1So, apparently this is what happens when I read Gilgamesh again after watching Doctor Who...
this story is set in series 3, sometime after Blink but before Utopia. It also was inspired by the cartoon episode The Infinite Quest, which was awesome because Martha and the Doctor got to have a proper non-angsty adventure, and go to space and explore. Also because of that praying-mantis-like queen. The mantis-like species in this fic has nothing to do with that, except aesthetic inspiration, because praying mantises are cool.
They, Who Saw the Deep
"We did it!" Martha said, beaming at the Doctor, who grinned back at her with that wild, manic abandon.
"Oh yes we did," he said. They embraced, and for a moment, as he spun her around, Martha felt like the whole world was cheering the two of them on; as though no sadness could ever touch them. The dictator was deposed and awaiting life imprisonment, and banners of celebration were waving through the street, pennants of pale peach and burnt scarlet, while the inhabitants rocked back and forth on their hindlegs in a sedate dance, cheering: The Doctor, Martha Jones. If they were on earth—and if the adult females were not twice as tall as her or the doctor, but smaller than their hands—Martha would have said they were mantises; but they called themselves (at least as far as the Tardis's translation was concerned) men.
The balcony of the palace was open to the sky, postcard-blue. And silhouetted against it, in the corner, the darker blue of the Tardis flashed in the brightness of the late afternoon sun like lapis.
The Doctor was already stepping toward the door as Martha turned to say goodbye. "It was wonderful meeting you, Eshi," she said to her friend, hugging her gently around the middle, careful to avoid the ear-spot on her abdomen.
Eshi rustled in confusion. "You're leaving? But we wanted to reward you."
Martha stepped back and smiled. "Helping you was reward enough, honestly."
"But…" Eshi said, "you can't leave. Who will lead us now?"
"I'm sure you'll figure it out, Eshi," Martha started to say. But even as she did, she stepped back. Eshi, and the others that had joined the impromptu party had all started to vibrate, a loud hiss that overtook the room like a swarm, and for a moment she considered running—then remembered what the Doctor had told her. They've evolved, but they're still predators, so you have to remember: whatever you do, don't act like prey. She smiled weakly, and cast a frantic glance back toward the Doctor.
He was watching her with a sickly expression, and she saw that the way to the Tardis was already blocked; he was hemmed in by a dangerous circle; the silks of their skirts swirling as they stood in a wide stance, their forelegs and wings in a bluffing threat that felt more than intimidating enough—she'd seen how fast they could move, when provoked. The mandibles around their open mouths clicked audibly. Not quite angry enough to attack, Martha thought: not yet. Perhaps she and the Doctor could still salvage this. But a pit had opened in her stomach, letting in the sour taste and thrill of fear.
She watched the Doctor, looking for the sign to run or act, but all he did was shake his head, very slightly; and she let out a shuddering breath, closing her eyes.
"Please, Martha Jones," Eshi said. "You must accept our hospitality."
Martha opened her eyes and looked bitterly over; meeting the large, unfathomable glasswork shine of Eshi's own, the pleading, confused tilt of her triangular head.
"Are you giving us a choice?" she said.
Eshi plucked fretfully at her colorful skirts and didn't answer.
Everything fell into a hush. Martha heard a sudden gasp, and turned toward the Doctor, but her way was blocked. All she could do was watch him stumble, looking sicker than ever; he held out one hand in a fist, clammy and shaking. Then he dropped the Tardis key to the ground, watching its bemused spin. It hit the stone with a clatter.
Telepathy, Martha remembered. They're forcing him to drop it! Because their (former) friends could speak—and because they had been so busy running for their lives—she had mostly put the knowledge of their telepathy out of her mind, once they had realized that it did not affect her. The Doctor, on the other hand, had easily entered into the collective mind ('not a collective mind, really,' he had said—'just think of it as radio'—and had not seemed to think it odd at all) and his interactions with the inhabitants here had been all the easier for it. But it seemed he was paying for that ease now.
"Doctor!" Martha said, wanting to rush forward, but knowing, still, that this could spiral even further out of control with one wrong move. She clenched her fists helplessly, feeling tears come to her eyes, and letting the fury of her emotions give her the strength to stand.
"Don't worry," the Doctor said, looking toward her. He smiled, and there was something terrible in its ease. "Why would I want to leave? I belong here."
"Yessss," the mantises sighed; and the group around the Doctor chivvied him out of the room.
Three years later
Time did not pass in the Tardis. Or perhaps it might be more sensible to say that all times passed within the Tardis, but Martha did not age at the rate she would have expected. She measured out the growth of her fingernails inside and out to compare, and there it was: time was negligible in a ship that existed outside of time. It was a fascinating way to achieve functional immortality (or perhaps only extremely slowed growth) and she could understand why the Doctor had never mentioned it to her. People would do terrible things to keep living. (She remembered Richard Lazarus, and the scorpion monster he had become—remembered the Doctor, talking and talking to him in the end, pulled from action by his empathy or his guilt—remembered dressing up as though they were two ordinary people going to a high-class party, playing pretend)
In her bedroom on the Tardis, just hovering between the oblivion of sleep and the crushing weight of wakefulness, she could consider her situation in an artificial calm, floating suspended in an eerie sort of acceptance. Martha wondered, vaguely, if that was how the Tardis observed and felt everything—at a remove, without worry. She chuckled to herself, chiding herself for her fanciful thoughts, and forced herself to get up. She sat on the edge of her bed as though a chasm opened endlessly at her feet, and took one breath, and another, and another, and tried to chase away the remnants of her fleeting thoughts, the last time she had seen her family—mum and dad and Tish and Leo and—at least this time, this adventure, she didn't have to worry she'd die without them knowing. She'd rationed out her calls to the bare minimum, not wanting to lock some span of her relative timeline in stone. Martha would get back, and not a moment later than she wanted.
"I'll get back," she said to herself, and the sound of her own voice seemed to tell her that yes, she would.
She did not change in her room. She didn't want to bring the outside world into the one place she could try to forget; and so after she'd made herself breakfast in her favorite kitchen, the one with the view of an apple orchard cloaked in fog she'd never been able to find her way into, she went to the wardrobe room. Her pajamas Martha left carefully folded on a stuffed chair, and from the nearest rack she pulled the silken skirts that the inhabitants of Riktha wore, and the headdress of beaten gold and jewels. Lastly, she put on her makeup.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror. Armor, she reminded herself. Armor for the slow war she was fighting. She'd always been practical, and she was patient, and that was going to save her and the Doctor now, as it had done for them before. Traveling in time, she'd learned, was an exercise in waiting: in 1913, in 1969, waiting and then running and then waiting again. But she wouldn't have to wait anymore. Today, she told herself. Today is time.
Martha stepped out of the Tardis doors, carefully locking them behind her with one of the keys that hung on the chain around her neck. The other was the Doctor's, picked from the ground and waiting for his return.
"Goddess!" Lalla said, with a happy sway in her direction. The chattiest and most good-natured of Eshi's many granddaughters, she had no memory of the forced nature of Martha's rule as Goddess-Queen, and Martha had been careful to keep it that way.
Martha smiled her way. "Hello, Lalla. Is everything ready?"
"Yes, goddess, we are all overjoyed to show you the splendour of our great city!"
"That's what I'm counting on," Martha said under her breath. Lalla, who had already been leading her out of the room, swiveled her head backwards.
"You can always count on us, Goddess," she assured her.
Down the wide steps of the great palace, a line of Martha's personal guard bowed at her exit. Lalla bent down, allowing Martha to climb onto her back, and with one beat of her wings, they were ascending in a circle up into the aching blue. Behind her, like a colorful ribbon, the flashing wings of her entourage streamed out; and Martha indulged herself in one of the occasional pleasures she was allowed: flying. The city below them seemed as truly small as though she came from the heavens, as the men of Riktha believed. The morning sun dazzled down upon them, heating the metal that crossed her brow and hung in beaded false-wings behind her head. It warmed, also, the chain around her neck, and the two keys that rested upon her breast.
It had taken careful planning for this day to come; planning, and waiting. Martha had a longer memory than the people of this planet: three generations had passed for them; friends and enemies had grown old and died in the space of three short years. The dictator she and the Doctor had once helped depose had grown frail, locked in a prison hardly less gilded than her own; Eshi had given birth, and died, and her children had molted out of their ant-like exoskeletons, leaving them behind like the memories of past selves. It was a jarring truth that never became easier to bear, watching the men of Riktha fall away and turn to dust.
With a graceful dive, they were tumbling down toward the city below, sounds and smells rushing up to meet them as though they had pierced through a veil. Lalla finally alighted gently, and Martha dismounted, looking on the temple for the first time.
Watching her from each side of its tall pillars were carven statues bearing her own face, serene and un-worn. Martha remembered the worry she'd expressed to the Doctor, that first time they'd traveled some other where and when, and which he'd dismissed as though it were not a concern at all. Yet she felt, staring up at the image of herself, the papery corpse of a butterfly under her heel, and wondered how easy it really was to change time; irrevocably, terribly, and absolutely.
She picked up her skirts and ascended the steps into the cool shadows. It was noon; and the hot sun created puddles of blazing light. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, to see anything other than pure darkness, to work out the intricacies mosaiced on the walls; to pick out colors on the silk curtains that spun its way around her as she passed, sliding over her skin. There were basins and small lit fires, and a round pool cut into the stone. And there on the expanse of floor was a Riktha female with the Doctor on her back.
No, not 'on her back', Martha's inner voice said, with the clinical detachment of a doctor. Mating. That's what they call it. She stifled the hysterical urge to laugh, clamping both hands over her mouth and closing her eyes. I suppose I'm really not his type, am I?
She couldn't just interrupt. It would be… it would… well, she would be mortified to have to. But a thought from her knowledge of the Riktha's earth equivalent struck her, and she turned to Lalla, who had followed at her heels. "She's not going to eat him, is she?"
Lalla let out an affronted hiss. "Of course not! We aren't barbarians. It would be incredibly rude to do something like that. And anyway, it's traditional to dine beforehand, so no one gets peckish." Then she turned her head toward Martha and continued in a quieter aside, "Unless you were really kinky, I suppose. I have heard of it being practiced in that regard." She clicked her mandibles once, thoughtfully. "Is that how the gods do it all the time?"
"Err…" Martha said. She turned her head away so that Lalla couldn't see her blush, and continued in a strangled voice, "Not particularly."
She settled herself down on a couch nearby to wait, wishing she'd thought to bring a novel. Something—anything—else to think about.
Deep into her mental recitation of the bones of the human hand, she heard the Doctor's voice. "Turn your attention to your children. Through this, you will live."
"Then I… won't make it," the Riktha replied, sadly.
"I'm sorry," the Doctor said. "Your life is almost over. I can't tell you the day, 'cause I don't know it, but I see the end of your timeline like a snapped thread."
Martha looked up to see that the Doctor was now a few feet away from the Riktha, facing her, pulling on a silken robe. The female bowed her head. "Thank you, high priest. I will use this knowledge well." She walked out, nodding a little at Lalla and bowing even further before Martha. "Goddess," she said, in a subdued voice.
"So," the Doctor said. "Goddess. I never thought I would require a personal visit. Have I offended you somehow?" his voice was mild, but with an edge as though he was considering being insulted. Martha couldn't keep herself from laughing, then, and the Doctor frowned, crossing his arms and staring down at her.
"No," Martha said. "No, I'm not insulted, Doctor. I'm here to…" she paused. She could feel Lalla's curious eyes on her, and she swallowed back the truth. She needed the people's cooperation to get back to the Tardis—that, and the Doctor's. But with his skeptical gaze boring down on her, Martha began to fear how to get one without loosing the other.
"Doctor," the Doctor said, as though turning the word over in his mouth; then he smiled delightedly. "I suppose I am, at that. I help people who need help, fix what needs fixing. Is that why you've come to me?"
"In a sense," Martha said.
The Doctor crouched on his heels in front of her and looked at her, suddenly; with a sharp scalpel-like precision. He raised one hand to his hair and ruffled through it. "Huh," he said. "You're incredible, Goddess. Like nothing I've ever seen before. You step in and out of time… you burn with an aura, something dancing all around you, like starfire." He reached out and trailed his fingers lightly across her shoulder and throat, before dragging them down the chain to rest atop the two keys. Martha held her breath, watching the spark of sudden confusion in the Doctor's eyes as he stared down at the key he played across his palm. "It speaks to me like voices," he said.
"…what does it say?" Martha asked, quietly; hardly daring to make a sound.
Something in the Doctor's gaze grew dark and uncertain. "I don't… I don't know." He opened his mouth as though to breathe in the answer, bringing the key to his lips and brushing it across them, and his breath caught. He gazed, suddenly, somewhere far beyond Martha, beyond the stone temple, beyond the world itself, and the knowing seemed to torment him; tears fell from his eyes. "This is the key to your dwelling place?" he asked.
"…Yes," Martha said, under her breath, in a half-gasp. "Yes, it is, Doctor. Look closer. Please."
"I'm afraid to," the Doctor said. He gripped the key in his palm and pulled so hard the chain stretched out between them; so hard it bit into the back of her neck, but Martha didn't move.
"You have to," Martha said. She put her hand over his own until his unyielding grip trembled. "I need you to."
The Doctor let out a shaking sigh, and bent his head. "As my Goddess commands," he said. He held the key, carefully, gingerly, and touched it to his tongue, swirling over every part of the sun-warmed metal. As he did so, his other hand brushed across the pulse-point of Martha's throat. "You're scared too," he said, at last.
"Always," Martha said. "But we don't let that stop us, do we Doctor."
The Doctor laughed bitterly. "How easy… for an immortal to say."
Martha looked at the pain in his face, and the confusion behind his eyes, and brushed her hands across his forehead and chin, just holding his trembling form. "Not so easy," she said. "Not so easy at all."
He kissed her, then; quietly. As though he had done so many times before. It was Martha who pulled back, reticent. "Doctor, you don't have to—I'm not asking you for this—"
"No," the Doctor said. "No, you're asking me for something far harder to give."
Martha turned her head away, and feeling the brush of her headdress about her, took it off and placed it on the couch beside her. Lalla gasped. "Goddess?"
"Please, Lalla…" Martha said. "Take care of it for me."
With a bow, Lalla picked up the headdress and retreated a few paces, almost hidden behind the curtains through which her watchful eyes peered.
"You're going to get tired of me eventually," the Doctor said, as he pressed kisses to her skin, over her throat and chest, his tongue flicking out to tease her nipple which ached, hard as though with cold, though the afternoon air was sweltering. She leaned forward, wrapping her arms around him, pushing her hands across the long planes of his shoulderblades, the pointed, whipcord-thin energy of his body.
"I won't," she said.
"You forget," the Doctor said, "I'm a soothsayer. Your path spins from mine. I see it in your atoms," he parted the skirts and drew one chilled hand across her bare leg. "Your bones."
Martha closed her eyes, and felt tears of exhaustion slipping out. "Please," she said. "Don't."
He hesitated. "Are you unhappy, Goddess?" he said, letting his touch fall away.
"No!" Martha cried, her eyes slipping open. She grabbed hold of him as though he were about to be taken from her, as though the stretch of time the Doctor saw before them would race toward them in a single instant like a wave. "Stay with me, Doctor," she said. "Please. I can't do it without you." It didn't have the weight of her admission of love to him so long ago, when he had been a human so unlike himself, so terrified and strange. There was no humiliation in this. Only honesty. Her words fell out of her like she was placing them at his feet for him to guard.
"You can," the Doctor said. "You will."
"I don't want to," Martha countered.
He smiled at her, for a moment, almost shyly. "Then, Goddess," he said, "I shall gladly be your companion, for as long as you'll have me."
He moved his fingers to her sex, which was already wet, and pressed gently against it, too slow, like he meant to unravel her.
"You're remembering," Martha said.
"I'm only seeing what you show me, Goddess." The Doctor paused, looked into her eyes for a serious moment. "Loneliness. How do you live like that, Goddess? Without the touch of other minds… why, you must…" she gasped, and he pressed his fingers inside her, "you must be the loneliest creature in the universe."
Martha laughed, blinking the tears from her eyes. "Not by far, Mister," she said.
He smiled, crookedly. "Will you consume me, then, when this is done? To keep me with you forever?"
She shook her head, unable to speak.
"You have to," he said quietly. "It's the only way for me to stay."
His fingers moved within her, and like a page turning back, she could almost feel what it was he felt. Across her face, pressing lightly across her forehead, the point of his fingers rested, and his mind went falling into hers with a wild sort of despair, something unheeding and strange that felt almost like love. Then she saw: the world, and not the world; and her slow steps, not running but walking. Pain sparked its way across her muscles as though she had been traveling for days without rest, and she cried out.
"It hurts," the Doctor said. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry… Martha…"
It hurt, but it hurt like sadness, like responsibility for a people; it hurt like being pulled back down to earth; like the moment in a sunset when you've been watching the glorious abandon and then suddenly realize that the greatest light is behind and all that is left are echoes. It hurt like time itself hurts, and death, and grief, and the growing pains of a body becoming its truer self, molting from its too-small exoskeleton to become something new.
They knew one too much like themself, ringing outward like the pure note from a tuning fork; and stayed, mirrored in a single moment, suspended between their pasts and futures which warped together like a möbius strip.
And then the moment ended.
.
.
.
notes:
Riktha is a Sanskrit word meaning
Wealth. | (Especially) property, possessions, effects (left at death). | Gold.
