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Fic: Hollow World, Chapter 6
Title: Hollow World
Author: Veldeia
Fandom: Doctor Who
Spoilers: Takes place before Blink. Nothing worth mentioning, really.
Characters/Pairings: 10th Doctor, Martha Jones, OCs. Gen.
Rating: PG
Genre/Category: Adventure, hurt/comfort, drama.
Warnings: WIP.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not making money. Will return everyone good as new once I'm done.
Summary: The 10th Doctor and Martha, stuck in a cave, utterly unprepared and separated from the TARDIS - what else could go wrong?
6. Stratton's Squeeze
They were on Earth.
Martha still had a hard time actually believing that fact, even though they were now walking along the cave passage with three men from the sixties. She was glad they had met them. Not that she didn't trust the Doctor's abilities and wide knowledge of all of time and space, but these were people who had clearly spent a lot of time in places just like this, and already knew this particular cave quite well.
"So, what do you do? Are you both geologists as well?" Martha asked Brian and Joseph as they walked.
"I'm more of a well-informed amateur in that field," Joseph replied. "Photography is my actual line of work. Of course, I abandoned all my equipment once we realised we're stuck here. No sense in lugging all that extra weight around, when no one is ever going to see the pictures anyway."
"I'm not a geologist at all. I'm a teacher, actually," Brian said. "Elementary school."
"What's a school teacher doing in a cave, then?" Martha asked.
"I'm mostly here for the adventure and the excitement, and..." He sighed. "Well, I wouldn't be here if not for Jess."
"Oh, you mentioned him earlier - what happened to him?" Considering Brian's tone and the fact that he had said they'd lost Jess, maybe she shouldn't have asked that, but she couldn't help being curious. "Of course, I understand if you don't want to talk about it," she added quickly.
"It's okay, I think you'd better hear our story since we're in this mess together now. And it's not him, it's her. Jessica Solis. You may have heard of her, she's one of the top speleologists around here," he said, paused, and sighed again. "Was, I should say, I guess. She's the one who found the entrance to this cave, and she was always the one to go through the most challenging obstacles first, but then... There was this boulder choke, and it seemed all right, we all agreed on that, no loose boulders, just very tight - and she went through first - but it wasn't all right. It shifted. Collapsed on top of her. We did our best, but we couldn't reach her, and she wouldn't answer our calls -"
"There was nothing we could do," Joseph added, his voice wavering slightly as well. "We had no choice but to leave her. She's gone."
"That's horrible! I'm so sorry," Martha said.
"I guess we'll all be joining her soon enough. Maybe she was lucky. At least it was quick for her," Brian said gloomily.
"We won't," Martha reassured him. "We're going to get out of here, all of us. The Doctor and I, we've been in situations far worse than this. There's always a way out."
Martha kept expecting for the Doctor to speak up, but he was being strangely quiet. She had thought he was feeling better. Maybe she'd been wrong. He was walking ahead of her, next to Grant, who was leading the way. He seemed to be staring at his toes instead of looking around, and that alone was a clear sign he wasn't back to normal yet.
They walked back to the crossroads, followed the familiar wide passage for a few minutes, and then Grant stopped. "This is it," he said, nodding towards one of the walls. "Our shortcut to the river."
At first, Martha didn't even understand what he was gesturing at. When she did - she felt her mouth go dry and her palms turn sweaty at the very idea. There was an opening in the wall, but it was so low that she would never ever have considered it a possible passage.
"They insist on calling it Stratton's Squeeze, in my dishonour," Joseph said unhappily. "But you are both much smaller than I, so it should be easy enough for you."
"I really don't know about that," Martha said. "I've never done anything like this before."
"Don't worry, it's really simple, and it's not that tight all the way through," Grant said, doing absolutely nothing to reassure her.
"What exactly are we facing, then?" the Doctor asked. Even he wasn't sounding too enthusiastic.
"Just crawling, with some squeezes, all in a nice straight line. Maybe fifty yards or so," Grant explained. "That's the uncomfortable part. After that, some wading and a few traverses in the river, and a walk in a wide, easy tunnel. Let's see - I can go first and guide you, Doctor. Martha, you come after him, then Brian, so you can help both her and Joe. That sound all right to you?"
"Fine, I'll come last so I won't slow you down too much," Joseph muttered.
"I think I'll be taking it slow, too," Martha said.
The entrance of Stratton's Squeeze was a little larger than she'd thought at first. She could actually fit through it on her knees and elbows. After the first few feet, the ceiling rose a little. She kept going. She tried not to think about where she was, and did her best to keep her head clear and just concentrate on moving. She could do this.
She could see the Doctor not far ahead of her, and hear Brian just behind her, pushing his tackle bag in front of him. The tunnel was so narrow that simply turning around would be a challenge. Then, the Doctor stopped moving.
"Gets a little squeezy here," he announced, his voice sounding muffled in the tight space. "So, here we go."
She followed him through the tight section, and it wasn't all that bad, although Martha could see why Joseph had complained about it. He was quite a bit bigger than her, after all. She did have to crawl, pressed flat against the ground, and her clothes got completely covered in mud, but that was unavoidable. If it wasn't any worse than this, she'd survive. She couldn't imagine why anyone would want to do something like this voluntarily, though.
After the first squeeze, they had it easy for a while, but then, the Doctor stopped again, and proceeded really slowly. Soon, all Martha could see were the soles of his trainers, sticking out of a very narrow horizontal crack, like the rock had swallowed him alive - it even looked like he was trying to fight against the stony maw, his toes shuffling against the ground as he squiggled his way through.
She stared at his shoes, holding her breath. Oh, God, how could she do this? And what if she couldn't? What if she got stuck? This was far worse than the first squeeze, and worse than the narrow vertical crack the Doctor had gone through earlier. He seemed to have no trouble with this one, either. She would have to do it, too. There was no turning back now.
The Doctor's shoes disappeared from view. "All right, Martha, I'm through," he called out.
She braced herself, and started crawling.
"Turn your head sideways, and keep at least one hand extended ahead of you all the time," Brian advised from behind her. "And remember, you can't get stuck, not really. If you were able to get there, it's always possible to get out, too."
She somehow managed to get her head and her good hand through the tightest part. She could see to the slightly wider space beyond, where the Doctor was sitting in an awkward-looking position, his back against one wall and his trainers against the other, his pulled-up knees almost touching his chin. He gave her an encouraging smile.
She tried to keep going, but she wasn't getting anywhere. Her shoulders were at the tightest part now, and it really was tight, it was so tight that she couldn't breathe - she thought about petromite tunnels that could collapse any minute - surely this wasn't one of those? And the lost caver, Jess, who had been buried under rocks, probably suffocated, crushed, just like this -
"Martha?" the Doctor called out, sounding worried. "Martha, it's all right. Relax. You're safe."
She swallowed, and tried to calm down, but it felt completely ridiculous - how was she supposed to relax when she was stuck between who knew how many tons of rock - when there wasn't even enough room to take a deep breath?
"You can fit through, if the Doctor and I could," she heard Grant say.
The Doctor crouched in front of her and gave her his hand. "Come on, I'll help. We can do this."
He pulled, and she kicked with her feet and tried to wriggle her way forwards as best she could, and slowly, all too slowly, she was moving, an inch, then another, and she almost got stuck and panicked again when it was her hips at the tightest part, but somehow, she managed it, and finally, finally she was through. She pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms tightly around them.
"All right, Brian, the coast is clear," Grant announced.
The Doctor somehow managed to worm his arm around Martha's shoulders despite the lack of room. "Are you all right?" he asked.
She nodded, not trusting her voice yet. She must've got a dozen new bruises, but she was still so panicked and shaky that she didn't even feel the dull pain of her wrist.
"That was the worst of it, the narrowest part of this whole trip. You did good," Grant said from behind the Doctor.
The Doctor reached over Martha to pull Brian's bag through the squeeze. Next came his helmet, and then, Brian himself emerged through the tight section.
"Quite a thrill, that one," he said, grinning. Then, he saw the look on Martha's face, and turned more serious. "We're not far from the river now, and the rest of the journey is much easier than what we've just gone through."
"All right," Martha managed to say. "I'm ready, let's move on."
They kept going, and the tunnel grew slightly bigger, high enough that she could've walked in a low crouch instead of crawling, but she stayed on her hands and knees. She wasn't entirely sure her feet would carry her.
She wanted nothing more than to get out of this horribly cramped space, and that was what kept her going through one more squeeze, not quite as tight as the previous one, but no less scary for that. Even the tunnels where there was no risk of getting stuck felt much too tight now. She had to keep reminding herself that there were chambers as huge as houses in this place, and if she just kept going a little longer, they would soon reach one of those.
Finally, the walls disappeared from around her, turning into darkness instead, and she could breathe freely again. They weren't in a room, but in a high passage, on a wide riverbank made up of rocks and boulders. The roar of running water was very loud here. The river itself was much smaller than she would've expected, more like a rapidly flowing stream.
The Doctor was sitting on the ground right next to the opening, staring into the distance. Immensely relieved that they had both made it safely through that terrible tunnel, Martha made her way to him, and wrapped her arms around him.
"Now, this sort of squeezes aren't too bad," he told her over the noise.
She just chuckled tiredly, and hugged him a little tighter.
After a while, she realised that his forehead was resting on her shoulder, and he was leaning on her really heavily.
"Doctor?"
His head snapped up, he sat up straight, and blinked at her blearily, raising his hand to rub at his eyes. "Oh, I'm sorry! Do we need to go?"
"We're not in a hurry," she replied. Had he just nodded off there? She didn't think Time Lords did that. Had he blacked out, then? "Doctor, if you need to rest -"
"No, actually, we are," he interrupted her, got up, and headed towards the river.
7. The River
Author: Veldeia
Fandom: Doctor Who
Spoilers: Takes place before Blink. Nothing worth mentioning, really.
Characters/Pairings: 10th Doctor, Martha Jones, OCs. Gen.
Rating: PG
Genre/Category: Adventure, hurt/comfort, drama.
Warnings: WIP.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not making money. Will return everyone good as new once I'm done.
Summary: The 10th Doctor and Martha, stuck in a cave, utterly unprepared and separated from the TARDIS - what else could go wrong?
6. Stratton's Squeeze
They were on Earth.
Martha still had a hard time actually believing that fact, even though they were now walking along the cave passage with three men from the sixties. She was glad they had met them. Not that she didn't trust the Doctor's abilities and wide knowledge of all of time and space, but these were people who had clearly spent a lot of time in places just like this, and already knew this particular cave quite well.
"So, what do you do? Are you both geologists as well?" Martha asked Brian and Joseph as they walked.
"I'm more of a well-informed amateur in that field," Joseph replied. "Photography is my actual line of work. Of course, I abandoned all my equipment once we realised we're stuck here. No sense in lugging all that extra weight around, when no one is ever going to see the pictures anyway."
"I'm not a geologist at all. I'm a teacher, actually," Brian said. "Elementary school."
"What's a school teacher doing in a cave, then?" Martha asked.
"I'm mostly here for the adventure and the excitement, and..." He sighed. "Well, I wouldn't be here if not for Jess."
"Oh, you mentioned him earlier - what happened to him?" Considering Brian's tone and the fact that he had said they'd lost Jess, maybe she shouldn't have asked that, but she couldn't help being curious. "Of course, I understand if you don't want to talk about it," she added quickly.
"It's okay, I think you'd better hear our story since we're in this mess together now. And it's not him, it's her. Jessica Solis. You may have heard of her, she's one of the top speleologists around here," he said, paused, and sighed again. "Was, I should say, I guess. She's the one who found the entrance to this cave, and she was always the one to go through the most challenging obstacles first, but then... There was this boulder choke, and it seemed all right, we all agreed on that, no loose boulders, just very tight - and she went through first - but it wasn't all right. It shifted. Collapsed on top of her. We did our best, but we couldn't reach her, and she wouldn't answer our calls -"
"There was nothing we could do," Joseph added, his voice wavering slightly as well. "We had no choice but to leave her. She's gone."
"That's horrible! I'm so sorry," Martha said.
"I guess we'll all be joining her soon enough. Maybe she was lucky. At least it was quick for her," Brian said gloomily.
"We won't," Martha reassured him. "We're going to get out of here, all of us. The Doctor and I, we've been in situations far worse than this. There's always a way out."
Martha kept expecting for the Doctor to speak up, but he was being strangely quiet. She had thought he was feeling better. Maybe she'd been wrong. He was walking ahead of her, next to Grant, who was leading the way. He seemed to be staring at his toes instead of looking around, and that alone was a clear sign he wasn't back to normal yet.
They walked back to the crossroads, followed the familiar wide passage for a few minutes, and then Grant stopped. "This is it," he said, nodding towards one of the walls. "Our shortcut to the river."
At first, Martha didn't even understand what he was gesturing at. When she did - she felt her mouth go dry and her palms turn sweaty at the very idea. There was an opening in the wall, but it was so low that she would never ever have considered it a possible passage.
"They insist on calling it Stratton's Squeeze, in my dishonour," Joseph said unhappily. "But you are both much smaller than I, so it should be easy enough for you."
"I really don't know about that," Martha said. "I've never done anything like this before."
"Don't worry, it's really simple, and it's not that tight all the way through," Grant said, doing absolutely nothing to reassure her.
"What exactly are we facing, then?" the Doctor asked. Even he wasn't sounding too enthusiastic.
"Just crawling, with some squeezes, all in a nice straight line. Maybe fifty yards or so," Grant explained. "That's the uncomfortable part. After that, some wading and a few traverses in the river, and a walk in a wide, easy tunnel. Let's see - I can go first and guide you, Doctor. Martha, you come after him, then Brian, so you can help both her and Joe. That sound all right to you?"
"Fine, I'll come last so I won't slow you down too much," Joseph muttered.
"I think I'll be taking it slow, too," Martha said.
The entrance of Stratton's Squeeze was a little larger than she'd thought at first. She could actually fit through it on her knees and elbows. After the first few feet, the ceiling rose a little. She kept going. She tried not to think about where she was, and did her best to keep her head clear and just concentrate on moving. She could do this.
She could see the Doctor not far ahead of her, and hear Brian just behind her, pushing his tackle bag in front of him. The tunnel was so narrow that simply turning around would be a challenge. Then, the Doctor stopped moving.
"Gets a little squeezy here," he announced, his voice sounding muffled in the tight space. "So, here we go."
She followed him through the tight section, and it wasn't all that bad, although Martha could see why Joseph had complained about it. He was quite a bit bigger than her, after all. She did have to crawl, pressed flat against the ground, and her clothes got completely covered in mud, but that was unavoidable. If it wasn't any worse than this, she'd survive. She couldn't imagine why anyone would want to do something like this voluntarily, though.
After the first squeeze, they had it easy for a while, but then, the Doctor stopped again, and proceeded really slowly. Soon, all Martha could see were the soles of his trainers, sticking out of a very narrow horizontal crack, like the rock had swallowed him alive - it even looked like he was trying to fight against the stony maw, his toes shuffling against the ground as he squiggled his way through.
She stared at his shoes, holding her breath. Oh, God, how could she do this? And what if she couldn't? What if she got stuck? This was far worse than the first squeeze, and worse than the narrow vertical crack the Doctor had gone through earlier. He seemed to have no trouble with this one, either. She would have to do it, too. There was no turning back now.
The Doctor's shoes disappeared from view. "All right, Martha, I'm through," he called out.
She braced herself, and started crawling.
"Turn your head sideways, and keep at least one hand extended ahead of you all the time," Brian advised from behind her. "And remember, you can't get stuck, not really. If you were able to get there, it's always possible to get out, too."
She somehow managed to get her head and her good hand through the tightest part. She could see to the slightly wider space beyond, where the Doctor was sitting in an awkward-looking position, his back against one wall and his trainers against the other, his pulled-up knees almost touching his chin. He gave her an encouraging smile.
She tried to keep going, but she wasn't getting anywhere. Her shoulders were at the tightest part now, and it really was tight, it was so tight that she couldn't breathe - she thought about petromite tunnels that could collapse any minute - surely this wasn't one of those? And the lost caver, Jess, who had been buried under rocks, probably suffocated, crushed, just like this -
"Martha?" the Doctor called out, sounding worried. "Martha, it's all right. Relax. You're safe."
She swallowed, and tried to calm down, but it felt completely ridiculous - how was she supposed to relax when she was stuck between who knew how many tons of rock - when there wasn't even enough room to take a deep breath?
"You can fit through, if the Doctor and I could," she heard Grant say.
The Doctor crouched in front of her and gave her his hand. "Come on, I'll help. We can do this."
He pulled, and she kicked with her feet and tried to wriggle her way forwards as best she could, and slowly, all too slowly, she was moving, an inch, then another, and she almost got stuck and panicked again when it was her hips at the tightest part, but somehow, she managed it, and finally, finally she was through. She pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms tightly around them.
"All right, Brian, the coast is clear," Grant announced.
The Doctor somehow managed to worm his arm around Martha's shoulders despite the lack of room. "Are you all right?" he asked.
She nodded, not trusting her voice yet. She must've got a dozen new bruises, but she was still so panicked and shaky that she didn't even feel the dull pain of her wrist.
"That was the worst of it, the narrowest part of this whole trip. You did good," Grant said from behind the Doctor.
The Doctor reached over Martha to pull Brian's bag through the squeeze. Next came his helmet, and then, Brian himself emerged through the tight section.
"Quite a thrill, that one," he said, grinning. Then, he saw the look on Martha's face, and turned more serious. "We're not far from the river now, and the rest of the journey is much easier than what we've just gone through."
"All right," Martha managed to say. "I'm ready, let's move on."
They kept going, and the tunnel grew slightly bigger, high enough that she could've walked in a low crouch instead of crawling, but she stayed on her hands and knees. She wasn't entirely sure her feet would carry her.
She wanted nothing more than to get out of this horribly cramped space, and that was what kept her going through one more squeeze, not quite as tight as the previous one, but no less scary for that. Even the tunnels where there was no risk of getting stuck felt much too tight now. She had to keep reminding herself that there were chambers as huge as houses in this place, and if she just kept going a little longer, they would soon reach one of those.
Finally, the walls disappeared from around her, turning into darkness instead, and she could breathe freely again. They weren't in a room, but in a high passage, on a wide riverbank made up of rocks and boulders. The roar of running water was very loud here. The river itself was much smaller than she would've expected, more like a rapidly flowing stream.
The Doctor was sitting on the ground right next to the opening, staring into the distance. Immensely relieved that they had both made it safely through that terrible tunnel, Martha made her way to him, and wrapped her arms around him.
"Now, this sort of squeezes aren't too bad," he told her over the noise.
She just chuckled tiredly, and hugged him a little tighter.
After a while, she realised that his forehead was resting on her shoulder, and he was leaning on her really heavily.
"Doctor?"
His head snapped up, he sat up straight, and blinked at her blearily, raising his hand to rub at his eyes. "Oh, I'm sorry! Do we need to go?"
"We're not in a hurry," she replied. Had he just nodded off there? She didn't think Time Lords did that. Had he blacked out, then? "Doctor, if you need to rest -"
"No, actually, we are," he interrupted her, got up, and headed towards the river.
7. The River