Gallifreyan Nature: Chapter 9

[nevermoreraven]

Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: Teen
DISCLAIMER: Other people have actually read this one before the internet.  Yes, I know.  It's weird.
Summary: This is a rewrite of the Human Nature/Family of Blood two-parter, because I really liked Latimer.  It's long.  I liked it pretty well at the time, as did the other readers, so let's see how well it held up.  ...so far, so good.  also I actually bothered to tab for once on this one.
It's not finished, but it's fairly close.

 

Martha’s dreams were as reassuring as the night before, although they weren’t as memorable, just more muddled.  When she woke up in the morning, though, the scene with the Doctor telling her he’d find her was right there in her head, just like the previous day.  She went until about eleven without seeing Daniel anywhere, and began to feel a little lonely.  She finally got tired of it all-after all, it wasn’t as if she’d really been born into the role of a servant, she wasn’t useless, and she certainly didn’t plan on doing this for the rest of her life.  They’d had her at worthless jobs, like polishing the silverware, and they even were making her do it the way that dulled out the shine eventually-the school was too cheap to buy the good cleaning equipment, though Martha couldn’t have remembered exactly what that was without a quick peek on the internet.  She didn’t feel in the mood to argue it using gestures and a loud voice with the Headmaster, so she just snuck outside.

As soon as she’d stepped outdoors, she took a breath of fresh air that cleared out her mind.  In that moment, she heard whooping and laughter, so similar to the Doctor’s own that, for a minute, the world stopped for her.

Daniel then rode into sight.  Apparently, he’d been practicing in the open field next to the school.  Where he’d gotten a horse from she wasn’t certain, but assumed that it had to have been cleared with the Headmaster, or he wouldn’t have been out here this long.  Someone would have noticed before now.  He turned his mount around, then urged it into a gallop, flying on the wind and laughing wholeheartedly.

This was too much.  Martha broke out into a run, getting into the woods and trying to at least keep the Doctor in sight.  She felt the exhilaration, the adrenaline coursing through her veins, the heart rate flying, the sweat breaking out on her skin.  She was more alive than she’d been in months.  Oh, it wasn’t quite running with the Doctor, but close enough to make her happier than she’d been in a long time.

After a while, she couldn’t hear the hoofbeats anymore, and slid to a halt, panting, hands on her thighs.  She’d lost him, but it’d been a great run while it lasted…

Martha glanced up and jumped backward.  The horse and the Doctor were right on top of her, and he was grinning like anything.  “Fancy a trip, Miss Jones?”

He might as well have been asking her if he’d join her for a trip in the TARDIS.  She couldn’t say no even if she wanted to.  His smile grew even more dazzling, and he held out his hand, ready to swing her onto the horse.  She took it, and felt her heart skip a beat at the soft, gentle touch.  With very little visible effort, he swung her behind him and grinned mischievously back at her.  “Hold on tight!”

With a cowboy yell he urged the steed into a full gallop, steering her onto the path into the village.  He kept yelling in excitement, and her excited giggling joined the mix.  The rush was more than she’d remembered, although she’d learned from her training that people tended to forget how good something felt if it’d been long enough.  Or maybe it’d been a rumor that the older trainees kept spreading to keep the newer ones on their toes.  Whatever the case, she needed the Doctor more than ever.

They went straight through the village and barely managed to avoid a shopper from a house in the countryside.  The looks they’d been given were mostly incredulous, as if many believed they’d been hallucinating or drinking too much.

Daniel Winters let out an excited laugh, though from the sheer joy of the ride or amusement from the faces they’d seen she couldn’t say.  Eventually, reluctantly, he slowed the horse down.

“So…what were you doing roaming the woods instead of polishing silverware?”  The question wasn’t accusatory, just curious.  She would have wondered where he’d gotten that from, but if this was a Time Lord she wasn’t really startled.

“Didn’t want to do the everyday stuff.  You should know what that’s like.”  Martha smiled at him, but he just cast her a puzzled look.  She needed to stop thinking of him as the Doctor.  Either he wasn’t, and that was why he was confused, or he was trying the innocent act.

Her cheeks started to grow warm-her arms were still tight around his waist.  And if he wasn’t the Doctor-if he was just a kid…

After a moment, he agreed, “I can’t blame you.  I wouldn’t want to be stuck in there all day with nothing but chores to do.”  He paused again, then grinned.  “The people in the town must’ve been sure that the apocalypse was coming.  They may try telling the Headmaster, but I’m sure he wouldn’t listen to such a strange story, which is good, because I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble.”

Martha shot him a disbelieving look and revised her opinions.  He couldn’t possibly be the Doctor with that attitude.

He’d been completely oblivious about her earlier embarrassment, which tallied with the theory that he was the Doctor.  But even he noticed her skeptical stare and backtracked a little.   “Okay…so trouble follows me around and being near me just ensures you’ll have some trouble no matter what.  But I wouldn’t like to get you into messes that way.”

Martha couldn’t help but blush more furiously.  Was it just ‘cause he was a kid, that she was reading innuendo into every word?

Daniel Winters sighed and turned around to fix her with a serious look.  “Look…I hate asking, because I’m really not supposed to know, but where’s the watch?”

He probably wasn’t expecting Martha to grab his neck and get into a stranglehold position.  “Why do you want to know about that?” she hissed, eyes dilating furiously with anger.  The Doctor had warned her about the Family.  Okay, so they might be able to appear human, but she never expected this ploy-to look like the Doctor, to act like him, to lull her into a state of false security.

Daniel threw up his hands and went totally, utterly still.  Only his lips moved as he answered.  “I want to know that it’s safe, that it’s where it was the last time.  That everything’s going as it should be-following the Doctor’s plan, I mean.  And since things have changed…well, I’m not so sure anymore, am I?  You don’t have to tell me, if it makes you feel better.  It wasn’t the brightest thing I’ve ever done in my life, asking you, was it?  Well, aside from this time on Neban Mexchak the Ulgisnik.  I managed to insult a policeman pretty badly by just asking about the weather.  That’s a death warrant there, by the way.  Don’t do it, if you ever get the chance to go.  I had to run for blocks and blocks just to lose the bloke.  He was pretty determined to rip my head off.  And they can, you know, the Nebchaks.  It’s mostly just a matter of leverage for them…”  His eyes had gone wide, and just a touch scared, but he was babbling like the Doctor.

Martha warned him with her eyes to shut up, and he got the picture pretty quickly.  “Give me a reason I shouldn’t kill you now,” she threatened him coldly.

He blinked, then answered quietly.  “I’ll tell you a secret, something only the Doctor would know.  I’m not him, by the way.  I’m just…like.  And it was a story, that’s very important…”

She glared, and he stopped talking, instead leaning in towards her.  She expected him to whisper something in her ear.  Instead, he kissed her.  Slowly, apparently enjoying every minute of it.  His lips were soft, gentle, exploring cautiously.  So much could be said, not with words but with a simple, basic action.  Martha kissed him back, hard.  She couldn’t help it.  How many times had she wished him just to look at her, to smile that smile only for her and her alone, to kiss her again?...  And despite herself, she felt a shudder of pleasure ripple through her as she let her guard down.

She expected him to have a knife or something and kill her when he was finished, leaving a broken corpse on the road.  Instead, face ever so cute and vulnerable, he took that moment to whisper, “Genetic transfer.”

Miss Jones blinked.  Somehow, it didn’t seem such a small gesture for the immense shock she’d just been handed.  Somewhere in her head, she imagined the Doctor, still talking, ‘Would you like that in a box, Martha?  With wrapping paper and such?  Would that be better?  I’d defer to your expert advice, Doctor Jones.’

“How could you possibly…”  Her voice died in her throat.  She couldn’t find the words, which was silly.  She’d been thinking of it, had a whole question worked out, but somehow she lost it, staring into his eyes.  Whoever this boy was, he was looking straight at her.  It wasn’t the Doctor’s look that he got sometimes, the one where he was looking around her but not at her, not really seeing her with his eyes, or maybe it was that his brain wasn’t processing the information in the way that he processed everything else.

The worst thing of all was the sad look in his deep brown eyes-the one that said that he’d seen too much pain and death and there’d be more of it by the end of this.  “I’m sorry, Martha Jones,” they told her without speaking, “I’m so, so sorry.”

And then he smiled at her, not one of his reckless, cheeky grins, just a small smile, but one that promised that everything would be all right.  “I can’t explain, because the universe might implode or we’d have a time paradox, and we wouldn’t want either of those.  I might be able to tell you someday, when you and the Doctor are far away from here, and safe.  But for the time being,” he sighed, a heavy, heartsfelt sigh that made her heart twinge in sympathy, “I’m a friend.  You can come to me for help, if you really need to.  Keep an eye on Mr. Smith-more than you’re already doing.  More specifically, keep an eye on that watch.  If it disappears while he’s around, well, then, everything’s all well and good.  And no, I can’t tell you.  If not, if it disappears when no one’s around…we have trouble on our hands.  And not the kind of trouble I could fix in the amount of time we’d have.  So we just kind of have to trust and hope.  Oh, and keep our fingers crossed.  I’ve found that helps.  But the Family don’t know about the watch ploy, so…with any luck, we’re in the clear.  For now.  But whenever you’re feeling blue, whenever you’re feeling doubt creep into your veins, like ice stealing towards your heart…”  He noticed her raised eyebrow and swallowed the rest of his words, ignoring the very keen need to sprout poetry, waiting a moment to build up his resistance to such things before continuing again, “Do come and have a chat.  Or something.  We could even run Arthur again, through the village.  That’d be brilliant!”  He laughed out loud, grinning at the expression on her face.

He slowed down in the woods, let Martha down off the horse now named Arthur gracefully.  His eyes sparkled, showing the smile he now wore to be one of playful fun.  “I’m a knight, right?”  He mimed holding a lance, and made small clanking noises out the side of his mouth so as not to penetrate the illusion.  Miss Jones’ sides hurt from trying not to laugh.  “And this is my faithful steed, Arthur.”  He patted the horse, who sidled away from Martha.  She couldn’t keep the laughter in this time-the look on Daniel’s face was too much.  She couldn’t tell if she’d imagined the ‘woah’, though.

“Just don’t go tilting at windmills, okay?”  She definitely had affection for this strange apparition, Doctor-ish and yet not-Doctor that he was.

He winked, comfortable in his seat on the horse once again.  He appeared to have lost the saddle that Mr. Smith had probably tried to make him use.  “Not really my style.”  Keeping up the knight theme, he leant over to take her hand and kiss it, then straightened up to wave.  “Don’t want you to be missed.  We don’t need you attracting attention to yourself,” he explained.

With a grin and a wave, Martha Jones walked off, feeling warm and cozy.  All she wanted now was to curl up by a fire and read a book, but that wasn’t happening.  Still, this particular adventure went a long way towards recharging her batteries.

If she’d turned to look, she would have seen Daniel Winters’ expression fall into a look of absolute longing and regret.  Things weren’t easy-he didn’t have that long, and already he was starting to have ties.  Then he wiped the tears away angrily.  Business first, that was him, pleasure later.  Of course, a bit of him whispered in the dark, that probably meant that pleasure wouldn’t happen at all.  But he had things to see to, things that wouldn’t get straightened out without his self-admitted formidable help.  Better get to it, he told himself, though he didn’t move for what seemed to be a long, long time.