(no subject)
Now, be wary of this fic. I can quite easily understand how it may not be everyones cuppa tea. It flicks between perspectives a little, and I welcome concrit, since I may be completely wrong in the tone of this.
Anyway,
Fandom: Doctor Who
Title: The Causes of Change
Summary: Quite odd, so I'm sorry if you don't like it. A slightly blurry portrait of the relationships between Ten, Martha and Jack.
Rating/Spoilers: Low rating, spoliers for Smith and Jones and POTW, AU for series 3.
The Causes of Change
According to a huge range of people, there are a multitude of options in each person’s life. Some are important, and some are not, but scientists, and philosophers, psychologists and wise, old grandparents all agree, that in one moment, in one second, there are a million different possibilities just waiting to happen. Each possibility rests on a decision, and may seem trivial on its own, but as so many old proverbs seem to imply, all big things, causing huge changes in lives, are made up from those seemingly unimportant choices. This means though, that people often don’t even realise the course of their life has changed, because it was decided through so many tiny little questions and appropriately small answers.
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“Doctor!”
“Sorry…You called me Doctor.”
Martha grinned. He looked so pleased, and he seemed to forget their current predicament. It was a tiny thing for her, a subconscious decision, but it seemed to mean a lot to him.
He grinned, temporarily stopping. He did love it when someone new admitted who he was. Or even just suspended disbelief to see that there were more important things at stake. Made him think, just for a moment, that he had done something worthy to inspire their confidence in him.
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Sometimes, however, a question comes along that is so obviously a life-changing one that time seems to stand still. The possibilities flash before the eyes of the one being questioned so fast that they blur into a slideshow being shown too fast for any understanding to be possible. And it is in this moment that the universe stops, just for a nanosecond, to appreciate the magnitude of the event.
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“I just thought, since you saved my life, and I’ve got a brand new sonic screwdriver which needs road-testing, you might fancy a trip…”
She smiled. She smiled when he asked her, and she asked the relevant questions, getting a feel for the situation, the proposition and the whole thing put together. She knew it was important, knew this would leave her different forever, but saying no? Had it ever really been an option? Martha’s logical brain had worked out within a second that if she said no, she’d regret it for the rest of her life.
It was make-or-break time. Would she come, or was Rose the beginning of people turning him and his TARDIS down. Nah, course she’d come. One of the first things he’d liked about her was her curiosity, asking why they could breathe on the moon. She wouldn’t, nay, couldn’t, turn down a chance like this.
***
So she smiled. She smiled when he showed her things she could only ever have imagined with the help of chemicals from the university labs. She loved every second - at the moment he was explaining, with a completely straight face and a decidedly serious tone, how the music of ABBA had affected a colony of bees on an otherwise deserted planet in the Camplox galaxy. Were it anyone else, she’d recommend they were institutionalised, but this was just…his thing. A quirk.
While she watched, she saw him twitch, and twist his arm to flatten his hair, only resulting in an ever more mad-as-a-hatter, geeky-professor, I’m-such-a-klutz look than before. They’d just been to a planet where it rained pearls, and the native giraffe-like creatures had eaten moving leaves, as they walked about. Of course, they’d ended up running for their lives, this time from a scary-haired, Frida-like woman, prompting her (with hindsight, ill-thought-out) comment regarding the widespread problems caused by ABBA. This then prompted the current topic of conversation. That was if you could call it conversation when only one person had spoken for the last ten minutes.
Maybe this was a bad idea, being here in a box, with a very alien alien, talking about old pop music, she thought to herself.
Nah, she couldn’t regret saying yes. Sprinting for her life included, this was the most exciting time of her life.
The right decision, definitely.
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Life changing decisions are rare though. Some people may never experience one in a lifetime. Instead, looking back, they can see where each choice affected their later lives. Take, for example, a kiss.
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Jack was surprised by her. Even in this new body, he’d expected the Doctor to have another slightly impressionable young girl aboard, who trusted instinct. Instead, he found a logical, mildly manipulative student, whose reasons for coming on the TARDIS were split fairly evenly between an excess of curiosity about all things organic, and an excess of interest in the Doc himself. Jack suspected a little crush had developed, not that he blamed her.
However, impressionable, she was not. He had not expected subtle overtures from Miss Martha Jones, and it was kinda nice to be surprised like this for once. She’d approached him in the kitchen and asked what his biological anomalies were, with just a hint of a smile, and he’d responded, naturally, by flirting. Somewhat bafflingly, she’d raised an eyebrow and flirted back. It culminated in a long, slow kiss that Jack knew he would have to stop.
Any second now.
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The problem is, some choices are made at the wrong time, or, more specifically, a decision is not made, therefore possibilities are altered. Just a fraction too late, only one decision delayed. It can be extremely important.
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He’d walked in, before stopping, quite literally, in his tracks. He’d just found Jack, and explained to Martha about the whole situation, (reassuring her, in a roundabout way, that he wasn’t going to leave her for dead on an abandoned abattoir of a satellite anytime soon), but then gone to fix a couple of minor malfunctions.
He’d only gone to the kitchen to scrounge a cup of tea - hopefully already brewed. And he’d found his old companion and his new companion, successfully imitating fully clothed sex, using just their mouths. Jealousy was an unusual emotion in this body, but he didn’t like it.
Oh well. When in doubt, say nothing at all. Wait, was that a proverb or a song lyric? Not that it mattered. With that thought still foremost in his mind, Jack and Martha became aware of his presence, and jumped away from each other. Well, he couldn’t have them all falling out over something like this. Nope, only one way to resolve a situation like this, if he dared.
He could join in.
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Change is a bizarre thing. By its very definition, it means ‘a deviation from a currently established baseline’, implying a flux of energy or time, and yet it is the universe’s only constant.
Small decisions lead to situations in which big decisions are required. It is with a combination of these choices that a result occurs. Positive or negative, it happens, and is usually the fault of more than one person, but it is change, and it is inevitable.
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He did join in.
And there were tears and wonders, and grins, and promises, and moments, and more tears and love… but mostly, there was constant change, because that was what they needed.
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