Within My Reach (G, 1/1)

[nonelvis]

Title: Within My Reach
Characters/Pairing(s): Martha, Ace, Mickey
Rating: G
Word count: 2,700
Spoilers: None
Summary: Martha's dreams lead her to an alien artifact – and a decision about her future.
Beta: platypus
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously.

Author's Notes: Written for the_tenzo's Doctor Who Fic Bingo challenge. My bingo was Martha, UNIT, mind-reading, Daleks, and Ace, though I tossed in "___ of Rassilon" because I couldn't help myself. Huge thanks to platypus for putting up with my obsessive revisions to the story.

::xposted to lifeonmartha and dwfiction, and archived at Teaspoon and AO3


The voice was in Martha's head again. Male, deep, murmuring in a language that whirled in circles in her mind, never quite resolving into sentences, only fragments of words she could almost piece together before they slipped through her fingers. An urgency she sensed even without being able to understand the instructions.

She woke at 4:13am, anxiety and tension quivering through her body, whispers swirling away while her eyes struggled open. She no longer reached instinctively for another person on the opposite side of the bed; Tom had been in Africa too long, and both he and Martha knew by now he wasn't coming back. His pillow had migrated to her side quite some time ago.

She fluffed it with a fist, and tried to fall back to sleep. Maybe this time it'd work.

Even if it hadn't worked, not really, for a week.

* * *

Sarah Jane had family responsibilities; and Jack, down two staff members, was on constant overtime; and though they'd tried to hold regular meetings of their irregular survivors' group, Mickey and Martha were the only ones with perfect attendance.

They'd bonded over drinks, tall tales, and the shared sting of seeing the person you love look right through you at someone else. Now they met whenever they could, which was never as often as they liked, given Martha's workload and Mickey's unpredictable freelance schedule in Cardiff.

"You look shagged out, Martha," Mickey said. "And I wasn't even there to help."

"Oh, very funny."

"Who said I was joking?"

Martha shook her head. "Keep trying. Maybe someday it'll work."

"Seriously, though, you've got these gigantic bags under your eyes, right here –"

"You know what every woman wants to hear? How terrible she looks."

"What's wrong, Martha? Come on, you can tell me."

"It's probably nothing, Mickey," she said. "Just had some bad dreams lately. It's totally normal for someone with my workload to be under a lot of stress. I'm sure it'll pass."

Mickey nodded once, slowly. "You really don't want to talk about it?"

Martha reached for Mickey's hands, curled her fingers beneath his palms. They were warm and strong, and she realised just how long it had been since she'd held someone's hand. "You're a good friend, Mickey," she said. "I promise I'll let you know if there's anything you can do."

"I can do all sorts of things," Mickey said, winking. "Ask me anytime."

* * *

The three pints from the pub helped Martha get to sleep, but didn't stop her from waking, startled and confused by the voice, as dawn began brightening the edges of the sky.

She flipped onto her back, arm flung over her eyes to block the growing glare from the window. Fears and worries spun through her the way they always did after the dreams. She could have told Mickey. She should have told Mickey, except that would have meant admitting she needed help.

But if she tried to work things out without him – and more important, without the Doctor – could she do it?

That, at least, was a question Martha knew the answer to. She'd been capable of so much when she'd met the Doctor, and capable of so much more when she left him. Spend a year fighting for your life, and the years after that bucking military bureaucracy, and you get used to seizing what's important to you with both hands instead of waiting for someone to politely deliver it with a neatly tied bow.

Perhaps a mild sleeping pill for later, then; half of her wondering if it would simply make the problem go away, the other half hoping its chief side effect – vivid, memorable dreams – would sharpen what she'd been seeing.

Either way, it would bring her closer to an answer.

* * *

The next morning, gradually easing herself out of the pill's lingering haze, she reviewed what she could remember from the night before. Almost nothing, just the velvet blanket of the pill soothing her, except for one short interlude with the voice – which had then faded into the image of a storeroom stacked high with wooden boxes, and two women dressed in black prising them open.

One of the women had chestnut hair slicked back in a ponytail. Her face was crisscrossed with shadows, but Martha could still see the pale roundness of her cheeks, the tense set of her mouth.

The other woman had been Martha herself.

* * *

The next night, another sleeping pill downed, the voice returned to Martha's dreams, elliptical tones at last converging into something she could understand.

Find me, it whispered. I am alone, I am in the dark, I must be found, I must be returned, I am needed, find me. I must save them. You must save me.

This time, Martha woke with the fragments of another speech on her lips: It told me to find you. It wants to be held.

Time Lord technology, then, whatever it was. Maybe even another Time Lord, one the Doctor had told her nothing about.

"You bastard," she muttered, and tossed fitfully the rest of the night.

* * *

When another dream found her rifling through the warehouse again, Martha didn't even bother trying to get back to sleep; instead, she slipped on a black turtleneck and jeans and started driving. Right, then left, then straight for a while; then right again, guided by instinct and an increasingly loud find me, find me, find me.

It was only twenty minutes before she arrived at what she should have realised would be the destination all along: UNIT's Black Archive. No one gave the woman who'd held the Osterhagen Key in her hands the slightest trouble on entrance, practically waving her through on sight, and Martha stalked the corridors, following her senses and hoping what was guiding her was something stronger than sleep deprivation.

By the time she reached Sector D, the voice had stopped whispering pleas and moved on to issuing commands. Martha's head rang with deafening echoes, and on the other side of the passcard-secured entrance, she slumped to the floor, covering her ears and squeezing her eyes shut.

"That won't work," said another voice, closer, female. "Hold still."

A gloved hand fumbled behind Martha's ear, applying pressure and what felt like a metal knob. Instantly, the commands dialled back to a soft hum of barely audible words.

"Psychic inhibitor," said a familiar woman with a chestnut ponytail. "Should shut the old windbag up for a while." She extended a hand. "Name's Ace. You can call your soldier friends to arrest me if you like, or you can let me help."

Martha savoured the sudden silence in her head. "Martha Jones," she replied, letting Ace help her to her feet. "All things considered, I think you just earned yourself the benefit of the doubt."

* * *

Ace didn't bother asking Martha for her passcard as they worked their way through Sector D, instead swiping them through with a strip of matte, grey plastic. None of the passing patrols even blinked at their presence.

"Perception filter, is it?" asked Martha, which stopped Ace in her tracks. "Probably built into that inhibitor? 'Cause the guards aren't seeing me, either."

"Very good, Jones! I knew you had to be one of us. Only way you could have heard Lord High Pompous Lunatic in your head."

"And that'd be ..."

"Rassilon. President of Gallifrey, Founder of the Time Lords, or as I liked to call him, His Barminess. Half the crap on the planet was named after him, including the Circlet of Rassilon. That's what's been calling to us, Martha – it's trying to hitch a ride home with the nearest time traveller. Which means there's going to be a way home for it soon; I just don't know how, and I can't let it happen."

"Gallifrey's gone, Ace. The Doctor told me all about it."

"Who do you think hid the Circlet here in the first place?" Ace continued walking, and didn't wait for Martha to follow. "The Circlet's too dangerous to let Rassilon at it again. He could read anyone's mind with it, anywhere, anytime. Gallifrey or not, I have to destroy it."

Martha hurried to catch up. "The Doctor left something that powerful here on Earth, and just hoped no one would find it?" She paused. "What am I saying? Of course he did."

"Cleaning up after him's part of my job. Always has been," said Ace.

"I know how you feel," replied Martha.

* * *

I must be found, I must be returned, I must save them. You must save me. Louder now, an impatient edge to the voice slicing through the inhibitor's check on its volume.

"We're getting closer," Martha said. "Just three more storerooms in this wing."

Like every other room she and Ace had visited, this one was floor-to-ceiling with wooden-slatted boxes, all tagged with a bar code, UNIT identification label, and four sets of official stamps. Ace cocked her head at one of the tall containers in front of her, then pulled a short prybar from her jacket and forced open the front of the box.

Inside was the gunmetal-grey shell of a Dalek, pockmarked with glossy black bumps. There was no eerie blue glimmer in the eyestalk, and the creature seemed as dead as dead could be, but seeing it still made Martha flinch.

"Nice of UNIT to keep one of these in cold storage," Ace said. "Hope you don't mind if I vaporise it later." She slapped a flashing yellow disk on top of the Dalek's head.

"Everything's catalogued, Ace," said Martha. "Someone'll notice if something this big disappears."

"Nah. Dalek takes a one-way trip into the sun; box stays here, all sealed up nice and neat like no one ever touched it. It'll be ages before someone figures out it's gone." Ace tugged at the edge of the teleport disk, testing its adhesion. "Besides," she added, "you really care what UNIT thinks anyway?"

"We're protecting the world. It's important work."

"Sure. But I bet you miss being your own boss, don't you? The Professor and I, we've had our problems, but at least it was always just us out there, no rules, no one telling us what to do." When she turned to Martha, there was a terribly familiar mischievous glow to her face. "Of course, if you want to stay here and push papers all day, that's your business."

"I didn't say that," Martha snapped.

"Didn't have to," said Ace, tapping the box panel back in place. "If you've travelled with him, then you already know it yourself."

* * *

"Last one," said Ace, swiping her magic passcard over the access panel.

"Good." Martha strained not to shout over the din in her head. Even through the psychic inhibitor's barrier, the Circlet urged her forwards: find me. Find me. FIND ME.

Sector D-8 was no different from any of the other storerooms they'd seen so far, but the size and arrangement of boxes twigged Martha's déjà vu. It was the room from her dream, no question about it.

Digging through the stack of boxes was sore, sweaty work, and naturally, the one Martha and Ace agreed was calling to them was buried in the deepest stack, in the farthest corner. When they finally unearthed it, Martha took one look at the official UNIT label stuck to the box and started laughing uncontrollably.

"Good one, Professor," Ace muttered.

"Come on," Martha said, still wheezing from laughter, "who's going to touch a box marked 'Ark of the Covenant'?"

"Crazy people, I suppose." Ace shrugged, then broke into a grin. "Like us."

She made short work of the lid, and together, they pulled the top aside to reveal a thicket of excelsior concealing stacks of bricks, and beneath the bricks, a dark, wooden box engraved with a double figure-eight symbol.

Free me. Use me. I need to be held, I need to help, I need to save them. This close to the Circlet, the inhibitor was useless, the voice in Martha's head now as loud as if she'd never worn Ace's gadget at all. Martha reached deep into the excelsior, retrieving the wooden box and tracing the seal with her fingertips, grooves tingling against her skin.

"Martha, give it to me."

Martha's fingers kept moving, and she cradled the box more tightly. Use me. Let me help.

"Martha," Ace said, more sternly this time. "You need to let go. A human mind's not –"

I can save them all. Open me. Free me.

Ace reached for the box, but Martha snatched it away, flipped open the lid, clasped the slim silver band –

and it was like breaking into a billion pieces, or more specifically, ten pieces, one thinking about whether anyone would notice if that ramshackle Type 40 disappeared for a bit of a joyride; and another whether he's wrong about that beast charging him and his friends, what will happen if it isn't a figment of their imagination; and another whether that arrogant, uptight know-it-all who's just been dropped aboard without his permission might possibly prove diverting after all; and another with an electric hum coursing through his body when he flips the lever that sets the TARDIS in motion, and the new girl he's spirited away from her family row clings to the control panel when his ship shudders and shifts into gear –

A gloved hand, strong and sure, ripped the circlet away from Martha, and Martha crumpled to the floor, cradling her aching head. By the time she looked up again, Ace had snapped the box shut and slapped another teleport disk on it.

"I'm so sorry," Martha said in a small, hoarse voice.

Ace crouched next to Martha. "It's okay. If you can talk, I got it back in time. Turn a human brain to oatmeal, that thing will. Even fry a Time Lord brain, eventually."

"Ace," Martha said, "I could hear him."

"Who? His Barminess?"

"No. The Doctor."

"Oh, Jones. Can't say I didn't half wonder what went on in his head sometimes, but trust me, this is not the way to find out."

"I could hear him – all of him, inside my head, all talking over each other – why wouldn't he shut up?"

"When does he ever shut up?"

"Good point." Martha smiled wanly.

"So," Ace said, "hear anything interesting in that old head of his?"

"Too many of him jumbled up in there to really tell. All those memories. Always him running or fighting or just getting off on all the trouble he was making ... and I think one of him was flirting with a tree."

"Professor, you old dog." Ace helped Martha to her feet. "Didn't know he swung quite that way, though. Still, takes all sorts."

"Oh, my head."

"I tried to warn you."

"Yeah, well, next time we go hunting for dangerous alien artefacts, I promise I'll listen more carefully."

The promise hung suspended between them for a moment. A promise Martha hadn't intended to make, but maybe it was time to reach for what she wanted with both hands, make it her own. Save the world on her terms instead of someone else's.

But that didn't mean she had to do it alone.

"Come with me," Ace said. "Room for two on my motorbike."

"I'm not going to be anyone else's companion, Ace."

"Not my sidekick; equals. But leave the driving to me."

"It's a tempting offer ... but I think I'm going to stick closer to home."

"Paperwork's just that appealing, is it?"

"I didn't say that," Martha answered with a smile.

Ace nodded. "See you around, then, Jones."

She was out the door before Martha could even tell her goodbye, and when Martha looked down the hall to call after her, it was if no one had ever been there at all.

* * *

Sunrise painted tangerine and yellow over the trees at the end of the Black Archive's access road, and the guard at the front gate gave Martha a friendly wave as she drove past.

It was probably way too early to make this phonecall, knowing whom she was trying to reach, but Martha tapped the number into her mobile anyway.

After four rings, a sleepy voice picked up.

"This better be good."

"Mickey?" Martha said. "I've got a proposition for you ... ."

Comments

[nonelvis]

Yes, that would seem like a few too many mouths ;) but either way, I'm pleased you enjoyed the story!