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Story: Innocence
Author: Love! Slash! Angst!![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
loveslashangst
Characters: Ten, Martha Jones, Rose Tyler (implied)
Rated: R for some EXTREMELY suggestive banter and at least one scene that's not ready for primetime, though this is not -- strictly speaking -- a Ten/Martha fic
Disclaimer: I don't own 'em, because if I did, there might be real science in Dr. Who instead of just the usual pseudo-science. (ophymirage adds: But Stephen Moffatt's welcome to steal the Universal Model Map any time. Because I want to see that on screen, dammit...)
Spoilers: AU, Sequel (kinda) to The Lady in the Fireplace.
Summary: Ten makes a decent proposal. Martha takes him up on it. Hilarity and adult-themed hijinks ensue. Not exactly a Martha/Ten, but more my love letter to her, hoping she finds what she's REALLY looking for.
Author's Note:
In which the Doctor is a mad scientist and Martha learns how to play with his balls.
This is still not what you think, but it is lovingly dedicated to my mad and delightful wife, Leda, who -- luckily for me -- is an armchair astrophysicist specializing in quantum mechanics. (Smart IS sexy.)
The Doctor and Martha race each other for the door.
As they trot down the hall, she turns at a sound. Dear God, is the Doctor actually giggling? That could be a very bad sign. Sometimes the things that amuse him are very, very dangerous. (Not that he’s not absolutely adorable when he’s amused. Big kid and all that.)
He brings them to a halt in front of a simple, wooden door. Martha wavers between amusement and annoyance as the Doctor strikes a dramatic pose. “Behind this door,” he intones, eyes sparkling with mock warning, “lie all the secrets of the universe.”
She folds her arms, bemused. “G’won. Tell us another.”
He drops the drama. “No, seriously. There’s some well cool stuff in here.”
“Is this your play room, then?” she teases.
“Nope.” He puts one graceful finger over his lips and pushes the door open with the other long-fingered hand. “It’s my secret lab.”
“Well that works.” She steps inside, trying not to be nervous. (And excited! He’s showing her the secret lab!) “If anyone’s a mad scientist, it must be you.”
The Doctor gives a melodramatic cackle of insane glee and shuts the door behind them.
He shoots his cuffs. “Now then. The game.”
He pauses. Stares. “Bugger. Wrong room.”
“You sure?” It certainly looks like a lab to her, what with the table of odd tubes, the rack of beakers, waiting Bunsen burners and oddments and a whole wall of shelves of jars of God-knows-what.
Annoyed, the Doctor dials his sonic screwdriver. Aims. The thing buzzes. The room inverts, pulling in on itself. Martha’s brain can’t quite handle what she’s seeing. It’s like watching someone turn their shirt inside out, only with a whole room.
She blinks. They’re now in a sterile-looking white room. Like a lab-tech kind of place.
“Should we have hazmat suits on?” Calm. Yes. She’s definitely going to remain calm.
“Bugger BUGGER,” says the Doctor. “Thought I left it... Oh yeah!” He dials again. Another buzz. Another mind-bending inversion.
The place now looks like someone’s romper room. Fake wood panelling. Low-pile carpet. Slight musty smell. Rocking chair in the corner.
Oh yes, and a cube hovering in the middle of the room, seemingly in defiance of gravity.
She stares at the Doctor.
He looks sheepish. (Or slightly smug. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.) “Time Lord stuff.”
She cocks an eyebrow at him. (Brings a whole new meaning to ‘space-saver’.) “Is it safe?”
“Perfectly.” He steps toward the cube. The room wobbles a bit, then solidifies into real, three-dimensional space.
And Martha’s never been so aware that she’s been sleeping with an alien.
The cube in the centre of the room is about a meter square per side. Each plane is laid out with the bright primary colours and madcap patterns of the Mousetrap board game.
The Doctor puts on his brainy specs (Love those!) and peers at the thing.
She takes a tentative step forward. The ground seems like ground. Slightly spongy carpet. And entirely too normal for having just appeared before her eyes. Then she notices that each plane of the cube already has the accoutrements of the game already laid out. Man in the pan. Weird wobbly stairs. Pole with the little net. Humorous boot on its bar. Mouse-shaped counters sit on various squares as if the game has already begun.
After all that build up, she’s actually disappointed. “But it’s already set up.”
“Nawwwwww.” The Doctor circles the cube, inspecting. “Setting up the boards is the boring part. Takes forever with all those plastic pieces and little mice and whatnot, so I just skip to the Positioning. Now THESE babies are the real adventure.”
It’s only at that moment that she’s able to really perceive the little... um... spherical things that hover at odd angles around the cube. For a moment, she thinks they’re silvery-black marbles (like inverted mirrors), but looking at them for longer than a few seconds gives her a headache. “What are those?”
“Wormholes.” He makes it sound like she’s been thick enough to ask if there’s really salt in a salt shaker.
“Wormholes.” She uses her best clinical, I’m-talking-to-a-crazy-person voice.
“‘Course wormholes!” he says. “Can’t play tesseract Mousetrap without wormholes! How else d’you get the ball to trigger all six traps at once?”
“They can’t be wormholes,” says Martha as calmly as she can. “Wormholes would send us to another dimension. Or suck up the room. Or destroy everything.”
“Awwwww,” he says with his usual gleeful derision. “These aren’t big enough to hurt anything. Little bitty cracks in space-time. The chaff of black holes. Surprisingly common.” He frowns slightly. “Don’t last too long, though, so I keep having to find new ones -- irritating to have the pieces cease to exist just when I’ve got a matched set, but they’re fun to play with while they’re here.”
Just when she thought he couldn’t possibly do anything weird enough to surprise her. “You play with wormholes... for fun?”
He grins. “Fantastic, isn’t it?” He looks admiringly at the cube. “Wish I’d thought of this years ago. Could’ve made a mint. The right marketing and a good supplier of replacement pieces and I’ll wager you’d have seen one of these in every nursery on Gallifrey. Could’ve retired and bought my way out of the price on my head.”
A chair appears beside Martha just in time. She sits heavily. “You’re completely mad.”
He nods vigorously with another of those mad-scientist cackles. He rubs his hands together, anticipating. “Rules. Yes. Rules. Each player gets two wormholes per side to do with as they please. AHA!!” He leans forward. “About to have a reaction on delta board.”
He’s making even less sense than usual. “What?”
“Delta board,” he says, a model of patient insanity. He points to each side in sequence. “Alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta. Six sides. Six letters for shorthand. Decided to use the Greek.” He gives her a confiding look. “Sounded more science-y.”
She has to laugh. It’s either that or run screaming. (She really wants to sign on for this?) Just then, a ball appears out of one of the wormholes. Sets off the chain reaction on the “delta” side board. Man flips into pan. Ball rolls. Net falls just as it should, trapping a mouse-shaped counter.
“Fantastic!” says the Doctor. “Now to gamma.” He points.
The ball zips into the wormhole at the base of the trap. Comes shooting out of another wormhole about half a metre above the gamma board. Sets off another chain reaction. The falling net traps another mouse counter.
“Epsilon!” the Doctor carols. He’s nearly vibrating with joy.
The ball falls through the wormhole at the base of the net. Appears over the epsilon board. Misses entirely. Whizzes straight at Martha’s head.
The Doctor grabs the ball out of the air before it can hit her. “Bollocks,” he says. “Could’ve sworn I had it that time.”
She’s out of breath and thoroughly startled. (The thing would’ve brained her in another second.) “I don’t suppose,” she says as calmly as she can, “you’d like to tell me what in the hell just happened?”
“Could’ve sworn...” He purses his lips as he does some silent calculating. “Been waiting for that one to clear for about three weeks now.”
“Three weeks!” She’s gone shrill again, dammit. “How can it take three weeks for a metal ball to go through a wormhole? I thought they were instant!”
He stares at the cube intently. Glares at the errant ball as if it’s personally insulted him.
“Doctor?” she prompts.
“What?” He snaps out of it. “Oh. Yes. They don’t all take that long. That’s the tricky bit with wormholes. Variables in the time-space of the multiverse can wreck all kinds of havoc. The ball could end up coming out of your nose, or not showing up for four days, or stuck inside a solid wall.” He smiles. “Once, one of mine ended up in King George II's chamber pot. Messy business that was.”
She has a weird urge to kiss him. Or to run for her life while she’s still got all her limbs. “And this is your idea of fun?”
He winks. “Yup.” He glares at the ball one more time, then pitches it down into the wormhole at the base of the little blue plastic stairs on the epsilon side. The ball disappears. He gets serious again, calculating. “Have about five minutes before it comes back, hopefully.”
He dials the sonic screwdriver. Aims it. It buzzes. The Doctor nods, satisfied. He clicks his fingers. The traps on the delta and gamma boards reset.
This is nothing like playing with Tish. (But now that she thinks about it, is this any weirder than the twenty-year traffic jam on New Earth?) “So how do you move wormholes without... I dunno... something bad happening?”
The Doctor twirls his sonic screwdriver with a flourish. “Setting 3016-C creates a very localised region of Euclidean space. Since its relative curvature -- compared to the surrounding space-time -- is effectively zero, it will draw a nearby wormhole to it like an iron filing to a magnet.” He dials again. Hits the button. Another buzz. (That thing’s good for everything.) The wormhole closest to him sluggishly moves a few centimeters closer. “Like so,” he says. “When you have each wormhole where you want it...” He lets go the button and the buzzing stops. “Simply turn off the screwdriver.” The wormhole settles into its new position, looking oddly satisfied with itself. “There. With any kind of luck everything will line up better this time.”
The ball reappears through the wormhole. It misses epsilon side again. The Doctor makes a grab for it. Misses. It hits the carpet.
“Bollocks!” The Doctor picks up the ball. Waggles an admonishing finger at it. “I’ll have you know I was making a point.”
She shakes her head in wonder. “You’re either impossibly brilliant or completely mad.”
He grins. “Why not both?”
The Doctor palms the ball. Folds his hands behind him. Turns neatly on his heel to face her. “Now then, Miss Jones. The real question is...” He bends forward into a half-bow. Offers her the sonic screwdriver, handle first. “Are you game?”
Link to All Previous Chapters
Author: Love! Slash! Angst!
loveslashangst Characters: Ten, Martha Jones, Rose Tyler (implied)
Rated: R for some EXTREMELY suggestive banter and at least one scene that's not ready for primetime, though this is not -- strictly speaking -- a Ten/Martha fic
Disclaimer: I don't own 'em, because if I did, there might be real science in Dr. Who instead of just the usual pseudo-science. (
ophymirage adds: But Stephen Moffatt's welcome to steal the Universal Model Map any time. Because I want to see that on screen, dammit...) Spoilers: AU, Sequel (kinda) to The Lady in the Fireplace.
Summary: Ten makes a decent proposal. Martha takes him up on it. Hilarity and adult-themed hijinks ensue. Not exactly a Martha/Ten, but more my love letter to her, hoping she finds what she's REALLY looking for.
Author's Note:
In which the Doctor is a mad scientist and Martha learns how to play with his balls.
This is still not what you think, but it is lovingly dedicated to my mad and delightful wife, Leda, who -- luckily for me -- is an armchair astrophysicist specializing in quantum mechanics. (Smart IS sexy.)
The Doctor and Martha race each other for the door.
As they trot down the hall, she turns at a sound. Dear God, is the Doctor actually giggling? That could be a very bad sign. Sometimes the things that amuse him are very, very dangerous. (Not that he’s not absolutely adorable when he’s amused. Big kid and all that.)
He brings them to a halt in front of a simple, wooden door. Martha wavers between amusement and annoyance as the Doctor strikes a dramatic pose. “Behind this door,” he intones, eyes sparkling with mock warning, “lie all the secrets of the universe.”
She folds her arms, bemused. “G’won. Tell us another.”
He drops the drama. “No, seriously. There’s some well cool stuff in here.”
“Is this your play room, then?” she teases.
“Nope.” He puts one graceful finger over his lips and pushes the door open with the other long-fingered hand. “It’s my secret lab.”
“Well that works.” She steps inside, trying not to be nervous. (And excited! He’s showing her the secret lab!) “If anyone’s a mad scientist, it must be you.”
The Doctor gives a melodramatic cackle of insane glee and shuts the door behind them.
He shoots his cuffs. “Now then. The game.”
He pauses. Stares. “Bugger. Wrong room.”
“You sure?” It certainly looks like a lab to her, what with the table of odd tubes, the rack of beakers, waiting Bunsen burners and oddments and a whole wall of shelves of jars of God-knows-what.
Annoyed, the Doctor dials his sonic screwdriver. Aims. The thing buzzes. The room inverts, pulling in on itself. Martha’s brain can’t quite handle what she’s seeing. It’s like watching someone turn their shirt inside out, only with a whole room.
She blinks. They’re now in a sterile-looking white room. Like a lab-tech kind of place.
“Should we have hazmat suits on?” Calm. Yes. She’s definitely going to remain calm.
“Bugger BUGGER,” says the Doctor. “Thought I left it... Oh yeah!” He dials again. Another buzz. Another mind-bending inversion.
The place now looks like someone’s romper room. Fake wood panelling. Low-pile carpet. Slight musty smell. Rocking chair in the corner.
Oh yes, and a cube hovering in the middle of the room, seemingly in defiance of gravity.
She stares at the Doctor.
He looks sheepish. (Or slightly smug. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.) “Time Lord stuff.”
She cocks an eyebrow at him. (Brings a whole new meaning to ‘space-saver’.) “Is it safe?”
“Perfectly.” He steps toward the cube. The room wobbles a bit, then solidifies into real, three-dimensional space.
And Martha’s never been so aware that she’s been sleeping with an alien.
The cube in the centre of the room is about a meter square per side. Each plane is laid out with the bright primary colours and madcap patterns of the Mousetrap board game.
The Doctor puts on his brainy specs (Love those!) and peers at the thing.
She takes a tentative step forward. The ground seems like ground. Slightly spongy carpet. And entirely too normal for having just appeared before her eyes. Then she notices that each plane of the cube already has the accoutrements of the game already laid out. Man in the pan. Weird wobbly stairs. Pole with the little net. Humorous boot on its bar. Mouse-shaped counters sit on various squares as if the game has already begun.
After all that build up, she’s actually disappointed. “But it’s already set up.”
“Nawwwwww.” The Doctor circles the cube, inspecting. “Setting up the boards is the boring part. Takes forever with all those plastic pieces and little mice and whatnot, so I just skip to the Positioning. Now THESE babies are the real adventure.”
It’s only at that moment that she’s able to really perceive the little... um... spherical things that hover at odd angles around the cube. For a moment, she thinks they’re silvery-black marbles (like inverted mirrors), but looking at them for longer than a few seconds gives her a headache. “What are those?”
“Wormholes.” He makes it sound like she’s been thick enough to ask if there’s really salt in a salt shaker.
“Wormholes.” She uses her best clinical, I’m-talking-to-a-crazy-person voice.
“‘Course wormholes!” he says. “Can’t play tesseract Mousetrap without wormholes! How else d’you get the ball to trigger all six traps at once?”
“They can’t be wormholes,” says Martha as calmly as she can. “Wormholes would send us to another dimension. Or suck up the room. Or destroy everything.”
“Awwwww,” he says with his usual gleeful derision. “These aren’t big enough to hurt anything. Little bitty cracks in space-time. The chaff of black holes. Surprisingly common.” He frowns slightly. “Don’t last too long, though, so I keep having to find new ones -- irritating to have the pieces cease to exist just when I’ve got a matched set, but they’re fun to play with while they’re here.”
Just when she thought he couldn’t possibly do anything weird enough to surprise her. “You play with wormholes... for fun?”
He grins. “Fantastic, isn’t it?” He looks admiringly at the cube. “Wish I’d thought of this years ago. Could’ve made a mint. The right marketing and a good supplier of replacement pieces and I’ll wager you’d have seen one of these in every nursery on Gallifrey. Could’ve retired and bought my way out of the price on my head.”
A chair appears beside Martha just in time. She sits heavily. “You’re completely mad.”
He nods vigorously with another of those mad-scientist cackles. He rubs his hands together, anticipating. “Rules. Yes. Rules. Each player gets two wormholes per side to do with as they please. AHA!!” He leans forward. “About to have a reaction on delta board.”
He’s making even less sense than usual. “What?”
“Delta board,” he says, a model of patient insanity. He points to each side in sequence. “Alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta. Six sides. Six letters for shorthand. Decided to use the Greek.” He gives her a confiding look. “Sounded more science-y.”
She has to laugh. It’s either that or run screaming. (She really wants to sign on for this?) Just then, a ball appears out of one of the wormholes. Sets off the chain reaction on the “delta” side board. Man flips into pan. Ball rolls. Net falls just as it should, trapping a mouse-shaped counter.
“Fantastic!” says the Doctor. “Now to gamma.” He points.
The ball zips into the wormhole at the base of the trap. Comes shooting out of another wormhole about half a metre above the gamma board. Sets off another chain reaction. The falling net traps another mouse counter.
“Epsilon!” the Doctor carols. He’s nearly vibrating with joy.
The ball falls through the wormhole at the base of the net. Appears over the epsilon board. Misses entirely. Whizzes straight at Martha’s head.
The Doctor grabs the ball out of the air before it can hit her. “Bollocks,” he says. “Could’ve sworn I had it that time.”
She’s out of breath and thoroughly startled. (The thing would’ve brained her in another second.) “I don’t suppose,” she says as calmly as she can, “you’d like to tell me what in the hell just happened?”
“Could’ve sworn...” He purses his lips as he does some silent calculating. “Been waiting for that one to clear for about three weeks now.”
“Three weeks!” She’s gone shrill again, dammit. “How can it take three weeks for a metal ball to go through a wormhole? I thought they were instant!”
He stares at the cube intently. Glares at the errant ball as if it’s personally insulted him.
“Doctor?” she prompts.
“What?” He snaps out of it. “Oh. Yes. They don’t all take that long. That’s the tricky bit with wormholes. Variables in the time-space of the multiverse can wreck all kinds of havoc. The ball could end up coming out of your nose, or not showing up for four days, or stuck inside a solid wall.” He smiles. “Once, one of mine ended up in King George II's chamber pot. Messy business that was.”
She has a weird urge to kiss him. Or to run for her life while she’s still got all her limbs. “And this is your idea of fun?”
He winks. “Yup.” He glares at the ball one more time, then pitches it down into the wormhole at the base of the little blue plastic stairs on the epsilon side. The ball disappears. He gets serious again, calculating. “Have about five minutes before it comes back, hopefully.”
He dials the sonic screwdriver. Aims it. It buzzes. The Doctor nods, satisfied. He clicks his fingers. The traps on the delta and gamma boards reset.
This is nothing like playing with Tish. (But now that she thinks about it, is this any weirder than the twenty-year traffic jam on New Earth?) “So how do you move wormholes without... I dunno... something bad happening?”
The Doctor twirls his sonic screwdriver with a flourish. “Setting 3016-C creates a very localised region of Euclidean space. Since its relative curvature -- compared to the surrounding space-time -- is effectively zero, it will draw a nearby wormhole to it like an iron filing to a magnet.” He dials again. Hits the button. Another buzz. (That thing’s good for everything.) The wormhole closest to him sluggishly moves a few centimeters closer. “Like so,” he says. “When you have each wormhole where you want it...” He lets go the button and the buzzing stops. “Simply turn off the screwdriver.” The wormhole settles into its new position, looking oddly satisfied with itself. “There. With any kind of luck everything will line up better this time.”
The ball reappears through the wormhole. It misses epsilon side again. The Doctor makes a grab for it. Misses. It hits the carpet.
“Bollocks!” The Doctor picks up the ball. Waggles an admonishing finger at it. “I’ll have you know I was making a point.”
She shakes her head in wonder. “You’re either impossibly brilliant or completely mad.”
He grins. “Why not both?”
The Doctor palms the ball. Folds his hands behind him. Turns neatly on his heel to face her. “Now then, Miss Jones. The real question is...” He bends forward into a half-bow. Offers her the sonic screwdriver, handle first. “Are you game?”
Link to All Previous Chapters
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