Jun. 24th, 2008 01:28 pm
Chapter 6: In Waiting we Learn
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clocketpatch At long last an LJ-update. Many, many, many thanks to Bewarethespork for the beta job.
Chapter 6: In waiting we learn
Martha dozes in the sickbay. She shares small, crust-cut sandwiches with Sergeant Benton, who doesn’t eat or say much but makes quite a few dopey expressions. Afterwards, she has nothing much to do. She dozes some more, drinks three cups of tea, plays cards with a few soldiers who are on break, and, finally, gets fed up with inaction and marches off to see what Jack is up to and how the Doctor is coming with the tracker.
The Doctor’s lab is a mess: test-tubes, scrap-metal, books, silk jackets thrown haphazardly over chairs, plates of food growing fungus colonies. Martha smiles. It needs a woman’s touch, she thinks, or maybe just a maid’s touch. The TARDIS is tucked into a back corner, and Martha is surprised by the amount of junk piled in front of the ship’s door. She remembers the Doctor saying that he was going to his ship to work on the tracker, but it looks like he hasn’t entered the old girl in some time.
The Doctor is alone. He stands by a cluttered table tinkering with what appears to be a wine bottle, a mousetrap, and a walkie-talkie. Martha wonders where Jack is since she hasn’t seen him around and assumed he’d come here to help or annoy. The Doctor hasn’t noticed her, and she watches him from the doorway for a few minutes. His face is pulled tight with concentration, and there is a certain deliberate tension to his movements. It’s like he holding something back; he is a jack-in-the-box ready to spring, but Martha can’t tell if the puppet in the box will be a funny clown or a scary clown.
His back is turned to his ship, and, for some reason, that is significant. Perhaps it is the light, or the paint is a greyer tone of blue, but to Martha the TARDIS looks sad. She feels like she is intruding, standing in the doorway like this, watching. She clears her throat to get the Doctor’s attention.
The change that comes over him is fascinating, and a bit frightening to watch. The tension falls out of him and some kind of fake smile pours in to take its place. It’s a clown mask, but not the hidden one. He doesn’t look up to greet Martha.
“I sent him looking for a wave-length deliberator and a ball of yarn,” he says, answering Martha’s unspoken question about Jack, “He kept breathing down my neck and asking questions best left unanswered, and there’s something about him…” the Doctor trails off. He stretches hugely and finally looks over at Martha. “He was impeding my concentration,” he finishes, “and I did warn him, though…” he scratches his chin, “…I suppose it wasn’t his fault.”
“Are you nearly done?” Martha asks. She edges into the room and to the Doctor’s side.
He grabs a sandwich off the cluttered table and takes a few thoughtful bites.
“I’ll be done by morning,” he says, “if I am not interrupted and everything goes well.”
“Oh,” says Martha. The words are soft but the ‘go away’ is clear. She takes a few steps to the door, but is stopped by the Doctor’s big, callused hand on her arm.
“You don’t need to go Martha,” he says, “the company would be nice for a time. As long as you are quiet when you need to be.”
“I can be quiet,” Martha says. After a year of running and hiding she knows silence better than a Christmas-story mouse.
“Good," says the Doctor, "Now, would you hand me that test tube from over there. The blue one?”
Martha searches and finds it. When she gives it to the Doctor he grabs it without looking, though he does rumble a thank-you. It’s taken him only a moment to become immersed in his work again and Martha isn’t sure whether she should be grateful or infuriated.
Grateful she decides, and she hands him a few more tools before he stops making requests and becomes almost automatonic in his movements. There’s an almost physical bond between him and his work, a concentration so intense Martha can feel it. She quietly — though she doubts a stampede of elephants could disturb him — clears herself a chair to sit on. Minutes, maybe hours, pass, and she is fascinated by the weave and duck of his hands and the complex maze of circuitry, lights, and chemicals he builds out of such clumsy tools.
“Ms. Shaw used to say that I only took on assistants to pass me test tubes and tell me how brilliant I am,” he says suddenly, causing Martha to jerk out of the near she's fallen into.
He’s still completely engaged in his work. His hands still shuffle multifaceted components across the table top. His voice is distant and far-away and rambling with many long pauses between words, and Martha doesn’t know if she is expected to answer. She doesn’t know if he knows that he is speaking.
“It’s generally not this messy in here,” he says. “I’ve been growing slack, letting the outside reflect the inside. Before Liz would tidy up — not a thing out of place with her. She’d pitch a fit whenever I left a dish on the table, and Jo… well, I’m not sure was a tidy person at home, but she had a strong sense of professionalism, sometimes, and seemed to think it was her job to clean up my messes, and in return I’d only leave her larger ones. Eventually they both got fed-up and left, found better places to be, and left me alone with the cleaning up."
"Do you miss them?" Martha asks, already knowing the answer.
"Sometimes, more than I let on, but they moved on with their lives and I'm happy for them. I suppose I should do the same. Your world is beautiful, but it itches and grates with its primitiveness and monotony, and the soldier mentality of this place in particular is infuriating. There’s nothing holding me here now; only this strange notion that something, or someone, is waiting for me, and so I in turn must wait for them. Time Lords get these ideas sometimes — it’s part of being part of the web — only, I wonder if this feeling is nothing but a backlash from being cut out of that web for so long. I wonder if, perhaps, I am waiting in vain. If the real truth is that I can’t bring myself to leave because I’m afraid.”
There’s a long pause, and Martha wonders if that’s the end of his confession. The Doctor starts to sing softly and Martha is struck by how beautiful his voice is; gruff and harmonious. She doesn’t understand the words but doesn’t need to. The song ends, stays ended, but after many moments of quiet he begins speaking again, startling her with how distant he sounds, disconnected from himself.
“I’ve recently betrayed the two most important women in the my life you see. The problem is that one of them went away for a time, and then when I got her back I was so eager to spend time with her that I forget about the one who had nurtured me through her absence. A wise old hermit once counselled me that a man may not serve two masters, and my predicament is that — in doing so — I have ended up losing one friend and despising the other.” He inhales deeply, and swallows so that it echoes around the room. He looks sad, lost, but only for a moment. He smiles ruefully and shakes his head.
“Enough on sad by-gones, this tracker is a tricksy little bauble and it would be rather moronic of me to muck it up by being emotional.”
He stops talking then and is silent for the rest of the night, his hands deftly constructing the tracker as Martha looks on. Eventually she becomes tired. Her eyelids droop, hover, close. And he is still working when she sleeps, but he does stop for a short time to fetch her a blanket and to gently carry her to the dusty cot he keeps hidden behind a lab bench at the room’s far end.
“Sleep,” he says, stroking her cheek, and then returns to his work, less animated now that there is no one to watch.
Martha dozes in the sickbay. She shares small, crust-cut sandwiches with Sergeant Benton, who doesn’t eat or say much but makes quite a few dopey expressions. Afterwards, she has nothing much to do. She dozes some more, drinks three cups of tea, plays cards with a few soldiers who are on break, and, finally, gets fed up with inaction and marches off to see what Jack is up to and how the Doctor is coming with the tracker.
The Doctor’s lab is a mess: test-tubes, scrap-metal, books, silk jackets thrown haphazardly over chairs, plates of food growing fungus colonies. Martha smiles. It needs a woman’s touch, she thinks, or maybe just a maid’s touch. The TARDIS is tucked into a back corner, and Martha is surprised by the amount of junk piled in front of the ship’s door. She remembers the Doctor saying that he was going to his ship to work on the tracker, but it looks like he hasn’t entered the old girl in some time.
The Doctor is alone. He stands by a cluttered table tinkering with what appears to be a wine bottle, a mousetrap, and a walkie-talkie. Martha wonders where Jack is since she hasn’t seen him around and assumed he’d come here to help or annoy. The Doctor hasn’t noticed her, and she watches him from the doorway for a few minutes. His face is pulled tight with concentration, and there is a certain deliberate tension to his movements. It’s like he holding something back; he is a jack-in-the-box ready to spring, but Martha can’t tell if the puppet in the box will be a funny clown or a scary clown.
His back is turned to his ship, and, for some reason, that is significant. Perhaps it is the light, or the paint is a greyer tone of blue, but to Martha the TARDIS looks sad. She feels like she is intruding, standing in the doorway like this, watching. She clears her throat to get the Doctor’s attention.
The change that comes over him is fascinating, and a bit frightening to watch. The tension falls out of him and some kind of fake smile pours in to take its place. It’s a clown mask, but not the hidden one. He doesn’t look up to greet Martha.
“I sent him looking for a wave-length deliberator and a ball of yarn,” he says, answering Martha’s unspoken question about Jack, “He kept breathing down my neck and asking questions best left unanswered, and there’s something about him…” the Doctor trails off. He stretches hugely and finally looks over at Martha. “He was impeding my concentration,” he finishes, “and I did warn him, though…” he scratches his chin, “…I suppose it wasn’t his fault.”
“Are you nearly done?” Martha asks. She edges into the room and to the Doctor’s side.
He grabs a sandwich off the cluttered table and takes a few thoughtful bites.
“I’ll be done by morning,” he says, “if I am not interrupted and everything goes well.”
“Oh,” says Martha. The words are soft but the ‘go away’ is clear. She takes a few steps to the door, but is stopped by the Doctor’s big, callused hand on her arm.
“You don’t need to go Martha,” he says, “the company would be nice for a time. As long as you are quiet when you need to be.”
“I can be quiet,” Martha says. After a year of running and hiding she knows silence better than a Christmas-story mouse.
“Good," says the Doctor, "Now, would you hand me that test tube from over there. The blue one?”
Martha searches and finds it. When she gives it to the Doctor he grabs it without looking, though he does rumble a thank-you. It’s taken him only a moment to become immersed in his work again and Martha isn’t sure whether she should be grateful or infuriated.
Grateful she decides, and she hands him a few more tools before he stops making requests and becomes almost automatonic in his movements. There’s an almost physical bond between him and his work, a concentration so intense Martha can feel it. She quietly — though she doubts a stampede of elephants could disturb him — clears herself a chair to sit on. Minutes, maybe hours, pass, and she is fascinated by the weave and duck of his hands and the complex maze of circuitry, lights, and chemicals he builds out of such clumsy tools.
“Ms. Shaw used to say that I only took on assistants to pass me test tubes and tell me how brilliant I am,” he says suddenly, causing Martha to jerk out of the near she's fallen into.
He’s still completely engaged in his work. His hands still shuffle multifaceted components across the table top. His voice is distant and far-away and rambling with many long pauses between words, and Martha doesn’t know if she is expected to answer. She doesn’t know if he knows that he is speaking.
“It’s generally not this messy in here,” he says. “I’ve been growing slack, letting the outside reflect the inside. Before Liz would tidy up — not a thing out of place with her. She’d pitch a fit whenever I left a dish on the table, and Jo… well, I’m not sure was a tidy person at home, but she had a strong sense of professionalism, sometimes, and seemed to think it was her job to clean up my messes, and in return I’d only leave her larger ones. Eventually they both got fed-up and left, found better places to be, and left me alone with the cleaning up."
"Do you miss them?" Martha asks, already knowing the answer.
"Sometimes, more than I let on, but they moved on with their lives and I'm happy for them. I suppose I should do the same. Your world is beautiful, but it itches and grates with its primitiveness and monotony, and the soldier mentality of this place in particular is infuriating. There’s nothing holding me here now; only this strange notion that something, or someone, is waiting for me, and so I in turn must wait for them. Time Lords get these ideas sometimes — it’s part of being part of the web — only, I wonder if this feeling is nothing but a backlash from being cut out of that web for so long. I wonder if, perhaps, I am waiting in vain. If the real truth is that I can’t bring myself to leave because I’m afraid.”
There’s a long pause, and Martha wonders if that’s the end of his confession. The Doctor starts to sing softly and Martha is struck by how beautiful his voice is; gruff and harmonious. She doesn’t understand the words but doesn’t need to. The song ends, stays ended, but after many moments of quiet he begins speaking again, startling her with how distant he sounds, disconnected from himself.
“I’ve recently betrayed the two most important women in the my life you see. The problem is that one of them went away for a time, and then when I got her back I was so eager to spend time with her that I forget about the one who had nurtured me through her absence. A wise old hermit once counselled me that a man may not serve two masters, and my predicament is that — in doing so — I have ended up losing one friend and despising the other.” He inhales deeply, and swallows so that it echoes around the room. He looks sad, lost, but only for a moment. He smiles ruefully and shakes his head.
“Enough on sad by-gones, this tracker is a tricksy little bauble and it would be rather moronic of me to muck it up by being emotional.”
He stops talking then and is silent for the rest of the night, his hands deftly constructing the tracker as Martha looks on. Eventually she becomes tired. Her eyelids droop, hover, close. And he is still working when she sleeps, but he does stop for a short time to fetch her a blanket and to gently carry her to the dusty cot he keeps hidden behind a lab bench at the room’s far end.
“Sleep,” he says, stroking her cheek, and then returns to his work, less animated now that there is no one to watch.
