Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Back when the world had been made right again, Martha had fully intended on staying home with her family for a little while. Really, that was her entire plan. Lay low for a few months, finish up her studies, rid herself of the nightmares that tormented her every time her eyes blinked closed, even just for a moment… That was all she had in mind.

Then UNIT itself had phoned in with a hello, is this Martha Jones, would you like a job, and Martha had to accept because what else was she supposed to do? If she was honest, Martha wasn’t really a homebody, and UNIT seemed the closest thing to some excitement as she could get. The next-best adventure, in a way.

Martha had never brought up the fact that she never technically made it to doctor-hood. She held the title, though. She might’ve find it a little bit funny, but she never stopped to think about it too much. If she did, she always ended up feeling just a bit guilty about it. So, she brushed it off. She was Doctor Jones now, formalities be damned.

And the ironic thing was, her first true patient as Dr Jones? Well…

The task had been simple: clear out the nest of drug-selling Betelgeusans. Martha had been told to go because, well, it’s her job to go. Not because anybody had planned for the Betelgeusans to have guns.

Martha knelt over the officer on the ground, quickly rummaging through her kit.

“Sorry, I don’t think I remember your name,” she said, smiling a hopefully reassuring smile at him.

“Jones,” the man grit through his teeth. “I’m Private Jones.”

She could’ve laughed at that, but she was too busy digging for some tweezers.

“Well, Private Jones,” she said, “I’m Dr Jones.”

“I know,” he said. “I know… knew…”

“Why don’t you save your breath,” she suggested, not unkindly.

“No,” he insisted, “I have to…”

And Martha had met enough stubborn people in her life to know that she had better just let him say what he wanted. Anyway, handling the bleeding wound was by far a more pressing matter than whether or not she could get this man to shut up.

“I knew your cousin,” Private Jones said, “Adeola Oshodi. Back at… Torchwood… my girlfriend… they… were friends.”

Martha said nothing, dividing emotion from the situation as she continued to work.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I just want you to know… I’m sorry.”

“While that’s kind of you to say,” Martha said when she finishes wiping away blood, so that she can adhere the gauze to him, “is that really what you’d like to make your last words?”

“Haven’t got…” he panted, splicing in a grunt of pain, “…anyone else to say things to. Nothing to say.”

“Well, that’s just sad,” she said. “Guess it’s a good thing you’re not actually dying.”

He blinked up at her. “What?”

“It hit your shoulder.”

Private Jones managed to lift his head enough to glance at the gauze. He stared at it for just a moment, then let out a mortified groan and closed his eyes, letting his head fall back to the pavement. Martha laughed.

“Melodramatic,” she said.

He cracked an eye open and glared at her. She laughed again, sitting back on her heels.

“Seriously, though,” she said, sobering. “I’ve put some Alvean coagulation gel on it. You won’t bleed out. But we should still get you some proper medical attention. We don’t want that to get infected, now, do we?”

“No,” Private Jones agreed. “I don’t think I’d enjoy that very much.”

“I’ll slip you some painkillers,” she told him. “Make the ride back a little less unbearable.”

“Why, Dr Jones,” Private Jones said dryly as she pushed up one of his sleeves and stuck him with a needle. “Dealing drugs is unbecoming of a UNIT officer.”

She gave him a smile. “Well, I don’t know about officer. I’m a doctor. I can do what I’d like with these drugs.”

A small chuckle bubbled out of Private Jones’s lips. Then he closed his eyes again and settled, lying perfectly still as another uniformed officer called for their ride.

An hour later, and Martha’s first patient had become someone else’s nth patient, and Martha had to go see how many officials’ heads she had to clonk together to get them to order field agents to wear complete tactical gear on all missions, even the seemingly low-level, no-brainer, harmless ones. Especially those.

Little did she know, this wasn’t the last time Martha would deal with Private Jones. Oh, no. Far from that, actually.

Martha’s job was to sit and wait in the armoured vehicle while all the field agents went out and did… whatever it was they did for every mission. Shoot people with guns, she supposed. Why the Doctor (she assumed it had been the Doctor, anyway) had called UNIT to get Martha a job, she would never understand. Especially since… well, “The Year.”

A quick rapping of armoured knuckles jolted her from her thoughts. She glanced up at the officer, and he made a motion for her to lower the window. She did so slowly. There was a reason she sat in the car. Field work was dangerous, and while she was fully capable of handling herself in the face of danger, all field medics must sit in the car and wait until they were needed. Martha didn’t know how many UNIT had lost just sitting around, lying out in the open, waiting while bullets were being exchanged. She didn’t want to know. What she wanted is a higher ranking (and paying, to be frank) job, though she knew she wouldn’t get that. She was new and she never technically finished with her studies.

The officer made a motion for her to open her window faster, and Martha caught the immediacy of the situation.

“What is it?” she asked as the window zips the rest of the way down.

“Someone’s been shot,” the officer told her. “Poison dart, or something.”

“Call for medical backup,” she said, because nothing in her kit could save whoever the wounded officer turned out to be.

“Already done.”

She hopped out of the vehicle, gear in hand and urgency in her pace. The officer led her around the warehouses that they’d raided, towards the clearing in the back. Somewhere in her periphery she noted the would-be-overlords tied up by in the field to the right, guarded by heavily armed officers. She was not looking for the aliens, though; she was looking for the wounded officer.

When she saw the body lying on the ground and the officers hovering over it, she broke into a sprint. All that running with the Doctor had to do her some good, right?

The moment she had pushed through the loose circle of officers, she dropped to her knees and dug through her kit. Antivenins, antitoxins… antidotes… she located them all before checking out her patient. She plucked the dart out of his neck and examined his vitals.

The man’s breathing was slower, as was his heartrate, but it took but a moment for her to realise why. She pressed her lips together and picked the dart back up.

“It was a sedative,” she told the officers gathered around her, waving the dart at them.

She couldn’t blame them, really. Tufted dart blown from the lips of an alien? More than likely to be poisoned. But she assumed the man’s situation hadn’t changed in any of the minutes it took for the one officer to retrieve Martha, and based on the area the dart had been in, it would have, had it actually been a poisoned dart.

“So… he’s… sleeping?” a Private asked haltingly.

“Pretty much, yeah,” Martha said. She started loading all her anti-whatevers back into her kit, then stood. “You got lucky. But someone’s going to need to carry him back to the cars.”

The officers looked amongst themselves, until three women stepped forward and picked up the downed man, one on each arm and the third holding his feet. The other officers dispersed, some to help wrangle the aliens to the vehicles, some to slowly trudge themselves back. Martha stayed with the three women and the knocked-out man, making sure they didn’t need additional help. Tactical gear surely didn’t make carrying people any easier.

They were halfway to the armoured cars when Martha finally realised who this was. She remembered those soft cheekbones and that button nose. Private Jones. She smiled to herself and kept walking behind him, catching his red beret as it slipped from his head.

Martha got the pleasure of sitting in the back of a vehicle with Private Jones, acting as a prop so that he didn’t keel over sideways. His head had rolled onto her shoulder, which would be uncomfortable as all hell for him tomorrow. He was rather tall. And it was bit of a stretch down to Martha’s shoulder. Not good for necks.

She tried to push him back upright, but it only served to lean him down more. With a resigned sigh, she accepted her fate.

This time, Martha was allowed to monitor the recovery of her patient—possibly as the “recovery” was merely just waiting for him to wake up. She sat by his bedside in the recovery ward, filling out her reports. She found herself muttering angrily under her breath. She never knew tranquilizer was this much of a pain in the arse to document.

“It is,” a sleepy voice said beside her. “Have to fill out form H-G-T12… then Tr-72a… and then get those cleared…”

Martha snapped the files shut and sets them aside.

“Good morning, sleepy head,” she said, leaning over him. “Are you awake?”

“Do I have to be?”

“If I’m to fill out the rest of form… H… G…”

“—T12,” Private Jones finished for her.

“How do you even know that?” she asked.

“I know everything,” he said enigmatically.

She scoffed. “Yeah, okay. Then how is it you didn’t know enough to duck?”

An abashed look bloomed on Private Jones’s face and he glanced away.

“I was trying to get Lieutenant Foster out of the way,” he mumbled.

“And you couldn’t just, oh, I dunno,” Martha said, “yell at her to move?”

Private Jones opens his mouth, then closed it again. He did that a few times, looking mildly reminiscent of a fish.

“I didn’t think about that,” he said eventually.

“No, I suppose you didn’t.”

He scowled and she smiled.

“I’ve filled out what I can,” she said, dumping the file folders and pen onto his chest. “Your turn.”

The scowl reversed into a vague look of surprise, but Martha got out of her chair (and takes a moment to stretch, because she had sat there for well over an hour now), then slipped away before Private Jones could call her back.

Martha applied for a promotion. She was better than a field medic. She knew that. No offense to field medics, but they were just barely above nurse level. She trained to be a doctor, not a nurse.

So, she applied and, to her glee, was offered the promotion.

To senior field medic.

Senior field medics had two positions. Some went out into the field and did legitimate field work. The rest sat back and looked over officers when they came back bruised and scraped after missions. More nurse work, really. Guess which one Martha got assigned to?

She took the promotion, anyway.

She also functioned as something GP-adjacent, which she didn’t mind, she supposed. She got an office. People came into that office and she checked them out. Sometimes, she sat there for hours, checking returned officers with minor burns, cuts, bruises, and bumps after a long and eventful mission. All the people with real injuries went right to the operating theatres or recovery rooms, and she tried not to feel bitter about it when she handed icepacks over to people with the tiniest lumps on their foreheads. She would still rather be a UNIT surgeon in the operating theatres or a UNIT geneticist in the labs or a UNIT anything else, but at least she wasn’t sitting in a vehicle, bored out of her mind and waiting for something to happen. (Which was bad because she was the doctor, so she shouldn’t hope anything should happen.)

But sometimes… oh, sometimes, it was fun. Because sometimes she got the most bizarre things that the recovery rooms didn’t know how to deal with, and the operating theatres couldn’t do anything for.

Take, for example, the giant beesting that may or may not have been a beesting.

She heard a tentative knock on her door and went to open it. There she found find Private Jones, of all people, standing outside her door, tall and awkward and looking like he would rather be somewhere else—anywhere else—but here.

“Private Jones,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

He pressed his lips together for a moment, blinked, then cleared his throat.

“Can I come in?”

Confused, she stepped aside, letting him slip through the small crack in the door. He glanced around the room, then went and sat on the examination table. He crossed his ankles, which nearly made Martha laugh. It’s very… polite. But he still hadn’t said why he was here, so she focused on that instead.

“Is something the matter?” she asked.

“Oh. Um. Yes.”

He then failed to elaborate.

“Well,” she said, “what is it?”

“I’ve been… stung…” Private Jones said.

“Stung?”

“By a wasp. Or bee.”

“They sent you here for a beesting?” she asked.

Private Jones nodded, his expression clearly stating that this had not been his choice.

“Right,” Martha said, holding in a sigh. “Let me pull up your records.”

She sat down on her desk chair, scooting it with her toes to the computer. She typed in “Jones” and hits enter, only to realise a second to late that many Joneses worked for UNIT. She peeked over her shoulder.

“First name?” she asked.

“Ianto,” said Private Ianto Jones.

“Oh. My boyfriend’s Welsh, too,” she said. She didn’t quite know why.

Private Jones smirked. “You have fine taste.”

“Thank you,” she said, grinning back.

Then she turned back around and tries the search again, this time for Jones, Ianto. She found the right files and clicked them open, scanning through them quickly.

“Okay,” she said. “No allergies?”

“No.” He eyed her strangely when she turned and stood up. “You didn’t have to pull up my file for that. You could have just asked me.”

“Standard procedure,” she told him.

“Well, I’m clearly not allergic to beestings,” he said pointedly.

“No, but you could be allergic to latex,” she replied, snapping the gloves onto her hand.

He blanched. “Is that… necessary?”

“Standard procedure!” she sang again. “Now. Where’s the sting?”

“It’s… um…”

Private Jones pulled a face.

“Well?” Martha asked. “Can’t treat it if I can’t see it.”

He heaved a long sigh, then pulled off the standard black UNIT undershirt, yanking his arms out of the long sleeves. Martha would not admit it, not ever, but she did take a peek at his physique. In the non-medical way. She also took a peek for medical reasons, but her gaze lingered for her own personal intrigue.

He didn’t have rock-hard abs, but then again, nobody did when they’re slouched over like that. She assumed they were probably firm enough from whatever workout regime UNIT puts its officers through, but they still retained that bit of softness. Perfectly normal, then. Perfectly healthy.

Right, now that she’d taken her unwarranted ogle, she had work to do.

“Where is it?” she asked, moving around to his back, as it evidently wasn’t on his front. “Oh. Wait.”

“Yeah,” Private Jones said as she stared at the lump.

“Might I ask how this happened?”

“Well, I was taking a shower,” he said, “and then there was this buzzing noise. I barely heard it above the water. And then I felt this… sharp pinch.”

“Pinch?” she asked, prodding the patch fading outwards across his skin from the centre of the lump. “Not a sting?”

“I mean, I guess it was like a sting,” he said. “But… well, my immediate reaction was ‘pinch.’ So. Yeah.”

“Huh,” she said. That was all she has.

“The others told me to come here. Is it really that bad?”

“Private Jones,” she said, “what colour do you think a beesting is?”

“I dunno. Red, I suppose.”

“Right. And you’d agree it’s most certainly not supposed to be green? Or purple?”

“What?”

Private Jones craned his neck around, trying to see what she was talking about. His eyes went wide, and his head snapped back around almost instantly.

“It shouldn’t look like that,” he said, rather correctly.

“No, it should not.”

She studied the green spot and purple patch and tried to make sense of it for a bit. Well. It was nothing like anything she’d seen before. Not even with the Doctor had she seen a reaction to a bug bite or sting like this. She poked the skin again, then frowned.

“Hm,” she said.

She turned and rooted through her drawers. They were clean drawers, very well organised, because some days she just sat there and organised and reorganised her room because she hadn’t anything else to do. In the top left drawer, she kept a scanner. One of the good scanners. Could scan anything, terrestrial or not. Was it the best quality? Top-of-the-line model? No, those went to the senior field medics in the field. But this one sufficed.

“What’s that?” Private Jones asked suspiciously as she turned it on.

“Scanner,” she said. “I can’t make heads nor tails of what that is, so I’d like just a little hint.”

It took a moment for the thing to prime, then she moved behind his back and held it over the lump. 

“I always feel like it’s cheating,” he said as it scans. “Using the tech we find. It’s not ours.”

“Well,” she said, “we can either use it for something helpful, or we can let it sit in a box and fumble our way through things it could easily solve.”

“But is it our right, to have these things?” he asked.

“I don’t think it matters if it’s our right or not,” she replied carefully. “We do have them. That can’t be debated.”

Private Jones made a small noise of neither agreement nor dissent.

“Do you normally start philosophical debates with all your doctors?” she asked.

“Only the ones with good tastes,” he deadpanned.

She laughed. Then she remembered something and stopped.

“Weren’t you from Torchwood?” she asked.

Private Jones took a deep inhale through his nose.

“Yes,” he said, the good nature from before gone in a flash.

“Didn’t you use the stuff you found over there, too?”

“Yes.”

Martha noted his terse response and decided to drop it. She had her scans finished now, anyway.

“Alright,” she said, glancing over the readings. “It’s…”

“What?” he asked when she trailed off.

“Well, it’s a cyst,” she said.

“A what?”

“A cyst,” she repeated, though she knew that wasn’t what he meant. “It’s just green and purple and evidently caused by a bee-like insect.”

“Is it dangerous?” He turned his neck to see the spot again.

“No,” she said. “Just a normal sebaceous cyst. Other than the… you know.”

“What do we do about it?”

She shrugged. “I can lance it, I suppose.”

“And then what?”

“And then drain it,” she said.

Private Jones glanced up at her, a frown on his brow and moue on his lips.

“It’ll be quick and then it’ll be gone.”

He sighed. “Right. Let’s get it over with.”

She smiled at his attitude, then retrieved a small scalpel, a bunch of gauze, and something to numb the area. Private Jones acted the model patient; he sat stock-still the entire time, not daring to move an inch. Whether it came from restraint or fear, Martha couldn’t tell. But he only moved again when she finished taping the gauze to his back.

“There we are,” she said, patting a shoulder. “You’re all set.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” she said. “Come back if it turns any other funny colours.”

“Alright,” he said slowly.

She entered all of today’s events into his records while he slipped his shirt back on. She still labelled it as a “beesting” because she didn’t know what else she would call it. She added “sebaceous cyst,” obviously, and the purple and green colouration, but then she didn’t know what else to say. She’d input the scanner readings and that would be about all she could do.

“You can go,” she said when she turned around and found him still sitting there, watching her with an uncomfortable look.

He nodded, relief flooding his face as he stood.

“Thank you, Doctor Jones,” he said smoothly.

She laughed. “Oh, please. I’m Martha.”

“I know, but—”

“But I’ve dismissed you and am no longer acting as your doctor.” She pointed to his back. “I just drained a cyst of yours, I think you’re allowed first-name basis now.”

A small smile flicked his lips upwards.

“Thank you,” he repeated.

Then he ducked out of the door.

The start to her third week in her new office went excruciatingly slow. No routine physicals, no scheduled missions. Nothing to reorganise, because she’d just done that yesterday. She had not one single useful thing to do.

She had just started debating the effects of possibly developing an addiction to Tetris when her door burst open. She looked up, surprised, as a small crowd of people entered the small room: two of them supporting a third, bloody person. She got to her feet instantly, all thoughts of childish computer games dropped in favour of true doctoring as she inspected the supported person.

“You again?” she asked, bewildered.

Private Jones’s face appeared equally as shocked, his mouth hanging open in a stunned pout. They stared at each other for a moment, then Martha ushered Lieutenant Fowler and Private Phipps to the examination table.

“What’s happened?” she demanded as they deposited Private Jones onto the table.

“Training accident,” Lieutenant Fowler said.

“Got sliced,” Private Phipps said.

Martha looked to Private Jones, but his face had scrunched up in pain as he took deep breaths in and out, pressing a hand against his bleeding side.

“How the hell—” She cut off and shook her head. “Never mind. Just… step out, please.”

Lieutenant Fowler and Private Phipps shared a glance, then shrugged and disappear from view. Martha turned to Private Jones again and studied the damage.

“I’m not going to ask why you didn’t wear your tactical vest,” she said severely as she peeled the shirt away from his side, “and I’m not going to ask why you came here, but I will ask: how did this happen?”

“Throwing knives,” Private Jones grit out. “Crank… missed.”

Martha now wanted to ask how Private Crank could miss so horribly, but she had a job to do. First, said job was in making sure the bleeding slowed down, because in no way could she sew that right back up. The blood would make her fingers far too slippery.

When Martha was younger, her mother made her learn all sorts of skills. Baking, cooking, drawing, embroidery… At the time, they’d seemed foolish, pointless, and a waste of her time, but when she’d been better than anyone else at sewing a patient up, she realised how helpful many of those skills had become. Useful enough that Private Jones was stitched up in no time, really.

She gave a final swipe over the wound, cleaning up the last of the blood. She plastered a bandage to it.

“There,” she said.

She helped Private Jones sit upright from leaning back on his hands. His bloody fingers went to the bandage, but she slapped the hand away.

“Don’t play with it,” she said. “You’ll open your stitches. If I have to sew you shut again, I’ll make sure to sew your hands to your sides so they can’t touch it again.”

He held his hands up in surrender.

She stood and washed her hands in the sink, then filled a small dish (the one usually meant for the patients that come in heaving their guts up, but she didn’t need to mention that to Private Jones.) She helped him clean the blood off his hands, then dumped out the water and set the bowl aside to be later sterilised.

“I suppose I could check out your shoulder and back while you’re here,” she said.

“They’re both fine,” he said, though he let her lift up what remained of his tattered shirt.

A tiny scar stretched across his back where the “beesting” had been, and a slightly larger one where the bullet had hit his shoulder. But both had healed well, and she lowered his shirt back down after an approving nod.

“Looks good,” she said. “Hopefully, this one will heal up just as nicely.”

He nodded slowly, observing her with a careful gaze.

“I asked them to bring me here,” he said eventually.

“What?”

“You said you wouldn’t ask why I came here,” he said. “I didn’t want to go into surgery for a stupid cut.”

“That was more than a cut,” she told him.

He shrugged the shoulder of his good side. “Still. I figured… you were my best bet. And you have good tastes.”

“Think I’ll give you special treatment because you’re Welsh?” she joked.

He smiled. It was soft and barely there, but it was still a smile.

“I’ll give you something for the pain,” she said after a moment, “then go home. Get some rest. I’m submitting a report about Private Crank.”

His nose scrunched up.

“I am,” she reiterated. “However this happened, it was due to sheer negligence.”

He still didn’t look pleased about this, and it made Martha wonder if it was like teasing at school. Don’t get the bullies in trouble, or they’d only bully harder when they’d been reprimanded. Well, as far as she knew, Private Crank wasn’t a bully, and if he was, then throwing knives at someone was a step too far, and he needed to be reprimanded.

She gave him something to relieve the pain and told him to come back if he needs anything else. He thanked her and made to leave.

“Private Jones?” she said as he’s about to step out.

He turned and stood still, as if awaiting orders. Well, it would make sense, wouldn’t it? Sometimes she forgot UNIT was a paramilitary organisation. She didn’t know how she forgot, but she did sometimes. Probably because they holed her up in this damn office all of the time.

“Try not to get injured again,” she suggested.

That soft smile returned. “I’ll try.”

“Good.”

She turned to her computer, ready to start a report, but she looked back up in surprise when she heard a soft “Martha?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you. Really.”

She couldn’t help the smile that spread across her face.

“Yeah, of course,” she said.

He stood there for a moment longer, making that weird thin-lipped almost-smile that some people made, then nodded and slipped out of the door.

Her smile remained glued to her face as she returned back to her work.

Martha applied for another promotion her second month. She couldn’t take this office anymore. It consumed her alive. Even when she went home to Tom at night, this constant nagging of you’re-not-doing-enough sat in the back of her skull.

To her honest-to-god surprise, she was accepted for the promotion. Maybe she’d had intervention again. Not only had she become an actual doctor by technicality, but she had also been promoted twice so early on in her career for no legitimate reason. This had to be the doing of someone in higher power. Or someone that UNIT owed. She knew one person who fits both of those. She didn’t call him to ask. She suspected he wouldn’t answer, anyway. He never did.

But she was a senior field medic now—one of the ones who got to do real field work. And she felt absolutely elated. Doctoring and adventure? That was what she needed, now. That was what her life was supposed to be.

“Are you sure?” Tom asked. “This seems… dangerous.”

“Please,” she scoffed. “I’ve been in far more dangerous situations than anything UNIT can throw me into.”

Tom gave a sceptical hum and folded his arms, but he said nothing more. Wouldn’t matter if he had argued to the moon and back, anyway. Martha had already accepted the promotion.

Her first mission was to a chemical plant in Warrington. She was to determine if they were or were not testing on cloned human beings, posing as a simple health inspector. She got one officer to take along with her, posing as her assistant.

When she reviewed the list of suggested names, she had to laugh at one of them. She chose him without a second thought.

“Lieutenant,” she said appreciatively as Special Agent Lieutenant Ianto Jones walked up to her the day of the mission. “Congratulations on your promotion.”

“Doctor,” he replied smoothly. “Congratulations on your promotion.”

That still felt weird to Martha. Doctor Jones? Lovely. Still gave her chills, sometimes. Doctor? Hm… that made her feel like a certain someone.

“I hope you’re going to keep yourself nice and safe this trip,” she said.

An eyebrow flickered up. “I’ll remind you my job is to keep you safe.”

“How about we make it both of us?” she suggested. “It’ll hardly do me any good, trying to gather information, keeping myself and you safe, and trying to stop you from bleeding out on the floor all at once.”

“I suppose,” he said, one side of his mouth straying upwards.

He looked strange, in that suit. It seemed somehow both made for him and not. It… well, it suited him. But it almost didn’t make sense. This was Lieutenant Jones, meant for UNIT operative gear. Although, she could appreciate the way the red highlighted his appealing features. Between this tie and his usual berets, red clearly was certainly Lieutenant Jones’s colour.

“You look nice,” she told him.

“As do you.”

She had to admit that, while the pencil skirt did kind of ride up and the heels killed her feet, she did look rather stunning. She just hoped she didn’t have to do any running today, because things would get somewhat tricky.

“Thank you,” she said. “Shall we?”

She gestured to the unassuming company-looking car that UNIT had dished out for the purposes of this mission. He made a look of distaste, but he followed her to the vehicle regardless.

“So,” she said as Lieutenant Jones started the long drive to Cheshire. “Promoted twice, then?”

“No, just the once.”

She glanced at him. “But I thought—”

“I’ve been in training to be an agent since I joined,” he said. “They wouldn’t accept me right away.”

“How come?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t have the skillset. I used to be a PA.”

She studied him briefly. She had read his file. Recruited right out of the ashes of Canary Wharf because he had literally nothing left. No job, no girlfriend, nothing. But she didn’t say a word, because she knew nobody liked this sort of pity. She herself was personally glad most of her file was restricted and classified. She could only imagine the looks she’d get if they weren’t… (not to mention all of the confusion some officers would have in being told that they had not only aided but followed the past Prime Minister—an alien—into his reign of terror).

“They said I had ‘a keen eye for detail’ and whatever else,” Lieutenant Jones continued, “so they’d train me. It just happened to take a year.”

“Is that how Private Crank got your side?” she asked.

Lieutenant Jones flipped the indicators on before he made a turn, but he said nothing as they rounded the corner.

As it was both of their first missions, it obviously went sideways. They got the information they need (the plant was obviously running on cloned human test subjects—that wasn’t even a secret. All of it lay right out there in the open, as soon as they walked in), but their covers were blown the moment Lieutenant Jones suggested they find the site the plant grew and kept their clones.

Martha sprained her ankle. She knew that skirt and those heels would kill her. She had to have Lieutenant Jones half-drag, half-support her to the car as they made a hasty escape.

“Think they’ll fire us?” she gasped after she took a wrong step.

Instead of responding, he set her down against the wall of the building, pulling a gun from his—

“How the hell did you fit that there?” she asked, shocked.

“I’m bendy,” he said.

She wanted to ask him what in god’s name that meant, but he had already dashed back towards the door. She didn’t know what for, but she heard some shots ring out. Tensing against the wall, she hoped with all the hope in her that those shots came from Lieutenant Jones. Or maybe not. Well, she hoped they didn’t hit Lieutenant Jones.

Lieutenant Jones was only gone for a short while before he returned. Maybe a few minutes, tops. Still long enough for Martha to demand where he’d gone.

“We have to go,” he said, hauling her back to her feet.

“What? Why?”

“Come on,” he urged.

She leant on him again, trying a strange combination of hopping and running as she attempted to keep up with him on their mad dash to the car. He let go of her the moment her door opened, sprinting around to his own side. She clambered in, slowly and clumsily, as he slammed his door shut. She didn’t want to jostle her ankle too much.

“Hurry,” he said, and his tone had her complying, ankle be damned.

“What’s going on?” she asked as he starts the car.

“We need to get away from here as fast as possible,” he said. “We don’t want to be here when the device goes off.”

“You put a bomb in the building?” she shouted.

“Not a bomb, no,” he said calmly, as he began turning the car around. “Just something to scramble their systems. Shut the entire place down. Stop the production until UNIT can do something about it themselves.”

At first, she wanted to ask where he hid that, too. She didn’t. Best not to know, sometimes.

“So we need to get out of here before the gate before it locks us in,” he said. “In twenty seconds.”

“How are you going to—Jesus!”

Martha had to grab onto her seat and the dashboard as Lieutenant Jones sent the car shooting forward, rocketing its way through the long drive to the gates. The gates close just as they zoomed through, barely making it past. The gates slammed closed behind them; however, Lieutenant Jones did not stop there. He kept speeding well past the gate, burning rubber as they swerved left and right at his uncontrollable speeds.

A good couple minutes pass before Lieutenant Jones slowed down to a normal speed. Martha’s heart raced at an incredible rate, and she had to actively work to pry her fingers from the fabric of her car seat.

“Where the hell did you learn to drive?” she demanded. “The Action Hero School of Driving?”

He glanced at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Drive to Warrington,” she instructed. “We’ve got a hotel there. Would’ve spent the night there if our cover wouldn’t have been blown.”

He took her directions, this time driving like a normal human being and not some madman with a death wish. Her ankle was plenty tender by the time they reach the hotel. She again had to lean heavily on him, so they played the act of overly-cute newlyweds, the kind that couldn’t keep their hands off each other even for one second. The receptionist gave them an odd look, but they managed to get their room without a fuss.

She sat down on the bed the moment they enter the room. He helped her prop her ankle up on a pillow.

“I’ll need something cold,” she said. “Like an icepack.”

“Don’t think we have one of those.”

“Not even in the medical kit?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Nope. There’s a bottle of Paracetamol.”

She groaned. She should’ve checked that kit. What kind of field doctor was she? Never mind—she could do nothing about it now. She’d have to think of something else.

“Can you make a run to the store and grab me some frozen peas?” she asked.

He nodded, grabbing the keys to the car. She sank back onto the bed as he made to leave, maybe to take a nap or just to rest for a while. But the moment he got to the door, he stopped.

“What brand?” he asked.

She sat back up and stared at him, bewildered. Did he really think she cares what kind of bloody peas she iced her ankle with? Evidently, it would seem he did, as he gazed back placidly.

“Tesco value is just fine,” she said.

He nodded again, then disappeared out the door. She shook her head and relaxed out on the bed once more.

Martha got her nap, because she was shaken awake almost a half an hour later. The first few moments of consciousness lack coherency, so she asked Tom what he was doing.

“Not Tom,” said Not Tom. “I have your peas.”

She blinked the rest of the way awake.

“Lieutenant Jones,” she said, finding him bending over her.

“Special Agent Jones,” he corrected. “Here.”

He offered her a bag of frozen peas. She took it, stared at it for a moment, then remembered her throbbing ankle.

“Could you get me a towel?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“None of that,” she replied, waving him off playfully.

He smiled slightly, then disappeared to grab her a hand towel. She got up and inspected her ankle. Oh. Not good. Not entirely bad, no, but definitely not good.

“Thanks,” she said, wrapping the towel around the bag of peas. “I’ll pay you back later.”

“Please,” he scoffed. “It’s all of eighty-eight pence."

“Still,” she said.

She placed the makeshift icepack onto her ankle and let out a sigh. It didn’t bring instant relief, but it did help.

“So,” he said. “Is it true what they say?”

“About what?”

“‘Doctors make the worst patients,’” he quoted.

Well. She could think of a specific doctor that made to be possibly the most difficult patient ever.

“Depends,” she said.

“On?”

“Whether or not I’m allowed to whine about it,” she said.

He rolled his eyes.

After they had ordered some pizza that never arrived, they decide it was late enough to sleep. Lieutenant—Special Agent Jones insisted he slept in the chair. She tried to get him to sleep in the bed with her (but not with her, obviously), but he continued to decline until she felt too tired to argue anymore. It did mean she got to laugh at him the next morning when his neck was tight and sore.

They drove back to London, Martha looking after her ankle as she also skimmed over the data they had collected (a.k.a. the four blurry pictures she had managed to capture on her mobile). Well. It was enough that UNIT would dismantle the chemical plant in a few days, brick by brick, but it wasn’t enough that they wouldn’t get yelled at.

“Well,” Special Agent Jones said the moment they step outside of their meeting. “That went…”

“Terribly?” she offered.

“I was going to say ‘disastrously wrong,’” he said, “but ‘terribly’ works.”

“At least they didn’t fire us,” she said. “Or demote us.”

“That wouldn’t be good,” he agreed.

She nodded and he nodded, and this seemed to be the natural end to the conversation. They stood there a moment longer, then he nodded once more as a farewell and stepped off.

“Special Agent Jones?” she called, turning around.

He stopped and looked back at her.

“Still haven’t given you the eighty-eight pence,” she said.

He shook his head. “Keep it.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Peas are free for anyone with good tastes,” he said, smiling lightly.

Then he ducked his head, turned, and left.

She watched him for a moment, mystified. Then someone called for her. Colonel Mace… he’d defended them in their briefing. Said their work was, while a bit rushed and overly-dramatic, ultimately good. Maybe she could bend his ear and get herself a few more missions…

Martha’s next case came not even a week after.

“I’d like to see what you can do about the Erikson team,” Colonel Mace told her.

“Why?” she asked, baffled. “Isn’t Doctor Erikson doing the Erikson team?”

“He quit,” Colonel Mace said.

She stared at him.

“The case, not UNIT,” Mace clarified. “God, no. Heaven only knows how much of a shitshow that would be.”

“Why’d he quit?”

“For no reason of importance to you,” Mace said, without malice. “The important thing is—do you think you can take it?”

“I… dunno,” she said honestly.

“It’s just overseeing the small drug squad. And it’ll only be for a short while, I assume.”

“Who’s on the team?” she asked.

“You see… the thing is…” Mace pulled an uncomfortable face. “Well, one of the officers quit with Erikson.”

“You’re telling me I’ve got a team of two?”

“We can give you another,” he said. “Shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Who are the remaining two?”

“Private Jenkins and Private Smith.”

Martha tried to put a face to either of them. She didn’t know who Private Jenkins was, and she knew a few Private Smiths. Two of them would be alright to work with, but the other one… well, she hoped it was one of the alright two.

“Can I make a request?” she asked.

“For what?” Mace asked.

“The replacement.”

Mace frowned. “Do you have someone in mind?”

She gave him her candidates. One flew over with ease, but they were her alternative. Mace asked why, and she told him her first option. Mace baulked at it.

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not?” she asked. “He’s good! You know he’s good! And we’ve worked together before!”

“You lost useful evidence together before,” he amended.

“We still got enough! It was our first time out!”

“No,” Mace repeated. “It’s waste of resources. We don’t have special agents to throw around like that.”

“If you won’t assign him to the squad,” she said, “then I won’t lead it.”

He tilted his head slightly, studying her.

“Is this your ultimatum?” he asked.

“Yes.”

If she was going to be running this shitshow of a team, she had better have someone she liked and trusted on it. And Special Agent Jones was the closest thing she had to either.

Mace surveyed her for a moment longer, then deflated with a sigh. “Fine.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said.

He grumbled something to himself as he left. Oh, well. She could win his favour back later.

She met her team the next morning. Private Smith was indeed one of the good Private Smiths—thank god for that. She could finally put a face to Private Jenkins. He seemed sweet. And, to her utter delight, her request for Special Agent Ianto Jones had gone through. Martha would thank Colonel Mace for it some other time.

He greeted her with a half-cocked eyebrow, the tiniest hint of a smile playing on his lips.

“Heard you asked for me,” he said.

“Well, what can I say?” she replied. “I’ve just got good tastes.”

The parroted phrase made his smile just the smallest bit wider.

“Drugs, though?” he asked, back to business. “Not what I’m trained for.”

“Listen,” she said. “Doctor Erikson quit halfway through finding where that deadly hallucinogen comes from. I need people to help me finish that.”

“Yes, but me?”

“Why not you?” she said. “You’re the spy. You should be able to suss it out.”

“I’m not a spy,” he replied, but she could tell by the way his face tinged just how much he fancied it.

“Besides, you’re here anyway. Might as well do a good job.”

His eyebrow reverted to its arched position. “Fine.”

“Thank you.”

He put a hand on the holster of his gun, then slipped past her to join the small team. She watched him go.

Guns. She had grown used to them. Still didn’t carry one herself. Colonel Mace did. Special Agent Jones did. Privates Jenkins and Smith did. The Doctor wouldn’t approve of any of them. Good thing he wasn’t here, she supposed.

The case Erikson had left wide open for her had very little information. She could tell why he quit it. Absolutely nothing useful came from the files, save for a few autopsies of the people the drug has killed. She sent Jenkins after a few leads with the families (he seemed a nice enough kid; he wouldn’t ruffle too many feathers) and Smith after some semi-classified files. She wanted to put Jones on scouting missions—or that was what she called them in her head, anyway—to the sites where the bodies had been found. But he had other ideas.

“I thought I told you the case files were useless,” she said, leaning over him as he read through them.

“Maybe.”

She frowned down at him. Maybe?

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Clues.”

She stood up again, rolling her eyes. Sometimes, she wondered why she even bothered with some certain people.

Jenkins returned that night with no evidence, Smith came back empty-handed, and neither Martha nor Jones had found anything in the files. They tried again the next day—Jenkins going to find more families, Smith searching for new classified files, and Martha and Jones still pouring through what little they already have.

For a week this went on. A whole week. Martha could see why Erikson quit; the thing was a nightmare of a case. Nothing could be done. Whatever this drug was, wherever it came from, they could not trace it back to the source.

“I’ve traced the hallucinogen back to its source,” Jones said one day.

Martha looked up from the tiny flower she had been doodling on the corner of a note.

“What?”

He picked up a file, scanned it, then pointed out a small footnote on one of the files to Martha.

“Says here that all of them were once test subjects for experimental drug trials.”

“What?” she demanded again. “No, that can’t be. That would have been a correlation between the victims. I would’ve seen it.”

“If they were all the same experimental drug, maybe,” he said. He tapped the line. “They’re all different drugs, ranging from hair growth vitamins to kidney treatments. And they were all taken at widely different times.”

“Okay…” She still wished she would’ve seen that, though she couldn’t change that now. She could mope about it later, but now they had a job to do. “What about it?”

“Have you heard of a pharmaceutical company called ‘Deneb Foundations?’” he asked.

“Deneb? As in, the—”

“Star? Yeah.”

“Is that where all the experimental drug trials originated?”

“Yep.” He popped the ‘p,’ zooming his chair from his desk to Smith’s unattended laptop.

“And… it’s alien?”

“I’d assume so,” he said, rapidly typing away at the keyboard. “Especially if the head of the company looks like—”

He spun the laptop around, showing Martha a picture of a man that wasn’t… quite a man. Not with vibrant purple eyes like those.

“—that,” he finished.

“So… how does this work out?” she asked. “They all died from drug poisoning. From a hallucinogen they took recently. What does that have to do with these experimental drugs?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But it’s the only correlation we have. My best bet? They got addicted to something during the trials.”

“Hm,” she said.

Of course, the four of them couldn’t just take down an entire drug company. No, they needed a whole brigade, here. But they got to go. Martha was allowed to take the lead, as she became the head of the drug squad.

“Is it bad that this is exciting?” she asked Jones on the drive over.

He paused inspecting his pistol to cast her a sidelong glance, his eyebrow raised.

“Well,” he said, putting the gun away. “I’m not expecting any resistance, but you never know, with purple-eyed aliens who kill people under the guise of a helpful pharmaceutical company.”

Her face dropped. Well.

“Then again,” he added, “it is always a bit of a rush.”

She nearly rolled her eyes as he gave her a small smile.

Now, if she was completely honest, she had really thought it would’ve gone down easy. But, as things could never be such, somebody had alerted Deneb Foundations. At least twenty purple-eyed Denebians stood awaiting them, armed to the teeth with guns and… more guns. Sometimes, Martha understood all too well why the Doctor detested the things.

Martha got shoved aside a lot, as she did not have a gun of her own. Half “get out of the way” and half “protect Martha!” She really didn’t know which she hated more.

She did her rounds, like she had done when she’d first joined UNIT. Patch up a cut here, staunch the blood flow there, press ice on bruises everywhere. Most officers were generally unhurt, but… well, she couldn’t find Jones anywhere.

“Hold this,” she told Jenkins, throwing him an icepack.

“What for?”

“Just… find someone who needs it.”

She packed up the rest of her kit and headed off.

“Special Agent Jooones,” she called as she wandered down some halls. “Special Agent? Lieutenant? Jones?”

Nobody answered her.

“Ianto,” she finally snapped. “I swear to god, if you don’t answer me, I’ll sew your fingers together when I see you next.”

It felt like it took forever to find him, but she did. He was near an office halfway across the building from where she had started.

“Ianto!” she yelled.

He turned around.

“Oh,” he said. “Hello.”

His lip was split right open, blood dribbling lightly onto his chin. A small spot adorned his cheek, which would no doubt bloom into a freshly purpled bruise. A man (or not-man—probably a Denebian, for all she knew) rested on the ground behind him, sporting a bloody nose and most likely a major concussion.

“Ran out of bullets,” he said when she gawped at him.

“So you beat him up?”

“Was a fair fistfight,” he protested meekly. “His skull just wasn’t thick enough.”

“What’s that?” she demanded.

She picked up his hands and held them up in the air, knuckles facing her. They… did not look good. They were bruising faster than Ianto’s cheek, and one of them had cut open. Or maybe it was the blood from the other guy. Either way, it needed to be cleaned.

Martha dropped the hands and pointed downwards. He rolled his eyes, but she adamantly and sternly pointed to the floor again.

“Sit,” she said.

He sighed and sat down. She nodded appreciatively, then knelt down beside him and opened up her med kit, pulling out wipes to disinfect and plasters to, well, plaster.

“You came looking for me,” he said after a while.

“Of course I did, you idiot,” she said. “Had to make sure you were still alive.”

“Thanks.”

She glanced up at him. He looked earnest. Pitifully so. It made her wonder, somewhat sadly, if he had ever been left behind. She hoped not.

“Here,” she said, handing him a small patch of gauze. “Stick that on your lip.”

He did so obediently. He made a face as the gauze stuck instantly to the blood and the tackiness of his lips, but he kept it there.

“I have good taste,” she said. “Remember? Can’t leave the Welshmen behind.”

He snorted, still pressing the gauze to his lip.

“And now, I get to test you for a concussion,” she said, and he groaned.

Despite their win with the Deneb Foundation, Martha and Special Agent Ianto Jones were booted from the drug squad.

“Erikson wants the job back,” Colonel Mace explained, mildly apologetic.

“I’m sure he does,” she scoffed. “Right after we finish up his case with a great deal of success? Why wouldn’t he want it back?”

Mace, rather intelligently, ignored her. “And I’m going to let him have it.”

“But why? We were doing so well!”

“Neither you nor Special Agent Lieutenant Jones are needed for the drug squad,” Mace said. “You have other things that are more important. Things you need to do more.”

Now, she doubted that very much, but it seemed that arguments would get her absolutely nowhere. Not with this. So, she conceded her loss and handed the job back over to a sneering Erikson’s power-hungry hands, then waited for her next assignment.

And, if she was honest, this assignment… might have actually been better than a small drug squad. More undercover work. A chance to redeem herself. That, and—

“What are you doing here?” she asked as Jones showed up by the car.

He shrugged. “You needed somebody else. Couldn’t let you go in alone.”

“Really?”

“Us Joneses have to stick together.”

“Well, alright then, Special Agent Lieutenant Ianto Jones.” (Which was actually a mouthful, really.) “Let’s get started.”

“Let’s,” he agreed.

She kept grinning as they got into the car. 

Chapter Text

It was funny, how easy it was to get used to someone.

Ianto came on all of Martha’s missions, now. The only one he hadn’t joined her on was the one where she had a small solo assignment. That was her sixth mission after the drug squad, and it honestly had felt so weird to be alone. It felt so weird to be without Ianto. She had grown accustomed to him, it seemed.

Which was why she really hated it when he did stupid things.

“You need to stop getting shot,” Martha said.

“It’s my job,” Ianto said, wincing when she probed the deep graze.

“To get shot?”

“To make sure you don’t get hurt.”

“Says who?”

“Well, Colonel Mace, for one,” he said dryly.

Martha snorted and rolled her eyes. She began to disinfect the wound, and he just barely hissed through his teeth. She admired his stoicism; she knew this must hurt like a bitch.

“Ianto, why do you work for UNIT?” she asked.

“What?”

“I’m distracting you,” she said. “Don’t have anything to numb your arm, so I’m stitching you up as it is.”

“Are you supposed to tell people you’re distracting them?” he asked.

“Shut up and tell me why you joined UNIT.”

“Which is it? Shut up, or tell you about my poor life choices?”

She raised a hand to cuff him and he ducked slightly, laughing. She rolled her eyes and returned to preparing to sew his arm back up.

“I didn’t have anything else, really,” Ianto said, sobering. “After Lisa…”

She would hug him, but Ianto had a gash on his arm and was laying on the ground, and she had blood smeared all across her hands. That, and she didn’t know if this was enough to warrant a hug, really.

“I’m sorry,” she said, just like she always did when she brought Lisa up, like he always did when he mentioned Adeola.

“It’s not your fault. Nobody’s but Yvonne’s. She was my boss, you know. Not just… as the head of Torchwood. I was her PA.”

She remembered that conversation. God, that felt like so long ago now.

“That’s why they wouldn’t let you become ‘Special Agent Jones’ right away, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he said. Then he winced as she began sewing him back up. “Ah.”

“Sorry.”

She kept at her stitches for a few moments, only being reminded she was supposed to be distracting him when he hissed again.

“So… how did it happen, then?” she asked. “You were a PA and then… you were here, training to be an agent.”

“After the battle… after Lisa… I just… oh, I dunno. I couldn’t think. I just kept doing what people told me, you know? Clean up this body. Help remove the fallen beam from behind that door. Carry down these stretchers. For five hours, I think… I just did what I was told.”

“That isn’t how you should’ve been treated,” she said, pausing her administrations for a moment to be horrified. “You were a survivor of a tragedy. They should’ve taken care of you.”

“Doesn’t matter what should have happened.” A verbal shrug seeped into his tone. “Besides, UNIT needed the help and I needed… to not think.”

“Hm,” she said. “So, then what?”

“Well, then I had nothing to do with my life, and you know UNIT. Always looking for more volunteers.” He made the tiniest pained noise, then controlled himself again. “I don’t think you should be legally allowed to sign yourself up for a paramilitary organisation while in shock.”

“Probably not,” she agreed with a laugh. “So. They handed you the papers and you signed the lines and… asked if there were any openings for spies?”

“No.”

She raised a suspicious eyebrow, smirk on her face. He pressed his lips together and looked down at his arm.

“I asked if they needed help undercover,” he said, almost primly.

“That sounds like the exact same thing,” she told him.

He hmphed.

Martha tied off the last stitch. She swiped off the last of the blood, then began to bandage the wound.

“That’s about it,” she said. “Try not to pull them out.”

He threw a light scowl at her. “I won’t.”

“Good. I’m driving back.”

“I can drive,” he objected.

“No, you can’t,” she said. “Your arm needs some rest. And you shouldn’t drive, ever.”

“I’m not bad at driving!”

She laughed as she cleaned up her medical kit.

“By the way,” she said. “Mum’s having another dinner this weekend. You’re expected to come.”

Ianto groaned. “Do I have to?”

“Yes! You need socialisation. You’re too lonely.”

“I’m not lonely,” he scoffed.

She gave him a sceptical look.

“I’m not,” he said. “It’s impossible to be lonely when you live in the barracks.”

“Why do you still live there? Lieutenants don’t have to live on base.”

“Why would I move?” he asked. “I wouldn’t know what to do on my own in a flat.”

“See?” she said. “Lonely.”

“That’s not lonely!”

“From where I’m standing, it seems pretty lonely,” she said. “Honestly, when was the last time you… you know…”

His eyes widened a fraction.

“We are not discussing this.”

“Why not?” she said. “It’s what friends do.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be your friend now.”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “When’s the last time you had a night… with just you… and someone else?”

“A… little bit ago. And no,” he said to her intrigued look, “I’m not telling you who. We were just… it was nothing.”

“You’re lonely,” she concluded. “And you’re coming to dinner. Now, get up!”

Ianto rolled his eyes, but he took her hand and stood.

The good thing was, Martha’s family liked Ianto. Well, Leo seemed a little iffy about him, and Mum liked him a little too much, and Tish liked him a little too much. Dad’s opinion hasn’t made itself known yet, though. And Tom… well, he and Ianto talked about… whatever it was two Welshmen talked about, so she assumed they liked each other well enough.

Martha always marvelled at how Ianto looked at the dinners. Honestly, it was so hard to picture him out of his UNIT attire. Jeans? A nice shirt? A tie? They felt so foreign to Martha. They looked good on him, obviously, but… she could never wrap her head around it.

“Stop bringing bottles of wine,” she hissed at him when they met at Mum’s.

“Francine likes them!” Ianto protested softly.

“She has too much wine.”

Ianto began to raise his objections again, but her mobile rang. Since she came without Tom this time, she assumed it must be him.

“I told you that you’d regret it,” she said.

“I… beg your pardon?”

Martha stared at Ianto in shock. He gave her a quizzical look in return, but all she could do is give a stunned “Colonel Mace?” into the mobile. Ianto’s face immediately pulled into a cringe that Martha herself felt deep within her gut.

“Well, I’m certainly not whoever you thought I was,” Mace said.

“Sorry, I assumed you were—doesn’t matter. What can I do for you, sir?”

“You can get yourself to Cardiff, that’s what.”

Martha blinked. “What?”

“Captain Jack Harkness,” Mace said, and Martha’s heart lept. “He called in an hour ago. Demanded to have our files.”

“Which ones?” she asked. “Why are you telling me about—”

“Because he asked specifically about your, um… your toxic shock cases, or whatever you call them.”

“My South Wales cases?” Her voice raised in pitch and Ianto’s eyebrows flew upwards. They had worked steadily on this for three weeks now.

“Yes, those,” Mace said. “I didn’t give them to him. Of course, he put on one of his shows and pulled out his blackmail routine, but I had the pleasure of finally one-upping the bast—”

He cut himself off with a cough and she rolled her eyes to herself. Ianto shot a puzzled eyebrow her way. She shook her head in response.

“Anyway,” Mace continued, “I said they were your cases, and he went all quiet. Then he asked if you wouldn’t mind joining them to figure it out.”

“When does he expect me by?” she asked, hopes soaring.

“Tomorrow night,” he said. “He expects another incident, I think. Either that, or he’s going to go make one himself.”

She held back a sigh. Perhaps it was a good thing she was the one on the South Wales cases—Jack wouldn’t be able to tolerate any other UNIT doctor, and UNIT would never agree to release any of its files. They got lucky with this.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, and then hung up before Mace could grouch more about her friend.

Ianto raised an eyebrow. “South Wales cases?”

“How’s your arm?” she asked in lieu of answering.

He flexed it. “Better.”

“Hmmm,” she said.

She didn’t think she could trust his judgement on that; Ianto had never been one for telling the truth about injuries. God, she still remembered the time he got bitten by that—not that it mattered, now. He seemed to be doing well enough.

“Tomorrow night,” she said.

He nodded.

“This is absolute rubbish,” Ianto said the instant they enter the tourist centre.

“Behave,” Martha told him.

“I’m not wrong,” he said defiantly, gesturing a hand to the scene in front of them.

To give him credit, he was not, in fact, wrong. The place looked like nobody had been up there in years: dust coated the walls and the floors and the various surfaces, tawdry beads hung in a curtain that belonged to the seventies, and a clunky computer sat on the front desk. And all of the pamphlets were from… Jesus, they were from sixteen years ago.

Ianto sent her a pointedly raised eyebrow. “This place is ill-run.”

“Well, he did say nobody uses this office,” she said. “There’s supposed to be a button on the other side of the desk. Opens a false wall, or something.”

“Rubbish, ill-run, and tacky,” he remarked.

She gave him an amused smile. “Tacky” spy-like stuff was just up Ianto’s alley. He rolled his eyes, then peered over the desk. He reached a hand over, pressed something out of her line of sight, and the door slid open.

“Huh,” she said.

He just made a disgusted noise. She threw him a quizzical glance and he held up his arm, displaying the new coat of dust adorning his otherwise pristine uninform.

“It’ll brush off,” she said, waving a shooing hand towards him and the entrance. “Go on.”

As he petulantly patted the dust off his arm, Ianto turned and entered the corridor. Martha followed, then slid beside him when she realised the hallways was wide enough for the both of them.

She had a small number of guesses why Ianto might act this testy. The first guess was that they were in Cardiff, and she knew he didn’t like his hometown. The second was that this place was Torchwood—somewhere Ianto probably never wanted nor expected to step foot inside again. And the third was… well, Ianto had never been a fan of the Doctor. Quite the opposite, in fact. From what little she had gleaned from him about Canary Wharf, he partially blamed the Doctor.  And every time she parted with small snippets of “The Year,” he never failed to vocalise even the tiniest bit of his displeasure. So, the fact that he was about to meet another “Doctor Groupie” probably pissed him off to no end.

As all three were equally likely to be the reason Ianto was in a huff, she wouldn’t ask. Especially since the answer could very well actually turn out as “all three.”

The small lift at the end of the corridor took them down. Anticipation crept up Martha’s neck, tingling her throat and threatening to burst out into a grin on her face. She clamped it down, though, and tried to match Ianto’s stoic gaze.

Jack had told her, in order to open the door, turn the top key forwards. Martha hadn’t a clue what that meant until now, as she turned the strange lever towards the door and watched the giant cog hiss into action.

 “—song of a nightingale,” she heard Jack say as the door just began to roll back. “Miss Martha Jones.”

With her heart leaping to her throat, she stepped forward, Ianto beside her. Her initial thought was, Jesus, this place was bigger than she had ever imagined, and then her second was, oh. There stood Jack, and he winked and smiled like it was naught but a day since she had last seen him. God, she had missed him. So much.

She descended down the tiny stairs, into the strange cage outside the door. Ianto stepped in beside her, and they took a moment to gawk at the place around them.

“Absolute rubbish,” he intoned quietly.

“Behave,” she murmured back.

She gently smacked the side of his leg with her briefcase, then left the small cage, hurrying up the stairs to Jack. Vaguely aware of the reluctant footsteps trailing behind her, she set her briefcase down, letting Jack envelop her instantly into a hug.

“Oh, it’s good to see you, Jack,” she said when she pulled free.

“Toshiko, Owen, Gwen,” Jack said, addressing his team, “meet Martha.”

“Just a casual visit, or…” asked the man in the lab coat, clearly Dr Owen Harper.

“I’m here to do your post-mortem,” she told him, picking up her briefcase again.

“Doctor Jones is from UNIT,” she heard Jack inform them as she headed to what she assumed to be the autopsy room. She hoped it was, anyway. Considering that nobody corrected her, she was right, thankfully.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” someone said behind her. Judging the Welsh lilt, that was Gwen Cooper. “Sorry, I get a bit confused. Which one’s UNIT?”

“Intelligence, military, cute… red… caps…”

Martha glanced up from organising her things, watching a wide array of emotions cross Jack’s face. Mostly shock, really, and she traced the gaze back to Ianto, who was bringing her other briefcase down the steps to her.

“Who is he?” Jack demanded.

“He can speak for himself,” Ianto said coolly, not bothering to look at Jack as he handed Martha the case. “Special Agent Jones.”

She pursed her lips at him, sending him another reprimand of “behave!” through her small glare. He gave her the minutest roll of his eyes in return.

“I identified a pattern from UNIT’s data on sudden deaths,” she explained to Jack and his team as she slipped on some gloves. “Toxic shock. Nothing to link the victims. Different ages, sexes, ethnic origins, occupations. But there was a statistically significant concentration in South Wales.”

“Oh, come on Martha, be honest,” Jack said. “You just came all this way to see me.”

Beside her, Ianto made a small noise in his throat.

“Still struggling to conquer your shyness, Jack?” she said, throwing Ianto another stern look.

She bent over the body, prepared to start her examination, when Owen asked her about her patterns. She explained the small correlation of the cases being written off as suicides and accidents, then pulled back the dead man’s eyelid to show them the puncture mark on the eyeball. She mentioned bloodwork and medical files, neither of which Owen had yet checked, so they gravitated to Toshiko Sato’s desk to see what they could find. However, Torchwood’s servers appeared no better than UNIT’s, despite what Colonel Mace had once mentioned in passing. She kept that thought to herself, though. She liked Tosh and didn’t want to offend her.

“Right,” Jack said. “While we’re waiting… Martha?”

He made a motion to join him… wherever he wanted to go. Martha shrugged and followed. Ianto fell instantly into step behind her, which made Jack send her an incredulous look. She caught it and turned to Ianto. He stopped in his tracks, lines creasing his brow. She didn’t have to say anything to him; this was Ianto. He was smart. He knew when he was sent away. He blinked and turned and pretended to be interested in whatever Tosh was doing. Melodramatic.

Martha followed Jack to his office, by the looks of things. It was interesting, how eclectic this place was. And… well, alright, Ianto had been right; it was a little dirty.

“So,” Jack said. “Who’s the puppy?”

“What?” she asked, confused.

“The one following you around,” Jack said, nodding his head out towards the main sector of the base.

She frowned at him for a moment longer. Then the confusion slipped away, and she sighed.

“He’s not a dog,” she said.

“Could’ve fooled me,” Jack said.

“Don’t be like that,” she told him, though not unkindly, “he’s just my partner.”

Jack leant back, eyes widening a fraction. He glanced away for a moment, seeming to consider this, then leant forward again, a shocked expression stamped across his face.

“Is this Tom?” Jack asked. “Did you marry him already? Why wasn’t I invited?”

Martha took her turn to be shocked, then laughed.

“No,” she said. “Ianto’s not—he’s Ianto. He works with me!”

“But… Special Agent Jones,” Jack said.

“Do you know how many British people are named Jones?” she countered.

He gave a conceding shrug.

“He works with me,” she repeated, sitting down in front of him. “He just… tags along with me on everything.”

“Medical officer and her guard dog?”

“You have to stop calling him a dog,” she said. “He won’t like that.”

“Do all the other medical officers have their own special agent to drag along with them?”

“No, it’s just… me and Ianto…” she said. At his raised eyebrows, she added, “Be nice.”

Jack smirked, but he thankfully diverted to asking about her family. They covered everything and nothing, and then Gwen showed up and suggested a tour. Jack pounced on the idea, loudly inviting Ianto to join in. Ianto looked a bit peeved, but Martha sent him another “play fair” face, and he accepted the invitation in… good enough graces. It was all she could ask for, when Jack clearly wasn’t going to play fair back. Martha knew that once Jack set his eyes on something, once he caught that scent, he sank his teeth in and never let go. Part of Martha wanted to give Ianto a hand out of the hole that he had unknowingly and unwillingly dug for himself, but part of Martha just wanted Jack to have his fun. That was the hard part, it seems, when dealing with two different worlds. Neither of them had precedence over another.

Perhaps Martha’s favourite part of the tour was when Owen attempts to woo her (she was almost certain he was already into her) with something called a “singularity scalpel,” and it nearly blew the red beret right off Ianto’s head. Well, it exploded something on the tables that Ianto had been leaning over until that point, and he shouted and ducked. Martha’s heart nearly stopped, but the moment he peeped back up, glaring between Owen and the site of the explosion, the tightness of her chest lessened and she could breathe again. Ianto returned to standing, a pout embellishing his face as he glided his way back to Martha’s side. She fought her laughter down.

Then Tosh brought up another attack, and it finally became go-time.

Ianto didn’t like being separated, but he let Martha go and do her job with the promise she would return. But he baulked at her going out on her own with Owen, especially when he’d been sent in the complete opposite direction with Gwen. It was one thing to sit behind and wait, and a completely different thing to be doing something, but not what he was supposed to. She can hear the displeasure in his voice when he reported in that Barry Leonard recovered from diabetes.

And then the Pharm restricted access to Jack and Owen, and that was when it really started to turn.

“One of us goes undercover,” Gwen suggested.

“No, we don’t know enough about the workings of that place,” Jack said. “Too many things could go wrong.”

“Unless you were to put a medic in there,” Martha said. “Someone who knew what to look for.”

Owen made a face. “Yeah, but I can’t do it. They know me now, don’t they.”

Martha sometime wondered why the universe made men so egotistical. “Men,” of course, covering the forms of humans and Time Lords alike.

“I know it’s hard to believe, Owen,” she said, “but I wasn’t thinking of you.”

“Absolutely not,” Ianto said.

“No way,” Jack said.

The two of them stared at each other for a second, Ianto glaring and Jack intrigued, but Martha had grown tired of male posturing.

“Come on, I’ve been in worse places. And you know it.”

Jack looked around, then smiled and said, “Okay.”

Ianto didn’t sway as easily. He never did, but especially not now.

His tone was icy when he goes over the plans of the Pharm’s buildings with her. Well, maybe not icy, really. It was just… not how he talks to her. This was how he talks to other people. This was his voice for all non-Martha people: formal and distant. She didn’t like that voice used on her.

“—but you don’t need to go anywhere near there,” Ianto said.

“Spoilsport,” she told him, trying to add some levity back in.

It didn’t work.

“The first thing you need to do,” he said, still impassive, “is get yourself accepted as a clinical trials subject. Don’t try to hard, don’t draw too much attention to yourself.”

“Be invisible,” she said. “I can do that.”

“Once you’re in, they need you to gain access to the Pharm’s IT systems—close down the system firewalls and security systems. That way Miss Sato can gain access to the files and see what they’re really up to.”

“Industrial espionage. It’s very civilised,” she joked.

Ianto still didn’t yield.

“Once you’ve done that, get out. Don’t take any unnecessary risks.”

“Understood,” she said.

“Cool.” But it didn’t sound cool, not the way he said it now.

“What’s wrong?” she sked when he turned to stalk up the stairs in a quiet, Ianto-like huff.

He half-turned back. “Why… would something be wrong?”

“Because you’re acting like that,” she said, folding her arms. “All moody.”

He scoffed. “I’m not moody.”

“Yes, you are. You have been ever since I said I would go.”

“Because you shouldn’t go,” Ianto snapped.

He glanced away, and Martha tapped her toe once.

“I’m the only one who can,” she said.

“I’m more qualified for—”

“Industrial espionage?” she tried again, but it still didn’t reach. He didn’t smile. She sighed and moved on. “Look, I’m a doctor. You’re not. And your arm is still healing.”

“My arm is fine,” he insisted. “I can wield a firearm just as well as I normally can.”

“Well, that’s another thing. We’re not going in there all guns blazing. We have to be more subtle.”

“I can be subtle!”

“I know,” she said. “You could probably hide a skeleton in… the basement, or whatever the phrase is.”

“It’s skeletons in the closet, and that’s not even the right metaphor,” he said.

“Not my point,” she said. “Look, they need a doctor. You know that.”

After a pause, he said, “I still don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“I know you don’t,” Martha said, calmingly, reassuringly, “but it’s the only way.”

He studied her for a moment, then looked away again. He stood stock-still, and Martha didn’t know whether to gear up for another argument or not. Then he nodded once and turned, beginning to ascend the autopsy room stairs.

“Shall we get your cover story sorted?” he called back.

“Absolutely,” she said.

As it turned out… Okay. He wasn’t right. He wasn’t. Sending Ianto in would’ve been worse than sending her in. But he was… He did predict how bad of an idea it was. She could feel suspicion crawling around in the gazes of everyone who looked at her when she waited in the Pharm. Suspicion, and then something she could only describe as overlordly. Like they owned her. They didn’t, though, do they? They owned Samantha Jones with hepatitis. She was Martha Jones, a doctor working in industrial espionage.

But then overlordly transitioned to malevolent, because she was a doctor working in industrial espionage. She wasn’t perfect. She made a wrong move, and they had her.

And all that time as she was being strapped up and drugged, her thoughts whirled around Ianto. Not completely, no. She wasn’t that bad enough of a girlfriend, daughter, and sister that she didn’t spare Tom and Mum and Tish and Dad and Leo all some of her thoughts. And she obviously thought of the Doctor and Jack and his lovely little team, but really all she could think about is Ianto, because Jesus, she might be all he had right now. That, and she really didn’t want to leave him behind when their last conversation was an argument. And she really just… god, she didn’t want to go. Not like this. Not strapped up and alone when all she wanted is Ianto to come and save her. She didn’t even care that she’d have to play damsel in distress; she didn’t want to go.

When she slipped out, she thought she saw Owen and Jack, and all she could think was that they were the wrong people.

Of course, when she came back around to the pair of them standing over her, she was slightly more grateful that it was the pair of them and not Ianto. And then she was surprised that the “singularity scalpel” even worked. She would have to ask Ianto to go through UNIT’s own databases to see if he could find it for her. Ianto was good with databases.

“Okay, let’s go,” Jack called, disrupting her from her thoughts.

She let Owen help her to the Torchwood SUV, and then she was suddenly held at gunpoint. Owen stepped in again, very stoically and very stupidly.

“Now, let’s not be stupid, okay? We’re both rational men. Scientists,” Owen said, trying to get Copley to back down.

Martha knew it was not going to work. She had seen enough desperate and angry people before that she could spot them a mile away. And “rational” was never a word she’d use to describe any of those people. Certainly not Copley. There was no chance in hell he’ll drop his gun.

An unexpected noise caused the team to jolt, and for a moment, Martha thought that Copley had shot Owen. But Copley just stood there, not moving, and then the gun slipped from his fingers, and he collapsed to the ground.

Owen let out a breath, a fast and hard one, possibly because he knew just as well as Martha had that Copley would’ve shot him. But Martha wasn’t interested in Owen right now. No, she was more stunned by Ianto, storming towards the group, sniper rifle at his side and thunderous look upon his face.

“Ianto?”

Ianto just kept stalking forward. He stepped over Copley’s body when he reached it, not even sparing it so much as a glance. Martha took a moment to be mildly impressed, but she instantly returned to bewilderment as he breezed past her, marching right up to Jack.

“Are you mad?” he spat.

“Me?” Jack asked, seeming as confused as Martha feels. “What did I do?”

“He would have killed Dr Harper if I hadn’t stepped in! Martha was next!” Ianto pointed to Martha, who just stood by, watching and clutching her still-aching stomach. “This shit happened because you left me in the Hub!”

“Okay,” Jack said, holding a placating hand up, as if shushing a wild, raging beast, “okay. First of all, it was Martha who said you needed to stay in the Hub, so don’t put that on me.”

Ianto’s eyes barely flickered to Martha before locking back onto Jack. She figured they would either argue about it later, or Ianto would lock it up with all his other bottled-up emotions and pretend it was fine and dandy and that he didn’t care. Sometimes, she found it horrible that she really just preferred the arguing.

“Second,” Jack said, reeling her back into reality, “if I didn’t leave you in the Hub, Owen could be dead.”

“That’s a conjecture and you know it.” But by his tone, Martha could tell Ianto felt less certain now.

“Maybe,” Jack said. “But we’re all fine now, okay? And we really have to get out of here now, so if you’d like to let us finish that—”

A beat passed before Ianto stepped aside, letting Jack free. Jack eyed him a moment longer, then sprang back to his usual Captain Action, calling orders to Tosh and Gwen. Ianto turned to Martha, and she noted the set of his jaw as he came over to her, putting a hand on her shoulder. She leant onto him slightly.

“You alright?” he asked.

“Owen says I’ll be fine with a bit of bedrest,” Martha said, glancing over to the other doctor.

Owen made a face, evidently no longer pleased to be playing the role of Martha’s attending doctor while Ianto stood by and glared him down.

“How did you get here, anyway?” Owen asked Ianto. “’s not like you could just hop in a cab. Not with that getup.”

“I borrowed your car,” Ianto said placidly.

“You what?”

“It’s out by the gate. You might want to get a move on; it’s a bit of a trek.”

Owen gawped at him for a moment, then took off in a sprint for his car. Martha kept her laugh in a she spotted the smirk on Ianto’s face.

“You had to steal his car?” she asked.

“He was right,” Ianto said. “Nobody would’ve let me in their cab. Not with James.”

“With who?”

“With… nobody. Nothing.”

But Martha watched him draw the sniper rifle closer to his body. She tried to suppress her smile, but his tiny pout meant some of it slipped onto her face.

“Where’s Owen?” Jack asked as he returned to them.

“Getting his car,” Ianto said, helping Martha into the SUV.

Martha caught a glimpse of the curious glare Jack threw at Ianto before being ushered the rest of the way into the SUV. Then Ianto slid in beside her, Gwen hopping in on the other side. Tosh and Jack got in the front, where Jack turned around to frown oddly at Ianto once more, then back again to start the SUV.

As the ride back was largely silent, Martha took the time to explain to Ianto the finer points of her capture and rescue. He made a scandalised face when she mentioned being saved by the “singularity scalpel,” but otherwise, he just nodded, possibly adding every minor offense to the total he had saved up against the Torchwood team. Or maybe against the Pharm. She didn’t know who Ianto was pissed off at. Maybe it was himself.

Back in the Hub, Ianto instantly began collecting their things. Martha sat on the sofa and waited, still feeling a little sick and sore. When he returned, she took his arm, and he quickly tried to steal her out of there.

“Oi!”

Ianto grumbled beneath his breath as they turned back to see Owen, Gwen, and Jack standing there.

“Where are you going?” Owen continued.

“Hotel,” Ianto answered. “Martha needs rest.”

“She can get that here,” Jack said.

“It’s nearing midnight, we’ve been up for over forty-eight hours, and you have no proper bed,” Ianto pointed out.

“They do need rest,” Gwen agreed, albiet reluctantly. “They can come back tomorrow, can’t you?”

That last part she addressed to Ianto and Martha. Martha nodded wearily.

“I can’t do paperwork tonight,” she said. “I don’t even think Ianto can.”

“I should still check you out,” Owen said.

“I can do it myself. I’m a doctor.”

“You can’t lead an examination on yourself,” Owen said.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re the subject of it!”

“I’ll be fine,” Martha said. She turned to Jack. “Really. I’ll be just fine. I just need rest.”

Jack looked between the four people around him, took a moment to decide, then made a shooing motion with his hands. Ianto needed no more encouragement, hauling Martha away from the Hub before Owen could protest again.

In the hotel, Martha immediately drew herself a hot, steaming bath. She called Tom and had a lengthy conversation with him—the hot water had turned lukewarm by the time she hung up. She did a few tiny stretches while she dried off, trying to evaluate the tenderness in her abdomen and determine where exactly it lies. She figured the dull pain should fade in a day or two.

Ianto was sitting on her bed when she comes out of the bathroom.

“You’re very lucky I put my clothes on in there,” she warned him. “What are you doing here?”

He looked up at her. “I got bored.”

“Hm,” she said, sitting down next to him. “How’d you get in here, anyway?”

“How’s Tom?” he asked, ignoring her.

“Tom’s fine.”

He nodded.

Martha didn’t know what else to say, and Ianto wasn’t being very forthcoming, so they sat in silence.

“So,” she said after a while. “How is it, being back at Torchwood?”

“That isn’t Torchwood,” Ianto scoffed automatically. Then he cleared his throat and bowed his head. “Not… not the Torchwood I know, anyway.”

“I suppose it’s very different to your gleaming tower,” she conceded.

“Very,” he said.

Martha looked over to him. His eyes stared at the floor, lost to whatever past she pushed him into. She changed the topic.

“Well, what about the people?” she asked. “I take it you and Toshiko got along?”

“She has some… warped ideas,” he said, a smile playing on his lips. He glanced back up. “But she’s rather nice. Ms Cooper, too.”

“And Owen?”

Ianto made a noncommittal noise.

“Oh, you liked him,” she said. “Come on, admit it. It was nice having someone to banter with.”

“Banter?” Ianto pulled a face. “He’s just rude.”

“He’s fun,” she said, “and you know it.”

He rolled his eyes.

“What about Jack?” she asked.

Ianto’s look warped into something closer to surly. “What about him?”

She stared at him. “Please don’t tell me you hate Jack.”

“I don’t—” Ianto cut off, looking down at his hands, fingers laced together and fidgeting. “I don’t hate him.”

She leant back on her hands. “Then why are you making that face?”

“He’s just… there’s just something about him that… rubs me the wrong way.”

“What sort of something?”

“I don’t know it’s just…” Ianto cleared his throat and moved on. “I dunno. Anyway, the entire dynamic of the team is just… bizarre.”

Martha frowned at him, sitting in confused silence until he glanced over to her and started to explain.

“Ms Cooper and Dr Harper most definitely have shagged, but Dr Harper isn’t Ms Cooper’s fiancé, which means she regrets and loathes herself for it. Miss Sato and Dr Harper have an unrequited fling going on between them, though it’s never been addressed. Captain Harkness and Ms Cooper have an unresolved sexual tension between them. No doubt nothing romantic, but definitely distracting.”

After a significant pause, Martha managed, “You got all that in one day?”

He blinked, looking away as he shrugged. “It’s my job to notice things.”

She doubted that talent came from his job, but she didn’t say as much.

“So, you’re saying… what?” she asked.

“It’s just one big horseshoe of a thing, that’s all,” Ianto said.

She felt like he was avoiding something, but she really had no idea what.

“Okay, I need rest,” she said. “Get out.”

He sighed as she shoved him off the bed.

“Get some sleep,” she reminded him as he headed out. “Paperwork tomorrow.”

“Please,” he said. “I could do paperwork in my sleep.”

“You could not,” she told him. “Go. Rest.”

Morning came before Martha was ready for it. Her body still ached. Granted, it had died down since last night, but it felt like someone punched her in the gut. Sad, that she knew exactly what that felt like.

She sat in bed for a while, not sure if she wanted to get up or go back to sleep. This was ultimately decided for her when a knock came at her door.

“Just let yourself in, Ianto,” Martha grumbled.

As the door was far away and made of thick wood, Ianto didn’t hear her, and knocked again.

“Come in!” she shouted.

“I can’t,” came the muffled reply. “It’s locked.”

Martha sighed, sliding out of bed. She had to do everything herself, didn’t she?

“Locks didn’t stop you last night,” she said when she cracked the door open.

Ianto shrugged. “Can I come in?”

“No,” she said. At his frown, she added, “I’m not dressed.”

His frown deepened. “Why aren’t you dressed?”

“It’s seven,” she informed him.

“Plenty of time for you to get ready by,” Ianto said.

“Not if I woke up ten minutes ago.”

“Why are you waking up so late?”

“Seven isn’t late!”

“Well, it certainly isn’t early,” he said.

“We don’t have a set schedule, and I intend to take full advantage of that,” she explained. “Why are you so eager to get in so early?”

“I’m not,” he said. “I just figured… the sooner we went, the sooner we got done, and the sooner we can leave.”

“Cardiff won’t eat you alive,” she said.

“Says you.”

“Eight o’clock,” she decided. “And no sooner.”

“By eight or at eight?”

“Go make yourself a coffee,” she told him.

“I did. It’s shit instant.”

“Bye, Ianto,” she said, and then closed the door on his face.

Hair, makeup, and dressing all took a little longer than they usually would, because Martha was deadest on leaving exactly on her own time, and not a moment before. Every other day followed Ianto’s clock, but today, it could be hers, and she really did plan to take full advantage of it. She didn’t get many days off, and this was the closest thing to that.

Right on time, she walked into the hotel’s lobby and found Ianto nursing a cup of coffee in his hands. He took a sip of it and grimaced, and then he spotted her.

“Took you long enough,” he griped.

“I had to make sure I was looking my absolute best,” she said.

“You look lovely,” he replied automatically. “Can we go now?”

“What are you, five?”

But she slotted her hand into his offered arm, and off they walked to the car. 

She watched Cardiff fly by outside the window as they returned to Jack’s base. She could have seen this every day, had she chosen a different path. Jack had offered her a job once. She had considered it, before also turning him down in favour of staying home with her family. Then she’d taken the job UNIT had offered. But this could have been her life, she realised.

It also could have been Ianto’s.

Martha glanced over to him. His eyes remained locked on the road through the windscreen, so she took the liberty of studying him while he wouldn’t notice.

She tried to picture it, in her mind’s eye. Ianto Jones, working for Torchwood Cardiff. Seemed almost impossible to imagine. She couldn’t picture what he would wear, what he would do, what he would be like. She could make conjectures, but she couldn’t formulate what he would be like altogether as a person, as another Ianto Jones.

After a few minutes, she stopped trying. She liked Ianto how he was now, and if she couldn’t imagine him any other way, then maybe that meant things were the way they were meant to be. Why bother envisioning anything different, in that case?

“It looks better in the daylight,” Martha said as they walked through the tourist centre again.

Ianto threw her a sceptical look. She shrugged, wiped dust from the desk, and then reached over to press the button for the false wall.

Jack seemed utterly surprised to see them.

“You’re here early,” he said, blinking down at them from beside Toshiko’s station as they walked through the cog door.

Martha noted that his braces were draped down by his sides and his shirt was half-buttoned.

“Early?” Ianto looked equally as shocked. “It’s past eight.”

“Exactly,” Jack said.

“Just what sort of schedule do you have around here?”

“Behave,” Martha whispered.

“Well, Gwen and Toshiko try to get in by eight, but that almost never happens,” Jack said. “Not unless Toshiko’s pulled another all-nighter, or if Gwen has had another small tiff with Rhys about the wedding that morning. And Owen runs on his own clock.”

Ianto looked absolutely appalled.

“So, what do we do in the meantime, then?” Martha asked.

Jack shrugged. “Want to feed a Weevil?”

“Like… the bug?” Martha asked slowly. She’d had enough of bugs for quite some time.

Jack grinned widely.

Well, Weevils were not bugs. They were, in fact, coverall-wearing, mildly telepathic aliens, who happened to want to tear humans apart and eat them.

Not the worst she had met.

Toshiko came in first, and then Gwen entered a few minutes later. Owen was still nowhere to be seen, but Ianto figured he can start the interview part of their paperwork without him.

It was ridiculous, how much paperwork goes into some missions. Martha supposed this massive load was due to the joint UNIT/Torchwood operation more than anything. UNIT would do anything to poke its nose in its smaller, more clandestine counterpart, including overstock itself in near-useless interviews and reports on a situation that would normally require half the paper load.

Owen dragged himself in around nine, clearly hungover. He claimed his near-death experience had warranted a drink, and then plopped down beside Martha in the autopsy room to watch as she finished Copley’s autopsy (which would also require paperwork, as well as a whole written report on what happened in the Pharm while she was doing her “industrial espionage,” and what happened in the Pharm as a whole operation… she already felt swamped by this).

Around midday, they took a break for lunch. Jack ordered Chinese for them all, and they crowded in a messy conference room to eat it. The team engaged in lots of conversation, with topics ranging from last night to the exact shade of white Gwen wanted her wedding dress to be. Martha chimed in when she could, but Ianto said nothing the entire meal. Sometimes, Martha looked up and caught Ianto throwing hard looks at Jack, but Jack never seemed to notice.

They all returned to reports and logs and paperwork. Martha was up to her eyeballs. Ianto was not. This was because Ianto liked paperwork, for whatever reason, and was incredibly good at doing it. He even pitched in and did some of hers when she threw him a few pleading glances.

At precisely eight in the evening, Martha stacked her last report, and called it quits. She tried not to roll her eyes when Ianto immediately began to pack up in a hurry.

They said their goodbyes up on the Roald Dahl Plass. Martha hugged Tosh, Gwen, and Owen, kissed their cheeks, and whispered kind goodbyes to them. Ianto merely kissed the girls’ cheeks out of politeness. He then glared at Owen and Owen glared back, but they shook hands anyway.

When it came time to say goodbye to Jack, though, Martha thought about it for approximately a quarter of a second before leaning up to lay one on him. Jack, being Jack, kissed right back. She could sense his confusion the entire time, though.

“Well, everyone else has had a go,” she said when Jack sent her a look after they parted.

He laughed, then stroked her cheek.

“You can so come back anytime,” he told her.

She smiled sadly. She’d had her answer to this since the drive in this morning.

“Well, maybe I will,” she said. “One day.”

Then she moved aside, and Ianto stepped forth to give Jack a quick shake of the hand, much like he had with Owen. Jack, evidently, had other plans.

“Suits,” Jack said, still keeping his hand firmly clasped around Ianto's, not permitting him to leave.

“Sir?” Ianto asked, baffled.

“I think you’d look better in a suit,” Jack said. A challenge settled in his voice.

Ianto, never the sort to be one-upped, said, “I’ve worn plenty of suits before.”

Jack’s eyebrows shifted up.

“When I worked for Torchwood London,” Ianto continued smoothly.

When Jack’s eyebrows raised in full, Ianto evidently gathered to himself that he had won this provocation. His posture became more assured, and his tone broached witticism.

“Besides. I thought you liked the red caps.”

And a wicked grin crossed Jack’s face at that remark. Martha knew what was coming even before Jack tugged the hand he still held and brought Ianto to him.

The kiss was much like Martha’s, only Jack was the initiator and Ianto was the one left completely thrown for a loop.

“What was that?” he spluttered the moment they broke apart.

Jack shrugged, a smirk pressing upon his face. “Proof I do like the red caps.”

Martha quickly hid her own smile as Ianto’s eyes flew to her face, stunned. Someone behind her—Martha presumed it to be Gwen—didn’t keep their mirth nearly as hidden, as a short giggle cut through the silence.

After a moment, Ianto unfroze from his spot, retrieved the suitcases, and all but fled to the car. Martha went after him, still smiling to herself.

The drive back to London went far quicker than it should have—mainly because Ianto seemed to have it in his head that they were being chased.

“Ianto, you’re speeding.”

“I am not.”

Martha eyed him, electing to not correct the boldfaced lie outright. Especially when her mobile ping-ed a text from Jack.

“Torchwood London?”

She grinned, hiding the mobile away.

“So,” she said to Ianto.

“Shut up.”

“I haven’t even said anything yet.”

His eyes slid sideways over to her, then back to the road, his face in a petulant pout. “Don’t say anything at all.”

“Fond of Jack yet?”

His eyes squinted, and the car zoomed even faster.

Chapter Text

Ianto rented a flat.

He didn’t tell anyone this until he moved into said flat, lived there for a week, and then decided to host a small, belated flatwarming.

Martha couldn’t begrudge him this, because she herself had been engaged to merely a week ago, and that had been the big news of the week. Still, she did wish he had told her about this. She could expend more than a bit of extra giddiness on his behalf.

Of course, when she arrived at the party, she sighed heavily and handed him the bottle of cheap wine she’d bought for the occasion.

“I thought you said it was a flatwarming, not a solo drinking night,” she said.

“It is a flatwarming,” Ianto said. “And it isn’t a solo drinking night.”

“Alright, a paired solo drinking night, then,” she said.

“Flatwarming,” Ianto repeated, stubbornly.

“Then where are all the guests?” she asked.

Ianto looked away, mouth twisting sheepishly.

“Exactly,” she said, and then pushed through the door to greet the vacant rooms.

The place was spruce, as Martha imagined the flat might be, but it looked… homey. In a very Ianto-like way. She liked it well enough, then, she supposed.

“I do like the shade of the curtains,” she said.

“I didn’t pick those—they came with the flat.”

“Well, I like them, anyway.” She peered around some more, then turned to Ianto. “Should we open that bottle?”

He looked down at the bottle in his hands, shrugged, and headed towards the kitchen. She dropped her handbag on his sofa, then followed, still taking in the place as she went.

“Oh, you have wineglasses,” she said as he grabbed two.

“Of course I do,” he scoffed. “You like wine too much for me not to.”

She grinned, accepting the offered glass. While the gibe was good-natured and friendly, something told her she shouldn’t take it as a compliment, either. But she did. Ianto, normally not a wine drinker, got wine glasses for his apartment because she liked wine. She was touched.

She raised her glass. “To your new flat.”

“To your engagement,” he returned, holding up his own.

And then they started drinking.

Martha thought they’d have the night together. Maybe she’d crash on his sofa, even. But no, at ten on the dot, Ianto looked at the clock, glanced down at his third glass of wine, eyed Martha carefully, and then told her she had to leave.

“What?” she asked. “Why?”

“I just have…” He looked over to the door of his flat. “Things… I need to do.”

“Can’t they wait until morning?” she asked. “Or until you’re sober?”

“This isn’t something I can just resched—no,” Ianto amended decisively. “It can’t.”

She frowned at him. He blinked back, face blank and yet entirely readable. With a sigh and a laugh, she downed the rest of her glass.

“Whoever it is better be good.”

“Who says—”

“Goodnight, Ianto,” she said, grinning.

She got a cab home that night, figuring to herself that this might actually do Ianto some good. 

“Doctor Jones,” Colonel Mace said.

“Colonel Mace,” Martha replied, glancing up from her samples.

Colonel Mace stared down at her for a moment, then sighed. “Operation Blue Sky is yours, if you really want it.”

She felt her eyes go wide. “Really?”

“Really,” Mace said.

“You mean it?”

“I mean it,” he assured her.

“Oh my god.” She took a moment longer to be stunned, then grinned up at the colonel. “Thank you, sir—I won’t let you down.”

“I should hope not,” he said.

Colonel Mace lingered a bit longer, looking over her shoulder at her samples. He evidently could make neither heads nor tails of it, because he made a blank face, stood up, and left. She laughed to herself, pulling her chair back to the table and returning to work.

“You’re heading Operation Blue Sky?”

“Yep,” she said, not bothering to look up this time.

“You do realise it’s a failure, right?”

“It isn’t.”

“They’ve been on it for a week now. I’m pretty sure it’s a dead end.”

“It is not,” she repeated.

“Why else would they give it to you, then?”

“Because I asked for it,” she said, finally glancing up at Ianto.

“Oh,” he said.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, though,” she said, though not acerbically.

“Had I known you’d asked for it, I would not have said anything,” Ianto said.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, that makes me feel so much better.”

He was silent for a moment.

“But you do have to admit,” he said the instant she tried to turn back to her samples, “it is a bit… suspect.”

She frowned back up at him. “How so?”

“Well, think about it. It’s been ages since it’s been released to the public, and they haven’t figured anything out about the ATMOS systems. Not before, not after, and absolutely nothing this week.”

“We’ve taken longer to find anything suspicious,” she reminded him.

“There’s no proof whatsoever that it’s even alien!”

“Well, there’s no way it’s human,” she pointed out. “And if it’s not human, that means only one thing: it’s alien.”

Ianto didn’t look convinced.

“Look,” he said, “all I’m saying is—be careful. For all we know, they may happily be shoving the useless assignment over to you, letting you take the fall when it inevitably fails.”

“They’re not setting me up,” she said. “Now, could you please let me finish this?”

Ianto sighed and she returned to her work.

The thing was… Ianto was, at least in part, right. ATMOS, except for its inexplicably impossible design, had nothing that flashed any big, bold “this is alien!” signs. And the people in charge were likely rather happy to be handing off the assignment to someone else. But, if so, only because they had more pressing matters to attend to. Martha knew this wasn’t a dead end, and she wasn’t being set up for failure. She just needed to find something that nobody else could find. And she did have that something. Rather, someone.

Operation Blue Sky metaphorically sat on her desk for two days before she did anything about it. She knew she needed to wait for the right moment to employ her plan.

That moment happened to be the unfortunate deaths of fifty-two people across the globe, one of those people being the reporter who’d brought UNIT back onto the ATMOS case. Martha wished something else had happened—something that hadn’t resulted in death—but that wasn’t in her power to control. She only had power to control what happened next.

Colonel Mace essentially came banging down her door, trying to fetch Operation Blue Sky back, but she stood her ground.

“I know someone who can help,” she assured him.

“Help? Help how?” he demanded. “You do know Operation Blue Sky is the seizure of the ATMOS central depot, right?”

“Yes, which means I’m still qualified to lead it! I’ve done this before. But what I mean is, I know someone who can prove that ATMOS is alien,” she said. “Which makes Operation Blue Sky even possible, because we can’t seize the factory without proof.”

Mace eyed her for a moment, a conflicted expression playing underneath his usually blank face. She knew she had him then.

“Alright,” he said tightly. “Who is this person?”

She smiled, almost elated with excitement. Then she remembered the severity of the situation. And something else.

“First you have to move Special Agent Jones to another assignment,” she said.

“What?” Mace asked. “Why would I do that?”

“It’s in everyone’s best interest,” Martha said. “If you want this to go smoothly, Special Agent Jones can’t be anywhere near this.”

Mace still seemed utterly baffled, but he agreed.

“Why am I being sent to Wales?” Ianto snapped over a phone call that evening.

“They needed someone Welsh, I’d imagine,” she said.

“There’s plenty of other Welsh officers. I should be working Operation Blue Sky with you,” he said. “You need me!”

“Clearly, Operation Red Dragon needs you more.”

“That’s a lie, and you know it.”

“I’m sorry, Ianto,” she said. “It’s out of my hands.” Or, at least, it was now.

He let out a frustrated sigh and hung up without another word. She cringed, feeling guilty. She knew it was for the best, both for him and everyone else involved. It wouldn’t go well if the people at the head of the mission hated each other.

The next morning, Martha phoned the Doctor.

Overall, the takeover of the factory went successfully. She did feel poorly about Ianto, and she did wish he had been by her side, like always, but she was otherwise rather pleased with herself.

Until the Doctor said that ATMOS wasn’t alien. She decided she never would tell Ianto that he was right. Though that meant very little, when Ianto could (and very likely would) just look at the reports.

“Decades ahead of its time,” the Doctor said, which made Martha feel a bit better about herself.

Colonel Mace peered at the ATMOS device, which the Doctor didn’t like at all.

“Look, do you mind? Could you stand back a bit?”

Mace, confused, took a step back. “Sorry, have I done something wrong?”

“You’re carrying a gun.” The Doctor’s volume raised. “I don’t like people with guns hanging around me, alright?”

“If you insist,” Mace said.

He and Martha shared a glance as he left. Now he understood why Ianto couldn’t be around. Ianto would annoy the Doctor with his guns, the Doctor would annoy Ianto for all of his misdeeds (as Ianto would consider them), and a feedback loop of annoyance would grow and grow until it reached a horrid tipping point. Plus, Martha didn’t exactly want to see her friends fight like that. 

“Tetchy,” Martha scolded the Doctor when Mace had gone.

“Well, it’s true,” the Doctor said.

“He’s a good man,” she said.

He sat up, scanning the ATMOS system with his sonic screwdriver. “People with guns are usually the enemy in my books.” He glanced up at her. “You seem quite at home.”

“If anyone got me used to fighting, it's you,” she informed him.

“Oh right, so it's my fault.”

“Well, you got me the job. Besides, look at me.”

He looked at her.

“Am I carrying a gun?” she asked.

“Suppose not,” he said.

And that might have been somewhat rude to the UNIT officers, implying she was better than they were, but if she wanted to get through this without smacking the Doctor upside the head, she had to get a point across.

“It's all right for you,” she said. “You can just come and go, but some of us have got to stay behind. So I've got to work from the inside, and by staying inside, maybe I stand a chance of making them better.”

“Yeah?” said the Doctor.

His face remained stony for a moment, but then he grinned.

“That’s more like Martha Jones,” he said.

“I learned from the best,” she said.

“Well…” said the Doctor, practically dancing on the line between humble and egotistical.

“Oi, you lot!”

Martha looked over at Donna, who came bursting into the room. Of all the people the Doctor could have chosen to take through time and space with him next, Martha thought Donna was the perfect choice. She didn’t take nonsense. That was a necessary trait one needed when travelling with the Doctor.

“All your storm troopers and your sonics,” Donna said, sounding pleased with herself. “You’re rubbish. Should’ve come with me.”

“Why?” the Doctor asked. “Where have you been?

“Personnel. That’s where the weird stuff’s happening, in the paperwork. Because I spent years working as a temp, I can find my way round an office blindfold. And the first thing I noticed… is an empty file.”

She held that file in her hands.

“Why? What’s inside it?” the Doctor asked. “Or, what’s not inside it?”

“Sick days.”

She opened the file dramatically, exposing the bare insides of the file.

“There aren’t any,” she said. “Hundreds of people working here and no one’s sick. Not one hangover, man flu, sneaky little shopping trip, nothing. Not ever! They don’t get ill!”

“That can’t be right,” said Mace, who had come in just after Donna.

He took the file from her and inspected it, as if he could find something more hidden… wherever he thought anything could be hidden in that thing.

“You’ve been checking out the building—should’ve been checking out the workforce,” Donna said.

Martha couldn’t help but grin. Maybe she didn’t have Ianto with her, but she evidently had a backup.

“Ianto would like you,” she said, smiling at Donna.

“Ianto?” The Doctor frowned at her. “I thought your fiancé’s name was Tom?”

“She’s not talking about her fiancé, then, is she?” Donna said. Then she smiled at Martha. “Now, who is this Ianto, anyway?”

“Never mind that,” Mace said, sounding scandalised. “Doctor Jones, set up a medical post. Start examining the workers. I’ll send them through.”

He placed the file in Martha’s hands, then left with the Doctor.

“Come on, Donna,” Martha said, happy to work with her new backup. “Give me a hand.”

Of course, Martha’s backup went home to her family and left Martha on her own. Though if she hadn’t, Donna wasn’t a true backup for Ianto, because she didn’t know how to use a gun; therefore, Martha still would have been abducted, anyway. Go figure.

As she lay strapped down, Martha literally watched a clone of herself emerge from the bubbling green… she didn’t even know what that was. Some fluid of some sort. Disgusting.

“You will sleep, girl,” said Commander Skorr.

Beginning to feel herself fade out, Martha decided she would stop side-lining Ianto if this was what came of it. Her luck always turned out absolute rubbish without him.

The Doctor saved her, and she wasn’t at all surprised. He always tended to do that, later rather than sooner. She hoped he hadn’t let her clone get away with too much before he got to her.

Honestly, if two days ago, someone had told her she’d have a heart-to-heart with her dying clone, she would have laughed. Now, she just felt sick. “There's so much that you want to do” and “all that life” made her feel… wrong. Like she wasn’t living the life she thought she wanted. What had the other Martha gleaned from her inner feelings that she hadn’t?

She took the engagement ring off Other Martha’s finger and slid it onto her own. She hadn’t thought about Tom, this time she got captured. She thought about Ianto and the Doctor and her family…

Not that she had much time to dwell on the matter. Bigger fish to fry than her own love-life. Bigger, potatoey-shaped fish.

Damn, she wanted fish and chips. Sitting in that thing for god only knows how long made her hungry, and running around after the Doctor wasn’t helping. When this was over, she was going to phone Mum and then get herself some good fish.

So, she did. It was the closest thing she could get to comfort, which was something she could use a bit of after all of this.

“Bye, Mum,” she said when she’d finished.

“Been a while since I’ve had fish and chips,” the Doctor murmured, stabbing his fork around his food.

“I know the best place,” she said. “Just on the corner of—”

She cut off, looking down at her mobile.

“You should answer that,” the Doctor said. He eyed the mobile pointedly and popped a chip in his mouth.

“It’s just Mum again. Probably going to scold me about something she forgot to mention.” But she set her fish aside and grabbed the phone.

It wasn’t Mum.

She quickly returned the mobile to her coat pocket, promising to herself she’d call Ianto later. She just needed a while with the Doctor first; she wasn’t ready for her two worlds to collide just yet.

“I take it that isn’t your mother,” the Doctor said, his eyebrows high on his head. “Is it… Tom?”

“Oh, um. No.”

She hadn’t even thought to phone Tom…

“Ah,” the Doctor said slowly.

He bit a chip, studying her with a careful eye. She fidgeted for a moment, feeling guilty. Then she felt guilty for feeling guilty, because what did she have to feel guilty for?

She shook her head, forcing herself into the present.

“So,” she said. “Where are you and Donna headed next?”

“Oh… everywhere… nowhere…”

He grinned and she laughed, trying to imagine all the things those two got themselves into on their travels. Must have been fun.

“You could come, too, you know,” he said.

“Thank you, but my answer is still no,” she said. “I have people who need me here.”

After a somewhat tense moment, he nodded.

“Come see the TARDIS, at least,” the Doctor said. “She misses you.”

“Well,” Martha said, “with an offer like that, how could I refuse?”

The Doctor and Donna walked Martha back to her flat. She felt sorry for Donna—deluded into thinking she’d be there forever for the Doctor. Martha had thought that once, too. But she hoped, both for the Doctor and for Donna’s sake, that Donna was right this time. The Doctor was never good on his own, and Donna… she seemed all the better for him.

Plus, after losing his daughter, the Doctor could probably use some company. Or a distraction. But Martha couldn’t be either for him anymore.

Outside her flat, she and the Doctor hugged. A fond-farewell sort of hug, because while she still loved him—and suspected she always would—she was for sure over that chapter in her life. These past few days taught her that as much as anything.

At the sound of a gun cocking, the Doctor and Martha froze in each other’s arms. Oh, shit. What now?

“Step back,” said Ianto’s voice, steely and grim. “Now.”

Martha almost sighed in relief, but then remembered Ianto didn’t make threats he didn’t carry out on, especially not when it came to the Doctor.

“Ianto,” she warned, pulling herself from the Doctor’s arms.

Ianto said nothing to her, keeping his pistol and his icy gaze locked on the Doctor.

“Step back,” he repeated.

The Doctor did not step back. He stared right back at Ianto, as if challenging him to shoot.

This is why Martha never wanted the two to meet. Her worst nightmare, playing out right in front of her.

“Ianto, put down the gun,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“Yes, Ianto,” the Doctor muttered darkly. “Put down the gun.”

Ianto stood his ground. 

“Ianto!” she snapped. “Put the gun down!”

Ianto glanced over to her, his eyes narrowed. She glared him down, and, eventually, Ianto de-cocked the gun and lowered it to his side.

“‘Am I carrying a gun,’ you asked,” the Doctor said Martha lowly. “Well, you wouldn’t need to, would you? You’ve got him carrying it for you.”

Martha refused to wither beneath his gaze. After a moment, he turned away from her, stalking up to Ianto. He looked Ianto up and down, then he started circling the other man, hands clasped behind his back like a teacher about to reprimand his pupil. (And, god, if that didn’t just put unwelcome images of John Smith into her head…)

“Well,” the Doctor said, stopping behind Ianto after his second circle. “I suppose you’ve got loyalty going for you.”

Ianto shot Martha an incensed look. She returned it with a quelling and warning one of her own.

The Doctor paced towards the front of Ianto again. “But there’s something…”

He trailed off, leaving his sentence unfinished as he leaned close to Ianto. It almost looked like he was sniffing Ianto, but Martha didn’t see his nostrils flare at all… so perhaps he was just oddly inspecting Ianto. Not that that didn’t make it any less strange.

Suddenly, the Doctor drew back, his eyebrows skyrocketing on his forehead.

“Seems he rubs off on people,” he murmured. “Could sense him miles away off you… Interesting…”

Ianto grew visibly enraged. Fortunately, he did nothing about this rage, but Martha was confused. What on earth (or, evidently, who) could the Doctor possibly mean that caused Ianto to become this angry?

The Doctor stepped back beside Martha.

“Interesting,” he repeated quietly, still eyeing Ianto.

“I’d ask what the hell is going on here, but I’m not sure I want to know.”

Martha jumped, then felt momentarily abashed—she’d forgotten Donna was behind them.

“Who are you?” Ianto asked Donna, bewildered.

“I could ask you the same thing,” she replied, folding her arms.

“Jones,” Ianto said. “Special Agent Jones.”

Donna’s eyebrows flickered up as Martha tried not to roll her eyes.

“Donna,” responded Donna. “Super Temp Donna.”

Ianto regarded her for a moment. A subtly appeased look crossed his gaze. Martha felt a tiny bit vindicated; she knew he’d like Donna.

The two of them shook hands, and the Doctor cleared his throat.

“We should be going,” he told Donna.

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” Donna said, sounding somewhat put-out.

She grinned at Ianto, winked at Martha, then turned on a heel and took off back toward the TARDIS again. The Doctor lingered a second longer, eyeing Ianto strangely. Then he said a final farewell to Martha and went after Donna.

Ianto and Martha stood outside on the pavement, watching as the blue police box whirred and groaned its way out of this time. When it had gone, Ianto stalked off in the direction of Martha’s flat. She sighed heavily and followed, figuring they’d have much to discuss.

“What the hell was that?” she demanded the instant they were indoors.

“What did you expect?” Ianto pointed angrily at the door. “You’d gone missing, and then he turned up! What was I supposed to do, sit and pretend he’d just taken you to tea? Have a nice chat with him?”

“Missing?”

“You were gone for a week—what else would you call that?”

She shouldn’t have been surprised; the Doctor came in and out on his own schedule. Did she expect this time to be any different than the other times she’d come back too early or too late? No, but… it had been a while since she’d had to think about that.

“It was only a day for me, if anything,” she told him.

Ianto scoffed.

“What?”

“Shouldn’t have even been a day,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to go,” she said. “The TARDIS just… left with me in it.”

“He kidnapped you?”

“He did not!” she exclaimed. “The TARDIS has a mind of its own—it wasn’t his choice.”

Ianto did not look convinced.

“You shouldn’t have called him in the first place.”

She was growing tired of this. “Why not? We needed his help! There was no way we could have done that on our own!”

“Death follows him everywhere he goes,” Ianto said, darkly and grimly.

Martha wanted retort that the Doctor couldn’t save everyone, that it wasn’t all his fault, but Ianto’s tone and expression made her pause. It wasn’t the usual melodrama she spotted there.

“Ianto?” she asked, prompting him to continue.

“Jenkins,” Ianto said.

An icy jolt cut through her. She stared at him, too horrified to even ask him to continue.

“He didn’t even tell you, did he?” Ianto spat.

“Ross?” was all she could say.

And Ianto seemed to lose some of his fire then, because he shut his mouth and put his hands on his hips.

Martha stayed stock-still for a beat, trying to process it all. She couldn’t, really. It was all too much to bear on her own. She stepped forward and put her arms around Ianto’s neck, holding him because she thought he needed it, and because she needed it, too.

At first, Ianto did nothing. He stood, awkward in her hold, merely allowing her to cling to him out of surprise. Then, slowly and tentatively, he wrapped his arms back around her waist. And then he well and truly hugged her in return, pressing his palms against her back and pulling her fully to him.

Ross had been… “mate” was probably the best word for what Ross had been to them. Teammate and friend. The kind of person to laugh off a rough mission with and the guy they had taken along for drinks, when they wanted a group. Martha already missed him, and she could only imagine how Ianto had taken losing a mate for that week when he thought Martha might not come back to him, either.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.

Ianto just held her closer and didn’t respond.

A while later, they sat in Martha’s sitting room, drinking mugs of tea. Of all the things Ianto had offered to prepare for her, this was what she wanted most. Hot, soothing tea.

Ianto had begun to explain what happened while she had been away. He explained the clean-up operation UNIT had gone through after she’d left, and then expounded upon what he did in Cardiff. Which was, evidently, not very much.

“You were in the hospital?” she cut through his tale.

“It was only a day and a night!” Ianto fiddled his fingers around the handle of his mug. “I was fine.”

“If you were in the hospital, I doubt that,” she said. “People who are ‘fine’ do not spend a day and a night in a hospital.”

“Well, I’m fine now,” he amended. “See?”

Careful not to spill his tea, he spread his arms wide, as if to show himself to be, like he claimed, fine.

“Why were you there?” When Ianto didn’t reply, she asked, “Was it the gas?”

“I was inside,” he protested, which wasn’t a denial.

She shook her head. “See? This is why you need to stop smoking. Bad for your lungs.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“I’ve seen you sneaking those cigarettes,” she accused.

He scowled.

“If you didn’t smoke, you probably would have withstood the gas better.”

“Anyway,” Ianto said, and she figured she would never get him to fully drop his habit. “Then I got out of the hospital, and they were already finished, so spent the night in Cardiff with—” He stopped himself abruptly, blinked, then continued, “with an old friend.”

“You don’t have any old friends in Cardiff,” she said, frowning. “Burned all your bridges, remember?”

“Yes, well… not… this one.”

“Who was this?”

“Nobody that matters, really,” he said quickly. “Anyway, point is, I came home in the morning and… waited here for you.”

She had the distinct feeling he was hiding something from her, but she let it slide. Ianto didn’t hide much from her that she couldn’t eke out, so there would be a reason if he was keeping secrets now.

“You just waited at my flat, hoping I’d return?” she asked, moving on.

“Well…”

“What if I didn’t?”

“I knew you would,” he dismissed.

“Then why were you so worried about the Doctor kidnapping me?”

He glared at her. “What if he’d hurt you?”

She sighed and rolled her eyes, sipping at her tea.

“So,” Ianto said after a beat. “What about you? Where did you go?”

“Oh,” Martha said, her heart sinking somewhat once more as she remembered the events of the day. “Well…”

She related everything from the moment she stepped into the TARDIS to the moment Jenny died. Ianto sat, listening with rapt attention as she rambled on about the horrid seven-day war between the humans and the Hath.

“Death follows him everywhere he goes,” Ianto echoed quietly when she’d finished. Now, this time, his standard melodramatic tone had emerged.

“Or maybe he follows death.”

An eyebrow cocked upwards, but Ianto’s face remained otherwise void of emotion.

“Anyway,” she said, “I’m home now.”

“And you’re not… planning to run off with him again?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I made my choice. I chose to be here, and this is where I’m going to stay.”

He nodded once. “Good.”

Silence hung over the two of them for a long stretch.

“Have you talked to Tom?” Ianto asked eventually.

“Oh,” she said. “Um.”

“Probably should do that…”

“Yeah,” she said. “Best if I do.”

They looked at each other for an awkward second, then Ianto stood.

“I’ll… leave you to it,” he said.

He took his mug to the kitchen, disposing of it in the sink (though she was sure he also did a small pre-wash, because he was Ianto, and he aspired to be as clean as clean could be), and then left.

She picked up her mobile and stared at it a while. Why did she feel so guilty?

The inevitable did happen.

After a lot of shouting, a lot of crying, and a lot of silence, Martha and Tom broke off their engagement.

“What do we do now?” Tom murmured after they’d spent an hour doing nothing but sitting quietly in the same room as one another.

Martha shrugged. “I… don’t know.”

“Me neither.”

They gazed at each other.

“I still love you,” he whispered.

“And I love you.” Her voice broke. “But it’s not… the way it should be.”

“No,” he agreed softly.

They hugged, and kissed, and then Tom (who was already supposed to be back on his way to his job in Chad) packed up the rest of his stuff from the flat and took it with him. Took only three hours. Just went to show how much of their lives were actually integrated. So little belongings and so little time in this flat. So little effort into their relationship.

After he’d gone, she spent a long time trying to sort out the flat so that it looked like she’d been the sole occupant the entire time. She’d move things this way and that, but nothing seemed to work. She figured that maybe to an outside eye, things would look normal, but to her… it wouldn’t look right. Ever. Long after she’d decided to be done rearranging, she found herself fussing with things.

“I need to get out of here,” she sighed to herself when she moved a lamp around for the fifth time that evening.

She contemplated calling Tish or Mum, but ultimately decided she didn’t want to deal with the many questions and aggressive sympathy that would follow the initial declaration of “Tom and I called it off.” Really, she wanted to get drunk. She didn’t have anyone for that, though.

Well, she did have someone. While it might take a slight bit of convincing, Ianto would likely be willing to drink with her.

Martha took all of Tom’s favourite beers and bottle of wine, packed them up, and drove them over to Ianto’s flat. She stood at his door and knocked on it.

“I know you’re in there,” she called. “Come on, Ianto. It’s me. Open up!”

When nobody responded, she pounded louder. She almost smacked Ianto as the door whipped open to reveal his bemused face. She lowered her hand, refusing to feel sheepish.

“You could have called,” Ianto said.

“Well, then you might’ve said you’re busy.”

“Who said I’m busy?” he asked, a little too quickly.

She frowned minutely at him. “Alright, then… can I come in?”

“Um,” he said.

And a strange noise came from within his flat. Martha peered over his shoulder inside, alarmed.

“Is someone in?” she asked.

“No,” Ianto said, again with far too little pause. “Just… the cat.”

“You don’t have a cat.”

“The neighbour’s cat,” he amended.

Martha found herself unable to recall any neighbour’s cat. She eyed him momentarily, studying his face. He raised his eyebrows in return, so she shrugged it off.

“Can I come in now?” she repeated.

With a sigh, he opened his door farther and stepped aside, letting her pass through. She beelined for his kitchen, throwing the bag onto the kitchen’s bar. The bottles clinked together, and she unloaded a few of them.

“Aren’t these Tom’s?” Ianto asked as she handed him the bottle of wine.

“Yep,” she said, starting to root through his kitchen for the corkscrew, “and he left them behind, so we’re going to drink them all.”

“Won’t he want them when he comes back?”

She stopped digging through a drawer and glanced up at him.

“He’s not… coming back.”

“Oh no,” he said.

“Oh, yes,” she returned, pulling the corkscrew out.

He stared at her for a moment, then started with a gentle “Martha—”

“Nope,” she said, “whatever you have to say, you can say when I’m drunk.”

She tossed the bottle opener at him, and he caught it deftly in his free hand. He looked at it, then at the bottle, and finally at Martha. When he shrugged and turned towards his sitting room, she grabbed his wine glasses.

“You’re not usually this untidy,” she said as she saw the pile of clothing on his sofa.

Ianto said nothing, quickly bundling up the clothes in his arms and hurrying away to his bedroom. He returned a moment later, his face completely placid, as if everything was perfectly normal. Suspicious. As was the faint commotion from Ianto’s room following that.

“Cat again,” Ianto said.

She frowned at him. “Ianto, if someone’s over—”

“Nobody’s here,” Ianto said with assurance he hadn’t had earlier.

She kept frowning at him for a moment longer, then again brushed it off. This evening wasn’t meant to be for giving Ianto the third degree. It was meant for getting drunk.

An hour later, having gone through a wine bottle, a few beers, and halfway through another bottle of wine, Martha felt tipsy and blissfully free of all negative emotions. Most of them, anyway. Enough that the weights of the world lifted up off her chest.

“Tell you what, though,” Ianto said, gesturing his mostly empty wineglass at her.

His eyes had taken a slightly glazed quality, and every so often he blinked quickly, as if to stay coherent. It mirrored her own light feelings.

“I knew he wasn’t right for you,” he continued. “Right from the moment I first spotted him.”

That slapped a piece of reality back into her system.

“What?” she asked. “I thought you liked him. You said I had good tastes.”

“Yeah, before I met him,” he said. “Before I realised his personality was more than just ‘Welsh.’”

“He wasn’t that bad!” She was allowed the defensive feelings, she felt. After all, it hadn’t even been whole a day since it all came crashing down.

“No,” Ianto said, “but he wasn’t for you. I could tell that the moment I met him. He’s not what you need.”

She stared at him, astounded. He didn’t notice, peeking one eye into his wineglass as he swirled the remnants around.

“You’re better with someone else,” he went on. Then he glanced back up at her. “Why did you even fall for him in the first place?”

Martha opened her mouth, then closed it again. She thought of a suitable response, formatted it properly in her head, and prepared to give it with decisiveness. The moment she opened her mouth again, though, nothing she wanted or planned came pouring out. Instead, she found herself blabbing about a quick trip to the end of the world. She told him about a year that never existed, a year nobody remembered, save for a select few unfortunate souls.

And she told him everything.

It all came out unbidden, from the smallest belly-aching hunger pangs to the day her feet bled so hard she left bloody bootprints in the sand, from the saddest baby-faced orphaned teen she’d met to the entire countries she’d seen burn and fall right before her eyes.

He drank it all in quietly, watching her the entire time with an impassive face. He’d look away once or twice, down to his wineglass, but the rest of it, he was respectful. Sympathetic, in his own Ianto-like way. Martha didn’t know how to explain it other than that: Ianto-like. Beyond everything else that Ianto could be, he was mostly just… Ianto.

Though the hug that followed did not feel very Ianto-like. It felt quite awkward, really. Maybe because, Martha suspected, Ianto had never learned how to properly hug. But she appreciated the sentiment anyway.

He pulled back, taking a small sip from his glass, almost as if to pretend the moments before hadn’t happened.

“I watched Canary Wharf burn,” he said to his glass. “It wasn’t the whole world, but it was my world. Everything I had… gone.”

She gave a derisive laugh. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

His returning grin was equally dire. “Just a bit, yeah.”

“To ending worlds,” she said.

He clinked the lip of his glass against hers. “Ending worlds.”

They each drank, though she downed the rest of her wine while he merely wet his lips. She eyed him carefully as he closed his eyes and rested his head against the top of the sofa.

“Tell me,” she said. “If things had gone differently, after Canary Wharf—"

He blinked his eyes open again, lifting his head to frown at her.

“What would you be doing right now?” she finished.

The following pause felt heavy. He stared at her for most of it, then away at the wall. She half expected him to not answer, and had begun preparing to ask him something else when he next spoke.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I never…”

He cut off for a second, looking back to her.

“I don’t know,” he repeated.

“Well,” she said. “Surely there’s something that would make you happy.”

His lips pursed for a second, then disappeared completely as he seemed to consider.

“Come on,” she said. “What makes you happy?”

“I… don’t know…” he said again, though this time, she could tell the lie when it smacked her so squarely in the face.

“What is it?” she pressed. “It’s me, Ianto—you can tell me anything.”

“You’ll laugh,” he said.

“I won’t!” She drew a swift “x” over her chest. “Cross my heart and everything!”

He squinted suspiciously at her for a second, then said, “Okay… well… if I could do anything… anything at all…”

He stopped again, abashed.

“Iantooo,” she intoned.

“Fine, alright,” he said. “I want to work in a museum.”

A snort escaped before she could control herself.

“You said you wouldn’t laugh!” Ianto protested.

“I’m not laughing at you,” Martha said, “I’m laughing at—you’d really think I’d laugh at that? I think that’s a great idea!”

“Really?” he asked, sceptical.

“Yes!” She sat up, tucking her legs under herself. “Listen, you’d be great. You’d archive amazingly.”

“How’d you know—”

“Because I know you, Ianto Jones,” she said, pointing her wineglass at him. “You like Star Wars and James Bond and Indiana Jones and Star Trek and, most of all, knowing everything. You like knowing everything so much that sometimes you make people forget you don’t know everything. And you like that, too. And… I don’t know how that gets me to archives, but it does.”

“You’re drunk,” Ianto said after a moment.

“Mm, so are you.”

Another pause hung over them.

“I don’t think I could archive now,” he murmured eventually. “Too scarred for normal civilian life now.”

“Not true,” she said. “You look just fine.”

He hummed a note, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, though she could tell his feelings shifted more towards the latter.

Martha didn’t remember much more after that point. She could only assume she’d downed more alcohol, as she woke with quite the hangover and no idea how she wound up with a duvet covering herself and a leg dangling off the side of the sofa. Ianto likewise had no clue how he ended up on the floor, curling around one of the sofa’s pillows and wine glass still tucked in his hand.

They’d have to clean the small wine stain out of the carpet.

“You’re what?” Ianto demanded.

“I know—I’m sorry!” she shouted.

She clung desperately to her seat, trying to keep a steady balance as Ianto sped forward, dodging and weaving around the other cars on the road.

“You just decided now was a good time to tell me this?”

“You’re the one who brought it up!” she said.

“I didn’t say anything about it!”

He made a sharp tug on the wheel, veering the car abruptly left. She tipped sideways. When she righted herself, she looked back in the mirrors.

“They’re still gaining on us!” she told him.

“I know,” he ground through his teeth.

She kept her eyes on the car behind them, her heart racing in her chest.

This was an unexpected outturn to their latest mission. Martha wasn’t actually sure how it happened, really; one moment, they were investigating a bizarre and small pharmaceutical company claiming to be able to cure any number of otherwise incurable diseases, and the next… Well. Now they had the Orion Syndicate on their tails.

“I didn’t bring New York up!” Ianto said, drawing her back to the conversation at hand.

“You’re the one who asked if I’d miss this when I left!”

“As a joke! I didn’t know you were actually leaving m—”

He had cut off, but she knew the last bit of that sentence.

“What’s in New York, anyway?” he asked.

“A promotion,” she said.

She couldn’t say much more than that, even if she wanted to. And she did want to—Ianto was her closest confidant. And, surely, he’d love to hear about Project Indigo. However, she was sworn to complete secrecy.

“You couldn’t get one here?” he asked. “They’re obsessed with you, Martha! If you asked them nicely, they’d hand you the entire world!”

“Ianto, that’s—" 

“Scratch that—if you asked rudely, they’d gift you the universe!” he shouted as he accelerated, passing yet another lorry in record time.

“You’re being ridiculous!”

“You’re moving to New York for a promotion, and I’m the one being ridiculous?”

“For god’s sake, Ianto, I just want a break from London!” she yelled. “Everywhere I look, it’s like I’m looking at a world where Tom should still be with me! And it hurts, and I’m so tired of it!”

From the corner of her eyes, she saw Ianto’s knuckles whiten as he clenched the wheel.

“I can’t keep doing this,” she said, barely audible above the engine’s roar. “I just need a break.”

Her mum had done it, too, when she and Dad had split. Spent a month away. Hadn’t been fun for Dad or Martha or her siblings, but Mum seemed a bit better when she’d returned. Martha just needed her month away. Her month would actually be six, but that didn’t matter. All the better for time to heal, she supposed.

Ianto didn’t respond. He looked about to, but then suddenly his expression changed from bemused frustration to sudden urgency. He yanked the car right with no warning, speeding up as he did so. Martha barely grabbed a hold of her seatbelt to keep herself upright. She looked behind them, only to see the car chasing them riding practically on their boot.

“Call someone,” Ianto urged. “Now!”

Martha fumbled around searching for her bag. When she found it, her mobile decided it would like to take a trip to the bottom, so she tossed items out into the back seat in pursuit of it. Sure, that PDA was expensive and sounded like it just cracked against the window, but it was far less important than getting out of this car chase without being shot.

Colonel Mace, frustratingly, did not answer her call. In her head, as she punched in numbers to UNIT’s dispatch, she thought about just how she’d berate him for it later.

 “We’re being chased!” Martha shouted into her mobile the instant someone picked up. “Operation Green Li—Ianto, look out!”

To avoid the abrupt appearance of a bright blue car, Ianto steered sharply right.

Time seemed to slip then. All Martha could feel was the first few instants of sheer panic, and then it just felt… she couldn’t describe it. She’d never be able to find the words to, in all of her life after. It was just that, for a second, things were normal, and then the next, the universe felt all inside-out and upside-wrong.

And then the car stopped rolling with a sickening crunch.

She didn’t know how long she lay there for. Time still hadn’t righted itself. And she was dizzier than she’d ever been in her life; nothing stuck in her head. She could feel herself breathing. That was the only thing that registered. That, and the ringing in her ears.

After a while, a dull sense broke through the haze. It felt urgent, but not fully formed. Haste, but indistinct and smothered. She wasn’t even sure what it was for, at first.

“Ianto,” she murmured eventually. “Ianto…”

Her voice sounded faraway and muffled, lost in the ringing of her ears. Slowly, she glanced around, looking for Ianto. She didn’t see him in what remained of the seat beside her.

“Ianto?” she said again, louder, feeling the panic edge back in.

The windscreen was shattered, and she could see blood. She tried to recall if Ianto had worn his seatbelt; she couldn’t remember, but she was sure he had. But still… he wasn’t in the car, and the windscreen was still burst and bloody.

Slowly, stiffly, and carefully, Martha began extracting herself from her seat. Her left wrist twinged—painfully so—with every move she made, but she couldn’t stop. She had to get to Ianto.

She managed to free herself from the wreckage, sprawling out on the grass for a moment. The world spun again; she had to right it before she kept going. When her head cleared enough, she got to her feet.

“Ianto?” she called once more, stumbling forward.

A strangled moan answered her. Heart beating in her chest, she turned towards the direction of the sound.

“Oh, no,” she distantly heard herself say.

Staggering over to the crumpled form, she tried to keep her swimming head on straight. She had to get to Ianto, and then she had to… she had… well, there was a lot of blood, staining the grass red, so she had to…

She sank to the ground beside him. She somehow didn’t topple over, remaining on her knees as she gazed down at his bloodied body.

“Ianto…”

She had to stop the bleeding. That’s what she had to do.

But where was he bleeding? It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. There was just blood, and the moment she touched his chest, her hand was seeped in it. And he screamed.

She shushed him, “It’s alright, it’s alright…”

Was it? She couldn’t tell. Her vision swam, and her brain felt heavy, and she still couldn’t find the wound… what sort of doctor was she?

“Martha,” Ianto choked out.

“I’m here,” she said. “It’s alright, I’m here.”

A sob escaped him. “Hurts.”

“I know, I know.”

She put a hand to his cheek, and he hissed in agony. Quickly, she removed her hand. A shocking, angry red cut stuck out against the pallor of his face. That made for one wound she could find, then, but she could do nothing for it. That didn’t worry her as much as the rest of him did.

“Okay,” she said to herself. “Okay…”

She brushed a hand across her face, trying to shove away the hair that had pulled down. The wet feeling of Ianto’s blood smothered her forehead. She withheld a sob. She couldn’t afford to cry—she was already having enough difficulty focusing her vision as it was.

And maybe that was when she finally realised that she couldn’t do this. Her left wrist seared in pain, her head felt like it was underwater, and she was struggling to figure out what she was supposed to do for Ianto. She couldn’t be Doctor Jones right now.

She could be Martha, though. She could be Ianto’s friend and keep him awake until she could figure out what else to do.

“Ianto?” she asked, peering down at him again.

His eyes had slipped shut. She reached out and tapped his cheek—the good one—and he moaned.

“Ianto, I need you to stay awake,” she said.

Seemingly with great effort, his eyes fluttered back open. His normal piercing blue gaze was dull and hidden under heavy lids, but he stared up at her.

“Marth—aaaaaah!"

He all but screamed in pain when she suddenly slapped a hand over his mouth.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she consoled, quieting him.

She went back to listening closely to the sounds of the world around them. Those were sirens, right? They sounded like sirens… Dare she shout for help? For all she knew, the Orions hadn’t left.

Ianto’s breath came out in short, weak huffs against her hand. She ignored it, focusing instead on the sounds of possible rescue. She could only think about one thing at a time; her head was still sinking, and she felt oh-so dizzy.

She was so dizzy that, when she saw the paramedics approach, she sobbed in relief and backed away from Ianto. She laid down on the ground beside him. His eyes had closed again, and she felt hers do much the same.

She didn’t want to open them again.

Martha woke up at the hospital alone. The cold, sterile rooms somehow felt so much different when she was the one in the bed. The white walls mocked her, and the beeping machines annoyed her.

She sat up, orienting herself.

She felt fine. A tad woozy, but otherwise fine. Absolutely no need for her stay in bed, though. Not when all she had attached her was a monitor and an IV drip that had nearly finished off.

With a quick tug, the IV pulled free. The monitor slipped easily from her finger; however, it made quite a fuss once removed. She ignored it.

Her wrist twinged when she pushed some weight onto it as she left the bed. And her head spun. Without knowing anything else, her best immediate guess was a sprained wrist and a small concussion. But so what?

Nobody came to shove Martha back into bed as she escaped her room. She was grateful for this; she didn’t want to have to put up a fight. Though it did worry her slightly. Was the hospital understaffed? Did they just not care? Not for her to worry about, she supposed. She had her own things to worry about. Like Ianto.

She had planned to quickly stick her head inside every door in every ward until she found him, but as it turned out, she had no need to do so. The first door she cracked open revealed a prone Ianto Jones in a stark white hospital bed. And also—

“Jack?” she asked.

Jack Harkness’s head whipped up, surprise widening his eyes comically. Then it reversed into a frown as he studied her.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I could ask you the same thing,” she said, snapping the door closed behind her.

“I… heard you were hurt,” Jack said.

“Did you.”

“Yes, so, I came down to visit,” he finished lamely.

“This isn’t my room.”

“Well. You were asleep,” he said.

“So is Ianto,” she pointed out.

He glanced over to Ianto’s form, and Martha took the opportunity to pull up the other chair beside Jack. She sank into it, grateful that the room stopped spinning as she did. When her vision settled, she herself took the opportunity to get a good look at Ianto.

The white sheets and white walls and white bandages and white everything paled Ianto. Or perhaps that was him recovering from blood loss. Either way, the pallor of his face concerned her slightly. As did the taped-up gash on his cheek.

“‘Too scarred for normal life,’” she quoted under her breath.

Jack frowned at her. She ignored him, still studying Ianto. More accurately, she studied the way his hand lay turned over and opened on the blanket, just inches away from Jack’s own.

She could put two and two together.

“Ianto’s neighbour doesn’t have a cat,” she said.

Jack’s frown deepened. “Martha, I think you should—”

“You’re not here for me, are you?” she cut over him.

The fingers just inches away from Ianto’s twitched. “I am.”

“No, you’re not,” she said gently. “You’re here for him.”

“I’m here for both of you,” Jack said after a moment.

She could believe that, though not fully. Patting his arm, she gave him light smile.

In the bed, Ianto stirred. Martha sat up as best as she could, attentive as she could make herself be. Jack’s hand slipped into Ianto’s. She noted, for a brief second, the seemingly perfect fit. Then she forgot the hands as Ianto cracked his eyes open, just barely.

“Jack?” he mumbled.

“Hey,” Jack said, teeth flashing in a dazzling grin.

More words tumbled loosely from Ianto’s lips, which Martha took to mean, “Where am I?”

“You’re in the hospital,” Jack said, interpreting similarly.

“We were in a car crash, remember?” Martha tacked on.

Ianto’s eyes, still heavily lidded, searched blearily until they found her face. “Martha?”

“Hello, you,” she said. She scrounged up just enough to smile at him.

His eyes slipped shut again, and he sighed out, “Don’t go.”

“I’m staying right here.”

He made a noise in the back of his throat and then seemingly succumbed to the drugs again, his breath evening back out to the slower rhythm of sleep. With her eyes still firmly locked onto him, Martha sat back in her seat. She figured, though, the lie was worth it. And while New York might be an ocean away, at least Cardiff only took a drive. One that seemed to already be regularly made. So, perhaps she could rest easy, knowing he wouldn’t be alone.

She squinted at Jack and Ianto. That was two shovel talks her Mum would be giving. She’d have to stay long enough to at least see that.

Chapter Text

Sarah Jane Smith was the first to leave. Martha stood by one of the twisted columns and waited. She would leave next, Jack likely trailing along with, but for now she would let Sarah Jane have her private goodbye.

She looked around at the people in the TARDIS with her. Rose Tyler… well. The woman was cute, alright, and Martha completely understood why everyone was so besotted with her. Martha smiled to herself, thinking about the past jealousy she’d had. Glad that was over and done with. Rose’s mum was talking to that other man… Ricky? No, no—Mickey. Mickey Smith. Martha eyed him. He looked… nice.

Blinking, she turned her attention to Jack, who was shoving a mobile in his pocket. He returned her gaze with a lifted eyebrow, then nodded his head toward the TARDIS doors. She shrugged. Sarah Jane should be finished by now, she supposed.

Only stopping to give Donna a hug goodbye, Martha exited the TARDIS. The shining daylight blinded her for a moment, and she grabbed Jack’s arm until her vision cleared.

“Hard to think that just minutes ago, it was pitch dark out here,” she said.

Jack hummed an acknowledging note.

“You two are off, then, too?” the Doctor asked.

Jack and Martha stopped in front of him.

“Well, as I assume nobody fancies another trip to the end of the universe,” Jack said, “I figured I should step out.”

“Oh, she likes you,” the Doctor said. “She just needed to get used to you, that’s all.”

Jack sent a glance to the TARDIS. Then he shrugged.

“Speaking of which…” The Doctor snatched Jack’s wrist in one hand and pulled out his sonic screwdriver in the other. He pointed the sonic screwdriver at Jack’s wrist strap, pressing a few buttons on the vortex manipulator with his thumb. “I told you… no teleport.”

Jack looked down to Martha and she raised her eyebrows in return, suppressing a grin.

 “And, Martha,” the Doctor said, turning to her next, “get rid of that Oesterhagen thing. Eh? Save the world one more time.”

She smiled up at him. “Consider it done.”

Jack saluted the Doctor, and she followed in suit. The Doctor returned the gesture, and that was all.

Jack took Martha’s hand as they walked away.

“You know,” he said, “I’m not too sure about UNIT these days. Maybe there’s something else you could be doing.”

“When have you ever been sure about UNIT?” she asked.

“Good point,” he said.

“Besides,” she said. “What else would I do? I don’t think Owen would like it if I stole his job.”

Jack laughed. “No, I suppose not. Still. We’d find a way to make it work.”

“Well, thank you for the offer,” she said, “but I think I’ll stick it out with UNIT for a little while longer.”

“Ah, well,” he sighed playfully.

“Oi! You two!”

At the shout, Martha and Jack looked over their shoulders. That man, Mickey Smith, was running toward them. Jack groaned.

“Thought I got rid of you,” he said, his hand breaking apart from Martha’s as Mickey fit in between them.

“Yeah, you wish,” Mickey said.

“You’re not going back?” Martha asked.

“What for?” Mickey asked. “Nothing over there for me. Rose has got two Doctors now. One of them’s bound to keep her.”

“Were you her—” She dropped it. Maybe that wasn’t something she wanted answered. Stupid of her—she’d known the man for all of what, fifteen minutes? And she’d already imagined things for herself.

“Maybe not as much as I thought I was,” Mickey said.

Oh. Well, she supposed that was certainly interesting. But maybe not interesting enough. She wasn’t playing second to Rose Tyler again. Though she did suppose, if he wasn’t even looking back… and if the only person he’d said his goodbye to was Rose’s mum…

Not for her to think about. Again, she’d only known him for fifteen minutes. She needed to learn to think before she felt.

“You know,” Jack said once more, and Marta rolled her eyes in preparation for whatever came out of his mouth next, “I got to kiss the Doctor and Rose and Martha, but never you, Mickey.”

“Good,” Mickey said. “It’s going to stay that way.”

“You sure?” Jack asked.

“You’re not convincing anyone of anything today, it seems, Jack,” Martha said.

He snapped his fingers in mock frustration. “Damn.”

“So,” Mickey said as they began walking again. “Where are we off to?”

Martha hadn’t thought of that yet. Where would she go? Her place in New York was, well, quite some distance from here. She could go back to Mum’s, she supposed.

“Out of the park,” Jack said.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Mickey said.

“You’re welcome, Mickey Moose.”

“Oh, it’s Moose, now, is it?”

Martha caught Jack’s shit-eating grin and held back an eyeroll.

The three of them strolled out of the park. She wanted them to hurry up, just a tad, but one of her companions had set a slower pace and there seemed to be no changing it. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched the two of them. Mickey was looking around at everything, taking it all in. Jack, walking with a slight bounce in his step, merely stared on ahead merrily. Either of them could have been the one slowing her down.

They did exit the park eventually, and Martha looked at the road, then to Jack and Mickey.

“I don’t have my mobile on me,” she said. “Can either of you call a taxi, or something?”

“Don’t have one,” Mickey said. “Least, not anymore. It’s stuck in another universe.”

“You don’t need one,” Jack said. He had his head down, studying his vortex manipulator carefully. “I’ve got us a ride.”

“I thought the Doctor just disabled that again,” Martha said.

“He did.” Jack flipped the casing back over the vortex manipulator and smiled at her.

“Then… what were you doing?”

“Tracking the ride. Should be here in about… well, now.”

He peered out at the road then, and Martha and Mickey likewise craned their necks out to see a car pulling up. She frowned at it for a second, confused. And then it hit her like a jolt of electricity, livening her spirits and brightening her day. Her face could’ve split in two, she grinned so hard.

Ianto Jones stepped out of the now parked car, squinting at the three of them through the brilliant sunlight. He walked across the street to them, hands in his pockets and placid look on his face. He looked good. Perhaps he favoured the leg that got torn in the car crash over a month ago, but he otherwise appeared loads better than when she last saw him. And the nice red shirt looked good over those black trousers.

She didn’t throw herself at him. No matter how Jack would tease her about it in the future, she refused to admit she threw herself at him. She hugged him like a normal person. Maybe she was a bit speedy as she reached out to him, and maybe she hugged him a bit tighter than customary, but she hadn’t been in Ianto’s presence in a month. All she’d had were emails, texts, and video chats, and those were nothing like the real thing.

“I missed you,” she said, drawing back and smiling up at him. “But look at you! You look good.”

“Your mum’s made sure of that,” Ianto said.

“Of course she has,” she laughed.

She moved over slightly, letting him have more space, but kept her hand on his arm. She noted that Jack’s hand also rested lightly on Ianto’s back. Holding back another laugh, she figured that all they needed now was a reason for Mickey to put a hand on Ianto, too. Ianto must’ve thought something similar, because all of the sudden he glanced over to the leftover man.

“Oh,” Mickey said. “Hey. I’m—”

“Samuel.” A frown had plastered onto Ianto’s face.

“What? No, I’m Mickey Smith,” Mickey said with his own confused scowl.

“No,” Ianto said slowly. “Samuel Smith. Torchwood London.”

Mickey blinked, and Martha and Jack shared a look behind Ianto’s back.

“I’d forgotten that,” Mickey said, almost to himself. He frowned again. “How’d you know that?”

“I worked for Torchwood London,” Ianto said. “I was Yvonne’s PA.”

Mickey eyed him for a few moments. “Oh, yeah… I think I remember you…”

“I take it you weren’t really a lab assistant, then.”

“No. I was trying to stop you lot from ending the world.” His tone bit.

“Did you know what was going to happen?” Ianto asked, equally cold.

“Well, I didn’t know about the Daleks, but…”

“You should’ve warned us.”

“Would you have listened?” Mickey retorted.

Ianto gazed steadily at him. “I would have.”

Martha couldn’t tell if she was stuck on the fringes of mutual hostility or mutual acceptance, but it now felt like a mixture of the two. Ianto and Mickey stared at each other for a bit longer, their expressions shifting ever-so-slightly.

“Anyway,” Mickey said eventually, holding out his hand. “Mickey Smith.”

“Ianto Jones,” Ianto said, shaking the hand.

“What, no ‘special agent?’” Martha asked.

“I’m not on duty,” said Ianto formally.

Martha shot Jack a hidden smile. Jack grinned in return. Ianto caught them, his eyebrows raising and his lips pressing together, clearly unamused.

“Right,” he said. “If I’m going to be your cab for the day, you might as well get in.”

Martha found herself sitting in the back with Mickey. She hadn’t expected to wind up there; her spot was in the front, beside Ianto, as it always was. But… she did suppose it was Jack who had called Ianto…

She studied the two of them. She was one of the closest friends either of them had. Which possibly made third-wheeling even worse. Though, she figured as she watched Mickey shift uncomfortably for the billionth time, it was better than fourth-wheeling. And she supposed it wasn’t the worst—she got to watch her two friends be happy together. Certainly made Mum happy, that was for sure.

Oh. Speaking of Mum…

“Ianto?” she said. “Could you stop by Mum’s?”

Ianto looked up at her through the rear-view mirror, studying her. “Alright…”

The rest of the drive was largely silent, though occasionally Jack pointed out one or two sites that he recalled from days of old. Martha snuck a glance at Ianto when he mentioned those things—Ianto seemed to be mutely intrigued by what Jack had to say, instead of slightly disturbed. Jack must’ve told him about That Secret of his, then. Maybe that shocked her, after The Year, but maybe it didn’t. If Jack could trust anyone, it would be Ianto. And especially considering… well. Everything between them now.

Ianto stopped the car outside Mum’s flat, and Martha quickly hopped out.

“Have fun, boys,” she said. “I’ll see you both later.”

Then she made a quick gesture to Mickey, who still sat in the back of the car, looking rather confused. He quickly exited at her signal.

“Give Francine my love,” Jack said.

“Will do,” she said.

“Thanks for the lift,” Mickey said to Ianto.

Ianto nodded back in reply. His eyes slid over to Martha, and she sent him a look (one she meant to mean “go have fun!”). He rolled his eyes, but the hints of a smile on his lips betrayed him. She shut the door after that, then stepped up onto the pavement, Mickey following closely, and waved after the car as Ianto drove away.

“How come Jack didn’t get out with us?” Mickey asked.

“Well,” Martha said meaningfully.

“Oh.”

“It was best that we gave them some space,” she said.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” She tilted her head towards Mum’s flat. “Come on.”

“You sure?” Mickey asked. “I mean…”

“I’m assuming you don’t have anywhere else to be,” Martha said.

Mickey was silent for a moment. He studied the flat, a small frown crossing his face.

“I don’t, do I?” he asked. He looked to Martha again. “Thanks. Really.”

“Don’t mention it,” she said. “Come on—Mum thinks I’m probably dead right now.”

“What?”

Instead of answering, she grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the front door. She knocked loudly on it, calling for her mother.

Mum opened the door and almost threw herself at Martha. She reprimanded Martha for a good few minutes about scaring people half to death and refusing to phone back and all sorts of things. Then she drew back, staring at Mickey. Martha briefly wondered how Mickey flew under so many people’s radar—she’d set her eyes on him the first moment she wasn’t fighting for her life and couldn’t look away.

“Mickey Smith,” said Mickey, holding out his hand.

Mum blinked at the hand, then at Mickey, and then to Martha. Martha caught the quick flash behind her mum’s eyes and tried not to sigh. She’d never hear the end of this, would she? And there wasn’t even a “this” yet. Or at all, never mind the “yet.” Who said there would be a “yet?”

“Francine,” Mum said. “Would you like some tea?”

Mickey had a rather warm smile, Martha realised.

Martha pounded on the door. “Make sure you’re both decent before you open the door!”

Ianto’s unamused face appeared as the door swung open.

“Oh, good, you have clothes on,” she said.

Then she stepped past him, entering his flat without permitting him the chance to accept or deny her entry.

“I think you should tell Mum you’re up and functioning again,” she said as she made her way to his kitchen, “because she’s sent me here with loads of food. I think most of it is pies. She has too much time on her hands, I swear.”

She set the bag of goods on Ianto’s island bar, then looked around.

“Where’s Jack?” she asked.

“He’s gone,” Ianto said.

“Already? It’s only been a day.”

“He had stuff he needed to do.”

“Gwen, Owen, and Tosh couldn’t manage for a day without him?” she asked.

“Not when the world just nearly ended.”

She shrugged, conceding to his point. Then she grinned. “Did you have a nice day yesterday, then?”

“Yes,” he said slowly. He failed to elaborate further.

“So, what? You’re not going to tell me?”

“You are exactly like your mother.”

“I’ll ignore that,” she said, pointing a warning finger at him.

Ianto glanced down at the finger, going slightly cross-eyed as he did. He raised his eyebrows, glancing back up at her.

“We went… out on a date,” he said eventually.

“Did you go somewhere nice?”

“It was dinner and a movie.”

“That doesn’t answer the question,” she pointed out.

“Yes! It was… nice.”

She grinned. “You’re all flustered.”

He rolled his eyes.

“And then?” she prompted.

“And then we… dabbled.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“So, what’s his dabbling like?”

“Innovative,” was what Ianto came up with.

“Really?”

He nodded. “Bordering on the avant-garde.”

Well, she couldn’t say she expected anything less from Captain Jack Harkness. “Wow.”

“Oh, yeah.” Ianto’s eyes had gone slightly unfocused then. She almost tried to imagine what he could possibly be thinking, but then stopped herself. Invasion of privacy. She wasn’t going to think about her two friends… dabbling. Then he snapped out of his daze, looking at the bag of food. “So. Pies?”

“Pies,” she confirmed. “Mincemeat, veg, anything you can think of. I think there’s even a strawberry tart.”

“Your mum sure does like making pies,” Ianto said.

“Tell me about it.”

“Thank her for me.”

“I will.” Martha then cast a scrutinising eye over him. Like yesterday, she determined he looked fine. Healthy, even. But this could all be a deceptive front. So, she added, “Lift up your shirt.”

“What?”

She motioned upwards. “Shirt. Up.”

Ianto sighed and rolled his eyes to the heavens, but he lifted his shirt up, anyway. Martha stepped in close and began inspecting his torso. Lines twisted up his abdomen, raised and pink scars from glass. They looked healed. Martha pressed on one and slyly observed Ianto’s reaction. He neither flinched nor budged, merely looking down at her hand.

“What about your leg?” Martha asked.

“I’m not dropping my trousers for you,” Ianto said.

She folded her arms. “I didn’t ask you to. I’m just asking, is it okay?”

“Mostly.”

“You limp,” she pointed out. “Just a teeny bit. But it’s still there.”

“They said it would go away soon,” he said.

“How soon?”

He shrugged. “Just soon.”

“When do you end medical leave?” she asked.

“Next week.”

“Hmmm.” She would have waited maybe another week, but if that was what he was ordered, she supposed that was what was going to happen.

“And how long until you go back to New York?” A terse edge seeped into the corners of his tone.

She raised her eyebrows. “Well, I dunno. I figured maybe… a few years? That seems to be the pattern.”

Puzzlement crossed Ianto’s face as he frowned down at her.

“I mean, I wasn’t that fond of the place, and there are better places to vacation to,” she said. “Seriously, I’ve been stuck there twice, and let me tell you… the Mediterranean would suit me far better.”

“You’re… not going back?” he asked.

She smiled. “Nope.”

“But I thought…” He licked his lips, still frowning. “Six months, you said.”

“Mace called me last night,” she said. “He asked me if I really wanted to go back.”

“And you didn’t?”

“I really did mean it—New York is not for me,” she said.

Ianto paused for a moment. “So… you’re staying?”

“Yes,” she emphasised. “I’m staying.”

Ianto took a moment to process this. He blinked down at her, then glanced away, and then back to her. Slowly, a keen look crossed his face.

“I suppose you’ll be needing backup,” he said.

“I suppose I will,” she agreed, unable to fight the grin breaking onto her face.

“Well. Good.” Ianto raised his eyebrows. “Was going to get rather boring without you dragging me places.”

“You mean, without the chance to throw yourself at every possible form of danger?”

He rolled his eyes, and she laughed.

It was an absolute rush to be out in the field again. Martha couldn’t believe she’d ever taken a desk job. What the hell had she been thinking? Getting away from London was one thing, but dooming herself to constant boredom… not helpful in the slightest. Only left her more time to dwell.

But now? Now, her brain flooded constantly with fixing problems, fleeing sticky situations, and trying to keep herself alive. And Ianto. Trying to keep Ianto alive was very big in her brain. That man attracted danger like clover drew in bees. Granted, he hadn’t gotten hurt since the car wreck, but still, Martha had quite the time with him.

Christ. She had missed this so much.

They fell back into their usual pattern immediately, but it wasn’t until their third mission back together that things got interesting.

“What are you doing here?” Martha heard Ianto demand.

“Me? What the hell are you doing here?”

Startled by the sound of that voice, Martha stopped collecting her samples from the corpse of the Alkaraban. She sent a disgusted glare at the two men tied up in the corner, then left the room in search of Ianto and his companion.

“I’m here ‘cause I heard people were going missing!” Mickey Smith said, his hands raised in surrender as Ianto’s pistol trained on him.

“And… you thought you were going to stop it?” Ianto asked.

“Well, yeah,” Mickey said. “And I would’ve done it, if you hadn’t stopped me.”

“Hate to break it to you, but you’re a bit late.”

“Ianto,” Martha said, having seen and heard enough.

The pair of them glanced over to her, Mickey with wide eyes and Ianto with a raised brow. She made a motion to Ianto. He stifled an obvious sigh, then dropped the gun from Mickey, returning it to its holster.

“Really,” Martha said to Mickey. “What are you doing here?”

“Like I said.” Mickey’s eyes flickered to Ianto, then back to Martha. “People were going missing.”

“Didn’t know you were invested in the safety of the alien population,” Martha said.

Mickey shrugged. “Well, when they’re the only people who accept you after moving back from another dimension…”

Martha frowned and filed that away in the corners of her mind for later review.

“And you just thought you’d come in, unarmed, unprepared, and untrained…” Ianto said dryly.

“Who said anything about untrained? I didn’t spend two years hunting down Cybermen for nothing.”

“Cybermen are not the same as these.” Ianto sounded tense.

Mickey scoffed, “You don’t think I don’t know that?”

Ianto blinked.

“Listen,” Mickey said, holding up his hands again placatingly. “I was just trying to help. And now that I know I didn’t need to, I’ll back off. Alright?”

Martha eyed him for a second, then glanced over to Ianto. Ianto caught the look. His lips pinched and his brows furrowed, but he didn’t seem to disagree with the question she sent through their gaze. She sent him a flash of a smile and he rolled his eyes in fond annoyance.

She turned back to Mickey. “Well, we could use an extra set of hands...”

Mickey stood straighter. “Really?”

“If you’re here already,” Ianto said, “you might as well help out.”

“Huh,” Mickey said, seemingly to himself. Then he shrugged again at the pair of them. “Yeah, alright. I guess I could help.”

And so Mickey helped Martha and Ianto shove their two prisoners into the UNIT vehicle, held test tubes for Martha as she finished collecting her samples of the poor Alkaraban, and then aided her in bagging the body up. He snapped a photo of the body on his mobile, first.

“They’ll want to know,” Mickey said. “If I can’t get them the body back, the least I can do is make sure they know what happened to him.”

Martha thought that was incredibly considerate and kind of him.

Then it was time to leave. Martha thanked Mickey, and Ianto threw in his own grunt of gratitude after Martha glared at him.

“Don’t mention it,” Mickey said.

“We won’t,” Ianto said. “That would only cause trouble for us all.”

“Ignore him,” Martha mouthed to Mickey.

Mickey grinned at her, and she winked discreetly at him as Ianto turned to get into the vehicle. She got in herself and watched Mickey’s shrinking form through the mirrors as Ianto drove them away.

“Hm.”

“What?” Ianto asked.

“Nothing,” she said, sitting straight up as Mickey disappeared from view. “Just thinking.”

Over the next three weeks, Ianto and Martha came across Mickey twice more. Each time went down much the same: they would demand he was doing there, he would claim he was trying to help someone, and then he would end up helping them. Of course, Ianto didn’t hold a gun to Mickey either time, which Martha and Mickey both appreciated.

“Are you stalking us?” Martha asked the third time.

“No,” Mickey said.

“Seems like you’re stalking us,” Ianto pointed out.

“It’s just a weird coincidence, that’s all,” Mickey said. At their looks, he added, “Seriously. I was just doing this as a favour for my landlady.”

“Your landlady wants alien drugs?” Martha asked.

“Well, to her, they’re just drugs.”

Beside Martha, Ianto pulled a thoughtful face. She nudged him with her elbow.

“I don’t think you should be doing drug runs for your landlady,” she said.

“It’s not like I’ve got much of a choice,” Mickey said. “If I don’t want her kicking me out, I’ve got to get them.”

“Why don’t you just move somewhere else?” Martha asked.

“Hard to rent a flat when you’re legally dead. Or get a job. Or do anything.”

“You’re legally dead?” Martha asked, stunned.

“Yeah.” Mickey put his hands in his pockets. “Imagine my surprise when I went to withdraw what little I had saved only to find out that I couldn’t, ‘cause I’d been considered dead here since I switched universes.”

Martha stared at him for a long while. Ianto’s eyes shifted between her and Mickey, but Martha ignored him. She could only think about the way the universe moved on without people. Would that have happened to her, if the Doctor had failed to bring her back one day? She couldn’t even begin to imagine that.

“Well, we can’t let you have the drugs,” Ianto said eventually, drawing Martha from her rumination.

“Yeah, I figured,” Mickey sighed. “Suppose begging you to spot me a few hundred quid won’t work, either, huh?”

Ianto made an apologetic face.

“No, but I can bring you back to life,” Martha said.

Both Mickey and Ianto stared at her.

“I’m sure UNIT can do something about it,” she went on. “I’ll talk to someone, see what I can do.”

“Oh,” Mickey said after a short pause. “That’d be great. Thanks.”

And that was how, five days later, Martha found herself sitting down with Mickey in a small room at UNIT’s London headquarters.

“Oh.” Mickey said as she set a stack of files in front of him. “It’s you.”

“It’s me,” she said.

“I thought you were a field agent.”

“Senior field medic,” she corrected. “But I can still do paperwork. Since I’m the one who set this up, they figured…”

“Ah.” He looked around the room for a second, taking it all in. “Where’s that Ianto guy?”

“Eating lunch,” she said. She began unstacking the files between them. “Right. Should we get you started?”

An hour flew by without them noticing. Martha thought it would be slow work, but it wasn’t. Not when Mickey kept making ridiculous comments about all the forms he had to sign. She found herself enjoying herself immensely, actually.

“Do you want to get lunch sometime?” blurted from her lips before she had time to think it through.

Mickey stopped shoving the last document back into its file and stared at her. She held her breath, just for a moment, before he smiled softly.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’d be great.”

“—then you’ll have to take the south exit to… Ianto, who are you texting?” Martha asked, folding her arms as she glared at him.

Ianto glanced up from his mobile. “Um. Sorry. What were you saying?”

“Is it your boyfriend?” she asked.

“He isn’t my—” He cut off with a sigh. Martha raised her eyebrows challengingly. His own arched in response, and he said, “Actually, it’s your boyfriend.”

“Mickey?” she asked, stunned.

“The very one.”

“Why are you texting Mickey?”

Ianto faltered. His eyes skittered down to his mobile, then back up at Martha.

“Why are you texting Mickey?” she repeated.

“He’s… sending me updates.”

“Updates?”

“On… rugby?”

“Nice try,” Martha said. “He prefers football.”

Ianto grimaced slightly.

“Ianto,” she prompted, losing her patience.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “He’s been helping me out on the case.”

“He what?”

“He asked me about the bodies going missing, and I said we were already dealing with it. So, he gave me a few tips and I just… kept asking for more.”

“Why?”

“He’s useful!” He sighed. “Look. I know it isn’t proper protocol. I wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t necessary.”

Martha set her jaw, studying him for a bit. Then she shook her head and untensed.

“Fine. Yeah. Alright, what does he have to say?”

And Ianto looked perhaps too pleased to relay the information, which almost made her regret it. But she had to admit, the intel was incredibly useful. It frustrated her a tiny bit.

“I thought he’d stopped doing this,” she said when Ianto had finished. “I helped him move, for god’s sake.”

“Well, think about it,” Ianto said. “He went from being a man in constant action to… stagnancy. Fighting Cybermen to working at a chip shop. Can’t really blame him for wanting in on the action again, can you?”

Martha supposed she couldn’t. She’d be one big, filthy hypocrite if she did.

“He isn’t, you know,” she said instead.

Perplexment framed Ianto’s face. “Isn’t what?”

“My boyfriend.”

Then he rolled his eyes.

“What?” she asked.

“You’ve been going out for two months,” he said. “I think you’re dating now.”

“You want to talk? You’re the one who just—”

“Right, so, back to the mission at hand,” he interrupted loudly. Martha shook her head, exasperated.

But the thing was, she couldn’t even really say Ianto was wrong. Martha and Mickey had actually been seeing each other on a regular basis since they legally put Mickey’s life back together. At least once a week. Twice they’d gone out two times in one week, because Mickey had been in the area and Martha hadn’t much felt like cooking those nights.

She liked being with Mickey, too. He made the hours spin by without her noticing. He was funny and smart, and above all, kind. Mickey once told her about how the Doctor would patronise him for being an idiot, but from what she had learned he could with computers and machines… he was nothing short of a genius, and the fact that he even helped the Doctor at all meant he had a good heart.

Of course, that brought up Rose Tyler again… Mickey had done it all for her, not the Doctor. Mickey had loved Rose. And Martha couldn’t lie, it did bother her, because look what happened last time she aimed for a man who had his heart set on Rose? But, she did admit, when Mickey was with Martha, he was with Martha. That was miles ahead of where the Doctor had been. And… she supposed the reverse might be the same for Mickey: she was another woman who pined for the Doctor. Was she thinking about the Doctor when she was with Mickey? No, unless the Doctor was the topic of conversation. And  even then, she only ever thought of him as the person she travelled with, not the man who had her heart. Because he didn’t, not anymore. Not like that. So, should she really be concerned about Rose? Maybe not.

And… there were the other shared experiences… Not only had they travelled with the Doctor, not only were they ignored by those they dreamed of, but they were both the members of a unique club called “I Lived in a World Nobody Here Knows About and It Was Hell.” The few others who belonged to that club were Martha’s family and Jack. So, she felt like they would’ve come together in the end, searching for someone who understood what it was like.

Plus, he was good in bed. She could not deny that.

“Earth to Martha,” Ianto said. “Now who’s not paying attention?”

“Sorry,” she said, zoning back in. “Go on.”

“You mean ‘repeat all that.’ You didn’t listen to anything I said.”

“Well, maybe if you made it a bit more interesting,” she teased.

He rolled his eyes. “Anyway, what I said was—” 

She had offered it by complete accident. If one could call offering to take one’s new boyfriend on what had originally been planned as a honeymoon with one’s ex-fiancé an “accident.”

It was an accident in that she hadn’t considered it fully when she offered, and not an accident because she had meant it. It would be a fun experience for them! But… perhaps not with the shadow of a failed relationship hanging over them. And maybe not appropriate when the relationship was this new and the trip that long and destination that far away. A four-month relationship with Mickey versus a week-long holiday in the Maldives.

The two of them stared at each other for a second. Then Mickey had shrugged, grinned, and said, “Yeah, alright. Sounds like fun.”

And that had been that.

“What if Tom wants to take the holiday?” Ianto asked as Martha shoved stuff into her suitcase.

She let out a short, derisive laugh. “He’d never take enough time off his job.”

“Hm.”

“Are you going to just stand there, or are you going to help me?” she asked.

“Well…”

“Cheeky,” she warned. She pointed at the suitcase. “Hold this down while I zip it shut.”

“You could just pack tidier, you know.”

“Just hold it down without the sass, thank you.”

Ianto drove her to the airport, because she didn’t want to leave a car there for the week. Mickey had arranged to get a cab, so she’d meet him there. Something fluttered in her stomach as they pulled in: either excitement or worry, she couldn’t decide. Possibly a bit of both.

“Okay, don’t let UNIT fall to pieces while I’m gone,” Martha said as she removed her luggage from the boot of Ianto’s car.

“I’ll do my best,” he replied with mock sincerity.

“And keep yourself out of trouble, too,” she added.

“I’ll be fine. I’m not going to get into trouble in a week.”

She squinted at him for a moment, then conceded. “Alright. See you.”

“Bye.”

She gave him a quick hug, then began to drag her suitcases towards the building. She met Mickey there, and the fluttering in her stomach increased by tenfold. Excitement mostly dominated, this time.

The trip was… amazing. She really didn’t have any other word for it than that. She could try to describe it with others: fun, exhilarating, exhausting (yes, in that sense), enjoyable, lovely… but amazing fit it the best. Amazing encompassed all those other things and more.

It solidified everything she felt when she looked at Mickey. She knew she fell fast—it was a thing with her. She fell fast, she fell hard, and she fell deeply. And that was okay! She’d long since accepted this about herself. As long as the other person didn’t mind, well, then it was absolutely fine. And Mickey, as far as she could tell, was all for it. The way he’d kissed her as they sat in front of that sunset the third night… well, she was sure he was at least starting to feel the same way too.

“Ugh,” Martha said as they made their way through the airport. “I almost don’t want to go back to real life.”

“Come on,” Mickey said. “You know you’d miss it. Catching aliens.”

“Not everything is aliens,” she pointed out.

“No, just most of it.”

She grinned. “Alright, I suppose that’s true.”

“You catching a cab with me?” Mickey asked.

“I planned to meet Ianto here,” she said. “But I haven’t seen him… I’ll call him.”

She reached into one of her bags, dug around a bit, and then withdrew her mobile.

“I haven’t even looked at this since the day we left,” she laughed.

“Didn’t look at mine, either,” he said. “The world could wait.”

They grinned at one another for a second, both thinking back to their amazing week. Then Martha looked away, down at her mobile.

“Oh my god,” she exclaimed.

“What is it?” Mickey asked, attempting to peer at her mobile.

“Ten missed calls… all from Ianto…”

“Didn’t think he had that much separation anxiety,” he remarked.

“He doesn’t,” she said, pressing the mobile to her ear as she replayed the missed calls.

She told him to only call if there was a problem. And, as she listened through each one, she realised just how big that problem was.

“Martha?”

She held up her hand to Mickey, silencing him as she listened to Ianto’s final message, filled with him begging her to make sure his sister and her kids were safe. Ianto rarely spoke about them. If he had asked her this, something had happened to him.

Heart nearly pounding right out of her chest, she listened to the last message on record.

“You okay?” Mickey asked as she stuffed her mobile into her jacket pocket.

“We need to go. Now.”

“Why? What’s happened?”

“Look, just… call us a cab.”

“Okay, okay,” Mickey said, and then went after his own mobile.

As he called, Martha looked around the airport, trying to grasp if the world was still holding its breath. It seemed it was slowly releasing said breath, really, because while there were fewer people than she’d expect on a Sunday morning, those here were going about as per usual. World-ending events never held anyone back for long. It had only taken hours for people to revert to normal after the Daleks. Evidently a day was all that was needed this time.

The cab took too long to arrive, in Martha’s opinion, but arrive it did. Martha all but threw her luggage in the back, while Mickey placed his own more carefully. She instructed the driver to the right hospital. Mickey watched her the entire time, but she didn’t look at him. The pit in her stomach threatened to consume her and the panic in her chest angled to overwhelm her.

Martha promised the driver that she’d pay extra if he just stayed and waited for them to return. They couldn’t bring their luggage into the hospital and they couldn’t very well let him drive off with it, so they had to make do with this compromise. Mickey didn’t seem to be all too keen on it, but Martha swore that it was her own money that she would put into this. She did understand that UNIT paid higher than a chip shop.

The only break in Martha’s stride through the hospital was to demand a room number from the desk. The woman working it bristled slightly at Martha’s brusque tone but gave the number as speedily as possible. Martha wouldn’t have been surprised if the woman threw a glare at their backs as they hurried onward again.

Martha burst through the room without even a knock, too terrified to bother with protocol or kindness.

The two men in the room glanced up at her, Jack surprised enough to cut off midway through what he had been saying and Ianto sheepish enough to pull a grimace-like expression. Martha stared at them for about a second before the panic in her chest exploded.

“Five minutes!” she shouted. “Five minutes, Ianto—I’m gone for all of five minutes and you manage to get yourself in trouble!”

Jack snickered. Martha glared at him, and he coughed, pretending to suddenly be interested in the way the hospital blankets fell over Ianto’s legs.

“It wasn’t five minutes,” Ianto protested. “It was seven days, and the world was ending, and—”

“Oh, well, I guess that’s alright, then, isn’t it? Perfectly fine if it’s seven days!”

“And I’m fine,” Ianto finished.

“You don’t look fine, mate,” Mickey said from behind Martha.

“Mickey Moose!” Jack said, looking up again.

“I think I preferred ‘Mouse,’” Mickey grumbled quietly to himself.

Martha ignored the both of them, still glowering at Ianto.

“I am fine,” Ianto said. “I just… inhaled some gas, that’s all.”

“It was a virus, and you died, I revived you, and then you spent seventeen hours unconscious,” Jack corrected.

Ianto glared at him.

“Okay,” Mickey said. “Why don’t we just all take a second to calm down—”

Now three people were glaring, and they all directed it at Mickey. He held up his hands defensively.

“Okay, maybe not. I’m just saying, I don’t know what’s going on, and I’d kind of like to know.”

Jack and Ianto turned to each other, sharing a look Martha couldn’t interpret. Then Jack sighed and began explaining.

They had come for the children, Jack said, and they’d done it before. Vile, disgusting, and revolting three-headed creatures, known only as the frequency they spoke at—the 456. The government tried to hide them, hide the past dealings with them, and it had nearly destroyed Torchwood. Needing help, Jack had dragged Ianto into the mix, only for him to eventually wind up on death’s doorstep as they bargained with the 456. Jack had destroyed them, in the end, while Ianto’s life was being saved in the hospital and the rest of Torchwood had gone out on the run to save the children they could.

Martha listened to this raptly, surveying Ianto all the while. No new scars, no new bumps or bruises or breaks. Just an oxygen tube to keep his lungs going while they recovered and a heart monitor to make sure it didn’t blip out again.

“So,” she said eventually. “I’m assuming Mace didn’t take to well to mutiny?”

“No, actually, I’ve been promoted,” Ianto said.

Martha blinked. Jack pulled a face.

“For ‘outstanding performance in the field,’ or some bullshit like that,” Ianto said. “Really he’s just glad I helped fix the situation. Keeps people off UNIT’s arse that way. Can’t blame them for not helping in the slightest if I was there.”

“So, you’re what,” Mickey said, “Special Agent Captain Jones?”

“Yep.”

“Christ,” Martha said.

Jack just sat back in his chair and folded his arms. “Maybe they should’ve just fired you. You’re more use to us than to them.”

“You’re just upset we’re the same rank,” Ianto said.

“I am not.”

Ianto raised his eyebrows and glanced to Martha. She felt a smile unwillingly tug at her lips.

“Okay, out,” she said, moving along quickly. She pointed to Mickey and Jack. “Out, both of you.”

“What?” Jack asked while Mickey merely turned and left.

“You can get him back later,” she said. “My turn.”

Jack shrugged, then patted one of Ianto’s legs before he stood and followed after Mickey. His fingers trailed along her shoulders gently as he passed her, a light and reassuring touch. It comforted her, for reasons she couldn’t explain, but then the fingers left as Jack walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

“How are you, really?” Martha asked Ianto, sitting down in Jack’s vacated chair.

“I’m fine,” Ianto insisted again. “Really.”

She observed him for a bit, trying to ascertain if he was lying or not. While the monitors and tubes did portray some semblance of “not fine,” the rest of Ianto seemed to agree with what he said. So, slowly, she relaxed.

“Jack left… quite the message,” she said.

“Did he?” Ianto said, with a near nervous laugh.

“I thought you were dying.”

“Ah,” Ianto said. He let the silence flow naturally between them for a second, then said, “Well, I’m not. Not anymore. Really, I am fine now.”

“I’m so sorry I never answered my mobile,” she told him.

“Don’t be,” he said. “I knew it was a long shot when I called. I just… didn’t want you to not know, at the end.”

She reached out and took his hand. He squeezed hers reassuringly.

“Are you really a captain?” she asked after a beat.

“Yes.” He grinned. “I outrank you.”

“Heaven help us,” she joked.

“I was thinking, though,” he said, dropping his tone low and conspiratorially. “How long do you think we’ll be with UNIT?”

The plurality stunned her for a moment, but she figured it was… rather accurate, really. He would follow her wherever she went, and she felt inclined to do the same with him. They were their own unit now.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I’ve never thought about it.”

“I always thought I’d die for UNIT.” Seemed like honesty was hitting the “brutal” point. “I mean, I thought so for Torchwood London, too, but… I didn’t have anything else…”

“Until now?” she asked when he trailed off.

“I don’t want to work for Jack,” Ianto said, “but the break from UNIT was…”

He didn’t finish, letting it hang in the air for interpretation. Martha understood, though.

“What would we even do?” she laughed. “Strike out on our own? Like Mickey?”

“He could join,” Ianto suggested.

“You’re ridiculous,” she told him, though the fantasy was already forming in her mind. “For now let’s just… enjoy your promotion, yeah?”

“Yeah.” He smirked. “I can order you around now.”

“I’d like to see you try,” she said.

Ianto smiled and squeezed her hand again. Martha returned the smile and gesture, feeling deep down, everything was going to be just fine, no matter what happened next.