Feb. 25th, 2008 09:30 pm
Chapter 1: In Victory
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clocketpatch"Am I alright? Of course I'm all right! I am the Doctor; I'm always alright!"
Jack and Martha exchange a look. The "always alright" Doctor sways on his feet, clutching at the console. Whatever good the Archangel network did for him two hours ago it is wearing off; his wrinkles are returning, his breathing is becoming progressively laboured, and his skin has gone grey and rashy.
"Will you at least sit down for a minute," says Jack, "let Martha examine you?"
"Why? There's nothing wrong with me."
The Doctor skilfully backs his way around the console before Jack can grab him, and force him to sit down. It has been this way for over an hour now, with the Doctor becoming progressively more elusive about his visibly deteriorating health.
Following the Master's death, the Doctor clung to the corpse of his late enemy (friend?) for close to thirty minutes before Jack finally pried him away. The Doctor started punching at him in response (his eyes closed, his fists lashing out blindly, desperately) before grabbing the corpse and dragging it back to the TARDIS. Jack and Martha followed, and things have been falling down a very steep and bumpy hill ever since.
"Doctor, please," Martha says, exasperated. She's just spent a year going through hell and all she wants is to spend some quiet time catching up with her family. She wants to collapse and have a hot bath, a change of clothes, and some chocolate, and then to resume a normal life free from war zones, aliens, and lice. She doesn't think that is very much to ask. She's just saved the world after all –
But so has the Doctor, and as a doctor Martha knows that he needs help; she just hopes she can give it to him. She was trained to deal with uncooperative patients in med. school, but the majority of those lessons (all) had assumed human patients in a hospital setting, not surprisingly fast, mentally and physically unstable aliens with coral struts to dodge and hide behind.
"Do you want to go on a trip Rose?" the Doctor asks.
"I'm not Rose," Martha says for what feels like the hundredth time, "I'm Martha, and you need help. You're disassociating and –"
"Doctor, listen to her," says Jack, making yet another unsuccessful swing to catch the Doctor's arm.
"Let's go to Woman Wept!" says the Doctor, hammering on the controls, and ignored the growing desperation on his companion's faces. The look on his own face shows that he is currently reliving a different reality, and he is happy there. "Have you ever been Rose? You'll like it. A whole ocean frozen in the middle of a storm. "
"I'd like it if you sat down," says Martha, "Just for a minute." He might be happy, but he isn't healthy, and it is a false light he's chasing: a will-o-the-wisp.
The Doctor pauses for a moment as if considering. Then he puts on a childish pout.
"Nope! There's so much to see, and no time to waste. Cities made of song, and rivers that run backwards, and there's never any time for it you know, which is funny, because I'm Time Lord, so you'd think I'd have plenty, but nope! But I can't sleep, mustn't stop, because sleep is for tortoises, and I'm a blue whale, or was that a coyote?"
"Doctor!!" Martha and Jack shout together.
He pays them no heed. Instead he skips carefully over the Master's corpse (ignored since he brought it in), and continues fiddling with the TARDIS controls. There is a manic light in his eyes; a tremor that is forcing him to go on like this when, physically, he appears to be on the brink of collapse. Both Martha and Jack are highly relieved by the fact that the TARDIS is – apparently – in a non-functioning state after all the violations the Master inflicted on her. The last thing either of them wants is an unplanned trip in the badly damaged ship with the badly damaged Doctor in tow.
"What if I give you a present?" Martha asks, assuming a different tact.
The Doctor looks up, childish intrigue stamped across his face along with a healthy dose of suspicion. It breaks Martha's heart. Even with the wrinkles; he looks so young.
"What kind of present?" he asks.
Martha nods to Jack who starts slinking around the back of the console while the Doctor is distracted.
"A marvellous, wonderful present. The best you've ever had."
"I doubt that," says the Doctor smugly, "I've had a lot of presents, and you're just a stupid ape. You aren't even a very nice looking one. I bet you don't have any present at all. I bet you're a liar."
Martha grits her teeth against the insult. A year, a year in hell, and this was her reward. She wants to strangle him. She wants to hold him close and make him better; he is so very, very broken.
"It's a brilliant present," she says, using his favourite word, "but I can't tell you what it is."
"Why not?"
She thinks fast, remembering all the replies her parents ever gave her and her siblings in the weeks leading up to birthdays and Christmas:
"It's a secret. You won't be surprised if I just tell you."
"I could pretend to be surprised," says the Doctor with a trace of his normal pluckiness.
Jack is very close now. He nods at Martha to continue.
"Well… I suppose, but only if you're good, and stay right there, and don't move."
"I'll be as still as a petrified frog!" the Doctor says.
"Good, now, this present –"
The Doctor wiggles with excitement.
"– it's not something you can see, and it's not something you might like at first, but once you understand it you'll be so happy. It's something cruel and kind, and a bit like a riddle, but it doesn't have an answer. It takes time to grow and it's not easily broken when it's strong. It's hard work, and it's no work, and all of the wonders of the universe are nothing in comparison…"
"What is it?" the Doctor asks impatiently, practically dancing on the spot.
Jack nods one last time. He is ready.
"It's behind you," says Martha, tears prickling her eyes.
The Doctor turns around and straight into Jack's waiting arms.
"No, let go, I'll kill you! All of you stupid, meddling… get off!"
Jack hangs on gamely to the kicking and screaming Time Lord as Martha approaches.
"It's friendship," she says, applying pressure to the bundle of nerves on the back of the Doctor's neck and praying that it will have the same effect on Time Lords as it does on humans. She's learned a lot about self-defence and quick ways to render people unconscious during the last year. She's learned a lot of things:
Like how to repress the tender streams of moisture that are threatening to burst out of her eyes and down her cheeks, and how to ignore the screams of dissonant emotion that tear at her heart and make her want to curl up into a little ball on the floor and never move again. To find some dark, safe place and hide. Forever.
The doubt, the uncertainty, the despair…
It works, and the Doctor slumps limply into Jack's arms. He's started to shrink again, turn small, and wizened, and too old to live. He looks so tiny and brittle. Defeated. He twitches in his sleep, his body refusing the enforced rest, still trying to fight…
"How long?" Jack asks, wiping his brow.
"Don't know, not long. We'll have to…" her voice chokes, he didn't deserve this… "We'll have to find some way to restrain him when he comes round. He could hurt himself."
"Okay," says Jack, his voice uncharacteristically gruff. He wipes his brow again, this time including his eyes.
"Then we'll have to –" Martha stops mid-sentence, noticing something.
No.
What?" Jack asks, but Martha doesn't respond.
She refuses to believe it. After a year in hell it couldn't be true. She can feel herself starting to shake, and has to mentally cajole herself into some kind of calm; now is not the time for a nervous breakdown (she wants it though, oh how she longs for that luxury, and soft warm blankets, and chocolate, and kind voices telling her that everything will be okay…)
But not yet. She steadies her breathing, but still finds herself unable to properly reply to Jack's question.
"Look," she croaks, raising a finger to point:
The Master's corpse is gone and the Time Rotor is moving. The room begins to tremble as the TARDIS dematerialises. They are in the vortex, the Doctor is sick and unconscious, and a deadly enemy is hiding somewhere onboard.
"Shit," Jack says, summing the situation up in one word. "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit…"
An ominous bell tolls from the depths of the ship.
Then, in a cliché burst of bad luck, the lights go out, and the floor decides that life as a wall looks rather attractive. The walls don't agree, and, after much tossing, a compromise is reached and the floor takes out a timeshare with the ceiling.
Everything flips over backwards, inside out – nothing makes sense anymore. It's pitch black and they are in the belly of the beast.
Jack groans from the floor/wall/ceiling (in the dark he has no idea) where he has been thrown before being flung across the room to somewhere else. He has no idea what this rough treatment is doing to the Doctor's fragile and aged body. He doesn't want to know. A few moments later he is tossed headfirst into something unyielding and he doesn't have to know because the loss of consciousness makes everything that much darker.
"Shit."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
no subject
no subject
To cut, there'll be a button when making your post that has two straight lines and a squiggly line underneath them. If you hover your cursor over it it'll say insert lj cut or something to that evvect, click on it, enter your cut text (text that people will click on to get to the main text), click OK and a grey box will appear in the post-y place thing. Type the stuff you want behind the cut in there and it will be hidden unless you click on the cut text. I hope that made sense.
no subject
no subject
Do you mind if I friend you?
no subject
There are a few grammarical issues, but they don't really subtract from the creative bliss I feel from reading this. :D