Another challenging endeavour! I SWEAR I have not abandoned my "Detour" story, I simply got itchy fingers to start this. It was burning a hole in my head, and once I got it out on paper, it started burning a hole in my computer files. I could not contain it - it became bigger than me. Again, please forgive my schizophrenia.

This story really started incubating over a year ago, in July of 2009. I think there is a problem inherhent in a spin-off show with a strong lead character who was once second fiddle to an even stronger lead character on the parent show. I often found this problem with "Angel," when the world came into peril, and even more often, I find the problem arising on "Torchwood." When the conflict gets really, really bad and it looks like the world will end, the spin-off characters always act like they're out of options. But they haven't called in the big guns yet!

Externally, the reasoning for "Angel" and "Buffy" was that they wound up on different networks, and once you put the Doctor on "Torchwood," it becomes "Doctor Who," and stops being "Torchwood." Not to mention, little kids tuning in to "Torchwood" to see their Doctor? Not the greatest of ideas, PR-wise. Internally, sometimes it is explained, and sometimes not. I know that the writers had Gwen theorize it away in the final episode of Children of Earth, but the explanation sucked rocks, and actually offended some of us. Like we're supposed to buy that the Doctor wouldn't help save the Earth just because we humans are acting like idiots? In the Doctor's world, we act like idiots most of the time, and he likes us anyway! So pick up the damn phone!

So I'd like now to explore what would have happened if Jack and Gwen had got their heads out of their you-know-whats, and realized that honeymoon or no honeymoon, UNIT's Chief Medical Officer would have parted the Red Sea if it meant saving the world. Hell, she'd crossed it on foot to save it, why wouldn't she make a inter-coital phone call? (Not that we'll have to worry about any of that.)

Mondays are always rubbish, no matter what the week-end had held. Even if she'd spent the last two days floating on a cloud above a world at peace, it would still have been a bloody drag to get up this morning.

Mind you, today wasn't as bad as Saturday had been. Saturday had been brutal. She'd spent most of that day locked in her room at her mum and dad's flat (where she currently lived) with people outside the door begging her to emerge. Both of her parents had tried, her sister, brother, sister-in-law, a few of her friends. Even the dog had come scratching.

But she had refused to come out. She didn't want them to see her crying.

Everyone had expected her to cry, sure, over what the day could have been. The funny thing was, she wasn't crying over the loss, but just from a general claustrophobia, a feeling that the world was closing in. She'd been relatively all right when she awoke, had planned to get away, go find a café and sit, have the day to herself to reflect. But they hadn't let her. As soon as her mum had heard footsteps coming from her bedroom, she was knocking, saying things like, "Honey? Why don't you come down and have a nice breakfast with the family?" Her condescending tone had been just plain annoying, so she shooed her mum away.

Although her mum wouldn't go away. Eventually, an expletive exploded from inside the room, followed by a muffled sob, and her mum took it as a sign of sadness and grief over the day's inherent dark symbolism. Really it was frustration. She'd meant it when she'd said leave me the hell alone, goddamn it! But then her dad's voice came through the door, then another voice, until a parade of clumsy loved-ones had succeeded in making her feel well and truly pitiful. It's like when a friend dies, and you're fine, until someone says, "How're you holding up?" and then you burst into tears and can't stop.

She hadn't planned to spend the day sitting on her bed, crying over a piece of card that said, in purple script, The Honour of Your Presence is Requested… but she had. They'd forced her. She hadn't wanted to try on the dress and the shoes and the veil… but she had. They were staring at her, seemed to say to her her, you said you'd wear us – why aren't you wearing us? She hadn't meant to wonder what everyone else was doing, those nice folks who had cleared their schedules for her day, and had had their plans abruptly cancelled… but as noon came, she did wonder.

Thank goodness they had decided to make it a small affair; it had meant a smaller disaster later, when it all came crashing down three weeks ago, another Monday, bloody Monday. Though it had been too late to return the dress, or get refunded on the cake, catering, site fees, flowers or anything else, her parents hadn't minded. They just wanted her to heal, and wanted to help and hover and fuss over her. And so, cloistered within the loving home of her family, she'd made herself utterly miserable.

Now it was Monday, 8:31 a.m., and she had nothing to do for the next two weeks. She sat on a park bench in the garden of a bed and breakfast near central London, a cup of coffee in one hand, and a pair of British Airways boarding passes in the other. The plane would leave for Bermuda in twenty minutes. She wondered whether it was on-schedule, and who, if anyone, would be sitting in the seats they'd left unoccupied. She ran her fingers over the names in boxy lettering, chuckling about how she'd fretted over how her name should appear on the pass. Technically, until she filled out the paperwork, her name wouldn't yet have changed, and her passport was still in her maiden name anyway, so she might as well keep the Jones. Little had she known until three weeks ago that she'd be keeping the Jones forever, or at least until further notice.

She sighed. Briefly yesterday, she'd thought of getting on the plane anyway. The whole trip was paid for, and she desperately needed a getaway. She thought of inviting a friend, but her friends would just want to spend the time drinking, pulling in blokes and trashing Tom. She didn't want that – it wasn't going to help. What she needed was either two weeks on a Zen retreat, or a good, solid crisis to take her mind off it. And frankly, the only people who she'd want to travel with now, or could give her a good crisis, were not the types who were, generally speaking, available on a moment's notice.

She sighed again. A tall man came into her mind; two tall men, actually. One in a suit, trainers and brown coat, the other in braces, combat boots and a blue coat. One mind-bogglingly clever, the other just highly adaptable. Both ridiculously magnetic, both cheeky, both dangerous. Both warriors, homeless, tortured, semi-immortal and impossibly old. As a result, they were kindred, connected in a way that made them, perhaps, the only people in the universe who could understand either one of them. This was a bond that the young, jealous medical student had found annoying. The wordly and experienced Dr. Jones now hoped they'd both find solace in it.

And, once her all-consuming, gut-wrenching love for one of them had ebbed away along with her vague fear of the other, she'd begun to think of the two of them as symbols of the same thing. Adventure, security, bravery… her old life. Something she'd been longing to re-capture.

She wondered about their lives today, and hypothetically, where she would fit in. When she was in New York, she'd received an e-mail from Gwen Cooper delivering the sad news of Toshiko Sato's death and Owen Harper's final, gruesome fate. Though, surprisingly, when she saw them again, neither Jack nor Gwen nor Ianto seemed much the worse for wear. And after the dust from the Dalek attack had settled, it had looked for a while like Torchwood had found a new medical officer in her, and a new technology officer in Mickey Smith, but both had declined and gone their separate ways. She supposed that now, they'd found their medic and their techie – no more space for her.

She chuckled to herself about where she'd fit into the Doctor's life now. When she'd walked away from the TARDIS the last time, the Doctor, his twin, Donna Noble and Rose Tyler had been inside. She knew without asking that the Doctor would come up with a way to "dispose of" his Döppelganger, as she couldn't see either one of them staying sane with the other on-board. Then, shortly thereafter, she'd heard through the medical taskforce in UNIT that Donna Noble was home in Chiswick and unwell, and that she was to be put under psychiatric surveillance (Nut-Watch, as they called it, usually reserved for the poor farmers in Salisbury, half mad from dealing with crop circles) as per the Doctor's orders.

So then there were two in the TARDIS. Even though she no longer hoped that she and the Doctor would someday be sending their kids off to university together, she was pretty sure she'd rather spend her life mucking out horse stalls with a plastic spoon than travel with those two.

Still, she thought of him and Jack wistfully. She remembered telling Donna that the Doctor was like fire – stand too close and you get burned. But she also supposed he was like a drug. Once you get a shot in the arm of the adrenaline and excitement of his life, you want it always. She had never really stopped to think about it, but she supposed that before today, she'd had it in the back of her mind that she could always call him back and ask him to take her away again, whenever she liked. After all, she'd been the one to walk away, and after the Sontaran thing, he and Donna had asked her to stay. But now, it wasn't an option anymore, and even though she wasn't sure she'd do it even if she could, she still felt the loss. The whole time she'd known him, he'd longed for something he'd lost that he couldn't have back – now he had it back, she reckoned he'd be a complete moron to jeopardise it in any way. Until three weeks ago when she started feeling the pull to get away, none of this had occurred to her in almost two years.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Her old mobile number, signalling a text message from outer space and all of her worlds colliding. The text read, "Congrats, Mrs. M. Bermuda's brill & so R U. Bon voyage. Luv, the D." She chuckled bitterly, and answered, "Thx," not ready nor wanting to tell the story again, especially in stilted text messaging language. In a couple of weeks, she'd call him and explain properly.

And these thoughts made her feel fatigued. She decided to take her mind away, and to her surprise, she let go of all of it, the way one lets go of a barbell after ten reps. It was a relief.

And so, Martha Jones zoned out for a bit. It was a good thing to do. For eight whole minutes, she did not think of Tom or Bermuda, of Jack or Torchwood, of the Doctor or Rose. She fixated on the passers-by, on people going about their lives. A boy across the street trotted behind his mum eating yoghurt, while she talked on the phone. A courier carrying a full canvas bag came by on his bicycle, and a cheerful-looking older lady stepped aside for him, and smiled. A silver Mercedes stopped at the traffic signal, and she could hear Tears For Fears playing loudly on the speakers inside. Behind her, on the patio of the bed and breakfast, she overheard an American family planning out their day. They were headed to see Parliament and ride the London Eye, and the parents were trying to map out the short path on the Tube. The way they carried on, Martha guessed they were not from New York, Boston, Chicago, Washington or any other city with a reliable train system. The kids were young, maybe between eight and ten, and very excited. They marvelled a bit too loudly about how the people here all "talk funny," and their parents shushed them hastily. Martha smiled.

A minute or two later, the American family walked past her, the parents still fretting over the Underground map. The youngsters had peeled out ahead of the parents toward the street, and the mother looked up a beat too late. The kids had, admittedly, looked to the right for cars before running out into the street. But traffic was still coming, and they had just enough time to cross, as though they were playing a real-life game of Frogger.

Actually, they would have had enough time to cross, had they not stopped dead in the middle of the road. A loud skid bounced off the buildings and sounded like a trumpet, the boy was run down by a red Volkswagen, and the girl was narrowly missed. Though, she did not jump out of the way nor react at all. Cars skidded to a stop everywhere, and Martha gave a cry, then ran to help, spilling her coffee over the cobbled path in the garden. As she knelt beside the boy, pulling the mother back by the shoulders, insisting she was a doctor, she glanced at her watch. 8:40 a.m., GMT.