Now and Then and Never (Doctor Who, Martha/Sarah Jane, for marginalia)
Title: Now and Then and Never
Author: cdybedahl
Recipient: marginalia
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Martha Jones/Sarah Jane Smith
Rating: R
Word count: 3200
Summary: Martha met Sarah Jane three times.
Beta-read by ffutures and slamaina. Remaining errors are entirely because I ignored their advice.
Now and Then and Never
Written by Calle Dybedahl
1969
When first they meet, Sarah Jane is eighteen. It's 1969, two years past the Summer of Love, five years before Sarah Jane meets the Doctor, fifteen years before Martha Jones is born, and Martha is stuck in time. She's stuck in sexism and racism and a world that is stranger to her than she would ever have guessed. The past is a foreign country, they say. She thinks they're right.
She would've preferred Spain.
It's Friday night, and after closing up the shop Martha just can't face going back to the drab flat and the chronically moping Doctor. She digs out a scrap of paper with a phone number on it, a phone number a hopeful young man buying flowers for his mom gave her. Maybe it's his lucky night, she thinks as she dials the number.
It's not, as it turns out. By the time Martha gets to the party he invites her to, he's already too stoned and drunk to stand unaided. He doesn't even recognize her, calling her Lisa. She's more relieved than disappointed. She drifts through the party, bottle of wine in hand and air heavy with pot and incense. It's a counterculture party, held in a basement flat looking like the mutant child of the Arabian Nights and a thrift shop. The people Martha think of as hippies, although she knows that they see themselves as belonging to a multitude of different subcultures, all with different names. Martha can't always see the distinction, but she doesn't argue. It's one of the few places where someone with her skin colour can mix with people of different hue, and if she's drunk enough it feels not much worse than home.
In a room at the back five young women are beating out a furious, complicated rhythm on djembe drums. Martha stands watching. Some people are dancing and she's tempted to join in. The sound of the drums goes right through her, lodges in her bones, pulls her to move. Something keeps her still anyway, some sense of propriety and decorum. She leans against the wall and drinks deep of the wine.
"Do you like them?" someone asks, shouting the question into Martha's ear from a distance of maybe a hand span.
"What?" Martha shouts back. The someone is a young woman, brown-haired and cute. She's leaning against the wall next to Martha, turned towards her and smiling.
"The drummers," she shouts. "Do you like them?"
Martha nods.
"Wanna dance?" the girl asks. "They don't like it when you just listen."
Martha can easily hear the implied "with me" in the girl's question and suddenly she realises that all the people dancing to the drums are women.
"They're from a women's commune in Croydon," the girl shouts. "I dated the blonde in the leather vest for a while."
Even half-drunk half-stoned Martha gets what the girl is really asking. She feels flattered. Even so, her first reaction is to politely turn the girl down. But before the words can leave her mouth, it dawns on her that she has absolutely no reason to. The girl is certainly attractive, and it's not like Martha has anyone to stay faithful to. The whole free-love thing is alive and well. HIV hasn't reared its ugly head yet. A warm and friendly body to share her bed would go a long way toward improving her mood.
"What's your name?" Martha shouts.
The girl's smile widens.
"Sarah Jane," she shouts back. "Sarah Jane Smith."
Martha turns and leans forward to put her mouth really close to Sarah Jane's ear.
"Hello Sarah Jane Smith," she says. "I'm Martha Jones. Let's dance."
"Wonderful," Sarah Jane says. "There's just one thing."
Martha has already taken the first step out onto the improvised dance floor. She stops.
"What?"
"I'm not wearing a bra," Sarah Jane says. "Bouncing around to the drums would chafe my nipples something awful. So I'm going to take my shirt off."
"I hope you don't mind if I enjoy the view," Martha says, her mouth getting a bit ahead of her ethanol-dulled brain.
"Not in the least," Sarah Jane says. "But I don't want to be the only one out there with my top off."
Martha smiles and starts unbuttoning her blouse.
The next morning, Martha tries to sneak out of Sarah Jane's room in the women's commune in Croydon without waking Sarah Jane, but fails.
"Hey," Sarah Jane says from the bed, blinking sleep out of her eyes.
"Hey," Martha says, unable to think of something better. She's buttoning her jeans and wishing she'd been able to find her underwear.
"It was nice," Sarah Jane says.
"Yes," Martha says, final button slipping into place. "It was."
"Will I see you again?"
Martha thinks for a moment. A year ago, she'd have said no. But that year is decades into the future.
"You never know, Sarah Jane," she says. "You never know."
The Un-Year
They next meet in the year that never was. Martha is trying to get out of England in the chaos following the Toclafane decimation of the human species. She's had a hint of some people who can help her, and she's waiting in a pub in Ealing for them to show up. Outside, everything is different. The Apocalypse has come, and the world is no longer the same. From the look of things, the pub might just as well have been in Cardiff.
There's not even beer. The last keg to be delivered went off a week ago. Martha is drinking wine that the pub's owner found at the back of the cellar. She's drinking straight from the bottle. It feels more appropriate than using a glass, under the circumstances.
"Well," a voice says next to her. "I wish I could say I was surprised, but frankly I'm not."
Martha looks up, and for a moment suffers from mental double vision. The woman standing next to her mixes with Martha's memory of her four decades back, and confusion results.
"Sarah Jane Smith," Martha says. "I guess it's you I'm waiting for?"
Behind Sarah Jane a young girl is looking suspiciously at the two of them. A black boy is standing next to her, looking every bit as suspicious.
"So you guys know each other?" the girl says.
Sarah Jane sits down across the table from Martha.
"Know might be putting it strongly," Sarah Jane says. "We met at a party in 1969."
"And you recognize her forty years later?" the boy says. "Must've been some party!"
"She's an alien, isn't she?" the girl says. "Way older than she looks. Or she's a time traveller."
"Neither," Martha says. "But I got a ride with a time traveller. And I'm Martha, by the way."
The girl holds out her hand. "I'm Maria," she says. "Pleased to meet you."
"Likewise," she says. The boy introduces himself as Clyde, and says that Luke couldn't come due to hiding them all from the Toclafane with the help of Mr. Smith. Hiding from the Toclafane is good, so Martha doesn't mind that she has no idea what the boy is talking about.
"Maria, Clyde, would you go outside and keep an eye on things," Sarah Jane says. "I need to talk details with Martha and it's better if you don't hear them."
"Sure," Maria says. "We'll let you know if anything odd comes close."
"Anything odder than usual, that is," Clyde adds.
They leave, chattering between themselves. Martha is left alone with Sarah Jane.
"It's amazing," Sarah Jane says. "You look exactly the same as I remember."
"It's not even been two years, for me," Martha says. "I'm surprised you remember me at all."
"One of the most gorgeous women I ever slept with?" Sarah Jane says. "Of course I remember you!"
"Flatterer," Martha says. "I'm not that..."
Sarah Jane interrupts Martha by leaning across the table, placing her hands on each side of Martha's head and giving her a long, sweet kiss.
"I looked for you, you know," Sarah Jane says afterwards, while Martha is still stunned by how good it felt. "I kept going to those parties, and asked around if anyone knew anything about you, but there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was as if you had never existed before that party, and just vanished afterwards."
"Well, that was pretty much what I did," Martha says.
"It got me into investigating the unusual, you know. Which led me to meet the Doctor. So it's all your fault, really."
"Should I apologise?"
"No," Sarah Jane says. "I should thank you, from the bottom of my heart. You'll be staying at my place tonight, by the way. Tomorrow we'll get you on a lorry that'll take you to a ship that'll take you to Lisbon. But tonight, you'll be under my roof. And I know I'm nowhere near as pretty as the girl you made love to back in 1969, but she's still there inside me. And she's never stopped wanting you."
Martha felt herself blush.
"Sarah Jane Smith?" she says.
"Yes?" Sarah Jane asks.
"That is without question the most beautiful come-on I've ever received."
"But did it work?"
Martha can't help laughing.
"Yes," she says. "It did. Let's go to your house, and you can thank me as much as you want."
"Oh, I can't do that," Sarah Jane says.
Martha looks at her, confused.
"You need to be on that lorry tomorrow," Sarah Jane says.
The next morning Martha wakes up in a proper English house. The room is chilly, but she's being kept warm by a thick duvet and a Sarah Jane snuggled up to her. Martha stays as still as she can, trying to avoid waking Sarah Jane.
"You're awake too, aren't you?"
Martha can't help smiling.
"Yes," she says. "I am."
She runs her hand down Sarah Jane's back, now that she knows the other woman is awake. In return, she gets a hand gently cupping her breast.
Martha sighs.
"There's no time," she says.
"I know," Sarah Jane says. She doesn't remove her hand.
Martha closes her eyes. She's enjoyed the night, very much. Her impromptu lover suddenly gaining four decades on her had felt strange at first, but that quickly passed. The sparkling mind behind those gray eyes was still there, enriched by years of experience. Not that she'd seen much of it back in the sixties, but enough to keep her interested and lodge Sarah Jane solidly in her memory.
"I'll be back," Martha says. "I'll return to you. I promise."
Sarah Jane smiles.
"Don't make promises you can't live up to," she says.
Martha looks into her eyes.
"I promise," she says. "Ok?"
"Ok," Sarah Jane says after a short pause. "But if you take another 40 years, you may end up disappointed."
As the lorry starts moving away from 13 Bannerman Road, Martha lifts a corner of the tarp she's hiding under and looks back. She can see Sarah Jane discreetly looking out a window. In her mind, Martha reaffirms her promise to return. She fixes the image of the house in her mind, picturing herself walking up to its front door some time in the future, in a sunny world free from the Master. Later, as she travels around the world, the image of Sarah Jane's house remains one of her stable points. Something to ground her, an anchor for hope. Something to aim for.
In the end, Jack Harkness destroys the Paradox Machine and Martha's entire second meeting with Sarah Jane suddenly has never happened at all.
Medusa Cascade
Martha is back on the TARDIS. It's towing the entire Earth back from the Medusa Cascade to where it should be. The Daleks have been prevented from destroying all of reality. Martha has been prevented from triggering the Osterhagen system and destroying the Earth. Thinking about how close she came to blowing up the planet makes her sick. Sure, at the moment she thought it was the best thing to do.
But still.
She's not alone in the TARDIS, of course. Far from it. She's never seen so many people in it before. The Doctor is there, of course. Twice. She didn't quite catch the explanation for that, but it seems to have something to do with his new companion Donna, who is apparently also a Time Lord. Sort of.
Jack Harkness is there, smiling and flirting with everyone as usual. The fabled Rose is also there, with, apparently, her mother and an ex-boyfriend. Martha assumes there's something of a story there. The mom is trying to flirt with the Doctor, and the ex-boyfriend is responding quite enthusiastically to Jack's flirting. Rose herself is all over the Doctors, too distracted to talk to anyone else. Donna the temp Time Lord from Chiswick is with them too, talking to one of the Doctors at a million miles per hour.
And across the console and all the frantic activity is Sarah Jane Smith. She's hanging back, not pushing herself on any of the others. Just standing there, smiling her secretive little smile and looking pretty happy. As Martha is looking at her, their eyes meet. They look into each other's eyes for what seems to Martha to be a heartbeat and an eternity. She knows that Sarah Jane will, at best, remember her from the party back in 1969. No more. No passionate night in Ealing. No reluctant leave-taking, no long hard year of yearning.
After reality reset itself, Martha never went back to Bannerman Road. She just couldn't think of a way to approach Sarah Jane that would make sense. She kept thinking and thinking and trying to figure out words, but she never did and eventually months had passed and she found herself working for UNIT in New York.
She isn't sure things would've worked out anyway. Their brief time together was under the shadow of disaster, when any close contact human to human was worth so very much more. In a non-ravaged world, all the differences between them would start to matter. Age. Backgrounds, social and racial. Education. Life experience. Yes, they've both travelled with the Doctor, and that counts for much, but maybe not enough. Martha can just imagine telling her mother. "Hi, mom. That fiancÈ I've been talking about and who had a billion good excuses never to see you? Total fabrication. This here journalist from Ealing is my real partner. She's a woman and a bit older than you, but that's no problem, right?"
Oh yeah, that'd go over well.
She isn't quite sure of her own feelings either. After all, she's only met this woman twice. Sure, she ended up spending the night with her both times, and they were very pleasant nights indeed, but still. That doesn't mean they'd like each other on a day-to-day basis. Even given that they both are in the small group of people who know about the Doctor and aliens and stuff.
Walk away, she tries to tell herself. Give it up. Let go. Resist the temptation to walk over to her and introduce yourself. She closes her eyes and shakes her head, trying to clear it, or at least to be confused about something else.
When she opens them again, Sarah Jane is standing right in front of her.
"Um, hi," Martha says.
She's not sure what else to say.
"I know you were the one who said you'd return to me," Sarah Jane says. "But I hope it's all right if I come to you instead. I got tired of just waiting while you were so close."
Martha's brain freezes up. She hears the words, but they make no sense. She never promised to return back in 1969. She did during the year that never was, but Sarah Jane wasn't on the Valiant when the year was undone, so she can't remember that.
Sarah Jane looks at her.
"You do remember me, don't you?" Sarah Jane says.
"Yes!" Martha says. "Of course I do. But how do you remember me? Or, well, from later than 1969?"
Sarah Jane puts her hand on Martha's leg, sending a shiver of pleasure up Martha's body.
"I keep track of and fight aliens," Sarah Jane says. "I have many strange things in my attic. Some of them detect and protect against manipulation of time. I don't really know how or which one, but one of them must have been enough to let me, Luke, Maria and Clyde remember that year. Although I sometimes wish the children hadn't. It was a rough year for them."
Martha feels a big smile grow onto her face. Possibly a grin, even.
"So you remember," she says.
"Well, I remember many things," Sarah Jane says. "Are you thinking of anything in particular?"
"Oh, I don't know," Martha says. "How about you just about tearing my pants off after a party in 1969?"
Sarah Jane nods.
"I remember that."
"Me doing the same to you about forty years later?"
"Mm, yes."
"Me grabbing you and kissing you really hard?"
Sarah Jane turns to her and smiles.
"I may need reminding of that one," she says.
"I'm sure that can be arranged," Martha says.
"Arranged?" Sarah Jane says, obviously pretending to be outraged. "Do you really find me that resistible?"
"There are quite a few people around here," Martha says. She looks around, at the Doctor, the Doctor again, Rose, Mickey, Jack, Donna, Jackie. It seems that Donna has just spotted the two of them off to the side and brought Rose's attention to them.
"So lets give them a show," Sarah Jane says.
Martha raises an eyebrow.
"With Jack around, that'll take more than a kiss," she says.
Sarah Jane dips her eyes to look at Martha's chest.
"Are you very fond of that blouse?" she asks.
Martha shakes her head. "Are you of yours?"
Sarah Jane shakes her head too.
As if they've rehearsed it, they tear each other's blouses open. They kiss, deep and hard, and hands roam over revealed skin.
"Well, someone's having fun!" Martha hears Donna say.
"Good on them!" she hears Jack add.
"Want to have some fun too?"
Mickey's voice, she's pretty sure. At least it's male and neither the Doctor nor Jack.
"Sure do," Jack says. Martha hears steps going off into the distance as she slides her hand under Sarah Jane's bra cup.
"Wait, no, none of that on the TARDIS!" she hears the Doctor protest.
"What?" Rose says. "Time Lords don't have sex?"
"This is neither the time nor the place! Particularly not the place!"
"I could show you a thing or two, Rose," an almost identical voice says. Sounds of kissing ensue.
Sarah Jane moves to straddle Martha's legs. They're still kissing as if their lives depended on it. Martha has pushed up Sarah Jane's bra for easier access, and Sarah Jane has done the same to her. Their stiff nipples touch.
"Hey, I'm not going to be left out of the action!" Donna says. "Come here, you!"
Jackie yelps in surprise.
"Stop this, all of you!" the Doctor says. "Right now!"
"Oh bother," he adds when absolutely nobody does.
Maybe more gets said. Martha doesn't care. Sarah Jane's hand is down her pants, and she has better things to concentrate on. She smiles like crazy through the kisses.
This will be a TARDIS ride to remember for a long, long time, Martha thinks.
Author: cdybedahl
Recipient: marginalia
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Martha Jones/Sarah Jane Smith
Rating: R
Word count: 3200
Summary: Martha met Sarah Jane three times.
Beta-read by ffutures and slamaina. Remaining errors are entirely because I ignored their advice.
Now and Then and Never
Written by Calle Dybedahl
1969
When first they meet, Sarah Jane is eighteen. It's 1969, two years past the Summer of Love, five years before Sarah Jane meets the Doctor, fifteen years before Martha Jones is born, and Martha is stuck in time. She's stuck in sexism and racism and a world that is stranger to her than she would ever have guessed. The past is a foreign country, they say. She thinks they're right.
She would've preferred Spain.
It's Friday night, and after closing up the shop Martha just can't face going back to the drab flat and the chronically moping Doctor. She digs out a scrap of paper with a phone number on it, a phone number a hopeful young man buying flowers for his mom gave her. Maybe it's his lucky night, she thinks as she dials the number.
It's not, as it turns out. By the time Martha gets to the party he invites her to, he's already too stoned and drunk to stand unaided. He doesn't even recognize her, calling her Lisa. She's more relieved than disappointed. She drifts through the party, bottle of wine in hand and air heavy with pot and incense. It's a counterculture party, held in a basement flat looking like the mutant child of the Arabian Nights and a thrift shop. The people Martha think of as hippies, although she knows that they see themselves as belonging to a multitude of different subcultures, all with different names. Martha can't always see the distinction, but she doesn't argue. It's one of the few places where someone with her skin colour can mix with people of different hue, and if she's drunk enough it feels not much worse than home.
In a room at the back five young women are beating out a furious, complicated rhythm on djembe drums. Martha stands watching. Some people are dancing and she's tempted to join in. The sound of the drums goes right through her, lodges in her bones, pulls her to move. Something keeps her still anyway, some sense of propriety and decorum. She leans against the wall and drinks deep of the wine.
"Do you like them?" someone asks, shouting the question into Martha's ear from a distance of maybe a hand span.
"What?" Martha shouts back. The someone is a young woman, brown-haired and cute. She's leaning against the wall next to Martha, turned towards her and smiling.
"The drummers," she shouts. "Do you like them?"
Martha nods.
"Wanna dance?" the girl asks. "They don't like it when you just listen."
Martha can easily hear the implied "with me" in the girl's question and suddenly she realises that all the people dancing to the drums are women.
"They're from a women's commune in Croydon," the girl shouts. "I dated the blonde in the leather vest for a while."
Even half-drunk half-stoned Martha gets what the girl is really asking. She feels flattered. Even so, her first reaction is to politely turn the girl down. But before the words can leave her mouth, it dawns on her that she has absolutely no reason to. The girl is certainly attractive, and it's not like Martha has anyone to stay faithful to. The whole free-love thing is alive and well. HIV hasn't reared its ugly head yet. A warm and friendly body to share her bed would go a long way toward improving her mood.
"What's your name?" Martha shouts.
The girl's smile widens.
"Sarah Jane," she shouts back. "Sarah Jane Smith."
Martha turns and leans forward to put her mouth really close to Sarah Jane's ear.
"Hello Sarah Jane Smith," she says. "I'm Martha Jones. Let's dance."
"Wonderful," Sarah Jane says. "There's just one thing."
Martha has already taken the first step out onto the improvised dance floor. She stops.
"What?"
"I'm not wearing a bra," Sarah Jane says. "Bouncing around to the drums would chafe my nipples something awful. So I'm going to take my shirt off."
"I hope you don't mind if I enjoy the view," Martha says, her mouth getting a bit ahead of her ethanol-dulled brain.
"Not in the least," Sarah Jane says. "But I don't want to be the only one out there with my top off."
Martha smiles and starts unbuttoning her blouse.
The next morning, Martha tries to sneak out of Sarah Jane's room in the women's commune in Croydon without waking Sarah Jane, but fails.
"Hey," Sarah Jane says from the bed, blinking sleep out of her eyes.
"Hey," Martha says, unable to think of something better. She's buttoning her jeans and wishing she'd been able to find her underwear.
"It was nice," Sarah Jane says.
"Yes," Martha says, final button slipping into place. "It was."
"Will I see you again?"
Martha thinks for a moment. A year ago, she'd have said no. But that year is decades into the future.
"You never know, Sarah Jane," she says. "You never know."
The Un-Year
They next meet in the year that never was. Martha is trying to get out of England in the chaos following the Toclafane decimation of the human species. She's had a hint of some people who can help her, and she's waiting in a pub in Ealing for them to show up. Outside, everything is different. The Apocalypse has come, and the world is no longer the same. From the look of things, the pub might just as well have been in Cardiff.
There's not even beer. The last keg to be delivered went off a week ago. Martha is drinking wine that the pub's owner found at the back of the cellar. She's drinking straight from the bottle. It feels more appropriate than using a glass, under the circumstances.
"Well," a voice says next to her. "I wish I could say I was surprised, but frankly I'm not."
Martha looks up, and for a moment suffers from mental double vision. The woman standing next to her mixes with Martha's memory of her four decades back, and confusion results.
"Sarah Jane Smith," Martha says. "I guess it's you I'm waiting for?"
Behind Sarah Jane a young girl is looking suspiciously at the two of them. A black boy is standing next to her, looking every bit as suspicious.
"So you guys know each other?" the girl says.
Sarah Jane sits down across the table from Martha.
"Know might be putting it strongly," Sarah Jane says. "We met at a party in 1969."
"And you recognize her forty years later?" the boy says. "Must've been some party!"
"She's an alien, isn't she?" the girl says. "Way older than she looks. Or she's a time traveller."
"Neither," Martha says. "But I got a ride with a time traveller. And I'm Martha, by the way."
The girl holds out her hand. "I'm Maria," she says. "Pleased to meet you."
"Likewise," she says. The boy introduces himself as Clyde, and says that Luke couldn't come due to hiding them all from the Toclafane with the help of Mr. Smith. Hiding from the Toclafane is good, so Martha doesn't mind that she has no idea what the boy is talking about.
"Maria, Clyde, would you go outside and keep an eye on things," Sarah Jane says. "I need to talk details with Martha and it's better if you don't hear them."
"Sure," Maria says. "We'll let you know if anything odd comes close."
"Anything odder than usual, that is," Clyde adds.
They leave, chattering between themselves. Martha is left alone with Sarah Jane.
"It's amazing," Sarah Jane says. "You look exactly the same as I remember."
"It's not even been two years, for me," Martha says. "I'm surprised you remember me at all."
"One of the most gorgeous women I ever slept with?" Sarah Jane says. "Of course I remember you!"
"Flatterer," Martha says. "I'm not that..."
Sarah Jane interrupts Martha by leaning across the table, placing her hands on each side of Martha's head and giving her a long, sweet kiss.
"I looked for you, you know," Sarah Jane says afterwards, while Martha is still stunned by how good it felt. "I kept going to those parties, and asked around if anyone knew anything about you, but there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was as if you had never existed before that party, and just vanished afterwards."
"Well, that was pretty much what I did," Martha says.
"It got me into investigating the unusual, you know. Which led me to meet the Doctor. So it's all your fault, really."
"Should I apologise?"
"No," Sarah Jane says. "I should thank you, from the bottom of my heart. You'll be staying at my place tonight, by the way. Tomorrow we'll get you on a lorry that'll take you to a ship that'll take you to Lisbon. But tonight, you'll be under my roof. And I know I'm nowhere near as pretty as the girl you made love to back in 1969, but she's still there inside me. And she's never stopped wanting you."
Martha felt herself blush.
"Sarah Jane Smith?" she says.
"Yes?" Sarah Jane asks.
"That is without question the most beautiful come-on I've ever received."
"But did it work?"
Martha can't help laughing.
"Yes," she says. "It did. Let's go to your house, and you can thank me as much as you want."
"Oh, I can't do that," Sarah Jane says.
Martha looks at her, confused.
"You need to be on that lorry tomorrow," Sarah Jane says.
The next morning Martha wakes up in a proper English house. The room is chilly, but she's being kept warm by a thick duvet and a Sarah Jane snuggled up to her. Martha stays as still as she can, trying to avoid waking Sarah Jane.
"You're awake too, aren't you?"
Martha can't help smiling.
"Yes," she says. "I am."
She runs her hand down Sarah Jane's back, now that she knows the other woman is awake. In return, she gets a hand gently cupping her breast.
Martha sighs.
"There's no time," she says.
"I know," Sarah Jane says. She doesn't remove her hand.
Martha closes her eyes. She's enjoyed the night, very much. Her impromptu lover suddenly gaining four decades on her had felt strange at first, but that quickly passed. The sparkling mind behind those gray eyes was still there, enriched by years of experience. Not that she'd seen much of it back in the sixties, but enough to keep her interested and lodge Sarah Jane solidly in her memory.
"I'll be back," Martha says. "I'll return to you. I promise."
Sarah Jane smiles.
"Don't make promises you can't live up to," she says.
Martha looks into her eyes.
"I promise," she says. "Ok?"
"Ok," Sarah Jane says after a short pause. "But if you take another 40 years, you may end up disappointed."
As the lorry starts moving away from 13 Bannerman Road, Martha lifts a corner of the tarp she's hiding under and looks back. She can see Sarah Jane discreetly looking out a window. In her mind, Martha reaffirms her promise to return. She fixes the image of the house in her mind, picturing herself walking up to its front door some time in the future, in a sunny world free from the Master. Later, as she travels around the world, the image of Sarah Jane's house remains one of her stable points. Something to ground her, an anchor for hope. Something to aim for.
In the end, Jack Harkness destroys the Paradox Machine and Martha's entire second meeting with Sarah Jane suddenly has never happened at all.
Medusa Cascade
Martha is back on the TARDIS. It's towing the entire Earth back from the Medusa Cascade to where it should be. The Daleks have been prevented from destroying all of reality. Martha has been prevented from triggering the Osterhagen system and destroying the Earth. Thinking about how close she came to blowing up the planet makes her sick. Sure, at the moment she thought it was the best thing to do.
But still.
She's not alone in the TARDIS, of course. Far from it. She's never seen so many people in it before. The Doctor is there, of course. Twice. She didn't quite catch the explanation for that, but it seems to have something to do with his new companion Donna, who is apparently also a Time Lord. Sort of.
Jack Harkness is there, smiling and flirting with everyone as usual. The fabled Rose is also there, with, apparently, her mother and an ex-boyfriend. Martha assumes there's something of a story there. The mom is trying to flirt with the Doctor, and the ex-boyfriend is responding quite enthusiastically to Jack's flirting. Rose herself is all over the Doctors, too distracted to talk to anyone else. Donna the temp Time Lord from Chiswick is with them too, talking to one of the Doctors at a million miles per hour.
And across the console and all the frantic activity is Sarah Jane Smith. She's hanging back, not pushing herself on any of the others. Just standing there, smiling her secretive little smile and looking pretty happy. As Martha is looking at her, their eyes meet. They look into each other's eyes for what seems to Martha to be a heartbeat and an eternity. She knows that Sarah Jane will, at best, remember her from the party back in 1969. No more. No passionate night in Ealing. No reluctant leave-taking, no long hard year of yearning.
After reality reset itself, Martha never went back to Bannerman Road. She just couldn't think of a way to approach Sarah Jane that would make sense. She kept thinking and thinking and trying to figure out words, but she never did and eventually months had passed and she found herself working for UNIT in New York.
She isn't sure things would've worked out anyway. Their brief time together was under the shadow of disaster, when any close contact human to human was worth so very much more. In a non-ravaged world, all the differences between them would start to matter. Age. Backgrounds, social and racial. Education. Life experience. Yes, they've both travelled with the Doctor, and that counts for much, but maybe not enough. Martha can just imagine telling her mother. "Hi, mom. That fiancÈ I've been talking about and who had a billion good excuses never to see you? Total fabrication. This here journalist from Ealing is my real partner. She's a woman and a bit older than you, but that's no problem, right?"
Oh yeah, that'd go over well.
She isn't quite sure of her own feelings either. After all, she's only met this woman twice. Sure, she ended up spending the night with her both times, and they were very pleasant nights indeed, but still. That doesn't mean they'd like each other on a day-to-day basis. Even given that they both are in the small group of people who know about the Doctor and aliens and stuff.
Walk away, she tries to tell herself. Give it up. Let go. Resist the temptation to walk over to her and introduce yourself. She closes her eyes and shakes her head, trying to clear it, or at least to be confused about something else.
When she opens them again, Sarah Jane is standing right in front of her.
"Um, hi," Martha says.
She's not sure what else to say.
"I know you were the one who said you'd return to me," Sarah Jane says. "But I hope it's all right if I come to you instead. I got tired of just waiting while you were so close."
Martha's brain freezes up. She hears the words, but they make no sense. She never promised to return back in 1969. She did during the year that never was, but Sarah Jane wasn't on the Valiant when the year was undone, so she can't remember that.
Sarah Jane looks at her.
"You do remember me, don't you?" Sarah Jane says.
"Yes!" Martha says. "Of course I do. But how do you remember me? Or, well, from later than 1969?"
Sarah Jane puts her hand on Martha's leg, sending a shiver of pleasure up Martha's body.
"I keep track of and fight aliens," Sarah Jane says. "I have many strange things in my attic. Some of them detect and protect against manipulation of time. I don't really know how or which one, but one of them must have been enough to let me, Luke, Maria and Clyde remember that year. Although I sometimes wish the children hadn't. It was a rough year for them."
Martha feels a big smile grow onto her face. Possibly a grin, even.
"So you remember," she says.
"Well, I remember many things," Sarah Jane says. "Are you thinking of anything in particular?"
"Oh, I don't know," Martha says. "How about you just about tearing my pants off after a party in 1969?"
Sarah Jane nods.
"I remember that."
"Me doing the same to you about forty years later?"
"Mm, yes."
"Me grabbing you and kissing you really hard?"
Sarah Jane turns to her and smiles.
"I may need reminding of that one," she says.
"I'm sure that can be arranged," Martha says.
"Arranged?" Sarah Jane says, obviously pretending to be outraged. "Do you really find me that resistible?"
"There are quite a few people around here," Martha says. She looks around, at the Doctor, the Doctor again, Rose, Mickey, Jack, Donna, Jackie. It seems that Donna has just spotted the two of them off to the side and brought Rose's attention to them.
"So lets give them a show," Sarah Jane says.
Martha raises an eyebrow.
"With Jack around, that'll take more than a kiss," she says.
Sarah Jane dips her eyes to look at Martha's chest.
"Are you very fond of that blouse?" she asks.
Martha shakes her head. "Are you of yours?"
Sarah Jane shakes her head too.
As if they've rehearsed it, they tear each other's blouses open. They kiss, deep and hard, and hands roam over revealed skin.
"Well, someone's having fun!" Martha hears Donna say.
"Good on them!" she hears Jack add.
"Want to have some fun too?"
Mickey's voice, she's pretty sure. At least it's male and neither the Doctor nor Jack.
"Sure do," Jack says. Martha hears steps going off into the distance as she slides her hand under Sarah Jane's bra cup.
"Wait, no, none of that on the TARDIS!" she hears the Doctor protest.
"What?" Rose says. "Time Lords don't have sex?"
"This is neither the time nor the place! Particularly not the place!"
"I could show you a thing or two, Rose," an almost identical voice says. Sounds of kissing ensue.
Sarah Jane moves to straddle Martha's legs. They're still kissing as if their lives depended on it. Martha has pushed up Sarah Jane's bra for easier access, and Sarah Jane has done the same to her. Their stiff nipples touch.
"Hey, I'm not going to be left out of the action!" Donna says. "Come here, you!"
Jackie yelps in surprise.
"Stop this, all of you!" the Doctor says. "Right now!"
"Oh bother," he adds when absolutely nobody does.
Maybe more gets said. Martha doesn't care. Sarah Jane's hand is down her pants, and she has better things to concentrate on. She smiles like crazy through the kisses.
This will be a TARDIS ride to remember for a long, long time, Martha thinks.