nekare

I ditched my last two classes because I'm still sick sick sick. I'm out of kleenex so I have a roll of toilet paper at my right and a growing pile of snotty tissues on my left. Ugh. At least I don't have a fever anymore, though.

I haven't listened to anything but Travis all week long. It's been the only good part of my week, to be honest. So that's been pretty pretty awesome. I'm torn between naming The Invisible Band and 12 Memories my favorite album of theirs, although I actually dig a lot of songs from all of their albums. I ♥ Travis.

Also, I really want to SQUEEEE about Who but I don't wanna spoil anyone in here so I'll post about it later. *g*

Title: Break Us Apart, Bring Us Together
Word Count: 3500
Spoilers: Up to Blink.
Author Notes: Betaed by such_heights. My take on the 'living in 1969' theme.


Break Us Apart, Bring Us Together

It’s almost too easy. Get stranded in time, get a flat, get strange looks from the neighbors, get a job, get a life in a decade she’d only seen on the telly before.

But then the Doctor gets fired from his job because he didn’t show up for three days (he was too busy doing research, he says), and Martha doesn’t have any papers to prove she’s a medical student (or anyone existing, for that matter) and gets turned down when she asks for a job at a hospital and it feels as if the domesticity is going to kill her.

She starts missing, not only her cozy own century and her family and life but she starts missing the hum of the TARDIS as she’s falling asleep, and then she misses the Doctor because idealizing the man that cooks and burns your dinner is way harder than idealizing the man that shows you a new galaxy on a daily basis.

----

She comes home knackered from work and with a raging headache and there are bits of wiring and pieces of machinery that once belonged to their phone and the half finished timey-wimey detector on the table. The Doctor is poking at something with the sonic screwdriver between his teeth.

They eat two days old curry take away when it becomes obvious that the… thing, he was trying to cook isn’t going to get any less black, and then they sit barefoot on the couch and watch a contest show on the telly. Martha laughs when the Doctor answers ever single one of the questions correctly, and she calls him a pompous arse when he says that even a baby would know any of it.

It all becomes routine, and sometimes she hates it and sometimes she loves it.

----

The rest of the girls in the shop think the Doctor is her boyfriend. She doesn’t set them right because it’s just easier that way and because there’s a small part of her that wants it to be true.

It’s not until she tries to tell the other girls about him that she realizes just how inhuman he is. She reckons she always knew, but it’s not until she sees him being him while in such normal surroundings that she really notices.

He takes their fridge apart. He prods at the little bits of metal for a week, glasses on and tongue peeking out. When he puts it back together, it makes orange-colored ice by default and the milk vanishes if you put it in the third shelf on the right on a Monday.

He starts with the radio next, and then he spends most of his evenings listening to soap operas broadcasted a galaxy away. Or so he claims, because without the TARDIS, Martha only hears gibberish.

He’s desperate without the TARDIS. He’s too hyper, too shifty, too lost without her. He hardly ever sleeps. She can hear him at night, pacing across their tiny living room into the kitchen into the bathroom and back again. He makes her dizzy with so much pacing.

It’s weird, but she doesn’t become so aware of how alien he is until they’re sharing a bathroom, him shaving and her showering and them talking about her job and how they’re going to pay the rent this month. The contradiction makes her head ache, so she tries not to think about it.

----

A man once stops breathing in the middle of the shop. Martha’s the one that brings him back to life and performs an emergency tracheostomy and shouts his vitals to the paramedics and the one that ends up covered in blood to the shock of her coworkers.

It’s a wake up call of sorts, a seemingly random event that reminds her of who she is: Martha Jones, daughter, sister, almost doctor. She feels as if she’s starting to lose herself as she plays this character, this Martha Jones, girlfriend of John Smith, clerk girl behind with the rent of her dingy East End flat.

She goes home and lies on her bed and recites all of the muscles in the human body. She gets two of them wrong, and irritatingly enough, the Doctor says Corrugator supercilii and fibularis tertius, from the door.

She throws her pillow at him.

----

They’ve run into the Doctor’s past lives at least twice already. The Doctor she knows is always rude and impatient and has a tendency to scowl at his past selves, and then he goes and stares at the other men’s TARDIS and, sometimes, puts his palm against the blue wood and closes his eyes and wishes for Lord knows what. Martha says he’s pining, and he says he’s not, but she knows he’s lying.

She could hardly believe at first that the man in the funny hat and umbrella and the one with the giant scarf are the same man as the one in pinstripes that has shown her the universe and that now forgets to buy bread every time he goes out for the groceries.

The meetings have been brief and awkward, and for all that the Doctor in the suit may be the eldest, he still gets scolded like a child for having dared lose the TARDIS.

For Martha, it is enthralling, getting to know these old versions of the man she’s living with. There’s a glint of madness that wasn’t there in his old selves, the same as regret, and she knows without being told that these strange but familiar men still have a planet to call home.

----

Martha lets her tongue run loose one evening and whines to a coworker about having missed The Beatles’ last show live as a band. Lara is sweet-faced and has glitter on her hair and has named her infant daughter ‘Sunlight’; and she opens her eyes really wide and asks What on Earth are you talking about?, and Martha tries to giggle but it comes out all wrong but Lara seems to be mollified when she says that it’s nothing, that she’s speaking nonsense.

The Doctor tells her that she still has Abbey Road to look forward to, and Martha twists her mouth a bit because she could still get that back at home, couldn’t she? Truth to be told, she’s not the greatest Beatles fan, but it’s a matter of principle, of a heritage her generation has been told to believe in. It’s weird; to see teenagers singing songs on the streets that she considers oldies.

“Well then, what do you want to see from the sixties,” she asks, and he falls quiet for once in his life.

He says something that could be My granddaughter, but it can’t be right, it’s absurd, and then he says, louder this time, “wrong year, anyway,” and then he changes the subject and she’s intrigued, she’s so very intrigued, but she doesn’t ask because there’s something in his expression, like his mind is centuries away, and for a moment, he almost looks frail, like an old man in a search for meaning.

----

The Doctor once introduces them as married.

“Oh, hello, John Jones, and this is my wife, Martha Jones,” he says, and she stares, and not only because it sounds ridiculous.

----

They get close, closer, and they find themselves handing the salt shaker without having to be asked for it and communicating through noises and half-finished sentences. There’s something both comforting and horrifying at the thought of it, and it chills Martha a bit to realize her own parents once behaved like this around each other, years before it all went to hell.

It’s even worse for the Doctor, she knows. He’s continuously hanging on the edge, although the edge of what, she’s not quite sure. He’s just not designed for this kind of stability, this never ending routine, and it shows in the way he fidgets, in the way he sometimes goes uncharacteristically quiet.

They both have their ways to cope. Martha dates this guy, George, that she met at a small coffee shop near her job, and he’s sweet and funny and the sex is magnificent, but walking on tiptoe and keeping the lights off so as to not wake the Doctor when coming home makes her feel like a teenager all over again.

“Had fun last night?” the Doctor asks the next morning, and Martha fidgets until she tells herself she shouldn’t have to give any explanations to the man sitting in front of her.

“Yeah, I did,” she finally says, and the Doctor grins and nods and doesn’t really mention it again but he brings home a gallon of ice cream the next night and tells story after story until she’s laying on the floor with her feet on the couch laughing until she cries. It’s not until days later that she remembers she was supposed to meet George to go see a movie.

The Doctor denies any knowledge about it, but he’s obviously lying, and she realizes they’ve been around each other for far too long, and that they’re becoming somewhat codependent.

The Doctor’s method of coping, on the other hand, involves breaking in to the UNIT headquarters and showing Martha around just for kicks. He says hello to random people and convinces the night guards that he’s entirely authorized to be there and even takes some stuff from his own lab to finish the timey-wimey machine. He leaves a small note to himself detailing everything he took. She asks him about it because it seems like such a proper thing to do, and he’s so improper in everything he does, but he just shrugs and says that he remembers getting the note so many years ago, and that you just shouldn’t mess around with time.

He takes her to as many concerts, art exhibitions or student riots as there are, and drags her into every single potential mess that seems remotely alien-related, and if Martha ignores the fact that she’s probably late for work and that there’s something dodgy growing in their fridge, and that they’re out of milk, it almost, almost feels like normal.

----

They’ve been in 1969 for three months already when Martha goes into the kitchen in the morning and finds the Doctor sitting on the table with a cup of coffee between his hands and bloodshot eyes. It’s obvious he hasn’t slept.

She pours herself some coffee, stares out of the window in silence, and when she turns around he’s looking at her with this weird look in his face, something like desperation and a hunger of sorts, and she still doesn’t quite know how to react when he jumps off the table and pushes her against the fridge. He noses at her neck, still silent, and she somehow knows he’s not thinking of the enigmatic Rose, or of that girl Sarah Jane she saw his earlier self with, but he’s not thinking of her either – he’s thinking of his ship, and it almost feels as if she’s stumbled between something sacred.

When he kisses her, a hand in her hair, she kisses back for a second because she’s curious, she’s always been, and then she pushes him away and goes out of the room and when she comes back in after a while he’s back to normal and they don’t talk about it.

----

The next time, they’re in the kitchen again, and he’s washing the dishes and she’s telling him how one of the girls she works with found out her boyfriend was a serial killer when she found a human head on his fridge.

“You’re not a serial killer, are you?” She asks after a pause, and he laughs.

“No bodies in my freezer, promise,” he says, smiling, and that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any skeletons in the closet because she knows he does, but right now he’s looking at her, laughing with her, and Martha surprises herself by leaning in and kissing him. Almost in a mirror of the last time this happened, he hesitates for a moment, and then he’s pulling her closer with his hands still soapy and gets her soaked in his haste to take her top off.

They’re laughing as he gets foam in her face, as he lifts her by the waist and places her on the counter, as she wraps her legs around his waist.

It’s almost care-free, almost as if there was only the two of them, as he slips into her and puts his hand between their bodies and makes her sigh, as she kisses sloppily the corner of his mouth, but then she’s coming and then he is too and she can feel a ripple in time, a second that stretches too far, and she realizes she’s just shagged something that’s only human-shaped and then he’s the Doctor again, withdrawn in his effervescence.

So he talks and talks to fill the silence as they get dressed again and she goes to work wondering just what the hell happened.

That night he seems normal when she gets home, and she almost has to wonder if it wasn’t a dream. Then, right in the middle of a discussion about in which year a certain album of David Bowie’s had been released, he says that sex with him almost always ends up messy and that it really shouldn’t happen again. She shrugs, and says she doesn’t mind messy.

He’s back in her bed that night.

----

They watch the moon landing out on the street, in a television that is old even for sixties standards. It belongs to one of their neighbors, who decided this was an event to share, and set it up in the middle of the street. People bring chairs and food and soon, it’s a party, and Martha is tingling with excitement as the children run around chasing each other as they wait for it all to begin. It is way past their bedtime, but this is a once in a lifetime thing (or five in a lifetime, if you’re Martha Jones), so no one’s saying anything.

There’s silence right before it begins, and everyone’s wide-eyed, tense, and then it happens, and all of the faces have wonder written on them. There is cheering and clapping coming from everywhere, and even the air is charged with excitement.

Martha smiles slightly, and is reminded a bit more of who she is, the girl that has walked the moon before, and it’s bittersweet, thinking of seeing the stars for the first time and feeling it all so away right now. She looks up while everyone looks down at the telly, looks into the moon and tries to convince herself that it’ll be all right, that sending messages to Sally Sparrow isn’t all for nothing.

It’s strange, seeing humankind land on the moon from such a different perspective after seeing it so many times from up close. Suddenly, it’s too real, the possibility of not going back home (whether home is her flat or the TARDIS, she’s not so sure anymore), and it doesn’t scare her nearly as much as it terrified her to stay in 1913 with an impostor in the Doctor’s place.

The Doctor takes her hand, and it’s not until Martha looks at him in surprise that she realizes he’s not looking up, but looking at her, and he’s smiling almost sadly. “You will become a doctor one day,” he says, almost as if reading her thoughts, and she’s still not certain that he’s not.

She trusts him, always has, although a little voice in her head says she shouldn’t, so she smiles back at him and says, “of course I will.”

So they hold hands and look up into the sky while people cheer and the children keep on saying that they want to travel to the stars when they grow up.

----

She knows that the moment they get back into the TARDIS this… thing, she has with the Doctor is over. She doesn’t mind it, because, at the end, it was born out of loneliness and boredom and monotony, and the overwhelming feeling that there’s no one else in here that has seen the same things that they have.

She suspects that that is how the Doctor feels like all the time, and it makes her shudder just to think about it.

----

They’re desecrating Wester Drumlins Manor, painting messages on the wall, laughing because the other option is to fret about the TARDIS. It’s the Doctor the one that first gets paint on Martha, and she gasps and throws some at him and then it’s war.

They chase each other around the house, laughing and yelling like children. They end up on the street, still trying to get as much paint as possible on the other one. Then the Doctor pulls her towards him and there’s nothing childish about the way he smears paint on her belly and then her neck as he turns her face around to kiss her.

He always kisses somewhat desperately, as if he was looking for something and hasn’t found it yet, and Martha knows he’s not good for her but does nothing about it but cling back and try not to lose herself in his intensity.

When they break apart, Martha looks away to find a teenaged version of her mother, staring at them with a frown a few steps away. Her first reaction is to blush hotly and start explaining, the second one to want to go and hug this semi-stranger because it’s been too long since she last saw her.

The Doctor moves forward as if to stop her from moving, and Martha pulls her hand away and says, “I know,” because it might be her mother, but she’s not her mother yet, and the Doctor should know her well enough already by now to realize that she can tell the difference.

The young Francine frowns at them and keeps on walking, and they were just kissing in the middle of the street while covered in paint, so Martha guesses they deserve the stares.

They go back inside, Martha homesick and the Doctor chastened. They go on painting in silence.

It’s not until later that she connects the dots and realizes why her mother always seemed so suspicious of the Doctor.

----

“I do know you’re not human,” Martha says as she stares at the ceiling. The Doctor buries his head beneath the pillow by her side. He usually waits until she’s asleep before going out of the room, but for some reason she just can’t go to sleep.

“But do you understand?” he says after a long while.

“I think I do. Or I will, someday.” The Doctor sighs. She goes on, “I understand you, in any case, and I know you have commitment issues and you’re still mourning and you’re slightly insane.”

There’s silence. “…You make it sound so bad,” he says, all petulant child. She lifts the pillow off his face and sure enough, he’s pouting.

“What, I hurt your ego?” she chuckles.

He kicks her lightly on the shin, but he grows serious. “If you know me so well, then you know this,” and he makes a vague hand gesture that for all she knows could mean them two or the room or the decade, “is only a dream, and we’re about to wake up.”

“I know,” Martha says, and means it.

“Tell me a story,” she says after a while. He tells her a story about a girl named Susan that was far too alive to stay in a stifling planet. His talking lulls her to sleep.

When she wakes up, she’s alone, but it’s nothing she didn’t expect from him.

----

Seeing the TARDIS again is like exhaling after a long time of holding your breath. The Doctor goes inside with a grin, and Martha stays behind for a moment to give him time. When she goes in, the Doctor is still whispering sweet nothings and stroking the console. The only thing that keeps her from mocking him is the memory of the Doctor talking with his ship in his sleep.

“Where to, then?” he asks after a while, and when he turns around to face her he’s the man she first met on the moon, the intriguing stranger instead of the flatmate she’s been living with. And she’s Martha Jones again, almost a doctor, interplanetary traveller. She’s not the woman he first met anymore, because she’s grown too much, seen too much to remain unchanged. She’s fine with that.

“Anywhere but here,” she says. He laughs.

When they go out of the door, it’s raining somewhere across the galaxy. They’re soaked in seconds, but they keep on smiling, almost drunk with the freedom of going anywhere, anywhen. There are patches of dark blue sky visible through the heavy clouds, whiter and puffier than anywhere on earth. The water has a pink tint to it, and Martha jumps on puddles like a little girl and the Doctor talks about how brilliant it all is until Martha tells him to shut up and just enjoy it.

He takes her hand and drags her away to explore, looking for a world to save, probably. The contact is familiar, and yet different, and Martha feels as if she’s awoken from a dream and entered another.

They’ll be all right. She’ll be all right.

Someday she’ll leave, or be left, but right now, she’s home.