-six guards in close pursuit. “Hello?” he says, very nearly dropping the phone as he puts it to his ear.
Martha giggles rather sloppily in his ear. “Doctor,” she slurs and titters some more. He sighs inwardly, cursing stupid humans and their stupid love of ethanol and their stupid slow metabolism and their stupid, stupid primitive brains.
“Yes, Martha,” he says, rounding a corner and - ah, there’s the TARDIS, if he can just reach it before the thundering horde - “Is there a reason you’re calling me, Martha?”
“No,” she says unconcernedly. “I was just - well, I thought I might order a pizza. We were supposed to have dinner, but Tom got called in, third time in a week, I don’t even know what’s going on up there, so I called Julia instead and she brought over some limoncellos and -”
“Is this going somewhere?” he interrupts. Nearly to the TARDIS - nearly there -
“- I don’t even know how much I had - was it . . . maybe it was . . . but - no, it couldn’t have been . . . well, maybe it was. Anyway -”
“Oi you! Get back here!” shouts one of the Praetorian Guards. The Doctor chances a look behind him. The closest one is reaching out, nearly able to grab his collar - he breaks into a sprint, flinging open the door of the TARDIS and barrelling inside. The guards, thwarted, begin banging on the doors and yelling for his head.
In his ear, Martha rambles away, oblivious. “Anyway, I thought I’d order us a pizza, or a curry perhaps, but then when I picked up the phone I saw your number in my phone book - well, my number really, but it’s yours now - and I thought I hadn’t called you in a while, so perhaps I should, and so I called you. Hi!”
He briefly considers simply hanging up on her. He is the sole lord of all of time and space - he’s well above being drunk-dialed by former companions, especially former companions who are drunk enough they might not even remember calling in the first place . . . but then again, this is Martha, who he’s been abominable enough to already. He can put up with her rambling for a few minutes.
“Hello, Martha,” he says, preparing the TARDIS for dematerialization - he’s safe enough inside the TARDIS, but all the thumping on the doors is giving him a headache.
“I really miss you, you know?” she says. “Like I’ll just be standing there, washing the dishes, and I’ll think, I wonder what the Doctor’s up to. Or I’ll be working on charts and I’ll think, I wonder what the Doctor’s doing up there without me.”
“Uh-huh,” the Doctor says, popping the handbrake. The pounding on the door abruptly lessens as the TARDIS slides into the vortex.
“And any time there’s anything big on the news, you know, some kind of international crisis, I’m always glued to the telly, the entire time. Tom makes fun of me for it, says it’s all lies anyway, but I’m watching for you, you know? I mean, I know you don’t like being on the telly, it’s not your thing, you just do your bit and go, you know, but I think - well, maybe someone’ll catch just the edge of him. Just a bit. Or the TARDIS. But I never see you. Are you avoiding Earth?” she demands.
“Only the television cameras.” He checks the coordinates, readjusts the TARDIS’s heading slightly. “I was there just a couple months ago, kicking aliens out of Downing Street. Again.”
“See, I knew there was something funny about that new home secretary!” Martha says triumphantly. “Just seemed off somehow. Tom didn’t believe me. He doesn’t know about . . .”
The Doctor gives her ten seconds, then prompts, “About?”
“About everything that’s out there. You, Shakespeare, end of the universe. I can’t tell him. I can’t tell him anything, really.” Martha goes quiet. The Doctor briefly takes the phone away from his ear, checking to make sure he hasn’t lost signal. Theoretically, she’s still there. “I really love him,” she says after a long pause. “I really, really love him. I mean, I really, really, really love him.”
“I’d gathered.”
She sounds reflective when she speaks again. “I love him so much. But I worry that maybe he doesn’t love me as much as I love him? Like I always tell him I love him before he goes to work. But half the time he doesn’t even say anything back. Just walks away. Is it me, Doctor? Am I the problem?”
“Martha,” he says, “you’re drunk. Put the phone down, drink some water and go lay down.”
She giggles again. “Doctor’s orders. Take two aspirin and call me in the morning. Oh -” in the background a door opens and a soft woman’s voice says something - “I should go. Julia’s asking where the pizza is.”
“Go on, then.”
“I’ll call again,” Martha says, and then she is gone.
The Doctor pockets the mobile again. “No, Martha Jones," he says reflectively, "you weren’t the problem."
III.
The third time Martha calls, he is up to his elbows in TARDIS parts, methodically applying his sonic screwdriver to various fuses, trying to find exactly which one has blown and left him stranded just outside of the Malactar Cluster. He is on his way to the Planetary Fair and Market on Traxid Prime at the request of the Duchess of Traxid, a beautiful woman who does not appreciate tardiness, so the repairs are growing a little frantic.
Martha’s phone starts beeping in his pocket and he hauls himself out of the well, groaning. “Ohh, Martha, you picked a bad time to call for a taxi,” he says to himself. Flipping open the phone, he says, “Hello?”
At first, he hears nothing but a snuffling noise that makes him wonder whether the phone is still working, but just as he is about to hang up, he realizes two things: one, Martha is there, and two, she is crying.
“Martha?” he says, alarmed. “What’s going on?”
She sniffles a few times before forcing out in a tiny voice, “He left me.”
Fantastic. The Doctor’s not sure, but the last time he checked, his job description didn’t include the words agony aunt. Apparently it does now. He rapidly recalls Martha’s personal timeline and tries to figure out who he might be. “Who? Tom, you mean?”
“Wanker, more like.” She laughs slightly, choking on a sob. “We’ve been together for so long, and then this morning he told me he ‘needed some time away from me’ so he could ‘think about things’. What’s there to think about? He either loves me or he doesn’t. Simple as that.”
The Doctor shifts uncomfortably, aware that he isn’t exactly upset by this news. As a matter of fact, he’s feeling rather - relieved? Even gleeful?
Oh dear.
“Well,” he says lamely, “he could just -”
“Bet he’s got another girl,” Martha says darkly. “Bet she’s blonde. And perfect. It’s always the blondes. What’s wrong with me? What’d I do? Oh God, look at me. I get dumped and the first thing I do is ring up a time-travelling alien. I’m pathetic.” The snuffling starts up again.
He sighs inwardly. Comforting women, particularly human women, has never been a skill of his. Usually he just ignores their distress until it goes away, but something tells him - perhaps it’s his overdeveloped sense of self-preservation - that Martha will not accept being ignored.
“Martha Jones,” he says, “Martha, listen to me. You’re a star, I told you that. I meant it then and I mean it now. And if he can’t see that then it’s just his fault.”
There. That sounds good, like what the humans say to each other. He genuinely cares for all his companions - he wouldn’t invite them along with him if he didn’t - but he’s not always very good at communicating that to them, particularly not in their silly little language.
“You’re just saying that.”
“I’m not just saying it. I mean it.”
“Right.” Martha seems, slowly, to be calming down.
“So,” the Doctor says after a pause, “not that I’m not flattered, you know, by the thought. But - what made you decide to call me? Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
“I don’t know!” Martha sounds irritated and defensive. “Because - I don’t know. Because D comes before J in my address book?”
“Ah.” They are both silent. Finally, he says, “You know . . . you could always come with me. I’ve got a vacancy in the TARDIS, and -”
“Doctor -”
“- you know I can always use a helping hand around here, and -”
“Doctor, no.”
“- well, all right, if that’s what you want, I suppose.” He waits. “We could go see Agatha Christie, I never did get around to visiting her . . .”
“No,” Martha repeats, and then softens. “Not right now. I need - I think I need to talk to Tom, see what’s going on with him. And if we really are - well, if that’s the case, then I’ll give you a ring.”
“Can’t say fairer than that, I guess.”
Sounding wistful, Martha says, “When is it where you are?”
“Well . . . I don’t so much have a when right now, I’m sort of - stuck - but the last time I was somewhere with a time, it was the year 8472. Not exactly a good time for Earth. You lot had taken to bombing each other again. What is it with you and all the bombs anyway? Why don’t you all learn that it’s never a good idea?” He stops. “When is it where you are?”
“February,” Martha says. “2011. It’s my birthday in a week. Great timing, Tom.”
Always funny, the Doctor thinks, how their little mayfly lives flit by so fast. For him it’s been no more than a couple of months, six at the most, but two years of her life have already gone since the last time they saw each other.
“Oops -” says Martha. “Call waiting, hang on.” The line goes dead. Resignedly, the Doctor resumes testing fuses. After about six fuses, Martha returns, saying, “That was Tish. I don’t even know how she knows, but she knows. I think I might have a moan at her for a bit instead of you. No offense, Doctor, but you’re not very good at this whole listening while someone moans at you bit.”
“You’re not the first person to notice,” he mutters.
“Call waiting,” Martha says. “I should -”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll ring you again sometime, okay? Goodbye, Doctor,” says Martha, and the phone goes dead.
Frowning, the Doctor carefully slips back the phone into his pocket. “That was odd,” he says to himself, and then shrugs and sniffs. “Huh. Nothing I can do about it. Now . . .” He claps his hands and looks up at the TARDIS. “Let’s get you fixed, old girl, so I can be on my way to Traxid. The Duchess is waiting.”
Around him, the TARDIS hums back into life, the time rotor placidly beginning to pump. He gapes admiringly up at the control console. “Cheeky girl! You stopped just so I’d talk to Martha, didn’t you? You like her, I know. So do I.”
The TARDIS’s thrum sounds rather smug.
IV.
He is in the bath, washing off the grime of an intervention on Laimus II, when he hears Martha’s phone start bleating obnoxiously. He sighs. Let it ring, or - well, it might be important. Fortunately, his suit jacket is hanging on the back of the TARDIS bathroom door, so he jumps out of the shower, hastily wrapping a towel around his waist, and dives for the phone, catching it just before it goes to voicemail. “Hello?” he says.
“Doctor!” Martha says, sounding a little frantic. “Oh, thank God you’re there. How can you kill a Skelix?”
“What do you need to kill a Skelix for?” he asks, confused.
“Just tell me!” she snaps.
“No, really. What do you need to kill a Skelix for? Normally they’re fairly docile.”
In the background he hears screaming, a man’s voice yelling, an animal howling, people running.
“You wouldn’t happen to have disturbed a nesting mother, by any chance? There’s a small colony of them living in the Lake District - it’s really not wise to bother them during nesting season.”
“Oh, for God’s sake - no, I didn’t disturb a nesting mother. Look, will you just tell me how to get rid of this thing?” Martha demands.
“Aw, you don’t want to kill it. That’s not right; it’s only protecting its babies, after all. Plenty of ways to knock it out, though - good old H20'll work just fine. Water. Always thought it was funny that they live in the Lake District. All that water, and they can’t touch a drop.”
“Hang on,” says Martha. After a pause, the Doctor hears her yelling, “Jack! Tosh! The hosepipe! Spray it with water!”
“Jack?” he says, even though he knows Martha can’t hear him. “Jack Harkness? Oh, Martha Jones, what are you doing mixed up with Torchwood?” He stands there, water dripping down his legs, and listens to the sound of Jack’s team - plus Martha - battling the Skelix.
Finally, Martha comes back on the line. “It’s down,” she says. “Thanks.”
“There wouldn’t happen to be a horde of Skelix running wild through Cardiff, would there?” he asks suspiciously.
“Not in Cardiff, no.”
“Ah.”
“Maybe in Swansea, more like . . .”
“Ah.”
“And - oh, I think Jack wants to talk to you.” A brief silence, and then Jack is there, all his usual bonhomie firmly in place. “Doctor! Excellent idea Martha had, sticking you with a mobile phone. I should have thought of that myself.”
“Martha says there’s a horde of Skelix running wild through the streets of Swansea,” the Doctor says, keeping it from sounding entirely like an accusation.
“Not a horde! More like one. One very angry Skelix. Someone saw one of them up in the Lake District and thought it might make a good housepet. Can’t imagine why.”
“You’re one to talk!” Martha’s voice says in the background. “That bloody pteranadon scared me senseless the first time I saw it.”
“Anyway, it - that’d be the Skelix, not Myfanwy - got free, and it was just a little bit annoyed about the whole situation. But we took care of it. Like we usually do. Most of the time.”
The Doctor considers, hitching his towel up. “Get where she can’t hear you.”
“Just a moment . . . Okay. We’re clear.”
“What,” the Doctor demands, “is Martha doing in Swansea with Torchwood? It’s bad enough you’ve - infiltrated them - but her too? Did something happen in London? She was safe there.”
“Relax, Doctor,” Jack says, tone level. “I didn’t brainwash her or anything. I needed a new medic after the one I had deliberately walked into a den of Weevils and got himself mauled beyond recognition, and Martha was looking for a change after Tom dumped her. So I offered her a job and she accepted. She’s tough, Martha. She’s done really well so far.”
“If she gets hurt -”
“I know, Doctor. She does a better job of keeping herself safe than any of us could do for her.”
“I mean it.” He pauses, thinks. “Don’t tell her I said anything.”
Jack chuckles. “I won’t. You too, huh?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Doctor says, as dignified as he can get, considering that he’s currently sopping wet and wearing nothing but a towel clutched around his waist.
“Sure, Doctor.”
“Put Martha back on, will you?”
A rustling sound, and then Martha says, “Hello?”
“While I’ve got you on the line,” the Doctor says, “what is that awful Crazy Frog ringtone doing on your phone?”
“I didn’t put it on there! Leo did, absolutely ages ago, when that ringtone was everywhere. He told me he thought it was funny.”
“I was trying to change the contrast on the screen and now it’s stuck as your ringtone.”
“Oh dear,” Martha says, giggling. “A catastrophe. Look, we have to take this Skelix back to the Hub before it wakes up. Thanks for the advice, Doctor.”
“Oh, right. Anytime. You know that.”
“Bye,” she says, and hangs up. The Doctor lowers the phone, keenly aware that for the first time, Martha has not promised to call again. And to top it all off, his bath has gone cold.
“Bother,” he says.
V.
Martha’s next call is a long time in coming, long enough that he feels the need for a new companion - or companions, actually. There are two of them: William and Mary Dunbar - “we’ve heard all the jokes, thank you kindly,” Mary says - a pair of siblings in their mid-twenties from turn-of-the-20th-century Manchester. William is an engineer and a tinkerer, fond of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne; Mary is practical, vivacious and slightly bemused by the reality of time travel.
Finally, though, the mobile in his pocket rings. “Hello,” he answers.
“Hello, Doctor,” says Martha.
“Martha! Good to hear from you. Finally decided you’re ready to come back aboard the TARDIS? Great. I have to warn you though, it might be a bit crowded with you here. I have some other friends traveling with me at the moment -”
“That’s not actually why I called you,” Martha says, and the Doctor can hear suppressed glee trembling in her voice. “Doctor, I wanted to tell you . . . Tom and I are getting married!”
The news hits him like a punch in the gut, which is strange, because up until thirty seconds ago he was sure his reaction to news like this would be total happiness. He blinks a few times, runs a hand through his hair and finally says, “I thought you and Tom broke up. You moved to Cardiff and started working for Torchwood.”
“I still work for Torchwood. But six months ago Tom and I got back together, so I moved back to London. His Majesty’s Government thought it was a good idea to finally rebuild Torchwood One.”
“I don’t,” he mutters.
“It’s different now, though. It’s not bad. Not with me around. We’ve gone public, we have.” Martha switches gears. “Anyway, you should come round for dinner sometime, maybe meet Tom. You’re definitely invited to the wedding.”
“I don’t know,” says the Doctor, “weddings and I really don’t mix. I tend to bring - catastrophe - with me whenever I go to one. Human sacrifice - killer robot Santas - that sort of thing.”
“At least come for dinner? I really want Tom to meet you.”
“Sure.”
“And just because I’m getting married doesn’t mean I can’t travel with you ever again, right? I mean, the TARDIS travels in time and everything. I could spend a week with you and come back the second after I left and it would be like I wasn’t even gone. You know?”
“Right.” The Doctor idly fiddles with some of the switches on the TARDIS’s console. “I should go,” he says. “We’re about to materialize. I told William I’d take him to see the year five million. He insisted.”
“All right,” Martha says easily. “Don’t forget - wedding in June 2014. Save the date. You’d definitely better be there.”
“I definitely better will be,” says the Doctor, and he’s not sure if he’s lying or not.
“Seriously. Dinner sometime. Give me a ring.” Martha rings off.
The Doctor holds the mobile in his hand, staring at it until Mary and William burst into the console room, all good humor and casual demands to see something interesting. “Rome?” he suggests. “Pompeii? Ooh, maybe not Pompeii.” And they are off and running, eventually headed for 24th century San Francisco.
Much later, the Doctor makes a note in his thousand-year diary for June 2014.
VI.
It is night aboard the TARDIS. Molly and Will bunked down hours ago, but the Doctor is still up, sitting in the console room and reading the TARDIS’s repair manual. Something is itching his time senses, just enough to keep him from sleeping properly. He is unable to identify what it is, though, which unsettles him.
He is chortling his way through a discussion of the proper way to flush the TARDIS’s meson scrubbers - obviously written by someone who had never operated a TARDIS - when Martha’s phone goes off. He fishes it out of his pocket, flipping it open and answering. “Hello?”
“Is this the Doctor?” an unfamiliar man’s voice says.
“Usually, yes,” he says. “Who is this?”
“This is Tom Milligan. Martha’s husband.” His voice sounds raw and tired.
“I missed the wedding,” mutters the Doctor. “I was going to go. I meant to go.”
Milligan continues, “Martha left instructions that you were to be called if something - Look, do you have a name or anything? All Martha’s note says is ‘call the Doctor’ which is kind of weird, you know.”
“It’s just the Doctor. She wanted you to call me if something?”
“If something happened, right. Um . . .” Milligan hesitates and the Doctor holds his breath, knowing what Milligan is about to tell him. After a painful moment, Milligan finally says, “There was an accident yesterday evening. Martha was crossing the street on her way home from work, and some idiot going too fast - he says he didn’t see her, but how could he not see her? She was wearing white, there were lights - anyway, she, um, uh . . .”
Milligan’s voice fails him. Gently, the Doctor says, “Got hit.”
“Yeah,” Milligan says, sounding rather broken. “It was over pretty soon after that. She died on the way to the hospital, they told me. We haven’t even been married a year yet. Our anniversary’s next month.”
The Doctor feels rather broken himself. This is what was troubling his time senses, he knows. He always feels it when a companion passes - Barbara, Jo, Harry. He hadn’t expected Martha to go, not so young. Not without ever coming back to the TARDIS. He had their next trip all planned out, and it was going to be - well, all right, maybe he didn’t have their next trip totally planned out, but it was going to be fantastic. And now -
“I’m sorry,” he tells Milligan. “I’m so, so sorry. She was exceptional. Wonderful. Brilliant.”
“She was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Milligan says, his grief echoing down the line.
The Doctor pauses. “Did Martha ever tell you how she and I met?”
“She meant to, but she never had the chance . . .”
He begins the story. “Remember when there was that terrorist attack on Royal Hope Hospital? Martha was there. And so was I . . .”
-30-
Reviews are always appreciated.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Martha Jones, cameos by others
Word Count: 4368
Rating: PG
Summary: Martha Jones promised to call the Doctor.
Author’s Notes: This pretty much fell out of my head whole after watching “Last of the Time Lords”. As such, spoilery for the entire third series. Doesn’t quite gibe with what we know about the fourth series, mainly because I started writing it before the BBC made all those announcements. Mostly unbetaed, but thanks to powerof3 for putting up with me testing dialogue on her. She also suggested a few things. This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by persons and entities included but not limited to the BBC, Russell T. Davies, Phil Collinson and Julie Gardner. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.
I.
The phone calls start shortly after the Doctor finishes up tidying up the mess aboard the Titanic. It was all a rather bog-standard (and frankly, boring) alien plot to abduct - and consume - the inhabitants of the doomed ship. He’d had some unwanted and completely unnecessary help from his ninth incarnation and, oddly enough, his fourth, and in the end, the ship regrettably went down as scheduled. History, after all, has to be maintained.
He jumps at the mobile the first time it rings, only to disappointedly find that it is a wrong number. The second time it rings, though, it is Martha, giggling uncontrollably and gleefully into his ear when he answers. “Hello?” he says.
“I passed my exams!” she shrieks. “I’m a proper doctor now! Not just an almost doctor anymore, me. A real true proper doctor!”
“Well, that’s good, I suppose,” he says, tucking the phone under his ear while he tweaks two wires underneath the TARDIS console that don’t really need tweaking. “What are you planning to do now?”
“We’re - hush up, Shaz, I’m on the phone - we’re going -” There is a burst of high-pitched female voices in the background. “Hang on,” says Martha. The Doctor sighs and transfers the mobile to his other ear.
Martha comes back on the line. “We’re going down the pub, apparently. Tom says he’ll meet us there and Julia says she knows the bartender, so maybe we won’t end up paying a packet for a few rounds. And Shaz says we’re going dancing after that.”
“Oh,” the Doctor says vaguely, keeping his voice neutral. The wires won’t - “Who’s Tom? Bloke from school, is he?”
“Tom? No, he’s a doctor already. He’s been a doctor already. Pediatrician at St. Basil’s. He’s - I’m sort of seeing him. For a couple months now, actually.”
The Doctor pushes the wires together harder than he intended to and they spark, singeing his fingers, making him quickly drop them. “Oh. Well. That’s,” he says, and then he isn’t really sure what it is, so he lets the sentence trail away. “So you’re not - not calling because -”
“No, Doctor.” Martha’s tone is gentle. “Not yet. I will - it’s just - there’s so much . . . my family and Tom . . . and I’ve been studying for this so long -”
“No, no,” he says. “No, it’s all right. Don’t worry about it. It’s okay. Don’t rush yourself on my account.”
“I will call you when I’m ready,” she promises. “You’d better answer when you see it’s me. I’ll be angry if you don’t.”
“Yeah.”
“Look, I really have to go now, Doctor. I just wanted to let you know. Sort of - keep you up on things. You know, right?”
“Right.” He pauses. “Congratulations, by the way.”
“Thanks. I - I miss you, you know.” He hears the catch in her speech and knows she was about to say something else.
“Yeah. Bye.”
“Goodbye, Doctor.” The phone beeps as Martha rings off. He flips the mobile shut and slips it into his inside suit pocket.
“So . . .” He sighs and looks round the TARDIS, empty except for him. “Barcelona, then, old girl? We’ve never quite managed to make it there.”
II.
The second time Martha calls him, he is running for his life. The Most Holy and Revered Praetor of the Kthiolian Empire has become convinced that the Doctor stole the ancient Klyte Crystal, and - well, all right, he has stolen the Klyte Crystal, but it’s for a good cause and besides, he’s going to put it back when he’s done with it, so there’s really no need to send an entire phalanx of Praetorian Guards after him with orders to shoot on sight.
The mobile rings, and he has a brief and interesting moment trying to juggle the crystal and the phone while skidding around a corner in the Praetor’s castra with seventy-six guards in close pursuit. “Hello?” he says, very nearly dropping the phone as he puts it to his ear.
Martha giggles rather sloppily in his ear. “Doctor,” she slurs and titters some more. He sighs inwardly, cursing stupid humans and their stupid love of ethanol and their stupid slow metabolism and their stupid, stupid primitive brains.
“Yes, Martha,” he says, rounding a corner and - ah, there’s the TARDIS, if he can just reach it before the thundering horde - “Is there a reason you’re calling me, Martha?”
“No,” she says unconcernedly. “I was just - well, I thought I might order a pizza. We were supposed to have dinner, but Tom got called in, third time in a week, I don’t even know what’s going on up there, so I called Julia instead and she brought over some limoncellos and -”
“Is this going somewhere?” he interrupts. Nearly to the TARDIS - nearly there -
“- I don’t even know how much I had - was it . . . maybe it was . . . but - no, it couldn’t have been . . . well, maybe it was. Anyway -”
“Oi you! Get back here!” shouts one of the Praetorian Guards. The Doctor chances a look behind him. The closest one is reaching out, nearly able to grab his collar - he breaks into a sprint, flinging open the door of the TARDIS and barrelling inside. The guards, thwarted, begin banging on the doors and yelling for his head.
In his ear, Martha rambles away, oblivious. “Anyway, I thought I’d order us a pizza, or a curry perhaps, but then when I picked up the phone I saw your number in my phone book - well, my number really, but it’s yours now - and I thought I hadn’t called you in a while, so perhaps I should, and so I called you. Hi!”
He briefly considers simply hanging up on her. He is the sole lord of all of time and space - he’s well above being drunk-dialed by former companions, especially former companions who are drunk enough they might not even remember calling in the first place . . . but then again, this is Martha, who he’s been abominable enough to already. He can put up with her rambling for a few minutes.
“Hello, Martha,” he says, preparing the TARDIS for dematerialization - he’s safe enough inside the TARDIS, but all the thumping on the doors is giving him a headache.
“I really miss you, you know?” she says. “Like I’ll just be standing there, washing the dishes, and I’ll think, I wonder what the Doctor’s up to. Or I’ll be working on charts and I’ll think, I wonder what the Doctor’s doing up there without me.”
“Uh-huh,” the Doctor says, popping the handbrake. The pounding on the door abruptly lessens as the TARDIS slides into the vortex.
“And any time there’s anything big on the news, you know, some kind of international crisis, I’m always glued to the telly, the entire time. Tom makes fun of me for it, says it’s all lies anyway, but I’m watching for you, you know? I mean, I know you don’t like being on the telly, it’s not your thing, you just do your bit and go, you know, but I think - well, maybe someone’ll catch just the edge of him. Just a bit. Or the TARDIS. But I never see you. Are you avoiding Earth?” she demands.
“Only the television cameras.” He checks the coordinates, readjusts the TARDIS’s heading slightly. “I was there just a couple months ago, kicking aliens out of Downing Street. Again.”
“See, I knew there was something funny about that new home secretary!” Martha says triumphantly. “Just seemed off somehow. Tom didn’t believe me. He doesn’t know about . . .”
The Doctor gives her ten seconds, then prompts, “About?”
“About everything that’s out there. You, Shakespeare, end of the universe. I can’t tell him. I can’t tell him anything, really.” Martha goes quiet. The Doctor briefly takes the phone away from his ear, checking to make sure he hasn’t lost signal. Theoretically, she’s still there. “I really love him,” she says after a long pause. “I really, really love him. I mean, I really, really, really love him.”
“I’d gathered.”
She sounds reflective when she speaks again. “I love him so much. But I worry that maybe he doesn’t love me as much as I love him? Like I always tell him I love him before he goes to work. But half the time he doesn’t even say anything back. Just walks away. Is it me, Doctor? Am I the problem?”
“Martha,” he says, “you’re drunk. Put the phone down, drink some water and go lay down.”
She giggles again. “Doctor’s orders. Take two aspirin and call me in the morning. Oh -” in the background a door opens and a soft woman’s voice says something - “I should go. Julia’s asking where the pizza is.”
“Go on, then.”
“I’ll call again,” Martha says, and then she is gone.
The Doctor pockets the mobile again. “No, Martha Jones," he says reflectively, "you weren’t the problem."
III.
The third time Martha calls, he is up to his elbows in TARDIS parts, methodically applying his sonic screwdriver to various fuses, trying to find exactly which one has blown and left him stranded just outside of the Malactar Cluster. He is on his way to the Planetary Fair and Market on Traxid Prime at the request of the Duchess of Traxid, a beautiful woman who does not appreciate tardiness, so the repairs are growing a little frantic.
Martha’s phone starts beeping in his pocket and he hauls himself out of the well, groaning. “Ohh, Martha, you picked a bad time to call for a taxi,” he says to himself. Flipping open the phone, he says, “Hello?”
At first, he hears nothing but a snuffling noise that makes him wonder whether the phone is still working, but just as he is about to hang up, he realizes two things: one, Martha is there, and two, she is crying.
“Martha?” he says, alarmed. “What’s going on?”
She sniffles a few times before forcing out in a tiny voice, “He left me.”
Fantastic. The Doctor’s not sure, but the last time he checked, his job description didn’t include the words agony aunt. Apparently it does now. He rapidly recalls Martha’s personal timeline and tries to figure out who he might be. “Who? Tom, you mean?”
“Wanker, more like.” She laughs slightly, choking on a sob. “We’ve been together for so long, and then this morning he told me he ‘needed some time away from me’ so he could ‘think about things’. What’s there to think about? He either loves me or he doesn’t. Simple as that.”
The Doctor shifts uncomfortably, aware that he isn’t exactly upset by this news. As a matter of fact, he’s feeling rather - relieved? Even gleeful?
Oh dear.
“Well,” he says lamely, “he could just -”
“Bet he’s got another girl,” Martha says darkly. “Bet she’s blonde. And perfect. It’s always the blondes. What’s wrong with me? What’d I do? Oh God, look at me. I get dumped and the first thing I do is ring up a time-travelling alien. I’m pathetic.” The snuffling starts up again.
He sighs inwardly. Comforting women, particularly human women, has never been a skill of his. Usually he just ignores their distress until it goes away, but something tells him - perhaps it’s his overdeveloped sense of self-preservation - that Martha will not accept being ignored.
“Martha Jones,” he says, “Martha, listen to me. You’re a star, I told you that. I meant it then and I mean it now. And if he can’t see that then it’s just his fault.”
There. That sounds good, like what the humans say to each other. He genuinely cares for all his companions - he wouldn’t invite them along with him if he didn’t - but he’s not always very good at communicating that to them, particularly not in their silly little language.
“You’re just saying that.”
“I’m not just saying it. I mean it.”
“Right.” Martha seems, slowly, to be calming down.
“So,” the Doctor says after a pause, “not that I’m not flattered, you know, by the thought. But - what made you decide to call me? Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
“I don’t know!” Martha sounds irritated and defensive. “Because - I don’t know. Because D comes before J in my address book?”
“Ah.” They are both silent. Finally, he says, “You know . . . you could always come with me. I’ve got a vacancy in the TARDIS, and -”
“Doctor -”
“- you know I can always use a helping hand around here, and -”
“Doctor, no.”
“- well, all right, if that’s what you want, I suppose.” He waits. “We could go see Agatha Christie, I never did get around to visiting her . . .”
“No,” Martha repeats, and then softens. “Not right now. I need - I think I need to talk to Tom, see what’s going on with him. And if we really are - well, if that’s the case, then I’ll give you a ring.”
“Can’t say fairer than that, I guess.”
Sounding wistful, Martha says, “When is it where you are?”
“Well . . . I don’t so much have a when right now, I’m sort of - stuck - but the last time I was somewhere with a time, it was the year 8472. Not exactly a good time for Earth. You lot had taken to bombing each other again. What is it with you and all the bombs anyway? Why don’t you all learn that it’s never a good idea?” He stops. “When is it where you are?”
“February,” Martha says. “2011. It’s my birthday in a week. Great timing, Tom.”
Always funny, the Doctor thinks, how their little mayfly lives flit by so fast. For him it’s been no more than a couple of months, six at the most, but two years of her life have already gone since the last time they saw each other.
“Oops -” says Martha. “Call waiting, hang on.” The line goes dead. Resignedly, the Doctor resumes testing fuses. After about six fuses, Martha returns, saying, “That was Tish. I don’t even know how she knows, but she knows. I think I might have a moan at her for a bit instead of you. No offense, Doctor, but you’re not very good at this whole listening while someone moans at you bit.”
“You’re not the first person to notice,” he mutters.
“Call waiting,” Martha says. “I should -”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll ring you again sometime, okay? Goodbye, Doctor,” says Martha, and the phone goes dead.
Frowning, the Doctor carefully slips back the phone into his pocket. “That was odd,” he says to himself, and then shrugs and sniffs. “Huh. Nothing I can do about it. Now . . .” He claps his hands and looks up at the TARDIS. “Let’s get you fixed, old girl, so I can be on my way to Traxid. The Duchess is waiting.”
Around him, the TARDIS hums back into life, the time rotor placidly beginning to pump. He gapes admiringly up at the control console. “Cheeky girl! You stopped just so I’d talk to Martha, didn’t you? You like her, I know. So do I.”
The TARDIS’s thrum sounds rather smug.
IV.
He is in the bath, washing off the grime of an intervention on Laimus II, when he hears Martha’s phone start bleating obnoxiously. He sighs. Let it ring, or - well, it might be important. Fortunately, his suit jacket is hanging on the back of the TARDIS bathroom door, so he jumps out of the shower, hastily wrapping a towel around his waist, and dives for the phone, catching it just before it goes to voicemail. “Hello?” he says.
“Doctor!” Martha says, sounding a little frantic. “Oh, thank God you’re there. How can you kill a Skelix?”
“What do you need to kill a Skelix for?” he asks, confused.
“Just tell me!” she snaps.
“No, really. What do you need to kill a Skelix for? Normally they’re fairly docile.”
In the background he hears screaming, a man’s voice yelling, an animal howling, people running.
“You wouldn’t happen to have disturbed a nesting mother, by any chance? There’s a small colony of them living in the Lake District - it’s really not wise to bother them during nesting season.”
“Oh, for God’s sake - no, I didn’t disturb a nesting mother. Look, will you just tell me how to get rid of this thing?” Martha demands.
“Aw, you don’t want to kill it. That’s not right; it’s only protecting its babies, after all. Plenty of ways to knock it out, though - good old H20'll work just fine. Water. Always thought it was funny that they live in the Lake District. All that water, and they can’t touch a drop.”
“Hang on,” says Martha. After a pause, the Doctor hears her yelling, “Jack! Tosh! The hosepipe! Spray it with water!”
“Jack?” he says, even though he knows Martha can’t hear him. “Jack Harkness? Oh, Martha Jones, what are you doing mixed up with Torchwood?” He stands there, water dripping down his legs, and listens to the sound of Jack’s team - plus Martha - battling the Skelix.
Finally, Martha comes back on the line. “It’s down,” she says. “Thanks.”
“There wouldn’t happen to be a horde of Skelix running wild through Cardiff, would there?” he asks suspiciously.
“Not in Cardiff, no.”
“Ah.”
“Maybe in Swansea, more like . . .”
“Ah.”
“And - oh, I think Jack wants to talk to you.” A brief silence, and then Jack is there, all his usual bonhomie firmly in place. “Doctor! Excellent idea Martha had, sticking you with a mobile phone. I should have thought of that myself.”
“Martha says there’s a horde of Skelix running wild through the streets of Swansea,” the Doctor says, keeping it from sounding entirely like an accusation.
“Not a horde! More like one. One very angry Skelix. Someone saw one of them up in the Lake District and thought it might make a good housepet. Can’t imagine why.”
“You’re one to talk!” Martha’s voice says in the background. “That bloody pteranadon scared me senseless the first time I saw it.”
“Anyway, it - that’d be the Skelix, not Myfanwy - got free, and it was just a little bit annoyed about the whole situation. But we took care of it. Like we usually do. Most of the time.”
The Doctor considers, hitching his towel up. “Get where she can’t hear you.”
“Just a moment . . . Okay. We’re clear.”
“What,” the Doctor demands, “is Martha doing in Swansea with Torchwood? It’s bad enough you’ve - infiltrated them - but her too? Did something happen in London? She was safe there.”
“Relax, Doctor,” Jack says, tone level. “I didn’t brainwash her or anything. I needed a new medic after the one I had deliberately walked into a den of Weevils and got himself mauled beyond recognition, and Martha was looking for a change after Tom dumped her. So I offered her a job and she accepted. She’s tough, Martha. She’s done really well so far.”
“If she gets hurt -”
“I know, Doctor. She does a better job of keeping herself safe than any of us could do for her.”
“I mean it.” He pauses, thinks. “Don’t tell her I said anything.”
Jack chuckles. “I won’t. You too, huh?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Doctor says, as dignified as he can get, considering that he’s currently sopping wet and wearing nothing but a towel clutched around his waist.
“Sure, Doctor.”
“Put Martha back on, will you?”
A rustling sound, and then Martha says, “Hello?”
“While I’ve got you on the line,” the Doctor says, “what is that awful Crazy Frog ringtone doing on your phone?”
“I didn’t put it on there! Leo did, absolutely ages ago, when that ringtone was everywhere. He told me he thought it was funny.”
“I was trying to change the contrast on the screen and now it’s stuck as your ringtone.”
“Oh dear,” Martha says, giggling. “A catastrophe. Look, we have to take this Skelix back to the Hub before it wakes up. Thanks for the advice, Doctor.”
“Oh, right. Anytime. You know that.”
“Bye,” she says, and hangs up. The Doctor lowers the phone, keenly aware that for the first time, Martha has not promised to call again. And to top it all off, his bath has gone cold.
“Bother,” he says.
V.
Martha’s next call is a long time in coming, long enough that he feels the need for a new companion - or companions, actually. There are two of them: William and Mary Dunbar - “we’ve heard all the jokes, thank you kindly,” Mary says - a pair of siblings in their mid-twenties from turn-of-the-20th-century Manchester. William is an engineer and a tinkerer, fond of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne; Mary is practical, vivacious and slightly bemused by the reality of time travel.
Finally, though, the mobile in his pocket rings. “Hello,” he answers.
“Hello, Doctor,” says Martha.
“Martha! Good to hear from you. Finally decided you’re ready to come back aboard the TARDIS? Great. I have to warn you though, it might be a bit crowded with you here. I have some other friends traveling with me at the moment -”
“That’s not actually why I called you,” Martha says, and the Doctor can hear suppressed glee trembling in her voice. “Doctor, I wanted to tell you . . . Tom and I are getting married!”
The news hits him like a punch in the gut, which is strange, because up until thirty seconds ago he was sure his reaction to news like this would be total happiness. He blinks a few times, runs a hand through his hair and finally says, “I thought you and Tom broke up. You moved to Cardiff and started working for Torchwood.”
“I still work for Torchwood. But six months ago Tom and I got back together, so I moved back to London. His Majesty’s Government thought it was a good idea to finally rebuild Torchwood One.”
“I don’t,” he mutters.
“It’s different now, though. It’s not bad. Not with me around. We’ve gone public, we have.” Martha switches gears. “Anyway, you should come round for dinner sometime, maybe meet Tom. You’re definitely invited to the wedding.”
“I don’t know,” says the Doctor, “weddings and I really don’t mix. I tend to bring - catastrophe - with me whenever I go to one. Human sacrifice - killer robot Santas - that sort of thing.”
“At least come for dinner? I really want Tom to meet you.”
“Sure.”
“And just because I’m getting married doesn’t mean I can’t travel with you ever again, right? I mean, the TARDIS travels in time and everything. I could spend a week with you and come back the second after I left and it would be like I wasn’t even gone. You know?”
“Right.” The Doctor idly fiddles with some of the switches on the TARDIS’s console. “I should go,” he says. “We’re about to materialize. I told William I’d take him to see the year five million. He insisted.”
“All right,” Martha says easily. “Don’t forget - wedding in June 2014. Save the date. You’d definitely better be there.”
“I definitely better will be,” says the Doctor, and he’s not sure if he’s lying or not.
“Seriously. Dinner sometime. Give me a ring.” Martha rings off.
The Doctor holds the mobile in his hand, staring at it until Mary and William burst into the console room, all good humor and casual demands to see something interesting. “Rome?” he suggests. “Pompeii? Ooh, maybe not Pompeii.” And they are off and running, eventually headed for 24th century San Francisco.
Much later, the Doctor makes a note in his thousand-year diary for June 2014.
VI.
It is night aboard the TARDIS. Molly and Will bunked down hours ago, but the Doctor is still up, sitting in the console room and reading the TARDIS’s repair manual. Something is itching his time senses, just enough to keep him from sleeping properly. He is unable to identify what it is, though, which unsettles him.
He is chortling his way through a discussion of the proper way to flush the TARDIS’s meson scrubbers - obviously written by someone who had never operated a TARDIS - when Martha’s phone goes off. He fishes it out of his pocket, flipping it open and answering. “Hello?”
“Is this the Doctor?” an unfamiliar man’s voice says.
“Usually, yes,” he says. “Who is this?”
“This is Tom Milligan. Martha’s husband.” His voice sounds raw and tired.
“I missed the wedding,” mutters the Doctor. “I was going to go. I meant to go.”
Milligan continues, “Martha left instructions that you were to be called if something - Look, do you have a name or anything? All Martha’s note says is ‘call the Doctor’ which is kind of weird, you know.”
“It’s just the Doctor. She wanted you to call me if something?”
“If something happened, right. Um . . .” Milligan hesitates and the Doctor holds his breath, knowing what Milligan is about to tell him. After a painful moment, Milligan finally says, “There was an accident yesterday evening. Martha was crossing the street on her way home from work, and some idiot going too fast - he says he didn’t see her, but how could he not see her? She was wearing white, there were lights - anyway, she, um, uh . . .”
Milligan’s voice fails him. Gently, the Doctor says, “Got hit.”
“Yeah,” Milligan says, sounding rather broken. “It was over pretty soon after that. She died on the way to the hospital, they told me. We haven’t even been married a year yet. Our anniversary’s next month.”
The Doctor feels rather broken himself. This is what was troubling his time senses, he knows. He always feels it when a companion passes - Barbara, Jo, Harry. He hadn’t expected Martha to go, not so young. Not without ever coming back to the TARDIS. He had their next trip all planned out, and it was going to be - well, all right, maybe he didn’t have their next trip totally planned out, but it was going to be fantastic. And now -
“I’m sorry,” he tells Milligan. “I’m so, so sorry. She was exceptional. Wonderful. Brilliant.”
“She was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Milligan says, his grief echoing down the line.
The Doctor pauses. “Did Martha ever tell you how she and I met?”
“She meant to, but she never had the chance . . .”
He begins the story. “Remember when there was that terrorist attack on Royal Hope Hospital? Martha was there. And so was I . . .”
-30-
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