fic:Scenes of a Half-Hearted Betrayal (Doctor Who)

[intrikate88]

Title: Scenes of a Half-Hearted Betrayal
Author: intrikate88
Rating: PG13? Language. Angst.
Word Count: 2,453
Spoilers: for "Utopia"
A/N: Based on the ideas put forth in this post. Written to deal with waiting for my Sound of Drums torrent to finish. (7.7%, I will die of suspense, actually.) Some scenes illustrating how Martha might become the Master's companion and why. Semi-serious, with a generous helping of crunchy satire bits.

I actually have no idea about any of it, it's pretty random. It's time travel so the scenes jump around. I have no idea how the two TARDISes are happening, IT'S 'COS OF QUAUNTUM JUST ACCEPT IT. There will probably be more, if I don't get bored. After all, Martha needs to buy some villainous knickers to wear for her dear Saxy. Also I want her to hook up humourously with Mickey Smith, we'll see.

They had sealed off the futurekind, blockading themselves in with as much technology as they could so the Doctor and Jack could go about creating a vortex manipulator (probably out of shiny twine, glue made from a plate of eggs Professor Yana had left behind the computer for three weeks, and half of a broken mirror.) Martha stood to one side, feeling unhelpful and awkwardly useless, until the Doctor snapped at her to go look through the data disks and see if there was anything useful.

 

“But I don’t even know what to look for!” she wailed.

 

“With an attitude like that, I hope Jack’s your only patient. Sure, he’d die before you ever started treatment, but at least he’d resuscitate without you needing to figure out how to work the paddles. Figure it out!” The Doctor’s eyes were darkly blazing. Martha had seen him do very violent things in this sort of mood.

 

So, no less enlightened but very much intimidated, Martha scampered back to the computer, her eyes prickling. She loaded one disk after another, the TARDIS in her head translating the strange language into words she could understand. There were records; history of the planet, it seemed, on one, and on another, blueprints for the rocket and the base. She tried to ignore the howling she could hear from the above hallways. So far, it seemed like they had a whole level to themselves. But they wouldn’t hold the futurekind off forever, and unless the Master, as the Doctor had called him, came back and returned the TARDIS, they were stuck, there at the end of the universe.

 

Martha set her face. They had gotten through worse.

 

Well, strictly speaking, they hadn’t. But it helped to pretend that they had.

 

“I found something,” she called out to the two men. They looked up. “It… it looks like a modified version of Einstein’s equation. I’m rubbish with physics, really, but it might be useful.”

 

The Doctor bounded across the room to look. He took only a moment’s glance at it. “Brilliant, Martha, that’ll help a lot.” He looked around the room. “Printer over there, I’ll need to look at that while building this thing, it’s too big to haul over.” At her blank look, he pointed to the keyboard. “Really, Martha, the print key could not be more obvious.”

 

And indeed, there was a red button that said Print. Martha felt the embarrassed flush creeping up towards her face. The Doctor raced back towards the creation taking slow form on the floor, and Martha pushed the print button, then hit ‘enter’ when a message popped up on the screen, without looking at it, and wondered if there was any sort of internet, and if there was even any point in wondering if she could log into Myspace and update her blog. Sometimes she wondered why she bothered with it. She was a doctor, not a writer, but it seemed like she should keep some record of all the adventures she was having.

 

The computer screen went blank.

 

Martha wrinkled her forehead. “What?”

 

“Where’s that printoff, Martha? I need it…” the Doctor called.

 

“I- I’m not sure,” Martha said, and struggled to remember what she had hit ‘enter’ to confirm. Really fatal error, her memory falteringly informed her. Really, really fatal. As in, your hard drive is not pining for the fjords, and is in fact only standing up because it has been nailed to the perch. This is an ex-hard drive. Click okay to format everything and re-create from start? “Uh, Doctor?”

 

“Yes, Martha?!”

 

“I think I erased it.”

 

The two of them stared at each other for a moment. The Doctor raced over to the computer, hitting keys and murmuring, “No, no, no…” He turned to Martha, his eyes blazing even more than before. “It’s been a very long time since I called someone a stupid ape, but you are really trying for the title. That was our best chance of getting out of here.”

 

“I’m sorry! I wasn’t paying attention and I hit the button without thinking!”

 

“What were you thinking of? Your Myspace? My TARDIS is stolen and this is the best help I can get?”

 

“Well, I’m sorry for not being Rose and not knowing what to do all the time!” Martha snapped.

 

“I’d settle for you knowing what to do, ever!”

 

They stood, glaring, for a very long five seconds.

 

“Go check the doors, make sure the locks aren’t slipping,” the Doctor ordered, turning away from her. “I’ll see if I can remember all of that really useful equation you deleted.”

 

* * *

 

“You know,” said Jack, as Martha nodded and turned before her tears could be seen, and scuttled out the door, “she’s not a terrible girl.”

 

“I know,” said the Doctor noncommittally.

 

“I mean, I haven’t seen any astonishing displays of brilliance-“

 

“Well, I’m around.”

 

“-but I’m sure she’s clever enough, usually. And she’s sweet.”

 

“Jack,” said the Doctor warningly. Jack rolled his eyes. “She’s no Rose. Rose would’ve known what to do, what I needed. Rose could’ve helped.”

 

“Nobody’s Rose.” Jack’s voice held only the smallest bit of tension. “You can’t dismiss her because she’s not Rose. That’s unjust.”

 

“There’s no justice,” said the Doctor. “There’s just us.”

 

“That was your cue to admit you might need to apologize to her,” Jack hinted.

 

“See? That’s what you do, what Rose would do. Even Mickey would do that! Challenge me. I can’t be bothered to remember all of those human things.”

 

“Martha doesn’t challenge you because she’s infatuated with you.” Jack paused. “She wants you to be in love with her and not with Rose.”

 

“Well, if she wants that, maybe she needs to focus on being somebody at all,” the Doctor said irritably. This conversation was beginning to be all about emotion and romance and in this particular circumstance, the Doctor actually had more in common with a twelve-year-old boy than a time lord hovering around a millennia old. “I turn around and forget she’s behind me, she has so little presence. Startles me sometimes, she does.”

 

Jack was silent, but in a significant sort of way.

 

“Alright! Alright, I’ll apologize. Now will you give me a hand with these circuits?”

 

* * *

 

Martha wondered more than briefly if the Doctor meant for her to get eaten, since sending her out alone to check and make sure that doors weren’t coming open was along the line of reasoning Little Red Riding Hood’s mother used, when sending her through the thick, dark, dangerous woods with a basket of good-smelling food, knowing full well there was a wolf out. But it wasn’t something she’d ask him, so she’d just have to wait and see if he was disappointed when she came back alive.

 

The self-pity almost distracted her from the rage.

 

Martha had never had much experience with the male species. Her mother didn’t encourage it, partly because she thought Martha needed to focus on her education, and partly because Martha’s father was a skirt-chaser and therefore all men were scum, with the possible exception of Martha’s brother. In short, Martha had never really had the experience of rejected.

 

Oh, she’d been overlooked before. She’d become indispensable to her family in response to that- they made sure to notice her when she had all the answers. But being overlooked just prompted her to strive harder, to try to impress people more, and that was a good thing, right? Right? It hadn’t been that far of a leap to go from trying to impress a never-satisfied mother to trying to impress a never-content Time Lord.

 

But to be rejected, all her months of work scorned, just for messing up? For pushing the wrong button? How could he even say that to her? Did he just never look at her long enough to notice anything she did for him?

 

Of course he didn’t. It was always about Rose.

 

Martha sat down on a bench. They didn’t need her back for awhile, that was certain. She hoped they wouldn’t leave her; she sort of felt that Jack wouldn’t; having been left behind himself, she didn’t think he’d let the same happen to her.

 

Martha unclenched her teeth. She hadn’t noticed she’d been doing that. She rubbed her face, and said aloud, “He’s not ever going to get over her and need me, is he?”

 

“Your chances of that aren’t looking good. Tragic thing, attractive woman like you,” answered a voice. A voice that was attached to a person she didn’t know was in with them. A familiar voice. Martha took her hands away from her eyes.

 

Then returned them, and rubbed her eyes. Clearly the odd time on the TARDIS that led to sleep deprivation was messing with her head. “The prime minister?” she asked, bemused.

 

Mr. Saxon laughed, and sat down on the bench next to her. “Not here, clearly,” he said. “Here, I think, we can dispense with old human titles.”

 

“The Doctor called you ‘the Master’,” Martha replied. She shifted away from him. He noticed this, but didn’t respond. “You were Professor Yana, weren’t you? Why’d you kill Chantho?”

 

“A regrettable instance,” he said. “The regeneration is a confusing event. Time lords can be dangerous to be around, during that period. I… truly am sorry, for she was a good companion to me.”

 

Martha let out a short laugh. “Not that I would know. I’m having trouble passing my medical exams now, and that’s just human anatomy.” She remembered what the Doctor had said, in the moments after his TARDIS had disappeared: The Master… he’s evil, really, really… evil. I’ve fought him before… of all the Time Lords to survive, why him? “You’re bad,” Martha blurted. “The Doctor said. He said you’re evil.” She stood up, not wanting to sit next to him anymore, even if there was a small part of her excited about meeting the prime minister.

 

“He would,” agreed the Master. “Shiny conscience like his, I’m sure he’s perfectly equipped to judge.”

 

Martha snorted. “Yeah, him? He’s… well, he’s wonderful, and he helps people. But you don’t dare cross him. Sometimes he gets creative with his destruction. Knows just where to aim to hurt the most, he does.”

 

“He always did,” Saxon said softly. “Builds his own little world and decides what’s right and what’s wrong and where you should go in it, and you just have to go along, don’t you?”

 

Martha bit her lip, and looked down. Harold Saxon leaned forward, and took her hand. “You don’t have to go where he puts you, Martha. You can live in the whole world, not just the one he made, where he keeps you on the outer rim.”

 

“But… I’ve had such wonderful adventures, and I don’t hate him, not even if-“ She stopped, and wiped at her eyes. “He’s never going to love me, and I just- I’m just hanging here, waiting. I’m stuck, with him, here at the end of the universe.”

 

“Ah,” said the Master, grinning, “but I have a ship that travels in time.”

 

* * *

 

The council workman leaned on his shovel. “Blimey, I’m bored,” he commented.

 

“Yeah, me too,” commented his fellow shovel-leaner in return.

 

“Still,” reflected a third, who looked more than a little like Mickey Smith, “holdin’ up traffic’s a laugh, innit?”

 

They gazed around Piccadilly Circus’s afternoon traffic, and concurred that yes, it was indeed and there were few better evil ways to enjoy oneself. The shovel leaner who was shagging the wife of the Mickey Smith look-alike disagreed, but only in the privacy of his own head.

 

Shovel-leaner number two pulled out a cigarette.

 

“Oi!” said the first. “Boss said you’re not to light up while workin’ anymore, not after that time with the gas leak.”

 

“I can have a fag anytime I bleedin’ want,” said number two, blowing smoke in his esteemed colleague’s face.

 

“Hur, hur,” said One and Three dutifully, having watched American television and been educated on what ‘fag’ meant in other vernacular. The smoking shovel-leaner glared, and flicked ash and sparks down a nearby handily open manhole. Grumbles came from below, but he ignored them.

 

“Ain’t had nuffin’ to do since those metal blokes were tearin’ up the streets,” resumed the first workman.

 

“Cybermen, weren’t they called?”

 

“Cybermen, that’s so sixties. Cheesy sci-fi, that is.”

 

Two blue police boxes, also along the sixties theme, appeared by the entrance to the tube. The smoking shovel-leaner took out the cigarette. “You don’t see that every day,” quoth he.

 

“Do too,” countered number three. “’Ppears out o’ nowhere, bashes into things. I had to go an’ fix up the side of that estate next to Powell Estate, ‘cos it knocked a whole load of bricks loose last Christmas.”

 

The doors of the police boxes opened. A man in a pinstriped brown suit stepped out. “You can’t  be here!” he said. “That’s a temporal whatsit, a-“

 

“Thing that fucks with space and time,” supplied a voice from behind him.

 

“Exactly!” confirmed Pinstripe Man.

 

The prime minister stepped out of the other police box. “Oh, it could rip a hole in the universe, could it? Flip the fabric of causality inside out?” The prime minister grinned. “What a pity!”

 

The man who had said the two police boxes fucked with space and time stepped out. The third shovel leaner, who looked like Mickey Smith, whose wife was being shagged by shovel-leaner number one, thought he looked attractive.

 

“Can’t have people getting hangovers before getting drunk, what kind of world is that?” the man asked, in an American accent.

 

A voice, a woman’s voice, came from inside the prime minister’s box. The shovel-leaners absently wondered what all those people could be getting up to inside police boxes. “Is that Jack? What are they doing here?” The young woman appeared. “Doctor? Jack? How do you have the TARDIS?”

 

Pinstripe Man shrugged.

 

The young woman’s eyes narrowed. “Big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey, I expect?”

 

Pinstripe Man grinned. “That about sums it up, yeah.” The grin dimmed. “But I have to stop your Master-”

 

“He’s not my Master!”

 

“-because this can’t be allowed to exist.” And with that announcement, he slapped the prime minister, and a sonic boom echoed around the circus, setting off car alarms three blocks away and deafening all who heard it. When the council workmen could see straight again and had dabbed the blood from their broken eardrums, they gazed in dismay at the asphalt on the street, which had apparently leaped into the air and crumbled to dust. The second shovel leaner took a long drag on his cigarette. “You said you were bored, Larry?”

 

“Wasn’t complainin’, was I?”