Always Running, Part 1/1
Title: Always Running
Author: radiantbaby
Characters/Pairings: Mostly Ten/Dr. John, but implied Ten/Martha/Dr. John as well [Note: Dr. John was a David Tennant character from “Love in the 21st Century”]
Word Count: 8061
Genre: AU, Angst, Romance, Slash
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Post-S3 new!Who [AU], also “Unearthly Child,” “The Sensorites,” and “The Dalek Invasion of Earth.”
Summary: The Doctor takes John a trip, but the two end up closer than they expected as they discover what always keeps them running and how they might face up to the demons of their pasts. Crossover of Doctor Who and “Love in the 21st Century”
Disclaimer: All your Doctor Who are belong to us Sadly, I own nothing related to Doctor Who or ‘Love in the 21st Century’ et al. I am just playing around in their sandbox for a bit of fun.
Author Notes: Thank you to persiflage_1 and ebbyzone [who also provided the original prompt] for their beta-work, sanity checks, advice, and overall moral support.
This story is #8 in our series, following the events of Bizarre Love Triangle.
Feedback is happy-making, so please leave a word or two [even if I am a bit slack in responding, your comments always make my day].
===
[Fic Banner by radiantbaby]
+ + +
Brown eyes met brown - both deep, both searching, both filled with a surprising recognition of kindred souls within the universe -
The Doctor almost felt sparks against his fingertips as they pressed delicately - intimately - against John’s temples. The rush of climax had synced them together, their thoughts and feelings interlaced and their souls touching in the darkness as their bodies moved against one another.
“Always running,” the Doctor whispered.
“Always,” John replied.
And as soon as it was there, the connection broke just as quickly - walls rising harshly to protect against secrets and any other bombardments pulling up deeply buried feelings from the past.
+ + +
“Martha?” John called out in the darkness, heart racing, and limbs cold and clammy from the nightmare he was having.
A protective arm wrapped around his torso and a body quickly flanked his side, naked flesh now sticking to naked flesh from the sweat rising on John’s skin.
“It’s okay, I’m here,” the Doctor whispered.
“Where’s Martha?” he asked in a half-whimper, feeling suddenly lost in the darkness as his mind slowly began to wake, still shaken by his bad dream.
A soft kiss against his neck and fingertips stroking his belly began to calm him. “On assignment with Torchwood in Africa. You remember that, don’t you, John?” the Doctor said, his dulcet voice soothing him as he become more fully aware of everything around him.
John raised a hand to his forehead, running a hand through his hair in embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Doctor, I was just - ”
“Scared?” the Doctor nuzzled his nose against John’s neck, “You sounded like you were having a terrible dream.”
“Yeah.” John said quietly, swallowing hard, “I had a bad dream. It was about Martha.”
---
Royal Hope Hospital. 1:30 AM.
John sat worrying by Martha’s bedside, nervously chewing his fingernail as he watched the slow rise and fall of her chest, as she lay unconscious before him.
She’d been at UNIT early that morning when - from the bit and pieces he’d gleaned from speaking with the Brigadier - an alien had infiltrated the premises. One of the first rooms it had found was the medical bay and it had attacked a hapless Martha -- it’s teeth injecting her with some unknown, unearthly venom - before it could be captured.
Several hours and tests later, she was in Royal Hope under his care. He’d yelled and fought to get her there and once they’d deemed her able to be released to him, he’d rushed her to the hospital to do his own battery of tests.
“Dr. MacLachlan, is there anything you need before I go?” Emily, the nurse on duty, asked him.
“I’m alright. Thank you, Emily.”
“Is,” Emily hesitated, looking down for a moment before looking back at him, “is Martha going to be alright?”
“I’m sure she will be,” he said with a forced smile, hoping that he could convince himself of the words he was saying. “She is a fighter and a survivor, so if anyone can make it, she can.”
“I hope you are right, doctor,” Emily replied with a sad smile back at him, before ducking out the door to leave.
Once alone with Martha again, he reached over to stroke her hair, speaking softly to her. “It’s going to alright, my darling. Jack is on his way and both Torchwood and UNIT are working on an antidote. Would you like me to read to you? I have some Keats in my office. I can run and grab it for you.”
John got up and pressed a soft kiss to Martha’s forehead, frowning a bit as the skin there was cold and laden with sweat. “I’ll be back in just a moment. Maybe I’ll read some of Keats’ letters to you. I know how much you love those.”
He turned and left the room, remembering with a wistful smile the times he would read to her. She had been surprised that he was a fan of poetry, especially the Romantics, but always said how much she loved it when he would read to her as they lounged around their home.
Lying in his arms, she’d say how it would ground her and ease her in times of stress. She would then smile and tell him how she loved to hear the soft cadence of his voice as he read to her and he would blush, but beam inwardly at her words.
Truth be told, it had always been an almost-secret part of himself that he’d never truly shared with anyone else. His attempts at reading poetry to a girl in the past as a teenager only led him to be called a poof by her and, consequentially, hiding that side of himself from any future lovers.
He probably wouldn’t have told Martha either, to be honest, but she’d discovered his books one evening and asked him about them. He knew he could never lie to her, so he, rather nervously, told her that day of his love for poetry.
He was surprised she’d been so receptive to his confession and even had been the one to request for him to read to her sometime in the first place. Soon after, it quickly moved to becoming a small tradition of sorts for them on more emotionally exhausting days, especially since they’d moved in together.
Once he entered his office, he grabbed his Keats book from his shelf and quickly made his way back to Martha’s room. As he rounded the corner to enter, though, he gasped in surprise - the bed had been stripped bare and Martha was nowhere to be found.
John double-checked the number of the room as his heart began to race and he began to panic. He made his way down to the hall to a nursing station to ask about Martha’s whereabouts, but no one seemed to know what he was talking about.
There was no record of her being there on the computer and when he’d run back to the room a second time, he noticed her charts were missing as well.
“Martha?”
He called out for her repeatedly, quickly making his way through the halls. Several nurses tried to quiet him, warning him that he was going to wake up many of the patients. He stubbornly ignored them, though, instead focusing on making his way through the hospital in a desperate search for her.
I only left her for just a minute, just a minute, he kept repeating to himself. What could have happened?
“Martha?” he called out one last time.
Then he awoke abruptly.
---
The Doctor reached up to caress his hair, a thumb’s caress against his temple to give him a glimpse into what John had dreamt. “It’s alright, it was just a nightmare. I think you’re just worried because she is so far away. Do you need me to take you to her? I can do that if you need. Or, we could call her.”
“Yes, I should call her,” John said with a sigh, reaching over to flip on the bedside lamp. “That’ll make me feel better, I should think. Otherwise, I might not be able to get back to sleep.”
John smiled at the Doctor, looking at the soft glow of his skin as the light shone on him and the way the sinews of his muscles shifted beneath his skin as he reached over to grab John’s mobile from the bedside locker on his side.
John would have never guessed a month before that the man he’d contemplated angrily confronting on first sight would now be entwined nude with him - legs curled around legs - on his bed.
The Doctor handed over the phone and he took it, flipping it open to scroll through the names on his contact list. He worried for a moment that it was only about 6:00 AM in Madagascar -- where she was helping Torchwood with an alien virus that had broken out in the north of the island - but his need to call her dominated any real reticence.
“Hello,” Martha answered, obviously groggy and sleepy on the other end of the line when she answered.
John spoke to her for a few minutes and, after finally feeling convinced that she was currently in no danger, he sheepishly ended the call and placed the mobile on his bedside locker.
“Better?” the Doctor asked, watching him with his head propped up on his elbow.
“Much,” John replied, mirroring him with his head now also propped up. “I’m sorry to have woken you.”
“Oh, I wasn’t sleeping,” the Doctor replied with a shrug.
“Not sleeping?”
“No, just thinking.”
“About what?”
“You.”
“Me?” John smiled, leaning forward to press his lips against the Doctor’s. “I like that.”
John pushed the Doctor backward to lay flat, moving on top of him and straddling his leg to deepen the kiss.
Sometimes there would be a fight for dominance between them - two alpha males trying to top one another - but this time the Doctor submitted easily to him, seemingly letting him use the pleasure from him as a salve against his worries.
As John fell back asleep later, he didn’t dream at all - instead succumbing to a soft black darkness that felt as if it enveloped him like a blanket. He wasn’t sure if the Doctor had anything to do with it, but he knew that even if he did, he’d probably never actually admit it.
The two men were still playing games with one another when it all came down, still holding back as much as they gave.
Sometimes, John thought, it was like looking in a mirror.
+ + +
“I think you impress him and scare him at the same time,” Martha’s voice - choppy with static from their dodgy phone connection - rose on the line.
“How do you mean?” John asked, stirring the scallops in the pan before him.
It had been two days since he’d had his bad dream and Martha was giving him a rare call to reconnect. He’d offered several times to come and see her in Africa, knowing that if the Doctor couldn’t bring him there, he’d just as easily jump on a plane to get there.
“Don’t you see how much alike the two of you are?” Martha asked with a laugh, “I’m amazed I never saw it before. It’s just when the two of you are together, it’s a bit…uncanny.”
“Yeah, well, he is a handsome bloke,” John replied easily, dodging the deeper ramifications of what she was saying.
+ + +
“Where are we?” John peered outside the door of the TARDIS into the beautiful shining swirls of red dust before him.
“The Horsehead Nebula,” the Doctor announced, his voice punctuated with gleeful smugness as he sidled up next to him and pointed into the distance. “See? It’s shaped a bit like a horse. Well, personally I agree with the Ood and think it looks more like a Cragorhloot, but I don’t think that Cragorhloothead Nebula has quite the same ring to it, do you?”
“And we’re not going to suffocate in the vacuum of space with these doors open?”
John marveled at how calmly he’d asked the question. The concepts that went hand in hand with his new life seemed to be coming to him with much more ease than he would have anticipated.
“Nah, the TARDIS is protecting us, we’ll be perfectly fine. Care to sit down?” the Doctor offered, folding his own lanky body to perch on the edge of the entrance, leaving his legs to swing in the space outside, much like a child might. “I assure you, it’s perfectly safe.”
John eased himself down to the floor much more slowly, still a bit hesitant about things, before draping his own legs outside the entrance and heaving a small sigh of relief once he was safely settled.
“See, not so bad, eh?” the Doctor asked, a wide smile on his face.
“Yeah. A bit weird, but not bad.”
The Doctor nodded in assent and then the two men fell into a companionable silence, just quietly watching the sights before them.
John mused to himself about how what he saw was just so peaceful and so enchanting. He even smiled a bit as he fantasized for a moment about being an artist, brushes in hand as he painted the beautiful palate of shapes and colors before him - anything to attempt to capture the memory in a more tangible medium.
John also - he had to confess - wished he could show what he was seeing to Martha.
“Have you…ever brought Martha here?”
The Doctor looked thoughtfully at John, chewing his bottom lip for a moment before answering. “No, not Martha. Last time I was here was a very, very long time ago. I was a different man then, quiet literally. It was with Barbara, Ian…and…and Susan, but not Martha.” He swallowed hard, looking away back into space.
John wondered why he’d faltered in speaking and what had caused him to turn away, but didn’t push. The two men were always walking on eggshells around one another, it seemed, no matter how close they got. John found himself empathizing more and more with Martha’s tales of frustration from when she still traveled with him, often not knowing how much to ask the Doctor and how much to just let be.
To John, the Doctor always seemed at some sort of tipping point and left him with a strong sense that if he pushed that little bit too much, he might just break him.
“Over there,” the Doctor spoke again, this time his voice barely louder than a whisper, as he pointed across the nebula, “is the Sense Sphere, home of the Sensorites. And just over there,” he paused again, pointing in the opposite direction, “is the Ood Sphere, home of the Ood.”
“The Sensorites…Ood…Barbara….Ian….Susan….what stories you must have…”
“Everyone has stories.”
“You know, Martha thinks we are a lot alike. Or so she says.”
The Doctor hummed in assent. “We do look very similar, though I might wager that I’m the more handsome of the two of us,” he said with a cheeky grin.
“Right, you keep believing that.”
“It’s what keeps me going some days.”
----
“Susan was my granddaughter.”
The Doctor was telling one of his anecdotes -- as he so often did - and then seemingly apropos of nothing, at least as far as not relating to the subject at hand from what John could tell, he’d suddenly stated this revelation very simply, yet sadly.
“Pardon?”
“Susan. She was my granddaughter,” he repeated.
“But you look so - ” Young, John had almost said.
The Doctor simply raised an eyebrow at him in response and the two men fell into silence again, turning their attention back outside the doors of the TARDIS.
“Where is she now?” John whispered into the soundless space before them, hoping to finally break the tension that was quickly rising between them.
“Gone.”
“Moved on?”
The Doctor laughed mirthlessly and John felt himself tremble a bit at the dark expression that now colored his countenance as he glanced back at him to answer. “Not quite.”
“Oh.”
The two men returned to looking at the nebula, awkward words between them apparently stifling them both.
“You said that over there was the Sense Sphere, right? What sort of planet is it? Is it anything like Earth?” John asked quietly, attempting to avert the apparent discomfort with the topic at hand.
John’s inquiry was only met with silence, though -- a cold, achingly discomforting silence.
John didn’t know the Doctor very well, of course, but one thing he had observed since they’d been acquainted was that he was generally a particularly verbose fellow, especially when it came to such things as the topic of science or history or time. In fact, sometimes he would regale John for hours with fantastical stories about where and when he’d traveled, or debate with him about microbiology in modern medicine, or tell awful Maths jokes that only he would laugh at -
The Doctor was rarely so quiet.
His uncharacteristic silence began to fill John with a looming sense of unease, especially when he dared sidelong glances at the darkened, hollow gaze in the Doctor’s eyes as he looked out into space.
To John, the Doctor had never seemed more alien to him than he had in that moment - so different, so distant.
And then, though the two men were in a vessel that traveled in time, it seemed that time had in fact stopped - that it was now (almost) standing still. Those soundless minutes frozen between them soon felt as if they were now curling and grasping at them with icy spindly fingers -- hanging thick and heavy around them, as if trapping them, weighing them down.
John wanted it to stop or speed up again or something (anything), because the discomfort picked and pulled at him like a scab, sinking deep beneath his punctured skin, and he understood with a stark clarity why he was always running - it was to escape this terrible pull into the creeping darkness of the past.
John grasped the doorway of the TARDIS at his sides, knuckles white and his body taut as if he was about spring upward and escape. In fact, that was all that was filling his mind now, his desires - to escape, to run, the boy inside screaming at the man he was now to get away, to not let it get him (again) -
He’d started to pull his knees up, started to shift his body to stand, when the Doctor grabbed his arm with a strong grip to stop him, fingertips pressing hard into his skin enough to bruise -
“She’d dead.” It was small, broken, barely above a whisper, but the words were there, hanging between them like that thick sinister pull of time he was trying so desperately to escape.
“Dead,” John echoed, wanting to free himself from the Doctor’s grasp, but honestly a bit afraid to, unsure of what might happen if he even could.
“I killed her, John. I killed them all.”
Something dropped inside John’s belly and he began to feel a bit dizzy and nauseated, everything spinning around him now. He hoped for a minute that maybe time had restarted, that his body was just catching back up to the momentum of its movement after being momentarily sedentary. “Killed?” he stammered, still trying to get his bearings.
“My world, my people, my family - all dead because of me.”
The Doctor was looking at him again - those hollow, dark, ancient eyes now turned in his direction and burning into him as if piercing his soul. John tried to look away, but he found himself just as trapped by the Doctor’s expression as he had by the frightening feeling in the air around them.
“Stop,” John managed, pleading. He knew he was trembling now, but he didn’t care anymore, he just wanted - needed - to run.
“Oh, I can’t stop, John. I kill people, that is my life, that is my curse.”
“Are you,” John paused, an odd alarmed whimper-like sound rising from deep within his throat stopping him before he continued, his voice quivering, “going to kill me too?”
The Doctor’s eyes focused even more intently on him and then his gaze looked down at where he was holding his arm. He let go quickly, shaking his hand as if scalded by heat, and when his gaze returned to John, he now only saw fear - and unshed tears - there instead.
“John,” he whispered.
“Doctor.”
The Doctor lifted his hand to run it through his hair and John took advantage of the distraction, pushing himself to his feet, but the Doctor grabbed his leg. “Don’t leave. Please. They all leave.”
John breathed in deeply, trying to calm himself. The Doctor was obviously frightened, so one of them needed to be calm. He reached into his mind to ease himself, to put himself in a position of more authority, the way he held himself when talking to or soothing his patients - calm, cool-headed, collected.
“Doctor, please let go,” John said evenly, as if soothing a skittish horse. “You are hurting me and you are scaring me.”
“I - ”
“Doctor, please,” he repeated, still calm, still soothing, still professional -
“I had to,” the Doctor let go of John’s leg. “It wasn’t like I walked up and put a bullet in their brains. I could never…it was the war, I had to save them, don’t you understand? It was the only way. It was my duty. I was a soldier. I did what they asked and I was supposed to die too, but I didn’t. I didn’t. I am the only one. I am the last. I am the last of my kind. There were so many better people - better friends, better leaders - who should have survived instead of me. I am no one special, I am just a renegade meddler with a incessant god complex. It shouldn’t have ended that way. I’ve already lost too many people, but now, now I’ve lost them all.”
“I…never knew,” John said, softening, but still keeping his distance.
“I’ve never…I don’t think I’ve ever even said it out loud before. Bit and pieces, yes, but never…”
“Martha doesn’t know?”
“She knows that I’m the last of my kind and that my world was destroyed. She doesn’t know that it was at my hands.”
“Why haven’t you told her before? Or anyone for that matter?”
“You humans can’t understand the scope of it all, what it is like to not only destroy your own world, but your entire species,” the Doctor snarled, his ferocity from moments before seeming to rear its head again.
“That’s not fair.”
“Life’s not fair.”
“Look, maybe I…we…can’t understand, but that doesn’t mean you can’t give us a chance to try. Maybe we can help you. You are always pushing people away, maybe it’s time to let people in.”
“Such a healer, you are. I bet you always took in stray kittens as a child,” the Doctor spat, venom still in his words.
“Maybe I am a healer, maybe that feels like my purpose, and maybe I can help you.”
“As I said, you can’t understand.”
“Then help me understand, even just a little. What are you so afraid of?”
The Doctor stared up at him, blinking a bit as if thinking, as if unsure of how to respond, caught off-guard. “I…am afraid of getting too close and losing more people.”
“Cutting off your nose to spite your face, then? Sounds like a bad plan to me.”
”Oh, and what would you know?”
“I know what it means to lose everyone you hold dear, to be left alone. I know what it means to push everyone away because you are too terrified to let yourself care for them. I know what it means to be so terrified of losing someone that you sometimes cry yourself to sleep at night. No, it’s certainly not on the immense magnitude of what you’ve experienced -- I get that - but that doesn’t make it any less painful or real.”
“You humans, I hate you sometimes -- thinking you can fix everything, challenging me with your ostentatious thoughts and ideas and assumptions,” the Doctor said, his angry expression now softening with a small smile and a glimmer in his eye, despite his words.
“Oh, I know. Always a challenge, me. Mum said that I was even terrible with potty training, always wanting to run around the block with my nappy down around my ankles instead - “
“John, I am sorry that I frightened you,” the Doctor said soberly, interrupting him.
“The past is a frightening place.” John slowly eased back down to sit cross-legged on the ramp near the Doctor.
“You would have liked her.”
“Susan?”
“Yes. Oh, she was brilliant, just absolutely brilliant. She had her mother’s eyes and the loyalty of her father and, well, the obstinacy of me. She was so loyal, so very loyal. I had to…well, I had to push her away in the end -- out of the nest, so to speak - or she would have never left my side.”
“Out of the nest?”
“I wanted her to belong somewhere, John, to have roots of her own, not a life of just traveling all over time and space with me. She’d met a boy called David, a freedom fighter, who’d fallen in love with her immediately and she with him. Perhaps it wasn’t really true love, but I still thought perhaps with him she could finally have those roots and live a normal life. I didn’t want her to be like me. So, I locked her out of the TARDIS, leaving her with David on 22nd century Earth…It was truly one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”
John put his hand reassuringly on the Doctor’s knee. “Did you ever visit her again?”
“No. I always meant to, of course, but I was always busy, always moving on and on, making excuse after excuse to myself for never wanting to look back or go back. I’ve spent lifetimes running from my past and I’ve always deeply regretted it. You always think you have tomorrow, especially when you are a Time Lord. In this case, I didn’t. I saw her once on Gallifrey -- later, older, as a new man - but then…well, I can only assume she died, if not earlier then with all the others, when I…well, when I…”
The Doctor swallowed hard and looked down.
“She’s alive in your heart…or hearts though. That’s where I keep William,” John patted his chest, “right here.”
“William?”
“My brother. I lost him when I was a child. He was bleeding in my arms and I thought for a long time that it was my fault that I couldn’t save him. It’s why I’m a doctor now, really…you lose people, I try to save them.”
The Doctor looked back up, fixing him with a curious stare. “Do you ever visit his grave?”
“I did a lot for a long time when I was young, every day for a while even, but now I carry him with me instead. I have a small memorial of sorts for him on my fireplace mantle at home and I keep his memory alive with the work I do. Hell, I’ve even toyed around with starting up a ‘William MacLachlan Fund’ or somesuch for children who’ve been in traumatic accidents or for their families -- whenever I get enough money accumulated, that is - for even more of a living memorial, you know?”
“Yes, a memorial, good, that’s good. You see, John, I haven’t just lost my people - I’ve lost so many others that have traveled with me. Just like Martha, there have been so many people that have been through these doors.” He ran a hand up the wood of the doorframe and tapped on it fondly before returning his hands to his lap. “So many adventures, but so much loss. Some of them died, some of them simply moved on.”
“I try to visit them - their graves - if I can, if I am around, if I am strong enough, really,” he continued, his voice thick with emotion. “Sometimes, though, there is no grave or city or even planet to honor them on. Sometimes it is just as gone as they are, so I have to make due in other ways. I don’t have a memorial on the mantle like you, but I do have a room - a ‘memorial’ or even mausoleum room, I guess you could say. That is where I keep all my memories of lost friends and loved ones.”
The Doctor reached over and pressed a palm to John’s chest, above his heart, which was still racing just a bit. “I’d keep them in my hearts - like you, John - but there are much too many of them, too many that have slipped through my fingers, that my hearts might just break from it all.”
John smiled sadly at him, reaching up the cover the Doctor’s hand with his own. “Can I see it - this room?”
“You never back down, do you?” the Doctor asked, chuckling and shaking his head in slight exasperation.
“It’s what makes me a good doctor, I suppose.”
“It’s what makes you a good person.”
“Come on, up, up.” The Doctor slipped his hand from John’s so that he could stand and, once on his feet, John looked questioningly up at him. “You may never have this chance again. Let’s just say I’m in a strange mood.”
John hopped up himself, knowing the window of opportunity to see this private side of the Doctor was quickly closing - that he was being given a rare gift, a gift that he was so thankful for. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“No, thank you, John,” he replied, pulling John into a tight embrace. They held each other for several long moments before the Doctor began laughing.
“What?” John asked bemused, his voice muffled slightly by the material of the Doctor’s jacket.
“Somehow I can totally see it…you running around with your nappy around your ankles, naked to the world with no shame about your body. I can see some things about you have hardly changed. It’s no wonder you and Jack get on so well…”
+ + +
The first thing John noticed was that the room was a pale yellow and not as well lit as the other rooms he had been in on the TARDIS. Then, looking around, he saw that situated along the curved walls, there were cupboards of smallish drawers with unfamiliar symbols above the handles. As John approached one of the walls, the symbols seemed to change - no longer static, they morphed into letters he could now understand -
The words were names: Zoe, Jamie, Victoria, Liz, Jo, Ben…
The Doctor walked up beside John, leaning over to his left to caress the letters on the drawer in front of him with his fingertips - it was simply labeled ‘Susan.’ He then softly pulled on the handle to open it, reaching inside to pull out what appeared to be a small transistor radio that looked to John to be from the 1960s or so.
The Doctor then caressed the radio in his hand for a moment, before flipping it on and lifting it to his ear. He seemed to fall into a trance -- his eyes closing as his body started to move to the music irregularly, his arm and hand moving in front of him in an almost circular, yet jerky rhythm. There was something a bit eerie and unsettling about the way he moved - something so very alien - that John only felt better when he focused on the music instead.
It sounded just like Earth music - Merseybeat from the 60s, in fact -- just like what his own grandfather would listen to when a young John and Will would visit him, regaling them with wondrous tales of how he’d once been in a skiffle band and had even known the legendary Lonnie Donegan.
Even though he’d rarely thought of him in years, John suddenly deeply missed his grandfather - the memory now painfully present in his senses with the Doctor reminiscing about Susan and the music drawing him back to his youth. He’d died - his grandfather - when he was just a young boy, even before Will’s accident, but John could still remember him vividly and fondly.
“John Smith and the Common Men,” the Doctor murmured, almost startling John back to the present from his own thoughts. “Susan loved them.”
The Doctor continued to dance - John now watching him with curiosity - until the song ended and he flipped the radio off. His eyes were suddenly clear and he seemed himself again as he turned from John to place a light kiss on the radio and then carefully, lovingly, placed it back in the drawer where he’d retrieved it.
“My grandfather loved that music,” John offered softly, trying to ease the tension now hanging in the room between them.
The Doctor turned to him and offered a soft smile in response, his eyes suddenly seeming to show how old he truly was - so impossibly ancient it was almost dizzying. “Grandfathers usually do.”
---
The Doctor spoke briefly about many of the people whose names decorated the room, seeming not to linger too long on any of them, but instead moving along from each one in their own time.
John got the distinct impression that the Doctor was never one to linger on such matters - always moving forward with things, much like himself.
The two men finally stopped in front of a cupboard that had a drawer labeled ‘Martha’ and despite himself, John’s breath hitched in surprise upon seeing it. The Doctor stepped forward, not speaking a word in response, and eased open the drawer. He then reached inside and pulled out what almost looked like a necklace, or, upon closer inspection, a key at the end of some frayed string. It glinted in the yellow light and, almost unconsciously, John cupped his hands underneath it as it swayed to and fro, letting the Doctor slowly lower it into his hands.
“Is this -- ?”
“The perception filter she wore when she walked the Earth,” the Doctor replied almost brusquely, his eyes boring into his so intensely that John felt compelled to look down at the key instead.
“Why do you have it?” John whispered, feeling suddenly reverent to the object.
“She gave it back after everything…before she left.”
“And why do you keep it here?” John asked, starting to hand it back to the Doctor, though he was surprised when he’d flinched and took a step backward from him, avoiding it.
“Sometimes I keep things in here to remember,” he replied, his eyes now taking on a look of regret mixed with what almost looked like fear. “And sometimes I keep things in here to forget.”
John looked at the Doctor for a moment and then back down at the key in his hand. “Are you afraid of this?”
“Afraid, no. Why should you ask that?” the Doctor replied, noticeably uncomfortable now, as he began to scratch his neck and ease another step backward.
“You are acting strange, that’s why. You were fine a moment ago - a bit odd and all as you showed me the other things, but since you picked this up…you’ve been afraid. Yes, definitely afraid.”
The Doctor’s brow furrowed in confusion as if he’d been unaware of the difference in his behavior until his expression suddenly cleared as if he were remembering something. “I must have held it too long again,” he finally murmured.
“I’m sorry?”
“The connection - psychometry is what you humans call it,” the Doctor began to speak more clearly. “I can connect with objects sometimes, well, get impressions and feelings from touching them. It’s not common, but if it is an object that has a lot of emotion attached to it…well, let’s just say that most of the things in this room have that effect on me.”
“Psychometry?” John repeated, thinking back on the Doctor’s behavior since they’d been in the room. “I noticed that you’ve acted differently with each object, now that you mention it. I just thought you were being your usual odd and eccentric self. I mean, you were dancing a bit strangely with that radio when we first came in and when you had that kilt in your hand, your whole manner and speech changed. I thought you were just showing off using a proper Scottish accent for me as you told those anecdotes about…Jamie, was it? It didn’t even occur to me that…wow.”
“I didn’t even notice.” The Doctor was beginning to look a bit sheepish.
“And this?” John began, rubbing a fingertip over the tiny pieces of metal soldered to the key. “You can feel things from this as well? You can…feel Martha?”
The Doctor bit his lip, a faraway look darkening his expression. “Yes.”
“Does it…hurt?”
“The key? Well, it stings a bit if I hold it for more than a moment. If I hold it for longer though - ”
“Have you?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
The Doctor sat suddenly on the ground in a heap of lanky curled limbs, pulling his knees up to his chest as he began to rock back and forth. He’d honestly moved so quickly that he’d startled John.
“Doctor?”
He looked up at John, tears beginning to roll down his cheeks. “I saw it all, John. I saw everything. I held it one night, after she left. It must have been strong enough to knock me out because I woke up hours later on the floor just here. As soon as I came to, though, a flood of her memories - her feelings - rushed into me. It was horrible. I was overwhelmed with fear. I’d never felt so afraid, so alone, so invisible. It took me ages to calm down.”
John knelt down in front of him, putting a reassuring a hand on his shoulder. “Doctor - ”
“I did that to her, John. Yes, she came out strong and she made me so proud in the end, but she also lived a year of nightmares because of me.”
“Doctor - ”
“The things she saw John. The terrible, terrible things - ”
“Doctor,” John shifted onto the floor to wrap him arm around him to calm him. “It’s okay, now. She’s been dealing with it, moving on. She doesn’t blame you.”
John held the Doctor while he cried, leaving the key on the floor beside them. Its mysteries kept calling to him, though, and he couldn’t help but finally ask, “Can you show me?”
The Doctor looked at him, utterly astonished. “Show you?” he repeated slowly, dragging out each word.
“Yes,” John replied, pushing his chin out in defiance. “I want to know, even just a glimmer. All these people I care about know about that year - Martha, Jack, the Brig - and I try and console them, I try to understand, but I can’t do it effectively because I didn’t live it. I will always be on the outside looking in. I want to help instead and I can’t help if I don’t know what it was like.”
“You don’t know what you are asking,” the Doctor said evenly, wiping the tears from his face with the back of his hand.
“Yes, I do. I’m not an idiot.”
“John, this is not a game. This is about real feelings, Martha’s feelings.”
“Yes, the woman I love, the woman we love. I want to truly understand her. I want to know.”
“This isn’t about favorite colors or her favorite toy as a child, John, this is much darker than that.”
“We all have our demons, Doctor. Please, let me have this.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not? It can’t be about ability. I know that you’ve connected to me, got inside my head, helped me see things…somehow before - ”
“John, please don’t ask this of me,” the Doctor interrupted. “I already feel enough guilt over her experiencing this, I can’t let you feel it as well.”
“Shouldn’t that be my decision? I’m willing to take on this burden, Doctor. Please, this means a lot to me. Please.”
The Doctor finally shook his head in exasperation. “You are a stubborn boy, aren’t you? Martha is lucky to have you.”
John gave a triumphant smile. “What do we need to do?”
“Come here,” the Doctor replied, pulling him between his knees so that they were huddled together, legs wrapped around legs, in a ball on the floor. “I’m going to open your senses up to feel what I am feeling, well as much as I can with your physiology, but it will only be a glimpse. Then I will drop the key as soon as it gets too intense to break the connection, okay?”
”Okay,” John replied, holding the Doctor close.
“Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
The Doctor reached up to press his fingertips against John’s temples and immediately he noticed that suddenly everything around him seemed brighter, more pronounced. It was as if everything was alive around him and he could feel everything around him weaving together into a state of perpetual connectedness - everything linked to everything throughout time, throughout space --
It was both frightening and exhilarating.
“Now hand me the key,” he felt, more than heard, the Doctor say.
John reached over to pick up the key, feeling it almost sparking with energy in his hand, and then handed it to the Doctor. The Doctor then covered John’s hand with his so that they held it between them and the next thing John saw was a blinding light - a light that felt as if it was burning into him, as if setting him on fire - and then nothing but darkness.
---
John was walking the streets near his old house in Glasgow late in the evening. It was cold enough to see his breath and hardly anyone was around.
He heard screaming suddenly and then saw people running across the street before him, running this way and that, more in a blind panic than with any noticeable purpose. John ran up to one of the people, asking them what was going on, but they did not respond to him -- it was like they couldn’t see or hear him. He went up to another person - a woman this time - and received the same lack of response. This went on, person after person, until he finally heard someone screaming in the distance to go to your homes and hide.
John soon found himself running, his breathing deep and labored as he made his way down the streets back home. Once there, he quickly let himself inside and ran through the house calling for his mum, only to find her passed out in the living room on the couch, an empty bottle of whiskey by her side and the telly turned up far too loud. He tried to shake her to wake her up -- unsure of what the danger was outside but still wanting to protect her nonetheless - but she did not stir.
There was a crashing sound from the back of the house that startled him and his mother sat up suddenly, looking around to try and figure out where the noise came from.
“Johnny, is that you? What are you up to now?” she called out angrily - her voice slurred with intoxication -- and then added with a mumble, “Always getting into trouble. Such a worthless boy.”
“Mum, I’m right here. It wasn’t me,” John said, trying to ignore the sting from her words, but she was looking straight through him as if he wasn’t there.
“Damn, telly. Never anything good on,” she groaned, using the remote to turn it off.
Loud laughter echoed outside the room and then John looked up to see three strange metallic balls float into the room. There was a loud ‘shing’ of metal as what looked like spikes unfolded from their sides, spinning like blades.
“Good evening. Time to die,” a voice, much like a child sounded in the room, and then the laughter continued until they descended upon John’s mother to kill her.
“No!” he screamed out, helplessly. “No!”
“John, John, it’s me,” he heard a voice faint in the distance - a voice familiar, soothing -
He opened his eyes to see the Doctor above him, holding him as he kicked his legs and struggled against him.
---
“So alone, so invisible,” John whimpered. “They killed her. I think they killed them all.”
The Doctor stroked John’s hair as he now lay bonelessly across his lap in his arms.
“Just a nightmare,” the Doctor said soothingly. “It was just your brain trying to process what the key showed you, trying to integrate it into your own memories. It’s probably easier for me because I can compartmentalize my thoughts quite easily, but human brains don’t work the same way.” The Doctor pressed a kiss to the crown of John’s head. “What did you see?”
John recounted his nightmare to the Doctor, trying to make sense of it as he spoke. “I don’t really understand what was happening. Were those the Toclafane?”
“Yes. It sounds like your mind picked a memory where you felt very lost and alone and grafted Martha’s fear and experiences with the Toclafane right on top.”
“I suppose,” John replied, weakly.
“John, may I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“Our connection is still there but fading, so as you spoke of your dream, I could see and feel what you saw. Was,” he paused for a moment before continuing, “your mother really like that?”
John closed his eyes with a heavy sigh, leaning into the Doctor. “I’m afraid so. After my brother died, she always just made me feel - ”
“Invisible.”
“Yes, invisible. Invisible, worthless…you name it. And for a long, long time I believed her. It sometimes amazes me that I’ve ended up where I am today despite all that.”
“Yes, you could have taken a much darker path,” the Doctor sighed, holding John close. “But you didn’t. You’ve got a great big beautiful heart and you are a good man, John MacLachlan. I know what it’s like to be lost too, but I also know what it’s like to be found - ”
“By Martha?”
The Doctor laughed. “By Martha, by so many. So many people whose memories I cherish in this very room, making me the man I am today.”
“In my dream I was in Glasgow, where I grew up. I haven’t been able to go back there for about ten years. I tried to a few months ago with Martha, but found myself paralyzed with fear in Edinburgh and never made the trip over.”
“Old ghosts?”
“Too many. As you said, that is when I personally felt most invisible and most alone. I was so lost back then that there is a part of me that worries that if I go back and someone from my past sees me, that it will break the spell and I will be right back in that terrible life again.”
“I’m sure you know that’s not true, that you are stronger than that, John.”
“Somewhere up here I do,” John tapped his forehead and then moved his hand down to cover his heart, “but here needs a bit of work.”
+ + +
John and the Doctor were back to sitting in the doorway of the TARDIS looking out over the Horsehead Nebula again. John now carried the key in his pocket, a gift from the Doctor who’d said that the “last place Martha’s memories needed to be was a mausoleum” when she was still “so very alive.”
As they sat in silence - John’s hand in his pocket stroking the key - he thought of Martha’s journey across the Earth and how he knew a bit more about how she’d felt as she’d done so because of the Doctor. He felt more proud, more in awe, more in love with her than ever.
“John?”
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Let me take you to Glasgow.”
“I’m sorry?”
The Doctor reached down and pulled out the key from John’s pocket by the string. “You felt Martha’s fear from when she wore that, but you also felt that fierce strength of hers. Maybe it’s time that you went back home,” he paused, looping the key around John’s neck. “And be invisible again, but this time on your terms.”
“But - ”
“No one can see you, John -- no one that you don’t wish to, at least. Let Martha and I give you this gift.”
“I’m…scared.”
“I’ll be right beside you the whole time if you wish, holding your hand. I was a lost boy once too, John. Let me help you with something that I can never do for myself.”
The Doctor leaned over to press his lips against John’s and the two kissed languidly for several long moments before he got up to set the controls for Glasgow. John cupped the key around his neck in his hand and lifted it to his lips as the sounds of the TARDIS ground and whirred around him.
“Thank you,” he whispered, his gratitude rushing through him for both to the Doctor and Martha.
Author: radiantbaby
Characters/Pairings: Mostly Ten/Dr. John, but implied Ten/Martha/Dr. John as well [Note: Dr. John was a David Tennant character from “Love in the 21st Century”]
Word Count: 8061
Genre: AU, Angst, Romance, Slash
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Post-S3 new!Who [AU], also “Unearthly Child,” “The Sensorites,” and “The Dalek Invasion of Earth.”
Summary: The Doctor takes John a trip, but the two end up closer than they expected as they discover what always keeps them running and how they might face up to the demons of their pasts. Crossover of Doctor Who and “Love in the 21st Century”
Disclaimer: All your Doctor Who are belong to us Sadly, I own nothing related to Doctor Who or ‘Love in the 21st Century’ et al. I am just playing around in their sandbox for a bit of fun.
Author Notes: Thank you to persiflage_1 and ebbyzone [who also provided the original prompt] for their beta-work, sanity checks, advice, and overall moral support.
This story is #8 in our series, following the events of Bizarre Love Triangle.
Feedback is happy-making, so please leave a word or two [even if I am a bit slack in responding, your comments always make my day].
===
[Fic Banner by radiantbaby]
+ + +
Brown eyes met brown - both deep, both searching, both filled with a surprising recognition of kindred souls within the universe -
The Doctor almost felt sparks against his fingertips as they pressed delicately - intimately - against John’s temples. The rush of climax had synced them together, their thoughts and feelings interlaced and their souls touching in the darkness as their bodies moved against one another.
“Always running,” the Doctor whispered.
“Always,” John replied.
And as soon as it was there, the connection broke just as quickly - walls rising harshly to protect against secrets and any other bombardments pulling up deeply buried feelings from the past.
+ + +
“Martha?” John called out in the darkness, heart racing, and limbs cold and clammy from the nightmare he was having.
A protective arm wrapped around his torso and a body quickly flanked his side, naked flesh now sticking to naked flesh from the sweat rising on John’s skin.
“It’s okay, I’m here,” the Doctor whispered.
“Where’s Martha?” he asked in a half-whimper, feeling suddenly lost in the darkness as his mind slowly began to wake, still shaken by his bad dream.
A soft kiss against his neck and fingertips stroking his belly began to calm him. “On assignment with Torchwood in Africa. You remember that, don’t you, John?” the Doctor said, his dulcet voice soothing him as he become more fully aware of everything around him.
John raised a hand to his forehead, running a hand through his hair in embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Doctor, I was just - ”
“Scared?” the Doctor nuzzled his nose against John’s neck, “You sounded like you were having a terrible dream.”
“Yeah.” John said quietly, swallowing hard, “I had a bad dream. It was about Martha.”
---
Royal Hope Hospital. 1:30 AM.
John sat worrying by Martha’s bedside, nervously chewing his fingernail as he watched the slow rise and fall of her chest, as she lay unconscious before him.
She’d been at UNIT early that morning when - from the bit and pieces he’d gleaned from speaking with the Brigadier - an alien had infiltrated the premises. One of the first rooms it had found was the medical bay and it had attacked a hapless Martha -- it’s teeth injecting her with some unknown, unearthly venom - before it could be captured.
Several hours and tests later, she was in Royal Hope under his care. He’d yelled and fought to get her there and once they’d deemed her able to be released to him, he’d rushed her to the hospital to do his own battery of tests.
“Dr. MacLachlan, is there anything you need before I go?” Emily, the nurse on duty, asked him.
“I’m alright. Thank you, Emily.”
“Is,” Emily hesitated, looking down for a moment before looking back at him, “is Martha going to be alright?”
“I’m sure she will be,” he said with a forced smile, hoping that he could convince himself of the words he was saying. “She is a fighter and a survivor, so if anyone can make it, she can.”
“I hope you are right, doctor,” Emily replied with a sad smile back at him, before ducking out the door to leave.
Once alone with Martha again, he reached over to stroke her hair, speaking softly to her. “It’s going to alright, my darling. Jack is on his way and both Torchwood and UNIT are working on an antidote. Would you like me to read to you? I have some Keats in my office. I can run and grab it for you.”
John got up and pressed a soft kiss to Martha’s forehead, frowning a bit as the skin there was cold and laden with sweat. “I’ll be back in just a moment. Maybe I’ll read some of Keats’ letters to you. I know how much you love those.”
He turned and left the room, remembering with a wistful smile the times he would read to her. She had been surprised that he was a fan of poetry, especially the Romantics, but always said how much she loved it when he would read to her as they lounged around their home.
Lying in his arms, she’d say how it would ground her and ease her in times of stress. She would then smile and tell him how she loved to hear the soft cadence of his voice as he read to her and he would blush, but beam inwardly at her words.
Truth be told, it had always been an almost-secret part of himself that he’d never truly shared with anyone else. His attempts at reading poetry to a girl in the past as a teenager only led him to be called a poof by her and, consequentially, hiding that side of himself from any future lovers.
He probably wouldn’t have told Martha either, to be honest, but she’d discovered his books one evening and asked him about them. He knew he could never lie to her, so he, rather nervously, told her that day of his love for poetry.
He was surprised she’d been so receptive to his confession and even had been the one to request for him to read to her sometime in the first place. Soon after, it quickly moved to becoming a small tradition of sorts for them on more emotionally exhausting days, especially since they’d moved in together.
Once he entered his office, he grabbed his Keats book from his shelf and quickly made his way back to Martha’s room. As he rounded the corner to enter, though, he gasped in surprise - the bed had been stripped bare and Martha was nowhere to be found.
John double-checked the number of the room as his heart began to race and he began to panic. He made his way down to the hall to a nursing station to ask about Martha’s whereabouts, but no one seemed to know what he was talking about.
There was no record of her being there on the computer and when he’d run back to the room a second time, he noticed her charts were missing as well.
“Martha?”
He called out for her repeatedly, quickly making his way through the halls. Several nurses tried to quiet him, warning him that he was going to wake up many of the patients. He stubbornly ignored them, though, instead focusing on making his way through the hospital in a desperate search for her.
I only left her for just a minute, just a minute, he kept repeating to himself. What could have happened?
“Martha?” he called out one last time.
Then he awoke abruptly.
---
The Doctor reached up to caress his hair, a thumb’s caress against his temple to give him a glimpse into what John had dreamt. “It’s alright, it was just a nightmare. I think you’re just worried because she is so far away. Do you need me to take you to her? I can do that if you need. Or, we could call her.”
“Yes, I should call her,” John said with a sigh, reaching over to flip on the bedside lamp. “That’ll make me feel better, I should think. Otherwise, I might not be able to get back to sleep.”
John smiled at the Doctor, looking at the soft glow of his skin as the light shone on him and the way the sinews of his muscles shifted beneath his skin as he reached over to grab John’s mobile from the bedside locker on his side.
John would have never guessed a month before that the man he’d contemplated angrily confronting on first sight would now be entwined nude with him - legs curled around legs - on his bed.
The Doctor handed over the phone and he took it, flipping it open to scroll through the names on his contact list. He worried for a moment that it was only about 6:00 AM in Madagascar -- where she was helping Torchwood with an alien virus that had broken out in the north of the island - but his need to call her dominated any real reticence.
“Hello,” Martha answered, obviously groggy and sleepy on the other end of the line when she answered.
John spoke to her for a few minutes and, after finally feeling convinced that she was currently in no danger, he sheepishly ended the call and placed the mobile on his bedside locker.
“Better?” the Doctor asked, watching him with his head propped up on his elbow.
“Much,” John replied, mirroring him with his head now also propped up. “I’m sorry to have woken you.”
“Oh, I wasn’t sleeping,” the Doctor replied with a shrug.
“Not sleeping?”
“No, just thinking.”
“About what?”
“You.”
“Me?” John smiled, leaning forward to press his lips against the Doctor’s. “I like that.”
John pushed the Doctor backward to lay flat, moving on top of him and straddling his leg to deepen the kiss.
Sometimes there would be a fight for dominance between them - two alpha males trying to top one another - but this time the Doctor submitted easily to him, seemingly letting him use the pleasure from him as a salve against his worries.
As John fell back asleep later, he didn’t dream at all - instead succumbing to a soft black darkness that felt as if it enveloped him like a blanket. He wasn’t sure if the Doctor had anything to do with it, but he knew that even if he did, he’d probably never actually admit it.
The two men were still playing games with one another when it all came down, still holding back as much as they gave.
Sometimes, John thought, it was like looking in a mirror.
+ + +
“I think you impress him and scare him at the same time,” Martha’s voice - choppy with static from their dodgy phone connection - rose on the line.
“How do you mean?” John asked, stirring the scallops in the pan before him.
It had been two days since he’d had his bad dream and Martha was giving him a rare call to reconnect. He’d offered several times to come and see her in Africa, knowing that if the Doctor couldn’t bring him there, he’d just as easily jump on a plane to get there.
“Don’t you see how much alike the two of you are?” Martha asked with a laugh, “I’m amazed I never saw it before. It’s just when the two of you are together, it’s a bit…uncanny.”
“Yeah, well, he is a handsome bloke,” John replied easily, dodging the deeper ramifications of what she was saying.
+ + +
“Where are we?” John peered outside the door of the TARDIS into the beautiful shining swirls of red dust before him.
“The Horsehead Nebula,” the Doctor announced, his voice punctuated with gleeful smugness as he sidled up next to him and pointed into the distance. “See? It’s shaped a bit like a horse. Well, personally I agree with the Ood and think it looks more like a Cragorhloot, but I don’t think that Cragorhloothead Nebula has quite the same ring to it, do you?”
“And we’re not going to suffocate in the vacuum of space with these doors open?”
John marveled at how calmly he’d asked the question. The concepts that went hand in hand with his new life seemed to be coming to him with much more ease than he would have anticipated.
“Nah, the TARDIS is protecting us, we’ll be perfectly fine. Care to sit down?” the Doctor offered, folding his own lanky body to perch on the edge of the entrance, leaving his legs to swing in the space outside, much like a child might. “I assure you, it’s perfectly safe.”
John eased himself down to the floor much more slowly, still a bit hesitant about things, before draping his own legs outside the entrance and heaving a small sigh of relief once he was safely settled.
“See, not so bad, eh?” the Doctor asked, a wide smile on his face.
“Yeah. A bit weird, but not bad.”
The Doctor nodded in assent and then the two men fell into a companionable silence, just quietly watching the sights before them.
John mused to himself about how what he saw was just so peaceful and so enchanting. He even smiled a bit as he fantasized for a moment about being an artist, brushes in hand as he painted the beautiful palate of shapes and colors before him - anything to attempt to capture the memory in a more tangible medium.
John also - he had to confess - wished he could show what he was seeing to Martha.
“Have you…ever brought Martha here?”
The Doctor looked thoughtfully at John, chewing his bottom lip for a moment before answering. “No, not Martha. Last time I was here was a very, very long time ago. I was a different man then, quiet literally. It was with Barbara, Ian…and…and Susan, but not Martha.” He swallowed hard, looking away back into space.
John wondered why he’d faltered in speaking and what had caused him to turn away, but didn’t push. The two men were always walking on eggshells around one another, it seemed, no matter how close they got. John found himself empathizing more and more with Martha’s tales of frustration from when she still traveled with him, often not knowing how much to ask the Doctor and how much to just let be.
To John, the Doctor always seemed at some sort of tipping point and left him with a strong sense that if he pushed that little bit too much, he might just break him.
“Over there,” the Doctor spoke again, this time his voice barely louder than a whisper, as he pointed across the nebula, “is the Sense Sphere, home of the Sensorites. And just over there,” he paused again, pointing in the opposite direction, “is the Ood Sphere, home of the Ood.”
“The Sensorites…Ood…Barbara….Ian….Susan….what stories you must have…”
“Everyone has stories.”
“You know, Martha thinks we are a lot alike. Or so she says.”
The Doctor hummed in assent. “We do look very similar, though I might wager that I’m the more handsome of the two of us,” he said with a cheeky grin.
“Right, you keep believing that.”
“It’s what keeps me going some days.”
----
“Susan was my granddaughter.”
The Doctor was telling one of his anecdotes -- as he so often did - and then seemingly apropos of nothing, at least as far as not relating to the subject at hand from what John could tell, he’d suddenly stated this revelation very simply, yet sadly.
“Pardon?”
“Susan. She was my granddaughter,” he repeated.
“But you look so - ” Young, John had almost said.
The Doctor simply raised an eyebrow at him in response and the two men fell into silence again, turning their attention back outside the doors of the TARDIS.
“Where is she now?” John whispered into the soundless space before them, hoping to finally break the tension that was quickly rising between them.
“Gone.”
“Moved on?”
The Doctor laughed mirthlessly and John felt himself tremble a bit at the dark expression that now colored his countenance as he glanced back at him to answer. “Not quite.”
“Oh.”
The two men returned to looking at the nebula, awkward words between them apparently stifling them both.
“You said that over there was the Sense Sphere, right? What sort of planet is it? Is it anything like Earth?” John asked quietly, attempting to avert the apparent discomfort with the topic at hand.
John’s inquiry was only met with silence, though -- a cold, achingly discomforting silence.
John didn’t know the Doctor very well, of course, but one thing he had observed since they’d been acquainted was that he was generally a particularly verbose fellow, especially when it came to such things as the topic of science or history or time. In fact, sometimes he would regale John for hours with fantastical stories about where and when he’d traveled, or debate with him about microbiology in modern medicine, or tell awful Maths jokes that only he would laugh at -
The Doctor was rarely so quiet.
His uncharacteristic silence began to fill John with a looming sense of unease, especially when he dared sidelong glances at the darkened, hollow gaze in the Doctor’s eyes as he looked out into space.
To John, the Doctor had never seemed more alien to him than he had in that moment - so different, so distant.
And then, though the two men were in a vessel that traveled in time, it seemed that time had in fact stopped - that it was now (almost) standing still. Those soundless minutes frozen between them soon felt as if they were now curling and grasping at them with icy spindly fingers -- hanging thick and heavy around them, as if trapping them, weighing them down.
John wanted it to stop or speed up again or something (anything), because the discomfort picked and pulled at him like a scab, sinking deep beneath his punctured skin, and he understood with a stark clarity why he was always running - it was to escape this terrible pull into the creeping darkness of the past.
John grasped the doorway of the TARDIS at his sides, knuckles white and his body taut as if he was about spring upward and escape. In fact, that was all that was filling his mind now, his desires - to escape, to run, the boy inside screaming at the man he was now to get away, to not let it get him (again) -
He’d started to pull his knees up, started to shift his body to stand, when the Doctor grabbed his arm with a strong grip to stop him, fingertips pressing hard into his skin enough to bruise -
“She’d dead.” It was small, broken, barely above a whisper, but the words were there, hanging between them like that thick sinister pull of time he was trying so desperately to escape.
“Dead,” John echoed, wanting to free himself from the Doctor’s grasp, but honestly a bit afraid to, unsure of what might happen if he even could.
“I killed her, John. I killed them all.”
Something dropped inside John’s belly and he began to feel a bit dizzy and nauseated, everything spinning around him now. He hoped for a minute that maybe time had restarted, that his body was just catching back up to the momentum of its movement after being momentarily sedentary. “Killed?” he stammered, still trying to get his bearings.
“My world, my people, my family - all dead because of me.”
The Doctor was looking at him again - those hollow, dark, ancient eyes now turned in his direction and burning into him as if piercing his soul. John tried to look away, but he found himself just as trapped by the Doctor’s expression as he had by the frightening feeling in the air around them.
“Stop,” John managed, pleading. He knew he was trembling now, but he didn’t care anymore, he just wanted - needed - to run.
“Oh, I can’t stop, John. I kill people, that is my life, that is my curse.”
“Are you,” John paused, an odd alarmed whimper-like sound rising from deep within his throat stopping him before he continued, his voice quivering, “going to kill me too?”
The Doctor’s eyes focused even more intently on him and then his gaze looked down at where he was holding his arm. He let go quickly, shaking his hand as if scalded by heat, and when his gaze returned to John, he now only saw fear - and unshed tears - there instead.
“John,” he whispered.
“Doctor.”
The Doctor lifted his hand to run it through his hair and John took advantage of the distraction, pushing himself to his feet, but the Doctor grabbed his leg. “Don’t leave. Please. They all leave.”
John breathed in deeply, trying to calm himself. The Doctor was obviously frightened, so one of them needed to be calm. He reached into his mind to ease himself, to put himself in a position of more authority, the way he held himself when talking to or soothing his patients - calm, cool-headed, collected.
“Doctor, please let go,” John said evenly, as if soothing a skittish horse. “You are hurting me and you are scaring me.”
“I - ”
“Doctor, please,” he repeated, still calm, still soothing, still professional -
“I had to,” the Doctor let go of John’s leg. “It wasn’t like I walked up and put a bullet in their brains. I could never…it was the war, I had to save them, don’t you understand? It was the only way. It was my duty. I was a soldier. I did what they asked and I was supposed to die too, but I didn’t. I didn’t. I am the only one. I am the last. I am the last of my kind. There were so many better people - better friends, better leaders - who should have survived instead of me. I am no one special, I am just a renegade meddler with a incessant god complex. It shouldn’t have ended that way. I’ve already lost too many people, but now, now I’ve lost them all.”
“I…never knew,” John said, softening, but still keeping his distance.
“I’ve never…I don’t think I’ve ever even said it out loud before. Bit and pieces, yes, but never…”
“Martha doesn’t know?”
“She knows that I’m the last of my kind and that my world was destroyed. She doesn’t know that it was at my hands.”
“Why haven’t you told her before? Or anyone for that matter?”
“You humans can’t understand the scope of it all, what it is like to not only destroy your own world, but your entire species,” the Doctor snarled, his ferocity from moments before seeming to rear its head again.
“That’s not fair.”
“Life’s not fair.”
“Look, maybe I…we…can’t understand, but that doesn’t mean you can’t give us a chance to try. Maybe we can help you. You are always pushing people away, maybe it’s time to let people in.”
“Such a healer, you are. I bet you always took in stray kittens as a child,” the Doctor spat, venom still in his words.
“Maybe I am a healer, maybe that feels like my purpose, and maybe I can help you.”
“As I said, you can’t understand.”
“Then help me understand, even just a little. What are you so afraid of?”
The Doctor stared up at him, blinking a bit as if thinking, as if unsure of how to respond, caught off-guard. “I…am afraid of getting too close and losing more people.”
“Cutting off your nose to spite your face, then? Sounds like a bad plan to me.”
”Oh, and what would you know?”
“I know what it means to lose everyone you hold dear, to be left alone. I know what it means to push everyone away because you are too terrified to let yourself care for them. I know what it means to be so terrified of losing someone that you sometimes cry yourself to sleep at night. No, it’s certainly not on the immense magnitude of what you’ve experienced -- I get that - but that doesn’t make it any less painful or real.”
“You humans, I hate you sometimes -- thinking you can fix everything, challenging me with your ostentatious thoughts and ideas and assumptions,” the Doctor said, his angry expression now softening with a small smile and a glimmer in his eye, despite his words.
“Oh, I know. Always a challenge, me. Mum said that I was even terrible with potty training, always wanting to run around the block with my nappy down around my ankles instead - “
“John, I am sorry that I frightened you,” the Doctor said soberly, interrupting him.
“The past is a frightening place.” John slowly eased back down to sit cross-legged on the ramp near the Doctor.
“You would have liked her.”
“Susan?”
“Yes. Oh, she was brilliant, just absolutely brilliant. She had her mother’s eyes and the loyalty of her father and, well, the obstinacy of me. She was so loyal, so very loyal. I had to…well, I had to push her away in the end -- out of the nest, so to speak - or she would have never left my side.”
“Out of the nest?”
“I wanted her to belong somewhere, John, to have roots of her own, not a life of just traveling all over time and space with me. She’d met a boy called David, a freedom fighter, who’d fallen in love with her immediately and she with him. Perhaps it wasn’t really true love, but I still thought perhaps with him she could finally have those roots and live a normal life. I didn’t want her to be like me. So, I locked her out of the TARDIS, leaving her with David on 22nd century Earth…It was truly one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”
John put his hand reassuringly on the Doctor’s knee. “Did you ever visit her again?”
“No. I always meant to, of course, but I was always busy, always moving on and on, making excuse after excuse to myself for never wanting to look back or go back. I’ve spent lifetimes running from my past and I’ve always deeply regretted it. You always think you have tomorrow, especially when you are a Time Lord. In this case, I didn’t. I saw her once on Gallifrey -- later, older, as a new man - but then…well, I can only assume she died, if not earlier then with all the others, when I…well, when I…”
The Doctor swallowed hard and looked down.
“She’s alive in your heart…or hearts though. That’s where I keep William,” John patted his chest, “right here.”
“William?”
“My brother. I lost him when I was a child. He was bleeding in my arms and I thought for a long time that it was my fault that I couldn’t save him. It’s why I’m a doctor now, really…you lose people, I try to save them.”
The Doctor looked back up, fixing him with a curious stare. “Do you ever visit his grave?”
“I did a lot for a long time when I was young, every day for a while even, but now I carry him with me instead. I have a small memorial of sorts for him on my fireplace mantle at home and I keep his memory alive with the work I do. Hell, I’ve even toyed around with starting up a ‘William MacLachlan Fund’ or somesuch for children who’ve been in traumatic accidents or for their families -- whenever I get enough money accumulated, that is - for even more of a living memorial, you know?”
“Yes, a memorial, good, that’s good. You see, John, I haven’t just lost my people - I’ve lost so many others that have traveled with me. Just like Martha, there have been so many people that have been through these doors.” He ran a hand up the wood of the doorframe and tapped on it fondly before returning his hands to his lap. “So many adventures, but so much loss. Some of them died, some of them simply moved on.”
“I try to visit them - their graves - if I can, if I am around, if I am strong enough, really,” he continued, his voice thick with emotion. “Sometimes, though, there is no grave or city or even planet to honor them on. Sometimes it is just as gone as they are, so I have to make due in other ways. I don’t have a memorial on the mantle like you, but I do have a room - a ‘memorial’ or even mausoleum room, I guess you could say. That is where I keep all my memories of lost friends and loved ones.”
The Doctor reached over and pressed a palm to John’s chest, above his heart, which was still racing just a bit. “I’d keep them in my hearts - like you, John - but there are much too many of them, too many that have slipped through my fingers, that my hearts might just break from it all.”
John smiled sadly at him, reaching up the cover the Doctor’s hand with his own. “Can I see it - this room?”
“You never back down, do you?” the Doctor asked, chuckling and shaking his head in slight exasperation.
“It’s what makes me a good doctor, I suppose.”
“It’s what makes you a good person.”
“Come on, up, up.” The Doctor slipped his hand from John’s so that he could stand and, once on his feet, John looked questioningly up at him. “You may never have this chance again. Let’s just say I’m in a strange mood.”
John hopped up himself, knowing the window of opportunity to see this private side of the Doctor was quickly closing - that he was being given a rare gift, a gift that he was so thankful for. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“No, thank you, John,” he replied, pulling John into a tight embrace. They held each other for several long moments before the Doctor began laughing.
“What?” John asked bemused, his voice muffled slightly by the material of the Doctor’s jacket.
“Somehow I can totally see it…you running around with your nappy around your ankles, naked to the world with no shame about your body. I can see some things about you have hardly changed. It’s no wonder you and Jack get on so well…”
+ + +
The first thing John noticed was that the room was a pale yellow and not as well lit as the other rooms he had been in on the TARDIS. Then, looking around, he saw that situated along the curved walls, there were cupboards of smallish drawers with unfamiliar symbols above the handles. As John approached one of the walls, the symbols seemed to change - no longer static, they morphed into letters he could now understand -
The words were names: Zoe, Jamie, Victoria, Liz, Jo, Ben…
The Doctor walked up beside John, leaning over to his left to caress the letters on the drawer in front of him with his fingertips - it was simply labeled ‘Susan.’ He then softly pulled on the handle to open it, reaching inside to pull out what appeared to be a small transistor radio that looked to John to be from the 1960s or so.
The Doctor then caressed the radio in his hand for a moment, before flipping it on and lifting it to his ear. He seemed to fall into a trance -- his eyes closing as his body started to move to the music irregularly, his arm and hand moving in front of him in an almost circular, yet jerky rhythm. There was something a bit eerie and unsettling about the way he moved - something so very alien - that John only felt better when he focused on the music instead.
It sounded just like Earth music - Merseybeat from the 60s, in fact -- just like what his own grandfather would listen to when a young John and Will would visit him, regaling them with wondrous tales of how he’d once been in a skiffle band and had even known the legendary Lonnie Donegan.
Even though he’d rarely thought of him in years, John suddenly deeply missed his grandfather - the memory now painfully present in his senses with the Doctor reminiscing about Susan and the music drawing him back to his youth. He’d died - his grandfather - when he was just a young boy, even before Will’s accident, but John could still remember him vividly and fondly.
“John Smith and the Common Men,” the Doctor murmured, almost startling John back to the present from his own thoughts. “Susan loved them.”
The Doctor continued to dance - John now watching him with curiosity - until the song ended and he flipped the radio off. His eyes were suddenly clear and he seemed himself again as he turned from John to place a light kiss on the radio and then carefully, lovingly, placed it back in the drawer where he’d retrieved it.
“My grandfather loved that music,” John offered softly, trying to ease the tension now hanging in the room between them.
The Doctor turned to him and offered a soft smile in response, his eyes suddenly seeming to show how old he truly was - so impossibly ancient it was almost dizzying. “Grandfathers usually do.”
---
The Doctor spoke briefly about many of the people whose names decorated the room, seeming not to linger too long on any of them, but instead moving along from each one in their own time.
John got the distinct impression that the Doctor was never one to linger on such matters - always moving forward with things, much like himself.
The two men finally stopped in front of a cupboard that had a drawer labeled ‘Martha’ and despite himself, John’s breath hitched in surprise upon seeing it. The Doctor stepped forward, not speaking a word in response, and eased open the drawer. He then reached inside and pulled out what almost looked like a necklace, or, upon closer inspection, a key at the end of some frayed string. It glinted in the yellow light and, almost unconsciously, John cupped his hands underneath it as it swayed to and fro, letting the Doctor slowly lower it into his hands.
“Is this -- ?”
“The perception filter she wore when she walked the Earth,” the Doctor replied almost brusquely, his eyes boring into his so intensely that John felt compelled to look down at the key instead.
“Why do you have it?” John whispered, feeling suddenly reverent to the object.
“She gave it back after everything…before she left.”
“And why do you keep it here?” John asked, starting to hand it back to the Doctor, though he was surprised when he’d flinched and took a step backward from him, avoiding it.
“Sometimes I keep things in here to remember,” he replied, his eyes now taking on a look of regret mixed with what almost looked like fear. “And sometimes I keep things in here to forget.”
John looked at the Doctor for a moment and then back down at the key in his hand. “Are you afraid of this?”
“Afraid, no. Why should you ask that?” the Doctor replied, noticeably uncomfortable now, as he began to scratch his neck and ease another step backward.
“You are acting strange, that’s why. You were fine a moment ago - a bit odd and all as you showed me the other things, but since you picked this up…you’ve been afraid. Yes, definitely afraid.”
The Doctor’s brow furrowed in confusion as if he’d been unaware of the difference in his behavior until his expression suddenly cleared as if he were remembering something. “I must have held it too long again,” he finally murmured.
“I’m sorry?”
“The connection - psychometry is what you humans call it,” the Doctor began to speak more clearly. “I can connect with objects sometimes, well, get impressions and feelings from touching them. It’s not common, but if it is an object that has a lot of emotion attached to it…well, let’s just say that most of the things in this room have that effect on me.”
“Psychometry?” John repeated, thinking back on the Doctor’s behavior since they’d been in the room. “I noticed that you’ve acted differently with each object, now that you mention it. I just thought you were being your usual odd and eccentric self. I mean, you were dancing a bit strangely with that radio when we first came in and when you had that kilt in your hand, your whole manner and speech changed. I thought you were just showing off using a proper Scottish accent for me as you told those anecdotes about…Jamie, was it? It didn’t even occur to me that…wow.”
“I didn’t even notice.” The Doctor was beginning to look a bit sheepish.
“And this?” John began, rubbing a fingertip over the tiny pieces of metal soldered to the key. “You can feel things from this as well? You can…feel Martha?”
The Doctor bit his lip, a faraway look darkening his expression. “Yes.”
“Does it…hurt?”
“The key? Well, it stings a bit if I hold it for more than a moment. If I hold it for longer though - ”
“Have you?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
The Doctor sat suddenly on the ground in a heap of lanky curled limbs, pulling his knees up to his chest as he began to rock back and forth. He’d honestly moved so quickly that he’d startled John.
“Doctor?”
He looked up at John, tears beginning to roll down his cheeks. “I saw it all, John. I saw everything. I held it one night, after she left. It must have been strong enough to knock me out because I woke up hours later on the floor just here. As soon as I came to, though, a flood of her memories - her feelings - rushed into me. It was horrible. I was overwhelmed with fear. I’d never felt so afraid, so alone, so invisible. It took me ages to calm down.”
John knelt down in front of him, putting a reassuring a hand on his shoulder. “Doctor - ”
“I did that to her, John. Yes, she came out strong and she made me so proud in the end, but she also lived a year of nightmares because of me.”
“Doctor - ”
“The things she saw John. The terrible, terrible things - ”
“Doctor,” John shifted onto the floor to wrap him arm around him to calm him. “It’s okay, now. She’s been dealing with it, moving on. She doesn’t blame you.”
John held the Doctor while he cried, leaving the key on the floor beside them. Its mysteries kept calling to him, though, and he couldn’t help but finally ask, “Can you show me?”
The Doctor looked at him, utterly astonished. “Show you?” he repeated slowly, dragging out each word.
“Yes,” John replied, pushing his chin out in defiance. “I want to know, even just a glimmer. All these people I care about know about that year - Martha, Jack, the Brig - and I try and console them, I try to understand, but I can’t do it effectively because I didn’t live it. I will always be on the outside looking in. I want to help instead and I can’t help if I don’t know what it was like.”
“You don’t know what you are asking,” the Doctor said evenly, wiping the tears from his face with the back of his hand.
“Yes, I do. I’m not an idiot.”
“John, this is not a game. This is about real feelings, Martha’s feelings.”
“Yes, the woman I love, the woman we love. I want to truly understand her. I want to know.”
“This isn’t about favorite colors or her favorite toy as a child, John, this is much darker than that.”
“We all have our demons, Doctor. Please, let me have this.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not? It can’t be about ability. I know that you’ve connected to me, got inside my head, helped me see things…somehow before - ”
“John, please don’t ask this of me,” the Doctor interrupted. “I already feel enough guilt over her experiencing this, I can’t let you feel it as well.”
“Shouldn’t that be my decision? I’m willing to take on this burden, Doctor. Please, this means a lot to me. Please.”
The Doctor finally shook his head in exasperation. “You are a stubborn boy, aren’t you? Martha is lucky to have you.”
John gave a triumphant smile. “What do we need to do?”
“Come here,” the Doctor replied, pulling him between his knees so that they were huddled together, legs wrapped around legs, in a ball on the floor. “I’m going to open your senses up to feel what I am feeling, well as much as I can with your physiology, but it will only be a glimpse. Then I will drop the key as soon as it gets too intense to break the connection, okay?”
”Okay,” John replied, holding the Doctor close.
“Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
The Doctor reached up to press his fingertips against John’s temples and immediately he noticed that suddenly everything around him seemed brighter, more pronounced. It was as if everything was alive around him and he could feel everything around him weaving together into a state of perpetual connectedness - everything linked to everything throughout time, throughout space --
It was both frightening and exhilarating.
“Now hand me the key,” he felt, more than heard, the Doctor say.
John reached over to pick up the key, feeling it almost sparking with energy in his hand, and then handed it to the Doctor. The Doctor then covered John’s hand with his so that they held it between them and the next thing John saw was a blinding light - a light that felt as if it was burning into him, as if setting him on fire - and then nothing but darkness.
---
John was walking the streets near his old house in Glasgow late in the evening. It was cold enough to see his breath and hardly anyone was around.
He heard screaming suddenly and then saw people running across the street before him, running this way and that, more in a blind panic than with any noticeable purpose. John ran up to one of the people, asking them what was going on, but they did not respond to him -- it was like they couldn’t see or hear him. He went up to another person - a woman this time - and received the same lack of response. This went on, person after person, until he finally heard someone screaming in the distance to go to your homes and hide.
John soon found himself running, his breathing deep and labored as he made his way down the streets back home. Once there, he quickly let himself inside and ran through the house calling for his mum, only to find her passed out in the living room on the couch, an empty bottle of whiskey by her side and the telly turned up far too loud. He tried to shake her to wake her up -- unsure of what the danger was outside but still wanting to protect her nonetheless - but she did not stir.
There was a crashing sound from the back of the house that startled him and his mother sat up suddenly, looking around to try and figure out where the noise came from.
“Johnny, is that you? What are you up to now?” she called out angrily - her voice slurred with intoxication -- and then added with a mumble, “Always getting into trouble. Such a worthless boy.”
“Mum, I’m right here. It wasn’t me,” John said, trying to ignore the sting from her words, but she was looking straight through him as if he wasn’t there.
“Damn, telly. Never anything good on,” she groaned, using the remote to turn it off.
Loud laughter echoed outside the room and then John looked up to see three strange metallic balls float into the room. There was a loud ‘shing’ of metal as what looked like spikes unfolded from their sides, spinning like blades.
“Good evening. Time to die,” a voice, much like a child sounded in the room, and then the laughter continued until they descended upon John’s mother to kill her.
“No!” he screamed out, helplessly. “No!”
“John, John, it’s me,” he heard a voice faint in the distance - a voice familiar, soothing -
He opened his eyes to see the Doctor above him, holding him as he kicked his legs and struggled against him.
---
“So alone, so invisible,” John whimpered. “They killed her. I think they killed them all.”
The Doctor stroked John’s hair as he now lay bonelessly across his lap in his arms.
“Just a nightmare,” the Doctor said soothingly. “It was just your brain trying to process what the key showed you, trying to integrate it into your own memories. It’s probably easier for me because I can compartmentalize my thoughts quite easily, but human brains don’t work the same way.” The Doctor pressed a kiss to the crown of John’s head. “What did you see?”
John recounted his nightmare to the Doctor, trying to make sense of it as he spoke. “I don’t really understand what was happening. Were those the Toclafane?”
“Yes. It sounds like your mind picked a memory where you felt very lost and alone and grafted Martha’s fear and experiences with the Toclafane right on top.”
“I suppose,” John replied, weakly.
“John, may I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“Our connection is still there but fading, so as you spoke of your dream, I could see and feel what you saw. Was,” he paused for a moment before continuing, “your mother really like that?”
John closed his eyes with a heavy sigh, leaning into the Doctor. “I’m afraid so. After my brother died, she always just made me feel - ”
“Invisible.”
“Yes, invisible. Invisible, worthless…you name it. And for a long, long time I believed her. It sometimes amazes me that I’ve ended up where I am today despite all that.”
“Yes, you could have taken a much darker path,” the Doctor sighed, holding John close. “But you didn’t. You’ve got a great big beautiful heart and you are a good man, John MacLachlan. I know what it’s like to be lost too, but I also know what it’s like to be found - ”
“By Martha?”
The Doctor laughed. “By Martha, by so many. So many people whose memories I cherish in this very room, making me the man I am today.”
“In my dream I was in Glasgow, where I grew up. I haven’t been able to go back there for about ten years. I tried to a few months ago with Martha, but found myself paralyzed with fear in Edinburgh and never made the trip over.”
“Old ghosts?”
“Too many. As you said, that is when I personally felt most invisible and most alone. I was so lost back then that there is a part of me that worries that if I go back and someone from my past sees me, that it will break the spell and I will be right back in that terrible life again.”
“I’m sure you know that’s not true, that you are stronger than that, John.”
“Somewhere up here I do,” John tapped his forehead and then moved his hand down to cover his heart, “but here needs a bit of work.”
+ + +
John and the Doctor were back to sitting in the doorway of the TARDIS looking out over the Horsehead Nebula again. John now carried the key in his pocket, a gift from the Doctor who’d said that the “last place Martha’s memories needed to be was a mausoleum” when she was still “so very alive.”
As they sat in silence - John’s hand in his pocket stroking the key - he thought of Martha’s journey across the Earth and how he knew a bit more about how she’d felt as she’d done so because of the Doctor. He felt more proud, more in awe, more in love with her than ever.
“John?”
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Let me take you to Glasgow.”
“I’m sorry?”
The Doctor reached down and pulled out the key from John’s pocket by the string. “You felt Martha’s fear from when she wore that, but you also felt that fierce strength of hers. Maybe it’s time that you went back home,” he paused, looping the key around John’s neck. “And be invisible again, but this time on your terms.”
“But - ”
“No one can see you, John -- no one that you don’t wish to, at least. Let Martha and I give you this gift.”
“I’m…scared.”
“I’ll be right beside you the whole time if you wish, holding your hand. I was a lost boy once too, John. Let me help you with something that I can never do for myself.”
The Doctor leaned over to press his lips against John’s and the two kissed languidly for several long moments before he got up to set the controls for Glasgow. John cupped the key around his neck in his hand and lifted it to his lips as the sounds of the TARDIS ground and whirred around him.
“Thank you,” he whispered, his gratitude rushing through him for both to the Doctor and Martha.