taxonomites | 005: Everything Changes [Location: Amy and the Doctor's House]

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005: Everything Changes [Location: Amy and the Doctor's House]

The house was new and unused and, although Time Lords didn't need much sleep, the Doctor had selected a bedroom at random. It was that bedroom that Martha Jones - fully dressed and sprawled out on bed that she'd never seen in her life - woke up in, but, really, the fact that she'd been taken from her flat was the least of her worries.

Her chest hurt.

No. It didn't hurt, as such, but the sensation of two hearts beating in one chest was enough to unsettle someone who'd grown up with one.

Slowly, tentatively, she put a hand on her chest and got to her feet.

Was this how the Doctor felt every day? She could feel time - everything that had been and could be and would be and ...

"Oh my god," she breathed, dropping her hand back to her side and stumbling over to a mirror on the far side of the room. She didn't just feel like the Doctor. She was the Doctor! She was in his body.

Although she couldn't begin to imagine what a person hoped to gain from switching their bodies, Martha wouldn't put anything past the hamsters. Or past the Master, for that matter. As far as they were concerned, their imprisonment was just a great big game.

She needed to find the Doctor.

There was no sign of the tablet on the bedside table - knowing him, he'd left it in the kitchen while making himself a midnight cup of tea - so she had no choice but to head off down the hallway.

"Amy?" she called, "Amy, are you here?"

The Doctor could be a difficult man to find. It'd be a lot easier if she had help from someone they both trusted.

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Hearing her name, Amy poked her head out of the bathroom door, toothbrush still in her mouth. "Hmm?" she asked, mouth full of toothpaste. She had obviously just gotten up, as she was still in her nightie and robe, slippers on her feet, and her hair was tangled.

Her relief - and the bright, genuine smile that accompanied it - was palpable.

"Amy? God, I'm so glad to see you!"

And, because it really was Amy, Martha allowed herself to entertain the possibility that the body swap was an isolated incident. Maybe they were the only ones to be affected by it?

"It's Martha," she explained, "I don't know what happened, but I just woke up in this body this morning. It's got to be a glitch."

Amy stopped brushing, her eyebrows lifting in surprise. "Wah? Woht oo een?" The "What you mean?" didn't quite come out as intended. She shook her head, went back into the bathroom, and spat out the toothpaste. After a quick rinse with water, she returned.

"Sorry, run that by me again. A glitch? Like, something weird happens to our bodies?"

"Exactly. Sometimes the hamsters like to mess around with our bodies to see what we do."

Their captors had locked them up like rats in a cage and, as sickening as it was, the experiments were to be expected.

"They've never swapped our bodies before," she added, "They must be running out of ideas."

"So you're Martha, in the Doctor's body." She paused, taking in this info, then a smile tugged at the corner of her lips.

"Seen him in the buff yet?"

"What? No!"

The suggestion left her looking flustered and embarrassed. More than that, it forced her to think about the practicalities of their situation.

"If he's got my body, that means ... oh my god. This is just ridiculous. There has to be a way to reverse it."

She couldn't decide if having a stranger in her body would have been better or worse. On one hand, Martha trusted the Doctor implicitly. On the other hand, it was the Doctor. The man who she'd fallen in love with while they were travelling the stars. It'd be a long time before she managed to look him in the eye again.

She couldn't help but snicker at the Doctor's, no, at Martha's expression coming through the Doctor's features. But her mirth wavered as both she and Martha realized the Doctor would be able to see all of Martha.

"Don't worry; these glitches? They don't last long, right?"

"It depends on the glitch."

She wasn't an expert, but she knew that Fred had done a lot of research into the subject and that there didn't seem to be much of a pattern to them.

"I'm lucky, really," she said, in a half hearted attempt to reassure herself, "At least I can trust the Doctor."

If she repeated that enough, she'd start to forget the embarrassment that she already felt.

"Oo, I see. Well, I suppose the thing to do would be to find him and try to brainstorm a solution." She wasn't sure if the Doctor's impressive brain could actually reverse a glitch, but it was worth a try.

She could just imagine the Doctor now, rifling through Martha's drawers, panties flying through the air as he looked for something suitable to wear. He'd probably be devastated when he discovered she owned no bow ties.

Martha seemed to have reached the same conclusion. She gave Amy a smile that was very similar to the amused grin she'd received earlier.

"He's going to make me wear a bow tie, isn't he?"

"As soon as he finds a hatch to give him one, yes." She laughed softly.

"Why don't you call him up and see if he's freaking out? I'm going to get dressed."

It was certainly an interesting mental image and Martha shook her head - the Doctor's head - in amusement and exasperation.

"I will." She felt a lot calmer now. Calm enough to track the Doctor down. "Where's the kitchen?"

"Down the stairs, turn down the hall, and it's at the back of the house." She started to move towards her room, but stopped. "Oh, but mind the teacups on the floor. He was doing an experiment last night."

"... tea cups?"

Martha wanted to ask for an explanation, but it wasn't particularly important. She'd find out what he'd been doing when she had less pressing concerns to deal with.

"Never mind," she said, setting off in the right direction, "Thanks for your help."

"No problem," she said, waving it away. She headed for her bedroom, wondering just what was going to happen when Martha had to go to the bathroom.

That was one of the many things that Martha was determinedly not thinking about.

Amy went and changed, and while she did, she thought about how lucky she was not to be involved in this glitch. She wondered how widespread it was, and how long it was going to last.

Once dressed, she came back out of her room and headed down the stairs, guessing Martha was in the kitchen.

By the time Amy made her way into the kitchen, Martha had hatched a comfortable pair of jeans and a jumper to temporarily replace the Doctor's suit. (She had to live in the body for the foreseeable future, after all.) Her tablet sat on the counter and, while she waited for the Doctor to respond to her post, she'd started to clear up the tea cups that littered the floor.

What was taking him so long?

Amy skipped into the kitchen, thoroughly amused at the situation. If she were in Martha's shoes, she wouldn't be so keen, but this glitch seemed harmless enough and it was providing quality entertainment.

"Jeans! The Doctor looks great in jeans. And no bow tie! Ah, it figures the only way I'd see him without it is when he's not actually him."

"I had to hatch them," she confessed, allowing herself to share in Amy's mirth. Ranting and raging wouldn't go any good. She had to put up with this until the hamsters decided to switch them back and, since it appeared to be a pretty harmless sort of glitch, going with the flow would be much easier than fighting against the tide. "He had a wardrobe full of tweed jackets."

"Oh, I know!" Amy said, picking up a few stray teacups and bringing them over to the sink. "I wish I could throw them all in the bin, but he'd just hatch more." She shook her head, and peered out the window.

"Have you heard anything about how widespread this glitch is? I mean, is it like, one in five people get glitched, or every other person?"

"Did you see the last suit he used to wear?" she asked, depositing a few more teacups into the sink. "It wasn't too bad. The pinstripes actually suited him."

At the time, she'd probably paid far too much attention to that.

"I don't know," she added, honestly. "Sometimes the glitches affect the whole city. Sometimes it's just a handful of people."

After a tram ride that seemed far too long, the Doctor spotted the familiar shape of the house he and Amy had decided on and grinned. "There!"

The only thing that stopped him from running off in that direction there and then was the fact the tram was still moving, but the moment it came to a stop, he reached back to grab Martha's hand and started off. Just like old times, he reflected absently.

Well, if old time had involved him being in the Master's body, that was.

"Not far now!" he said, glancing back to smile at his friend and previous companion. "Hopefully we can still get there in time before anything happens."

It was about time. If the Master had to remain trapped in this tram car for any longer with the Doctor being his infuriatingly evasive self, he was fairly sure he'd have given himself a bloody nose.

But this-- this was a violation he couldn't bear. Martha's hand twitched in the Doctor's grip convulsively before the Master was able to control it. He wanted more than anything to wrench it away, but instead he smiled back tightly and tried to make Martha's miserable human body keep pace with the Doctor's ridiculously long strides. He fervently hoped he wouldn't wake with some sort of hip strain when this was all over.

"Don't worry, Doctor," he said with much more gusto than he felt. "We'll stop him!"

"Well, hopefully he hasn't started anything yet. But we can't find out that until we get there and... and we'll figure it out when we get there!"

Around the corner, down to the end of the block and there was the house they'd chosen. The Doctor hurried up to the door and raised his hand to knock--

And stopped.

"Wait, what if he answers?" he dithered. "He'll probably be pretending to be me or something. I know, why don't you knock, and I'll sort of keep out of sight. If Amy answers, that's good, but if he-- I mean, I do-- then... we'll have to think of something. Maybe I can sneak in around the back? No, wait. He'll probably be expecting me, so it might seem odd if you show up for no reason..."

The Master, currently trying to catch Martha's breath again (how did these humans do it? How did they keep up with him with such inefficient bodies?), rolled her eyes as the Doctor rambled.

"Oh, for R-- god's sake, Doctor!" he amended, catching his slip just in time. "Get a grip!" And the Master reached Martha's hand out ahead of his own body to knock firmly on the door. Four knocks... and then, darting a quick glance at the Doctor, he hastily added a fifth.

As soon as she heard the knock at the door, Martha - still trying to get used to the strange Time Lord body she'd found herself in - sprinted down the stairs to answer it. It had to be the Doctor. Who else would be turning up at the door - at this door - in the middle of a crisis?

"It's about time you got here," she said as she pulled open the door, "Half the city's woken up in the wrong body ..."

And then she caught sight of the two people at the door. Seeing her own body - her body - was surreal enough, but the all too familiar figure behind it that made her insides freeze.

"Oh my god!" She'd only half opened the door and did her best to block the rest of it with the Doctor's body. "Saxon?"

Even now, she had the presence of mind to remember not to call him 'Master'. The rest of her response was instinctive, even if a rational part of her knew that it probably wasn't him. Not at the moment.

Amy heard the knock on the door and turned her head in time to see the Doctor's lanky body go running from the kitchen.

"Wait for me!" she called, following after her. But the Doctor always had been a fast runner, and Martha used it to her full advantage as Amy fell behind.

Once she made it to the door, completely winded from the burst of energy, she found that Martha was blocking the way.

"Wha? Is it him?" she asked, trying to catch her breath. "Who's Saxon?"

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005: Everything Changes [Location: Amy and the Doctor's House]

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[Turning up some time later in the day]

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