LONDON GIRLS

London Girls: Chapter One

Early Mornings

Disclaimer: Nope. None of it is mine. Just a tattered copy of Little Women

Author's note: Yes, really. Me. Writing a Martha fic, who would ever have thought? The idea for a Martha/Donna/Rose based story came into my head at the end of 'Partner's in Crime' and I've been writing this ever since. It's finished (yay!) but there's no way it will be edited in time for the Doctor Who finale in two weeks :( So this isn't in canon with events, but then, my Torchwood story isn't either, so never mind! Whatever happens in episodes 12 and 13, this will stay the same :) Anyone read Richard Hammond's 'On the Edge'? There's a tiny reference! Please let me know what you think about this! Right...off to update Sherbet Fountain


Being up and about this early; it felt strange and unnerving. The street was still and deathly quiet, whereas during the day it would be alive with a melody of sounds; the hum of car engines, the shrieks of children playing hide and seek, music blaring from open houses, people mowing the lawn and chatting on the corner on the way back from the school run.

Now, it was as if the sound had been turned off, as if the world had been muted. It was much colder, too. She could see her breath clouding in front of her as she breathed. She curled her toes inside her Ugg boots and hugged her dressing down more tightly around her as the early morning air caused her to shiver. It was so early that it was still dark, the amber streetlights illuminating the sleeping, lifeless houses, like an abandoned toy set.

Static pools of yellowish light from the streetlights reflected off the alternately parked cars around the street. Yet one car; a red BMW was neither lifeless nor empty, and it was this car, or rather the tall dark young man loading all manner of holdalls, suitcases and files into its boot and backseat that held her attention.

"Get in, Martha, it's freezing!" the man called to her, setting a heavy-looking backpack into the footwell of the passenger seat, and shutting the car door.

Martha, who was hovering around the iron gates that led up to their narrow drive, shook her head at him stubbornly as he made his way back over to her.

"No…no it's not, I'm all right," she lied, her teeth chattering. In the dim, amber light her face looked tired and ropy, and bore the telltale signs of stress- induced acne.

Shivering, she gave him her best 'I'm Dr. Martha Jones' look; the fake smile she usually reserved for anxious, hysterical patients who were being difficult towards the end of her shift, when she was almost dead on her feet and all she wanted was to go home and go to bed…not, for example deal with a thirty-something year old man who had wanted to see what would happen if he 'turned the funny little green screw' that was embedded in the back of his hand and so had spattered the walls, his sheets, his chest and a nearby nurse a deep crimson, which had been a particularly memorable incident the week before.

"I could have seen myself off, you know," he told her quietly, pulling her into a close, tight hug and resting his chin on her unbrushed hair.

"Oh, I know," she mumbled into his shoulder, clasping her arms underneath his jacket and around his waist. "But my shift starts at eight so…"

"So you decided to get up four hours early," he teased her.

"Yeah, something like that," she agreed, pulling away from him so she could face him properly. Her expression was rather sad. Like that of a pre-teen girl with gravel and muck stuck in a bloody cut on her knee after having a nasty fall, who felt very sorry for herself, but knew that she was too old to cry and make a fuss, and so made do with bravely biting her lip.

"Tom…be careful. Look after yourself," she said softly, a cool hand smoothing his jaw and sliding down to his jacket collar, which she readjusted tenderly, like a mother fretting over her son on his first day of school.

"I will," he assured her, stilling her fidgeting hands and holding them in his own. "I'll phone you when I land and yes I'll get some breakfast at Heathrow," he said, winningly, preempting her next questions.

"Ok," she accepted with a thin smile, her dark almond eyes raking over his face, drinking in every detail. She tucked her loose hair behind her ears, because it was starting to annoy her and stood on tiptoe to press a soft kiss to his lips.

"Bye," she said fondly, trailing a light hand down his arm almost regretfully.

He gave her an extra kiss on the cheek and tapped her nose, gently.

"You look shattered," he told her half-sternly. "As a doctor I recommend that you go back inside and back to bed…instead of hanging around in the street in your dressing gown, like an extra from Shameless."

Martha grinned as him, a cheeky twinkle in her eye.

"Oh, are they the doctor's orders?" she asked, flirtatiously, her eyebrows raised.

He smiled back at her, though not without noticing as he did so, the dark purple bags under her eyes. "Most definitely."

Giving her one last squeeze and gently thumbing a crumb of sleep from the corner of her eye, he walked back to his car, quite forlornly and was about to get in when he turned to face her again, his hand on the door handle.

"Any plans to save the world while I'm gone?" he asked, only half-jokingly, his eyes looking wary. "You're not going to…I don't know, fly to the moon and adopt a Martian or anything?"

Martha leaned heavily against the gatepost, the bricks digging in to her shoulder. It was possible to make out a bemused smile on her face, in the poor light.

"I'll still be here when you get back," she told him firmly, guessing at what he was really trying to get at. He trusted her infinitely, she knew that, but there was always a slight concern at the back of his mind that the Doctor would come back and take her away again…

Tom nodded, wordlessly, his anxiety lifting. "Dr. Jones," he said smartly, winking at her as he opened the door and settled himself in the drivers seat.

"Dr. Milligan," she responded, nodding curtly. It was a fond inside joke that had been running since the day they'd met. Well, since the day Tom had met Martha. In the beginning she'd been so nervous about meeting him again after he'd (unknowingly) died and saved her life, so conscious that she mustn't reveal anything that she'd learnt about him during the Year That Never Was, that she'd uncharacteristically tumbled over her words and introduced herself as, "Dr. Martha Milligan."

Blushing furiously, much to his amusement she'd fluffed her correction, too and ended up gabbling nonsense, just like the Doctor. "I-I mean, I'm Jones. Martha. Dr. Jones…I'm Martha," she'd wittered stupidly, feeling like an utter fool. It had just carried on from there, really…

Despite the cold, Martha stayed by the gates until Tom had driven out of sight. His car purring down the street; flashes of yellow hitting the roof as he drove past the streetlights before turning right onto the main road.

Martha watched him disappear with a slight look of longing. She felt like one of those sad women from those old black and white, grainy films that her grandma had been so fond of, where they stood mournfully on a train station platform, watching as their sweethearts chugged away from them, off to war. Well, for about five seconds.

Common sense soon kicked in, telling her to go back inside instead of standing out in the street like a stray waif. Standing in the street at what, four o'clock in the morning, staring into thin air was not sensible; she didn't want the neighbours to think she had a screw loose. Not that there'd be many gossiping curtain twitchers craning their necks out of their windows at this unholy hour, but still, you could never be too sure.

Sighing, she clutched a handful of her dressing gown in her hands, hoiking up the green, fleecy material so it wouldn't drag on the ground or get tangled between her legs and traipsed back into the house.

The warmth that hit her as she pushed open the door was gorgeous. After being outside for so long she was chilled to the bone; her numb hands prickled and ached as they went rather drastically from being out in the cold, to being in the warmth, like severe pins and needles. For a while, she was happy to stay leaning against the radiator in the hallway, warming her back against the scalding hot ceramic, feeling the sort of sleepy contentedness that usually came with a bubbly warm bath.

Being up at four o'clock in the morning unfortunately wasn't a new experience. When she'd worked at the hospital she'd worked all kinds of ridiculous hours; 7pm till 3am being the worst, because it meant sleeping during the day, (where she'd be woken up by the phone and the postman) and working through the night, which was both tedious and exhausting. Of course, when she'd been traveling with the Doctor, she'd been lucky to get at most three hours sleep here and there between their various escapades; running away from pig men and hitting Eurovision to name but two.

The Doctor didn't see sleep as a necessity; he saw it as an annoyance. Needless to say, her body clock was always all over the place and often she found herself waking in the early hours of the morning even when she didn't have to, then annoyingly, being unable to drop back off, fitfully tossing and turning until her alarm eventually went off.

This morning had been one of those occasions. She had awoken around three-ish, freezing cold due to Tom taking up most of the quilt, wrapping it around himself like a cocoon and hadn't been able to get back to sleep. Despite her tiredness, she'd dragged herself out of bed when Tom had woken up an hour later, throwing on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and Ugg boots on top of her pyjamas and a thick dressing gown for warmth as she'd stumbled downstairs and in a zombie-like state, made Tom a steaming hot cup of tea as he'd showered and got dressed.

She'd then spent the best part of ten minutes following him around the house like a dutiful puppy as he'd added the last few items to his hand luggage, twice re-packing his passport and boarding card for him because twice, he'd mislaid them… then confiscated his car keys from him because he'd kept leaving them on the kitchen table so he 'wouldn't lose them' and then forgetting where he'd put them. Honestly, he was a brilliantly clever doctor, but he was about as organised as a two year old. Less, even.

Planning his departure; his flights and the times he had to check-in had been like trying to plan a full-scale UNIT operation. He'd only been told the week before that he was expected to attend a weeklong conference in Paris concerning the administration of a new, revolutionary medication, which if successful would help combat cancer at more that half the rate of chemotherapy.

Ever the diligent doctor, he'd immediately agreed to go, even though it hadn't been even been four months since he'd returned from Africa. Initially, she'd been disappointed that he would be leaving her again, but as a doctor herself, even Martha had to admit that this 'new, revolutionary medication' sounded fascinating. In fact, if she weren't so busy with UNIT, she would have happily given her left arm in order to go with him.

Nevertheless, she'd maintained that she was at least a tiny bit disgruntled, if only because Tom had been feeling slightly ashamed about abandoning her again and had promised her that he'd bring her back a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes to make up for it and well…Christian Louboutin shoes were Christian Louboutin shoes, weren't they?

Shoes or not, she would miss him dreadfully; in the evenings more that anything else. It would be alright during the day because when they were at work they didn't see each other much anyway, but in the evenings when she would be coming home to an empty house, too tired to want to go to all the hassle of cooking a proper meal and instead cobbling together beans on toast, she'd have no one to doze off on the settee with.

Whereas usually she'd perch on the edge of the bath whilst Tom leaned against the sink and together they'd talk about their day and swap stories about eccentric patients saying or doing all kinds of ridiculous things as they brushed their teeth; their words half-unintelligible through foams of toothpaste, now she'd have to do her teeth on her own, with only her thoughts for company.

Tom wasn't just her fiancé; he was her best friend, too. They were always talking over each other and carrying on like infants. Bickering over whose turn it was to do the ironing, whose turn it was to do the washing up…

Subconsciously, she stood twisting the metal band of her engagement ring around her finger, the diamond twinkling as it caught the light. She always twirled her ring whenever she was thinking about him, like Dorothy clicking her heels and thinking of home.

A sudden, uncontrollable need to give a huge yawn distracted her from her daze and she mentally told herself off; berating herself for standing in the hallway like a bottle of milk when any sensible person would have crawled back to bed for a few more snatched hours of sleep.

She knew though, that there would be absolutely no point in going back to bed because she just wouldn't sleep. Once she was up and awake that was it; she was up for the day. Though it was too early to even consider breakfast; the thought of eating at this hour made her feel woozy, a cup of hot, strong coffee certainly wouldn't go amiss. Something to wake her up a bit, because at the moment she felt too tired to even know what day it was.

The kitchen was a small, modern-ish room with a laminate floor, mock wooden bench tops and chrome fittings. In the corner was a poorly stocked fridge and a freezer that held nothing but frozen soup and ice-lollies. The freezer was actually used as more of a notice board than anything else. Timetables of both of their working shifts were stuck to it with little plastic magnets that they'd bought at the Pound Shop, along with shopping lists, wedding invitation lists, phone numbers of stately homes and hotels that they could possibly use as a venue for their wedding reception, as well as the usual stuff, like photos of Keisha, Leo's baby daughter and appointment cards for the dentist.

There were also all the usual appliances you would expect to find in a kitchen; a dishwasher, which was full of both clean and dirty crockery; a microwave, which had been given to them by Tom's mum and was definitely on its last legs; and a kettle, which Martha now filled at the kitchen sink and set to boil.

Wearily, she sat herself down at the kitchen table; the only surface in the ever clean room which was a complete and utter mess. Three old copies of the British Medical Journal lay open, with chunks of different paragraphs highlighted in neon blue, littered with post-it notes and scrawled over in Tom's slightly messy handwriting. Beside them, lay Tom's laptop, on which he had been writing a report on the recovery for Bronchiolitis for a lecturer friend at Imperial College. Judging from the scraps of paper that were wedged underneath the laptop, bearing the vague outline of a plan and conclusion, he had thankfully nearly finished.

Martha's own copy of The Directory of Private Medicine lay underneath a rough draft of a completely useless seating plan, as well as a sleek, glossy Brides magazine. Waiting for the kettle to boil, Martha picked up the magazine warily, seeing that her mother, (and Tish as well, probably) had already taken the liberty of turning down the pages of dresses they thought she might like. She flicked through the pages of impossibly beautiful brides and exotic flower arrangements until she reached a page with a folded down edge. Smoothing it out, she wrinkled her nose slightly as she saw that her mum had indicated a beaded silk creation with a full, puffball skirt like Cinderella's.

To her mum's credit, she would admit that it was absolutely lovely but…just not her. It was too fussy, too over the top, too fairytale princess for her liking. She skipped a few pages until she recognised Tish's neat, curling handwriting swirling over a page of vampy-looking brides wearing 1920's style flapper dresses…she closed the magazine despondently, vowing that she would wear a dress like that when Hell froze over.

She'd gone off the Roaring Twenties era a bit, ever since the Daleks had attempted to take over Manhattan… she'd been frightened and repulsed by what those metal monsters had done, though she'd tried to hide it from the strained Doctor at the time. The last thing she wanted was to be reminded of the bad experiences she'd encountered with the Doctor on her wedding day.

The clicking of the kettle coming to boil forced her to get to her feet, and she crossed the kitchen, dragging her feet to make herself a coffee, retrieving the milk from the fridge and slopping in the hot water and two mounds of coffee on absolute autopilot. The slightly bitter aroma of the coffee was like a none-too-gentle slap in the face; she immediately felt her head clear and her eyes focus. She took a large, greedy mouthful, then regretted it when it burnt its way down her throat, causing her to splutter and her eyes to water. After taking a moment to recover herself, she dabbed at the puddle of light brown liquid she had somehow managed to spill all over the bench with a red-checked tea towel and, cradling her hot cup, shuffled into the darkened living room.

Carefully setting her coffee onto a coaster on a little side table, she switched on a reading lamp, so that dim artificial light ebbed over her and took a heavy woolen throw that was draped across the leather settee and shrouded herself in it, like an enormous blanket, because despite the heartening warmth of the coffee she could still feel herself shivering and her nose was freezing. Nothing more than a cold chip of ice sitting on her face.

More for want of something to do than anything else, something to engage her, to distract her from her tiredness, she switched on the TV, wincing when it kicked into life at too high a volume; loud voices disturbing the silence of the night. Jumping slightly, she frantically turned the volume down and flicked listlessly through the channels. What on earth would be on at 4 o'clock in the morning? Sky News was on for 24hrs of course, and the pre-school children's TV would start at around five-ish, but other than that it would just be repeats of old 80's sitcoms and long-forgotten, trite films.

Still, that's what you got for being foolish enough to get up at the crack of dawn. Not than she actually wanted to watch anything either, she just wanted a bit of background rabble so the house wouldn't feel so oppressively eerie and silent, but she eventually settled for an old-looking film on channel 5. Little Women. The version that wasn't the one with the entire A-Z of female Hollywood stars making up the cast, the other one ;the one with the depressingly beautiful young Elizabeth Taylor as Amy. It was a film that had always made her cry when she was younger (who hadn't bubbled about Beth?), yet had frustrated her, as she'd grown older, purely because she could never understand why Louisa May Alcott had Laurie marry Amy of all people. Completely the wrong sister; it should have always been Jo…

In spite of her tiredness Martha found herself gradually being drawn into the film; losing herself in the romance and its oldie-worldly charm; content to watch Laurie and Jo frolic in the snow like children, as in awe of them as she had been when she was younger, mesmerized by their costumes and speech, immersed in the story with a wistful smile on her face.

Feeling hopelessly lazy and comfortable, Martha wrapped her hands around her coffee cup to warm them and leant back against the cushions, he Ugg's probably scuffing the soft leather of the settee, but since she was alone, with no Tom around to nag her so put her feet down she left them there. The world didn't end because Martha Jones put her feet up on the furniture...though admittedly, she and the Doctor had once been arrested on some planet to the east of the constellation of Iranaeus because the Doctor had unwittingly put his feet up on a table.

However, seeing as the said table had been some sort of sacrificial relic used to honour their Goddess (or whatever the reason had been…their accents had been extremely thick and hard to understand and the Doctor had been extremely vague in his bashful explanation), it was perhaps no surprise that the planet's inhabitants had kicked off a bit, but that was another case entirely.

Martha's settee was just that; an ordinary settee, dull as dishwater. Dishwater…where had that expression come from, anyway? 'Dull as dishwater'? It was…a bit daft really.

Martha sighed heavily; her tiredness was making her think strangely. She'd never normally consider something as obscure as dishwater in the early hours of the morning whilst watching Little Women. Perhaps she should prescribe herself some herbal sleep supplements? Not that they ever worked but…

Closing her eyes against the steady stream of thoughts that were riddling through her mind Martha stood up clutching her half-full cup of coffee, her legs stiff after being bunched up for the best part of an hour, pins and needles prickling through her calves and feet. She'd been about to retreat to the study; a tiny, cramped room just off the living room that also acted as a mini library to hers and Tom's rather impressive selection of books, to retrieve her old childhood copy of Little Women because she wanted to check something about Meg, when a dark shadow of movement outside in the street caught her eye.

Curiously, but no less carefully she put down her coffee and inched towards the window, peeking out from behind the closed blinds. The street was just as quiet as it had been an hour previously, though the black night sky had began to thin; dim fingers of daylight could just be seen starting to peer through the darkness on the horizon, like the dying embers of a fire. Yet she could just make out two figures silently making their way up the street from the direction of the town center, side by side. Frowning, Martha began to close the blinds again, dismissing the two figures as mere drunkards or tired partygoers, making their way home from a night on the town.

That is, until they passed under one of the yellow streetlights on the opposite side of the street and she recognised the form of a tall, thin dark-haired man wearing a long coat and a trainer-clad red-haired woman beside him…

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