Resting Place

[clocketpatch]

A bit of random fic from when I really REALLY ought to be working on other things. As with almost all my lj fic this carries the Not Complete, May Never Be Completed, and the Not Beta'd warnings. This is set directly after The Lazarus Experiment, which I haven't seen for a bit, so excuse any flubs in the carry-on scene.

I do not own Doctor Who. This is probably for the best.




Title: Resting Place
Word count: Approx 2000
Characters: Ten, Martha, the TARDIS because she's awesome

Resting Place




It was a public park in a run down part of London. Not one of the lush, tax-padded green spaces. This was more a lot that happened to have grass, a few benches, and a couple of straggling trees in it. Tall, stern-walled tenements blocked out the low sun on either side. Their sides scrawled with graffiti tags and obscenities.

It wasn’t the sort of place Martha would go alone in her normal life. Especially not now, near to dark. And she knew that this night those creeping shadows would conceal things more dangerous than some street gang or meth-head mugger. It was late autumn and a bit chillier than her jacket was designed for.

Not that she was thinking about the temperature – not in regards to herself anyway. She was far more focused on the unconscious form draped over one of the broken down benches.

His eyes were open, gazing off blankly into the deepening purple sky. He’d tucked his jacket in around himself in an attempt to conceal the slash across his chest, but Martha knew it was there. She also knew that he’d been lying about the venom.

ABC – airway, breathing, circulation. Martha did the check as best she could in the fleeing light. The first was clear, the next two were sluggish but functioning. The TARDIS was twelve blocks away. Martha positioned the Doctor’s arms around her neck and shoulders, braced herself, and stood. A broken arrow crunched underfoot as she staggered, adjusting herself, and him.

He was a tall man and she was a short woman and twelve blocks was a long way at night in a bad neighbourhood when the goblins were loose. She attempted to steady the Doctor with one hand while sneaking the other into her pocket to touch the reassuring angles of her TARDIS key.

She could do it. She was Martha Jones, after all. Hadn’t he said she was brilliant?

---

Earlier:

The key nestled against her clasped palms, silver on dark. The coiled chain wrapped like a beaded snake as she raised up her hands to meet it. The metal was slightly cool against her skin. Martha looked up after a long moment of wonder.

He leaned back against a pillar with that self-assured, close-lipped smile. His arms crossed. He was watching her. His whole body motionless except for the track of his eyes surveying her expression, her reaction, and finding them acceptable. Planned.

Martha didn’t mind. She swallowed. Tried to think of something to say other than ‘thank you’ again. This was how she’d imagined graduation would feel; the whole future ahead of her, and now the past too, the universe. And then a sudden thought, practical, because she was always practical, even when she wasn’t.

“Where will I sleep?”

“Sorry?” The Doctor cocked his head in confusion. His expression went from almost predatory to utter bafflement in under three seconds.

“Sleep, you know, eight hours? Rest, regenerate? All that…” She tucked the key into her jacket pocket. “Or do you just stop off at a hotel whenever you need too? Because that’s okay, just so long as we don’t visit the Elephant again.”

“The what?” the Doctor asked. He uncrossed his arms and stood up straight against the pillar. The movement translated to a rumple in the front of his suit. “Elephants? I’m sure I haven’t seen an elephant in ooo… fifty years. Bligh me, has it been that long? That’s a long time to go without an elephant.”

“When we met Shakespeare?” Martha helpfully reminded. “We shared a bed?”

“Right,” the Doctor said. He nodded slowly to emphasis. “Shakespeare. Harry Potter. Witches. Carrionites. Yep, good old Will. That was a day. Not sure what I did to annoy the queen though. I mean, you’d think I’d cuckold her or something.”

“Sleeping arrangements?” Martha asked.

“Oh, right,” said the Doctor. He nodded again, fixing her gaze on the downward stroke. “No.”

“No?” said Martha.

“No staying in hotels or inns or Hooverville every night. I mean, it is fun, and I quite like it for a change of pace, but a person needs a solid base for mental stability. You get a room in the TARDIS.”

Martha looked around. The TARDIS, as she knew it, was one big circular room with an arching roof. There was the central console, the thingy shooting out of it that the Doctor called the time rotor, the coral struts, and the grated floor. She thought she could sleep in the jump seat, maybe, but it wouldn’t be comfortable. There was a little ladder-accessible gallery that could be turned into a skinny loft, possibly. But any way she looked at it, Martha didn’t see any glowing possibilities. The TARDIS was amazing yes, alien yes, her wildest dreams yes, but –

“Um Doctor, not to be picky, but I’m not sure this will work.”

He looked crushed. “Too sudden?” he asked.

“No, that’s – but just where am I supposed to sleep?”

“Your room,” said the Doctor. He looked at Martha like she’d dribbled on herself. “I thought we’d gone over this?”

“My room, yes,” said Martha in an equally slow and deliberate manner. “Because humans need these things called beds, preferably large enough for anyone and everyone sleeping in them.”

“Who else would be sleeping in it?” the Doctor asked, and Martha could tell he wasn’t deliberately being obtuse.

“Where is it?” she asked.

“Where is –” the Doctor started. He raised his arm to point, and then stopped with a sheepish ‘oh’. He walked over to the console and stroked it a few times, crooning under his breath. “What is it old girl? Come on, play nice.”

A moment later the impossible happened. Though, Martha thought, she really had to redefine her definition of impossible in contrast to the fact that she was inside of a blue box that defied physics.

The far wall opened. Or perhaps opened was the wrong word. It wasn't like a hidden door swinging out of an invisible frame; One moment there was a stretch of slightly-curved, brass-dotted wall, the next there was a gap leading to a corridor, leading to who knew where. No transition. Martha fought the furious urge to blink.

“Fourth door on the right,” said the Doctor, “… or maybe the third on the left? She’s being a bit funny about me inviting you on. Permanently, that is. I think she thinks it’s a bit soon after –”

He cut off his sentence with swallow, for which Martha was grateful.

“Down there, anyways,” he said. “Don’t be long. I want to see some elephant. I mean really? Half a century since I’ve been to a circus; that’s just silly.”

Martha had half-tuned out most of his ramble. She stepped tentatively into the newly formed corridor. It started out round and coiling and very green, like a forest tunnel or a coral maze. There were three doors scattered along; two to the right, one to the left. Then the tunnel opened up suddenly into a bridge and Martha found herself standing on iridescent metal grating suspended above a well of infinite light.

She put her hands on the thin steel railing to steady herself and walked across slowly. She wasn’t afraid. The glow seemed to seep inside her mind and sing and knead. A thousand pecking questions, gentle as kisses. She closed her eyes briefly at the mid-point, pausing for a moment to let the whatever-it-was flow across her senses like a rain storm and the tingling scent of ozone.

Then she continued to the other side where the tunnel resumed and more doors awaited. The fourth door on the right came first, and when Martha opened it she found a perfect reproduction of her flat. Right down to the knickers drying on her laundry rack.

Martha stepped forward, out of her closet. The door swung shut behind her. And she was in her flat, her flat. She sat down hard on her bed. The mattresses' give was just as she remembered. Perfectly right and obscenely normal. Her teddy knocked over at the motion and sprawled into her lap. Martha straightened him, biting her lip. She looked at her closet;

Had it all be some cruel trick and he’d booted her out the back door? Or had his ship done it on her own – no, that was silly, ships weren’t, this couldn’t be –

Couldn’t it?

She stood up and took the few steps to the flat’s proper door. Her fingers brushed over the knob. If she opened it, she was sure, she’d find herself in her building’s manky hallway. She looked back at the closet. If she opened it, would she find Narnia on the other side? Was there sky behind the rolled-back blinds on her windows? Was her mum waiting on the other end of that phone?

Or had it all been just a dream?

Martha took a deep breath and went back to the closet. She wanted to close her eyes when she walked through, because maybe that way when she opened them to a blank wall and neatly rolled socks the shock wouldn’t be as bad. But she’d never been one to walk blindly into things (or so she kept telling herself), and she wasn’t starting today.

She opened the door.

---

It wasn’t a dream.

---

But it felt like waking from one as she stepped direct from her little flat to the threshold of the console room. She stood there awhile, watching the Doctor fuss about. He hadn’t seen her yet, or couldn’t see her, maybe.

Martha felt very strange, like she’d made a great decision, but then, hadn’t she already decided to delay her exams and take up with the Doctor on a fling? Wherever he might lead her? She tucked her fingers into her jacket pocket, checking that the key the Doctor had gifted her was still there.

It was. The rhythm of its chain slipping between her fingers was strangely soothing. Her cell was in the same pocket, and the hard plastic case drew her backwards as much as the key pulled her forwards.

She stepped out of the doorway and up to where the Doctor was working, not surprised when the arch closed behind her.

He looked up, his face lit green, and grinning.

“I’ve got it all set for elephants!” he said, still obsessing. “Trunks and tusks and parading pachyderms. I’ve even got some peanuts!” He pulled a rumpled looking candy-striped bag out of his pocket. “You aren’t allergic are you?”

Martha shook her head, and doing so seemed to clear the dust.

“I don’t like circuses,” she said.

“Why not?” asked the Doctor sharply. “Life under the big top, a world within a world, sticky cotton candy smells, the flying trapeze, never putting down roots –”

“And who are you?” asked Martha. “The ring master or the lion tamer?”

The Doctor brushed his chin with his thumb and forefinger. “I’m probably the bearded lady if anything,” he said wistfully, staring off into space for a moment before he caught Martha’s eye and grinned. “Nah! Caught you. I’d be one of the clowns, seeing things from the ground floor, entertaining the kiddies.”

“Cleaning up the messes.”

“Oh, always.”

And wearing a mask, Martha thought, always a mask.


“They abuse the animals you know,” she said.

“What? The clowns?”

“The circuses, because they’re on the road all the time, the animals are in these itty-bitty crates and don’t get the care they need. I could never stand going when I was little. They all looked so sad.”

“Who said we were going to a 21^st century circus?” said the Doctor. “38^th century space coliseum on the planet Pluurm. Well, not on, specifically, it's a modified asteroid they've set in orbit. Bit of a pleasure planetoid. Not sure what it's name is specifically; something boring with lots of '1's and '0's and jibble-jabble, but they’ve managed to combine the big top atmosphere with state of the art technology. The animals are all animatronics! It’s the circus sans cruelty, same fun, less of the guilt, and the naked stars as your tent, how about that?”

“But you aren’t really seeing elephants then, are you?” asked Martha. “If they’re robots…”

His face fell.

“No, I suppose not… well… only one thing for it then.”

He flipped a switch and everything lurched sidewise. Martha grabbed hold of the console to keep her feet from betraying her. The Doctor did the same, leaning close and grinning wildly.

“Next stop Borneo!”