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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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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?"

For a moment Martha didn't know what else to say, but she breathed a sigh of relief when he bought his hand to her cheek, taking it as a sign that he was starting to come out of this fog he seemed to be in. Had his forehead not been against hers, Martha would have nodded in response to it his question, but instead she just spoke softly, as if she was worried it would break the spell. "Yes. I kept missing you, I think. It's hard to explain."

Normally, her worst nightmares were of Japan, as he said. Japan with Russia and America and the market in France added as little bits of supplemental material. These dreams had been different, filled with accusing shadows, and pictures of things that she'd now come to understand happened aboard the Barge. It was almost like her subconscious was trying to remind her why she'd been so miserable without even realizing she had been miserable.

Letting the washcloth fall from her fingers onto the floor, Martha just reached up and touched the back of his neck, holding him tightly. "It's going to be alright now, Sev. We're together. We're not going anywhere."

"We are," he said finally, correcting her though he knew she had meant something else entirely; he swallowed hard, his eyes closed as he breathed her in. "We're going home."

He had no intention of remaining in Baedal; if it took every ounce of energy and will, every last scrap of magic, he was getting them both out of there and - first - back to the Barge. After that, home. Cardiff or London or Hogsmeade, but home. They didn't belong here.

It was a good thought for him to latch on to. It gave him a goal on to which he could focus his attention, rather than allowing himself to drown in the absolute terror of the last few days. He did better when he had a goal - and until he could see her safely out of here, he could protect her.

"Home." Martha said quickly, and her tone reflected hope in it. Home wasn't something she'd considered before, other than the passing, 'the TARDIS needs to know I'm not where I'm supposed to be. The Doctor will come'. Then she'd wondered how many other companions had thought the same things at various points in their lives. But now the worry was replaced the question 'why hasn't the Admiral taken us back?'

The Admiral owed her, and he owed them. He owed Severus his life back, and he owed her. He should get them home. To the Barge and Mozenrath (because the Admiral owed him as well) and then home.

"We'll figure out a way to go home. There has to be one." Right now Martha was thinking about everything that had been in that damned brochure. If there's gods then maybe they actually had the power to return them home.

His mind wasn't on the Admiral, the Barge, or Mozenrath. If he thought of them, he would recoil again. He had abandoned his inmate (ex-inmate, yes, very well), regardless of his willingness to do so. Severus had enough to cope with at the moment without considering the impact of their departure on the Barge.

Instead, he focused on her. His hand moved to her cheek, his thumb stroking across her skin. So long as they both acknowledged this wasn't home, there was no staying here, he could direct his attention to her.

"I've missed you so." It seemed trite to say it - inadequate, even. It was like saying he missed breathing. He didn't miss such a vital necessity. He died without it.

"I've missed you too. And I'll always find you. Really," Martha leaned over and kissed him. The kiss wasn't a prelude to sex; it was far from it. It was almost like CPR: used with the intention of restarting and reassuring that things were going to be alright.

One of her hands rested against bare chest, the place over his heart where she could feel that he was still here, muscle still working. Still alive. "You and me, remember? Always."

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