Doctor Who Fic: Universal Realignment (1/8)
This would be what I was working on instead of writing a review for AoL/WW3.
Story Title: Universal Realignment
Author: butterfly
Summary: The Doctor takes Martha and Jack for a trip before the final scenes of "Last of the Time Lords".
Pairing: Oh, the same as the show -- implied emotionally requited Doctor/Rose; light amounts of unrequited Doctor/other folks and Jack/everyone.
Rating: At the moment, it's family-friendly. PG or PG-13 (at most).
Warning: AU after Doctor Who 3x13 - "Last of the Time Lords"
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to Doctor Who and the BBC.
Universal Realignment
“We’ve got an alert!” the Doctor announced, halting their progress through time with a twist of the hand. Then he sprang into action, setting a tracer on the anomalous energy signature. He turned the monitor toward himself and crowed in delight. This one, he recognised - this one had real promise. He hadn’t done something like this in ages.
“What is it?” Martha shouted over the sounds of the TARDIS kicking into gear.
“Everything you could ever ask for,” the Doctor said. “Jack, work that vortex loop control as hard as you can!”
“Not a problem,” Jack said, and the Doctor could see him glancing over at the monitor, though he wouldn’t have any luck working out what it said. “Any clues on where we’re going?”
“We’ll know when we get there,” the Doctor said and then he called out more instructions over the console, smiling to himself as Jack showed that he still remembered where everything was.
The ride got bumpier and Martha shimmied out of the Doctor’s way when he reached to pull up one of the levers right in front of her.
Finally, they started slowing down and the Doctor could see their destination coordinates blinking up on the monitor. They were somewhere he’d been before, somewhere he knew.
“Next stop, Galtia Six,” the Doctor said, firmly shifting the dimensional stabiliser to a higher frequency level - they’d need that. Jack was standing on the other side of the console, twisting the polarity count down to minimal levels, while Martha clung to the side of the railing as the ship steadied. “Or, as the natives once called it -- Jat’ica.”
“Sounds like fun,” Martha said, with a wide smile and bright eyes.
“It’s a lizard hunt,” the Doctor said, grinning back at her. Martha’s face fell. “We’re here to get some contrary beasties out of this dimension before they start making Tuesday happen on Sunday.”
“There are lizards that can do that?” Martha asked.
“Not just any old lizards,” the Doctor said, double-checking the monitor to make certain that they’d tracked down the right energy signature. “We’ll be hunting down some Olpanilicks.”
“Aren’t they…?” Jack asked.
“They are,” the Doctor confirmed.
“What?” Martha asked.
“They’re transdimensional,” Jack said. “That’s why they’re causing so many problems. Am I right, Doctor?”
“Give the man a chocolate star,” the Doctor said. “Olpanilicks are wanderers of the dimensions. I thought they were extinct, to be honest, but they were just somewhere that I couldn’t see. And now they’re here, bringing in all sorts of exotic matter that really doesn’t belong.”
“So, we’re sending them home?” Martha asked.
“What home? They live through their family unit. They’re not intelligent, not strictly speaking, but they’re loyal. Can’t smell, can’t hear, can’t see, can’t taste anything but energy. Humans and other lifeforms are, luckily enough, incompatible energy. They’ve no interest in you, which makes them fairly well unique,” the Doctor said. Olpanilicks! They’d actually survived. If that energy signature weren’t entirely, utterly unique, he might have doubted himself, but as it was there simply wasn’t any question. “They just want enough power to travel on with their family. Understandable enough, given their circumstances. Oh, no, Martha, we’re not sending them home - we’re sending them to journey on, into universes where they’ll cause fewer problems.”
“Always something new with you, Doctor,” Martha said. “Suppose this means that I should change into something more appropriate.”
“Is there something wrong with what you’ve got on?” the Doctor asked, patting his pockets to make sure he had everything he needed.
“She’s wearing a skirt,” Jack pointed out. “Probably because you said our last trip together should be something fun, like a party on Maurix during their fourth Kipo dynasty.”
The Doctor glanced over at Martha - she was wearing a skirt, look at that. All dark red and fitted. Plus, she had on all sorts of jewellery - was that normal? The Doctor tried to recall if Martha used to wear any, before the year that hadn't happened, and came up with a big blank space.
Well, she probably wanted to impress Jack and hadn’t realised that Jack didn’t need bobs and slinky skirts. All Jack needed was a pulse - no, hang on, Jack didn’t really seem to need one of those either, now that he thought about it. The ability to say ‘yes’ was perhaps the key ingredient.
“Oh. Well, I can see where that might be a problem,” the Doctor said. “Right, then, go on and get changed. We’ll wait for you.”
Martha smiled at him and the Doctor smiled back happily, and then she skittered off towards the wardrobe room.
“She’s lovely,” Jack said.
“Very sweet,” the Doctor agreed. “Good to have around in a crisis.”
“That’s… not exactly what I meant,” Jack said.
“Right, of course,” the Doctor said, feeling a little like an idiot. He’d just been thinking about Jack and Martha together and then completely missed a hint. “It’s not as though you need my permission. Just don’t ask her while we’re in the middle of something.”
“I seemed to need it last time,” Jack said. The Doctor locked eyes with him, and Jack was actually serious.
“Jack, I’m not… the situations aren’t similar in the slightest,” the Doctor said. “Martha’s my friend - if you two want to have fun during non-hostile conditions, what business is it of mine?”
“We really need to have that talk someday,” Jack said, which seemed a bit of a non sequitur.
“Which one?” the Doctor asked. “I can’t fix you, Jack. And if you want to talk about… about Rose, I already told you what happened to her.”
“I get the feeling that you didn’t tell me everything,” Jack said.
Jack was fun to have around, truly he was, but he could be annoyingly persistent. Rose was never going to be here again and talking about her all the time wouldn’t change that.
Best to move on with their lives.
“That’s not what I’m talking about, though,” Jack said. “We need to have a conversation about Martha.”
“Oh. We do? Don’t you think she’s grand?” the Doctor asked. “I thought teaming up with her was a nice bit of luck.”
“I like her just fine,” Jack said. “My feelings have nothing to do with it.”
“Doesn’t she like you?” the Doctor asked. “I could have sworn that she did. Would have staked money on it. Guess it’s good that I didn’t. Mind you, not sure who I’d have made the bet with, as the two of you have conflicts of interest.”
“I’m sure that she likes me fine,” Jack said. “I’m talking about the reason she was wearing a skirt.”
“Maurix? We can probably still go there when this is all over,” the Doctor said. “And you can dance with her all you like.”
“I don’t want to step on any toes, that’s all,” Jack said, spreading his hands.
“Ah. Oh. No need to worry about that,” the Doctor said, grabbing his coat from the pilot’s chair and sliding it on. “She only goes for humans. Told me so herself. You’ve got a clear field, if you can convince her that you’re worth the time.”
“And you’ve got no objections?” Jack said.
“None,” the Doctor said, wondering how many times Jack was going to make him say it. “As long as you don’t have sex on the console - and don’t, by the way - it isn’t anything to do with me.”
Martha clattered back into the room, wearing trousers now, and Jack seemed to decide that it was a good time to shut up.
“So, Galtia Six,” Martha said. “What do I need to know?”
“Not much. We’re not here to do any sight-seeing and there shouldn’t be a civilisation about, at least not any more,” the Doctor said. “Actually, it’s quite boring, Galtia Six. Big, dead planet. Breathable atmosphere, plenty of vegetation, but no leap to animal life, at least not yet, and the plants haven’t shown any sign of sentience. It’s pretty enough, I suppose, but it won’t do for a holiday.”
“Wait just a minute,” Martha said. “There was a civilisation here before, but now there’s just plants?”
“Big catastrophe,” the Doctor said. “Their own fault. They irradiated the capital and then the rest moved off-world to keep from dying. No one ever came back. I’d say it was a loss for the galaxy, but considering that they were trying to build a weapon to invade Galtia Four, it’d be hard to argue that point.”
“Well, you don’t have to sound so cheerful about it,” Martha said. “You could have some sympathy.”
“They overreached themselves - decided that they should be the sole arbitrators of right and good,” the Doctor said. “I’m not saying that they deserved to die and I’m not saying that I didn’t try to save them, but it’s not as if it was the planet of sunshine and rainbows.”
“When did this happen?” Jack asked.
“For them, about… three hundred years ago, give or take,” the Doctor said. “For me… well, that’s actually what I was doing a month before I met Martha. Trying to save the Galtia Skaions. Useless, really. Some people can’t be saved.”
“I won’t believe that,” Martha said. The Doctor looked over at her, a warm feeling creeping into his bones.
“Oh, humans,” he said, fondly. “Don’t let go of that belief, Martha. That relentless optimistic faith that the best of you have, no matter how bad things get, is more precious than you can possibly imagine.”
Martha flushed and looked away, and Jack was looking… angry, of all things.
Really, all he did was compliment their species. A little appreciation back didn’t seem like too much to ask. Just one small word, ‘thanks’, but they were too busy being odd and emotional to say it.
He’d never understand them.
“Right, here we go,” he said. “Galtia Six. Watch your hands and feet as you exit the TARDIS, look both ways before crossing the street, remember that any alien life out there is more afraid of me than you are of it, and don’t forget to tip your waiter.”
Martha was smiling again at the end of his ramble, which marked that as a qualified success.
“So, these lizards - do they just look like lizards?” Martha asked.
“Oh, they look like your garden-variety lizard - green, vaguely spotted, long tail,” the Doctor said. “Only they’re about three feet tall, and they can paralyse you with a glance.”
“What?”
“Didn’t I mention that?”
“Not in so many words,” Martha said. “We’re hunting something that can paralyse us?”
“It wears off,” the Doctor pointed out. “And it’s not as though they do it on purpose - it’s just what happens when they expel their excess energy. They absorb energy, expel and paralyse, and then travel on to a new universe. It’s really quite brilliant.”
Jack glanced over at them, a smile finally tugging at the corner of his mouth, and then he opened the door, cautiously checking out what lay outside.
“We’re in a building,” Jack announced. “I think we’re blocking a hallway - it doesn’t look like there’s any room on either side of us.”
“Another expert parking job,” the Doctor said, reaching down to flip a switch that would mask the TARDIS’s radiation from the Olpanilicks. “Come on, then - time to go hunting. No point standing around here all day, yapping off our ears.”
Once outside, the Doctor could see that Jack was right - they were in one of the many dead buildings of Galtia Six. Abandoned for centuries, but still standing. In fact, judging by the architecture, they might even be in the same building where he'd been held prisoner.
One of his more miserable stints in prison, all things considered. Even more so because he’d had no company - just him, trying to argue some sense into people who wouldn’t listen, trapped in a city with a name that had struck him as a particularly sick joke on the part of the universe.
It didn't feel much better this time around.
He was trying to move on - he’d got a new suit and shoes, saved a few planets and the Earth a couple of times over, and he’d even got a brand new travelling companion. Martha Jones, medical student and brilliant asker of questions. Probably beautiful, judging by reactions from Shakespeare and Jack and a dozen other blokes. Definitely fun and very useful to have around when he nearly died, which seemed to be happening a lot recently.
He didn’t need to be standing in bloody J’arunp ‘k Y’narl Riif, thinking about something impossibly far away.
“Now, we should be fairly close to where the Olpanilicks entered our universe, but I didn’t want to put us right on top of them, so there’s still some searching to do,” the Doctor said, reaching into his pocket for supplies. “Martha, Jack: you might need these.”
He handed each of them a small hand mirror and then started down the corridor. Definitely Galtia Six - he’d have known that even if the TARDIS hadn’t said so - the tall pointed ceiling of the hallway, the way the paint had oozed down the walls as a result of the j’run radiation, the complicated sexagesimal windows that just showed more hallways, the soft ambient ever-glow lights that really had lived up to their name, one of their classic lop-sided staircases up ahead; it was all very familiar to him.
“Are you trying to tell us that they’re so ugly we can scare them away with their own reflections?” Martha asked, smirking.
The Doctor sighed, his momentum ruined. He glared at Martha for a bit, but she kept on looking terribly amused by herself, so he gave it up as a bad job and went on with his explanation. “The mirror will give you some protection against the paralytic. Just hold it up if you see an Olpanilick and you’ll probably be fine.”
“And ‘probably’ never gets us into trouble,” Martha said, giving her mirror a suspicious glance.
“We’re not dead yet,” the Doctor said as he pulled out his sonic screwdriver and started adjusting it.
“Not all of us, anyway,” Jack said. He was smiling when the Doctor looked at him, but there was a truth in his words that implied that they probably did need to have a talk of some kind. Jack deserved more of an explanation than the Doctor had been able to give him… or at least a better reason why the Doctor couldn’t tell him more.
In due time, they reached the stairway that the Doctor had spotted from the TARDIS - it spiralled into the walls in five different directions, complicated and inefficient as the people who’d made it.
“What now?” Martha asked.
“I’m not picking up anything,” Jack announced, after messing about with his wristband. “Doctor, which way should we go?”
“Let’s split up,” the Doctor said cheerfully, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and tuning it to pick up the right sort of exotic matter trail. “Jack - take the upward right; Martha - take the middle left.”
“And what about you?” Martha asked.
“Oh, I’ll wander about.” The Doctor waved the retuned screwdriver in Martha’s direction, pursing his lips slightly when the readings were off. “As I said earlier, they aren’t dangerous - just pests, really. I have a few things that I’d like to set up so that I can send them on their merry way.”
“All right, have it your way,” Martha said, heading into the stairwell he'd pointed her toward.
“He usually does,” Jack told her, and the Doctor looked over to see him grinning cheekily. Jack shrugged when he met the Doctor’s eyes, then he turned away and the Doctor sighed, all the words he should say to Jack sticking in his throat.
Then they were gone and he was alone, in the ruins of a civilisation that he hadn’t been able to save. A people too stubborn to admit that an outsider might have insight that they lacked, with leaders unwilling to back down even when their own scientists had told them that the weapon’s stability was questionable. He'd spent weeks screaming at them to save themselves and they'd refused to listen.
The Doctor sat down cross-legged on the stone floor, hauled a transfuse generator out of a pocket, and continued to adjust the settings on his screwdriver.
This, at least, was a problem that he could solve.
Part Two