Fic: The Many

[thornyrose42]

 

Two weeks later Martha rings the Doctor.

 

“You did that on purpose didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

 

His sigh is a crackle of static in her ear. 

 

“We could have been here, we could have helped, you could have fixed this.” Her voice cracks.

 

“Martha, I…”

 

“You whisked us away, half way across space and time, and brought us back when it was all over. Convenient that you came on that week wasn’t it? And you just happened to have Sarah Jane and the kids with you? What a coincidence! God I should have know something was up, I should have…”

 

“I had to.”

 

“Don’t you dare!” He breaths in, sharply, and there is a knife edge silence for a moment. She draws her anger back in, then says quietly, “You know where you found us? All those kids we were working with at the aid outpost? We got back, we waved you off and we walked back. There was nothing left. The whole place was deserted. The army had taken them. Gwen tells me that back home they took the bottom ten percent, the league tables you know, but here… here everyone is the bottom ten percent. I bet they didn’t even debate it; they just went out and rounded them up. Child-catchers!”

 

“I’m sorry, I’m so…”

 

“Please, no, just no.”

 

His voice continues relentless.

 

“It was a fixed point. It was… it, it needed to happen. Somethings, some events, history revolves around them. I can’t change that.”

 

“But what about, all the stuff you’ve said about it being a ball, like jelly…” She could feel herself starting to plead and stopped.

 

“I didn’t want… I knew you would, that you would all fight, but this wasn’t your fight, Martha. Dr. Jones, you know that sometimes, sometimes there isn’t anything you can do, not everybody lives.”

 

“Like Ianto. Did you know that he died? I talked to Jack, he wouldn’t answer my calls but I got through to Gwen and she forced the phone into his hand or something. He wouldn’t say much, but it isn’t just Ianto he had to, he had to…”

 

Her tears are choked up in the back of her throat. It feels like she’s swallowed a pine cone. 

 

“I know.”

 

“I don’t know how he did it. I keep trying to imagine what I would have done. If it was Keisha looking at me as I killed her. And I don’t know. I don’t know…”

 

He doesn’t say anything for a long time. She counts the static bursts in her ear. Twenty breaths later he says:

 

“You saved a hundred and six people, you and Tom and Sarah Jane and Luke and Rani and Clyde, you saved that colony. You were brilliant. If you hadn’t been there...”

 

Another stomach punch of guilt and anger hit her. She almost laughed with the shock.

 

“There are no easy choices are there Doctor?”

 

“Sometimes...I have found them too easy.”

 

She hangs up shortly afterwards. It is too hard to talk to the Doctor now. She goes back to hunting down her missing children and that night she tells Tom what she couldn’t tell the Doctor. She is glad, guiltily glad, that she didn’t have to choose between the many and the few. She is too sure that she would have made the wrong choice.

 

 

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

That was excellent, ic, and the last sentence was just perfect.

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I think, in way, the choice that Jack made was heroic and Martha, I think, while she would willingly sacrifice herself and as in Journey's End a faceless world, I don't know whether she could do that to her family. I don't think very many of us could.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

“It was a fixed point. It was… it, it needed to happen. Somethings, some events, history revolves around them. I can’t change that.”

I had wondered if that was the reason he was conveniently absent when this is exactly the sort of situation he usually shows up for.

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

I think that it has to be really, especially for something this big that spans the whole world, I don't know, I suppose you could accept Gwen's opinion and fanwank that his experiences in Midnight had meant that he couldn't face humans at their worst again...

But I still think that if he could have stepped in he would have.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Nah. I can certainly see why Gwen would say that, and it's a pretty effective line, but I really don't believe that it's true. Either he just managed to miss it somehow, or he stayed away for timeline reasons.

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

Can you imagine if he had just managed to miss it though? He pops in about three weeks after it has happened to check that Torchwood isn't doing anything too stupid and maybe (as I saw in one fic) release the Weevils or because he has noticed that the Rift is doing something funny and then he finds the crater where Torchwood was...

And of course you can't cross your own timeline or something...

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Ouch. But that would be just his luck these days, really.

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

Jack's MANPAIN is nothing to the Doctors ANGST!

:)

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Ha! :)

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

MANPAIN vs ANGST in the ultimate fight to the death! Coming soon to BBC1 in a christmas special near you.

[mizerable-momo.livejournal.com]

i'm of the opinion that it had to happen based solely on a question asked during DW season 1 on that horrible version of The Weakest Link.
the one about the Great Cobalt Pyramid being built on the ruins of the Torchwood Institute. They never specified WHICH branch of Torchwood it was. So... because 3 was absolutely without question obliterated while Canary Wharf may have had only some structural damage... yeah. it had to happen because he'd already crossed that timeline where it was fact? and at the time had jack with him making it fact for him too?... coupled with the problem of jack being a fact himself? god, not i'm confusing myself!

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

I think this is the point where the Doctor jumps in with "big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimiy stuff".

:)

Though I hadn't remembered that been so long since I watched season one.

[mizerable-momo.livejournal.com]

the only reason i remembered it is because it's a key point in 2 fics i'm writing, using the Cobalt Pyramid as an impossibly large paradox machine. n.n

[aralias.livejournal.com]

as i said in my journal, this is excellent. and i think a much more plausible explanation (poor doctor. the way he must think of himself now, to say that he's found the choices too easy). and, in the end, i suppose, not many people died on a global scale. jack did save them - most of them.

i love the way you've juxtaposed martha, tom and the sja gang saving a group of people on an alien world, with not being able to save anyone on earth because they were gone. and the idea of martha (who is one of the goodies) not being able to make the right choice either.

very good.

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much. :)

This is actually my first fic set in the Doctor who universe so I'm really glad that it has gone down so well.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Very good.

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much!

[softly-me.livejournal.com]

Oh, I liked this. Especially because during the entire episode I kept thinking, 'DOCTOR! Jack needs you! Where are you?!?'

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

Oh me too, especially since Jack seemed to be trying to BE the Doctor a lot of the time and really failing quite badly, after all the Doctor barely gets away with it half the time.

[kathyh]

“It was a fixed point. It was… it, it needed to happen. Somethings, some events, history revolves around them. I can’t change that.”

That really works for me as a reason why he wasn't there. When Gwen was saying the he "turns from this planet in shame" in my head I was muttering "no, he doesn't" (which did make me feel I might be taking it a bit too seriously *g*) as nothing I've seen in my years of watching Doctor Who would make me believe that.

Excellent last line. Not many people could have made Jack's choice.

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

Oh exactly, I feel quite certain that even after Midnight the Doctor still loves his messed up, dangerous, indomitable humans and Earth is after all his second home. Also you can see how the events of the series would be a turning point, maybe this is what Jack means when he stands on his roof and says that the twenty first century is when it all changes.

[kate-swynford.livejournal.com]

Great story. I can see it happening (and it fits nicely into canon).

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

Cheers!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Saw this recced by selenak - I'd been wondering about SJS too, this makes a lot of sense.

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

Yeah, although I've been thinking about it since and SJS and the kids are a lot harder to take on a week long visit to the cosmos then I thought at first, after all what about their parents.

[lady-moriel.livejournal.com]

He and Sarah Jane would come up with something. I kind of wanted to see fic of the SJA cast during this just because I figure Luke wouldn't be affected, but all in all this bit of canon is dark enough it would be hard to fit SJA into it properly other than having them gone.

[honorh.livejournal.com]

Very, very good. I like how this was mostly dialogue. Sometimes, just telling the words people say makes it even more vivid. And the last sentence--perfect.

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

I think because it was a phone conversation the words and what they can hear become the most important thing, also you know, it was one in the morning, dialogue was about all I could manage!

[elisi]

I could see this, yes. Thank you.

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[vitruvian23.livejournal.com]

Okay... answers for Martha and SJ. Now I'm wondering what Donna and Wilf (and mum, too, I suppose) got up to.

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

Knowing Donna she was probably taking a five day camping trip in the Himalayas whilst wearing earmuffs and a very wide brimmed hat. :)

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

“There are no easy choices are there Doctor?”

“Sometimes...I have found them too easy.”

Oh, NICE.

Really like this take on it. (And oh, I miss Martha Jones.)

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I was worried about the Doctor's voice.

/And oh, I miss Martha Jones./

I do to. Goes away to watch the Shut Up and Drive vid for the then thousandth time

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

Shut Up and Drive vid

Got a handy link? & :-)

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

http://laurashapiro.livejournal.com/240950.html

In which Martha Jones is better than you!

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

Ugh just saw the imeem no longer works but i think that the download still does.

Martha Jones is not pleased.

[salienne.livejournal.com]

Ouch. That was dark, but just the right level of dark, and I could hear the two of them having that conversation in my head. Really interesting take on why Martha, Sarah Jane and the kids, and the Doctor weren't there.

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'm really pleased that you thought I got the voices right.