Doctor Who fic: The Other Side of the World (27/31)
Title: The Other Side of the World (27/31)
Rating: PG
Characters: Rose, Martha
Timeline: Season three
Summary: Season three AU; After a fateful visit to Royal Hope Hospital, Rose finds herself lost in time and space with medical student Martha Jones. As they struggle to find a way home, they meet old friends, and old enemies, along the way...
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine. Any borrowed dialogue belongs to Russell T Davies and the BBC.
A/N: A sequel to "The Other Side". It's not necessary reading; it just sets up the premise that it was the Doctor who was trapped in Pete's World, not Rose. And a shout-out to my awesome betas: joking and quean_of_swords. This story wouldn't have been posted without you guys.
Chapter One. Chapter Two. Chapter Three. Chapter Four. Chapter Five. Chapter Six. Chapter Seven. Chapter Eight. Chapter Nine. Chapter Ten. Chapter Eleven. Chapter Twelve. Chapter Thirteen. Chapter Fourteen. Chapter Fifteen. Chapter Sixteen. Chapter Seventeen. Chapter Eighteen. Chapter Nineteen. Chapter Twenty. Chapter Twenty-One. Chapter Twenty-Two. Chapter Twenty-Three. Chapter Twenty-Four. Chapter Twenty-Five. Chapter Twenty-Six.
The truck rumbled along, though there was only silence within the vehicle. There wasn’t much Martha wanted to say and her driver still seemed a bit tongue-tied from the thought that he was sitting next to the Famous Martha Jones. Tom Milligan came off as a nice enough man, but his continued awe just felt misplaced to her. She allowed her name to be spread like a myth, but she had never expected it to spread like wildfire. She was just one girl trying to help a friend.
The further the sun dropped into the horizon, the closer Martha’s fate loomed. She had a fair idea of what waited for her in London, but she wasn’t so confident that she believed she would leave the encounter unscathed. If the death of her family had been good for just one thing, it served to remind her she wasn’t invulnerable.
Her eyelids drooped. Martha sat up abruptly, falling asleep the last thing she wanted right now. She hadn’t slept much on the voyage across the Atlantic, and although she was so used to running on very little sleep or adrenaline, it seemed her travels were finally catching up with her.
“Are you all right?” Tom glanced over at her, his worry evident in his expression.
For whatever reason, Martha had expected Dr. Milligan to be a middle-aged man with glasses and a nervous disposition, just like some of the prominent doctors at Royal Hope. Imagine her surprise when she was met with a strapping young man with warm brown eyes and a strong handshake. “I’m fine,” she assured him, mustering a smile.
Tom didn’t seem convinced, but he added nothing else and turned his attention back to the road. As a doctor, Martha could imagine Tom was used to dealing with stubborn people. Her own career aspirations to become a doctor felt like a lifetime ago.
She thought of asking Tom what his speciality was, to strike up a polite conversation, when a sudden explosion caused the truck to swerve, only there were no flames, just a loud bang. Just for a second Martha wondered if someone was shooting at them and that was merely a warning shot, but then she heard the grind of metal against the road and she knew instantly they had a flat tire.
The truck rolled into a ditch on the side of the road, but the rather abrupt stop spared them from having to make any dangerous evasive manoeuvres. Tom’s truck was quite battered to begin with, but the fact that it still ran proved it could take a beating.
Martha opened her door and stepped out, her feet instantly landing in the muddy water that lined the ditch. Each footstep was accompanied by a squelching sound that somehow reminded her of the wild boar she and the others had encountered while wandering through Germany.
“This one is completely blown.” Tom kicked what remained of the tire on his side of the truck with his boot.
“This one, too,” said Martha, noticing the tire on the passenger side was deflated as well. She frowned, not liking the odds. One tire she could understand, but two?
Shouting in the distance caused her and Tom to look up from their inspection. They were nearly on the outskirts of London, but that didn’t seem close enough to encounter the patrols. Martha grabbed her bag before climbing out of the ditch. The road was devoid of any life but with her higher vantage point she could see distant lights bobbing in the night, quickly coming towards them.
“This way.” Tom grabbed Martha by the arm, pulling her across the road. She quickened her steps to match Tom’s longer stride.
A darkened factory waited over the next rise, its bulk a black void against the darkening sky. It was clearly abandoned, but the only building for miles. It was an obvious place to hide and that was likely the point. They were being herded like animals.
Martha just hoped they weren’t being led to a slaughter.
The Master was waiting for Rose when she was shoved off the lift and onto the bridge. She couldn’t look at the Master without thinking about what happened in the bedroom and it filled her with disgust. Suppressing a shiver, she kept the conference table between them.
“It’s a big day tomorrow. It’ll be the most important thing to happen since some interstellar flotsam came together to form this rock heap.”
Time and time again, Rose had wondered why the Master bothered to come back to Earth if he hated it so much. There were billions of other planets out there and countless other species he could torment. Then it dawned on her; it wasn’t about the planet at all or the people who called it home. Earth only mattered to the Master because it had mattered to the Doctor. What better way to strike at your enemy then to tear down the things he held dear?
But the Doctor wasn’t around anymore, as Rose was painfully aware. It didn’t make sense to attack something if your opponent wasn’t there to balk.
“And I want you to see the dawn of a glorious new Time Lord empire,” continued the Master, enjoying the sound of his voice. “Are you going to behave? Or should I point some guns at your friends’ heads?”
If there was some greater logic to the Master’s actions, Rose couldn’t figure it out. “Why didn’t you just kill Gwen and Ianto in the beginning? You could have saved yourself a lot of grief.”
“Are you saying I should kill them right now?”
“Or why didn’t you get rid of Torchwood when we first landed in the past? Why keep me around either?” Her words came quicker are she thought about all the opportunities the Master had missed. “With a working time machine, you could have gone any where, any when. Make sure I wasn’t born or Jack never became immortal. If you’re supposed to be a genius, you’re pretty daft for not thinking up any of this.” Rose was so tempted to laugh in his face.
The Master was up out of his chair before she realized he had moved and she had no time to dodge his shot. The laser fire grazed her left arm, burning her bicep. She slumped against the table, gasping in pain.
“I keep you around,” said the Master, approaching Rose, “because it amuses me.” He pushed her into a chair, forcing her to sit down, and he took a seat on the edge of the table, liking they were having a civil conversation. “I’m trying to build something that will last the ages. Unity across the cosmos.”
“With you as our lord and master?” Rose stared up at him in scorn, cradling her left arm. It was an echo of how they first met, after Yana had regenerated in the TARDIS. It didn’t seem fair that the last Time Lord in the universe was the Master. The Doctor didn’t deserve to be alone, but maybe the loneliness was better than knowing the only other remnant of your people was a crazy psychopath.
The Doctor was worthy of a better legacy than that.
The side door to the bridge flew open and a guard rushed in. He hastily saluted the Master before delivering a whispered message. Rose couldn’t make out what he said, but then a grin blossomed on the Master’s face and she just knew it wasn’t good news, or, at least good news by her standards.
“Lock her up,” the Master told the guard, gesturing at Rose. She was dragged back to the lift, the guard unmindful of her injured left arm. When the doors closed, the Master was still grinning.
The factory smelled like manure. Martha was just grateful it wasn’t an abattoir.
Whatever the factory’s true purpose was, it was still a building full of threatening shadows. She could barely see through the gloom but she didn’t want to risk using a torch to light their way. The soldiers chasing them would latch onto the illumination like a moth. The only light that did filter in was the diffused moonlight though it did little to prevent Martha from stumbling over dusty equipment. She bumped her knee on a forgotten shelving unit and nearly knocked it over.
“Tom.” She snagged the back of his jacket and pulled him to a stop. In the run over from the truck, he had pulled out a gun and now he held it at the ready. It was a startling sight, to see a doctor with a gun, but in times like these Martha was well aware people did things they normally wouldn’t in the name of survival.
“We need to keep moving, Martha,” Tom urged in a whisper. He reached for her hand but she pulled back. They were in an exposed part of the factory with few places to hide and already they could hear the organized footfall of the soldiers, but she had been running and hiding for a good year now. In that moment, Martha was well prepared to do the opposite.
“I’ll be okay, Tom.” She briefly touched him on the arm before she turned away and started towards the sound of clomping boots. She had barely made it three steps when Tom grabbed her from behind and pulled her behind the cover of a forklift.
“Are you mad?”
A part of Martha was sad it had to end this way. Tom had risked everything to get her to London. She felt a need to explain herself, to justify what came next. “I know, Tom. I know everything. We picked you for a reason.” He stared at her silently and she could just picture his brain scrambling madly to come up with something to say. She saved him the trouble and continued on.
“You’ve been sneaking information about the Resistance to the Master. You’ve been doing it for months now, just small things, nothing that would put anyone in serious harm, but then you were told you had to do more. I know you don’t want to hand me over, but you have no choice. You have to know your family is safe and I get that. So just let me go. I want to be here.”
Tom looked away from her, as though he was embarrassed or ashamed. She had seen people do horrible things, mostly for their own self-preservation, but Tom was one of the few she had encountered who was acting out of love. It was a noble gesture that Martha could relate to.
She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, his stubble scratching her lips. “I don’t hate you.” The last thing she saw of Tom as she walked off into the darkness was a look of grim realization on his face. This was where their paths diverged.
Despite knowing what she was walking in to, Martha’s heart still pounded madly within her chest and her hands trembled slightly. She balled her hands into fists, took a deep breath, and kept on walking. The soldiers were methodically sweeping through the factory, the light of their torches cutting through the dust being stirred into the air. One step after the other brought her closer to the men until finally the light of a torch found her among the shadows. The sudden brightness assaulted her eyes and for a moment, Martha was blinded. She heard the sound of multiple guns being turned in her direction, but she couldn’t see how many were pointed at her.
She raised her hands above her head and tried to look as unthreatening as possible. Her actions seemed to throw the soldiers and they stood around for a second, staring at her. Her surrendering hadn’t been discussed in the briefing it seemed.
The lull was broken as one of the soldiers grabbed her arms and manhandled her into a pair of handcuffs. The metal cut into her wrists and Martha tried not to gasp. A push to the back got her moving and she shuffled along with her armed escort to a jeep waiting outside.
It was time to bring down a mad man.
Rating: PG
Characters: Rose, Martha
Timeline: Season three
Summary: Season three AU; After a fateful visit to Royal Hope Hospital, Rose finds herself lost in time and space with medical student Martha Jones. As they struggle to find a way home, they meet old friends, and old enemies, along the way...
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine. Any borrowed dialogue belongs to Russell T Davies and the BBC.
A/N: A sequel to "The Other Side". It's not necessary reading; it just sets up the premise that it was the Doctor who was trapped in Pete's World, not Rose. And a shout-out to my awesome betas: joking and quean_of_swords. This story wouldn't have been posted without you guys.
Chapter One. Chapter Two. Chapter Three. Chapter Four. Chapter Five. Chapter Six. Chapter Seven. Chapter Eight. Chapter Nine. Chapter Ten. Chapter Eleven. Chapter Twelve. Chapter Thirteen. Chapter Fourteen. Chapter Fifteen. Chapter Sixteen. Chapter Seventeen. Chapter Eighteen. Chapter Nineteen. Chapter Twenty. Chapter Twenty-One. Chapter Twenty-Two. Chapter Twenty-Three. Chapter Twenty-Four. Chapter Twenty-Five. Chapter Twenty-Six.
The truck rumbled along, though there was only silence within the vehicle. There wasn’t much Martha wanted to say and her driver still seemed a bit tongue-tied from the thought that he was sitting next to the Famous Martha Jones. Tom Milligan came off as a nice enough man, but his continued awe just felt misplaced to her. She allowed her name to be spread like a myth, but she had never expected it to spread like wildfire. She was just one girl trying to help a friend.
The further the sun dropped into the horizon, the closer Martha’s fate loomed. She had a fair idea of what waited for her in London, but she wasn’t so confident that she believed she would leave the encounter unscathed. If the death of her family had been good for just one thing, it served to remind her she wasn’t invulnerable.
Her eyelids drooped. Martha sat up abruptly, falling asleep the last thing she wanted right now. She hadn’t slept much on the voyage across the Atlantic, and although she was so used to running on very little sleep or adrenaline, it seemed her travels were finally catching up with her.
“Are you all right?” Tom glanced over at her, his worry evident in his expression.
For whatever reason, Martha had expected Dr. Milligan to be a middle-aged man with glasses and a nervous disposition, just like some of the prominent doctors at Royal Hope. Imagine her surprise when she was met with a strapping young man with warm brown eyes and a strong handshake. “I’m fine,” she assured him, mustering a smile.
Tom didn’t seem convinced, but he added nothing else and turned his attention back to the road. As a doctor, Martha could imagine Tom was used to dealing with stubborn people. Her own career aspirations to become a doctor felt like a lifetime ago.
She thought of asking Tom what his speciality was, to strike up a polite conversation, when a sudden explosion caused the truck to swerve, only there were no flames, just a loud bang. Just for a second Martha wondered if someone was shooting at them and that was merely a warning shot, but then she heard the grind of metal against the road and she knew instantly they had a flat tire.
The truck rolled into a ditch on the side of the road, but the rather abrupt stop spared them from having to make any dangerous evasive manoeuvres. Tom’s truck was quite battered to begin with, but the fact that it still ran proved it could take a beating.
Martha opened her door and stepped out, her feet instantly landing in the muddy water that lined the ditch. Each footstep was accompanied by a squelching sound that somehow reminded her of the wild boar she and the others had encountered while wandering through Germany.
“This one is completely blown.” Tom kicked what remained of the tire on his side of the truck with his boot.
“This one, too,” said Martha, noticing the tire on the passenger side was deflated as well. She frowned, not liking the odds. One tire she could understand, but two?
Shouting in the distance caused her and Tom to look up from their inspection. They were nearly on the outskirts of London, but that didn’t seem close enough to encounter the patrols. Martha grabbed her bag before climbing out of the ditch. The road was devoid of any life but with her higher vantage point she could see distant lights bobbing in the night, quickly coming towards them.
“This way.” Tom grabbed Martha by the arm, pulling her across the road. She quickened her steps to match Tom’s longer stride.
A darkened factory waited over the next rise, its bulk a black void against the darkening sky. It was clearly abandoned, but the only building for miles. It was an obvious place to hide and that was likely the point. They were being herded like animals.
Martha just hoped they weren’t being led to a slaughter.
The Master was waiting for Rose when she was shoved off the lift and onto the bridge. She couldn’t look at the Master without thinking about what happened in the bedroom and it filled her with disgust. Suppressing a shiver, she kept the conference table between them.
“It’s a big day tomorrow. It’ll be the most important thing to happen since some interstellar flotsam came together to form this rock heap.”
Time and time again, Rose had wondered why the Master bothered to come back to Earth if he hated it so much. There were billions of other planets out there and countless other species he could torment. Then it dawned on her; it wasn’t about the planet at all or the people who called it home. Earth only mattered to the Master because it had mattered to the Doctor. What better way to strike at your enemy then to tear down the things he held dear?
But the Doctor wasn’t around anymore, as Rose was painfully aware. It didn’t make sense to attack something if your opponent wasn’t there to balk.
“And I want you to see the dawn of a glorious new Time Lord empire,” continued the Master, enjoying the sound of his voice. “Are you going to behave? Or should I point some guns at your friends’ heads?”
If there was some greater logic to the Master’s actions, Rose couldn’t figure it out. “Why didn’t you just kill Gwen and Ianto in the beginning? You could have saved yourself a lot of grief.”
“Are you saying I should kill them right now?”
“Or why didn’t you get rid of Torchwood when we first landed in the past? Why keep me around either?” Her words came quicker are she thought about all the opportunities the Master had missed. “With a working time machine, you could have gone any where, any when. Make sure I wasn’t born or Jack never became immortal. If you’re supposed to be a genius, you’re pretty daft for not thinking up any of this.” Rose was so tempted to laugh in his face.
The Master was up out of his chair before she realized he had moved and she had no time to dodge his shot. The laser fire grazed her left arm, burning her bicep. She slumped against the table, gasping in pain.
“I keep you around,” said the Master, approaching Rose, “because it amuses me.” He pushed her into a chair, forcing her to sit down, and he took a seat on the edge of the table, liking they were having a civil conversation. “I’m trying to build something that will last the ages. Unity across the cosmos.”
“With you as our lord and master?” Rose stared up at him in scorn, cradling her left arm. It was an echo of how they first met, after Yana had regenerated in the TARDIS. It didn’t seem fair that the last Time Lord in the universe was the Master. The Doctor didn’t deserve to be alone, but maybe the loneliness was better than knowing the only other remnant of your people was a crazy psychopath.
The Doctor was worthy of a better legacy than that.
The side door to the bridge flew open and a guard rushed in. He hastily saluted the Master before delivering a whispered message. Rose couldn’t make out what he said, but then a grin blossomed on the Master’s face and she just knew it wasn’t good news, or, at least good news by her standards.
“Lock her up,” the Master told the guard, gesturing at Rose. She was dragged back to the lift, the guard unmindful of her injured left arm. When the doors closed, the Master was still grinning.
The factory smelled like manure. Martha was just grateful it wasn’t an abattoir.
Whatever the factory’s true purpose was, it was still a building full of threatening shadows. She could barely see through the gloom but she didn’t want to risk using a torch to light their way. The soldiers chasing them would latch onto the illumination like a moth. The only light that did filter in was the diffused moonlight though it did little to prevent Martha from stumbling over dusty equipment. She bumped her knee on a forgotten shelving unit and nearly knocked it over.
“Tom.” She snagged the back of his jacket and pulled him to a stop. In the run over from the truck, he had pulled out a gun and now he held it at the ready. It was a startling sight, to see a doctor with a gun, but in times like these Martha was well aware people did things they normally wouldn’t in the name of survival.
“We need to keep moving, Martha,” Tom urged in a whisper. He reached for her hand but she pulled back. They were in an exposed part of the factory with few places to hide and already they could hear the organized footfall of the soldiers, but she had been running and hiding for a good year now. In that moment, Martha was well prepared to do the opposite.
“I’ll be okay, Tom.” She briefly touched him on the arm before she turned away and started towards the sound of clomping boots. She had barely made it three steps when Tom grabbed her from behind and pulled her behind the cover of a forklift.
“Are you mad?”
A part of Martha was sad it had to end this way. Tom had risked everything to get her to London. She felt a need to explain herself, to justify what came next. “I know, Tom. I know everything. We picked you for a reason.” He stared at her silently and she could just picture his brain scrambling madly to come up with something to say. She saved him the trouble and continued on.
“You’ve been sneaking information about the Resistance to the Master. You’ve been doing it for months now, just small things, nothing that would put anyone in serious harm, but then you were told you had to do more. I know you don’t want to hand me over, but you have no choice. You have to know your family is safe and I get that. So just let me go. I want to be here.”
Tom looked away from her, as though he was embarrassed or ashamed. She had seen people do horrible things, mostly for their own self-preservation, but Tom was one of the few she had encountered who was acting out of love. It was a noble gesture that Martha could relate to.
She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, his stubble scratching her lips. “I don’t hate you.” The last thing she saw of Tom as she walked off into the darkness was a look of grim realization on his face. This was where their paths diverged.
Despite knowing what she was walking in to, Martha’s heart still pounded madly within her chest and her hands trembled slightly. She balled her hands into fists, took a deep breath, and kept on walking. The soldiers were methodically sweeping through the factory, the light of their torches cutting through the dust being stirred into the air. One step after the other brought her closer to the men until finally the light of a torch found her among the shadows. The sudden brightness assaulted her eyes and for a moment, Martha was blinded. She heard the sound of multiple guns being turned in her direction, but she couldn’t see how many were pointed at her.
She raised her hands above her head and tried to look as unthreatening as possible. Her actions seemed to throw the soldiers and they stood around for a second, staring at her. Her surrendering hadn’t been discussed in the briefing it seemed.
The lull was broken as one of the soldiers grabbed her arms and manhandled her into a pair of handcuffs. The metal cut into her wrists and Martha tried not to gasp. A push to the back got her moving and she shuffled along with her armed escort to a jeep waiting outside.
It was time to bring down a mad man.