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locker_monsterTitle: The Other Side of the World (3/31)
Rating: PG
Characters: Rose, Martha
Timeline: Season three
Summary: Season three AU; After a fateful visit to Royal Hope Hospital, Rose finds herself lost in time and space with medical student Martha Jones. As they struggle to find a way home, they meet old friends, and old enemies, along the way...
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine. Any borrowed dialogue belongs to Russell T Davies and the BBC.
A/N: A sequel to "The Other Side". It's not necessary reading; it just sets up the premise that it was the Doctor who was trapped in Pete's World, not Rose. And a shout-out to my awesome betas:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
joking and quean_of_swords. This story wouldn't have been posted without you guys.
Chapter One. Chapter Two.
It was unnerving to look all around and see nothing but the deepest depths of an alien ocean. Martha was fully aware that all that separated her from crushing death was the hollow passageway made of thick glass and that wasn’t holding up quite so well at the moment. She ran desperately, trying to keep ahead of the thin cracks forming all along the glass. If the passageway shattered, both she and Rose were dead. The pressure would kill them long before they had time to drown.
She urged Rose forward, always making sure the young woman was in front of her. She was less pale now and her wound was stitched up, but that didn’t mean she was totally recovered.
Out in the darkness of the ocean, an alien fish creature swam along beside them, keeping pace with them. His tail thrashed furiously to give him the speed he needed. Though they couldn’t hear him, speakers in the passageway translated his speech and his words drove them onward.
Thankfully their checkpoint was approaching. A large metal ring that acted as a support and location marker for the passageway grew closer with every stride. Their companion in the water swam ahead, accessing the control panel on his side of the glass. The moment both she and Rose were across the ring, they came to a stop, gasping deeply the circulated air that ventilated the underwater passageways.
“It’s not working,” Martha said between breaths. The cracks were still travelling down the passageway towards them. Out in the ocean, the fish alien entered commands into the control panel at a frantic pace.
“Give him a chance. He got the rest of the group out.”
But there was no time to give. Little geysers of water seeped through the fractures in the glass. Martha could now hear the glass slowly giving way under the pressure of the ocean.
“Please start running,” said the fish alien, his voice a monotone drone as translated through the speakers. It was hard for Martha to read his expression. The glass distorted the underwater world outside and the alien really didn’t have any familiar features. His large eyes and his gaping mouth of teeth didn’t look like anything human.
“No,” said Rose, resolute. “Whatever’s breaking apart your passageways can hurt you, too. Just come with us back to the surface.”
“I cannot let the entire structure collapse. If we lose the passageways in the deep world, the ports of the bright world will collapse as well. If you leave now, you can warn the top dwellers of the danger. I will be fine, Rose of Tyler.” The fish creature bared his rows and rows of sharp teeth, like he was smiling.
As urgent as the situation was, Martha made no move to leave. She didn’t want to be crushed by million tonnes of water, but she couldn’t leave another living being to die either. She may have not been a full doctor yet, but she still had an obligation to ensure no harm came to others, human or extraterrestrial.
For Rose, it seemed, the decision wasn’t as simple. She watched the cracks continue to form for a moment before looking over her shoulder to take in the passageway leading away from the trouble. The inner conflict was apparent in her expression. The frown on her face completely dominated her whole being. After a few seconds, the weight of each option considered, Rose placed her hand on Martha’s arm.
“We have to warn the people on the surface.”
Martha looked to their fish friend. He was engrossed with inputting data in the control panel, trying to activate the emergency bulkheads.
A thin layer of water splashed underfoot as Rose tightened her grip. Martha silently nodded her head and together they took off down the passageway, headed for the glass lift at the far end.
She tried not to let her thoughts dwell on the alien they were leaving behind, but she couldn’t help herself. He had greeted them when they had stepped off the TARDIS and had shown them the way to the medical facility. He had even helped to heal Rose’s wound. Unlike the aliens who had appeared at Royal Hope, the fish creature had shown kindness.
“Please tell me these are still workin’,” Rose muttered to herself as they entered at the lift. She pushed the up button.
A second later, the door hissed shut and a gravity well pushed them up the glass shaft. Though it was her second time in the glass lift, Martha found herself thinking about Willy Wonka and his similar means of transport. That lift had gone into space.
“It feels like you do this all the time,” she said to Rose. The lift maintained a constant speed and the ride would take minutes. Now felt like a decent time to ask some of the questions that had been on Martha’s mind.
Rose rested her weight against the side of the glass, her left hand cradling her right side. “I used to. Me and the Doctor.”
Something about the way Rose said the word lent it so much significance. “Doctor who?”
Rose smiled at the question, a sad little half smile. “Just the Doctor. We travelled together for awhile.”
“In the TARDIS. Through time and space.” It was hard enough to believe that blue box was a space ship, but the fact that it also travelled in time was almost too much. Just saying it out loud barely made it plausible.
“He showed me the universe. There’s so much out there, Martha. People and worlds you can’t even imagine.”
“Oh, I’m starting to.” Martha gave a nervous little laugh. Here she was talking about time travel with a young woman a few years younger than her in a glass lift under the ocean of an alien world. What her imagination was capable of now was sorely lacking compared to what the greater universe could think up. “So where is the Doctor now? You said you were just looking after the TARDIS.”
Rose looked away from Martha, her gaze falling on the darkness outside. “He’s… not around anymore. He told me to leave the TARDIS to gather dust, but I couldn’t do it. Maybe I should have listened.”
The glass walls of the lift reflected Rose’s image and Martha could see the longing and sadness in the young woman’s expression. “Who was he, the Doctor?”
Though nothing could be seen beyond the minimal amount of light given off by the lift, Rose continued to stare out at the ocean. When the young woman didn’t reply after a moment or two, Martha thought she might have stepped over a line. The one downside at working at Royal Hope; she recognized mourning quite easily.
But then Rose frowned, not out of annoyance from Martha’s question, but out of concern. “Martha…”
Martha looked out the lift, wondering what it was that had caught Rose’s attention. At first she saw nothing but dark blue ocean, but after a second she saw it. Subtle cracks were forming in the lift shaft.
“Can this thing go any faster?” Rose looked madly around the lift but there were no buttons to push or controls to manipulate.
Martha forced herself to look away from the developing cracks. “We couldn’t, even if we want to. If we ascend too quickly the sudden pressure differential will cause decompression sickness. You don’t want a burst lung, trust me.”
The cracks seemed to race them as the lift continued up the glass shaft. With each passing moment, the fractures became longer and bigger.
“So, worst case scenario. The shaft breaks?”
“The shaft breaks and we plunge back down. At that point the strain of the ocean breaks the glass of the lift and we drown, or we die from the pressure.”
The lift continued to rise despite the potential for the shaft to fail catastrophically. Rose went silent, her gaze never leaving the surface of the glass. She looked lost in thought and for the moment Martha was happy to defer to the young woman’s expertise, though there wasn’t much either of them could do right that second.
Never in her life had Martha missed home more than in that moment. Her parents may have squabbled like teenagers and work at the hospital was mad, but it was familiar.
A faint, almost scratching sound pulled Martha from her thoughts. She looked around the lift. The ocean was starting to lighten around them. She could make out small alien fish drawn to the light of the lift. They were getting closer to the surface. But it wasn’t soon enough.
The glass of the lift was cracking too.
She glanced at Rose. Her companion had seen it as well. A spider web of cracked glass was creeping outwards from one side. It was moving slower than the cracking of the glass of the shaft but it was likely both would completely shatter, leaving them at the mercies of the ocean’s depths. In such an enclosed space, Martha felt completely useless. What could she or Rose do without any resources besides themselves?
“Oh, now that’s just mad,” Martha whispered to herself as a thought dawned on her. She took in the progress of the cracks then tried to gauge how far they were from the ocean’s surface. She wasn’t a diver, far from it, but she knew what the human body was capable of.
The lift shaft seemed to be all fractures now. One good hit and it looked ready to give. The lift itself wasn’t far behind.
“Rose, this is going to sound mad, but I think I know how to get out of here.” More diffused sunlight was cutting through the waters. Another thirty seconds and maybe they would be close enough. “We’re going to break out.”
“What about the pressure?”
“I read somewhere the body can withstand 1500 feet, maybe more. That’s only half a kilometre. I think we’re close.”
Rose placed her hand on the centre of the spider web. The cracks had reached the top of the lift and were nearly all the way around. “Better than waitin’ around.”
Martha pointed to where Rose’s hand was. “We break that, then the shaft.”
They positioned themselves opposite of their target, though the confined space of the lift didn’t leave them that much room to gather speed. They would have to do this with brute force, not momentum. It was a shame neither of them were rugby players. Rose counted to three and together they slammed their weight against the wall of the lift. Martha immediately bounced back and she gasped in pain as her entire shoulder began to ache. Rose rubbed her own sore shoulder.
“Okay, not the brightest plan then,” said Martha.
“It’s the only one we got. Come on.” Rose lined up for another attempt.
One… two… three! All the fear, anger, and excitement Martha was feeling in that moment, she channelled it. This was hardly how she pictured spending her day after work, but it didn’t matter if she was crushed to death at the bottom of an alien ocean.
The glass of the lift crunched under their second attempt. Without pausing, they went for a third and the glass gave way just slightly.
“One more,” Rose urged between gasps. Martha took deep breaths, preparing herself in case they did break through. The water would surge in faster than they could react. Her final breath of air would have to last her until they broke the ocean’s surface.
For one second, Martha felt a solid wall against her shoulder. Then it all fell away and the cold seized her. Up and down lost meaning as she and Rose tumbled out of the lift and out into the waters of the ocean. The rational part of her brain warned her to remain calm so she wouldn’t use up all of her oxygen at once, but the rest of her felt a desperate need to take in a breath. She fought the urge and started to kick her way up. Just below her, Rose did the same.
It was so cold. Her limbs refused to work, but she pushed on, her burning lungs a constant reminder that she had to make it. The dark shapes that made up the landing pads of the port hovered over the water.
But no matter how hard Martha swam, the shapes refused to come into focus. She tried to move her arms faster but it was like someone had strapped lead weights to them. Her chest was ready to burst and the ocean was growing darker.
It was a complete surprise to her when she broke the surface of the ocean. Martha took a giant gulp of air, swallowing a mouthful of salty water at the same time as she bobbed along with the waves. As she choked and coughed, a pair of strong hands suddenly wrapped around her arms and pulled her out of the water. Her arms and legs felt so heavy she let whoever and whatever do so.
A blue faced creature looked down at her. It spoke but she barely heard a word it said. All Martha was aware of was she was resting on one of the landing pads, tired and dizzy, but alive.
Hearing some shouts in the distance, Martha had enough sense left to sit up and look. On another landing pad, a group of aliens were hauling a second person out of the water. At the sound of hearty coughing, she felt a surge of relief and flopped back down against the landing pad.
She didn’t hate Rose Tyler for dragging her into this wild existence. It had been her choice to follow the young woman out of the hospital. Whatever lay ahead of them, they would face it together.
Rating: PG
Characters: Rose, Martha
Timeline: Season three
Summary: Season three AU; After a fateful visit to Royal Hope Hospital, Rose finds herself lost in time and space with medical student Martha Jones. As they struggle to find a way home, they meet old friends, and old enemies, along the way...
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine. Any borrowed dialogue belongs to Russell T Davies and the BBC.
A/N: A sequel to "The Other Side". It's not necessary reading; it just sets up the premise that it was the Doctor who was trapped in Pete's World, not Rose. And a shout-out to my awesome betas:
joking and quean_of_swords. This story wouldn't have been posted without you guys.Chapter One. Chapter Two.
It was unnerving to look all around and see nothing but the deepest depths of an alien ocean. Martha was fully aware that all that separated her from crushing death was the hollow passageway made of thick glass and that wasn’t holding up quite so well at the moment. She ran desperately, trying to keep ahead of the thin cracks forming all along the glass. If the passageway shattered, both she and Rose were dead. The pressure would kill them long before they had time to drown.
She urged Rose forward, always making sure the young woman was in front of her. She was less pale now and her wound was stitched up, but that didn’t mean she was totally recovered.
Out in the darkness of the ocean, an alien fish creature swam along beside them, keeping pace with them. His tail thrashed furiously to give him the speed he needed. Though they couldn’t hear him, speakers in the passageway translated his speech and his words drove them onward.
Thankfully their checkpoint was approaching. A large metal ring that acted as a support and location marker for the passageway grew closer with every stride. Their companion in the water swam ahead, accessing the control panel on his side of the glass. The moment both she and Rose were across the ring, they came to a stop, gasping deeply the circulated air that ventilated the underwater passageways.
“It’s not working,” Martha said between breaths. The cracks were still travelling down the passageway towards them. Out in the ocean, the fish alien entered commands into the control panel at a frantic pace.
“Give him a chance. He got the rest of the group out.”
But there was no time to give. Little geysers of water seeped through the fractures in the glass. Martha could now hear the glass slowly giving way under the pressure of the ocean.
“Please start running,” said the fish alien, his voice a monotone drone as translated through the speakers. It was hard for Martha to read his expression. The glass distorted the underwater world outside and the alien really didn’t have any familiar features. His large eyes and his gaping mouth of teeth didn’t look like anything human.
“No,” said Rose, resolute. “Whatever’s breaking apart your passageways can hurt you, too. Just come with us back to the surface.”
“I cannot let the entire structure collapse. If we lose the passageways in the deep world, the ports of the bright world will collapse as well. If you leave now, you can warn the top dwellers of the danger. I will be fine, Rose of Tyler.” The fish creature bared his rows and rows of sharp teeth, like he was smiling.
As urgent as the situation was, Martha made no move to leave. She didn’t want to be crushed by million tonnes of water, but she couldn’t leave another living being to die either. She may have not been a full doctor yet, but she still had an obligation to ensure no harm came to others, human or extraterrestrial.
For Rose, it seemed, the decision wasn’t as simple. She watched the cracks continue to form for a moment before looking over her shoulder to take in the passageway leading away from the trouble. The inner conflict was apparent in her expression. The frown on her face completely dominated her whole being. After a few seconds, the weight of each option considered, Rose placed her hand on Martha’s arm.
“We have to warn the people on the surface.”
Martha looked to their fish friend. He was engrossed with inputting data in the control panel, trying to activate the emergency bulkheads.
A thin layer of water splashed underfoot as Rose tightened her grip. Martha silently nodded her head and together they took off down the passageway, headed for the glass lift at the far end.
She tried not to let her thoughts dwell on the alien they were leaving behind, but she couldn’t help herself. He had greeted them when they had stepped off the TARDIS and had shown them the way to the medical facility. He had even helped to heal Rose’s wound. Unlike the aliens who had appeared at Royal Hope, the fish creature had shown kindness.
“Please tell me these are still workin’,” Rose muttered to herself as they entered at the lift. She pushed the up button.
A second later, the door hissed shut and a gravity well pushed them up the glass shaft. Though it was her second time in the glass lift, Martha found herself thinking about Willy Wonka and his similar means of transport. That lift had gone into space.
“It feels like you do this all the time,” she said to Rose. The lift maintained a constant speed and the ride would take minutes. Now felt like a decent time to ask some of the questions that had been on Martha’s mind.
Rose rested her weight against the side of the glass, her left hand cradling her right side. “I used to. Me and the Doctor.”
Something about the way Rose said the word lent it so much significance. “Doctor who?”
Rose smiled at the question, a sad little half smile. “Just the Doctor. We travelled together for awhile.”
“In the TARDIS. Through time and space.” It was hard enough to believe that blue box was a space ship, but the fact that it also travelled in time was almost too much. Just saying it out loud barely made it plausible.
“He showed me the universe. There’s so much out there, Martha. People and worlds you can’t even imagine.”
“Oh, I’m starting to.” Martha gave a nervous little laugh. Here she was talking about time travel with a young woman a few years younger than her in a glass lift under the ocean of an alien world. What her imagination was capable of now was sorely lacking compared to what the greater universe could think up. “So where is the Doctor now? You said you were just looking after the TARDIS.”
Rose looked away from Martha, her gaze falling on the darkness outside. “He’s… not around anymore. He told me to leave the TARDIS to gather dust, but I couldn’t do it. Maybe I should have listened.”
The glass walls of the lift reflected Rose’s image and Martha could see the longing and sadness in the young woman’s expression. “Who was he, the Doctor?”
Though nothing could be seen beyond the minimal amount of light given off by the lift, Rose continued to stare out at the ocean. When the young woman didn’t reply after a moment or two, Martha thought she might have stepped over a line. The one downside at working at Royal Hope; she recognized mourning quite easily.
But then Rose frowned, not out of annoyance from Martha’s question, but out of concern. “Martha…”
Martha looked out the lift, wondering what it was that had caught Rose’s attention. At first she saw nothing but dark blue ocean, but after a second she saw it. Subtle cracks were forming in the lift shaft.
“Can this thing go any faster?” Rose looked madly around the lift but there were no buttons to push or controls to manipulate.
Martha forced herself to look away from the developing cracks. “We couldn’t, even if we want to. If we ascend too quickly the sudden pressure differential will cause decompression sickness. You don’t want a burst lung, trust me.”
The cracks seemed to race them as the lift continued up the glass shaft. With each passing moment, the fractures became longer and bigger.
“So, worst case scenario. The shaft breaks?”
“The shaft breaks and we plunge back down. At that point the strain of the ocean breaks the glass of the lift and we drown, or we die from the pressure.”
The lift continued to rise despite the potential for the shaft to fail catastrophically. Rose went silent, her gaze never leaving the surface of the glass. She looked lost in thought and for the moment Martha was happy to defer to the young woman’s expertise, though there wasn’t much either of them could do right that second.
Never in her life had Martha missed home more than in that moment. Her parents may have squabbled like teenagers and work at the hospital was mad, but it was familiar.
A faint, almost scratching sound pulled Martha from her thoughts. She looked around the lift. The ocean was starting to lighten around them. She could make out small alien fish drawn to the light of the lift. They were getting closer to the surface. But it wasn’t soon enough.
The glass of the lift was cracking too.
She glanced at Rose. Her companion had seen it as well. A spider web of cracked glass was creeping outwards from one side. It was moving slower than the cracking of the glass of the shaft but it was likely both would completely shatter, leaving them at the mercies of the ocean’s depths. In such an enclosed space, Martha felt completely useless. What could she or Rose do without any resources besides themselves?
“Oh, now that’s just mad,” Martha whispered to herself as a thought dawned on her. She took in the progress of the cracks then tried to gauge how far they were from the ocean’s surface. She wasn’t a diver, far from it, but she knew what the human body was capable of.
The lift shaft seemed to be all fractures now. One good hit and it looked ready to give. The lift itself wasn’t far behind.
“Rose, this is going to sound mad, but I think I know how to get out of here.” More diffused sunlight was cutting through the waters. Another thirty seconds and maybe they would be close enough. “We’re going to break out.”
“What about the pressure?”
“I read somewhere the body can withstand 1500 feet, maybe more. That’s only half a kilometre. I think we’re close.”
Rose placed her hand on the centre of the spider web. The cracks had reached the top of the lift and were nearly all the way around. “Better than waitin’ around.”
Martha pointed to where Rose’s hand was. “We break that, then the shaft.”
They positioned themselves opposite of their target, though the confined space of the lift didn’t leave them that much room to gather speed. They would have to do this with brute force, not momentum. It was a shame neither of them were rugby players. Rose counted to three and together they slammed their weight against the wall of the lift. Martha immediately bounced back and she gasped in pain as her entire shoulder began to ache. Rose rubbed her own sore shoulder.
“Okay, not the brightest plan then,” said Martha.
“It’s the only one we got. Come on.” Rose lined up for another attempt.
One… two… three! All the fear, anger, and excitement Martha was feeling in that moment, she channelled it. This was hardly how she pictured spending her day after work, but it didn’t matter if she was crushed to death at the bottom of an alien ocean.
The glass of the lift crunched under their second attempt. Without pausing, they went for a third and the glass gave way just slightly.
“One more,” Rose urged between gasps. Martha took deep breaths, preparing herself in case they did break through. The water would surge in faster than they could react. Her final breath of air would have to last her until they broke the ocean’s surface.
For one second, Martha felt a solid wall against her shoulder. Then it all fell away and the cold seized her. Up and down lost meaning as she and Rose tumbled out of the lift and out into the waters of the ocean. The rational part of her brain warned her to remain calm so she wouldn’t use up all of her oxygen at once, but the rest of her felt a desperate need to take in a breath. She fought the urge and started to kick her way up. Just below her, Rose did the same.
It was so cold. Her limbs refused to work, but she pushed on, her burning lungs a constant reminder that she had to make it. The dark shapes that made up the landing pads of the port hovered over the water.
But no matter how hard Martha swam, the shapes refused to come into focus. She tried to move her arms faster but it was like someone had strapped lead weights to them. Her chest was ready to burst and the ocean was growing darker.
It was a complete surprise to her when she broke the surface of the ocean. Martha took a giant gulp of air, swallowing a mouthful of salty water at the same time as she bobbed along with the waves. As she choked and coughed, a pair of strong hands suddenly wrapped around her arms and pulled her out of the water. Her arms and legs felt so heavy she let whoever and whatever do so.
A blue faced creature looked down at her. It spoke but she barely heard a word it said. All Martha was aware of was she was resting on one of the landing pads, tired and dizzy, but alive.
Hearing some shouts in the distance, Martha had enough sense left to sit up and look. On another landing pad, a group of aliens were hauling a second person out of the water. At the sound of hearty coughing, she felt a surge of relief and flopped back down against the landing pad.
She didn’t hate Rose Tyler for dragging her into this wild existence. It had been her choice to follow the young woman out of the hospital. Whatever lay ahead of them, they would face it together.
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no subject
Date: 2010-12-21 07:03 am (UTC)(I also liked Martha's stray Willy Wonka thought!)
no subject
Date: 2010-12-23 01:22 am (UTC)The Martha/Rose friendship is an important part of the story. If circumstances had been different, Rose and Martha could have totally been best mates on the show.
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Date: 2011-01-13 04:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-15 12:17 am (UTC)http://locker-monster.livejournal.com/143365.html (http://locker-monster.livejournal.com/143365.html)