chapter 2: In Pieces

[clocketpatch]

Chapter 2: In Pieces



The lights come back on slowly, reluctantly; the way a child returns home to supper when they know that they've stayed out too late and are due for a lecture. The ship is humming, vibrating like it always does, but the tune is off. It's painful and discordant and –



The light is wrong; too dim, too red (but it's trying to be green in other places and the effect is like Christmas attacked with a sledgehammer). It's all wrong, and it knows it's wrong, and it's scared. That's what's wrong with the ship: it, she, is frightened out of her wits.



Jack's head hurts.



It turns out that he isn't on the floor, ceiling, or wall (not that any of those terms are very fitting at the moment. Up and down more like – though there are places where even that simplicity is called into question). He is jammed on top of what was once the base of a coral support strut. He carefully extracts himself and climbs down to… well, he climbs down.



Debris is everywhere, and what is serving as the floor is slanted and treacherous. Glass and metal crunches under his feet, mixed with something slick that he really doesn't want to think about. He finds Martha partially buried under what looks to be part of the jump seat.



"You okay?" he asks, helping her to her feet.



"Always."



A long gash runs over her left eyebrow, splitting it and twisting towards her ear. She examines it with a hesitant, prodding finger.



"Skull's intact and it's beginning to clot. Good stitches and it won't scar. I've had worse." Her hand drops. "Where's the Doctor?"



Jack has been wondering that himself. He tried to hang onto the unconscious Time Lord during the crash, but things got rough. He remembers the lights going out, hitting something hard, and loosing his grip.



"I don't know."



Martha sits down suddenly and heavily. Dust rises up from the impact dancing and flickering like fairies in the dim, wrong light. She puts her hands over her eyes and seems to sink into herself. If it were anyone else Jack would guess she was crying, but then, who is he to make those judgements? He barely knows this woman. This Martha Jones who saved the world.



"Are you okay?" Jack asks.



"Fine, fine and dandy. Just a bit dizzy. I might have a mild concussion. You'll have to keep me awake for the rest of the day." She peeks out from a web of fingers. "You can do that right?"



"I can, but – you know what I mean: are you okay Martha? Really okay?"



The hands come down revealing red eyes but no tears.



"No, I'm not okay, and neither are you. I'd diagnose PTSD for both of us; suggest counselling, and a long period of rest in familiar surroundings, but we aren't going to get that are we?"



Jack says nothing. There is nothing to say; no truth that doesn't sting.



"I just want it to stop for one minute," Martha says, "Just one minute. I spent a year tracking the time, the hours, the seconds until I would be free and everything would be normal. This isn't normal. This is – do we even know where we are? It could be the end of the universe again. There could be zombies out there getting ready to eat us, or it could be the Roman Empire or Mars or…" She stops, realising that she is hyperventilating.



"I just want to go home," she whispers.



"I know," says Jack, and his voice says that he does know – perhaps better than she can understand. She is being so selfish in all of this. Jack went through a year of hell too, and he can't die. She doesn't want to think what that means when you're being held prisoner by a psychopath like the Master.



And before that: He is immortal. How long has he been wandering the slow path? Does he even have a home to go back to?



He is looking at her with eyes that are baby blue and welled with concern. He's dirtier than she is; his face is barely visible through lines of dirt and pain. He smells like blood, sweat, and excrement. He's very thin – how did she not notice that before? But then, everyone she's seen for months has been half-starved and filthy.



He bends down, patting her hunched up shoulders, trying to comfort her. She is tense; she learned to be tense during her mission; relax for one instant in the Master's world and you died. Cut to pieces by Toclafane. Bombed into oblivion. Sick. Starved. Detained. Ripped apart by hungry, rabid dogs – the perception filter didn't work on animals. She is so tired. She aches everywhere: new aches from the crash and old aches from a year of sleeping rough. She is hungry, and unbearably thirsty, and her clothes are stiff with sweat, blood, and dirt. She can feel the fleas crawling under her collar.



She wishes that she never met the Doctor. Never begged him for a trip. What an idiot she was: he told her it was dangerous. She wanted adventure. She wanted to run along the wind like a hero (wasn't that why she went to med. school in the first place? To be a hero?)



"Come on," says Jack, offering her a hand up. How can he be so strong? "We've got to find the Doctor."



She accepts the hand, and the task, not because she wants to, but because there is nothing else she can do.



I'm alright, she thinks, I'm always alright.




                                                                                                     *




The TARDIS door is open, so they hypothesise that the Master must have taken the Doctor outside. Martha wonders how as they climb and clamber towards the exit. The Doctor, when she last saw him, was in no state to scramble over this mess.



On that same branch of thought: neither was the Master, in fact, he had been suffering from a bad case of dead, but he seems to have got over that.



Martha thinks of cockroaches.



They reach the door, and there is a temporary disorientation as they pull themselves out onto a different plane of gravity. The TARDIS's blue outer shell is turned on its side in the middle of a field. There is a fence in the distance, and on the other side there is a small compound of dingy white concrete buildings. They look vaguely military, and Martha hopes that they haven't landed in a restricted area –



Being arrested and held down for questioning would be the topper on everything that has happened. She thinks it might push her over the edge.



"Where to?" she asks Jack.



He's looking at the compound with a hand over his eyes to protect them from glare. The sun is up about as high as it can go and it's hot. Behind them the field, studded with occasional trees, goes on and on. Martha knows that there is only one logical direction, but she can't help feeling a bit sad/scared/angry when Jack points (Her emotions are all jumbled inside her. She can't understand what she feels, so she represses it. She knows it's unhealthy, but it's survival, and what else can she do? She thinks that this is how the Doctor ended up the way he is.).



They walk towards the compound. The fence, when they reach it, is easy enough to jump. Barbed wire, but Martha dealt with enough of that over the year to know how to avoid getting cut. Jack seems equally experienced and they proceed.



There are no footprints, no clues. Really they're just wandering around hopefully. There are armed guards up ahead. Martha sees them first, but it is Jack who pulls her around a corner before they can be spotted. She's used to having the perception filter. It's left her handicapped. She might have walked right into those guards if Jack hadn't –



"Thanks," she whispers.



"He isn't outside," says Jack, "If he's anywhere I'd guess for inside one of those buildings, but which one?"



"More to the point," says Martha, "How do we get past the goon squad?"



That seems to stump Jack, but he comes up with a response soon enough, and he manages to grin as he delivers it:



"Simple, we pull a Doctor and let ourselves get captured."



"Because that worked so well the last time," Martha says.



"You got a better plan?"



She doesn't.



A moment later it doesn't matter. There are four of them, in pale green military uniforms, guns raised and pointed. They are humans, and their uniforms aren't quite modern, but they aren't historic either.



"Identification," one of them barks.



Jack stretches out his arms, fists closed.



"You didn't say please," he chides.



One of the guards leans forward.



"Please," he says irritably.



Jack grabs the barrel of his rifle in a lightening move, and swings it around, knocking the guard to the grass, clutching at a nose that will never be straight again. Martha has one of the others in a headlock before they can flinch, but that still leaves two. There's a bang. Loud. Martha can't hear. Spinning. Disoriented.



Jack is lying on the ground with a bullet through his temple.



Martha wants to throw up. She knows he'll just come back, but it's too much. She can't deal with any more death. Not after everything. It was suppose to be over damn it! It was supposed to be over!



She doesn't realise that she is shouting those words out loud. Nor does she see the looks that the guards are giving her, and the raised eyebrows that they are giving to each other. She doesn't see the stunned expression on the too-young face of the guard who pulled the trigger, or hear the bloody-murder shouts of the broken-nosed man Jack conked. Her knees have gone weak, and she lets herself fall onto the grass. Grass is nice.



She can smell its greenness, and the rich earth beneath it – mostly clay with a sprinkle of true soil. Red and strong smelling. Dry, but moist – old rain, old promises, soaked up by the sun. Worms going down to their rest after the turmoil of the flood. Sweet clover, clippings, and the dead, straggling yellow bits underneath. An ant hill.



One of the guards is putting handcuffs on her and she doesn't care. She's all right though, her and the Doctor – they're both fine, always. Jack's fine too. He's coming back to life. Gagging and thrashing on the lawn. He startles the guards, but to their credit they don't shoot him again. Instead they check his head, exchange astonished glances, and cuff him too.



The guards are dragging Jack to his feet. He complies. They try to get Martha up as well, but she doesn't want to leave the grass. Grass is nice. Grass is soft. Grass is simple.



She kicks and screams, but they get her up, eventually (though she manages to bite one of them). They lead them into one of the buildings. Which is okay, because that was what she wanted right? She thinks. She doesn't know. She just wants to lie down on the grass and sleep herself to death.