Meeting at Infinity

---

Part One

Chapter 1

London, 31st October 2008

"Come on, Martha, it'll be fun. And it'll be good for us to have fun. You said that."

Martha didn't look up from the sofa, eyes staying fixed on her tracksuited legs and trainered feet rather than the telly blaring away in the corner. "Oh, 'us' is it? I like that. I'm the one who's been invited to Julia's party, not you."

"She said you could bring as many people as you liked."

"You were listening in after I picked up the other phone," Martha said.

"You should bring a boy as well," Tish went on, ignoring her. "There must be someone you could call ..."

Martha's mind went instantly, and guiltily, to the Doctor. She quashed the thought just as quickly. Phoning her old mobile simply to invite him to a Hallowe'en party was altogether too silly, as well as representing a complete failure in the getting-over-him stakes. Then she thought, even more guiltily, of Tom Milligan. She'd phoned him once, just after they'd arrived in October, but that had been part of tying up loose ends; she'd needed the reassurance that the rest of the world had returned to normal, even if her world never could. She definitely wasn't going to phone him again. It would be far too weird. Even if he had been rather handsome, all stubbly and muscley and mmm ...

She realised Tish was staring at her intently. "I'm not interested in boys," she said, glaring at her.

"Well, bring a girl then," Tish said.

"Oh, ha ha. You know what I mean."

"Yeah, you want someone who's all man," Tish said. She paused theatrically, as though a light bulb had just switched on above her head. "Maybe you could meet one at Julia's party!"

"I don't want to go to Julia's party," Martha said. She was still reconnecting with her family, after they'd all been through hell. She didn't know if she could cope with her friends as well, at least not in person -- it had been good to hear Julia's voice on the phone, but there had been so many unspoken questions in it that she wasn't sure she'd manage.

At least they'd been able to avoid endless debriefings and psychological assessments, and the worst of the public reaction to what -- from the rest of the world's point of view -- seemed to be the Prime Minister's sudden breakdown and assassination of the US President-Elect. As regular UNIT troops had begun picking up the pieces in the aftermath, the Doctor had sidled up to them, pointed out the potential unpleasantness, and offered the family "just one trip", a few months into the future.

The family had gratefully accepted, Mum admittedly much more warily than the others, after Martha had extracted a promise that it wouldn't involve any unexpected side-trips. She'd felt a sense of bitter irony at the reversal from the way each landing not back in present-day London had thrilled her at the beginning of her time with him. But the Doctor had reassured them that a detour would be strictly impossible anyway, with the TARDIS not yet fully repaired from the abuse it had suffered at the hands of the Master.

There'd been a couple of phone calls -- a highly complicated one to Leo and a deceptively simple one made by Jack, who in a few brief words had put wheels in motion that had covered for everyone's temporary absence from history without a hitch, at least as far as they'd experienced in the three weeks they'd been back in the timestream. But Martha suspected even Jack's influence didn't reach all the way to every single one of her friends.

"But it'll be fun," Tish insisted, as though repetition would make her position any more convincing -- her favourite tactic in an argument since before Martha could remember.

"Tish is right," said Mum. She hadn't given any sign that she'd been listening, either to them or the TV. "You should go. Both of you," she added in the pre-emptive-argument-settling voice that they'd become very familiar with in their teens. Martha realised with a start that this was the first time they'd even had an argument since the end of their ordeal.

Martha was filled with a sudden rush of warmth towards her sister and her Mum at this reminder of how their lives had been, before.

"Would you be OK, Mum?" Martha asked.

"I can cope with one evening at home on my own," she snapped. "And if not, I can always ring your dad, can't I? He did say 'any time'." She chuckled mirthlessly to herself.

On the television, the credits started to roll, then shrank into a corner to make space for a promo for the Panorama documentary coming up later in the evening. "Harold Saxon - What Really Happened?" the caption said, as a picture of an election poster faded in, the Master's face grinning out from it.

All three of them lunged for the remote control at once.

---

Martha stood at Julia's door, feeling ridiculous. The fancy dress shops had already been cleared out when they'd finally got into town. Tish's hopes of "rocking a sexy witchy sisters look" had given way to tossing a coin for the right to choose between the only two costumes that fitted them -- Robin Hood and Snow White. Martha had lost.

"I think this is a kid's costume," Tish said, adjusting her green tunic around her breasts for the thousandth time.

Martha raised an eyebrow, the simple gesture more than sufficient to emphasise the inexpressible awfulness of her own costume.

"And Robin Hood's a boy."

"There's a long theatrical tradition of cross-dressing," Martha said. "Dames and the principal boy in panto, and of course in Elizabethan times there were no women allowed on stage at all."

"Yeah, yeah, we've all seen Shakespeare in Love." Martha opened her mouth to respond, but Tish cut her off. "Or personally starred in the sequel, I know. You're such a namedropper, Martha. Y'know, I hope you don't meet a bloke tonight, for his sake. How can he ever hope to compete with the most famous men in all of history?"

Martha was about to remind Tish to keep quiet about all the time-travel-and-aliens stuff -- her paranoia overcoming her confidence in her sister -- when Julia opened the door.

"Martha! It's so good to see you." Julia hugged her, and Martha held tight to her friend for just the briefest moment before letting go again.

"You remember my sister Tish, right?"

"Of course I do! Hi, Tish, glad you could make it." Julia smiled widely. "Come in, come in."

Almost as soon as they were inside, Tish made a beeline for the living room, where a few people were already dancing to music slightly too loud for the speakers to cope with. Julia hung back, looked at Martha nervously. "Come into the kitchen, I'll get you a drink."

"Thanks," Martha said as she followed.

When they got there, Julia gabbled off an exhaustive list of the different drinks available, including every possible combination of spirits and mixers. Martha waited for her to finish, for her nervousness to work its way out. Eventually, she said, deadly serious, "Martha, are you all right? Everyone's really worried, I mean, you just disappeared after the whole business with the ... after that whole business."

"I'm fine, Julia. Or I will be, at least."

"I was so relieved when you answered the phone, you know. There were three different lots of people came round asking about you -- all real Spooks-y types, but none of them seemed to know about each other -- and some people were saying you'd been extraordinarily rendered or something."

"No, really, I'm fine." She tried to process everything Julia had just said. "Who said I'd been arrested?"

"Oh, no one in particular. But you just vanished! For months."

"Yeah, I suppose I did. Sorry." Bringing the family forward had been the right thing to do, Martha was sure of it, but it would inevitably have these sorts of consequences for the rest of her life. "You said people were asking about me. When was that?" It made sense if the Master's dirty tricks department had involved themselves, but had anything happened since then?

Julia was about to answer when a man dressed in a skeleton outfit -- including a skull mask covering his whole face except for tiny eyeholes -- stumbled drunkenly into the kitchen and opened the fridge before staring into it, clearly forgetting what he'd wanted in the first place. In that moment of stillness, the cartoonish glow-in-the-dark bones seemed all too real to Martha, evoking a hundred hideous memories -- Toclafane executions, mass graves, random corpses dead of exposure or exhaustion littering the sides of her lonely path ...

Maybe coming to a Hallowe'en party hadn't been such a good idea after all.

The man left again, having grabbed a beer.

"You fancy him, don't you?"

"No, no, that's not why I was staring," Martha said, trailing off as she realised that she didn't want to go into the real explanation.

"Those lycra suits are good for showing off the muscles, aren't they? And other things." And Julia, god bless her, actually nudged Martha with an elbow.

"Can't say that I noticed," Martha said, truthfully enough.

"I don't know who he is, sorry. One of Ben's friends from St Gart's, I think."

"I'm not sure dating doctors is such a good idea," Martha said, then quickly added, "not that it hasn't worked out for you, of course. Have you two set a date yet?"

---

Two G&Ts and a reaffirmed commitment to being a bridesmaid later, Julia finally decided she had to go and be hostess-ish. Martha made her way to the improvised dance floor in the living room, which had become much livelier since her arrival. Martha wasn't at all surprised to find Tish right in the middle of it.

"This is great!" Tish shouted in her ear.

Martha smiled and settled into dancing alongside her, enjoying herself more and more as the music got cheesier and cheesier. After a while, she became conscious that the guy in the skeleton suit was nearby, dancing at her with a level of coordination that belied the drunkenness she'd seen in the kitchen.

Martha was prepared to bet even money that Julia had propelled him in her direction. Still, there was nothing scary about the bones of his outfit while they were busting some surprisingly funky moves, and she was supposed to be having fun. With a shrug of her shoulders, she subtly adjusted her position so that they were dancing with each other.

She was just beginning to appreciate what Julia been saying with her nudge nudge, wink wink routine when she heard the scream.

Instinctively, she ran to its source, ploughing her way through confused partygoers. She was dimly aware of the tightness of Snow White's shoes, and of Tish and someone else running just behind her. She dodged through the back hallway, narrowly avoiding a snogging couple who clearly weren't about to let anything so dull as a blood-curdling scream of terror get in the way of their encounter, before going out into the garden.

She saw quickly that the only person out there, the person who must have been the source of the scream, was Morgenstern. But her attention was immediately drawn to the yellow shimmer in the air above him, from which a giant, winged lizard-y something emerged, flapping its wings slowly and deliberately.

And then, everyone was talking at once.

"What the hell's that?" Skeleton Guy said, his voice sounding oddly familiar.

"Martha! Thank God!" Morgenstern clung onto her as though he was drowning.

Tish simply swore.

The flying thing let out a rasping screech, and dived straight at Martha, its red eyes burning. Just as it was about to reach her, it vanished in an implosion of the same eerie yellow light from which it had appeared, leaving only the echoes of its unearthly cry resonating around the garden.

"Martha," Morgenstern said, "there was a ... I just came out here for a breath of fresh air, but then I saw a body ... well, I mean, I thought it was someone who'd just passed out, so I went to check them over, but when I ..." He broke down for a moment in sobs on Martha's shoulder. "It was a dead body, Martha. It was my dead body. All cut open and ... oh, god. And then that thing appeared."

Martha patted his back in a rather ineffective attempt at reassurance.

"There's no body here now," said Skeleton Guy. Martha looked up and saw that he'd taken off the skull mask now to reveal the face of ... Tom Milligan. Damn. No wonder his voice had sounded familiar.

Come on, Martha, keep it together.

"I think I might have seen something when we first came out," Tish said. "But it disappeared at the same time as that ... thing."

"What was that, anyway?" Tom said.

"What was what?" Julia said, emerging from the house to investigate. Less than a minute had passed but she'd already missed all the important stuff.

Martha wasn't sure she could deal with this right now. All she wanted was to be away, away from the weirdness, away from the sense that everyone was expecting her to know what to do, and most of all away from the man dressed as a skeleton whom she'd seen sacrifice himself to save her life less than three weeks ago.

Fortunately, Tish was on hand, and there were some things she was very good at.

"Nothing," she said brightly. "Oliver here -- it is Oliver, isn't it? -- had a little bit too much to drink and gave himself a scare. I'm sure he'll be right as rain in the morning. In fact, I think we've all had a little bit too much, and it's probably time Martha and I went home. There's a taxi rank just down the road, isn't there? Thank you so much for inviting us, we've had a marvellous night! See you again soon!" And without really knowing how it had happened, Martha was away, disentangled from Morgenstern and being propelled by the elbow to the front door.

"Thanks, Tish," Martha said.

"What are sisters for if not a good bit of tactical lying?" Tish said. "Speaking of which, you know how I said we'd had too much to drink?"

Martha nodded dumbly.

"We haven't had nearly enough." And she brandished a small vodka bottle she must have liberated from the kitchen somehow on their way out, before unscrewing the cap and taking a swig.

She offered it to Martha, who took a sip, then another and another. The alcohol paradoxically made her feel more clear-headed, forcing parts of her still-racing mind to slow down. "Thanks."

"Let's go and find that taxi. And on the way you can tell me what really happened back there. 'Cos I know freaked-out bystanders and giant flapping alien lizards are pretty much par for the course for you, but something really spooked you."

---

"Do you have any idea how late it is?"

"You mean how early. And you did say I could call any time."

"I just didn't expect this time. You're like a nightingale or something."

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I, Jack?"

"Sadly, no. So tell me, Martha Jones, why are you calling? I assume it's not just to listen to my sexy accent."

"Something really weird happened tonight."

"Torchwood weird?"

"Definitely. Flying lizard things with glowing red eyes appearing and disappearing, a friend of mine seeing his own dead body--"

"Wait, this 'flying lizard thing'. Big beak, leathery wings?"

"Yes. Why, do you know what it was?"

"Maybe. I'll have Tosh check some things in the morning."

"That wasn't the really weird thing, though. There was ..."

"Martha?"

"A lot of people died in that year, Jack. I mean, billions of people died, but I saw a lot of people die. To help me. Or protect me."

"And you saved the world, and now they're not dead. Focus on that, Martha."

"But that's just it, Jack. One of them was there tonight. Someone who died right at the end, threw himself in front of a Toclafane without even thinking about it ... So brave. And then, there he was. It was just too weird."

"And are you likely to see him anywhere again?"

"Probably not. I mean, maybe Julia's wedding, I suppose. Oh, god, I hadn't even thought of that. I'm supposed to be a bridesmaid."

"This is going to happen, Martha. This is what it's like for us. We save people but they can never know. Our work has to be in secret."

"I don't know if I can do it, Jack."

"I know you can, OK? I've seen exactly what you can do. And you can always talk to me."

"Any time?"

"Any time."

---

Chapter 2

Cardiff, 10th November 2008

Tosh swung her tracking device in a wide arc, but it stubbornly refused to give her any sort of signal. Gwen's torchlight beam, piercing the darkness of the warehouse, similarly failed to reveal anything other than damp walls and cold concrete flooring.

"They've cleared out," said Gwen, her words echoing in Tosh's earpiece a split second later.

"Agreed," Jack said over the comm link. He and Ianto had taken the other side of the site, while Owen checked the office to see if there were any records.

"They're professionals," Ianto chipped in. "Haven't left the slightest trace behind."

"Bastards," Owen said with feeling. Tosh knew this case was getting to him. Ever since the first, literally brainless, corpse had been brought into the morgue the whole thing had seemed ... personal, somehow.

"This just means we try harder," Jack said. "We will find them."

A blue LED on Tosh's tracker began to blink insistently. "Hold on," she said. "I think I have something." She waved the tracker left and right, searching for the source of the signal she'd detected. Wordlessly, Gwen moved her torch to follow.

All too soon, a corpse came into view. But this wasn't like the others -- it was frozen solid, like someone who'd died on the side of a high mountain, the left hand reaching up for the sky in some final futile gesture of defiance.

"That wasn't here a minute ago," Gwen insisted.

"I know," Tosh said.

They walked slowly towards the body, crouching to their knees when they reached it.

"This doesn't make any sense," Gwen said as she reached out to the corpse's legs. "It's not been operated on at all."

But Tosh barely heard her. She was looking to the corpse's face, twisted in pain, half-shadowed by the ice encasing it, but sickeningly familiar nonetheless. "Gwen ... this is ... this is you."

"What?" Gwen said, but when she shone the beam of her torch directly on the head, she screamed.

Owen came running through the door -- he must have been heading there anyway after hearing Tosh say she'd found something. "What's going on?" he said.

Tosh nodded wordlessly at the body -- Gwen's body, she forced herself to think.

"That's impossible," he said. "I mean, I know we deal with impossible things all the bloody time, but that's not right."

Before Tosh could respond, her tracker began to go wild, lights flashing arhythmically, bleeps and whistles sounding simultaneously. She gripped onto it as though it was a weapon, or a talisman she could use against whatever was coming next.

What came next was a yellow glow filling the air on the far side of the warehouse, from which emerged a large flying creature. It screeched and dived towards them. Towards Gwen, specifically, Tosh realised, as Owen dashed in front of her. Surely he couldn't protect her against something like that?

Gwen had unholstered her gun, and she crouched to one knee to fire. The bullet didn't seem to have the slightest effect, but at the last moment the creature broke off and flew away into another yellow glow that shimmered into existence directly in front of it.

Tosh turned round to see that Jack and Ianto had arrived. Jack went to Gwen, put his arms around her shoulders, while Ianto asked Tosh, "What did we miss?"

"We found ..." Tosh turned and pointed to show him the body, but discovered it had vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. "It was Gwen. Gwen's body. Frozen to death."

"What?" Ianto said.

"Come on, everyone," Jack said, "we're going back to the Hub."

---

Two hours later, they were all gathered around the conference table. Ever since she'd climbed into the back of the SUV, Tosh had been trying to make sense of the readings she'd recorded during the encounter, but the more she deciphered, the more frightening the implications became. She tried to put the thoughts away, focus on the immediate problems, as the mood in the room subtly shifted to the calmness of waiting for the beginning of a meeting. "What was that thing?" Gwen asked when they got under way. It was an entirely reasonable question, but not the one Tosh would have expected her to ask.

Jack steepled his hands and looked directly at Gwen, then Owen, then Tosh, until his eyes were fixed on Ianto's. "There are ... things -- people, forces of nature, monsters, maybe all three at once -- that were only ever legends, even to the Time Agency. Unsubstantiated rumours, their possible existence only inferred from missions gone catastrophically wrong. But they're real. And I should know, I've met some of them. What we saw in that warehouse came straight out of those stories. It fit with all the stories of the tempiphages." He finally broke Ianto's gaze, looking straight ahead, or nowhere at all. "The Reapers. Time's white blood cells, gobbling up the remnants of fractured timelines."

The others seemed stunned, but Tosh felt only the sinking-stomach sensation of being proved right when she'd wished she was wrong. Jack's idea fit perfectly with everything she'd been able to deduce. "Then -- I'm sorry, Gwen -- that body was an alternate Gwen, from another timeline?"

Jack nodded. "Not any other timeline, either. I told you what happened while I was away ..."

Ianto took his cue. "Harold Saxon turned out to be a renegade Time Lord known as 'the Master'." His tone was filled with acid sarcasm. "He subjugated Earth and ruled it for a year but the paradox was undone and time rewound, defeating him before he'd done anything more than assassinate President Winters."

"What I didn't tell you -- what I didn't want to tell you -- was what happened to you. He arranged to have you sent ... away, where you couldn't be a threat to him during his rise to power."

"The Himalayas," Owen said. "That 'Yeti control sphere' that turned out to be one of those new silvery-coloured footballs."

"When we got back, the government had collapsed and all hell had broken loose," Ianto said.

"In the other timeline," Jack said, "the one where the Master won, you never made it back. You died out there. I'm sorry."

"So ... I'm sorry, Jack, it's a bit much to take in when it's your own death," Gwen said, voice shaking with emotion. "That was the me who died on a mountainside, cold and alone?"

Jack nodded wordlessly.

"But then ..." Tosh broke off again, marshalled her thoughts. "This 'Reaper' wasn't really going for Gwen, it was going for the body. To ... clean up the wound, or whatever. But it didn't, it just flew away."

"I think that was me," Jack said with a tiny self-effacing smile. "Old things offer some protection, according to the myths. And I've got a fair few miles on the clock these days."

"But you don't look a day over ninety!" Ianto said.

"So none of this had anything to do with stealing people's brains to feed aliens in exchange for dubious powers?" Owen said.

"I don't think so, no," Jack said. "We'll work on that, and we won't stop until we put those bastards down. But we'll also work on this. Something caused that wound in time in the first place, the chance for the Reaper to come through. And I don't think it's the first time. Tosh?"

"A few weeks back, Jack got a report of a similar incident in London. He asked me to scan for possible time anomalies, but there was too much noise from normal Rift activity to be sure. But now that we have the readings I took at the scene, we can pinpoint the corresponding frequency of quantum vibrations. It if happens again, in Cardiff, London, anywhere in the world, we'll know."

"You think it is going to happen again?" Gwen said. "You think someone's ... what, doing this on purpose?"

"Maybe it's a side-effect," Owen said. "Someone's dicking about with time and doesn't realise it's doing this as well."

"Maybe," Jack said. "We'll know more if Tosh gets another signal. But all we can do for now is watch and wait." He looked round at them all again. "Let's get back to work."

---

Chapter 3

London, 21st November 2008

Tom sighed with relief as he reached the sanctuary of the staff lounge. He headed straight for the vending machine and bought a packet of "light" salt and vinegar crisps, the unhealthiest thing available since the managers' decision that the hospital staff ought to practise what they preached.

He pinched the top of the packet and ripped it open as he went to sit down next to Alice. On the other side of the cheap MDF coffee table were Ben and Greg.

"Ah, Tom," Ben said. "You coming tonight?"

"What's tonight?" Tom asked through a mouthful of crisps.

"Julia's bunch from the Royal Hope are all about to be scattered to the four winds for their electives so they're off to the pub for a send off. The more the merrier, Julia says."

"Depends," Tom said. "If the next six hours of this shift are the same as the first two, I'm barely going to be in a state to order a takeaway, let alone sustain conversation with people I barely know."

"What's the matter, Tom?" Alice said. "Students too young for you?"

Tom started to protest, as did Ben. Alice had promised to stop calling him a cradlesnatcher, but only after the wedding. But quick as a flash Greg said, "We all know policewomen are more Tom's speed. I think it's the handcuffs."

"Or maybe the truncheon," Alice interjected.

"That was one time," Tom said. "One time. Which has been misrepresented forever after, even by the people who were there." With that, he glared at Alice, probably slightly more severely than he intended, because she put a hand on his knee and whispered "Sorry" even as Ben and Greg continued to roar with laughter.

"I could ask Julia if Martha's going to be there," Ben said when they'd finally calmed down.

"And why should I care about that?" Tom said. If Greg's reaction was anything to go by, it was the funniest thing anyone had said all year. "I'm that obvious, am I?" he said to the other two.

"You've been unsubtly pumping me for information about her ever since Hallowe'en," Ben said.

"She seemed nice, is all," Tom said. "There's no harm in showing an interest."

"There is a line, Tom," Alice said, putting on her mother hen act, "between 'showing an interest' and 'stalking'. And you are way, way over on the other side of it."

"I haven't stalked anyone!" Tom objected.

"Only because Ben won't tell you her address," Greg put in.

"Well, maybe I'll come," Tom said. "Maybe."

---

The pub was crowded with Friday night revellers; even without the obnoxiously loud music you'd have to shout to be heard over all the other people shouting to be heard. Tom made his way slowly to the table at the back where he could see Ben and Julia, leaning in close to one another, but still facing outwards to the group around them. Ben never had got back to Tom about whether Martha was going to be there, but he'd decided to chance it. A quick scan of the half-familiar faces around the table showed that she hadn't turned up yet, if she was going to.

"Tom, you came!" Ben shouted when he reached them.

"Well, we all know why," Julia added.

"Oh, not you as well," Tom said, just as one of the others -- a short-ish bloke with curly hair -- was saying "Do we?"

Tom looked at the empty glasses around the table and realised this was going to be a fairly expensive round. "Would anyone like another drink?"

A minute or so later, Tom was pressed into the crush around the bar, all thoughts of their teasing -- or Martha -- forgotten as he repeated everyone's orders in his head, making a particular effort to recall the exact specification of Julia's overcomplicated cocktail.

So when he was struggling back from the bar with several glasses held between both hands and almost ran straight into Martha, the smoothest, most winning line he could come up with was, "Oh, hello."

"Hi!" Martha smiled broadly at him for a moment, then her expression shifted subtly. "You're ... Tom, right?"

He bent down a little so that she could hear him without him having to shout quite so much. "That's right, Tom Milligan, we met at--"

"--Julia's Hallowe'en party," she said into his ear. "I remember. I'm Martha, by the way."

"Do you want a drink?" Tom asked, twisting his head back towards the bar. "I--"

"I'm OK, thanks," Martha said, subtly changing her body language so that she wasn't at the back of the queue-crowd, simply standing near it.

"Right, well," Tom said, keen to carry on talking to her by herself, but conscious of how daft it would appear not to take the drinks back to the table.

Just then the cavalry appeared, in the rather unlikely form of Greg. "Thought you might need a hand with the drinks," he said. "Bit much for one person to carry," he went on, while comprehensively disproving the point by relieving Tom of all of them. Tom mouthed a "thank you" at him as he retreated back to the table.

"Shall we go somewhere a bit quieter?" Tom nodded towards a corner that was slightly further away from the loudspeakers than anywhere else in the pub.

Martha looked hesitant for a moment, which Tom ascribed to its proximity to the toilets, then nodded.

"So what elective are you off to?" Tom asked once they'd got there.

"I'm not, actually," Martha said, and this time her smile seemed genuine and uncomplicated. "I've got a job."

"You're giving up on medicine? After five years of hard graft? That seems--"

"Six," Martha corrected quickly. "I intercalated. But no, it's a medical job. They're accelerating my doctorate. I've just got to take ... well, all the exams I'd have done in a year and a half. I should probably be at home revising."

"Yeah, sounds like it," Tom said, memories of the horrors of going back to the exam hall after spending long periods in the wards fresh in his mind. "You know, I never heard of that before, skipping ahead like that."

"Well, my new employers are ... a bit different."

"A bit different like ...?"

"A bit different like I'm probably not supposed to talk about it."

"UNIT," said Tom, and the widening of Martha's eyes told him he was right, if not in the exact detail then at least in having pinpointed Martha's new employers as belonging to the general not-quite-so-top-secret-as-they-should-be aliens-and-weird-happenings department. "Oh, come on, the way you dealt with that thing at the party that everyone's quietly pretending to have forgotten about. It's obvious."

"Everyone except you?" Martha said. "You believe in ..."

"Aliens," Tom said, just as Martha finished "monsters".

"Everyone who's got half a brain knows," Tom went on, "no matter how many unconvincing cover ups they try on. It's like Mister Saxon always said."

"I really don't want to talk about Mister Saxon," Martha said quietly.

"Oh," Tom said. "Right. Do you-- do you know what happened? 'Cos it was--"

"I know exactly what happened. And I really don't want to talk about it."

Tom decided to shift to safer ground. "So you're going to be doing alien autopsies or something? That's ... cool."

"I don't know what I'll be doing, exactly, but I do know I'm not supposed to talk about it."

Still not safe enough, clearly. "So, er, you'll be Doctor Jones," Tom said. "Hey, like that Aq--"

"Don't you dare say another syllable," Martha said. It was a rubbish joke, Tom reflected, one she'd probably heard a million times before. But at least she was smiling again. "And when did I tell you my last name, anyway?"

"Er, ah," Tom said. "Just now. Honest."

"You're a very bad liar," Martha said. "It's OK, Julia told me."

"Dammit, she promised--"

"She said you were quite naive, too," Martha said. "Girls have been known to talk to each other from time to time, you know."

"So ...?"

"So I'm flattered that you're interested, but ..." She stopped for a moment, looked like she was collecting her thoughts. "Look, it's not like we really know each other. At all, and--"

"We could get to know each other," Tom said. Martha looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights, which wasn't quite the effect he'd been going for. "I mean, if you wanted to."

"I'm sorry," Martha said. "I know I'm being weird. And I do. Want to. At least, part of me does -- a large part! It's just I've got a lot going on right now--"

"Well, yeah, with your fancy X-Files job."

"Oh, that's not even the half of it. There's just-- It's not you. It's really ... not you."

"OK, well, no pressure," Tom said. He grabbed the least disgusting napkin from a nearby table and took out his pen to scribble on it. "Look, here's my number. Call me if you want to, don't if you don't, and--"

He pushed the note towards as she reached for it, and then suddenly as their fingers touched she grabbed his hand to lever herself up to kiss him, a quick peck but right on the lips.

"Right, erm," Tom began, but he was cut off from saying any more when Martha reached up to kiss him again, longer this time. Her lips were soft and warm and at quite a strange angle, and Tom belatedly realised that he was going to have to bend down slightly. He did so, tilting his head to one side as Martha bent hers the other way. He put a tentative hand on her shoulder and, when it wasn't brushed away, another one on her hair. Her hands reached up to his shoulders as she began to suck gently on his upper lip and ...

"Martha," an acid-dipped female voice said from behind him. "I thought you'd been a while getting the drinks."

Suddenly, Martha broke off the kiss, biting her lip nervously and ducking her head to look round Tom. Tom turned to see who the new arrival was, only distantly aware of Martha dodging past him.

"Hi," Tom said after swallowing awkwardly.

"Hi," the girl replied, managing to make the single simple syllable sound like an invitation to drop dead.

"Er, who are you?" he asked, trying not to sound too rude but letting a little of his irritation at being interrupted in the middle of what had been turning into a very good kiss.

"I'm Martha's sister. Tish." She instantly looked as though she regretted giving him any information at all, let alone her name.

"Tom, Tom Milligan."

"Tom, yes, I know," she said. "Well, it was nice to meet you," she added perfunctorily as she walked away to follow wherever Martha had gone -- the loos, Tom surmised quickly.

That was all a bit odd, Tom decided. Though it could be encouraging; Martha's sister knowing his name meant they must have talked about him, surely? Yes, encouraging. Probably. Almost definitely.

He changed his assessment back to "odd" a moment or so later, when the two emerged from the bathroom and headed straight for the door, Tish steering Martha by the elbow.

"Call me!" Tom said weakly to Martha's back, unsure whether she had actually picked up his number in all the confusion.

She looked over her shoulder at him for a moment, but her expression was unreadable.

---

Chapter 4

3rd December 2008

"You're what?"

Mum was shouting, properly shouting, her face twisted with rage. Martha hadn't seen her quite like this, so apoplectically angry, since the final stages of the divorce. Martha took a step or two backwards, almost colliding with the living room wall.

"Mum--" Tish started, stepping forward from the corner, putting a hand on Mum's arm only for it to be shaken away.

"Stay out of this, Tish!" She turned back to Martha. "I ... I can't believe you're even thinking about doing this."

Martha remembered with a shudder that a few weeks ago she'd actually been feeling nostalgic about family arguments. Now it was just like the worst of her teenage years. And all those old instincts came right back automatically. All Mum's anger served to do was make Martha dig her heels in more.

"But I told you about it as soon as I got the offer, even before we jumped ahead."

"And then you never mentioned it again! I never imagined in my life you were going to do it! Don't you see, Martha? UNIT ... They ..." She collapsed onto the sofa, head in her hands. "You weren't there, Martha. You might have walked through hell but we had to live with it -- me and Tish and your father -- right there in the devil's headquarters. The soldiers on the Valiant, the Master's lackeys ... they were all UNIT soldiers."

There were hundreds of counterarguments: that the Master had had his fingers in UNIT recruitment as much as the design of the Valiant, that just like everyone else they'd only been doing what they had to to survive, that some of them had acted in small ways and big to oppose his rule, even right under his nose. But the real reason was simpler. "But that's why I have to do it, Mum, to ... help change things, so that the people like that are rooted out. That's why."

"What do you mean?"

"They said I'd been ... recommended."

"Recommended?" Martha was about to say something, but then Mum added, "By the Doctor, you mean."

"I think so, yes."

"You can't still be running around cleaning up his messes," Mum said. "You're better than that."

"Mum, it's a brilliant opportunity and it's ... it's the right thing to do." Martha sat on the sofa next to her. "You know I can't walk away from that."

"Dammit, Martha, it's not safe! It's not safe ..."

"Nothing's safe, Mum. Nothing. If I'd stuck to doing what was safe, you'd all be dead."

"If you'd stuck to doing what was safe, you'd never have got into that blasted TARDIS in the first place! The Master would never have known or cared who we were!"

Before she was even aware of having done it, Martha was off the sofa, out of the living room and slamming the door behind her. As she pelted up the stairs, she heard the door open and close again behind her.

"Martha!" Tish shouted at the top of her voice, followed by a muttered "Oh bloody hell" as she ran upstairs.

Martha reached her bedroom and collapsed onto her bed. She blinked, but tears wouldn't come; she simply felt hollow inside. A moment later, Tish had reached her and was knocking on the door. "Martha? Come on, Martha, I'm the one who's supposed to be the drama queen. You're the sensible one."

"Come in, then," Martha said reluctantly, anger and frustration already metamorphosing into shame.

Tish came and sat on the bed. "You know what Mum's like," she said. "Now that she's vented it'll be all back to normal and pretend it never happened."

"That's exactly what we're doing though, isn't it?" Martha said. "Trying to put all of it in a box and carry on as though we don't still all remember a year in hell even if the rest of the world doesn't. But we can't, because it did happen." Tish put an arm around Martha's shoulder and Martha slumped, putting her head into the crook of her sister's arm. "Is it the same for you, Tish?" she mumbled into a mouthful of sweater. "Do you see UNIT as the enemy?"

"It's all just people," Tish said. "Mad, bad, sad, whatever. But good and brilliant and self-sacrificing, too. All just people," she repeated, patting Martha's back.

"It can't ever be the same, though, can it?" Martha said. "We've seen it now, how bad things can be."

"And we've got a second chance to make it better," Tish said. "How often does that happen? Isn't that what your new--"

Just then, Martha's phone beeped to announce the arrival of a text message. Martha wanted to ignore it, but Tish gently raised her back up and said, "See? Life does go on. You should see who that is."

Martha smiled wanly at her and wrestled with the skinniness of her pocket for the phone. When she saw the screen, she clutched it to her chest. But Tish prised it out of her hands without a second thought, only to stop dead on seeing the "Message from: Tom" on the screen.

"Martha!" she said. "I can't-- I mean, how long has this been going on?"

"I texted him to apologise for being rude. Because, you know, I was. What with you practically dragging me out of there."

"Don't you dare try and blame me," Tish said. "You said, after that party, that I should--"

"And he texted back," Martha cut across her. "And since then we've been texting, on and off. There's nothing wrong with people texting each other."

"Except when you watched one of them die but then they came back to life! I can't believe it." Tish shook her head. "I really can't."

"I thought you were supposed to be cheering me up," Martha said, "not starting a completely different argument."

"Well, I thought you realised what a bad idea this was." She waved the phone around to emphasise her point, and Martha took the opportunity to grab it back off her.

"It's ..." Martha tried to marshal her thoughts. She remembered something Jack had said, about taking your chances for happiness where you could. "Life's too short. To worry about that stuff."

"Well, you're a big girl, Martha," Tish said. "I can't stop you."

"You did in the pub."

"'Cos I thought you wanted me to! But if you've changed your mind ..."

"I don't know," Martha said. "I don't know what I want. But I do know that he's ... I know what he's capable of in a crisis."

Tish's mouth flapped a few times; she wasn't often lost for words, and Martha recognised it as her choosing very careful exactly what she was going to say next. "Martha, you met him just towards the end. He might not even know that stuff about himself. You don't want to go having expectations he can never live up to. Remember he's just a bloke."

Martha smiled. "The thing is, I think just a bloke might be exactly what I need."

Tish smiled back at her. Then she nodded at the mobile. "Well, go on then, what does it say?"

"I'm not reading it with you here!"

"Why, are you worried it might be too sappy? Or too raunchy?"

"No, it's just ... oh, just go. Please?"

"Oh, you're no fun," Tish mock-pouted. "All right, all right, I'll go."

As soon as Tish had closed the bedroom door, Martha hit the "Read message" button. She smiled even wider as Tom's words appeared on the tiny glowing screen:

"Look, this is stupid. So I'm just going to go for it. Do you want to go on a date?"

---

Chapter 5

Cardiff, 8th December 2008

Ianto put the coffee mug down next to Tosh and retreated, walking backwards so as to minimise any disturbance he might cause. She nodded a thank you without pausing in the rhythm of her typing. A few moments later, he saw her take a deep swig of the still scalding-hot drink, and then return to her work.

As he gently closed the door, still walking backwards as though he'd had an audience with the queen, he bumped into Jack. Literally.

Ianto startled as he pulled himself back up. He was acutely aware of the physicality of Jack's presence, and he thought for a moment that Jack might take the opportunity to make some lascivious remark, or, well, do something lascivious. But his lover's mood was sombre. "Is she all right?"

"She's doing what she needs to do."

"Burying herself in her work," Jack said. "It's not healthy."

"We all have our coping mechanisms," Ianto said curtly. Then, after a moment, "It hit her harder this time."

"Tommy the tommy," Jack said.

"Those sealed orders ..." Ianto marshalled his thoughts. "No, but you weren't around here then, were you? You'd been ..."

"... seconded to one of the more abstruse branches of the regular army by my 'superiors'," Jack finished. "Plenty of uses for a man who can't die in wartime."

"You know, it's funny," Ianto said. "There really ought to be a file about you, somewhere in the archives. But I've never come across one."

"And exactly how much time have you spent looking, Ianto Jones?"

Ianto wasn't about to answer that question, honestly or otherwise. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

Jack smiled, accepting Ianto's parry for now, at least. "Did you see what Tosh was working on?"

"Code," Ianto replied. "I really wouldn't like to say I knew anything for certain beyond that." Jack opened his mouth to say something, but Ianto continued. "Knowing Tosh, though, she's probably picked up one of those long-term projects we keep being prevented from making proper progress on by minor things like hostile time travellers and alien invasions. Given both Torchwood's organisational priorities and Tosh's personal ones, I'd say that business in the warehouse last month with the ... alternate Gwen's body."

"I thought that might be it," Jack said. "She asked me this morning if I was aware of any more Reaper sightings."

Just then, a loud "ah ha!" sounded from within the office Tosh had sequestered herself in. A few seconds later, she emerged, triumphantly clutching a printout. She seemed somewhat surprised to run into the two of them just outside her door.

"Something to report, Miss Sato?"

"Spying on me, Captain Harkness?"

"We're ... concerned for your well being," Jack said.

"How very sweet of you, I'm sure," Tosh said. "But look." She thrust her piece of paper into Jack's hand; Ianto craned his head round to see.

It appeared to be a diagram of some sort of device, crowded round with what Ianto knew just enough to know were complex mathematical expressions he didn't understand in the slightest. There was no scale on the diagram; Ianto had no idea whether it was a piece of microelectronics or something the size of a room.

"You remember the time we saw Gwen's body, from the parallel universe where the Master won?" Tosh said.

"Yes," Jack said, giving Ianto the subtlest of his wide-ranging repertoire of winks.

"It came through a gap in the fabric of space and time, a mismatch between overlapping quantum regions of space-time on the Planck scale. According to some of the more interesting theories -- the ones not ruled out by the very existence of some of our more exotic alien tech -- the universe is grainy on the smallest scales, a foam of constantly shifting quanta of excited gravitational fields, which simply are space-time."

"Loop quantum gravity," Jack nodded, in that infuriating I-learned-all-this-in-primary-school way he sometimes had. "A limited model, but with some useful applications. Including this, it seems. What is it, exactly?"

Tosh pushed her hair behind her ear, about as far as she would go towards being affronted right now. "These gaps in space-time -- whatever's causing them -- are like tiny flaws in the structure of a crystal. I think if we can build this and hook it into the Rift Manipulator, we can pinpoint the flaws and cast them into the Rift, which is already so chaotic and scrambled that it wouldn't make any practical difference."

"Tosh, you're a genius," Jack said. Tosh smiled slightly.

"We may not have to build one," Ianto said, pleased to have something useful to contribute. "At least not from scratch. I think I've seen something similar in storage. This is a sort of desktop-mounted thing, isn't it?" Tosh nodded. "There's definitely something with the same sort of nobbly bits--" He looked up and saw both Jack and Tosh looking at him amusedly. "Look, I don't know the technical terms but the ... geometry of the thing must be important, not just decorative, if it's this complicated."

"Oh, very," Tosh said. "You could say all-important."

"Right, well. I don't know if the thing we've got in the basement has exactly the same function, but it could probably be adapted."

"Ah, the benefits of teamwork," Jack said.

"It's useless, though," Tosh said. Now it was her turn to be on the receiving end of stares. "The flaw is like one end of a meta-wormhole, a connection within a whole network of wormholes that's been cut loose from its other end. It'll only work if we can cast them both into the Rift, or the network will still be fundamentally unbalanced."

"And this other end ..."

"Is probably fixed at the source of these emissions," Tosh said.

"Which we still don't know," Jack said.

"Which we still don't know," Tosh confirmed.

"How can we find out?" Ianto asked.

"All we can do for now is wait for more flaws to appear," Tosh said. "The more data we collect, the better fix we'll be able to get. With enough data points I could triangulate to arbitrary precision."

Ianto didn't want to bring the mood down still further, but he felt obliged to say, "But each of your data points represents someone coming face-to-face with their own dead body?"

"Not necessarily a dead body," Jack said. "The Master slaughtered billions, and he took steps to deal with Torchwood because he knew you were a threat to him. But he kept plenty of people alive as slaves. Not that meeting your living self would be much less disconcerting." He seemed to force himself to brighten up. "Still, this is definitely progress. Ianto, show Tosh whatever it is you've got hidden away downstairs. And Tosh, keep collecting that data."

---

Chapter 6

London, 20th December 2008

"What do you think of those?" Martha asked, pointing to one of the less eye-wateringly expensive pairs of earrings in the jewellers' window, simple silver studs with elegant little sapphires embedded in them -- not quite Tish's usual style, but the sort of thing she'd be able to wear to fancy PR dos for work.

"Yeah, they're nice," Tom said, in that man-voice that implied he'd have said that about any of them.

"I'm not sure," Martha said. "Maybe ... those ones."

Tom looked at them -- or rather, Martha suspected, the price tag. "For your sister?"

"You think that's too much to spend for a Christmas present, don't you?"

"I didn't say that," Tom said.

"You didn't need to."

"I think you think it's too much to spend, and you're projecting that opinion on to me," he said with a slight air of smugness. "I mean, really, it's none of my business; I don't know what's normal for your family, do I?"

"I think it might be guilt," Martha said, stepping backwards slightly to allow a small girl in a pink Puffa jacket to zoom past.

"Guilt?" Tom said.

"We had a bit of a row recently. About-- Well, never mind what it was about. Oh, god, see, I don't want you to get the wrong impression of my family, they're lovely. Really. But ... well, we've been through a lot lately and--"

They both stopped when a high-pitched wail began. Martha saw that the girl who'd just run past her had slipped and fallen on a patch of floor near the door of the shopping centre, where the water on a thousand shoppers' shoes throughout the day had built into a slick. She and Tom both started to head towards the girl, who was cradling her arm.

When she reached the girl, Martha crouched down and patted her lightly on the back. "Hey, hey, it's OK," she said. "Let me have a look; I'm a doctor. My name's Martha."

Tom coughed slightly as he crouched down as well. "I'm a doctor too," he said. "A real one. Martha hasn't actually graduated yet. I'm Tom, by the way."

"Want Doctor Martha," the girl said, holding her arm out for Martha to look at. Martha took it and turned it slightly so she could inspect the damage.

"Don't hold it like that!" Tom said. "It might be broken."

"I know how to hold a patient's arm," Martha said. "Anyway, look, she's just grazed it." She looked into the girl's eyes. "I know it hurts, but you're going to be absolutely fine." The girl nodded solemnly. "Get your mum to put some disinfectant on it when you get home, just in case." Martha looked up at the woman who had just appeared, who she took to be the mum in question. "She'll be fine. Just nip to the loos and give it a wash, and then whack some Dettol on it when you get home."

"Thank you, Doctor Martha," the girl sing-songed.

Tom said, "She's not ... oh, what's the use?"

"Yeah, thanks," said the woman, in a tone that expressed less in the way of undying gratitude than it did the desire to get her daughter away from a pair of nutters. She took her daughter's hand and led her away.

"She was cute," Martha said as they started walking back into the mall.

"You're just saying that because she fell for your lies."

"My good bedside manner, you mean."

"Hey, I've got a good bedside manner," Tom said. "Especially with kids. And kids with far worse problems than minor grazes, at that."

"Yeah, yeah, you're a paediatrician and that means you like children and that means you're the perfect man, blah blah blah."

Tom grinned. "You said it, not me." He bounced from one foot to another. "We're not about to accidentally end up having a conversation about ideal family sizes and hypothetical names for hypothetical children of both sexes far too early in our relationship or anything, are we?"

"No," said Martha.

"Well, that's a relief," said Tom. Then, with a wicked smile, "Reginald, if it's a boy, though."

"It's a very good thing," Martha said, tucking her arm into his, "that I know that you're joking."

"Maybe I'm not; maybe I'm using the jokiness as a way of being deniable about something I actually feel deeply about and you've just wounded me to the core."

"You are still joking, aren't you? It's not your dead grandfather's name or something and I've just mortally offended you?"

"Maybe you will never know," Tom said, affecting huffiness. Or at least she hoped it was affected.

"That deniable-joking tactic is a very girlie thing to do, though, really," Martha said with more certainty than she felt. "And you're not very girlie, so I think we're OK."

"So you use it, then, do you?"

"Are you saying I'm girlie?"

"You're a girl, you're allowed to be girlie," Tom said. "You probably use it to bring up bizarre sexual practices you want to try."

"So it's too soon to talk about children, but weird sex is A-OK?"

"Well, sex does come before children," Tom said. "I did manage to pick that little snippet of information up in medical school."

They'd come back to the jeweller's shop Martha had been looking at before the girl had fallen over. Martha looked again at the pairs of earrings she'd been considering; neither were quite right, really. "I don't think I'm going to manage to find anything for Tish today," she said. "Shall we head back to the Tube?"

"Actually, I, er, came in the car," Tom said. "I wanted to bring you your present and it's a bit big ... which now that I think about it means that it's completely stupid to expect you to lug it back on the Underground, so, um, do you want a lift home?"

"OK, then," Martha said, trying not to get too excited at the prospect of a large present. She'd given Tom his -- the distressingly safe option of a fancy tie -- when they'd met up at the coffee shop inside the arcade. She hoped his present wasn't going to show hers up too badly.

When they reached Tom's car and loaded their purchases into the boot, Martha's present was already sitting there. It came in a large box that was wrapped with a fastidiousness she wouldn't quite have expected from him

"You have to open it now," Tom said, picking it up easily and passing it to her. She thought he was just being strong, but when she gingerly took hold of it, it turned out to be fairly light.

"It's not Christmas for another--"

"Open it now," he said again.

Martha tried to unpick the sellotape carefully so that she could keep the paper, but quickly decided that an underground car park was hardly the best place for such an activity, so she just ripped it open and unfolded the flaps of the box. Inside was a potted plant -- it looked like some sort of orchid, deep purple flowers just starting to bud.

"Wow," Martha said. "That's beautiful. That's amazing, thank you." She leaned over and gave him a quick kiss, then another, longer one. "But I should warn you now that I kill things like this all the time."

"I'll make sure you don't," Tom said confidently. "Come on, pop it back in the boot for now and we'll get you home."

---

Chapter 7

London, 24th December 2008

The doorbell rang, but he didn't answer. Carol singers, inevitably. Just another of the many meaningless rituals of this time of year. A mish-mash of half-remembered offerings to fully forgotten gods.

His rituals, though, they were meaningful. He turned back to the table, the pentagram and the circle circumscribing it lit by nothing more than the black candles at its five points. He placed the bone-sculpted bowl in the centre of the arrangement, one of the larger pieces of wreckage from the Sycorax ship. That had become a Christmas-time ritual, too, alien spaceships taking the place of Santa's reindeer in the skies over London.

Torchwood had quickly scooped up the bowl -- one of the keys to the Sycorax's blood control -- but he'd been able to retrieve it in the confusion after Canary Wharf. All through that incident, he'd known it couldn't be a coincidence. Blood rituals and bone masks; the Faction might have died but the universe itself had not forgotten them, had recreated their methodology, albeit as a debased parody.

He opened the vial and poured carefully, the blood running into the bowl. The blood of someone who'd been on the Valiant; easy enough for him to obtain, but oh so valuable; blood that had been at the heart of the paradox, that had lived this time already and was living it again. As he poured it all out, he chanted, the words he'd painstakingly reconstructed and then rehearsed for so long, finally given meaning by his offering to the loa. Surely this would be sufficient to bring forth an alter-time state, to rip open the veil of this paltry reality and look at the magnificence that lay behind it.

He could feel it in his fingertips -- an electrical crackling, as though the air itself was about to tear itself apart, as though the deeper realities were about to burst forth.

But the crackling dissipated; a brief gust of impossible wind blew the candles out, and he was left in darkness. And then nothing.

It wasn't enough; it was never enough. Was it simply not enough blood? No, it wasn't about amounts; this was precision, not butchery. There must be something else he was missing, something more fundamental. But what could it be? What else did the loa need?

No matter. He would work it out, in time.

---

Chapter 8

London, December 31st 2008

Martha put the bags she was carrying down on the doorstep to ring the doorbell.

"Martha!" Tish shouted. "Careful with the streamers! It's all wet there."

Martha rolled her eyes as she picked up the bag containing them again.

The door opened and Tom wrapped Martha up in a hug, kissing her with a vigorousness that was endearing, but embarrassing in Tish's presence. She returned the kiss eagerly, but at the same time trying to push him away.

"Hey," Martha said. "So ..."

"So, er, you brought your sister, I see," Tom said, once he'd noticed Tish's presence. Martha was tempted to tell him he was cute when he blushed, but that would doubtless just make him blush more.

Tish tutted. "Martha said you told her to bring stuff to make the party go with a bang." She smiled. "So I told her to bring me."

---

An hour later, Martha was in the kitchen with Tom mixing up what Tom insisted was "fruit punch", despite the fact that the only fruit-related components were liqueurs. Tish was transforming the rest of Tom's into what she called "the party zone".

"You don't mind about Tish, do you? She does do this sort of thing professionally. I mean, as part of her job, she's very high-powered and scary, really. You don't mind her--"

"Coming and doing almost all the work?" Tom finished for her. "No, no, funnily enough I don't mind at all. I'm not very good at, y'know, all the host business. But Alice insisted it was my turn, so ..."

"It's just, I thought-- You mustn't blame her. Tish. For that time at the pub. She was ... Well, I wasn't sure about ..." There were so many things she could have said, and yet couldn't. "About whether I was ready for a relationship. So she was doing what she thought I wanted her to."

"It's OK, really," Tom said. Martha could tell there were things he wanted to ask, but didn't. "So, you sounded in your texts like you enjoyed Christmas."

"Yeah, yeah, it was nice. Relaxing. And I think it's the nicest I've seen my mum and dad be to each other since ..."

"Since they broke up?"

"Oh, since way before they broke up," Martha said. "You should have seen some of the fights they had, those last couple of years. Anyway, what about you, how were your parents? "

"They were good, yeah," Tom said. "My aunt came over as well."

"Is that your mum's sister or your dad's?"

"Mum's," Tom said. "All my aunts and uncles are on my mum's side; Dad was an only child. I think he always wanted more than one kid, but Mum knew what it was like having so many. And she ended up winning."

"Is that what usually happens?"

"Pretty much," Tom said, as he finally added a non-alcoholic component to the drink in the form of a single carton of orange juice. He stirred it round a few times and then ladled out a small amount which he offered to Martha to test.

Martha sipped from it, then had a minor coughing fit in response to the strength of the concoction. She nodded approval. "Did your dad like his present?" Much of their shopping trip had been occupied with finding exactly the right vinyl LP.

"Yeah," Tom said, but there was a note of uncertainty in his voice. Then he repeated "Yeah", more emphatically.

Just then, Tish swished into the room. "Need an extension lead," she said.

"There should be one in--" He broke off; obviously the instructions were too complicated. "You know what, I'll show you."

---

Martha landed on the sofa next to Tom. "Gimme your phone," she said.

"Huh?" Tom said blearily.

He was somewhat the worse for wear for drink, but then so was Martha, which was why she needed the phone in the first place: she'd forget the date Julia had just told her for the wedding if she didn't text it to herself, which obviously meant she needed to use another phone to do so. It all made sense in her head, but her attempt to explain it to Tom didn't feel terribly coherent.

Somehow, though, Tom knew what she meant. As he handed over his mobile, he said, "But your phone has a caled-- a can-- a date thing."

"I don't know how to work it at the best of times," Martha said. "And this isn't exactly the best of times."

"You're drunk," Tom said. It was a sort of happy accusation.

"Not as drunk as you," Martha said, opening up Tom's text message writing window and carefully tapping in "August 22nd".

"It is the best of times, though," Tom went on. "'Cos I've got you." And without warning he wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug and kissed her on the cheek. Martha got a gust of beer breath.

"Chee-sy," she said as she hit "send".

Tom seemed to sober up slightly. "Seriously, though, I generally hate New Year. All that pressure to find someone to snog at midnight. But now that I've got someone to snog at midnight, it suddenly seems like a lovely tradition."

"You're making a few assumptions here, aren't you?"

"Oh, are you not going to kiss me?" Tom said, slumping back into the sofa. "That's a pity."

"I didn't say that either," Martha said.

"You're being confusing," Tom accused.

"Well, that's my feminine prerogative," Martha said as she snuggled up closer to him, though it seemed to come out as "femana progtive".

"Look, Martha, there's something I've got to tell you."

"You're gay," Martha said. "You've got a love child you have to pay maintenance cheques to every month. You're secretly the grandson of Grand Duchess Anastasia, who did escape from Ekaterinburg after all."

Just then, the rest of the partygoers started to cluster around the TV, which was showing the celebrations in Trafalgar Square.

"Er, it's much less exciting than any of those," Tom said. "I signed up for MSF, oh, ages ago now. I didn't really think much would come of it; I mean, I had a bit of experience from my gap year--"

Martha barked out a short laugh.

"What?"

"Nothing, no," Martha said. "Just ... yeah, gap year experience. Always helpful."

"But I didn't ... well, y'know." Tom had to speak up as the crowd around the TV began counting down from ten. "Anyway, I got the letter yesterday, they're calling me up. It's not as long as most placements, just a couple of months to help get an immunisation programme started in Chad."

"Three!" the crowd of people around them shouted.

Martha bit her lip. "You don't mind, do you?" Tom said.

"Two!"

"I mean, we've only just--" Tom went on.

"One!"

"Mind?" Martha said. "I think it makes you a bloody hero."

"Happy New Year!"

Martha kissed Tom then, but it was nothing to do with the celebrations.

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Go to Part Two