prompt response: oncoming_storms 71.3 - imprisoned in a small cell
They don't send armed troops to capture her; she walks right into their trap when UNIT offers her a job that seems too good to be true just after her graduation. It's been months since the Valiant, and Martha's convinced that the entire affair has been quietly buried by the government. She's heard that Lucy killed the Master and was declared criminally insane and institutionalised. So she decides that it has to be safe to go to the interview and see what this job is all about.
And Martha finds herself in UNIT's custody, just like that.
She tries to keep track of the days and nights at first. Two weeks in, she stops eating, cataloging the symptoms of starvation one by one. The first three days are simple; food had been scarce during the Master's rule, and Martha had often given up her food so others could eat. Her forced inactivity makes it easier for her metabolism to adjust and slow down.
After a week, she can tell she's lost weight under her baggy orange jumpsuit - not much, but some. Her liver is beginning to rely on the fats stored in her body to produce energy. Her breath smells of pears (a byproduct of her liver malfunctioning), and it makes her giggle until she gasps for breath.
Three more days, and she's taken to the prisoners' clinic and administered nutrients intravenously. It's then that she loses track of time, slipping in and out of consciousness in a room without windows. It could have been a day or a week or a month until she was returned to her cell - which remains utterly unchanged. (She doesn't even know if it's her cell; perhaps there had been a vacancy in another. They have no identifying marks.)
The only way she can continue to resist is through her silence. She never speaks, not during the interrogation sessions, no matter what they say to her. They've come for her less and less frequently, and she spends her days staring at the door. She wonders if she's starting to go mad. She wonders if she'll become invisible if she remains silent, or if she could just stop eating until her body is incorporeal and can slip through the door with ease. She never wonders if the Doctor will come for her.
When her hair is lank and brittle, someone comes in and shaves it short, just like a stereotypical prison from television or films. Martha almost laughs as it falls to the floor in matted and tangled hanks, looking like ink splashed on the concrete. But it's all swept up, and she's left alone again.
She's not even called to testify at her own trial - an affair conducted entirely in secret and, she thinks in one of her lucid moments, probably completely illegally. She doesn't even know if there was anybody representing her, or what they would have argued. A plea of insanity might be accurate now; she's not sure she could pass any psychological test given to her. But she knows deep in her heart that she was in full possession of her mental faculties when she shot the Master, much as she knows that she would do it again if she had to. (Does that make her mad? Maybe it does. Maybe she was mad to think she could even save the world to begin with.)
The walls close in around her till she starts thinking of them as a second skin, as a shell keeping her (protecting her?) from the outside world. A Martha-golem, stoic and silent.
Martha doesn't exist anymore. They've told her parents that she's gone to do charitable work in Africa - her parents suspect something's wrong, of course, but there's nothing they can do about it. The people in charge of interrogating her have told her that she'll be declared dead in a few months - victim to one of the diseases found in third world countries, perhaps, or killed in an uprising. Martha Jones will be a martyr, and the girl left behind in the cells nothing but a ghost. This is her penance.
Sometimes, at night, she hears the Master's laughter echoing in her head.
Muse: Martha Jones
Fandom: Doctor Who
Words: 703
Notes: The chronology on this 'verse is getting a bit weird as I backtrack for a couple stories. If you read the other two, know that the first one comes before this and the second is quite some time after this.
And Martha finds herself in UNIT's custody, just like that.
She tries to keep track of the days and nights at first. Two weeks in, she stops eating, cataloging the symptoms of starvation one by one. The first three days are simple; food had been scarce during the Master's rule, and Martha had often given up her food so others could eat. Her forced inactivity makes it easier for her metabolism to adjust and slow down.
After a week, she can tell she's lost weight under her baggy orange jumpsuit - not much, but some. Her liver is beginning to rely on the fats stored in her body to produce energy. Her breath smells of pears (a byproduct of her liver malfunctioning), and it makes her giggle until she gasps for breath.
Three more days, and she's taken to the prisoners' clinic and administered nutrients intravenously. It's then that she loses track of time, slipping in and out of consciousness in a room without windows. It could have been a day or a week or a month until she was returned to her cell - which remains utterly unchanged. (She doesn't even know if it's her cell; perhaps there had been a vacancy in another. They have no identifying marks.)
The only way she can continue to resist is through her silence. She never speaks, not during the interrogation sessions, no matter what they say to her. They've come for her less and less frequently, and she spends her days staring at the door. She wonders if she's starting to go mad. She wonders if she'll become invisible if she remains silent, or if she could just stop eating until her body is incorporeal and can slip through the door with ease. She never wonders if the Doctor will come for her.
When her hair is lank and brittle, someone comes in and shaves it short, just like a stereotypical prison from television or films. Martha almost laughs as it falls to the floor in matted and tangled hanks, looking like ink splashed on the concrete. But it's all swept up, and she's left alone again.
She's not even called to testify at her own trial - an affair conducted entirely in secret and, she thinks in one of her lucid moments, probably completely illegally. She doesn't even know if there was anybody representing her, or what they would have argued. A plea of insanity might be accurate now; she's not sure she could pass any psychological test given to her. But she knows deep in her heart that she was in full possession of her mental faculties when she shot the Master, much as she knows that she would do it again if she had to. (Does that make her mad? Maybe it does. Maybe she was mad to think she could even save the world to begin with.)
The walls close in around her till she starts thinking of them as a second skin, as a shell keeping her (protecting her?) from the outside world. A Martha-golem, stoic and silent.
Martha doesn't exist anymore. They've told her parents that she's gone to do charitable work in Africa - her parents suspect something's wrong, of course, but there's nothing they can do about it. The people in charge of interrogating her have told her that she'll be declared dead in a few months - victim to one of the diseases found in third world countries, perhaps, or killed in an uprising. Martha Jones will be a martyr, and the girl left behind in the cells nothing but a ghost. This is her penance.
Sometimes, at night, she hears the Master's laughter echoing in her head.
Muse: Martha Jones
Fandom: Doctor Who
Words: 703
Notes: The chronology on this 'verse is getting a bit weird as I backtrack for a couple stories. If you read the other two, know that the first one comes before this and the second is quite some time after this.