You Know I'll Put Us Back Together PART 2 (Doctor Who fanfic)
Title: You Know I'll Put Us Back Together
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Pre-Martha/Ten, Pre-Donna/Jack if you squint.
Disclaimer: I'm poor, I own nothing, yadayadayada.
AN: This is because I’ve seen Martha-abused fics with Martha needing to be saved, and I’ve seen fics in which Martha’s screwed up because of the way the Doctor treated her, and this bunny popped into my head.
Summary: There are all kinds of abuse. Martha’s merely trading emotional for physical. Friendship for love. Because he says he loves her, and she believes him. Because she loved the Doctor and she had to leave. Pre-JE, post-Doctor's Daughter.
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...Part II...
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“I don’t understand,” the Doctor says, and Jack looks up from the drink he’s nursing.
“She’s hurting, Doctor. That year was hard on all of us, but for her…” Jack trails off with a sigh.
“But she’s Martha Jones,” the Doctor splutters. “She’d never let a man hurt her!”
And Jack just looks at him, silent, stone.
“What?” the Doctor asks after a moment.
“She’d never let a man hurt her?” Jack asks, voice sneering, and the Doctor blinks at him.
“That’s what I said,” he says, frowning, and Jack snorts with disgust. “What?”
“Doctor,” Jack says, irritated, “She traveled with you, didn’t she?”
“What do you mean by that?” the Doctor asks, with a definite edge to his voice, but Jack meets him glare for glare.
“You sent her to walk the world for a year. You made her take charge in 1913, ignoring her all the while, you admitted to me yourself you couldn’t keep a job in 1969, and she had to earn keep for both of you. Doctor, tell me you’ve noticed how she tries to do everything you need her to, no matter how hard on her it is?”
“Jack, I never forced her-”
“She’d call me late at night, terrified, for weeks after the Valiant, terrified her nightmares were real, needing some sort of concrete proof. And one time she called, sobbing, because she’d dreamt of the Master finding you, and when I told her to call you, to have some sort of proof you were okay, she said no, she had to be strong for you.”
“I know she’s strong,” the Doctor half-growls, and Jack shakes his head.
“She’s always been as strong as you needed her to be, Doctor. She’s always been as strong as anyone needed her to be, but you…you stretched that to its limit. She walked the earth for a year, Doctor! You gave her, what-a few words of a plan? And then sent her to ground with the world at stake on her shoulders?”
“I didn’t have a choice!” the Doctor yells, furious at himself and Jack and the entire situation. “She was the only one who could! We would’ve blazed in the night, but she was human, she was…she was…”
“She was strong, Doctor, wasn’t she? And it hurt her, but you needed her, didn’t you? So she did it, she took it, just like she always took it. And Tom might not be you, Doctor, but he tells her he loves her, tells her he needs her. He sees that she’s there.”
“So she lets him hurt her?” he snaps, and Jack shrugs uneasily.
“I imagine he apologizes and she forgives him and he promises he’ll change and she tells him she’ll stay.”
“Martha wouldn’t-”
“She’s strong and brilliant, Doctor, yes, but she’s also just a girl, a girl who needs to be needed, who’ll do anything for those she loves.”
./.
“Tell us,” Jack says, and Martha looks at the two men sitting across from her, the two men that she loves more than anything in the world.
More than Tom.
“I don’t…”
“The year,” the Doctor says, his voice barely above a whisper. “You can’t keep it locked inside. Tell us. We’re here to listen.”
“I can’t,” she says, sounding horrified at the thought of reliving all those moments, and Jack’s hand finds her good right hand, the Doctor’s ghost over the fingers poking out of the cast.
“It’s all right,” Jack says, voice soothing, and she closes her eyes wearily.
“You didn’t…you weren’t on the ground, you didn’t…you didn’t see the…I couldn’t help them,” she whispers fiercely, painfully. “I couldn’t do anything but run and hide and…I had to make them believe, even when I couldn’t anymore. I had to make them hope, had to…”
Jack and the Doctor sit quietly, watching her.
“I met Tom, in that year,” she says after a moment. “I didn’t tell you, didn’t tell anyone, not even Tish, but…he died. Saving my life. So many people died saving my life. I just…he needed…”
“What did he need?” Jack presses softly, and her shoulders hunch in a little.
“Me,” she says.
“Why did he hurt you?” the Doctor asks, and she shakes her head.
“He didn’t mean to,” she says.
“Why did he hurt you?” Jack pushes, and she tangles a hand in her hair.
“He loves me,” she says.
“Then why did he hurt you?” the Doctor asks, and she looks up at them.
“Because I let him,” she says, voice half-gasping, half-choking, and before they can say a word she bolts upstairs, the door to her bedroom slamming and locking.
./.
Donna’s house-watching downstairs, because no one really cares anymore if she beats the crap out of Tom and Jack and the Doctor quite obviously need some cool down time. Jack drags him to another bar, and the Doctor is fairly certain that alcohol is not going to solve these problems but he says nothing.
“The sad thing about this,” Jack says after a long moment of silence, looking decidedly fed up, “Is that you care about her. You just can’t seem to bring yourself to show her.”
“She knows I care about her,” the Doctor says, suddenly defensive. “All my companions know-”
“You know, you’re fantastic and brilliant and heroic but you can be a bit of a jerk sometimes.”
“Jack, she knows I care about her! I dropped everything and came running, didn’t I? I-I-I’d never let her get hurt!”
“Think about it, Doctor,” Jack says, more tired than anything else. “Do you really think she knows that? Does she know that you care about her, or that you don’t want people around you to die? Because I think she thinks she’s just another face in the crowd to you, and given what she’s done for you, for the world? That’s hardly fair.”
“Jack, she knows,” the Doctor repeats, except he’s frowning now, thinking of her yelling at John Smith, thinking of her walking away, and his throat is unpleasantly tight.
“Does she?” Jack asks softly, and when the Doctor just stares at him, silent, Jack shakes his head and walks away.
./.
The Doctor, being the Doctor, enters her house in a whirlwind, breezing past Donna without so much as a hello, resisting the temptation to sonic Martha’s door open, and instead knocking on her door.
“Martha,” he calls, “Martha Jones, please open the door.”
She opens it warily, eyes questioning, and he steps through before she can change her mind.
“Martha,” he says. “Martha Jones. Oh, I am sorry.”
“What?” she asks, startled, and moves around to face him, so she can better see his eyes.
“I should’ve told you, I just thought you…knew. Everything else you figured out or asked about and you never let me see inside and here I’m supposed to be a genius but I acted the daft idiot and Martha, dear Martha Jones, you know I’m proud of you, don’t you? You know that I care about you, don’t you?” He’s grabbed her hands in his, looking at her with such profound…hope. It actually hurts.
“Doctor, what are you doing?” she asks, and her voice is harsh and the littlest bit unsteady, and he blinks, confused.
“Martha?” he asks, hesitant.
“I don’t want your pity, Doctor. I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone,” she says, and her voice is fierce, and his hand tightens on hers.
“You’ve never needed anyone, have you?” he asks, and she blinks, startled. She swallows, but stays silent as he leans closer. “You go out into the world and you don’t ask anything of anyone. You make it on your one.” His eyes scan her face, and she forces herself not to look away, even when he sighs and his features soften. “You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone, Martha,” he says. “You’re brilliant. You’ve always been brilliant.”
“Doctor,” she whispers, and her voice is pained, “Doctor, don’t do this, please don’t this.”
“You don’t always have to be so strong,” he says, and his voice is low, and she closes her eyes.
“I do,” she breathes. “I really do. Everybody needs…everybody’s expecting…”
“We care about,” the Doctor cuts in. “We want you to be happy. That’s all we need, Martha.”
“He just…he kept saying he needed me, he loved me, he…”
“I know,” he says, his voice soft, and unexpectedly she pulls away, shoving him hard in the chest.
“Get out!” she yells, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. Roughly she scrubs them away with her good hand. “Get out,” she repeats, her voice a little more calm, and with a calm sort of determination, he shakes his head.
“No,” he says.
“I’m fine,” she says, and despite the fact that she tries to be cutting it ends in a question.
“You’re not fine,” he says, and she worries her lip with her teeth.
“He loved me, and I couldn’t even make him happy. I can’t…I can’t make anyone happy, I just…I keep trying but I can’t ever manage to…to…” she trails off, voice unsteady, looking past him, and he edges closer.
“If he wasn’t happy with you, then he was an idiot,” the Doctor says, squeezing her shoulder with one hand, brushing the hair out of her face with the other.
“You weren’t happy with me,” she says, not even bitter anymore, and he closes his eyes briefly, wishing he knew what to say to make this all better.
“I’m not ever happy, Martha,” he says at last. “But I was happier with you than without you. Donna’s fantastic in her own way, and I’d miss her too, but there’s a Martha-shaped hole in the TARDIS.”
Immediately he mentally curses himself out, remembering what Jack had said about her being vulnerable to suggestion, and bending to others needs.
“I just want you to be happy,” he says quickly, and she scoffs. “Martha,” he says, moving closer, and she hits him, hard, in the chest.
“I can’t be happy!” she says (screams), hitting him again. “I don’t remember how to be happy, Doctor!”
“Martha,” he says, worried about her broken ribs, her left wrist, and warily he catches her hands as she tries to hit him again.
“Just leave me alone,” she says, still furious.
“Martha,” he says, and she pulls against him, and he’s afraid to loosen his hands in case she gets away, afraid to tighten them in case he hurts her. “Martha,” he pleads, and still she pulls away. “Martha,” he begs, and finally she stills against him, her head resting against his shoulder.
“I told you to go away,” she says, and her voice is ragged, and the Doctor doesn’t dare let go of her hands. “I want you to go away,” she says, and her voice is fierce, and the Doctor’s muscles tighten in anticipation.
“But then,” she whispers, and now her voice is just…empty. “But then, no one ever really cares about what I want.”
“Martha,” he says, the word melting into her hair, and without thought he shifts and enfolds her in his arms, and still she stands, cold and stiff and unyielding.
Bend.
Almost against her will, a choked sob escapes, her shoulders tightening in on themselves. Silence, then, for a long moment, and then a barely contained shudder, and the Doctor holds her tighter, pulling her into him, knowing he must almost be hurting her, but her fingers tighten in his jacket, pushing into his skin, and another sob escapes, and her entire form is trembling against his, and now she can’t stop, it’s too late, and she sinks into him, tears staining his front, all control gone, just emotion. Pure emotion. Sorrow and rage and hate and fear and regret.
He holds her.
It’s all he can do.
Minutes or hours later, he’s practically holding her up, so he sinks carefully to the ground. She tightens a little when he pulls her close against him, but she’s human and he’s Time Lord and they both know she’s not winning this one.
She falls asleep with him holding her.
When she wakes up, he’s still holding her, long fingers sliding her hair out of her face, dark eyes troubled.
“I’m sorry,” she says, looking embarrassed, and she tries to pull away. He doesn’t let go. “Doctor…” she says, eyebrow raised, but he just sits there watching her.
“Your eye looks better,” he says.
“That’s good,” she says, sounding almost shy, and the Doctor pulls her a little closer to him.
“How can I make you happy?” he asks, voice pitched-low, and she blinks.
“I am happy,” she says, and something like distress passes over his face.
./.
“Jack,” the Doctor says. “I’m going to take you away with me.”
Jack smirks. “I’ve been waiting years for you to come to your senses,” he says, eyebrows wiggling. The Doctor attempts to keep a straight face, while Jack smiles knowingly.
“I’m going to make Martha better,” the Doctor says. “I’m going to try to get her agree to come away. I think she’ll want you to come.”
“And you want me to come so that you don’t completely screw everything up again?” Jack asks, and the Doctor winces.
“Something like that.”
Jack sort of smiles at the admission, and then he nods. “I’ve always been at your beck and call, Doctor. Hers too.”
./.
The Doctor finds her sitting on the floor of her bedroom, back pressed tightly to the wall, obviously upset.
“Martha,” he says, voice low. “What do you need?”
She blinks heavy eyes and tries to frown up at him. “What?”
“Everything you’ve said, your entire life, your family, Tom…you stayed with them, you helped them, because they needed you. Even me, you walked away from because you thought I needed something else, someone else. That’s no way to live, Martha. What do you need?”
“What do I need?”
“What do you need, Martha Jones,” the Doctor repeats gently, and she frowns, struggling with the question, struggling to give him an answer.
“I don’t know,” she whispers at last. “I don’t know.” She pulls her legs into her chest, buries her face in them, arms around her head. “I don’t know anything anymore,” she murmurs into her clothes.
“What do you want, then?” he asks, still trying to be gentle, and she lets out a reluctant sob.
“Time,” she breathes. “Space. Freedom. Escape.”
“We could take a trip,” he offers, coaxing her head up with a finger to her chin. “I never did give you a trip without running and hiding and I always did depend on you too much.”
“I’m not some weak girl,” she says fiercely, despite the tears running down her cheeks, and he smiles sadly.
“You’ve never been weak,” he says softly. “I rather think that was part of the problem. Too much strength and too good at hiding everything away.”
“Doctor?” she asks, hesitant, and he finds her good hand, threads his fingers through hers.
“There are beaches where the sand is white and soft and the ocean is blue and goes on forever,” he says, scooting over next to her so they’re both leaning against the wall, hand-in-hand. “We’ll take a vacation. A vacation that never has to end,” he adds, and she closes her eyes at the delicious thought, and then almost immediately her face falls.
“Mum and Tish-”
“I have a time machine,” he says, smiling sadly. “Let go of your responsibilities for a bit, Martha. Give yourself a bit of freedom.”
She’s still frowning, but reluctantly she relaxes back into the wall. “A little vacation would be nice,” she admits slowly. And then she smirks a little, although the effort is a bit more apparent than it should be. “Although Jack will just end up ogling you the entire time.”
“Oh, is Jack invited?” the Doctor asks, eyebrow raised. “Maybe it’s you who’s wanting to ogle our friend the Captain, eh?”
“Donna will keep him in line,” she suggests, “If she’s done vacationing with her family?”
“You’ll be okay with both of them there?” he asks, hoping he’s being tactful enough but worried that once again she’s looking to make other people happy, or that she’s simply too uncomfortable to be alone with him. She appears to hear something entirely different.
“They’ll probably be busy,” she says, worrying her lip a little with her teeth, and he squeezes her hand.
“They’ll want to be there for you, if that’s what you want,” he says, trying for patience.
“I want…” she says, and then exhales sharply. “I want my family.” He looks a bit crestfallen, and starts to pull back, and she blinks. “My TARDIS family,” she adds, quickly, and at that he grins. He pulls her tightly into a hug, and she smiles back at him.
“Then that, he says, ever so determined, “Is precisely what you’ll get.”
./.
The hum of the TARDIS in comforting, because it speaks of peace and love and time and faith and hope, always hope, stretching through the millennia, changing and molding and breathing and life goes on.
Martha and the Doctor and Donna and Jack are curled up on one of those large couches, a half-sprawled tangle of limbs and happiness, watching one of those terrible old sci-fi movies, and the Doctor keeps commenting on the complete inaccuracy, and Donna and Jack keep oohing and aahing when hot men walk on the screen, and Donna and Martha keep rolling their eyes and mouthing ‘men’ as the Doctor and Jack bicker back and forth about silly things, and Jack is shamelessly flirting with everyone, and Martha sits, so full of love and happiness and it really isn’t fair to everyone else.
“Biscuit?” the Doctor offers her, except the looks in his eyes lets her know precisely what he’s offering, and what it means, and she smiles through suddenly damp eyes.
“Yes please,” she says, and he smiles back, so gentle, his fingers finding hers.
“Ooh, I love this part!” Donna smirks, nudging Martha as a quite well-built man enters stage left, and Martha laughs as Jack playfully runs a hand through the Doctor’s precious hair.
“So do I,” Martha says softly. “So do I.”
Finis
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AN: So. That was a long one-shot for me. So I love Martha, and ended up unable to resist the allure of evil!Tom. So this is my take on that.
Plus, I love Donna and Jack. Like, A LOT. You can probably tell.