[fic] Savior 3/3 (Doctor Who, Martha/Master, PG-13)
Title: Savior 3/3
Series:Doctor Who
Characters/Pairing: Martha Jones/The Master, Doctor/Master (implied)
Rating: PG-13
Length: this part 4260 /14900 total
Genre: Dark fic/drama
Warnings: Supporting character death
Spoilers: through Last of the Time Lords
Summary: dark_fest fic, prompt: Master/Martha. The Master lays a trap for the Doctor using Martha before they ever met.
Notes: Hearty thank yous are due to persiflage_1 for Brit-picking a complete stranger's story and being warm and cheerful to boot; to tsubaki_ny, darthneko, emilytarot and armistice_day for cheerleading at all stages; and most absolutely and especially to the fantastic Mr. foxysquid, who held my hand every step of the way, listened to me bitch and moan and gnash my teeth, and pre-read/provided much insight on the story in many of its ugliest phases. Any remaining errors are my own!
Disclaimer: Not mine. Just playing :)
( Part 1 | 2 | 3 | Index & Extras )
7: Falling Down.
The Master brought Martha back to modern-day London, and made her a queen.
She still worked at the Royal Hope, but only because the Master said that was where the other Time Lord would come looking for her. When her shifts ended, there was always a car waiting for her, waiting to carry her to adorn Harold Saxon's arm.
He took her out on the town. He seemed to love showing her off for some reason she couldn't fathom, so they went dancing and socializing, rubbing shoulders with the London political elite. She learned to smile and laugh and be as charming as he was, when it suited her. She called him "Harry" to others, learned to look as if she were in love. She became famous, infamous. She saw her picture in the tabloids, and sometimes late at night she cried to herself over them, wondering what Tish would've made of all this.
She was aware that she was slowly becoming more and more like him--mad, yes, but also seeing the people around her as if they were not hers, as if she was outside, somehow.
Some nights, when she felt that distance keenly and when he was in good spirits, she swallowed his charm and flattery and pretended it was real. There were times that she could almost pretend to love the Master as much as she hated him. She told herself that they were using each other. They were, after all, uniquely set apart and bound together by their purpose.
That was what she told herself the night he came back to their shared flat, eyes bright and all but glowing with victory, dragging her up out of her seat and spinning her around.
"Guess what's happened?" he prompted her, like an eager child. "Ask me, Martha Jones."
"What's happened, Harry Saxon?" she said, because she wanted to know, and not because she was obliging him.
He crooked his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, and kissed her cheek. "I've heard a little rumor from a very reliable source that one Harold Saxon is about to be named Minister of Defense."
"And so it begins."
"Aren't you happy for me?" He inserted himself into her line of sight and pouted dramatically.
She pointed to her lips. "See me smiling?"
"Aww, come on, Martha. Be happy for me."
"I'm happy if it gets us closer to the machine being done and this other Time Lord."
"Oof, so single minded!" The Master clutched his chest. "Please, Martha, just a little smile?"
Her mouth twitched, and the corner pulled up. He whooped and pulled her round and round again, and kissed her, and despite herself she kissed him back. Then he dropped down on one knee in front of her while the world continued to spin.
"What are you doing?"
"Martha Jones," he said, all overacted solemnity, "Every good politician needs a wife."
He produced a ring from his pocket and presented it to her.
Martha's stomach lurched. "I--I can't."
"Who do we have," the Master said to her, "but each other?"
His words brought the lonely burden of what she had done, what she would do, crashing down on her.
Martha reached out and took the ring.
"It means nothing," she said, holding the ring out between them. "It's all convenience."
"My dear Martha," he said, as if she really were everything. "Of course."
She didn't flinch, didn't show a bit of hurt. When he opened her arms she stepped into them, and let him hold her as she slipped the ring on her finger.
"My dear," he murmured into her hair, "would-be doctor."
Martha wondered why he always chuckled when he said that word.
***
On that night, like all her worst nights, she went to see the TARDIS.
Though from the outside it still looked the ordinary blue box, inside the once-beautiful ship was a ruin. The reddish cabin light had become almost bloody. A distant ringing sounded constantly. The console was a mess, paneling pulled off, pipes and tubes and wiring crammed into it. A metal cage was half-installed around the central shaft and two massive copper pipes were in the process of being laid down across the cabin floor.
Martha found some peace by tidying up what she could, wiping away smears of oil and a mysterious fluid. She never touched the mess of tubes and pipe and cabling the Master had installed, only the original elements of the TARDIS. She always spoke to it as she worked, as if she wasn't as responsible for this as the Master himself.
"I'm sorry, love," she said. "You look as bad as I feel. But it's worth it. I promise you."
When she had cleaned what she could, Martha knelt behind the bench near the console and pulled up the grating behind it. She felt in the narrow space between one of the support struts and the flooring. For a moment, her breath caught in her throat, and then her fingertips contacted the thin edge of the photograph she had hidden there.
Martha closed her eyes. She never took the photo out; she could see it clearly enough in her mind, Leo and Tish, her mum and her dad, herself, smiling. Innocent and whole, alive. But she liked to feel that it was still there.
The dry scrape of the TARDIS doors opening jerked her upright. She tried to get the panel back in place quietly and quickly, but her fingers slipped on the metal and it fell down with a clang. She held her breath and waited for the Master's voice to ring out, to cut her down.
Instead, she heard a low, male gasp. Martha glanced around herself, grabbed a laser cutter the Master had left behind. Her heart pounding in her ears, she leaned past the bench to have a look.
An old, wiry man with a long face and nervous eyes stood just inside the TARDIS, staring at her.
"You," he said. "You're Martha Jones. Saxon's--"
Her mind filled in whore, but he simply didn't finish.
"That's right," she said. "And who are you?"
"I was assured--" he said, his hands patting at himself, as if he were searching his pockets for something. "No matter, no matter. What are you doing here?"
"I think you should be answering that question. Or should I call security?"
"Oh, Miss Jones, I doubt you will. He wouldn't like that, if you did, would he? Does he even know you're here?"
"Who are you?" she repeated.
"Archie Muir," he said. "Torchwood."
"You're a long way from Cardiff."
"Glasgow. Torchwood Two."
"There's a Torchwood Two?"
"There's me," Archie said, eyeballing her. "So do I trust her, or don't I? Hard to say, hard to say. Which is it, puppet, lapdog, fool...?"
"I can hear you," she said.
"Do you know what he is doing here? Do you?" He stared at her face, and she stared back, showing him nothing. She was getting good at that, even as the Master was good at it. "Or have you come to get lost? Red eyes. Crying, or doing the drugs?"
"Or how about allergies?"
"Yes, could be that, too, couldn't it?" He took a few steps forward, halting between each and watching her, as if she were an unknown dog. She half expected him to extend a hand towards her so she could sniff it. From one of his many pockets, he produced a handheld of some sort and began waving it up and down, squinting at it.
"What do you think you're doing? Didn't you hear me? I said, you can't be here." She stepped in front of the scanner. "Especially not if you're Torchwood."
"The rumors. The parts. And this! Isn't it--wasn't it--? I just have to confirm--then maybe Harkness will take my calls. Thinks I'm a fool. I'm a fool? Look at Cardiff, what've they ever had to cope with? Not twenty calls a day about the Loch Ness Monster, I'm sure." Archie Muir tried to lean around her, turning a dial on the scanner. "Give me a look, then, dear."
Martha raised the laser cutter. "I can't let you do that."
Archie stopped, looked at the cutter, and then at Martha. "Young lady. You don't point dangerous equipment at folks without meaning to use it. Not wise, not wise at all."
"I mean it."
"Do you? Saw the look on your face, I did, when I first walked in here. Thought I was him, didn't you? You don't want to hurt me. Folks like me, we're here to help you."
He took a step towards the central console, towards her. She didn't lower the cutter.
"Stop," she said.
"He's not who you think he is, young lady. I'm quite sure. Quite sure. What's he paid you with, attention and jewels? Not enough. Get away from him, if you're smart. He's not human. Look into his past. Look hard."
He took another step, and she raised her thumb over the activation switch on the cutter handle.
Archie shook his head. "Well, go on then, shoot me," he said. "Others will come. Torchwood Two, UNIT, the Doctor, others. I trust that they'll sort it out. Oh yes. If Archie Muir can, others will too."
Martha's attention snagged on a single word. "The doctor? Which doctor?"
She was so distracted she almost missed Archie's brief glance at the scanner in his hand, the split-second widening of his eyes. Whatever he'd come for, he'd gotten. He gave her a grandfatherly smile, pocketed the scanner, put his hands up.
"All right, young lady. She wins, doesn't she? I'll be going, then."
Archie turned. He began walking towards the TARDIS doors, and she almost let him do it.
Almost.
Martha's mouth dried out as she realized that she couldn't let him go. Even if he had been just a janitor--the wrong word spoken to the right ears could ruin everything. And Archie Muir was Torchwood; he had recognized something, he knew Saxon was more than he said he was.
"Stop," she said. Archie kept walking.
Her hand tightened on the laser cutter.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry, but it's what I have to do. I've got to make things right."
She thumbed the activation switch, and shut her eyes against the glare.
8: Who.
"There was no blood. No blood at all, you know. Just a little burned hole."
It was Christmas Eve. She sat at the dinner table, staring out the glass wall of Saxon's flat at the blinking lights across the street. A half-drunk glass of champagne sat in front of her; she played with the stem of the glass.
"What are you on about now?" The Master emerged from the kitchen, undoing his Harold Saxon costume--a tuxedo, complete with bowtie, worn to yet another pointless political hobnobbing affair. He tossed his cufflinks onto the table beside her. "Have you finally gone mad? I suppose it's about time. You've been needing a new look."
She shot him a hateful glare. He beamed at her. "Ah, there's the Martha Jones I love."
She turned her face back to the window. His hand landed on her bare shoulder, eased the curtain of her hair back. His fingertip lay against the top of her spine. If she imagined, it could seem like a loving caress, and some nights, she was still willing to do so.
"Oh, don't be like that. It's Christmas. Aren't you humans supposed to be full of good cheer?"
"What's to be cheerful about?"
"Plenty! Let's see... I'm Minister of Defense. We're getting married. The campaign is going smashingly. The machine is almost done. Everything is going according to plan?"
When she didn't react to any of these, he leaned over, rested his cheek against hers. "Only four more months until the end of this reality and you see your family again?"
"All right. Cheers to that," she said, and sipped from her champagne glass.
"Just a drink? Not even a kiss?"
He never made her do anything, only suggested. It was always her choice. She supposed he liked it, that way. She came to him. She had no one to blame but herself.
Martha stood and kissed him.
"Kiss me, kill me," she murmured against his mouth. She felt him smile.
"All in good time, my dear." His hand wrapped over her right, briefly squeezed. She felt her engagement ring dig into his fingers, and the sides of her middle and pinky. "You look tired. Come to bed."
"Eventually."
She felt his annoyance, but sat back down at the table anyway. When she heard the door closing down the hall, she let out a long breath she wasn't aware of holding. She was grateful to whatever game he was playing that insisted on her willing compliance; she didn't fool herself that he did it out of some respect for her.
Martha drank down the rest of her champagne, and waited.
***
She went to their room, later, to see if he was asleep. The Master was sleeping more than he had when they first met, sometimes as long as four hours--something he was doing was taking it out of him. When he slept lately, he slept like the dead. Martha stood over him and thought about the hole she had put in Archie Muir's chest, of how easily she could do it to the Master while he lay there with his child-like, innocent expression.
But if he died, so did all her plans. If he died, she was nothing but small and evil.
She turned and looked for his case. She found it propped against the side of the chair in the corner of the room, and, as quietly as she could, she popped open the clasps and eased the laptop out of it. She laid it down on the chair seat while she closed the case again.
Saxon's mobile rang.
Martha jumped away from the case guiltily. She glanced at Saxon but he didn't stir, not until the third ring. By then she was able to get to the door, and shut it quietly behind herself. On the fifth ring, she heard him answer, voice thick with sleep.
"Saxon. This better be good."
Martha resumed her position at the dinner table just as the bedroom door opened.
"A what? A Christmas star? Are you--?" The Master paused.
Martha followed his gaze out the window and gasped, seeing the distant, star-shaped object descending towards the Thames.
"That's no star, you idiot." The Master seized his jacket from the coat closet and opened the front door. "Mobilize the local units now. Protocol Z. I want it brought down and the wreckage retrieved--"
The door shut behind him, cutting off the rest of his order.
In the distance, the Christmas star lit up with something like lightning.
"Beautiful," Martha murmured, but she didn't stay to watch it.
She hurried back to the bedroom. The laptop was still on the chair seat. Martha opened it and booted it up, tapping her fingers on the chair arm impatiently.
There were benefits to being the Master's companion; sometimes when he was feeling arrogant and lazy, he had her go through his correspondence as if she were his secretary. He did not seem to be especially creative with his passwords. She pulled up the Torchwood Remote Access window and logged in effortlessly.
"Happy Christmas," she said to herself, and navigated to the database search.
She typed in "doctor." The portal pulled up a massive list of doctors. A quick perusal of the first few pages of results brought nothing of interest. Martha bit her lip, sitting back on her heels, and considered. Then she typed, "the doctor."
A single entry came up. She held her breath and pulled up the main record. A number of faces stared out at her, old and young, odd and handsome. Bold letters underneath declared the faces to be "Enemy of the Crown. Seize On Sight." She began to read, and then she stared at the pictures again.
"But this is for a single individual?"
Her eye caught the line item "species." Next to it was "Time Lord."
"Stupid," she muttered. "I should've guessed!"
There were dozens upon dozens of incidents and sightings, dating back to 1879 and the founding of Torchwood. Earlier dates were listed for even more possible sightings. Martha's eyes skimmed the most recent: the mannequins coming to life, the space ship crashing into Big Ben, the Battle of Canary Wharf.
She swallowed.
"Fascinating reading, isn't it?"
Martha slammed the laptop shut. Too late, she knew, but she couldn't help the automatic response. The Master dropped down beside her.
"Torchwood enemy number one arrives in town and the harmless, curious ghosts become fully fledged metal monsters?"
He reached over, opened up the laptop again. When the screen came back up, he pulled up a surveillance photo of the Doctor at the Torchwood facility, wild eyed and shouting at something, all mad eyebrows and unruly hair.
"He's a menace," the Master said, staring at the screen. "Flocking to trouble, trying to fix things, but always, always leaving a ruin in his wake. Sound familiar, Martha?"
Martha said nothing.
"You... doctors."
The Master held his hand in front of the screen, almost as if he meant to touch that manic face, and then he shut the laptop with a force that made her wince. He wore such an expression that Martha couldn't tear her eyes away, such a mixture of hate and fear and loathing and passion, and perhaps, even love.
It was an expression Martha saw on her own face, sometimes, in the mirror, when the Master passed through the room or her thoughts.
She stood abruptly, unable to be in the bedroom any more. Breathless, she hurried into the dining room, picked up her glass and stared out of the wide windows, into the dark.
The sound of blood rushing in her ears deafened her.
Martha knew then with crystal clarity that she was a piece to be discarded. All of this, all of this game; in the end it was nothing to do with her. The Master played it for the Doctor.
Despair threatened, and fear, that all she had done was futile, for nothing. That she had stood by Saxon, that she had let the TARDIS be mutilated, that she had killed, all in the name of promises that would never be kept.
He would give her the second TARDIS, he had said. What a fool she was to believe that. She didn't even know how to pilot one--he had laughed, when she asked to be shown how. And once he had the Doctor why would he take her back? Unless he wanted to watch her die at the hands of the same Cybermen who murdered her family. Perhaps he would consider that a gift. Perhaps she would, too.
But she had come all this way. She had done so much, so much of it awful, but not all. She had given up so much. She had to find a way out, a way to redeem this. If the Master thought so little of her--if she was nothing but a mouse, a pawn--surely she could find a way to exit the game on her own terms?
She felt the Master enter the room, and she despaired.
His words were like silk wrapped around a blade. "I know what you're thinking. Humans are so transparent. But haven't you learned after all this time, after all I've given you...? It's so much easier when you don't fight." She could feel his smile on the back of her neck, burning her. "Less fun, but easier."
She turned and tried to smile at him. "I don't know what you mean, Harry."
"Master."
She tried to say the word, tried to placate him, but it stuck in her mouth. His feral grin dropped into a scowl.
"Don't think that I need you. That I care what happens to you. If you do something rash and you die, it will annoy me, but if won't matter. If you kill yourself, it won't matter. If you cooperate and you live--who knows, my dear, maybe you'll get the better of me after all?" She saw the flash of his teeth. "So what do you say?"
She said nothing. The Master's arm wrapped heavily around her shoulders, and Martha knew she was lost.
9: Fate.
"You understand the plan?"
Martha sat in front of the picture window. "Yes," she said, dully. Four months, four months she had searched for any opportunity, any way out, but still this day had come.
She had looked for her chance to ruin the Master's plans. But she must have been as opaque as glass to him. The Master had moved the TARDIS to some secret location, and she no longer had its comfort. The weight of the wedding ring on her hand was like a ten-ton stone. Her family was still dead, ten months rotting in the dirt. And the Master still slept at their flat every night, so peacefully, as if mocking her, inviting her to kill him in his sleep.
She had tried, more than once, but she never could bring herself to do it. And that made her glad.
The Master snapped his fingers in front of her face. "Are you in there? I said repeat it to me. Humor me."
"I go to work. I'll meet the Doctor on my rounds with Stoker. We'll get carted off to the moon by Judoon, and I'll help him sort it out."
"And?"
"And I'm to make friends with him."
"Yes. That's very important, do you understand? He'll trust you almost from the start, I don't know why," the Master said. "I suppose he'll see all the good and the kindness and your shared penchant for hopeless situations." He rolled his eyes. "He'll trust you, Martha, to the point where he leaves his life in your hands."
"And then I let him die?"
"No," the Master had said. "And then you save his life and hand him to me. I want him to see you do it. Betray him. That's when the fun begins, when he finally gets to see my smiling face. He'll love that. And you, my dear, will be free to do as you like."
Martha didn't bother to hide that she didn't believe him. "Of course I will."
He knelt in front of her and cupped her cheeks with his hands. "Oh, Martha, Martha Saxon, don't you trust me?"
"Don't call me that," she said, turning her face away so that his kiss landed somewhere on her jaw.
He snorted, and his eyes hooded. Then he stood, turning to look out the window, hands on his hips. Two of his fingers began to tap out a familiar four-beat against his pelvis. She had agitated him; she was glad.
"Don't even think about not going through with it," he warned her, still facing away from her. "If you try to betray me, I'll know. It's been all fun and games, my dear, watching you run your little rat maze, exercising your free will, but when the moment comes you will do what I want, whether you choose to or not."
Martha bowed her head. "Of course," she said, quietly, "Master."
***
The Royal Hope.
Martha chuckled darkly at the name.
She stood across the way from the hospital. The pedestrian crossing light had long since changed from red to green. The people around her flowed forward, but Martha didn't move.
She would go into the hospital. She would meet the Doctor on her rounds. She would befriend him, and then betray him to the Master on the moon.
But Martha could not make her feet move. She heard someone behind her curse at her, felt people shove into her sides. If she stayed there, if she didn't get to the hospital before it began raining, if she watched it fly away and did nothing, would she finally win? No, but the Master had warned her against that. If she didn't go inside, he would make her. Her choices were always an illusion. Her fate was written in stone, so unchangeably that she could meet her future wrongdoings in the shape of a dozen floating, insane spheres.
Martha waited to hear the part of herself that had always screamed against such things as fixed timelines and pre-destiny, but she heard only silence.
The crowd moved around her; the world moved on without her. Her feet refused to lift from the pavement. She waited for him to take control of her, to move her limbs like she was a puppet. She waited to die.
Someone shuffled past her, caught her shoulder. Martha looked up. Her eyes widened; she knew that face.
It was the face she saw every day in the mirror, after all.
"Hope, Martha," her other self said, and smiled brilliantly, pressing something into her hand.
Martha looked down to see the photo of her family, the one she had hidden in the TARDIS: Leo and Tish, her mum, her dad, herself, laughing and innocent. She gasped and looked up, her lips parting to say something, to ask anything, but the other Martha was gone.
"Hope," she repeated, and pressed the photo to her chest.
Martha walked forward, head held high, to meet her destiny.
-fin-
Series:Doctor Who
Characters/Pairing: Martha Jones/The Master, Doctor/Master (implied)
Rating: PG-13
Length: this part 4260 /14900 total
Genre: Dark fic/drama
Warnings: Supporting character death
Spoilers: through Last of the Time Lords
Summary: dark_fest fic, prompt: Master/Martha. The Master lays a trap for the Doctor using Martha before they ever met.
Notes: Hearty thank yous are due to persiflage_1 for Brit-picking a complete stranger's story and being warm and cheerful to boot; to tsubaki_ny, darthneko, emilytarot and armistice_day for cheerleading at all stages; and most absolutely and especially to the fantastic Mr. foxysquid, who held my hand every step of the way, listened to me bitch and moan and gnash my teeth, and pre-read/provided much insight on the story in many of its ugliest phases. Any remaining errors are my own!
Disclaimer: Not mine. Just playing :)
( Part 1 | 2 | 3 | Index & Extras )
7: Falling Down.
The Master brought Martha back to modern-day London, and made her a queen.
She still worked at the Royal Hope, but only because the Master said that was where the other Time Lord would come looking for her. When her shifts ended, there was always a car waiting for her, waiting to carry her to adorn Harold Saxon's arm.
He took her out on the town. He seemed to love showing her off for some reason she couldn't fathom, so they went dancing and socializing, rubbing shoulders with the London political elite. She learned to smile and laugh and be as charming as he was, when it suited her. She called him "Harry" to others, learned to look as if she were in love. She became famous, infamous. She saw her picture in the tabloids, and sometimes late at night she cried to herself over them, wondering what Tish would've made of all this.
She was aware that she was slowly becoming more and more like him--mad, yes, but also seeing the people around her as if they were not hers, as if she was outside, somehow.
Some nights, when she felt that distance keenly and when he was in good spirits, she swallowed his charm and flattery and pretended it was real. There were times that she could almost pretend to love the Master as much as she hated him. She told herself that they were using each other. They were, after all, uniquely set apart and bound together by their purpose.
That was what she told herself the night he came back to their shared flat, eyes bright and all but glowing with victory, dragging her up out of her seat and spinning her around.
"Guess what's happened?" he prompted her, like an eager child. "Ask me, Martha Jones."
"What's happened, Harry Saxon?" she said, because she wanted to know, and not because she was obliging him.
He crooked his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, and kissed her cheek. "I've heard a little rumor from a very reliable source that one Harold Saxon is about to be named Minister of Defense."
"And so it begins."
"Aren't you happy for me?" He inserted himself into her line of sight and pouted dramatically.
She pointed to her lips. "See me smiling?"
"Aww, come on, Martha. Be happy for me."
"I'm happy if it gets us closer to the machine being done and this other Time Lord."
"Oof, so single minded!" The Master clutched his chest. "Please, Martha, just a little smile?"
Her mouth twitched, and the corner pulled up. He whooped and pulled her round and round again, and kissed her, and despite herself she kissed him back. Then he dropped down on one knee in front of her while the world continued to spin.
"What are you doing?"
"Martha Jones," he said, all overacted solemnity, "Every good politician needs a wife."
He produced a ring from his pocket and presented it to her.
Martha's stomach lurched. "I--I can't."
"Who do we have," the Master said to her, "but each other?"
His words brought the lonely burden of what she had done, what she would do, crashing down on her.
Martha reached out and took the ring.
"It means nothing," she said, holding the ring out between them. "It's all convenience."
"My dear Martha," he said, as if she really were everything. "Of course."
She didn't flinch, didn't show a bit of hurt. When he opened her arms she stepped into them, and let him hold her as she slipped the ring on her finger.
"My dear," he murmured into her hair, "would-be doctor."
Martha wondered why he always chuckled when he said that word.
***
On that night, like all her worst nights, she went to see the TARDIS.
Though from the outside it still looked the ordinary blue box, inside the once-beautiful ship was a ruin. The reddish cabin light had become almost bloody. A distant ringing sounded constantly. The console was a mess, paneling pulled off, pipes and tubes and wiring crammed into it. A metal cage was half-installed around the central shaft and two massive copper pipes were in the process of being laid down across the cabin floor.
Martha found some peace by tidying up what she could, wiping away smears of oil and a mysterious fluid. She never touched the mess of tubes and pipe and cabling the Master had installed, only the original elements of the TARDIS. She always spoke to it as she worked, as if she wasn't as responsible for this as the Master himself.
"I'm sorry, love," she said. "You look as bad as I feel. But it's worth it. I promise you."
When she had cleaned what she could, Martha knelt behind the bench near the console and pulled up the grating behind it. She felt in the narrow space between one of the support struts and the flooring. For a moment, her breath caught in her throat, and then her fingertips contacted the thin edge of the photograph she had hidden there.
Martha closed her eyes. She never took the photo out; she could see it clearly enough in her mind, Leo and Tish, her mum and her dad, herself, smiling. Innocent and whole, alive. But she liked to feel that it was still there.
The dry scrape of the TARDIS doors opening jerked her upright. She tried to get the panel back in place quietly and quickly, but her fingers slipped on the metal and it fell down with a clang. She held her breath and waited for the Master's voice to ring out, to cut her down.
Instead, she heard a low, male gasp. Martha glanced around herself, grabbed a laser cutter the Master had left behind. Her heart pounding in her ears, she leaned past the bench to have a look.
An old, wiry man with a long face and nervous eyes stood just inside the TARDIS, staring at her.
"You," he said. "You're Martha Jones. Saxon's--"
Her mind filled in whore, but he simply didn't finish.
"That's right," she said. "And who are you?"
"I was assured--" he said, his hands patting at himself, as if he were searching his pockets for something. "No matter, no matter. What are you doing here?"
"I think you should be answering that question. Or should I call security?"
"Oh, Miss Jones, I doubt you will. He wouldn't like that, if you did, would he? Does he even know you're here?"
"Who are you?" she repeated.
"Archie Muir," he said. "Torchwood."
"You're a long way from Cardiff."
"Glasgow. Torchwood Two."
"There's a Torchwood Two?"
"There's me," Archie said, eyeballing her. "So do I trust her, or don't I? Hard to say, hard to say. Which is it, puppet, lapdog, fool...?"
"I can hear you," she said.
"Do you know what he is doing here? Do you?" He stared at her face, and she stared back, showing him nothing. She was getting good at that, even as the Master was good at it. "Or have you come to get lost? Red eyes. Crying, or doing the drugs?"
"Or how about allergies?"
"Yes, could be that, too, couldn't it?" He took a few steps forward, halting between each and watching her, as if she were an unknown dog. She half expected him to extend a hand towards her so she could sniff it. From one of his many pockets, he produced a handheld of some sort and began waving it up and down, squinting at it.
"What do you think you're doing? Didn't you hear me? I said, you can't be here." She stepped in front of the scanner. "Especially not if you're Torchwood."
"The rumors. The parts. And this! Isn't it--wasn't it--? I just have to confirm--then maybe Harkness will take my calls. Thinks I'm a fool. I'm a fool? Look at Cardiff, what've they ever had to cope with? Not twenty calls a day about the Loch Ness Monster, I'm sure." Archie Muir tried to lean around her, turning a dial on the scanner. "Give me a look, then, dear."
Martha raised the laser cutter. "I can't let you do that."
Archie stopped, looked at the cutter, and then at Martha. "Young lady. You don't point dangerous equipment at folks without meaning to use it. Not wise, not wise at all."
"I mean it."
"Do you? Saw the look on your face, I did, when I first walked in here. Thought I was him, didn't you? You don't want to hurt me. Folks like me, we're here to help you."
He took a step towards the central console, towards her. She didn't lower the cutter.
"Stop," she said.
"He's not who you think he is, young lady. I'm quite sure. Quite sure. What's he paid you with, attention and jewels? Not enough. Get away from him, if you're smart. He's not human. Look into his past. Look hard."
He took another step, and she raised her thumb over the activation switch on the cutter handle.
Archie shook his head. "Well, go on then, shoot me," he said. "Others will come. Torchwood Two, UNIT, the Doctor, others. I trust that they'll sort it out. Oh yes. If Archie Muir can, others will too."
Martha's attention snagged on a single word. "The doctor? Which doctor?"
She was so distracted she almost missed Archie's brief glance at the scanner in his hand, the split-second widening of his eyes. Whatever he'd come for, he'd gotten. He gave her a grandfatherly smile, pocketed the scanner, put his hands up.
"All right, young lady. She wins, doesn't she? I'll be going, then."
Archie turned. He began walking towards the TARDIS doors, and she almost let him do it.
Almost.
Martha's mouth dried out as she realized that she couldn't let him go. Even if he had been just a janitor--the wrong word spoken to the right ears could ruin everything. And Archie Muir was Torchwood; he had recognized something, he knew Saxon was more than he said he was.
"Stop," she said. Archie kept walking.
Her hand tightened on the laser cutter.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry, but it's what I have to do. I've got to make things right."
She thumbed the activation switch, and shut her eyes against the glare.
8: Who.
"There was no blood. No blood at all, you know. Just a little burned hole."
It was Christmas Eve. She sat at the dinner table, staring out the glass wall of Saxon's flat at the blinking lights across the street. A half-drunk glass of champagne sat in front of her; she played with the stem of the glass.
"What are you on about now?" The Master emerged from the kitchen, undoing his Harold Saxon costume--a tuxedo, complete with bowtie, worn to yet another pointless political hobnobbing affair. He tossed his cufflinks onto the table beside her. "Have you finally gone mad? I suppose it's about time. You've been needing a new look."
She shot him a hateful glare. He beamed at her. "Ah, there's the Martha Jones I love."
She turned her face back to the window. His hand landed on her bare shoulder, eased the curtain of her hair back. His fingertip lay against the top of her spine. If she imagined, it could seem like a loving caress, and some nights, she was still willing to do so.
"Oh, don't be like that. It's Christmas. Aren't you humans supposed to be full of good cheer?"
"What's to be cheerful about?"
"Plenty! Let's see... I'm Minister of Defense. We're getting married. The campaign is going smashingly. The machine is almost done. Everything is going according to plan?"
When she didn't react to any of these, he leaned over, rested his cheek against hers. "Only four more months until the end of this reality and you see your family again?"
"All right. Cheers to that," she said, and sipped from her champagne glass.
"Just a drink? Not even a kiss?"
He never made her do anything, only suggested. It was always her choice. She supposed he liked it, that way. She came to him. She had no one to blame but herself.
Martha stood and kissed him.
"Kiss me, kill me," she murmured against his mouth. She felt him smile.
"All in good time, my dear." His hand wrapped over her right, briefly squeezed. She felt her engagement ring dig into his fingers, and the sides of her middle and pinky. "You look tired. Come to bed."
"Eventually."
She felt his annoyance, but sat back down at the table anyway. When she heard the door closing down the hall, she let out a long breath she wasn't aware of holding. She was grateful to whatever game he was playing that insisted on her willing compliance; she didn't fool herself that he did it out of some respect for her.
Martha drank down the rest of her champagne, and waited.
***
She went to their room, later, to see if he was asleep. The Master was sleeping more than he had when they first met, sometimes as long as four hours--something he was doing was taking it out of him. When he slept lately, he slept like the dead. Martha stood over him and thought about the hole she had put in Archie Muir's chest, of how easily she could do it to the Master while he lay there with his child-like, innocent expression.
But if he died, so did all her plans. If he died, she was nothing but small and evil.
She turned and looked for his case. She found it propped against the side of the chair in the corner of the room, and, as quietly as she could, she popped open the clasps and eased the laptop out of it. She laid it down on the chair seat while she closed the case again.
Saxon's mobile rang.
Martha jumped away from the case guiltily. She glanced at Saxon but he didn't stir, not until the third ring. By then she was able to get to the door, and shut it quietly behind herself. On the fifth ring, she heard him answer, voice thick with sleep.
"Saxon. This better be good."
Martha resumed her position at the dinner table just as the bedroom door opened.
"A what? A Christmas star? Are you--?" The Master paused.
Martha followed his gaze out the window and gasped, seeing the distant, star-shaped object descending towards the Thames.
"That's no star, you idiot." The Master seized his jacket from the coat closet and opened the front door. "Mobilize the local units now. Protocol Z. I want it brought down and the wreckage retrieved--"
The door shut behind him, cutting off the rest of his order.
In the distance, the Christmas star lit up with something like lightning.
"Beautiful," Martha murmured, but she didn't stay to watch it.
She hurried back to the bedroom. The laptop was still on the chair seat. Martha opened it and booted it up, tapping her fingers on the chair arm impatiently.
There were benefits to being the Master's companion; sometimes when he was feeling arrogant and lazy, he had her go through his correspondence as if she were his secretary. He did not seem to be especially creative with his passwords. She pulled up the Torchwood Remote Access window and logged in effortlessly.
"Happy Christmas," she said to herself, and navigated to the database search.
She typed in "doctor." The portal pulled up a massive list of doctors. A quick perusal of the first few pages of results brought nothing of interest. Martha bit her lip, sitting back on her heels, and considered. Then she typed, "the doctor."
A single entry came up. She held her breath and pulled up the main record. A number of faces stared out at her, old and young, odd and handsome. Bold letters underneath declared the faces to be "Enemy of the Crown. Seize On Sight." She began to read, and then she stared at the pictures again.
"But this is for a single individual?"
Her eye caught the line item "species." Next to it was "Time Lord."
"Stupid," she muttered. "I should've guessed!"
There were dozens upon dozens of incidents and sightings, dating back to 1879 and the founding of Torchwood. Earlier dates were listed for even more possible sightings. Martha's eyes skimmed the most recent: the mannequins coming to life, the space ship crashing into Big Ben, the Battle of Canary Wharf.
She swallowed.
"Fascinating reading, isn't it?"
Martha slammed the laptop shut. Too late, she knew, but she couldn't help the automatic response. The Master dropped down beside her.
"Torchwood enemy number one arrives in town and the harmless, curious ghosts become fully fledged metal monsters?"
He reached over, opened up the laptop again. When the screen came back up, he pulled up a surveillance photo of the Doctor at the Torchwood facility, wild eyed and shouting at something, all mad eyebrows and unruly hair.
"He's a menace," the Master said, staring at the screen. "Flocking to trouble, trying to fix things, but always, always leaving a ruin in his wake. Sound familiar, Martha?"
Martha said nothing.
"You... doctors."
The Master held his hand in front of the screen, almost as if he meant to touch that manic face, and then he shut the laptop with a force that made her wince. He wore such an expression that Martha couldn't tear her eyes away, such a mixture of hate and fear and loathing and passion, and perhaps, even love.
It was an expression Martha saw on her own face, sometimes, in the mirror, when the Master passed through the room or her thoughts.
She stood abruptly, unable to be in the bedroom any more. Breathless, she hurried into the dining room, picked up her glass and stared out of the wide windows, into the dark.
The sound of blood rushing in her ears deafened her.
Martha knew then with crystal clarity that she was a piece to be discarded. All of this, all of this game; in the end it was nothing to do with her. The Master played it for the Doctor.
Despair threatened, and fear, that all she had done was futile, for nothing. That she had stood by Saxon, that she had let the TARDIS be mutilated, that she had killed, all in the name of promises that would never be kept.
He would give her the second TARDIS, he had said. What a fool she was to believe that. She didn't even know how to pilot one--he had laughed, when she asked to be shown how. And once he had the Doctor why would he take her back? Unless he wanted to watch her die at the hands of the same Cybermen who murdered her family. Perhaps he would consider that a gift. Perhaps she would, too.
But she had come all this way. She had done so much, so much of it awful, but not all. She had given up so much. She had to find a way out, a way to redeem this. If the Master thought so little of her--if she was nothing but a mouse, a pawn--surely she could find a way to exit the game on her own terms?
She felt the Master enter the room, and she despaired.
His words were like silk wrapped around a blade. "I know what you're thinking. Humans are so transparent. But haven't you learned after all this time, after all I've given you...? It's so much easier when you don't fight." She could feel his smile on the back of her neck, burning her. "Less fun, but easier."
She turned and tried to smile at him. "I don't know what you mean, Harry."
"Master."
She tried to say the word, tried to placate him, but it stuck in her mouth. His feral grin dropped into a scowl.
"Don't think that I need you. That I care what happens to you. If you do something rash and you die, it will annoy me, but if won't matter. If you kill yourself, it won't matter. If you cooperate and you live--who knows, my dear, maybe you'll get the better of me after all?" She saw the flash of his teeth. "So what do you say?"
She said nothing. The Master's arm wrapped heavily around her shoulders, and Martha knew she was lost.
9: Fate.
"You understand the plan?"
Martha sat in front of the picture window. "Yes," she said, dully. Four months, four months she had searched for any opportunity, any way out, but still this day had come.
She had looked for her chance to ruin the Master's plans. But she must have been as opaque as glass to him. The Master had moved the TARDIS to some secret location, and she no longer had its comfort. The weight of the wedding ring on her hand was like a ten-ton stone. Her family was still dead, ten months rotting in the dirt. And the Master still slept at their flat every night, so peacefully, as if mocking her, inviting her to kill him in his sleep.
She had tried, more than once, but she never could bring herself to do it. And that made her glad.
The Master snapped his fingers in front of her face. "Are you in there? I said repeat it to me. Humor me."
"I go to work. I'll meet the Doctor on my rounds with Stoker. We'll get carted off to the moon by Judoon, and I'll help him sort it out."
"And?"
"And I'm to make friends with him."
"Yes. That's very important, do you understand? He'll trust you almost from the start, I don't know why," the Master said. "I suppose he'll see all the good and the kindness and your shared penchant for hopeless situations." He rolled his eyes. "He'll trust you, Martha, to the point where he leaves his life in your hands."
"And then I let him die?"
"No," the Master had said. "And then you save his life and hand him to me. I want him to see you do it. Betray him. That's when the fun begins, when he finally gets to see my smiling face. He'll love that. And you, my dear, will be free to do as you like."
Martha didn't bother to hide that she didn't believe him. "Of course I will."
He knelt in front of her and cupped her cheeks with his hands. "Oh, Martha, Martha Saxon, don't you trust me?"
"Don't call me that," she said, turning her face away so that his kiss landed somewhere on her jaw.
He snorted, and his eyes hooded. Then he stood, turning to look out the window, hands on his hips. Two of his fingers began to tap out a familiar four-beat against his pelvis. She had agitated him; she was glad.
"Don't even think about not going through with it," he warned her, still facing away from her. "If you try to betray me, I'll know. It's been all fun and games, my dear, watching you run your little rat maze, exercising your free will, but when the moment comes you will do what I want, whether you choose to or not."
Martha bowed her head. "Of course," she said, quietly, "Master."
***
The Royal Hope.
Martha chuckled darkly at the name.
She stood across the way from the hospital. The pedestrian crossing light had long since changed from red to green. The people around her flowed forward, but Martha didn't move.
She would go into the hospital. She would meet the Doctor on her rounds. She would befriend him, and then betray him to the Master on the moon.
But Martha could not make her feet move. She heard someone behind her curse at her, felt people shove into her sides. If she stayed there, if she didn't get to the hospital before it began raining, if she watched it fly away and did nothing, would she finally win? No, but the Master had warned her against that. If she didn't go inside, he would make her. Her choices were always an illusion. Her fate was written in stone, so unchangeably that she could meet her future wrongdoings in the shape of a dozen floating, insane spheres.
Martha waited to hear the part of herself that had always screamed against such things as fixed timelines and pre-destiny, but she heard only silence.
The crowd moved around her; the world moved on without her. Her feet refused to lift from the pavement. She waited for him to take control of her, to move her limbs like she was a puppet. She waited to die.
Someone shuffled past her, caught her shoulder. Martha looked up. Her eyes widened; she knew that face.
It was the face she saw every day in the mirror, after all.
"Hope, Martha," her other self said, and smiled brilliantly, pressing something into her hand.
Martha looked down to see the photo of her family, the one she had hidden in the TARDIS: Leo and Tish, her mum, her dad, herself, laughing and innocent. She gasped and looked up, her lips parting to say something, to ask anything, but the other Martha was gone.
"Hope," she repeated, and pressed the photo to her chest.
Martha walked forward, head held high, to meet her destiny.
-fin-