Martha: Chapters Two and Three

[mewiet]

Title: Martha
Author: mewiet
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Martha Jones, Ninth Doctor, Tish Jones, Clive Finch, and the Nestene Consciousness
Disclaimer: Obviously I don't own Doctor Who or I wouldn't be writing fanfic for it.
Summary: What would've happened if Nine had met Martha instead of Rose when the Nestene Consciousness invaded Earth?
Author’s Notes: Since I forgot to post the second chapter here, I'm just going to do Chapter Two and Three in the same post.

Previous Chapter: Chapter One



Martha

Chapter Two

"The whole of central London has been closed off as police investigate the fire. Early reports indicate-"

The television snapped off with a pop in response to Martha aiming the remote at it. She was propped up against two pillows in bed, not at all ready to face the morning, let alone the calls from her family that she knew were due to begin pouring in again at any moment.

"Yes, Mum, I know it's all over the news. No, Mum, you don't need to change your flight, I'm already here with her and she's fine, the paramedics gave everyone a clean bill of health last night." Tish walked into the room with her cell phone pressed to her ear. "Well of course I'd let you talk to her, but -" she looked pointedly at her sister "-she's sleeping right now and after last night, it's probably best she gets her rest, don't you think? Yes, I'll have her call you as soon as she's up, I promise."

Martha mouthed, 'Thank you.'

Tish nodded. "I love you too. Goodbye." She hung up and set her phone onto the dresser, then flopped down on the end of the bed beside Martha. "So, how are you really?"

"A little less rattled then last night maybe, but I don't feel any different." Martha pushed off her covers. "You know you didn't have to come over last night, right?"

"I guess I'm a little more like Mum than I care to admit."

Martha leaned forward to hug Tish. "A little bit isn't that bad."

Tish noticed the skeletal hand sitting on Martha's dresser and got up to grab it. "What's this, then?"

Martha shrugged. "Just a piece of a broken skeleton model." She shook her head. "It's nothing."

"Well this could be handy," she smirked. "Like your own little Thing." Tish set the hand on the bed and maneuvered its fingers so that it appeared to be crawling up the comforter. "Whatcha think?"

Martha slapped her hand down on the skeleton hand. "Don't do that," she said nervously. "That's creepy. I should get rid of it." She grabbed the hand and walked over to the bathroom where she chucked it into the waste bin. "And, actually, I think I might to get out of here."

"Where do you want to go?"

"No, I mean, by myself. No offense."

Tish leaned back on the bed and shrugged. "None taken. I get it. Go have a little stroll, a little fresh air. Just make sure to take your cell with you."

"Yes, Mum."

"Now that's creepy."

After Tish left the room Martha quickly shed her night clothes for a pair of hip huggers, a swoop neck burgundy blouse, some high heeled boots, and a matching burgundy leather jacket. She loosely ran a brush through her hair and then pulled it up into a messy bun on the back of her head. After applying a thin layer of dark cherry lip gloss, she grabbed her purse - and cell phone - and headed for the front door. "I'm heading out now!" she hollered. But the moment she opened the door, she found a buzzing blue light in her face.

"What are you doing here?"

"Me?" Martha glared. "I live here! What's your excuse?" She suddenly snatched the wand from his hand. "And what is this thing? Some kind of burgle tool?"

"Hey!" The Doctor snapped. "Don't take other people's things!" He suddenly wedged his way into the apartment.

"I'll stop taking your things when you stop stalking me!" Martha grabbed The Doctor by the flap of his jacket. "Are you planning to blow up my flat now too?"

"Why would I do that?" he scoffed. "I got a signal." He tapped the wand. "But it must be the wrong one. You're not plastic, are you?" He knocked on Martha's forehead and shook her head. "No." He glared at his device. "What's wrong with you?"

"Funny, I keep wondering the same thing."

"Martha, is someone at the door?" Tish stepped out from the kitchen and stopped when she saw The Doctor. "Oh, hello." She raised an eyebrow in her sister's direction.

Martha shook her head. "Someone from The Enquirer. Give us…ten minutes."

Tish pursed her lips. "Maybe he could give me ten minutes after?" she winked and disappeared back into the kitchen.

Martha led her mystery man into the small room that served as her living room. "Now I want to know everything, I think you owe me at least that much." She pointed to the couch. "Now sit. And talk."

The Doctor plopped down on the couch. "Comfy." He ran his hand over the armest. "Leather. I like leather."

"I can tell," Martha frowned. "But I don't want to hear about my couch."

"You said 'everything.' Stream of consciousness, I assumed."

"Don't assume."

Martha took a seat in an overstuffed chair. "What happened last night at the school?"

"I told you, living-"

"Yeah, 'living plastic.' But what does that mean? How can plastic be living?"

Before The Doctor could answer, there was a tapping sound up the back of the couch. Suddenly the skeletal hand which had been thrown away appeared and launched off the back cushion and clamped around The Doctor's neck.

"Oh my god!" Martha gasped, jumping up. She grabbed the remote control from the glass coffee table and attempted to beat the skeletal hand off. Instead, it only got irritated and grabbed onto Martha's face instead. She held back a scream as its force shoved her against the wall and The Doctor desperately attempted to pull it off. She could feel the bony fingers digging into her skin and making her eyes water. Finally, when she felt the hard plastic fingers begin to break the flesh, The Doctor tore it from her face and waved his wand at it, clicking his button on the side as if he were searching for the right setting.

"There!" he announced proudly. "I've cut off the signal." He tossed the hand at Martha. "Harmless."

"Very funny," Martha retorted sarcastically. "Signal to what? I thought you took care of that on the roof?"

"That was only one signal. It's like taking the batteries out of your phone, it stops the phone from working but you'd have to disconnect the satellite to bring down all phones."

"So where's the proverbial satellite?"

"I'm still working on that." The Doctor headed for the front door.

"I'll help you then."

"No," he said, opening the door. "You won't."

"I will and I am. You shouldn't have blown up my school and then shown up again at my front door if you didn't want my help." She followed him out the door and chased him down several flights of stairs as he skillfully tried to avoid her questions. "Do you want me to go to the police?"

"What would that do?"

"Get people killed, you said so yourself."

"Is that supposed to scare me? Because you were the one who refused to let anyone die last night. I know you wouldn't do so now."

Martha crossed her arms. "Fine. But I won't leave you alone until you're straight with me."

"I believe that," he chuckled. The Doctor stopped suddenly and turned to Martha. He examined her face and then touched her cheek with his thumb. "It cut you," he said, wiping away a smear of blood.

"I - hadn't noticed."

"Look, last night I was taking care of a very bad thing. This morning I was tracking the plastic and the plastic was tracking me. You were just an accident, you got in the way. It," he said, holding up the skeleton hand, "reactivated this morning in your flat because it thought you might lead it to me. But now I've neutralized it, so you can go off on your merry little way."

"And who's to stop it from reactivating again?"

"I'm taking it with me, so that won't be a problem again. Safe and sound, see?"

Martha shook her head. "I don't believe you. There's more to it than that, but you seem to think I'm too thick to understand."

"You're human."

"And you're not?"

"Nope. Neither is the plastic."

"Really?" she said skeptically. "Then what are you?"

"A long way from home."

"All right, so say for a moment that I accept that. Humans have withstood a lot, so what makes you think I can't handle this?"

The Doctor studied her. "Okay, Martha. This," he said, waving the skeleton hand, "or rather, the being controlling it, wants to take over the human race."

"And they're taking over med school mannequins to do it? What good does that do? Scare off a generation of people from turning into doctors and saving lives?"

"Not just med school mannequins, all mannequins, all over the world."

"Okay…"

"Do you believe me?"

"Maybe."

"Well you're still listening, that's something."

"I am. So explain: who are you?"

"I told you: I'm The Doctor."

Martha shook her head. "No. You have to earn that title."

The Doctor stepped in front of her, stared her down, but Martha didn't flinch. "It's like when you're a kid, the first time that they tell you that the Earth's turning and you just can't quite believe it 'cause everything looks like it's standing still. I can feel it." He grabbed Martha's hand.

His hand gripped around hers made Martha feel weightless, somehow, like she was suspended in a dream and everything was revolving around her. It was intoxicating, like a narcotics induced high.

"The turn of the Earth; the ground beneath our feet, spinning at a thousand miles an hour. The entire planet is hurdling around the sun at sixty-seven-thousand miles an hour. I can feel it. We are falling through space, you and me…clinging to the skin of this tiny little world. And if we let go…" He released her hand.

Martha closed her eyes, suddenly experiencing a feeling of vertigo.

"That's who I am. Now, forget me. Go home." He used the skeleton finger to point back the way they'd come from and then turned and walked across the street.

Martha touched her forehead, still feeling dizzy and woozy, as though she'd drunken too much at the pub the night before. She closed her eyes, hoping for the feeling to subside. It started to, but then she heard a noise, a whirring-whooshing sound that she'd never heard before, and she opened her eyes but saw bubbling black spots in her vision, the way someone with low blood pressure might if they stood up too fast. Within the blurs she thought she saw a blue box across the street, in the general direction in which The Doctor had headed, but her vision was still too fuzzy to make it out. When it cleared she saw no sign of The Doctor anywhere. Or the blue box.

Chapter Three

Doctor?

Martha stared at the word in her search box. She didn't bother to click the search tab, it was too vague. She needed something more direct, but what? She rubbed her forehead and sipped on a mug of chamomile that Tish had made her.

The Doctor and living plastic?

And the search came back instantly, but the results had nothing to do with the man she'd seen. The top links referenced a man called Dr. Rhenborg and his so-called living plastic creations. Artwork, she guessed. Or possibly some kind of top-of-the-line medical technology that she had yet to hear of, which seemed unlikely. Either way, it wasn't of use to her. As she racked her brain, she suddenly remembered the glimpse of the blue box, the one she wasn't sure had even been there in the first place.

The Doctor and the blue box?

This time the first link that came back had promise: Doctor Who? That was certainly the question she wanted answered, so she clicked on the link and it brought up a mint colored page with a black and white photograph. Everything in the photograph had been blurred out except one face: the face of The Doctor. Below, a message in bold type read: Have you seen this man? Below that was a contact link for someone referred to only as Clive. With nothing else to work with, Martha clicked the link.

An hour later Martha found herself parked in front of the house of a man who called himself Clive Finch. She didn't know much about him, other than he had a wife and two kids. She tapped on the steering wheel, wondering if she should've brought Tish with her or not. "Not," she finally said. "Tish doesn't need to be involved. Not yet." Martha climbed out and knocked on the front door. A moment later a boy answered, probably somewhere between fourteen and fifteen. "Hi," she smiled. "You must be Clive's son? I'm here to see him."

"Dad!" the boy hollered, uninterested. "It's one of your nutters!"

Martha smiled awkwardly as the boy wandered away from the door. Moments later a hulking man approached with a friendly smile. "Hi, Clive?"

"And you must be Martha."

Martha offered her hand. "Nice to meet you, Clive. Good name," she remarked. "Same as my dad's."

"Oh, thank you," Clive nodded. "Named after my father, actually."

"Who is it?" a woman's voice called from upstairs.

"Oh, uh, something to do with The Doctor!" Clive called back. "She's been reading the website." Clive turned back to Martha. "Please come in, I'm back in the shed."

"'She'?" the woman's voice asked, followed by footsteps down the stairs. "She's been reading the website? She's a 'she'?"

Martha waved politely as Clive ushered her down the hall, through the kitchen, and out the back door into the shed. It was cramped and smelt of dust and hot oil. She waved her hand, swirling the dust in the air around that shine in the shreds of light from the covered windows; she nearly sneezed.

"A lot of this stuff's quite sensitive, I couldn't just send it to ya. People might intercept, if ya know what I mean. If you dig deep enough, and keep a lively mind, this 'Doctor' keeps cropping up all over the place: political diaries, conspiracy theories, even ghost stories. No first name, no last name, just 'The Doctor.' Always, 'The Doctor.' And the title seems to be passed down from father to son, it appears to be an inheritance. That's your Doctor there, isn't it?" Clive asked, pointing to his website pulled up on his computer screen.

"Yeah," Martha agreed.

"I tracked it down to the Washington Public Archive just last year. The online photo's enhanced, but if we look at the original…" He pulled a handful of photos from a plastic bag and began to hold them up for Martha. He pointed out The Doctor's face, which was already circled in red Sharpie with arrows pointing to it. He had three of the same photo, but each one was zoomed in a little more. When he showed her the final one he explained, "November the twenty-second, nineteen-sixty-three."

"The assassination of President Kennedy," Martha interrupted, even before Clive's hand trailed down to the picture of the President and his wife in their fateful motorcade. "His father?" she asked aloud.

"Going further back: April nineteen-twelve. This is a photograph of the Daniels family of Southampton. 'And friend.'" He held up another photograph, this time of The Doctor in Edwardian clothing.

"He's identical," Martha gawked. "I know genetics can be a little crazy - I've got a cousin that looks almost identical to me - but this is insane!"

Clive nodded. "This was taken the day before they were to sail to the new world on the Titanic. For some unknown reason they cancelled the trip and survived. Uh, and here we are," he said, reached for a plastic bag pinned to the wall. He shook out a hand drawing. "Eighteen-eighty-three, another Doctor!" He flashed the picture at Martha.

What struck her the most was that, not only did the drawing look identical to the photos, but that this one also wore identical clothing to her Doctor. "That's impossible." Then she recalled The Doctor's claim: an alien. She gingerly touched the pulse on her wrist, it had sped up considerably.

"This one washed up on the coast of Sumatra, the very night that Krakatoa exploded. The Doctor is a legend woven throughout history. When disaster comes, he's there. He brings a storm in his wake and he has one constant companion."

"Who?"

"Death."

Martha flinched and the thick silence of the hot shed air was interrupted by the buzz of her cellular. She held up a single finger. "Excuse me a moment."

"Yes, of course," Clive smiled.

Martha stepped outside the shed, back into the daylight and soft breeze. She felt the wispy hairs from her messy updo tickle the back of her neck as she checked her caller I.D. "Tish?"

"Hello, Martha."

Martha frowned. "Hey…uh, are you all right?"

"Why wouldn't I be all right?"

"You just…sound a little off, that's all."

"We should meet for lunch, let's meet for lunch!"

Martha blinked and checked her watch. She was surprised to discover how long she'd been out. "Uh, yeah, sorry, I didn't realize I'd been gone so long. Has Mum called again?"

"Pizza! I want pizza!"

"O-kay," Martha laughed. "Pizza, then. You want to meet at Gandolfo's?"

"Gandolfo's."

"Yeah, you remember, it's around the corner from-" But before she could finish, the call went dead. Martha stared at her phone. She had a nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach, but she didn't have enough information to understand why yet. She tried to shake herself off and reentered the shed. "I'm sorry, that was my sister, she wanted to meet up for lunch."

Clive nodded understandingly. "I suppose our time's up then?" He laughed jovially. "Well, you know where to find me if you need to know anything else. And I'll put you on my mailing list too, in case I find out anything else we should meet about," he promised.

"I'd appreciate that." Martha followed the man back through the house and smiled at his wife as she was leaving. The visit had only left her with more questions than answers, all of which she pondered over and over on her drive to Gandolfo's. When she arrived she was surprised to find that Tish was already there, but before she even reached the table, she noticed that her sister looked bizarre. Her hair and makeup seemed…strange, almost as though it had been painted on like a Barbie doll's. "Tish?"

"Sister! Sis. Sissy." Tish exclaimed, her mouth shaping into a disturbingly wide grin.

"You must be hungry. Or gearing up to ask me for money, I can't decide which." Martha slid into the seat opposite her sister and tried not to let onto the fact that she was staring at her. "Trying something new with your makeup?"

"What?" Tish asked distractedly. "Where have you been?"

Martha stared at a glass of ice water on the table. "I, uh, just went to meet up with someone."

"Who?"

"No one," Martha evaded. "Just somebody I met online. Not like an Internet date or anything like that. And don't go telling Mum! You know she'd just freak out."

"What did he say?" Tish pressed.

"'He'?" she asked, recalling Clive's wife's reaction to her. "Look at you, always assuming the worst. Could've been a she."

"What did he say?" Tish's voice gleamed with a near steel edge. Then, in literally a blink, she forced out a fat smile. "You can tell me, sister. Sis. Sissy. Tell me! Tell me!"

"What's gotten into you?" Martha asked, narrowing her eyes.

"One cheese pizza!"

"We haven't even ordered yet," Martha snapped without looking up.

"Tell me!" Tish yelled, suddenly slamming her fist on the table. "Tell me about The Doctor!"

Martha suddenly sat ramrod straight in her chair. "I never told you about The Doctor."

Tish smiled big again. "Oops?" She grabbed Martha's hand, pinning her to the table. "I need to find out how much he knows, so tell me where he is!"

"Doesn't anybody want this pizza?"

Suddenly Martha gasped, recognizing the voice. She inwardly cursed herself for not having done so sooner. Nay, immediately. She looked up at the same time Tish did and found The Doctor standing at her side, holding a medium sized pizza tray with a single cheese pizza and the pizza slicer on it.

"Ah, gotcha!" Tish grinned.

"Why don't we just cut to the chase?" The Doctor winked. He grabbed the pizza cutter off the tray and threw it at Tish.

The pizza cutter smacked into Tish's forehead in time with Martha's horrified gasp and then her forehead wiggled, absorbing the pizza cutter. Suddenly she held up her hand and a rippling moved down her throat, over her shoulder, across her arm, and then the blade of the pizza cutter emerged through her palm until she was holding the handle. "Cut your losses, Doctor?" She lunged at The Doctor, slashing with the pizza cutter.

The Doctor flipped the pizza tray over, catching the blade of the knife on it like a sword against a shield. He then shoved back, knocking Tish on her bum, and grabbed Martha by the hand to pull her off her chair.

Tish's arm suddenly expanded into a rubbery looking pizza handle and she smashed it down on the table, breaking it in two.

Shouts rang out across the restaurant as The Doctor lunged at Tish, grabbing her in a headlock. He twisted her head until it popped off in his hands and then stepped back, staring at her glaring face in his hands.

"Don't think that's going to stop me!" Behind The Doctor, Tish's headless body began to run blindly around the room, bashing and smashing anything it could find.

For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Martha ran to the fire alarm and yanked it down. "Everyone out!" she hollered. "Run!"

The Doctor motioned to Martha to follow him through the kitchen and out the back door into the alley. Once out he threw his weight against the door and began to wave his silver wand up and down against the frame.

"What are you doing?" Martha demanded. "Come on!"

"You want it to follow us?" The Doctor snapped in return.

Martha whirled around, about to fire off another reply when she saw a large blue Police Call Box standing in the open alley. She blinked a couple times, recalling the glimpse she thought she saw of it earlier in the day. But she didn't have time to dwell on it, because the pounding on the door became louder. She ran to a chained gate and pulled on it. "We're trapped."

"Nah," The Doctor said dismissively. He pulled out a key from his inner pocket and stuck it into the lock on the blue box.

"In there?" Martha echoed incredulously.

"Stay out, come in, it's your choice," The Doctor said before disappearing through the doors.

Martha watched the indents in the door growing larger. She finally pushed through the door and stopped halfway up a metal ramp as the door shut behind her. Inside, it was like a whole other world. "Is this some kind of optical illusion?"

"You tell me."

"It's bigger on the inside!"

The Doctor stood at the console, hooking Tish's head up to some wires. "I hadn't noticed."

"Is there a - a crew or something?"

"Just me. Now, shut up a minute." The Doctor waved his wand over Tish's head. Or the thing that had been pretending to be Tish. "You see, the arm was too simple," he announced. "But a head's perfect. I can use it to trace the signal back to the original source." He laid the head down on the console and spun around to face Martha. "Right! Where d'you want to start?"

Martha looked around. "You weren't lying when you said you were an alien."

"Right."

"So…what kind of alien?"

"Time Lord."

"Time Lord?" Martha laughed in spite of herself. "Well, that's not pompous at all." She suddenly waved her arm around as if she were holding a marker. "That little wand thing, with the blue light, what's that?"

"This?" The Doctor said, producing the object in question. At Martha's nod he explained, "A sonic screwdriver. It uses sonic waves to screw and unscrew things. It started out as a convenience, but as with most technology, it's advanced a lot since then."

"So that's what you did out there? You used it to kind of…screw the door in place? Without screws?"

"Lock it," The Doctor said flatly. "Yes." The Doctor motioned his arm in a wide arc. "This is called the TARDIS. T-A-R-D-I-S. It stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space."

"So it's a spaceship that looks like a wooden box?"

"A Police Box from the nineteen-fifties."

"Right," Martha whispered. Suddenly she gasped and her hand flew to her mouth in revulsion.

"Culture shock," The Doctor concluded. "That's all right, it happens to the best of us."

Martha ran up the remainder of the ramp and shoved The Doctor out of the way. She began to try and pick up the melting globs of the rubber Tish-shaped head. "Tish?" she rasped. "Tish!"

"No!" The Doctor yelped. "No, no, no, no!"

"What's happened to her?" Martha demanded. "What happened to Tish?"

But The Doctor was running around the console, too busy pulling levers and pushing buttons to pay attention to her. "The signal's fading!" He seemed to be talking more to himself than to her. "Wait, no, there - there!" The machine beneath their feet began to shake and whir. "No, no, no, no, no, no! Oh, no! Almost there, almost there!" he yelled, lifting his hands towards the ceiling. "Here we go!"

Martha suddenly flew around the console, catching The Doctor off guard. She grabbed him by the flaps of his jacket and thrust him up against the railing of the ship. Bits of melted Tish were rubbing off on his clothes. "No!" she shouted. "You are not going anywhere until you tell me what's happened to my sister!"

"I - I don't know," he sputtered, genuinely shocked by her abrasive course of action.

"My sister is a melting blob of rubber and you don't know? You tore off her head and you don't know?"

"This," he said, wiping a bit of the melted rubber off his jacket, "isn't your sister. She's a copy!"

"Yes, I thought as much about that when you threw a pizza cutter into her forehead!"

"So why are you chastising me about pulling off her head if you'd already worked out the details?"

"Because now that head is melting! Is it like in the sci-fi shows, when the copy dies it means the real person has died too? Is my sister dead?"

"I don't know."

"Then what bloody good are you?!"