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Who: Martha Jones and Severus Snape (Jack Jones)
What: Running into the wife when she doesn't remember who he is. Yay angst.
Where: The inn.
When: TBD.
Notes: Martha's going to remember... eventually.
Warnings: Angst.

There were some things that a person got used to quicker than others, and given the travelling Martha'd done in time, adjusting to a new place was something that she'd had a leg up on. The fact that she'd found an organization like Torchwood (where she had been planning on going immediately after she resigned from UNIT) had helped with the adjustment without a doubt.

Being employed, being a doctor, was a brilliant thing and she was happy with having gainful employment. Her free time at the inn was coming and end, and despite the fact that Martha had been spending some time cottage hunting, she wasn't finding anything. Places just didn't seem proper, for reasons that she couldn't quite press her finger on. It was like there was a place she was picturing in her head and nothing else could hold up.

Carrying a box through the hallways, Martha had a pleased smile on her face. She'd find a place soon, and then she'd move and then she'd worry about going home. There was a large and person-shaped hole that she was assuming was Tom. After all, who else could it have been. Clothing shopping had been done, so she felt a bit odd in the black jacket, but at least the style was one that was familiar.

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"Oh, we met a little on the networks, did we not..."

But Xenophilius is saying this while he configures what Severus just said, pale eyebrows going up as slightly cross-eyed gaze slants towards Martha. "So you did find someone you know," he says, with conspirational warmth for the pair of them as opposed to tripping over little details like the potions professor from school marrying a Muggle in the time it took for him to travel dimensions in three years.

The why of that seems less immediately concerning than the fact of it itself, and someone who sews together stories, both true and not, can put the pieces in place just fine.

Martha hadn't been expecting him to come out with it, at all. Her hands stilled for a moment, and her eyes went wide when he actually called her Snape-Jones. While it hadn't been her name for very long, it still made her smile to hear him say it, even though it was a little one. One side of her lip twisted upwards, half a smile just for him. After all, she was trying to be stealthy.

"I did." Martha said, looking over her shoulder with a smile as the dittany did it's job. "I'm incredibly lucky that way." She couldn't keep the warmth from her voice, and she then looked back to the wound. It was mostly healed, and Martha frowned for a moment. "I need to get a proper bandage from my room. I'm afraid this will leave a scar." There was guilt in her tone that she didn't bother to make the effort to hide.

"Thank you, Xenophilius. I mean it. I don't know what I would have done if you didn't have this."

When she smiled at him, Severus cocked an eyebrow at her as though challenging her to question his change of heart. Defiance was a good default for situations like this. With that, he turned his attention to monitoring her use of dittany and trying not to wince.

He wasn't going to say another word on the matter; at Xenophilius's comment, he simply inclined his head and let Martha do the talking. Thankfully, the other man seemed to be displaying a rare sense of decorum - one not possessed by most journalists, in Snape's experience. Next time, however, he would contact Claire Bennet to do the healing. Once he had ascertained that he could trust her, that was. Not that he wanted a 'next time' - after all, the circumstances were rather unique.

Severus passed a hand over the wound, then flexed his fingers as though ensuring they would work properly. The skin felt too tight and raw, but it was no longer a gaping wound.

"I suppose I owe you a good deal," he said finally, glancing at the other man. It wasn't a question - he might have been noting that he had a bar tab to pay. Xenophilius was not only protecting his identity now, but Martha's, as well. Not to mention answering hasty, somewhat panicked communications with dittany. Severus would have to pay this particular piper eventually.

Pale eyebrows raise again at the lavish thanks, as if not quite understanding the concept that not only would someone be slow to act, they might not act at all. "It's quite alright," he assures, mildly, looking back towards Severus; and understanding sets in there, about the weight of the secrets being held as well as the dittany proved. "I suppose," he agrees, unassuming. "If you're the kind of person to add things up in that way."

Xeno isn't, necessarily, being highly unpolitical and generally kind enough, but he that's as much protest as he can muster. Having allies, friends, people who owe things, is never a terrible possession in this world.

"I'll get along, then, if you like. If you've much to catch up on."

Martha definitely wasn't, and she was hoping that her early assumptions about Xeno were going to prove to be right. She didn't want him to be the one to sell them out--she didn't want anyone to sell them out, really. Martha just wanted to hold her husband and have him hold her and tell one another that the two of them were going to be just fine, even with everything else.

Especially with everything else.

"Thank you," Martha said again when it came to his offer of leaving them alone to catch up on things. They needed too. "I mean it, thanks."

Severus stood as the other man spoke, taking care not to jostle Martha, took up his wand, and moved to retrieve his coat from the floor. He would clearly have to find some way to repair the shirt he wore, but the blood on the coat would come out easily, he supposed.

He was quite prepared to allow Xenophilius to leave without another word said on the matter; however, Martha's thanks drew his attention away from the fabric, and he remembered that somewhere along the line, he had learned manners. Likely when Martha told him he wasn't very nurselike. Not the best of manners, but enough that he now gave Lovegood a curt nod - more thanks than most would receive from him.

Severus was, after all, the kind of person to add things up in 'that way' - and he might have thought whatever favor owed would be thanks enough.

It isn't often that Xeno can read a room and leave when it's appropriate. But in this one rather unique case, he can.

Something about marriage he can relate to.

"Oh, I believe you," he assures Martha, and, with a last flash of a smile to the professor, he flits his way out of the library with that sort of surprisingly light footed way of his, disappearing beyond the shelves and out into the rest of the Inn. Maybe he'll say hello to those there while he's here.

As soon as Lovegood had left, Martha had let out a sigh of relief. Now that the tension was starting to lessen a bit, she could feel the muscles in her back begin to unknit, and slowly became aware of the fact that she'd been carrying the tension there for a long time. Longer than since when he'd grabbed her in the hallway. At the moment a part of her was wondering if it'd been lingering there for the two weeks that her sleep had been bad and that she'd felt like a part of her was missing.

And now here he was with a fresh scar that was her fault, along with damage to his foot that she couldn't heal. Well, yet. Maybe the facility at Hellsing would have something that would permanently remove his limp. One less thing for her to worry about him here. One less disadvantage that he would have if the Lestranges happened to find him.

As if to reassure herself that he was here and whole and not some sort of fevered hallucination, Martha stroked her hand against his cheek. Her thumb moved in a slow circle, following the able to his nose and then back again. She was thinking now, wondering how long those charms took to apply, if she was going to be living with that image of Hix rather than her beloved Sev.

She wanted out of this library with the smell of blood. If there was one good thing it was that magic didn't have DNA testing, so hopefully the crimson that had seeped into the rug wouldn't give them away. "Can you apparate us to my room or would you rather walk?" Her arm tucked under his shoulder, ready to bare his weight if it needed baring.

Severus stared for a long while at the place where Lovegood had been; until now, it had been easy to disregard all thought of the past few days. He could focus on the wound in his arm and the pain in his foot and not allow his mind to stray to those first eight hours in the arrival room, the lapse in will to attempt an escape. To do so much as stand up.

Losing Lily had been horrifying. A living nightmare, to know he had been instrumental in the death of someone he had loved since he was a child. He had wished himself dead, and might have followed through on that impulse had Dumbledore not stepped in and given him a reason to continue, no matter how distasteful. And, as he had so often been told (and come to realize, himself) Lily had never been his.

Martha had. Whereas he never knew what might have been with Lily, Severus knew precisely what had been lost when he found himself wrenched from the Barge. When he attempted to contact her using the two-way mirror and found that he had both mirrors in his pockets. There would be no more lazy mornings, no more wagers or robes or drinking games. None of her smiles. He would never again be able to bear the scent of lemon and honey. No more towels on the floor or shoes in bed or whispered plans for the future in the darkness of their room. No more Martha. She might as well be dead, for all that he could reach her, and for eight hours in the arrival room, he had been unable to process any of it at all. It had been not only prudent, but easier to pretend to be someone else. Even if the name 'Jack' inspired a slew of painful memories, it was less painful to be him than Severus Snape.

Over the next few days, it had been as though the oxygen was slowly being sucked from the world. He felt both more caustic and hateful, and more indifferent. The tightness in his chest had become unbearable. And then she had passed him in the hall, giving him a flicker of hope. But she hadn't known him and his heart had broken all over again, and again when she mistook him for the Doctor.

He didn't feel her hand on his cheek; he didn't come out of his reverie until she tucked her arm under his shoulder in an attempt to steady him. Quite suddenly, he grasped her, pulling her rather forcefully into an embrace. He didn't dare close his eyes at first, but clung to her as he had only once before: as though she was his last lifeline.

"Sev," Martha's voice was soft when he grabbed her like that, and she wrapped her arms around him, just pressing as plush to him as she could. "I'm here. I'm here and I'm not going anywhere." Soft words of reassurance, as if she could chase the shadows and the specters of loss away from his mind. She was reminded now of all the times where they'd fought, of how she could almost always calm him by being there, by pressing her hand to his cheek and his lips to hers, or by sitting on his lap and just being there. A life line, a connection, and a promise that she wouldn't break. Don't you know how much I love you? Don't you know for how long I have?

Maybe it was harder for him to believe now that she had forgotten. A part of her was wondering if it was perhaps out of some sort of trauma that she hadn't remembered--that mentally she'd blocked it out. Or something had blocked it out. They'd both come here directly from the Barge; how could they be stolen without the Admiral's permission? He could make it so people were alive, so people could have second chances! How the hell could he have allowed this to happen without his consent.

"Always, Severus Snape." Martha spoke the words in the same tone that she'd used at their wedding, warm, bright, and filled with love. They would have always even if she had to cross hell and back to make certain that they did it. Whatever happened, whatever else anyone tried, Martha Snape-Jones wasn't going to allow anyone to do this to them again. "Always."

As though he had resigned himself to a death as was now presented with a very real, living, breathing person instead of a corpse, he couldn't believe it. Not even his hands on her shoulders and back could convince him fully that she was here and real and saying words he had wanted so badly to hear. It didn't seem out of the realm of possibility that he had suffered a breakdown and was imagining all of this - and worse, he didn't care if he was. If he had lost his mind and Martha was an hallucination, it was better than being sane without her.

Severus tightened his hold on her and buried his face in her neck, breathing her in, listening to her reassurances. He didn't give even a moment's consideration to how they had come to be here; all that mattered was that he had her. Other concerns could come later.

"I thought I had lost you," he managed weakly. He had said it already, but for some reason - inexplicable, incomprehensible, illogical as it may have been - it needed to be repeated. He needed her to understand that there was more to those words than simply what lay at the surface. He had told her so often what she was to him - his wife, his love, his redemption, his paradise - that surely she would understand how devastating it had been. But more to the point, it was an explanation for his behavior in the hall. Fear and desperation had driven him to act violently. Underlying all of the need for her to understand his panic was the need for forgiveness. Nearly losing her had caused him to do do her harm.

"You'll never lose me." She said quickly, and her voice was entirely certain. It had a note of unshakable belief, of complete undeniably. Once upon a time, in a world that was bleeding radiation and violence and blood, the faith in that voice had kept humanity going. The faith in that voice had united the entire human race into one field, one word, and it had saved everyone. Somewhere down the line, that unshakable faith that Martha Jones had in the Doctor had been altered, it'd been transfered, and it had been given to someone else entirely. Now Martha Jones, Martha Snape-Jones had faith in him and faith in this.

But she did know that he thought he'd lost her. It had been apparent to her with the way that he'd gripped her arm, the way that he'd been so angry. A million lifetimes ago, Martha had accused of him of lashing out, of being like this when he was hurt or scared. He could act like a wounded animal and snap. Martha knew that this had been that. That what had happened was that. And she'd forgave him as soon as she'd had those memories jammed into her brain.

"Sev," she said quickly, the nickname becoming second nature even in the few weeks that she'd been using it. "I'll always find you. I don't care how I have to do it, but I'll always find you. Please believe in me." And please don't fall so far into madness that I lose you. The thought was left unspoken for the moment, but she gripped him tighter, and pressed her lips to his chin, tasting him, feeling the warmth and the breath and his heart pumping. He hadn't done it, thank god, but she couldn't let there be a next time. Or the possibility of a next time happen.

He felt as though he had missed a step in the darkness - that sudden moment of instinctual panic, the way the stomach drops when your foot isn't planted in just the right way, or there isn't a stair where one is expected. Please believe in me.

He hadn't. He had completely lost faith in her, in spite of the fact that she had searched for the Doctor for four months even with the knowledge that he was dead. In spite of the year she had walked the Earth. Why had he thought she wouldn't do such a thing for her husband? A few days and he had begun to mourn her; a few more and he would have given up entirely, and she had been here the entire time. Hadn't he told her she gave him hope? Had he meant it only so long as their relationship was absolute, her presence tangible? When she walked out of a room, did hope go with her? It was like a subtle knife through the ribs.

"Forgive me."

"Of course, Severus. You don't even need to ask." She leaned over and kissed him softly, pressing her forehead to his for a moment, just holding him there. With her eyes closed and her arms around him, Martha could smell the sharp herbalness of him below the blood, and she realized that she'd been smelling it in phantom places since she'd been here.

Or maybe since he had been here.

"You're always forgiven. For everything." Her hand cupped his face when she pulled away a bit. "Can you apparate us back to your room? Or mine? I want to get this blood off you and have a look at your foot." And just be near him and touching him. Right now she just wanted to keep touching him, not letting him go.

Always forgiven. It should have worried him that she was so willing to overlook his errors, but instead, he felt a surge of sheer relief. She was patient and accepting and he wouldn't have her otherwise. She wouldn't be here with him now. When she moved to pull away, his arms tensed slightly against the action. He told himself he was being absurd, that she wouldn't vanish if he let her go, but what if?

He slowly loosened his hold, however, and gave her a nod. So long as she doesn't leap on his foot or scream in his ear again, he should be quite capable of taking them directly to his room. Without waiting for further prompting, he took her elbow, a crack resounding in the library with their departure.

His own room in the Inn was almost untouched. The bed hadn't been slept in; a chair stood by the window. There was barely any evidence that someone occupied it.

As soon as they were in his room, Martha took a deep breath. She suspected that he would have done some sort of magical protection here, if things were normal. Of course, at the moment, he was anything but normal, and rational. They'd see to it later. Quickly her hands were at his sides, and then they moved to his chest starting to undo buttons quickly. She needed to see that he was mostly whole and alright. She wanted to feel his heart beating against her hand with a steady pulse, and she wanted to feel his chest rise and fall with each breath.

Looking around his room, and seeing the bed, Martha turned back and looked at his face, and then she touched his cheek once more. How many days had he been here? How long since he'd slept? Martha took a deep breath and attempted to remember the last time she'd slept with him, and had he been able to sleep. It struck her then, that she might have come from a different time than he had, considering how they'd arrived apart.

But that was a question that she couldn't ask. The last thing she wanted was to go back to how things had been with Sirius's arrival. They'd just been starting to get back to normal and at the moment, they couldn't handle that cold awkwardness with one another. She couldn't handle it. "Let's get this shirt off you, yeah?"

His first reaction to her attempt to unbutton his shirt and her glance at the bed was a twitching of his hands, as though he wanted to stop her; he wasn't rational at the moment, and thus he misread the situation. It all was becoming something of a haze to him - as though focusing all his attention on the situation in the library had sapped him of energy and focus. She was unbuttoning his shirt, touching his cheek, giving him directions.

His hands did move then, taking her weakly by the wrists in an effort to stop her from following through with what he interpreted as sexual advances. It had never been further from his mind; he registered some surprise at that - that it was the last thing he wanted to do right now - but surprise notwithstanding, he held her off and took a step back. "Don't, Martha."

It only occurred to him once the words were out of his mouth that she might simply be trying to help him off with his shirt because it was soaked with his blood.

Martha's mouth dropped open when he took her by the wrists and she just blinked at him for a moment, completely shocked by the way he was responding. His step back was mirrored a bit, and she just watched him. Sex was the farthest thing from her mind at the moment. With everything that had just happened, it seemed like a bad idea and one that she couldn't grasp. She was still in doctoring mode.

"Sev," she said quickly. "I just wanted to get the blood off." Feeling uncertain and worried, Martha took a step closer to him, and then she gestured to his arm. "And I want to get a bit of a plaster on that, just in case." She didn't want him to start bleeding again, that would only make things worse, really.

"It's going to be okay. We're going to be alright." She took another step and nodded to him before she touched his cheek, cupping it and trying to reassure him. "I'm not going anywhere."

Blood. Of course. He lowered his hands, then mechanically set to work on the remaining buttons. It wasn't often he liked to relinquish control, but for once - this once - it was a relief to simply do as he was told, knowing she wanted nothing from him. After days spent thinking far too much, feeling far too much, he had what he wanted, she was here, she was giving him instructions. He could simply...disengage. Empty himself entirely of thought. It was the greatest and simplest display of trust, to do nothing more than exist and obey.

It was also cowardice; he was recoiling from the emotional strain. I thought I'd lost you was circling his mind again and again like a broken record. He wanted not to think. Later (if she stayed the night, oh god, he hoped she would stay, he wasn't certain she would, that she wanted to share his bed) he would cling to her, fighting involuntary shivers and the urge to sleep in case she might vanish the moment his eyes closed. Later, he would sleep, only to awaken with a start, soaked in cold sweat and experiencing very real terror, but for now he was able to avoid it. Shirt off. Let her look at the wounds. Ignore everything else.

Once he had managed to shrug out of the shirt, he held it as though it was something entirely foreign, balled up and stained as it was. He chanced a look at her, reassuring himself that she was as good as her word. She wasn't leaving.

As he took off the shirt, Martha walked a way for a moment, heading into the bathroom. She left the door open, and kept herself in sight as she wet two washcloths. Returning, Martha took the shirt and just tossed it on the floor. They would fix it, or they wouldn't but it would be dealt with later. Everything could wait. There were things to fix that were much more important that shirts or even scars.

With the dripping cloths in one hand, Martha pressed her other against his cheek. She was worried, and it showed, and her voice had that same calm and caring tone despite the emotion that was churning behind her eyes. "Come sit down on the bed, yeah? Too tall for me to do this properly too." Right now, Martha was attempting to stop the spiraling that she'd seen him hover on before. In the end, he'd beaten it off by having to care for her, but now it was so much worse without the net of the death toll to catch them.

"Do you have any jim jams here?" There was not even the slightest question in her mind about her leaving. She couldn't leave him. They slept better around one another in the best of times, nevermind when he was so obviously conflicted. Right now, nothing would force her to leave his side. Nothing.

Without further argument, Severus seated himself on the edge of the bed, leaned forward and rested his arms on his knees. If he hadn't been so intent on keeping an eye on her, he might have rested his head in his hands. Irrationally, pointlessly, he thought about making some comment regarding her height. She was so small. Funny how such a small thing could leave such a large hole in the world when she was gone.

She had asked him something. Though his eyes were on her, they had taken on a glazed look as he considered her height. It took him a moment to focus and process the question; he finally shook his head and made some noise in the negative. No sleepwear. Unnecessary, as he hadn't been sleeping.

But what an odd question to ask. Did he need them? Did she? "Why?"

Martha perched on the edge of the bed next to him, half-turned towards him and the arm where the blood had been. Without bothering to warn or to ask, Martha gently moved the cloth over his arm, removing the blood that had started to dry into tacky streaks where it had flowed so freely. Her hands were remarkably steady for how much she felt like she was shaking inside, and at the moment Martha could only thank her lucky stars that she had those doctoring reflexes worked out so she could do this.

The question caught her by surprise, and her hand stilled for a moment before she looked up at him. "Because we need something to sleep in, and I didn't want to go back to my room." The we hadn't been at all empathized, because Martha had thought it to be entirely self-evident. Of course she would stay with him, and had decided that even leaving for the short time right now would be horrible.

"I'm sure you haven't slept since you've been here, and you definitely need to do it, my love. The sooner the better and for as long as you can manage."

For a moment, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to exist within the feel of her hands and the wet cloth on his arm. He should wash; he should clean himself up, snap out of it, but he didn't want to. He wanted to be here with her and not think.

With her explanation in mind, he managed the thin ghost of a smile. We need something to sleep in. She wanted the pajama top for herself, as she so often did, and it would reach to her knees and need to be turned up at the wrists. She would wear it better than he did. Funny, it could have been just yesterday that he saw her dressed that way, the memory was so vivid. If this was an hallucination, it was an elaborate one, indeed.

He straightened and reached out with his uninjured hand, touching her knee the way he might take her elbow or place it on the small of her back: chaste, but familiar. When he spoke, his tone was vague and entirely too conversational for the situation. "Have you slept?"

A terrible thought struck him, surfacing through the haze, and panic reared in him, full and sharp and snapping him back to reality. Looking askance at her, he added cautiously, "With anyone?"

It wasn't an accusation - but how long had she been here? Had she taken comfort from someone else? Had she found another 'Jack' to her 'Gwen'? He thought the worst had been the lack of recognition in her eyes, but he suddenly very much hoped she had been faithful simply because of the existence of the ring on her finger. To Tom, granted, but still. Faithful.

Martha just kept washing, and when the first cloth became too saturated with blood, she'd just dropped it onto the shirt that was already bloody and began with the second one. The blood was mostly off his arm when he reached out and touched her, and Martha had a little sigh of relief that he'd done it. She was taking it for a good sign; he'd started to come around a bit.

Expecting the question a bit, Martha shrugged. "A bit," she wasn't lying when she said a bit, but a bit wasn't necessarily a number, and it didn't betray how small or large the number of hours when she'd slept was. "With my trainers on." For reasons she'd chalked up to simply being taken from her home, not the additional piece of missing him before she'd known he'd existed.

His next question made her blink, and her entire posture stiffened. "Sev, of course not! Even if I didn't remember you, I remembered that my heart belonged to someone else. I missed you when I couldn't remember you, I'd never have slept with someone else while I was feeling that way."

Regret was a natural result of asking such a question; in his current state, however, he felt none. He had offended her, true, but the information seemed crucial. Had his wife, not knowing she was his wife, slept with another man. He would be immensely sorry for it later, when he was able to think straight, after he'd slept and eaten and felt safe with the situation. There would be regrets for insulting her and doubting her, but not for asking. He would have always wondered otherwise.

His fears alleviated, he brought his hand to her cheek and pressed his forehead to hers, immediately mentally moving on from the subject. She'd been sleeping with her trainers on, and that deserved his attention far more than some imagined tryst. It gave him something to focus on, because where there were trainers, so too were there: "Nightmares?"

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HAHAHA my failure. sorry everyone. carry on.

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