It Takes an Ocean Not to Break - Chapter Nine
Disclaimer: The BBC owns "Doctor Who" and all related characters; Marvel and Disney own "The Avengers" and all related characters; I own nothing.
Warnings: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Spoilers: "The Avengers" movie, "Doctor Who" seasons 3 and 4, "Torchwood" season 2
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Maria was wrong, Martha decided about a week later. It wasn’t the first step that was the hardest. It was the second, and third, and every step that followed that was the hardest, or at least that’s how it seemed.
She made an appointment with the therapist that Maria recommended, and he agreed to see her on short notice. He was already vetted by SHIELD, and a little extra digging showed that he had some experience with UNIT, too. Even then, she came close to talking herself out of going several times before finally working up the nerve to walk through the door. She’d faced down Daleks, the Master, and Loki, and yet sitting across from this man seemed harder than all of that combined.
Dr. Thornton was an older man, with close-cropped, curly grey-streaked black hair and evaluative hazel eyes peering at Martha from behind rectangle glasses. He spoke with a faint Boston accent, almost too faint to hear except for the missing r’s breaking through as he briefly laid out the ground rules for their sessions.
“So, Martha,” he said, once he’d finished the introductions and the ground rules. “Tell me about why you’re here.”
“It’s going to sound like complete rubbish,” Martha warned, only stalling slightly.
He smiled, and the lines framing his face softened. “Tell me anyways,” he encouraged her. “Nothing you tell me is going to leave this room, remember?”
Martha took a deep breath and nodded. “About two years ago, when I was finishing up my last year of medical school...”
She delved into an abbreviated version of how she met the Doctor, before transitioning to the Year That Never Was. She couldn’t fully describe what she’d lived through that year, not even if she wanted to. But she tried, outlining the horrors she’d seen, the desperation that had fueled her, the good and the evil of that year that only a few were cursed to remember.
“I was doing fine, for the most part,” Martha explained once she’d finished telling Dr. Thornton about the Year, her voice rough. “I had a few nightmares, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. I was healing. But after what happened with Loki,” she took a shuddering breath before continuing, “it’s like I’m reliving it, and I’ve lost all the progress that I’ve made in moving on.”
She felt exposed, sitting on this couch, sharing one of her deepest secrets with this stranger. Once again, she wondered if she was doing the right thing. If she was making the choice that would help her, and not just leave her in a worse place than she already was.
“That’s understandable, given what you’ve just described to me,” Dr. Thornton responded, putting down his pen and placing his notepad on the table beside him. He leaned forward and gave Martha a reassuring smile. “I’ve worked with many individuals diagnosed with PTSD, and almost all of their cases, no matter how different they are from each other, share that element. You’re not alone in this.”
He glanced at the clock before turning his attention back to Martha. “We’re almost out of time today, but I’d like to schedule an appointment in a few days so that we can discuss possible treatments,” he said, picking up his notepad and flipping to a new page.
“I can do that,” Martha answered, her voice quiet.
“Good. Before you go, there is something that you can start, however,” he said, writing something down that she couldn’t read. “From what you’ve told me, it sounds like you’ve been isolating yourself from your friends and family.” At Martha’s slow nod, he continued, “Start reconnecting with them. Don’t be afraid to use them as a support net. You don’t need to tell them everything, but trust them to be there to catch you. They’re more valuable than you might think they are.”
After finalizing a follow-up appointment in three days, Martha went to her favorite café to think. In the corner with a cup of Earl Grey, she reviewed the last few hours. She still felt on edge about the entire thing, but she was less afraid that Dr. Thornton was going to write her off. If he had, there had been no indication of it during their session.
Her mobile buzzed, and she fished it out from her pocket to read a text from Jane, letting her know that she and Darcy were having a bad science movie marathon and wondering if Martha would want to attend.
Start reconnecting with them. Dr. Thornton’s words rang in her head as she read the text several times, before pressing the reply button.
When and where? Almost immediately after she hit Enter, her mobile buzzed again with Jane’s reply.
Later that night, the look on Jane’s face when she opened the door to Martha’s hesitant knock made Martha feel guilty about brushing off earlier attempts to hang out.
“Good, you came,” Jane said, stepping back so that Martha could come in. “Darcy’s getting the popcorn ready, and we have Netflix queued up and ready to go. Any preferences?”
It was a fun night. Jane and Martha wholeheartedly mocked the science behind “The Core,” while Darcy offered commentary on the less-than-original plot devices and threw popcorn at the screen. After that, they switched to Boggle, something that only Darcy could make a cutthroat sport. Martha stayed later than she’d originally planned, and when she finally did leave, with plans for brunch the next day, she felt lighter than she had in a long time
But the nightmares still came, and once again she fled to her couch and curled up underneath a blanket, only this time with a worn copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets clutched in her hand. Reconnecting didn’t just have to mean reconnecting with people, after all. She finally drifted back to sleep just as the sky began to lighten, her dreams shifting to more pleasant memories.
The afternoon, after saying goodbye to Jane and Darcy, Martha decided to go for a walk through Central Park, just to stretch her legs. Unlike the last time she’d been here, the park was mostly deserted, the cloudy weather having warned people away.
Martha found herself back at the bench overlooking the former site of Hoovertown. A few brave individuals defied the predicted rain and sat on the lawn, but it was eerily empty compared to last time. She’d been sitting there for roughly five minutes when the sound of a boot scuffing against ground behind her drew her attention.
“Didn’t you ever learn it’s rude to stalk people?” she asked, tilting her head back to look at Clint. “I thought I’d gotten that point across back in New Mexico.”
“I’m a slow learner,” Clint replied, sitting down next to her.
“Really? There’s a shocker.”
“Cute.”
“I try,” Martha retorted, before switching the subject. “So, is there any reason in particular you were stalking me? Because like I said before, it’s rude. And quite creepy.”
Clint shrugged, answering, “I don’t suppose you’d buy the ‘I happened to be in the area’ excuse.” At Martha’s eye roll, he snorted. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“You’re stalling,” Martha pointed out with a raised eyebrow. “And not very well, I might add.”
He sobered and looked down at his hands. “I guess I just wanted to see you.”
“I do have a mobile. And an email address that I seem to recall you using in the not-so-distant past,” Martha pointed out sensibly. “You could have contacted me that way.”
“Okay, I get it, stalking is bad and I shouldn’t do it. Email is better. You’ve made your point,” Clint said with a wince.
“Just remember that for next time.”
They lapsed into silence, neither sure what to say. This was the first time since the attempted invasion that they had been together for a reason other than work, and Martha found herself at a loss what to she should do. They just sat there, staring out at the lawn in front of them with nothing to say.
“I never did apologize for calling you ‘Doc’ back in you lab,” Clint finally broke the silence, turning his head to look at Martha. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry about that, Martha.”
“Apology accepted,” Martha answered quietly, leaning back against the bench. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you lately. It’s been... it’s been a rough few weeks.”
Clint let out a short laugh. “You don’t need to apologize for that, since I’ve been doing the same thing.” He paused, before continuing, “I think it’s been a rough few weeks for everybody.”
“That’s probably the understatement of the year,” Martha said, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth despite the subject matter.
“I don’t know, I can think of a few more. Tasha’s definition of a quick workout, for one.”
Martha’s smile widened at the thought. She looked up at the darkening sky and stood up with a sigh. “Not that I don’t mind the company, but I think I better head back to my flat, unless I want to be stuck in a romcom cliché and get caught out in the rain.” She blushed, realizing that somehow she’d managed to bypass her brain to mouth filter.
“Cliché, huh?” he asked, getting to his feet and smirking at her. “Now why would you say that?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Martha lied, trying and failing to keep her flaming cheeks under control.
“You’re a shit liar, Jones.”
Martha refused to dignify the comment with an answer. They walked out of the park together, not talking until they reached the edge closest to Martha’s flat.
“So, are we okay, Martha?” Clint asked, looking at her with concern written all over his face.
Martha smiled at him, reached out and took his hand. “Of course we are,” she answered, giving his hand a squeeze. “Just call next time you want to talk.”
He laughed, and they parted, going their separate ways. It started raining when she was less than two blocks away from her flat, and she rushed to get there before she was completely soaked. She’d just stepped inside when her mobile buzzed with a text message from Clint.
This enough of a romcom cliché for you?
“Arse,” Martha muttered, a smile on her face.
~*~*~
Two steps forward, one step back. That’s how things seemed to go for the next few weeks. Therapy with Dr. Thornton helped. He’d started her on cognitive-behavioral therapy, working on isolating triggers and exploring why they made her react the way that they did. Most of the triggers were small and almost illogical in their connections, but they were relatively easy to identify and talk about. Others, like the sound of the Master’s distinctive four-part beat, inevitably sent her into a panic attack. Her nightmares were slowly starting to become less frequent, but the ones she did have were just as brutal as the ones she’d been having before starting therapy, if not more.
She broke the news to Steve about her diagnosis over dinner at his flat in Brooklyn, after her second appointment with Dr. Thornton. He didn’t seem all that surprised.
“You suspected?” she asked, curling up in the worn armchair in his living room that she’d long since claimed as her own.
“I think we all did,” Steve answered, looking a little uncomfortable. Despite the fact that he’d been unfrozen for over six months, he was still very much a man from another era. “You just seemed...different after everything.”
“‘Scattered’ is apparently the word Coulson used.” It was better than broken, which was how Martha was still describing herself.
“He did say something along those lines when I went to go see him,” Steve commented, almost too quietly for Martha. He changed the subject to baseball, something he was still trying and failing to interest Martha in.
It wasn’t until later that she began putting the pieces together and realized what Coulson had been doing. He’d been ringing the alarms, doing his best to help her, in apparent repayment for saving his life back on the Helicarrier. She didn’t mention to it when she went to see him, however, and instead poked fun at him for his Captain America memorbilia collection. It wasn’t until she was ready to leave that she finally said, “Thank you.” She didn’t specify for what, but from the look on his face, he knew. Maybe one day she’d tell him about why she called him Phil.
Martha began to hang out with her mates on a regular basis again, no longer just commuting between her office and her flat. When Darcy heard Martha call them her “mates,” the younger girl hadn’t stopped commenting on how awesomely British Martha sounded, much to Jane’s amusement.
She introduced Bobbi to the pair, and they began to have more girls’ nights out, occasionally crashed by Natasha and Maria. Underneath the restrained and unimpressed agent that Martha had known until recently, Maria turned out to be blunt, occasionally foulmouthed, and possessing of a seemingly magical ability to avoid hangovers.
She finally found out why Natasha had seemed so familiar when they met. Roughly two and a half months after the invasion, they had gone out to a karaoke bar Maria had discovered. While Bobbi and Jane did their best to sing “She Blinded Me with Science,” and Darcy oh-so-helpfully recording the entire thing, Natasha leaned over to Martha.
“This sure is a long way from La Scala,” she said.
Martha paused, her eyes widening. “That was you?” she whispered, suddenly placing Natasha’s face in an incident that she and the Doctor had run into while stopping in Milan to visit the opera. There had been Krynoids, among other things, but it had occurred right before the Family, and Martha had relegated it to a corner of her mind.
That had occurred in 1981.
“Like I said, it’s a long way since then,” Natasha replied with a shit eating grin. “Next time you see the Doctor, tell him I said hello. And ask him what the hell is the deal with the fez.”
If Martha was taking steps forward on reconnecting with friends and making new ones, her current inability to leave her job was a step back. Despite telling Fury that she would resign, she was still working for SHIELD and growing increasingly unhappy about it. While she enjoyed the work, she didn’t trust Fury, not after Phase 2 and his lying about Coulson. But there was so much work still to be done, most of which Martha didn’t feel comfortable leaving. She mentioned this to Dr. Thornton in the same week that Natasha had reminded her of La Scala.
Dr. Thornton waited a few seconds after she’d finished before asking, “Have you given any thought to what you might do after you resign from SHIELD?”
“Some,” Martha answered. “But not a whole lot. I’ve had other things on my mind.”
“When you do think about leaving SHIELD, what are your feelings when considering what happens next?”
Martha paused, considering the question. “I feel terrified,” she said slowly. “I’ve always had a plan. I’ve always known what comes next. I knew I wanted to be a doctor, so I planned for that after entering university. After medical school, UNIT approached me. But now, I don’t know. And that scares me.”
“Do you think that might have something to do with why you’re delaying your departure from SHIELD?”
Martha didn’t have an answer for him. She thought about that question for the rest of the afternoon, turning it over in her head. As a general principle, Martha didn’t act without a plan. There were a few notable exceptions-traveling with the Doctor, for example-but she liked having a plan. It made her feel comfortable, even safe. But she didn’t have a plan for her post-SHIELD life, and that terrified her. Maybe Dr. Thornton was right. Maybe that was part of why she kept finding it hard to move on from the attack.
The next afternoon, Martha stood in front of Fury’s desk at SHIELD’s New York base. He sat behind his desk, reading her resignation letter, his face unreadable.
“So you’ve made your decision,” he finally said, placing the paper down and looking up at Martha.
She nodded. “I have, sir. It just took a little longer than I expected.”
She’d written her two weeks’ notice the night before, after deliberating for hours. She still felt uncertain and slightly terrified of what the future held, but she’d made her decision. Two weeks should be enough to wrap up her role in the autopsy project and hand things over to her second-in-command.
“Any plans for the future?” he asked. She can see the calculations running through his head, wondering if there’s a way to somehow bring her back into the fold. Natasha had mentioned that SHIELD’s recruiting her had been a coup, and she didn’t think Fury would be keen to lose her so easily. He may not have a contingency plan now, but she wouldn’t put it past him to set something in place to draw her back.
“None at the moment,” she answered. “Although I believe I’m long overdue for a holiday.”
“It will be a shame to lose you, Dr. Jones,” Fury replied, standing up and offering his hand for Martha to shake. “Best of luck in your future endeavors.”
“You too,” Martha said, shaking his hand and leaving the office for her own to break the news to her team. She spent the rest of the day putting her affairs in order and making arrangements with Dr. Zulawski to begin transferring responsibilities the following week.
Surprisingly, no one tried to contact her that day. Either they were giving her space or, however unlikely, the news of her departure hadn’t started making the gossip rounds. She had lunch scheduled tomorrow with Jane, Darcy, and Bobbi, where she would let them know. After that, she’d start telling the others.
That night, though, she had no real plans other than Skyping her mum and sister. They supported her decision and begged her to visit. Martha told them she would consider it, but at the moment she was making no concrete plans. By the time they were done, there was a message in her inbox from Jack, letting her know that Nick Fury was an idiot for letting her go.
She was in the middle of writing back when someone knocked at her door. Frowning, she stood up and carefully walked over to it. Normally, the building’s doorman would ring up to let her know she had a visitor, but there had been no buzz on the intercom. She peered through the peephole and sighed when she saw who it was. Of course he would manage to slip into her building unnoticed.
“Hello,” she greeted Clint, opening the door. He was dressed in civilian clothes-a snug t-shirt and jeans-and looked nervous. “Any particular reason you decided to sneak into my building?”
“I like a challenge,” he answered, a smile briefly flitting across his face before vanishing. “Can I come in?”
She stepped back, letting him inside, and was suddenly very conscious of the fact that she was wearing pajama pants and a tank top, leaving the scar on her left arm exposed. It was too late and too hot out to cover up, however, making it visible to Clint for the first time. His eyes lingered on it briefly before moving her face as she closed the door behind him.
She didn’t know where exactly she and Clint stood. They had been rebuilding their relationship, but barely. Neither of them mentioned the email he’d sent before Loki’s invasion, and Martha still wasn’t sure if she had been reading too much into it-or if that even mattered anymore. She didn’t know if they had a friendship with an element of flirting, like what she had with Jack, or if there might be something more there. She wouldn’t deny that there was attraction on her part, but she wasn’t sure he felt the same. She wished she knew; the last thing she wanted was a repeat of her crush on the Doctor, on top of everything else.
“Rumor has it that you’re leaving SHIELD,” Clint said, getting right to the point. “Supposedly you handed Fury your two weeks’ this afternoon.”
“In a stunningly rare occurrence, the office rumor mill is one hundred percent accurate,” Martha answered, her palms sweaty.
“Why?”
That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? “A lot of things,” Martha said quietly. “Part of it is related to what happened with Loki, but the other part...Do you remember the conversation we had back in New Mexico? About what our past selves would think of us?”
“You talked about why you wanted to become a doctor,” he replied immediately. “You said that you wanted to help people.
Martha nodded. “I’m not happy with what I’m doing with SHIELD, Clint,” she answered. “It’s interesting, yeah, and I’m contributing something, but it’s not making me happy. I can’t be in a place where I feel that way.” Not again. She’d walked away from the TARDIS for similar reasons.
“Are you going to stay in New York?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I could end up anywhere.” She gave him a shaky smile. “I’m not really sure of anything at this point, except that I need time to sort things out.”
“Would I be among the things needing sorting out?” Clint asked seriously and Martha felt the bottom of her stomach drop.
“That depends,” she answered, doing her best to sound calm and taking a step closer to him. She hoped that she was reading the situation correctly. The look he was giving her was almost impossible to break down: nervousness, longing, fear, something that she was afraid to try to identify. She wondered if she looked the same way to him.
“On what?”
Martha was the type of person who liked to think things through, to have a plan in place so that she didn’t wander blindly through the unknown. She’d always been that way. But there were times, she discovered, that taking the leap without knowing what was next was necessary. Her leaving SHIELD, for example, or traveling with the Doctor. She was about to add one more thing to that list.
“On this,” Martha answered, taking the final step and leaning up to kiss Clint gently on the lips. He froze for half a second before slipping his warm, calloused hands around her waist and pulling her closer, deepening the kiss. Finally, air became a problem, and they broke apart, both breathing heavily and leaning into the other.
“So, does that help sort things out?” Clint whispered, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. He still looked uncertain, but his eyes were dark with desire, sending shivers down Martha’s spine.
“It’s a start,” she answered, enjoying the feeling of his arms around her. She still felt scared, unsure if she was making the right choice or if this would come back to bite her in the arse, like it had with the Doctor and Tom. But for now, it was a leap she was willing to take.
Besides, what was life without a little risk?
With that in mind, she leaned up for another kiss.
Warnings: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Spoilers: "The Avengers" movie, "Doctor Who" seasons 3 and 4, "Torchwood" season 2
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Maria was wrong, Martha decided about a week later. It wasn’t the first step that was the hardest. It was the second, and third, and every step that followed that was the hardest, or at least that’s how it seemed.
She made an appointment with the therapist that Maria recommended, and he agreed to see her on short notice. He was already vetted by SHIELD, and a little extra digging showed that he had some experience with UNIT, too. Even then, she came close to talking herself out of going several times before finally working up the nerve to walk through the door. She’d faced down Daleks, the Master, and Loki, and yet sitting across from this man seemed harder than all of that combined.
Dr. Thornton was an older man, with close-cropped, curly grey-streaked black hair and evaluative hazel eyes peering at Martha from behind rectangle glasses. He spoke with a faint Boston accent, almost too faint to hear except for the missing r’s breaking through as he briefly laid out the ground rules for their sessions.
“So, Martha,” he said, once he’d finished the introductions and the ground rules. “Tell me about why you’re here.”
“It’s going to sound like complete rubbish,” Martha warned, only stalling slightly.
He smiled, and the lines framing his face softened. “Tell me anyways,” he encouraged her. “Nothing you tell me is going to leave this room, remember?”
Martha took a deep breath and nodded. “About two years ago, when I was finishing up my last year of medical school...”
She delved into an abbreviated version of how she met the Doctor, before transitioning to the Year That Never Was. She couldn’t fully describe what she’d lived through that year, not even if she wanted to. But she tried, outlining the horrors she’d seen, the desperation that had fueled her, the good and the evil of that year that only a few were cursed to remember.
“I was doing fine, for the most part,” Martha explained once she’d finished telling Dr. Thornton about the Year, her voice rough. “I had a few nightmares, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. I was healing. But after what happened with Loki,” she took a shuddering breath before continuing, “it’s like I’m reliving it, and I’ve lost all the progress that I’ve made in moving on.”
She felt exposed, sitting on this couch, sharing one of her deepest secrets with this stranger. Once again, she wondered if she was doing the right thing. If she was making the choice that would help her, and not just leave her in a worse place than she already was.
“That’s understandable, given what you’ve just described to me,” Dr. Thornton responded, putting down his pen and placing his notepad on the table beside him. He leaned forward and gave Martha a reassuring smile. “I’ve worked with many individuals diagnosed with PTSD, and almost all of their cases, no matter how different they are from each other, share that element. You’re not alone in this.”
He glanced at the clock before turning his attention back to Martha. “We’re almost out of time today, but I’d like to schedule an appointment in a few days so that we can discuss possible treatments,” he said, picking up his notepad and flipping to a new page.
“I can do that,” Martha answered, her voice quiet.
“Good. Before you go, there is something that you can start, however,” he said, writing something down that she couldn’t read. “From what you’ve told me, it sounds like you’ve been isolating yourself from your friends and family.” At Martha’s slow nod, he continued, “Start reconnecting with them. Don’t be afraid to use them as a support net. You don’t need to tell them everything, but trust them to be there to catch you. They’re more valuable than you might think they are.”
After finalizing a follow-up appointment in three days, Martha went to her favorite café to think. In the corner with a cup of Earl Grey, she reviewed the last few hours. She still felt on edge about the entire thing, but she was less afraid that Dr. Thornton was going to write her off. If he had, there had been no indication of it during their session.
Her mobile buzzed, and she fished it out from her pocket to read a text from Jane, letting her know that she and Darcy were having a bad science movie marathon and wondering if Martha would want to attend.
Start reconnecting with them. Dr. Thornton’s words rang in her head as she read the text several times, before pressing the reply button.
When and where? Almost immediately after she hit Enter, her mobile buzzed again with Jane’s reply.
Later that night, the look on Jane’s face when she opened the door to Martha’s hesitant knock made Martha feel guilty about brushing off earlier attempts to hang out.
“Good, you came,” Jane said, stepping back so that Martha could come in. “Darcy’s getting the popcorn ready, and we have Netflix queued up and ready to go. Any preferences?”
It was a fun night. Jane and Martha wholeheartedly mocked the science behind “The Core,” while Darcy offered commentary on the less-than-original plot devices and threw popcorn at the screen. After that, they switched to Boggle, something that only Darcy could make a cutthroat sport. Martha stayed later than she’d originally planned, and when she finally did leave, with plans for brunch the next day, she felt lighter than she had in a long time
But the nightmares still came, and once again she fled to her couch and curled up underneath a blanket, only this time with a worn copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets clutched in her hand. Reconnecting didn’t just have to mean reconnecting with people, after all. She finally drifted back to sleep just as the sky began to lighten, her dreams shifting to more pleasant memories.
The afternoon, after saying goodbye to Jane and Darcy, Martha decided to go for a walk through Central Park, just to stretch her legs. Unlike the last time she’d been here, the park was mostly deserted, the cloudy weather having warned people away.
Martha found herself back at the bench overlooking the former site of Hoovertown. A few brave individuals defied the predicted rain and sat on the lawn, but it was eerily empty compared to last time. She’d been sitting there for roughly five minutes when the sound of a boot scuffing against ground behind her drew her attention.
“Didn’t you ever learn it’s rude to stalk people?” she asked, tilting her head back to look at Clint. “I thought I’d gotten that point across back in New Mexico.”
“I’m a slow learner,” Clint replied, sitting down next to her.
“Really? There’s a shocker.”
“Cute.”
“I try,” Martha retorted, before switching the subject. “So, is there any reason in particular you were stalking me? Because like I said before, it’s rude. And quite creepy.”
Clint shrugged, answering, “I don’t suppose you’d buy the ‘I happened to be in the area’ excuse.” At Martha’s eye roll, he snorted. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“You’re stalling,” Martha pointed out with a raised eyebrow. “And not very well, I might add.”
He sobered and looked down at his hands. “I guess I just wanted to see you.”
“I do have a mobile. And an email address that I seem to recall you using in the not-so-distant past,” Martha pointed out sensibly. “You could have contacted me that way.”
“Okay, I get it, stalking is bad and I shouldn’t do it. Email is better. You’ve made your point,” Clint said with a wince.
“Just remember that for next time.”
They lapsed into silence, neither sure what to say. This was the first time since the attempted invasion that they had been together for a reason other than work, and Martha found herself at a loss what to she should do. They just sat there, staring out at the lawn in front of them with nothing to say.
“I never did apologize for calling you ‘Doc’ back in you lab,” Clint finally broke the silence, turning his head to look at Martha. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry about that, Martha.”
“Apology accepted,” Martha answered quietly, leaning back against the bench. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you lately. It’s been... it’s been a rough few weeks.”
Clint let out a short laugh. “You don’t need to apologize for that, since I’ve been doing the same thing.” He paused, before continuing, “I think it’s been a rough few weeks for everybody.”
“That’s probably the understatement of the year,” Martha said, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth despite the subject matter.
“I don’t know, I can think of a few more. Tasha’s definition of a quick workout, for one.”
Martha’s smile widened at the thought. She looked up at the darkening sky and stood up with a sigh. “Not that I don’t mind the company, but I think I better head back to my flat, unless I want to be stuck in a romcom cliché and get caught out in the rain.” She blushed, realizing that somehow she’d managed to bypass her brain to mouth filter.
“Cliché, huh?” he asked, getting to his feet and smirking at her. “Now why would you say that?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Martha lied, trying and failing to keep her flaming cheeks under control.
“You’re a shit liar, Jones.”
Martha refused to dignify the comment with an answer. They walked out of the park together, not talking until they reached the edge closest to Martha’s flat.
“So, are we okay, Martha?” Clint asked, looking at her with concern written all over his face.
Martha smiled at him, reached out and took his hand. “Of course we are,” she answered, giving his hand a squeeze. “Just call next time you want to talk.”
He laughed, and they parted, going their separate ways. It started raining when she was less than two blocks away from her flat, and she rushed to get there before she was completely soaked. She’d just stepped inside when her mobile buzzed with a text message from Clint.
This enough of a romcom cliché for you?
“Arse,” Martha muttered, a smile on her face.
~*~*~
Two steps forward, one step back. That’s how things seemed to go for the next few weeks. Therapy with Dr. Thornton helped. He’d started her on cognitive-behavioral therapy, working on isolating triggers and exploring why they made her react the way that they did. Most of the triggers were small and almost illogical in their connections, but they were relatively easy to identify and talk about. Others, like the sound of the Master’s distinctive four-part beat, inevitably sent her into a panic attack. Her nightmares were slowly starting to become less frequent, but the ones she did have were just as brutal as the ones she’d been having before starting therapy, if not more.
She broke the news to Steve about her diagnosis over dinner at his flat in Brooklyn, after her second appointment with Dr. Thornton. He didn’t seem all that surprised.
“You suspected?” she asked, curling up in the worn armchair in his living room that she’d long since claimed as her own.
“I think we all did,” Steve answered, looking a little uncomfortable. Despite the fact that he’d been unfrozen for over six months, he was still very much a man from another era. “You just seemed...different after everything.”
“‘Scattered’ is apparently the word Coulson used.” It was better than broken, which was how Martha was still describing herself.
“He did say something along those lines when I went to go see him,” Steve commented, almost too quietly for Martha. He changed the subject to baseball, something he was still trying and failing to interest Martha in.
It wasn’t until later that she began putting the pieces together and realized what Coulson had been doing. He’d been ringing the alarms, doing his best to help her, in apparent repayment for saving his life back on the Helicarrier. She didn’t mention to it when she went to see him, however, and instead poked fun at him for his Captain America memorbilia collection. It wasn’t until she was ready to leave that she finally said, “Thank you.” She didn’t specify for what, but from the look on his face, he knew. Maybe one day she’d tell him about why she called him Phil.
Martha began to hang out with her mates on a regular basis again, no longer just commuting between her office and her flat. When Darcy heard Martha call them her “mates,” the younger girl hadn’t stopped commenting on how awesomely British Martha sounded, much to Jane’s amusement.
She introduced Bobbi to the pair, and they began to have more girls’ nights out, occasionally crashed by Natasha and Maria. Underneath the restrained and unimpressed agent that Martha had known until recently, Maria turned out to be blunt, occasionally foulmouthed, and possessing of a seemingly magical ability to avoid hangovers.
She finally found out why Natasha had seemed so familiar when they met. Roughly two and a half months after the invasion, they had gone out to a karaoke bar Maria had discovered. While Bobbi and Jane did their best to sing “She Blinded Me with Science,” and Darcy oh-so-helpfully recording the entire thing, Natasha leaned over to Martha.
“This sure is a long way from La Scala,” she said.
Martha paused, her eyes widening. “That was you?” she whispered, suddenly placing Natasha’s face in an incident that she and the Doctor had run into while stopping in Milan to visit the opera. There had been Krynoids, among other things, but it had occurred right before the Family, and Martha had relegated it to a corner of her mind.
That had occurred in 1981.
“Like I said, it’s a long way since then,” Natasha replied with a shit eating grin. “Next time you see the Doctor, tell him I said hello. And ask him what the hell is the deal with the fez.”
If Martha was taking steps forward on reconnecting with friends and making new ones, her current inability to leave her job was a step back. Despite telling Fury that she would resign, she was still working for SHIELD and growing increasingly unhappy about it. While she enjoyed the work, she didn’t trust Fury, not after Phase 2 and his lying about Coulson. But there was so much work still to be done, most of which Martha didn’t feel comfortable leaving. She mentioned this to Dr. Thornton in the same week that Natasha had reminded her of La Scala.
Dr. Thornton waited a few seconds after she’d finished before asking, “Have you given any thought to what you might do after you resign from SHIELD?”
“Some,” Martha answered. “But not a whole lot. I’ve had other things on my mind.”
“When you do think about leaving SHIELD, what are your feelings when considering what happens next?”
Martha paused, considering the question. “I feel terrified,” she said slowly. “I’ve always had a plan. I’ve always known what comes next. I knew I wanted to be a doctor, so I planned for that after entering university. After medical school, UNIT approached me. But now, I don’t know. And that scares me.”
“Do you think that might have something to do with why you’re delaying your departure from SHIELD?”
Martha didn’t have an answer for him. She thought about that question for the rest of the afternoon, turning it over in her head. As a general principle, Martha didn’t act without a plan. There were a few notable exceptions-traveling with the Doctor, for example-but she liked having a plan. It made her feel comfortable, even safe. But she didn’t have a plan for her post-SHIELD life, and that terrified her. Maybe Dr. Thornton was right. Maybe that was part of why she kept finding it hard to move on from the attack.
The next afternoon, Martha stood in front of Fury’s desk at SHIELD’s New York base. He sat behind his desk, reading her resignation letter, his face unreadable.
“So you’ve made your decision,” he finally said, placing the paper down and looking up at Martha.
She nodded. “I have, sir. It just took a little longer than I expected.”
She’d written her two weeks’ notice the night before, after deliberating for hours. She still felt uncertain and slightly terrified of what the future held, but she’d made her decision. Two weeks should be enough to wrap up her role in the autopsy project and hand things over to her second-in-command.
“Any plans for the future?” he asked. She can see the calculations running through his head, wondering if there’s a way to somehow bring her back into the fold. Natasha had mentioned that SHIELD’s recruiting her had been a coup, and she didn’t think Fury would be keen to lose her so easily. He may not have a contingency plan now, but she wouldn’t put it past him to set something in place to draw her back.
“None at the moment,” she answered. “Although I believe I’m long overdue for a holiday.”
“It will be a shame to lose you, Dr. Jones,” Fury replied, standing up and offering his hand for Martha to shake. “Best of luck in your future endeavors.”
“You too,” Martha said, shaking his hand and leaving the office for her own to break the news to her team. She spent the rest of the day putting her affairs in order and making arrangements with Dr. Zulawski to begin transferring responsibilities the following week.
Surprisingly, no one tried to contact her that day. Either they were giving her space or, however unlikely, the news of her departure hadn’t started making the gossip rounds. She had lunch scheduled tomorrow with Jane, Darcy, and Bobbi, where she would let them know. After that, she’d start telling the others.
That night, though, she had no real plans other than Skyping her mum and sister. They supported her decision and begged her to visit. Martha told them she would consider it, but at the moment she was making no concrete plans. By the time they were done, there was a message in her inbox from Jack, letting her know that Nick Fury was an idiot for letting her go.
She was in the middle of writing back when someone knocked at her door. Frowning, she stood up and carefully walked over to it. Normally, the building’s doorman would ring up to let her know she had a visitor, but there had been no buzz on the intercom. She peered through the peephole and sighed when she saw who it was. Of course he would manage to slip into her building unnoticed.
“Hello,” she greeted Clint, opening the door. He was dressed in civilian clothes-a snug t-shirt and jeans-and looked nervous. “Any particular reason you decided to sneak into my building?”
“I like a challenge,” he answered, a smile briefly flitting across his face before vanishing. “Can I come in?”
She stepped back, letting him inside, and was suddenly very conscious of the fact that she was wearing pajama pants and a tank top, leaving the scar on her left arm exposed. It was too late and too hot out to cover up, however, making it visible to Clint for the first time. His eyes lingered on it briefly before moving her face as she closed the door behind him.
She didn’t know where exactly she and Clint stood. They had been rebuilding their relationship, but barely. Neither of them mentioned the email he’d sent before Loki’s invasion, and Martha still wasn’t sure if she had been reading too much into it-or if that even mattered anymore. She didn’t know if they had a friendship with an element of flirting, like what she had with Jack, or if there might be something more there. She wouldn’t deny that there was attraction on her part, but she wasn’t sure he felt the same. She wished she knew; the last thing she wanted was a repeat of her crush on the Doctor, on top of everything else.
“Rumor has it that you’re leaving SHIELD,” Clint said, getting right to the point. “Supposedly you handed Fury your two weeks’ this afternoon.”
“In a stunningly rare occurrence, the office rumor mill is one hundred percent accurate,” Martha answered, her palms sweaty.
“Why?”
That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? “A lot of things,” Martha said quietly. “Part of it is related to what happened with Loki, but the other part...Do you remember the conversation we had back in New Mexico? About what our past selves would think of us?”
“You talked about why you wanted to become a doctor,” he replied immediately. “You said that you wanted to help people.
Martha nodded. “I’m not happy with what I’m doing with SHIELD, Clint,” she answered. “It’s interesting, yeah, and I’m contributing something, but it’s not making me happy. I can’t be in a place where I feel that way.” Not again. She’d walked away from the TARDIS for similar reasons.
“Are you going to stay in New York?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I could end up anywhere.” She gave him a shaky smile. “I’m not really sure of anything at this point, except that I need time to sort things out.”
“Would I be among the things needing sorting out?” Clint asked seriously and Martha felt the bottom of her stomach drop.
“That depends,” she answered, doing her best to sound calm and taking a step closer to him. She hoped that she was reading the situation correctly. The look he was giving her was almost impossible to break down: nervousness, longing, fear, something that she was afraid to try to identify. She wondered if she looked the same way to him.
“On what?”
Martha was the type of person who liked to think things through, to have a plan in place so that she didn’t wander blindly through the unknown. She’d always been that way. But there were times, she discovered, that taking the leap without knowing what was next was necessary. Her leaving SHIELD, for example, or traveling with the Doctor. She was about to add one more thing to that list.
“On this,” Martha answered, taking the final step and leaning up to kiss Clint gently on the lips. He froze for half a second before slipping his warm, calloused hands around her waist and pulling her closer, deepening the kiss. Finally, air became a problem, and they broke apart, both breathing heavily and leaning into the other.
“So, does that help sort things out?” Clint whispered, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. He still looked uncertain, but his eyes were dark with desire, sending shivers down Martha’s spine.
“It’s a start,” she answered, enjoying the feeling of his arms around her. She still felt scared, unsure if she was making the right choice or if this would come back to bite her in the arse, like it had with the Doctor and Tom. But for now, it was a leap she was willing to take.
Besides, what was life without a little risk?
With that in mind, she leaned up for another kiss.