Chapter 3: In Days of Yore

[clocketpatch]

Chapter 3: In Days of Yore




Blue.



Blue time.



Time on its side. Weak. Easy prey.



People are dancing, worshipping me, as they should.



Pale stars can be seen through the broken siding of this building that they erected to hide me. They dance – shadows against fire and starlight.



Weak, pitiful things. Easily deceived. They are no good prey. I stretch one tentacle forward from my earthy prison to the man who promises my freedom.



He will deliver it, but not the way he thinks.



Fool.



Thinks I will do his bidding. Soon…




I pull my tentacle back into the ground.



Soon…





He will do mine.






*





Jack knows that he's being stupid.



But he is boiling with the need to attack someone to vent his frustration and stress and all of the pain that is simmering in his gut from being strong for so long. And the guard, and the uniform…. Adrenaline is pounding through his veins and he ignores the part of his mind which is shrieking that this might not be a good idea: that this could be anywhere, anytime and trying for conversation before launching into battle mode might get them further in their search for the Doctor.



Martha is looking at him for direction. He is her pillar of strength right now, Jack realizes. She's using him as a crutch to keep sane after everything she's been through.



The guard has a gun in his face.



Jack knows he's being stupid, but what comes next is more instinct than design. The guard is disarmed and disabled in a few swift seconds. Martha watches his actions, and then initiates her own battle dance. Two guards down, two guards to go. Jack can take two men at once. Easy. Except they have guns, and he really has been stupid.



It's a quick death and he doesn't really feel it. Dying is easy; living is easy; it's pulling yourself back together after being fractured for the thousandth time that's hard. Some cracks never fuse back together properly. The Master killed him a lot of times – practice should make things easier rather than harder.



He comes back to the sensation of cold metal locking around his wrists. He wants to fight – oh god in his mind he is rebelling – but a year of chains and telepathic abuse has thumped the idea of docility into him. He can still struggle if he tries, but why bother? It's a waste of resources, and, now that he's truly gone and fucked things up, he thinks that a bit of quiet observation might, possibly, salvage something from the situation. He notices the logo stitched to the guard's shoulders.



Stupid, stupid, stupid… and he hopes that it's not too late to call back his mistake.






*





Martha feels like she's floating on her back underwater. Reality is the silver, tensile skin of the surface; rippling and easily distorted. She can't breathe. She's comfortable in the blood warm pool. She's safe – except she can't breathe, and she's choking on her own delusions. She'll have to surface soon or be lost forever.



That doesn't seem as scary as it should.



An arm breaks the surface, reaches down, pulls her up with a touch. They'll never take her alive. She thrashes and kicks – she's tied down. On a bed, a comfortable bed, but there are restraints on her wrists and ankles.



"She's coming round!" The voice is muffled. A light shines in her eyes. First one then the other. Pupil dilation response test says a far away portion of her mind. She doesn't understand it. She isn't listening. The light is too bright. It hurts. Everything hurts. She jerks her head away.



A face follows the light, swimming into her line of vision like a phantom. She doesn't know this person: male, mid-thirties give or take, funny haircut, predominant chin, blue eyes. He's not modern, he's – Martha's mind can't place a decade he would look ordinary in – not the beginning of the twenty-first. He's wearing a uniform. Uniform means military; means government controlled; means Master controlled.



"Martha? Martha Jones?" the man asks.



That confirms it. He's a stranger but he knows her name; all of the Master's men know her name. There's a bounty out for her arrest.



"Yes," she says. Her tongue is gritty against her cheeks. Why is she so thirsty? They've been torturing her obviously, but she can't remember it. She turns her head sidewise against the bright starched pillow it's resting on.



Why would they give her a pillow?



There's an IV dripping something into her arm, truth serum probably. The room she's in looks like an infirmary, but she knows better; it's a torture recovery chamber for the Master's victims. Well, she won't talk. She won't give away the plan. While there's life there's hope.



She cranes her neck, trying to get a glimpse of her watch. It's gone. Been removed. No way to tell if the moment has gone by or not. She's told a lot of people about the plan. All she can do now is hope that humanity and the Archangel Network will be enough to put things right again.



She wishes she wasn't so thirsty.



As she thinks it a glass of water is pressed to her lips. It's cool, sweet, and unpolluted. Her instinct is to gulp.



"Slowly old girl," says the man, pulling the glass away, "you'll make yourself sick."



The glass returns, and this time Martha rations herself, afraid of losing the water. This wonderful liquid that pours down her chapped throat and settles, cool and marvellous, in her belly. She hasn't had a proper drink in ages. Most of the world's waterways are contaminated now and she ran out of purification tablets weeks ago.



"That's enough," says the man, after half the water is gone, taking the glass away. Martha leans after it, but the restraints keep her from following as the water is placed on a bedside table, so close, but worlds away. She whimpers.



"Everything is fine," the man says soothingly (false sympathy, devious, foul, so like one of the Master's puppets), "we aren't going to hurt you."



"Then why am I restrained?" She manages to put some strength into her voice. She has to make up for her position, for appearing so helpless. God, did she just whimper?



"You've won," she says bitterly, "just kill me and let it be over with."



"It is over," says the man, "You were restrained for your own good. I didn't want it, but the way you were thrashing – and you bit Sergeant Benton. I'll take them off now if you promise not to try and harm anyone, or leave."



"Don't try and trick me," Martha says.



The man's hand pauses. He had been about to undo the bindings, but now he seems to be rethinking it.



"Maybe not. Dreadfully sorry about all this, but you are a bit barmy at the moment. I'd give you a bit of something to help you back to sleep, but I had to give you enough sedatives to knock out a horse when you first came in. Do you know where you are?"



She thinks. She knows where she is: captured by the Master, but her physical location is a mystery. She doesn't remember where she was previous to waking up here. She doesn't remember being captured. She could be hidden in a bunker under the grey ash of burned out Japan, or in some secret room on board the Valiant, or nestled in the claws of one of the great industrial concentration camps that dot and soil the coasts of the Master's world. She doesn't know. Admitting this might be seen as weakness. She keeps her mouth shut.



"You're in a UNIT medical facility. My name is Harry Sullivan and I've been treating you for –"



"You're lying."



The man – this Harry Sullivan – looks concerned and weary, like he has been holding a vigil. Would one of the Master's men look concerned? Or perhaps this is another trick.



She hears a creaking sound, wood on tiled floor, and her eyes swing round to find the source. The room's door is opening. Martha braces herself. Only one person could be coming to visit her here. She thinks that she will be strong, or try to be.



The person who comes through the door is not who she excepts:



"Jack?"



He comes to her side and squeezes her hand reassuringly. He undoes her restraints.



"It's okay hun," he says.



He is clean, and his eyes look less dull.



"These people are friends," he says, and she thinks she might believe him. "It's 1974," he adds.



She surfaces, breaking the beaded surface of her disassociation with a sob. The Master hasn't captured her, because he has been dethroned and his empire overthrown. This is where the TARDIS brought them: not to another planet, but to a past where she hasn't been born. She is Martha Jones and she saved the world, and that chapter of her life is over – except it isn't, because she's trapped here.



"We need to find the Doctor," she croaks.



His hands are tender on her bruised wrist. They sit there, nestled over her pulse, comforting, calming.



"Yes," he says, "but rest first."



She shakes his hand away, ignores the attending doctor's "steady on there, you're not quite fit", and sits up, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. She feels a bit dizzy. She grabs the glass from the bedside table and gulps the remaining liquid inside. She dries her mouth with the back of her hand feeling better.



"There's no time," she says.



And the look in Jack's eyes says that he knows:



There never is.