[fic] Savior 2/3 (Doctor Who, Martha/Master, PG-13)
Title: Savior 2/3
Series: Doctor Who
Characters/Pairing: Martha Jones/The Master, Doctor/Master (implied)
Rating: PG-13
Length: this part 5800/14900 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 )
4: Eyes Open.
Martha had expected fine china, expensive wines, waiters tripping all over themselves to serve the Harold Saxon. So she began to have serious doubts when the car stopped somewhere in the warehouse district.
"I take it this is a very exclusive place," Martha said, dryly, as Saxon unlocked a warehouse door with a tap-tap-tap-tap of his fingers on keypad. She thought she was probably mad for following him inside; he might kill her, or worse. She went in, anyway.
Inside, the warehouse was one long corridor punctuated by endless doors, all guarded by keypads and blinking lights. Martha tried to look inside the narrow windows, but all she saw were shadows. Saxon led her to the last door. It had no keypad, just a glowing ring of blue light cast in front of the door.
He stepped into the ring and the door whooshed open.
"Ah, dear Torchwood, you had your uses," he remarked, stepping inside.
The small room beyond contained a single object: a blue wooden box that resembled a telephone box, emblazoned with the words "POLICE BOX" across the top.
The warnings going off in Martha's head rose to a volume she could no longer ignore. Crossing her arms over her chest, she stopped near the doorway. "All right," she said, "I think I've played along quite long enough. I thought you were taking me to supper."
"I am."
"Then what are we doing here? Unless I'm about to walk through those doors and be transported to, I dunno, Narnia or something--"
Saxon beamed at her. "Almost." When she gave him a skeptical look, he said, "Oh, come on, Miss Jones. Don't get all Doubting Thomas on me now. I know you're not, so there's no use in pretending."
Beckoning her along, he strode forward. He took out a key and slid it into the lock on the box's door. The key stuck as he tried to turn it. Saxon scowled. "Come on, you difficult little--!" The lock gave with an audible snick. "Ah, there we are!"
Saxon shoved the doors open. He cast his arms apart dramatically.
"Ta-dah!"
Martha thought of witches shoving little children into ovens for supper, and rich men with nasty habits of shoving grief-maddened medical students into strange blue boxes for worse reasons. She stepped forward to see anyway.
Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped.
Beyond the blue doors was an impossibly huge space, a large round cabin studded with strange knobby protrusions and supported by organic-looking arches. In the center was a tall, clear column housing some machinery, surrounded by a console full of dials and switches and levers.
"What? But that's--!" Wonder obliterated everything else Martha was feeling. She took a few steps forward into the box, then a few steps more. She circled the round console in the center, turned in the faintly reddish light, and ran back outside. She touched the solid wood of the sides and back of the box before returning to the entrance. "That's amazing," she breathed, suddenly dizzy with the impossible reality. "It's--it's bigger on the inside!"
She spun and faced Saxon, who was watching her with a smug sort of delight. She pressed her palm against one of the strange, coral-like struts curving towards the ceiling. "Is this some sort of space ship in disguise?"
"That and more, my dear."
"Your space ship?"
"It's mine now."
"Now?" she asked, but she wasn't really listening, and he didn't answer. Martha hovered her hands over the console. The thing looked jury-rigged, parts of the console opened up, tubes and wires and other things Martha couldn't name spilling out. "Is it broken?"
"It was," Saxon said, something gloating in his tone. "But it's beginning to see who's master."
"Does it have a name?" Martha stared up into the clear column, and then crouched down to look through the grated flooring beneath her feet.
"The TARDIS."
She poked at a rubber mallet discarded in a corner and her lips quirked, almost making it to a smile. "That's a funny name. Is that your language, then?"
"TARDIS. Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Time, space, it's all at our fingertips."
She gawked; she couldn't help it. "Wait. Are you saying it's a space ship and a time machine?"
"Humans," Saxon said. For a moment she glimpsed a disgust that was quite possibly the most genuine emotion he'd ever shown her, and then it was gone, hidden under a falsely patient smile. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. We can go anywhere, anywhen--well, nearly, due to meddling little friends who think it's funny to--but that's neither here nor there. That won't be an issue soon."
"Oh, that is too much!"
Saxon walked a circle around the console, stopping across from Martha. His fingertips tapped against the rounded edge of an opened panel before curling just inside. There was something slightly obscene, invasive, about his hands resting there. "How can you still doubt, Miss Jones? It wasn't so long ago that tin men from a parallel Earth were marching around, trying to upgrade humanity."
She tore herself away from the movement of his hands. "But I saw that, with my own two eyes. And I didn't know they were from a parallel Earth."
"So little faith," Saxon said, mock-sadly. "All right. I'll show your two lovely, lovely eyes. If you could go to any where, any time, Miss Jones, in the past or future year, where and when would you go?"
"Oh." Martha's face fell, her grief returning in a sudden, sharp rush. "You have to ask?" Her heart began to race as she considered the possibilities. "Can we--can we go back to--to save them?"
Saxon's mouth twitched. "Ahh. Sorry. I should have said 'not directly affecting your own past.' There are rules, you know. Paradoxes and reapers and ruining the pattern of the universe and all that. Save them, and you could destroy a hundred other lives. But I can take you back to that day, if you'd care to relive it."
Martha shook her head, horrified. "Absolutely not." She looked away, feeling awful for how much she'd been enjoying herself. "Maybe... maybe I shouldn't be here at all."
"None of that," Saxon said. "Self-pity doesn't become you. When shall we go, Miss Jones?"
"I don't know." Martha shook her head again. "How about..." She groped for something harmless. "Well, before everything..." She swallowed. "Julia kept asking me to go with her to a book release party for 'Deathly Hallows' next week. I told her I wasn't interested, so I'm not likely to run into myself there, am I? Or will I destroy the universe by seeing Julia when I'm not supposed to?"
Saxon wrinkled his nose and laughed. "A book release party? I'm astounded at your lack of vision, Miss Jones. Oh, all right. That should be harmless enough. If it'll make you believe me."
He moved quickly and with purpose around the console; she had to jump out of his way as he reached into one of the opened panels and did something to create a shower of sparks. "Come on, you old cow!" he scowled, kicking the edge of the console; suddenly the ship lurched and the clear column in the center illuminated a greenish-orange as machinery began pumping inside. "Here we go!" The room was filled with an eerie, whooshing pulse.
The sound lasted just long enough for Martha to ask "What is that?" before it stopped. Saxon whirled the monitor towards himself, nodded, and then crooked his arm towards her.
"Right on time. Of course. Shall we?" he said.
She hesitated, and then took his arm. "All right," she said, doubtfully, and walked with him out of the TARDIS.
Martha was startled to find it was full night outside. They were in an alley and she could hear excited voices just around the corner. She glanced at Saxon who smiled at her indulgently, and cocked his head towards the street.
They rounded the corner and someone shouted, "Martha Jones?"
Martha turned to see Julia waving her down the queue of people.
"Oh my god. Martha, it is you. I haven't seen you in a week--where have you... Oh my god!" Julia noticed Martha's escort with a widening of her eyes. "Is that--are you--Harold Saxon?" She looked back at Martha, and at their linked arms. "Martha Jones, you don't tell me anything any more! Katie--" Julia elbowed the woman she was with; Martha saw that it was Nurse Chapham. "Look who's here. And who with."
Nurse Chapham acknowledged Martha with a frown, then saw Saxon. She goggled, and looked momentarily unsteady. "Mr. Saxon," she gasped. "It's--it's an honor to meet you, sir. Kiss Me, Kill Me is my favorite book!"
Julia dragged Martha slightly aside as Chapham fluttered and fawned.
"How are you, love?" Julia said. "Honestly, you could've called. I was really beginning to worry. I rang your flat four times this week. Stoker's all but written you off. Why didn't you say something? I was starting to think you--" she swallowed. "That maybe you decided to join your family." She looked grim.
Martha had to stop herself from saying, "But I just saw you this morning!"
"I'm sorry. Things have just been--complicated, lately."
Julia shot a look towards Saxon, who had acquired a circle of admirers. "Apparently so. And to think we all came here for Rowling's new book." She jerked her chin toward the storefront, where piles of the latest Harry Potter awaited the stroke of midnight. "If I buy a copy of Kiss Me, Kill Me do you think he'll sign it for me?"
Martha barely heard her, staring at the clerk heading towards the door with keys in hand.
"So it's really the twenty-first?" Martha breathed, feeling a bit dizzy.
"In--" Julia glanced at her mobile. "Three minutes, yeah. Martha, you all right?"
"I--yeah." Martha shook her head. "I'm sorry, but... I've got to get going."
"Martha!"
Ignoring Julia's pleas to stay, Martha hurried back towards the alley. She was dimly aware of Saxon excusing himself and catching up with her.
"What?" he said, "Don't want a copy of the book? Prove to yourself it's real?"
"I believe," she said, breathlessly.
"Ah, it's all rubbish anyway. Wizards and monsters and magic."
"Hey, I loved those books," Martha said, without much force.
"I can show you so much more, and so much better. And it'll be real."
"Is that a good thing?"
They reached the TARDIS doors; he unlocked them, held the door for her. She hurried inside.
"Shall I take you home, then?" he asked, his tone edging on derisive.
Raising her eyebrows, she turned to him, surprised. "I have a choice?"
"Of course you do. What fun would it be if you didn't?"
"No, I don't want to go home," Martha said. She turned to him slowly. "I'm not upset. I'm actually... I'm just. A bit. Bowled over. We're in the future! I can't get my head around it." She laughed and was all-too aware of the tight, high shrillness of it. "I haven't gone completely mad, have I?"
"No, just slightly bonkers," he said. He closed the doors and leaned against them, then erased the distance between them with two energetic leaps that undermined the seriousness of his suit. His arm slid over her shoulders. Martha started to tell him to keep his hands to himself, but he pressed a finger against her lips and she was too startled by the coldness of his hands to finish.
"Well, if you're staying, we've got to be going. Promised you supper and answers, didn't I? And..." He looked her up and down. "We'll need to get you changed. Something nicer, more cheery. If you'll head left, then second right, then third left--oh, just start walking, you'll hit a wardrobe, and you ought to find a few things that'll fit you perfectly. How about red? I do love red."
"I am getting hungry." She managed a tentative smile. "So where... when are we going?"
He strolled over to the console, began turning knobs and winding up a handle. "It's a surprise. Well?"
Martha nodded, and headed off to find the wardrobe. She was already in over her head; she might as well start trying to swim.
5: The Dark.
Everything had gone dark.
It was black, black, black all around Martha, an all-consuming blackness she had never known. It swallowed the light from the TARDIS greedily and made some kind of primal fear rise in her, set her insides screaming.
Still giddy from their first stop, she had foolishly rushed out of the TARDIS doors as soon as they landed, eager to see what lay beyond. But what she thought was night was not, and she froze as she was embraced by a never-ending darkness.
Saxon stepped out beside her.
"Where are we?" She drew closer to him, not quite touching.
"The year one-hundred-trillion. The end of time," Saxon said, spreading his arms towards the never-ending darkness beyond. "This is the absolute end of the universe."
Martha shook her head. "That's impossible," she said, but something in her gut seemed to believe, the same thing that screamed against the unnatural darkness. "Why are we here?"
Saxon began walking forward without answering. She lunged after him and caught his arm, stumbling over the rocky ground. He laughed at her and patted her hand. She couldn't help but think he was being patronizing.
It was bitter cold and the ground was rocky, littered with loose gravel. Martha cursed Saxon's suggestion that she dress up--red, who could even see it!--and her stupid choice of heels. She cursed her stupid decision to go with him, for momentarily trusting him. She cursed herself for clinging to his arm like a scared little girl. But she couldn't let go.
"Come on. Didn't you say you were hungry?" Saxon said, and she wanted to hit him for the mocking laughter behind his words.
"What could we ever find to eat here?" she hissed at him, angry to cover up her fear.
"You'd be surprised." He stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. Martha heard the distant whirr of something approaching, and fell back a step behind Saxon.
Winking stars appeared in the distance, and at first she thought some cloud cover had moved, that it was not truly as black and suffocating as she'd thought. Then the stars grew as the whirring grew louder, and she realized she was seeing lights on the surface of flying metal spheres. The spheres were approaching with an alarming speed.
Strange, high-pitched noises join the whirring sound. It took Martha a moment to realize they were words spoken in childish tones:
"Supper time! Supper time!" and, "The Master is here! Mr. Master. We like the Master."
"'The master'?" Martha said, unable to keep the scorn out of her voice. She threw a disbelieving look at Saxon.
He shrugged, carelessly. "'The Master' is my real name, Miss Jones. Well... as near as you'll get."
Martha stared. She released his arm, recoiling. "I'm never calling you that."
His mouth curved. "I'm patient."
Saxon turned a circle, smiling beatifically at the spheres now hovering above his head. Martha thought she should probably be more grateful for what little light they lent, but she wasn't. Something about them bothered her.
"My friends. How nice to see you all again."
"Master!" the spheres squealed. "We're so glad you're back."
"We were getting so lonely."
"We've had the bodies put out your supper. Just like you said!"
"The Master will be back for supper!"
"And here I am," Saxon said. "May I introduce my lovely companion--?"
"Martha," one of the spheres chirruped. "Martha Jones."
Martha spun to face Saxon as the spheres clustered around her. "How do they know my name? Did you tell them I was coming?"
The spheres kept up their eager babble: "The skies are made of diamonds! We're the diamonds now, Martha, diamonds in the sky! Aren't we so pretty?"
"You helped us get here! We couldn't forget you!"
"You helped us find Utopia!"
"You helped us fly! You saved us!"
"What are they talking about?" Martha tried not to flinch as they drew closer and closer. "Sorry, um, whatever you are, I think you've got me confused--"
"Not at all," Saxon said. "You did help them, Martha. Or rather, you will."
"Oh. I. What?" Martha stared.
"Don't worry your pretty little head about it." He patted her cheek. She swatted him away.
"You can't just--"
Saxon wrapped an arm around her and steered her away from the TARDIS. "Come on, Miss Jones! The lady wants supper, my friends!"
She shrugged him off. "No, I don't. I want some straight answers."
"After supper."
Martha pressed her lips together and followed after the line of spheres, which bobbed and danced in front of her. They walked for a long time before they finally approached a huddle of buildings. The buildings were clustered around a row of massive furnaces, burning futilely against the darkness.
"In here!" The lead sphere bobbed and swooped. "Supper for the Master!"
Martha stepped into the lighted space, blinking at the sudden brilliance. She accepted a seat before she realized what was offering it to her. "Oh my god!" She leapt to her feet. "What is that?"
A headless corpse stood behind her, its hands still on the chair back. Where its neck should have been was a mass of mechanics, all black metal and blinking lights, like the spheres. Martha could smell it, chemical, like formaldehyde. Her stomach rolled.
"Don't be afraid, Martha Jones," one of the spheres crooned. "It's just a body."
"We need the bodies," another sphere chimed in. "They helped us become what we are."
"Soon we won't need them any more. We just need to finish."
Martha clutched the edge of her seat, leaning as far from the "body" as she could. "Finish what?"
"Finish changing."
"Making ourselves better."
"Making ourselves prettier."
"Soon we'll be able to do everything, without the bodies."
Saxon took a seat across from her. The table between them looked made of some sort of cannibalized metal, pitted and scarred, but it was solid enough. There was a steaming, battered pot, and some sort of dried meat, as well as a foil-wrapped packet. Saxon reached for the packet and tore it open to reveal dry, hard biscuits. He leaned across the table and told her in a stage whisper, "EMR-rations from the Omni group. I'd stick to these, if I were you. Maybe a bit stale, but... I don't think the meat will be to your liking."
"Thanks," she said, pretty sure he'd informed her just to make her nauseated. "But I'm not hungry any more."
He grinned at her and bit into a biscuit. The spheres hovered around them.
"Have some supper, pretty Martha."
"Eat something, kind Martha."
They bobbed and danced around her until she took a biscuit just to make them happy. "Here, see?" She nibbled a corner and nearly spat it out; it tasted like wet soil in her mouth.
"Nice Martha, good Martha!"
She gave them a tight smile and turned, slightly desperately, to Saxon. "Who are they? Why do they know me?"
"As they said. You save them, Miss Jones."
"I think I would've remembered something like that." Martha dropped the biscuit to the table.
"Well, for you, it's yet to happen yet. For me that was the past. Oh, it's all a bit mixed up." Saxon scrunched up his face.
"What do you--?"
Martha stopped mid-sentence as the spheres suddenly ceased their gentle bobbing, freezing mid-air; and then they left her, swirling into a loose line and out the door. She tried to see where they'd gone, squinting into the dim outside, but her eyes could make out nothing.
She heard perfectly well, however. The distinct sound of running feet--human feet, she thought--and fearful grunts. She rose.
"Stay," Saxon said.
His tone was so cold, so absolute, that she obeyed. When she heard the eerie, childlike laughter and then the screams, she was glad she did.
"What was that?"
Saxon chewed another biscuit and shrugged.
"Just cleaning up the vermin, I expect," he said.
"Vermin? That sounded like a person."
Saxon shrugged again as the spheres returned to the room, whirring and whirling and spinning. One had several sharp blades protruding from its base, which it withdrew with a slick sound. Another was spattered with red blood, some of which slowly dripped onto the table as it hovered in front of her.
"Silly thing," it told her. "They like to run and run and run. They were like us once. But now they have no minds at all. They make good bodies, though."
"And play fun games with us!" The sphere demonstrated what sort of games it meant by vaporizing the dried meat with some sort of laser.
"'Like us once'? They're what you used to be?"
"They don't want to change. So we have to get rid of them!"
"Do you want to play with them too, nice Martha?"
"No. Thank you." Martha shuddered. She fixed a plastic smile on her face and turned to Saxon. "And perhaps Mr. Saxon and I ought to be going, now."
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. "Don't you like your handiwork, Miss Jones?"
"My handiwork?"
"I've always thought," Saxon remarked, looking up at her and then at the spheres, "that some people aren't meant to be doctors." Martha tensed, but Saxon didn't notice, or didn't care. "They're attracted to trouble, to broken things, and they think they're supposed to fix them, and then they just make a worse mess. But you, Miss Jones... Look at the marvels you've achieved! Now that is what I call healing."
Martha furrowed her brow. "I don't--?"
"Stars burnt out. Worlds gone cold. All of creation, dying. And yet--humanity survives, thanks to Martha Jones." He looked up at the spheres circling Martha.
"Humanity? You don't mean--. They can't be human."
"Always need to see with your own two eyes, do you?" Saxon reached up, spread his hand beneath one of the spheres. It lowered itself to rest against his fingertips. "Why don't you open up, my friend? All of you. Open up and show the pretty lady your faces."
The sphere rotated on its axis rapidly. "But we're afraid, Master. Our eyes are afraid. Afraid of the dark."
"Do it."
The spheres lowered to Martha's eye level; one by one, they split open. Inside each, nestled among machinery and punctured by tubes and pins, was a withered-looking human head.
Martha felt her gorge rise. She clenched her teeth until she thought they would crack, but still the end of a scream escaped between her mashed-together lips.
"Aren't we pretty?" The spheres covered up their all-too human faces, and then twirled in mid-air. "Aren't we pretty, sweet Martha, kind Martha?"
Saxon caught her shoulder as she stumbled back. He pressed his mouth close to her ear. "What's one dead family when you help turn the remnants of humanity into this?"
"They can't be human," Martha said, filled with revulsion.
"Ask them. I'm sure they've got medical records, anatomical diagrams--you need that sort of thing, after all, when you decide to chop off your heads and become floating cyborgs."
"Yes! We can show you!" a sphere volunteered. "We can show you how to be just like us. Martha Jones, you were kind to us. You helped us fly."
"How could I? I'm dead," Martha whispered. "I'm dead. By the year one-hundred trillion, I'm cold and rotted and dust."
"Not," Saxon purred, "if you have a TARDIS."
"Oh god," she said.
"Yes." He knelt beside her, turning her face towards him with the fingertips of his hand.
"Even at the end of all things, you help them cling just a little longer. Ever the little... doctor. Don't you want to know the story? It's a very good story. Touching, if I do say so myself."
She shook her head. He kept on speaking.
"Picture it: Malcassairo, one of the last strongholds of humankind, huddling against the darkness and the death of everything around them, rapidly going extinct. Yearning to join what's left of the human race at fabled Utopia. Aided by one noble, selfless, creative genius--that's me, of course--but missing one crucial piece of knowledge. And then who should arrive but a brave, good-hearted, curious young lady?"
Saxon grinned, a shark's smile if she ever saw one. "You asked why I'm so interested in you, Miss Jones. Well, I'll tell you. You saved me, too. Or you will. I was lost, and then I felt your sweet little hands on me, and I was found. You gave me the missing piece, and together we sent the human race off to their new fate."
"It was cold, so cold," one of the spheres said, rotating anxiously. "We had to fix ourselves. We learned from you, and the Master."
"You were so clever."
"We decided to be clever too!"
"We're clever too, aren't we?"
"The Master makes such clever things. The Doctor fixes them. We can do it too."
"We fixed ourselves!"
"We fixed the bodies and the runaways!"
The spheres began giggling and whirling, flicking their blades in and out.
"They're mad," Martha breathed. "All mad."
"You're going to hurt their feelings, Miss Jones. They're our responsibility." Saxon's hand curled against the back of her neck, pulled her against his chest. "We're the proud parents of the future human race!"
She shook him off, and stood, wrapping her arms around herself. Martha shuddered. "No," she said, gasping. "No. If it's true, if any of this isn't just lies--! Now that I know, I won't do any of it. I'll go home. I'll stay there, in the past--present--the time I'm supposed to be."
"You could try that. And then what? Paradox. Chaos. You've already done it, already lived to witness the effects of your actions. You'll tear apart the pattern of the universe. Is that what you want?" Saxon's eyes were suddenly bright. "Is it?"
She thought he almost wanted her to say yes. Her lips began to form the word before she shook her head, vehemently.
"Of course not!"
She felt like he had spun her around and around and around, like the ground was whirling under her feet and over her head.
The spheres hovered, chirping, "But you saved us, Martha Jones!"
"We like you, Martha. Don't you like us?"
"No." Hot, angry tears spilled down Martha's cheeks, frustrated tears, hateful tears. "No, stop saying that. I didn't save you. I didn't."
"Look into my face, Miss Jones, and tell me I'm lying."
Martha stared into Saxon's face, telling herself he was a politician, a businessman, not even human. That she could trust nothing she saw there, not the sneering amusement, the hint of impatience, the laugh curving his eyes and curling his lips.
"You're responsible," he said, and she saw no lie, heard no deceit. But more than that, she knew herself. If she had come across these people, stranded, why wouldn't she help them? Even knowing, as she did, what they would become. At least they would live, wouldn't they? No threat to anyone but themselves.
"Isn't it a good thing, Martha?" Saxon murmured to her. His arm slid over her shoulders, pulled her close, and this time she didn't step away from him. "Isn't that what you've always wanted, saving people?"
"You helped us, Martha Jones."
"You helped us become pretty!"
"Pretty?" Martha repeated, looking up at the spheres from within the prison of Saxon's arms. "You're monsters." She laughed through her tears, knowing how mad she sounded, hardly caring. "You're all monsters," she said, including Saxon in the sweep of her gaze, holding his eyes at the end of it.
And what was she, who stood dry-eyed at her family's graves, who went gallivanting off with strangers before the dirt was cast over them? Who strode in so arrogantly like some would-be hero and "rescued" the human race?
The part of Martha that had been clinging to doubt, to deniability, slipped closer to the yawning darkness opened up inside of her. A sob caught in her throat.
"And I help. I help make you monsters."
"My dear Martha." Saxon held her a little away, brushing away the hair sticking to her wet cheeks with his fingertips. "Here at the end of universe, we're all monsters."
He kissed her then, and she laughed against his lips at the madness of it all, being kissed by a monster at the end of time, and she let him.
6: Your Eyes Will Adjust.
Martha stood in the dark, her arms crossed over her chest, staring at the square white light of the TARDIS windows.
"In the end," she said, "They all die."
Snakelike, Saxon's hand slid up against the small of her back. She didn't step away, or rebuke him for it. Her eyes never left the TARDIS.
"What's the point?" she said. "What is the point of something as wonderful as being able to travel all time and space when you can't even fix all those horrible wrongs?"
"Maybe we did it for good reason," she said. "Maybe we thought we were helping them, sending them away to go mad in the dark. But what's the point? When the last star dies, when the universe collapses, when time ends... there's nothing. Nothing."
"If I could make something like the TARDIS," she said, "I would fix so many things. Never mind paradoxes. I'd find a way to fix those, too. I would do it."
"Bent but not broken. Not entirely. I see why he was drawn to you." Saxon's voice startled her. She'd all but forgotten he was there. "Maybe you should've been a Time Lord."
"Time Lord?"
"My people. Gone now, but..." Martha saw genuine emotion pass over Saxon's face, though she couldn't name it. "We ruled all Time, saw the all the possibilities and patterns of the universe. Could change them, if we wanted. It was our birthright, our nature, our being. There were no paradoxes when the Time Lords were in their glory days, no chaos but that which we controlled. Such an empire, Miss Jones."
"What happened to them?"
"I don't know," Saxon said. "But... all things die, don't they, Miss Jones?"
Finally turning her face away from the light of the TARDIS, she glanced at him. "How can you not know, if you are one?"
He didn't answer her. His features pinched, his eyes narrowed.
Some part of Martha wanted to push and probe, wanted to draw out the real anger there, provoke him. Cleopatra and the asp. She let the question rise to her lips and then slide away, unvoiced. It was becoming so easy to let everything slide over her, past her. She had looked at the end of time, the end of humankind, hadn't she? Found herself complicit. What could be worse?
The pale white light of the TARDIS drew her gaze again. It was comforting, quieted the screaming inside of her. She had the brief, foolish notion that it was alive, reaching out to her, but Saxon spoke and broke the illusion.
"There is one way still to do it."
He could sound, she thought, so compassionate, so comforting, when he wanted.
"To save your family, to change things, and not pull apart the fabric of reality. To even stop yourself from doing any of this. From saving me, if you like, although you won't be able to get rid of me that easily."
She knew he was baiting her, dangling the carrot on the string, and that he might pull it away the instant she reached for it. But Martha reached all the same.
"How?"
"It won't be pretty, or easy."
"How?" she repeated.
"When we were at the height of our power, some made paradox machines to allow contradictory timelines to exist. We could do it. Unfortunately--we'll have to butcher the TARDIS to make one."
"Then how could I go back and save them?"
"There is one other TARDIS in all the universe. I know the day it comes to Earth again--and how you can get a hold of it."
"Steal it, you mean?"
"Borrow it," he said, smiling.
She shook her head. "No. I love my family, and I want them to live--but that just seems wrong. 'Cos, I'll know what I've done, how I saved them."
"You can change that too. Change yourself so that we never meet. Save yourself."
She faced him. "My--I'll change too, if I do that? I won't remember?"
"Well. You'll still exist, thanks to the paradox machine, but that other you, that Martha Jones, won't remember. And once you fix her--well, up to you what you want to do with yourself."
Martha stared at the light of the TARDIS. She said, without emotion: "Don't pretend you're doing this for me. I know you're not."
"No," Saxon said smiling. "You're no fool, are you, Miss Jones?"
"Why do you want the paradox machine?"
"I--" His hesitation was so slight, she never would have caught it before. But she was beginning to know him, Harold Saxon, the Master, whoever he was. She was beginning to see into him, and that disturbed her, as much as she could still be disturbed. She knew he was going to lie. "I wish to bring back Gallifrey. My home. To do that, I need to find out what happened."
She nodded, beginning to see. "Another TARDIS, another Time Lord. And me, what am I? Bait?"
He drew her close, turned his face and breathed in against her hair. "Clever Martha Jones. I do like you." She shivered, for too many reasons. "After you bring him to me, I don't care what you do. Take his TARDIS. Save your family. My gift to you, for assisting me, for serving as my... companion."
She slipped away from him and walked up to the TARDIS, put her hand against the blue wooden doors.
"This is wrong," Martha said. "So, so wrong."
"But you want it, don't you, Martha Jones?"
She shivered again, because he was right. Even if she couldn't give herself another chance, she would find a way to give her family another one. She would use Saxon as much as he used her. And if he ever showed her his back--
The blue wood was warm as she pressed her cheek against it. "If you are alive," she whispered. "I'm sorry. I'll find a way to make it right."
Then she turned and faced Saxon. She even managed to smile. She damned herself, hoping to save herself.
"Yes."
"Yes, what?" he said, gloating, and she let him gloat.
The words all but burned her tongue as she said them, but she got them out.
"Yes, Master."
Next Part
Series: Doctor Who
Characters/Pairing: Martha Jones/The Master, Doctor/Master (implied)
Rating: PG-13
Length: this part 5800/14900 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 )
4: Eyes Open.
Martha had expected fine china, expensive wines, waiters tripping all over themselves to serve the Harold Saxon. So she began to have serious doubts when the car stopped somewhere in the warehouse district.
"I take it this is a very exclusive place," Martha said, dryly, as Saxon unlocked a warehouse door with a tap-tap-tap-tap of his fingers on keypad. She thought she was probably mad for following him inside; he might kill her, or worse. She went in, anyway.
Inside, the warehouse was one long corridor punctuated by endless doors, all guarded by keypads and blinking lights. Martha tried to look inside the narrow windows, but all she saw were shadows. Saxon led her to the last door. It had no keypad, just a glowing ring of blue light cast in front of the door.
He stepped into the ring and the door whooshed open.
"Ah, dear Torchwood, you had your uses," he remarked, stepping inside.
The small room beyond contained a single object: a blue wooden box that resembled a telephone box, emblazoned with the words "POLICE BOX" across the top.
The warnings going off in Martha's head rose to a volume she could no longer ignore. Crossing her arms over her chest, she stopped near the doorway. "All right," she said, "I think I've played along quite long enough. I thought you were taking me to supper."
"I am."
"Then what are we doing here? Unless I'm about to walk through those doors and be transported to, I dunno, Narnia or something--"
Saxon beamed at her. "Almost." When she gave him a skeptical look, he said, "Oh, come on, Miss Jones. Don't get all Doubting Thomas on me now. I know you're not, so there's no use in pretending."
Beckoning her along, he strode forward. He took out a key and slid it into the lock on the box's door. The key stuck as he tried to turn it. Saxon scowled. "Come on, you difficult little--!" The lock gave with an audible snick. "Ah, there we are!"
Saxon shoved the doors open. He cast his arms apart dramatically.
"Ta-dah!"
Martha thought of witches shoving little children into ovens for supper, and rich men with nasty habits of shoving grief-maddened medical students into strange blue boxes for worse reasons. She stepped forward to see anyway.
Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped.
Beyond the blue doors was an impossibly huge space, a large round cabin studded with strange knobby protrusions and supported by organic-looking arches. In the center was a tall, clear column housing some machinery, surrounded by a console full of dials and switches and levers.
"What? But that's--!" Wonder obliterated everything else Martha was feeling. She took a few steps forward into the box, then a few steps more. She circled the round console in the center, turned in the faintly reddish light, and ran back outside. She touched the solid wood of the sides and back of the box before returning to the entrance. "That's amazing," she breathed, suddenly dizzy with the impossible reality. "It's--it's bigger on the inside!"
She spun and faced Saxon, who was watching her with a smug sort of delight. She pressed her palm against one of the strange, coral-like struts curving towards the ceiling. "Is this some sort of space ship in disguise?"
"That and more, my dear."
"Your space ship?"
"It's mine now."
"Now?" she asked, but she wasn't really listening, and he didn't answer. Martha hovered her hands over the console. The thing looked jury-rigged, parts of the console opened up, tubes and wires and other things Martha couldn't name spilling out. "Is it broken?"
"It was," Saxon said, something gloating in his tone. "But it's beginning to see who's master."
"Does it have a name?" Martha stared up into the clear column, and then crouched down to look through the grated flooring beneath her feet.
"The TARDIS."
She poked at a rubber mallet discarded in a corner and her lips quirked, almost making it to a smile. "That's a funny name. Is that your language, then?"
"TARDIS. Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Time, space, it's all at our fingertips."
She gawked; she couldn't help it. "Wait. Are you saying it's a space ship and a time machine?"
"Humans," Saxon said. For a moment she glimpsed a disgust that was quite possibly the most genuine emotion he'd ever shown her, and then it was gone, hidden under a falsely patient smile. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. We can go anywhere, anywhen--well, nearly, due to meddling little friends who think it's funny to--but that's neither here nor there. That won't be an issue soon."
"Oh, that is too much!"
Saxon walked a circle around the console, stopping across from Martha. His fingertips tapped against the rounded edge of an opened panel before curling just inside. There was something slightly obscene, invasive, about his hands resting there. "How can you still doubt, Miss Jones? It wasn't so long ago that tin men from a parallel Earth were marching around, trying to upgrade humanity."
She tore herself away from the movement of his hands. "But I saw that, with my own two eyes. And I didn't know they were from a parallel Earth."
"So little faith," Saxon said, mock-sadly. "All right. I'll show your two lovely, lovely eyes. If you could go to any where, any time, Miss Jones, in the past or future year, where and when would you go?"
"Oh." Martha's face fell, her grief returning in a sudden, sharp rush. "You have to ask?" Her heart began to race as she considered the possibilities. "Can we--can we go back to--to save them?"
Saxon's mouth twitched. "Ahh. Sorry. I should have said 'not directly affecting your own past.' There are rules, you know. Paradoxes and reapers and ruining the pattern of the universe and all that. Save them, and you could destroy a hundred other lives. But I can take you back to that day, if you'd care to relive it."
Martha shook her head, horrified. "Absolutely not." She looked away, feeling awful for how much she'd been enjoying herself. "Maybe... maybe I shouldn't be here at all."
"None of that," Saxon said. "Self-pity doesn't become you. When shall we go, Miss Jones?"
"I don't know." Martha shook her head again. "How about..." She groped for something harmless. "Well, before everything..." She swallowed. "Julia kept asking me to go with her to a book release party for 'Deathly Hallows' next week. I told her I wasn't interested, so I'm not likely to run into myself there, am I? Or will I destroy the universe by seeing Julia when I'm not supposed to?"
Saxon wrinkled his nose and laughed. "A book release party? I'm astounded at your lack of vision, Miss Jones. Oh, all right. That should be harmless enough. If it'll make you believe me."
He moved quickly and with purpose around the console; she had to jump out of his way as he reached into one of the opened panels and did something to create a shower of sparks. "Come on, you old cow!" he scowled, kicking the edge of the console; suddenly the ship lurched and the clear column in the center illuminated a greenish-orange as machinery began pumping inside. "Here we go!" The room was filled with an eerie, whooshing pulse.
The sound lasted just long enough for Martha to ask "What is that?" before it stopped. Saxon whirled the monitor towards himself, nodded, and then crooked his arm towards her.
"Right on time. Of course. Shall we?" he said.
She hesitated, and then took his arm. "All right," she said, doubtfully, and walked with him out of the TARDIS.
Martha was startled to find it was full night outside. They were in an alley and she could hear excited voices just around the corner. She glanced at Saxon who smiled at her indulgently, and cocked his head towards the street.
They rounded the corner and someone shouted, "Martha Jones?"
Martha turned to see Julia waving her down the queue of people.
"Oh my god. Martha, it is you. I haven't seen you in a week--where have you... Oh my god!" Julia noticed Martha's escort with a widening of her eyes. "Is that--are you--Harold Saxon?" She looked back at Martha, and at their linked arms. "Martha Jones, you don't tell me anything any more! Katie--" Julia elbowed the woman she was with; Martha saw that it was Nurse Chapham. "Look who's here. And who with."
Nurse Chapham acknowledged Martha with a frown, then saw Saxon. She goggled, and looked momentarily unsteady. "Mr. Saxon," she gasped. "It's--it's an honor to meet you, sir. Kiss Me, Kill Me is my favorite book!"
Julia dragged Martha slightly aside as Chapham fluttered and fawned.
"How are you, love?" Julia said. "Honestly, you could've called. I was really beginning to worry. I rang your flat four times this week. Stoker's all but written you off. Why didn't you say something? I was starting to think you--" she swallowed. "That maybe you decided to join your family." She looked grim.
Martha had to stop herself from saying, "But I just saw you this morning!"
"I'm sorry. Things have just been--complicated, lately."
Julia shot a look towards Saxon, who had acquired a circle of admirers. "Apparently so. And to think we all came here for Rowling's new book." She jerked her chin toward the storefront, where piles of the latest Harry Potter awaited the stroke of midnight. "If I buy a copy of Kiss Me, Kill Me do you think he'll sign it for me?"
Martha barely heard her, staring at the clerk heading towards the door with keys in hand.
"So it's really the twenty-first?" Martha breathed, feeling a bit dizzy.
"In--" Julia glanced at her mobile. "Three minutes, yeah. Martha, you all right?"
"I--yeah." Martha shook her head. "I'm sorry, but... I've got to get going."
"Martha!"
Ignoring Julia's pleas to stay, Martha hurried back towards the alley. She was dimly aware of Saxon excusing himself and catching up with her.
"What?" he said, "Don't want a copy of the book? Prove to yourself it's real?"
"I believe," she said, breathlessly.
"Ah, it's all rubbish anyway. Wizards and monsters and magic."
"Hey, I loved those books," Martha said, without much force.
"I can show you so much more, and so much better. And it'll be real."
"Is that a good thing?"
They reached the TARDIS doors; he unlocked them, held the door for her. She hurried inside.
"Shall I take you home, then?" he asked, his tone edging on derisive.
Raising her eyebrows, she turned to him, surprised. "I have a choice?"
"Of course you do. What fun would it be if you didn't?"
"No, I don't want to go home," Martha said. She turned to him slowly. "I'm not upset. I'm actually... I'm just. A bit. Bowled over. We're in the future! I can't get my head around it." She laughed and was all-too aware of the tight, high shrillness of it. "I haven't gone completely mad, have I?"
"No, just slightly bonkers," he said. He closed the doors and leaned against them, then erased the distance between them with two energetic leaps that undermined the seriousness of his suit. His arm slid over her shoulders. Martha started to tell him to keep his hands to himself, but he pressed a finger against her lips and she was too startled by the coldness of his hands to finish.
"Well, if you're staying, we've got to be going. Promised you supper and answers, didn't I? And..." He looked her up and down. "We'll need to get you changed. Something nicer, more cheery. If you'll head left, then second right, then third left--oh, just start walking, you'll hit a wardrobe, and you ought to find a few things that'll fit you perfectly. How about red? I do love red."
"I am getting hungry." She managed a tentative smile. "So where... when are we going?"
He strolled over to the console, began turning knobs and winding up a handle. "It's a surprise. Well?"
Martha nodded, and headed off to find the wardrobe. She was already in over her head; she might as well start trying to swim.
5: The Dark.
Everything had gone dark.
It was black, black, black all around Martha, an all-consuming blackness she had never known. It swallowed the light from the TARDIS greedily and made some kind of primal fear rise in her, set her insides screaming.
Still giddy from their first stop, she had foolishly rushed out of the TARDIS doors as soon as they landed, eager to see what lay beyond. But what she thought was night was not, and she froze as she was embraced by a never-ending darkness.
Saxon stepped out beside her.
"Where are we?" She drew closer to him, not quite touching.
"The year one-hundred-trillion. The end of time," Saxon said, spreading his arms towards the never-ending darkness beyond. "This is the absolute end of the universe."
Martha shook her head. "That's impossible," she said, but something in her gut seemed to believe, the same thing that screamed against the unnatural darkness. "Why are we here?"
Saxon began walking forward without answering. She lunged after him and caught his arm, stumbling over the rocky ground. He laughed at her and patted her hand. She couldn't help but think he was being patronizing.
It was bitter cold and the ground was rocky, littered with loose gravel. Martha cursed Saxon's suggestion that she dress up--red, who could even see it!--and her stupid choice of heels. She cursed her stupid decision to go with him, for momentarily trusting him. She cursed herself for clinging to his arm like a scared little girl. But she couldn't let go.
"Come on. Didn't you say you were hungry?" Saxon said, and she wanted to hit him for the mocking laughter behind his words.
"What could we ever find to eat here?" she hissed at him, angry to cover up her fear.
"You'd be surprised." He stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. Martha heard the distant whirr of something approaching, and fell back a step behind Saxon.
Winking stars appeared in the distance, and at first she thought some cloud cover had moved, that it was not truly as black and suffocating as she'd thought. Then the stars grew as the whirring grew louder, and she realized she was seeing lights on the surface of flying metal spheres. The spheres were approaching with an alarming speed.
Strange, high-pitched noises join the whirring sound. It took Martha a moment to realize they were words spoken in childish tones:
"Supper time! Supper time!" and, "The Master is here! Mr. Master. We like the Master."
"'The master'?" Martha said, unable to keep the scorn out of her voice. She threw a disbelieving look at Saxon.
He shrugged, carelessly. "'The Master' is my real name, Miss Jones. Well... as near as you'll get."
Martha stared. She released his arm, recoiling. "I'm never calling you that."
His mouth curved. "I'm patient."
Saxon turned a circle, smiling beatifically at the spheres now hovering above his head. Martha thought she should probably be more grateful for what little light they lent, but she wasn't. Something about them bothered her.
"My friends. How nice to see you all again."
"Master!" the spheres squealed. "We're so glad you're back."
"We were getting so lonely."
"We've had the bodies put out your supper. Just like you said!"
"The Master will be back for supper!"
"And here I am," Saxon said. "May I introduce my lovely companion--?"
"Martha," one of the spheres chirruped. "Martha Jones."
Martha spun to face Saxon as the spheres clustered around her. "How do they know my name? Did you tell them I was coming?"
The spheres kept up their eager babble: "The skies are made of diamonds! We're the diamonds now, Martha, diamonds in the sky! Aren't we so pretty?"
"You helped us get here! We couldn't forget you!"
"You helped us find Utopia!"
"You helped us fly! You saved us!"
"What are they talking about?" Martha tried not to flinch as they drew closer and closer. "Sorry, um, whatever you are, I think you've got me confused--"
"Not at all," Saxon said. "You did help them, Martha. Or rather, you will."
"Oh. I. What?" Martha stared.
"Don't worry your pretty little head about it." He patted her cheek. She swatted him away.
"You can't just--"
Saxon wrapped an arm around her and steered her away from the TARDIS. "Come on, Miss Jones! The lady wants supper, my friends!"
She shrugged him off. "No, I don't. I want some straight answers."
"After supper."
Martha pressed her lips together and followed after the line of spheres, which bobbed and danced in front of her. They walked for a long time before they finally approached a huddle of buildings. The buildings were clustered around a row of massive furnaces, burning futilely against the darkness.
"In here!" The lead sphere bobbed and swooped. "Supper for the Master!"
Martha stepped into the lighted space, blinking at the sudden brilliance. She accepted a seat before she realized what was offering it to her. "Oh my god!" She leapt to her feet. "What is that?"
A headless corpse stood behind her, its hands still on the chair back. Where its neck should have been was a mass of mechanics, all black metal and blinking lights, like the spheres. Martha could smell it, chemical, like formaldehyde. Her stomach rolled.
"Don't be afraid, Martha Jones," one of the spheres crooned. "It's just a body."
"We need the bodies," another sphere chimed in. "They helped us become what we are."
"Soon we won't need them any more. We just need to finish."
Martha clutched the edge of her seat, leaning as far from the "body" as she could. "Finish what?"
"Finish changing."
"Making ourselves better."
"Making ourselves prettier."
"Soon we'll be able to do everything, without the bodies."
Saxon took a seat across from her. The table between them looked made of some sort of cannibalized metal, pitted and scarred, but it was solid enough. There was a steaming, battered pot, and some sort of dried meat, as well as a foil-wrapped packet. Saxon reached for the packet and tore it open to reveal dry, hard biscuits. He leaned across the table and told her in a stage whisper, "EMR-rations from the Omni group. I'd stick to these, if I were you. Maybe a bit stale, but... I don't think the meat will be to your liking."
"Thanks," she said, pretty sure he'd informed her just to make her nauseated. "But I'm not hungry any more."
He grinned at her and bit into a biscuit. The spheres hovered around them.
"Have some supper, pretty Martha."
"Eat something, kind Martha."
They bobbed and danced around her until she took a biscuit just to make them happy. "Here, see?" She nibbled a corner and nearly spat it out; it tasted like wet soil in her mouth.
"Nice Martha, good Martha!"
She gave them a tight smile and turned, slightly desperately, to Saxon. "Who are they? Why do they know me?"
"As they said. You save them, Miss Jones."
"I think I would've remembered something like that." Martha dropped the biscuit to the table.
"Well, for you, it's yet to happen yet. For me that was the past. Oh, it's all a bit mixed up." Saxon scrunched up his face.
"What do you--?"
Martha stopped mid-sentence as the spheres suddenly ceased their gentle bobbing, freezing mid-air; and then they left her, swirling into a loose line and out the door. She tried to see where they'd gone, squinting into the dim outside, but her eyes could make out nothing.
She heard perfectly well, however. The distinct sound of running feet--human feet, she thought--and fearful grunts. She rose.
"Stay," Saxon said.
His tone was so cold, so absolute, that she obeyed. When she heard the eerie, childlike laughter and then the screams, she was glad she did.
"What was that?"
Saxon chewed another biscuit and shrugged.
"Just cleaning up the vermin, I expect," he said.
"Vermin? That sounded like a person."
Saxon shrugged again as the spheres returned to the room, whirring and whirling and spinning. One had several sharp blades protruding from its base, which it withdrew with a slick sound. Another was spattered with red blood, some of which slowly dripped onto the table as it hovered in front of her.
"Silly thing," it told her. "They like to run and run and run. They were like us once. But now they have no minds at all. They make good bodies, though."
"And play fun games with us!" The sphere demonstrated what sort of games it meant by vaporizing the dried meat with some sort of laser.
"'Like us once'? They're what you used to be?"
"They don't want to change. So we have to get rid of them!"
"Do you want to play with them too, nice Martha?"
"No. Thank you." Martha shuddered. She fixed a plastic smile on her face and turned to Saxon. "And perhaps Mr. Saxon and I ought to be going, now."
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. "Don't you like your handiwork, Miss Jones?"
"My handiwork?"
"I've always thought," Saxon remarked, looking up at her and then at the spheres, "that some people aren't meant to be doctors." Martha tensed, but Saxon didn't notice, or didn't care. "They're attracted to trouble, to broken things, and they think they're supposed to fix them, and then they just make a worse mess. But you, Miss Jones... Look at the marvels you've achieved! Now that is what I call healing."
Martha furrowed her brow. "I don't--?"
"Stars burnt out. Worlds gone cold. All of creation, dying. And yet--humanity survives, thanks to Martha Jones." He looked up at the spheres circling Martha.
"Humanity? You don't mean--. They can't be human."
"Always need to see with your own two eyes, do you?" Saxon reached up, spread his hand beneath one of the spheres. It lowered itself to rest against his fingertips. "Why don't you open up, my friend? All of you. Open up and show the pretty lady your faces."
The sphere rotated on its axis rapidly. "But we're afraid, Master. Our eyes are afraid. Afraid of the dark."
"Do it."
The spheres lowered to Martha's eye level; one by one, they split open. Inside each, nestled among machinery and punctured by tubes and pins, was a withered-looking human head.
Martha felt her gorge rise. She clenched her teeth until she thought they would crack, but still the end of a scream escaped between her mashed-together lips.
"Aren't we pretty?" The spheres covered up their all-too human faces, and then twirled in mid-air. "Aren't we pretty, sweet Martha, kind Martha?"
Saxon caught her shoulder as she stumbled back. He pressed his mouth close to her ear. "What's one dead family when you help turn the remnants of humanity into this?"
"They can't be human," Martha said, filled with revulsion.
"Ask them. I'm sure they've got medical records, anatomical diagrams--you need that sort of thing, after all, when you decide to chop off your heads and become floating cyborgs."
"Yes! We can show you!" a sphere volunteered. "We can show you how to be just like us. Martha Jones, you were kind to us. You helped us fly."
"How could I? I'm dead," Martha whispered. "I'm dead. By the year one-hundred trillion, I'm cold and rotted and dust."
"Not," Saxon purred, "if you have a TARDIS."
"Oh god," she said.
"Yes." He knelt beside her, turning her face towards him with the fingertips of his hand.
"Even at the end of all things, you help them cling just a little longer. Ever the little... doctor. Don't you want to know the story? It's a very good story. Touching, if I do say so myself."
She shook her head. He kept on speaking.
"Picture it: Malcassairo, one of the last strongholds of humankind, huddling against the darkness and the death of everything around them, rapidly going extinct. Yearning to join what's left of the human race at fabled Utopia. Aided by one noble, selfless, creative genius--that's me, of course--but missing one crucial piece of knowledge. And then who should arrive but a brave, good-hearted, curious young lady?"
Saxon grinned, a shark's smile if she ever saw one. "You asked why I'm so interested in you, Miss Jones. Well, I'll tell you. You saved me, too. Or you will. I was lost, and then I felt your sweet little hands on me, and I was found. You gave me the missing piece, and together we sent the human race off to their new fate."
"It was cold, so cold," one of the spheres said, rotating anxiously. "We had to fix ourselves. We learned from you, and the Master."
"You were so clever."
"We decided to be clever too!"
"We're clever too, aren't we?"
"The Master makes such clever things. The Doctor fixes them. We can do it too."
"We fixed ourselves!"
"We fixed the bodies and the runaways!"
The spheres began giggling and whirling, flicking their blades in and out.
"They're mad," Martha breathed. "All mad."
"You're going to hurt their feelings, Miss Jones. They're our responsibility." Saxon's hand curled against the back of her neck, pulled her against his chest. "We're the proud parents of the future human race!"
She shook him off, and stood, wrapping her arms around herself. Martha shuddered. "No," she said, gasping. "No. If it's true, if any of this isn't just lies--! Now that I know, I won't do any of it. I'll go home. I'll stay there, in the past--present--the time I'm supposed to be."
"You could try that. And then what? Paradox. Chaos. You've already done it, already lived to witness the effects of your actions. You'll tear apart the pattern of the universe. Is that what you want?" Saxon's eyes were suddenly bright. "Is it?"
She thought he almost wanted her to say yes. Her lips began to form the word before she shook her head, vehemently.
"Of course not!"
She felt like he had spun her around and around and around, like the ground was whirling under her feet and over her head.
The spheres hovered, chirping, "But you saved us, Martha Jones!"
"We like you, Martha. Don't you like us?"
"No." Hot, angry tears spilled down Martha's cheeks, frustrated tears, hateful tears. "No, stop saying that. I didn't save you. I didn't."
"Look into my face, Miss Jones, and tell me I'm lying."
Martha stared into Saxon's face, telling herself he was a politician, a businessman, not even human. That she could trust nothing she saw there, not the sneering amusement, the hint of impatience, the laugh curving his eyes and curling his lips.
"You're responsible," he said, and she saw no lie, heard no deceit. But more than that, she knew herself. If she had come across these people, stranded, why wouldn't she help them? Even knowing, as she did, what they would become. At least they would live, wouldn't they? No threat to anyone but themselves.
"Isn't it a good thing, Martha?" Saxon murmured to her. His arm slid over her shoulders, pulled her close, and this time she didn't step away from him. "Isn't that what you've always wanted, saving people?"
"You helped us, Martha Jones."
"You helped us become pretty!"
"Pretty?" Martha repeated, looking up at the spheres from within the prison of Saxon's arms. "You're monsters." She laughed through her tears, knowing how mad she sounded, hardly caring. "You're all monsters," she said, including Saxon in the sweep of her gaze, holding his eyes at the end of it.
And what was she, who stood dry-eyed at her family's graves, who went gallivanting off with strangers before the dirt was cast over them? Who strode in so arrogantly like some would-be hero and "rescued" the human race?
The part of Martha that had been clinging to doubt, to deniability, slipped closer to the yawning darkness opened up inside of her. A sob caught in her throat.
"And I help. I help make you monsters."
"My dear Martha." Saxon held her a little away, brushing away the hair sticking to her wet cheeks with his fingertips. "Here at the end of universe, we're all monsters."
He kissed her then, and she laughed against his lips at the madness of it all, being kissed by a monster at the end of time, and she let him.
6: Your Eyes Will Adjust.
Martha stood in the dark, her arms crossed over her chest, staring at the square white light of the TARDIS windows.
"In the end," she said, "They all die."
Snakelike, Saxon's hand slid up against the small of her back. She didn't step away, or rebuke him for it. Her eyes never left the TARDIS.
"What's the point?" she said. "What is the point of something as wonderful as being able to travel all time and space when you can't even fix all those horrible wrongs?"
"Maybe we did it for good reason," she said. "Maybe we thought we were helping them, sending them away to go mad in the dark. But what's the point? When the last star dies, when the universe collapses, when time ends... there's nothing. Nothing."
"If I could make something like the TARDIS," she said, "I would fix so many things. Never mind paradoxes. I'd find a way to fix those, too. I would do it."
"Bent but not broken. Not entirely. I see why he was drawn to you." Saxon's voice startled her. She'd all but forgotten he was there. "Maybe you should've been a Time Lord."
"Time Lord?"
"My people. Gone now, but..." Martha saw genuine emotion pass over Saxon's face, though she couldn't name it. "We ruled all Time, saw the all the possibilities and patterns of the universe. Could change them, if we wanted. It was our birthright, our nature, our being. There were no paradoxes when the Time Lords were in their glory days, no chaos but that which we controlled. Such an empire, Miss Jones."
"What happened to them?"
"I don't know," Saxon said. "But... all things die, don't they, Miss Jones?"
Finally turning her face away from the light of the TARDIS, she glanced at him. "How can you not know, if you are one?"
He didn't answer her. His features pinched, his eyes narrowed.
Some part of Martha wanted to push and probe, wanted to draw out the real anger there, provoke him. Cleopatra and the asp. She let the question rise to her lips and then slide away, unvoiced. It was becoming so easy to let everything slide over her, past her. She had looked at the end of time, the end of humankind, hadn't she? Found herself complicit. What could be worse?
The pale white light of the TARDIS drew her gaze again. It was comforting, quieted the screaming inside of her. She had the brief, foolish notion that it was alive, reaching out to her, but Saxon spoke and broke the illusion.
"There is one way still to do it."
He could sound, she thought, so compassionate, so comforting, when he wanted.
"To save your family, to change things, and not pull apart the fabric of reality. To even stop yourself from doing any of this. From saving me, if you like, although you won't be able to get rid of me that easily."
She knew he was baiting her, dangling the carrot on the string, and that he might pull it away the instant she reached for it. But Martha reached all the same.
"How?"
"It won't be pretty, or easy."
"How?" she repeated.
"When we were at the height of our power, some made paradox machines to allow contradictory timelines to exist. We could do it. Unfortunately--we'll have to butcher the TARDIS to make one."
"Then how could I go back and save them?"
"There is one other TARDIS in all the universe. I know the day it comes to Earth again--and how you can get a hold of it."
"Steal it, you mean?"
"Borrow it," he said, smiling.
She shook her head. "No. I love my family, and I want them to live--but that just seems wrong. 'Cos, I'll know what I've done, how I saved them."
"You can change that too. Change yourself so that we never meet. Save yourself."
She faced him. "My--I'll change too, if I do that? I won't remember?"
"Well. You'll still exist, thanks to the paradox machine, but that other you, that Martha Jones, won't remember. And once you fix her--well, up to you what you want to do with yourself."
Martha stared at the light of the TARDIS. She said, without emotion: "Don't pretend you're doing this for me. I know you're not."
"No," Saxon said smiling. "You're no fool, are you, Miss Jones?"
"Why do you want the paradox machine?"
"I--" His hesitation was so slight, she never would have caught it before. But she was beginning to know him, Harold Saxon, the Master, whoever he was. She was beginning to see into him, and that disturbed her, as much as she could still be disturbed. She knew he was going to lie. "I wish to bring back Gallifrey. My home. To do that, I need to find out what happened."
She nodded, beginning to see. "Another TARDIS, another Time Lord. And me, what am I? Bait?"
He drew her close, turned his face and breathed in against her hair. "Clever Martha Jones. I do like you." She shivered, for too many reasons. "After you bring him to me, I don't care what you do. Take his TARDIS. Save your family. My gift to you, for assisting me, for serving as my... companion."
She slipped away from him and walked up to the TARDIS, put her hand against the blue wooden doors.
"This is wrong," Martha said. "So, so wrong."
"But you want it, don't you, Martha Jones?"
She shivered again, because he was right. Even if she couldn't give herself another chance, she would find a way to give her family another one. She would use Saxon as much as he used her. And if he ever showed her his back--
The blue wood was warm as she pressed her cheek against it. "If you are alive," she whispered. "I'm sorry. I'll find a way to make it right."
Then she turned and faced Saxon. She even managed to smile. She damned herself, hoping to save herself.
"Yes."
"Yes, what?" he said, gloating, and she let him gloat.
The words all but burned her tongue as she said them, but she got them out.
"Yes, Master."
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