Doctor Who Fic: Universal Realignment (2/8)

[butterfly]

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 -- 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.

Previous part can be found here.


Universal Realignment

Martha was beginning to regret her shoes. Normally, she could run all over the place in whatever she wanted, but the stairs here were doing a number on her ankles. Add to that the fact that she’d stepped into something disgusting when she’d turned her last corner and she was pretty much done with Galtia Six.

Travelling the galaxy through time and space had been all very nice when it wasn't traumatic, but the Doctor always did seem to pick the dirtiest places to end up.

Still, at least this place supplied its own light. She’d tried to figure out just where the lights were for ages before she’d realised that the glow was actually coming from everywhere - that the walls, floor, and ceiling all emitted a low level of light.

She leaned up against the wall for a bit of a rest, hoping that the Doctor and Jack were having better luck than she was at finding the… oh, what had the Doctor called them?

Olpagilicks? Olpahilicks?

Whatever they were called, they'd sounded a bit like basilisks to Martha - lizards that turned people to stone. Like some of the other things she'd seen with the Doctor, the stories got it all wrong, this time made them sound more dangerous than they really were, but the people writing those stories hadn't had the Doctor with them.

She shifted a bit on the wall… and then slowly stood up when she saw something glittering on the floor.

A shed skin. And that meant that she was headed in the right direction. Martha smiled a bit, feeling a touch of giddiness come over her. She went over and reached out to grab a piece of the glimmering emerald skin, thinking to keep some of it for the Doctor to look over and then she yelped as the slightest touch sliced open her finger.

Brilliant. Martha sighed and wished for a thick pair of gloves, then gave it up as a bad job. Besides, the Doctor already knew what the lizards were - there wasn’t a mystery here. She wished she'd thought of that before carving up her hand. She gingerly wiped away the blood and was pleased to see that the cut was quite shallow. She wouldn't even need to wrap it.

That settled to her satisfaction, Martha headed down along the hallway, her boot heels clanking loudly on the bare floor - no hearing, no sense of smell, no sight; they wouldn’t know she was coming no matter how obvious she was.

She spotted a brighter light coming in through a half-open door at the end of the hallway and she had the feeling that she was close.

She burst into the room, prepared to start calling for the Doctor to join her, but stopped short when all she saw was a girl kneeling on the floor, facing half-away from her, her hand hovering just over another pile of shining green scales.

“Be careful,” Martha said, rubbing her thumb gently over her cut. “They’re sharp.”

“You’re right about that,” the girl said, though ‘woman’ was probably more accurate - she looked older now when Martha had a closer look, maybe a little older than Martha was, and just the slightest bit familiar, though Martha couldn’t place why. If they were at home, Martha would peg her as a South Londoner from the voice, but as it was, she could be from anywhere. “I fell into a patch a few days ago. Cuts all over my hands and legs. I was bleeding for a solid twenty minutes. Got a good yelling at by my doctor.”

And sure enough, she was wearing gloves - good thick ones, from the look of them.

“She'll be pleased that you're being more careful now,” Martha said absently, taking a moment to check out the room. It was massive, probably twice the size of the main room of the TARDIS, and it was open to the sky - there were enormous round skylights in the ceiling, all with the glass gone. The walls were the same old wood with paint slopped on, like the people making it had expended all their effort on building the walls and then given up when it came to decorating.

The sky was an odd lavender shade that she’d never seen before, not even when she was looking through paints and colours for her flat, and the light from it made the woman's hair look nearly the same color. There was a moon up in the sky, only a sliver of a crescent, but still bigger than the moon would ever be at home. There was clearly a sun, too, judging from how bright the sky was, but it wasn’t where she could see it - they were in the morning or the evening, then, of this world.

There was another pile of shed skin near a door on the other side of the room - there were three doors over there, plus another dozen scattered on the other five walls. She glanced behind her and saw yet another entrance, to the left of the one that she’d come through. Maybe that one led to where the Doctor was searching.

“Do you know where we are?” the woman asked, standing up and brushing off her trousers. She’d gone and put some of the scales in a tube that Martha hadn’t noticed before, and after holding it up to the light, she went and tucked it away in a pocket, taking off her gloves and sticking them into a bag that had been sitting on the other side of her. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not from a planet with two moons.”

“There’s two of them?” Martha asked. The woman laughed, something in the way of it making Martha want to smile, too.

“You must have missed the other one,” she said. “It went down already. I could only see the edge of it before and I’ve been here at least an hour.”

“I’ve been here longer than that, I think.” Though Martha couldn’t really be sure, now that she thought about it - her watch had stopped somewhere between the nineteen century and meeting Captain Jack. She’d never bothered to get it fixed. There hadn't been much point when she wasn’t going to be in the same time from one day to the next. “But I’ve been indoors all that time. This is the first time I’ve seen the sky here.”

“Alien skies are the best sort of sky,” the woman said, an odd wistfulness in her voice. “Once, I thought I’d never see another one. And now… I’ll probably never see my own again.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that.” Martha hadn’t exactly been given permission to invite people on board, but she couldn’t imagine the Doctor saying no to something like this. “If you need a lift, I can take you home.”

“You don’t even know where I’m from.” The woman looked over at Martha, her eyes warm, and Martha flushed slightly, glad that the girl probably wouldn’t be able to notice. “Or  when I’m from… I don’t even know if…”

“You’re out of your time?” Martha asked.

“I don’t know.” She lingered over the words. “I was following these… alien lizards when they went into this bright - it wasn't light, it felt different than light, somehow. I went after them, completely ignoring protocol -- I didn’t even wait for back-up. And then it closed behind me and I couldn’t get back.”

“You really have no idea where you are,” Martha said, feeling a wave of sympathy wash over her. Without the Doctor, she’d be as lost as this woman was. “And you haven’t got any friends with you.”

“Haven’t needed any so far.” The woman’s body tightened into a defensive line. Then she paused, giving Martha an assessing look, her eyes looking darker, a deeper brown now than the greenish hazel they’d appeared a moment ago. That queer feeling of recognition tugged at Martha again - something about her eyes, something in the way she looked a little more deeply than Martha was comfortable with. “That’s not fair, is it? Not when you’re only trying to help.”

“And I can help,” Martha promised, taking a step toward her. “I didn’t get here following the lizards. I’m here on purpose. This friend of mine has a ship. We can take you home, I promise.”

“Yeah, but if humans are having space ships, then I’ve got to be out of my time.” She hadn’t moved away from Martha, but she hadn’t warmed up again, either. “And that won’t work out for me… unless you’re a Time Agent. Are you?”

“Not exactly, but something similar,” Martha said, noticing that the woman knew about Time Agents but was apparently from before they existed. She was very familiar with time travel, then, despite wanting to go back home to her own time. “We’re not official. We just lark about, trying to help where we can.”

“Sounds familiar.” The woman smiled widely. Martha’s breath caught in her throat and she shook her head slightly, because the Doctor had just that smile - huge and manic and not quite real. “All right, I’ll go with you… as soon as we’ve dealt with the lizards. They’re making things go sideways, if that makes sense. I don’t know what they are, but they made all of our instruments go mad. And a couple of our people just… froze in place when they went after them, but only for about twenty minutes at a time, so that part isn’t so bad. Still, they’re a nuisance at best and dangerous at worst, and I haven’t been lucky enough to end up with an ‘at best’ for eight years.”

“I wish I could help more. I do know that they’re some kind of transdimensional lizard-like thing,” Martha mused, for once wishing that the Doctor had kept on babbling on about their alien du jour. “The name is right on the tip of my tongue. My friends, they knew all about them, said that they weren’t dangerous, but that they disrupt the universe. Though that sounds dangerous enough to me.”

“You aren’t from the same place as your friends,” the woman said. When Martha looked over at her in surprise, she continued, “You talk about them like… like they’re expected to know more than you.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right about that.” Martha rubbed her hands together, not sure how she felt about this stranger seeing that so easily, when Martha hadn’t even noticed. “I’m used to being the smartest person in the room, but when the Doctor’s there-“

“Did you just say the Doctor?” The woman’s face paled, like she was going into shock. “The Doctor. Travels in a blue box that’s-“

“Bigger on the inside,” Martha finished with her. “You’ve met him?”

“Met him… I’ve… but he said that there weren’t… and I’d hoped, but we still hadn't managed to make anything to…”

After the confused rush of words, the woman fell silent, looking away from Martha. She seemed to be completely stunned; Martha could have knocked her over with a feather. And Martha couldn’t have even begun to catalogue everything that was flickering across her face - there was fear and pain and something that looked like wonder.

“Transdimensional lizards.” Her voice was tight, like she couldn’t believe her own words. “You said it. Transdimensional. They travel across dimensions. And I’ve travelled with them. I’m home.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Martha said, feeling completely lost. “You just said-”

“The Doctor’s here. Right in this building. After so long-”

“Who are you?” Martha asked. “You’re not planning on hurting him…” The woman shot her a fierce look and Martha stopped, started again, “Okay, you’re not planning on hurting him. But who are you? How d’you know the Doctor?”

“I travelled with him, too,” the woman whispered.

Martha stared at her for a moment, everything that the Doctor had and hadn’t told her falling into place. She didn’t have all the answers yet, but she had this one.

“You’re Rose.” And now Martha knew exactly where she’d glimpsed those eyes, staring over from the pages of John Smith’s journal, the memory of Rose lingering even when the Doctor couldn’t remember himself. She’d only seen the page for a second, and from a horrible angle, but she was right.

“Rose Tyler, yeah,” Rose said, confirming what Martha already knew. “I take it he’s mentioned me. That’s a step up for him.”

“Suppose so,” Martha said faintly, trying to reconcile this woman with the ‘Rose’ that she’d constructed from the half-dozen things that the Doctor and Jack had said about her. “He’s going to be happy to see you.”

Then Martha heard a familiar noise behind her and she spun around, seeing the knob on that door on the left turn.

“Martha, are you in here?” the Doctor asked, frowning down at his sonic screwdriver as he let the door fall shut behind him. “I’ve been getting this peculiar feedback-”

And then he looked up… right past Martha.

His mouth fell open, his words drying up. He shook his head slightly, as though afraid to believe his own eyes. There was a dawning light in his face that cut Martha to the quick - they’d become so close, the two of them, friends and comrades, but some part of Martha hadn’t rid herself of that niggling desire to have him look at her like she was a woman, not just a friend.

His lips parted, but no sound came out. He took a faltering step forward, and the sonic screwdriver fell out of his hand, clattering as it hit the worked-stone floor. Martha could hear Rose behind her, voice shaking out one word.

“Doctor?”

The Doctor sprang into motion, racing toward them, even as Martha felt Rose run past her the other way - they met about three metres in front of Martha, colliding in a hug that lifted Rose off the ground and almost knocked the Doctor over.

And now she could see the Doctor’s face; he was whispering to Rose, too quietly for Martha to hear any of it, and she was wrapped up in him, maybe whispering back, and the Doctor’s eyes were all crinkled up at the corners and he was smiling so wide and happy that her heart ached from it.

“Transdimensional lizards,” the Doctor said, as he pulled away from the hug without actually letting Rose go, his hands sliding down her arms to hold her close to him. There didn’t seem to be an inch of space between them. “A group of Olpanilicks just happened to wander from your dimension into mine, right when you were investigating them - that's too many coincidences, Rose.”

“You’re right,” Rose agreed - Martha took a couple of steps closer, not quite able to fight her curiosity. “But it doesn’t have to be bad. I saw… in the tunnel where I first encountered the Olpen-“

“Olpanilicks,” the Doctor said, lifting his hand to brush through Rose’s hair, his gaze tracing over her face.

“Olpanilicks,” Rose repeated and the Doctor’s smile dazzled Martha briefly. “In the tunnel where I first met them, there was writing on the wall. You can probably guess what it said.”

“Bad wolf,” the Doctor said, and the words meant nothing to Martha outside a fairytale. Maybe that was the sense that it made for these two, right now. “It’s here, too, Rose. It’s the name of this city - J’arunp ‘k Y’narl Riif. It means Town-Place of Dreadful Riif, which is the name of a wild canine-like creature that lived here hundreds of years ago. This is the City of Bad Wolf.”

“And you didn’t believe it could mean anything, any more than I did with Dårlig Ulv Stranden or the half-dozen other times that I saw it in… in Pete’s world, but now we know the truth,” Rose said. “It was telling us not to give up hope - that I could find my way home.”

“But… Jackie.” The Doctor sounded rather like Leo had when he got accepted into university - relief and fear all mixed up together. “She’s still there. Mickey, too. And there’s no way of making the Olpanilicks go to any specific dimension… well, I never thought there was, anyway, and I doubt there is, outside of the Vortex. You’re trapped here, Rose.”

“Trapped with you.” Rose’s voice was choked up, but more like she was overwhelmed than any kind of sad.

“Not so bad,” the Doctor said, only half a question, and he pulled Rose in for another hug, burying his face in her hair. Martha knew she should look away, that she was seeing something private, but…

She’d been attracted to the Doctor the very first time that she’d ever met him - she’d thought he was nuts, yeah, but also a ‘bit of alright’. Everything since that first moment had only cemented those two feelings - he was utterly mad, but so completely brilliant and gorgeous.

But she had never seen the Doctor look as beautiful as he did here, with this woman. Even when she had walked in on stupid, brave John Smith and Joan Redford, he hadn’t looked like this.

She’d gone to a few weddings in her life, but only one really stuck out in her memory - Kitty Millings, someone she’d briefly roomed with after university, had got married to her long-term sweetheart, Keith Braxton, about a year before Martha had met the Doctor. To be honest, Martha hadn’t ever liked Kitty much - she’d always thought that the girl was a bit shallow and flighty. Kitty hadn’t finished university herself and hadn’t cared the least bit.

She’d never liked Kitty much, but she remembered with crystal clarity that wedding and the look in Kitty’s eyes when she’d walked down the aisle toward Keith - as though every dream that she had ever had was coming true. Martha could still feel the sharp ache of longing that she had felt back then, wanting someone to look at her just that way.

And that was how the Doctor looked now - like he’d just been handed the greatest gift in the universe.

“Oh, my god.”

Martha glanced over to where the voice had come from and saw Jack walking towards the group. Also not looking at her. Hanging about near Rose Tyler was going to give her a complex, she could already be sure of that much.

The Doctor and Rose broke away from their hug, and Martha could see Rose’s face now, as brilliantly ecstatic as the Doctor’s.

“Jack?” Rose asked, and Martha saw the Doctor’s arm slide around the curve of Rose’s back, his face turning studied and careful, though still filled with that inner glow. “Oh, Jack, it’s so good to see you.”

“Right back atcha,” Jack said, somehow looking younger than he had only hours before, the shadows in his eyes not quite as deep. “So, the Doctor was wrong, then?”

Martha winced, but the Doctor was grinning again now.

“Completely wrong,” the Doctor enthused. “The best kind of wrong.”

“The very best,” Jack agreed, that softness still in his face. He opened his arms wide. “So, sweetheart, do I merit a hug?”

Rose laughed merrily and then launched herself at Jack, who caught her up in as tight a hug as the Doctor and Rose had shared.

“Look at her,” the Doctor said, his voice warm and tender. Martha turned toward him. He’d never considered it, she realised, looking at his face. She had never even been an option, not any more than Jack or Tallulah. They were mates and he wanted to share his happiness with her. Simple as that. It had always been as simple as that. “Only ten minutes ago, I thought I’d never see her face again, never see that smile, and now… she looks right at home. Like she never left.”

“Like Jack,” Martha said. “He slipped right back into place with you, too.”

Rose and Jack had broken their embrace but, like the Doctor, Jack didn’t seem willing to let her go just yet, his voice bright and cheerful, telling her about an adventure of some kind that he taken on - something light and fun, from the sound of it.

“Ah, but I knew where Jack was.” The Doctor was watching Rose like he was afraid she might disappear right in front of him; Martha remembered John Smith again, saying softly, she seems to vanish later on.

“That still bothers me,” Martha said. “Leaving him behind, just because he felt wrong.”

“If Jack forgave me, I don’t see why you shouldn’t,” the Doctor countered. “And I did go back for him, after all.”

“You didn’t even know he was there,” Martha said. “You were there for the Rift. You were surprised as anything that he was there. You ran away from him.”

“It still counts.” And then he walked away, towards Rose and Jack, without another word to her.

“He’s going to drive me mad,” Martha muttered, following.

“So, about those Olpanilicks,” the Doctor said cheerfully. Rose and Jack both gave him their full attention. “I think it’s time for me to send them along to brighter pastures. They’ve done what they came here for and we don’t need them any more.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jack said, and then he took one careful step toward the Doctor. Or was it away from Rose? He was looking at the Doctor, though. Martha bit her lip, trying to work out just what was going on. “Though I am still wondering how you’re making them leave. From what I’ve heard, they generally have to spend days in any given dimension to soak up enough power for a transfer.”

“I’m going to…” The Doctor paused, mid-reach into his pocket. “Hmm.”

Martha chuckled and he shot her a curious look. Then she pointed over towards the door where he came in; the sonic screwdriver still lying on the ground.

“Right,” the Doctor said, looking mildly put-out when Rose started giggling too. “Anyway, I plan on blowing up my sonic screwdriver.”

“You’re going to do what?” Rose asked, and then the confusion on her face cleared. “Oh. So that they get full on the energy and can go somewhere else.”

“You have been learning things in that universe of yours,” the Doctor teased with a rakish smile, tilting his face towards Rose’s. “But there’s more to it than that.”

“You’re going to rig it to send them to an apocalyptic universal cycle,” Jack explained, with the air of a man who knows that he’s got the right answer.

Martha glanced over at Rose, who wrinkled up her nose and shrugged. Well, at least it didn’t make any sense to her, either. Rose was getting more likeable by the minute.

“Well, if you must take all the fun out of guessing,” the Doctor said, bounding over to retrieve the sonic screwdriver. Martha tried to recall if she’d ever seen him bound before and was coming up with nothing.

“Oh, I must,” Jack teased, heading over to the door the piles of scales marked out.

The Doctor scowled a bit in Jack's general direction but no one was took it seriously. Everything felt lighter now, in this moment. The Doctor and Jack both seemed to be carrying less weight on their shoulders.

"I've gone ahead and created a bit of a reflective waveform shield around us so, Martha and Jack, you won't need those mirrors anymore," the Doctor said, and Martha saw Rose mouth the word 'mirror', eyes bright. The Doctor continued babbling on about whatever he'd done, but Martha tuned him out, focusing on Rose, who had turned away from the Doctor and was heading back in Martha's direction.

“I’m sorry for getting caught up there,” Rose said, grabbing her bag from the floor and then coming up alongside Martha. “We didn’t get properly introduced - did the Doctor call you Martha?”

“That’s right. I’m Martha Jones.”

“It’s good to meet you, Martha Jones,” Rose said, reaching over to give Martha her hand. “Anyone keeping company with the Doctor is someone worth knowing, so I’m sure we’ll get along just fine.”

“I hope so,” Martha said. “I have to admit, I didn’t have you pegged right.”

“No surprise there, not really.” Rose shrugged it off, like that didn’t matter, which didn’t make any sense to Martha. “The Doctor can talk your ear off when it comes to aliens and planets and things, but when it’s about what really matters, he’s rubbish at it. Always has been, judging from previous evidence.”

“Sounds like you know more than I do,” Martha said, but it was hard to hold it against her.

“Probably just know different things,” Rose offered with a touch of hesitation and Martha recognised this sort of conversation. She had been thinking that Rose would be above jealousy, completely certain of the Doctor’s feelings for her, but this was her feeling out the water and seeing just how close Martha was to him. “I’m sure he’s told you lots that I don’t have a clue about.”

She could use this, if she wanted to. The way the Doctor had talked about his home, she was sure that he hadn’t told anyone else. She could make Rose jealous, even if it was only for a moment.

“Mostly, he told me how much he missed you,” Martha said instead, but not feeling quite generous enough to smile at Rose, not just yet.

“Really?” Rose asked.

“Really,” Martha confirmed.

And that was that. Martha stamped down hard on that last ember of a crush on the Doctor and looked over at Rose, who was glowing with happiness, and knew she’d made the right choice.

“I’m so glad you ran into me,” Rose told her, as they trailed along behind the Doctor and Jack. “Just think, if you hadn’t shown up, I might have been in another room when the Doctor arrived. Could have missed each other by seconds. He’d have dealt with the problem and you lot could have all been gone by the time I heard the TARDIS leaving. You saved my life, Martha.”

For one wild moment, Martha wished with everything that she was that just that had happened, that they’d missed Rose and that it was just her with the Doctor and Jack still - and then, she looked forward and saw the Doctor, leaning over to say something to Jack, his face quiet and content. The brittleness that had always been there, the distance that she had assumed was just part of his nature… it was gone now, snow melting with the coming of spring.

“That’s what I’m here for,” Martha said, glancing over at Rose. “I’m a doctor, actually. A real one… or I will be, soon as I pass my exams.”

“That’s brilliant,” Rose enthused, just like the Doctor had done, so many times. Martha distinctly remembered Rose saying that she was human… or, no, she’d said that if humans had time ships, she was out of her time. That wasn’t quite the same thing. But she was human; Martha remembered the Doctor saying that, too, that Rose was 'so human'. “We could use one of those around - you can’t leave him alone for a minute before he gets into trouble.”

“True enough.” Martha shook her head, putting her questions away for another day. “I’ve had to save his life more times than I can count. He’s absolutely reckless.” That part of him had worried her as often as it delighted her.

“Yeah,” Rose agreed, her grin wide and true, the joy in her eyes infectious. “Wouldn’t have him any other way.”

“Neither would I,” Martha said, smiling back now. The Doctor was still the Doctor and it had all been worth it, she’d made that decision ages ago. And… she'd already decided to leave, back when the Doctor had coaxed Jack into 'one last trip' with him, but it was good to know that when she left, the Doctor wouldn't be alone.

And she and Rose Tyler were going to be very good friends.

Part Three