Fic: But Here Shows Much Amiss
Title: But Here Shows Much Amiss
Author: john_elliott
Characters: Martha, Jo
Rating / Warnings: PG for implied violence
Word count: ~900
Disclaimer: "Doctor Who" belongs to the BBC.
"Is he...?" Jo asked in a small voice.
"I'm afraid so," Martha said. "There's nothing we can do for him now."
She lowered Sir Gahanor's cooling body to the floor, then helped Jo to her feet.
"It's how he wanted to go," she said. The words seemed empty.
"I know." Jo's eyes were brimming with tears. "Defending us against impossible odds. And he did it, too."
"Are you hurt at all?"
"No." Jo gestured at the bloodstains, vivid and red against the white of her jacket. "That's all from when I was holding him. And he said he-"
Her voice wavered, and broke. Martha threw her arms round her, as if by so doing she could blot out what they'd both seen in the last fifteen minutes.
"He didn't have to!" Jo sobbed. "We could have run away or hidden. Why did he have to stay and fight all those people? He didn't have his armour on or anything! This was supposed to be a celebration!"
Martha didn't answer. The smell of blood was all around her. Even as Jo sobbed in her arms, she stared dry-eyed across the hall, the stiffening corpses mingling with those she'd seen in the ruins of Berne, the Naples crater, the city guards in Durban who'd hidden her from the Toclafane at the cost of their own lives. Intellectually, she knew she'd saved them, but she'd only ever known them in death.
"Thank you," Jo said, rather shakily. Martha blinked, wondering how long she'd been lost in thought. Carefully, as if letting a child take her first unassisted steps, she let go of Jo and took a step back. There was a momentary resistance as their clothes, stuck together by Gahanor's clotting blood, separated.
Jo took one last look at the body of their defender, than took Martha by the hand and picked her way through the corpse-strewn banqueting hall to the daïs at the far end. The table on it was overturned, the floor a ghastly mixture of wine and blood. Here, the Duke and a few of his guards had made a stand, before his rival's archers had shot them down and been killed in their turn.
"Here," she said, kneeling beside the Duke's body, heedless of the congealing blood. "He took it. He wouldn't have trusted it to anyone else."
She fumbled with the pouch on the man's belt, but the stiff leather straps resisted her. Martha glanced around and picked up a dagger, dropped by one of the yeomen in his death throes.
"Try this," she said.
Jo cut the pouch free from its former owner, found a clear area of floor, and tipped it out. Sparing most of its contents not a second look, she picked up the object she sought: a pendant, its intricate designs far too precise to be decorative, and glimmering with more than reflected light.
"Here it is," she said bleakly. "We've won."
"Not if someone steals it before we can get it to the Doctor," Martha reminded her.
"The doors are still locked." Jo stuffed the pendant in her jacket pocket and sat down on the edge of the daïs. "We'll have to wait for the Doctor to come and find us. Unless something's happened to him, too."
Martha patted her shoulder. "He'll be fine. He always is."
"I'd like to think so." Jo looked up at Martha. "Do you think, if we hadn't come here, all of these people would still be alive?"
"Maybe some of them. But who knows how many more would die? Karris had to be stopped. You know that."
Jo looked down at her bloodstained hands. "Who wills the ends, wills the means."
"You did what was right-" Martha broke off and spun round, all her defensive instincts shouting at her. The floor was vibrating, as if some cumbersome machine below it was being slowly turned by cowed villeins.
"The dumbwaiter!" Jo hissed, jumping to her feet.
"More guards." Martha still glanced about wildly. "It must be. Someone from one side or the other trying to mop up any survivors."
"Well, we can't run, and we can't hide." Jo bent down suddenly, and picked up the dagger she'd used to open the pouch. "And I'm not going to surrender."
"Nor me." Martha snatched up a bow and a few scattered arrows. "Over by this pillar."
They had barely reached the pillar when the panel at the side of the dais creaked open, revealing the contents of the dumbwaiter. Instead of guards, all that could be seen was a huge, barrel-sized, motionless, white object.
"Is that a cake?" Martha whispered.
"It must be some kind of trap." Jo gripped her dagger firmly. "I'll investigate."
"No, let me do it."
"I'm trained for this."
"I've got a year's experience."
"And you've got the ranged weapon." Jo gestured fiercely with the dagger. "Now cover me!"
She'd made it about halfway across the floor when the top of the object burst open and a tall, skinny, cake-covered figure burst out of it. As far as could be seen, he was wearing few, if any, clothes, save a jester's hat.
"Surprise!" the Doctor shouted. "Happy birthday.."
His voice died away as he took in the scene, the shattered tables and crockery, the spilt food and wine, the dead nobles and men-at-arms, the tense, crouching figure of Martha, and the bloodstained, wild-eyed Jo.
"...Not a good time?" he asked.
Author's note: This, I think, deserves some explanation. It's the far end of a train of thought that started with the innocuous remark 'All you need is cake'. From that, my next thought was to "So, any fic could be improved by adding an unrelated cake scene?". And the next hop from there was by way of Pratchett to "The Blood-Soaked Tragedy Of The Mad Monk Of Quirm (with Obligatory Naked Ten In A Cake Scene)."
And having thought it, I had to write it.