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.

[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.

[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.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Very good.

[softly-me.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[kate-swynford.livejournal.com]

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

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[elisi]

I could see this, yes. Thank you.

[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.

[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.)

[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.