THIS IS THE FINAL CHAPTER, MES ENFANTS. THANK YOU FOR STAYING ABOARD! THIS HAS BEEN AN INTERESTING WRITING EXPERIENCE AND I'M GLAD YOU ALL WERE ABLE TO SHARE IT WITH ME!

TWENTY-THREE

"Hel-lo Jones family!" the Doctor cried out, making a grand entrance into the console room, with Martha in tow.

Noticing that Martha had re-tied her hair, Tish cleared her throat and muttered to Leo, "Well, that was quick." He sniggered.

The Doctor dashed right up to Leo, Tish and Francine, called them by name, shook their hands vigourously.

"Clive Jones," said Martha's father as he stuck his hand out grumpily. "And who might you be?"

"I'm the Doctor," the Doctor said.

Clive looked at Francine questioningly. "That's all he ever tells us, just get used to it," she told him.

"Now, then," the Doctor announced. "What can we do about getting you folks home?"

"I suppose we should think about booking a return ticket," Francine said. She looked at Martha. "We weren't sure how long we'd be here."

"Aaagh, why bother, right Martha?"

"Right, Doctor."

"Up and away," he said, raising an eyebrow and throwing some of the controls on the console.

The TARDIS' gears ground and wheezed, and then came to a halt.

Martha smiled at her family. Her dad asked, once more, "What the hell was that?"

"Look outside," she told them.

They all glanced at each other, and finally it was Tish who went to the door. She opened it and gasped. "Oh my God!"

"What? What is it?" asked Francine, rushing to her side.

"We're home!"

"What do you mean, we're home?"

Leo and Clive made their way to the door as well, and each gasped in turn as they stepped outside. "It's London! We were just in Tibet, now we're in London! How the hell...?"

Tish stuck her head back inside and said, "Martha, you have to come out here!" Martha and the Doctor looked at each other with knowing smiles. They linked hands and walked down the ramp, and out the door.

Francine turned to them and said, "You two are coming in for dinner, and we are going to have a chat, yeah?" But it wasn't really a question.

The Doctor held his breath uncomfortably, while Martha said, "All right, mum. We'll chat."

He exhaled and agreed, "Yes. Yes, lovely."

Francine's eyes narrowed. "Good."

"What's wrong?" asked Martha. The Doctor was staring at the bedroom ceiling, arms propped behind his head, his brow furrowed. She was lying on her side under the sheet with her head in her hand. It was one of their afterwards-and-in-between moments, when they had their most fun discussions.

"Hm? Oh, nothing," the Doctor replied. "Just... dinner."

She giggled and lay her head on his chest. "Bit much, was it?"

"It was all very, very human."

"Well, we coudn't tell them outright that you're an alien, Doctor. That would have been a disaster."

"But did we have to invent a whole childhood and career history? And Martha," he squeaked, sitting up. "Why on Earth would anyone want to work as a bellhop?"

"You were putting yourself through medical school," she justified, sitting up as well. "Come on, you did what you had to. Your parents were dead and the family trust had been drained by your alcoholic uncle who blew it all at the dog track, so what choice did you have?"

He stared at her deadpan.

"People have histories, Doctor!"

"Can't I just be mysterious and enigmatic? I mean, do we have to give your family the metal image of me dressed as a bellhop?"

Martha started laughing heartily.

"Stop it!" he demanded.

"But at least I gave you Cambridge," she offered, as she pulled her giggling under control.

"Well, I'd have preferred the Sorbonne, but okay."

"My mum is fluent in French," she said. "She'd have made you speak, and she's a complete snob about it."

"Martha, I speak over a million languages. I can handle French."

"Whatever. Maybe next time we'll tell her that you spent time as an associate professor there, okay?"

He smiled. "Ooh, I like that."

They both lay down once more. "Anyway, honestly," she sighed. "I'm not sure they bought any of it."

"What makes you say that?"

"Er, we dematerialised in Tibet and five seconds later arrived in London. In a police box. With infinite interior space. I think they've worked out at this stage that you're not exactly an average bloke."

"I can act like one. I did all right tonight, didn't I?"

"Please, you might as well have I'm not an average bloke tattooed on your forehead. And you only did all right tonight because I did all the talking."

"You really, really did."

"I'm very inventive," she said, feigning arrogance.

"Multi-talented," he agreed. After a beat, he asked, "Martha? What happened? I mean, in Lhasa, after I went out of the game?"

"I cried. I panicked. I entertained cross-dressing."

"Excuse me?"

"I thought if I wore your clothes I would think like you."

"What?"

"I know."

"Okay, what happened after that?"

"I went for a walk, and I started thinking about the Rachnoss. I understood what you were trying to do by throwing off the balance of the elements – turning love to hate by sledgehammering a temple. But then I realised that the Rachnoss were foiled by an imbalance of the elements, which amounted to an inundation of water."

He nodded, a bit sullen, guilty.

She continued. "I thought, I'm sorry to say, that your logic was wrong. Flawed. It's not turning an element on its ear that would do the trick, it's flooding the place with it."

"That's brilliant," he said. "I'm sorry I didn't think of it."

"Thank you. So I went looking for Lobsang Samten, figuring he was a forward-thinking monk, and rang the BBC. In order to convince him to do a public address to the world on television, I had to talk about you, which of course caused me to lose my mind with Mad Red because I'm so bloody in love with you. So he threw me in a cage and climbed into a news van."

"What the hell did he say that convinced twenty thousand people to gather in Tibet on twenty-four hours' notice?"

"I'm not sure it's what he said, just the way he said it. I haven't seen it yet, but apparently we can Youtube it."

"Okay, so who set up the stage and all that?"

"The BBC. They did it as a publicity stunt, of course, which turned out to be a good thing because if we just waited for people to spontaneously love each other, it might have taken longer."

"So he envoked love on a stage in front of twenty thousand?"

"Yes, apparently."

"And everyone went all Mad Red, didn't they?"

"According to my mum, yes. And then all of the Mad Red cases across the world went into convulsions. I assume my family was afflicted too – my mum only knows because Lobsang Samten spoke to my family for a bit. Can Buddhist monks really see across the world?"

The Doctor sighed. "Some say they can. It's all part of their belief that we come from the same consciousness, and they're not wrong. They claim that if they go into deep meditation, they can see everything in the universe for short bits of time."

"Because he told my mum that he could see across the world, and that the convulsions were happening everywhere, not just in Lhasa. He said he could see a malevolent cloud forming, and when it became too dense..."

"It turned in on itself."

"Yes," Martha said. "Exactly. I know it's part of Eastern Philosophy – and Western, if you look deeply enough. But it also turned out to be true."

"Well, it's much less philosophical and more physical. Don't let us forget what actually caused all of this – the elements. They were out of balance, and the Rachnoss' drug lost its hold."

"Well you know," she smiled. "To-may-to, to-mah-to."

"Are you mocking my scientific approach?"

"Nope," she promised. "Just being human."

He smiled and turned over to kiss her forehead. He rested his head on his fist and looked down at her. "Thank you, Martha. You've saved me again."

"Right back at'cha."

"And thank you for making me talk," he said. "It had been... oh, far too long. I'd learned to bury those memories so deep, they were rotting."

"I'm a little ashamed of the way I acted up on the mountain," she confessed. "But I'm glad that some good came of it."

"Oh, in the long-run, everything good came of it. Martha, you have touched places in me that I never knew existed. My family, my children – they're gone, and they only live on in me now. I'd never learned how to tap those places before, how to live with them as part of me as an organism. I had tried to put them in a lock box of some sort..."

"I know what you mean."

"I think you do. But can you live with them?" he wanted to know.

"What would you do if I said no?"

"I don't know, actually."

"I'll admit," she said. "I was surprised. It never even occurred to me that you'd have children. I would never put you in the role of a father – it just doesn't fit with who you are to me. But how can I live with you if I can't handle your past? I'm competing with nine hundred plus years – I'll have to like it or lump it."

"You'd never put me in the role of a father?" he asked. He spoke with a bit of resentment.

It took her a moment to realise what he was asking her, and why he seemed so hurt. "Oh! I didn't mean that," she said, sheepishly. "Of course I would... I mean, if ever... I would love... I'm saying this all wrong."

"No, it's okay. I'm just surprised you'd never thought about it."

"Me too," she said, truthfully.

"I'd always heard that human women began picking out wallpaper for the nursery on the third date."

"It's been a while since you've dated a human woman," she pointed out, rolling her eyes a bit.

"Clearly," he agreed, with a playful smile.

She sighed. "Thinking about it now, does that count for something?"

"Of course," he whispered, kissing her forehead again.

And then she asked, "Is it even possible?"

"Yes," he said. "It's happened before. It's a bit dangerous, but it's possible."

"Wow. Are the offspring viable?"

"What, you mean, do they have to be sterile like mules?"

"Well, yeah. Plenty of species can cross-breed, but the offspring are usually non-viable."

"As far as I know, they're viable, but I couldn't swear to it."

"Wow," she said again.

"Well," he sighed. "Hate to change the subject on you, but tomorrow, we'd better go down to the Rachnoss' ship and deactivate everything. Are you up for that?"

"Sure."

"We can't risk having this Vitiatum leak happen again. Something tells me that there won't be such an outpouring of emotion the second time around, and we still don't have an antidote."

"So, we're going to the centre of the Earth?"

"Yep."

"That's brilliant!"

"But now that we've made plans for tomorrow, the question remains, what do we do with the rest of our night?"

That, of course, was a question that neither of them ever needed ask again.

END