This is the thrilling conclusion of "Formalities." Our heroes have one more tumble ahead of them (which I hope you find intense and evocative, though brief), plus some revelations and closure! Hope you have enjoyed this silly little story of mine! Thank you for reading!

And please don't forget to review! Mmmwah!

IV

As she was vacating the pyramid through the "front" door, and the Doctor through the door on the city side, Nedea was being ushered back in by Queen Wissance and two other women. One of the women was holding a candle in front of Nedea, which looked and smelled exactly like the one the Doctor had used to help Martha meditate. Apparently, she was being re-imbued straight away. Martha wondered if there was a new male arrival asking for access to the city.

A lulling, womanly voice passing by brought her out of a reverie of sorts.

"Congratulations," Wissance was saying. "You must have embodied the Goddess well, Miss Jones."

"Erm, thanks," Martha said, a little rankled by the comment.

She did not like that anyone knew what she and the Doctor had just done (even though the pyramid had been built for just such a thing, and of course everyone knew what they were doing). She found that now that her fondest desire had come to pass, she did not want to share it with anyone. She was highly uncomfortable in this openly sexual arena, where the goings-on in the ceremonial pyramids were a matter of public business.

She had an hour to kill now. Why so long? she wondered. Is that the Doctor's projected recovery time? She decided not to think too hard about it, as it only made her more nervous, as she fretfully wondered what he was doing during that time. Talking to people? Discussing their tryst?

Just now, she felt exposed and fragile, and did not wish to make eye-contact with anyone... best just to enter the pyramid opposite and wait there.

She made her way across the walkway, round the pond and over the other walkway. She approached the pyramid whose door was labelled with the symbol for female, and the door opened to her.

This time she knew just what to do, so she stepped behind the screen and found a Supplicant's robe approximately the right length for her. She was now the party trying to get into Rambaja, so she peeled off the clothes she had hastily put back on just a few minutes before, and donned the robe.

This time, she also knew more of what to expect from him, which, paradoxically, terrified her.

Before, she'd gone in with the Doctor having no idea of what he really felt like, the texture and temperature of his skin, how he moved in moments of primal blindness. It was all new and exploratory.

But now she knew all those things, because she had tasted them… and one taste had given her hunger something to cling to. The electricity in his touch, the sinews of his arms, shoulders and chest. Of course, the still-tangible ghost of him sliding in and out of her, and the bracing and shuddering when he came. It had all been one glorious symphony as far as she was concerned…

…and she was here to repeat it. Only now, she had expectations that were accurate (and high), and not based on fantasy. She had desires rooted in experience, not in a schoolgirl fever. She still had the impressions of his flesh against hers within her sense memory, and the symphony played in her head – she couldn't stop it. All of this knowing amounted to more anticipation, more heat rippling through her, more nervousness, more need, more want…

"Just calm down, Martha," she chided herself.

What she did not have this time was the benefit of a guided meditation to help her rest her nerves. All she had was a big room, exactly like the other one, except it was a mirror image. It was empty except for her and the furniture, but cosy in its way. And she reckoned that the pacing back and forth she was doing was actually causing more harm than good. So, she lay down on the bed, above the covers, with her head on the pillow. Placing her hands across her stomach, she did some breathing exercises she had learned for relaxation. If she played her cards right, the next hour could simply fly by.

The city-side door opened, and woke her from a light sleep. It was the umpteenth sound that had done as much – the building settling, birds outside, the climate control system kicking on and off. Her "sleep" had been, if anything, a snooze. A drifting-off. A nod.

But the door opening brought her properly out of it, and her eyes darted to the source of the noise. A figure appeared in the doorway, a familiar one with a slim build and disheveled hair.

"Hi," he said, rather casually, crossing the room, and allowing the door to slide shut behind him. He was wearing the burgundy tee-shirt he'd had on underneath his dress shirt before they had entered the first pyramid, and his pin-striped trousers. In his right hand he carried his jacket, shirt, tie, socks and shoes. He tossed them onto one of the armchairs.

"How's the city?" she asked, unsure of what else to say.

"Beautiful," he said with a little smirk. "Can't wait for you to see it."

He approached the bed and crawled up onto his knees near the foot.

"Getting ready to meditate?" she asked, quietly.

"Hm? Oh, no. It's already done. Colour me imbued."

She took in a sharp breath before she could stop it, which betrayed her nervousness. "Oh. Really?"

"Yeah. What else was I going to do with that hour?"

"I dunno," she chuckled. "Lounge about and obsess over what's going to happen next? Maybe give yourself a nervous ulcer? You should try it, it's fun."

He gave her a crooked smile. "Nervous, really? Even now?"

"Especially now," she breathed.

Still smiling crookedly, he shook his head, and removed his tee-shirt. He then eased forward, planting both hands on the bed on either side of her.

"Shall we see what we can do about those nerves?" he asked, using one hand now to tug at the braided sash around her waist, and pulling it loose.

"I don't think that's going to help," she said, already melting into desire, just watching him undo what she was wearing. He fluttered a naughty eyebrow at her, and the sash came untied.

He reached toward her collar bone and grasped the zip of her cloak, locking onto her eyes with his. He seemed to search her as he tugged at the little metal gadget, exposing a long strip of her skin to the open air, inch by inch.

When he reached the bottom of the zip, somewhere between her knees, he sat back and used both hands to disengage one side from the other. He laid the garment open and looked her over. She had discarded all of her undergarments when she'd changed into the cloak, and the sight of her, extended and bare, was almost inebriating. Before, she had been upright and basically in control. Now, she was all his. For the taking, for the relishing. The possibilities and impulses made him feel a bit addled.

But he found his bearings soon enough. He wrapped his hands around her waist and slid them underneath her body, while his lips found the valley between her breasts. He kissed and licked and teased his way southward. And then those lips found her stomach and abdomen. She sucked in a sharp breath as his tongue dipped into her navel just for a fleeting half-second. Her thighs parted almost involuntarily, and she groaned with disappointment as his journey led him upwards again, toward her ribs.

He dragged his tongue across her skin now, and slid his hands up behind her scapulae. She arched with a moan when his tongue found first one nipple and then the other. He teased and sucked, bit and kneaded, all the while trying to hold her steady, as the sensation threatened to make her hit the ceiling. Eventually, he raked his lips up her neck, across her jaw and rested on her own lips, and his whole body pressed down on her. His tongue probed her mouth. He was hungry. He was hard. He was blinded by the experience of her.

And with that heady kiss, quite suddenly, his control seemed to leave him. He groaned, clutched at her, clung to her mouth desperately and he seemed to grind his pelvis into her, uncaring that there was at least one layer of clothing holding him back.

So she disengaged her arms from the wide sleeves of the cloak, and her hands went to his waist band and fumbled with the button. In her haste, she managed to detach one end of the fabric from the other, but she had no idea whether she had torn the thread, and she didn't particularly care. Next she went for the zip and promptly opened it.

To her surprise, he flung himself sideways and lay on his back. He wriggled out of his trousers from there and threw them aside.

Just as quickly, he rolled back atop her, locked onto her gaze with a great ache in his eyes, and he drove into her with force. She gasped in surprise, but her whole body buzzed. Pleasure, anticipation, just a hint of pain. Her thighs grasped him, and her ankles met behind his bum.

He gave her almost no room nor time for breath. He thrust in and out in steady, long, fierce strokes, and managed to shock her with the ravenousness of his movements. An hour after their first encounter, he was seemingly so ready to be with her again, and his body's drive betrayed anxiousness, craving, need, compulsion. It was as if, once he'd felt the ecstasy and influence of her, he would need more and more. It was akin to how she had felt coming into this room.

She felt him touch her, crash into her, all the way inside, in places she'd been too preoccupied to feel before. The first time, she now knew, she'd been too wrapped up in her own agenda to understand how all-around powerful he was, and this experience could be.

He breathed hard and said her name and wound his fingers in her hair. He plunged his lips against hers and his tongue into her mouth, and then against her jaw and neck and ear. Words escaped them both, as did complete thoughts. There was a roughness about him, bubbling to the surface and detonating exactly now, exactly here. Mindlessness fogged him, but he didn't just fuck her, he took her like he was addicted to her. Like he wanted to drink her, or disappear into her, or engage every molecule of his being, bottle the moment, burn them both out. To describe it was to feel frustration; it was not a shag, and it was not lovemaking. It was both. And neither. It was far more cathartic than either one, more longed-for, and more explosive.

Twice, his hard thrusts coaxed a throaty cry and an electric slick orgasm out of her. Twice he ground against her, watching her face contort and flush as he urged pleasure through her. He watched her as the sensation subsided, but the craving only grew. He knew that once he'd seen this, Martha Jones' face in the throes of squirming ecstasy, he would never be able to look back. In fact, he did not want this to end even now, but the ache was too deep, the fire too out-of-control. The finish-line was definitely near.

Her senses seemed to heighten as she crashed back to Earth. He dug his elbows into the bed, tightened his fingers in her hair and said that all he wanted was to come inside of her and never stop. Tears came to her eyes. The thrusting over-stimulated her spent body, and the hair-pull was perfectly painful. His words were possessive and thrilling, and she was filled with just him. Everywhere, she felt him. And before long, there was a throb inside of her, a groan beside her ear, and a sudden warmth. She was being flooded. He repeated the groan, and drove in again and again, until he was well and truly finished…

And then the door on the city side of the room slid open, and Martha was welcomed into the city.

After a long recovery and a brief, sobering talk about how they would sort out their "relationship issues" after the Eye of Harmony was repaired, the Doctor and Martha walked hand-in-hand, fully-clothed, out of the pyramid and down the steps into the city. They were welcomed at the foot of the stairs into the courtyard of the Convening Councils, and later that day, the councils did, indeed, convene. Queen Wissance helped explain to them the Doctor's dilemma concerning the Eye of Harmony, and implored the psychic bodies to begin putting out feelers for an alternate source of power.

"Now what?" asked Martha as they stepped into the foyer of the government building in which all of the 'important' business had taken place. The psychics were on it… there was nothing for them to do.

"Now, we wait," he said.

"Time to kill?"

"Yep. Want to see the Four Craters of Montagwon?"

She shrugged. "Sure."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Yes, very convincing."

"Well, it's just… we could talk now. Sort things out before too much time goes by, and it becomes too hard. We have the time. And then…"

When she didn't finish. "Mm? Then?"

"Then I don't have to wait to find out if any of those formalities that we went through actually meant anything to you."

He didn't say anything for a long moment. So she broke the silence herself.

"Unless there's something about the Eye of Harmony being in distress that means the accompanying Time Lord cannot give of himself. In which case… I would understand. I mean, I would know that you're full of it, but I would understand." She sat down on a nearby bench and crossed her arms. She looked at him with a little smirk, and he returned it.

"Okay," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and coming toward her. "You want to do this now? I guess… I guess I can do that."

He sat down beside her.

"Sorry. You know what? We don't have to do this now," she assured him.

"Well, to be honest, I was hoping to have a little cushion of time to sort out what I want to say, and how, but…"

"Ugh, never mind," she said. "We can talk later. I'm being childish. I'm just thinking, why not now because I feel like I'm hanging in limbo. I mean, I can do this any time because I know exactly how I feel and what I want and it's hard to hold back... But I don't want to rush you or put you in an awkward position. So I can wait."

"Listen, Martha…"

"Doctor?" a voice said from somewhere relatively far away in the cavernous, stone space.

It was Queen Wissance, appearing through a door that the travelling pair had not previously noticed.

"Yes?"

"I've had a message from the gods," said the Queen. "They are pleased."

"Oh. Well… we did our best," he said, uneasily.

"And they seek an audience with you," she said. "Come. Come on into our sanctuary and I will extract a member of the Clergy Council to show you how to commune."

"Oh, you know… that's all right," he said, standing up. "I don't think we need any help there. Do we Martha?"

She stood as well. "No, I shouldn't think so," she said, just to go along with the Doctor's flow, as she was used to doing.

"We meditated, and imbued ourselves quite well enough, thanks," the Doctor chirped. "If the gods seek us, then we will commune on our own."

Wissance frowned. She clearly did not like the idea that the Doctor had his own channel to the gods (or at least thought he did). She hadn't believed that their scheme for entering the city would work either…

"As you wish," she said grudgingly, and disappeared back through the door she'd used to enter.

The Doctor held out his hand to Martha. "Fancy a jaunt to Mount Olympus?"

The TARDIS materialised on the same island and building that housed the Haeíni, the brother and sister pair who seemed to pull all the strings for Rambaja. He and Martha found them sitting as they had been, glowing pyramids, beatific expressions and all.

"Doctor," said the Diess when the two of them entered the room. "And a friend! I see you received our request for a meeting."

"Indeed," he said. "By the way, this is Martha Jones."

"Hi," Martha said, uneasily, trying to resist the urge to ask ten million questions about the room she was standing in.

The Diess and the Deity both came toward them, smiling. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Martha Jones," said the Diess.

"Why are we here?" asked the Doctor.

"Doctor, are we to assume that you have recently entered the city of Rambaja?" asked the Deity.

"Yes," he said. "You recognised me while I was meditating?"

"No, not at all. We don't know one being from another, to be honest, when we get an energy signature fired at us."

The sister chimed in. "But we did notice a huge quantum transfer, a couple of hours ago, and one about an hour before that, as well."

"Ah."

The brother and sister looked at one another. She said, "We felt it would be an unlikely coincidence that you came here to find out more about the imbuing process and the formal greeting, and this happens so soon after."

The brother spoke then. "Remember we mentioned that it was very powerful, prescient, all-seeing beings who had been capable, historically, of creating such a quantum flux in the midst of an energy exchange at the visceral level?"

"What?" Martha asked. "Sorry, but… what?"

The Doctor turned to her. "We talked about how they ask people for the ceremonial copulation as a formal greeting because they want to spread their essences throughout the cosmos as a way to observe the universe… remember that?"

"Yeah."

"They're hoping that Nedea or Elbon, or any given surrogate imbued with the gods' essences, will copulate with someone… well, as they said, powerful, prescient, all-seeing, enough to actually cause some kind of transfer on the quantum level. Said person would be imbued slightly then, himself or herself. Then, in theory, that person would take that essence with them when they leave Rambaja. And maybe spread it around, maybe not."

"Exactly," said the Deity. "And a Time Lord is precisely the type of being that could facilitate a quantum transfer. We detected such a transfer just after we spoke to you, so we assumed that you'd offered a greeting, then gone into the city. But we aren't sure why we detected two transfers."

The Doctor looked at Martha. "It's because Martha imbued herself with the Diess so that I could enter the city. And later, I imbued myself with the Deity so that she could."

The brother and sister looked askance at one another. "Why?" asked the Diess.

"Because… reasons," the Doctor responded. "Mostly to do with the fact that neither one of us felt it desirable nor necessary to shag a stranger. So we found a work-around."

"Oh. That's curious," mused the Deity. "Well, no matter. We've come here to ask for your services on a semi-permanent basis."

"Excuse me?"

"Will you be our male surrogate?" asked the Diess.

Martha coughed, choking on some air.

"Seriously… excuse me?" the Doctor repeated.

"Being imbued with the essence of the Deity," said the Deity. "And being a Time Lord, you'd be able to quantum transfer with every female visitor (or male, if you aren't opposed) to Rambaja. Our objective could be met so much more quickly."

"Erm, no," the Doctor said. "I'm declining that offer. Thanks just the same."

"Doctor, I must implore you…" the Diess began.

"No, no, there's no need for imploring," the Doctor said. He looked at Martha, locking eyes with her. She knew the look on his face. A revelation was coming to him. The wheels were turning. "Because you've got it all wrong."

"Got what all wrong?" asked the Diess.

"Your whole system," he said, not moving his eyes. "The surrogates, your philosophy… all of it."

"I don't understand," the Diess complained.

"How many times, not counting today, has that quantum thing happened?" the Doctor wondered. "You said a handful of times. What does that mean? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred?

"More like ten," said the Deity.

"Do you have a record of those dates?"

"Of course," said the Deity. He gestured to the console where he and his sister had previously been sitting.

"Thing is, my Haeíni friends, I've been to Rambaja before, but I can almost guarantee you that there was no quantum transfer when I made the greeting that time," the Doctor said. "May I?"

Both brother and sister gestured in assent, and the Doctor put one hand on top of the glowing pyramid.

"What are you doing?" Martha wanted to know.

"Feeding in time coordinates… not an exact process, mind you, since I don't actually remember when precisely I was in Rambaja last, but the thing is semi-sentient so I'm willing it to read my mind a bit." After about thirty seconds he stepped away from it. "There. Time coordinate has been entered. Was there a huge move-and-shake of quantum energies that day in Rambaja?"

The Diess and the Deity seemed to peer into the triangle together, then they exchanged a look. "No," said the sister.

"No," the Doctor agreed. "But I was a Time Lord then just as I am now. Prescient, all-seeing, blah blah. Why do you think there was no transfer then?"

"I don't know!" the Diess said, utterly confused. They had based their entire system on the assumption that the process was dependent upon certain types of individuals coming through the city gates, having lent a certain grandiosity to the coital event, and a certain visceral-level sharing of energies. If that was incorrect, then…

"It's because I was shagging a total stranger. It was a means to an end. I just wanted to get into the city, and yeah, the sex was nice… ish, but to be honest, it was awkward for me and I could have lived without it," he said. His eyes came to rest on Martha once again. "But today it was a different story. The transfer was made because a connection was made. Actually, the connection already existed – we just sealed it, if you will"

"Doctor," Martha whispered.

"You lot talk about visceral energies," he continued, never taking his eyes off his companion. "Something powerful happening in our minds, our guts and souls when we open ourselves up and feel the kind of pleasure that forces our bodies to spin out of control… maybe even the kind of pleasure that causes us pain when we think about it because there is always a longing that follows. Well, that can't be achieved with a stranger. That has to be cultivated."

"But those other ten instances…" the Deity began.

"They must have got lucky," the Doctor said. "They found a connection and were lucky. That's all I can say."

The Diess and the Deity were rapt, rather confounded, and now simply waited to hear more.

"What do you generally do when, say, a committed couple arrives asking to enter the city?" he asked them.

"Well…"

"You split them up," the Doctor answered for them. "You have the woman go with Elbon, or whoever the current male surrogate is, and you have the man go with the female surrogate."

"Yes."

"Mark my words," he said, taking Martha's hand. "Let those couples remain together. Have someone nearby who can walk them through the process of meditation and imbuing with your essences, and then leave them alone. I guarantee you, if you let people who love each other make formal greetings together, without the surrogates, you'll find that your coital events are much more productive."

"Oh!" the Diess breathed, her eyebrows raised high, looking off at the wall opposite. She breathed this syllable as though she were just starting to see.

He continued, "Keep Nedea and Elbon around just in case a single person comes through and needs to gain entry… or, then again, you could just let them in without the greeting, since you'll be able to afford to now."

"This is starting to make sense," the Deity said, coming to it slowly.

"I talked yesterday with Queen Wissance about how humans have a difficult time separating sex from emotion, how it can represent a promise made before giving of oneself and one's body that way," the Doctor mused, now talking more to Martha than anyone. "But now that we're here and I'm having this brilliant revelation, I'm realising that it's not just humans. The need to find that connection – the kind you have to cultivate in order to reap the full benefit of the formal greeting, well, it's a basic part of... sentience itself, it might be said."

"I suppose it is," said the Diess.

"This quantum transfer thing is much less lofty than you thought, as it turns out," the Doctor said. "You lot don't need a Time Lord, you just need a little love, a little passion. Which is lucky, because there's only one of me, but there's a whole lot of that other stuff to be had."

All the way back to the TARDIS, and inside the vessel on the trip back to Rambaja, and even as they spoke with one of the Council members for an update, the Doctor and Martha barely looked at one another.

They took a seat side-by-side on the same bench where they'd sat not too long before, to wait for the Councils to do their good work.

For a long few moments, they said nothing.

"So it looks like the Eye of Harmony situation is going to be okay," Martha said. "I mean, their psychic feelers are leading them in a particular direction – isn't that a good thing?"

"It's a great thing," he sighed. "It might just save the universe. In the next day or two."

"Will you be ready to talk in a day or two?"

He leaned his head back against the wall and looked at her with a tired smile. "We don't need to talk, Martha."

"We don't?"

"No," he assured her. "I mean, we can if you want, but I think you know everything you need to know."

"I do?" she asked, relief coming through in her voice.

"Yeah."

"When did you know?" she asked, with a smile.

"As soon as we were finished the second time," he said.

"Why couldn't you tell me then?"

He shrugged. "A lifetime of holding back. Several lifetimes."

She laid her head on his shoulder. "Well, I only have one lifetime."

"I know," he said lightly. He turned his head and kissed her forehead. "Good job I can't stop myself talking once I get a bee in my bonnet, eh?"

"So if this is all over in a day or so, then what's next for us?" she wondered.

"Then… I dunno," he shrugged. "Think they'd let us book one of those pyramids for a few days?"

END

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