Because I'm not ready to post this on my fic journal, I'm going to put it up here...
*
Five months and twenty-three days into the year of hell on earth, Martha Jones stopped running. She didn't mean to - she never meant to, and even if she survived this year, she wasn't sure now she ever could. Accidents, however, did happen.
Lying still on the ground, flat on her stomach, face pressed into the dirt, Martha silently cursing the day the Toclafane got smart. Well. She said "smart". They always were smart, to be truthful, but in the past month or so they'd developed some new tactics she really wasn't fond of.
She took a breath and chanced a glance upwards. The air was icy in her lungs, and she still wasn't nearly as far north as she intended to go. Above, the sky was crystalline blue, perfectly clear, and through it glided four silver spheres. It would have been peaceful, pretty, if she didn't know that they were literally killing machines.
And if not for the fact that they kept firing their lasers or whatever they were at random intervals, random locations. That was their favorite new technique, started a month ago, as far as Martha could tell. They knew vaguely when she was around, but the perception filter kept them from seeing her, so they just... attacked. Anything. Everything. Like flushing a rabbit from the brush.
The terrifying thing was that it nearly worked. With every shot, her muscles tensed, her heart raced, everything in her screaming to run, before they got her. It took all of her self-control, all of her hard-won strength of will, to stay put. If she just stayed still until they passed...
Don't make any sudden movements. Don't speak, don't draw the least bit of attention to yourself... She knew well enough how the perception filters worked by now,but she always found herself repeating those instructions, every time.
Martha lunged to her feet and took off running, to the distant tree line where she'd at least have a little more cover, more places to hide. The muscles of her legs screamed - she'd been running too much these past few days, these past months - but she managed to keep going by sheer virtue of the fact that if she stopped, if she fell, she wouldn't get back up.
She could make it. She had to make it. She was not going to die in the middle of nowhere in Russia.
A laser struck the ground, mere feet to her left. Martha felt her heart stop momentarily, and she looked to the sky to see a single Toclafane, and God, how had she missed it? As she watched, the blades extended, glinting in the sunlight, under the clear blue sky. Martha drew a ragged breath, the cold air rasping painfully in her lungs, burning in her throat, and pressed on just a little faster. It hurt, but not nearly as much as she imagined dying would.
A boulder exploded, just a little to her right, in a shower of fragmented stone. The force of it sent Martha tumbling to the ground, the back of her head cracking against a rock - a sharp pain, her head spinning, the sight of the bladed Toclafane approaching, and then nothing but darkness.
She didn't even have time to regret that she'd failed the Doctor before she lost consciousness completely.
C is for Collar
Five months and twenty-three days into the year of hell on earth, Martha Jones stopped running. She didn't mean to - she never meant to, and even if she survived this year, she wasn't sure now she ever could. Accidents, however, did happen.
Lying still on the ground, flat on her stomach, face pressed into the dirt, Martha silently cursing the day the Toclafane got smart. Well. She said "smart". They always were smart, to be truthful, but in the past month or so they'd developed some new tactics she really wasn't fond of.
She took a breath and chanced a glance upwards. The air was icy in her lungs, and she still wasn't nearly as far north as she intended to go. Above, the sky was crystalline blue, perfectly clear, and through it glided four silver spheres. It would have been peaceful, pretty, if she didn't know that they were literally killing machines.
And if not for the fact that they kept firing their lasers or whatever they were at random intervals, random locations. That was their favorite new technique, started a month ago, as far as Martha could tell. They knew vaguely when she was around, but the perception filter kept them from seeing her, so they just... attacked. Anything. Everything. Like flushing a rabbit from the brush.
The terrifying thing was that it nearly worked. With every shot, her muscles tensed, her heart raced, everything in her screaming to run, before they got her. It took all of her self-control, all of her hard-won strength of will, to stay put. If she just stayed still until they passed...
Don't make any sudden movements. Don't speak, don't draw the least bit of attention to yourself... She knew well enough how the perception filters worked by now,but she always found herself repeating those instructions, every time.
Martha lunged to her feet and took off running, to the distant tree line where she'd at least have a little more cover, more places to hide. The muscles of her legs screamed - she'd been running too much these past few days, these past months - but she managed to keep going by sheer virtue of the fact that if she stopped, if she fell, she wouldn't get back up.
She could make it. She had to make it. She was not going to die in the middle of nowhere in Russia.
A laser struck the ground, mere feet to her left. Martha felt her heart stop momentarily, and she looked to the sky to see a single Toclafane, and God, how had she missed it? As she watched, the blades extended, glinting in the sunlight, under the clear blue sky. Martha drew a ragged breath, the cold air rasping painfully in her lungs, burning in her throat, and pressed on just a little faster. It hurt, but not nearly as much as she imagined dying would.
A boulder exploded, just a little to her right, in a shower of fragmented stone. The force of it sent Martha tumbling to the ground, the back of her head cracking against a rock - a sharp pain, her head spinning, the sight of the bladed Toclafane approaching, and then nothing but darkness.
She didn't even have time to regret that she'd failed the Doctor before she lost consciousness completely.
(continued in the next comment...)