prompt response: oncoming_storms 123.1 - companion
Some things about being a member of UNIT, Martha reflected as she admired the view of the Swiss Alps while plucking chocolates from a box, weren't quite so bad. Like when you had to attend Important Top-Secret Meetings in Geneva and got put up in four-star hotels, for example, and the expense report was classified so nobody could actually see what you spent money on.
"Room service!" someone called from the hallway, accompanying this with a rap on Martha's door. She frowned slightly; she hadn't ordered room service yet today. She got up from the bed, making sure the sash on her robe was fastened tightly around her waist, and peered through the peephole.
"I didn't order anything," she replied through the door, eyeing the girl in what was definitely not a maid's uniform for the hotel she was currently at. (In fact, it looked rather more like, well, a sexy French maid costume, given the amount of very long leg and thigh she could see.)
"Er, hold on." Martha could barely make out the sounds of the girl conferring with someone else. "Well, that was a rubbish plan. What do we do now?" She paused for a moment, then raised her voice again. "Complimentary room service? It's got...delicious pastries? We don't actually have any pastries, you know."
Well, if anybody wanted to harm her, they'd certainly sent a rank amateur to do the job. Martha rolled her eyes, leaning against the doorframe. "Are they delicious pastries with a side of arsenic, perhaps?" She wasn't sure who still used arsenic to poison people in this day and age, actually.
"Look, the Earth's going to end before she opens the bloody door," the girl hissed, and Martha thought that she would really have to look into a hotel with better soundproofing next time.
"It's certainly going to if she doesn't - and yes, Doctor Jones, I know you're eavesdropping at the door."
"Just...you know, open it!" Martha had a sense that this wasn't directed at her, but at the other person in the corridor.
"So how's a Scot end up working at a hotel in Switzerland, anyway?" Martha asked, rolling her eyes a little.
"Oh, for - Martha, just let us in already!" The man in the hallway, who she suspected was deliberately standing where he couldn't be seen through the peephole, sounded thoroughly exasperated - and entirely unfamiliar. "You're being ridiculous about this."
She folded her arms and glowered at the door. Nobody told her she was being ridiculous, particularly not strangers who were calling her by her first name and offering her imaginary poisoned pastries. "I'm not even dressed," she retorted. "If you're going to kidnap me, I'm going to at least put on some clothes first." Well, actually, she would ring UNIT's security detail in the lobby, but it was a minor sort of detail.
There was a dull thunk that sounded like someone hitting their head against the wall. "Now you're just paranoid," he muttered.
A healthy dose of paranoia had kept her from getting captured during the Year That Wasn't - and being an operative for a paramilitary organisation that protected the planet from aliens wasn't the safest line of work, either. She pulled her mobile out of the pocket of her robe, tapping through her list of contacts, when it suddenly sparked and went black - just as the door swung open.
The redhead in the corridor didn't look especially happy - well, Martha wouldn't have been, either, if she'd been forced to wear anything like that. "All right, she's out, can I go change now?"
"I thought this sort of thing was your career, Pond." The man next to the door looked to be about her age - more a pretentious graduate student at Oxford than would-be kidnapper-slash-assassin. Martha was fairly certain that not even undercover criminals wore tweed suits and bowties.
"It's a job, and I just...it's different, all right?" She grabbed a bag from the bottom of their trolley (at least they'd got that part of their ruse right) and pushed past Martha into her room, heading straight for the toilet.
"Sorry," he apologised, shrugging. "You know the Scots, they haven't got any manners."
"Oi!" came a muffled protest from the bathroom.
Martha closed her eyes, leaning against the doorframe; she was beginning to get one hell of a headache.
"Tea! I think we could all do with a nice cup of tea, don't you, Martha?" And now her room was quite thoroughly invaded - but potential killers rarely headed for the kettle first. "Amy, I need to fill the kettle." The door opened a crack and he passed the kettle through - Martha, on the other hand, was definitely contemplating the minibar.
"All right," she said finally, after counting to ten in a few different languages and still incapable of doing anything other than slamming the door shut. "Who the hell are you?"
And then Martha really looked at him. Oh, God, she knew that kicked-puppy look in his eyes, would've known it anywhere, and she mentally ratcheted her estimate up to half the contents of the minibar and a bottle of paracetamol. And she really needed to put some clothes on - it wasn't that she was completely naked under the robe, but she certainly felt it.
"Seriously? You can't possibly be any older than I am." She gave the Doctor a disapproving look that she'd learnt from her mother.
"It's still me, Martha," he said patiently. "Just...a different me, that's all."
"One that's having a midlife crisis," she muttered under her breath. "Which would explain the barely-legal ginger."
The Doctor gave her his own Disapproving Look - one that even Francine would've had to admit was quite good - and Martha quailed a little under his gaze. Apparently this regeneration was rather a more no-nonsense sort than her Doctor. (She'd read all about his regenerations in the UNIT files - and thought the one in the cape was rather dashing, if entirely too old - and felt fairly qualified to discuss such things. She'd also got together for tea and biscuits with a number of the Doctor's other former assistants, which had inevitably led to a rather astonishing amount of gossip.) "Right. Just a friend." She really hoped Amy wasn't like her - she would, she thought, have to pull her aside for a private talk before they left. Well, sometime in between having tea and saving the world.
"You didn't drop in and act all dodgy just for tea, did you?" she asked suspiciously. "Because you've certainly never seemed inclined to keep in touch before - not even a postcard or an email or a text. You didn't even RSVP to the wedding!"
He looked shifty for a moment. "Knowing it wouldn't happen doesn't count as a proper answer, does it? I actually bought a present and everything, I just sort of got...well, I was a bit preoccupied with the regeneration business, the TARDIS got all out of sorts, then I had to show Amy around, ran into some Daleks trying to manipulate Winston Churchill - look, you know how it is. At least I bought you a very nice interdimensional toaster - if I can find it in the TARDIS."
She did know how it was, actually; part of her was nostalgic for the life of an itinerant time-traveller, and part of her was just as glad she'd left it behind. Martha glanced at Amy as she emerged from the toilet - the petty bit of her mind noted that her skirt was just as short as the one she'd been wearing before, and she wondered when she'd got so old. Maybe it just had something to do with the Doctor being - well, looking - younger now.
"Anyway," he continued, pouring tea into cups for the three of them, "sorry for being a bit secretive about it all, but you've got a bit of a problem with an infestation in UNIT - and an infiltration, actually, which is what happens when hexipedal blattopterans decide to take over."
"He means giant alien cockroaches," Amy whispered helpfully. "I told him to call a galactic exterminator, but, well-"
"I thought I'd use my old contacts here on Earth," the Doctor interrupted smoothly, as if he hadn't just flinched at Amy's use of the word 'exterminator'. "Which means you! I mean, it was a bit coincidental, you being in Geneva and all, but quite useful."
"Hold on." Amy furrowed her brow in confusion. "If she knows you, why didn't she recognise you? Isn't that a bit weird?"
"Nnnoooot exactly. Didn't I explain regeneration to you? I could've sworn I did. Well, I thought you knew, since you met me while I was still changing."
"I was seven! You just came in, made a mess of the house, fixed the crack in my wall, and disappeared for twelve years." From Amy's tone of voice, Martha suspected this was a sore subject between the two. "Fish custard doesn't exactly explain much."
"Right, well, instead of dying, my species initiates a drastic cellular reformation - all my cells literally regenerate, and I become a different person. Different face, different personality -"
"Different screwdriver," Amy finished, nodding sagely. "So Martha..."
"Travelled with me a few years ago." He favoured Martha with a fond smile. "Met Shakespeare, actually."
"Who tried to come on to me," Martha told Amy. "And him."
"Yes, well." The Doctor fidgeted a little. "Enough explaining, let's talk about giant cockroaches, eh?"
"Wait, wait, wait." Amy held up a hand in protest. "So you do this all the time, do you? Just...pick people up and...do what you did with me? Is it some sort of hobby for you, being an intergalactic tour guide?" She looked bewildered and, Martha thought, a little angry and hurt, not that she blamed her one bit.
"I get lonely." He looked down into his teacup for a long moment. "I like having someone with me, all you brilliant humans with your brilliant human ways of seeing the universe. Nothing wrong with that, is there, Amelia? Being alone in the TARDIS is a bit like being left at home alone when you're seven." He shrugged. "The voices from the cracks in the walls would drive you mad. So I have someone to fill the silence. And you, Pond, talk enough for five people."
"I'm surprised she can get a word in edgewise," Martha remarked, and the Doctor looked up and smiled at her - not the manic grin she'd been used to, but one that she still recognised as being uniquely him.
**
"I feel like...some sort of pet or something," Amy told Martha later. The Doctor was busy in the lab, and the two women had been left to their own devices. "It's bad enough that he still thinks I'm seven sometimes, but - I dunno, Martha. I spent twelve years waiting for him to come back for me - and when he did, he left again."
Martha was pretty sure that running around after the Doctor wasn't exactly the safest life for a small child, but wisely remained silent on the subject. She could tell that Amy clearly had some sort of feelings for the Doctor; she could recognise the symptoms, having experienced it herself for so long. (She was still half in love with him - well, with the old Doctor; she wasn't sure about this new one yet.)
"Look, Amy," she began. "it's amazing, this sort of life. I won't deny that. And the Doctor, well, he's got a bit of a magnetic personality - you'll never want to leave. Nobody ever does."
"So he's got everybody else locked in rooms in the TARDIS, then?" Amy rolled her eyes. "Lucky you, managing to escape."
This was getting a bit awkward - Martha was clearly a bit pants at giving advice. "Thing is, Amy, sometimes things don't go as smoothly as they ought. It's dangerous, being with the Doctor. Dangerous and exciting and...well, it'll change you. Maybe you won't notice it, but everybody around you will."
Amy still looked unimpressed. "Yeah, all right, then. What's your point, Martha?"
The point, she wanted to say, was in Rose, trapped in an alternate universe, or Jack, unable to die, or in the scars on her back and everything her family had gone through. "Point is, not everybody chooses to leave. Some people have their choices made for them. And growing attached to the Doctor - it's just as dangerous, Amy. At the end of the day, he's not human. He's lived for centuries - he's the last of his entire species. He'll live for centuries, watch the lot of us wither and die, and it's on his mind all the time. He's lost more than any of us can ever imagine, and every loss breaks his hearts."
"So you've got to know when to walk away," she continued. "It'll hurt like hell, but you'll know when it's for the best for both of you. Maybe you won't want to believe it - but we all love the Doctor, every one of us, in our own ways, and you won't be the first to end up heartbroken, trust me." Martha closed her eyes for a moment; it still hurt her, leaving the Doctor, and she knew she'd made the right choice. It had been the only choice, as far as she was concerned.
"I left the night before my wedding," Amy told her. "No offence, Martha, but your advice would've been timed better about two years ago."
"You aren't wearing an engagement ring." To Martha, that spoke volumes - mainly that she was running away from getting married. "I bet he's a great bloke, your fiance, and I'm sure you love him. But at the end of the day, you've still run off to be with the Doctor, haven't you?"
"I'll be back before the morning," she protested. "It's sort of like my hen night - you know, only with more space whales and not as many strippers."
"And you'll have changed."
"God, are you always so smug?" Amy scoffed. "Maybe I already know I can't have a relationship with him - I'm not thick, all right? And you're rubbish at this whole heart-to-heart girl talk thing."
"Look, just don't say I didn't warn you, all right?" Martha threw her hands up in the air. She liked Amy, really, but she was proving impossible to deal with. "I'm going to go see if the Doctor needs any help.
"'Course you are," Amy muttered as she strode off.
(to hopefully be continued)
Character: Martha Jones
Fandom: Doctor Who
Words: 2483 (thank you for getting carried away, snarky muses)
"Room service!" someone called from the hallway, accompanying this with a rap on Martha's door. She frowned slightly; she hadn't ordered room service yet today. She got up from the bed, making sure the sash on her robe was fastened tightly around her waist, and peered through the peephole.
"I didn't order anything," she replied through the door, eyeing the girl in what was definitely not a maid's uniform for the hotel she was currently at. (In fact, it looked rather more like, well, a sexy French maid costume, given the amount of very long leg and thigh she could see.)
"Er, hold on." Martha could barely make out the sounds of the girl conferring with someone else. "Well, that was a rubbish plan. What do we do now?" She paused for a moment, then raised her voice again. "Complimentary room service? It's got...delicious pastries? We don't actually have any pastries, you know."
Well, if anybody wanted to harm her, they'd certainly sent a rank amateur to do the job. Martha rolled her eyes, leaning against the doorframe. "Are they delicious pastries with a side of arsenic, perhaps?" She wasn't sure who still used arsenic to poison people in this day and age, actually.
"Look, the Earth's going to end before she opens the bloody door," the girl hissed, and Martha thought that she would really have to look into a hotel with better soundproofing next time.
"It's certainly going to if she doesn't - and yes, Doctor Jones, I know you're eavesdropping at the door."
"Just...you know, open it!" Martha had a sense that this wasn't directed at her, but at the other person in the corridor.
"So how's a Scot end up working at a hotel in Switzerland, anyway?" Martha asked, rolling her eyes a little.
"Oh, for - Martha, just let us in already!" The man in the hallway, who she suspected was deliberately standing where he couldn't be seen through the peephole, sounded thoroughly exasperated - and entirely unfamiliar. "You're being ridiculous about this."
She folded her arms and glowered at the door. Nobody told her she was being ridiculous, particularly not strangers who were calling her by her first name and offering her imaginary poisoned pastries. "I'm not even dressed," she retorted. "If you're going to kidnap me, I'm going to at least put on some clothes first." Well, actually, she would ring UNIT's security detail in the lobby, but it was a minor sort of detail.
There was a dull thunk that sounded like someone hitting their head against the wall. "Now you're just paranoid," he muttered.
A healthy dose of paranoia had kept her from getting captured during the Year That Wasn't - and being an operative for a paramilitary organisation that protected the planet from aliens wasn't the safest line of work, either. She pulled her mobile out of the pocket of her robe, tapping through her list of contacts, when it suddenly sparked and went black - just as the door swung open.
The redhead in the corridor didn't look especially happy - well, Martha wouldn't have been, either, if she'd been forced to wear anything like that. "All right, she's out, can I go change now?"
"I thought this sort of thing was your career, Pond." The man next to the door looked to be about her age - more a pretentious graduate student at Oxford than would-be kidnapper-slash-assassin. Martha was fairly certain that not even undercover criminals wore tweed suits and bowties.
"It's a job, and I just...it's different, all right?" She grabbed a bag from the bottom of their trolley (at least they'd got that part of their ruse right) and pushed past Martha into her room, heading straight for the toilet.
"Sorry," he apologised, shrugging. "You know the Scots, they haven't got any manners."
"Oi!" came a muffled protest from the bathroom.
Martha closed her eyes, leaning against the doorframe; she was beginning to get one hell of a headache.
"Tea! I think we could all do with a nice cup of tea, don't you, Martha?" And now her room was quite thoroughly invaded - but potential killers rarely headed for the kettle first. "Amy, I need to fill the kettle." The door opened a crack and he passed the kettle through - Martha, on the other hand, was definitely contemplating the minibar.
"All right," she said finally, after counting to ten in a few different languages and still incapable of doing anything other than slamming the door shut. "Who the hell are you?"
And then Martha really looked at him. Oh, God, she knew that kicked-puppy look in his eyes, would've known it anywhere, and she mentally ratcheted her estimate up to half the contents of the minibar and a bottle of paracetamol. And she really needed to put some clothes on - it wasn't that she was completely naked under the robe, but she certainly felt it.
"Seriously? You can't possibly be any older than I am." She gave the Doctor a disapproving look that she'd learnt from her mother.
"It's still me, Martha," he said patiently. "Just...a different me, that's all."
"One that's having a midlife crisis," she muttered under her breath. "Which would explain the barely-legal ginger."
The Doctor gave her his own Disapproving Look - one that even Francine would've had to admit was quite good - and Martha quailed a little under his gaze. Apparently this regeneration was rather a more no-nonsense sort than her Doctor. (She'd read all about his regenerations in the UNIT files - and thought the one in the cape was rather dashing, if entirely too old - and felt fairly qualified to discuss such things. She'd also got together for tea and biscuits with a number of the Doctor's other former assistants, which had inevitably led to a rather astonishing amount of gossip.) "Right. Just a friend." She really hoped Amy wasn't like her - she would, she thought, have to pull her aside for a private talk before they left. Well, sometime in between having tea and saving the world.
"You didn't drop in and act all dodgy just for tea, did you?" she asked suspiciously. "Because you've certainly never seemed inclined to keep in touch before - not even a postcard or an email or a text. You didn't even RSVP to the wedding!"
He looked shifty for a moment. "Knowing it wouldn't happen doesn't count as a proper answer, does it? I actually bought a present and everything, I just sort of got...well, I was a bit preoccupied with the regeneration business, the TARDIS got all out of sorts, then I had to show Amy around, ran into some Daleks trying to manipulate Winston Churchill - look, you know how it is. At least I bought you a very nice interdimensional toaster - if I can find it in the TARDIS."
She did know how it was, actually; part of her was nostalgic for the life of an itinerant time-traveller, and part of her was just as glad she'd left it behind. Martha glanced at Amy as she emerged from the toilet - the petty bit of her mind noted that her skirt was just as short as the one she'd been wearing before, and she wondered when she'd got so old. Maybe it just had something to do with the Doctor being - well, looking - younger now.
"Anyway," he continued, pouring tea into cups for the three of them, "sorry for being a bit secretive about it all, but you've got a bit of a problem with an infestation in UNIT - and an infiltration, actually, which is what happens when hexipedal blattopterans decide to take over."
"He means giant alien cockroaches," Amy whispered helpfully. "I told him to call a galactic exterminator, but, well-"
"I thought I'd use my old contacts here on Earth," the Doctor interrupted smoothly, as if he hadn't just flinched at Amy's use of the word 'exterminator'. "Which means you! I mean, it was a bit coincidental, you being in Geneva and all, but quite useful."
"Hold on." Amy furrowed her brow in confusion. "If she knows you, why didn't she recognise you? Isn't that a bit weird?"
"Nnnoooot exactly. Didn't I explain regeneration to you? I could've sworn I did. Well, I thought you knew, since you met me while I was still changing."
"I was seven! You just came in, made a mess of the house, fixed the crack in my wall, and disappeared for twelve years." From Amy's tone of voice, Martha suspected this was a sore subject between the two. "Fish custard doesn't exactly explain much."
"Right, well, instead of dying, my species initiates a drastic cellular reformation - all my cells literally regenerate, and I become a different person. Different face, different personality -"
"Different screwdriver," Amy finished, nodding sagely. "So Martha..."
"Travelled with me a few years ago." He favoured Martha with a fond smile. "Met Shakespeare, actually."
"Who tried to come on to me," Martha told Amy. "And him."
"Yes, well." The Doctor fidgeted a little. "Enough explaining, let's talk about giant cockroaches, eh?"
"Wait, wait, wait." Amy held up a hand in protest. "So you do this all the time, do you? Just...pick people up and...do what you did with me? Is it some sort of hobby for you, being an intergalactic tour guide?" She looked bewildered and, Martha thought, a little angry and hurt, not that she blamed her one bit.
"I get lonely." He looked down into his teacup for a long moment. "I like having someone with me, all you brilliant humans with your brilliant human ways of seeing the universe. Nothing wrong with that, is there, Amelia? Being alone in the TARDIS is a bit like being left at home alone when you're seven." He shrugged. "The voices from the cracks in the walls would drive you mad. So I have someone to fill the silence. And you, Pond, talk enough for five people."
"I'm surprised she can get a word in edgewise," Martha remarked, and the Doctor looked up and smiled at her - not the manic grin she'd been used to, but one that she still recognised as being uniquely him.
**
"I feel like...some sort of pet or something," Amy told Martha later. The Doctor was busy in the lab, and the two women had been left to their own devices. "It's bad enough that he still thinks I'm seven sometimes, but - I dunno, Martha. I spent twelve years waiting for him to come back for me - and when he did, he left again."
Martha was pretty sure that running around after the Doctor wasn't exactly the safest life for a small child, but wisely remained silent on the subject. She could tell that Amy clearly had some sort of feelings for the Doctor; she could recognise the symptoms, having experienced it herself for so long. (She was still half in love with him - well, with the old Doctor; she wasn't sure about this new one yet.)
"Look, Amy," she began. "it's amazing, this sort of life. I won't deny that. And the Doctor, well, he's got a bit of a magnetic personality - you'll never want to leave. Nobody ever does."
"So he's got everybody else locked in rooms in the TARDIS, then?" Amy rolled her eyes. "Lucky you, managing to escape."
This was getting a bit awkward - Martha was clearly a bit pants at giving advice. "Thing is, Amy, sometimes things don't go as smoothly as they ought. It's dangerous, being with the Doctor. Dangerous and exciting and...well, it'll change you. Maybe you won't notice it, but everybody around you will."
Amy still looked unimpressed. "Yeah, all right, then. What's your point, Martha?"
The point, she wanted to say, was in Rose, trapped in an alternate universe, or Jack, unable to die, or in the scars on her back and everything her family had gone through. "Point is, not everybody chooses to leave. Some people have their choices made for them. And growing attached to the Doctor - it's just as dangerous, Amy. At the end of the day, he's not human. He's lived for centuries - he's the last of his entire species. He'll live for centuries, watch the lot of us wither and die, and it's on his mind all the time. He's lost more than any of us can ever imagine, and every loss breaks his hearts."
"So you've got to know when to walk away," she continued. "It'll hurt like hell, but you'll know when it's for the best for both of you. Maybe you won't want to believe it - but we all love the Doctor, every one of us, in our own ways, and you won't be the first to end up heartbroken, trust me." Martha closed her eyes for a moment; it still hurt her, leaving the Doctor, and she knew she'd made the right choice. It had been the only choice, as far as she was concerned.
"I left the night before my wedding," Amy told her. "No offence, Martha, but your advice would've been timed better about two years ago."
"You aren't wearing an engagement ring." To Martha, that spoke volumes - mainly that she was running away from getting married. "I bet he's a great bloke, your fiance, and I'm sure you love him. But at the end of the day, you've still run off to be with the Doctor, haven't you?"
"I'll be back before the morning," she protested. "It's sort of like my hen night - you know, only with more space whales and not as many strippers."
"And you'll have changed."
"God, are you always so smug?" Amy scoffed. "Maybe I already know I can't have a relationship with him - I'm not thick, all right? And you're rubbish at this whole heart-to-heart girl talk thing."
"Look, just don't say I didn't warn you, all right?" Martha threw her hands up in the air. She liked Amy, really, but she was proving impossible to deal with. "I'm going to go see if the Doctor needs any help.
"'Course you are," Amy muttered as she strode off.
(to hopefully be continued)
Character: Martha Jones
Fandom: Doctor Who
Words: 2483 (thank you for getting carried away, snarky muses)