The startling and thrilling conclusion of "Fail Safe!" This one was fun to write... evil Ten is a hot. No wait, I mean A HOOT! ;-)

I decided to insert the scene with the two of them sneaking around inside UNIT because, well, as I said, it was fun. But also because I wanted to illustrate what state of mind they are both in when they submit to detonation. They basically do it for each other, which is really what it's all about.

Thank you for reading! You guys are the best!

TWENTY-THREE

Oh, the things we tell ourselves when we're about to die.

In those last few moments, Martha even told herself that she was happy not to die in a "common" way, like cancer or a heart attack. Even if she was to die in precisely the same manner as every living thing currently on this planet, at least it would be a spectacular death, and she was right there in the fray.

And of course, she reminded herself, she spent the final minutes of Earth's existence, painful though they may have been, with the man she loved. He was in hyper-irrational destruction mode, and he was about to do something that he would come to regret with all of his might, she was sure. But she would die with the memory of his face, his walk, his intensity, those eyes with the fire behind them, and that taut, strung-out, pacing, powder-keg of a body that had given her so much grief and pleasure and more grief… and more pleasure.

Right up to the moment when he aimed the sonic screwdriver through the door of the console and hit the button, making everyone gasp and grab onto one another, she kept her eyes on him, and memorised everything she could. The last of the Time Lords, who was about to destroy himself, along with his second-"favourite" planet ever… which, actually, was something she hadn't seen coming…

And even past that moment, after his manipulation with the sonic had actually closed the breach, she still stood motionless, stuck in her loop of thinking. Last moments… love… memories, kisses, wonder...

The Doctor stared at her with sadness in his eyes for a few moments.

Then, "All right, then. Now what?" he asked, with only a hint of bitterness in his voice.

This brought her round, and she chuckled with relief. "Now our world goes on turning."

Lawrence Fortis spoke then. "You didn't really want to destroy the Earth, did you?"

The Doctor looked at him with daggers in his eyes. "Don't bloody push it, Fortis."

Larry held up his hands in disarmed fashion, and backed away a few steps.

The Doctor turned and saw fifty men in crescent formation around Colonel Mace, with their weapons trained on the Time Lord and his TARDIS.

"You can tell your men to relax," said the Doctor. "I'll come quietly."

Martha held out her hand. He took it, and the two of them began walking toward the Tower, ignoring the armed soldiers around them, the onlookers, the UNIT personnel standing about in lab coats…

They just followed Mace's lead, and retreated through the main entrance.

"He's wrong, you know," the Doctor said, again, not without bitterness. "About me not wanting to destroy the Earth."

"Yeah?" she asked, a little afraid of what he might say next.

"Well, it's not like I'm hell-bent on it," he said. "But it's really not about the Earth, Martha."

"Then what's it about?"

He lowered his voice significantly. "It's… I don't really want to do anything without you. Destroying things, saving things… whatever. Without you it all feels empty."

"I'm so glad you see it that way," she asked, wrapping her free arm around his, for a few moments.

"Not to mention the fact that I can't destroy the planet if you're on it."

"Very, very glad of that."

"And, I can't fly away from this planet if you're in some jungle pod in Brazil…"

"You know about the pod?" she asked, surprised.

"Of course I know about the pod, Martha," he said. "It's been there a good fifteen years. The Brig thought he was so clever with that anti-probe technology, but that stuff only works on Category-C galactic probes and the TARDIS has… you know what? Never mind. Yeah. I know about the pod."

"So… why didn't you…"

"Just let you go, and then break into it later and drag you out, possibly against your will?"

"Yeah," she said, sheepishly.

"Do you really have to ask?"

"No."

"I might do that if it were literally anyone else trying to get away from me. But I couldn't do it to you. Even though I'd really, really want to."

"That's something, I suppose."

"Yeah, damn it," he muttered. "It's something."

Gathered in a small conference room inside UNIT headquarters, seven humans and a Time Lord debriefed the past few weeks' events. The Doctor sat with Martha Jones, Lawrence Fortis, Colonel Mace, the astrophysicist Dr. Willam Enger, one other physicist, Dr. Samantha Palmer and two armed officers, Luna and Morgen, assigned to "escort" the Doctor within the confines of the facility. The mood was tense, as the story unfolded and all eyes hopped back and forth between the Doctor and Mace.

For his part, the Colonel seemed like his head was going to explode, with the revelation that this had all come about because the Doctor and Martha Jones had spent a spectacular night together in a hotel. Though, he was unsurprised, and oddly unbothered, under the circumstances, that UNIT would have to answer for a shedload of money missing from a New York bank (the Doctor was mum on the subject of how he might help rectify it).

"Why?" asked Mace. "What could a Time Lord possibly want with a thing like money?"

They explained that they went on to Tahiti and to Austria, for a bit of "abandon," as the Doctor euphemistically put it. "You know, food and alcohol and all the things in life that make us feel good." This made Mace grab his temples, and look at the two of them again with disbelief.

Fortis stifled a giggle.

It was decided that the Doctor, Fortis, Enger and Palmer would go into the lab the following morning to re-create a version of the Eustarus that would turn the Doctor away from his roguish ways. The Doctor estimated that the process would take about forty-eight hours to complete, if they worked straight through. They drew up a schedule of four twelve-hour days, during which no-one currently in the room would leave headquarters. Sleeping arrangements were made, for their down-time. It was made quite clear by Colonel Mace (without eye-contact) that each member of the party would remain in separate sleeping quarters.

On that first night, Martha, exhausted, pulled a UNIT-issue wool blanket over herself and lay down on the exam table in the room that used to be her work space. The thing was made for an adult male, so it was plenty long for her, and had one elevated end for her head. She climbed into a set of hospital scrubs and fell asleep within minutes. She felt truly calm, for the first time in over a month.

But sometime around midnight, she awoke with a start. The air conditioning switched itself off, and the ancient system tended to bang and clang when any changes occurred. She knew all at once where she was, what was happening, and she sat up with a start.

"Shit!" she spat, realising she was ensconced within UNIT, with the Doctor practically chained up, and this would not do.

She was back in her free-spirit state of mind, and circumstances now seemed rather dire.

She sat still on the exam table and began mentally pacing like a caged animal, going over and over the events in her mind. She was mightily glad that the Earth still turned, that the Doctor's love extended even farther than his thirst for power. But now that the Earth was safe, she reckoned it was time to re-awaken his thirst. And perhaps his hunger. Perhaps a bit of both before the light of day, before the wheels of the UNIT machine came back into motion, to let the Doctor work it all out in their favour.

She noticed the effects of the lack of air conditioning within only minutes of its stopping. She opened the door to the hallway, just to get some air moving, as she was beginning to feel, in this underground lair of Authority and Diligence, that she couldn't breathe. As she did so, she heard the voice of Agent Luna, the Doctor's night guard, say, "FYI, heading to the gents. Back in two minutes, tops."

"Copy that, Luna," an electronic voice said through the radio on his belt.

Ten seconds later, Martha heard the squeaky door of the men's room open and shut. She ran down the hall gracefully, leaping on her toes so as not to make any noise. She had known the Doctor's room would not be locked, because he was set up for the night in a locker room whose door had no lock nor latch. This was decided, since the Doctor had refused to turn over the sonic screwdriver to Colonel Mace, and they did not want him barricading himself inside the room with UNIT personnel unable to reach him.

She pushed open the door, and stepped inside stealthily. The Doctor was lying on a cot, face up, feet crossed, hands folded behind his head. His elbows formed two large triangles beside his ears, and like her, he was wearing blue hospital scrubs in lieu of pyjamas.

"Hi," he said, sounding surprised to see her, but not startled.

"Hello," she whispered.

As she stepped forward, he was able to see her face in the little light afforded by the emergency lamp in the corner.

"You're not supposed to be here," he teased.

"Neither are you, quite frankly."

"Ah, but that's different. I'm a rogue."

"Aren't you just?" she lilted, coming further forward. She smirked as she threw one leg over him. There was just enough room between his hips and the edge of the cot for her knees. She sat on his legs and smiled.

"Did Luna go to the loo?" he wondered.

"Yeah," she said. "They must not be that serious about keeping you contained."

He shrugged. "I guess they reckon I can't get far once I'm in."

"So," she sang, sliding his scrub top upwards and leaning forward to kiss the warm flesh behind it. "I assume you have a plan."

"For what?"

"For getting us out of here," she said between kisses.

"I don't."

"You mean, not yet."

"I mean, I don't. I don't have a plan. And I'm not going to have one."

She sat up straight. "What?"

He took her hands. "I've run through every possible scenario in my mind, and the way I see it, I can either have the grandiose things that I want – domination of the universe or parts of it, my fingers in the pies of the Shadow Proclamation, which… oh, that would be amazing…"

"Or?"

"Or… I can have you. But not both. It just can't work."

"It can't?"

"No. I mean, it would be different if you could be trusted, but you can't. Your old sensibilities come out too often and derail everything."

"I'm evolving," she argued, whining a bit. "In another month, I'll be totally turned."

"No, you won't," he told her. "It doesn't work that way."

"How do you know?"

"Time Lord, remember? I built the damn thing, I know how it operates, Martha."

She crossed her arms over her chest in an angry sort of pout. "So it's my fault that you're letting them cut you off at the knees?"

"Of course it is," he said, matter-of-factly. "But I choose you anyway."

"You choose me, or you're forced to choose me?"

"I could have expanded that breach without actually being anywhere near it," he said. "I could have got back in the TARDIS and, like Mace said, had done with the whole human race. From there, I had a plan-B, that didn't involve the Earth. But you weren't willing to come with me just then, so it was either destroy the Earth with you on it, or I had to stand down. And with Mace and his minions standing by, it's not like I could stand around and wait for your opinions to change."

"Hmph," she responded.

He seemed thoughtful for a moment. "Every time I think about the Bonnie and Clyde life and how much fun it would be, I can't help but remember that every now and then, you come over all conscience-bound and start hating yourself. In that case, I'd have to force you to live the life with me, and I don't want to do that either. Not to you."

"Not to me."

"Not you."

"You're just going to lie down and take it?" she asked him, a little shrilly, with her hands on his chest.

He fluttered a naughty eyebrow at her. "Looks like. As long as it's you asking… I can think of worse things."

"Doctor!" she cried out. "You can't just… give in because of love. You can have everything you want. We can! You're the Doctor for God's sake!"

"No, we can't, Martha," he said. "Your niggling bit of humanity is holding us back. And that bit, along with UNIT, is going to bring us down. Especially now that we're in the belly of the beast, thank you very much, Dr. Jones. And if it's not today, then it'll be next week, or the week after."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "I can't believe this."

He sighed, and attempted a lying-down shrug. "Everyone has their Achilles heel. For the Master it was the fact that he couldn't face death. For me… it's Martha Jones."

"I'd curse that stupid anchor thing, but that would be counterproductive," she muttered.

"Trust me, Martha. I'd love to grab the universe by the throat and take my due from it," he said with gritted teeth. "I want to pull strings all over every galaxy, have my will, have my way, and have no-one be the wiser. And I could do it – it would be frighteningly easy. But things being what they are, the thought of doing any of that without you makes me feel utterly hollow. Why bother, then, you know?"

She pouted. "What am I going to do with a do-gooder Doctor again?"

He smirked. "I'm not going to stop being a Time Lord. I'm not going to stop being me."

"But…"

"All that ambition, all that power, will still be in me, and still be possible. I'll always be able to do those things if I choose… all the Eustarus will do is make me choose not to."

"Mm," she said.

He wrapped his hands around her thighs and bum and pulled her forward. She leaned down and planted her hands on the sides of the cot, looking straight down at him.

"All that stuff you were talking about yesterday when you left me," he whispered. "Being able to feel me inside you, and know. Know the fury, the storm behind my eyes, know where I've been, what I've seen, the things I've done and am capable of doing… none of that will change."

"You're right," she sighed. She let herself down and buried her mouth in his neck. She began to plant kisses behind his ear, down his neck, forward over his jaw as he spoke.

"A Time Lord is a Time Lord, Martha. It's only choices that make one differ from the other. You want a powder-keg of potential? I've always had that. I'll always have it."

"Yes," she whispered, feeling him harden underneath her.

"These thoughts are what have been keeping me going," he said. "I can't think of it as a defeat. My Time Lord nature can't be defeated."

"Good," she said.

"And in you, I have someone staggeringly beautiful, clever, sophisticated, knowledgeable and, as it happens, very, very hot. Amazing how I want those things no matter what state of mind I'm in. And amazing how you can deliver them, no matter what state of mind you're in."

That first night, after their tryst, Martha put her scrubs back on and returned to the exam room. She greeted Agent Luna sprightly when she left, delighting in the astonished look on his face, and half expecting him to detain her. To her relief, he didn't.

On the second night, just after the air conditioning stopped, the Doctor arrived in the exam room, as Luna had again gone to the loo. A couple of hours later, he too padded back down the hall with a friendly hello as he approached Luna.

On the third night, the Doctor simply opened the locker room door and walked through it, with Luna standing right there.

"Where do you think you're going?" asked the Agent.

"You know where," the Time Lord responded with a sigh.

"You are not to leave your quarters," Luna argued. "You are to be under surveillance!"

Halfway down the hall, the Doctor stopped and turned around to look at him. "So, come guard this door, then! Blimey, do I have to think of everything?"

And he kept walking.

Luna caught up with him. "Colonel Mace made it clear that none of you are permitted to share sleeping quarters!"

"In the first place," the Doctor said, stopping again, now just a few steps from Martha's door. "There's not a lot of sleeping going on when we're together anyway, so technically, we're fine."

Luna opened his mouth to interrupt, and the Doctor cut him off.

"And in the second place… come on, Luna, what are you afraid is going to happen? We'll have a shag and the Earth will implode?"

"Maybe! I don't know!"

By now, Martha had heard them talking, and she stuck her head out through the door, then stepped into the hall.

The Doctor continued, "We've done this the past two nights, and nothing horrible has happened, has it?"

"I…"

"You know very well that Colonel Mace just wants us apart because he either has an inappropriate crush on Dr. Jones, or he's got some kind of bizarre pseudo-paternal attachment to her… probably both. And he's a puritanical stuffed-shirt who exhibits a high degree of squeamishness when it comes to interpersonal relationships. And he might be a virgin."

"Doctor, stop it," Martha sighed.

"So, do we really want to adhere to the Gospel of Mace? Especially where the matters of the flesh are concerned?" the Doctor asked Luna.

"I… I think…" Luna sputtered.

The Doctor moved toward Martha's exam room door. "Look, it's fine. Nothing has changed. I'll still be about in the morning to help Fortis and the gang figure out how to neuter me again. Only, I'll be in a much better mood about it, if you leave us the hell alone."

With that, he disappeared behind the door and locked it with the sonic screwdriver.

And when Martha came down the hall on the fourth night, she opened her mouth to speak to Luna, but he just said flatly, "Whatever. Go on in. Just try to keep the noise down, would you?"

The following noon was the scheduled detonation. Martha was escorted to the laboratory by an officer who didn't make eye-contact, and for all she knew, couldn't speak English. Fortis, Enger and Palmer were standing by with the Doctor, and Colonel Mace joined the party with Luna and Morgen a few moments later.

They used some alien-borrowed instruments (and a lot of big words) to measure a kind of energy output coming from the Doctor and Martha. Then, the Doctor showed his Companion to a corner of the lab where they had lined the floor with a square of breathable sponge-like material.

"This is for you, during the detonation process," Larry Fortis said. "Watching the Doctor go through it the first time was fairly awful, so I thought there should be some kind of padding, you know…"

The Doctor didn't say anything, but slapped him lightly on the back. He and Martha then lay down on the spongy surface, on their sides, holding hands.

"Ready?" he asked her.

"No," she croaked, her eyes filling with tears.

And the detonation was just about as awful as Martha had imagined it, though she had been briefed that it would be three times as hard on the Doctor. She never lost her ability to talk and think and cry, but as before, the Doctor went catatonic for a few minutes, and all the colour seemed to leave his face. She wasn't sure what was worse – the feeling of being crushed, or knowing that he was feeling it so much more.

But when it was over, they were still there, on the floor, with each other. Their "audience" waited expectantly for them to stand up and report that they felt like saving the universe again… but they didn't.

"Can you just leave us for a while?" the Doctor asked, getting to his feet, with help.

"Let us scan you, then we will do as you ask," Colonel Mace said.

Their energy output seemed to satisfy the Colonel, with a second opinion from Fortis, though they both agreed that at least a twelve-hour period of incubation was probably needed.

"Fine, whatever," the Doctor said, with almost no voice left. "Can we just…?"

At that point, Mace ordered everyone to stand aside and let the Doctor and Martha pass. They went from the room quietly, and shut themselves into the exam room where Martha had slept for four nights, and worked for a year before that. They fell into an exhausted, relieved hug as soon as they were inside, but about ten seconds later, there was a knock.

"What is it?" the Doctor asked, annoyed.

"It's me," Fortis' voice said. "I'm sorry… but I have something for you."

"What?" said the Doctor, throwing the door open.

Fortis stood there holding up one end of the big spongy square, and Dr. Enger held the other end. The Doctor and Martha stood aside, nonplussed, as the two physicists squeezed the thing into the room. They worked together to move the exam table aside, to make room on the floor. Then Fortis leaned out into the hall and produced two pillows, and threw them on the mat.

"They're from the hospital wing," he said. Then, he just shrugged, and said, "There you go. Just ring my extension when you're ready for room-service."

"Thanks," said the Doctor, shaking Larry's hand, and Dr. Enger's.

They had a wool blanket, and they had each other. And now, they had a place where they could just rest, side-by-side.

And rest they did. They slept for about six hours, but they spent at least another two or three lying there, talking intermittently, drifting in and out, making vague plans for the coming weeks, talking about how they really should just get up, and call Fortis…

Martha laid her head on his chest and marvelled at how the life and pulse of UNIT was beating around them, as the night shift would have come in by then and be well underway in its workings. Just outside that door was something of her former life that she had given up for this one, and she had never been so glad of it.

At last, they stood up, feeling groggy but happy. They both still knew they had about three or four hours to go (at least) before they could be allowed to leave the Tower. A couple of days before, Mace had sent men out to manually bring the TARDIS into HQ for storage, so all they had to do was home in on it with the sonic, and they could leave. But neither one of them was in any mood to be breaking rules now, and they both reckoned they'd have to step lightly, in order to maintain the trust of UNIT. At least for a time.

The Doctor put the pieces of his brown suit back together and bent in half to adjust his tie in front of a small mirror over the sink. They had already stood the sponge mat up on its side, and moved the exam table back into place. Martha was back into her freshly-laundered clothes, and was folding up the blanket. She stacked it atop the two pillows on the exam table when the Doctor turned around, leaned against the counter and watched her.

"What?" she asked, feeling his admiring eyes on her. She stopped and looked back at him, her arms folded.

"You know," he said. "I almost suggested in the meeting on Wednesday that the Eustarus be renamed."

"Yeah? Why?"

"I thought it should be named for you," he said with a smile. "Code-named the Martha Jones Project, or something like that. The Jones Machine." Then he smiled even wider, goofily, in fact.

"That's… really lame," she laughed.

"No it's not! It's brilliant!"

She smiled. "Why for me?"

"Because, Dr. Jones," he said. "You are the fail-safe."

"What?" she asked, her mouth open, but still smiling. "Are you sure you're all right? It's definitely good that they'll be scanning you again."

"Come on! Sure, that bloody box had the black hole and the hyper-gravity and all that rubbish in it but at the end of the day… you are what turned me back."

"I got you into that whole mess in the first place."

He waved off the comment, and uncrossed and recrossed his feet. "Well, yeah… that could happen to anyone." He took a few moments just to look her over, and see her, almost with new eyes. He stood up straight then and took the few steps to close the space between them. "But who else could have held my hand in that cell, and guaranteed that I'd come out with at least something good intact?"

She shrugged. "Well…"

"No-one, that's who. And without that," he said, then he whistled in a tone that denoted a downward trajectory. "The universe might be in some trouble, Martha. No way I would have agreed to any of this if I didn't have you."

"Well… I love you. I wasn't going to leave you. Well, I might have, but only because…"

"You did everything right. And twice you've been the fail-safe. Once in that cell, and once on Wednesday when you tried to walk away from me and I almost…" he gulped hard, as a wave of regret washed over him, for what he could have done, and almost did. He recovered himself, and said, "What Fortis and Enger and Palmer and I did in that lab was just a formality. That was just science. You are the real thing, Martha Jones."

They shared a cathartic kiss then, their first since the detonation.

"Come on," he said, when it was over. "Fortis wants to film me talking about the recipe for re-making the Eustarus. They've got to forge another one now."

"Ugh," she groaned. "That's right."

"They're talking about maybe making three more of them," he said. "One for the Tower, one for the Brig in Peru, and one for you, to place as you see fit."

"Yeah, 'cause it worked out so well the last time," she joked.

With that, he sonicked the door open, took her hand, and they turned right, toward the laboratory where several hours of probes and tests waited for them. But at least they were undertaking them, and everything else from here on out, together.

END

Again, thanks so much for reading! Please leave a review because I feed on your feedback!

FYI: I have a plan for a new story on the horizon. It will be a in the same "universe" as this one. In fact it will pick up, I believe, literally on the same day when this story leaves off. It will be another adventure with UNIT, the Doctor and his Companion doing what they do best! I'm not sure of its title yet... I'm thinking of "The Window on the Left." I hope you'll check it out!