Chapter 4: in Question

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  Chapter 4: In Question

She has a shower before going anywhere (complete with delousing shampoo), and gets some new clothes — they're military issue, made for men, too big, and baggy in all the wrong places, but they're clean.

Her head has been stitched up. It's a good job. She's jealous of the skills and equipment that provided it; Being a doctor was probably the most difficult part of the year — harder than the rough nights or the constant hiding and fatigue, harder than the thirst, or the knowledge that the fate of the world and the universe balanced on her pitifully unprepared shoulders. She remembers the first time she held a baby that was dying of a cold — that was it, a simple cold, and mild malnutrition — she could have fixed him so easily if she had been a tiny bit more experienced, a fraction more prepared.

Instead she got to watch his lips go blue, and feel his tiny heart flutter, and stop.

Back to the present. If she reflects on the past she might get trapped in it again. Except, technically, she is in the past and the past she can't let herself think about is the future. Except it's not even that because it never happened.

God her head hurts.

"Are you okay?" asks Jack.

"I'm fine," says Martha, "just… thinking."

Jack doesn't ask what about.

They're walking down a hallway (drab military issue like everything else). Going to the Brigadier's office. Whoever he is. The guard Martha bit is walking with them, Sergeant Benton, he was waiting for them when they emerged from the infirmary. His arm has been bandaged, and he accepted Martha's apology with a quaint, ironic smile; like biting people is a normal event and nothing to get excited over.

They are still prisoners, or at least under suspicion.

"I get put in detention," Jack says, explaining, "this little box of a room, not even a real cell, and I'm just sitting there contemplating my navel when this man, well dressed, a bit old, but definitely a looker, barges in asking what I've done with his Bessie."

"His who?" Martha asks.

"His car, apparently," says Jack.

"It's yellow," Benton supplies, as if that means something.

"That's not the point," says Jack, "the point is who the man is."

"The Doctor?" says Benton, before Martha can respond or Jack can continue.

"The who?!"

Martha stops in the middle of the hall. She's running through a mental checklist: well dressed, not after the year, but he could have found new clothing. Old, yes, but only because of the Master. A looker… that is stop, stay away territory… yes.

"Not our Doctor," Jack says before she can get hopeful, "A Doctor, a former Doctor if that makes sense. He's the Doctor, but not ours yet. A previous regeneration."

Martha blinks. Of course it couldn't be that easy. They continue walking down the hall.

"Is he how you —" she pauses, trying to form her turbulent thoughts into coherent sentences. "Did you explain everything to him? Is that how we're wandering around getting to see this Brigadier instead of chained up in some cellar? How you got me medical treatment? Or was that just your charm and good looks?"

"They would have treated you in any case," Jack says, "but I'm a fact in time: he believed everything I said."

"You told him about —" Martha starts, and stops when Jack interrupts with a shake of his head and a definite don't say anything about that look in his eyes.

"I told him we're from his future. Anything more than that could be dangerous. Paradoxes. He agrees with me. This version of the Doctor still has some sense left in his head."

Martha stops again, a realisation sputtering through her abused mind.

"The Doctor owned a yellow car named Bessie?"

It's in character, and she can even picture it: the Doctor in some yellow roadster (it would have to be a roadster, and an open-roofed one at that — he's such a little boy sometimes) his spiky hair thrown back by the breeze, the road bumpy and twisting before him as he rides carelessly at breakneck speed, his attention everywhere but where it should be.

It's enough to make her crack a smile through the tears that she's finished with holding back. Jack too, though she doesn't know what picture he's imaging. Benton is smiling as well, but he's been doing that since Martha met him. He's got the look of a man who is competent, but often lost in daydreams.

He keeps looking at her out of the corner of his eye in the most awkward way. Dream on, Martha thinks. Though he does seem sweet enough. And very forgiving considering that she gnawed on his arm earlier.

They turn a corner.

There's a door with a subdued nameplate reading Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Benton knocks on it with a respectful, restrained fist, before opening it, and throwing a salute to the man inside.

The Brigadier is a slim man with a small, well-trimmed moustache that looks more glued-on than grown. He's wearing the same pale green uniform as everyone else, and he has a small wooden baton tucked under one arm. He has the pose of a soldier and a brook-no-nonsense leader, an imposing figure and a leader of men, but Martha's eyes quickly skim over him to the other man in the room:

He is tall, and topped with a messy puff of white hair that reminders her of her own Doctor — but there all resemblance ends. This Doctor looks like a six-foot light bulb in a dinner jacket. This Doctor looks confident, in control. He stands straight, and doesn't seem to be carrying as much emotional luggage as her incarnation.

He looks — more free?

He's giving her a critical eye, and those are also different: blue and wise instead of brown and tormented, but the sparkle is exactly the same. It's how she knows who he is immediately. That, and who else would wear that costume in public?

"Martha Jones?" he asks, stepping forward, "glad to see you are doing better."

The Brigadier clears his throat.

The Doctor passes him a look. There is some tension between the men that Martha can't define; friendship, yes, but also an extreme annoyance and disapprovingness. There's water under that bridge.

"I think we'll have to save the introductions," the Doctor says, his eyes twinkling.

"Yes," says the Brigadier dryly, "I am still abundantly curious as to why exactly you are vouching for these intruders who attacked four of my men this morning, especially after the theft of your beloved vehicle?"

"Oh, but look at this woman," says the Doctor, winking at Martha, "she couldn't be a thief? Surely. She's far too beautiful for that."

Martha blushes, Benton starts doing that awkward corner-of-his-eyes thing again, and Jack looks ready to burst out laughing. The Doctor waggles his eyebrows suggestively adding to the mirth.

"Doctor!" the Brigadier snaps.

Martha's own eyebrows twitch at that. She doesn't think she's ever seen anyone try to boss the Doctor (her Doctor) around with that much authority in their voice and a seeming expectation that they will be obeyed. Except the Master. But that isn't what's going on here.

She wonders again at the two men's relationship.

"I have an excellent eye," says the Doctor, rolling onto a new subject with such skill it doesn't seem like the answer to a command. "I can almost always spot a liar, and believe me when I say this pair is innocent… of that one crime at least. Though, I don't believe they are being completely honest about their purpose here, but, I believe they have reasons for that as well."

"I don't have time for their reasons," the Brigadier says, "security has been breached and I am the one who will have to answer for that in Geneva if anything with more importance than your car has gone missing."

"Brigadier," the Doctor says slowly, and suddenly all of the whimsy goes out of his voice leaving something behind that is hard as ice and very alien, "there will be much worse things to deal with if you do not listen to what I have to say right now. You currently have far larger problems to worry about than security breaches. There are some very serious temporal anomalies registering on my scanners. Something is trying to gain entrance to this dimension. Something which doesn't belong here."

Jack coughs, and all of the eyes in the room turn to look at him.

"It isn't you," the Doctor says, "yours is a creative anomaly. This is an utterly destructive one. It will rip the fabric of this world apart if given a chance."

There is a short gap in conversation. The room is still, and all of the previous laughter is gone. In its place is a shuddery electricity. Martha feels cold without reason. All she can think about are paradoxes: the world eating kind.

"Could it be…" she starts, and all eyes are on her now, daring her to speak "…the Doctor," she finishes lamely. "Or…" she tries again, ignoring the frantic shut up gestures Jack is making. Paradoxes can swoop down and eat her foot for all she cares; she didn't save the world for it to get destroyed again. "The Master?"

That brings a reaction. Everyone in the room — excluding her and Jack — repeats the name in a hushed voice. The kind of voice you use when talking about the devil. Down at whisper level so he won't hear you talking and give a response.

"I take it you know him?" says Martha (of course the Doctor knows him, she berates herself. They were childhood friends, she thinks, it's been a long time since she heard the story. A year. And she wasn't sure she believed it then).

The Doctor is looking at her through narrow eyes.

"Yes," he says, and she's not sure if he's answering her question; yes, I know him or yes, he's the cause of this disturbance, or both.

"He kidnapped the Doctor," Jack says.

So much for paradoxes.

"The Doctor?" the Brigadier says, "but he's right h… don't tell me there's more than one of them about." He begins massaging his temples. It's a headache that Martha is well familar with. She sends sympathy by turning her eyes to the carpet. It's brown and lumpy.

The Doctor takes a deep breath, and when he releases it he seems to deflate a little. He isn't as strong as Martha thought when she first came into the room (she's looking for strength everywhere lately, probably because she has so little left herself). He's not broken like her Doctor. He doesn't have a great crushing weight of grief bearing down on him or an air of barely contained madness, but, hidden at the back of his blue-not-brown gaze is a flicker of sadness, and, maybe, fear. But she could be imagining that. Because she needs him, someone, to be strong for her, lest she drown again.

"This may be more serious than I first suspected," he says in a gravelly voice, "I think you should tell me everything."

So they do.