Martha danced impatiently as she stared at the spot where Vairë had told her she would be landing the TARDIS for a quick fuel-up before heading to eighteenth century France. She felt conspicuous and out-of-place here in the middle of Cardiff. Passers-by seemed to stare at her and her backpack filled with clothing and other necessities. Not that Vairë left her without things that women needed, Martha grinned. If she were going to travel through time and space, she was glad to be doing so with another woman who wouldn’t be embarrassed about needing to stop off for tampons or a particular brand of deodorant or razor blades.
Martha stretched again as she glanced around her. Earlier, two blokes had stopped to stare at her. One had black hair and blue eyes and wore a coat that looked like it belonged in the 1940s. The other had been a tall, brown-haired, brown-eyed cutie with freckles. She wasn’t sure where they had gone but she remembered joking with Vairë that their band needed a drummer and a bassist. Blue-eyes could have done for the bassist while the tall, wiry one would have been perfect on the drummer’s throne.
Martha turned and smiled as she heard the engine sounds that only the TARDIS made. When it finished materializing a few yards from her, she hurried to the doors and opened them with her key. Vairë was on her way down the ramp and the two girls embraced.
“I have missed you so much!” Martha cried with delight. “Wow. You’ve redecorated a bit.” The console room was filled with tapestries that looked like something out of a story. Martha beamed when she recognized her and Vairë’s adventures woven into several of them.
“I’ve missed you, too,” Vairë whispered. “And, yeah. I decided if I was going to call myself ‘Weaver’ then I’d better learn how to weave. Come on, then. I just want to get a minute of sunlight before we head off. I hope you’re ready to don a corset, Martha Jones, because France in the 1700s means neither of us can wear pants.”
“I’ll just go toss my stuff in my room, then,” Martha nodded. “Is the wardrobe still in the same place?”
“Yes. I’ve taken the liberty of asking Maggie to put the most comfortable corsets in front. There’s a machine that can help us with lacing them since I don’t have the first clue how to do that myself. Oh, and I’m going to apologize in advance for the way they’ll treat you. Since you are…darker skinned, they might assume you’re a slave. Fucking primitives,” Vairë sighed.
“Well, as long as you know I’m not, that’s all that matters,” Martha said softly.
“You’re a doctor. A proper, real, medical doctor,” Vairë frowned. “I don’t care what color your skin is. You’re brilliant and magnificent and fun to be around. I’ll do my best to keep those bigoted idiots from bothering you. I just hope you forgive me if I can’t kill every last one of them for being stupid. Sometimes, history requires that the idiots live another day.”
“So, how long has it been for you?” Martha asked curiously. Vairë seemed older, more mature, and just a little bit stronger than she had been when she’d left a few months ago.
“A while,” she replied evasively.
“How long a while?”
“Too long,” she grinned. “Now, come on, let’s hit the road.” No sooner had Vairë placed her hands on the console and begun to sing than the TARDIS lurched, throwing both of the girls to the floor. “What’s wrong, sister?” Vairë shouted. She could feel the TARDIS’s terror and panic in her mind. “What’s wrong?”
A fact. A fixed point. Get away from it. Must get away. Must run. Hide. GET IT OFF ME!
Vairë shuddered, feeling her sister’s terror as the TARDIS spun them through the Vortex, shuddering violently, trying to shake something off. The blonde managed to get to her feet and checked the monitor. “We’re accelerating into the future. The year one billion. Five billion. Five trillion. Fifty trillion? What? The year one hundred trillion? That’s impossible.”
“Why? What is it? Where are we headed?” Martha asked.
“We’re going to the end of the universe,” Vairë replied in disbelief. “Not even the Time Lords came this far.”
“So, no corsets then?”
“Decidedly not,” Vairë whispered as she felt the TARDIS land. “Well, I don’t know about you, Martha, but let’s go see what’s out there!”
~*~*~*~
Jack and the Doctor had been headed back to the Torchwood hub after lunch when the call came in. The TARDIS had just materialized along the rift that ran through Cardiff. Both men began running to the scene. As they rounded the bend, they could see the blue box standing there. The Doctor sped up, letting his respiratory bypass kick in as he got closer to his ship. If the TARDIS was there, then chances are that Rose was there. He couldn’t wait to be reunited with them both.
When he was twenty feet from the ship, the Doctor vanished. Jack was startled but kept running, his momentum carrying him when he heard the Time Rotors spin up. He leapt and grabbed onto the exterior of the ship and hung on for dear life as the TARDIS bucked and spun beneath him, trying to throw him off. He could feel the Vortex whipping around him and knew that if he let go, he’d lose his mind as well as his life. When the ship finally landed, he collapsed as the darkness washed over him.
~*~*~*~
“The swords are new, too,” Martha remarked as she watched Vairë pull on her long leather trench coat and then put a pair of swords through the loops over her back so that the hilts came up over her shoulders. She’d spent some time training with them and was confident in her ability to use them if necessary. Then Martha blinked as the swords seemed to vanish. Or no…they were still there…she just couldn’t seem to focus on them.
“Perception filter,” Vairë grinned. “And I carry these now because an old friend of mine asked to me redeem them. Now, let’s go see what’s out there at the end of the universe, shall we?”
The two girls stepped out of the TARDIS. Vairë glanced up and was surprised to see that the sky was inky black. It was as if all the stars in the universe had gone out. She ran some calculations in her head and nodded. By this point, almost all of the stars would be dead. The universe itself was coming to an end. She’d be surprised if there were any life out there now. Idly, she wondered what would replace the universe once its time ran out.
“Oh my God!” Martha shouted as she saw a man’s body near the TARDIS. Vairë moved over, her own eyes widening in shock. She knew this man. He’d been one of her best friends. The Doctor had told her that Jack had died. “I can’t find a pulse. Let me get my medical kit,” Martha said as she darted back inside the TARDIS. Vairë stood, numb. She could feel her sister’s chagrin and fear washing over her. Why was the TARDIS afraid of Jack? When the ship sent the answer, Vairë shuddered, this time in disgust at herself and at what she had done to this poor man. She made no move to help him. He’d wake up on his own shortly. By then, Martha had returned. “That coat doesn’t look very hundred trillion,” she muttered, “more like World War II.”
“He came with us, I think,” Vairë said, surprised at how distant her voice sounded to her own ears. “Must have been clinging to the outside of the TARDIS all the way from Earth. He’s an old friend of mine. Used to travel with the Doctor and me back before we got separated.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” Martha whispered, “but he’s dead.”
Just then, Jack gasped as life returned to him. Vairë grinned as he began flirting with Martha immediately. She’d missed him. She’d missed his light-hearted flirting banter with both her and the Doctor. After a few moments, he glanced over Martha’s shoulder and then pulled himself to his feet. “Rosie?” he asked quietly.
“That’s Vairë,” Martha corrected him.
“Haven’t gone by Rose in quite some time,” Vairë said softly.
“You let everyone think you were dead,” Jack accused.
“Figured it’d be simpler. Mum and Mickey were gone – off living in a parallel world. I had no reason to keep coming back to Earth. Still had a few friends – not good ones or anything – and I guessed that they could use the closure.”
“So, wait,” Martha said, “you are Rose? Rose Tyler? The hero of Canary Wharf?”
“I’m no hero,” Vairë said calmly. “Just me. And, in a way, Rose Tyler did die at Canary Wharf. Better to let her go. Let her rest. Let her belong to the past. I am Vairë Carter now.”
“Rose,” Jack said urgently.
“Please, don’t call me that,” she replied, her face twisting into a grimace. “It hurts too much to remember that life. My name is Vairë now.”
“Fine, then, Vairë it is. Where the hell have you been? And why Carter? Did you get married or something?”
“Here and there. Traveling about. We were just about to go get the Doctor from France in the 1700s when you knocked us off-course. Sorry about that, by the way. And she is, too. It was instinct. I made you a fixed point in time and space. I made you immortal. And that’s not supposed to happen. The TARDIS reacted against you. Flew all the way to the end of the universe to try to shake you off. As for marriage, no. I’ve never found a bloke I was terribly interested in and the three relationships I had were so long ago that I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten how to do the whole domestic thing.”
“How long ago?” Jack pressed. Martha nodded as well.
“Like I said earlier. ‘A while.’ I was a right prat to Mickey. He deserved so much better than me but I was so thoughtless when I was a kid. Jimmy was just a nightmare but goes to show the kind of man I go for – can’t trust myself to pick a decent fellow. Then there was the Doctor. Fell hard for him but…he was the Doctor,” she shrugged.
“And what about the Doctor?” Jack asked.
“Oh, we were just friends.”
“Just friends? You had that Time Lord wrapped around your finger.”
“Like hell I did! We were just friends. He didn’t love me. He fell in love with Madame du Pompadour and went to be with her. I figure I’ll go pick him up a few months after she’s died – give him time to mourn and all. Hopefully in my time running around, I’ve done enough to merit staying aboard the TARDIS with him as his assistant.”
“Wow,” Martha breathed. “I’m best mates with the woman who saved the Earth!”
“Leave it, Martha,” Vairë sighed. “Rose Tyler died at Canary Wharf. I can’t take it when people call me by her name. There’s only been one person who could name me without it hurting and she’s gone now. So, let it go. Rose Tyler is dead.”
“The Doctor,” Jack started to say. Vairë raised a hand and cut him off. “No, listen,” he protested.
“Ssh,” she hissed, cupping a hand to her ear and then staring off into the distance. “Is it just me or does that look like a hunt?”
The three of them began to run, jumping into the adventure stretching out before them here at the end of the universe.
~*~*~*~
Jack marveled at how quickly everything could go to hell. They’d gotten involved in a hunt, sought refuge in a silo housing the largest rocket he’d ever seen, met a genius professor named Yana. Rose – no, Vairë as she preferred now – had managed to help Yana get the rocket ready for launch. Then it’d turned out that Yana was actually a Time Lord and that his seeing the TARDIS – which had been brought to the rocket base by truck – along with Vairë and Jack reminiscing over their trips with the Doctor had triggered his memories enough for him to open some watch and suddenly remember being a Time Lord. Poor Chantho had tried to stop him but only pushed the Time Lord into a regeneration cycle. And now this new Time Lord, the Master, had Vairë and the TARDIS and had taken off for destination “unknown.”
“I swear I’ve heard that voice before,” Martha was saying. “I swear to you, Jack.”
“Martha, we can do recriminations later,” the Captain said as he tried to shut the door so that the Futurekind would be on the other side and he and Vairë’s rather cute friend would be safe. “Right now, let’s work on the whole ‘surviving the next half-hour’ step of my plan.”
“Oh, you have a plan do you?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
“Hope it works better than Vairë’s do.”
“How often does she nearly get you killed?”
“Way too often. But, she always comes through in the end,” Martha said proudly. “She’s my best friend.”
Just then, a flash of light hit them and, when the two could see again, Jack started swearing. Martha gaped. A tall, wiry man with brown hair and brown eyes wearing a pinstriped suit stood in front of them.
“Blimey, I hate time traveling without a capsule,” he said, speaking with an Estuarial accent. “Where’s the TARDIS? Where and when are we?” He noticed the two struggling to hold the door back. Sighing, the newcomer helped them slam it shut and then pulled out a sonic screwdriver to ensure that the things on the other side wouldn’t get through. “Well, Jack?” he asked, his brown eyes flashing umber.
“Malcassario in the year one hundred trillion,” Jack said. “As for the TARDIS, no clue where or when it went. It was right over there,” he pointed to where they had parked the TARDIS while Vairë used it to help power the rocket for launch. “There was this other Time Lord here. Called himself the Master. He took the TARDIS and Vairë and ran off.”
“Vairë?”
“Yeah. Rose. She told me that much. New name, new identity.”
“What?”
“And I don’t think she’s human anymore.”
“What?!”
“She is pretty good at not talking about it. Martha’s the one who filled me in on that. Though the eyes and the fact that she’s a lot older than she looks were pretty good evidence that she’s not human.”
“Hi, I’m Martha Jones. Vairë’s friend,” Martha bristled. The two men had completely forgotten she was there. “And I just remembered where I’ve heard that Master bloke’s voice before.”
“Where and when was that, Ms. Jones?” Jack asked. The Doctor still seemed to be processing what Jack had told him.”
“Earth. The UK. 2008. He’s Harold Saxon.”
“The Prime Minister,” Jack winced. “And to think, I voted for him.”
“Me too,” Martha sighed. “So, how do we get back there? Your space hopper burnt out and Vairë and the sports car of time travel have been slightly stolen.”
“Of all the prejudices for her to pick up…,” Jack winced.
“I figure she’s partial to the TARDIS considering that the alien is her sister.”
“WHAT?!” the Doctor shouted.
“That’s the Doctor, by the way,” Jack said, waving at the other man.
“Doctor who?”
“Just ‘the Doctor.’”
“Oh, right. Vairë mentioned him a couple of times. Said they used to travel together until he went off to get married or something. Then the ship adopted her and now it’s just the two of them. Must have been one hell of a woman for him to give up traveling like that.”
“WHAT?!”
“He’s kind of a broken record, isn’t he?” Martha muttered.
“Doc, focus,” Jack said. “Can you fix this? Send us back to London in 2008?” The Doctor blinked and gave Jack a glare that said they would be continuing the discussion later on at considerable length and volume. Jack held out his Vortex Manipulator and the Doctor began repairing it. They knew better than to try to tinker with the one the Doctor carried. It was deadlocked sealed to ensure it couldn’t be tampered with. Jack had told the Time Lord that those kinds of Manipulators were pre-programmed to ensure that the traveler was where and when he was needed in order to stop paradoxes since a person could not easily see their own time lines. Once the Doctor was exactly where and when he needed to be in order to rejoin the flow of time without the need of the Manipulator, it would port itself back to the Time Agency. “Though, hold on. Wait. Martha, grab his arm would you?”
“What are you doing?” the Doctor asked as Martha latched on to one arm. Jack took hold of the other and suddenly, they were bouncing back in time.